Flashman And The Tiger

In my experience, which is considerable, observations like "coward" are usually made fortissimo at the climax of a first-rate turn-up between a lady and gentleman most intimately acquainted … a lover’s quarrel, perhaps? You’ll recall that Cumming was among those I’d suspected of dancing the honeymoon hornpipe with my dear one in days gone by; it had been no more than my normal suspicion of her, and had gone clean out of my head during the Tranby scandal, but now it was back with a vengeance. Yes …’twould be about ten years since she’d dropped Cumming’s acquaintance abruptly, and my lurid imagination could conjure up the scene in some silken nest of sin around South Audley Street, circa 1880, Cumming all moustachioed and masterful in his long combinations and my adulterous angel bursting proudly out of her corset as they slanged each other across the crumpled sheets of shame. God knows I’ve been there often enough myself, when passion has staled to moody discontent, sullen exchanges wax into recrimination, the errant wife makes odious comparisons to the lover’s disadvantage—and that’s the moment when Lothario, cut to the quick, speaks his mind of the cuckolded husband. "Your precious Harry’s not so much of a man, I can tell you …" followed by a shriek of indignation and the crash of a hurled utensil … aye, that’s how it would have been, devil a doubt; try as I might, I couldn’t picture it any different: Cumming must have been the little trollop’s lover, to call me a coward to her face. If this wasn’t proof, nothing was.

I sat brooding darkly, remembering the straw sticking to the back of her dress after she’d been in the woods with that randy redskin Spotted Tail; Cardigan with his pants round his ankles and her in bare buff when I blundered boozily out of the cupboard where I’d been asleep; the shiny black boots that had betrayed her assignation with that smirking swine Watkins or Watney or what-ever the hell his name was; her preening herself in her sarong before that oily pirate Usman who’d diddled me at cricket … and heaven knew how many others of whom I’d feared the worst. Time and again I’d been torn by jealous unproven suspicion, and resolved to have it out with her … and shirked at the last ’cos I’d rather not know. Well, not this time, bigod; I felt my anger rising as I remembered her protestations that she’d only done the dirty on Cumming to avenge my "honour"—ha! Like as not her true reason for wreaking vengeance on him was because he’d kicked her out of bed … But if that were so, she’d never have said a word to me about laying a plant on him, would she? Oh, lord, were my foul imaginings getting the better of me yet again; was I judging her by my own murky lights? So many times I’d faced this same hideous question: Elspeth, true or false? It was high time I had an answer, and I was going red in the face and growling as she came tripping back into the room, plump and radiant, no sign at all of her recent distress.

"Jane is bringing fresh tea, and some of those little German biscuits, and oh, you’re not angry with me, dearest, and all is --She stopped short in dismay. "Why, Harry, whatever is the matter? Why are you scowling so? Oh, my love, what is it?"

I had risen in my jealous wrath. Now I sat down again, marshalling my words, while she viewed me in pretty alarm.

"Elspeth!" says I … and stopped short in turn. "Ah … what’s that? Bringing tea, is she? Well, now … ah, what about a pot of coffee for the old man, eh? Scowling? No, no, just this leg o' mine giving me a twinge … the old wound, you know … Here, you come and sit on t’other one, and give us a kiss!"

As the black chap said in Shakespeare’s play, ’tis better as it is.

Appendix

It hardly seemed worth while to give footnotes to Flashman' s account of the Tranby Croft affair, since almost all of them would have led the reader to the same authority, W. Teignmouth Shore’s The Baccarat Case: Gordon-Cumming v. Wilson and Others, 1932, in the Notable British Trials Series. It contains a full transcript of the trial, with notes and comments, and is the best and fullest work on the subject. Other books which touch on the case and related matters include Margaret Blunden, The Countess of Warwick, 1967; Piers Compton, Victorian Vortex, 1977; Philippe Julian, Edward and the Edwardians; and an anonymous work, The Private Life of the King, 1901.

Teignmouth Shore published his book "to win justice for the memory of a man much wronged", and nailed his colours to the mast with his opening quotation from Truth, which asserted after the trial that a dog would not have been hanged on the evidence that convicted Gordon-Cumming. It was an opinion shared by many, and if Flashman is to be believed, they were right.