Speeches: Literary and Social

LONDON, APRIL 6, 1846

[The first anniversary festival of the General Theatrical Fund
Association was held on the evening of the above date at the London
Tavern. The chair was taken by Mr. Dickens, who thus proposed the
principal toast:]

Gentlemen,--In offering to you a toast which has not as yet been
publicly drunk in any company, it becomes incumbent on me to offer
a few words in explanation: in the first place, premising that the
toast will be "The General Theatrical Fund."

The Association, whose anniversary we celebrate to-night, was
founded seven years ago, for the purpose of granting permanent
pensions to such of the corps dramatique as had retired from the
stage, either from a decline in their years or a decay of their
powers. Collected within the scope of its benevolence are all
actors and actresses, singers, or dancers, of five years' standing
in the profession. To relieve their necessities and to protect
them from want is the great end of the Society, and it is good to
know that for seven years the members of it have steadily,
patiently, quietly, and perseveringly pursued this end, advancing
by regular contribution, moneys which many of them could ill
afford, and cheered by no external help or assistance of any kind
whatsoever. It has thus served a regular apprenticeship, but I
trust that we shall establish to-night that its time is out, and
that henceforth the Fund will enter upon a flourishing and
brilliant career.

I have no doubt that you are all aware that there are, and were
when this institution was founded, two other institutions existing
of a similar nature--Covent Garden and Drury Lane--both of long
standing, both richly endowed. It cannot, however, be too
distinctly understood, that the present Institution is not in any
way adverse to those. How can it be when it is only a wide and
broad extension of all that is most excellent in the principles on
which they are founded? That such an extension was absolutely
necessary was sufficiently proved by the fact that the great body
of the dramatic corps were excluded from the benefits conferred by
a membership of either of these institutions; for it was essential,
in order to become a member of the Drury Lane Society, that the
applicant, either he or she, should have been engaged for three
consecutive seasons as a performer. This was afterwards reduced,
in the case of Covent Garden, to a period of two years, but it
really is as exclusive one way as the other, for I need not tell
you that Covent Garden is now but a vision of the past. You might
play the bottle conjuror with its dramatic company and put them all
into a pint bottle. The human voice is rarely heard within its
walls save in connexion with corn, or the ambidextrous
prestidigitation of the Wizard of the North. In like manner, Drury
Lane is conducted now with almost a sole view to the opera and
ballet, insomuch that the statue of Shakespeare over the door
serves as emphatically to point out his grave as his bust did in
the church of Stratford-upon-Avon. How can the profession
generally hope to qualify for the Drury Lane or Covent Garden
institution, when the oldest and most distinguished members have
been driven from the boards on which they have earned their
reputations, to delight the town in theatres to which the General
Theatrical Fund alone extended?

I will again repeat that I attach no reproach to those other Funds,
with which I have had the honour of being connected at different
periods of my life. At the time those Associations were
established, an engagement at one of those theatres was almost a
matter of course, and a successful engagement would last a whole
life; but an engagement of two months' duration at Covent Garden
would be a perfect Old Parr of an engagement just now. It should
never be forgotten that when those two funds were established, the
two great theatres were protected by patent, and that at that time
the minor theatres were condemned by law to the representation of
the most preposterous nonsense, and some gentlemen whom I see
around me could no more belong to the minor theatres of that day
than they could now belong to St. Bartholomew fair.

As I honour the two old funds for the great good which they have
done, so I honour this for the much greater good it is resolved to
do. It is not because I love them less, but because I love this
more--because it includes more in its operation.

Let us ever remember that there is no class of actors who stand so
much in need of a retiring fund as those who do not win the great
prizes, but who are nevertheless an essential part of the
theatrical system, and by consequence bear a part in contributing
to our pleasures. We owe them a debt which we ought to pay. The
beds of such men are not of roses, but of very artificial flowers
indeed. Their lives are lives of care and privation, and hard
struggles with very stern realities. It is from among the poor
actors who drink wine from goblets, in colour marvellously like
toast and water, and who preside at Barmecide beasts with wonderful
appetites for steaks,--it is from their ranks that the most
triumphant favourites have sprung. And surely, besides this, the
greater the instruction and delight we derive from the rich English
drama, the more we are bound to succour and protect the humblest of
those votaries of the art who add to our instruction and amusement.

Hazlitt has well said that "There is no class of society whom so
many persons regard with affection as actors. We greet them on the
stage, we like to meet them in the streets; they almost always
recal to us pleasant associations." {21} When they have strutted
and fretted their hour upon the stage, let them not be heard no
more--but let them be heard sometimes to say that they are happy in
their old age. When they have passed for the last time from behind
that glittering row of lights with which we are all familiar, let
them not pass away into gloom and darkness,--but let them pass into
cheerfulness and light--into a contented and happy home.

This is the object for which we have met; and I am too familiar
with the English character not to know that it will be effected.
When we come suddenly in a crowded street upon the careworn
features of a familiar face--crossing us like the ghost of pleasant
hours long forgotten--let us not recal those features with pain, in
sad remembrance of what they once were, but let us in joy recognise
it, and go back a pace or two to meet it once again, as that of a
friend who has beguiled us of a moment of care, who has taught us
to sympathize with virtuous grief, cheating us to tears for sorrows
not our own--and we all know how pleasant are such tears. Let such
a face be ever remembered as that of our benefactor and our friend.

I tried to recollect, in coming here, whether I had ever been in
any theatre in my life from which I had not brought away some
pleasant association, however poor the theatre, and I protest, out
of my varied experience, I could not remember even one from which I
had not brought some favourable impression, and that, commencing
with the period when I believed the clown was a being born into the
world with infinite pockets, and ending with that in which I saw
the other night, outside one of the "Royal Saloons," a playbill
which showed me ships completely rigged, carrying men, and
careering over boundless and tempestuous oceans. And now,
bespeaking your kindest remembrance of our theatres and actors, I
beg to propose that you drink as heartily and freely as ever a
toast was drunk in this toast-drinking city "Prosperity to the
General Theatrical Fund."