BOOKS.
THE STORY OF CHINESE GORDON.*
THIS is the third time the story of Chinese Gordon has been told, to all intents and purposes against his own wish; and yet he is only a little over fifty years of age—by the way, his latest biographer has surely omitted to give the date of his birth, January 28th, 1833—and, therefore, as we count now-a-days, in the prime of life. He has, indeed, suffered from angina pectoris, • The Story of Chinese Gordon. By A. Egmont Hake. With Two Portraits and Two Maps. London : Remington and Co. 1881.
and his record of feats in the way of physical endurance is probablymore remarkable than that of any of his contemporaries. But then, he has lived, not perhaps with the carefulness of those who, as the late Mr. Rathbone Greg put it, " creep through life in a sort of clever quarantine," but with the healthy recklessness of boundless faith. He has made his life tolerable by declining to submit to the tyranny of its amusements ; he has shirked dining out, and when he is tired goes to bed at eight o'clock. An experi- enced physician will allow that there is even more sagacity than whimsicality in General Gordon's conception of the paradise of retirement,—lying in bed till eleven, short strolls, no heavy dinners, no railway journeys, no interviewing or lionising, and oysters for lunch. We gather, too, from what Mr. Hake says, that General Gordon is not only ready for fresh work, if he gets a call, but, as undergraduates say, is "thoroughly fit." He is settled in a retreat outside Jerusalem, where " he works at his self-imposed task, the reconstructive survey, half mystical, half scientific," of the Holy Sepulchre, the Tabernacle, and the walls of Jerusalem, mainly, it would seem, to prove that the so-called holy sites do not deserve the name. "Here he lives on bread and fruits (tobacco he reserves for great occasions, Soochow and Dara, for instance), and gives the bulk of his pay to those who hunger and are in need." It is incredible that Chinese Gordon's career should be over, or that he should be allowed to devote much of his time to the proposed Jordan Canal, although Mr. Hake tells us in his too rotund way that " the thoroughness with which he has gone into all the details of this enormous scheme is complete and unassailable." It would be too much to say of Chinese Gordon, as Wordsworth said of Milton, " England hath need of thee," and he himself would be the last man to think it. But it is rather remarkable that we should at the present moment be discussing four problems in which he is deeply interested, and with two of which he is probably more intimate than any man alive. Mr. Hake hints that at any moment he may be back among us, to take up the question of outcast London ; and he has in the past attacked slums with as much earnestness and skill as he has attacked Chinese stockades and the strongholds of Egyptian slaveholders. Until Masnpha accepts the terms of the Colonial Office, it will be rash to say that the difficulty in Basutoland has been got over ; and if he remains obstinately irreconcileable, it will be strange, indeed, if our authorities do not think of the one English- man who reached the old rebel's heart. As for China and the Soudan, it is enough to say that it is General Gordon's name they call up before any other. The episodes of his career have up to the present moment been so re- markable, that it is not surprising that each, as it occurred, should have found an eagerly enthusiastic chronicler. But General Gordon, who has been written of and up against his will, has been wiser in his generation than his biographers. Until his career is finished, it will be impossible to build a com- pact theory, either of it or of his character. There is ground, not only for hope, but for belief, that his career is not more than half finished.
