27 10 361 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 Summary Occasionally speeches are summarised in sources in third person. Include that here, so that everything in the text transcription is only Dickens's words. He begged most unaffectedly and heartily to thank the company for the honour they had done him; but looking to the other toasts upon the list, he would at once proceed to say that it was important to all such charities to have the aid of efficient honorary officers who, not merely under the excitement of an occasional festival, but at all times, were prepared to do them service. Among such officers none were more important than the Vice-Presidents, and he had much pleasure in proposing their health.   His office, he said, had compelled him to burst into bloom so often that he could wish there were a closer parallel between himself and the American Aloe. It was particularly agreeable and appropriate to know that the parents of the institution were to be found in the seed and nursery trade. And the seed having yielded such good fruit, and the nursery having produced such a healthy child, I have the greatest pleasure in proposing the health of ‘The Nursery and Seed business – the Parents of the Institution’, and to couple with the toast the name of Mr. James Thompson.  His observation of the signboards of this country, he said, had taught him that its conventional gardeners were always jolly, and always three in number.  Whether that conventionality had any reference to the three Graces, or to those very significant letters £., s., d., he did not know. Those mystic letters were, how-ever, very important, and no society could have officers of more importance than its Treasurers, nor could it possibly give them too much to do.   Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given London 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. 18520614 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. The first toast which our duty and our inclination alike prompt us to give, is the health of Her Majesty the Queen. Her Majesty often breathes the morning air in gardens; and it is not hard to imagine that there may be occasions when the results of the plain wood and iron spade, without the palace, may afford her a more agreeable relief from the cares of state than the gold and silver within. That Her Majesty has an interest in gardens we may venture to assume; and that she has a special interest in gardeners we know, in the most acceptable manner, by her having presented this institution with the sum of fifty pounds. When my friend, the late Reverend Sydney Smith was taking leave of a friend going to New Zealand, he whimsically wished that he might disagree with any cannibal who might chance to eat him ; and although myself of a pacific disposition, I should like to disagree with any foreign gentlemen who would take away my personal liberty; and I should be disposed to differ with any foreign prince, potentate, or peasant who might venture to take any liberty with my liberty. Hence, gentlemen, I always hold in great respect our Army and Navy, and not least when it is by no means inappropriate to remember that no agriculture, no commerce, no art, could long be pursued if England were unable to defend herself, to repel invasion, and to make her name, as it ought to be, a name of fear to the tyrants of the world. I beg to give you 'The Army and Navy', and to couple with that toast the name of Captain Wrench. Gentlemen, I have to offer you a toast which expresses our interest in the institution in whose behalf we are met together. I feel in reference to the institution something like a counsel for the plaintiff with nobody on the other side; but even if it had existed instead of three times three, ninety times nine years, I should still feel it my duty to trouble you with a few facts from the very short brief which has been entrusted to me, for that desperate gardener, Old Time, does so transplant and remove, as to warrant the supposition that there are always some to whom it may be desirable to state the merits of the case. The institution was founded in the year 1838; and for the first few years of its existence seems not to have been particularly robust, and to have been placed in rather a shaded position, receiving somewhat more than its needful allowance of cold water. In 1848 it was removed into a more genial situation, and grafted on to a better managerial stock where it began to blossom; and it has now borne fruit and become such a vigorous tree that, at present, thirty-five old people daily sit within the shelter of its friendly branches. It is to be observed of this institution, unlike some older and more renowned, that what it is in name it is in effect. The class for whose benefit it purports to have been devised has its full and entire advantage. All the pensioners upon the list have been veritable gardeners, or the wives of gardeners. It is managed by gardeners, and besides having upon its books this excellent rule: ‘That gardeners who have contributed to the funds of the charity for fifteen years, and who from old age or misfortune become destitute, have claims upon this institution in preference to those who have never subscribed to it’, I observe that every subscriber may be placed upon the pension list, if he will, without election, without canvass, without solicitation and as his independent right. I lay great stress upon this, because I hold that the man principle of every society such as this should be, in the first place, to help those who have helped themselves and helped others; and, secondly, to merge all considerations of its own importance in the sacred duty of relieving such persons when they fall into affliction, with the utmost possible delicacy, and without the least chance of carrying a pang to their hearts, or bringing a blush to their cheeks. That the society's pensioners do not become such as long as they are reasonably able to toil is evinced by the significant fact that the average age of the present pensioners is 77. That they are not waste-fully relieved is shown by the fact that the whole sum expended for their relief does not exceed five hundred pounds a year; that no narrow confines of locality are favoured in the selection will be clear when I assure you that pensioners are to be found in every part of the country, east, west, north, and south. That the expenses of the society are not disproportionate to the society's income is proved by their being all defrayed out of the annual subscriptions, while the sum at present in hand is £2,700, and we mean to make it up to three thousand at least. Such is the institution which appeals to you through me as a most unworthy advocate for sympathy and support. That it has not addressed itself in vain to the employers is evident from its having for its President a nobleman whose whole possessions are remarkable for taste and beauty, and whose gardener's laurels are famous throughout the world. And I notice with great pleasure, on the list of Vice-Presidents, the names of many noblemen and gentlemen of great influence and station. I am particularly struck in glancing through the pages of this little book, with the number of nurserymen and seedsmen who have contributed, and the handsome sums written against their names. It is a very worthy example. The gardeners also muster very strong, and I do hope the day will come when no one will be left out, but every decent gardener in England will feel that this society is a part of his calling, and though he may never want its aid, that it is his duty to belong to it for the sake of others who may. The gardener particularly needs such help as this society affords. His gains are not great; he often knows gold and silver better as the colours of fruit and flowers, than by their presence in his pockets; and it is easy to see how his exposure to changes of weather may render him peculiarly liable to sickness and infirmity. A gardener, of all men, should particularly appreciate the worth of such a society as this, for his continual observance of the changing seasons and declining days may well suggest to him the decline of life, and that it is a dictate both of worldly prudence and Christian kindness to provide for it. Finally, to all here who are gardeners, and to all here who are not gardeners, except as we all trace our descent in a direct line from the first ‘gardener Adam and his wife’, this institution forcibly appeals. The universality of the gardener's calling is one of its greatest characteristics. If any improvement be made in Her Majesty's garden, or in that of his Grace or my Lord, it is very soon transferred even to the costermonger. In the culture of flowers there cannot, by their very nature, be anything solitary or exclusive. The wind that blows over the cottager's patch sweeps also over the grounds of the nobleman; and as the rain descends on the just and the unjust, so it communicates to all gardeners, both rich and poor, an interchange of pleasure and enjoyment; and the gardener of the rich man, in developing and enhancing a fruitful flower of a delightful scent is, in some part, the gardener of everybody else. Flowers are the best picture books I know; and whenever I see them lying open at the labourer's door, I can always read in them that he is a better and happier man. It is not too much to say that the gardener is essential to all of us. The love of gardening is associated with all countries and all periods of time. The scholar and the statesman, men of peace and men of war, have agreed in all ages to delight in gardens. The most ancient people of the earth had gardens where there are now nothing but solitary heaps of earth. The younger ancients had crowns of flowers. In China hundreds of acres were employed in gardens. When we travel by our railways we see the weaver striving for a scrap of garden, the poor man wrestling with smoke for a little bower of scarlet runners; and those who have no ground of their own will carry on their gardens in jugs and basins. In factories and workshops, people garden; and even the prisoner is found gardening, in his lonely cell, after years and years of solitary confinement. Of the exponents of a language so universal as this, surely it then is not too much to say that the gardener who produces shapes and objects so lovely and so comforting should have some hold upon the world's remembrance when he himself becomes in need of comfort? And so then, coming at last to three times three cheers for three times three years, I will call upon you to drink ‘Prosperity to the Gardeners' Benevolent Institution’, and I beg to couple with that toast the name of its President, the Duke of Devonshire, whose worth is written in all his deeds, and who has communicated to his title and his riches a lustre which no title and riches could confer. 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 Gardeners' Benevolent Institution Anniversary Festival 1852 Description An account of the resource Speech at the Gardeners' Benevolent Institution Anniversary Festival (14 June 1852). 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 1852-06-14 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1852-06-14_Speech_Gardeners-Benevolent-Institution-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 Gardeners' Benevolent Institution Anniversary Festival' (14 June 1852). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1852-06-14_Speech_Gardeners-Benevolent-Institution-Anniversary-Festival">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1852-06-14_Speech_Gardeners-Benevolent-Institution-Anniversary-Festival</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. The first toast which our duty and our inclination alike prompt us to give, is the health of Her Majesty the Queen. Her Majesty often breathes the morning air in gardens; and it is not hard to imagine that there may be occasions when the results of the plain wood and iron spade, without the palace, may afford her a more agreeable relief from the cares of state than the gold and silver within. That Her Majesty has an interest in gardens we may venture to assume; and that she has a special interest in gardeners we know, in the most acceptable manner, by her having presented this institution with the sum of fifty pounds. When my friend, the late Reverend Sydney Smith was taking leave of a friend going to New Zealand, he whimsically wished that he might disagree with any cannibal who might chance to eat him ; and although myself of a pacific disposition, I should like to disagree with any foreign gentlemen who would take away my personal liberty; and I should be disposed to differ with any foreign prince, potentate, or peasant who might venture to take any liberty with my liberty. Hence, gentlemen, I always hold in great respect our Army and Navy, and not least when it is by no means inappropriate to remember that no agriculture, no commerce, no art, could long be pursued if England were unable to defend herself, to repel invasion, and to make her name, as it ought to be, a name of fear to the tyrants of the world. I beg to give you 'The Army and Navy', and to couple with that toast the name of Captain Wrench. Gentlemen, I have to offer you a toast which expresses our interest in the institution in whose behalf we are met together. I feel in reference to the institution something like a counsel for the plaintiff with nobody on the other side; but even if it had existed instead of three times three, ninety times nine years, I should still feel it my duty to trouble you with a few facts from the very short brief which has been entrusted to me, for that desperate gardener, Old Time, does so transplant and remove, as to warrant the supposition that there are always some to whom it may be desirable to state the merits of the case. The institution was founded in the year 1838; and for the first few years of its existence seems not to have been particularly robust, and to have been placed in rather a shaded position, receiving somewhat more than its needful allowance of cold water. In 1848 it was removed into a more genial situation, and grafted on to a better managerial stock where it began to blossom; and it has now borne fruit and become such a vigorous tree that, at present, thirty-five old people daily sit within the shelter of its friendly branches. It is to be observed of this institution, unlike some older and more renowned, that what it is in name it is in effect. The class for whose benefit it purports to have been devised has its full and entire advantage. All the pensioners upon the list have been veritable gardeners, or the wives of gardeners. It is managed by gardeners, and besides having upon its books this excellent rule: ‘That gardeners who have contributed to the funds of the charity for fifteen years, and who from old age or misfortune become destitute, have claims upon this institution in preference to those who have never subscribed to it’, I observe that every subscriber may be placed upon the pension list, if he will, without election, without canvass, without solicitation and as his independent right. I lay great stress upon this, because I hold that the man principle of every society such as this should be, in the first place, to help those who have helped themselves and helped others; and, secondly, to merge all considerations of its own importance in the sacred duty of relieving such persons when they fall into affliction, with the utmost possible delicacy, and without the least chance of carrying a pang to their hearts, or bringing a blush to their cheeks. That the society's pensioners do not become such as long as they are reasonably able to toil is evinced by the significant fact that the average age of the present pensioners is 77. That they are not waste-fully relieved is shown by the fact that the whole sum expended for their relief does not exceed five hundred pounds a year; that no narrow confines of locality are favoured in the selection will be clear when I assure you that pensioners are to be found in every part of the country, east, west, north, and south. That the expenses of the society are not disproportionate to the society's income is proved by their being all defrayed out of the annual subscriptions, while the sum at present in hand is £2,700, and we mean to make it up to three thousand at least. Such is the institution which appeals to you through me as a most unworthy advocate for sympathy and support. That it has not addressed itself in vain to the employers is evident from its having for its President a nobleman whose whole possessions are remarkable for taste and beauty, and whose gardener's laurels are famous throughout the world. And I notice with great pleasure, on the list of Vice-Presidents, the names of many noblemen and gentlemen of great influence and station. I am particularly struck in glancing through the pages of this little book, with the number of nurserymen and seedsmen who have contributed, and the handsome sums written against their names. It is a very worthy example. The gardeners also muster very strong, and I do hope the day will come when no one will be left out, but every decent gardener in England will feel that this society is a part of his calling, and though he may never want its aid, that it is his duty to belong to it for the sake of others who may. The gardener particularly needs such help as this society affords. His gains are not great; he often knows gold and silver better as the colours of fruit and flowers, than by their presence in his pockets; and it is easy to see how his exposure to changes of weather may render him peculiarly liable to sickness and infirmity. A gardener, of all men, should particularly appreciate the worth of such a society as this, for his continual observance of the changing seasons and declining days may well suggest to him the decline of life, and that it is a dictate both of worldly prudence and Christian kindness to provide for it.  Finally, to all here who are gardeners, and to all here who are not gardeners, except as we all trace our descent in a direct line from the first ‘gardener Adam and his wife’, this institution forcibly appeals. The universality of the gardener's calling is one of its greatest characteristics. If any improvement be made in Her Majesty's garden, or in that of his Grace or my Lord, it is very soon transferred even to the costermonger. In the culture of flowers there cannot, by their very nature, be anything solitary or exclusive. The wind that blows over the cottager's patch sweeps also over the grounds of the nobleman; and as the rain descends on the just and the unjust, so it communicates to all gardeners, both rich and poor, an interchange of pleasure and enjoyment; and the gardener of the rich man, in developing and enhancing a fruitful flower of a delightful scent is, in some part, the gardener of everybody else.   Flowers are the best picture books I know; and whenever I see them lying open at the labourer's door, I can always read in them that he is a better and happier man. It is not too much to say that the gardener is essential to all of us. The love of gardening is associated with all countries and all periods of time. The scholar and the statesman, men of peace and men of war, have agreed in all ages to delight in gardens. The most ancient people of the earth had gardens where there are now nothing but solitary heaps of earth. The younger ancients had crowns of flowers. In China hundreds of acres were employed in gardens. When we travel by our railways we see the weaver striving for a scrap of garden, the poor man wrestling with smoke for a little bower of scarlet runners; and those who have no ground of their own will carry on their gardens in jugs and basins. In factories and workshops, people garden; and even the prisoner is found gardening, in his lonely cell, after years and years of solitary confinement. Of the exponents of a language so universal as this, surely it then is not too much to say that the gardener who produces shapes and objects so lovely and so comforting should have some hold upon the world's remembrance when he himself becomes in need of comfort? And so then, coming at last to three times three cheers for three times three years, I will call upon you to drink ‘Prosperity to the Gardeners' Benevolent Institution’, and I beg to couple with that toast the name of its President, the Duke of Devonshire, whose worth is written in all his deeds, and who has communicated to his title and his riches a lustre which no title and riches could confer.  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 London 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. 18470329 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, 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. 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 General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival 1847 Description An account of the resource Toast at the General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival (29 March 1847). 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 1847-03-29 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1847-03-29_Speech_General-Theatrical-Fund-Dinner 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. 'General Theatrical Anniversary Festival' (29 March 1847). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <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>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. 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: <div style="text-align: center;">so worthy and so much its own</div> <div style="text-align: center;">As to be favoured, need but to be known.</div> 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. 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 Summary Occasionally speeches are summarised in sources in third person. Include that here, so that everything in the text transcription is only Dickens's words. 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’. Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given London 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. 18480417 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 General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival 1848 Description An account of the resource Toasts given at the General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival (17 April 1848). 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 1848-04-17 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1848-04-17_Speech_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. 'Toasts given at the General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival' (17 April 1848). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <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>. 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 London 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. 18490521 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, 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. 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 General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival 1849 Description An account of the resource Speech at the General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival (21 May 1849). 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 1849-05-21 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1849-05-21_Speech_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 General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival' (21 May 1849). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <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>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. 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. 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 London 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. 18500325 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. 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. 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 General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival 1850 Description An account of the resource Speech at the General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival (25 March 1850). 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 1850-03-25 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1850-03-25_Speech_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 General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival' (25 March 1850). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <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>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. 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. 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 Summary Occasionally speeches are summarised in sources in third person. Include that here, so that everything in the text transcription is only Dickens's words. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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’. Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given London 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. 18510414 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, 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!’ 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 General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival 1851 Description An account of the resource Chairman's speeches at the General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival (14 April 1851). 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 1851-04-14 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1851-04-14_Speech_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. 'Chairman's speeches at the General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival' (14 April 1851). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <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>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. 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!’ 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 Summary Occasionally speeches are summarised in sources in third person. Include that here, so that everything in the text transcription is only Dickens's words. 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. 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 its 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. 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 Money 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. 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. 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. Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given London 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. 18520405 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 General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival 1852 Description An account of the resource Speech at the General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival (5 April 1852). 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 1852-04-05 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1852-05-04_Speech_General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival-1852 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 General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival' (5 April 1852). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <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>. 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. 