The Speedicut Papers Book 5 (1871–1879): Suffering Bertie

THE SPEEDICUT PAPERS

The Memoirs of Jasper Speedicut

Book 5 (1871–1879)

Suffering Bertie

Edited

by

Christopher Joll

AuthorHouse™ UK

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© 2018 Christopher Joll. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  02/22/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5462-8847-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-8848-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-8846-6 (e)

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For

PA

Who is wholly unaware of his role

CONTENTS

Notes On The Editor

Introduction

Principal Characters In Order Of Appearance

Synopsis Of Book 4 (Where Eagles Dare)

Chapter One: Finding Khazi

Chapter Two: Bimbling With Bertie

Chapter Three: Vicky’s Vapours

Chapter Four: The Shadow Of Death

Chapter Five: Under Starter’s Orders

Chapter Six: What Goes Around…

Chapter Seven: …Comes Around

Chapter Eight: The Long Arm Of Coincidence

Chapter Nine: Sink Or Swim

Chapter Ten: Rhodes To Riches

Chapter Eleven: Boom & Bust?

Chapter Twelve: Trains & Boats & Plains

Chapter Thirteen: Horizontal In Paris

Chapter Fourteen: From Frogs To Wogs

Chapter Fifteen: Governors & Governesses

Chapter Sixteen: Fog And Foam

Chapter Seventeen: Preening Princes

Chapter Eighteen: Potions & Punts

Chapter Nineteen: A Death In The Family

Chapter Twenty: A Hand Of Poker

Chapter Twenty-One: An Ace In The Hole

Chapter Twenty-Two: Party Tricks

Chapter Twenty-Three: Boney Was A Warrior…

Chapter Twenty-Four: In The Missionary Position

Chapter Twenty-Five: In The Hall Of The Mountain King

Chapter Twenty-Six: The Great Escape

Chapter Twenty-Seven: A Fallen Eagle

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Pearls Beyond Price

Appendix A: Dictionary Of British Biographies

NOTES ON THE EDITOR

After serving time at Oxford University and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Christopher Joll spent his formative years as an officer in The Life Guards, an experience from which he has never really recovered.

On leaving the Army, Joll worked first in investment banking, but the boredom of City life led him to switch careers and become an arms salesman. After ten years of dealing with tin pot dictators in faraway countries, he moved - perhaps appropriately - into public relations where, in this new incarnation, he had to deal with dictators of an altogether different type.

From his earliest days, Joll has written articles, features, short stories and reportage. One such piece of writing led to an early brush with notoriety when an article he had penned anonymously in 1974 for a political journal ended up as front page national news and resulted in a Ministerial inquiry. In 2012 Joll wrote the text for Uniquely British: A Year in the Life of the Household Cavalry, an illustrated account of the Household Cavalry from the Royal Wedding to the Diamond Jubilee, and in 2017 he published The Spoils of War. His yet to be published memoires, Anecdotal Evidence, promises to cause considerable consternation in certain quarters should it ever appear in print.

Since leaving the Army in 1975, Joll has been involved in devising and managing charity fund-raising events. This interest started in 1977 with The Silver Jubilee Royal Gifts Exhibition at St James’s Palace and The Royal Cartoons Exhibition at the Press Club. In subsequent years, he co-produced ‘José Carreras & Friends’, a one-night Royal Gala Concert at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane; ‘Serenade for a Princess’, a Royal Gala Concert at the Banqueting House, Whitehall; and ‘Concert for a Prince’, a Royal Gala Concert staged at Windsor Castle (the first such event to be held there following the post-fire restoration).

More recently, Joll has focused on devising, writing, directing and sometimes producing events primarily for military charities. These include in various different roles the Household Cavalry Pageant (2007); the Chelsea Pageant (2008); the Diamond Jubilee Parade in the Park (2012); the British Military Tournament (2010-2013); the Gurkha Bicentenary Pageant (2015); the Waterloo Bicentenary National Service of Commemoration & Parade at St Paul’s Cathedral (2015); the Shakespeare 400 Memorial Concert (2016); The Patron’s Luncheon (2016), the official London event to mark The Queen’s 90th Birthday and The Great War Symphony to be premiered in 2018 at the Royal Albert Hall.

