FLASH FOR FREEDOM!
George MacDonald Fraser
1971
For Kath, a memento of the long Sunday
Explanatory Note
When the first two packets of the Flashman Papers were published, in 1969 and 1970, there was some controversy over their authenticity. It was asked whether the papers were, in fact, the true personal memoirs of Harry Flashman, the notorious bully of Tom Brown's Schooldays and later an eminent British soldier, or were simply an impudent fake.
This was not a controversy in which either Mr Paget Morrison, the owner of the papers, or I, his editor, thought fit to join. The matter was thoroughly discussed in various journals, and also on television, and if any doubters remain they are recommended to study the authoritative article which appeared in the New York Times of July 29, 1969, and which surely settles the question once and for all.
The first two packets of the papers contained Flashman's personal narrative of his expulsion from Rugby School by Dr Thomas Arnold, his early service in the British Army (1839-42), his decoration by Queen Victoria after the First Afghan War, and his involvement in the Schleswig-Holstein Question, in which he found himself pitted against the young Otto von Bismarck and the celebrated Countess of Landsfeld. The third packet, which is now presented to the public, continues his story in the year 1848 and the early months of 1849. It is remarkable as a first-hand account of an important social phenomenon of the early Victorian years—the Afro-American slave trade—and in its illumination of the characters of two of the most eminent statesmen of the century, one a future British Prime Minister and the other a future American President. Flashman's recollections cast interesting light on what may be called their formative years.
When the Flashman Papers were brought to light at Ashby, Leicestershire, in 1965, it was noted that while the great volume of manuscript had obviously been examined and re-arranged round about 1915, no alteration or amendment had been made to the text as set down by Flashman himself in 1903-1905. Closer examination of the third packet reveals, however, that an editorial hand has been lightly at work. I suspect that it belonged to Grizel de Rothschild, the youngest of Flashman's sisters-in-law, who with a fine Victorian delicacy has modified those blasphemies and improprieties with which the old soldier occasionally emphasised his narrative. She was by no means consistent in this, for while she paid close attention to oaths, she left untouched those passages in which Flashman retails his amorous adventures; possibly she did not understand what he was talking about. In any event, she gave up the task approximately half-way through the manuscript, but I have left her earlier editing as it stands, since it adds a certain period charm to the narrative.
For the rest, I have as usual inserted occasional explanatory notes.
G.M.F.
FLASH FOR FREEDOM!
1
I believe it was the sight of that old fool Gladstone, standing in the pouring rain holding his special constable's truncheon as though it were a bunch of lilies, and looking even more like an unemployed undertaker's mute than usual, that made me think seriously about going into politics. God knows I'm no Tory, and I never set eyes on a Whig yet without feeling the need of a bath, but I remember thinking as I looked at Gladstone that day: “Well, if that's one of the bright particular stars of English public life, Flashy my boy, you ought to be at Westminster yourself.”
You wouldn't blame me; you must have thought the same, often. After all, they're a contemptible lot, and you'll agree that I had my full share of the qualities of character necessary in political life. I could lie and dissemble with the best, give short change with a hearty clap on the shoulder, slip out from under long before the blow fell, talk, toady, and turn tail as fast as a Yankee fakir selling patent pills. Mark you, I've never been given to interfering in other folks' affairs if I could help it, so I suppose that would have disqualified me. But for a little while I did think hard about bribing my way to a seat—and the result of it was that I came within an ace of being publicly disgraced, shanghaied, sold as a slave, and God knows what besides. I've never seriously considered politics since.
It was when I came home from Germany in the spring of '48, after my skirmish with Otto Bismarck and Lola Montez. I was in d-d bad shape, with a shaven skull, a couple of wounds, and the guts scared half out of me, and all I wanted was to go to ground in London until I was my own man once more. One thing I was sure of: nothing was going to drag me out of England again—which was ironic, when you consider that I've spent more than half of the last fifty years at the ends of the earth, in uniform as often as not, and doing most of my walking backwards.
