Speeches: Literary and Social
by Charles Dickens · English · Gutenberg #824 · 587,084 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Speeches: Literary and Social
Author: Charles Dickens
Release date: February 1, 1997 [eBook #824]
Most recently updated: December 18, 2014
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/824
Credits: Transcribed from the 1880 Chatto and Windus edition by David Price
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPEECHES: LITERARY AND SOCIAL ***
Transcribed from the 1880 Chatto and Windus edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
[Picture: Book cover]
SPEECHES
_LITERARY AND SOCIAL_
BY
CHARLES DICKENS
WITH CHAPTERS ON “CHARLES DICKENS AS A LETTER WRITER,
POET, AND PUBLIC READER.”
[Picture: Drawing of Charles Dickens]
_A NEW EDITION_
London
CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1880
INTRODUCTION.
CHARLES DICKENS was born at Landport, Portsmouth, on February 7, 1812.
At that time his father, Mr. John Dickens, held an office in the Navy Pay
Department, the duties of which obliged him to reside alternately at the
principal naval stations of England. But on the conclusion of peace in
1815 a considerable reduction was made by Government in this branch of
the public service. Mr. John Dickens, among others, was pensioned off,
and he removed to London with his wife and children, when his son Charles
was hardly four years of age.
No doubt the varied bustling scenes of life witnessed by Charles Dickens
in his early years, had an influence on his mind that gave him a taste
for observing the manners and mental peculiarities of different classes
of people engaged in the active pursuits of life, and quickened a
naturally lively perception of the ridiculous, for which he was
distinguished even in boyhood.
It is curious to observe how similar opportunities of becoming acquainted
practically with life, and the busy actors on its varied scenes, in very
early life, appear to influence the minds of thinking and imaginative men
in after-years. Goldsmith’s pedestrian excursions on the Continent,
Bulwer’s youthful rambles on foot in England, and equestrian expeditions
in France, and Maclise’s extensive walks in boyhood over his native
county, and the mountains and valleys of Wicklow a little later, were
fraught with similar results.
Charles Dickens was intended by his father to be an attorney. Nature and
Mr. John Dickens happily differed on that point. London law may have
sustained little injury in losing Dickens for “a limb.” English
literature would have met with an irreparable loss, had she been deprived
of him whom she delights to own as a favourite son.
Dickens, having decided against the law, began his career in “the
gallery,” as a reporter on _The True Sun_; and from the first made
himself distinguished and distinguishable among “the corps,” for his
ability, promptness, and punctuality.
Remaining for a short term on the staff of this periodical, he seceded to
_The Mirror of Parliament_, which was started with the express object of
furnishing _verbatim_ reports of the debates. It only lived, however,
for two sessions.
The influence of his father, who on settling in the metropolis, had
become connected with the London press, procured for Charles Dickens an
appointment as short-hand reporter on the _Morning Chronicle_. To this
period of his life he has made some graceful and interesting allusions in
a speech delivered at the Second Anniversary of the Newspaper Press Fund,
about five years ago.
It was in _The Monthly Magazine_ of January, 1834, before he had quite
attained his twenty-second year, that Charles Dickens made his first
appearance in print as a story-teller. {7} Neither the editor of the
magazine, nor the readers, nor even the ardent and gratified young author
himself (who has described in the preface to the “Pickwick Papers” his
sensations on finding his little contribution accepted), then dreamt that
he would become in five short years from that time one of the most
popular and widely-read of English authors, that his name would shortly
become familiar as a household word, and that his praise would be on
every tongue on both sides of the Atlantic.
Encouraged by his success, Charles Dickens continued to send sketches in
the same vein, and for the next twelve months was a tolerably constant
contributor to the _Magazine_. All, or nearly all, of these little
papers were reprinted in the collection of _Sketches by Boz_; but as it
will perhaps be interesting to some of our readers to trace their
original appearance in the magazine, we give a list of them here:—
February, 1834, Horatio Sparkins.
Marriage a-la-Mode.
April „ The Bloomsbury Christening.
May „ The Boarding-House.
August „ _Ibid._ (No II.) {8a}
September „ The Goings-on at Bramsby Hall.
October „ The Steam Excursion.
January, 1835. Passage in the Life of Mr. Watkins Tottle.
February „ _Ib._ Chapter Second.
A similar series was afterwards contributed to the evening edition of
_The Morning Chronicle_, {8b} then edited by Mr. John Black, and on which
Dickens was engaged as parliamentary reporter.
While writing the “Sketches,” a strong inclination towards the stage
induced Mr. Charles Dickens to test his powers as a dramatist, and his
first piece, a farce called _The Strange Gentleman_, was produced at the
St. James’s Theatre on the opening night of the season, September 29,
1836. The late Mr. Harley was the hero of the farce, which was received
with great favour. This was followed by an opera, called _The Village
Coquettes_, for which Mr. Hullah composed the music, and which was
brought out at the same establishment, on Tuesday, December 6, 1836. The
quaint humour, unaffected pathos, and graceful lyrics of this production
found prompt recognition, and the piece enjoyed a prosperous run. _The
Village Coquettes_ took its title from two village girls, Lucy and Rose,
led away by vanity, coquetting with men above them in station, and
discarding their humble, though worthy lovers. Before, however, it is
too late they see their error, and the piece terminates happily. Miss
Rainforth and Miss Julia Smith were the heroines, and Mr. Bennet and Mr.
Gardner were their betrothed lovers. Braham was the Lord of the Manor,
who would have led astray the fair Lucy. There was a capital scene,
where he was detected by Lucy’s father, played by Strickland, urging an
elopement. Harley had a trifling part in the piece, rendered highly
amusing by his admirable acting.
On March 6, 1837, was brought out at the St. James’s Theatre a farce,
called _Is She His Wife_; _or_, _Something Singular_, in which Harley
played the principal character, Felix Tapkins, a flirting bachelor, and
sang a song in the character of Pickwick, “written expressly for him by
Boz.”
Under the pseudonym of Timothy Sparks Charles Dickens published about
this time a wholesome, wise, and cleverly written little pamphlet against
Sabbatarianism, in which he cogently and forcibly advocated more liberal
views respecting the observance of Sunday than generally obtain in this
country. {10}
In March, 1836, appeared the first number of “Pickwick,” with
illustrations by Seymour. It was continued in monthly shilling numbers
until its completion, and this has been Mr. Dickens’s favourite and usual
form of publication ever since. The success and popularity of the
work—which, in freshness and vigour, he has never surpassed in his later
and maturer writings—were unmistakeable. Several playwrights dramatised
it, with more or less success; and a swarm of obscure scribblers flooded
the town with imitations and sequels, which, like Avanelleda’s second
part of “Don Quixote,” came mostly to grief, and were quickly forgotten.
Before the work had reached its third number, the talented artist who had
undertaken the illustrations, and who has immortalised the features of
Mr. Pickwick, was unfortunately removed by death, and Mr. Hablot Browne
(the well-known _Phiz_) was chosen to replace him, and continued to
illustrate most of Mr. Dickens’s novels for many years after. During the
years 1837–1838, Mr. Dickens carried on the editorship of _Bentley’s
Miscellany_, where his novel of “Oliver Twist” (illustrated by George
Cruikshank) first appeared. To this magazine, during the time that he
conducted it, he also contributed some humorous papers, entitled “Full
Report of the Meetings of the Mudfog Association for the Advancement of
Everything.” But, finding his editorial office irksome, he soon
abandoned it.
During his engagement with Mr. Bentley, he edited and partly wrote the
“Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi,” {11} a book now almost forgotten, though
not without passages of pathos and humour. Dickens, in the introductory
chapter (dated February, 1838), gives the following account of his share
in the work:—
“For about a year before his death, Grimaldi was employed in writing
a full account of his life and adventures, and as people who write
their own lives often find time to extend them to a most inordinate
length, it is no wonder that his account of himself was exceedingly
voluminous.
“This manuscript was confided to Mr. Thomas Egerton Wilks, to alter
and revise, with a view to its publication. While he was thus
engaged, Grimaldi died; and Mr. Wilks having, by the commencement of
September (1837), concluded his labours, offered the manuscript to
Mr. Bentley, by whom it was shortly afterwards purchased.
“The present editor of these volumes has felt it necessary to say
thus much in explanation of their origin. His own share in them is
stated in a few words. Being much struck by several incidents in the
manuscript—such as the description of Grimaldi’s infancy, the
burglary, the brother’s return from sea, and many other passages—and
thinking that they might be related in a more attractive manner, he
accepted a proposal from the publisher to edit the book, and _has_
edited it to the best of his ability, altering its form throughout,
and making such other alterations as he conceived would improve the
narration of the facts, without any departure from the facts
themselves.”
His next work was “Nicholas Nickleby,” published in monthly numbers. The
following passage from the original preface, which is only to be found in
the old editions, alludes to the great success that attended this story:—
“It only now remains for the writer of these pages, with that feeling
of regret with which we leave almost any pursuit that has for a long
time occupied us and engaged our thoughts, and which is naturally
augmented in such a case as this, when that pursuit has been
surrounded by all that could animate and cheer him on—it only now
remains for him, before abandoning his task, to bid his readers
farewell.”
This was followed by “Master Humphrey’s Clock,” the publication of which,
in weekly numbers, with illustrations by Cattermole and Hablot Browne,
was commenced in April, 1840. “Master Humphrey’s Clock” comprised the
two novels of “The Old Curiosity Shop” and “Barnaby Rudge,” which are now
published in a separate form, stripped of the introductory portion
relating to Master Humphrey, and of the intercalary chapters in which Mr.
Pickwick and the two Wellers appear again on the scene. It was pleasant
to meet once more these familiar humorous creations, and it may be a
matter for regret that this portion of the book has been consigned to
oblivion. But the author considered that these passages served only to
interrupt the continuity of the main story, and they were consequently
eliminated.
These three characters (the Wellers and Mr. Pickwick) have all the same
raciness and inexhaustible humour in this sequel as in the work in which
we were first introduced to them. As the original edition of the work we
are alluding to is now somewhat rare, the reader may not be displeased to
have a few specimens laid before him. Here is Mr. Weller senior’s
opinion of railways:—
“I con-sider,” said Mr. Weller, “that the rail is unconstitootional
and an inwaser o’ priwileges, and I should wery much like to know
what that ’ere old Carter as once stood up for our liberties and wun
’em too—I should like to know wot he vould say if he wos alive now,
to Englishmen being locked up with widders, or with anybody, again
their wills. Wot a old Carter would have said, a old Coachman may
say, and I as-sert that in that pint o’ view alone, the rail is an
inwaser. As to the comfort, vere’s the comfort o’ sittin’ in a harm
cheer lookin’ at brick walls or heaps o’ mud, never comin’ to a
public house, never seein’ a glass o’ ale, never goin’ through a
pike, never meetin’ a change o’ no kind (horses or othervise), but
alvays comin’ to a place, ven you come to one at all, the wery picter
o’ the last, vith the same p’leesemen standing about, the same
blessed old bell a ringin’, the same unfort’nate people standing
behind the bars, a waitin’ to be let in; and everythin’ the same
except the name, vich is wrote up in the same sized letters as the
last name and vith the same colors. As to the _h_onour and dignity
o’ travelling vere can that be vithout a coachman; and wot’s the rail
to sich coachmen and guards as is sometimes forced to go by it, but a
outrage and a insult? As to the pace, wot sort o’ pace do you think
I, Tony Veller, could have kept a coach goin’ at, for five hundred
thousand pound a mile, paid in adwance afore the coach was on the
road? And as to the ingein—a nasty wheezin’, creaking, gasping,
puffin, bustin’ monster, alvays out o’ breath, vith a shiny green and
gold back, like a unpleasant beetle in that ’ere gas magnifier—as to
the ingein as is alvays a pourin’ out red hot coals at night, and
black smoke in the day, the sensiblest thing it does in my opinion,
is, ven there’s somethin’ in the vay and it sets up that ’ere
frightful scream vich seems to say, ‘Now here’s two hundred and forty
passengers in the wery greatest extremity o’ danger, and here’s their
two hundred and forty screams in vun!’” {15}
While Mr. Pickwick is listening to Master Humphrey’s story above, the
Wellers are entertained by the housekeeper in the kitchen, where they
find Mr. Slithers, the barber, to whom Sam Weller, drawing extensively we
may suppose upon his lively imagination, relates the following anecdote:—
“I never knew,” said Sam, fixing his eyes in a ruminative manner upon
the blushing barber, “I never knew but von o’ your trade, but _he_
wos worth a dozen, and wos indeed dewoted to his callin’!”
“Was he in the easy shaving way, sir,” inquired Mr. Slithers; “or in
the cutting and curling line?”
“Both,” replied Sam; “easy shavin’ was his natur, and cuttin’ and
curlin’ was his pride and glory. His whole delight wos in his trade.
He spent all his money in bears and run in debt for ’em besides, and
there they wos a growling avay down in the front cellar all day long,
and ineffectooally gnashing their teeth, vile the grease o’ their
relations and friends wos being re-tailed in gallipots in the shop
above, and the first-floor winder wos ornamented vith their heads;
not to speak o’ the dreadful aggrawation it must have been to ’em to
see a man alvays a walkin’ up and down the pavement outside, vith the
portrait of a bear in his last agonies, and underneath in large
letters, ‘Another fine animal wos slaughtered yesterday at
Jinkinson’s!’ Hows’ever, there they wos, and there Jinkinson wos,
till he wos took wery ill with some inn’ard disorder, lost the use of
his legs, and wos confined to his bed, vere he laid a wery long time,
but sich wos his pride in his profession even then, that wenever he
wos worse than usual, the doctor used to go down stairs and say,
‘Jinkinson’s wery low this mornin’; we must give the bears a stir;’
and as sure as ever they stirred ’em up a bit, and made ’em roar,
Jinkinson opens his eyes if he wos ever so bad, calls out, ‘There’s
the bears!’ and rewives agin. Vun day the doctor happenin’ to say,
‘I shall look in as usual to-morrow mornin’,’ Jinkinson catches hold
of his hand and says, ‘Doctor,’ he says, ‘will you grant me one
favor?’ ‘I will, Jinkinson,’ says the doctor. ‘Then, doctor,’ says
Jinkinson, ‘vill you come un-shaved, and let me shave you?’ ‘I
will,’ says the doctor. ‘God bless you,’ says Jinkinson. Next day
the doctor came, and arter he’d been shaved all skilful and reg’lar,
he says, ‘Jinkinson,’ he says, ‘it’s wery plain this does you good.
Now,’ he says, ‘I’ve got a coachman as has got a beard that it ’d
warm your heart to work on, and though the footman,’ he says, ‘hasn’t
got much of a beard, still he’s a trying it on vith a pair o’ viskers
to that extent, that razors is christian charity. If they take it in
turns to mind the carriage wen it’s a waitin’ below,’ he says, ‘wot’s
to hinder you from operatin’ on both of ’em ev’ry day as well as upon
me? you’ve got six children,’ he says, ‘wot’s to hinder you from
shavin’ all their heads, and keepin’ ’em shaved? You’ve got two
assistants in the shop down-stairs, wot’s to hinder you from cuttin’
and curlin’ them as often as you like? Do this,’ he says, ‘and
you’re a man agin.’ Jinkinson squeedged the doctor’s hand, and begun
that wery day; he kept his tools upon the bed, and wenever he felt
his-self gettin’ worse, he turned to at vun o’ the children, who wos
a runnin’ about the house vith heads like clean Dutch cheeses, and
shaved him agin. Vun day the lawyer come to make his vill; all the
time he wos a takin’ it down, Jinkinson was secretly a clippin’ avay
at his hair vith a large pair of scissors. ‘Wot’s that ’ere snippin’
noise?’ says the lawyer every now and then, ‘it’s like a man havin’
his hair cut.’ ‘It _is_ wery like a man havin’ his hair cut,’ says
poor Jinkinson, hidin’ the scissors and lookin’ quite innocent. By
the time the lawyer found it out, he was wery nearly bald. Jinkinson
was kept alive in this vay for a long time, but at last vun day he
has in all the children, vun arter another, shaves each on ’em wery
clean, and gives him vun kiss on the crown of his head; then he has
in the two assistants, and arter cuttin’ and curlin’ of ’em in the
first style of elegance, says he should like to hear the woice o’ the
greasiest bear, vich rekvest is immedetly complied with; then he says
that he feels wery happy in his mind, and vishes to be left alone;
and then he dies, prevously cuttin’ his own hair, and makin’ one flat
curl in the wery middle of his forehead.” {18a}
There is a great deal more in the same vein, not unworthy of the
“Pickwick Papers.” We must leave the curious reader to find it out,
however, for himself.
During the progress of this publication, it seems that certain officious
persons, mistaking it for a kind of _omnium gatherum_, by “several
hands,” tendered contributions to its pages, and the author was compelled
to issue the following advertisement:
MASTER HUMPHREY’S CLOCK.
MR. DICKENS begs to inform all those Ladies and Gentlemen who have
tendered him contributions for this work, and all those who may now
or at any future time have it in contemplation to do so, that he
cannot avail himself of their obliging offers, as it is written
solely by himself, and cannot possibly include any productions from
other hands.
This announcement will serve for a final answer to all
correspondents, and will render any private communications
unnecessary.
After “winding up his Clock,” as he termed it, Dickens resolved to make a
tour in the United States. Before he went away, however, some of the
most distinguished citizens of Edinburgh gave him a farewell banquet.
{18b} He was then only twenty-nine years of age, and this was the first
great public recognition of his genius, and the first occasion that was
afforded him of displaying his powers as a public speaker. Professor
Wilson (Christopher North) presided, and spoke of the young author in the
following terms:—
“Our friend has dealt with the common feelings and passions of
ordinary men in the common and ordinary paths of life. He has not
sought—at least he has not yet sought—to deal with those thoughts and
passions that are made conspicuous from afar by the elevated stations
of those who experience them. He has mingled in the common walks of
life; he has made himself familiar with the lower orders of society.
He has not been deterred by the aspect of vice and wickedness, and
misery and guilt, from seeking a spirit of good in things evil, but
has endeavoured by the might of genius to transmute what was base
into what is precious as the beaten gold. . . . But I shall be
betrayed, if I go on much longer,—which it would be improper for me
to do—into something like a critical delineation of the genius of our
illustrious guest. I shall not attempt that; but I cannot but
express in a few ineffectual words, the delight which every human
bosom feels in the benign spirit which pervades all his creations.
How kind and good a man he is, I need not say; nor what strength of
genius he has acquired by that profound sympathy with his
fellow-creatures, whether in prosperity and happiness, or overwhelmed
with unfortunate circumstances, but who do not yet sink under their
miseries, but trust to their own strength of endurance, to that
principle of truth and honour and integrity which is no stranger to
the uncultivated bosom, which is found in the lowest abodes in as
great strength as in the halls of nobles and the palaces of kings.
“Mr. Dickens is also a satirist. He satirises human life, but he
does not satirise it to degrade it. He does not wish to pull down
what is high into the neighbourhood of what is low. He does not seek
to represent all virtue as a hollow thing, in which no confidence can
be placed. He satirises only the selfish, and the hard-hearted, and
the cruel; he exposes in a hideous light that principle which, when
acted upon, gives a power to men in the lowest grades to carry on a
more terrific tyranny than if placed upon thrones. I shall not
say—for I do not feel—that our distinguished guest has done full and
entire justice to one subject—that he has entirely succeeded where I
have no doubt he would be most anxious to succeed—in a full and
complete delineation of the female character. But this he has done:
he has not endeavoured to represent women as charming merely by the
aid of accomplishments, however elegant and graceful. He has not
depicted those accomplishments as the essentials of their character,
but has spoken of them rather as always inspired by a love of
domesticity, by fidelity, by purity, by innocence, by charity, and by
hope, which makes them discharge, under the most difficult
circumstances, their duties; and which brings over their path in this
world some glimpses of the light of heaven. Mr. Dickens may be
assured that there is felt for him all over Scotland a sentiment of
kindness, affection, admiration and love; and I know for certain that
the knowledge of these sentiments must make him happy.”