We are not quite satisfied 'with the manner in which Mr. Hake has written his "story." He has plenty of " go ;" his enthu- siasm for his hero is transparently sincere. He can sketch character, and write narrative—provided it be a straight bit of narrative—in a way that 13aves little to be desired. Thus, his pictures of Colonel Gordon's father and mother, and, indeed, of the Gordons and Enderbys generally, are excellent, and show at a glance how the leader of the "Ever-victorious Army " came by his Celtic simplicity of faith, humour, and dash, and his Saxon shrewdness, sturdiness, coolness, and love of ad- venture. But in his passion for trenchancy, Mr., Hake is apt to lapse into what Mr. Arnold would term a "Corin- thian," or, at least, Daily-Telegraph style. We dislike the sensational titles he gives some of his chapters, such as " Childe Roland," or even " God bless the Kernel ;" we are certain his hero would dislike them. Then, although honour- able—most honourable—to General Gordon himself, and most stimulating to others, as are his simple faith, his courage, his modesty, his obedience to the Divine Order, we wish Mr. Hake had dwelt a little less upon them,—had allowed them, as Dr. Birkbeck Hill has in effect done, in his Colonel Gordon in Central Africa, to speak for themselves; he should have remembered his own doctrine, that "the unsaid is better than the said." Finally, we should have liked Mr. Hake to have dwelt more in simple, direct statements of fact, and less in high-pitched generalities. What is the plain man,
anxious to obtain moral stimulus from the story of General Gordon's life, to make of this ?—" A story, as of the Temptation in the Wilderness, might be told of the moral campaign he has waged upon such of the world's worst citizens—rebels from the Throne, outcasts of the Word—as have sought to lure him from his chosen way. For never, perhaps, was one loathing corrup- tion cast more among the corrupt; never, perhaps, was one more tormented in his holy labours by workers of evil. Strong in the whole armour of God, he has fought the good fight, and has prevailed, and has his reward." This reads for all the world like a passage from Mr. Swinburne,—but Mr. Swinburne strenuously championing the lilies and languors of virtue.
Mr. Hake's biography of necessity tells little that is positively new of General Gordon's life. The story of three-fourths of it has already been given in the late Mr. Andrew Wilson's narrative of the doings of the "Ever-victorious Army," and in Dr. Birkbeck Hill's Colonel Gordon in Central Africa, the latter composed chiefly of extracts from letters and journals. The incidents in Colonel Gordon's life subsequent to his departure from the Soudan, and down to his temporary retirement to Jerusalem,— his positively ludicrous attempt to run in official harness as private secretary to Lord Ripon, his opportune appear- ance and decisive declaration in favour of peace at Pekin, at the time of the difficulty between China and Russia, his political but not moral failure in Basntoland,—are too near us to have already faded from the popular memory. We could, indeed, have wished that Mr. Hake had been in a position to give more and fuller information as to Gordon's school-days and Crimean experiences, for during these his char- acter was in process of formation. In the Crimea, unquestionably, he showed his mettle. Mr. Hake, in his account of Gordon's days at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, says that " once, during his cadetship, he was rebuked for incompetence, and told that he would never make an officer ; whereupon he tore the epaulets from his shoulders, and flung them at his superior's feet." This is characteristic of Gordon ; essentially loyal, he was incapable of submitting to injustice, and so, it seems, was his father before him. A complete biography of Colonel Gordon can hardly be expected, until he gives his consent to its publi- cation, or writes it himself. Meanwhile, a fresh and connected account of his marvellous campaigns against the Taipings, and against Zebebr's black brigade of slavedealers in the Soudan, is heartily welcome, the more especially as Mr. Hake's narrative is, as we have already said, thoroughly enjoyable, so long as he does not halt to ejaculate, speculate, or eulogise, but moves steadily on like Gordon's own camel. It is impossible to lay down this book without coming to the conclusion that its hero's military genius is of a very high, if not of the highest order. No doubt, it is not easy to dissociate his successes entirely from his moral character. The Taipings were ultimately at least as much terrified by the bamboo cane with which he led his men to victory, as by the skilful dispositions of his forces. His person- ality, more than his discipline, impressed the riffraff of drunken officers and disorderly men whom he trained to be the best army that China has ever had in her service. The Mandarins would not have trusted and co-operated with him as they did—probably they would have murdered him—had they not come to