28 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 New York Venue Where the speech was given Delmonico's 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. 18680418 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. Gentlemen, I cannot do better than take my cue to from your distinguished President, and to refer in my first remarks to his remarks in connexion with the old natural association between you and me. When I received an invitation from a private association of working members of the Press of New York to dine with them today, I accepted that compliment in grateful remembrance of a calling that was once my own, and in loyal sympathy towards a brotherhood which, in the spirit, I have never quitted. To the wholesome training of severe newspaper work, when I was a very young man, I constantly refer my first successes; and my sons will hereafter testify of their father that he was always steadily proud of that ladder by which he rose. If it were otherwise I should have but a very poor opinion of their father – which, perhaps, upon the whole, I have not. Hence, gentlemen, under any circumstances, this company would have been exceptionally interesting and gratifying to me. But whereas I supposed that, like the fairies’ pavilion in the Arabian Nights, it would be but a mere handful, and I find it to turn out, like the same elastic pavilion, capable of comprehending a multitude, so much the more proud am I of the honour of being your guest; for you will readily believe that the more widely representative of the Press in America my entertainers are, the more I must feel the good-will and the kindly sentiments towards me of that vast institution. Gentlemen, so much of my voice has lately been heard in the land, and I have for upwards of four hard winter months so contended against what I have been sometimes quite admiringly assured was ‘a true American catarrh’ – a possession which I have throughout highly appreciated, though I might have preferred to be naturalized by any other outward and visible means. I say, gentlemen, so much of my voice has lately been heard, that I might have been contented with troubling you no further from my present standing-point, were it not a duty with which I henceforth charge myself, not only here but on every suitable occasion, whatsoever and wheresoever, to express my high and grateful sense of my second reception in America, and to bear my honest testimony to the national generosity and magnanimity. Also, to declare how astounded I have been by the amazing changes that I have seen around me on every side – changes moral, changes physical, changes in the amount of land subdued and peopled, changes in the rise of vast new cities, changes in the growth of older cities almost out of recognition, changes in the graces and amenities of life, changes in the Press, without whose advancement no advancement can be made anywhere. Nor am I, believe me, so arrogant as to suppose that in five-and-twenty years there have been no changes in me, and that I have nothing to learn, and that I had nothing to learn and no extreme impressions to correct from when I was here first. And, gentlemen, this brings me to a point on which I have, ever since I landed here last November, observed a strict silence, though tempted sometimes to break it, but in reference to which I will, with your permission, beg leave to take you now into my confidence. Even the Press, being human, may be sometimes mistaken or misinformed, and I rather think that I have myself, on one or two occasions, in some rare instances, known its information to be not perfectly accurate with reference to myself. Indeed, I have now and again been more surprised by printed news that I have read of myself, than by any printed news that I have ever read in my present state of existence. Thus, the vigour and perseverance with which I have for some months past been collecting materials and hammering away at a new book on America have much astonished me, seeing that all that time it has been perfectly well known to my publishers on both sides of the Atlantic, that I positively declared that no consideration on earth should induce me to write one. But what I have intended, what I have resolved upon (and this is the confidence I seek to place in you) is, on my return to England, in my own person to bear, for the behoof of my countrymen, such testimony to the gigantic changes in this country as I have hinted at tonight. Also, to record that wherever I have been, in the smallest places equally with the largest, I have been received with unsurpassable politeness, delicacy, sweet temper, hospitality, consideration, and with unsurpassable respect for the privacy daily enforced upon me by the nature of my avocation here, and the state of my health. This testimony, so long as I live, and so long as my descendants have any legal right in my books, I shall cause to be republished, as an appendix to every copy of those two books of mine in which I have referred to America. And this I will do and cause to be done, not in mere love and thankfulness, but because I regard it as an act of plain justice and honour. Gentlemen, the transition from my own feelings towards and interest in America to those of the mass of my countrymen seems to be a natural one; but, whether or no, I make it with an express object. I was asked in this very city, about last Christmas time, whether an American was not at some disadvantage in England as a foreigner. The notion of an American being regarded in England as a foreigner at all, of his ever being thought of or spoken of in that character, was so uncommonly incongruous and absurd to me, that my gravity was, for the moment, quite overpowered. As soon as it was restored, I said that for years and years past I hoped I had had as many American friends and had received as many American visitors as almost any Englishman living, and that my unvarying experience, fortified by theirs, was that it was enough in England to be an American to be received with the readiest respect and recognition anywhere. Hereupon, out of half a dozen people, suddenly spoke out two, one an American gentleman, with a cultivated taste for art, who, finding himself on a certain Sunday outside the walls of a certain historical English castle, famous for its pictures, was refused admission there, according to the strict rules of the establishment on that day, but who, on merely representing that he was an American gentleman, on his travels, had, not to say the picture gallery, but the whole castle, placed at his immediate disposal. The other was a lady, who, being in London, and having a great desire to see the famous reading-room of the British Museum, was assured by the English family with whom she stayed that it was unfortunately impossible, because the place was closed for a week, and she had only three days there. Upon that lady’s going to the Museum, as she assured me, alone to the gate, self-introduced as an American lady, the gate flew open, as it were magically. I am unwillingly bound to add that she certainly was young and exceedingly pretty. Still, the porter of that institution is of an obese habit, and, according to the best of my observation of him, not very impressible. Now, gentlemen, I refer to these trifles as a collateral assurance to you that the Englishman who shall humbly strive, as I hope to do, to be in England as faithful to America as to England herself, has no previous conceptions to contend against. Points of difference there have been, points of difference there are, points of difference there probably always will be between the two great peoples. But broadcast in England is sown the sentiment that those two peoples are essentially one, and that it rests with them jointly to uphold the great Anglo-Saxon race, to which our President has referred, and all its great achievements before the world. And if I know anything of my countrymen – and they give me credit for knowing something – if I know anything of my countrymen, gentlemen, the English heart is stirred by the fluttering of those Stars and Stripes, as it is stirred by no other flag that flies except its own. If I know my countrymen, in any and every relation towards America, they begin, not as Sir Anthony Absolute recommended that lovers should begin, with ‘a little aversion’, but with a great liking and a profound respect; and whatever the little sensitiveness of the moment, or the little official passion, or the little official policy now, or then, or here, or there, may be, take my word for it, that the first enduring, great popular consideration in England is a generous construction of justice. Finally, gentlemen, and I say this subject to your correction, I do believe that from the great majority of honest minds on both sides, there cannot be absent the conviction that it would be better for this globe to be riven by an earthquake, fired by a comet, overrun by an iceberg, and abandoned to the Arctic fox and bear, than that it should present the spectacle of these two great nations each of which has, in its own way and hour, striven so hard and so successfully for freedom, ever again being arrayed the one against the other. Gentlemen, I cannot thank your President enough, or you enough, for your kind reception of my health and of my poor remarks; but, believe me, I do thank you with the utmost fervour of which my soul is capable. 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 New York Press Banquet Description An account of the resource Speech at the New York Press Banquet, New York (18 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 1868-04-18 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1868-04-18_Speech_New-York-Press-Banquet 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 New York Press Banquet, New York' (18 April 1868). Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1868-04-18_Speech_New-York-Press-Banquet">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1868-04-18_Speech_New-York-Press-Banquet</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Gentlemen, I cannot do better than take my cue to from your distinguished President, and to refer in my first remarks to his remarks in connexion with the old natural association between you and me. When I received an invitation from a private association of working members of the Press of New York to dine with them today, I accepted that compliment in grateful remembrance of a calling that was once my own, and in loyal sympathy towards a brotherhood which, in the spirit, I have never quitted. To the wholesome training of severe newspaper work, when I was a very young man, I constantly refer my first successes; and my sons will hereafter testify of their father that he was always steadily proud of that ladder by which he rose. If it were otherwise I should have but a very poor opinion of their father – which, perhaps, upon the whole, I have not. Hence, gentlemen, under any circumstances, this company would have been exceptionally interesting and gratifying to me. But whereas I supposed that, like the fairies’ pavilion in the Arabian Nights, it would be but a mere handful, and I find it to turn out, like the same elastic pavilion, capable of comprehending a multitude, so much the more proud am I of the honour of being your guest; for you will readily believe that the more widely representative of the Press in America my entertainers are, the more I must feel the good-will and the kindly sentiments towards me of that vast institution. Gentlemen, so much of my voice has lately been heard in the land, and I have for upwards of four hard winter months so contended against what I have been sometimes quite admiringly assured was ‘a true American catarrh’ – a possession which I have throughout highly appreciated, though I might have preferred to be naturalized by any other outward and visible means. I say, gentlemen, so much of my voice has lately been heard, that I might have been contented with troubling you no further from my present standing-point, were it not a duty with which I henceforth charge myself, not only here but on every suitable occasion, whatsoever and wheresoever, to express my high and grateful sense of my second reception in America, and to bear my honest testimony to the national generosity and magnanimity. Also, to declare how astounded I have been by the amazing changes that I have seen around me on every side – changes moral, changes physical, changes in the amount of land subdued and peopled, changes in the rise of vast new cities, changes in the growth of older cities almost out of recognition, changes in the graces and amenities of life, changes in the Press, without whose advancement no advancement can be made anywhere. Nor am I, believe me, so arrogant as to suppose that in five-and-twenty years there have been no changes in me, and that I have nothing to learn, and that I had nothing to learn and no extreme impressions to correct from when I was here first. And, gentlemen, this brings me to a point on which I have, ever since I landed here last November, observed a strict silence, though tempted sometimes to break it, but in reference to which I will, with your permission, beg leave to take you now into my confidence. Even the Press, being human, may be sometimes mistaken or misinformed, and I rather think that I have myself, on one or two occasions, in some rare instances, known its information to be not perfectly accurate with reference to myself. Indeed, I have now and again been more surprised by printed news that I have read of myself, than by any printed news that I have ever read in my present state of existence. Thus, the vigour and perseverance with which I have for some months past been collecting materials and hammering away at a new book on America have much astonished me, seeing that all that time it has been perfectly well known to my publishers on both sides of the Atlantic, that I positively declared that no consideration on earth should induce me to write one. But what I have intended, what I have resolved upon (and this is the confidence I seek to place in you) is, on my return to England, in my own person to bear, for the behoof of my countrymen, such testimony to the gigantic changes in this country as I have hinted at tonight. Also, to record that wherever I have been, in the smallest places equally with the largest, I have been received with unsurpassable politeness, delicacy, sweet temper, hospitality, consideration, and with unsurpassable respect for the privacy daily enforced upon me by the nature of my avocation here, and the state of my health. This testimony, so long as I live, and so long as my descendants have any legal right in my books, I shall cause to be republished, as an appendix to every copy of those two books of mine in which I have referred to America. And this I will do and cause to be done, not in mere love and thankfulness, but because I regard it as an act of plain justice and honour. Gentlemen, the transition from my own feelings towards and interest in America to those of the mass of my countrymen seems to be a natural one; but, whether or no, I make it with an express object. I was asked in this very city, about last Christmas time, whether an American was not at some disadvantage in England as a foreigner. The notion of an American being regarded in England as a foreigner at all, of his ever being thought of or spoken of in that character, was so uncommonly incongruous and absurd to me, that my gravity was, for the moment, quite overpowered. As soon as it was restored, I said that for years and years past I hoped I had had as many American friends and had received as many American visitors as almost any Englishman living, and that my unvarying experience, fortified by theirs, was that it was enough in England to be an American to be received with the readiest respect and recognition anywhere. Hereupon, out of half a dozen people, suddenly spoke out two, one an American gentleman, with a cultivated taste for art, who, finding himself on a certain Sunday outside the walls of a certain historical English castle, famous for its pictures, was refused admission there, according to the strict rules of the establishment on that day, but who, on merely representing that he was an American gentleman, on his travels, had, not to say the picture gallery, but the whole castle, placed at his immediate disposal. The other was a lady, who, being in London, and having a great desire to see the famous reading-room of the British Museum, was assured by the English family with whom she stayed that it was unfortunately impossible, because the place was closed for a week, and she had only three days there. Upon that lady’s going to the Museum, as she assured me, alone to the gate, self-introduced as an American lady, the gate flew open, as it were magically. I am unwillingly bound to add that she certainly was young and exceedingly pretty. Still, the porter of that institution is of an obese habit, and, according to the best of my observation of him, not very impressible. Now, gentlemen, I refer to these trifles as a collateral assurance to you that the Englishman who shall humbly strive, as I hope to do, to be in England as faithful to America as to England herself, has no previous conceptions to contend against. Points of difference there have been, points of difference there are, points of difference there probably always will be between the two great peoples. But broadcast in England is sown the sentiment that those two peoples are essentially one, and that it rests with them jointly to uphold the great Anglo-Saxon race, to which our President has referred, and all its great achievements before the world. And if I know anything of my countrymen – and they give me credit for knowing something – if I know anything of my countrymen, gentlemen, the English heart is stirred by the fluttering of those Stars and Stripes, as it is stirred by no other flag that flies except its own. If I know my countrymen, in any and every relation towards America, they begin, not as Sir Anthony Absolute recommended that lovers should begin, with ‘a little aversion’, but with a great liking and a profound respect; and whatever the little sensitiveness of the moment, or the little official passion, or the little official policy now, or then, or here, or there, may be, take my word for it, that the first enduring, great popular consideration in England is a generous construction of justice. Finally, gentlemen, and I say this subject to your correction, I do believe that from the great majority of honest minds on both sides, there cannot be absent the conviction that it would be better for this globe to be riven by an earthquake, fired by a comet, overrun by an iceberg, and abandoned to the Arctic fox and bear, than that it should present the spectacle of these two great nations each of which has, in its own way and hour, striven so hard and so successfully for freedom, ever again being arrayed the one against the other. Gentlemen, I cannot thank your President enough, or you enough, for your kind reception of my health and of my poor remarks; but, believe me, I do thank you with the utmost fervour of which my soul is capable. 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' 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. 18671102 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. My Lords, Ladies, and Gentlemen, No thanks that I can offer you can express my sense of my reception by this great assemblage, or can in the least suggest to you how deep the glowing words of my friend the chairman, and your acceptance of them, have sunk into my heart. But both combined have so greatly shaken the composure that I am used to command in the presence of an audience, that I hope you may observe in me some traces of an eloquence more expressive than the richest words. To say that I am fervently grateful to you, is to say – nothing; to say that I can never forget this beautiful sight is to say – nothing. To say that it brings upon me a rush of emotion, not only in its present pride and honour, but in the thought of its remembrance in the future by those who are dearest to me, is to say – nothing. To feel all this, however, for the moment even almost to pain, is very much indeed. Mercutio says of the wound in his breast, dealt him by the hand of a foe, that – ‘’Tis not so deep as a well nor so wide as a church door; but ’tis enough, ’twill serve.’ I may say of the wound in my breast, newly dealt by the hands of my friends, that it is deeper than the soundless sea, and wider than the whole Catholic Church. And I may safely add, that it has for the moment almost stricken me dumb. My Lords, ladies and gentlemen, I should be more than human – and I assure you I am very human indeed – if I could look upon this brilliant representative company and not feel greatly thrilled and stirred by the presence of so many of my brother artists, not only in literature, but also in the sister arts, especially painting, among whose professors living, and, unhappily, dead, are many of my oldest and best friends. I hope that I may regard this thronging of my brothers round me as a testimony on their part that they believe that the cause of art generally has been safe in my keeping, and that they think it has never been falsely dealt with by me. Your resounding cheers just now would have been but so many cruel reproaches to me if I could not here declare that, from the earliest days of my career down to this proud night, I have always tried to be true to my calling. Never unduly to assert it on the one hand, and never on any pretence or consideration, to permit it to be patronized in my person on the other, has been the steady endeavour of my life; and I have occasionally been vain enough to hope that I may leave its social position in England better than I found it. Similarly, and equally, I hope, without presumption, I trust that I may take this general representation of the public here, through so many orders, pursuits, and degrees, as a token that the public believe, that with a host of imperfections and shortcomings upon my head, I have as a writer, in my soul and conscience, tried to be as true to them as they have ever been to me. And here, in reference to the inner circle of the arts, and the outer circle of the public, I feel it a duty tonight to offer two remarks. I have in my day at odd times heard a great deal about literary sets, and cliques, and coteries, and barriers, and about keeping this man up, and keeping that man down, and about sworn disciples, and sworn unbelievers, and mutual admiration societies, and I know not what other dragons in the upward path. I began to tread it when I was very young, without influence, without money, without companion, introducer, or adviser, and I am bound to put in evidence in this place that I never lighted on those dragons yet. So have I heard in my day, at divers other odd times, much generally to the effect that the English people have little or no love of art for its own sake, and that they do not greatly care to acknowledge or do honour to the artist. My own experience has uniformly been exactly the reverse. I can say that of my countrymen, though I cannot say that of my country. And now, ladies and gentlemen, passing to the immediate occasion of your doing me this great honour, the story of my going again to America is very easily and briefly told. Since I was there before, a vast entirely new generation has arisen in the United States. Since I was there before most of the best known of my books have been written and published. The new generation and the books have come together, until, at last, numbers of those who have so widely and constantly read me, have expressed a strong wish that I should read myself. This wish, at first conveyed to me through public channels and business channels, has gradually become enforced by an immense accumulation of letters from individuals and associations of individuals, all expressing in the same hearty, homely, cordial, unaffected way, a kind of personal interest in me. I had almost said a kind of personal affection for me, which, I am sure you will agree with me, it would be dull insensibility on my part not to prize. Little by little this pressure has become so great that although, as Charles Lamb says, ‘My household gods strike a terribly deep root’, I have torn them from their places, and this day week, at this hour, shall be upon the sea. You will readily conceive that I am inspired besides by a natural desire to see for myself the astonishing change and progress of a quarter of a century over there, to grasp the hands of many faithful friends whom I left upon those shores, to see the faces of the multitude of new friends upon whom I have never looked, and last, not least, to use my best endeavour to lay down a third cable of intercommunication and alliance between the old world and the new. Twelve years ago, when, Heaven knows, I little thought I should ever be bound upon the voyage which now lies before me, I wrote, in that form of my writings which obtains by far the most extensive circulation, these words of the American nation: – ‘I know full well, whatever little motes my beamy eyes may have descried in theirs, that they are a kind, large-hearted, generous, and great people.’ In that faith I am going to see them again. In that faith I shall, please God, return from them in the spring; in that same faith to live and to die! My Lords, ladies and gentlemen, I told you in the beginning that I could not thank you enough, and Heaven knows I have most thoroughly kept my word. If I may quote one other short sentence from myself, let it imply all that I have left unsaid, and yet most deeply feel; let it, putting a girdle round the earth, comprehend both sides of the Atlantic at once in this moment. ‘And so,’ as Tiny Tim observed. ‘God bless us every one!’ 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 Dinner on Revisiting America Description An account of the resource Speech at the Farewell Dinner on Revisiting America (2 November 1867). 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 1867-11-02 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1867-11-02_Speech_Farewell-Dinner-on-Revisiting-America 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 Dinner on Revisiting America' (2 November 1867). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1867-11-02_Speech_Farewell-Dinner-on-Revisiting-America">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1867-11-02_Speech_Farewell-Dinner-on-Revisiting-America</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. My Lords, Ladies, and Gentlemen, No thanks that I can offer you can express my sense of my reception by this great assemblage, or can in the least suggest to you how deep the glowing words of my friend the chairman, and your acceptance of them, have sunk into my heart. But both combined have so greatly shaken the composure that I am used to command in the presence of an audience, that I hope you may observe in me some traces of an eloquence more expressive than the richest words. To say that I am fervently grateful to you, is to say – nothing; to say that I can never forget this beautiful sight is to say – nothing. To say that it brings upon me a rush of emotion, not only in its present pride and honour, but in the thought of its remembrance in the future by those who are dearest to me, is to say – nothing. To feel all this, however, for the moment even almost to pain, is very much indeed. Mercutio says of the wound in his breast, dealt him by the hand of a foe, that –  ‘’Tis not so deep as a well nor so wide as a church door; but ’tis enough, ’twill serve.’ I may say of the wound in my breast, newly dealt by the hands of my friends, that it is deeper than the soundless sea, and wider than the whole Catholic Church. And I may safely add, that it has for the moment almost stricken me dumb. My Lords, ladies and gentlemen, I should be more than human – and I assure you I am very human indeed – if I could look upon this brilliant representative company and not feel greatly thrilled and stirred by the presence of so many of my brother artists, not only in literature, but also in the sister arts, especially painting, among whose professors living, and, unhappily, dead, are many of my oldest and best friends. I hope that I may regard this thronging of my brothers round me as a testimony on their part that they believe that the cause of art generally has been safe in my keeping, and that they think it has never been falsely dealt with by me. Your resounding cheers just now would have been but so many cruel reproaches to me if I could not here declare that, from the earliest days of my career down to this proud night, I have always tried to be true to my calling. Never unduly to assert it on the one hand, and never on any pretence or consideration, to permit it to be patronized in my person on the other, has been the steady endeavour of my life; and I have occasionally been vain enough to hope that I may leave its social position in England better than I found it. Similarly, and equally, I hope, without presumption, I trust that I may take this general representation of the public here, through so many orders, pursuits, and degrees, as a token that the public believe, that with a host of imperfections and shortcomings upon my head, I have as a writer, in my soul and conscience, tried to be as true to them as they have ever been to me. And here, in reference to the inner circle of the arts, and the outer circle of the public, I feel it a duty tonight to offer two remarks. I have in my day at odd times heard a great deal about literary sets, and cliques, and coteries, and barriers, and about keeping this man up, and keeping that man down, and about sworn disciples, and sworn unbelievers, and mutual admiration societies, and I know not what other dragons in the upward path. I began to tread it when I was very young, without influence, without money, without companion, introducer, or adviser, and I am bound to put in evidence in this place that I never lighted on those dragons yet. So have I heard in my day, at divers other odd times, much generally to the effect that the English people have little or no love of art for its own sake, and that they do not greatly care to acknowledge or do honour to the artist. My own experience has uniformly been exactly the reverse. I can say that of my countrymen, though I cannot say that of my country. And now, ladies and gentlemen, passing to the immediate occasion of your doing me this great honour, the story of my going again to America is very easily and briefly told. Since I was there before, a vast entirely new generation has arisen in the United States. Since I was there before most of the best known of my books have been written and published. The new generation and the books have come together, until, at last, numbers of those who have so widely and constantly read me, have expressed a strong wish that I should read myself. This wish, at first conveyed to me through public channels and business channels, has gradually become enforced by an immense accumulation of letters from individuals and associations of individuals, all expressing in the same hearty, homely, cordial, unaffected way, a kind of personal interest in me. I had almost said a kind of personal affection for me, which, I am sure you will agree with me, it would be dull insensibility on my part not to prize. Little by little this pressure has become so great that although, as Charles Lamb says, ‘My household gods strike a terribly deep root’, I have torn them from their places, and this day week, at this hour, shall be upon the sea. You will readily conceive that I am inspired besides by a natural desire to see for myself the astonishing change and progress of a quarter of a century over there, to grasp the hands of many faithful friends whom I left upon those shores, to see the faces of the multitude of new friends upon whom I have never looked, and last, not least, to use my best endeavour to lay down a third cable of intercommunication and alliance between the old world and the new. Twelve years ago, when, Heaven knows, I little thought I should ever be bound upon the voyage which now lies before me, I wrote, in that form of my writings which obtains by far the most extensive circulation, these words of the American nation: – ‘I know full well, whatever little motes my beamy eyes may have descried in theirs, that they are a kind, large-hearted, generous, and great people.’ In that faith I am going to see them again. In that faith I shall, please God, return from them in the spring; in that same faith to live and to die! My Lords, ladies and gentlemen, I told you in the beginning that I could not thank you enough, and Heaven knows I have most thoroughly kept my word. If I may quote one other short sentence from myself, let it imply all that I have left unsaid, and yet most deeply feel; let it, putting a girdle round the earth, comprehend both sides of the Atlantic at once in this moment. ‘And so,’ as Tiny Tim observed. ‘God bless us every one!’ Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Speeches Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context speeches Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together Dickens’s collected and uncollected speeches, making an under-explored body of work searchable for the first time. </h4> Dickens made more than a hundred speeches between 1837 and 1870 at events ranging from charitable dinners and award ceremonies to banquets in his honour or brief words of thanks before a public reading. In these speeches, the author touched on topics including his own life and professional development as well as other subjects such as politics, education, literature, public health and the development of the railway. Efforts to collect Dickens’s speeches prior to 1960 were incomplete at best, and misleading and fragmentary at worst. John Camden Hotten’s collection of speeches, begun without the author’s consent (although he never responded to Hotten’s letters, Dickens did begin efforts to block their publication) and published together with a hastily-compiled biography shortly after the author’s death, remained the primary collected version of the speeches until the Nonesuch Dickens of 1938-39 (a limited print run). Finally, K. J. Fielding brought all known speeches together in 1960, correcting shoddy transcriptions by Hotten using contemporary newspaper accounts, and nearly doubling the total number of speeches attributed to Dickens (The Speeches of Charles Dickens [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960]): Hotten had only featured the text of 56 speeches, the Nonesuch edition of the speeches provided an additional nine, and Fielding presented more than a hundred. Since this monumental work, a handful have also appeared in The Dickensian;<a href="#fn1" id="ref1">1</a> there are certainly more to be found, as the volume of digitised newspapers and periodicals increases, and corrections to be made to existing transcriptions. No effort to collect the speeches has been made since Fielding; this collection thus represents the most complete body of Dickens's speeches ever assembled. Dickens did not write his speeches beforehand, nor did he speak from notes. George Dolby recounted his imaginative process in 1884: <blockquote>[S]upposing the speech was to be delivered in the evening, his habit was to take a long walk in the morning, during which he would decide on the various heads to be dealt with. These being arranged in their proper order, he would in his 'mind's eye,' liken the whole subject to the tire of a cart wheel – he being the hub. From the hub to the tire he would run as many spokes as there were subjects to be treated, and during the progress of the speech he would deal with each spoke separately, elaborating them as he went round the wheel; and when all the spokes dropped out one by one, and nothing but the tire and space remained […] his speech was at an end. (Charles Dickens as I Knew Him: The Story of the Reading Tours in Great Britain and America, pp. 273-74)</blockquote> However, on important occasions, Dickens might personally correct transcriptions of speeches for major London newspapers like The Times. As such, these newspaper accounts are as accurate a source as we can hope to have for what Dickens said (or meant to say). Our Transcription field will only include words attributed directly to Dickens rather than third-person reports or paraphrases of his speeches. Where only such reports exist, we will provide the text in the 'Summary' field. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to what are given as Dickens's words only, to avoid skewing the results, but of course we are reliant on the quality of the reporting: we recommend analysing topics, themes, quotations and concepts rather than granular detail such as prepositions, punctuation, capitalisation and the intricacies of grammar, as different newspaper accounts can vary on these points. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or to contribute other uncollected speeches by Dickens. 1. These are Philip Collins, 'Some Uncollected Speeches by Dickens', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 89-99; David A. Roos, 'Dickens at the Royal Academy of Arts: A New Speech and Two Eulogies', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 100-107; and William F. Long, 'Dickens and the Coming of Rail to Deal: An Uncollected Speech and its Context', The Dickensian 85.418 (1989): pp. 66-80. <a href="#ref1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Emily Middleton; Ellie-Louise Crampton; Maisie Howard; Adam Woods Speech Summary Occasionally speeches are summarised in sources in third person. Include that here, so that everything in the text transcription is only Dickens's words. The toast he was about to propose, he said, had reference to the means by which the end they had in view was to be attained, and to the delicacy with which the helping hand of the society was extended to objects of its sympathy: it was, ‘the health of the Committees of ladies and gentlemen who manage its affairs’. He took the great end and object of this institution to be the recognition, at last, of the claims and merit of a class whose office is in reason and in right high, but which has been made in folly and injustice low. It had been stated by Dr. Goldsmith, who had painful experience of the neglect which this class of instructor endures, that he knew no member of society more useful nor more honourable than the imparter of knowledge; at the same time he knew none who was so generally despised, and whose talents were so ill rewarded. Now, if this were true in general, with what particular force did it apply to those unkind, ungenerous slights which ‘patient merit of the unworthy takes' in the persons of governesses?’ It was very well to say that ‘knowledge is power’, but how often did they forget that it was a source of weakness too? Knowledge had not its right place in society, and he believed that it did not obtain a just recognition and reward for its services anywhere. To take the case of those ladies in comparison with menial servants: they were worse paid than the cook; their salaries would bear poor comparison with the wages of the butler; they would appear but shabbily with the remuneration of the lady's-maid; and they were even lower than those paid to liveried footmen. The power of governesses was acknowledged by the middle-aged lady in a turban – she felt the power of the governess's knowledge in the education of her daughters; gentlemen also felt the power of the governess's knowledge; but nobody thought of the poor fagged knowledge herself, her eyes red with poring over advertisements in search of a new situation; and, after having faithfully accomplished her task in one family, being thrown upon the world, and going forth again among strangers to educate others. When he first received the prospectus of this institution, and perceived that to a committee of ladies was entrusted the care of considering the cases of distressed governesses and of relieving them with a delicacy suitable to their refined feelings, he began to hope for the improvement of the condition of governesses who were not distressed, and to hope that their position in society would be elevated as it ought to be. He considered that those ladies and gentlemen who engaged in this good work virtually pledged themselves, by their influence and example, to elevate the moral condition of governesses; and from that moment he conceived in that institution a heartfelt interest, and a hope of future benefit, that he felt for very few. He took that to be the great end of the institution, for it would otherwise do but little at the best. They might relieve the physical sufferings of governesses in distress – they might cheer them on the bed of sickness, and soften the asperities of their condition in declining age; but, unless the society exerted its energies to render governesses more respected, it would fall far short of the  great end which he conceived it had in view. From first to last he had a confidence that the society would do its duty; and he hoped by its means to see blotted out a national reproach, and that the profession of education would be placed on that honourable footing which in any civilized and Christian land, it ought to hold. Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given London Tavern Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18440420 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Governesses' Benevolent Institution First Anniversary Festival Description An account of the resource Speech at the Governesses' Benevolent Institution First Anniversary Festival (20 April 1844). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1844-04-20 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1844-04-20_Speech_Governesses-Benevolent-Institution-First-Anniversary-Festival Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Speech at the Governesses' Benevolent Institution First Anniversary Festival' (20 April 1844). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1844-04-20_Speech_Governesses-Benevolent-Institution-First-Anniversary-Festival">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1844-04-20_Speech_Governesses-Benevolent-Institution-First-Anniversary-Festival</a>. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Speeches Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context speeches Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together Dickens’s collected and uncollected speeches, making an under-explored body of work searchable for the first time. </h4> Dickens made more than a hundred speeches between 1837 and 1870 at events ranging from charitable dinners and award ceremonies to banquets in his honour or brief words of thanks before a public reading. In these speeches, the author touched on topics including his own life and professional development as well as other subjects such as politics, education, literature, public health and the development of the railway. Efforts to collect Dickens’s speeches prior to 1960 were incomplete at best, and misleading and fragmentary at worst. John Camden Hotten’s collection of speeches, begun without the author’s consent (although he never responded to Hotten’s letters, Dickens did begin efforts to block their publication) and published together with a hastily-compiled biography shortly after the author’s death, remained the primary collected version of the speeches until the Nonesuch Dickens of 1938-39 (a limited print run). Finally, K. J. Fielding brought all known speeches together in 1960, correcting shoddy transcriptions by Hotten using contemporary newspaper accounts, and nearly doubling the total number of speeches attributed to Dickens (The Speeches of Charles Dickens [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960]): Hotten had only featured the text of 56 speeches, the Nonesuch edition of the speeches provided an additional nine, and Fielding presented more than a hundred. Since this monumental work, a handful have also appeared in The Dickensian;<a href="#fn1" id="ref1">1</a> there are certainly more to be found, as the volume of digitised newspapers and periodicals increases, and corrections to be made to existing transcriptions. No effort to collect the speeches has been made since Fielding; this collection thus represents the most complete body of Dickens's speeches ever assembled. Dickens did not write his speeches beforehand, nor did he speak from notes. George Dolby recounted his imaginative process in 1884: <blockquote>[S]upposing the speech was to be delivered in the evening, his habit was to take a long walk in the morning, during which he would decide on the various heads to be dealt with. These being arranged in their proper order, he would in his 'mind's eye,' liken the whole subject to the tire of a cart wheel – he being the hub. From the hub to the tire he would run as many spokes as there were subjects to be treated, and during the progress of the speech he would deal with each spoke separately, elaborating them as he went round the wheel; and when all the spokes dropped out one by one, and nothing but the tire and space remained […] his speech was at an end. (Charles Dickens as I Knew Him: The Story of the Reading Tours in Great Britain and America, pp. 273-74)</blockquote> However, on important occasions, Dickens might personally correct transcriptions of speeches for major London newspapers like The Times. As such, these newspaper accounts are as accurate a source as we can hope to have for what Dickens said (or meant to say). Our Transcription field will only include words attributed directly to Dickens rather than third-person reports or paraphrases of his speeches. Where only such reports exist, we will provide the text in the 'Summary' field. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to what are given as Dickens's words only, to avoid skewing the results, but of course we are reliant on the quality of the reporting: we recommend analysing topics, themes, quotations and concepts rather than granular detail such as prepositions, punctuation, capitalisation and the intricacies of grammar, as different newspaper accounts can vary on these points. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or to contribute other uncollected speeches by Dickens. 1. These are Philip Collins, 'Some Uncollected Speeches by Dickens', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 89-99; David A. Roos, 'Dickens at the Royal Academy of Arts: A New Speech and Two Eulogies', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 100-107; and William F. Long, 'Dickens and the Coming of Rail to Deal: An Uncollected Speech and its Context', The Dickensian 85.418 (1989): pp. 66-80. <a href="#ref1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Emily Middleton; Ellie-Louise Crampton; Maisie Howard; Adam Woods Speech 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. When he had given that toast, he said, he should feel that the glory of his office was gone. He had often looked towards the gallery of that room and wondered why the ladies were consigned to that dismal, gloomy, and uncomfortable region, and considered whether there could be any good reason for sending them skyward. He had speculated again and again whether the custom was Chinese, Kamschatkan, Mahometan, or Ojibbeway, because he felt it was certainly not an English one, or, if it was, that it ought no longer to be so. He was lately conversing with a friend upon the subject, and he suggested as a reason for the custom a desire, on the part of the men, to etherealize the ladies, as they could not possibly suppose that they desired to eat and drink. It certainly was not that distance might increase the enchantment, as they were enchanting to us under any circumstances. He had consulted several ladies who sat around him on the subject, and they had told him we were mistaken in their views, and indeed it was high time the men set themselves right, or there was no knowing what tremendous consequences might ensue from the ladies’ determined vows of celibacy. They had, however, this evening set themselves right, and they might congratulate themselves upon the grace and lustre that were shed upon the meeting by the presence of ‘our better angels’, of our dearest companions and our constant and unchanging friends –  those friends who were ever at our sides in the period of our success, the closest to us in triumph and defeat, and to whom, let us roam through the world as fiercely as we will, we must come back for comfort and help; and excellent as this establishment was with all its appliances and means to boot, it was nothing in comparison with the soothing kindness and affection of their gentle care. Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given London Tavern Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18440604 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, I have now to propose to you a toast which may not only be assumed to have a real interest for us who are met here to advance the prospects of a young and struggling institution, but which I know concerns and deeply moves the welfare, comfort, mental ease, health, and life of a vast multitude of persons of both sexes, born and bred among the middle classes of society, who are dependent, under Providence, upon their own honourable exertions for subsistence in this great wilderness –  London. The toast, ladies and gentlemen, is ‘Prosperity to the Sanatorium’. I scarcely know whether it is necessary for me in this company to enter into any explanation of the objects and designs of this establishment, but its leading principle may be very easily and briefly stated. It is a home in sickness, founded and maintained upon the footing of a club, the expenses of which, by the voluntary contributions of many persons for a common welfare and advantage, are rendered so light that a weekly payment never exceeding two guineas, and in many instances not exceeding one guinea, secures to every inmate, gentleman or lady, a comfortable, genteel, and cheerful house; a quiet, well-ventilated, and wholesome chamber; the first medical advice that the skill and science of this city can supply; the diligent and careful nursing of persons trained and educated for the purpose; every possible comfort in illness, and every possible means towards recovery. This small weekly payment begins and ceases with the residence of the sick persons in the house, the qualification for a member being the annual subscription of only one guinea. If the patient have any relative or devoted friends anxious to minister to his or her afflictions, that friend can reside in the house on the same cheap and easy terms; and if the patient have a preference for any medical adviser not immediately connected with the institution, that gentleman can rely, as many have, and certify to it afterwards, on his instructions being honestly and faithfully carried out, and his treatment never being interfered with in the least degree; nay, the patient never even having heard of such a place as the Sanatorium, may have been induced to enter it – for this has happened also – by the advice of a medical professor most eminent and most honoured for his humanity and great attainments, who has said: ‘You have to submit to a most terrible bodily trial, go into this place, in Heaven's name; for on nowhere else can I repose such perfect confidence in the treatment and attention you will receive and which will, therefore, lead to your ultimate recovery? Bear in mind, ladies and gentlemen, that all those benefits are extended to the recipients, not in charity, but as a just right which honest pride may claim without a blush. Bear in mind that but for this Sick Home hundreds of persons, as sensitively and delicately nurtured as ourselves, would have had no choice between a public hospital and the uncertain supplies of strangers. Is it too much to claim, therefore, for an institution such as this the sympathy of every generous mind and feeling heart?  Let us suppose for a moment that there was no such place as the Sanatorium, as there was not two years ago, and that a lady who lives by imparting to others the accomplishments that she acquired in happier and more prosperous days, who is a governess in a family, is stricken down by illness. It is part of the lady's position that she should have no home to repair to in such a case, for her profession leads her, of necessity, to establish herself in the homes of others. It is, therefore, almost a part of that lady's position, very often to have no right to be ill; but, as that implied contract is an artificial one in which nature has no very great share, ill she is – and seriously. The lady in the family, Mrs. Wilkins we will say, takes an early opportunity of informing Mr. Wilkins of the circumstance, and Mr. Wilkins at first, does not very well know what to make of it, as it was not in the agreement; but he, after a little reflection, says that this sort of thing is very inconvenient to the family, as no doubt it is, and that he hopes it is not catching. The family apothecary advises him, and says ‘No, it is not catching; but it is a surgical disorder of long standing, not uncommon – not at all uncommon; but of a very serious nature, which will require time, the best medical advice, and a severe operation.’ Mr. Wilkins lives in a very good style; but his house is not larger than will comfortably accommodate his family, and he has to provide another governess for the instruction of his children. He is a tender-hearted man enough; but he cannot create out of a tender heart the room and attention which such a case requires. The poor lady is perfectly aware of that, resigns her situation, and takes a lodging. She is visited there by a surgeon, a most humane and liberal man, to whom this melancholy case is by no means strange, who entertains a great interest and compassion for her, and who more than confirms the statement of the apothecary. He feels for her desolate situation, and makes a few inquiries. Her family, of course, was broken up when she went out as a governess, or she never would have gone out. But has she no relative? Yes, a brother, but he is a clerk in the City. She has a sister, but she went to Australia four years ago, with a husband and six children. The case must be proceeded with. Nobody dare venture to breathe in her anxious and excited ear of a hospital, and there is nothing for her but a lodging, which, for any provision that it has in its convenience for illness, might be a lodging for an immortal spirit wholly unencumbered by a body – where the good woman of the house is almost perpetually employed in the back parlour dotting down her accounts with pen and ink, adding them up and bringing them forward, and carrying them over. She is greatly assisted in the product of these items by an odious anomaly called a sick nurse, who has been hired to attend upon the poor lady, and who is a creature of that sort who never could continue to exist but for our deplorable propensity to take whatever does exist for granted, and to rest comfortably satisfied that, because it is very bad, it cannot be better. And so this poor lady struggles on, surrounded by every adverse circumstance at a time when everything should be propitious, and instead of kind feelings and fostering hope going hand in hand to speed her recovery, her home is gloomy, hopeless, and disconsolate. And even if her desolate situation should awaken, and Heaven forbid such circumstances should not awaken, the sympathies of those about her, leading them to be regardless of their own immediate profit in her great misery, even that is torture to an honourable mind; for in this miserable sacrifice of the poor, and the uncertainty of ever being able to repay the kindnesses, new causes of despondency and grief inevitably spring up. This is no idle picture, but one of every day's occurrence, and you may know of its existence. It is even stated here, in this little record which has been laid before you today, where a poor governess frightfully afflicted is cured, where the blind clerk recovers the inestimable blessing of sight, where the senseless is restored to health, where the gentleman and scholar, whose labours are connected with popular instruction through the press, does not disdain to seek refuge, where the dying man expatiates to his brother, day by day, upon the happiness and peace of such a place as this institution, begging him with his last breath to make it better known when he is in his grave. There is not one among us, I am confident, who can withstand this little simple history. There is not one among us, I know by myself, who can pass it wholly by-there is not one among us, having a brother or child, or any dear friend, who can dismiss the harrowing echoes of that faint voice from his mind. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Sanatorium we call upon you to assist. I am confident that the voice of which I have spoken will speak to you far more forcibly than I can ever hope to do of the high claims it has upon you. Its principle is self-support, – still, it appeals to you and the public for help; for to be self-supporting it must be thoroughly and well established, and there is no greater inconsistency in thus putting forth its pretentions and appealing to you for help, than there is in any young married couple who are to live upon their annual income wanting some assistance upon their first entering into the world. The directors of this Sanatorium,  ladies and gentlemen, cannot offer you the luxury sometimes too freely offered, of the bestowing of charity in the common acceptance of the word, but they can offer you the gratification – and you will judge for yourselves whether there can be a higher or better one – of helping those who help themselves. They offer you the gratification of enabling men and women of strong hearts to preserve an independent spirit and an upright mien, when that calamity, which is our common inheritance, stops the labour of their hands and heads. There can be no one here who does not owe a debt of sympathy for acts of kindness and affection in the hour of need, and I am persuaded that there is no one present to whom the prosperity of this institution, if it be rightly understood, can by possibility be a matter of indifference or slight regard. I beg, therefore, to propose to you to drink, ‘Prosperity to the Sanatorium’. 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 The Sanatorium Anniversary Festival Description An account of the resource Speech at the Sanatorium Anniversary Festival (4 June 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 1844-06-04 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1844-06-04_Speech_Sanatorium-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 Sanatorium Anniversary Festival' (4 June 1844). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1844-06-04_Speech_Sanatorium-Anniversary-Festival">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1844-06-04_Speech_Sanatorium-Anniversary-Festival</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Ladies and Gentlemen, I have now to propose to you a toast which may not only be assumed to have a real interest for us who are met here to advance the prospects of a young and struggling institution, but which I know concerns and deeply moves the welfare, comfort, mental ease, health, and life of a vast multitude of persons of both sexes, born and bred among the middle classes of society, who are dependent, under Providence, upon their own honourable exertions for subsistence in this great wilderness –  London. The toast, ladies and gentlemen, is ‘Prosperity to the Sanatorium’.   I scarcely know whether it is necessary for me in this company to enter into any explanation of the objects and designs of this establishment, but its leading principle may be very easily and briefly stated. It is a home in sickness, founded and maintained upon the footing of a club, the expenses of which, by the voluntary contributions of many persons for a common welfare and advantage, are rendered so light that a weekly payment never exceeding two guineas, and in many instances not exceeding one guinea, secures to every inmate, gentleman or lady, a comfortable, genteel, and cheerful house; a quiet, well-ventilated, and wholesome chamber; the first medical advice that the skill and science of this city can supply; the diligent and careful nursing of persons trained and educated for the purpose; every possible comfort in illness, and every possible means towards recovery. This small weekly payment begins and ceases with the residence of the sick persons in the house, the qualification for a member being the annual subscription of only one guinea. If the patient have any relative or devoted friends anxious to minister to his or her afflictions, that friend can reside in the house on the same cheap and easy terms; and if the patient have a preference for any medical adviser not immediately connected with the institution, that gentleman can rely, as many have, and certify to it afterwards, on his instructions being honestly and faithfully carried out, and his treatment never being interfered with in the least degree; nay, the patient never even having heard of such a place as the Sanatorium, may have been induced to enter it – for this has happened also – by the advice of a medical professor most eminent and most honoured for his humanity and great attainments, who has said: ‘You have to submit to a most terrible bodily trial, go into this place, in Heaven's name; for on nowhere else can I repose such perfect confidence in the treatment and attention you will receive and which will, therefore, lead to your ultimate recovery?   Bear in mind, ladies and gentlemen, that all those benefits are extended to the recipients, not in charity, but as a just right which honest pride may claim without a blush. Bear in mind that but for this Sick Home hundreds of persons, as sensitively and delicately nurtured as ourselves, would have had no choice between a public hospital and the uncertain supplies of strangers. Is it too much to claim, therefore, for an institution such as this the sympathy of every generous mind and feeling heart?   