The Life of Gordon, Volume IBoulger, Demetrius Charles
History
The Life of Gordon, Volume I
Boulger, Demetrius Charles
Generals -- Great Britain -- Biography; Gordon, Charles George, 1833-1885
"Our readers, without exception, will learn with regret of the
departure of Lieut.-Colonel Gordon, R.E., C.B., from the town in
which he has resided for six years, gaining a name by the most
exquisite charity that will long be remembered. Nor will he be
less missed than remembered in the lowly walks of life, by the
bestowal of gifts, by attendance and administration on the sick
and dying, by the kindly giving of advice, by attendance at the
Ragged School, Workhouse, and Infirmary--in fact, by general and
continued beneficence to the poor, he has been so unwearied in
well-doing that his departure will be felt by many as a personal
calamity. There are those who even now are reaping the rewards of
his kindness. His charity was essentially charity, and had its
root in deep philanthropic feeling and goodness of heart,
shunning the light of publicity, but coming even as the rain in
the night-time, that in the morning is noted not, but only the
flowers bloom, and give a greater fragrance.... All will wish him
well in his new sphere, and we have less hesitation in penning
these lines from the fact that laudatory notice will confer but
little pleasure upon him who gave with the heart and cared not
for commendation."
Gordon left for Galatz on 1st October 1871. He had visited and
described it fourteen or fifteen years before, and he found little or
no change there. The special task intrusted to the Commission of which
he was a member was to keep open by constant and vigilant dredging the
mouth of the Sulina branch of the Danube. He discovered very soon that
the duties were light and monotonous, and in the depressing
atmosphere--social and political as well as climatic--of the Lower
Danube, he pined more than ever for bracing work, and for some task
about which he could feel in earnest. The same conclusion seems to
have forced itself upon his mind at the beginning and at the end of
his stay at Galatz. In one of his first letters he exclaims: "How I
like England when I am out of it! There is no place in the world like
it!" In another letter, written on the very day of his departure home,
he wrote: "Tell S. to thank God that he was born an Englishman."
Gordon was always intensely patriotic. His patriotism partook of the
same deep and fervid character as his religion, and these and many
other little messages in his private correspondence furnish striking
evidence to the fact.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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