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The story of its origin will admit of being retold. When the Manchus conquered China, in the middle of the seventeenth century, they received material aid from a Chinese soldier named Wou Sankwei. He was rewarded with the Viceroyalty of the whole of south-western China, in which region he became supreme. After many years the Manchus thought he posed with too great an air of independence, and he was summoned to Peking to give an account of his stewardship. But Wou Sankwei was too old to be caught by so simple a ruse. He defied the Manchus, and established his authority throughout the larger part of the country south of the Great River. The young and afterwards illustrious Emperor Kanghi threw himself into the struggle with ardour, and it continued for many years, and devastated almost as large an area as did the Taeping rebellion. Kanghi did not obtain a decisive triumph until after the death of Wou Sankwei, when he bestowed a yellow riding jacket and an ornament of peacock's feathers for the cap on his principal lieutenants. He also decreed that this decoration should be made a regular order, to be conferred only on generals who had led victorious armies against rebel forces. Gordon was thus perfectly qualified to receive the order founded by the famous Manchu contemporary of the Grand Monarque.

The Chinese Government also sent him six mandarin dresses in the correct fashion for a commanding officer of the rank of Ti-Tu, and a book explaining how they should be worn. Gordon said very little about it, his only comment being: "Some of the buttons on the mandarin hats are worth thirty or forty pounds. I am sorry for it, as they cannot afford it over well; it is, at any rate, very civil of them." The two Empress Regents also struck a heavy gold medal in his honour, the destination of which will be told hereafter, and Li Hung Chang did everything possible to demonstrate the respect and regard he entertained for his European colleague. That that was no transitory feeling was well shown thirty-two years later, when the famous Chinese statesman seized the occasion of his visit to London to place wreaths on the statue and cenotaph of his old comrade in arms. General Gordon valued the Yellow Jacket and the Gold Medal very highly. When he gave up the medal for the cause of charity he felt its loss keenly, and it became a phrase with him to signify the height of self-sacrifice to say, "You must give up your medal." Prince Kung, in a special and remarkable despatch to the British Minister, narrated in detail the achievements of Gordon, and declared in graceful language that "not only has he shown himself throughout both brave and energetic, but his thorough appreciation of that important question, a friendly understanding between China and foreign nations, is also deserving of the highest praise." The Minister was requested to bring these facts to the notice of the British Government, and it was even suggested by the Chinese Prince that some reward that Gordon would appreciate at the hands of his own Sovereign should be conferred on him, and would be hailed with satisfaction in China. If I add to this list the sword of Chung Wang, captured from one of his lieutenants, and presented afterwards by Gordon to the Duke of Cambridge, the rewards of Gordon from the Chinese are fully catalogued. At the hands of his own Government he received for his magnificent service a brevet lieutenant-colonelcy, and somewhat later the Companionship of the Bath.

Gordon had kept a journal, which he sent home; but subsequently, on finding that it was being circulated, he destroyed it. Of this fact there is no doubt, and it is of course impossible to say whether it contained more than the manuscript history of the Taeping war, which he lent me in 1881 as "a trustworthy narrative" for the purposes of my "History of China," and which was published many years later as a separate volume. The authorship of that history is a matter of speculation, but there seems little or no doubt that it was at least compiled under Gordon's own direction, from the reports of his lieutenants in China, and completed during his residence at Gravesend.

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 title 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 principal 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 assault 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 Japan. 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 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. 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 promptitude 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 assertion that in those qualities he was unsurpassable; 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 noble 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 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 £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 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.