Let us suppose for a moment that there was no such place as the Sanatorium, as there was not two years ago, and that a lady who lives by imparting to others the accomplishments that she acquired in happier and more prosperous days, who is a governess in a family, is stricken down by illness. It is part of the lady's position that she should have no home to repair to in such a case, for her profession leads her, of necessity, to establish herself in the homes of others. It is, therefore, almost a part of that lady's position, very often to have no right to be ill; but, as that implied contract is an artificial one in which nature has no very great share, ill she is – and seriously. The lady in the family, Mrs. Wilkins we will say, takes an early opportunity of informing Mr. Wilkins of the circumstance, and Mr. Wilkins at first, does not very well know what to make of it, as it was not in the agreement; but he, after a little reflection, says that this sort of thing is very inconvenient to the family, as no doubt it is, and that he hopes it is not catching. The family apothecary advises him, and says ‘No, it is not catching; but it is a surgical disorder of long standing, not uncommon – not at all uncommon; but of a very serious nature, which will require time, the best medical advice, and a severe operation.’  Mr. Wilkins lives in a very good style; but his house is not larger than will comfortably accommodate his family, and he has to provide another governess for the instruction of his children. He is a tender-hearted man enough; but he cannot create out of a tender heart the room and attention which such a case requires. The poor lady is perfectly aware of that, resigns her situation, and takes a lodging. She is visited there by a surgeon, a most humane and liberal man, to whom this melancholy case is by no means strange, who entertains a great interest and compassion for her, and who more than confirms the statement of the apothecary. He feels for her desolate situation, and makes a few inquiries. Her family, of course, was broken up when she went out as a governess, or she never would have gone out. But has she no relative? Yes, a brother, but he is a clerk in the City. She has a sister, but she went to Australia four years ago, with a husband and six children. The case must be proceeded with. Nobody dare venture to breathe in her anxious and excited ear of a hospital, and there is nothing for her but a lodging, which, for any provision that it has in its convenience for illness, might be a lodging for an immortal spirit wholly unencumbered by a body – where the good woman of the house is almost perpetually employed in the back parlour dotting down her accounts with pen and ink, adding them up and bringing them forward, and carrying them over. She is greatly assisted in the product of these items by an odious anomaly called a sick nurse, who has been hired to attend upon the poor lady, and who is a creature of that sort who never could continue to exist but for our deplorable propensity to take whatever does exist for granted, and to rest comfortably satisfied that, because it is very bad, it cannot be better.  And so this poor lady struggles on, surrounded by every adverse circumstance at a time when everything should be propitious, and instead of kind feelings and fostering hope going hand in hand to speed her recovery, her home is gloomy, hopeless, and disconsolate. And even if her desolate situation should awaken, and Heaven forbid such circumstances should not awaken, the sympathies of those about her, leading them to be regardless of their own immediate profit in her great misery, even that is torture to an honourable mind; for in this miserable sacrifice of the poor, and the uncertainty of ever being able to repay the kindnesses, new causes of despondency and grief inevitably spring up. This is no idle picture, but one of every day's occurrence, and you may know of its existence. It is even stated here, in this little record which has been laid before you today, where a poor governess frightfully afflicted is cured, where the blind clerk recovers the inestimable blessing of sight, where the senseless is restored to health, where the gentleman and scholar, whose labours are connected with popular instruction through the press, does not disdain to seek refuge, where the dying man expatiates to his brother, day by day, upon the happiness and peace of such a place as this institution, begging him with his last breath to make it better known when he is in his grave. There is not one among us, I am confident, who can withstand this little simple history. There is not one among us, I know by myself, who can pass it wholly by-there is not one among us, having a brother or child, or any dear friend, who can dismiss the harrowing echoes of that faint voice from his mind.   This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Sanatorium we call upon you to assist. I am confident that the voice of which I have spoken will speak to you far more forcibly than I can ever hope to do of the high claims it has upon you. Its principle is self-support, – still, it appeals to you and the public for help; for to be self-supporting it must be thoroughly and well established, and there is no greater inconsistency in thus putting forth its pretentions and appealing to you for help, than there is in any young married couple who are to live upon their annual income wanting some assistance upon their first entering into the world. The directors of this Sanatorium,  ladies and gentlemen, cannot offer you the luxury sometimes too freely offered, of the bestowing of charity in the common acceptance of the word, but they can offer you the gratification – and you will judge for yourselves whether there can be a higher or better one – of helping those who help themselves. They offer you the gratification of enabling men and women of strong hearts to preserve an independent spirit and an upright mien, when that calamity, which is our common inheritance, stops the labour of their hands and heads. There can be no one here who does not owe a debt of sympathy for acts of kindness and affection in the hour of need, and I am persuaded that there is no one present to whom the prosperity of this institution, if it be rightly understood, can by possibility be a matter of indifference or slight regard. I beg, therefore, to propose to you to drink, ‘Prosperity to the Sanatorium’. 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 Leeds Venue Where the speech was given Music 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. 18471201 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, Believe me, speaking to you with a most disastrous cold, which makes my own voice sound very strangely in my ears, that if I were not gratified and honoured beyond expression by your cordial welcome, I should have considered the invitation to occupy my present position in this brilliant assemblage in itself a distinction not easy to be surpassed. The cause in which we are assembled and the objects we are met to promote, I take, and always have taken to be, the cause and the objects involving almost all others that are essential to the welfare and happiness of mankind. And in a celebration like the present, commemorating the birth and progress of a great educational establishment, I recognize a something, not limited to the spectacle of the moment, beautiful and radiant though it be – not limited even to the success of the particular establishment in which we are more immediately interested – but extending from this place and through swarms of toiling men elsewhere, cheering and stimulating them in the onward, upward path that lies before us all. Wherever hammers beat, or wherever factory chimneys smoke; wherever hands are busy, or the clanking of machinery resounds; wherever, in a word, there are masses of industrious beings whom their wise Creator did not see fit to constitute all body, but into each and every one of whom He breathed a mind, – there, I would fain believe, some touch of sympathy and encouragement is felt from our collective pulse now beating in this Hall. Ladies and gentlemen, glancing with such feelings at the report of your institution for the present year, sent to me by your respected President – whom I cannot help feeling it, by-the-by, a kind of crime to depose, even thus peacefully, and for so short a time – I say, glancing over this report, I found one statement of fact in the very opening which gave me uncommon satisfaction. It is, that a great number of the members and subscribers are among that class of persons for whose advantage Mechanics' Institutions were originated, namely, persons receiving weekly wages. This circumstance gives me the greatest delight. I am sure that no better testimony could be borne to the merits and usefulness of this institution, and that no better guarantee could be given for its continued prosperity and advancement. To such associations as this, in their darker hours, there may yet reappear now and then the spectral shadow of a certain dead and buried opposition; but before the light of a steady trust in them on the part of the general people, bearing testimony to the virtuous influences of such institutions by their own intelligence and conduct, the ghost will melt away like early vapour from the ground. Fear of institutions such as these! We have heard people sometimes speak with jealousy of them. With distrust of them! Imagine here, on either hand, two great towns like Leeds, full of busy men, all of them feeling necessarily, and some of them heavily, the burdens and inequalities inseparable from civilized society. In this town there is ignorance, dense and dark. In that town, education – the best of education: that which the grown man from day to day and year to year furnishes for himself and maintains for himself, and in right of which his education goes on all his life, instead of leaving off, complacently, just when he begins to live in the social system. Now, which of these two towns has a good man, or a good cause, reason to distrust and dread? – ‘The educated one’, does some timid politician with a marvellously weak sight say – as I have heard such politicians say – ‘because knowledge is power, and because it won't do to have too much power abroad’. Why, ladies and gentlemen, reflect whether ignorance be not power, and a very dreadful power. Look where we will, do we not find it powerful for every kind of wrong and evil? Powerful to take its enemies to its heart, and strike its best friends down; powerful to fill the prisons, the hospitals, and the graves; powerful for blind violence, prejudice, and error, in all their gloomy and destructive shapes. Whereas the power of knowledge, if I understand it, is to bear and forbear; to learn the path of duty and to tread it; to engender that self-respect which does not stop at self, but cherishes the best respect for the best objects; to turn an always enlarging acquaintance with the joys and sorrows, capabilities and imperfections of our race to daily account in mildness of life and gentleness of construction, and humble efforts for the improvement, stone by stone, of the whole social fabric I have never heard but one tangible position taken against educational establishments for the people, and that was, that in this or that instance, or in these or those instances, education for the people has failed. And I have never traced even this to its source but I have found that the term education, so employed, meant anything but education – implied the mere imperfect application of old, ignorant, preposterous spelling-book lessons to the meanest purposes: as if you should teach a child that there is no higher end in electricity, for example, than expressly to strike a mutton-pie out of the hand of a greedy boy – and on which it is as unreasonable to found an objection to education in a comprehensive sense, as it would be to object altogether to the combing of youthful hair, because in a certain charity school they had a practice of combing it into the pupil's eyes. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I turn to the report of this institution, on whose behalf we are met; and I start with the education given there, and I find that it really is an education that is deserving of the name. I find that there are papers read and lectures delivered, on a variety of subjects of interest and importance. I find that there are evening classes formed for the acquisition of sound, useful English information, and for the study of those two important languages, daily becoming more important in the business of life, the French and German. I find that there is a class for drawing, a chemical class, subdivided into the elementary branch and the manufacturing branch – most important here. I find that there is a day school, at twelve shillings a quarter, which small cost, besides including instruction in all that is useful to the merchant and the man of business, admits to all the advantages of the parent institution. I find that there is a school of design established, in connexion with the Government School; and that there was in January this year, a Library of between six and seven thousand volumes of books. Ladies and gentlemen, if any man would tell me that anything but good could come of such knowledge as this, all I can say is, that I should consider him a new and most lamentable proof of the necessity of such institutions, and should regard him in his own person as a melancholy instance of what a man may come to by never having belonged to one or sympathized with one. There is one other paragraph in this report which struck my eye in looking over it, and on which I cannot help offering a word of joyful notice. It is the steady increase which appears to have taken place in the number of lady members, among whom I hope I may presume are included some of the bright fair faces that are clustered around me. Gentlemen, I hold it is not good for man to be alone, even in Mechanics' Institutions, and I rank it as very far from amongst the last or least of the merits of such places, that he need not be alone there, and that he is not. I believe that the sympathy and society of those who are our best and dearest friends in infancy, in childhood, in manhood, and in old age, the most devoted and least selfish natures that we know on earth. who turn to us always constant and unchanged, when others turn away, should greet us here, if anywhere, and go on with us side by side. I know, gentlemen, by the evidence of my own proper senses at this moment, that there are charms and graces in such greetings, such as no other greetings can possess. I know that in every beautiful work of the Almighty hand, which is illustrated in your lectures, and in every real or ideal portraiture of fortitude and goodness that you find in your books, there is something that must bring you home again to them for its brightest and best example. And therefore, gentlemen, I hope you will never be without them, or without an increasing number of them in your studies and your commemorations; and that an immense number of new marriages, and other domestic festivals naturally consequent upon those marriages may be traced back from time to time to the Leeds Mechanics' Institution. Ladies and gentlemen, there are many gentlemen around me, distinguished by their public position and services, or endeared to you by frequent intercourse, or by their zealous efforts on behalf of the cause which brings us together; and to them I shall beg leave to refer you for further observations on this happy and interesting occasion; begging to congratulate you finally upon the occasion itself; upon the prosperity and thriving prospects of your institution; and upon our common and general good fortune in living in these times, when the means of mental culture and improvement are presented cheaply, socially, and cheerfully, and not in dismal cells or lonely garrets. And lastly, I congratulate myself, I assure you, most heartily upon the part with which I am honoured on an occasion so congenial to my warmest feelings and sympathies, and I beg to thank you for such evidences of your good-will, as I never can coldly remember and never forget. Ladies and Gentlemen, it is a great satisfaction to me that this question has been put by the Mayor, inasmuch as I hope I may receive it as a token that he has forgiven me those extremely large letters, which I must say, from the glimpse I caught of them when I arrived in town, looked very like a leaf from the first primer of a very promising young giant. I will only observe, in reference to the proceedings of this evening, that after what I have seen, and the many excellent speeches I have heard from gentlemen of so many different callings and persuasions, meeting here as on neutral ground, I do more strongly and sincerely believe than I ever have in my life –  and that is saying a great deal – that institutions such as this will be the means of refining and improving that social edifice which has been so often mentioned tonight, until – unlike that Babel tower which would have taken heaven by storm – it shall end in sweet accord and harmony amongst all classes of its builders. Ladies and gentlemen, most respectfully and heartily I bid you good night and good-bye, and I trust the next time we meet it will be in even greater numbers, and in a larger room, and that we shall often meet again, to recall this evening, then of the past, and remember it as one of a series of increasing triumphs of your excellent institution. 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 Leeds Mechanics' Institution Annual Soirée Description An account of the resource Speech at the Leeds Mechanics' Institution Annual Soirée (1 December 1847). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1847-12-01 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1847-12-01_Speech_Leeds-Mechanics-Institution-Annual-Soiree 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 Leeds Mechanics' Institution Annual Soirée' (1 December 1847). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1847-12-01_Speech_Leeds-Mechanics-Institution-Annual-Soiree">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1847-12-01_Speech_Leeds-Mechanics-Institution-Annual-Soiree</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Ladies and Gentlemen, Believe me, speaking to you with a most disastrous cold, which makes my own voice sound very strangely in my ears, that if I were not gratified and honoured beyond expression by your cordial welcome, I should have considered the invitation to occupy my present position in this brilliant assemblage in itself a distinction not easy to be surpassed. The cause in which we are assembled and the objects we are met to promote, I take, and always have taken to be, the cause and the objects involving almost all others that are essential to the welfare and happiness of mankind. And in a celebration like the present, commemorating the birth and progress of a great educational establishment, I recognize a something, not limited to the spectacle of the moment, beautiful and radiant though it be – not limited even to the success of the particular establishment in which we are more immediately interested – but extending from this place and through swarms of toiling men elsewhere, cheering and stimulating them in the onward, upward path that lies before us all. Wherever hammers beat, or wherever factory chimneys smoke; wherever hands are busy, or the clanking of machinery resounds; wherever, in a word, there are masses of industrious beings whom their wise Creator did not see fit to constitute all body, but into each and every one of whom He breathed a mind,  – there, I would fain believe, some touch of sympathy and encouragement is felt from our collective pulse now beating in this Hall. Ladies and gentlemen, glancing with such feelings at the report of your institution for the present year, sent to me by your respected President – whom I cannot help feeling it, by-the-by, a kind of crime to depose, even thus peacefully, and for so short a time – I say, glancing over this report, I found one statement of fact in the very opening which gave me uncommon satisfaction. It is, that a great number of the members and subscribers are among that class of persons for whose advantage Mechanics' Institutions were originated, namely, persons receiving weekly wages. This circumstance gives me the greatest delight. I am sure that no better testimony could be borne to the merits and usefulness of this institution, and that no better guarantee could be given for its continued prosperity and advancement. To such associations as this, in their darker hours, there may yet reappear now and then the spectral shadow of a certain dead and buried opposition; but before the light of a steady trust in them on the part of the general people, bearing testimony to the virtuous influences of such institutions by their own intelligence and conduct, the ghost will melt away like early vapour from the ground. Fear of institutions such as these! We have heard people sometimes speak with jealousy of them. With distrust of them! Imagine here, on either hand, two great towns like Leeds, full of busy men, all of them feeling necessarily, and some of them heavily, the burdens and inequalities inseparable from civilized society. In this town there is ignorance, dense and dark. In that town, education – the best of education: that which the grown man from day to day and year to year furnishes for himself and maintains for himself, and in right of which his education goes on all his life, instead of leaving off, complacently, just when he begins to live in the social system.  