Flashman's Lady

  Appendix B: The White Raja

  Nowadays, when it is fashionable to look only on the dark side of imperialism, not much is heard of James Brooke. He was one of those Victorians who gave Empire-building a good name, whose worst faults, perhaps, were that he loved adventure for its own sake, had an unshakeable confidence in the civilising mission of himself and his race, and enjoyed fighting pirates. His philosophy, being typical of his class and time, may not commend itself universally today, but an honest examination of what he actually did will discover more to praise than to blame.

  The account of his work which Steward gave to Flashman is substantially true—Brooke went to Sarawak for adventure, and ended as its ruler and saviour. He abolished the tyranny under which it was held, revived trade, drew up a legal code, and although virtually without resources and with only a handful of adventurers and reformed head-hunters to help him, fought his single-handed war against the pirates of the Islands. It took him six years to win, and considering the savagery and overwhelming numbers of his enemies, the organised and traditional nature of the piracy, the distances and unknown coasts involved, and the small force at his disposal, it was a staggering achievement.

  That it was a brutal and bloody struggle we know, and it was perhaps inevitable that at the end of it Brooke should find himself described by one newspaper as “pirate, wholesale murderer, and assassin”, and that demands were made in Parliament, by Hume, Cobden, and Gladstone (who admired Brooke, but not his methods) for an inquiry into his conduct. Palmerston, equally inevitably, defended Brooke as a man of “unblemished honour”, and Catchick Moses and the Singapore merchants rallied to his support. In the event, the inquiry cleared Brooke completely, which was probably a fair decision; his distant critics might think that he had pursued head-hunters and sea-robbers with excessive enthusiasm, but the coast villagers who had suffered generations of plundering and slavery took a different view.

  So did the great British public. They were not short of heroes to worship in Victoria’s reign, but among the Gordons, Livingstones, Stanleys, and the rest. James Brooke deservedly occupied a unique place. He was, after all, the storybook English adventurer of an old tradition—independent, fearless, upright, priggish and cheerfully immodest, and just a little touched with the buccaneer; it was no wonder that a century of boys’ novelists should take him as their model. Which was a great compliment, but no greater than that paid to him by the tribesmen of Borneo; to them, one traveller reported, he was simply superhuman. The pirates of the Islands might well have agreed.*

  * Suleiman Usman among them. Brooke ran him to earth at Maludu, North Borneo, in August 1845, only a few weeks after the Flashmans were rescued from Madagascar, from which it appears that Usman, having lost Elspeth, returned to his own waters. He was certainly at Maludu when the British force under Admiral Cochrane attacked and destroyed it; one report states that Usman was wounded, believed killed, in the action, and he does not appear to have been heard of again.

  Appendix C: Queen Ranavalona I

  “One of the proudest and most cruel women on the face of the earth, and her whole history is a record of blood and deeds of horror.” Thus Ida Pfeiffer, who knew her personally. Other historians have called her “the modern Messalina”. “a terrible woman…possessed by the lust of power and cruelty”, “female Caligula”, and so forth; to M. Ferry, the French Foreign Minister, she was simply “l’horrible Ranavalo”.* Altogether there is a unanimity which, with the well-documented atrocities of her reign, justifies the worst that even Flashman has to say of her.

  That he has reported his personal acquaintance with her accurately there is no reason to doubt. His account of Madagascar and its strange customs accords with other sources, as do his descriptions of such minutiae as the Queen’s eccentric wardrobe, her Napoleonic paintings, furniture, idols, place-cards at dinner, drinking habits, and even musical preferences. His picture of her fantastically dressed court, her midnight party, and the public ceremony of the Queen’s Bath can be verified in detail. As to her behaviour with him, it is known that she had lovers—possibly even before her husband’s death, although that admittedly is pure speculation based on a study of the events which brought her to the throne, on which Flashman touches only briefly.

  King Radama, her husband, had died suddenly at the age of 36 in 1828. Since they had no children, the heir was the king’s nephew, Rakotobe; his supporters, foreseeing a power struggle, concealed the news of the king’s death for some days to enable Rakotobe to consolidate his claim. In the meantime, however, a young officer named Andriamihaja, who was ostensibly among Rakotobe’s supporters, betrayed the news of the king’s death to Ranavalona, for reasons which are not disclosed. She promptly got the leading military men on her side, put it about that the idols favoured her claim to the throne, and ruthlessly slaughtered all who resisted, including the unfortunate Rakotobe. She rewarded Andriamihaja’s treachery by making him commander-in-chief and taking (or confirming) him as her lover—he was presently accused of treachery, put to the tanguin, and executed. (See Oliver, vol. i.)

