entered the army, first in the
8th Regiment, and transferred in a short time to the 59th, when, at
the early age of ten, Charles Gordon was sent off to school at
Taunton. The selection of this school in the western country was due
to the head-master, Mr Rogers, being a brother of a governess in the
Gordon family. Little is known of his early childhood beyond the fact
that he had lived, before he was ten, at Corfu, where his father held
a command for some years. The Duke of Cambridge has publicly stated
that he recollects, when quartered at Corfu at this period, having
seen a bright and intelligent boy who occupied the room next to his
own, and who subsequently became General Gordon. At Taunton Gordon
remained during the greater part of five years, enjoying the
advantages of one of the most excellent grammar schools in the West of
England, and although he failed to make any special mark as a scholar,
I find that, whether on account of his later fame or for some special
characteristic that marked him out from the general run of boys, his
name is still remembered there by something more than the initials cut
upon his desk. If he distinguished himself in anything it was in
map-making and drawing, and he exhibited the same qualifications to
the end of his career. How careful and excellent the grounding at
Taunton school must have been was shown by the fact that, after one
year's special coaching at Mr Jefferies' school at Shooter's Hill,
Gordon passed direct into the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. It
is noteworthy that during the whole of the period we are now
approaching, he never showed the least tendency to extravagance, and
his main anxiety seems to have been to save his parents all possible
expense, more especially because they had a large family of daughters.
To the end of his life, and in each successive post, Gordon was the
slave of duty. At this time, and during the years that follow, down to
the Chinese campaigns, his guiding thought was how to save his family
the smallest expense on his account, and yet at the same time to hold
his head high, and to show himself worthy of his race.

Gordon entered the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich in 1848, when he
had not completed his sixteenth year, and during the four years he
remained there he gave some evidence of the qualities that
subsequently distinguished him, at the same time that he showed a
lightness of disposition which many will think at strange variance