General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival 1849

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.