"FLASHMAN" (1969) Book ReviewForty-one years ago, an old literary character was re-introduced to many readers, thanks to a former Scottish journalist named George MacDonald Fraser. The author took a character from a famous Victorian novel and created a series of novels that placed said character in a series of historical events throughout the middle and second half of the 19th century. The 1857 novel, ”TOM BROWN’S SCHOOLDAYS”, told the story of a young English boy named Tom Brown and his experiences at the famous school, Rugby, during the 1830s. One of Tom’s travails focused on his abuse at the hands of an older student – a bully – named Flashman. However, Flashman got drunk at a local tavern and in the following morning was expelled by Rugby’s famous headmaster, Dr. Thomas Arnold. Fraser took the Flashman character, gave him a first name – Harry – and continued his story following the expulsion from Rugby in the 1969 novel, ”FLASHMAN”.The beginning of the novel saw the seventeen year-old Harry Flashman trying to find a new profession following his expulsion from Rugby. Due to his father’s wealth and his maternal Uncle Bindley Paget’s social connections, Flashman found a position as a junior officer in one of Britain’s most elite Army regiments, the 11th Hussars aka the Cherrypickers. And thanks to his talent for toadying and projecting a sense of style (inherited from his aristocratic late mother), Flashman managed to win the support and favor of the regimental commander, the haughty James Thomas Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan. Unfortunately, Flashman’s ideal life as a leisurely Army officer came to an end. His involvement with the French mistress of a fellow officer kicked off a series of events that led to Flashman being swept into the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-1842). One of those events included seducing one Elspeth Morrison, the sixteen year-old daughter of a wealthy Scottish merchant. After being forced to marry her by her relations, Flashman was kicked out of the 11th Hussars and sent to India by Lord Cardigan, who regarded the marriage as a step down the social ladder for the usually favored young Army officer.It was in Afghanistan that Flashman earned the nickname, “Bloody Lance” by taking credit for his servant’s killing of four Afghan attackers. There, he also met one Ilderim Khan, the son of a pro-British Afghan nobleman and became the latter’s lifelong friend and blood brother. This friendship would end up saving Flashman’s life during the Sepoy Rebellion in ”FLASHMAN IN THE GREAT GAME”. Flashman also managed to earn two deadly enemies – an Afghan warlord named Gul Shah and his mistress (later wife), a dancer named Narreeman. The source of the pair’s enmity toward Flashman originated with his rape of Narreeman.More importantly, ”FLASHMAN” allowed readers to view many important events of the First Anglo-Afghan War. Not only did Flashman meet many historical figues such as Lord Cardigan, Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, the Duke of Wellington, but also Alexander Burnes, Akbar Khan, William Macnaghten, Thomas Arnold, and the incompetent commander of the British Army in Afghanistan, General William Elphinstone. I must admit that my opinion of the novel has changed a great deal over the years. Originally, I held a low opinion of ”FLASHMAN” for years, comparing it to the more epic-like sagas such as ”FLASHMAN AT THE CHARGE” (1973), ”FLASHMAN IN THE GREAT GAME” (1975), ”FLASHMAN AND THE REDSKINS” (1982) and ”FLASHMAN AND THE DRAGON” (1985). I still regard these four novels in a higher regard than ”FLASHMAN”. But I must admit that perhaps I had been a little unfair in my regard for the 1969 novel. It is actually a solid adventure story filled with historical interest, witty humor, sharp action and excellent pacing. Some fans of The Flashman Papers have expressed disgust or disenchantment with the Harry Flashman character portrayed in this novel. I suspect that a great deal of these negative opinions may have stemmed from Flashman’s rape of Narreeman. And I understand. However, many of these fans also complained about the young British officer’s crass style and manner – especially toward his father’s mistress, Judy. One has to remember that Harry Flashman aged from 17 to 20 years old in this story. He did convey some semblance of the style, common sense and instinct that would fool many people and serve him for years. But as an adolescent on the threshold of twenty, he had yet to learn some of the hard facts of life. As for his rough treatment and negative opinion of Judy, I suspect that his ego suffered a massive blow, when she rejected him, following a one-time bout under the sheets. A blow that he obviously had failed to recover from after six decades, while ”writing” his memoirs.”FLASHMAN” also had its share of