Now, which of these two towns has a good man, or a good cause, reason to distrust and dread? – ‘The educated one’, does some timid politician with a marvellously weak sight say – as I have heard such politicians say – ‘because knowledge is power, and because it won't do to have too much power abroad’. Why, ladies and gentlemen, reflect whether ignorance be not power, and a very dreadful power. Look where we will, do we not find it powerful for every kind of wrong and evil? Powerful to take its enemies to its heart, and strike its best friends down; powerful to fill the prisons, the hospitals, and the graves; powerful for blind violence, prejudice, and error, in all their gloomy and destructive shapes. Whereas the power of knowledge, if I understand it, is to bear and forbear; to learn the path of duty and to tread it; to engender that self-respect which does not stop at self, but cherishes the best respect for the best objects; to turn an always enlarging acquaintance with the joys and sorrows, capabilities and imperfections of our race to daily account in mildness of life and gentleness of construction, and humble efforts for the improvement, stone by stone, of the whole social fabric. I have never heard but one tangible position taken against educational establishments for the people, and that was, that in this or that instance, or in these or those instances, education for the people has failed. And I have never traced even this to its source but I have found that the term education, so employed, meant anything but education – implied the mere imperfect application of old, ignorant, preposterous spelling-book lessons to the meanest purposes: as if you should teach a child that there is no higher end in electricity, for example, than expressly to strike a mutton-pie out of the hand of a greedy boy – and on which it is as unreasonable to found an objection to education in a comprehensive sense, as it would be to object altogether to the combing of youthful hair, because in a certain charity school they had a practice of combing it into the pupil's eyes. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I turn to the report of this institution, on whose behalf we are met; and I start with the education given there, and I find that it really is an education that is deserving of the name. I find that there are papers read and lectures delivered, on a variety of subjects of interest and importance. I find that there are evening classes formed for the acquisition of sound, useful English information, and for the study of those two important languages, daily becoming more important in the business of life, the French and German. I find that there is a class for drawing, a chemical class, subdivided into the elementary branch and the manufacturing branch – most important here. I find that there is a day school, at twelve shillings a quarter, which small cost, besides including instruction in all that is useful to the merchant and the man of business, admits to all the advantages of the parent institution. I find that there is a school of design established, in connexion with the Government School; and that there was in January this year, a Library of between six and seven thousand volumes of books.  Ladies and gentlemen, if any man would tell me that anything but good could come of such knowledge as this, all I can say is, that I should consider him a new and most lamentable proof of the necessity of such institutions, and should regard him in his own person as a melancholy instance of what a man may come to by never having belonged to one or sympathized with one.   There is one other paragraph in this report which struck my eye in looking over it, and on which I cannot help offering a word of joyful notice. It is the steady increase which appears to have taken place in the number of lady members, among whom I hope I may presume are included some of the bright fair faces that are clustered around me. Gentlemen, I hold it is not good for man to be alone, even in Mechanics' Institutions, and I rank it as very far from amongst the last or least of the merits of such places, that he need not be alone there, and that he is not. I believe that the sympathy and society of those who are our best and dearest friends in infancy, in childhood, in manhood, and in old age, the most devoted and least selfish natures that we know on earth. who turn to us always constant and unchanged, when others turn away, should greet us here, if anywhere, and go on with us side by side. I know, gentlemen, by the evidence of my own proper senses at this moment, that there are charms and graces in such greetings, such as no other greetings can possess. I know that in every beautiful work of the Almighty hand, which is illustrated in your lectures, and in every real or ideal portraiture of fortitude and goodness that you find in your books, there is something that must bring you home again to them for its brightest and best example. And therefore, gentlemen, I hope you will never be without them, or without an increasing number of them in your studies and your commemorations; and that an immense number of new marriages, and other domestic festivals naturally consequent upon those marriages may be traced back from time to time to the Leeds Mechanics' Institution.  Ladies and gentlemen, there are many gentlemen around me, distinguished by their public position and services, or endeared to you by frequent intercourse, or by their zealous efforts on behalf of the cause which brings us together; and to them I shall beg leave to refer you for further observations on this happy and interesting occasion; begging to congratulate you finally upon the occasion itself; upon the prosperity and thriving prospects of your institution; and upon our common and general good fortune in living in these times, when the means of mental culture and improvement are presented cheaply, socially, and cheerfully, and not in dismal cells or lonely garrets. And lastly, I congratulate myself, I assure you, most heartily upon the part with which I am honoured on an occasion so congenial to my warmest feelings and sympathies, and I beg to thank you for such evidences of your good-will, as I never can coldly remember and never forget. Ladies and Gentlemen, it is a great satisfaction to me that this question has been put by the Mayor, inasmuch as I hope I may receive it as a token that he has forgiven me those extremely large letters, which I must say, from the glimpse I caught of them when I arrived in town, looked very like a leaf from the first primer of a very promising young giant.   I will only observe, in reference to the proceedings of this evening, that after what I have seen, and the many excellent speeches I have heard from gentlemen of so many different callings and persuasions, meeting here as on neutral ground, I do more strongly and sincerely believe than I ever have in my life –  and that is saying a great deal – that institutions such as this will be the means of refining and improving that social edifice which has been so often mentioned tonight, until – unlike that Babel tower which would have taken heaven by storm – it shall end in sweet accord and harmony amongst all classes of its builders.  Ladies and gentlemen, most respectfully and heartily I bid you good night and good-bye, and I trust the next time we meet it will be in even greater numbers, and in a larger room, and that we shall often meet again, to recall this evening, then of the past, and remember it as one of a series of increasing triumphs of your excellent institution. 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 Glasgow 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. 18471228 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, Let me begin by endeavouring to convey to you the assurance that not even the warmth of your reception can exceed in simple earnestness and cordiality the feelings with which I come among you. This beautiful scene and your generous greeting would naturally awaken within me no common feelings, but when I connect them with the high purpose of this brilliant assembly; when I regard it as an educational example and encouragement to all Scotland; when I regard it no less as a recognition on the part of everybody here to the right indisputable and inalienable of all those who are actively engaged in the work and business of life to elevate and improve themselves so far as in them lies by all good means, I feel as if I stood here to swear brotherhood to all the young men in Glasgow, and to all the young women too,– being unfortunately in no position to take upon myself any tenderer vows in that respect. I feel, I say, as though we were pledged from this time forth to make common cause together in one of the most worthy and laudable of all human objects. Ladies and gentlemen, common cause must be made in such a design as brings us together tonight: without it nothing can be done, but with it everything. It is a common cause of right, God knows, for it is idle to suppose that the advantages of such an institution as the Glasgow Athenaeum stop within its walls or are confined to its own members. Through all the society of this great and important city, upwards to the highest and downwards to the lowest, its influence I know must be felt for good: downwards in a clearer perception of, and sympathy with, those social miseries that can be alleviated, and those wide open doors of vice and crime that can be shut and barred; and upward in the greater intelligence, increased efficiency, and higher character of all who partake of its benefits themselves, or who communicate, as all must do, in a greater or less degree, some portion of them to the circle of relatives and friends in which they move.  Nor, ladies and gentlemen, would I say of any man, however high his social position, or however great his attainments, that he might not find something to be learnt even by immediate contact with such an institution. If he only saw the goddess Knowledge coming out of her secluded palaces and high places to mingle with the throng, and to give them shining glimpses of the splendour of the treasures she once kept closely hoarded up, he might learn something. If he only saw the energy and courage with which those who earn their daily bread by the labour of their hands or heads, come night after night, as to a recreation, to that which was perhaps the sole absorbing business of his youth, there might still be something very wholesome for him to learn. But, when he could see in such places, as anybody who chooses can see, their genial and reviving influences, their substitution of the contemplation of the beauties of nature and art and the wisdom of great men, for mere sensual enjoyment, then he might know and learn this – that it is at once the duty and interest of all good members of society to encourage and protect these institutions. Ladies and gentlemen, I take occasion to say now, as I did at an Athenaeum meeting in Yorkshire a few weeks since – and I think it a point always to be borne in mind on occasions such as these –  that when such associations are objected to or decried on the ground that, in the views of the objectors, education among the people has not succeeded, the term education is used with not the least reference to its real meaning, and is wholly misunderstood. Mere reading and writing are not education. It would be quite as reasonable to call bricks and mortar, architecture; oils and colours, art; reeds and cat-gut, music; or a child's spelling-book the works of Shakespeare, Milton or Bacon, as to call the lowest rudiments of education, ‘education’, and to visit upon that much abused and slandered word their failure in any instance. To my thinking it is precisely because they are not education: because, generally speaking, the word has been misunderstood in that sense a great deal too long; because education for the business of life, and for the due cultivation of the domestic virtues, is at least as important from day to day to the grown person as to the child; because real education amidst the strife and contention for a livelihood, and the consequent necessity incumbent on a great number of young persons to go into the world when they are very young and having had no adequate opportunity for mental culture, is extremely difficult, –  it is because of these things that I look upon Mechanics' Institutions and Athenaeums as vitally important to the well-being of society; and it is because the rudiments of education may there be turned to good account in the acquisition of sound principles, and in the practice of the great virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity, to which all our knowledge tends: it is because of that, I take it, that we are met here in Education's name tonight. It is a very great satisfaction to me to occupy the place with which I am honoured in this meeting on behalf of an infant Institution, – a remarkably fine child no doubt, of thriving aspect, of vigorous constitution, but an infant still. I esteem myself singularly fortunate in knowing it before its prime, in the hope that I may have the pleasure of remembering in its prime, and when it has attained to its lusty maturity, that I was a friend of its youth. It has already passed through some of the disorders to which childhood is liable. Succeeding to its elder brother, of a very meritorious character but of rather a weak constitution, who expired when only about twelve months old from, it is said, the exhausting effects of getting up too early in the morning, it has fought manfully through a sea of troubles. Its friends have often been much concerned for it; its pulse has been so exceedingly low that it was only beating 1250, when it should have been 10,000. Several relations and friends have even gone so far as to walk off once or twice in the melancholy belief that it was dead. But notwithstanding all this, assisted by the indomitable energy of one or two kind nurses, to whom it can never be sufficiently grateful, it has come through triumphantly; and now, of all the youthful members of its family I ever saw, it has the strongest attitude, the healthiest look, the brightest and most cheerful air. I find it with lectures in prospect and in progress, in a great variety of sound, useful, and well-selected subjects; I find that already evening classes are in operation for the modern languages, French, German, Spanish, and Italian, as well as for Logic, Grammar, Music and Mathematics, and that these are now attended by upwards of five hundred persons. But best and foremost of all in the history of the institution, and far more satisfactory to me than anything else, I find that all this has been mainly achieved by the young men of Glasgow themselves, with very little assistance. And, ladies and gentlemen, as the axiom that Heaven helps those who help themselves is truer in no case than in this, I look to the young men of Glasgow, from such a past and such a present, to a noble future. Everything that has been done in any other Athenaeum hitherto, I confidently expect to see done here; and when that shall be the case, and when there are great cheap schools connected with it, and when it has bound together for ever all its friends, and won over to itself all those who look distrustfully upon it now – then, but not till then, may the young men of Glasgow rest from their labours, and think their duty done. If the young men of Glasgow look for any stimulus or encouragement in this wise, they have one already beside them in the presence of their fair townswomen: an incentive which is irresistible. It is a most delightful circumstance to me, and one fraught with inestimable benefits to institutions of this kind, that at a meeting of this nature those who in all things are our strongest aid, our best examples, our encouragers and friends, are not excluded. In ancient times abstract ideas of excellence were associated with those arts which refined and elevated mankind, and it was even conceived that the Graces themselves came down to encourage their cultivation by their example, and adorn them by their presence. But, now, we have the Graces with us themselves for, I am happy to say, that in Glasgow there is a peculiar bond of union between its Athenaeum and the fairest part of creation. The present Library being a small one, and the necessary additions being difficult and expensive to make, I understand that the ladies generally have resolved to hold a fancy bazaar for the sale of the work of their own hands, and to devote the proceeds to the admirable purpose of its extension. And I learn, with no less pleasure, that Her Majesty the Queen, approving of this most excellent design, with a graceful and womanly feeling, has consented that the bazaar shall be held under her royal patronage. After this I can only say, gentlemen, that if you do not find something very agreeable in your books, you are much duller scholars than I take you to be. And you, ladies – the single ladies at least – however disinterested I know you are by sex and nature, will I hope reap advantages from your exertions to promote its interests, by never marrying any but members of the Athenaeum. It seems to me that it ought to be the pleasantest library in the world. Hazlitt, in speaking of some of the graceful fancies of the writers of fiction, says: How long since I first became acquainted with these characters; what old fashioned friends they seem; and yet I am not tired of them, like so many other friends, nor they of me. In this case the books will not only possess all the attractions of their own friendships and charms, but also the manifold – I had almost said the womanfold – associations connected with their donors. I can imagine now, in fact, from these fanciful associations, some fair Glasgow widow may be taken for the remoter one whom Sir Roger de Coverley could not forget; I can imagine how Sophia's muff may be seen and loved, but not by Tom Jones, going down the High Street on any winter day; or I can imagine the student finding in every fair form the exact counterpart in the Glasgow Athenaeum; and I can imagine the History of Europe exciting the utmost interest without either the knowledge or consent of my friend Sheriff Alison. I can imagine, in short, how through all the facts and fictions of this library, the ladies will always be active, and and that Age will not wither them, nor custom stale Their infinite variety. I am surrounded by gentlemen to whom I shall soon give place, being at least as curious to hear them as you yourselves undoubtedly are; but before I sit down allow me to observe that it seems to me a most delightful and happy chance that this meeting should be held at this genial season of the year, when a new time is, as it were, opening up before us, and when we celebrate the birth of that divine and blessed Teacher, who took himself the highest knowledge into the humblest places, and whose great system comprehended all mankind. I hail it as a most auspicious omen, at this time of the year, when many scattered friends and families are reassembled, that we should be called upon to meet here to promote a great purpose, a general good will, and a general improvement; as I consider that such designs are worthy of the faith we hold, and I do believe they are a practical remembrance of the sacred words, ‘On earth peace, good will towards men’. I hope that every year which dawns on your institution, will find it richer in its means of usefulness, and greyer headed in the honour and respect it has gained. It can hardly speak for itself more appropriately than in the words of an English writer, when contemplating the English emblem of this period of the year, the Holly Tree: And should my youth, as youth is apt, I know, Some harshness show, All vain asperities I, day by day, Would wear away, Till the smooth temper of my age should be  Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree. And as when all the summer trees are seen So bright and green, The Holly leaves their fadeless hues display Less bright than they, But when the bare and wintry woods we see, What then so cheerful as the Holly Tree? So serious should my youth appear among The thoughtless throng, So would I seem among the young and gay More grave than they That in my age as cheerful I might be As the green winter of the Holly Tree. Ladies and Gentlemen, I am no stranger to Scotland, and – I say it with the deepest gratitude– I am no stranger to the warmth of Scottish hearts; but the warmth of your present welcome almost deprives me of any hope of acknowledging it. I will not detain you any longer at this late hour; let it suffice to assure you, that for taking the part with which I have been honoured in this festival, I have been repaid a thousandfold by your abundant kindness, and by the unspeakable gratification it has afforded me. I hope that, before many years are past, we may have another meeting in public when we shall rejoice at the immense progress your institution will have made in the meantime, and look back upon this night with pleasure and satisfaction. I shall now, in conclusion, repeat most heartily and fervently the motto referred to by Dr. Ewing, ‘Let Glasgow flourish’, which Bailie Nicol Jarvie, himself ‘a Glasgow body’, observed was 'elegantly putten round the town's arms’. 