“A Companion to The Flashman Papers” Collated by Philip Henderson, Curator

“The FLASHMAN Day Journals”


PROLOGUE
For those of us fervent scholars of the Flashman Papers, no prologue is necessary. However for those not familiar with this eminent Victorian, perhaps a few words are required. Harry Paget Flashman first appears in public, in the schoolboy classic, “Tom Brown’s Schooldays”, written by Tom Hughes and published in 1857. Flashman was the bully, who made Tom Brown’s early life at Rugby School somewhat of a misery. Just before the end of that book, Flashman is expelled by Dr Thomas Arnold, the headmaster, for ‘beastly drunkeness’. From then, 1839, until 1965 for most of us, nothing was heard of Flashman. Then, in a sale room in Leicestershire, an old tea-chest was found containing various packages of papers written by the late Sir Harry Flashman VC., etc., etc., which were clearly his memoires, written ostensibly in the last two decades before his death in 1915. George MacDonald Fraser, the well known author and script writer, took up the task of editing and publishing these invaluable firsthand ‘reports’. In the last thirty five or so years, he has published some 12 volumes of “The Flashman Papers” - covering such events as the Retreat from Kabul, the Indian Mutiny, Rajah Brooke in the East Indies, and the Battle of the Little Big Horn, to mention just a few of the events of the period where Flashman was present. The papers are very detailed - written in a tone of scrupulous honesty with a robust turn of phrase and provide an individual and possibly totally accurate insight into what exactly happened during some of the more famous events of the Victorian era.Often within these Papers are references to occurrences and periods which doubtless appear in Papers Mr Fraser has yet to find and edit. Fortunately, however, further finds have been made…Introduction
The Archive was established in 2001 as a result of the Curator’s finding, in a second hand bookshop in Lucca, Tuscany, what could conceivably to be the Flashman Family Bible, detailing the Flashman family records from 1775 to 1916 – see Archive Note: The Flashman Family. Since then various extraneous manuscripts, letters, documents, newspaper cuttings and other ‘miscellania’ which could possibly relate to the Flashmans have been located and acquired from time to time.
However, perhaps the most important single discovery was some 60 small, somewhat battered, handwritten Day Journals, apparently covering the years from August 1839 to early October 1915 - reportedly found in 2002 in an old school tuck box which, on cursory inspection, could have been owned by General Flashman (given that it apparently had the letters ‘H.P.F.’ inscribed on the lid). There were also several other documents, principally various newspaper articles and scrapbooks; these latter could conceivably be the ones kept by Lady Elspeth Flashman (see a remark made by Flashman in his Paper “Flashman and the Tiger” - the Bacarat episode), which someone had subsequently added to. The tuck box had presumably lain in the basement of Gandamack Lodge in Ashby, Leics, since the mid 1920s. The tuck box, so it is understood, was locked with a letter combination padlock when found – the six-letter combination read F-L-A-S-H-Y (an easy – too easy? - code to decipher!) – a type of padlock which although in use since about 1850, was particularly popular after WW1.Gandamack Lodge – built by Flashman sometime in the late 1800s - was used as a convalescent/recuperation hospital for wounded officers/soldiers during the Great War. In 1917 apparently there was a fire, which gutted most of the roof and upper floors. The house was seemingly restored sometime during the 1920s; one must presume under the direction of one of the family – and indeed some correspondence also found in the tuck box indicates such work as being proposed/in train in the early 1920s. Most of the personal accoutrements of the family were presumably therefore stored away and, it seems, simply forgotten. Information suggests the house was sold circa the 1930s. However, in the property boom of the early 2000s, it was completely refurbished and turned into upmarket apartments. It seems it was by pure chance that these vital diaries and other items were saved, rather than being junked. The foreman of the gang carrying out the primary demolition work in the refurbishment programme, Mr Cornelius ‘Bricktop’ Mulhane, the person who discovered the tuck box, is a Flashman ‘scholar’.

