Deprived of pets as he had been during his childhood, Mr. Saltus responded
to his new playmates in a surprising way, taking over their education, as
he called it, from the first. Fifi was taken into the inner recesses of his
study to serve as a paperweight. Rigging up a tight-rope in the garden, he
taught her to walk on it, to stand on her hind legs, play ball and jump
through a hoop.
When his eyes became tired with writing he amused himself hour after hour
playing with his new toys. With his fancy for alliterations Fifi became
"Pasy's pride and pleasure Puss." In the album of snapshots are many of
"E---- and his angels," as I called them.
Then a sad thing happened. From eating some poisoned meat put out for
gophers by a neighbor, both little creatures became violently ill, and in
spite of the best doctors and care, Fifi died. I did not mourn alone. Mr.
Saltus wept like a baby and could not write a word for days. Until the end
of his life he kept referring to her, imitating the inflection of her miaws
when deprived of sardines, of which she was inordinately fond.
After this the puppy came in for all the attention. During her recovery
from the poison she was brought up to sleep on the foot of my bed,--a habit
she saw fit never to change, for she slept there for the rest of her life.
With a patience little expected from him, Mr. Saltus taught her to run a
yard or two in front of him so that he could watch her, and taught her to
walk on her hind legs and various other accomplishments. With the training
and understanding of her, the fear of dogs left him. He began to pat
strange animals on their heads and take an interest in work in their
behalf. The puppy, Toto, went with him for walks as soon as she was able to
toddle on before him, but she usually returned in his arms.
The reason for entering so fully into his habits and association with this
little being is because, like a thread of pure gold, she was woven into the
fabric of his existence from the first, becoming at the last one of the
most vital considerations of his life.
During a brief stay in Pasadena the year before, I had made the
acquaintance of a Mr. and Mrs. Colville. The former was an exceptional
character, combining the enthusiasm of a scholar and the erudition of a
sage. He was a critic, a philosopher and a Theosophist. His wife was, and
is, one of the noblest and most selfless beings on earth.
This acquaintance was passed on to Mr. Saltus. From the moment he saw them
they exercised a profound influence on his life. Inclined as he was to take
the tempo of his likes and dislikes from me, his immediate admiration for
these two was exceptional. The occultism to which he had hitherto listened
with rather indifferent ears took on new interest. He bought "The Ancient
Wisdom," by Annie Besant, the "Secret Doctrine," and a number of other
Theosophical books. What was more, he studied them.
The little bungalow of the Colvilles in Pasadena became a kind of magnetic
pole. To discuss higher metaphysics and occultism with the husband, and
observe its practical application by his wife, constituted a treat. Mrs.
Colville could tear Mr. Saltus to pieces. She could put her finger on the
weak links in his character, suggesting methods by which they might be
strengthened with unerring intuition. He not only accepted it with the
simplicity of a child, but he thanked her for it. Never in his life had he
met a woman of her kind before, and he loved her for her selflessness and
the poise she radiated. His confidence and trust in her were such that on
the day preceding his death he urged me to write to her and ask her to take
him into her meditations. With all that may be said against Mr. Saltus by
his critics, the fact of his not only recognizing, but immediately
responding to spiritual greatness justified the confidence put in him by
myself when a child. It proved beyond question, that with a different early
environment and training, he would have developed the splendid qualities
latent until the end of his life.
Work upon "The Monster" was under way at this time, and over his books Mr.
Saltus was very much like a mother with her child. He might suggest that a
novel of his own was full of flaws,--but woe to the outsider who ventured
to criticise so much as a comma in its construction. It gave him perhaps
the shock of his literary life, when, after a discussion, Mrs. Colville
said to him:--
"You are a brilliant man,--an artist and a stylist. You are a poet, an
historian and an essayist; but a novelist--never. Your psychology of humans
is oblique, your plots improbable when not impossible, and your characters
ink."
