Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Speeches Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context speeches Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together Dickens’s collected and uncollected speeches, making an under-explored body of work searchable for the first time. </h4> Dickens made more than a hundred speeches between 1837 and 1870 at events ranging from charitable dinners and award ceremonies to banquets in his honour or brief words of thanks before a public reading. In these speeches, the author touched on topics including his own life and professional development as well as other subjects such as politics, education, literature, public health and the development of the railway. Efforts to collect Dickens’s speeches prior to 1960 were incomplete at best, and misleading and fragmentary at worst. John Camden Hotten’s collection of speeches, begun without the author’s consent (although he never responded to Hotten’s letters, Dickens did begin efforts to block their publication) and published together with a hastily-compiled biography shortly after the author’s death, remained the primary collected version of the speeches until the Nonesuch Dickens of 1938-39 (a limited print run). Finally, K. J. Fielding brought all known speeches together in 1960, correcting shoddy transcriptions by Hotten using contemporary newspaper accounts, and nearly doubling the total number of speeches attributed to Dickens (The Speeches of Charles Dickens [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960]): Hotten had only featured the text of 56 speeches, the Nonesuch edition of the speeches provided an additional nine, and Fielding presented more than a hundred. Since this monumental work, a handful have also appeared in The Dickensian;<a href="#fn1" id="ref1">1</a> there are certainly more to be found, as the volume of digitised newspapers and periodicals increases, and corrections to be made to existing transcriptions. No effort to collect the speeches has been made since Fielding; this collection thus represents the most complete body of Dickens's speeches ever assembled. Dickens did not write his speeches beforehand, nor did he speak from notes. George Dolby recounted his imaginative process in 1884: <blockquote>[S]upposing the speech was to be delivered in the evening, his habit was to take a long walk in the morning, during which he would decide on the various heads to be dealt with. These being arranged in their proper order, he would in his 'mind's eye,' liken the whole subject to the tire of a cart wheel – he being the hub. From the hub to the tire he would run as many spokes as there were subjects to be treated, and during the progress of the speech he would deal with each spoke separately, elaborating them as he went round the wheel; and when all the spokes dropped out one by one, and nothing but the tire and space remained […] his speech was at an end. (Charles Dickens as I Knew Him: The Story of the Reading Tours in Great Britain and America, pp. 273-74)</blockquote> However, on important occasions, Dickens might personally correct transcriptions of speeches for major London newspapers like The Times. As such, these newspaper accounts are as accurate a source as we can hope to have for what Dickens said (or meant to say). Our Transcription field will only include words attributed directly to Dickens rather than third-person reports or paraphrases of his speeches. Where only such reports exist, we will provide the text in the 'Summary' field. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to what are given as Dickens's words only, to avoid skewing the results, but of course we are reliant on the quality of the reporting: we recommend analysing topics, themes, quotations and concepts rather than granular detail such as prepositions, punctuation, capitalisation and the intricacies of grammar, as different newspaper accounts can vary on these points. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or to contribute other uncollected speeches by Dickens. 1. These are Philip Collins, 'Some Uncollected Speeches by Dickens', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 89-99; David A. Roos, 'Dickens at the Royal Academy of Arts: A New Speech and Two Eulogies', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 100-107; and William F. Long, 'Dickens and the Coming of Rail to Deal: An Uncollected Speech and its Context', The Dickensian 85.418 (1989): pp. 66-80. <a href="#ref1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Emily Middleton; Ellie-Louise Crampton; Maisie Howard; Adam Woods Speech Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given Freemasons' Tavern Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18570406 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. Gentlemen, I have to acknowledge the toast which has been associated by our chairman with such flattering encomiums, and by you with so kind a welcome. Before I do so, I wish to offer a word of explanation in reference to the very startling remark which has fallen from my Right hon. friend the member for the Haymarket. Gentlemen, God forbid that I should have any electioneering designs upon any constituency whatever. My way of life, my delight in life, my means of usefulness in life, such as they are, have long been chosen, and I assure you that I have no intention of canvassing any ‘sex’ whatever, except that sex whose presence I feel behind me, of whose presence I have always a deep perception, appropriately seated in the clouds above me, and that other sex whose presence I see before me. Gentlemen, with this word of explanation, allow me, as one of your