Mrs. Edgar Saltus and Dog New York CityEdgar Saltus New York City
Mrs. Edgar Saltus and Dog New York CityEdgar Saltus New York City
It was during my stay at the Hotel Broztel that an incident occurred, small in itself, but so characteristic of Mr. Saltus that it is included in order to show his many-sidedness. As I have said before, Mr. Saltus and I when by ourselves never chatted in rational English. From the early days of our acquaintance, when for the first time he was brought in contact with pets, he adopted as his own, and never relinquished, the baby language in which I always addressed them, and it became ours. He not only delighted in using it, but the vocabulary increased after he took it over. This is easily accounted for when one realizes the muted days of his early life, so filled with dread and discord, when he was afraid to play like other children, afraid to say anything, and with no outlet in the way of pets, on which he could expend his natural playfulness and lavish his love.
In writing of our various conversations, the language which we invariably used when alone has been omitted, for the reason that it would be difficult to understand, and that the deciphering of it would confuse and delay the meaning. In my estimation it added to Mr. Saltus' charm and was a key to the simplicity of his real nature, but to the public it would appear trivial, if not absurd. One incident, however, is amusing.
Coming into my rooms one day, Mr. Saltus exclaimed:—
"What drivelling fools some men make of themselves! Here I have been for ten minutes at the Manhattan, trying to get you on the telephone. The wires were crossed, and I had to listen to drivel of the most nauseous kind between a man and a woman. He, anyway, should be shot. A woman may be forgiven for twaddle—but a man never."
"What did they say?" I asked.
"Oh—the man kept calling her honey-bunch, cutikins, and lollypop. It was rot ofthe worst kind. Then she replied, calling him sugar plum and tootsy wootsy and tiddley-winks. Lord, what fools some people make of themselves!"
He went out on some business after a while. Later in the day my telephone rang. It was Mr. Saltus on the wire. Here is the conversation which followed:—
"Miaw, Miaw, little Puss."
"Miaw."
"Little fur smoothed down and little taily waving in the air?" (I was always supposed to be a Persian kitten.)
"Miaw."
"Wants to lap up keemy and nibbst fish at the Prince George for your din-din?"
"Miaw!"
"Baby Totesikins love her Pasy and want din-din also? Lift her up to answer."
(Toto lifted in my arms to the telephone, long practice having made her adept.)
"Baby wants nice bickies?"
"Woof! Woof!"
"Loves, Pasy?"
"Woof." (Toto put down.)
"There, little Puffikins, Snippsy orders nice din for both. Says he good old dog Tray. Says he satisfactory scoundrel."
Laughter.
"What are you laughing at?"
"At drivel of the most nauseous kind between a man and a woman. He at least ought to be shot."
Laughter from the other end.
Never until that moment had Mr. Saltus realized what our conversation must sound like to an outsider and an uninitiate. It brought us both up with a jerk. Thereafter Mr. Saltus wrote "tolerance," and, underlining the word, added it to a list he had made.
During the time Mr. Saltus had been alone in New York, one of his greatest distractions and relaxations was taking his daughter Elsie, a débutante, for tea or for luncheon. Tall, graceful, oriental in colouring like himself, he not only admired her for her beauty but enjoyedher new and refreshing angle on life. Chatting with her was both restful and stimulating to him. In one sense she was a complete stranger to him, having lived apart for so many years. In another, she was so close that everything concerning her, no matter how slight, was of profound importance. As he had no near relatives and saw nothing whatever of his many cousins, she represented the only tie of blood in the world.
The circumstances were unfortunate. Living with a sister of her mother's, who, obviously, could not be expected to welcome him with outstretched arms, she met her father as a rule in restaurants. That was formal and less conducive to intimacy than seeing a parent in moments of rest and relaxation. Accepting this as the inevitable result of things, Mr. Saltus looked forward to the time when in a home of her own he would feel free to visit his daughter early, often and informally, and reach the bedrock of her very charming self. This seemed about to be realized, when, soon after her début, she became engaged to one of the finest, most dependable and altogether delightful of men,—J. Theus Munds,—and a date for the wedding was set.