INTRODUCTION

With the first publication of The Speedicut Papers in 2013, the reading public was shocked to learn that Brigadier General Sir Harry Flashman VC, one of the greatest heroes of the Victorian age, was nothing more than a Paris-based remittance man and a plagiarising fraud. Almost as shocking was the revelation that, for more than 250 years, there has been a secret organisation at the heart of the British Establishment, called The Brotherhood of the Sons of Thunder, which was ruthlessly interfering in the nation’s affairs.

These facts were revealed in a cache of letters written over a lifetime by Colonel Sir Jasper Speedicut to his friend Harry Flashman, which I discovered in 2010 in the basement of the New Walk Museum in Leicester. Taken together, the letters are a comprehensive record of the life and times of Speedicut: soldier, courtier, bi-sexual and reluctant hero.

In this, the fifth volume of The Speedicut Papers, the public will once again learn of further previously hidden truths that cast a new light on real historical incidents, set against the major events of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Although the first seven volumes of The Speedicut Papers were originally published in letter format, in response to popular demand I have re-edited the books into a narrative text. As with the previously published work, in the interests of clarity I have annotated the text with dates and historical or explanatory background material.

CHRISTOPHER JOLL

www.jasperspeedicut.com

PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE

Any similarity to persons now dead is entirely intentional

Jasper Speedicut – an officer and a gentleman, usually known as ‘Speed’

Harry Flashman – a remittance man mostly based in Paris, who is a friend of Speedicut and his controller in ‘The Brotherhood of the Sons of Thunder’, usually known as ‘Flashy’

Frederick Searcy – Speedicut’s private secretary, formerly a riding instructor in the 2nd Life Guards

Muhamad Khazi – Speedicut’s head coachman, formerly a Kizilbashi irregular cavalryman

Lady Charlotte-Georgina Speedicut – Speedicut’s second wife, daughter of the Duke of Whitehall

Mrs Ovenden – the Speedicut’s cook

Henry Crichton – the Speedicut’s butler

Edward – a young footman in the Speedicut household

Miss James – Lady Charlotte-Georgina Speedicut’s lady’s maid and Searcy’s wife

Prissy – a black American ex-slave, married to Khazi and employed as the Duchess of Whitehall’s lady’s maid

Dagmar FitzCharles, Duchess of Whitehall – imperious wife of the 7th Duke of Whitehall and mother of Lady Charlotte-Georgina Speedicut

HRH Prince Albert Edward, The Prince of Wales – eldest son of Queen Victoria, known as Bertie

HRH Princess Alexandra, Princess of Wales – Danish-born wife of the Prince of Wales

The Great Boanerges - Charles-James FitzCharles, 7th Duke of Whitehall and head of the Brotherhood of the Sons of Thunder

Catherine Walters – a courtesan, usually known as ‘Skittles’

Honorine Verne – wife of the novelist Jules Verne

Phileas Fogg – a bachelor of independent means

Dr Henry Jekyll – a Harley Street physician

Cecil Rhodes – a diamond prospector

Jan Adendorff - guide, occasional big game hunter and part time militiaman

Barney Barnato – a cigar merchant turned diamond prospector

Major Algernon St Albion – a multi-millionaire officer in the 10th Hussars

Charles-Ethelred FitzCharles, Marquess of Pellmell – brother of Lady Charlotte-Georgina Speedicut and future 8th Duke of Whitehall

Augustus Melmotte MP – a financier and Chairman of the South Central Pacific & Mexican Railway Company

Sir Felix Carberry Bart – a dissolute young Baronet

Paul Montague – a young railway engineer

A J Raffles – a young Englishman abroad

HIH Prince Louis Napoleon, the Prince Imperial – heir to the Imperial throne of France

Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead VC – an officer of the 24th Regiment of Foot

Lieutenant John Chard VC – an officer in the Royal Engineers

Cetshwayo kaMpande – King of the Zulus

Lady Florence Dixie – a war correspondent

SYNOPSIS OF BOOK 4 (WHERE EAGLES DARE)

Two main storylines run through Book 4 of The Speedicut Papers: Speedicut’s quest to identify the traitor within the British establishment, who has already occasioned him considerable problems, and his involuntary involvement in the affairs of three Emperors and one future Emperor.

Book 4 opens in Washington DC on the evening of 14th April 1865 in the immediate aftermath of the assassination of President Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre. Circumstantial evidence, which Khazi has discovered in Speedicut’s hotel room, confirms a warning given to Speedicut by Captain Rhett Butler that there is a traitor embedded in the British Foreign Office, the Brotherhood of the Sons of Thunder or both, and that Speedicut has been ‘set up’ to take the blame for a Russian plot to assassinate Lincoln. In the event, the assassins were not connected to the Russian plot but to a rival one in which Butler was involved. Despite this, Speedicut realises that he could still be implicated and seizes the opportunity to return to London ahead of the trial of the conspirators.

During the trans-Atlantic crossing, Speedicut has a brief affair with Lizzie Eustace, the young wife of the terminally ill Sir Florian Eustace, the owner of the fabled Eustace diamonds; Speedicut narrowly escapes being caught by Sir Florian in flagrante delicto with Lady Eustace. On his arrival back at Curzon Street, Speedicut is presented with his infant daughter, Dorothea, who was born whilst he was in the United States. Her christening and the wedding of Searcy and Miss James follow swiftly. In the course of the christening, Dorothea is nearly drowned in the font by her mother’s inept relation, Lord Charles-Henry FitzCharles, Bishop of Matabeleland; Searcy’s and Miss James’s wedding is a similarly fraught occasion, enlivened by a distraught Khazi.

At an interview with his father-in-law the Duke of Whitehall, who is also head (‘Great Boanerges’) of the Brotherhood of the Sons of Thunder, Speedicut learns that the Brotherhood’s finances have been badly impacted by the American Civil War and that the Brotherhood has no immediate need of his skills. At Horse Guards, where he briefs the Commander-in-Chief, HRH The Duke of Cambridge, on his recent experiences in the United States, Speedicut is also told that there are currently no jobs for him in the Army and he is put on a period of extended leave. Given all the circumstances, Speedicut decides that a second honeymoon is appropriate and he takes his wife, Lady Charlotte-Georgina, along with Searcy, Khazi and Miss James, to the Hotel Crillon in Paris.

Whilst in Paris, Speedicut encounters the recently widowed Lady Eustace whose diamonds were mysteriously stolen shortly after her husband’s death. Lady Eustace informs Speedicut that Rhett Butler is staying at the Hotel Meurice. Speedicut confronts Butler, whom he suspects is involved in the disappearance of the Eustace diamonds, and demands to know the name of the traitor in the British establishment; Butler evades the question. Lady Eustace also gives the Speedicuts an introduction to Erik de Agyrém, an Hungarian architect who is involved in the design of the new opera house. In the course of a near fatal encounter in the part-constructed building, Speedicut realises that de Agyrém is none other than Count Vladimir de Dracule, who he last encountered in Berlin in 1849.

In the meantime, Speedicut receives a telegram from the Duke of Cambridge, instructing him to report to the British Embassy to provide the Ambassador with information relating to the situation between Mexico and the United States, a subject on which Speedicut has absolutely no knowledge. At the Embassy, he finds to his dismay that the Ambassador has arranged for him to brief Emperor Louis Napoleon. Following an intensive lecture on the Mexican situation by Searcy, which Speedicut only partially understands, he inadvertently gives the Emperor the justification he needs to withdraw French troops from Mexico. With the consent of the Ambassador, he is also tasked by Louis Napoleon with briefing the Emperor of Austria, older brother of the Emperor of Mexico, on the reasons for the French decision.

