The Life of Gordon Volume I Part 9

Of the true personal journal Gordon wrote in 1864: "I do not want the same published, as I think, if my proceedings sink into oblivion, it would be better for every one; and my reason for this is that it is a very contested point whether we ought to have interfered or not, on which point I am perfectly satisfied that it was the proper and humane course to pursue, but I still do not expect people who do not know much about it to concur in the same.... I never want anything published. I am sure it does no good, and makes people chary of writing."

The same feeling came out in his last letter to his mother from China, 17th November 1864: "The individual is coming home, but does not wish it known, for it would be a signal for the disbanded to come to Southampton, and although the waits at Christmas are bad, these others are worse." Such a wish as this was impossible of gratification. The public press could not be silenced by the modesty of this retiring commander whose deeds had been so heroic and devoid of selfish purpose. The papers became so filled with accounts of his achievements that he gave up reading them, but _The Times_ had at least crystallised the opinion of the day into a single sentence: "Never did soldier of fortune deport himself with a nicer sense of military honour, with more gallantry against the resisting, and with more mercy towards the vanquished, with more disinterested neglect of opportunities of personal advantage, or with more entire devotion to the objects and desires of his own Government, than this officer who, after all his victories, has just laid down his sword."

The more calmly and critically the deeds of the Ever Victorious Army and Gordon's conduct during the campaign against the Taepings are considered, the greater will be the credit awarded to the high-minded, brave, and unselfish man who then gained the sobriquet of "Chinese"

Gordon. Among all the deeds of his varied and remarkable career he never succeeded in quite the same degree in winning fame and in commanding success. At Khartoum the eyes of the world were on him, but the Mahdi was allowed to remain victorious, and the Soudan still awaits fresh conquest. But during the two Taeping campaigns he was completely successful, and closed his work with an unqualified triumph. It was also the only occasion when he led an army in the field, and proved his claims to be considered a great commander. Of serious warfare it may be said to have been his last experience, for his own Government was very careful to give him no active military employment--garrison, and even consular duties being deemed more suitable for this victorious leader than the conduct of any of those little expeditions commencing with the Red River and Ashanti for which he was pre-eminently qualified--and under the Khedive he controlled an army without finding a real foe. Gordon's t.i.tle to rank among skilful military commanders rests on his conduct at the head of the Ever Victorious Army during the Taeping war. It has earned the praise of many competent military authorities as well as the general admiration of the public, and Lord Wolseley must have had it in his mind when, in vindicating his sanity, he exclaimed that he "wished other English generals had been bitten with his madness."

Those who have thought that Gordon won his victories in China by sheer personal gallantry, and nothing else, have taken a very shallow view of the case, and not condescended to study the details. In his general conception of the best way to overcome the Taepings he was necessarily hampered by the views, wishes, jealousies, and self-seeking purposes of his Chinese colleagues. But for them, his strategy would have been of a very different character, as he himself often said. He had to adjust his means to the best attainable end, and it must be allowed that he did this with remarkable tact and patience--the very qualities in which he was naturally most deficient. If we consider his strategy as being thus fettered by the Chinese officials Li Hung Chang and General Ching, whose first object was not so much the overthrow of the Taeping Government as the expulsion of the Taepings from the province for which they were responsible, it will be admitted that nothing could be better than his conception of what had to be done, and how it was to be effected. The campaign resolved itself into the cutting off of all their sources of supply from the sea and Treaty ports, and the shutting up of their princ.i.p.al force within the walls of Soochow. How well and successfully that was accomplished has been narrated, but a vainglorious commander could not have been held back after the fall of Chanchufu from leading his victorious force to achieve a crowning triumph at Nanking, which Gordon could easily have carried by a.s.sault before the order in council withdrawing his services came into effect.

More frequent opportunity was afforded for Gordon to reveal his tactical skill than his strategical insight, and in this respect the only trammels he experienced were from the military value and efficiency of his force, which had its own limitations. But still it would be unjust to form too poor an estimate of the fighting efficiency and courage of either Gordon's force or his Taeping opponents from the miserable exhibition the Chinese recently made of themselves during the war with j.a.pan. The heavy losses incurred, the several repulses Gordon himself experienced, would alone tell a different tale, if there were not the obstinate resistance offered to General Staveley and the French by the Taepings to show that they were not altogether contemptible adversaries. Gordon himself thought that his force could fight very well, and that his officers, if somewhat lacking in polish, were not to be surpa.s.sed in dash and devilry. For the Taepings, especially behind walls, and when it was impossible to out-manoeuvre them, he had also the highest opinion, and his first object on every occasion was to discover a weak point in their position, and his patience and perspicuity were generally rewarded.

The very first step he took on approaching any place that he had to attack was to reconnoitre it himself, either on foot or in one of his steamers, and he wrote a powerful despatch pointing out the general neglect of this precaution in the conduct of our Eastern campaigns, with its inevitable heavy attendant loss of precious lives. As he truly said, a careful reconnaissance generally revealed points of weakness in the enemy's position, and the Taepings, like all Asiatics, were easily demoralised when their line of retreat was threatened, or when attacked at some point where their preparations had not been perfected. Among his own personal qualifications, his untiring energy and his exceptional prompt.i.tude in coming to a decision were the most remarkable. No exertion relaxed his effort or diminished his ardour, and in face of fresh perils and disappointments he was always ready with a new plan, or prepared with some scheme for converting defeat into victory. One of his chief characteristics was his quickness in seeing an alternative course of action when his original plan had either failed or been thwarted by others. Of his personal courage and daring sufficient instances have been given to justify the a.s.sertion that in those qualities he was unsurpa.s.sable; and if he had never done anything else than lead the Ever Victorious Army, it would be sufficient to secure him a place among the most remarkable of English soldiers. In China he will be remembered for his rare self-abnegation, for his n.o.ble disdain of money, and for the spirit of tolerance with which he reconciled the incompatible parts of "a British officer and a Chinese mandarin."

CHAPTER VI.

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 a.s.sociated 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sive 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 sh.e.l.l 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.serting 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 ent.i.tled 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 Ess.e.x 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 Ess.e.x 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 a.s.sistant 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 a.s.sert 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 a.s.sent, 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 70, 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 a.s.sisted 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, princ.i.p.ally 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 cla.s.s, 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.ses 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 10; 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.sistant, 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 "w.a.n.gs," 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 G.o.d. 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 pa.s.sed through his hands. He sometimes met with gross ingrat.i.tude, 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 ma.s.s 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 25 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 a.s.sistant 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 2000 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 w.a.n.gs 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 princ.i.p.al resident. Having mentioned the Snake flags, it is proper to add that the princ.i.p.al 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 G.o.d 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 p.r.o.nounced 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-cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 pa.s.s 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 Emba.s.sy 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 10,000 a year, but Gordon absolutely refused to accept more than 2000 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 10,000 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 G.o.ds, but not so powerful as _our_ G.o.d. 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."