Flash For Freedom!

FLASH FOR FREEDOM!

by George MacDonald Fraser

Copyright 1971 by George MacDonald Fraser

For Kath, a memento of the long Sunday

Explanatory Note

When the first two packets of the Flashman Papers were published, in 1969 and 1970, there was some controversy over their authenticity. It was asked whether the papers were, in fact, the true personal memoirs of Harry Flash.man, the notorious bully of Tom Brown's Schooldays and later an eminent British soldier, or were simply an impudent fake.

This was not a controversy in which either Mr Paget Morrison, the owner of the papers, or I, his editor, thought fit to join. The matter was thoroughly discussed in various journals, and also on television, and if any doubters remain they are recommended to study the authoritative article which appeared in the New York Times of July 29, 1969, and which surely settles the question once and for all.

The first two packets of the papers contained Flashman's personal narrative of his expulsion from Rugby School by Dr Thomas Arnold, his early service in the British Army (1839-42), his decoration by Queen Victoria after the First Afghan War, and his involvement in the Schleswig-Holstein Question, in which he found himself pitted against the young Otto von Bismarck and the celebrated Countess of Landsfeld. The third packet, which is now presented to the public, continues his story in the year 1848 and the early months of 1849. It is remarkable as a first-hand account of an important social phenomenon of the early Victorian years — the Afro-American slave trade — and in its illumination of the characters of two of the most eminent statesmen of the century, one a future British Prime Minister and the other a future American President. Flashman's recollections cast interesting light on what may be called their formative years.

When the Flashman Papers were brought to light at Ashby, Leicestershire, in 1965, it was noted that while the great volume of manuscript had obviously been examined and re-arranged round about 1915, no alteration or amendment had been made to the text as set down by Flashman himself in 1903-1905. Closer examination of the third packet reveals, however, that an editorial hand has been lightly at work. I suspect that it belonged to Grizel de Rothschild, the youngest of Flashman's sisters-in-law, who with a fine Victorian delicacy has modified those blasphemies and improprieties with which the old soldier occasionally emphasised his narrative. She was by no means consistent in this, for while she paid close attention to oaths, she left untouched those passages in which Flashman retails his amorous adventures; possibly she did not understand what he was talking about. In any event, she gave up the task approximately half-way through the manuscript, but I have left her earlier editing as it stands, since it adds a certain period charm to the narrative.

For the rest, I have as usual inserted occasional explanatory notes.

G.M.F.