MISS AUGUSTA GORDON TO QUEEN VICTORIA
Rockstone Place, Southampton.
MADAM,
The letter which your Majesty has so graciously honoured me with has deeply touched and gratified me. I am so thankful to know of your sympathy for, and the endeavours you so very kindly made to save my dear Brother, though _others dared_ to prevent your supporting him in his just demands. Never can I cease to be deeply grateful to your Majesty for the great kindness you have shown towards him. I think he received the gracious message you sent him through me as in one of the Volumes of his Diaries he returns a little letter in which I told him of your Majesty’s message. If permitted I should like to bring over the Original Diaries when I have the great honour to wait on your Majesty next month.
I am your Majesty’s devoted subject and servant, M. AUGUSTA GORDON.
MISS AUGUSTA GORDON TO MR. BLUNT
Rockstone Place, Southampton, _11th September_ 1882.
Will you kindly give me a copy (two if you can spare them) of your letter on Egypt written to Mr. Gladstone and others. I am sending on by the first mail your letters and the 19th Century to my Brother at the Cape. Strange you were not listened to by those in authority. I fancy there are many of your way of thinking and there would be many more if they knew the rights and wrongs done to Egypt.
A. GORDON.
MR. BLUNT TO GENERAL C. G. GORDON
Delhi, _24th January_, 1884.
MY DEAR GENERAL,
I feel obliged to write to you about your mission to the Soudan. I see it announced to-day by telegraph without explanation of its object, but I cannot wait till more definite news arrives, and I desire to warn you. It may be you are going there to make peace between the Mahdi and our troops in Egypt, to acknowledge his sovereignty in the Soudan, and arrange terms for the evacuation of Khartoum. If so, I can only wish you God speed. It is a good work, and you will accomplish it. But if, as I fear it may be, from the tradition of some of those in power, the object of your mission is to divide the tribes with a view to retaining any part of the country for the Khedive, to raise men for him and scatter money, it is bad work, and you will fail. It must be so. Neither your courage, nor your honest purpose, nor the inspiration which has hitherto guided you, will bring you success. I know enough to be able to assure you that every honest Mohammedan in Egypt and North Africa and Arabia sympathizes with the Mahdi’s cause, not necessarily believing him to have a Divine mission, but as representing ideas of liberty and justice and religious government which they acknowledge to be divine. For this reason you will only have the men of Belial on your side, and these will betray you. I beg you be cautious. Do not trust to the old sympathy which united Englishmen with the Arabs. I fear it is a thing of the past, and that even your great name will not protect you with them. Also consider what your death will mean: the certainty of a cry for vengeance in England, and an excuse with those who ask no better than a war of conquest. I wish I could be sure that all those who are sending you on your mission do not foresee this end. Forgive me if I am wrong in my fears; and believe me yours, very gratefully, in memory of last year,
WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT.
MRS. SURTEES-ALLNATT TO MR. BLUNT
134, St. Owens, Hereford, _Dec._ 27, 1884.
DEAR SIR,
Will you allow me, personally a stranger, to tell you how interested I am in the result of your application to Mr. Gladstone respecting your mediation with the Mahdi.
You will the more readily understand my great interest, when I mention that I was in London for some weeks last spring for the purpose of devising some means for the rescue of General Gordon, and that I was about the first (I believe) to suggest the Volunteer Expedition of which I see by the “Pall Mall Gazette” you had heard.
I saw Captain Brocklehurst, having called upon him though a stranger, but knowing his friendship for General Gordon. My own scheme was in the first place to have raised a “Khartoum Fund,” for which I had many promises, and would have had no difficulty in raising from £80,000 and upwards. My idea was to pay the safe conduct for General Gordon and his garrison (in fact for all his people at Khartoum) from Khartoum to Cairo, a certain sum to be paid to the chief of each tribe, the amount to be in proportion to the extent of territory over which the safe pass would be given. I saw many members of the House of Commons and other influential persons, but after discussion, though my plan was approved by many, it was waived in favour of the Volunteer Expedition, to which I promised to transfer the £100 I should have subscribed to the “safe conduct” scheme.
But the Government negatived decidedly the Volunteer movement, and my plan had fallen through. It was with much regret that I returned here, having after much anxiety and trouble effected nothing of that on which my heart was set.
If I had known you were in London I would have ventured to have called on you. I have a strong personal regard for General Gordon, and with many members of his family I am on terms of friendship. Now, I am perplexed whether to wish you success in your application to the Premier—if it would save General Gordon I would pray for it—but if you should be frustrating plans for his safety I could not. I write to you freely though a stranger, and I hope you will forgive me, but the one great interest which I think we both have in common, General Gordon, will plead my excuse.
Believe me, dear Sir, yours faithfully, ELIZABETH SURTEES-ALLNATT.
MR. BLUNT TO MRS. ALLNATT
Crabbet Park, _Dec._ 29, 1884.
MY DEAR MADAM,
I am sorry that I did not know of your plans for rescuing General Gordon by peaceful means last year, as your support and that of friends so liberal and sincere in their efforts would have given great weight to my plea with Mr. Gladstone, and might perhaps have turned the scale with him in favour of negociation. This course would, I am convinced, have been an infinitely surer and better one than that of war which our Government have chosen.
My point of view in the matter is of course rather a different one from yours, for you look only to General Gordon’s safety, whereas I look also, and indeed primarily, to the well-being of the Nile populations; but I see no reason that our efforts should not even now be made in common.
