readenglishbook.com » Other » Eminent Victorians, Lytton Strachey [books to improve english TXT] 📗

Book online «Eminent Victorians, Lytton Strachey [books to improve english TXT] 📗». Author Lytton Strachey



1 ... 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99
Go to page:
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 The Standard Ebooks logo.

Eminent Victorians
was published in 1918 by
Lytton Strachey.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Alex Cabal,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2000 by
Martin Adamson
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at
Google Books.

The cover page is adapted from
Henry Edward Manning,
a painting completed in 1882 by
George Frederic Watts.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
September 11, 2018, 11:58 p.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/lytton-strachey/eminent-victorians.

The volunteer-driven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org.

Uncopyright

May you do good and not evil.
May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.
May you share freely, never taking more than you give.

Copyright pages exist to tell you can’t do something. Unlike them, this Uncopyright page exists to tell you, among other things, that the writing and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the U.S. public domain. The U.S. public domain represents our collective cultural heritage, and items in it are free for anyone in the U.S. to do almost anything at all with, without having to get permission. Public domain items are free of copyright restrictions.

Copyright laws are different around the world. If you’re not located in the U.S., check with your local laws before using this ebook.

Non-authorship activities performed on public domain items⁠—so-called “sweat of the brow” work⁠—don’t create a new copyright. That means nobody can claim a new copyright on a public domain item for, among other things, work like digitization, markup, or typography. Regardless, to dispel any possible doubt on the copyright status of this ebook, Standard Ebooks L3C, its contributors, and the contributors to this ebook release this ebook under the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, thus dedicating to the worldwide public domain all of the work they’ve done on this ebook, including but not limited to metadata, the titlepage, imprint, colophon, this Uncopyright, and any

1 ... 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99
Go to page:

Free e-book «Eminent Victorians, Lytton Strachey [books to improve english TXT] 📗» - read online now

Comments (0)

There are no comments yet. You can be the first!
Add a comment