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
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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.
SPEECH: 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
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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