Flash for Freedom!

‘The French have too much on hand with their own rebels to mind about us,’ said 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 chose, 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 mill-workers 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 Medusa-in-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 daresay.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.

‘Me, in Parliament?’ I loosed a huge guffaw. ‘What the devil would I do there? D’ye think that would keep the Chartists at bay?’

At this he let loose a great tirade about the parlous state of the country, and the impending dissolution of constitutional government, and how it was everyone’s duty to rally to the flag. Oddly enough, it reminded me of the kind of claptrap I’d heard from Bismarck – strong government, and lashing the workers – but I couldn’t see how Flashy, M.P., was going to bring that about.

‘If yesterday’s nonsense has convinced you that we need a change at Westminster,’ says I, ‘– and I’d not disagree with you there – why don’t you stand yourself?’

He glowered at me over his gruel-bowl. ‘I’m no’ the Hero of Kabul,’ says he. ‘Forbye, I’ve business enough to attend to. But you – ye’ve nothing to hinder ye. Ye’re never tired o’ tellin’ us whit a favourite ye are wi’ the public. Here’s your chance to make somethin’ o’t.’

‘You’re out of your senses,’ says I. ‘Who would elect me?’

‘Anybody,’ snaps he. ‘A pug ape frae the zoological gardens could win a seat in this country, if it was managed right.’ Buttering me up, I could see.

‘But I’m not a politician,’ says I. ‘I know nothing about it, and care even less.’

‘Then ye’re the very man, and ye’ll find plenty o’ kindred spirits at Westminster,’ says he, and when I hooted at him he flew into a tremendous passion that drove the females weeping from the room. I left him raging.

But when I came to think about it, do you know, it didn’t seem quite so foolish after all. He was a sharp man, old Morrison, and he could see it would do no harm to have a Member in the family, what with his business interests and so on. Not that I’d be much use to him that I could see – I didn’t know, then, that he had been maturing some notion of buying as many as a dozen seats. I’d no idea, you see, of just how wealthy the old rascal was, and how he was scheming to use that wealth for political ends. You won’t find much in the history books about John Morrison, Lord Paisley, but you can take my word for it that it was men like him who pulled the strings in the old Queen’s time, while the political puppets danced. They still do, and always will.

And from my side of the field, it didn’t look a half bad idea. Flashy, M.P. Sir Harry Flashman, M.P., perhaps. Lord Flash of Lightning, Paymaster of the Forces, with a seat in the Cabinet, d--n your eyes. God knows I could do that job as well as Thomas Babbling Macaulay. Even in my day-dreaming I stopped short of Flashy, Prime Minister, but for the rest, the more I thought of it the better I liked it. Light work, plenty of spare time for as much depraved diversion as I could manage in safety, and the chance to ram my opinions down the public’s throat whenever I felt inclined. I need never go out of London if I didn’t want to – I would resign from the army, of course, and rest on my considerable if ill-gotten laurels – and old Morrison would be happy to foot the bills, no doubt, in return for slight services rendered.

The main thing was, it would be a quiet life. As you know, in spite of the published catalogue of my career – Victoria Cross, general rank, eleven campaigns, and all that mummery – I’ve always been an arrant coward and a peaceable soul. Bullying underlings and whipping trollops always excepted, I’m a gentle fellow – which means I’ll never do harm to anyone if there’s a chance he may harm me in return. The trouble is, no one would believe it to look at me; I’ve always been big and hearty and looked the kind of chap who’d go three rounds with the town rough if he so much as stepped on my shadow, and from what Tom Hughes has written of me you might imagine I was always ready for devilment. Aye, but as I’ve grown older I’ve learned that devilment usually has to be paid for. God knows I’ve done my share of paying, and even in ’48, at the ripe old age of twenty-six, I’d seen enough sorrow, from the Khyber to German dungeons by way of the Borneo jungles and the torture-pits of Madagascar, to convince me that I must never go looking for trouble again.2 Who’d have thought that old Morrison’s plans to seat me at Westminster could have led to … well, ne’er mind. All in good time.

As to getting a suitable seat, that would be easy enough, with Morrison’s gelt greasing the way. Which prompted the thought that I ought to have a word with him about issues of political importance.

‘Two thousand a year at least,’ says I.

‘Five hundred and no’ a penny more,’ says he.

‘Dammit, I’ve appearances to keep up,’ says I. ‘Elspeth’s notions ain’t cheap.’

‘I’ll attend to that,’ says he. ‘As I always have done.’ The cunning old bastard wouldn’t even let me have the administration of my own wife’s household; he knew better.

‘A thousand, then. Good God, my clothes’ll cost that.’

‘Elspeth can see tae your wardrobe,’ says he, smirking. ‘Five hundred, my buckie; it’s mair than your worth.’

‘I’ll not do it, then,’ says I. ‘And that’s flat.’

‘Aye, weel,’ says he, ‘that’s a peety. I’ll just have to get one that will. Ye’ll find it a wee bit lean on your army half-pay, I’m thinkin’.’

‘Damn you,’ says I. ‘Seven-fifty.’

And eventually I got it, but only because Elspeth told her father I should have it. She, of course, was delighted at the thought of my having a political career. ‘We shall have soirées, attended by Lord John and the Marquis of Lansdowne,’3 she exclaimed. ‘People with titles, and their ladies, and –’

‘They’re Whigs,’ says I. ‘I’ve an idea your papa will expect me to be a Tory.’

‘It doesn’t signify in the least,’ says she. ‘The Tories are a better class of people altogether, I believe. Why, the Duke is a Tory, is he not?’

‘So the rumour runs,’ says I. ‘But political secrets of that kind must be kept quiet, you know.’

‘Oh, it is all quite wonderful,’ says she, paying me no heed at all. ‘You will be famous again, Harry – you are so clever, you are sure to be a success, and I – I will need at least four page boys with buttons, and footmen in proper uniform.’ She clapped her hands, her eyes sparkling, and pirouetted. ‘Why, Harry! We shall need a new house! I must have clothes – oh, but Papa will see to it, he is so kind!’

It occurred to me that Papa might decide he had bitten off more than he could chew, listening to her, although personally I thought her ideas were excellent. She was in tremendous spirits, and I took the opportunity to make another assault on her; she was so excited that I had her half out of her dress before she realised what I was about, and then the wicked little b---h teased me along until I was thoroughly randified, only to stop me in the very act of boarding her, because of her concern for dear little Harry Albert Victor, blast his impudence.

‘To think,’ says she, ‘that he will have a great statesman for a father!’ She had me in the Cabinet already, you see. ‘Oh, Harry, how proud we shall be!’

Which was small consolation to me just then, having to button myself up and restrain my carnal appetites. To be sure I eased them considerably in the next week or two, for I looked out some of the Haymarket tarts of my acquaintance, and although they were a poor substitute for Elspeth they helped me to settle in again to London life and regular whoring. So I was soon enjoying myself, speculating pleasantly about the future, taking my ease with the boys about the town, forgetting the recent horrors of Jotunberg and Rudi Starnberg’s gang of assassins, and waiting for old Morrison to start the wheels of my political career turning.

He was helped, of course, by my own celebrity and the fact that my father – who was now happily settled down with his delirium tremens at a place in the country – had been an M.P. in his time, and a damned fine hand at the hustings; he had got in on a popular majority after horse-whipping his opponent on the eve of the poll and offering to fight bare-knuckle with any man the Whigs could put up, from Brougham down. He had a good deal more bottom than I, but they did for him at Reform, and if I didn’t have his ardour I was certain I had a greater talent for survival, political and otherwise.

Anyway, it was some weeks before Morrison announced that I was to meet some ‘men in the know’ as he called them, and that we were to go down to Wiltshire for a few days, to the house of a local bigwig, where some politicos would be among the guests. It sounded damned dull, and no doubt would have been, had it not been for my own lechery and vanity and the shockingest turn of ill luck. Apart from anything else, I missed the Derby.

We left Elspeth at home, working contentedly at her Berlins,4 and took the train for Bristol, Morrison and I. He was the damnedest travelling companion you ever saw, for apart from being a thundering bore he carped at everything, from the literature at the station book-stalls, which he pronounced trash, to the new practice of having to pay a bob ‘attendance money’ to railway servants.5 I was glad to get to Devizes, I can tell you, whence we drove to Seend, a pretty little place where our host lived in a fairish establishment called Cleeve House.

He was the kind of friend you’d expect Morrison to have – a middle-aged moneybags of a banker called Locke, with reach-me-down whiskers and a face like a three-day corpse. He was warm enough, evidently, but as soon as I saw the females sitting about in chairs on the gravel with their bonnets on, reading improving books, I could see this was the kind of house-party that wasn’t Flashy’s style at all. I was used to hunting weeks where you dined any old how, with lots of brandy and singing, and chaps p-----g in the corner and keeping all hours, and no females except the local bareback riders, as old Jack Mitton used to call them. But by ’48 they were going out, you see and it was as much as you dare do, at some of the houses, to produce the cards before midnight after the ladies had retired. I remember Speed telling me, round about this time, of one place he’d been to where they got him up at eight for morning prayers, and gave him a book of sermons to read after luncheon.

Cleeve House wasn’t quite as raw as that, but it would have been damned dreary going if one of the girls present hadn’t been quite out of the ordinary run. I fixed on her from the start – a willowy blonde piece with a swinging hip and a knowing eye. Strange, I met her at Cleeve, and didn’t see her again till I came on her cooking breakfast for a picket of Campbell’s Highlanders outside Balaclava six years later, the very morning of Cardigan’s charge. Fanny Locke her name was;6 she was the young sister of our host, a damned handsome eighteen with the shape of a well-developed matron. Like so many young girls whose body outgrows their years, she didn’t know what to do with it – well, I could give her guidance there. As soon as I saw her swaying down the staircase at Cleeve, ho-ho, thinks I, hark forrard. You may be sure I was soon in attendance, and when I found she was a friendly little thing, and a keen horsewoman, I laid my plans accordingly, and engaged to go riding with her next day, when she would show me the local country – it was the long grass I had in mind, of course.

In the meantime, the first evening at Cleeve was quite as much fun as a Methodist service. Of course, all Tory gatherings are the same, and Locke had assembled as choice a collection of know-all prigs as you could look for. Bentinck I didn’t mind, because he had some game in him and knew more about the turf than anyone I ever met, but he had in tow the cocky little sheeny D’Israeli, whom I never could stomach. He was pathetic, really, trying to behave like the Young Idea when he was well into greasy middle age, with his lovelock and fancy vest, like a Punjabi whoremaster. They were saying then that he had spent longer ‘arriving’ at Westminster than a one-legged Irish peer with the gout; well, he ‘arrived’ in the end, as we know, and if I’d been able to read the future I might have toadied him a good deal more, I daresay.7