Mrs. J. THEUS MUNDS The Daughter of EDGAR SALTUS And Her Little SonMrs. J. THEUS MUNDSThe Daughter ofEDGAR SALTUSAnd Her Little Son
Any idea of going to the wedding reception was beyond Mr. Saltus' wildest dreams. Added to his abhorrence of crowds and festivities he was too ill for such an affair. A look into the church was the most he was capable of. Had father and daughter understood one another better, what followed need never have happened. Invitations were sent to us—but for the church only. Cards to the reception were omitted. A whip lash across his face would have hurt Mr. Saltus less. It bowled him over. Nothing would have induced him to go in any event, but the knowledge that he, her father, was purposely omitted was a knife in the back. Appreciating why his presence would have been not only unwelcome but an embarrassment, he expected others to have understood that he would have looked upon the invitation as an act of courtesy only.
Vainly I tried to put it before him as I saw it, explaining and extenuating the omission. It failed to have the desired effect. Mr. Saltus took it that I, too, was turning against him. It was a hopeless muddle. Had his daughter been older at the time, and more experienced, and had she known him better, it could have been avoided so easily. Had she gone to him explaining the situation, he would not only have urged her to omit him but entered sympathetically into her viewpoint. The invitations were not sent out by her, and she could not, without directly offending her aunt, have given one over her head. Acting as many another has when in doubt, she did nothing and was silent, believing that in the years to come it would be explained and made right between them. Mr. Saltus never overlooked it. Not until he lay in his coffin and that closed forever, did she come under the same roof with him again.
The following winter Mr. Saltus just escaped pneumonia, and was weakened by its effects, sowe decided to try housekeeping again. It was a brave venture. He wanted his meals when he wanted them. A set time for anything irritated him beyond endurance. Handicapped by a wife who frequently forgot that the ordering depended upon herself, and who was lost in abstract space when she should have found her way to the grocers or even to the telephone in time, it was beginning under difficulties.
Having a fancy for the atmosphere of Columbia University, which was his Alma Mater, we took an apartment in The Arizona, 508 West 114th Street, directly opposite the oval. It savoured of the country out there, adding the convenience of being between Riverside Drive and Morningside Park, where, his increasing lameness permitting, Mr. Saltus was able to go and rest. With the realization of his age and infirmities his desire to get away from the world increased by leaps and bounds, for not only did he wish to avoid people, but he even disliked to have them know where he lived. Long accustomed to being taken for myfather, that did not trouble him. But walking painfully with a stick, and stopping at intervals to take peppermint for the acute indigestion, which attacked him when in motion, humiliated him intensely. The sympathy in the faces of those who passed him, a sympathy sometimes expressed in words, was more agonizing even than the pain. In order to keep his home a secret retreat, where, like a wounded animal, he could hide in silence, he continued giving the Manhattan Club as his address.
While formerly Mr. Saltus had enjoyed having me take a walk with him, he now avoided it. Toto only was permitted to accompany him.
"My God," he would exclaim when questioned, "I may be a cripple, but I am not blind. I can see what people are thinking—'That poor girl tied to an old derelict!'"
Ridiculous as this was, Mr. Saltus could not be persuaded out of it. For the same reason he refused to get into a street car with me.To sit, and let me stand beside him, as might happen if the car were crowded, was a chance he did not mean to take.
Specialists diagnosed his trouble as Reynous disease, an affliction most unusual in this part of the world,—of slow growth, but leading inevitably to a wheeled chair. The prospect appalled him. My father had been confined to one for many years, and Mr. Saltus knew what it meant.
"Karma has taken my legs from under me," he exclaimed again and again.
I invented cases of cure for him, but in my absence one day he consulted a physician, who had not been coached in the matter, and he told him the truth. The blow was terrific. Realizing that he must keep his mind occupied or go under, he started to write "The Paliser Case." The plot was not new. It was "The Perfume of Eros" in a new frock. He was not writing so much to create as to fight the constant pain in his legs. His condition was an embarrassing one to his pride. When the painattacked him, he had to sit down there and then, or fall down. To be compelled to rest on copings, doorsteps or curbstones, as the case might be, was tragic, and yet it was more tragic to remain a prisoner in the house. My mother gave him a small camp chair, and this upon occasions he took with him in case of emergencies.
