The Life of Gordon, Volume II

by Demetrius Charles Boulger

When Gordon first returned from the Cape the King of the Belgians wrote, reminding him of his old promise, dating from 1880, to enter into his service on the Congo, and stating that the difficulty of having an internationally recognised Congo flag, which Gordon had made a sine quâ non of his appointment, could be most speedily solved by Gordon joining him as counsellor at once. This Gordon could not agree to, and he went to Palestine, there to await the King's summons, which came by Sir William Mackinnon's note in October 1883. It then became necessary for Gordon to obtain the official permission of his Government to take up this post, of the exact nature of which the Foreign Office had been already informed, both by General Gordon and King Leopold.

Gordon at once telegraphed to the War Office for the leave rendered necessary by his being on the active list, and that Department replied, asking for particulars. When these were furnished through the Foreign Office the decision was announced that "the Secretary of State declines to sanction your employment on the Congo." The telegraph clerk, more discerning or considerate than Her Majesty's Government, altered "declines" into "decides," and Gordon, in happy ignorance of the truth, proceeded with all possible despatch via Acre and Genoa to Brussels, which he reached on New Year's Day, 1884. That very night he wrote me a short note saying, "I go (D.V.) next month to the Congo, but keep it secret." Such things cannot be kept secret, and four days later a leading article in The Times informed his countrymen of Gordon's new mission.

On reaching Brussels the mistake in the telegram was discovered, and Gordon here learnt that his Congo mission was vetoed. Then came the difficulty to know what was to be done. Without leave he could not go anywhere without resigning his commission; he was not qualified for a pension, and there were engagements he had voluntarily contracted that he would not see broken, and persons who would suffer by his death, whose interests he was in every way bound to safeguard. Therefore, if he was to carry out his engagement with the King of the Belgians, it was obviously necessary that he should resign the British Army, and that the King should compensate him for his loss. The King said at once: "Retire from the army and I will compensate you," but in a matter of such importance to others Gordon felt nothing should be left to chance, and that a definite contract should be made. For this he had neither the patience nor the business knowledge, and he delegated the task of arranging the matter to his brother, Sir Henry Gordon, who negotiated with the late Sir William Mackinnon as representing the King. They agreed that the value of Gordon's pension if commuted would be £7288, and the King of the Belgians was to provide that sum, which was to be paid into a trust fund. In this and every other matter the King behaved towards Gordon in the most generous and cordial manner, furnishing a marked contrast with the grudging and parsimonious spirit of the British Government towards Gordon in China, at the Cape, and now again when destined for the Congo.

All the arrangements connected with this subject were made in three days, and while Gordon gave instructions for his will to be prepared for the disposal of the trust fund after his death, he wrote the same day (6th January) to Mr H. M. Stanley, then acting for the King on the Congo, announcing his own appointment, offering to "serve willingly with or under him," and fixing his own departure from Lisbon for 5th of February. Dis aliter visum. For the moment he worked up some enthusiasm in his task. "We will kill the slave-traders in their haunts"; and again, "No such efficacious means of cutting at root of slave trade ever was presented as that which God has, I trust, opened out to us through the kind disinterestedness of His Majesty," are passages in the same letter, yet all the time there is no doubt his heart and his thoughts were elsewhere. They were in the Soudan, not on the Congo.

The night of this letter he crossed from Brussels, and went straight to his sister's house, long the residence, and, practically speaking, the home of his family, 5 Rockstone Place, Southampton. On the 7th of the month—that is, the same day as he arrived—he wrote the formal letter requesting leave to resign his commission in the Queen's army, and also stating, with his usual candour, that King Leopold II. had guaranteed him against any pecuniary loss. To that letter it may at once be stated that no reply was ever sent. Even the least sympathetic official could not feel altogether callous to a voluntary proposition to remove the name of "Chinese" Gordon from the British army list, and the sudden awakening of the public to the extraordinary claims of General Gordon on national gratitude, and his special fitness to deal with the Soudan difficulty warned the authorities that a too rigid application of office rules would not in his case be allowed. By no individual effort, as has been too lightly granted by some writers, but by the voice of the British people was it decided that not only should Gordon have leave to go to the Congo, without resigning his commission, but also that he should be held entitled to draw his pay as a British general while thus employed. But this was not the whole truth, although I have no doubt that the arrangement would have been carried out in any case. In their dilemma the Government saw a chance of extrication in the person of Gordon, the one man recognised by the public and the press as capable of coping with a difficulty which seemed too much for them. The whole truth, therefore, was that the Congo mission was to wait until after Gordon had been sent to, and returned from, the Soudan. He was then to be placed by the British Government entirely at the disposal of the King of the Belgians. As this new arrangement turned on the assent of the King, it was vital to keep it secret during the remainder of the 15th and the whole of the 16th of that eventful January.