Whilst Lady Charlotte-Georgina, Khazi and Miss James return to London, Speedicut and Searcy – newly promoted to the role of private secretary - make their way to Vienna. There they are met by a young Austrian officer, Count von Bombelles, who is on the staff of the Emperor of Mexico. Von Bombelles escorts Speedicut to Schönbrunn Palace where he briefs Emperor Franz Josef and again meets the Empress ‘Sisi’, who invites him to ride-out with her the following day. Later, at his hotel, Speedicut encounters Baron von Einem of the Prussian Secret Service, whom he had last seen at Windsor Castle in 1855. On his ride with the Empress, Speedicut has an accident and, whilst under the influence of morphine, agrees to advise Franz Josef – who has been led to believe that Speedicut is an expert on the subject of Schleswig-Holstein - at an Austro-Prussian conference to be held at Bad Gastein to determine the future of the two states. Speedicut realises that, to preserve British neutrality, it is essential that his presence at the conference remains a secret, a situation which could easily be compromised by von Einem. To protect Speedicut, Searcy devises a plan to have von Einem arrested and deported before the conference for an act of gross indecency in a Turkish bath in Vienna. Unfortunately, von Einem realises at the last minute that Speedicut is part of this successful plot.

Back once again in England, Speedicut spends the winter of 1865-6 shooting and hunting. This pleasant existence is unexpectedly interrupted by the news that, at the request of the Emperor of Austria, he has been seconded with immediate effect to serve for twelve months as Equerry to the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. He is instructed by the Foreign Office that, in order to avoid the Prussian Secret Service, he must travel to Mexico incognito and dressed as a woman. The disguise is in vain for the Prussian Secret Service, in the shape of Baron von Einem, have been fully informed by the British traitor. Consequently, Speedicut is ambushed whilst on a stop-over in the Azores. Thanks to the unexpected intervention of Searcy, Speedicut narrowly avoids being muted, castrated and consigned by a vengeful von Einem into service in the male harem of the Sultan of Morocco.

On arrival in Mexico, Speedicut is appointed by Emperor Maximilian to the Household of the Empress Carlota and awarded the Order of Our Lady of Guadeloupe (3rd Class). He befriends another member of the Imperial Household, a Prussian soldier-of-fortune, Prince Felix Salm-Salm and his Red Indian wife, Agnes. As the military situation in Mexico deteriorates, the Empress Carlota decides to return to Europe to rally support for the imperial regime. Speedicut and von Bombelles travel with her to Paris, Brussels, Vatican City and the Miramare Palace at Trieste. Whilst in Paris, Speedicut has a life-threatening experience with the Empress of the French in a hotel lift. In Rome, after an audience with the Pope and a rather unfortunate incident with Khazi, the Empress Carlota has a nervous breakdown from which she does not recover. In consequence, Speedicut and von Bombelles are ordered to return to Mexico. Whilst Speedicut is preparing to take part in a hopeless military expedition to crush the rebels and save Maximilian’s throne, Captain Butler appears and promises to help Speedicut return to England whilst at the same time implicating him in an arms shipment swindle. He also gives Speedicut a vital clue as to the identity of the traitor in the British establishment: ‘fog in London is dangerous’.

Maximilian’s military expedition fails and the Emperor and his staff are besieged by rebel forces in Querétaro. Maximilian orders Speedicut to return to Mexico City and assist the traitorous General Márquez with the financing of a relief column. Back in the capital, Márquez does nothing of the sort and leaves Speedicut to kick his heels whilst he awaits Butler’s instructions for his return to England. However, before Butler gets in touch, Speedicut is ‘persuaded’ by Princess Salm-Salm into returning with her to Querétaro to rescue the Emperor. Once there, Speedicut, involuntarily disguised as Princess Salm-Salm, negotiates with the rebel leader, Juarez, to save the life of the Emperor. Believing that his Mexican assignment is now complete, Speedicut returns with Khazi to London via Atlanta, where he once again sees Captain Butler. Butler asks him to return the Eustace diamonds to Lady Eustace as he has been unable - on her behalf - to find a buyer for them; Khazi is caught having sex with Scarlett Butler’s maid, Prissy, agrees to marry her and she returns with him to London to the dismay of Lady Charlotte-Georgina.

