Banquet at the Mansion House 1866
Description
Speech at the Banquet at the Mansion House (16 January 1866).
Creator
Dickens, Charles
Date
Bibliographic Citation
Dickens, Charles. 'Speech at the Banquet at the Mansion House' (16 January 1866). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1866-01-16_Speech_Banquet-at-the-Mansion-House.
Summary
Dickens proposed ‘The Health of the Lady Mayoress’ – with characteristic grace – and the company separated.
'I dined with Ferguson at the Lord Mayor's last Tuesday, and had a grimly-distracted impulse upon me to defy the Toastmaster, and rush into a speech about him and his noble art, when I sat pining under the imbecility of a variety of Constitutional and Corporational idiots. I did seize him for a moment by the hair of his head (in proposing the Lady Mayoress), and derived some faint consolation from the Company's response to the reference. O! No man will ever know under what provocation to contradiction and a savage yell of repudiation, I suffered at the hands of the renowned Mr. Goschen — feebly complacent in the uniform of Madame Tussaud's Own Military Waxers, and almost the worst speaker I ever heard in my life! Mary and Georgina sitting on either side of me, urged me to "look pleased". I replied in expressions not to be repeated. Shee (the Judge) was just as good and graceful, as He (the Member) was bad and gawky.'