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SPEECH OF CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 DELIVERED AT 
 
 GORE HOUSE, KENSINGTON 
 MAY 10, 1851 
 
SPEECH 
 
 OF 
 
 CHARLES DICKENS ^^ 
 
 DELIVERED AT GORE HOUSE, KENSINGTON. MAY 10. 1851 
 
 PRINTED FROM THE ORIGINAL 
 AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT 
 
 EXCLUSIVELY FOR MEMBERS OF 
 
 THE BIBLIOPHILE SOCIETY 
 BOSTON. MDCDIX 
 

 e® 
 
 Copyrighted 1909, by 
 
 THE BIBWOPHII^E SOCIETY 
 
 AU Jits: his Reserved 
 
 ©CI,A?5ISfl3 ^' 
 
The original MS. of the '^Dickens 
 Speech" is owned by one of our members, 
 Mr. Edmund D. Brooks, of Minneapolis. 
 He has kindly prepared an introductory 
 note and loaned the MS. to The Bibliophile 
 Society to be printed for the members. The 
 cost of issuing this pamphlet has been 
 charged into general expense, and no direct 
 charge is made to members therefor. 
 
 The Council 
 
■--.i 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 The text of tMs Speech, as printed in the 
 National Edition of Dickens's Works, pub- 
 lished by Chapman and Hall, vol. 38, page 
 390, contains about eleven hundred words, 
 while the original manuscript, now printed 
 in full for the first time, contains nearly two 
 thousand words. 
 
 Aside from the new matter, the MS. 
 di:ffers from the printed form in many essen- 
 tial details, suggesting the conclusion that 
 the After-dinner Speech of Dickens in pro- 
 posing the toast "Lord Ashley and the 
 Board of Health" was originally written 
 out with much care, spoken extempore, and 
 the speech as printed was taken from the 
 reporter's account with no reference to the 
 MS., which was probably not then available 
 for printing. 
 
 Throughout the printed speech the third 
 person is used, as, '*0f what avail is it to 
 send missionaries to the miserable man con- 
 demned to work in a foetid court, with every 
 sense bestowed upon him for his health and 
 happiness turned into a torment, with every 
 month of his life adding to the heap of evil 
 under which he is condemned to exist"?" 
 [5] 
 
The MS. is in the first person, as follows : 
 ^'What avails it to send a Missionary to me, 
 a miserable man or woman living In a foetid 
 court where every sense bestowed upon me 
 for my delight becomes a torment, and every 
 minute of my life is a new mire added to the 
 heap under which I lie degraded?" 
 
 The MS. also contains many courteous 
 phrases and humorous allusions, character- 
 istic of the great novelist, which are entirely 
 omitted in the printed version. And the 
 new material furnished gives an interesting 
 glimpse of the sanitary struggles with which 
 modern London has wrestled. 
 
 As is well known, Dickens felt a keen 
 interest in any reform likely to benefit the 
 condition of the poor, and was consequently 
 the ardent champion of the various plans 
 for the betterment of the sanitation of Lon- 
 don, which began about 1840, and continued 
 during his lifetime. 
 
 The MS., consisting of fourteen closely 
 written 8vo pages entirely in the handwrit- 
 ing of Dickens, is superbly bound, by San- 
 gorski and Sutcliffe, of London, in full dark 
 green crushed levant, gold-tooled sides, 
 leather joints, and silk fly-leaves. 
 
 Edmund D. Brooks 
 
 [6] 
 
A SPEECH DELIVERED AT GORE 
 
 HOUSE, KENSINGTON, 
 
 MAY 10, 1851 
 
 BY CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 My Lord and Gentlemen: — 
 
 I am placed in that peculiarly advan- 
 tageous position for speaking, that I must 
 either turn from the chairman or from the 
 company. But, as the company includes 
 that best and brightest part of all company, 
 whose presence (I presume) we are sup- 
 posed not to recognize on these occasions as 
 we never address them — and, as I have 
 abundant experience of the innate courtesy 
 and politeness of my noble friend — I shall 
 take the course which I am sure will be most 
 agreeable to him, and turn to this assembly 
 in general. Indeed, gentlemen, I have but 
 a few words to say, either on the needfulness 
 of Sanitary Reform, or on the consequent 
 usefulness of the Metropolitan Sanitary 
 Association. 
 
 [7] 
 
That no one can estimate the amount of 
 mischief which is grown in dirt ; that no one 
 can say, here it stops, or there it stops, either 
 in its physical or its moral results, when 
 both begin in the cradle and are not at rest 
 in the obscene grave, is now as certain as it 
 is that the air from Gin Lane will be carried, 
 when the wind is Easterly, into May Fair, 
 and that if you once have a vigorous pesti- 
 lence raging furiously in Saint Giles's, no 
 mortal list of Lady Patronesses can keep it 
 out of Almack's. 
 
 Twelve or fifteen years ago, some of the 
 first valuable reports of Mr. Chadwick and 
 of Dr. Southwood Smith, strengthening and 
 much enlarging my previous imperfect 
 knowledge of this truth, made me, in my 
 sphere, earnest in the Sanitary Cause. And 
 I can honestly declare tonight that all the 
 use I have since made of my eyes or nose, 
 that all the information I have since been 
 able to acquire through any of my senses, 
 has strengthened me in the conviction that 
 Searching Sanitary Reform must precede 
 all other social remedies, and that even Edu- 
 cation and Religion can do nothing where 
 they are most needed, until the way is paved 
 for their ministration by Cleanliness and 
 
 [8] 
 
Decency. Am I singular in this opinion? 
 You will remember the speech made this 
 night by the Right Reverend Prelate, which 
 no true Sanitary Reformer can have heard 
 without emotion. What avails it to send a 
 Missionary to me, a miserable man or woman 
 living in a foetid Court where every sense 
 bestowed upon me for my delight becomes a 
 torment, and every minute of my life is new 
 mire added to the heap under which I lie 
 degraded? To what natural feeling within 
 me is he to address himself? What ancient 
 chord within me can he hope to touch? Is 
 it my remembrance of my children? Is it 
 a remembrance of distortion and decay, 
 scrofula and fever? Would he address 
 himself to my hopes of immortality? I 
 am so surrounded by material filth that my 
 Soul can not rise to the contemplation of an 
 immaterial existence! Or, if I be a miser- 
 able child, born and nurtured in the same 
 wretched place, and tempted, in these better 
 times, to the Ragged School, what can the 
 few hours' teaching that I get there do for 
 me, against the noxious, constant, ever-re- 
 newed lesson of my whole existence? But 
 give me my first glimpse of Heaven through 
 a little of its light and air — give me water 
 
 [9] 
 
— help me to be clean — lighten this heavy 
 atmosphere in which my spirit droops and I 
 become the indifferent and callous creature 
 that you see me — gently and kindly take 
 the body of my dead relation out of the 
 small room where I grow to be so familiar 
 with the awful change that even its sanctity 
 is lost to me — and, Teacher, then I'll hear, 
 you know how willingly, of Him whose 
 thoughts were so much with the Poor, and 
 who had compassion for all human sorrow! 
 I am now, gentlemen, to propose to you 
 as a toast a public Body without whose effi- 
 cient aid this preparation so much to be 
 desired, for Christianity at home, cannot be 
 effected ; and by whom, if we earnestly desire 
 such preparation, we must stand, giving 
 them all the support it is in our power to 
 render. I mean, the Board of Health. We 
 have a transparent instance very near at 
 hand of the mysterious arrangement that no 
 great thing can possibly be done without a 
 certain amount of nonsense being talked 
 about it in the way of objection. Much as 
 our respected friend the Ex-unprotected 
 Female was confounded, at that family 
 dinner party where we last heard of her by 
 some alarming conversation respecting the 
 
 [10] 
 
sparrows in Mr. Paxton's gutters, and the 
 casks of gunpowder sent to the Great Expos- 
 ition under the semblance of coffee, so, I 
 dare say, it has been the fortune of most of 
 us to hear the Board of Health discussed in 
 various congenial circles. I have never been 
 able to make out distinctly more than two 
 objections to it: the first is expressed in a 
 long word which I seem to remember to have 
 heard pronounced with a sort of violent 
 relish on two or three previous occasions — 
 Centralization. 
 
 Now, gentlemen, in the year before last, 
 in the time of the cholera, you had an excel- 
 lent opportunity of judging between this 
 Centralization on the one hand, and what I 
 may be permitted to call Vestrylization on 
 the other. You may recollect the Reports 
 of the Board of Health on the subject of 
 cholera, and you may recollect the Reports 
 of the discussions on the same subject at 
 some vestry meetings. I have the honor — 
 of which I am very sensible — to be one of 
 the constituent body of the amazing Vestry 
 of Marylebone ; and if you chance to remem- 
 ber (as you very likely do) what the Board 
 of Health did in Glasgow and other places, 
 and what my vestry said, you will probably 
 [11] 
 
agree with me that between tMs so-called 
 Centralization, and tMs Vestrylization, the 
 former is by far the best thing to stand by 
 in an emergency. My vestry even took the 
 high ground of denying the existence of 
 cholera in an unusual degree. And although 
 that denial had no greater effect upon the 
 disease than my vestry's denial of the exist- 
 ence of Jacob's Island had upon the Earth 
 about Bermondsey, the circumstance may be 
 suggestive to you in considering what 
 Vestrylization is, when a few noisy little 
 landlords interested in the maintenance of 
 abuses, struggle to the foremost ranks ; and 
 what the so-called Centralization is when it 
 is a combination of active business habits, 
 sound medical knowledge, and a zealous 
 sjmipathy with the sufferings of the people. 
 But, gentlemen, there is, as I have said, 
 another objection to the Board of Health. 
 It is conveyed in the shorter and less alarm- 
 ing word — delay. Now, I need not suggest 
 to you that it would surely be unreasonable 
 to object to a first-rate chronometer, that it 
 wouldn't go — when its owner wouldn't 
 wind it up. Yet I cannot help thinking, I 
 must plainly avow, that the Board of Health 
 is in the parallel position of being excellently 
 
 [12] 
 
adapted for going, and being very willing 
 and anxious to go, but not being able to go, 
 because its lawful master has fallen into a 
 gentle slumber, and forgotten to set it a-go- 
 ing. As a component particle of this asso- 
 ciation wMch my Noble friend in the chair 
 considers useful as a gentle stimulus to gov- 
 ernments, I must take leave to say that I do 
 not, and can not, consider the Board of 
 Health responsible for delay in sanitary 
 reforms. Lord Robert Grosvenor referred 
 just now to Lord Castlereagh's favorite 
 adage that you must never hallo until you 
 are out of the Wood. It occurred to me that 
 with a very slight addition that would be 
 an excellent adage for all Sanitary Reform- 
 ers : to-wit, that you must never hallo until 
 you are out of the Woods — and Forests. 
 
 If I may venture to make the remark 
 under the presiding of my Noble friend, 
 whom we were all so glad to see, and would 
 all have been so happy to retain in those 
 leafy regions, I would say that since the 
 remote period when 'Hhe noble savage" ran 
 wild there, some other Nobles — not savages 
 by any means, but gentlemen of high accom- 
 plishments and worth — have gone a little 
 wild in the same districts and wandered 
 
 [13] 
 
rather more languidly out of the direct path 
 than is quite good for the public. You will 
 of course understand that in saying this, I 
 merely express my own individual misgiv- 
 ings, but I will tell you why I entertain 
 them. Considering the Report of the Board 
 of Health on Intramural Interments to be 
 one of the most remarkable social documents 
 ever issued under any Government, and an 
 honor to the country and the time, I cannot 
 but believe that the Board of Health would 
 have advanced a little quicker in the carry- 
 ing out of the measure founded upon it 
 but for some stoppage in the way above 
 them which we don't clearly see. Re- 
 membering the vigor and perspicuity with 
 which they have indicated to us the 
 chief Sanitary evils it is essential to 
 remove, I cannot hold them responsible 
 for the prolonged existence of those evils. 
 As with omission, so with commission. 
 Remembering how clearly they shewed 
 us the advantages of a continuous sup- 
 ply of soft water, and how they pointed 
 out to us an abundant source of supply, 
 I cannot cast upon them the blame of a 
 measure which gives us only hard water. 
 Remembering how they dwelt upon the 
 
 [14] 
 
necessity of a combination of water-works, 
 I cannot charge them with the injury of 
 perpetuated separation. Remembering how 
 they demonstrated to us that disease must 
 lurk in houses founded over cesspools or 
 built upon foundations saturated with cess- 
 pool matter, I cannot hold them responsible 
 for the maintenance of a system of drainage 
 which does not remove these ills. And 
 therefore, gentlemen, both for the good they 
 have done, and for the good they may be 
 fairly assumed to have had the will to do, 
 but not the power, I commend the Board of 
 Health to you as especially deserving and 
 requiring the sympathy, the encouragement, 
 and the support of the Metropolitan Sani- 
 tary Association. 
 
 I shall beg, in conclusion, to couple with 
 the toast the name of a Noble Lord, one of 
 its members, whose Earnestness in all good 
 works no man can doubt, and who always 
 has the courage steadily to face the worst 
 and commonest of all cants ; that is to say, 
 the cant about the cant of philanthropy and 
 benevolence. I propose to you. Lord Ash- 
 ley and the Board of Health. 
 
 [15] 
 
The following is printed from the origi- 
 nal MS., in the handwriting of Dickens, to 
 whicJi is appended a note signed hy Mark 
 Lemon, the editor of ^' Punch'' at that time. 
 The MS. is now in the collection of Mr. 
 Bixby: 
 
 DREADFUL HARDSHIPS 
 
 Endured by the Shipwrecked Crew of the 
 London Chief for Want of Water 
 
 In the deplorable condition cast away 
 upon that desolate & frightful region called 
 the Suburbs, the aspect of which might well 
 appal the stoutest heart, our sufferings for 
 want of water are scarcely to be imagined. 
 Cleanliness, either in our persons or our huts 
 or clothing, was totally impossible. All the 
 water, if it may be called such, that we had 
 was an intermittent and irregular leakage 
 of liquid filth (into a small foul butt) tainted 
 with every description of poisonous and 
 putrescent matter, swarming with marine 
 monsters, loathsome to the sight, odious to 
 the taste, offensive to the smell. To aggra- 
 vate our sufferings, a savage of a hostile 
 tribe made his appearance among us regu- 
 
 [16] 
 
larly once a quarter, derided our complaints 
 and cruelly tomahawked some of our mis- 
 erable companions. The name of the wretch 
 was Waw Taw-Rate Col Lee Taw. How 
 often did our thoughts revert to our dear 
 civilized land and its freedom from such 
 intolerable evils. — Journal of the surviving 
 sufferers, 
 
 (The only contribution of Charles Dick- 
 ens to Punch, 
 
 M. Lemon.) 
 
 [17] 
 
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