His having ascertained from the owner-developers that none of the items left in the house were considered to be either of value or interest, he had therefore retained possession of them; he was aware that the property had been built by Flashy, out of the money got from selling a necklace and other booty obtained principally in Cawnpore/Lucknow in 1857, and that Mr Paget Morrison, the General’s executor, had died. He was thus at a loss regarding who was the rightful owner of them. Coincidentally in the summer of 2003, he arrived in Tuscany for a holiday and he told the Curator of the Flashman Archive of his find; Mr Mulhane was kind enough, on his return to England, to send and entrust these journals to the Archive’s care. The Flashman Papers themselves and Lady Elspeth’s diaries, of course, remain in the possession of G.M.F.Unfortunately no copy of Flashy’s Last Will and Testament, which conceivably could have alluded to these Journals and documents, has yet come to light. The records at the Probate Office, where a copy of the Will must have been filed, for the years 1915-18 were lost in the blitz of WWII – a copy of Flashy’s Will may possibly exist within the papers of the late Paget Morrison Esq, in South Africa, but no such copy has yet surfaced. Within these Journals, if of course their provenence can ever be attested, a number of the questions that have puzzled Flashman historians/scholars - since the original discovery of the Flashman Papers in 1965 - might be answered. Flashy makes no mention of how he managed to write (and retain) these Journals – most of the 60 or so that have come to hand are the size of a small pocket diary - given his various trials and tribulations. It needs be said that some journals have quite obviously been lost, in that the collection is not complete; some months/years are not covered. Moreover some pages of those to hand are either missing or undecipherable (due to damage from damp, etc.) and some of the actual entries are almost illegible now, 150 plus years later.
Also in the tuck box, so we were told, were a number of Flashy’s firearms that have hitherto not been found, notably his Garland pocket pistol, his German revolver and his Navy Colt. His Khyber knife, we know from G.M.F., was left to Mr Paget Morrison and his Tranter revolver, from Cartwright of Norwich, is now in the possession of a Mr Garry Jones of Los Angeles, California. His ‘scarred old double-action Bulldog’ has yet to reappear; though, as G.M.F. remarks, Flashy states that he flung that away after the Battle of the Little Big Horn (see “Flashman and the Redskins”), despite later his mentioning its being in a drawer of a desk at his ‘Berkeley Square’ residence. Possibly it was too cumbersome to be put in the tuck box, if it was actually still Flashy’s possession circa 1910. Mr Mulhane told us that he has kept the three guns mentioned, with a view to presenting them to the Imperial War Museum unless a rightful owner can be found. The day Journals etc, we believe should eventually be donated to the British Library, unless again a rightful heir appears who would wish otherwise.Within the collection of newspaper cuttings etc., there is an extract from a Philips’ auction catalogue dated January 1922, regarding various lots for sale ‘from the estate of an anonymous gentlemen’, which would indicate that Flashman’s executor – understood to be Mr Paget Morrison - put the medal collection and other effects up for sale, after WWI; the Victoria and Albert Museum’s having turned down the gift of them. From that catalogue one is also led to presume that various mementos of the General were also sold at auction at that time – such as his duelling pistols and uniforms, ceremonial swords, etc., and the Tranter revolver – though whether Mr Jones or his relatives purchased it then is not known. Where other of the General’s items/souveniers are - such as Lakshmibai’s stirrup, Irma’s glove, Szu-Zhan’s chain collar and even the stone he bought from the boy street vendor when entering Nanking in 1860, to say nothing of the ‘anonymous’ scarlet garter, or Silk One’s scarf (all of which he particularly mentions in his Papers, written post 1900) - remains a mystery. It was possibly considered that they had no intrinsic value. One therefore hopes that somewhere, there is yet a third tea chest, tuck box or valise which will be found, containing some of these remembrances.Caveat:It should be emphasised, that apart from the word of Mr Cornelius ‘Bricktop’ Mulhane and the checking of the information contained in the Journals with the Papers, as so far published, and other extant historical sources, there is no other knowledge to hand that would, in reality, corroborate or verify the Journals’ authenticity. There is thus no way that one can assure other Flashman scholars that any of these ‘new’ documents are genuine. There is no mention, within the Papers, of their existence. It is conceivable therefore that they are all complete forgeries. If genuine, there is the conundrum that the Papers were found in a saleroom in Leicestershire in 1965, and thereby were quite clearly separated from these diaries. One might consequently well wonder how this could have happened. The only reasonable explanation must be that Flashy himself kept the sets apart, given his perceived desire that his Papers with their explicit detail were not something that he thought his wife should read. Flashy, when collating his memoires, could have considered that his keeping of such journals would be self-evident to the reader. It would also be intriguing to know how he was able, during his various ‘peregrinations’, to ensure the maintenance and indeed retention thereof – a question that could be seen to militate against their bona fides... but then, for instance, his hanging onto Szu-Zhan’s collar and the ‘Nanking stone’, given his subsequent experiences in Peking, must equally have required some ingenuity.To a layman, the paper itself looks old enough, as does the writing, ink, bindings/covers and, where apparent, the indelible pencilled remarks but absolute verification would demand an expert in this field. Comparison of the handwriting with that of the Papers has not been done. Quite reasonably Mr Macdonald Fraser has retained close hold of those invaluable memoires and, given the inundation of questions, queries and other enquiries he receives almost daily, it would be an imposition upon his time to seek such verification. The Archive has therefore opted to take the Journals at face value, in that even if not genuine, considerable research has gone into their preparation and that work per se, should be valuable to interested parties.

