“THEY can’t come in here—I tell you they simply can’t.”

I was sitting eating my matutinal egg on a sleety January day in 1909, when I heard this altercation at the door.

“They can’t come in here,” repeated the cook, “they simply can’t.”

Thinking I had better go and see what it was all about, I ventured forth. On the doorstep stood two laughing postmen.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Parcels, mum, parcels; we have got a whole van full.”

“A van full!” I exclaimed, seeing a large red parcels-delivery van in the road.

“Yes, a special van for you, mum, containing one hundred and ninety-six parcels.”

I nearly collapsed.

“Where are they to go?” I exclaimed.

“I don’t know,” he replied.

“They can’t come in here,” chirruped the cook, knowing the hall was already packed.

“You must leave them in the van,” I suggested helplessly, “until I have time to think what is to be done with them.”

“Can’t do that,” replied the smiling postman. “We have brought you a ’special delivery’ as it is, and I must go back for my ordinary rounds.”

“Well, they can’t come in here,” I repeated in the cook’s words, as the wind howled down the street and stray flakes of snow fell.

“Let us stand them in the street,” brilliantly suggested the postman.

This was an inspiration, and accordingly one hundred and ninety-six parcels were packed up against the side of a London house. They stood four or five feet high. Having told the cook to remain at the front door and see that nothing happened to them, I returned to my half-cold egg, but I had not even finished it before there were more altercations at the door.

The noise continuing, I again left the breakfast-table (8.45 a.m.) to see what it meant. Another van. This time a Carter Paterson.

“Have you any parcels?” I asked in trepidation.

“Yes, mum, seventy-eight; nearly a van-load of sacks and crates and other huge things.”

Into the street they also had to go, but before the men were finished unpacking other carts were arriving, and depositing sixteen, twenty-seven, thirty-six packages upon the pavement.

By ten o’clock the house and the neighbours’ houses were barricaded with parcels. Never, probably, was such a sight seen in a London street. Five vans’ loads disgorged at one time.

Messina was buried in ruins, I was buried in parcels. After eighteen days I was being disinterred from bundles and packages in London.

It all came about in this wise. The letter I sent to six important London papers, expecting, perhaps, that one of them might kindly print it, appeared in all of them. The evening Press reprinted it. It was copied into the large provincial papers the next day. That letter started a veritable snow-ball scheme. It was a Tuesday. I had a luncheon engagement.

On my return about four in the afternoon my parlourmaid met me with an agonised face, and exclaimed:

“We have had a time since you went out, m’m!”

“Why?” I asked, surprised.

“By twelve o’clock that front door-bell began to ring,” she said, “and it has never ceased. Ladies in motors, people in carriages, gentlemen in hansoms, babies in perambulators—and they have all left parcels.”

“Parcels!” I exclaimed in horror.

“Yes, m’m, parcels. The cloak-room is stacked from floor to ceiling.”

This rather took my breath away, and I wondered how on earth I should ever get that number of things to Sicily.

No chance to return to the breakfast-table. There was no time to finish that egg as wildly I rushed to the telephone, begging one or two intimate friends to come and help at once, while a servant went off to neighbours to ask for immediate assistance.

Between signing papers for quickly-arriving packages and struggling to get helpers, a policeman appeared.

“Very sorry, mum, but, you know, you are obstructing the roadway,” he said.

“I cannot help it,” I replied. “I am literally overpowered, and as it is in the cause of charity, I suppose it does not matter.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” he answered; “but you must leave some pathway, besides which you are blocking the road; you will be taken up as a public nuisance.”

This was really too much. Telephoning for assistance to a high official at Scotland Yard, who chanced to be a personal friend, he soon sent me a special constable. One was not enough. He had to send for another policeman. But as every little butcher boy told every other little butcher boy what was going on, and as every loafer told every other loafer to come and see, an inspector had also to be requisitioned. For four days we were guarded by three stalwart policemen, who kept an eye on us for a further length of time.

“Pass along, please. Pass along, please,” became a well-known cry in the Terrace. Verily it was a blockade—especially after the papers extolled the novelty of the scene. Then nurses and perambulators came to have a look at us; ladies in grand motors drove round to see the sight; Bath chairs added to the confusion; and, above all, the unemployed at one time threatened serious trouble.

But to go back in the history of events which led to the Siege of York Terrace.

It was Christmas, 1908.

We were only a party of twelve, but amongst my guests was His Excellency the Italian Ambassador, the Marquis di San Giuliano. We ate turkey and plum-pudding, cracked crackers, and made merry in the usual Christmas fashion.

The Ambassador and I talked much of Sicily, of its sunshine, its people and the happy months I had spent there, and then of his family who lived in or near Catania, not far from Messina.

Jovial, contented, and pleased we parted at midnight on that Friday. Before daylight on the Monday following two hundred thousand people had been killed, wounded, or rendered homeless in a few seconds in Messina. Terrible indeed was the disaster. The earth opened and practically swallowed Reggio on the opposite shore, while a huge wave overswept the Sicilian coast. Houses fell like packs of cards, and the beautiful city of Messina cracked to pieces like the smashing of glass.

For hours—yes, for many hours—the Italian Ambassador in London did not even know whether his entire family had been swept away or not. All his relations felt the shock, though happily none succumbed. His son, the late Marquis di Capizzi, wrote to me a couple of days after the catastrophe, and said:

“We are still suffering from the terrible impressions of the earthquake that completely destroyed Messina, killing nearly 200,000 persons. It lasted so long and so much that we were sure we should all be killed here (Catania) and yet we escaped.”

Then followed details of death, horror, and misery, of starvation and naked humanity running about in torrential rain. Thus flashed across my mind an idea which matured in the above-mentioned letter to the Press:

An innocent enough little letter! Yet how far-reaching in its results.

There stood the parcels, but what they were to go into was the next problem. Each girl friend as she arrived was bundled into a cab, and told to go to shops in the neighbourhood and collect all the packing-cases she could and bring them back. They were brought, but more and more were wanted. Each shop could only produce two or three, and those they gave cheerfully, but as the stacks of packages increased more rapidly than they decreased, it ended at last in our requisitioning huge furniture cases, the sort of thing that holds a cottage piano, a settee, or two or three arm-chairs.

The first fifteen hundred articles were counted. They filled ten crates. After that it was impossible to enumerate, or even to do more than cursorily sort the things, but on the estimate of the first ten cases, I appear to have sent away twenty-seven thousand garments in one hundred and ninety-eight packing-cases. Some of them were so heavy they took four men to lift.

The first twenty thousand left in three days to catch the earliest mail steamers to the stricken centres.

How terrific was the pace may be judged by one incident.

I telephoned on Wednesday morning to my friend Sir Thomas Sutherland, asking that the weekly P. and O. boat might take out twenty cases for delivery in Sicily. By lunch-time that number had swollen to forty, so I telephoned again, and begged he would find room for forty in the Simla.

Still the pile did not decrease. Still we sent for packing-cases to the large furniture emporiums. By tea-time the number was much augmented, and I wired desperately to Sir Thomas, begging him to come and see me on his way home. He did so. His motor could not get up the street, for the newspapers had begun to mention the circumstance, and a crowd of sightseers and idlers had come to look on.

“I never saw such a sight,” he exclaimed; “the place is like a railway emporium.”

“I have a confession to make,” I said. “I asked you at luncheon-time to take forty cases. Dare I tell you I now have altogether eighty-five packages standing on the pavement, waiting to go somewhere?”

“Eighty-five!” he exclaimed. “But the Simla is full already.”

“They can’t stop here,” I said, almost in tears, for really the thing was becoming too serious. “The cases won’t even come inside the door. I have nowhere to put them, and they can’t remain in the street in case it rains, even if the police do guard them all night.”

They went to the docks that night. Then I went to bed feeling that it was over.

But not a bit of it. The very same thing began again next day, and another friend—Sir Frederick Green, chairman of the Orient—had to be appealed to, to convey the next consignment to Naples, which he most generously did.

To give some idea of the enormous magnitude of this undertaking—twelve dozen-dozen yards of rope were used to tie the cases, and twice I sent out for four shillings and sixpence worth of nails for fastening the lids. Two whole quart bottles of ink were used for painting on the addresses; and three dust-carts—special dust-carts—were required at the end of the first day to take away the refuse of string, cardboard-boxes, and brown paper. Never can I thank my twenty-seven willing helpers sufficiently. There were seldom less than fifteen at a time unpacking, sorting, and repacking in the street in all that bitter cold. They forgot personal suffering and backaches, working right cheerily and generously all those anxious days.

Buried in parcels did I call it? Swamped in parcels, drowned in parcels! Probably about three thousand of them.

