Good advice from Billy Russell

I’ve written about it at length elsewhere – the fearful havoc of embarking, with ships full of spewing soldiers rocking at anchor for days on end, the weeping women who were ordered to stay behind (although my little pal, Fan Duberly, sneaked aboard disguised as a washerwoman), the horses fighting and smashing in their cramped stalls, the hideous stink, the cholera corpses floating in the bay, Billy Russell standing on the quay with his note-book damning Lord Lucan’s eyes – ‘I have my duty, too my lord, which is to inform my readers, and if you don’t like what you’re doing being reported, why then, don’t do it! And that’s my advice to you!’ Of course he was daft and Irish, was Billy, but so was Lucan, and they stood and cussed each other like Mississippi pilots.

Flashman at the Charge, p.59, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

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Not your ordinary trooper

…he was well spoken enough, and, although he knew his place, was not at all your ordinary trooper, half-yokel, half-guttersnipe.

Flashman, p.202, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

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The best troopers

And of course Lady Sale was to the fore, wearing an enormous turban and riding a tiny Afghan pony side-saddle. ‘I was saying to Lady McNaghten that I believe we wives would make the best troopers of all,’ she cries out. ‘What do you think, Mr Flashman?’
‘I’d take your Ladyship into my troop any time,’ says I, at which she simpered horribly – ‘but the other horses might be jealous,’ I says to myself quietly, at which the lancers set up a great laugh.

Flashman, p.178, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,Florentia Sale, Lady Sale.