Institution, will find it richer in its means of usefulness, and
grayer-headed in the honour and respect it has gained. It can
hardly speak for itself more appropriately than in the words of an
English writer, when contemplating the English emblem of this
period of the year, the holly-tree:-
[Mr. Dickens concluded by quoting the last three stanzas of
Southey’s poem, THE HOLLY TREE.
In acknowledging a vote of thanks proposed by Sir Archibald (then
Mr.) Alison, Mr. Dickens said:]
Ladies and Gentlemen, – I am no stranger – and I say it with the
deepest gratitude – to the warmth of Scottish hearts; but the
warmth of your present welcome almost deprives me of any hope of
acknowledging it. I will not detain you any longer at this late
hour; let it suffice to assure you, that for taking the part with
which I have been honoured in this festival, I have been repaid a
thousand-fold by your abundant kindness, and by the unspeakable
gratification it has afforded me. I hope that, before many years
are past, we may have another meeting in public, when we shall
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rejoice at the immense progress your institution will have made in
the meantime, and look back upon this night with new pleasure and
satisfaction. I shall now, in conclusion, repeat most heartily and
fervently the quotation of Dr. Ewing, the late Provost of Glasgow,
which Bailie Nicol Jarvie, himself “a Glasgow body,” observed was
“elegantly putten round the town’s arms.”
SPEECH: LONDON, APRIL 14, 1851.
[The Sixth Annual Dinner of the General Theatrical Fund was held at
the London Tavern on the above date. Mr. Charles Dickens occupied
the chair, and in giving the toast of the evening said:-]
I HAVE so often had the satisfaction of bearing my testimony, in
this place, to the usefulness of the excellent Institution in whose
behalf we are assembled, that I should be really sensible of the
disadvantage of having now nothing to say in proposing the toast
you all anticipate, if I were not well assured that there is really
nothing which needs be said. I have to appeal to you on the old
grounds, and no ingenuity of mine could render those grounds of
greater weight than they have hitherto successfully proved to you.
Although the General Theatrical Fund Association, unlike many other
public societies and endowments, is represented by no building,
whether of stone, or brick, or glass, like that astonishing
evidence of the skill and energy of my friend Mr. Paxton, which all
the world is now called upon to admire, and the great merit of
which, as you learn from the best authorities, is, that it ought to
have fallen down long before it was built, and yet that it would by
no means consent to doing so – although, I say, this Association
possesses no architectural home, it is nevertheless as plain a
fact, rests on as solid a foundation, and carries as erect a front,
as any building, in the world. And the best and the utmost that
its exponent and its advocate can do, standing here, is to point it
out to those who gather round it, and to say, “judge for
yourselves.”
It may not, however, be improper for me to suggest to that portion
of the company whose previous acquaintance with it may have been
limited, what it is not. It is not a theatrical association whose
benefits are confined to a small and exclusive body of actors. It
is a society whose claims are always preferred in the name of the
whole histrionic art. It is not a theatrical association adapted
to a state of theatrical things entirely past and gone, and no more
suited to present theatrical requirements than a string of packhorses
would be suited to the conveyance of traffic between London
and Birmingham. It is not a rich old gentleman, with the gout in
his vitals, brushed and got-up once a year to look as vigorous as
possible, and brought out for a public airing by the few survivors
of a large family of nephews and nieces, who afterwards double-lock
the street-door upon the poor relations. It is not a theatrical