Text: Richard Henry Stoddard, “Mrs. Botta and Her Friends,” The Independent (New York, NY), vol. 46, whole no. 2357, February 1, 1894, p. 17

[page 17:]

THE best preparation for reading these Memoirs of Mrs. Botta is a glance over the first forty or fifty names in the series of papers which Edgar Allan Poe contributed, in 1846, to The Lady's Book, of Louis A. Godey. Familiar with the reputation of the ladies and gentlemen who figure in this list, my acquaintance with Mrs. Botta dates back only forty-four years, when, a timid young person of twenty-four, I was introduced into her salon, either by Dr. Rufus Wilmot Griswold, or by Mr. Bayard Taylor. I had scrawled some immature verse, which Mr. Seba Smith and Mrs. Caroline M. Kirkland thought not entirely unworthy of the places which they gave it, one in The Rover, a little weekly, the other in The Union Magazine, a monthly of larger size, with illustrations on wood and steel, mezzotints, if my memory is not at fault, by Mr. John Sartain. Mrs. Botta, who was then Miss Anne Charlotte Lynch, was known to me before the date I have specified through her poems in Graham's Magazine and other periodicals, which were copied in The Evening Mirror, of which Mr. Nathaniel Parker Willis was editor in chief, and in The New York Tribune, the critical chair of which was filled by Mr. George Ripley. To meet this accomplished gentlewoman was a distinction, since in meeting her one met her friends, the least of whom was worth knowing. She lived, as nearly as I now recollect, on the south side of Ninth Street, not far from Fifth Avenue, and with her was her elderly mother, and a young woman who is now Mrs. S. M. C. Ewer, and was a sister of Mr. Charles Congdon, a brilliant humorist, whom I did not know until ten years later. Who witnessed my awkward entrance into Miss Lynch's well-lighted parlor? I have forgotten who they were. I only know that the night was a cold one; late in November, I fancy, and that, chilled through and through, in spite of a thick cloak which I wore, I stooped and chafed my hands before her glowing coal fire. Many a day passed before I heard the last story about my blundering gaucherie on that woful night — a gaucherie which worsened itself in the sharp eyes of Phyllis, who declared that she wondered at her foolish Corydon. The Willises were there, the poet who wrote “Scripture Sketches” in his youth, and had written much versatile poetry and prose since — letters from all quarters of the world — his second wife and his daughter, Imogen. But before these I see Miss Lynch, tall, gracious, kindly, the woman that she remained until the cold March morning two years ago when she wandered out into the worlds beyond this workaday world of ours. Present, also, were two of the swarming sisterhood of American singers, an elderly spinster, who was remembered through one of her solemn lyrics, entitled, I think, “He Came too Late,” and a more hopefull married woman, whose songs were of a more cheerful cast. Her name escapes me, for the reason that some admiring member of her sex has my copy of Griswold's “Female Poets of America.” (Moral: Don’t loan, but give outright the books that you need for reference. No books were ever pilfered, least of all, stolen; they are “conveyed” — they disappear.) On a later occasion, early in the following spring, I met another singer of tender melodies. She came of a poetic family, for, besides herself, I can recall a sister who wrote fairly well, Born in Boston, children of a merchant there named Locke, Frances Sargent spent a portion of her girlhood where I passed my boyhood, in Hingham, Mass., where, in my seventh year, Mr. William Gilmore Simms, of South Carolina, improvised his “Atalantis: A Tale of the Sea.” Miss Locke married a painter named Osgood, with whom she sailed for London, where he drew many celebrities ; and she warbled her way into their affections, remembering her native land in her first book, “A Wreath of Wild Flowers for New England.” When I met this gentle lady, seven-and-thirty, or it may be thirty-eight summers had touched her, lightly, as it seemed, but heavily, as it proved; for, always fragile, she was in a decline, reminding her friends, after her soul had taken its flight, of Young's Narcissa —

Mrs. Osgood was a paragon. For, loved of all men who knew her, she was hated by no woman who ever felt the charm of her presence. Poe was enamored of her, or fancied that he was, which with him was the same thing. He dedicated a copy of verses to her, a trifle which had served the same purpose twice before. He concealed her name in an effusion of twenty lines, and he reviewed her in his glowing fashion, and no one disputed the accuracy of his verdict, in her case. But Poe had a rival in her affections in Dr. Griswold, whom she transformed for the moment into an impassioned poet. When Edgar Allan was drugged to death at Baltimore, [column 2:] about six months before the time of which I am writing, I scribbled some verse in his memory ; and she was good enough to think some of it not unworthy of its theme. She died a few weeks later, and was buried in a hillside grave at Hingham. I remember some lines from her pen that begin, “A place in thy memory, dearest,” and a dainty versicle of hers about Pet Names. I have a copy of the “Poetical Works” of Leigh Hunt, which Dr. Griswold gave her, and some penciled lines on the fly leaves at the end. As nearly as I can make them out they run:

I return to the list of names in Poe's “Literati of New York City,” and recover others whom I saw at Miss Lynch's evenings at home. Constantly there was Mr. William M. Gillespie, a mathematician of eminence, who stammered in his speech; Dr. John W. Francis, who knew and was known to everybody, a florid gentleman with flowing white locks; and Ralph Hoyt, who said of “Old” in this simple fashion:

Then came Mrs. Ann S. Stephens, poetess, writer of stories, and, later, of three or four novels ; and next Mrs. Kirkland, Mrs. Embury, Miss Sedgewick, Mrs. Hewitt, Mrs. Elizabeth Oakes Smith, and Dr. Thomas Ward, who, under the Horatian signature of Flaccus, celebrated “Passaic, a Group of Poems, Touching that River, with other Poems.” Greater names were those of Bryant, Halleck, and one lesser, in the person of the bard who entreated the woodman to spare the tree.

