" ANDROMEDA."
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."
SIR,—In justice to George Fleming, who is in a foreign country and little likely to see your review of her book "Andromeda," will you kindly allow me to state that the account of that story given in the above-named review is curiously inaccurate in several very essential particulars. The heroine of the story does not "break two matrimonial engagements," simply because she is only engaged once. She does not even, in the right Sanaa of the words, break one matrimonial engagement, since it is broken against her will by her fiances generosity. The story is not one of the kind represented,—that is to say, of a fickle girl accepting and rejecting one lover after another, but is. simply the record of how a woman who accepts a man from motives of pity endeavours to be true to him to the- end, even after she has discovered her mistake. How it is pos. sible for any reviewer who has read the book to avoid seeing that this is ita main motive, is more than I, for one, can understand. Again, it is entirely incorrect to say, as your reviewer says, that the author gets out of the difficulty of the broken. engage- ment by the simple expedient of leaving it to the young lady herself, since the engagement is not broken by her at all, but, as I said before, by her fiance's generosity.—I am, Sir, &c.,
A READER OF " AND.ROMEDA."
[Our correspondent is right, no doubt, as regards the literal statement ; but the heroine of "Andromeda," though under no engagement to Mr. Clayton, had. avowedly consented to his going abroad withher, knowing his passion, and thereby encouraging him to indulge it. Her other companions, moreover, evidently regard her as bound to him, or the name of " Andromeda," which they confer upon her, would have no meaning. Our reviewer did not say that the young lady broke off her engagement with the Marchese by renouncing it; he said she was "equal to the occasion," and this the story proves.—ED. Spectator.]
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