[Speech of Josiah Quincy, Jr., at the banquet given by the "Young
Men of Boston" at Boston, Mass., February 1, 1842, to Charles
Dickens, upon his first visit to America. Mr. Quincy was the
President of the evening. About two hundred gentlemen sat at the
tables, the brilliant company including George Bancroft, Richard H.
Dana, Sr., Richard H. Dana, Jr., Washington Allston, the painter,
Oliver Wendell Holmes, George S. Hillard, Josiah Quincy, President
of Harvard College, the Governor of the State, the Mayor of the
city, and Thomas C. Grattan, the British Consul.]
GENTLEMEN:--The occasion that calls us together is almost
unprecedented in the annals of literature. A young man has crossed the
ocean, with no hereditary title, no military laurels, no princely
fortune, and yet his approach is hailed with pleasure by every age and
condition, and on his arrival he is welcomed as a long-known and highly
valued friend. How shall we account for this reception? Must we not at
the first glance conclude with Falstaff, "If the rascal have not given
me medicines to make me love him, I'll be hanged: it could not be
else--I have drunk medicines."
But when reflection leads us to the causes of this universal sentiment,
we cannot but be struck by the power which mind exercises over mind,
even while we are individually separated by time, space, and other
conditions of our present being. Why should we not welcome him as a
friend? Have we not walked with him in every scene of varied life? Have
we not together investigated, with Mr. Pickwick, the theory of
Tittlebats? Have we not ridden together to the "Markis of Granby" with
old Weller on the box, and his son Samivel on the dickey? Have we not
been rook-shooting with Mr. Winkle, and courting with Mr. Tupman? Have
we not played cribbage with "the Marchioness," and quaffed the rosy with
Dick Swiveller? Tell us not of animal magnetism! We, and thousands of
our countrymen, have for years been eating and talking, riding and
walking, dancing and sliding, drinking and sleeping, with our
distinguished guest, and he never knew of the existence of one of us. Is
it wonderful that we are delighted to see him, and to return in a
measure his unbounded hospitalities? Boz a stranger! Well may we again
exclaim, with Sir John Falstaff, "D'ye think we didn't know ye?--We knew
ye as well as Him that made ye."
But a jovial fellow is not always the dearest friend; and, although the
pleasure of his society would always recommend the progenitor of Dick
Swiveller, "the perpetual grand of the glorious Appollers," in a scene
like this, yet the respect of grave doctors and of fair ladies proves
that there are higher qualities than those of a pleasant companion to
recommend and attach them to our distinguished guest. What is the charm
that unites so many suffrages? It is that in the lightest hours, and in
the most degraded scenes which he has portrayed, there has been a
reforming object and a moral tone, not formally thrust into the canvas,
but infused into the spirit of the picture, with those natural touches
whose contemplation never tires.
With what a power of delineation have the abuses of his institutions
been portrayed! How have the poor-house, the jail, the police courts of
justice, passed before his magic mirror, and displayed to us the petty
tyranny of the low-minded official, from the magnificent Mr. Bumble, and
the hard-hearted Mr. Roker, to the authoritative Justice Fang, the
positive Judge Starleigh! And as we contemplate them, how strongly have
we realized the time-worn evils of some of the systems they revealed to
our eyesight, sharpened to detect the deficiencies and malpractices
under our own.
The genius of chivalry, which had walked with such power among men, was
exorcised by the pen of Cervantes. He did but clothe it with the name
and images of Don Quixote de la Mancha and his faithful Squire, and
ridicule destroyed what argument could not reach.
This power belongs in an eminent degree to some of the personifications
of our guest. A short time ago it was discovered that a petty tyrant had
abused the children who had been committed to his care. No long and
elaborate discussion was needed to arouse the public mind. He was
pronounced a perfect Squeers, and eloquence could go no further. Happy
is he who can add a pleasure to the hours of childhood, but far happier
he who, by fixing the attention of the world on their secret sufferings,
can protect or deliver them from their power.
But it is not only as a portrayer of public wrongs that we are indebted
to our friend. What reflecting mind can contemplate some of those
characters without being made more kind-hearted and charitable? Descend
with him into the very sink of vice--contemplate the mistress of a
robber--the victim of a murderer--disgraced without--polluted
within--and yet when, in better moments, her natural kindness breaks
through the cloud, then she tells you that no word of counsel, no tone
of moral teaching, ever fell upon her ear. When she looks forward from a
life of misery to a death by suicide, you cannot but feel that there is
no condition so degraded as not to be visited by gleams of a higher
nature, and rejoice that He alone will judge the sin who knows also the
temptation. Again, how strongly are the happiness of virtue and the
misery of vice contrasted. The morning scene of Sir Mulberry Hawk and
his pupil brings out in strong relief the night scene of Kit Nubbles and
his mother. The one in affluence and splendor, trying to find an easier
position for his aching head, surrounded with means and trophies of
debauchery, and thinking "there would be nothing so snug and comfortable
as to die at once." The other in the poorest room, earning a precarious
subsistence by her labors at the wash-tub--ugly, and ignorant, and
vulgar, surrounded by poverty, with one child in the cradle, and the
other in the clothes-basket, "whose great round eyes emphatically
declared that he never meant to go to sleep any more, and thus opened a
cheerful prospect to his relations and friends"--and yet in this
situation, with only the comfort that cleanliness and order could
impart, kindness of heart and the determination to be talkative and
agreeable throws a halo round the scene, and as we contemplate it we
cannot but feel that Kit Nubbles attained to the summit of philosophy,
when he discovered "there was nothing in the way in which he was made
that called upon him to be a snivelling, solemn, whispering
chap--sneaking about as if he couldn't help it, and expressing himself
in a most unpleasant snuffle--but that it was as natural for him to
laugh as it was for a sheep to bleat, a pig to grunt, or a bird to
sing."
Or take another example, when wealth is attained, though by different
means and for different purposes. Ralph Nickleby and Arthur Gride are
industrious and successful; like the vulture, they are ever soaring over
the field that they may pounce on the weak and unprotected. Their
constant employment is grinding the poor and preying upon the rich. What
is the result? Their homes are cold and cheerless--the blessing of him
that is ready to perish comes not to them, and they live in wretchedness
to die in misery. What a contrast have we in the glorious old
twins--brother Charles and brother Ned. They have never been to school,
they eat with their knives (as the Yankees are said to do), and yet what
an elucidation do they present of the truth that it is better to give
than to receive! They acquire their wealth in the honorable pursuits of
business. They expend it to promote the happiness of every one within
their sphere, and their cheerful days and tranquil nights show that
wealth is a blessing or a curse, as it ministers to the higher or lower
propensities of our nature.
"He that hath light within his own clear breast,
May sit in the centre and enjoy bright day;
But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts,
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun;
Himself is his own dungeon."
Such men are powerful preachers of the truth that universal benevolence
is the true panacea of life; and, although it was a pleasant fiction of
brother Charles, "that Tim Linkinwater was born a hundred and fifty
years old, and was gradually coming down to five and twenty," yet he who
habitually cultivates such a sentiment will, as years roll by, attain
more and more to the spirit of a little child; and the hour will come
when that principle shall conduct the possessor to immortal happiness
and eternal youth.