16 Despite Flashman's enthusiastic notice, it seems probable that Lola Montez was not a particularly good artiste, although the historian Veit Valentin observes that she had "the tigerish vivacity that inspires the Andalusian dance".
17 The account of Lola's disastrous appearance at Her Majesty's Theatre (June 3, 1843) is splendidly accurate, not only in its description of Lord Ranelagh's denunciation, but even in such details as the composition of the audience and the programme notes. (See Wyndham's Magnificent Montez.) This is a good, verifiable example of Flashman's ability as a straight reporter, and encourages confidence in those other parts of his story where corroboration is lacking and checking of the facts is impossible.
18 Lola had a passionate affair with Liszt in the year following her departure from London; after their first rapture she appears to have had much the same effect on the famous pianist as she did on Flash. man. He tired of her, and did indeed abandon her in a hotel, whereupon she spent several hours smashing the furniture. Typically, Lola bore no grudge in her high days in Munich she wrote to Liszt offering him Bavarian honours.
19 The coat-of-arms of the Countess of Landsfeld is accurately described; the "fat whale" was a silver dolphin.
20 Stieler's portrait of Lola in Ludwig's gallery is a model of Victorian respectability, A more characteristic Montez is to be seen in Dartiguenave's lithograph; he has caught not only her striking beauty, but her imperious spirit. ee Mr Barbosa's rendering of Stieler's portrait of Lola on the left side of the front cover of this eclition.l
21 "Lola was always vain of her bosom". She was indeed, if the story of her first meeting with Ludwig is to be believed. He is supposed to have expressed doubts about the reality of her figure: her indignant reply was to tear open the top of her dress.
22 There is no supporting evidence that Wagner visited Lola in Munich at this time, but it is not impossible. They met for the first time in 1844, when Liszt took her to a special performance of "Rienzi" at Dresden, and Wagner's impression was of "a painted and jewelled woman with bold, bad eyes". He also described her as "demonic and heartless". Curiously, the great composer gained as much favour from Ludwig II as Lola had done from Ludwig I—so much so that the wits nicknamed him "Lolotte".
23 The American may have been C. G. Leland, a student at Munich University and a friend of Lola's, He claimed that he was the only one of her intimates at whom she had never thrown "a plate or a book, or attacked with a dagger, poker, broom, or other deadly weapon".
24 Schönhausen. Flashman's view of the castle's "medieval ghastliness" was echoed by Bisinarck himself; he described it to a friend as an "old haunted castle, with pointed arches and waIls four feet thick, (and) thirty rooms of which two are furnished." He also complained about its rats and the wind in the chimneys.
25 Flashman's summary of the Schleswig-Holstein Question is accurate so far as it goes; enthusiasts in diplomatic history who wish greater detail are referred to Dr David Thomson's Europe Since Napoleon, pp. 242-3 and 309-11. German and Danish versions of the problem should not be read in isolation.
26 The schlager play of the German students, whereby they could receive superficial head and face wounds which left permanent scars for public admiration, was a unique form of the duel. The equipment is as Flashman describes it; the schlager itself was three-and-a-half feet long, with an unusually large guard ("the soup-plate of honour"). The practice of leaving the wounds open to form the largest possible scar is curiously paralleled by the custom of certain primitive African tribes. In the duel itself, thrusting was strictly forbidden, except at the University of Jena, where there were many theological students. These young men would have found facial scars an embarrassment in their careers, so instead of cutting at the head, Jena students were allowed to run each other through the body, thus satisfying honour without causing visible disfigurement.
27 Bismarck liked to picture himself eventually becoming a rustic landowner; his remark about Stettin wool market occurs again in his recorded conversation, when he spoke of his ambition to "raise a family, and ruin the morals of my peasants with brandy".
28 Bandobast: organisation (Hindustani).
29 In 1847 Germany suffered its second successive failure of the potato crop. In the northern areas wheat had doubled its price in a few years.
30 The emblem of Holstein was, in fact, a nettle-leaf shape.
31 "a plumed helmet, à la Tin-bellies". Flashman is here almost certainly referring to the New Regulation Helmet which had been announced for the British Heavy Dragoons in the previous autumn. Its ridiculously extravagant plumage—popularly supposed to be an inspiration of Prince Albert's—had been the talk of fashionable London in the weeks shortly before Flashman's departure for Munich.
32 Libby Prison, in Richmond, Va., was notorious in the U.S. Civil War. Federal officers were confined there by the Confederates, often in conditions of dreadful overcrowding; it was the scene of a mass escape by tunnel in 1864, and two subsequent Federal cavalry raids to rescue prisoners. Flashman's reference seems to suggest that he was confined there himself; no doubt examination of those packets of his papers as yet unopened will confirm this.
33 Kibroth-Hattaavah—"there they buried the people that lusted" (Numbers 11: 34, 35)—seems to have been a popular subject for sermons at public schools. Dr Rowlands preached on this text in Eric, or Little by Little, by Dean Farrar.
34 It is just possible that the orator was Karl Marx. The Strackenzian coronation must have taken place before his recorded return to Germany from Brussels, where he had conceived the Communist Manifesto, but it is not inconceivable that he visited Strackenz beforehand. The coronation certainly offered a tempting target at a time when European politics generally were in a precarious state. Against the fact that there is no evidence of his ever having visited the duchy, must be balanced Flashman's description of the orator, which is Marx to the life.
35 Eider Danes, a faction who wished to make Schleswig Danish as far as the River Eider. Von Starnberg's concern about pro-Danish militant organisations in Strackenz is understandable, as is his anxiety over Hansen's unexpected appearance at the wedding. What struck the editor as curious was that none of Bismarck's conspirators seem ever to have been alarmed at the prospect of Danish royalty attending the ceremony; that surely would have led to Flashman's exposure. But obviously none, did attend, and this can only be explained by the fact that King Christian of Denmark died on January 10, 1848—shortly before the wedding took place—and that this kept the Danish Court at home, in mourning. A rare stroke of luck for the conspiracy; one does not like to think it was anything else.
36 "Punch" stayed neutral in the checked-or-striped trousers controversy. One of its cartoons suggested that "checks are uncommon superior, but stripes is most nobby". But it was a middle- rather than an upper-class debate.
37 Flashman believes he sang the old nursery rhyme in English, yet it is interesting to note (see Opie's Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes) that it appeared in German, apparently for the first time in that language, in 1848 ("So reiten die herren auf ihren stoizen Pferden, tripp trapp, tripp trapp, tripp trapp") the year in which he and the Duchess Irma were married. Possibly she had noticed after all.