generally hope to qualify for the Drury Lane or Covent Garden
institution, when the oldest and most distinguished members have
been driven from the boards on which they have earned their
reputations, to delight the town in theatres to which the General
Theatrical Fund alone extended?
I will again repeat that I attach no reproach to those other Funds,
with which I have had the honour of being connected at different
periods of my life. At the time those Associations were
established, an engagement at one of those theatres was almost a
matter of course, and a successful engagement would last a whole
life; but an engagement of two months’ duration at Covent Garden
would be a perfect Old Parr of an engagement just now. It should
never be forgotten that when those two funds were established, the
two great theatres were protected by patent, and that at that time
the minor theatres were condemned by law to the representation of
the most preposterous nonsense, and some gentlemen whom I see
around me could no more belong to the minor theatres of that day
than they could now belong to St. Bartholomew fair.
As I honour the two old funds for the great good which they have
done, so I honour this for the much greater good it is resolved to
do. It is not because I love them less, but because I love this
more – because it includes more in its operation.
Let us ever remember that there is no class of actors who stand so
much in need of a retiring fund as those who do not win the great
prizes, but who are nevertheless an essential part of the
theatrical system, and by consequence bear a part in contributing
to our pleasures. We owe them a debt which we ought to pay. The
beds of such men are not of roses, but of very artificial flowers
indeed. Their lives are lives of care and privation, and hard
struggles with very stern realities. It is from among the poor
actors who drink wine from goblets, in colour marvellously like
toast and water, and who preside at Barmecide beasts with wonderful
appetites for steaks, – it is from their ranks that the most
triumphant favourites have sprung. And surely, besides this, the
greater the instruction and delight we derive from the rich English
drama, the more we are bound to succour and protect the humblest of
those votaries of the art who add to our instruction and amusement.
Hazlitt has well said that “There is no class of society whom so
many persons regard with affection as actors. We greet them on the
stage, we like to meet them in the streets; they almost always
recal to us pleasant associations.” When they have strutted and
fretted their hour upon the stage, let them not be heard no more –
but let them be heard sometimes to say that they are happy in their
old age. When they have passed for the last time from behind that
glittering row of lights with which we are all familiar, let them
not pass away into gloom and darkness, – but let them pass into
cheerfulness and light – into a contented and happy home.
This is the object for which we have met; and I am too familiar
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Dickens, Charles – Speeches, Literary & Social
with the English character not to know that it will be effected.
When we come suddenly in a crowded street upon the careworn
features of a familiar face – crossing us like the ghost of
pleasant hours long forgotten – let us not recal those features
with pain, in sad remembrance of what they once were, but let us in
joy recognise it, and go back a pace or two to meet it once again,
as that of a friend who has beguiled us of a moment of care, who
has taught us to sympathize with virtuous grief, cheating us to
tears for sorrows not our own – and we all know how pleasant are
such tears. Let such a face be ever remembered as that of our
benefactor and our friend.
I tried to recollect, in coming here, whether I had ever been in