Royal Flash

‘Splendid piece, ain’t she?’ says one of the Mooners. ‘They say Lumley’ – he was the manager – ‘pays her a fortune. ’Pon my soul, I would myself, what?’

Oho, I thought to myself, what’s this? I asked the Mooner, offhand, who she might be.

‘Why, she’s his new danseuse, don’t you know,’ says he. ‘It seems that opera hasn’t been bringing in the tin lately, so Lumley imported her specially to dance between the acts. Thinks she’ll make a great hit, and with those legs I’ll be bound she will. See here.’ And he pushed a printed bill into my hand. It read:

HER MAJESTY’S THEATRE

Special Attraction

Mr Benjamin Lumley begs to announce that between the acts of the Opera, Donna Lola Montez, of the Teatro Real, Seville, will have the honour to make her first appearance in England in the Original Spanish dance, El Oleano.

‘Ain’t she a delight, though?’ says the Mooner. ‘Gad, look at ’em bouncing when she struts!’

‘That’s Donna Lola Montez, is it?’ says I. ‘When does she perform, d’ye know?’

‘Opens next week,’ says he. ‘There’ll be a crowd and a half, shouldn’t wonder. Oh, Lovely Lola!’

Well, I’d never heard of Lola Montez, but I saw there was something here that needed going into. I made a few discreet inquiries, and it seemed that half the town was talking about her already, for Lumley was making a great to-do about his beautiful new attraction. The critics were slavering in advance about ‘the belle Andalusian’, and predicting a tremendous success, but nobody had any notion that she wasn’t a genuine Spanish artiste at all. But I was in no doubt about her; I’d been close enough to Rosanna James to be sure.

At first I was just amused, but then it occurred to me that here was a heaven-sent opportunity to have my own back on her. If she was exposed, denounced for what she really was, that would put paid to her making a hit. It would also teach her not to throw piss-pots at me. But how to do it best? I pondered, and in five minutes I had it pat.

I remembered, from the conversations we had had during our passionate week, her mention of Lord Ranelagh, who was one of the leading boys about town just then. She was forever chattering about her admirers, and he was one she had turned down; snubbed him dead, in fact. I knew him only to see, for he was a very top-flight Corinthian, and didn’t take much heed even of heroes if they weren’t out of the top drawer (and I wasn’t). But all I’d heard suggested that he was a first-class swine, and just the man for me.

I hunted him out at his club, slid inside when the porter wasn’t looking, and found him in the smoke-room. He was lying on a couch, puffing a cigar with his hat over his brows; I spoke right out.

‘Lord Ranelagh,’ says I. ‘How are you? I’m Flashman.’

He cocked an eye lazily under the brim of his hat, damned haughty.

‘I’m certain I haven’t had the honour,’ says he. ‘Good day to you.’

‘No, no, you remember me,’ says I. ‘Harry Flashman, you know.’

He pushed his hat right back, and looked at me as if I was a toad.

‘Oh,’ says he at length, with a sneer. ‘The Afghan warrior. Well, what is it?’

‘I took the liberty of calling on your lordship,’ says I, ‘because I chanced to come across a mutual acquaintance.’

‘I cannot conceive that we have any,’ drawls he, ‘unless you happen to be related to one of my grooms.’

I laughed merrily at this, although I felt like kicking his noble backside for him. But I needed him, you see, so I had to toad-eat him.

‘Not bad, not bad,’ says I. ‘But this happens to be a lady. I’m sure she would be of interest to you.’

‘Are you a pimp, by any chance? If so—’

‘No, my lord, I’m not,’ says I. ‘But I thought you might be diverted to hear of Mrs James – Mrs Elizabeth Rosanna James.’

He frowned, and blew ash off his ridiculous beard, which covered half his shirt-front.

‘What of her, and what the devil has she to do with you?’

‘Why, nothing, my lord,’ says I. ‘But she happens to be taking the stage at Her Majesty’s next week, masquerading as a famous Spanish dancer. Donna Lola Montez, she calls herself, and pretends to be from Seville. An impudent imposture.’

He digested this, while I watched his nasty mind working.

‘How d’ye know this?’ says he.

‘I’ve seen her at rehearsal,’ says I, ‘and there’s no doubt about it – she’s Rosanna James.’

‘And why should this be of interest to me?’

I shrugged at this, and he asked what my purpose was in telling him.

