Chapter IV: Gordon in Palestine

SUCH is the history of Gordon’s first service in the Soudan under Ismaïl Pasha, from 1874 to 1879, in its principal features as gathered from his own letters. At this time of his life, 1880, there is no question that to the official world in England as in Egypt, except among his intimate friends who knew him well, Gordon was considered mad; nor wholly, perhaps, without excuse. He had quarrelled in his last two years with nearly every official person at Cairo, including the new Viceroy Tewfik, Nubar Pasha, and most of the Khedivial ministers, as well as with M. de Lesseps and Lord Cromer. There is an interesting memorandum drawn up by himself relating the circumstances which led to his collision with the last of these, and, as it throws light on their later relations, as well as giving a lively picture of the writer, it will be worth epitomizing here.

The memorandum tells us that in the spring of 1878 Ismaïl Pasha, being in financial difficulties, sent for him (Gordon) to come from Khartoum to Cairo, and help him in making an arrangement with the representatives of his creditors. “I arrived,” says Gordon, “on the 7th March, at 9.30 p.m. His Highness sent his equerry to meet me at the terminus and was waiting dinner. Dirty as I was, after a railway journey of 350 miles, I had to obey, but before dinner His Highness took me aside and asked me to be President of an Inquiry into the state of the finances of the country. . . . I said I would accept the Commission of Inquiry as President. His Highness said, ‘You will see Lesseps, who will act with you.’ I said ‘Yes,’ and accepted the mission with the agreement that the Commissioners of the Dette were not to be on the Inquiry. I was angry with these Commissioners because I thought they had been too hard on His Highness. The next day I saw Mr. Vivian, the English Consul-General, and he said, ‘I wonder you could accept the Presidency without the Commissioners of the Dette.’ I said I was free to accept or to refuse. I then called on the German Consul-General, and when there the French and Austrian Consuls-General and also Vivian came in, and attacked me for having accepted the post of President. They said I was risking His Highness his throne, if he formed the Commission of Inquiry without the creditors’ representatives. I said, ‘Why do you not tell him so?’ They said, ‘You ought to do so.’ I said, ‘Well, will you commission me to do so from you with any remarks I like to make as to the futility of your remarks?’ They all said, ‘Yes, we authorize you to do so in our names.’ I did so that evening, and told His Highness just before dinner at Abdin. I said, ‘I have seen the four Consuls-General to-day, and they told me to tell your Highness from them that you run a serious personal risk if you have a Commission of Inquiry without the Commissioners of the Dette being upon it.’ His Highness did not seem to care a bit, and said he was only afraid of England, who he was sure would not move. He said, ‘You will see Lesseps to-morrow and arrange the Enquête with him.’ The next day Lesseps came with Standen, now Resident Commissioner for the British Government Suez Canal Shares at Paris, an old friend of mine. Lesseps began, ‘We must have the Commissioners of the Dette on the Enquête.’ I said, ‘It is a _sine qua non_ that they are not to be upon it.’ Lesseps replied, ‘They must be upon it.’ Then in came Cherif Pasha and said, ‘Are you agreed?’ I left Lesseps to speak and he said ‘Yes,’ at which I stared and said, ‘I fear not.’ Then Lesseps and Cherif Pasha discussed it, and Lesseps gave in and agreed to serve on the Commission without the Commissioners, but he must ask permission from Paris. Cherif Pasha was pleased, but I instinctively felt old Lesseps was ratting, so I asked Cherif Pasha to stop a moment and said to Standen, ‘Now see that Lesseps does not make a mess of it, let him say at once will he act without the Commissioners of Dette or not, do this for my sake, take him into that corner and speak to him.’ Standen did so while I took Cherif Pasha into the other corner, much against his will, for he thought I was a bore raising obstacles. I told him that Lesseps had declared before he came he would not act unless with the Commissioners. Cherif was huffed with me and turned to Lesseps, whom Standen had already dosed in his corner of the room, and he and Lesseps had a close conversation again for some time, and then Cherif came to me and said, ‘Lesseps has accepted without the Commissioners of the Dette. I disgusted Cherif as I went downstairs with him by saying, ‘He will never stick to it.’ When downstairs in one of the many antechambers to the Palace His Highness gave me (shall I ever lodge in palaces again? I hope not) I found Baring. Now Baring is in the Royal Artillery, while I am in the Royal Engineers. Baring was in the nursery while I was in the Crimea. He has a pretentious grand patronizing way about him. We had a few words together. I said I would do what His Highness asked me. He said it was unfair to the creditors, and in a few moments all was over. When oil mixes with water we will mix together! I went upstairs.”