One specialist after another was called, for between the indigestion and his legs, he was in perpetual torture. Rebellious at first, at what seemed a tragic and trivial end to his eventful life, Mr. Saltus brought his philosophy into concrete use, realizing that the lesson of patience was what he needed most, and was now in a position to acquire. With the acceptance of his afflictions as karma, and adjusting his mind to the idea of the wheeled chair, it lost its power to hurt him. Removing from my bureau a card I had stuck in the glass, he put it in his. It was a quotation from the Gitâ, which read:—"Taking as equal pleasure and pain, gain or loss, victory or defeat, thou shaltnot incur sin." From that hour he complained no longer, although complications and sorrow piled on in rapid succession.
Before telling of them, another incident should be given in its proper sequence. In giving some of Mr. Saltus' clothes to a tailor for pressing, a letter fell out of one of the pockets. It was a note from his Los Angeles friend Miss S——, of whom he had told me that he had lost all trace. Sent from abroad, it was directed to the Manhattan Club. It was not the simple note or the friendship which angered me at the moment, but his stupid and needless denials regarding it. Although I knew, better than anyone else could have done, how impossible it was for him to face momentary unpleasantness, this was too much. I went to him and said,
"Well, Snipps, you are a clever prevaricator, but in this you have been a plain ass. A spineless jellyfish must give place to it. Judas and Ananias combined could take lessons from you with profit. Here you are ready to cross theriver Styx and take the remnants of a misspent life into Avitchi." (The lower astral plane. Its lessons and condition were a subject which tormented Mr. Saltus more than a little. Darkness always appalled him, and he dreaded detention there.)
It was a cruel thrust on my part, said on the impulse of the moment. Mr. Saltus went white to the lips.
"That you can say such a thing over nothing!" he gasped. "I could not risk the reminders of Dorothy S——, which you would have treated me to had I told you."
His usual comeback about the "subordinate entity" and the "submerged It," failed him then. The lower astral plane with all its horrors, then uppermost in his mind, was recalled by my chance remark. He went off into hysterics, of so serious a nature that it ended by his going to bed. Complicating his other disabilities was heart trouble, and he was taking nitroglycerine at the time. There wasnothing to do but put a sponge over the incident and make light of it.
This I did, so convincingly that a few days later he began to call:—
"Little Anny feels ill," or "Little Anny wants to come in and sit down beside you,"—"Anny" being his abbreviation for Ananias.
It is a pity that Mr. Saltus was never frank with me over this friendship. Knowing my faults and limitations as no one else could, he knew also that smallness was not one of them, and that bigness and fineness on his part always engendered in me the desire to meet it in kind.
Had he but told me how greatly Miss S——had ministered to his comfort during my absence in England, when he was ill and alone,—how she had overseen his mending, and, studying the needs of a dyspeptic, had prepared meals for him in her little apartment many a time, I would have been sympathetic.
Miss S—— came into Mr. Saltus' life shortly after his illness in Los Angeles, to which I havereferred, and at the moment when he was turning from the material to the spiritual. The understanding of occultism, which came to him in a blinding flash, was such that he could think and talk of little else. Miss S——, whose unusual personality and fluid mind rendered her susceptible to new impacts, was very much interested in what he told her along these lines. As she has put it to me since Mr. Saltus' death, "He came into my life like a Buddha, bringing enlightenment."
With thirty-five years' difference in their ages, and meeting him only when he was past middle life, she saw in him a great teacher—and he saw in her a rarely sensitive soul full of possibilities.
These potentialities were developed after Miss S—— went to New York, and soon placed her in a position of importance and responsibility.
She could not see in Mr. Saltus, as I did, a being who step by step had mounted a ladder of light on the rungs of his dead selves.She saw only the finished product, for the process of refinement, by which his greater qualities had been separated from the lesser, covered a long period of years.
Some of those who read this biography will say that Mr. Saltus may have been glad to escape at times from a home where animals were given so much attention. This remark has in fact been made to me by those who can judge only from the surface of things. The fabric of this criticism is, however, less substantial than moonlight. During the latter years of Mr. Saltus' life much of Miss S——'s time was spent abroad. When Mr. Saltus saw her, as he did frequently during her intermissions in New York, he but left his home environment to go into a similar one. High-strung, nervous and temperamental, Miss S—— had the animal complex as strongly as I. Her apartment was never without one or two pets whose comfort, well being and happiness were her constant pre-occupation. Had he found these conditions under his own roof unpleasant,he would not have gone out of his way to duplicate them elsewhere.
