On 19 October 1833, 191 years ago, life began for the poet of Australia – Adam Lindsay Gordon – in Charlton Kings, a village adjoining Cheltenham in Gloucestershire. His parents Adam Durnford and Harriet Gordon previously lived at No. 5 Columbia Place (originally spelt ‘Colombia’), a lovely terrace in Winchcombe Street (1-6 Colombia Place are now 112-122 Winchcombe Street). On 3 December 1833, Adam Lindsay was baptised at St Mary’s Church, Charlton Kings. For a short time, the family moved to the Portuguese islands of Madeira, where Lindsay’s sister Francesca Clara Ignez Gordon was born in 1837, before they returned in 1840 to Cheltenham, residing at 4 Pittville Villas (now 34-60 Prestbury Road) until 1845. The Gordons then moved to 25 Priory Street (now number 28), a ‘dignified tree-lined road’, close to the then new Cheltenham College where Lindsay attended in 1841-42 and again in 1851-52, and where his father taught Oriental languages from 1846 to 1857.

A few days before his second birthday Adam Lindsay Gordon was given a New Testament by his godfather CT Cooke.

The centenary of Gordon’s birth was celebrated in many places on 19 October 1933, including in Cheltenham, through the efforts of Douglas Sladen, who arranged a memorial tablet outside the Priory Street home, also a memorial for the Cheltenham College which celebrated the centenary, at which Sladen was invited to address the boys on the life and poetry of Gordon. Sladen and Gordon had both attended Cheltenham College.

Back in Victoria, wreaths were laid on 19 October 1933 at the Adam Lindsay Gordon statue in Spring Street, Melbourne, sculpted by Paul Montford, commissioned by the Gordon Memorial Committee. William H Everard, MLA, gave an address at the poet’s statue as did Paul Montford. President of the Gordon Memorial Committee, Charles R Long, also placed a wreath on the statue.

Sladen also co-authored with Edith Humphris the book Adam Lindsay Gordon and His Friends in England and Australia (1912).

Having left England for Australia at the end of 1879 at age 23, Douglas Sladen became an ardent devotee from the first night he stayed with his uncle Sir Charles Sladen in Geelong, when his uncle put into his hands a book of poems by Adam Lindsay Gordon.

Also, on the centenary of Gordon’s birth, Douglas Sladen was instrumental in having a memorial bust installed in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey, unveiled on 11 May 1934, making Adam Lindsay Gordon the only Australian poet to have received such an honour. The bust was sculpted by Lady Hilton Young (Kathleen Scott, widow of the late Captain Robert Scott of Antarctic fame; she married Edward Hilton Young in 1922). The bust was unveiled by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang.