7 10 136 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Speeches Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context speeches Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together Dickens’s collected and uncollected speeches, making an under-explored body of work searchable for the first time. </h4> Dickens made more than a hundred speeches between 1837 and 1870 at events ranging from charitable dinners and award ceremonies to banquets in his honour or brief words of thanks before a public reading. In these speeches, the author touched on topics including his own life and professional development as well as other subjects such as politics, education, literature, public health and the development of the railway. Efforts to collect Dickens’s speeches prior to 1960 were incomplete at best, and misleading and fragmentary at worst. John Camden Hotten’s collection of speeches, begun without the author’s consent (although he never responded to Hotten’s letters, Dickens did begin efforts to block their publication) and published together with a hastily-compiled biography shortly after the author’s death, remained the primary collected version of the speeches until the Nonesuch Dickens of 1938-39 (a limited print run). Finally, K. J. Fielding brought all known speeches together in 1960, correcting shoddy transcriptions by Hotten using contemporary newspaper accounts, and nearly doubling the total number of speeches attributed to Dickens (The Speeches of Charles Dickens [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960]): Hotten had only featured the text of 56 speeches, the Nonesuch edition of the speeches provided an additional nine, and Fielding presented more than a hundred. Since this monumental work, a handful have also appeared in The Dickensian;<a href="#fn1" id="ref1">1</a> there are certainly more to be found, as the volume of digitised newspapers and periodicals increases, and corrections to be made to existing transcriptions. No effort to collect the speeches has been made since Fielding; this collection thus represents the most complete body of Dickens's speeches ever assembled. Dickens did not write his speeches beforehand, nor did he speak from notes. George Dolby recounted his imaginative process in 1884: <blockquote>[S]upposing the speech was to be delivered in the evening, his habit was to take a long walk in the morning, during which he would decide on the various heads to be dealt with. These being arranged in their proper order, he would in his 'mind's eye,' liken the whole subject to the tire of a cart wheel – he being the hub. From the hub to the tire he would run as many spokes as there were subjects to be treated, and during the progress of the speech he would deal with each spoke separately, elaborating them as he went round the wheel; and when all the spokes dropped out one by one, and nothing but the tire and space remained […] his speech was at an end. (Charles Dickens as I Knew Him: The Story of the Reading Tours in Great Britain and America, pp. 273-74)</blockquote> However, on important occasions, Dickens might personally correct transcriptions of speeches for major London newspapers like The Times. As such, these newspaper accounts are as accurate a source as we can hope to have for what Dickens said (or meant to say). Our Transcription field will only include words attributed directly to Dickens rather than third-person reports or paraphrases of his speeches. Where only such reports exist, we will provide the text in the 'Summary' field. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to what are given as Dickens's words only, to avoid skewing the results, but of course we are reliant on the quality of the reporting: we recommend analysing topics, themes, quotations and concepts rather than granular detail such as prepositions, punctuation, capitalisation and the intricacies of grammar, as different newspaper accounts can vary on these points. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or to contribute other uncollected speeches by Dickens. 1. These are Philip Collins, 'Some Uncollected Speeches by Dickens', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 89-99; David A. Roos, 'Dickens at the Royal Academy of Arts: A New Speech and Two Eulogies', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 100-107; and William F. Long, 'Dickens and the Coming of Rail to Deal: An Uncollected Speech and its Context', The Dickensian 85.418 (1989): pp. 66-80. <a href="#ref1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Emily Middleton; Ellie-Louise Crampton; Maisie Howard; Adam Woods Speech Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given Freemasons' Hall Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18550521 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. Before proceeding with the business of the general meeting, it occurs to me that we should all refresh our memories as to what this institution is, what it wants, and why we have reason for hoping that its wants will, in the long run, be realized. In the first place your institution is a society – a benevolent and provident society – ‘for granting temporary relief and permanent assistance to masters and servants engaged as vendors of newspapers, who from age, infirmity, or distress may require assistance.’ As I understand the society, although it grants temporary relief to those who are not members, it reasonably, as a matter of justice and right, only grants pensions to the persons and widows of those who are members. It appears one of the great merits of this institution that the qualification of membership is made so extremely small and easy, and within the access of everybody belonging to the trade, the subscription being five shillings annually, or a fraction more than a penny a week. Everybody knows, on the authority of ‘the wisdom of our ancestors’, that ‘early to bed and early to rise, make a man healthy, wealthy, and wise’; and although the newsmen as a class are compelled to rise extremely early, which implies extremely early going to bed, still the financial operations of the newsmen do not materially affect the money market. The society provides a qualification within the reach of all poor men, and therefore you commence with the very strong leverage of going upon a perfectly practicable plan. The management of the society is remarkably economical; its expenses are particularly small; it has three pensioners upon its list; and it has saved from its small beginnings £1,500. Then we come to the question of what your infant struggling society wants? It wants, in the first place, as we all do, more money; it wants, as very few of us do with our current Parliamentary experience, more members. This latter want I regard as by far the more important want of the two; for it is only by the support of the newsvendors themselves; it is only by your zealous exertions and devotion to your own cause; it is only, in short, by your uniting together for the benefit of your common calling, that this society can ever be raised into an extended sphere of usefulness; in fact it is only by your thoroughly helping yourselves that the public can ever be got to help you. You may rely upon it that there is no principle more certain than this, that every man who becomes a member of your society communicates a moral support to it which is worth his five shillings a year fifty times told. Every man owes a duty to the calling in which he is engaged no less than to himself, and it is only by this sense of double duty being diffused among the whole trade that your society can ever succeed. Even if there be a man in your trade so sanguine as to believe that he himself will never want help in age, infirmity, or distress, you must inspire that man with the ambition to help his brothers all round, and to elevate the whole family by the brightness of that laudable example. Well then, we come to the question, what grounds the society has for believing that it will ultimately come to the accomplishment of those wants which I have stated? Now, foremost in the future which is opening before you, I cannot but put the intelligence and enterprise of the principals engaged in the newsvending trade, and the business habits, the good sense, and the good feeling of their assistants. If certain gentlemen whom I see about me tonight– if Mr. Wild, for example, who is close to me, were a distributor of news for the two reasons that his great grandmother, the Dowager – dowager Mrs. Wild had been a distributor of news, that he himself had not the slightest knowledge of his own business, I should have slight hope of him. Or if he had selected for his assistant a man who left me the Morning Post for last Christmas Day twelve months, instead of The Times of this morning, sent my copy of the Examiner to Bengal instead of to Tavistock Square, and insisted in serving me with publications I never wished to see, while keeping back those I am dying to read, I should have very small hope of him; and I should take the liberty of saying of such a master and man – as I have taken the liberty of saying pretty often lately of another master and man: ‘It is perfectly clear that no good whatever can come out of these people; they are a scarcely animated heap of confusion and imbecility, and they can no more become better than roses can bloom in the Great Desert, or than the Great Pyramid can stand on its head.’ But newsmen cannot proceed in this manner. They must be steady, attentive, active, industrious, and efficient. The master, to succeed in his trade, must watch and be wary and attentive to every minute detail; and the assistant, to be an assistant worthy of his money – whether he be a man of middle age with a large family, or whether he be an undersized boy who gets a larger-sized boy to hold his oilskin portfolio while he refreshes himself by ‘overing’ all the posts on his beat – must do his appointed task of work within his appointed time, or he must come out of the Cabinet altogether, and go to the father of all confusion and false principles. And although the checktaker at a theatre never sees the play, and similarly it is possible a newsman may never read the paper – though I have seen him at it often when he goes along the street – I cannot but believe that he derives some intelligence and instruction from the article in which he deals; and so long as he discharges his duties faithfully and efficiently, I cannot think it likely his trade will remain a peculiar or exceptional case in not having its own thriving provident institution, supported by the very best men. Then, lastly, if the members of the trade be only true to the trade itself and to themselves – which I again insist on, with your leave, to be the one thing needful in this business, and the solid ground on which alone your house can stand – we have to ask whether there is a reasonable hope that the public will be glad to help them? I am strongly of opinion that there is, since no one can doubt that the newsman is in his degree a public servant, and that the pack he carries up and down is of vital importance to the public interest. There are near Westminster, at this very moment while I speak, some gentlemen – certain howling Dervishes, who are observed to be particularly attentive at their devotions at the shrine of my friend Mr. Layard, whose honesty of purpose stands unimpeached – who would hamstring every newsman in London, if they could do so with impunity. Why? Because the newsman, though he is humbly associated, still is usefully and necessarily associated with that great engine which puts a girdle round the earth in every twenty-four hours, and because the newsman, going upon his daily way, lights up the whole country, as the bearer of a flaming cross used to call the Highland clans together.  We have had lately a strike among the gasworkers, and a strike among the cab-drivers; but consider what were those inconveniences compared with the light that would be dimmed, and the progress that would be stopped, by a strike of newsmen. Humbly associated, I say again, but necessarily associated with that wonderful engine, that great result of civilization which is the terror of all humbugs, and the natural enemy of everyone and everything that cannot bear the light, the newsman is undoubtedly in his degree a good public servant, and the public never forgot a good public servant yet, if he took his right place. And when I remember that this trade has grown to what it is from the days when some little, mean, poor broadside was issued occasionally, giving an account of certain wonderful appearances observed in the air by eighteen persons of credit down in Northamptonshire; when a dozen country gentlemen subscribed to a newsletter written by a person of learning, the news of which, seldom true to begin with, was six months old when they got it; when a copy of The Times would scarcely have made one night's curl papers for a young lady with a very moderate crop; and when I look to the present day when the same newspaper is large enough for a carpet for a dining-room; and when I reflect that the daily press is the portal through which men of great ability, intelligence, and energy pass to win their way to distinction in every quarter of the world; I say – when I see all this – I cannot believe that an institution belonging to the trade, and plainly tending to its benefit, does not contain within it the capacity of being developed to a state of usefulness and credit worthy of the service in which newsmen were enlisted. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Newsvendors' Benevolent Institution Annual General Meeting Description An account of the resource Speech at the Newsvendors' Benevolent Institution Annual General Meeting (21 May 1855). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1855-05-21 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1855-05-21_Speech_Newsvendors-Benevolent-Institution-Annual-General-Meeting Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Speech at the Newsvendors' Benevolent Institution Annual General Meeting' (21 May 1855). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1855-05-21_Speech_Newsvendors-Benevolent-Institution-Annual-General-Meeting">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1855-05-21_Speech_Newsvendors-Benevolent-Institution-Annual-General-Meeting</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Before proceeding with the business of the general meeting, it occurs to me that we should all refresh our memories as to what this institution is, what it wants, and why we have reason for hoping that its wants will, in the long run, be realized. In the first place your institution is a society – a benevolent and provident society – ‘for granting temporary relief and permanent assistance to masters and servants engaged as vendors of newspapers, who from age, infirmity, or distress may require assistance.’ As I understand the society, although it grants temporary relief to those who are not members, it reasonably, as a matter of justice and right, only grants pensions to the persons and widows of those who are members. It appears one of the great merits of this institution that the qualification of membership is made so extremely small and easy, and within the access of everybody belonging to the trade, the subscription being five shillings annually, or a fraction more than a penny a week. Everybody knows, on the authority of ‘the wisdom of our ancestors’, that ‘early to bed and early to rise, make a man healthy, wealthy, and wise’; and although the newsmen as a class are compelled to rise extremely early, which implies extremely early going to bed, still the financial operations of the newsmen do not materially affect the money market. The society provides a qualification within the reach of all poor men, and therefore you commence with the very strong leverage of going upon a perfectly practicable plan. The management of the society is remarkably economical; its expenses are particularly small; it has three pensioners upon its list; and it has saved from its small beginnings £1,500. Then we come to the question of what your infant struggling society wants? It wants, in the first place, as we all do, more money; it wants, as very few of us do with our current Parliamentary experience, more members. This latter want I regard as by far the more important want of the two; for it is only by the support of the newsvendors themselves; it is only by your zealous exertions and devotion to your own cause; it is only, in short, by your uniting together for the benefit of your common calling, that this society can ever be raised into an extended sphere of usefulness; in fact it is only by your thoroughly helping yourselves that the public can ever be got to help you. You may rely upon it that there is no principle more certain than this, that every man who becomes a member of your society communicates a moral support to it which is worth his five shillings a year fifty times told. Every man owes a duty to the calling in which he is engaged no less than to himself, and it is only by this sense of double duty being diffused among the whole trade that your society can ever succeed. Even if there be a man in your trade so sanguine as to believe that he himself will never want help in age, infirmity, or distress, you must inspire that man with the ambition to help his brothers all round, and to elevate the whole family by the brightness of that laudable example. Well then, we come to the question, what grounds the society has for believing that it will ultimately come to the accomplishment of those wants which I have stated? Now, foremost in the future which is opening before you, I cannot but put the intelligence and enterprise of the principals engaged in the newsvending trade, and the business habits, the good sense, and the good feeling of their assistants. If certain gentlemen whom I see about me tonight– if Mr. Wild, for example, who is close to me, were a distributor of news for the two reasons that his great grandmother, the Dowager – dowager Mrs. Wild had been a distributor of news, that he himself had not the slightest knowledge of his own business, I should have slight hope of him. Or if he had selected for his assistant a man who left me the Morning Post for last Christmas Day twelve months, instead of The Times of this morning, sent my copy of the Examiner to Bengal instead of to Tavistock Square, and insisted in serving me with publications I never wished to see, while keeping back those I am dying to read, I should have very small hope of him; and I should take the liberty of saying of such a master and man – as I have taken the liberty of saying pretty often lately of another master and man: ‘It is perfectly clear that no good whatever can come out of these people; they are a scarcely animated heap of confusion and imbecility, and they can no more become better than roses can bloom in the Great Desert, or than the Great Pyramid can stand on its head.’ But newsmen cannot proceed in this manner. They must be steady, attentive, active, industrious, and efficient. The master, to succeed in his trade, must watch and be wary and attentive to every minute detail; and the assistant, to be an assistant worthy of his money – whether he be a man of middle age with a large family, or whether he be an undersized boy who gets a larger-sized boy to hold his oilskin portfolio while he refreshes himself by ‘overing’ all the posts on his beat – must do his appointed task of work within his appointed time, or he must come out of the Cabinet altogether, and go to the father of all confusion and false principles. And although the checktaker at a theatre never sees the play, and similarly it is possible a newsman may never read the paper – though I have seen him at it often when he goes along the street – I cannot but believe that he derives some intelligence and instruction from the article in which he deals; and so long as he discharges his duties faithfully and efficiently, I cannot think it likely his trade will remain a peculiar or exceptional case in not having its own thriving provident institution, supported by the very best men. Then, lastly, if the members of the trade be only true to the trade itself and to themselves – which I again insist on, with your leave, to be the one thing needful in this business, and the solid ground on which alone your house can stand – we have to ask whether there is a reasonable hope that the public will be glad to help them? I am strongly of opinion that there is, since no one can doubt that the newsman is in his degree a public servant, and that the pack he carries up and down is of vital importance to the public interest. There are near Westminster, at this very moment while I speak, some gentlemen – certain howling Dervishes, who are observed to be particularly attentive at their devotions at the shrine of my friend Mr. Layard, whose honesty of purpose stands unimpeached – who would hamstring every newsman in London, if they could do so with impunity. Why? Because the newsman, though he is humbly associated, still is usefully and necessarily associated with that great engine which puts a girdle round the earth in every twenty-four hours, and because the newsman, going upon his daily way, lights up the whole country, as the bearer of a flaming cross used to call the Highland clans together.  We have had lately a strike among the gasworkers, and a strike among the cab-drivers; but consider what were those inconveniences compared with the light that would be dimmed, and the progress that would be stopped, by a strike of newsmen. Humbly associated, I say again, but necessarily associated with that wonderful engine, that great result of civilization which is the terror of all humbugs, and the natural enemy of everyone and everything that cannot bear the light, the newsman is undoubtedly in his degree a good public servant, and the public never forgot a good public servant yet, if he took his right place. And when I remember that this trade has grown to what it is from the days when some little, mean, poor broadside was issued occasionally, giving an account of certain wonderful appearances observed in the air by eighteen persons of credit down in Northamptonshire; when a dozen country gentlemen subscribed to a newsletter written by a person of learning, the news of which, seldom true to begin with, was six months old when they got it; when a copy of The Times would scarcely have made one night's curl papers for a young lady with a very moderate crop; and when I look to the present day when the same newspaper is large enough for a carpet for a dining-room; and when I reflect that the daily press is the portal through which men of great ability, intelligence, and energy pass to win their way to distinction in every quarter of the world; I say – when I see all this – I cannot believe that an institution belonging to the trade, and plainly tending to its benefit, does not contain within it the capacity of being developed to a state of usefulness and credit worthy of the service in which newsmen were enlisted. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Speeches Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context speeches Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together Dickens’s collected and uncollected speeches, making an under-explored body of work searchable for the first time. </h4> Dickens made more than a hundred speeches between 1837 and 1870 at events ranging from charitable dinners and award ceremonies to banquets in his honour or brief words of thanks before a public reading. In these speeches, the author touched on topics including his own life and professional development as well as other subjects such as politics, education, literature, public health and the development of the railway. Efforts to collect Dickens’s speeches prior to 1960 were incomplete at best, and misleading and fragmentary at worst. John Camden Hotten’s collection of speeches, begun without the author’s consent (although he never responded to Hotten’s letters, Dickens did begin efforts to block their publication) and published together with a hastily-compiled biography shortly after the author’s death, remained the primary collected version of the speeches until the Nonesuch Dickens of 1938-39 (a limited print run). Finally, K. J. Fielding brought all known speeches together in 1960, correcting shoddy transcriptions by Hotten using contemporary newspaper accounts, and nearly doubling the total number of speeches attributed to Dickens (The Speeches of Charles Dickens [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960]): Hotten had only featured the text of 56 speeches, the Nonesuch edition of the speeches provided an additional nine, and Fielding presented more than a hundred. Since this monumental work, a handful have also appeared in The Dickensian;<a href="#fn1" id="ref1">1</a> there are certainly more to be found, as the volume of digitised newspapers and periodicals increases, and corrections to be made to existing transcriptions. No effort to collect the speeches has been made since Fielding; this collection thus represents the most complete body of Dickens's speeches ever assembled. Dickens did not write his speeches beforehand, nor did he speak from notes. George Dolby recounted his imaginative process in 1884: <blockquote>[S]upposing the speech was to be delivered in the evening, his habit was to take a long walk in the morning, during which he would decide on the various heads to be dealt with. These being arranged in their proper order, he would in his 'mind's eye,' liken the whole subject to the tire of a cart wheel – he being the hub. From the hub to the tire he would run as many spokes as there were subjects to be treated, and during the progress of the speech he would deal with each spoke separately, elaborating them as he went round the wheel; and when all the spokes dropped out one by one, and nothing but the tire and space remained […] his speech was at an end. (Charles Dickens as I Knew Him: The Story of the Reading Tours in Great Britain and America, pp. 273-74)</blockquote> However, on important occasions, Dickens might personally correct transcriptions of speeches for major London newspapers like The Times. As such, these newspaper accounts are as accurate a source as we can hope to have for what Dickens said (or meant to say). Our Transcription field will only include words attributed directly to Dickens rather than third-person reports or paraphrases of his speeches. Where only such reports exist, we will provide the text in the 'Summary' field. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to what are given as Dickens's words only, to avoid skewing the results, but of course we are reliant on the quality of the reporting: we recommend analysing topics, themes, quotations and concepts rather than granular detail such as prepositions, punctuation, capitalisation and the intricacies of grammar, as different newspaper accounts can vary on these points. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or to contribute other uncollected speeches by Dickens. 1. These are Philip Collins, 'Some Uncollected Speeches by Dickens', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 89-99; David A. Roos, 'Dickens at the Royal Academy of Arts: A New Speech and Two Eulogies', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 100-107; and William F. Long, 'Dickens and the Coming of Rail to Deal: An Uncollected Speech and its Context', The Dickensian 85.418 (1989): pp. 66-80. <a href="#ref1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Emily Middleton; Ellie-Louise Crampton; Maisie Howard; Adam Woods Speech Summary Occasionally speeches are summarised in sources in third person. Include that here, so that everything in the text transcription is only Dickens's words. As his speech, he said, was in the report which he had presented to the chairman, he would not be able to renew the gratification which the learned gentleman, the seconder of the amendment, said he felt at hearing his speeches. He regarded, moreover, the complaint of the lamentable deficiency of their funds, after the astounding and unanswered statement made by Mr. Dilke of their financial resources, as about the most bitterly ironical thing which the human mind could conceive of that society. The honourable gentleman who had moved the amendment had appeared, in common with other gentlemen who had addressed the meeting, to approach the proposal entirely in the character of a lender; but let him approach it in the character of a borrower, and put the question to them as a matter of feeling, whether they could not conceive the case of a high-spirited literary man, who would refuse to apply for a gift of money but who would be willing to come to the Fund for a loan to assist him in his difficulties. The noble lord had said, ‘Oh! he can regard it as a loan, and can pay it back again in the form of a donation.’ But, he would ask, was there a man in that room, who, having received a loan of, say, a hundred pounds, would have the audacity to put down his name in the list of subscribers as a donor to the society of one hundred pounds, when he repaid it? The suggestion was founded on a perfect misconception of the literary character and honour of the country which it was amazing to hear from such lips. A gentleman in the room interrupted to say that it was understood that Chateaubriand had done so. DICKENS. <span class="NormalTextRun SCXW266286389 BCX0" data-ccp-charstyle="normaltextrun" data-ccp-charstyle-defn="{"ObjectId":"a910b0d7-d005-48fc-ba31-8678fc05619c|36","ClassId":1073872969,"Properties":[201342446,"1",201342447,"5",201342448,"1",201342449,"1",469777841,"Aptos",469777842,"",469777843,"Aptos",469777844,"Aptos",201341986,"1",469769226,"Aptos",268442635,"22",469775450,"normaltextrun",201340122,"1",134233614,"true",469778129,"normaltextrun",335572020,"1",469778324,"Default Paragraph Font"]}">– Then he did extremely wrong. JOHN MURRAY. – I would do so, too. DICKENS – Then you would be extremely wrong, likewise. With respect to the proposal of the Committee to establish a place for the reunion of literary men, it had been objected by one honourable gentleman that the Athenaeum and other clubs already existed, to which literary men might resort. Why, there was also a fine building known as the London Tavern, which was equally open and accessible to literary men. But did they think that Mr. Bathe, the respectable and enterprising owner of that establishment, would keep his house open for such a purpose? The accommodation proposed to be provided by the committee was of a character suited to the requirements of persons who were altogether unable to avail themselves of privileges such as those to which he had referred. It had been said that the committee wished to take a very large proportion of the £30,000 belonging to the Fund, and appropriate it to other purposes. Nothing of the sort was intended; and the committee had expressly stated in their report that the funds required would be supplied by those persons who would avail themselves of the privilege of the proposed new institution. The object of the literary institution was to induce literary men at home and abroad to take a greater interest in the society, and in case of success the committee anticipated that the increased interest would ensure a corresponding increase in contributions to the Literary Fund; and they proposed that the experiment should first be made on a very small scale, and at almost nominal expense, and then, if unfortunately they should fail in exciting among the profession an increased interest in the objects of the institution, and so did not gain an accession of subscribers, no possible harm would have been done, and the project need not be carried any further. Mr. Milnes had asked the advocates of the scheme why they did not found such a society as they wanted; but they might just as reasonably ask him, and the other conductors of that institution, why this was not done by them as they had their £30,000 of reserved fund, their £200 a year, with which to fulfil these original intentions of the founders that they now altogether blinked.  He would ask any gentleman present to consider whether the Literary Fund was capable of an extended interest among Literary men? Let him look around the room, and, – he said it without any disrespect – at the representatives of Literature on the platform, and ask himself whether he could not imagine a better representation of Literature, brought together under the name of the Literary Fund. The alterations proposed in the report, in the mode of assisting literary men, were suggested by literary men animated with a feeling in favour of their art, who desired to do it good; and actuated also by an earnest desire to rouse up this slumbering society and make it do more for Literature than it had ever yet done, or was likely to do, if left to itself. They knew well that being awakened was, at all time, and under any circumstances, an extremely disagreeable process. – They all knew this, for they objected to it every day of their lives.But beyond all question the Literary Fund had overslept itself by a great number of years, and it was absolutely necessary to knock it up; and, please God, they would get it out of bed by some means or other.   Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given Royal Literary Fund Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18550616 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Royal Literary Fund Special General Meeting 1855 Description An account of the resource Speech at the Royal Literary Fund Special General Meeting (16 June 1855). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1855-06-16 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1855-06-16_Speech_Royal-Literary-Fund-Special-General-Meeting Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Speech at the Royal Literary Fund Special General Meeting' (16 June 1855). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1855-06-16_Speech_Royal-Literary-Fund-Special-General-Meeting">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1855-06-16_Speech_Royal-Literary-Fund-Special-General-Meeting</a>. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Speeches Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context speeches Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together Dickens’s collected and uncollected speeches, making an under-explored body of work searchable for the first time. </h4> Dickens made more than a hundred speeches between 1837 and 1870 at events ranging from charitable dinners and award ceremonies to banquets in his honour or brief words of thanks before a public reading. In these speeches, the author touched on topics including his own life and professional development as well as other subjects such as politics, education, literature, public health and the development of the railway. Efforts to collect Dickens’s speeches prior to 1960 were incomplete at best, and misleading and fragmentary at worst. John Camden Hotten’s collection of speeches, begun without the author’s consent (although he never responded to Hotten’s letters, Dickens did begin efforts to block their publication) and published together with a hastily-compiled biography shortly after the author’s death, remained the primary collected version of the speeches until the Nonesuch Dickens of 1938-39 (a limited print run). Finally, K. J. Fielding brought all known speeches together in 1960, correcting shoddy transcriptions by Hotten using contemporary newspaper accounts, and nearly doubling the total number of speeches attributed to Dickens (The Speeches of Charles Dickens [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960]): Hotten had only featured the text of 56 speeches, the Nonesuch edition of the speeches provided an additional nine, and Fielding presented more than a hundred. Since this monumental work, a handful have also appeared in The Dickensian;<a href="#fn1" id="ref1">1</a> there are certainly more to be found, as the volume of digitised newspapers and periodicals increases, and corrections to be made to existing transcriptions. No effort to collect the speeches has been made since Fielding; this collection thus represents the most complete body of Dickens's speeches ever assembled. Dickens did not write his speeches beforehand, nor did he speak from notes. George Dolby recounted his imaginative process in 1884: <blockquote>[S]upposing the speech was to be delivered in the evening, his habit was to take a long walk in the morning, during which he would decide on the various heads to be dealt with. These being arranged in their proper order, he would in his 'mind's eye,' liken the whole subject to the tire of a cart wheel – he being the hub. From the hub to the tire he would run as many spokes as there were subjects to be treated, and during the progress of the speech he would deal with each spoke separately, elaborating them as he went round the wheel; and when all the spokes dropped out one by one, and nothing but the tire and space remained […] his speech was at an end. (Charles Dickens as I Knew Him: The Story of the Reading Tours in Great Britain and America, pp. 273-74)</blockquote> However, on important occasions, Dickens might personally correct transcriptions of speeches for major London newspapers like The Times. As such, these newspaper accounts are as accurate a source as we can hope to have for what Dickens said (or meant to say). Our Transcription field will only include words attributed directly to Dickens rather than third-person reports or paraphrases of his speeches. Where only such reports exist, we will provide the text in the 'Summary' field. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to what are given as Dickens's words only, to avoid skewing the results, but of course we are reliant on the quality of the reporting: we recommend analysing topics, themes, quotations and concepts rather than granular detail such as prepositions, punctuation, capitalisation and the intricacies of grammar, as different newspaper accounts can vary on these points. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or to contribute other uncollected speeches by Dickens. 1. These are Philip Collins, 'Some Uncollected Speeches by Dickens', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 89-99; David A. Roos, 'Dickens at the Royal Academy of Arts: A New Speech and Two Eulogies', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 100-107; and William F. Long, 'Dickens and the Coming of Rail to Deal: An Uncollected Speech and its Context', The Dickensian 85.418 (1989): pp. 66-80. <a href="#ref1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Emily Middleton; Ellie-Louise Crampton; Maisie Howard; Adam Woods Speech Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given Drury Lane Theatre Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18550627 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. I cannot, I am sure, better express my sense of the kind reception accorded to me by this great assembly, than by promising to compress what I shall address to it within the closest possible limits. It is more than eighteen hundred years ago, since there was a set of men who thought they should be heard for their much speaking’. As they have propagated exceedingly since that time, and as I observe that they flourish just now to a surprising extent about Westminster, I will do my best to avoid adding to the numbers of that prolific race. The noble lord at the head of the Government, when he wondered in Parliament about a week ago, that my friend, Mr. Layard, did not blush for having stated in this place what the whole country knows perfectly well to be true, and what no men in it can by possibility better know to be true than those disinterested supporters of that noble lord, who had the advantage of hearing him and cheering him night after night, when he first became Premier – I mean that he did officially and habitually joke at a time when this country was plunged in deep disgrace and distress – I say, that noble lord, when he wondered so much that a man of this age, who has, by his earnest and adventurous spirit, done the most to distinguish himself and it, did not blush for the tremendous audacity of having come so between the wind and his nobility, turned an airy period with reference to the private theatricals at Drury Lane Theatre. I have some slight acquaintance with theatricals, private and public, and I will accept that figure of the noble lord. I will not say that if I wanted to form a company of Her Majesty’s servants, I think I should know where to put my hand on ‘the comic old gentleman’; nor, that if I wanted to get up a pantomime, I fancy I should know what establishment to go to for the tricks and changes; also, for a very considerable host of supernumeraries, to trip one another up in that scene of contention with which many of us are familiar, both on these and on other boards, in which the principal objects thrown about, are loaves and fishes. But I will try to give the noble lord the reason of these private theatricals, and the reason why, however ardently he may desire to ring the curtain down upon them, there is not the faintest present hope of their coming to a conclusion. It is this:—The public theatricals which the noble lord is so condescending as to manage, are so intolerably bad, the machinery is so cumbrous, the parts so ill distributed, the company so full of ‘walking gentlemen’, the managers have such large families, and are so bent upon putting those families into what is theatrically called ‘first business’ – not because of their aptitude for it, but because they are their families, that we find ourselves obliged to organize an opposition. We have seen the Comedy of Errors played so dismally like a tragedy that we cannot bear it. We are, therefore, making bold to get up the School of Reform, and we hope, before the play is out, to improve that noble lord by our performance very considerably. If he object that we have no right to improve him without his license, we venture to claim that right in virtue of his orchestra, consisting of a very powerful piper, whom we always pay. Sir, as this is the first political meeting I have ever attended, and as my trade and calling is not politics, perhaps it may be useful for me to show how I come to be here, since reasons similar to those which have influenced me, may still be fluttering, unbalanced, in the minds of others. I want at all times, in plain sincerity, to do my duty by my countrymen. If I feel an attachment toward them, there is nothing disinterested or meritorious in that, for I can never too affectionately remember the confidence and friendship that they have long reposed in me. Within my sphere of action – which I shall never change; I shall never overstep, further or for a longer period than I do tonight, the circle of my own pursuits, as one who lives by Literature, who is content to do his public service through Literature, and who is conscious that he cannot serve two masters – within my sphere of action I have, for some years, tried to understand the heavier social grievances and to help to set them right. When the Times newspaper proved its then almost incredible case, in reference to the ghastly absurdity of that vast labyrinth of misplaced men and misdirected things, which had made England unable to find on the face of the earth, an enemy one-twentieth part so potent for the misery and ruin of her noble defenders as she has been herself, I believe that the gloomy silence into which the country fell, was by far the darkest aspect in which a great people had been exhibited for very many years. With shame and indignation lowering among all classes of society, and this new element of discord piled on the heaving basis of ignorance, poverty and crime, which is always below us – with little adequate expression of the general mind, or apparent understanding of the general mind, in Parliament – with the machinery of Government and the legislature going round and round, and the people fallen from it and standing aloof, as if they left it to its last remaining function of destroying itself, when it had achieved the destruction of so much that was dear to them – I did believe, and I do believe, that the only wholesome turn affairs so menacing could take, was, the awaking of the people, the outspeaking of the people, the uniting of the people in all patriotism and loyalty to effect a great peaceful constitutional change in the administration of their own affairs. At such a crisis this Association arose, and at such a crisis I joined it: considering its further