Explanatory Note
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 This was of immense help to me when the Flashman Papers, which were still unpublished at Sir Harry’s death in 1915, turned up as a collection of packets in a tea-chest at a Midlands sale-room in 1966, and were entrusted to me, as editor, by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 hither-to-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
(1878 and 1883–4)
Chapter 1
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.
It had its compensations along the way, though, among them the highest decoration France can bestow, the gratitude of two Crowned Heads (one of ’em an out-and-out stunner, much good may it do me), the chance to serve Otto Bismarck a bad turn, and the favours of that delightful little spanker, Mamselle Caprice, to say nothing of the enchanting iceberg Princess Kralta. No … I can’t think too much ill of little Blowitz at the end of the day.
He was reckoned the smartest newsman of the time, better than Billy Russell even, for while Billy was the complete hand at dramatic description, thin red streaks and all, and the more disastrous the better, Blowitz was a human ferret with his plump little claw on every pulse from Lisbon to the Kremlin; he knew everyone, and everyone knew him – and trusted him. That was the great thing: kings and chancellors confided in him, empresses and grand duchesses whispered him their secrets, prime ministers and ambassadors sought his advice, and while he was up to every smoky dodge in his hunt for news, he never broke a pledge or betrayed a confidence – or so everyone said, Blowitz loudest of all. I guess his appearance helped, for he was nothing like the job at all, being a five-foot butterball with a beaming baby face behind a mighty moustache, innocent blue eyes, bald head, and frightful whiskers a foot long, chattering nineteen to the dozen (in several languages), gushing gallantly at the womenfolk, nosing up to the elbows of the men like a deferential gun dog, chuckling at every joke, first with all the gossip (so long as it didn’t matter), a prime favourite at every Paris party and reception – and never missing a word or a look or a gesture, all of it grist to his astounding memory; let him hear a speech or read a paper and he could repeat it, pat, every word, like Macaulay.
Aye, and when the great crises came, and all Europe was agog for news of the latest treaty or rumour of war or collapsing ministry, it was to the Times’ Paris telegrams they looked, for Blowitz was a past master at what the Yankee scribblers call “the scoop”. At the famous Congress of Berlin (of which more anon), when the doors were locked for secret session, Bismarck looked under the table, and when D’Israeli asked him what was up, Bismarck said he wanted to be sure Blowitz wasn’t there. A great compliment, you may say – and if you don’t, Blowitz did, frequently.
It was through Billy Russell, who you may know was also a Times man and an old chum from India and the Crimea, that I met this tubby prodigy at the time of the Franco-Prussian farce in ’70, and we’d taken to each other straight off. At least, Blowitz had taken to me, as folk often do, God help ’em, and I didn’t mind him; he was a comic little card, and amused me with his Froggy bounce (though he was a Bohemian in fact), and tall tales about how he’d scuppered the Commune uprising in Marseilles in ’71 by leaping from rooftop to rooftop to telegraph some vital news or other to Paris while the Communards raged helpless below, and saved some fascinating Balkan queen and her beautiful daughter from shame and ruin at the hands of a vengeful monarch, and been kidnapped when he was six and fallen in love with a flashing-eyed gypsy infant with a locket round her neck – sounded deuced like The Bohemian Girl to me, but he swore it was gospel, and part of his “Destiny”, which was a great bee in his bonnet.
“You ask, what if I had slipped from those Marseilles roofs, and been dashed to pieces on the cruel cobbles, or torn asunder by those ensanguined terrorists?” cries he, swigging champagne and waving a pudgy finger. “What, you say, if that vengeful monarch’s agents had entrapped me – moi, Blowitz? What if the gypsy kidnappers had taken another road, and so eluded pursuit? Ah, you ask yourself these things,
cher ’Arree –”
“I don’t do anything o’ the sort, you know.”
“But you do, of a certainty!” cries he. “I see it in your eye, the burning question! You consider, you speculate, you! What, you wonder, would have become of Blowitz? Or of France? Or The Times, by example?” He inflated, looking solemn. “Or Europe?”
“Search me, old Blowhard,” says I rescuing the bottle. “All I ask is whether you got to grips with that fascinating Balkan bint and her beauteous daughter, and if so, did you tackle ’em in tandem or one after t’other?” But he was too flown with his fat-headed philosophy to listen.
“I did not slip, me – I could not! I foiled the vengeful monarch’s ruffians – it was inevitable! My gypsy abductors took the road determined by Fate!” He was quite rosy with triumph. “Le destin, my old one – destiny is immutable. We are like the planets, our courses preordained. Some of us,” he admitted, “are comets, vanishing and reappearing, like the geniuses of the past. Thus Moses is reflected in Confucius, Caesar in Napoleon, Attila in Peter the Great, Jeanne d’Arc in … in …”
“Florence Nightingale. Or does it have to be a Frog? Well, then, Madame du Barry –”
“Jeanne d’Arc is yet to reappear, perhaps. But you are not serious, my boy. You doubt my reason. Oh, yes, you do! But I tell you, everything moves by a fixed law, and those of us who would master our destinies –” he tapped a fat finger on my knee “– we learn to divine the intentions of the Supreme Will which directs us.”
“Ye don’t say. One jump ahead of the Almighty. Who are you reincarnating, by the way – Baron Munchausen?”
