The Sun.
London, England, 1866-02-15 00:00:00

The Dramatic, Equestrian, and Musical
Sick Fund.

The annual festival of this charity was held yes-
terday evening at Willis's Rooms, King-street, St.
James's, under the presidency of Charles Dickens,
Esq. Between 300 and 400 ladies and gentlemen
sat down to table. To give a list of the guests would
be to enumerate all who are most celebrated in litera-
ture, the drama, music, and the fine arts generally.
The (capacity of the large room was tested to the
utnrost. Indeed, the only inconvenience of the
evening was a little unpleasant crowding in the
attempt to find seats for some fifty more guests
than could be conveniently accommodated.
The CHAIRMAN, who on rising was received with
loud and long continued cheering, gave the usual
loyal toasts, which were most heartily responded to.
In proposing the toast of the evening, the CHAIR-
MAN said—Ladies, before I couple you with the
gentlemen, which will be at least proper to the in-
scription over my head (St. Valentine's Day)—before
I do so allow me, on behalf of my grateful sex here
represented, to thank you for the great pleasure and
interest with which your gracious presence at these
festivals never fails to inspire us. (Cheers.) There
is no English custom ythich is so manifestly a relic
of savage life as thafoustom which usually excludes
you from participation in shnilar gatherings. (Hear.)
And although the crime: carries its own heavy
punishment along with it, in respect that it divests
a public dinner of its most beautiful ornament and
of its most fascinating charm, still the offence is none
the less to be severely reprehended on every possible
occasion, as outraging equally nature and art. I
believe that as little is known of the saint whose
name is written here as can well be known of any
saint or sinner. (Laughter.) We, your loyal ser-
vants, are deeply thankful to him for having some-
how gained possession of one day in the year—for
having, as no doubt he has, arranged the almanac
for 1866—expressly to delight us with the enchant-
ing fiction that we have some tender proprietorship
in you which we should scarcely dare to claim on
a less auspicious occasion. (Cheers.) Ladies,
the utmost devotion sanctioned by the saint we
beg to lay at your feet, and any little inno-
cent privileges—(laughter)—to which we may be en-
titled by the same authority we beg respectfully
but firmly to claim at your hands. (Cheers.) Now,
ladies and gentlemen, yeu need no ghost to inform
you that I am going to propose " Prosperity to the
Dramatic, Musical, and Equestrian Sick Fund As-
sociation—(hear, hear,)—audfurther, that I should
be going to ask you actively to promote that pro-
sperity by liberally contributing to its funds, if that
task were not reserved for a much more persuasive
speaker. But I rest the strong claim of the society
for its useful existence and its truly charitable
functions on a very few words, though, as well as I
can recollect, upon something like six grounds.
1 First, it relieves the sick; secondly, it buries the
dead; thirdly, it enables the poor members of the
profession to journey to accept new engagements
whenever they find themselves stranded in some
remote inhospitable place, or when, from other cir-
cumstances, they find themselves perfectly crippled
as to locomotion for want of money ; fourthly, it
often finds such engagements for them by acting as
their honest, disinterested agent ; fifthly, it is its
principle to act humanely upon the instant, and
never, as is too often the case within my experience,
to beat about the bush till the bush is withered and
dead—(cheers)—lastly, the society is not in the least
degree exclusive, but takes under its comprehensive
care the whole range of the theatre and the concert-
room, from the manager in his room of state, or
in his caravan, or at the drum-head—(laughter)—
down to the theatrical housekeeper, who is usually
to be found amongst the cobwebs in the flies—rks
Uown—to-trio—h-all porter, 4 passes his life in a
thorough draft—(laughter)— -and, to the best of my
observation, in perpetually interrupted endeavours
to cat something with a knife and fork out of a
basin, by a dusty fire, in that extraordinary little
gritty room upon which the sun never shines, and
on the portals of which are inscribed the magic
words, " stage door." Now, ladies and gentlemen,
this society administers its benefits sometimes by
way of loan ; sometimes by way of gift ; sometimes
by way of assurance at very low premiums; some-
times to members, oftener to non-members : always
expressly, remember, through the hands of a secretary
or committee well acquainted with the wants of the
applicants, and thoroughly versed, if not by hard ex-
perience at least by sympathy, in the calamities and un -
certainties incidental to the general calling. One
mnst know something of the general calling to know
what those afflictions are. A lady who had been
upon the stage from her earliest childhood till she
was a blooming woman, and who came from a long
line of provincial actors and actresses, once said to
me when she was happily married ; when she was
rich, beloved, courted ; when she was mistress of a
fine house—once said to me at the head of her own
table, surrounded by distinguished guests of every
degree, " Oh, but I have never forgotten the hard
time when I was on the stage, and when my baby
brother died, and when my poor mother and I
'nought the little baby from Ireland to England,
and acted three nights in England, as we had
acted three nights in Ireland, with the pretty
creature lying upon the only bed in our lodging
before we got the money to pay for its funeral."
Ladies and gentlemen, such things are, every day,
to this hour ; but happily at this day and in this
hour this association has arisen to be the timely
friend of such great distress. (Cheers.) It is not
often the fault of the sufferers that they fall into
these straits. Struggling artists must necessarily
change from place to place, and thus it frequently
happens that they become, as it were, strangers in
slight circumstances--a pass-
, and very
the sickness of the husband, wife, or
child,e
anelsassecr,eious town—(laughter)—an anathemising
unl
der of the gospel of gentleness and forbear-
ance—anyieenxvgpro l iy p
one of these causes may often in a few
hours wreck them upon a rock in the barren ocean ;
and then, happily, this society, with the swift alacrity
of the lifeboat, dashes to the rescue and takes them
off. (Cheers.) Looking just now over the last re-
port issued by the society, and confining my scrutiny
to the head of illness alone, I find that in one year,
I think, 672 days of sickness had been assuaged by
its means. In nine years, which formed the term
of its existence, as many as 5,500 and odd. Well,
I thought when I saw 5,500 and odd days of sick-
ness, this is a very serious sum, but add the nights!
Add the nights—those long dreary hours in the
twenty-four when the shadow of death is darkest,
when despondency is strongest, and when hope is
weakest, before you gauge the good that is done by
this institution, and before you gauge the good that
reallherereall
y
will
to-night. Add, more than all, that
the improvidence, the recklessness of the general
b e done
(che by
ersevery shilling that you bestow.)
multitude of poor members of this profession, I
should say is a cruel conventional fable. (Cheers.)
And that there is no class of society the members of
which so well help themselves or so well help each
other. (Hear, hear.) Not in the whole grand
chapters of Westminster Abbey and York Minster,
not in the wholequadrangle of the Royal Exchange,
not in the whole list of members of the Stock Ex-
change, not in the Inns of Court, not in the College
of Physicians, not in the College of Surgeons can
there possibly be found more remarkable instances
of uncomplaining poverty, of cheerful, constant
self-denial, of the generous remembrance of the
claims of kindred and professional brotherhood, than
will certainly be found in the dingiest and dirtiest
concert-room, in the least lucid theatre—even in the
raggedest tent circus that was ever stained by
weather. (Cheers.) I have been twitted in print
before now with rather flattering actors when I
address them as one of their trustees at their General
Fund dinner. Believe me, I flatter nobody, unless
it be sometimes myself ; but, in such a company as
the present, I always feel it my manful duty to bear