case to be – if further case could possibly be needed – that what is everybody’s business is nobody’s business, that men must be gregarious in their good citizenship as in most other things, and that it is a law in nature that there must be a centre of attraction for particles to fly to, before any serviceable body with recognised functions can come into existence. Well! This Association has arisen, and we belong to it. What are the objections to it? I have heard in the main but three, which I will briefly glance at, in the order in which I have heard them. One. It is proposed to exercise an influence, through the constituencies, on the House of Commons. I have not the least hesitation in saying that I have the smallest amount of faith in the House of Commons at present existing, and that I consider the exercise of such influence highly necessary to the welfare and honour of this country. Reading no later than yesterday, a favourite boo of mine, I find Mr. Pepys, two hundred years ago, writing of the House of Commons in his time and its political contentions, thus: My cousin Roger Pepys tells me that it is matter of the greatest grief to him in the world that he should be put upon this trust for being a Parliament man; because he says nothing is done, that he can see, out of any truth and sincerity, but mere envy and design. Now, how it comes to pass that after two hundred years, and many years after a Reform Bill, the House of Commons is so little changed, I will not stop to inquire. I will not ask how it happens that bills which cramp and worry the people, and restrict their scant enjoyments, are so easily smuggled through that place, and how it happens that measures for their real service are so very difficult to pass. I will not analyse the confined air of the lobby, or reduce to their primitive gases, its deadening influences on the memory of that Honourable Member who was once a candidate for the honour of your – and my – independent vote and interest. I will not ask what Sectarian figure that is, full of blandishments, standing on the threshold, with its finger on its lips. I will not ask how it comes to pass that personal altercations, involving all the removes and definitions of Shakespeare’s Touchstone – the retort courteous – the reply churlish – the reproof valiant – the countercheck quarrelsome – the lie circumstantial and the lie direct – are of immeasurably greater interest in the House of Commons than the health, the taxation, the education, of a whole people. I will not penetrate the mysteries of that secret chamber in which the Bluebeard, Party, keeps his strangled public questions, straitly charging his last bride, the new comer, on no account to open the door. I will merely put it to the humble practical experience, recent and remote, of everybody here, whether the House of Commons is not occasionally a little hard of hearing, not a little dim of sight, not a little slow of understanding: whether, in short, it is not in a sufficiently invalided state to require close watching, and the occasional application of sharp stimulants; and whether it is not capable of considerable improvement? I believe that, in order to preserve it in a state of real usefulness and independence, the people must be very watchful and very jealous of it; and it must have its memory jogged; it must be kept awake; when it happens to have taken too much Ministerial narcotic, it must be trotted about, and must be bustled and pinched in a friendly way, as is the usage in such cases. And I hold that no power can have so just a right to administer our functions as a body comprising electors from all parts of the country, who are associated together because their country is dearer to them than drowsy twaddle, unmeaning routine, orthe absurdest worn out conventionalities. This brings me to objection number two. It is stated that this Association sets class against class. Is this so? No, it finds class set against class, and seeks to reconcile them. I wish to avoid placing in opposition here, the two words Aristocracy and People. I am one who can believe in the virtues and uses of both, and, I would elevate or depress neither, at the cost of a single just right belonging to either. I will use, instead of these words, the terms, the governors and the governed. These two bodies the Association finds with a gulf between them, in which lie, newly buried, thousands on thousands of the bravest and most devoted men that, even England ever bred. It is to prevent the recurrence of innumerable smaller evils, of which, unchecked, that great calamity was the crowning height and the necessary consummation, and to bring together those two fronts looking now so strangely at each other, that this Association seeks to help to bridge over that abyss, with a structure founded on common justice and supported by common sense. Setting class against class! The old unmeaning parrot cry than which we remember nothing earlier in our lives! Try its justice in this case, by an illustration:– A respectable old gentleman with a large and costly establishment of servants, finds his household in complete disorder, and that he can get nothing done. When he asks his servants to give his children bread, they give them stones; when they are told to give those children fish, they give them serpents. When they are ordered to send to the East they send to the West; when they ought to be serving dinner in the North, they were consulting obsolete and exploded cookery books in the South; they break, lose, forget, waste, destroy; only tumble over one another when required to do anything; and make the respectable gentleman’s house a scene of scandalous ruin. At last the respectable gentleman calls to him his house steward, and says, even then more in sorrow than in anger, This is a terrible business, no fortune can stand it – no mortal equanimity can bear it! I must change my system of appointing my servants; I must obtain servants who now and will do their duty’. The house steward throws up his eyes in pious horror, ejaculates ‘Good God, here is my master setting class against class!’ rushes off into the servants’ hall, and delivers a long and melting oration on that wicked theme. And so we come to the third objection, which I have observed to obtain among that class of young gentlemen of good family, who are not particularly fit for anything but spending money which they have not got. It is usually comprised in the observation, ‘How very extraordinary it is that these Administrative Reform fellows can’t mind their own business’. I think it will occur to most of us who are here, in final disposal of this alarming objection, that it is rather because we do mind our own business, and because we must have our business minded, and because those who undertake to mind it do not mind it properly, that we are an Association at all. I observe from the Parliamentary debates – which have of late, by-the-by, frequently suggested to me that there is this difference between the bull of Spain the bull of Nineveh, that, whereas, in the Spanish case, the bull rushes at the scarlet, in the Ninevite case, the scarlet rushes at the bull – I have observed in the Parliamentary debates that, by a curious fatality, there has been a great deal of the reproof valiant and the counter check quarrelsome, in reference to every case, showing the necessity of Administrative Reform, by whomsoever produced, whensoever, and wheresoever. I dare say I should have no difficulty in adding two or three cases to the list, which I know to be true, and which I have no doubt would be contradicted, but I consider it a work of supererogation; for, if the people at large be not already convinced that a sufficient general case has been made out for Administrative Reform, I think they never can be, and they never will be. There is, however, an old indisputable, very well known story, which has so pointed a moral at the end of it that I will substitute it for a new case: by doing of which I may avoid, I hope, the sacred wrath of St. Stephen. Ages ago a savage mode of keeping accounts on notched sticks was introduced into the Court of Exchequer; and the accounts were kept, much as Robinson Crusoe kept his calendar on the desert island. In the course of considerable revolutions of time, the celebrated Mr. Cocker was born, and died. Mr. Walkinghame, of The Tutor’s Assistant, and a terrible hand at figures, was born, and died; a multitude of accountants, book-keepers, actuaries, and mathematicians, were born, and died; and still official routine clung to these notched sticks, as if they were pillars of the constitution, and still the Exchequer accounts continued to be kept on certain splints of elm wood called ‘tallies’. Late in the the reign of George III, some restless and revolutionary spirit originated the suggestion, whether, in a land where there were pens, ink, and paper, slates and pencils, and systems of accounts, this rigid adherence to a barbarous usage might not possibly border on the ridiculous? All the red tape in the public offices turned redder at the bare mention of this bold and original conception, and it took till 1826 to get these sticks abolished. In 1843 it was found that there was a considerable accumulation of them; and the question then arose, what was to be done with such worn-out, worm-eaten rotten old bits of wood? I dare say there was a vast amount of minuting, memoranduming, and dispatch-boxing, on this mighty subject. The sticks were housed at Westminster, and it would naturally occur to any of us unofficial personages that nothing would have been easier than to allow them to be carried away for firewood, by some of the many miserable creatures in that neighbourhood. However, they never had been useful, and official routine could not endure that they ever should be useful, and so the order went forth that they were to be privately and confidentially burnt. It came to pass that they were burnt in a stove in the House of Lords. The stove, overgorged with these preposterous sticks, set fire to the panelling; the panelling set fire to the House of Lords; the House of Lords set fire to the House of Commons; the two houses were reduced to ashes; architects were called in to build two more; we are now in the second million of the cost thereof; the national pig is not nearly over the stile yet; and the little old woman, Britannia, hasn’t got home tonight. I think we may reasonably observe, in conclusion, that all-obstinate adherence to rubbish which time has long outlived, is certain to have in the soul of it more or less that is pernicious and destructive; more or less that will some day set fire to something or other; which, freely given to the winds would have been harmless, which, persistently retained, is ruinous. I repeat, with submission, that I think it is as unnecessary to set the Administrative Reform case up, as it is idle to hope to put it down, on this or that particular instance. The great, broad, and true case that our public progress is far behind our private progress, and that we are not more remarkable for our private wisdom and success in matters of business than we are for our public folly and failure, I take to be as clearly established as the existence of the sun, moon, and stars. To set this right, and to clear the way in the country’s cause for merit everywhere: accepting it equally whether it be aristocratic or democratic, and only asking whether it be honest or true: I take to be the object of this Association. This object it seeks to promote by uniting together large numbers of the people, I hope, of all conditions, to the end that they may better comprehend, bear in mind, understand themselves, and impress upon others, the common public duty. Also, of which there is great need, that by keeping a vigilant eye on the skirmishers of Party, as they are thrown out from time to time by their Generals, they may see that feints and manoeuvres do not oppress the small defaulters and release the great, and that they do not gull the public with a mere field-day Review of Administrative Reform, instead of an earnest hard-fought Battle. I speak as an individual, wholly unconnected with the management of this Association, and having had no consultation with any one upon the subject, when I particularly wish that the directors may devise some means of enabling intelligent working men to join this body, on easier terms than subscribers who have larger resources. I could wish to see great numbers of them belong to it, because I sincerely believe that it would be good for the common weal. Said the noble Lord at the head of the Government, when Mr. Layard asked him for a day for his motion. Let the hon. gentleman find a day for himself. Now, in the names of all the gods at once, Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed That he is grown so great? If our Caesar will excuse me, I would take the liberty of reversing that cool and lofty sentiment, and I would say, ‘First Lord, your duty it is to see that no man is left to find a day for himself. See you, who take the responsibility of government, who aspire to it, live for it, intrigue for it, scramble for it, who hold to it tooth-and-nail when you can get it, see you that no man is left to find a day for himself. In this old country, with its seething hard-worked millions, its heavy taxes, its swarms of ignorant, its crowds of poor, its crowds of wicked, woe the day which the dangerous man shall find for himself, because the head of the Queen’s Government failed in his duty of anticipating it by a brighter and better one! Name you the day, First Lord; make a day; work for a day beyond your little time, Lord Palmerston, and History in return may then – not otherwise – find a day for you; a day equally associated with the contentment of the loyal, patient, willing-hearted English people, and with the happiness of your Royal Mistress and her fair line of children. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Administrative Reform Association Meeting Description An account of the resource Speech at an Administrative Reform Association Meeting (27 June 1855). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1855-06-27 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1855-06-27_Speech_Administrative-Reform-Association-Meeting Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Speech at an Administrative Reform Association Meeting' (27 June 1855). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1855-06-27_Speech_Administrative-Reform-Association-Meeting">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1855-06-27_Speech_Administrative-Reform-Association-Meeting</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. I cannot, I am sure, better express my sense of the kind reception accorded to me by this great assembly, than by promising to compress what I shall address to it within the closest possible limits. It is more than eighteen hundred years ago, since there was a set of men who thought they should be heard for their much speaking’. As they have propagated exceedingly since that time, and as I observe that they flourish just now to a surprising extent about Westminster, I will do my best to avoid adding to the numbers of that prolific race. The noble lord at the head of the Government, when he wondered in Parliament about a week ago, that my friend, Mr. Layard, did not blush for having stated in this place what the whole country knows perfectly well to be true, and what no men in it can by possibility better know to be true than those disinterested supporters of that noble lord, who had the advantage of hearing him and cheering him night after night, when he first became Premier – I mean that he did officially and habitually joke at a time when this country was plunged in deep disgrace and distress – I say, that noble lord, when he wondered so much that a man of this age, who has, by his earnest and adventurous spirit, done the most to distinguish himself and it, did not blush for the tremendous audacity of having come so between the wind and his nobility, turned an airy period with reference to the private theatricals at Drury Lane Theatre. I have some slight acquaintance with theatricals, private and public, and I will accept that figure of the noble lord. I will not say that if I wanted to form a company of Her Majesty’s servants, I think I should know where to put my hand on ‘the comic old gentleman’; nor, that if I wanted to get up a pantomime, I fancy I should know what establishment to go to for the tricks and changes; also, for a very considerable host of supernumeraries, to trip one another up in that scene of contention with which many of us are familiar, both on these and on other boards, in which the principal objects thrown about, are loaves and fishes. But I will try to give the noble lord the reason of these private theatricals, and the reason why, however ardently he may desire to ring the curtain down upon them, there is not the faintest present hope of their coming to a conclusion. It is this:—The public theatricals which the noble lord is so condescending as to manage, are so intolerably bad, the machinery is so cumbrous, the parts so ill distributed, the company so full of ‘walking gentlemen’, the managers have such large families, and are so bent upon putting those families into what is theatrically called ‘first business’ – not because of their aptitude for it, but because they are their families, that we find ourselves obliged to organize an opposition. We have seen the Comedy of Errors played so dismally like a tragedy that we cannot bear it. We are, therefore, making bold to get up the School of Reform, and we hope, before the play is out, to improve that noble lord by our performance very considerably. If he object that we have no right to improve him without his license, we venture to claim that right in virtue of his orchestra, consisting of a very powerful piper, whom we always pay. Sir, as this is the first political meeting I have ever attended, and as my trade and calling is not politics, perhaps it may be useful for me to show how I come to be here, since reasons similar to those which have influenced me, may still be fluttering, unbalanced, in the minds of others. I want at all times, in plain sincerity, to do my duty by my countrymen. If I feel an attachment toward them, there is nothing disinterested or meritorious in that, for I can never too affectionately remember the confidence and friendship that they have long reposed in me. Within my sphere of action – which I shall never change; I shall never overstep, further or for a longer period than I do tonight, the circle of my own pursuits, as one who lives by Literature, who is content to do his public service through Literature, and who is conscious that he cannot serve two masters – within my sphere of action I have, for some years, tried to understand the heavier social grievances and to help to set them right. When the Times newspaper proved its then almost incredible case, in reference to the ghastly absurdity of that vast labyrinth of misplaced men and misdirected things, which had made England unable to find on the face of the earth, an enemy one-twentieth part so potent for the misery and ruin of her noble defenders as she has been herself, I believe that the gloomy silence into which the country fell, was by far the darkest aspect in which a great people had been exhibited for very many years. With shame and indignation lowering among all classes of society, and this new element of discord piled on the heaving basis of ignorance, poverty and crime, which is always below us – with little adequate expression of the general mind, or apparent understanding of the general mind, in Parliament – with the machinery of Government and the legislature going round and round, and the people fallen from it and standing aloof, as if they left it to its last remaining function of destroying itself, when it had achieved the destruction of so much that was dear to them – I did believe, and I do believe, that the only wholesome turn affairs so menacing could take, was, the awaking of the people, the outspeaking of the people, the uniting of the people in all patriotism and loyalty to effect a great peaceful constitutional change in the administration of their own affairs. At such a crisis this Association arose, and at such a crisis I joined it: considering its further case to be – if further case could possibly be needed – that what is everybody’s business is nobody’s business, that men must be gregarious in their good citizenship as in most other things, and that it is a law in nature that there must be a centre of attraction for particles to fly to, before any serviceable body with recognised functions can come into existence. Well! This Association has arisen, and we belong to it. What are the objections to it? I have heard in the main but three, which I will briefly glance at, in the order in which I have heard them. One. It is proposed to exercise an influence, through the constituencies, on the House of Commons. I have not the least hesitation in saying that I have the smallest amount of faith in the House of Commons at present existing, and that I consider the exercise of such influence highly necessary to the welfare and honour of this country. Reading no later than yesterday, a favourite boo of mine, I find Mr. Pepys, two hundred years ago, writing of the House of Commons in his time and its political contentions, thus: My cousin Roger Pepys tells me that it is matter of the greatest grief to him in the world that he should be put upon this trust for being a Parliament man; because he says nothing is done, that he can see, out of any truth and sincerity, but mere envy and design. Now, how it comes to pass that after two hundred years, and many years after a Reform Bill, the House of Commons is so little changed, I will not stop to inquire. I will not ask how it happens that bills which cramp and worry the people, and restrict their scant enjoyments, are so easily smuggled through that place, and how it happens that measures for their real service are so very difficult to pass. I will not analyse the confined air of the lobby, or reduce to their primitive gases, its deadening influences on the memory of that Honourable Member who was once a candidate for the honour of your – and my – independent vote and interest. I will not ask