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.