Flashman Papers Omnibus

by Fraser George MacDonald

  For Flashman’s experiences with “Kralta” we have only his own testimony. As to her appearance and personality, he is more detailed than Blowitz, but there are no contradictions between them: both agree that she was imperious and charming, and while Flashman is more specific about what are called vital statistics, he can have had no quarrel with the little Bohemian’s romantic raptures. Blowitz was beglamoured on first sight of the Princess at a dinner party, to such an extent that he could not remember who else was present – a most unusual lapse of his remarkable memory. He enthuses about her beauty, radiance, “exquisite elegance”, “silky hair” (chestnut at their first meeting, but subsequently “golden”), “melodious voice,” “blue eyes which lighted up one of the most fascinating faces I have ever seen”, and so on; he even notes the “brilliancy” of her teeth. There is something approaching awe in his description of her crossing a room with “the vague rustle of her silken robes … like a rapid vision”, and one gets the impression sometimes that he was rather afraid of her.

  13. This is the first substantial reference in the Papers to Flashman’s sojourn in Mexico in the latter half of the 1860s; hitherto we have known only that he spent time in a Mexican prison, and was an aide-de-camp to the unfortunate Emperor Maximilian, younger brother of Emperor Franz-Josef of Austria. Maximilian, an amiable and well-intentioned prince, interested in botany, was a pawn in the ambitious schemes of Napoleon III of France, who took advantage of civil war in Mexico to send in a French army, ostensibly to collect war debts from the victorious ‘Liberals’ of Benito Juarez, but in fact to establish a puppet empire under Maximilian, who was persuaded to accept the Mexican crown in 1863. He set up a government and was planning social and educational reforms, including freedom for the Indians, but Juarez’s forces remained hostile to the imperial regime, and when Napoleon withdrew his forces, partly due to pressure from the Americans, who were sympathetic to Juarez’s republicans, Maximilian was left to his fate. He made a brave fight of it, but was captured by the Juaristas in May 1867, and executed by firing squad in the following month.

  What part Flashman played in these events will no doubt be revealed when his Mexican papers come to light. We know that he was in the U.S. with President Lincoln a few days before the latter’s death in April 1865, so his Mexican adventures were presumably confined to the next two years at most. The reference to Princess Salm-Salm, the wife of Prince Felix Salm-Salm, a German officer who served in the U.S. Civil War (possibly with Flashman) and was later chief a.d.c. to Maximilian in Mexico, suggests that Flashman was involved in the efforts which both the Prince and Princess made to save the Emperor’s life; she was a handsome and fearless lady who has left a spirited account of her adventures in Mexico, and of her later life in European royal circles and in the Franco-Prussian war, in which her husband was killed. Her Ten Years of My Life (1868) and the Prince’s My Diary in Mexico (1874) which she published after his death, give invaluable details of Maximilian’s last days.

  That the Emperor Maximilian was a cricketer seems to be confirmed by a photograph in a Brussels museum in which he is seen posing at the end of a match with members of the British Legation in Mexico City, c. 1865. The editor is indebted to Colonel J. M. C Watson for a copy of this picture.

  14. Flashman seldom elaborates on international affairs, and it is probable that he has summarised, with commendable accuracy, the information given him by Willem von Starnberg touching on the state of the Austrian Empire and its ruler, the Hungarian question, and the relations of Emperor Franz-Josef, the Empress Elisabeth (“Sissi”), and their son, the Crown Prince Rudolf. (See Appendix.)

  15. In 1853 Franz-Josef of Austria had escaped with a bad neck wound when he was stabbed by a Hungarian apprentice whose knife was impeded by the Emperor’s stiff military collar. Uniform also saved the life of the elderly German Emperor in 1878, when the helmet which he insisted on wearing in accordance with regulations took the blast of a double-barrelled shotgun; he had survived another shooting attempt only three weeks earlier. Tsar Alexander II of Russia was less fortunate; he was killed by a second bomb in St Petersburg in 1881, only minutes after an earlier device had wrecked his carriage. (See Bulow, and works cited in the Appendix.)

