The next vital experience in Mr. Saltus' life was his divorce from Helen
Read. Hopelessly unsuited to be the husband of any woman who expected to
find a normal, conventional and altogether rational being, his marriage
with her was doomed to failure from the first.
From his rooms on Fifth Avenue, at a large Italian table of carved olive
wood (the same table on which I am writing these lines), he turned out
novels like flapjacks, entertaining his acquaintances in the intervals.
Among the friends of the first Mrs. Saltus was a girl belonging to one of
the oldest and best families in the country. Spanish in colouring, high
bred in features, a champion at sports and a belle at the balls, she was
sufficiently attractive to arrest the attention of a connoisseur. Owing to
her friendship with his wife, she saw a great deal of Mr. Saltus also.
Their acquaintance, however, had begun many years before, when as a youth
in Germany he had met the girl and her family. Too young at that time to
think of marriage they had been semi-sweethearts.
It was only to be expected, then, that his side of the story was put
forward with all the cleverness of a master of his craft, and what man, no
matter how much in the wrong, does not consider himself much abused? In
this case, he gained not only a sympathetic listener, but an ally.
Tea in his rooms perhaps,--a luncheon in some quiet and secluded restaurant
to talk it over, and tongues began to wag. That wagging was more easily
started than stopped. It gained momentum. Before it reached its height,
Mrs. Saltus brought an action for divorce, naming her one-time friend as
one of the co-respondents. Willing to agree to the divorce, provided the
name of the girl was omitted, Mr. Saltus struck the first opposition of his
life. Bitter over her friend's "taking ways",--forgetting perhaps that
even in court circles the American habit of souvenir hunting had become the
fashion,--she may have thought a husband superior to a bit of stone from an
historic ruin, or a piece of silver from a sanctuary. Possibly in those
days they were.
Many years later, when asked by Mr. Saltus as a joke, what I would do, in
case some woman lured him from our fireside, I read him the account of a
Denver woman, who, hearing that her husband was about to elope with his
typist, appeared at the office. She was on the lookout for bargains. Facing
the offenders she agreed to let them go in peace with her blessing, if the
typist would promise to provide her with a new hat. Hats were scarce and
expensive. Husbands, cheap and plentiful, were not much in exchange.
Commenting on it the paper said, "The woman who got the hat, was in luck."
This episode and the newspaper article about it occurring many years later,
there was nothing to suggest the idea to the first incumbent. Besides,
being the daughter of a many times millionaire, she was probably well
supplied with hats.
At this time, Edgar Saltus was at the height of his fame. The newspapers
reeked with the scandal. There were editions after editions in which his
name appeared in large type. To protect the name of the alleged
co-respondent Mr. Saltus fought tooth and nail. However much he had been at
fault in his treatment of Helen Read, his intentions now were to be
chivalrous in the extreme, to protect the girl who had been dragged into
such a maelstrom.
Every witticism he had sent out was used against him. His amusing reply
"God", spoken of previously, became a boomerang. Having once been asked
what books had helped him most, he replied "My own." From that joke a
colossus of conceit arose.
The history of that suit was so written up and down and then rewritten, as
to be boring in the extreme. After a great deal of delay, of mud-throwing,
and heart-breaking, the name of her one-time friend having been withdrawn,
and all suggestion of indiscretion retracted, a divorce was given to Helen
Read. She was a free woman again,--free to forget, if she could, the hectic
experience of marriage with a man fundamentally different from those who
had entered her life.
After the divorce Mr. Saltus threw himself into his work. "Mme. Sapphira"
was the immediate result. Aimed at his first wife, in an attempt to
vindicate himself,--with a thin plot, and written as it was with a purpose,
it not only failed to interest, but reacted rather unpleasantly upon
himself. His object in writing it was too obvious.
It was his custom in those days to begin writing immediately after his
coffee in the morning. That alone constituted his breakfast,--a pot of
coffee and a large pitcher of milk, with a roll or two or a few thin slices
of toast. Cream and sugar he detested. Accustomed to this breakfast during
his life abroad, it was a habit he never changed. The same breakfast in
the same proportions, was served to him until his last day.
Writing continuously until about two p. m., he would stop for a bite, and
then go at it again until four. Hating routine and regularity above all
things, his copy alone was excepted. It was his habit to write a book in
the rough, jotting down the main facts and the dialogue. The next writing
put it into readable form, and on this second he always worked the hardest,
transforming sentences into graceful transitions,--interjecting epigrams,
witticisms and clever dialogue, and penetrating the whole with his
personality. The third writing (and he never wrote a book less than three
times) gave it its final coat of varnish. Burnishing the finished product
with untiring skill, it scintillated at last.
