Speeches: Literary and Social

LONDON, MAY 11, 1864

[On the above date Mr. Dickens presided at the Adelphi Theatre, at
a public meeting, for the purpose of founding the Shakespeare
Schools, in connexion with the Royal Dramatic College, and
delivered the following address:]

Ladies and gentlemen--Fortunately for me, and fortunately for you,
it is the duty of the Chairman on an occasion of this nature, to be
very careful that he does not anticipate those speakers who come
after him. Like Falstaff, with a considerable difference, he has
to be the cause of speaking in others. It is rather his duty to
sit and hear speeches with exemplary attention than to stand up to
make them; so I shall confine myself, in opening these proceedings
as your business official, to as plain and as short an exposition
as I can possibly give you of the reasons why we come together.

First of all I will take leave to remark that we do not come
together in commemoration of Shakespeare. We have nothing to do
with any commemoration, except that we are of course humble
worshippers of that mighty genius, and that we propose by-and-by to
take his name, but by no means to take it in vain. If, however,
the Tercentenary celebration were a hundred years hence, or a
hundred years past, we should still be pursuing precisely the same
object, though we should not pursue it under precisely the same
circumstances. The facts are these: There is, as you know, in
existence an admirable institution called the Royal Dramatic
College, which is a place of honourable rest and repose for
veterans in the dramatic art. The charter of this college, which
dates some five or six years back, expressly provides for the
establishment of schools in connexion with it; and I may venture to
add that this feature of the scheme, when it was explained to him,
was specially interesting to his Royal Highness the late Prince
Consort, who hailed it as evidence of the desire of the promoters
to look forward as well as to look back; to found educational
institutions for the rising generation, as well as to establish a
harbour of refuge for the generation going out, or at least having
their faces turned towards the setting sun. The leading members of
the dramatic art, applying themselves first to the more pressing
necessity of the two, set themselves to work on the construction of
their harbour of refuge, and this they did with the zeal, energy,
good-will, and good faith that always honourably distinguish them
in their efforts to help one another. Those efforts were very
powerfully aided by the respected gentleman {14} under whose roof
we are assembled, and who, I hope, may be only half as glad of
seeing me on these boards as I always am to see him here. With
such energy and determination did Mr. Webster and his brothers and
sisters in art proceed with their work, that at this present time
all the dwelling-houses of the Royal Dramatic College are built,
completely furnished, fitted with every appliance, and many of them
inhabited. The central hall of the College is built, the grounds
are beautifully planned and laid out, and the estate has become the
nucleus of a prosperous neighbourhood. This much achieved, Mr.
Webster was revolving in his mind how he should next proceed
towards the establishment of the schools, when, this Tercentenary
celebration being in hand, it occurred to him to represent to the
National Shakespeare Committee their just and reasonable claim to
participate in the results of any subscription for a monument to
Shakespeare. He represented to the committee that the social
recognition and elevation of the followers of Shakespeare's own
art, through the education of their children, was surely a monument
worthy even of that great name. He urged upon the committee that
it was certainly a sensible, tangible project, which the public
good sense would immediately appreciate and approve. This claim
the committee at once acknowledged; but I wish you distinctly to
understand that if the committee had never been in existence, if
the Tercentenary celebration had never been attempted, those
schools, as a design anterior to both, would still have solicited
public support.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, what it is proposed to do is, in fact,
to find a new self-supporting public school; with this additional
feature, that it is to be available for both sexes. This, of
course, presupposes two separate distinct schools. As these
schools are to be built on land belonging to the Dramatic College,
there will be from the first no charge, no debt, no incumbrance of
any kind under that important head. It is, in short, proposed
simply to establish a new self-supporting public school, in a
rapidly increasing neighbourhood, where there is a large and fast
accumulating middle-class population, and where property in land is
fast rising in value. But, inasmuch as the project is a project of
the Royal Dramatic College, and inasmuch as the schools are to be
built on their estate, it is proposed evermore to give their
schools the great name of Shakespeare, and evermore to give the
followers of Shakespeare's art a prominent place in them. With
this view, it is confidently believed that the public will endow a
foundation, say, for forty foundation scholars--say, twenty girls
and twenty boys--who shall always receive their education
gratuitously, and who shall always be the children of actors,
actresses, or dramatic writers. This school, you will understand,
is to be equal to the best existing public school. It is to be
made to impart a sound, liberal, comprehensive education, and it is
to address the whole great middle class at least as freely, as
widely, and as cheaply as any existing public school.