When Gordon arrived at Waterloo Station, at a little before two o'clock on 15th January, and was met there by myself, I do not think that he knew definitely what was coming, but he was a man of extraordinary shrewdness, and although essentially unworldly, could see as clearly and as far through a transaction as the keenest man of business. What he did know was that the army authorities were going to treat him well, but his one topic of conversation the whole way to Pall Mall was not the Congo but the Soudan. To the direct question whether he was not really going, as I suspected, to the Nile instead of the Congo, he declared he had no information that would warrant such an idea, but still, if the King of the Belgians would grant the permission, he would certainly not be disinclined to go there first. I have no doubt that those who acted in the name of the Ministry in a few minutes discovered the true state of his mind, and that Gordon then and there agreed, on the express request of the Government of Mr Gladstone, to go and see the King, and beg him to suspend the execution of his promise until he had gone to the Soudan to arrest the Mahdi's career, or to relieve the Egyptian garrisons, if the phrase be preferred. It should also be stated that Gordon's arrangement with the King of the Belgians was always coupled with this proviso, "provided the Government of my own country does not require my services." The generosity of that sovereign in the matter of the compensation for his Commission did not render that condition void, and however irritating the King may have found the circumstances, Gordon broke neither the spirit nor the letter of his engagement with his Majesty by obeying the orders of his own Government.

Late the same evening I was present at his brother's house to receive an account for publication of his plans on the Congo, but surrounded by so large a number of his relatives summoned to see their hero, many of them for the last time, it was neither convenient nor possible to carry out this task, which was accordingly postponed till the following morning, when I was to see him at the Charing Cross Hotel, and accompany him by the early boat train to Dover. On that night his last will was signed and witnessed by his uncle, Mr George Enderby, and myself. The next morning I was at the hotel before seven, but instead of travelling by this early train, he postponed his departure till ten o'clock, and the greater part of those three hours were given to an explanation, map in hand, of his plans on the Congo. The article, based on his information, appeared in The Times of 17th January 1884, but several times during our conversation he exclaimed, "There may be a respite," but he refused to be more definite. Thus he set out for Brussels, whether he was accompanied by his friend Captain (now Colonel) F. Brocklehurst, who was undoubtedly acting as the representative of the authorities. I believe I may say with confidence that if he did not actually see the King of the Belgians on the evening of the same day, some communication passed indirectly, which showed the object of his errand, for although his own letter communicating the event is dated 17th, from Brussels, it is a fact within my own knowledge that late in the evening of the 16th a telegram was received—"Gordon goes to the Soudan."

The first intimation of something having happened that his brother Sir Henry Gordon received, was in a hurried letter, dated 17th January, which arrived by the early post on Friday, 18th, asking him to "get his uniform ready and some patent leather boots," but adding, "I saw King Leopold to-day; he is furious." Even then Sir Henry, although he guessed his destination, did not know that his departure would be so sudden, for Gordon crossed the same night, and was kept at Knightsbridge Barracks in a sort of honourable custody by Captain Brocklehurst, so that the new scheme might not be prematurely revealed. Sir Henry, a busy man, went about his own work, having seen to his brother's commission, and it was not until his return at five o'clock that he learnt all, and that Gordon was close at hand. He at once hurried off to see him, and on meeting, Gordon, in a high state of exhilaration, exclaimed, "I am off to the Soudan." Sir Henry asked "When?" and back came the reply, "To-night!" He had got his respite.

To him at that moment it meant congenial work and the chance of carrying out the thoughts that had been surging through his mind ever since Egyptian affairs became troubled and the Mahdi's power rose on the horizon of the Soudan. The reality was to prove far different. 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.

I am placed in a position to state that on the morning of the 17th, at 10 a.m., he wrote to his sister from Brussels, as follows—"Do not mention it, but there is just a chance I may have to go to Soudan for two months, and then go to Congo," and again in a second letter at two o'clock, "Just got a telegram from Wolseley saying, 'Come back to London by evening train,' so when you get this I shall be in town, but keep it a dead secret, for I hope to leave it again the same evening. I will not take Governor-Generalship again, I will only report on situation." After this came a post-card—18th January, 6 a.m. "Left B., am now in London; I hope to go back again to-night." That very night he left for Egypt.