The Sun.
London, England, 1857-12-28 00:00:00

r II

MR. TH. ACKE.RAY AND THE COMMER-

CIAL TRAVELLERS.

The annual festival to commemorate the esta-
blishment of the Commercial Travellers' Schools,
in which 150 orphan and necessitous children are
educated and maintained, was held at the London
Tavern on Saturday evening. Mr. Thackeray, the
celebrated novelist, presided ; and upwards of 100
principals of leading firms in the city and " gentle-
men of the road" sat down to dinner. In the course

of evening the scholars were led in procession
round the room, and their healthy, intelligent, and
cheerful appearance was the theme of universal

praise.
The usual loyal toasts having been duly honoured,
The CHAIRMAN proposed " The Army and Navy,"
observing that the hearts of our brave soldiers at
Delhi and Lucknow must have throbbed with pride,
as they sat at their Christmas feast, when they
thought of how their gallant services to their coun-
try would be appreciated in England that day.

(dheers.)
The CHAIRMAN next rose and said, —I approach
the toast of the evening with very great diffidence,
remembering who have been my last two predeces-
sors in this chair (Mr. Dickens and Sir E. B. Lyt-
ton), and how consummate was the eloquence with
which each of those distinguished men addressed
you. Moreover, after all that has happened very
recently, I feel it needful for me to be particularly
cautious whenever I come to any meeting in the
city which has to do with money and monetary
affairs. (Hear, and a laugh.) It is seldom that I
appear at all in these regions, unless, indeed, it be
occasionally to pay a pleasing visit to Messrs. Brad-
bury and Evans, in Bouverie-street, or to Messrs.
Smith and Co., of Cornhill. But I read my paper,
like every good Briton, and from that I gather a
lesson of profound caution in speaking to mercantile
men on subjects of this kind. Supposing, for
instance, that I have shares in Bundelcund Banking
Company or in the Royal British Diddlesex Bank,
I come down to a meeting of the shareholders and
hear an honoured treasurer and an admirable presi-

