Mr Tighe’s bet was that Flashman would “carry his bat” (i.e. would not lose his wicket, and be “not out” at the end of the innings). A curious wager, perhaps, but not extraordinary in an age when sportsmen were prepared to bet on virtually anything.
The Regency practice among noblemen of patronizing prize-fighters, and using them (usually when they had retired) as bodyguards and musclemen, had not quite died out in Flashman’s youth, so his fears of the Duke’s vengeance were probably well-founded – especially in view of the names mentioned by Judy. Ben Caunt, popularly known as “Big Ben” (the bell in the Westminster clock tower is said to have been named after him) was a notoriously rough heavyweight champion of the 1840s, and the other fighter referred to can only have been Tom Cannon, “the Great Gun of Windsor”, who had held the title in the 1820s.
The first sale of Australian horses, imported into Singapore by Boyd and Company, did not in fact take place until 20 August 1844. These were the first of the famous cavalry “walers” (so called after New South Wales) of the Indian Army.
Not quite so ancient and shrivelled nowadays, perhaps. Flashman, writing in the Pax Britannica of the Edwardian years, could not foresee a time when the tribes of North Borneo would resume the practice of head-hunting which British rule discouraged. The Editor has seen rows of comparatively recent heads in a “head-house” up the Rajang River; the locals admitted that most of them were “orang Japon”, taken from the Japanese invaders of the Second World War, but some of them looked new enough to have belonged to the Indonesian tribesmen who at that time (1966) were fighting the British-Malay forces in the Communist rebellion.
Frank Marryat, son of the novelist Captain Marryat, served as a naval officer in Far Eastern waters in the 1840s, and confirmed Flashman’s opinion of the dullness and prudishness of Singapore society. “Little hospitality, less gaiety … everyone waiting to see what his position in society is going to be.” His description of the city, its people, customs, and institutions, tallies closely with Flashman’s. (See Borneo and the Indian Archipelago (1848), by F. S. Marryat, and for a wealth of detail, An Anecdotal History of Old Times in Singapore, by C. B. Buckley.)
Catchick Moses the Armenian and Whampoa the Chinese were two of the great characters of early Singapore. Catchick was famous not only as a merchant, but as a billiards player, and for his eccentric habit of shaving left-handed without a glass as he walked about his verandah. He was about 32 when Flashman knew him; when he made his will, at the age of 73, seven years before his death, he followed the unusual procedure of submitting it to his children, so that any disputes could be settled amicably during his lifetime.
Whampoa was the richest of the Chinese community, renowned for the lavishness of his parties, and for his luxurious country home with its gold-framed oval doors. His appearance was as Flashman describes it, down to his black silk robe, pigtail, and sherry glass. (See Buckley, Marryat.)
As Flashman later admits, the name of James Brooke, White Raja of Sarawak and adventurer extraordinary, meant nothing to him on first hearing, which is not surprising since the fame of this remarkable Victorian had not yet reached its peak. But Flashman was plainly impressed, despite himself, by his rescuer’s personality and appearance, and his description tallies exactly with Brooke’s famous portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, which catches all his resolution and restless energy, as well as that romantic air which made him the beau ideal of the early Victorian hero. The painting could serve as the frontispiece for any boys’ adventure story of the nineteenth century – and sometimes did. All that is missing is the face-wound which Flashman mentions; Brooke had received it in a fight with Sumatran pirates at Murdu on 12 February 1844, so it would still be incompletely healed when they met.
If it seems unlikely that even an emotional Victorian can have spoken such purple prose, we can be certain that Brooke at least wrote it, almost word for word. In his journal, about this time, he recorded his emotions on hearing that a European lady was held prisoner by Borneo pirates who were demanding ransom: “A captive damsel! Does it not conjure up images of blue eyes and auburn hair of hyacinthine flow! And after all, a fat old Dutch frau may be the reality! Poor creature, even though she be old, and fat, and unamiable, and ugly, it is shocking to think of such a fate as a life passed among savages!” Obviously, he cannot have had Mrs Flashman in mind.
Henry Keppel (1809–1904) was one of the foremost fighting seamen of the Victorian period. An expert in the specialized craft of river warfare, he was known to the Dyaks as “the red-haired devil”, and served with Brooke in numerous raids against the pirates of the South China Sea. (See his books, Expedition to Borneo of HMS Dido, 1846, and A Visit to the Indian Archipelago in HMS Maeander, 1853.) He later became Admiral of the Fleet.
Stuart’s enthusiastic description of Brooke and his adventures is perfectly accurate, so far as it goes (see The Raja of Sarawak by Gertrude L. Jacob, 1876, The Life of Sir James Brooke, by Spenser St John, 1879, Brooke’s own letters and journal, and other Borneo sources quoted elsewhere in these footnotes. Also Appendix B). The only error at this point is a minor one of Flashman’s, for “Stuart’s” name was in fact George Steward; obviously Flashman has again made a mistake of which he is occasionally guilty in his memoirs, of trusting his ears and not troubling to check the spelling of proper names.
Angela Georgina Burdett-Coutts (1814–1906), “the richest heiress in all England, enjoyed a fame … second only to Queen Victoria.” She spent her life and the vast fortune inherited from her grandfather, Thomas Coutts the banker, on countless charities and good causes, endowing schools, housing schemes, and hospitals, and providing funds for such diverse projects as Irish famine relief, university scholarships, drinking troughs, and colonial exploration; Livingstone, Stanley, and Brooke were among the pioneers she assisted. She was the first woman to be raised to the peerage for public service, and numbered among her friends Wellington, Faraday, Disraeli, Gladstone, Daniel Webster, and Dickens, who dedicated “Martin Chuzzlewit” to her.
The combination of her good looks, charm, and immense wealth attracted innumerable suitors, but she seems to have felt no inclination to matrimony until she met Brooke and “fell madly in love with him”. There is a tradition that she proposed to him and was politely rejected (see following note), but they remained close friends, and she is said to have been instrumental in obtaining official recognition for Sarawak. She eventually married, in her sixties, the American-born William Ashmead-Bartlett. She is buried in Westminster Abbey. (See Raja Brooke and Baroness Burdett-Coutts, Letters, edited by Owen Rutter, and the Dictionary of National Biography.) Flashman’s memory has again betrayed him on one small point; he may have known Miss Coutts, but not “at Stratton Street”; she did not take up residence there until the late 1840s.