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 Athenaeum, Glasgow, First Annual Soirée Description An account of the resource Speech at the Athenaeum, Glasgow, First Annual Soirée (28 December 1847). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1847-12-28 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1847-12-28_Speech_Athenaeum-Glasgow-First-Annual-Soiree 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 Athenaeum, Glasgow, First Annual Soirée' (28 December 1847). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1847-12-28_Speech_Athenaeum-Glasgow-First-Annual-Soiree">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1847-12-28_Speech_Athenaeum-Glasgow-First-Annual-Soiree</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Ladies and Gentlemen, Let me begin by endeavouring to convey to you the assurance that not even the warmth of your reception can exceed in simple earnestness and cordiality the feelings with which I come among you. This beautiful scene and your generous greeting would naturally awaken within me no common feelings, but when I connect them with the high purpose of this brilliant assembly; when I regard it as an educational example and encouragement to all Scotland; when I regard it no less as a recognition on the part of everybody here to the right indisputable and inalienable of all those who are actively engaged in the work and business of life to elevate and improve themselves so far as in them lies by all good means, I feel as if I stood here to swear brotherhood to all the young men in Glasgow, and to all the young women too,– being unfortunately in no position to take upon myself any tenderer vows in that respect. I feel, I say, as though we were pledged from this time forth to make common cause together in one of the most worthy and laudable of all human objects. Ladies and gentlemen, common cause must be made in such a design as brings us together tonight: without it nothing can be done, but with it everything. It is a common cause of right, God knows, for it is idle to suppose that the advantages of such an institution as the Glasgow Athenaeum stop within its walls or are confined to its own members. Through all the society of this great and important city, upwards to the highest and downwards to the lowest, its influence I know must be felt for good: downwards in a clearer perception of, and sympathy with, those social miseries that can be alleviated, and those wide open doors of vice and crime that can be shut and barred; and upward in the greater intelligence, increased efficiency, and higher character of all who partake of its benefits themselves, or who communicate, as all must do, in a greater or less degree, some portion of them to the circle of relatives and friends in which they move.  Nor, ladies and gentlemen, would I say of any man, however high his social position, or however great his attainments, that he might not find something to be learnt even by immediate contact with such an institution. If he only saw the goddess Knowledge coming out of her secluded palaces and high places to mingle with the throng, and to give them shining glimpses of the splendour of the treasures she once kept closely hoarded up, he might learn something. If he only saw the energy and courage with which those who earn their daily bread by the labour of their hands or heads, come night after night, as to a recreation, to that which was perhaps the sole absorbing business of his youth, there might still be something very wholesome for him to learn. But, when he could see in such places, as anybody who chooses can see, their genial and reviving influences, their substitution of the contemplation of the beauties of nature and art and the wisdom of great men, for mere sensual enjoyment, then he might know and learn this – that it is at once the duty and interest of all good members of society to encourage and protect these institutions. Ladies and gentlemen, I take occasion to say now, as I did at an Athenaeum meeting in Yorkshire a few weeks since – and I think it a point always to be borne in mind on occasions such as these –  that when such associations are objected to or decried on the ground that, in the views of the objectors, education among the people has not succeeded, the term education is used with not the least reference to its real meaning, and is wholly misunderstood. Mere reading and writing are not education. It would be quite as reasonable to call bricks and mortar, architecture; oils and colours, art; reeds and cat-gut, music; or a child's spelling-book the works of Shakespeare, Milton or Bacon, as to call the lowest rudiments of education, ‘education’, and to visit upon that much abused and slandered word their failure in any instance. To my thinking it is precisely because they are not education: because, generally speaking, the word has been misunderstood in that sense a great deal too long; because education for the business of life, and for the due cultivation of the domestic virtues, is at least as important from day to day to the grown person as to the child; because real education amidst the strife and contention for a livelihood, and the consequent necessity incumbent on a great number of young persons to go into the world when they are very young and having had no adequate opportunity for mental culture, is extremely difficult, –  it is because of these things that I look upon Mechanics' Institutions and Athenaeums as vitally important to the well-being of society; and it is because the rudiments of education may there be turned to good account in the acquisition of sound principles, and in the practice of the great virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity, to which all our knowledge tends: it is because of that, I take it, that we are met here in Education's name tonight.    It is a very great satisfaction to me to occupy the place with which I am honoured in this meeting on behalf of an infant Institution, – a remarkably fine child no doubt, of thriving aspect, of vigorous constitution, but an infant still. I esteem myself singularly fortunate in knowing it before its prime, in the hope that I may have the pleasure of remembering in its prime, and when it has attained to its lusty maturity, that I was a friend of its youth. It has already passed through some of the disorders to which childhood is liable. Succeeding to its elder brother, of a very meritorious character but of rather a weak constitution, who expired when only about twelve months old from, it is said, the exhausting effects of getting up too early in the morning, it has fought manfully through a sea of troubles. Its friends have often been much concerned for it; its pulse has been so exceedingly low that it was only beating 1250, when it should have been 10,000. Several relations and friends have even gone so far as to walk off once or twice in the melancholy belief that it was dead. But notwithstanding all this, assisted by the indomitable energy of one or two kind nurses, to whom it can never be sufficiently grateful, it has come through triumphantly; and now, of all the youthful members of its family I ever saw, it has the strongest attitude, the healthiest look, the brightest and most cheerful air.   I find it with lectures in prospect and in progress, in a great variety of sound, useful, and well-selected subjects; I find that already evening classes are in operation for the modern languages, French, German, Spanish, and Italian, as well as for Logic, Grammar, Music and Mathematics, and that these are now attended by upwards of five hundred persons. But best and foremost of all in the history of the institution, and far more satisfactory to me than anything else, I find that all this has been mainly achieved by the young men of Glasgow themselves, with very little assistance. And, ladies and gentlemen, as the axiom that Heaven helps those who help themselves is truer in no case than in this, I look to the young men of Glasgow, from such a past and such a present, to a noble future. Everything that has been done in any other Athenaeum hitherto, I confidently expect to see done here; and when that shall be the case, and when there are great cheap schools connected with it, and when it has bound together for ever all its friends, and won over to itself all those who look distrustfully upon it now – then, but not till then, may the young men of Glasgow rest from their labours, and think their duty done.   If the young men of Glasgow look for any stimulus or encouragement in this wise, they have one already beside them in the presence of their fair townswomen: an incentive which is irresistible. It is a most delightful circumstance to me, and one fraught with inestimable benefits to institutions of this kind, that at a meeting of this nature those who in all things are our strongest aid, our best examples, our encouragers and friends, are not excluded. In ancient times abstract ideas of excellence were associated with those arts which refined and elevated mankind, and it was even conceived that the Graces themselves came down to encourage their cultivation by their example, and adorn them by their presence. But, now, we have the Graces with us themselves for, I am happy to say, that in Glasgow there is a peculiar bond of union between its Athenaeum and the fairest part of creation. The present Library being a small one, and the necessary additions being difficult and expensive to make, I understand that the ladies generally have resolved to hold a fancy bazaar for the sale of the work of their own hands, and to devote the proceeds to the admirable purpose of its extension. And I learn, with no less pleasure, that Her Majesty the Queen, approving of this most excellent design, with a graceful and womanly feeling, has consented that the bazaar shall be held under her royal patronage.   After this I can only say, gentlemen, that if you do not find something very agreeable in your books, you are much duller scholars than I take you to be. And you, ladies – the single ladies at least – however disinterested I know you are by sex and nature, will I hope reap advantages from your exertions to promote its interests, by never marrying any but members of the Athenaeum. It seems to me that it ought to be the pleasantest library in the world.    Hazlitt, in speaking of some of the graceful fancies of the writers of fiction, says:   How long since I first became acquainted with these characters; what old fashioned friends they seem; and yet I am not tired of them, like so many other friends, nor they of me.   In this case the books will not only possess all the attractions of their own friendships and charms, but also the manifold – I had almost said the womanfold – associations connected with their donors. I can imagine now, in fact, from these fanciful associations, some fair Glasgow widow may be taken for the remoter one whom Sir Roger de Coverley could not forget; I can imagine how Sophia's muff may be seen and loved, but not by Tom Jones, going down the High Street on any winter day; or I can imagine the student finding in every fair form the exact counterpart in the Glasgow Athenaeum; and I can imagine the History of Europe exciting the utmost interest without either the knowledge or consent of my friend Sheriff Alison. I can imagine, in short, how through all the facts and fictions of this library, the ladies will always be active, and and that   Age will not wither them, nor custom stale   Their infinite variety.   I am surrounded by gentlemen to whom I shall soon give place, being at least as curious to hear them as you yourselves undoubtedly are; but before I sit down allow me to observe that it seems to me a most delightful and happy chance that this meeting should be held at this genial season of the year, when a new time is, as it were, opening up before us, and when we celebrate the birth of that divine and blessed Teacher, who took himself the highest knowledge into the humblest places, and whose great system comprehended all mankind. I hail it as a most auspicious omen, at this time of the year, when many scattered friends and families are reassembled, that we should be called upon to meet here to promote a great purpose, a general good will, and a general improvement; as I consider that such designs are worthy of the faith we hold, and I do believe they are a practical remembrance of the sacred words, ‘On earth peace, good will towards men’.  I hope that every year which dawns on your institution, will find it richer in its means of usefulness, and greyer headed in the honour and respect it has gained. It can hardly speak for itself more appropriately than in the words of an English writer, when contemplating the English emblem of this period of the year, the Holly Tree:   And should my youth, as youth is apt, I know,   Some harshness show,   All vain asperities I, day by day,   Would wear away,   Till the smooth temper of my age should be   Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree.  And as when all the summer trees are seen   So bright and green,   The Holly leaves their fadeless hues display  Less bright than they,   But when the bare and wintry woods we see,   What then so cheerful as the Holly Tree?   So serious should my youth appear among   The thoughtless throng,   So would I seem among the young and gay  More grave than they  That in my age as cheerful I might be  As the green winter of the Holly Tree.    Ladies and Gentlemen, I am no stranger to Scotland, and – I say it with the deepest gratitude– I am no stranger to the warmth of Scottish hearts; but the warmth of your present welcome almost deprives me of any hope of acknowledging it. I will not detain you any longer at this late hour; let it suffice to assure you, that for taking the part with which I have been honoured in this festival, I have been repaid a thousandfold by your abundant kindness, and by the unspeakable gratification it has afforded me. I hope that, before many years are past, we may have another meeting in public when we shall rejoice at the immense progress your institution will have made in the meantime, and look back upon this night with pleasure and satisfaction. I shall now, in conclusion, repeat most heartily and fervently the motto referred to by Dr. Ewing, ‘Let Glasgow flourish’, which Bailie Nicol Jarvie, himself ‘a Glasgow body’, observed was 'elegantly putten round the town's arms’.   Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Speeches Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context speeches Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together Dickens’s collected and uncollected speeches, making an under-explored body of work searchable for the first time. </h4> Dickens made more than a hundred speeches between 1837 and 1870 at events ranging from charitable dinners and award ceremonies to banquets in his honour or brief words of thanks before a public reading. In these speeches, the author touched on topics including his own life and professional development as well as other subjects such as politics, education, literature, public health and the development of the railway. Efforts to collect Dickens’s speeches prior to 1960 were incomplete at best, and misleading and fragmentary at worst. John Camden Hotten’s collection of speeches, begun without the author’s consent (although he never responded to Hotten’s letters, Dickens did begin efforts to block their publication) and published together with a hastily-compiled biography shortly after the author’s death, remained the primary collected version of the speeches until the Nonesuch Dickens of 1938-39 (a limited print run). Finally, K. J. Fielding brought all known speeches together in 1960, correcting shoddy transcriptions by Hotten using contemporary newspaper accounts, and nearly doubling the total number of speeches attributed to Dickens (The Speeches of Charles Dickens [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960]): Hotten had only featured the text of 56 speeches, the Nonesuch edition of the speeches provided an additional nine, and Fielding presented more than a hundred. Since this monumental work, a handful have also appeared in The Dickensian;<a href="#fn1" id="ref1">1</a> there are certainly more to be found, as the volume of digitised newspapers and periodicals increases, and corrections to be made to existing transcriptions. No effort to collect the speeches has been made since Fielding; this collection thus represents the most complete body of Dickens's speeches ever assembled. Dickens did not write his speeches beforehand, nor did he speak from notes. George Dolby recounted his imaginative process in 1884: <blockquote>[S]upposing the speech was to be delivered in the evening, his habit was to take a long walk in the morning, during which he would decide on the various heads to be dealt with. These being arranged in their proper order, he would in his 'mind's eye,' liken the whole subject to the tire of a cart wheel – he being the hub. From the hub to the tire he would run as many spokes as there were subjects to be treated, and during the progress of the speech he would deal with each spoke separately, elaborating them as he went round the wheel; and when all the spokes dropped out one by one, and nothing but the tire and space remained […] his speech was at an end. (Charles Dickens as I Knew Him: The Story of the Reading Tours in Great Britain and America, pp. 273-74)</blockquote> However, on important occasions, Dickens might personally correct transcriptions of speeches for major London newspapers like The Times. As such, these newspaper accounts are as accurate a source as we can hope to have for what Dickens said (or meant to say). Our Transcription field will only include words attributed directly to Dickens rather than third-person reports or paraphrases of his speeches. Where only such reports exist, we will provide the text in the 'Summary' field. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to what are given as Dickens's words only, to avoid skewing the results, but of course we are reliant on the quality of the reporting: we recommend analysing topics, themes, quotations and concepts rather than granular detail such as prepositions, punctuation, capitalisation and the intricacies of grammar, as different newspaper accounts can vary on these points. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or to contribute other uncollected speeches by Dickens. 