Returning to the United States with his wife, Edgar Saltus took an
apartment in the Florence in East 18th street, where, on an upper floor,
his mother had lived for some time. Though their relations were strained to
the breaking point, a link held them. Mrs. Saltus expected to become a
mother in the autumn of 1897.
It was at this juncture that Mr. Saltus thought of journalism. His
popularity as a novelist as well as his exchequer had dwindled. This was
directly due to his divorce, the fighting of which had been expensive both
in coin and character. Journalism held out a hand. A literary man should,
he believed, be able to tackle anything with his pen.
The New York Journal, as the American was then called, gave him his first
assignment. It was to go to Sing Sing prison and, seeing a murderer
electrocuted, write it up from his unique angle. That, for a man who could
not hear about a cut finger without shuddering! It might have been a
knock-out the first day. All night he fought with himself. To refuse the
first assignment meant having the door of journalism shut in his face. To
go and faint at the sight, might mean worse.
With characteristic ingenuity he mapped out a plan. "Go to Sing Sing
prison? With pleasure." Imagination being one of his greatest assets, he
sat up all night picturing and then writing the scene, taking a new slant
on it, peppering his copy with witticism and metaphors; and the work was
done. One might suppose he had supped on electrocutions.
Stuffing the copy in his pocket he went,--went to the death house, and in
spite of his trembling legs, went with the officials near the chair itself.
Then he closed his eyes. Next morning his article appeared, the editor
complimenting him; "Edgar Saltus only could have seen so much in so
little," he said.
Thereafter he was launched as a journalist, writing Sunday specials almost
continuously. With this, and with Collier's Weekly, for which he edited a
column called The Note Book, and a history which he was compiling for
Collier's also, Mr. Saltus' working hours were ten out of the twenty-four,
and his output greater than at any time since he had flowered into print.
Working continuously when indoors, taking his meals at the old Everett
House, then on the upper corner of Union Square, he lived in a world of his
own, accepting things as they were.
Writing of him at that time Town Topics said:--
"Time deals gently with Edgar Saltus. In spite of his arduous literary
labours he is the same Edgar he was fifteen years ago. Slick, dark, jaunty.
He has not taken on flesh and preserves the slim youthful shape of years
ago. Tripping up the Avenue a day or two ago in his new straw hat and blue
serge suit it was hard to believe that he was not a summer man of this
year's vintage. How does he do it? Concerning his work a pretty woman once
said to him, 'Mr. Saltus, I never know what construction to put on your
books.' 'Put the worst,' was the author's reply."
The following summers he spent with his mother at Narragansett Pier. Second
only to Newport in that day, it was a most fashionable resort. Smartness
and beauty vied with each other not only in Sherry's Casino but in the
large hotels which no longer exist. The smart set absent from Newport were
to be found at the Pier. Bar Harbor excepted, there was no where else to go
and swim--in the swim.
At this epoch, in addition to his fame as a novelist and journalist, Mr.
Saltus added that of being a Don Juan and a Casanova rolled into one, with
a bit thrown in for good measure. They paled beside the reputation
enveloping him. A whisper followed his footsteps. It was to the effect that
not only had his first wife been glad to escape with her life but that his
second was but waiting the psychological moment to follow suit.
Young girls were warned against being seen with him. Elder women had to be
restrained from flinging themselves in his way. When he appeared in the
Casino, he at once became the center of interest. This was understandable,
for he was startlingly handsome. A few years over forty,--his thick black
hair parted in the center,--his chiselled features emphasized by the tilt
of his head,--his small moustache twisted to a hair,--he gazed upon the
world through eyes of pansy purple, which, while contemptuous, were
saddened by all that he had suppressed in silence. Slight, scrupulously
turned out, a walking stick always in his hand, he stood in relief against
the other men at the Pier--an Olympian in a world of mortals.
A connection of my family,--a childhood playmate of my cousins, and a
companion in youth of my eldest half-brother, Mr. Saltus was hurled into my
life by a huge wave. We were in bathing at the time.
Spending that summer at Narragansett with my brother, happy in the vacation
from school, where I misused the time for practicing music in scribbling, I
imagined myself an embryonic Ouida. In the circumstances a Ouidaesque hero
seemed worth bothering with.
"Here, Edgar,"--my brother caught Mr. Saltus by the arm--"disabuse this kid
of the idea that she can learn to write."
