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 Richmond Venue Where the speech was given Exchange Hotel 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. 18420318 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. Mr. President and Gentlemen, I am most truly grateful and obliged to you for the kind welcome which you have given me. I receive and acknowledge with gratitude this testimonial of your kindly feelings towards me. If it were possible to convey to you my sense and appreciation of your favours, I would indeed acknowledge, as I receive, your good wishes an hundred fold. But, as I said at a social party a few nights since at Washington – a party somewhat similar to this – it is my misfortune to be passing through this country with almost as rapid a flight as that of any bird of the air–the American Eagle excepted. I find, in my career amongst you, no little resemblance to that far-famed Sultan of the thousand-and-one nights, who was in the habit of acquiring a new friend every night and cutting his head off in the morning. I find another resemblance to what we read in the history of that Sultan. He was diverted from his bad habit by listening to the tales of one who proved a favourite above all the rest; so I am stopped in my original intention by the hospitalities of the Americans. I say that the best flag of truce between two nations having the same common origin, and speaking the same language, is a fair sheet of white paper inscribed with the literature of each. If, hereafter, I think of this night, if I remember the welcome which you have assured me, believe me, my small corner, my humble portion of that fair sheet shall be inscribed with the hospitalities I have received from the friends I have seen and made here. It has been said, gentlemen, that an after-dinner speech may be too long. If so, it may be said with more truth, that an after-supper speech cannot be too short, and especially to those with whom to listen to a speech is no novelty, and mong whom a man of few words is a rare and almost literal ‘phenomenon’. I therefore deem it only necessary to say to you that I am most deeply and sincerely obliged to you for your kindness. In reference to the admonition tendered to me by my worthy friend, your President, I will say that it has long been a thing near my heart. But I hope I shall never need the monitor of which he reminds us. My situation forbids all paralysis of my pen – as I hope you will discover from November next, when I shall resume my literary labours. The hospitalities of America can never be forgotten among them: your kindness, certainly never. Imagine me thinking of you tomorrow; imagine me on the road to Fredericksberg – on that Virginia road from Fredericksburg to the Potomac. In fact throughout all my travels in these parts I shall think of the pleasure I have enjoyed in the bosom of your society. 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 Dinner in His Honour, Richmond Description An account of the resource A speech at a social dinner in his honour, Richmond (18 March 1842). 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 1842-03-18 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1842-03-18_Speech_Dinner-Richmond 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. 'Dinner in His Honour, Richmond' (18 March 1842). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1842-03-18_Speech_Dinner-Richmond">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1842-03-18_Speech_Dinner-Richmond</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Mr. President and Gentlemen, I am most truly grateful and obliged to you for the kind welcome which you have given me. I receive and acknowledge with gratitude this testimonial of your kindly feelings towards me. If it were possible to convey to you my sense and appreciation of your favours, I would indeed acknowledge, as I receive, your good wishes an hundred fold. But, as I said at a social party a few nights since at Washington – a party somewhat similar to this – it is my misfortune to be passing through this country with almost as rapid a flight as that of any bird of the air–the American Eagle excepted. I find, in my career amongst you, no little resemblance to that far-famed Sultan of the thousand-and-one nights, who was in the habit of acquiring a new friend every night and cutting his head off in the morning. I find another resemblance to what we read in the history of that Sultan. He was diverted from his bad habit by listening to the tales of one who proved a favourite above all the rest; so I am stopped in my original intention by the hospitalities of the Americans. I say that the best flag of truce between two nations having the same common origin, and speaking the same language, is a fair sheet of white paper inscribed with the literature of each. If, hereafter, I think of this night, if I remember the welcome which you have assured me, believe me, my small corner, my humble portion of that fair sheet shall be inscribed with the hospitalities I have received from the friends I have seen and made here. It has been said, gentlemen, that an after-dinner speech may be too long. If so, it may be said with more truth, that an after-supper speech cannot be too short, and especially to those with whom to listen to a speech is no novelty, and mong whom a man of few words is a rare and almost literal ‘phenomenon’. I therefore deem it only necessary to say to you that I am most deeply and sincerely obliged to you for your kindness. In reference to the admonition tendered to me by my worthy friend, your President, I will say that it has long been a thing near my heart. But I hope I shall never need the monitor of which he reminds us. My situation forbids all paralysis of my pen – as I hope you will discover from November next, when I shall resume my literary labours. The hospitalities of America can never be forgotten among them: your kindness, certainly never. Imagine me thinking of you tomorrow; imagine me on the road to Fredericksberg – on that Virginia road from Fredericksburg to the Potomac. In fact throughout all my travels in these parts I shall think of the pleasure I have enjoyed in the bosom of your society.