Flashman
What happened to Flashman, the caddish bully of Tom Brown's Schooldays, after he was expelled in drunken disgrace from Rugby School in the late 1830s? What kind of man grew out of the foul-mouthed, swaggering, cowardly toady who roasted fags for fun and howled when he was beaten himself?
For more than a century the fate of history's most notorious schoolboy remained a mystery - until, in 1966, George MacDonald Fraser decided to discover a vast collection of unpublished manuscripts in a Midland sale-room. Since then the scandalous saga of Flashman, Victorian hero and scoundrel, has emerged in a series of bestselling memoirs in which the arch-cad reviews, from the safety of old age, his exploits in bed and battle.
George MacDonald Fraser served in a Highland regiment in India and the Middle East, worked on newspapers in Britain and Canada, and has written nine other Flashman novels and numerous films, most notably The Three Musketeers, The Four Musketeers, and the James Bond film, Octopussy.
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By the same author
THE FLASHMAN PAPERS
Royal Flash
Flash for Freedom!
Flashman at the Charge
Flashman in the Great Game
Flashman's Lady
Flashman and the Redskins
Flashman and the Dragon
Flashman and the Mountain of Light
Flashman and the Angel of the Lord
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Mr American
The Pyrates
The Candlemass Road
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SHORT STORIES
The General Danced at Dawn
McAuslan in the Rough The Sheikh and the Dustbin
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HISTORY
The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers
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AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Quartered Safe Out Here
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The Hollywood History of the World
FLASHMAN
From The Flashman Papers, 1839-1842
Edited and Arranged by GEORGE MACDONALD FRASER
FOR KATH
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Explanatory Note
The great mass of manuscript known as the Flashman Papers was discovered during a sale of household furniture at Ashby, Leicestershire, in 1965. The papers were subsequently claimed by Mr Paget Morrison, of Durban, South Africa, the nearest known living relative of their author.
A point of major literary interest about the papers is that they clearly identify Flashman, the school bully of Thomas Hughes' Tom Brown's Schooldays, with the celebrated Victorian soldier of the same name. The papers are, in fact, Harry Flashman's personal memoirs from the day of his expulsion from Rugby School in the late 1830s to the early years of the present century. He appears to have written them some time between 1900 and 1905, when he must have been over eighty. It is possible that he dictated them. The papers, which had apparently lain untouched for fifty years, in a tea chest, until they were found in the Ashby saleroom, were carefully wrapped in oilskin covers. From correspondence found in the first packet, it is evident that their original discovery by his relatives in 1915 after the great soldier's death caused considerable consternation; they seem to have been unanimously against publication of their kinsman's autobiography - one can readily understand why - and the only wonder is that the manuscript was not destroyed.
Fortunately, it was preserved, and what follows is the content of the first packet, covering Flashman's early adventures. I have no reason to doubt that it is a completely truthful account; where Flashman touches on historical fact he is almost invariably accurate, and readers can judge whether he is to be believed or not on more personal matters.
Mr Paget Morrison, knowing of my interest in this and related subjects, asked me to edit the papers. Beyond correcting some minor spelling errors, however, there has been no editing to do. Flashman had a better sense of narrative than I have, and I have confined myself to the addition of a few historical notes.
The quotation from Tom Brown's Schooldays was pasted to the top page of the first packet; it had evidently been cut from the original edition of 1856.
G. M. F.
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One fine summer evening Flashman had been regaling himself on gin-punch, at Brownsover; and, having exceeded his usual limits, started home uproarious. He fell in with a friend or two coming back from bathing, proposed a glass of beer, to which they assented, the weather being hot, and they thirsty souls, and unaware of the quantity of drink which Flashman had already on board. The short result was, that Flashy became beastly drunk. They tried to get him along, but couldn't; so they chartered a hurdle and two men to carry him. One of the masters came upon them, and they naturally enough fled. The flight of the rest excited the master's suspicions, and the good angel of the fags in-cited him to examine the freight, and, after examination, to convoy the hurdle himself up to - the School-house; and the Doctor, who had long had his eye on Flashman, arranged for his withdrawal next morning.
- THOMAS HUGHES, Tom Brown's Schooldays.
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Hughes got it wrong, in one important detail. You will have read, in Tom Brown, how I was expelled from Rugby School for drunkenness, which is true enough, but when Hughes alleges that this was the result of my deliberately pouring beer on top of gin-punch, he is in error. I knew better than to mix my drinks, even at seventeen.
I mention this, not in self-defence, but in the interests of strict truth. This story will be completely truthful; I am breaking the habit of eighty years. Why shouldn't I? When a man is as old as I am, and knows himself thoroughly for what he was and is, he doesn't care much. I'm not ashamed, you see; never was - and I have enough on what Society would consider the credit side of the ledger -a knighthood, a Victoria Cross, high rank, and some popular fame. So I can look at the picture above my desk, of the young officer in Cardigan's Hussars; tall, masterful, and roughly handsome I was in those days (even Hughes allowed that I was big and strong, and had considerable powers of being pleasant), and say that it is the portrait of a scoundrel, a liar, a cheat, a thief, a coward - and, oh yes, a toady. Hughes said more or less all these things, and his description was pretty fair, except in matters of detail such as the one I've mentioned. But he was more concerned to preach a sermon than to give facts.
But I am concerned with facts, and since many of them are discreditable to me, you can rest assured they are true. At all events, Hughes was wrong in saying I suggested beer. It was Speedicut who ordered it up, and I had drunk it (on top of all those gin-punches) before I knew what I was properly doing. That finished me; I was really drunk then - "beastly drunk", says Hughes, and he's right - and when they got me out of the "Grapes" I could hardly see, let alone walk. They bundled me into a sedan, and then a beak hove in sight and Speedicut lived up to his name and bolted. I was left sprawling in the chair, and up came the master and saw me. It was old Rufton, one of Arnold's housemasters.
"Good God!" he said. "It's one of our boys - drunk!" I can still see him goggling at me, with his great pale gooseberry eyes and white whiskers. He tried to rouse me, but he might as well have tried to wake a corpse. I just lay and giggled at him. Finally he lost his temper, and banged the top of the chair with his cane and shouted: