Speeches: Literary and Social Part 14

The Board of Health may be excellently adapted for going and very willing and anxious to go, and yet may not be permitted to go by reason of its lawful master having fallen into a gentle slumber and forgotten to set it a going. One of the speakers this evening has referred to Lord Castlereagh's caution "not to halloo until they were out of the wood." As regards the Board of Trade I would suggest that they ought not to halloo until they are out of the Woods and Forests. In that leafy region the Board of Health suffers all sorts of delays, and this should always be borne in mind. With the toast of the Board of Health I will couple the name of a n.o.ble lord (Ashley), of whose earnestness in works of benevolence, no man can doubt, and who has the courage on all occasions to face the cant which is the worst and commonest of all- -the cant about the cant of philanthropy.

SPEECH: GARDENING. LONDON, JUNE 9, 1851.

[At the anniversary dinner of the Gardeners' Benevolent Inst.i.tution, held under the presidency of Mr., afterwards Sir Joseph Paxton, Mr. Charles d.i.c.kens made the following speech:-]

I feel an unbounded and delightful interest in all the purposes and a.s.sociations of gardening. Probably there is no feeling in the human mind stronger than the love of gardening. The prisoner will make a garden in his prison, and cultivate his solitary flower in the c.h.i.n.k of a wall. The poor mechanic will string his scarlet bean from one side of his window to the other, and watch it and tend it with unceasing interest. It is a holy duty in foreign countries to decorate the graves of the dead with flowers, and here, too, the resting-places of those who have pa.s.sed away from us will soon be gardens. From that old time when the Lord walked in the garden in the cool of the evening, down to the day when a Poet- Laureate sang -

"Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere, From yon blue heaven above us bent The gardener Adam and his wife Smile at the claims of long descent,"

at all times and in all ages gardens have been amongst the objects of the greatest interest to mankind. There may be a few, but I believe they are but a few, who take no interest in the products of gardening, except perhaps in "London Pride," or a certain degenerate kind of "Stock," which is apt to grow hereabouts, cultivated by a species of frozen-out gardeners whom no thaw can ever penetrate: except these, the gardeners' art has contributed to the delight of all men in their time. That there ought to be a Benevolent Provident Inst.i.tution for gardeners is in the fitness of things, and that such an inst.i.tution ought to flourish and does flourish is still more so.

I have risen to propose to you the health of a gentleman who is a great gardener, and not only a great gardener but a great man--the growth of a fine Saxon root cultivated up with a power of intellect to a plant that is at this time the talk of the civilized world--I allude, of course, to my friend the chairman of the day. I took occasion to say at a public a.s.sembly hard-by, a month or two ago, in speaking of that wonderful building Mr. Paxton has designed for the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, that it ought to have fallen down, but that it refused to do so. We were told that the gla.s.s ought to have been all broken, the gutters all choked up, and the building flooded, and that the roof and sides ought to have been blown away; in short that everything ought to have done what everything obstinately persisted in not doing. Earth, air, fire, and water all appear to have conspired together in Mr. Paxton's favour--all have conspired together to one result, which, when the present generation is dust, will be an enduring temple to his honour, and to the energy, the talent, and the resources of Englishmen.

"But," said a gentleman to me the other day, "no doubt Mr. Paxton is a great man, but there is one objection to him that you can never get over, that is, he is a gardener." Now that is our case to-night, that he is a gardener, and we are extremely proud of it.

This is a great age, with all its faults, when a man by the power of his own genius and good sense can scale such a daring height as Mr. Paxton has reached, and composedly place his form on the top.

This is a great age, when a man impressed with a useful idea can carry out his project without being imprisoned, or thumb-screwed, or persecuted in any form. I can well understand that you, to whom the genius, the intelligence, the industry, and the achievements of our friend are well known, should be anxious to do him honour by placing him in the position he occupies to-night; and I a.s.sure you, you have conferred great gratification on one of his friends, in permitting him to have the opportunity of proposing his health, which that friend now does most cordially and with all the honours.

SPEECH: THE ROYAL ACADEMY DINNER. LONDON, MAY 2, 1870.

[On the occasion of the Second Exhibition of the Royal Academy in their new galleries in Piccadilly, the President, Sir F. Grant, and the council gave their usual inaugurative banquet, and a very distinguished company was present. The dinner took place in the large central room, and covers were laid for 200 guests. The Prince of Wales acknowledged the toast of his health and that of the Princess, the Duke of Cambridge responded to the toast of the army, Mr. Childers to the navy, Lord Elcho to the volunteers, Mr.

Motley to "The Prosperity of the United States," Mr. Gladstone to "Her Majesty's Ministers," the Archbishop of York to, "The Guests,"

and Mr. d.i.c.kens to "Literature." The last toast having been proposed in a highly eulogistic speech, Mr. d.i.c.kens responded.]

Mr. President, your Royal Highnesses, my Lords and Gentlemen,--I beg to acknowledge the toast with which you have done me the great honour of a.s.sociating my name. I beg to acknowledge it on behalf of the brotherhood of literature, present and absent, not forgetting an ill.u.s.trious wanderer from the fold, whose tardy return to it we all hail with delight, and who now sits--or lately did sit--within a few chairs of or on your left hand. I hope I may also claim to acknowledge the toast on behalf of the sisterhood of literature also, although that "better half of human nature," to which Mr. Gladstone rendered his graceful tribute, is unworthily represented here, in the present state of its rights and wrongs, by the devouring monster, man.

