第76章

Dean Stanley. Life and Correspondence of Dr Arnold.

Thomas Hughes. Tom Brown's Schooldays.

Sir H. Maxwell-Lyte. History of Eton College.

Wilfrid Ward. W. G. Ward and the Oxford Movement.

H. Clough. Letters. An Old Rugbaean. Recollections of Rugby.

Thomas Arnold. Passages in a Wandering Life.

The End of General Gordon DURING the year 1883 a solitary English gentleman was to be seen, wandering, with a thick book under his arm, in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. His unassuming figure, short and slight, with its half-gliding, half-tripping motion, gave him a boyish aspect, which contrasted, oddly, but not unpleasantly, with the touch of grey on his hair and whiskers. There was the same contrast--enigmatic and attractive--between the sunburnt brick-red complexion--the hue of the seasoned traveller--and the large blue eyes, with their look of almost childish sincerity. To the friendly inquirer, he would explain, in a row, soft, and very distinct voice, that he was engaged in elucidating four questions--the site of the Crucifixion, the line of division between the tribes of Benjamin and Judah, the identification of Gideon, and the position of the Garden of Eden. He was also, he would add, most anxious to discover the spot where the Ark first touched ground, after the subsidence of the Flood: he believed, indeed, that he had solved that problem, as a reference to some passages in the book which he was carrying would show.

This singular person was General Gordon, and his book was the Holy Bible.

In such complete retirement from the world and the ways of men, it might have seemed that a life of inordinate activity had found at last a longed-for, final peacefulness. For month after month, for an entire year, the General lingered by the banks of the Jordan. But then the enchantment was suddenly broken. Once more adventure claimed him; he plunged into the whirl of high affairs; his fate was mingled with the frenzies of Empire and the doom of peoples. And it was not in peace and rest, but in ruin and horror, that he reached his end.

The circumstances of that tragic history, so famous, so bitterly debated, so often and so controversially described, remain full of suggestion for the curious examiner of the past. There emerges from those obscure, unhappy records an interest, not merely political and historical, but human and dramatic. One catches a vision of strange characters, moved by mysterious impulses, interacting in queer complication, and hurrying at last--so it almost seems--like creatures in a puppet show to a predestined catastrophe. The characters, too, have a charm of their own: they are curiously English. What other nation on the face of the earth could have produced Mr. Gladstone and Sir Evelyn Baring and Lord Hartington and General Gordon? Alike in their emphasis and their lack of emphasis, in their eccentricity and their conventionality, in their matter-of-factness and their romance, these four figures seem to embody the mingling contradictions of the English spirit.

As for the mise-en-scene, it is perfectly appropriate. But first, let us glance at the earlier adventures of the hero of the piece.

Charles George Gordon was born in 1833. His father, of Highland and military descent, was himself a Lieutenant-General; his mother came of a family of merchants, distinguished for their sea voyages into remote regions of the Globe. As a boy, Charlie was remarkable for his high spirits, pluck, and love of mischief.

Destined for the Artillery, he was sent to the Academy at Woolwich, where some other characteristics made their appearance.

On one occasion, when the cadets had been forbidden to leave the dining-room and the senior corporal stood with outstretched arms in the doorway to prevent their exit, Charlie Gordon put his head down, and, butting the officer in the pit of the stomach, projected him down a flight of stairs and through a glass door at the bottom. For this act of insubordination he was nearly dismissed-- while the captain of his company predicted that he would never make an officer. A little later, when he was eighteen, it came to the knowledge of the authorities that bullying was rife at the Academy. The new-comers were questioned, and one of them said that Charlie Gordon had hit him over the head with a clothes-brush. He had worked well, and his record was on the whole a good one; but the authorities took a serious view of the case, and held back his commission for six months. It was owing to this delay that he went into the Royal Engineers, instead of the Royal Artillery.

He was sent to Pembroke, to work at the erection of fortifications; and at Pembroke those religious convictions, which never afterwards left him, first gained a hold upon his mind. Under the influence of his sister Augusta and of a 'very religious captain of the name of Drew', he began to reflect upon his sins, look up texts, and hope for salvation. Though he had never been confirmed-- he never was confirmed-- he took the sacrament every Sunday; and he eagerly perused the Priceless Diamond, Scott's Commentaries, and The Remains of the Rev. R.

McCheyne. 'No novels or worldly books,' he wrote to his sister, 'come up to the Commentaries of Scott.... I, remember well when you used to get them in numbers, and I used to laugh at them; but, thank God, it is different with me now. I feel much happier and more contented than I used to do. I did not like Pembroke, but now I would not wish for any prettier place. I have got a horse and gig, and Drew and myself drive all about the country. I hope my dear father and mother think of eternal things...

Dearest Augusta, pray for me, I beg of you.'

He was twenty-one; the Crimean War broke out; and before the year was over, he had managed to get himself transferred to Balaclava.