GORDON IN PALESTINE
SUCH is the history of Gordon’s first service in the Soudan under Ismaïl
Pasha, from 1874 to 1879, in its principal features as gathered from his
own letters. At this time of his life, 1880, there is no question that
to the official world in England as in Egypt, except among his intimate
friends who knew him well, Gordon was considered mad; nor wholly,
perhaps, without excuse. He had quarrelled in his last two years with
nearly every official person at Cairo, including the new Viceroy Tewfik,
Nubar Pasha, and most of the Khedivial ministers, as well as with M. de
Lesseps and Lord Cromer. There is an interesting memorandum drawn up by
himself relating the circumstances which led to his collision with the
last of these, and, as it throws light on their later relations, as well
as giving a lively picture of the writer, it will be worth epitomizing
here.
The memorandum tells us that in the spring of 1878 Ismaïl Pasha, being
in financial difficulties, sent for him (Gordon) to come from Khartoum
to Cairo, and help him in making an arrangement with the representatives
of his creditors. “I arrived,” says Gordon, “on the 7th March, at 9.30
p.m. His Highness sent his equerry to meet me at the terminus and was
waiting dinner. Dirty as I was, after a railway journey of 350 miles, I
had to obey, but before dinner His Highness took me aside and asked me
to be President of an Inquiry into the state of the finances of the
country. . . . I said I would accept the Commission of Inquiry as
President. His Highness said, ‘You will see Lesseps, who will act with
you.’ I said ‘Yes,’ and accepted the mission with the agreement that the
Commissioners of the Dette were not to be on the Inquiry. I was angry
with these Commissioners because I thought they had been too hard on His
Highness. The next day I saw Mr. Vivian, the English Consul-General, and
he said, ‘I wonder you could accept the Presidency without the
Commissioners of the Dette.’ I said I was free to accept or to refuse. I
then called on the German Consul-General, and when there the French and
Austrian Consuls-General and also Vivian came in, and attacked me for
having accepted the post of President. They said I was risking His
Highness his throne, if he formed the Commission of Inquiry without the
creditors’ representatives. I said, ‘Why do you not tell him so?’ They
said, ‘You ought to do so.’ I said, ‘Well, will you commission me to do
so from you with any remarks I like to make as to the futility of your
remarks?’ They all said, ‘Yes, we authorize you to do so in our names.’
I did so that evening, and told His Highness just before dinner at
Abdin. I said, ‘I have seen the four Consuls-General to-day, and they
told me to tell your Highness from them that you run a serious personal
risk if you have a Commission of Inquiry without the Commissioners of
the Dette being upon it.’ His Highness did not seem to care a bit, and
said he was only afraid of England, who he was sure would not move. He
said, ‘You will see Lesseps to-morrow and arrange the Enquête with him.’
The next day Lesseps came with Standen, now Resident Commissioner for
the British Government Suez Canal Shares at Paris, an old friend of
mine. Lesseps began, ‘We must have the Commissioners of the Dette on the
Enquête.’ I said, ‘It is a _sine qua non_ that they are not to be upon
it.’ Lesseps replied, ‘They must be upon it.’ Then in came Cherif Pasha
and said, ‘Are you agreed?’ I left Lesseps to speak and he said ‘Yes,’
at which I stared and said, ‘I fear not.’ Then Lesseps and Cherif Pasha
discussed it, and Lesseps gave in and agreed to serve on the Commission
without the Commissioners, but he must ask permission from Paris. Cherif
Pasha was pleased, but I instinctively felt old Lesseps was ratting, so
I asked Cherif Pasha to stop a moment and said to Standen, ‘Now see that
Lesseps does not make a mess of it, let him say at once will he act
without the Commissioners of Dette or not, do this for my sake, take him
into that corner and speak to him.’ Standen did so while I took Cherif
Pasha into the other corner, much against his will, for he thought I was
a bore raising obstacles. I told him that Lesseps had declared before he
came he would not act unless with the Commissioners. Cherif was huffed
with me and turned to Lesseps, whom Standen had already dosed in his
corner of the room, and he and Lesseps had a close conversation again
for some time, and then Cherif came to me and said, ‘Lesseps has
accepted without the Commissioners of the Dette. I disgusted Cherif as I
went downstairs with him by saying, ‘He will never stick to it.’ When
downstairs in one of the many antechambers to the Palace His Highness
gave me (shall I ever lodge in palaces again? I hope not) I found
Baring. Now Baring is in the Royal Artillery, while I am in the Royal
Engineers. Baring was in the nursery while I was in the Crimea. He has a
pretentious grand patronizing way about him. We had a few words
together. I said I would do what His Highness asked me. He said it was
unfair to the creditors, and in a few moments all was over. When oil
mixes with water we will mix together! I went upstairs.”
