HUMPHRY SA.NDWITH.*

MR. WARD has hardly received sufficient credit for his skill as a

biographer. His subject has fascinated the critics ; and they hardly notice the art which has made the life of such a man—a man whose foible was diffuseness about his own adventures—se- interesting, yet so brief. There is not a superfluous page in this volume, and scarcely one which may not be quoted by itself either for the facts of Dr. Sandwith's career, or for illustra- tions of Oriental manners, or for some story throwing light upon a personage important in the history of the time. A narrative which might easily have been made a dull one—for it is difficult to write of Dr. Sandwith without fighting over again old battles about Turks, Russians, English policy, and the results of war — is made throughout bright and crisp, far more readable even to those who care little about the East than most novels. At the same time, its hero stands out clearly before the reader. Dr. Sandwith evidently belonged to a class infrequent, except in England and perhaps Germany, but among Englishmen exceedingly numerous,—the class of adventurers with principles and hearts, men who want to get on and mean to do it, who shrink from no work and scarcely any service, who are not tormented with small scruples, and can tolerate scoundrels when that is indispensable ; but who are governed by conscience, nevertheless, and though they see enough to make them callous, remain strongly, often even rashly, humanitarian. German adventurers sometimes show those qualitie.s too—witness Dr. \Verne, the physician who lived so long with Egyptian armies on the Upper Nile ; but it is the rarest thing to meet them in adventurers of any other nation. The son of a small Wesleyan, medical practitioner of strong religious opinions, but no money, and, though fond of his children, with little judgment in manag- ing them, Humphry Sandwith scrambled almost anyhow into a fair professional education. He probably never would have risen to eminence in the London practice he once thought of starting, having little in him of true scientific acumen ; but he acquired enough knowledge for practice, and he had just the kind of capacity, the ready-wittedness and power of observa- tion, which make in semi-civilised communities the successful doctor. As a mere boy, he once resettled an old lady's jaw which had got out of place, and when more experienced, and serving as Staff-Surgeon with Bashi-Bazouks, he found himself out of quinine :—

"'I really had not more of this precious drag than might be re- quired by our own star, campaigning in that most unhealthy country ; and as I reckoned one English gentleman worth fifty Bashi-Bazonks, I could not, except in very rare cases, afford to give my patients quinine. However, I took into consideration their original hardihood of constitution, their present comfort, their regular diet, and their nursing (for I bad impressed and paid several Bashi-Bazouk nurses), and I calculated that milder bitters than quinine would be useful. So putting my botanical knowledge (by no moans great) to the test, I went herbalising over the fields, choosing the bitter plants belonging to those natural orders that are innocuous. Moreover, I gathered sundry narcotics, snob as hyoscyamus and other herbs, with which I

Humpliry Sandwith, By T. H. Ward. London : Cassell and Co. 1 L.

made poultices and fomentations, and thus I found a tolerable pharmacy amongst the meadows of the Danube, that were teeming with the richest vegetation. The neighbouring marshes, too, sup- plied me with leeches. After all, the best test of such experiments is the result, and I never had more success than amongst these poor Bashi-Bazonks, nor did I ever meet with livelier expressions of gratitude.'" A man of that kind, full of resource, brave, ambitions, and penniless, drifts naturally to the East ; and Dr. Sandwith at

twenty-seven, with 290 in his pocket, and no other property except a few letters of introduction, and the power of living and travelling for weeks upon a five-pound note,—an invaluable pro- perty in itself,—betook himself to Constantinople to seek his fortune. Sir Stratford Canning, then Ambassador, whom he de- scribes, as everyone else does, as the most overbearing of mankind, and in whose ability he evidently had great difficulty in believing, turned a cold-shoulder upon him, and at last only gave him some trifling appointment. He, however, made friends every- where, especially in the Embassy., and was at length selected to accompany Mr. Layard on his exploring expedition into Meso- potamia. This was the kind of life which suited Dr. Sand- with, and till he died he always spoke of his life there as the pleasantest year in his whole existence, and referred to it with almost garrulous iteration. Careless of personal comforts, and unusually brave, he had that enjoyment of Asia as distinguished from Europe, that appreciation of the charm of "the East" -which is a special, and apparently an instinctive, quality with some men, and almost invariably makes the adventurer who possesses it, if he can but keep alive, a success- ful man. Sandwith, unfortunately, could barely keep alive. Though he could do an immensity of hard work, and had almost limitless energy, he had a permanent liability to fever, which, at critical moments, attacked and crippled him. He was corn. polled by it to leave Mosul and the explorations, and return to Constantinople, where he lived by private practice ; and it was not till General Williams applied for him, then serving with Bashi-Bazonks at Varna, that his career recommenced. He was appointed Inspector-General of Hospitals, with a staff of some

fifty medical nondescripts, whom he somehow drilled into such -usefulness that throughout the siege of Kars, typhus never made its appearance, nor had they a case of gangrene in