‘Oh, I was sure you would wish to be at her first performance – to pay your respects to an old friend,’ says I. ‘And if so, I would solicit a place for myself in your party. I entertain the same affection for her that I’m sure your lordship does.’

He considered me. ‘You’re a singularly unpleasant creature,’ says he. ‘Why don’t you expose her yourself, since that’s obviously what you want?’

‘Your lordship, I’m sure, has a style in these things. And you are well known, while I …’ I didn’t want to be the centre of any scandal, although I wanted to have a front seat to see the fun.

‘I can do your dirty work, eh? Well, well.’

‘You’ll go?’

‘That is no concern of yours,’ says he. ‘Good day.’

‘May I come?’

‘My dear sir, I cannot prevent you going where you choose. But I forbid you absolutely to address me in public.’

And he turned over on his side, away from me. But I was satisfied; no doubt he would go, and denounce ‘Donna Lola’. He had his own score to pay off, and was just the sort of mean hound who would do it, too.

Sure enough, when the fashionable crowd was arriving at Her Majesty’s the following Monday, up rolls Lord Ranelagh with a party of bloods, in two coaches. I was on hand, and tailed on to them at the door; he noticed me, but didn’t say anything, and I was allowed to follow into the omnibus-box which he had engaged directly beside the stage. One or two of his friends gave me haughty stares, and I took my seat very meek, at the back of the box, while his lordship showed off at the front, and his friends and he talked and laughed loudly, to show what first-rate bucks they were.

It was a splendid house – quite out of proportion to the opera, which was The Barber of Seville. In fact, I was astonished at the gathering: there was the Queen Dowager in the Royal Box, with a couple of foreign princelings; old Wellington, wrinkled and lynx-eyed, with his Duchess; Brougham, the minister, the Baroness de Rothschild, Count Esterhazy, the Belgian Ambassador, and many others. All the most eminent elderly lechers of the day, in fact, and I hadn’t a doubt that it wasn’t the music they had come for. Lola Montez was the attraction of the night, and the talk through the pit was of nothing else. Rumour had it that at certain select gatherings for the highest grandees in Spain, she had been known to dance nude; it was also being said that she had once been the leading light of a Turkish harem. Oh, they were in a fine state of excitement by the time the curtain went up.

My own idea of theatrical entertainment, I admit, is the music-hall; strapping wenches and low comedians are my line, and your fine drama and music bore me to death. So I found The Barber of Seville a complete fag: fat Italians screeching, and not a word to be understood. I read the programme for a bit, and found more entertainment in the advertisements than there was on the stage – ‘Mrs Rodd’s anatomical ladies’ stays, which ensure the wearer a figure of astonishing symmetry’; I remember thinking that the leading lady in The Barber could have profited by Mrs Rodd’s acquaintance. Also highly spoken of were Jackson’s patent enema machines, as patronised by the nobility when travelling. I wasn’t alone, I noticed, in finding the opera tedious; there were yawns in the pit, and Wellington (who was near our box) began to snore until his Duchess dug him in the ribs. Then the first act ended, and when the applause died away everyone sat up, expectant; there was a flourish of Spanish music from the orchestra, and Lola (or Rosanna) shot dramatically on to the stage.

I’m no authority on the dance; the performer, not the performance, is what I pay to see. But it seemed to me that she was damned good. Her striking beauty brought the pit up with a gasp: she was in a black bodice, cut so low that her breasts seemed to be in continual danger of popping out, and her tiny pink skirt showed off her legs to tremendous advantage. The slim white neck and shoulders, the coal-black hair, the gleaming eyes, the scarlet lips curled almost in contempt – the whole effect was startling and exotic. You know these throbbing, Spanish rhythms; well, she swayed and shook and stamped her way through them in splendid passion, and the audience sat spellbound. She was at once inviting and challenging; I doubt if there was any gesture or movement in the whole dance that a magistrate could have taken exception to, and yet the whole effect of it was sensual. It seemed to say ‘Bed me – if you dare’, and every man in the place was taking her clothes off as he watched. What the women thought I can’t imagine, but I guess they admired her almost as much as they disliked her.16

When she finished abruptly, with a final smash of her foot and clash of cymbals from the orchestra, the theatre went wild. They cheered and stamped, and she stood for a moment still as a statue, staring proudly down at them, and then swept straight off the stage. The applause was deafening, but she didn’t come back, and there were sighs and a few groans when the curtain went up again on the next act of the opera, and those damned Macaronis began yelping again.