  16. The quotation is from “In Ambush”, in Stalky and Co.

  17. Which it still retains. Ischl in Flashman’s time had a population of fewer than 3000, and seems to have changed little since then; its lack of size makes it a pleasant little gem among European resorts, tranquil and unhurried in its grand surroundings, and its shops and coffee-houses, with their remarkable range of confections, remain as attractive as ever. It is appropriate that such a Ruritanian setting should have been home to Franz Lehar (after Flashman’s day); his villa remains on the banks of the Traun, the Golden Ship was serving excellent cabbage a few years ago, and Frosch and his colleagues were still amusing audiences at the little theatre.

  18. Anyone visiting the “Kaiservilla”, the royal lodge at Bad Ischl, will probably share Flashman’s abiding memory. The lodge today is much as he describes it, and the horns of the Emperor’s quarries still adorn its walls in profusion. There is in fact a secret stairway from the Emperor’s rooms, remarkably modest chambers simply furnished with, among other items, the plain iron bedstead which he used. It is such an ordinary bedroom that it is hard to realise that this is where the First World War began.

  Flashman’s brief acquaintance with Franz-Josef illustrates many of the Emperor’s characteristics: his passion for the military, his poor grasp of languages other than his own, his rather stuffy formality, his devotion to administrative detail, and the simplicity of his tastes – boiled beef and beer was a favourite meal. He enjoyed his rubbers of tarok, and in his later years especially it was a regular evening pastime. (See Appendix.)

  19. There is an old salt-mine in the mountains of the Saltzkammergut above Ischl which corresponds so closely to Flashman’s description that it must surely be the same one. The strange pool is still there, and the bogies run on rails from the mine entrance into the great cavern.

  20. The quoted line is spoken by Rudolf Rassendyll to Count Rupert of Hentzau in The Prisoner of Zenda. Flashman claimed that he had told the story of his Strackenz adventure to Anthony Hope Hawkins (later Sir Anthony Hope) and that the novelist used it as the basis for his famous romance, modelling the Count of Hentzau on Rudi von Starnberg.

  21. Caprice must have charmed at least three copies of Punch from her English tourist, including the most recent issue (October 13) in which France is depicted as a homely old woman. The cartoon of Gladstone dancing the hornpipe is from a September number (he was on a cruise with Lord Tennyson) and the alluring figure labelled “Manchester Ship Canal” is earlier still. Punch’s anti-Gallic prejudice runs through all three numbers. The blimpish British officers cited by Flashman are characters in Hector Servadac, one of Jules Verne’s later science-fiction novels (1877). Police whistles came into use in 1883.

  22. There were many distinguished de la Tour d’Auvergnes, principally Theophile Malo Corret of that name, a French soldier renowned for his courage and chivalry, who died in 1800, having consistently refused promotion beyond the rank of captain. He was known as the First Grenadier of France.

  23. W. Pembroke Fetridge was the author of The American Traveller’s Guide: Harper’s Handbook for Travellers in Europe, which first appeared in 1862. Flashman probably had the 1871 edition.

  24. The unique position which Chinese Gordon held in the eyes of officialdom and the public was demonstrated by the fact that when he left Charing Cross Station for the Sudan, the Foreign Secretary bought his ticket, the Duke of Cambridge held the carriage door for him, and Lord (formerly Sir Garnet) Wolseley carried his bag. (See Charles Chenevix Trench, Charley Gordon, 1978.)

  THE SUBTLETIES OF BACCARAT

  (1890 and 1891)

  Chapter 11

  “See here, Flashman,” says the Prince of Wales, looking hunted and chewing his cigar as though it were plug tobacco,
“you must get me out o’ this. God knows what Mother would say!”

  I couldn’t think there was much she hadn’t said already. When you’re a queen of unblemished virtue, devoted to Duty and the high moral tone, and your son and Heir to the Throne is a notorious wastrel who counts all time lost when he ain’t stuffing, swilling, sponging off rich toad-eaters, and rogering everything in skirts, you’re apt to be censorious – why, she’d once told Elspeth that she was determined to outlive the brute ’cos he wasn’t fit to be king, so there. But in the present instance, so far as I’d gathered from his incoherent growls, I was shot if I could see what he was in a stew about; for once he appeared to be blameless. Yet here he was mangling his weed and twitching like a frightened Falstaff.

