Art criticism the Flashman way

‘In my youth, if a lady of quality had expressed her opinion* — as she has a perfect right to do — d’you think she’d have been dragged before a magistrate? Certainly not! She’d have been sent down to the country for a rest, her father would have bought the damned painting, her brother would have horse whipped the artist and that’d be that!’


* i.e. Attacking a painting with a meat cleaver (Speedicut)


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


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, youth.

Some thoughts on the cessation of the slave trade

      I think he was right; by the way, and I speak from experience, having shirked responsibility too often to count. But the Balllantynes and Legerwoods didn’t, and if the slave trade has been swept off the face of the seas, it hasn’t really been the work of reformers and statesmen with lofty ideals in London and Paris and Washington, but because a long-forgotten host of fairly feckless young Britons did it for fun. And you may tell the historians I said so.


Flashman on the March, p.20, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, slavery.

Holding the sea-lanes

      But I ain’t mocking him, much, and I’ve got a sight more use for him and his like that for the psalm-smiting Holy Joes who pay lip service to delivering the heathen from error’s chain by preaching and giving their ha’pence to the Anti-Slavery Society, but spare never a though for young Ballantyne holding the sea-lanes for civilisation and Jack Legerwood dying the kind of death you wouldn’t wish for your worst enemy. I’ve even heard ‘em maligned like my old shipmate Brooke* for taking a high hand and shooting first and hammering slavers and pirates and brigands like the wrath of God. Censure’s so easy from a distance, but I’ve seen them on the frontiers, schoolboys with the down still on their cheeks doing a man’s work and getting a seedeboy’s pay¹² and damn-all thanks and more often than not a bullet for their twenty-first birthday . . .


12. Seedeboy, sifiboy, Anglo-Indian slang for an African, usually a labourer (see Kipling, The Lost Legion. “We’ve starved on a Seedeboy’s pay”). Eric Partridge points out, in his Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, the irony that the word derives from sidi, a lord. 


Flashman on the March, p.20, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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A dull world

... it would be a dull world if there were no subalterns in it. Quieter, mind you.


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


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In my callow youth

      There was a time, in my callow youth, when the discovery that I was running not opium but guns would have had me bolting frantically for the nearest patch of timber, protesting that it was nothing to do with me, constable, and the chap in charge would be along in a moment.

Flashman and the Dragon, p.28, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.

Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, youth.

Squaring the account

I’ve heard some amazing declarations in my time, but this babbling was extraordinary. It comes of Christian upbringing, of course, and taking cold baths, all of which implants in the impressionable mind the notion that repentance can somehow square the account.

Flashman in the Great Game, p.210, Pan edition, 4th printing, 1979.

Before the shooting begins

It’s always the same before the shooting begins – the hostesses go into a frenzy of gaiety, and all the spongers and civilians crawl out of the wainscoting braying with good fellowship because thank God they ain’t going, and the young plungers and green striplings roister it up, and their fiancées let ’em pleasure them red in the face out of pity, because the poor brave boy is off to the cannon’s mouth, and the dance goes on and the eyes grow brighter and the laughter shriller – and the old men in their dress uniforms look tired, and sip their punch by the fireplace and don’t say much at all.

Flashman at the Charge, p.42, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,shooting, old men.

My own ardent youth

It made me quiet sentimental to watch him – reminded me of my own ardent youth , when every coupling began with an eager stagger across the floor trying to disentangle one’s breeches from one’s ankles.

Flashman at the Charge, p.40, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,youth, breeches.

Sometimes I remember

God knows I’m no romantic adventurer, but sometimes I remember – and I’d like to run south again down to Africa with a fair wind. In a private yacht, with my youth, half a dozen assorted Parisian whores, the finest food and drink, and perhaps a German band. Aye, it’s a man’s life.

Flash For Freedom!, pp.62-63, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1980.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes.