It is as well to know how one’s family dovetails into the community of
such a mosaic work as the British, so I will set down what information
I have on the subject. I presume that a band of Hakes quitted Prussian
Saxony in the olden time for a less sandy soil, and that some of them
settled on the old red sandstone of Devon. The name of Hache gave
itself to a town in the region of Broadcliss, and received a notice in
Doomsday-book. The family no doubt occupied the soil thereabout for
centuries, the name being noticeable in the Broadcliss Register in the
time of Queen Anne. The name, too, is rife in Saxony; at Stassfurt there
is a Hake’s Bridge; besides this there are numerous workmen of the name,
engaged in the salt factories, not to mention a general and count who
commanded the army against the Danes in the Schleswig-Holstein affair.
In England, too, this family name has belonged to all classes, from a
viscount in the time of Edward I., an M.P. for Windsor and a poet, in the
reign of Henry VIII., down to some, who, being in trade, my mother used
to call “the scum of the earth.”
My great-grandfather is reputed to have had land and a mansion called
Bluehayes, hard by Broadcliss; and tradition says it got merged into the
family of Acland by a successful mortgage on their part. My family lived
on the soil for many centuries without being distinguished in any branch
of science, literature, or art.
My mother’s family have had a different career: her father was a soldier,
and the son of one; they were Gordons of the Huntly stock, and came
directly from the Park branch of that house, but how little meaning is
there in a name! Truth to tell the only male descendants of the first
Gordon are the Aberdeen family. In the reign of one David, King of
Scotland, a Norman prince of name forgotten, settled on a territory
called Gordon, north of the Tweed. The elder branch failed after three or
four generations; an only daughter succeeding to the territory, married
a Seton, of Seton, who took the name of Gordon, so that this branch, the
most successful one, having become barons, earls, marquisses, and finally
dukes, are a younger branch of the Setons; baronets of Touch, still
existing, while the Aberdeens, the second branch of Gordon, are the true
descendants.
The centuries that have elapsed must have wholly eradicated the blood of
Gordon in this family that still bears the name, and had the marquisate
from early Scottish kings, whose daughter one of them married: Arabella.
There is something very dry in family history, because no one cares for
other people’s relations. What I note down is to show that I belong to
all classes. I have a cousin who is a baronet named Key; another who
is an earl named Ranfurly; and, as I was told, one of my family was a
butcher named Bedford. In fact, while not a true Briton, which I am glad
of, I have a full share to my name of the Saxon blood. As regards my
mother’s family, they were comparatively obscure in the middle of this
century, and are so still, except in the instance of one individual who
has a statue in Trafalgar Square, set up by the Conservative Government
in perpetual disapproval of the neglect which the hero of Khartoum
experienced at the hands of the Gladstone-Granville administration. But
for that he would have been, like Cromwell, without a statue. Of him I
shall give my opinion in the proper place; and as his name is public
property, I shall trace some of the families from which, in common with
him, I have derived my origin.
I may say, then, that our grandfather, Captain William Augustus
Gordon, was an officer somewhat distinguished in the service. He was
at the taking of Moro Castle, Havanna, Louisburg, and Quebec. At the
siege of Quebec he was on the staff of General Wolf, and saw him die
happy. He retired early from the army, in which he made many powerful
friends—married a lady of many high qualities and great personal beauty,
named Clarke, whose family belonged to Hexham, in Northumberland, the
sister of the Rev. Slaughter Clarke, incumbent of that place, at whose
house he first met her while stationed in the town on military duty. He
had a family by her of four daughters and three sons, of which my mother
was the firstborn.