  We were alone, and he was too fretful to be on his dignity, so I guided him to a chair, soothed him with a stiff b. and s., lit him a fresh smoke, waited courtier-like while he coughed his innards out, and invited him to restate his troubles, as calmly as might be, to sympathetic old Flashy.

  “I’ve just told you!” snaps he, wheezing and wiping his piggy eyes. “It is the most shocking business. They say Bill Cumming has cheated at baccarat!”

  That’s what I’d thought he said the first time, and wondered if I’d misheard. But he seemed sober and rational, if agitated.

  “You mean last night, sir – in the billiard-room?”

  “Yes, confound it – and the night before! You were there, hang it all!”

  Well, I had been, as an occasional spectator looking in from time to time to make sure my feather-brained wife wasn’t slapping down her jewellery and crying “Banco!”, but I wasn’t having this. I should explain that baccarat is the most imbecile of card games (Elspeth plays it, after all) in which half-wits sit round a large table and the banker deals two cards to the crowd on his right, two to those on his left, and two to himself, the object being to get as near a total of nine with your two cards as may be; if your side gets two deuces, you’ll ask for a third card, won’t you, hoping for a four or a five, and the banker has the same privilege. If he gets closer to nine, he wins; if he doesn’t, you win. Endless fun, my dear, assuming you can count up to nine, and if it don’t rival chess, exactly, at least its simplicity leaves little room for sharp practice. Which was why I couldn’t credit what his fat highness was telling me.

  “Cheated – at baccarat? No, sir, it can’t be done,” I told him. “Well, not unless you’re the banker, and even then, with a four-pack deck, more than two hundred cards, why, you’d have to be the very devil of a mechanic.” I considered. “Can’t think I’ve ever seen it tried … no, not out West, even. Mind you, they don’t go in for baccarat, much … vingt-et-un, mostly, and poker –”

  “Damn poker!” croaks he. “He cheated, I tell you – and I was the blasted banker!”

  Come to think of it, so he had been, on both nights, and for a happy moment I wondered if he’d been slipping ’em off the bottom himself, and was trying to shift the blame, in true royal style – but that wouldn’t do; he hadn’t the spunk for it.

  “Let me get this right, sir … you tell me Gordon-Cumming cheated? For God’s sake, who says so?”

  “Coventry and Owen Williams. There can be no doubt about it – I saw nothing wrong, but they are quite positive.”

  Since one of them was a deaf peer, and t’other a Welsh major-general, I didn’t put much stock in this. “They say they saw him sharping?”

  “No, no, not they – these dreadful Wilson people, the young ones – our host’s children, dammit, four or five of them, young Wilson and that impossible fellow Green – and two of the ladies, even … they all saw him cheat, I tell you!” He thumped his knee, almost eating his cigar. “Why did I ever allow myself to be prevailed upon to come to this infernal house? It will be a lesson to me, Flashman, I don’t mind telling you – did you ever hear anything so monstrous?”

  “If it’s true, sir … How do they say he cheated?”

  “Why, by adding to his stake – putting on counters after the coups were declared in his side’s favour – and taking ’em off when he’d lost. They saw him do it time and again, apparently, on both nights, when I,” groans he, “was holding the bank!”

  The more I heard, the dafter it became. I’m no gambling man myself, much, and have never had the skill or nerve for sharping anyway, but in my time I’ve seen ’em all: stud games in Abilene livery stables with guns and gold-pokes down on the blanket, nap schools from Ballarat to the Bay, penny-ante blackjack in political country houses (with D’Israeli dealing and that oily little worm Bryant planting aces in my unsuspecting pockets, damn him), and watched the sharks at work with cold decks, shaved edges, marked backs, and everything up their sleeves bar a trained midget – and you may take my word for it, the last place on God’s earth you’d want to sit on the Queen of Spades or try to juggle the stakes is Grandmama’s drawing-room after dinner; you won’t last five minutes. As Gordon-Cumming, I was asked to believe, had discovered.

  “And no one said anything at the time?”

  “Why … why, no.” He blinked in bearded bewilderment. “No, they did not … the ladies, I suppose … the ghastly scene that must have followed …” He made vague gestures with his cigar. “But they felt they could not keep silent altogether, and told Williams and Coventry – and they,” he fairly snarled, “have told me! Before dinner tonight. Why they felt obliged to drag me into the wretched business I cannot think. It’s too bad!”