In moments of wrath I had flung the same words in his face and been told,
"Ignorance, when it speaks, speaks loudly."
Instead of the explosion I expected, it took Mr. Saltus off his feet. He
sat down. His affection and admiration for the Colvilles could not be
called in question after that, and he began at once to take stock of
himself seriously.
The lease of the house we were occupying having expired, another one on
Grand View Street off Westlake Park was taken. The beauty of this little
park, and the pleasure of sitting out under the palm trees, book in hand,
Toto lying at his feet, soothed and relaxed Mr. Saltus amazingly. The idea
of rewriting "The Monster" and weaving Theosophy into it suggested itself.
Mrs. Besant spoke in Los Angeles at this time and we attended a private
lecture. He heard her speak many times again in London in the Queen's Hall,
but from that first glance he declared her to be in his estimation the most
wonderful woman incarnate on earth to-day. "The Monster" was put aside in
order that he might have more leisure to study Theosophy.
Mr. Saltus was now in his fifty-fifth year, and for the first time he
began to show symptoms of breaking. Extreme irritability with attacks of
giddiness were followed by periods of depression. His Theosophical studies
helped him to keep his poise. The physician who was consulted gave no cause
for alarm. He said that Mr. Saltus was undergoing certain physiological
changes and that he must abstain from prolonged mental work. A rough draft
of "The Monster," including a certain amount of Theosophy, was in hand, so
he said he would do no more creative work for a time.
That time was a long one. Mr. Saltus never did any entirely original work
again. His creative faculty became semi-detached from his work in a desire
to study. He wrote several novels after the lapse of years, but each of
them was elaborated and improved from central situations he had used before
either in novels or in short stories. In many of these, as in "Lords of the
Ghostland," Mr. Saltus felt that he had not made the most of his material,
and the desire to re-write, amplify and do justice to the subject in a new
and big way was tucked away in a corner of his mind. During the last years
of his life, when the necessity for finding forgetfulness of the physical
was paramount, the opportunity to use this material presented itself.
At the end of that summer we went on to Warner's Hot Springs. Mr. Saltus
was left at loose ends, and he went to a hotel, hoping to join us again
when we decided on a house for the winter.
While we were at the Hot Springs Mr. Saltus met a young girl, Miss S----.
So weird, wild and fantastic are the stories which have been circulated
about her, so malicious and untrue, that in justice to all, a plain
statement of the facts is called for. It was during this stay at Warner's
Hot Springs that a letter from Mr. Saltus referred to meeting a young girl.
So seldom did he meet anyone sufficiently worth mentioning that I was
interested. In the letter he said that he had been introduced to a girl,
Miss S----, who reminded him very much of myself. This was, he explained,
not only because of her features but her nature, which was highly
emotional, and that she adored animals to such a degree that I would find
in her a kindred soul. I was much interested and wrote him that I would
like to meet her.
Mr. Saltus' next letter was from San Francisco, where, at the request of
the Examiner, he had gone to write up the Portola Festival. His next
letter, however, was from Los Angeles again, giving the news that the Los
Angeles Examiner had retained him to write a series of editorials to boom
Southern California. Urging us to return, he said that he could not work
without a background and was like a man without arms or legs. Telegrams and
long distance telephone messages followed.
Soon afterward we took a house in Los Angeles again, centrally located in
what was then a fashionable location in Pico Heights, and Mr. Saltus got to
work at once. It was neither sustained nor creative like that of writing a
novel. It consisted in compiling information and statistics and presenting
them in entertaining and acceptable form. The final draft of "The Monster"
was done and ready for the typist. The compiling of material for two-page
editorials each week kept him so occupied that his usual afternoon walks
with Toto were shortened or neglected altogether. All his life he had
walked a great deal. It was his way of keeping fit. With the physiological
change in his constitution his desire to walk decreased, and the beginning
of the breakdown began without either of us suspecting it. An inveterate
smoker always, he then consumed almost twice as many cigarettes a day as
before,--strong Cuban ones of the most insidious kind. This, too, was
paving the way for the obscure and deadly disease which later gripped him
like a vise.
