of Ralph Waldo Emerson, hopeful of all good things; and again the strong, decisive profile of Bancroft in the attitude of an attentive listener. This picture of representative writers in America, in history, philosophy, romance, and poetry, was also enriched by Bryant's noble head, Hawthorne's dreamy face, H. T. Tuckerman's scholarly look, and Willis, the Count d'Orsay of the literary college, jotting down his impressions.
This picture was drawn, I think, for the Knickerbocker Magazine. I would give a great deal for a copy of it, for I have lost the impression which I owed to the kindness of Lewis Gaylord Clark, then editor of the Knickerbocker Magazine, to whom I had taken a story called The Man in Armor — a story which grew out of my West Indian experience. I have the poor little dusty thing beside me now; but this accidental connection with that magazine led to the delightful privilege of knowing many of the writers, and to my admittance to the literary circle of Miss Anna C. Lynch, an American Rahel,[1] our first authoress to hold a salon, my friend for the rest of her life. It was a most agreeable circle. If there is anything so good now in New York I do not know it. Mrs. Botta, after her marriage — for Miss Lynch married the Italian physicist Botta early in the fifties — continued to be the Rahel, as I have said, of New York until her death. At her literary reunions I have met not only many of these most agreeable literary men and women of our own country, but the historians, authors, and artists of England, France, and Italy. Such a grand phalanx as would often gather in a single evening! — Christine Nilsson, Salvini, Ristori, Anthony Trollope,
- ↑ Rahel was the wife of Varnhagen von Ense, and the Queen of the German salon.
