Relevant Notes from The Speeches of Charles Dickens

The following excerpts from Dickens’s speeches bear in part on David Copperfield. Drawn from The Speeches of Charles Dickens. Edited by K. J. Fielding. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960.

Page	Date	Topic/Speech	Details	Relevance to David Copperfield
9	1842	Banquet in His Honor: Edinburgh	“I feel as if the death of fictitious creatures, in which you have been kind enough to express an interest, had endeared us to each other as real afflictions deepen friendships in actual life; I feel as if they had been ral persons, whose fortunes we had pursued together in inseperable connection, and that I had never known them apart from you.”	Dickens bonds with real people through their shared love and sympathy for fictional characters. Last line is especially interesting.
17-18	1842	Banquet in His Honor: Boston	First trip to America– compares his comfort in US with Aladdin’s Palace. “It is not easy for a man t speak of his own book. I dare say that few persons have been more interested in mine than I; and if it be a general principle that a mother’s love is blind, I believe it may be said of an author’s attachment to the creatures of his own imagination, that it is a perfect model of consistency and devotion, and is the blindest of all. But the objects and purposed I have in view are very plain and simple, and may easily be told. I have always had, and always shall have, an earnest and true desire to contribute, as far as in me lies, to the common stock of healthful cheerfulness and enjoyment. I have always had, and shall always have, an invincible repugnance to that mole-eyed philosophy that loves the darkness, and winks and scowls in the light…”	States the love for his novelistic children, and the moral purpose of his novels. Also int’g in light of Dickens own potential manic-depressive moments.
73-76	1846	General Theatrical Fund	The ‘associations’ that are inspired by the sight of an actor (old or otherwise) are always pleasant	Talks about changes of Covent Garden and Drury Lane to Opera Houses and regulations of this sort, etc…
75	1846	General Theatrical Fund	“Hazlitt has well said that “There is no class of society whom so many people well regard as actors. We greet them on the stage, we like to meet them in the streets; they almost recall to us pleasant associations.	Memory; Dickens love for the stage
76	1846	General Theatrical Fund	“I am too familiar with the English Character not to know that it will be affected.When we come suddenly across a crowded street upon the features of a familiar face, crossing us like the ghost of pleasant hours forgotten, let us not recall those features n pain, in sad rememberance of what they once were; but let us in joy recognize, and go back a pace or two to meet it once again…”	Dickens knowledge and belief of the English psychology
238-244	1857	Warehousemen and Clerks Schools	A great speech creating anecdotes about different kind of schools he doesn’t like: charity schools, ladies’ schools, etc. Then, “let me tell you about the kind of school I do like.“Also, when asked to toast the press, he replies it is like “as if he had asked them to toast to his own family“, “Being born and bred to the press, his earliest working years being passed in the House of Commons,and he must be base indeed, or have a very much shorter memory than he believed he possessed…if it were not one of the foremost efforts of his life to do anything he could to uphold its character.”	Schools in general, contrasts the bad school vs the good school; specifically tells an autobiographical anecdote that is the incident of the turned toes of “Miss Shepard.” Also, the school he endorses is the School for Orphaned and Necessitous Children- always a theme for CD.
275	1858	Royal Dramatic College	Opened in 1865 (?) and closed in 1877. Actors didn’t want to retire to countryside, but rather to stay in London (277).	Schools
333	1864	Royal Dramatic College – and Shakespeare School	Proposed free public school for children of actors. Mentions houses were completed and installed and some inhabited at this time. Proposes school: that I believe there is not in England any institution so socially liberal as a public school. It has been called a little cosmos of life outside, and I think it is so, with the exception of one of life’s worst foibles–for, as far as I know, nowhere in this country is there so complete an absence of servility to mere rank, to mere position, to mere riches as in a public school. A boy there is always what his abilities or his personal qualities make him. We may differ about the curriculum and other matters, but of the frank, free, manly, independent spirit preserved in our public schools, I apprehend there can be no kind of question. It has happened in these later times that objection has been made to children of dramatic artists in certain little sniveling private schools–but in public schools never.	Comments concerning public vs. private schools useful
346-348	1865	The Newspaper Press Fund	“I never forgot the fascination of that old pursuit” “…sometimes I mentally follow the speaker in the old way; and sometimes, if you can believe me, I even find my hand going on the tablecloth, taking imaginary note of it all”	Dickens talks autobiographically about his days at 18 as a parliamentary reporter, learning shorthand, etc., but more importantly, speaks to CD’s lifelong commitment to and view of himself ‘observing’ and recording
379	1868	Banquet in His Honor: NY	Reflects on days as a reporter. “When I received an invitation from a private association of working members of the press of NY to dine with them today, I accepted that compliment in grateful rememberance of a calling that was once my own, and in loyal sympathy toward a brotherhoood which, in the spirit , I have never quitted…To the wholesome 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 steadly proud of that ladder by which he rose.”	Int’g reflections on his reporting days relate to David Copperfield in that he defends his pride in the profession.
406 (whole speech starts 397)	1869	Birmingham Midland Institute, Annual Inaugural Meeting, Birmingham	“The one servicable, safe, certain, renumeratve, attainable quality in every study and in every pursuit is the quality of attention. My own invention or imagination, such as it is, I can most truthfully assure you, would have never served me as it has, but for the habot of commonplace, humble, patient, dialy, toiling, druging attention. Genius, vivacity, quickness of penetration, brillincy in association of ideas–such mental qualities, like the qualities of the appartion of the externally armed head in MacBeth will not always be commanded; but attention, after due term of submissive service, always will. Like certain plants which the poorest peasant may grow in the poorest soil, it can be cutivated by anyone, and it certain…to bring forth flowers and fruit.”	Dickens contrasts school conventions with self-education by observation, and touches on psychology. Dickens’s fundamental belief in the powers of ‘attention’ and ‘observation’ relate nicely to David Copperfield. Note “renumerative” among its benefits.