Trustees, to express the gratification that we feel, in which I have no doubt you participate, in the very prosperous budget which has been presented to us tonight by my Right Hon. friend, and allow me also to express our great satisfaction in finding him, notwithstanding the very frequent appeals he makes to his constituents, still holding the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer. If he should ever, in another phase of that office, as I have heard it whispered he has some deep prospective intention of doing – if he should ever relieve me of any portion of that income tax which he nightly levies on the public, I hope, as I am sure you do, that in this and in all his enterprises he may be triumphantly successful. Gentlemen, as I have the honour in this institution to hold an official position, you will readily perceive that I should make a most interesting lengthy speech, but for the unfortunate circumstance that I am held in the bonds of official reserve, to which unhappy restraint, as the custom is in such cases, I the more gratefully submit, because I have no statement whatever to make, and nothing whatever to say. I shall, therefore, content myself with thanking you on my own part, and on that of my fellow Trustees, for the toast you have just drunk, and with announcing that I shall beg the chairman's permission to propose another toast when the Toastmaster shall have called upon you, in due form, to charge your glasses. Gentlemen, While I agreed with every part of the excellent address which was made by the chairman in proposing the Fund, I particularly sympathized with that portion of it in which he preferred a claim on the part of the stage to be regarded as a powerful and useful means towards the education of the people. If there were ever a time when the Theatre could be considered to have a strong claim to consideration in that respect, it surely is the present. Gentlemen, we have schoolmasters going about like those horrible old women of whom we read in the public reports, perpetually flaying Whittington's cat alive; we have schoolmasters constantly demonstrating on blackboards to infant minds the utter impossibility of Puss in Boots; we have all the giants utterly dead and gone, with half the Jacks passing examinations every day in mental arithmetic; and with Tom Thumb really only known in these times as the gallant general seeking kisses of the ladies at 6d. a head in the American market; I say really, gentlemen, in these times, when we have torn so many leaves out of our dear old nursery books, I hold it to be more than ever essential to the character of a great people, that the imagination, with all its innumerable graces and charities, should be tenderly nourished; and foremost among the means of training it, I agree with the chairman, must always stand the stage, with its wonderful pictures of passion, with its magnificent illusions, and with its glorious literature. But, gentlemen, there is another aspect, to which the chairman could not with equal modesty advert, in which a thoroughly well-conducted theatre is of vast importance: that is, not only with reference to the public, who so greatly need it, but as a means of sustaining the honour and credit of the dramatic profession itself; as a means of presenting their usefulness to the public in its most striking colours; and as a means of always sustaining them against the reproaches which ignorance and malignity have showered upon them with the only liberality of which such qualities are capable. Gentlemen, an ill-conducted theatre does a world of harm, no doubt. I will not go so far as to say, for that would be going very far indeed, that it does as much harm as a thoroughly ill-conducted school, or a thoroughly ill-conducted chapel; but it does harm enough, and a great deal more. A thoroughly well-conducted theatre, on the contrary, blots out the sins of a thousand bad ones, and will surely attract to itself the goodwill and respect of great numbers of well-meaning and virtuous people, previously objectors, and will conciliate them to understand that what they dreaded in the dramatic art arose not from its use, but from its abuse – not from its exertion, but from its perversion. Now, gentlemen, I perfectly well know that you will all agree with me that if ever a theatre attained these ends, it is the theatre Sadlers’ Wells. Gentlemen, that theatre, rescued from the wretchedest condition, from a condition so disgraceful that if  on any night in the week the New River Company had poured in through its boxes, pit, and gallery the Humane Society could have hardly done a worse thing at one time than have interfered. With a very bad audience – I beg in reference to that gentleman's observation who says ‘No,’ to state that I have as accurate a knowledge of that theatre as any man in the kingdom, and I say, that with one of the most vagabond audiences that ever went into a theatre – utterly displaced from it, and with one of the most intelligent and attentive audiences ever seen, attracted to it and retained in it – I believe I am not very wrong in my rough calculation when I say, that that theatre has been opened under Mr. Phelps’s management 3,000 nights, and that during 2,000 of those nights the author represented has been Shakespeare. Gentlemen, add for the other thousand nights sterling old plays, tragedies and comedies, many new plays of great merit, accepted with a real sense of managerial responsibility, and paid for, as I have reason to know in the case of a friend, with a spirit and liberality that would have done honour to the old days of the two great theatres – add to that, that all these plays have been