Patronage and Politics in the Victorian Empire: The Personal Governance of Sir Arthur Hamilton Gordon (Lord Stanmore)
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better claims for transfers and promotions. Disappointment and disillusionment followed high expectations, to be followed by yet more importuning. The duke of Newcastle gave no firm promises, and early 1860 found Gordon cooling his heels, drilling his regiment in Scotland, and distracted by his father's final illness. 20His expectations now switched to Ceylon and even to New Zealand, for which he claimed he had the support of Sir George Grey. 21Early in 1861, after the death of his father, Gordon was in Egypt and worried that Newcastle might be abroad in India without finding him a post first. 22In June, he was “horrified” to learn that the colonial secretary of Guiana had been given the governorship, especially as he objected to the promotion of a “local man” to the most senior position. His fear now was that he would be fobbed off with St. Helena or the Falklands; and he did not want Antigua either. 23Finally, he brought matters to a head and went to see Newcastle in July:

but he offers me Antigua or the Lieutenant Governorship of New Brunswick. But for the intense cold I would certainly take the latter but you know how I dread cold—and yet Antigua seems hardly worth taking, for I am under no necessity in a pecuniary point of view to take an appointment. I told him I wished for Trinidad. He said he would give it me if he could, but that it would not be vacant for a year & he did not advise me to wait on the chance of his being then in office. 24
Reluctantly, he mentally prepared himself to face the “Arctic winter.”