To go back a little. It was shortly after his marriage to Helen Read that
the conventional trip to Europe followed. Added to the selfishness which
the circumstances of his life had fostered abundantly, Edgar Saltus had a
number of odd and well developed twists. Illness in any form was abhorrent
to him, contact with it unthinkable, and even to hear about it
objectionable. When his young wife suffered from neuralgia--a thing which
not infrequently happened--he put on his hat and walked out. The idea of
schooling himself to bear anything he disliked was as foreign as Choctaw.
High-tempered, moody, impatient to a degree seldom encountered, and with
the preconceived idea that he was entirely right in everything, he set sail
on the matrimonial sea. Two episodes will make clear why the shoals were
encountered so soon. Realizing then how oblique had been his angle, the
story of his life must be thrown forward, as they say in filmdom, to 1912
and then back again to the earlier episode.
We were traveling in a _wagon-lit_ from Germany to Paris. After he had
tucked me in for the night I noticed that Mr. Saltus had removed only his
coat and his shoes, and was going to bed practically clothed. That alone
made me take notice. We had not been married long at the time, but I was
acquainted with his habits. Better than any human I ever knew, he loved to
be _en negligee_. He could slide out of his clothes and into a
dressing-gown like an eel.
This extraordinary behavior was further emphasized when, in spite of his
hatred of speaking to people, servants especially, I heard him whispering
at the door to the guard. At such radical conduct, I asked what it was all
about. His reluctance to answer made me even more insistent. With his
cleverness at evasions and his agility at inventing explanations off the
bat, he put me aside with the suggestion that he had asked for more
covering. Knowing his ways and his wiles backward and forward, I laughed.
Explain he must. Then he said that we would be crossing the frontier in the
early hours of the morning, and, as it would be necessary for him to get
out and open our luggage for inspection, he had remained dressed. Realizing
that it was difficult for me to sleep under any conditions, and fearful
lest I be annoyed by it, he had told the man not to knock, but to come in
quietly and touch him instead. It was consideration for me, nothing else.
The explanation apparently covered everything. Drawing up his blankets he
said, "Good-night."
Instead, however, of the usual deep breathing to follow, presently I heard
him laughing, laughing heartily, and trying to suppress it. When questioned
he could only say:
"If Helen could see me now! Good Lord!"
When he had repeated it three or four times, I sat up and told him he could
tell the worst. This is what he said:
"When Helen and I were traveling this same route and we realized that the
frontier meant getting up in the night and the horrors of the customs, I
suggested that she be a sport, and toss up a coin to see which of us should
take on the job."
"Horrors!" I interjected. "How could you even think of such a thing?"
"How could I? There you have it. How could I? I did, all the same. We were
both young and healthy. I didn't see why my sex should be penalized. We
threw, and it fell to her."
Another "Horrors" came from the opposite bed. "But of course you did not
let her when it came to the scratch? You remembered that you were supposed
to take care of her?"
"What I remember only too well is that I did let her do it. She spoke
French beautifully and she did it quite uncomplainingly. What a brute I
was! I cannot believe that I was ever that sort of being."
"Suppose we toss up now?" I suggested.
Mr. Saltus laughed. "You! Why, little Puss, I would sit up all night with
joy, rather than have you wakened. You go out and attend to the customs!"
He laughed again. "If Helen could see me now! What a hell of a life I must
have led her!"
The other episode occurred during the last years of his life, when we were
living in the apartments where Mr. Saltus died. His bed-room and study were
at the end of a long hall, removed from the noise of the front door, the
elevator, and the telephone, where he could work in quiet.
Uninterrupted quiet was a vital essential to him. Distractions of any kind,
no matter how well meant or accidental, sent him into hysterics and ended
his work for the day, and he begged me never to speak to him unless the
house was on fire. Sometimes through carelessness I did interrupt him as he
went from his study to his bed-room, asking him a question or telling him
of something which had occurred, but when working in his study he was left
in peace.