This is interesting as a record of the incompatibility of temper and
ideas existing between Gordon and Cromer six years before 1884. It
explains indeed what would otherwise be inexplicable, the quarrel that
broke out at once between them when Gordon returned to Cairo on his
final mission.
It is not necessary to continue Gordon’s story of how he was played with
on the earlier occasion by our Cairo diplomatists, but one scene which
gives us an amusing glimpse of Lesseps, and at the same time of Gordon’s
character, I will add: “The next morning,” he continues, “the 8th March
at 9 I went to Lesseps en route to His Highness. Lesseps said, ‘See what
Cherif Pasha has written to me.’ ‘Mon cher Vicomte, son Altesse le
Khedive m’a chargé de vous présenter ses grands remerciments pour avoir
accepté d’être sur la Commission d’Enquête et elle me prie d’ajouter que
c’est ce qu’elle a toujours attendu d’un si ancien ami de Mehemet Ali et
ses fils.’ This letter had been written before I saw Lesseps, and of
course His Highness thanked him for being upon the Enquête _without_ the
four Commissioners of the Dette, which Lesseps declined to do except
under certain conditions, so the letter was written to Lesseps thanking
him for services which the Khedive was furious about. Lesseps said,
looking at his pretty young wife of twenty-two, ‘I am off to Halowan and
shall not be back until night. I have telegraphed to my Government to
ask permission to be on the Enquête with you. Here is a copy of the
telegram, will you give it to His Highness?’ He gave it over to me to
read. I read it, it was thus: ‘Son Altesse le Khedive m’a prié de me
joindre avec M. Gordon et les Commissionaires de la Caisse pour faire
une Enquête sur les finances d’Egypte, je demande permission.’ I said,
‘Oh! my dear old fellow M. Lesseps, this will never do.’ He said, ‘Well,
anyway it is off, and I am off to Halowan and shall not be back to-
night.’ Well, off I had to go with this telegram to Abdin. Cherif and
Riaz Pasha were in the antechamber, drowsy and happily smoking. As I
went in I saw a bald-headed ‘coot,’ the Consul-General of the Pays Bas,
going in to His Highness. Cherif drowsily said, ‘Well, any news?’ I
said, ‘No, only I have a telegram for His Highness from Lesseps.’ So
Riaz and Cherif chatted away in Turkish till I saw the ‘coot’ go out and
Cherif was called in. Suddenly Cherif came flying out, all drowsiness
gone, and said, ‘Where is the telegram of Lesseps?’ I gave it him and
then in came flying Pharaoh (the Khedive) with Cherif. Pharaoh threw
himself on the sofa and said, ‘Je suis tout à fait bouleversé avec ce
télégramme de Lesseps. C’est tout à fait contre mes désirs. Barrat!
