Autograph letter signed : Hampstead [London], to [James] Payn, 1882 October 14.

Expressing sympathy for Payn's rheumatism and relating an encounter he had in August with a man at an inn in Northumberland who proved to be an imposture claiming to be Payn himself ("He observed a mysterious air about his connections with literature but hinted at his own wide spread popularity. He evidently wanted me to ask him who he was...I did not. But in the morning I called the landlady who told me it was 'Mr. James Payn, the great novelist who wrote the Confidential Agent'. There! and he was more dignified than you, but I always had my suspicions").