Toast at the Artists' General Benevolent Institution Charity Dinner

Toast given at the Artists' General Benevolent Institution Charity Dinner, Freemasons' Hall (24 March 1839).

Dickens, Charles

The Morning Chronicle (25 March 1839).

Dickens, Charles. 'Toast at the Artists' General Benevolent Institution Charity Dinner (24 March 1839). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1839-03-24_Speech_Artists-General-Benevolent-Institution.

'Mr. Charles Dickens said that, if he could consider the compliment as one paid to himself, unexpected as it was, he should have had great difficulty in returning thanks; but he was relieved from any such consideration, because he only recognised in it the connection which existed between the pencil and the pen, and therefore in the name of the sewards, of whom he had the honour to be one, he begged to return their sincere acknowledgments for the mark of distinction which had been paid to them. It would be bad taste in him if he were to detain them at any length, but he must at the same time say, that it gave him sincerely gratification to see around him, on an occasion of this kind, those distinguished artists, who cast lustre by their genius on the lowest subjects, and raised them by the power of their graphic pencils to the level of their own fanciful imaginations. He hoped he would be permitted to say, that it gave him pleasure and delight to be connected even for a moment with an institution which partook of the grace and beauty of the pencil, and shed its soft light upon poverty and distress, into the house of sickness and sorrow.'