18660328 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, in my childish days I remember to have had a vague but profound admiration for a certain legendary person called the Lord Mayor’s Fool. I had the highest opinion of the intellectual capacity of that suppositious retainer of the Mansion House, and I really regarded him with feelings approaching to absolute veneration, because my nurse informed me on every gastronomic occasion that the Lord Mayor’s Fool liked everything that was good. You will agree with me, I have no doubt, that if this discriminating jester had existed at the present time he could not fail to have liked his master very much, seeing that so good a Lord Mayor is very rarely to be found, and that a better Lord Mayor could not possibly be. You have already divined, gentlemen, that I am about to propose to you to drink the health of the right honourable gentleman in the Chair. As one of the Trustees of the General Theatrical Fund, I beg officially to tender him my best thanks for lending the very powerful aid of his presence, his influence, and his personal character to this very deserving institution. As his private friends we ventured to urge upon him to do us this gracious act, and I beg to assure you that the perfect simplicity, modesty, cordiality, and frankness with which he assented, enhanced the gift one thousandfold. I think it must be very agreeable to a company like this to know that the President of the night is not ceremoniously pretending, ‘positively for this night only’, to have an interest in the drama, but that he has an unusual and thorough acquaintance with it, and that he has a living and discerning knowledge of the merits of the great old actors. It is very pleasant to me to remember that the Lord Mayor and I once beguiled the tedium of a journey by exchanging our experiences upon this subject. I rather prided myself on being something of an old stager, but I found the Lord Mayor so thoroughly up in all the stock pieces, and so knowing and yet so fresh about the merits of those who are most and best identified with them, that I readily recognized in him what would be called in fistic language, a very ugly customer – one, I assure you, by no means to be settled by any novice not in thorough good theatrical training. Gentlemen, we have all known from our earliest infancy that when the giants in Guildhall hear the clock strike one, they come down to dinner. Similarly, when the City of London shall hear but one single word in just disparagement of its present Lord Mayor, whether as its enlightened chief magistrate, or as one of its merchants, or as one of its true gentlemen, he will then descend from the high personal place which he holds in the general honour and esteem. Until then he will remain upon his pedestal, and my private opinion, between ourselves, is that the giants will come down long before him. Gentlemen, in conclusion, I would remark that when the Lord Mayor made his truly remarkable, and truly manly, and unaffected speech, I could not but be struck by the odd reversal of the usual circumstances at the Mansion House, which he presented to our view; for whereas it is a very common thing for persons to be brought tremblingly before the Lord Mayor, the Lord Mayor presented himself as being brought tremblingly before us. I hope that the result may hold still further; for whereas it is a common thing for the Lord Mayor to say to a repentant criminal who does not seem to have much harm in him, ‘Let me never see you here again’, so I would propose that we all with one accord say to the Lord Mayor, ‘Let us by all means see you here again on the first opportunity.’ Gentlemen, I beg to propose to you to drink, with all the honours, ‘The health of the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor’. 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 General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival 1866 Description An account of the resource Speech at the General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival (28 March 1866). 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 1866-03-28 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1866-03-28_Speech_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 General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival' (28 March 1866). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1866-03-28_Speech_General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1866-03-28_Speech_General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Gentlemen, in my childish days I remember to have had a vague but profound admiration for a certain legendary person called the Lord Mayor’s Fool. I had the highest opinion of the intellectual capacity of that suppositious retainer of the Mansion House, and I really regarded him with feelings approaching to absolute veneration, because my nurse informed me on every gastronomic occasion that the Lord Mayor’s Fool liked everything that was good. You will agree with me, I have no doubt, that if this discriminating jester had existed at the present time he could not fail to have liked his master very much, seeing that so good a Lord Mayor is very rarely to be found, and that a better Lord Mayor could not possibly be. You have already divined, gentlemen, that I am about to propose to you to drink the health of the right honourable gentleman in the Chair. As one of the Trustees of the General Theatrical Fund, I beg officially to tender him my best thanks for lending the very powerful aid of his presence, his influence, and his personal character to this very deserving institution. As his private friends we ventured to urge upon him to do us this gracious act, and I beg to assure you that the perfect simplicity, modesty, cordiality, and frankness with which he assented, enhanced the gift one thousandfold. I think it must be very agreeable to a company like this to know that the President of the night is not ceremoniously pretending, ‘positively for this night only’, to have an interest in the drama, but that he has an unusual and thorough acquaintance with it, and that he has a living and discerning knowledge of the merits of the great old actors. It is very pleasant to me to remember that the Lord Mayor and I once beguiled the tedium of a journey by exchanging our experiences upon this subject. I rather prided myself on being something of an old stager, but I found the Lord Mayor so thoroughly up in all the stock pieces, and so knowing and yet so fresh about the merits of those who are most and best identified with them, that I readily recognized in him what would be called in fistic language, a very ugly customer – one, I assure you, by no means to be settled by any novice not in thorough good theatrical training. Gentlemen, we have all known from our earliest infancy that when the giants in Guildhall hear the clock strike one, they come down to dinner. Similarly, when the City of London shall hear but one single word in just disparagement of its present Lord Mayor, whether as its enlightened chief magistrate, or as one of its merchants, or as one of its true gentlemen, he will then descend from the high personal place which he holds in the general honour and esteem. Until then he will remain upon his pedestal, and my private opinion, between ourselves, is that the giants will come down long before him. Gentlemen, in conclusion, I would remark that when the Lord Mayor made his truly remarkable, and truly manly, and unaffected speech, I could not but be struck by the odd reversal of the usual circumstances at the Mansion House, which he presented to our view; for whereas it is a very common thing for persons to be brought tremblingly before the Lord Mayor, the Lord Mayor presented himself as being brought tremblingly before us. I hope that the result may hold still further; for whereas it is a common thing for the Lord Mayor to say to a repentant criminal who does not seem to have much harm in him, ‘Let me never see you here again’, so I would propose that we all with one accord say to the Lord Mayor, ‘Let us by all means see you here again on the first opportunity.’ Gentlemen, I beg to propose to you to drink, with all the honours, ‘The health of the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor’. 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 Summary Occasionally speeches are summarised in sources in third person. Include that here, so that everything in the text transcription is only Dickens's words. The toast he was about to propose, he said, had reference to the means by which the end they had in view was to be attained, and to the delicacy with which the helping hand of the society was extended to objects of its sympathy: it was, ‘the health of the Committees of ladies and gentlemen who manage its affairs’. He took the great end and object of this institution to be the recognition, at last, of the claims and merit of a class whose office is in reason and in right high, but which has been made in folly and injustice low. It had been stated by Dr. Goldsmith, who had painful experience of the neglect which this class of instructor endures, that he knew no member of society more useful nor more honourable than the imparter of knowledge; at the same time he knew none who was so generally despised, and whose talents were so ill rewarded. Now, if this were true in general, with what particular force did it apply to those unkind, ungenerous slights which ‘patient merit of the unworthy takes' in the persons of governesses?’ It was very well to say that ‘knowledge is power’, but how often did they forget that it was a source of weakness too? Knowledge had not its right place in society, and he believed that it did not obtain a just recognition and reward for its services anywhere. To take the case of those ladies in comparison with menial servants: they were worse paid than the cook; their salaries would bear poor comparison with the wages of the butler; they would appear but shabbily with the remuneration of the lady's-maid; and they were even lower than those paid to liveried footmen. The power of governesses was acknowledged by the middle-aged lady in a turban – she felt the power of the governess's knowledge in the education of her daughters; gentlemen also felt the power of the governess's knowledge; but nobody thought of the poor fagged knowledge herself, her eyes red with poring over advertisements in search of a new situation; and, after having faithfully accomplished her task in one family, being thrown upon the world, and going forth again among strangers to educate others. When he first received the prospectus of this institution, and perceived that to a committee of ladies was entrusted the care of considering the cases of distressed governesses and of relieving them with a delicacy suitable to their refined feelings, he began to hope for the improvement of the condition of governesses who were not distressed, and to hope that their position in society would be elevated as it ought to be. He considered that those ladies and gentlemen who engaged in this good work virtually pledged themselves, by their influence and example, to elevate the moral condition of governesses; and from that moment he conceived in that institution a heartfelt interest, and a hope of future benefit, that he felt for very few. He took that to be the great end of the institution, for it would otherwise do but little at the best. They might relieve the physical sufferings of governesses in distress – they might cheer them on the bed of sickness, and soften the asperities of their condition in declining age; but, unless the society exerted its energies to render governesses more respected, it would fall far short of the  great end which he conceived it had in view. From first to last he had a confidence that the society would do its duty; and he hoped by its means to see blotted out a national reproach, and that the profession of education would be placed on that honourable footing which in any civilized and Christian land, it ought to hold. Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given London 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. 18440420 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 Governesses' Benevolent Institution First Anniversary Festival Description An account of the resource Speech at the Governesses' Benevolent Institution First Anniversary Festival (20 April 1844). 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 1844-04-20 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1844-04-20_Speech_Governesses-Benevolent-Institution-First-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 Governesses' Benevolent Institution First Anniversary Festival' (20 April 1844). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1844-04-20_Speech_Governesses-Benevolent-Institution-First-Anniversary-Festival">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1844-04-20_Speech_Governesses-Benevolent-Institution-First-Anniversary-Festival</a>. 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 Manchester Venue Where the speech was given Free Trade Hall 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. 18581203 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. Ladies and Gentlemen, It has of late years become noticeable in England that the autumn season produces an immense amount of public speaking. I notice that no sooner do the leaves begin to fall from the trees, than pearls of great price begin to fall from the lips of the wise men of the east, and north, and west, and south; and anybody may have them by the bushel, for the picking up. Now, whether the comet has this year had a quickening influence on this crop, as it is by some supposed to have had upon the corn harvest and the vintage, I do not know; but I do know that I have never observed the columns of the newspapers to groan so heavily under a pressure of orations, each vieing with the other in the two qualities of having little or nothing to do with the matter in hand, and of being always addressed to any audience in the wide world rather than the audience to which it was delivered. The autumn being gone, and the winter come, I am so sanguine as to hope that we in our proceedings may break through this enchanted circle and deviate from this precedent; the rather as we have something real to do, and are come together, I am sure, in all plain fellowship and straightforwardness, to do it. We have no little straws of our own to throw up to show us which way any wind blows, and we have no oblique biddings of our own to make for anything outside this hall. At the top of the public announcements of this meeting are the words ‘Institutional Association of Lancashire and Cheshire’. Will you allow me, in reference to the meaning of those words, to present myself before you as the embodied spirit of ignorance recently enlightened, and to put myself through a short, voluntary examination as to the results of my studies? To begin with, the title did not suggest to me anything in the least like the truth. I have been for some years pretty familiar with the terms, ‘Mechanics’ Institutions’, and ‘Literary Societies’, but they have, unfortunately, become too often associated in my mind with a body of great pretensions, lame as to some important member or other, which generally inhabits a new house much too large for it, and which is very seldom paid for, and which takes the name of mechanics most grievously in vain, for I have usually seen a mechanic and a dodo in that place together. I, therefore, began my education, in respect of the meaning of this title, very coldly indeed, saying to myself, ‘Here is the old story’. But the perusal of a very few lines of my book soon gave me to understand that it was not by any means the old story; in short, that this association is expressly designed to correct the old story, and to prevent its defects from becoming perpetuated. I learnt that this Institutional Association is the union, in one central head, of one hundred and fourteen local Mechanics Institutions and Mutual Improvement Societies, at an expense of no more than five shillings to each society; suggesting to them all how they can best communicate with and profit by the fountain-head and one another; keeping their best aims steadily before them; advising how those aims can be best attained; giving a direct end and object to what might otherwise easily become waste forces; and sending among them not only oral teachers, but, better still, boxes of excellent books, called ‘Free Itinerating Libraries’. I learned that these books are constantly making the circuit of hundreds upon hundreds of miles, and are constantly being read with inexpressible relish by thousands upon thousands of toiling people, but that they are never damaged or defaced by one rude hand. These, and other like facts, lead me to consider the immense importance of the fact that no little cluster of working men’s cottages can arise in any Lancashire or Cheshire valley, at the foot of any running stream which enterprise hunts out for water-power, but it has its educational friend and companion ready for it, willing for it, acquainted with its thoughts and ways and turns of speech even before it has come into existence. Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is the main consideration that has brought me here. No central association at a distance could possibly do for those working men what this local association does. No central association at a distance could possibly understand them as this local association does. No central association at a distance could possibly put them in that familiar and easy communication with one another, as that I, man or boy, eager for knowledge in that valley seven miles off, should know of you, man or boy, eager for knowledge in that valley twelve miles off, and should occasionally trudge to meet you, that you may impart your learning in one branch of acquisition to me, whilst I impart mine in another to you. Yet this is distinctly a feature, and a most important feature, of this society. On the other hand it is not to be supposed that these honest men, however zealous, could, as a rule, succeed in establishing and maintaining their own institutions of themselves. It is obvious that combination must materially diminish their cost, which is in itself a vital consideration; and it is equally obvious that experience, essential to the success of all combination, is especially so when its object is to diffuse the results of experience and reflection. Well, ladies and gentlemen, the student of the present profitable history of this society does not stop here in his learning; when he has got so far, he finds with interest and pleasure that the parent society at certain stated periods invites the more eager and enterprising of the local societies to submit themselves to voluntary examination in various branches of useful knowledge, of which examination it takes the charge and arranges the details, and invites the successful candidates to come to Manchester to receive the prizes and certificates of merit which it impartially awards. The most successful of the competitors in the list of these examinations are now among us, and these little marks of recognition and encouragement I shall have the honour presently of giving them, as they come before you, one by one, for that purpose. I have looked over a few of those examination papers. They comprise history, geography, grammar, arithmetic, book-keeping, decimal coinage, mensuration, mathematics, social economy, the French language – in fact, they comprise all the keys that open all the locks of knowledge. I felt most devoutly grateful, as to many of them, that they had not been submitted to me to answer, for I am perfectly sure that if they had been, I should have had mighty little to bestow upon myself tonight. And yet it is always to be observed and seriously remembered that these examinations are undergone by people whose lives have been passed in a continual fight for bread, and whose whole existence has been a constant wrestle with ‘Those twin gaolers of the daring heart – low birth and iron fortune’. I could not but consider, with extraordinary admiration, that these questions have been replied to, not by men like myself, the business of whose life is with writing and books, but by men, the business of whose life is with tools and machinery. Let me endeavour to recall, as well as my memory will serve me, from among the most interesting cases of prize-holders and certificate-gainers who will appear before you, some two or three of the most conspicuous examples. There are two poor brothers from near Chorley, who work from morning to night in a coal-pit, and who, in all weathers, have walked eight miles a night, three