Up to the time of going to California to live, Mr. Saltus' life had, in
spite of its colourfulness, been more or less sad. There was a wistfulness
in his eyes,--a reaching-out for something stronger than human ties to
build on. The note-book to which I have previously referred, and which he
compiled for writing "The Philosophy of Disenchantment" and "The Anatomy of
Negation," was filled with quotations from the Gita. This meant something
deeper than copy to him. Upon meeting Mr. and Mrs. Colville, the inner
yearning which had been inhibited so long became suddenly objective, taking
on the concrete form of study along esoteric lines.
All this time he was studying "The Secret Doctrine," going over each stanza
slowly, thoughtfully, weighing each word and its meaning--searching for
gold.
He burst into my room one day without knocking,--a thing he never omitted
to do. I realized that only an internal earthquake could have caused such
forgetfulness. Throwing a book into my lap, he sank into a chair and
exclaimed:--
"Blind,--blind and conceited ass that I have been! All my life I have been
searching for truth. Now I have found it. Life's problems are over."
Taking the book from my hand he said:--
"Listen to this. 'Said the Flame to the spark, thou art myself,--my image
and my shadow. I have clothed myself in thee,--and thou art my vahan, until
the day be with us, when thou shalt re-become myself,--and others
thyself,--and me.'"
He read the stanza three times very slowly, his emotion so intense that
tears stood in his eyes. At that moment he touched the highest pinnacle of
his life. It was his Mount of Transfiguration. As soon as he was
sufficiently master of himself to speak, he said:--
"Let me send your name and my own this very day to Adyar to join the
Theosophical Society?"
I had never been affiliated with organizations or cults,--my understanding
of the occult having been more or less born with me and intuitive rather
than academic; but, delighted at the unfolding of his higher nature, I
agreed at once to his suggestion.
He saturated himself with Theosophy as one might with a disinfectant after
long exposure to infection. From that hour he was another being; his
perception of values and his attitude toward life became readjusted. The
polarity of his angle on everything shifted, and the axis of his being,
responding to the change, swung back to its real home. It was like melting
the ice of Spitzbergen and restoring to it the tropical beauty and verdure
it once enjoyed. In this way Mr. Saltus became imbued with the magnitude of
his discovery--or rather his recovery of it.
It has been said by his critics, that, in becoming a Theosophist, Mr.
Saltus stepped down from the Olympian heights, became mundane, and did not,
as I have suggested, ascend the Mount of Transfiguration. Constructive
criticism of any description is helpful, but it is open to question whether
or not this touches the crux of the matter. The fact that his imaginative
faculty became somewhat transmuted into channels not wholly literary, gives
critics this chance.
It has been said that I persuaded him to become a Theosophist. Nothing is
further from the truth, for, while I believed much that is called
Theosophy, I had scarcely dipped into a book on it, and our chats on these
lines had been more or less personal, one saying to the other, "Perhaps we
were brother and sister or twins in our last life," suggesting various
amusing combinations of relationship.
I never tried to persuade him to accept anything. It would have been not
only foolish and futile, but would have defeated its purpose.
Though his acceptance of it came suddenly, it was the culmination of remote
causes, too deep for either his critics or his friends to see.
It has been said also of Tolstoi that when he turned to religion he turned
from greatness. This may be true in a sense. It resolves itself into the
question "What is greatness?" That Mr. Saltus' keen interest in occultism
over-shadowed and coloured every act and thought of his life thereafter,
is undeniably true; but what it took from him in one sense it gave to him
in another. It gave him what he had been unconsciously seeking,--the
ability to build up a series of sequences in his mind, and in the
acceptance of them to find peace. Peace and progress were his pole stars.
Who can say how little or how great are such objectives? If any change took
place in his creative potentialities, it was because he deliberately
allowed it.
