Derrick Vaughan Novelist
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Edna Lyall >> Derrick Vaughan Novelist
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Derrick Vaughan--Novelist
'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 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 moustache, and
with light hazel eyes that look out on the world quietly enough.
You might talk to him for long in an ordinary way and never suspect
that he was a genius; but when you have him to yourself, when some
consciousness of sympathy rouses him, he all at once becomes a
different being. His quiet eyes kindle, his face becomes full of
life--you wonder that you ever thought it heavy or commonplace.
Then the world interrupts in some way, and, just as a hermit-crab
draws down its shell with a comically rapid movement, so Derrick
suddenly retires into himself.
Thus much for his outer man.
For the rest, there are of course the neat little accounts of his
birthplace, his parentage, his education, etc., etc., published with
the list of his works in due order, with the engravings in the
illustrated papers. But these tell us little of the real life of
the man.
Carlyle, in one of his finest passages, says that 'A true
delineation of the smallest man and his scene of pilgrimage through
life is capable of interesting the greatest men; that all men are to
an unspeakable degree brothers, each man's life a strange emblem of
every man's; and that human portraits faithfully drawn are of all
pictures the welcomest on human walls.' And though I don't profess
to give a portrait, but merely a sketch, I will endeavour to sketch
faithfully, and possibly in the future my work may fall into the
hands of some of those worthy people who imagine that my friend
leapt into fame at a bound, or of those comfortable mortals who seem
to think that a novel is turned out as easily as water from a tap.
There is, however, one thing I can never do:--I am quite unable to
put into words my friend's intensely strong feeling with regard to
the sacredness of his profession. It seemed to me not unlike the
feeling of Isaiah when, in the vision, his mouth had been touched
with the celestial fire. And I can only hope that something of this
may be read between my very inadequate lines.
Looking back, I fancy Derrick must have been a clever child. But he
was not precocious, and in some respects was even decidedly
backward. I can see him now--it is my first clear recollection of
him--leaning back in the corner of my father's carriage as we drove
from the Newmarket station to our summer home at Mondisfield. He
and I were small boys of eight, and Derrick had been invited for the
holidays, while his twin brother--if I remember right--indulged in
typhoid fever at Kensington. He was shy and silent, and the ice was
not broken until we passed Silvery Steeple.
"That," said my father, "is a ruined church; it was destroyed by
Cromwell in the Civil Wars."
In an instant the small quiet boy sitting beside me was transformed.
His eyes shone; he sprang forward and thrust his head far out of the
window, gazing at the old ivy-covered tower as long as it remained
in sight.
"Was Cromwell really once there?" he asked with breathless interest.
"So they say," replied my father, looking with an amused smile at
the face of the questioner, in which eagerness, delight, and
reverence were mingled. "Are you an admirer of the Lord Protector?"
"He is my greatest hero of all," said Derrick fervently. "Do you
think--oh, do you think he possibly can ever have come to
Mondisfield?"
My father thought not, but said there was an old tradition that the
Hall had been attacked by the Royalists, and the bridge over the
moat defended by the owner of the house; but he had no great belief
in the story, for which, indeed, there seemed no evidence.
Derrick's eyes during this conversation were something wonderful to
see, and long after, when we were not actually playing at anything,
I used often to notice the same expression stealing over him, and
would cry out, "There is the man defending the bridge again; I can
see him in your eyes! Tell me what happened to him next!"
Then, generally pacing to and fro in the apple walk, or sitting
astride the bridge itself, Derrick would tell me of the adventures
of my ancestor, Paul Wharncliffe, who performed incredible feats of
valour, and who was to both of us a most real person. On wet days
he wrote his story in a copy-book, and would have worked at it for
hours had my mother allowed him, though of the manual part of the
work he had, and has always retained, the greatest dislike. I
remember well the comical ending of this first story of his. He
skipped over an interval of ten years, represented on the page by
ten laboriously made stars, and did for his hero in the following
lines:
"And now, reader, let us come into Mondisfield churchyard. There
are three tombstones. On one is written, 'Mr. Paul Wharncliffe.'"