No sooner has Speedicut returned home than he is ordered by the Great Boanerges to go to South Africa following the discovery of diamonds in the Orange Free State. Once there he is to assess the investment potential and then, if appropriate, purchase land in the area on behalf of the Brotherhood. Before leaving for the Cape with Searcy, Speedicut has a close encounter with Lady Eustace, during which he surreptitiously returns the diamonds. Having lost track of the time in Lady Eustace’s bed, he misses the induction into the Brotherhood of Phileas Fogg. In Cape Town, Speedicut mentions the new Brother to Searcy, who immediately makes the connection with Butler’s clue as to the identity of the traitor. Once on the Orange River, Speedicut and Searcy conclude that there is no investment potential at the site. They return to England empty handed and Speedicut resumes the leisured life of an officer on half-pay.

This idyll is rudely interrupted in the early months of 1867 with the news that the world’s largest diamond deposit has been identified at the Orange River site; the Great Boanerges is so angry with Speedicut that he suspends him from the Brotherhood. Meanwhile, Speedicut is ordered by the Commander-in-Chief to return from half-pay and assume the command of the 10th Hussars at Aldershot. There is then a three-year gap in the correspondence, which resumes in 1870 with a letter to Flashman from Bad Ems, where the Speedicuts are ‘taking the waters’. Whilst there, Speedicut is compromised with a waiter by Baron von Einem and then embroiled in a Prussian plot to spark a war with France. Speedicut is innocently responsible for the publication of the notorious ‘Ems Telegram’. This triggers the Franco-Prussian War, to which Speedicut is appointed by Horse Guards as a British observer on the Prussian side.

Whilst kicking his heels at Prussian GHQ, Speedicut is ‘persuaded’ by the King of Prussia to cross the front line under a flag of truce with the task of persuading Emperor Louis Napoleon to leave the Army of Châlons, which the Prussians are about to crush, and return to Paris to save his regime. Speedicut’s stated price for carrying out this mission is the award of the Order of the Black Eagle, a brazen demand to which the King of Prussia grudgingly accedes. However, Louis Napoleon refuses to return to Paris. Instead, he asks Speedicut if he will take the Prince Imperial to the coast, so that he can escape to England, and then travel to Paris to convince the Empress Eugénie that she too must flee the country. Speedicut successfully completes the first half of this mission but has the greatest difficulty in convincing the Empress that she must leave the Tuileries Palace. He eventually succeeds, just as the Parisian mob storms the building and, after an extraordinary encounter with an irascible British Field Marshal on a yacht anchored at Trouville, delivers the Empress to the Isle of Wight. Some weeks later Speedicut receives a letter of thanks from the Empress along with the Legion of Honour (3rd Class).

In early 1871, Speedicut receives an invitation to the French Imperial Household-in-Exile at Camden Place, Chislehurst. He arrives to find that he is part of a reception committee for a visit by Queen Victoria to the Imperial couple. At the end of the visit, the ex-Empress Eugénie – with the implied authority of The Queen – asks Speedicut if he will return to Paris to recover ‘items of considerable value to the Imperial Family’. Speedicut feels that he has no choice but to accept the assignment, despite the fact that Paris is in the murderous grip of the Commune.

When he arrives at the seat of the legitimate French government in Versailles, in the company of Khazi and Searcy, Speedicut establishes that travel into Paris is extremely hazardous. Accordingly, and thanks to the intervention of William Russell of The Times, he enters the city with the government forces sent in to crush the Commune. In a series of misadventures, Speedicut and Khazi eventually get into the Tuileries Palace and find the Imperial Family’s ‘items of considerable value’, which turn out to be family photographs. Speedicut is so incensed at this discovery that he throws his cigar back into the palace, which inadvertently ignites a gun powder store and destroys the building; Khazi and Speedicut are separated by the blast.