Through all this Ranelagh had sat forward in his chair, staring at her, but never said a word. He didn’t pay the least attention to the opera, but when Lola came on for her second dance, which was even more tempestuous than the first, he made a great show of examining her through his glasses. Everyone else was doing the same, of course, in the hope that her bodice would burst, which it seemed likely to do at any moment, but when the applause broke out, wilder than ever, he kept his glasses glued to his eyes, and when she had gone he was seen to be frowning in a very puzzled way. This was all leading up to the denouement, of course, and when she bounced on, snapping her fan, for the third time, I heard him mutter to his nearest neighbour:

‘You chaps keep your eyes on me. I’ll give the word, mind, and then we’ll see some fun.’

She swirled through the dance, showing splendid amounts of her thighs, and gliding about sinuously while peeping over her fan, and at the finish there was a perfect torrent of clapping and shouting, with bouquets plopping down on to the stage and chaps standing up and clapping wildly. She smiled now, for the first time, bowing and blowing kisses before the curtain, and then suddenly, from our box there was a great hissing in unison, at which the applause faltered and died away. She turned to stare furiously in our direction, and as the hissing rose louder than ever there were angry shouts and cries from the rest of the theatre. People craned to see what the row was about, and then Ranelagh climbs to his feet, an imposing figure with his black beard and elegant togs, and cries out, very distinctly:

‘Why, this is a proper swindle, ladies and gentlemen! That woman isn’t Lola Montez. She’s an Irish girl, Betsy James!’

There was a second’s silence, and then a tremendous hullabaloo. The hissing started again, with cries of ‘Fraud!’ and ‘Impostor!’, the applause began and sputtered out, and angry catcalls and boos sounded from the gallery. In a moment the whole mood of the theatre had changed; taking their cue from Ranelagh and his toadies, they began to howl her down; a few coins clattered on the stage; the conductor, gaping at the audience with his mouth open, suddenly flung down his baton and stamped out; and then the whole place was in a frenzy, stamping and calling for their money back, and shouting to her angrily to get back to the bogs of Donegal.

She was standing blazing with fury, and when she moved towards our box some of the chaps scrambled back to get out of harm’s way. She stood a moment, her bosom heaving, her eyes sweeping the box – oh, yes, she recognised me all right, and when she began to curse at us I think it was me as much as Ranelagh she was getting at. Unfortunately, she swore in English, and the mob caught it and yelled louder than ever. Then she dashed down the bouquet she was holding, stamped on it, kicked it into the orchestra, and with one last damnation in our direction, ran from the stage as the curtain fell.17

I must say I was delighted; I hadn’t thought it could go off so well. As we crowded out of the place – The Barber, of course, was entirely forgotten in the sensation – I came up to Ranelagh’s elbow and congratulated him; I couldn’t have paid her out so splendidly myself, and I told him so. He gave me a cold nod and sailed off, the snobbish bastard, but I wasn’t in a mood to mind too much; that was me quits with Mistress Lola for her brickbats and insults, and I went home in high good humour.

She was finished on the London stage, of course. Lumley dismissed her, and although one or two attempts were made to present her at other theatres, the damage was done. All sorts of people now seemed to remember her as Mrs James, and although she wrote a letter of denial to the press, no one believed it. A few weeks later she had disappeared and that, thought I, was the end of Lola Montez so far as I was concerned, and good riddance. A brilliant bed-mate, I don’t deny, in her way, and even now the picture of her kneeling naked among the bed-clothes can set me itching – but I’d never liked her particularly, and was glad to see her sent packing.

But it wasn’t the end of her, by any means. Although it was some years before I saw her again – in circumstances that I couldn’t have dreamed of – one heard of her from time to time through the papers. And always it was sensational news; she seemed to have a genius for thrusting herself into high places and creating scandal. First there was a report of her horse-whipping a policeman in Berlin; next she was dancing on the tables during a civic banquet in Bonn, to the outrage of Prince Albert and our Queen, who were on a State visit at the time. Then she was performing in Paris, and when the audience didn’t take to her she stripped off her garters and drawers and flung them at the gallery; she started a riot in the streets of Warsaw, and when they tried to arrest her she held the peelers off with pistols. And of course there were scores of lovers, most of them highly placed: the Viceroy of Poland, the Tsar of Russia (although I doubt if that’s true), and Liszt the musician.18 She took up with him two or three times, and once to get rid of her he locked her in a hotel room and sneaked out by the back door.

