Omeka ID	Omeka URL	Title	Description	Creator	Source	Date	Rights	Type	Identifier	Bibliographic Citation	Venue	TEI File	Summary	Publication Type	Publication	Ngram Text	Ngram Date	Location	Files
236	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/236	Toast at the Artists' General Benevolent Institution Charity Dinner	Toast given at the Artists' General Benevolent Institution Charity Dinner, Freemasons' Hall (24 March 1839).	Dickens, Charles	<em>The Morning Chronicle </em>(25 March 1839).	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1839-03-24">1839-03-24</a>			1839-03-24_Speech_Artists-General-Benevolent-Institution	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Toast at the Artists' General Benevolent Institution Charity Dinner</span><span> (24 March 1839). </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1839-03-24_Speech_Artists-General-Benevolent-Institution">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1839-03-24_Speech_Artists-General-Benevolent-Institution</a>.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Freemasons%27+Hall">Freemasons' Hall</a>		'Mr. Charles Dickens said that, if he could consider the compliment as one paid to himself, unexpected as it was, he should have had great difficulty in returning thanks; but he was relieved from any such consideration, because he only recognised in it the connection which existed between the pencil and the pen, and therefore in the name of the sewards, of whom he had the honour to be one, he begged to return their sincere acknowledgments for the mark of distinction which had been paid to them. It would be bad taste in him if he were to detain them at any length, but he must at the same time say, that it gave him sincerely gratification to see around him, on an occasion of this kind, those distinguished artists, who cast lustre by their genius on the lowest subjects, and raised them by the power of their graphic pencils to the level of their own fanciful imaginations. He hoped he would be permitted to say, that it gave him pleasure and delight to be connected even for a moment with an institution which partook of the grace and beauty of the pencil, and shed its soft light upon poverty and distress, into the house of sickness and sorrow.'	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Newspaper">Newspaper</a>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=93&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=The+Morning+Chronicle">The Morning Chronicle</a>		18390324	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a>	https://dickenssearch.com/files/original/6/Toast_at_the_Artists_General_Benevolent_Institution_Charity_Dinner/1839-03-24_Speech_Artists-General-Benevolent-Institution.pdf
246	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/246	The Literary Fund Anniversary Festival	Speech at the Literary Fund Anniversary Festival (3 May 1837).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1837-05-03">1837-05-03</a>			1837-05-03_Speech_Literary-Fund-Anniversary-Festival	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'The Literary Fund Anniversary Festival' </span><span>(3 May 1837). </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1837-05-03_Speech_Literary-Fund-Anniversary-Festival">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1837-05-03_Speech_Literary-Fund-Anniversary-Festival</a>.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Freemasons%27+Tavern">Freemasons' Tavern</a>		<p>He spoke unaffectedly, he said, when he declared that his feelings were overpowered by receiving such an honour from such a company. He felt peculiarly embarrassed in acknowledging the toast, from the language in which it was couched. Wherever he looked around him he saw many more distinguished for ability than he could ever hope to be, to whom that honour might with far more justice have been awarded. He was proud to receive so friendly a shake of the hand from the old stagers, who sought to raise him up to their own level. The great discrepancy in the toast that had been drunk would have been in coupling them with ‘the rising authors of the day’. Now, the difference was that they had risen, while he at the most was only rising.</p> <p>He hoped that the rising authors would all feel it an honour to be connected with that institution, and that should he ever leave any literary work that should carry his name to posterity (a circumstance the least likely to happen) that it would also be known that the flattering encouragement he had that night received from his literary brethren had nerved him to future exertions, smoothed his path to the station he had gained, and animated his endeavour not to do other than justice to their kind praise.</p>				18370503	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a>
100	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/100	Sporting Event, Gad’s Hill	Speech at a Gad's Hill sporting event (26 December 1869).	Dickens, Charles	Forster, John. <em>The Life of Charles Dickens</em>. Ed. J. W. T. Ley. London: Cecil Palmer, 1928. p. 833.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1869-12-26">1869-12-26</a>		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Speech">Speech</a>	1869-12-26_Speech_Sporting_Event_Gads_Hill	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Sporting Event, Gad’s Hill' (26 December 1867). </span><em>Dickens Search.</em><span> Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1869-12-26_Speech_Sporting_Event_Gads_Hill">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/</a></span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1869-12-26_Speech_Sporting_Event_Gads_Hill">1869-12-26_Speech_Sporting_Event_Gads_Hill</a>.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Gad%27s+Hill">Gad's Hill</a>		‘I made them a little speech from the lawn, at the end of the games, saying that please God we would do it again next year. They cheered most lustily and dispersed.’	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Biography">Biography</a>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=93&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=The+Life+of+Charles+Dickens">The Life of Charles Dickens</a>		18691226	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Kent">Kent</a>
86	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/86	Shakespeare's Birthday at the Garrick Club	Speech given at the Garrick Club (22 April 1854).	Dickens, Charles	O'Dowd, James. 'A Shakespeare Birthday: A Reminiscence of Charles Dickens.' <em>Pall Mall Magazine</em> (April 1906): 423-28.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1854-04-22">1854-04-22</a>		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Speech">Speech</a>	1854-04-22_Speech_Shakespeares_Birthday_at_the_Garrick_Club	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Garrick Club' (22 April 1854). </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1854-04-22_Speech_Shakespeares_Birthday_at_the_Garrick_Club">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1854-04-22_Speech_Shakespeares_Birthday_at_the_Garrick_Club</a><span>.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Garrick+Club">Garrick Club</a>		'He began by saying that we were met to celebrate an event, a great event. Not, as some thought, merely the birthday of a dramatist and an actor. We met on that day to celebrate a great deal more. We met on that day to celebrate the birthday of a vast army of living men and women, who would live for ever with an actuality greater than that of the men and women whose external forms we saw around us, and whom we knew ourselves – types of humanity, the inner working of whose souls was open to us, as were the faces of ordinary men.<br /><br />To-day was born a Prince of Denmark, who would live for ever as the type of man whose mind was "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," and whose life-story was fore-shadowed by his appearance from the moment he came before us as "a broken glass of fashion, a mould of form," pale and worn with weeping for his father's death, and remotely suspicious of its cause, and not with "his hair crisply curled short as if he were going to an everlasting dancing-master's party at the Danish court," as "most Hamlets since the great Kemble have been bound to do." A Prince of Denmark who will live for ever, even though he be remembered by no more than the words that ask, [quotes from "Whether 'tis nobler to "a consummation Devoutly to be wished"].<br /><br />On this day was born not only this lasting embodiment of deep insight into life and its problems, but also "Laughter holding both his sides." On this day was born Falstaff, who, like one who takes the chair on such an occasion as this, has to be the cause of speaking in others. And on this day the famous Justice Shallow, who, though you may not admire his qualities, will live in the memory of all who laugh at him, and all who try to personate him on the stage. "'Tis the heart, Master Page, 'tis here, 'tis here. I have seen the time, with my long sword I would have made you four tall fellows skip like rats."<br /><br />But on this day, that saw the birth of Justice Shallow, as well as of the "merry knight," that "mountain of flesh," of whom Prince Hal said (as we all would now say had Falstaff not been born): "I could have better spared a better man," there was also born Queen Mab: [quotes from "She is the fairies' midwife to "as they lie asleep"].<br /><br />And on this day was born that weaver who felt as out of place among fairies as "a lion among ladies": [quotes from "God shield us! A lion among ladies" to "a man as other men are"].<br /><br />On this day, too, was born Macbeth, the type of all who show how the first fall into evil leads even men capable of noble thoughts down, eventually, into the lowest depths; Macbeth, who said: [quotes from "If it were done" to "jump the life to come"].<br /><br />To-day was born a certain Signior Benedick of Padua –that is, not the Benedick of this or that theatrical company, but the constant occasion of merriment among the persons represented in <em>Much Ado about Nothing</em>: "all mirth," as Don Pedro has it, "from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot"; and who may well inspire mirth in all.<br /><br />This day was born a Duke who, exiled from the "painted pomp" of his "envious court", could utter words teaching what I hold to be a vital truth, "above all, that nothing is high because it is in a high place, and that nothing is low because it is in a low one." This is the lesson taught us in the great book of Nature and the lesson uppermost in the mind of that inspired man who tells us that there are –<br /><br />Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,<br />Sermons in stones, and good in everything.<br /><br />Today was born a villain, for whose birth we may yet be glad, because he was not the ordinary villain of the stage. For Iago can be portrayed without "frowning, sneering diabolically, grinning, and elaborately doing everything else that would induce Othello to run him through the body very early in the play" Shakespeare's Iago is a man who could and did make friends, who could dissect his master's soul without flourishing his scalpel as if it were a walking-stick; who could overpower Emilia by other arts than a sign-of-the-Saracen's-Head grimness; who could be a boon companion without, <em>ipso facto</em>, warning all beholders off by the portentous phenomenon; who could sing a song and clink a can naturally enough, and stab men really in the dark – not in a transparent notification of himself as going about seeking whom to stab.<br /><br />On this day was born the ideal embodiment of woman's passionate love, to whom her lover in his passion idealised as the sun at the dawn rising to – [quotes from "Kill the envious moon" to "And none but fools do wear it"].<br /><br />And on this day was born a fool, not dressed in vestal livery, but dressed in motley, who "laid him down and basked him in the sun, and as quoted by the melancholy Jacques (whose words are in-woven in this tablecloth before me: "All the world's a stage") described, for all time, the qualities, the privileges and the duties of the satirist of him who, like this fool, "should be so deep contemplative" as to make the sage "ambitions for a motley suit." "Invest me in my motley: give me leave to speak my mind, and I will, through and through, cleanse the foul body of whole infected world, if they will but patiently receive my medicine."<br /><br />In like manner Dickens dealt with many more of Shakespeare's characters, each time acting and speaking the lines with consummate art and skill.<br /><br />Dickens went on to say that this was also the birthday of the English novel. "Every writer of fiction, although he may not adopt the dramatic form, writes, in effect, for the stage. He many never write plays, but the truth and passions which are in him must be more or less reflected in the great mirror which he holds up to Nature."<br /><br />Furthermore, he reminded us that it was the birthday of some of those present –of Compton, of Vanderhoff, of Wallack. For their art and fame would not have been but for the birth of whim whose birthday they were celebrating. He would go further, and say that it was the birthday of that club. For if there had never been a Shakespeare there never would have been a Garrick, and if there had never been a Garrick there would never have been a Garrick club.'	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Periodical">Periodical</a>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=93&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Pall+Mall+Magazine">Pall Mall Magazine</a>		18540422	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a>
82	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/82	Shakespeare Club Dinner	Speech given at the Shakespeare Club dinner, London (30 March 1839).	Dickens, Charles	Macready, William Charles. <em>The Diaries of William Charles Macready 1833-1851.</em> Vol. 1. Ed. William Toynbee. New York: <span>Putnam's, 1912. pp. 504-505.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1839-03-30">1839-03-30</a>		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Speech">Speech</a>	1839-03-30_Speech_Shakespeare_Club_Dinner	Dickens, Charles. 'Shakespeare Club Dinner' (30 March 1839). <em>Dickens Search</em>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1839-03-30_Speech_Shakespeare_Club_Dinner">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1839-03-30_Speech_Shakespeare_Club_Dinner</a>.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Shakespeare+Club">Shakespeare Club</a>		'most earnest, eloquent, and touching, It took a review of my enterprise at Covent Garden, and summed up with an eulogy of me that quite overpowered me.'	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Diary">Diary</a>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=93&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=The+Diaries+of+William+Charles+Macready">The Diaries of William Charles Macready</a>		30031839	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a>
266	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/266	Royal General Theatrical Fund Dinner 1855	Speeches at the Royal General Theatrical Fund Dinner (2 April 1855).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1855-04-02">1855-04-02</a>			1855-04-02_Speech_Royal-Genera- Theatrical-Fund-Dinner-1855	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Speeches at the Royal General Theatrical Fund Dinner' (2 April 1855).</span><span> </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1855-04-02_Speech_Royal-Genera- Theatrical-Fund-Dinner-1855">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1855-04-02_Speech_Royal-Genera- Theatrical-Fund-Dinner-1855</a><span>.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London+Tavern">London Tavern</a>		<p>He was sure, he said, that after the address they had just heard, he need say but little in proposing to them the health of their respected chairman, and prosperity to the Haymarket Theatre. If Mr. Buckstone were any ordinary chairman, he might pass the toast over without any further observations; but he was not so – he was a gentleman who had a special claim upon their regards. He could answer for it from his recollections as a boy, twenty-five years ago, how much the acting of that gentleman had enchanted him, as no doubt it then did many others, and how he went home to dream of his comicalities. When at the Adelphi, Mr. Buckstone was great in his most original boys, as he is excellent in everything. Who can forget at that time his leading home the inebriated Master Magog, the Beadle; or, in later days, his drunken man in <em>Presented at Court</em>; or his <em>Rough Diamond</em>, with his huge short collar and most natural account of the doings at his village home? It was gratifying to notice the progress Mr. Buckstone had made in his profession since that time, but that was not the only claim the chairman had upon them – he had always shown himself most ready to urge the claims of their benevolent fund, and to support and aid a brother actor.</p> <p>Mr. Buckstone had now become a manager, and it was to be hoped that by keeping everybody and everything in their proper places, he would command that success which he so much deserved. If in the Crimea, or in the East at the theatre of war, they had met with some checks, and nothing was to be found that was required, it was gratifying to know that such was not the case at the Haymarket Theatre. If Mr. Buckstone had some slight comestibles and luxuries to present to his patrons, if he had to bring his ships upon the stage, they might depend upon it that everything good would not be found packed under 500 tons of irons, nor would he be unable to fire a shot because they had all been left somewhere where they were not wanted. It had given him great delight to witness the spirit with which Mr. Buckstone had conducted his house – to enjoy the acting of Miss Cushman, or the twinkling of the feet of the Spanish Dancers. Again, wishing them every success, he begged to propose to them ‘The health of Mr. Buckstone, and success to the Haymarket Theatre’.</p>			I dare say, gentlemen, it is within the theatrical experience of most of us that upon some occasion when we have been at the play – when everything has progressed in the most satisfactory manner –when the principle actor has been a decided favourite – when every point has been told with the people in front – when no one has had the misfortune to make one of those little mistakes which we call ‘missing his tip' – I dare say that, within the theatrical experience of most of you, on some occasion, the act drop being down, there has unexpectedly appeared before it, on one side, a gentleman in plain clothes, with his hat feelingly clasped in both his hands, and not without some appearances of the street upon his boots – a gentleman of pale aspect insight of the audience which is partly referable to the agitation of his feelings, and partly to the strong action floating on features unprepared by the hare’s foot – but before that gentleman has opened his lips in reference to the ‘proverbial generosity of the British public’. You immediately perceive with dismay that he has come forward to apologize. Now, I am that gentleman on the present occasion. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, therefore, I am commissioned by the management to inform you that Mr. Buckstone, owing to circumstances over which he has no control, has been put up for two parts in this piece, and finds himself unable to appear in both of them at the same time. He is, at this present moment, making himself up for his favourite character – Treasurer to the General Theatrical Fund, in which arduous impersonation he has, through several successive seasons at this establishment, been sustained by your applause. He therefore finds himself unable, for the moment, to appear in that other character of Chairman, for which he would have delivered that well-known and spirit-stirring address, which would have so much affected you. In this dilemma, relying on that consideration which was never appealed to in vain – I allude to the consideration of a British audience – perhaps you will permit me to walk through Mr. Buckstone’s part.’ Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, I have to say to you in this way, that perhaps you will allow me to state to you what Mr. Buckstone would have said. Ladies and gentlemen, on receiving from Mr. Toole the key note, ‘Pray, silence – chair!’ Mr. Buckstone Would have risen to have proposed the toast of the evening, and in doing so he would have commenced by congratulating the members of the Theatrical Fund on the numerous and respectable assembly before him, testifying as it does to their sense of the merits of the institution itself, and to the fact that in the midst of wars and tumults the humanizing arts are not forgotten. Least of all, as is natural, that art, that through the means of 1 little play, has made the battles of Poitiers and Agincourt more renowned all the chroniclers and historians put together, and which – No disrespect to those ‘thoughts that breathe and words that burn’, referred to by our chairman – has done more to stir the bold English blood in a just cause, than all the parliamentary speeches that were ever delivered, than all the debates which ever made the night hideous. Surely you are not inappropriately asked to remember this object in a time of war, when it can present to you tangibly under its glowing pictures the joys of military triumph, the sorrows of defeat, the constancy of noble minds, the misfortunes and unspeakable calamities of war, and the inappreciable blessings of peace. You are besought most worthily to remember this object of maintaining and encouraging a society which comprehends every grade of actors without limitation, which is fettered by no hard restrictions or impossible conditions, which embraces all theatrical professors, high and low, equally training them to be provident before they are independent, and which succours all who are responsive to its appeal. The resources of the society become their right, so that the proudest spirit need not blush to accept its aid. Lastly, gentlemen, and in a word you are asked to help those who under trouble and difficulty have helped themselves. You want to do this in tender remembrance of those efforts which have lightened our cares and have placed us for the time in a wider and less selfish world in lieu of that which is so much with us early and late. This is the sum and substance of Mr. Buckstone’s case if he had been able to appear in that principle character for which he is put down in the bill. At the right moment you would have heard all that fervid eloquence which belongs to the part, and would have seen all the humour connected with it thoroughly performed. As I now have the pleasure of observing Mr. Buckstone at the wing, evidently well up in the part of Treasurer, with his property documents all ready, eager to come on, I will, with your permission, leave the stage to him, merely observing that I detect mischief in his treasury eye, and I would recommend to you the caution once regularly administered at the opening of the pit doors, ‘Take care of your pockets!’ I am now to propose to you ‘Prosperity to the General Theatrical Fund!’	18550402	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a>
261	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/261	Royal General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival 1853	Speech at the Royal General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival (22 March 1853).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1853-03-22">1853-03-22</a>			1853-03-22_Speech_Royal-General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival-1853	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Speech at the Royal General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival' (22 March 1853).</span><span> </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1853-03-22_Speech_Royal-General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival-1853">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1853-03-22_Speech_Royal-General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival-1853</a><span>.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London+Tavern">London Tavern</a>		<p>On a recent occasion, he said, they were informed that a respectable and active police officer had insinuated himself into the midst of an incorruptible election. This very intellectual person had reason to believe, from information he had received, that if he proceeded in a certain direction he would encounter a sage, between whom and himself a most mysterious and magnetic influence would arise if he laid his hand upon his nose. He obeyed these instructions, and in reply to the gesture alluded to, the sage observed, ‘It is all right, but there is something more’; whereupon the police officer repeated the necessarily cabalistic sign, which secured his admission into the mysterious region, and he took the chief magician into custody.</p> <p>If he might adapt this incident, of a not very agreeable or creditable nature, to the present very agreeable and creditable occasion, he would suggest it was all right, but there was something more. Without having applied their hands to their noses, they might be said to have placed them in grateful homage on their hearts, and also to their ears in listening to those sweet sounds produced by the musicians, and which gave delight, not only in themselves, but from the generous spirit in which they were uttered. They had used their hands in making those sounds very agreeable to the management of the fund, and in acknowledging the very admirable exposition of its claims they had heard from the Chair. In reference to the Chair, he would simply say that he hoped the ‘devil’s bird-catchers’ might always be able to lime so good a bird. He was too old a bird to be caught by chaff, whether of a celestial or infernal description.</p> <p>The chairman had laid the fund, under a very great obligation, and the cabalistic sign which he was advised as the next in order was, that every gentleman presented empty a wine glass in his honour. They were so fortunate in having for their president a gentleman who was the representative of a large mercantile community, and his presence afforded a graceful expression of that union of sympathy which should exist between the busy pursuits of life and its wholesome recreations. They also had in their chairman of the night one who was personally and pleasantly acquainted with the objects of their assembly. He, therefore, called up upon them to drink his health, and when they had done that, he hoped they would recollect that they were still ‘something more’.</p>				18530322	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a>
89	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/89	Royal Academy Dinner	Speech given at the Royal Academy Dinner (3 May 1862).	Dickens, Charles	'Banquet at the Royal Academy.' <em>The Times </em>(5 May 1862): p. 5.; <em>The Times Digital Archive</em>, <a href="https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS84056741/TTDA?u=leedsuni&sid=bookmark-TTDA&xid=bbfb6803" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://l</a><span><a href="https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS84056741/TTDA?u=leedsuni&sid=bookmark-TTDA&xid=bbfb6803" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ink.gale.com/apps/doc/CS84056741/TTDA?u=leedsuni&sid=bookmark-TTDA&xid=bbfb6803</a>.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1862-05-03">1862-05-03</a>	<em>The Times Digital Archive</em>, <a href="https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS84056741/TTDA?u=leedsuni&sid=bookmark-TTDA&xid=bbfb6803" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://l</a><span><a href="https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS84056741/TTDA?u=leedsuni&sid=bookmark-TTDA&xid=bbfb6803" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ink.gale.com/apps/doc/CS84056741/TTDA?u=leedsuni&sid=bookmark-TTDA&xid=bbfb6803</a>. Some rights reserved. This work permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Speech">Speech</a>	1862-05-03_Speech_Royal_Academy_Dinner	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Royal Academy Dinner' (3 May 1862). <em>Dickens Search.</em> Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/admin/speeches/1862-05-03_Speech_Royal_Academy_Dinner"><span class="citation-url">https://dickenssearch.com/admin/speeches/1862-05-03_Speech_Royal_Academy_Dinner</span></a><span>.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Royal+Academy">Royal Academy</a>	<a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1862-05-03_Speech_Royal_Academy_Dinner.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Royal Academy Dinner (3 May 1862).</a>		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Newspaper">Newspaper</a>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=93&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=The+Times">The Times</a>	It is one of the privileges of literature to speak from the walls of this room rather than from the floor, and to find expression here in the great works of painting and sculpture rather than in spoken words. From these walls, even in our own times, Shakespeare, Moliere, Le Sage, Cervantes, Goldsmith, Sterne, Fielding, Smollett, Defoe, a host of illustrious writers has been so eloquent in the masterpieces of members of this Academy that one poor writer of fiction left to his own lips may well find nothing to say in this otherwise difficult task assigned to him. However, he finds consolation in this that his own art is inseparable from the art of his entertainers, that the great magic circle of the arts is impossible to be broken, and that here at least 'his foot is on his native heath', even though his name is not by any means Macgregor. In the name of many distinguished gentlemen, present and absent, foreign and native, I have to thank you for your remembrance of the sister art, though I beg to say on behalf of those whom I represent that we cannot by any means hold that the present President of the Royal Academy is at all disinterested in this proposal to do honour to literature, seeing that he himself is so near akin to it. We scarcely ever open any book with a higher interest and pleasure than we open this great annual volume, of which the leaves are now spread before this company; and we certainly never open a book to which we find so graceful and appropriate a preface as that which is always delivered from the red chair which you, Sir Charles, occupy. If I might have changed the figure, supposing noble lords and right hon gentlemen to have remained, I might even in conclusion have gone so far as to say that I think we receive the annual budget of the President of the Royal Academy with almost as much interest as we receive the annual budget of the Chancellor of the Exchequer; having in addition the pleasant consideration that it is not attended with those terrific consequences which we cannot by any strength of imagination separate from the latter production.	18620503	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a>	https://dickenssearch.com/files/original/6/Royal_Academy_Dinner/1862-05-03_Speech_Royal_Academy_Dinner.pdf
96	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/96	Reading in Peterborough	Speech given before a reading of 'Little Dombey' and 'The Pickwick Trial' (19 October 1859).	Dickens, Charles	<em>Peterborough Advertiser</em> (22 October 1859).	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1859-10-19">1859-10-19</a>		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Speech">Speech</a>	1859-10-19_Speech_Reading_in_Peterborough	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Reading in Peterborough' (19 October 1859). </span><em>Dickens Search.</em><span> Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1859-10-19_Speech_Reading_in_Peterborough">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/</a></span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1859-10-19_Speech_Reading_in_Peterborough">1859-10-19_Speech_Reading_in_Peterborough</a>.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Corn+Exchange">Corn Exchange</a>		‘Mr. Dickens was warmly received, and before commencing the reading said, that some years ago he had given a reading in this place – rendered dear to him by a personal friend – for the benefit of a local institution, and it occurred to him that, as on that occasion he read the Christmas Carol, it might be the pleasure of the audience to hear The Story of Little Dombey instead of the Carol. The audience signified their approval of the proposition, and Mr. Dickens proceeded to read the work mentioned.’	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Newspaper">Newspaper</a>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=93&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Peterborough+Advertiser">Peterborough Advertiser</a>		18591019	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Peterborough">Peterborough</a>
