and unveiled 15 Oct. 1888) and a sum of 20,000l. to his relatives. A recumbent effigy of Gordon in bronze by Mr. Boehm, R.A., has been placed by the family in St. Paul's Cathedral. The corps of royal engineers erected a bronze statue of him mounted on a camel, by Mr. Onslow Ford, A.R.A., in their barrack square at Chatham, and a portrait by Mr. Val Prinsep is in the Chatham mess. Memorials are also projected in Westminster Abbey and Rochester Cathedral. More general expression was given to the people's admiration of Gordon's character by the institution of the ‘Gordon Boys' Home’ for homeless and destitute boys. Gordon's sister presented to the town of Southampton her brother's library in March 1889.
Gordon's character was unique. Simple-minded, modest, and almost morbidly retiring, he was fearless and outspoken when occasion required. Strong in will and prompt in action, with a naturally hot temper, he was yet forgiving to a fault. Somewhat brusque in manner, his disposition was singularly sympathetic and attractive, winning all hearts. Weakness and suffering at once enlisted his interest. Caring nothing for what was said of him, he was indifferent to praise or reward, and had a supreme contempt for money. His whole being was dominated by a Christian faith at once so real and so earnest that, although his religious views were tinged with mysticism, the object of his life was the entire surrender of himself to work out whatever he believed to be the will of God.
The following epitaph has been written by Lord Tennyson:
Warrior of God, man's friend, not here below,
But somewhere dead far in the waste Soudan,
Thou livest in all hearts, for all men know
This earth hath borne no simpler, nobler man.
The following letters and journals of Gordon have been published:
- ‘Publications of the Egyptian General Staff. Provinces of the Equator. Summary of letters and reports from the governor-general,’ Cairo, 1877.
- ‘Reflections in Palestine,’ 1883.
- ‘Letters from the Crimea, the Danube, and Armenia … 1854 to … 1858,’ ed. D. C. Boulger, 1884.
- ‘General Gordon's Private Diary of his Exploits in China.’ amplified by S. Mossman, 1885.
- ‘Gordon, a woman's memories of him, and his letters to her from the Holy Land,’ 1885.
- ‘Letters to his Sister, M. A. Gordon,’ 1885.
- ‘Letters to the Rev. R. H. Barnes,’ 1885.
- ‘The Journals of … Gordon at Kartoum,’ ed. A. E. Hake, 1885.
- ‘General Gordon's last Journal. A facsimile of the last of the six volumes of journals despatched by General Gordon, before the fall of Kartoum,’ 1885.
- Gordon's ‘Diary of the Taiping Rebellion,’ ed. A. E. Hake, 1890.
[Corps Records; Gordon's own letters and journals as above; A. Wilson's ‘Ever Victorious Army,’ 1868; Dr. Birkbeck Hill's Colonel Gordon in Central Africa, 1881; Hake's Story of Chinese Gordon; Col. Sir W.F. Butler's Memoir of Gordon in Men of Action Series, 1889; C. C. Chesney's Essays in Modern Military Biography, 1874; Archibald Forbes's Chinese Gordon, 1884; Colonel Sir Charles Wilson's From Korti to Khartoum; Rev. R.H. Barnes's Charles George Gordon: a Sketch, 1885; Boulger's Hist. of China, vol. iii. 1881, &c.; Lieutenant-general Sir G. Graham's Last Words with Gordon, 1887; H. W. Gordon's Events in the Life of Charles George Gordon, 1886.]
GORDON, DUKE (1739–1800), librarian, son of William Gordon, a weaver in the Potterrow, Edinburgh, was born on 20 May 1739. His father gave him his baptismal name from a clannish feeling for the Duke of Gordon. He was educated at a school in the Cowgate, under Andrew Waddel, translator of Buchanan's paraphrase of the Psalms. On 13 March 1753 he entered the Greek class in the Edinburgh University under Robert Hunter, and became a good scholar. During 1754 he was substitute teacher of the parish school of Tranent, Haddingtonshire, returning to the university on 4 March 1755. After completing his course he was tutor in the families of Captain John Dalrymple [q. v.], afterwards fifth earl of Stair, and of Alexander Boswell, lord Auchinleck [q. v.] James Robertson, D.D., professor of oriental languages, on being made university librarian (12 Jan. 1763), appointed Gordon his assistant. This office he retained under Andrew Dalzel [q. v.]. Robertson's successor. His salary till 1783 was only 15l., and never exceeded 35l.; he supported himself mainly by tuition. According to his biographer, he was a patient, sensitive scholar, not without sarcastic humour. He detected three of the six errors in the ‘immaculate’ Horace of 1744 [see Foulis, Robert]. On his retirement from duty he received (12 April 1800) the degree of M.A. He died unmarried on 30 Dec. 1800, and was buried in St. Cuthbert's churchyard, where a monument to his memory bears a long Latin inscription by Dalzel. He left 500l. to the Edinburgh Infirmary, and the reversion of house property of nearly the same value to the poor of St. Cuthbert's.
[Memoir by Dalzel in New Annual Register (for 1801), 1802, p. 47; also in Scots Magazine, 1802 (contains valuable particulars of Scottish university training); Cat. of Edinburgh Graduates, 1858, p. 215.]
