Workhouse inmates are, as a rule, a very disheartening class to visit. A large percentage of them have been brought there by faults of their own, and most of them are beyond the age when one may reasonably hope for reform. Gordon's kind heart was proof against disappointment, and he persistently used to visit the old people, supplying tobacco to the men, and tea to the women, and chatting away to them, in an effort to help them to forget their troubles. He was mindful, too, of the sick, caring not who the sufferer was nor what his complaint; so long as he was in need, so long was Gordon a regular visitor at his sick-bed. Frequently when he heard that the doctors had ordered delicacies beyond the reach of a patient, he would purchase what was required, and administer it with his own hands. Mr. Lilley says:—
"On one occasion he visited a poor, wretched woman, in an apparently dying condition. He at once lighted a fire, made some gruel for her, and fed her with his own hand. He afterwards appointed a nurse to look after her, and sent a doctor to her, and it is believed that she is still residing at Gravesend, a living testimony to his generous care."
The people so loved him, that often instead of sending for the clergyman when in sickness or trouble, the poor would send for the Colonel living at Fort House, the official residence of the officer commanding the Royal Engineers.
Even his house and garden seem to have been placed at the disposal of the poor in the neighbourhood. A visitor once remarked to his housekeeper on the beautiful vegetables his garden produced. She replied that the Colonel never touched them, but used to let the poor people come in and cultivate plots of ground in the garden, and grow their own vegetables; and even when presents of fruit were sent him by friends, he used to take them to the bedside of some sick person, who he thought needed them more than he did.
As for his own food, nothing could have been more simple and plain. The Rev. S. H. Swaine says, "Coming home with us one afternoon late, we found his tea waiting for him—a most unappetising stale loaf and a teapot of tea. I remarked upon the dryness of the bread, when he took the whole loaf (a small one) and crammed it into the slop-basin, and poured all the tea upon it, saying it would soon be ready for him to eat, and in half-an-hour it would not matter what he had eaten." It is said that some of the boys whom he invited to live in his house were a good deal disappointed when they saw the kind of fare that was put before them. They had fondly imagined that the occupant of such a grand house would have sumptuous meals, which they would share, and they were not prepared for the plain salt-beef, and other good but very plain food, to which the Colonel was in the habit of sitting down. But though he denied himself luxuries of any sort, he often used to take grapes and other dainties to the sick and the dying.
All forms of distress aroused his interest; and when the late Canon Miller of Greenwich was collecting money for the suffering people at Coventry, during the cotton famine, Gordon took a large and valuable gold medal, that had been presented to him by the Empress of China, and having with a gouge scooped out his name, which was engraved upon it, put it into an envelope and despatched it to the Canon, merely notifying briefly the object for which it was sent. Efforts have been since made to discover the fate of the medal, which was of the best gold, and twice the size of a crown piece, but owing to the death of Canon Miller, they have hitherto been unsuccessful.
Gordon was, indeed, generous to a fault, and sometimes he was taken in by impostors; but as he had a good knowledge of human nature, he was not deceived so often as many with his generous heart would be. His generosity was only limited by his purse, and there were times in his life when he drew the line too fine, for, as he himself once said, "I assure you that many a time I have not known where my food was to come from, nor if I should find a place in which to lie down at night." So long as there was money in his pocket, so long had he money to give away; but on many occasions he forgot that he had a long railway journey before him, and that the generosity he displayed to the needy would not be extended to him at the railway ticket office. But on the whole, his money was well laid out; many is the lad he started in life, many the waif he picked up from the gutter, who, now a well-to-do respectable member of society, might, but for him, have been a criminal, getting into trouble himself, and leading others astray.
It would be interesting to follow more in detail the career of this remarkable man at Gravesend, but space forbids. Gordon only spent six years at this kind of work, and much of the time was engaged in his official duties, yet the results were so good, that one cannot but regret that a longer part of his career was not passed in the same way. From his letters written in the Soudan, it is evident that he often thought of devoting his old age to work among the poor, had he been spared. It was, however, willed otherwise, and we are only permitted to see how much can be done by a man in six years, when his heart is thoroughly in the work.
It has been remarked more than once, that Gordon's military career reminds one of the great soldier Cromwell, who did so much to rescue England from the degenerate condition into which it had fallen under the miserable rule of the Stuarts. In the same way the six years spent by Gordon at Gravesend, very forcibly remind us of the great religious philanthropist, Lord Shaftesbury, who did perhaps more than any other man of this nineteenth century, or any other century, to relieve human suffering, and to solve some of those difficult problems that are associated with the condition of the poor. Lord Shaftesbury had little in common with Cromwell, except that both loved God and hated tyranny and injustice. Their ways of going to work were very different, but one cannot help seeing that Gordon combined much of both characters; and had his lot fallen in different times or different circumstances, he might have undertaken the work of either. He had all the martial instinct of a Cromwell, and, with it, the love of relieving suffering which so characterised Lord Shaftesbury. His one object seems to have been to—