1. These are Philip Collins, 'Some Uncollected Speeches by Dickens', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 89-99; David A. Roos, 'Dickens at the Royal Academy of Arts: A New Speech and Two Eulogies', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 100-107; and William F. Long, 'Dickens and the Coming of Rail to Deal: An Uncollected Speech and its Context', The Dickensian 85.418 (1989): pp. 66-80. <a href="#ref1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Emily Middleton; Ellie-Louise Crampton; Maisie Howard; Adam Woods Speech Summary Occasionally speeches are summarised in sources in third person. Include that here, so that everything in the text transcription is only Dickens's words. He was, he said, deeply sensible of the warmth and earnestness of the welcome he had received this evening, and of the distinguished compliment which had been paid to him by the Lord Chief Baron. He had been requested to propose a toast upon this occasion, and he did not know for what reason, unless it were that he was a law student without ever having studied the law, or that he once had the honour of being connected with a case, which was an action for breach of promise of marriage – and which was only reported in one book – a case in which he confessed that the pleading, the evidence, the summing up, and the verdict were all equally wrong. He was extremely glad to be present, because it afforded him an opportunity of entering into personal explanations. Some time ago a gentleman had written to him stating that he thought he had been ‘rather hard’ upon the profession, and it would be an agreeable sacrifice to offended justice if he would come here and confess that he did not mean what he said. He was now ready to plead to that accusation. He then went on to make some amusing observations on the subject of pleading, and facetiously alluded to the character of Dick Swiveller as connected with the law. He concluded by proposing ‘The Bar and the Profession’. 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. 18490619 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 United Law Clerks' Society Annual Dinner Description An account of the resource Speech at the United Law Clerks' Society Annual Dinner (19 June 1849). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1849-06-19 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1849-06-19_Speech_United-Law-Clerks-Society 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 United Law Clerks' Society Annual Dinner' (19 June 1849). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1849-06-19_Speech_United-Law-Clerks-Society">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1849-06-19_Speech_United-Law-Clerks-Society</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 Summary Occasionally speeches are summarised in sources in third person. Include that here, so that everything in the text transcription is only Dickens's words. He then said it had now become his duty to give them what was usually called ‘the toast of the evening’ – That ‘duty’, as Shakespeare said, ‘cannot be silent’. But he would promise that what he might say should be said earnestly and to the purpose, and at once as much and as little as possible. As he learned from the pamphlet which had been placed before him, it was ten years since the newsvendors, being a large and industrious body in London, established a Benevolent and Provident Institution ‘for the granting of temporary relief and permanent assistance to masters and servants engaged as vendors of newspapers, who from age, infirmity, or distress, may require the aid of the benevolent’. And he observed that the institution so originated had this excellent feature – that only those were eligible as permanent pensioners who were members of the society, and had subscribed to its funds – which, as he thought, was a very salutary and wise regulation; not only as encouraging provident habits and the feeling of brotherhood, but also as sparing the reduced recipients of bounty any humiliation in availing themselves of those funds – as inspiring (which he considered a most excellent thing) the thought: ‘I can take the money without a blush; I did a just thing when I subscribed to this institution, and I did it for others no less than for myself. I did not then know that the hour of sickness and distress, which comes to so many of us, would come to me; but, being come, I can thank God I was mindful of it, and that I can take this pittance with an independent spirit, and an upright head.’  This institution, although it had a portion of £1,000 hard money out at interest, which was a very tolerable fortune for so very young a creature, was still exceedingly young. Its whole life had been passed in the nursery. It was so young, indeed, that it had never until today come down to show itself after dinner. But as there was in the infancy of almost all young creatures a certain period when the frame was employed in gathering form and strength, so he believed that this young creature had been employed these ten years in taking the necessary amount of sleep and very mild sustenance; and that tonight a young giant was exhibited to them for the first time, which, like the giant in the Arabian Nights, would contemptuously kick over the casket which had contained it; yet, unlike that giant, would never be able to get into it again. The rapidity with which healthy children grew out of their clothes was, he believed, a frequent subject of complaint in many families – he knew it was in his own. If this child did not grow out of its first suit of £1,000 while the nap was still new upon it, so as to compel them to measure him in quick succession for a suit of £2,000, or £5,000, or £10,000, all he meant to say was that  the fault would be theirs alone, and they would deserve to be stigmatized as most unnatural parents. For himself, as a friend of the family, he should never be satisfied unless he had an opportunity of saying to the grown-up bantling: ‘I knew you when you were a baby with a very weak chest. I sat at the head of the table on the first occasion when your pinafore was taken off; and now I see you a strong man, who (if I may adopt the phraseology of the sporting part of the press, with which you are all, no doubt, familiar) may be heard of once a year at the bar of the Albion, whose money is ready for all comers, and who would be very glad to meet with any customer who will do him the honour to call.’ The claims of the Newsvendors, as a body, upon one another, and upon the public, to erect a provident institution of their own: and not only that, but to elevate themselves and those whom they employed, in the social scale, in intelligence and good conduct: seemed to him to be most undeniable. It was not that they toiled in all weathers – it was not that they were up early and late that they were watching while others slept –  that they were at our doors daily throughout the year ministering to our requirements – although this was much, and in virtue of which we owed them a debt of gratitude –  it was not for this that they inherited this claim; but it was because they were connected with that great power which had become the axis on which the moral world turned round. – Humbly connected no doubt, but most usefully and inseparably. They were, to that fountain of knowledge to all men which was popularly called ‘the Press’, as conduits to a well of water; or what the pipes which undermined the streets of this city were to the great gas works from which the lights proceeded which turned our night into day. It was that they went on for ever between us and those mighty engines which, working night by night, and all night long, were felt in their faintest throb throughout the civilized world. It was that those men should be in a high degree worthy of their trade, and should not be behind the members of any other industrious calling, but should be up with the foremost. It was no more than two hundred and fifty years since the first idea of a newspaper was conceived in this island, to stimulate the people to resist the Spanish Armada. It was not more than two hundred years since the first notion of a regular newspaper, in anything like its present form, was reduced to practice. One hundred and fifty years ago there did not appear to have been a single daily paper in England, and ten years later only one. When he compared such a state of things with that now existing, he felt as if the humble men connected with the vending of news ought to be in advance of those times in the same proportionate degree as  the newspapers they dealt in, and that they ought to take their stand upon the footing of their useful trade, and be as much recognized and respected in that trade as the paper-maker or the printer. Were they not indebted to the newsvendors almost for everything? If expresses came from different parts of the country, or steam-packets from foreign lands, did they not do so to deposit their treasures with the newsvendors, by whom their most important communications were laid thereafter before the public? It was only last summer a member of their trade delivered at his door the astounding intelligence that the City of London was the best watered, the best drained, and the most wholesome city in the world; and, shortly after, the same gentleman, brought him the astounding intelligence that certain sages who said such was the case, were not locked up in the incurable cellars of Bethlehem Hospital. Shortly after this the same newsvendor brought him the news that the city was a charnel-house; and on yesterday morning an afflicted wife and family heard from the same source, that a husband and father was roaming about the world with an unsatiated thirst for human blood. The object which brought them together at that meeting might at first sight seem small enough; but it was so great in its importance, and so comprehensive in principle, that it really deserved their best consideration. He thought that every follower, however humble, of that great plough, which was for ever turning up the world, and knew no season of pause in its work, was deserving of their best consideration; and therefore he asked them to drink most heartily and cordially, “Prosperity to the Newsvendors' Provident and Benevolent Association.” The toast was drunk ‘with three times three, and one cheer more’. One of the Newsvendors then proposed the health of the chairman, and Dickens replied. He thanked the company most heartily, he said, for this very cordial mark of their good will, which he could not separate from something of the earnestness of a private greeting, rather than a mere public welcome. Having been himself a speaker so often already, he ought now to confine himself to calling forth divers unwilling gentlemen he saw around him, and contemplating their sufferings and their triumphs. In thanking them for the honour they had conferred upon him, he could not forget that his first entry into life, his first success in life, his first view of the bearings of life around him, were in connexion with a London daily newspaper, and that connexion had always lived in his remembrance as a source of pleasure, and he acknowledged it as a source of at once pride and pleasure. Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given Albion 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. 18491121 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 Newsvendors' Benevolent Institution First Anniversary Dinner Description An account of the resource Speech at the Newsvendors' Benevolent Institution First Anniversary Dinner (21 November 1849). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1849-11-21 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1849-11-21_Speech_Newsvendors-Benevolent-Institution-First-Anniversary-Dinner Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Speech at the Newsvendors' Benevolent Institution First Anniversary Dinner' (21 November 1849). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1849-11-21_Speech_Newsvendors-Benevolent-Institution-First-Anniversary-Dinner">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1849-11-21_Speech_Newsvendors-Benevolent-Institution-First-Anniversary-Dinner</a>. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Speeches Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context speeches Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together Dickens’s collected and uncollected speeches, making an under-explored body of work searchable for the first time. </h4> Dickens made more than a hundred speeches between 1837 and 1870 at events ranging from charitable dinners and award ceremonies to banquets in his honour or brief words of thanks before a public reading. In these speeches, the author touched on topics including his own life and professional development as well as other subjects such as politics, education, literature, public health and the development of the railway. Efforts to collect Dickens’s speeches prior to 1960 were incomplete at best, and misleading and fragmentary at worst. John Camden Hotten’s collection of speeches, begun without the author’s consent (although he never responded to Hotten’s letters, Dickens did begin efforts to block their publication) and published together with a hastily-compiled biography shortly after the author’s death, remained the primary collected version of the speeches until the Nonesuch Dickens of 1938-39 (a limited print run). Finally, K. J. Fielding brought all known speeches together in 1960, correcting shoddy transcriptions by Hotten using contemporary newspaper accounts, and nearly doubling the total number of speeches attributed to Dickens (The Speeches of Charles Dickens [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960]): Hotten had only featured the text of 56 speeches, the Nonesuch edition of the speeches provided an additional nine, and Fielding presented more than a hundred. Since this monumental work, a handful have also appeared in The Dickensian;<a href="#fn1" id="ref1">1</a> there are certainly more to be found, as the volume of digitised newspapers and periodicals increases, and corrections to be made to existing transcriptions. No effort to collect the speeches has been made since Fielding; this collection thus represents the most complete body of Dickens's speeches ever assembled. Dickens did not write his speeches beforehand, nor did he speak from notes. George Dolby recounted his imaginative process in 1884: <blockquote>[S]upposing the speech was to be delivered in the evening, his habit was to take a long walk in the morning, during which he would decide on the various heads to be dealt with. These being arranged in their proper order, he would in his 'mind's eye,' liken the whole subject to the tire of a cart wheel – he being the hub. From the hub to the tire he would run as many spokes as there were subjects to be treated, and during the progress of the speech he would deal with each spoke separately, elaborating them as he went round the wheel; and when all the spokes dropped out one by one, and nothing but the tire and space remained […] his speech was at an end. (Charles Dickens as I Knew Him: The Story of the Reading Tours in Great Britain and America, pp. 273-74)</blockquote> However, on important occasions, Dickens might personally correct transcriptions of speeches for major London newspapers like The Times. As such, these newspaper accounts are as accurate a source as we can hope to have for what Dickens said (or meant to say). Our Transcription field will only include words attributed directly to Dickens rather than third-person reports or paraphrases of his speeches. Where only such reports exist, we will provide the text in the 'Summary' field. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to what are given as Dickens's words only, to avoid skewing the results, but of course we are reliant on the quality of the reporting: we recommend analysing topics, themes, quotations and concepts rather than granular detail such as prepositions, punctuation, capitalisation and the intricacies of grammar, as different newspaper accounts can vary on these points. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or to contribute other uncollected speeches by Dickens. 1. These are Philip Collins, 'Some Uncollected Speeches by Dickens', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 89-99; David A. Roos, 'Dickens at the Royal Academy of Arts: A New Speech and Two Eulogies', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 100-107; and William F. Long, 'Dickens and the Coming of Rail to Deal: An Uncollected Speech and its Context', The Dickensian 85.418 (1989): pp. 66-80. <a href="#ref1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Emily Middleton; Ellie-Louise Crampton; Maisie Howard; Adam Woods Speech Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given London Tavern Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18510301 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, After all you have already heard, and have so rapturously received, I assure you that not even the warmth of your kind welcome would embolden me to hope to interest you if I had not full confidence in the subject I have to offer to your notice. But my reliance on the strength of this appeal to you is so strong that I am rather encouraged than daunted by the brightness of the track on which I have to throw my little shadow. Gentlemen, as it seems to me, there are three great requisites essential to the perfect realization of a scene so unusual and so splendid as that in which we are now assembled. The first, and I may say most difficult requisite, is a man possessing that strong hold on the general remembrance, that indisputable claim on the general regard and esteem, which is possessed by my dear and much valued friend, our guest. The second requisite is the presence of a body of entertainers, a great multitude of hosts as cheerful and good humoured – under, I am sorry to say, some personal inconvenience – as warm-hearted and as nobly in earnest, as those whom I have the privilege of addressing. The third, and certainly not the least of these requisites, is a president who, less by his social position which he may claim by inheritance, or by his fortune which may have been adventitiously won, and may again be accidentally lost, than by his comprehensive genius, shall fitly represent the best part of him to whom honour is done, and the best part of those who unite in the doing of it. Such a president I think we have found in our chairman of tonight, and I need scarcely add that our chairman's health is the toast I have to propose to you. Many of those who now hear me were present, I dare say, at that memorable scene of Wednesday night last, when the great vision which had been a delight and a lesson, and, I dare say, very often to many of us – I know I can speak for myself – a support and a comfort, and which for many years has improved and charmed us, and to which we look back in elevated relief from the labours of our lives, faded from our sight for ever. I will not stop to inquire whether our guest may or may not have looked forward through rather too long a period for us, to some remote and distant time when he might possibly bear some far-off likeness to a certain Spanish archbishop whom our old friend Gil Blas once served. Nor will I stop to inquire whether it was a reasonable disposition in the audience of Wednesday night to seize upon the words: And I have bought Golden opinions from all sorts of people Which would be worn now in their newest gloss, Not cast aside so soon –  but I will venture to intimate what has, in my own mind, mainly connected that occasion with the present. When I looked round on the vast assemblage, and observed the huge pit hushed into stillness on the rising of the curtain, and that mighty surging gallery, where men in their shirt sleeves had been striking out their arms like strong swimmers, – when I saw that boisterous human flood become still water in a moment, and remain so from the opening to the end of the play, it suggested to me something besides the trustworthiness of the English crowd, and the delusion under which those labour who are apt to disparage and malign it: it suggested to me, that in meeting here tonight, we undertook to represent something of the all-pervading feeling of that crowd through all its intermediate degrees, from the full-dressed lady, with her diamonds sparkling upon her breast in the proscenium-box, to the half-undressed gentleman, who bides his time to take some refreshment in the back row of the gallery. And I consider, gentlemen, that no one who could possibly be placed in this Chair could so well head that comprehensive representation, and could so well give the crowning grace to our festivities as one whose comprehensive genius has in his various works embraced them all, and who has in his dramatic genius, enchanted and enthralled them all at once. Gentlemen, it is not for me here to recall, after what you have heard this night, what I have seen and known in bygone times of Mr. Macready's management, and of the strong friendship of Sir Bulwer Lytton for him, of the association of his pen with his earliest successes, or of Mr. Macready's zealous and untiring services; but it may be permitted to me to say what, in any public mention of him I can never repress, that in the path we both tread I have uniformly found him from the first the most generous of men; quick to encourage, slow to disparage, ever anxious to assert the order of which he is so great an ornament; never condescending to shuffle it off, and leave it outside state rooms, as a Mussulman might leave his slippers outside a mosque. There is a popular prejudice, a kind of superstition, to the effect that authors are not a particularly united body, that they are not invariably and inseparably attached to each other. I am afraid I must concede half a grain or so of truth to that superstition; but this I know, that there can hardly be, that there hardly can have been, among the followers of literature, a man of more high standing further above those little grudging jealousies, which do sometimes disparage its brightness, than Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton. And I have the strongest reason just at present to bear my testimony to his great consideration for those evils which are sometimes unfortunately attendant upon it, though not on him. For, in conjunction with some other gentlemen now present, I have just embarked in a design with Sir Bulwer Lytton, to smooth the rugged way of young labourers, both in literature and the fine arts, and to soften, but by no eleemosynary means, the declining years of meritorious age. And if that project prosper, as I hope it will, and as I know it ought, it will one day be an honour in England where it is now a reproach; originating in his sympathies, being brought into operation by his activity, and endowed from the very cradle by his generosity. There are many among you who will have each his own favourite reason for drinking our chairman’s health, resting his claim probably upon some of his diversified success. According to the nature of your reading, some of you will connect him with prose, others will connect him with poetry. One will connect him with comedy, and another with the romantic passions of the stage, and his assertion of worthy ambition and earnest struggles against those twin gaolers of the human heart Low birth and iron fortune. Again, another's taste will lead him to the contemplation of Rienzi, and the streets of Rome; another's to the rebuilt and repeopled streets of Pompeii; another's to the touching history of the fireside where the Caxton family learned how to discipline their natures and tame their wild hopes down. But however various their feelings and reasons may be, I am sure that with one accord each will help the other, and all will swell the greeting, with which I shall now propose to you ‘The Health of our Chairman, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton’. 