Sir Gordon

“ Gordon winced painfully. He felt with a sharper agony the sensitive pang of the cripple, the shame of misshapenness that all his life had clung like an old-man-of-the-sea. It had not only stung his childhood; it had stolen from him the romance of his youth—the one gleam that six years ago had died.
Six years! For a moment time fell away like rotten shale from about a crystal. The room, the wine-cabinet, faded into a dim background, and on this, as if on a theater curtain, dissolving pictures painted themselves flame-like.
He was back in his Harrow days now, at home for his last vacation. ”

“ Almost before Gordon had left the library the Consul-General was back at his desk—the stern, saturnine man once more, with a face that seemed to express a mind inaccessible to human emotions of any sort.
"As bright as light—sees things before one says them," he said to himself, as Gordon closed the door on going out. "Why have I wasted myself with weaklings so long?" ”

“ GORDON SWIMS FOR A LIFE
From London to Ostend, and through Flanders, a swart shadow trailed George Gordon slowly but unerringly. It was the man whose dark, reckless face had once turned with jealous passion to Jane Clermont as they had watched a carriage approaching Drury Lane; he who, on a later night, had pursued the same vehicle, then a mark for jeers, to Piccadilly Terrace. The question he had uttered as he saw Gordon alight alone, had rang in his brain through his after-search: “Where has he left her?” ”

“ Gordon uttered an astonished and bewildered exclamation:
“Caro! What mad masquerade is this?”
She drew back under the pale intensity, the controlled agitation of his face. “Forgive me! forgive me!” Tumult was looking from her eyes, and her shoulders were heaving. “I could not help it! I have tried to forget you during all this past year. I cannot bear to see you only at Melbourne House and at parties and on the street. How pale you always are!” she went on. “Like a statue of marble, and your dark hair such a contrast. I never see you without wanting to cry. ”

“ Gordon had been looking at him steadily—looking, but with a strange irrelevance, seeing really himself, [137] standing in his own room at a long-ago dawn, a goblet of brandy in his hand, and in his heart a determination rising anew—a wish to be like the youth whose clasp now met his own, with a like serenity and purpose, a soul to which fame meant least, truth and right all! In that year of dazzle before his marriage he had quenched that determination. He had worshiped the Great Beast. He had lived the world’s life and played its games and accepted its awards. ”

“ It would be difficult to think of a man more completely the antithesis of Gordon. His temperament, all in monochrome, touched in with cold blues and indecisive greys, was eminently unromantic. He had a steely colourlessness, and a steely pliability, and a steely strength. Endowed beyond most men with the capacity of foresight, he was endowed as very few men have ever been with that staying-power which makes the fruit of foresight attainable. ”

“ Gordon recollected the conversation concerning Lord Nelson, and the effect produced on Margarette; and resolving in his turn to find a passage to her sensibilities, led the conversation to heroes and great men. He made some very eloquent remarks, as he apprehended, on heroism and greatness, which had previously been arranged with great care.
"Whom do you consider truly great men, Mr. Gordon?" asked Alice.
"Alexander—Louis the Fourteenth—Napoleon—Voltaire and Lord Byron," said Gordon. "Each in his turn, and in his own way, has dazzled the whole world!" ”

“ The news of Gordon's death startled not England only, but the whole of the civilised world. Every eye had been watching the relief column slowly wending its way up the Nile, and over the desert route. One war correspondent had actually used the words in his telegram, "To-morrow the lonely and weary hero will joyfully grasp the hand of an Englishman." People would not at first believe the sad reality, and for a time every one hoped against hope. ”

“ Sir Henry knew the ingrained and unalterable character of his brother, and adapted himself to it, partly through affection and partly through admiration, for in his eyes Charles Gordon was the truest of heroes. No man ever possessed a truer or more solicitous friend than General Gordon found in him. ”

“ My spirit but speaks to thee.'
Wringing her hands, tearing her hair,
His lady she was seen,
And thus addressed his servant Gordon,
Where he stood on the green.
'O wae be to you, George Gordon!
An ill death may you die! ”

“ He was to learn in his own person the weakness and falseness of his Government, and to find himself betrayed by the very persons who had only sought his assistance in the belief that by a miracle—and nothing less would have sufficed—he might relieve them from responsibilities to which they were not equal. Far better would it have been, not only for Gordon's sake, but even for the reputation of England, if he had carried out his original project on the Congo, where, on a less conspicuous scene than the Nile, he might still have fought and won the battle of humanity. ”

“ In this siege, as in many other fights, Gordon had himself to lead his army. If an officer shrank back before the savage enemy, Gordon would take him gently by the arm and lead him into the thickest of the battle. He himself went unarmed, and would lead his troops onwards with the little cane he nearly always carried. Where the fire was hottest, there Gordon was always to be found, caring no more for the bullets that pattered round him than if they were hailstones. The Chinese soldiers came to look on the little cane as a magic wand. ”

“ At once Gordon began to get his ragamuffin army into shape.
He arranged that the soldiers were to get their pay regularly, but were to have no extra pay for the places which they took. Any man caught plundering a town that was taken was to be shot. He replaced the adventurers of all nations, many of them drunken rogues, who were the army's officers, by English officers lent by the British Government. He drilled his men well. He practised them in attacking fortified places, and he formed a little fleet of small steamers and Chinese gunboats. ”

“ But, brilliant as these operations were, Gordon's military genius showed itself no less unmistakably in other directions. The Ever Victorious Army, recruited from the riff-raff of Shanghai, was an ill-disciplined, ill-organised body of about three thousand men, constantly on the verge of mutiny, supporting itself on plunder, and, at the slightest provocation, melting into thin air. Gordon, by sheer force of character, established over this incoherent mass of ruffians an extraordinary ascendancy. ”

“ The problem was how to withdraw that enormous number of human beings from the Soudan into Egypt. What appeared to be needed far more than troops was a man with a head on his shoulders, acquainted with the country, familiar with the people and their habits of thought, and possessing force of character to stand against the turbulent elements that had to be dealt with. No sooner were the difficulties of the position recognised in England than an outcry arose that Gordon ought to be sent to undertake the herculean task. ”

“ The personal glimpses obtainable of Gordon during these depressing years, while engaged on a task he foresaw would be undone by the weakness and indifference of the Egyptian authorities as soon as he gave it up, are very illustrative of his energy and inherent capacity for command. The world at large was quite indifferent to the heroism and the self-denial, amounting to self-sacrifice, which alone enabled him to carry on his own shoulders, like a modern Atlas, the whole administration of a scarcely conquered region, which covered ten degrees of latitude. ”

“ He began scratching at the threshold, and emitted a perfect volley of barks. It did not sound like one dog, but a whole pack. Gordon, with an impulse which he could not understand, quickly put out the prism-fringed lamp which hung over his table. Then he sprang to the dog, and had the dog by the collar. "Be still, Jack," he said in a low voice, and the dog obeyed instantly, although he was quivering under his hand. Gordon could feel the muscles run like angry serpents under the smooth white hair, he felt the crest of rage along his back. ”

“ This mode of living was due, not to any peculiarity about General Gordon—although I trace to this period the opinion that he was mad—but mainly to his honest wish not to be biassed by any European's judgment, and to be able to give the Khedive absolutely independent advice, as if he himself were an Egyptian, speaking and acting for Egypt. Enough has been said to explain why he failed to accomplish a really impossible task. ”

“ But while Gordon brought kindness and conciliation into play, the settlement of the region entrusted to his care called for sterner measures, and he was not the man, with all his nobility of character and overflowing supply of the milk of human kindness, to refrain from those vigorous and decisive measures that keep turbulent races in subjection, and advance the cause of civilization, which in so many quarters of the world must be synonymous with British supremacy. ”

“ This picture of Gordon lighting a cigarette in the press of a doubtful battle may well be coupled with that already given during the Taeping rebellion, of his standing unarmed in the breach of an assaulted stockade, while around him pressed on or wavered the individuals of a forlorn hope. It will be difficult for anyone to find in all the annals of war another instance of human courage more nearly approaching the sublime. ”

“ Charles Gordon with a brother (William Augustus) more unruly than himself, finding the time hang heavily upon their hands during the vacation, employed themselves in various ways. Their father's house (at Woolwich) was opposite to that of the Commandant of the Garrison, and was overrun with mice. These were caught, the Commandant's door quietly opened, and the mice were transferred to new quarters. In after life (that is in 1879, when in the Soudan) Charles Gordon wrote to one of his nieces: 'I am glad to hear the race of true Gordons is not extinct. ”

“ Gordon himself thought that his force could fight very well, and that his officers, if somewhat lacking in polish, were not to be surpassed in dash and devilry. For the Taepings, especially behind walls, and when it was impossible to out-manœuvre 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. ”

“ Again, since Gordon has taken the command, he has exerted himself to organise the force, and though he has had but one month he has got the force into shape. As the people and place are charmed with him, as he has already given me returns of the organisation of the force, the formation of each regiment, and the expenses ordinary and extraordinary in the clearest manner, wishing to drill our troops and save our money, it is evident that he fully comprehends the state of affairs. ”

“ General Sir Gerald Graham who, to use his own words, was Gordon's "school-fellow at Woolwich, his comrade in the Crimea and China, and for many years past a more or less regular correspondent," has put on record the following interesting description of the hero, and it should not be forgotten that, excepting his companion, Colonel Donald Stewart, and Mr Power, General Graham was the last Englishman to see General Gordon in this world. ”

“ Like his father and grandfather, William Henry Gordon chose the profession of a soldier, and entered the Royal Artillery. He saw a great deal of active service, being with his corps in the Peninsula and at Maida, commanding at a later period the Artillery at Corfu and Gibraltar, and attaining before his death in 1865 the rank of Lieutenant-General. He was also connected with the Woolwich Arsenal as Director of the Carriage Department. He has been described as an excellent officer if a somewhat strict disciplinarian, and his firm character of noble integrity lived again in his sons. ”

“ I wrote it to my wife—when I was a Bond Street lounger, a London cicisbeo and fan-carrier to a woman.”
The man who stared across the sill with a painful fascination was witnessing a glaring, vulgar travesty of himself. Not the George Gordon he was, or, indeed, had ever been, but the George Gordon the world believed him; the abandoned profligate of wassail and blackguardism, whom tourists boasted of having seen, and of whom an eleventh commandment had been promulgated for all British womankind—not to read his books. ”

“ Five years later Gordon was fighting with the English and French armies in China. Shortly after he was made commander of a force that was commissioned by the Emperor of China to put down a rebellion of the Taipings, of so dangerous a character that it threatened to overturn the monarchy.
Gordon had only about 3000 men, chiefly Chinese; and, notwithstanding the fact that when he took over the force it had just been demoralised by defeat, he soon proved himself more than a match for the rebel hordes. From one victory to another he led his men on, and cities fell in quick succession before him. ”