Anyway, I came home across the Channel one jump ahead of half the monarchs and statesmen in Europe. The popular rebellion I'd seen in Munich was only one of a dozen that broke out that spring, and all the fellows who'd lost their thrones and chancellorships seemed to have decided, like me, that old England was the safest place. So it proved, but the joke was that for a few weeks after I came home it looked touch and go whether England didn't have a revolution of her own, which would have sold the fleeing monarchs properly, and serve 'em right.
Mind you, I thought it was all gammon myself; I'd just seen a real rebellion, with mobs chanting and smashing and looting, and I couldn't imagine it happening in St James's. But that crabbed old Scotch miser, Morrison, my abominable father-in-law, thought different, and poured out his fears to me on my first evening at home.
“It's thae bluidy Chartists,” cries he, with his head in his hands. “The d-d mob is loose aboot the toon, or soon will be. It's no' enough, their Ten Hoors Bill, they want tae slake their vengeance on honest fowk as well. Burn them a', the wicked rascals! And whit does the Government do, will ye tell me? Naethin'! Wi' rebellion in oor midst, an' the French chappin' at oor doors!”
“The French have too much on hand with their own rebels to mind about us,” says I. “As to the Chartists, I recall you expressing the same fears, years ago, in Paisley, and nothing came of it. If you remember—”
“Naethin' came o't, d'ye say?” cries he, with his chops quivering. “I ken whit came o't! You, that should hae been at your post, were loupin' intae the bushes wi' my Elspeth. Oh, Goad,” says he, groaning, “as if we hadnae tribulation enough. Wee Elspeth, in her. . . her condeetion.”
That was another thing, of course. My beautiful Elspeth, after eight years of wedded bliss, had now conceived at last, and to hear her father, mother, and sisters you would have thought it was Judgement Day. Myself, I believe she'd done it just to be topsides with the Queen, who had recently produced yet another of her innumerable litter. But what concerned me most was the identity of the father; I knew my darling feather-head, you see, for the trollop she was—you would never have thought it, to look at her beguiling innocence, but it had long been an unspoken bargain between us that we let each other's private lives alone, and I could guess she had been in the woodshed with half a dozen during my absence. Mind you, I might have pupped her myself before I went to Germany, but who could tell? And if she gave birth to something with red hair and a pug nose there was liable to be talk, and God knows what might come of that.
You see, we were an odd family. Old Morrison was as rich as an Amsterdam Jew, and when my guv'nor went smash over railway stock, Morrison had paid the bills for Elspeth's sake. He had been paying ever since, keeping me and my guv'nor on a pittance while he used our house, and got what credit he could out of being related to the Flashman family. Not that that was much, in my opinion, but since we were half-way into Society, and Morrison had daughters to marry off, he was prepared to tolerate us. He had to tolerate me, anyway, since I was married to his daughter. But it was a d-d tricky business, all round, for he could kick me out if he chos
e, and would do like a shot the moment Elspeth decided she'd had enough of me. As it was, we dealt well enough with each other, but with a child on the way things might, I suspected, be different. I'd no wish to be out in the street trying to scrape by on a captain's half pay.
So what with Elspeth pregnant and old Morrison expecting the Communist rabble at the door at any moment, it was a fairly cheerless homecoming. Elspeth seemed pleased enough to see me, all right, but when I tried to bundle her into bed she would have none of it, in case the child was harmed. So instead of bouncing her about that evening I had to listen fondly to her drivelling about what name we should give our Little Hero—for she was sure it must be a boy.
“He shall be Harry Albert Victor,” says she, holding my hand and gazing at me with those imbecile blue eyes which never lost their power, somehow, to make my heart squeeze up inside me, God knows why. “After you, my dearest love, and our dear, dear Queen and her dearest love. Would you approve, my darling?”
