"MISS STANDISH."
ITO THE ED/TOR OF THE " SPROTATOR."]
SIR,—I am sure, without intending it, yon have really done me rather an injury by your notice, on July 21st, of my last book, "Miss Standish." That story your reviewer mildly praises ;, but with regard to the second, " By the Bay of Naples," several quite erroneous statements are made. The plot of that story does not, as your reviewer thinks, " turn upon the hideous com- plication of a man in love with the daughter of a woman whom. he has seduced," but upon the wholly different situation of a. man in love with the daughter of a lady who had refused to become his wife. There is a deeply tragic element in the story.. He had threatened the lady who refused him to make her miserable for ever, if she would not marry him. He accomplished his threat by having her daughter as a baby stolen away from her, thus breaking the gentle mother's heart- Years afterwards, he meets the daughter, and from her like- ness to her mother at once falls in love with her, believing her to be some one else. The story is founded on fact. For years it has haunted me, as showing how this man was, indeed, cursed in gaining his wishes,—first, the heart-break and consequent death of the woman he had, as he said, loved; next, the accept- ance of the gentle girl, whose life he had devoted himself to from her babyhood. I have often thought, perhaps we should all be equally left without anything to wish or hope, if we gained that on which we have set our hearts. It seemed to require a Hawthorne properly to relate the story. But none else tried it So I tried. Possibly I have failed. But in any case, though tragic, my story has none of the hideous eleinents attributed to me, probably through a hasty turning-over of the pages, in your notice. Can you remove from the minds of your readers the impression that I have written such a story as that attributed to me P It is particularly painful to me, that people should think I had written anything of the Bei Frau Weiland, Sissilefstrasse, Homburg, .August 7th.
[We are sorry that we did Miss Bewicke a wrong ; but it was not caused by " hasty turning-over of the pages." On the con- trary, pp. 40-41 in voL iii. were read more than once, and inter- preted to the best of our power. Read again, in the light of Miss Bewicke's explanation, they assume a meaning which wo gladly accept, instead of that which we had put upon them.—. ED. Spectator.]
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