The Rest Is History - 141. General Gordon: The Ultimate Victorian Hero

Episode Date: January 24, 2022

Who was General Gordon?  Tune in to hear about the life and times of the 'emblematic martyr of the Victorian age'. Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Alas, now o'er the civilised world there hangs a gloom For brave General Gordon that was killed in Khartoum He was a Christian hero and a soldier of the cross And to England his death will be a very great loss He was very cool in temper, generous and brave, the friend of the poor, the sick and the slave. And many a poor boy he did educate and laboured hard to do so early

and late. The inimitable poetic style of friend of the show William McGonagall, whose great masterpiece on the disaster of the the Tay Bridge we've already featured on The Restless History in our 12 Days of Christmas episode and Dominic the death of General Gordon the archetypal Victorian hero at Khartoum in Sudan on the 26th of January 1885 was seen as a disaster fit to rank with the Tay Bridge disaster wasn't it? Oh a far greater disaster than the Tay Bridge disaster Tom. The death of Gordon at Khartoum is one of the absolute emblematic moments of the Victorian era. It's an extraordinary shock to Victorian Britain. It's one of the Victorian era. It's an extraordinary shock to Victorian Britain. It's one of the great media events of the Victorian age.

And General Gordon is one of the absolute kind of emblematic martyrs of the British Empire. One of the most famous men in the world, I would say, at the point that he died. So fascinating you say that because we've got a question from Stefan Jensen, another friend of the show show who's always popping up with his questions i think he's been in abeyance recently but he's back and he says who on earth is general charles george gordon what a thing to say stephan what a thing to say well but i mean i i'll be honest i mean i have a

kind of vague sense of him standing at the top of some steps with people with spears getting ready to spit in the kind of famous archetypal image. But apart from that, I didn't really know a huge amount about him. But having. Well, basically, this week I've gone down General Gordon shape rabbit hole. I mean, they're really, really it is a brilliant topic. And one of the things that is brilliant about Gordon is precisely what has happened to his subsequent reputation. So someone who was so famous is now not a name to play with by and large, but also Victorian hero, the archetype of a Christian Victorian hero,

but then subsequently gets kind of skewered by Lytton Strachey in his famous, kind of famously feline book volume of biographies of eminent Victorians. So what is it? It's Dr. Arnold Florence Nightingale and Cardinal Newman. One of the Cardinals. Yeah. So the question of how we're to understand Gordon, I mean, it kind of bleeds into the broader topic of how are we to understand the British Empire? All those, I mean, very kind of hot button issue.

Yeah. And it kind of also feeds into the broader theme, which is the question of how reputations over the course of history have evolved. How some people go up, some people go do down and we are going to be talking about that live are we not oh yeah that's a very nice link tom we're doing a live show aren't we about reputations for rest is history club members now maybe not everybody listening to this will know about the rest is history club i may have some new listeners. Yeah, but we may have new listeners, Tom, who are attracted by the subject of General Gordon. Yes, we will. And, you know, we can open up to them the great vista of the Rest Is History Club.

So this is a club that you sign up to. Costs next to nothing, I would say. Next to nothing. Restishistorypod.com. And you get basically all the episodes without adverts. You get access to archive without adverts. You get – you can run this splendid thing called the Discord chat

where people chat about history. You get live streams with us and all kinds of goodies. I can't remember what the other goodies are, but I seem to remember they're absolutely tremendous. Well, the particular goody that we're talking about in this context is a live event on the question of reputation in history. That's this Wednesday, the 26th of January at eight o'clock London time. And I'll tell you something else that you get if you become a club member, is that if you bump into me, as two people did this morning at a conference,

and you are club members, you get a shout-out. So I'm going to give a shout-out to James Farrow, who is a friend of the show, club member, and Ernie Wakeford, who is 13. Oh, that's nice. And a club member. So that's splendid, isn't it? Was this a hedgehog-saving conference? And Stonehenge time opposing.

Oh, very good. All your causes wrapped into one. Absolutely. So we should get back to General Gordon. Yes. Okay. So Stefan's question, who on earth is General Charles George Gordon? Dominic, do you want to give a kind of very brief resume of his career?