produced with the same beauty, with the same delicacy and taste, with the same sensible subservience of the scene-painter and the mechanist to the real meaning of the play, and with the same indebtedness to the creator of the whole for his admirable impersonation of a great variety of most opposite and diversified characters, and surely we must all agree, to say the very least, that the public is under a great debt to the profession, is under a great debt of obligation to Mr. Phelps, and that it has a strong legitimate interest in the continued success of his undertaking. Gentlemen, for the public I can only say that so far as I know it, I have never mixed with any grade or class of it by whom those exertions have failed to be held in the highest respect, or from whom they have failed to elicit the highest approval; and it may be worthy of remark, that I have found this feeling to exist quite as strongly among the intelligent artist classes of Paris as here in London. Gentlemen, on the other hand, for the profession, Mr. Phelps’s position here tonight, and our recognition of him in it, are an ample and sufficient answer. He is here before you in a double capacity: firstly, as the mind of the theatre in which the English drama has found a home, and in which graceful homage is rendered to the noblest of all dramatists – that he has there a body of students behind the curtain, and a body of students before the curtain,  striving together to appreciate and extol him; Mr. Phelps is also here in the other capacity of one whose life and labour are a constant credit and a constant honour to, and a constant sustainer of, the dignity and credit of his art. Gentlemen, in this double capacity I am perfectly sure you are ready, for the second time, to give Mr. Phelps a double welcome. I am perfectly sure you will receive the toast, which is his health, with a double acclamation, and that you will unite in a double expression of your best wishes for his success, health, happiness, and prosperity. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Royal General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival 1857 Description An account of the resource Speech at the Royal General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival (6 April 1857). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1857-04-06 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1857-04-06_Speech_Royal-General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Speech at the Royal General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival' (6 April 1857). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1857-04-06_Speech_Royal-General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1857-04-06_Speech_Royal-General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Gentlemen, I have to acknowledge the toast which has been associated by our chairman with such flattering encomiums, and by you with so kind a welcome. Before I do so, I wish to offer a word of explanation in reference to the very startling remark which has fallen from my Right hon. friend the member for the Haymarket. Gentlemen, God forbid that I should have any electioneering designs upon any constituency whatever. My way of life, my delight in life, my means of usefulness in life, such as they are, have long been chosen, and I assure you that I have no intention of canvassing any ‘sex’ whatever, except that sex whose presence I feel behind me, of whose presence I have always a deep perception, appropriately seated in the clouds above me, and that other sex whose presence I see before me. Gentlemen, with this word of explanation, allow me, as one of your Trustees, to express the gratification that we feel, in which I have no doubt you participate, in the very prosperous budget which has been presented to us tonight by my Right Hon. friend, and allow me also to express our great satisfaction in finding him, notwithstanding the very frequent appeals he makes to his constituents, still holding the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer. If he should ever, in another phase of that office, as I have heard it whispered he has some deep prospective intention of doing – if he should ever relieve me of any portion of that income tax which he nightly levies on the public, I hope, as I am sure you do, that in this and in all his enterprises he may be triumphantly successful.  Gentlemen, as I have the honour in this institution to hold an official position, you will readily perceive that I should make a most interesting lengthy speech, but for the unfortunate circumstance that I am held in the bonds of official reserve, to which unhappy restraint, as the custom is in such cases, I the more gratefully submit, because I have no statement whatever to make, and nothing whatever to say. I shall, therefore, content myself with thanking you on my own part, and on that of my fellow Trustees, for the toast you have just drunk, and with announcing that I shall beg the chairman's permission to propose another toast when the Toastmaster shall have called upon you, in due form, to charge your glasses.  