This is interesting as a record of the incompatibility of temper and ideas existing between Gordon and Cromer six years before 1884. It explains indeed what would otherwise be inexplicable, the quarrel that broke out at once between them when Gordon returned to Cairo on his final mission.

It is not necessary to continue Gordon’s story of how he was played with on the earlier occasion by our Cairo diplomatists, but one scene which gives us an amusing glimpse of Lesseps, and at the same time of Gordon’s character, I will add: “The next morning,” he continues, “the 8th March at 9 I went to Lesseps en route to His Highness. Lesseps said, ‘See what Cherif Pasha has written to me.’ ‘Mon cher Vicomte, son Altesse le Khedive m’a chargé de vous présenter ses grands remerciments pour avoir accepté d’être sur la Commission d’Enquête et elle me prie d’ajouter que c’est ce qu’elle a toujours attendu d’un si ancien ami de Mehemet Ali et ses fils.’ This letter had been written before I saw Lesseps, and of course His Highness thanked him for being upon the Enquête _without_ the four Commissioners of the Dette, which Lesseps declined to do except under certain conditions, so the letter was written to Lesseps thanking him for services which the Khedive was furious about. Lesseps said, looking at his pretty young wife of twenty-two, ‘I am off to Halowan and shall not be back until night. I have telegraphed to my Government to ask permission to be on the Enquête with you. Here is a copy of the telegram, will you give it to His Highness?’ He gave it over to me to read. I read it, it was thus: ‘Son Altesse le Khedive m’a prié de me joindre avec M. Gordon et les Commissionaires de la Caisse pour faire une Enquête sur les finances d’Egypte, je demande permission.’ I said, ‘Oh! my dear old fellow M. Lesseps, this will never do.’ He said, ‘Well, anyway it is off, and I am off to Halowan and shall not be back to- night.’ Well, off I had to go with this telegram to Abdin. Cherif and Riaz Pasha were in the antechamber, drowsy and happily smoking. As I went in I saw a bald-headed ‘coot,’ the Consul-General of the Pays Bas, going in to His Highness. Cherif drowsily said, ‘Well, any news?’ I said, ‘No, only I have a telegram for His Highness from Lesseps.’ So Riaz and Cherif chatted away in Turkish till I saw the ‘coot’ go out and Cherif was called in. Suddenly Cherif came flying out, all drowsiness gone, and said, ‘Where is the telegram of Lesseps?’ I gave it him and then in came flying Pharaoh (the Khedive) with Cherif. Pharaoh threw himself on the sofa and said, ‘Je suis tout à fait bouleversé avec ce télégramme de Lesseps. C’est tout à fait contre mes désirs. Barrat! (l’esclave écrivain de son altesse) venez ici, dites à quelqu’un d’aller à Halowan et de dire à Lesseps de ne pas télégraphier à Paris,’ and then turning to me His Highness said, ‘I put the whole affair into your hands.’ Then, calling Barrat, he said, ‘Telegraph to Goschen, Gordon is charged with the whole affair, arrange with him.’ Consequently I telegraphed to Goschen, ‘I have recommended His Highness to suspend the payment of the next Coupon in order to pay the employés and meet pressing claims. I will arrange with you for the Commission of Inquiry into the finances.’ Goschen answered, ‘I will not look at you, the matter is in the hands of Her Majesty’s Government.’ I then wrote to His Highness and proposed that he should suspend the payment of the Coupon and pay the employés and pressing claims, that he should do it by decree and quote me. Throw all the blame upon me, saying if he did not like to do this I would myself write to Lord Derby, to say I had recommended His Highness to do so-and-so; that I did not ask Her Majesty’s Government to give any acquiescence to it, but merely to tell them if the Khedive did this, it was my fault. The Khedive hesitated and did not answer me, and shut himself up in his harem for two days and the game was lost. (There would have been no risk in this.) Vivian (English Consul-General), of course, was on the _qui vive_; he knew that some strong measure was in prospect, and telegraphed to Her Majesty’s Government, begging the same to authorize him to join the French Consul-General, to stop His Highness taking any sharp measures. Of course Vivian pointed out the Red Republican nature of your humble servant. Lord Derby, against anything abrupt, telegraphed to Vivian, who came to me and said, ‘I have a telegram; I will read it to you; but you are not to say anything about it until I have communicated it to His Highness, for it would not be proper.’ The telegram ran thus: ‘You are authorized in conjunction with your French colleague, to inform His Highness that Her Majesty’s Government trusts His Highness will do nothing without accordance with his creditors, and that Her Majesty’s Government are willing to send Rivers Wilson out to help him, and that Her Majesty’s Government think that Baring ought to be on the Inquiry.’ Vivian then said, ‘What will you recommend His Highness to do?’ I said, ‘I would recommend him to bow to Her Majesty’s Government.’ Vivian said, ‘What will he do?’ I said, ‘He might say I am sovereign and will do as I will.’ Vivian (who was a pretty black-eyed boy, and was put by General Fox under my care at the Royal Military Academy, and whom Ruck Keene kicked on the ankle when he was removed from that rough school) went home, and on the morrow went in great pomp to His Highness with the French Consul-General, saying on leaving, ‘C’est tout ce que nous avons à dire à votre altesse pour le moment.’ Of course my tongue was tied; but before they (the two Consuls- General) went to His Highness I wrote to Cherif Pasha, and said, hoping to take the wind out of their sails, ‘Tell His Highness if he is troubled, to ask Her Majesty’s Government for Rivers Wilson to come out and help me’; and I added (for I had begun to see, with Pharaoh wavering, it was necessary for _me_ to look to _my retreat_), ‘I will not act with any of the four Commissioners of the Dette.’ This also gave His Highness a reason for refusing Her Majesty’s Government’s recommendation, that Baring should be on the Commission of Inquiry, because he could quote my objections.