The story was no better than the productions of most eight-year-old
children, the written story at least. But, curiously enough, it
proved to be the germ of the celebrated romance, 'At Strife,' which
Derrick wrote in after years; and he himself maintains that his
picture of life during the Civil War would have been much less
graphic had he not lived so much in the past during his various
visits to Mondisfield.
It was at his second visit, when we were nine, that I remember his
announcing his intention of being an author when he was grown up.
My mother still delights in telling the story. She was sitting at
work in the south parlour one day, when I dashed into the room
calling out:
"Derrick's head is stuck between the banisters in the gallery; come
quick, mother, come quick!"
She ran up the little winding staircase, and there, sure enough, in
the musician's gallery, was poor Derrick, his manuscript and pen on
the floor and his head in durance vile.
"You silly boy!" said my mother, a little frightened when she found
that to get the head back was no easy matter, "What made you put it
through?"
"You look like King Charles at Carisbrooke," I cried, forgetting how
much Derrick would resent the speech.
And being released at that moment he took me by the shoulders and
gave me an angry shake or two, as he said vehemently, "I'm not like
King Charles! King Charles was a liar."
I saw my mother smile a little as she separated us.
"Come, boys, don't quarrel," she said. "And Derrick will tell me
the truth, for indeed I am curious to know why he thrust his head in
such a place."
"I wanted to make sure," said Derrick, "whether Paul Wharncliffe
could see Lady Lettice, when she took the falcon on her wrist below
in the passage. I mustn't say he saw her if it's impossible, you
know. Authors have to be quite true in little things, and I mean to
be an author."
"But," said my mother, laughing at the great earnestness of the
hazel eyes, "could not your hero look over the top of the rail?"
"Well, yes," said Derrick. "He would have done that, but you see
it's so dreadfully high and I couldn't get up. But I tell you what,
Mrs. Wharncliffe, if it wouldn't be giving you a great deal of
trouble--I'm sorry you were troubled to get my head back again--but
if you would just look over, since you are so tall, and I'll run
down and act Lady Lettice."
"Why couldn't Paul go downstairs and look at the lady in comfort?"
asked my mother.
Derrick mused a little.
"He might look at her through a crack in the door at the foot of the
stairs, perhaps, but that would seem mean, somehow. It would be a
pity, too, not to use the gallery; galleries are uncommon, you see,
and you can get cracked doors anywhere. And, you know, he was
obliged to look at her when she couldn't see him, because their
fathers were on different sides in the war, and dreadful enemies."
When school-days came, matters went on much in the same way; there
was always an abominably scribbled tale stowed away in Derrick's
desk, and he worked infinitely harder than I did, because there was
always before him this determination to be an author and to prepare
himself for the life. But he wrote merely from love of it, and with
no idea of publication until the beginning of our last year at
Oxford, when, having reached the ripe age of one-and-twenty, he
determined to delay no longer, but to plunge boldly into his first
novel.
He was seldom able to get more than six or eight hours a week for
it, because he was reading rather hard, so that the novel progressed
but slowly. Finally, to my astonishment, it came to a dead stand-
still.
I have never made out exactly what was wrong with Derrick then,
though I know that he passed through a terrible time of doubt and
despair. I spent part of the Long with him down at Ventnor, where
his mother had been ordered for her health. She was devoted to
Derrick, and as far as I can understand, he was her chief comfort in
life. Major Vaughan, the husband, had been out in India for years;
the only daughter was married to a rich manufacturer at Birmingham,
who had a constitutional dislike to mothers-in-law, and as far as
possible eschewed their company; while Lawrence, Derrick's twin
brother, was for ever getting into scrapes, and was into the bargain
the most unblushingly selfish fellow I ever had the pleasure of
meeting.
"Sydney," said Mrs. Vaughan to me one afternoon when we were in the
garden, "Derrick seems to me unlike himself, there is a division
between us which I never felt before. Can you tell me what is
troubling him?"