interesting fictional characters. I have already mentioned the villainous Gul Shah and his mistress (later wife) Narreeman. I have also mentioned the young Afghan who became a close friend of Flashy’s, Ilderim Khan. But he had an even larger role in ”FLASHMAN IN THE GREAT GAME”. And as I had mentioned, Elspeth also appeared in the novel. However, her presence in the novel would not be truly felt, until the last chapter that featured Harry’s homecoming. Fraser barely explored her personality in the novel, but he did allow a peek into her promiscuous and self-absorbed nature in that last chapter. One particular character, Sergeant Hudson, proved to be a reliable source of defense for Flashman during the retreat from Kabul. During this event, Flashman experienced one of the most bizarre moments of his life, while being rejected by the young wife of an Army officer named Mrs. Betty Parker, whom he was trying to seduce:"'What the devil' says I. 'What’s the matter?''Oh, you brute!' she hissed - for she had the sense to keep her voice down – 'you filthy, beastly brute! Get out of my tent at once! At once, d’you her?'I could make nothing of this, and said so. 'What have I done? I was only being friendly. What are you acting so damned missish for?''Oh base!' says she. 'You . . . you . . .''Oh, come now,' says I. 'You’re in very high ropes, to be sure. You weren’t so proper when I squeezed you the other night.''Squeezed me?' says she, as though I had uttered some unmentionable word.'Aye, squeezed. Like this.' And I reached over and, with a quick fumble in the dark, caught one of her breasts. To my amazement, she didn’t seem to mind.'Oh, that!' she says. 'What an evil creature you are! You know that is nothing; all gentlemen do that, in affection. But you, you monstrous beast, presume on my friendship to try to . . . Oh, oh, I could die of shame!'If I had not heard her I shouldn’t have believed it. God knows I have learned enough since of the inadequacies of education given to young Englishwomen, but this was incredible."This last encounter with Mrs. Betty Parker struck me as a hilarious metaphor for the blindingly naïve morality that had began to encroach early Victorian society.”FLASHMAN” also provided some interesting historical vignettes from the First Anglo-Afghan War. And young Flashman managed to witness or participate in a good number of them. The novel allowed him to be the sole surviving British witness to the murder of political officer, Sir Alexander Burnes and his younger brother, Charles. He also witnessed the murder of another political officer named Sir William Macnaghten, along with Last Stand at Gandamak and the Siege of Jalalabad. But Fraser’s pièce de résistance in ”FLASHMAN” proved to be the disasterous Kabul retreat in which the British contingent under General Elphinstone were forced to march from Afghanistan to India in cold weather and dire circumstances:"From other accounts of that frightful march that I have read – mostly Mackenzie’s and Lawrence’s and Lady Sale’s – I can fit a few of my recollections into their chronicle, but in the main it is just a terrible, bloody nightmare even now, more than sixty years after. Ice and blood and groans and death and despair, and the shrieks of dying men and women and the howling of the Ghazis and Gilzais. They rushed and struck, and rushed and struck again, mostly at the camp-followers, until it seemed there was a slashed brown body every yard of the way. The only place of safety was in the heart of Shelton’s main body, where the sepoys still kept some sort of order; I suggested to Elphy when we set off that I and my lancers should ride guard on the womenfolk, and he agreed at once. It was a wise move on my part, for the attacks on the flanks were now so frequent that the work we had been doing yesterday was become fatally dangerous. Mackenzie’s jezzailchis were cut to ribbons stemming the sorties."Reading the above passage made me wonder about the wisdom of the current Western presence in Afghanistan. And there is nothing like a British military disaster to bring out the best of Fraser’s writing skulls. It proved to be the first of such passages in novels like ”FLASHMAN IN THE GREAT GAME” and ”FLASHMAN AND THE REDSKINS”.In the end, Fraser did a solid job in initiating what would proved to be The Flashman Papers in his first novel, ”FLASHMAN”. Granted, the novel’s first part set in England struck me as slightly rushed. And the Harry Flashman character seemed a bit crude in compare to his characterizations in the novels that followed. Like many other readers, I found his rape of the Narreeman character hard to stomach. But Fraser did an excellent job in re-creating early Victorian Britain, British India, Afghanistan and the First Anglo-Afghan War. In short, ”FLASHMAN” turned out to be a solid start to an excellent series of historical novels.