“Capital choice,” says I. “Couldn't be better.” Not unless, I thought to myself, you called him Tom, or Dick, or William, or whatever the fellow's name was who was in the hay with you. (After all, we'd been married a long while and made the springs creak time without number, and devil a sign of our seed multiplying. It seemed odd, now. Still, there it was.)
“You make me so happy, Harry,” says she, and do you know, I believed it. She was like that, you see; as immoral as I was, but without my intelligence. No conscience whatever, and a blissful habit of forgetting her own transgressions—or probably she never thought she had any to forget.
She leaned up and kissed me, and the smell and feel of her blonde plumpness set me off, and I made a grab at her tits, but she pushed me away again.
“We must be patient, my own,” says she, composing herself. “We must think only of dear Harry Albert Victor.”
(That, by the way, is what he is called. The bastard's a bishop, too. I can't believe he's mine.)
She cooed and maundered a little longer, and then said she must rest, so I left her sipping her white-wine whey and spent the rest of the evening listening to old Morrison groaning and snarling. It was the same old tune, more or less, that I'd grown used to on the rare occasions when we had shared each other's company over the past eight years—the villainy of the workers, the weakness of government, the rising cost of everything, my own folly and extravagance (although heaven knows he never gave me enough to be extravagant with), the vanity of his wife and daughters, and all the rest of it. It was pathetic, and monstrous, too, when you considered how much the old skinflint had raked together by sweating his mill-workers and cheating his associates. But I observed that the richer he got, the more he whined and raged, and if there was one thing I'll say for him, he got richer quicker than the only sober man in a poker game.
The truth was that, coward and skinflint though he was, he had a shrewd business head, no error. From being a prosperous Scotch mill owner when I married his daughter he had blossomed since coming south, and had his finger in a score of pies—all d-d dirty ones, no doubt. He had become known in the City, and in Tory circles too, for if he was a provincial nobody he had the golden passport, and it was getting fatter all the time. He was already angling for his title, although he didn't get it until some little time later, when Russell sold it to him—a Whig minister ennobling a Tory miser, which just goes to show. But with all these glittering prizes in front of him, the little swine was getting greedier by the hour, and the thought of it all dissolving in revolution had him nearly puking with fear.
“It's time tae tak' a stand,” says he, goggling at me. “We have to defend our rights and our property”—and I almost burst out laughing as I remembered the time in Paisley when his millworkers got out of hand, and he cringed behind his door, bawling for me to lead my troops against them. But this time he was really frightened; I gathered from his vapourings that there had been recent riots in Glasgow, and even in Trafalgar Square, and that in a few days there was to be a great rally of Chartists—“spawn of Beelzebub” he called them—on Kennington Common, and that it was feared they would invade London itself.
To my astonishment, when I went out next day to take my bearings, I discovered there was something in it. At Horse Guards there were rumours that regiments were being brought secretly to town, the homes of Ministers were to be guarded, and supplies of cutlasses and firearms were being got ready. Special constables were being recruited to oppose the mob, and the Royal Family were leaving town. It all sounded d-d serious, but my Uncle Bindley, who was on the staff, told me that the Duke was confident nothing would come of it.
“So you'll win no more medals this time,” says he, sniffing. “I take it, now that you have consented to honour us with your presence again, that you are looking to your family” (he meant the Pagets, my mother's tribe) “to find you employment again.”
“I'm in no hurry, thank'ee,” says I. “I'm sure you'd agree that in a time of civil peril a gentleman's place is in his home, defending his dear ones.”
“If you mean the Morrisons,” says he, “I cannot agree with you. Their rightful place is with the mob, from which they came.”
“Careful, uncle,” says I. “You never know—you might be in need of a Scotch pension yourself some day.” And with that I left him, and sauntered home.
