Speeches: Literary and Social

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
experience when I sat on that committee, and when I have known
persons relieved on many consecutive occasions without further
inquiry being made. As to the suggestion that we should select the
items of expenditure that we complain of, I think it is according
to all experience that we should first affirm the principle that
the expenditure is too large. If that be done by the meeting, then
I will proceed to the selection of the separate items. Now, in
rising to support this resolution, I may state at once that I have
scarcely any expectation of its being carried, and I am happy to
think it will not. Indeed, I consider it the strongest point of
the resolution's case that it should not be carried, because it
will show the determination of the fund's managers. Nothing can
possibly be stronger in favour of the resolution than that the
statement should go forth to the world that twice within twelve
months the attention of the committee has been called to this great
expenditure, and twice the committee have considered that it was
not unreasonable. I cannot conceive a stronger case for the
resolution than this statement of fact as to the expenditure going
forth to the public accompanied by the committee's assertion that
it is reasonable. Now, to separate this question from details, let
us remember what the committee and their supporters asserted last
year, and, I hope, will re-assert this year. It seems to be rather
the model kind of thing than otherwise now that if you get 100
pounds you are to spend 40 pounds in management; and if you get
1000 pounds, of course you may spend 400 pounds in giving the rest
away. Now, in case there should be any ill-conditioned people here
who may ask what occasion there can be for all this expenditure, I
will give you my experience. I went last year to a highly
respectable place of resort, Willis's Rooms, in St. James's, to a
meeting of this fund. My original intention was to hear all I
could, and say as little as possible. Allowing for the absence of
the younger and fairer portion of the creation, the general
appearance of the place was something like Almack's in the morning.
A number of stately old dowagers sat in a row on one side, and old
gentlemen on the other. The ball was opened with due solemnity by
a real marquis, who walked a minuet with the secretary, at which
the audience were much affected. Then another party advanced, who,
I am sorry to say, was only a member of the House of Commons, and
he took possession of the floor. To him, however, succeeded a
lord, then a bishop, then the son of a distinguished lord, then one
or two celebrities from the City and Stock Exchange, and at last a
gentleman, who made a fortune by the success of "Candide,"
sustained the part of Pangloss, and spoke much of what he evidently
believed to be the very best management of this best of all
possible funds. Now it is in this fondness for being stupendously
genteel, and keeping up fine appearances--this vulgar and common
social vice of hanging on to great connexions at any price, that
the money goes. The last time you got a distinguished writer at a
public meeting, and he was called on to address you somewhere
amongst the small hours, he told you he felt like the man in plush
who was permitted to sweep the stage down after all the other
people had gone. If the founder of this society were here, I
should think he would feel like a sort of Rip van Winkle reversed,
who had gone to sleep backwards for a hundred years and woke up to
find his fund still lying under the feet of people who did nothing
for it instead of being emancipated and standing alone long ago.
This Bloomsbury house is another part of the same desire for show,
and the officer who inhabits it. (I mean, of course, in his
official capacity, for, as an individual, I much respect him.)
When one enters the house it appears to be haunted by a series of
mysterious-looking ghosts, who glide about engaged in some
extraordinary occupation, and, after the approved fashion of
ghosts, but seldom condescend to disclose their business. What are
all these meetings and inquiries wanted for? As for the authors, I
say, as a writer by profession, that the long inquiry said to be
necessary to ascertain whether an applicant deserves relief, is a
preposterous pretence, and that working literary men would have a
far better knowledge of the cases coming before the board than can
ever be attained by that committee. Further, I say openly and
plainly, that this fund is pompously and unnaturally administered
at great expense, instead of being quietly administered at small
expense; and that the secrecy to which it lays claim as its
greatest attribute, is not kept; for through those "two respectable
householders," to whom reference must be made, the names of the
most deserving applicants are to numbers of people perfectly well
known. The members have now got before them a plain statement of
fact as to these charges; and it is for them to say whether they
are justifiable, becoming, or decent. I beg most earnestly and
respectfully to put it to those gentlemen who belong to this
institution, that must now decide, and cannot help deciding, what
the Literary Fund is for, and what it is not for. The question
raised by the resolution is whether this is a public corporation
for the relief of men of genius and learning, or whether it is a
snug, traditional, and conventional party, bent upon maintaining
its own usages with a vast amount of pride; upon its own annual
puffery at costly dinner-tables, and upon a course of expensive
toadying to a number of distinguished individuals. This is the
question which you cannot this day escape.