'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!"