Harry Paget Flashman is NOT your typical morally-challenged but likeable scoundrel who you can’t help but love because of his sharp wit and buckets o’ charm. No…he’s an ASSHOLE…a big one. A rapacious, lecherous, despicable scumbag with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I’m talking such odious funtivities as:**Having sex with his Father’s mistress, and then beating and sexually assaulting her when she refuses his subsequent advances.**Forcibly selling his Indian concubine to a passing artillery major, because she had become “too and mopish at night to be much fun.” **Randomly flogging his household servants everyday “for their good and my own amusement.” Get me…not the kind of actions at which it’s easy to give a wink and nod. I’m not even docking him for his racism and sexism, for which he gets a "sign-of-the-times" hall pass based on the 19th Century timeline.And yet…. To the enduring credit of George MacDonald Fraser, he manages to weave a funny, engaging historical adventure around this black hole of virtue, one that kept me laughing and turning pages throughout. PLOT SUMMARY:Flashman follows the exploits of the notorious bully from immediately after his expulsion from Rugby School, as detailed in Tom Brown's Schooldays, from which Fraser borrowed the character. The story is framed as a fictional memoir/autobiography told in a series of “papers” discovered to have been written by Flashman when he was very old. In this first installment, we follow Flashy from his schooling disgrace to his Machiavellian career in the Army, during which he travels from Scotland (where he seduces the young daughter of the family he billets with), to India (where he bangs everything with a pulse), to Afghanistan, where he’s a participant in the major events of the First Anglo-Afghan War. At every turn, through a combination of luck, quick thinking and timely cowardice, Flashman comes out smelling like a rose and ends this first novel as a famous war hero.THOUGHTS:I liked it. I feel like a bit of a heel for saying so, but Fraser’s polished, wonderfully paced, historically accurate story-telling, combined with Flashman’s unique, humorous voice won me over. It’s a combination of historical fiction, scoundrel lit, and dry British humor. Flashy’s observations about his colleagues and the world around him are unvarnished, unflattering, and often hilarious. Many of his best barbs are reserved for his commanding officer in Afghanistan, General Elphy Bey. Here are a few examples: But I still state unhesitatingly, that for pure, vacillating stupidity, for superb incompetence to command, for ignorance combined with bad judgment --in short, for the true talent for catastrophe -- Elphy Bey stood alone. Others abide our question, but Elphy outshines them all as the greatest military idiot of our own or any other day.Only he could have permitted the First Afghan War and let it develop to such ruinous defeat. It was not easy: he started with a good army, a secure position, some excellent officers, a disorganised enemy, and repeated opportunities to save the situation. But Elphy, with the touch of true genius, swept aside these obstacles with unerring precision, and out of order wrought complete chaos. We shall not, with luck, look upon his like again. And later, when Elphy’s incompetence causes things to go from bad to worse to downright disastrous: Possibly there has been a greater shambles in the history of warfare than our withdrawal from Kabul; probably there has not…I am at a loss for words to describe the superhuman stupidity, the truly monumental incompetence, and the bland blindness to reason of Elphy Bey and his advisers. If you had taken the greatest military geniuses of the ages, placed them in command of our army, and asked them to ruin it utterly as speedily as possible, they could not – I mean it seriously -- have done it as surely and swiftly as he did. And he believed he was doing his duty. The meanest sweeper in our train would have been a fitter commander. Fraser's humor sits very well with me, and generally kept me smiling. In the end, while I never liked Flashy, nor do I think I ever will, he did make me laugh. He kept me engaged and enjoying myself, and he gets props for that. I have a feeling I will be returning to the Flashman Papers to read about more of Flashy's exploits...conquests...scandals...crimes and misdemeanors. 3.0 stars. Recommended.
What do You think about Flashman (1999)?
