FAREWELL DINNER TO MR CHARLES DICKENS AT NEW YORK.
(From the " Weekly Dispatch-) On Saturday, the 18th April, a dinner in honor of Mr Dickens was given at Delinonico's, in New York, by the press of the United States. Mr Horace Greeley presided, and on his right was the guest of the evening. Some delay was caused in the commencement of the festivities by the sudden illness of Mr Dickens, and it was reported that he would be unable to attend, but to the great gratification of the assemblage he made his appearance in the receptionroom at 6.30 o'clock, and at once entered the dining-room, leaning on the arm of the chairman. Mr Dickens, who, on rising to respond to the toast of the evening, was received such loud and long-continued cheering that he had to stand for some time awaiting an opportunity to speak, spoke as follows : — "Gentlemen, — When I received an invitation from a private association of working members of the press of New York to dine with them to-day, I accepted that compliment in greatful remeinberance of a calling that was once my own, and in loyal sympathy towards a brotherhood which, in spirit, I have never quitted. To the wholesale training of severe newspaper work, when I was a very young man, I constantly refer my first successes^; and my sons will hereafter testify of their father that he was always steadily proud of that ladder by which he rose. If it were otherwise, I should have but a very poor opinion of their father, which perhaps, upon the whole, I have not. Hence, gentlemen, under any circumstances, this company would have been exceptionally interesting and gratifying to me. But, whereas I supposed that, like the fairies' pavilion, in the ' Arabian Nights,' it would be but a mere handful, and I find it turn out uke the same elastic pavilion, capable of comprehending a multitude, so much the more proud am I of the honor of being your guest ; for you will readily believe that the more widely representative of the press in America my entertainers are, the more I must feel the goodwill and the kindly sentiments towards me of that vast institution. Gentlemen, so much of my voice has lately been heard in the land and I have, for upwards of four hard winter months, so contended against what I have been sometimes quite admiringly assured was true American catarrh '-• (laughter) — a possession which I have throughout highly appreciated, though I might have preferred to be naturalised by any other outward and visible means — 1 say, gentlemen, so much of my voice has lately been heard, that I might have been contented with troubling you no further from my present standing-point, were it not a duty with which I henceforth, charge myself, not only here but on every suitable occasion, whatsoever and wheresoever,/ to express my high and grateful sense of my second reception in America, and to bear my honest testimony to the national generosity and magninimity. Also to declare how astounded I have been by the amazing changes that 1 have seen around me on every sidechanges moral, changes physical,? changes in the amount of land subdued and cultivated, changes in the rise of vast new cities, changes in the growth of older cities almost out of recognition, changes in the growth of the graces and amenities of life, changes in the press, without whose advancement no advancement can take place anywhere. Nor am I, believe me, so arrogant as to suppose t v at in five and twenty years there have been no changes in me, and that I had nothing to learn and no extreme impressions to correct when I was here first. And, geutlemen, this bring 3me to a point on which I have, ever since I landed here last November, observed a strict silence, however tempted sometimes to break it, but in reference to which I will, with, your good leave, take you into my confidence now. Even the press, being human, may be sometimes mistaken or misinformed, and I rather think that I have in one or two rare instances known its information to be not perfectly accurate with reference to myself. Indeed, I have now and again been more surprised by printed news that I have read of myself than by any other printed news that I have ever read in my present state of existence^ Thus, the vigour and perseverance with which I have for some months past been collecting materials for, and hammering away at, a new book on America, have astonished me seeing that all that time it has been perfectly well known to my publishers on both sides of the Atlantic that I positively declared that no consideration on earth should induce me to write one. But what I have intended, what I have resolved upon (and this^ is the confidence I seek to place you in), is, on my return to England, in my own English journal, manfully, promptly, plainly, in my own person, to bear, for the behoof of my countrymen, such testimony to the gigantic changes in this country as I have hinted to-night. Also, to record that wherever I have been, in the smallest places equaliy with the largest, I have been received with unsurpassable politeness, delicacy, sweet temper, hospitality and consideration, and with unsurpassable respect for the privacy daily enforced upon me by the nature of my avocation here aud the state of my health. This testimony, so long as I live, and so long as my descendants have any legal right in my books, I shall cause to be republished, as an appendix to every copy of those two books of mine in which I have referred to America. And this I will do and cause to be done, not in mere love and thankfulness, but because I regard it as an act of plain justice and honor. Gentlemen, the transition from my own feelings toward and interest in America to those of the mass of my countrymen seems to be a natural one ;
