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 B: 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 Flash-man 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 C: 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 person-ally. 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'.*(* Speech to the Chamber of Deputies, Paris, 1884.) 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.
King Radama, her husband, had died suddenly at the age of 36 in 1828. Since they had no children, the heir was the king's nephew, Rakotobe; his supporters, foreseeing a power struggle, concealed the news of the king's death for some days to enable Rakotobe to consolidate his claim. In the meantime, however, a young officer named Andriamihaja's, who was ostensibly among Rakotobe's supporters, betrayed the news of the king's death to Ranavalona, for reasons which are not disclosed. She promptly got the leading military men on her side, put it about that the idols favoured her claim to the throne, and ruthlessly slaughtered all who resisted, including the unfortunate Rakotobe. She rewarded Andriamihaja's treachery by making him commander-in-chief and taking (or confirming) him as her lover - he was presently accused of treachery, put to the tanguin, and executed. (See Oliver, vol. i.)
The next 35 years were a reign of terror, religious persecution, and genocide on a scale (considering Madagascar's size and limited population) hardly matched until our own times. That Ranavalona escaped assassination or deposition is testimony to the strength with which she wielded her absolute power, and to her capacity for surviving plots. How many of these there were, we cannot know, but none succeeded - including the Flashman coup of 1845, and a later conspiracy in which Ida Pfeiffer, then aged 60, found herself involved, to her considerable alarm: she describes in her Travels how Prince Rakota (still evidently intent on getting rid of mother) showed her the arsenal he intended to use in his revolt, and how she then went to bed and had nightmares about the tanguin test.
Since we know that Rakota and Laborde both survived the plot which Flashman describes, it seems likely that it simply died stillborn, or that the Queen, for some reason, forebore to take vengeance on the conspirators. It would be pleasant to think that Mr Fankanonikaka, at least, was spared to continue his devoted service to his queen and country.
Notes
1. Since most of the Flashman Papers were written between 1900 and 1905, it seems likely that Flashman is here referring to the Test Match series of 1901-2, which Australia won by four matches to one, and possibly also to
