truth stands as independent before you as if they were three
hundred Cockers all regulated by the Gospel according to
themselves. There are in existence three artists’ funds, which
ought never to be mentioned without respect. I am an officer of
one of them, and can speak from knowledge; but on this occasion I
address myself to a case for which there is no provision. I
address you on behalf of those professors of the fine arts who have
made provision during life, and in submitting to you their claims I
am only advocating principles which I myself have always
maintained.
When I add that this Benevolent Fund makes no pretensions to
gentility, squanders no treasure in keeping up appearances, that it
considers that the money given for the widow and the orphan, should
really be held for the widow and the orphan, I think I have
exhausted the case, which I desire most strenuously to commend to
you.
Perhaps you will allow me to say one last word. I will not consent
to present to you the professors of Art as a set of helpless
babies, who are to be held up by the chin; I present them as an
energetic and persevering class of men, whose incomes depend on
their own faculties and personal exertions; and I also make so bold
as to present them as men who in their vocation render good service
to the community. I am strongly disposed to believe there are very
few debates in Parliament so important to the public welfare as a
really good picture. I have also a notion that any number of
bundles of the driest legal chaff that ever was chopped would be
cheaply expended for one really meritorious engraving. At a highly
interesting annual festival at which I have the honour to assist,
and which takes place behind two fountains, I sometimes observe
that great ministers of state and other such exalted characters
have a strange delight in rather ostentatiously declaring that they
have no knowledge whatever of art, and particularly of impressing
on the company that they have passed their lives in severe studies.
It strikes me when I hear these things as if these great men looked
upon the arts as a sort of dancing dogs, or Punch’s show, to be
turned to for amusement when one has nothing else to do. Now I
always take the opportunity on these occasions of entertaining my
humble opinion that all this is complete “bosh;” and of asserting
to myself my strong belief that the neighbourhoods of Trafalgar
Square, or Suffolk Street, rightly understood, are quite as
important to the welfare of the empire as those of Downing Street,
or Westminster Hall. Ladies and Gentlemen, on these grounds, and
backed by the recommendation of three hundred artists in favour of
the Benevolent Fund, I beg to propose its prosperity as a toast for
your adoption.
SPEECH: THE FAREWELL READING. ST. JAMES’S HALL, MARCH 15, 1870.
[With the “Christmas Carol” and “The Trial from Pickwick,” Mr.
Page 116
Dickens, Charles – Speeches, Literary & Social
Charles Dickens brought to a brilliant close the memorable series
of public readings which have for sixteen years proved to audiences
unexampled in numbers, the source of the highest intellectual
enjoyment. Every portion of available space in the building was,
of course, last night occupied some time before the appointed hour;
but could the St. James’s Hall have been specially enlarged for the
occasion to the dimensions of Salisbury Plain, it is doubtful
whether sufficient room would even then have been provided for all
anxious to seize the last chance of hearing the distinguished
novelist give his own interpretation of the characters called into
existence by his own creative pen. As if determined to convince
his auditors that, whatever reason had influenced his
determination, physical exhaustion was not amongst them, Mr.
Dickens never read with greater spirit and energy. His voice to
the last retained its distinctive clearness, and the transitions of
tone, as each personage in the story, conjured up by a word, rose
vividly before the eye, seemed to be more marvellous than ever.
The vast assemblage, hushed into breathless attention, suffered not
a syllable to escape the ear, and the rich humour and deep pathos