Flashman And The Tiger

Flashman’s account makes it clear that he and Moran must have reached the Drift about or eight or nine o’clock, while the hospital was still burning, and entered the perimeter after jumping the stone wall and the mealie-bag barricade which had been built to defend the hospital at the western end of the post. The "huge cove" with the red beard was presumably Chaplain George Smith, but Flashman is probably mistaken in describing him as "pistolling", since the Chaplain was foremost in the vital work of carrying ammunition. (See Michael Glover, Rorke’s Drift, 1975, an excellent account of the siege and its background, and other works cited in these Notes.)

[9]. The Times of Monday, February 12, 1894, carried under the name Macmillan a notice of the birth of a boy the previous Saturday; he was subsequently christened Maurice Harold.

[10]. Either Flashman’s memory or his hearing has played him false. Oscar Wilde attended a performance of Pinero’s The Second Mrs Tanqueray at the St James’s in February, 1894, in the company of Aubrey Beardsley, whom he wished to present to Mrs Patrick Campbell. (See The Letters of Oscar Wilde.) His new play, which he mentioned to Selina, would be either An Ideal Husband, which was in manuscript at that time, or The Importance of Being Earnest; both were produced in the following year.

[11]. "Father Oscar". Flashman was needling deliberately; he obviously knew that Wilde was sensitive about being no longer in the first flush of youth, and hated being called "Papa" or "Father". (See Lord Alfred Douglas’s Oscar Wilde and Myself, 1914.)

[12]. W. E. Gladstone resigned as Prime Minister, and retired from politics, on March 3, 1894.

[13]. The appearance of this item in the press establishes the date as March 29, 1894. Elspeth’s serial may have been Under the Red Robe, by Stanley J. Weyman, which appeared in instalments in the Illustrated London News early in this year.

[14]. Elsewhere in his memoirs (see Flash for Freedom!) Flashman has suggested that Sullivan was killed by Charity Spring aboard the Balliol College slave-ship in 1848, during a fight with an American warship; presumably the mate was only badly wounded, and recovered to fall a victim to Moran twenty years later.

[15]. Flashman made reluctant use of an astonishing variety of weaponry during his adventurous life, but although he makes frequent references to Adams revolvers there is no evidence that he had any particularly favourite side-arm. Those listed here appear to have been kept for sentimental rather than for practical reasons. The most interesting item is "the scarred old double-action Bulldog", since it was just such a weapon that he used at Little Big Horn; he had borrowed it from Custer himself, and may even have accidentally shot the General with it in the heat of battle. But that gun he flung away in panic, and the mystery remains—how (and why) did he acquire another like it? Only two of Flashman’s side-arms appear to have survived: his Khyber knife, bequeathed to Mr Paget Morrison, the custodian of his papers, and a Tranter revolver from Cartwright of Norwich, engraved with the owner’s name, now in the possession of Mr Garry James of Los Angeles, California.

[16]. Colonel Palmer’s old age pension proposals of 1894 did in fact exclude anyone convicted of a crime in the previous fifteen years, or of drunkenness in the previous ten.

[17]. In the Army Cup Final played on April 5, 1894, the Black Watch beat the Royal Artillery, 7-2. The Duchess of Connaught, apparently supported by General Flashman, presented the cup.

[18]. Apart from a few minor discrepancies, Flashman’s account of Colonel Moran’s movements and arrest on that Thursday night corroborates the celebrated narrative of Dr Watson, who has described the Colonel’s capture in "The Adventure of the Empty House" (see The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). It will be remembered that Moran was apprehended by Holmes and Watson in the act of trying to murder the former (who had rigged up a dummy to draw his fire); Moran’s motive was revenge (and no doubt fear that Holmes would identify him as the murderer of the Hon. Ronald Adair, whom Moran had killed some days previously).