Speeches: Literary and Social

COMMERCIAL TRAVELLERS. LONDON, DECEMBER 30, 1854

[The following speech was made by Mr. Dickens at the Anniversary
Dinner in commemoration of the foundation of the Commercial
Travellers' Schools, held at the London Tavern on the above date.
Mr. Dickens presided on this occasion, and proposed the toasts.]

I think it may be assumed that most of us here present know
something about travelling. I do not mean in distant regions or
foreign countries, although I dare say some of us have had
experience in that way, but at home, and within the limits of the
United Kingdom. I dare say most of us have had experience of the
extinct "fast coaches," the "Wonders," "Taglionis," and "Tallyhos,"
of other days. I daresay most of us remember certain modest
postchaises, dragging us down interminable roads, through slush and
mud, to little country towns with no visible population, except
half-a-dozen men in smock-frocks, half-a-dozen women with umbrellas
and pattens, and a washed-out dog or so shivering under the gables,
to complete the desolate picture. We can all discourse, I dare
say, if so minded, about our recollections of the "Talbot," the
"Queen's Head," or the "Lion" of those days. We have all been to
that room on the ground floor on one side of the old inn yard, not
quite free from a certain fragrant smell of tobacco, where the
cruets on the sideboard were usually absorbed by the skirts of the
box-coats that hung from the wall; where awkward servants waylaid
us at every turn, like so many human man-traps; where county
members, framed and glazed, were eternally presenting that petition
which, somehow or other, had made their glory in the county,
although nothing else had ever come of it. Where the books in the
windows always wanted the first, last, and middle leaves, and where
the one man was always arriving at some unusual hour in the night,
and requiring his breakfast at a similarly singular period of the
day. I have no doubt we could all be very eloquent on the comforts
of our favourite hotel, wherever it was--its beds, its stables, its
vast amount of posting, its excellent cheese, its head waiter, its
capital dishes, its pigeon-pies, or its 1820 port. Or possibly we
could recal our chaste and innocent admiration of its landlady, or
our fraternal regard for its handsome chambermaid. A celebrated
domestic critic once writing of a famous actress, renowned for her
virtue and beauty, gave her the character of being an "eminently
gatherable-to-one's-arms sort of person." Perhaps some one amongst
us has borne a somewhat similar tribute to the mental charms of the
fair deities who presided at our hotels.

With the travelling characteristics of later times, we are all, no
doubt, equally familiar. We know all about that station to which
we must take our ticket, although we never get there; and the other
one at which we arrive after dark, certain to find it half a mile
from the town, where the old road is sure to have been abolished,
and the new road is going to be made--where the old neighbourhood
has been tumbled down, and the new one is not half built up. We
know all about that party on the platform who, with the best
intentions, can do nothing for our luggage except pitch it into all
sorts of unattainable places. We know all about that short
omnibus, in which one is to be doubled up, to the imminent danger
of the crown of one's hat; and about that fly, whose leading
peculiarity is never to be there when it is wanted. We know, too,
how instantaneously the lights of the station disappear when the
train starts, and about that grope to the new Railway Hotel, which
will be an excellent house when the customers come, but which at
present has nothing to offer but a liberal allowance of damp mortar
and new lime.

I record these little incidents of home travel mainly with the
object of increasing your interest in the purpose of this night's
assemblage. Every traveller has a home of his own, and he learns
to appreciate it the more from his wandering. If he has no home,
he learns the same lesson unselfishly by turning to the homes of
other men. He may have his experiences of cheerful and exciting
pleasures abroad; but home is the best, after all, and its
pleasures are the most heartily and enduringly prized. Therefore,
ladies and gentlemen, every one must be prepared to learn that
commercial travellers, as a body, know how to prize those domestic
relations from which their pursuits so frequently sever them; for
no one could possibly invent a more delightful or more convincing
testimony to the fact than they themselves have offered in founding
and maintaining a school for the children of deceased or
unfortunate members of their own body; those children who now
appeal to you in mute but eloquent terms from the gallery.

It is to support that school, founded with such high and friendly
objects, so very honourable to your calling, and so useful in its
solid and practical results, that we are here to-night. It is to
roof that building which is to shelter the children of your
deceased friends with one crowning ornament, the best that any
building can have, namely, a receipt stamp for the full amount of
the cost. It is for this that your active sympathy is appealed to,
for the completion of your own good work. You know how to put your
hands to the plough in earnest as well as any men in existence, for
this little book informs me that you raised last year no less a sum
than 8000 pounds, and while fully half of that sum consisted of new
donations to the building fund, I find that the regular revenue of
the charity has only suffered to the extent of 30 pounds. After
this, I most earnestly and sincerely say that were we all authors
together, I might boast, if in my profession were exhibited the
same unity and steadfastness I find in yours.

I will not urge on you the casualties of a life of travel, or the
vicissitudes of business, or the claims fostered by that bond of
brotherhood which ought always to exist amongst men who are united
in a common pursuit. You have already recognized those claims so
nobly, that I will not presume to lay them before you in any
further detail. Suffice it to say that I do not think it is in
your nature to do things by halves. I do not think you could do so
if you tried, and I have a moral certainty that you never will try.
To those gentlemen present who are not members of the travellers'
body, I will say in the words of the French proverb, "Heaven helps
those who help themselves." The Commercial Travellers having
helped themselves so gallantly, it is clear that the visitors who
come as a sort of celestial representatives ought to bring that aid
in their pockets which the precept teaches us to expect from them.
With these few remarks, I beg to give you as a toast, "Success to
the Commercial Travellers' School."

