26 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 Location The location Birmingham Venue Where the speech was given Town 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. 18690927 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, We often hear of our own country that it is an over-populated one, that it is an over-pauperized one, and that it is an over-taxed one. Now I entertain, especially of late time, the heretical belief that it is an over-talked one, and that there is a deal of public speech-making going about in various directions which might be advantageously dispensed with. If I were free to act upon this conviction, as president for the time being of the great Institution so numerously represented here, I should at once subside into a golden silence, which would be of a highly edifying, because of a very exemplary, character. But I happen to be the Institution’s willing servant: not its imperious master; and it exacts tribute of mere silver or copper speech – not to say brazen – from whomsoever it exalts to my high office. So, some African tribes – not to draw the comparison disrespectfully – some savage African tribes, when they make a king, require him perhaps to achieve an exciting foot-race under the stimulus of considerable prodding and goading, or perhaps to be severely and experimentally knocked about the head by his privy council, or perhaps to be dipped in a river full of crocodiles, or perhaps to drink immense quantities of something nasty out of a calabash – at all events, to undergo some purifying ordeal in the presence of his admiring subjects. I must confess that I became rather alarmed when I was duly warned by your constituted authorities that whatever I might happen to say here tonight would be termed an inaugural address on the entrance upon a new term of study by the members of your various classes; for besides that the phrase is something high-sounding for my taste, I avow that I do look forward to that blessed time when every man shall inaugurate his own work for himself, and do it. I believe that we shall then have inaugurated a new era indeed, and one in which the Lord’s Prayer will be a fulfilled prophecy upon this earth. Remembering, however, that you may call anything by any name without in the least changing its nature – bethinking myself that you may, if you be so minded, call a butterfly a buffalo, without advancing a hair’s breadth towards making it one – I became composed in my mind, and resolved to stick to the very homely intention I had previously formed. This was merely to tell you, the members, students, and friends, of the Birmingham and Midland Institute; firstly, what you cannot possibly want to know (this is a very popular oratorical theme); secondly, what your Institution has done; thirdly, what, in the poor opinion of its president for the time being, remains for it to do, and not to do. Now, first, as to what you cannot possibly want to know. You cannot need from me any oratorical declamation concerning the abstract advantages of knowledge, or the beauties of self-improvement. If you had any such requirement, you would not be here. I conceive that you are here, because you have become thoroughly penetrated with such truths, either in your own persons or in the persons of some striving fellow creatures, on whom you have looked with interest and sympathy. I conceive that you are here because you conceive the welfare of a great chiefly adult educational establishment, whose doors stand really open to all sorts and conditions of people, to be inseparable from the best welfare of your great town and its neighbourhood. Nay, if I take a much wider range than that, and say that we all – every one of us – perfectly well know that the benefits of such an establishment must extend far beyond the limits of this midland county fires and smoke, and must comprehend, in some sort, the whole community, I do not strain the truth. It was suggested by Mr. Babbage, in his Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, that a mere spoken word – a mere syllable thrown into the air – may go on reverberating through illimitable space for ever and for ever, seeing that there is no rim against which it can strike: no boundary at which it can possibly arrive. Similarly it may be said – not as an ingenious speculation, but as a steadfast and absolute fact – that human calculation cannot limit the influence of one atom of wholesome knowledge patiently acquired, modestly possessed, and faithfully used. As astronomers tell us that it is probable that there are in the universe innumerable solar systems besides ours, to each of which myriads of utterly unknown and unseen stars belong, so it is certain that every man, however obscure, however far removed from the general recognition, is one of a group of men impressible for good and impressible for evil, and that it is in the eternal nature of things that he cannot really improve himself without in some degree improving other men. And observe: this is especially the case when he has improved himself in the teeth of adverse circumstances, as in a maturity succeeding to a neglected or an ill-taught youth, in the few daily hours remaining to him after ten or twelve hours of labour, in the few pauses and intervals of a life of toil; for then his fellow creatures and companions have assurance that he can have known no favouring conditions, and that they can do what he has done, in wresting some enlightenment and self-respect from what Lord Lytton finely calls Those twin gaolers of the daring heart, Low birth and iron fortune. As you have proved these truths in your own experience or in your own observation, and as it may be safely assumed that there can be very few persons in Birmingham, of all places under heaven, who would contest the position that the more cultivated the employed the better for the employer, and the more cultivated the employer the better for the employed; therefore, my reference to what you do not want to know shall here cease and determine. Next, with reference to what your Institution has done; on my summary, which shall be as concise and as correct as my information and my remembrance of it may render possible, I desire to lay emphatic stress. Your Institution, sixteen years old, and in which masters and workmen study together, has outgrown the ample edifice in which it receives its 2,500 or 2,600 members and students. It is a most cheering sign of its vigorous vitality that of its industrial students almost one-half are artisans in the receipt of weekly wages. I think I am correct in saying that 400 others are clerks, apprentices, tradesmen, or tradesmen’s sons. I note with particular pleasure the adherence of a goodly number of the gentler sex, without whom no Institution whatever can truly claim to be either a civilizing or a civilized one. The increased attendance at your educational classes is always greatest on the part of the artisans – the class within my experience the least reached in any similar institutions elsewhere, and whose name is the oftenest and most constantly taken in vain. But it is especially reached here, not improbably because it is, as it should be, specially addressed; in the foundation of the industrial department, in the allotment of the direction of the society’s affairs, and in the establishment of what are called its penny classes – a bold and, I am happy to say, a triumphantly successful experiment, which enables the artisan to obtain sound evening instruction in subjects directly bearing on his daily usefulness or on his daily happiness: as arithmetic (elementary and advanced), chemistry, physical geography, and singing: on payment of the astounding low fee of a single penny every time he attends a class. I beg emphatically to say that I look on this as one of the most remarkable schemes ever devised for the educational behoof of the artisan, and if your Institution had done nothing else in all its life, I would take my stand by it on its having done this. Apart, however, from the industrial department, it has its general department, offering all the advantages of a first-class literary Institution. It has its reading rooms, its library, its chemical laboratory, its museum, its art department, its lecture hall, and its long list of lectures on subjects of various and comprehensive interest, delivered by lecturers of the highest qualifications. Very well. But it may be asked, what are the practical results of these appliances? Now, let us suppose a few. Suppose that your Institution should have educated those who are now its teachers. That would be a remarkable fact. Supposing, besides, that it should, so to speak, have educated education, all around it, by sending forth numerous and efficient teachers into many and divers schools. Suppose the young student, reared exclusively in its laboratory, should be presently snapped up for the laboratory of the great and famous hospital. Suppose that in nine years its industrial students should have carried off a round dozen of the much-competed-for prizes awarded by the Society of Arts and the Government departments, besides two local prizes originating in the generosity of a Birmingham man. Suppose that the Town Council, having it in trust to find an artisan well fit to receive the Whitworth prizes, should find him here. Suppose that one of your industrial students should turn his chemical studies to the practical account of extracting gold from waste colour water, and of taking it into custody, in the very act of running away by the thousand pounds worth, down the town drains. Suppose another should perceive in his books, in his studious evenings, what was amiss with his master’s until then inscrutably defective furnace, and should go straight at it – to the great annual saving of that master – and put it right. Suppose another should puzzle out the means, until then quite unknown in England, of making a certain description of coloured glass. Suppose another should qualify himself to vanquish one by one, as they daily arose, all the little difficulties incidental to his calling as an electro-plater, and should be applied to by his companions in the shop ,in all emergencies, under the name of the ‘Encyclopædia’. Suppose a long procession of such cases, and then consider that these are not suppositions at all, but are plain unvarnished facts, culminating in the one special and significant fact that, with a single solitary exception, every one of the Institution’s industrial students who have taken its prizes within ten years, have since climbed to a higher station in his way of life. As to the extent to which the Institution encourages the artisan to think, and so, for instance, to rise superior to the little shackling prejudices perchance existing in his trade when they will not bear the test of inquiry, that is only to be equalled by the extent to which it encourages him to feel. There is a certain tone of modest manliness pervading all the little facts which I have looked through which I found remarkably impressive. The decided objection on the part of the industrial students to attend the classes in their working clothes breathes this tone, as being a graceful and yet at the same time perfectly independent recognition of the place and of one another. And this tone is admirably illustrated in the case of a poor bricklayer, who, being in temporary reverses through illness in his family, had consequently been obliged to part with his best clothes; and who, being therefore missed from the classes in which he had been noticed as a very hard worker, was entreated to attend them in his working clothes. He replied, ‘No, it was not possible. It must not be thought of. It must not come into question for a moment. It might be supposed that he did it to attract attention.’ And the same man being offered by one of the officers a loan of money to enable him to rehabilitate his appearance, positively declined it, on the ground that he came to the Institution to learn, and to know better how to help himself: not otherwise to ask help, or to receive help, from any man. Now, I am justified in calling this the tone of the Institution, because it is no isolated instance, but it is a fair and honourable sample of the spirit of this place, and as such I put it at the conclusion – though last, certainly not least – of my references to what your Institution has indubitably done. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I come at length to what, in the humble opinion of its evanescent officer before you, remains for the Institution to do, and not to do. As Mr. Carlyle has it, towards the closing pages of his grand history of the French Revolution, ‘This with due brevity disposed of, then courage, oh listener, I see land!’ I earnestly hope – and I firmly believe – that your Institution will do henceforth as it has done hitherto; it can hardly do better. I hope and believe that it will know among its members no distinction of person, creed, or party; but that it will conserve its place of assemblage as a high and pure ground, on which all such considerations shall merge into the one universal, heaven-sent aspiration of the human soul to be wiser and better. I hope and believe that it will always be expansive and elastic; for ever seeking to devise new means of enlarging the circle of its members, and of attracting to itself the confidence of still greater and greater numbers, and never evincing any more disposition to stand still than time does, or life does, or the seasons do. And above all this, I hope, and I feel confident from its antecedents, that it will never allow any consideration on the face of the earth to induce it to patronize or to be patronized, for I verily believe that the bestowal and receipt of patronage in such wise has been a curse in England, and that it has done more to prevent really good objects, and to lower really high character, than the utmost efforts of the narrowest antagonism could have effected in twice the time. I have no fear that the walls of the Birmingham and Midland Institute will ever tremble responsive to the croakings of the timid opponents of intellectual progress; but in this connexion generally I cannot forbear from offering a remark which is much upon my mind. It is commonly assumed – much too commonly – that this age is a material age, and that a material age is an irreligious age. I have been pained lately to see this assumption repeated in certain influential quarters for which I have a high respect, and desire to have a higher. I am afraid that by dint of constantly being reiterated and reiterated, without protest, this assumption – which I take leave altogether to deny – may be accepted by the more unthinking part of the public as unquestionably true; just as certain caricaturists and painters professedly making a portrait of some public man, which was not in the least like him, to begin with, have gone on repeating and repeating it, until the public came to believe that it must be exactly like him, simply because it was like itself, and really have at last, in the fullness of time, grown almost to resent upon him their tardy discovery, that he was not like it. I confess, standing here in this responsible situation, that I do not understand this much-used and much-abused phrase, a ‘material age’, I cannot comprehend – if anybody can: which I very much doubt – its logical signification. For instance: has electricity become more material in the mind of any sane, or moderately insane man, woman, or child, because of the discovery that in the good providence of God it was made available for the service and use of man to an immeasurably greater extent than for his destruction? Do I make a more material journey to the bedside of my dying parent or my dying child, when I travel there at the rate of sixty miles an hour, than when I travel thither at the rate of six? Rather, in the swift case, does not my agonized heart become over-fraught with gratitude to that Supreme Beneficence from whom alone can have proceeded the wonderful means of shortening my suspense? What is the materiality of the cable or the wire, compared with the immateriality of the spark? What is the materiality of certain chemical substances that we can weigh or measure, imprison or release, compared with the immateriality of their appointed affinities and repulsions, prescribed to them from the instant of their creation to the day of judgment? When did this so-called material age begin? With the invention of the art of printing? Surely it has been a long time about; and which is the more material object, the farthing tallow candle that will not give me light, or that flame of gas that will? No, ladies and gentlemen, do not let us be discouraged or deceived by vapid, empty words. The true material age is the stupid Chinese age, in which no new grand revelation of nature is granted, because such revelations are ignorantly and insolently repelled, instead of being diligently and humbly sought. The difference between the ancient fiction of the mad braggart defying the lightning, and the modern historical picture of Franklin drawing it towards his kite, in order that he might the more profoundly study what was set before him to be studied (or it would not have been there), happily expresses to my mind the distinction between the much maligned material sages, and the – I suppose immaterial, but certainly in one sense very much so –sages of the Celestial Empire school. And consider: whether it is likely or unlikely, natural or unnatural, reasonable or unreasonable, that I, a being capable of thought, and finding myself surrounded by such diversified wonders on every hand, should sometimes ask myself the solemn question – should be disposed to put to myself the solemn consideration – Can these things be among those things which might have been disclosed by Divine lips nigh upon two thousand years ago, but that the people of that time could not bear them? And whether this be so or no, I, finding myself so surrounded on every hand, is not my moral responsibility tremendously increased thereby, and with it my intelligent submission of myself as a child of Adam and the dust, before that Shining Source equally of all that is granted and of all that is withheld, who holds in His mighty hands the unapproachable mysteries of life and death? To the students of your industrial classes generally, I have had it in my mind, first, to commend the short motto, in two words, ‘Courage, Persevere’. This is the motto of a friend and worker. Not because the eyes of Europe are upon them, for I don’t in the least believe it; nor because the eyes of even England are upon them, for I don’t in the least believe it; not because their doings will be proclaimed with blast of trumpet at the street corners, for no such musical performances will take place; not because self-improvement is at all certain to lead to worldly success, but because it is good and right of itself; and because, being so, it does assuredly bring with it, its own resources and its own rewards. I would further commend to them a very wise and witty piece of advice on the conduct of the understanding, which was given more than half a century ago by the Reverend Sydney Smith – wisest and wittiest of the friends I have lost. He says – and he is speaking, you will please understand, as I speak, to a school of voluntary students – he says: There is a piece of foppery which is to be cautiously guarded against, the foppery of universality, of knowing all sciences and excelling in all arts: chemistry, mathematics, algebra, dancing, history, reasoning, riding, fencing, Low Dutch, High Dutch, and natural philosophy. In short, the modern precept of education very often is, ‘Take the Admirable Crichton for your model, I would have you ignorant of nothing.’ Now – said he – my advice, on the contrary, is to have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order that you may avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything. To this I would superadd a little truth, which holds equally good of my own life, and the life of every eminent man I have ever known. The one serviceable, safe, certain, remunerative, attainable quality in every study and in every pursuit is the quality of attention. My own invention or imagination, such as it is, I can most truthfully assure you, would never have served me as it has, but for the habit of commonplace, humble, patient, daily, toiling, drudging attention. Genius, vivacity, quickness of penetration, brilliancy in association of ideas – such mental qualities, like the qualities of the apparition of the externally armed head in Macbeth will not be commanded: but attention, after due term of submissive service, always will. Like certain plants which the poorest peasant may grow in the poorest soil, it can be cultivated by anyone, and it is certain in its own good season to bring forth flowers and fruit. – I can most truthfully assure you, by the by, that this eulogium on attention is so far quite disinterested on my part, as that it has not the least reference whatever to the attention with which you have honoured me. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have done. I cannot but reflect how often you have probably heard within these walls one of the foremost men, and certainly one of the best speakers, if not the very best, in England. I could not say to myself, when I began just now, in Shakespeare’s line: I will be Bright and shine in gold. But I could say to myself, and I did say to myself, ‘I will be as natural and easy as I possibly can, because my heart has all been in my subject, and I bear an old love towards Birmingham and Birmingham men.’ I have said that I bear an old love towards Birmingham and Birmingham men; let me amend a small omission, and add ‘and Birmingham women’. This ring I wear on my finger now is an old Birmingham gift, and if, by rubbing it I could raise the spirit that was obedient to Aladdin’s ring, I heartily assure you that my first instruction to that Genie on the spot should be to place himself at Birmingham’s disposal in the best of causes. Ladies and Gentlemen, as I hope that it is more than possible that I shall have the pleasure of meeting you again before Christmas is out, and shall have the great interest of seeing the faces, and touching the hands, of the successful competitors in your lists, I will not cast upon that anticipated meeting the terrible foreshadowing of dread which must inevitably result from a second speech. I thank you most heartily, and I most sincerely and fervently say to you, Good night, and God bless you! In reference to the appropriate and excellent remarks of Mr. Dixon, I will now discharge my conscience of my political creed, which is contained in two articles, and has no reference to any party or persons. My faith in the people governing is, on the whole, infinitesimal; my faith in The People governed is, on the whole, illimitable. 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 Birmingham and Midland Institute Inaugural Meeting Description An account of the resource Speech at the Birmingham and Midland Institute Inaugural Meeting (27 September 1869). 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 1869-09-27 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1869-09-27_Speech_Birmingham-and-Midland-Institute-Inaugural-Meeting 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 Birmingham and Midland Institute Inaugural Meeting' (27 September 1869). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1869-09-27_Speech_Birmingham-and-Midland-Institute-Inaugural-Meeting">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1869-09-27_Speech_Birmingham-and-Midland-Institute-Inaugural-Meeting</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Ladies and Gentlemen, We often hear of our own country that it is an over-populated one, that it is an over-pauperized one, and that it is an over-taxed one. Now I entertain, especially of late time, the heretical belief that it is an over-talked one, and that there is a deal of public speech-making going about in various directions which might be advantageously dispensed with. If I were free to act upon this conviction, as president for the time being of the great Institution so numerously represented here, I should at once subside into a golden silence, which would be of a highly edifying, because of a very exemplary, character. But I happen to be the Institution’s willing servant: not its imperious master; and it exacts tribute of mere silver or copper speech – not to say brazen – from whomsoever it exalts to my high office. So, some African tribes – not to draw the comparison disrespectfully – some savage African tribes, when they make a king, require him perhaps to achieve an exciting foot-race under the stimulus of considerable prodding and goading, or perhaps to be severely and experimentally knocked about the head by his privy council, or perhaps to be dipped in a river full of crocodiles, or perhaps to drink immense quantities of something nasty out of a calabash – at all events, to undergo some purifying ordeal in the presence of his admiring subjects. I must confess that I became rather alarmed when I was duly warned by your constituted authorities that whatever I might happen to say here tonight would be termed an inaugural address on the entrance upon a new term of study by the members of your various classes; for besides that the phrase is something high-sounding for my taste, I avow that I do look forward to that blessed time when every man shall inaugurate his own work for himself, and do it. I believe that we shall then have inaugurated a new era indeed, and one in which the Lord’s Prayer will be a fulfilled prophecy upon this earth. Remembering, however, that you may call anything by any name without in the least changing its nature – bethinking myself that you may, if you be so minded, call a butterfly a buffalo, without advancing a hair’s breadth towards making it one – I became composed in my mind, and resolved to stick to the very homely intention I had previously formed. This was merely to tell you, the members, students, and friends, of the Birmingham and Midland Institute; firstly, what you cannot possibly want to know (this is a very popular oratorical theme); secondly, what your Institution has done; thirdly, what, in the poor opinion of its president for the time being, remains for it to do, and not to do. Now, first, as to what you cannot possibly want to know. You cannot need from me any oratorical declamation concerning the abstract advantages of knowledge, or the beauties of self-improvement. If you had any such requirement, you would not be here. I conceive that you are here, because you have become thoroughly penetrated with such truths, either in your own persons or in the persons of some striving fellow creatures, on whom you have looked with interest and sympathy. I conceive that you are here because you conceive the welfare of a great chiefly adult educational establishment, whose doors stand really open to all sorts and conditions of people, to be inseparable from the best welfare of your great town and its neighbourhood. Nay, if I take a much wider range than that, and say that we all – every one of us – perfectly well know that the benefits of such an establishment must extend far beyond the limits of this midland county fires and smoke, and must comprehend, in some sort, the whole community, I do not strain the truth. It was suggested by Mr. Babbage, in his Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, that a mere spoken word – a mere syllable thrown into the air – may go on reverberating through illimitable space for ever and for ever, seeing that there is no rim against which it can strike: no boundary at which it can possibly arrive. Similarly it may be said – not as an ingenious speculation, but as a steadfast and absolute fact – that human calculation cannot limit the influence of one atom of wholesome knowledge patiently acquired, modestly possessed, and faithfully used. As astronomers tell us that it is probable that there are in the universe innumerable solar systems besides ours, to each of which myriads of utterly unknown and unseen stars belong, so it is certain that every man, however obscure, however far removed from the general recognition, is one of a group of men impressible for good and impressible for evil, and that it is in the eternal nature of things that he cannot really improve himself without in some degree improving other men. And observe: this is especially the case when he has improved himself in the teeth of adverse circumstances, as in a maturity succeeding to a neglected or an ill-taught youth, in the few daily hours remaining to him after ten or twelve hours of labour, in the few pauses and intervals of a life of toil; for then his fellow creatures and companions have assurance that he can have known no favouring conditions, and that they can do what he has done, in wresting some enlightenment and self-respect from what Lord Lytton finely calls Those twin gaolers of the daring heart, Low birth and iron fortune. As you have proved these truths in your own experience or in your own observation, and as it may be safely assumed that there can be very few persons in Birmingham, of all places under heaven, who would contest the position that the more cultivated the employed the better for the employer, and the more cultivated the employer the better for the employed; therefore, my reference to what you do not want to know shall here cease and determine. Next, with reference to what your Institution has done; on my summary, which shall be as concise and as correct as my information and my remembrance of it may render possible, I desire to lay emphatic stress. Your Institution, sixteen years old, and in which masters and workmen study together, has outgrown the ample edifice in which it receives its 2,500 or 2,600 members and students. It is a most cheering sign of its vigorous vitality that of its industrial students almost one-half are artisans in the receipt of weekly wages. I think I am correct in saying that 400 others are clerks, apprentices, tradesmen, or tradesmen’s sons. I note with particular pleasure the adherence of a goodly number of the gentler sex, without whom no Institution whatever can truly claim to be either a civilizing or a civilized one. The increased attendance at your educational classes is always greatest on the part of the artisans – the class within my experience the least reached in any similar institutions elsewhere, and whose name is the oftenest and most constantly taken in vain. But it is especially reached here, not improbably because it is, as it should be, specially addressed; in the foundation of the industrial department, in the allotment of the direction of the society’s affairs, and in the establishment of what are called its penny classes – a bold and, I am happy to say, a triumphantly successful experiment, which enables the artisan to obtain sound evening instruction in subjects directly bearing on his daily usefulness or on his daily happiness: as arithmetic (elementary and advanced), chemistry, physical geography, and singing: on payment of the astounding low fee of a single penny every time he attends a class. I beg emphatically to say that I look on this as one of the most remarkable schemes ever devised for the educational behoof of the artisan, and if your Institution had done nothing else in all its life, I would take my stand by it on its having done this. Apart, however, from the industrial department, it has its general department, offering all the advantages of a first-class literary Institution. It has its reading rooms, its library, its chemical laboratory, its museum, its art department, its lecture hall, and its long list of lectures on subjects of various and comprehensive interest, delivered by lecturers of the highest qualifications. Very well. But it may be asked, what are the practical results of these appliances? Now, let us suppose a few. Suppose that your Institution should have educated those who are now its teachers. That would be a remarkable fact. Supposing, besides, that it should, so to speak, have educated education, all around it, by sending forth numerous and efficient teachers into many and divers schools. Suppose the young student, reared exclusively in its laboratory, should be presently snapped up for the laboratory of the great and famous hospital. Suppose that in nine years its industrial students should have carried off a round dozen of the much-competed-for prizes awarded by the Society of Arts and the Government departments, besides two local prizes originating in the generosity of a Birmingham man. Suppose that the Town Council, having it in trust to find an artisan well fit to receive the Whitworth prizes, should find him here. Suppose that one of your industrial students should turn his chemical studies to the practical account of extracting gold from waste colour water, and of taking it into custody, in the very act of running away by the thousand pounds worth, down the town drains. Suppose another should perceive in his books, in his studious evenings, what was amiss with his master’s until then inscrutably defective furnace, and should go straight at it – to the great annual saving of that master – and put it right. Suppose another should puzzle out the means, until then quite unknown in England, of making a certain description of coloured glass. Suppose another should qualify himself to vanquish one by one, as they daily arose, all the little difficulties incidental to his calling as an electro-plater, and should be applied to by his companions in the shop ,in all emergencies, under the name of the ‘Encyclopædia’. Suppose a long procession of such cases, and then consider that these are not suppositions at all, but are plain unvarnished facts, culminating in the one special and significant fact that, with a single solitary exception, every one of the Institution’s industrial students who have taken its prizes within ten years, have since climbed to a higher station in his way of life. As to the extent to which the Institution encourages the artisan to think, and so, for instance, to rise superior to the little shackling prejudices perchance existing in his trade when they will not bear the test of inquiry, that is only to be equalled by the extent to which it encourages him to feel. There is a certain tone of modest manliness pervading all the little facts which I have looked through which I found remarkably impressive. The decided objection on the part of the industrial students to attend the classes in their working clothes breathes this tone, as being a graceful and yet at the same time perfectly independent recognition of the place and of one another. And this tone is admirably illustrated in the case of a poor bricklayer, who, being in temporary reverses through illness in his family, had consequently been obliged to part with his best clothes; and who, being therefore missed from the classes in which he had been noticed as a very hard worker, was entreated to attend them in his working clothes. He replied, ‘No, it was not possible. It must not be thought of. It must not come into question for a moment. It might be supposed that he did it to attract attention.’ And the same man being offered by one of the officers a loan of money to enable him to rehabilitate his appearance, positively declined it, on the ground that he came to the Institution to learn, and to know better how to help himself: not otherwise to ask help, or to receive help, from any man. Now, I am justified in calling this the tone of the Institution, because it is no isolated instance, but it is a fair and honourable sample of the spirit of this place, and as such I put it at the conclusion – though last, certainly not least – of my references to what your Institution has indubitably done. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I come at length to what, in the humble opinion of its evanescent officer before you, remains for the Institution to do, and not to do. As Mr. Carlyle has it, towards the closing pages of his grand history of the French Revolution, ‘This with due brevity disposed of, then courage, oh listener, I see land!’ I earnestly hope – and I firmly believe – that your Institution will do henceforth as it has done hitherto; it can hardly do better. I hope and believe that it will know among its members no distinction of person, creed, or party; but that it will conserve its place of assemblage as a high and pure ground, on which all such considerations shall merge into the one universal, heaven-sent aspiration of the human soul to be wiser and better. I hope and believe that it will always be expansive and elastic; for ever seeking to devise new means of enlarging the circle of its members, and of attracting to itself the confidence of still greater and greater numbers, and never evincing any more disposition to stand still than time does, or life does, or the seasons do. And above all this, I hope, and I feel confident from its antecedents, that it will never allow any consideration on the face of the earth to induce it to patronize or to be patronized, for I verily believe that the bestowal and receipt of patronage in such wise has been a curse in England, and that it has done more to prevent really good objects, and to lower really high character, than the utmost efforts of the narrowest antagonism could have effected in twice the time. I have no fear that the walls of the Birmingham and Midland Institute will ever tremble responsive to the croakings of the timid opponents of intellectual progress; but in this connexion generally I cannot forbear from offering a remark which is much upon my mind. It is commonly assumed – much too commonly – that this age is a material age, and that a material age is an irreligious age. I have been pained lately to see this assumption repeated in certain influential quarters for which I have a high respect, and desire to have a higher. I am afraid that by dint of constantly being reiterated and reiterated, without protest, this assumption – which I take leave altogether to deny – may be accepted by the more unthinking part of the public as unquestionably true; just as certain caricaturists and painters professedly making a portrait of some public man, which was not in the least like him, to begin with, have gone on repeating and repeating it, until the public came to believe that it must be exactly like him, simply because it was like itself, and really have at last, in the fullness of time, grown almost to resent upon him their tardy discovery, that he was not like it. I confess, standing here in this responsible situation, that I do not understand this much-used and much-abused phrase, a ‘material age’, I cannot comprehend – if anybody can: which I very much doubt – its logical signification. For instance: has electricity become more material in the mind of any sane, or moderately insane man, woman, or child, because of the discovery that in the good providence of God it was made available for the service and use of man to an immeasurably greater extent than for his destruction? Do I make a more material journey to the bedside of my dying parent or my dying child, when I travel there at the rate of sixty miles an hour, than when I travel thither at the rate of six? Rather, in the swift case, does not my agonized heart become over-fraught with gratitude to that Supreme Beneficence from whom alone can have proceeded the wonderful means of shortening my suspense? What is the materiality of the cable or the wire, compared with the immateriality of the spark? What is the materiality of certain chemical substances that we can weigh or measure, imprison or release, compared with the immateriality of their appointed affinities and repulsions, prescribed to them from the instant of their creation to the day of judgment? When did this so-called material age begin? With the invention of the art of printing? Surely it has been a long time about; and which is the more material object, the farthing tallow candle that will not give me light, or that flame of gas that will? No, ladies and gentlemen, do not let us be discouraged or deceived by vapid, empty words. The true material age is the stupid Chinese age, in which no new grand revelation of nature is granted, because such revelations are ignorantly and insolently repelled, instead of being diligently and humbly sought. The difference between the ancient fiction of the mad braggart defying the lightning, and the modern historical picture of Franklin drawing it towards his kite, in order that he might the more profoundly study what was set before him to be studied (or it would not have been there), happily expresses to my mind the distinction between the much maligned material sages, and the – I suppose immaterial, but certainly in one sense very much so –sages of the Celestial Empire school. And consider: whether it is likely or unlikely, natural or unnatural, reasonable or unreasonable, that I, a being capable of thought, and finding myself surrounded by such diversified wonders on every hand, should sometimes ask myself the solemn question – should be disposed to put to myself the solemn consideration – Can these things be among those things which might have been disclosed by Divine lips nigh upon two thousand years ago, but that the people of that time could not bear them? And whether this be so or no, I, finding myself so surrounded on every hand, is not my moral responsibility tremendously increased thereby, and with it my intelligent submission of myself as a child of Adam and the dust, before that Shining Source equally of all that is granted and of all that is withheld, who holds in His mighty hands the unapproachable mysteries of life and death? To the students of your industrial classes generally, I have had it in my mind, first, to commend the short motto, in two words, ‘Courage, Persevere’. This is the motto of a friend and worker. Not because the eyes of Europe are upon them, for I don’t in the least believe it; nor because the eyes of even England are upon them, for I don’t in the least believe it; not because their doings will be proclaimed with blast of trumpet at the street corners, for no such musical performances will take place; not because self-improvement is at all certain to lead to worldly success, but because it is good and right of itself; and because, being so, it does assuredly bring with it, its own resources and its own rewards. I would further commend to them a very wise and witty piece of advice on the conduct of the understanding, which was given more than half a century ago by the Reverend Sydney Smith – wisest and wittiest of the friends I have lost. He says – and he is speaking, you will please understand, as I speak, to a school of voluntary students – he says: There is a piece of foppery which is to be cautiously guarded against, the foppery of universality, of knowing all sciences and excelling in all arts: chemistry, mathematics, algebra, dancing, history, reasoning, riding, fencing, Low Dutch, High Dutch, and natural philosophy. In short, the modern precept of education very often is, ‘Take the Admirable Crichton for your model, I would have you ignorant of nothing.’ Now – said he – my advice, on the contrary, is to have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order that you may avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything. To this I would superadd a little truth, which holds equally good of my own life, and the life of every eminent man I have ever known. The one serviceable, safe, certain, remunerative, attainable quality in every study and in every pursuit is the quality of attention. My own invention or imagination, such as it is, I can most truthfully assure you, would never have served me as it has, but for the habit of commonplace, humble, patient, daily, toiling, drudging attention. Genius, vivacity, quickness of penetration, brilliancy in association of ideas – such mental qualities, like the qualities of the apparition of the externally armed head in Macbeth will not be commanded: but attention, after due term of submissive service, always will. Like certain plants which the poorest peasant may grow in the poorest soil, it can be cultivated by anyone, and it is certain in its own good season to bring forth flowers and fruit. – I can most truthfully assure you, by the by, that this eulogium on attention is so far quite disinterested on my part, as that it has not the least reference whatever to the attention with which you have honoured me. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have done. I cannot but reflect how often you have probably heard within these walls one of the foremost men, and certainly one of the best speakers, if not the very best, in England. I could not say to myself, when I began just now, in Shakespeare’s line: I will be Bright and shine in gold. But I could say to myself, and I did say to myself, ‘I will be as natural and easy as I possibly can, because my heart has all been in my subject, and I bear an old love towards Birmingham and Birmingham men.’ I have said that I bear an old love towards Birmingham and Birmingham men; let me amend a small omission, and add ‘and Birmingham women’. This ring I wear on my finger now is an old Birmingham gift, and if, by rubbing it I could raise the spirit that was obedient to Aladdin’s ring, I heartily assure you that my first instruction to that Genie on the spot should be to place himself at Birmingham’s disposal in the best of causes. Ladies and Gentlemen, as I hope that it is more than possible that I shall have the pleasure of meeting you again before Christmas is out, and shall have the great interest of seeing the faces, and touching the hands, of the successful competitors in your lists, I will not cast upon that anticipated meeting the terrible foreshadowing of dread which must inevitably result from a second speech. I thank you most heartily, and I most sincerely and fervently say to you, Good night, and God bless you! In reference to the appropriate and excellent remarks of Mr. Dixon, I will now discharge my conscience of my political creed, which is contained in two articles, and has no reference to any party or persons. My faith in the people governing is, on the whole, infinitesimal; my faith in The People governed is, on the whole, illimitable. 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 Sydenham Venue Where the speech was given Crystal Palace 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. 18690830 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, flushed with fireworks, I can warrant myself to you as about to imitate those gorgeous illusions by making a brief spurt and then dying out. And, first of all, as an invited visitor of the London Rowing Club to this most interesting occasion, I will beg, in the name of the other invited visitors present – always excepting the distinguished guests who are the cause of our meeting – to thank the President for the modesty and courtesy with which he has deputed to one of us the most agreeable part of his evening’s duty. It is the more graceful in him to do this because he can hardly fail to see that he might very easily do it himself; as this is a case, of all others, in which it is according to good taste and the very principles of things that the great social vice, speech-making, should hide its diminished head before the great social virtue, action. However, there is an ancient story of a lady who threw her glove into an arena full of wild beasts to tempt her attendant lover to climb down and reclaim it. The lover, rightly inferring from the action the worth of the lady, risked his life for the glove, and then threw it lightly in her face as a token of his eternal adieu. I take up the President’s glove, on the contrary, as a proof of his much higher worth, and of my real interest in the cause in which it was thrown down, and I now profess my readiness to do even an injustice to the duty which he has assigned me. Gentlemen, a very remarkable and affecting volume was published in the United States within a short time before my last visit to that hospitable land, containing ninety-five biographies of young men, for the most part well born and well nurtured, and trained in various peaceful pursuits of life, who, when the flag of their country waved them from those quiet paths in which they were seeking distinction of various kinds, took arms in the dread civil war which elicited so much bravery upon both sides, and died in the defence of their country. These great spirits displayed extraordinary aptitude in the acquisition, even in the invention, of military tactics, in the combining and commanding of great masses of men, in surprising readiness of self-resource for the general good, in humanely treating the sick and wounded, and in winning to themselves a very rare amount of personal confidence and trust. They had all risen to be distinguished soldiers; they had all done deeds of great heroism; they had all combined with their valour and self-devotion a serene cheerfulness, a quiet modesty, and a truly Christian spirit; and they had all been educated in one school – Harvard University. Gentlemen, nothing was more remarkable in these fine descendants of our forefathers than the invincible determination with which they fought against odds, and the undauntable spirit with which they resisted defeat. I ask you, who will say after last Friday that Harvard University is less true to herself in peace than she was in war? I ask you, who will not recognize in her boat’s crew the leaven of her soldiers, and who does not feel that she has now a greater right than ever to be proud of her sons, and take these sons to her breast when they return with resounding acclamations? It is related of the Duke of Wellington that he once told a lady who foolishly protested that she would like to see a great victory, that there was only one thing worse than a victory, and that was a great defeat. But, gentlemen, there is another sense in which to use the term, a great defeat. Such is the defeat of a handful of daring fellows who make a preliminary dash of three or four thousand stormy miles to meet great conquerors on their own domain, who do not want the stimulus of friends and home, but who sufficiently hear and feel their own dear land in the shouts and cheers of another, and who strive to the last with a desperate tenacity that makes the beating of them a new feather in the proudest cap. Gentlemen, you agree with me that such a defeat is a great, a noble, part of a manly wholesome action; and I say that it is in the essence and life-blood of such a defeat to become at last a sure victory. Now, gentlemen, you know perfectly well the toast I am going to propose, and you know equally well that in thus glancing first towards our friends of the white stripes, I merely anticipate and respond to the instinctive courtesy of Oxford towards our brothers from a distance – a courtesy extending, I hope, and I do not doubt, to any imaginable limits except allowing them to take first place in last Friday’s match, if they could by any human and honourable means be kept in the second. I will not avail myself of the opportunity provided for me by the absence of the greater part of the Oxford crew – indeed, of all but one, and that its most modest and devoted member – I will not avail myself of the golden opportunity considerately provided for me, to say a great deal in honour of the Oxford crew. I know that the gentleman who attends here attends under unusual anxieties and difficulties, and that if he were less in earnest his filial affection could not possibly allow him to be here. It is therefore enough for me, gentlemen, and enough for you that I should say, here and now, that we all unite with one accord in regarding the Oxford crew as the pride and flower of England, and that we should consider it very weak indeed to set anything short of England’s very best in opposition to, or competition with America; though it certainly must be confessed – I am bound in common justice to admit it – it must be confessed in disparagement of the Oxford men, as I heard a discontented gentleman remark last Friday night, about ten o’clock, when he was baiting a very small horse in the Strand – he was one of eleven with pipes in a chaise cart – I say it must be admitted in disparagement of the Oxford men on the authority of this gentleman, that they have won so often that they could afford to lose a little now, and that ‘they ought to do it, but they won’t’. Gentlemen, in drinking to both crews, and in offering the poor testimony of our thanks in acknowledgment of the gallant spectacle which they presented to countless thousands last Friday, I am sure I express not only your feeling and my feeling, but also the feeling of the whole people of England, when I cordially give them welcome to our English waters and English ground, and also bid them ‘God speed’ in their voyage home. As the greater includes the less, and the sea holds the river, so I think it is no very bold augury to predict that in the friendly contests yet to come and to take place, I hope, on both sides of the Atlantic, there are great river triumphs for Harvard University yet in store. Gentlemen, I warn the English portion of this audience that these are very dangerous men. Remember that it was an undergraduate of Harvard University who served as a common seaman ‘Two Years Before the Mast’, and who wrote about the best sea book in the English tongue. Remember that it was one of those American gentlemen who sailed his mite of a yacht across the Atlantic in mid-winter, and who sailed in her to sink or swim with the men who believed in him. And now, gentlemen, in conclusion, animated by your cordial acquiescence, I will take upon myself to assure our brothers from a distance that the utmost enthusiasm with which they can be received on their return home will find a ready echo in every corner of England, and, further, that none of their immediate countrymen – I use the qualifying term ‘immediate’, for we are, as our President said, fellow-countrymen, thank God – that none of their compatriots who saw, or who will read of, what they did in this great race, can be more thoroughly imbued with a sense of their indomitable courage, and their high deserts, than are their rivals and their hosts tonight. Gentlemen, I beg to propose to you to drink ‘The Crews of Harvard and Oxford University’, and I beg to couple with that toast the names of Mr. Simmons and Mr. Willan. 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 London Rowing Club Banquet for the Harvard and Oxford Crews Description An account of the resource Speech at the London Rowing Club Banquet for the Harvard and Oxford Crews (30 August 1869). 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 1869-08-30 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1869-08-30_Speech_London-Rowing-Club-Banquet-for-the-Harvard-and-Oxford-Crews 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 London Rowing Club Banquet for the Harvard and Oxford Crews' (30 August 1869). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1869-08-30_Speech_London-Rowing-Club-Banquet-for-the-Harvard-and-Oxford-Crews">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1869-08-30_Speech_London-Rowing-Club-Banquet-for-the-Harvard-and-Oxford-Crews</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Gentlemen, flushed with fireworks, I can warrant myself to you as about to imitate those gorgeous illusions by making a brief spurt and then dying out. And, first of all, as an invited visitor of the London Rowing Club to this most interesting occasion, I will beg, in the name of the other invited visitors present – always excepting the distinguished guests who are the cause of our meeting – to thank the President for the modesty and courtesy with which he has deputed to one of us the most agreeable part of his evening’s duty. It is the more graceful in him to do this because he can hardly fail to see that he might very easily do it himself; as this is a case, of all others, in which it is according to good taste and the very principles of things that the great social vice, speech-making, should hide its diminished head before the great social virtue, action. However, there is an ancient story of a lady who threw her glove into an arena full of wild beasts to tempt her attendant lover to climb down and reclaim it. The lover, rightly inferring from the action the worth of the lady, risked his life for the glove, and then threw it lightly in her face as a token of his eternal adieu. I take up the President’s glove, on the contrary, as a proof of his much higher worth, and of my real interest in the cause in which it was thrown down, and I now profess my readiness to do even an injustice to the duty which he has assigned me. Gentlemen, a very remarkable and affecting volume was published in the United States within a short time before my last visit to that hospitable land, containing ninety-five biographies of young men, for the most part well born and well nurtured, and trained in various peaceful pursuits of life, who, when the flag of their country waved them from those quiet paths in which they were seeking distinction of various kinds, took arms in the dread civil war which elicited so much bravery upon both sides, and died in the defence of their country. These great spirits displayed extraordinary aptitude in the acquisition, even in the invention, of military tactics, in the combining and commanding of great masses of men, in surprising readiness of self-resource for the general good, in humanely treating the sick and wounded, and in winning to themselves a very rare amount of personal confidence and trust. They had all risen to be distinguished soldiers; they had all done deeds of great heroism; they had all combined with their valour and self-devotion a serene cheerfulness, a quiet modesty, and a truly Christian spirit; and they had all been educated in one school – Harvard University. Gentlemen, nothing was more remarkable in these fine descendants of our forefathers than the invincible determination with which they fought against odds, and the undauntable spirit with which they resisted defeat. I ask you, who will say after last Friday that Harvard University is less true to herself in peace than she was in war? I ask you, who will not recognize in her boat’s crew the leaven of her soldiers, and who does not feel that she has now a greater right than ever to be proud of her sons, and take these sons to her breast when they return with resounding acclamations? It is related of the Duke of Wellington that he once told a lady who foolishly protested that she would like to see a great victory, that there was only one thing worse than a victory, and that was a great defeat. But, gentlemen, there is another sense in which to use the term, a great defeat. Such is the defeat of a handful of daring fellows who make a preliminary dash of three or four thousand stormy miles to meet great conquerors on their own domain, who do not want the stimulus of friends and home, but who sufficiently hear and feel their own dear land in the shouts and cheers of another, and who strive to the last with a desperate tenacity that makes the beating of them a new feather in the proudest cap. Gentlemen, you agree with me that such a defeat is a great, a noble, part of a manly wholesome action; and I say that it is in the essence and life-blood of such a defeat to become at last a sure victory. Now, gentlemen, you know perfectly well the toast I am going to propose, and you know equally well that in thus glancing first towards our friends of the white stripes, I merely anticipate and respond to the instinctive courtesy of Oxford towards our brothers from a distance – a courtesy extending, I hope, and I do not doubt, to any imaginable limits except allowing them to take first place in last Friday’s match, if they could by any human and honourable means be kept in the second. I will not avail myself of the opportunity provided for me by the absence of the greater part of the Oxford crew – indeed, of all but one, and that its most modest and devoted member – I will not avail myself of the golden opportunity considerately provided for me, to say a great deal in honour of the Oxford crew. I know that the gentleman who attends here attends under unusual anxieties and difficulties, and that if he were less in earnest his filial affection could not possibly allow him to be here. It is therefore enough for me, gentlemen, and enough for you that I should say, here and now, that we all unite with one accord in regarding the Oxford crew as the pride and flower of England, and that we should consider it very weak indeed to set anything short of England’s very best in opposition to, or competition with America; though it certainly must be confessed – I am bound in common justice to admit it – it must be confessed in disparagement of the Oxford men, as I heard a discontented gentleman remark last Friday night, about ten o’clock, when he was baiting a very small horse in the Strand – he was one of eleven with pipes in a chaise cart – I say it must be admitted in disparagement of the Oxford men on the authority of this gentleman, that they have won so often that they could afford to lose a little now, and that ‘they ought to do it, but they won’t’. Gentlemen, in drinking to both crews, and in offering the poor testimony of our thanks in acknowledgment of the gallant spectacle which they presented to countless thousands last Friday, I am sure I express not only your feeling and my feeling, but also the feeling of the whole people of England, when I cordially give them welcome to our English waters and English ground, and also bid them ‘God speed’ in their voyage home. As the greater includes the less, and the sea holds the river, so I think it is no very bold augury to predict that in the friendly contests yet to come and to take place, I hope, on both sides of the Atlantic, there are great river triumphs for Harvard University yet in store. Gentlemen, I warn the English portion of this audience that these are very dangerous men. Remember that it was an undergraduate of Harvard University who served as a common seaman ‘Two Years Before the Mast’, and who wrote about the best sea book in the English tongue. Remember that it was one of those American gentlemen who sailed his mite of a yacht across the Atlantic in mid-winter, and who sailed in her to sink or swim with the men who believed in him. And now, gentlemen, in conclusion, animated by your cordial acquiescence, I will take upon myself to assure our brothers from a distance that the utmost enthusiasm with which they can be received on their return home will find a ready echo in every corner of England, and, further, that none of their immediate countrymen – I use the qualifying term ‘immediate’, for we are, as our President said, fellow-countrymen, thank God – that none of their compatriots who saw, or who will read of, what they did in this great race, can be more thoroughly imbued with a sense of their indomitable courage, and their high deserts, than are their rivals and their hosts tonight. Gentlemen, I beg to propose to you to drink ‘The Crews of Harvard and Oxford University’, and I beg to couple with that toast the names of Mr. Simmons and Mr. Willan. 