see that he could be no impostor who would take no reward from the men who had murdered the prisoners for whose safety he had pledged his honour. Probably his fearless intrepidity in appearing before Suleiman and his brother slave-dealers in the Soudan, unarmed, without an escort, had more to do with their defeat than the desperate bravery of his able lieutenant, Gessi. Yet if his career is looked at from the professional view, it will be allowed that his tactics throughout his campaigns were those of Napoleon, of Nelson, of all commanders whose success has been due to genius rather than talent. He spared no pains in finding out all about " the enemy," and here his engineering experiences and methods helped him greatly; then he struck straight at their centre. It was thus that he isolated Nanking, the stronghold of the Taipings. It was thus that he was suc- cessful in the Soudan ; as Napier says of Napoleon's conquest of Spain, he thrust his -fist into the heart of it, and then spread out his fingers. Mr. Hake does well to reproduce the military memorandum General Gordon left behind him when last he visited Pekin, to confirm the temporarily feeble knees of Li Hang Chang. Nothing could more clearly prove how thoroughly he has seen into the true character of the Chinese as a fighting nation. The memorandum might be summed up in two words, "numbers " and " worry ;" and these he keeps re-
peating in the ears of the Chinese, like a schoolmaster or Mr. Matthew Arnold. Trust in numbers as to everything, he virtually says,—of men, of breechloaders, of earthworks, of torpedoes. For the rest, do not fight pitched battles or defend fortresses, but " worry " the enemy till he " gets sick." Do not trouble your- selves with baggage, but see that you cut off his by marching more quickly than he, getting behind him, before him, around him. A great war between France and China would mean a protracted conflict between " dash " and " worry," and possibly "worry," like "dogged," might do it.
Machiavelli, contrasting Christianity with Paganism, de- clares that " the one places supreme happiness in humility, abnegation, contempt for human things, while the other makes the sovereign good consist in greatness of soul, force of body, and all the qualities which make men to be feared." This is not the whole truth, for there were chords of humanity beyond the masterly, but altogether worldly, touch of Machiavelli ; there were even racial types—the Teutonic, for example—that he really knew only by repute. But his characterisation of Christianity may be recommended to those who are desirous to find the key to the "simple, Cross" variety of faith that has sustained General Gordon dining his adventurous career. His story is not only rich in humility, abnegation, contempt for merely objective human pleasures ; it reveals to us a singularly happy man. Gordon had — and felt — hardships, disappointments, and defeats ; his journals and letters show him to have been often sick at heart. Yet his spirits never seem to have flagged ; his native humour broke through all clouds of trouble. In the midst of his difficulties in the Soudan, he writes—we quote from
Dr. Birkbeck Hill's book:— "You are only called on at intervals to rely on your God ; with me, I am obliged continually to do so. I mean by this that you have only great trials, such as the illness of a child, when you feel yourself utterly weak now and then. I am constantly in anxiety. The body rebels against this constant leaning on God ; it is a heavy strain on. it ; it causes appetite to cease. Find me the man—and I will take him as my help—who utterly despises money, name, glory, honour ; one who neier wishes to see his home again ; one who looks to God as the source of good and controller of evil ; one who has a healthy body and energetic spirit, and one who looks on death as a release from misery ; and if you cannot find him, then leave me alone. To carry myself is enough for me, I want no other baggage."
Here, one would say, General Gordon's heart was as near breaking as it could be. Yet, in the same letter, he gives this tolerant, almost man-of-the-worldly view of Mahom- medanism,—" I like the Mussulmau ; he is not ashamed of his God ; his life is a fairly pure one ; certainly, he gives himself a good margin in the wife-line, but, at any rate, he never poaches on others. Can our Christian people say the same ?" Gordon, in short, places all joy in action; he says, as emphatically as Carlyle himself, that action is life and in- action is death. But while his career is to be recommended as an example—and it can hardly be recommended too highly—it should never be forgotten that the Christian life is not all or even mainly action. Mr. Hake compares General Gordon with Cromwell ; and his language, saturated as it is with Biblical Christianity, recalls Cromwell's. Yet it is Milton, Cromwell's friend and champion contro mundion, who has proclaimed that it is "the cherub Contemplation" that " guides the fiery-wheeled. throne."
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