I waited until the coast was clear, and then creaked to my feet and hurried homeward, stiff and sore and stinking of brandy (bourbon, my eye! – as though I’d pollute my liver with that rotgut) and if my “besotted shell” was in poor shape, my heart was rejoicing. It had all come right, for little Selly and me, and as I limped my way towards Berkeley Square I was in capital fettle. I was even whistling to myself as I loitered past the end of Hay Hill, and then my roving eye chanced to fall on a certain lighted window, and I bore up short, thinking hollo, what’s this?
For it was my window, in the chambers of my salad days, which as I’ve told you I had placed at the convenience of the Prince of Wales for the entertainment of his secret gallops. I remembered seeing in the morning’s paper that he had been due at Charing Cross that evening from France; by George, thinks I, the randy little pig can’t wait for his English muttons, for all that he must have been panting after half the skirt dancers of Paris this month past. No sooner home than he’s in the saddle again. I was shaking my head sadly over such scandalous conduct, when along comes a cab round the corner from Grafton Street, pulling up at the very door to my Hay Hill place – it was pretty late by now, and all quiet, very discreet. Aha, thinks I, here’s his little macaroon; let’s see who it is this time, so that we can tattle at the club in the morning.
So I shuffled close, just as a heavily-veiled lady got out, without paying the cab, which rattled off at once. That proved it, and as she crossed the pavement and passed into the entry I was abreast, glancing in. She pulled off her veil, and shook her hair, just as I passed, and for a split second I saw her face before she hurried on. And I staggered, as though from a blow, clutching the railings and sinking to the pavement. For there was no mistaking; it was my own granddaughter, little Selina.
I’ve been hit hard in my time, but that nearly carried me off. My own grand-daughter – going up to that pot-bellied satyr! I sprawled there against the railings, dumfounded. Selina, the wide-eyed, tender innocent – mistress to the revolting Bertie! No, no, it couldn’t be … why, only that morning she’d been pleading with me to save her from the embraces of Moran; she’d seemed almost out of her wits – by George, though, well she might be, if she was the Prince of Wales’s secret pet! She couldn’t afford to compromise herself with half-pay adventurers like Tiger Jack, not if she was to keep in favour with her royal lover. And she couldn’t be mixed up in scandals over her fiancé’s pilfering regimental funds, neither. She had had to get Moran silenced (with my money, she hoped) if she was to stay topsides with Bertie. No wonder she’d wailed on my bosom, the designing, wicked little hussy. And I’d been in a lather about her honour – her honour! My own grand-daughter.
That, of course, was the point. She was my grand-daughter, and what’s bred in the bone … oh, but she’d hocussed me properly, playing shrinking Purity, and I’d been ready to shell out half my fortune – and I’d come within an ace of committing murder for her. That was the far outside of enough – I stared up at that lighted window, bursting with outrage – and then for all my fury I found I was grinning, and then laughing, as I clung to the railings. Say what you like; consider that sweet, innocent, butter-melting beauty and the mind behind it – oh, she was Flashy’s little grandchild, all right, every inch of her.
“Wot’s all the row, then?” says a voice, and there was a burly, bearded copper shining his bull’s-eye on me. “Yore tight,” says he.
“No, guv’nor, not a bit,” I wheezed. “Just resting.”
“Don’t gimme none o’ your sauce,” says he. “This ’ere’s a respectable neighbour’ood – the likes o’ you can do yer boozin’ some place else, you follow? Nah then, ’op it.”
“Yuss, guv’nor,” says I. “Just goin’, honnist.”
“Orta know better, a man yore age. Look at yerself – proper disgrace, you are. Don’t you old rummies never learn?”
“No,” says I. “We never do.” And I set off, under his disapproving eye, across Berkeley Square.
* * *
a See Flashman and the Redskins
Notes
1. Paul Kruger (1825–1904), later President of the South African Republic, claimed that if Lord Chelmsford had taken his advice on Zulu fighting, Isandhlwana need not have been lost. “Oom Paul” spoke from experience; he had himself been caught by the speed of a Zulu attack, and survived only after hand-to-hand fighting inside his laager (square of wagons). (See J. Martineau’s Life of Sir Bartle Frere, 1893.) In fairness to Chelmsford, the failure to laager was Colonel Durnford’s; Rider Haggard, who knew Durnford well, advances an interesting theory on his tactics in The Tale of Isandhlwana, but agrees with Kruger that laagering would have saved the day.
