GRAVESEND AND GALATZ.
After the exciting and eventful ten years which began in the Crimea
and ended in China, the most tranquil period in Gordon's career
follows, until he was once again launched on the stormy sea of public
affairs in Africa. He used to speak of the six years following his
return from the Far East as the happiest of his life, and by a
fortunate although unusual coincidence the details of his existence
during the tranquil and uneventful period have been preserved with
great amplitude and fidelity by several witnesses associated with him
in his beneficent as well as his official work. It would be easy to
fill a small volume with these particulars, which have been already
given to the world, but here it will suffice to furnish a summary
sufficient to bring out the philanthropic side of his character, and
to explain how and why it came to be thought that Gordon was the man
to solve that ever-pressing but ever-put-off problem of diminishing
the pressure of excessive population and poverty in the eastern
districts of London.
General Gordon arrived in England early in 1865, and proceeded to join
his family at Rockstone Place, Southampton, where he was then doubly
welcomed, as his father was in declining health, and died soon
afterwards. Here Gordon passed a quiet six months, refusing all
invitations with extreme modesty, and in every way baffling the
attempts of relations, friends, and admirers to make a lion of him. He
would not permit anyone to say that his suppression of the Taeping
rebellion was a marvellous feat, and he evaded and resented all the
attempts made by those in power to bring him into prominence as a
national hero. Modesty is becoming as an abstract principle of human
conduct, but Gordon carried it to an excess that made it difficult not
so much for his fellow-men to understand him, as for them to hold
ordinary workaday relations with him. This was due mainly to two
causes--a habitual shyness, and his own perception that he could not
restrain his tongue from uttering unpalatable and unconventional
truths. He was so unworldly and self-sacrificing in his own actions
that he could not let himself become even in a passive sense
subservient to the very worldly means by which all men more or less
advance in public and private life. The desire of Ministers and War
Office authorities to bring him forward, to eulogise his Chinese
exploits, and in the end to give him worthy employment, was regarded
by him as that secret favouritism that he abhorred. He retired into
his shell at every effort made to bring him into prominence. He tore
up his diary sooner than that it should be the means of giving him
notoriety. He even refused special employment and promotion, because
it would put him over the heads of his old comrades at the Woolwich
Academy. The inevitable result followed. Those in power came to regard
him as eccentric, and when occasions arose that would have provided
him with congenial and much-desired employment on active service for
his own country, his name was passed over, and the best soldier in
England was left in inglorious and uncongenial inactivity. This was
regrettable, but natural. The most heroic cannot pose as being too
elevated above their fellows, or they will be left like Achilles
sulking in his tent.
There were moments, we have been told, when in the bosom of the family
circle he threw off the reserve in which he habitually wrapped
himself, and narrated in stirring if simple language the course of his
campaigns in China. These outbursts were few and far between. They
became still less frequent when he found that the effect of his
description was to increase the admiration his relatives never
concealed from him. His mother, whose feelings towards him were of a
specially tender nature, and whose solicitude for his personal safety
had been more than once evinced, took the greatest pride in his
achievements, and a special pleasure at their recital. But even her
admiration caused Charles Gordon as much pain as pleasure, and it is
recorded that while she was exhibiting to a circle of friends a map
drawn by him during his old term days at the Academy, he came into the
room, and seeing that it was being made a subject of admiration, took
it from his mother, tore it in half, and threw it into the fire grate.
Some little time after he repented of this act of rudeness, collected
the fragments, pasted them together, and begged his mother's
forgiveness. This damaged plan or map is still in existence. His
extraordinary diffidence and shrinking from all forms of praise or
exaltation was thus revealed at a comparatively early stage of his
career, and in connection with the first deeds that made him famous.
The incident just described shows that his way of asserting his
individuality was not always unattended with unkindness to those who
were nearest and dearest to him. His distrust of his own temper, and
of his capacity to speak and act conventionally, urged him towards a
solitary life; and when his fate took him into places and forms of
employment where solitude was the essential condition of the service,
it is not surprising that his natural shyness and humility, as well as
that habit of speaking his own mind, not only without fear or favour,
but also, it must be admitted, with considerable disregard for the
feelings of others, became intensified, and the most noticeable of his
superficial characteristics.
But although Gordon was averse to praise and any special promotion, he
was most anxious to resume the work of his profession, in which he
took a peculiar pride, and for which he felt himself so thoroughly
well suited. His temperament was naturally energetic and impulsive.
