Tower of Song and Stone

The Snooks books began life as my effort to write the missing "Flashman" novel dealing with his claimed activities during the American Civil War.  Searching through each of George MacDonald Fraser's memoirs of Harry's life, a list was made of all the Civil War references that Flashman casually mentioned. The "missing" book would have to incorporate every one of these claimed events, meetings and characters. 

​

GMF may have been honest in his reason for balking at writing about the Civil War - that it was dull in comparison with the adventures and locations available in writing about the Victorian era British Empire. He referred to it as "a colossal bore". On the other hand, he may have reviewed the various events he'd have to include and decided they were too widespread in location and too narrowly confined in time to allow a credible Flashman narrative to  weave them all together.

​

Here is what he, or anyone else trying to fill the gap, would have to deal with:

​

Flashman: 1839-1842.  Wellington takes him for his first meeting with Victoria; the Duke says this is the highest honour.  “Years later though, I told the American general ROBERT LEE, of the incident, and he said Wellington was right – I had received the highest honour any soldier could hope for.  But it wasn’t the medal; for Lee’s money it was Wellington’s hand

Flashman and the Mountain of Light: 1845-46. "It has been my fate to make the acquaintance of several mysterious beauties who excited the randy interest of my superiors – I recall Elgin going quite pink with curiosity about the empress of China, and the gleam in the eyes of Colin Campbell and Hugh Rose when they cross-examined me about the Rani of Jhansi. LINCOLN and Palmerston, too"

Royal Flash: 1847-1848.  “If I had been the hero everyone thought I was, or even a half-decent soldier, Lee would have won the battle of Gettysburg and probably captured Washington”.   Flashman was confined in LIBBY PRISON (Richmond, Virginia) and got  a letter of thanks from JEFFERSON DAVIS

Flash for Freedom!: 1848-1849. Flashman did not see LINCOLN again until “that fateful night fifteen years later” when he bribed/coerced Flashman into “ruining” his military reputation and risking his neck in order to save the Union “from disaster” (1864).  Mentions being at Appomattox (April 1865) and listening to LEE and GRANT talking   Also mentions he came “booming down” the Mississippi with GRANT [between March and July 1863]

Flashman and the Redskins Part I: 1849-1850. Flashman has a "pardon" from LINCOLN and refers to “that crazy bastard FREMONT” exploring and getting lost.  

Flashman in the Great Game: 1856-1858.  The battle of SHILOH is mentioned along with two non USA actions as if Flashy had experience of all 3.  Note 38 refers to “the only other identifiable picture of him as a comparatively young man – in a group of Union staff officers with President LINCOLN during the Civil War”.  [This must have been October 1862 after the battle of ANTIETAM when Lincoln posed with McCLELLAN and other officers]

Flashman and the Angel of the Lord: 1858-1859. “But perhaps you had to stand on CEMETERY RIDGE (Gettysburg) after PICKETT's charge to understand”. 
“I put these thoughts to LINCOLN, after the war ... and a few hours after that he was dead” (April 15, 1865).

At the time of writing, Flashman has his commissions in his desk drawer – both Union and Confederate.
JEB STUART “was devilish like me.  Not a double perhaps and lacking a couple of inches of my height, but like enough” .
“I was to form a good opinion of JEB STUART in later years”. 
“I remember the verdict, delivered to me during the Civil War, of a grizzled Alabama veteran, crimson with booze and chewing on his Wheeling tobey: ‘Ole OSSAWATOMIE? [i.e. JOHN BROWN] Well, no, suh, Ah reckon he lived like a skunk–an’ died like a lion’ ”

Flashman and the Dragon: 1860.

“I’ve done a lot of surrendering in my time... APPOMATTOX"
“...convincing JEFFERSON DAVIS that I’d come to fix the lightning rod”
“...or sitting alone with the President of the United States at the end of a great war, listening to him softly whistling Dixie”

Flashman on the March: 1868.  “I marched with SHERMAN to the sea” [November 15 to December 21 1864]

Flashman and the Redskins Part II: 1875-1876.
SHERIDAN: “I’d known him for a good sort in the Civil War” .."still looking as if he’d fallen in a river and let his uniform dry on him"
SHERMAN: "an ugly black-avised bargee. 10 years hadn’t mellowed him; a competent savage"
GRANT:  knows “something about my gifts of persuasion and negotiation”
CUSTER: “met briefly and informally . . .encounter at Audie (sic) 10 years or more earlier . . . Aside from the Audie (sic) skirmish, Appomattox and an exchange of courtesies in Washington I’d hardly known him ... Almost made a widow of Libby before she was married. His critics. . .never saw him at GETTYSBURG and YELLOW TAVERN.”   [Fraser seems to have confused the Battle of ALDIE with Custer's nickname "AUTIE"].  At that battle, Flashman refers to Custer as having “long blond hair and (a) ridiculous beribboned straw hat”.

Flashman and the Tiger
1. The Road to Charing Cross: 1877-1878. The value of a full bluff as when “they found me climbing through JEFFERSON DAVIS’s  skylight and I pretended I was a workman come to fix his lightning rod”
2. Flashman and the Tiger 1879, 1894. “Blazed away with a Navy Colt at GETTYSBURG”

 

The two Snooks books include all these elements, bar one. Flashman could not have gone down the Mississippi River with Grant to the siege of Vicksburg (April to July 1863) AND appeared at the battle of Gettysburg in July 1863. So Snooks goes "booming" down the Mississippi Central Railroad with Grant's army and is captured by Confederates at Holly Springs in December 1862. In his plan to adopt Snooks' memoir as his own, Flashman confused the two different advances in the Vicksburg campaign.

​