George Fraser - Flash for Freedom!

The main thing was, it would be a quiet life. As you know, in spite of the published catalogue of my career – Victoria Cross, general rank, eleven campaigns, and all that mummery – I’ve always been an arrant coward and a peaceable soul. Bullying underlings and whipping trollops always excepted, I’m a gentle fellow – which means I’ll never do harm to anyone if there’s a chance he may harm me in return. The trouble is, no one would believe it to look at me; I’ve always been big and hearty and looked the kind of chap who’d go three rounds with the town rough if he so much as stepped on my shadow, and from what Tom Hughes has written of me you might imagine I was always ready for devilment. Aye, but as I’ve grown older I’ve learned that devilment usually has to be paid for. God knows I’ve done my share of paying, and even in ’48, at the ripe old age of twenty-six, I’d seen enough sorrow, from the Khyber to German dungeons by way of the Borneo jungles and the torture-pits of Madagascar, to convince me that I must never go looking for trouble again. 2Who’d have thought that old Morrison’s plans to seat me at Westminster could have led to … well, ne’er mind. All in good time.

As to getting a suitable seat, that would be easy enough, with Morrison’s gelt greasing the way. Which prompted the thought that I ought to have a word with him about issues of political importance.

‘Two thousand a year at least,’ says I.

‘Five hundred and no’ a penny more,’ says he.

‘Dammit, I’ve appearances to keep up,’ says I. ‘Elspeth’s notions ain’t cheap.’

‘I’ll attend to that,’ says he. ‘As I always have done.’ The cunning old bastard wouldn’t even let me have the administration of my own wife’s household; he knew better.

‘A thousand, then. Good God, my clothes’ll cost that.’

‘Elspeth can see tae your wardrobe,’ says he, smirking. ‘Five hundred, my buckie; it’s mair than your worth.’

‘I’ll not do it, then,’ says I. ‘And that’s flat.’

‘Aye, weel,’ says he, ‘that’s a peety. I’ll just have to get one that will. Ye’ll find it a wee bit lean on your army half-pay, I’m thinkin’.’

‘Damn you,’ says I. ‘Seven-fifty.’

And eventually I got it, but only because Elspeth told her father I should have it. She, of course, was delighted at the thought of my having a political career. ‘We shall have soirées, attended by Lord John and the Marquis of Lansdowne,’ 3she exclaimed. ‘People with titles , and their ladies, and –’

‘They’re Whigs,’ says I. ‘I’ve an idea your papa will expect me to be a Tory.’

‘It doesn’t signify in the least,’ says she. ‘The Tories are a better class of people altogether, I believe. Why, the Duke is a Tory, is he not?’

‘So the rumour runs,’ says I. ‘But political secrets of that kind must be kept quiet, you know.’

‘Oh, it is all quite wonderful,’ says she, paying me no heed at all. ‘You will be famous again, Harry – you are so clever, you are sure to be a success, and I – I will need at least four page boys with buttons, and footmen in proper uniform.’ She clapped her hands, her eyes sparkling, and pirouetted. ‘Why, Harry! We shall need a new house! I must have clothes – oh, but Papa will see to it, he is so kind!’

It occurred to me that Papa might decide he had bitten off more than he could chew, listening to her, although personally I thought her ideas were excellent. She was in tremendous spirits, and I took the opportunity to make another assault on her; she was so excited that I had her half out of her dress before she realised what I was about, and then the wicked little b---h teased me along until I was thoroughly randified, only to stop me in the very act of boarding her, because of her concern for dear little Harry Albert Victor, blast his impudence.

‘To think,’ says she, ‘that he will have a great statesman for a father!’ She had me in the Cabinet already, you see. ‘Oh, Harry, how proud we shall be!’

Which was small consolation to me just then, having to button myself up and restrain my carnal appetites. To be sure I eased them considerably in the next week or two, for I looked out some of the Haymarket tarts of my acquaintance, and although they were a poor substitute for Elspeth they helped me to settle in again to London life and regular whoring. So I was soon enjoying myself, speculating pleasantly about the future, taking my ease with the boys about the town, forgetting the recent horrors of Jotunberg and Rudi Starnberg’s gang of assassins, and waiting for old Morrison to start the wheels of my political career turning.

He was helped, of course, by my own celebrity and the fact that my father – who was now happily settled down with his delirium tremens at a place in the country – had been an M.P. in his time, and a damned fine hand at the hustings; he had got in on a popular majority after horse-whipping his opponent on the eve of the poll and offering to fight bare-knuckle with any man the Whigs could put up, from Brougham down. He had a good deal more bottom than I, but they did for him at Reform, and if I didn’t have his ardour I was certain I had a greater talent for survival, political and otherwise.

Anyway, it was some weeks before Morrison announced that I was to meet some ‘men in the know’ as he called them, and that we were to go down to Wiltshire for a few days, to the house of a local bigwig, where some politicos would be among the guests. It sounded damned dull, and no doubt would have been, had it not been for my own lechery and vanity and the shockingest turn of ill luck. Apart from anything else, I missed the Derby.

We left Elspeth at home, working contentedly at her Berlins, 4and took the train for Bristol, Morrison and I. He was the damnedest travelling companion you ever saw, for apart from being a thundering bore he carped at everything, from the literature at the station book-stalls, which he pronounced trash, to the new practice of having to pay a bob ‘attendance money’ to railway servants. 5I was glad to get to Devizes, I can tell you, whence we drove to Seend, a pretty little place where our host lived in a fairish establishment called Cleeve House.

He was the kind of friend you’d expect Morrison to have – a middle-aged moneybags of a banker called Locke, with reach-me-down whiskers and a face like a three-day corpse. He was warm enough, evidently, but as soon as I saw the females sitting about in chairs on the gravel with their bonnets on, reading improving books, I could see this was the kind of house-party that wasn’t Flashy’s style at all. I was used to hunting weeks where you dined any old how, with lots of brandy and singing, and chaps p-----g in the corner and keeping all hours, and no females except the local bareback riders, as old Jack Mitton used to call them. But by ’48 they were going out, you see and it was as much as you dare do, at some of the houses, to produce the cards before midnight after the ladies had retired. I remember Speed telling me, round about this time, of one place he’d been to where they got him up at eight for morning prayers, and gave him a book of sermons to read after luncheon.

Cleeve House wasn’t quite as raw as that, but it would have been damned dreary going if one of the girls present hadn’t been quite out of the ordinary run. I fixed on her from the start – a willowy blonde piece with a swinging hip and a knowing eye. Strange, I met her at Cleeve, and didn’t see her again till I came on her cooking breakfast for a picket of Campbell’s Highlanders outside Balaclava six years later, the very morning of Cardigan’s charge. Fanny Locke her name was; 6she was the young sister of our host, a damned handsome eighteen with the shape of a well-developed matron. Like so many young girls whose body outgrows their years, she didn’t know what to do with it – well, I could give her guidance there. As soon as I saw her swaying down the staircase at Cleeve, ho-ho, thinks I, hark forrard. You may be sure I was soon in attendance, and when I found she was a friendly little thing, and a keen horsewoman, I laid my plans accordingly, and engaged to go riding with her next day, when she would show me the local country – it was the long grass I had in mind, of course.