Flashman And The Tiger

Appendix

It hardly seemed worth while to give footnotes to Flashman' s account of the Tranby Croft affair, since almost all of them would have led the reader to the same authority, W. Teignmouth Shore’s The Baccarat Case: Gordon-Cumming v. Wilson and Others, 1932, in the Notable British Trials Series. It contains a full transcript of the trial, with notes and comments, and is the best and fullest work on the subject. Other books which touch on the case and related matters include Margaret Blunden, The Countess of Warwick, 1967; Piers Compton, Victorian Vortex, 1977; Philippe Julian, Edward and the Edwardians; and an anonymous work, The Private Life of the King, 1901.

Teignmouth Shore published his book "to win justice for the memory of a man much wronged", and nailed his colours to the mast with his opening quotation from Truth, which asserted after the trial that a dog would not have been hanged on the evidence that convicted Gordon-Cumming. It was an opinion shared by many, and if Flashman is to be believed, they were right.

His view of the verdict aside, Mr Shore makes several points of interest. He describes the outcry against the Prince of Wales as outrageous, and one has to agree that whatever the faults of the future King Edward VII, he hardly deserved the storm which burst over his hapless head from a press which knew a ripe scandal when it saw one, and was only too glad of a royal scapegoat. Mr Shore wondered if any newspaper "of high standing" in 1932 would have been so censorious. Perhaps not; he did not live to see the 1990s. At the same time, the Prince showed lamentable judgment when the cheating allegation was first brought to his notice, and Mr Shore is plainly right when he suggests that the sensible thing would have been to insist on accused and accusers thrashing the matter out on the spot. There was indeed a remarkable lack of common sense in the way the affair was handled, and in the pathetic belief that it could be kept quiet. Obviously (as Flashman confirms) panic struck not only the Prince and his advisers, but Gordon-Cumming also, or he would never have signed the damning document.

Mr Shore is scathing on the conduct of the trial, "the Court being turned by consent of the judge into a theatre, and a shoddy theatre at that".

Whether Flashman’s sensational disclosure finally settles the controversy is for his readers to decide; it fits the known facts, and if it seems unlikely, that is perfectly in keeping with the rest of The Baccarat Case.

An entertaining experiment, which I have made myself, is to insert a cover over the introduction to Mr Shore’s book, and over the last page which carries the verdict, and invite someone who knows nothing of the case to read the trial and pronounce Sir William Gordon-Cumming guilty or not. The reactions are interesting.