Not long after Mr. Saltus' death, Miss S——and myself visited the Bide-a-Wee Home for Animals, of which I was a director. On our return home we noticed a poor lost cat trying to cross the street through densely congested traffic. With one accord we stood still, holding our breath, our hands clenched in agony, till the cat reached the further side in safety. Our reactions were not only immediate, but identical.
I make no attempt to go into the whys and wherefores of it all, nor do I offer an explanation. The facts are as I have stated. An elucidation of them is work for a psychiatrist.
Toward the end of 1918, and after a short and unexpected illness, our Toto, who had walked beside us for over ten years, passed over. To write of it even now is acute pain. The loss was like that of an only and uniquely beloved child. We were stunned, and in spite of my philosophy I went to pieces as I had never done in my life. It was over this heart-breaking event that Mr. Saltus displayed his extraordinary qualities.
"I wish you would have little Totesy's body cremated and her ashes kept and mingled with mine," he said.
Astonishment brought the reply,
"I never realized that you loved her so deeply."
"Nor did I until now, but it is not only that. Husbands may come and go, but there cannever be but one Toto," he said. "With whom do you wish to be buried?"
I was silent.
"There, you have answered me," he said after a pause. "I am sure you are planning to be buried in the Dogs' Cemetery in Hartsdale. Do as I ask. Let Toto's ashes and mine be mingled,—then, no matter where you go or what you do in the future, yours too will rest with mine at the last."
His wishes were carried out, and the ashes of the little being we loved so deeply are mixed with his own. Under a modest head-stone on which is engraved his name and the word "Eternamente," but a few feet from the monument covering the remains of his brother Frank, their ashes rest waiting to include my own.
This death cast a profound sadness over us. From comparative health, I went into a state of collapse and prolapsis such as I had never suffered before. Too ill and too indifferent even to speak, unless absolutely necessary, ourapartment became a place of silence. It was the most awful winter of our lives, but to his credit it must be said that Mr. Saltus not only never uttered a complaint but pretended all the time that his legs were rapidly getting better.
An unfortunate lease chained us to the depressing surroundings. It scourged Mr. Saltus' very soul to see me in such a condition and be powerless to help, for all he ever asked of me was to smile. When I could not do that, his world became night. He would sit beside my bed, the foot of which was elevated to an uncomfortable degree, and chat at length and delightfully on the interesting mysteries of antiquity in his effort to divert my mind.
It was then he started on "The Imperial Orgy." Taking some articles he had written for Munsey's Magazine years before as a base, he undertook, with the aid of some up-to-date books and notes he had gathered together during the years, to make a volume. Writing was not as easy as it had once been. It required an effort he had never before experienced.Added to this, he took on a new job. For a man of letters it was an extraordinary thing. Unacquainted with any detail of housekeeping, hating the petty, uninteresting trifles necessary to it, it was a far step for him to undertake ordering the meals and going to market. Upon occasions when for one cause or another the maid failed to appear of a morning, he even made my tea and toast and brought them to my bedside.
All the time he pretended to have a fancy for this. The shops on Amsterdam Avenue in the immediate vicinity of our apartment got to know him well. Now and again he would come in and say:—
"I went into a shop around the corner and a young lady jumped into my arms, licked my nose and tickled my ear with her tail. Don't tell me I am not a winner with the women."
I had to smile at that. The "young lady" was an Angora cat who embellished a shop in the neighborhood. To the amusement of her owner and the customers, she would jump onMr. Saltus' shoulders as soon as he appeared, and, wrapping herself about his neck like a scarf, would purr loudly. That cat pleased him enormously, and he was never tired of telling me about her. It was her purr which made him a constant patron of the shop.
Mr. Saltus had a profound interest in the enigmas of the past, and knowing I was keen also, he would sit on the foot of my bed and chat for hours concerning the Gates of Babylon, the astrological orientation of the Pyramids, Tyre, Carthage and the Incas. He was at his best during these times,—profound, epigrammatic and cynical by turns. The pity of it is that he had no audience but myself. He could have held any assemblage spell-bound for any length of time.
