GORDON, Charles George, letters, autographs, documents, manuscripts



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GORDON, Charles George (1833-1885). Army officer, killed at Khartoum.
Conclusion of an Autograph Letter Signed to his sister Augusta (signed 'your affect[ionate] brother C.G. Gordon'), ½-page 8vo, no date. Together with an Autograph Letter Signed by Gordon's sister [to the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette], 3 pages 8vo on black-edged paper, 5 Rockstone Place, Southampton, 23 January 1884.

Gordon claims to 'have written to all the family'.

In her letter to Stead Augusta Gordon thanks him for sending her a copy of the Pall Mall Gazette for 22 January 1884, which included a continuation of his interview with Gordon regarding the government's policy in the Sudan ('... I have read it with interest though he would not have looked at it I know - he told me how he had impressed on you there should be "no gilt"! Your report made a great stir in the land. My Brother said a shot had been fired. ...'). She also asks him to send her a few more copies, and to remember her 'should any further accounts at any time be published'.

Paying no heed to Gordon's reported request for 'no gilt', Stead and his colleagues in the press succeeded in pressurising Gladstone's cabinet to send Gordon on his fateful mission to the Sudan.

'In boyhood [Gordon] had developed a warm intimacy with this sister [Augusta], twelve years his senior; his trust in her was not only enduring but exclusive' (ODNB). She published his letters to her in 1888.

Stead was to lose his life in the sinking of the Titanic (15 April 1912).
[No: 26331]

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