Here, There and Everywhere

by Lord Frederic Hamilton

As my nephew and I drove out of the dock enclosure at Kingston, we were appalled at the scene of desolation that met our eyes. Kingston was one heap of ruins; there was not a house intact. Neither of us had imagined the possibility of a town being so completely destroyed, for this was in 1907, not 1915, and twenty brief seconds had sufficed to wreck a prosperous city of 40,000 inhabitants. The streets had been partially cleared, but the telephone and the electric-light wires were all down, as were the overhead wires for the trolly-cars. We traversed three miles of shapeless heaps of bricks and stones. Some trim well-kept villas in the suburbs which I remembered well, were either shaken down, or gaped on the road through broad fissures in their frontages, great piles of debris announcing that the building was only, so to speak, standing on sufferance, and would have to be entirely reconstructed. On arriving at King's House, we found the main building still standing, but so damaged that it might collapse at any moment, and therefore uninhabitable. The handsome ballroom, which formed a separate wing, was nothing but a pile of rubbish, a formless mass of bricks and plaster. The dining-room, making the corresponding wing, was built entirely of wood, and had consequently escaped injury. This dining-room was a very lofty hall, paved with marble and entirely surrounded by arches open to the air. It had previously reminded me of the interiors seen in Italian pictures of sacred subjects, with its bareness, spacious whiteness, its columns and arches. Here the Governor, Lady Swettenham and her sister were living, in little encampments formed by screens. Two splendid chandeliers of Spanish bronze, originally looted from Havannah in the eighteenth century, had been dismantled by the Governor's orders, in view of the possibility of further shocks. The verandah outside formed the living-room for every one. My nephew and I were very comfortably lodged in a little wooden shed, formerly the laundry. I had noticed as we drove through the town that the great Edinburgh reservoirs were apparently quite uninjured, and here at King's House the fountain was splashing in its basin as gaily as ever, the building containing the big swimming-bath was undamaged, and the spring which fed the bath still gurgled cheerfully into it. Wherever there was water, the shock seemed to have been neutralised, for I imagine that the water acted as a cushion to deaden the earth-wave. Neither the electric lighting nor the telephones were working.

A tropical night is seldom quiet, what with the croaking of frogs, the chirping of the cicadas, and some bird, insect, or reptile that imitates the winding in of a fishing-reel for hours together, but really the noise of the Jamaican nights after the earthquake was quite unbearable. Negroes are very hysterical, and some black preachers had utilised the earthquake to start a series of revival meetings, and these were held just outside the grounds of King's House. Right through the night they lasted, with continual hymn-singing, varied with loud cries and groans. "Abide with me" is a beautiful hymn, but really its beauties began to pall when it had been sung through from beginning to end nine times running. Neither my nephew nor I could get any sleep that first night owing to the blatant devotional exercises of the overwrought negroes.

Both Sir Alexander and Lady Swettenham were really wonderful. He, though an old man, only allowed himself five hours' sleep, and spent his days at Headquarters House trying to bring the affairs of the ruined city into some kind of order, and to start the every-day machinery of ordinary civilised life again, for there were no shops, no butchers or bakers, no clothing, no groceries—everything had been destroyed, and had to be reconstructed. We had noticed the previous afternoon a very rough newly erected shanty. It was barely finished, but already jets of steam were puffing from its roof, and a large sign proclaimed it a steam-bakery. That was the only source of bread-supply in Kingston. Is it necessary to specify the nationality of a firm so prompt to rise to an emergency, or to add that the names over the door were two Scottish ones? Lady Swettenham was equally indefatigable, and sat on endless committees: for sheltering the destitute, for helping the homeless with food, money and clothing, for providing for the widows and orphans.

It was estimated that twelve hundred people lost their lives on that fatal afternoon of January 14, 1907, though even this pales before the terrific catastrophe of St. Pierre in Martinique, on May 8, 1902, when forty thousand people and one of the finest towns in the West Indies were blotted out of existence in one minute by a fiery blast from the volcano Mont Pele.

Lady Swettenham was driving into Kingston with Lady Dudley at 2.30 p.m. on the day of the earthquake. Some ten minutes later they felt the carriage suddenly rise, and then fall again. The horses stopped, and the coachman looked back in vain for the tree he thought he must have run over, until, on turning the next corner, they came upon a house in ruins. Then Lady Swettenham knew. Both ladies worked all night in the hospital, attending to the hundreds of injured. The hospital dispensary had been wrecked, and, sad to say, the supply of chloroform became exhausted, so amputations had to be performed without anaesthetics. Most fortunately there was to have been a great ball at King's House that very evening, so Lady Swettenham was able to provide the hospital with unlimited soup, jellies, and cold chickens; otherwise it would have been impossible to provide the sufferers with any food at all.

As we all know, points of view differ. After the trolley-car service had been re-established, my nephew and I had occasion to go into Kingston daily towards noon. On the front bench of the car there was always seated a little white boy, about nine years old, with a pile of school-books. He was a well-mannered, friendly little fellow and soon entered into conversation. Waxing confidential, he observed to us, "Isn't this earthquake awfully jolly? Our school is all 'mashed up' so we get out at half-past eleven instead of at one."

"And how about your own house, Charlie? Is that all right?"

"Oh no, it's all 'mashed up' too, so is Daddy's store. We're living on the lawn in tents, like Robinson Crusoe. It's most awfully jolly!"

Incidentally I may remark that Charlie's father had been completely ruined by the earthquake, his store not being insured, but the small boy only saw things from his own point of view.

A certain London West-End church, with which I am connected, has a Resident Choir School attached to it. As the choir-boys' dormitory is at the top of the building, every time that there was an air-raid during the war, they were routed out of bed and sent down to the coal-cellar. The boys were told to write an account of one peculiarly severe raid as part of their school-work. One small urchin described it as follows: "The Vicar woke us up and told us there was an air-raid, and that we were to go down into the coal-cellar in our pyjamas with our blankets. It was awfully jolly down in the cellar. In our blankets we looked like robbers in a cave, or like a lot of Red Indians. The Vicar told us stories, and we had buns and cocoa and sang songs. It was all so awfully jolly that all the chaps hope that there will be plenty more air-raids."