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 told by Captain Eardley Wilmot that he would never make an officer, he tore the epaulets from his shoulders and threw them at the feet of his superior. This officer, afterwards General Eardley Wilmot, became one of his greatest friends. Later on, for another offence, in which many were concerned, and of which it is doubtful if Gordon really was guilty, he was deprived of half a year's seniority in the army. This punishment really did him a good turn, for it enabled him to secure a commission in the Royal Engineers instead of the Royal Artillery, to which he would otherwise have been posted.
On the 23rd June 1852 Gordon was gazetted to the Engineers, and on the 29th November 1854 he was ordered to Corfu. As the Crimean War was going on he was much disappointed at this order, and at first attributed it to his mother's influence, who, he thought, wanted him to be sent to a safe place. Through the influence of Sir John Burgoyne, an old family friend, his destination was changed, and on the 4th of December, during that bitterly cold winter, he writes, "I received my orders for the Crimea, and was off the same day." This was not the only time that he exhibited such promptitude in leaving his native land at the call of his country. Thirty years afterwards he left England for the Soudan the very day he received his orders.
He arrived in the Crimea on New Year's Day 1855, when all the celebrated historical battles were over. His martial ardour had doubtless been stirred by hearing how bravely our men swarmed up the heights at Alma, charged the Russian gunners at Balaklava, and drove back the sortie at Inkerman. When he arrived, the siege of Sebastopol had commenced in earnest, and for some time it was an engineer's campaign, in which the spade did more than the rifle, or, to speak more correctly, the musket; for very few of our men had rifles then. Disease and exhaustion from hardship slew far more than the bullet. Altogether, it was rather a trying time for a young officer full of fire and spirit, anxious to see service of that more dashing kind that appeals to the imagination. The slow advance of the trenches must have tried his somewhat impatient spirit, which, even in later years, when it might have been modified by time, was always more ready for a rapid march, a brilliant flank movement, or something of that kind. But though the trench-work must have been wearisome and distasteful to a degree, he threw himself heart and soul into it, meriting the following praise from Colonel Chesney, an eminent engineer officer: "In his humble position as an engineer subaltern he had attracted the notice of his superiors, not merely by his energy and activity (for these are not, it may be asserted, uncommon characteristics of his class), but by an extraordinary aptitude for war, developing itself amid the trench-work before Sebastopol in a personal knowledge of the enemy's movements such as no other officer attained. 'We always used to send him out to find what new move the Russians were making,' was the testimony given to his genius by one of the most distinguished officers he served under." He not only exhibited the "aptitude for war" of which Colonel Chesney speaks, but it appears that he also displayed on several occasions a great deal of that personal courage for which he afterwards became so renowned. A single incident may be taken as a specimen of many. One day as he was passing along the trenches, he overheard a heated altercation between a sapper and a corporal, both belonging to his own corps. On inquiring into the cause, he discovered that the corporal had ordered a man to stand on the parapet, where he was exposed to the enemy's fire, while the corporal, under cover, was going to hand him some gabions for repairing the parapet. Gordon at once jumped on to the parapet himself and called the corporal to join him, letting the sapper hand up the gabions from a place of safety. Gordon remained until the work was completed, in spite of the fire of the Russians, and then turning to the corporal said, "Never order a man to do anything you are afraid to do yourself."
His warlike genius and his courage were by no means his only remarkable characteristics, and it may not be out of place to mention here a trifling event, which possibly had a marked influence on his whole life. It so happened that Colonel Staveley, an officer who afterwards attained to some eminence, but who at that time was of no great note beyond being the second in command of a distinguished corps, the 44th Regiment, mentioned in Gordon's hearing that he had been appointed field-officer of the day for the trenches for the following day, but owing to his having been on sick leave, was ignorant of the geography of the place. Now considering that Gordon was at this time greatly overworked in the trenches, he might well have been excused had he allowed Colonel Staveley's remark to pass; for it must be remembered that it is no part of the duty of a young engineer officer to instruct infantry field-officers in their duties. But this was not Gordon's style. He, at all events, never limited himself to a strict routine of mere duty, and so he cheerfully volunteered assistance, saying, "Oh! come down with me to-night after dark, and I will show you over the trenches." Colonel Staveley says, "He drew me out a very clear sketch of the lines (which I have now), and down I went accordingly. He explained every nook and corner, and took me along outside our most advanced trench, the bouquets and other missiles flying about us in, to me, a very unpleasant manner; he taking the matter remarkably coolly." Napoleon somewhere remarked that "the smallest trifles produce the greatest results," an expression to which Gordon himself once referred. This Colonel Staveley afterwards became General Sir Charles Staveley, and he it was who first recommended Gordon, when quite a young captain in China, to take command of that army for which he did so much, and with which he acquired such renown. Had it not been for Sir Charles Staveley, possibly Gordon would never have had the opportunity he needed to show of what good stuff he was made; and who but the General himself can tell how much that night adventure in the trenches had to do with his selection later on?
As I have taken a later opportunity to enlarge on Gordon's simple faith, I will only say here that up to this period there are no indications that he was very decided. It appears that during the year 1854, when stationed at Pembroke, a distinct spiritual change came over him; and if we may judge from one of his letters to his sister Augusta, it was she who influenced him for good. But there can be no question that he did not at this time enter into that full assurance of faith which afterwards characterised him; still, his faith at this period, though weak, was real. In a letter home, referring to the death of a Captain Craigie, who was killed by a splinter from a shell, he says, "I am glad to say that he was a serious man. The shell burst above him, and by what is called chance struck him in the back, killing him at once." It is interesting to note from the words "what is called chance" that he had already learnt to recognise the hand of God in everything, and that even at this early stage of his career there existed the germs of that doctrine on which he spoke and wrote so much later on. It has been said by some that his so-called fatalistic views were imbibed from the Mohammedans in the Soudan. This sentence in a letter written by him before he had ever held an intimate conversation with a Mohammedan shows that such was not the case. Allusion is made to the incident here merely to show what the condition of faith and state of mind of Charles Gordon were during the Crimean War. There is one other letter on record, written about this time, which is worthy of mention here. When the Commander-in-chief of the Crimean army died, Gordon wrote, "Lord Raglan died of tear and wear and general debility. He was universally regretted, as he was so kind. His life has been entirely spent in the service of his country. I hope he was prepared, but do not know."