The old hulks

‘That’s the way we all go — the old hulks!’ The General tugged angrily at his moustache. ‘You can ruin yourself being battered and chased and shot at half your life, and fighting like hell on behalf of a lot of damned lickspittles who infest cesspits like the Athenaeum Club where they put too much damned salt in the damned consommé and try to poison people with curried turtle soup that would make a Bengali privy cleaner sick — not that I ever fought except when I couldn’t avoid it, but any man’s a bloody fool who does otherwise — and what d’you get for it at the end of the day? His voice was rising steadily, and his eyes glaring horribly. ‘I’ll tell you what you get — a set of tinware and a few meaningless titles and a pension that won’t keep your blasted dog in bones, and your niece, a lady of quality, expressing her proper contempt for a worthless travesty of a picture by some mountebank whom you wouldn’t pay to distemper a kitchen ceiling, may be hauled into a police court, subjected to the degradation of a public trial — ’


Mr American, p.391, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.



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General Flashman remarks on the capacity of British prime ministers

. . . they took a cab to the famous club, where Sir Harry stared around the imposing hall and remarked that things weren’t what they had once been. ‘Saw Palmerston fall down that staircase — the whole damned way from top to bottom. Tight as a fiddler’s bitch. Finished up wrapped round that pillar there. Can’t see Asquith doing that, somehow. Rotten prime minister. D’you know, I presented him with a school prize once? Must be fifty years ago — ugly little swot he was then, and hasn’t improved over the years. Mind you, Balfour wouldn’t have been any better — “Pretty Fanny”, they used to call him. Only good thing I know about him was that he taught Asquith how to ride a bicycle. Argued some kind of capacity, I suppose — I’d sooner try to teach a whale to play the fiddle.’


Mr American, p.388, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.



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Never to be seen again

Word came just then that Masteeat was expected hourly, and Warkite was off like a rising grouse, never to be seen again.



Flashman on the March, p.282, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Canard mécanique

Speedy was nodding like a mechanical duck.



Flashman on the March, p.275, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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A glitter of sabres

A trumpet sounded, and across the Islamgee plain I saw a glitter of sabres where a squadron of bearded sowars were cantering to meet them — Bombay Lights, I’m told, and just the boys to do Theodore’s homework for him if he lingered.


Flashman on the March, p.262, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Rule Britannia, thinks I

. . . our jaunty subaltern was putting on dog in no uncertain manner. His old red coat was sponged and pressed, his whiskers shone with pomade, his cap was on three hairs, his cane under his arm, and his monocle in his eye. Rule Britannia, thinks I, and stamped my heel in reply to the barra salaam* he threw me . . .


 *Big salute


Flashman on the March, p.245, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Bless the rains down in Africa

It began to rain, coming down in stair-rods that pitted the mud like buckshot . . .



Flashman on the March, p.222, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Glum speculation

      To keep my mind from glum speculation, I tried to remember how many times I’d been in chains before. Four or five, pehaps? Proper chains, that is, not the darbies used by the A Division peelers to restrain obstreperous revellers, but your genuine bilboes.


Flashman on the March, p.201, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Mad King Theodore

To find myself in the presence of Mad King Theodore was enough to turn my bowels to buttermilk . . .

Flashman on the March, p.190, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.



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The splendid horseshoe

. . . I was able to get a full view of that extraordinary wonder of the natural world, all six hundred yards of it from the broken cataracts at its western end to the splendid horseshoe on the east. Aye, the devil certainly looks after his own, thinks I, while my Galla escorts sneered and nudged each other and muttered “Walker!” in Amharic.



Flashman on the March, p.145, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Trout fishing in Africa

. . . and enjoying the aforesaid bout of hareem gymnastics, in the course of which we rolled down the bank into the water, not that Uliba seemed to notice, the dear enamoured girl, for she thrashed about in the shallows like a landed trout.


Flashman on the March, p.101, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Belgravian sisters

It was being borne in on me that the moral climate of Abysinnia was not quite that of our own polite society — not that Uliba’s Belgravian sisters are averse to a cut off the joint from time to time, but they know enough to keep quiet about it.


Flashman on the March, p.86, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.



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About to apply

. . . I was about to apply the Flashman half-nelson (buttoack in one hand, tit in t’other) when she drew her head back from mine . . .



Flashman on the March, p.70, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Antique whiskers

. . . and then I remembered that this same Napier, with his antique whiskers and one foot in the grave, had recently married a spanking little filly of eighteen, which had plainly influenced his outlook on commerce with the fairer sex; no wonder he looked as though he’d been fed through a mangle.


Flashman on the March, p.58, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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A gift mare

. . . some fellows don’t know a gift mare when she kicks ’em in the trinkets.


Flashman on the March, p.56, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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A quartermaster’s nightmare

      It was a quartermaster’s nightmare, too much gear coming ashore too quickly and nowhere to put it, with confusion worse confounded by the milling mob of what someone called the “pierhead democracy” . . .


Flashman on the March, p.28, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.



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Tinkers and cheese

. . . “but it’s all balls and Banbury . . .”


Flashman on the March, p.16, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.



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Oyez, oyez, oyez!

      Unfortunately, she shared another characteristic with Elspeth — she had no more discretion than the town crier . . .


Flashman on the March, p.8, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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A reluctant hand

. . . my tale of the strangest campaign in the whole history of British arms — and that takes in some damned odd affairs, a few of which I’ve borne a reluctant hand in myself. But Abyssinia took the cake, currants and all.


Flashman on the March, pp.3-4, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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The horse's laugh

“Soon as I told you I was in Dickie’s Meadow,² with this damned fortune to be shipped and Sturgess in dock, what sympathy did dear old friend Flashy offer? The horse’s laugh, and wished me joy!”


2. “Dickey”, meaning shaky or uncertain, has a currency of centuries, but “in Dickie’s meadow”, meaning in serious trouble is, or was a North Cumbrian expression, and it has been suggested (fancifully, no doubt) that since Richard III was in his younger days Warden of the West March with his head-quarters in Carlisle, where he is commemorated in one of the city’s principal streets, Rickergate, the proverbial “meadow” may have been Bosworth Field.


Flashman on the March, p.3, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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