His school days in the States over, Edgar Saltus went abroad with his
mother for an indefinite time. Europe became their headquarters during what
must have been the most constructively interesting part of his early life.
Heidelberg, Munich, the Sorbonne, and an elderly professor supplementing
certain studies did their best for him. At an age when the world seemed his
for the taking, with brilliant mind, unusual physical attractiveness, the
ability to charm without effort, and sufficient means, his path was if
anything too rosy.
The pampered only child of an adoring mother, he had only to express a wish
to have it gratified. He became selfish and self-centered as the result.
His motto was "Carpe diem," and he carefully contrived to live down to it.
During a summer in Switzerland without his mother Mr. Saltus met a charming
young girl of semi-royal birth, whom we will call Marie C----, and eloped
with her. Her furious family followed, overtaking them in Venice. As she
was unable, because of her exalted station, to be married by a priest
without credentials and permission, the ceremony had been omitted for the
moment. That complicated matters. Marie was whisked off to a convent,
where, the year following, she died. As usual the woman paid. Meanwhile, a
young and charming Venetian countess did her best to console the explorer
in hearts.
On the heels of this episode came his mother. Funds were stopped, and to
the chagrin of the countess who had braved disgrace, her charmer was taken
back to Heidelberg.
With an insight and interest almost paternal, the old professor who had
tutored him at times gave Mr. Saltus a lesson he never forgot. Realizing as
he must have that the youth had a quality of fascination seldom
encountered, a quality likely to lead to his early ruin if not
circumscribed, he assigned himself the job. Taking him to an exhibit where
wax figures representing parts of the human body in different stages of
disease were set up for a clinic, he let it do its work.
Illness, ugliness, unsightliness of any kind, had a horror for Mr. Saltus.
It was an intrinsic part of his inner essence. That exhibit nearly did for
him. It made him ill for a week,--the most profitable illness he ever had
in his life. Never in his wildest and least responsible moments did he have
an affair with any woman other than of his own class.
A student of the classics, with Flaubert sitting on the lotus leaf of
perfection before his eyes, it soon became the desire of his heart to meet
some of the great ones of letters. Even then the young Edgar was trying his
hand at it.
Through the friendship of Stuart Merrill, a young American poet living in
Paris, he had the supreme bliss of being presented to Victor Hugo. The
anticipation of it alone made him tremble. It was to him like meeting the
Dalai Lama in person. Reverently he approached the great one repeating, as
he did so, the Byzantine formula, "May I speak and live?"
The magnificent one condescended to permit it. From a great chair which
resembled a shrine and in which he looked like an old idol, he deigned to
speak to his admirer. Mr. Saltus left his presence with winged feet.
The author of "Poemes Antiques," Leconte de Lisle, was another to whom the
youthful aspirant was on his knees. Through Stuart Merrill again he was
admitted to Olympus.
"You are a church. You have your worshipers," he told the poet. Leconte de
Lisle listened, or pretended to listen, with indifference. That attitude of
his appealed as much to Mr. Saltus as his poems. It was the way genius
should act, he reflected.
Another meteor crossing his orbit was Verlaine. It was at the Cafe Francois
Premier that they met. Shabby, dirty, and a little drunk, he talked
delightfully as only poets and madmen can. He talked of his "prisons" and
of his "charity hospitals," quite unaffectedly and as a landed proprietor
speaks of his estates. One of these Edgar Saltus visited. It was an
enclosure at the back of a shop in a blind alley, where he had a cot that
stood not on the floor, for there was no floor, but on the earth.
Of Oscar Wilde and Owen Meredith, he had at that time only a peep in
passing. His particular chums were the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Francis
Hope. Among the interesting personalities with whom he became friends was
the Baron Harden Hickey. In what way he became a Baron was never elucidated
to Mr. Saltus' satisfaction. Poet, scholar, and crack duelist, his sword
was as mighty as his pen. At my hand is a book of his called "Euthanasia,"
and inscribed in his writing are the words:
To
Edgar Saltus............................the unique,
From his extravagant admirer
H. H.
Harden Hickey had ambitions. One of them was to found a monarchy at
Trinidad and rule there. He was nothing if not original. The post of Poet
Laureate he offered to Edgar Saltus. Owing to the intervention of the
Powers, the project failed. Harden Hickey killed himself. Such friends in
any event were not commonplace.