The place was in a ferment. Old Morrison, carried away by terror for his strong-boxes, had actually plucked up courage to go to Marlborough Street and 'test as a special constable, and when I came home he was standing in the drawing-room looking at his truncheon as though it was a snake. Mrs Morrison, my Medusain-law, was lying on the sofa, with a maid dabbing her temples with eau-de-cologne, Elspeth's two sisters were weeping in a corner, and Elspeth herself was sitting, cool as you please, with a shawl round her shoulders, eating chocolates and looking beautiful. As always, she was the one member of the family who was quite unruffled.
Old Morrison looked at me and groaned, and looked at the truncheon again.
“It's a terrible thing to tak' human life,” says he.
“Don't take it, then,” says I. “Strike only to wound. Get your back against a brick wall and smash 'em across the knees and elbows.”
The females set up a great howl at this, and old Morrison looked ready to faint.
“D'ye think. . . it'll come tae. . . tae bloodshed?”
“Shouldn't wonder,” says I, very cool.
“Ye'll come with me,” he yammered. “You're a soldier—a man of action—aye, ye've the Queen's Medal an' a'. Ye've seen service—aye——against the country's enemies! Ye're the very man tae stand up to this. . . this trash. Ye'll come wi' me—or maybe tak' my place!”
Solemnly I informed him that the Duke had given it out that on no account were the military to be involved in any disturbance that might take place when the Chartists assembled. I was too well known; I should be recognised.
“I'm afraid it is for you civilians to do your duty,” says I. “But I shall be here, at home, so you need have no fear. And if the worst befalls, you may be sure that my comrades and I shall take stern vengeance.”
I left that drawing-room sounding like the Wailing Wall, but it was nothing to the scenes which ensued on the morning of the great Chartist meeting at Kennington. Old Morrison set off, amidst the lamentations of the womenfolk, truncheon in hand, to join the other specials, but was back in ten minutes having sprained his ankle, he said, and had to be helped to bed. I was sorry, because I'd been hoping he might get his head stove in, but it wouldn't have happened anyway. The Chartists did assemble, and the specials were mustered in force to guard the bridges—it was then that I saw Gladstone with the other specials, with his nose dripping, preparing to sell his life dearly for the sake of constitutional liberty and his own investments. But it poured down, everyone was soaked, the foreign agitators who were on hand got nowhere, and all the inflamed mob did was to send a monstrous petition across to the House of Commons. It had five million signatures, they said;
I know it had four of mine, one in the name of Obadiah Snooks, and three others in the shape of X's beside which I wrote, “John Morrison, Arthur Wellesley, Henry John Temple Palmerston, their marks”.
But the whole thing was a frost, and when one of the Frog agitators in Trafalgar Square got up and d-d the whole lot of the Chartists for English cowards, a butcher's boy tore off his coat, squared up to the Frenchy, and gave the snail-chewing scoundrel the finest thrashing you could wish for. Then, of course, the whole crowd carried the butcher's boy shoulder high, and finished up singing “God Save the Queen” with tremendous gusto. A thoroughly English revolution, I dare say.[1]
You may wonder what all this had to do with my thinking about entering politics. Well, as I've said, it had lowered my opinion of asses like Gladstone still further, and caused me to speculate that if I were an M.P. I couldn't be any worse than that sorry pack of fellows, but this was just an idle thought. However, if my chief feeling about the demonstration was disappointment that so little mischief had been done, it had a great effect on my father-in-law, crouched at home with the bed-clothes over his head, waiting to be guillotined.
You'd hardly credit it, but in a way he'd had much the same thought as myself, although I don't claim to know by what amazing distortions of logic he arrived at it. But the upshot of his panic-stricken meditations on that day and the following night, when he was still expecting the mob to reassemble and run him out of town on a rail, was the amazing notion that I ought to go into Parliament.
“It's your duty,” cries he, sitting there in his night-cap with his ankle all bandaged up, while the family chittered round him, offering gruel. He waved his spoon at me. “Ye should hiv a seat i' the Hoose.”
I'm well aware that when a man has been terrified out of his wits, the most lunatic notions occur to him as sane and reasonable, but I couldn't follow this.
Flash For Freedom! Page 1