TLS, one page, 5 x 8, Burwash, Etchingham letterhead, September 28, 1935. Letter to Captain A. B. Kennair, in full: "Thank you very much for your most kind invitation for the 28th of next month. It is one that I should greatly like to accept, but my work and engagements will not allow my going away from the South on that date. May I wish you and all your old comrades assembled a stirring and heart-warming dinner of old memories. It is a far cry back through [t]he years to that three-year Burma War!" In fine condition, with intersecting folds. Accompanied by the original mailing envelope addressed in Kipling's own hand, as well as material related to the 50th anniversary of the Royal Welch Fusileers 1st Battalion, a regiment that took part in the siege and capture of Mandalay on November 28, 1885, including: a telegraph issued by the private secretary of King George V; a dinner menu for the reunion, signed inside by fourteen of the attendees, with several of them adding humorous pencil sketches; and a glossy 8 x 6 photo, affixed to its original mount, showing eighteen of the reunion members. Evoking the nostalgia of a British soldier for Asia's exoticism, Kipling published 'Mandalay' in the first series of the Barrack-Room Ballads, and Other Verses in 1892.
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