It was at this sad time, and during my breakdown which followed, that Mr. Saltus gave fullest expression to the understanding, sympathetic and tender side of his nature. These qualities he always possessed in a superlative degree, and they were the leaven which madehim unique among men. So certain was I always of his attitude toward me, that it was my habit to run to him with a cut finger or an obsolete word. Whatever the case, my needs were answered immediately.
When I turned to him as usual, but with a breaking heart, he comforted me as he alone could. Night after night, when sleep dissolved into a mirage, he sat by my bed and read aloud to me. Algernon Blackwood was a great favorite with both of us. Some novel of his was always on Mr. Saltus' desk. I could not count the times he read the short stories in "Dr. Silence" aloud to me, and after reading discussed the various themes on which they were constructed. Talbot Mundy is another for whom Mr. Saltus had a great admiration, and his books were substituted when we began to know "Dr. Silence" by heart. He never asked me if I would like to have him read to me, or what particular books I fancied. He always knew, and brought the volume suited to my mood of the moment. Swinburne sang andscintillated through him many and many an evening, and no one could give the lights and shades, the flow and flavour of his verse, as Mr. Saltus did. He adored Swinburne. At other times Keats' "Nightingale" trilled in the twilight.
This was when I could be read to and diverted, but there were times when I was too ill and miserable to listen. Then Mr. Saltus would take me on his lap and rock me as one would a child, singing little songs he made up as he rocked. He had done this often during the years, but never with such tenderness as at this time.
A friend of mine to whom I gave a rough draft of this biography to read, said:
"Did you never do anything but quarrel with Mr. Saltus?"
That remark surprised me into reading it over in a new light. Then I saw what she meant. So much of our life together was quiet, uneventful and peaceful, that to bring out Mr. Saltus' many-sidedness, I have given prominenceto incidents of various kinds—exceptional happenings, rather than our everyday life. As a matter of fact our life together was exceptionally harmonious.
It has been said by my critics, and with a great deal of truth, that I am the last woman on earth Mr. Saltus should have married. No one appreciates this fact better than I do—and this in spite of our similar tastes and temperament. A genius should never marry. There is that in his nature which not only unfits him for the limitations of conventional existence, but diverts and distracts his imaginative faculty and creative ability. If a genius marries at all, it should be to find not only a pillow for his moods, eccentricities and weariness, but a being who, merging her personality in his, supplements, and that unconsciously, such qualities as he may need in his work. The wife of a genius should lead his life alone—be able to anticipate his needs and supply them, so unobtrusively that he accepts her services without knowing it.
Although anxious to do this, I could not. It was temperamentally impossible, however much I tried to bring it about. Many factors were at the base of this inability,—my frailty as a child and the continuous care given to me in consequence; added to this was the disparity in our ages, which tinged Mr. Saltus' attitude toward me with that of a father. His former unhappy marriages had left their mark, and made him desire to be father, mother, husband and protector to me.
Coming into my life at the age and in the way he did, he was Edgar Saltus the man, never the author, to me, his work being lost in his personality. This was what he wanted, and, as he frequently expressed it:—
"To the world I am Edgar Saltus the author, but thank God, I can be merely Mr. Me to you."
Times without number I tried to make myself over into the kind of wife a literary man should have, but with the same results. Howevermuch I tried to conceal these efforts, Mr. Saltus would see them and say:—
"Do stop trying to be somebody else, and be my little girl again. You think you know the kind of a woman I should have married. Perhaps you do, but I would have killed her ages and ages ago. Do be yourself. I wouldn't have you changed by a hair."
However much he was deluded, it was by himself, for I always told him that I was the last woman in the world he should have selected.
During this winter the distress in Mr. Saltus' legs increased to such a degree that it took him ten minutes to walk from the Arizona to the corner of Amsterdam Avenue, a distance of only a few yards. Most of the time he went in a taxi, but even getting out of one and walking the length of the hall to the elevator, was so tiresome and so painful that he had to sit in the lobby for fifteen minutes or more before coming upstairs.