nights a week, to attend the classes in which they have gained distinction. There are two poor boys from Bollington, who began life as piecers at one shilling or eighteen-pence a week, and the father of one of whom was cut to pieces by the machinery at which he worked, but not before he had himself founded the institution in which this son has since come to be taught. These two poor boys will appear before you tonight, to take the second-class prize in chemistry. There is a plasterer from Bury, sixteen years of age, who took a third class certificate last year at the hands of Lord Brougham; he is this year again successful in a competition three times as severe. There is a wagon-maker from the same place, who knew little or absolutely nothing until he was a grown man, and who has learned all he knows, which is a great deal, in the local institution. There is a chain-maker, in very humble circumstances, and working hard all day, who walks six miles a night, three nights a week, to attend the classes in which he has won so famous a place. There is a moulder in an iron foundry who, whilst he was working twelve hours a day before the furnace, got up at four o’clock in the morning to learn drawing. ‘The thought of my lads’, he writes in his modest account of himself, ‘in their peaceful slumbers above me, gave me fresh courage, and I used to think that if I should never receive any personal benefit, I might instruct them when they came to be of an age to understand the mighty machines and engines which have made our country, England, pre-eminent in the world’s history’. There is a piecer at mule-frames, who could not read at eighteen, who is now a man of little more than thirty, who is the sole support of an aged mother, who is arithmetical teacher in the institution in which he himself was taught, who writes of himself that he made the resolution never to take up a subject without keeping to it, and who has kept to it with such an astonishing will, that he is now well versed in Euclid and Algebra, and is the best French scholar in Stockport. The drawing classes in that same Stockport are taught by a working blacksmith; and the pupils of that working blacksmith will receive the highest honours of tonight. Well may it be said of that good blacksmith, as it was written of another of his trade, by the American poet: Toiling – rejoicing – sorrowing, Onward through life he goes; Each morning sees some task begun,  Each evening sees its close; Something attempted, something done, Has earned a night’s repose. Ladies and gentlemen – to pass from the successful candidates to the delegates from local societies now before me, and to content myself with one instance from amongst them. There is amongst their number a most remarkable man, whose history I have read with feelings I could not adequately express under any circumstances, and least of all when I know he hears me, who worked when he was a mere baby at hand-loom weaving until he dropped from fatigue; who began to teach himself as soon as he could earn five shillings a week; who is now a botanist, acquainted with every production of the Lancashire valleys; who is a naturalist, and has made and preserved a collection of the eggs of British birds, and stuffed the birds; who is now a conchologist, with a very curious and in some respects an original collection of fresh-water shells, and has also preserved and collected the mosses of fresh waters and the sea; who is worthily the president of his own local Literary Institution; and who was at his work this time last night as foreman in a mill. So stimulating has been the influence of these bright examples, and many more, that I notice among the applications from Blackburn for preliminary test examination papers, one from an applicant who gravely fills up the printed form by describing himself as ten years of age, and who, with equal gravity, describes his occupation as ‘nursing a little child’. Nor are these things confined to the men. The women employed in factories, milliners’ work, and domestic service, have begun to show, as it is fitting they should, a most decided determination not to be outdone by the men; and the women of Preston in particular, have so honourably distinguished themselves, and shown in their examination papers such an admirable knowledge of the science of household management and household economy, that if I were a working bachelor of Lancashire or Cheshire, or if I had not cast my eye or set my heart upon any lass in particular, I should positively get up at four o’clock in the morning with the determination of the iron-moulder himself, and should go to Preston in search of a wife. Now, ladies and gentlemen, these instances, and many more, daily occurring, always accumulating, are surely better testimony to the working of this Association than any number of speakers could possibly present to you? Surely the presence among us of these indefatigable people is the Association’s best and most effective triumph in the present and the past, and is its noblest stimulus to effort in the future? As its temporary mouth-piece I would beg to say to that portion of the company who attend to receive the prizes, that the institution can never hold itself apart from them – can never set itself above them; that their distinction and success must be its distinction and success; and that there can be but one heart beating between them and it. In particular, I would most especially entreat them to observe that nothing will ever be further from this Association’s mind than the impertinence of patronage. The prizes that it gives, and the certificates that it gives, are mere admiring assurances of sympathy with so many striving brothers and sisters, and are only valuable for the spirit in which they are given, and in which they are received. The prizes are money prizes, simply because the institution does not presume to doubt that persons who have so well governed themselves, know best how to make a little money serviceable, because it would be a shame to treat them like grown-up babies by laying it out for them, and because it knows that it is given, and knows it is taken, in perfect clearness of purpose, perfect trustfulness, and above all perfect independence. Ladies and gentlemen, reverting once more to the whole collective audience before me, I will, in another two minutes, release the hold which your favour has given me on your attention. Of the advantages of knowledge I have said, and I shall say, nothing. Of the certainty with which the man who grasps it under difficulties rises in his own respect and in usefulness to the community, I have said, and I shall say, nothing. In the City of Manchester, in the county of Lancaster, both of them remarkable for self-taught men, that were superfluous indeed. For the same reason I rigidly abstain from putting together any of the shattered fragments of that poor clay image of a parrot which was once always saying, without knowing why, that knowledge was a dangerous thing. I should as soon think of piecing together the mutilated remains of any wretched Hindoo who has been blown from an English gun. Both, creatures of the past, have been – as my friend Mr. Carlyle vigorously has it – ‘blasted into space’; and there, as to this world, is an end of them. So I desire, in conclusion, only to sound two strings. In the first place let me congratulate you upon the progress which real mutual improvement societies are making at this time in your neighbourhood, through the noble agency of individual employers and their families, whom you can never too much delight to honour. Elsewhere, through the agency of the great railway companies, some of which are bestirring themselves in this manner with a gallantry and generosity deserving of all praise. Secondly and lastly, let me say one word out of my own personal heart, which is always very dear to it in this connexion. Do not let us, in the midst of the visible objects of nature, whose workings we can tell off in figures, surrounded by machines that can be made to the thousandth part of an inch, acquiring every day knowledge which can be proved upon a slate or demonstrated by a microscope – do not let us, in the laudable pursuit of the facts that surround us, neglect the fancy and the imagination which equally surround us as part of the great scheme. Let the child have its fables; let the man or woman into which it changes, always remember these fables tenderly. Let numerous graces and ornaments that cannot be weighed and measured, and that seem at first sight idle enough, continue to have their places about us, be we never so wise. The hardest head may co-exist with the softest heart. The union and just balance of those two is always a blessing to the possessor, and always a blessing to mankind. The Divine Teacher was as gentle and considerate as He was powerful and wise. You all know how He could still the raging of the sea, and could hush a little child. As the utmost results of the wisdom of men can only be at last to help to raise this earth to that condition to which His doctrine, untainted by the blindnesses and passions of men, would have exalted it long ago; so let us always remember that He set us the example of blending the understanding and the imagination, and that, following it ourselves, we tread in His steps, and help our race on to its better and best days. Knowledge, as all followers of it must know, has a very limited power indeed when it informs the head alone; but when it informs the head and heart too, it has a power over life and death, the body and the soul, and dominates the universe. I am deeply obliged to you for your cordial reception. The honour of this presidency, believe me, is all mine; the pleasure attaching to it, I am sure, we shall divide between us. No man can have seen this scene tonight without having his heart touched with the most delightful emotions, and without feeling himself, as to the great mass of the community, a wiser, a better, a more helpful, a more happy man. But it is nothing new to me to receive satisfaction here; for I never come to Manchester without expecting pleasure, and I never leave it without taking pleasure away. I heartily assure you that you have been most cordially welcome to my poor services, and I most affectionately wish you good night. 