Gentlemen, While I agreed with every part of the excellent address which was made by the chairman in proposing the Fund, I particularly sympathized with that portion of it in which he preferred a claim on the part of the stage to be regarded as a powerful and useful means towards the education of the people. If there were ever a time when the Theatre could be considered to have a strong claim to consideration in that respect, it surely is the present. Gentlemen, we have schoolmasters going about like those horrible old women of whom we read in the public reports, perpetually flaying Whittington's cat alive; we have schoolmasters constantly demonstrating on blackboards to infant minds the utter impossibility of Puss in Boots; we have all the giants utterly dead and gone, with half the Jacks passing examinations every day in mental arithmetic; and with Tom Thumb really only known in these times as the gallant general seeking kisses of the ladies at 6d. a head in the American market; I say really, gentlemen, in these times, when we have torn so many leaves out of our dear old nursery books, I hold it to be more than ever essential to the character of a great people, that the imagination, with all its innumerable graces and charities, should be tenderly nourished; and foremost among the means of training it, I agree with the chairman, must always stand the stage, with its wonderful pictures of passion, with its magnificent illusions, and with its glorious literature. But, gentlemen, there is another aspect, to which the chairman could not with equal modesty advert, in which a thoroughly well-conducted theatre is of vast importance: that is, not only with reference to the public, who so greatly need it, but as a means of sustaining the honour and credit of the dramatic profession itself; as a means of presenting their usefulness to the public in its most striking colours; and as a means of always sustaining them against the reproaches which ignorance and malignity have showered upon them with the only liberality of which such qualities are capable. Gentlemen, an ill-conducted theatre does a world of harm, no doubt. I will not go so far as to say, for that would be going very far indeed, that it does as much harm as a thoroughly ill-conducted school, or a thoroughly ill-conducted chapel; but it does harm enough, and a great deal more. A thoroughly well-conducted theatre, on the contrary, blots out the sins of a thousand bad ones, and will surely attract to itself the goodwill and respect of great numbers of well-meaning and virtuous people, previously objectors, and will conciliate them to understand that what they dreaded in the dramatic art arose not from its use, but from its abuse – not from its exertion, but from its perversion. Now, gentlemen, I perfectly well know that you will all agree with me that if ever a theatre attained these ends, it is the theatre Sadlers’ Wells. Gentlemen, that theatre, rescued from the wretchedest condition, from a condition so disgraceful that if  on any night in the week the New River Company had poured in through its boxes, pit, and gallery the Humane Society could have hardly done a worse thing at one time than have interfered. With a very bad audience –  I beg in reference to that gentleman's observation who says ‘No,’ to state that I have as accurate a knowledge of that theatre as any man in the kingdom, and I say, that with one of the most vagabond audiences that ever went into a theatre – utterly displaced from it, and with one of the most intelligent and attentive audiences ever seen, attracted to it and retained in it – I believe I am not very wrong in my rough calculation when I say, that that theatre has been opened under Mr. Phelps’s management 3,000 nights, and that during 2,000 of those nights the author represented has been Shakespeare. Gentlemen, add for the other thousand nights sterling old plays, tragedies and comedies, many new plays of great merit, accepted with a real sense of managerial responsibility, and paid for, as I have reason to know in the case of a friend, with a spirit and liberality that would have done honour to the old days of the two great theatres – add to that, that all these plays have been produced with the same beauty, with the same delicacy and taste, with the same sensible subservience of the scene-painter and the mechanist to the real meaning of the play, and with the same indebtedness to the creator of the whole for his admirable impersonation of a great variety of most opposite and diversified characters, and surely we must all agree, to say the very least, that the public is under a great debt to the profession, is under a great debt of obligation to Mr. Phelps, and that it has a strong legitimate interest in the continued success of his undertaking. Gentlemen, for the public I can only say that so far as I know it, I have never mixed with any grade or class of it by whom those exertions have failed to be held in the highest respect, or from whom they have failed to elicit the highest approval; and it may be worthy of remark, that I have found this feeling to exist quite as strongly among the intelligent artist classes of Paris as here in London. Gentlemen, on the other hand, for the profession, Mr. Phelps’s position here tonight, and our recognition of him in it, are an ample and sufficient answer. He is here before you in a double capacity: firstly, as the mind of the theatre in which the English drama has found a home, and in which graceful homage is rendered to the noblest of all dramatists – that he has there a body of students behind the curtain, and a body of students before the curtain,  striving together to appreciate and extol him; Mr. Phelps is also here in the other capacity of one whose life and labour are a constant credit and a constant honour to, and a constant sustainer of, the dignity and credit of his art. Gentlemen, in this double capacity I am perfectly sure you are ready, for the second time, to give Mr. Phelps a double welcome. I am perfectly sure you will receive the toast, which is his health, with a double acclamation, and that you will unite in a double expression of your best wishes for his success, health, happiness, and prosperity.