The Stark Munro Letters VII - The Parade, Bradfield, 9th March, 1882

Arthur Conan Doyle (0:16)

VII. The Parade, Bradfield, 9th March, 1882

While you see I am as good as my word, Bertie, and here is a full account of this queer little sample gouged out of real life never to be seen, I should fancy, by any eye save your own. I have written to Horton also, and of course to my mother, but I don't go into detail with them as I have got into the way of doing with you. You keep on assuring me that you like it, so on your own head be it if you find my experiences gradually developing into a weariness. When I woke in the morning and looked round at the bare walls in the basin on the packing case I hardly knew where I was. Cullingworth came charging into the room in his dressing gown, however, and roused me effectually by putting his hands on the rail at the end of the bed and throwing a somersault over it, which brought his heels on to my pillow with a thud. He was in great spirits and, squatting on the bed, he held forth about his plans while I dressed.

I will tell you one of the first things I mean to do, Munro, said he. I mean to have a paper of my own. We'll start a weekly paper here, you and I, and we'll make them sit up all round. We'll have an organ of our own just like every French politician. If anyone crosses us, we'll make them wish they had never been born. Eh, what, laddie? What do you think? So clever, Munro, that everybody's bound to read it, and so scathing that it will just fetch out blisters every time. Don't you think we could? What politics? I asked. Oh, curse the politics! Red pepper well rubbed in, that's my idea of a paper. Call it the scorpion. Chaff the mayor and the council until they call a meeting and hang themselves. I'd do the snappy paragraphs, and you would do the fiction and poetry. I thought about it during the night, and Hetty has written to Murdoch's to get an estimate for the printing. We might get our first number out this day week.

My dear chap, I gasped.

I want you to start a novel this morning. You won't get many patients at first, and you'll have lots of time. But I never wrote a line in my life. A properly balanced man can do anything he sets his hand to. He's got every possible quality inside him, and all he wants is the will to develop it.

Could you write a novel yourself? I asked. Of course I could. Such a novel, Munro, that when they'd read the first chapter the folk would just sit groaning until the second came out. They'd wait in rows outside my door in the hope of hearing what was coming next. By crumbs, I'll go and begin it now. And with another somersault over the end of the bed, he rushed from the room with the tassels of his dressing-gown flying behind him.

I dare say you've quite come to the conclusion by this time that Cullingworth is simply an interesting pathological study, a man in the first stage of lunacy or general paralysis. You might not be so sure about it if you were in close contact with him. He justifies his wildest flights by what he does. It sounds grotesque when put down in black and white, but then it would have sounded equally grotesque a year ago if he had said that he would build up a huge practice in a twelve month. Now we see that he has done it. His possibilities are immense. He has such huge energy at the back of his fertility of invention. I am afraid on thinking over all I have written to you that I may have given you a impression of the man by dwelling too much on those incidents in which he has shown the strange and violent side of his character and omitting the sketches between where his wisdom and judgment have had a chance. His conversation when he does not fly off at a tangent is full of pith and idea. The greatest monument ever erected to Napoleon Bonaparte was the British national debt, said he yesterday. Again, we must never forget that the principal export of Great Britain to the United States is the United States. Again, speaking of Christianity, what is intellectually unsound cannot be morally sound. He shoots off a whole column of aphorisms in a single evening. I should like to have a man with a notebook always beside him to gather up his waste. No, you must not let me give you a impression of the man's capacity. On the other hand, it would be dishonest to deny that I think him thoroughly unscrupulous and full of very sinister traits. I am much mistaken, however, if he has not a fine strata in his nature. He is capable of rising to heights as well as sinking to depths. Well, when we had breakfasted, we got into the carriage and drove off to the place of business.