what Sectarian figure that is, full of blandishments, standing on the threshold, with its finger on its lips. I will not ask how it comes to pass that personal altercations, involving all the removes and definitions of Shakespeare’s Touchstone – the retort courteous – the reply churlish – the reproof valiant – the countercheck quarrelsome – the lie circumstantial and the lie direct – are of immeasurably greater interest in the House of Commons than the health, the taxation, the education, of a whole people. I will not penetrate the mysteries of that secret chamber in which the Bluebeard, Party, keeps his strangled public questions, straitly charging his last bride, the new comer, on no account to open the door. I will merely put it to the humble practical experience, recent and remote, of everybody here, whether the House of Commons is not occasionally a little hard of hearing, not a little dim of sight, not a little slow of understanding: whether, in short, it is not in a sufficiently invalided state to require close watching, and the occasional application of sharp stimulants; and whether it is not capable of considerable improvement? I believe that, in order to preserve it in a state of real usefulness and independence, the people must be very watchful and very jealous of it; and it must have its memory jogged; it must be kept awake; when it happens to have taken too much Ministerial narcotic, it must be trotted about, and must be bustled and pinched in a friendly way, as is the usage in such cases. And I hold that no power can have so just a right to administer our functions as a body comprising electors from all parts of the country, who are associated together because their country is dearer to them than drowsy twaddle, unmeaning routine, orthe absurdest worn out conventionalities. This brings me to objection number two. It is stated that this Association sets class against class. Is this so? No, it finds class set against class, and seeks to reconcile them. I wish to avoid placing in opposition here, the two words Aristocracy and People. I am one who can believe in the virtues and uses of both, and, I would elevate or depress neither, at the cost of a single just right belonging to either. I will use, instead of these words, the terms, the governors and the governed. These two bodies the Association finds with a gulf between them, in which lie, newly buried, thousands on thousands of the bravest and most devoted men that, even England ever bred. It is to prevent the recurrence of innumerable smaller evils, of which, unchecked, that great calamity was the crowning height and the necessary consummation, and to bring together those two fronts looking now so strangely at each other, that this Association seeks to help to bridge over that abyss, with a structure founded on common justice and supported by common sense. Setting class against class! The old unmeaning parrot cry than which we remember nothing earlier in our lives! Try its justice in this case, by an illustration:– A respectable old gentleman with a large and costly establishment of servants, finds his household in complete disorder, and that he can get nothing done. When he asks his servants to give his children bread, they give them stones; when they are told to give those children fish, they give them serpents. When they are ordered to send to the East they send to the West; when they ought to be serving dinner in the North, they were consulting obsolete and exploded cookery books in the South; they break, lose, forget, waste, destroy; only tumble over one another when required to do anything; and make the respectable gentleman’s house a scene of scandalous ruin. At last the respectable gentleman calls to him his house steward, and says, even then more in sorrow than in anger, This is a terrible business, no fortune can stand it – no mortal equanimity can bear it! I must change my system of appointing my servants; I must obtain servants who now and will do their duty’. The house steward throws up his eyes in pious horror, ejaculates ‘Good God, here is my master setting class against class!’ rushes off into the servants’ hall, and delivers a long and melting oration on that wicked theme. And so we come to the third objection, which I have observed to obtain among that class of young gentlemen of good family, who are not particularly fit for anything but spending money which they have not got. It is usually comprised in the observation, ‘How very extraordinary it is that these Administrative Reform fellows can’t mind their own business’. I think it will occur to most of us who are here, in final disposal of this alarming objection, that it is rather because we do mind our own business, and because we must have our business minded, and because those who undertake to mind it do not mind it properly, that we are an Association at all. I observe from the Parliamentary debates – which have of late, by-the-by, frequently suggested to me that there is this difference between the bull of Spain the bull of Nineveh, that, whereas, in the Spanish case, the bull rushes at the scarlet, in the Ninevite case, the scarlet rushes at the bull – I have observed in the Parliamentary debates that, by a curious fatality, there has been a great deal of the reproof valiant and the counter check quarrelsome, in reference to every case, showing the necessity of Administrative Reform, by whomsoever produced, whensoever, and wheresoever. I dare say I should have no difficulty in adding two or three cases to the list, which I know to be true, and which I have no doubt would be contradicted, but I consider it a work of supererogation; for, if the people at large be not already convinced that a sufficient general case has been made out for Administrative Reform, I think they never can be, and they never will be. There is, however, an old indisputable, very well known story, which has so pointed a moral at the end of it that I will substitute it for a new case: by doing of which I may avoid, I hope, the sacred wrath of St. Stephen. Ages ago a savage mode of keeping accounts on notched sticks was introduced into the Court of Exchequer; and the accounts were kept, much as Robinson Crusoe kept his calendar on the desert island. In the course of considerable revolutions of time, the celebrated Mr. Cocker was born, and died. Mr. Walkinghame, of The Tutor’s Assistant, and a terrible hand at figures, was born, and died; a multitude of accountants, book-keepers, actuaries, and mathematicians, were born, and died; and still official routine clung to these notched sticks, as if they were pillars of the constitution, and still the Exchequer accounts continued to be kept on certain splints of elm wood called ‘tallies’. Late in the the reign of George III, some restless and revolutionary spirit originated the suggestion, whether, in a land where there were pens, ink, and paper, slates and pencils, and systems of accounts, this rigid adherence to a barbarous usage might not possibly border on the ridiculous? All the red tape in the public offices turned redder at the bare mention of this bold and original conception, and it took till 1826 to get these sticks abolished. In 1843 it was found that there was a considerable accumulation of them; and the question then arose, what was to be done with such worn-out, worm-eaten rotten old bits of wood? I dare say there was a vast amount of minuting, memoranduming, and dispatch-boxing, on this mighty subject. The sticks were housed at Westminster, and it would naturally occur to any of us unofficial personages that nothing would have been easier than to allow them to be carried away for firewood, by some of the many miserable creatures in that neighbourhood. However, they never had been useful, and official routine could not endure that they ever should be useful, and so the order went forth that they were to be privately and confidentially burnt. It came to pass that they were burnt in a stove in the House of Lords. The stove, overgorged with these preposterous sticks, set fire to the panelling; the panelling set fire to the House of Lords; the House of Lords set fire to the House of Commons; the two houses were reduced to ashes; architects were called in to build two more; we are now in the second million of the cost thereof; the national pig is not nearly over the stile yet; and the little old woman, Britannia, hasn’t got home tonight. I think we may reasonably observe, in conclusion, that all-obstinate adherence to rubbish which time has long outlived, is certain to have in the soul of it more or less that is pernicious and destructive; more or less that will some day set fire to something or other; which, freely given to the winds would have been harmless, which, persistently retained, is ruinous. I repeat, with submission, that I think it is as unnecessary to set the Administrative Reform case up, as it is idle to hope to put it down, on this or that particular instance. The great, broad, and true case that our public progress is far behind our private progress, and that we are not more remarkable for our private wisdom and success in matters of business than we are for our public folly and failure, I take to be as clearly established as the existence of the sun, moon, and stars. To set this right, and to clear the way in the country’s cause for merit everywhere: accepting it equally whether it be aristocratic or democratic, and only asking whether it be honest or true: I take to be the object of this Association. This object it seeks to promote by uniting together large numbers of the people, I hope, of all conditions, to the end that they may better comprehend, bear in mind, understand themselves, and impress upon others, the common public duty. Also, of which there is great need, that by keeping a vigilant eye on the skirmishers of Party, as they are thrown out from time to time by their Generals, they may see that feints and manoeuvres do not oppress the small defaulters and release the great, and that they do not gull the public with a mere field-day Review of Administrative Reform, instead of an earnest hard-fought Battle. I speak as an individual, wholly unconnected with the management of this Association, and having had no consultation with any one upon the subject, when I particularly wish that the directors may devise some means of enabling intelligent working men to join this body, on easier terms than subscribers who have larger resources. I could wish to see great numbers of them belong to it, because I sincerely believe that it would be good for the common weal. Said the noble Lord at the head of the Government, when Mr. Layard asked him for a day for his motion. Let the hon. gentleman find a day for himself. Now, in the names of all the gods at once, Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed That he is grown so great? If our Caesar will excuse me, I would take the liberty of reversing that cool and lofty sentiment, and I would say, ‘First Lord, your duty it is to see that no man is left to find a day for himself. See you, who take the responsibility of government, who aspire to it, live for it, intrigue for it, scramble for it, who hold to it tooth-and-nail when you can get it, see you that no man is left to find a day for himself. In this old country, with its seething hard-worked millions, its heavy taxes, its swarms of ignorant, its crowds of poor, its crowds of wicked, woe the day which the dangerous man shall find for himself, because the head of the Queen’s Government failed in his duty of anticipating it by a brighter and better one! Name you the day, First Lord; make a day; work for a day beyond your little time, Lord Palmerston, and History in return may then – not otherwise – find a day for you; a day equally associated with the contentment of the loyal, patient, willing-hearted English people, and with the happiness of your Royal Mistress and her fair line of children. https://dickenssearch.com/files/original/6/On_Thackeray_Going_to_America/1855-10-11_Speech_On_Thackeray_Going_to_America.pdf 0c673e9f29834f23e4f1fb2fc682d340 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Speeches Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context speeches Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together Dickens’s collected and uncollected speeches, making an under-explored body of work searchable for the first time. </h4> Dickens made more than a hundred speeches between 1837 and 1870 at events ranging from charitable dinners and award ceremonies to banquets in his honour or brief words of thanks before a public reading. In these speeches, the author touched on topics including his own life and professional development as well as other subjects such as politics, education, literature, public health and the development of the railway. Efforts to collect Dickens’s speeches prior to 1960 were incomplete at best, and misleading and fragmentary at worst. John Camden Hotten’s collection of speeches, begun without the author’s consent (although he never responded to Hotten’s letters, Dickens did begin efforts to block their publication) and published together with a hastily-compiled biography shortly after the author’s death, remained the primary collected version of the speeches until the Nonesuch Dickens of 1938-39 (a limited print run). Finally, K. J. Fielding brought all known speeches together in 1960, correcting shoddy transcriptions by Hotten using contemporary newspaper accounts, and nearly doubling the total number of speeches attributed to Dickens (The Speeches of Charles Dickens [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960]): Hotten had only featured the text of 56 speeches, the Nonesuch edition of the speeches provided an additional nine, and Fielding presented more than a hundred. Since this monumental work, a handful have also appeared in The Dickensian;<a href="#fn1" id="ref1">1</a> there are certainly more to be found, as the volume of digitised newspapers and periodicals increases, and corrections to be made to existing transcriptions. No effort to collect the speeches has been made since Fielding; this collection thus represents the most complete body of Dickens's speeches ever assembled. Dickens did not write his speeches beforehand, nor did he speak from notes. George Dolby recounted his imaginative process in 1884: <blockquote>[S]upposing the speech was to be delivered in the evening, his habit was to take a long walk in the morning, during which he would decide on the various heads to be dealt with. These being arranged in their proper order, he would in his 'mind's eye,' liken the whole subject to the tire of a cart wheel – he being the hub. From the hub to the tire he would run as many spokes as there were subjects to be treated, and during the progress of the speech he would deal with each spoke separately, elaborating them as he went round the wheel; and when all the spokes dropped out one by one, and nothing but the tire and space remained […] his speech was at an end. (Charles Dickens as I Knew Him: The Story of the Reading Tours in Great Britain and America, pp. 273-74)</blockquote> However, on important occasions, Dickens might personally correct transcriptions of speeches for major London newspapers like The Times. As such, these newspaper accounts are as accurate a source as we can hope to have for what Dickens said (or meant to say). Our Transcription field will only include words attributed directly to Dickens rather than third-person reports or paraphrases of his speeches. Where only such reports exist, we will provide the text in the 'Summary' field. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to what are given as Dickens's words only, to avoid skewing the results, but of course we are reliant on the quality of the reporting: we recommend analysing topics, themes, quotations and concepts rather than granular detail such as prepositions, punctuation, capitalisation and the intricacies of grammar, as different newspaper accounts can vary on these points. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or to contribute other uncollected speeches by Dickens. 1. These are Philip Collins, 'Some Uncollected Speeches by Dickens', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 89-99; David A. Roos, 'Dickens at the Royal Academy of Arts: A New Speech and Two Eulogies', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 100-107; and William F. Long, 'Dickens and the Coming of Rail to Deal: An Uncollected Speech and its Context', The Dickensian 85.418 (1989): pp. 66-80. <a href="#ref1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Emily Middleton; Ellie-Louise Crampton; Maisie Howard; Adam Woods Speech Summary Occasionally speeches are summarised in sources in third person. Include that here, so that everything in the text transcription is only Dickens's words. ‘Dickens’s speech gave a happy expression to the spirit that animated all, telling Thackeray not alone how much his friendship was prized by those present, and how proud they were of his genius, but offering him in the name of the tens of thousands absent who had never touched his hand or seen his face, life-long thanks for the treasures of mirth, wit, and wisdom within the yellow-covered numbers of Pendennis and Vanity Fair.’ ‘The chairman rose, amid furiously friendly applause; he had, he said, decided that it would be the wish of everybody to avoid toasts and speech-making, and he therefore went at once to the one object of the assemblage – to propose the health of Mr. Thackeray.’ ‘Mr. Dickens made a neat speech – a very neat speech, in his polished actor-like manner, which has but this defect, that they countenance never swerves with the words – that his superbly brilliant eye stares at you all the time with the fixed clearness of an Argand lamp. He was not fulsome in his compliments to his friend – his highest praise was, that Mr. Thackeray was “no ordinary man,” and he avoided, in praising a novel writing, the laudation of novel-writing, with great tact, merely saying, that he was, with his whole soul, devoted to, and proud of that art, and declaring that Thackeray was an honour, in his life, as in his writings, to that art (which is not altogether too recklessly true). Dexterously he referred to Thackeray’s visit to America, for the purpose of paying a compliment to the Americans, who, he said, whatever motes might be noticed in their keen optics, were to be recognized as a high-spirited, advancing, intellectual, generous race, – the which people who remembered the foolish American notes, cheered as a recantation deserves to be cheered. Mr. Dickens delivered himself in a finished manner of some jokes. The table at which we were dining was horse-shoed in shape; and this table was allegorically or metaphorically pitched at Mr. Thackeray, and nailed on to him by way of securing good luck. Then, it was remembered, that though he went away by himself, he left his creations behind, which was a comfort: - “Jeames” could not act as his servant, and the “snobs” would continue to amuse us. And so on; the wit not magnificent, but sufficient; and so far so good – the speech answered its purpose; and when D., before sitting down, put his little hand into T.’s big hand, and shook T. solemnly, and even pathetically, the room rang with applause – it was an historical picture which Tenniel was taking a note of.’ 'Mr. Dickens rose and said that he would make no more speeches; speeches were a nuisance, and he called on somebody for a song.' 'Mr. Dickens responded, to the effect that he would not make any more speeches, and called on another (idiot) for a song, which was more frightful than the last...' Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given London Tavern Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Biography Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Life of Charles Dickens Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18551011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource On Thackeray Going to America Description An account of the resource Speech given at the London Tavern ahead of William Makepace Thackeray going to America (11 October 1855). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. Ed. J. W. T. Ley. London: Cecil Palmer, 1928. p. 575. Chester Chronicle (20 October 1855). Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1855-10-11 Type The nature or genre of the resource Speech Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1855-10-11_Speech_On_Thackeray_Going_to_America Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'On Thackeray Going to America' (11 October 1855). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1855-10-11_Speech_On_Thackeray_Going_to_America">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1855-10-11_Speech_On_Thackeray_Going_to_America</a>. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Speeches Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context speeches Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together Dickens’s collected and uncollected speeches, making an under-explored body of work searchable for the first time. </h4> Dickens made more than a hundred speeches between 1837 and 1870 at events ranging from charitable dinners and award ceremonies to banquets in his honour or brief words of thanks before a public reading. In these speeches, the author touched on topics including his own life and professional development as well as other subjects such as politics, education, literature, public health and the development of the railway. Efforts to collect Dickens’s speeches prior to 1960 were incomplete at best, and misleading and fragmentary at worst. John Camden Hotten’s collection of speeches, begun without the author’s consent (although he never responded to Hotten’s letters, Dickens did begin efforts to block their publication) and published together with a hastily-compiled biography shortly after the author’s death, remained the primary collected version of the speeches until the Nonesuch Dickens of 1938-39 (a limited print run). Finally, K. J. Fielding brought all known speeches together in 1960, correcting shoddy transcriptions by Hotten using contemporary newspaper accounts, and nearly doubling the total number of speeches attributed to Dickens (The Speeches of Charles Dickens [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960]): Hotten had only featured the text of 56 speeches, the Nonesuch edition of the speeches provided an additional nine, and Fielding presented more than a hundred. Since this monumental work, a handful have also appeared in The Dickensian;<a href="#fn1" id="ref1">1</a> there are certainly more to be found, as the volume of digitised newspapers and periodicals increases, and corrections to be made to existing transcriptions. No effort to collect the speeches has been made since Fielding; this collection thus represents the most complete body of Dickens's speeches ever assembled. Dickens did not write his speeches beforehand, nor did he speak from notes. George Dolby recounted his imaginative process in 1884: <blockquote>[S]upposing the speech was to be delivered in the evening, his habit was to take a long walk in the morning, during which he would decide on the various heads to be dealt with. These being arranged in their proper order, he would in his 'mind's eye,' liken the whole subject to the tire of a cart wheel – he being the hub. From the hub to the tire he would run as many spokes as there were subjects to be treated, and during the progress of the speech he would deal with each spoke separately, elaborating them as he went round the wheel; and when all the spokes dropped out one by one, and nothing but the tire and space remained […] his speech was at an end. (Charles Dickens as I Knew Him: The Story of the Reading Tours in Great Britain and America, pp. 273-74)</blockquote> However, on important occasions, Dickens might personally correct transcriptions of speeches for major London newspapers like The Times. As such, these newspaper accounts are as accurate a source as we can hope to have for what Dickens said (or meant to say). Our Transcription field will only include words attributed directly to Dickens rather than third-person reports or paraphrases of his speeches. Where only such reports exist, we will provide the text in the 'Summary' field. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to what are given as Dickens's words only, to avoid skewing the results, but of course we are reliant on the quality of the reporting: we recommend analysing topics, themes, quotations and concepts rather than granular detail such as prepositions, punctuation, capitalisation and the intricacies of grammar, as different newspaper accounts can vary on these points. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or to contribute other uncollected speeches by Dickens. 1. These are Philip Collins, 'Some Uncollected Speeches by Dickens', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 89-99; David A. Roos, 'Dickens at the Royal Academy of Arts: A New Speech and Two Eulogies', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 100-107; and William F. Long, 'Dickens and the Coming of Rail to Deal: An Uncollected Speech and its Context', The Dickensian 85.418 (1989): pp. 66-80. <a href="#ref1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Emily Middleton; Ellie-Louise Crampton; Maisie Howard; Adam Woods Speech Location The location Sheffield Venue Where the speech was given Mechanics' Hall Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. Mr. Mayor, I beg to assure you, and those gentlemen who are associated with you in this kind gift, that I accept with heartfelt delight and cordial gratitude such beautiful specimens of the work of your famous town. The kind expressions with which you have accompanied this presentation, and the response which they have received from the assembly, will never be obliterated from my memory. You have heard my voice so much tonight that out of pure forbearance I will not say more than to assure you that these things shall be heirlooms in my family. They will be prized by those who love me as testifying not only to the work of Sheffield hands, but to the warmth and generosity of Sheffield hearts. Believe me, ladies and gentlemen, that to the earnestness of my aim and desire to do right by my readers, and to leave our imaginative and popular literature more closely associated than I found it at once with the private homes and public rights of the English people, I shall ever be faithful – to my death – in the principles which have won your approval. Allow me to take a reluctant leave, wishing you, one and all, many many merry Christmases, and many, many happy new years. Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18551222 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource After Reading in Sheffield Description An account of the resource After a reading of A Christmas Carol in Sheffield (22 December 1855) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1855-12-22 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1855-12-22_Speech_After-Reading-in-Sheffield Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'After Reading in Sheffield' (22 December 1855). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1855-12-22_Speech_After-Reading-in-Sheffield">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1855-12-22_Speech_After-Reading-in-Sheffield</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Mr. Mayor, I beg to assure you, and those gentlemen who are associated with you in this kind gift, that I accept with heartfelt delight and cordial gratitude such beautiful specimens of the work of your famous town. The kind expressions with which you have accompanied this presentation, and the response which they have received from the assembly, will never be obliterated from my memory. You have heard my voice so much tonight that out of pure forbearance I will not say more than to assure you that these things shall be heirlooms in my family. They will be prized by those who love me as testifying not only to the work of Sheffield hands, but to the warmth and generosity of Sheffield hearts. Believe me, ladies and gentlemen, that to the earnestness of my aim and desire to do right by my readers, and to leave our imaginative and popular literature more closely associated than I found it at once with the private homes and public rights of the English people, I shall ever be faithful – to my death – in the principles which have won your approval. Allow me to take a reluctant leave, wishing you, one and all, many many merry Christmases, and many, many happy new years. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Speeches Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context speeches Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together Dickens’s collected and uncollected speeches, making an under-explored body of work searchable for the first time. </h4> Dickens made more than a hundred speeches between 1837 and 1870 at events ranging from charitable dinners and award ceremonies to banquets in his honour or brief words of thanks before a public reading. In these speeches, the author touched on topics including his own life and professional development as well as other subjects such as politics, education, literature, public health and the development of the railway. Efforts to collect Dickens’s speeches prior to 1960 were incomplete at best, and misleading and fragmentary at worst. John Camden Hotten’s collection of speeches, begun without the author’s consent (although he never responded to Hotten’s letters, Dickens did begin efforts to block their publication) and published together with a hastily-compiled biography shortly after the author’s death, remained the primary collected version of the speeches until the Nonesuch Dickens of 1938-39 (a limited print run). Finally, K. J. Fielding brought all known speeches together in 1960, correcting shoddy transcriptions by Hotten using contemporary newspaper accounts, and nearly doubling the total number of speeches attributed to Dickens (The Speeches of Charles Dickens [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960]): Hotten had only featured the text of 56 speeches, the Nonesuch edition of the speeches provided an additional nine, and Fielding presented more than a hundred. Since this monumental work, a handful have also appeared in The Dickensian;<a href="#fn1" id="ref1">1</a> there are certainly more to be found, as the volume of digitised newspapers and periodicals increases, and corrections to be made to existing transcriptions. No effort to collect the speeches has been made since Fielding; this collection thus represents the most complete body of Dickens's speeches ever assembled. Dickens did not write his speeches beforehand, nor did he speak from notes. George Dolby recounted his imaginative process in 1884: <blockquote>[S]upposing the speech was to be delivered in the evening, his habit was to take a long walk in the morning, during which he would decide on the various heads to be dealt with. These being arranged in their proper order, he would in his 'mind's eye,' liken the whole subject to the tire of a cart wheel – he being the hub. From the hub to the tire he would run as many spokes as there were subjects to be treated, and during the progress of the speech he would deal with each spoke separately, elaborating them as he went round the wheel; and when all the spokes dropped out one by one, and nothing but the tire and space remained […] his speech was at an end. (Charles Dickens as I Knew Him: The Story of the Reading Tours in Great Britain and America, pp. 273-74)</blockquote> However, on important occasions, Dickens might personally correct transcriptions of speeches for major London newspapers like The Times. As such, these newspaper accounts are as accurate a source as we can hope to have for what Dickens said (or meant to say). Our Transcription field will only include words attributed directly to Dickens rather than third-person reports or paraphrases of his speeches. Where only such reports exist, we will provide the text in the 'Summary' field. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to what are given as Dickens's words only, to avoid skewing the results, but of course we are reliant on the quality of the reporting: we recommend analysing topics, themes, quotations and concepts rather than granular detail such as prepositions, punctuation, capitalisation and the intricacies of grammar, as different newspaper accounts can vary on these points. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or to contribute other uncollected speeches by Dickens. 1. These are Philip Collins, 'Some Uncollected Speeches by Dickens', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 89-99; David A. Roos, 'Dickens at the Royal Academy of Arts: A New Speech and Two Eulogies', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 100-107; and William F. Long, 'Dickens and the Coming of Rail to Deal: An Uncollected Speech and its Context', The Dickensian 85.418 (1989): pp. 66-80. <a href="#ref1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Emily Middleton; Ellie-Louise Crampton; Maisie Howard; Adam Woods Speech Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given Royal Literary Fund Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18560312 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. Sir, I shall not attempt to follow my friend Mr. Bell – who, in the profession of literature, represents upon this Committee a separate and distinct branch of the profession, that like: The last rose of summer Stands blooming alone, His lovely companions All faded and gone, – into the very ingenious maze of bramble-bushes with which he has contrived to beset this question. In the remarks I have to make I shall confine myself to four points. One, that it would appear from Mr. Bell's speech that the Committee find themselves in the painful condition of not spending enough money, and will presently apply themselves to the great reform of spending more. Two, that with regard to the house, it is a positive matter of history, that the house for which Mr. Williams was so anxious, was to be applied to uses to which it never has been applied, and which the administrators of the Fund decline to recognize. Three, that with respect to Mr. Bell’s endeavours to remove the Artists’ Benevolent Fund from the ground of analogy which it unquestionably occupies in reference to the Literary Fund, by alleging that it continually relieves the same people, I beg to say that Mr. Bell, as well as every gentleman sitting at that table, knows perfectly well, that it is the business of this Fund to relieve the same people over and over again; and, indeed, I hold in my hand a report for 1855, from which I find out that out of forty-eight cases relieved, thirty were those of persons relieved from the second to the tenth time.  I can only oppose to that statement my own experience when I sat on that committee, and when I have known persons relieved, as a matter of course, on many consecutive applications, without further inquiry being made. As to the suggestion that we should select the particular items of expenditure that we complain of, I think it is according to all experience that we should first affirm the principle that the expenditure is too large. If that be done by the meeting, then I will immediately proceed to the selection of the separate items. Now, in rising to support this resolution, I may state at once that I have scarcely any expectation of its being carried, and I am happy to think it will not. Indeed, I consider it the strongest point of the resolution's case that it should not be carried, for it would be impossible to convey to the public a more convincing proof of mismanagement, and the determination of the managers to mismanage it to the death, than would be involved in the recital for the second time within twelve months, that the attention of the Committee had been called to the incontrovertible facts of its great expenditure, and that at the same time the Committee had asserted that it considered the expenses were not unreasonable. I cannot conceive a stronger case for the responsibility of the reform urged for the second time and I rejoice that this statement of facts  and the assertion that the expenses are not unreasonable will go forth together. Now, to separate this question from details, let us remember what the Committee and their supporters asserted last year, and I hope will reassert this year: that it was rather a model kind of thing than otherwise now, that if you get £100 you are to spend £40 in management; and if you get £1000, of course you may spend £400 in giving the rest away. Now, in case there should be any ill-conditioned people here, who may ask what occasion there can be for all this expenditure, I will give you my experience. I went last year to a highly respectable place of resort, Willis’s Rooms, in St. James’s, to a Special General meeting of this Corporation, for the purpose of hearing and seeing all I could, and saying as little as I could prevail on myself not to say. Allowing for the absence of the younger and fairer portion of the female sex, the general appearance of the place was very much like Almack’s in the morning. A number of stately old dowagers were ranged in a row on one side, and old gentlemen sat on the other. The ball was opened with due solemnity by a real marquis, who walked a minuet with the Secretary, at which the audience were much affected. Then another party advanced, who, I am sorry to say, was only a member of the House of Commons – but a gentleman highly connected – and he gracefully took the floor. To him, however, succeeded a distinguished lord, then a bishop, then the son of a distinguished lord; after which the minor church rose, with a member of the Stock Exchange and the Bar; and, at last, in an interval of the theatricals, a man more immediately connected with Literature, though not of course considered very respectable, was allowed to step in and sustain the part of Pangloss, in the adventures of Candide, and delight the audience by explaining that this was the best of all possible societies, conducted under the best of all possible managements, at the least of all possible expenditure from the best of all possible funds. It is in these things – it is in our fondness for being so stupendously genteel, by keeping up such a fashionable appearance, by giving way to the vulgar and common social vice of hanging on to great connexions at any price – that the money goes. Why, sir, the very last distinguished writer of fiction whom you caught for your public dinner, told you, in return for drinking his health, somewhere towards the small hours of the morning, that he felt like the servant in plush who is permitted to sweep the stage down, when there are no more great people to come on; and  I myself, at a dinner some twelve years ago, felt like a sort of Rip Van Winkle reversed, who had gone to sleep backwards for a hundred years; and, waking, found that Literature instead of being emancipated, had to endure all manner of aristocratic patrons, and was lying at the feet of people who did nothing for it, instead of standing alone and appealing to the public for support. Why, this Bloomsbury house is another part of the same desire for show, and the officer who inhabits it. (I mean, of course, in his official capacity, for, as an individual, I much respect him.) When one enters the house it appears to be haunted by a series of mysterious looking ghosts, who glide about in some extraordinary occupation; and, after the approved fashion of ghosts, but seldom condescend to disclose their business. What are all these meeting and inquiries wanted for? As for the authors, I say, as a writer by profession, that the long inquiry said to be necessary to ascertain whether an applicant deserves relief, is a preposterous pretence, and that working literary men would have a far better knowledge of the cases coming before the board than can ever be attained by that Committee. Further, I say openly and plainly, that this Fund is pompously and unnaturally administered at great expense, instead of being quietly administered at small expense: and that the secrecy to which it lays claim as its great attribute, is not kept; for through those ‘two respectable householders’, to whom reference must be made to enlighten the ignorance of the Committee, the names of the most deserving applicants leak out, and are, to numbers of people, perfectly well known. The members have now got before them a plain statement of fact as to these charges; and it is for them to say whether they are unreasonable, or justifiable, becoming, and decent. I beg most earnestly and respectfully to put it to those gentlemen who belong to this institution, that they must now decide, and cannot help deciding, what the Literary Fund is, and what it is not – what it is for, and what it is not for. The question raised by the resolution is whether this is a public corporation for the relief of men of genius and learning, who may be reduced to distress by unavoidable calamities or deprived by enfeebled faculties or declining life of the power of literary exertion; or whether it is a snug, traditional, and conventional party, bent upon maintaining its own usages with a vast amount of unnecessary parade, upon its own annual puffery at costly dinner tables, and upon a course of expensive toadying once every twelve months, to one or two members of the aristocracy, with a view to recruiting its finances. This is the question that you must decide today, and it is a question from which you cannot escape. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Royal Literary Fund Annual General Meeting 1856 Description An account of the resource Speech at the Royal Literary Fund Annual General Meeting (12 March 1856). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1856-03-12 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1856-03-12_Speech_Royal-Literary-Fund-Annual-General-Meeting Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Speech at the Royal Literary Fund Annual General Meeting' (12 March 1856). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1856-03-12_Speech_Royal-Literary-Fund-Annual-General-Meeting">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1856-03-12_Speech_Royal-Literary-Fund-Annual-General-Meeting</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Sir, I shall not attempt to follow my friend Mr. Bell – who, in the profession of literature, represents upon this Committee a separate and distinct branch of the profession, that like:   The last rose of summer   Stands blooming alone,   His lovely companions   All faded and gone,   – into the very ingenious maze of bramble-bushes with which he has contrived to beset this question. In the remarks I have to make I shall confine myself to four points. One, that it would appear from Mr. Bell's speech that the Committee find themselves in the painful condition of not spending enough money, and will presently apply themselves to the great reform of spending more. Two, that with regard to the house, it is a positive matter of history, that the house for which Mr. Williams was so anxious, was to be applied to uses to which it never has been applied, and which the administrators of the Fund decline to recognize. Three, that with respect to Mr. Bell’s endeavours to remove the Artists’ Benevolent Fund from the ground of analogy which it unquestionably occupies in reference to the Literary Fund, by alleging that it continually relieves the same people, I beg to say that Mr. Bell, as well as every gentleman sitting at that table, knows perfectly well, that it is the business of this Fund to relieve the same people over and over again; and, indeed, I hold in my hand a report for 1855, from which I find out that out of forty-eight cases relieved, thirty were those of persons relieved from the second to the tenth time.  I can only oppose to that statement my own experience when I sat on that committee, and when I have known persons relieved, as a matter of course, on many consecutive applications, without further inquiry being made. As to the suggestion that we should select the particular items of expenditure that we complain of, I think it is according to all experience that we should first affirm the principle that the expenditure is too large. If that be done by the meeting, then I will immediately proceed to the selection of the separate items.  