the hospitals. He even made of Turkish doctors efficient and laborious assistants. His work was incessant, but it was successful; General Mouravieff, when the place fell, gave him his liberty in return for his kindness to the Russian wounded, and on his return to London he found himself the hero of the

hour, feted and caressed by all the great ladies and personages in London, and perhaps a little apt to judge them (vide page 153) by their attention to himself. He never lost his head, how- ever ; asked for an appointment while his services were fresh; and as he knew the East, was made in our queer English

way, which ought to ruin us, but does not, because in emergencies we choose a different way, Secretary to the Government of the Mauritius. He succeeded well enough, but disliked the work ; and after three years' experience of it, returned home, married, and resigned his post,—a step which proved fatal to his official career. Thenceforward his life, though he had become, in some way not explained in this biography, but, we presume, through his wife's fortune, fairly well off, was that of a writer and traveller in Eastern Europe, who devoted himself heart and soul, with an ac- tivity which never tired and with great success, to the work of indoctrinating statesmen, diplomatists, and the public with his rooted conviction that the Turks were barbarians, who must quit Europe. This conviction was almost a passion with him, and was the more remarkable because he had begun with a strong prepossession the other way, had found his friends among men like Layard, had made his reputation while fighting for Turks, and had been dismissed

from a post he valued—correspondent of the Times at Con-

stantinople—as an incorrigible Turkophile. It was not till he knew the Turks thoroughly and their language that he hated them ; but then he did it thoroughly, his policy towards the Ottomans going beyond that which Mr. Delane had previously shadowed out in the following remarkable letter :—

" The Times Office, September 5th, 1853. "'DEAR Sta,—As your private communications with the Times have hitherto been principally upon money matters, I, as the Editor, have scarcely had occasion to write to you, and have left any necessary

• correspondence in the hands of my excellent colleague, Mr. Morrie. The tone which you have recently taken, however, compels me to address you, for it is impossible that you should continue to represent us if you persist in taking a line so diametrically opposed to the in- _

tarsal; of this country. As it would seem that you never take the trouble of reading the opinions of the paper with which you corre- spond, I must begin by informing you that whatever concern it may have in the well-being of Turkey, it owes a higher duty to the people of the United Kingdom, who are willing to support Turkey so far as they conceive it to be for their interest, but acknowledge no obli- gation either by treaty or by implication to shed their blood or spend their money in its behalf. You seem to imagine that England can desire nothing better than to sacrifice all its greatest interests and most cherished objects to support barbarism, the slave-trade, and Islamism, when its especial minion is to promote civilisation, freedom, and Christianity—all for one's love for the Turk. Pray undeceive yourself. For political purposes we connive at the existence of the Turk. Ho fills a blank in Europe—he is a barrier against a more aggressive power. We had rather have the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus in the hands of King Log than King Stork, but we are not bound to the Turk by any other tie than in- terest. We tolerate him, and will not permit the Russians to dis- possess him, but we are not blind to the fact that as a nation he is rapidly decaying, and if we were slow to fight for him when he had more vitality, we are less than ever inclined to do so when he is visibly fading away, and when no amount of protection (which is as fatal as aggression) can long preserve his boasted integrity and inde- pendence. Now, as you will see by this explanation that we in this country have no such sentimental feeling for the Turk as should induce us to sacrifice ourselves at his good pleasure, to look at the Turkish question only as it affects England and English interests, you will perhaps understand how it is that our statesmen here con- sider themselves as competent to deal with the question—always with a view rather to England than to Turkey—sit you and the small English clique at Constantinople. No doubt the Turks would will- ingly involve the whole world in war—it is the natural resource and occupation of barbarians; no doubt the British Ambassador and the handful of English about him would find their importance much in- creased by the exertions this country might make and the millions it might spend in behalf of Turkey. No doubt it is very hard that Russia should occupy quasi-Turkish Provinces, and that the Porte should not be able to tarn the phrases of a note precisely as it pleases. But English Ministers have at least as much reason to consider York- shire and Lancashire as Moldavia and Wallachia ; and though they may feel it expedient to protect and support the Sultan, it is not to him, but to the Queen, that they owe their allegiance.'"

In the Russo-Turkish war Dr. Sandwith was again in front in Servia and Bulgaria, organising hospitals ; but his health broke down under his labours, and he returned to the West so broken, that the rest of his life was a struggle against disease, varied only by a journey to Bulgaria with Lord Bath, till in May, 1881, he died. He was not a great man, lacking width of judgment and, except when satisfied with his surroundings, perseverance; but he was a most able and resourceful one, who, though anxious to succeed, detested all manner of wrong, and deliberately spent himself that the world should suffer after he had gone, less misery than he found in it. There are hundreds of such men in England, but few who more thoroughly de- served the success and appreciation he obtained. • That is a rather dull account of a man whose life was in many ways almost a romance, and of a book which is full from end to end of pointed story, fine description—the latter usually Dr. Sandwith's—and sketches of character, sometimes, particu- larly in the case of some Turkish statesmen, bitten-in with vitriol.