Broadly, ladies and gentlemen, this is the whole design. There are
foundation scholars at Eton, foundation scholars at nearly all our
old schools, and if the public, in remembrance of a noble part of
our standard national literature, and in remembrance of a great
humanising art, will do this thing for these children, it will at
the same time be doing a wise and good thing for itself, and will
unquestionably find its account in it. Taking this view of the
case--and I cannot be satisfied to take any lower one--I cannot
make a sorry face about "the poor player." I think it is a term
very much misused and very little understood--being, I venture to
say, appropriated in a wrong sense by players themselves.
Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, I can only present the player to
you exceptionally in this wise--that he follows a peculiar and
precarious vocation, a vocation very rarely affording the means of
accumulating money--that that vocation must, from the nature of
things, have in it many undistinguished men and women to one
distinguished one--that it is not a vocation the exerciser of which
can profit by the labours of others, but in which he must earn
every loaf of his bread in his own person, with the aid of his own
face, his own limbs, his own voice, his own memory, and his own
life and spirits; and these failing, he fails. Surely this is
reason enough to render him some little help in opening for his
children their paths through life. I say their paths advisedly,
because it is not often found, except under the pressure of
necessity, or where there is strong hereditary talent--which is
always an exceptional case--that the children of actors and
actresses take to the stage. Persons therefore need not in the
least fear that by helping to endow these schools they would help
to overstock the dramatic market. They would do directly the
reverse, for they would divert into channels of public distinction
and usefulness those good qualities which would otherwise languish
in that market's over-rich superabundance.

This project has received the support of the head of the most
popular of our English public schools. On the committee stands the
name of that eminent scholar and gentleman, the Provost of Eton.
You justly admire this liberal spirit, and your admiration--which I
cordially share--brings me naturally to what I wish to say, that I
believe there is not in England any institution so socially liberal
as a public school. It has been called a little cosmos of life
outside, and I think it is so, with the exception of one of life's
worst foibles--for, as far as I know, nowhere in this country is
there so complete an absence of servility to mere rank, to mere
position, to mere riches as in a public school. A boy there is
always what his abilities or his personal qualities make him. We
may differ about the curriculum and other matters, but of the
frank, free, manly, independent spirit preserved in our public
schools, I apprehend there can be no kind of question. It has
happened in these later times that objection has been made to
children of dramatic artists in certain little snivelling private
schools--but in public schools never. Therefore, I hold that the
actors are wise, and gratefully wise, in recognizing the capacious
liberality of a public school, in seeking not a little hole-and-
corner place of education for their children exclusively, but in
addressing the whole of the great middle class, and proposing to
them to come and join them, the actors, on their own property, in a
public school, in a part of the country where no such advantage is
now to be found.

I have now done. The attempt has been a very timid one. I have
endeavoured to confine myself within my means, or, rather, like the
possessor of an extended estate, to hand it down in an
unembarrassed condition. I have laid a trifle of timber here and
there, and grubbed up a little brushwood, but merely to open the
view, and I think I can descry in the eye of the gentleman who is
to move the first resolution that he distinctly sees his way.
Thanking you for the courtesy with which you have heard me, and not
at all doubting that we shall lay a strong foundation of these
schools to-day, I will call, as the mover of the first resolution,
on Mr. Robert Bell.