THE STARK MUNRO LETTERS

THE STARK MUNRO LETTERS.




I. 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.