WHAT THE JOURNALS TELL US

Flashy, according to his editor, G.M.F., is “rarely precise about dates” in The Flashman Papers - indeed he often seems not even to mention that “it is/was Christmas Day/New Year’s Eve/Easter/my birthday/etc.” 1841 and 1883 are ones that readily come to mind, when we know where precisely he was at such festive times; by simple day count one can, of course, determine that such festivals must have passed unstated. For example, one of the (relatively few) dates specified is “September 22nd 1856”, the night of his meeting with Ellenborough, Wood and Palmerston at Balmoral, prior to his going to India at the time of the Mutiny – however as there is no further date mentioned, one is left to presume he had Christmas on board ship, getting to Bombay around mid January. G.M.F. does say that Elspeth kept complete diaries during their marriage and there are various extracts provided by Grizel de Rothschild, some for example dated circa 1842/4 relating, as an instance, to Elspeth’s ‘concern’ regarding the admiration Flashy got from the ladies in the audience at Lord’s and the ‘attentions’ Don Solomon paid to her - but in totality they only cover a fragment of Flashy’s ‘doings’. These Journals therefore fill in several of the detailed gaps apparent in the Papers but because of their occasional illegibility, often a particular date has had to be surmised/calculated from other sources. One has to say that this has contested, from time to time, with some of Flashy’s ideas of dates, as spelled out in the Papers. Where this has happened, subsequent dates have had to be deduced and reconciled (Journals ‘versus’ Papers). Flashy does provide in his Papers, in most instances, a quasi day-count or an indication of how much time had passed between events but as said, rarely a specific calendar date – the Archive has therefore been forced into using historical fact as the hook and then to job backwards.

Where particularly the Journals do provide an interesting insight is the very fact that one can determine, with maybe debatable accuracy, almost the day-to-day events during fairly protracted periods of Flashy’s life and thus they shed some light on some of the confusions that exist within the Papers. One of the things that does come across, when comparing these Journals with the published Papers, is how Flashy’s memory must have been acutely stimulated as he re-read them during/prior to his writing the Papers. The plethora of detail and recall of particular circumstances, in the latter – and indeed conversations – are positively awe-inspiring. The fact that sometimes specific details, from time to time, are at variance with what must actually have happened at the time, should not detract in any way, from the Papers’ vital contribution to our understanding, today, of Victorian history. At point, when Flashy came to write his ‘memories’, he was surely acting much more in the role of raconteur than ‘gospel-writer’; few of us could recall the words of any conversation fifty years later but we can nevertheless recall what was said. Thus, in the Papers, he was more intent in getting across the spirit and character of the times and the individuals, than recounting exact conversations. In this regard his ‘memory lapses’ should be seen as irrelevant – doubtless Flashy would use to such critics, a re-working of the old adage: “one who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.”
One can also readily understand from these Journals why, when Flashy came to write the Papers themselves, he often skipped intervening periods, so to make that particular narrative/episode coherent. The journals are per force, muddled in terms of keeping to the prime thread of such episodes - some of the notes in the Journals are understandably very brief. G.M.F. makes the point in numerous notes to the Papers, that from time to time Flashy’s memory is occasionally at fault, however as can be readily appreciated when one peruses them, these Journals were kept fairly assiduously, if sporadically; it would appear, however, when he came to write his Papers Flashy did not seem always to check back as assiduously – it could simply have been too much of a bother and he preferred to rely on memory. His occasional lapses or confusions with dates and/or personalities is also perhaps explained by his often being in no fit position to update these Journals on a regular basis – the very manner of the writing suggests that often he possibly/probably almost just scribbled a note, some time after the event.