From all the accounts I receive, Lord Wolseley’s expedition will meet with determined opposition, and it is quite possible that it may be several months yet on the road—in which case the time will shortly come when necessity will compel the Government, if they would not fail altogether in their object of saving Gordon’s life, to have recourse to our ideas if not to our help. My principal fear indeed is that, going to work through ignorance of the conditions before them in a blundering way, their attempts to treat will be so protracted that Khartoum will in the interval have fallen. I will not, however, be a prophet of evil, only I would urge you not to relax your efforts. Any independent appeal made just now to Mr. Gladstone would, I believe, have at least this good effect, that it would force on his attention the daily increasing gravity of Gordon’s situation.
Very faithfully yours, WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT.
MRS. SURTEES-ALLNATT TO MR. BLUNT
134, St. Owens, Hereford, _Febry._ 17, 1885.
MY DEAR SIR,
I thank you for your letter just received. I have given up (as you see) all hope of the precious life having been saved. But how cruel has been the martyrdom of his, during weeks and months, owing to the Government, of which one cannot speak with aught but the greatest contempt and indignation. Knowing the faith of the devoted Christian soldier, I have the hope or rather the consolation of thinking that as he was deserted by man so his God was nearer to him day by day.
I go tomorrow (Wednesday) till Saturday to Mr. Egmont Hake, the Biographer of “Chinese Gordon.” I should like very much to talk over one or two matters with you now, respecting the recovery of his bible and journal, etc., and also of the proposed additional expedition. Is it not madness to send one of the Khedive’s sons as Governor General of the Soudan? I thought the Egyptians were hated by the poor Soudanese.
Unhappy land! What will be the outcome of all this? God, who created the world out of chaos, can bring order out of the Egyptian confusion.
Believe me, My dear Sir, Yrs. sincerely, ELIZABETH SURTEES-ALLNATT.
MRS. SURTEES-ALLNATT TO MR. BLUNT
38, Montpellier Terrace, Cheltenham, _Feb._ 21, 1885.
MY DEAR SIR,
I am staying here till Wednesday, when I shall D.V. return to Hereford, where I shall anxiously await the result of your kind effort to procure for me the bible of dear General Gordon.
In the train to-day I read in the papers, with dismay, the reply of the Government to the questions respecting the important and precious records of Khartoum kept by its devoted Defender. They decline to say what course they will take regarding them. I have just written to Sir Henry Gordon most earnestly beseeching him, out of regard to his brother’s memory, to apply for the possession of the journal, 6 volumes, on their arrival. One dreads such important and deeply interesting records getting into the hands of men so unscrupulous as those comprising the present Government. The papers would probably be cruelly mutilated before leaving their hands, if there were aught in them that would condemn those who sacrificed their devoted Envoy to paltry party devices.
I am my dear Sir, Yrs. sincerely, ELIZABETH SURTEES-ALLNATT.
EXTRACT FROM EDITH, LADY LYTTON’S DIARY
_June_ 7, Simla, 1880.—In the evening, while we were at dinner under the Shemiana on the lawn, Lord William [Beresford] arrived, having left Lord Ripon at Umballa and come on very quickly to reach us for our last evening. He says the heat has been tremendous and worse than he has ever felt it, and he and Major White had to put ice on their heads one night, expecting every minute to succumb. But Lord Ripon and party have not complained or been ill. Lord William told us about Colonel Gordon being so odd; he says the world is not big enough for him, and that there is no king or country big enough. He hit Lord William on the shoulder, saying, “Yes, that is flesh, that is what I hate, and what makes me wish to die.” He resigned the Private Secretaryship, to the Viceroy’s great inconvenience, because he was asked to answer an address at Bombay saying that Lord Ripon had read it with interest and would write again at some time, and he said: “You know perfectly that Lord Ripon has never read it, and will not write, and I can’t say those sort of things, so I shall resign, and you take in my resignation.” Colonel Gordon received a telegram from China asking him to go and fight the Russians there, so he has gone off to do so, and his last word to Lord William was, “Everyone will say I am mad, but you say I am not.”
COLONEL LOUIS A. GORDON TO MR. BLUNT
Carpenters, Horsham, Sussex, _Sept._ 4, 1911.
DEAR MR. BLUNT,
I am glad to see that you, in your new book “Gordon at Khartoum,” are undertaking the vindication of my uncle’s memory against an attack on it, which Lord Cromer thought fit to make in his “Modern Egypt” so many years after the death of General Gordon and my father Sir Henry Gordon. I know that nothing that Lord Cromer could write would in the least affect General Gordon’s memory; but the remarks he makes leave a nasty taste in the mouth and it is very desirable that they should be responded to in detail.
In “Modern Egypt,” page 43, Vol. I, I observe a note which affects my father, Sir Henry Gordon; Lord Cromer says: “At the instance however, of General Gordon’s friends and family, a good deal of violent and very foolish abuse of Lord Granville—and if I remember rightly, of others—was omitted. It is in my opinion to be regretted that this was done. The publication of the Journal, as it was originally written, would have enabled the public to judge more accurately of the value of General Gordon’s criticisms, than was possible when only an expurgated edition was issued.” This contains an accusation of tampering with the Journals which the facts do not warrant.
As far as Sir Henry Gordon is concerned, expurgation of the kind referred to by Lord Cromer was certainly not authorised. In his “Description of the Journals,” page lxv, my father says: “I have arranged . . . for their issue in a very nearly entire state, only some 6 or 7 pages being omitted which contain, in my opinion, no matter of public interest; while with regard to names those who are well acquainted with the affairs of Egypt can fill in the blanks without difficulty.” That no fraud has been exercised on the public in the matter, and that the public has not been deprived of the opportunity of reading the Journals in full, is sufficiently plain by the fact that the Journals were deposited by my family in the British Museum plain for all folk to see; so that anyone, caring to do so, can satisfy himself on the subject.
Yrs. sincerely,