Botta: How good and how happy we ought to be!

Some thoughts for the new year from Anne Charlotte Lynch Botta, January 2, 1853:

How good and how happy we ought to be! But how impossible it seems for a human being to be really happy. Every new possession seems to bring a new want. This utter insufficiency of everything human and earthly, to satisfy the soul, seems one of the strongest proofs of its immortality.

I once thought of writing a kind of fairy tale, in which the hero should by some supernatural aid have all his wishes gratified. He should desire wealth, fame, love, power, and each in turn should fail to satisfy. At last, in despair, he should resign his supernatural power of accomplishing his wishes, and seek from the guardian spirit who attended him the secret of that happiness he had failed to secure. He now learns for the first time that "the Kingdom of Heaven is within him." That he carries it with him and diffuses it around. That it is in seeking the happiness and good of others that he is to find his own, rather than in the pursuit of selfish ends. How do you like the plot?

The Vermont-born Botta became better known as a social hostess for literary salons than for her own writing. Her welcoming personality enamored her to many, from fellow writers to political figures. She apparently never wrote the "fairy tale" she outlined above. Her writings, however, express similar sentiments of optimism in a cynical world, usually guided by her faith. She often compared life to a battle, one which is led by a perfect deity, yet which sees us struggle in our attempts to achieve perfection. Perhaps no short poem of hers better displays her outlook than one simply titled "To --" (1849):

In the noble army of Reform

     Thou art a pioneer; 

And bravely wields thy good right arm,

     The broadsword and the spear.

Thou may'st not see the battle's close,
     The victory may'st not win:

But the scars upon thy spirit prove,
     Thou hast not lived in vain.

Lynch and Willis: love or be famous

When Nathaniel Parker Willis and his (second) wife Cornelia heard of Anne Charlotte Lynch's engagement to Vincenzo Botta, they immediately wrote a letter of congratulations. The letter, dated March 24, 1855, expresses hope from the Willises for Lynch's future:

The positive news of your coming marriage affected us very strongly, of course. Nellie and I love you so well that we tremble while we rejoice in new wings so venturesome, though so expanding of scope and lift... You are above destiny — subject naturally to nothing.

Lynch had almost met Botta (pictured), a professor in Turin, Italy, while traveling through Europe two years earlier. The Italian government had sent him to the United States to research the American education system (he had previously been sent to Germany with a similar mission) and so they missed one another. Determined he should meet her, he supposedly carried six letters of introduction on his behalf. Back in New York after her European travels, Botta visited her daily until he finally proposed. He did not return to Italy, instead taking a job at City University of New York.

Willis had befriended Lynch, whom he called "Lynchie," many years earlier and was apparently ecstatic about her coming wedding. He invited the couple to visit him at Idlewild, his home on the Hudson River: "Our glen is a place for the happy... We trust you will both feel more at home at Idlewild than anywhere else." Willis adds that "no woman ever deserved more love" than Lynch. She, by then, had already established herself as a leading hostess for literary salons and had published several poems herself. In 1845, she had asked Willis for his opinion of her writing. Calling himself her "literary godfather," he offered a telling assessment of his own literary theory and his prediction for Lynch:

Poetry is a shadow over the heart that enables us to see to the bottom-like clouds cutting off the sunshine from a well. I now see the truth in the well of your heart, but I do not know as I dare tell you what it is like. You would be bound to deny a part of it, true or not, and (to tell a truth that is all my own) I do not yet feel sufficiently taken into your confidence to venture on translating your pulses to yourself—no; I will not venture!
...The intense passionateness of your nature is all ready for utterance in undying language; and that if you do not breathe your heart soon upon an absorbent object, you will either be corroded by the stifled intensity of undeveloped feeling, or you will overflow with poetry and (like other volcanoes that find a vent) blacken the verdure around you with the cinders of exposed agonies. In short, you must love or be famous!

Things of the heart can never be lost

Tennessee politician and orator Henry Clay was awarded a gold medal with his likeness from admirers in New York. When the committee asked for its return to complete an improvement of it, Clay left it in the hands of New York poet and socialite Anne Charlotte Lynch, who had been visiting Washington, D.C. and had served as Clay's personal secretary for a time. Lynch kept the medal in a satchel which she held for safekeeping. However, somewhere in her travels, she lost the medal. She contacted a friend of Clay's to notify the man on her behalf. This was the response, dated March 17, 1852:

I call on Mr. Clay and mentioned the loss of the medal. I found him not at all affected by it; his spirits were as good and he as cheerful as I have seen him... He, I assure you, has suffered not the slightest depression on this account.