Mr. Saltus turned, but a wave was quicker. It took him like a top, spinning
him around and around, depositing him finally at my feet. He attempted to
rise. The undertow thought otherwise. With his accustomed facetious
flattery, he asked:
"What do I get for lying at the feet of a child?"
"A kick," was the reply, action following the words.
Our introduction was effected. Going up on the beach we sat down on the
sand. It was a brilliant July morning.
"So you think you would like to write, Bambina? Don't. Take fatherly
advice. A woman's sole duty in life is to charm and do nothing. Only old
scoundrels like myself should work. Behold the result."
"You were badly brought up," he was told.
"How would you have tackled the job?" he inquired.
"Taking you down would have suited me much better."
That amused him. He laughed.
"Of course. It is only from babes like you that age learns now-a-days. How
is it that you are the one of your family I meet last?" He hesitated.
"No--not last,--for I seem always to have remembered you. Long ago you
closed a door and left me in darkness. Now you open it again and smile. You
should never do anything but smile,--and yet you have--oh, I don't know
what! You take me back to Rome--back and back through lives and lives--if
such were true."
I hastened to reassure him.
"Such things are true, surely. From the time I was able to think at all, I
remembered many events from former lives. I have no recollection of knowing
you, however."
"But you believe that you lived before? I'll tell you what I have never
mentioned to any one. From an agnostic it would not ring true. If I have
written anything which will live it is 'Imperial Purple.' The reason is
simple. If there is anything in your theory at all, I lived in Rome. I was
an eye-witness of the killing of Caesar. The story of it ran off my pen.
Text books were needless. I wrote as I remembered, and truth penetrates.
Later I tried to write of Greece, and failed. It was mechanical. There was
no subconscious memory to help me. A pretty theory,--that is all. When a
bee dies it ceases to hum."
Joining my brother and myself Mr. Saltus lunched at the Casino. Later in
the afternoon, overtaking us on the road with his bicycle, he joined us
again. So satisfied and overbearing was his exterior, so arrogant his
veneer, that it was with difficulty one could penetrate it and see the
over-indulged and pampered little boy, full of fun and longing to
play,--sympathetic and full of sentiment, hiding the best beneath the
worst,--fearful of being misunderstood,--of being his real self. Coming
face to face with a little girl more pampered and self-willed even than
himself gave him a shock.
That evening, a woman friend of my brother's making a fourth, we were Mr.
Saltus' guests for dinner at the Casino. In those days Sherry's old Casino
was a fairyland of fashion, beauty and smartness. It presented a brilliant
scene at that moment.
In faultless evening clothes, his dark colouring emphasized by the expanse
of shirt front, Mr. Saltus looked what he may have been,--an Oriental,
trying to adapt himself to a foreign environment. He was, on the contrary,
silhouetted against it.
Dinner over, my brother took his friend to watch the dancing. We were
supposed to follow. At Mr. Saltus' suggestion, however, we turned and went
to the upper turret of the Casino. From there we stood and looked down upon
the panorama below. It was an interesting sight. At tables shaded by
immense coloured umbrellas made visible by multiple electric lights, the
murmur of well turned out men, talking to beautiful women, rose like the
hum of bees.
The orchestra, which was unusually fine, muted their violins with the
plaintive strains of the Liebestod. Mr. Saltus could not tell one note from
another, nor could he play on any musical instrument, but he had an ear as
sensitive to the slightest discord as a composer's. The Liebestod spoke a
language he understood. That language was mine also. It spoke even more
clearly to me,--saturated as I had been with Wagner and the various motifs
of his masterpieces since babyhood. Music moved me profoundly.
When he turned at last, it was to see tears in my eyes. He said nothing.
There is that in silence which is more forceful than words. That also was
a language he understood. The orchestra ceased. The hum began again, but
from a far distant ball-room there filtered the faint but unmistakable
notes of "Love's Dream After the Ball." July twilights are long. Still
silent, we watched a sky of coral and jade melt into a night spattered with
stars.
A school girl, with little knowledge of men save that gleaned from Scott
and Ouida, it was no wonder that at his first words I had the surprise of
my life.
In true Ouidaesque style Mr. Saltus took a fold of my gown in his hand,
dropped to his knees, and kissing it said:--
"All my life I have been a rudderless ship seeking harbour. Now I am home.
