Anne Lynch Botta.
Anne Lynch Botta.
“What a divine power is this of acquiring knowledge!” - Lynch, 1838
Anne Lynch [11.11.1815 – 3.23.1891] was born into a revolutionary household. Her mother, Charlotte Gray, was the granddaughter of a Revolutionary War officer; her father, Patrick Lynch, was a native Dubliner who had, at the age of sixteen, participated in the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Unfortunately, this happy household dissolved a few short years after Anne’s birth when her father died in a tragic shipwreck in the West Indies. Despite their altered circumstances, Charlotte fought with the grit of her ancestors to maintain the quality of her children’s upbringing, and both Anne and her elder brother, Thomas began their formal education in elite schools. At the age of sixteen, Anne—already showing signs of brilliance—secured entrance to the Albany Female Academy, one of the most progressive institutions of women’s education in the nineteenth century.
While enrolled at the Academy, Anne’s creativity and scholarship blossomed. She excelled in her coursework, earning class honors and multiple awards for her poetry. However, coursework was not the only concern to occupy her mind.
Unlike her aristocratic peers whose tuition was absorbed by their parents, Anne was not free of the care of her own tuition, and she was forced to defray her own expenses while in school. She accomplished this partially by means of her brother, who procured copyediting work for Anne from local journals, and partially by means of her own creative efforts—that is, by selling pieces of her own to journals. Thus, necessity—the oft-heralded mother of invention—in this instance proved the mother of a literary career.
practicing pedagogy.
“[Anne’s] acute intellectual insight into character, and her wisdom in guiding others as well as herself in the various branches of study, were remarkable. She inspired her pupils with love for intellectual occupation, strengthened their characters, and made them eager to improve in every way. Her intense interest in their advancement became to them a powerful stimulus. Her strong affection for young people was a dominant characteristic of her nature, and she delighted in promoting and watching over the gradual development of their mental and moral faculties.”
Upon her graduation in 1834, Anne chose to remain at Albany Female Academy as an instructor. In this position, she taught composition to the institution’s elite enrollees for just over two years. At this time, eager to continue teaching but wishing for a change of scenery, Anne accepted a post as a private governess on the isolated turf of Shetland Island, New York. Anne later recalled this period of solitude on the island as a time of profound mental development, as she employed her spare time supplementing her own education and writing her first serious composition, “The Diary of a Recluse,” which would later reap the high regard of critics.
After four years in comparative isolation, Anne relocated to Providence, Rhode Island, intent upon establishing a household with her mother. Anne’s pedagogical passion, however, was not to be averted, and within weeks Anne had transformed this new house into a site of education. Having already experimented with the educational roles of teacher and governess, Anne now assumed a new role—that of an academic tutor. During the course of her five years in Providence, Anne tutored dozens of students, several of whom developed into lifelong friends. While documentation of Lynch’s pedagogical persuasions are scant, the record left by one such student and later friend, Sophie Ewer, provides a fascinating insight into Anne’s pedagogical presence (see quote at left).
This simple tribute to a beloved teacher provides us with an invaluable key to understanding Anne’s actions throughout her entire life. This sketch reanimates Anne’s image, investing her features with more than ordinary intelligence and illuminating her personality as one that celebrated learning in a manner that was both delightful and dynamic. Moreover, we see that Anne’s participation in education was no casual affair; rather, her teaching persona demonstrated depth and intentionality rooted in her own profound appreciation of learning. In an era in which teachers utilized the hickory stick as frequently as they did pencils, Anne’s commitment to motivating her students not through retribution but through individualized attention and a cultivation of a genuine appreciation for the subjects they studied is remarkable.
More importantly for the interpretation of her later life, this sketch allows us to understand Anne’s linkage of cultivation of “mental and moral faculties” with expression of “strong affection”. To Anne, enhancing others’ ability to engage with and in the exchange of ideas was a primary means of demonstrating care for and achieving the good of others.
