CHAPTER X
1856–7—13TH LIGHT DRAGOONS
The Regiment at Scutari—Typhoid and inflammation of the lungs—Scutari Hospital—Tender and brutal attendants—My mother nurses me—Garrison life in Ireland—The Regimental Doctor—Lord Seaton—Gazetted to 17th Lancers—Join on board ship.
At the end of the year an order was received for two Cornets to proceed to the Crimea, and I was one of those nominated. When we left the Barracks on the 1st January, we were accompanied to the station by all the soldiers and half the townspeople, for the war fever had not even then died out.
It was blowing freshly when the steamship left on the 3rd with some Infantry recruits, young officers, about 50 lads of the Royal Engineer Train, and their horses. In my Diary letters, written up daily, there is a description of all my companions, but I cannot trace that there was any Senior officer appointed to command, and if he were appointed he certainly never asserted his authority. The breeze became a gale when we got out into the Channel, and all the men and officers except myself were very sick. No officers came to table for three days, and the horses got no attention beyond what I endeavoured to procure at the hands of some sea-sick recruits. There was an Engineer officer on board, and he sometimes visited the horses, but I do not think he had official charge of them. Before we got to Gibraltar we had thrown overboard fifteen out of fifty horses, and there a Veterinary surgeon came on board and had some of the worst cases disembarked, and to my great relief put a farrier on board. I appreciated his help, for I was never in bed during the seven days at sea till midnight, and three nights not at all, when I was trying to keep the horses alive.
It was very cold on deck, and the sea-sick recruits posted as sentries on the horse deck would always, unless watched, tie up the wind-sails, and go to sleep. I landed my own horses fit for gentle work at Scutari on the 22nd January, but the surviving Royal Engineer Train horses could not have been effective for many months.
The Cavalry officers, when they heard that they were going to Turkey from the Crimea, sent home for hounds, and so a few days after my reaching Scutari I had some hunting, jackals giving better runs than foxes in Turkey. I had on the 17th of February an unusual experience. We were running a jackal when I saw an eagle swoop some distance off; on galloping up to it, I found it had struck and killed a hare, which it held until dismounting I ran up, when it left me in possession. Four days later I was sent to Hospital.[50] I became very ill, and had it not been for the Captain of my Troop, Percy Smith, who had brought the Regiment out of action at Balaklava, after showing distinguished courage, I should have added one to the many who rest under the cypress trees in the Scutari cemetery, where the doctors believed I had contracted the fever when going round guards at night. When I had been some little time in Hospital, Captain Smith brought a namesake, Doctor Smith, President of a Pathological Committee, who had been sent out by the Government, to visit me. Doctor Smith asked the young Medical officer who had charge of the case how he was treating me, and on receiving a reply said, “Oh yes, for typhoid; he’ll die later from that, but now he is in imminent danger from pneumonia.” Heroic measures by the application of leeches and blisters were adopted; indeed, where I had not one or the other, I was covered with mustard poultices. My case was now handed over to Assistant-Surgeon S. M. Webb, M.D., a clever doctor employed on Staff duty in the Hospital, to whom my mother later expressed her deep gratitude for his care and skilful attention.
Captain Smith wrote by every mail to my parents, but before the worst account reached them, the Medical officers telegraphed that while my recovery was very doubtful, I should probably live sufficiently long for my parents to see me. This telegram was received at the same time as a few lines I had scrawled on the 21st February, and on the 9th March my parents left Marseilles in the Borysthene, reaching Constantinople on the 19th March. In the meantime I had been at the point of death, acute inflammation of the lungs and typhoid having brought me to the verge of the next world. I heard the Senior officer desire the doctor in charge not to worry me by giving me any more medicine, saying as he left the ward, “The boy must die—let him die in peace.” I was attended by Private Stanley, my soldier-servant, and two female nurses, one, Susan Cator, who had been sent out from St. Thomas’s Hospital, and another whose name I suppress, for I detested her, and with reason. The bones of both my hips had come through the skin, and this woman, instead of wetting the lint before she changed it, used to tear it off roughly, bringing away flesh and drawing blood. I shuddered every time she approached me, and generally wept when Susan Cator left the ward. She always put in thirty-six hours out of forty-eight, because she knew I disliked her companion. I was relieved, however, of the woman’s presence soon after my mother arrived.
My mother came to see me on the 20th March, the Lady Superintendent of the Hospital receiving her as a guest until I left Scutari. My father’s life was heavily insured, and as he had to ask permission of the Companies before he passed out of Europe, he could not come to see me until a fortnight later. When my mother arrived I was too ill to recognise her, or rather to realise we were in Asia; but when she came again next morning—for I generally had lucid intervals from delirium every forenoon—I expressed my joy at seeing her, but could not believe she had been to see me the previous day.
When my mother had been three days in the hospital, she opened the ward door quietly while the brutal nurse was with me, and saw her, clenching her fist, strike me in the face. My head had been shaved for the fever, and I used to rub it continually while delirious, singing the refrain of a negro melody, which was then on every barrel organ, concerning “An old nigger, whose name was Uncle Ned.” When I came to the line, “He had no wool on the top of his head,” I rubbed my head until it bled. The nurse had been rebuked for allowing me to do this, and it was when I, all unconscious, continued to rub my head, that she struck me. It did not matter to me, for I felt nothing, although I knew previously that she had held my arm to prevent my doing it. My mother flew at her, and I never saw her again.