I come a weary and sinful pilgrim to knock at the portals of paradise."
Indignant in the belief that I was considered too young to be treated as an
equal,--regarding him, in spite of his extreme beauty, as too old to be
thinking seriously about the future, I received his words with a blaze of
anger. A hasty and dignified exit was called for. That, however, was not
easy to make. His back against the gate, Mr. Saltus went on talking. He
said a great deal and he said it well.
Only that morning a woman sitting on the veranda of the hotel where we were
stopping, had entertained the other old women who were knitting, with the
recital of Mr. Saltus' life and his misdeeds. One remark constantly
interjected had amused me:--
"He boasts that every novel he has written has been dug from a woman's
heart."
This I threw at him like a bomb. He took it standing. He had to stand to
control the gate which was the sole exit from the turret. Thereupon, and in
spite of my efforts to go, he told me the story of his life in brief,
pouring it out as rapidly as he could, admitting his mistakes and wrong
doing,--confessing three-fold the iniquities which had been put to his
discredit by the public. Carrying it up to date, he admitted that though he
was under the same roof with his wife, he was not living with her, and
that he wanted to be free to start life over again.
"You are so young, I can almost bring you up," he said.
"Bring me up, indeed!" I exclaimed. "You will dig no experience out of my
heart. The shadow of your personality shall never cloud my life." That
seemed such a fine phrase at the time. Still indignant and fearful of being
considered an ignorant child, I became silent. That was the way a Ouida
heroine should act.
Disregarding both my silence and my resentment, Mr. Saltus went on
talking:--
"I don't like your name. It means sorrow, and every Marie who has
encountered the Saltus family has suffered from it. You shall be the
exception. I will use the name you invented when as a baby you tried to
pronounce it,--Mowgy. That is your name, and being such a pert little puss
I will add that for good measure,--Mowgy-Puss. Now what animal will you
attach to me?"
While speaking, Mr. Saltus had released his hold on the gate. He was
anxious to know what animal I would assign to him. Afterward he confessed
that he had expected me to say a lion. That would have pleased him too
well. Distracting his attention from the exit, I moved nearer to it.
Answering "A skunk!" I emphasized it with a sudden bolt through the gate
and rushed down stairs to the Casino.
An avalanche overwhelmed us there. Our absence having become prolonged, my
brother, with Archibald Clavering Gunter, who warned him of my danger with
every step, had searched not only the Casino but the sands. There was a
heated scene. The friendship of years snapped like a wish-bone, and I was
dragged back to the hotel.
There it might have ended,--would probably have ended, and the biography of
Edgar Saltus have fallen into other hands than mine to write, but
well-intentioned friends and relatives assisted things so super-abundantly,
that what might have died a natural death took on new life and flourished.
Forbidden to speak to Mr. Saltus under penalty of being sent home to my
father, it became at once an interesting romance. The following morning
there was not a dowager in the hotel unacquainted with my misdeed, and none
omitted to add their warning and advice. Hearing of the adventure, and that
I was taking a land-slide to perdition and was hell-bent, friends called to
warn and save me. Dear old Gunter with genuine kindness of heart came also.
"I am a very busy man just now," he said, "but if you are determined to
learn how to write, and will wait till I get this novel off my mind, I will
take you in hand and see what I can make of you."
Everyone did their duty. The only one not offering advice was the hotel
cat. Not permitted for a moment to leave my brother's side I seemed safe
and secure. It was all in the seeming, for Mr. Saltus was a very ingenious
man. The early afternoon papers from New York used to reach the Pier about
three, boys taking them to all the hotels on the front. One stopped at
ours. We were sitting on the veranda at the time, my brother buying a paper
as usual. With a knowing wink the newsboy shoved another into my hand.
While every one else was reading I unfolded it. A note from Mr. Saltus fell
out. It suggested that after I was supposed to be in bed that evening, I
slip out, go down a back staircase and meet the writer at a place on the
beach he designated. It was urgent. It was more. It suggested that if I did
not appear he would drink himself into delirium, and then come to the hotel
and have it out with my brother.
Youth is credulous. I met him at the place suggested. After that the
newsboy served as a postman. Letters came and went. There was a thrill in
doing it under their noses. It came out at last, however. I was returned to
my father minus a character and the family warned to watch me very closely.
So fate went on weaving its web, and the karmic links of anterior lives
reached out, binding our destiny.