Speedicut recovers consciousness, bruised, battered and burned, in La Roquette prison where he is being held as a hostage by the Commune. He survives the notorious massacre in the rue Haxo, is ‘rescued’ by Prussian troops and later found in a field hospital by Searcy and Russell. Khazi, however, appears to have vanished Book 4 ends with Speedicut recovering in the Hotel Meurice whilst Searcy initiates a desperate search for Khazi…

CHAPTER ONE: FINDING KHAZI

Whilst my old chum (and controller in the Brotherhood of the Sons of Thunder), Flashy, was on the Orange River, where he was attempting to filch land from Dutch farmers with a view to topping up the Brotherhood’s coffers with raw diamonds and, in all probability, poaching his liver on cheap alcohol, contracting a disfiguring disease from the local bints or being bored to death by the Boers, I was resting in the Meurice Hotel, Paris. There, with the help of my butler, Searcy, I was trying to recover from the injuries inflicted upon me by the Paris Communards – at least to the extent that the Frog fillies didn’t stampede every time I walked into a drawing room.

In that regard, I’m pleased to be able to tell my readers that by the middle of June [1871] the blisters covering the whole of my rear elevation had dried up, so I could once again sit on soft furnishings without leaving an unsightly stain behind me. However, although my hair was slowly re-growing, the back of my head still resembled the arse of a newly shorn ram with sun burn. Searcy suggested that I wear a caxon,¹ but I decided on a more draconian solution. Accordingly, the hotel’s barber was summoned to perform an all-over tonsure. I knew that, for a while, I would look like that absurd egg-head, Rudolf Ruritania, whom Bismarck recently toppled from the throne of his eponymous pocket-sized German principality, but I thought that was preferable to looking as if I’ve suffered a severe attack of moth. There was the added benefit that, on my upcoming return to London, it would beg a large number of not unwelcome questions about my sojourn in Paris.

Speaking of which, I have to inform my readers that – one month on and with order fully and brutally restored – if it hadn’t been for the ruins of the Tuileries Palace (for which I took absolutely no responsibility), the Hotel de Ville and the Palais Royal, a casual visitor really wouldn’t have known that Paris had been a battlefield for the past six months or so: the city’s powers of recovery were quite extraordinary, matched only by my own. Whilst on the subject of me and the Frogs, I think I mentioned [in Book 4] that I had written a stiff letter to the ex-Emperor, whose frigid frau had coerced me into breasting the barricades in order to rescue her family’s photograph albums. Of course, if I’d known in the first place that’s what I’d been sent to recover I would have given the silly cow short shrift and risked the wrath of the Widow of Windsor. Anyway, I wrote a letter to Louis Napoleon in which I detailed, in considerable and graphic detail, my exploits in Paris on behalf of the ex-Imperial Family and I copied it to Ponsonby at the Palace.² Unsurprisingly, I did not receive a reply from either quarter. However, I remained optimistic that HM would see fit to reward my heroics, on behalf of her friend the Frog bookmaker, with something to match my continental tin ware, which Charlotte-Georgina continued to hold in abject contempt. The Bath would be appropriate, I thought.

‘But what about Khazi?’ goes up the cry from my band of loyal followers. For those whose brains have been enfeebled by the pox or an excess of booze, I should remind my readers that Khazi, my Afghan coachman, and I had been separated in the huge explosion that destroyed the Tuileries Palace. Although, with relative ease, my secretary, Searcy, had found my lightly roasted carcass in a Prussian field hospital, his extensive search of the prisons, hospitals, morgues and cemeteries of Paris produced not even the charred remains of a one-eyed Kizilbashi irregular cavalryman-turned-gentleman’s-head-coachman. To say that Searcy was distraught would be an understatement.

I was sitting at my desk one morning, pondering whether to send to write to my wife or, instead, to risk a brief promenade in the Tuileries Gardens, when Searcy entered the hotel suite with my post. His usually handsome phiz was a picture of misery and his normally bright eyes were reddened with grief.

Do buck up, old chap, I said.

