The Sun.
London, England, 1855-05-29 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

S. G. 0.

Scutari and its Hospitals. By the Hon. and
Rev. Sydney Godolphin Osborne. Dickinson,
Brothers.
'lke noblest and ghastliest of narratives. Let
us confess at once that we almost envy the good
man who has written it the recollection of what-
ever he has gone through in his endeavour to al-
leviate the sufferings of our heroic soldiers in their
terrible pest-houses upon the shores of the Bos-
phorus. It is not nowadays that the English
public need be reminded that in the Honourable
and Reverend Sydney Godolphin Osborne may be
recognised one of the most genuine, because one of
the most practical, energetic, and laborious of
living philanthropists. His claims upon the popular
respect are by this time, we conceive, pretty
widelt known. They require nc specific mention
from us. They have long been scarcely less a
fruitful source of interest than a theme of general
and unaffected admiration. Yet the singleness of
purpose, the gentleness of heart, the untiring- zeal
and unconquerable determination by which Mr.
Osborne's charitable efforts have been hitherto con-
spicuously characterised, have never yet been
brought so directly under the notice of his fellow-
countrymen as they have been very recently,
through the medium of the humane enterprise
which conducted him to a memorable and deplo-
rable locality in the neighbourhood of Constanti-
nople. In the thin volume before us, embellished
with five coloured lithographs illustrative of the
enthralling subjects described in the eight chapters
of the letterpress, we have the succinct but
sufficient record of this somewhat notable un-
dertaking. If we are not very much mis-
taken it will be regarded by the future
annalists of the present War, as a blue-book not a
jot less remarkable in its way than that larger one
which a little later on will comprise the whole of
the ample catechism of Mr. Roebuck's Committee
of Inquiry into the condition of the Army before
Sebastopol. It is a lamentable pendant to the
description of the horrible mismanagement in the
Crimea, this commemoration of the (if possible)
yet more horrible mismanagement on the Bospho-
rus. The frightful story here told of our soldiers'
sufferings at Scutari is the miserable sequel of the
narrative of their preliminary sufferings at Bala-
klava. It would be difficult, we conjecture, for
even the most callous to glance over the account
here given of the former by Mr. Osborne, without
profound emotions—emotions of poignant grief,
swallowed up before very long in those of scarcely
utterable indignation.
Altogether, it seems, Mr. Osborne was not more
than six weeks at Constantinople. But within the
compass of those six weeks how much of good
were his kind band and gentle heart, his clear
judgment and tender commiseration, his en-
ergy and benevolence enabled to accomplish !
invited to assume the honourable and respon-
sible office of almoner of the Times Fund—
,Nlr. Osborne preferred to go, on his own account,
untrammelled by any positive engagement.
" Within twenty-four hours from the time I made
up my mind on the subject," lie says, "I started
with my son for Constantinople." Arriving at his.
lestinatiou on the Bth of November, 1854, he took
tiis departure on his return homewards from the
Pinkish capital on the 19th of December. During
lie interval between which dates Mr. Osborne co-
werated, heart and soul, with Mr. Macdonald, the
able and efficient Times Commissioner. The Chief
Authority, he tells us, was clearly under the delusion
" That nothing WAS wanting !" Whereas almost
,verything was found wanting by Mr. Osborne,
Ind Mr. Macdonald, and Mr. Stafford, and Miss
Nightingale. What some of the most glaring of
die deficiencies were, this comment upon " Scutari
and its Hospitals" sufficiently indicates. It de-
.,cribes, without the smallest exaggeration, the state
in which the writer found both the Barrack Hos-
iital and the General Hospital, the condition
in
,vhich he left them, and the contrast presented by
each to the great French Military Hospital at Pero..
Speaking of the latter, Mr. Osborne can scarcely find
adequate words in which to express his amazement
end admiration. " The French," he exclaims "are
certainly a most wonderful people, at home any-
where. I found it difficult to believe that the
arder, quiet, regularity of service, and perfect ma-
chinery of this hospital could be the growth of but
a few months, and that too in a foreign land.
