| 1. | The Minor St James Club may have been new to Flashman in 1842, but it was notorious to fashionable London. Its proprietor, a Mr Bond, was successfully sued in that year by a disgruntled punter who received £3500 in respect of his losses. (See L. J. Ludovici’s The Itch for Play.) |
| 2. | Mr Wilson’s performances were a great success all over England, especially with exiled Scots like Mrs Flashman. His repertoire included “A Nicht wi’ Burns”, and a lecture on the ’45 Rebellion, as well as popular songs. He died during a tour of the United States. |
| 3. | Horse-drawn omnibuses had been running in London since Flashman was a small boy; possibly he is referring to a new service. Their conductors, or “cads”, had a reputation for violence and obscenity which lingers in the word to this day. |
| 4. | Raiding of gambling-hells was common after the Police Act of 1839, which permitted forced entry. Flashman’s observations on the proprietors’ precautions and their right to sue the police are accurate. (See Ludovici.) |
| 5. | Hughes’ passing reference to Speedicut certainly brackets him with Flashman, and can therefore be taken to be highly uncomplimentary. Flashman shows him in a new light, which prompts the thought that Speedicut may have been one (or both) of the anonymous companions in “Tom Brown” who spared the fags in the blanket-tossing episode and was later in favour of only partially roasting Tom before the fire. |
| 6. | The “barbed wire” comparison must have occurred to Flashman at some later date; it was not in common use before the 1870’s. |
| 7. | Nick Ward claimed the championship of England after beating Deaf James Burke in September, 1840, and Ben Caunt in February, 1841. He lost a return bout with Caunt three months later. |
| 8. | The second Marquis of Conyngham was among the victims fleeced at Mr Bond’s Minor Club; he lost at least £500 on two occasions in 1842. |
| 9. | Flashman’s description of Bismarck evokes a different picture from the popular impression of the Iron Chancellor, but it tallies with those details of his early life which biographers seldom dwell on at length. Bismarck’s taste for playful violence, his boorish conduct in public places, his whoring, carousing, and riotous behaviour (the habit of firing a pistol into the ceiling to announce his arrival to friends, for example), and his 25 duels in his first term at Göttingen, all testify to a nature not invariably statesmanlike. He appears, in fact, to have been an unpleasant young man, brilliant beyond his years but given to cynicism and arrogance. He was as tall, strong, and handsome as Flashman remembers him, with blond-red hair and aristocratic bearing. |
| | As to his presence in London in 1842, he did indeed travel extensively in Britain that year, and was rebuked for whistling in the streets of Leith on a Sunday. He is said to have liked the British; his affection encompassed at least one beautiful English girl, Laura Russell, with whom he had been infatuated some years earlier, but who had broken their engagement to marry an older man. Possibly this prejudiced him in later life. |
| 10. | Peel’s introduction in 1842 of an income tax of 7d in the pound on all incomes above £150 was regarded as iniquitous. Lord Brougham argued (with what effect we all know) that “such a tax ought on no account to form a part of the ordinary revenue … but should cease with the necessity which alone could justify its imposition”. |
| 11. | Bismarck was accounted something of a wit, and like most wits he seems to have had a habit of repeating himself. His remark that a gift for languages was a fine talent for a head-waiter is also recorded in Prince von Bülow’s “Memoirs”, where it is suggested that Bismarck was in the habit of using it on linguistically-gifted young diplomats. |
| 12. | John Gully, M.P. (1783–1863) was one of the most popular and respected champions of the bare-knuckle ring. The son of a Bath butcher, he conducted his father’s business so unsuccessfully that he was imprisoned for debt, but while in the King’s Bench in 1805 he was visited by an acquaintance, Henry “Game Chicken” Pearce, then champion of England. In a friendly spar with the champion in the jail, Gully was so impressive that sporting patrons paid his debts, and he met Pearce for the title at Hailsham, Sussex, a fortnight before Trafalgar. Before a huge crowd which included Beau Brummel and the Duke of Clarence (later William IV), Pearce narrowly beat Gully over 64 rounds; it has since been suggested that Gully outfought the champion, but was reluctant to knock out his benefactor. This seems unlikely. However, Gully won the title two years later with decisive victories over Bob Gregson, “the Lancashire Giant”, and then retired, aged only 24. He made a fortune on the turf, where he owned several Classic winners, and by investments in coal and land. He was M.P. for Pontefract from 1832 to 1837, was twice married, and had 24 children. |
| | Flashman’s portrait of Gully accords with other contemporary accounts of the gentle, quiet six-footer who, when roused, was one of the most savage and scientific fighters of boxing’s golden age. “At heart,” says Nat Fleischer, “his ambition was to belong to the gentry. He had little use for the professional ring and its shady followers.” Fleischer is probably right when he suggests that, but for chance, Gully would never have become a pugilist at all. |