Deciding at last that he must have some kind of an occupation, his mother
having on his account drawn liberally from her principal, Mr. Saltus
decided to return to the United States. Once there he entered Columbia Law
School. Terse, clear, and versatile with his pen, the law seemed more or
less to beckon. Plead he could not; owing to his acute nervousness and his
slight hesitancy of speech that was out of the question. The uninteresting
but necessary technical side of the law could alone be his. In some
climates and altitudes Mr. Saltus' speech became almost a stammer. In
others it vanished. Never was it unpleasant, and many thought it rather
fascinating. People affected him in this way. Most of them got on his
nerves, and the peculiar hesitancy followed, while with those to whom he
was accustomed, he could talk for hours without a trace of it. Even as a
youth his disinclination to meet people, his horror of crowds, and his
desire to be alone a great deal were becoming marked characteristics. So
also was the quality he had developed as a child, the increasing inability
to face a disagreeable issue.
During his life in Germany, Schopenhauer had been his daily food. From his
angle religions were superstitions for the ignorant and credulous. They
offered nothing. With Schopenhauer came Spinoza. Between them the Columbia
student became saturated like a sponge.
At intervals Mr. Saltus had tried his hand at verse as well as prose. A
sonnet written in Venice and published afterward under the title of
"History" was among his first. Timidly, almost apologetically, he took it
to his brother Frank.
"Splendid! Better than anything I ever did," was the unexpected praise. "I
write more easily, but it is too much fag for me to polish my work. You
are slower, but you scintillate. Go in for letters. It is your place in the
scheme of things."
Thus encouraged, and by the brother who was the flame of the family, Edgar
Saltus took up his pencil in earnest. Fundamentally, both Edgar and Frank
Saltus were alike. They seemed to be oriental souls functioning for a life
in occidental bodies, and the clothes pinched. Neither could endure
routine, nor could they tolerate the prescribed and circumscribed existence
of the western world. It was difficult to internalize in an environment
both objective and external. They were subtle, indolent, exotic, living in
worlds of their own, as far removed from those with whom they brushed
elbows as is the fourth dimension.
Frank let himself go the way of least resistance, without effort or desire
to fit in with his environment. Having traveled everywhere, and exhausted
to its limit every emotion and experience, bored to tears with the world
outside of his imagination and finally even with that within, he
stimulated what remained with alcohol and drugs. As the mood took him he
composed, tossing off sonnets and serenades like champagne, carelessly and
without effort, a Titan with the indifference of a pigmy. What he might
have been, had he forced his furtive and fertile fancy to grapple with the
tedium of sandpaper and polish, only an extension of consciousness could
reveal.
Writing of him in those days James Huneker said:
"He had the look of a Greek god gone to ruin. He was fond of absinthe and I
never saw him without a cigarette in his mouth. He carved sonnets out of
solid wood and compiled epigrams for Town Topics as a pastime. He composed
feuilletons that would have made the fortune of a boulevardier. He was a
ruin, but he was a gentleman. Edgar Saltus was handsome in a different way,
dark, petit maitre."
Of Frank Saltus' multiple love affairs one alone cut deep enough to leave
an imprint. Under the title "To Marie B--," he wrote one of his best
poems.
Curiously enough, the name Marie had been that of Edgar's first and
unfortunate love. So convinced was he that no one with that name could
survive close association with a Saltus, that from the first hour of our
acquaintance he refused to call me by it, using a contraction I had lisped
as an infant in trying to pronounce Marie, Mowgy. It was the last word he
spoke on earth.
