General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival 1847

Gentlemen, it is well for me, and better for you, that the admirable exposition we have heard from my friend on my left of the claims and merits of the General Theatrical Fund, and its immense superiority in its freedom from exclusive restrictions to any other institution having any similar but narrower object, leaves nothing to be added on that head: though the case is so clear and so strong, and has always in its common sense and justice interested me so earnestly, that I could hold forth on this theme ‘until my eyelids could no longer wag’, and am happy to be relieved of the danger of producing any influence on your eyelids by dealing with it at all. As it has been written of Vice, that she is

A monster of such hideous mien,
As to be hated needs but to be seen.

 so, I am sure, it might be written of the General Theatrical Fund, that its objects are:

And better known they never can be, than from the lips which have proclaimed them to the room this night.

There is, however, gentlemen, one point that seems to me to arise naturally out of the observations of our distinguished President, and at which I cannot help just glancing as I go along. Hope lingered at the bottom of a box in ancient days, as we are told: I cannot help fancying that I descry her lingering yet, at the bottom of those two strong-boxes of the Covent Garden and Drury Lane Theatrical Funds, to offer solid consolation to the General Theatrical Fund in time to come. For as the natural recipients of that treasure pass away in natural course, and no one among them bears in his hand ‘a glass that shows me many more’ – or any more – I cannot help fancying that some portion of the garnered wealth must come our way at last, and float into our roomy coffers. Gentlemen, I hardly think it possible that two such large golden camels can entirely pass through the eyes of two such little needles; and when an institution has arisen, so broad and free as this is, which extends its advantages, not to the pale shades of two dead and buried companies of actors, but to the whole theatrical profession throughout England, I hold it would be a faint-hearted blinking of the question not to avow what most of us here must surely feel – a confident belief that to such resources it may justly, and of right, look for valuable endowment in the days to come. It is ill ‘waiting for dead men’s shoes’, I know; but it is quite another matter waiting for shoes that have been made for people who can never be born to try them on.

I come now, gentlemen, to propose to you a toast which is uppermost, I dare say, in the thoughts of everybody present, which is ‘the very head and front’ of the occasion, and the cause which brings us together; which is, and ever must be, inseparably associated with the honour, dignity, and glory of the English stage; with its revival in splendour and magnificence from ruin and rubbish, with its claims to be respected as an art and as a noble means of general instruction and improvement. To whom could such a toast apply, if not to our chairman, Mr. Macready? Of whom, gentlemen – so graceful and appropriate is the position he now occupies among us – I would say, if I may paraphrase what he knows well, that nothing in the Chair became him like the taking of it. It is as generous and true in him – at the head of his profession, and at the zenith of a proud and prosperous career, to take part with this Fund, and to be heard in this pace urging its claims with a manly earnestness, because it is not restrictive, and because it does not favour a few, and because it addresses itself to the great body of actors, and most of all to those who most need it, – as it must be of enduring service to the institution to receive such high and valuable testimony.

Gentlemen, it would be difficult for me to find terms in which to discharge the duty of proposing our chairman’s health, in the difficulty I always feel as to the separation of his name from sentiments of strong personal affection and attachment, if I were not happily relieved by the knowledge that, in your breasts as well as mine, the mere mention of Mr. Macready’s name awakens a host of eloquent associations, – Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, grey-haired Lear, Virginius, Werner, and a host of others, speak for him within us, like spirits. We once again forget the encircling walls of his Covent Garden Theatre, or of Drury Lane – theatres then with nothing infamous to mock the lesson that the poet taught or shame the woman-student of it – and look upon old Rome, its senate and its army, or the Forest of Arden with its gnarled and melancholy boughs, or Swinstead Abbey Gardens with the cruel king upon his death-bed, or Prospero’s enchanted island, or any of those scenes of airy nothings that he made plain and palpable. Oh! if one touch of nature makes the whole world kin, think, gentlemen, for how much of the kindred feeling that is amongst us tonight, or at any time, we are indebted to such an art, and such a man! May we be more and more indebted to him, year by year, for very many years to come! May we yet behold the English drama – this is a hope to which I always cling – in some theatre of his own, rising proudly from its ashes, into new and vigorous existence. And may we, in the reception we now give his name, express all this, and twenty times as much; including the past, the present, and the future; and give him reason years hence to remember this occasion, with something of the pleasure and delight that we have through him derived from it ourselves! I beg to propose to you to drink the health of our chairman, Mr. Macready.