pretend to entreat from you an act of charity.
I have used the word gratitude; and let any man ask his own heart,
and confess if he have not some grateful acknowledgments for the
actor’s art? Not peculiarly because it is a profession often
pursued, and as it were marked, by poverty and misfortune – for
other callings, God knows, have their distresses – nor because the
actor has sometimes to come from scenes of sickness, of suffering,
ay, even of death itself, to play his part before us – for all of
us, in our spheres, have as often to do violence to our feelings
and to hide our hearts in fighting this great battle of life, and
in discharging our duties and responsibilities. But the art of the
actor excites reflections, sombre or grotesque, awful or humorous,
which we are all familiar with. If any man were to tell me that he
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denied his acknowledgments to the stage, I would simply put to him
one question – whether he remembered his first play?
If you, gentlemen, will but carry back your recollection to that
great night, and call to mind the bright and harmless world which
then opened to your view, we shall, I think, hear favourably of the
effect upon your liberality on this occasion from our Secretary.
This is the sixth year of meetings of this kind – the sixth time we
have had this fine child down after dinner. His nurse, a very
worthy person of the name of Buckstone, who has an excellent
character from several places, will presently report to you that
his chest is perfectly sound, and that his general health is in the
most thriving condition. Long may it be so; long may it thrive and
grow; long may we meet (it is my sincere wish) to exchange our
congratulations on its prosperity; and longer than the line of
Banquo may be that line of figures which, as its patriotic share in
the national debt, a century hence shall be stated by the Governor
and Company of the Bank of England.
SPEECH: THE ROYAL LITERARY FUND. LONDON, MARCH 12, 1856.
[The Corporation of the Royal Literary Fund was established in
1790, its object being to administer assistance to authors of
genius and learning, who may be reduced to distress by unavoidable
calamities, or deprived, by enfeebled faculties or declining life,
of the power of literary exertion. At the annual general meeting
held at the house of the society on the above date, the following
speech was made by Mr. Charles Dickens:]
SIR, – I shall not attempt to follow my friend Mr. Bell, who, in
the profession of literature, represents upon this committee a
separate and distinct branch of the profession, that, like
“The last rose of summer
Stands blooming alone,
While all its companions
Are faded and gone,”
into the very prickly bramble-bush with which he has ingeniously
contrived to beset this question. In the remarks I have to make I
shall confine myself to four points: – 1. That the committee find
themselves in the painful condition of not spending enough money,
and will presently apply themselves to the great reform of spending
more. 2. That with regard to the house, it is a positive matter
of history, that the house for which Mr. Williams was so anxious
was to be applied to uses to which it never has been applied, and
which the administrators of the fund decline to recognise. 3.
That, in Mr. Bell’s endeavours to remove the Artists’ Fund from the
ground of analogy it unquestionably occupies with reference to this
fund, by reason of their continuing periodical relief to the same
persons, I beg to tell Mr. Bell what every gentleman at that table
knows – that it is the business of this fund to relieve over and
over again the same people.
MR. BELL: But fresh inquiry is always made first.
MR. C. DICKENS: I can only oppose to that statement my own
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experience when I sat on that committee, and when I have known
persons relieved on many consecutive occasions without further