Mrs. Ewer records her recollections of Mrs. Botta in thirty-four pages, which leave little to be said, they are so well-informed, so terse and so just; and more than thirty of their common friends record their reminiscences also. Most of these ladies and gentlemen I have met in her parlors in Waverley Place, in Ninth Street, and, during the last twenty years, at her home in West Thirty-seventh Street. They are my good friends Mrs. S. J. Lippincott (“Grace Greenwood”), Mr. Richard S. Willis, Mr. Parke Godwin, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Mr. Charles Dudley Warner, Mrs. L. C. Runkle, Miss Kate Field, Miss Edith M. Thomas and Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman. To these I add the names of painters like Mr. H. K. Brown, Mr. Daniel Huntington, Mr. John Durand, the elder, Mr. Rossiter, Mr. Darley, Mr. Read, Mr. Church, Mr. Addison Richards, and the departing names of May, Kensett, Elliott, Hicks, and the memories of French, Italian and German painters whose names do not remain with me. I saw Miss Bremer, in her home, and in her walks and drives; and I see, as vividly as if they were before me now, the Cary Sisters, Alice, the eldest, Phoebe, the next, and the youngest Elmina, whose beauty was of the the [[(sic)]] loveliest Eastern type — Moorish or Circassian. They were all poets, Alice the more melodious, and Phoebe the most versatile. Her forte was caricature, her parodies being better than their originals, the best being her burlesque of Bayard Taylor's “Manuela,” which, in her hands, became “Martha Hopkins,” in which disguise she took stern hold of the drollery of her readers.

Mrs. Ewer gives us selections from the letters of Mrs. Botta to twenty-three of her correspondents, and extracts from the correspondence of one-and-twenty of her friends. I will allow myself to make only two excerpts. The first shall consist of eight lines from an epistle from the pen of Emerson, under the date of March 16th, 1869:

“I am glad you find Huxley interesting. He is an acknowledged master in England. As long ago as the Prince of Wales was here in Boston, Dr. Acland interested us much in him. But I have read him less than his compeers — Owen, Tyndall and Darwin. Natural science is the point of interest now; and I think it is diminishing and extinguishing a good deal that was called poetry. These sublime and all-reconciling revelations of nature will exact of poetry a corresponding hight [[height]] and scope, or put an end to it.”

Nearly four years before these words reached Mrs. Botta the author of “Marco Bozzaris” addressed a courteous letter to that lady:

“When Madame Catalani, at Weimar, was proffered an introduction to Goethe, she innocently asked: ‘Whois he? What instrument does he play upon?’ I find myself just becoming as ignorant of books and their authors as a dozen opera singers, for until I saw (after seeing you), at Appleton's, your very handsome husband's very handsome volume, I had no idea that, he was an author, even in his own language, still less that he was so complete a master of ours as a glance over the volume so convincingly showed me. I look forward to great pleasure and profit from its perusal.”

I first met the author of “Proverbial Philosophy” at the house of Miss Lynch; and the story was told of him, then and there, that on his arrival at New York, in the forenoon, he plodded his way up Broadway, carpetbag in one hand, and in the other an umbrella, until he gained the office of The Evening Post, and the editorial room of Mr. Bryant, whom he saluted with the remark that he had just written a greeting to America, from which greeting he had forgotten to erase the date of its careful composition in his insular residence. Such was [column 3:] the story which was related of this dapper little person, who lived long enough to visit us once more, in our Centennial Year, freighted with an enormous tragicomedy about Mister Washington and dear Major André. I saw Mr. Tupper on both these visitations, on the last at the Century Club, in Fifteenth Street; but I did not read his comic-tragedy, nor have written a word about him until I pen these not unfriendly words of reminiscence. He had his audience, as Dr. Holland had, and Mr. Roe had, and as Mr. Whitcomb Riley has to-day. We cannot all be Shakespeares and Miltons, and at our best only a few of us may hope to be Byrons, Wordsworths, Tennysons and Shelleys. “There are degrees, mon cher Monsieur,” as the French justice reminded the elder Dumas, who said he would call himself a dramatist, if he were not in the country of Camille. Let us be modest, or as modest as we can.

Whether Mrs. Botta kept a Journal we are not told; but, if she did, we may be certain that there was not an ungenerous word in it. She was not one who seasoned her talk with personal gossip, from which she was averse. She saw Poe as often as he needed her aid, as he believed he did when he recited “The Raven” in her parlors, probably in Waverley Place. She was chary in speaking about him, as about all whom she knew. She was not indulgent to the Interviewer, even tho her lifelong friend, Willis, was the Inventor of Interviewing. Would she like what I wrote concerning her and her friends? I hope so; but I am not sure. I am sure of one thing, however, and that is, if she disliked it, she would say so frankly. She was always frank with me, and I was frank to her. When she asked my advice, which was seldom, I was sincere, as she wished me to be. I have been reading her verse, and I think it better than I expected it would be — better, I dare say, than she dared to think herself. It is graceful, it is pensive, and, for the day in which it was written, more promising than we find it now. It is the writing of a gentlewoman, who had ideals, which she never lost — ideals of purity, piety, and all that endears our mothers, our wives and our daughters to the least worthy of their relatives.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 17, column 1:]

* A MEMOIR OF ANNE C. L. BOTTA. Written by Her Friends. New York: J. Selwyn Tait & Sons.