Twenty thousand garments were got off by Friday night, when I had already implored the public through the Press to stop sending any more. Twenty thousand garments in reply to my appeal for a few things to send in “a box”!

On Saturday I had the following letter inserted in the Press, thinking this would stop the flow:

But no, still they came.

A week later the Italian Ambassador’s kindly thanks appeared in the Press:

Did that end it? Not at all. For another week packages dribbled in from Ireland, from the North of Scotland, from Germany, and even from Switzerland.

The curious thing about these parcels was that more than half the clothes were absolutely new. People had gone to shops and bought five or ten pounds’ worth of goods in reply to my appeal “in kind.” A large number came from gentlemen’s clubs or chambers. These usually arrived anonymously, with a touching little bit of paper inside, “God bless you,” or “An unknown admirer of your books,” or “My interest in Sicily was first awakened by your book on that country.”

A pair of baby’s socks came from a poor woman who wrote she was sorry she could not send more, but still she wanted to send something. Another workman’s wife offered a week’s time, as she had formerly been a shirt-maker and could get through a lot in the time, and that right willingly “for them poor things.”

A poor old governess wrote from a seaside town:

The address was rather touching:

“The Lady Authoress,
“Sending garments, etc.,
“To MESSINA,
“London.”

Another was poor; but had a pair of old ear-rings valued about £2, which she offered to send me for sale if I would apply the money in buying clothes. Some of the parcels contained several hundred things—often newly bought and beautiful—many were accompanied by complete lists of the contents.

Another letter came from a Home, and was signed by a row of Nurses on the Staff, each sending a contribution. A charming lady sent an odd shoe, and explained that the fellow shoe was in the parcel she had sent off the day before! A man sent a coat, and the next day followed the waistcoat which he had just found!

One more practical gentleman sent twenty-four pairs of beautiful new white blankets, done up in sacking; another thoughtful person sent six dozen new hair-brushes.

Numbers of people came to talk to me, shake hands with me, interview me, until I had to beg my friends to say I was engaged and invisible.

A lady brought a parcel and almost refused to leave it without seeing me personally and handing me her half-crown. As she was one of a number, the servant refused, whereupon she insisted on writing a letter, and sat down to slowly compile four sheets for my benefit, while the parlourmaid, who had been dragged from the packing, stood beside her. Luckily, she left the parcel and the two-and-sixpence.

Letters came from the grandest homes, from castles and courts, from vicarages and schools, and from some of the very poorest dwellings, carpenters’ wives and mill hands. They came from remote villages and towns I had never heard of, and many consignments arrived from abroad, the senders having written to large London emporiums and ordered blankets or shirts to be sent for the refugees.

Probably one-third came anonymously, a third more asked for acknowledgment, while others sent money to buy clothes, or for me to use at my discretion.

“Please prepay the carriage, dear friends.” Innocent enough words—but oh, the result of them almost swamped me—nearly nine hundred postal orders, mostly for sixpence, was the result. They came in letters, they came pinned to garments, they turned up anywhere and everywhere, and also stamps; just three, or six, or nine, or a dozen odd stamps, to help to pay carriage or buy clothes.

Roughly, I received about twelve hundred epistles, followed, after it was all over, by several hundred more begging letters from England and Italy. Many of these specified exactly what the writer would like to have: “A green dress, and my waist is 28 inches,” or “A pair of grey flannel trousers, and my height is 5ft. 10in.”

Among the strange addresses were:

“Alla Nobile Dama,
“Mrs. Alec Tweedie,
“Cultrice di belle Lettere,
“London.”

Or again,

“To the Right Honourable Lady
“Alec Tweedie,
“London.”

They flattered and praised me, spoke “of my great merits and noble heart,” and then proceeded to ask me “to pay for the education of a young musician,” “adopt a baby,” “get the plays of a young dramatist performed in London,” “send money to a Viscount who was too proud to beg, so would I address it to his servant?” England and Italy honoured me with some hundred of these begging letters. Old clothes men offered to buy up what was left over. “Mrs. Harts” and “Mr. Abrahams” rang up to know if I wished to sell any of the surplus things. (What did they take me for?) Men and women pulled the front-door bell and asked for coats and skirts; in fact, my house was not my own for a month or more.