99	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/99	Reading in New Haven	Speech given before a reading of 'Doctor Marigold's Prescriptions' and 'Mr. Bob Sawyer’s Party' (24 March 1868).	Dickens, Charles	<em>New Haven Evening Register</em> (25 March 1868).	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1868-03-24">1868-03-24</a>		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Speech">Speech</a>	1868-03-24_Speech_Reading_in_New_Haven	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Reading in New Haven' (24 March 1868). </span><em>Dickens Search.</em><span> Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1868-03-24_Speech_Reading_in_New_Haven">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/</a></span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1868-03-24_Speech_Reading_in_New_Haven">1868-03-24_Speech_Reading_in_New_Haven</a>.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Music+Hall">Music Hall</a>		‘The audience was large and gave Mr. Dickens their undivided attention. – His apology for the “inconvenience of which he asserted himself to have been the innocent cause” was very timely, and gave him the entire support of his audience.’	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Newspaper">Newspaper</a>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=93&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=New+Haven+Evening+Register">New Haven Evening Register</a>		18680324	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=New+Haven">New Haven</a>
239	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/239	Reading in Manchester	Speech before a reading of <em>A Christmas Carol</em>, Manchester (31 July 1857).	Dickens, Charles	Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser (1 August 1857).	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1857-07-31">1857-07-31</a>			1857-07-31_Speech_Reading-in-Manchester	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Before a Reading of the <em>Carol</em>' </span><span>(31 July 1857). </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1857-07-31_Speech_Reading-in-Manchester">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1857-07-31_Speech_Reading-in-Manchester</a>.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Free-Trade+Hall">Free-Trade Hall</a>		'Mr. Dickens introduced his reading by saying that on the occasions when he had the honour of repeating his "Carol" before audience he was accustomed to commence with two observations. The first was, that he should pause for five minutes half way through the story; and the second, that whenever as they proceeded the audience felt disposed to give utterance to any emotions, he frankly begged they would do so in the most natural manner possible, and without the least apprehension of disturbing him.'	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Newspaper">Newspaper</a>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=93&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Manchester+Courier+and+Lancashire+General+Advertiser">Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser</a>	I need hardly say to you that nothing can be more delightful to me than to know that you are interested, and nothing can be more agreeable to me than that the short personal relations between us may be perfectly friendly, easy, unaffected and unconstrained.	18570731	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Manchester">Manchester</a>	https://dickenssearch.com/files/original/6/Reading_in_Manchester/1857-07-31_Speech_Before-Reading-Carol .pdf
94	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/94	Reading in Edinburgh	Speech given before a reading of <em>The Chimes</em> (27 September 1858).	Dickens, Charles	<em>Edinburgh Courant</em> (28 September 1858).	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1858-09-28">1858-09-28</a>		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Speech">Speech</a>	1858-09-27_Speech_Reading_in_Edinburgh	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Reading in Edinburgh' (27 September 1858). </span><em>Dickens Search.</em><span> Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1858-09-27_Speech_Reading_in_Edinburgh">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1858-09-27_Speech_Reading_in_Edinburgh</a></span>.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Queen+Street+Hall">Queen Street Hall</a>		‘Mr. Dickens, who, on entering, was welcomed by prolonged and cordial applause, premised his reading by informing us that the little story he was to read was written by him in Italy about twelve years ago, and for the purpose of expressing his views on certain subjects then before the public mind. With the season the story passed away, leaving with us, however, some visionary remembrances of the ghosts of the Chimes, as well as some lingering recollections of less aerial groups hovering round the destiny of poor Toby Veck.’	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Newspaper">Newspaper</a>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=93&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Edinburgh+Courant">Edinburgh Courant</a>		18580927	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Edinburgh">Edinburgh</a>
92	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/92	Reading in Dublin	Speech given before a reading of <em>The Chimes</em> (24 August 1858).	Dickens, Charles	<em>Saunders’ News-Letter </em>(25 August 1858).	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1858-08-24">1858-08-24</a>		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Speech">Speech</a>	1858-08-24_Speech_Reading_in_Dublin	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Reading in Dublin' (24 August 1858). </span><em>Dickens Search.</em><span> Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1858-08-24_Speech_Reading_in_Dublin">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1858-08-24_Speech_Reading_in_Dublin</a>.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Rotunda">Rotunda</a>	<a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1858-08-24_Speech_Reading_in_Dublin.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span>Reading in Dublin (24 August 1858).</span></a>		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Newspaper">Newspaper</a>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=93&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Saunders%27+News-Letter">Saunders' News-Letter</a>	I have been accustomed to remark in England, when reading the parts of this fancy, that it was written about a dozen years ago, at a time when I was living in Italy, and when some circumstances recorded in the home newspapers – all within the compass of a single week – appeared to me to render the utterance of a few earnest words very necessary. If there be in our United Kingdom, as I hope and believe, less direct need of such utterance now than there was then, so much the better for us all: we have only to assume to-night that a few hints for compassionate and merciful remembrance are never out of date in the Christian calendar.	18580824	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Dublin">Dublin</a>
93	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/93	Reading in Clifton	Speech given before a reading of The Chimes (2 August 1858).	Dickens, Charles	<p><em>Clifton Chronicle</em> (4 August 1858).</p>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1858-08-02">1858-08-02</a>		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Speech">Speech</a>	1858-08-02_Speech_Reading_in_Clifton	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Reading in Clifton' (2 August 1858). </span><em>Dickens Search.</em><span> Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1858-08-02_Speech_Reading_in_Clifton">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1858-08-02_Speech_Reading_in_Clifton</a>.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Victoria+Rooms">Victoria Rooms</a>		‘Mr. Dickens addressed his audience in a few prefatory words to the effect that the book which he was about to read, was written several years previously, in consequence of certain circumstances which seemed to render a few words of earnest remonstrance necessary. Though the cause for this remonstrance was now to some extent removed, and in part he hoped, by the aid of his little work, yet a plea for the poor and distressed was never out of season, and in that light he trusted his little work would be welcome to his hearers.’	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Newspaper">Newspaper</a>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=93&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Clifton+Chronicle">Clifton Chronicle</a>		18580802	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Clifton">Clifton</a>
95	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/95	Reading in Brighton	Speech given before a matinée reading of 'Little Dombey' (13 November 1858).	Dickens, Charles	<em>Brighton Gazette</em> (18 November 1858).	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1858-11-13">1858-11-13</a>		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Speech">Speech</a>	1858-11-13_Speech_Reading_in_Brighton	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Reading in Brighton' (13 November 1858). </span><em>Dickens Search.</em><span> Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1858-11-13_Speech_Reading_in_Brighton">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1858-11-13_Speech_Reading_in_Brighton</a>.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Town+Hall">Town Hall</a>		‘Mr. Dickens, in commencing, expressed a hope that his audience would speedily forget the cold light of day and lose themselves with him amidst those childish footsteps, trusting that they would laugh if they thought proper, or cry if they thought proper, as nothing could give him greater pleasure than to see them do so unconstrainedly.’	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Newspaper">Newspaper</a>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=93&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Brighton+Gazette">Brighton Gazette</a>		18581113	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Brighton">Brighton</a>
88	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/88	Reading at Reading Literary, Scientific and Mechanics' Institution	Speech given before a reading of <em>A Christmas Carol </em>(19 December 1854).	Dickens, Charles	'Mr. Charles Dickens' Visit to Reading.'<em> Berkshire Chronicle </em>(23 December 1854): p.6.; <em>British Library Newspapers,</em><span> </span><a href="https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/JA3228166379/BNCN?u=leedsuni&sid=bookmark-BNCN&xid=4d1a8520" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/JA3228166379/BNCN?u=leedsuni&sid=bookmark-BNCN&xid=4d1a8520</a><span>.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1854-12-19">1854-12-19</a>	<em>British Library Newspapers,</em><span> </span><a href="https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/JA3228166379/BNCN?u=leedsuni&sid=bookmark-BNCN&xid=4d1a8520" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/JA3228166379/BNCN?u=leedsuni&sid=bookmark-BNCN&xid=4d1a8520</a><span>. Some rights reserved. This work permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Speech">Speech</a>	1854-12-19_Speech_Reading_at_Reading_Literary_Scientific_and_Mechanics-Institution	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Reading at Reading Literary, Scientific and Mechanics' Institution' (19 December 1854). </span><em>Dickens Search.</em><span> Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1854-12-19_Speech_Reading_at_Reading_Literary_Scientific_and_Mechanics-Institution">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1854-12-19_Speech_Reading_at_Reading_Literary_Scientific_and_Mechanics-Institution</a>.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Reading+Literary%2C+Scientific+and+Mechanics%27+Institution">Reading Literary, Scientific and Mechanics' Institution</a>	<a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1854-12-19_Speech_Reading_at_Reading_Literary_Scientific_and_Mechanics-Institution.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Reading at Reading Literary, Scientific and Mechanics Institution (19 December 1854).</a>	'Mr. Dickens then stated that the last time he had had the pleasure of reading his Christmas Carol, it was to an audience of three thousand, and they were kind enough to consider themselves a Christmas party listening to a Christmas story. He wished his audience so to consider themselves that evening; and to give a free and natural expression of their feelings, without entertaining any feer of disturbing him. He then proceed to give his reading.'	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Newspaper">Newspaper</a>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=93&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Berkshire+Chronicle">Berkshire Chronicle</a>	Ladies and Gentlemen, you will feel with me, I am sure, that the time is past when it would have become me to make any reference of a merely personal nature to the cause of your having so greatly honoured me in selecting me as your president – for the memory of the good is still removed to a region, in which all public life and private attachment must equally rise. Therefore you must equally agree with me that it is not my task to disturb its serenity by any reference to private grief or individual attachment. I stand here in the place of one whose name is deeply dear to all of us. He recognised as you do, in the selection of a friend to follow him, the expression of a hope that that friend my have learnt some lessons at least from the example of his gentle nature and his simple heart.	18541219	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Reading">Reading</a>	https://dickenssearch.com/files/original/6/Reading_at_Reading_Literary_Scientific_and_Mechanics_Institution/1854-12-19_Speech_Reading_at_Reading_Literary_Scientific_and_Mechanics-Institution.pdf
263	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/263	Public Meeting of the Printers' Readers' Association	Chairman's Speech at the Public Meeting of the Printers' Readers' Association (17 September 1867).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1867-09-17">1867-09-17</a>			1867-09-17_Speech_Public-Meeting-of-the-Printers-Readers-Association	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Chairman's Speech at the Public Meeting of the Printers' Readers' Association' (17 September 1867).</span><span> </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1867-09-17_Speech_Public-Meeting-of-the-Printers-Readers-Association">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1867-09-17_Speech_Public-Meeting-of-the-Printers-Readers-Association</a><span>.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Salisbury+Hotel">Salisbury Hotel</a>					Gentlemen, as this society is convened not to hear a speech from me, but to hear a statement of facts and figures very nearly affecting the personal interests of, at all events, the great majority of those who compose it, I feel that my preface need be but very brief. Of the details of the question at issue, I know, of myself, absolutely nothing. I have consented to occupy the chair at the request of the London Association of the Correctors of The Press for two reasons. Firstly, because I think that openness and publicity in such a case is a very wholesome example, very much needed at this time, and highly becoming a body of men associated with the great public safeguard, the Press. Secondly, because I know from some slight practical experience, what the duties of the correctors of the press are, and how those duties are usually performed; and I can testify, and do testify here, that they are not mechanical, that they are not mere matters of manipulation and routine, but they require from those who perform them much natural intelligence, much superadded cultivation, considerable readiness of reference, quickness of resource, an excellent memory, and a clear understanding. And I most gratefully acknowledged that I have never gone through the sheets of any book that I have written without having had presented to me by the corrector of the press, some slight misunderstanding into which I have fallen, some little lapse I have made; in short, without having sat down in black and white some unquestionable indication that I have been closely followed through my work by a patient and trained mind, and not merely by a skilful eye. In this declaration I have not the slightest doubt that the great body of my brother and sister writers, as a plain act of justice, heartily concur. For these plain and short reasons, briefly stated, I am here; and being here I beg to assure you that if anyone is present who is in any way associated with the printing press, and should desire to address you, he shall receive from me, whatever his opinions, the readiest attention and the amplest opportunity.	18670917	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a>
242	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/242	Private Dinner, Washington	A speech at a private dinner, Washington (14 March 1842).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1842-03-14">1842-03-14</a>			1842-03-14_Speech_Private-Dinner-Washington	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Speech at a Private Dinner, Washington' </span><span>(14 March 1842). </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1842-03-14_Speech_Private-Dinner-Washington">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1842-03-14_Speech_Private-Dinner-Washington</a>.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Boulanger%27s">Boulanger's</a>					I rise to propose to you one more sentiment; it must be my last; it consists of two words – ‘Good Night!’ Since I have been seated at this table I have received the welcome intelligence that the news from the dear ones has come at last – that the long-expected letters have arrived. Among them are certain scrawls from little beings across the ocean, of great interest to me, and I thought of them for many days past, in connexion with drowned men and a noble shop, broken up and lying in fragments upon the bottom of the ocean. But they are here, and you will appreciate the anxiety I feel to read them. Permit me, in allusion to some remarks made by a gentleman near me, to say that every effort of my pen has been intended to elevate the masses of society; to give them the station they deserve among mankind. With that intention I commenced writing, and I assure you that as long as I write at all, that shall be the principal motive of my efforts. Gentlemen, since I arrived on your hospitable shore, and in my flight over your land, you have given me everything I can ask but time–that you cannot give me, and you are aware that I must devote some of it to myself. Therefore, with the assurance that this has been the most pleasant evening I have passed in the United States, I must bid you farewell, and once more repeat the words, Good Night!	18420314	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Washington+D.+C.">Washington D. C.</a>
264	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/264	Printers' Pension Society Anniversary Festival 1864	Chairman's Speeches at the Printers' Pension Society Anniversary Festival (6 April 1864).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1864-04-06">1864-04-06</a>			1864-04-06_Speech_Printers-Pension-Society-Anniversary-Festival	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Chairman's Speeches at the Printers' Pension Society Anniversary Festival' (6 April 1864).</span><span> </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1864-04-06_Speech_Printers-Pension-Society-Anniversary-Festival">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1864-04-06_Speech_Printers-Pension-Society-Anniversary-Festival</a><span>.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London+Tavern">London Tavern</a>					I do not know whether my feelings are exceptional, but I have a distinct recollection (in my early days at school, when under the dominion of an old lady, who to my mind ruled the world with the birch) of feeling an intense disgust with printers and printing. I thought the letters were printed and sent there to plague me, and I looked upon the printer as my enemy. When I was told to say my prayers I was told to pray for my enemies, and I distinctly remember praying especially for the printer as my greatest enemy. I never now see a row of large, black, fat, staring Roman capitals, but this reminiscence rises up before me. As time, wore on, however, and I became interested in Jack the Giant Killer, and other storybooks, this feeling of disgust became somewhat mitigated; and was still further removed when I became old enough to read The Arabian Nights and Robinson Crusoe with his man Friday; in fact, from the savages enjoying their feast upon the beach, I believe I might trace my first impression of a public dinner! But this feeling of dislike to the printer altogether disappeared from the time I saw my own name in print. I now feel gratified at looking at the jolly letter O, the crooked S, with its full benevolent turns, the curious G, and the Q with its comical tail, that first awoke in me a sense of the humourous. The printer of myself are, and have been for some time, inseparable companions. I have served three apprenticeships to life since I last presided over one of the festivals of this Society. It is twenty-one years since I have taken this chair. How many chairs have I taken since then? – In fact, I might say, a whole pantechnicon of chairs; and, in having worked my way round, I feel that I have come home again. My interest in the prosperity of the Society remains unabated. It has not been an existence forty years, and it has accumulated a fund of £11,000, and has now seventy-six pensioners – male and female – on its funds, at an annual outlay of £850. It has done and is doing great good, and it is only to be regretted that the whole of the claimants on the charity cannot be taken under his charge. The printer is a faithful servant, not only of those connected with the business, but of the public at large, and has, therefore, when labouring under infirmity or disease, an especial claim on all for support. Without claiming for him the whole merit of the work produced by his skill, labour, endurance, and intelligence; without it what would be the state of the world at large? Why, tyrants and humbugs in all countries would have everything their own way! I am certain there are not in any branch of manual dexterity so many remarkable men as might be found in the printing trade. For quickness of perception, amount of endurance, and willingness to oblige, I have ever found the compositor pre-eminent. His labour is of a nature calling for the sympathy of all. Often labouring under an avalanche of work, carried through half the night – often through the whole night – working in an unnatural and unwholesome atmosphere produced by artificial light, and exposed to sudden changes from heat to cold, the journeyman printer is rendered peculiarly liable to pulmonary complaints, blindness, and other serious diseases. The afflicted printer who has lost his sight in the service, sitting through long days in his one room, the pleasures of reading – his great source of entertainment – being denied him, his daughter or wife might read to him; but the cause of his misfortune would invade even that small solace of his dark seclusion, for the types from which that very book was printed he might have assisted to set up. Is this an imaginary case? Nearly every printing office in London of any consideration has turned out numbers such. The public, therefore, in whose interest and for whose instruction and amusement the work was executed, were bound to support the Printers’ Pension Society! In connexion with this part of the subject I may mention two pleasing facts: my good friend Mr. Bunting who has incurred a certain amount of public ridicule for writing a pamphlet on the cure of corpulency, has presented the society with £52.10s, being the present amount of profit received from the sale of this pamphlet. I can only say, if the society could find many friends like that, it would soon get fat. A Mr, Vincent, who had published some works, and whose interest in the welfare of the printer had originated entirely from the kind and ready assistance, the civility, and the courtesy he had received during his business engagements at the office where his printing had been done, has signified his intention of bestowing upon the society house property in Liverpool of the annual rent of £150, from which there are to be created five pensions of £20, and the residue to go to the capital fund of the Society. The tyrants and humbugs before referred to – and many tyrants and humbugs there were in Europe – would gladly pension off all the printers throughout the world and have done with them; but let the friends of education and progress unite in pensioning off the worn and afflicted printers, and the remainder would ultimately press the tyrants and humbugs off the face of the earth. For if ever they were to be pressed out, the printer’s is the press that will do it. The printer is the friend of intelligence, of thought; he is the friend of liberty, of freedom, of law; indeed, the printer is the friend of every man who is the friend of order; the friend of every man who can read. Of all inventions, of all the discoveries in science or art, of all the great results in the wonderful progress of mechanical energy and skill, the printer is the only product of civilization necessary to the existence of free man.	18640406	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a>
245	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/245	Printers' Pension Society Anniversary Festival 1843	Toast at the Printers' Pension Society Anniversary Festival (4 April 1843).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1843-04-04">1843-04-04</a>			1843-04-04_Speech_Printers-Pension-Society	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Printers' Pension Society Annual Dinner' </span><span>(4 April 1843). </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1843-04-04_Speech_Printers-Pension-Society">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1843-04-04_Speech_Printers-Pension-Society</a>.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London+Tavern">London Tavern</a>		<p>It had, he observed, a more immediate reference to the object for which they were that day assembled. The Printers’ Pension Society had existed, as most them no doubt knew, about sixteen years, and was founded for the purpose of maintaining the widows of deceased printers, or decayed printers themselves. The amounts awarded in the estimation of some might be said to be small, – the good that was done was great. It afforded to many, and the most deserving persons, relief in the hour of distress, – that distress which sooner or later comes to most of us. But the printers were peculiarly liable to premature decay, to injury in their faculties when many others were still able to earn their daily bread (which was a fact known to most of them) from the character of their occupation – the late and arduous hours during which they were obliged to tax powers that were often of the most delicate nature.</p> <p>That peculiar liability to decay gave printers powerful claims to their sympathy and support. But that claim was largely enhanced when they recollected that by the printers’ means they were enabled to scatter throughout the world the loftiest efforts of intellect – the ‘thoughts that breathe, the words that burn’ – to send to every part of the universe the great imaginings of the most accomplished minds, to instruct and regenerate mankind. When they reflected thus – and who could avoid it? – the claims of the printers became irresistible. He felt quite assured from what took place at the last election for pensioners, and from what he saw now in that room, that everyone would promptly put his hand into whatever pocket he had, and thereby enable their Treasure to make a most favourable report. He was sure it was unnecessary to add more to arouse their sympathies; but he could assure them that the knockings at the door of the institution were very numerous.</p> <p>Be it borne in mind that this institution gave no encouragement to thoughtlessness and extravagance; for every claimant must have contributed to the funds for some years before he was qualified should necessity arise to appeal for aid. Many had belonged to it from its foundation. He knew many who were so circumstanced. The institution was further valuable as generating good feeling among the workmen themselves. On every account they deserved the respect and consideration of every honest man, to the truth of which he could bear ample testimony from considerable intercourse with that valuable body of men. There was an asylum for warriors who had fought the battles of their country, and most justly and properly; but, in God’s name, let them sustain an asylum for those who suffered in struggles, in the bloodless contests, of promoting knowledge, of civilizing or of improving mankind, and of advancing the peaceful superiority of human beings. He gave them 'The Printers’ Pension Society, and prosperity to it'.</p> <p>He felt deeply obliged, he said, for the kindness thus shown, and the enthusiastic manner in which it had been evinced. There were few proceedings which went so home to his heart, as such testimonies of kind regards.</p> <p>He then continued:</p> <p>He had, he said, to propose another toast, and he would introduce it with a remark or two, not because they were requisite, but because such a toast on such an occasion ought not to be named without some observation.</p>; <p>He had next to propose, he said, ‘The Stationers’ Company’. He believed that notwithstanding what had been declared by a Noble and learned Lord, ‘a friend of ours elsewhere’, the Stationers’ Company were alive and doing well, and that Stationers’ Hall still stood where it did. He gave, with great pleasure, ‘The Stationers’ Company, the steady supporters of the Printers’ Pension Society’.</p>			The Printers’ Pension Society, and prosperity to it. I now give ‘The Press’, that wonderful lever Archimedes wished for, and which has moved the world! which has impelled it onward in the path of knowledge, of mercy, and of human improvement so far that nothing in the world can ever roll it back! The mass of the people, said Dr. Johnson very truly, in any country where printing is unknown, must be barbarous; and Sir Thomas More, the best, and wisest, and the greatest of men, who, before the press was established, died what was almost the natural death of the good, and the wise and the great – Sir Thomas More so clearly saw into futurity, and descried from afar off the stupendous influence of the press, that he went out of his way to set up a printing-press in Utopia, knowing that without it even the people of that fancied land would not bear competition in the course of years with the real nations of the earth. If they looked back only for two hundred years, to that time when the Dutch citizen carved letters on the bark of the beechen tree, and took off impressions of them on paper as toys to please his grand-children – he little knew the wonderful agent which, in scarcely a century, was about to burst on mankind; what a strong engine in the course of time it must become, even in the land where the ruthless vices and crimes of the anointed ruffian who spread More’s bloody pillow were to acquire him an immortality of infamy. I thank God that it has been so; from that hour no good has been devised, no wonderful invention has been broached, no barbarism has been struck down, but that same press has had its iron grip upon it, and never once has it let it till it was done. If we look at our social and daily life, we shall see how constantly present the press is, and how essential an element it has become of civilized existence. In great houses, and even in lowly huts, in crowds, and in solitudes, in town and country, in the nursery of the children and by the old man’s elbow chair – still, in some shape or other, there it is! Now it is an alphabet, with its fat black capital letters; now in the form of whole words; now in the story of Puss in Boots; now as Robinson Crusoe; now as a tale of the Caliph Haroun al-Raschid; now as a Lindley Murray; now as a Tutor’s Assistant; then as a Virgil, a Homer, or a Milton; now in the form of the labours of the editor of a popular newspaper: in some shape or other the press is constantly present and associated with our lives, from the baptismal service to the burial of the dead. I know that to some its power is obnoxious. There are some gentlemen of a patriotism so unselfish that they would put the newspaper press of their native country on an equality of efficiency with that of another nation, which, as long ago as Benjamin Franklin wrote, was an unique, a distinct and a singular thing. But as we have means of judging for ourselves every morning and evening of the newspaper literature, it is satisfactory to know that there never was a righteous cause but the same men have hated it; and there never was a disappointed man or a discontented patriot, anxious to pass upon a people determined not to recognize him as such, but he has bemoaned the privileges of the press in the same crocodile’s tears. With regard to the influence of the press on public men, I only leave you to judge from what public men often are even with this engine in full operation, what sort of characters they would be without it. I give you then, – ‘The fountain of Knowledge and the bulwark of Freedom, the founder of free states and their preserver – the Press!’<br /> The Stationers’ Company, the steady supporters of the Printers’ Pension Society.	18430404	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a>