Golly, well, if you were giving a very brief resume, you would say this. Just a very brief one he's born in 1833 he dies in 1885 uh gordon is the in some ways for the british the ultimate imperial hero he um sees action in this huge range of extraordinary places in the crimean war in china he's present at the burning of the summer palace by brit's present at the burning of the Summer Palace by British troops at the end of the Second Opium War. He then commands a small kind of almost paramilitary unit called the Ever Victorious Army in China fighting against the Taiping Rebellion, which is this kind of this massive and incredibly

kind of bloody war involving a kind of heavenly cult, which Gordon helps to defeat. He goes to the Balkans. He goes to the Sudan. Then he has lots of other kind of adventures. And then he ends up going back to the Sudan in 1884. The Sudan is wracked with war and rebellion. And with this kind of jihadi group

led by a fellow called the Mahdi, who thinks he's kind of a prophet, a chosen one, paving the way for the advent of, I think it's the advent of Jesus, is it, Tom? It is, yeah. The return of Jesus. And Gordon ends up trapped in Khartoum,

in the capital of the Sudan, with the eyes of the world on him, and the Mahdi's army closing in. The British are desperate, finally, to rescue him, but do they get there in time? Well, we shouldn't give the end away, but basically there's a very dramatic denouement. And then after the story ends,

Gordon becomes the story ends Gordon becomes the and I don't think icon is the wrong word I think icon is absolutely the right word because he's a real the key thing about Gordon apart from all this amazing Imperial adventure story is he's a religious figure he sees himself as a religious figure he his apps

you know he he thinks about religion every minute of every day and the religious side of him is has fascinated people ever since yeah so that second verse by mcgonigal it highlights the the ambivalences in his life and in his reputation so he was very cool in temper generous and brave the friend of the of the poor, the sick and the slave. And a key part of what he's doing in the Sudan is that he is fighting slavery. He is trying to abolish the slave trade. And this is something that he comes across very early in his career because he gets seconded to Armenia, which is on the kind of frontiers of the Ottoman Empire. And he sees there for himself the slave trading, the obtaining of slaves from Armenia that the Ottomans are doing,

getting slaves for Constantinople. And so that is a theme that runs throughout his life. And it's part of what's going on when he goes back to Khartoum. So he is kind of emblematically a figure who fights the slave trade. He is a liberal. He's the ultimate liberal imperialist. And actually, the funny thing about him is as imperial heroes go, you were saying about his reputation dipping. But he's one of the, in some ways, I would say one of the least likely to be cast.

Absolutely. And I think we will come to this. But there is then the second, the other last three or four lines and many a poor boy he did educate and labored hard to do so early and late and this is what listen strachey fixes on in his biography it's what richard davenport hines in um a recent biography of him but kind of very short biographical sketch, describes him as a creep. Gordon never marries. He is notoriously, he gets kind of,

he's very awkward with women. Yeah. But he does devote himself when he is in charge of the artillery at Gravesend in Kent. He devotes a lot of his time to charitable works and particularly working with raggedy boys, boys who are starving, urchins. He lets them into his garden. He helps with their education. He provides places on ships. He follows their careers with great interest.

And of course, this is seen as a work of great Christian philanthropy. But for Lytton Strachey and for Richard Davenport Hines, it's seen as something altogether more sinister and suspicious. And so that also is a part of the complexity of his reputation, isn't it? And on top of that, there is a kind of rumour that he was an alcoholic. So his life is very contested. And I think that everything that makes the Victorians contested is kind of summed up by his career. And you suggested this and I thought, I don't know about that. But having, I mean, honestly, it's a brilliant topic,

and I completely commend you for it. Well, before we get into the sort of narrative of it, Tom, there's a bit of a Hall of Mirrors side of kind of Gordon's career, isn't there? Because if you read, there are lots of biographies. If you read three different biographies, they will give you three different, three subtly different accounts of his life and motivations. It's actually very hard to get to a true picture of gordon i think because

it depends so much on what weight you put on different people's statements about him on statements of his own and it also i think so that you talk about lit and straight in eminent victorians i mean i think so much of that portrait of of Gordon is kind of self-projection actually and I think it you know as we'll see with the sort of the helping the poor boys you know a lot of your interpretation of Gordon is on what you're bringing you're bringing to the table I think in your expectations anyway well and I think that it it also and it may not surprise you to hear me say this i think it depends on how seriously you take gordon's christianity yeah and and whether you think that gordon's christianity is a kind of screen for predatory sexuality or all kinds of things or whether you think that he is sincere and yeah it's sincere yeah so we can perhaps discuss that

