have had, the child you certainly have been. Each of these dreamchildren
should hold in its powerful hand one of the little
children now lying in the Child’s Hospital, or now shut out of it
to perish. Each of these dream-children should say to you, “O,
help this little suppliant in my name; O, help it for my sake!”
Well! – And immediately awaking, you should find yourselves in the
Freemasons’ Hall, happily arrived at the end of a rather long
speech, drinking “Prosperity to the Hospital for Sick Children,”
and thoroughly resolved that it shall flourish.
SPEECH: EDINBURGH, MARCH, 26, 1858.
[On the above date Mr. Dickens gave a reading of his Christmas
Carol in the Music Hall, before the members and subscribers of the
Philosophical Institution. At the conclusion of the reading the
Lord Provost of Edinburgh presented him with a massive silver
wassail cup. Mr. Dickens acknowledged the tribute as follows:]
MY LORD PROVOST, ladies, and gentlemen, I beg to assure you I am
deeply sensible of your kind welcome, and of this beautiful and
great surprise; and that I thank you cordially with all my heart.
I never have forgotten, and I never can forget, that I have the
honour to be a burgess and guild-brother of the Corporation of
Edinburgh. As long as sixteen or seventeen years ago, the first
great public recognition and encouragement I ever received was
bestowed on me in this generous and magnificent city – in this city
so distinguished in literature and so distinguished in the arts.
You will readily believe that I have carried into the various
countries I have since traversed, and through all my subsequent
career, the proud and affectionate remembrance of that eventful
epoch in my life; and that coming back to Edinburgh is to me like
coming home.
Ladies and gentlemen, you have heard so much of my voice to-night,
that I will not inflict on you the additional task of hearing any
more. I am better reconciled to limiting myself to these very few
words, because I know and feel full well that no amount of speech
to which I could give utterance could possibly express my sense of
the honour and distinction you have conferred on me, or the
heartfelt gratification I derive from this reception.
Page 48
Dickens, Charles – Speeches, Literary & Social
SPEECH: LONDON, MARCH 29, 1858.
[At the thirteenth anniversary festival of the General Theatrical
Fund, held at the Freemasons’ Tavern, at which Thackeray presided,
Mr. Dickens made the following speech:]
IN our theatrical experience as playgoers we are all equally
accustomed to predict by certain little signs and portents on the
stage what is going to happen there. When the young lady, an
admiral’s daughter, is left alone to indulge in a short soliloquy,
and certain smart spirit-rappings are heard to proceed immediately
from beneath her feet, we foretell that a song is impending. When
two gentlemen enter, for whom, by a happy coincidence, two chairs,
and no more, are in waiting, we augur a conversation, and that it
will assume a retrospective biographical character. When any of
the performers who belong to the sea-faring or marauding
professions are observed to arm themselves with very small swords
to which are attached very large hilts, we predict that the affair
will end in a combat. Carrying out the association of ideas, it
may have occurred to some that when I asked my old friend in the
chair to allow me to propose a toast I had him in my eye; and I
have him now on my lips.
The duties of a trustee of the Theatrical Fund, an office which I
hold, are not so frequent or so great as its privileges. He is in
fact a mere walking gentleman, with the melancholy difference that
he has no one to love. If this advantage could be added to his
character it would be one of a more agreeable nature than it is,
and his forlorn position would be greatly improved. His duty is to
call every half year at the bankers’, when he signs his name in a
large greasy inconvenient book, to certain documents of which he
knows nothing, and then he delivers it to the property man and