As far as the Curator is aware the Journals are consistent – and have been reconciled - with remarks made by Flashy in his Papers and, of course, historical fact.

FLASHY’S CONFUSIONS

We often know, from the Papers, for instance that he left ‘somewhere’ at such and such a time, and next we find him in ‘London or wherever’ and one’s reaction often is to ignore the travel time spent. The consequent ‘time-leap’ has foxed certain scholars including perhaps Flashy himself in that within the Papers, he gets his dates “wrong” in several crucial instances. Typically in this context, as an example:- It normally took four months by boat from Calcutta to London; it took at least 6 weeks by ‘road’ from the Afghan border to Calcutta; plus there would surely have been time spent waiting for a berth on a ship and he tells us he attended various ‘functions’ on his journey back from Afghanistan in 1842 (see ‘Flashman’) - and we do know an exact date (April 18th) when he was in Jellalabad, via Pollock’s diaries. Thus his accomplishing his hat trick at Lords in 1842 is hard to ‘accommodate’ for, given the ‘normal’ travel, he may not have been back in London until October that year, i.e. somewhat after the cricket season usually ended – he must therefore have returned by steamship…an innovation in travel at that time that it is strange he didn’t mention - until he repeats a remark made by Solomon Husman regarding the proposed trip to the East with Elspeth and her father (see ‘Flashman’s Lady’). The particular trip from Kabul in 1842 is further confused in that it is possibly on this return home, assuredly through Egypt, that he purchased the ostrich feather fan (there are only two times that he could have acquired it) that Elspeth uses to singular effect at Balmoral (see ‘Flashman and the Great Game’) – further indicating he must have used the ‘land-bridge’ - and yet he doesn’t mention that or the fan’s purchase until 1856.Different examples of Flashy’s ‘old age confusion’ include how he reported his conversation with Raja Brooke in 1845, prior to the battles in the Battang Lupar.- Seeing a picture of Angela Burdett-Coutts in Brooke’s drawing room (see ‘Flashman’s Lady’), Flashy mentions knowing her and refers to her as “young Angie Coutts”. Not only that but also he mentions ‘Stratton Street’. As G.M.F. notes, Angela Burdett-Coutts did not reside in Stratton Street until the ‘late 1840s.’ Also, Flashy was in his early to mid-twenties at the time of the Brooke conversation, whilst the lady was certainly in her early 30s – she was eight years his senior. The phraseology itself looks therefore, to be somewhat presumptuous and so unlikely; Brooke was then 42, a bit of a stickler re attitudes towards womankind and he clearly had a (platonic) fixation in respect of the lady, of which Flashy was made quickly aware. Thus it is more likely that this is the remembrance of an old duffer, aged mid 80s, of a conversation long passed. A mention of Flashy’s visiting Stratton Street is actually noted in the Journals as occurring on January 5th 1848, during his sojourn in London after the Sikh/Koh-i-Noor affair (see ‘Flashman and the Mountain of Light’) and prior to his abduction and his going on Bismarck’s mission to Strackenz (see ‘Royal Flash’). There is an earlier mention in Journal No.3, of his meeting ‘London’s richest spinster’ on his return from Afghanistan, at a Charity showing at the Royal Academy (Somerset House), on November 7th 1842 – and that can only have been the lady in question. He seems therefore, in the retelling of his chat with Brooke in c1905, not to have checked back in his journals thoroughly – something he seems to have been guilty of fairly regularly. One could further presume that Flashy possibly ‘augmented his acquaintance’ with this lady – as perhaps he could be accused of doing at other times and with other personalities – when he came to write the full ‘discourse’. The various notes, etc. supplied by G.M.F., show that it was during the early 1900s that Flashy wrote his Papers – and he started collating in around 1899 or 1902; there are in fact sundry comments that would suggest he conceived the idea of writing them as early as 1887 and again in 1898 (when viewing the Wollen painting of Gandamack).Inconsistencies, aberrations or things the scholar might care to question, abound within the Papers. In addition to occasional muddles regarding for example, the date of birth of his daughter Jo, or whether Uncle Bindley was a Paget or a Flashman - or indeed omissions like when and how did Basset, his first batman in 1841, disappear in Afghanistan. These are ‘peculiars’ and to cite but two special instances:- How did Gordon-Cumming know that Flashy ran from Isandhlwana, when he promulgated this slur to Elspeth ‘in 1881’ [N.B. Flashy was not aware of the slur until 1891 see ‘Flashman and the Tiger’]? The relevant wording is: “but she (Elspeth) was too angry to hear me, raging on in full spate about how the brazen rascal had dared to say that I had fled headlong, and escaped in a cart…” The problem here is that, although the slur is true, the only notable person Flashy met on his flight from ‘Little House’ was Tiger Moran. Two points are relevant here: first when they met, Flashy was not in uniform - he had retired from Army service and was at Isandhlwana in a ‘private’ capacity, not as a member of the military - as the Journals show (and Flashy comments in the Papers) he had come to South Africa because of Elspeth’s wishing to visit “her cousin’s mine”; secondly Flashy was riding a horse by then.