“Now, would you believe it? Vivian never gave His Highness the true telegram. He and the French Consul-General gave him a paper: ‘Our Governments authorize us to inform your Highness, that they trust you will only act in accord with your creditors.’ Unimportant as this paper was, it sickened him for two days, during which he only spoke of the Soudan; till at last I took an opportunity, as the moment of secrecy was over, to tell him what the true telegram was. He looked quite surprised and said, ‘Why, they never told me that!’ The fact, however, was that the paper the Consuls-General gave him was so vague, and the solemnity of their manner was so great, that His Highness got frightened; and when I did tell him, after these two days, he had already given in, and had agreed to have the Commissioners of the Caisse (or Dette) upon the Inquiry, and as a sequel to call for Rivers Wilson. He never told me he had given in; but four days after I heard of it, and on my seeing him he said (for it was no longer a secret that he had ceded), ‘Have you any news?’ I said, ‘Yes, I hear your Highness has agreed to the four Commissioners of the Dette being on the Inquiry.’ He said ‘Yes’ and the subject dropped. Five days after that I left Cairo with no honours by the ordinary train, paying my passage. The sun which rose with such splendour, set in the deepest obscurity. I calculate my financial episode cost me £800. His Highness was bored with me after my failure, and could not bear the sight of me, which his surroundings soon knew. I dare say I may have been imprudent in speech. I have no doubt it is better as it is. His Highness and I would have fallen out about the composition of the Commission of Inquiry, for I feel sure it was meant to be packed, and that I was only to be the figure head; but the families of the Ameer of Afghanistan will never change their natures; peace be to them.”

