It is singular that you should write just now to ask what I know of Oliver Haddo, since by chance I met the other night at dinner at Queen Anne’s Gate a man who had much to tell me of him.  I am curious to know why he excites your interest, for I am sure his peculiarities make him repugnant to a person of your robust common sense.  I can with difficulty imagine two men less capable of getting on together.  Though I have not seen Haddo now for years, I can tell you, in one way and another, a good deal about him.  He erred when he described me as his intimate friend.  It is true that at one time I saw much of him, but I never ceased cordially to dislike him.  He came up to Oxford from Eton with a reputation for athletics and eccentricity.  But you know that there is nothing that arouses the ill-will of boys more than the latter, and he achieved an unpopularity which was remarkable.  It turned out that he played football admirably, and except for his rather scornful indolence he might easily have got his blue.  He sneered at the popular enthusiasm for games, and was used to say that cricket was all very well for boys but not fit for the pastime of men. (He was then eighteen!) He talked grandiloquently of big-game shooting and of mountain climbing as sports which demanded courage and self-reliance.  He seemed, indeed, to like football, but he played it with a brutal savagery which the other persons concerned naturally resented.  It became current opinion in other pursuits that he did not play the game.  He did nothing that was manifestly unfair, but was capable of taking advantages which most people would have thought mean; and he made defeat more hard to bear because he exulted over the vanquished with the coarse banter that youths find so difficult to endure.

What you would hardly believe is that, when he first came up, he was a person of great physical attractions.  He is now grown fat, but in those days was extremely handsome.  He reminded one of those colossal statues of Apollo in which the god is represented with a feminine roundness and delicacy.  He was very tall and had a magnificent figure.  It was so well-formed for his age that one might have foretold his precious corpulence.  He held himself with a dashing erectness.  Many called it an insolent swagger.  His features were regular and fine.  He had a great quantity of curling hair, which was worn long, with a sort of poetic grace:  I am told that now he is very bald; and I can imagine that this must be a great blow to him, for he was always exceedingly vain.  I remember a peculiarity of his eyes, which could scarcely have been natural, but how it was acquired I do not know.  The eyes of most people converge upon the object at which they look, but his remained parallel.  It gave them a singular expression, as though he were scrutinising the inmost thought of the person with whom he talked.  He was notorious also for the extravagance of his costume, but, unlike the aesthetes of that day, who clothed themselves with artistic carelessness, he had a taste for outrageous colours.  Sometimes, by a queer freak, he dressed himself at unseasonable moments with excessive formality.  He is the only undergraduate I have ever seen walk down the High in a tall hat and a closely-buttoned frock-coat.