The Speedicut Papers: Book 7 (1884–1895): Royal Scandals

By Christopher Joll

Why did General Gordon remain in Khartoum?
What really happened at the Battle of Abu Klea? How and why
did King Ludwig II of Bavaria, Crown Prince Rudolf of
Austria-Hungary and Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence
and Avondale, actually die? Who was Jack the Ripper? And why was
Oscar Wilde provoked into suing Lord Queensberry? For the
first time, convincing answers to these and many other
historical questions are answered in
the memoirs of Colonel Jasper Speedicut.

Speaking on behalf of the Faversham family, I can assure you
that this book is an appalling travesty of the truth!
A E W Mason

Judging from this memoir, the British Empire was coloured
pink on the map for a very good reason.
Alfred Kinsey

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Apr 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546291398

Christopher Joll

After serving time at Oxford University and the RMA Sandhurst, Christopher Joll spent his formative years as an officer in The Life Guards. On leaving the Army, Joll worked first in investment banking, then as an arms salesman before moving into public relations. From his earliest days Joll has written articles, features, short stories and reportage. In addition to the Speedicut books, in 2014, Joll wrote the text for Uniquely British: A Year in the Life of the Household Cavalry, in late 2018 he published The Drum Horse in the Fountain & Other Tales of the Heroes & Rogue in the Guards and in early 2020 he will publish Spoils of War: The Treasures, Trophies & Trivia of the British Empire. Since leaving the Army in 1975, Joll has also been involved in devising and managing major charity fund-raising events including the Household Cavalry Pageant, the Royal Hospital Chelsea Pageant, the acclaimed British Military Tournament, a military tattoo in Hyde Park for the Diamond Jubilee, the Gurkha 200 Pageant, the Waterloo 200 Commemoration at St Paul’s Cathedral, the Shakespeare 400 Gala Concert and The Great War Symphony at the Royal Albert Hall for which he wrote, researched and directed the 60-minute film that accompanied the symphony. In 2019, this led to a commission to write, present and direct five short films for the Museum Prize Trust. When not writing, directing or lifting the lid on the cess pits of British history, Joll publishes a weekly Speedicut podcast and gives lectures at literary festivals, museums, clubs and on cruise ships on topics related to his books and the British Empire. www.christopherjoll.com

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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 04/27/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5462-9140-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-9141-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-9139-8 (e)

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

For

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Who has bravely read every line of The Speedicut Papers despite deploring Speedicut’s attitude to women, minorities, religion and just about everything…

CONTENTS

Notes On The Editor

Introduction

Principal Characters In Order Of Appearance

Synopsis Of Book 6 (Vitai Lampada)

Chapter One: The Power Of Prayer

Chapter Two: Allah Be Praised

Chapter Three: The Chains That Bind

Chapter Four: Up The Nile With A Camel

Chapter Five: Who Left The Door Open?

Chapter Six: ’Twixt White & Blue

Chapter Seven: Death Before Breakfast

Chapter Eight: In The Drink

Chapter Nine: Another Damned Religious Fanatic

Chapter Ten: To Russia With Love

Chapter Eleven: Swans & Lovers

Chapter Twelve: Telegrams

Chapter Thirteen: Comings & Goings

Chapter Fourteen: Ripping Times

Chapter Fifteen: The Road To Mayerling

Chapter Sixteen: Birth Of A Mystery

Chapter Seventeen: Lord Arthur Somerset’s Crime

Chapter Eighteen: Lust In A Hot Climate

Chapter Nineteen: Cheats Never Beat

Chapter Twenty: The Protestant Maiden Stakes

Chapter Twenty-One: Bertie In The Box

Chapter Twenty-Two: On The Horns Of A Dilemma

Chapter Twenty-Three: Love In A Time Of Influenza

Chapter Twenty-Four: Funeral Games

Chapter Twenty-Five: Wilde About The Boys

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 seventh 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; this is the last of the new editions. 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’

Edward –Speedicut’s valet

Lieutenant Colonel John Stewart – an officer in the 11th Hussars and Gordon’s Second-in-Command at Khartoum

Major General Charles Gordon – Governor General of the Soudan

Hassan Bey Hassanayn – General Gordon’s private secretary and a part-time interpreter

Muhammad Ahmad – otherwise known as The Mahdi, a Soudanese rebel & religious leader

Harry Faversham – a British officer

Rudolf Slatin – also known as Slatin Bey, an Austrian officer in the service of the Khedive of Egypt

