Artists' Benevolent Fund Anniversary Festival 1858
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Ladies and Gentlemen, There is an absurd theatrical story which was once told to me by a dear and valued friend, who has now passed from this sublunary stage, and which is not without its moral as applied to myself, in my present presidential position. In a certain theatrical company was included a man, who on occasions of emergency was capable of taking part in the whole round of British drama, provided he was allowed to use his own language in getting through the dialogue. It happened one night that Reginald, in The Castle Spectre, was taken ill, and this hardy veteran of a hundred characters was, of course, called up for the vacant part. He responded with his usual promptitude, although knowing nothing whatever of the character; but while they were getting him into the dress, he expressed a not unreasonable wish to know in some vague way what the part was about. He was not particular as to details, but in order that he might properly portray his sufferings, he thought he should have some slight inkling as to what really had happened to him; as, for example, what murders he had committed, whose father he was, of what misfortunes he was the victim, – in short, in a general way to know why he was in the place at all. They said to him, ‘Here you are, chained in a dungeon, an unhappy father; you have been here for seventeen years, during which time you have never seen your daughter; you have lived upon bread and water, and, in consequence, are extremely weak, and suffer from occasional lowness of spirits’. ‘All right’, said the actor of universal capabilities, ‘Ring up.’
When he was discovered to the audience, he presented an extremely miserable appearance, was very favourably received, and gave every sign of going on well until, through some mental confusion as to his instructions, he opened the business of the act by stating in pathetic terms, that he had been confined in that dungeon seventeen years during which time he had not tasted a morsel of food, to which circumstance he was inclined to attribute the fact of his being at that moment very much out of condition. The audience, thinking this statement exceedingly improbable, declined to receive it, and the weight of that speech hung round him until the end of his performance.
Now I, too, have received instructions for the part I have the honour of performing before you, and it behoves both you and me to profit by the terrible warning I have detailed, while I endeavour to make the part I have undertaken as plain and intelligible as I possibly can.
As I am going to propose to you that we should now begin to connect the business with the pleasure of the evening, by drinking prosperity to the Artists’ Benevolent Fund, it becomes important that we should know what that fund is. It is an association supported by the voluntary gifts of those who entertain a critical and admiring estimation of art, and has for its objects the granting of annuities to the widows and children of deceased artists – of artists who have been unable in their lives to make any provision for those dear objects of their love surviving themselves. Now it is extremely important to observe that this institution of an Artists’ Benevolent Fund, which I now call on you to pledge, has connected with it, and has arisen out of another artists' association, which does not ask you for help, which never did and never will ask you for help, which is self-supporting, and which is entirely maintained by the prudence and providence of its three hundred artist members. That fund, which is called the Artists’ Annuity Fund is, so to speak, a joint and mutual Assurance Company against infirmity, sickness, and old age. To the benefits it affords every one of its members has an absolute right, a right be it remembered produced by timely thrift and self denial, and not assisted by appeals to the charity or compassion of any human being. On that fund there are, if I remember aright, some seventeen annuitants who are in the receipt of eleven hundred a year, the proceeds of their own self-supporting institution. In recommending to you this benevolent fund, which is not self-supporting, they address you, in effect, in these words: ‘We ask you to help these widows and orphans, because we show you we have first helped ourselves. These widows and orphans may be ours or they may not be ours; but in any case we will prove to you to a certainty that we are not so many wagoners calling upon Hercules to do our work, because we do our own work, each has his shoulder to the wheel; each, from year to year, has had his shoulder set to the wheel; and the prayer we make to Hercules and all the gods at once is simply this – that this fact may be remembered when the wagon has stopped for ever, and the spent and worn-out wagoner lies lifeless by the roadside.
Ladies and gentlemen, I most particularly wish to impress on you the strength of this appeal. I am a painter, a sculptor, or an engraver, of average success. I study hard, and work hard, with no immense return for my labour. Whilst I live in health, my hand and eye are mine. I prudently belong to the Annuity Fund, whose help whether in sickness or old age, I may or may not want, yet still 1 help to provide for some of my brethren who inevitably will want. I thus do my duty to them and to myself by putting them and myself beyond the need of charity whilst life remains. But when life is gone from me; when this hand, once so skilful with the brush, the chisel, or the burin, has for ever lost its cunning; when this poor form, which for so many years bent patiently over the easel or the desk, is laid low, and the grass grows green above my grave, how consoling to my survivors that I had at least made some attempts at provision for them.
This is the case with the Artists’ Benevolent Fund, and in stating this I am only the mouthpiece of three hundred of the trade, who in truth stand as independent before you as if they were three hundred Cockers all regulated by the Gospel according to themselves. There is in existence a third Artists' fund, wholly unconnected with the two to which I have alluded – which must not be mentioned but with honour and respect.! It gives away sums of money in eleemosynary relief. I have the honour of being one of the honorary officers thereof. I know it to be a generous fund and a good fund. But it addresses its appeal to you on behalf of those amongst the unfortunate or less provident men who have made no provision for themselves, or for those dependent on the contingencies of sickness or age. I address you on behalf of those professors of the fine arts who have made provision during life, and in submitting to you their claims I am only advocating principles which I myself have always maintained.
When I add that this Benevolent Fund makes no pretensions to gentility, squanders no treasure in keeping up appearances, that it considers that the money given for the widow and orphan, should really be held for the widow and orphan, I think I have exhausted the case, which I desire most strenuously to commend to you.
Perhaps you will allow me to say one last word. I will not consent to present to you the professors of Art as a set of helpless babies, who are to be held up by the chin; I present them as an energetic and persevering class of men, whose income depends on their own faculties and personal exertions; and I also make so bold as to present them as men who in their vocation render good service to the community. I am strongly disposed to believe there are very few debates in Parliament so important to the public welfare as a really good picture. I have also a notion that any number of bundles of the driest legal chaff that was ever chopped would be cheaply exchanged for one really accessible, really humanizing, really meritorious engraving. At a highly interesting annual festival at which I have the honour to assist, 1 and which takes place behind two fountains, I sometimes observe that great ministers of state and other such exalted characters have a strange delight in rather ostentatiously declaring that they have no knowledge whatever of art, and particularly of impressing on the company that they have passed their lives in severe studies. It strikes me when I hear these things as if these great men looked upon the arts as a sort of dancing dogs, or Punch’s show, to be turned to for amusement when one has nothing else to do. Now I always take the opportunity on these occasions of entertaining my humble opinion that all this is complete ‘bosh’; and of asserting to myself my strong belief that the neighbourhoods of Trafalgar Square, or Suffolk Street, rightly understood, are quite as important to the welfare of the empire as those of Downing Street or Westminster Hall.
Ladies and gentlemen, on these grounds – upon grounds not one inch lower – and backed by the recommendation of three hundred artists in favour of the Benevolent Fund, I beg propose its prosperity as a toast for your adoption.
Summary
He alluded to her Majesty's magnificent donation of 100 guineas. This fact in itself was no slight proof of the Queen’s interest in the association. The art of the artist, coupled with the art of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had rendered the Queen’s head familiar to them at every hour of their daily lives. And on that head they were now anxious, as loyal and devoted subjects, to invoke a blessing.
He alluded eloquently to their services. Although he was not one of those who feared or had the least apprehension of an invasion, or that the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square would be carried off – seeing, for instance, that it was a building that would not be worth the transport, yet at the same time it was well to be prepared for any emergency; and he was sure that should such arise, the services to which he had the honour to allude would be found – as ever – ready and willing to serve for the honour of their country.