(l’esclave écrivain de son altesse) venez ici, dites à quelqu’un d’aller
à Halowan et de dire à Lesseps de ne pas télégraphier à Paris,’ and then
turning to me His Highness said, ‘I put the whole affair into your
hands.’ Then, calling Barrat, he said, ‘Telegraph to Goschen, Gordon is
charged with the whole affair, arrange with him.’ Consequently I
telegraphed to Goschen, ‘I have recommended His Highness to suspend the
payment of the next Coupon in order to pay the employés and meet
pressing claims. I will arrange with you for the Commission of Inquiry
into the finances.’ Goschen answered, ‘I will not look at you, the
matter is in the hands of Her Majesty’s Government.’ I then wrote to His
Highness and proposed that he should suspend the payment of the Coupon
and pay the employés and pressing claims, that he should do it by decree
and quote me. Throw all the blame upon me, saying if he did not like to
do this I would myself write to Lord Derby, to say I had recommended His
Highness to do so-and-so; that I did not ask Her Majesty’s Government to
give any acquiescence to it, but merely to tell them if the Khedive did
this, it was my fault. The Khedive hesitated and did not answer me, and
shut himself up in his harem for two days and the game was lost. (There
would have been no risk in this.) Vivian (English Consul-General), of
course, was on the _qui vive_; he knew that some strong measure was in
prospect, and telegraphed to Her Majesty’s Government, begging the same
to authorize him to join the French Consul-General, to stop His Highness
taking any sharp measures. Of course Vivian pointed out the Red
Republican nature of your humble servant. Lord Derby, against anything
abrupt, telegraphed to Vivian, who came to me and said, ‘I have a
telegram; I will read it to you; but you are not to say anything about
it until I have communicated it to His Highness, for it would not be
proper.’ The telegram ran thus: ‘You are authorized in conjunction with
your French colleague, to inform His Highness that Her Majesty’s
Government trusts His Highness will do nothing without accordance with
his creditors, and that Her Majesty’s Government are willing to send
Rivers Wilson out to help him, and that Her Majesty’s Government think
that Baring ought to be on the Inquiry.’ Vivian then said, ‘What will
you recommend His Highness to do?’ I said, ‘I would recommend him to bow
to Her Majesty’s Government.’ Vivian said, ‘What will he do?’ I said,
‘He might say I am sovereign and will do as I will.’ Vivian (who was a
pretty black-eyed boy, and was put by General Fox under my care at the
Royal Military Academy, and whom Ruck Keene kicked on the ankle when he
was removed from that rough school) went home, and on the morrow went in
great pomp to His Highness with the French Consul-General, saying on
leaving, ‘C’est tout ce que nous avons à dire à votre altesse pour le
moment.’ Of course my tongue was tied; but before they (the two Consuls-
General) went to His Highness I wrote to Cherif Pasha, and said, hoping
to take the wind out of their sails, ‘Tell His Highness if he is
troubled, to ask Her Majesty’s Government for Rivers Wilson to come out
and help me’; and I added (for I had begun to see, with Pharaoh
wavering, it was necessary for _me_ to look to _my retreat_), ‘I will
not act with any of the four Commissioners of the Dette.’ This also gave
His Highness a reason for refusing Her Majesty’s Government’s
recommendation, that Baring should be on the Commission of Inquiry,
because he could quote my objections.
“Now, would you believe it? Vivian never gave His Highness the true
telegram. He and the French Consul-General gave him a paper: ‘Our
Governments authorize us to inform your Highness, that they trust you
will only act in accord with your creditors.’ Unimportant as this paper
was, it sickened him for two days, during which he only spoke of the
Soudan; till at last I took an opportunity, as the moment of secrecy was
over, to tell him what the true telegram was. He looked quite surprised
and said, ‘Why, they never told me that!’ The fact, however, was that
the paper the Consuls-General gave him was so vague, and the solemnity
of their manner was so great, that His Highness got frightened; and when
I did tell him, after these two days, he had already given in, and had
agreed to have the Commissioners of the Caisse (or Dette) upon the
Inquiry, and as a sequel to call for Rivers Wilson. He never told me he
had given in; but four days after I heard of it, and on my seeing him he
said (for it was no longer a secret that he had ceded), ‘Have you any
news?’ I said, ‘Yes, I hear your Highness has agreed to the four
Commissioners of the Dette being on the Inquiry.’ He said ‘Yes’ and the
subject dropped. Five days after that I left Cairo with no honours by
the ordinary train, paying my passage. The sun which rose with such
splendour, set in the deepest obscurity. I calculate my financial
episode cost me £800. His Highness was bored with me after my failure,
and could not bear the sight of me, which his surroundings soon knew. I
dare say I may have been imprudent in speech. I have no doubt it is
better as it is. His Highness and I would have fallen out about the
composition of the Commission of Inquiry, for I feel sure it was meant
to be packed, and that I was only to be the figure head; but the
families of the Ameer of Afghanistan will never change their natures;
peace be to them.”