dent make the most flourishing reports of the state
of our concern, showing to us enormous divi-
dends accompanied with the most elegant bonuses ;
and proving to us that our funds are invested in
the most secure way at Bogleywallah, Bundelcund,
and Branksea Castle. (Laughter.) I go away
delighted at the happy prospect before my wife
and family, feeling perfect confidence that those
innocent beings will be comfortable for the rest of
their lives. What, then, is my horror, when, in
one brief fortnight after, instead of those enormous
dividends aid elegant bonuses, I am served with a
notice to pay up a most prodigious sum (laughter) ;
when I find that our estates at Bundelcund and
Bogleywallah have been ravished by the Bengal
tiger ; that the Island of Brankeea is under water ;
that our respected president is obliged to go to Spain
for the benefit of his health, and our eloquent
treasurer cannot abide the London fog. (Renewed
laughter.) You see I must be a little careful. But,
granted that the accounts we have here have not,
like our dinner been subjected to an ingenious
culinary process—(a laugh—granted that you have
spent, as I read in your report, 25,0001. in raising
a noble school and grounds ; that you have in-
vested another 15,0001. in the funds ; that you
have collected around you the happy juvenile faces
which I see smiling on yonder benches, to be the
objects of your honest, Christian kindness ; and
that you have achieved this scheme among your-
selves—granting all this to be true, then gentlemen
I am your most humble servant, and no words that
I can find can express my enthusiastic admiration
for what you have done, and for the excellent in-
stitution of which you are the hearty patrons and
supporters. (Cheers.) I sincerely wish on behalf
of my own class, the literary profession, that we
had an institution to which we could confide our
children, instead of having to send them about to
schools as we do, at an awful cost. When the re-
spected Mr. Squeers, of Do-the-Boys Hall, an-
nounces that he proposes to take a limited number
of pupils it is not because he is in love with the
little darlings that he does it, but because he
designs Ito extract a profit out of them.
It always pains me to think of the profits
to be screwed out of the bellies of the poor
little innocents. Why have we not, as men of
letters, some such as-ociation as that which you
have got up f I appeal to my literary brethren, if
any of them are present, whether we, the men of
the line, cannot emulate the men of the road ?
(Hear, hear.) A week ago, a friend engaged in my
own profession, making his 1,0001. a-year, showed
me the half-yearly account of his two little boys at
school. These little heroes of 6 and 7, who are at
a very excellent school, where they are well and
, comfortably provided for name borne with a little
bill in their pocket which, amounted to the sum of
751. fur the half-year. Now, think of this poor
Paterfamilias earning his moderate 1,0001. a-year,
out of which he has his life assurance, his inoome-
tax, and his house-rent to pay, with three or four
poor relations to support—for, doubtless, we are
all blessed with these appendages—(a laugh)—aud
with the heavy bills of his wife and daughters for
millinery and mantua-making to meet, especially
at their present enormous rates and sizes. (Re-
newed laughter.) Think of this over-burdened man
having to pay 75/..for one half-year's schooling of
his little boys. (Hear, hear.) Let the gentlemen of
the press, then, try to devise some scheme which
shalt benefit them, as you have undoubtedly bene-
fited by what you have accomplished for yourselves.
I will not allude to the educatory process through
which you put your children, and which was spoken
of last year by the distinguished man who filled
this chair in terms of most just praise, except to
say that you appear to teach the pupils modern
languages, mathematics, music, and the various
other branches of instruction needed to fit them for
the encounter of life which all are obliged to enter.
We are all travellers and voyagers who must em-
bark on life's ocean ' • and before you Pend your
boys to sea you teach them to swim, to navigate
the ship, and guide her into port. The last time
I visited America, two years ago, I sailed on board
the Africa, Captain Harrison, an officer who has
now received a much larger command—the Levia-
than ; and all that I can say is, I heartily wish him
and his employers well out of the " fix." (A laugh.)
The Africa, however, was steaming out of Liver-
pool one fine blowy October thy, aud was hardly
ever the bar, when, animated by those peculiar
sensations not uncommon to landsmen at the corn-
meocement of asa voyage, I was holding on amid-
ships. (A laugh.) Up comes a quick-eyed shrewd
looking little roan who holds on by the mxt rope to
me and says, " STr. Thackeray, I am the represon-
tative of the house of Appleton and Co., of Broad-
way, New York—a most liberal and enterprising
publishing firm, who will be most happy to do
business with you." I don't know that we then
did any business in the line thus delicately hinted
at, because at that particular juncture we were both
of us called, by a heavy lurch of the ship, to a
casting up of accounts of a far less agreeable cha-
racter. (Laughter.) But, gentlemen, there are
but few of us ..who are not travellers. I parted
to-day from a near neighbour, and as famous and
intelligent a traveller as any that I could name—l
mean Mr. William Howard Russell, the traveller
for a celebrated publishing firm in Printing-house-
square. (" Hear," and a laugh.) We all know
how he travelled three years ago, when he went
out to inspect for his employers the shot and shell
and bayonet market at the Crimea, and reported
on the state of French grape at the Malakoff, of
British beef at Balaklava, and of Russian hides at
Inkermann. (Cheers and laughter.) He is now
on his way to Marseilles. In another month he will
be in India—(cheers)—and he will see the shat-
tered gates around which the brave young engineers
died at their duty, through which Wilson and his
gallant comrades passed over heaps of enemies,
until they reached the imperial palace of Delhi, in
which, amid shouts of victory, the health of Queex
Victoria was drunk. He will see the battered walls
through which Havelock and Outram, and, !lastly,
Sir Colin Campbell and his relieving army, marched
to rescue our women and children, crushing hosts
of foes before them, and finally plantingthe glorious
old flag of England on Lucknow's walls. That,
gentlemen, was a melancholy dinner of his yester-
day—his Christmas dinner, the last meal he was
to take here at home. The little children sat round
the table on that sad evening, and the poor wife
must have gazed at them with a wistful eye. But
now the parting is over, and this day he has taken
his. first step on his long journey. Many and
many a time in the solitude of travel, in the lone-
liness of the desert; on ship-board at the morn-
ing-watch, when sea and sky are flushed with the
golden sunrise ; or at midnight, amid the rushing
waters, and under the stars of God, he will think
with inexpressible tenderness of the dear being he
,has left at home. (Cheers.) But for his children
he might have been among us now, gentlemen, as
he was last year. He separates from them in order
to_ do his duty—in order to toil that they may be
comfortable—in order to earn the means of one
day coming back to there, and seeing them growing
up around him educated and happy. (Hear, hear.)
And you, gentlemen in your several degrees, also
support toil, privation, travel, and separation, in
e'r-der.to make your young ones happy ; and you
"'I mliserate, too, the cause of your brethren in dis-
, trees
made the little beseriin -
tunateTle:°lnpassionatethe poor and the unfor-
Hie divine ordinance who
cacokinermayorecoiandikeunar come unto
el by giving—" Prosperity
tOirihrreh
amid loud applause.) (Drank
Various complimentary toasts followed, and a
liberal subscription in aid of the charity was' made
by the company present. The treasurer (Mr Geo.
Moore) stated that the building erected by the so-
cHhoilnol:.,, (Cheers.)