After this things had only gone from bad to worse in Gordon’s relations with the official world. His last act at Cairo, just before leaving it as he thought for ever at the end of 1879, was to have a serious quarrel with Nubar Pasha. He held Nubar responsible for much of Ismaïl’s indebtedness to Europe, and for the international pressure which had been put upon him, and had led to his deposition; and at their leave- taking he had spoken his opinion of him so strongly to his face that he considered it necessary to offer the Armenian ex-Minister “satisfaction.” There are letters extant referring to this and to Nubar’s answer declining the hostile invitation.

There are some curious letters, too, which Gordon wrote about the time of his arrival in London to Lady Burton, wife of Sir Richard Burton, who, like himself, had quarrelled with the Foreign Office, giving his opinion on the chief official personages at Cairo, and of those at home. In one of these he says, 4th February 1880: “You write to an orb which is setting or rather is set; I have no power to aid your husband in any way. I went to F. O. to-day and, as you know, Lord Hammond is very ill. Well, the people there were afraid of me, for I have written hard things to them, and though they knew all, they would say nought. I said, ‘Who is the personification of Foreign Office?’ They said, ‘Currie is.’ I saw Currie, but he tried to evade my question, _i.e._, ‘Would F. O. do anything to prevent the Soudan falling into chaos?’ It was no use. I cornered him, and then he said, ‘I am merely a clerk to register letters coming in and going out.’ So then I gave it up and marvelled. I must say I was surprised to see such a thing, a great Government like ours governed by men who dare not call their souls their own. Lord Hammond rules them with a rod of iron. If your husband would understand that F. O. is at present Lord Hammond, and he is ill, he would see that I can do nothing. I have written letters to F. O. that would raise a corpse; it is no good. I have threatened to go to the French Government about the Soudan; it is no good.”

Again, from Lausanne, 12th March 1880: “Of course your husband failed with Tewfik. I scent carrion a long way off and felt that the hour of my departure from Egypt had come, so I left quietly. Instead of A (Ismaïl), who was a good man, you have B (Tewfik), who may be good or bad as events will allow him. B is the true son of A, but has the inexperience of youth and may be smarter. The problem working out in the small brains of Tewfik is this: ‘my father lost his throne because he scouted the creditors; the Government only cared for the creditors; they did not care for good government, so if I look after the creditors I may govern the country as I like.’ No doubt Tewfik is mistaken, but these are his views backed up by a ring of Pashas.”

And a month later from Paris: “I do not like or believe in Nubar. He is my horror; for he had led the old ex-Khedive to his fall, though Nubar owed him everything. When Ismaïl became Khedive, Nubar had £3 a month; he now owns £1,000,000. Things will not and cannot go straight in Egypt; and I would say, ‘Let them glide.’ Before long time elapses things will come to a crisis. The best way is to let all minor affairs rest, and to consider quietly how the ruin is to fall. It must fall ere long. United Bulgaria—Austria; Syria—France; and Egypt—England. France would then have as much interest in repelling Russia as we have. Supposing you got out Riaz, why you would have Riaz’s brother; and if you got rid of the latter, you would have Riaz’s nephew. _Le plus on change, le plus c’est la même chose_. . . . Egypt is usurped by the family of the Sandjak of Salonique, and (by our folly) we have added a ring of Circassian pashas. The whole lot should go.”