From that hour a new world opened before his eyes, a world of endless
vistas,--of delightful study and research,--of new thinking, reconstruction
and regeneration, Mr. Saltus' one lament being:--
"Why has it taken me so long?"
Destroying the finished copy of "The Monster," he set about rewriting it
entirely from his new viewpoint, and thereafter until the day of his death
he wrote nothing untinged by the philosophy that had become an essential
part of his consciousness.
This new and complete distraction was a godsend, for Mr. Saltus was far
from well and he was inclined to be terrified over the least symptom of
anything out of the common. Abstract reading and study took him out of
himself and bridged many an hour with pleasure and profit.
Coming in the house one day Mr. Saltus said:--
"When I was down-town I charged a box of sweets on your bill."
"Did you?" I replied. "Since when have you developed the taste?" Puddings
and candies of any kind he had always avoided.
"They were not for myself but for the young girl, Miss S----, I wrote you
about. She is now connected with the Library and I see quite a little of
her, for I go there often to get books and collect data for my articles.
Having been educated abroad she speaks French like a native, and being
unusually intelligent she has helped me a great deal."
Occupied as I was at the time with organizing a theatrical entertainment
for the benefit of The Los Angeles Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals,--having to see and secure all the talent, I put off an invitation
to bring her to the house for tea or to dine until the affair was over.
Unfortunate omission! More unfortunate yet was my remark:--
"Remember Dorothy S----."
That was an episode Mr. Saltus wanted least of all to be reminded of. It
sealed his lips more effectually than cement. When a few weeks later I
inquired about his friend, he said that she had moved and that he had no
idea what had become of her. Moved she had, but only a block or two. Once
again his inability to face anything holding the remotest possibility of
unpleasantness tangled him in an unnecessary deception.
During the holidays a telegram announcing the death of Mrs. Saltus in Paris
reached him. This was only a few days before the preliminary papers in the
divorce were to be issued.
In all justice to Mr. Saltus it must be said that he sincerely regretted
the final separation came this way. It hit him between the eyes. From his
new angle on life,--his belief that, reincarnation being a necessity, he
must meet every ego he had in any way wronged and pay his debt to each,
appalled him. However much he had attempted to justify himself in the past
he did so no longer. The sudden passing over of one so closely connected
with his early life--to whom he realized that he had never been all that he
should--struck home. He went about the house softly and silently, passages
of the Gita penetrating him like flame and steel.
His first impulse was to go East to meet his young daughter upon her return
from abroad. The memory of her had become a beautiful dream to him. From
that dream he was most anxious to awake and enjoy the reality. Her mother's
wishes had been very explicit in the matter. She left the little girl to
the guardianship of an aunt, with provisions in her will calculated to
curtail the young girl's best interests in case her father took her. Over
and over we thrashed the matter out between us. He had the law of the land
on his side.
Persuaded at last that the only restitution he could make the mother for
anything she had endured because of him, was through the child, he wrote
his daughter asking her desire in the matter. Upon her replying that she
wanted to carry out her mother's wishes, much against his will, Mr. Saltus
yielded.
There was another thing he yielded also. Against my firm refusal to go to
the altar or the courthouse until a proper time elapsed, he talked in vain.
"Contending with you is like biting into granite," he said with annoyance,
"and my poor teeth are being worn away."
"It is harder to be the granite," I told him. "I would be so much happier
transformed into pliable putty."
"Why not try it for a pleasant change?" he inquired.
"Because, for your sake, I cannot. You are not granite to me,--you are a
piece of marble out of which I am trying with chisel in my hand to release
the something concealed there."
"Your chisel is sharp and the process is a painful one."
"So it is," I admitted, "and I do not know to which of us it is the more
so. Shall I put it down and rest?"
Mr. Saltus smiled.
"No, little Puss. You are the instrument of karma. Keep on chiseling. You
believe in me, and if you think there is something worth while, awaiting
release--do not falter. Only the one who sees it can set it free."