General Gordon. Seton Churchill
who are worthy of the name of men have within them a spirit which admires all that is manly, noble, and chivalrous; and for such it is a grand thing to have a high ideal, even if they do not attain to it. As it is true of men that they cannot habitually think mean thoughts without becoming mean, or set before themselves a low ideal without lowering themselves, so is it true that men cannot adopt a high ideal without instinctively cultivating noble and lofty aims.
Frederick Robertson of Brighton once said, "Hate hypocrisy, hate cant, hate intolerance, hate oppression, hate injustice, hate pharisaism, hate them as Christ hated them, with a deep, living, Godlike hatred." It would be difficult to point to one who was more thoroughly influenced by the teaching conveyed in this short sentence than was Gordon. But negative virtues of this kind were not enough for him. One of his most prominent characteristics was his love for that which is good, and his incessant efforts to do good. His career was one long effort to relieve the sufferings of his fellow-creatures, to inculcate Divine truths, and in every way to make the world better. Few labourers have been called to such a variety of work; but it was all one to him. He worked for God in China when fighting to quell a civil war; he served the same Master at Gravesend when he visited the sick and the dying, and rescued little street arabs from lives of sin; and the same motives prompted him when, later on, he devoted all his energies to mitigating and attempting to abolish the horrors of the slave-trade. He is dead, but his noble example still lives.
"Press on, press on! nor doubt, nor fear,
From age to age, this voice shall cheer;
Whate'er may die and be forgot,
Work done for God—it dieth not."
CHAPTER II
EARLY LIFE AND CRIMEAN WAR
Charles George Gordon was born on January 28, 1833, at Woolwich, so that he began his life among soldiers. He was the fourth son of General Henry William Gordon, who was in the Royal Artillery. His father came from a good family, which for centuries had been associated with the army. The old General appears to have been a good officer and a kind-hearted man, and doubtless the son inherited not only the instincts of a soldier, but a certain nobility of character which was conspicuous in the father. When the father held a high command at Corfu, he made a point of seeking out and paying attention to the forlorn and uninteresting, who are usually overlooked by others. Those who have been richly endowed by Nature have little difficulty in gaining the smiles of society; but in all classes there are a few unfortunate ones, who are not specially gifted and attractive, and who consequently often have the cold shoulder turned towards them. It was characteristic of Charles Gordon's father, as it was of himself in later years, that these were the ones he befriended and looked after.
If Charles Gordon inherited from his father the instincts of a soldier, there can be little doubt that on his mother's side he inherited a spirit of enterprise. His mother was Elizabeth Enderby, the daughter of an enterprising merchant, who had ships on every sea. It is men of this class, quite as much as our soldiers and sailors, who have made England what she is. Samuel Enderby was one of the best-known among the great merchant-princes of England, and he it was chiefly who opened to commerce the previously unknown waters of the South Pacific, after the exploring expeditions of Captain Cook. It is supposed that the first batch of convicts sent to Botany Bay were conveyed in one of his ships, and, but for his whaling fleet, Australia might never have been peopled by English emigrants. His ships carried on a busy trade with America, and it was one of his fleet that carried the historic cargo of tea which was thrown into Boston harbour when the Americans severed their connection with the mother country. His daughter had a large family, numbering five sons and six daughters. Three only of the sons survived, and they all attained the rank of General in the army. One of them became General Enderby Gordon, C.B., of the Royal Artillery, who distinguished himself in the Crimean War, and also in the Indian Mutiny. Another became General Sir Henry William Gordon, already alluded to as the author of "Events in the Life of Charles George Gordon." Charlie Gordon, to use the name by which the subject of this memoir was always known among his friends, was a delicate lad, and, perhaps for this reason, was the special favourite of his mother, who appears to have been a fond parent and a sensible woman. She was always proud of her boy, and once or twice even annoyed him by speaking of him in terms of praise to others.
The Gordon family seems to have been a very happy one, which to a great extent must have been the result of the mother's influence. One only needs to read the published "Letters of General Gordon to his Sister" to see how passionately fond the two were of each other. It might well have been Gordon that Browning had in his mind when he said—
"I think, am sure, a brother's love exceeds
All the world's love in its unworldliness."
A few lines from a letter of one of his brothers, written from the Crimea, show the fond and almost parental care that the elder exhibited on behalf of the younger brother. The extract is as follows:—"Only a few lines to say Charlie is all right, and has escaped amidst a terrific shower of grape and shells of every description. You may imagine the suspense I was kept in until assured of his safety."
Like all soldiers' sons, Gordon when young had plenty of opportunities of moving about and seeing different parts of the world. In many ways this roving life is disadvantageous to a lad, as in after years he can never look back to one spot as his home, and consequently he can never localise the charming associations connected with that word. A boy also suffers considerably by being moved from one school to another. On the other hand, his wits, as a rule, get sharpened by contact with new people and new circumstances. Before Gordon was seven years old, he had accompanied his father on successive moves to Dublin, and to Leith Fort. In 1840 he went to Corfu, where his father was in command of the Royal Artillery. It was here the Duke of Cambridge first made his acquaintance, as they occupied quarters next to each other, and His Royal Highness, just forty-five years afterwards, after Gordon's death, said in a speech at the Mansion House, that he remembered the little lad then. As Gordon returned to England with his mother at the age of ten, the fact that the Commander-in-Chief remembered him at all is another proof of the wonderful faculty of memory which the Royal Family are said to possess. How differently the Duke would have thought of that little fair-haired boy with the blue penetrating eyes could he have looked into the future! It was in 1843 that Mrs. Gordon brought her son to England for the sake of his education. He went to school at Taunton for a few years, and then to Mr. Jeffery's, Shooters Hill, Woolwich, preparatory to entering the Royal Military Academy. His father had been given an appointment at the Arsenal at Woolwich, so that his holidays, as well as much of his school life, were spent at that great garrison town. There was nothing about the youth at this time that indicated what his future would be. Indeed, the very energies which in after life made him undertake so much, finding no other vent, gave him a turn for mischief and fun of all sorts. Later in life, and even amid all his troubles in the Soudan, he would in his letters recall with pleasure the boyish days spent at Woolwich.
In 1848 he entered the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, where he remained till 1852, when, at the age of nineteen, he received his commission in the Royal Engineers. Although he was an adept at surveying and at fortification, two branches of military knowledge which served him well in after years, he was deficient in mathematics, and consequently did not make much progress. An event which took place here might have had very serious consequences, and shows that even then he had the daring nature which afterwards characterised him. For some reason it became necessary to restrain the cadets when leaving the dining-hall, the approach to which was by a narrow staircase. At the top of this staircase stood the senior corporal, with outstretched arms, facing the cadets. This was too much for one so full of fun and energy and so reckless of consequences as Gordon; so, putting down his head, he charged, and butting the corporal in the pit of the stomach, sent him flying down the staircase and through a window beyond. Fortunately the corporal was unhurt, but Gordon was perilously near dismissal, and having his military career cut short. The act of insubordination was, however, overlooked by the authorities, but that it did not subdue his spirit is evident from the fact that on another occasion, when