The independent command he had exercised in China had strengthened
these tendencies, and made a dull routine doubly irksome to one whose
eager spirit sought action in any form that offered. The quiet
domestic life of the family circle at Southampton soon became
intolerable to his restless spirit, and although he was entitled to
two years' leave after his long foreign service, he took steps to
return to active service as an engineer officer within a very few
months of his return to England.
On 1st September 1865 he was appointed Commanding Royal Engineer
officer at Gravesend, to superintend the erection of the new forts to
be constructed in that locality for the defence of the Thames. For
such a post his active military service, as well as his technical
training, eminently suited him; and although there was little promise
of excitement about it, the work was distinctly congenial, and offered
him a field for showing practical judgment and skill as an engineer.
He threw himself into his task with his characteristic energy and
enthusiasm. But how far the latter was damped by his prompt discovery
that the whole project of the Thames defences was faulty and unsound
it is impossible to say, but his attention to his work in all its
details certainly showed no diminution or falling off. There were five
forts in all to be constructed--three on the south or Kent side of the
river, viz., New Tavern, Shornmead, and Cliffe; and two, Coalhouse and
Tilbury, on the north or Essex side. An immense sum had been voted by
Parliament for their construction, and Gordon was as loud as an
officer dare be in his denunciation of this extravagant waste of money
as soon as he discovered by personal examination that the three
southern forts could be turned into islands, and severed from all
communication by an enemy cutting the river bank at Cooling; and also
that the northern forts were not merely unprotected in the rear, like
those of the Chinese, but completely commanded from the Essex range of
hills. Notwithstanding this important discovery, made at the very
beginning, the original scheme was prosecuted to the end, with
enormous outlay and useless result, for an entirely new system of
river defences had to be formed and carried out at a later period.
But for these errors Gordon was in no sense responsible, and they
would not have been committed if his advice and representations had
been heeded.
Mr Arthur Stannard, who was assistant to the manager of the firm which
had been intrusted with the contract for the building of these forts,
gave in the _Nineteenth Century_ for April 1885 the best account we
possess of the manner in which Colonel Gordon discharged his official
duties at Gravesend.
Colonel Gordon's headquarters were at a quaint-looking, old-fashioned
house with a good-sized garden, close to the site on which the New
Tavern fort was to be erected. He considered himself to be on official
duty from eight o'clock in the morning until two o'clock in the
afternoon; and during these six hours he not only worked himself
without intermission, but expected all those under him to work in the
same untiring spirit. He was a severe and unsparing taskmaster, and
allowed no shirking. No other officer could have got half the work out
of his men that he did. He used to keep them up to the mark by
exclaiming, whenever he saw them flag: "Another five minutes gone, and
this not done yet, my men! We shall never have them again."
Another instance of his unflagging energy and extreme activity was
furnished in connection with the boat in which he had to visit the
different parts of the defences. A two-oared, slow-moving boat was
provided for the purpose, but Gordon soon grew tired of this slow
means of locomotion, and he started a four-oared gig. He trained these
men according to his own ideas, and expected them to row with all
their might and main, and to lose not a minute in casting off their
boat on his arrival. So fond was he of rapid motion, or so impressed
with the value of time, that he would continue to urge them on,
whenever any signs of slackening appeared, with exclamations: "A
little faster, boys, a little faster!" and Mr Stannard states that he
has seen the boatmen land after such a row as this in as limp a
condition as four strong men could be. All his own movements were
carried on at the run, and his activity was such that few younger and
taller men were able to keep up with him. I well recollect myself my
first interview with General Gordon in 1881, when he roused me up by a
surprise morning visit at eight o'clock--I had not returned from a
newspaper office till four o'clock--and carried me off, walking in a
light, springy way which was half a run up to the top of Campden Hill,
to interview the late Sir Harry Parkes.
While many incidents and the general tenor of his conduct show the
natural gentleness of Gordon and his softness of heart, he was a
strict disciplinarian, and even a martinet in some of his ways. As has
been said, he came on duty at eight every morning punctually, but he
would not allow himself to be intruded upon before that hour. Mr
Stannard tells one story that furnishes striking evidence to this
effect. Early in the morning the men were brought to a standstill in
their work until Colonel Gordon arrived to decide some doubtful or
disputed matter. It was noticed that his bedroom window was wide open,
and the contractor's manager was induced to go up and knock at his
door for instructions. Gordon opened his door a little way, and
exclaimed in a testy and irritable tone, "Presently, presently." He
made his regular appearance at eight o'clock, and no one ventured to
again disturb him before the regulation hour.
