Read
the original report from The Times on the Charge of the Light Brigade
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.
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 . . .”