It’s all very well you saying that, sir, he replied, through a barely supressed sob, but it’s the not knowing that I find so hard to bear. My heart tells me that Mo is out there somewhere, but my head tells me that he must be dead. He let out a deep sigh. "I know that the reason I can’t find him is that he was thrown into one of those mass graves that were dug for the burial of all those executed Communists."³

There was no answer to that, so I tried a word of encouragement.

Well, I said, you’ve still got those detective chappies from the Poirot Private Detective Agency lookin’, ain’t you?

I have, sir, but I’m not sure that they would be able to find a flower in a florist’s shop, let alone Mo in this vast city. And they’re costing you a small fortune, what with their fees and expenses and overtime…

You’re not to think about that, I replied, the Speedicut coffers are still fairly full and there are plenty of untapped reserves, this said as I suddenly remembered that – unbeknownst to Charlotte-Georgina – I still had that raddled old Indian whore’s gaudy girdle and the Emperor of China’s chess pieces safely stashed in one of Angie Burdett-Coutts’s deepest vaults.⁴

Unfortunately, my robust declaration of continued financial solvency did not have the intended morale-lifting effect on Searcy. Instead, unbidden, my excellent secretary slumped into the chair opposite me, lowered his head into his hands and started to blub. I was, and I admit this frankly, completely at a loss to know what to do. However, I’d always found that a distraction, preferably one that involved a considerable amount of misbehaviour in the bedroom department, was an effective treatment for the glooms, if not an absolute cure.

Enough of all this, I said, as I decided that what was required was a firm bracing up, not tea and sympathy, this isn’t like you, Searcy. What ever happened to your Englishman’s stiff upper lip?

I seem to have lost it – like Mo, he said, as his sobs deepened.

What about the spirit that held the gates at Hougoumont? I said in desperation.

I was a Life Guard, sir, not a bloody Coldstreamer…

Yes, yes, I know that – but it’s the principle of the thing, not the ’effing cap badge, for heaven’s sake. Lady Hamilton didn’t have a fit of the vapours when her one-eyed hero bought it and nor should you!

As a matter of fact, she did, sir. She was prostrated with grief, then she took to the bottle and died of gin in Calais.

The fact that Searcy had corrected my account of the old tart’s reactions to the death of the hero of Trafalgar was an encouraging sign and I immediately noted that he had stopped sobbing. I decided to press my advantage.

Just as well that you don’t like gin then, ain’t it? He nodded silently whilst he still held his head in his hands. Tell you what, I went on, I feel fit enough to take a turn in the park, then after luncheon and a decent snooze, I propose that we head off to Pigalle. It says in this mornin’s papers that the Brasserie des Martyrs has opened up its basement as a theatre, called the Divan de Maroc, where entertainments for the ‘broad minded’ seem to be the order of the day.

I don’t know, sir. I’m not really in the mood…

Enough of this, Searcy, I said, as I rose from behind my desk. Get me my straw tile and cane, we’re goin’ promenadin’ – and who knows - between the whores and the bum boys lurkin’ around the palace ruins and the Carousel, we may just find a one-eyed Afghan beggin’ on the very spot where I last saw him.

With considerable reluctance Searcy acceded to my instruction and, half-an-hour later, we were touring the scene of my inadvertent act of pyromania. Khazi was not there. Far from raising Searcy’s sprits, the absence of his friend and colleague seemed to depress him yet further. So, as it was a fine day and I was feeling considerably better, instead of returning to our rooms I decided that we would take luncheon at Ledoyen, which was only a short walk from the Tuileries Gardens. I’d read in La Gazette that it had recently reopened and, so the rag said, had an even better kitchen than before the siege, during which it had made something of a speciality serving exotic meats from the butcher at the zoo. La Gazette also asserted that, during the first Frog Revolution, it had been the favourite haunt of Robespierre, Napoleon and his slap-and-tickle. Anyway, now that roast rat and rhino were (hopefully) no longer on the menu, I reckoned it was good enough for the two of us, and so it proved to be.

