Beschreibung:

GORDON, Charles G. Autograph letter signed ("C.G. Gordon"), to Sir Samuel Baker, Southampton, 8 January 1884. 2 pages, 4to . [ With :] STEAD, W.T. Autograph letter signed ("W.T. Stead") to his sister Augusta Gordon, 11 February 1885. 1 page, 8vo, Pall Mall Gazette stationery . DEATH BY INTERVIEW? W.T. STEAD LAMENTS HIS ROLE IN PUSHING FOR GORDON'S APPOINTMENT The famous London editor William Stead played a crucial role in Gordon's expedition to the Sudan. It was his interview with Gordon in The Pall Mall Gazette that helped stir up a public cry against the government for action: Here was a tried and true military hero, a former governor-general for Sudan. Who could be better suited to lead British troops there? Why wasn't the government availing itself of his services? Here we have both Gordon's and Stead's reactions to their encounter. "Today," Gordon writes, "came a Mr. Stead & invaded me. I told him what I had to say about Soudan. He is editor Pall Mall Gazette. This is all I mean to say." He then goes on to make travel arrangements and plan a meeting with Baker and his wife: "...but I am jigged, & if you could come to Hotel, we would be quiet..." After Gordon's death, Stead writes in grief-stricken tones to Augusta Gordon: "My heart is too full to write to you. What I have to say I have already said in the Pall Mall Gazette of which I suppose a copy will reach you with this. May God bless that cry of faith and hope to many a mourning soul. It was at least wrung from my heavy heart and written in intervals of bitter weeping...May God's will be done. You never weary me by writing, I am always glad to hear from you." Stead pioneered the use of interviews in British journalism, and he turned the Pall Mall Gazette from a sleepy gentleman's magazine to a muckraking, and often sensationalistic journal. Stead's life ended, ironically enough, in one of the most newsworthy events of the twentieth century: the sinking of the Titanic on 15 April 1912. (2)