She was not at all a good-looking woman, but she had a very sweet,
wistful face, and I never looked at her sad eyes without feeling
ready to go through fire and water for her. I tried now to make
light of Derrick's depression.
"He is only going through what we all of us go through," I said,
assuming a cheerful tone. "He has suddenly discovered that life is
a great riddle, and that the things he has accepted in blind faith
are, after all, not so sure."
She sighed.
"Do all go through it?" she said thoughtfully. "And how many, I
wonder, get beyond?"
"Few enough," I replied moodily. Then, remembering my role,--"But
Derrick will get through; he has a thousand things to help him which
others have not,--you, for instance. And then I fancy he has a sort
of insight which most of us are without."
"Possibly," she said. "As for me, it is little that I can do for
him. Perhaps you are right, and it is true that once in a life at
any rate we all have to go into the wilderness alone."
That was the last summer I ever saw Derrick's mother; she took a
chill the following Christmas and died after a few days' illness.
But I have always thought her death helped Derrick in a way that her
life might have failed to do. For although he never, I fancy, quite
recovered from the blow, and to this day cannot speak of her without
tears in his eyes, yet when he came back to Oxford he seemed to have
found the answer to the riddle, and though older, sadder and graver
than before, had quite lost the restless dissatisfaction that for
some time had clouded his life. In a few months, moreover, I
noticed a fresh sign that he was out of the wood. Coming into his
rooms one day I found him sitting in the cushioned window-seat,
reading over and correcting some sheets of blue foolscap.
"At it again?" I asked.
He nodded.
"I mean to finish the first volume here. For the rest I must be in
London."
"Why?" I asked, a little curious as to this unknown art of novel-
making.
"Because," he replied, "one must be in the heart of things to
understand how Lynwood was affected by them."
"Lynwood! I believe you are always thinking of him!" (Lynwood was
the hero of his novel.)
"Well, so I am nearly--so I must be, if the book is to be any good."
"Read me what you have written," I said, throwing myself back in a
rickety but tolerably comfortable arm-chair which Derrick had
inherited with the rooms.
He hesitated a moment, being always very diffident about his own
work; but presently, having provided me with a cigar and made a good
deal of unnecessary work in arranging the sheets of the manuscript,
he began to read aloud, rather nervously, the opening chapters of
the book now so well known under the title of 'Lynwood's Heritage.'
I had heard nothing of his for the last four years, and was amazed
at the gigantic stride he had made in the interval. For, spite of a
certain crudeness, it seemed to me a most powerful story; it rushed
straight to the point with no wavering, no beating about the bush;
it flung itself into the problems of the day with a sort of sublime
audacity; it took hold of one; it whirled one along with its own
inherent force, and drew forth both laughter and tears, for
Derrick's power of pathos had always been his strongest point.
All at once he stopped reading.
"Go on!" I cried impatiently.
"That is all," he said, gathering the sheets together.
"You stopped in the middle of a sentence!" I cried in exasperation.
"Yes," he said quietly, "for six months."
"You provoking fellow! why, I wonder?"
"Because I didn't know the end."
"Good heavens! And do you know it now?"
He looked me full in the face, and there was an expression in his
eyes which puzzled me.
"I believe I do," he said; and, getting up, he crossed the room, put
the manuscript away in a drawer, and returning, sat down in the
window-seat again, looking out on the narrow, paved street below,
and at the grey buildings opposite.
I knew very well that he would never ask me what I thought of the
story--that was not his way.
"Derrick!" I exclaimed, watching his impassive face, "I believe
after all you are a genius."
I hardly know why I said "after all," but till that moment it had
never struck me that Derrick was particularly gifted. He had so far
got through his Oxford career creditably, but then he had worked
hard; his talents were not of a showy order. I had never expected
that he would set the Thames on fire. Even now it seemed to me that
he was too dreamy, too quiet, too devoid of the pushing faculty to
succeed in the world.
