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William Gordon - son of the 12th Laird of Abergeldie
The Gordons O' Girnoc
Aberdeen Free Press
Tuesday 1st November 1904
By John M. Bulloch
Sir, - your courtesy has enabled me to supplement the articles on the Gordons of Abergeldie, which I contributed to your columns, in the matter of the new correspondence of Sir Charles Gordon, son of the 12th laird, as preserved among the additional MSS, in the British Museum. Perhaps you will permit me to add to my description of his younger brother William, by giving the gist of some remarkably interesting letters preserved in the same invaluable storehouse.
Those epistles, twenty in number, were written between the years 1783 and 1786, to Sir Robert Murray Keith, our brilliant Ambassador at Vienna, whom Gordon and his brother claimed as their 'cousin,' although I cannot quite make out the relationship. They will be found scattered through eight volumes (Add. MSS. 35, 529-35, 535 inclusive, and 35, 537), which were bought by the museum with the famous Hardwicke Papers. Sir Robert was one of those nice old-fashioned gentlemen who destroyed nothing. He left his letters to his only child, who, as Mrs Gillespie Smith, wrote his life, and to whom Gordon paid his respects when she visited London in 1785. Her aunt & guardian, Miss Murray Keith, depoisited the documents for safety with Lord Hardewicke, whose custodianship finally became ownership (as it frequently does); and the nation purchased them a few years ago. That is why Abergeldie brings its pine tree fragrance to musty Bloomsbury.
The letters have all the qualities of the best correspondence. They are full of good gossip, which is never cruel. They breathe the spirit of a man who missed nothing wherever he was, and present vivid sketches of the moment in Germany, Holland, London, Scotland and Ireland. They show that Gordon had a fine sense of gratitude, and his charming reference to his "old father and mother," lonely at Abergeldie, while their sons sought fortune throughout the world, are among their most pleasant qualities. Sir Robert Keith would seem to have made it a 'quid pro quo' with his young protégée that they should keep him posted up in the affairs of the outside world. Thus on returning to London in 1785, after his long tour abroad, young Gordon tells the Ambassador all about the wonderful "Talking Pig" which could spell out the word Nebuchadnezzar (though Gordon mispelt it himself according to the modern method). It was the talk of the town, just as the Thinking Horse is now the wonder of Berlin, from which Gordon wrote his first epistle a hundred and twenty-two years ago. He recounts (partly in German and partly in Greek characters) an unusually salacious story about the Prince of Wales and "our Duchess of the North" (Jane Maxwell), which Lord Campbell's Act (and our latter-day ethics of gossip), prevents my repeating, though the Duchess came out of it in a very favourable light. He describes the military manoeuvres he witnessed. He descants on the politics of the day, even to the struggle between Skene of Skene and Ferguson of Pitfour for the representation of Aberdeenshire, which divided the Duffs and the Tory Gordons into fierce camps. In short, he nearly always found a story to tell the Ambassador, for only once does he play the needy knife-grinder, and that was when he was staying at Abergeldie, when he writes (14th November 1785) that "it is rather a difficult matter to find the subject for a letter in the Highlands of Scotland." All the letters, however, betoken a youth (he was just in the twenties) of remarkably quick perceptions, and present a living picture of his "wanderjahre."
William Gordon was born in 1765, and attended the tertian and magistrand classes at Marischall College, 1778-1780. Immediately after, he entered the army and sailed for America, only to get fever and ague ("my old friends," as he calls them years after), and to find himself a prisoner with his elder brother David, and the rest of Cornwallis's army at Yorktown on the fatal 19th October 1781. Shortly after this he got his company in the 54th Regiment by purchase. I cannot say when he returned: but he seems to have visited Vienna and Sir Robert before the 6th July 1783, the date of his first letter, which is written from Berlin, where he was an honoured guest in John Stepney's house.
We have heard a great deal lately about the ragging of the studious officer. In 1783 the War Office itself seems to have undertaken that role, which is still occasionally played by silly subalterns, for Gordon, like his brother Charles, complains bitterly of the impediments put in his way of learning his profession. "As to my leave of absence," he writes disconsolately on the 12th August 1783 "I am extremely sorry to inform you that the last post brought me letters that (as I was the youngest captain in the regiment, I was reduced to half-pay) which is a rather disagreeable thing for a young man travelling that has no fortune. I have had the greatest injustice done me, otherwise I should have two captains under me." (in the 54th, when he had purchased the company of Captain French, who had re-changed into the 38th.) He applied for redress to General Sir Henry Conway; he appealed for a post under General Boyd, with whom he went with the manoeuvres at Potsdam; he bethought him seriously of Sir John Stepney's advice to go out to the East Indies; and he cites feelingly his brother Charles's dislike of "idleness," though he had advised him not to enter the Russian service, on which he "is very keen at present." At last he resolved to help himself by remaining on the Continent and seeing foreign armies at work. So we find him in February 1784, at Dresden; in August in the camp at Brun; in October at Strasburg, though he threatens "to return to the Highlands to lay by for another time as my finances will not allow me to spend much time in London." But still he stayed abroad, and in February 1785, we find him in Metz, hard at work.