* * * * *
Dickens left Liverpool, on his voyage across the Atlantic, in the
“Britannia” steam-packet, Captain Hewett, on the 3rd of January, 1842.
At Boston, Hartford, and New York, he was received with ovations
(Washington Irving on one occasion presiding at a banquet held in his
honour), until he was obliged to decline any further appearance in
public. During this first visit to America, he made three long and
eloquent speeches, which are all given in this volume _in extenso_. In
each of these he referred in an earnest way to the great question of
International Copyright, urging upon his Transatlantic friends the
necessity of doing right and justice in this matter. He returned to
England in the month of June, and a few weeks afterwards addressed the
following circular letter to all the principal English authors:—
“1, DEVONSHIRE TERRACE, York Gate, Regent’s Park,
“7_th_ _July_, 1842.
“You may perhaps be aware that, during my stay in America, I lost no
opportunity of endeavouring to awaken the public mind to a sense of
the unjust and iniquitous state of the law in that country, in
reference to the wholesale piracy of British works. Having been
successful in making the subject one of general discussion in the
United States, I carried to Washington, for presentation to Congress
by Mr. Clay, a petition from the whole body of American authors,
earnestly praying for the enactment of an International Copyright
Law. It was signed by Mr. Washington Irving, Mr. Prescott, Mr.
Cooper, and every man who has distinguished himself in the literature
of America; and has since been referred to a Select Committee of the
House of Representatives. To counteract any effect which might be
produced by that petition, a meeting was held in Boston—which, you
will remember, is the seat and stronghold of Learning and Letters in
the United States—at which a memorial against any change in the
existing state of things in this respect was agreed to, with but one
dissentient voice. This document, which, incredible as it may appear
to you, was actually forwarded to Congress and received, deliberately
stated that if English authors were invested with any control over
the re-publication of their own books, it would be no longer possible
for American editors to alter and adapt them (as they do now) to the
American taste! This memorial was, without loss of time, replied to
by Mr. Prescott, who commented, with the natural indignation of a
gentleman, and a man of letters, upon its extraordinary dishonesty.
I am satisfied that this brief mention of its tone and spirit is
sufficient to impress you with the conviction that it becomes all
those who are in any way connected with the literature of England, to
take that high stand, to which the nature of their pursuits, and the
extent of their sphere of usefulness, justly entitle them, to
discourage the upholders of such doctrines by every means in their
power, and to hold themselves aloof from the remotest participation
in a system, from which the moral sense and honourable feeling of all
just men must instinctively recoil.
“For myself, I have resolved that I will never from this time enter
into any negotiation with any person for the transmission across the
Atlantic of early proofs of anything I may write, and that I will
forego all profit derivable from such a source. I do not venture to
urge this line of proceeding upon you, but I would beg to suggest,
and to lay great stress upon the necessity of observing one other
course of action, to which I cannot too emphatically call your
attention. The persons who exert themselves to mislead the American
public on this question, to put down its discussion, and to suppress
and distort the truth in reference to it in every possible way, are
(as you may easily suppose) those who have a strong interest in the
existing system of piracy and plunder: inasmuch as, so long as it
continues, they can gain a very comfortable living out of the brains
of other men, while they would find it very difficult to earn bread
by the exercise of their own. These are the editors and proprietors
of newspapers almost exclusively devoted to the re-publication of
popular English works. They are, for the most part, men of very low
attainments, and of more than indifferent reputation; and I have
frequently seen them, in the same sheet in which they boast of the
rapid sale of many thousand copies of an English reprint, coarsely
and insolently attacking the author of that very book, and heaping
scurrility and slander upon his head. I would therefore entreat you,
in the name of the honourable pursuit with which you are so
intimately connected, never to hold correspondence with any of these
men, and never to negotiate with them for the sale of early proofs of
any work over which you have control, but to treat on all occasions
with some respectable American publishing house, and with such an
establishment only. Our common interest in this subject, and my
advocacy of it, single-handed, on every occasion that has presented
itself during my absence from Europe, form my excuse for addressing
you.
“I am, &c.,
“CHARLES DICKENS.”
By his “American Notes,” and by some of the scenes in “Martin
Chuzzlewit,” Dickens gave for a time great offence to the Americans,
though he only satirised some of their foibles (with just a spice of
piquante exaggeration), as he had ours at home. Let the reader hear what
two candid Americans have recently written on this subject:—
“The ‘American Notes’ are weak, and unworthy of their author; but the
American sketches in ‘Martin Chuzzlewit’ are among the cleverest and
truest things he has ever written. The satire was richly deserved,
well applied, and has done a great deal of good. To claim that it
was mere burlesque and exaggeration, is sheer nonsense, and it is
highly disingenuous to deny the existence of the absurdities upon
which it was founded. Moreover, the popular implication that there
is really nothing now in the country justly to provoke a smile—to
urge with so much complacency that we have changed all that—argues
the continued existence of not a little of the same thin-skinned
tetchiness, the same inability ‘to see ourselves as others see us,’
which made us so legitimate a target before.”
“As for certain American portraits painted in Martin Chuzzlewit,”
says an American lady, {24} “I should as soon think of objecting to
them as I should think of objecting to any other discovery in natural
history. To deny the existence of Elijah Pogram, Jefferson Brick,
Colonel Diver, Mrs. Hominy, and Miss Codger, is to deny facts
somewhat exaggerated, that are patent to any keen observer who has
ever travelled through the United States. The character of Elijah
Pogram is so well known as to constantly figure in the world of
illustration; and we can well afford to laugh at foibles of native
growth when Mr. Dickens devotes the greater part of this same novel
to the exposition of English vice and selfishness.”
The following letter, referring to Martin Chuzzlewit, which was then in
course of publication, was addressed by Mr. Dickens to a friend in
January, 1844:—
“Devonshire Terrace,
“_January_ 2_d_, 1844.
MY DEAR SIR,
“THAT is a very horrible case you tell me of. I would to God I could
get at the parental heart of —, in which event I would so scarify it,
that he should writhe again. But if I were to put such a father as
he into a book, all the fathers going (and especially the bad ones)
would hold up their hands and protest against the unnatural
caricature. I find that a great many people (particularly those who
might have sat for the character) consider even Mr. Pecksniff a
grotesque impossibility, and Mrs. Nickleby herself, sitting bodily
before me in a solid chair, once asked me whether I really believed
there ever was such a woman.
“So — reviewing his own case, would not believe in Jonas Chuzzlewit.
‘I like Oliver Twist,’ says —, ‘for I am fond of children. But the
book is unnatural, for who would think of being cruel to poor little
Oliver Twist!’
“Nevertheless I will bear the dog in my mind, and if I can hit him
between the eyes so that he shall stagger more than you or I have
done this Christmas under the combined effects of punch and turkey, I
will.
“Thank you cordially for your note. Excuse this scrap of paper. I
thought it was a whole sheet until I turned it over.
“My dear Sir,
“Faithfully yours,
“CHARLES DICKENS.”
To a collection of Sketches and Tales by a Working Man, published in
1844, {26} Charles Dickens was induced to contribute a preface, from
which we select the following passages:—
“I do not recommend it as a book of surpassing originality or
transcendent merit . . . I do not claim to have discovered, in humble
life, an extraordinary and brilliant genius. I cannot charge mankind
in general with having entered into a conspiracy to neglect the
author of this volume, or to leave him pining in obscurity. I have
not the smallest intention of comparing him with Burns, the
exciseman; or with Bloomfield, the shoemaker; or with Ebenezer
Elliott, the worker in iron; or with James Hogg, the shepherd. I see
no reason to be hot, or bitter, or lowering, or sarcastic, or
indignant, or fierce, or sour, or sharp, in his behalf. I have
nothing to rail at; nothing to exalt; nothing to flourish in the face
of a stony-hearted world; and have but a very short and simple story
to tell.
“John Overs is, as is set forth in the title-page, a working man. A
man who earns his weekly wages (or who did when he was strong enough)
by plying of the hammer, plane, and chisel. He became known to me
nearly six years ago, when he sent me some songs, appropriate to the
different months of the year, with a letter, stating under what
circumstances they had been composed, and in what manner he was
occupied from morning until night. I was just then relinquishing the
conduct of a monthly periodical, {27} or I would gladly have
published them. As it was, I returned them to him, with a private
expression of the interest I felt in such productions. They were
afterwards accepted, with much readiness and consideration, by Mr.
Tait, of Edinburgh, and were printed in his Magazine.
“Finding, after some further correspondence with my new friend, that
his authorship had not ceased with his verses, but that he still
occupied his leisure moments in writing, I took occasion to
remonstrate with him seriously against his pursuing that course. I
told him, his persistence in his new calling made me uneasy; and I
advised him to abandon it as strongly as I could.
“In answer to this dissuasion of mine, he wrote me as manly and
straightforward, but withal, as modest a letter, as ever I read in my
life. He explained to me how limited his ambition was: soaring no
higher than the establishment of his wife in some light business, and
the better education of his children. He set before me the
difference between his evening and holiday studies, such as they
were; and the having no better resource than an ale-house or a
skittle-ground. He told me how every small addition to his stock of
knowledge made his Sunday walks the pleasanter, the hedge-flowers
sweeter, everything more full of interest and meaning to him.
* * * * *
“He is very ill; the faintest shadow of the man who came into my
little study for the first time, half-a-dozen years ago, after the
correspondence I have mentioned. He has been very ill for a long
period; his disease is a severe and wasting affection of the lungs,
which has incapacitated him these many months for every kind of
occupation. ‘If I could only do a hard day’s work,’ he said to me
the other day, ‘how happy I should be.’
“Having these papers by him, amongst others, he bethought himself
that, if he could get a bookseller to purchase them for publication
in a volume, they would enable him to make some temporary provision
for his sick wife, and very young family. We talked the matter over
together, and that it might be easier of accomplishment I promised
him that I would write an introduction to his book.
“I would to Heaven that I could do him better service! I would to
Heaven it were an introduction to a long, and vigorous, and useful
life! But Hope will not trim his lamp the less brightly for him and
his, because of this impulse to their struggling fortunes, and trust
me, reader, they deserve her light, and need it sorely.
“He has inscribed this book to one {28} whose skill will help him,
under Providence, in all that human skill can do. {29} To one who
never could have recognised in any potentate on earth a higher claim
to constant kindness and attention than he has recognized in him. * *
* *”
The beautiful series of Christmas stories, with which during the last
fifteen years the public have become so familiar, was commenced by Mr.
Dickens in December, 1843, with _A Christmas Carol in Prose_, illustrated
by John Leech. What Jeffrey, what Sydney Smith, what Jerrold, what
Thackeray thought and wrote about this little story is well known.
“Blessings on your kind heart, my dear Dickens,” wrote Jeffrey, “and may
it always be as full and as light as it is kind, and a fountain of
goodness to all within reach of its beatings. We are all charmed with
your Carol; chiefly, I think, for the genuine goodness which breathes all
through it, and is the true inspiring angel by which its genius has been
awakened. The whole scene of the Cratchits is like the dream of a
beneficent angel, in spite of its broad reality, and little Tiny Tim in
life and in death almost as sweet and touching as Nelly. You may be sure
you have done more good, and not only fastened more kindly feelings, but
prompted more positive acts of benevolence by this little publication
than can be traced to all the pulpits and confessionals since Christmas,
1842.”
“It is the work,” writes Thackeray, {30} “of the master of all the
English humourists now alive; the young man who came and took his
place calmly at the head of the whole tribe, and who has kept it.
Think of all we owe Mr. Dickens since those half-dozen years, the
store of happy hours that he has made us pass, the kindly and
pleasant companions whom he has introduced to us; the harmless
laughter, the generous wit, the frank, manly, human love which he has
taught us to feel! Every month of those years has brought us some
kind token from this delightful genius. His books may have lost in
art, perhaps, but could we afford to wait? Since the days when the
_Spectator_ was produced by a man of kindred mind and temper, what
books have appeared that have taken so affectionate a hold of the
English public as these?
“Who can listen to objections regarding such a book as this? It
seems to me a national benefit, and to every man or woman who reads
it a personal kindness. The last two people I heard speak of it were
women; neither knew the other, or the author, and both said by way of
criticism, ‘God bless him!’ * * * As for Tiny Tim, there is a certain
passage in the book regarding that young gentleman about which a man
should hardly venture to speak in print or in public, any more than
he would of any other affections of his private heart. There is not
a reader in England but that little creature will be a bond of union
between the author and him; and he will say of Charles Dickens, as
the woman just now, ‘God bless him!’ What a feeling is this for a
writer to be able to inspire, and what a reward to reap.”
During six years did Mr. Dickens continue to issue at Christmas these
little volumes: “A Christmas Carol” (December, 1843); “The Chimes”
(December, 1844); “The Cricket on the Hearth” (December, 1845); “The
Battle of Life” (December, 1846); “The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s
Bargain” (December, 1848). {31}
Christmas stories are now grown so much the fashion that, whenever the
season of holly and mistletoe comes round they greet us at every turn,
forcing themselves upon our notice through every species of whimsical and
enticing embellishment. Why is it that, amidst such a satiety of
novelties we turn again and again, with an interest as keen as ever, to a
perusal of the pages where little Dot Peerybingle chirps as brightly as
the cricket on her own hearth, where Trotty Veck listens to the voices of
the chimes, striving to comprehend what it is they say to him, and where
old Scrooge’s heart is softened by his ghostly visitants? It is because
Charles Dickens has made such a study of that human nature we all possess
in common that he is able to strike with a practised hand upon the chords
of our hearts, and draw forth harmony that vibrates from soul to soul.
It is not, however, our intention here, to follow Mr. Dickens through the
whole of his long and honourable literary career, far less to undertake
the superfluous task of extolling the numerous and brilliant list of
writings that have followed each other in rapid and welcome succession
from his indefatigable pen. All that remains for us to do now, is to
notice briefly two very grave charges that have been made against the
general tendency of his writings, and to bring forward some evidence in
refutation of them.
These two charges are, 1, a wilful perversion of facts in describing the
political and social condition of our time; 2, an irreverence for and
ridicule of sacred things and persons, which (say the objectors) infuses
a subtle poison through the whole of his works, and unsettles the belief
of the young. We shall take these charges one at a time.
In some of his later novels, such as “Bleak House,” and “Little Dorrit,”
in which he has endeavoured to grapple with the great social and
political problems of the age, certain critics have accused him of
exaggeration, and even of a wilful perversion of facts. Against their
opinion we are pleased to be able to set that of so good an authority as
the author of “Modern Painters:”—
“The essential value and truth of Dickens’s writings,” says Mr.
Ruskin, “have been unwisely lost sight of by many thoughtful persons,
merely because he presents his truth with some colour of caricature.
Unwisely, because Dickens’s caricature, though often gross, is never
mistaken. Allowing for his manner of telling them, the things he
tells us are always true. I wish that he could think it right to
limit his brilliant exaggeration to works written only for public
amusement; and when he takes up a subject of high national
importance, such as that which he handled in ‘Hard Times,’ that he
would use severer and more accurate analysis. The usefulness of that
work (to my mind, in several respects the greatest he has written,)
is with many persons seriously diminished, because Mr. Bounderby is a
dramatic monster, instead of a characteristic example of a worldly
master; and Stephen Blackpool a dramatic perfection, instead of a
characteristic example of an honest workman. But let us not lose the
use of Dickens’s wit and insight because he chooses to speak in a
circle of stage fire. He is entirely right in his main drift and
purpose in every book he has written; and all of them, but especially
‘Hard Times,’ should be studied with close and earnest care by
persons interested in social questions. They will find much that is
partial, and, because partial, apparently unjust; but if they examine
all the evidence on the other side, which Dickens seems to overlook,
it will appear, after all their trouble, that his view was the
finally right one, grossly and sharply told.” {33}
Secondly, Mr. Dickens is accused of an irreverence for, and unseemly
ridicule of, sacred things. Any attentive reader of Dickens will have
observed that he is not much in the habit of quoting from, or alluding to
the writings of others; but that when he does quote or allude, it is in
the great majority of cases from or to the Holy Scriptures. {34}
Occasionally we come upon a reference to Shakespeare; now and then we
meet with one from Swift, or Scott, or Byron; but these occur so seldom,
that it may be said, once for all, that the source from which Mr. Dickens
is usually in the habit of making quotations, is the Bible only. It is
very interesting to find that so many of Mr. Dickens’s characters are
represented as being in the habit either of regularly reading and
studying the Bible, or of having it read to them by some one else.
“I ain’t much of a hand at reading writing-hand,” said Betty Higden,
“though I can read my Bible and most print.” Little Nell was in the
constant habit of taking the Bible with her to read while in her quiet
and lonely retreat in the old church, after all her long and weary
wanderings were past. In the happy time which Oliver Twist spent with
Mrs. Maylie and Rose, he used to read, in the evenings, a chapter or two
from the Bible, which he had been studying all the week, and in the
performance of which duty he felt more proud and pleased than if he had
been the clergyman himself. There was Sarah, in the “Sketches by Boz,”
who regularly read the Bible to her old mistress; and in the touching
sketch of “Our Next-door Neighbour” in the same book, we find the mother
of the sick boy engaged in reading the Bible to him when the visitor
called and interrupted her. This incident reminds us of the poor
Chancery prisoner in the Fleet, who, when on his death-bed calmly waiting
the release which would set him free for ever, had the Bible read to him
by an old man in a cobbler’s apron. One of David Copperfield’s earliest
recollections was of a certain Sunday evening, when his mother read aloud
to him and Peggotty the story of Our Saviour raising Lazarus from the
dead. So deep an impression did the story make upon the boy, taken in
connexion with all that had been lately told him about his father’s
funeral, that he requested to be carried up to his bed-room, from the
windows of which he could see the quiet churchyard with the dead all
lying in their graves at rest below the solemn moon. Pip, too, in “Great
Expectations,” was not only in the habit of reading the Bible to the
convict under sentence of death, but of praying with him as well; and
Esther Summerson tells us how she used to come downstairs every evening
at nine o’clock to read the Bible to her god-mother.
Not a few of the dwellings into which Mr. Dickens conducts us in the
course of some of his best-known stories, have their walls decorated with
prints illustrative of familiar scenes from sacred history. Thus when
Martin Chuzzlewit went away from Pecksniff’s, and was ten good miles on
his way to London, he stopped to breakfast in the parlour of a little
roadside inn, on the walls of which were two or three highly-coloured
pictures, representing the Wise Men at the Manger, and the Prodigal Son
returning to his Father. On the walls of Peggotty’s charming
boat-cottage there were prints, showing the Sacrifice of Isaac, and the
Casting of Daniel into the Den of Lions. When Arthur Clennam came home
after his long absence in the East, he found the Plagues of Egypt still
hanging, framed and glazed, on the same old place in his mother’s
parlour. And who has forgotten the fireplace in old Scrooge’s house,
which “was paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to
illustrate the Scriptures?”