All the arts, and many of the sciences, bear witness that women, even in their present oppressed condition, can attain to quite as great distinction, and can attain to quite as lofty names as men.

Their emanc.i.p.ation (as I am given to understand) drawing very near, there is no saying how soon they may "push us from our stools" at these tables, or how soon our better half of human nature, standing in this place of mine, may eloquently depreciate mankind, addressing another better half of human nature sitting in the president's chair.

The literary visitors of the Royal Academy to-night desire me to congratulate their hosts on a very interesting exhibition, in which risen excellence supremely a.s.serts itself, and from which promise of a brilliant succession in time to come is not wanting. They naturally see with especial interest the writings and persons of great men--historians, philosophers, poets, and novelists, vividly ill.u.s.trated around them here. And they hope that they may modestly claim to have rendered some little a.s.sistance towards the production of many of the pictures in this magnificent gallery.

For without the patient labours of some among them unhistoric history might have long survived in this place, and but for the researches and wandering of others among them, the most preposterous countries, the most impossible peoples, and the absurdest superst.i.tions, manners, and customs, might have usurped the place of truth upon these walls. Nay, there is no knowing, Sir Francis Grant, what unlike portraits you yourself might have painted if you had been left, with your sitters, to idle pens, unchecked reckless rumours, and undenounced lying malevolence.

I cannot forbear, before I resume my seat, adverting to a sad theme (the recent death of Daniel Maclise) to which his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales made allusion, and to which the president referred with the eloquence of genuine feeling. Since I first entered the public lists, a very young man indeed, it has been my constant fortune to number amongst my nearest and dearest friends members of the Royal Academy who have been its grace and pride.

They have so dropped from my side one by one that I already, begin to feel like the Spanish monk of whom Wilkie tells, who had grown to believe that the only realities around him were the pictures which he loved, and that all the moving life he saw, or ever had seen, was a shadow and a dream.

For many years I was one of the two most intimate friends and most constant companions of the late Mr. Maclise. Of his genius in his chosen art I will venture to say nothing here, but of his prodigious fertility of mind and wonderful wealth of intellect, I may confidently a.s.sert that they would have made him, if he had been so minded, at least as great a writer as he was a painter.

The gentlest and most modest of men, the freshest as to his generous appreciation of young aspirants, and the frankest and largest-hearted as to his peers, incapable of a sordid or ign.o.ble thought, gallantly sustaining the true dignity of his vocation, without one grain of self-ambition, wholesomely natural at the last as at the first, "in wit a man, simplicity a child," no artist, of whatsoever denomination, I make bold to say, ever went to his rest leaving a golden memory more pure from dross, or having devoted himself with a truer chivalry to the art G.o.ddess whom he worshipped.

[These were the last public words of Charles d.i.c.kens.]

Footnotes:

{1} Sir David Wilkie died at sea, on board the Oriental, off Gibraltar, on the 1st of June, 1841, whilst on his way back to England. During the evening of the same day his body was committed to the deep. --ED.

{2} The Britannia was the vessel that conveyed Mr. d.i.c.kens across the Atlantic, on his first visit to America--ED.

{3} Master Humphrey's Clock, under which t.i.tle the two novels of Barnaby Rudge and The Old Curiosity Shop originally appeared.--ED.

{4} "I shall always entertain a very pleasant and grateful recollection of Hartford. It is a lovely place, and I had many friends there, whom I can never remember with indifference. We left it with no little regret." American Notes (Lond. 1842). Vol.

I, p. 182.

{5} See the Life and Letters of Washington Irving (Lond. 1863), p.

644, where Irving speaks of a letter he has received "from that glorious fellow d.i.c.kens, in reply to the one I wrote, expressing my heartfelt delight with his writings, and my yearnings toward himself." See also the letter itself, in the second division of this volume.--ED.

{6} TENNYSON, Lady Clara Vere de Vere, then newly published in collection of 1842.--ED

{7} "That this meeting, while conveying its cordial thanks to Charles d.i.c.kens, Esq., for his presence this evening, and for his able and courteous conduct as President, cannot separate without tendering the warmest expression of its grat.i.tude and admiration to one whose writings have so loyally inculcated the lessons of benevolence and virtue, and so richly contributed to the stores of public pleasure and instructions."

{8} The Duke of Devonshire.

{9} Charlotte Corday going to Execution.

{10} The above is extracted from Mrs. Stowe's "Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands,", a book in which her eaves-dropping propensities were already developed in a sufficiently ugly form.--ED.

{11} Alas! the "many years" were to be barely six, when the speaker was himself destined to write some memorial pages commemorative of his ill.u.s.trious friend (Cornhill Magazine, February, 1864.)--ED.

{12} Mr. Henry Dodd had proposed to give five acres of land in Berkshire, but, in consequence of his desiring to attach certain restrictions, after a long and unsatisfactory correspondence, the Committee, on 13th January following, rejected the offer.

(Communicated.)

{13} Claude Melnotte in The Lady of Lyons, Act iii. sc. 2.

{14} Mr. B. Webster.

{15} Romeo and Juliet, Act III. Sc. 1.

{16} Robert Browning: Bells and Pomegranates.

{17} R. H.

{18} Carlyle's French Revolution. Book X., Chapter I.

{19} Henry Thomas Buckle.

{20} This and the Speeches which follow were accidentally omitted in their right places.