These letters show what Gordon’s attitude was towards the Khedive Tewfik and the regime of the Dual Control, and are useful as explaining how impossible it seemed two and three years later at Cairo that he should ever again be employed in the Khedivial service, or accept such were it offered him. It was hardly better as between him and the Foreign Office. His final quarrel with our diplomacy will be found narrated in an entry of my diary of 1880 quoted in my “Secret History,” which tells the story of Gordon’s correspondence with Lord Lyons at the Paris Embassy on his way home to England. It was in regard to what he considered ought to be done in the matter of appointing his successor at Khartoum, and this was repeated at the Foreign Office on his arrival in London. Talking over this episode of Gordon’s career with Sir Rivers Wilson recently (1910), he repeated to me the story with more circumstantial details. At that time, the spring of 1880, Wilson was in the habit of being consulted at the Foreign Office on Egyptian matters; and he told me that on one occasion he was sent for by Lord Salisbury, who was then Foreign Secretary, and asked his opinion of Gordon in connection with some proposals that had been made at the War Office for his re-employment. Wilson, while Finance Minister at Cairo the year before, had come into collision with Gordon, not personally but officially, and a number of violent telegrams had passed between the two, Gordon being at Khartoum, Wilson at Cairo. They had never met, and now both had left Egypt, and both under an official cloud. Wilson, in spite of their quarrel and though he considered Gordon wrong-headed and perverse, entertained a high personal respect for him, and hearing of his arrival in London, left a card on him at the hotel where he was lodging, and Gordon returned the visit next morning, as he explained, “to apologize for the rudeness of his telegrams.” Wilson on this occasion was much taken with “the strange little unpretending man with eyes like blue diamonds,” and had much conversation with him about the affairs of Egypt, in which both were interested; he knew the common talk at the Foreign Office, where Gordon was considered mad, and when a few days later Salisbury asked his opinion about him, he understood at once what was in question, Gordon’s sanity, and answered that though Gordon for all ordinary Foreign Office work was officially “impossible,” nevertheless, if there were anything exceptionally astonishing to do in a wild country, he was the man to do it, as, for instance, to settle matters with Cetewayo, the Zulu chieftain who was giving trouble in South Africa.[17] Nevertheless, the idea of Gordon’s madness persisted at the Foreign Office, and he remained unemployed either there or at the War Office as long as the Tories were in power.

Gordon’s life for the next year was a series of abortive undertakings, accepted in haste and repented of at leisure. On the formation of Gladstone’s ministry of May 1880, Lord Ripon, having been appointed Viceroy of India, offered him the post, a very important one, of going with him as his official private secretary. The offer was made to him through the instrumentality of Lord Northbrook, who had been in correspondence with him about various matters during his own Viceroyalty, and Gordon, under the idea that an entirely new departure was about to be taken in India, according to those principles of justice and self-government of which he approved, without well considering his own unfitness for a post whose principal duties were essentially those of conciliation, self-effacement, and the disguising of unpleasant truths, in an ill-considered moment accepted. An interesting memorandum will be found in the Appendix giving the true story of Gordon’s ideas at starting with Lord Ripon, and the reason of his resignation within a few days of their arrival at Bombay. It has never before, I believe, been published. He had held the post barely a month.[18]

Three days later, 7th July, we find him embarked on a new adventure in consequence of a telegram received from China, whither he had been called by Sir Robert Hart to advise on a threatened quarrel between the Chinese Emperor and the Emperor of Russia; and without delay he proceeds thither, gives his advice for peace, which is sound and good, but refuses to stay more than two days at Pekin, and, having come into collision with our diplomacy at Tientsin, as he had before at Cairo, he leaves once more for England, which he reaches 21st October. His restless energy at this period seems to have had no bounds.

The same autumn saw him in the west of Ireland, whither he had gone “to have a little shooting and satisfy himself on the state of the lower classes.” Here again he was bent upon good work, and from Glengariff addressed a memorandum to Lord Northbrook on the subject of settling the land question on lines identical with those adopted in 1886, but so far in advance of what Gladstone’s Government was as yet prepared for that Downing Street became more than ever convinced that, as Sir E. Hamilton wrote to me about it, “the writer did not seem to be clothed in the rightest of minds.”[19] In February 1881 we find him offering his views (quite sound ones) about Afghanistan to the “Times,” and about the art of irregular warfare to the “Army and Navy Gazette.” In April he offers his services to the Cape Government to assist in terminating the Basuto war, and soon after, in May, wishing to serve a friend, he volunteers for Mauritius. In July and September he addresses the Government on the question of the Suez Canal, the route to India by the Cape, and the uselessness of Malta and Gibraltar; and on the 24th of March 1882, having received his promotion to the rank of General, he leaves Mauritius for the Cape, where he accepts new service in Basutoland and does good work. But again not for long; and the 14th of October sees him once more in England—having again quarrelled with the Cape authorities. The year had been one of constant activity and constant change, and of that unconscious self-advertisement he reproached himself with later to his sister as “Agag” or “hailing the tram of the world.”