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 Honour of William Macready's Farewell Performance Description An account of the resource Speech at the Banquet in Honour of William Macready's Farewell Performance (1 March 1851). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1851-03-01 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1851-03-01_Speech_Banquet-in-Honour-of-William-Macready 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 Banquet in Honour of William Macready's Farewell Performance' (1 March 1851). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1851-03-01_Speech_Banquet-in-Honour-of-William-Macready">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1851-03-01_Speech_Banquet-in-Honour-of-William-Macready</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Gentlemen, After all you have already heard, and have so rapturously received, I assure you that not even the warmth of your kind welcome would embolden me to hope to interest you if I had not full confidence in the subject I have to offer to your notice. But my reliance on the strength of this appeal to you is so strong that I am rather encouraged than daunted by the brightness of the track on which I have to throw my little shadow.  Gentlemen, as it seems to me, there are three great requisites essential to the perfect realization of a scene so unusual and so splendid as that in which we are now assembled. The first, and I may say most difficult requisite, is a man possessing that strong hold on the general remembrance, that indisputable claim on the general regard and esteem, which is possessed by my dear and much valued friend, our guest. The second requisite is the presence of a body of entertainers, a great multitude of hosts as cheerful and good humoured – under, I am sorry to say, some personal inconvenience – as warm-hearted and as nobly in earnest, as those whom I have the privilege of addressing. The third, and certainly not the least of these requisites, is a president who, less by his social position which he may claim by inheritance, or by his fortune which may have been adventitiously won, and may again be accidentally lost, than by his comprehensive genius, shall fitly represent the best part of him to whom honour is done, and the best part of those who unite in the doing of it. Such a president I think we have found in our chairman of tonight, and I need scarcely add that our chairman's health is the toast I have to propose to you. Many of those who now hear me were present, I dare say, at that memorable scene of Wednesday night last, when the great vision which had been a delight and a lesson, and, I dare say, very often to many of us – I know I can speak for myself – a support and a comfort, and which for many years has improved and charmed us, and to which we look back in elevated relief from the labours of our lives, faded from our sight for ever. I will not stop to inquire whether our guest may or may not have looked forward through rather too long a period for us, to some remote and distant time when he might possibly bear some far-off likeness to a certain Spanish archbishop whom our old friend Gil Blas once served. Nor will I stop to inquire whether it was a reasonable disposition in the audience of Wednesday night to seize upon the words: And I have bought   Golden opinions from all sorts of people   Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,  Not cast aside so soon –   but I will venture to intimate what has, in my own mind, mainly connected that occasion with the present. When I looked round on the vast assemblage, and observed the huge pit hushed into stillness on the rising of the curtain, and that mighty surging gallery, where men in their shirt sleeves had been striking out their arms like strong swimmers, – when I saw that boisterous human flood become still water in a moment, and remain so from the opening to the end of the play, it suggested to me something besides the trustworthiness of the English crowd, and the delusion under which those labour who are apt to disparage and malign it: it suggested to me, that in meeting here tonight, we undertook to represent something of the all-pervading feeling of that crowd through all its intermediate degrees, from the full-dressed lady, with her diamonds sparkling upon her breast in the proscenium-box, to the half-undressed gentleman, who bides his time to take some refreshment in the back row of the gallery. And I consider, gentlemen, that no one who could possibly be placed in this Chair could so well head that comprehensive representation, and could so well give the crowning grace to our festivities as one whose comprehensive genius has in his various works embraced them all, and who has in his dramatic genius, enchanted and enthralled them all at once. Gentlemen, it is not for me here to recall, after what you have heard this night, what I have seen and known in bygone times of Mr. Macready's management, and of the strong friendship of Sir Bulwer Lytton for him, of the association of his pen with his earliest successes, or of Mr. Macready's zealous and untiring services; but it may be permitted to me to say what, in any public mention of him I can never repress, that in the path we both tread I have uniformly found him from the first the most generous of men; quick to encourage, slow to disparage, ever anxious to assert the order of which he is so great an ornament; never condescending to shuffle it off, and leave it outside state rooms, as a Mussulman might leave his slippers outside a mosque. There is a popular prejudice, a kind of superstition, to the effect that authors are not a particularly united body, that they are not invariably and inseparably attached to each other.  I am afraid I must concede half a grain or so of truth to that superstition; but this I know, that there can hardly be, that there hardly can have been, among the followers of literature, a man of more high standing further above those little grudging jealousies, which do sometimes disparage its brightness, than Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton. And I have the strongest reason just at present to bear my testimony to his great consideration for those evils which are sometimes unfortunately attendant upon it, though not on him. For, in conjunction with some other gentlemen now present, I have just embarked in a design with Sir Bulwer Lytton, to smooth the rugged way of young labourers, both in literature and the fine arts, and to soften, but by no eleemosynary means, the declining years of meritorious age. And if that project prosper, as I hope it will, and as I know it ought, it will one day be an honour in England where it is now a reproach; originating in his sympathies, being brought into operation by his activity, and endowed from the very cradle by his generosity. There are many among you who will have each his own favourite reason for drinking our chairman’s health, resting his claim probably upon some of his diversified success. According to the nature of your reading, some of you will connect him with prose, others will connect him with poetry. One will connect him with comedy, and another with the romantic passions of the stage, and his assertion of worthy ambition and earnest struggles against   those twin gaolers of the human heart   Low birth and iron fortune.  Again, another's taste will lead him to the contemplation of Rienzi, and the streets of Rome; another's to the rebuilt and repeopled streets of Pompeii; another's to the touching history of the fireside where the Caxton family learned how to discipline their natures and tame their wild hopes down. But however various their feelings and reasons may be, I am sure that with one accord each will help the other, and all will swell the greeting, with which I shall now propose to you ‘The Health of our Chairman, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton’.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Speeches Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context speeches Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings together Dickens’s collected and uncollected speeches, making an under-explored body of work searchable for the first time. </h4> Dickens made more than a hundred speeches between 1837 and 1870 at events ranging from charitable dinners and award ceremonies to banquets in his honour or brief words of thanks before a public reading. In these speeches, the author touched on topics including his own life and professional development as well as other subjects such as politics, education, literature, public health and the development of the railway. Efforts to collect Dickens’s speeches prior to 1960 were incomplete at best, and misleading and fragmentary at worst. John Camden Hotten’s collection of speeches, begun without the author’s consent (although he never responded to Hotten’s letters, Dickens did begin efforts to block their publication) and published together with a hastily-compiled biography shortly after the author’s death, remained the primary collected version of the speeches until the Nonesuch Dickens of 1938-39 (a limited print run). Finally, K. J. Fielding brought all known speeches together in 1960, correcting shoddy transcriptions by Hotten using contemporary newspaper accounts, and nearly doubling the total number of speeches attributed to Dickens (The Speeches of Charles Dickens [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960]): Hotten had only featured the text of 56 speeches, the Nonesuch edition of the speeches provided an additional nine, and Fielding presented more than a hundred. Since this monumental work, a handful have also appeared in The Dickensian;<a href="#fn1" id="ref1">1</a> there are certainly more to be found, as the volume of digitised newspapers and periodicals increases, and corrections to be made to existing transcriptions. No effort to collect the speeches has been made since Fielding; this collection thus represents the most complete body of Dickens's speeches ever assembled. Dickens did not write his speeches beforehand, nor did he speak from notes. George Dolby recounted his imaginative process in 1884: <blockquote>[S]upposing the speech was to be delivered in the evening, his habit was to take a long walk in the morning, during which he would decide on the various heads to be dealt with. These being arranged in their proper order, he would in his 'mind's eye,' liken the whole subject to the tire of a cart wheel – he being the hub. From the hub to the tire he would run as many spokes as there were subjects to be treated, and during the progress of the speech he would deal with each spoke separately, elaborating them as he went round the wheel; and when all the spokes dropped out one by one, and nothing but the tire and space remained […] his speech was at an end. (Charles Dickens as I Knew Him: The Story of the Reading Tours in Great Britain and America, pp. 273-74)</blockquote> However, on important occasions, Dickens might personally correct transcriptions of speeches for major London newspapers like The Times. As such, these newspaper accounts are as accurate a source as we can hope to have for what Dickens said (or meant to say). Our Transcription field will only include words attributed directly to Dickens rather than third-person reports or paraphrases of his speeches. Where only such reports exist, we will provide the text in the 'Summary' field. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to what are given as Dickens's words only, to avoid skewing the results, but of course we are reliant on the quality of the reporting: we recommend analysing topics, themes, quotations and concepts rather than granular detail such as prepositions, punctuation, capitalisation and the intricacies of grammar, as different newspaper accounts can vary on these points. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or to contribute other uncollected speeches by Dickens. 1. These are Philip Collins, 'Some Uncollected Speeches by Dickens', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 89-99; David A. Roos, 'Dickens at the Royal Academy of Arts: A New Speech and Two Eulogies', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 100-107; and William F. Long, 'Dickens and the Coming of Rail to Deal: An Uncollected Speech and its Context', The Dickensian 85.418 (1989): pp. 66-80. <a href="#ref1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Emily Middleton; Ellie-Louise Crampton; Maisie Howard; Adam Woods Speech Summary Occasionally speeches are summarised in sources in third person. Include that here, so that everything in the text transcription is only Dickens's words. He could assure them, he said, that when he entered that room he had no idea of addressing them, but a member of the committee had asked him to propose the toast in a manner which evinced that he thought he required no forcing, and that he only required to be planted in that soil to flower immediately. Though he was no gardener himself, he knew well and appreciated the repose and delight to be found in gardening, and amongst its productions. Probably there was no feeling in the human mind stronger than the love of gardening. The prisoner in his dismal cell would endeavour to raise a flower from the chinks in the floor of his dungeon; the invalid or lodger in the garret took delight in the pot of flowers on the parapet, or endeavoured to cultivate his scarlet runners in communication with the garret of his neighbour over the way; the miniature garden was one of the greatest amusements of childhood; and, again, gardening was one of the last and best pleasures of the aged. It was a holy duty in foreign countries to decorate the graves of the dead with flowers, and here, too, the resting-places of those who had passed away from us would soon be gardens. Indeed, from that old time when the Lord walked in the garden in the cool of the evening, down to the day when a Poet Laureate sang   Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere,   From yon blue heavens above us bent   The gardener Adam and his wife   Smile at the claims of long descent,  at all times and in all ages, gardens were among the objects of the greatest interest to mankind. There might be a few, but he believed they were but a few, who took no interest in the products of gardening, except perhaps in London Pride, or a certain degenerate kind of ‘Stock’, which was apt to grow hereabouts, cultivated by a species of frozen-out gardeners whom no thaw can ever penetrate; except these, the gardeners’ art had contributed to the delight of all men in their time. That there ought to be a Benevolent Provident Institution for gardeners was in the fitness of things, and that such an institution ought to flourish, and did flourish, was still more so. He had risen to propose to you the health of a gentleman who was a great gardener, and not only a great gardener, but a great man, the growth of a fine Saxon root cultivated up with a power of intellect that was at this time the talk of the civilized world – he alluded, of course, to his friend, the chairman of the day. He had taken occasion to say at a public assembly hard by, a month or two ago, in speaking of the wonderful building Mr. Paxton had designed for the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, that it ought to have fallen down, but that it refused to do so. We were told that the glass ought to have been all broken, the gutters all choked up, and the building flooded, and that the roof and sides ought to have been blown away; in short, that everything ought to have done what everything obstinately persisted in not doing. Earth, air, fire and water all appear to have conspired together in Mr. Paxton's favour – all had conspired to one result, which, when the present generation was in dust, would be an enduring temple to his honour, and to the energy, the talent, and the resources of Englishmen. ‘But’, said a gentleman to him the other day, ‘no doubt Mr. Paxton is a great man, but there is one objection to him that you can never get over, that is, he is a gardener’. Now, that was their case tonight, that he was a gardener, and they were extremely proud of it. This was a great age, with all its faults, when a man by the power of his own genius and good sense could scale such a daring height as Mr. Paxton had reached, and composedly place his form on the top. This was a great age, when a man impressed with a useful idea, could carry out his project without being imprisoned, or thumb-screwed or persecuted in any form. I can well understand, Dickens continued, that you, to whom the genius, the intelligence, the industry, and the achievements of our friend are well known, should be anxious to do him honour by placing him in the position he occupies tonight; and I assure you, you have conferred great gratification on one of his friends, in permitting him to have the opportunity of proposing his health, which that friend now does most cordially, and with all the honours.  Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given London Coffee House 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. 18510609 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gardeners' Benevolent Institution Anniversary Festival 1851 Description An account of the resource Speech at the Gardeners' Benevolent Institution Anniversary Festival (9 June 1851). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1851-06-09 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1851-06-09_Speech_Gardeners-Benevolent-Institution-Anniversary-Festival Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Speech at the Gardeners' Benevolent Institution Anniversary Festival' (9 June 1851). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1851-06-09_Speech_Gardeners-Benevolent-Institution-Anniversary-Festival">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1851-06-09_Speech_Gardeners-Benevolent-Institution-Anniversary-Festival</a>.