BY STEWART SLATER
They have come for Roald Dahl. They have come for James Bond. They have not, yet, come for Sir Harry Paget Flashman, V.C. Which is a surprise.
For, it is hard to imagine a figure less in tune with our times. A Poster-boy for Victorian Imperialism at a time when colonialism has become a synonym for evil. Holder of unenlightened views on women – half way through his life, he had already reached 478 conquests, not all of them willing. The less said about his racial views, the better. Black Lives would not, we can be sure, have Mattered to Flashman for, with the important exception of his own, no lives did. If ever there was a figure ripe for cancellation, it is “Bloody Lance”, the “hero” of Piper’s Fort.
But life sometimes imitates art for to the man himself, this would be nothing new. Flashman’s entire adult life was a sustained effort to avoid cancellation. From his first campaign in Afghanistan, when, having collapsed in terror, he was found clutching the flag by the relieving force and mistakenly hailed a hero, the public’s view of Flashman was radically different to the reality, an illusion which, enjoying the baubles of fame, he expended considerable effort in maintaining, all too aware of the consequences of failure.
In this, he was, if anything, too successful. While he ended his life as a Brigadier-General, knight and a friend of “Vicky”, these came at the not insignificant cost of a series of exploits which he would have given almost anything to avoid. For, a self-confessed coward, his lovingly curated reputation turned him into the Empire’s “go to” man for dangerous missions resulting in his unwilling presence at the Charge of the Light Brigade, the Indian Mutiny, the Taiping Rebellion, the First Sikh War, the Abyssinian War and the Battle of Isandlwana.
That he was also forced by Bismarck to impersonate a member of the Danish Royal Family, spent time as a slaver and, indeed, a slave, was present at both Harper’s Ferry and Little Big Horn and was, for a period, the kept man of the possibly cannibalistic Queen Ranavalona I of Madagascar were, however, very much his own fault.
It is, of course, purely by historical accident that we know of this eventful life; the result, according to the first book, of the discovery of a long forgotten anti-hero’s papers in a furniture sale in Leicestershire. Or more prosaically, of a bored journalist on the Glasgow Herald wondering what might have happened to the villain in Tom Brown’s Schooldays after his expulsion from Rugby. It is a measure of George MacDonald Fraser’s success that more than one American journalist reviewed his first installment of his series as the former and not the latter.
It was an easy mistake to make for the twelve books of the series are vividly written, backed up with copious footnotes of exactly the type a dusty academic might make (it is no slight on my teachers when I say that most of my knowledge of the Victorian Empire comes from the back pages of Flashman). Had the papers of a forgotten real-life figure been discovered, it is hard to believe they would have looked much different.
But more than the form of the books, there is the man himself. For Fraser created, in contrast to the usual one-dimensional characters of mass market fiction, a believable figure of recognisably human complexity. A habitual coward, he can, when his reputation demands it, summon the courage to preserve his image, riding with the Light Brigade all the way to the Russian guns. There may be many women, but there is only one Woman, Elspeth, the Paisley mill-owner’s daughter he unwillingly marries in the first book. Equally fond of horizontal gymnastics and, he suspects, with a similar disregard for the letter of her marriage vows, no matter how long he is gone, or how many beds he passes through on the way, he always finds his way back to the wife who is, in all likelihood, every bit as bad as himself.
It is only “by making the darkness conscious”, wrote Carl Jung, that one can “become enlightened” and it was in this that Fraser excelled himself. For Flashman is shockingly self-aware, every book a remorseless catalogue of his sins and failings. If he is critical of others (most famous Victorians enter his pages, few, if any, leave them unscathed) he is no more sparing of himself; his only talents are “horses, languages, and fornication.” Every misdeed (and there are plenty) is calmly and dispassionately laid out before the reader. Few characters would describe themselves as “a scoundrel, a liar, a cheat, a thief, a coward and, oh yes, a toady.”, even fewer would do so in such an unapologetic way. The Scottish writer James Hogg may have called his novel The Private Memoirs of a Justified Sinner but Flashman never attempts to provide excuses for his behaviour, he merely accepts himself for what he is and invites us to do the same, conscious perhaps that, in the same position, many of us might be tempted to behave in similar ways.
It is eighteen years since the last book was published, and fifteen since Fraser died, so there will be no more. We will never learn what Flashman did to earn San Serafino’s Order of Purity and Truth, nor what they knew of him to only give him the 4th class. For the moment, though, the books remain, the literary equivalent of a roguish but irresistible friend who turns up occasionally, tells some cracking stories in the pub and then tries, not for the first time, to leave with your girlfriend.
But if J.K. Rowling, purveyor of Enid Blyton with an overlay of Blairism and cod Latin, can face trouble over her views on the trans issue, how much longer can an avowed fan of the Empire whose main character is an upper class white man with dodgy attitudes and a long list of colonial atrocities to his name last?
Perhaps longer than we fear. For if the fictional Flashman was good at appearing all things to all people, so the books permit numerous different readings. To Fraser, they were “an adventure story dressed up as the memoirs of an unrepentant cad”, but to reviewers they are a “scathing attack on British Imperialism” which “debunk the noble rhetoric of Victorian England”.
While he may have set out to write a Boy’s Own story, the picture of the time which Fraser paints is nuanced. The many great Victorians who appear do so warts and all, often, indeed, warts alone – James Hope Grant may have put down the Taiping Rebellion* and been voted the thanks of Parliament, but to Flashman, “he wasn’t much of a general…so inarticulate he could barely utter any order but ‘Charge’”. The Empire which emerges from his writing is not one which won by the great and the good in heroic feats which will echo down the ages, but one acquired despite the manifest inadequacies of those in command. There are no heroes in a Flashman novel, least of all the man himself, merely the villainous, the stupid and, like the abolitionist John Brown, the insane. If he is better than those he meets, it is only because he knows just how bad he is.
Nor are his racism and sexism entirely clear cut. His time as a slave in America allows Fraser to paint a highly unflattering portrait of that society and the closest thing the series has to a recurring villain is John Charity Spring, moralising former Oxford don turned master of the slave ship Balliol College. Whatever views he has on race, they do nothing to stop him fraternising with women from all backgrounds, many of whom, like the Empress Dowager Cixi and Lakshmibai, Rani of Jhansi and leader of the Indian Mutiny, are clearly “strong, independent women”.
It may be then that, just as the fictional Flashman paid enough deference to the pities of his time to emerge unscathed, there is just enough in them for the books to manage the same trick in our equally censorious days. This should not, of course, matter for he is one of the great fictional characters, roguish yet irresistible. He deserves to survive. So, just in case I’m wrong, if you haven’t already done so, go and buy a copy. You won’t regret it.
Stewart Slater works in Finance. He invites you to join him at his website.
*MacDonald Fraser may have mixed up two men with similar names, and the one who assisted in the Taiping Rebellion was Admiral Sir James Hope while the one who was voted the thanks of Parliament for something else was General Sir James Hope Grant.