them through the breath of life, Liverpool stood foremost among the
great places out of London to which I looked with eager confidence
and pleasure. And why was this? Not merely because of the
reputation of its citizens for generous estimation of the arts; not
merely because I had unworthily filled the chair of its great selfeducational
institution long ago; not merely because the place had
been a home to me since the well-remembered day when its blessed
roofs and steeples dipped into the Mersey behind me on the occasion
of my first sailing away to see my generous friends across the
Atlantic twenty-seven years ago. Not for one of those
considerations, but because it had been my happiness to have a
public opportunity of testing the spirit of its people. I had
asked Liverpool for help towards the worthy preservation of
Shakespeare’s house. On another occasion I had ventured to address
Liverpool in the names of Leigh Hunt and Sheridan Knowles. On
still another occasion I had addressed it in the cause of the
brotherhood and sisterhood of letters and the kindred arts, and on
each and all the response had been unsurpassably spontaneous, openhanded,
and munificent.
Mr. Mayor, and ladies and gentlemen, if I may venture to take a
small illustration of my present position from my own peculiar
craft, I would say that there is this objection in writing fiction
to giving a story an autobiographical form, that through whatever
dangers the narrator may pass, it is clear unfortunately to the
reader beforehand that he must have come through them somehow else
he could not have lived to tell the tale. Now, in speaking fact,
when the fact is associated with such honours as those with which
you have enriched me, there is this singular difficulty in the way
of returning thanks, that the speaker must infallibly come back to
himself through whatever oratorical disasters he may languish on
the road. Let me, then, take the plainer and simpler middle course
of dividing my subject equally between myself and you. Let me
assure you that whatever you have accepted with pleasure, either by
word of pen or by word of mouth, from me, you have greatly improved
in the acceptance. As the gold is said to be doubly and trebly
refined which has seven times passed the furnace, so a fancy may be
said to become more and more refined each time it passes through
the human heart. You have, and you know you have, brought to the
consideration of me that quality in yourselves without which I
should but have beaten the air. Your earnestness has stimulated
mine, your laughter has made me laugh, and your tears have
overflowed my eyes. All that I can claim for myself in
establishing the relations which exist between us is constant
fidelity to hard work. My literary fellows about me, of whom I am
so proud to see so many, know very well how true it is in all art
that what seems the easiest done is oftentimes the most difficult
to do, and that the smallest truth may come of the greatest pains –
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Dickens, Charles – Speeches, Literary & Social
much, as it occurred to me at Manchester the other day, as the
sensitive touch of Mr. Whitworth’s measuring machine, comes at
last, of Heaven and Manchester and its mayor only know how much
hammering – my companions-in-arms know thoroughly well, and I think
it only right the public should know too, that in our careful toil
and trouble, and in our steady striving for excellence – not in any
little gifts, misused by fits and starts – lies our highest duty at
once to our calling, to one another, to ourselves, and to you.
Ladies and gentlemen, before sitting down I find that I have to
clear myself of two very unexpected accusations. The first is a
most singular charge preferred against me by my old friend Lord
Houghton, that I have been somewhat unconscious of the merits of
the House of Lords. Now, ladies and gentlemen, seeing that I have
had some few not altogether obscure or unknown personal friends in
that assembly, seeing that I had some little association with, and