He then assisted Moran in blowing up the bridge across the gully, on their way to Rorke’s Drift. G-C himself, had left Isandhlwana with Chelmsford at dawn on the morning of January 22nd 1879 (so he was not personally present at the slaughter at Isandhlwana) and he didn’t get to Rorke’s Drift until the evening of January 23rd - after that fracas was all over. He, G-C, met Flashy at both places but very few ‘officers’ survived the slaughter by the Zulus at Isandhlwana on the 22nd; there was no way that G-C could have known about Flashy’s fleeing headlong - especially ‘in a cart’ - Flashy wasn’t exactly in the cart for long, he transferred to a gun barrel! Neither could G-C have known – albeit fallaciously – that Flashy “had skulked in the hospital” during the Zulu attack on Rorke’s Drift. G-C may well have added two and two and, given there was mutual antipathy, assumed Flashy had scarpered from Isandhlwana, without any evidence or justification for such remarks whatsoever.- On the train from Allahabad to Calcutta in 1858, just after he had been awarded the VC, Flashy read “Tom Brown’s Schooldays”, sent to him by Cardigan via Elspeth. In the relevant Paper (“Flashman and the Great Game”), written circa 1903, he indicates that (in 1858 when reading the book) he was apparently completely unaware of and could not at first remember who Tom Brown was – he says he finally remembered him at Rugby as “a mealy pious toad-eater”. Unquestionably this is a total lapse of memory 45 years after, by an old codger who in recalling and writing about the event, quite simply lost his temper – and the Journals bear this out. First off in the very same Paper, Flashy had re-met Scud East at Cawnpore in 1857 and indeed been at his side when East died at Suttee Ghat: “East gave a ghost of a smile – I found I was blubbering and gasping and thinking about Rugby – and a small fag limping along pathetically after the players at Big Side – you don’t see a child you’ve known all your life, die every day”. East was particularly a member of Tom Brown’s ‘circle’ at Rugby, so in his remembering of East at Rugby, Flashy cannot but also have remembered Brown. He was to meet another Old Rugbeian, William ‘Rake’ Hodson, at Lucknow a little later in 1857.

