Speeches: Literary and Social by Charles Dickens
Speeches: Literary and Social by Charles Dickens
SPEECH: EDINBURGH, JUNE 25, 1841.
[At a public dinner, given in honour of Mr. Dickens, and presided
over by the late Professor Wilson, the Chairman having proposed his
health in a long and eloquent speech, Mr. Dickens returned thanks
as follows:-]
IF I felt your warm and generous welcome less, I should be better
able to thank you. If I could have listened as you have listened
to the glowing language of your distinguished Chairman, and if I
could have heard as you heard the “thoughts that breathe and words
that burn,” which he has uttered, it would have gone hard but I
should have caught some portion of his enthusiasm, and kindled at
his example. But every word which fell from his lips, and every
demonstration of sympathy and approbation with which you received
his eloquent expressions, renders me unable to respond to his
kindness, and leaves me at last all heart and no lips, yearning to
respond as I would do to your cordial greeting – possessing, heaven
knows, the will, and desiring only to find the way.
The way to your good opinion, favour, and support, has been to me
very pleasing – a path strewn with flowers and cheered with
sunshine. I feel as if I stood amongst old friends, whom I had
intimately known and highly valued. I feel as if the deaths of the
fictitious creatures, in which you have been kind enough to express
an interest, had endeared us to each other as real afflictions
deepen friendships in actual life; I feel as if they had been real
persons, whose fortunes we had pursued together in inseparable
connexion, and that I had never known them apart from you.
It is a difficult thing for a man to speak of himself or of his
works. But perhaps on this occasion I may, without impropriety,
venture to say a word on the spirit in which mine were conceived.
I felt an earnest and humble desire, and shall do till I die, to
increase the stock of harmless cheerfulness. I felt that the world
was not utterly to be despised; that it was worthy of living in for
many reasons. I was anxious to find, as the Professor has said, if
I could, in evil things, that soul of goodness which the Creator
has put in them. I was anxious to show that virtue may be found in
the bye-ways of the world, that it is not incompatible with poverty
and even with rags, and to keep steadily through life the motto,
expressed in the burning words of your Northern poet –
“The rank is but the guinea stamp,
The man’s the gowd for a’ that.”
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Dickens, Charles – Speeches, Literary & Social
And in following this track, where could I have better assurance
that I was right, or where could I have stronger assurance to cheer
me on than in your kindness on this to me memorable night?
I am anxious and glad to have an opportunity of saying a word in
reference to one incident in which I am happy to know you were
interested, and still more happy to know, though it may sound
paradoxical, that you were disappointed – I mean the death of the
little heroine. When I first conceived the idea of conducting that
simple story to its termination, I determined rigidly to adhere to
it, and never to forsake the end I had in view. Not untried in the
school of affliction, in the death of those we love, I thought what
a good thing it would be if in my little work of pleasant amusement
I could substitute a garland of fresh flowers for the sculptured
horrors which disgrace the tomb. If I have put into my book
anything which can fill the young mind with better thoughts of
death, or soften the grief of older hearts; if I have written one
word which can afford pleasure or consolation to old or young in
time of trial, I shall consider it as something achieved –
something which I shall be glad to look back upon in after life.