| 13. | Flashman’s reference to a horse called “Running Reins” is most interesting. In May, 1844, a year and a half after the party at Perceval’s place, the Derby was won by a horse entered as “Running Rein”; it proved, upon inquiry, to be a four-year-old named Maccabeus, and was disqualified, but not before the scandal had developed into a court case (Wood v. Peel) and become the talk of the sporting world. The principal villain in the case, Abraham Levi Goodman, fled the country; the horse Maccabeus disappeared. But there certainly was a genuine Running Rein, whose performances in the 1843 season had given rise to suspicion. Flashman’s mention seems to suggest that Running Rein (his rendering of the name as Reins is obviously a slip) had a reputation earlier still, although not an unsavoury one. Turf records of the day contain no mention of Running Ribbons, however, so Spottswood was probably doing Gully no great favour in offering to sell him. |
| 14. | John L. Sullivan won the first recognised world heavyweight title when he knocked out Paddy Ryan in nine rounds at Mississippi City, on Feb. 7, 1882. It is reported that the spectators included Henry Ward Beecher, the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, and Jesse James. |
| 15. | Gents and Mooners. In the 1840’s the term Gent was most particularly applied to the young middle-class idler who aped his superiors and dressed extravagantly; the Mooner was rather older and spent his time “mooning” at shop windows and ambling gently about the town. Flashman would consider both species to be well beneath him. |
| 16. | Despite Flashman’s enthusiastic notice, it seems probable that Lola Montez was not a particularly good artiste, although the historian Veit Valentin observes that she had “the tigerish vivacity that inspires the Andalusian dance”. |
| 17. | The account of Lola’s disastrous appearance at Her Majesty’s Theatre (June 3, 1843) is splendidly accurate, not only in its description of Lord Ranelagh’s denunciation, but even in such details as the composition of the audience and the programme notes. (See Wyndham’s Magnificent Montez.) This is a good, verifiable example of Flashman’s ability as a straight reporter, and encourages confidence in those other parts of his story where corroboration is lacking and checking of the facts is impossible. |
| 18. | Lola had a passionate affair with Liszt in the year following her departure from London; after their first rapture she appears to have had much the same effect on the famous pianist as she did on Flashman. He tired of her, and did indeed abandon her in a hotel, whereupon she spent several hours smashing the furniture. Typically, Lola bore no grudge; in her high days in Munich she wrote to Liszt offering him Bavarian honours. |
| 19. | The coat-of-arms of the Countess of Landsfeld is accurately described; the “fat whale” was a silver dolphin. |
| 20. | Stieler’s portrait of Lola in Ludwig’s gallery is a model of Victorian respectability. A more characteristic Montez is to be seen in Dartiguenave’s lithograph; he has caught not only her striking beauty, but her imperious spirit. (See Mr Barbosa’s rendering of Stieler’s portrait of Lola on the left side of the front cover of this edition.) |
| 21. | “Lola was always vain of her bosom”. She was indeed, if the story of her first meeting with Ludwig is to be believed. He is supposed to have expressed doubts about the reality of her figure: her indignant reply was to tear open the top of her dress. |
| 22. | There is no supporting evidence that Wagner visited Lola in Munich at this time, but it is not impossible. They met for the first time in 1844, when Liszt took her to a special performance of “Rienzi” at Dresden, and Wagner’s impression was of “a painted and jewelled woman with bold, bad eyes”. He also described her as “demonic and heartless”. Curiously, the great composer gained as much favour from Ludwig II as Lola had done from Ludwig I—so much so that the wits nicknamed him “Lolotte”. |
| 23. | The American may have been C. G. Leland, a student at Munich University and a friend of Lola’s. He claimed that he was the only one of her intimates at whom she had never thrown “a plate or a book, or attacked with a dagger, poker, broom, or other deadly weapon”. |
| 24. | Schönhausen. Flashman’s view of the castle’s “medieval ghastliness” was echoed by Bismarck himself; he described it to a friend as an “old haunted castle, with pointed arches and walls four feet thick, (and) thirty rooms of which two are furnished.” He also complained about its rats and the wind in the chimneys. |
| 25. | Flashman’s summary of the Schleswig-Holstein Question is accurate so far as it goes; enthusiasts in diplomatic history who wish greater detail are referred to Dr David Thomson’s Europe Since Napoleon, pp. 242–3 and 309–11. German and Danish versions of the problem should not be read in isolation. |
| 26. | The schlager play of the German students, whereby they could receive superficial head and face wounds which left permanent scars for public admiration, was a unique form of the duel. The equipment is as Flashman describes it; the schlager itself was three-and-a-half feet long, with an unusually large guard (“the soup-plate of honour”). The practice of leaving the wounds open to form the largest possible scar is curiously paralleled by the custom of certain primitive African tribes. In the duel itself, thrusting was strictly forbidden, except at the University of Jena, where there were many theological students. These young men would have found facial scars an embarrassment in their careers, so instead of cutting at the head, Jena students were allowed to run each other through the body, thus satisfying honour without causing visible disfigurement. |