A year after arriving in Providence, Anne ventured upon a project that would not only confirm her status as a literary figure but also inadvertently set her upon her lifelong career as a salonnière. Fascinated by Rhode Island culture, Anne determined to compile the works of Rhode Island authors past and present into a volume titled The Rhode Island Book (1841). While past authors were beyond her call, Anne hosted Saturday evening meetings with authors yet living to discuss their contributions to her volume. After the book was released, neither Anne nor her authors saw any reason to discontinue the meetings they had found so convivial—Anne’s first salon was born. It quickly grew to include authors beyond those involved in the original project and eventually one contemporary from this time would note that “the very best literary society of Providence could be found in the parlor of Miss Lynch.” Among the original authors at Anne’s salon was none other than Sarah Helen Whitman, a native Providence poet who also hosted literary gatherings in Providence, and it was likely at one of these two establishments that both women made the further acquaintanceship of fellow poet and later New York comrade Frances Sargent Osgood, who visited Providence in 1842.
In 1845, Anne and her mother relocated to Manhattan, New York. Here, Anne accepted a position teaching composition at the Brooklyn Academy for Young Ladies, but her educational attention was now equally divided between this formal expression of her pedagogical interests and her new-found informal outlet for those interests, the salon. Upon arriving at her new home in Waverly Place, Lynch instantly began hosting the literati of the city, and within months her sitting room was attended weekly by the city’s notable thinkers. Perhaps her most dramatic accomplishment of this era was her social sponsorship of Edgar Allan Poe. Although Poe had enjoyed a large measure of fame upon the publication of his masterpiece “The Raven” earlier in 1845, Lynch was the first salonnière to recognize his merits as a thinker and she bore the honor of inducting Poe into high literary society.
By 1850, Anne had been hosting salons for nearly a decade and had facilitated the collaborations of dozens of New York’s artists through her salons. Surprisingly, however, the true high points of her career as a salonnière lay yet in the future.
successful salonniere.
“[Anne] received guests on Saturday evenings and on special occasions such as St. Valentine’s Day. After being admitted to a dim hall, where they shed cloaks, shawls, and hats, her guests proceeded upstairs to two adjoining parlors with a coal fire at either end. Here Lynch received them, often dressed in white with a white flower in her dark hair… There were sometimes so many people present that they had to find seats on the rug or the staircase. Tea and cookies were served; in the course of the evening someone might sit down at the piano, and the guests might dance the quadrille. ”
anne abroad.
“Her social success among the best people was extraordinary. At Cabinet and Presidential receptions she was seen surrounded like a queen by statesmen. One of her warmest friends in those days was Henry Clay. He had for her, he once told me, not only the admiration he always felt for a clever, witty woman, but profound respect for her scholarly attainments, her rare good sense, and, above all, her purity of character.”
Dating to her early days copyediting at the Albany Female Academy, Anne had never shaken the spectre of financial need. By the year 1850, she had been steadily working to earn an income for over fifteen years; however, in 1850, a unique opportunity presented itself. A portion of the pay originally owed to her maternal grandfather, a revolutionary war officer, had been left unpaid; Anne determined to petition Congress to make good on the balance. Accordingly, she began spending her seasons in Washington, D. C., serving as famed Senator Henry Clay’s personal secretary and petitioning Congress for the release of her grandfather’s pay. While in D.C., Lynch attended the parties and soirees hosted by that city’s luminaries, amongst whom she was supremely popular and from whom she gleaned additional insight into elevated expressions of culture.
In 1853, Congress relented and awarded her the funds, which she swiftly invested to a profit upon the advice of a close friend, Charles Butler. These funds and the interest they earned provided Anne with a degree of financial independence that she had never yet experienced, and she immediately set out for the continent to experience European culture in company with the Butler family. As a connoisseur of world literature, Anne was enthralled by the experience of touring England, Paris, Florence, Venice, and Rome; as an aesthete of culture, she haunted their respective museums, art galleries, and monuments. Having delighted in watercolor since her time at the Academy, Anne was eager to expand her skills in visual art and even studied the art of sculpting briefly while in Italy. In her later years she would return to this interest and produce a bust of Butler as a gesture of gratitude for his role in her rise to financial security.
vincenzo.