I met him, later on, by the way, and we discussed the lovely Lola and found ourselves much in agreement. Like me, he admired her as a tumble, but found her all too overpowering. ‘She is a consuming fire,’ he told me, shaking his white head ruefully, ‘and I’ve been scorched – oh, so often.’ I sympathised; she had urged me on in love-making with a hair-brush, but with him it had been a dog-whip, and he was a frail sort of fellow, you know.

At all events, these scraps of gossip reached me from time to time over the next few years. In that time I was out of England a good deal – as will be set down in another packet of my memoirs, if I’m spared to write them. My doings in the middle forties of the century don’t fit in with my present tale, though, so I pass them over for the moment and come to the events to which my meeting with Lola and Otto Bismarck was the prelude.

I can see, now, that if I hadn’t deserted Speedicut that night, hadn’t been rude to Bismarck, hadn’t set Jack Gully on to give him a beating, and finally, hadn’t taken my spite out on Lola by peaching on her to Ranelagh – without all these ‘if’s’ I would have been spared one of the most frightening and incredible experiences of my life. Another glorious chapter in the heroic career of Harry Flashman would not have been written, and neither would a famous novel.

However, I’ve seen too much of life to fret over if’s and but’s. There’s nothing you can do about them, and if you find yourself at the end of the day an octogenarian with money in the bank and drink in the house – well, you’d be a fool to wish that things had fallen out differently.

Anyway, I was home again in London in ’47, with cash in my pocket for once – my own cash, too, dishonestly got, but no dirtier than the funds which old Morrison, my father-in-law, doled out as charity to keep us respectable ‘for my wee daughter’s sake’. His wee daughter, my Elspeth, was as pleased to see me as she ever was; we still suited very well between the sheets, however much she was playing loose with her admirers. I had ceased worrying about that, too.

However, when I arrived home, hoping for a few months’ rest to recover from the effects of a pistol ball which had been dug out of the small of my back, there was a nasty shock awaiting me. My dear parents-in-law, Mr and Mrs Morrison of Paisley, were now in permanent residence in London; I hadn’t seen much of them, thank God, since I had married their beautiful, empty-headed trollop of a daughter several years before, when I was a young subaltern in Cardigan’s Hussars. We had detested each other then, they and I, and time hadn’t softened the emotion, on either side.

To make matters worse, my father was away from home. In the past year or two the old fellow had been hitting the bottle pretty hard – and pretty hard for him meant soaking up liquor in every waking moment. Once or twice they had to put him away in a place in the country where the booze was sweated out of him and the pink mice which nibbled at his fingers and toes were shoo’ed away – that was what he said, anyway – but it seemed that they kept coming back, and he was off getting another ‘cure’.

‘A fine thing,’ sniffed old Morrison – we were at dinner on my first evening home, and I had hoped to have it in bed with Elspeth, but of course we had to do ‘the polite’ by her parents – ‘a fine thing, indeed. He’ll drink himsel’ intae the grave, I suppose.’

‘Probably,’ says I. ‘His father and grand-father did, so I don’t see why he shouldn’t.’

Mrs Morrison, who in defiance of probability had grown with the years even more like a vulture, gave a gasp of disgust at this, and old Morrison said he didn’t doubt that the son of the house would follow in his ancestors’ besotted footsteps.

‘Shouldn’t wonder,’ says I, helping myself to claret. ‘I’ve got a better excuse than they had.’

‘And whit does that mean, sir?’ bridled old Morrison. I didn’t bother to tell him, so he started off on a great rant about ingratitude and perversity, and the dissolute habits of myself and my family, and finished up with his age-old lamentation about his daughter having married a wastrel and a ruffian, who hadn’t even the decency to stay at home with his wife like a Christian, but must be forever wandering like Ishmael …

‘Hold on,’ says I, for I was sick of this. ‘Since I married your daughter I have been twice abroad, on my country’s service, and on the first occasion at least I came home with a good deal of credit. I’ll wager you weren’t slow to boast about your distinguished son-in-law when I came back from India in ’42.’

‘And what have ye made of it?’ sneers he. ‘What are ye? A captain still, and like to remain one.’

‘You’re never tired of reminding Elspeth in your letters that you keep this family, this house, and the rest of it. Buy me a majority, if military rank means so much to you.’

