cheers just now would have been but so many cruel reproaches to me
if I could not here declare that, from the earliest days of my
career down to this proud night, I have always tried to be true to
my calling. Never unduly to assert it, on the one hand, and never,
on any pretence or consideration, to permit it to be patronized in
my person, has been the steady endeavour of my life; and I have
occasionally been vain enough to hope that I may leave its social
position in England better than I found it. Similarly, and equally
I hope without presumption, I trust that I may take this general
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representation of the public here, through so many orders,
pursuits, and degrees, as a token that the public believe that,
with a host of imperfections and shortcomings on my head, I have as
a writer, in my soul and conscience, tried to be as true to them as
they have ever been true to me. And here, in reference to the
inner circle of the arts and the outer circle of the public, I feel
it a duty to-night to offer two remarks. I have in my duty at odd
times heard a great deal about literary sets and cliques, and
coteries and barriers; about keeping this man up, and keeping that
man down; about sworn disciples and sworn unbelievers, and mutual
admiration societies, and I know not what other dragons in the
upward path. I began to tread it when I was very young, without
influence, without money, without companion, introducer, or
adviser, and I am bound to put in evidence in this place that I
never lighted on these dragons yet. So have I heard in my day, at
divers other odd times, much generally to the effect that the
English people have little or no love of art for its own sake, and
that they do not greatly care to acknowledge or do honour to the
artist. My own experience has uniformly been exactly the reverse.
I can say that of my countrymen, though I cannot say that of my
country.
And now passing to the immediate occasion of your doing me this
great honour, the story of my going again to America is very easily
and briefly told. Since I was there before a vast and entirely new
generation has arisen in the United States. Since I was there
before most of the best known of my books have been written and
published; the new generation and the books have come together and
have kept together, until at length numbers of those who have so
widely and constantly read me; naturally desiring a little variety
in the relationship between us, have expressed a strong wish that I
should read myself. This wish, at first conveyed to me through
public channels and business channels, has gradually become
enforced by an immense accumulation of letters from individuals and
associations of individuals, all expressing in the same hearty,
homely, cordial unaffected way, a kind of personal interest in me –
I had almost said a kind of personal affection for me, which I am
sure you would agree with me it would be dull insensibility on my
part not to prize. Little by little this pressure has become so
great that, although, as Charles Lamb says, my household gods
strike a terribly deep root, I have torn them from their places,
and this day week, at this hour, shall be upon the sea. You will
readily conceive that I am inspired besides by a natural desire to
see for myself the astonishing change and progress of a quarter of
a century over there, to grasp the hands of many faithful friends
whom I left there, to see the faces of the multitude of new friends
upon whom I have never looked, and last, not least, to use my best
endeavour to lay down a third cable of intercommunication and
alliance between the old world and the new. Twelve years ago, when
Heaven knows I little thought I should ever be bound upon the
voyage which now lies before me, I wrote in that form of my