The Stark Munro Letters | Page 3

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THE STARK MUNRO LETTERS

BEING A SERIES OF TWELVE LETTERS WRITTEN BY J.
STARK MUNRO, M.B., TO HIS FRIEND AND FORMER
FELLOW-STUDENT, HERBERT SWANBOROUGH, OF LOWELL,
MASSACHUSETTS, DURING THE YEARS 1881-1884

EDITED AND ARRANGED BY A. CONAN DOYLE

The letters of my friend Mr. Stark Munro appear to me to form so
connected a whole, and to give so plain an account of some of the
troubles which a young man may be called upon to face right away at
the outset of his career, that I have handed them over to the gentleman
who is about to edit them. There are two of them, the fifth and the ninth,
from which some excisions are necessary; but in the main I hope that
they may be reproduced as they stand. I am sure that there is no

privilege which my friend would value more highly than the thought
that some other young man, harassed by the needs of this world and
doubts of the next, should have gotten strength by reading how a
brother had passed down the valley of shadow before him.
HERBERT SWANBOROUGH.
LOWELL, MASS.

THE STARK MUNRO LETTERS.

HOME. 30th March, 1881.
I have missed you very much since your return to America, my dear
Bertie, for you are the one man upon this earth to whom I have ever
been able to unreservedly open my whole mind. I don't know why it is;
for, now that I come to think of it, I have never enjoyed very much of
your confidence in return. But that may be my fault. Perhaps you don't
find me sympathetic, even though I have every wish to be. I can only
say that I find you intensely so, and perhaps I presume too much upon
the fact. But no, every instinct in my nature tells me that I don't bore
you by my confidences.
Can you remember Cullingworth at the University? You never were in
the athletic set, and so it is possible that you don't. Anyway, I'll take it
for granted that you don't, and explain it all from the beginning. I'm
sure that you would know his photograph, however, for the reason that
he was the ugliest and queerest-looking man of our year.
Physically he was a fine athlete--one of the fastest and most determined
Rugby forwards that I have ever known, though he played so savage a
game that he was never given his international cap. He was well-grown,
five foot nine perhaps, with square shoulders, an arching chest, and a
quick jerky way of walking. He had a round strong head, bristling with
short wiry black hair. His face was wonderfully ugly, but it was the
ugliness of character, which is as attractive as beauty. His jaw and
eyebrows were scraggy and rough-hewn, his nose aggressive and
red-shot, his eyes small and near set, light blue in colour, and capable
of assuming a very genial and also an exceedingly vindictive
expression. A slight wiry moustache covered his upper lip, and his

teeth were yellow, strong, and overlapping. Add to this that he seldom
wore collar or necktie, that his throat was the colour and texture of the
bark of a Scotch fir, and that he had a voice and especially a laugh like
a bull's bellow. Then you have some idea (if you can piece all these
items in your mind) of the outward James Cullingworth.
But the inner man, after all, was what was most worth noting. I don't
pretend to know what genius is. Carlyle's definition always seemed to
me to be a very crisp and clear statement of what it is NOT. Far from
its being an infinite capacity for taking pains, its leading characteristic,
as far as I have ever been able to observe it, has been that it allows the
possessor of it to attain results by a sort of instinct which other men
could only reach by hard work. In this sense Cullingworth was the
greatest genius that I have ever known. He never seemed to work, and
yet he took the anatomy prize over the heads of all the ten-hour-a-day