Text: James B. Reece, “Anne C. Lynch,” Poe's Poe and the New York Literati Story, dissertation, 1954 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 143, continued:]

Anne Charlotte Lynch Botta (1815-1891) was the daughter of an Irish immigrant who settled in Bennington, Vermont, after being banished from his homeland for his part in the rebellion of 1798. Her father died when she was yet a child, and shortly afterward the family moved to Hartford, Connecticut, where Anne began her formal education. In 1834 she was graduated from an academy for women in Albany, New York, and for a short period served as instructor there. For two years she taught in a private home in Shelter Island, New York. From there she went to Providence, Rhode Island, where she conducted a school for girls in her home and began the practice of entertaining people of distinction. By 1836 her verses had begun to appear in the New [page 144:] Yorker.

Late in 1843 she moved with her mother to New York, where she taught English composition at a school for women and with notable success maintained her reputation as a hostess.(1) Occasional contributions of prose and. verse from her pen went to magazines and gift books. In 1853 she traveled in Europe, and two years later she married Dr. Vincenzo Botta, an Italian educator and professor of the Italian language and literature at the University of the City of New York. During the Franco-Prussian war she sold a valuable autograph collection in order to aid the women and children of Paris, but the money, received too late for its original purpose, was used to found a prize to be awarded by the French Academy.

Mrs. Botta's literary output was not prolific. Her collected Poems appeared in 1849. She edited the Rhode-Island Book (1841) and compiled the Handbook of Universal Literature (1860), which was widely used as a textbook.

Testimonials to the personal charm of Mrs. Botta are numerous. She had all the tact of a French woman ... was personally pretty, with a glow and repartee quite charming,” wrote Elizabeth Oakes Smith. “Few women known to me have had greater grace or ease in the entertainment of strangers,” remarked Parke Godwin, “while in her more private intercourse, her frank, intelligent, [page 145:] courteous ways won her the warmest and most desirable friendships.” More exaggerated but perhaps no less sincere is the tribute of Horace Greeley: “Anne Lynch is the best woman that God ever made.”(3)

At some time before the end of June, 1845, Poe made the acquaintance of Miss Lynch, and until January of the following year he appears to have enjoyed her hospitality with some frequency.(4) Miss Lynch's receptions gave Poe the opportunity to meet or to become better acquainted with many of his “Literati” subjects and provided him with much of the data that went into the personal descriptions of the sketches. His association with Miss Lynch ended when she sided with Mrs. Ellet in the affair of the letters early in 1846.(5)

Poe reprinted some of Miss Lynch's poems in the Broadway [page 146:] Journal, and on two occasions wrote laudatory accompanying notes. In copying “The Ideal” and “The Ideal Found” into the Journal for June 21, 1845, he wrote:

In a friendly note Miss Lynch thanked Poe for these remarks, attempted to cheer him from a spell of despondency which a letter from him had revealed, and invited him to her home to read from his poetry.(7) In transferring her “Bones in the Desert” to his columns from The Opal for 1846, Poe described the piece as a “thoughtful and vigorous poem.”(8)

Following her visit to Poe's home with Miss Fuller to retrieve Mrs. Osgood's letters, she must have wondered with some anxiety what treatment she might receive in the forthcoming “Literati” papers. If so, her fears were groundless, for Poe had little, but compliments for her. He found in her poetry indications of “at least unusual talent” and repeated the compliments paid to “The Ideal” and “The Ideal Found” in the Broadway Journal, [page 147:] adding that the poems gave evidence that their author possessed “an intuitive sense of poetry's true nature.”(9) Poe's request to Godey, “Please put Miss Lynch in the next number, suggests that he wished to reassure her of his good will.

On the personal level, Miss Lynch was not among Poe's admirers. Poe visited her frequently, she wrote to George W. Eveleth, but “almost always on my reception evenings, when many other guests were present; and my relations with him were rather superficial than intimate.” She was never, she stated, “under the influence of the fascination which he exercised over many; and, while I liked him and appreciated his genius, it was always with a certain degree of coldness, or, at least, not enthusiasm.”(11) In explaining why Poe had not attended a party at her home in February, 1848, Miss Lynch wrote to Mrs. Whitman that she had not seen him for more than a year and that there was “a deep rooted prejudice against him which I trust he will overcome earnestly request you not to mention this because I have no quarrel with Poe, and admire his genius as much as any one can.(12) She seems to have been reluctant to talk about Poe [page 148:] after he had ceased to attend her receptions.(13)

Perhaps the most important result of Poe's acquaintance with Miss Lynch was the role she played in promoting his later interest in Mrs. Whitman, whom she had. known in Providence.(14) Poe wrote to Mrs. Whitman that he had first heard of her through a conversation with Miss Lynch, who “referred to thoughts, sentiments, traits, moods which I knew to be my own,” he continued, “but which, until that moment, I had believed to be my own solely — unshared by any human being. A profound sympathy took immediate possession of my soul.”(15) It seems likely also that Miss Lynch was one of Mrs. Whitman's correspondents who, in 1846, had kept her informed of Poe's activities in literary society.(16) It was to Miss Lynch's that Mrs. Whitman sent the valentine addressed to “The Raven,” the first communication between her and Poe.(17)

Evidence concerning Poe's later attitude toward Miss Lynch is too scanty to warrant any definite conclusion on that point. In a lecture delivered in the summer of 1848 Poe is said to have ascribed to her poetry “an unequalled success in the concentrated [page 149:] and forcible enunciation of the sentiment of heroism and duty.”(18) But in a letter to Mrs. Whitman in the fall of that year he included Miss Lynch in a group of women of whom he said “neither these nor any within their influence, are my friends.”(19) In its context, however, the statement seems merely negative; Poe was explaining that Mrs. Whitman had received a false impression of him partly because she was unacquainted with his true friends. Miss Lynch's Hand-Book of Universal Literature, which does not contain biographical sketches of the authors represented, repeats stock-critical observations on Poe's works. Of the tales it is said that “a subtle power of analysis, a minuteness of detail, a refinement of reasoning in the anatomy of mystery, give to his most improbable inventions a wonderful reality.”(20) The poems are constructed with great ingenuity,” and “illustrate a morbid sensitiveness and a shadowy and gloomy imagination.”(21)

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 144:]

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 145:]

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 146:]

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 147:]

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 148:]

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 149:]