The son of a brilliant father and brother of a genius, Edgar Saltus was
made conscious of his supposed inferiority by the world at large. To his
mother, in spite of her indulgent idolatry of him, must be given the credit
that he, too, did not sink into an apathy and dream his life away. The
worst side of his brother's character was held always before him, as well
as his inability to earn anything with all his talents, and the fact that
he, Edgar, was an Evertson as well as a Saltus was used effectively. As far
as she could she fought the soft, sensual streak in his nature, the
oriental under its mask. Too late to grapple with his fixed habit of
avoiding the ugly, unpleasant, and the irksome, she hammered in the lesson
of dissipated talents and a wasted life. So well was this done that Edgar
Saltus, to use his own words, "By the grace of God and absent-minded
professors," managed to take his degree as a Doctor of Law.
With that in one pocket and a sonnet in the other, he cut loose to have a
little fling before starting in for a career at the bar. That career never
materialized.
With a mother always a part of the upper ten, he was soon submerged by
balls, receptions, and festivities. His ability to fraternize being limited
and superficial and the necessity for a great deal of solitude fundamental,
it was not long before the desire to express himself with his pen
reasserted itself, and a number of sonnets was the result. Few knew
anything of the hours he put in pruning, polishing, and sandpapering them.
Albert Edwin Shroeder, a friend reaching back to the Heidelberg days, knew
the most, but even with him Edgar Saltus was reticent about his work. It
may be mentioned in passing that Shroeder was an intimate friend of Frank
Saltus, as well. His admiration for the brothers expressed itself in many
ways. Among Mr. Saltus' effects are letters from him and some books. On the
fly-leaf of one is written, "To the Master from his servant A. Shroeder."
On another, "To the unique, from one who admires him uniquely." This
friendship lasted until Mr. Shroeder's death.
Other intimate friends were Clarence and Walter Andrews. Of his escapades
with them Mr. Saltus was never weary of telling, the tendrils of their
friendship being long and strong. Of those who knew him in these halcyon
days Walter Andrews alone survives. Sitting at my side, as he very
graciously offered to do, he drove with Mr. Saltus' only child, his
daughter, Mrs. J. Theus Munds, and myself, to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and
saw the ashes of his oldest friend returned to the earth.
Not fitted by nature for the cut and dried, the literal and the precise,
longing more and more to express himself in writing, he let the law linger.
Having already several stories to his credit, the possibility of making
letters his profession appealed strongly to Mr. Saltus. Money in itself
meant nothing to him. It went through his hands as through a sieve. To be
free from rules and routine, free to express himself, that alone mattered,
and that, despite the inroads made into their capital, he could do.
Law books were consigned to the trash baskets. Paper and pencils took their
place, and it was not long before the results took on a golden hue.
At that epoch, his star rising to the ascendent and Fame flitting before
him as a will-o'-the-wisp urging him on, he met one of New York's most
beautiful young matrons--Mme. C----. An American herself of old
Knickerbocker stock, married to a nobleman, she represented youth, beauty,
charm, and position, added to which she had a brilliant mind.
A serious love affair resulted. Vainly did Mrs. Saltus urge her son to
marry and settle down. Vainly did the family of Mme. C----warn her of
possible perils ahead. So handsome in those days that the papers referred
to him as the "Pocket Apollo," so popular that girls fought for his favor,
Mr. Saltus had a triumphal sail through a social sea as heady as champagne.
From his own account and a diary of Mme. C----'s found after his death, the
affair must have cut deep. Quoting from it one reads:
"Edgar called to-day. There is no one like him in the world. He is the
unique. I adore him to madness."
Again one reads:
"Edgar is the center of my being. Never can I cease to love him. That is
certain. But should he ever cease to love me--? It is unthinkable. I cannot
contemplate it--and live."
Once again:
"They tell me that this cannot go on. I have children. Oh, my God! Can I
tear him out of my heart--and live?"
There is no doubt whatever but that the devotion was very sincere on both
sides. It ended, nevertheless, owing no doubt to the fine qualities of Mme.
C----, who, putting the happiness of others before her own, went abroad and
lost herself there for a time.
Proud, arrogant, accustomed to having his own way at any cost, selfish and
self-centered as the result of his indulgent childhood, during which he had
never exercised the least self-control, it was a new experience to Edgar
Saltus. Taking what he wanted when he wanted it and because he wanted it,
without the least thought of others, save perhaps his mother, he had built
up on his weaknesses, in ignorance of, and not recognizing, his strength.
