The Stark Munro Letters II - Home, 10th April, 1881

Arthur Conan Doyle (0:00)

CHAPTER II of The Stark Munro Letters This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit librivox.org. Recording by Mary J. The Stark Munro Letters by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, CHAPTER II HOME, 10th of April, 1881 Well, my dear Bertie, here I am again in your post box. It's not a fortnight since I wrote you that great long letter, and yet you see I have news enough to make another formidable budget.

They say that the art of letter writing has been lost, but if quantity may atone for quality, you must confess that, for your sins, you have a friend who has retained it. When I wrote you last, I was on the eve of going down to join the Cullingworths at Avonmouth, with every hope that he had found some opening for me. I must tell you at some length the particulars of that expedition. I traveled down part of the way with young Leslie Duncan, whom I think you know. He was gracious enough to consider that a third-class carriage in my company were to be preferred to a first-class with solitude. You know that he came in to his uncle's money a little time ago, and after a first delirious outbreak, he has now relapsed into that dead heavy state of despair which is caused by having everything which one can wish for. How absurd are the ambitions of life, when I think that I, who am fairly happy and as keen as a razor-edge, should be struggling for that which I can see has brought neither profit nor happiness to him. And yet, if I can read my own nature, it is not the accumulation of money which is my real aim, but only that I may acquire so much as will relieve my mind of sordid cares and enable me to develop any gifts which I may have, undisturbed. My tastes are so simple that I cannot imagine any advantage which wealth can give, save indeed the exquisite pleasure of helping a good man or a good cause. Why should people ever take credit for charity, when they must know that they cannot gain as much pleasure out of their guineas in any other fashion? I gave my watch to a broken schoolmaster the other day, having no change in my pocket, and the mater could not quite determine whether it was a trade of madness or of nobility. I could have told her with absolute confidence that it was neither the one nor the other, but a sort of epicurean selfishness with perhaps a little dash of swagger away down at the bottom of it. What had I ever had from my chronometer like the quiet thrill of satisfaction when the fellow brought me the pond ticket and told me that the 30 shillings had been useful?

Leslie Duncan got out of car stairs and I was left alone with a pale, white-haired, old Roman Catholic priest, who had sat quietly reading his office in the corner. We fell into the most intimate talk, which lasted all the way to Avonmouth. Indeed so interested was I that I very nearly passed through the place without knowing it. Father Logan, for that was his name, seemed to me a beautiful type of what a priest should be, self-sacrificing and pure-minded, with a kind of simple cunning about him and a deal of innocent fun. He had the defects as well as the virtues of his class, for he was absolutely reactionary in his views. We discussed religion with fervor, and his theology was somewhere about the early Pliocene. He might have chattered the matter over with the priest of Charlemagne's court, and they would have shaken hands after every sentence. He would acknowledge this and claim it as a merit. It was consistency in his eyes. If our astronomers and inventors and lawgivers had been equally consistent, where would modern civilization be? Is religion the only domain of thought which is non-progressive and to be referred forever to a standard set 2,000 years ago? Can they not see that as the human brain evolves it must take a wider outlook? A half-formed brain makes a half-formed god. And who shall say that our brains are even half-formed yet?

The truly inspired priest is the man or woman with the big brain. It is not the shaven patch on the outside, but it is the sixty ounces within which is the real mark of election. You know that you are turning up your nose at me, Bertie. I can see you do it. But I'll come off the thin ice and you shall have nothing but facts now. I'm afraid that I should never do for a storyteller. For the first stray character that comes along puts his arms in mine and walks me off, with my poor story straggling away to nothing behind me. Well, then, it was night when we reached Avonmouth, and as I popped my head out of the carriage window, the first thing that my eyes rested upon was old Cullingworth, standing in the circle of light under a gas lamp. His frock coat was flying open, his waistcoat unbuttoned at the top, and his hat, a top hat this time, jammed on the back of his head, with his bristling hair spurting out in front of it. In every way, save that he wore a collar, he was the same Cullingworth as ever. He gave a roar of recognition when he saw me, bustled me out of my carriage, seized my carpet bag, or grip sack as you used to call it, and a minute later we were striding along together through the streets. I was, as you may imagine, all in a tingle to know what it was that he wanted with me. However, as he made no allusion to it, I did not care to ask, and during our longish walk, we talked about indifferent matters. It was football first, I remember, whether Richmond had a chance against Blackheath, and the way in which the new passing game was shredding the old scrimmages. Then he got on to inventions, and became so excited that he had to give me back my bag in order that he might be able to slap all his points home with his fist upon his palm. I can see him now stopping with his face leaning forward and his yellow tusks gleaming in the lamplight.