Moreover, Flashy was always inordinately proud of his cricketing skill - bowling, horse-riding, languages and fornicating were the four things he held he did well - and Tom Brown had interrupted Flashy’s lunch at ‘The Green Man’ and invited him to play cricket for Rugby Past and Present against Kent at Lords in 1842 – Flashy maintains that even in this meeting he did not actually recognise Brown at first, having not seen him for three years. However, it is in this match that Flashy achieves his singular effort of the ‘first recorded hat trick’ – a feat he mentions quite often in the Papers and includes in his full entry in Who’s Who. Some have suggested that ‘whilst the hat trick was important to Flashy, the invitation wasn’t’ – except others might suggest that as this was when Flashy achieved (what he clearly considered as) one of his most memorable feats, he could not have forgotten such a relevant detail. Thus: how can he not have remembered the identity of someone he was at school with who was also captain/promoter of ‘RPP’, a mere 16 years later when reading the book? Tom Brown in fact appears as a side comment in numerous Papers. The Journal for 1858 does reconcile these ‘occurrences’ in that he did recall the earlier meetings, most particularly because (in 1842) of his suggesting Brown join him in a training bout with a hussy or two, in the Haymarket – he invented bordello cricket that afternoon and got thrown out of a disorderly house for being disorderly!It is perhaps pertinent that G.M.F. tells us that, in what is clearly Flashy’s renewed rage in 1903 when writing the Great Game episode: “At this point, with a torn page and several explosive blots, the fifth packet of the Flashman Papers comes to an end.” This suggests that, despite Flashy’s not pursuing Hughes for libel as the Papers say he thought of doing in 1858 (though G.M.F. does mention the possibility that Flashy did demand and get a retraction by 1861), when revisiting the scene nigh 50 years later, he could still get very annoyed about it! Flashy, somewhat uncharacteristically for him in his early 80s - by which time he was at his most cynical - seems to have got himself into a fair old bate and found himself incapable of writing further.Intriguingly, however, when he came to write the John Brown episode (see ‘Flashman and the Angel of the Lord’), some ten years later in 1913, his temper had eased somewhat and he recalled that, on arrival at Calcutta in 1858 “It was with relief that I learned - no one seemed to have heard of the damned book, or weren’t letting on if they had.” He then continues: “It’s been the same ever since, I’m happy to say; not a word of reproach or a covert snigger, even - the fact is some truths don’t matter. I’ve been seventy years an admired hero - folk simply don’t want to know that such a paladin was a rotter - in childhood and, if he was, they don’t care.” Almost in contradiction to those remarks, moreover, when writing of his meeting with President Grant (see ‘Flashman and the Redskins’), to press Custer’s request for re-instatement to command of the 7th Calvalry, in 1876, he mentions that Grant asked him if he was the Flashman in ‘Tom Brown’s Schooldays.’ Flashy unabashed replied: “Oh, yes, don’t you know, that’s me.” Then he goes on that Grant asked if the description of him was true. Flashy, chuckling, we’re told, rejoined: “Oh, yes, I’d say so. Every word of it. Great days they were.” In fact one has to say that many of the Papers refer, at various times, to either Hughes or Brown (e.g. Flashy suggests the likelihood that Hughes would be unsurprised that he got on with the Afghanis). So one must opine that the last lines of ‘Flashman and the Great Game’ are an aberration.

The Journals do, perhaps, solve several particulars (as well as raising others) – e.g. his time in Australia and his experiences on a wagon train going west, his philandering in Corpus Christi - but also other matters that may have bothered some scholars, e.g.:
- When was he dubbed ‘Sir Harry’? In ‘The Great Game’ prior to his leaving Calcutta in 1858, he is informed by Sir Colin Campbell that he is to receive a knighthood. However when he gets to Cape Town, he is shanghaied by James Charity Spring and as a result, finds himself in America as one of John Brown’s pet lambs. At the conclusion of that ‘adventure’, Mrs Hannah Popplewell bundles him off the train prior to its arrival at Baltimore and embarking on the boat home, so to avoid LaForce’s brigands; the journals presented cover the period between that moment and his arrival in Hong Kong in 1860, prior to the Taiping Rebellion. Logic, in terms of his preserving his hide, and evidence garnered from sundry remarks within the Papers, would have lead one to deduce that he headed due west from Baltimore and embarked for Australia or Hong Kong, probably from San Francisco - and thence as we know, he went to Peking – and the Journals confirm that deduction. The essential point though is that he cannot have got back home from his time with Lakshmibai and the Mutiny until well after the Taiping episode - insofar as we know he was ‘mickey-finned’ in Singapore, via Phoebe Carpenter, on his way home from China - or otherwise mid to late 1861. It is therefore only then that he could have received his knighthood – most importantly prior to the death of Prince Albert, otherwise he could not have had the necessary audience with Her Majesty until the late 1860s, if not even later. The Journals state that he ‘bowed the knee’ on Saturday, November 23rd 1861 – one presumes Her Majesty and the Prince Consort left for Windsor that evening, in that Prince Albert died there, of typhoid, on December 14th.
- When did it become known that he ‘worked both sides of the street’ in the American Civil War? We know, from various remarks in the Papers, that Flashy was in close contact with both Grant and Lee at various times - and for protracted periods; Grant during the Vicksburg campaign and Lee at Gettysburg are particular instances mentioned. Flashy was therefore obviously in some form of ‘advisory capacity’ to both of them during notably the period from late 1862 to mid-1863. It is inconceivable that either of those two Generals was aware of his ‘dual role’ at that point in time. We know he spent time in Libby, the PoW prison for Union soldiers in Richmond and indeed he was with Sherman ‘marching to the sea’ in late 1864, whilst he refers to Lee as ‘my old boss’ at various times – notably the opening lines of ‘Royal Flash.’ It is, furthermore, clear from his conversations with Custer in 1876 (“Flashman and the Redskins”), that the latter, to name just one person, was aware by then of his fighting on both sides during the war. At sometime and somewhere Flashy’s duplicity must have become evident to all. The Journals show that Flashy in fact turned his coat several times during the conflict – occasionally at the instigation/suggestion of his then commanding officer, occasionally of his own volition - and that it was at the Appomattox Court House, on April 9th 1865 when Lee surrendered to Grant, that his ‘role’ finally came properly to light.