237	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/237	Presentation to Captain Hewett	A speech given at the presentation to Captain Hewett, Boston (29 January 1842).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1842-01-29">1842-01-29</a>			1842-01-29_Speech_Presentation-to-Captain-Hewett	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Presentation to Captain Hewett </span><span>(29 January 1842). </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1842-01-29_Speech_Presentation-to-Captain-Hewett">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1842-01-29_Speech_Presentation-to-Captain-Hewett</a>.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Tremont+Theatre">Tremont Theatre</a>					Ladies and gentlemen, I am assured by your presence here this morning that you have become acquainted with the nature of the welcome duty which I have to discharge, and which is most pleasantly commended to me in a double sense: firstly because it cannot fail to be gratifying to a worthy man who has established a strong claim upon my interest and esteem; and, secondly, because it affords me an opportunity of meeting you, whom I have a thousand reasons for longing to see, here, or anywhere.&nbsp; It may be known to you, perhaps, that passengers on board the Britannia Steamship which bore me and some four score others to these happy shores, held a meeting together the day before our arrival, the object of which to do honour to Captain Hewett, the able commander under whose guidance we had crossed the wide Atlantic. I, and two other gentlemen, (one of whom stands near me, and the other of whom is prevented by business from attending here today) had the honour to be deputed by that meeting to carry its intention into effect. In the execution of the trust reposed in us by our fellow passengers, we are most desirous to impress you with the fact that this is very far from being an ordinary or matter of course proceeding: that it is not a matter of form, but of good sound substance; that in presenting Captain Hewett with these slight and frail memorials, we are not following out a hollow custom, but are imperfectly expressing the warmest and most earnest feelings, being well assured that with God’s blessing we owe our safety and preservation under circumstances of unusual peril, to his ability, courage, and skill. You will please to understand that these tokens on the table are an acknowledgement, not in themselves, but in the feeling which dictates their presentation, of many long and weary nights of watching and fatigue, of great exertion of body, and much anxiety of mind, and of the prompt and efficient discharge of arduous duties such as do not often present themselves. In a word, this is anything but an extraordinary return for really extraordinary services; and we wish you to regard it in that light that our present may have the value which it was intended to bear, and which is far enough removed, Heaven knows, from its intrinsic worth or beauty. Captain Hewett, I am very proud and happy to have been selected as the instrument of conveying to you the heartfelt thanks of my fellow passengers on board the ship entrusted to your charge, and of entreating your acceptance of this trifling present. The ingenious artists who work in silver do not always, I find, keep their promises even in Boston. I regret that instead of two goblets, which there should be here, there is at present only one. This deficiency, however, will soon be supplied; and when it is, our little testimonial will be, so far, complete. You are a sailor, Captain Hewett, in the truest sense of the word; and the devoted admiration of the ladies, God bless them, is a sailor’s first boast. I need not enlarge upon the honour they have done you, I am sure, by their presence here. Judging of you by myself, I am certain that the recollection of their beautiful faces will cheer your lonely vigils upon the ocean for a long time to come. In all time to come, and in all your voyages upon the sea, I hope you will have a thought for those who wish to live in your memory by the help of these trifles. As they will often connect you with the pleasures of those homes and firesides from which they once wandered, and which, but for you, they might never have regained, so they that trust that you will sometimes associate them with your hours of festive enjoyment: and that when you drink from these cups, you will feel that the draught is commended to your lips by friends whose best wishes you have, and who earnestly and truly hope for your success, happiness, and prosperity in all the undertakings of your life.	18420129	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Boston">Boston</a>
251	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/251	Polytechnic Institute of Birmingham	Speech for the Polytechnic Institute of Birmingham (28 February 1844).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1844-02-28">1844-02-28</a>			1844-02-28_Speech_Polytechnic-Institute-Birmingham	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Polytechnic Institute of Birmingham' (28 February 1844)</span><span>. </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1844-02-28_Speech_Polytechnic-Institute-Birmingham">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1844-02-28_Speech_Polytechnic-Institute-Birmingham</a>.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Town+Hall">Town Hall</a>					You will think it very unwise, or very self-denying in me, in such an assembly, in such a splendid scene, and after such a welcome, to congratulate myself on having nothing new to say to you; but I do so notwithstanding. To say nothing of places nearer home, I have had the honour of attending at Manchester shortly before Christmas, and at Liverpool only the night before last (whence I have brought with me a slight hoarseness), for purposes similar to that which bring you together now; and, looking down a short perspective of similar engagements, I feel immense satisfaction in the thought that I shall very soon have nothing at all to say; in which case I shall be content to stake my reputation, like the Spectator of Addison, and that other great periodical Spectator, the Speaker of the House of Commons, on my powers of listening. That feeling, and your earnest reception of me, are not my only reasons for feeling a genuine, cordial, and sincere pleasure in the proceedings tonight. The Polytechnic Institution of Birmingham is now in its infancy, struggling into life under all those adverse and disadvantageous circumstances which, to a greater or lesser extent, naturally beset all infancy; but I would much rather connect myself with its records now, however humble, in its days of difficulty and danger, than look back upon its origin when it may have become strong, and rich, and powerful. I should prefer an intimate association with it now, in its early days and apparent struggles, to becoming its advocate an acquaintance, i's fair-weather friend, in its high and palmy days. I would rather be able to say to it, ‘I knew you in your swaddling clothes. Your two elder brothers had drooped and died, their chests were weak. About your cradle nurses shook their heads, and gossips groaned; but up you shots apace, up, up, indomitable in your constitution, strong in your tone and muscle, well-knit in your figure, steady in your pulse, wise and temperate in your speech, of good repute in all your doings, until you have grown a very giant.’ Birmingham is, in my mind, and in the minds of most men, associated with many giants; and I can no more believe that this young institution will turn out sickly, dwarfish, or of stunted growth, then I can that when my glass slipper of chairmanship falls off, and the clock strikes twelve tonight, that this hall will be turned into a pumpkin! I found that strong belief upon the splendid array of grace and beauty by which I am surrounded, and which, if it only had 100th part of the effect upon others it has upon me, could do anything it pleased, with anything in anybody. I found my strong conviction, in the second place, upon the public spirit of the town of Birmingham – upon the name, and famous of its capitalists and working men; upon the greatness and importance of its merchants and manufacturers; upon its inventions, which are constantly in progress; upon the skill and intelligence of its artisans, which are daily developing; and the increased knowledge of all portions of the community. All these reasons lead me to the conclusion that your institution will advance, that it will and must progress, that the town will stride in advance of time, and will not content itself with lingering leagues behind. I have another peculiar ground of satisfaction in connexion with the object of this assembly, and it is this: that the resolutions about to be proposed do not contain in themselves anything of a sectarian or class nature; that they do not confine themselves to anyone single institution, but assert the great and omnipotent principles of comprehensive education, everywhere, and under each and every circumstance. I beg leave to say that I can concur heart and hand in those principles, and will do all in my power for their advancement; for such imperfect knowledge as I possess of the mass of my fellow creatures, and their condition in this country, weds me to this principal heart and hand, beyond all powers of divorcement but one. I hold that for any fabric of society to go on day after day, and year after year, from father to son, and from grandfather to grandson, unceasingly punishing men for not engaging in the pursuit of virtue and for the practice of crime, without showing them the way to virtue, has no foundation in justice, has no foundation in religion, has no foundation in truth, and has only one parallel in fiction that I know of, – which is the case of an obdurate old Genie, in the Arabian Nights, who was bent on taking the life of a certain merchant, because he had struck out the eye of his invisible son. Again, if I may refer to another tale in the same book of charming fancies – not inappropriate to the present occasion – there is the case of a powerful spirit who had been imprisoned at the bottom of the sea, shut up in a casket with a leaden cover, sealed with the seal of Solomon upon it. There he lay neglected for many centuries, and during that period made many different vows: at first, that he would reward magnificently those who should release him, and, at last, that he would destroy them. Now, there is a spirits of great power, the Spirit of Ignorance, long shut up in a vessel of Obstinate Neglect, with a great deal of lead in its composition, and sealed with the seal of many, many Solomons, and which is exactly in the same position. Release it in time, and it will bless, restore, and reanimates society; but let it lie under the rolling waves of years, and its blind revenge at last will be destruction. That there are classes which, rightly treated, are our strength, and wrongly treated are our weakness, I hold it impossible to deny; and that for these industrious, intelligent, and honourably independent classes, in whom Birmingham is, especially interested, there are no means of mutual instruction and improvement so peculiarly adapted to their circumstances as a Mechanics’ Institute, is a proposition which I take to be, by this time, quite beyond disproof. Far be it from me, and here I wish to be most particularly understood, to attempt to depreciate the excellent Church instruction Societies, or the worthy, sincere and temperate zeal of those reverend gentlemen by whom they usually conducted. On the contrary I believe that they have done, and are doing, much good, and are deserving of high praise; but I hope it may be said, without offence, that in a community such as Birmingham, there are other objects not unworthy in the light of heaven – and objects of unrecognized utility – which are worthy of support, but which lie beyond their influence: principles which are practised in word and deed, in Polytechnic Institutions, principles for the diffusion of which honest men of all degrees and of every creed may associate together on an independent footing and on neutral ground, and at small expense, for the better understanding and the greater consideration of each other, and for the better cultivation of the happiness of all. But it surely cannot be allowed that those who labour day by day, surrounded by machinery, shall be permitted to degenerate into machines themselves; but, on the contrary, they should be able to assert the common origin in that Creator from whose wondrous hands they came, and unto whom, responsible and thinking men, they will return. There is, indeed, no difference in the main with respect to the dangers of ignorance, and the advantages of knowledge, between those who hold different opinions; for, it is to be observed, that those who are most distrustful of the advantages of education, are always the first to exclaim against the results of ignorance. This fact was pleasantly illustrated on the railway, as I came here. In the same carriage with me, there sat an ancient gentleman (I feel no delicacy in alluding to him, for I know that he is not in the room, having got out far short of Birmingham), who expressed himself most mournfully as to the ruinous effects and rapid spread of railways, and was most pathetic upon the virtues of the slow-going old stage coaches. Now I, entertaining some little lingering kindness for the road, made shift to express my concurrence with the old gentleman’s opinion, without any great compromise of my own. Well, we got on tolerably comfortably together; and when the engine, with a frightful screech, dived into the darkness, like some strange aquatic monster, the old gentleman said this would never do, and I agreed with him. When it parted from each successive station with a shock and a shriek, as if it had had a double tooth drawn, the old gentleman shook his head, and I shook mine. When he burst forth against such new fangled notions, and said that no good could come from them, I did not contest the point. But I invariably found that when the speed of the engine was abated, or there was the slightest prolongation of our stay at any station, the old gentleman was up in arms, and his watch was instantly out of his pocket, denouncing the slowness of our progress. Now I could not help comparing this old gentleman to that ingenious class of persons who are in the constant habit of declaiming against the views and crimes of society and at the same time are the first and foremost to assert that vice and crime have not their common origin in ignorance and discontent. The good work, however, in which whatever maybe your parties and opinions you are all deeply interested, has been well begun. We are all interested in it, it is advancing and cannot be stopped by any opposition although it may be retarded, in this place or that, by the indifference of the middle classes, with whom it successful progress chiefly rests. Of this success I cannot entertain a doubt; for whenever the working classes enjoy an opportunity of effectually rebutting accusations, which falsehood or thoughtlessness have brought against them, they always avail themselves of it, and show themselves in their true characters; and it is this which made the damage done to a single picture in the National Gallery in London, by some poor lunatic cripple, a mere matter of newspaper notoriety and wonder for some few days. This has established a fact evident to the meanest comprehension, that any number of thousands of persons of the humblest condition of life in this country, can pass through that same National Gallery, or the British Museum, in seasons of holiday making, without damaging in the slightest degree, the smallest rarity, in either wonderful collection. I do not myself believe that the working classes were ever the wanton or mischievous persons they have been so often and so long represented to be; but I rather incline to the opinion that some wise men took it into their heads to lay it down as a matter of fact, without being particular about the premises, and that the idle and prejudiced, not wishing to have the trouble of forming opinions for themselves, took it for granted – until the people had an opportunity for disproving, the stigma and vindicating themselves before the world. Now this assertion is well illustrated by what has occurred respecting an equestrian statue in the metropolis, with respect to which a legend existed that the sculptor hanged himself, because he had neglected to put a girth to the saddle. The story was currently believed for many years, until it was inspected for a different purpose, and it was found to have had a girth all the time. But surely if, as it is stated, the people are ill disposed and mischievous, surely that is the best reason that can be offered for teaching them better; if they are not, surely that is a reason for giving them every opportunity of vindicating their injured reputation; and they cannot possibly, I think, have a better one than the opportunity of associating together voluntarily for such high purposes as it is proposed to carry out by the establishment of the Birmingham Polytechnic Institution. In any case, and in every case, if you would reward honesty, if you would give encouragement to good, if you would stimulate the idle, eradicate evil, or correct what is bad, education – comprehensive liberal education – is the one thing needful, and the one effective end. And if I may apply to my purpose, and render into plain prose, some words of Hamlet, not with reference to any government or party (for party being, for the most part, an irrational sort of thing, has no connexion with the object we have in view), and if I might apply those words to education as Hamlet applied them to the skull of Yorick, the King’s Jester, I would say, ‘Now hie thee to the council chamber, and tell them, though they lay it on in sounding language and fine words an inch thick, to this complexion they must come at last’. Ladies and Gentlemen, We are now even, for if I have ever been as fortunate as to touch your feelings, you have amply returned the compliment. But I am as little disposed to say to you, ‘Go, and sin no more’, in this wise, as I am to promise of myself that ‘I will never do so again’. As long as I can make you laugh or cry, I will; and you will easily believe me when I say that you cannot do too much on your parts to show me that we are still cordial and loving friends. To you, ladies of the institution, I am – as who is not? – especially and deeply indebted. I have sometimes thought that much of whatever little magic lies in that short name yonder must be attributable to its having as many letters in it as there at were three Graces, and to the Graces having been of your fair sisterhood. A story is told of an eastern potentate of modern times, who, for an eastern potentate, was a tolerably good man – sometimes bow-stringing his friends rather indiscriminately in his moments of anger, but burying them with great splendour in his moments of penitence – that whenever intelligence was brought him of any new plot or turbulent conspiracy, his first inquiry always was, ‘Who is she?’ – meaning that there must be a woman at the bottom of it. In my small way, I differ from that potentate. Whenever any good is to be done, and any great end is to be attained, any ministering angel’s hand is needed, my first inquiry always is, ‘Where is she?’ And the certain answer is, ‘She is here'. Ladies and gentlemen, you have made me very proud and happy, and with all my heart I thank you for your heartfelt generosity, A thousand times, goodnight: A thousand times the worst to want your light!	18440228	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Birmingham">Birmingham</a>
90	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/90	Opening of the South-Eastern Railway Company Line from Minster to Deal	Speech given at a dinner celebrating the opening of the South-Eastern Railway Company (SER) line from Minster to Deal, Kent (30 June 1847).	Dickens, Charles	'Opening of the Minster and Deal Railway.' <em>The Railway Times </em>(3 July 1847): p. 875.; <em>Google Books</em>, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_mI3AQAAMAAJ" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_mI3AQAAMAAJ</a>.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1847-06-30">1847-06-30</a>	Google Books, Fair Use.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Speech">Speech</a>	1847-06-30_Speech_Opening_of_the_SER_Company_Line_Minster_to_Deal	Dickens, Charles. 'Opening of the South-Eastern Railway Company Line from Minster to Deal' (30 June 1847). <em>Dickens Search.</em> Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1847-06-30_Speech_Opening_of_the_SER_Company_Line_Minster_to_Deal">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1847-06-30_Speech_Opening_of_the_SER_Company_Line_Minster_to_Deal</a>.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Town+Hall">Town Hall</a>	<a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1847-06-30_Speech_Opening_of_the_SER_Company_Line_Minster_to_Deal.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Opening of the South-Eastern Railway Company Line from Minster to Deal (30 June 1847).</a>		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Newspaper">Newspaper</a>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=93&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=The+Railway+Times">The Railway Times</a>	The allusion, at the bottom of the table, to my travels abroad, is particularly agreeable and pleasant to me at this moment, for I can assure you that I never felt more perfectly and entirely at home than your kind reception has made me. Gentlemen, I confess that I should have felt it a subject of great embarrassment to have my name connected with so great an occasion as the present, under any circumstances, but I feel it particularly so, when the hasty requisition by electric telegraph which brought me here, and which reached me about the middle of the day; but through your kindness, I am relieved of much of that embarrassment. Gentlemen, nothing which extends the happiness, intelligence, and welfare of the human race – nothing which tends to diminish prejudices – nothing which tends to cement us together as one body – nothing which tends to bring down to places such as these those great armies of invasion which my friend on my right has just spoken of, bearing, instead of warlike banners, those little fluttering flags which we have seen to-day – gentlemen, nothing of that kind can be foreign to the profession of literature or art. And nothing so agreeable and so pleasant as the faces I have seen here to-day, and the honest, earnest, and generous welcome that I have witnessed in this room, can be foreign to the breast of any man who is a man. Gentlemen, as time is wearing I will only detain you by saying that I hope and believe that so long as the broad sea rolls on this beautiful beach of Deal – so long as the men who launch their boats on that sea – so well alluded to just now – so long as they are framed for gallantry and skill throughout England and throughout the world, so long I hope and believe that you will feel the advantages of the great work which has been brought home to your doors to-day, in the persons of your sons, and sons' sons', and your sons' sons' sons. Gentlemen, I beg to return you my most cordial thanks, and to drink all your healths in return.	18470630	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Deal">Deal</a>; <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Kent">Kent</a>	https://dickenssearch.com/files/original/6/Opening_of_the_South-Eastern_Railway_Company_Line_from_Minster_to_Deal/1847-06-30_Speech_Opening_of_the_SER_Company_Line_Minster_to_Deal.pdf
91	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/91	On Thackeray Going to America	Speech given at the London Tavern ahead of William Makepace Thackeray going to America (11 October 1855).	Dickens, Charles	Forster, John.<em> The Life of Charles Dickens</em>. Ed. J. W. T. Ley. London: Cecil Palmer, 1928. p. 575.; <em>Chester Chronicle</em> (20 October 1855).	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1855-10-11">1855-10-11</a>		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Speech">Speech</a>	1855-10-11_Speech_On_Thackeray_Going_to_America	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'On Thackeray Going to America' (11 October 1855). </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><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><span>.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London+Tavern">London Tavern</a>		<p>‘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 <em>Pendennis </em>and <em>Vanity Fair</em>.’</p>; <p>‘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.’</p>; <p>‘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.’</p>; '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...'	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Biography">Biography</a>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=93&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=The+Life+of+Charles+Dickens">The Life of Charles Dickens</a>		18551011	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a>	https://dickenssearch.com/files/original/6/On_Thackeray_Going_to_America/1855-10-11_Speech_On_Thackeray_Going_to_America.pdf
84	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/84	On Return from America	Speech given at Greenwich (9 July 1842).	Dickens, Charles	<em>The Letters of Charles Dickens. The</em><span> </span><em>Pilgrim Edition.<span> </span></em><span>Edited by Madeline House, Graham Storey and Kathleen Tillotson. Volume 3 (1842-1843), p.264<em>n</em>. Oxford University Press, 1974.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=18420709">18420709</a>		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Speech">Speech</a>	1842-07-09_Speech_on_Return_from_America	Dickens, Charles. 'On Return from America' (9 July 1842). <em>Dickens Search</em>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1842-07-09_Speech_on_Return_from_America">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1842-07-09_Speech_on_Return_from_America</a>.			'Well, we drank "the Boz", with a delectable clatter, which drew from him a goood warm hearted speech, in which he hinted the great advantage of going to America for the pleasure of coming back again – & pleasantly described the embarrassing attentions of the Transatlantickers, who made his private house & private cabin particularly public.'	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Letter">Letter</a>			189420709	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Greenwich">Greenwich</a>
85	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/85	On Macready Going to America	Speech given at Richmond ahead of William Charles Macready's American theatrical tour (26 August 1843).	Dickens, Charles	Macready, William Charles. <em>The Diaries of William Charles Macready 1833-1851</em>. Vol. 2. Ed. William Toynbee. New York: Putnam's, 1912. p. 218.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1843-08-26">1843-08-26</a>		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Speech">Speech</a>	1843-08-26_Speech_On_Macready_Going_to_America	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'On Macready Going to America' (26 August 1843). </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1843-08-26_Speech_On_Macready_Going_to_America">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1843-08-26_Speech_On_Macready_Going_to_America</a><span>.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Star+and+Garter">Star and Garter</a>		'Dickens proposed the only toast of the evening, my health etc., in a very feeling and elegant speech.'	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Diary">Diary</a>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=93&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=The+Diaries+of+William+Charles+Macready">The Diaries of William Charles Macready</a>		18430826	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Richmond">Richmond</a>
253	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/253	Metropolitan Sanitary Association Public Meeting	Speech at the first Metropolitan Sanitary Association Public Meeting (6 February 1850).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1850-02-06">1850-02-06</a>			1850-02-06_Speech_Metropolitan-Sanitary-Association-Public-Meeting	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Speech at the first Metropolitan Sanitary Association Public Meeting' (6 February 1850).</span><span> </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1850-02-06_Speech_Metropolitan-Sanitary-Association-Public-Meeting">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1850-02-06_Speech_Metropolitan-Sanitary-Association-Public-Meeting</a><span>.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Freemason%27s+Tavern">Freemason's Tavern</a>		<p>Having been requested to second the resolution, he said, he was happy to say that he would have but very few words to address them in doing so, chiefly because all that was to be set up on the subject had been anticipated by the previous speakers. But they would excuse him if he so far followed in the footsteps of those who had preceded him, as to endeavour to impress upon the meeting that their great object was to bring the metropolis within the provision of the Public Health Act, from the operation of which it had been most absurdly and monstrously excluded – because it was their duty to diminish an amount of suffering and a waste of life which would be a disgrace to a heathen land, to atone for long years of neglect, of which they had all to a greater or lesser extent been guilty, and to address a most grievous and cruel injustice.</p> <p>It was a common figure of speech when anything very important was left out of any great scheme, to say that it was the tragedy of <em>Hamlet</em> with Hamlet left out; but the existence of a Public Health Act with the metropolis excluded from its operation suggested something to him even more sad, and that was the representation of <em>Hamlet</em> with nothing in it but the gravedigger. They had agreed that this was a state of things which must not be allowed to continue. They found every year 13,000 unfortunate persons dying unnaturally in prematurely around them. They found infancy was made stunted, ugly, and full of pain; maturity made old, and old age imbecile; and pauperism made hopeless every day. They claimed for the metropolis of a Christian country that this should be remedied, and that the capital should set an example of humanity and justice to the whole empire.</p> <p>Of the sanitary condition of London at the present moment, he solemnly believed it would be almost impossible to speak too ill. He knew of many places in it unsurpassed in the accumulated horrors of their neglect by the dirtiest old spots in the dirtiest old towns, under the worst old governments in Europe. Great contrasts of rank, great contrasts of wealth, and great contrasts of comfort must, as every man of sense was aware exist among all civilized communities; but he sincerely believed that no such contrasts as were afforded by our handsome streets, our railroads and our electric telegraphs, in the year of our Lord 1850, as compared with the great mass of the dwellings of the poor in many parts of this metropolis, had ever before been presented on this earth.</p> <p>The principle objectors to to the improvement of the sanitary condition of London – not to mention those noble and honourable friends of theirs who were that day at Westminster and elsewhere,’ letting I dare not wait upon I would’ – the principle objectors to the sanitary improvement of the metropolis, might be divided into two classes. The first of these classes consisted of the small owners of small tenements, who pushed themselves forward on boards of guardians and parish vestries, and were clamorous about the ratings of their property. The other class was composed of gentlemen more independent and less selfish, who had a weak leaning to the words ‘self-government’. Now, the first of these classes preceded generally on the supposition that the compulsory improvement of their dwellings, when exceedingly defective, would prove very expensive. But that was a great mistake, for nothing was cheaper than good sanitary improvement, as they knew in the case of ‘Jacob’s Island’, which he had described in a work of fiction some ten or eleven years ago, and where the improvements had been made at a cost of less than the price of a pint of porter or two glasses of gin a week to each inhabitant. With regard to the objectors on the principle of self-government, and that what was done in the next parish was no business of theirs, he should begin to think there was something in it when he found any court or street keeping its disease within its own bounds, or any parish keeping to itself its own fever or its own smallpox, just as it maintained its own beadles on its own fire-engine. But until that time should have arrived, and so long as he breathed the same air as the inhabitants of that court, or street, or parish, – so long as he lived on the same soil, was lighted by the same sun and moon, and fanned by the same winds, he should consider their health and sickness as most decidedly his business, and would endeavour to force them to be pure and clean, and would place them under the control of a General Board for the general good.</p> <p>The Right Rev. prelate in the chair had referred in the most impressive manner to that charge frequently made, among other ill-considered charges, against the poor, that they like to be dirty and to lead degraded lives. Now if that charge were true it would only present to him another proof of our living in a very alarming under most unnatural state of society. But it was no more of them than that when they first had public baths they would not bathe, and that when they first had washhouses their wives would not wash. We could not expect to gather ‘grapes from thorns nor figs from thistles’; and we could not be surprised if the poor were not sensible of the decencies of life when they had no opportunity of being made acquainted with them. The main wonder in connexion with the poor was that they did so soon esteem what was really for their good when they had any fair experience of it.</p> <p>No one who had any experience of the poor could fail to be deeply affected by their patience, by their sympathy with one another, and by the beautiful alacrity with which they helped each other in toil, in the day of suffering, and at the hour of death. It hardly ever happened that any case of extreme protracted destitution found its way into the public prints without our reading at the same time of some ragged Samaritan sharing his last loaf or spending his last penny to relieve the poor miserable in the little room upstairs, or in the cellar underground. It was with a view to mitigate the sufferings of that class; to develop in these people the virtue which nothing could eradicate; to raise them in the social scale as they should be raised; to lift them from a condition into which they did not allow their beasts to sink, and to cleanse the foul air for the passage of Christianity and education throughout the land, that the meeting was assembled. He could not lay it to his heart, nor could he flatter any of those present with the idea that they had met there to plume themselves on their charity or their philanthropy. They could claim little merit for each other in such a cause, for the object of their assembling, as he regarded it, was simply to help to set that right which was very wrong before God and before man.</p>				18500206	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a>
