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LONDON, NOVEMBER 5, 1857
[At the fourth anniversary dinner of the Warehousemen and Clerks
Schools, which took place on Thursday evening, Nov. 5th, 1857, at
the London Tavern, and was very numerously attended, Mr. Charles
Dickens occupied the chair. On the subject which had brought the
company together Mr. Dickens spoke as follows:-]
I must now solicit your attention for a few minutes to the cause of
your assembling together--the main and real object of this
evening's gathering; for I suppose we are all agreed that the motto
of these tables is not "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we
die;" but, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we live." It is
because a great and good work is to live to-morrow, and to-morrow,
and to-morrow, and to live a greater and better life with every
succeeding to-morrow, that we eat and drink here at all.
Conspicuous on the card of admission to this dinner is the word
"Schools." This set me thinking this morning what are the sorts of
schools that I don't like. I found them on consideration, to be
rather numerous. I don't like to begin with, and to begin as
charity does at home--I don't like the sort of school to which I
once went myself--the respected proprietor of which was by far the
most ignorant man I have ever had the pleasure to know; one of the
worst-tempered men perhaps that ever lived, whose business it was
to make as much out of us and put as little into us as possible,
and who sold us at a figure which I remember we used to delight to
estimate, as amounting to exactly 2 pounds 4s. 6d. per head. I
don't like that sort of school, because I don't see what business
the master had to be at the top of it instead of the bottom, and
because I never could understand the wholesomeness of the moral
preached by the abject appearance and degraded condition of the
teachers who plainly said to us by their looks every day of their
lives, "Boys, never be learned; whatever you are, above all things
be warned from that in time by our sunken cheeks, by our poor
pimply noses, by our meagre diet, by our acid-beer, and by our
extraordinary suits of clothes, of which no human being can say
whether they are snuff-coloured turned black, or black turned
snuff-coloured, a point upon which we ourselves are perfectly
unable to offer any ray of enlightenment, it is so very long since
they were undarned and new." I do not like that sort of school,
because I have never yet lost my ancient suspicion touching that
curious coincidence that the boy with four brothers to come always
got the prizes. In fact, and short, I do not like that sort of
school, which is a pernicious and abominable humbug, altogether.
Again, ladies and gentlemen, I don't like that sort of school--a
ladies' school--with which the other school used to dance on
Wednesdays, where the young ladies, as I look back upon them now,
seem to me always to have been in new stays and disgrace--the
latter concerning a place of which I know nothing at this day, that
bounds Timbuctoo on the north-east--and where memory always depicts
the youthful enthraller of my first affection as for ever standing
against a wall, in a curious machine of wood, which confined her
innocent feet in the first dancing position, while those arms,
which should have encircled my jacket, those precious arms, I say,
were pinioned behind her by an instrument of torture called a
backboard, fixed in the manner of a double direction post. Again,
I don't like that sort of school, of which we have a notable
example in Kent, which was established ages ago by worthy scholars
and good men long deceased, whose munificent endowments have been
monstrously perverted from their original purpose, and which, in
their distorted condition, are struggled for and fought over with
the most indecent pertinacity. Again, I don't like that sort of
school--and I have seen a great many such in these latter times--
where the bright childish imagination is utterly discouraged, and
where those bright childish faces, which it is so very good for the
wisest among us to remember in after life--when the world is too
much with us, early and late {22}--are gloomily and grimly scared
out of countenance; where I have never seen among the pupils,
whether boys or girls, anything but little parrots and small
calculating machines. Again, I don't by any means like schools in
leather breeches, and with mortified straw baskets for bonnets,
which file along the streets in long melancholy rows under the
escort of that surprising British monster--a beadle, whose system
of instruction, I am afraid, too often presents that happy union of
sound with sense, of which a very remarkable instance is given in a
grave report of a trustworthy school inspector, to the effect that
a boy in great repute at school for his learning, presented on his
slate, as one of the ten commandments, the perplexing prohibition,
"Thou shalt not commit doldrum." Ladies and gentlemen, I confess,
also, that I don't like those schools, even though the instruction
given in them be gratuitous, where those sweet little voices which
ought to be heard speaking in very different accents, anathematise
by rote any human being who does not hold what is taught there.
