because it is opposed to a stupid, unfeeling libel; secondly,
because my doing so may afford some slight encouragement to the
persons who are unjustly depreciated; and lastly, and most of all,
because I know it is the truth.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, it is time we should what we
professionally call “ring down” on these remarks. If you, such
members of the general public as are here, will only think the
great theatrical curtain has really fallen and been taken up again
for the night on that dull, dark vault which many of us know so
well; if you will only think of the theatre or other place of
entertainment as empty; if you will only think of the “float,” or
other gas-fittings, as extinguished; if you will only think of the
people who have beguiled you of an evening’s care, whose little
vanities and almost childish foibles are engendered in their
competing face to face with you for your favour – surely it may be
said their feelings are partly of your making, while their virtues
are all their own. If you will only do this, and follow them out
of that sham place into the real world, where it rains real rain,
snows real snow, and blows real wind; where people sustain
themselves by real money, which is much harder to get, much harder
to make, and very much harder to give away than the pieces of
tobacco-pipe in property bags – if you will only do this, and do it
in a really kind, considerate spirit, this society, then certain of
the result of the night’s proceedings, can ask no more. I beg to
propose to you to drink “Prosperity to the Dramatic, Equestrian,
and Musical Sick Fund Association.”
[Mr. Dickens, in proposing the next toast, said:-]
Gentlemen: as I addressed myself to the ladies last time, so I
address you this time, and I give you the delightful assurance that
it is positively my last appearance but one on the present
occasion. A certain Mr. Pepys, who was Secretary for the Admiralty
in the days of Charles II., who kept a diary well in shorthand,
which he supposed no one could read, and which consequently remains
to this day the most honest diary known to print – Mr. Pepys had
two special and very strong likings, the ladies and the theatres.
But Mr. Pepys, whenever he committed any slight act of remissness,
or any little peccadillo which was utterly and wholly untheatrical,
used to comfort his conscience by recording a vow that he would
abstain from the theatres for a certain time. In the first part of
Mr. Pepys’ character I have no doubt we fully agree with him; in
the second I have no doubt we do not.
I learn this experience of Mr. Pepys from remembrance of a passage
in his diary that I was reading the other night, from which it
appears that he was not only curious in plays, but curious in
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Dickens, Charles – Speeches, Literary & Social
sermons; and that one night when he happened to be walking past St.
Dunstan’s Church, he turned, went in, and heard what he calls “a
very edifying discourse;” during the delivery of which discourse,
he notes in his diary – “I stood by a pretty young maid, whom I did
attempt to take by the hand.” But he adds – “She would not; and I
did perceive that she had pins in her pocket with which to prick me
if I should touch her again – and was glad that I spied her
design.” Afterwards, about the close of the same edifying
discourse, Mr. Pepys found himself near another pretty, fair young
maid, who would seem upon the whole to have had no pins, and to
have been more impressible.
Now, the moral of this story which I wish to suggest to you is,
that we have been this evening in St. James’s much more timid than
Mr. Pepys was in St. Dunstan’s, and that we have conducted
ourselves very much better. As a slight recompense to us for our
highly meritorious conduct, and as a little relief to our overcharged