With regard to his meals he was most abstemious, and at the same time
irregular. His brother describes an arrangement by which he was able
to take, at all events, his midday meal, and at the same time to carry
on his official work, especially in the matter of receiving visitors.
He had a deep drawer in his table, in which the food was deposited.
When anyone came to see him, the drawer was closed, and all signs of a
meal were concealed. At all periods of his career he was a small and
frugal eater, partly because he deprecated extravagance in living, and
partly because he considered that the _angina pectoris_ from which he
thought he suffered could be best coped with by abstention from a
sumptuous or heavy diet. Some days he would almost starve himself, and
then in the night Nature would assert herself, and he would have to
come downstairs and take whatever he found in the larder. It is
recorded that on one occasion he sucked ten or a dozen raw eggs. But
if he denied himself the luxuries and even the necessaries of a decent
table, he possessed the true spirit of hospitality, and never expected
his guests to follow any different practice than their own. For them
he was always at pains to provide dainty fare and good wine. Nor must
undue stress be laid on the isolated cases cited of his indifference
to his personal comfort. Gordon was always attentive to his dress and
appearance, never forgetting that he was a gentleman and an English
officer.
While quartered at Gravesend he received a visit from Sir William
Gordon, who had just been appointed to the command of the troops in
Scotland. Sir William was no relation, only a member of the same great
clan, and he had served with Gordon in the trenches of the Crimea. He
had a great admiration and affection for the younger officer, and
begged him to accept the post of his _aide-de-camp_ in the North. The
idea was not a pleasant one to our Gordon, but his good-nature led him
to yield to the pressing invitations of his friend; and after he had
given his assent, he was ill with nervousness and regret at having
tied himself down to an uncongenial post. In some way or other Sir
William heard of his distress, and promptly released him from his
promise, only exacting from him the condition that he should pay him a
visit at his home in Scotland. Soon afterwards Sir William Gordon
became seriously ill, and Charles Gordon hastened to the North, where
he remained some time employed in cheering up his friend, who was
suffering from hypochondria. Some time afterwards Sir William died
under sad circumstances. He had wished to benefit General Gordon by
his will, but the latter absolutely refused to have anything except a
silver tea service, which he had promised Sir William, while alive, to
accept, because "it would pay for his funeral," and save any one being
put to expense over that inevitable ceremony. The fate of this tea
service, valued at L70, cannot be traced. It had disappeared long
before Gordon's departure for Khartoum, and was probably sold for some
beneficent work.
The Sir William Gordon incident was not the only external affair that
distracted his attention from the monotonous routine work of building
forts on a set, but faulty and mistaken, plan. Glad as he was of any
work, in preference to the dull existence of a prolonged holiday in
the domestic circle, Gravesend was not, after all, the ideal of active
service to a man who had found the excitement of warfare so very
congenial to his own temperament. When, in the course of 1867 it
became evident that an expedition would have to be sent to Abyssinia
to release the prisoners, and to bring the Negus Theodore to his
senses, Gordon solicited the Horse Guards to include him in any force
despatched with this object. There is no reason to think that his wish
would not have been complied with if the expedition had been fitted
out from England, but it was very wisely decided that the task should
be entrusted to the Anglo-Indian Army. The late Lord Napier of
Magdala, then Commander-in-Chief of the Bombay Army, was appointed to
the command. The officers of his staff, as well as the troops under
him, were all drawn from the Bombay Army, and although his connection
by marriage, Sir Charles Staveley, held a command under Napier, and
would willingly have assisted towards the gratification of his wish,
an exception in Gordon's case could not be made without that
favouritism which he most deprecated. Still, it was a great
disappointment to him, and he shut himself up for a whole day, and
would see no one.
If the six years at Gravesend, "the most peaceful and happy of any
portion of my life," as he truly said, had left no other trace than
his official work, of which the details must necessarily be meagre,
there would have been a great blank in his life, and the reader would
necessarily possess no clue to the marked change between the Gordon
of China and the Gordon of the Soudan. Not that there was any loss of
power or activity, but in the transition period philanthropy had come
to occupy the foremost place in Gordon's brain, where formerly had
reigned supreme professional zeal and a keen appreciation--I will not
say love--of warlike glory. His private life and work at Gravesend
explain and justify what was said of him at that time by one of his
brother officers: "He is the nearest approach to Jesus Christ of any
man who ever lived."
