The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald

       APPENDIX 1: Cricket in the 1840s

      Flashman had a highly personal approach to cricket, as to most things, but there can be no doubt that through his usual cynicism there shines a genuine love of the game. This is not surprising, since it is perhaps the subtlest and most refined outdoor sport ever devised, riddled with craft and gamesmanship, and affording endless scope to a character such as his. Also, he played it well, according to his own account and that of Thomas Hughes, who may be relied on, since he was not prone to exaggerate anything to Flashman’s credit. Indeed, if he had not been so fully occupied by military and other pursuits, Flashman might well have won a place in cricket history as a truly great fast bowler – the dismissal of such a trio as Felix, Pilch, and Mynn (the early Victorian equivalents of Hobbs, Bradman, and Keith Miller) argues a talent far above the ordinary.

      How reliable a guide he is to the cricket of his day may be judged from reference to the works listed at the end of this appendix. His recollection of Lord’s in its first golden age is precise, as are his brief portraits of the giants of his day – the huge and formidable Mynn, the elegant Felix, and the great all-rounder Pilch (although most contemporaries show Pilch as being a good deal more genial than Flashman found him). His technical references to the game are sound, although he has a tendency to mix the jargon of his playing days with that of sixty years later, when he was writing – thus he talks not of batsmen, but of “batters”, which is correct 1840s usage, as are shiver, trimmer, twister, and shooter (all descriptive of bowling); at the same time he refers indiscriminately to both “hand” and “innings”, which mean the same thing, although the former is long obsolete, and he commits one curious lapse of memory by referring to “the ropes” at Lord’s in 1842; in fact, boundaries were not introduced until later, and in Flashman’s time all scores had to be run for.

      Undoubtedly the most interesting of his cricket recollections is his description of his single-wicket match with Solomon; this form of the game was popular in his day, but later suffered a decline, although attempts have been made to revive it recently. The rules are to be found in Charles Box’s The English Game of Cricket (1877), but these varied according to preference; there might be any number of players, from one to six, on either side, but if there were fewer than five it was customary to prohibit scoring or dismissals behind the line of the wicket. Betting on such games was widespread, and helped to bring them into disrepute. However, it should be remembered that the kind of wagering indulged in by Flashman, Solomon, and Daedalus Tighe was common in their time; heavy, eccentric, and occasionally crooked it undoubtedly was, but it was part and parcel of a rough and colourful sporting era in which even a clergyman might make a handsome income in cricket side-bets, when games could be played by candlelight, and enthusiasts still recalled such occasions as the Greenwich Pensioners’ match in which spectators thronged to see a team of one-legged men play a side who were one-armed. (The one-legged team won, by 103 runs; five wooden legs were broken during the game.) Indeed, we may echo Flashman: cricket is not what it was. (See Box; W. W. Read’s Annals of Cricket, 1896; Eric Parker’s The History of Cricket, Lonsdale Library (with Sir Spencer Ponsonby-Fane’s description of Lord’s in “Lord’s and the MCC”); W. Denison’s Sketches of the Players, 1888; Nicholas (“Felix”) Wanostrocht’s Felix on the Bat, 1845; and the Rev. J. Pycroft’s Oxford Memories, 1886.)

       APPENDIX 2: 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 civilizing 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 organized 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 3: 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.