ANDROMEDA.;*
WE do not expect from the author of Mirage a realistic novel. She is a writer of romance, and the source of her imaginings is not the work-a-day world. Therefore, it is not because her new novel, Andromeda, deals not at all with realities that it fails to please us, but because its unreality is not of an attractive, nor are its fancies of a wholesome, kind.
There are novels which are injurious in their tendency, although there does not attach to them the stigma of immorality, or even that comparatively light one of want of refinement. These are novels in which the aims and objects of life are perverted into mere self-indulgence, in matters of sentiment though not of sense ; and ideals, not depraved, but false and mis- leading, are held up to admiration. Fairyland is a realm in which every one may sojourn unharmed ; but a dream-country, wherein love is, indeed, lord of all, but in a fashion that pro-
' Andromeda. By George Fleming. London : Bentley and Bon.
duc,es misery, wilfulness, vanity, and intolerable self-conscious- ness, is a field of imagination wherein much straying is not to be recommended. The world we all have to get through some- how is not an easy place for that operation ; but it would be much leas easy if men and women in any large number conducted themselves after the fashion of the personages of Andromeda, and if our girls were to accept Miss Clare Dillon as an exemplar to be envied and imitated. Love, we suppose, will always con- tinue to hold, in novels, a place vastly disproportionate to that which it actually fills in real life, and it would be unreasonable as well as useless to object to its doing so. No writer can give more than quickly dissolving views of the fortunes of his per- sonages, and he may linger over the romantic period, if he will, nublamed. But there is love and love, even in the most fanciful estimate of that passion ; and the fickle, introspective, and merely emotional sentiment which pervades this novel is not of the worthy order.
The Andromeda of this story is not happily named, for so little is she chained to:anything that she breaks two matrimonial engagements, one of them of her own offering. But we do not mind these little slips ; ladies are not the only offenders against accuracy in the attempt to be classically allegorical ; it is to the dreary, morbid tone of the story, and to the self-consciousness, self-engrossment, and, we mast say it, the general sham of Miss Clare Dillon. This young lady,',being on a tour in Tyrol, has for her companions three attendant cavaliers, all in love with her, and a charming elderly half-sister, with a. beautiful face and grey hair, to flatter and fondle her ; but she has no one at hand to speak the language of common-sense, or to insinuate, in such moments as can be spared from emotions of the moody and jerky description, that a sphere outside of her own personal sen- sations exists. We are introduced to her while she is out walking with Mr. Clayton, lover number one, and the impression she makes is that she is rude, self-willed, and. affected. She poses perpetually ; we are tired of her "fair little head" and her" little gloved hands" before she has dismissed Mr. Clayton's suit on the ground that she has changed her mind, and gone home to "draw her sister's fingers caressingly down across her hot cheek," and say, "Agatha, you are good !" The author does not give Miss Dillon fair play ; she is always accentuating her by some trick, emphasising her by some detail—her gloves or her glance, the little curls on her neck, the sprig of heather in her dress. She "looks down upon her gloved hands as they rested in her lap," while she revolves the destiny of lover number one, and holds out "both her little white hands" to lover number two when she says to him,—" I come to tell you that if it will make you happy I am ready to marry you, Richard." These provoking mannerisms fritter away the situations-; while the methods of address of two out of the three gentlemen whose fate is in those obtrusive hands are so silly that we quite approve of Andromeda's changing her mind about- one of them, and only wonder how she could make it- up to passing her life with the other. We may suppose, however, that even in Clare's cloud. land she would expect her husband to leave off talking to her in sententious spasms and bits of French, and not to address her as "child ;" but it would be pleasanter for the reader if her lovers had avoided these practices. Mr. Nevil Marlowe, a rude person with theories about "the Latin blood," is the ultimate winner of the young lady, who discovers that she loves him, instead of the" Richard " to whom she has betrothed herself. This is hard upon Richard, because Nevil Marlowe is his bosom friend. In the first chapter the two watch Miss Dillon setting out for her walk with Mr. Clayton—the dragon to her Andro- meda—and Richard explains his feelings towards the young lady in a number of sentences, of which the following are a few :
"'She has become a necessity to me, like the air I breathe. When I hear her voice or her laugh under that window, it ia as if the day was breaking in my heart. My heart P Do you know, Nevil, there have been days this last fortnight when the craving for her has been like a physical pain to me, and I have felt my heart flutter and strain like some miserable, broken.winged bird !' He looked up at his friend with passionate, miserable eyes. I rave. Mais gue voulez-vous I It is the Latin blood, you know, old fellow !' "
It may be admitted that there, is not a little difficulty in marrying the object of this confidential ontbarstto the recipient of it, without making the breach of faith committed by Nevil Marlowe, in declaring his love to Miss Dillon after she has freely and spontaneously engaged herself to his friend, flagrant and revolting. Out of this difficulty, nevertheless, the author gets very well indeed, by the simple expedient of leaving it to the young lady, who is equal to the occasion.
The handsome hunchback, with mournful eyes and long white hands, has been a stranger to the stage of fiction for a long time. He makes his reappearance in the person of the Marchese di San Donato, Miss Dillon's lover number two The author poses him also a good deal too much ; his graceful cloak is obtrusive, and the shadow of his high shoulder, that is always being cast upon the wall, makes us wonder why somebody had not the sense to shift the lights, and so disperse the portent; but he is interesting. By far the best part of the story is that in which Miss Dillon has no place,—the family history of San Donati. The old Marchese, the proud, grim grandfather of the disgraziato; the widowed mother of the deformed boy, and her mingled feelings ; the haughty- sister (of whom nob nearly enough is made) ; the family retainers ; the picture of seigneurial life in Italy,—all these are admirably depicted; and in comparison with them Andromeda and her adventures are trumpery. The atmosphere of the book is mainly depressing, but there are smart bits of dialogue ; and the American girl, Miss Armitage, is a ray of light in the gloom. So is Lord Irwin, with whom she talks very- pleasant nonsense. There are also some pretty sketches of Tyrolese scenery.
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