Metz was a favourite rendezvous of the "young British soldier," to use the phrase of Mr Kipling, who has proved such an ostentatiously unacademic Gamaliel to that personage. During Gordon's stay there were eight of them in the garrison, notably his old American friend Captain Robertson of the 77th, son of the laird of Lude: Lord Inverurie, afterwards 6th Earl of Kintore, who was in the Scots Greys; Major Pitcairn, whose father had fallen at Bunker's Hill; and Captain Heron, both of whom tramped about the Continent on foot. The presence of his countrymen made Gordon remember his nationality. "The (French) officers," he writes (25th February 1785) "always plague me by saying - 'Il y a beau d'Anglais,' and upon my telling them there is not but several 'officiers Britannique,' they reply 'c'est egal." The note of criticism and the fact that the commandant did not invite the Scots to dinner, did not deter Gordon from "going over once more a course of military mathematics" with the Professor of the College Royale, during which he supped "at the mess of the artillery captains." The criticism of France remains: but we never look on Metz as a second "Shop."
He travelled home by Coblentz where he was introduced to the Elector. "It is impossible to be more polite than His Royal Highness was." He invited Gordon and Robertson to dinner; but they could not wait, hurrying London-wards by Nimeguen, Utrecht, Amsterdam, the Hague and Rotterdam. At Utrecht, ever eager for information, he learned all about "my namesake Mr Gordon" who was "playing the deuce in Holland. He entered the Stradt Haus of Utrecht the day I was there and obliged the Magistrates to repeal an Act they had proposed the day before" This reference is undoubtedly to Otto Dick Gordon, colonel of the "Pro Patria" Company of the Civic Guards of Utrecht, and lieutenant and Captain of the "Hands and Foot Bowmen." From 1784 to 1787 this Otto took part in the great question between the claims of the Princes of Orange as Hereditary Stadholders and the home rule claims of the provinces and the municipalities. Gordon sided with the latter, and all Holland rang with a song in his praise, beginning "Mynheer Gordon is cen brave kaptan." He is not identified in Mr Ferguson's laborious work on the Scots Brigade in Holland, but the curious will find him treated in the Dutch dictionary of national biography, where it is stated that he was a kinsman of the Dutch poet, Gertrude Gordon, who claims descent from the Letterfourie family, so that he was nearer to young Abergeldie than a mere namesake. (Let me say in parenthesis that the only other Gertrude Gordon I know of is the lady who has descended from poetry to prose by writing a monograph on "L'Appendicite chez l'enfant," published in Paris eight years ago.) Young Abergeldie tells us that his "namesake" was at the head of 700 "effectives, completely armed, and even with cannon"; and that "almost all the inhabitants of Utrecht, and a great number of ladyes, have subscribed to furnish him with powder for exercising his corps. But several of the English merchants at Amsterdam told me he was a most turbulent man, and had done a great deal of harm during the war."
When he got back to London, young Gordon continued posting up Sir Robert in the gossip of the day. He writes one letter from "Little Gordon Castle, near Brompton." He describes this retreat as "really a charming place, perfectly retired," one and a quarter miles from Hyde Park turnpike. "On this account, it answers both for town and country house," so that his brother "has only two rooms in town."
From Abergeldie (14th November 1785) he reports that Captain Skene of Skene "went to Gordon Castle about a fortnight ago, but was refused admittance, the servant saying that the Duke was gone a-hunting, and as the Duchess purposed setting out for Edinburgh next day, she could receive no company."
He passed through Aberdeen on the 25th December 1785 on his way to join his regiment (the 15th) at Wexford, and he gossips about his sister-in-law, Mrs Peter Gordon's people the Forbes. Just a year later (28th December 1786) he writes from Castle Lyons, where he was in command of a battalion of light companies (made up of men from the 4th, 15th, 26th, 61st, and 69th regiments) to quell the disturbances in the country. A little later he was back in Scotland, hoping that all his brothers would be able to sit round this family table at Abergeldie where they, had not been for 18 years. On this occasion he Visited the hospitable Sir Alexander Dick of Prestonfield, whose cousin once removed, the late Colonel W. H. Dick-Cunyngham, V.C., was yet to glorify the Gordons.
Here the letters to the Keith come to an end so far as the Museum knows. Gordon's subsequent career was brilliantly spent in the West Indies. He was largely responsible (April 14th 1793) for the capture of the island of Tobago, where the present laird of Newton's ancestor began his fortune; and he was chosen with his regiment, the 4th Battalion of the 60th (now the King's Royal Rifles) to take part in the expedition against Martinique - which ended so disastrously for his brother Sir Charles. This was the second of the three captures of that island which hat staggered humanity in recent years by angrily belching forth hot cinders from Mont Pelee, and it is interesting to remember that in the first capture (1762) the engineers were commanded by Colonel Harry Gordon of Knockespock, who so minutely describes the tactics in a long letter to Colonel Henry Bouquet, which is also preserved in the Museum (Add. 21.648 f39). Gordon however, never reached Martinique. He set sail in glory from Barbados where he had proved such a success that the House of Assembly voted him an "elegant sword," and the people stocked the man-of-war in which he sailed "with every kind of refreshment." He reached the Leeward Islands, where he displayed an "intrepid spirit" by pushing six miles inwards exposed to the enemy's fire, the incessant rain and long spells of starvation. Then he went on to Dominica, where he succumbed in a few hours (July 6th 1793) to the fever which decimated the troops. Martinique did not fall till the next March.
It was an untimely, almost an. inglorious end to ouch a promising career, for he had accomplished so much in his eight and twenty years that the "Gentleman's Magazine" declared that "by his death His Majesty and the service have lost as valuable and brave an officer as Great Britain ever could boast." The eulogy was not overwrought; indeed, he was worthier of a better-informed epitaph.
Strange that it should be buried away in commonplace Bloomsbury!
I am, etc.,
J.M. Bulloch
118 Pall Mall, S.W.