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 Institutional Association of Lancashire and Cheshire Prize-Giving Description An account of the resource Speech at the Institutional Association of Lancashire and Cheshire Prize-Giving (3 December 1858). 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 1858-12-03 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1858-12-03_Speech_Institutional-Association-of-Lancashire-and-Cheshire 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. 'Institutional Association of Lancashire and Cheshire Prize-Giving' (3 December 1858). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1858-12-03_Speech_Institutional-Association-of-Lancashire-and-Cheshire">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1858-12-03_Speech_Institutional-Association-of-Lancashire-and-Cheshire</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Ladies and Gentlemen, It has of late years become noticeable in England that the autumn season produces an immense amount of public speaking. I notice that no sooner do the leaves begin to fall from the trees, than pearls of great price begin to fall from the lips of the wise men of the east, and north, and west, and south; and anybody may have them by the bushel, for the picking up. Now, whether the comet has this year had a quickening influence on this crop, as it is by some supposed to have had upon the corn harvest and the vintage, I do not know; but I do know that I have never observed the columns of the newspapers to groan so heavily under a pressure of orations, each vieing with the other in the two qualities of having little or nothing to do with the matter in hand, and of being always addressed to any audience in the wide world rather than the audience to which it was delivered. The autumn being gone, and the winter come, I am so sanguine as to hope that we in our proceedings may break through this enchanted circle and deviate from this precedent; the rather as we have something real to do, and are come together, I am sure, in all plain fellowship and straightforwardness, to do it. We have no little straws of our own to throw up to show us which way any wind blows, and we have no oblique biddings of our own to make for anything outside this hall. At the top of the public announcements of this meeting are the words ‘Institutional Association of Lancashire and Cheshire’. Will you allow me, in reference to the meaning of those words, to present myself before you as the embodied spirit of ignorance recently enlightened, and to put myself through a short, voluntary examination as to the results of my studies? To begin with, the title did not suggest to me anything in the least like the truth. I have been for some years pretty familiar with the terms, ‘Mechanics' Institutions’, and ‘Literary Societies’, but they have, unfortunately, become too often associated in my mind with a body of great pretensions, lame as to some important member or other, which generally inhabits a new house much too large for it, and which is very seldom paid for, and which takes the name of mechanics most grievously in vain, for I have usually seen a mechanic and a dodo in that place together. I, therefore, began my education, in respect of the meaning of this title, very coldly indeed, saying to myself, ‘Here is the old story’. But the perusal of a very few lines of my book soon gave me to understand that it was not by any means the old story; in short, that this association is expressly designed to correct the old story, and to prevent its defects from becoming perpetuated. I learnt that this Institutional Association is the union, in one central head, of one hundred and fourteen local Mechanics Institutions and Mutual Improvement Societies, at an expense of no more than five shillings to each society; suggesting to them all how they can best communicate with and profit by the fountain-head and one another; keeping their best aims steadily before them; advising how those aims can be best attained; giving a direct end and object to what might otherwise easily become waste forces; and sending among them not only oral teachers, but, better still, boxes of excellent books, called ‘Free Itinerating Libraries’. I learned that these books are constantly making the circuit of hundreds upon hundreds of miles, and are constantly being read with inexpressible relish by thousands upon thousands of toiling people, but that they are never damaged or defaced by one rude hand. These, and other like facts, lead me to consider the immense importance of the fact that no little cluster of working men's cottages can arise in any Lancashire or Cheshire valley, at the foot of any running stream which enterprise hunts out for water-power, but it has its educational friend and companion ready for it, willing for it, acquainted with its thoughts and ways and turns of speech even before it has come into existence. Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is the main consideration that has brought me here. No central association at a distance could possibly do for those working men what this local association does. No central association at a distance could possibly understand them as this local association does. No central association at a distance could possibly put them in that familiar and easy communication with one another, as that I, man or boy, eager for knowledge in that valley seven miles off, should know of you, man or boy, eager for knowledge in that valley twelve miles off, and should occasionally trudge to meet you, that you may impart your learning in one branch of acquisition to me, whilst I impart mine in another to you. Yet this is distinctly a feature, and a most important feature, of this society. On the other hand it is not to be supposed that these honest men, however zealous, could, as a rule, succeed in establishing and maintaining their own institutions of themselves. It is obvious that combination must materially diminish their cost, which is in itself a vital consideration; and it is equally obvious that experience, essential to the success of all combination, is especially so when its object is to diffuse the results of experience and reflection. Well, ladies and gentlemen, the student of the present profitable history of this society does not stop here in his learning; when he has got so far, he finds with interest and pleasure that the parent society at certain stated periods invites the more eager and enterprising of the local societies to submit themselves to voluntary examination in various branches of useful knowledge, of which examination it takes the charge and arranges the details, and invites the successful candidates to come to Manchester to receive the prizes and certificates of merit which it impartially awards. The most successful of the competitors in the list of these examinations are now among us, and these little marks of recognition and encouragement I shall have the honour presently of giving them, as they come before you, one by one, for that purpose. I have looked over a few of those examination papers. They comprise history, geography, grammar, arithmetic, book-keeping, decimal coinage, mensuration, mathematics, social economy, the French language – in fact, they comprise all the keys that open all the locks of knowledge. I felt most devoutly grateful, as to many of them, that they had not been submitted to me to answer, for I am perfectly sure that if they had been, I should have had mighty little to bestow upon myself tonight. And yet it is always to be observed and seriously remembered that these examinations are undergone by people whose lives have been passed in a continual fight for bread, and whose whole existence has been a constant wrestle with ‘Those twin gaolers of the daring heart – low birth and iron fortune’. I could not but consider, with extraordinary admiration, that these questions have been replied to, not by men like myself, the business of whose life is with writing and books, but by men, the business of whose life is with tools and machinery. Let me endeavour to recall, as well as my memory will serve me, from among the most interesting cases of prize-holders and certificate-gainers who will appear before you, some two or three of the most conspicuous examples. There are two poor brothers from near Chorley, who work from morning to night in a coal-pit, and who, in all weathers, have walked eight miles a night, three nights a week, to attend the classes in which they have gained distinction. There are two poor boys from Bollington, who began life as piecers at one shilling or eighteen-pence a week, and the father of one of whom was cut to pieces by the machinery at which he worked, but not before he had himself founded the institution in which this son has since come to be taught. These two poor boys will appear before you tonight, to take the second-class prize in chemistry. There is a plasterer from Bury, sixteen years of age, who took a third class certificate last year at the hands of Lord Brougham; he is this year again successful in a competition three times as severe. There is a wagon-maker from the same place, who knew little or absolutely nothing until he was a grown man, and who has learned all he knows, which is a great deal, in the local institution. There is a chain-maker, in very humble circumstances, and working hard all day, who walks six miles a night, three nights a week, to attend the classes in which he has won so famous a place. There is a moulder in an iron foundry who, whilst he was working twelve hours a day before the furnace, got up at four o'clock in the morning to learn drawing. ‘The thought of my lads’, he writes in his modest account of himself, ‘in their peaceful slumbers above me, gave me fresh courage, and I used to think that if I should never receive any personal benefit, I might instruct them when they came to be of an age to understand the mighty machines and engines which have made our country, England, pre-eminent in the world's history’.  