  The next 35 years were a reign of terror, religious persecution, and genocide on a scale (considering Madagascar’s size and limited population) hardly matched until our own times. That Ranavalona escaped assassination or deposition is testimony to the strength with which she wielded her absolute power, and to her capacity for surviving plots. How many of these there were, we cannot know, but none succeeded—including the Flashman coup of 1845, and a later conspiracy in which Ida Pfeiffer, then aged 60, found herself involved, to her considerable alarm: she describes in her Travels how Prince Rakota (still evidently intent on getting rid of mother) showed her the arsenal he intended to use in his revolt, and how she then went to bed and had nightmares about the tanguin test.

  Since we know that Rakota and Laborde both survived the plot which Flashman describes, it seems likely that it simply died stillborn, or that the Queen, for some reason, forebore to take vengeance on the conspirators. It would be pleasant to think that Mr Fankanonikaka, at least, was spared to continue his devoted service to his queen and country.

  * Speech to the Chamber of Deputies, Paris, 1884.

  Notes

  1. Since most of the Flashman Papers were written between 1900 and 1905, it seems likely that Flashman is here referring to the Test Match series of 1901-2, which Australia won by four matches to one, and possibly also to the series of summer 1902, when the Australians retained the Ashes, 2-1. It was in this year that an attempt to amend the ever-controversial leg-before-wicket rule failed.

  [p. 10]

  2. Flashman’s behaviour on the football field is memorably described in Tom Brown’s Schooldays, where Thomas Hughes refers to his late arrival at scrimmages “with shouts and great action”.

  [p. 11]

  3. Flashman’s memory is playing him false here, but only slightly. The so-called Rebecca Riots did not begin until some months later, in 1843, when a peculiar secret society known as “Rebecca and her Daughters” began a terrorist campaign against high toll charges in South Wales. They went armed, masked, and disguised as women, and would descend by night on toll-houses and toll-gates, which they wrecked. They apparently took their name from an allusion in Genesis xxiv, 60: “And they blessed Rebekah…and said…let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them.” (See Halevy’s History of the English People, vol. iv, and Punch, vol. v, introduction, 1843.)

  [p. 18]

  4. This is the earliest mention in any sporting or literary record of the “hat trick”, signifying the feat by a bowler of taking three wickets with successive balls, which traditionally entitles him to a new hat. The phrase has now, of course, a wider application outside cricket, covering three successive triumphs of any kind—a hat-trick of goals or election victories, for example. It is interesting to speculate, not only that the phrase had its origin in Mynn’s impulsive gesture to Flashman, but also that it was first used ironically.

  [p. 29]

&nbs
p; 5. Lords Haddington and Stanley were respectively First Lord of the Admiralty and Colonial Secretary; Lord Aberdeen was Foreign Secretary. Flashman is being malicious in coupling Deaf Burke and Lord Brougham as rascals—one was a famous prize-fighter and the other a prominent Whig politician.

  [p. 38]

  6. Alice Lowe, mistress of Lord Frankfort, figured in a notorious court case over gifts he had given her, and which he claimed she had stolen. Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, then nearing completion, was something of a laughing stock—Punch noted gleefully that the statue of the great sailor closely resembled Napoleon. The Royal Hunt Cup was first run at Ascot in 1843 and “The Bohemian Girl” opened at Drury Lane in November of that year.

  [p. 38]

  7. Various government reports appeared in the early 1840s on conditions in mines and factories; they were horrifying. The atrocities referred to in Morrison’s conversation with Solomon may be traced in those reports and in others from the preceding decade. As a result, Lord Ashley (later Earl of Shaftesbury) got a Bill through the Commons in 1842 prohibiting the employment of women or children below thirteen in the mines, although the Lords subsequently lowered the age to ten; in 1843 the publication of the report of the Children’s Employment Commission (“Horne’s report”) led to further legislation, including a reduction in factory working hours for children and adolescents. (See Report of the Children’s Employment Commission (Mines) 1842; the second report of the C.E.C., 1843; and other papers quoted in Human Documents of the Industrial Revolution, by E. Royston Pike.)