as we go as we go so we will build up um to the huge melodrama of the siege of khartoum and the fall of khartoum and the battle with the mardi and stuff but maybe we should go into him gordon and his career first to give people a sort of sense of the of the background so he's the son of a lieutenant colonel in the royal artillery he's born in 1833 in woolwich he's brought up in a part of his childhood tom in a place you know very well in corfu in corfu yeah yeah so he probably played cricket in corfu i imagine as you have well and he then he gets sent to um a school in taunton and the um the playing fields of this um school are now the cricket ground of somerset county cricket club oh that's always nice there's definitely a cricket link there and um gordon wasn't was a keen cricketer well i'm glad i'm glad for you that

this has happened because i did suggest this and uh I know you were a little bit suspicious at first, but it's got Christianity and cricket. So basically I could have designed it. And Dominic. It's got eunuchs. Yes, it has. Because he made this fame, you know, talking about his boyhood. He was quite a naughty boy, wasn't he? He was a prankster.

He's a prankster. He goes to the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich. So he's ran thester he's a prankster he goes to the royal military academy um in woolwich so he's ran but the arsenal that gives its name to the football club um signs up to the royal engineers um but while he's there he he seems to have started to have kind of religious promptings yeah and he famously said later on in that that at the age of 14 i wished i were an eunuch yeah that's uh it's an unusual see i i get this is the first example i think of something that where it's very hard to know how to interpret that did he genuinely wish he were a eunuch is he making a remark about you know he was struggling with kind of what he would see as sinful, lascivious longings.

You know, because obviously he's going through puberty at 14. What what what how much weight do you I mean, it's impossible to know, isn't it, Tom? Well, I think I think he clearly has kind of religious promptings that that they're they're not dominating his life at this point but they're clearly there and i would guess the likeliest explanation would be that he is feeling urges to do things that are against you know christian teaching whatever that is like you know having extramarital sex or whatever or yeah who knows gay sex i mean who knows um but then he gets uh he qualifies doesn't he and gets posted to uh to pembroke yeah um to to be an engineer at the docks and there he is born again he is he's born again i i seem to get

the impression he's born again multiple times in his, or he goes through periods of intense religious awakening. This is the first. He meets a man called Captain Drew, I think, who's an Irish Protestant who sort of seems to semi-convert him. And it's the Protestant quality of it that is key because it's this idea of the spirit descending, of Gordon feeling a sense of personal redemption. And in due course, he will have the sense that he's born into Christ. And I think everything about his life suggests he takes this completely seriously. Yeah. So when Little Strachey and Eminent Victorians portrayed him as a hypocrite and a charlatan, I think that is utterly, utterly wrong. everything about his life suggests he takes this completely seriously yeah so when little

strachey and eminent victorians portrayed him as a hypocrite and a charlatan i think that is utterly utterly wrong because everything we know about gordon suggests that he is completely serious about this and it matters enormously this amazing um comment on him by by someone who knew him a friend that he is without the three strongest passions which make men good or bad, the love of money, the love of fame, and the love of women. And, you know, those are kind of amazing.

You know, it will be a theme throughout his career that he is utterly contemptuous of money. And whenever he's offered the salary for, you know, as leading men in China or Sudan or wherever, he rejects it. And he shares the money out among people who need it more. as leading men in China or Sudan or wherever, he rejects it. And he shares the money out among people who need it more. The love of fame, I mean, again, this has a kind of,

you might think that someone who ends up the most famous man in the world, this would be a ludicrous thing to say. But again, so when he's in the Sudan the first time, he has a kind of deputy who he sends out to go and find a lake so that he won't have the glory of winning it. And he gets, for his work on the frontier in Armenia, he gets elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. And then he turns it down because he feels that this will raise his profile too high. So again, I think that you can see that this is a genuine instinct. And so the love of women, I mean, Lytton Strachey assumes that he's gay,

which as you say, may well be a reflection more of Lytton Strachey who was gay than Gordon because it actually does seem that Gordon's shyness is around women. Yes, he's incredibly shy around women, except for his sister, who he... He's got an older sister, I think, that he confides in. But the attempt to control his sexual needs

