Under the Red Crescent: Adventures of an English Surgeon with the Turkish Army at Plevna and Erzeroum 1877-1878Ryan, Charles S. (Charles Snodgrass)
History
Under the Red Crescent: Adventures of an English Surgeon with the Turkish Army at Plevna and Erzeroum 1877-1878
Ryan, Charles S. (Charles Snodgrass)
Russo-Turkish War, 1877-1878 -- Personal narratives
English philanthropy was displayed as generously at this stage as it had
been throughout the entire course of the war, and English gold was
freely spent on the relief of starving and fever-stricken refugees from
the Turkish provinces as well as on the sick and wounded troops. We got
into touch with the philanthropic scheme undertaken by the Baroness
Burdett-Coutts, who had sent out a large sum of money for the relief of
the refugees; and we also met Mr. William Ashmead-Bartlett, the
administrator of the fund, who afterwards married the baroness. He was
ill with typhoid fever contracted from some of the refugees, and was
under treatment at the English hospital, where his brother (now Sir
Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett) was looking after him. Denniston, Stoker, and I
paid a visit of inspection to the temporary hospitals established with
the money supplied by the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, and furnished a
report upon them.
It is to Sir Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett that I owe my first introduction to
a very charming American lady, who has since become known to a wide
circle through her career on the stage. When I first met her she was an
extraordinarily pretty woman, and she and her husband were on their
honeymoon trip. He was a very gentlemanly man, with a rather retiring
disposition; while she was about twenty years of age, and a perfect
model of youthful womanhood. Every glance of her brightly flashing eyes
and every line of her finely moulded figure told of bounding life and
vivacity. Sir Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett and I saw a good deal of her and
her husband for a week or two. We had lunch together often, and took
part in several picnics up the Bosphorus, in that spring-time nineteen
years ago, when the blue waters of the strait and the bright eyes of La
belle Americaine laughed in harmony, while Europe was waiting with
beating heart for the verdict--peace or war. I met the B---- P----s
again on board the steamer which took me away from Constantinople. Then
our paths in life divided, and I had almost forgotten the vivacious
American lady, when one evening a year or two ago I dropped into the
Princess's Theatre in Melbourne to see Sardou's great play _La Tosca_.
In the actress who was playing the name part I recognized my
acquaintance of the stirring times of the war. It was Mrs. B---- P----.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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