252	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/252	Metropolitan Sanitary Association Anniversary Banquet	Speech at the Metropolitan Sanitary Association Anniversary Banquet (10 May 1851).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1851-05-10">1851-05-10</a>			1851-05-10_Speech_Metropolitan-Sanitary-Association-Anniversary-Banquet	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Metropolitan Sanitary Association Anniversary Banquet' (10 May 1851)</span><span>. </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1851-05-10_Speech_Metropolitan-Sanitary-Association-Anniversary-Banquet">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1851-05-10_Speech_Metropolitan-Sanitary-Association-Anniversary-Banquet</a><span>.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Gore+House">Gore House</a>					My Lord and Gentlemen, I am placed in that peculiarly advantageous position for speaking, that I must either turn from the chairman or from the company. But, as the company includes that best and brightest of all company, whose presence (I assume) we're supposed not to recognise on these occasions as we never address them – and, as I have abundant experience of the innate courtesy and politeness of my noble friend – I shall take the cause which I am sure will be most agreeable to him, and turn to this assembly in general. Indeed, gentlemen, I have but a few words to say, either on the needfulness of Sanitary Reform, or on the consequent usefulness of the Metropolitan Sanitary Association. That no one can estimate the amount of mischief which is grown in dirt; that no man can say, here it stops, or there it stops, either in its physical or moral results, when both begin in the cradle and are not at rest in the obscene grave, is now as certain as it is that the air from Gin Lane will be carried, when the wind is Easterly, into May Fair, and that if you once have a vigorous pestilence raging furiously in St. Giles’s, no mortal list of Lady Patronesses can keep it out of Almack’s. Twelve or fifteen years ago some, of the first valuable reports of Mr. Chadwick and of Dr. Southwood Smith strengthening and much enlarging my previous imperfect knowledge of this truth, made me, in my sphere, earnest in this Sanitary Cause. And I can honestly declare tonight, that all the use I have since made of my eyes – or nose – that all the information I have since been able to acquire through any of my senses, has strengthened me in the conviction that Searching Sanitary Reform must precede all other social remedies, and that even Education and Religion can do nothing where they are most needed, until the way is paved for their ministrations by Cleanliness and Decency. Am I singular in this opinion? You will remember the speech made this night by the Right Reverend Prelate, which no true Sanitary Reformer can have heard without emotion. What avails it to send a Missionary to me, a miserable man or woman living in a foetid Court where every sense bestowed upon me for my delight becomes a torment, and every month of my life is new mire added to the heap under which I lie degraded? To what natural feeling within me is he to address himself? What ancient chord within me can he hope to touch? Is it my remembrance of my children? Is it a remembrance of distortion and decay, scrofula and fever? Would he address himself to my hopes of immortality? I am so surrounded by material filth that my Soul can not rise to the contemplation an immaterial existence! Or, if I be a miserable child, born and natured in the same wretched place, and tempted, in these better times, to the Ragged School, what can the few hours’ teaching that I get there do for me, against the noxious, constant, ever-renewed lesson of my whole existence. But, give me my first glimpse of Heaven through a little of its light and air – give me water – help me to be clean – lighten this heavy atmosphere in which my spirit droops and I become the indifferent and callous creature that you see me – gently and kindly take the body of my dead relation out of the small room where I grow to be so familiar with the awful change that even its sanctity is lost to me – and, Teacher, then I’ll hear, you know how willingly, of Him whose thoughts were so much with the Poor, and who had compassion for all human sorrow! I am now, gentlemen, to propose to you as a toast a public Body without whose efficient aid this preparation so much to be desired, for Christianity at home, cannot be effected; and, by whom, if we earnestly desire such preparation, we must stand, giving them all the support it is in our power to render. I mean, the Board of Health. We have a transparent instance very near at hand of the mysterious arrangement that no great thing can possibly be done without a certain amount of nonsense being talked about it in the way of objection. Much as I respected friend the Ex-unprotected Female was confounded, at that family dinner party where we last heard of her, by some alarming conversation respecting the sparrows in Mr. Paxton's gutters, and the casks of gunpowder sent to the Great Exposition under the semblance of coffee, so, I dare say, it has been the fortune of most of us to hear the Board of Health discussed in various congenial circles. I've never been able to make out, distinctly, more than two objections to it; the first is expressed in a long word which I seem to have heard pronounced with a sort of violent relish on two or three previous occasions – Centralization. Now, gentlemen, in the year before last, in the time of the cholera, you had an excellent opportunity of judging between this Centralization on the one hand, and what I may be permitted to call Vestrylization on the other. You may recollect the Reports of the Board of Health on the subject of cholera, and you may recollect the Reports of the discussions on the same subject at some Vestry Meetings. I have the honour – of which I am very sensible – to be one of the constituent body of the amazing Vestry of Marylebone; and if you chance to remember (as you very likely do) what the Board of Health did, in Glasgow and other places, and what my vestry said, you will probably agree with me that between this so-called Centralization, and this Vestrylization, the former is by far the best thing to stand by in an emergency. My vestry even took the high ground of denying the existence of cholera in any unusual degree. And though that denial had no greater effect upon the disease than my vestry’s denial of the existence of Jacob’s Island had upon the Earth about Bermondsey, the circumstance may be suggestive to you in considering what Vestrylization is, when a few noisy little landlords interested in the maintenance of abuses, struggle to the foremost ranks; and what the so-called Centralization is when it is a combination of active business habits, sound medical knowledge, and a zealous sympathy with the sufferings of the people. But gentlemen there is, as I have said, another objection to the Board of Health. It is conveyed in the shorter and less alarming word – delay. Now, I need not suggest to you that it would surely be unreasonable to object to a first-rate chronometer that it wouldn't go – when its owner wouldn't wind it up. Yet I cannot help thinking, I must plainly avow, that the Board of Health is in the parallel position of being excellently adapted for going, being very willing and anxious to go, but not being able to go, because its lawful master has fallen into a gentle slumber, and forgotten to set it a-going. As a component particle of this association which my Noble friend in the chair considers useful as a gentle stimulus to governments, I must take leave to say that I do not, and can not, consider the Board of Health responsible for delay in sanitary reforms. Lord Robert Grosvenor referred just now to Lord Castlereagh’s favourite adage, that you must never hallo until you are out of the Wood. It occurred to me that with a very slight addition that would be an excellent adage for all Sanitary Reformers: to wit, that you must never hallo until you're out of the Woods – and Forests. If I may venture to make the remark under the presiding of my Noble friend whom we are all glad to see, and would all have been so happy to retain, in those leafy regions, I would say that since the remote period when ‘the noble Savage’ ran wild there, some other Nobles – not savages by any means, but gentlemen of high accomplishments and worth – have' gone a little wild in the same districts and wandered rather more languidly out of the direct path than is quite good for the public. You will of course understand that in saying this, I merely express my own individual misgivings. But I will tell you why I entertain them. Considering the Report of the Board of Health on Intra-mural Interments to be one of the most remarkable social documents ever issued under any Government, and an honour to the country and the time, I cannot but believe that the Board of Health would have advanced a little quicker in the carrying-out of the measure founded upon it but for some stoppage in the way above them which we don't clearly see. Remembering the vigour and perspicuity with which they have indicated to us the chief Sanitary evils it is essential to remove, I cannot hold them responsible for the prolonged existence of those evils. As with omission, so with commission. Remembering how clearly they showed us the advantages of a continuous supply of soft water, and how they pointed out to us an abundant source of supply, I cannot cast upon them the blame of a measure which gives us only hard water. Remembering how they dwelt upon the necessity of a combination of water-works, I cannot charge them with the injury of perpetuated separation. Remembering how they demonstrated to us that disease must lurk in houses founded over cesspools or built upon foundations saturated with cesspool matter, I cannot hold them responsible for a system of drainage which does not remove these ills. And therefore, gentlemen, both for the good they have done, and for the good they may be fairly assumed to have had the will to do, but not the power, I commend the Board of Health to you as especially deserving and requiring the sympathy, the encouragement, and the support of the Metropolitan Sanitary Association. I shall beg, in conclusion, to couple with the toast the name of a Noble Lord, one of its members, whose Earnestness in all good works no man can doubt, and who always has the courage to face the and commonest of all cants; that is to say, the cant about the cant of philanthropy and benevolence. I propose to you Lord Ashley and the Board of Health.	18510510	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Kensington">Kensington</a>
262	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/262	Metropolitan Rowing Club	Chairman's Speech at the Metropolitan Rowing Club (7 May 1866).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1866-05-07">1866-05-07</a>			1866-05-07_Speech_ Metropolitan-Rowing-Club	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Chairman's Speech at the Metropolitan Rowing Club' (7 May 1866).</span><span> </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1866-05-07_Speech_ Metropolitan-Rowing-Club">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1866-05-07_Speech_ Metropolitan-Rowing-Club</a><span>.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London+Tavern">London Tavern</a>		<p>Having asked the indulgence of those present, as he was labouring under a bad cold, he went on to remark that he could not avoid the remembrance of what very poor things the amateur rowing clubs on the Thames were in the early days of his noviciate; not to mention the difference in the build of the boats. He could not get on in the beginning without being a pupil under an anomalous creature called a ‘fireman-waterman’, who wore an evidently tall hat, and a perfectly unaccountable uniform, of which it might be said that if it were less adapted for one thing than another, that thing was fire. He recollected that this gentleman had on some former day won a King’s prize wherry, and they used to go about in this accursed wherry, he and a partner, doing all the hard work, while the fireman drank all the beer.</p> <p>The river was very much clearer, freer, and cleaner in those days than these; but he was persuaded that this philosophical old boatman could no more have dreamt of seeing the spectacle which had taken place on Saturday, or of seeing these clubs matched for skill and speed, then he should dare to announce through the usual authentic channels that he was to be heard of at the bar below, and that he was perfectly prepared to accommodate Mr. James Mace if he meant business. Nevertheless, he could recollect that he had turned out for a spurt a few years ago on the River Thames with an occasional Secretary, who should be nameless, and some other Eton boys, and that he could hold his own against them. More recently still, the last time that he rode down from Oxford he was supposed to have covered himself with honour, though he must admit that he found the locks so picturesque as to require more examination for the discovery of their beauty.</p> <p>But what he wanted to say was this: though his ‘fireman-waterman’ was one of the greatest humbugs that ever existed, he taught him what an honest, healthy, manly sport this was. The waterman would bid them pull away, and assure them that they were certain of winning in some race. And he would remark that aquatic sports never entailed a moment’s cruelty, or a moment’s pain, upon any living creature. Rowing men pursued recreation under circumstances which brace their muscles, and cleared the cobwebs from their minds. He assured them that he regarded such clubs as these as a ‘national blessing’. They owed, it was true, a vast deal to steam power – as was sometimes proved at matches on the Thames – but, at the same time, they were greatly indebted to all the tended to keep up a healthy, manly tone. He understood that there had been a committee selected for the purpose of arranging a great amateur regatta, which was to take place off Putney in the course of the season that was just begun. He could not abstain from availing himself of the occasion to express a hope that the committee would successfully carry on its labour to a triumphant result, and that they should see upon the Thames, in the course of this summer, such a brilliant sight as had never been seen there before. To secure this there must be some hard work, skilful combinations, and rather large subscriptions. But although the aggregate result must be great, if by no means followed that it need to be at all large in its individual details.</p> <p>In conclusion, Dickens went on to to make a laughable comparison between the paying off or purification of the National Debt, just advocated by Mr. Gladstone in his budget speech, and the purification of the river Thames.</p>				18660507	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a>
260	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/260	General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival 1852	Speech at the General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival (5 April 1852).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1852-04-05">1852-04-05</a>			1852-05-04_Speech_General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival-1852	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Speech at the General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival' (5 April 1852).</span><span> </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1852-05-04_Speech_General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival-1852">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1852-05-04_Speech_General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival-1852</a><span>.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London+Tavern">London Tavern</a>		<p>He could assure them, he said, that he really was not using a common form of words, but was honestly expressing the feeling at the moment when he avowed himself at some loss, both to think the company for their hearty greeting, and to thank his generous friend in the Chair for the terms in which he had referred to him. Sir Anthony Absolute was of the opinion that in love of affairs it was best to begin with a little aversion; and if he (Mr. Dickens) could only have started with a little coldness on the part of his friend in the Chair, or even a moderate warmth on the part of the audience, it was quite unknown into what an admirable speech he should have presently soared. But a tribute so noble, and a welcome so cordial, he found to be very bad preparations indeed for such an achievement.</p> <p>Before referring to the Fund, which is the main object of interest with all of them my evening, he would take leave to say that he was exceedingly glad that his friend, the chairman, it happened to allude to him, and that company, in his Stage-Managerial capacity; because he did particularly desire to express his conviction in such a company, of all others, that the dramatic profession was very ill served by some misjudging friends, when they supposed that it could possibly be injured by, or could possibly regard with anything like resentment or jealousy, Amateur Theatricals. He had, for a brief space, assumed the functions of an amateur manager and actor, in furtherance of a cause in which his warmest sympathies and aspirations were (like those of his friend in the Chair) enlisted; and to represent that the stage could possibly be injured, or could fairly claim any right to consider itself injured by such performances was to exclude it from the liberal position assumed in such wise by every other liberal art. And literature there were received, freely, and, without cavil, amateurs of all kinds: physicians, lawyers, officers of the army and navy, merchants’ clerks who travelled and saw strange countries, lords and ladies of various degrees, – anybody who had anything to say, and possibly, now, and then, somebody had nothing to say. Through the whole of the last season, a gallery was opened in Pall Mall for the exhibition of pictures of amateur artists; he never heard that the members of the Royal Academy were much aggrieved by the circumstance, or very desperately alarmed by its public patronage, and success. So, in music: he believed it was generally acknowledged that some excellent lessons have been given to the public and the profession by the knowledge and patience of amateurs in chorus singing, and that the production of some of the most admired works of the old masters were due to the exertions of amateurs, without the least injury to the regular professors of the art. The liberal and generous feeling which thus distinguished other kindred arts, surely was to be claimed for the stage, as <em>its</em> just characteristic too; and could not be better claimed for it than at the anniversary celebration of its most comprehensive and its least restricted institution.</p> <p>With reference to the General Theatrical Fund, he had been so often before them as one of the Trustees, that he found it very difficult to say anything relative to it which he had not said before, or which they did not know as well as himself. Independently of the fact that their Fund had been established seven years, and that their position was improving every time they met, the eloquence of their chairman in proposing the toast of the evening, and their Treasurer’s admirable acknowledgement of it, had completely exhausted the subject, and he now stood before them a bankrupt Trustee without a leg to stand upon. If he could only have found one good vice in the management, he would have been well set up in business for the evening, and might have remained in a perfectly self-satisfied condition until next year. If, for instance, he could only have complained that the institution was expensively managed, that there was nobody connected with the management, who had any sympathy with the unfortunate members of the Dramatic profession: that none of them had had any experience of the habits or struggles of poor actors; if hr could only have said that the Treasurer was a stern, austere man, altogether a hard-favoured person, severe of countenance and very difficult to approach; or if he could have said that the institution was exclusive in its nature, one that required candidates for admission to its benefits to have complied with some trifling condition – reasonable, but not easy, such as having held an engagement for two or three consecutive years in the moon, or having appeared in Sir Edward Lytton’s <em>Money</em> two or three hundred nights before the Esquimaux – if he could have found any such trifling ground of complaint, he would have been at no loss for a topic. But, whereas in the General Theatrical Fund, the local comedian was not expected to have fulfilled those consecutive engagements in the moon; the tragedian was not expected to have played Evelyn two or three hundred consecutive nights in the icy regions of the North; Fenella, the sister of Masaniello, was not refused relief because she was only a dancer, nor Masaniello himself because he was only a singer.</p> <p>He had nothing left to say in lieu of that great speech he might, and indisputably would, under these happiest circumstances have made, but that he wanted a grievance. Indeed, he was so utterly utter loss for a grievance that he had had serious thoughts of abandoning these festivals altogether, and taking to attending those banquets which he sometimes saw advertised to take place in the neighbourhood of Freemasons’ Hall, where he was informed that he could find all these causes of complaint ready made to his hand. Like his friend, Mr. Buckstone, however, he did not wish to indulge in any unkind expressions towards the other theatrical funds, some old and esteemed friends of his were connected with them, and as he would wish to make them also the friends of this institution. What he would suggest, afar off, was that these Funds should make some change in their constitutions adopted to the altered times, and he thought there was nothing so likely to reconcile all differences, and to do so much good to all parties, as a happy marriage.</p> <p>All he would say in his official position was that the General Theatrical Fund was progressing steadily, that they had not the slightest difficulty to state to that company, and that the institution was steadily and gallantly supported by the members of the profession. All who had the least theatrical experience must know how necessary it was to any play, in order to ensure success, that it should possess some female interest. No institution could succeed that was not backed by that influence; and, therefore, it was with great pleasure that he learned from their worthy Secretary that a large portion of the subscribers consisted of the gentler sex. Nor were they wanting there, to shed on the assembly a grace which nothing else could give to it; for whether he looked before or behind him (and here he might be allowed to say that he almost regretted, to occupy one of the posts of honour, and wished he was situated among some of his friends in a more private situation at the side of the room) –, he met with nothing but beaming faces, encouraging and gentle looks. On the part of his brother Trustees, and on his own behalf, he begged to acknowledge the toast with many thanks; and he begged to assure those present that they need not be in the least afraid, that evening, of troubling the Treasurer or the Trustees by swelling their contributions and support of the fund to any inconvenient amount; for they were perfectly ready to bear, with the utmost cheerfulness, the heaviest total with which they might think fit to burden them.</p>				18520405	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a>
259	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/259	General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival 1851	Chairman's speeches at the General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival (14 April 1851).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1851-04-14">1851-04-14</a>			1851-04-14_Speech_General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Chairman's speeches at the General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival' (14 April 1851).</span><span> </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1851-04-14_Speech_General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1851-04-14_Speech_General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival</a><span>.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London+Tavern">London Tavern</a>		<p>In reply the chairman begged to be allowed to offer them his deepest thanks for the manner in which the last toast had been responded to. He deeply felt the honour conferred upon him, having attended the meeting as a matter of duty, though placed from peculiar circumstances in a highly painful and difficult position. If his services were of any value to the institution, he said, he could assure its members that those services were always freely and heartily at their disposal. He would say no more upon the subject, but proceed to a toast which he doubted not would be warmly received and responded to.</p> <p>He had always taken the highest interest in the prosperity of the Drama, because he believed that a noble Drama tended to purify the human heart, and was the most important agent in the work of education and civilization. He would not dismiss the hope that the British Drama would ultimately ‘look up’, after a pretty long contemplation of its feet; because he could not believe that any art which so appealed to the various passions and affections of human nature could become extinct. A love of the Drama in some shape was implanted in the breast of all people. When the officers of Captain Cook’s ships, who had left their children enacting mimic plays in this country, arrived in the South Sea Uslands, they found the untutored natives doing the same beneath the shadow of their broad-leaved trees. It constituted one of the distinctions which separated man from the brute creation, and he should continue in that belief until he heard of the monkeys producing a play, or the elephants coming out in a good jog-trot, see-saw comedy.</p> <p>It had often been his misfortune to hear the Drama decried by people of the best intentions because of its abuses. Now doubt the Drama had its abuses like other institutions, but so far from that being a reason why they should decry it, it was a reason why they should endeavour to improve and elevate it. In some shape you would always have it; and, depend upon it, if you would not have it at its best, with your own help and consent, you would have it at its worst in your own despite. Perhaps the one reason why the Drama did not hold so good a position in this country as it ought to do, was to be found in the fact that, up to a comparatively recent period, English legislation had drearily discouraged it, and its professors had not been looked upon with respect to which they were justly entitled. But notwithstanding all discouragement, he hoped that it could, and believed that it would, be restored to its proper position among the Arts; and in no way could they better assist the endeavour to raise it, than by extending their support and assistance to those who had always shown their anxiety to maintain the respectability and honour of Dramatic Profession.</p>; <p>The chairman then said that the next toast he had to give was the Professional Ladies and Gentlemen who delighted them with their exertions that evening. After what they had heard and witnessed he felt sure that he need do no more to recommend that toast to them, than to remind them that the whole of those Ladies and Gentlemen gave their assistance, not only gratuitously, but cheerfully, to aid the cause which they had met to promote, and he was sure that they wished for no greater reward than the knowledge that they had been instrumental in promoting the prosperity of the General Theatrical Fund.</p> <p>The Chairman said that he had now come to the last toast of the evening. There was a story told of an Eastern potentate, that when any intelligence of mischief having occurred was brought to him, he always used to exclaim, ‘Who is she?’ – invariably anticipating that it must be caused by a woman. In this country they had a somewhat better application of the same idea, for whenever there was a cause of benevolence to be served, they had only to say ‘Where is she?’ and the answer was sure to be ‘She is here'. The Drama was full of beautiful specimens of woman’s love and woman’s wit, but without stopping to draw comparisons between the characters of Desdemona, Juliet, or other interesting creatures of the poet's brain, he would conclude by giving them, ‘The Ladies’.</p>			Gentlemen, in offering to you the loyal and always acceptable toast, ‘The Queen’, I have the pleasure of informing you that the Secretary has, this morning, received Her Majesty’s usual annual donation of one hundred pounds to the funds of the Institution. ‘The Queen.’ Gentlemen, I am sure it will not be necessary for me in presenting to you the next toast, to remind any gentleman present – it being sufficiently known to all parties – of the great interest taken by the illustrious individual whose health I am about to propose, in all the arts and sciences, or the zealous co-operation which His Royal Highness Prince Albert has always shown to any measure devised for their encouragement. At the present time, that is more particularly brought under the attention of the public through the exertions now being made on the suggestion of His Royal highness, to open within a few days, an Exhibition of the world’s progress in the arts and sciences in the magnificent and surprising Palace of Glass, which is, of itself, one of the most remarkable works of art of the age. ‘His Royal Highness Prince Albert, Albert Prince of Wales, and the rest of the Royal Family.’ Gentlemen, the next toast which I have to propose is one, in reference to which the gallant deeds of the members of the professions that are the subjects of it, speak sufficiently in themselves, and need no words of mine, – ‘The Army and Navy.’ Gentlemen, I have so often have the gratification of bearing my testimony in this place to the usefulness of the excellent institution in whose behalf we are assembled, that I should be sensible of the disadvantage of having nothing new to say to you in proposing the toast you all anticipate, if I were not relieved by the conviction that nothing new needs to be said, inasmuch as its old grounds of appeal to you can neither be weakened or strengthened by any advocacy of mine. Although the General Theatrical Fund, unlike some similar public institutions, is represented by no fabric of stone, or brick, or glass – like that wonderful achievement of my ingenious friend Mr. Paxton, of which the great demerit, as we learn from the best authorities, is, that it ought to have fallen down before it was quite built, and would by no means consent to do it. Although, I say, the General Theatrical Fund is represented by no great architectural edifice, it is nevertheless as plain a fact, rests upon as solid a foundation, and carries as erect a front as any building in the world. And the best that its exponent, standing in this place, can do, is to point it out to all beholders, saying simply, ‘There it is! Judge of it for yourselves.’ But, gentlemen, though there may be no necessity for me to state what the General Theatrical Fund is, it may be desirable (with reference to that portion of the present company who have hitherto had but a limited acquaintance with it), that I should state what it is not. It is not a theatrical association whose benefits are confined to a small body of actors, while its claims to public supports are uniformly preferred in the name of the whole histrionic art. It is not a theatrical association adapted to a state of things entirely past and gone, and no more a feature of the present time than groves of highwaymen hanging in chains on Hounslow Heath, or strings of packhorses between London and Birmingham. It is not a rich old gentlemen, with the gout in his vitals, brushed up once a year to look as vigorous as possible, and taken out for a public airing by the few survivors of a large family of nephews and nieces, who keep him laid up in lavender all the rest of the year as a mighty delicate old gentleman: then ask his poor relations, whom they lock out with a double turn of the street door key, why they don't come in and enjoy his money? It is not a theatrical association, which says to the poor actor, ‘You have only to strut and fret your hour, for so many consecutive nights and for so many seasons, on this stage – whereon it is impossible you ever can set foot; you have only to declaim for so many consecutive nights, in English – here, upon these boards where the English tongue is never heard; you have only to force yourself between these bars (of music), and to make your way – you, an unwieldy Swan of Avon, into this aviary of singing birds – you have only to do this, and you shall come into your share of the advantages of the fund which was raised from the public, in the name, and for the love, of your all-embracing art.’ No, gentlemen, if there be any such funds, this Fund is not of that kind. This Fund is a theatrical association, addressed to the means, and adapted to the wants – and sore and dire those often are – of the whole theatrical profession throughout England. It is a society in which the word ‘exclusiveness’ is unknown. It is a society which says to the actor, ‘You may be the Brigand, or the Hamlet, or the Ghost, or the Court Physician, or the King's whole army; you may do the light business, or the heavy business, or the comic business, or the serious business, or the eccentric business; you may be the captain who courts the young lady, whose guardian unaccountably persists in dressing himself a hundred years behind the time; or you may be the lady's younger brother, in white kid gloves and trousers, whose position in the family would appear to be to listen to all the female members of it when they sing, and to shake hands with them between all the verses; or you may be the Baron who gives the fête, and who sits on the sofa under the canopy, with the Baroness, to behold the fête; or you may be the peasant who swells the drinking chorus at the fête, and who may usually be observed to turn his glass upside-down immediately before drinking the Baron’s health; or you may be the Clown who takes away the door-step of the house where there's a dinner party; or you may be the first stout gentleman who issues forth out of that house, on the false alarm of fire, and precipitates himself into the area; or you may be a Fairy, residing for ever in a revolving Star, in the Regions of Pleasure, or the Palaces of Delight; or you may even be a Witch in Macbeth, bearing a marvellous resemblance to the Malcolm or Donalbain of the previous scenes with his wig hind-side before. But, be you what you may; be your path in the profession never so high or never so humble, this institution addresses you, and offers you the means of doing good to yourself, and doing good to other people.’ Nor let it be forgotten, gentlemen, that the General Theatrical Fund is essentially a Provident Institution. Its members are of a class whose earnings are, at the best, precarious; and they are required to lay by, out of their weekly salary, when they get it, a certain small weekly sum. This they do through every difficulty, with constancy that cannot be too much admired; and the first effect of the institution on them, is, to engender a habit of forethought and self-denial. By becoming a member of this society the actor is placing himself in a position to secure his own right at no man's wrong; and when in old age or times of distress he makes his claim to it, he will be entitled to say, ‘I do not compromise my independence herein; I do not disgrace my children; I am neither a beggar nor a suppliant; I come to reap the harvest from the seed which I sowed long ago.’ Therefore it is, gentlemen, that in asking you to support this Institution, I never will hold out to you the inducement, that you are performing an act of charity in the common acceptation of the word. Of all the abuses of that much abused term, none have so raised my indignation as some that I have heard in this room. If you help this Fund you will not be performing an act of charity, but you will be helping those who help themselves, and you will be coming to the aid of men who put their own shoulders to the wheel of their sunken carriage, and did not stand idly by while it sank deeper in the mire. Have you help this Fund you will not be performing an act of charity, but you will do an act of Christian kindness, benevolence, encouragement. You will do an act of justice – you will do an act of gratitude. But I will not so wrong a body of men struggling so manfully for independence, as to solicit you to perform, in their behalf, an act of charity. Gentlemen, I have used the term ‘gratitude’. Let any of us look back upon his past life, and say whether he owes no gratitude to the actor’s art! Not because it is often exercised in the midst of sickness, poverty, and misfortune, – other arts, God knows, are liable to the like distresses! Not because the actor sometimes comes from scenes of affliction and misfortune – even from death itself – to play his part before us; all men must do that violence to their feelings, in passing on to the fulfilment of their duties in the great strife and fight of life. But because in the relief afforded to us by the actor’s art, we always find some reflection, humorous or pathetic, sombre or grotesque, of all the best things that we feel and know. If any man were to tell me that he owed no great acknowledgement to the stage, I would ask him the one question, whether he remembered his first play? Oh, gentlemen, if you can but carry back your thoughts to that night, and think a little of the bright and harmless world it opened to your view, full well assured am I that we shall hear of it expressively from Mr. Cullenford, when he comes to read out the donations by and by! Gentlemen, this is the sixth year the members of this society have met together in this room. This is the sixth time your child has been brought down and introduced to the company after dinner. His nurse, a very worthy person of the name of Buckstone, with excellent characters from several places, is here, and will presently speak to you regarding the health of the child; and will, I have no doubt, be able to tell you that is chest is perfectly sound, and its general health in the best condition. Long may it continue so – long may it thrive and grow! Long may we meet here to congratulate each other on its increased and increasing prosperity, and longer than the line of Banquo may the line of figures be, in which its patriotic share in the National Debt shall be stated a hundred years hence, in the account books of the Governor and Company of the Bank of England! I beg to give you, ‘Prosperity to the General Theatrical Fund!’	18510414	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a>
258	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/258	General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival 1850	Speech at the General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival (25 March 1850).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1850-03-25">1850-03-25</a>			1850-03-25_Speech_General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Speech at the General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival' (25 March 1850).</span><span> </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1850-03-25_Speech_General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1850-03-25_Speech_General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival</a><span>.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London+Tavern">London Tavern</a>					Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, Before I proceed to discharge the very simple office entrusted to me, you will perhaps allow me to congratulate you upon the very agreeable mode of spending Quarter Day – a day not always connected with agreeable associations, or devoted to such hilarity. Perhaps we will also allow me, gentlemen, to renew my annual congratulations on the prosperity of the General Theatrical Fund, and the courage and perseverance with which its members, many of them under very unpropitious circumstances indeed, continue to fulfil their task. I never go into any of our smaller London theatres, or even into country theatres – such a one for instance as I was at the other night, where no particular piece belonged to the immense night in the bill, where generally people walked in and out, where a sailor fought a combat with anyone he chanced to meet and who happened to be in possession of a sword, – I never go into any of the neglected temples of the drama, where it is so hard to get a living, but I come out again with a considerably strengthened and increased admiration of those who are the members of this Fund, and who, with constancy and perseverance, bear up under the greatest difficulties. It is, I say, an extraordinary and a remarkable fact, and an excellent example to the members of other and more lauded professions. Gentlemen, I now come to the toast which I have to propose to you. I shall not express, as I ought to express according to all precedent, my sorrow that it has not fallen into better hands; although it might easily have done that, to tell the truth, I am exceedingly glad to hold it in mine, as it gives me the opportunity of publicly rendering my humble tribute of respect to the character and exertions of a gentleman to whom this fund is much indebted, who is connected in no slight degree with the public enjoyment, and in no slight degree with the successes and hopes of the English Drama, its literature and art. I mean our chairman, Mr. Webster. I knew very well you would give a cordial reception to his name. I was well assured of it because I esteem, as every friend of this institution must esteem, the very great importance of his encouragement, because I feel it is honourable to him and to it, that setting aside all considerations of this Fund or that Fund, of this theatre or that theatre, he puts himself at the head of a society which comprehends all theatres, and which includes all the members of the profession of which he is an old and great supporter. I felt assured, gentlemen, of the sympathy of all this company who are not connected with the profession, because our chairman has been now, for a long time, the manager of two admirably conducted theatres; because he has never been behind the public requirements in any respect, but has even outstripped them; because he has a very strong demand upon our respect and admiration. My friend, Mr. Buckstone, admirably expressed in one sentence a capital summary of his merits, that ‘he not only employed a great number of actors, but paid them too’; and really, gentlemen, in drinking such a toast as the present, we must not forget what a very difficult and arduous career such a manager has to encounter; what untoward circumstances and great difficulties he has to struggle against, and how likely he is to be injured by any depression in the public mind, from whatever cause. Yet, notwithstanding all this, he has evinced a steadiness of purpose not to close his theatre, night after night, whatever may be the great temptations he has had to do so, being too mindful of the poor hangers-on dependent upon him for their daily bread, and who hope for the public support. Such a manager as this, gentlemen, Mr. Webster has always been; And when we add to this, that for many years he has fought a manly, stand-up English battle against very powerful rivals of various countries, English, Swedish, French, Italian, and has encountered all kinds of strange animals, lions, tigers, Ethiopians and Nightingales; and when we add to this list that it is sometimes softly whispered, though I do not believe it myself, that certain members of the theatrical profession, on rare and particular occasions, at great distances apart, are a little capricious and difficult to deal with: when we take all these circumstances into our consideration, I think we shall agree that he has come very nobly through his difficulties, and looks exceedingly well tonight after all that he has gone through. I cannot, gentlemen, in conclusion, express my sense of Mr. Webster's position in reference to the Drama, and in reference to this society , more to my own satisfaction, at all events, than by relating little story (a very short one) that was told to me last night of an exceedingly intelligent and strictly veracious friend of mine, an American Sea Captain. Gentlemen, once upon a time, he had as a passenger upon board his ship a young lady of great personal attractions, they used that phrase as one entirely new to you, and five young gentlemen, also passengers, and who in the course of a short voyage all fell desperately in love with the young lady. The young lady, liking all the five young gentlemen, and liking them all equally well, felt herself placed in a position of some difficulty, and in this emergency applied for advice to my friend the Captain. My friend the Captain, himself a man of an original turn of mind, proposed to the young lady that she should jump overboard, he having a well-manned boat alongside to prevent the possibility of accidents, and that she should marry the man that jumped in after her. She was very much struck by it, and it being summer time and fine weather, and naturally fond of bathing, decided to accept the proposition. Accordingly, on a certain morning, when her five admirers were all on deck, she went over the side head foremost. Four of the five immediately plunged in after her; and, said the young lady to the Captain when they were all on deck again, ‘What am I to do now? See how wet they are.’ Said the Captain to the young lady, ‘Take the dry one!’ Which she did. Now the way in which I adapt this story to the present purpose is simply by reversing it: that the British drama having gone overboard, and a great many admirers having looked on coolly, and one having gone in and kept his head above water for a long time, my advice to this society would have been, ‘Take the wet one.’ And you have got him. I am thoroughly glad you have, and I beg to propose to you, in all sincerity, to drink his health with acclamation. On behalf of the Hon. Mr. Justice Talfourd, and my brother Trustee, I beg to return you my best thanks, and particularly to my friend Mr. Webster, for his kind mention of my name. The only embarrassment that I feel on these occasions is that I really don't know what we have to do. I might illustrate our position by a theatrical case. Perhaps you may have observed that when a young lady performs a piece of horsemanship, there are generally two or three ambiguous looking gentleman who follow Mr. Widdicombe about, and who are indispensable to the performance, though the lady never knows why or in what particular, but she is perfectly satisfied that they must be there, and that without them the thing could not possibly be done. I might suppose my friend Mr. Buckstone, in reference to this institution, to be the party representing Mr. Widdicombe, and Mr. Cullenford performing the pleasing act of Secretaryship upon the highly trained charger: well we, the Trustees, represent those attendants looking on so very hard after them.	18500325	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a>
256	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/256	General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival 1849	Speech at the General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival (21 May 1849).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1849-05-21">1849-05-21</a>			1849-05-21_Speech_General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Speech at the General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival' (21 May 1849).</span><span> </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1849-05-21_Speech_General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1849-05-21_Speech_General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival</a><span>.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London+Tavern">London Tavern</a>					Gentlemen, in hope that you will not object to a Trustee with a cold, however naturally you might object to a cold Trustee, I beg, in behalf of my absent colleagues, to return you their thanks for the honour you have rendered them, and on my own part to acknowledge the honour you have rendered me. And I am well assured, gentlemen, that I express their feelings no less than my own, when I congratulate the General Theatrical Fund on the brilliant assembly by which I am surrounded; and on its being presided over by a gentleman who has a triple claim on its consideration and respect. I do not mean to say, gentlemen, with Mrs. Malaprop’s own happy confusion of ideas, that the chairman is ‘like Cerberus, three gentlemen at once’; but I think I give utterance to the sentiment – to the general sentiment – of all this company, when I hail him as gracefully seated in his right place tonight, not only in consideration of his own talents and public position, but in memory of the genius of his immortal father, and in consideration of the many tender and sweet remembrances all England must associate with his accomplished wife. Gentlemen, if, like some Trustees on an infinitely larger scale – some of those legislative Trustees who occasionally refresh themselves with odd vagaries elsewhere – I might espy ‘strangers present’; though Heaven forbid that the sudden sharpness of my eyesight should be attended with the disastrous House of Commons consequences, and lead to the withdrawal of those fair ornaments of our society; but I say, if, with the proverbial clearness of vision of an Irish member, I might espy ‘strangers present,’ I would appeal to them confidently as the best judges whether their sex has ever had a gentler, better, truer exponent than the lady of whom I speak. Perchance, gentlemen, I would appeal to them to say whether her sitting among us at this time is not the crowning grace of our festivity. In common, gentlemen, both with the chairman and Secretary, I regret very much to miss at this board today the pleasant and familiar face of our Treasurer; I regret it selfishly for our sakes, for I can guess to how many faces his is imparting something of its own delightful cheerfulness and mirth at this moment. But as a less important officer of this institution, it is a great pleasure to me to confirm all that you have heard stated of its continued prosperity, and to bear my admiring testimony to the patience and perseverance with which its members contribute, many of them from very scanty and uncertain resources, those periodical sums which are to be a provision for their old age; to exult, as I annually do, in the refutation thus afforded to the sweeping charge of improvidence, which is somewhat thoughtlessly made, and as I conceive ungenerously, against the members of the theatrical profession, and other not dissimilar pursuits. Gentlemen, I always consider when I hear that charge made, that it is not sufficiently recollected that if you are born to the possession of a silver spoon, it may not be very difficult to apply yourself to the task of keeping it well polished on the side-board, but that if you are born to the possession of a wooden ladle instead, the process of transmuting it into that article of plate is often a very difficult and discouraging process. And most of all we should remember that it is so at a time of general trouble and distress. ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown’ indeed, in days when crowns of so many sorts, of gold, brass, and iron, are tumbling from the heads of the wearers; but the head that wears a mimic crown, and the hand that grasps a mimic sceptre, fare at such a season, worst of all; for then the peaceful, graceful arts of life go down, and the slighter ornaments of social existence are the first things crushed. Therefore, gentlemen, if the King of Sardinia cannot get into trouble without involving the King or Mr. Daggerwood’s Company; and if the leader of the Austrian armies cannot make a movement without affecting the leader of the business at the Theatre Royal, Little Pedlington, so much the more have we reason to rejoice in the continued prosperity of this institution – so much the more have we reason to rejoice in its floating on this sea of trouble; like the veritable sea-serpent, according to Captain McQuhae, with which it tallies in all its essential features, for it is apparently bent on a vigorous and determined object, with its head considerably above water, and drawing easily behind it a long train of useful circumstances. One other word, gentlemen, on the hopes of the Drama, and consequently on the hopes of the extended operations of this establishment, and I have done. When the chairman made his first admirable speech, I confess I had some doubts whether I quite agreed with him, but I was quite sure that if we did not agree, we should agree to differ; but when made that admirable other speech in reference to the Fund, I was happy to find that we were cordially agreed. Gentlemen, I allude to the regeneration of the Drama. I think it is next to impossible but that it must come to pass, because the Drama is founded on an eternal principle in human nature. I say it respectfully, I do not think it within the power of any potentate on earth, however virtuous, however munificent, however strong in the love and honour of a people, to raise the Drama up, or to pull the Drama down. In this room, in Windsor Castle, in an African hut, in a North American wigwam, there is the same inborn delight and interest in a living representation of the actions, passions, joys, and sorrows of mankind. In England, of all countries on the earth, this interest is purified and exalted by the loftiest masterpieces of human fancy, and the proudest monuments of human wit. Such an art, gentlemen, I hold to be imperishable; reverses it may suffer, from many causes, but ‘malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing’, to my thinking, can root it out.	18490521	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a>
255	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/255	General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival 1848	Toasts given at the General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival (17 April 1848).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1848-04-17">1848-04-17</a>			1848-04-17_Speech_General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Toasts given at the General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival' (17 April 1848).</span><span> </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1848-04-17_Speech_General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1848-04-17_Speech_General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival</a><span>.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London+Tavern">London Tavern</a>		He had, he said, never been in limbo, and therefore his knowledge of the Old Bailey was limited; and as the sheriff had been pleased to remark that but few, if any actors, had been in ‘durance vile’, he thought he might return the compliment by saying that but few sheriffs had been resident in Newgate. With respect to the speech of the gallant officer, who returned thanks for the Navy, he could assure him that though his friend Captain Cuttle was not present, he would most indubitably ‘take a note of it’. ‘Good wine’, as Rosalind says, ‘needs no bush’; so a good play needs no epilogue; a good book no preface; and a good toast but few words. It was conventionally supposed that actors were an improvident race; but he would maintain that it was more creditable to those who yielded up out of so many shillings so many pence to a fund for their decayed brethren, than those who hoarded up hundreds. And he would assert that, in the profession, there were a number of highly honourable, talented and striving men and women, of whose daily lives many of the company then assembled might take an example. Dickens then pronounced a high eulogium on the talents of the chairman, who, he said, had written the best comedy since Goldsmith’s time; and as to his works of fiction, they were known and appreciated by all the world. He concluded by calling on the company to drink his health.; He had, he said, but half a dozen words to say. The Muses were ladies; the Graces were ladies; some of the best writers were ladies; some of the best characters in tragedy and comedy were ladies; the brightest portion of our existence were ladies. He would, therefore, give ‘The Ladies’.				18480417	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a>
244	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/244	General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival 1847	Toast at the General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival (29 March 1847).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1847-03-29">1847-03-29</a>			1847-03-29_Speech_General-Theatrical-Fund-Dinner	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'General Theatrical Anniversary Festival' </span><span>(29 March 1847). </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1847-03-29_Speech_General-Theatrical-Fund-Dinner">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1847-03-29_Speech_General-Theatrical-Fund-Dinner</a>.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London+Tavern">London Tavern</a>					Gentlemen, it is well for me, and better for you, that the admirable exposition we have heard from my friend on my left of the claims and merits of the General Theatrical Fund, and its immense superiority in its freedom from exclusive restrictions to any other institution having any similar but narrower object, leaves nothing to be added on that head: though the case is so clear and so strong, and has always in its common sense and justice interested me so earnestly, that I could hold forth on this theme ‘until my eyelids could no longer wag’, and am happy to be relieved of the danger of producing any influence on your eyelids by dealing with it at all. As it has been written of Vice, that she is A monster of such hideous mien, As to be hated needs but to be seen. so, I am sure, it might be written of the General Theatrical Fund, that its objects are: so worthy and so much its own As to be favoured, need but to be known. And better known they never can be, than from the lips which have proclaimed them to the room this night. There is, however, gentlemen, one point that seems to me to arise naturally out of the observations of our distinguished President, and at which I cannot help just glancing as I go along. Hope lingered at the bottom of a box in ancient days, as we are told: I cannot help fancying that I descry her lingering yet, at the bottom of those two strong-boxes of the Covent Garden and Drury Lane Theatrical Funds, to offer solid consolation to the General Theatrical Fund in time to come. For as the natural recipients of that treasure pass away in natural course, and no one among them bears in his hand ‘a glass that shows me many more’ – or any more – I cannot help fancying that some portion of the garnered wealth must come our way at last, and float into our roomy coffers. Gentlemen, I hardly think it possible that two such large golden camels can entirely pass through the eyes of two such little needles; and when an institution has arisen, so broad and free as this is, which extends its advantages, not to the pale shades of two dead and buried companies of actors, but to the whole theatrical profession throughout England, I hold it would be a faint-hearted blinking of the question not to avow what most of us here must surely feel – a confident belief that to such resources it may justly, and of right, look for valuable endowment in the days to come. It is ill ‘waiting for dead men’s shoes’, I know; but it is quite another matter waiting for shoes that have been made for people who can never be born to try them on. I come now, gentlemen, to propose to you a toast which is uppermost, I dare say, in the thoughts of everybody present, which is ‘the very head and front’ of the occasion, and the cause which brings us together; which is, and ever must be, inseparably associated with the honour, dignity, and glory of the English stage; with its revival in splendour and magnificence from ruin and rubbish, with its claims to be respected as an art and as a noble means of general instruction and improvement. To whom could such a toast apply, if not to our chairman, Mr. Macready? Of whom, gentlemen – so graceful and appropriate is the position he now occupies among us – I would say, if I may paraphrase what he knows well, that nothing in the Chair became him like the taking of it. It is as generous and true in him – at the head of his profession, and at the zenith of a proud and prosperous career, to take part with this Fund, and to be heard in this pace urging its claims with a manly earnestness, because it is not restrictive, and because it does not favour a few, and because it addresses itself to the great body of actors, and most of all to those who most need it, – as it must be of enduring service to the institution to receive such high and valuable testimony. Gentlemen, it would be difficult for me to find terms in which to discharge the duty of proposing our chairman’s health, in the difficulty I always feel as to the separation of his name from sentiments of strong personal affection and attachment, if I were not happily relieved by the knowledge that, in your breasts as well as mine, the mere mention of Mr. Macready’s name awakens a host of eloquent associations, – Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, grey-haired Lear, Virginius, Werner, and a host of others, speak for him within us, like spirits. We once again forget the encircling walls of his Covent Garden Theatre, or of Drury Lane – theatres then with nothing infamous to mock the lesson that the poet taught or shame the woman-student of it – and look upon old Rome, its senate and its army, or the Forest of Arden with its gnarled and melancholy boughs, or Swinstead Abbey Gardens with the cruel king upon his death-bed, or Prospero’s enchanted island, or any of those scenes of airy nothings that he made plain and palpable. Oh! if one touch of nature makes the whole world kin, think, gentlemen, for how much of the kindred feeling that is amongst us tonight, or at any time, we are indebted to such an art, and such a man! May we be more and more indebted to him, year by year, for very many years to come! May we yet behold the English drama – this is a hope to which I always cling – in some theatre of his own, rising proudly from its ashes, into new and vigorous existence. And may we, in the reception we now give his name, express all this, and twenty times as much; including the past, the present, and the future; and give him reason years hence to remember this occasion, with something of the pleasure and delight that we have through him derived from it ourselves! I beg to propose to you to drink the health of our chairman, Mr. Macready.	18470329	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a>