are focused on women. Yeah, I think that's right. It's cod psychology, isn't it? I think it's pure speculation, the idea that he's gay. And it goes hand in hand with all this stuff about the boys, but just because you are kind to small boys and educate them and are charitable it doesn't mean that you necessarily have sinister motives we should say that he's kind to small girls as well and he's he's he's very kind to um to the elderly too yeah he's just an he's he is it's a really interesting thing

because of course now our instincts when confronted with victorian philanthropy um the sort of the cultural sort of expectation now is that it will be exposed as mere hypocrisy and it's all a cover for something else but in gordon's case i think there's every reason to think it is absolutely heartfelt and genuine you know he doesn't do it for fame he doesn't do it for attention um the thing about his sort of sexuality that i think we can say is that he does have clearly some he's one of these people who has a sense of this is disgust too strong this this sense of revulsion from his own body he talks later on about how he hence about the eunuch thing how he thinks the body is a mere sheath for your soul uh that will be discarded later on and he has this is a kind of but this is theologically bred as well so again the question of whether so that's a heretical it's

kind of gnosticism isn't it it is it's verging on gnosticism the idea that the body itself is corrupt i mean that's not what conventional Christianity teaches. But he does hold to that because he's essentially self-educated as a Christian. And so he reads the Bible over and over again. I mean, he has an incredibly rich knowledge of scripture, but it leads him into kind of some faintly heterodox opinions. And so the question then is, well, does he arrive at the heterodox opinions because he's prompted by his sexuality to do that or vice versa? And I suppose we live in a post Freudian age where our instinct is always to assume that one's belief in scriptural theology is determined by one's sexuality. But I think that it's possible to overdo that. Yeah, I think what we can say though tom is that um when he

meets people particularly later in his life i mean they meet him and they're like oh you're chinese gordon you're the fellow who commanded the ever victorious army this great adventure and and then he just starts banging onto them about about um his kind of heretical ideas and lots of people at the time not just subsequently lots of kind of senior military people and administrators they think he's completely mad. Yeah. And this is one of the fascinating things about him, that even at the time people say, well, he's brilliant and he's a genius and he's incredibly brave and has complete integrity,

but he's also a lunatic. Well, or a saint. Yes. And so the margins between lunacy and saintliness, even in the Victorian period, are quite fine. So anyway, so that's a kind of general i guess kind of scan of of um gordon's psychology we've we've dealt with that in five minutes um but before we come to the break why don't we just um get him to china okay because it's in china

that he first becomes famous. So his first big thing is when he's in his early 20s, he gets sent to the Crimea. And there he makes a name for himself. He's very brave. He actually says later on, oh, I'd hoped to be killed when I was... I mean, it's hard to know how much this is true of him in the Crimea and the Crimean War.

But again, and so Strachey kind of casts that as a death wish yeah but again you can see that as bread of his understanding of theology yeah because he thinks being it's the gateway to heaven yeah doesn't he so so garlett woolsey who he meets who's a um also in the crimean war young irishman who will go on to become um a very very eminent general and in fact the man who leads the expedition to become a very, very eminent general. And in fact, the man who leads the expedition to try and rescue Gordon in 1885. And he says that life to Gordon was but a pilgrim's progress between the years of early manhood

and the heaven he now dwells in, the home he always longed for. So I think it's perfectly possible to see Gordon's bravery and his willingness to court death as an expression of his conviction that when he dies, he will be joined with the saviour. Yeah, I think that's fair enough. see Gordon's bravery and his willingness to court death as an expression of his conviction that when he dies, he will be joined with the saviour. Yeah, I think that's fair enough. So anyway,

he goes to the Crimea and there he kind of does this. He's a great surveyor and a kind of engineer, basically. So he will kind of crawl out of the trench and crawl close to the Russian trenches and sketch their forts. And he's brilliant at that. I mean, he's a brilliant kind of sketcher of enemy positions and so on. Physically, he's a brilliant kind of sketcher of enemy positions and so on. Physically, he's not a kind of strapping person by any means. He's quite slight. He's great. He's quite nondescript,

except for these, people talk about these piercing kind of grey-blue eyes and people are struck by them even at the time. In the Crimea, he picks up his one big vice, which is cigarette smoking. Yeah, I didn't realize that cigarettes... No, neither of us knew this, Tom. ...were introduced at the Crimean War.

