Chinese Gordon -- Dapper In Death?

[Huerta88]

As a youth, I was instructed that General Chinese Gordon was such a gentleman of the old school that, when he realized the garrison of Khartoum was going to fall to the Mahdi’s forces, he donned his immaculate white linen suit and went out on the steps of the besieged building, where he was felled in hand to hand combat, reasoning that a British gentleman and soldier would at least send a message to the natives by dying in sartorial, as well as martial, style.

Given that the entire garrison was, I think, killed, I’m not sure how many first hand witnesses there were on which to base this tale, but I do seem to find some indication he did go down fighting.

However . . . the part about the white suit, I can’t substantiate. True? False? Unknowable?

[Slithy_Tove]

Probably unknowable. Most of the paintings I’ve see of the incident were of him in his black Royal Engineers uniform, not white linen. I do remember one engraving of him dying in a fight wearing his Egyptian field marshal’s uniform.

From what I’ve read, the modern consensus seems to be that he died in the street fighting, not standing at the top of his stairs above the awed dervishes.

[bonzer]

That question of how there are any halfway reliable accounts of his death is one I’ve never seen answered. Though, since the relief force rolled into town only two days later, there were presumably plenty of people willing to offer accounts.
There’s the further problem that A.W. Joy’s 1893 painting so quickly became the popular version of what had happened (reinforced by the likes of the 1898 tableau of it in Madame Tussaud’s, not to mention, eventually, Khartoum).
Writing in Eminent Victorians, Lytton Strachey, of course, manages to brilliantly render the Imperial myth version, while simultaneously undermining it:

He had been on the roof, in his dressing-gown, when the attack began; and he had only time to hurry to his bedroom to slip on a white uniform, and to seize up a sword and a revolver, before the foremost of the assailants were in the palace. The crowd was led by four of the fiercest of the Mahdi’s followers-tall and swarthy Dervishes, splendid in their many-coloured jibbehs, their great swords drawn from their scabbards of brass and velvet, their spears flourishing above their heads. Gordon met them at the top of the staircase. For a moment, there was a deathly pause, while he stood in silence, surveying his antagonists. Then it is said that Taha Shahin, the Dongolawi, cried in a loud voice, “Mala’ oun el yom yomek!” (O cursèd one, your time is come), and plunged his spear into the Englishman’s body. His only reply was a gesture of contempt. Another spear transfixed him; he fell, and the swords of the three other Dervishes instantly hacked him to death. Thus, if we are to believe the official chroniclers, in the dignity of unresisting disdain, General Gordon met his end. But it is only fitting that the last moments of one whose whole life was passed in contradiction should be involved in mystery and doubt. Other witnesses told a very different story. The man whom they saw die was not a saint but a warrior. With intrepidity, with skill, with desperation, he flew at his enemies. When his pistol was exhausted, he fought on with his sword; he forced his way almost to the bottom of the staircase; and, among a heap of corpses only succumbed at length to the sheer weight of the multitudes against him.

(It’s perhaps worth noting that Joy has Gordon armed only with an unthreatening pistol, while the Tussaud’s tableau had him with both that and the sword - see And When Did You Last See You Father?, NMGM, 1992, p103-4.)
Yet even a Victorian account can avoid the familiar staircase:

When Gordon awoke to find that, through the treachery of his Egyptian lieutenant, Khartoum was in the hands of the Mahdi, he set out with a few followers for the Austrian consulate. Recognized by a party of rebels, he was shot dead on the street and his head carried through the town at the end of a pike, amid the wild rejoicings of the Mahdi’s followers.

Finally, a few years ago the UK’s Public Record Office finally declassified some contemporary intelligence reports suggesting, though not proving, that Gordon was captured alive, tortured and only died some time later.

[T.Slothrop]

[Slight hijack]
I read a supposedly true story of a young boy who grew up in Khartoum who was sent away to school. He wrote back that he missed his family and that he missed the statue of Gordon and he even missed the statue of the guy who was riding on Gordon’s back. (he was refering to the statue of Gordon on a camel but had grown up thinking that Gordon was the camel’s name).
[/slight hijack]