There is a piecer at mule-frames, who could not read at eighteen, who is now a man of little more than thirty, who is the sole support of an aged mother, who is arithmetical teacher in the institution in which he himself was taught, who writes of himself that he made the resolution never to take up a subject without keeping to it, and who has kept to it with such an astonishing will, that he is now well versed in Euclid and Algebra, and is the best French scholar in Stockport. The drawing classes in that same Stockport are taught by a working blacksmith; and the pupils of that working blacksmith will receive the highest honours of tonight. Well may it be said of that good blacksmith, as it was written of another of his trade, by the American poet: Toiling – rejoicing –  sorrowing,   Onward through life he goes;   Each morning sees some task begun,   Each evening sees its close;   Something attempted, something done,   Has earned a night's repose. Ladies and gentlemen – to pass from the successful candidates to the delegates from local societies now before me, and to content myself with one instance from amongst them. There is amongst their number a most remarkable man, whose history I have read with feelings I could not adequately express under any circumstances, and least of all when I know he hears me, who worked when he was a mere baby at hand-loom weaving until he dropped from fatigue; who began to teach himself as soon as he could earn five shillings a week; who is now a botanist, acquainted with every production of the Lancashire valleys; who is a naturalist, and has made and preserved a collection of the eggs of British birds, and stuffed the birds; who is now a conchologist, with a very curious and in some respects an original collection of fresh-water shells, and has also preserved and collected the mosses of fresh waters and the sea; who is worthily the president of his own local Literary Institution; and who was at his work this time last night as foreman in a mill. So stimulating has been the influence of these bright examples, and many more, that I notice among the applications from Blackburn for preliminary test examination papers, one from an applicant who gravely fills up the printed form by describing himself as ten years of age, and who, with equal gravity, describes his occupation as ‘nursing a little child’. Nor are these things confined to the men. The women employed in factories, milliners’ work, and domestic service, have begun to show, as it is fitting they should, a most decided determination not to be outdone by the men; and the women of Preston in particular, have so honourably distinguished themselves, and shown in their examination papers such an admirable knowledge of the science of household management and household economy, that if I were a working bachelor of Lancashire or Cheshire, or if I had not cast my eye or set my heart upon any lass in particular, I should positively get up at four o'clock in the morning with the determination of the iron-moulder himself, and should go to Preston in search of a wife. Now, ladies and gentlemen, these instances, and many more, daily occurring, always accumulating, are surely better testimony to the working of this Association than any number of speakers could possibly present to you? Surely the presence among us of these indefatigable people is the Association's best and most effective triumph in the present and the past, and is its noblest stimulus to effort in the future? As its temporary mouth-piece I would beg to say to that portion of the company who attend to receive the prizes, that the institution can never hold itself apart from them –  can never set itself above them; that their distinction and success must be its distinction and success; and that there can be but one heart beating between them and it. In particular, I would most especially entreat them to observe that nothing will ever be further from this Association’s mind than the impertinence of patronage. The prizes that it gives, and the certificates that it gives, are mere admiring assurances of sympathy with so many striving brothers and sisters, and are only valuable for the spirit in which they are given, and in which they are received. The prizes are money prizes, simply because the institution does not presume to doubt that persons who have so well governed themselves, know best how to make a little money serviceable, because it would be a shame to treat them like grown-up babies by laying it out for them, and because it knows that it is given, and knows it is taken, in perfect clearness of purpose, perfect trustfulness, and above all perfect independence. Ladies and gentlemen, reverting once more to the whole collective audience before me, I will, in another two minutes, release the hold which your favour has given me on your attention. Of the advantages of knowledge I have said, and I shall say, nothing. Of the certainty with which the man who grasps it under difficulties rises in his own respect and in usefulness to the community, I have said, and I shall say, nothing. In the City of Manchester, in the county of Lancaster, both of them remarkable for self-taught men, that were superfluous indeed. For the same reason I rigidly abstain from putting together any of the shattered fragments of that poor clay image of a parrot which was once always saying, without knowing why, that knowledge was a dangerous thing. I should as soon think of piecing together the mutilated remains of any wretched Hindoo who has been blown from an English gun. Both, creatures of the past, have been – as my friend Mr. Carlyle vigorously has it – ‘blasted into space’; and there, as to this world, is an end of them. So I desire, in conclusion, only to sound two strings. In the first place let me congratulate you upon the progress which real mutual improvement societies are making at this time in your neighbourhood, through the noble agency of individual employers and their families, whom you can never too much delight to honour. Elsewhere, through the agency of the great railway companies, some of which are bestirring themselves in this manner with a gallantry and generosity deserving of all praise. Secondly and lastly, let me say one word out of my own personal heart, which is always very dear to it in this connexion. Do not let us, in the midst of the visible objects of nature, whose workings we can tell off in figures, surrounded by machines that can be made to the thousandth part of an inch, acquiring every day knowledge which can be proved upon a slate or demonstrated by a microscope – do not let us, in the laudable pursuit of the facts that surround us, neglect the fancy and the imagination which equally surround us as part of the great scheme. Let the child have its fables; let the man or woman into which it changes, always remember these fables tenderly. Let numerous graces and ornaments that cannot be weighed and measured, and that seem at first sight idle enough, continue to have their places about us, be we never so wise. The hardest head may co-exist with the softest heart. The union and just balance of those two is always a blessing to the possessor, and always a blessing to mankind. The Divine Teacher was as gentle and considerate as He was powerful and wise. You all know how He could still the raging of the sea, and could hush a little child. As the utmost results of the wisdom of men can only be at last to help to raise this earth to that condition to which His doctrine, untainted by the blindnesses and passions of men, would have exalted it long ago; so let us always remember that He set us the example of blending the understanding and the imagination, and that, following it ourselves, we tread in His steps, and help our race on to its better and best days. Knowledge, as all followers of it must know, has a very limited power indeed when it informs the head alone; but when it informs the head and heart too, it has a power over life and death, the body and the soul, and dominates the universe.  I am deeply obliged to you for your cordial reception. The honour of this presidency, believe me, is all mine; the pleasure attaching to it, I am sure, we shall divide between us. No man can have seen this scene tonight without having his heart touched with the most delightful emotions, and without feeling himself, as to the great mass of the community, a wiser, a better, a more helpful, a more happy man. But it is nothing new to me to receive satisfaction here; for I never come to Manchester without expecting pleasure, and I never leave it without taking pleasure away. I heartily assure you that you have been most cordially welcome to my poor services, and I most affectionately wish you good night. manchester