235	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/235	For the Hospital for Sick Children	Speech given to fundraise for the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street (9 February 1858).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1858-02-09">1858-02-09</a>			1858-02-09_Speech_Hospital_for_Sick_Children	Dickens, Charles. 'For the Hospital for Sick Children' (9 February 1858). <em>Dickens Search</em>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1858-02-09_Speech_Hospital_for_Sick_Children">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1858-02-09_Speech_Hospital_for_Sick_Children</a>.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Freemasons%27+Hall">Freemasons' Hall</a>		He hoped, he said, it would not be incompatible with the latest fashion, if he reminded the company that a large portion of the army were at this moment in India employed in punishing great treachery and great cruelty, and in upholding a government which, whatever its faults, had proved immeasurably superior to Asiatic rule. Of the army so employed he would say no more than to express his hope, in the words of the immortal Nelson applied to another service, that their humanity after the action might be as great as their valour in the field. This was a peaceful country, and we wished to love on the best terms with all our neighbours, and he therefore hoped that a certain obstructive branch of our national defence might never find it necessary to throw itself in the way of those gay military spirits who had recently announced their intention ‘to march far within the bowels of the land, without impediment’. For he had a strong misgiving that the naval capacity for understanding such practical jokes was none of the keenest, and that the gay spirits to whom he had alluded might, under certain possible contingencies, find themselves in a rather disagreeable dilemma. He begged to couple with this toast the name of Colonel Hamley, who had distinguished himself no less in his literary than in his military capacity.			Ladies and Gentlemen, It is one of my rules in life not to believe a man who may happen to tell me that he feels no interest in children. I hold myself bound to this principle by all kind consideration, because I know, as we all must, that any heart which could really toughen its affections and sympathies against those dear little people must be wanting in so many humanizing experiences of innocence and tenderness, as to be quite an unsafe monstrosity among men. Therefore I set the assertion down, whenever I happen to meet with it – which is sometimes, though not often – as an idle word, originating possibly in the genteel languor of the hour, and meaning about as much as that knowing social lassitude, which has used up the cardinal virtues and quite found out things in general, usually does mean. I suppose it may be taken for granted that we, who come together in the name of children and for the sake of children, acknowledge that we have an interest in them; indeed, I have observed since I sit down here that we are quite in a childlike state altogether, representing an infant institution, and not even yet a grown-up company. A few years are necessary to the increase of our strength and the expansion of our figure; and then these tables, which now have a few tucks in them, will be let out, and then this hall, which now sits so easily upon us, will be too tight and small for us. Nevertheless, it is likely that even we are not without our experience now and then of spoilt children. I do not mean of our own spoilt children, because nobody’s own children ever were spoilt, but I mean the disagreeable children of our particular friends. We know by experience what it is to have them down after dinner, and, across the rich perspective of a miscellaneous dessert to see, as in a black dose darkly, the family doctor looming in the distance. We know – I have no doubt we all know – what it is to assist at those little maternal anecdotes and table entertainments illustrated with imitations and descriptive dialogue which might not be inaptly called, after the manner of my friend Mr. Albert Smith, the toilsome ascent of Miss Mary and the eruption (cutaneous) of Master Alexander. We know what it is when those children won’t go to bed; we know how they prop their eyelids open with their forefingers when they will sit up; how, when they become fractious, they say aloud that they don’t like us, and our nose is too long, and why don’t we go? And we are perfectly acquainted with those kicking bundles which are carried off at last protesting. An eminent eye-witness told me that he was one of a company of learned pundits who assembled at the house of a very distinguished philosopher of the last generation, to hear him expound his stringent views concerning infant education and early mental development, and he told me that while the philosopher did this in very beautiful and lucid language, the philosopher’s little boy, for his part, edified the assembled sages by dabbling up to the elbows in an apple pie which had been provided for their entertainment, having previously anointed his hair with the syrup, combed it with his fork, and brushed it with his spoon. It is probable that we also have our similar experiences, sometimes, of principles that are not quite practice, and that we know people claiming to be very wise and profound about nations of men who show themselves to be rather weak and shallow about units of babies. But, ladies and gentlemen, the spoilt children whom I have to present to you after this dinner of today are not of this class. I have glanced at these for the easier and lighter introduction of another, a very different, a far more numerous, and a far more serious class. The spoilt children whom I must show you are the spoilt children of the poor in this great city – the children who are, every year, for ever and ever irrevocably spoilt out of this breathing life of ours by tens of thousands, but who may in vast numbers be preserved, if you, assisting and not contravening the ways of Providence, will help to save them. The two grim nurses, Poverty and Sickness, who bring these children before you, preside over their births, rock their wretched cradles, nail down their little coffins, pile up the earth above their graves. Of the annual deaths in this great town, their unnatural deaths form more than one-third. I shall not ask you, according to the custom as to the other class – I shall not ask you on behalf of these children, to observe how good they are, how pretty they are, how clever they are, how promising they are, whose beauty they most resemble – I shall only ask you to observe how weak they are, and how like death they are! And I shall ask you, by the remembrance of everything that lies between your own infancy and that so miscalled second childhood when the child’s graces are gone and nothing but its helplessness remains – I shall ask you to turn your thoughts to these spoilt children in the sacred names of Pity and Compassion. Some years ago, being in Scotland, I went with one of the most humane members of the humane medical profession, on a morning tour among some of the worst lodged inhabitants of the old town of Edinburgh. In the closes and wynds of that picturesque place – I am sorry to remind you what fast friends picturesqueness and typhus often are – we saw more poverty and sickness in an hour than many people would believe in a life. Our way lay from one to another of the most wretched dwellings – reeking with horrible odours – shut out from the sky – shut out from the air – mere pits and dens. In a room in one of these places, where there was an empty porridge-pot on the cold hearth, with a ragged woman and some ragged children crouching on the bare ground near it – where, I remember as I speak, that the very light, refracted from a high damp-stained and time- stained house-wall, came trembling in, as if the fever which had shaken everything else there had shaken even it – there lay, in an old egg-box which the mother had begged from a shop, a little feeble, wasted, wan, sick child. With his little wasted face, and his little hot worn hands folded over his breast, and his little bright attentive eyes, I can see him now, as I have seen him for several years, look in steadily at us. There he lay in his little frail box, which was not at all a bad emblem of the little body from which he was slowly parting – there he lay, quite quiet, quite patient, saying never a word. He seldom cried, the mother said; he seldom complained; ‘he lay there, seemin’ to woonder what it was a‘ aboot’. God knows, I thought, as I stood looking at him, he had his reasons for wondering – reasons for wondering how it could possibly come to be that he lay there, left alone, feeble and full of pain, when he ought to have been as bright and as brisk as the birds that never got near him – reasons for wondering how he came to be left there, a little decrepit old man pining to death, quite a thing of course, as if there were no crowds of healthy and happy children playing on the grass under the summer’s sun within a stone’s throw of him, as if there were no bright, moving sea on the other side of the great hill overhanging the city; as if there were no great clouds rushing over it; as if there were no life, and movement, and vigour anywhere in the world – nothing but stoppage and decay. There he lay looking at us, saying, in his silence, more pathetically than I have ever heard anything said by any orator in my life, ‘Will you please to tell me what this means, strange man? and if you can give me any good reason why I should be so soon, so far advanced on my way to Him who said that children were to come into His presence and were not to be forbidden, but who scarcely meant, that they should come by this hard road by which I am travelling – pray give that reason to me, for I seek it very earnestly and wonder about it very much’; and to my mind he has been wondering about it ever since. Many a poor child, sick and neglected, I have seen since that time in this London; many a poor sick child I have seen most affectionately and kindly tended by poor people, in an unwholesome house and under untoward circumstances, wherein its recovery was quite impossible; but at all such times I have seen my poor little drooping friend in his egg-box, and he has always addressed his dumb speech to me, and I have always found him wondering what it meant, and why, in the name of a gracious God, such things should be! Now, ladies and gentlemen, such things need not be, and will not be, if this company, which is a drop of the life-blood of the great compassionate public heart, will only accept the means of rescue and prevention which it is mine to offer. Within a quarter of a mile of this place where I speak, stands a courtly old house, where once, no doubt, blooming children were born, and grew up to be men and women, and married, and brought their own blooming children back to patter up the old oak staircase which stood but the other day, and to wonder at the old oak carvings on the chimney-pieces. In the airy wards into which the old state drawing-rooms and family bedchambers of that house are now converted are such little patients that the attendant nurses look like reclaimed giantesses, and the kind medical practitioner like an amiable Christian ogre. Grouped about the little low tables in the centre of the rooms are such tiny convalescents that they seem to be playing at having been ill. On the doll’s beds are such diminutive creatures that each poor sufferer is supplied with its tray of toys; and, looking round, you may see how the little tired, flushed cheek has toppled over half the brute creation on its way into the ark; or how one little dimpled arm has mowed down (as I saw myself) the whole tin soldiery of Europe. On the walls of these rooms are graceful, pleasant, bright, childish pictures. At the bed’s heads, are pictures of the figure which is the universal embodiment of all mercy and compassion, the figure of Him who was once a child himself, and a poor one. Besides these little creatures on the beds, you may learn in that place that the number of small Out-patients brought to that house for relief is no fewer than ten thousand in the compass of one single year. In the room in which these are received, you may see against the wall a box, on which it is written, that it has been calculated, that if every grateful mother who brings a child there will drop a penny into it, the Hospital funds may possibly be increased in a year by so large a sum as forty pounds. And you may read in the Hospital Report, with a glow of pleasure, that these poor women are so respondent as to have made, even in a toiling year of difficulty and high prices, this estimated forty, fifty pounds. In the printed papers of this same Hospital, you may read with what a generous earnestness the highest and wisest members of the medical profession testify to the great need of it; to the immense difficulty of treating children in the same hospitals with grown-up people, by reason of their different ailments and requirements, to the vast amount of pain that will be assuaged, and of life that will be saved, through this Hospital; not only among the poor, observe, but among the prosperous too, by reason of the increased knowledge of children’s illnesses, which cannot fail to arise from a more systematic mode of studying them. Lastly, gentlemen, and I am sorry to say, worst of all —(for I must present no rose-coloured picture of this place to you – I must not deceive you;) lastly, the visitor to this Children’s Hospital, reckoning up the number of its beds, will find himself perforce obliged to stop at very little over thirty; and will learn, with sorrow and surprise, that even that small number, so forlornly, so miserably diminutive, compared with this vast London, cannot possibly be maintained, unless the Hospital be made better known; I limit myself to saying better known, because I will not believe that in a Christian community of fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, it can fail, being better known, to be well and richly endowed. Now, ladies and gentlemen, this, without a word of adornment – which I resolved when I got up not to allow myself – this is the simple case. This is the pathetic case which I have to put to you; not only on behalf of the thousands of children who annually die in this great city, but also on behalf of the thousands of children who live half developed, racked with preventable pain, shorn of their natural capacity for health and enjoyment. If these innocent creatures cannot move you for themselves, how can I possibly hope to move you in their name? The most delightful paper, the most charming essay, which the tender imagination of Charles Lamb conceived, represents him as sitting by his fireside on a winter night telling stories to his own dear children, and delighting in their society, until he suddenly comes to his old, solitary, bachelor self, and finds that they were but dream-children who might have been, but never were. ‘We are nothing’, they say to him; ‘less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been, and we must wait upon the tedious shore of Lethe, millions of ages, before we have existence and a name’. ‘And immediately awaking’, he says, ‘I found myself in my arm-chair’. The dream-children whom I would now raise, if I could, before every one of you, according to your various circumstances, should be the dear child you love, the dearer child you have lost, the child you might have had, the child you certainly have been. Each of these dream-children should hold in its powerful hand one of the little children now lying in the Child’s Hospital, or now shut out of it to perish. Each of these dream-children should say to you, ‘O help this little suppliant in my name; O, help it for my sake!’ Well! – And immediately awaking, you should find yourselves in the Freemasons’ Hall, happily arrived at the end of a rather long speech, drinking ‘Prosperity to the Hospital for Sick Children’, and thoroughly resolved that it shall flourish.	18580209	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a>
254	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/254	First Anniversary Festival of the General Theatrical Fund	Speech at the First Anniversary Festival of the General Theatrical Fund (6 April 1846).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=18460406">18460406</a>			1846-04-06_Speech_First-Anniversary-Festival-General-Theatrical-Fund	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Speech at the First Anniversary Festival of the General Theatrical Fund' (6 April 1846).</span><span> </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/ 1846-04-06_Speech_First-Anniversary-Festival-General-Theatrical-Fund">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/ 1846-04-06_Speech_First-Anniversary-Festival-General-Theatrical-Fund</a><span>.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London+Tavern">London Tavern</a>					Gentlemen, in offering to you a toast which has not yet been publicly drunk in any company, it becomes incumbent on me to offer a few words in explanation, – in the first place premising that the toast will be, ‘The General Theatrical Fund’. The association whose anniversary we celebrate tonight, was founded seven years ago, for the purpose of granting permanent pensions to such members of the corps dramatique as had retired from the stage, either from a decline in their years or decay in their powers. Collected within the scope of its benevolence are all actors and actresses, singers or dancers, of five years’ standing in the profession. To relieve their necessities and to protect them from want is the great aim of the society; and it is good to know that for seven years the members of it have steadily, patiently, quietly, and perseveringly pursued this end, advancing by regular contribution moneys which many of them could ill afford, and cheered by no external help or assistance whatsoever. It has thus served a regular apprenticeship; but I trust that we shall establish tonight that its time is out, and that henceforth the Fund will enter upon a flourishing and brilliant career. I have no doubt that you are all aware that there are, and were when this institution was founded, two other institutions existing, of a similar nature – Covent Garden and Drury Lane – both of long standing, both richly endowed. It cannot, however, be tpo distinctly understood that the present institution is not in any way adverse to those. How can it be, when it is only a wide and broad extension of all that is most excellent in the principles on which they are founded? That such an extension was absolutely necessary was sufficiently proved by the fact that the great body of the dramatic corps were excluded from the benefits conferred by a membership of either of these institutions; for it was essential in order to become a member of the Drury Lane society that the applicant, either he or she, should have been engaged for three consecutive seasons as performer. This was afterwards reduced, in the case of Covent Garden, to a period of two years; but it really is as exclusive one way as another, for I need not tell you that Covent Garden is now but a vision of the past. You might play the bottle-conjuror with its dramatic company, and put them all into a pint bottle. The human voice is rarely heard within its walls save in connexion with Corn, or the ambidextrous prestidigitation of the Wizard of the North. The only run there, is the run of rats and mice. In like manner Drury Lane is so devoted to foreign ballets and foreign operas that it is more deserving of the name of the Opéra Comique, than of a national theatre; while the statue of Shakespeare is well placed over its portal, since it serves as emphatically to point out his grave as does his bust at Stratford-upon-Avon. How can the profession generally hope to qualify for the Drury Lane or Covent Garden institutions, when the oldest and most distinguished members have been driven from the boards on which they earned their reputations, to delight the town in theatres to which the General Theatrical Fund alone extends? I will again repeat that I attach no reproach to those other Funds, with which I have had the honour of being connected at different periods of my life. At the time those associations were established, an engagement of one of those theatres was almost a matter of course, and a successful engagement would last a whole life; but in an engagement of two months’ duration at Covent Garden would be a perfect Old Parr of an engagement just now. It should never be forgotten that when those two funds were established the two great theatres were protected by patent, and that at that time the minor theatres were condemned by law to the representation of the most preposterous nonsense, and some gentlemen whom I see around me could have no more belonged to the minor theatres of that day than they could now belong to St. Bartholomew’s Fair. As I honour the two old Funds for the great good which they have done, so I honour this for the much greater good it is resolved to do. It is not because I love them less, but because I love this more – because it includes more in its operation. Let us ever remember that there is no class of actors who stand so much in need of a retiring fund as those who do not win the great prizes, but who are nevertheless an essential part of the theatrical system, by consequent bear a part in contributing to our pleasure. We owe them a debt which we ought to pay. The beds of such men are not of roses, but of very artificial flowers indeed. Their lives are full of care and privation, and hard struggles with very stern realities. It is from among the poor actors who drink wine from goblets, in colour marvellously like toast and water, and who preside at Barmecide feasts with wonderful appetites for steaks, – it is from their ranks that the most triumphant favourites have sprung. And surely, besides this, the greater the instruction and delight we derive from the rich English drama, the more we are bound to succour and protect the humblest of those votaries of the art, who add to our instruction and amusement. Hazlitt has well said that ‘There is no class of society whom so many people regard with affection as actors. We greet them on the stage, we like to meet them in the streets; they almost always recall to us pleasant associations.’ When they have strutted and fretted their hour upon the stage, let them not be heard no more, – but let them be heard sometimes to say that they are happy in their old age. When they have passed for the last time behind that glittering row of lights with which we are all familiar, let them not pass away into the gloom and darkness; but let them pass into cheerfulness and light, into a contented and happy home. This is the object for which we have met; and I am too familiar with the English character not to know that it will be effected. When we come suddenly in a crowded street upon the careworn features of a familiar face, crossing us like the ghost of pleasant hours forgotten, let us not recall these features in pain, in sad remembrance of what they once were; but let us in joy recognize, and go back a pace or two to meet it once again, as that of a friend who has beguiled us of a moment of care, who was taught us to sympathize with virtuous grief cheating us to tears for sorrows not our own – and we all know how pleasant are such tears. Let such a face be ever remembered as that of our benefactor and our friend. I tried to recollect, in coming here, whether I had ever been in any theatre in my life from which I had not brought away some pleasant association, however poor the theatre; and I protest, out of my varied experience, I could not remember even one from which I had not brought some favourable impression – and that, commencing with the period when I believed that the Clown was a being born into the world with infinite pockets, and ending with that in which I saw the other night, outside one of the ‘Royal Saloons’, a playbill which showed me ships completely rigged, carrying men and careering over boundless and tempestuous oceans. And now, bespeaking your kindest remembrance of our theatres and actors, I beg to propose that you drink as heartily and freely as ever a toast was drunk in this toast-drinking city, ‘Prosperity to the General Theatrical Fund’.	18460406	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a>
83	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/83	Dinner to Celebrate the Completion of <em>Nicholas Nickleby</em>	Speech given at the dinner to celebrate the completion of <em>Nicholas Nickleby </em>(5 October 1839).	Dickens, Charles	Macready, William Charles. <em>The Diaries of William Charles Macready 1833-1851.</em> Vol. 2. Ed. William Toynbee. New York: <span>Putnam's, 1912. p. 25.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1839-10-05">1839-10-05</a>		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Speech">Speech</a>	1839-10-05_Speech_Nickleby_Dinner	Dickens, Charles. 'Dinner to Celebrate the Completion of <em>Nicholas Nickleby</em> (5 October 1839). <em>Dickens Search</em>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1839-10-05_Speech_Nickleby_Dinner">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1839-10-05_Speech_Nickleby_Dinner</a>.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Albion+Hotel">Albion Hotel</a>		'Dickens was not as good as he usually is. He stated that <em>Nickleby </em>had been to him a diary of the last two years: the various papers preserving to him the recollection of the events and feelings connected with their production.'	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Diary">Diary</a>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=93&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=The+Diaries+of+William+Charles+Macready">The Diaries of William Charles Macready</a>		18391005	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a>
243	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/243	Dinner in His Honour, Richmond	A speech at a social dinner in his honour, Richmond (18 March 1842).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1842-03-18">1842-03-18</a>			1842-03-18_Speech_Dinner-Richmond	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Dinner in His Honour, Richmond' </span><span>(18 March 1842). </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1842-03-18_Speech_Dinner-Richmond">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1842-03-18_Speech_Dinner-Richmond</a>.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Exchange+Hotel">Exchange Hotel</a>					Mr. President and Gentlemen, I am most truly grateful and obliged to you for the kind welcome which you have given me. I receive and acknowledge with gratitude this testimonial of your kindly feelings towards me. If it were possible to convey to you my sense and appreciation of your favours, I would indeed acknowledge, as I receive, your good wishes an hundred fold. But, as I said at a social party a few nights since at Washington – a party somewhat similar to this – it is my misfortune to be passing through this country with almost as rapid a flight as that of any bird of the air–the American Eagle excepted. I find, in my career amongst you, no little resemblance to that far-famed Sultan of the thousand-and-one nights, who was in the habit of acquiring a new friend every night and cutting his head off in the morning. I find another resemblance to what we read in the history of that Sultan. He was diverted from his bad habit by listening to the tales of one who proved a favourite above all the rest; so I am stopped in my original intention by the hospitalities of the Americans. I say that the best flag of truce between two nations having the same common origin, and speaking the same language, is a fair sheet of white paper inscribed with the literature of each. If, hereafter, I think of this night, if I remember the welcome which you have assured me, believe me, my small corner, my humble portion of that fair sheet shall be inscribed with the hospitalities I have received from the friends I have seen and made here. It has been said, gentlemen, that an after-dinner speech may be too long. If so, it may be said with more truth, that an after-supper speech cannot be too short, and especially to those with whom to listen to a speech is no novelty, and mong whom a man of few words is a rare and almost literal ‘phenomenon’. I therefore deem it only necessary to say to you that I am most deeply and sincerely obliged to you for your kindness. In reference to the admonition tendered to me by my worthy friend, your President, I will say that it has long been a thing near my heart. But I hope I shall never need the monitor of which he reminds us. My situation forbids all paralysis of my pen – as I hope you will discover from November next, when I shall resume my literary labours. The hospitalities of America can never be forgotten among them: your kindness, certainly never. Imagine me thinking of you tomorrow; imagine me on the road to Fredericksberg – on that Virginia road from Fredericksburg to the Potomac. In fact throughout all my travels in these parts I shall think of the pleasure I have enjoyed in the bosom of your society.	18420318	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Richmond">Richmond</a>
250	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/250	Commercial Travellers' Schools Anniversary Festival	Chairman's speeches at the Commercial Travellers' Schools Anniversary Festival (22 December 1859).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1859-12-22">1859-12-22</a>			1859-12-22_Speech_Commercial-Travellers-Schools-Anniversary-Festival	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Commercial Travellers' Schools Anniversary Festival' (22 December 1859)</span><span>. </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1859-12-22_Speech_Commercial-Travellers-Schools-Anniversary-Festival">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1859-12-22_Speech_Commercial-Travellers-Schools-Anniversary-Festival</a>.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London+Tavern">London Tavern</a>		<p>They were sometimes told, he said, as if it were a new discovery, that war was the greatest of all evils. Now, he thought he preferred no high claim on the intelligence of this company when he said they all knew it to be so. Common humanity taught them to regard war as an unparalleled calamity. So strongly rooted was this feeling in the English mind, that it might truly be said that the popular voice was almost always for peace, and always attached enormous responsibility to any men in power who, for selfish ends, should be the first to ‘cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war’. But the next greatest sin to such an act was that of any men who accepted the responsibility of government and left the people ill prepared to resist aggressive war. It was because they who sat there were devoted to the arts and ways of peace, and because they exhibited all the signs of outward prosperity, that he congratulated them upon the manly and national spirit which was then stirring amongst them as well as amongst our professed defenders by sea and land.</p> <p>We Englishmen uttered no defiance, no braggart boast, against any nation on the face of the earth, but wished quietly to keep our own; and, with the blessing of heaven, which helped those who helped themselves, they would most assuredly do it. The plain meaning of the Rifle movement was but the revival of the old brave spirit of our forefathers, and a proof that all who had a stake in the country – and who that had life in it had not? – were ready if occasion required to fight and die in its defence. On that account, he would, with their permission, slightly alter the toast about the be proposed, and give ‘The Army and Navy, and the Volunteers’.</p>; He was told, he said, that it was once observed by a lady who kept a commercial boarding-house in the neighbourhood of the Monument, named Mrs. Todgers, that no such strong passion existed in the human breast as that of commercial gentlemen for gravy. She said, as he had been informed, and had reason to believe true, that it was her opinion that no animal known to butchers or experienced housekeepers would yield from any of its joints the amount of gravy that was called for by the peculiarity of the commercial palate. The anxiety, and mental agony that this most estimable lady had undergone from this single cause was sufficient to undermine the strongest constitution. With this lady’s experience and responsibilities heavy on his soul, he was thrown into a gloomy state of feeling when the duties and responsibilities of this eventful day loomed and darkened upon him. He was disturbed by the amount of oratorical gravy which he knew would be expected from the head of the table, and his sorrows were aggravated by his own personal knowledge of the inadequacy of the supply. It was very small comfort for him to remember that the last time he had the honour to fill that place the guests were most kind and considerate. He could not banish the shadow of ‘Todgers’s’, nor get rid of the horrors of that lady’s experience of what gravy was to a commercial man. In short he was dreadfully perplexed to know how he should act upon the present occasion. In this disturbed state of mind he had made several forlorn attempts to get material for a speech. He had looked through the advertisement pages of Bradshaw, and asked himself whether anything could be done with those inviting advertisements of hotels in which were offered, at fixed charges, bed, breakfast, and attendance, with the additional advantages of perfect solitude and an Italian atmosphere. He had asked himself, despondingly, the question whether anything apropos might be got out of the unfortunate porter who sat up all night, and who never went to bed in the day time. He had then started off by express train of remembrances to another and much larger hotel at Leeds, where he had happened to be staying about seven weeks before, where the chamber appurtenances belonged to a period far anterior to the present, and where the night candles were nothing less than mutton truncheons of most exaggerated proportions, and could not by any possibility be blown out.; He went on to ask permission to propose the health of a gentleman to whom the institution, the progress of which they were met to celebrate, was more indebted than to any other creature, and to whose zeal and liberality much of its success was owing. He proposed ‘The health of Mr. George Moore, the Treasurer’. He must say, in passing, that he was the commercial giant, who would accompanied him on the occasion to which he had referred, but he himself could never be Jack, for he could neither deceive or kill such a giant on any account.			