As one hundred and twenty-six pounds eighteen shillings and eleven pence came to me in money with the request that I would buy clothing (which I did from poor guilds), as the donors lived in the country, or do exactly as I liked with it, we tried to be businesslike, in spite of the rush, and made most elaborate tables showing cases despatched, dates, money received, expended, and so on.

Nothing was omitted. Every conceivable article of clothing for men, women, and children was there. Numberless blankets, sheets, needles, cottons, pins, tapes, new stockings with the proper-coloured mending pinned on, and boots and shoes galore. The things in themselves depicted the thought and care with which they had been selected, showing the sympathy of the people of Great Britain, from the poorest to the richest, with the unfortunate sufferers. Amongst other things were razors and pipes. There were even braces, slippers, fur coats, hairpins, sleeping-socks, and amongst it all came a parcel of most useful things, amongst which were hidden a dozen copies of the Christian World. Did the dear old body who sent them imagine that the Sicilian peasants could read an English tract?

One lady wrote she “is sending a case weighing four hundredweight, and as it contains seven hundred garments, she thinks it might go as it stands.” It did; God bless her.

Really it was a study in parcels. Some were so beautifully done up that one marvelled at the dexterity of amateur hands which tied the string; others were disgracefully bundled together; and in one or two cases labels arrived saying they had been found without any parcels attached.

Many people had carefully sorted the things into bundles and written outside, “Complete outfit for a man,” “Complete outfit for a woman,” “For a peasant child,” or “For a well-born little girl.”

Several people in different parts of England offered to get up working-parties, and asked for suggestions for making suitable garments.

A Manchester manufacturer of flannel said he was willing to give all that was required, and his workpeople would give the time if I let them know what to make, but as his letter did not arrive until twenty-five thousand things had gone, I did not feel able to begin over again. Dressmakers and shops sent contributions. Several sent parcels in great haste. Poor dears, they imagined there would be one crate—my “one box on Friday” became a veritable joke. A lady sent a sack containing clothes, and kindly requested that I would let her have the sack back. I did return several portmanteaux, suit-cases, washing-baskets, and even hold-alls, but when it came to a sack——

The crowd which collected in the street was both pathetic and humorous. I remember two shabby little urchins of eight and ten looking with longing eyes at the warm clothing, and the younger one remarked: “I say, Bob, what a pity we wasn’t blowd up in that earthquake!”

A friend noticed a couple of unusual parcels being handed in at the door and quietly put into one of the cases. On rushing to investigate, she found that one contained my best drawing-room curtains returned from the cleaners, and the other a cake for afternoon tea.

Warned not to leave her wraps about, one of my helpers put her muff and stole on the staircase. An hour later she only rescued them in the nick of time from a crate where a kindly man was packing them up, thinking they “would be so comfortable for the poor people in Sicily.”

Many of these crates stood four feet from the ground. It was therefore impossible, even with the aid of friendly walking-sticks, to pack the bottom, consequently a kitchen chair was fetched, and by its aid various girls got inside and gradually packed the clothing and themselves upwards.

My rooms on the ground floor were full of parcels, letters, cheques, postal orders, keys waiting to be returned with portmanteaux, labels likewise to be affixed to returned empties, bills of lading, telegrams, cards, accounts for clothing, etc. Personally, I never sat down for one minute that somebody did not come to ask for a shilling, or sixpence, or half-crown, to pay for some package delivered unpaid at the door.

To complicate matters, reporters and photographers seemed to arrive from everywhere. They snapshotted us as we worked, they gleaned bits of information from any and every one, and one of them insisted on penetrating my private den, where he found me busily writing. A friend, hearing a crash and seeing a mysterious light, thought there was a sudden earthquake in York Terrace. She rushed to the hall to ask what had happened. “Oh, it is nothing, only Mrs. Tweedie being snapshotted.”

And oh—what a photograph it was! But it was reproduced in France, Germany, Italy, and Sicily.

Some weeks afterwards I received the following letter from the Italian Government through Sir Rennell Rodd, our Ambassador in Rome:

Most of the packages were distributed by my personal friends to the real sufferers in Sicily fourteen days after the earthquake.

Yes, it was an experience. An extraordinary experience even in a life not unknown to strange sights and circumstances, but it was not what one would willingly undertake again. The strain of organising such a performance in a few hours’ time was terrific.

It cost me some weeks of my life, made a hole in my pocket, and did my walls and house much damage, but I gained a vast amount of experience, and hundreds of half-sheets of note-paper!