'— that you were on hand, at the head of your command. But I do not know, and frankly I do not care. Good day to you, my lord.' And with a little nod I turned to the door.
His voice pursued me, cracking with rage.
'Colonel Fwashman!' he cried. 'You are a viper!'
I turned at that, making myself go red in the face in righteous wrath, but I knew what I was about; he was getting no blow or challenge from me — he shot too damned straight for that.
'Indeed, my lord,' says I. 'Yet I don't wriggle and turn.' And I left him gargling, well pleased with myself. But, as I say, it probably cost me the V.C. at the time; for all the rumours, he was still a power at Horse Guards, and well insinuated at Court, too.1
However, our little exchange did nothing to diminish my popularity at large; a few nights later I got a tremendous cheer at the Guards Dinner at Surrey Gardens, with chaps standing on the table shouting 'Huzza for Flash Harry!' and singing 'Garryowen' and tumbling down drunk — how they did it on a third of a bottle of bubbly beat me.2 Cardigan wasn't there, sensible fellow; they'd have hooted him out of the kingdom. As it was, Punch carried a nasty little dig about his absence, and wondered that he hadn't sent along his spurs, since he'd made such good use of them in retiring from the battery.
Of course, Lord Haw-Haw wasn't the only general to come under the public lash that summer; the rest of 'em, like Lucan and Airey, got it too for the way they'd botched the campaign. So while we gallant underlings enjoyed roses and laurels all the way, our idiot commanders were gainfully employed exchanging recriminations, writing furious letters to the papers saying 'twasn't their fault, but some other fellow's, and there had even been a commission set up to investigate their misconduct of the war.
Unfortunately, government picked the wrong men to do the investigating — MacNeill and Tulloch — for they turned out to be honest, and reported that indeed our high command hadn't been fit to dig latrines, or words to that effect. Well, that plainly wouldn't do, so another commission had to be hurriedly formed to investigate afresh, and this time get the right answer, and no nonsense about it. Well, they did, and exonerated everybody, hip-hip-hurrah and Rule, Britannia. Which was what you'd have expected any half-competent government to stage-manage in the first place, but Palmerston was in the saddle by then, and he wasn't really good at politics, you know.
To crown it all, in the middle of the scandal the Queen herself had words about it with Hardinge, the Commander-in-Chief, at the Aldershot Review, and poor old Hardinge fell down paralysed and never smiled again. It's true; I was there myself, getting soaked through, and Hardinge went down like a shanghaied sailor, with all his faculties gone, not that he had many to start with. Some said it was a judgement on the Army and government corruption, so there.
All of which mattered rather less to me than the width of Elspeth's crinolines, but if I've digressed it is merely to show you how things were in England then, and also because I can never resist the temptation to blackguard Cardigan as he deserves. Meanwhile, I was going happily about my business, helping my dear wife spend her cash — which she did like a clipper-hand in port, I'm bound to say — and you would have said we were a blissful young couple, turning a blind eye to each other's infidelities and galloping in harness when we felt like it, which was frequent, for if anything she got more beddable with the passing years.
And then came the invitation to Balmoral, which reduced Elspeth to a state of nervous exultation close to hysterics, and took me clean aback. I'd have imagined that if the Royal family ever thought of me at all, it was as the chap who'd been remiss enough to lose one of the Queen's cousins — but mind you, she had so many of 'em she probably didn't notice, or if she did, hadn't heard that I was to blame for it. No, I've puzzled over it sometimes, and can only conclude that the reason we were bidden to Balmoral that September was that Russia was still very much the topic of the day, what with the new Tsar's coronation and the recent peace, and I was one of the most senior men to have been a prisoner in Russia's hands.
I didn't have leisure to speculate at the time, though, for Elspeth's frenzy at the thought of being 'in attendance', as she chose to call it, claimed everyone's attention within a mile of Berkeley Square. Being a Scotch tradesman's daughter, my darling was one degree more snobbish than a penniless Spanish duke, and in the days before we went north her condescension to her middle-class friends would have turned your stomach. Between gloating, and babbling about how she and the Queen would discuss dress-making while Albert and I boozed in the gunroom (she had a marvellous notion of court life, you see), she went into declines at the thought that she would come out in spots, or have her drawers fall down when being presented. You must have endured the sort of thing yourself.
