of dust should blemish the perfection of tunic and long boots, or the polish of lance, sword, pistols, and carbine. Probyn eyed them jaundiced-like, stroking his fair moustache.
“If they take the stick24 again, Fane’ll be insufferable,” says he. “What, you’d like the Manchoo Emperor to see all this? Don’t fret, old fellah – he will.”
He left me at the causeway, and I drove on alone to Pehtang, a moth-eaten village on the river boasting one decent house, where Elgin and his staff were quartered. I tiffined first with Temple of the military train, who deafened me with complaints about the condition of our transport – poor forage for the beasts, useless coolies, officers over-worked (“for a miserly nine and sixpence a day buckshee, let me tell you!”), the native ponies were hopeless, the notion of issuing a three-day cooked ration in this climate was lunacy, and it was a rooten, piddling war, anyway, which no one at home would mind a bit. It sounded like every military train I’d seen.
“Frogs just a damned nuisance, of course – no proper provision, an’ three days late,” says he with satisfaction. “How the blazes Bonaparte ever got ’em on parade beats me. We should go without ’em.”
Everyone says that about the French, and it’s gospel true – until it’s Rosalie’s breakfast timea, and then Froggy’ll be first into the breach ahead of us, just out of spite.
Elgin was in the backyard of his house, stamping about in his shirt-sleeves, snapping dictation at Loch, his secretary, while my Canton inquisitor, Parkes, sat by. I heard Elgin’s sharp, busy voice before I saw him; as I halted in the gateway he turned, glaring like a belligerent Pickwick, and hailed me in mid-sentence with a bark and a wave.
“…Šand I have the honour to refer your excellency to the Superintendent’s letter of whenever-it-was … Ha, Flashman! At last! … and to repeat the assertion … wait, Loch, make that warning … aye, the warning conveyed in my notes of so-and-so and so-and-so … that unless we have your assurance … solemn assurance … that our ultimatum will be complied with directly …”
Still dictating, he rummaged in a letter-case and shoved a packet at me; to my astonishment it was addressed in my wife’s simpleton scrawl, and I’d have pocketed it, but Elgin waved me peremptorily to read it, so I did, while he went on dictating full spate.
“Oh, my Darlingest Dear One, how I long to see you!” it began, and plunged straight into an account of how Mrs Potter was positive that the laundry were pinching our Best Linen sheets and sending back rubbish, so she had approved Mrs Potter’s purchase of one of Williamson’s new patent washing-machines and did I think it a Great Extravagance? “I am sure it must prove Useful, and a Great Saving. Shirts require no hand-rubbing! Qualified Engineers are prompt to carry out repairs, tho’ such are seldom necessary Mrs Potter says.” She (Elspeth, not Mrs Potter) loved me Excessively and had noticed in the press an Item which she was sure I must find droll – a Bishop’s duaghter had married the Rev. Edward Cheese! Such a comical name! She had been to Hanover Square to hear Mr Ryder read “MacBeth” – most moving altho’ Shakespeare’s notions of Scottish speech were outlandish and silly, and she and Jane Speedicut had been twice to “The Pilgrim of Love” at the Haymarket, and Jane had wept in a most Affected way “just to attract Attention, which she needn’t have bothered in that unfortunate lilac gown, so out of style!!” She missed me, and please, I must not mind about the washing-machine for if she hadn’t Mrs P. might have Given Notice! Little Havvy hoped his Papa would kill a Chinaman, and enclosed a picture of Jesus which he had drawn at school. “Oh, come to us soon, soon, dear Hero, to the fond arms of your Loving, Adoring Elspeth. x x x x x!!!”
I ain’t given to sentimental tears, but it was a close thing, standing in that hot, dusty yard with the smell of China in my nostrils, holding that letter which I could picture her writing, sighing and frowning and nibbling her pen, rumpling her golden curls for inspiration, burrowing in her dictionary to see how many s’s in “necessary”, smiling fondly as she kissed young Havvy’s execrable drawing – eleven years old the little brute was, and apparently thought Christ had a green face and feathers in his hair. If she’d written pages of Undying Devotion and slop, as she had in our young days, I’d have yawned at it – but all the nonsense about washing-machines and “MacBeth” and Jane’s dress and the man Cheese was so … so like Elspeth, if you know what I mean, and I felt such a longing for her, just to sit by her, and have her hand in mind, and look into those beautiful wide blue eyes, and tear off her corset, and –
“Flashman!” Elgin was grasping my hand, demanding my news. “Ha! I’m glad to see you! You were despaired of at Shanghai!” The sharp eyes twinkled for an instant. “So you’ll write directly to reassure that bonny little wife whose letter I brought, hey? She’s in blooming health. Well, sit down, sit down! Tell me of Nanking.”
So I did, and he listened with his bare forearms set on the table, John Bull to the life; he’d be fifty then, the Big Barbarian, as the Chinese called him, bald as an egg save for a few little white wisps, with his bulldog lip and sudden barks of anger or laughter. A peppery old buffer, and a deal kinder than he looked – how many ambassadors would call on a colonel’s wife to carry a letter to her man? – and the shrewdest diplomatic of his day, hard as a hammer and subtle as a Spaniard. Best of all, he had common sense.
He’d made a name in the West Indies and Canada, negotiated the China treaty which we were now going to enforce, and had saved India, no question, by diverting troops from China at the outbreak of the Mutiny, without waiting orders from home. As to his diplomatic style – when the Yankees still had their eye on Canada, and looked like trying annexation, Elgin went through Washington’s drawing-rooms like a devouring flame, wining and dining every Southern Democrat he could find, dazzling ’em with his blue blood, telling ’em racy stories, carrying on like Cheeryble – and hinting, ever so delicate, that if Canada joined the Great Republic, it would give the Northern Yankees a fine majority in Congress, with all those long-nosed Scotch Calvinists (to say nothing of French Papists) becoming American voters overnight. That set the fire-bells ringing from Charleston to the Gulf, and with the South suddenly dead set against annexation – why Canada never did join the U.S.A., did she? Wily birds, these earls – this one’s father had pinched all the best marbles in Greece, so you could see they were a family to be watched.25
“An unsavoury crew of fanatics,” was his comment when I’d told him of the Taipings. “Well, thanks to you, we should be able to keep them from Shanghai, and once the treaty’s signed, their bolt’s shot. The Imperial Chinese Government can set about ’em in earnest – with our tacit support, but not our participation. Eh, Parkes?”
“Yes … the trouble is, my lord,” says Parkes, “that those two terms have a deplorable habit of becoming synonymous.”
“Synonymous be damned!” snaps Elgin. “H.M.G. will not be drawn into war against the Taipings. We’d find ourselves with a new empire in China before we knew it.” He heaved up from the table and poured coffee from a spirit kettle. “And I have no intention, Parkes, of presiding over any extension of the area in which we exhibit the hollowness of our Christianity and our civilisation. Coffee, Flashman? Yes, you can light one of your damned cheroots if you want to – but blow the smoke the other way. Poisoning mankind!”
There you have three of Elgin’s fads all together – he hated tobacco, was soft on Asiatics, and didn’t care for empire-building. I recall him on this very campaign saying he’d do anything “to prevent England calling down God’s curse on herself for brutalities committed on yet another feeble Oriental race.” Yet
