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24, PARK CRESCENT,
PORTLAND PLACE, W. 1.

15 1/ 20

Dear Mr Buchan.

Do you suffer from or have you
ever suffered from duodenal ulcer or the dyspepsia
which is with great difficulty distinguished therefrom?
You will be amazed at my question but I have a
very good reason for asking which may mitigate the
feeling of impertinance it may have awakened.
I feel that your knowledge of the symptoms from which
your American character in "Greenmantle" and "Mr.
Standfast" suffered is too exact not to betray personal
experience so that my pride or conceit in the matter of
detecting "internal evidence" has prompted me bluntly
to ask you point blank if I am correct. By the same
signs I believe Mr. H. G. Wells to be a sufferer from
chronic nervous dyspepsia with hyperchlorhydria;
& doubtless if I meet with no rebuff from you
I shall write & ask him the same sort of question!