'Oh, Harry, Jane Speedicut will be green! You and I — guests of her majesty! It will be the finest thing — and I have my new French dresses — the ivory, the beige silk, the lilac satin, and the lovely, lovely green which old Admiral Lawson so admired — if you think it is not a leetle low for the Queen? And my barrege for Sunday — will there be members of the nobility staying also? — will there be ladies whose husbands are of lower rank than you? Ellen Parkin — Lady Parkin, indeed! — was consumed with spite when I told her — oh, and I must have another maid who can manage my hair, for Sarah is too maladroit for words, although she is very passable with dresses — what shall I wear to picnics? — for we shall be bound to walk in the lovely Highland countryside — oh, Harry, what do you suppose the Queen reads? — and shall I call the Prince ’highness‘ or ‘sir’?'
I was glad, I can tell you, when we finally reached Abergeldie, where we had rooms in the castle where guests were put up — for Balmoral was very new then, and Albert was still busy having the finishing touches put to it. Elspeth by this time was too nervous even to talk, but her first glimpse of our royal hosts reduced her awe a trifle, I think. We took a stroll the first afternoon, in the direction of Balmoral, and on the road encountered what seemed to be a family of tinkers led by a small washerwoman and an usher who had evidently pinched his headmaster's clothes. Fortunately, I recognised them as Victoria and Albert out with their brood, and knew enough simply to raise my hat as we passed, for they loathed to be treated as royalty when they were playing at being commoners. Elspeth didn't even suspect who it was until we were past, and when I told her she swooned by the roadside. I revived her by threatening to carry her into the bushes and molest her, and on the way back she observed that really her majesty had looked quite royal, but in a common sort of way.
By the time we were presented at Balmoral, though, the next day, she was high up the scale again, and the fact that we shared the waiting-room beforehand with some lord or other and his beak-nosed lady, who looked at us as though we were riff-raff, reduced my poor little scatterbrain to quaking terror. I'd met the royals before, of course, and tried to reassure her, whispering that she looked a stunner (which was true) and not to be put out by Lord and Lady Puffbuttock, who were now ignoring us with that icy incivility which is the stamp of our lower-class aristocracy. (I know; I'm one myself nowadays.)
It was quite handy that our companions kept their noses in the air, though, for it gave me the chance to loop a ribbon from the lady's enormous crinoline on to an occasional table without her knowing, and when the doors to the royal drawing-room were opened she set off and brought the whole thing crashing down, crockery and all, in full view of the little court circle. I kept Elspeth in an iron grip, and steered her round the wreckage, and so Colonel and Mrs Flashman made their bows while the doors were hurriedly closed behind us, and the muffled sounds of the Puffbuttocks being extricated by flunkeys was music to my ears, even if it did make the Queen look more pop-eyed than usual. The moral is: don't put on airs with Flashy, and if you do, keep your crinolines out of harm's way.
And, as it turned out, to Elspeth's lifelong delight and my immense satisfaction, she and the Queen got on like port and nuts from the first. Elspeth, you see, was one of those females who are so beautiful that even other women can't help liking 'em, and in her idiot way she was a lively and engaging soul. The fact that she was Scotch helped, too, for the Queen was in one of her Jacobite moods just then, and by the grace of God someone had read Waverley to Elspeth when she was a child, and taught her to recite 'The Lady of the Lake'.
I had been dreading meeting Albert again, in case he mentioned his whoremongering Nephew Willy, now deceased, but all he did was say:
'Ah, Colonel Flashmann — haff you read Tocqueville's L'Ancien Regime?'
I said I hadn't, yet, but I'd be at the railway library first thing in the morning, and he looked doleful and went on:
'It warns us that bureaucratic central government, far from curing the ills of revolution, can actually arouse them.'
I said I'd often thought that, now that he mentioned it, and he nodded and said: 'Italy is very unsatisfactory,' which brought our conversation to a close. Fortunately old Ellenborough, who'd been chief in India at the time of my Kabul heroics, was among those present, and he buttonholed me, which was a profound relief. And then the Queen addressed me, in that high sing-song of hers:
