LONDON, APRIL 14, 1851.
[The Sixth Annual Dinner of the General Theatrical Fund was held at the London Tavern on the above date.Mr.Charles Dickens occupied the chair, and in giving the toast of the evening said:-]
I HAVE so often had the satisfaction of bearing my testimony, in this place, to the usefulness of the excellent Institution in whose behalf we are assembled, that I should be really sensible of the disadvantage of having now nothing to say in proposing the toast you all anticipate, if I were not well assured that there is really nothing which needs be said.I have to appeal to you on the old grounds, and no ingenuity of mine could render those grounds of greater weight than they have hitherto successfully proved to you.
Although the General Theatrical Fund Association, unlike many other public societies and endowments, is represented by no building, whether of stone, or brick, or glass, like that astonishing evidence of the skill and energy of my friend Mr.Paxton, which all the world is now called upon to admire, and the great merit of which, as you learn from the best authorities, is, that it ought to have fallen down long before it was built, and yet that it would by no means consent to doing so - although, I say, this Association possesses no architectural home, it is nevertheless as plain a fact, rests on as solid a foundation, and carries as erect a front, as any building, in the world.And the best and the utmost that its exponent and its advocate can do, standing here, is to point it out to those who gather round it, and to say, "judge for yourselves."It may not, however, be improper for me to suggest to that portion of the company whose previous acquaintance with it may have been limited, what it is not.It is not a theatrical association whose benefits are confined to a small and exclusive body of actors.It is a society whose claims are always preferred in the name of the whole histrionic art.It is not a theatrical association adapted to a state of theatrical things entirely past and gone, and no more suited to present theatrical requirements than a string of pack-horses would be suited to the conveyance of traffic between London and Birmingham.It is not a rich old gentleman, with the gout in his vitals, brushed and got-up once a year to look as vigorous as possible, and brought out for a public airing by the few survivors of a large family of nephews and nieces, who afterwards double-lock the street-door upon the poor relations.It is not a theatrical association which insists that no actor can share its bounty who has not walked so many years on those boards where the English tongue is never heard - between the little bars of music in an aviary of singing birds, to which the unwieldy Swan of Avon is never admitted - that bounty which was gathered in the name and for the elevation of an all-embracing art.