  Sheer vapouring, of course. As Prince of Wales, first gentleman of Europe (God help us), he was the bright particular star and pack leader of the genteel rabble assembled at Tranby Croft, Yorks, for the Doncaster races, and knew perfectly well that any serious breach of polite behaviour by a fellow guest, such as card-sharping, was bound to land on his mat. I reminded him of this tactfully, and added that I didn’t believe it for a minute. Some foolish mistake or misunderstanding, I said, depend upon it.

  “No such thing!” He heaved his guts out of the chair and began to pace about. “The young Wilsons and Green – aye, and that chap what’s-his-name – Levett – who is in Cumming’s own regiment, for heaven’s sake – all avow it. They saw him cheat! Coventry and Williams are in no doubt whatsoever. It’s too frightful for words!” He gloomed at me, all hang-dog German jowls. “Can you imagine the scandal if it should come out – if it were to reach the Queen’s ears that such a thing had happened in … in my presence?” He took a step towards me. “My dear Harry – you know about these things – what is to be done?”

  One thing was plain – it wasn’t Cumming’s supposed sleight of hand (which I still couldn’t credit) that was putting him in a ferment, but that it had happened in a game presided over by His Royal Grossness, and whatever would Mama say when she heard that he’d been spreading the boards like Faro Jack. Tame stuff, from where I stood, compared to his whoremongering and general depravity, but if it had shaken him to the point where I was his dear Harry, he must be desperate. I’d steered him out of more than one scrape in the past, and here he was again, looking at me like an owl in labour. So, first things first.

  “What does Gordon-Cumming say?”

  “He denies it outright, of course – Williams and Coventry saw him before dinner, and –”

  “You haven’t spoken to him yourself, then?”

  He shuddered. “No – and I dread it! You think I should not? Oh, if I could avoid it … how am I to face him – an old friend, an intimate of years, a fellow officer – a baronet, dammit, a … a man of honour …”

  Aye, that’s a word we’ll hear more of before this is done, thinks I. “Tell me, sir – these eagle-eyed youngsters … how much do they claim Cumming bilked ’em of?”

  He goggled at me. “What on earth has that to do with it? If a fellow cheats, what does the amount matter?”

  “Something, I’d say. Now, I didn’t play either night, but my Elspeth said something about five and ten bob stakes, so it can’t have been much of a high game?”

 
“Heavens, no! A friendly game, to amuse the ladies – why, I set the bank limit at a hundred pounds, both nights –”

  “So Cumming can’t have won more than a hundred or two, can he? Well, I don’t know what he’s worth – some say eighty thou’ p.a. – but he has a place in Scotland, house in Town, half-colonelcy in the Guards, moves in the top flight, and I’ve never heard he was short o’ the ready, have you?” He shook his head, glowering. “Well, sir – would he risk his good name, his commission, his place in Society – good Lord, everything he counts worth while! – for a few wretched quid that wouldn’t keep him in cheroots for a year? Why, sir, it don’t bear looking at, even!”

  And it didn’t. I’m ready to believe evil of anyone, usually with good cause, and especially of Sir William Gordon-Cumming, Bart, whose reputation I’d have been happy to blacken any day (I’ll tell you why presently), but this accusation made no sense at all. Quite apart from the mechanical difficulties of the thing, the paltry sums involved, and the ghastly risk he’d have been running, all of which I’d pointed out, there was my knowledge of the man’s character, which was that of a top-lofty prig with immense notions of his own dignity, who’d have regarded cheating as shocking bad form, and never mind dishonesty. No, it wouldn’t do.

  But there was no persuading Bertie the Bounder of that. He was in such a funk about the possible scandal that sweet reason was lost on him, and those two duffers Coventry and Williams had convinced him that the evidence was overwhelming. How, they demanded, when I’d prevailed on the Prince to have ’em in so that I might hear their tale first-hand, could five intelligent young people be mistaken, not on one occasion only, but on several.

  “Hold hard a moment,” says I. “Let’s take it in order. Two nights ago, Monday, you played baccarat in the smoking-room after dinner. I was only in and out while you played, but as I recall you had three card tables pushed together with a cloth over them, to play at. Your highness had the bank –”