Black Ajax

You know what came of it … we lived to fight another day, Hooky withdrew to Portugal, foxed Massena with Torres Vedras, and held French armies in Spain that Boney could have used in Russia where he froze to death, France was beat – and all because the Light Brigade crossed that gully, perhaps. I like to think so, at all events; worth being skewered and trampled, what? In the meantime, I came home … now, where the devil was I, before you reminded me of the Peninsula?

Ah, yes, I was asking what you supposed the buzz was in Town that autumn of ’09? The war? The King’s madness? The Cabinet? No such thing. The name on every lip wasn’t Talavera or Hooky or Boney, but Mary Clarke – and I’ll lay a million to a mag you never heard of her, eh? I thought not.

Ah, Mary! She was the sweetest little nesting-bird, and my first love ’fore I went to Spain – well, one of ’em. Shape of Aphrodite, sassy as a robin, and devoted to the study of cavalry subalterns – when she wasn’t accommodating the Duke of York, that is. She was his prize pullet, you see, and we lesser lights (I was a mere cornet of horse then, but she was nuts on me) had to slip in at her back door in Gloucester Place like so many area sneaks. Gad, she was the bang-up Cyprian, though! Ten horses, three cooks, twenty servants, dined off a French duke’s plate, and entertained like a bashaw’s niece – York gave her a thousand a month, and you may believe ’twasn’t enough. So dear Mary set up shop selling Army promotions, slipping the tickets for York to sign when he was too lushy or baked with her fond attentions to notice, I dare say. Oh, a prime racket she had, until some parliamentary pimp blew the gaff.

There was the devil to pay, York had to resign command of the Army, Mary was called to the Bar of the House and had ’em in fits with her sauce and sharp answers, and to crown all she threatened to publish York’s love-letters. I saw some of ’em, and they were hot-house stuff, I can tell you. Cost the old calf’s head ten thou’ and a pension of four hundred a year to buy ’em back.

D’ye wonder that Mary Clarke was all the chat from St James’s to St Giles? Mere wars and Commons votes weren’t in it with her – or with Moll Douglas, the bird of paradise whom Mornington, Hooky’s brother, had in tow when he went out as Minister to Spain. That set the tongues wagging at Almack’s, for what made it worse was that Mornington’s lawful blanket wouldn’t divorce him or clear out of Apsley House. She’d been another bareback rider until Mornington married her; French piece, Gabrielle Hyacinthe de Something. Shocking taste in women he had. Whores, the lot o’ them.

What’s this to do with Molineaux? Why, to impress upon you what a light-minded crew of sensation-seekers Society was, ripe for any novelty – female, criminal or sporting for choice – and because it pleases me to hold forth at length while sampling this excellent drop o’ short. So don’t dam’ well interrupt. We’ll come to the Dusky Miller presently.

Speaking of sport, there was a mighty stink at Newmarket about that time, when two touts called Bishop and Dan Dawson were bribed to see that certain horses didn’t start, so they blew arsenic into the water troughs, poisoned I don’t know how many runners. They were grabbed, Bishop peached to save his neck, but it was the Paddington frisk for Danny, and half the turf set went down to Cambridge to see him drop, more than one noble lord, I’m told, heaving a sigh of relief when he died with his mouth shut.

Not that politics was altogether neglected in the clubs and drawing-rooms. Why, the day I landed there was a disagreement in Cabinet. Foreign secretary, Canning, an intriguing toad, if you ask me, with an eye on Downing Street, blamed the war minister, Castlereagh, for the Walcheren fiasco, and Castlereagh demanded pistols for two on Putney Heath. The pair of cakes missed each other altogether with their first shots, tried again, Castlereagh put a slug in Canning’s leg, and Canning shot a button off his lordship’s coat. I heard the news from Kangaroo Cooke, York’s old aide.

“Bet you’re glad they weren’t alongside at Talavera,” says he. “Still, they scored one hit, which is more than Tierney and Pitt could manage – and say this for ’em, it’s a dam’ stylish way to bring down a government.”

Wasn’t he right, though? Can’t see Melbourne or Peel having the game to shoot each other, worse luck.