Yes, we've both learned something from doing this podcast. So yeah, the cigarette smoking became a big thing with the Crimean War. He becomes a complete addict. You know, he's a chain smoker. So he's distinguished himself in the Crimea as a surveyor and as a kind of engineer. And he's then sent to the Danube as a surveyor and as a kind of engineer. And he's then sent to the Danube as a surveyor to kind of help sketch out the frontier between the Ottoman and Russian empires, the new frontier at the end of the Crimean War.

Then, as you say, he's sent to Armenia where he slides down Mount Ararat. Did you see that? Mount Ararat. And sort of slides down it. I mean, that perfectly captures the man, doesn't it? Because it's a combination of kind of religiosity and demented adventuring. But also Ararat is the mountain on which Noah's Ark is meant to have landed.

But Gordon doubts that. So this will also become a theme. He knows better. Yes, exactly. He's a great man for discovering biblical locations, isn't he? As we will find out. As we will find out. As we will find out. And then, so he has all these sort of adventures.

He goes and meets Kurdish villagers and he goes to Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia and so on. And then in the autumn of 1860, he goes to China. And China is in the throes of the most extraordinary convulsion. Well, Dominic, let's take a quick break here. So, and when we come back, tell us what the great convulsion that's going on when Gordon arrives in China, what it is. We'll see you in a few minutes. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q& q a we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works

we have just launched our members club if you want ad-free listening bonus episodes and early access to live tickets head to the rest of the entertainment.com that's the rest is entertainment.com hello welcome back we are talking gordon of khartoum but before he became gordon of khartoum he was known as chinese gordon and dominic i interrupted you by going to a break um you were telling us what the convulsion was that uh china was afflicted by when he arrives so china is a bit of a basket case in the 19th century um it's involved in two different wars at once at this point one is the second opium war so basically the british and the french are trying to open up china and seize kind of treaty ports and so they can flog them drugs so they can yes we can we can sell the drugs. And that's going to culminate in the burning of the Winter Palace in Beijing, at which...

That's 1858. In which Gordon is present, along with Sir Harry Flashman, who meets him at the end of the book, Flashman and the Dragon. Would you know, this whole way through, I've been thinking that Gordon is a kind of upstanding Flashman. He is. Because he goes everywhere, doesn't he? Yeah, he has that same kind of trajectory where he just keeps popping up in these strange places.

But he very strongly disapproves of the burning of... He doesn't approve of it at all. And actually, in the flashman book, he's there as a sort of pale eyewitness. He just comes in briefly. But you're right. He doesn't really approve of this. And he disapproves of the French looting. Yeah, the looting, which is shocking.

Doesn't like looting. Yeah. So all these kind of things that people now hold against the British Empire. So the idea of looting stuff. You know, we hear a lot back with reference to British museums holding imperial loot. This isn't entirely a 21st century perspective. Gordon had that perspective as well. i mean snowflakes like gordon were complaining in there sorry to tell me you walked

into that one right um but that's not really the big story or extraordinary as it may seem the big story is the typing rebellion which is more your kind of thing tom because it's mad christianity it is do you want to tell us about the Taiping Rebellion? So the Taiping Rebellion is, I mean, carnage. A guy called Hong Siu Kwan, I hope I pronounced that. That was beautifully done. Some approximation to how it should be pronounced, essentially decides that he's the younger brother of Jesus. And for very complicated reasons that I would need to spend

more time in the Bodleian studying, basically the whole of China goes insane and agrees with him. And the Taipings, as they're called, the Qing dynasty is absolutely up against it because of the Opium Wars and general kind of disitude. The Taiping Rebellion is a murderous, horrific, bloodthirsty process of civil war. But it's also a kind of religious crusade, isn't it? Kind of. And so a lot of people in Britain think that it's Protestantism coming to China. And so there's quite a lot of enthusiasm in Britain for the Taipings, despite the fact that they're basically murderous. Well, could you not see, Tom,

could you not see the Taiping Rebellion and the creation of the Mardist kind of state in Sudan? They're both places where Christianity and westernization and modernization and imperialism have arrived with a great shock in the kind of yeah mid-victorian period and kind of traditional structures have been splintered and these are ways of trying to to react well and and you know who pointed that out was actually strachey so little strachey drew the analogy between um hong shu kwan and and the mardi I'm disappointed to find that I'm in the same...