but whether or no, I make it with a] express object. I was asked in this verj city, about last Christmas time, whethe an American was not at some disadvantage in England, as a foreigner. Th< notion of an American's being regardet in England as a foreigner at all — of hi: ever being thought of or spokon of ii that character — was so uncommonly in congruous and absurd to me that nij gravity was, for the moment, quit< overpowered. As soon as it was restored I said that for years and years past ] hoped I had as many American friends and had received as many Americai visitors, as almost any Englishman living - and that my unvarying experience "■ fortified by theirs, was that it was enougl in England to be au American to be received with the readiest respect anc recognition everywhere. Thereupon, oui of half-a-dozen .people, suddenly 3pak« out two, one an American gentleman with a cultivated taste for art, who, finding himself on a certain Sunday outside the walls of a certain historical English castle, famous for its pictures, was refused admission there, according to the strict rule of the establishment on • that day, but who on mere representing that he was an American gentleman on his travels, had not only the picture gallery, but the whole castle placed at his immediate disposal. The other was a lady who, being in London, and having a great desire to see a particular museum, was assured by the English family with whom she stayed that it was impossible, because the place was closed for a week, and she had only three days to remain. Upon that lady's going to the museum, as she assured me, alone, self— introduced as an American lady, the gate flew open, as it were, magically. I am unwillingly bound to add that the lady certainly was young and extremely pretty. Still, the porter of that institution is of an obese habit, and, according to the best of my observations of him, not very impressible. Now, gentlemen, I refer to these trifles as a - collateral assurance to you that the Englishman who shall humbly strive, as I hope to do, to be in England as faithful . to America as to England herself, has no previous conceptions to contend against. Points of difference there have been, • points of difference there are, points of difference there probably always will be between the two great people. But broad— : cast in England is sown the sentiment that these two peoples are essentially one \ — and that it rests with them jointly to uphold the great Anglo-Saxon race, to which onr president has referred, and all its great achievements before the world. If I know anything of my countrymen, and they give me credit for knowing something — if I know anything of my countrymen gentlemen, the English heart is stirred by the flutteriug of those stars and stripes, as it is stirred by no other flag that flies, except its own. If I know my countrymen, in any and every relation towards America, they begin, not as Sir Anthony Absolute recommended lovers to begin, with ' a little aversion,' but with a great liking and a profound respect; and whatever the little sensitiveness of the momeut, or the little official passion, or the little official policy, now or then, or here or there, may be, take my word for it that the first, enduring, great popular consideration in England is a generous construction of justice. Finally, gentlemen, and I say this subject to your correction, I do believe that from the great majority of honest minds on both sides, there cannot be absent the conviction that it would be better for this globe to be riven by" an earthquake, fired by a comet, overrun by an iceberg, and^ abandoned to the Arctic fox and bear, than that it should present the spectacle of these two great nations, each of whom has, in its own way and hour, striven so hard and so successfully for freedom, ever again being arrayed the one against the other. (Tumultuous applause, the whole company standing up and cheering again and again.) Gentlemen, I cannot thank your president enough or you enough, for your kind reception of my health, and of my poor remarks ; but believe me, Ido thank you with the utmost fervour of which my soul is capable."
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Southland Times, Issue 990, 22 July 1868, Page 2
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1,748FAREWELL DINNER TO MR CHARLES DICKENS AT NEW YORK. Southland Times, Issue 990, 22 July 1868, Page 2
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