The Project Gutenberg EBook of Derrick Vaughan--Novelist, by Edna Lyall

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Title: Derrick Vaughan--Novelist

Author: Edna Lyall

Posting Date: October 1, 2008 [EBook #1665]
Release Date: March, 1999

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DERRICK VAUGHAN--NOVELIST ***

Produced by Les Bowler

DERRICK VAUGHAN--NOVELIST

By Edna Lyall

'It is only through deep sympathy that a man can become a
great artist.'--Lewes's Life of Goethe.

'Sympathy is feeling related to an object, whilst sentiment
is the same feeling seeking itself alone.'--Arnold Toynbee.

Chapter I.

'Nothing fills a child's mind like a large old mansion; better if un- or
partially occupied; peopled with the spirits of deceased members of the
county and Justices of the Quorum. Would I were buried in the peopled
solitude of one, with my feelings at seven years old!'--From Letters of
Charles Lamb.

To attempt a formal biography of Derrick Vaughan would be out of the
question, even though he and I have been more or less thrown together
since we were both in the nursery. But I have an odd sort of wish to
note down roughly just a few of my recollections of him, and to show how
his fortunes gradually developed, being perhaps stimulated to make the
attempt by certain irritating remarks which one overhears now often
enough at clubs or in drawing-rooms, or indeed wherever one goes.
"Derrick Vaughan," say these authorities of the world of small-talk,
with that delightful air of omniscience which invariably characterises
them, "why, he simply leapt into fame. He is one of the favourites of
fortune. Like Byron, he woke one morning and found himself famous."

Now this sounds well enough, but it is a long way from the truth, and
I--Sydney Wharncliffe, of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-law--desire,
while the past few years are fresh in my mind, to write a true version
of my friend's career.

Everyone knows his face. Has it not appeared in 'Noted Men,'
and--gradually deteriorating according to the price of the paper and
the quality of the engraving--in many another illustrated journal? Yet
somehow these work