After this things had only gone from bad to worse in Gordon’s relations
with the official world. His last act at Cairo, just before leaving it
as he thought for ever at the end of 1879, was to have a serious quarrel
with Nubar Pasha. He held Nubar responsible for much of Ismaïl’s
indebtedness to Europe, and for the international pressure which had
been put upon him, and had led to his deposition; and at their leave-
taking he had spoken his opinion of him so strongly to his face that he
considered it necessary to offer the Armenian ex-Minister
“satisfaction.” There are letters extant referring to this and to
Nubar’s answer declining the hostile invitation.
There are some curious letters, too, which Gordon wrote about the time
of his arrival in London to Lady Burton, wife of Sir Richard Burton,
who, like himself, had quarrelled with the Foreign Office, giving his
opinion on the chief official personages at Cairo, and of those at home.
In one of these he says, 4th February 1880: “You write to an orb which
is setting or rather is set; I have no power to aid your husband in any
way. I went to F. O. to-day and, as you know, Lord Hammond is very ill.
Well, the people there were afraid of me, for I have written hard things
to them, and though they knew all, they would say nought. I said, ‘Who
is the personification of Foreign Office?’ They said, ‘Currie is.’ I saw
Currie, but he tried to evade my question, _i.e._, ‘Would F. O. do
anything to prevent the Soudan falling into chaos?’ It was no use. I
cornered him, and then he said, ‘I am merely a clerk to register letters
coming in and going out.’ So then I gave it up and marvelled. I must say
I was surprised to see such a thing, a great Government like ours
governed by men who dare not call their souls their own. Lord Hammond
rules them with a rod of iron. If your husband would understand that F.
O. is at present Lord Hammond, and he is ill, he would see that I can do
nothing. I have written letters to F. O. that would raise a corpse; it
is no good. I have threatened to go to the French Government about the
Soudan; it is no good.”
Again, from Lausanne, 12th March 1880: “Of course your husband failed
with Tewfik. I scent carrion a long way off and felt that the hour of my
departure from Egypt had come, so I left quietly. Instead of A (Ismaïl),
who was a good man, you have B (Tewfik), who may be good or bad as
events will allow him. B is the true son of A, but has the inexperience
of youth and may be smarter. The problem working out in the small brains
of Tewfik is this: ‘my father lost his throne because he scouted the
creditors; the Government only cared for the creditors; they did not
care for good government, so if I look after the creditors I may govern
the country as I like.’ No doubt Tewfik is mistaken, but these are his
views backed up by a ring of Pashas.”
And a month later from Paris: “I do not like or believe in Nubar. He is
my horror; for he had led the old ex-Khedive to his fall, though Nubar
owed him everything. When Ismaïl became Khedive, Nubar had £3 a month;
he now owns £1,000,000. Things will not and cannot go straight in Egypt;
and I would say, ‘Let them glide.’ Before long time elapses things will
come to a crisis. The best way is to let all minor affairs rest, and to
consider quietly how the ruin is to fall. It must fall ere long. United
Bulgaria—Austria; Syria—France; and Egypt—England. France would then
have as much interest in repelling Russia as we have. Supposing you got
out Riaz, why you would have Riaz’s brother; and if you got rid of the
latter, you would have Riaz’s nephew. _Le plus on change, le plus c’est
la même chose_. . . . Egypt is usurped by the family of the Sandjak of
Salonique, and (by our folly) we have added a ring of Circassian pashas.
The whole lot should go.”
These letters show what Gordon’s attitude was towards the Khedive Tewfik
and the regime of the Dual Control, and are useful as explaining how
impossible it seemed two and three years later at Cairo that he should
ever again be employed in the Khedivial service, or accept such were it
offered him. It was hardly better as between him and the Foreign Office.
His final quarrel with our diplomacy will be found narrated in an entry
of my diary of 1880 quoted in my “Secret History,” which tells the story
of Gordon’s correspondence with Lord Lyons at the Paris Embassy on his
way home to England. It was in regard to what he considered ought to be
done in the matter of appointing his successor at Khartoum, and this was
repeated at the Foreign Office on his arrival in London. Talking over
this episode of Gordon’s career with Sir Rivers Wilson recently (1910),
he repeated to me the story with more circumstantial details. At that
time, the spring of 1880, Wilson was in the habit of being consulted at
the Foreign Office on Egyptian matters; and he told me that on one
occasion he was sent for by Lord Salisbury, who was then Foreign
Secretary, and asked his opinion of Gordon in connection with some
proposals that had been made at the War Office for his re-employment.
