I'm blessed!

     ‘I should have thought you overheard, while you were asleep,’ said Mr Franklin caustically, ‘that Miss Delys is only a friend, that I’m married, and strange as it may seem to you, I’m faithful to my wife.’
     ‘You don’t say!’ The General seemed genuinely surprised. ‘Well, I’m blessed!’ He gave Mr Franklin a curious look. ‘You a Baptist, or something like that?’



Mr American, p.438, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.


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Her flash arts

      There is a tide in the affairs of men when you simply have to chuck it — as, for example, when you learn that the wife of your unsuspecting bosom is a practised thimblerigger who has used her flash arts to ruin an innocent man.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.260, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, wife.

Pomading his eyebrows

      But my conversational bolt was shot. For once I was at a loss — as who would not be, on discovering that while he was bulling a chap's wife all over the shop and probably making a hell of an uproar, the chap himself was virtually next door brushing his teeeth or pomading his eyebrows . . .


Flashman and the Tiger, p.188, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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So damned military

      “I bumped into the sergeant of the guard, accidental-a-purpose. A waxed-moustached old turnip-head who's so damned military he probably rides his wife by the numbers — almost ruptured himself comin’ to attention when I happened by.”


Flashman and the Tiger, p.123, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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Mrs Flashman

      I turned to see what had astonished him, and understood. My dear wife, who is nothing, if not patient, was waiting on a couch by the dining-room door, fanning herself idly, and innocently ignoring the admiring glances of gentlemen, passing through. She was wearing something blue from Paris, as I recall, which left her mostly bare to the waist, and to impress the colonials she had decorated her upper works with the diamond necklace presented to her by the Grand Duke Alexis, a lecherous Russian lout of our acquaintance.

Flashman and the Redskins, pp.218-19, Pan Books edition, 1983.

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Flashman from the heart

      I thought of her finger, under that crushing boot, of the way she’d stood up in the bushes and walked straight out, of the bruising ride from Antan’, of all she’d endured since Singapore – and I didn’t feel ashamed, exactly, because you know it ain’t my line. But I felt my eyes sting, and I lifted her chin with my hand.
      ‘Old girl,’ says I, ‘you’re a trump.’

Flashman's Lady, p.284, Pan edition, 1979.

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When the stakes were on the blanket

She didn’t take fright, or weep, or even plague me with further questions; I’ve known cleverer women and plenty like Lakshmibai and the Silk One who were better at rough riding and desperate work, but none gamer than Elspeth when the stakes were on the blanket. She was a soldier’s wife, all right; pity she hadn’t married a soldier.

Flashman's Lady, p.281, Pan edition, 1979.

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Conversation from a Victorian marriage

      ‘Harry – you are sure you have not been astride Mrs Lade?’
      I was so amazed she had to say it twice.
      ‘Eh? Good God, girl, what do you mean?’
      ‘Have you mounted her?’
      I can’t think how I’ve kept my sanity, talking to that woman for sixty years. Of course, at the time we’d only been married for five, and I hadn’t plumbed the depths of her eccentricity. I could only gargle and exclaim:
      ‘Damnit, I’ve told you I haven’t! And where on earth – it is shocking to use expressions of that kind!’
      ‘Why? You use them – I heard you, at Lady Chalmers’, when you were talking to Jack Speedicut, and you were both remarking on Lottie Canvendish, and whatever her husband could see in such a foolish creature, and you said you expected he found her a good mount. I dare say I was not meant to hear.
      ‘I should think not! and I can have said no such thing – and anyway, ladies ain’t meant to understand such . . . such vulgar words.'
      ‘The ladies who get mounted must understand them.’
      ‘They ain’t ladies!’
      ‘Why not? Lottie Canvendish is. So am I, and you have mounted me – lots of times.’ She sighed, and nestled close, God help us.

Flashman's Lady, pp.195-6, Pan edition, 1979.

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Looking glorious

Elspeth was fast asleep, looking glorious with the candlelight on her blonde hair tumbled over the pillow, and her rosebud lips half open, snoring like the town band.

Flashman in the Great Game, p.39, Pan edition, 4th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes, snoring.

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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Flashman, Flashman quotes,Billy Russell, Crimean War.

That funny Scotch word

…she sobbed and clung to me, calling me her ‘jo’ – it was that funny Scotch word, which she hadn’t used for years, since she had grown so grand, that made me believe her – almost.

Flashman at the Charge, p.49, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes.

Comparing birthmarks

He was in the act of advancing towards my wife, and from the expression on his face – which was that of a starving, apoplectic glutton faced with a crackling roast – and from other visible signs, his intention was not simply to compare birthmarks.

Flashman at the Charge, p.46, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,birthmarks, roast.

I'd rather not, dearest

…I’ve noticed that there are few things that a middle-aged man will go in such awe of as an imperious young wife; he’ll face a wounded buffalo, or go headlong into a sabre charge, be he’ll turn pale and stutter at the thought of saying, ‘ I’d rather not, dearest.’

Flash For Freedom!, p.178, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1980.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes.