The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  18. The Akalis were the commandos of the Khalsa, a strict sect known variously as the Timeless Ones, the Children of God the Immortal, and the Crocodiles; a footnote to George Broadfoot’s biography typically describes them as “devoted to misrule and plunder”.

  19. Since Flashman refers later in the manuscript to a Cooper pepperbox, it is probable that the pistol he drew on Dalip Singh was a Cooper also. They were manufactured from about 1840 by J. R. Cooper, a British gunsmith, and fired six rounds. (See The Revolver, 1818–65, by A. W. F. Taylerson, R. A. N. Andrews, and J. Frith (1968).)

  20. There is a mystery here: the “tough, shrewd-looking heavyweight” who called on Flashman with Bhai Ram Singh hardly sounds like the “good, kind, and polite old Fakir Azizudeen” who had been Runjeet Singh’s foreign minister, and was still to the fore at this time, although he died of natural causes a few weeks later. Both the physical description and the style are inconsistent; indeed, the only way in which Bhai Ram’s companion resembles Azizudeen is in his uncompromising honesty. Either Flashman’s visitor was another courtier altogether, and he has simply got the name wrong, or his descriptive memory is playing him false for once.

  21. Flashman has caught the spirit but slightly misquoted the letter of Robert Herrick’s “Upon Julia’s Clothes”:

  Next, when I cast mine eyes and see

  That brave vibration each way free;

  O how that glittering taketh me!

  He quotes Herrick again (p. 277), but it is doubtful if he had any special affection for the poet, or would even have recognised his name. The Flashman Papers abound in erratic literary allusions – the present volume contains echoes of Donne, Shakespeare, Macaulay, Coleridge, Voltaire, Dickens, Scott, Congreve, Byron, Pope, Lewis Carroll, Norse mythology, and obscure corners of the Old Testament – but it would be rash to conclude that Flashman had any close acquaintance with the authors; more probably the allusions were picked up second hand from conversations and casual reading, with two exceptions. He knew Macaulay personally, and had certainly read his Lays, and he seems to have had a genuine liking for Thomas Love Peacock, whose caustic humour and strictures on Whiggery, political economy, and academics probably appealed to him. For the rest, we may judge that Flashman’s frequent references to Punch, Pierce Egan’s Tom and Jerry, and sensational fiction like Varney the Vampire, more fairly reflect his literary taste; we know from an earlier volume that the word Trollope meant only one thing to him, and it was not the author.

  22. Alexander Haughton Campbell Gardner, “Gurdana Khan” (1785–1877), is an extraordinary figure even for an age and region which saw such adventurers as “Sekundar” Burnes, Count Ignatieff, Yakub Beg, Pottinger, Connolly, Avitabile, and John Nicholson. He was born on the shore of Lake Superior, in what is now Wisconsin, the son of a Scottish surgeon and his Anglo-Spanish wife; Dr Gardner had served on the American side in the War of Independence, and knew both Washington and Lafayette. Young Alexander spent some years in Ireland, where he seems to have learned military gunnery, possibly in the British Army, went to Egypt, and travelled by caravan from Jericho to Russia, where his brother was a government engineer. Thence he went to Central Asia, where for several years his life was one of continual warfare, raid, ambush, escape and exploration among the wild tribes; he fought as a mercenary, and for a time appears to have been little more than a wandering bandit – “Food we obtained by levying contributions from everyone we could master,” he writes in his Memoirs, “but we did not slaughter except in self-defence.” He seems to have had to defend himself with fatal frequency, both as soldier and freebooter, as well as escaping from slave-traders, being attacked by a wolf-pack, leading an expedition against Peshawar under the sacred banner of the Khalifa (“all burning with religious zeal and the desire to work their will in the rich city”) and spending nine months in an underground dungeon. He rose to command a hill region with his own private fort under the rebel Habibullah Khan, who was opposing the Afghan monarch, Dost Mohammed, and it was on a foray to kidnap a princess from Dost Mohammed’s harem (with her treasure) that he met his first wife – an incident described in his best laconic style:

  In the course of the running fight to our stronghold I was enabled to see the beautiful face of a young girl who accompanied the princess. I rode for a considerable time beside her, pretending that my respect for the elder lady made me choose that side of her camel … On the following morning Habibulla Khan richly rewarded his followers, but I refused my share of the gold and begged for this girl to be given to me in marriage …

  She was, and for two years they lived happily, until Gardner returned from an action in which he had lost 51 men out of 90, to find that his fort had been attacked, and his wife had stabbed herself rather than be taken prisoner; their baby son had also been murdered. Although he continued in Afghanistan for some years, and was reconciled with Dost Mohammed, he eventually took service in the Punjab with Runjeet Singh, training the Khalsa in gunnery, fought in various actions, and was in Lahore in the six years of bloodshed and intrigue following Runjeet’s death. He was guard commander to the infant Dalip Singh and Rani Jeendan at the time of his meeting with Flashman, but he was strongly pro-British (his friends included Henry Lawrence) and believed that India’s future would be best served by ever closer communion with the United Kingdom. In his letter “from John Bull of India to John Bull of England”, he envisaged the development of India as a great industrial nation, with Indians playing their part in the highest posts in civil and military life, and being represented in both Houses at Westminster. Physically, Gardner was as Flashman describes him – six feet tall, fierce, lean, and of iron constitution. As a result of one of his numerous wounds he was unable to swallow solid food, and could drink only with the help of an iron collar, but even in his eightieth year he was said to be as active as a man of fifty, lively and humorous, and speaking an English which was “quaint, graphic, and wonderfully good considering his fifty years among Asiatics”. The photograph in his Memoirs shows a splendid old war-horse, beak-nosed and with bristling whiskers, seated sword in hand and clad in a full suit of tartan, even to his plumed turban. He bought the cloth from a Highland regiment in India, but which tartan it is cannot be told from the monochrome picture, and thereby hangs a small mystery.

  Flashman says it was the tartan of the 79th (Cameron) Highlanders, and describes it as red or crimson – which is slightly puzzling, since the 79th’s kilt is largely dark blue, being a hybrid of the MacDonald and a crimson element from the Lochiel Cameron. It may be that Flashman, who knew his military tartans, regarded it as “red” only by contrast with those of the four other Highland regiments, which are predominantly dark blue-green. The only other explanation is that he was entirely mistaken, and Gardner was wearing not the 79th tartan but the red and resplendent Lochiel Cameron – in which case the Colonel must have been a sight to behold.

  (See Memoirs of Alexander Gardner, ed. Hugh W. Pearse (1890).)

  23. It is quite possible that Kipling based Daniel Dravot, the hero of The Man Who Would Be King, on Dr Harlan. He would surely have heard of the American, and there is a strong echo, in Dravot’s fictional Kafiristan adventure (published in 1895), of Harlan’s aspirations first to the throne of Afghanistan, and later successfully to the kingship of Ghor, as described in Gardner’s Memoirs (published in 1890); whether Harlan’s story was true is beside the point. Like many passages in his astonishing career, it lacks corroboration; on the other hand it was accepted, along with the rest, by such authorities as Major Pearse, who was Gardner’s editor, and the celebrated Dr Wolff.

  Josiah Harlan (1799–1871) was born in Newlin Township, Pennsylvania, the son of a merchant whose family came from County Durham. He studied medicine, sailed as a supercargo to China, and after being jilted by his American fiancée, returned to the East, serving as surgeon with the British Army in Burma. He then wandered to Afghanistan, where he embarked on that career as diplomat, spy, mercenary soldier, and double (sometimes treble) age
nt which so enraged Colonel Gardner. The details are confused, but it seems that Harlan, after trying to take Dost Mohammed’s throne, and capturing a fortress, fell into the hands of Runjeet Singh. The Sikh maharaja, recognising a rascal of genius when he saw one, sent him as envoy to Dost Mohammed; Harlan, travelling disguised as a dervish, was also working to subvert Dost’s throne on behalf of Shah Sujah, the exiled Afghan king; not content with this, he ingratiated himself with Dost and became his agent in the Punjab – in effect, serving three masters against each other. Although, as one contemporary remarks with masterly understatement, Harlan’s life was now somewhat complicated, he satisfied at least two of his employers: Shah Sujah made him a Companion of the Imperial Stirrup, and Runjeet gave him the government of three provinces which he administered until, it is said, the maharaja discovered that he was running a coining plant on the pretence of studying chemistry. Even then, Runjeet continued to use him as an agent, and it was Harlan who successfully suborned the Governor of Peshawar to betray the province to the Sikhs. He then took service with Dost Mohammed (whom he had just betrayed), and was sent with an expedition against the Prince of Kunduz; it was in this campaign that the patriotic doctor “surmounted the Indian Caucasus, and unfurled my country’s banner to the breeze under a salute of 26 guns … the star-spangled banner waved gracefully among the icy peaks.” What this accomplished is unclear, but soon afterwards Harlan managed to obtain the throne of Ghor from its hereditary prince. This was in 1838; a year later he was acting as Dost’s negotiator with the British invaders at Kabul; Dost subsequently fled, and Harlan was last seen having breakfast with “Sekundar” Burnes, the British political agent.

  Thus far Harlan’s story rests largely on a biographical sketch by the missionary, Dr Joseph Wolff; they met briefly during Harlan’s governorship of Gujerat, but Wolff (who of course never had the advantage of reading the present packet of the Flashman Papers) confesses that he knows nothing of the American after 1839. In fact, Harlan returned to the U.S. in 1841, married in 1849, raised Harlan’s Light Horse for the Union in the Civil War, was invalided out, and ended his days practising medicine in San Francisco; obviously he must have revisited the Punjab in the 1840s, when Flashman knew him. Of his appearance and character other contemporaries tell us little; Dr Wolff describes “a fine tall gentleman” given to whistling “Yankee Doodle”, and found him affable and engaging. Gardner mentions meeting him at Gujerat in the 1830s, but speaks no ill of him at that time.

  His biographer, Dr Joseph Wolff, D.D., LL.D (1795–1862), was a scholar, traveller, and linguist whose adventures were even more eccentric than Harlan’s. Known as “the Christian Dervish”, and “the Protestant Xavier”, he was born in Germany, the son of a Jewish rabbi, and during his “extraordinary nomadic career” converted to Christianity, was expelled from Rome for questioning Papal infallibility, scoured the Middle and Far East in search of the Lost Tribes of Israel, preached Christianity in Jerusalem, was shipwrecked in Cephalonia, captured by Central Asian slave-traders (who priced him at only £2.50, much to his annoyance), and walked 600 miles through Afghanistan “in a state of nudity”, according to the Dictionary of National Biography. He made a daring return to Afghanistan in search of the missing British agents, Stoddart and Connolly, and narrowly escaped death at the hands of their executioner. At other times Dr Wolff preached to the U.S. Congress, was a deacon in New Jersey, an Anglican priest in Ireland, and finally became vicar of a parish in Somerset. As Flashman has remarked, there were some odd fellows about in the earlies. (See Gardner; The Travels and Adventures of Dr Wolff (1860); Dictionary of American Biography; D.N.B.)

  24. Flashman’s is by far the fullest of the many descriptions of the murder of Jawaheer Singh on the 6th of Assin (September 21), 1845. He differs from other versions only in minor details: obviously he was unaware that two of the Wazir’s attendants were also killed, and that for a time Dalip Singh was a prisoner of the troops. But his description of the Rani’s reaction, while more graphic in detail, is borne out by other writers, who testify to her hysteria and threats of vengeance. (It has been suggested that she was a party to her brother’s death, but this seems most improbable, although on one occasion she had contemplated his arrest.) That Jawaheer knew of his peril is certain; he had, as Flashman says, attempted to buy his security on the previous evening, but on the fatal day he seems to have believed that he would escape with his life. In fact, he was foredoomed, not only because of Peshora Singh’s death, but (according to Cunningham) because the Khalsa believed he would “bring in the British”. (See Cunningham, Carmichael Smyth, Khushwant Singh, Gardner, and others.)

  At first glance, Flashman’s comparison of Jeendan to Clytemnestra would seem to refer to the Hon. J. Collier’s celebrated painting of Agamemnon’s queen, but this cannot be the case. Flashman wrote the present memoir before 1902 – so much is clear from his noting on p. 20 that it was written before his Borneo adventure, which he set down in or soon after that year. Since Collier’s painting was not exhibited until the Royal Academy of 1914, Flashman must be referring to some earlier, as yet unidentified, painting of Clytemnestra.

  25. Confirmation of the details of this deplorable episode is to be found in Carmichael Smyth.

  26. Flashman’s detailed eye-witness account of this durbar cannot be confirmed in all its particulars, but its substance is to be found in other authorities, including such contemporaries as Broadfoot and Carmichael Smyth. Jeendan plainly knew how to manage her troops, whether by overawing them with royal dignity, or captivating them by appearing unveiled and dressed as a dancing-girl. Carmichael Smyth describes her initial refusal to listen to their entreaties after Jawaheer’s death, her dictation of terms at the Summum Boorj, her insistence on Lal Singh as Wazir rather than Goolab, and her dispersal of the Khalsa on the understanding that she would soon launch it across the Sutlej. Broadfoot’s account, quoting Nicolson, speaks for itself:

  Court’s brigade was in favour of making Raja Gulab Singh minister; the other brigades seemed disposed to support the Rani, who behaved at this crisis with great courage. Sometimes as many as two thousand of these reckless and insubordinate soldiers would attend the Darbar at one time. ‘The Ranee, against the remonstrances of the chiefs, receives them unveiled, with which they are so charmed that even Court’s brigade agreed to confirm her in the government if she would move to their camp and let them see her unveiled whenever they thought proper.’ These strange disorderly ruffians, even when under the direct influence of her great beauty and personal attractions, reproved her for her unconcealed misconduct with Raja Lal Singh, and recommended her, as she seemed to dislike solitude, to marry; they told her she might select whom she pleased out of three classes, namely, chiefs, akalis, or wise men. She adopted a bold tone with the troops, and not only reproached them, but abused them in the grossest language, whilst they listened with pretended humility.

  27. Flashman is consistently vague about dates, and does nothing to clear up the longstanding mystery of when exactly the Sikhs invaded across the Sutlej. December 11 is the favourite date, but estimates by both British and Indian historians vary from the 8th to the 15th. Sir Henry Hardinge formally declared war on the 13th, and as Khushwant Singh points out, this almost certainly followed the crossing of the first Sikh units; the whole operation must have taken some days. Nicolson, at Ferozepore, says the invasion began on the 11th; Abbott, however, is definite that Broadfoot received word of it on the morning of the 10th.

  28. If Flashman were not so positive, one might be tempted to regard this reference to “Drink, puppy, drink” as another misplaced musical memory; elsewhere in the Papers he occasionally errs in “remembering” tunes (e.g. “The Galloping Major”, “Old Folks at Home”) before they have been written. At first sight, “Drink, puppy, drink” and “The Tarpaulin Jacket”, which he quotes on p. 233, look like similar cases of faulty recollection; both were written by Flashman’s fellow-officer, George Whyte-Melville (1821–78), none of whose writings appear to
have been published before his first retirement from the Army in 1849. So how can Flashman have known them in 1845, and be so sure of “Drink, puppy, drink” that he refers to it no fewer than three times in his memoirs of that year?

  There is a plausible explanation. Although no reference to Whyte-Melville has yet appeared in The Flashman Papers, it is quite possible that they met as early as their first year in the Army, when Flashman was stationed at Glasgow and Whyte-Melville was a subaltern in the 93rd (later Argyll and Sutherland) Highlanders. In such a small society it would be strange if two young men with so much in common did not come together: they were the sons of landed gentlemen who had married into the aristocracy, were both outstanding horsemen, keen sportsmen, and popular convivialists, and may even have discovered a bond of suffering from their schooldays (Flashman at Arnold’s Rugby, Whyte-Melville at Eton under the notorious Keate). And when it is remembered that Whyte-Melville’s considerable literary talent was of that precocious, carefree kind which may be called amateur in the true sense (in later life he gave all his royalties to establishing reading-rooms for stable boys, and similar charities), it seems quite probable that such songs as “Drink, puppy, drink” were being sung in messes and clubs long before their genial author had even thought of looking for a publisher.

  An interesting discovery, from Flashman’s dungeon ordeal, is that in roasting Tom Brown so memorably before the schoolroom fire at Rugby (see Tom Brown’s Schooldays), he was simply passing on a lesson learned from the deplorable Dawson, to whom he also refers in Flashman in the Great Game.

  29. How many Sikhs crossed the Sutlej it is impossible to say, far less how many were in the field on both sides of the river. Flashman’s eventual figure of 50,000 may not be far out, but it can be regarded as a maximum; Cunningham’s estimate is 35,000–40,000, plus another force of unspecified size advancing on Ludhiana. Against this Gough had about 30,000 at most, but only 22,000 of these were on or near the frontier, and they were widely dispersed. The Khalsa, according to Cunningham, had a superiority of almost two to one in artillery.