Major Herbert Kitchener – an intelligence officer

General the Lord Wolseley – a highly experienced, ambitious and successful British Army officer, known to his friends as ‘Joe’

Colonel Frederick Burnaby – a former Commanding Officer of the Royal Horse Guards attached to the Camel Corps

Lieutenant Colonel the Hon Reginald Talbot – a 1st Life Guard and Commanding Officer of the Heavy Camel Regiment

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

Arthur Raffles – a gentleman thief

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

Lady Charlotte-Georgina Speedicut – Speedicut’s second wife, sister of the 8th Duke of Whitehall

HRH The Prince of Wales – eldest son of Queen Victoria and Heir Apparent to the British Throne

HRH Prince Albert Victor of Wales – eldest son of The Prince of Wales and Heir Presumptive, known by his family as ‘Eddy’ – later Duke of Clarence & Avondale

Prince Felix Yusupov – a Russian aristocrat, known before his marriage as Count Felix Sumarokov-Elston

Princess Zenaïde Yusupova – his wife and the richest woman in Russia

Ivan – a Russian valet

Prince Anatole Lieven – a Russian aristocrat

Prince Dimitri Lieven – Prince Anatole Lieven’s son

Dorothea Speedicut – Speedicut’s only child

Oscar Wilde – a poet and playwright

Charles-Ethelred FitzCharles, 8th Duke of Whitehall – brother of Lady Charlotte-Georgina Speedicut and Great Boanerges of the Brotherhood of the Sons of Thunder

Count Alexei Vronsky – a Russian Guards officer, who Speedicut first met in 1854

Count Nicholai Pavlovich Ignatiev – a Russian diplomat, administrator and secret agent

Mitzi, Dowager Countess von Schwanstein – a Bavarian aristocrat and one of Speedicut’s former lovers

King Ludwig II of Bavaria – the ruler of Bavaria; variously known to history as ‘Mad King Ludwig’ or the ‘Dream King’

Colonel Count Alfred Dürkheim – King Ludwig’s senior Equerry

HIM Empress Elizabeth of Austria – usually known as Sisi, first cousin of King Ludwig II of Bavaria

HIH Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria – Heir Apparent to the thrones of Austro-Hungary

Baroness Mary von Vetsera – Crown Prince Rudolf’s under-age mistress

Lieutenant Colonel Sir William Gordon-Cumming Bart – an officer in the Scots Guards and a friend of The Prince of Wales

HM Queen Victoria – Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Ireland and Empress of India

HSH Princess May of Teck – a minor member of the Württemberg royal family and a distant cousin of Queen Victoria

Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas – third son of the Marquess of Queensberry

John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry – an irascible peer

SYNOPSIS OF BOOK 6 (Vitai Lampada)

Book 6 of The Speedicut Papers is, as the sub-title suggests, largely concerned with Speedicut’s reluctant and unsought involvement in a series of British colonial and imperial disasters - in Afghanistan, South Africa, Egypt and the Sudan. Whilst not ducking shot, shell and spears, Speedicut indulges deeply in such pleasures (usually of the carnal variety) that are on offer.

The book opens in mid-1879 with Speedicut recently returned to London from the Zulu War bearing a dispatch from the British High Commissioner at the Cape for the Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, in which – unbeknownst to Speedicut - the blame for the death of the Prince Imperial at the hands of the Zulus is laid squarely at his door. Thanks to a plan devised by Speedicut’s long-serving secretary, Frederick Searcy, which involves the ‘loss’ of the dispatch and Speedicut giving his own (correct) version of the Prince Imperial’s death to Queen Victoria, he manages to dodge the blame. However, during an incident-packed visit to Osborne House, Speedicut accidentally learns that he is to join Sir Louis Cavagnari’s mission to the Amir of Afghanistan.

Back in London, Speedicut is briefed on this task jointly by his brother-in-law, the Duke of Whitehall (acting in his role as Great Boanerges of the Brotherhood of the Sons of Thunder) and the Foreign Secretary, Lord Salisbury. It is their belief that the Russians are yet again plotting to acquire India by force and, as a diversionary tactic, are deliberately destabilising the political and military situations in Afghanistan, Egypt and the Transvaal. They also have serious misgivings about Sir Louis Cavagnari’s ability to neutralise the Russian influence in Afghanistan. During the briefing it emerges that, whilst ostensibly Speedicut’s role on Cavagnari’s mission is to safeguard the British government’s (and the Brotherhood’s) interests in the production of opium, his actual role is to report to London on the envoy’s performance.

