【英文原著类】Derrick Vaughan--Novelist(德里克·凡更).pdf

Derrick Vaughan--Novelist
Derrick Vaughan--
Novelist
by Edna Lyall
1
Derrick Vaughan--Novelist
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 works of art don't satisfy me, and, as I write, I see before me
something very different from the latest photograph by Messrs. Paul and
Reynard.
I see a large-featured, broad-browed English face, a trifle heavy-
looking when in repose, yet a thorough, honest, manly face, with a
complexion neither dark nor fair, with brown hair and m