Mark Twain Project :: Letters :: : an electronic text

To Reginald Cholmondeley
24 July 1881 • Branford, Conn.
(Transcript by Mary Cholmondeley: CU-MARK, UCCL 01987)

Click to add citation to My Citations.

Hartford July 24./81

My dear Mr Cholmondeley

Being dead I might be excused from writing letters, but I am not that kind of a corpse. May I never be so dead as to neglect the hail of a friend from a far land!

[It] is odd that a letter containing the news of my own death should give me pleasure [&] a lively sense of relief—yet these were the effects produced by this one: pleasure in the recognition of the fact that I still possess a friendship which I so greatly value, [&] a sense of relief in the conviction that a fraud who has been passing under my name during some years in New South Wales [&] neighboring regions is at last disposed of [&] out of the way. Three times during the present year, [mention] has been made of him in letters to me from that part of the world, [&] I was beginning to get pretty tired of him [&] his performances. Mention was made of him in a letter which I received (in the same mail with yours) to-day from Adelaide, South Australia—but not of his death. Still that letter antedates yours 8 days, [&] the fellow may have died during that week. (I am guessing that you got your news from out there somewhere, [&] not from England or America.)

[We] are all well [&] hearty, [&] Mrs Clemens [&] I join in thanks to you for your kind words, [&] in rejoicings that you are still in the land of the living— [&] in good health, too, we hope.