  [p. 41]

  8. Lola Montez was Flashman’s mistress for a brief period in the autumn of 1842, until they quarrelled; he took revenge by engineering a hostile reception for her when she made her début as a dancer on the London stage in June, 1843. Following this incident, she left England and began that astonishing career as a courtesan which led to her becoming virtual ruler of Bavaria-an episode in which Flashman and Otto von Bismarck were closely involved. (See biographies of Lola Montez, and Flashman’s own memoir on the subject, published as Royal Flash.)

  [p. 42]

  9. From Flashman’s description of the “bluff-looking chap in clerical duds” with the crippled arm, it seems certain that he was Richard Harris Barham (1788-1845), author of The Ingoldsby Legends, of which one of the most famous relates how Lord Tomnoddy, accompanied by “…M’Fuze, and Lieutenant Tregooze, and…Sir Carnaby Jenks of the Blues”, attended a Newgate execution, and revelled the previous night at the Magpie and Stump, overlooking the street where the scaffold was erected. However, Barham’s inspiration did not come from the execution which Flashman describes; he wrote his famous piece of gallows humour some years earlier, but may well have attended later executions out of interest. Thackeray’s presence is interesting, since it suggests that he had got over the revulsion he felt at Courvoisier’s hanging three years earlier, when he could not bear to watch the final moment. (See Barham; The Times, July 7, 1840, and May 27, 1868, reporting the Courvoisier and Barret executions; Thackeray’s “Going to See a Man Hanged”, Fraser’s Magazine, July 1840; Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge and “A Visit to Newgate”, from Sketches by Boz; and Arthur Griffiths’ Chronicles of Newgate 1884 and Criminal Prisons of London 1862.)

  [p. 48]

  10. Mr Tighe’s bet was that Flashman would “carry his bat” (i.e. would not lose his wicket, and be “not out” at the end of the innings). A curious wager, perhaps, but not extraordinary in an age when sportsmen were prepared to bet on virtually anything.

  [p. 50]

  11. The Regency practice among noblemen of patronising prize-fighters, and using them (usually when they had retired) as bodyguards and musclemen, had not quite died out in Flashman’s youth, so his fears of the Duke’s vengeance were probably well-founded-especially in view of the names mentioned by Judy. Ben Caunt, popularly known as “Big Ben” (the bell in the Westminster clock tower is said to have been named after him) was a notoriously rough heavyweight champion of the 1840s, and the other fighter referred to can only have been Tom Cannon, “the Great Gun of Windsor”, who had held the title in the 1820s.

  (p. 70]

  12. The first sale of Australian horses, imported into Singapore by Boyd and Company, did not in fact take place until August 20, 1844. These were the first of the famous cavalry “walers” (so called after New South Wales) of the Indian Army.

  (p. 84]

  13. Not quite so ancient and shrivelled nowadays, perhaps. Flashman, writing in the Pax Britannica of the Edwardian years, could not foresee a time when the tribes of North Borneo would resume the practice of head-hunting which British rule discouraged. The Editor has seen rows of comparatively recent heads in a “head-house” up the Rajang River; the locals admitted that most of them were “orang Japon”, taken from the Japanese invaders of the Second World War, but some of them looked new enough to have belonged to the Indonesian tribesmen who at that time (1966) were fighting the British-Malay forces in the Communist rebellion.

  [p. 92]

  14. Frank Marryat, son of the novelist Captain Marryat, served as a naval officer in Far Eastern waters in the 1840s, and confirmed Flashman’s opinion of the dullness and prudishness of Singapore society. “Little hospitality, less gaiety…everyone waiting to see what his position in society is going to be.” His description of the city, its people, customs, and institutions, tallies closely with Flashman’s. (See Borneo and the Indian Archipelago (1848), by F. S. Marryat, and for a wealth of detail, An Anecdotal History of Old Times in Singapore, by C. B. Buckley.)

  [p. 95]

  15. Catchick Moses the Armenian and Whampoa the Chinese were two of the great characters of early Singapore. Catchick was famous not only as a merchant, but as a billiards player, and for his eccentric habit of shaving left-handed without a glass as he walked about his verandah. He was about 32 when Flashman knew him; when he made his will, at the age of 73, seven years before his death, he followed the unusual procedure of submitting it to his children, so that any disputes could be settled amicably during his lifetime.