Here are a few comparisons. Mr. Larry, in bestowing a bachelor’s
blessing on Miss Cross, before “somebody” came to claim her for his own,
“held the fair face from him to look at the well-remembered expression on
the forehead, and then laid the bright golden hair against his little
brown wig, with a genuine tenderness and delicacy which, if such things
be old-fashioned, were as old as Adam.” As old as Adam here means so
long ago as Adam’s time; while Methuselah suggests great age. Thus Miss
Jellyby relieved her mind to Miss Summerson on the subject of Mr. Quale,
in the following energetic language:—“If he were to come with his great
shining, lumpy forehead, night after night, till he was as old as
Methuselah, I wouldn’t have anything to say to him.” And Mr. Filer, in
his eminently practical remarks on the lamentable ignorance of political
economy on the part of working people in connexion with marriage,
observed to Alderman Cute that a man may live to be as old as Methuselah,
and may labour all his life for the benefit of such people; but there
could be no more hope of persuading them that they had no right or
business to be married, than he could hope to persuade them that they had
no earthly right or business to be born. Miss Betsy Trotwood declared to
Mr. Dick that the natural consequence of David Copperfield’s mother
having married a murderer—or a man with a name very like it—was to set
the boy a-prowling and wandering about the country, “like Cain before he
was grown up.” Joe Gargery’s journeyman, on going away from his work at
night, used to slouch out of the shop like Cain, or the Wandering Jew, as
if he had no idea where he was going, and had no intention of ever coming
back. Describing the state of “the thriving City of Eden,” when Martin
and Mark arrived there, the author of “Martin Chuzzlewit” says—“The
waters of the Deluge might have left it but a week before, so choked with
slime and matted growth was the hideous swamp which bore that name.” The
Deluge suggests Noah’s ark. The following reference to it is from
“Little Dorrit,” descriptive of the gradual approach of darkness up among
the highest ridges of the Alps:—“The ascending night came up the
mountains like a rising water. When at last it rose to the walls of the
convent of the great St. Bernard, it was as if that weather-beaten
structure were another ark, and floated on the shadowy waves.” Here is
something from the Tower of Babel:—“Looming heavy in the black wet night,
the tall chimneys of the Coketown factories rose high into the air, and
looked as if they were so many competing towers of Babel.” When Mortimer
Lightwood inquired of Charley Hexam, with reference to the body of the
man found in the river, whether or not any means had been employed to
restore life, he received this reply:—“You wouldn’t ask, sir, if you knew
his state. Pharoah’s multitude that were drowned in the Red Sea ain’t
more beyond restoring to life.” The boy added, further, “that if Lazarus
were only half as far gone, that was the greatest of all the miracles.”
When the Scotch surgeon was called in professionally to see Mr. Krook’s
unfortunate lodger, the Scotch tongue pronounced him to be “just as dead
as Chairy.” Job’s poverty is not likely to be forgotten among the
comparisons. No, Mr. Mell’s mother was as poor as Job. Nor Samson’s
strength: Dot’s mother had so many infallible recipes for the
preservation of the baby’s health, that had they all been administered,
the said baby must have been done for, though strong as an infant Samson.
Nor Goliath’s importance: John Chivery’s chivalrous feeling towards all
that belonged to Little Dorrit, made him so very respectable, in spite of
his small stature, his weak legs, and his genuine poetic temperament,
that a Goliath might have sat in his place demanding less consideration
at Arthur Clennam’s hands. Nor Solomon’s wisdom: Trotty Veck was so
delighted when the child kissed him that he couldn’t help saying, “She’s
as sensible as Solomon.” Miss Wade having said farewell to her
fellow-travellers in the public room of the hotel at Marseilles, sought
her own apartment. As she passed along the gallery, she heard an angry
sound of muttering and sobbing. A door stood open, and, looking into the
room, she saw therein Pet’s attendant, the maid with the curious name of
Tattycoram. Miss Wade asked what was the matter, and received in reply a
few short and angry words in a deeply-injured, ill-used tone. Then again
commenced the sobs and tears and pinching, tearing fingers, making
altogether such a scene as if she were being “rent by the demons of old.”
Let us close these comparisons by quoting another from the same book,
“Little Dorrit,” descriptive of the evening stillness after a day of
terrific glare and heat at Marseilles:—“The sun went down in a red,
green, golden glory; the stars came out in the heavens, and the
fire-flies mimicked them in the lower air, as men may feebly imitate the
goodness of a better order of beings; the long, dusty roads and the
interminable plains were in repose, and _so deep a hush was on the sea_,
_that it scarcely whispered of the time when it shall give up its dead_.”
Looking over the familiar pages of “Nicholas Nickleby,” our eye lights
upon a passage, almost at opening, which refers to God’s goodness and
mercy. As Nickleby’s father lay on his death-bed, he embraced his wife
and children, and then “solemnly commended them to One who never deserted
the widow or her fatherless children.” Towards the close of Esther
Summerson’s narrative in “Bleak House” we read these touching, tender
words regarding Ada’s baby:—“The little child who was to have done so
much was born before the turf was planted on its father’s grave. It was
a boy; and I, my husband, and my guardian gave him his father’s name.
The help that my dear counted on did come to her; though it came in the
Eternal Wisdom for another purpose. Though to bless and restore his
mother, not his father, was the errand of this baby, its power was mighty
to do it. When I saw the strength of the weak little hand, and how its
touch could heal my darling’s heart and raise up hopes within her, I felt
a new sense of the goodness and tenderness of God.” After these
illustrations of the great lessons of the goodness of God, and that there
is mercy in even our hardest trials, we come next upon one which teaches
the duty of patience and resignation to God’s will. Mrs. Maylie observed
to Oliver Twist, with reference to the dangerous illness of Rose, that
she had seen and experienced enough to “know that it is not always the
youngest and best who are spared to those that love them; but this should
give us comfort in our sorrow, for Heaven is just, and such things teach
us impressively that there is a brighter world than this, and that the
passage to it is speedy. God’s will be done!”
Our Saviour’s life and teaching afford so many interesting illustrations
to Charles Dickens that our great difficulty, in the limited space to
which we are now confined, is to make a good selection. Here is a sketch
entitled “A Christmas Tree,” from one of his reprinted pieces, which
contains this simple and beautiful summary of our Lord’s life on
earth:—“The waits are playing, and they break my childish sleep! What
images do I associate with the Christmas music as I see them set forth on
the Christmas Tree? Known before all the others, keeping far apart from
all the others, they gather round my little bed. An angel speaking to a
group of shepherds in a field; some travellers, with eyes uplifted,
following a star; a Baby in a manger; a Child in a spacious temple
talking with grave men; a solemn figure, with a mild and beautiful face,
raising a dead girl by the hand; again, near a city gate, calling back
the son of a widow, on his bier, to life; a crowd of people looking
through the opened roof of a chamber where He sits, and letting down a
sick person on a bed with ropes; the same, in a tempest, walking on the
water to a ship; again, on a sea-shore, teaching a great multitude;
again, with a child upon His knee, and other children round; again,
restoring sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to the deaf,
health to the sick, strength to the lame, knowledge to the ignorant;
again, dying upon a cross, watched by armed soldiers, a thick darkness
coming on, the earth beginning to shake, and only one voice heard,
‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do.’”
These passages, which are only a few out of a very much longer list that
might be made, will be sufficient, we trust, to show how much our
greatest living novelist is in the habit of going to the sacred narrative
for illustrations to many of his most touching incidents, and how
reverent and respectful always is the spirit in which every such
illustration is employed. To think of Charles Dickens’s writings as
containing no religious teaching, is to do them a great injustice.
* * * * *
The first of Mr. Dickens’s famous public Readings was given at
Birmingham, during the Christmas week of 1853. At a meeting held on
Monday, January 10, 1853, in the theatre of the Philosophical
Institution, “for the purpose of considering the desirableness of
establishing in Birmingham a Scientific and Literary Society upon a
comprehensive plan, having for its object the diffusion,” &c., Mr. Arthur
Ryland read a letter from Mr. Charles Dickens, received by him the day
after the Literary and Artistic Banquet, containing an offer to visit
Birmingham next Christmas, and read his Christmas Carol, in the Town
Hall, for the benefit of the proposed Institution, with the proviso,
however, that as many as possible of the working class should be admitted
free. “It would,” said Mr. Dickens, “take about two hours, with a pause
of ten minutes half-way through. There would be some novelty in the
thing, as I have never done it in public, though I have in private, and
(if I may say so) with a great effect on the hearers. I was so
inexpressibly gratified last night by the warmth and enthusiasm of my
Birmingham friends, that I feel half ashamed this morning of so poor an
offer. But as I had decided on making it to you before I came down
yesterday, I propose it nevertheless.”
The readings—three in number—came off with great _éclat_ during the last
week of the year, and brought in a net sum of £400 to the Institute. Mr.
Dickens continued from this time to give similar readings, for charitable
purposes, both in the provinces and in London; but it was not till five
years later (1858) that he began to read on his own account.
As we are writing, that long series of readings—continued through sixteen
years, in both hemispheres—is drawing to a close, and the voice and
figure of Charles Dickens, that have grown so familiar to us all, will
dwell henceforth in the memory alone, but in one of its most honoured
niches.
We ought not to omit to mention what any reader may well surmise, that
Charles Dickens is inimitable in enlivening correspondence or table-talk
with humorous anecdote, appropriate to the occasion. We subjoin a few
specimens. The first is from one of his letters to Douglas Jerrold, and
is dated Paris, 14th February, 1847:—“I am somehow reminded of a good
story I heard the other night from a man who was a witness of it, and an
actor in it. At a certain German town last autumn there was a tremendous
_furore_ about Jenny Lind, who, after driving the whole place mad, left
it, on her travels, early one morning. The moment her carriage was
outside the gates, a party of rampant students, who had escorted it,
rushed back to the inn, demanded to be shown to her bedroom, swept like a
whirlwind upstairs into the room indicated to them, tore up the sheets,
and wore them in strips as decorations. An hour or two afterwards a bald
old gentleman, of amiable appearance, an Englishman, who was staying in
the hotel, came to breakfast at the _table d’hôte_, and was observed to
be much disturbed in his mind, and to show great terror whenever a
student came near him. At last he said, in a low voice, to some people
who were near him at the table, ‘You are English gentlemen, I observe.
Most extraordinary people, these Germans! Students, as a body, raving
mad, gentlemen!’ ‘Oh, no!’ said somebody else; ‘excitable, but very good
fellows, and very sensible.’ ‘By God, sir!’ returned the old gentleman,
still more disturbed, ‘then there’s something political in it, and I am a
marked man. I went out for a little walk this morning after shaving, and
while I was gone’—he fell into a terrible perspiration as he told
it—‘they burst into my bedroom, tore up my sheets, and are now patrolling
the town in all directions with bits of ’em in their button-holes!’ I
needn’t wind up by adding that they had gone to the wrong chamber.”
Dickens now and then administers a little gentle rebuke to affectation,
in a pleasant but unmistakable manner. Here is an instance of how he
silenced a bilious young writer, who was inveighing against the world in
a very “forcible feeble manner.” During a pause in this philippic
against the human race, Dickens said across the table, in the most
self-congratulatory of tones:—“I say—what a lucky thing it is you and I
don’t belong to it? It reminds me,” continued the author of Pickwick,
“of the two men, who on a _raised_ scaffold were awaiting the final
delicate attention of the hangman; the notice of one was aroused by
observing that a bull had got into the crowd of spectators, and was
busily employed in tossing one here, and another there; whereupon one of
the criminals said to the other—‘I say, Bill, how _lucky it is_ for us
that we _are up here_.’”
* * * * *
Here is a humorous and graphic account which he sent to the leading
newspaper of his sensations during the shock of earthquake that was felt
all over England in October, 1863. It is doubly interesting, as giving a
description of his country-house at Gad’s-hill, near Rochester:—
“I was awakened by a violent swaying of my bedstead from side to
side, accompanied by a singular heaving motion. It was exactly as if
some great beast had been crouching asleep under the bedstead, and
were now shaking itself and trying to rise. The time by my watch was
twenty minutes past three, and I suppose the shock to have lasted
nearly a minute. The bedstead, a large iron one, standing nearly
north and south, appeared to me to be the only piece of furniture in
the room that was heavily shaken. Neither the doors nor the windows
rattled, though they rattle enough in windy weather, this house
standing alone, on high ground, in the neighbourhood of two great
rivers. There was no noise. The air was very still, and much warmer
than it had been in the earlier part of the night. Although the
previous afternoon had been wet, the glass had not fallen. I had
mentioned my surprise at its standing near the letter ‘i’ in ‘Fair,’
and having a tendency to rise.”
* * * * *
But the thing which, above all others, has characterised Dickens
throughout his career, that has made his world-wide fame, and rendered
his name a household word, is his broad, genial sympathy with life in all
its phases, and with those most who are manfully toiling towards a better
day. To this “enthusiasm of humanity” John Forster has alluded in the
Dedicatory Sonnet to Charles Dickens, prefixed to his “Life of
Goldsmith,” (March, 1848), when he says:—
“Come with me and behold,
O friend with heart as gentle for distress,
As resolute with wise true thoughts to bind
The happiest to the unhappiest of our kind,
That there is fiercer crowded misery
In garret-toil and London loneliness
Than in cruel islands ’mid the far-off sea.”
The great heart of Dickens has beat in unison with his age and with the
people, and his name will be dear to all English-speaking races long
after this little island of ours, the old home, shall have become a
summer resort—a curiosity to visit—for the children of the great
Anglo-Saxon Republics that are now growing up in the New and the Southern
Worlds.
_December_, 1869.
I.
EDINBURGH, JUNE 25, 1841.
[At a public dinner, given in honour of Mr. Dickens, and presided over by
the late Professor Wilson, the Chairman having proposed his health in a
long and eloquent speech, Mr. Dickens returned thanks as follows:—]
IF I felt your warm and generous welcome less, I should be better able to
thank you. If I could have listened as you have listened to the glowing
language of your distinguished Chairman, and if I could have heard as you
heard the “thoughts that breathe and words that burn,” which he has
uttered, it would have gone hard but I should have caught some portion of
his enthusiasm, and kindled at his example. But every word which fell
from his lips, and every demonstration of sympathy and approbation with
which you received his eloquent expressions, renders me unable to respond
to his kindness, and leaves me at last all heart and no lips, yearning to
respond as I would do to your cordial greeting—possessing, heaven knows,
the will, and desiring only to find the way.
The way to your good opinion, favour, and support, has been to me very
pleasing—a path strewn with flowers and cheered with sunshine. I feel as
if I stood amongst old friends, whom I had intimately known and highly
valued. I feel as if the deaths of the fictitious creatures, in which
you have been kind enough to express an interest, had endeared us to each
other as real afflictions deepen friendships in actual life; I feel as if
they had been real persons, whose fortunes we had pursued together in
inseparable connexion, and that I had never known them apart from you.
It is a difficult thing for a man to speak of himself or of his works.
But perhaps on this occasion I may, without impropriety, venture to say a
word on the spirit in which mine were conceived. I felt an earnest and
humble desire, and shall do till I die, to increase the stock of harmless
cheerfulness. I felt that the world was not utterly to be despised; that
it was worthy of living in for many reasons. I was anxious to find, as
the Professor has said, if I could, in evil things, that soul of goodness
which the Creator has put in them. I was anxious to show that virtue may
be found in the bye-ways of the world, that it is not incompatible with
poverty and even with rags, and to keep steadily through life the motto,
expressed in the burning words of your Northern poet—
“The rank is but the guinea stamp,
The man’s the gowd for a’ that.”
And in following this track, where could I have better assurance that I
was right, or where could I have stronger assurance to cheer me on than
in your kindness on this to me memorable night?
I am anxious and glad to have an opportunity of saying a word in
reference to one incident in which I am happy to know you were
interested, and still more happy to know, though it may sound
paradoxical, that you were disappointed—I mean the death of the little
heroine. When I first conceived the idea of conducting that simple story
to its termination, I determined rigidly to adhere to it, and never to
forsake the end I had in view. Not untried in the school of affliction,
in the death of those we love, I thought what a good thing it would be if
in my little work of pleasant amusement I could substitute a garland of
fresh flowers for the sculptured horrors which disgrace the tomb. If I
have put into my book anything which can fill the young mind with better
thoughts of death, or soften the grief of older hearts; if I have written
one word which can afford pleasure or consolation to old or young in time
of trial, I shall consider it as something achieved—something which I
shall be glad to look back upon in after life. Therefore I kept to my
purpose, notwithstanding that towards the conclusion of the story, I
daily received letters of remonstrance, especially from the ladies. God
bless them for their tender mercies! The Professor was quite right when
he said that I had not reached to an adequate delineation of their
virtues; and I fear that I must go on blotting their characters in
endeavouring to reach the ideal in my mind. These letters were, however,
combined with others from the sterner sex, and some of them were not
altogether free from personal invective. But, notwithstanding, I kept to
my purpose, and I am happy to know that many of those who at first
condemned me are now foremost in their approbation.
If I have made a mistake in detaining you with this little incident, I do
not regret having done so; for your kindness has given me such a
confidence in you, that the fault is yours and not mine. I come once
more to thank you, and here I am in a difficulty again. The distinction
you have conferred upon me is one which I never hoped for, and of which I
never dared to dream. That it is one which I shall never forget, and
that while I live I shall be proud of its remembrance, you must well
know. I believe I shall never hear the name of this capital of Scotland
without a thrill of gratitude and pleasure. I shall love while I have
life her people, her hills, and her houses, and even the very stones of
her streets. And if in the future works which may lie before me you
should discern—God grant you may!—a brighter spirit and a clearer wit, I
pray you to refer it back to this night, and point to that as a Scottish
passage for evermore. I thank you again and again, with the energy of a
thousand thanks in each one, and I drink to you with a heart as full as
my glass, and far easier emptied, I do assure you.
* * * * *
Later in the evening, in proposing the health of Professor Wilson, Mr.
Dickens said:—
I HAVE the honour to be entrusted with a toast, the very mention of which
will recommend itself to you, I know, as one possessing no ordinary
claims to your sympathy and approbation, and the proposing of which is as
congenial to my wishes and feelings as its acceptance must be to yours.
It is the health of our Chairman, and coupled with his name I have to
propose the literature of Scotland—a literature which he has done much to
render famous through the world, and of which he has been for many
years—as I hope and believe he will be for many more—a most brilliant and
distinguished ornament. Who can revert to the literature of the land of
Scott and of Burns without having directly in his mind, as inseparable
from the subject and foremost in the picture, that old man of might, with
his lion heart and sceptred crutch—Christopher North. I am glad to
remember the time when I believed him to be a real, actual, veritable old
gentleman, that might be seen any day hobbling along the High Street with
the most brilliant eye—but that is no fiction—and the greyest hair in all
the world—who wrote not because he cared to write, not because he cared
for the wonder and admiration of his fellow-men, but who wrote because he
could not help it, because there was always springing up in his mind a
clear and sparkling stream of poetry which must have vent, and like the
glittering fountain in the fairy tale, draw what you might, was ever at
the full, and never languished even by a single drop or bubble. I had so
figured him in my mind, and when I saw the Professor two days ago,
striding along the Parliament House, I was disposed to take it as a
personal offence—I was vexed to see him look so hearty. I drooped to see
twenty Christophers in one. I began to think that Scottish life was all
light and no shadows, and I began to doubt that beautiful book to which I
have turned again and again, always to find new beauties and fresh
sources of interest.
* * * * *
In proposing the memory of the late Sir David Wilkie, Mr. Dickens said:—
LESS fortunate than the two gentlemen who have preceded me, it is
confided to me to mention a name which cannot be pronounced without
sorrow, a name in which Scotland had a great triumph, and which England
delighted to honour. One of the gifted of the earth has passed away, as
it were, yesterday; one who was devoted to his art, and his art was
nature—I mean David Wilkie. {53} He was one who made the cottage hearth
a graceful thing—of whom it might truly be said that he found “books in
the running brooks,” and who has left in all he did some breathing of the
air which stirs the heather. But however desirous to enlarge on his
genius as an artist, I would rather speak of him now as a friend who has
gone from amongst us. There is his deserted studio—the empty easel lying
idly by—the unfinished picture with its face turned to the wall, and
there is that bereaved sister, who loved him with an affection which
death cannot quench. He has left a name in fame clear as the bright sky;
he has filled our minds with memories pure as the blue waves which roll
over him. Let us hope that she who more than all others mourns his loss,
may learn to reflect that he died in the fulness of his time, before age
or sickness had dimmed his powers—and that she may yet associate with
feelings as calm and pleasant as we do now the memory of Wilkie.
II.
JANUARY, 1842.
[In presenting Captain Hewett, of the _Britannia_, {55} with a service of
plate on behalf of the passengers, Mr. Dickens addressed him as follows:]
CAPTAIN HEWETT,—I am very proud and happy to have been selected as the
instrument of conveying to you the heartfelt thanks of my
fellow-passengers on board the ship entrusted to your charge, and of
entreating your acceptance of this trifling present. The ingenious
artists who work in silver do not always, I find, keep their promises,
even in Boston. I regret that, instead of two goblets, which there
should be here, there is, at present, only one. The deficiency, however,
will soon be supplied; and, when it is, our little testimonial will be,
so far, complete.
You are a sailor, Captain Hewett, in the truest sense of the word; and
the devoted admiration of the ladies, God bless them, is a sailor’s first
boast. I need not enlarge upon the honour they have done you, I am sure,
by their presence here. Judging of you by myself, I am certain that the
recollection of their beautiful faces will cheer your lonely vigils upon
the ocean for a long time to come.
In all time to come, and in all your voyages upon the sea, I hope you
will have a thought for those who wish to live in your memory by the help
of these trifles. As they will often connect you with the pleasure of
those homes and fire sides from which they once wandered, and which, but
for you, they might never have regained, so they trust that you will
sometimes associate them with your hours of festive enjoyment; and, that,
when you drink from these cups, you will feel that the draught is
commended to your lips by friends whose best wishes you have; and who
earnestly and truly hope for your success, happiness, and prosperity, in
all the undertakings of your life.
III.
FEBRUARY 1842.
[At dinner given to Mr. Dickens by the young men of Boston. The company
consisted of about two hundred, among whom were George Bancroft,
Washington Allston, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. The toast of “Health,
happiness, and a hearty welcome to Charles Dickens,” having been proposed
by the chairman, Mr. Quincy, and received with great applause, Mr.
Dickens responded with the following address:]
GENTLEMEN,—If you had given this splendid entertainment to anyone else in
the whole wide world—if I were to-night to exult in the triumph of my
dearest friend—if I stood here upon my defence, to repel any unjust
attack—to appeal as a stranger to your generosity and kindness as the
freest people on the earth—I could, putting some restraint upon myself,
stand among you as self-possessed and unmoved as I should be alone in my
own room in England. But when I have the echoes of your cordial greeting
ringing in my ears; when I see your kind faces beaming a welcome so warm
and earnest as never man had—I feel, it is my nature, so vanquished and
subdued, that I have hardly fortitude enough to thank you. If your
President, instead of pouring forth that delightful mixture of humour and
pathos which you have just heard, had been but a caustic, ill-natured
man—if he had only been a dull one—if I could only have doubted or
distrusted him or you, I should have had my wits at my fingers’ ends,
and, using them, could have held you at arm’s-length. But you have given
me no such opportunity; you take advantage of me in the tenderest point;
you give me no chance of playing at company, or holding you at a
distance, but flock about me like a host of brothers, and make this place
like home. Indeed, gentlemen, indeed, if it be natural and allowable for
each of us, on his own hearth, to express his thoughts in the most homely
fashion, and to appear in his plainest garb, I have a fair claim upon you
to let me do so to-night, for you have made my home an Aladdin’s Palace.
You fold so tenderly within your breasts that common household lamp in
which my feeble fire is all enshrined, and at which my flickering torch
is lighted up, that straight my household gods take wing, and are
transported there. And whereas it is written of that fairy structure
that it never moved without two shocks—one when it rose, and one when it
settled down—I can say of mine that, however sharp a tug it took to pluck
it from its native ground, it struck at once an easy, and a deep and
lasting root into this soil; and loved it as its own. I can say more of
it, and say with truth, that long before it moved, or had a chance of
moving, its master—perhaps from some secret sympathy between its timbers,
and a certain stately tree that has its being hereabout, and spreads its
broad branches far and wide—dreamed by day and night, for years, of
setting foot upon this shore, and breathing this pure air. And, trust
me, gentlemen, that, if I had wandered here, unknowing and unknown, I
would—if I know my own heart—have come with all my sympathies clustering
as richly about this land and people—with all my sense of justice as
keenly alive to their high claims on every man who loves God’s image—with
all my energies as fully bent on judging for myself, and speaking out,
and telling in my sphere the truth, as I do now, when you rain down your
welcomes on my head.
Our President has alluded to those writings which have been my occupation
for some years past; and you have received his allusions in a manner
which assures me—if I needed any such assurance—that we are old friends
in the spirit, and have been in close communion for a long time.
It is not easy for a man to speak of his own books. I daresay that few
persons have been more interested in mine than I, and if it be a general
principle in nature that a lover’s love is blind, and that a mother’s
love is blind, I believe it may be said of an author’s attachment to the
creatures of his own imagination, that it is a perfect model of constancy
and devotion, and is the blindest of all. But the objects and purposes I
have had in view are very plain and simple, and may be easily told. I
have always had, and always shall have, an earnest and true desire to
contribute, as far as in me lies, to the common stock of healthful
cheerfulness and enjoyment. I have always had, and always shall have, an
invincible repugnance to that mole-eyed philosophy which loves the
darkness, and winks and scowls in the light. I believe that Virtue shows
quite as well in rags and patches, as she does in purple and fine linen.
I believe that she and every beautiful object in external nature, claims
some sympathy in the breast of the poorest man who breaks his scanty loaf
of daily bread. I believe that she goes barefoot as well as shod. I
believe that she dwells rather oftener in alleys and by-ways than she
does in courts and palaces, and that it is good, and pleasant, and
profitable to track her out, and follow her. I believe that to lay one’s
hand upon some of those rejected ones whom the world has too long
forgotten, and too often misused, and to say to the proudest and most
thoughtless—“These creatures have the same elements and capacities of
goodness as yourselves, they are moulded in the same form, and made of
the same clay; and though ten times worse than you, may, in having
retained anything of their original nature amidst the trials and
distresses of their condition, be really ten times better;” I believe
that to do this is to pursue a worthy and not useless vocation.
Gentlemen, that you think so too, your fervent greeting sufficiently
assures me. That this feeling is alive in the Old World as well as in
the New, no man should know better than I—I, who have found such wide and
ready sympathy in my own dear land. That in expressing it, we are but
treading in the steps of those great master-spirits who have gone before,
we know by reference to all the bright examples in our literature, from
Shakespeare downward.
There is one other point connected with the labours (if I may call them
so) that you hold in such generous esteem, to which I cannot help
adverting. I cannot help expressing the delight, the more than happiness
it was to me to find so strong an interest awakened on this side of the
water, in favour of that little heroine of mine, to whom your president
has made allusion, who died in her youth. I had letters about that
child, in England, from the dwellers in log-houses among the morasses,
and swamps, and densest forests, and deep solitudes of the far west.
Many a sturdy hand, hard with the axe and spade, and browned by the
summer’s sun, has taken up the pen, and written to me a little history of
domestic joy or sorrow, always coupled, I am proud to say, with something
of interest in that little tale, or some comfort or happiness derived
from it, and my correspondent has always addressed me, not as a writer of
books for sale, resident some four or five thousand miles away, but as a
friend to whom he might freely impart the joys and sorrows of his own
fireside. Many a mother—I could reckon them now by dozens, not by
units—has done the like, and has told me how she lost such a child at
such a time, and where she lay buried, and how good she was, and how, in
this or that respect, she resembles Nell. I do assure you that no
circumstance of my life has given me one hundredth part of the
gratification I have derived from this source. I was wavering at the
time whether or not to wind up my Clock, {61} and come and see this
country, and this decided me. I felt as if it were a positive duty, as
if I were bound to pack up my clothes, and come and see my friends; and
even now I have such an odd sensation in connexion with these things,
that you have no chance of spoiling me. I feel as though we were
agreeing—as indeed we are, if we substitute for fictitious characters the
classes from which they are drawn—about third parties, in whom we had a
common interest. At every new act of kindness on your part, I say to
myself “That’s for Oliver; I should not wonder if that was meant for
Smike; I have no doubt that is intended for Nell;” and so I become a much
happier, certainly, but a more sober and retiring man than ever I was
before.
Gentlemen, talking of my friends in America, brings me back, naturally
and of course, to you. Coming back to you, and being thereby reminded of
the pleasure we have in store in hearing the gentlemen who sit about me,
I arrive by the easiest, though not by the shortest course in the world,
at the end of what I have to say. But before I sit down, there is one
topic on which I am desirous to lay particular stress. It has, or should
have, a strong interest for us all, since to its literature every country
must look for one great means of refining and improving its people, and
one great source of national pride and honour. You have in America great
writers—great writers—who will live in all time, and are as familiar to
our lips as household words. Deriving (as they all do in a greater or
less degree, in their several walks) their inspiration from the
stupendous country that gave them birth, they diffuse a better knowledge
of it, and a higher love for it, all over the civilized world. I take
leave to say, in the presence of some of those gentleman, that I hope the
time is not far distant when they, in America, will receive of right some
substantial profit and return in England from their labours; and when we,
in England, shall receive some substantial profit and return in America
for ours. Pray do not misunderstand me. Securing to myself from day to
day the means of an honourable subsistence, I would rather have the
affectionate regard of my fellow men, than I would have heaps and mines
of gold. But the two things do not seem to me incompatible. They cannot
be, for nothing good is incompatible with justice; there must be an
international arrangement in this respect: England has done her part, and
I am confident that the time is not far distant when America will do
hers. It becomes the character of a great country; _firstly_, because it
is justice; _secondly_, because without it you never can have, and keep,
a literature of your own.
Gentlemen, I thank you with feelings of gratitude, such as are not often
awakened, and can never be expressed. As I understand it to be the
pleasant custom here to finish with a toast, I would beg to give you:
AMERICA AND ENGLAND, and may they never have any division but the
Atlantic between them.
IV.
FEBRUARY 7, 1842.
GENTLEMEN,—To say that I thank you for the earnest manner in which you
have drunk the toast just now so eloquently proposed to you—to say that I
give you back your kind wishes and good feelings with more than compound
interest; and that I feel how dumb and powerless the best acknowledgments
would be beside such genial hospitality as yours, is nothing. To say
that in this winter season, flowers have sprung up in every footstep’s
length of the path which has brought me here; that no country ever smiled
more pleasantly than yours has smiled on me, and that I have rarely
looked upon a brighter summer prospect than that which lies before me
now, {63} is nothing.
But it is something to be no stranger in a strange place—to feel, sitting
at a board for the first time, the ease and affection of an old guest,
and to be at once on such intimate terms with the family as to have a
homely, genuine interest in its every member—it is, I say, something to
be in this novel and happy frame of mind. And, as it is of your
creation, and owes its being to you, I have no reluctance in urging it as
a reason why, in addressing you, I should not so much consult the form
and fashion of my speech, as I should employ that universal language of
the heart, which you, and such as you, best teach, and best can
understand. Gentlemen, in that universal language—common to you in
America, and to us in England, as that younger mother-tongue, which, by
the means of, and through the happy union of our two great countries,
shall be spoken ages hence, by land and sea, over the wide surface of the
globe—I thank you.
I had occasion to say the other night in Boston, as I have more than once
had occasion to remark before, that it is not easy for an author to speak
of his own books. If the task be a difficult one at any time, its
difficulty, certainly, is not diminished when a frequent recurrence to
the same theme has left one nothing new to say. Still, I feel that, in a
company like this, and especially after what has been said by the
President, that I ought not to pass lightly over those labours of love,
which, if they had no other merit, have been the happy means of bringing
us together.
It has been often observed, that you cannot judge of an author’s personal
character from his writings. It may be that you cannot. I think it very
likely, for many reasons, that you cannot. But, at least, a reader will
rise from the perusal of a book with some defined and tangible idea of
the writer’s moral creed and broad purposes, if he has any at all; and it
is probable enough that he may like to have this idea confirmed from the
author’s lips, or dissipated by his explanation. Gentlemen, my moral
creed—which is a very wide and comprehensive one, and includes all sects
and parties—is very easily summed up. I have faith, and I wish to
diffuse faith in the existence—yes, of beautiful things, even in those
conditions of society, which are so degenerate, degraded, and forlorn,
that, at first sight, it would seem as though they could not be described
but by a strange and terrible reversal of the words of Scripture, “God
said, Let there be light, and there was none.” I take it that we are
born, and that we hold our sympathies, hopes, and energies, in trust for
the many, and not for the few. That we cannot hold in too strong a light
of disgust and contempt, before the view of others, all meanness,
falsehood, cruelty, and oppression, of every grade and kind. Above all,
that nothing is high, because it is in a high place; and that nothing is
low, because it is in a low one. This is the lesson taught us in the
great book of nature. This is the lesson which may be read, alike in the
bright track of the stars, and in the dusty course of the poorest thing
that drags its tiny length upon the ground. This is the lesson ever
uppermost in the thoughts of that inspired man, who tells us that there
are
“Tongues in the trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”
Gentlemen, keeping these objects steadily before me, I am at no loss to
refer your favour and your generous hospitality back to the right source.
While I know, on the one hand, that if, instead of being what it is, this
were a land of tyranny and wrong, I should care very little for your
smiles or frowns, so I am sure upon the other, that if, instead of being
what I am, I were the greatest genius that ever trod the earth, and had
diverted myself for the oppression and degradation of mankind, you would
despise and reject me. I hope you will, whenever, through such means, I
give you the opportunity. Trust me, that, whenever you give me the like
occasion, I will return the compliment with interest.
Gentlemen, as I have no secrets from you, in the spirit of confidence you
have engendered between us, and as I have made a kind of compact with
myself that I never will, while I remain in America, omit an opportunity
of referring to a topic in which I and all others of my class on both
sides of the water are equally interested—equally interested, there is no
difference between us, I would beg leave to whisper in your ear two
words: _International Copyright_. I use them in no sordid sense, believe
me, and those who know me best, best know that. For myself, I would
rather that my children, coming after me, trudged in the mud, and knew by
the general feeling of society that their father was beloved, and had
been of some use, than I would have them ride in their carriages, and
know by their banker’s books that he was rich. But I do not see, I
confess, why one should be obliged to make the choice, or why fame,
besides playing that delightful _reveil_ for which she is so justly
celebrated, should not blow out of her trumpet a few notes of a different
kind from those with which she has hitherto contented herself.
It was well observed the other night by a beautiful speaker, whose words
went to the heart of every man who heard him, that, if there had existed
any law in this respect, Scott might not have sunk beneath the mighty
pressure on his brain, but might have lived to add new creatures of his
fancy to the crowd which swarm about you in your summer walks, and gather
round your winter evening hearths.
As I listened to his words, there came back, fresh upon me, that touching
scene in the great man’s life, when he lay upon his couch, surrounded by
his family, and listened, for the last time, to the rippling of the river
he had so well loved, over its stony bed. I pictured him to myself,
faint, wan, dying, crushed both in mind and body by his honourable
struggle, and hovering round him the phantoms of his own
imagination—Waverley, Ravenswood, Jeanie Deans, Rob Roy, Caleb
Balderstone, Dominie Sampson—all the familiar throng—with cavaliers, and
Puritans, and Highland chiefs innumerable overflowing the chamber, and
fading away in the dim distance beyond. I pictured them, fresh from
traversing the world, and hanging down their heads in shame and sorrow,
that, from all those lands into which they had carried gladness,
instruction, and delight for millions, they brought him not one friendly
hand to help to raise him from that sad, sad bed. No, nor brought him
from that land in which his own language was spoken, and in every house
and hut of which his own books were read in his own tongue, one grateful
dollar-piece to buy a garland for his grave. Oh! if every man who goes
from here, as many do, to look upon that tomb in Dryburgh Abbey, would
but remember this, and bring the recollection home!
Gentlemen, I thank you again, and once again, and many times to that.
You have given me a new reason for remembering this day, which is already
one of mark in my calendar, it being my birthday; and you have given
those who are nearest and dearest to me a new reason for recollecting it
with pride and interest. Heaven knows that, although I should grow ever
so gray, I shall need nothing to remind me of this epoch in my life. But
I am glad to think that from this time you are inseparably connected with
every recurrence of this day; and, that on its periodical return, I shall
always, in imagination, have the unfading pleasure of entertaining you as
my guests, in return for the gratification you have afforded me to-night.
V.
NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 18, 1842.
[At a dinner presided over by Washington Irving, when nearly eight
hundred of the most distinguished citizens of New York were present,
“Charles Dickens, the Literary Guest of the Nation,” having been
“proferred as a sentiment” by the Chairman, Mr. Dickens rose, and spoke
as follows:]
GENTLEMEN,—I don’t know how to thank you—I really don’t know how. You
would naturally suppose that my former experience would have given me
this power, and that the difficulties in my way would have been
diminished; but I assure you the fact is exactly the reverse, and I have
completely baulked the ancient proverb that “a rolling stone gathers no
moss;” and in my progress to this city I have collected such a weight of
obligations and acknowledgment—I have picked up such an enormous mass of
fresh moss at every point, and was so struck by the brilliant scenes of
Monday night, that I thought I could never by any possibility grow any
bigger. I have made, continually, new accumulations to such an extent
that I am compelled to stand still, and can roll no more!
Gentlemen, we learn from the authorities, that, when fairy stories, or
balls, or rolls of thread, stopped of their own accord—as I do not—it
presaged some great catastrophe near at hand. The precedent holds good in
this case. When I have remembered the short time I have before me to
spend in this land of mighty interests, and the poor opportunity I can at
best have of acquiring a knowledge of, and forming an acquaintance with
it, I have felt it almost a duty to decline the honours you so generously
heap upon me, and pass more quietly among you. For Argus himself, though
he had but one mouth for his hundred eyes, would have found the reception
of a public entertainment once a-week too much for his greatest activity;
and, as I would lose no scrap of the rich instruction and the delightful
knowledge which meet me on every hand, (and already I have gleaned a
great deal from your hospitals and common jails),—I have resolved to take
up my staff, and go my way rejoicing, and for the future to shake hands
with America, not at parties but at home; and, therefore, gentlemen, I
say to-night, with a full heart, and an honest purpose, and grateful
feelings, that I bear, and shall ever bear, a deep sense of your kind,
your affectionate and your noble greeting, which it is utterly impossible
to convey in words. No European sky without, and no cheerful home or
well-warmed room within shall ever shut out this land from my vision. I
shall often hear your words of welcome in my quiet room, and oftenest
when most quiet; and shall see your faces in the blazing fire. If I
should live to grow old, the scenes of this and other evenings will shine
as brightly to my dull eyes fifty years hence as now; and the honours you
bestow upon me shall be well remembered and paid back in my undying love,
and honest endeavours for the good of my race.
Gentlemen, one other word with reference to this first person singular,
and then I shall close. I came here in an open, honest, and confiding
spirit, if ever man did, and because I felt a deep sympathy in your land;
had I felt otherwise, I should have kept away. As I came here, and am
here, without the least admixture of one-hundredth part of one grain of
base alloy, without one feeling of unworthy reference to self in any
respect, I claim, in regard to the past, for the last time, my right in
reason, in truth, and in justice, to approach, as I have done on two
former occasions, a question of literary interest. I claim that justice
be done; and I prefer this claim as one who has a right to speak and be
heard. I have only to add that I shall be as true to you as you have
been to me. I recognize in your enthusiastic approval of the creatures
of my fancy, your enlightened care for the happiness of the many, your
tender regard for the afflicted, your sympathy for the downcast, your
plans for correcting and improving the bad, and for encouraging the good;
and to advance these great objects shall be, to the end of my life, my
earnest endeavour, to the extent of my humble ability. Having said thus
much with reference to myself, I shall have the pleasure of saying a few
words with reference to somebody else.