[In proposing the health of the Army in the Crimea, Mr. Dickens
said:-]

IT does not require any extraordinary sagacity in a commercial
assembly to appreciate the dire evils of war. The great interests
of trade enfeebled by it, the enterprise of better times paralysed
by it, all the peaceful arts bent down before it, too palpably
indicate its character and results, so that far less practical
intelligence than that by which I am surrounded would be sufficient
to appreciate the horrors of war. But there are seasons when the
evils of peace, though not so acutely felt, are immeasurably
greater, and when a powerful nation, by admitting the right of any
autocrat to do wrong, sows by such complicity the seeds of its own
ruin, and overshadows itself in time to come with that fatal
influence which great and ambitious powers are sure to exercise
over their weaker neighbours.

Therefore it is, ladies and gentlemen, that the tree has not its
root in English ground from which the yard wand can be made that
will measure--the mine has not its place in English soil that will
supply the material of a pair of scales to weigh the influence that
may be at stake in the war in which we are now straining all our
energies. That war is, at any time and in any shape, a most
dreadful and deplorable calamity, we need no proverb to tell us;
but it is just because it is such a calamity, and because that
calamity must not for ever be impending over us at the fancy of one
man against all mankind, that we must not allow that man to darken
from our view the figures of peace and justice between whom and us
he now interposes.

Ladies and gentlemen, if ever there were a time when the true
spirits of two countries were really fighting in the cause of human
advancement and freedom--no matter what diplomatic notes or other
nameless botherations, from number one to one hundred thousand and
one, may have preceded their taking the field--if ever there were a
time when noble hearts were deserving well of mankind by exposing
themselves to the obedient bayonets of a rash and barbarian tyrant,
it is now, when the faithful children of England and France are
fighting so bravely in the Crimea. Those faithful children are the
admiration and wonder of the world, so gallantly are they
discharging their duty; and therefore I propose to an assembly,
emphatically representing the interests and arts of peace, to drink
the health of the Allied Armies of England and France, with all
possible honours.


[In proposing the health of the Treasurer, Mr. Dickens said:-]


If the President of this Institution had been here, I should
possibly have made one of the best speeches you ever heard; but as
he is not here, I shall turn to the next toast on my list:- "The
health of your worthy Treasurer, Mr. George Moore," a name which is
a synonym for integrity, enterprise, public spirit, and
benevolence. He is one of the most zealous officers I ever saw in
my life; he appears to me to have been doing nothing during the
last week but rushing into and out of railway-carriages, and making
eloquent speeches at all sorts of public dinners in favour of this
charity. Last evening he was at Manchester, and this evening he
comes here, sacrificing his time and convenience, and exhausting in
the meantime the contents of two vast leaden inkstands and no end
of pens, with the energy of fifty bankers' clerks rolled into one.
But I clearly foresee that the Treasurer will have so much to do
to-night, such gratifying sums to acknowledge and such large lines
of figures to write in his books, that I feel the greatest
consideration I can show him is to propose his health without
further observation, leaving him to address you in his own behalf.
I propose to you, therefore, the health of Mr. George Moore, the
Treasurer of this charity, and I need hardly add that it is one
which is to be drunk with all the honours.


[Later in the evening, Mr. Dickens rose and said:-]


So many travellers have been going up Mont Blanc lately, both in
fact and in fiction, that I have heard recently of a proposal for
the establishment of a Company to employ Sir Joseph Paxton to take
it down. Only one of those travellers, however, has been enabled
to bring Mont Blanc to Piccadilly, and, by his own ability and good
humour, so to thaw its eternal ice and snow, as that the most timid
lady may ascend it twice a-day, "during the holidays," without the
smallest danger or fatigue. Mr. Albert Smith, who is present
amongst us to-night, is undoubtedly "a traveller." I do not know
whether he takes many orders, but this I can testify, on behalf of
the children of his friends, that he gives them in the most liberal
manner.

We have also amongst us my friend Mr. Peter Cunningham, who is also
a traveller, not only in right of his able edition of Goldsmith's
"Traveller," but in right of his admirable Handbook, which proves
him to be a traveller in the right spirit through all the
labyrinths of London. We have also amongst us my friend Horace
Mayhew, very well known also for his books, but especially for his
genuine admiration of the company at that end of the room [Mr.
Dickens here pointed to the ladies gallery], and who, whenever the
fair sex is mentioned, will be found to have the liveliest personal
interest in the conversation.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am about to propose to you the health of
these three distinguished visitors. They are all admirable
speakers, but Mr. Albert Smith has confessed to me, that on fairly
balancing his own merits as a speaker and a singer, he rather
thinks he excels in the latter art. I have, therefore, yielded to
his estimate of himself, and I have now the pleasure of informing
you that he will lead off the speeches of the other two gentlemen
with a song. Mr. Albert Smith has just said to me in an earnest
tone of voice, "What song would you recommend?" and I replied,
"Galignani's Messenger." Ladies and gentlemen, I therefore beg to
propose the health of Messrs. Albert Smith, Peter Cunningham, and
Horace Mayhew, and call on the first-named gentleman for a song.