2. In connection with Flashman’s defence of the wagon with his revolvers, it is interesting to note that one of the Zulu warriors, a son of Chief Sirayo, later described how he had seen one of the British force, “a very tall man”, keeping up a spirited revolver fire from an empty wagon. “We all said what a very brave man he was … he kept his ground for a very long time.” This admittedly does not sound like Flashman, and Mackinnon and Shadbolt, in The South African Campaign of 1879–80, are probably correct when they identify the hero as Captain Younghusband of the 24th Regiment.
3. This was not the only incident of its kind at Isandhlwana. The editor is indebted to Colonel John Awdry of Fovant for drawing his attention to the experience of General (formerly Lieutenant) Smith-Dorrien, one of the survivors of the battle. During the rout Smith-Dorrien came on a man who had been kicked by his horse and could not mount; Smith-Dorrien helped him into the saddle and gave him a knife, and the rider, having promised to catch a horse for Smith-Dorrien, promptly fled from the battlefield. If Flashman’s account of his own evasion were not so precise, one would be tempted to identify him with Smith-Dorrien’s fugitive. (See The Man Who Disobeyed, by A. J. Smithers.)
4. The battle of Isandhlwana (the place of the Little House or Little Hand) was fought on January 22, 1879, when 1600 British and native troops of Lord Chelmsford’s force invading Zululand were overwhelmed by 20,000 warriors of the impis of King Cetewayo (Ketshwayo). What Flashman was doing there is a mystery. Earlier in the present volume he refers to a visit paid to South Africa in connection with a mine (whether gold or diamond he does not say) belonging to a relative of Lady Flashman’s, and there is evidence elsewhere that later he took part in an expedition through unexplored territory in the interior, but how he came to be involved in Chelmsford’s operations is still unexplained. Usually in his memoirs he is careful to give full military and political background to his activities, but in this case he treats Isandhlwana, and the equally famous defence of Rorke’s Drift, as mere incidents in his story, and clarification must wait on further study of the Flashman Papers, or possibly of Dawns and Departures of a Soldier’s Life, should the missing volumes of that work come to light. There, it may be, will be found some account of the preliminaries to the Zulu War – the border friction between the Transvaal Dutch and Cetewayo’s people, Britain’s annexation of the Transvaal and failure to settle the border question, the decision to send in Chelmsford’s three columns, the establishment of the base at Isandhlwana, and Chelmsford’s departure thence with part of his force in the hope of gaining a quick victory over the Zulu army, while Major Pulleine was left to defend the Isandhlwana camp, only to be wiped out by a Zulu attack which was entirely unexpected.
Why Flashman treats this notable imperial disaster, and its sequel at Rorke’s Drift, so cursorily is plain enough. His chief concern in this extract (which came to light more than twenty years ago as a separate fragment in that packet of his Papers dealing with the Indian Mutiny) is to tell the story of his dealings with the notorious Colonel John Sebastian (“Tiger Jack”) Moran, and he does not hesitate to pass by great events with little more than a glance. Thus his description of the Isandhlwana fighting is sketchy and highly personal. Reading it, one might suppose that hardly any time elapsed between the first appearance of the
Zulus and their final assault on the camp, but in fact there was much intervening activity. Following Lord Chelmsford’s departure at dawn, various detachments had been sent out from Pulleine’s camp under the Isandhlwana hill as advance pickets and to deal with small groups of Zulus who had appeared; the largest of these detachments, Colonel Durnford’s, encountered a powerful impi and was forced to beat a fighting retreat towards the camp, where Pulleine was already under attack. How Flashman came to be within earshot of Pulleine and have a view of Durnford, whose retreat had begun some miles away, one can only guess; no doubt he moved at his customary high speed, and it is likely that in his recollection of his panic-stricken confusion he has unwittingly “telescoped” events and time. His description of the battle’s climax accords with other accounts, but he does not mention that the Zulu advance was held up and badly mauled at various points before the final overrunning of the British position. The encircling “chest and horns” tactic was entirely successful, and those of Pulleine’s force who escaped the main action were hunted down the ravine to Fugitives’ Drift on the Buffalo River. (See Rider Haggard’s account written for Andrew Lang; Colenso and Durnford, History of the Zulu War, 1881; Sir Reginald Coupland, Zulu Battle-Piece, 1948; Donald L. Morris, The Washing of the Spears, 1965; C. T. Binns’ The Last Zulu King; Mackinnon and Shadbolt; and the personal narrative of C. L. Norris-Newman, the only journalist to travel with Chelmsford’s force, In Zululand with the British, 1880. An interesting memoir of Zululand during the war is the journal of Cornelius Vjin, a trader who was in Zulu hands for much of the time, Cetshwayo’s Dutchman, 1880.)