There is in this city a gentleman who, at the reception of one of my
books—I well remember it was the Old Curiosity Shop—wrote to me in
England a letter so generous, so affectionate, and so manly, that if I
had written the book under every circumstance of disappointment, of
discouragement, and difficulty, instead of the reverse, I should have
found in the receipt of that letter my best and most happy reward. I
answered him, {70} and he answered me, and so we kept shaking hands
autographically, as if no ocean rolled between us. I came here to this
city eager to see him, and [_laying his hand it upon Irving’s shoulder_]
here he sits! I need not tell you how happy and delighted I am to see
him here to-night in this capacity.
Washington Irving! Why, gentlemen, I don’t go upstairs to bed two nights
out of the seven—as a very creditable witness near at hand can testify—I
say I do not go to bed two nights out of the seven without taking
Washington Irving under my arm; and, when I don’t take him, I take his
own brother, Oliver Goldsmith. Washington Irving! Why, of whom but him
was I thinking the other day when I came up by the Hog’s Back, the Frying
Pan, Hell Gate, and all these places? Why, when, not long ago, I visited
Shakespeare’s birthplace, and went beneath the roof where he first saw
light, whose name but _his_ was pointed out to me upon the wall?
Washington Irving—Diedrich Knickerbocker—Geoffrey Crayon—why, where can
you go that they have not been there before? Is there an English farm—is
there an English stream, an English city, or an English country-seat,
where they have not been? Is there no Bracebridge Hall in existence?
Has it no ancient shades or quiet streets?
In bygone times, when Irving left that Hall, he left sitting in an old
oak chair, in a small parlour of the Boar’s Head, a little man with a red
nose, and an oilskin hat. When I came away he was sitting there
still!—not a man _like_ him, but the same man—with the nose of immortal
redness and the hat of an undying glaze! Crayon, while there, was on
terms of intimacy with a certain radical fellow, who used to go about,
with a hatful of newspapers, wofully out at elbows, and with a coat of
great antiquity. Why, gentlemen, I know that man—Tibbles the elder, and
he has not changed a hair; and, when I came away, he charged me to give
his best respects to Washington Irving!
Leaving the town and the rustic life of England—forgetting this man, if
we can—putting out of mind the country church-yard and the broken
heart—let us cross the water again, and ask who has associated himself
most closely with the Italian peasantry and the bandits of the Pyrenees?
When the traveller enters his little chamber beyond the Alps—listening to
the dim echoes of the long passages and spacious corridors—damp, and
gloomy, and cold—as he hears the tempest beating with fury against his
window, and gazes at the curtains, dark, and heavy, and covered with
mould—and when all the ghost-stories that ever were told come up before
him—amid all his thick-coming fancies, whom does he think of? Washington
Irving.
Go farther still: go to the Moorish Mountains, sparkling full in the
moonlight—go among the water-carriers and the village gossips, living
still as in days of old—and who has travelled among them before you, and
peopled the Alhambra and made eloquent its shadows? Who awakes there a
voice from every hill and in every cavern, and bids legends, which for
centuries have slept a dreamless sleep, or watched unwinkingly, start up
and pass before you in all their life and glory?
But leaving this again, who embarked with Columbus upon his gallant ship,
traversed with him the dark and mighty ocean, leaped upon the land and
planted there the flag of Spain, but this same man, now sitting by my
side? And being here at home again, who is a more fit companion for
money-diggers? and what pen but his has made Rip Van Winkle, playing at
nine-pins on that thundering afternoon, as much part and parcel of the
Catskill Mountains as any tree or crag that they can boast?
But these are topics familiar from my boyhood, and which I am apt to
pursue; and lest I should be tempted now to talk too long about them, I
will, in conclusion, give you a sentiment, most appropriate, I am sure,
in the presence of such writers as Bryant, Halleck, and—but I suppose I
must not mention the ladies here—
THE LITERATURE OF AMERICA:
She well knows how to do honour to her own literature and to that of
other lands, when she chooses Washington Irving for her representative in
the country of Cervantes.
VI.
MANCHESTER, OCTOBER 5, 1843.
[This address was delivered at a soirée of the members of the Manchester,
Athenæum, at which Mr. Dickens presided. Among the other speakers on the
occasion were Mr. Cobden and Mr. Disraeli.]
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,—I am sure I need scarcely tell you that I am very
proud and happy; and that I take it as a great distinction to be asked to
come amongst you on an occasion such as this, when, even with the
brilliant and beautiful spectacle which I see before me, I can hail it as
the most brilliant and beautiful circumstance of all, that we assemble
together here, even here, upon neutral ground, where we have no more
knowledge of party difficulties, or public animosities between side and
side, or between man and man, than if we were a public meeting in the
commonwealth of Utopia.
Ladies and gentlemen, upon this, and upon a hundred other grounds, this
assembly is not less interesting to me, believe me—although, personally,
almost a stranger here—than it is interesting to you; and I take it, that
it is not of greater importance to all of us than it is to every man who
has learned to know that he has an interest in the moral and social
elevation, the harmless relaxation, the peace, happiness, and
improvement, of the community at large. Not even those who saw the first
foundation of your Athenæum laid, and watched its progress, as I know
they did, almost as tenderly as if it were the progress of a living
creature, until it reared its beautiful front, an honour to the town—not
even they, nor even you who, within its walls, have tasted its
usefulness, and put it to the proof, have greater reason, I am persuaded,
to exult in its establishment, or to hope that it may thrive and prosper,
than scores of thousands at a distance, who—whether consciously or
unconsciously, matters not—have, in the principle of its success and
bright example, a deep and personal concern.
It well becomes, particularly well becomes, this enterprising town, this
little world of labour, that she should stand out foremost in the
foremost rank in such a cause. It well becomes her, that, among her
numerous and noble public institutions, she should have a splendid temple
sacred to the education and improvement of a large class of those who, in
their various useful stations, assist in the production of our wealth,
and in rendering her name famous through the world. I think it is grand
to know, that, while her factories re-echo with the clanking of
stupendous engines, and the whirl and rattle of machinery, the immortal
mechanism of God’s own hand, the mind, is not forgotten in the din and
uproar, but is lodged and tended in a palace of its own. That it is a
structure deeply fixed and rooted in the public spirit of this place, and
built to last, I have no more doubt, judging from the spectacle I see
before me, and from what I know of its brief history, than I have of the
reality of these walls that hem us in, and the pillars that spring up
about us.
You are perfectly well aware, I have no doubt, that the Athenæum was
projected at a time when commerce was in a vigorous and flourishing
condition, and when those classes of society to which it particularly
addresses itself were fully employed, and in the receipt of regular
incomes. A season of depression almost without a parallel ensued, and
large numbers of young men employed in warehouses and offices suddenly
found their occupation gone, and themselves reduced to very straitened
and penurious circumstances. This altered state of things led, as I am
told, to the compulsory withdrawal of many of the members, to a
proportionate decrease in the expected funds, and to the incurrence of a
debt of £3,000. By the very great zeal and energy of all concerned, and
by the liberality of those to whom they applied for help, that debt is
now in rapid course of being discharged. A little more of the same
indefatigable exertion on the one hand, and a little more of the same
community of feeling upon the other, and there will be no such thing; the
figures will be blotted out for good and all, and, from that time, the
Athenæum may be said to belong to you, and to your heirs for ever.
But, ladies and gentlemen, at all times, now in its most thriving, and in
its least flourishing condition—here, with its cheerful rooms, its
pleasant and instructive lectures, its improving library of 6,000
volumes, its classes for the study of the foreign languages, elocution,
music; its opportunities of discussion and debate, of healthful bodily
exercise, and, though last not least—for by this I set great store, as a
very novel and excellent provision—its opportunities of blameless,
rational enjoyment, here it is, open to every youth and man in this great
town, accessible to every bee in this vast hive, who, for all these
benefits, and the inestimable ends to which they lead, can set aside one
sixpence weekly. I do look upon the reduction of the subscription, and
upon the fact that the number of members has considerably more than
doubled within the last twelve months, as strides in the path of the very
best civilization, and chapters of rich promise in the history of
mankind.
I do not know whether, at this time of day, and with such a prospect
before us, we need trouble ourselves very much to rake up the ashes of
the dead-and-gone objections that were wont to be urged by men of all
parties against institutions such as this, whose interests we are met to
promote; but their philosophy was always to be summed up in the unmeaning
application of one short sentence. How often have we heard from a large
class of men wise in their generation, who would really seem to be born
and bred for no other purpose than to pass into currency counterfeit and
mischievous scraps of wisdom, as it is the sole pursuit of some other
criminals to utter base coin—how often have we heard from them, as an
all-convincing argument, that “a little learning is a dangerous thing?”
Why, a little hanging was considered a very dangerous thing, according to
the same authorities, with this difference, that, because a little
hanging was dangerous, we had a great deal of it; and, because a little
learning was dangerous, we were to have none at all. Why, when I hear
such cruel absurdities gravely reiterated, I do sometimes begin to doubt
whether the parrots of society are not more pernicious to its interests
than its birds of prey. I should be glad to hear such people’s estimate
of the comparative danger of “a little learning” and a vast amount of
ignorance; I should be glad to know which they consider the most prolific
parent of misery and crime. Descending a little lower in the social
scale, I should be glad to assist them in their calculations, by carrying
them into certain gaols and nightly refuges I know of, where my own heart
dies within me, when I see thousands of immortal creatures condemned,
without alternative or choice, to tread, not what our great poet calls
the “primrose path” to the everlasting bonfire, but one of jaded flints
and stones, laid down by brutal ignorance, and held together, like the
solid rocks, by years of this most wicked axiom.
Would we know from any honourable body of merchants, upright in deed and
thought, whether they would rather have ignorant or enlightened persons
in their own employment? Why, we have had their answer in this building;
we have it in this company; we have it emphatically given in the
munificent generosity of your own merchants of Manchester, of all sects
and kinds, when this establishment was first proposed. But are the
advantages derivable by the people from institutions such as this, only
of a negative character? If a little learning be an innocent thing, has
it no distinct, wholesome, and immediate influence upon the mind? The
old doggerel rhyme, so often written in the beginning of books, says that
“When house and lands are gone and spent,
Then learning is most excellent;”
but I should be strongly disposed to reform the adage, and say that
“Though house and lands be never got,
Learning can give what they can_not_.”
And this I know, that the first unpurchasable blessing earned by every
man who makes an effort to improve himself in such a place as the
Athenæum, is self-respect—an inward dignity of character, which, once
acquired and righteously maintained, nothing—no, not the hardest
drudgery, nor the direst poverty—can vanquish. Though he should find it
hard for a season even to keep the wolf—hunger—from his door, let him but
once have chased the dragon—ignorance—from his hearth, and self-respect
and hope are left him. You could no more deprive him of those sustaining
qualities by loss or destruction of his worldly goods, than you could, by
plucking out his eyes, take from him an internal consciousness of the
bright glory of the sun.
The man who lives from day to day by the daily exercise in his sphere of
hands or head, and seeks to improve himself in such a place as the
Athenæum, acquires for himself that property of soul which has in all
times upheld struggling men of every degree, but self-made men especially
and always. He secures to himself that faithful companion which, while
it has ever lent the light of its countenance to men of rank and eminence
who have deserved it, has ever shed its brightest consolations on men of
low estate and almost hopeless means. It took its patient seat beside
Sir Walter Raleigh in his dungeon-study in the Tower; it laid its head
upon the block with More; but it did not disdain to watch the stars with
Ferguson, the shepherd’s boy; it walked the streets in mean attire with
Crabbe; it was a poor barber here in Lancashire with Arkwright; it was a
tallow-chandler’s son with Franklin; it worked at shoemaking with
Bloomfield in his garret; it followed the plough with Burns; and, high
above the noise of loom and hammer, it whispers courage even at this day
in ears I could name in Sheffield and in Manchester.
The more the man who improves his leisure in such a place learns, the
better, gentler, kinder man he must become. When he knows how much great
minds have suffered for the truth in every age and time, and to what
dismal persecutions opinion has been exposed, he will become more
tolerant of other men’s belief in all matters, and will incline more
leniently to their sentiments when they chance to differ from his own.
Understanding that the relations between himself and his employers
involve a mutual duty and responsibility, he will discharge his part of
the implied contract cheerfully, satisfactorily, and honourably; for the
history of every useful life warns him to shape his course in that
direction.
The benefits he acquires in such a place are not of a selfish kind, but
extend themselves to his home, and to those whom it contains. Something
of what he hears or reads within such walls can scarcely fail to become
at times a topic of discourse by his own fireside, nor can it ever fail
to lead to larger sympathies with man, and to a higher veneration for the
great Creator of all the wonders of this universe. It appears to his
home and his homely feeling in other ways; for at certain times he
carries there his wife and daughter, or his sister, or, possibly, some
bright-eyed acquaintance of a more tender description. Judging from what
I see before me, I think it is very likely; I am sure I would if I could.
He takes her there to enjoy a pleasant evening, to be gay and happy.
Sometimes it may possibly happen that he dates his tenderness from the
Athenæum. I think that is a very excellent thing, too, and not the least
among the advantages of the institution. In any case, I am sure the
number of bright eyes and beaming faces which grace this meeting to-night
by their presence, will never be among the least of its excellences in my
recollection.
Ladies and gentlemen, I shall not easily forget this scene, the pleasing
task your favour has devolved upon me, or the strong and inspiring
confirmation I have to-night, of all the hopes and reliances I have ever
placed upon institutions of this nature. In the latter point of view—in
their bearing upon this latter point—I regard them as of great
importance, deeming that the more intelligent and reflective society in
the mass becomes, and the more readers there are, the more distinctly
writers of all kinds will be able to throw themselves upon the truthful
feeling of the people and the more honoured and the more useful
literature must be. At the same time, I must confess that, if there had
been an Athenæum, and if the people had been readers, years ago, some
leaves of dedication in your library, of praise of patrons which was very
cheaply bought, very dearly sold, and very marketably haggled for by the
groat, would be blank leaves, and posterity might probably have lacked
the information that certain monsters of virtue ever had existence. But
it is upon a much better and wider scale, let me say it once again—it is
in the effect of such institutions upon the great social system, and the
peace and happiness of mankind, that I delight to contemplate them; and,
in my heart, I am quite certain that long after your institution, and
others of the same nature, have crumbled into dust, the noble harvest of
the seed sown in them will shine out brightly in the wisdom, the mercy,
and the forbearance of another race.
VII.
LIVERPOOL, FEBRUARY 26, 1844.
[The following address was delivered at a soirée of the Liverpool
Mechanics’ Institution, at which Mr. Dickens presided.]
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,—It was rather hard of you to take away my breath
before I spoke a word; but I would not thank you, even if I could, for
the favour which has set me in this place, or for the generous kindness
which has greeted me so warmly,—because my first strong impulse still
would be, although I had that power, to lose sight of all personal
considerations in the high intent and meaning of this numerous
assemblage, in the contemplation of the noble objects to which this
building is devoted, of its brilliant and inspiring history, of that
rough, upward track, so bravely trodden, which it leaves behind, and that
bright path of steadily-increasing usefulness which lies stretched out
before it. My first strong impulse still would be to exchange
congratulations with you, as the members of one united family, on the
thriving vigour of this strongest child of a strong race. My first
strong impulse still would be, though everybody here had twice as many
hundreds of hands as there are hundreds of persons present, to shake them
in the spirit, everyone, always, allow me to say, excepting those hands
(and there are a few such here), which, with the constitutional infirmity
of human nature, I would rather salute in some more tender fashion.
When I first had the honour of communicating with your Committee with
reference to this celebration, I had some selfish hopes that the visit
proposed to me might turn out to be one of congratulation, or, at least,
of solicitous inquiry; for they who receive a visitor in any season of
distress are easily touched and moved by what he says, and I entertained
some confident expectation of making a mighty strong impression on you.
But, when I came to look over the printed documents which were forwarded
to me at the same time, and with which you are all tolerably familiar,
these anticipations very speedily vanished, and left me bereft of all
consolation, but the triumphant feeling to which I have referred. For
what do I find, on looking over those brief chronicles of this swift
conquest over ignorance and prejudice, in which no blood has been poured
out, and no treaty signed but that one sacred compact which recognises
the just right of every man, whatever his belief, or however humble his
degree, to aspire, and to have some means of aspiring, to be a better and
a wiser man? I find that, in 1825, certain misguided and turbulent
persons proposed to erect in Liverpool an unpopular, dangerous,
irreligious, and revolutionary establishment, called a Mechanics’
Institution; that, in 1835, Liverpool having, somehow or other, got on
pretty comfortably in the meantime, in spite of it, the first stone of a
new and spacious edifice was laid; that, in 1837, it was opened; that, it
was afterwards, at different periods, considerably enlarged; that, in
1844, conspicuous amongst the public beauties of a beautiful town, here
it stands triumphant, its enemies lived down, its former students
attesting, in their various useful callings and pursuits, the sound,
practical information it afforded them; its members numbering
considerably more than 3,000, and setting in rapidly for 6,000 at least;
its library comprehending 11,000 volumes, and daily sending forth its
hundreds of books into private homes; its staff of masters and officers,
amounting to half-a-hundred in themselves; its schools, conveying every
sort of instruction, high and low, adapted to the labour, means,
exigencies, and convenience of nearly every class and grade of persons.
I was here this morning, and in its spacious halls I found stores of the
wonders worked by nature in the air, in the forest, in the cavern, and in
the sea—stores of the surpassing engines devised by science for the
better knowledge of other worlds, and the greater happiness of
this—stores of those gentler works of art, which, though achieved in
perishable stone, by yet more perishable hands of dust, are in their
influence immortal. With such means at their command, so well-directed,
so cheaply shared, and so extensively diffused, well may your Committee
say, as they have done in one of their Reports, that the success of this
establishment has far exceeded their most sanguine expectations.
But, ladies and gentlemen, as that same philosopher whose words they
quote, as Bacon tells us, instancing the wonderful effects of little
things and small beginnings, that the influence of the loadstone was
first discovered in particles of iron, and not in iron bars, so they may
lay it to their hearts, that when they combined together to form the
institution which has risen to this majestic height, they issued on a
field of enterprise, the glorious end of which they cannot even now
discern. Every man who has felt the advantages of, or has received
improvement in this place, carries its benefits into the society in which
he moves, and puts them out at compound interest; and what the blessed
sum may be at last, no man can tell. Ladies and gentlemen, with that
Christian prelate whose name appears on your list of honorary Members;
that good and liberal man who once addressed you within these walls, in a
spirit worthy of his calling, and of his High Master—I look forward from
this place, as from a tower, to the time when high and low, and rich and
poor, shall mutually assist, improve, and educate each other.
I feel, ladies and gentlemen, that this is not a place, with its 3,200
members, and at least 3,200 arguments in every one, to enter on any
advocacy of the principle of Mechanics’ Institutions, or to discuss the
subject with those who do or ever did object to them. I should as soon
think of arguing the point with those untutored savages whose mode of
life you last year had the opportunity of witnessing; indeed, I am
strongly inclined to believe them by far the more rational class of the
two. Moreover, if the institution itself be not a sufficient answer to
all such objections, then there is no such thing in fact or reason, human
or divine. Neither will I venture to enter into those details of the
management of this place which struck me most on the perusal of its
papers; but I cannot help saying how much impressed and gratified I was,
as everybody must be who comes to their perusal for the first time, by
the extraordinary munificence with which this institution has been
endowed by certain gentlemen.
