Flashman on the March

and pinching poverty'; there is general agreement about her vow of seclusion in her tower. Only Flashman gives her a name and personal description, and since he knew her intimately and none of the others seems even to have seen her, readers may be inclined to accept his account as authoritative. (Henty, Stanley, Holland and Hozier, and William Simpson, Diary of a Journey to Abyssinia, 1868. Simpson was a journalist and artist with the Illustrated London News whose diary has been edited and annotated by Richard Pankhurst, 2002.) [p. 63]

[29] Flashman does not exaggerate. Mr St John is an enthusiast whose observations are to be found in Hotten’s Abyssinia and Its People (see Note to p. 24). [p. 78]

[30] Readers of the Flashman Papers do not need to be told that his one real talent (aside from his boasted expertise with horses and women) was for languages. He was a brilliant linguist and an unusually quick study, often mastering a language in weeks; he was being modest in telling Napier that he could “scratch by” in a dozen but was fluent in only six, and it is not surprising that he quickly acquired enough Amharic for simple conversation. It has been the Abyssinian language since the late Middle Ages, when it replaced Ge’ez, the tongue of those Semitic people who crossed from Arabia to Ethiopia long ago. Ge’ez means literally 'the free” and was applied to the people also; it is still used for liturgical purposes. An expert on Ethiopian languages, E. Ullendorf, says that Amharic bears the same kind of relation ship to Ge’ez as French does to Latin. (See E. Ullendorf, Exploration and Study of Abyssinia, 1945.) [p. 102]

[31] “Palmer’s Vesuvians', a patent match which burned with a sputtering flame, a favourite with cigar smokers, [p. 109]

[32] The atrocities described by Uliba-Wark are all well attested; indeed they are only part of the catalogue of horrors to be found in the histories written by two of the prisoners held by Theodore: Narrative of the British Mission to Theodore of Ethiopia by Hormuzd Rassam, 2 vols, 1869, and A Narrative of the Captivity in Abyssinia, 1868, by Dr Henry Blanc. These are two of the most essential works on the Abyssinian War, and between them give a graphic and detailed picture not only of the privations of their imprisonment, and of the plotting and politicking which took place between them and their captors, but are invaluable for their portraits of Theodore himself. They will be referred to frequently in these Notes, [p. Ill]

[33] Flashman is almost certainly referring to the First Sikh War of 1845-6 and the China War of 1860, which he has described in Flashman and the Mountain of Light and Flashman and the Dragon, [p. 111]

[34] The yellow scorpions of the genus Buthus are found in north-east Africa and the Sahara. Baby scorpions climb on the mother’s back after birth and remain there until they are big enough to fend for themselves, [p. 120]

[35] Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke attempted to find the source of the Nile in 1857-9, but Burton fell ill and Speke reached the source on Lake Victoria alone. Burton queried his findings, and after Speke and Grant in 1868 confirmed Speke’s original discovery (see Note to p. 61) Burton renewed the controversy. He and Speke were due to debate the question before the British Association on September 15, 1864, but on that same morning Speke was accidentally killed while partridge-shooting, [p. 131]

[36] Flashman’s cavalier attitude to dates is a vexation, but this passage gives some indication of his movements in the mid-1860s. The reference to Chancellorsville places him in the United States in May 1863, and we know he was at Gettysburg two months later, and in Washington when Lincoln was shot (April 1865). It is just possible, but highly unlikely, that his service (to both sides) in the U.S. Civil War was interrupted by a return to England in late 1863 or 1864. When he arrived in Mexico is uncertain, but his mention of Queretaro places him in the country between February and May of 1867, since that was the period in which Maximilian based himself at that royalist stronghold, where he was captured by the Juaristas. It seems plain, then, that between April 1865 and February 1867 Flashman returned to England at least once, and probably twice, since he speaks of “intervals” in the plural.