It was at this time, during his short stay in London at the close of 1882, that I had the talk with him described at the beginning of this volume. His personality, as I saw him then, remains very clear with me. It is that of a little, quite unmilitary man, not specially distinguished except for his clear gray-blue eyes, and his singularly frank, unconventional manner. There was nothing in the smallest degree assertive about him, or which could give a stranger the idea of his being a leader of men, or a man accustomed to authority and importance in the world. His conversation was pleasant without any special grace of manner, and he impressed me principally with an appearance of extreme natural goodness and honesty of speech. He had, what is often the case with men of very superior understanding, a great humility in expressing his opinion even about those things he knew the best. At the same time he was quite able to maintain his own in argument, and had much wit and pleasant humour in discussion. He seemed to take it for granted that the person he was talking to was as good and honest as himself, and with as good a right to an opinion. At that time, as far as my recollection goes, he had no thought of ever returning to Egypt. He had quarrelled too entirely with Tewfik and the Pashas, who composed the Khedivial Court party under the restored regime, to think it possible. His mind was set on a religious retreat in the Holy Land, and, if he had any other plan beyond, it was to take service under King Leopold on the Congo. It was one of his aberrations of intelligence to be constantly deceived as to character, and he looked upon Leopold as an enlightened prince, and his Congo scheme as a humanitarian enterprise for the suppression of the slave trade.

Thus at the end of the year 1882, instead of going to Egypt he left England for Jerusalem, and stayed on in its neighbourhood for nearly the whole of 1883. This was the most mystical part of his life, and has been fully dealt with in various semi-religious works. I confess that it is difficult for any one who is not himself a mystic to read these without a suspicion that on this one point Gordon was at this time less than entirely sane. His great object in visiting the Holy Land was to re-read the Bible, which had been his constant study all his life, on the spot where so many of the events recorded in it happened. He had convinced himself that by prayer and study every riddle contained in the Book could be made clear down to the smallest historical and geographical allusions, hence his time was devoted to localizing the various biblical events, and reconciling difficulties by solutions, which he considered to be inspired as he read. This led him sometimes into a labyrinth of impossibilities, which he nevertheless clung to and expounded in his letters to his friends, and not to his religious friends only, or to his sister, though these were the chief recipients of his confidences, but to some whom one would have thought entirely outside the category of those to whom such could possibly be made. One of them may be quoted as showing how far he was from the track of ordinary reason about the physical facts of the modern world we know. It might have been written by a recluse of the sixth century, while it was addressed to one no less a Gallio about spiritual things than the late Sir Richard Burton. Gordon had been trying to identify the respective sites of the Garden of Eden and of Ararat, where Noah’s Ark rested, with other points of biblical geography, which he thought might interest Burton as a geographer and Oriental scholar. “My idea,” he says, writing from Jerusalem, June 3, 1883, “is that the Pison is the Blue Nile, and that the sons of Joktan were at Harrar, Abyssinian Godjam, but it is not well supported. The rock of Harrar was the platform Adam was moulded on out of clay from the Potters’ Field. He was then put in Seychelles, Eden, and after the Fall, brought back to Mount Moriah to till the ground in the place he was taken from. Noah built the ark twelve miles from Jaffa at Aïn Judeh; the Flood began, the Ark floated up and rested on Mount Baris, afterwards Antonia; he sacrificed on the Rock (Adam was buried on Skull Hill, hence the skull under the Cross). It was only 776 A.D. that Mount Ararat of Armenia became the site of the Ark’s descent. Koràn says El Judi (Ararat) is holy land. After the Flood the remnants went East to plain of Shimar. Had they gone East from El Judi, near Mosul, or from Armenian Ararat they could never have reached Shimar. Shem was Melchizedek.” Was ever serious letter written to so mocking a reader?

