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Thackeray and Dickens, on the whole, followed Fielding. To all three of them passion is an affair wholly of the senses, temporary, episodic, and therefore comparatively unimportant. Thackeray intimated that he could have done more with it but for his fear of Mrs. Grundy.
"Don't let her impose on you, Stone," responded the old gentleman, throwing a quick wink in my direction. "She's young, you know, and don't know as much as mother. She'll have you climbing an oak tree to get a young hawk out of its nest likely as not." Salome laughed, while I boldly assured them that I would make the effort should she desire such a thing. Mrs. Grundy was quiet, as usual.
Could we add up the trouble, the cost, the jealousies, vexations, misunderstandings, the loss of time and the loss of pleasure, which these conventions entail could we clearly realise the extent to which we are all daily hampered by them, daily enslaved by them; we should perhaps come to the conclusion that the tyranny of Mrs. Grundy is worse than any other tyranny we suffer under.
Parker of course couldn't dispute her, so he turned away, wondering within himself "what made wimmen so queer!" The day following the wedding, the bride went to her new home, where she was received by Miss Grundy with a grunt which was probably intended for a "how d'ye do."
The next morning we started polling. I had the honour of giving the first vote, and at four o'clock the poll was decided in our favour Walker, 301; Grundy, 151. The next day I returned from Manchester, and had not been in the mill two hours before I was summoned to assist in quelling a riot. I rode down immediately with three other gentlemen and a magistrate to the scene of faction.
Parker himself appeared, and to him Miss Grundy and Sal detailed their grievances, both in the same breath. "I can't get at a word," said he, and turning to the pleasant-looking woman, who was quietly paring apples, he asked what it meant.
We have seen people stay away from the theater because Mrs. Grundy said the star of the evening invariably retired to his couch in a state of extreme inebriety. If the star is afflicted with a weakness of this kind, we may regret it. We may pity or censure the star. But we must still acknowledge the star's genius, and applaud it.
As a people, we have cheerfully accepted the Puritan restraint of speech, we have respected the shamefaced conventions of decent and social utterance. Like the men and women described in Locker-Lampson's verses, Americans "eat, and drink, and scheme, and plod, They go to church on Sunday; And many are afraid of God And more of Mrs. Grundy." Now Mrs.
Deck was left alone; but in spite of the solicitude of the Kentuckian, he did not regard himself as in any danger, for the guerillas were not likely to explore the hills on their way to the mansion, where Captain Grundy doubtless expected to make an easy victory over the force defending it.
It is but a hearty laugh at our expense, and Mrs. Grundy is content. If you don't want her to pity or backbite, let her laugh. She is a she-Cerberus, she wants to eat you; well stop her mouth with a cake. "Yes," continued this better sort of Aristippus, so wise under all his seeming levities, "the cue thus given, everything favors it.
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