It was at about this time that Anne, now in her early forties, met Vincenzo Botta, a professor of philosophy at the University of Turin, in Northern Italy. An educational enthusiast, Vincenzo had recently received a commission from the Sardinian parliament to conduct research on the educational system of Germany; in 1853, he was sent to New York City to accomplish a similar research project. Upon completing his research, however, Vincenzo was loathe to leave the city, finding its environs—and perhaps its star inhabitant—to be much to his liking. He determined to remain in the States indefinitely and assumed a position teaching philosophy and Italian at the University of New York.
Anne and Vincenzo married in the spring of 1855.
For many women of this era, marriage signaled the end of their own enterprises—a sharp division between their former and future lives as those lives became at best husband-oriented and at worst husband-dominated. Perhaps it was Anne’s forty years that allowed her to choose wisely—or perhaps she had reached the age of forty unwed precisely because she had refused to be bound to a man who would disrupt her mode of existence. In either scenario, in choosing to marry she chose perfectly, for in Vincenzo Anne secured a partner who prized education, intellect, and the sharing of ideas as passionately as she. Indeed, far from resenting or rivalling Anne’s salon, Vincenzo joined wholeheartedly in its spirit, leading one friend to reminisce of those times that “[Anne’s] receptions were more frequently given after her marriage in 1855.” (emphasis mine) Another friend remarked of their marriage that, “With such a helper by her side, her generous hospitality enlarged its bounds till it took in the best representatives of literature, art, and science, with the leaders and heroes of great movements for liberty and humanity of the Old World as of the New.” Rather than subordinating Anne’s interests, Vincenzo celebrated them in a way that allowed her to expand their scope; rather than dominating Anne, Vincenzo delighted in her independence. Indeed, it was of this Renaissance of Anne’s salon at the Botta’s new inhabitance on West 37th Street, NYC that Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote affectionately to her in 1868, describing himself as one of many grateful guests whose life was elevated by her “house of the expanding doors.”
This revival of her salon represented the true acme of Anne’s performance as a salonnière. Calling upon her previous experiences as a hostess, her observations from her time in the aristocratic salons of D. C. and Europe, and the connections of her supportive husband, Anne crafted an environment of sophistication and elevation that led the many illustrious figures who attended her salon to praise it as the best in the country. Much as she had welcomed New York’s literati to her parlor in the 1840s, Anne now feted celebrated thinkers on a national—and even international—scale. Her guests were not only writers but also statesmen, nobility, and visual artists. Among the latter was Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, who visited her salon while in the midst of designing his soon to be world-famous sculpture, The Statue of Liberty, which he had been commissioned to create by France. Upon arriving in America for his lecture tour in the mid 1880s, Oscar Wilde immediately sought entrance to Anne’s salon, recognizing the importance of her approval in securing the success of his tour. Sharing his Irish descent and interest in aesthetics, Anne granted him the endorsement he sought, and he went on to assume celebrity status in the States.
As her guests grew more august, Anne continued to root the sophistication of her salon not merely in an her integration of high society’s etiquettes, but rather in a far more personal aspect of her philosophy. This philosophy is visible just beneath the surface of the testimony of one of her guests from that era:
“The success of these gatherings was principally due to the fact that the hostess never forced her opinions on her guests. It was her policy to arouse the brilliancy of cultured minds, and keep the light burning by gentle suggestions. She never argued, and thus kept peace, and avoided hurting the feelings of her friends. Humorous and witty, she never allowed her repartee to be tinged with sarcasm.” (Sophie Ewer, “Memoirs,” 15)
Here we see a fascinating reemergence of themes from Anne’s earlier life—her intentionally positive and nurturing persona within the classroom. In constructing the fundamental schema of her salon, Anne integrated principles not of her fashionable but rather her pedagogical experiences; her motive was not to see and be seen, but rather to create an environment in which, just as in her private tutoring sessions, her guests would be induced to engage excitedly with ideas. Indeed, it is possible that Anne felt less like a hostess and more like a teacher during these gatherings, as she first roused the intellects of and then gently guided the discourse between her guests.