One element was obvious throughout—system.
Every oue seemed to have his own particular sphere
of duty, and quietly to set about it. Nothing
seemed left to chance : there was a certain import-
'ince given to even the smallest matter of detail." ;
kdding, with marked emphasis, a little further on
—" It was not merely that the contrast with
our own sad bungling execution was so mani-
F.est, but I am in justice bound to say, I never
tnywliere saw a system that seemed to me so •
perfectly organised and so cleverly carried ovt" As
in the management of this same French military
ilo :pital at Porn. To which perfection of organi-
ation and consummate skill of management, Mr.
Osborne presents, we repeat, in ghastly contrast,
he terrible disorganisation and disastrous misma-
nagement witnessed by him both in the 'British
General Hospital and the British Barrack
EloSpital at Scutari. Recounting his expe-
riences in regard to the latter, lie tells us
-,fiat he agreed for a time to take pastoral charge
)f a particular portion of the Barrack Hospital—
•eniarkirig significantly in another port of his
aarrative (as an evidence of the labour requir-
ng to be gone through by those in attendance
non tile sick in that and the adjoining esta-
blishment) that when he left Scutari " there
Hurst have been little less than four miles of ground
occupied in, lines of beds" —stretched out upon
those beds men, presenting to view almost every
nanaginable example of mutilation and suffer-
n;„.
Passing from these terrible scenes
d human misery, he informs us that " with
the exception of the Priests in attendance
111 the Catholic patients, and the ' Sisters' minis-
terina to all," he seldom met any one in the
wards while he continued to visit them. Wards,
these were, set apart for the victims of perhaps the
direst scourge of all in those hospitals, the dysentery,
or diarrhoea, or Varna-fever, as it was variously
:Jailed by the soldiers themselves. Scarcely any-
thing, we are told, could well be more hideous or
more hopeless than the condition into which the
hapless occupants of these wards were plunged im-
mediately upon their entrance into them—without
the merest show, it seems, of anything in the
ht h way
of medical alleviation. Over the p mige
been written with awful appropriateness the super-
scription placed by Dante over the entrance to the
Inferno. Yet, says Mr. Osborne, "In this cruel
scene of filthy neglect, I can with truth say, I was
never called to one dying man who uttered a mur-
mur against those who thus treated him and his
comrades." Nay, he describes them as very diffe-
rently occupied, namely, as " listening with every
sentiment of grateful delight to the invitations,
the promises, of Him who left his home in heaven
to contend to death, for every penitent who should
trust his soul to Him." Besides imparting spiritual
consolations to the dying, Mr. Osborne undertook
now and then commissions from them of remem-
brance to " all at home, all inquiring friends,"
observing, as he records the circumstance—" There
was little else I could ever do for them—they said
so, and gave a grateful pressure to the extended
hand (in one instance the fine dying fellow kissed
it)—then, the ' God bless you, Sir.' " A sweet re-
ward of itself, that benediction of the expiring
soldier to the ears of our brave-hearted. philanthro-
pist.
As most of our readers are already aware, Mr.
Osborne was not alone in his self-imposed toil of
benevolence. There was, for example, his over-
active and untiring colleague Mr. Macdonald, the
Times commissioner. And besides Mr. Macdonald,
another volunteer assistant in the person of the
hon. gentleman the member for Northampton-
shire. Alluding to their joint labours in writing
" home " for the sick and dying sufferers, Mr.
Osborne says :
" I found a most zealous assistant in this
he work tint
g bemy
friend Mr. Staff rd ; day by day and all day,
seen with his portfolio by the side of the poor sufferers,
giving many hours to the task. Indeed he gave himself
:tiniest entirely to it, sending me each night the letters he
had written ; he went to the camp in the Crimea for ten
days, and there too he found a field for the same kind
labour.
Another glimpse we fancy we obtain of Mr
Staff,,rd a few pages later in the same narrative,
Nceful