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 Liverpool Venue Where the speech was given Saint George's 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. 18690410 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. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen, Although I have become so well accustomed of late to the sound of my own voice in this neighbourhood as to hear it with perfect composure, the occasion is, believe me, very very different in respect of those overwhelming voices of yours. As Professor Wilson once confided to me in Edinburgh that I had not the least idea from hearing him in public, what a magnificent speaker he found himself to be when quite alone, so you can form no conception, from the specimen before you, of the eloquence with which I shall thank you again and again in some of the innermost moments of my future life. Often and often then, God willing, my memory will recall this brilliant scene, and will reilluminate this: – banquet-hall deserted, Whose lights are fled Whose garlands dead And all but I departed: and faithful to this place in its present aspect, I will mark and observe it exactly as it stands – not one man’s seat empty, not one woman’s fair face absent – while life and memory abide by me. Mr. Mayor, Lord Dufferin in his speech so affecting to me, so eloquently uttered, and so rapturously received, made a graceful and gracious allusion to the immediate occasion of my present visit to your noble city. It is no homage to Liverpool, based upon a moment’s untrustworthy enthusiasm, but it is the solid fact built upon the rock of experience that when I first made up my mind, after considerable deliberation, systematically to meet my readers in large numbers, face to face, and to try to express myself to them through the breath of life, Liverpool stood foremost among the great places outside London to which I looked with eager confidence and pleasure. And why was this? Not merely because of the reputation of its citizens for generous estimation of the arts; not merely because I had unworthily filled the chair of its great self-educational institution long ago; not merely because the place had been a home to me since the well-remembered day when its blessed roofs and steeples dipped into the Mersey behind me on the occasion of my first sailing away to see my generous friends across the Atlantic seven-and-twenty years ago. Not for one of those considerations; but because it had been my happiness to have a public opportunity of testing the spirit of its people. I had asked Liverpool for help towards the worthy preservation of Shakespeare’s house. On another occasion I had ventured to address Liverpool in the names of Leigh Hunt and Sheridan Knowles. On still another occasion I had addressed it in the cause of the brotherhood and sisterhood of letters and the kindred arts. And on each and all the response had been unsurpassably spontaneous, open-handed, and munificent. Mr. Mayor, and ladies and gentlemen, if I may venture to take a small illustration of my present position from my own peculiar craft, I would say that there is this objection, in writing fiction, to giving the story an autobiographical form: that through whatever dangers the narrator may pass, it is clear unfortunately to the reader beforehand that he must have come through them somehow, else he could not have lived to tell the tale. Now in speaking fact, when the fact is associated with such honours as those with which you have enriched me, there is this singular difficulty in returning thanks, that the speaker must infallibly come back to himself through whatever oratorical disasters he may languish on the road. Let me, therefore, – let me, then, take the plainer and simpler middle course of dividing my subject equally between myself and you. Let me assure you that whatever you have accepted with pleasure, either by word of pen or by word of mouth, from me, you have greatly improved in the acceptance. As the gold is said to be doubly and trebly refined which has seven times passed the furnace, so a fancy may be said to become more and more refined each time it passes through the human heart. You have, and you know you have, brought to the consideration of me that quality in yourselves without which I should have beaten the air. Your earnestness has stimulated mine, your laughter has made me laugh, and your tears have overflowed my eyes. All that I can claim for myself, in establishing the relations which exist between us, is constant fidelity to hard work. My literary brethren about me, of whom I am so proud to see so many, know very well how true it is, of all art, that what seems the easiest done is oftentimes the most difficult to do, and that the smallest truth may come of the greatest pains, – much, as it occurred to me at Manchester, the other day, the sensitive touch of Mr. Whitworth’s wonderful measuring machine comes at last, though Heaven, Manchester, and its maker only knew how much hammering and firing were required to bring it out. And my companions-in-arms know thoroughly well, and I think it is right the public should know too, that in our careful toil and trouble, and in our steady striving for excellence – not in any little gifts, misused by fits and starts – lies our highest duty at once to our calling, to one another, to ourselves and to you. Ladies and gentlemen, before sitting down I find that I have to clear myself of two very unexpected accusations. The first is a most singular charge preferred against me by my old friend Lord Houghton: that I have been somewhat unconscious of the merits of the House of Lords. Now, ladies and gentlemen, seeing that I have had some not altogether obscure or unknown personal friends in that assembly; seeing that I had some little association with, and knowledge of, a certain obscure peer lately known in England by the name of Lord Brougham; seeing that I regard with some admiration and affection another obscure peer wholly unknown in literary circles, called Lord Lytton; seeing also that I have had for some years some slight admiration of the extraordinary judicial properties and amazingly acute mind of a certain Lord Chief Justice popularly known by the name of Lord Cockburn; and also seeing that there is no man in England whom I respect more in his public capacity, whom I love more in his private capacity, or from whom I have received more remarkable proofs of his honour and love of literature, than another obscure nobleman called Lord Russell; taking these circumstances into consideration, I was rather amazed by my noble friend’s accusation. When I asked him, on his sitting down, what amazing devil possessed him to make this charge, he replied that he had never forgotten the days of Lord Verisopht. Then, ladies and gentlemen, I understood it all; because it is a remarkable fact, that in the days when that depreciative and profoundly unnatural character was invented, there was no Lord Houghton in the House of Lords. And there was in the House of Commons, a rather indifferent member called Richard Monckton Milnes. Ladies and gentlemen, to conclude – for the present; to conclude, I close with the other charge of my noble friend, and here I am more serious, and I may be allowed perhaps to express my seriousness in half a dozen plain words. When I first took Literature as my profession in England, I calmly resolved within myself that, whether I succeeded or whether I failed, Literature should be my sole profession. It appeared to me at that time that it was not so well understood in England as it was in other countries that Literature was a dignified profession, by which any man might stand or fall. I made a compact with myself that in my person Literature should stand, and by itself, of itself, and for itself; and there is no consideration on earth which would induce me to break that bargain. Ladies and gentlemen, finally allow me to thank you for your great kindness, and for the touching earnestness with which you have drunk my health. I should have thanked you with all my heart if it had not so unfortunately happened that, for many sufficient reasons, I lost my heart, at between half-past six and half-past seven o’clock tonight. Gentlemen – for I address myself solely to you – the nature of the toast I am about to propose cannot, I think, be better or more briefly expressed than in a short quotation from Shakespeare, slightly altered: Scene: A banqueting hall. Thunder – of admiration. Lightning – of eyes. Enter Macbeth and Banquo: Banquo: Who are these, So sparkling and so bright in their attire, That look not like the inhabitants o’ the earth And yet are on’t? Reply: Sir, these are the Lancashire Witches. Pondering this turn in my mind just now, and looking round this magnificent hall, I naturally pondered also on the legend of its patron saint. It is recorded of Saint George that he was even more devoted to love and beauty than the other six Champions of Christendom. And I, his loyal imitator and disciple, have moulded myself completely upon him in looking around me here. How happy could I be with either, Were t’other dear charmer away, is a sentiment that was first put into writing some few ages after Saint George’s time; but I have a profound conviction that he would have originated it if he could have projected himself into this occasion. However, he was much better employed in killing the Dragon. Oh yes! – much better employed in killing the Dragon, who would have devoured the lady. And he was much better employed still, in marrying the lady, and enslaving himself by freeing her. The legend, as I remember, goes on to relate that the accursed brood of dragons after that time retired into inaccessible solitudes, and was seen no more – except on very special occasions. Now, it occurs to me, that if any of those dragons should yet be lingering in retirement, and if they should have, in virtue of any bewitched sixth sense, the slightest notion of the havoc that will be wrought amongst Saint George’s descendants by this assembly of glowing beauty here tonight, then the dragon race is even with Saint George at last, and is most terribly avenged. Gentlemen, I give you ‘The Ladies’. Ladies and gentlemen, the learned lady who has just sat down has completely mistaken me. I referred not to my having been enslaved tonight by one lady, or two, but by all present; and when I made the quotation from Captain Macheath, I made a quotation from a gentleman who, though he happened at the moment to be attended by only two ladies, was notoriously the slave, as I am, of the whole sex. I have no, ladies and gentlemen, to propose to you a toast inseparable from the enterprise of Liverpool – from the public honour and public spirit of Liverpool; equally inseparable from the stately streets and buildings around us, and from the hospitals, schools, and free libraries, and those great monuments of consideration for the many which have made this place an example to England. I have to propose to you to drink ‘His Worship the Mayor and the Corporation of this Town’. 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 Banquet in His Honour, Liverpool Description An account of the resource Speeches given at a Banquet in His Honour, Liverpool (10 April 1869). 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 1869-04-10 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1869-04-10_Speech_Banquet-in-His-Honour-Liverpool 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. 