Speeches: Literary and Social

LONDON, MAY 8, 1858

[The forty-eighth Anniversary of the establishment of the Artists'
Benevolent Fund took place on the above date at the Freemasons'
Tavern. The chair was taken by Mr. Charles Dickens, who, after
having disposed of the preliminary toasts with his usual felicity,
proceeded to advocate the claims of the Institution in whose
interest the company had assembled, in the following terms:-]

Ladies and gentlemen,--There is an absurd theatrical story which
was once told to me by a dear and valued friend, who has now passed
from this sublunary stage, and which is not without its moral as
applied to myself, in my present presidential position. In a
certain theatrical company was included a man, who on occasions of
emergency was capable of taking part in the whole round of the
British drama, provided he was allowed to use his own language in
getting through the dialogue. It happened one night that Reginald,
in the Castle Spectre, was taken ill, and this veteran of a hundred
characters was, of course, called up for the vacant part. He
responded with his usual promptitude, although knowing nothing
whatever of the character, but while they were getting him into the
dress, he expressed a not unreasonable wish to know in some vague
way what the part was about. He was not particular as to details,
but in order that he might properly pourtray his sufferings, he
thought he should have some slight inkling as to what really had
happened to him. As, for example, what murders he had committed,
whose father he was, of what misfortunes he was the victim,--in
short, in a general way to know why he was in that place at all.
They said to him, "Here you are, chained in a dungeon, an unhappy
father; you have been here for seventeen years, during which time
you have never seen your daughter; you have lived upon bread and
water, and, in consequence, are extremely weak, and suffer from
occasional lowness of spirits."--"All right," said the actor of
universal capabilities, "ring up." When he was discovered to the
audience, he presented an extremely miserable appearance, was very
favourably received, and gave every sign of going on well, until,
through some mental confusion as to his instructions, he opened the
business of the act by stating in pathetic terms, that he had been
confined in that dungeon seventeen years, during which time he had
not tasted a morsel of food, to which circumstance he was inclined
to attribute the fact of his being at that moment very much out of
condition. The audience, thinking this statement exceedingly
improbable, declined to receive it, and the weight of that speech
hung round him until the end of his performance.

Now I, too, have received instructions for the part I have the
honour of performing before you, and it behoves both you and me to
profit by the terrible warning I have detailed, while I endeavour
to make the part I have undertaken as plain and intelligible as I
possibly can.

As I am going to propose to you that we should now begin to connect
the business with the pleasure of the evening, by drinking
prosperity to the Artists' Benevolent Fund, it becomes important
that we should know what that fund is. It is an Association
supported by the voluntary gifts of those who entertain a critical
and admiring estimation of art, and has for its object the granting
of annuities to the widows and children of deceased artists--of
artists who have been unable in their lives to make any provision
for those dear objects of their love surviving themselves. Now it
is extremely important to observe that this institution of an
Artists' Benevolent Fund, which I now call on you to pledge, has
connected with it, and has arisen out of another artists'
association, which does not ask you for a health, which never did,
and never will ask you for a health, which is self-supporting, and
which is entirely maintained by the prudence and providence of its
three hundred artist members. That fund, which is called the
Artists' Annuity Fund, is, so to speak, a joint and mutual
Assurance Company against infirmity, sickness, and age. To the
benefits it affords every one of its members has an absolute right,
a right, be it remembered, produced by timely thrift and self-
denial, and not assisted by appeals to the charity or compassion of
any human being. On that fund there are, if I remember a right,
some seventeen annuitants who are in the receipt of eleven hundred
a-year, the proceeds of their own self-supporting Institution. In
recommending to you this benevolent fund, which is not self-
supporting, they address you, in effect, in these words:- "We ask
you to help these widows and orphans, because we show you we have
first helped ourselves. These widows and orphans may be ours or
they may not be ours; but in any case we will prove to you to a
certainty that we are not so many wagoners calling upon Jupiter to
do our work, because we do our own work; each has his shoulder to
the wheel; each, from year to year, has had his shoulder set to the
wheel, and the prayer we make to Jupiter and all the gods is simply
this--that this fact may be remembered when the wagon has stopped
for ever, and the spent and worn-out wagoner lies lifeless by the
roadside.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, I most particularly wish to impress on you
the strength of this appeal. I am a painter, a sculptor, or an
engraver, of average success. I study and work here for no immense
return, while life and health, while hand and eye are mine. I
prudently belong to the Annuity Fund, which in sickness, old age,
and infirmity, preserves me from want. I do my duty to those who
are depending on me while life remains; but when the grass grows
above my grave there is no provision for them any longer."

This is the case with the Artists' Benevolent Fund, and in stating
this I am only the mouthpiece of three hundred of the trade, who in
truth stands as independent before you as if they were three
hundred Cockers all regulated by the Gospel according to
themselves. There are in existence three artists' funds, which
ought never to be mentioned without respect. I am an officer of
one of them, and can speak from knowledge; but on this occasion I
address myself to a case for which there is no provision. I
address you on behalf of those professors of the fine arts who have
made provision during life, and in submitting to you their claims I
am only advocating principles which I myself have always
maintained.

When I add that this Benevolent Fund makes no pretensions to
gentility, squanders no treasure in keeping up appearances, that it
considers that the money given for the widow and the orphan, should
really be held for the widow and the orphan, I think I have
exhausted the case, which I desire most strenuously to commend to
you.

Perhaps you will allow me to say one last word. I will not consent
to present to you the professors of Art as a set of helpless
babies, who are to be held up by the chin; I present them as an
energetic and persevering class of men, whose incomes depend on
their own faculties and personal exertions; and I also make so bold
as to present them as men who in their vocation render good service
to the community. I am strongly disposed to believe there are very
few debates in Parliament so important to the public welfare as a
really good picture. I have also a notion that any number of
bundles of the driest legal chaff that ever was chopped would be
cheaply expended for one really meritorious engraving. At a highly
interesting annual festival at which I have the honour to assist,
and which takes place behind two fountains, I sometimes observe
that great ministers of state and other such exalted characters
have a strange delight in rather ostentatiously declaring that they
have no knowledge whatever of art, and particularly of impressing
on the company that they have passed their lives in severe studies.
It strikes me when I hear these things as if these great men looked
upon the arts as a sort of dancing dogs, or Punch's show, to be
turned to for amusement when one has nothing else to do. Now I
always take the opportunity on these occasions of entertaining my
humble opinion that all this is complete "bosh;" and of asserting
to myself my strong belief that the neighbourhoods of Trafalgar
Square, or Suffolk Street, rightly understood, are quite as
important to the welfare of the empire as those of Downing Street,
or Westminster Hall. Ladies and Gentlemen, on these grounds, and
backed by the recommendation of three hundred artists in favour of
the Benevolent Fund, I beg to propose its prosperity as a toast for
your adoption.