So, sir, there you have me, back in Town … and I can see the leery look in your eye as you hear me refer so familiarly to Society, with idle mention of nobility and royalty, and ask yourself, do I speak of what I know, or am I a rasher o’ wind retailing second-hand goods? Yes, you do, damn your impudence, I know. You’ve cast about, I don’t doubt, and are aware that the Flashmans are a smoky lot, not halfway up the tree nowadays. My son has the fame of his Afghan laurels, as I had mine in the Peninsula, but they don’t last, and once the shine has gone, you’re an unregarded relic of a disreputable age.

We ain’t Quality, never were. Know what my father was? A slave-trader, making enough from black ivory to be a nabob, bought himself a house in South Audley Street and a place in the shires, sent me to Rugby, stumped up for my colours – but he was still trade, and if I was to cut my way into the charmed circle I must do it with my sabre. God knows I tried, at Rolica and Vimeiro, and scouting along the Douro, hunting glory, and in that charge at Talavera. I was “Mad Buck” when I came home, hero of the hour – aye, and for the hour – pointed out at Horse Guards, worth a hail-fellow from Clarence and a shake of the hand from Prinny, who swore he couldn’t ha’ done better himself, by George, sir, he couldn’t … and wondered if I dare turn my eyes on the beauteous ’Lishy Paget – now she was Quality, and above my touch, but I had the style and the shoulders, and I reckoned the Flashman blunt wouldn’t hurt.

Aye, but if you’re a hero – and one who has cut his pigtail, mind – you must ride the rocket while it’s ascending, for the stick’ll come down at last. I pray God it never does for young Harry; with luck it won’t, for he has a way with him, and the kind of fame that’ll last a lifetime, even if he don’t add to it, which he likely will. He don’t know it, but by God I’m proud of him. He won his spurs clean, and he don’t have that rum shadow that clung to me over my duelling – can’t think why I was such a fire-eater in the Peninsula, but I was, and the hellish fact is that when you’ve been out a couple o’ times you find a taste for it. Harry’s a cooler hand altogether – why, the only time he stood up the young madman gave his man a free shot, and then deloped! I was never reckoned a funk, but damned if I’d ever have the pluck for that! Aye, I’m proud – as I shall tell him when … well, if he visits me. When you see him, you might … no, better not. Guv’nor in the blue-devil factory’s best at a distance, eh?

I’ll take some more of the red tape, if you please … thank’ee. And you may pour out that bottle of belch, too … To come to the point, when I came home in ’09 I was a hero – and nobody. I’d been on the edge of the sporting set as a younker, before I went to Spain – sparred with Cribb, as I told you, took my wet at Stephen’s and Limmer’s, was reckoned a useful pradster at the Corner (no seat at the Monday dinners, though), lost a careful amount at Crocky’s hell in Oxford Street, but was nowhere near Brooks’ or Waitier’s where the real gamesters played, and far outside the swim of the prime swells, the Four-in-Handers and heads of the Fancy.

As for the ton, the world of Society, I was nowhere. Too young, too unconnected, too unknown. The nearest I’d ever come to the top flight was to mount York’s mistress unbeknownst, La Clarke aforesaid, and God knows I wasn’t the only one to do that.

This won’t do, thinks I, and pondered how I might make a “character” in Town, win my way into the clubs and salons, be a figure on the turf and in the Fancy, and, in fine, become a regular out-and-outer, a buck o’ the first head, at home in Almack’s and the Daffy Club

(#litres_trial_promo) both, winning the lofty approval of the Town tabbies in the Park and pattering the flash in the Holy Land – and a mean, dicky ambition, you may say, but you ain’t a young horse soldier with his glory all behind him whose father made his pile shipping blackbirds.

I knew it could be done, for while the West End was a damned exclusive place, it was easier to break in then, in those easy times, than it is now. Brummell had done it from nowhere – well, Eton – by being pleasant, and a top-notch cricketer, and looking just so through his quizzing-glass (usually at Prinny’s neckercher), but he was a one-and-only, was George. You had to be noticed, and then admitted, and while some did it by high play, or writing poems, or toad-eating at Holland House, or inventing a new neckercher, or rattling the right dowagers, or even clambering round a room on the furniture without touching the floor, none o’ these would ha’ been my style – except the dowagers, and I didn’t know any. But I had a stroke of luck – the damnedest thing you ever imagined, and before I’d been home a month I was in prime twig, top o’ the mark, and “on the Town”.