Amongst the peculiar features of management which made the greatest
impression on me, I may observe that that regulation which empowers
fathers, being annual subscribers of one guinea, to introduce their sons
who are minors; and masters, on payment of the astoundingly small sum of
five shillings annually, in like manner their apprentices, is not the
least valuable of its privileges; and, certainly not the one least
valuable to society. And, ladies and gentlemen, I cannot say to you what
pleasure I derived from the perusal of an apparently excellent report in
your local papers of a meeting held here some short time since, in aid of
the formation of a girls’ school in connexion with this institution.
This is a new and striking chapter in the history of these institutions;
it does equal credit to the gallantry and policy of this, and disposes
one to say of it with a slight parody on the words of Burns, that
“Its ’prentice han’ it tried on man,
And then it _taught_ the lasses, O.”
That those who are our best teachers, and whose lessons are oftenest
heeded in after life, should be well taught themselves, is a proposition
few reasonable men will gainsay; and, certainly, to breed up good
husbands on the one hand, and good wives on the other, does appear as
reasonable and straightforward a plan as could well be devised for the
improvement of the next generation.
This, and what I see before me, naturally brings me to our fairer
members, in respect of whom I have no doubt you will agree with me, that
they ought to be admitted to the widest possible extent, and on the
lowest possible terms; and, ladies, let me venture to say to you, that
you never did a wiser thing in all your lives than when you turned your
favourable regard on such an establishment as this—for wherever the light
of knowledge is diffused, wherever the humanizing influence of the arts
and sciences extends itself, wherever there is the clearest perception of
what is beautiful, and good, and most redeeming, amid all the faults and
vices of mankind, there your character, your virtues, your graces, your
better nature, will be the best appreciated, and there the truest homage
will be proudly paid to you. You show best, trust me, in the clearest
light; and every ray that falls upon you at your own firesides, from any
book or thought communicated within these walls, will raise you nearer to
the angels in the eyes you care for most.
I will not longer interpose myself, ladies and gentlemen, between you and
the pleasure we all anticipate in hearing other gentlemen, and in
enjoying those social pleasures with which it is a main part of the
wisdom of this society to adorn and relieve its graver pursuits. We all
feel, I am sure, being here, that we are truly interested in the cause of
human improvement and rational education, and that we pledge ourselves,
everyone as far as in him lies, to extend the knowledge of the benefits
afforded in this place, and to bear honest witness in its favour. To
those who yet remain without its walls, but have the means of purchasing
its advantages, we make appeal, and in a friendly and forbearing spirit
say, “Come in, and be convinced—
‘Who enters here, leaves _doubt_ behind.’”
If you, happily, have been well taught yourself, and are superior to its
advantages, so much the more should you make one in sympathy with those
who are below you. Beneath this roof we breed the men who, in the time
to come, must be found working for good or evil, in every quarter of
society. If mutual respect and forbearance among various classes be not
found here, where so many men are trained up in so many grades, to enter
on so many roads of life, dating their entry from one common
starting-point, as they are all approaching, by various paths, one common
end, where else can that great lesson be imbibed? Differences of wealth,
of rank, of intellect, we know there must be, and we respect them; but we
would give to all the means of taking out one patent of nobility, and we
define it, in the words of a great living poet, who is one of us, and who
uses his great gifts, as he holds them in trust, for the general welfare—
“Howe’er it be, it seems to me
’Tis only noble to be good:
True hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.” {88}
VIII.
BIRMINGHAM, FEBRUARY 28, 1844.
[The following speech was delivered at a Conversazione, in aid of the
funds of the Birmingham Polytechnic Institution, at which Mr Dickens
presided.]
YOU will think it very unwise, or very self-denying in me, in such an
assembly, in such a splendid scene, and after such a welcome, to
congratulate myself on having nothing new to say to you: but I do so,
notwithstanding. To say nothing of places nearer home, I had the honour
of attending at Manchester, shortly before Christmas, and at Liverpool,
only the night before last, for a purpose similar to that which brings
you together this evening; and looking down a short perspective of
similar engagements, I feel gratification at the thought that I shall
very soon have nothing at all to say; in which case, I shall be content
to stake my reputation, like the Spectator of Addison, and that other
great periodical speaker, the Speaker of the House of Commons, on my
powers of listening.
This feeling, and the earnest reception I have met with, are not the only
reasons why I feel a genuine, cordial, and peculiar interest in this
night’s proceedings. The Polytechnic Institution of Birmingham is in its
infancy—struggling into life under all those adverse and disadvantageous
circumstances which, to a greater or less extent, naturally beset all
infancy; but I would much rather connect myself with it now, however
humble, in its days of difficulty and of danger, than look back on its
origin when it may have become strong, and rich, and powerful. I should
prefer an intimate association with it now, in its early days and
apparent struggles, to becoming its advocate and acquaintance, its
fair-weather friend, in its high and palmy days. I would rather be able
to say I knew it in its swaddling-clothes, than in maturer age. Its two
elder brothers have grown old and died: their chests were weak—about
their cradles nurses shook their heads, and gossips groaned; but the
present institution shot up, amidst the ruin of those which have fallen,
with an indomitable constitution, with vigorous and with steady pulse;
temperate, wise, and of good repute; and by perseverance it has become a
very giant. Birmingham is, in my mind and in the minds of most men,
associated with many giants; and I no more believe that this young
institution will turn out sickly, dwarfish, or of stunted growth, than I
do that when the glass-slipper of my chairmanship shall fall off, and the
clock strike twelve to-night, this hall will be turned into a pumpkin. I
found that strong belief upon the splendid array of grace and beauty by
which I am surrounded, and which, if it only had one-hundredth part of
the effect upon others it has upon me, could do anything it pleased with
anything and anybody. I found my strong conviction, in the second place,
upon the public spirit of the town of Birmingham—upon the name and fame
of its capitalists and working men; upon the greatness and importance of
its merchants and manufacturers; upon its inventions, which are
constantly in progress; upon the skill and intelligence of its artisans,
which are daily developed; and the increasing knowledge of all portions
of the community. All these reasons lead me to the conclusion that your
institution will advance—that it will and must progress, and that you
will not be content with lingering leagues behind.
I have another peculiar ground of satisfaction in connexion with the
object of this assembly; and it is, that the resolutions about to be
proposed do not contain in themselves anything of a sectarian or class
nature; that they do not confine themselves to any one single
institution, but assert the great and omnipotent principles of
comprehensive education everywhere and under every circumstance. I beg
leave to say that I concur, heart and hand, in those principles, and will
do all in my power for their advancement; for I hold, in accordance with
the imperfect knowledge which I possess, that it is impossible for any
fabric of society to go on day after day, and year after year, from
father to son, and from grandfather to grandson, punishing men for not
engaging in the pursuit of virtue and for the practice of crime, without
showing them what virtue is, and where it best can be found—in justice,
religion, and truth. The only reason that can possibly be adduced
against it is one founded on fiction—namely, the case where an obdurate
old geni, in the “Arabian Nights,” was bound upon taking the life of a
merchant, because he had struck out the eye of his invisible son. I
recollect, likewise, a tale in the same book of charming fancies, which I
consider not inappropriate: it is a case where a powerful spirit has been
imprisoned at the bottom of the sea, in a casket with a leaden cover, and
the seal of Solomon upon it; there he had lain neglected for many
centuries, and during that period had made many different vows: at first,
that he would reward magnificently those who should release him; and at
last, that he would destroy them. Now, there is a spirit of great
power—the Spirit of Ignorance—which is shut up in a vessel of leaden
composition, and sealed with the seal of many, many Solomons, and which
is effectually in the same position: release it in time, and it will
bless, restore, and reanimate society; but let it lie under the rolling
waves of years, and its blind revenge is sure to lead to certain
destruction. That there are classes which, if rightly treated,
constitute strength, and if wrongly, weakness, I hold it impossible to
deny—by these classes I mean industrious, intelligent, and honourably
independent men, in whom the higher classes of Birmingham are especially
interested, and bound to afford them the means of instruction and
improvement, and to ameliorate their mental and moral condition. Far be
it from me (and I wish to be most particularly understood) to attempt to
depreciate the excellent Church Instruction Societies, or the worthy,
sincere, and temperate zeal of those reverend gentlemen by whom they are
usually conducted; on the contrary, I believe that they have done, and
are doing, much good, and are deserving of high praise; but I hope that,
without offence, in a community such as Birmingham, there are other
objects not unworthy in the sight of heaven, and objects of recognised
utility which are worthy of support—principles which are practised in
word and deed in Polytechnic Institutions—principles for the diffusion of
which honest men of all degrees and of every creed might associate
together, on an independent footing and on neutral ground, and at a small
expense, for the better understanding and the greater consideration of
each other, and for the better cultivation of the happiness of all: for
it surely cannot be allowed that those who labour day by day, surrounded
by machinery, shall be permitted to degenerate into machines themselves,
but, on the contrary, they should assert their common origin from their
Creator, at the hands of those who are responsible and thinking men.
There is, indeed, no difference in the main with respect to the dangers
of ignorance and the advantages of knowledge between those who hold
different opinions—for it is to be observed, that those who are most
distrustful of the advantages of education, are always the first to
exclaim against the results of ignorance. This fact was pleasantly
illustrated on the railway, as I came here. In the same carriage with me
there sat an ancient gentleman (I feel no delicacy in alluding to him,
for I know that he is not in the room, having got out far short of
Birmingham), who expressed himself most mournfully as to the ruinous
effects and rapid spread of railways, and was most pathetic upon the
virtues of the slow-going old stage coaches. Now I, entertaining some
little lingering kindness for the road, made shift to express my
concurrence with the old gentleman’s opinion, without any great
compromise of principle. Well, we got on tolerably comfortably together,
and when the engine, with a frightful screech, dived into some dark
abyss, like some strange aquatic monster, the old gentleman said it would
never do, and I agreed with him. When it parted from each successive
station, with a shock and a shriek as if it had had a double-tooth drawn,
the old gentleman shook his head, and I shook mine. When he burst forth
against such new-fangled notions, and said no good could come of them, I
did not contest the point. But I found that when the speed of the engine
was abated, or there was a prolonged stay at any station, up the old
gentleman was at arms, and his watch was instantly out of his pocket,
denouncing the slowness of our progress. Now I could not help comparing
this old gentleman to that ingenious class of persons who are in the
constant habit of declaiming against the vices and crimes of society, and
at the same time are the first and foremost to assert that vice and crime
have not their common origin in ignorance and discontent.
The good work, however, in spite of all political and party differences,
has been well begun; we are all interested in it; it is advancing, and
cannot be stopped by any opposition, although it may be retarded in this
place or in that, by the indifference of the middle classes, with whom
its successful progress chiefly rests. Of this success I cannot
entertain a doubt; for whenever the working classes have enjoyed an
opportunity of effectually rebutting accusations which falsehood or
thoughtlessness have brought against them, they always avail themselves
of it, and show themselves in their true characters; and it was this
which made the damage done to a single picture in the National Gallery of
London, by some poor lunatic or cripple, a mere matter of newspaper
notoriety and wonder for some few days. This, then, establishes a fact
evident to the meanest comprehension—that any given number of thousands
of individuals, in the humblest walks of life in this country, can pass
through the national galleries or museums in seasons of holiday-making,
without damaging, in the slightest degree, those choice and valuable
collections. I do not myself believe that the working classes ever were
the wanton or mischievous persons they were so often and so long
represented to be; but I rather incline to the opinion that some men take
it into their heads to lay it down as a matter of fact, without being
particular about the premises; and that the idle and the prejudiced, not
wishing to have the trouble of forming opinions for themselves, take it
for granted—until the people have an opportunity of disproving the stigma
and vindicating themselves before the world.
Now this assertion is well illustrated by what occurred respecting an
equestrian statue in the metropolis, with respect to which a legend
existed that the sculptor hanged himself, because he had neglected to put
a girth to the horse. This story was currently believed for many years,
until it was inspected for altogether a different purpose, and it was
found to have had a girth all the time.
But surely if, as is stated, the people are ill-disposed and mischievous,
that is the best reason that can be offered for teaching them better; and
if they are not, surely that is a reason for giving them every
opportunity of vindicating their injured reputation; and no better
opportunity could possibly be afforded than that of associating together
voluntarily for such high purposes as it is proposed to carry out by the
establishment of the Birmingham Polytechnic Institution. In any
case—nay, in every case—if we would reward honesty, if we would hold out
encouragement to good, if we would eradicate that which is evil or
correct that which is bad, education—comprehensive, liberal education—is
the one thing needful, and the only effective end. If I might apply to
my purpose, and turn into plain prose some words of Hamlet—not with
reference to any government or party (for party being, for the most part,
an irrational sort of thing, has no connexion with the object we have in
view)—if I might apply those words to education as Hamlet applied them to
the skull of Yorick, I would say—“Now hie thee to the council-chamber,
and tell them, though they lay it on in sounding thoughts and learned
words an inch thick, to this complexion they must come at last.”
* * * * *
In answer to a vote of thanks, {95} Mr. Dickens said, at the close of the
meeting—
Ladies and gentlemen, we are now quite even—for every effect which I may
have made upon you, the compliment has been amply returned to me; but at
the same time I am as little disposed to say to you, ‘go and sin no
more,’ as I am to promise for myself that ‘I will never do so again.’ So
long as I can make you laugh and cry, I will; and you will readily
believe me, when I tell you, you cannot do too much on your parts to show
that we are still cordial and loving friends. To you, ladies of the
Institution, I am deeply and especially indebted. I sometimes [_pointing
to the word_ ‘_Boz_’ _in front of the great gallery_] think there is some
small quantity of magic in that very short name, and that it must consist
in its containing as many letters as the three graces, and they, every
one of them, being of your fair sisterhood.
A story is told of an eastern potentate of modern times, who, for an
eastern potentate, was a tolerably good man, sometimes bowstringing his
dependants indiscriminately in his moments of anger, but burying them in
great splendour in his moments of penitence, that whenever intelligence
was brought him of a new plot or turbulent conspiracy, his first inquiry
was, ‘Who is she?’ meaning that a woman was at the bottom. Now, in my
small way, I differ from that potentate; for when there is any good to be
attained, the services of any ministering angel required, my first
inquiry is, ‘Where is she?’ and the answer invariably is, ‘Here.’ Proud
and happy am I indeed to thank you for your generosity—
‘A thousand times, good night;
A thousand times the worse to want your light.’
IX.
GARDENERS AND GARDENING.
LONDON, JUNE 14, 1852.
[The Ninth Anniversary Dinner of the Gardeners’ Benevolent Institution
was held on the above date at the London Tavern. The company numbered
more than 150. The dessert was worthy of the occasion, and an admirable
effect was produced by a profuse display of natural flowers upon the
tables and in the decoration of the room. The chair was taken by Mr.
Charles Dickens, who, in proposing the toast of the evening, spoke as
follows:—]
FOR three times three years the Gardeners’ Benevolent Institution has
been stimulated and encouraged by meetings such as this, and by three
times three cheers we will urge it onward in its prosperous career.
[_The cheers were warmly given_.]
Occupying the post I now do, I feel something like a counsel for the
plaintiff with nobody on the other side; but even if I had been placed in
that position ninety times nine, it would still be my duty to state a few
facts from the very short brief with which I have been provided.
This Institution was founded in the year 1838. During the first five
years of its existence, it was not particularly robust, and seemed to
have been placed in rather a shaded position, receiving somewhat more
than its needful allowance of cold water. In 1843 it was removed into a
more favourable position, and grafted on a nobler stock, and it has now
borne fruit, and become such a vigorous tree that at present thirty-five
old people daily sit within the shelter of its branches, and all the
pensioners upon the list have been veritable gardeners, or the wives of
gardeners. It is managed by gardeners, and it has upon its books the
excellent rule that any gardener who has subscribed to it for fifteen
years, and conformed to the rules, may, if he will, be placed upon the
pensioners’ list without election, without canvass, without solicitation,
and as his independent right. I lay very great stress upon that
honourable characteristic of the charity, because the main principle of
any such institution should be to help those who help themselves. That
the Society’s pensioners do not become such so long as they are able to
support themselves, is evinced by the significant fact that the average
age of those now upon the list is seventy-seven; that they are not
wasteful is proved by the fact that the whole sum expended on their
relief is but £500 a-year; that the Institution does not restrict itself
to any narrow confines, is shown by the circumstance, that the pensioners
come from all parts of England, whilst all the expenses are paid from the
annual income and interest on stock, and therefore are not
disproportionate to its means.
Such is the Institution which appeals to you through me, as a most
unworthy advocate, for sympathy and support, an Institution which has for
its President a nobleman {98} whose whole possessions are remarkable for
taste and beauty, and whose gardener’s laurels are famous throughout the
world. In the list of its vice-presidents there are the names of many
noblemen and gentlemen of great influence and station, and I have been
struck in glancing through the list of its supporters, with the sums
written against the names of the numerous nurserymen and seedsmen therein
comprised. I hope the day will come when every gardener in England will
be a member of the charity.
The gardener particularly needs such a provision as this Institution
affords. His gains are not great; he knows gold and silver more as being
of the colour of fruits and flowers than by its presence in his pockets;
he is subjected to that kind of labour which renders him peculiarly
liable to infirmity; and when old age comes upon him, the gardener is of
all men perhaps best able to appreciate the merits of such an
institution.
To all indeed, present and absent, who are descended from the first
“gardener Adam and his wife,”
the benefits of such a society are obvious. In the culture of flowers
there cannot, by their very nature, be anything, solitary or exclusive.
The wind that blows over the cottager’s porch, sweeps also over the
grounds of the nobleman; and as the rain descends on the just and on the
unjust, so it communicates to all gardeners, both rich and poor, an
interchange of pleasure and enjoyment; and the gardener of the rich man,
in developing and enhancing a fruitful flavour or a delightful scent, is,
in some sort, the gardener of everybody else.
The love of gardening is associated with all conditions of men, and all
periods of time. The scholar and the statesman, men of peace and men of
war, have agreed in all ages to delight in gardens. The most ancient
people of the earth had gardens where there is now nothing but solitary
heaps of earth. The poor man in crowded cities gardens still in jugs and
basins and bottles: in factories and workshops people garden; and even
the prisoner is found gardening in his lonely cell, after years and years
of solitary confinement. Surely, then, the gardener who produces shapes
and objects so lovely and so comforting, should have some hold upon the
world’s remembrance when he himself becomes in need of comfort.
I will call upon you to drink “Prosperity to the Gardeners’ Benevolent
Institution,” and I beg to couple with that toast the name of its noble
President, the Duke of Devonshire, whose worth is written in all his
deeds, and who has communicated to his title and his riches a lustre
which no title and no riches could confer.
* * * * *
[Later in the evening, Mr. Dickens said:—]
My office has compelled me to burst into bloom so often that I could wish
there were a closer parallel between myself and the American aloe. It is
particularly agreeable and appropriate to know that the parents of this
Institution are to be found in the seed and nursery trade; and the seed
having yielded such good fruit, and the nursery having produced such a
healthy child, I have the greatest pleasure in proposing the health of
the parents of the Institution.
* * * * *
[In proposing the health of the Treasurers, Mr. Dickens said:—]
My observation of the signboards of this country has taught me that its
conventional gardeners are always jolly, and always three in number.
Whether that conventionality has reference to the Three Graces, or to
those very significant letters, L., S., D., I do not know. Those mystic
letters are, however, most important, and no society can have officers of
more importance than its Treasurers, nor can it possibly give them too
much to do.
X.
BIRMINGHAM, JANUARY 6, 1853.
[On Thursday, January 6, 1853, at the rooms of the Society of Artists, in
Temple Row, Birmingham, a large company assembled to witness the
presentation of a testimonial to Mr. Charles Dickens, consisting of a
silver-gilt salver and a diamond ring. Mr. Dickens acknowledged the
tribute, and the address which accompanied it, in the following words:—]
GENTLEMEN, I feel it very difficult, I assure you, to tender my
acknowledgments to you, and through you, to those many friends of mine
whom you represent, for this honour and distinction which you have
conferred upon me. I can most honestly assure you, that it is in the
power of no great representative of numbers of people to awaken such
happiness in me as is inspired by this token of goodwill and remembrance,
coming to me direct and fresh from the numbers themselves. I am truly
sensible, gentlemen, that my friends who have united in this address are
partial in their kindness, and regard what I have done with too great
favour. But I may say, with reference to one class—some members of
which, I presume, are included there—that I should in my own eyes be very
unworthy both of the generous gift and the generous feeling which has
been evinced, and this occasion, instead of pleasure, would give me
nothing but pain, if I was unable to assure them, and those who are in
front of this assembly, that what the working people have found me
towards them in my books, I am throughout my life. Gentlemen, whenever I
have tried to hold up to admiration their fortitude, patience,
gentleness, the reasonableness of their nature, so accessible to
persuasion, and their extraordinary goodness one towards another, I have
done so because I have first genuinely felt that admiration myself, and
have been thoroughly imbued with the sentiment which I sought to
communicate to others.
Gentlemen, I accept this salver and this ring as far above all price to
me, as very valuable in themselves, and as beautiful specimens of the
workmanship of this town, with great emotion, I assure you, and with the
liveliest gratitude. You remember something, I daresay, of the old
romantic stories of those charmed rings which would lose their brilliance
when their wearer was in danger, or would press his finger reproachfully
when he was going to do wrong. In the very improbable event of my being
in the least danger of deserting the principles which have won me these
tokens, I am sure the diamond in that ring would assume a clouded aspect
to my faithless eye, and would, I know, squeeze a throb of pain out of my
treacherous heart. But I have not the least misgiving on that point;
and, in this confident expectation, I shall remove my own old diamond
ring from my left hand, and in future wear the Birmingham ring on my
right, where its grasp will keep me in mind of the good friends I have
here, and in vivid remembrance of this happy hour.
Gentlemen, in conclusion, allow me to thank you and the Society to whom
these rooms belong, that the presentation has taken place in an
atmosphere so congenial to me, and in an apartment decorated with so many
beautiful works of art, among which I recognize before me the productions
of friends of mine, whose labours and triumphs will never be subjects of
indifference to me. I thank those gentlemen for giving me the
opportunity of meeting them here on an occasion which has some connexion
with their own proceedings; and, though last not least, I tender my
acknowledgments to that charming presence, without which nothing
beautiful can be complete, and which is endearingly associated with rings
of a plainer description, and which, I must confess, awakens in my mind
at the present moment a feeling of regret that I am not in a condition to
make an offer of these testimonials. I beg you, gentlemen, to commend me
very earnestly and gratefully to our absent friends, and to assure them
of my affectionate and heartfelt respect.
* * * * *
The company then adjourned to Dee’s Hotel, where a banquet took place, at
which about 220 persons were present, among whom were some of the most
distinguished of the Royal Academicians. To the toast of “The Literature
of England,” Mr. Dickens responded as follows:—
Mr. Mayor and Gentlemen, I am happy, on behalf of many labourers in that
great field of literature to which you have pledged the toast, to thank
you for the tribute you have paid to it. Such an honour, rendered by
acclamation in such a place as this, seems to me, if I may follow on the
same side as the venerable Archdeacon (Sandford) who lately addressed
you, and who has inspired me with a gratification I can never forget—such
an honour, gentlemen, rendered here, seems to me a two-sided illustration
of the position that literature holds in these latter and, of course,
“degenerate” days. To the great compact phalanx of the people, by whose
industry, perseverance, and intelligence, and their result in
money-wealth, such places as Birmingham, and many others like it, have
arisen—to that great centre of support, that comprehensive experience,
and that beating heart, literature has turned happily from individual
patrons—sometimes munificent, often sordid, always few—and has there
found at once its highest purpose, its natural range of action, and its
best reward. Therefore it is right also, as it seems to me, not only
that literature should receive honour here, but that it should render
honour, too, remembering that if it has undoubtedly done good to
Birmingham, Birmingham has undoubtedly done good to it. From the shame
of the purchased dedication, from the scurrilous and dirty work of Grub
Street, from the dependent seat on sufferance at my Lord Duke’s table
to-day, and from the sponging-house or Marshalsea to-morrow—from that
venality which, by a fine moral retribution, has degraded statesmen even
to a greater extent than authors, because the statesman entertained a low
belief in the universality of corruption, while the author yielded only
to the dire necessity of his calling—from all such evils the people have
set literature free. And my creed in the exercise of that profession is,
that literature cannot be too faithful to the people in return—cannot too
ardently advocate the cause of their advancement, happiness, and
prosperity. I have heard it sometimes said—and what is worse, as
expressing something more cold-blooded, I have sometimes seen it
written—that literature has suffered by this change, that it has
degenerated by being made cheaper. I have not found that to be the case:
nor do I believe that you have made the discovery either. But let a good
book in these “bad” times be made accessible,—even upon an abstruse and
difficult subject, so that it be one of legitimate interest to
mankind,—and my life on it, it shall be extensively bought, read, and
well considered.
Why do I say this? Because I believe there are in Birmingham at this
moment many working men infinitely better versed in Shakespeare and in
Milton than the average of fine gentlemen in the days of bought-and-sold
dedications and dear books. I ask anyone to consider for himself who, at
this time, gives the greatest relative encouragement to the dissemination
of such useful publications as “Macaulay’s History,” “Layard’s
Researches,” “Tennyson’s Poems,” “The Duke of Wellington’s published
Despatches,” or the minutest truths (if any truth can be called minute)
discovered by the genius of a Herschel or a Faraday? It is with all
these things as with the great music of Mendelssohn, or a lecture upon
art—if we had the good fortune to listen to one to-morrow—by my
distinguished friend the President of the Royal Academy. However small
the audience, however contracted the circle in the water, in the first
instance, the people are nearer the wider range outside, and the Sister
Arts, while they instruct them, derive a wholesome advantage and
improvement from their ready sympathy and cordial response. I may
instance the case of my friend Mr. Ward’s magnificent picture; {105} and
the reception of that picture here is an example that it is not now the
province of art in painting to hold itself in monastic seclusion, that it
cannot hope to rest on a single foundation for its great temple,—on the
mere classic pose of a figure, or the folds of a drapery—but that it must
be imbued with human passions and action, informed with human right and
wrong, and, being so informed, it may fearlessly put itself upon its
trial, like the criminal of old, to be judged by God and its country.
Gentlemen, to return and conclude, as I shall have occasion to trouble
you again. For this time I have only once again to repeat what I have
already said. As I begun with literature, I shall end with it. I would
simply say that I believe no true man, with anything to tell, need have
the least misgiving, either for himself or his message, before a large
number of hearers—always supposing that he be not afflicted with the
coxcombical idea of writing down to the popular intelligence, instead of
writing the popular intelligence up to himself, if, perchance, he be
above it;—and, provided always that he deliver himself plainly of what is
in him, which seems to be no unreasonable stipulation, it being supposed
that he has some dim design of making himself understood. On behalf of
that literature to which you have done so much honour, I beg to thank you
most cordially, and on my own behalf, for the most flattering reception
you have given to one whose claim is, that he has the distinction of
making it his profession.
* * * * *
Later in the evening, Mr. Dickens gave as a toast, “The Educational
Institutions of Birmingham,” in the following speech:
I am requested to propose—or, according to the hypothesis of my friend,
Mr. Owen, I am in the temporary character of a walking advertisement to
advertise to you—the Educational Institutions of Birmingham; an
advertisement to which I have the greatest pleasure in calling your
attention, Gentlemen, it is right that I should, in so many words,
mention the more prominent of these institutions, not because your local
memories require any prompting, but because the enumeration implies what
has been done here, what you are doing, and what you will yet do. I
believe the first is the King Edward’s Grammar School, with its various
branches, and prominent among them is that most admirable means of
training the wives of working men to be good wives and working wives, the
prime ornament of their homes, and the cause of happiness to others—I
mean those excellent girls’ schools in various parts of the town, which,
under the excellent superintendence of the principal, I should most
sincerely desire to see in every town in England. Next, I believe, is
the Spring Hill College, a learned institution belonging to the body of
Independents, foremost among whose professors literature is proud to hail
Mr. Henry Rogers as one of the soundest and ablest contributors to the
Edinburgh Review. The next is the Queen’s College, which, I may say, is
only a newly-born child; but, in the hands of such an admirable Doctor,
we may hope to see it arrive at a vigorous maturity. The next is the
School of Design, which, as has been well observed by my friend Sir
Charles Eastlake, is invaluable in such a place as this; and, lastly,
there is the Polytechnic Institution, with regard to which I had long ago
occasion to express my profound conviction that it was of unspeakable
importance to such a community as this, when I had the honour to be
present, under the auspices of your excellent representative, Mr.
Scholefield. This is the last of what has been done in an educational
way. They are all admirable in their kind; but I am glad to find that
more is yet doing. A few days ago I received a Birmingham newspaper,
containing a most interesting account of a preliminary meeting for the
formation of a Reformatory School for juvenile delinquents. You are not
exempt here from the honour of saving these poor, neglected, and wretched
outcasts. I read of one infant, six years old, who has been twice as
many times in the hands of the police as years have passed over his
devoted head. These are the eggs from which gaol-birds are hatched; if
you wish to check that dreadful brood, you must take the young and
innocent, and have them reared by Christian hands.
Lastly, I am rejoiced to find that there is on foot a scheme for a new
Literary and Scientific Institution, which would be worthy even of this
place, if there was nothing of the kind in it—an institution, as I
understand it, where the words “exclusion” and “exclusiveness” shall be
quite unknown—where all classes may assemble in common trust, respect,
and confidence—where there shall be a great gallery of painting and
statuary open to the inspection and admiration of all comers—where there
shall be a museum of models in which industry may observe its various
sources of manufacture, and the mechanic may work out new combinations,
and arrive at new results—where the very mines under the earth and under
the sea shall not be forgotten, but presented in little to the inquiring
eye—an institution, in short, where many and many of the obstacles which
now inevitably stand in the rugged way of the poor inventor shall be
smoothed away, and where, if he have anything in him, he will find
encouragement and hope.
I observe with unusual interest and gratification, that a body of
gentlemen are going for a time to lay aside their individual
prepossessions on other subjects, and, as good citizens, are to be
engaged in a design as patriotic as well can be. They have the intention
of meeting in a few days to advance this great object, and I call upon
you, in drinking this toast, to drink success to their endeavour, and to
make it the pledge by all good means to promote it.
If I strictly followed out the list of educational institutions in
Birmingham, I should not have done here, but I intend to stop, merely
observing that I have seen within a short walk of this place one of the
most interesting and practical Institutions for the Deaf and Dumb that
has ever come under my observation. I have seen in the factories and
workshops of Birmingham such beautiful order and regularity, and such
great consideration for the workpeople provided, that they might justly
be entitled to be considered educational too. I have seen in your
splendid Town Hall, when the cheap concerts are going on there, also an
admirable educational institution. I have seen their results in the
demeanour of your working people, excellently balanced by a nice
instinct, as free from servility on the one hand, as from self-conceit on
the other. It is a perfect delight to have need to ask a question, if
only from the manner of the reply—a manner I never knew to pass unnoticed
by an observant stranger. Gather up those threads, and a great marry
more I have not touched upon, and weaving all into one good fabric,
remember how much is included under the general head of the Educational
Institutions of your town.
XI.
LONDON, APRIL 30, 1853.
[At the annual Dinner of the Royal Academy, the President, Sir Charles
Eastlake, proposed as a toast, “The Interests of Literature,” and
selected for the representatives of the world of letters, the Dean of St.
Paul’s and Mr. Charles Dickens. Dean Milman having returned thanks.]
MR DICKENS then addressed the President, who, it should be mentioned,
occupied a large and handsome chair, the back covered with crimson
velvet, placed just before Stanfield’s picture of _The Victory_.
Mr. Dickens, after tendering his acknowledgments of the toast, and the
honour done him in associating his name with it, said that those
acknowledgments were not the less heartfelt because he was unable to
recognize in this toast the President’s usual disinterestedness; since
English literature could scarcely be remembered in any place, and,
certainly, not in a school of art, without a very distinct remembrance of
his own tasteful writings, to say nothing of that other and better part
of himself, which, unfortunately, was not visible upon these occasions.
If, like the noble Lord, the Commander-in-Chief (Viscount Hardinge), he
(Mr. Dickens) might venture to illustrate his brief thanks with one word
of reference to the noble picture painted by a very dear friend of his,
which was a little eclipsed that evening by the radiant and rubicund
chair which the President now so happily toned down, he would beg leave
to say that, as literature could nowhere be more appropriately honoured
than in that place, so he thought she could nowhere feel a higher
gratification in the ties that bound her to the sister arts. He ever
felt in that place that literature found, through their instrumentality,
always a new expression, and in a universal language.
XII.
LONDON, MAY 1, 1853.
[At a dinner given by the Lord Mayor at the Mansion House, on the above
date, Mr. Justice Talfourd proposed as a toast “Anglo-Saxon Literature,”
and alluded to Mr. Dickens as having employed fiction as a means of
awakening attention to the condition of the oppressed and suffering
classes:—]
“MR. DICKENS replied to this toast in a graceful and playful strain. In
the former part of the evening, in reply to a toast on the chancery
department, Vice-Chancellor Wood, who spoke in the absence of the Lord
Chancellor, made a sort of defence of the Court of Chancery, not
distinctly alluding to Bleak House, but evidently not without reference
to it. The amount of what he said was, that the Court had received a
great many more hard opinions than it merited; that they had been
parsimoniously obliged to perform a great amount of business by a very
inadequate number of judges; but that more recently the number of judges
had been increased to seven, and there was reason to hope that all
business brought before it would now be performed without unnecessary
delay.
“Mr. Dickens alluded playfully to this item of intelligence; said he was
exceedingly happy to hear it, as he trusted now that a suit, in which he
was greatly interested, would speedily come to an end. I heard a little
by-conversation between Mr. Dickens and a gentleman of the bar, who sat
opposite me, in which the latter seemed to be reiterating the same
assertions, and I understood him to say, that a case not extraordinarily
complicated might be got through with in three months. Mr. Dickens said
he was very happy to hear it; but I fancied there was a little shade of
incredulity in his manner; however, the incident showed one thing, that
is, that the chancery were not insensible to the representations of
Dickens; but the whole tone of the thing was quite good-natured and
agreeable.” {113}
XIII.
BIRMINGHAM, DECEMBER 30, 1853.
[The first of the Readings generously given by Mr. Charles Dickens on
behalf of the Birmingham and Midland Institute, took place on Tuesday
evening, December 27, 1853, at the Birmingham Town Hall, where,
notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather, nearly two thousand
persons had assembled. The work selected was the _Christmas Carol_. The
high mimetic powers possessed by Mr. Dickens enabled him to personate
with remarkable force the various characters of the story, and with
admirable skill to pass rapidly from the hard, unbelieving Scrooge, to
trusting and thankful Bob Cratchit, and from the genial fulness of
Scrooge’s nephew, to the hideous mirth of the party assembled in Old Joe
the Ragshop-keeper’s parlour. The reading occupied more than three
hours, but so interested were the audience, that only one or two left the
Hall previously to its termination, and the loud and frequent bursts of
applause attested the successful discharge of the reader’s arduous task.
On Thursday evening Mr. Dickens read _The Cricket on the Hearth_. The
Hall was again well ruled, and the tale, though deficient in the dramatic
interest of the _Carol_, was listened to with attention, and rewarded
with repeated applause. On Friday evening, the _Christmas Carol_ was
read a second time to a large assemblage of work-people, for whom, at Mr.
Dickens’s special request, the major part of the vast edifice was
reserved. Before commencing the tale, Mr. Dickens delivered the
following brief address, almost every sentence of which was received with
loudly expressed applause.]
MY GOOD FRIENDS,—When I first imparted to the committee of the projected
Institute my particular wish that on one of the evenings of my readings
here the main body of my audience should be composed of working men and
their families, I was animated by two desires; first, by the wish to have
the great pleasure of meeting you face to face at this Christmas time,
and accompany you myself through one of my little Christmas books; and
second, by the wish to have an opportunity of stating publicly in your
presence, and in the presence of the committee, my earnest hope that the
Institute will, from the beginning, recognise one great principle—strong
in reason and justice—which I believe to be essential to the very life of
such an Institution. It is, that the working man shall, from the first
unto the last, have a share in the management of an Institution which is
designed for his benefit, and which calls itself by his name.
I have no fear here of being misunderstood—of being supposed to mean too
much in this. If there ever was a time when any one class could of
itself do much for its own good, and for the welfare of society—which I
greatly doubt—that time is unquestionably past. It is in the fusion of
different classes, without confusion; in the bringing together of
employers and employed; in the creating of a better common understanding
among those whose interests are identical, who depend upon each other,
who are vitally essential to each other, and who never can be in
unnatural antagonism without deplorable results, that one of the chief
principles of a Mechanics’ Institution should consist. In this world a
great deal of the bitterness among us arises from an imperfect
understanding of one another. Erect in Birmingham a great Educational
Institution, properly educational; educational of the feelings as well as
of the reason; to which all orders of Birmingham men contribute; in which
all orders of Birmingham men meet; wherein all orders of Birmingham men
are faithfully represented—and you will erect a Temple of Concord here
which will be a model edifice to the whole of England.
Contemplating as I do the existence of the Artisans’ Committee, which not
long ago considered the establishment of the Institute so sensibly, and
supported it so heartily, I earnestly entreat the gentlemen—earnest I
know in the good work, and who are now among us,—by all means to avoid
the great shortcoming of similar institutions; and in asking the working
man for his confidence, to set him the great example and give him theirs
in return. You will judge for yourselves if I promise too much for the
working man, when I say that he will stand by such an enterprise with the
utmost of his patience, his perseverance, sense, and support; that I am
sure he will need no charitable aid or condescending patronage; but will
readily and cheerfully pay for the advantages which it confers; that he
will prepare himself in individual cases where he feels that the adverse
circumstances around him have rendered it necessary; in a word, that he
will feel his responsibility like an honest man, and will most honestly
and manfully discharge it. I now proceed to the pleasant task to which I
assure you I have looked forward for a long time.
* * * * *
At the close of the reading Mr. Dickens received a vote of thanks, and
“three cheers, with three times three.” As soon as the enthusiasm of the
audience would allow him to speak, Mr. Dickens said:—
You have heard so much of my voice since we met to-night, that I will
only say, in acknowledgment of this affecting mark of your regard, that I
am truly and sincerely interested in you; that any little service I have
rendered to you I have freely rendered from my heart; that I hope to
become an honorary member of your great Institution, and will meet you
often there when it becomes practically useful; that I thank you most
affectionately for this new mark of your sympathy and approval; and that
I wish you many happy returns of this great birthday-time, and many
prosperous years.
XIV.
COMMERCIAL TRAVELLERS.
LONDON, DECEMBER 30, 1854.
[The following speech was made by Mr. Dickens at the Anniversary Dinner
in commemoration of the foundation of the Commercial Travellers’ Schools,
held at the London Tavern on the above date. Mr. Dickens presided on
this occasion, and proposed the toasts.]