Poetry came more easily to him than prose. He had to school himself at
first to avoid falling into it. On his knees before the spirit of Flaubert,
he pruned and polished his work.
At four, it was his custom to go for a walk Never interested in
sports,--walking only because he recognized the necessity for keeping
himself in physical trim, it was Spartan for him to do something he
disliked, and to keep on doing it. Pride kept him on the job. The "Pocket
Apollo" could not let himself go the way of least resistance. Shortly
before this time his brother Frank, who, at the last, had become a physical
wreck, had passed on. Outwardly this appeared to affect Mr. Saltus but
little. In reality it touched the vital center of his hidden self. A
photograph of Frank Saltus on a Shetland pony, against which the child
Edgar was leaning, hung in the latter's room forever after. The likeness
between them is striking. It is the only picture extant of Frank as a
child.
Not long after the divorce, and while he was still much in the limelight,
Mr. Saltus met at a dinner party a married woman,--a Mrs. A----. Well
known, wealthy, once divorced and the heroine of many romances, she took
one look at the "Pocket Apollo", and decided that she had met her fate.
During this time Mr. Saltus had become engaged to Miss Elsie Smith, a
talented, charming and high-bred girl belonging to one of the oldest New
York families, and expecting to marry her the following year, he was not
seeking an affair. Seeking or not the affair followed him, and was the
cause, indirect but unmistakable, of the wrecking of what might have been a
happy life with his second wife. Quoting Mr. Saltus, it began in this way.
The day after the dinner, while serving tea in his rooms to his fiancee, a
knock came at the door. That was unprecedented. No one was better
barricaded against intrusion than he. Not only were lift men and bell boys
well paid, but instructed in a law more drastic than that of the Medes and
Persians. It was to the effect, that the people he wanted to see he would
arrange to have reach him. Others who called,--no matter whom or what their
errand--were to be told that he was in conference with an Archbishop. If
they still persisted, they were to be told that he was dead.
This fancy of his continued throughout life, as attendants in the Arizona
Apartments must well remember. Nothing angered him more than infringement
of these rules. Unless summoned, no servant--no matter what the
occasion--dared to approach him.
By what guile, subterfuge or bribe Mrs. A---- had turned the trick, Mr.
Saltus had forgotten. After repeated knocking he decided to go to the door,
which he did, with hell-fire in his eyes, as his fiancee stepped behind a
portiere.
Determined to throttle the intruder he flung open the door. Cool and fresh
as a gardenia Mrs. A---- walked in. It was an awkward moment. In that
instant he no doubt remembered some of the careless compliments of the
night before. Going up to him, Mrs. A---- looked into his eyes and said:--
"I love you, and I have come to tell you of it. Dine with me tonight."
That was more awkward still. Even his ingenuity was taxed. Kissing her
hand, telling her that she had dragged him from the heroine of a novel so
abruptly that he was not normal, and promising to dine with her that
evening, he bowed her out. No one else could have managed it so cleverly.
The lady of the first part then reappearing he laughed. Telling her that
his promise to Mrs. A---- was the only way of sending her off, he sat down
at once and wrote her a letter, saying that it would be impossible for him
to dine with her after all. This he gave to his fiancee, asking her to send
it by a messenger on her way home.
It was well done. Knowing that his mail was bursting with letters from
love-sick women,--knowing also that no scrap-book, however large, could
hold the letters, locks of hair and photographs, that poured in on him
daily, and accepting it as a part of a literary man's life,--she accepted
this as well. They laughed over the episode and brushed it aside.
As a matter of fact Mr. Saltus played fair. He did not go to dine, but as
soon as he was alone, he sent another note less formal than the first,
asking Mrs. A---- to return the former note unopened, and saying that
though dinner was impossible, he would give himself the pleasure of calling
afterward.
This he did, and it turned the scales of his life. Questioned next day by
his fiancee as to whether or not he had changed his mind and gone to
dinner, he denied it vigorously. After that both ladies were invited for
tea, great care being taken, however, that they should never meet again.
The following summer Mrs. A---- with a party of friends went abroad. Mr.
Saltus joined them, safe in the knowledge that his fiancee was away with
her family, where, being decidedly persona non grata, he could not be
expected to follow. The summer passed and again he joined Mrs. A---- and
her friends in Cuba. Spring saw him in New York again. A year had elapsed,
during which he saw his fiancee occasionally and Mrs. A---- often.
From two letters written by Mrs. A----, which, used as book-marks, were
found between the leaves of an old novel after Mr. Saltus' death, a love
that counted no cost--passionate and paralyzing--oozes from the pages. "How
could I live if you should cease to love me?" was asked again and again.