If such were her intentions, her methods must be regarded as strikingly modern in their emphasis on discussion-based learning, and her attentiveness to generating an atmosphere in which respectful exchange of ideas was encouraged and rewarded might further be taken as a model by any thoughtful pedagogue.
return of the salon.
Among those who swarmed to her salon throughout the years were the following notables:
Edgar Allan Poe | Margaret Fuller |
Ralph Waldo Emerson | Amos Bronson Alcott |
Oscar Wilde | Louisa May Alcott | Horace Greeley |
Richard Henry Stoddard | N. P. Willis |
Sarah Helen Whitman | Herman Melville |
Mary Mapes Dodge | Fitz-Green Halleck |
Catherine Maria Sedgwick | Julia Ward Howe |
Delia Bacon | Grace Greenwood |
Bayard Taylor | William Cullen Bryant |
Frances Sargent Osgood | Rufus Griswold |
Emma Lazarus | Helen Hunt Jackson |
Washington Irving | Andrew Carnegie |
Fanny Kemble | Elizabeth Ellet |
William Makepeace Thackeray |
Daniel Webster | Anthony Trollope |
Matthew Arnold | Lord Houghton |
Lord Amberley | Frederic Auguste Bartholdi |
publications & penchants.
“Yet another point of interest in that delightful home in New-York city, was Mrs. Botta’s studio on the fourth floor. Here one realized more fully the wonderful many-sidedenss of her character… Some cases containing her favorite books ran along the wall… On her table lay certain books, her constant companions and friends, — Emerson, Herbert Spencer, George Eliot, Longfellow, Whittier, “Light of Asia,” Tennyson, Wordsworth, etc. In the drawers of her writing and study table were a series of blank books filled with choice and most exquisite extracts from all the great thinkers and teachers of the world. At some point or other of our conversation, she would dash open one of these drawers and bring forth the treasures she had gathered from all sources, and sit there brooding, questioning, pondering; these were her gems, the heirlooms of the ages… It was worth crossing the Atlantic to spend an evening alone with her in that fourth-story studio, to catch the gleams of those wise, far-seeing eyes, to feel the touch of that soul thirsting after wisdom, the ideal, the beautiful, as the hart panteth after the water-brooks. The walls of the studio were hung with all kinds of bas-reliefs, models, busts, statues, the mantelpiece crowded with pictures, paintings, photographs. The middle of the room was generally occupied with whatever bit of sculpture she happened to be working at... she worked unceasingly in her studio, devoting herself exclusively during the latter part of her life to modeling and sculpture.”
Later in life, Anne found yet a third outlet for her interest in pedagogy. Throughout her long years as a teacher, salonniere, secretary, and wife, Lynch’s early creative promise had not flagged, and she had maintained a steady flow of words. Between 1840-1860 she published poems, reviews, and essays through journals including The Broadway Journal, which Poe himself edited, as well as through the extremely popular The Home Journal, The Democratic Review, and The New York Mirror. In 1849, eight years after the publication of The Rhode Island Book (1841), she brought forth her first book of her own writings—a collection of ninety-one Poems sourced from her many contributions to journals across the preceding decades. Throughout the 1840s-1850s, Anne’s work was also included in a host of specialty publications known as “gift books”—these books consisted of special collections of the works of magazine writers published in a handsome “gift” binding, generally just before the holidays and intended to be given as presents.