| 27. | Bismarck liked to picture himself eventually becoming a rustic land-owner; his remark about Stettin wool market occurs again in his recorded conversation, when he spoke of his ambition to “raise a family, and ruin the morals of my peasants with brandy”. |
| 28. | Bandobast: organisation (Hindustani). |
| 29. | In 1847 Germany suffered its second successive failure of the potato crop. In the northern areas wheat had doubled its price in a few years. |
| 30. | The emblem of Holstein was, in fact, a nettle-leaf shape. |
| 31. | “a plumed helmet, à la Tin-bellies”. Flashman is here almost certainly referring to the New Regulation Helmet which had been announced for the British Heavy Dragoons in the previous autumn. Its ridiculously extravagant plumage—popularly supposed to be an inspiration of Prince Albert’s—had been the talk of fashionable London in the weeks shortly before Flashman’s departure for Munich. |
| 32. | Libby Prison, in Richmond, Va., was notorious in the U.S. Civil War. Federal officers were confined there by the Confederates, often in conditions of dreadful overcrowding; it was the scene of a mass escape by tunnel in 1864, and two subsequent Federal cavalry raids to rescue prisoners. Flashman’s reference seems to suggest that he was confined there himself; no doubt examination of those packets of his papers as yet unopened will confirm this. |
| 33. | Kibroth-Hattaavah—“there they buried the people that lusted” (Numbers 11:34, 35)—seems to have been a popular subject for sermons at public schools. Dr Rowlands preached on this text in Eric, or Little by Little, by Dean Farrar. |
| 34. | It is just possible that the orator was Karl Marx. The Strackenzian coronation must have taken place before his recorded return to Germany from Brussels, where he had conceived the Communist Manifesto, but it is not inconceivable that he visited Strackenz beforehand. The coronation certainly offered a tempting target at a time when European politics generally were in a precarious state. Against the fact that there is no evidence of his ever having visited the duchy, must be balanced Flashman’s description of the orator, which is Marx to the life. |
| 35. | Eider Danes, a faction who wished to make Schleswig Danish as far as the River Eider. Von Starnberg’s concern about pro-Danish militant organisations in Strackenz is understandable, as is his anxiety over Hansen’s unexpected appearance at the wedding. What struck the editor as curious was that none of Bismarck’s conspirators seem ever to have been alarmed at the prospect of Danish royalty attending the ceremony; that surely would have led to Flashman’s exposure. But obviously none did attend, and this can only be explained by the fact that King Christian of Denmark died on January 20, 1848—shortly before the wedding took place—and that this kept the Danish Court at home, in mourning. A rare stroke of luck for the conspiracy; one does not like to think it was anything else. |
| 36. | “Punch” stayed neutral in the checked-or-striped trousers controversy. One of its cartoons suggested that “checks are uncommon superior, but stripes is most nobby”. But it was a middle- rather than an upper-class debate. |
| 37. | Flashman believes he sang the old nursery rhyme in English, yet it is interesting to note (see Opie’s Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes) that it appeared in German, apparently for the first time in that language, in 1848 (“So reiten die Herren auf ihren stolzen Pferden, tripp trapp, tripp trapp, tripp trapp”) the year in which he and the Duchess Irma were married. Possibly she had noticed after all. |
| 38. | Domenico Angelo Tremamondo (1717–1804), known as Angelo, founded a dynasty of fencing-masters who conducted an academy of arms in London in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. |
| 39. | Revolution swept across Europe in those early months of 1848. Within the space of a few weeks revolts took place in Sicily, France, Austria, Italy, Germany, and Poland; new constitutions and reforms were adopted in Naples, Tuscany, Piedmont, Rome, Budapest, and Berlin, and the Communist Manifesto appeared. In Britain a Chartist petition was unsuccessful, and John Stuart Mill produced the Principles of Political Economy. |
| 40. | Presumably Flashman is referring to David’s highly romantic painting of Napoleon in the Alps, and confusing it with other works by the same artist in which the Emperor is shown with retinues of suitably respectful subordinates. |
| 41. | In fact the telegraph had been in existence for some years, but its use was not sufficiently widespread to have caused Flashman concern. |
| 42. | There is some confusion about Lola Montez’s movements during her final weeks in Munich; more than once she changed her mind about leaving, and made efforts to re-establish her hold over Ludwig. As to her walk through the hostile crowd, it is mentioned by at least one authority, and there is no doubt that the incident of her appearance on the balcony, splendidly dressed and toasting a raging crowd in champagne, is authentic. Her indifference to physical danger was remarkable. |
| 43. | And in the end Bismarck got his way; by waging war on Denmark in 1864 he achieved the occupation of Schleswig by Prussia and Holstein by Austria, thus helping to provoke the Austro-Prussian war of 1866. With Austria defeated as a rival, Bismarck by the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 united Germany minus Austria, and Schleswig and Holstein became part of the German Empire. |