Wilson, while Finance Minister at Cairo the year before, had come into
collision with Gordon, not personally but officially, and a number of
violent telegrams had passed between the two, Gordon being at Khartoum,
Wilson at Cairo. They had never met, and now both had left Egypt, and
both under an official cloud. Wilson, in spite of their quarrel and
though he considered Gordon wrong-headed and perverse, entertained a
high personal respect for him, and hearing of his arrival in London,
left a card on him at the hotel where he was lodging, and Gordon
returned the visit next morning, as he explained, “to apologize for the
rudeness of his telegrams.” Wilson on this occasion was much taken with
“the strange little unpretending man with eyes like blue diamonds,” and
had much conversation with him about the affairs of Egypt, in which both
were interested; he knew the common talk at the Foreign Office, where
Gordon was considered mad, and when a few days later Salisbury asked his
opinion about him, he understood at once what was in question, Gordon’s
sanity, and answered that though Gordon for all ordinary Foreign Office
work was officially “impossible,” nevertheless, if there were anything
exceptionally astonishing to do in a wild country, he was the man to do
it, as, for instance, to settle matters with Cetewayo, the Zulu
chieftain who was giving trouble in South Africa.[17] Nevertheless, the
idea of Gordon’s madness persisted at the Foreign Office, and he
remained unemployed either there or at the War Office as long as the
Tories were in power.
Gordon’s life for the next year was a series of abortive undertakings,
accepted in haste and repented of at leisure. On the formation of
Gladstone’s ministry of May 1880, Lord Ripon, having been appointed
Viceroy of India, offered him the post, a very important one, of going
with him as his official private secretary. The offer was made to him
through the instrumentality of Lord Northbrook, who had been in
correspondence with him about various matters during his own
Viceroyalty, and Gordon, under the idea that an entirely new departure
was about to be taken in India, according to those principles of justice
and self-government of which he approved, without well considering his
own unfitness for a post whose principal duties were essentially those
of conciliation, self-effacement, and the disguising of unpleasant
truths, in an ill-considered moment accepted. An interesting memorandum
will be found in the Appendix giving the true story of Gordon’s ideas at
starting with Lord Ripon, and the reason of his resignation within a few
days of their arrival at Bombay. It has never before, I believe, been
published. He had held the post barely a month.[18]
Three days later, 7th July, we find him embarked on a new adventure in
consequence of a telegram received from China, whither he had been
called by Sir Robert Hart to advise on a threatened quarrel between the
Chinese Emperor and the Emperor of Russia; and without delay he proceeds
thither, gives his advice for peace, which is sound and good, but
refuses to stay more than two days at Pekin, and, having come into
collision with our diplomacy at Tientsin, as he had before at Cairo, he
leaves once more for England, which he reaches 21st October. His
restless energy at this period seems to have had no bounds.
The same autumn saw him in the west of Ireland, whither he had gone “to
have a little shooting and satisfy himself on the state of the lower
classes.” Here again he was bent upon good work, and from Glengariff
addressed a memorandum to Lord Northbrook on the subject of settling the
land question on lines identical with those adopted in 1886, but so far
in advance of what Gladstone’s Government was as yet prepared for that
Downing Street became more than ever convinced that, as Sir E. Hamilton
wrote to me about it, “the writer did not seem to be clothed in the
rightest of minds.”[19] In February 1881 we find him offering his views
(quite sound ones) about Afghanistan to the “Times,” and about the art
of irregular warfare to the “Army and Navy Gazette.” In April he offers
his services to the Cape Government to assist in terminating the Basuto
war, and soon after, in May, wishing to serve a friend, he volunteers
for Mauritius. In July and September he addresses the Government on the
question of the Suez Canal, the route to India by the Cape, and the
uselessness of Malta and Gibraltar; and on the 24th of March 1882,
having received his promotion to the rank of General, he leaves
Mauritius for the Cape, where he accepts new service in Basutoland and
does good work. But again not for long; and the 14th of October sees him
once more in England—having again quarrelled with the Cape authorities.
