A DICKENS ADDRESS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVIII, Issue 21, 6 January 1928, Page 8

A DICKENS ADDRESS

MADE IN 1964. NOVELIST’S TRIBUTE TO PRINTERS. London, Rec. 10A speech made by Charles Dickens in 1864. which was not reported at the time, and has never since been published, has been found in the archives of the Printers’ Pension, Almshouse and Orphan Asylum Corporation. Dickens was chairman of the corporation in 184.3 and 1864. This year the centenary is being celebrated, and Prince Henry presided at the dinner held in the Coenaught Rooms on November 16. The speech made by Dickens sixty-three years ago was as follows-. “1 have served three apprenticeships to life since I last presided over one of the festivals of this society. It is twenty-one years since I first occupied this chair. How many chairs have I taken since then ? 1 might, in truth, say a whole pantechnicon of chairs: and in having worked my Wav round, I feel that I have come home again. “The printer is a faithful servant, not only for those connected with the business, but for the public at large, •ind has, therefore, when labouring under infirmity and disease, an especial claim on all for support. Without claiming for him the whole merit of the work produced by his skill, labour, endurance, and intelligence, without him what would be the state > Hi- world at large? Why, tyrants and humbugs in all countries would have everything their own way. “I am certain there are not in any branch of manual dexterity so many remarkable men as might be found in the printing trade. For quickness of perception, amount of endurance and willingness to oblige, 1 have ever found the compositor pre-eminent. “The afflicted printer who has lost his sight in the service, sitting Jirough long days in his ow.. room, the pleasure of reading — his great source of entertainment—being denied him, his daughter or his wife might read to him; but the cause of his mil-fortune would evade even that small solace of his dark seclusion, for the types from which that very book was printed he might have assisted to set up. “The printer is the friend of intelligence, of thought; he is the friend of liberty, of freedom, of law; indeed, the printer is the friend of every man who is the friend ot order—the friend of every man who can read!” Charles Dickens left an unpublished bnok, “The Life of Christ,” written for his children, which is now in the possession of his son, Sir Henry Dickson, K.C., the Common Sergeant of the City of London. Sir Henry received instructions in his father’s will that the book was not to be published.