Speeches: Literary and Social

LIVERPOOL, APRIL 10, 1869

[The following speech was delivered by Mr. Dickens at a Banquet
held in his honour at St. George's Hall, Liverpool, after his
health had been proposed by Lord Dufferin.]

Mr. Mayor, ladies and gentlemen, although I have been so well
accustomed of late to the sound of my own voice in this
neighbourhood as to hear it with perfect composure, the occasion
is, believe me, very, very different in respect of those
overwhelming voices of yours. As Professor Wilson once confided to
me in Edinburgh that I had not the least idea, from hearing him in
public, what a magnificent speaker he found himself to be when he
was quite alone--so you can form no conception, from the specimen
before you, of the eloquence with which I shall thank you again and
again in some of the innermost moments of my future life. Often
and often, then, God willing, my memory will recall this brilliant
scene, and will re-illuminate this banquet-hall. I, faithful to
this place in its present aspect, will observe it exactly as it
stands--not one man's seat empty, not one woman's fair face absent,
while life and memory abide by me.

Mr. Mayor, Lord Dufferin in his speech so affecting to me, so
eloquently uttered, and so rapturously received, made a graceful
and gracious allusion to the immediate occasion of my present visit
to your noble city. It is no homage to Liverpool, based upon a
moment's untrustworthy enthusiasm, but it is the solid fact built
upon the rock of experience that when I first made up my mind,
after considerable deliberation, systematically to meet my readers
in large numbers, face to face, and to try to express myself to
them through the breath of life, Liverpool stood foremost among the
great places out of London to which I looked with eager confidence
and pleasure. And why was this? Not merely because of the
reputation of its citizens for generous estimation of the arts; not
merely because I had unworthily filled the chair of its great self-
educational institution long ago; not merely because the place had
been a home to me since the well-remembered day when its blessed
roofs and steeples dipped into the Mersey behind me on the occasion
of my first sailing away to see my generous friends across the
Atlantic twenty-seven years ago. Not for one of those
considerations, but because it had been my happiness to have a
public opportunity of testing the spirit of its people. I had
asked Liverpool for help towards the worthy preservation of
Shakespeare's house. On another occasion I had ventured to address
Liverpool in the names of Leigh Hunt and Sheridan Knowles. On
still another occasion I had addressed it in the cause of the
brotherhood and sisterhood of letters and the kindred arts, and on
each and all the response had been unsurpassably spontaneous, open-
handed, and munificent.

Mr. Mayor, and ladies and gentlemen, if I may venture to take a
small illustration of my present position from my own peculiar
craft, I would say that there is this objection in writing fiction
to giving a story an autobiographical form, that through whatever
dangers the narrator may pass, it is clear unfortunately to the
reader beforehand that he must have come through them somehow else
he could not have lived to tell the tale. Now, in speaking fact,
when the fact is associated with such honours as those with which
you have enriched me, there is this singular difficulty in the way
of returning thanks, that the speaker must infallibly come back to
himself through whatever oratorical disasters he may languish on
the road. Let me, then, take the plainer and simpler middle course
of dividing my subject equally between myself and you. Let me
assure you that whatever you have accepted with pleasure, either by
word of pen or by word of mouth, from me, you have greatly improved
in the acceptance. As the gold is said to be doubly and trebly
refined which has seven times passed the furnace, so a fancy may be
said to become more and more refined each time it passes through
the human heart. You have, and you know you have, brought to the
consideration of me that quality in yourselves without which I
should but have beaten the air. Your earnestness has stimulated
mine, your laughter has made me laugh, and your tears have
overflowed my eyes. All that I can claim for myself in
establishing the relations which exist between us is constant
fidelity to hard work. My literary fellows about me, of whom I am
so proud to see so many, know very well how true it is in all art
that what seems the easiest done is oftentimes the most difficult
to do, and that the smallest truth may come of the greatest pains--
much, as it occurred to me at Manchester the other day, as the
sensitive touch of Mr. Whitworth's measuring machine, comes at
last, of Heaven and Manchester and its mayor only know how much
hammering--my companions-in-arms know thoroughly well, and I think
it only right the public should know too, that in our careful toil
and trouble, and in our steady striving for excellence--not in any
little gifts, misused by fits and starts--lies our highest duty at
once to our calling, to one another, to ourselves, and to you.

Ladies and gentlemen, before sitting down I find that I have to
clear myself of two very unexpected accusations. The first is a
most singular charge preferred against me by my old friend Lord
Houghton, that I have been somewhat unconscious of the merits of
the House of Lords. Now, ladies and gentlemen, seeing that I have
had some few not altogether obscure or unknown personal friends in
that assembly, seeing that I had some little association with, and
knowledge of, a certain obscure peer lately known in England by the
name of Lord Brougham; seeing that I regard with some admiration
and affection another obscure peer wholly unknown in literary
circles, called Lord Lytton; seeing also that I have had for some
years some slight admiration of the extraordinary judicial
properties and amazingly acute mind of a certain Lord Chief Justice
popularly known by the name of Cockburn; and also seeing that there
is no man in England whom I respect more in his public capacity,
whom I love more in his private capacity, or from whom I have
received more remarkable proofs of his honour and love of
literature than another obscure nobleman called Lord Russell;
taking these circumstances into consideration, I was rather amazed
by my noble friend's accusation. When I asked him, on his sitting
down, what amazing devil possessed him to make this charge, he
replied that he had never forgotten the days of Lord Verisopht.
Then, ladies and gentlemen, I understood it all. Because it is a
remarkable fact that in the days when that depreciative and
profoundly unnatural character was invented there was no Lord
Houghton in the House of Lords. And there was in the House of
Commons a rather indifferent member called Richard Monckton Milnes.

Ladies and gentlemen, to conclude, for the present, I close with
the other charge of my noble friend, and here I am more serious,
and I may be allowed perhaps to express my seriousness in half a
dozen plain words. When I first took literature as my profession
in England, I calmly resolved within myself that, whether I
succeeded or whether I failed, literature should be my sole
profession. It appeared to me at that time that it was not so well
understood in England as it was in other countries that literature
was a dignified profession, by which any man might stand or fall.
I made a compact with myself that in my person literature should
stand, and by itself, of itself, and for itself; and there is no
consideration on earth which would induce me to break that bargain.

Ladies and gentlemen, finally allow me to thank you for your great
kindness, and for the touching earnestness with which you have
drunk my health. I should have thanked you with all my heart if it
had not so unfortunately happened that, for many sufficient
reasons, I lost my heart at between half-past six and half-past
seven to-night.