Now, in rising to support this resolution, I may state at once that I have scarcely any expectation of its being carried, and I am happy to think it will not. Indeed, I consider it the strongest point of the resolution's case that it should not be carried, for it would be impossible to convey to the public a more convincing proof of mismanagement, and the determination of the managers to mismanage it to the death, than would be involved in the recital for the second time within twelve months, that the attention of the Committee had been called to the incontrovertible facts of its great expenditure, and that at the same time the Committee had asserted that it considered the expenses were not unreasonable. I cannot conceive a stronger case for the responsibility of the reform urged for the second time and I rejoice that this statement of facts and the assertion that the expenses are not unreasonable will go forth together. Now, to separate this question from details, let us remember what the Committee and their supporters asserted last year, and I hope will reassert this year: that it was rather a model kind of thing than otherwise now, that if you get £100 you are to spend £40 in management; and if you get £1000, of course you may spend £400 in giving the rest away. Now, in case there should be any ill-conditioned people here, who may ask what occasion there can be for all this expenditure, I will give you my experience. I went last year to a highly respectable place of resort, Willis’s Rooms, in St. James’s, to a Special General meeting of this Corporation, for the purpose of hearing and seeing all I could, and saying as little as I could prevail on myself not to say. Allowing for the absence of the younger and fairer portion of the female sex, the general appearance of the place was very much like Almack’s in the morning. A number of stately old dowagers were ranged in a row on one side, and old gentlemen sat on the other. The ball was opened with due solemnity by a real marquis, who walked a minuet with the Secretary, at which the audience were much affected. Then another party advanced, who, I am sorry to say, was only a member of the House of Commons –  but a gentleman highly connected – and he gracefully took the floor. To him, however, succeeded a distinguished lord, then a bishop, then the son of a distinguished lord; after which the minor church rose, with a member of the Stock Exchange and the Bar; and, at last, in an interval of the theatricals, a man more immediately connected with Literature, though not of course considered very respectable, was allowed to step in and sustain the part of Pangloss, in the adventures of Candide, and delight the audience by explaining that this was the best of all possible societies, conducted under the best of all possible managements, at the least of all possible expenditure from the best of all possible funds. It is in these things – it is in our fondness for being so stupendously genteel, by keeping up such a fashionable appearance, by giving way to the vulgar and common social vice of hanging on to great connexions at any price – that the money goes. Why, sir, the very last distinguished writer of fiction whom you caught for your public dinner, told you, in return for drinking his health, somewhere towards the small hours of the morning, that he felt like the servant in plush who is permitted to sweep the stage down, when there are no more great people to come on; and  I myself, at a dinner some twelve years ago, felt like a sort of Rip Van Winkle reversed, who had gone to sleep backwards for a hundred years; and, waking, found that Literature instead of being emancipated, had to endure all manner of aristocratic patrons, and was lying at the feet of people who did nothing for it, instead of standing alone and appealing to the public for support. Why, this Bloomsbury house is another part of the same desire for show, and the officer who inhabits it. (I mean, of course, in his official capacity, for, as an individual, I much respect him.) When one enters the house it appears to be haunted by a series of mysterious looking ghosts, who glide about in some extraordinary occupation; and, after the approved fashion of ghosts, but seldom condescend to disclose their business. What are all these meeting and inquiries wanted for? As for the authors, I say, as a writer by profession, that the long inquiry said to be necessary to ascertain whether an applicant deserves relief, is a preposterous pretence, and that working literary men would have a far better knowledge of the cases coming before the board than can ever be attained by that Committee. Further, I say openly and plainly, that this Fund is pompously and unnaturally administered at great expense, instead of being quietly administered at small expense: and that the secrecy to which it lays claim as its great attribute, is not kept; for through those ‘two respectable householders’, to whom reference must be made to enlighten the ignorance of the Committee, the names of the most deserving applicants leak out, and are, to numbers of people, perfectly well known.  The members have now got before them a plain statement of fact as to these charges; and it is for them to say whether they are unreasonable, or justifiable, becoming, and decent. I beg most earnestly and respectfully to put it to those gentlemen who belong to this institution, that they must now decide, and cannot help deciding, what the Literary Fund is, and what it is not – what it is for, and what it is not for. The question raised by the resolution is whether this is a public corporation for the relief of men of genius and learning, who may be reduced to distress by unavoidable calamities or deprived by enfeebled faculties or declining life of the power of literary exertion; or whether it is a snug, traditional, and conventional party, bent upon maintaining its own usages with a vast amount of unnecessary parade, upon its own annual puffery at costly dinner tables, and upon a course of expensive toadying once every twelve months, to one or two members of the aristocracy, with a view to recruiting its finances. This is the question that you must decide today, and it is a question from which you cannot escape.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Speeches Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context speeches Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together Dickens’s collected and uncollected speeches, making an under-explored body of work searchable for the first time. </h4> Dickens made more than a hundred speeches between 1837 and 1870 at events ranging from charitable dinners and award ceremonies to banquets in his honour or brief words of thanks before a public reading. In these speeches, the author touched on topics including his own life and professional development as well as other subjects such as politics, education, literature, public health and the development of the railway. Efforts to collect Dickens’s speeches prior to 1960 were incomplete at best, and misleading and fragmentary at worst. John Camden Hotten’s collection of speeches, begun without the author’s consent (although he never responded to Hotten’s letters, Dickens did begin efforts to block their publication) and published together with a hastily-compiled biography shortly after the author’s death, remained the primary collected version of the speeches until the Nonesuch Dickens of 1938-39 (a limited print run). Finally, K. J. Fielding brought all known speeches together in 1960, correcting shoddy transcriptions by Hotten using contemporary newspaper accounts, and nearly doubling the total number of speeches attributed to Dickens (The Speeches of Charles Dickens [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960]): Hotten had only featured the text of 56 speeches, the Nonesuch edition of the speeches provided an additional nine, and Fielding presented more than a hundred. Since this monumental work, a handful have also appeared in The Dickensian;<a href="#fn1" id="ref1">1</a> there are certainly more to be found, as the volume of digitised newspapers and periodicals increases, and corrections to be made to existing transcriptions. No effort to collect the speeches has been made since Fielding; this collection thus represents the most complete body of Dickens's speeches ever assembled. Dickens did not write his speeches beforehand, nor did he speak from notes. George Dolby recounted his imaginative process in 1884: <blockquote>[S]upposing the speech was to be delivered in the evening, his habit was to take a long walk in the morning, during which he would decide on the various heads to be dealt with. These being arranged in their proper order, he would in his 'mind's eye,' liken the whole subject to the tire of a cart wheel – he being the hub. From the hub to the tire he would run as many spokes as there were subjects to be treated, and during the progress of the speech he would deal with each spoke separately, elaborating them as he went round the wheel; and when all the spokes dropped out one by one, and nothing but the tire and space remained […] his speech was at an end. (Charles Dickens as I Knew Him: The Story of the Reading Tours in Great Britain and America, pp. 273-74)</blockquote> However, on important occasions, Dickens might personally correct transcriptions of speeches for major London newspapers like The Times. As such, these newspaper accounts are as accurate a source as we can hope to have for what Dickens said (or meant to say). Our Transcription field will only include words attributed directly to Dickens rather than third-person reports or paraphrases of his speeches. Where only such reports exist, we will provide the text in the 'Summary' field. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to what are given as Dickens's words only, to avoid skewing the results, but of course we are reliant on the quality of the reporting: we recommend analysing topics, themes, quotations and concepts rather than granular detail such as prepositions, punctuation, capitalisation and the intricacies of grammar, as different newspaper accounts can vary on these points. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or to contribute other uncollected speeches by Dickens. 1. These are Philip Collins, 'Some Uncollected Speeches by Dickens', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 89-99; David A. Roos, 'Dickens at the Royal Academy of Arts: A New Speech and Two Eulogies', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 100-107; and William F. Long, 'Dickens and the Coming of Rail to Deal: An Uncollected Speech and its Context', The Dickensian 85.418 (1989): pp. 66-80. <a href="#ref1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Emily Middleton; Ellie-Louise Crampton; Maisie Howard; Adam Woods Speech Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given Adelphi Theatre Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18560313 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. Ladies and Gentlemen, My part in the proceedings of today I apprehend will not be so much to talk myself, as to be the cause of talk – and I trust of action also – in others. I shall merely endeavour to present to you as plain and just a summary as I can possibly make of the circumstances under which we are assembled together, being as careful as I possibly can not to trench upon the part of this day's proceedings which has been assigned to those distinguished gentlemen and ornaments of the theatrical profession by whom I have the honour to find myself surrounded. The ideas which most people about London associate with Dulwich College are, probably, of the very vaguest kind. They associate it chiefly, I dare say, with a charming gallery of interesting pictures – very freely and laudably open to the public – which pictures are seen with an unusual absence of glare and bustle; with pleasant gardens outside and a beautiful country, rich in all the attractions of Surrey and Kent. They have, I dare say, certain indistinct associations with some musty old men, in black gowns, all bearing the name of Alleyn, and an embowered college where, without blame to anyone, I dare say a snug thing or two has been transacted in the way of a good place, which we should all be very happy to get if we were only fortunate enough, and were ‘Alleyn’ enough to obtain it. They have probably no more distinct idea of the founder of Dulwich College than that he was rather an ancient personage, who lived many years ago, and who, somehow or other, bequeathed to posterity an excuse for passing an occasional pleasant holiday in a pretty country; and I make so bold to say for myself, if he had only done that for this working time, I think he would have done better service to it than is rendered by many majestic and noble personages of much loftier pretensions. But it becomes us, and the object for which we are here today, to look a little more closely into the history of Dulwich College, and in particular to ascertain whether he had any peculiar and close associations with the stage. He lived by the name of Edward Alleyn, and he lived too, in the days of a remarkable man who, though he died a commoner, who, though he was not honoured with a patent of nobility, nevertheless did the state some service – one William Shakespeare. His mother was the wife of an actor; he was himself bred to the stage; his brother  engaged in theatrical pursuits; he married the daughter of the wife of an actor, who was herself an actress. He was himself a famous actor, and a great and prosperous theatrical manager. He was the manager of the Rose Theatre, and afterwards of the Fortune Theatre, and besides which he had a very large share – supposed to have been purchased from Shakespeare himself – in the Blackfriars Theatre; he was also one of the two appointed Masters of the King's Games; and besides inheriting considerable property, he acquired by the actor’s art and the manager's enterprise a great deal of money. Retiring from the stage before he was fifty years old, and being already Lord of the Manor of Dulwich, he founded there a college for the maintenance and support of one master, one warden, four fellows, six old men, and six old women, and twelve boys to be educated in good literature. To this college, after its completion, he himself retired, and there, wearing its habiliments and conducting himself in observance of its rules, he lived-and there he died, and there was buried in the year 1626, when he was sixty years of age. Now, when his ashes have lain under the chapel of that institution for more than two hundred years, a certain useful and very much needed public body – called the Charity Commission – discovered that the endowment of this college was extremely rich, and capable of great extension-which extension they recommended to the Legislature. Hereupon up rises, true to his art and true to his trust, a great theatrical manager of our own times, who prays – always keeping within the proposed extensions – prays that one fourth of the benefits may be extended to poor players of both sexes, and also to the children of poor players. This appeal this gentleman makes in remembrance of the stage which Edward Alleyn embraced; in remembrance of the means by which he acquired fame and fortune; in remembrance of his unvarying interest in, and kindness to, poor actors during the whole course of his life; and in remembrance of the desire which such a man must in all reason be assumed to have had to benefit his own class, amongst others, when he devoted his munificent spirit to the foundation of Dulwich College. Now, ladies and gentlemen, to array against the very moderate suspicion that the founder of Dulwich College, in the great act of his life, did not at once give the go-by to all the sympathies and associations of his whole existence, we have what the authors of romance in the present day might call one diabolical anecdote and one remarkable fact. Now to dispose of this diabolical anecdote; in the first place it is sufficient to mention that as the tale goes it was how that once Alleyn played the Devil, and that thereupon he found upon the stage with him an original devil, which apparition so terrified him – as well it might – that he immediately retired from the theatre, and, as an expiation for ever having belonged to it and for the part he had played in it, founded this ‘God’s Gift’, or Dulwich College. Now, as far as I have been able to learn, there is not the smallest reason to believe that Edward Alleyn even so much as played the Devil at all, indeed I find there is an angel's suit among the list of his wardrobe; and as this story is handed down to us by an old gentleman who wrote charming stories about ghosts coming out of the wainscot and who went back again with a melodious twang, perhaps, under these circumstances, without disrespect to this particular devil, we might venture to dispose of him with a melodious twang of general consent. The remarkable fact is, however, of much greater importance. It is in the original gift that Edward Alleyn limited the benefits to inhabitants of certain particular parishes, including his own. These parishes, I should mention, expressly included the very districts about the theatres in which the actors of that time habitually resided. Not to embarrass you with the names of persons, and places, and dates, it may be enough to say that the name of Edward Alleyn appears among the ratepayers of the liberty of the Clink, in Southwark; and, in addition we find the names of some ten thoroughly well-known actors rated to the relief of the poor – prominent amongst them appearing the names of Edward Alleyn and William Shakespeare? Surely we could hardly have a more striking corroboration of the intention that must have been in the mind of such a man than the express naming of those districts in which the players chiefly lived. Added to this, there is the fact that Edward Alleyn, himself an actor, was the first master of Dulwich College; and there is strong reason to believe – I say believe, because the spelling of the age renders the positive identification of names rather difficult – there is strong reason to believe, that two of the original officers of the College were also actors. Added to that, that at every period of his life, long after his retirement from the stage, and after his retirement to Dulwich, Edward Alleyn never forgot his brothers in the profession, nor ceased to be remembered by them as an actor; for we find on one occasion, a couple of years after he had built Dulwich College, he forgave a debt to a company of actors of £200 at a blow. One actor writes to him in this style: ‘I commend my love and humble duty to you, geving you thankes for your great bounty bestoed upon me in my sicknes, when I was in great want: god blese you for it.’ Lord Bacon writes of the College and of the founder – the actor – ‘I like well that Alleyn playeth the last act of his life so well.’ Alleyn himself writes to the former possessor of that ground on which the College now stands, and in which his ashes now repose, the following words in answer to such a taunt as a mean soul might be supposed to have thrown out upon his old profession: That I was a player I can not deny, and I am sure I will not. My meanes of living were honest, and with the poore abilytyes wherewith god blesst me I was able to doe something for my selfe, my relatives, and my frendes, many of them now lyving at this day will not refuse to owne what they owght me. Therefore am I not ashamed. Now, ladies and gentlemen, it would certainly be a grievous wrong to the writer of these noble words, and a great injury to the possessor of so manly a nature, to suppose him capable of having spurned the ladder by which he had risen, or to have set his face against the road by which he had come. I venture to say that in all biography there is not an instance of any man of honest self-reliance and self composure that was ever guilty of so base an action; accordingly Edward Alleyn never was. The industry of my friend, Mr. John Payne Collier, shows him to us in his habit as he lived; and it is easy, even in his secluded life at Dulwich, to trace many pleasant tenderings of his feet towards the old paths, and many delicate tenderings of his mind towards the old occupations. When he goes upon an occasional visit from Dulwich to London on horseback his delight is to dine at the theatrical ordinary, and surround himself with the old familiar theatrical faces; and at the Twelfth Night parties at Dulwich, the boys have to play before the good old player. Late in life his theatre is burnt down, and forthwith he applies himself with energy to its reconstruction. One of his old parts, copied by the theatre copyist, is found amongst his papers ages after he is dead. Everything testifies to the truth and fidelity of his simple heart. Gentle presences which I observe in the boxes, remind me that last night, when I was refreshing my memory with a reperusal of his good life, I found I had one uneasy doubt about him, and I mated that the follows of his college should be single men. This appeared to me uncomfortable. I soon found, however, his intention was to console them, and to recompense them for their miserable solitude, inasmuch as he had a wife of his own, to whom he was tenderly attached, and whom he was accustomed to address by the endearing epithet of ‘Mouse’, and when that grisly cat who is our common foe dispatched her he provided himself with another ‘Mouse’, with all convenient speed. Now, ladies and gentlemen, it will be most conducive to the order and effect of our proceedings that you should hear from the lips which have the best right to relate it to you, what encouraging communication has been had with the Charity Commissioners. Therefore, venturing to express my great admiration of the man who has an honest respect for his calling and a generous and disinterested sympathy with the professors of his art, and who moreover does the great public service – by no means an unimportant one in these times – of endeavouring to restore anything to its plain, original, truthful position, I beg to commend to your attention, Mr. Benjamin Webster. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Meeting of the Dramatic Profession on Dulwich College Description An account of the resource Speech at the Meeting of the Dramatic Profession on Dulwich College (13 March 1856). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1856-03-13 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1856-03-13_Speech_Meeting-of-the-Dramatic-Profession-on-Dulwich-College Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Speech at the Meeting of the Dramatic Profession on Dulwich College (13 March 1856). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1856-03-13_Speech_Meeting-of-the-Dramatic-Profession-on-Dulwich-College">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1856-03-13_Speech_Meeting-of-the-Dramatic-Profession-on-Dulwich-College</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Ladies and Gentlemen, My part in the proceedings of today I apprehend will not be so much to talk myself, as to be the cause of talk – and I trust of action also – in others. I shall merely endeavour to present to you as plain and just a summary as I can possibly make of the circumstances under which we are assembled together, being as careful as I possibly can not to trench upon the part of this day's proceedings which has been assigned to those distinguished gentlemen and ornaments of the theatrical profession by whom I have the honour to find myself surrounded. The ideas which most people about London associate with Dulwich College are, probably, of the very vaguest kind. They associate it chiefly, I dare say, with a charming gallery of interesting pictures – very freely and laudably open to the public – which pictures are seen with an unusual absence of glare and bustle; with pleasant gardens outside and a beautiful country, rich in all the attractions of Surrey and Kent. They have, I dare say, certain indistinct associations with some musty old men, in black gowns, all bearing the name of Alleyn, and an embowered college where, without blame to anyone, I dare say a snug thing or two has been transacted in the way of a good place, which we should all be very happy to get if we were only fortunate enough, and were ‘Alleyn’ enough to obtain it. They have probably no more distinct idea of the founder of Dulwich College than that he was rather an ancient personage, who lived many years ago, and who, somehow or other, bequeathed to posterity an excuse for passing an occasional pleasant holiday in a pretty country; and I make so bold to say for myself, if he had only done that for this working time, I think he would have done better service to it than is rendered by many majestic and noble personages of much loftier pretensions. But it becomes us, and the object for which we are here today, to look a little more closely into the history of Dulwich College, and in particular to ascertain whether he had any peculiar and close associations with the stage. He lived by the name of Edward Alleyn, and he lived too, in the days of a remarkable man who, though he died a commoner, who, though he was not honoured with a patent of nobility, nevertheless did the state some service – one William Shakespeare. His mother was the wife of an actor; he was himself bred to the stage; his brother engaged in theatrical pursuits; he married the daughter of the wife of an actor, who was herself an actress. He was himself a famous actor, and a great and prosperous theatrical manager. He was the manager of the Rose Theatre, and afterwards of the Fortune Theatre, and besides which he had a very large share – supposed to have been purchased from Shakespeare himself – in the Blackfriars Theatre; he was also one of the two appointed Masters of the King's Games; and besides inheriting considerable property, he acquired by the actor’s art and the manager's enterprise a great deal of money. Retiring from the stage before he was fifty years old, and being already Lord of the Manor of Dulwich, he founded there a college for the maintenance and support of one master, one warden, four fellows, six old men, and six old women, and twelve boys to be educated in good literature. To this college, after its completion, he himself retired, and there, wearing its habiliments and conducting himself in observance of its rules, he lived-and there he died, and there was buried in the year 1626, when he was sixty years of age. Now, when his ashes have lain under the chapel of that institution for more than two hundred years, a certain useful and very much needed public body –  called the Charity Commission – discovered that the endowment of this college was extremely rich, and capable of great extension-which extension they recommended to the Legislature. Hereupon up rises, true to his art and true to his trust, a great theatrical manager of our own times, who prays – always keeping within the proposed extensions – prays that one fourth of the benefits may be extended to poor players of both sexes, and also to the children of poor players. This appeal this gentleman makes in remembrance of the stage which Edward Alleyn embraced; in remembrance of the means by which he acquired fame and fortune; in remembrance of his unvarying interest in, and kindness to, poor actors during the whole course of his life; and in remembrance of the desire which such a man must in all reason be assumed to have had to benefit his own class, amongst others, when he devoted his munificent spirit to the foundation of Dulwich College.  Now, ladies and gentlemen, to array against the very moderate suspicion that the founder of Dulwich College, in the great act of his life, did not at once give the go-by to all the sympathies and associations of his whole existence, we have what the authors of romance in the present day might call one diabolical anecdote and one remarkable fact. Now to dispose of this diabolical anecdote; in the first place it is sufficient to mention that as the tale goes it was how that once Alleyn played the Devil, and that thereupon he found upon the stage with him an original devil, which apparition so terrified him – as well it might – that he immediately retired from the theatre, and, as an expiation for ever having belonged to it and for the part he had played in it, founded this ‘God’s Gift’, or Dulwich College. Now, as far as I have been able to learn, there is not the smallest reason to believe that Edward Alleyn even so much as played the Devil at all, indeed I find there is an angel's suit among the list of his wardrobe; and as this story is handed down to us by an old gentleman who wrote charming stories about ghosts coming out of the wainscot and who went back again with a melodious twang, perhaps, under these circumstances, without disrespect to this particular devil, we might venture to dispose of him with a melodious twang of general consent. The remarkable fact is, however, of much greater importance. It is in the original gift that Edward Alleyn limited the benefits to inhabitants of certain particular parishes, including his own. These parishes, I should mention, expressly included the very districts about the theatres in which the actors of that time habitually resided. Not to embarrass you with the names of persons, and places, and dates, it may be enough to say that the name of Edward Alleyn appears among the ratepayers of the liberty of the Clink, in Southwark; and, in addition we find the names of some ten thoroughly well-known actors rated to the relief of the poor –  prominent amongst them appearing the names of Edward Alleyn and William Shakespeare? Surely we could hardly have a more striking corroboration of the intention that must have been in the mind of such a man than the express naming of those districts in which the players chiefly lived. Added to this, there is the fact that Edward Alleyn, himself an actor, was the first master of Dulwich College; and there is strong reason to believe – I say believe, because the spelling of the age renders the positive identification of names rather difficult – there is strong reason to believe, that two of the original officers of the College were also actors. Added to that, that at every period of his life, long after his retirement from the stage, and after his retirement to Dulwich, Edward Alleyn never forgot his brothers in the profession, nor ceased to be remembered by them as an actor; for we find on one occasion, a couple of years after he had built Dulwich College, he forgave a debt to a company of actors of £200 at a blow. One actor writes to him in this style: ‘I commend my love and humble duty to you, geving you thankes for your great bounty bestoed upon me in my sicknes, when I was in great want: god blese you for it.’ Lord Bacon writes of the College and of the founder – the actor – ‘I like well that Alleyn playeth the last act of his life so well.’ Alleyn himself writes to the former possessor of that ground on which the College now stands, and in which his ashes now repose, the following words in answer to such a taunt as a mean soul might be supposed to have thrown out upon his old profession:   That I was a player I can not deny, and I am sure I will not. My meanes of living were honest, and with the poore abilytyes wherewith god blesst me I was able to doe something for my selfe, my relatives, and my frendes, many of them now lyving at this day will not refuse to owne what they owght me. Therefore am I not ashamed. Now, ladies and gentlemen, it would certainly be a grievous wrong to the writer of these noble words, and a great injury to the possessor of so manly a nature, to suppose him capable of having spurned the ladder by which he had risen, or to have set his face against the road by which he had come. I venture to say that in all biography there is not an instance of any man of honest self-reliance and self composure that was ever guilty of so base an action; accordingly Edward Alleyn never was. The industry of my friend, Mr. John Payne Collier,  shows him to us in his habit as he lived; and it is easy, even in his secluded life at Dulwich, to trace many pleasant tenderings of his feet towards the old paths, and many delicate tenderings of his mind towards the old occupations. When he goes upon an occasional visit from Dulwich to London on horseback his delight is to dine at the theatrical ordinary, and surround himself with the old familiar theatrical faces; and at the Twelfth Night parties at Dulwich, the boys have to play before the good old player. Late in life his theatre is burnt down, and forthwith he applies himself with energy to its reconstruction. One of his old parts, copied by the theatre copyist, is found amongst his papers ages after he is dead. Everything testifies to the truth and fidelity of his simple heart. Gentle presences which I observe in the boxes, remind me that last night, when I was refreshing my memory with a reperusal of his good life, I found I had one uneasy doubt about him, and I mated that the follows of his college should be single men. This appeared to me uncomfortable. I soon found, however, his intention was to console them, and to recompense them for their miserable solitude, inasmuch as he had a wife of his own, to whom he was tenderly attached, and whom he was accustomed to address by the endearing epithet of ‘Mouse’, and when that grisly cat who is our common foe dispatched her he provided himself with another ‘Mouse’, with all convenient speed.  Now, ladies and gentlemen, it will be most conducive to the order and effect of our proceedings that you should hear from the lips which have the best right to relate it to you, what encouraging communication has been had with the Charity Commissioners. Therefore, venturing to express my great admiration of the man who has an honest respect for his calling and a generous and disinterested sympathy with the professors of his art, and who moreover does the great public service – by no means an unimportant one in these times – of endeavouring to restore anything to its plain, original, truthful position, I beg to commend to your attention, Mr. Benjamin Webster. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Speeches Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context speeches Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together Dickens’s collected and uncollected speeches, making an under-explored body of work searchable for the first time. </h4> Dickens made more than a hundred speeches between 1837 and 1870 at events ranging from charitable dinners and award ceremonies to banquets in his honour or brief words of thanks before a public reading. In these speeches, the author touched on topics including his own life and professional development as well as other subjects such as politics, education, literature, public health and the development of the railway. Efforts to collect Dickens’s speeches prior to 1960 were incomplete at best, and misleading and fragmentary at worst. John Camden Hotten’s collection of speeches, begun without the author’s consent (although he never responded to Hotten’s letters, Dickens did begin efforts to block their publication) and published together with a hastily-compiled biography shortly after the author’s death, remained the primary collected version of the speeches until the Nonesuch Dickens of 1938-39 (a limited print run). Finally, K. J. Fielding brought all known speeches together in 1960, correcting shoddy transcriptions by Hotten using contemporary newspaper accounts, and nearly doubling the total number of speeches attributed to Dickens (The Speeches of Charles Dickens [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960]): Hotten had only featured the text of 56 speeches, the Nonesuch edition of the speeches provided an additional nine, and Fielding presented more than a hundred. Since this monumental work, a handful have also appeared in The Dickensian;<a href="#fn1" id="ref1">1</a> there are certainly more to be found, as the volume of digitised newspapers and periodicals increases, and corrections to be made to existing transcriptions. No effort to collect the speeches has been made since Fielding; this collection thus represents the most complete body of Dickens's speeches ever assembled. Dickens did not write his speeches beforehand, nor did he speak from notes. George Dolby recounted his imaginative process in 1884: <blockquote>[S]upposing the speech was to be delivered in the evening, his habit was to take a long walk in the morning, during which he would decide on the various heads to be dealt with. These being arranged in their proper order, he would in his 'mind's eye,' liken the whole subject to the tire of a cart wheel – he being the hub. From the hub to the tire he would run as many spokes as there were subjects to be treated, and during the progress of the speech he would deal with each spoke separately, elaborating them as he went round the wheel; and when all the spokes dropped out one by one, and nothing but the tire and space remained […] his speech was at an end. (Charles Dickens as I Knew Him: The Story of the Reading Tours in Great Britain and America, pp. 273-74)</blockquote> However, on important occasions, Dickens might personally correct transcriptions of speeches for major London newspapers like The Times. As such, these newspaper accounts are as accurate a source as we can hope to have for what Dickens said (or meant to say). Our Transcription field will only include words attributed directly to Dickens rather than third-person reports or paraphrases of his speeches. Where only such reports exist, we will provide the text in the 'Summary' field. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to what are given as Dickens's words only, to avoid skewing the results, but of course we are reliant on the quality of the reporting: we recommend analysing topics, themes, quotations and concepts rather than granular detail such as prepositions, punctuation, capitalisation and the intricacies of grammar, as different newspaper accounts can vary on these points. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or to contribute other uncollected speeches by Dickens. 1. These are Philip Collins, 'Some Uncollected Speeches by Dickens', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 89-99; David A. Roos, 'Dickens at the Royal Academy of Arts: A New Speech and Two Eulogies', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 100-107; and William F. Long, 'Dickens and the Coming of Rail to Deal: An Uncollected Speech and its Context', The Dickensian 85.418 (1989): pp. 66-80. <a href="#ref1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Emily Middleton; Ellie-Louise Crampton; Maisie Howard; Adam Woods Speech Summary Occasionally speeches are summarised in sources in third person. Include that here, so that everything in the text transcription is only Dickens's words. He would not follow, he said, the horrible example of his friend Mr. Taylor, who began by addressing the ladies, informing them that none of the other speakers had paid any regard to them, and having thus taken advantage of their unsuspecting nature to gain their willing ear, forthwith abandoned them, addressed himself to the gentlemen, and never after alluded to the ladies throughout his speech. The ladies and gentlemen present, or a large portion of them, would know that in order to make a performance go smoothly it was necessary to arrange a number of little points beforehand. Now, a little point had been arranged between Lord Tenterden and himself, which he would give the public the benefit of. Lord Tenterden had arranged for himself a speech which he had enjoined him (Mr. Dickens) not to entrench upon. It was enjoined to leave the chairman a little fat, and he was cautioned to keep to his toast. He would do so. He was sure they were under deep obligations to the professional ladies and gentlemen who had contributed so much towards their enjoyment that evening, and he felt it a great honour to be allowed to propose their healths. Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given London Tavern Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18560317 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. Well remember that when the opera of Gustavus was first produced at Covent Garden, the audience found something dangerously comic in that person referring to that which was the most momentous portion of his existence – whether he should or should not go to the ball where he received his death-wound – to the walking gentleman, Mr. Baker, who had never before opened his lips, or given any sign of his existence: I forget what Mr. Baker's opinion was, but the audience had no faith in him. And when Mr. Baker, who was dressed in a Court dress as the Court physician, replied to his royal master, the audience certainly were not so serious as they might have been. Now the Trustees are the Court Physicians and walking gentlemen in this place, inasmuch as we have nothing to do but to accept your thanks every year, and to acknowledge the same. My interest in this society dates from the establishment of the Fund itself. I found it, at the beginning, a plain unpretending reality, designed by actors for the benefit of actors of all degrees, gratuitously administered by actors for actors, and supported by their small earnings from year to year and from month to month. From that time to the present I find it the same, exactly what it claims and professes to be, with no kind of false pretence about it; and I do thoroughly believe it is one of the most deserving institutions in this country. I had, a few days ago, a communication from my friend and fellow Trustee, Mr. Macready, on the subject of this Fund. It arose out of that great change which has made Covent Garden a heap of ruins. That event occasioned us to remember afresh that the English drama has no home or hope of a home in that waste spot. That occasioned us to look afresh into the future, – whether there might be any claimants left on the Covent Garden Theatrical Fund; for, while it will be impossible that any new members can be made, I do indulge a hope, amounting almost to a conviction, that the accumulated wealth of that institution must ultimately flow into the coffers of this society. If it were possible, in the nature of things, that those distinguished professors of the dramatic art who are now most justly enjoying their annuities out of that fund as the result of their contributions to it, – even if it were possible to double, treble, and quadruple what they are now entitled to, we should all be delighted; but we cannot imagine, when all the purposes for which that fund was established are impossible of realization, what can become of its great capital, unless it finds its way to an institution founded for. and made accessible to. the whole dramatic profession throughout this kingdom. Having now thanked you on behalf of the Trustees for your favourable reception of their names, I will no longer stand in the way of the next toast, but thank you most gratefully for the hand-some, kind, and ready manner in which you were pleased to receive my name. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Royal General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival 1856 Description An account of the resource Speech at the Royal General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival (17 March 1856). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1856-03-17 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1856-03-17_Speech_Royal-General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Speech at the Royal General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival' (17 March 1856). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1856-03-17_Speech_Royal-General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1856-03-17_Speech_Royal-General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Well remember that when the opera of Gustavus was first produced at Covent Garden, the audience found something dangerously comic in that person referring to that which was the most momentous portion of his existence – whether he should or should not go to the ball where he received his death-wound – to the walking gentleman, Mr. Baker, who had never before opened his lips, or given any sign of his existence: I forget what Mr. Baker's opinion was, but the audience had no faith in him. And when Mr. Baker, who was dressed in a Court dress as the Court physician, replied to his royal master, the audience certainly were not so serious as they might have been. Now the Trustees are the Court Physicians and walking gentlemen in this place, inasmuch as we have nothing to do but to accept your thanks every year, and to acknowledge the same. My interest in this society dates from the establishment of the Fund itself. I found it, at the beginning, a plain unpretending reality, designed by actors for the benefit of actors of all degrees, gratuitously administered by actors for actors, and supported by their small earnings from year to year and from month to month. From that time to the present I find it the same, exactly what it claims and professes to be, with no kind of false pretence about it; and I do thoroughly believe it is one of the most deserving institutions in this country. I had, a few days ago, a communication from my friend and fellow Trustee, Mr. Macready, on the subject of this Fund. It arose out of that great change which has made Covent Garden a heap of ruins. That event occasioned us to remember afresh that the English drama has no home or hope of a home in that waste spot. That occasioned us to look afresh into the future, – whether there might be any claimants left on the Covent Garden Theatrical Fund; for, while it will be impossible that any new members can be made, I do indulge a hope, amounting almost to a conviction, that the accumulated wealth of that institution must ultimately flow into the coffers of this society. If it were possible, in the nature of things, that those distinguished professors of the dramatic art who are now most justly enjoying their annuities out of that fund as the result of their contributions to it, – even if it were possible to double, treble, and quadruple what they are now entitled to, we should all be delighted; but we cannot imagine, when all the purposes for which that fund was established are impossible of realization, what can become of its great capital, unless it finds its way to an institution founded for. and made accessible to. the whole dramatic profession throughout this kingdom.  Having now thanked you on behalf of the Trustees for your favourable reception of their names, I will no longer stand in the way of the next toast, but thank you most gratefully for the hand-some, kind, and ready manner in which you were pleased to receive my name. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Speeches Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context speeches Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together Dickens’s collected and uncollected speeches, making an under-explored body of work searchable for the first time. </h4> Dickens made more than a hundred speeches between 1837 and 1870 at events ranging from charitable dinners and award ceremonies to banquets in his honour or brief words of thanks before a public reading. In these speeches, the author touched on topics including his own life and professional development as well as other subjects such as politics, education, literature, public health and the development of the railway. Efforts to collect Dickens’s speeches prior to 1960 were incomplete at best, and misleading and fragmentary at worst. John Camden Hotten’s collection of speeches, begun without the author’s consent (although he never responded to Hotten’s letters, Dickens did begin efforts to block their publication) and published together with a hastily-compiled biography shortly after the author’s death, remained the primary collected version of the speeches until the Nonesuch Dickens of 1938-39 (a limited print run). Finally, K. J. Fielding brought all known speeches together in 1960, correcting shoddy transcriptions by Hotten using contemporary newspaper accounts, and nearly doubling the total number of speeches attributed to Dickens (The Speeches of Charles Dickens [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960]): Hotten had only featured the text of 56 speeches, the Nonesuch edition of the speeches provided an additional nine, and Fielding presented more than a hundred. Since this monumental work, a handful have also appeared in The Dickensian;<a href="#fn1" id="ref1">1</a> there are certainly more to be found, as the volume of digitised newspapers and periodicals increases, and corrections to be made to existing transcriptions. No effort to collect the speeches has been made since Fielding; this collection thus represents the most complete body of Dickens's speeches ever assembled. Dickens did not write his speeches beforehand, nor did he speak from notes. George Dolby recounted his imaginative process in 1884: <blockquote>[S]upposing the speech was to be delivered in the evening, his habit was to take a long walk in the morning, during which he would decide on the various heads to be dealt with. These being arranged in their proper order, he would in his 'mind's eye,' liken the whole subject to the tire of a cart wheel – he being the hub. From the hub to the tire he would run as many spokes as there were subjects to be treated, and during the progress of the speech he would deal with each spoke separately, elaborating them as he went round the wheel; and when all the spokes dropped out one by one, and nothing but the tire and space remained […] his speech was at an end. (Charles Dickens as I Knew Him: The Story of the Reading Tours in Great Britain and America, pp. 273-74)</blockquote> However, on important occasions, Dickens might personally correct transcriptions of speeches for major London newspapers like The Times. As such, these newspaper accounts are as accurate a source as we can hope to have for what Dickens said (or meant to say). Our Transcription field will only include words attributed directly to Dickens rather than third-person reports or paraphrases of his speeches. Where only such reports exist, we will provide the text in the 'Summary' field. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to what are given as Dickens's words only, to avoid skewing the results, but of course we are reliant on the quality of the reporting: we recommend analysing topics, themes, quotations and concepts rather than granular detail such as prepositions, punctuation, capitalisation and the intricacies of grammar, as different newspaper accounts can vary on these points. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or to contribute other uncollected speeches by Dickens. 1. These are Philip Collins, 'Some Uncollected Speeches by Dickens', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 89-99; David A. Roos, 'Dickens at the Royal Academy of Arts: A New Speech and Two Eulogies', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 100-107; and William F. Long, 'Dickens and the Coming of Rail to Deal: An Uncollected Speech and its Context', The Dickensian 85.418 (1989): pp. 66-80. <a href="#ref1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Emily Middleton; Ellie-Louise Crampton; Maisie Howard; Adam Woods Speech Summary Occasionally speeches are summarised in sources in third person. Include that here, so that everything in the text transcription is only Dickens's words. In proposing this toast, he said, he hoped it would not be at all supposed that he intended to hint that there was any connexion between a Hospital for Incurables, and the Houses of Lords and Commons. Yet it must be admitted that these houses had given symptoms of labouring under a lingering disease, with intermittent fever – with this difference, that it appeared the cold fits were very long, and the hot fits very short. Yet under the influence of gentle stimulants, the Legislature had occasionally assumed an appearance of being possessed of a strong and vigorous constitution. With the toast of the two Houses of Parliament he would couple the name of Lord Alfred Paget, who notwithstanding he had nearly met with a watery grave last night by his yacht being run down in the Channel, had been determined to be present that evening to support this great and noble charity. He approached the next toast, he said, with some trepidation, because he felt he could scarcely do justice to an institution which had for its object the finding a permanent home for a most deserving and afflicted class of the community. He had the high privilege to give a toast which recognized the immense social importance and the great Christian humanities of a hospital designed for the permanent care and comfort of those who, by disease, accident, or deformity, were hopelessly disqualified for the duties of life. It was to be remembered at the outset that it was the distinguishing feature of this institution that it entered into competition with none of the existing hospitals, but came in aid of every one of them. It did appear to him somewhat extraordinary that amongst the innumerable and valuable charities of this metropolis it had been so long without an institution for the relief of those who, in their helplessness, could not be relieved by any other hospital. There was no establishment for the treatment of the sick in this city from the doors of which some unfortunate persons altogether disqualified for the duties of life, were not driven away in consequence of the impossibility there was of rendering them that assistance which their state of health required. The institution was therefore no sooner in existence than, as might be expected, numbers of the most distinguished and experienced members of the medical profession recorded their conviction of its immense usefulness; and certificates had since been signed which placed it wholly and for ever beyond dispute. There were very many cases of great distress; of person who, brought up in a respectable position, were cut down by hopeless disease with no aid, no solace, in the dark hour of their affliction. It was to afford such a home, it was to relieve such parties that this charity was founded, and he trusted that it would grow, through the fostering care of the public, into one of the greatest of those benevolent institutions which did so much honour to the country. The Royal Hospital had scarcely achieved the second year of its existence; but nevertheless it had obtained ‘ a local habitation and a name’, in one of the prettiest places in the environs of London. There was nothing about the institution which partook of sectarianism; its principle was to know no distinction in religion; and there were not forty-four patients under its protective care. It divided itself into two branches, affording, first, to those objects of charity a home for life who had no other home; and, secondly, assisting with regular donations and kind counsels such patients as had friends to relieve them in part, and give them shelter, feeling that they could not bear that sharpest pain – the separation from those they loved. The necessity for such a hospital, which he could not but observe with regret, was shown by the circumstance that at the election within the last month, for ten recipients of the advantages of the charity, there were no less than 87 candidates, many of them having particular claims on the sympathy of the benevolent. He felt it was their duty to do everything that could be done to give these poor creatures even a chance of recovery – or, if not of recovery, of comfort in their closing days; and he trusted, therefore, that the institution would be liberally supported. In remembrance of those from whom they derived their birth; in remembrance of Him who said to the afflicted, ‘Take up thy bed and walk’; in remembrance of those whose pillows it might some day be their duty to smooth; in the name of those bright creatures upon whose breasts they hoped hereafter to rest their heads; for the love of God; for the love of man – which was one – he implored their aid on behalf of this infant institution, so that I might hereafter rank as a most beneficent giant. In conclusion he had great pleasure in proposing ‘Prosperity and Perpetuity to the Royal Hospital’. Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given London Tavern Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18560605 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Royal Hospital for Incurables Annual Dinner 1856 Description An account of the resource Chairman's toasts at the Royal Hospital for Incurables Annual Dinner (5 June 1856). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1856-06-05 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1856-06-05_Speech_Royal-Hospital-for-Incurables-Annual-Dinner Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Royal Hospital for Incurables Annual Dinner' (5 June 1856). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1856-06-05_Speech_Royal-Hospital-for-Incurables-Annual-Dinner">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1856-06-05_Speech_Royal-Hospital-for-Incurables-Annual-Dinner</a>. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Speeches Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context speeches Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together Dickens’s collected and uncollected speeches, making an under-explored body of work searchable for the first time. </h4> Dickens made more than a hundred speeches between 1837 and 1870 at events ranging from charitable dinners and award ceremonies to banquets in his honour or brief words of thanks before a public reading. In these speeches, the author touched on topics including his own life and professional development as well as other subjects such as politics, education, literature, public health and the development of the railway. Efforts to collect Dickens’s speeches prior to 1960 were incomplete at best, and misleading and fragmentary at worst. John Camden Hotten’s collection of speeches, begun without the author’s consent (although he never responded to Hotten’s letters, Dickens did begin efforts to block their publication) and published together with a hastily-compiled biography shortly after the author’s death, remained the primary collected version of the speeches until the Nonesuch Dickens of 1938-39 (a limited print run). Finally, K. J. Fielding brought all known speeches together in 1960, correcting shoddy transcriptions by Hotten using contemporary newspaper accounts, and nearly doubling the total number of speeches attributed to Dickens (The Speeches of Charles Dickens [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960]): Hotten had only featured the text of 56 speeches, the Nonesuch edition of the speeches provided an additional nine, and Fielding presented more than a hundred. Since this monumental work, a handful have also appeared in The Dickensian;<a href="#fn1" id="ref1">1</a> there are certainly more to be found, as the volume of digitised newspapers and periodicals increases, and corrections to be made to existing transcriptions. No effort to collect the speeches has been made since Fielding; this collection thus represents the most complete body of Dickens's speeches ever assembled. Dickens did not write his speeches beforehand, nor did he speak from notes. George Dolby recounted his imaginative process in 1884: <blockquote>[S]upposing the speech was to be delivered in the evening, his habit was to take a long walk in the morning, during which he would decide on the various heads to be dealt with. These being arranged in their proper order, he would in his 'mind's eye,' liken the whole subject to the tire of a cart wheel – he being the hub. From the hub to the tire he would run as many spokes as there were subjects to be treated, and during the progress of the speech he would deal with each spoke separately, elaborating them as he went round the wheel; and when all the spokes dropped out one by one, and nothing but the tire and space remained […] his speech was at an end. (Charles Dickens as I Knew Him: The Story of the Reading Tours in Great Britain and America, pp. 273-74)</blockquote> However, on important occasions, Dickens might personally correct transcriptions of speeches for major London newspapers like The Times. As such, these newspaper accounts are as accurate a source as we can hope to have for what Dickens said (or meant to say). Our Transcription field will only include words attributed directly to Dickens rather than third-person reports or paraphrases of his speeches. Where only such reports exist, we will provide the text in the 'Summary' field. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to what are given as Dickens's words only, to avoid skewing the results, but of course we are reliant on the quality of the reporting: we recommend analysing topics, themes, quotations and concepts rather than granular detail such as prepositions, punctuation, capitalisation and the intricacies of grammar, as different newspaper accounts can vary on these points. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or to contribute other uncollected speeches by Dickens. 1. These are Philip Collins, 'Some Uncollected Speeches by Dickens', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 89-99; David A. Roos, 'Dickens at the Royal Academy of Arts: A New Speech and Two Eulogies', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 100-107; and William F. Long, 'Dickens and the Coming of Rail to Deal: An Uncollected Speech and its Context', The Dickensian 85.418 (1989): pp. 66-80. <a href="#ref1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Emily Middleton; Ellie-Louise Crampton; Maisie Howard; Adam Woods Speech Summary Occasionally speeches are summarised in sources in third person. Include that here, so that everything in the text transcription is only Dickens's words. As, he said, he should not speak seven minutes, he hoped he should not incur the sacred wrath of the gentlemen in the middle of the room who were so impatient of any waste of time when those opposed to the Committee spoke, but who did not feel the slightest annoyance however long the speeches of the honourable gentlemen at the table might be. He, however, wished it to be distinctly understood that if he were going to speak seven hours instead of seven minutes, although he did not represent Literature in the attitude in which it was there most favourably received – namely, in the person of a suppliant certified by two householders – he should most strenuously though respectfully maintain his claim to be heard in this place above all others; for, in whatever manner it was treated elsewhere, there, at all events, every other consideration should yield to its dignity.  As to the denial of Mr. Bell as to the analogy to be drawn between the Literary Fund and the Artists’ Benevolent Fund, he at once took issue with him; he was very well acquainted with both funds, and protested that he knew of no difference between them, and of no reason whatever why this society should not be managed as cheaply as the other. With reference to the claims of Mr. Blewitt, and Mr. Dilke’s frequent acknowledgement of those claims, he impressed upon the meeting that there had been no change in the sentiments of his friend. All that they wanted was, that this society should avail themselves of the valuable services of Mr. Blewitt, in a wider and more efficient manner; and they had declared again and again that nothing would delight them more than to double or even treble Mr. Blewitt’s salary, on the society’s extending his sphere of operations. He passed over the somewhat lengthy case of Mr. Haydn, which, he submitted, with all due deference, had nothing whatever to do with the present discussion, and would endeavour to bring the attention of the meeting to the point at issue. The question as to the existence or not of the House fund, was not a question of 1821, but of last year; because, on the second Wednesday of last March, they – the conspiring reformers – were put down by the solemn assertion that there was a House fund of some £6,400. The subscription for that fund was a complete failure. He took it upon himself to say that it did not exceed £600. And the way in which this imaginary sum was got at was as follows: – the Prince Regent allowed two hundred guineas a year to pay the rent of the house inhabited by the society, paid yearly or half-yearly; but the sums paid for the rent had been put down as an accumulated fund, precisely as if they had it in hand at the present moment, – so the extraordinary statement made last year as to the existence of this sum, never had any real foundation. If statements were so rashly made in that expensive little room he thought it would not be long before the society itself would fall into disrepute.  He would, with their permission, give a short illustration of the mode in which this question had been dealt with. Let him suppose the case of a clerk in the receipt of one hundred pounds a year, paid half-yearly, and every farthing of which was anticipated before he received it. His having received that income twenty years, would not make him the possessor of £2,000. But he would carry the case further. Let them suppose a family picture representing an estimable old gentleman bestowing the hand of his only daughter upon the man of her heart, and saying to them, while tears of generosity coursed down his cheeks, My darling Emma, my dear Edward! take my blessing upon you each; and with my blessing accept my twenty years’ receipts of my rent at £200 a year, which your filial affection will at once enable you to perceive are equal to £4,000 Consols, in perpetuity.’ Or let them, without any derogation of dignity, just fancy themselves for a moment upon an Old Bailey jury, – would they, or would they not decide that such a representation was a false one? His assertion was, most distinctly, that they (the reform party) were put out of court last year on an utterly false pretence; and that part of the resolution, at all events, every gentleman in the room was bound to consider before he decided.   Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given Royal Literary Fund Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18570311 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Royal Literary Fund Annual General Meeting 1857 Description An account of the resource Speech at the Royal Literary Fund Annual General Meeting (11 March 1857). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1857-03-11 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1857-03-11_Speech_Royal-Literary-Fund-Annual-General-Meeting Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Speech at the Royal Literary Fund Annual General Meeting' (11 March 1857). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1857-03-11_Speech_Royal-Literary-Fund-Annual-General-Meeting">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1857-03-11_Speech_Royal-Literary-Fund-Annual-General-Meeting</a>.