5. Flashman was right that the Zulus would attack Rorke’s Drift, but wrong in supposing that they would invade Natal. Isandhlwana had been the most disastrous battle defeat suffered by British troops against native forces in the nineteenth century – although it was to be matched by the wipe-out of a brigade by Afghan tribesmen at Maiwand a year later – but it had been a costly victory for the Zulus, who were finally beaten at Ulundi in July, 1879.
6. For interesting information on Zulu superstitions, see Frazer’s Golden Bough. In fact, Moran was somewhat out of date; the practice of sending twins first in battle appears to have died out earlier in the century, in King Chaka’s time.
7. The pursuing Zulus were certainly soldiers of the Udloko regiment, part of the Undi corps who formed the right wing of the impis at Isandhlwana. Their red and white shields were distinctive. The Martini-Henry was a single-shot weapon, but a good rifleman could fire six rounds in half a minute.
8. The siege of the little Buffalo River station at Rorke’s Drift began only a few hours after Isandhlwana, and lasted through the night until the following morning. The garrison was about 130 strong, and was commanded by Lieutenant John Chard of the Royal Engineers and Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead of the 24th (Warwickshire) Regiment, largely recruited in Wales, and later renamed the South Wales Borderers. The attacking Zulu force, consisting of the Udloko, Tulwana, and ’Ndluyengwe regiments, was at least 4000 strong. Both sides fought with the utmost bravery from late afternoon until the climax of the battle at midnight, the Zulus trying to break into the perimeter hastily improvised of mealie-bags and biscuit boxes, and being met by the volleys of the defenders’ Martini-Henrys. Savage close-quarter fighting took place at the barricades, and in the hospital, which caught fire at about six o’clock, when the wounded had to be evacuated; by midnight the perimeter had shrunk to sixty-five yards in front of the storehouse. Following as it did on the disaster of Isandhlwana, the defence of Rorke’s Drift became, deservedly, a Victorian legend. Seventeen of the defenders died, and at least 400 Zulus. Eleven Victoria Crosses were awarded.
Flashman’s account makes it clear that he and Moran must have reached the Drift about or eight or nine o’clock, while the hospital was still burning, and entered the perimeter after jumping the stone wall and the mealie-bag barricade which had been built to defend the hospital at the western end of the post. The “huge cove” with the red beard was presumably Chaplain George Smith, but Flashman is probably mistaken in describing him as “pistolling”, since the Chaplain was foremost in the vital work of carrying ammunition. (See Michael Glover, Rorke’s Drift, 1975, an excellent account of the siege and its background, and other works cited in these Notes.)
9. The Times of Monday, February 12, 1894, carried under the name Macmillan a notice of the birth of a boy the previous Saturday; he was subsequently christened Maurice Harold.
10. Either Flashman’s memory or his hearing has played him false. Oscar Wilde attended a performance of Pinero’s The Second Mrs Tanqueray at the St James’s in February, 1894, in the company of Aubrey Beardsley, whom he wished to present to Mrs Patrick Campbell. (See The Letters of Oscar Wilde.) His new play, which he mentioned to Selina, would be either An Ideal Husband, which was in manuscript at that time, or The Importance of Being Earnest; both were produced in the following year.
11. “Father Oscar”. Flashman was needling deliberately; he obviously knew that Wilde was sensitive about being no longer in the first flush of youth, and hated being called “Papa” or “Father”. (See Lord Alfred Douglas’s Oscar Wilde and Myself 1914.)
