Eminent Victorians - Lytton Strachey (essential books to read TXT) 📗

honour would be irreparably tarnished if the Mahdi were left in the peaceful possession of Khartoum, and that the Expeditionary Force should be at once employed to chastise the false prophet and to conquer the Sudan. But it was in vain that the imperialists clamoured; in vain that Lord Wolseley wrote several dispatches, proving over and over again that to leave the Mahdi unconquered must involve the ruin of Egypt; in vain that Lord Hartington at last discovered that he had come to the same conclusion. The old man stood firm. Just then, a crisis with Russia on the Afghan frontier supervened; and Mr. Gladstone, pointing out that every available soldier might be wanted at any moment for a European war, withdrew Lord Wolseley and his army from Egypt. The Russian crisis disappeared. The Mahdi remained supreme lord of the Sudan.

And yet it was not with the Mahdi that the future lay. Before six months were out, in the plenitude of his power, he died, and the Khalifa Abdullahi reigned in his stead. The future lay with Major Kitchener and his Maxim-Nordenfeldt guns. Thirteen years later the Mahdi’s empire was abolished forever in the gigantic hecatomb of Omdurman; after which it was thought proper that a religious ceremony in honour of General Gordon should be held at the palace at Khartoum. The service was conducted by four chaplains⁠—of the Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Methodist persuasions⁠—and concluded with a performance of “Abide with Me”⁠—the General’s favourite hymn⁠—by a select company of Sudanese buglers. Everyone agreed that General Gordon had been avenged at last. Who could doubt it? General Gordon himself, possibly, fluttering, in some remote Nirvana, the pages of a phantasmal Bible, might have ventured on a satirical remark. But General Gordon had always been a contradictious person⁠—even a little off his head, perhaps, though a hero; and besides, he was no longer there to contradict⁠ ⁠… At any rate, it had all ended very happily⁠—in a glorious slaughter of 20,000 Arabs, a vast addition to the British Empire, and a step in the Peerage for Sir Evelyn Baring.

Bibliography

General Gordon.

Reflections in Palestine.

Letters.

Khartoum Journals.

E. Hake. The Story of Chinese Gordon.

H. W. Gordon. Events in the Life of C. G. Gordon.

D. C. Boulger. Life of General Gordon.

Sir W. Butler. General Gordon.

Rev. R. H. Barnes and C. E. Brown. Charles George Gordon: A Sketch.

A. Bioves. Un Grand Aventurier.

Li Hung Chang. Memoirs.2

Colonel Chaille-Long. My Life in Four Continents.

Lord Cromer. Modern Egypt.

Sir R. Wingate. Mahdiism and the Sudan.

Sir R. Slatin. Fire and Sword in the Sudan.

J. Ohrwalder. Ten Years of Captivity in the Mahdi’s Camp.

C. Neufeld. A Prisoner of the Khaleefa.

Wilfrid Blunt.

A Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt.

Gordon at Khartoum.

Winston Churchill. The River War.

F. Power. Letters from Khartoum.

Lord Morley. Life of Gladstone.

George W. Smalley. Mr. Gladstone. Harper’s Magazine, 1898.

B. Holland. Life of the Eighth Duke of Devonshire.

Lord Fitzmaurice. Life of the Second Earl Granville.

S. Gwynn and Gertrude Tuckwell. Life of Sir Charles Dilke.

Arthur Rimbaud. Lettres.

G. F. Steevens. With Kitchener to Khartoum.

Endnotes

“The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is everyone that is born of the Spirit.” ↩

The authenticity of the diary contained in this book has been disputed, notably by Mr. J. O. P. Bland in his Li Hung Chang. (Constable, 1917.) ↩

Colophon

Eminent Victorians
was published in 1918 by
Lytton Strachey.

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