They both began as religious reformers, ended as rebel kings. Right, well, I wouldn't have thought of us as similar people, but clearly little than I am. But specifically, the issue and why the British, and specifically Gordon, get sucked into it is that the Taipings are menacing Shanghai. Yeah, and the bankers and merchants there.

European merchants. Basically raise their own little army, the ever-victorious army. Which is a great name for an army, isn't it? It makes it sound absolutely fantastic, but actually it's a really ragtag, shambolic band of kind of mercenaries and drunkards, and it's commanded by this American guy called Frederick Townsend Ward, who does seem to be quite, doesn't he? He wears a frock coat, and I think he's quite a dashing figure uh frederick tanzo ward he meets flashman and fleshman and the dragon um but he's killed

i think and his successor is a french-american adventurer called henry i don't know how to pronounce it bergwein bergevin i don't know anyway he's a complete drunkard um and so they boot him out the the sort of the bankrollers of the ever victorious army it's quite small it's only about 5 or 6 thousand people they boot him out mostly Chinese right yeah a lot of them not all Chinese but yes mostly Chinese

exactly they boot him out and they want somebody else to do it and basically they ask around who's around in China and the British give them Gordon. And it showed that the ever victorious army is probably better known than it should be in some ways because it's quite a small outfit. And the reason they the fact that they give them Gordon tells you it's not that important because Gordon has actually never led an army into battle before. I mean, he's an engineer and a surveyor artillery man isn't he yeah exactly so

he doesn't really know what he's doing but he turns out to be very good at it to be good at commanding well because because there are lots of um rivers and canals and all kinds of stuff and so an ability to draw maps yes which gordon's very good at and they're all sort of steaming up and down rivers and stuff like this but also he's very strict isn't he he's a complete disciplinarian he bans hard liquor and so on and he has his pay cut and he gives it to his troops but he has this extraordinary persona where he so he always goes into battle smoking a cheroot um and he carries a cane unarmed yeah he's exactly he doesn't he goes in unarmed he carries this cane doesn't he

what do they call it his magic baton or something i can't remember what that was so again listen straight she who you know we've said is a bit of a bitch but actually um saying about gordon he seemed to pass through every danger with the scatheless equanimity of a demigod yeah it's a very impressive i mean this is very impressive stuff. It's very cool, isn't it? You know, at one point,

the artillery men mutiny, cause he won't let them loot. And he just, he manages to kind of brazen that out. Which again, is a kind of something that happens throughout his career. Yeah. Is that,

you know, he fixes those gleaming blue eyes and people just crumble. People are always, he's always going into situations where lots of armed men want to kill him and he turns up with his cigar and they and they all just sort of say his love of jesus because it all works his sort of sanctity his it is like a kind of protective kind of veil isn't it do you not think i mean people don't quite know what to

make of him and i think both both the chinese and and in due course um people in the sudan are stunned by his chastity as well so the sense of him as yeah i kind of you know a demigod is straight she's worth that this is someone who is very very unusual and has a kind of almost supernatural quality to him um and that combined with his military evident military talents means that basically within 18 months he's won an absolutely crushing victory yeah typings have all been booted out so the typings are defeated um by the imperial army um the sort of qing army plus the ever victorious army now i think the role of the ever victorious army is probably a bit inflated and that certainly chinese histories don't give the Qing army plus the ever-victorious army. Now, I think the role of the ever-victorious army

is probably a bit inflated, and that certainly Chinese histories don't give it as much weight by any means. Well, but isn't that partly because the Taipings are seen as precursors of the communists? That's right, Tom. That's right. But actually, when you look at the numbers involved, there are hundreds of thousands of men

in various armies in the field. It's implausible that Gordon's little band is a single decisive factor but i do think that he gets this this incredible distinction yes the yellow jacket uh which is only 20 mandarins in the whole of the empire have it yeah and gordon gets given it so the order of the garter isn't it it's the order of the garter of china basically yeah and i think he's the Order of the Garter, isn't it? It's the Order of the Garter of China, basically. Yeah. And I think he's the only non-Chinese person to have it. Yeah. And so I think that that is, you know,

one can take the revisionism too far. Maybe. He was clearly seen by the Chinese themselves as incredibly impressive. And so he's, what, 30 by this point? Yeah, he's about 30, isn't he? And so he's been given this incredible award by the Chinese emperor. He's commanded an army and then he has to go back to England.