Cease he did, however. There are those so constituted that they can drift
out of an affair so gradually that it is over without any perceptible
transition. It was that way with Edgar Saltus. Mercurial to a degree,
easily put off by something so slight no one else would have been
susceptible to it, when he was done--he was done. As he himself expressed
it, he could not "relight a burnt-out cigar."
That affair over, he remembered the ring he had given and the girl to whom
he was engaged. In spite of living in a social world poles apart from Mrs.
A----, and in spite of absence and travel, rumors of the affair had
filtered to his fiancee. Straightforward herself, scorning subterfuge as
weakness, she asked him to tell her the truth. With righteous indignation
Mr. Saltus denied it in toto, declaring it was an invention intended to
discredit him in her eyes. It was in this that he made the mistake of his
life.
Talking it over with me years afterward, he admitted that had he told her
the truth, loving him as she did, she would probably in the end have
forgiven him. It was the streak of fear--fear of a moment's unpleasantness,
which he might have faced then and there and surmounted--which was his
undoing. Taking the easiest way for the time being, he reiterated his
denials.
In glancing over the scenario of Edgar Saltus' life, this act, at the
pinnacle of his popularity and fame, may in the region behind effects have
set in motion forces which tore the peplum of popularity from him, and in
spite of his genius pushed him into semi-obscurity at the last.
His denials accepted, and there being no reason for delay, he married Elsie
Smith in Paris in 1895. It should have been a happy marriage, the two
having sufficient in common and neither being in their first youth. Its
rapid failure is therefore all the more pathetic.
Going from Paris to the south of France, the first mishap was that of
breaking his ankle. Unable to stand pain, Mr. Saltus fainted three times
while it was being set. That rather disgusted his wife. This accident led
to their first misunderstanding, when, in answering a telegram from Mrs.
Saltus Sr., news of the accident was excluded. Unwilling to hear anything
of an unpleasant nature himself, Mr. Saltus was equally unwilling to tell
any one he loved of a disagreeable episode. The memory of his early life
and training was at the bottom of this, and from one aspect it was a most
lovable quality.
Asked by Mr. Saltus why she had spoken of the accident, his wife replied
that she had but told the truth. At this Mr. Saltus flew into a rage,
declaring, as he used to put in his copy, "Truth must be pleasant, or else
withheld."
The incident was slight, but that which followed was not so. He being
unable because of his ankle to get about freely, and wanting some
cigarettes from a trunk, Mrs. Saltus volunteered to get them. She got the
shock and surprise of her life as well. Carelessness over his personal
effects was a characteristic of Mr. Saltus'. That carelessness was his
undoing upon this occasion. Beside the cigarettes lay a letter from Mrs.
A----. His wife read it. There and then she knew she had married him as the
result of a fabrication. A scene followed. Furious at his detection, Mr.
Saltus upbraided her for reading a letter not intended for her eyes. It was
the beginning of the end.
In one of Mr. Saltus' note books is the copy of a letter sent to his wife
shortly after the episode:
Elsie:--
To be quite candid with you I cannot be candid. I
cannot write to you as I used to do. I no longer know
what you will keep to yourself, what you will repeat,
nor yet how you will distort my words. The flow of
confidence is checked. An artery has been severed....
If reading has given you any idea of what a battle is,
you will remember that in the excitement of danger men
may be shot and slashed and not notice their wounds
until the fight is at an end.
Not until I got here did I realize what you had done in
telling your mother you had married me under
compulsion. Then I discovered that during the fight
which I had entered single handed for your sake, I had
been shot--shot from behind, shot by you.
There has been a great change in the weather, from
being very hot it has become quite cool. I hope you are
well and enjoying yourself.
As ever,
E. S.
The letter speaks for itself. In the same note book are entries made during
the same time:--
May 3rd, 1896.
Problem:--"Which is harder; for a woman to live under
the same roof with a man whom she detests, or for a man
to live under the same roof with a woman who detests
him?"
"Every day she invents some new way of being
disagreeable."
"Love should have but one punishment for the
wrongdoer,--that is, forgiveness."
"Injuries are writ in iron,--kindnesses scrawled in
sand."
Again November 13th.
"Elsie having told me:--
1. That I can ask nothing of her.
2. That her affairs are no concern of mine.
3. That hereafter she will give no orders for me:
We lead separate lives,--but into my life I open
windows. Against her own she closes doors."
One cannot at this day know or judge the inner ethics of it all. Mr.
Saltus' side only has been poured into my ears. One thing, however, is
certain. Mrs. Saltus, who suffered deeply at his hands, considered herself
more than justified in all that she did.
The fool blames others for the tragedies of life. The sage blames no one.
He knows that everything which happens is but the result of causes beyond
his control. He learns from suffering and defeat. With Epictetus he says
"We should wish things to be as they are."