GOMEZ DE AVELLANEDA, GERTRUDIS (1814-1873), Spanish dramatist and poet, was born at Puerto Príncipe (Cuba) on the 23rd of March 1814, and removed to Spain in 1836. Her Poesías líricas (1841), issued with a laudatory preface by Gallego, made a most favourable impression and were republished with additional poems in 1850. In 1846 she married a diplomatist named Pedro Sabater, became a widow within a year, and in 1853 married Colonel Domingo Verdugo. Meanwhile she had published Sab (1839), Guatimozín (1846), and other novels of no great importance. She obtained, however, a series of successes on the stage with Alfonso Munio (1844), a tragedy in the new romantic manner; with Saúl (1849), a biblical drama indirectly suggested by Alfieri; and with Baltasar (1858), a piece which bears some resemblance to Byron’s Sardanapalus. Her commerce with the world had not diminished her natural piety, and, on the death of her second husband, she found so much consolation in religion that she had thoughts of entering a convent. She died at Madrid on the 2nd of February 1873, full of mournful forebodings as to the future of her adopted country. It is impossible to agree with Villemain that “le génie de don Luis de Léon et de sainte Thérèse a reparu sous le voile funèbre de Gomez de Avellaneda,” for she has neither the monk’s mastery of poetic form nor the nun’s sublime simplicity of soul. She has a grandiose tragical vision of life, a vigorous eloquence rooted in pietistic pessimism, a dramatic gift effective in isolated acts or scenes; but she is deficient in constructive power and in intellectual force, and her lyrics, though instinct with melancholy beauty, or the tenderness of resigned devotion, too often lack human passion and sympathy. The edition of her Obras literarias (5 vols., 1869-1871), still incomplete, shows a scrupulous care for minute revision uncommon in Spanish writers; but her emendations are seldom happy. But she is interesting as a link between the classic and romantic schools of poetry, and, whatever her artistic shortcomings, she has no rivals of her own sex in Spain during the 19th century.
GOMM, SIR WILLIAM MAYNARD (1784-1875), British soldier, was gazetted to the 9th Foot at the age of ten, in recognition of the services of his father, Lieut.-Colonel William Gomm, who was killed in the attack on Guadaloupe (1794). He joined his regiment as a lieutenant in 1799, and fought in Holland under the duke of York, and subsequently was with Pulteney’s Ferrol expedition. In 1803 he became Captain, and shortly afterwards qualified as a staff officer at the High Wycombe military college. On the general staff he was with Cathcart at Copenhagen, with Wellington in the Peninsula, and on Moore’s staff at Corunna. He was also on Chatham’s staff in the disastrous Walcheren expedition of 1809. In 1810 he rejoined the Peninsular army as Leith’s staff officer, and took part in all the battles of 1810, 1811 and 1812, winning his majority after Fuentes d’Onor and his lieutenant-colonelcy at Salamanca. His careful reconnaissances and skilful leading were invaluable to Wellington in the Vittoria campaign, and to the end of the war he was one of the most trusted men of his staff. His reward was a transfer to the Coldstream Guards and the K.C.B. In the Waterloo campaign he served on the staff of the 5th British Division. From the peace until 1839 he was employed on home service, becoming colonel in 1829 and major-general in 1837. From 1839 to 1842 he commanded the troops in Jamaica. He became lieutenant-general in 1846, and was sent out to be commander-in-chief in India, arriving only to find that his appointment had been cancelled in favour of Sir Charles Napier, whom, however, he eventually succeeded (1850-1855). In 1854 he became general and in 1868 field marshal. In 1872 he was appointed constable of the Tower, and he died in 1875. He was twice married, but had no children. His Letters and Journals were published by F. C. Carr-Gomm in 1881. Five “Field Marshal Gomm” scholarships were afterwards founded in his memory at Keble College, Oxford.
GOMPERS, SAMUEL (1850- ), American labour leader, was born in London on the 27th of January 1850. He was put to work in a shoe-factory when ten years old, but soon became apprenticed to a cigar-maker, removed to New York in 1863, became a prominent member of the International Cigar-makers’ Union, was its delegate at the convention of the Federation of Organized Trade and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada, later known as the American Federation of Labor, of which he became first president in 1882. He was successively re-elected up to 1895, when the opposition of the Socialist Labor Party, then attempting to incorporate the Federation into itself, secured his defeat; he was re-elected in the following year. In 1894 he became editor of the Federation’s organ, The American Federationist.
GOMPERZ, THEODOR (1832- ), German philosopher and classical scholar, was born at Brünn on the 29th of March 1832. He studied at Brünn and at Vienna under Herman Bonitz. Graduating at Vienna in 1867 he became Privatdozent, and subsequently professor of classical philology (1873). In 1882 he was elected a member of the Academy of Science. He received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy honoris causa from the university of Königsberg, and Doctor of Literature from the universities of Dublin and Cambridge, and became correspondent for several learned societies. His principal works are: Demosthenes der Staatsmann (1864), Philodemi de ira liber (1864). Traumdeutung und Zauberei (1866), Herkulanische Studien (1865-1866), Beiträge zur Kritik und Erklärung griech. Schriftsteller (7 vols., 1875-1900), Neue Bruchstücke Epikurs (1876), Die Bruchstücke der griech. Tragiker und Cobets neueste kritische Manier (1878), Herodoteische Studien (1883), Ein bisher unbekanntes griech. Schriftsystem (1884), Zu Philodems Büchern von der Musik (1885), Über den Abschluss des herodoteischen Geschichtswerkes (1886), Platonische Aufsätze (3 vols., 1887-1905), Zu Heraklits Lehre und den Überresten seines Werkes (1887), Zu Aristoteles’ Poëtik (2 parts, 1888-1896), Über die Charaktere Theophrasts (1888), Nachlese zu den Bruchstücken der griech. Tragiker (1888), Die Apologie der Heilkunst (1890), Philodem und die ästhetischen Schriften der herculanischen Bibliothek (1891), Die Schrift vom Staatswesen der Athener (1891), Die jüngst entdeckten Überreste einer den Platonischen Phädon enthaltenden Papyrusrolle (1892), Aus der Hekale des Kallimachos (1893), Essays und Erinnerungen (1905). He supervised a translation of J. S. Mill’s complete works (12 vols., Leipzig, 1869-1880), and wrote a life (Vienna, 1889) of Mill. His Griechische Denker: Geschichte der antiken Philosophie (vols. i. and ii., Leipzig, 1893 and 1902) was translated into English by L. Magnus (vol. i., 1901).
GONAGUAS (“borderers”), descendants of a very old cross between the Hottentots and the Kaffirs, on the “ethnical divide” between the two races, apparently before the arrival of the whites in South Africa. They have been always a despised race and regarded as outcasts by the Bantu peoples. They were threatened with extermination during the Kaffir wars, but were protected by the British. At present they live in settled communities under civil magistrates without any tribal organization, and in some districts could be scarcely distinguished from the other natives but for their broken Hottentot-Dutch-English speech.