Worn uncommon well

      By the time of Tranby, to be sure, Elspeth was of an age where it should have been unlikely that either Bertie or Cumming would try to drag her behind the sofa, but I still didn't care to think of her within the fat-fingered reach of one or the trim moustache of t’other. She’d worn uncommon well; middle sixties and still shaped like a Turkish belly-dancer, with the same guileless idiot smile and wondrous blue eyes that had set me slavering when she was sixteen — she'd performed like a demented houri then and who was to say she’d lost the taste in half a century?

Flashman and the Tiger, p.224, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, sofa.

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.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, bolt.

Savage females of the species

… I say this without conceit, since it ain’t my doing — while civilized women have been more than ordinarily partial to me, my most ardent admirers have been the savage females of the species. Take the captain of Gezo’s Amazons, for example, who’d ogled me so outrageously during the death-house feast; or Sonsee-array the Apache (my fourth wife, in a manner of speaking); or Queen Ranavalona, who’d once confessed shyly that when I died she intended to have part of me pickled in a bottle, and worshipped; or Lady Caroline Lamb — the Dahomey slave, not the other one, who was before my time. Yes, I’ve done well among the barbarian ladies. Elspeth, of course, is Scottish.



Flashman and the Dragon, p.81, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, barbarian.

Mr Flashman's suspicion

…I had a suspicion that she’d sampled the marriage mutton elsewhere when my back was turned…

Flashman and the Redskins, p.24, Pan Books edition, 1983.

Tags:Flashman, Flashman quotes, marriage.

Shelley or one of those chaps

…the blighter was really mad about her, and not just to board and scuttle her, either, but with all the pure, romantic trimmings, like Shelley or one of those chaps. astonishing – well, I love her myself, always have, but not to put me off my food.

Flashman's Lady, p.197, Pan edition, 1979.

Tags:Flashman, Flashman quotes, love.

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.

Tags:Flashman, Flashman quotes, Jewish.

Drive a woman to fury

…he and Victoria weren’t getting on too well just then; she had just discovered (and confided to Elspeth) that she was in foal for the ninth time, and she took her temper out on dear Albert – the trouble was, he was so bloody patient with her, which can drive a woman to fury faster than anything I know. And he was always right, which was worse. So they weren’t dealing at all well, and he spent most of the daylight hours tramping up Glen bollocks, or whatever they call it, roaring ‘Ze gunn!’ and butchering every animal in view.

Flashman in the Great Game, p.23, Pan edition, 4th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Prince Albert, shooting.

Honeymoon hints

‘Your highness,’ he said at last, ‘ will be kind to our treasure.’
Strange, my own father-in-law had struck something of the same note before I married Elspeth; it’s a polite way of suggesting you don’t make too much of a beast of yourself on the honeymoon.

Royal Flash, p.155, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1978.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,honeymoon.

Elementary human relations

Ignorant women I have met, and I knew miss Elspeth must rank high among them, but I had not supposed until now that she had no earthly idea of elementary human relations. (Yet there were even married woman in my time who did not connect their husband's antics in bed with the conception of children.)


Flashman, pp. 57 - 58, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, ignorant, marital relations, antics,