My remark made him laugh incredulously.
"Define a genius," he said.
For answer I pulled down his beloved Imperial Dictionary and read
him the following quotation from De Quincey: 'Genius is that mode
of intellectual power which moves in alliance with the genial
nature, i.e., with the capacities of pleasure and pain; whereas
talent has no vestige of such an alliance, and is perfectly
independent of all human sensibilities.'
"Let me think! You can certainly enjoy things a hundred times more
than I can--and as for suffering, why you were always a great hand
at that. Now listen to the great Dr. Johnson and see if the cap
fits, 'The true genius is a mind of large general powers
accidentally determined in some particular direction.'
"'Large general powers'!--yes, I believe after all you have them
with, alas, poor Derrick! one notable exception--the mathematical
faculty. You were always bad at figures. We will stick to De
Quincey's definition, and for heaven's sake, my dear fellow, do get
Lynwood out of that awful plight! No wonder you were depressed when
you lived all this age with such a sentence unfinished!"
"For the matter of that," said Derrick, "he can't get out till the
end of the book; but I can begin to go on with him now."
"And when you leave Oxford?"
"Then I mean to settle down in London--to write leisurely--and
possibly to read for the Bar."
"We might be together," I suggested. And Derrick took to this idea,
being a man who detested solitude and crowds about equally. Since
his mother's death he had been very much alone in the world. To
Lawrence he was always loyal, but the two had nothing in common, and
though fond of his sister he could not get on at all with the
manufacturer, his brother-in-law. But this prospect of life
together in London pleased him amazingly; he began to recover his
spirits to a great extent and to look much more like himself.
It must have been just as he had taken his degree that he received a
telegram to announce that Major Vaughan had been invalided home, and
would arrive at Southampton in three weeks' time. Derrick knew very
little of his father, but apparently Mrs. Vaughan had done her best
to keep up a sort of memory of his childish days at Aldershot, and
in these the part that his father played was always pleasant. So he
looked forward to the meeting not a little, while I, from the first,
had my doubts as to the felicity it was likely to bring him.
However, it was ordained that before the Major's ship arrived, his
son's whole life should change. Even Lynwood was thrust into the
background. As for me, I was nowhere. For Derrick, the quiet, the
self-contained, had fallen passionately in love with a certain Freda
Merrifield.
Chapter II.
'Infancy? What if the rose-streak of morning
Pale and depart in a passion of tears?
Once to have hoped is no matter for scorning:
Love once: e'en love's disappointment endears;
A moment's success pays the failure of years.'
R. Browning.
The wonder would have been if he had not fallen in love with her,
for a more fascinating girl I never saw. She had only just returned
from school at Compiegne, and was not yet out; her charming
freshness was unsullied; she had all the simplicity and
straightforwardness of unspoilt, unsophisticated girlhood. I well
remember our first sight of her. We had been invited for a
fortnight's yachting by Calverley of Exeter. His father, Sir John
Calverley, had a sailing yacht, and some guests having disappointed
him at the last minute, he gave his son carte blanche as to who he
should bring to fill the vacant berths.
So we three travelled down to Southampton together one hot summer
day, and were rowed out to the Aurora, an uncommonly neat little
schooner which lay in that over-rated and frequently odoriferous
roadstead, Southampton Water. However, I admit that on that
evening--the tide being high--the place looked remarkably pretty;
the level rays of the setting sun turned the water to gold; a soft
luminous haze hung over the town and the shipping, and by a stretch
of imagination one might have thought the view almost Venetian.
Derrick's perfect content was only marred by his shyness. I knew
that he dreaded reaching the Aurora; and sure enough, as we stepped
on to the exquisitely white deck and caught sight of the little
group of guests, I saw him retreat into his crab-shell of silent
reserve. Sir John, who made a very pleasant host, introduced us to
the other visitors--Lord Probyn and his wife and their niece, Miss
Freda Merrifield. Lady Probyn was Sir John's sister, and also the
sister of Miss Merrifield's mother; so that it was almost a family
party, and by no means a formidable gathering. Lady Probyn played
the part of hostess and chaperoned her pretty niece; but she was not
in the least like the aunt of fiction--on the contrary, she was
comparatively young in years and almost comically young in mind; her
niece was devoted to her, and the moment I saw her I knew that our
cruise could not possibly be dull.