I THINK it may be assumed that most of us here present know something
about travelling. I do not mean in distant regions or foreign countries,
although I dare say some of us have had experience in that way, but at
home, and within the limits of the United Kingdom. I dare say most of us
have had experience of the extinct “fast coaches,” the “Wonders,”
“Taglionis,” and “Tallyhos,” of other days. I daresay most of us
remember certain modest postchaises, dragging us down interminable roads,
through slush and mud, to little country towns with no visible
population, except half-a-dozen men in smock-frocks, half-a-dozen women
with umbrellas and pattens, and a washed-out dog or so shivering under
the gables, to complete the desolate picture. We can all discourse, I
dare say, if so minded, about our recollections of the “Talbot,” the
“Queen’s Head,” or the “Lion” of those days. We have all been to that
room on the ground floor on one side of the old inn yard, not quite free
from a certain fragrant smell of tobacco, where the cruets on the
sideboard were usually absorbed by the skirts of the box-coats that hung
from the wall; where awkward servants waylaid us at every turn, like so
many human man-traps; where county members, framed and glazed, were
eternally presenting that petition which, somehow or other, had made
their glory in the county, although nothing else had ever come of it.
Where the books in the windows always wanted the first, last, and middle
leaves, and where the one man was always arriving at some unusual hour in
the night, and requiring his breakfast at a similarly singular period of
the day. I have no doubt we could all be very eloquent on the comforts
of our favourite hotel, wherever it was—its beds, its stables, its vast
amount of posting, its excellent cheese, its head waiter, its capital
dishes, its pigeon-pies, or its 1820 port. Or possibly we could recal
our chaste and innocent admiration of its landlady, or our fraternal
regard for its handsome chambermaid. A celebrated domestic critic once
writing of a famous actress, renowned for her virtue and beauty, gave her
the character of being an “eminently gatherable-to-one’s-arms sort of
person.” Perhaps some one amongst us has borne a somewhat similar
tribute to the mental charms of the fair deities who presided at our
hotels.
With the travelling characteristics of later times, we are all, no doubt,
equally familiar. We know all about that station to which we must take
our ticket, although we never get there; and the other one at which we
arrive after dark, certain to find it half a mile from the town, where
the old road is sure to have been abolished, and the new road is going to
be made—where the old neighbourhood has been tumbled down, and the new
one is not half built up. We know all about that party on the platform
who, with the best intentions, can do nothing for our luggage except
pitch it into all sorts of unattainable places. We know all about that
short omnibus, in which one is to be doubled up, to the imminent danger
of the crown of one’s hat; and about that fly, whose leading peculiarity
is never to be there when it is wanted. We know, too, how
instantaneously the lights of the station disappear when the train
starts, and about that grope to the new Railway Hotel, which will be an
excellent house when the customers come, but which at present has nothing
to offer but a liberal allowance of damp mortar and new lime.
I record these little incidents of home travel mainly with the object of
increasing your interest in the purpose of this night’s assemblage.
Every traveller has a home of his own, and he learns to appreciate it the
more from his wandering. If he has no home, he learns the same lesson
unselfishly by turning to the homes of other men. He may have his
experiences of cheerful and exciting pleasures abroad; but home is the
best, after all, and its pleasures are the most heartily and enduringly
prized. Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, every one must be prepared to
learn that commercial travellers, as a body, know how to prize those
domestic relations from which their pursuits so frequently sever them;
for no one could possibly invent a more delightful or more convincing
testimony to the fact than they themselves have offered in founding and
maintaining a school for the children of deceased or unfortunate members
of their own body; those children who now appeal to you in mute but
eloquent terms from the gallery.
It is to support that school, founded with such high and friendly
objects, so very honourable to your calling, and so useful in its solid
and practical results, that we are here to-night. It is to roof that
building which is to shelter the children of your deceased friends with
one crowning ornament, the best that any building can have, namely, a
receipt stamp for the full amount of the cost. It is for this that your
active sympathy is appealed to, for the completion of your own good work.
You know how to put your hands to the plough in earnest as well as any
men in existence, for this little book informs me that you raised last
year no less a sum than £8000, and while fully half of that sum consisted
of new donations to the building fund, I find that the regular revenue of
the charity has only suffered to the extent of £30. After this, I most
earnestly and sincerely say that were we all authors together, I might
boast, if in my profession were exhibited the same unity and
steadfastness I find in yours.
I will not urge on you the casualties of a life of travel, or the
vicissitudes of business, or the claims fostered by that bond of
brotherhood which ought always to exist amongst men who are united in a
common pursuit. You have already recognized those claims so nobly, that
I will not presume to lay them before you in any further detail. Suffice
it to say that I do not think it is in your nature to do things by
halves. I do not think you could do so if you tried, and I have a moral
certainty that you never will try. To those gentlemen present who are
not members of the travellers’ body, I will say in the words of the
French proverb, “Heaven helps those who help themselves.” The Commercial
Travellers having helped themselves so gallantly, it is clear that the
visitors who come as a sort of celestial representatives ought to bring
that aid in their pockets which the precept teaches us to expect from
them. With these few remarks, I beg to give you as a toast, “Success to
the Commercial Travellers’ School.”
* * * * *
In proposing the health of the Army in the Crimea, Mr. Dickens said:—
IT does not require any extraordinary sagacity in a commercial assembly
to appreciate the dire evils of war. The great interests of trade
enfeebled by it, the enterprise of better times paralysed by it, all the
peaceful arts bent down before it, too palpably indicate its character
and results, so that far less practical intelligence than that by which I
am surrounded would be sufficient to appreciate the horrors of war. But
there are seasons when the evils of peace, though not so acutely felt,
are immeasurably greater, and when a powerful nation, by admitting the
right of any autocrat to do wrong, sows by such complicity the seeds of
its own ruin, and overshadows itself in time to come with that fatal
influence which great and ambitious powers are sure to exercise over
their weaker neighbours.
Therefore it is, ladies and gentlemen, that the tree has not its root in
English ground from which the yard wand can be made that will measure—the
mine has not its place in English soil that will supply the material of a
pair of scales to weigh the influence that may be at stake in the war in
which we are now straining all our energies. That war is, at any time
and in any shape, a most dreadful and deplorable calamity, we need no
proverb to tell us; but it is just because it is such a calamity, and
because that calamity must not for ever be impending over us at the fancy
of one man against all mankind, that we must not allow that man to darken
from our view the figures of peace and justice between whom and us he now
interposes.
Ladies and gentlemen, if ever there were a time when the true spirits of
two countries were really fighting in the cause of human advancement and
freedom—no matter what diplomatic notes or other nameless botherations,
from number one to one hundred thousand and one, may have preceded their
taking the field—if ever there were a time when noble hearts were
deserving well of mankind by exposing themselves to the obedient bayonets
of a rash and barbarian tyrant, it is now, when the faithful children of
England and France are fighting so bravely in the Crimea. Those faithful
children are the admiration and wonder of the world, so gallantly are
they discharging their duty; and therefore I propose to an assembly,
emphatically representing the interests and arts of peace, to drink the
health of the Allied Armies of England and France, with all possible
honours.
* * * * *
In proposing the health of the Treasurer, Mr. Dickens said:—
If the President of this Institution had been here, I should possibly
have made one of the best speeches you ever heard; but as he is not here,
I shall turn to the next toast on my list:—“The health of your worthy
Treasurer, Mr. George Moore,” a name which is a synonym for integrity,
enterprise, public spirit, and benevolence. He is one of the most
zealous officers I ever saw in my life; he appears to me to have been
doing nothing during the last week but rushing into and out of
railway-carriages, and making eloquent speeches at all sorts of public
dinners in favour of this charity. Last evening he was at Manchester,
and this evening he comes here, sacrificing his time and convenience, and
exhausting in the meantime the contents of two vast leaden inkstands and
no end of pens, with the energy of fifty bankers’ clerks rolled into one.
But I clearly foresee that the Treasurer will have so much to do
to-night, such gratifying sums to acknowledge and such large lines of
figures to write in his books, that I feel the greatest consideration I
can show him is to propose his health without further observation,
leaving him to address you in his own behalf. I propose to you,
therefore, the health of Mr. George Moore, the Treasurer of this charity,
and I need hardly add that it is one which is to be drunk with all the
honours.
* * * * *
[Later in the evening, Mr. Dickens rose and said:—]
So many travellers have been going up Mont Blanc lately, both in fact and
in fiction, that I have heard recently of a proposal for the
establishment of a Company to employ Sir Joseph Paxton to take it down.
Only one of those travellers, however, has been enabled to bring Mont
Blanc to Piccadilly, and, by his own ability and good humour, so to thaw
its eternal ice and snow, as that the most timid lady may ascend it twice
a-day, “during the holidays,” without the smallest danger or fatigue.
Mr. Albert Smith, who is present amongst us to-night, is undoubtedly “a
traveller.” I do not know whether he takes many orders, but this I can
testify, on behalf of the children of his friends, that he gives them in
the most liberal manner.
We have also amongst us my friend Mr. Peter Cunningham, who is also a
traveller, not only in right of his able edition of Goldsmith’s
“Traveller,” but in right of his admirable Handbook, which proves him to
be a traveller in the right spirit through all the labyrinths of London.
We have also amongst us my friend Horace Mayhew, very well known also for
his books, but especially for his genuine admiration of the company at
that end of the room [_Mr. Dickens here pointed to the ladies gallery_],
and who, whenever the fair sex is mentioned, will be found to have the
liveliest personal interest in the conversation.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am about to propose to you the health of these
three distinguished visitors. They are all admirable speakers, but Mr.
Albert Smith has confessed to me, that on fairly balancing his own merits
as a speaker and a singer, he rather thinks he excels in the latter art.
I have, therefore, yielded to his estimate of himself, and I have now the
pleasure of informing you that he will lead off the speeches of the other
two gentlemen with a song. Mr. Albert Smith has just said to me in an
earnest tone of voice, “What song would you recommend?” and I replied,
“Galignani’s Messenger.” Ladies and gentlemen, I therefore beg to
propose the health of Messrs. Albert Smith, Peter Cunningham, and Horace
Mayhew, and call on the first-named gentleman for a song.
XV.
ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM.
THEATRE ROYAL, DRURY LANE, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 27, 1855.
I CANNOT, I am sure, better express my sense of the kind reception
accorded to me by this great assembly, than by promising to compress what
I shall address to it within the closest possible limits. It is more
than eighteen hundred years ago, since there was a set of men who
“thought they should be heard for their much speaking.” As they have
propagated exceedingly since that time, and as I observe that they
flourish just now to a surprising extent about Westminster, I will do my
best to avoid adding to the numbers of that prolific race. The noble
lord at the head of the Government, when he wondered in Parliament about
a week ago, that my friend, Mr. Layard, did not blush for having stated
in this place what the whole country knows perfectly well to be true, and
what no man in it can by possibility better know to be true than those
disinterested supporters of that noble lord, who had the advantage of
hearing him and cheering him night after night, when he first became
premier—I mean that he did officially and habitually joke, at a time when
this country was plunged in deep disgrace and distress—I say, that noble
lord, when he wondered so much that the man of this age, who has, by his
earnest and adventurous spirit, done the most to distinguish himself and
it, did not blush for the tremendous audacity of having so come between
the wind and his nobility, turned an airy period with reference to the
private theatricals at Drury Lane Theatre. Now, I have some slight
acquaintance with theatricals, private and public, and I will accept that
figure of the noble lord. I will not say that if I wanted to form a
company of Her Majesty’s servants, I think I should know where to put my
hand on “the comic old gentleman;” nor, that if I wanted to get up a
pantomime, I fancy I should know what establishment to go to for the
tricks and changes; also, for a very considerable host of
supernumeraries, to trip one another up in that contention with which
many of us are familiar, both on these and on other boards, in which the
principal objects thrown about are loaves and fishes. But I will try to
give the noble lord the reason for these private theatricals, and the
reason why, however ardently he may desire to ring the curtain down upon
them, there is not the faintest present hope of their coming to a
conclusion. It is this:—The public theatricals which the noble lord is
so condescending as to manage are so intolerably bad, the machinery is so
cumbrous, the parts so ill-distributed, the company so full of “walking
gentlemen,” the managers have such large families, and are so bent upon
putting those families into what is theatrically called “first
business”—not because of their aptitude for it, but because they _are_
their families, that we find ourselves obliged to organize an opposition.
We have seen the _Comedy of Errors_ played so dismally like a tragedy
that we really cannot bear it. We are, therefore, making bold to get up
the _School of Reform_, and we hope, before the play is out, to improve
that noble lord by our performance very considerably. If he object that
we have no right to improve him without his license, we venture to claim
that right in virtue of his orchestra, consisting of a very powerful
piper, whom we always pay.
Sir, as this is the first political meeting I have ever attended, and as
my trade and calling is not associated with politics, perhaps it may be
useful for me to show how I came to be here, because reasons similar to
those which have influenced me may still be trembling in the balance in
the minds of others. I want at all times, in full sincerity, to do my
duty by my countrymen. If _I_ feel an attachment towards them, there is
nothing disinterested or meritorious in that, for I can never too
affectionately remember the confidence and friendship that they have long
reposed in me. My sphere of action—which I shall never change—I shall
never overstep, further than this, or for a longer period than I do
to-night. By literature I have lived, and through literature I have been
content to serve my country; and I am perfectly well aware that I cannot
serve two masters. In my sphere of action I have tried to understand the
heavier social grievances, and to help to set them right. When the
_Times_ newspaper proved its then almost incredible case, in reference to
the ghastly absurdity of that vast labyrinth of misplaced men and
misdirected things, which had made England unable to find on the face of
the earth, an enemy one-twentieth part so potent to effect the misery and
ruin of her noble defenders as she has been herself, I believe that the
gloomy silence into which the country fell was by far the darkest aspect
in which a great people had been exhibited for many years. With shame
and indignation lowering among all classes of society, and this new
element of discord piled on the heaving basis of ignorance, poverty and
crime, which is always below us—with little adequate expression of the
general mind, or apparent understanding of the general mind, in
Parliament—with the machinery of Government and the legislature going
round and round, and the people fallen from it and standing aloof, as if
they left it to its last remaining function of destroying itself, when it
had achieved the destruction of so much that was dear to them—I did and
do believe that the only wholesome turn affairs so menacing could
possibly take, was, the awaking of the people, the outspeaking of the
people, the uniting of the people in all patriotism and loyalty to effect
a great peaceful constitutional change in the administration of their own
affairs. At such a crisis this association arose; at such a crisis I
joined it: considering its further case to be—if further case could
possibly be needed—that what is everybody’s business is nobody’s
business, that men must be gregarious in good citizenship as well as in
other things, and that it is a law in nature that there must be a centre
of attraction for particles to fly to, before any serviceable body with
recognised functions can come into existence. This association has
arisen, and we belong to it. What are the objections to it? I have
heard in the main but three, which I will now briefly notice. It is said
that it is proposed by this association to exercise an influence, through
the constituencies, on the House of Commons. I have not the least
hesitation in saying that I have the smallest amount of faith in the
House of Commons at present existing and that I consider the exercise of
such influence highly necessary to the welfare and honour of this
country. I was reading no later than yesterday the book of Mr. Pepys,
which is rather a favourite of mine, in which he, two hundred years ago,
writing of the House of Commons, says:
“My cousin Roger Pepys tells me that it is matter of the greatest
grief to him in the world that he should be put upon this trust of
being a Parliament man; because he says nothing is done, that he can
see, out of any truth and sincerity, but mere envy and design.”
Now, how it comes to pass that after two hundred years, and many years
after a Reform Bill, the house of Commons is so little changed, I will
not stop to inquire. I will not ask how it happens that bills which
cramp and worry the people, and restrict their scant enjoyments, are so
easily passed, and how it happens that measures for their real interests
are so very difficult to be got through Parliament. I will not analyse
the confined air of the lobby, or reduce to their primitive gases its
deadening influences on the memory of that Honourable Member who was once
a candidate for the honour of your—and my—independent vote and interest.
I will not ask what is that Secretarian figure, full of blandishments,
standing on the threshold, with its finger on its lips. I will not ask
how it comes that those personal altercations, involving all the removes
and definitions of Shakespeare’s Touchstone—the retort courteous—the quip
modest—the reply churlish—the reproof valiant—the countercheck
quarrelsome—the lie circumstantial and the lie direct—are of immeasurably
greater interest in the House of Commons than the health, the taxation,
and the education, of a whole people. I will not penetrate into the
mysteries of that secret chamber in which the Bluebeard of Party keeps
his strangled public questions, and with regard to which, when he gives
the key to his wife, the new comer, he strictly charges her on no account
to open the door. I will merely put it to the experience of everybody
here, whether the House of Commons is not occasionally a little hard of
hearing, a little dim of sight, a little slow of understanding, and
whether, in short, it is not in a sufficiency invalided state to require
close watching, and the occasional application of sharp stimulants; and
whether it is not capable of considerable improvement? I believe that,
in order to preserve it in a state of real usefulness and independence,
the people must be very watchful and very jealous of it; and it must have
its memory jogged; and be kept awake when it happens to have taken too
much Ministerial narcotic; it must be trotted about, and must be bustled
and pinched in a friendly way, as is the usage in such cases. I hold
that no power can deprive us of the right to administer our functions as
a body comprising electors from all parts of the country, associated
together because their country is dearer to them than drowsy twaddle,
unmeaning routine, or worn-out conventionalities.
This brings me to objection number two. It is stated that this
Association sets class against class. Is this so? (_Cries of_ “No.”)
No, it finds class set against class, and seeks to reconcile them. I
wish to avoid placing in opposition those two words—Aristocracy and
People. I am one who can believe in the virtues and uses of both, and
would not on any account deprive either of a single just right belonging
to it. I will use, instead of these words, the terms, the governors and
the governed. These two bodies the Association finds with a gulf between
them, in which are lying, newly-buried, thousands on thousands of the
bravest and most devoted men that even England ever bred. It is to
prevent the recurrence of innumerable smaller evils, of which, unchecked,
that great calamity was the crowning height and the necessary
consummation, and to bring together those two fronts looking now so
strangely at each other, that this Association seeks to help to bridge
over that abyss, with a structure founded on common justice and supported
by common sense. Setting class against class! That is the very parrot
prattle that we have so long heard. Try its justice by the following
example:—A respectable gentleman had a large establishment, and a great
number of servants, who were good for nothing, who, when he asked them to
give his children bread, gave them stones; who, when they were told to
give those children fish, gave them serpents. When they were ordered to
send to the East, they sent to the West; when they ought to have been
serving dinner in the North, they were consulting exploded cookery books
in the South; who wasted, destroyed, tumbled over one another when
required to do anything, and were bringing everything to ruin. At last
the respectable gentleman calls his house steward, and says, even then
more in sorrow than in anger, “This is a terrible business; no fortune
can stand it—no mortal equanimity can bear it! I must change my system;
I must obtain servants who will do their duty.” The house steward throws
up his eyes in pious horror, ejaculates “Good God, master, you are
setting class against class!” and then rushes off into the servants’
hall, and delivers a long and melting oration on that wicked feeling.
I now come to the third objection, which is common among young gentlemen
who are not particularly fit for anything but spending money which they
have not got. It is usually comprised in the observation, “How very
extraordinary it is that these Administrative Reform fellows can’t mind
their own business.” I think it will occur to all that a very sufficient
mode of disposing of this objection is to say, that it is our own
business we mind when we come forward in this way, and it is to prevent
it from being mismanaged by them. I observe from the Parliamentary
debates—which have of late, by-the-bye, frequently suggested to me that
there is this difference between the bull of Spain the bull of Nineveh,
that, whereas, in the Spanish case, the bull rushes at the scarlet, in
the Ninevite case, the scarlet rushes at the bull—I have observed from
the Parliamentary debates that, by a curious fatality, there has been a
great deal of the reproof valiant and the counter-check quarrelsome, in
reference to every case, showing the necessity of Administrative Reform,
by whomsoever produced, whensoever, and wheresoever. I daresay I should
have no difficulty in adding two or three cases to the list, which I know
to be true, and which I have no doubt would be contradicted, but I
consider it a work of supererogation; for, if the people at large be not
already convinced that a sufficient general case has been made out for
Administrative Reform, I think they neve
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