a slip) had a reputation earlier still, although not an unsavoury one. Turf records of the day contain no mention of Running Ribbons, however, so Spottswood was probably doing Gully no great favour in offering to sell him.
John L. Sullivan won the first recognised world heavyweight title when he knocked out Paddy Ryan in nine rounds at Mississippi City, on Feb. 7, 1882. It is reported that the spectators included Henry Ward Beecher, the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, and Jesse James.
Gents and Mooners. In the 1840’s the term Gent was most particularly applied to the young middle-class idler who aped his superiors and dressed extravagantly; the Mooner was rather older and spent his time “mooning” at shop windows and ambling gently about the town. Flashman would consider both species to be well beneath him.
Despite Flashman’s enthusiastic notice, it seems probable that Lola Montez was not a particularly good artiste, although the historian Veit Valentin observes that she had “the tigerish vivacity that inspires the Andalusian dance”.
The account of Lola’s disastrous appearance at Her Majesty’s Theatre (June 3, 1843) is splendidly accurate, not only in its description of Lord Ranelagh’s denunciation, but even in such details as the composition of the audience and the programme notes. (See Wyndham’s Magnificent Montez.) This is a good, verifiable example of Flashman’s ability as a straight reporter, and encourages confidence in those other parts of his story where corroboration is lacking and checking of the facts is impossible.
Lola had a passionate affair with Liszt in the year following her departure from London; after their first rapture she appears to have had much the same effect on the famous pianist as she did on Flashman. He tired of her, and did indeed abandon her in a hotel, whereupon she spent several hours smashing the furniture. Typically, Lola bore no grudge; in her high days in Munich she wrote to Liszt offering him Bavarian honours.
Stieler’s portrait of Lola in Ludwig’s gallery is a model of Victorian respectability. A more characteristic Montez is to be seen in Dartiguenave’s lithograph; he has caught not only her striking beauty, but her imperious spirit. (See Mr Barbosa’s rendering of Stieler’s portrait of Lola on the left side of the front cover of this edition.)
“Lola was always vain of her bosom”. She was indeed, if the story of her first meeting with Ludwig is to be believed. He is supposed to have expressed doubts about the reality of her figure: her indignant reply was to tear open the top of her dress.
There is no supporting evidence that Wagner visited Lola in Munich at this time, but it is not impossible. They met for the first time in 1844, when Liszt took her to a special performance of “Rienzi” at Dresden, and Wagner’s impression was of “a painted and jewelled woman with bold, bad eyes”. He also described her as “demonic and heartless”. Curiously, the great composer gained as much favour from Ludwig II as Lola had done from Ludwig I—so much so that the wits nicknamed him “Lolotte”.
The American may have been C. G. Leland, a student at Munich University and a friend of Lola’s. He claimed that he was the only one of her intimates at whom she had never thrown “a plate or a book, or attacked with a dagger, poker, broom, or other deadly weapon”.
Schönhausen. Flashman’s view of the castle’s “medieval ghastliness” was echoed by Bismarck himself; he described it to a friend as an “old haunted castle, with pointed arches and walls four feet thick, (and) thirty rooms of which two are furnished.” He also complained about its rats and the wind in the chimneys.
Flashman’s summary of the Schleswig-Holstein Question is accurate so far as it goes; enthusiasts in diplomatic history who wish greater detail are referred to Dr David Thomson’s Europe Since Napoleon, pp. 242–3 and 309–11. German and Danish versions of the problem should not be read in isolation.
The schlager play of the German students, whereby they could receive superficial head and face wounds which left permanent scars for public admiration, was a unique form of the duel. The equipment is as Flashman describes it; the schlager itself was three-and-a-half feet long, with an unusually large guard (“the soup-plate of honour”). The practice of leaving the wounds open to form the largest possible scar is curiously paralleled by the custom of certain primitive African tribes. In the duel itself, thrusting was strictly forbidden, except at the University of Jena, where there were many theological students. These young men would have found facial scars an embarrassment in their careers, so instead of cutting at the head, Jena students were allowed to run each other through the body, thus satisfying honour without causing visible disfigurement.
Bismarck liked to picture himself eventually becoming a rustic land-owner; his remark about Stettin wool market occurs again in his recorded conversation, when he spoke of his ambition to “raise a family, and ruin the morals of my peasants with brandy”.
“a plumed helmet, à la Tin-bellies”. Flashman is here almost certainly referring to the New Regulation Helmet which had been announced for the British Heavy Dragoons in the previous autumn. Its ridiculously extravagant plumage—popularly supposed to be an inspiration of Prince Albert’s—had been the talk of fashionable London in the weeks shortly before Flashman’s departure for Munich.
