A day or two after the date of this last letter Gordon returned to London, and went several times to see Isabel, who was ill in lodgings in Upper Montagu Street, and very anxious about her husband and the Midian Mines. Gordon’s prospects too were far from rosy at this time, so that they were companions in misfortune. They discussed Egypt and many things. Isabel writes: “I remember on April 15, 1880, he asked me if I knew the origin of the Union Jack, and he sat down on my hearth-rug before the fire, cross-legged, with a bit of paper and a pair of scissors, and he made me three or four Union Jacks, of which I pasted one in my journal of that day; and I never saw him again.”[33] She also writes elsewhere: “I shall never forget how kind and sympathetic he was; but he always said, ‘As God has willed it, so will it be.’ That was the burden of his talk: ‘As God has willed it, so will it be.’”
In May Burton wrote to Lord Granville, pointing out that Riaz Pasha was undoing all Gordon’s anti-slavery work, and asking for a temporary appointment as Slave Commissioner in the Soudan and Red Sea, to follow up the policy of anti-slavery which Gordon had begun. This Lord Granville refused.
Gordon went to many places—India, China, the Cape—and played many parts during the next three years; but he still continued to correspond with Isabel and her husband at intervals, though his correspondence referred mainly to private matters, and was of no public interest. In 1883 he wrote the following to Burton from Jerusalem, anent certain inquiries in which he was much interested:
“Jerusalem, June 3, 1883.
“My dear Burton,
“I have a favour to ask, which I will begin with, and then go on to other subjects. In 1878 (I think) I sent you a manuscript in Arabic, copy of the manuscript you discovered in Harar. I want you to lend it to me for a month or so, and will ask you in sending it to register it. This is the favour I want from you. I have time and means to get it fairly translated, and I will do this for you. I will send you the translation and the original back; and if it is worth it, you will publish it. I hope you and Mrs. Burton are well. Sorry that £ s. d. keep you away from the East, for there is much to interest here in every way, and you would be useful to me as an encyclopædia of oriental lore; as it is, Greek is looked on by me as hieroglyphics.
Hand written letter from C. G. Gordon
“Here is result of my studies: The whole of the writers on Jerusalem, with few exceptions, fight for Zion on the Western Hill, and put the whole Jerusalem in tribe Benjamin! I have worked this out, and to me it is thus: The whole question turns on the position of En-shemesh, which is generally placed, for no reason I know of, at Ain Hand. I find Kubbat el Sama, which corresponds to Bæthsamys of the Septuagint, at the north of Jerusalem, and I split Jerusalem by the Tyropœan Valley (alias the Gibeon of Eden, of which more another time).
“Anyway one can scarcely cut Judah out of Jerusalem altogether; yet that is always done, except by a few. If the juncture is as I have drawn it, it brings Gibeon, Nob, and Mizpah all down too close to Jerusalem on the Western Hills. This is part of my studies. Here is the Skull Hill north of the City (traced from map, ordnance of 1864), which I think is the Golgotha; for the victims were to be slain on north of altar, not west, as the Latin Holy Sepulchre. This hill is close to the old church of St. Stephen, and I believe that eventually near here will be found the Constantine churches.