The year had been one of constant activity and constant change, and of
that unconscious self-advertisement he reproached himself with later to
his sister as “Agag” or “hailing the tram of the world.”
It was at this time, during his short stay in London at the close of
1882, that I had the talk with him described at the beginning of this
volume. His personality, as I saw him then, remains very clear with me.
It is that of a little, quite unmilitary man, not specially
distinguished except for his clear gray-blue eyes, and his singularly
frank, unconventional manner. There was nothing in the smallest degree
assertive about him, or which could give a stranger the idea of his
being a leader of men, or a man accustomed to authority and importance
in the world. His conversation was pleasant without any special grace of
manner, and he impressed me principally with an appearance of extreme
natural goodness and honesty of speech. He had, what is often the case
with men of very superior understanding, a great humility in expressing
his opinion even about those things he knew the best. At the same time
he was quite able to maintain his own in argument, and had much wit and
pleasant humour in discussion. He seemed to take it for granted that the
person he was talking to was as good and honest as himself, and with as
good a right to an opinion. At that time, as far as my recollection
goes, he had no thought of ever returning to Egypt. He had quarrelled
too entirely with Tewfik and the Pashas, who composed the Khedivial
Court party under the restored regime, to think it possible. His mind
was set on a religious retreat in the Holy Land, and, if he had any
other plan beyond, it was to take service under King Leopold on the
Congo. It was one of his aberrations of intelligence to be constantly
deceived as to character, and he looked upon Leopold as an enlightened
prince, and his Congo scheme as a humanitarian enterprise for the
suppression of the slave trade.
Thus at the end of the year 1882, instead of going to Egypt he left
England for Jerusalem, and stayed on in its neighbourhood for nearly the
whole of 1883. This was the most mystical part of his life, and has been
fully dealt with in various semi-religious works. I confess that it is
difficult for any one who is not himself a mystic to read these without
a suspicion that on this one point Gordon was at this time less than
entirely sane. His great object in visiting the Holy Land was to re-read
the Bible, which had been his constant study all his life, on the spot
where so many of the events recorded in it happened. He had convinced
himself that by prayer and study every riddle contained in the Book
could be made clear down to the smallest historical and geographical
allusions, hence his time was devoted to localizing the various biblical
events, and reconciling difficulties by solutions, which he considered
to be inspired as he read. This led him sometimes into a labyrinth of
impossibilities, which he nevertheless clung to and expounded in his
letters to his friends, and not to his religious friends only, or to his
sister, though these were the chief recipients of his confidences, but
to some whom one would have thought entirely outside the category of
those to whom such could possibly be made. One of them may be quoted as
showing how far he was from the track of ordinary reason about the
physical facts of the modern world we know. It might have been written
by a recluse of the sixth century, while it was addressed to one no less
a Gallio about spiritual things than the late Sir Richard Burton. Gordon
had been trying to identify the respective sites of the Garden of Eden
and of Ararat, where Noah’s Ark rested, with other points of biblical
geography, which he thought might interest Burton as a geographer and
Oriental scholar. “My idea,” he says, writing from Jerusalem, June 3,
1883, “is that the Pison is the Blue Nile, and that the sons of Joktan
were at Harrar, Abyssinian Godjam, but it is not well supported. The
rock of Harrar was the platform Adam was moulded on out of clay from the
Potters’ Field. He was then put in Seychelles, Eden, and after the Fall,
brought back to Mount Moriah to till the ground in the place he was
taken from. Noah built the ark twelve miles from Jaffa at Aïn Judeh; the
Flood began, the Ark floated up and rested on Mount Baris, afterwards
Antonia; he sacrificed on the Rock (Adam was buried on Skull Hill, hence
the skull under the Cross). It was only 776 A.D. that Mount Ararat of
Armenia became the site of the Ark’s descent. Koràn says El Judi
(Ararat) is holy land. After the Flood the remnants went East to plain
of Shimar. Had they gone East from El Judi, near Mosul, or from Armenian
Ararat they could never have reached Shimar. Shem was Melchizedek.” Was
ever serious letter written to so mocking a reader?