‘Damn yer impudence!’ says he. ‘Is it no’ enough that I keep you and yer drunken father oot o’ the poor’s-hoose, where ye belong?’

‘I’d have thought so,’ says I, ‘but if you want me to shoot up the military tree as well – why, it costs money, you know.’

‘Aye, weel, deil’s the penny ye’ll get from me,’ snaps he. ‘Enough is bein’ spent on wanton folly as it is,’ and it seemed to me he darted a look at his vinegary spouse, who sniffed and coloured a bit. What’s this, I wondered: surely she hasn’t been asking him to buy her a pair of colours: Horse Guards wouldn’t have taken her, anyway, not for a commission: farrier-sergeant, perhaps, but no higher.

No more was said at dinner, which ended in a merry atmosphere of poisonous ill-will, but I got the explanation from Elspeth when we had retired for the night. It seemed that her mother had been growing increasingly concerned at her inability to get Elspeth’s two virgin sisters married off: the oldest girl, Mary, had been settled on some commercial creature in Glasgow, and was breeding at a rare rate, but Agnes and Grizel were still single. I said surely there were enough fortune-hunters in Scotland ready to take a shot at her father’s money, but she said no, her mother had discouraged them. She was flying higher, reasoning that if Elspeth had been able to get me, who had titled relatives and was at least half way into the great world of fashionable society, Agnes and Grizel could do even better.

‘She’s mad,’ says I. ‘If they had your looks it might be a half-chance, but one sight of your dear parents is going to scare any eligible sprig a mile off. Sorry, m’dear, but they ain’t acceptable, you know.’

‘My parents certainly lack the advantages,’ says Elspeth seriously. Marrying me had turned her into a most wonderful snob. ‘That I admit. But father is extremely rich, as you are aware—’

‘To hear him, it’s no fault of ours if he is.’

‘—and you know, Harry, that quite a few of our titled acquaintances are not too nice to look above a fine dowry. I think, with the right introductions, that Mama might find very suitable husbands for them. Agnes is plain, certainly, but little Grizel is really pretty, and their education has been quite as careful as my own.’

It isn’t easy for a beautiful woman with blue eyes, a milky complexion, and corn-gold hair to look pompous, especially when she is wearing only a French corset decorated with pink ribbons, but Elspeth managed it. At that moment I was overcome again with that yearning affection for her that I sometimes felt, in spite of her infidelities; I can’t explain it, beyond saying that she must have had some magic quality, something to do with the child-like, thoughtful look she wore, and the pure, helpless stupidity in her eyes. It is very difficult not to like a lovely idiot.

‘Since you’re so well-educated,’ says I, pulling her down beside me, ‘let’s see how much you remember.’ And I put her through a most searching test which, being Elspeth, she interrupted from time to time with her serious observations on Mrs Morrison’s chances of marrying off the two chits.

‘Well,’ says I, when we were exhausted, ‘so long as I ain’t expected to help launch ’em in Society, I don’t mind. Good luck to it, I say, and I hope they get a Duke apiece.’

But of course, I had to be dragged into it: Elspeth was quite determined to use my celebrity for what it was still worth, on her sisters’ behalf, and I knew that when she was insistent there was no way of resisting her. She controlled the purse-strings, you see, and the cash I had brought home wouldn’t last long at my rate of spending, I knew. So it was a fairly bleak prospect I had come back to: the guv’nor away in the grip of the quacks and demon drink, old Morrison in the house carping and snuffling, Elspeth and Mrs Morrison planning their campaign to inflict her sisters on unsuspecting London, and myself likely to be roped in – which meant being exposed in public alongside my charming Scotch relations. I should have to take old Morrison to my club, and stand behind Mrs Morrison’s chair at parties – no doubt listening to her teaching some refined mama the recipe for haggis – and have people saying: ‘Seen Flashy’s in-laws? They eat peat, don’t you know, and speak nothing but Gaelic. Well, it wasn’t English, surely?’

Oh, I knew what to expect, and determined to keep out of it. I thought of going to see my Uncle Bindley at the Horse Guards, and beseeching him to arrange an appointment for me to some regiment out of town – I was off the active list just then, and was not relishing the idea of half-pay anyway. And while I was hesitating, in those first few days at home, the letter came that helped to solve my difficulties for me and incidentally changed the map of Europe.