‘It’s a terrible thing to tak’ human life,’ says he.
‘Don’t take it, then,’ says I. ‘Strike only to wound. Get your back against a brick wall and smash ’em across the knees and elbows.’
The females set up a great howl at this, and old Morrison looked ready to faint.
‘D’ye think … it’ll come tae … tae bloodshed?’
‘Shouldn’t wonder,’ says I, very cool.
‘Ye’ll come with me,’ he yammered. ‘You’re a soldier – a man of action – aye, ye’ve the Queen’s Medal an’ a’. Ye’ve seen service – aye – against the country’s enemies! Ye’re the very man tae stand up to this … this trash. Ye’ll come wi’ me – or maybe tak’ my place!’
Solemnly I informed him that the Duke had given it out that on no account were the military to be involved in any disturbance that might take place when the Chartists assembled. I was too well known; I should be recognised.
‘I’m afraid it is for you civilians to do your duty,’ says I. ‘But I shall be here, at home, so you need have no fear. And if the worst befalls, you may be sure that my comrades and I shall take stern vengeance.’
I left that drawing-room sounding like the Wailing Wall, but it was nothing to the scenes which ensued on the morning of the great Chartist meeting at Kennington. Old Morrison set off, amidst the lamentations of the womenfolk, truncheon in hand, to join the other specials, but was back in ten minutes having sprained his ankle, he said, and had to be helped to bed. I was sorry, because I’d been hoping he might get his head stove in, but it wouldn’t have happened anyway. The Chartists did assemble, and the specials were mustered in force to guard the bridges – it was then that I saw Gladstone with the other specials, with his nose dripping, preparing to sell his life dearly for the sake of constitutional liberty and his own investments. But it poured down, everyone was soaked, the foreign agitators who were on hand got nowhere, and all the inflamed mob did was to send a monstrous petition across to the House of Commons. It had five million signatures, they said; I know it had four of mine, one in the name of Obadiah Snooks, and three others in the shape of X’s beside which I wrote, ‘John Morrison, Arthur Wellesley, Henry John Temple Palmerston, their marks’.
But the whole thing was a frost, and when one of the Frog agitators in Trafalgar Square got up and d----d the whole lot of the Chartists for English cowards, a butcher’s boy tore off his coat, squared up to the Frenchy, and gave the snail-chewing scoundrel the finest thrashing you could wish for. Then, of course, the whole crowd carried the butcher’s boy shoulder high, and finished up singing ‘God Save the Queen’ with tremendous gusto. A thoroughly English revolution, I daresay.1
You may wonder what all this had to do with my thinking about entering politics. Well, as I’ve said, it had lowered my opinion of asses like Gladstone still further, and caused me to speculate that if I were an M.P. I couldn’t be any worse than that sorry pack of fellows, but this was just an idle thought. However, if my chief feeling about the demonstration was disappointment that so little mischief had been done, it had a great effect on my father-in-law, crouched at home with the bed-clothes over his head, waiting to be guillotined.
You’d hardly credit it, but in a way he’d had much the same thought as myself, although I don’t claim to know by what amazing distortions of logic he arrived at it. But the upshot of his panic-stricken meditations on that day and the following night, when he was still expecting the mob to reassemble and run him out of town on a rail, was the amazing notion that I ought to go into Parliament.
‘It’s your duty,’ cries he, sitting there in his night-cap with his ankle all bandaged up, while the family chittered round him, offering gruel. He waved his spoon at me. ‘Ye should hiv a seat i’ the Hoose.’
I’m well aware that when a man has been terrified out of his wits, the most lunatic notions occur to him as sane and reasonable, but I couldn’t follow this.
‘Me, in Parliament?’ I loosed a huge guffaw. ‘What the devil would I do there? D’ye think that would keep the Chartists at bay?’
At this he let loose a great tirade about the parlous state of the country, and the impending dissolution of constitutional government, and how it was everyone’s duty to rally to the flag. Oddly enough, it reminded me of the kind of claptrap I’d heard from Bismarck – strong government, and lashing the workers – but I couldn’t see how Flashy, M.P., was going to bring that about.
‘If yesterday’s nonsense has convinced you that we need a change at Westminster,’ says I, ‘– and I’d not disagree with you there – why don’t you stand yourself?’
He glowered at me over his gruel-bowl. ‘I’m no’ the Hero of Kabul,’ says he. ‘Forbye, I’ve business enough to attend to. But you – ye’ve nothing to hinder ye. Ye’re never tired o’ tellin’ us whit a favourite ye are wi’ the public. Here’s your chance to make somethin’ o’t.’
‘You’re out of your senses,’ says I. ‘Who would elect me?’
‘Anybody,’ snaps he. ‘A pug ape frae the zoological gardens could win a seat in this country, if it was managed right.’ Buttering me up, I could see.
‘But I’m not a politician,’ says I. ‘I know nothing about it, and care even less.’
‘Then ye’re the very man, and ye’ll find plenty o’ kindred spirits at Westminster,’ says he, and when I hooted at him he flew into a tremendous passion that drove the females weeping from the room. I left him raging.
But when I came to think about it, do you know, it didn’t seem quite so foolish after all. He was a sharp man, old Morrison, and he could see it would do no harm to have a Member in the family, what with his business interests and so on. Not that I’d be much use to him that I could see – I didn’t know, then, that he had been maturing some notion of buying as many as a dozen seats. I’d no idea, you see, of just how wealthy the old rascal was, and how he was scheming to use that wealth for political ends. You won’t find much in the history books about John Morrison, Lord Paisley, but you can take my word for it that it was men like him who pulled the strings in the old Queen’s time, while the political puppets danced. They still do, and always will.
And from my side of the field, it didn’t look a half bad idea. Flashy, M.P. Sir Harry Flashman, M.P., perhaps. Lord Flash of Lightning, Paymaster of the Forces, with a seat in the Cabinet, d--n your eyes. God knows I could do that job as well as Thomas Babbling Macaulay. Even in my day-dreaming I stopped short of Flashy, Prime Minister, but for the rest, the more I thought of it the better I liked it. Light work, plenty of spare time for as much depraved diversion as I could manage in safety, and the chance to ram my opinions down the public’s throat whenever I felt inclined. I need never go out of London if I didn’t want to – I would resign from the army, of course, and rest on my considerable if ill-gotten laurels – and old Morrison would be happy to foot the bills, no doubt, in return for slight services rendered.
The main thing was, it would be a quiet life. As you know, in spite of the published catalogue of my career – Victoria Cross, general rank, eleven campaigns, and all that mummery – I’ve always been an arrant coward and a peaceable soul. Bullying underlings and whipping trollops always excepted, I’m a gentle fellow – which means I’ll never do harm to anyone if there’s a chance he may harm me in return. The trouble is, no one would believe it to look at me; I’ve always been big and hearty and looked the kind of chap who’d go three rounds with the town rough if he so much as stepped on my shadow, and from what Tom Hughes has written of me you might imagine I was always ready for devilment. Aye, but as I’ve grown older I’ve learned that devilment usually has to be paid for. God knows I’ve done my share of paying, and even in ’48, at the ripe old age of twenty-six, I’d seen enough sorrow, from the Khyber to German dungeons by way of the Borneo jungles and the torture-pits of Madagascar, to convince me that I must never go looking for trouble again.2 Who’d have thought that old Morrison’s plans to seat me at