It has been written of him that his house at Gravesend bore more
resemblance to the home of a missionary than the quarters of an
English officer. His efforts to improve and soften the hard lot of the
poor in a place like Gravesend began in a small way, and developed
gradually into an extensive system of beneficence, which was only
limited by his small resources and the leisure left him by official
duty. At first he took into his house two or three boys who attracted
his attention in a more or less accidental manner. He taught them in
the evening, fed and clothed them, and in due course procured for them
employment, principally as sailors or in the colonies. For a naturally
bad sailor, he was very fond of the sea; and perhaps in his heart of
hearts he cherished the thought that he was performing a national work
in directing promising recruits to the first line of our defence, and
the main prop of this Empire. Soon his few special pupils swelled into
a class, not all boarders, but of outsiders who came in to learn
geography and hear the Colonel explain the Bible; and not only that,
but to be told of stirring deeds beyond the sea by one who had himself
contributed to the making of history. We can well believe that before
this uncritical but appreciative audience, from whose favour he had
nothing to hope, or, as he would say, to fear, Gordon threw off the
restraint and shyness habitual to him. It was very typical of the man
that, where others thought only of instructing the poor and the
ignorant, his chief wish was to amuse them and make them laugh.
By this simple means his class increased, and grew too large for his
room. Sooner than break it up or discourage new-comers, he consented
to teach in the ragged schools, where he held evening classes almost
every night. Where he had clothed two or three boys, he now
distributed several hundred suits in the year; and it is said that his
pupils became so numerous that he had to buy pairs of boots by the
gross. All this was done out of his pay. His personal expenses were
reduced to the lowest point, so that the surplus might suffice to
carry on the good work. It very often left him nearly penniless until
his next pay became due--and this was not very surprising, as he could
never turn a deaf ear to any tale of distress, and often emptied his
pockets at the recital of any specially touching misfortune. When any
outside subject of national suffering appealed to his heart or touched
his fancy, he would consequently have no means available of sending
any help, and this was specially the case during the suffering of the
Lancashire operatives after the close of the American Civil War. On
that occasion he defaced the gold medal given him by the Chinese
Empresses, and sent it anonymously to the fund, which benefited from
it to the extent of L10; but, as has been already stated, he made this
sacrifice with the greatest pain and reluctance.
Gordon's love of children, and especially of boys, was quite
remarkable. He could enter into their feelings far better than he
could into those of grown men, and the irritability which he could
scarcely suppress even among his friends was never displayed towards
them. He was always at their service, anxious to amuse them, and to
minister to their rather selfish whims. Some accidental remark led his
class to express a wish to visit the Zoo. Gordon at once seized the
idea, and said they should do so. He made all the arrangements as
carefully as if he were organising a campaign. His duties prevented
his going himself, but he saw them off at the station, under the
charge of his assistant, and well provided with baskets of food for
their dinner and refreshment on their journey. Of course he defrayed
the whole expense, and on their return he gave them a treat of tea and
strawberries. He also thought of their future, being most energetic in
procuring them employment, and anxious in watching their after-career.
For some reason that is not clear he called these boys his "kings." He
probably used it in the sense that they were his lieutenants, and he
borrowed his imagery from the "Wangs," or kings of the Taeping ruler.
I am told, however, that he really used the word in a spiritual sense,
testifying that these boys were as kings in the sight of God. He
followed the course of the first voyage of those who went to sea,
sticking pins in a map to show the whereabouts of their respective
vessels. It is not astonishing that his pupils should have felt for
him a special admiration and affection. He not merely supplied all
their wants, but he endeavoured to make them self-reliant, and to
raise them above the sordid and narrow conditions of the life to which
they were either born or reduced by the improvidence or misfortune of
their parents. Of course Gordon was often deceived, and his confidence
and charity abused; but these cases were, after all, the smaller
proportion of the great number that passed through his hands. He
sometimes met with gross ingratitude, like that of the boy whom he
found starving, in rags, and ill with disease, and whom he restored to
health, and perhaps to self-respect, and then sent back to his parents
in Norfolk. But neither from him nor from them did he ever receive
the briefest line of acknowledgment. Such experiences would have
disheartened or deterred other philanthropists, but they failed to
ruffle Gordon's serenity, or to discourage him in his work.