The question of Gordon’s religious monomania is a difficult one to handle. In treating it, it is hardly possible not to do violence to what is sacred to us all, our beliefs, avowed or unavowed, in the supernatural. There are very few who in their hearts do not hold and cling to beliefs quite contrary to reason, and who do not attach to their own personalities an importance in the immensity of things they cannot at all deserve. Who then of us has a right to say of his fellow that he is less than reasonable because he believes this or that doctrine of his relations with the unseen more strongly than the rest? Gordon was not singular among Englishmen, even in our unbelieving day, in his thought that God had created him for a special purpose in the world—it is indeed the foundation of all Christian doctrine—nor is it easy to argue that the logical deduction he drew from it that God, having so created him, was also in constant communication with him, inspiring him with a daily knowledge how to fulfil that purpose, was other than a sane one. Nevertheless we cannot leave out of account this feature of the position if we are to consider the public case, which we are now fast approaching. The truth would seem to be that his year at Jerusalem was for him, if I may use an expression theologians would not I think condemn, a complete religious debauch which left him more than ever the prey of his own visions, a puppet in the hands of his imagined duty to do this or that for God, he knew not what, which God should presently reveal to him. He was waiting for a call. His letters that year to his sister and to Doctor Barnes, a friend of the same school of pietism as his own, give indications of this. Under Doctor Barnes’ influence he had during the past two years shifted somewhat his position in regard to the Church of England, of which he was not before a professed member. He had never been confirmed, but he now became a regular communicant, even adopting the doctrine of transubstantiation, or at any rate of there being supernatural elements in the sacrament of bread and wine. His letters are full of this. He corresponded, too, while at Jerusalem with English Church dignitaries, and through Doctor Barnes became intimate with Bishop Temple, and in this way the aspect of his religious mind, which before had been extremely eclectic, became more definitely that of orthodox English Christianity.

Of what the future was to bring him he wrote little, but there are several letters of his about Egypt which are of interest and may be given here.

These are to his sister:

“28 _February_ 1883.—Wonderful are the works of God in the Soudan! Look at His work. He has upset the Egyptian people thoroughly, and they will get their liberty from the oppressing Pachas. He has permitted this revolt, which will end, I believe, in the suppression of the slave trade and slave-holding, and He has humbled _me_. I will speak about myself for one moment. I foresaw the Egyptian and Soudan affair, and was not listened to. I am glad I was humiliated, for the things of this world will pass away. I expect Laurence Oliphant will go to the Soudan; there will be no end of trouble to reconquer it, and I am sorely tempted to write Lord Dufferin my ideas; but I will not, for Jesus is Lord and He knows what to do.”

“3 _March_ 1883.—I have great comfort in thinking that our Lord rules every petty and great event of life both on a small and large scale. Therefore He governs the Soudan now through A., B., and C., as much as he did when I was there, and neither I, nor A., B., and C., have or had anything to do with the Government, as far as others were concerned. With respect to the motives of our actions, it is another matter; they are the permanent residues—the things unseen. This comforts me, for I feel that their welfare, and the course of events that takes place, are being conducted by the same hand, whether I am there or not.”

“13 _March_.—. . . I am quite quiet about the Cape and the Soudan; my sympathies are with the people of those countries and not with the Turkish Pashas whom our Government will try and replace. Good will come of it.”

To me he wrote: “_April_ 3, 1883.—I am living quietly enough here and do not hear anything from Egypt. I expect Arabi will be back there in a year or so. Some of the officers from Egypt have been here. I do not think that it will be a favourite station for the army. I expect that the only man who can, humanly speaking, give quiet to Egypt and some hope of our benefiting the people is Nubar. He is the sort of man who could work with Arabi, and I think the trials he has gone through have benefited him. It is very quiet here, and one can live undisturbed, which is a great comfort. Government ought to get Tewfik’s deposition cancelled by the new House, for it has not been so at present.”

Again to his sister:

“16 _April_ 1883.—I am at work from morning to night. As for Egypt and the Cape, I no more care for them; and Lord Dufferin’s despatch shows that, even had I gone out, it would have been another fiasco.”

“7 _May_ 1883.—. . . I had a letter from Egypt which is not very sanguine about the state of affairs, all because our Government will not say they will stay; yet stay they must, whether they like it or not.”