Two days after Speedicut arrives in Kabul with his faithful Afghan coachman, Muhamad Khazi, the Cavagnari mission is attacked and massacred by Afghan army mutineers. Speedicut manages to escape the slaughter and, thanks to Khazi, hides out until the city is occupied by a British force under the command of Major General Sir Frederick Roberts. After a brief recuperation in India with the Tenth Hussars, Speedicut and Khazi board a ship to take them, via the Suez Canal, back to England in time for Christmas 1879. After a shipboard romance with a young Italian countess, Speedicut makes a stopover in Alexandria where he is the guest of the Khedive’s youngest brother, the charming but utterly debauched Prince Ali, in whose company he meets the dissident politician and Egyptian army officer, Colonel Ahmed Arabi.

Safely returned to London and hoping for an un-stressful posting to the Cavalry Division at Aldershot, Speedicut is dismayed to be informed by the recently appointed Liberal Foreign Secretary, Lord Kimberley, that he has been seconded by the War Office to the Secret Department of the Foreign Office. He reports to the aged General Faversham, head of the Secret Department and known as ‘W’, who gives him the unlikely code name of ‘Agent Shackle’ and tells that he is to go back to Afghanistan ‘under cover’ with the job of bribing various Afghan tribal leaders to support the British.

Later that day, Speedicut learns that his mother-in-law, the Dowager Duchess of Whitehall, has choked on a breakfast chop and died. Desperate not to have to return to Afghanistan in any capacity, Speedicut tries to use the Dowager’s grand, royalty-attended funeral as an excuse not to go. In this endeavour, he is singularly unsuccessful and is dispatched to the city of I immediately after the funeral, along with Searcy and Khazi, whilst Lady Charlotte-Georgina Speedicut takes a three-month holiday in the Cape.

There is then a break in the correspondence, which resumes in late-1880 with the news that, thanks to an unannounced change in British policy, Speedicut finds himself very much on the wrong side in Afghanistan. Although not involved in the defeat of the British expeditionary force at the battle of Maiwand in July 1880, Speedicut deems it expedient to try and leave I and make for the relative safety of British-held Kandahar, despite the fact that it is at the time being besieged by dissident Afghan forces under the command of Ayub Khan. After a series of mishaps, Speedicut is taken prisoner by Ayub’s men at the skirmish before Deh Khoja and, once again, has to be rescued by Searcy and Khazi in a bizarre saga of horrifying events which result in Speedicut temporarily losing his hair. But worse is to come. The trio eventually make their way to Kandahar, where Searcy and Khazi are mistaken by the British for rebels, imprisoned, tried by Court Martial and sentenced to death. They are only saved from being hanged, at the very last moment, by Speedicut.

Given three months leave in which to recover, Speedicut and his companions head for Cape Town and the estate that Lady Charlotte-Georgina has rented. Whilst there, his wife organises a dinner party for Cecil Rhodes, Harry Faversham (the son of Speedicut’s boss, W), Mrs Radclyffe-Hall and a young Russian, Princess Radziwill. During dinner, Speedicut is told by Rhodes that the Boers are itching to re-establish their rule in the British-controlled Transvaal and will probably use force of arms to do so.

Shortly before the Speedicuts are due to return to their house in Curzon Street, Speedicut receives instructions from the Secret Department to report to Pretoria. En route he is marooned by the railway at Middleburg, a small town east of Pretoria, where he joins up with a British column that is marching to Pretoria to strengthen the garrison there. Half-way to their destination, the column is ambushed by a party of armed Boers. The incident, on 20th December 1880, signals the start of the First Boer. Unwounded, Speedicut is sent by the Boers to fetch medical assistance for his fallen comrades and gets caught up in the conflict, during which he is inadvertently responsible for the British disaster at the battle of Majuba Hill.

At the close of the First Boer War in early 1881, Speedicut returns to London and has no further foreign adventures until, shortly before Christmas 1881, he is sent by the Secret Department to Egypt accompanied by Searcy and Khazi. His job there is to deliver a joint Anglo-French Note to the Khedive of Egypt which will re-establish the Khedive’s sagging authority in the face of a nationalist revolt led by Colonel Arabi. First, however, he has to travel to Paris where the Note will be counter-signed by the French Foreign Minister. Whilst in the city, he meets the decadent Count Robert de Montesquiou who introduces him to the society hostess, Countess Greffulhe. At a dinner party at her house Speedicut’s fellow guests include two royal mistresses, Lilly Langtry and Katharina Schratt, the actress Sarah Bernhardt and the artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who after dinner takes him to a brothel in Pigalle.