Lastly, I do not like, and I did not like some years ago, cheap
distant schools, where neglected children pine from year to year
under an amount of neglect, want, and youthful misery far too sad
even to be glanced at in this cheerful assembly.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, perhaps you will permit me to sketch
in a few words the sort of school that I do like. It is a school
established by the members of an industrious and useful order,
which supplies the comforts and graces of life at every familiar
turning in the road of our existence; it is a school established by
them for the Orphan and Necessitous Children of their own brethren
and sisterhood; it is a place giving an education worthy of them--
an education by them invented, by them conducted, by them watched
over; it is a place of education where, while the beautiful history
of the Christian religion is daily taught, and while the life of
that Divine Teacher who Himself took little children on His knees
is daily studied, no sectarian ill-will nor narrow human dogma is
permitted to darken the face of the clear heaven which they
disclose. It is a children's school, which is at the same time no
less a children's home, a home not to be confided to the care of
cold or ignorant strangers, nor, by the nature of its foundation,
in the course of ages to pass into hands that have as much natural
right to deal with it as with the peaks of the highest mountains or
with the depths of the sea, but to be from generation to generation
administered by men living in precisely such homes as those poor
children have lost; by men always bent upon making that
replacement, such a home as their own dear children might find a
happy refuge in if they themselves were taken early away. And I
fearlessly ask you, is this a design which has any claim to your
sympathy? Is this a sort of school which is deserving of your
support?
This is the design, this is the school, whose strong and simple
claim I have to lay before you to-night. I must particularly
entreat you not to suppose that my fancy and unfortunate habit of
fiction has anything to do with the picture I have just presented
to you. It is sober matter of fact. The Warehousemen and Clerks'
Schools, established for the maintaining, clothing, and educating
of the Orphan and Necessitous Children of those employed in the
wholesale trades and manufactures of the United Kingdom, are, in
fact, what I have just described. These schools for both sexes
were originated only four years ago. In the first six weeks of the
undertaking the young men of themselves and quite unaided,
subscribed the large sum of 3,000 pounds. The schools have been
opened only three years, they have now on their foundation thirty-
nine children, and in a few days they will have six more, making a
total of forty-five. They have been most munificently assisted by
the heads of great mercantile houses, numerously represented, I am
happy to say, around me, and they have a funded capital of almost
14,000 pounds. This is wonderful progress, but the aim must still
be upwards, the motto always "Excelsior." You do not need to be
told that five-and-forty children can form but a very small
proportion of the Orphan and Necessitous Children of those who have
been entrusted with the wholesale trades and manufactures of the
United Kingdom: you do not require to be informed that the house
at New-cross, rented for a small term of years, in which the
schools are at present established, can afford but most imperfect
accommodation for such a breadth of design. To carry this good
work through the two remaining degrees of better and best there
must be more work, more co-operation, more friends, more money.
Then be the friends and give the money. Before I conclude, there
is one other feature in these schools which I would commend to your
special attention and approval. Their benefits are reserved for
the children of subscribers; that is to say, it is an essential
principle of the institution that it must help those whose parents
have helped them, and that the unfortunate children whose father
has been so lax, or so criminal, as to withhold a subscription so
exceedingly small that when divided by weeks it amounts to only
threepence weekly, cannot, in justice, be allowed to jostle out and
shoulder away the happier children, whose father has had that
little forethought, or done that little kindness which was
requisite to secure for them the benefits of the institution. I
really cannot believe that there will long be any such defaulting
parents. I cannot believe that any of the intelligent young men
who are engaged in the wholesale houses will long neglect this
obvious, this easy duty. If they suppose that the objects of their
love, born or unborn, will never want the benefits of the charity,
that may be a fatal and blind mistake--it can never be an excuse,
for, supposing them to be right in their anticipation, they should
do what is asked for the sake of their friends and comrades around
them, assured that they will be the happier and the better for the
deed.
Ladies and gentlemen, this little "labour of love" of mine is now
done. I most heartily wish that I could charm you now not to see
me, not to think of me, not to hear me--I most heartily wish that I
could make you see in my stead the multitude of innocent and
bereaved children who are looking towards these schools, and
entreating with uplifted hands to be let in. A very famous
advocate once said, in speaking of his fears of failure when he had
first to speak in court, being very poor, that he felt his little
children tugging at his skirts, and that recovered him. Will you
think of the number of little children who are tugging at my
skirts, when I ask you, in their names, on their behalf, and in
their little persons, and in no strength of my own, to encourage
and assist this work?
At a later period of the evening Mr. Dickens proposed the health of
the President of the Institution, Lord John Russell. He said he
should do nothing so superfluous and so unnecessary as to descant
upon his lordship's many faithful, long, and great public services,
upon the honour and integrity with which he had pursued his
straightforward public course through every difficulty, or upon the
manly, gallant, and courageous character, which rendered him
certain, in the eyes alike of friends and opponents, to rise with
every rising occasion, and which, like the seal of Solomon, in the
old Arabian story, enclosed in a not very large casket the soul of
a giant. In answer to loud cheers, he said he had felt perfectly
certain, that that would be the response for in no English assembly
that he had ever seen was it necessary to do more than mention the
name of Lord John Russell to ensure a manifestation of personal
respect and grateful remembrance.
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