In that hotel I had seen many members of the present company, next morning, brushing their coats in the hall, and I then considered whether anything could be done with the word Travellers; and I thought whether any fanciful analogy could be drawn between those travellers who diffuse the luxuries and necessities of existence, and those who carry into desert places the waters of life, such as Dr. Livingstone, or Captain McClintock and his bold companions, who have graved the record of English modesty, gallantry and perseverance in the everlasting ice surrounding the North Pole. This put into my mind the fact that the best and greatest of these travellers have usually been amongst the gentle and mildest of men. I then asked myself whether I could make any fanciful parallel between my friend Mr. Layard, who brought to light the hidden memorials of a long extinct people, and my friend Mr. George Moore, who sits beside me, who has brought to light the hidden capabilities of a great trade.<br /> <br /> Not deriving any comfort from these ingenious speculations, I resolved, like the heroes in the fairy tales, to go out to seek my fortune; and I resorted to a friendly giant – a commercial giant – and we sallied out together only yesterday. We travelled on and on, very like the people in the fairy tales, until we came to a great castle of a bright red colour, looking perfectly glorious in the cold sunlight of a winter afternoon. We were received, not by one of those conventional monsters with a great eye in his forehead as large as six, but by a man with an extremely humorous expression of countenance and two bright eyes, under whose guidance we inspected the livestock and eatables of the establishment, which suggested to us nothing but an abundance of milk and pork.<br /> <br /> We then entered the castle, and found it within, a noble structure, with a cheerful lofty hall, large airy corridors, dormitories, and bathrooms, and an admirable banqueting-hall – not at all a mere matter of form, as I found on perusing the dietary table hanging on the wall; for I perceived that the most agreeable weekly exercises were practised, varying from roast beef and plum pudding to boiled mutton and hashes, with cold meat as an exceptional mortification, until the weekly circle was completed, and the roast beef of old England with its pleasing concomitant of plum pudding – by the by, suggestive of the season – made the pleasing appearance on the table before the happy and cheerful faces of the recipients of your bounty.<br /> <br /> My attention was called to the circumstance that one hundred young male giants, and fifty young female giants, with a partakers of this magnificent diurnal hospitality, and that they were at the same time receiving an excellent education in this spacious edifice. I looked over some of the examination papers, and I found them remarkable for a prevailing good sense and adaptation to the solid business and solid virtues of life, which I had not seen – no verily - in some colleges and ancient foundations. I looked at these young people – the male creatures – and I saw that they were healthy, cheerful, easy, and rational, under system of moral restraint far better than all the physical force that ever crushed a timid nature and never bent a stubborn one. I found other of these young people walking under their own control in the lanes outside the establishment, and coming home in the frosty air with cheery faces that were worthy of the season and of the weather. I spoke to many of them, and I found that they answered truly and fearlessly. I observed that they had an excellent way of looking those in authority full in the face. I did not see the sisterhood, and was very glad not to see them, because they were out for a long walk and had not yet come home. Gentlemen, I am told that these young people of both sexes are instructed, lodged, clothed, and boarded until they are fifteen years of age, when they are sent into the world, to the region of gold and silver which is the dream of aspiring youth. Some of the children were preparing themselves for this great world, which many of them will no doubt hereafter distinguish themselves. by studying a number of cardboard locomotive engines and trains, admirably made, and closely resembling those which by day and night pass before the windows of their school at Pinner. Finally, I made two discoveries of considerable importance to me; firstly that this was indeed, a most rare magical castle, by reason that it costs some £20,000, and belongs to a public body, and is paid for; secondly, and lastly, I found that I had gone out to seek my fortune not in vain, for in this castle I discovered my speech.<br /> <br /> Gentlemen, this castle is your own, and I assure you that its solid timbers, bricks and stones are not more solid than the effects which I have fancifully set before you. This castle is the Commercial Travellers’ Schools; and, in the endowing and maintaining of such an institution, the Commercial Travellers must raise themselves both in their own esteem and in the public regard. In this place any individual here can establish an individual right and title by the humble contribution of one guinea, and it could be handsomely maintained if every commercial traveller in the world would give it one half crown on a given day in every year. Gentlemen, I wish I could say of my order, or of others of greater pretensions, that its members were united in following such an example. I can say that there is no other order of men in this kingdom who, in their selection of men in whom to propose educational trust, do greater honour to themselves or to the cause of education than the board of management of this institution. I hope then, sincerely, that the time is not far distant when the Commercial Traveller who does not belong to this institution will be a rare and isolated case. I do hope this with some confidence, because I cannot believe that it is possible that many Commercial Travellers can look upon their own dear children and not feel they would be better and lighter hearted for being sharers in this institution.<br /> <br /> Gentlemen, we should remember tonight that we are all Travellers, and every round we take converges nearer and nearer to our home; that all our little journeyings bring us together to one certain end; and that the good that we do, and the virtues that we show, and particularly the children that we rear, survive us through the long and unknown perspective of time. When those children who now contemplate our proceedings pass around as presently, it can scarcely be but that some of this company will recognize in some little face the likeness of some friend or companion. An yone of us may read the affecting words of tenderness which were spoken by Him, who was once a child, and who loved little children. Let those words, not mine, speak eloquently for those Schools.<br /> <br /> And now I will not detain you longer; I feel that I have put the case of this invaluable institution on its own merits, and having done so feel cold upon to propose the toast of the evening, namely ‘Prosperity to the Commercial Travellers’ Schools’. In half a century to come, the boys of today will remember what has occurred this evening and, at a meeting like the present, evince by their conduct how they appreciate the good performed by those who had gone before them.	18591222	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a>
249	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/249	Commercial Travellers' Schools Anniversary Dinner	Chairman's speeches at the Commercial Travellers' Schools Anniversary Dinner (30 December 1854).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1854-12-30">1854-12-30</a>			1854-12-30_Speech_Commercial-Travellers-Schools-Anniversary-Dinner	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Commercial Travellers' Schools Anniversary Dinner' </span><span>(30 December 1854). </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1854-12-30_Speech_Commercial-Travellers-Schools-Anniversary-Dinner">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1854-12-30_Speech_Commercial-Travellers-Schools-Anniversary-Dinner</a>.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London+Tavern">London Tavern</a>		He had, he said, omitted the toast from the proper place on the list, partly because he had been engaged with one of the officers of the institution in conversation, and partly because he connected the name of his Royal Highness Prince Albert with the charity in which his Royal Highness had always taken so deep an interest.			I shall beg to suggest a reform in these proceedings at the outset by addressing this assembly as ‘Ladies and gentlemen’. I beg to propose to you the health of a constitutional Sovereign of a free people, the embodiment of the private virtues and public principles of the English nation – a Sovereign who in her public contact fully appreciates the national resolution never to allow the light of civilization and freedom to be quenched in the darkness of any irresponsible will on the face of the earth. Gentlemen, I give you the Queen, with all the honours. It does not require any extraordinary sagacity in a commercial assembly to appreciate the dire evils of war. The great interests of trade enfeebled by it, the enterprise of better times paralysed by it, all the peaceful arts sent down before it too palpably indicate its character and results, so that far less practical intelligence than that by which I am surrounded would be sufficient to appreciate the horrors of war. But there are seasons when the evils of peace though not so acutely felt are immeasurably greater, and when a powerful nation by admitting the right of any autocrat to do wrong sows by such complicity the seeds of its own ruin, and overshadows itself in time to come with that fatal influence which great and ambitious powers are sure to exercise over their weaker neighbours. Therefore it is, ladies and gentlemen, that the tree has not its roots in English ground from which the yard wand will be made that will measure – the mine has not its place in English soil which will supply the material of a pair of scales to weigh – the influence, that may be at stake in the war in which we are now straining all our energies. That war is at any time, and in any shape, a most dreadful and deplorable calamity we need no proverb to tell us; but it is just because it is such a calamity, and because that calamity must not for ever be impending over us at the fancy of one man against all mankind, that we must not allow that man to darken from our view the figures of peace and justice between whom and us he now interposes. Ladies and gentlemen, if ever there were a time when the true spirits of two countries were really fighting in the cause of human advancement and freedom – no matter what diplomatic notes or other nameless botherations, from number one to one hundred thousand and one, may have preceded their taking the field – if ever there were a time when noble hearts were deserving well of mankind by exposing themselves to the obedient bayonets of a rash and barbarian tyrant, it is now, when the faithful children of England and France are fighting so bravely in the Crimea. Those faithful children are the admiration and wonder of the world so gallantly are they discharging their duty; and therefore I propose to an assembly emphatically representing the interests and arts of peace, to drink the health of the Allied Armies of England and France, with all possible honours. I think it may be assumed that most of us here present know something about travelling. I do not mean in distant regions or foreign countries, although I dare say some of us have had experience in that way, but at home, and within the limits of the United Kingdom. I dare say most of us have had experience of the extinct ‘fast coaches’, the ‘Wonders’, ‘Taglionis’, and ‘Tallyhos’, of other days. I dare say most of us remember certain modest post-chaises, dragging us down interminable roads through slush and mud, to little country towns with no visible populations except half a dozen men in smock frocks smoking pipes under the lee of the Town Hall; half a dozen women with umbrellas and pattens, and a washed-out dog or so shivering under the gables to complete the desolate picture. We can all discourse, I dare say, if so minded, upon our recollections of the ‘Talbot’, the ‘King’s Head’, or the ‘Lion’ of those days. We have all been to that room on the ground floor on one side of the old inn yard, not quite free from a certain fragrant smell of tobacco, where the cruets on the sideboard were usually absorbed by the skirts of the box coats that hung from the wall, where driving-seats were laid out at every turn like so many human mantraps, where county members framed and glazed were eternally presenting that petition which somehow or other made their glory in the county, though nothing else had ever come of it. Where the Book of Roads, the first and last thing always required, was always missing, and generally wanted the first and last dozen leaves, and where one man was always arriving at some unusual hour in the night, and requiring his breakfast at a similarly singular period of the day. I have no doubt we could all be very eloquent on the comforts of our favourite hotel, wherever it was, – its beds, its stables, its vast amount of posting, its excellent cheese, its head waiter, its capital dishes, its pigeon-pies, or its 1820 port. Or possibly we could recall our chaste and innocent admiration of its landlady, or our fraternal regard for its handsome chambermaid. A celebrated dramatic critic once writing of a famous actress, renowned for her virtue and beauty, gave her the character of being ‘an eminently gatherable-to-one’s-arms, sort of person’. Perhaps someone amongst us has borne a somewhat similar mental tribute to the charms of the ladies associated with the administration of our favourite hotel. With the travelling characteristics of later times we are all, no doubt, equally familiar. We know all about that station of which we have a clear idea although we were never there; we know that if we arrive after dark we are certain to find it half a mile from the town, where the old road is sure to have been abolished, and the new road is going to be made, where the old neighbourhood has been tumbled down, and the new one is not half built up. We know all about that porter on the platform who with the best intentions in the world cannot do anything particularly efficacious with the luggage by looking at it with that bell in his hand. We know all about that particularly short omnibus, in which one is to be doubled up to the imminent danger of the crown of one’s hat; and about that fly, whose leading peculiarity is never to be there when it is wanted. We know, too, how instantaneously the lights of the station disappear the moment the train slips away, and about that grope to the new Railway Hotel, which will be an excellent house when the customers come, but which at present has nothing to offer but a liberal allowance of damp mortar and new lime. I record these little incidents of home travel mainly with the object of increasing your interest in the purpose of this assemblage. Every traveller has a home of his own, and he learns to appreciate it the more from his wandering. If he has no home, he learns the same lesson unselfishly by turning to the homes of other men. He may have his experiences of cheerful and exciting pleasures abroad; but home is the best, after all, and its pleasures are the most heartily and enduringly prized. Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, everyone must be prepared to learn that commercial travellers as a body know how to prize those domestic relations from which their pursuits so frequently sever them; for no one could possibly invent a more delightful or more convincing testimony to the fact than they themselves afford in founding and maintaining a school for the children of deceased or unfortunate members of their own body, – those children who now appeal to you in mute but eloquent terms from the gallery. It is to support that school, founded with such high and friendly objects, so very honourable to your calling, and so useful in its solid and practical results, that we are here tonight. It is to roof that building which is to shelter the children of your deceased friends with one crowning ornament, the best that any building can have, namely a receipt stamp for the full amount of the cost. It is for this that your active sympathy is appealed to, for the completion of your own good work. You know how to put your hands to the plough in earnest as well as any men in existence, for this little book informs me that you raised last year no less a sum than eight hundred pounds; and while fully half that sum consisted of new donations to the Building Fund, I find that the regular revenue of the charity has only suffered to the extent of thirty pounds. After this I most earnestly and sincerely say that were we all authors together I might boast, if in my profession were exhibited the same unity and steadfastness I find in yours. I will not urge on you the casualties of a life of travel, or the vicissitudes of business, or the claims fostered by that bond of brotherhood which ought always to exist amongst men who are united in a common pursuit. You have already recognized those claims so nobly, that I will not presume to lay them before you in any further detail. Suffice it to say that I do not think it is in your nature to do things by halves. I do not think you could so if you tried, and I have a moral certainty that you never will try. To those gentlemen present who are not members of the travellers’ body, I will say in the words of the French proverb, ‘Heaven helps those who help themselves’. The Commercial Travellers having helped themselves so gallantly, it is clear that the visitors who come as a sort of celestial representatives ought to bring that aid in their pockets which the precept teaches us to expect from them. With these few remarks, which not even your good nature will induce me to prolong, I beg to give you as a toast, ‘Success to the Commercial Travellers’ School’. Ladies and Gentlemen, You have made me tonight the representative of so many travellers rich in all kinds of enthusiasm, in addition to my own seven poor ones, and that necessity has involved the necessity of your hearing my voice so often, that I shall confine myself to simply thanking you most sincerely for the very kind manner in which you have received my health. If the President of this Institution had been here, I should possibly have made one of the best speeches you ever heard, but as he is not here, I shall turn to the next toast on my list, the Health of your worth Treasurer, Mr. George Moore, – a name which is a synonym for integrity, enterprise, public spirit, and benevolence. He is one of the most zealous officers I ever saw in my life; he appears to me to have been doing nothing during the last week but rushing into and out of railway-carriages, and making eloquent speeches at all sorts of public dinners in favour of this charity. Last evening he was in Manchester, and this evening he comes here, sacrificing his time and convenience, and exhausting in the meantime the contents of two vast leaden inkstands, and no end of pens, with the energy of fifty bankers’ clerks rolled into one. But I clearly foresee that the Treasurer will have so much to do tonight, such gratifying sums to acknowledge, and such large lines of figures to write in his books, that I feel the greatest consideration I can show him is to propose his health without further observation, leaving him to address you in his own behalf. I propose to you, therefore, the health of Mr. George Moore, the Treasurer of this charity, and I need hardly add that it is one which is to be drunk with all the honours. So many travellers have been going up Mont Blanc lately, both in fact and in fiction, that I have heard recently of a proposal for the establishment of a company to employ Sir Joseph Paxton to take it down. Only one of those travellers, however, has been enabled to bring Mont Blanc to Piccadilly, and by his own ability and good humour so to thaw its eternal ice and snow, as that the most timid lady may ascend it twice a day ‘during the holidays’, without the smallest danger or fatigue. Mr. Albert Smith, who is present amongst us tonight, is undoubtedly ‘a Traveller’. I do not know whether he takes many orders, but this I can testify, on behalf of the children of his friends, that he gives them in the most liberal manner. We have also amongst us my friend Mr. Peter Cunningham, who is also a traveller, not only in right of his able edition of Goldsmith’s Traveller, but in right of his admirable Handbook, which proves him to be a traveller in the right spirit through all the labyrinths of London. We have also amongst us my friend Horace Mayhew, very well known also for his books, but especially for his genuine admiration of the company at that end of the room, and who, whenever the fair sex is mentioned, will be found to have the liveliest personal interest in the conversation. Ladies and gentlemen, I am about to propose to you the health of these three distinguished visitors. They are all admirable speakers, but Mr. Albert Smith has confessed to me, that on fairly balancing his own merits as a speaker and a singer, he rather thinks he excels in the latter art. I have, therefore, yielded to his estimate of himself, and I have now the pleasure of informing you that he will lead off the speeches of the other two gentlemen with a song. Mr. Albert Smith has just said to me in an earnest tone of voice, ‘What song would you recommend?’ and I replied, ‘Galignani’s Messenger’. Ladies and gentlemen, I therefore beg to propose the health of Messrs. Albert Smith, Peter Cunningham, and Horace Mayhew, and call on the first-named gentleman for a song.	18541230	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a>
241	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/241	Banquet in his Honour, New York	Speech at a banquet in his honour in New York (18 February 1842).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1842-02-18">1842-02-18</a>			1842-02-18_Speech_Banquet-New-York	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Speech at Hartford' </span><span>(7 February 1842). </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1842-02-18_Speech_Banquet-New-York">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1842-02-18_Speech_Banquet-New-York</a>.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=City+Hotel">City Hotel</a>					Mr. President and Gentlemen, I don’t know how to thank you – I really don’t know how. You might, perhaps, suppose that by the dint of custom and from the experience your kindness has heaped upon me since my arrival in this country, that the difficult would have been somewhat diminished or dwindled into nothing but I do assure you the fact is exactly the reverse. Unlike that rolling stone which gathers no moss, I have, in my progress to your city, collected around me such a heap of obligation and weight of acknowledgement, that in my power of expressing it I have grown more and more unwieldy every hour! I picked up such a quantity of fresh moss – so to speak – at a certain brilliant scene on Monday night, that I thought I never could, by any possibility, grow any bigger. But crowded upon that, there comes again tonight a new accumulation of such extent and magnitude, that I am fairly at a standstill and can roll no more! Gentlemen, we know from all the authorities, that whenever a fairy stone, or ball, or reel of thread, stopped of its own accord–which I do not–some catastrophe was sure to be at hand. Its precedent, however, holds good in my case. For, remembering the short time I have before me in this land of mighty interest, and the poor opportunities I can have at best of acquiring a knowledge of, and making myself acquainted with it, I have felt it almost a duty to decline the honours which my generous friends elsewhere would heap upon me, and henceforth to pass through the country more quietly. Argus himself, though he had but one mouth for his hundred eyes, would have found the reception of a public entertainment once a week somewhat relaxing to his vigilance and activity. And as I would lose no scrap or jot from the rich mines of gratification and instruction which await me, I know, on every hand–and of which I have already derived no small instalment from your hospitals and common jails–I have resolved to take up my staff, and go upon my way rejoicing, and for the future to shake hands with Americans not at parties, but at home. And therefore, gentlemen, I say tonight, with a full heart and an honest purpose and grateful feelings, that I bear with me, and shall ever bear with me, a deeper sense of your kind, affectionate and noble greeting, than it is possible to convey in words; that no European sky without, and no cheerful home or well-warmed room within shall every shut out this land from my vision; that I shall often hear your words of welcome in my quiet room, oftenest when it is most quiet, and shall see your aces in the winter evening fire; that if I should live to grow old, the light of this hall and others like it will shine as brightly to my dull eyes fifty years hence as it does tonight and that when my course is run the sympathy you have shown to me shall be well remembered and paid back, so please God, in my undying love and honest endeavours for the good of my race. Gentlemen, one other word with reference to this tiresome first person, and I close that theme. I came here in an open, honest, and confiding spirit, if ever man did, and because I heartily inclined toward you; had I felt otherwise I should have kept away. As I came here, and am here, without the least admixture of the hundredth portion of a grain of base alloy, without the faintest unworthy reference to self in any word I have ever addressed to you, or in any sentiment I have ever interchanged with you, I assert my right tonight, in regard to the past for the last time, my right in reason, truth, and justice, to appeal to you, as I have done on two former occasions, on a question of universal literary interest in both countries. And, gentlemen, I claim this justice: that I have made the appeal as one who has a most righteous claim to speak and to be heard; and that I have done so in a frank, and courteous, and good-humoured spirit of deference to those who frankly, courteously, and good humouredly differed from me in any or every respect. For myself, gentlemen, I have only to add that I will ever be as true to you as you have been to me. I recognise in your enthusiastic approval of the creations of my fancy, as in a glass, your enlightened care for the happiness of the many, your tender and gentle regard for the afflicted and helpless, your sympathy for the downcast, your plans for the correction and improvement of the bad, and the encouragement and solace of the good–the education and advancement of every member of society. My constant and increasing devotion to the end of my life to these ends, and to every other object to the extent of my humble capacity, having the common good in view, shall prove to you that in this you do not mistake me, and that the light you have shed around my path was not unworthily bestowed. And now that I have said this much in reference to myself, let me have the gratification I have long expected of saying a few words in reference to somebody else. There is in this city a gentleman who, at the conclusion of one of my books–I well remember it was the Old Curiosity Shop – wrote to me in England a letter so generous, so affectionate, and so manly, that if I had written the book under every circumstance of disadvantage, discouragement, and difficult, instead of with everything to cheer and urge me on, I should have found in the receipt of that letter my best and happiest reward. I answered him, and he answered me, and so we kept shaking hands autobiographically, as if no ocean rolled between us, until I came here on Saturday night, longing and eager to see him. And here he sits! And I I need not tell you that it is the crowning circumstance to me of the night, that he is here in this capacity. Why, gentlemen, I don’t go upstairs to bed two nights out of seven, as I have a credible witness very near at hand to testify,–I say, gentlemen, I do not go to bed two nights out of seven without taking Washington Irving under my arm upstairs to bed with me; and when I don’t take him I take his next of kin – his own brother – Oliver Goldsmith. Washington Irving! Why, who but he was in my thoughts the other day as I approached your city in the steamboat from New Haven, when I was looking out for the Hog’s Back, the Frying Pan, and Hell Gate and all those horrible places of renown that were a terror to the Dutch navigators? Washington Irving! Why, when I visited Shakespeare’s birthplace not long ago, and went beneath the roof where he first saw light, whose name but his was the first that was pointed out with pride upon the wall?– Washington Irving! – Diedrich Knickerbocker, Geoffrey Crayon! Why, where can we go that they have not been before us? In the English farmhouse, in the crowded city, along the beautiful lanes, across the pleasant fields of England, and amidst her blessed, happy homes, his name above every name rises up with hallowed recollections of his virtues and talents, and like his memory will continue to be hallowed in those bright and innocent sanctuaries, until the last tick of the clock of Time! If we go into the country are there no Bracebridge Halls in existence? If we visit the crowded city, has Little Britain never had a chronicler? Is there no Boar’s Head in Eastcheap? Why, gentlemen, when Mr. Crayon left England he left sitting in the small back parlour of a certain public house near that same Boar’s Head, a man of infinite wisdom, with a red nose and an oilskin hat, who was sitting there when I came away. Yes, gentlemen, it was the same man – not a man that was very like him, but the self-same man–his nose in an immortal redness, and his hat in an undying glaze. Why, Mr. Crayon was also on terms of intimacy, in a certain village near that same Bracebridge Hall, with a certain radical fellow, who used to go about very much out at elbow, with his hat full of old newspapers. Gentlemen, I knew the man. He’s there to this very hour, with the newspapers in his hat, very much to the dissatisfaction of Mr. Tibbets the elder. And he has not changed a hair; and when I came away he charged me to give his best respects to Washington Irving! Gentlemen, leaving the town and ‘Rural Life in England,’ and forgetting for a moment, if anybody can, ‘The Pride of the Village,’ and ‘The Broken Heart’, let us cross the water again and ask who has associated himself most closely with the Italian Post-House, and the Bandits of the Pyrenees? When the traveller beyond the Alps is lighted to his little chamber, along dark, echoing, and spacious corridors, damp, gloomy, and cold; when he has sat down by the fire to watch the gradual change of his room from misery to comfort; when he has drawn his curtains, such as they are, moth-eaten and mouldy, and hearts the tempest beating with fury against his window; and when all the ghost stories that ever were told crowd around and I upon him – amid all his thick-coming fancies – who is it he thinks of at such a time? Why, Washington Irving! Go further away still, to the Moorish fountain, sparkling full in the moonlight, with a few water carriers and village gossips lingering about it still, as in days of old, for its refreshing coolness, and the voices of others going to the village dying away in the distance, like bees. Who, at such an hour, takes his silent stand beside the traveller, and points with his magic wand to the walls of Alhambra? Who awakens in every cave the echoing music, the tread of many twinkling feet, the sound of cymbals, the rattling clang of armour, the tramp of mailed men, and bids legions which for centuries have slept a dreamless sleep within the earth, or watched unwinkingly for buried treasure – who bids them start up and pass in grim array before your eyes? Or, leaving this, who embarked with Colombus in his gallant ship, traversed with him the dark and mighty ocean, leaped into the main, upon the land, and planted there the flag of Spain? Who but this same man now sitting by my side. And who, to come to your coast, is a more fit companion for the buccaneers, and monder-diggers, or who more fit to accompany Rip Van Winkle in his fearful journey to the mountains, where the uncouth crew did play at ninepins on that thundery afternoon? [Roars of laughter.] What pen but his could call such spirits from the vasty deep – make them come, too, at his call – peopling those Catskill mountains until they seem as much a part of them as any crag that ever frowned, or torrent that ever darted headlong from their heights. But, gentlemen, this is a most dangerous theme for me, for I have been enchanted with these people from my boyhood, and my glass slipper is on me still. Lest I should be tempted now to talk too long about them I will, in conclusion, give you a sentiment, most appropriate in the presence of Bryant, Halleck, and – but I suppose I must not mention the ladies here – I will give you ‘The Literature of America – She well knows how to honour her own literature, and to do honour to that of other lands, when she chooses Washington Irving for her representative in the country of Cervantes!’	18420218	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=New+York">New York</a>