Curator’s comments:
The diaries have been deciphered and partially (only where absolutely necessary) rewritten from the somewhat dishevelled state they were in when Bricktop Mulhane sent them. The originals, not being of high quality parchment, are very tatterdemalian.Having carried out a cursory review of the Journals on their arrival at the Archive and ‘edited’ years 1839/41, so to assess their acuracy, the Archive’s Curator found it irresistible, most particularly, not to spend time studying those Journals that covered Flashy’s activities from 1859 onwards until his arrival in Trieste in January 1868 - especially during the American Civil War - insofar as this is perhaps the major missing link in the Papers, as so far published. The key dates, as the Papers tell us, are that Flashy was at Harper’s Ferry end October 1859 (‘Flashman and the Angel of the Lord’); Hong Kong in March 1860 (‘Flashman and the Dragon’); then in America during the Civil War and subsequently in Mexico, whence he appears in Trieste and is then on his way to Abyssinia (‘Flashman on the March’). Throughout the published Papers, there are innumerable mentions of Flashy’s participation in this momentous war – typically: “I came through Harper’s Ferry and the war that followed…” But it may well be that, despite his often mentioning how he would write his memoires regarding this period, he may never actually have done so. His ‘John Brown narrative’ (‘Flashman and the Angel of the Lord’), we know, was penned in 1913 – a mere two years before his demise – and if he had written his American war reminiscences before then, he would surely have made mention of the fact somewhere in there, whereas the very tone of that writing suggests a stance of “I’ll get to that in due course…” Thus these Journals – depending once more upon their genuineness - could be the only source there is of his experiences during that war and what followed, up until his arrival at Trieste (‘Flashman on the March’). The other major gap in the papers is, following “The Tiger” , his time in Khartoum…

Other areas which require study, prior to covering periods for which Papers have been published, obviously are those times which Flashy has variously referred to, especially: the Franco-Prussian War (1870s); and, of course, the circumstances of his visit (with Elspeth?) to South Africa in 1879 where, a brief perusal of the Journals suggests he met H. Rider Haggard and went (or was due to go) big-game hunting with Allan Quatermain, prior to his arrival at Isandlwhana and Rorke’s Drift; in addition to his time with Gordon in the Sudan and his second(?) visit to China.

The Journals are not written in the manner that Flashman wrote his Papers but are the contemporary diaries that he kept – therefore they are without his ‘irony of hindsight’, which is so gloriously evident in his collated Papers. The diaries comprise just ‘current’ notes, used by Flashy 50 years later as an aide-memoire. From these Journals, however, we do know Flashman’s immediate perception/reaction of/to characters such as Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis, Jeb Stuart, ‘Wild Bill’ Hickok, Charles Gordon, Frederick Abberline – if a Paper ever appears particularly covering his time in Virginia in the early 1860s, that doubtless would include a perceptive and individual insight into the real place some Generals should ‘hold in history.’ The Journals could possibly confuse the ordinary reader most especially during the Civil War itself, inasmuch as, for instance, Flashy spent a considerable amount of time moving from place to place/army to army, not least within the state of Virginia itself. Without considerable background knowledge of, in this case, the Civil War (or a decent map!), it is not always easy to follow his perambulations – he often only mentions place-names with no more than a brief reference as to where he actually is in terms of location. Doubtless when he came to write the Papers, he would have been more expansive and directed himself to providing a more cohesive narrative. Where the Curator has deemed it necessary, in common with ‘our mentor,’ Mr George MacDonald Fraser, particular points and biographical notes have been developed for the purposes of clarity, or to seek to iron out some of Flashy’s ‘confusions’.