One morning, however (it was while he was writing on "The Imperial Orgy"),
something happened which at the moment seemed so vital, that, impulsively
and without realizing what the effect would be, I burst into his study
without warning and started to tell him.
The effect on him was of such a nature that the errand was forgotten. With
a yell like that of a maniac, Mr. Saltus grabbed his hair, pulling it out
where it would give way. Still screaming, he batted his head against the
walls and the furniture; and finally giving way utterly, he got down and
hit his head on the floor.
None of it was directed against me--the offender, yet no woman could have
been blamed for running out of the house. Ten minutes later, when he had
been put to bed like a small boy, given a warm drink, and had an electric
pad applied to his solar plexus, his one request was that I sit beside him
and read extracts from the "Gita."
His action was pitiful, tragic.
"Poor child! No one but yourself could understand and put up with such a
demon," he said. "I should be taken to the lethal chamber and put out of
the way. And yet I could not help it."
The realization that he, an old man then, a student of Theosophy, the first
precept of which is self-restraint, could have given way as he had, hurt
him cruelly. Understanding and sympathy brought him to himself rapidly.
Otherwise he would have been ill.
Mr. Saltus was an unconscious psychic. With those he loved he needed no
explanation of anything. He understood even to the extent of answering
one's unspoken thoughts many times. So psychic was he, that his
disinclination to be in crowds or meet many people came from the fact that
they devitalized him, leaving him limp as a rag. When writing a book, as he
himself often expressed it, he was in a state of "high hallucinatory
fever," giving out of his ectoplasm very much as a materializing medium
gives it out in a seance, to build up a temporary body for the spirit.
It is a well-known scientific fact that any interruption during the process
of materialization causes repercussion on the body of the medium, the
velocity being such that illness, if not insanity, may result.
While creating a book, Mr. Saltus was in very much the same condition, the
finer forces of his etheric body being semi-detached from the physical. He
could not help it any more than he could help the color of his eyes.
Lacking discipline and self-control from his youth, he could not, after his
formative years, coordinate his forces so as to grapple with this
limitation effectively.
During an interval of reading the "Gita" on this occasion he told me the
following:
"In the early days when I was first married to Helen Read, I was writing on
a novel. She had no idea how interruptions affected me--nor did I realize
myself how acute anything of the kind could become. I was in the middle of
an intricate plot. Helen, who out of the kindness of her heart was bringing
me a present, opened the door of my study and came in more quietly than you
did. Before she could open her mouth to say a word, I began to scream and
pull at my hair. Rushing to an open window I tore the manuscript, on which
I had been working so long, into fragments and threw them into the street.
Whether she thought I had gone suddenly insane and intended to kill her,
she did not stop to say. When I looked around she had fled."
For a girl reared in an atmosphere of conventional respectability, as they
were in those days, it must have been an insight into bedlam. Once again he
made the remark:
"If Helen could see me now, I would seem natural to her. My next life is
apt to be a busy one, paying my debts to her and to others."
In view of all this, and of the flirtations he kept up on every side, she
must have had a tolerance and a patience seldom encountered.
After Balzac and "The Philosophy of Disenchantment" and "The Anatomy of
Negation" were off the press, novel after novel fell from his pen, and the
newspaper articles quoted previously were appearing. In "A Transaction in
Hearts" Mr. Saltus put some of his own experiences, but so changed that the
public could not connect him with the plot. His literary bark was launched
and under full sail. He could touch the garment of Fame, and the texture
was soft and satisfying.
One of his novels was dedicated to E--R, his mother-in-law Emmaline Read.
Another to V. A. B. was to his friend Valentine (or Vally) Blacque. E--W
was to Miss Edith son, who later in life became the wife of Mr. Francis H.
Wellman, a genius in his own field. Shroeder and Lorillard Ronalds were
remembered as well.
