Very often Edgar Allan Poe attended the Lynch receptions, taking with him his delicate wife, who seemed to get better for the moment when she saw her husband the centre of a notable gathering. For even here Poe had quite a following of his own. It was on one of these evenings that he gave it as his opinion that The Sinless Child was one of the strongest long poems ever produced in America. This poem was just then making a great stir and on this special evening had been the subject of much discussion. The author was present, as she usually was where writers congregated, for the beautiful and witty Elizabeth Oakes Smith carried enthusiasm and inspiration wherever she went. She found time to form part of many a circle, even though her days were well filled, for she assisted her husband, "Major Jack Downing," in his editorial work. For many a year before she finally retired to Hollywood, South Carolina, she held her place as the first and only woman lecturer in America.
1. W.D. HOWELLS.
2. J.G. HOLLAND.
3. RICHARD GRANT WHITE.
4. BRANDER MATTHEWS.
5. WILLIAM WINTER.
From an engraving of the picture by J.H. Marble; courtesy of Mr. W.E. Benjamin.
Another dear friend of Poe's might usually be found at these receptions. "Estella" Lewis, the poet, lived in Brooklyn and held there quite a court of clever people. The time came when she was, indeed, a friend in need to Poe in his time of dire necessity at Fordham. It was at her Brooklyn home that he read The Raven before it was published, and Estella Lewis was the last friend he visited before he left New York on the journey south which ended in his death.
On the "Poe nights," too, Ann S. Stephens was usually to be found at Miss Lynch's. She became a much-read novelist, writing Fashion and Famine and Mary Derwent. On these nights, too, might be seen Margaret Fuller, the transcendentalist. She had left her Massachusetts home to take her place with Horace Greeley as literary editor of the Tribune, and between whiles devoted herself to charitable work in an effort to better the social condition of the poor of the metropolis. During most of her stay she lived in a locality much changed since her time, near where Forty-ninth Street touches the East River. A picturesque spot it was, overlooking the green stretches of Blackwell's Island, in the midst of suburban life. Her stay in New York was short. After a year or so she went to Europe and in Italy married the Marquis Ossoli. She was on her way back to America, in 1850, a passenger in the merchantman Elizabeth, when the ship was wrecked off Fire Island and she perished with it.
To this group of writers also belongs Frances Sargent Osgood. While, somewhere about the year 1846, the country was ringing with her praise, she was living the secluded life of an invalid, with her husband, in what was then becoming a fashionable neighborhood, 18 East Fourteenth Street. Once, in 1845, she had met Poe, had been instantly attracted by him, and became thereafter his staunch admirer, expressing her opinion persistently whenever opportunity offered. He, on his part, appreciated her poetic genius, and more than once referred to the scrupulous taste, faultless style, and magical grace of her verse. And several of his poems are addressed directly to her.
There was a young man named Richard Henry Stoddard who frequented the Lynch receptions. He had worked for six years in a foundry learning the trade of iron moulder, and writing poetry as he worked. By the year 1848 he was beginning to make a name for himself, and his first volume of poems, Footnotes, had just been published. At Miss Lynch's house he met Miss Elizabeth Barstow, herself a poet, and some time later visited her at her home in Mattapoisett. This led to their marriage. Early in the year of his meeting with Miss Barstow, Stoddard made the acquaintance of Bayard Taylor. Taylor had already travelled on foot over Europe, had crystallized the results of these travels in Views Afoot, and was then working under Greeley on the Tribune, as one of the several editors. Side by side with him worked that pure-hearted and thoughtful man who had been the instigator and supporter of the Brook Farm experiment, George Ripley, who wrote the Tribune's book criticisms.
Views Afoot was the most popular book of the day when Stoddard walked into the Tribune office and introduced himself to the author, finding him very hard at work in a little pen of a room. This was the start of a friendship which lasted for thirty years, and was only broken in upon by death.