Towards the end of
November, somebody at the War Office--it is not clear who--had
suggested that this emissary should be General Gordon. Lord
Granville, the Foreign Secretary, had thereupon telegraphed to
Sir Evelyn Baring asking whether, in his opinion, the presence of
General Gordon would be useful in Egypt; Sir Evelyn Baring had
replied that the Egyptian Government was averse to this
proposal, and the matter had dropped.
There was no further reference to Gordon in the official
dispatches
until after his return to England. Nor, before that date, was any
allusion made to him as a possible unraveller of the Sudan
difficulty,
in the Press. In all the discussions which followed the news of
the
Hicks disaster, his name is only to be found in occasional and
incidental references to his work "In the Sudan". The "Pall Mall
Gazette", which, more than any other newspaper, interested itself
in Egyptian affairs, alluded to Gordon once or twice as a
geographical expert; but, in an enumeration of the leading
authorities on the Sudan, left him out of account altogether. Yet
it was from the "Pall Mall Gazette" that the impulsion which
projected him into a blaze of publicity finally came. Mr. Stead,
its enterprising editor, went down to Southampton the day after
Gordon's arrival there, and obtained an interview.
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