During a summer abroad Mr. Saltus conceived the idea of writing "Mary
Magdalen." The circumstances connected with it are interesting. He was
dining in the rooms of Lord Francis Hope one evening. Oscar Wilde was
another guest. After their liqueurs and cigars the latter sauntered about,
looking at some of the pictures he fancied. One representing Salome
intrigued him more than a little. Beckoning to Mr. Saltus, he said:
"This picture calls me. I am going to write a classic--a play--'Salome.' It
will be my masterpiece."
Near it was a small picture of the Magdalen.
"Do so," said Mr. Saltus, "and I will write a book--'Mary Magdalen.' We
will pursue the wantons together."
Acting on the impulse, Mr. Saltus took rooms in Margaret Street, Cavendish
Square, where, within walking distance of the British Museum, he could
study his background for the story.
Mornings spent in research, afternoons in writing, with a bite of dinner at
Pagani's in Great Portland Street, made up his days. There were
interruptions, to be sure. One of them was a girl named Maudie, who lived
somewhere in Peckham. She joined him now and again at dinner. Asked to
describe her, he said he had forgotten even her last name, but remembered
that he had written of her, "She had the disposition of a sun-dial." This
may have assisted to keep him in a good humor.
Many years later Mr. Saltus took me to see the rooms he had occupied during
this time, with their queer old open fireplace, great four-poster bed,
canopied on all sides, and the old desk at which he had spent so many happy
hours. Working hours were happy hours to him, always. He had a sentiment
for the place, and once when I was in London alone I stopped there, taking
his old rooms for a time, and visiting the landmarks associated with that
part of his life. That I should do this touched him profoundly.
During the writing of "Mary Magdalen" he met many interesting people. Among
them was Owen Meredith, then British Ambassador to France. In connection
with him a rather amusing incident occurred. Dining one evening at the
home of Lady B----, Mr. Saltus was vis-a-vis with Owen Meredith. In the
course of the dinner the hostess gave the poet a novel, and asked him to
translate an epigram on the fly-leaf which was written in Greek.
Looking at it he said:
"My eyes are not what they once were. Give it to our young friend here,"
meaning Mr. Saltus.
The passage that had stumped him stumped Mr. Saltus as well, but he refused
to be caught. Glancing at it, he exclaimed:
"It is not fit to be translated in Lady B----'s presence."
At that both the rogues laughed.
In a monograph called "Parnassians Personally Encountered," Mr. Saltus
tells of this episode, as also of his meeting with other celebrities of the
day. Of Oscar Wilde he saw a great deal. The rapid-firing battery of his
wit, his epigrams, which gushing up as a geyser confused and astounded the
crowd, enchanted him. At the then popular Cafe Royal in Regent Street,
Wilde and himself, with a few congenial men, spent many an evening.
There was much in the mental companionship of Mr. Saltus and Wilde which
sharpened and stimulated each, making their conversation a battle-ground of
aphorisms and epigrams. According to Mr. Saltus, in spite of his abnormal
life, Wilde's conversation, barring its brilliancy, was as respectable and
conventional as that of a greengrocer. Neglecting to laugh at a doubtful
joke tossed off by one of his admirers, he was asked somewhat sarcastically
if he were shocked.
"I have lost the ability to be shocked, but not the ability to be bored,"
was the reply.
Vulgarity sickened him. Vice had to be perfumed, pagan, and private to
intrigue him. His conversation was immaculate. Many incidents concerning
Wilde are given in Mr. Saltus' monograph, "Oscar Wilde--An Idler's
Impressions." They give a new slant on his many-sided personality. One
episode is especially illuminating.
With Mr. Saltus, Wilde was driving to his home in Chelsea on a bleak and
bitter night. Upon alighting a man came up to them. He wore a short jacket
which he opened. From neck to waist he was bare. At the sight Mr. Saltus
gave him a gold piece, but Wilde, with entire simplicity, took off his own
coat and put it about the man. It was a lesson Mr. Saltus never forgot.