Читать книгу Royal Flash - George Fraser MacDonald - Страница 8

The second packet of the Flashman Papers – that great collection of manuscript discovered in a saleroom in Leicestershire in 1965 – continues the career of the author, Harry Flashman, from the point where the first instalment ended in the autumn of 1842. The first packet described his expulsion from Rugby School in 1839 (as previously referred to in Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown’s Schooldays) and followed his subsequent military career in England, India, and Afghanistan; the second packet covers two separate periods of several months in 1842–43 and 1847–48. There is an intriguing four-year gap which the author seems to indicate he has covered elsewhere in his memoirs.

The present instalment is of historical importance insofar as it describes Flashman’s encounters with several persons of international celebrity – including one most eminent statesman whose character and actions may now be subjected to some reappraisal by historians. It also establishes a point of some literary interest, for there can be no doubt that a link exists between Flashman’s German adventure and one of the bestselling novels in the Victorian period.

As with the first packet (entrusted to me by Mr Paget Morrison, the owner of the Flashman Papers) I have confined myself to correcting the author’s occasional lapses in spelling. Where Flashman touches on known history he is remarkably accurate, especially when one considers that he was writing in his eighties; wherever he appears to make a minor slip I have left it uncorrected in the text (as, for example, where he describes the pugilist Nick Ward as ‘the Champion’ in 1842, when in fact Ward had lost his title the previous year), but I have added such notes and comments as seemed appropriate.

Like most memorialists, Flashman is vague about exact dates; where these can be established I have entered them in the notes.

G.M.F.