And he's unbelievably famous and he hates it. He hates the fame. He hates the celebrity. And what happens to him? He spends the next six years basically repairing forts in Gravesend. And helping out raggedy boys and pensioners. So he sent to Gravesend, which obviously had always been, because of its importance, sort of naval, sort of coastal importance,

had always been very heavily defended. And they basically say to him, go and sort out these forts and modernise the defences and stuff. But he knows as well as everybody else, they're never going to be used else they're never going to be used it's a complete waste of his time um i think they so he gets up early doesn't he has a cold shower yeah then he goes out and does good reads the bible um goes and supervises the fort and then he spends all his afternoons doing good yes and clearly he's a bit the must that there clearly is some point at which he's feeling a bit miserable, that fate has turned against him and doesn't know what to do with himself.

But then he goes to a dinner party. Do you see this? He goes to a dinner party in Greenwich. And as luck would have it, while he's dressing for dinner, his gaze falls on the open pages of the Bible. So he's a man who reads the Bible while dressing for dinner, basically. And he sees the first epistle of St. John,

whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him and he in God. And on seeing this, he's kind of a man transformed. He says, gosh, all I need to do is believe in Jesus as the Son of God. I mean, it's a real evangelicalism, isn't it and it's from that that his feeling philanthropical yeah exercises proceed and he becomes very excited about the philanthropy so in gravesend he sets up this little sort of it's almost like a school isn't it they have they meet twice a week um he teaches all the boys

wangs yeah now that might sound again may uh they raise eyebrows but he calls them boys wangs. Yeah. Now, that might sound... Again, may raise eyebrows. He calls them his wang because in China, a general or a chief was called, a warlord was called a wang. And so he had wangs in his ever-victorious army. So that could be misinterpreted. And the boys, obviously, you can imagine the boys probably think it's hilarious and brilliant that they've been called wangs. And they do have prayers.

They sing hymns. He gives them bread and soup and stuff, and they do their lessons. And then he places them in work. In ships, doesn't he? In ships. So there'll be a ships boy and all this. And he has a big map, as you said at the beginning of the episode. He has this big map as you said at the beginning of the of the episode he has this big map and um every night you know he and his his wangs gather around and they he

gets one of them to to chart where the other boys you know the old boys are on the map i mean i think that's all actually pretty sweet and well i think you've got to take you know do you take this being born again this this sense that god's grace has come upon him seriously or do you not well and in in in in um john is it john pollock yeah john pollock's book gordon the man behind the legend a very kind of admiring biography of gordon he has quite a lot of quotes from the old boys of the Gordon Academy. Yeah. Ex-Wangs who basically say, Gordon changed my life.

You know, I owe him everything. It was wonderful. He was such a great man. You know, all this sort of stuff. So... I mean, he's not Jimmy Savile. Let's put it that way. Well, there's...

Actually, the week that this is going out, so I think... I can't remember whether it's on the day of his birth, 28th of January, or his death, 26th of January. But there's a ceremony at Gravesend in front of the statue of him there. So he's still remembered there. That's nice. Yeah, it is nice, I think.

Anyway, so we're not being cynical about it. No, I'm definitely not cynical about Gordon. I think Gordon is, at this point, you would say... A Christian hero. Well, the philanthropy is incredibly impressive, I think. I mean, I wouldn't do it myself. Because, of course not. I'm far too selfish and lazy.

Of course, you keep the money. But he's being paid quite a lot and he gives it all away. Yeah. As he does throughout his entire life. Do you know what, Dominic? We've spent 40 minutes. We haven't got very far. Well, so Gordon's great phrase, inaction is terrible to me.

So he's been to China. He's been in Grove's End. He's hanging out with the Wangs. Now comes the point where he goes to the country that will really make him famous, which is the Sudan. And so tomorrow we'll come back and we will talk about Gordon's career in the Sudan, the two times that he goes to that country.

If, however, you are a member of the Wrestling History Club, you don't need to wait because you can listen to the whole thing today. Incredible value. So we will see you in 30 seconds if you're a member of the Restless History Club

and we'll see you tomorrow if you're not. We should call them our wangs. I like that. If you're a wang, you can carry on listening. If not, too bad. Bye-bye.

Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.