The question of Gordon’s religious monomania is a difficult one to
handle. In treating it, it is hardly possible not to do violence to what
is sacred to us all, our beliefs, avowed or unavowed, in the
supernatural. There are very few who in their hearts do not hold and
cling to beliefs quite contrary to reason, and who do not attach to
their own personalities an importance in the immensity of things they
cannot at all deserve. Who then of us has a right to say of his fellow
that he is less than reasonable because he believes this or that
doctrine of his relations with the unseen more strongly than the rest?
Gordon was not singular among Englishmen, even in our unbelieving day,
in his thought that God had created him for a special purpose in the
world—it is indeed the foundation of all Christian doctrine—nor is it
easy to argue that the logical deduction he drew from it that God,
having so created him, was also in constant communication with him,
inspiring him with a daily knowledge how to fulfil that purpose, was
other than a sane one. Nevertheless we cannot leave out of account this
feature of the position if we are to consider the public case, which we
are now fast approaching. The truth would seem to be that his year at
Jerusalem was for him, if I may use an expression theologians would not
I think condemn, a complete religious debauch which left him more than
ever the prey of his own visions, a puppet in the hands of his imagined
duty to do this or that for God, he knew not what, which God should
presently reveal to him. He was waiting for a call. His letters that
year to his sister and to Doctor Barnes, a friend of the same school of
pietism as his own, give indications of this. Under Doctor Barnes’
influence he had during the past two years shifted somewhat his position
in regard to the Church of England, of which he was not before a
professed member. He had never been confirmed, but he now became a
regular communicant, even adopting the doctrine of transubstantiation,
or at any rate of there being supernatural elements in the sacrament of
bread and wine. His letters are full of this. He corresponded, too,
while at Jerusalem with English Church dignitaries, and through Doctor
Barnes became intimate with Bishop Temple, and in this way the aspect of
his religious mind, which before had been extremely eclectic, became
more definitely that of orthodox English Christianity.
Of what the future was to bring him he wrote little, but there are
several letters of his about Egypt which are of interest and may be
given here.
These are to his sister:
“28 _February_ 1883.—Wonderful are the works of God in the Soudan! Look
at His work. He has upset the Egyptian people thoroughly, and they will
get their liberty from the oppressing Pachas. He has permitted this
revolt, which will end, I believe, in the suppression of the slave trade
and slave-holding, and He has humbled _me_. I will speak about myself
for one moment. I foresaw the Egyptian and Soudan affair, and was not
listened to. I am glad I was humiliated, for the things of this world
will pass away. I expect Laurence Oliphant will go to the Soudan; there
will be no end of trouble to reconquer it, and I am sorely tempted to
write Lord Dufferin my ideas; but I will not, for Jesus is Lord and He
knows what to do.”
“3 _March_ 1883.—I have great comfort in thinking that our Lord rules
every petty and great event of life both on a small and large scale.
Therefore He governs the Soudan now through A., B., and C., as much as
he did when I was there, and neither I, nor A., B., and C., have or had
anything to do with the Government, as far as others were concerned.
With respect to the motives of our actions, it is another matter; they
are the permanent residues—the things unseen. This comforts me, for I
feel that their welfare, and the course of events that takes place, are
being conducted by the same hand, whether I am there or not.”
“13 _March_.—. . . I am quite quiet about the Cape and the Soudan; my
sympathies are with the people of those countries and not with the
Turkish Pashas whom our Government will try and replace. Good will come
of it.”
To me he wrote: “_April_ 3, 1883.—I am living quietly enough here and do
not hear anything from Egypt. I expect Arabi will be back there in a
year or so. Some of the officers from Egypt have been here. I do not
think that it will be a favourite station for the army. I expect that
the only man who can, humanly speaking, give quiet to Egypt and some
hope of our benefiting the people is Nubar. He is the sort of man who
could work with Arabi, and I think the trials he has gone through have
benefited him. It is very quiet here, and one can live undisturbed,
which is a great comfort. Government ought to get Tewfik’s deposition
cancelled by the new House, for it has not been so at present.”
Again to his sister:
“16 _April_ 1883.—I am at work from morning to night. As for Egypt and
the Cape, I no more care for them; and Lord Dufferin’s despatch shows
that, even had I gone out, it would have been another fiasco.”
“7 _May_ 1883.—. . . I had a letter from Egypt which is not very
sanguine about the state of affairs, all because our Government will not
say they will stay; yet stay they must, whether they like it or not.”