  Whampoa was the richest of the Chinese community, renowned for the lavishness of his parties, and for his luxurious country home with its gold-framed oval doors. His appearance was as Flashman describes it, down to his black silk robe, pigtail, and sherry glass. (See Buckley, Marryat.)

  [p. 98]

  16. As Flashman later admits, the name of James Brooke, White Raja of Sarawak and adventurer extraordinary, meant nothing to him on first hearing, which is not surprising since the fame of this remarkable Victorian had not yet reached its peak. But Flashman was plainly impressed, despite himself, by his rescuer’s personality and appearance, and his description tallies exactly with Brooke’s famous portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, which catches all his resolution and restless energy, as well as that romantic air which made him the beau ideal of the early Victorian hero. The painting could serve as the frontispiece for any boys’ adventure story of the nineteenth century—and sometimes did. All that is missing is the face-wound which Flashman mentions; Brooke had received it in a fight with Sumatran pirates at Murdu on February 12, 1844, so it would still be incompletely healed when they met.

  [p. 109]

  17. If it seems unlikely that even an emotional Victorian can have spoken such purple prose, we can be certain that Brooke at least wrote it, almost word for word. In his journal, about this time, he recorded his emotions on hearing that a European lady was held prisoner by Borneo pirates who were demanding ransom: “A captive damsel! Does it not conjure up images of blue eyes and auburn hair of hyacinthine flow! And after all, a fat old Dutch frau may be the reality! Poor creature, even though she be old, and fat, and unamiable, and ugly, it is shocking to think of such a fate as a life passed among savages!” Obviously, he cannot have had Mrs Flashman in mind.

  [p. 120]

  18. Henry Keppel (1809-1904) was one of the foremost fighting seamen of the Victorian period. An expert in the specialised craft of river warfare, he
was known to the Dyaks as “the red-haired devil”, and served with Brooke in numerous raids against the pirates of the South China Sea. (See his books, Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido, 1846, and A Visit to the Indian Archipelago in H.M.S. Maeander, 1853.) He later became Admiral of the Fleet.

  [p. 127]

  19. Stuart’s enthusiastic description of Brooke and his adventures is perfectly accurate,’ so far as it goes (see The Raja of Sarawak, by Gertrude L. Jacob, 1876, The Life of Sir James Brooke, by Spenser St John, 1879, Brooke’s own letters and journal, and other Borneo sources quoted elsewhere in these foot-notes. Also Appendix B). The only error at this point is a minor one of Flashman’s, for “Stuart’s” name was in fact George Steward; obviously Flashman has again made a mistake of which he is occasionally guilty in his memoirs, of trusting his ears and not troubling to check the spelling of proper names.

  [p. 130]

  20. Angela Georgina Burdett-Coutts (1814-1906), “the richest heiress in all England, enjoyed a fame…second only to Queen Victoria.” She spent her life and the vast fortune inherited from her grandfather, Thomas Coutts the banker, on countless charities and good causes, endowing schools, housing schemes, and hospitals, and providing funds for such diverse projects as Irish famine relief, university scholarships, drinking troughs, and colonial exploration; Livingstone, Stanley, and Brooke were among the pioneers she assisted. She was the first woman to be raised to the peerage for public service, and numbered among her friends Wellington, Faraday, Disraeli, Gladstone, Daniel Webster, and Dickens, who dedicated “Martin Chuzzlewit” to her.

  The combination of her good looks, charm, and immense wealth attracted innumerable suitors, but she seems to have felt no inclination to matrimony until she met Brooke and “fell madly in love with him”. There is a tradition that she proposed to him and was politely rejected (see following note), but they remained close friends, and she is said to have been instrumental in obtaining official recognition for Sarawak. She eventually married, in her sixties, the American-born William Ashmead-Bartlett. She is buried in Westminster Abbey. (See Raja Brooke and Baroness Burdett-Coutts, Letters, edited by Owen Rutter, and the Dictionary of National Biography.) Flashman’s memory has again betrayed him on one small point; he may have known Miss Coutts, but not “at Stratton Street”; she did not take up residence there until the late 1840s.