Perhaps the following incident is as characteristic as anything that
took place between Gordon and his "kings." A boy whom he had twice
fitted out for the world, but who always came to grief after a few
months' trial, returned for a third time in the evening. Gordon met
him at the gate, a mass of rags, in a deplorable condition, and
covered with vermin. Gordon could not turn him away, neither could he
admit him into his house, where there were several boys being brought
up for a respectable existence. After a moment's hesitation, he led
him in silence to the stable, where, after giving him some bread and a
mug of milk, he told him to sleep on a heap of clean straw, and that
he would come for him at six in the morning. At that hour Gordon
appeared with a piece of soap, some towels, and a fresh suit of
clothes, and, ordering the boy to strip, gave him a thorough washing
with his own hands from head to foot at the horse-trough. It is to be
regretted that there is no record of the after-fate of this young
prodigal, although it would be pleasant to think that he was the
unknown man who called at Sir Henry Gordon's house in 1885, after the
news of Gordon's death, and wished to contribute L25 towards a
memorial, because he was one of the youths saved by General Gordon, to
whom all his success and prosperity in life were due.
But it must not be supposed that Gordon's acts of benevolence were
restricted to boys. He was not less solicitous of the welfare of the
sick and the aged. His garden was a rather pretty and shaded one. He
had a certain number of keys made for the entrance, and distributed
them among deserving persons, chiefly elderly. They were allowed to
walk about, in the evening especially, and see the flowers,
vegetables, and fruit which Gordon's gardener carefully cultivated.
Gordon himself declared that he derived no special pleasure from the
sight of flowers, for the simple reason that he preferred to look at
the human face; and the same reason is the only one I can find he ever
gave for his somewhat remarkable reticence about dogs and other
domestic animals. It was said of him that he always had handy "a bit
o' baccy for the old men, and a screw o' tea for the old women." He
would hurry off at a moment's notice to attend to a dying person or to
read the Bible by a sick-bed. In the hospital or the workhouse he was
as well known as the visiting chaplain, and often he was requested by
the parish clergyman to take his place in visiting the sick. His
special invention for the benefit of his large number of clients was
a system of pensions, which varied from a shilling to as much as a
pound a week. Many of these payments he continued long after he left
Gravesend, and a few were even paid until the day of his death. It is
not surprising, in view of these facts, that Gordon remained a poor
man, and generally had no money at all. As he wrote very truly of
himself to his assistant Mr Lilley, "You and I will never learn wisdom
in money matters."
Many stories have been told of his tenderness of heart, and of his
reluctance to see punishment inflicted, but perhaps the following is
the most typical. A woman called on him one day with a piteous tale.
Gordon went to his bedroom to get half a sovereign for her, and while
he was away she took a fancy to a brown overcoat, which she hastened
to conceal under her skirt. Gordon returned, gave her the money, and
she left with a profusion of thanks. While on her road home the coat
slipped down, and attracted the notice of a policeman, who demanded an
explanation. She said, "I took it from the Colonel," and was marched
back for him to identify his property, and charge her with the theft.
When Gordon heard the story, he was far more distressed than the
culprit, and refused to comply with the constable's repeated requests
to charge her. At last a happy thought came to his relief. Turning to
the woman, he said, with a twinkle in his eye, "You wanted it, I
suppose?" "Yes," replied the astonished woman. Then turning to the
equally astonished policeman he said, "There, there, take her away,
and send her about her business."
Among the various economies he practised in order to indulge his
philanthropy was that of not keeping a horse, and he consequently took
a great deal of walking exercise. During his walks along the Kentish
lanes and foot-paths he distributed tracts, and at every stile he
crossed he would leave one having such an exhortation as "Take heed
that thou stumbleth not." Yet all this was done in an honest, and, as
I believe, a secretly humorous spirit of a serious nature, for Gordon
was as opposed to cant and idle protestations as any man. There is a
strikingly characteristic story preserved somewhere of what he did
when a hypocritical, canting humbug of a local religious secretary of
some Society Fund or other paid a visit to a house while he was
present. Gordon remained silent during the whole of the interview. But
when he was gone, and Gordon was asked what he thought of him, he
replied by waving his hand and drawing it across his throat, which he
explained signified in China that his head ought to be cut off as a
humbugging impostor.