On the 15th August, when the difficulty of General Hicks’ position in
the Soudan became known to him, he wrote: “If they do not make Nubar
Pasha prime minister or regent in Egypt they will have trouble, as he is
the only man who can rule that country. . . . Unless Hicks is given
supreme power he is lost, it can never work putting him in a subordinate
position, recent events at Cairo show what dependence can be placed upon
the Pashas. . . . Hicks must be made Governor General, otherwise he will
never end things satisfactorily.” On 2nd September he writes to Laurence
Oliphant, then at Haifa: “Her Majesty’s Government right or wrong will
not take a decided line in re Egypt and the Soudan, they drift but at
the same time cannot avoid the onus of being the real power in Egypt
with the corresponding advantage of being so. It is undoubtedly the fact
that they maintain Tewfik and the Pashas in power against the will of
the people. This alone is insufferable from disgusting the people, to
whom also Her Majesty’s Government have given no inducement to make
themselves popular. Their present action is a dangerous one, for without
any advantage over the Canal or to England, they keep a running sore
open with France and are acting in a way which will justify Russia to
act in a similar way in Armenia, and Austria in Salonica. Further than
that, Her Majesty’s Government must eventually gain the odium which will
fall upon them when the interest of the debt fails to be paid, which
will soon be the case. Also, Her Majesty’s Government cannot possibly
avoid the responsibility for the state of affairs in the Soudan, where a
wretched war drags on in a ruined country, at a cost of half a million
per annum, at least.
“I say therefore to avoid all this, if Her Majesty’s Government will not
act firmly and strongly and take the country (which, if I were they, I
would not do), let them attempt to get the Palestine Canal made and quit
Egypt to work out its own salvation. In doing so lots of anarchy will
take place. This anarchy is inseparable from a peaceful solution; it is
the travail in birth. Her Majesty’s Government do not prevent anarchy
now; therefore, better leave the country and thus avoid a responsibility
which gives no advantage and is mean and dangerous.”
“15 _September_ 1883.—If the Palestine canal is made we shall abandon
Egypt, which will then get self government, and will succeed under God’s
blessing, for He has a blessing for it.”
“28 _September_ 1883.—. . . Graham (Sir Gerald) writes from Egypt that
he is likely to go there at the end of the year: that looks as though we
should evacuate it. I like watching how God governs all things there; He
acts to us as we act to others.”
“25 _November_ 1883.—. . . As for the Soudan, I am much interested, but
should feel repugnance to going back there; and that is a great gain,
for I had a sneaking desire to return there, when I first came out here.
As for the Congo, I have not much choice left me.”
The Palestine Canal, to which he alludes, was a somewhat fanciful scheme
much talked of at the time by which the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea
were to be inundated and transformed into a long narrow lake, united at
the one end with the Mediterranean by a cutting at Haifa, and at the
other end with the Red Sea at Akabah. It interested Gordon principally
because he looked upon it as the possible fulfilment of Ezekiel’s
prophecy, “Their fish [_i.e._, of the Dead Sea] shall be according to
their kinds as the fish of the great sea [Mediterranean] and it shall
come to pass that the fishers shall stand upon it from En-Gedi even unto
En-Eglaim; they shall be a place to spread forth nets.” He also looked
upon it as a possible alternative route to the Suez Canal, which was the
excuse of our having occupied Egypt. “Anything,” he says about the
scheme, “is better than the wretched want of sympathy between us and the
Egyptians, which is now daily increasing into a deadly hate. We must
have a nemesis unless we show more sympathy. What single good thing have
we done the people? . . . Our Government will never get out of Egypt,
for the Europeans there will thwart any reform.”
These quotations are of some value as an indication of what his policy
was for Egypt as well as the Soudan, immediately previous to his
employment by the British Government there. As will be seen in the next
chapter, they must already to some extent have had their influence at
the Foreign Office. His thoughts, however, were but little connected
with Egypt. It was not to Egypt but to the Congo that he intended to
proceed, and it was in obedience to a summons from King Leopold at the
end of the year that, waking out of his long religious trance, he
returned to Europe. His first visit was to Brussels, and only after he
had arranged things there with Leopold did he go on, on the 7th of
January 1884, to his sister’s house at Southampton.