As to Miss Freda, when we first caught sight of her she was standing
near the companion, dressed in a daintily made yachting costume of
blue serge and white braid, and round her white sailor hat she wore
the name of the yacht stamped on a white ribbon; in her waist-band
she had fastened two deep crimson roses, and she looked at us with
frank, girlish curiosity, no doubt wondering whether we should add
to or detract from the enjoyment of the expedition. She was rather
tall, and there was an air of strength and energy about her which
was most refreshing. Her skin was singularly white, but there was a
healthy glow of colour in her cheeks; while her large, grey eyes,
shaded by long lashes, were full of life and brightness. As to her
features, they were perhaps a trifle irregular, and her elder
sisters were supposed to eclipse her altogether; but to my mind she
was far the most taking of the three.
I was not in the least surprised that Derrick should fall head over
ears in love with her; she was exactly the sort of girl that would
infallibly attract him. Her absence of shyness; her
straightforward, easy way of talking; her genuine goodheartedness;
her devotion to animals--one of his own pet hobbies--and finally her
exquisite playing, made the result a foregone conclusion. And then,
moreover, they were perpetually together. He would hang over the
piano in the saloon for hours while she played, the rest of us
lazily enjoying the easy chairs and the fresh air on deck; and
whenever we landed, these two were sure in the end to be just a
little apart from the rest of us.
It was an eminently successful cruise. We all liked each other; the
sea was calm, the sunshine constant, the wind as a rule favourable,
and I think I never in a single fortnight heard so many good
stories, or had such a good time. We seemed to get right out of the
world and its narrow restrictions, away from all that was hollow and
base and depressing, only landing now and then at quaint little
quiet places for some merry excursion on shore. Freda was in the
highest spirits; and as to Derrick, he was a different creature.
She seemed to have the power of drawing him out in a marvellous
degree, and she took the greatest interest in his work--a sure way
to every author's heart.
But it was not till one day, when we landed at Tresco, that I felt
certain she genuinely loved him--there in one glance the truth
flashed upon me. I was walking with one of the gardeners down one
of the long shady paths of that lovely little island, with its
curiously foreign look, when we suddenly came face to face with
Derrick and Freda. They were talking earnestly, and I could see her
great grey eyes as they were lifted to his--perhaps they were more
expressive than she knew--I cannot say. They both started a little
as we confronted them, and the colour deepened in Freda's face. The
gardener, with what photographers usually ask for--'just the faint
beginning of a smile,'--turned and gathered a bit of white heather
growing near.
"They say it brings good luck, miss," he remarked, handing it to
Freda.
"Thank you," she said, laughing, "I hope it will bring it to me. At
any rate it will remind me of this beautiful island. Isn't it just
like Paradise, Mr. Wharncliffe?"
"For me it is like Paradise before Eve was created," I replied,
rather wickedly. "By the bye, are you going to keep all the good
luck to yourself?"
"I don't know," she said laughing. "Perhaps I shall; but you have
only to ask the gardener, he will gather you another piece
directly."
I took good care to drop behind, having no taste for the third-
fiddle business; but I noticed when we were in the gig once more,
rowing back to the yacht, that the white heather had been equally
divided--one half was in the waist-band of the blue serge dress, the
other half in the button-hole of Derrick's blazer.
So the fortnight slipped by, and at length one afternoon we found
ourselves once more in Southampton Water; then came the bustle of
packing and the hurry of departure, and the merry party dispersed.
Derrick and I saw them all off at the station, for, as his father's
ship did not arrive till the following day, I made up my mind to
stay on with him at Southampton.
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