Once in Egypt, Speedicut joins the Khedive’s Staff in the rank of a Pasha and is reunited with the Khedive’s youngest brother, Prince Ali. The delivery of the Note, which is designed to shore-up the Egyptian government, results instead in its fall and the growing political ascendancy of Colonel Arabi. In order to solicit the support of the Ottoman Sultan, the Khedive dispatches Speedicut to Constantinople, but the yacht carrying him, Khazi, Searcy and Mamsir Tawkan (the Circassian commander of his personal guard), is shipwrecked off the coast of Mykonos and the party are separated. Speedicut, Khazi and Tawkan end up as captives of a handsome Greek outlaw, who holds them for ransom until Searcy unexpectedly negotiates their release. They all return to Alexandria to find it blockaded by the British and French fleets, following a massacre of Europeans in the city by Arabi’s nationalists.

Speedicut is then unwillingly inserted into Alexandria by Admiral Seymour, tasked with ensuring that the Khedive uses his loyal troops to support a landing of British troops led by Sir Garnet Wolseley. In due course, on 11th-13th July 1882, the British fleet bombards Alexandria, troops are landed and Speedicut is assigned to the Staff of the Expeditionary Force for the advance on Cairo to end Arabi’s rebellion.

Prior to the march on Cairo, events take a turn for the worse when Speedicut receives a telegram from Lady Charlotte-Georgina informing him that she thought he was dead, has sold the house in Curzon Street and his shares in Rhodes’ south African mining venture, and is about to depart for St Petersburg. Speedicut dispatches Searcy to London, armed with a Power of Attorney, to rectify the situation. Matters deteriorate further when Speedicut finds himself responsible for the British reverse at Kafr-el-Dawwar. To add to his woes, Speedicut is then used ruthlessly by General Wolseley in a deception plan to convince Colonel Arabi that there will be a second British attack from the north on his defensive position between Alexandria and Cairo.

Unaware that he is involved in a sophisticated double-cross, Speedicut, with Khazi and Tawkan, dashes across the desert on camels to warn Wolseley that he is marching into a trap - only to find that the British Expeditionary Force is actually at Ismailia on the Suez Canal, where it is about to launch a surprise march on Cairo from the east. Speedicut and his companions are assigned to the Household Cavalry Composite Regiment and take part in the famous Moonlight Charge at Kassassin, during which Khazi is wounded and Tawkan is killed, followed by the battle of Tel-el-Kebir which ends the Arabi revolt. With no further business in Egypt, Speedicut returns to London in late-1882 where he moves into his new house in Stratton Street, acquired for him in absentia by Searcy.

In the first half of 1883, Speedicut travels to Austria on a mission to save Emperor Franz-Josef from assassination (the letter detailing this adventure has been lost). Back in London for the start of the 1883 Season, Speedicut finds his household in a frenzy as preparations are being made for Dorothea Speedicut’s Presentation at Court and Coming-Out Ball. He also discovers that Lady Charlotte-Georgina is plotting for Dorothea to marry Prince Albert Victor of Wales or Prince Dimitri Lieven, the eldest son of Prince and Princess Lieven, with whom she stayed in St Petersburg. Speedicut decides to enter the newly commissioned Harry Faversham into the race for Dorothea’s hand, despite the fact that Faversham is a close friend of Oscar Wilde. In the ensuing scheming and consequent muddle, Speedicut finds that Lady Charlotte-Georgina has – as part of her plan - contrived to have him assigned by the Prince of Wales to ‘look after’ Prince Albert Victor, who is about to go up to Cambridge for three years prior to joining the Tenth Hussars.

In despair at this most unwelcome prospect, Speedicut appeals to his brother-in-law to find him an assignment with the Brotherhood. This the Duke of Whitehall does, but it is not – as Speedicut hoped – with the Khedive in Egypt but as Second-in-Command to Hicks Pasha in Khartoum, whence the reluctant young soldier, Harry Faversham, is also bound. Meanwhile, Dorothea becomes engaged to Prince Lieven. On hearing that Speedicut has been posted to the Sudan, Lady Charlotte-Georgina announces that she is returning to St Petersburg with Dorothea. Speedicut orders Searcy to accompany them, as he is suspicious of his wife’s apparent infatuation with Russia, Khazi is told that he will remain in London where his wife is expecting their fourth child and Speedicut takes Edward, one of the Stratton Street footmen, as his valet.

