peopling it with the creations of his brilliant fancy. Let us all
wish together that they may be many more – for the more they are
the better it will be, and, as he always excels himself, the better
they will be. I ask you to listen to their praises and not to
mine, and to let them, not me, propose his health.
SPEECH: LONDON, FEBRUARY 14, 1866.
[On this occasion Mr. Dickens officiated as Chairman at the annual
dinner of the Dramatic, Equestrian, and Musical Fund, at Willis’s
Rooms, where he made the following speech:]
LADIES, before I couple you with the gentlemen, which will be at
least proper to the inscription over my head (St. Valentine’s day)
– before I do so, allow me, on behalf of my grateful sex here
represented, to thank you for the great pleasure and interest with
which your gracious presence at these festivals never fails to
inspire us. There is no English custom which is so manifestly a
relic of savage life as that custom which usually excludes you from
participation in similar gatherings. And although the crime
carries its own heavy punishment along with it, in respect that it
divests a public dinner of its most beautiful ornament and of its
most fascinating charm, still the offence is none the less to be
severely reprehended on every possible occasion, as outraging
equally nature and art. I believe that as little is known of the
saint whose name is written here as can well be known of any saint
or sinner. We, your loyal servants, are deeply thankful to him for
having somehow gained possession of one day in the year – for
having, as no doubt he has, arranged the almanac for 1866 –
expressly to delight us with the enchanting fiction that we have
some tender proprietorship in you which we should scarcely dare to
claim on a less auspicious occasion. Ladies, the utmost devotion
sanctioned by the saint we beg to lay at your feet, and any little
innocent privileges to which we may be entitled by the same
authority we beg respectfully but firmly to claim at your hands.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, you need no ghost to inform you that I
am going to propose “Prosperity to the Dramatic, Musical, and
Equestrian Sick Fund Association,” and, further, that I should be
going to ask you actively to promote that prosperity by liberally
contributing to its funds, if that task were not reserved for a
much more persuasive speaker. But I rest the strong claim of the
society for its useful existence and its truly charitable functions
on a very few words, though, as well as I can recollect, upon
something like six grounds. First, it relieves the sick; secondly,
it buries the dead; thirdly, it enables the poor members of the
profession to journey to accept new engagements whenever they find
themselves stranded in some remote, inhospitable place, or when,
from other circumstances, they find themselves perfectly crippled
as to locomotion for want of money; fourthly, it often finds such
engagements for them by acting as their honest, disinterested
agent; fifthly, it is its principle to act humanely upon the
instant, and never, as is too often the case within my experience,
to beat about the bush till the bush is withered and dead; lastly,
the society is not in the least degree exclusive, but takes under
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its comprehensive care the whole range of the theatre and the
concert-room, from the manager in his room of state, or in his
caravan, or at the drum-head – down to the theatrical housekeeper,
who is usually to be found amongst the cobwebs and the flies, or
down to the hall porter, who passes his life in a thorough draught
– and, to the best of my observation, in perpetually interrupted
endeavours to eat something with a knife and fork out of a basin,
by a dusty fire, in that extraordinary little gritty room, upon
which the sun never shines, and on the portals of which are
inscribed the magic words, “stage-door.”
Now, ladies and gentlemen, this society administers its benefits
sometimes by way of loan; sometimes by way of gift; sometimes by