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From what source she has dained the information touching the remarks alleged to have been made by Miss Annie, I know not, nor have I ever heard the rumour here, of which she speaks. It is true that just about the time of her arrival in this place in Dec 1856, and indeed on the very day that your letter to me was received, I read in the “Charleston Courier” a graphic description of an English lady who had set up a spurious claim to the authorship of “John Halifax Gentleman”, and who left New York very suddenly because she feared exposure by the [illegible] arrival of a steamer on our shores, after this claim had reached England, and this [discussion?] so harmonized with the appearance, manners and seeming accomplishments of Mrs West, that some persons thought that she might be the veritable individual sketched by the newspaper [illegible], Among those who indulged in this conjecture were Dr [Drane?] and myself, and probably I might have said something about the matter in my letter to you, but I certainly did not assert that she was the identical person alluded to, and in no way intimated even that she had abandoned her children as nothing of the kind was mentioned in the article in the “Courier”, nor had I ever heard of any such abandonment, the allegation of which, seems