Although buried, as it were, at Gravesend, Gordon could not be
altogether forgotten. The authorities at the Horse Guards could not
comply with his request to be attached to the Abyssinian expedition,
but they were willing enough to do him what in official circles was
thought to be a very good turn when they could. The English membership
of the Danubian Commission became vacant, and it was remembered that
in his early days Gordon had taken part in the delimitation
negotiations which had resulted in the formation of that body. The
post carried with it the good pay of L2000 a year, as some
compensation for the social and sanitary drawbacks and disadvantages
of life in that region, and it was offered to Gordon, who accepted it.
It cut short his philanthropical labours, but it drew him back into
that current of active work for which he was already pining. He
therefore accepted it, and having presented some of the Snake flags of
the old Taeping Wangs to the local school in which he had toiled as a
simple teacher, he left Gravesend quietly, and without any
manifestation that it had lost its principal resident. Having
mentioned the Snake flags, it is proper to add that the principal of
these, including some of his own which were shot to ribbons, were left
by General Gordon to his sister, the late Miss Gordon, who in her turn
presented them, with the Yellow Jacket and its appendages, the chief
mandarin dress, etc., to the Royal Engineers at Chatham. The Gravesend
life closed with a notice in the local journal, from which the
following extract may be made; but once a year the old flags that led
the advance or retreat of the Chinese rebels are brought out from
their cases and flaunted before the Gravesend scholars as the memorial
of a brave and unselfish leader and teacher.
The farewell article in the local paper read as follows:--
"Our readers, without exception, will learn with regret of the
departure of Lieut.-Colonel Gordon, R.E., C.B., from the town in
which he has resided for six years, gaining a name by the most
exquisite charity that will long be remembered. Nor will he be
less missed than remembered in the lowly walks of life, by the
bestowal of gifts, by attendance and administration on the sick
and dying, by the kindly giving of advice, by attendance at the
Ragged School, Workhouse, and Infirmary--in fact, by general and
continued beneficence to the poor, he has been so unwearied in
well-doing that his departure will be felt by many as a personal
calamity. There are those who even now are reaping the rewards of
his kindness. His charity was essentially charity, and had its
root in deep philanthropic feeling and goodness of heart,
shunning the light of publicity, but coming even as the rain in
the night-time, that in the morning is noted not, but only the
flowers bloom, and give a greater fragrance.... All will wish him
well in his new sphere, and we have less hesitation in penning
these lines from the fact that laudatory notice will confer but
little pleasure upon him who gave with the heart and cared not
for commendation."
Gordon left for Galatz on 1st October 1871. He had visited and
described it fourteen or fifteen years before, and he found little or
no change there. The special task intrusted to the Commission of which
he was a member was to keep open by constant and vigilant dredging the
mouth of the Sulina branch of the Danube. He discovered very soon that
the duties were light and monotonous, and in the depressing
atmosphere--social and political as well as climatic--of the Lower
Danube, he pined more than ever for bracing work, and for some task
about which he could feel in earnest. The same conclusion seems to
have forced itself upon his mind at the beginning and at the end of
his stay at Galatz. In one of his first letters he exclaims: "How I
like England when I am out of it! There is no place in the world like
it!" In another letter, written on the very day of his departure home,
he wrote: "Tell S. to thank God that he was born an Englishman."
Gordon was always intensely patriotic. His patriotism partook of the
same deep and fervid character as his religion, and these and many
other little messages in his private correspondence furnish striking
evidence to the fact.
The mention of Galatz recalls an incident, showing how long was his
memory, and how much he clung to old friendships. During the
Commune--that is to say, when he was still at Gravesend--the papers
stated that a General Bisson had been killed at the Bridge of Neuilly
on 9th April 1871. He wrote to Marshal Macmahon to inquire if he was
the same officer as his old colleague on the Danube, and received, to
his regret, an affirmative answer. General Bisson and Gordon had kept
up a correspondence, in which the former always signed himself Bisson,
C.B., being very proud of that honour, which was conferred on him for
the Crimea. He was taken prisoner early in the Franco-Prussian war,
and was shot by the Communists almost immediately on his return from
the Prussian prison. Gordon's stay at Galatz was varied by an
agreeable trip in 1872 to the Crimea, where he was sent to inspect the
cemeteries with Sir John Adye. They travelled in an English gunboat,
which proved a comfortable sea-boat, and Gordon wrote, "General Adye
is a very agreeable companion." The cemeteries were found much
neglected, and in a sad state of disrepair. The Russian officers were
pronounced civil, but nothing more. But Gordon saw clearly that,
having torn up the Black Sea Treaty, they were ready to recover
Bessarabia, and to restore Sebastopol to the rank of a first-class
naval fortress. After the Crimean tour he came to England on leave.