Clay reportedly thought that just knowing the medal had been granted was enough for him to appreciate the respect and admiration it represented. Ultimately, he believed it was only a symbol and was, therefore, not really lost, "for things of the heart can never be lost."

Lynch, however, was not satisfied and was horrified by her error. She reported the loss to the police and offered a $500 reward. The satchel was ultimately found, severely damaged, and the medal was gone from it. Her feelings of guilt were apparently so strong that Clay himself wrote to calm her, as did the chairman of the committee which created the medal (he also offered a replacement for Clay, though in bronze rather than gold).

Fifteen years later, minus one week, a man from Maine wrote to Lynch (now Mrs. Vincenzo Botta) to alert her that he had seen the missing Clay medal! It had found its way to Switzerland, brought there by a sea-captain who purchased it in Philadelphia.

Clay and Lynch had met in Newport, Rhode Island in 1849 — the same year that Lynch's first collection of original poems was published. He apparently asked to see her poetry and she accordingly gave him a copy. Clay references an inscription in the book with her autograph which may or may not have been connected to a poem she dedicated to him. If a poem was written with Clay in mind, she did not acknowledge it in print. Instead, here is her poem "To One Who Wished to Read a Poem I Had Written":

Nay, read it not, thou wouldst not know
     What lives within my heart,
For from that fount it does not flow;
     'Tis but the voice of Art.

I could not bid my proud heart speak,
     Before the idle throng;
Rather in silence would it break
     With its full tide of Song.

Yes, rather would it break, than bare,
     To cold and careless eyes,
The hallowed dreams that linger there,
     The tears and agonies.

My lyre is skillful to repress
     Each deep, impassioned tone;
Its gushing springs of tenderness
     Would flow for one alone.

The rock, that to the parching sand
     Would yield no dewy drop,
Struck by the pilgrim prophet's wand,
     Gave all its treasures up.

My heart then, is my only lyre;
     The prophet hath not spoken,
Nor kindled its celestial fire;
     So, let its chords be broken.

I would not thou shouldst hear those lays,
     Though harsh they might not be;
Though thou, perchance, might'st hear and praise,
     They would not speak of me.

Birth of Anne Charlotte Lynch Botta

The daughter of an Irish nationalist who later moved to Cuba, Anne Charlotte Lynch was born in Bennington, Vermont, on November 11, 1815, raised in Connecticut, went to school in Albany, New York and, later, wrote her first book on Rhode Island. It was in Connecticut that she wrote to her friend on her 20th birthday:

I believe I have had every variety of feeling humanity is capable of, and there remains nothing for me now, not even a disappointment. My mind, too early matured, has reached at this period the limit it should only have attained at threescore; and now, like some plant, blossoming prematurely, it droops and withers, while all around it is verdant. But you will call me an egotist, and I shall deserve it; so let me turn to some more agreeable topic.

She then moved to Manhattan and established herself at the center of literary and elite cultural circles (surrounded by people like Margaret Fuller, Horace Greeley, Fanny Kemble, Edgar Allan Poe, Bayard Taylor, and others). It was in Europe that she met her husband, the Italian professor Vincenzo Botta.

In addition to earning a reputation as one of the greatest salon hostesses of the era, Lynch Botta was a prolific poet and occasional artist. Much of her writing reflects those dual interests; several of her poems are based on her reactions to paintings or sculptures. Usually, her poems had a slight religious tint to them and many mused on death and the afterlife. Her poem "Books for the People" (published in 1849):

          Light to the darkened mind
Bear, like the sun, the world's wide circle round,
Bright messengers that speak without a sound!
          Sight on the spirit blind
Shall fall where'er ye pass; your living ray
Shall change the night of ages into day;—
          God speed ye on your way!

          In closet and in hall,
Too long alone your message hath been spoken:
The spell of gold that bound ye there is broken;
          Go forth and shine on all;
The world's inheritance, the legacy
Bequeathed by Genius to the race are ye;
          Be like the sunlight, free!

          A mighty power ye wield!
Ye wake grim centuries from their deep repose,
And bid their hoarded treasuries unclose,
          The spoils of time to yield.
Ye hold the gift of immortality;
Bard, sage, and seer, whose fame shall never die,
          Live through your ministry.

          Noiseless upon your path,
Freighted with lore, romance, and song, ye speed,
Moving the world, in custom and in creed,
          Waking its love or wrath.
Tyrants, that blench not on the battle-plain,
Quail at your silent coming, and in vain
          Would bind the riven chain.

          Shrines, that embalm great souls!
Where yet the illustrious dead high converse hold,
As gods spake through their oracles of old;
          Upon your mystic scrolls,
There lives a spell to guide our destiny;
The fire by night, the pillared cloud by day,
          Upon our upward way.