'Speeches given at a Banquet in His Honour, Liverpool' (10 April 1869). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1869-04-10_Speech_Banquet-in-His-Honour-Liverpool">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1869-04-10_Speech_Banquet-in-His-Honour-Liverpool</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen, Although I have become so well accustomed of late to the sound of my own voice in this neighbourhood as to hear it with perfect composure, the occasion is, believe me, very very different in respect of those overwhelming voices of yours. As Professor Wilson once confided to me in Edinburgh that I had not the least idea from hearing him in public, what a magnificent speaker he found himself to be when quite alone, so you can form no conception, from the specimen before you, of the eloquence with which I shall thank you again and again in some of the innermost moments of my future life. Often and often then, God willing, my memory will recall this brilliant scene, and will reilluminate this: – banquet-hall deserted, Whose lights are fled Whose garlands dead And all but I departed: and faithful to this place in its present aspect, I will mark and observe it exactly as it stands – not one man’s seat empty, not one woman’s fair face absent – while life and memory abide by me. Mr. Mayor, Lord Dufferin in his speech so affecting to me, so eloquently uttered, and so rapturously received, made a graceful and gracious allusion to the immediate occasion of my present visit to your noble city. It is no homage to Liverpool, based upon a moment’s untrustworthy enthusiasm, but it is the solid fact built upon the rock of experience that when I first made up my mind, after considerable deliberation, systematically to meet my readers in large numbers, face to face, and to try to express myself to them through the breath of life, Liverpool stood foremost among the great places outside London to which I looked with eager confidence and pleasure. And why was this? Not merely because of the reputation of its citizens for generous estimation of the arts; not merely because I had unworthily filled the chair of its great self-educational institution long ago; not merely because the place had been a home to me since the well-remembered day when its blessed roofs and steeples dipped into the Mersey behind me on the occasion of my first sailing away to see my generous friends across the Atlantic seven-and-twenty years ago. Not for one of those considerations; but because it had been my happiness to have a public opportunity of testing the spirit of its people. I had asked Liverpool for help towards the worthy preservation of Shakespeare’s house. On another occasion I had ventured to address Liverpool in the names of Leigh Hunt and Sheridan Knowles. On still another occasion I had addressed it in the cause of the brotherhood and sisterhood of letters and the kindred arts. And on each and all the response had been unsurpassably spontaneous, open-handed, and munificent. Mr. Mayor, and ladies and gentlemen, if I may venture to take a small illustration of my present position from my own peculiar craft, I would say that there is this objection, in writing fiction, to giving the story an autobiographical form: that through whatever dangers the narrator may pass, it is clear unfortunately to the reader beforehand that he must have come through them somehow, else he could not have lived to tell the tale. Now in speaking fact, when the fact is associated with such honours as those with which you have enriched me, there is this singular difficulty in returning thanks, that the speaker must infallibly come back to himself through whatever oratorical disasters he may languish on the road. Let me, therefore, –  let me, then, take the plainer and simpler middle course of dividing my subject equally between myself and you. Let me assure you that whatever you have accepted with pleasure, either by word of pen or by word of mouth, from me, you have greatly improved in the acceptance. As the gold is said to be doubly and trebly refined which has seven times passed the furnace, so a fancy may be said to become more and more refined each time it passes through the human heart. You have, and you know you have, brought to the consideration of me that quality in yourselves without which I should have beaten the air. Your earnestness has stimulated mine, your laughter has made me laugh, and your tears have overflowed my eyes. All that I can claim for myself, in establishing the relations which exist between us, is constant fidelity to hard work. My literary brethren about me, of whom I am so proud to see so many, know very well how true it is, of all art, that what seems the easiest done is oftentimes the most difficult to do, and that the smallest truth may come of the greatest pains, – much, as it occurred to me at Manchester, the other day, the sensitive touch of Mr. Whitworth’s wonderful measuring machine comes at last, though Heaven, Manchester, and its maker only knew how much hammering and firing were required to bring it out. And my companions-in-arms know thoroughly well, and I think it is right the public should know too, that in our careful toil and trouble, and in our steady striving for excellence – not in any little gifts, misused by fits and starts – lies our highest duty at once to our calling, to one another, to ourselves and to you. Ladies and gentlemen, before sitting down I find that I have to clear myself of two very unexpected accusations. The first is a most singular charge preferred against me by my old friend Lord Houghton: that I have been somewhat unconscious of the merits of the House of Lords. Now, ladies and gentlemen, seeing that I have had some not altogether obscure or unknown personal friends in that assembly; seeing that I had some little association with, and knowledge of, a certain obscure peer lately known in England by the name of Lord Brougham; seeing that I regard with some admiration and affection another obscure peer wholly unknown in literary circles, called Lord Lytton; seeing also that I have had for some years some slight admiration of the extraordinary judicial properties and amazingly acute mind of a certain Lord Chief Justice popularly known by the name of Lord Cockburn; and also seeing that there is no man in England whom I respect more in his public capacity, whom I love more in his private capacity, or from whom I have received more remarkable proofs of his honour and love of literature, than another obscure nobleman called Lord Russell; taking these circumstances into consideration, I was rather amazed by my noble friend’s accusation. When I asked him, on his sitting down, what amazing devil possessed him to make this charge, he replied that he had never forgotten the days of Lord Verisopht. Then, ladies and gentlemen, I understood it all; because it is a remarkable fact, that in the days when that depreciative and profoundly unnatural character was invented, there was no Lord Houghton in the House of Lords. And there was in the House of Commons, a rather indifferent member called Richard Monckton Milnes. Ladies and gentlemen, to conclude – for the present; to conclude, I close with the other charge of my noble friend, and here I am more serious, and I may be allowed perhaps to express my seriousness in half a dozen plain words. When I first took Literature as my profession in England, I calmly resolved within myself that, whether I succeeded or whether I failed, Literature should be my sole profession. It appeared to me at that time that it was not so well understood in England as it was in other countries that Literature was a dignified profession, by which any man might stand or fall. I made a compact with myself that in my person Literature should stand, and by itself, of itself, and for itself; and there is no consideration on earth which would induce me to break that bargain. Ladies and gentlemen, finally allow me to thank you for your great kindness, and for the touching earnestness with which you have drunk my health. I should have thanked you with all my heart if it had not so unfortunately happened that, for many sufficient reasons, I lost my heart, at between half-past six and half-past seven o’clock tonight. Gentlemen – for I address myself solely to you – the nature of the toast I am about to propose cannot, I think, be better or more briefly expressed than in a short quotation from Shakespeare, slightly altered: Scene: A banqueting hall. Thunder – of admiration. Lightning – of eyes. Enter Macbeth and Banquo: Banquo: Who are these, So sparkling and so bright in their attire, That look not like the inhabitants o’ the earth And yet are on’t? Reply: Sir, these are the Lancashire Witches. Pondering this turn in my mind just now, and looking round this magnificent hall, I naturally pondered also on the legend of its patron saint. It is recorded of Saint George that he was even more devoted to love and beauty than the other six Champions of Christendom. And I, his loyal imitator and disciple, have moulded myself completely upon him in looking around me here. How happy could I be with either, Were t’other dear charmer away, is a sentiment that was first put into writing some few ages after Saint George’s time; but I have a profound conviction that he would have originated it if he could have projected himself into this occasion. However, he was much better employed in killing the Dragon. Oh yes! – much better employed in killing the Dragon, who would have devoured the lady. And he was much better employed still, in marrying the lady, and enslaving himself by freeing her. The legend, as I remember, goes on to relate that the accursed brood of dragons after that time retired into inaccessible solitudes, and was seen no more – except on very special occasions. Now, it occurs to me, that if any of those dragons should yet be lingering in retirement, and if they should have, in virtue of any bewitched sixth sense, the slightest notion of the havoc that will be wrought amongst Saint George’s descendants by this assembly of glowing beauty here tonight, then the dragon race is even with Saint George at last, and is most terribly avenged. Gentlemen, I give you ‘The Ladies’. Ladies and gentlemen, the learned lady who has just sat down has completely mistaken me. I referred not to my having been enslaved tonight by one lady, or two, but by all present; and when I made the quotation from Captain Macheath, I made a quotation from a gentleman who, though he happened at the moment to be attended by only two ladies, was notoriously the slave, as I am, of the whole sex. I have now, ladies and gentlemen, to propose to you a toast inseparable from the enterprise of Liverpool – from the public honour and public spirit of Liverpool; equally inseparable from the stately streets and buildings around us, and from the hospitals, schools, and free libraries, and those great monuments of consideration for the many which have made this place an example to England. I have to propose to you to drink ‘His Worship the Mayor and the Corporation of this Town’. 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 New York Venue Where the speech was given Steinway 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. 18680420 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, The shadow of one word has impended over me all this evening, and the time has come at length when the shadow must fall. It is but a very short one, but the weight of such things is not measurable by their length, and two much shorter words express the round of our human existence. When I was reading David Copperfield here last Thursday night, I felt there was more than usual significance for me in Mr. Peggotty’s declaration, ‘My future life lies over the sea.’ And when I closed this book just now, I felt most keenly that I was shortly to establish such an alibi as would have satisfied even the elder Mr. Weller. The relations which have been set up between us in this place – relations sustained, on my side at least, by the most earnest devotion of myself to my task: sustained by yourself, on your side, by the readiest sympathy and kindest acknowledgement – must now be broken, for ever. But I entreat you to believe that in passing from my sight, you will not pass from my memory. I shall often, often recall you as I see you now, equally by my winter fire and in the green English summer weather. I shall never recall you as a mere public audience, but rather as a host of personal friends, and ever with the greatest gratitude, tenderness, and consideration. Ladies and gentlemen, I beg to bid you farewell – and I pray God bless you, and God bless the land in which I leave you. 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 Farewell Reading, New York Description An account of the resource Speech at the Farewell Reading, New York (20 April 1868). 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 1868-04-20 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1868-04-20_Speech_Farewell-Reading-New-York 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 Farewell Reading, New York' (20 April 1868). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1868-04-20_Speech_Farewell-Reading-New-York">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1868-04-20_Speech_Farewell-Reading-New-York</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Ladies and gentlemen, The shadow of one word has impended over me all this evening, and the time has come at length when the shadow must fall. It is but a very short one, but the weight of such things is not measurable by their length, and two much shorter words express the round of our human existence. When I was reading David Copperfield here last Thursday night, I felt there was more than usual significance for me in Mr. Peggotty’s declaration, ‘My future life lies over the sea.’ And when I closed this book just now, I felt most keenly that I was shortly to establish such an alibi as would have satisfied even the elder Mr. Weller. The relations which have been set up between us in this place – relations sustained, on my side at least, by the most earnest devotion of myself to my task: sustained by yourself, on your side, by the readiest sympathy and kindest acknowledgement – must now be broken, for ever. But I entreat you to believe that in passing from my sight, you will not pass from my memory. I shall often, often recall you as I see you now, equally by my winter fire and in the green English summer weather. I shall never recall you as a mere public audience, but rather as a host of personal friends, and ever with the greatest gratitude, tenderness, and consideration. Ladies and gentlemen, I beg to bid you farewell – and I pray God bless you, and God bless the land in which I leave you. 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 Providence, Rhode Island Venue Where the speech was given City 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. 18680220 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, Before I begin my reading, I beg your permission to depart from my usual custom and to interpose a very few not very agreeable words. An hour or two ago I learnt, with an astonishment only to be equalled by my indignation, that a subordinate person in my employment, sent forward here to transact the preliminary business – to which he is well accustomed – had hazarded the amazing statement that his instructions were to sell no fewer than six tickets to one purchaser. Allow me to assure you, on my personal faith and honour, that this statement has no foundation whatever; that the absurd injustice it would involve, if true, is opposed to the invariable practice on my readings both on your side of the Atlantic and on mine; and that I have instantly called this offender to a very strict account indeed. 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 Before a Reading in Providence Description An account of the resource Speech before a Reading in Providence (20 February 1868). 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 1868-02-20 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1868-02-20_Speech_Before-a-Reading-in-Providence 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 before a Reading in Providence' (20 February 1868). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1868-02-20_Speech_Before-a-Reading-in-Providence">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1868-02-20_Speech_Before-a-Reading-in-Providence</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Ladies and Gentlemen, Before I begin my reading, I beg your permission to depart from my usual custom and to interpose a very few not very agreeable words. An hour or two ago I learnt, with an astonishment only to be equalled by my indignation, that a subordinate person in my employment, sent forward here to transact the preliminary business – to which he is well accustomed – had hazarded the amazing statement that his instructions were to sell no fewer than six tickets to one purchaser. Allow me to assure you, on my personal faith and honour, that this statement has no foundation whatever; that the absurd injustice it would involve, if true, is opposed to the invariable practice on my readings both on your side of the Atlantic and on mine; and that I have instantly called this offender to a very strict account indeed. 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 Boston Venue Where the speech was given Tremont Temple 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. 18680408 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, Before allowing Doctor Marigold to tell his story in his own peculiar way, I kiss the kind fair hands unknown which have so beautifully decorated my table this evening. Ladies and Gentlemen, My gracious and generous welcome in America, which can never be obliterated from my remembrance, began here. My departure begins here, too; for I assure you that I have never until this moment really felt that I am going away. In this brief life of ours it is sad to do almost anything for the last time, and I cannot conceal from you, although my face will so soon be turned towards my native land, and to all that makes it dear, that it is a sad consideration with me that in a very few moments from this time, this brilliant hall and all that it contains, will fade from my view – for evermore. But it is my consolation that the spirit of the bright faces, the quick perception, the ready response, the generous and the cheering sounds that have made this place delightful to me, will remain; and you may rely upon it that that spirit will abide with me as long as I have sense and sentiment. I do not say this with any limited reference to private friendships that have for years upon years made Boston a memorable and beloved spot to me, for such private references have no business in this public place. I say it purely in remembrance of, and in homage to, the great public heart before me. Ladies and gentlemen, I beg most earnestly, most gratefully, and most affectionately, to bid you, each and all, farewell. 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 At a Reading in Boston Description An account of the resource Speeches before and after a Reading in Boston (8 April 1868). 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 1868-04-08 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1868-04-08_Speech_At-a-Reading-in-Boston 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. 'Speeches before and after a Reading in Boston' (8 April 1868). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1868-04-08_Speech_At-a-Reading-in-Boston">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1868-04-08_Speech_At-a-Reading-in-Boston</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Ladies and Gentlemen, Before allowing Doctor Marigold to tell his story in his own peculiar way, I kiss the kind fair hands unknown which have so beautifully decorated my table this evening. Ladies and Gentlemen, My gracious and generous welcome in America, which can never be obliterated from my remembrance, began here. My departure begins here, too; for I assure you that I have never until this moment really felt that I am going away. In this brief life of ours it is sad to do almost anything for the last time, and I cannot conceal from you, although my face will so soon be turned towards my native land, and to all that makes it dear, that it is a sad consideration with me that in a very few moments from this time, this brilliant hall and all that it contains, will fade from my view – for evermore. But it is my consolation that the spirit of the bright faces, the quick perception, the ready response, the generous and the cheering sounds that have made this place delightful to me, will remain; and you may rely upon it that that spirit will abide with me as long as I have sense and sentiment. I do not say this with any limited reference to private friendships that have for years upon years made Boston a memorable and beloved spot to me, for such private references have no business in this public place. I say it purely in remembrance of, and in homage to, the great public heart before me. Ladies and gentlemen, I beg most earnestly, most gratefully, and most affectionately, to bid you, each and all, farewell. 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. I began with a small speech to the effect that I must trust to the brightness of their faces for the illumination of mine; this was taken greatly. Location The location Washington, D. C. Venue Where the speech was given Carroll 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. 18680203 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 Before a Reading in Washington Description An account of the resource Speech before a Reading in Washington (3 February 1868). 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 1868-02-03 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1868-02-03_Speech_Before-a-Reading-in-Washington 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 before a Reading in Washington' (3 February 1868). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1868-02-03_Speech_Before-a-Reading-in-Washington">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1868-02-03_Speech_Before-a-Reading-in-Washington</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 Washington, D. C. Venue Where the speech was given Carroll 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. 18680207 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, In all probability I shall never see your faces again, but I can assure you that yours have yielded me as much pleasure as I have given you. 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 After a Reading in Washington Description An account of the resource Speech after a Reading in Washington (7 February 1868). 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 1868-02-07 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1868-02-07_Speech_After-a-Reading-in-Washington 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 after a Reading in Washington' (7 February 1868). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1868-02-07_Speech_After-a-Reading-in-Washington">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1868-02-07_Speech_After-a-Reading-in-Washington</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Ladies and Gentlemen, In all probability I shall never see your faces again, but I can assure you that yours have yielded me as much pleasure as I have given you. 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. Dickens spoke shortly and well enough, but it had a very cut and dried air, and rather pompous and shapely in its construction and delivered in rather a sonorous deep voice. Not a jot of humour in it. Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given Freemasons' Tavern Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Letter Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) Rev. W. H. Brookfield, letter to his wife 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. 18440511 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 Artists' Benevolent Society Anniversary Festival 1844 Description An account of the resource Speech at the Artists' Benevolent Society Anniversary Festival (11 May 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 1844-05-11 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1844-05-11_Speech_Artists-Benevolent-Society-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 Artists' Benevolent Society Anniversary Festival' (11 May 1844). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1844-05-11_Speech_Artists-Benevolent-Society-Anniversary-Festival">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1844-05-11_Speech_Artists-Benevolent-Society-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 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’.