While these publications were gratifying, it was in 1860 that Anne produced her true magnum opus—the remarkable Hand-Book of Universal Literature; From the Latest and Best Authorities; Designed for Popular Reading and as a Text-Book for Schools and Colleges. This hefty volume consisted of twenty sections, each of which explored the literatures of a particular nation, including such diverse world cultures as China, Portugal, Scandinavia, Arabia, and Armenia in addition to the classical literatures of the Latin, Greek, Egyptian, and Hebrew languages and the modern efforts of England, France, Germany and Spain. In an updated edition of 1885, Lynch expanded this work to include individual sections canvassing Japanese, Sanskrit, Phoenician, and Syriac literatures.
In the preface to the first edition, Anne provides fascinating insight into her intentions in publishing this handbook. Characteristically, those intentions were motivated by both her inward- and outward-oriented attitudes towards learning. In this preface, Anne reveals that its materials originally arose from her own pursuit of knowledge—her determination to round out her own understanding of world literatures. Having collected those materials, Anne realized their potential in aiding others attempting a similar undertaking, and, acting on her indefatigable impulse to educate, she chose to compile her findings into a single, accessible volume. On the value of studying world literature, Anne noted,
“The literatures of different nations are so related, and have so influenced each other, that it is only by a survey of all, that any single literature, or even any great literary work, can be fully comprehended, as the various groups and figures of a historical picture must be viewed as a whole before they can assume their true place and proportions.” (Preface to Handbook, pg iv)
Given the breadth of her knowledge of literature and her interest in perceiving literatures holistically, it is unsurprising—only awe-inspiring—to discover that Lynch also pursued broad scholastic interests in the fields of meditative philosophy, science, art, and sociology. Reading continuously from the time of her graduation, Anne studied the ancients Epicetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Thomas a Kempis as well as modern reasoners such as Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others since faded from history’s view. Anne’s interest in pedagogy remained philosophical and she was so curious regarding the Transcendental attitudes towards education that she both invited Bronson Alcott to lead a discussion on education at her salon and further visited his revolutionary classroom at Brook Farm herself.
In her later days, Anne directed her creative focus towards two primary outlets. In the realm of composition, Anne determined to release a companion volume to her Handbook of World Literature, this time assembling the essential aspects of world history into an approachable text. She also began to spend more and more time in her fourth story art studio, where she not only wrote but also renewed her earlier pursuit of sculpture. Her skill in producing models of her friends led them to opine after her death that, had she not chosen to pursue linguistic expression throughout her life, she might easily have been recognized as a fine American artist.
death & legacy.
As she progressed towards the end of her life, Anne’s energies hardly abated and her social spirit never did. Indeed, the circumstances of Anne’s death might almost be described as thematic, for she died after catching pneumonia while in her garden planning festivities in honor of her thirty-fifth wedding anniversary with Vincenzo. Upon her death, Lynch was internationally mourned. Vincenzo received innumberable messages of consolation from her many protegies, disciples, and friends – including notes from the reigning monarchs of Italy, King Umberto I and Queen Margherita. Moved by this outpouring, Vincenzo determined to honor Anne’s life as she had spent it—through words exchanged amongst friends—and he accordingly collected and solicited poems, biographical sketches, and correspondence from her acquaintanceship. He published these tributes as the thick Memoirs of Anne C. L. Botta: Written by Her Friends, which remains an unparalleled trove of information for the biographer—or admirer— to this day.
In that volume, one of Anne’s friends cast the following prophecy regarding Anne’s reputation.
