its imposition'.
11 Bismarck was accounted something of a wit, and like most wits he seems to have had a habit of repeating himself, His remark that a gift for languages was a fine talent for a head-waiter is also recorded in Prince von Bnlow's 'Memoirs', where it is suggested that Bismarck was in the habit of using it on linguistically-gifted young diplomats.
12 John Gully, M.P. (1783—1863) was one of the most popular and respected champions of the bare-knuckle ring. The son of a Bath butcher, he conducted his father's business so unsuccessfully that he was imprisoned for debt, but while in the King's Bench in 1805 he was visited by an acquaintance, Henry 'Game Chicken' Pearce, then champion of England. In a friendly spar with the champion in the jail, Gully was so impressive that sporting patrons paid his debts, and he met Pearce for the title at Hailsham, Sussex, a fortnight before Trafalgar. Before a huge crowd which included Beau Brummel and the Duke of Clarence (later William IV), Pearce narrowly beat Gully over 64 rounds; it has since been suggested that Gully out-fought the champion, but was reluctant to knock out his benefactor. This seems unlikely. However, Gully won the title two years later with decisive victories over Bob Gregson, 'the Lancashire Giant', and then retired, aged only 24. He made a fortune on the turf, where he owned several Classic winners, and by investments in coal and land. He was M.P. for Pontefract from 1832 to 1837, was twice married, and had 24 children.
Flashman's portrait of Gully accords with other contemporary accounts of the gentle, quiet six-footer who, when roused, was one of the most savage and scientific fighters of boxing's golden age. 'At heart,' says Nat Fleischer, 'his ambition was to belong to the gentry. He had little use for the professional ring and its shady followers.' Fleischer is probably right when he suggests that, but for chance, Gully would never have become a pugilist at all.
13 Flashman's reference to a horse called 'Running Reins' is most interesting. In May, 1844, a year and a half after the party at Perceval's place, the Derby was won by a horse entered as 'Running Rein'; it proved, upon inquiry, to be a four-year-old named Maccabeus, and was disqualified, but not before the scandal had developed into a court case (Wood v. Peel) and become the talk of the sporting world. The principal villain in the case, Abraham Levi Goodman, fled the country; the horse Maccabeus disappeared. But there certainly was a genuine Running Rein, whose performances in the 1843 season had given rise to suspicion. Flashman's mention seems to suggest that Running Rein (his rendering of the name as Reins is obviously a slip) had a reputation earlier still, although not an unsavoury one. Turf records of the day contain no mention of Running Ribbons, however, so Spottswood was probably doing Gully no great favour in offering to sell him.
14 John L. Sullivan won the first recognised world heavy-weight title when he knocked out Paddy Ryan in nine rounds at Mississippi City, on Feb. 7, 1882. It is reported that the spectators included Henry Ward Beecher, the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, and Jesse James.
15 Gents and Mooners. In the 1840's the term Gent was most particularly applied to the young middle-class idler who aped his superiors and dressed extravagantly; the Mooner was rather older and spent his time 'mooning' at shop windows and ambling gently about the town. Flashman would consider both species to be well beneath him.
16 Despite Flashman's enthusiastic notice, it seems probable that Lola Montez was not a particularly good artiste, although the historian Veit Valentin observes that she had 'the tigerish vivacity that inspires the Andalusian dance'.
17 The account of Lola's disastrous appearance at Her Majesty's Theatre (June 3, 1843) is splendidly accurate, not only in its description of Lord Ranelagh's denunciation, but even in such details as the composition of the audience and the programme notes. (See Wyndham's
18 Lola had a passionate affair with Liszt in the year following her departure from London; after their first rapture she appears to have had much the same effect on the famous pianist as she did on Flash. man. He tired of her, and did indeed abandon her in a hotel, whereupon she spent several hours smashing the furniture. Typically, Lola bore no grudge in her high days in Munich she wrote to Liszt offering him Bavarian honours.
19 The coat-of-arms of the Countess of Landsfeld is accurately described; the 'fat whale' was a silver dolphin.
20 Stieler's portrait of Lola in Ludwig's gallery is a model of Victorian respectability, A more characteristic Montez is to be seen in Dartiguenave's lithograph; he has caught not only her striking beauty, but her imperious spirit. ee Mr Barbosa's rendering of Stieler's portrait of Lola on the left side of the front cover of this eclition.l
21 'Lola was always vain of her bosom'. She was indeed, if the story of her first meeting with Ludwig is to be believed. He is supposed to have expressed doubts about the reality of her figure: her indignant reply was to tear open the top of her dress.
22 There is no supporting evidence that Wagner visited Lola in Munich at this time, but it is not impossible. They met for the first time in 1844, when Liszt took her to a special performance of 'Rienzi' at Dresden, and Wagner's impression was of 'a painted and jewelled woman with bold, bad eyes'. He also described her as 'demonic and heartless'. Curiously, the great composer gained as much favour from Ludwig II as Lola had done from Ludwig I—so much so that the wits nicknamed him 'Lolotte'.
23 The American may have been C. G. Leland, a student at Munich University and a friend of Lola's, He claimed that he was the only one of her intimates at whom she had never thrown 'a plate or a book, or attacked with a dagger, poker, broom, or other deadly weapon'.
24 Schonhausen. Flashman's view of the castle's 'medieval ghastliness' was echoed by Bisinarck himself; he described it to a friend as an 'old haunted castle, with pointed arches and waIls four feet thick, (and) thirty rooms of which two are furnished.' He also complained about its rats and the wind in the chimneys.
25 Flashman's summary of the Schleswig-Holstein Question is accurate so far as it goes; enthusiasts in diplomatic history who wish greater detail are referred to Dr David Thomson's
26 The
27 Bismarck liked to picture himself eventually becoming a rustic landowner; his remark about Stettin wool market occurs again in his recorded conversation, when he spoke of his ambition to 'raise a family, and ruin the morals of my peasants with brandy'.
28 Bandobast: organisation (Hindustani).
29 In 1847 Germany suffered its second successive failure of the potato crop. In the northern areas wheat had doubled its price in a few years.
30 The emblem of Holstein was, in fact, a nettle-leaf shape.
31 'a plumed helmet, a la Tin-bellies'. Flashman is here almost certainly referring to the New Regulation Helmet which had been announced for the British Heavy Dragoons in the previous autumn. Its ridiculously extravagant plumage—popularly supposed to be an inspiration of Prince Albert's—had been the talk of fashionable London in the weeks shortly before Flashman's departure for Munich.
32 Libby Prison, in Richmond, Va., was notorious in the U.S. Civil War. Federal officers were confined there by the Confederates, often in conditions of dreadful overcrowding; it was the scene of a mass escape by tunnel in 1864, and two subsequent Federal cavalry raids to rescue prisoners. Flashman's reference
