be so; but the statement is unsupported by any authority. It is certain,
however, that her father was dead, and that she was living "in maiden
meditation" at Lyme with one of her guardians, Mr. Andrew Tucker. In his
chance visits to that place, young Fielding appears to have become
desperately enamoured of her, and to have sadly fluttered the Dorset
dovecotes by his pertinacious and undesirable attentions. At one time he
seems to have actually meditated the abduction of his "flame," for an
entry in the town archives, discovered by Mr. George Roberts, sometime
Mayor of Lyme, who tells the story, declares that Andrew Tucker, Esq.,
went in fear of his life "owing to the behaviour of Henry Fielding and
his attendant, or man." Such a state of things (especially when
guardians have sons of their own) is clearly not to be endured; and Miss
Andrew was prudently transferred to the care of another guardian, Mr.
Rhodes of Modbury, in South Devon, to whose son, a young gentleman of
Oxford, she was promptly married. Burke (_Landed Gentry_, 1858) dates
the marriage in 1726, a date which is practically confirmed by the
baptism of a child at Modbury in April of the following year. Burke
further describes the husband as Mr. Ambrose Rhodes of Buckland House,
Buckland-Tout-Saints. His son, Mr. Rhodes of Bellair, near Exeter, was
gentleman of the Privy Chamber to George III.; and one of his
descendants possessed a picture which passed for the portrait of Sophia
Western. The tradition of the Tucker family pointed to Miss Andrew as
the original of Fielding's heroine; but though such a supposition is
intelligible, it is untenable, since he says distinctly (Book XIII.
chap. i. of _Tom Jones_) that his model was his first wife, whose
likeness he moreover draws very specifically in another place, by
declaring that she resembled Margaret Cecil, Lady Ranelagh, and, more
nearly, "the famous Dutchess of _Mazarine_." [Footnote: See Appendix No.
I.: Fielding and Sarah Andrew.]