Dear fellow listers

As an Australian, I'm very interested in the story of imposter that Twain
outlines briefly in "Following the Equator":

< ...My curiosity faded away. However, when I found that I was going to
Australia it revived. And naturally: for if the people should say that I was
a dull, poor thing compared to what I was before I died, it would have a bad
effect on business. Well, to my surprise the Sydney journalists had never
heard of that impostor! I pressed them, but they were firm--they had never
heard of him, and didn't believe in him.>

To the best of my knowledge, there are only three other references to this
story extant. These include:

1. Twain's letter to the "Adelaide Observer", 15 October 1881 [reproduced as
Authoritative Contradiction in the "New York Times", 8 Dec 1881]

2. A private letter from J. Henry Harper to Edward Sandford Martin on 20 May
1895 (Paul A. Doyle, "Mark Twain Journal", Henry Harper's Telling of a Mark
Twain Anecdote, Vol XV, Summer, 1970, p.13).

3. A brief comment by Albert Bigelow Paine in Twain's biography: [On the day
that President Garfield was shot Mrs. Clemens received from their friend
Reginald Cholmondeley a letter of condolence on the death of her husband in
Australia; startling enough, though in reality rather comforting than
otherwise, for the reason that the "Mark Twain" who had died in Australia
was a very persistent impostor. Clemens wrote 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."
Out of this incident grew a feature of an anecdote related in "Following the
Equator" the joke played by the man from Bendigo.]


I've read and enjoyed Barb Schmidt's webpage devoted to Twain lookalikes,
but I am now curious if there are any other clues to the Australian imposter
who, according to the above, operated successfully in Australia in the
1870s?

Ron

ron hohenhaus
brisbane, australia
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