12. W. E. Gladstone resigned as Prime Minister, and retired from politics, on March 3, 1894.
13. The appearance of this item in the press establishes the date as March 29, 1894. Elspeth’s serial may have been Under the Red Robe, by Stanley J. Weyman, which appeared in instalments in the Illustrated London News early in this year.
14. Elsewhere in his memoirs (see Flash for Freedom!) Flashman has suggested that Sullivan was killed by Charity Spring aboard the Balliol College slave-ship in 1848, during a fight with an American warship; presumably the mate was only badly wounded, and recovered to fall a victim to Moran twenty years later.
15. Flashman made reluctant use of an astonishing variety of weaponry during his adventurous life, but although he makes frequent references to Adams revolvers there is no evidence that he had any particularly favourite side-arm. Those listed here appear to have been kept for sentimental rather than for practical reasons. The most interesting item is “the scarred old double-action Bulldog”, since it was just such a weapon that he used at Little Big Horn; he had borrowed it from Custer himself, and may even have accidentally shot the General with it in the heat of battle. But that gun he flung away in panic, and the mystery remains – how (and why) did he acquire another like it? Only two of Flashman’s side-arms appear to have survived: his Khyber knife, bequeathed to Mr Paget Morrison, the custodian of his papers, and a Tranter revolver from Cartwright of Norwich, engraved with the owner’s name, now in the possession of Mr Garry James of Los Angeles, California.
16. Colonel Palmer’s old age pension proposals of 1894 did in fact exclude anyone convicted of a crime in the previous fifteen years, or of drunkenness in the previous ten.
17. In the Army Cup Final played on April 5, 1894, the Black Watch beat the Royal Artillery, 7–2. The Duchess of Connaught, apparently supported by General Flashman, presented the cup.
18. Apart from a few minor discrepancies, Flashman’s account of Colonel Moran’s movements and arrest on that Thursday night corroborates the celebrated narrative of Dr Watson, who has described the Colonel’s capture in “The Adventure of the Empty House” (see The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). It will be remembered that Moran was apprehended by Holmes and Watson in the act of trying to murder the former (who had rigged up a dummy to draw his fire); Moran’s motive was revenge (and no doubt fear that Holmes would identify him as the murderer of the Hon. Ronald Adair, whom Moran had killed some days previously).
Flashman, of course, had no inkling of all this at the time, as his story shows. He was not to know that Moran, after retiring from the Indian Army, had turned his uncanny marksmanship to account by becoming a professional assassin in the employ of Holmes’s arch-enemy, Professor Moriarty, or that the Colonel eked out his contract fees by card-sharping, as in the case of St
anger and Adair. After his arrest by Holmes and Watson, Moran was charged with the Adair murder, but presumably escaped the gallows, since Dr Watson was still referring to him as “living” in 1902 (“The Adventure of the Illustrious Client”), and even suggested that he was alive in 1914 (“His Last Bow”). (See The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, volume 2, by William S. Baring-Gould. This distinguished work confirms the date of Moran’s arrest given by Flashman – April 5, 1894.)
The main discrepancy between the Watson and Flashman versions is interesting rather than important: Watson says that Moran fired from the ground floor of the empty house, while Flashman places him in an upper storey. The error is probably Watson’s. There has been much controversy among Baker Street addicts about angles of fire, the laws of optics, parabolas, etc. (see Baring-Gould), but to a rifleman it is obvious that Moran would have preferred a direct horizontal shot to an upward one, and this seems to have been the opinion of the artists who illustrated Watson’s account: the celebrated Sidney Paget, in the Strand Magazine of October, 1903, shows Moran looking straight across from his window, and the drawing of the American illustrator Joseph Camana in 1947 has both marksman and target on the same level.
Both Watson and Flashman are mistaken about Moran’s age. Watson says he was born in 1840; Flashman, by stating that Moran was fifteen years his junior, implies that the date was 1837. But since Moran himself states that he was fourteen in 1848, we must accept that he was born in 1834, which is in keeping with Watson’s description of him as “elderly” and a “fierce old man” in 1894.
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection Page 442