Thread by @jessnevins

Picking up from yesterday...

We left "English Jack" during the fighting in Kabul. Bobby & Evan are heavily outnumbered by the Afghans and engage them in hand-to-hand battle. Evan saves Jack’s life by stabbing an Afghani who is trying to run Jack through from behind.
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https://twitter.com/jessnevins/status/1447962066657202178

Evan and Bobby are terrified, their teeth chattering, but they are trying to do their duty. (Frightened heroes—not a common element of war story paper stories).
Then Bobby sees a girl he knows trapped in the upper floor of a building occupied by the Afghans.
2/30

Bobby runs inside to rescue the girl and finds the building full of butchered women and children. On the top floor Bobby finds the girl, clad only in tatters, mad and speechless from seeing her mother and sisters butchered, and only capable of a “ringing, hollow laugh.”
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[On the one hand, this sort of thing happened during the 1839 War—many women and children on both sides were killed. On the other, the horror readers are supposed to feel is racist in origin—the author wouldn’t place so much emphasis on an Afghan girl in similar straits].
4/30

Evan joins them, and from the window of the girl’s room they see the British troops breaking and running. The Afghan mob charges into the building, searching for any surviving Englishmen. Bobby and Evan hide with the girl in a wardrobe and lock themselves inside it.
5/30

An Afghan, unable to open the wardrobe, stabs a bayonet into the wardrobe, to make sure that no one is inside. The girl is stabbed in the shoulder, but that makes her break out into “wild shrill laughter,” causing the superstitious Afghans to run away.
6/30

Bobby and Evan get clothes for the girl, bandage her eyes so that she can’t see the bodies of her family, and take her down into the cellar of the building. Hours pass as they wait for the Afghans to leave the area.
7/30

Bobby leaves the cellar to reconnoiter. He sees Afghan boys playing football with a human head and sees warriors carrying spears with human heads on the end, some female. The girl sleeps. When she awakens she is no longer out of her wits, but she still can’t speak.
8/30

Bobby and Evan gather food, they eat, and eventually it is safe for them to leave the building. Outside the building they find a tiger about to attack the prostrate form of Jack Vere, but Bobby and Evan play their drums and frighten the tiger away.
9/30

Bobby and Evan help Jack into a nearby house, and Jack explains that he went into the city to find the boys but twisted his ankle in a hole. Unfortunately, the boys’ drumming attracts a crowd of angry Afghans, who break into the house to get at them.
10/30

At the same time the tiger breaks into the house to eat the dying and wounded, and the Afghanis, to rescue their wounded comrades, are forced to fight and kill the tiger.
Sound a bit incredible? This actually happened. “English Jack” is sticking closely to the facts.
11/30

But because the tiger fought them while they were hunting for an English officer the Afghans believe that the soul of a British officer must have entered into the tiger, so the Afghans leave the house and set it on fire, intending to raze it and kill all inside.
12/30

Jack, Bobby and Evan are trapped inside the burning building, but the British cavalry arrive in time to drive the Afghans off, and Jack and the boys are rescued. They return to the British cantonments with the British cavalry.
13/30

But as they reach the cantonments they see Afghan cavalry charging the cantonments & then the British dragoons who are accompanying Jack and the boys. The British charge the Afghanis, and “the resistless power, valour, and impetus of the British horsemen made itself felt.”
14/30

The British artillery drives off the remaining Afghanis, and everyone returns to the fort.
To repeat: the preceding actually happened. For the first few chapters of “English Jack,” the author simply repeats the real-life events that led up to the March from Kabul.
15/30

Jack, Bobby, and Evan are fictional creations of the author—everything else, including the girl in tatters, is taken from life. The author of “English Jack” didn’t have to exaggerate how horrible the current (1878) Afghan War was going to be. He only had to tell the truth.
16/30

Jack is interviewed by General Elphinstone about the situation in the city, but Elphinstone disbelieves that the Afghans are capable of such cruelty and accuses Jack of exaggeration. Jack is forced to admit that he promised Soojah reinforcements (a lie).
17/30

Elphinstone, indignant that a British officer lied to the Shah, orders Jack to return to Soojah and tell him the truth. Jack and the drummer boys return to Kabul but immediately run into an Afghan column of men, led by a war-elephant & accompanied by a Russian officer.
18/30

Before the Afghans can slaughter Jack and the boys an English woman gives them rifle cover from an upper floor window. She leads them through the building and into a hidden temple, where the pursuing Afghans do not find them.
19/30

okay, need to switch desks--will return in 5 minutes or so

She explains that she is Rose Trevor, formerly a governess for one of the English families in Kabul. She collapses into tears as she describes how all of her wards and the woman she worked for were killed by the Afghans.
20/30

She hid from the Afghans in a powder barrel and after they left she explored and found the hidden temple, dedicated to “the god Boora Penna.” The temple is hidden, since the “entire Mussulman population...have as great a horror of false gods as us Christian.”
21/30

Including that line about Muslims abhorring false gods is no doubt to avoid associating Muslims with the Afghan uprising. Since BOYS OF ENGLAND was internationally distributed, including in India (good old Imperial mail network), the author had to be careful.
22/30

The author of “English Jack” couldn’t offend the tens of millions of Muslims living in India and serving the occupying British—that might set off a repeat of the Sepoy Mutiny and get BOYS OF ENGLAND cancelled or censored. So the author made up “Boora Penna.”
23/30

Rose tells Jack and the boys horror stories from India of human sacrifices, which they believe.
Undoubtedly so did the reader. “English Jack” isn’t exactly pro-Indian/pro-Afghan. It does indulge in the common racisms of the time, so that “savages” is slung about.
24/30

What the author is interested in doing is showing that the English are no better than the “savages,” and that they ought to be staying out of Afghanistan permanently. (Reading “English Jack” side by side with Kipling would be instructive).
25/30

They hear someone entering the temple, so Rose leads them to the back of the idol of Boora Penna which looms over the temple. The idol is hollow inside, and Rose, Jack and the boys hide inside it. (Probably not the first instance of hiding-in-the-hollow-statue in fiction).
26/30

They see the rebel chief Ackbar Khan, an armored “Oriental chief,” and a Russian officer conferring. The “Oriental,” a priest of Siva, and Khan quarrel about how best to deal with the British.
[This was the British worst nightmare: Russia allied with Afghanistan]
27/30

The Russian reminds Khan & the “chief” that he is offering them an “unlimited supply of gunpowder and arms, together with a few thousand Cossacks, disguised” for their assistance in driving the British out of Afghanistan and overthrowing the Shah.
28/30

The trio agree to settle their individual differences after they have killed the English. They leave and the worshipers of Boora Penna enter the temple for their services. The priest of Siva attempts to slip into the idol in order to have it announce a “prophecy.”
29/30

Jack strangles the priest and does his own prophesying about the evils of the Russians, confusing the listening Afghans greatly and turning them against the Russians.
Tomorrow: the Retreat from (a.k.a. "the March from") Kabul!
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