Okay, I'll admit it. Perhaps because I'm a gal, a couple chapters into this book I wondered if I was going to have to force myself to keep going.Because -- as you know if you know anything about the Flashman series -- the narrator of these books is *not* a nice guy.But something happened as I reached a quarter mark or so of the novel: I found myself hooked. And by the time Flashy found himself in Afghanistan (the series' conceit is that Flashman was an eyewitness to a number of significant 19th century military events, including in this book the British army's 1842 Retreat from Kabul, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1842_ret...) my opinion of him had shifted. Yes, he's a despicable man: a coward, a misogynist, a liar. But all the same, I was rooting for him. I wanted him to somehow get out alive . . . You couldn't ask for a better example of how to make an unappealing character sympathetic, in fact. One last point. Someone in a Goodreads group thread (who hasn't read the book) speculated that Flashman might be considered "post-modern" -- a reasonable assumption given that the narrator is an anti-hero. But to my eye, the book transcends any neat categories. Yes, it can be read as a blistering critique of 19th century British imperialism, but it's dealing with historical facts -- a refreshing change from contemporary polemics that are out to score political points at the expense of everything else. And while the book (consistent with post-modernist writing) eschews any pretense to moral elevation, technically the writing and structure is both original and virtually flawless. So there's plenty of aesthetic pleasure to be had in the reading. I've also seen Flashman called a historical novel. I suppose that's as good a category as any. But there's something not quite right about that characterization, either. Or maybe I think of historical novels as more atmospheric. Flashman is set in the mid-1900s, but it reads like a contemporary. Recommend to anyone who likes terrific story-telling & can overlook very un-P.C. characters.
—Kirsten Mortensen
This is the first of a series of novels published beginning in 1969, all featuring Harry Flashman, a relatively minor and altogether craven character in Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown’s Schooldays. This novel somewhat comically chronicles Flashman’s exploits in the British army, primarily in Afghanistan in 1849. The book raised several issues of interest to me.First, there is the question of genre. One might legitimately describe the book as historical fiction. And, equally, it could be viewed as a parody of other historical or quasi-historical works such as the works of Patrick O’Brian or even Ian Fleming (if one allows the concept of a spoof of a spoof). The category of parody applies because Flashman is a thoroughly reprehensible character, an utter poltroon, a liar, a coward, a womanizer, a cheat, all by his own admission.Second, and of more interest to me, the book is a fairly accurate account of the First Anglo-Afghan War, of which I previously knew little; I was sent to more general references and have learned much about that conflict (the book is quite true to the known facts, except, of course, anything relating to Flashman). The situation with Britain in the region in the mid-18th century was uncannily like our own today, a very sobering observation, and the description of culture and clan relationships in Afghanistan could be right out of our daily press. Not very reassuring, I found.Third, having just finished reading a major work on the Greco-Roman Cynics, I was able to view this very non-politically-correct novel as being in the tradition of social critique and satire. Whether or not one is offended by the language and misogyny, and it is easy to be offended, such works as this do have the virtue of causing one to reflect on one’s own culture and society and to try to determine what customs and values are worthy of being kept and which are not.Finally, the book led me to reflect on the issue of heroism (for all his obvious faults, Flashman comes off looking like a hero). How do we define or determine heroism? Why is society so desperate to find heroes that it is willing to ignore or overlook inconvenient facts, so needy of worshiping heroes that it will grasp at those in almost any sphere who somehow seem to stand out as different from their peers? It is almost as if the concept of heroism itself is more important and of more value than any particular hero, so that society is perfectly willing to manufacture heroes if necessary. It is a very odd phenomenon, raising interesting speculations of humanity’s apparent need for babysitters, for people who will somehow take care of them, a seeming unwillingness or at least discomfort with existentially standing on our own two feet and meeting life without illusions.
—Bruce
A magnificent read about an appalling man. You get a good feel for Flashman's character early on. With his unflinching and intelligent take on the people and situations surrounding him you feel very much a part of the action. It is extremely well written and a very entertaining book.Given the current situation in Afghanistan, it's pretty poignant too. I was laughing till I snorted in public at the description of the incompetence of Major-General Elphinstone; then within moments nearly in tears as the full impact of it was realised.The voices seem appropriate, the writing is excellent and the adventure is extreme; so much better as it accurately follows historical facts and gives credible voice to them in a setting with which we've lately become familiar through the evening news.I strongly recommend it for anyone who's interested in a good read of historical fiction - just don't expect to like Flashman himself, though his unflinching honesty about his own cowardly, racist, misogonistic, classist, bullying character is extremely refreshing and entertaining.
—Sally