I don’t often give my readers a run-down on my diet, but the food at Ledoyen was so exceptional that I think it deserves a fuller-than-usual account. As I may have mentioned before, I like plain food, not the f’d-about-covered-in-sauce horse meat that some Parisian proprietors try to pass off as haute cuisine. Ledoyen’s menu promised no such abominations and, as Searcy couldn’t focus on it, I ordered for him.

We started with an amuse gueule: a delicious velouté of white truffles, which went remarkably well with a glass of Mr Roederer’s vintage fizz. I had a serious discussion with the maître d’ about whether to follow this with duck or goose foie gras. In the end, I opted for the goose, which I think has a better flavour and we washed it down with a syrupy d’Yquem ’11. It was a hot day and I didn’t want to eat too heavily, so we followed the foie gras with a grilled Dover sole and a couple of parsley’d and butter’d new spuds. The sommelier recommended a Rhône wine called Château-Grillet ’69 to go with the fish; I’d never heard of it before, but it was an excellent choice.⁵ After a short pause, we tucked into a crispy confit de canard with a La Tour ’55.⁶ The maître d’ had recommended the goose confit, but had changed his advice when I chose the noisy brutes’ livers. We passed on the cheese, which looked delicious but was not unique to the restaurant, and I rounded off the meal - for Searcy had said he was completely gonflé, a crude expression but descriptive of his condition - with a scrumptious tarte tatin which I sank with a rather good Calvados. After a reviving cup or two of coffee, we bimbled back to the Meurice where, not surprisingly given the extreme length of our walk, I slept soundly until Searcy awoke me to get changed for our outing to the fleshpots of Pigalle.

Possibly because of our modest but well-oiled midday meal, during which Searcy had indulged more freely in the wines than the food, his mood had lightened somewhat. Nonetheless, he was more of a damp blanket than a box of fireworks as we set off in an open-topped hired carriage for the Brasserie des Martyrs and the promise of its basement.

The food at the Brasserie was not up to much, so I won’t record the details, but the delights of its recently opened café-concert cellar-theatre were another matter altogether. After a moderate but horse-free dinner, and under the benign influence of a couple of bottles of the restaurant’s only red infuriator and some indifferent fizz with which we’d started, Searcy and I made our way down to the sous sol for what had been promised by Lefort, the greasy proprietor of the establishment,⁷ would be ‘un régal pour les yeux et les sens’. He did not exaggerate.

Loyal readers of my scribblings may remember my account of the Atlanta bordello’s floor show which I attended with Butler in ’61, during which I witnessed the utterly depraved and seemingly impossible antics of a white girl on a swing and an extraordinarily well-endowed darkie on a bench.⁸ Well, whoever had choreographed that show should take lessons from the director of the Divan du Maroc. The clue to the nature of the entertainment on offer lay in the name of the place. However, whether the debauched royal wog, who presided over the seraglio in Fez to which von Einem had been determined to consign me, would recognise the antics on display in the Divan du Maroc as Moroccan, was another matter altogether. But that is to split hairs of which, actually, there weren’t any on display. Unlike the Atlanta show chez Watling, which had been a series of acts unlinked, if that’s the mot juste, by anything other than raw rogering in all its varieties, the Divan du Maroc affected to present a story, loosely (and I use the term advisedly) based on tales from the Arabian Nights. These were drawn, so the programme informed us, from a translation by some fellow called Zotenberg.⁹

The show opened with a naked bint sprawled on a pile of cushions with her legs open in front of a bloated and moustachioed old satyr. His well upholstered arse was parked on a peacock throne, either side of which were a brace of naked Guardsmen, the like of which never served in the Grenadiers, who were brandishing scimitars. Whilst the houri, who had some completely unpronounceable oriental name that sounded like lemonade,¹⁰ played with herself in a way that would have had my wife, Charlotte-Georgina, yelling for the Peelers, she told stories to the Sultan so as to stop him from having her topped by his Guardsmen after he’d serviced her. Using some stage trickery, this scene dissolved into a series of linked stories in which a raunchy and well-hung sailor called Sin-bad got himself involved with a series of kings, princesses,