Lot 297
GENERAL GORDON OF KHARTOUM INTEREST
SILVER MOUNTED WHIP, REPUTED TO HAVE BELONGED TO GENERAL GORDON
Auction: Five Centuries Day One | Wed 13th May | Lots 68 to 297
Description
the whip with purple tassel end, covered in geometric woven fabric with silver thread, the handle with embossed white metal mounts; together with a VICTORIAN PARIAN WARE BUST OF GENERAL GORDON, modelled by W H Goss, the back with copyright stamp dated 1885; and three books relating to General Gordon; ‘Gordon and the Sudan’ by Bernard Allen, Macmillan & Co, London, 1931; ‘Gordon at Khartoum’ by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Stephen Swift & Co, London, 1912; ‘Heroes of Our Empire’ by G. Barnett Smith and F. M. Holmes, S. W. Partridge & Co Ltd, London (5)
Dimensions
the whip 84cm long; the bust 20cm high
Provenance
Given by General Gordon's sister, Mary Augusta Gordon, to Rev. Alexander Fullerton of Dalkey, Co. Dublin
The bust, and by family repute also the whip, gifted in his will, dated July 1919, to his son William Fullerton, hence by descent
Footnote
On January 26, 1885, Charles Gordon was killed at the Hakimadaria Palace, during the siege of Khartoum. Following the siege the Mahdist forces largely abandoned the city and demolished the Hakimadaria Palace, moving the capital across the Nile to Omdurman. The manner of Gordon's death is uncertain, but it was romanticised in a popular painting by George William Joy, 'General Gordon's Last Stand', dated 1893.