The affair of Mme. C---- hurt.
Little wonder it was that when a pretty and petite blonde girl swam into
the maelstrom of his environment, he made a grab for her. Pert and
piquant, her face upturned in the waltz, he whispered the lines beginning:
"Helen, thy beauty is to me" ... following it up as only he could. In
addition to her own attractiveness, Helen Read had a father who was a
partner of J. Pierpont Morgan. She was no small catch, and there were many
out with fishing tackle and bait.
On the surface it looked like an ideal match. All the gifts of the gods
were divided between them. Besides, every one approved of it. That in
itself should have warned them of disaster.
The year 1883 turned a new page, Edgar Saltus breaking into matrimony and
into print almost simultaneously. Houghton, Mifflin and Company having
agreed to bring out his translation of Balzac, the horizon opened like a
fan. The microbe of ink having entered into his blood, he conceived the
idea of putting Schopenhauer and Spinoza before the public in condensed and
epigrammatic form. To their philosophy he determined to add his own. "The
Philosophy of Disenchantment" and "The Anatomy of Negation" began brewing
in the caldron of his mind.
A note-book in which is condensed material for writing these books is
perhaps the most interesting bit of intimate work Mr. Saltus left behind
him, revealing as it does an Edgar Saltus unknown and unsuspected by the
world. In it is no man giving out savories and souffles with both hands,
taking the world as a jest, a game, and an amusement. It reveals the
serious and sober student, hiding behind a mask of smiles, subtleties, and
cynicism; the soul of a seeker, a soul very like that of his brother Frank.
So out of tune was it with its environment, so little understood, and so
little expecting to be, that wrapping itself in a mantle of impenetrability
and adjusting its mask, no one knew what existed behind it.
The note-book itself is most characteristic of Mr. Saltus. In it are
sonnets many of which have been published,--notes for his work,--drafts of
letters he expected to write,--quotations from various sources and
epigrams of his own and others jumbled together. Some of these are written
with his almost copper-plate precision, and the rest jotted down late at
night, perhaps after he had dined and wined well. These are mere scratches,
which only one familiar with his hand could decipher.
Youth flames from a leaf on which he has written:
Edgar Saltus.
A.M., Ph. D., K.S.K., etc., etc., etc.
The pomposity of this amused him very much during his later years. The
following quotations reveal what has been referred to as his oriental soul
floundering in the dark, seeking expression in a language new to his
tongue. Taken at random a few of the quotations are as follows:
"There are verses in the Vedas which when repeated are said to charm the
birds and beasts."
"All that we are is the result of what we have thought."
"Having pervaded the Universe with a fragment of Myself,--I remain."
"Near to renunciation,--_very near_,--dwelleth eternal peace."
As material for a book on agnosticism it is amusing,--his agnosticism being
in reality only his inability to accept creed-bound faiths. The quotations
are proof, however, that germinal somewhere was an aspiration for the
verities of things. Unable to find them, the ego drew in upon itself,
closing the door. Behind that door however it was watching and waiting with
a wistful yearning. Years later, after reading one stanza from the Book of
Dzyan, it flung open the door and emerged, to bathe in the sunlight it had
been seeking so long.
At the bottom of the page of quotations from the Gita is a footnote: "True
perhaps but utterly unintelligible to the rabble."
It was not long after his marriage that turning a corner he saw Fame
flitting ahead of him, smiling over her shoulder. The newspapers began to
quote his witticisms, as for example:
Hostess--"Mr. Saltus, what character in fiction do you admire most?"
Saltus--"God."
His books, considered outrageous to a degree, began to sell like hot cakes.
To quote again from a newspaper clipping of that day:
Depraved Customer--"Do you sell the books of Edgar Saltus?"
Virtuous Bookseller--"Sir, I keep Guy de Maupassant's, The Heptameron, and
Zola's, but Saltus--never."
Edgar Saltus was made.