His time was short, but he managed to pay a flying visit to
Gravesend. He also could not resist the temptation of attending the
funeral of the Emperor Napoleon in January 1873, and he expressed his
opinion of that ill-starred ruler in his usual terse manner--"a
kind-hearted, unprincipled man." His youngest brother, to whom he was
much attached, and who had shared in the Woolwich frolics, died about
this time, and his mother was seized with paralysis, and no longer
recognised him. He felt this change most acutely, for between him and
his mother there had been a peculiar attachment, and when he was at
home she would hardly ever let him out of her sight. He used to call
his home visits doing duty as his mother's _aide-de-camp_. When he
left England for Galatz she was unconscious, and passed away some
months later while he was abroad.
It was while General Gordon was on the Danube that preparations were
made for the expedition against the Ashantees, and many persons
suggested General Gordon for the command. It would have been an
excellent occasion for intrusting him with an independent command in
his country's service; but Sir Garnet, now Lord, Wolseley had recently
gained much credit by his conduct of the Red River Expedition, and was
appointed to the command of this force. General Gordon was no doubt
disappointed at the result, but not so much as he had been in the case
of Abyssinia, and loyalty to an old Crimean colleague tempered his own
loss with satisfaction at another's success. Still, on public grounds,
it must be pronounced unfortunate that the last occasion which was
offered of employing for a national cause the services of a soldier
who added the fervour and modesty of Wolfe to the genius of Clive
should have been allowed to pass by unutilised.
A casual meeting with Nubar Pasha at Constantinople, on his way back
from the Crimea in 1872, was destined to exercise what may be styled a
determining influence on the rest of Gordon's life. At that meeting
Nubar Pasha sounded him as to his willingness to take service under
the Khedive, and Gordon, attracted by the prospect of doing good work
on a larger sphere, expressed his own readiness to take up the task of
establishing authority, and suppressing slavery in the Soudan,
provided that the permission of his own Government were granted. He
heard nothing more of the matter for twelve months, but at the end of
September 1873 he received a communication to the effect that the
Khedive wished to appoint him to succeed Sir Samuel Baker, and that
the British Government were quite willing to grant him the necessary
permission. In a letter of 8th November 1873 to the Adjutant-General
he said:--
"I have written an account of what I know of the Khedive's having
asked me to take Baker's place. It came about from a
conversation I had with Nubar Pasha at our Embassy at
Constantinople. This was twelve months ago. The next thing was a
telegram a month ago. I have not determined what to do, but the
Government have no objection."
He was not long, however, in making up his mind, and early in 1874 he
was _en route_ for Alexandria. One characteristic act in connection
with his appointment deserves mention. The Khedive fixed his salary at
L10,000 a year, but Gordon absolutely refused to accept more than
L2000 a year--the same sum as he received for his post on the Danube.
Various reasons have been given for this decision, but there is no
ground for supposing that it was due to such a very narrow-minded
prejudice as "that he would take nothing from a heathen." If he ever
used these words, they must have been intended as a joke, and are not
to be accepted seriously. A sufficient explanation of his decision is,
that he had a supreme disdain for money, and the sum offered seemed
far in excess of the post and work he had to perform. To have received
L10,000 a year would have added immensely to his worries. He would not
have known what to do with it, and the voluntary cutting of his salary
relieved him of a weight of responsibility. Perhaps also he was
far-seeing enough to realise that he would be less the mere creature
of the Egyptian ruler with the smaller than with the larger salary,
while he could gratify his own inner pride that no one should say that
any sordid motive had a part in his working for semi-civilized
potentates, whether Chinese or Mussulmen.
I am able to describe Gordon's exact feelings on this point in his own
words. "My object is to show the Khedive and his people that gold and
silver idols are not worshipped by all the world. They are very
powerful gods, but not so powerful as _our_ God. From whom does all
this money come? from poor miserable creatures who are ground down to
produce it. Of course these ideas are outrageous. Pillage the
Egyptians is still the cry."