MRS. GRUNDY PROTESTS.
[To THE EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—For years I have had to put up with ignorant stories about me and my opinions. Whenever a man wants to do or to say or to write something that he doubts is not respectable, he sets up a scarecrow which he calls Mrs. Grundy and says that she will find fault; then the rest of the folk take his side for fear of being old-fashioned and ridiculous. Now comes something beyond bearing. Mr. Nelson, in his encyclopaedia, calls me a " fictitious personage,". and Master Stephen Paget, in a book
called I Hare Reason to Believe, contradicts him because, forsooth, I am an " eminent Victorian " whom he knew quite well in the later years of her life, and he has the impudence to write that I was the widow of a naval officer and had no children. Sir, this is too much. I have the greatest respect for Her Majesty Queen Victoria, and I revere her at a distance from the comfortable corner in Elysium where I sit with Mrs.
Harris and a few other so-called "fictitious personages "; but I am not a Victorian. I lived in the reign of good King George III. and was married to a substantial Hampshire farmer, and we brought up two as fine girls as any in the parish, all which the playwright Master George Colman has set down in
Speed the Plough, but never a word of ill will to my neigh- bours does he put into my mouth. It is all that woman Mrs. Ashfield. Farmer Ashfield, decent man, knew what her tongue was.
She-told him herself that " Dame Grundy's butter was quite the crack of the market," and wanted to tell him what I said at church on Sunday. Then says he, " Canst thou tell what parson zaid? Noa; then I'll tell thee. A' said that envy were as foul a weed as grows, and cankers all wholesome plants that be near it. That's what a' zaid." So says the dame, " And do-you think I envy Mrs. Grundy, indeed?"
" Why don't thee letten her aloane, then? " says he. "I do
verily think when thee goest to. t'other world, the vurst question thee ax'll be if Mrs. Grundy's there." Nothing would stop her, though. She heard that their former servant had married Sir Abel Handy, Bart., and off she goes : " Our Nelly married to a great baronet. I wonder what Mrs. Grundy will say? " And at last, when her own Susan was tokened to a young squire, she threatened to make me a half-curtsey at the wedding. Dame Ashfield was near ruined once, and thought to sell her three silk gowns and "go to church in a stuff one," and, of course, she says: "Let Mrs. Grundy turn up her nose as she pleases." Is it my fault that she set•so much store by my words, and how did she know what I would do when I saw a neighbour in trouble? I never demeaned myself to appear on the stage in a theatre, though.
Now, sir, if come play-acting gentleman would show Speed the Plough in Covent Garden again, and let the Londoners see Farmer Ashfield and Dame Ashfield and Sir Abel Handy and Bob Handy they would have a fine laugh, and would do
justice to your respectful and injured Mae. GRUNDY.
[We hope Mrs. Grundy's, suggestion will be noted by our theatrical producers, and that they will let ns EEO what was Colman's worth as a dramatist.—En. Spectator.]
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