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In Sir Harry Flashman, the moustachioed Victorian cad, bounder and lecher, the late George MacDonald Fraser took another man's fictional creation (the Rugby School bully in Tom Brown's Schooldays), added lashings of humour and layers of braggadocio, and made him his own. Despite the worst of intentions, Flashman is invariably in the right place at the right time, and is Mentioned in Dispatches by accident. To mark the author's death we present an extract from that most inglorious episode in his hero's life, The Road to Charing Cross, in which he encounters the real-life Times correspondent and legendary 'human ferret' Henri Blowitz

You don’t know Blowitz, probably never heard of him even, which is your good luck, although I dare say if you’d met him you’d have thought him harmless enough. I did, to my cost. Not that I bear him a grudge, much, for he was a jolly little teetotum, bursting with good intentions, and you may say it wasn’t his fault that they paved my road to Hell – which lay at the bottom of a salt-mine, and it’s only by the grace of God that I ain’t there yet, entombed in everlasting rock. Damnable places, and not at all what you might imagine. Not a grain of salt to be seen, for one thing.

Mind you, when I say ’twasn’t Blowitz’s fault, I’m giving the little blighter the benefit of the doubt, a thing I seldom do. But I liked him, you see, in spite of his being a journalist. Tricky villains, especially if they work for The Times. He was their correspondent in Paris 30 years ago, and doubtless a government agent – show me the Times man who wasn’t, from Delane to the printer’s devils – but whether he absolutely knew what he was about, or was merely trying to do old Flashy a couple of good turns, I ain’t sure. It was certainly his blasted pictures that led me astray: photographs of two lovely women, laid before my unsuspecting middle-aged eyes, one in ’78, t’other in ’83, and between ’em they landed me in the strangest pickle of my misspent life. Not the worst, perhaps, but bad enough, and deuced odd. I don’t think I understand the infernal business yet, not altogether.

George MacDonald Fraser

Author of dashing period novels which became a cult among young and old with their caddish anti-hero, Flashman

BACKGROUND

• Flashman author loses his final battle

• Flashman and the Man from The Times

• Flashman of The Times

• Lives Remembered: George MacDonald Fraser and Sir Nicholas Pumfrey

• Audiobooks: Flashman Papers

Related Internet Links

• Buy Flashman and the Tiger and other extracts from The Flashman Papers

It had its compensations along the way, though, among them the highest decoration France can bestow, the gratitude of two Crowned Heads (one of ’em an out-and-out stunner, much good may it do me), the chance to serve Otto Bismarck a bad turn, and the favours of that delightful little spanker, Mamselle Caprice, to say nothing of the enchanting iceberg Princess Kralta. No . . . I can’t think too much ill of little Blowitz at the end of the day.

He was reckoned the smartest newsman of the time, better than Billy Russell even, for while Billy was the complete hand at dramatic description, thin red steaks and all, and the more disastrous the better, Blowitz was a human ferret with his plump little claw on every pulse from Lisbon to the Kremlin; he knew everyone, and everyone knew him – and trusted him. That was the great thing: kings and chancellors confided in him, empresses and grand duchesses whispered him their secrets, prime ministers and ambassadors sought his advice, and while he was up to every smoky dodge in his hunt for news, he never broke a pledge or betrayed a confidence – or so everyone said, Blowitz loudest of all. I guess his appearance helped, for he was nothing like the job at all, being a five-foot butterball with a beaming baby face behind a mighty moustache, innocent blue eyes, bald head, and frightful whiskers a foot long, chattering nineteen to the dozen (in several languages), gushing gallantly at the womenfolk, nosing up to the elbows of the men like a deferential gun dog, chuckling at every joke, first with all the gossip (so long as it didn’t matter), a prime favourite at every Paris party and reception – and never missing a word or a look or a gesture, all of it grist to his astounding memory; let him hear a speech or read a paper and he could repeat it, pat, every word, like Macaulay.

Aye, and when the great crises came and all Europe was agog for news of the latest treaty or rumour of war or collapsing ministry, it was to the Times’ Paris telegrams they looked, for Blowitz was a past master at what the Yankee scribblers call “the scoop”. At the famous Congress of Berlin (of which more anon), when the doors were locked for secret session, Bismarck looked under the table, and when D’Israeli asked him what was up, Bismarck said he wanted to be sure Blowitz wasn’t there. A great compliment, you may say – and if you don’t, Blowitz did, frequently.

It was through Billy Russell, who you may know was also a Times man and an old chum from India and the Crimea, that I met this tubby prodigy at the time of the Franco-Prussian farce in ’70, and we’d taken to each other straight off. At least, Blowitz had taken to me, as folk often do, God help ’em, and I didn’t mind him; he was a comic little card, and amused me with his Froggy bounce (though he was a Bohemian in fact), and tall tales about how he’d scuppered the Commune uprising in Marseilles in ’71 by leaping from rooftop to rooftop to telegraph some vital news or other to Paris while the Communards raged helpless below, and saved some fascinating Balkan queen and her beautiful daughter from shame and ruin at the hands of a vengeful monarch, and been kidnapped when he was six and fallen in love with a flashing-eyed gypsy infant with a locket round her neck – sounded deuced like The Bohemian Girl to me, but he swore it was gospel, and part of his “Destiny”, which was a great bee in his bonnet.

“You ask, what if I had slipped from those Marseilles roofs, and been dashed to pieces on the cruel cobbles, or torn asunder by those ensanguined terrorists?” cries he, swigging champagne and waving a pudgy finger. “What, you say, if that vengeful monarch’s agents had entrapped me – moi, Blowitz? What if the gypsy kidnappers had taken another road, and so eluded pursuit? Ah, you ask yourself these things,cher ’Arree – ” “I don’t do anything of the sort, you know.”

“But you do, of a certainty!” cries he. “I see it in your eye, the burning question! You consider, you speculate, you! What, you wonder, would have become of Blowitz? Or of France? Or The Times, by example?” He inflated, looking solemn. “Or Europe?”

“Search me, old Blowhard,” says I, rescuing the bottle. “All I ask is whether you got to grips with that fascinating Balkan bint and her beauteous daughter, and if so, did you tackle ’em in tandem or one after t’other?” But he was too flown away with his fatheaded philosophy to listen.

“I did not slip, me – I could not! I foiled the vengeful monarch’s ruffians – it was inevitable! My gypsy abductors took the road determined by Fate!” He was quite rosy with triumph. “Le destin,my old one – destiny is immutable. We are like the planets, our courses preordained. Some of us,” he admitted, “are comets, vanishing and reappearing, like the geniuses of the past. Thus Moses is reflected in Confucius, Caesar in Napoleon, Attila in Peter the Great, Jeanne d’Arc in . . . in . . .”

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