Shortly before their departure for the Sudan, Harry Faversham announces that he is resigning his commission and going to study acting with Stanislavski in Moscow. Appalled at the boy’s prospective disgrace, Speedicut arranges for Faversham to be incapacitated with opium, kidnaps him and they travel together, via Egypt, to Khartoum.

Once there, Speedicut fortunately escapes from the massacre of Hicks’ army by the Mahdi’s at El Obeid on 5th November 1883, only to fall victim to a python from which life-threatening situation he is rescued by Harry Faversham and Edward the footman. Although Speedicut and Edward return to Khartoum, Faversham declares that he is duty bound to ride on in pursuit of the Mahdi and Speedicut later assumes that Faversham has been killed.

Speedicut’s fortunes take a turn for the better when he is ordered back to Egypt, only to discover that he has been assigned to accompany his former colleague in the Tenth Hussars, Lieutenant Colonel Valentine Baker, on a military expedition to north-east Sudan to eliminate the Mahdi’s ally, Osman Digna. Speedicut misses the disastrous first battle of El Teb but does take part in the more successful second battle. At the close of these hostilities, instead of returning to London, he is ordered by the Brotherhood to travel once again to Khartoum where he is to join General Gordon and ensure that the General remains in the beleaguered city. The last letter in Book 6, dated March 1884, ends on the eve of Speedicut’s departure, with Edward, for the Sudan.

CHAPTER ONE: THE POWER OF PRAYER

I last put pen to paper with the news that I was being sent by our sainted Brotherhood to join Charlie Gordon and Johnny Stewart in Khartoum.¹ So that my readers can understand what followed this ghastly posting, I have sketched below a crude map to which they can refer.

Khartoum%20map.jpg

The six-week journey to Khartoum started well enough on the train to Assuit, but got distinctly worse when Edward and I had to take to the Nile. Why? Because we had to change boats and ride evil-smelling donkeys around each and every one of the six blasted cataracts between Aswan and Khartoum.

We arrived in Khartoum in early-April to find that, shortly after we’d passed it, Berber had fallen to Osman Digna.² So the Nile was closed behind us and the telegraph had also been cut, although not before Brother Baring had informed Charlie that I was on my way.³ As I quickly discovered, Khartoum itself was - other than the river - entirely surrounded by the Mahdi’s forces.⁴ Heaven only knew why the arse-scratching religious lunatic wanted the place – it was a total sewer in every possible respect – but that’s politics (and religion) for you.

When we docked Stewart was on the quayside to meet us, smartly dressed in a khaki tunic with cherry-coloured fez and matching overalls. He bundled me into a rickety coach drawn by a pair of spavined nags, Edward climbed up behind and we trotted straight to the Governor’s (so-called) Palace, where Charlie had established his office and quarters. Whilst Edward tried to get my room into shape, Stewart took me off to see ‘the Chief’ as he insisted on calling Charlie. His job as Deputy Governor General had clearly gone straight to his empty head.

Speedicut, how nice to see you, Charlie said, as Stewart ushered me in. He extended a paw, whilst the other clutched what looked suspiciously like a Bible. Welcome to Khartoum! I gather you bring me some instructions from Sir Evelyn.

I do, I said handing over the letter. He tore open the envelope and read it.

I see, he paused. That will be all thank you, Stewart. The Cherrypicker did as he was bid and left the two of us alone. So, reading between the lines, the Brotherhood wants me to stay here until they can persuade Gladstone to send Brother Wolseley up the river to rescue me?⁵

That’s about the sum of it.

And you’re here to make sure I do just that?

Not exactly, I said, prevaricating, I think Brother Baring was worried that this letter might, err, fall into the wrong hands…

Or that I would refuse and you would then have to, shall we say, ‘convince’ me that it was the right thing to do?

I decided not to answer that question as it was too bloody near the truth for comfort. Charlie may have been a Bible basher, and a hazard to choir boys, but he was nobody’s fool.

Well, Brother Jasper, Osman Digna and the Mahdi have spared you that duty. We can still get messengers in and out but, thanks to our friends out there, he pointed at the open window, "and whether I like it or not, I’m here for the duration. Anyway, how could I, in honour, slip away on my own and leave my European, Egyptian and Soudanese colleagues to be slaughtered?"

