| 299 | https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/299 | Farewell Dinner on Revisiting America | | Speech at the Farewell Dinner on Revisiting America (2 November 1867). | Dickens, Charles | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1867-11-02">1867-11-02</a> | | | | | | | 1867-11-02_Speech_Farewell-Dinner-on-Revisiting-America | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Dickens, Charles. 'Speech at the Farewell Dinner on Revisiting America' (2 November 1867). <em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1867-11-02_Speech_Farewell-Dinner-on-Revisiting-America">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1867-11-02_Speech_Farewell-Dinner-on-Revisiting-America</a><span>.</span> | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Freemasons%27+Hall">Freemasons' Hall</a> | | | | | | | | | | | | My Lords, Ladies, and Gentlemen, No thanks that I can offer you can express my sense of my reception by this great assemblage, or can in the least suggest to you how deep the glowing words of my friend the chairman, and your acceptance of them, have sunk into my heart. But both combined have so greatly shaken the composure that I am used to command in the presence of an audience, that I hope you may observe in me some traces of an eloquence more expressive than the richest words. To say that I am fervently grateful to you, is to say – nothing; to say that I can never forget this beautiful sight is to say – nothing. To say that it brings upon me a rush of emotion, not only in its present pride and honour, but in the thought of its remembrance in the future by those who are dearest to me, is to say – nothing. To feel all this, however, for the moment even almost to pain, is very much indeed. Mercutio says of the wound in his breast, dealt him by the hand of a foe, that – ‘’Tis not so deep as a well nor so wide as a church door; but ’tis enough, ’twill serve.’ I may say of the wound in my breast, newly dealt by the hands of my friends, that it is deeper than the soundless sea, and wider than the whole Catholic Church. And I may safely add, that it has for the moment almost stricken me dumb. My Lords, ladies and gentlemen, I should be more than human – and I assure you I am very human indeed – if I could look upon this brilliant representative company and not feel greatly thrilled and stirred by the presence of so many of my brother artists, not only in literature, but also in the sister arts, especially painting, among whose professors living, and, unhappily, dead, are many of my oldest and best friends. I hope that I may regard this thronging of my brothers round me as a testimony on their part that they believe that the cause of art generally has been safe in my keeping, and that they think it has never been falsely dealt with by me. Your resounding cheers just now would have been but so many cruel reproaches to me if I could not here declare that, from the earliest days of my career down to this proud night, I have always tried to be true to my calling. Never unduly to assert it on the one hand, and never on any pretence or consideration, to permit it to be patronized in my person on the other, has been the steady endeavour of my life; and I have occasionally been vain enough to hope that I may leave its social position in England better than I found it. Similarly, and equally, I hope, without presumption, I trust that I may take this general representation of the public here, through so many orders, pursuits, and degrees, as a token that the public believe, that with a host of imperfections and shortcomings upon my head, I have as a writer, in my soul and conscience, tried to be as true to them as they have ever been to me. And here, in reference to the inner circle of the arts, and the outer circle of the public, I feel it a duty tonight to offer two remarks. I have in my day at odd times heard a great deal about literary sets, and cliques, and coteries, and barriers, and about keeping this man up, and keeping that man down, and about sworn disciples, and sworn unbelievers, and mutual admiration societies, and I know not what other dragons in the upward path. I began to tread it when I was very young, without influence, without money, without companion, introducer, or adviser, and I am bound to put in evidence in this place that I never lighted on those dragons yet. So have I heard in my day, at divers other odd times, much generally to the effect that the English people have little or no love of art for its own sake, and that they do not greatly care to acknowledge or do honour to the artist. My own experience has uniformly been exactly the reverse. I can say that of my countrymen, though I cannot say that of my country. And now, ladies and gentlemen, passing to the immediate occasion of your doing me this great honour, the story of my going again to America is very easily and briefly told. Since I was there before, a vast entirely new generation has arisen in the United States. Since I was there before most of the best known of my books have been written and published. The new generation and the books have come together, until, at last, numbers of those who have so widely and constantly read me, have expressed a strong wish that I should read myself. This wish, at first conveyed to me through public channels and business channels, has gradually become enforced by an immense accumulation of letters from individuals and associations of individuals, all expressing in the same hearty, homely, cordial, unaffected way, a kind of personal interest in me. I had almost said a kind of personal affection for me, which, I am sure you will agree with me, it would be dull insensibility on my part not to prize. Little by little this pressure has become so great that although, as Charles Lamb says, ‘My household gods strike a terribly deep root’, I have torn them from their places, and this day week, at this hour, shall be upon the sea. You will readily conceive that I am inspired besides by a natural desire to see for myself the astonishing change and progress of a quarter of a century over there, to grasp the hands of many faithful friends whom I left upon those shores, to see the faces of the multitude of new friends upon whom I have never looked, and last, not least, to use my best endeavour to lay down a third cable of intercommunication and alliance between the old world and the new. Twelve years ago, when, Heaven knows, I little thought I should ever be bound upon the voyage which now lies before me, I wrote, in that form of my writings which obtains by far the most extensive circulation, these words of the American nation: – ‘I know full well, whatever little motes my beamy eyes may have descried in theirs, that they are a kind, large-hearted, generous, and great people.’ In that faith I am going to see them again. In that faith I shall, please God, return from them in the spring; in that same faith to live and to die! My Lords, ladies and gentlemen, I told you in the beginning that I could not thank you enough, and Heaven knows I have most thoroughly kept my word. If I may quote one other short sentence from myself, let it imply all that I have left unsaid, and yet most deeply feel; let it, putting a girdle round the earth, comprehend both sides of the Atlantic at once in this moment. ‘And so,’ as Tiny Tim observed. ‘God bless us every one!’ | 18671102 | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a> | | | | | | | | |