It was this way. Kangaroo Cooke, whom I mentioned just now, was a leading dandy, a Big Gun. We’d met, just, when I was a lad, and now I ran into him in Craig’s Court, when I was settling up my Army bills. He proved to be a chum of Ponsonby, my old squadron commander, so nothing would do but he must dine me at White’s, and there, keeping my trap shut, my eyes open, and earwigging away, I heard a piece of gossip – dammit, I couldn’t help but hear, for they were full of it, the prime scandal of the hour. As thus:

One of the leading bright sparks of the day was young Harry Somerset, Marquis of Worcester and son and heir to the Duke of Beaufort no less, a well-regarded flower of our nobility who was as sober and decent as his son was wild and wanton. The boy was nutty on skirt, though not yet come of age (they’re the worst, you know), with a new charmer each week, until of late he’d fallen under the spell of one Harriet Wilson, a nymph of the pavey whose conduct would ha’ made Messalina look like a nun. Not the usual muslin, you understand, but a notorious siren who’d been mount to half the rakes in Town – a fact to which young Harry was evidently blind, as often happens with young fools and older women.

Boys will be boys, to be sure, but what was bringing Beaufort’s grey hairs round his ankles was that the idiot pup was babbling of marriage to this harpy, and at this rate breach of promise would be the least of it. There could be no buying her off, not with a whack at the Beaufort fortune in prospect, and no talking sense into the besotted Harry. Beaufort wanted to buy him colours and ship him off to Spain as aide to Hooky himself, but Harry wasn’t to be budged; he was at Harriet’s dainty feet, wouldn’t hear a word against her, and Beaufort, no doubt seeing himself having to cough up almighty damages or become father-in-law to the Whore of Babylon, was at a nonplus. Either way ’twould be a hideous scandal. What the devil, the gossips asked each other, was he to do?

Well, I could ha’ told ’em in no time flat, but ’twas no concern of mine, and it was only later, in idle meditation, that it struck me that whoever could detach the love-smitten younger Somerset from Circe’s embrace must surely earn the undying gratitude of Papa, one of the highest and most powerful peers in the land, a kingpin in Society, a Biggest of Big Guns, and the answer to a toad-eater’s prayer. A duke’s a duke, dammit, only one rung below a Prince of the Blood. It would have to be managed without expense, opprobrium, or the least breath of inconvenience to His Grace, but the dodge I had in mind was right as a gun, and promised a fine gig as well.

So I dug out my recently discarded regimentals and sauntered forth in full fig to call on La Belle Harriet at her crib in Mount Street (aptly named). My tale, earnestly delivered with becoming emotion, was that a comrade, Toby Wilson, had expired in my arms in the Peninsula, whispering: “M’sister … dearest Harriet …”, and here I was in the hope that she was the sister referred to. In which case, my heartfelt condolences, and with them those little keepsakes which I had culled, with a manly tear, from his pockets – a snuff-box, rings, seals, baccy-pouch, and a pipe with a Saracen’s head on the bowl, raked out from the rubbish in my attic.

Whether she swallowed it I’ve never been sure, and I doubt if she could tell you herself, for all her attention was taken with the dashing dragoon in his tight pants, bowing his stalwart six feet and fairly bursting with boyish admiration. That at least was genuine enough on my part, for she was an opulent beauty with a bold eye and a loose lip, not more than twice my age, and there was more cloth in her turban than in the rest of her deshabille.

In any event, dear old Toby was never mentioned again, and within an hour my youthful innocence had succumbed to the wiles of this practised enchantress. I ain’t claiming it as a conquest, by the way, for I doubt if anything with whiskers could have escaped her when she had an hour to spare, and I’d no call to employ the family gift for seduction beyond an artless blush, a gasp of adoration, and letting her have her head. Afterwards, to be sure, I regarded her with calf-like worship and pleaded for a return, which she was pleased to promise for the following afternoon. In my juvenile passion I anticipated this by boarding her again on the spot, and left her in a state of sweet collapse, vowing to call again on the morrow at five precisely.

Next morning I scouted about and learned by inquiry that Harry Worcester’s haunt of the day was the old O.P. tavern in Drury Lane, a theatrical ken kept by Hudson the song-smith, where the younger ton were used to look in for coffee and musical diversion of an early evening. That suited admirably, and I went home and wrote a note: “Oh blind, oh trusting! H.W. betrays you! If you doubt it, repair to her directly and behold Shameful Truth unveiled! A Friend”, superscribed and sealed it plain, and instructed my man, a seasoned artful dodger, to deliver it incog to the O.P. at five on the nail.