To which question there was no answer. I think I may have noted before that sieges are wretchedly tedious affairs - and that of Khartoum was no exception. Day dragged after week dragged after month as the rations ran lower and lower and we all lost inches around our waists. In May we had a minor drama when Johnny Stewart was nicked by a sniper’s ball in the upper arm. It wasn’t much more than a graze, but I thought we’d never hear the end of it. The night after it happened we were smoking on the palace roof after what had passed for dinner.

"Kitchener will be so upset when he hears,"⁶ Stewart bleated, whilst cradling his arm in a sling.

Who’s Kitchener? I asked.

He’s a young Sapper-turned-Intelligence officer, said Gordon. He’s ‘holding the fort’ at Debbeh and is now our principal link with Cairo.

Oh, him, I said, for I did know a bit about our communications route with the outside world. What’s so special about him?

"He’s not only the best ‘behind-the-lines man’ in the Army – he rides everywhere on a camel dressed as a Berber, y’know – but he’s also a very good friend of mine, said Stewart rather misty-eyed, and he will be really concerned that I have been so badly wounded."

Editor’s Note: Readers will note that – not for the first time - Speedicut expresses views on the unconventional sexuality of some of the principal players in his narrative. Whilst there exist no hard facts that he was right on this subject, there is plenty of circumstantial but well-documented evidence to support his opinions. I did consider editing out these passages but then decided that such censorship would compromise the story.

I was about to ask if this Kitchener fellow was another confirmed bachelor, like Charlie and Stewart but, in the end, I didn’t bother as the answer - and the attendant implications - was blindingly obvious. So much for the merry month of May.

June, however, was for me personally a black month. Against my advice, Edward volunteered to help bring in some stray cows and fell foul of those murderous buggers in the black patched frocks, otherwise known as the Dervishes. As I watched helpless from the battlements, he was quickly dispatched by a spear through the chest as he tried to hold back the bastards whilst the cows were herded into Khartoum. For once the Dervishes had the good manners not to chop him about too much or to parade his head on a pole… We buried him in the palace garden – or at least we buried those bits of him which we managed to get to before the vultures - and I demanded and got for him a full military send-off, complete with a Gyppo Army band playing Abide with Me. Quite how they did it, I don’t know, but they made the melody sound like the Gallop of the Valhallas by that Kraut revolutionary with whom pretty Ludwig was so besotted.

That said, I wouldn’t want my readers to think that this brief account of Edward’s demise and interment was in any way callous: I was very fond of the young shaver and I’d planned – as he was far-too-well educated to remain as a valet or revert to being a footman - that he should take over from my secretary, Searcy, in due course. But I saw so much slaughter over the year that followed, that I think I may have become rather hardened to the toll which the grim reaper has taken on those around me. That’s my excuse anyway.

July and August were completely unremarkable, except for the heat which was virtually unbearable and the rations which got leaner by the day. At the start of September, the Nile started to fall and, to Stewart disapproval, I began to keep a journal on which this account is based.

Can’t think why you’re wasting your doing that, Speedicut, the wretched Cherrypicker harrumphed, no one will ever read it.

I chose not to answer him, but Charlie said that it was a good idea and that he was keeping one himself, which put the heir of Cardigan firmly in his place. Then news arrived (courtesy of the Mahdi, of course) that a mixed force of a thousand Egyptian soldiers and bashi bazouks, which Charlie had sent up-river on three steamers to dislodge the Dervishes’ grip on the Blue Nile, had been wiped out on 31st August in an ambush at Umm Dubban. This repeat of the Hicks massacre stirred Charlie off his knees and he called a conference of his Staff and the principle Europeans trapped in the town. These latter included the more senior of the Gyppo officers, a bluff bogtrotter journalist called Frank Power, who I knew from the El Obeid fiasco (although a Times man he was in Khartoum freelancing for a German rag) and the Frog Consul-cum-part-time scribbler, a tiny little garlic-eater called Henri Harbin.⁷

Gentlemen, said Charlie, as his bright blue eyes flashed us his best Messianic look, "despite our perilous situation, we are here for a purpose. Quite what that purpose is can sometimes be difficult to determine. However, I have prayed hard of late for guidance on this subject, that explained all the time he’d spent on his knees – or most of it anyway (readers by now know Charlie’s reputation), and there is one thing of which I now believe we can all be sure and it is this: whilst a single Christian soul remains in Khartoum, the Almighty - with the help of