240	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/240	Banquet at Hartford	Speech at a banquet in his honour in Hartford, Connecticut (7 February 1842).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1842-02-07">1842-02-07</a>			1842-02-07_Speech_Banquet-at-Hartford	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Speech at Hartford' </span><span>(7 February 1842). </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1842-02-07_Speech_1842-02-07_Speech_Banquet-at-Hartford">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1842-02-07_Speech_1842-02-07_Speech_Banquet-at-Hartford</a>.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=City+Hotel">City Hotel</a>					Gentlemen, to say that I thank you for the earnest manner in which you have drunk the toast just now so eloquently proposed to you; to say that I give you back your kind wishes and good feelings with more than compound interest, and that I feel how dumb and powerless the best acknowledgements would be beside such genial hospitality as yours–is nothing. To say that in this winter season, flowers have sprung up in every footstep’s length of the path which has brought me here, that no country ever smiled more pleasantly than yours has smiled on me, and that I have rarely looked upon a brighter summer prospect than that which now lies before me now – is nothing. But it is something to be no stranger in a strange place; to feel, sitting at a board for the first time, the ease and affection of an old guest, to be at once on such intimate terms with the family as to have a homely, genuine interest in its every member; it is, I say, something to be in this novel and happy frame of mind. And as it is of your creation, and owes its being to you, I have no reluctance in urging it as a reason why, in addressing you, I should not so much consult the form and fashion of my speech, as I should employ the universal language of the heart which you, and such as you, best teach and best can understand. Gentlemen, in that universal language–common to you in America, and to us in England, as that younger mother tongue which, by means of, and through the happy union of our two great countries, shall be spoken ages hence, by land and sea, over the wide surface of the glove–I thank you. I had occasion, gentlemen, to say the other night in Boston, as I have more than once had occasion to remark before, that it is not easy for an author to speak of his own books. If the task be a difficult one at any time, its difficult certainly is not diminished when a frequent occurrence to the same theme has left one nothing new to say. Still I feel that, in a company like this, and especially after what has been said by the President, that I ought not to pass over those labours of love which, if they have no other merit, have been the happy means of bringing us together. It has been observed that you cannot judge of an author’s personal character from his writings. It may be that you cannot–I think it very likely, for many reasons, that you cannot–but, at least, a reader will rise from the perusal of a book with some defined and tangible idea of the writer’s moral creed and broad purposes, if he has any at all; and it is probably enough that he may like to have this idea confirmed from the author’s lips, or dissipated by his explanation. Gentlemen, my moral creed–which is a very wide and comprehensive one, and includes all sects and parties–is very easily summed up. I have faith, and I wish to diffuse faith in the existence–yes, of beautiful things, even in those conditions of society which are so degenerate, degraded, and forlorn that, at first sight, it would seem as though they could not be described but by a strange and terrible reversal of the words of Scripture – God said, Let there be light, and there was none. I take it that we are born and that we hold our sympathies, hopes, and energies in trust for the many, and not for the few. That we cannot hold in too strong a light of disgust and contempt, before the view of others, all meanness, falsehood, cruelty, and oppression, of every grade and kind. Above all, that nothing is high, because it is in a high place; and that nothing is low, because it is in a low one. [Loud applause.] This is a lesson taught us in the great book of nature. This is the lesson which may be read, alike in the bright track of the stars, and in the dusty course of the poorest thing that drags its tiny length upon the ground. This is the lesson every uppermost in the thoughts of that inspired man, who tells us that there are &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Tongues in tress, books in the running brooks &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sermons in stones, and good in everything. Gentlemen, keeping these objects steadily before me, I am at no loss to refer your favour and your generous hospitality back to the right source. While I know, on the one hand, that if, instead of being what it is, this were a land of tyranny and wrong, I should care very little for your smiles or frowns, so I am sure upon the other, that if, instead of being what I am, I were the greatest genius that every trod the earth, and had exerted myself for the oppression and degradation of mankind, you would despise and reject me. I hope you will, whenever, through such means, I give you the opportunity. Trust me that whenever you give me the like occasion, I will return the compliment with interest. Gentlemen, as I have no secrets from you, in the spirit of confidence you have engendered between us, and as I have made a kind of compact with myself that I never will, while I remain in America, omit an opportunity of referring to a topic in which I and all others of my class on both sides of the water are equally interested–equally interested, there is no difference between us–I would beg leave to whisper in your ear two words, International Copyright. I use them in no sordid sense, believe me, and those that know me best, best know that. For myself, I would rather that my children coming after me, trudged in the mud, and knew by the general feeling of society that their father was beloved, and had been of some use, that I would have them ride in their carriages, and know by their banker’s books that he was rich. But I do not see, I confess, why one should be obliged to make the choice, or why fame, besides playing that delightful reveille for which she is so justly celebrated, should not blow out of her trumpet a few notes of a different kind from those with which she has hitherto contented herself. It was well observed the other night by a beautiful speaker, whose words went to the heart of every man who heard him, that if there had existed any law in this respect, Scott might not have sunk beneath the mighty pressure on his brain, but might have lived to add new creatures of his fancy to the crowd which swarm about you in your summer walks and gather round your winter evening hearths. As I listened to his words there came back fresh upon me, that touching scene in the great man’s life, when he lay upon his couch surrounded by his family and listened, for the last time, to the rippling of the river he had so well loved, over its stony bed. I pictured him to myself, faint, wan, dying, crushed both in his mind and body by his honourable struggle, and hovering round him the ghosts of his own imagination–Waverley, Ravenswood, Jeannie Deans, Rob Roy, Caleb Balderstone, Dominie Sampson–all the familiar throng – with cavaliers, and Puritans, and Highland chiefs innumerable overflowing the chamber, and fading away in the dim distance beyond. I pictured them, fresh from traversing the world, and hanging down their heads in shame and sorrow that, from all those lands into which they had carried gladness, instruction, and delight for millions, they had brought him now one friendly hand to help to raise him from that sad, sad bed. No, nor brought him from that land in which his own language was spoken, and in every house and hut of which his own books were read in his own tongue, one grateful dollar-piece to buy a garland for his grave. Oh! if every man who goes from here, as many do, to look upon that tomb in Dryburgh Abbey, would but remember this, and bring the recollection home! Gentlemen I thank you again, and once again, and many times to that. You have given me a new reason for remembering this day, which is already one of the mark of my calendar, it being my birthday; and you have given those who are nearest and dearest to me a new reason for recollection it with pride and interest. Heaven knows that, although I should grow ever so grey, I shall need nothing to remind me of this epoch in my life. But I am glad to think that from this time you are inseparably connected with every recurrence of this day; and, that on its periodical return, I shall always, in imagination, have the unfading pleasure of entertaining you as my guests in return for the gratification you have afforded me tonight.	18420207	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Hartford%2C+Connecticut">Hartford, Connecticut</a>
234	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/234	At the Waterloo Rooms, Edinburgh	Speech given at a banquet in his honour in Edinburgh (25 June 1841).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1851-06-25">1851-06-25</a>			1851-06-25_Speech_Waterloo_Rooms	Dickens, Charles. 'Shakespeare Club Dinner' (25 June 1841). <em>Dickens Search</em>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1851-06-25_Speech_Waterloo_Rooms">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1851-06-25_Speech_Waterloo_Rooms</a>.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Waterloo+Rooms">Waterloo Rooms</a>					If I felt your warm and generous welcome less, I should be better able to thank you. If I could have listened, as you have listened, to the glowing language of your distinguished chairman, and if I could have heard, as you heard, the “thoughts that breathe and words that burn”, which he has uttered, it would have gone hard but I should have caught some portion of his enthusiasm, and kindled at his example. But every word which fell from his lips, and every demonstration of sympathy and approbation with which you received his eloquent expressions, renders me unable to respond to his kindness, and leaves me at last all heart and no lips. Yearning to respond as I would do to your cordial greeting – possessing, Heaven knows, the will, and desiring only to find the way. The way to your good opinion, favour, and support, has been to me very pleasant – a path strewn with flowers and cheered with sunshine. I feel as if I stood amongst old friends, whom I had intimately known and highly valued. I feel as if the deaths of the fictitious creatures, in which you have been kind enough to express an interest, had endeared us to each other as real afflictions deepen friendships in actual life; I feel as if they had been real persons, whose fortunes we had pursued together in inseparable connexion, and that I had never known them apart from you. It is a difficult thing for a man to speak of himself or of his works. But perhaps on this occasion I may, without impropriety, venture to say a word on the spirit in which mine were conceived. I felt an earnest and humble desire, and shall do till I die, to increase the stock of harmless cheerfulness. I felt that the world was not utterly to be despised; that it was worthy of living in for many reasons. I was anxious to find, as the Professor has said, if I could, in evil things, that soul of goodness which the Creator has put in them. I was anxious to show that virtue may be found in the by-ways of the world, that it is not incompatible with poverty and even with rags, and to keep steadily through life the motto, expressed in the burning words of your Northern poet The rank is but the guinea stamp, The Man’s the gowd for a’ that. And in following this track, where could I have better assurance that I was right, or where could I have stronger assurance to cheer me on than in your kindness on this, to me, memorable night? I am anxious and glad to have an opportunity of saying a word in reference to one incident in which I am happy to know you were interested and still more happy to know, though it may sound paradoxical, that you were disappointed: I mean the death of the little heroine. When I first conceived the idea of conducting that simple story to its termination, I determined rigidly to adhere to it, and never to forsake the end I had in view. Not untried in the school of affliction, in the death of those we love, I thought what a good thing it would be if in my little work of pleasant amusement I could substitute a garland of fresh flowers for the sculptured horrors which disgrace the tomb. If I have put into my book anything which can fill the young mind with better thoughts of death, or soften the grief of older hearts; if I have written one word which can afford pleasure or consolation to old or young in time of trial, I shall consider it as something achieved – something which I shall be glad to look back upon in after life. Therefore I kept to my purpose, notwithstanding that towards the conclusion of the story, I daily received letters of remonstrance, especially from the ladies. God bless them for their tender mercies! The Professor was quite right when he said that I had not reached to an adequate delineation of their virtues; and I fear that I must go on blotting their characters in endeavouring to reach the ideal in my mind. These letters were, however, combined with others from the sterner sex, and some of them were not altogether free from personal invective. But notwithstanding, I kept to my purpose, and I am happy to know that many of those who at first condemned me are now foremost in their approbation. If I have made a mistake in detaining you with this little incident, I do not regret having done so; for your kindness has given me such a confidence in you, that the fault is yours and not mine. I come once more to thank you, and here I am in a difficulty again. The distinction you have conferred upon me is one which I never hoped for, and of which I never dared to dream. That it is one which I shall never forget, and that while I live I shall be proud of its remembrance, you must well know. I believe I shall never hear the name of this capital of Scotland without a thrill of gratitude and pleasure. I shall love while I have life her people, her hills, and her houses, and even the very stones of her streets. And if, in the future works which may lie before me, you should discern – God grant you may – a brighter spirit and a clearer wit, I pray you to refer it back to this night, and point to that as a Scottish passage for evermore. I thank you again and again, with the energy of a thousand thanks in each one, and I drink to you with a heart as full as my glass, and far less easily emptied, I do assure you. I have the honour to be entrusted with a toast, the very mention of which will recommend itself to you I know, as one possessing no ordinary claims to your sympathy and approbation, and the proposing of which is as congenial to my wishes and feelings as its acceptance must be to yours. It is the health of our Chairman, and coupled with his name I have to propose the ‘Literature of Scotland’: a literature which he has done much to render famous through the world, and of which he has been for many years – as I hope and believe he will be for many more – a most brilliant and distinguished ornament. Who can revert to the literature of the land of Scott and of Burns without having directly in his mind, as inseparable from the subject and foremost in the picture, that old man of might, with his lion heart and sceptred crutch, Christopher North? I am glad to remember the time when I believed him to be a real, actual, veritable old gentleman, that might be seen any day hobbling along the High Street with the most brilliant eye – but that is no fiction – and the greyest hair in all the world, who wrote not because he cared to write, not because he cared for the wonder and admiration of his fellow-men, but who wrote because he could not help it, because there was always springing up in his mind a clear and sparkling stream of poetry which must have vent, and like the glittering fountain in the fairy tale, draw what you might, was ever at the full, and never languished even by a single drop or bubble. I had so figured him in my mind, and when I saw the Professor two days ago, striding along the Parliament House, I was disposed to take it as a personal offence – I was vexed to see him look so hearty, I drooped to see twenty Christophers in one. I began to think that Scottish life was all ‘light’ and no ‘shadows’, and I began to doubt that beautiful book to which I have turned again and again, always to find new beauties and fresh sources of interest. It had been the happy lot of Scotland that her great writers have loved to exhibit her in various forms, whether in scenes of solitary grandeur or her simple village ways. The mighty genius who lately departed from you was equally at home in the wild grandeur of Highland scenery or the burning sands of Syria, and in the low haunts of London life; while there is not a shepherd or peasant who has not his type immortalized in the verse of him whose hand was on the plough while his heart was with the muse. There is not a glen of a lonely haunt in the Highlands which has not been visited by Christopher North in his shooting jacket, with a heart as free and as wild as the winds that swept over him. His voice has been heard from the lonely heaths and the snow drifts of the mountains, in the highways of Edinburgh, and in the caves of the Covenanters. By his genius every foot of ground in Scotland has been pictured to dwellers afar off as a fairy land. It is difficult to follow the Professor through all the scenes which he has depicted with such exquisite beauty, from the varied stores of his rich and teeming fancy; so that the epitaph of Goldsmith may be applied to him, that there was no subject but he touched, and nothing which he touched that he did not adorn. But the literature of Scotland comprises other names which are familiar to you: poets, historians, critics, all of the foremost rank. The learned Lord who I am proud to call my friend, to whom, by his fine taste and just appreciation of the beauties of an author, literature owes so much, and to the generosity of whose nature those who are opposed to him have borne high testimony; the author of Matthew Wold and Adam Blair, who has lately depicted with vivid colouring the last days of the mighty genius who departed on the banks of the river he loved so well; the gentleman who is present amongst us, and who under the signature of ‘Delta’ has given the world assurance of a poet, who has raised in us all admiration which we would fain be at liberty to increase still further by meeting him oftener; these, and other great names, are all included in the toast, which we drink to do honour, not to them, but to ourselves. I am less fortunate than the two gentlemen who have preceded me in their toasts, for I have to mention a name known to all present, but which I cannot utter at this time without deep sorrow – a name in which Scotland had high and endearing pride, which England delighted to honour, and which was cherished in the breast of every reflecting man throughout the whole civilized world. From among the gifted spirits of our times a gentle, honest, generous and true one has passed away, as it were but yesterday. The life of one devoted to all that was true and beautiful, and elevating, in art and nature, hath come to an end. I will give you the memory of Wilkie. It is not as one whom many of us knew and loved; it is not as one whose simple nature his high fame and fortune never spoiled or changed; it is not as one who acted up to what he taught, and who made the domestic virtues and duties his daily practice, that I think of him tonight. I think of him as one – and you should do so too – who has left behind him unwonted fire, who has left an undying and imperishable name, who made the cottage hearth his grave theme, and who surrounded the lives, and cares, and daily toils, and occupations of the poor, with dignity and beauty: who indeed found ‘books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything’, and who has left behind in all his works the same breathing of health, as of the air wafted from the heather of his native land. However desirous one may be on an occasion like the present to separate his memory from these mournful associations which gather around it, it is impossible, they are peculiarly inseparable from him: the painter’s study with the empty easel, the brush and palette which he was wont to use, now lie idly by, his unfinished pictures turn their faces to the wall, and that bereaved and affectionate mourner whom he loved in his days to honour, will look upon him no more. He is gone, and has left behind him, particularly to his countrymen and all who knew him, a name and fame as pure and unsullied as the bright sky which shines over the painter’s grave. He has filled our minds and memories with what is mournful, yet as soothing as the roll of the blue waters over his honoured head. Mindful of his only sister, I cannot help expressing the hope that the time will shortly come when she, like us, will feel a solemn pleasure in speaking of his goodness and greatness, and when she will have the grateful recollection that he died in the fulness of his powers, before age or sickness had dimmed his sight, or had bowed his head.	18510625	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Edinburgh">Edinburgh</a>
97	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/97	At the School Ship, Boston	Speech at the School Ship, Boston (1 December 1867).	Dickens, Charles	Payne, Edward F. <em>Dickens Days in Boston</em>. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1927. p. 185.; <em>Alexandria Gazette</em> (28 August 1868).	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1867-12-01">1867-12-01</a>		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Speech">Speech</a>	1867-12-01_Speech_At_the_School_Ship	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'At the School Ship, Boston' (1 December 1867). </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1867-12-01_Speech_At_the_School_Ship">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1867-12-01_Speech_At_the_School_Ship</a>.		<a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1867-12-01_Speech_At_the_School_Ship.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">At the School Ship, Boston (1 December 1867).</a>	‘He had not thought that he could speak, but the sight of the boys moved him to address them. His remarks were inspiring and he concluded with these words:’	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Book">Book</a>; <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Newspaper">Newspaper</a>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=93&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Dickens+Days+in+Boston">Dickens Days in Boston</a>; <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=93&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Alexandria+Gazette">Alexandria Gazette</a>	Boys, if you have ever cause to remember me, think of me as a visitor who had sincere interest in your welfare and who told you above all to tell the truth as being the best way and the only way to earn God’s blessing.; Boys, do all the good you can, and don't make any fuss about it.	18671201	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Boston">Boston</a>	https://dickenssearch.com/files/original/6/At_the_School_Ship_Boston/1867-12-01_Speech_At_the_School_Ship.pdf
238	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/238	At the Annual Dinner of the Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Chest	Toast at the Annual Dinner of the Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Chest (6 May 1843).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1843-05-06">1843-05-06</a>			1843-05-06_Speech_Hospital-for-Consumption	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'At the Annual Dinner of the Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Chest' </span><span>(6 May 1843). </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1843-05-06_Speech_Hospital-for-Consumption">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1843-05-06_Speech_Hospital-for-Consumption</a>.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London+Tavern">London Tavern</a>		<p>The institution, he said, although at this time but a very young plant almost in the bud, had struck a deep root and taken a strong hold in the bosoms of tens of thousands of our fellow creatures. Little more than six months, according to the report just read, had passed since the hospital was open for the reception of patients, and within that short time no fewer than sixty or seventy patients had occupied its beds, while the number of out-patients – many whom they had been delighted to learn had, by the skill and timely aid they had received, been enabled to resume their accustomed occupations – amounted to no fewer than 750.</p> <p>If this charity had not existed, the doors of no sick house within London’s wide bounds would have been open to these poor persons. Before the hospital was founded they would have suffered, lingered, pined, and died in their poor homes, without a hand stretched out to help them in their slow decay. Remembering that the classes of suffering which the charity purposed to alleviate were of all others peculiarly the growth and produce of the country; that they were often the inheritance of the youngest, fairest, best amongst us, that they deprived fair England of those whom it could least afford to lose, struck down the objects of our dearest hopes when in their youthful prime, and when it was hardest to lose them – remembering these things who could doubt that such a charity must be munificently endowed? He now called upon them to drink ‘Prosperity’ to the institution, not as an unmeaning toast, but as a pledge that nothing on their parts should be wanting to aid and urge it onward in its prosperous course.</p>				18430506	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a>
247	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/247	Artists' Benevolent Fund Anniversary Festival	Short response to a toast at the Artists' Benevolent Fund Anniversary Festival (12 May 1838).	Dickens, Charles	The Examiner	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1838-05-12">1838-05-12</a>			1838-05-12_Speech_Artists-Benevolent-Fund-Anniversary-Festival	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Artists' Benevolent Fund Anniversary Festival' </span><span>(12 May 1838). </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1838-05-12_Speech_Artists-Benevolent-Fund-Anniversary-Festival">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1838-05-12_Speech_Artists-Benevolent-Fund-Anniversary-Festival</a>.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Freemasons%27+Tavern">Freemasons' Tavern</a>		<p>During the course of the evening, after the usual proceedings, one of the toasts proposed was ‘The health of the Royal Academicians’, which was acknowledged by their president, Sir Martin Archer Shee. ‘A Similar compliment to the Stewards was acknowledged by Mr. Dickens, whose presence we may add, gave no slight additional <em>éclat</em> to the affair, and whose name was received as a donor to the fund with such a burst of enthusiasm, again and again renewed, as we have never heard equalled in a meeting of this sort.’</p>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Newspaper">Newspaper</a>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=93&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=%3Cem%3EThe+Examiner%3C%2Fem%3E"><em>The Examiner</em></a>		18380512	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a>
248	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/248	After Reading in Sheffield	After a reading of <em>A Christmas</em> <em>Carol</em> in Sheffield (22 December 1855)	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1855-12-22">1855-12-22</a>			1855-12-22_Speech_After-Reading-in-Sheffield	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'After Reading in Sheffield' </span><span>(22 December 1855). </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><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>.	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Mechanics%27+Hall">Mechanics' Hall</a>					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.	18551222	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Sheffield">Sheffield</a>
265	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/265	After Final Reading	Short speech after Dickens's final reading at St. James's Hall (15 March 1870).	Dickens, Charles		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1870-03-15">1870-03-15</a>			1870-03-15_Speech_Final-Reading	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'Final Reading' (15 March 1870).</span><span> </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1870-03-15_Speech_Final-Reading">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1870-03-15_Speech_Final-Reading</a><span>.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=St+James%27s+Hall">St James's Hall</a>					Ladies and gentlemen, It would be worse than idle – for it would be hypocritical and unfeeling – if I were to disguise that I close this episode in my life with feelings of very considerable pain. For some fifteen years, in this hall and in many kindred places, I have had the honour of presenting my own cherished ideas before you for your recognition; and, in closely observing your reception of them, have enjoyed an amount of artistic delight and instruction which, perhaps, is given to few men to know. In this task, and in every other which I have ever undertaken, as a faithful servant of the public, always imbued with a sense of duty to them, and always striving to do his best, I have been uniformly cheered by the readiest response, the most generous sympathy, and the most stimulating support. Nevertheless, I have thought it well, at the full flood-tide of your favour, to retire upon those older associations between us, which date from much further back than these, and henceforth to devote myself exclusively to that art which first brought us together. Ladies and gentlemen, in but two short weeks from this time I hope that you may enter, in your own homes, on a new series of readings, at which my assistance will be indispensable; but from these garish lights I vanish now for evermore, with a heartfelt, grateful, respectful, and affectionate farewell.	18700315	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a>
98	https://dickenssearch.com/items/show/98	After a Reading at Steinway Hall	Speech given after a reading of <em>David Copperfield</em> and 'Mr. Bob Sawyer’s Party' (31 December 1867).	Dickens, Charles	'Mr. Dickens.' <em>New York Tribune</em> (1 January 1868): p. 4.; <em>Chronicling America</em>, <span><a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83030214/1868-01-01/ed-1/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83030214/1868-01-01/ed-1/</a>.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1867-12-31">1867-12-31</a>		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Speech">Speech</a>	1867-12-31_Speech_After_a_Reading_at_Steinway_Hall	<span>Dickens, Charles. 'After a Reading at Steinway Hall' (31 December 1867). </span><em>Dickens Search.</em><span> Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1867-12-31_Speech_After_a_Reading_at_Steinway_Hall">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1867-12-31_Speech_After_a_Reading_at_Steinway_Hall</a></span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1859-10-22_Speech_Reading_in_Peterborough"></a><span>.</span>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=97&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Steinway+Hall">Steinway Hall</a>	<a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1867-12-31_Speech_After_a_Reading_at_Steinway_Hall.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">After a Reading at Steinway Hall (31 December 1867).</a>		<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=94&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Newspaper">Newspaper</a>	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=93&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=New+York+Tribune">New York Tribune</a>	Ladies and gentlemen: I wish you, from my heart of hearts, a happy, happy New Year.	18671231	<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=New+York">New York</a>	https://dickenssearch.com/files/original/6/After_a_Reading_at_Steinway_Hall/1867-12-31_Speech_After_a_Reading_at_Steinway_Hall.pdf