“It was not so much what Mrs. Botta did for literature with her own pen, as what she helped others to do, that will make her name a part of the literary history of the country.” (Memoirs)
In this prophecy the friend was partially correct. Anne’s tireless energies as a hostess generated an environment in which creativity and collaboration thrived. In addition to this, she was swift to identify and elevate artists whom she perceived as receiving less than their due. However, this diminishing of Anne’s writings is not quite right, as her writings were celebrated in her day. Her poetry was anthologized by Rufus Griswold in his immensely popular Female Poets of America and her work appeared in many of the best journals and collections of the day. Perhaps more significantly, Anne’s Handbook to Universal Literature achieved instant recognition for its utility and many American colleges employed it as their world literature textbook throughout the late 19th and early 20th century. To this day, her volume can still be found in college libraries.
In the realm of political or social action, she was less visibly active than her contemporaries Margaret Fuller and Sarah Helen Whitman. However, the activities she undertook were perfect expressions of the fundamental principles we have already noted as motivating her behavior throughout her life—her deliberate, pedagogical approach to learning. This emphasis combined with her feminist leanings to produce a wholly unique approach to women’s rights. She supported the rights of women to own private property but demurred upon the question of women’s suffrage, opining that,
“The political vote given to women, would increase the quantity of the suffrage; but I doubt if it would improve its quality. Women must be educated, and then the time will come when they may claim to be a part of the political body.” (Lynch qtd. in Sophie Ewer, “Memoirs,” 29)
When examined, this position may be seen to be wholly Lynchian; while ostensibly opposing equal political rights, Lynch was actually arguing that women deserved to receive equal education opportunities as men, a step that would inevitably lead to greater equality. While this incremental perspective no doubt perplexed her feminist counterparts, we must note that Anne’s theory tended towards the construction of an even better life for women. Lynch wanted women to be not only free to vote but also free to think and to stand amongst men as not only their electoral but also their intellectual equals.
Nor was her position merely theoretical; Anne supported the education of women throughout her entire life, often teaching young women herself and further supporting clubs and societies dedicated to educating young girls. Towards the end of her life she combined her interest in composition and women’s intellectual equality in a scholarship that she established through the Académie Française. This scholarship was to be awarded to the best female-written essay on “The Condition of Woman” and the prize itself reflects her shrewdness. Rather than bestowing a sum to be used once and no more, she instead donated a sum of money to be invested; once every five years its investments yielded $1,00,0 which would then be awarded as a quinquennial prize. Thus the $1,000 scholarship has reproduced itself perpetually throughout the years, providing aid to multiple writers, rather than to only one.
More dramatically, Lynch’s passion for intellectual equality formed the driving force of her decades long involvement at the heart of high artistic society, where she used her salon to promote equal intellectual opportunity amongst men and women of all classes. Through her salon, Lynch not only promoted connections between lovers of literature and culture, but also developed her own culture based on equality of expression and collaboration. In this sense, Lynch’s influence extended far beyond her own writings and deep into the fabric of developing American literature. In this sense, her friend’s prophecy came true and Anne is remembered through the works of all who profit from the literary culture she contributed to establishing.
bibliography.
Botta, Vincenzo, ed. Memoirs of Anne C. L. Botta Written by Her Friends with Selections from her Correspondence and from her Writings in Prose and Poetry. New-York: J. Selwin Tait & Sons, 1893.
Duyckinck, E. A. and G. L., “Anne Charlotte Botta.” In Cyclopedia of American Literature: Vol 2, 627-28. New York: Charles Scribner, 1856.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Ralph Waldo Emerson to Anne Charlotte Lynch Botta, December 23, 1868. In The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Vol. Six, edited by Ralph L. Rusk. New York: Columbia University Press, 1939.
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Griswold, Rufus Wilmot, ed. “Anne C. Lynch.” In The Female Poets of America, 232-40. Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1844.
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Lynch, Anne C. Poems. New York: George P. Putnam, 1849.
Lynch, Anne C. The Rhode-Island Book. Providence, RI: H. Fuller, 1841.
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Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: A Biography. New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 2009.
Stern, Madeleine B. “Anne Charlotte (Lynch) Botta.” In Antebellum Writers in New York and the South, edited by Joel Myerson. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 3. Detroit, MI: Gale, 1979.