He sat back chortling, twirling his moustache. “Oh, ’Arree, ’Arree, you are incorrigible! Well, I shall submit no more to your scepticism méprisant, your dérision Anglaise. You laugh, when I tell you that in our moment of first meeting, I knew that our fates were bound together. ‘Regard this man,’ I thought. ‘He is part of your destiny.’ It is so, we are bound, I, Blowitz, in whom Tacitus lives again, and you … ah, but of whom shall I say you are a reflection? Murat, perhaps? Your own Prince Rupert? Some great beau sabreur, surely?” He twinkled at me. “Or would it please you if I named the Chevalier de Seignalt?”
“Who’s he when he’s at home?”
“In Italy they called him Casanova. Aha, that marches! You see yourself in the part! Well, well, laugh as you please, we are destined, you and I. You’ll see, mon ami. Oh, you’ll see!”
He had me weighed up, no error, and knew that on my infrequent visits to Paris, which is a greasy sort of sink not much better than Port Moresby, the chief reason I sought him out was because he was my passport to society salons and the company of the female gamebirds with whom the city abounds – and I don’t mean your poxed-up opera tarts and cancan girls but the quality traffic of the smart hôtels and embassy parties, whose languid ennui conceals more carnal knowledge than you’d find in Babylon. My advice to young chaps is to never mind the Moulin Rouge and Pigalle, but make for some diplomatic mêlée on the Rue de Lisbonne, catch the eye of a well-fleshed countess, and ere the night’s out you’ll have learned something you won’t want to tell your grandchildren.
In spite of looking like a plum duff on legs, Blowitz had an extraordinary gift of attracting the best of ’em like flies to a jampot. No doubt they thought him a harmless buffoon, and he made them laugh, and flattered them something monstrous – and, to be sure, he had the stalwart Flashy in tow, which was no disadvantage, though I say it myself. I suppose you could say he pimped for me, in a way – but don’t imagine for a moment that I despised him, or failed to detect the hard core inside the jolly little flâneur. I always respect a man who’s good at his work, and I bore in mind the story (which I heard from more than one good source) that Blowitz had made his start in France by paying court to his employer’s wife, and the pair of them had heaved the unfortunate cuckold into Marseilles harbour from a pleasure-boat, left him to drown, and trotted off to the altar. Yes, I could credit that. Another story, undoubtedly true, was that when The Times, in his early days on the paper, were thinking of sacking him, he invited the manager to dinner – and there at the table was every Great Power ambassador in Paris. That convinced The Times, as well it might.
So there you have M. Henri Stefan Oppert-Blowitz,1 and if I’ve told you a deal about him and his crackpot notions of our “shared destiny”, it’s because they were at the root of the whole crazy business, and dam’ near cost me my life, as well as preventing a great European war – which will happen eventually, mark my words, if this squirt of a Kaiser ain’t put firmly in his place. If I were Asquith I’d have the little swine took off sudden; plenty of chaps would do it for ten thou’ and a snug billet in the Colonies afterwards. But that’s common sense, not politics, you see.
That by the way. It was at the back end of ’77 that the unlikely pair of Blowitz and Sam Grant, late President of the United States, put me on the road to disaster, and (as is so often the case) in the most innocent-seeming way.
Like all retired Yankee bigwigs, Sam was visiting the mother country as the first stage of a grand tour, which meant, he being who he was, that instead of being allowed to goggle at Westminster and Windermere in peace, he must endure adulation on every hand, receiving presentations and the freedom of cities, having fat aldermen and provosts pump his fin, which he hated of all things, listening to endless boring addresses, and having to speechify in turn (which was purgatory to a man who spoke mostly in grunts), with crowds huzzaing wherever he went, the nobility lionising him in their lordly way, and being beset by admiring females from Liverpool laundresses to the Great White Mother herself.
Hard sledding for the sour little bargee, and by the time I met him, at a banquet at Windsor to which I’d been bidden as his old comrade of the war between the states, I could see he’d had his bellyful. Our last encounter had been two years earlier, when he’d sent me to talk to the Sioux and lost me my scalp at Greasy Grass,a and his temper hadn’t improved in the meantime.
“It won’t do, Flashman!” barks he, chewing his beard and looking as though he’d just heard that Lee had taken New York. “I’ve had as much ceremony and attention as I can stand. D’you know they’re treating me as royalty? It’s true, I tell you! Lord Beaconsfield has ordained it – well, I’m much obliged to him, I’m sure, but I can’t take it! If I have to lay another cornerstone or listen to another artisans’ address or have my hand tortured by some worthy burgess bent on wrestling me to the ground …” He left off snarling to look round furtive-like in case any of the Quality were in earshot. “At least your gracious Queen doesn’t shake hands as though she purposed to break my arm,” he added grudgingly. “Not like the rest of ’em.”
“Price of fame, Mr President.”
“Price of your aunt’s harmonium!” snaps he. “And it’ll be worse in Europe, I’ll be bound! Dammit, they embrace you, don’t they?” He glared at me, as though daring me to try. “Here, though – d’you speak French? I know you speak Siouxan, and I seem to recollect Lady Flashman extolling your linguistic accomplishments. Well, sir – do you or don’t you?”
I admitted that I did, and he growled his satisfaction.
“Then you can do me a signal favour … if you will. They tell me I must meet Marshal Macmahon in Paris, and he hasn’t a word of English – and my French you could write on the back of a postal stamp! Well, then,” says he, thrusting his beard at me, “will you stand up with me at the Invalids or the Tooleries or wherever the blazes it is, and play interpreter?” He hesitated, eyeing me hard while I digested this remarkable proposal, and cleared his throat before adding: “I’d value it, Flashman … having a friendly face at my elbow ’stead of some damned diplomatic in knee-britches.”
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