APPENDIX III:
In the Explanatory Note mention was made of Flashman’s wild incon sistency in spelling Abyssinian names. He was not alone. When the Abyssinian campaign began, virtually no proper names of places or people were known outside the country, and everyone writing about it seems simply to have pleased himself; thus we hear of Theodore’s Queen as Tooroo-Wark, Teriwark, Teru-Wark, Terunsheh, Terunish, and even Terenachie; his second “queen-concubine', whom Flashman calls Tamagno, is also Yetemagnu and Itamanya; his valet Wald Gabr is also Welder Gabre. The same is true of place-names, so I have simply chosen the spellings which Flashman uses most often. Rather more serious are the discrepancies in maps of the period, and here again I have used Flashman’s own crude sketch, which differs no more from the rest than they do from each other. It seems right and proper that the word “Abyssinia” means “confusion', or so I am told.
NOTES
[1] It is not entirely clear why the Maria Theresa dollar was so popular. Speedicut suggests that its silver was of unusual purity, but Samuel Baker, the hunter and explorer, noted that the effigy of the Empress 'with a very low dress and a profusion of bust, is, I believe, the charm that suits the Arab taste.”
[2] “Dickey', meaning shaky or uncertain, has a currency of centuries, but “in Dickie’s meadow', meaning in serious trouble is, or was, a North Cumbrian expression, and it has been suggested (fancifully, no doubt) that since Richard III was in his younger days Warden of the West March with his head- quarters in Carlisle, where he is commemorated in one of the city’s principal streets, Rickergate, the proverbial “meadow” may have been Bosworth Field, [p. 3]
[3] The mystery of Flashman’s service in the French Foreign Legion remains unsolved. It may have been after the U.S. Civil War, before his enlistment with Maximilian, or at some earlier date in North Africa, as references elsewhere in the Papers suggest. This is the first time desertion is mentioned, but without time and place. One thing is clear: he must have made his peace with the French authorities before 1877, the year in which he was awarded the Legion of Honour, [p. 4]
[4] Flashman is recalling another service to the Austrian royal family, when he foiled a plot by Hungarian nationalists to assassinate the Emperor Franz-Josef at his hunting lodge in Bad Ischl in 1883. He was rewarded with the Order of Maria Theresa and a waltz with the Empress Elisabeth. (See
[5] No doubt Flashman’s Mexican papers will have more to say of this remarkable and rather mysterious adventuress. All that we know of her origins is that she was probably American and had been a circus bareback rider before she met and married Prince Felix Salm-Salm, a German soldier of fortune, when he was serving in the U.S. Civil War. After the war the Salms’ taste for excitement took them to Mexico, where Felix became Maximilian’s chief a.d.c. and Flashman’s colleague. The three were involved in efforts to rescue the Emperor before his execu tion, and Princess Agnes has left some account of these in her
[6] Details of the Emperor Maximilian’s last voyage may be found in newspapers of the day, and there is an excellent account in the
[7] There must have been 250 of these boxes, each containing 2000 dollars, according to the cash account of the Treasury Officer to the expedition, [p. 12]
[8] A Bootneck or Leatherneck is a Royal Marine, supposedly so-called from the leather tab securing the uniform collar in the nine teenth century, or possibly from the leather neck-stock. Leatherneck was adopted as a nickname for the U.S. Marines early in the twentieth century. Royal Marines were also known as Jollies, which according to Eric Partridge was once the nick name of the London Trained Bands, [p. 12]
[9] Work on the Suez Canal, the brainchild of the French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps, began in 1859, and the waterway was opened to navigation in 1869. It had cost almost ?30 million, and in 1875 Disraeli acquired 176,602 shares for ?4 million, giving Britain a 44% holding. The canal was indeed built by what amounted to slavery, the forced labour
[10] In fact, Flashman’s consignment of dollars was a modest part of Napier’s “war- chest', about one-ninth. The financial accounts of the expedition show a total of 4,530,000 dollars paid in numerous instalments up to May 14, 1868, which the accountants estimated as equivalent to ?969,343.15.0, but these were only the shipments of silver; the total cost of the expedition was far higher. Disraeli, the Chancellor, originally asked the House of Commons for ?2 million, with a further ?1.5 million in the following year if the campaign was protracted; eventually the total cost was close to ?9 million, a vast sum which appalled Parliament. In fairness to Disraeli, it was impossible to tell what such an expedition into unknown territory would cost; on the other hand, there was tremendous waste, partly because Napier was given carte blanche and gave no thought to economy. (See “Supply of Treasure and Financial Arrangements” in volume 1 of the official history,
[11] This version of the Red Sea crossing by the Children of Israel is also to be found in
[12] Seedeboy, sidiboy, Anglo-Indian slang for an African, usually a labourer (see Kipling,
[13] Flashman’s memory is playing him false. He may well have seen, in late January, 1868, the cartoon of Theodore, as well as
[14] Flashman’s experience of Abyssinia was brief, barely more than two months in which he saw comparatively little of the country and its people. What he did see he reported with his usual accuracy, and his descriptions of costume and racial characteristics are borne out by contemporary artists. His enthusiasm for the beauty of the people, especially the women of Galla, is shared by other travellers. Most early descriptions of the country dwell at length on its churches, and religious customs and artefacts, some of which are strange to European Christians, but while Flashman has little interest in these, his notice of curiosities is reliable. The
[15] James Bruce (1730-94) was indeed something of an eccentric, a scholar, traveller, businessman, linguist, antiquary, and the first of a distinguished line of Scottish explorers in Africa. Born in Stirlingshire and educated at Harrow, he was a splendid athlete and horseman, six feet four inches tall, red-haired, reckless, com bative, and “swayed to an undue degree by self-esteem and the thirst for fame'. In the course of an adventurous life Bruce was British Consul at Algiers, a perilous post when the Barbary pirates were still active,
