FLASHMAN AND THE TIGER
George MacDonald Fraser
FLASHMAN, Harry Paget, brigadier-general, V.C., K.C.B., K.C.I.E.: Chevalier, Legion of Honour; Order of Maria Theresa, Austria; Order of the Elephant, Denmark (temporary); U.S. Medal of Honor; San Serafino Order of Purity and Truth, 4th class; b. May 5, 1822, s. of H. Buckley Flashman, Esq., Ashby, and Hon. Alicia Paget; m. Elspeth Rennie Morrison, d. of Lord Paisley, one s., one d. Educ. Rugby School. 11th Hussars, 17th Lancers. Served Afghanistan 1841-2 (medals, thanks of Parliament); chief of staff to H.M. James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, Batang Luper expedn, 1844; milit. adviser with unique rank of sergeant-general to H.M. Queen Ranavalona of Madagascar, 1844-5; Sutlej campaign, 1845-6 (Ferozeshah, Sobraon, envoy extraordinary to Maharani Jeendan, Court of Lahore); polit. adviser to Herr (later Chancellor Prince) von Bismarck, Schleswig-Holstein, 1847-8; Crimea, staff (Alma, Sevastopol, Balaclava), prisoner of war, 1854; artillery adviser to Atalik Ghazi, Syr Daria campaign, 1855; India, Sepoy Mutiny, 1857-8, dip, envoy to H.R.H. the Maharani of Jhansi, trooper 3rd Native Cavalry, Meerut, subseq. att. Rowbotham’s Mosstroopers, Cawnpore, (Lucknow, Gwalior, etc., V.C.); adjutant to Captain John Brown, Harper’s Ferry, 1859; China campaign 1860, polit. mission to Nanking, Taiping Rebellion, polit. and other services, Imperial Court, Pekin; U.S. Army (major, Union forces, 1862, colonel (staff) Army of the Confederacy, 1863); a.d.c. to H.I.M. Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, 1867; interpreter and observer Sioux campaign, U.S., 1875-6 (Camp Robinson conference, Little Big Horn, etc.); Zulu War, 1879 (Isandhlwana, Rorke’s Drift); Egypt 1882 (Kassassin, Tel-el-Kebir); personal bodyguard to H.I.M. Franz-Josef, Emperor of Austria, 1883; Sudan 1884-5 (Khartoum); Pekin Legations, 1900. Travelled widely in military and civilian capacities, among them supercargo, merchant marine (West Africa), agriculturist (Mississippi valley), wagon captain and hotelier (Santa Fe Trail); buffalo hunter and scout (Oregon Trail); courier (Underground Railroad); majordomo (India), prospector (Australia); trader and missionary (Solomon Islands, Fly River, etc.), lottery supervisor (Manila), diamond broker and horse coper (Punjab), dep. marshal (U.S.), occasional actor and impersonator. Hon. mbr of numerous societies and clubs, including Sons of the Volsungs (Strackenz), Mimbreno Apache Copper Mines band (New Mexico), Khokand Horde (Central Asia), Kit Carson’s Boys (Colorado), Brown’s Lambs (Maryland), M.C.C., White’s and United Service (London, both resigned), Blackjack (Batavia). Chmn, Flashman and Bottomley, Ltd; dir. British Opium Trading Co.; governor, Rugby School; hon. pres. Mission for Reclamation of Reduced Females. Publications: Dawns and Departures of a Soldier’s Life; Twixt Cossack and Cannon; The Case Against Army Reform. Recreations: oriental studies, angling, cricket (performed first recorded "hat trick", wickets of Felix, Pilch, Mynn, for 14 runs, Rugby Past and Present v. Kent, Lord’s 1842; five for 12, Mynn’s Casuals v. All-England XI, 1843). Add: Gandamack Lodge, Ashby, Leics.
When Sir Harry Flashman, V.C., the celebrated Victorian soldier, scoundrel, amorist, and self-confessed poltroon, began to write his memoirs early in the present century, he set to work with a discipline remarkable in one whose life and conduct were, to put it charitably, haphazard and irregular. Disdaining chronology, he adopted a random method, selecting episodes in his adventurous life and shaping them into complete, self-contained narratives, in the fashion of a novelist rather than an autobiographer. This was of immense help to me when the Flashman Papers, which were still unpublished at Sir Harry’s death in 1915, turned up as a collection of packets in a tea-chest at a Midlands sale-room in 1966, and were entrusted to me, as editor, by Flashman’s executor, the late Mr Paget Morrison of South Africa.
In accordance with his strict instructions, I dealt with the packets one at a time and found that, thanks to Sir Harry’s methodical approach, only a minimum of editing—correcting his occasional spelling mistakes and providing footnotes—was necessary to render the work fit for publication. Each packet contained a book almost ready-made, and soon the public, who until then had been aware of Flashman only as the cowardly bully of Thomas Hughes’s Tom Brown’s Schooldays, were in possession of his illuminating and often scandalous accounts of the First Afghan War, the Schleswig-Holstein Question, the African-American slave trade, and the Crimean War.
It was with the fifth packet that the pattern changed. Along with his account of the Indian Mutiny, Sir Harry had enclosed a separate brief narrative on an entirely different subject which he plainly felt did not call for extended treatment. Since it was too short for separate publication, and its inclusion with the Mutiny memoir would have made for an unwieldy book, I put it by, hoping the later packets would yield similar fragments which, with the first, might make a full volume.
Since then, two other such pieces have come to light, and the result is this collection of minor episodes in the career of an eminent if disreputable Victorian. One deals with a hitherto-unknown European crisis which, but for Flashman' s reluctant intervention, might well have advanced the outbreak of the First World War by three decades, with incalculable consequences. Since it is by far the longest fragment, presents a picture of a great monarch, involves if only at a distance many leading statesmen of the time, and finds Flashman in alliance with the shade of an old adversary, I have given it priority. The second piece clears up at last one of the most puzzling mysteries of the Victorian era, the notorious Baccarat Scandal in which the Prince of Wales was an unhappy actor. The third extract touches briefly on two of the most spectacular military actions of the century, and sees Flashman pitted against one of the great villains of the day, and observing, with his usual jaundiced eye, two of its most famous heroes. As this extract was the first to come to light, more than twenty years ago, and its known existence has caused some speculation among students of the Papers, I have given its title to the full volume.
G.M.F.
The Road To Charing Cross
You don’t know Blowitz, probably never heard of him even, which is your good luck, although I dare say if you’d met him you’d have thought him harmless enough. I did, to my cost. Not that I bear him a grudge, much, for he was a jolly little teetotum, bursting with good intentions, and you may say it wasn’t his fault that they paved my road to Hell—which lay at the bottom of a salt-mine, and it’s only by the grace of God that I ain’t there yet, entombed in everlasting rock. Damnable places, and not at all what you might imagine. Not a grain of salt to be seen, for one thing.
Mind you, when I say ’twasn’t Blowitz’s fault, I’m giving the little blighter the benefit of the doubt, a thing I seldom do. But I liked him, you see, in spite of his being a journalist. Tricky villains, especially if they work for The Times. He was their correspondent in Paris thirty years ago, and doubtless a government agent—show me the Times man who wasn’t, from Delane to the printer’s devils—but whether he absolutely knew what he was about, or was merely trying to do old Flashy a couple of good turns, I ain’t sure. It was certainly his blasted pictures that led me astray: photographs of two lovely women, laid before my unsuspecting middle-aged eyes, one in ’78, t’other in ’83, and between ’em they landed me in the strangest pickle of my misspent life. Not the worst, perhaps, but bad enough, and deuced odd. I don’t think I understand the infernal business yet, not altogether.