On the 15th August, when the difficulty of General Hicks’ position in the Soudan became known to him, he wrote: “If they do not make Nubar Pasha prime minister or regent in Egypt they will have trouble, as he is the only man who can rule that country. . . . Unless Hicks is given supreme power he is lost, it can never work putting him in a subordinate position, recent events at Cairo show what dependence can be placed upon the Pashas. . . . Hicks must be made Governor General, otherwise he will never end things satisfactorily.” On 2nd September he writes to Laurence Oliphant, then at Haifa: “Her Majesty’s Government right or wrong will not take a decided line in re Egypt and the Soudan, they drift but at the same time cannot avoid the onus of being the real power in Egypt with the corresponding advantage of being so. It is undoubtedly the fact that they maintain Tewfik and the Pashas in power against the will of the people. This alone is insufferable from disgusting the people, to whom also Her Majesty’s Government have given no inducement to make themselves popular. Their present action is a dangerous one, for without any advantage over the Canal or to England, they keep a running sore open with France and are acting in a way which will justify Russia to act in a similar way in Armenia, and Austria in Salonica. Further than that, Her Majesty’s Government must eventually gain the odium which will fall upon them when the interest of the debt fails to be paid, which will soon be the case. Also, Her Majesty’s Government cannot possibly avoid the responsibility for the state of affairs in the Soudan, where a wretched war drags on in a ruined country, at a cost of half a million per annum, at least.

“I say therefore to avoid all this, if Her Majesty’s Government will not act firmly and strongly and take the country (which, if I were they, I would not do), let them attempt to get the Palestine Canal made and quit Egypt to work out its own salvation. In doing so lots of anarchy will take place. This anarchy is inseparable from a peaceful solution; it is the travail in birth. Her Majesty’s Government do not prevent anarchy now; therefore, better leave the country and thus avoid a responsibility which gives no advantage and is mean and dangerous.”

“15 _September_ 1883.—If the Palestine canal is made we shall abandon Egypt, which will then get self government, and will succeed under God’s blessing, for He has a blessing for it.”

“28 _September_ 1883.—. . . Graham (Sir Gerald) writes from Egypt that he is likely to go there at the end of the year: that looks as though we should evacuate it. I like watching how God governs all things there; He acts to us as we act to others.”

“25 _November_ 1883.—. . . As for the Soudan, I am much interested, but should feel repugnance to going back there; and that is a great gain, for I had a sneaking desire to return there, when I first came out here. As for the Congo, I have not much choice left me.”

The Palestine Canal, to which he alludes, was a somewhat fanciful scheme much talked of at the time by which the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea were to be inundated and transformed into a long narrow lake, united at the one end with the Mediterranean by a cutting at Haifa, and at the other end with the Red Sea at Akabah. It interested Gordon principally because he looked upon it as the possible fulfilment of Ezekiel’s prophecy, “Their fish [_i.e._, of the Dead Sea] shall be according to their kinds as the fish of the great sea [Mediterranean] and it shall come to pass that the fishers shall stand upon it from En-Gedi even unto En-Eglaim; they shall be a place to spread forth nets.” He also looked upon it as a possible alternative route to the Suez Canal, which was the excuse of our having occupied Egypt. “Anything,” he says about the scheme, “is better than the wretched want of sympathy between us and the Egyptians, which is now daily increasing into a deadly hate. We must have a nemesis unless we show more sympathy. What single good thing have we done the people? . . . Our Government will never get out of Egypt, for the Europeans there will thwart any reform.”

These quotations are of some value as an indication of what his policy was for Egypt as well as the Soudan, immediately previous to his employment by the British Government there. As will be seen in the next chapter, they must already to some extent have had their influence at the Foreign Office. His thoughts, however, were but little connected with Egypt. It was not to Egypt but to the Congo that he intended to proceed, and it was in obedience to a summons from King Leopold at the end of the year that, waking out of his long religious trance, he returned to Europe. His first visit was to Brussels, and only after he had arranged things there with Leopold did he go on, on the 7th of January 1884, to his sister’s house at Southampton.