One would be inclined to commiserate with Elspeth if it were not clear from the Papers that, while they were deeply attached to each other, she bore his frequent absences with equanimity, [p. 135]

[37] It is not surprising that Flashman expected to be disbelieved, since in his day no one had survived such a plunge down a waterfall. Not until October, 2003, when an enterprising American deliber ately allowed himself to be borne over the Canadian section of Niagara Falls, and lived, did anyone make such a descent. The Canadian Fall is estimated at 158 ft; the Tisisat Fall which Flashman survived is approximately 150 ft. Tisisat is one of the most glo rious sights in Africa, the Blue Nile bordered by beautiful green banks and flowing smoothly past little jungly islands and rocks before it plunges over the lip. “It is an extraordinary thing that they should be so little known,” writes Alan Moorehead, “for they are, by some way, the grandest spectacle that either the Blue or the White Nile has to offer.” The Victoria Falls are considerably higher, and are known as “the smoke that thunders'. Tisisat, “the silver smoke', was discovered by two Portuguese missionaries, Paez and Lobo, in the early seventeenth century. (Moorehead, The Blue Nile.) [p. 144]

[38] We cannot tell where this camp was, and must assume from Flashman’s account that it was less than a day’s ride from Tisisat, probably in the direction of Magdala. Queen Masteeat was evi dently on the move at this time, and a week or so later we know from Holland and Hozier that she was at a place called Lugot, not given on the maps but said to be only five miles from Magdala. [p. 147]

[39] Lucien Maxwell (1818-75), frontiersman and landowner, was one of a party of mountain men, led by Kit Carson, who rescued Flashman from Apaches in 1850 (see Flashman and the Redskins); he later became proprietor of one of the largest private estates ever known, the Maxwell Land Grant. The trick which he taught Flashman of proffering a pistol-butt in apparent surrender to an opponent and suddenly rolling it into the palm to cover him, was known to gunfighters as the road-agent’s spin; the border shift consisted simply of tossing a pistol from one hand to the other.

The Las Vegas referred to is not the Nevada gambling resort, but an earlier settlement in New Mexico, [p. 147]

[40] Flashman was not exaggerating. His account of an Abyssinian orgy is almost identical to that of James Bruce a century earlier, the chief difference being that at the feast Bruce attended in Gondar, the steaks were cut from a living cow indoors in the pres ence of the guests, the beast’s bellowing being the summons to table. Both sexes were present, and Bruce describes how, after the banquet, “Love lights all its fires, and everything is permitted with absolute freedom. There is no coyness, no delays, no need of… retirement to gratify their wishes… they sacrifice both to Bacchus and to Venus. The two men nearest the vacuum a pair have made on the bench by leaving their seats, hold their upper garment like a screen before the two… and if we may judge by sound, they seem to think it as great a shame to make love in silence as to eat. Replaced in their seats again, the company drink the happy couple’s health, and their example is followed… as each couple is disposed. All this passes without remark or scandal, not a licentious word is uttered, nor the most distant joke upon the transaction.” [p. 176]

[41] Theodore used guerrilla raiding parties during his march from Debra Tabor, and after his arrival in Magdala, and prominent among them were his “Amazons'. Dr Blanc writes: “He had formed the strongest and hardiest of the women of his camp into a plundering band; he was much pleased with their bravery, and one of them having killed a petty chief… he was so delighted that he gave her a title of rank and presented her with one of his own pistols.” This description seems to fit Flashman’s “Diana', with her silver shield and pistol, [p. 189]

[42] The “falling out” had taken place when Theodore’s troops plundered the villagers of the Dalanta plateau, who had previously helped him as road-makers and porters on his march from Debra Tabor to Magdala. Furious at his betrayal, they gave their assistance to Napier’s advance. It is estimated that Theodore destroyed no fewer than 47 villages around Magdala, massacring 7000 people and pressing men into his service. According to Blanc, he was concluding a final raid in person at the time of Napier’s arrival at the Bechelo river (April 6-7); this must have been the raid, which was partly a foray for supplies as well as a scouting operation against the Gallas, which resulted in Flashman’s rescue and capture. (See Note to p. 221, which confirms the date.) [p. 195]

[43] If Theodore’s conversational flights seem outlandish, they are nevertheless authentic. He obviously had a habit of repeating himself, and giving free rein to his paranoia, during his drinking bouts, and his curious comparison of himself to an expectant mother, his allusions to the sword of Damocles, and