The United Service card room

. . . I was cut stone dead by someone a deal more important — the Prince of Wales, no less, shied away from me in the United Service card room, and hightailed it as fast as his ponderous guts would let him, giving me a shifty squint over his shoulder as he went. That, I confess, I found pretty raw. It’s embarrassing enough to be cut by the most vulgar man in Europe, but when he is also a Prince who is deeply in your debt you begin to wonder what royalty’s coming to.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.292, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, vulgar.

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.