Speaking of elevators, brings back Mr. Saltus' chronic objection to meeting people. It had increased with the years so as to become almost an obsession. He would wait any length of time in the lobby of the Arizona, rather than get in an elevator if there was anyone else in it. He was afraid someone might speak to him. When I had visitors (which, owing to my illness and his aversion, was infrequent)he would shoot past the living-room and down the hall to his study, forcing his tortured legs to such activity that it often took him hours to recover from the effects of it.
A year passed after the death of our beloved Toto,—a year so like inferno, that even to think of it makes me shudder. With Mr. Saltus' helplessness it was a toss-up which of us was in the worse condition. I looked up one day to find him weeping. When questioned he said:—
"I wish we could die together, before you lose your reason entirely. While I live I can take care of you no matter what happens, but after——? It's killing me to watch you open bureau drawers and stand there striving to think why you opened them: to see you grasp the top of your head trying to remember. All these years you have surmounted everything. Now only, you cannot make the grade, poor child. Death should be meaningless to one who understands it as you do. Cannot you make your philosophy concrete?"
It was hard, but it made me take notice. A strait-jacket and a padded cell sprang into the perspective with his words, and the selfishness of sorrow stared me in the face. For the first time I realized what, in my indifference to everything, I had become, and it stunned me. While this was sinking in he spoke again:—
"I will be with little Toto so soon, and we will wait together until you come over. You know as well as I do that your tears are vitriol on her spirit, retarding her evolution. For God's sake never agonize over me, unless you want to keep me earthbound and in prison."
Not one man in a million would have lived under the conditions he accepted in silence for over a year. The average good husband would have left and asked for a divorce. Mr. Saltus not only never complained, but was concerned only for me. From that hour I decided to pull myself together.
By the time "The Imperial Orgy" was finished, Mr. Saltus was in such bad shape that itwas hazardous for him to leave the house alone. Twice he dropped in the street with heart attacks. The "flu" epidemic coming on, his infection-complex swam into evidence again. He ceased going in public conveyances, and took a taxi whenever he thought it necessary to go out. A handkerchief saturated with camphor held to his nose, he took the chance now and again. Although he carried a card with his name and address in his pocket, it was always with dread that I saw him leave the apartment. A flask of whisky was in another pocket, a bottle of peppermint and tablets of nitroglycerin were in a third, and yet he was really in no shape to go at all.
It was after a sudden heart attack in the street, that I decided he must remain indoors till physicians could tell more definitely about his condition. The "flu" epidemic offered the chance I had been looking for. Had I come into the open and told him I was fearful he might be brought home in an ambulance, he would have died there and then at my feet.The impossibility of telling him anything unpleasant was a handicap. I was obliged to keep up the pleasing fiction that he was getting better every day, and to say that the increasing lameness and pain were but results of the treatment he was undergoing to effect a permanent cure. Any over-anxiety on my part would have been disastrous. Knowing his reactions, I said quite casually one day:—
"You must have to wait longer to pick up taxis these days."
"Why?" he asked in surprise.
"Because in default of enough ambulances, they are in such demand taking patients to the hospitals."
The implication was successful—Jean, the tree and the bubonic plague became as trifles compared to an infectious taxi.
"Great Heavens! I never thought of that," he exclaimed. "Are you sure?"
"I know only what I read and hear, but it may not be true," I said.
That was enough. It was weeks and weeksbefore Mr. Saltus could be persuaded to leave the apartment. Meanwhile, the plot of "The Ghost Girl" was occupying his mind. Though the central situation was one he had used before, in a short story called "A Bouquet of Illusions," he hoped to justify his use of it again by his amplification of it.
When the plot was mapped out, he announced that he was ready to start work, and "the kennel" could be cleaned up. "The kennel" referred to his study, which I have described elsewhere, and which at that time resembled a cross between a junk-shop and an ash-heap. It was cleaned only between novels, the débris of one being removed to make a place for another.
During this time Mr. Saltus was undergoing treatments of various kinds with no apparent improvement. Day after day we went from one specialist to another, seeking and hoping. It was tragic, and he was very brave about it, smiling and joking about his condition, worrying because it worried me.
When the weather was inviting we would walk the short block to Morningside Park and sit there an entire afternoon, enjoying the green. Trees interested Mr. Saltus,—old trees especially. When we sat down our seat became the magic carpet, and we alighted among the druids in an enchanted wood. We followed their festivals, picked out their occult symbols and searched for the mistletoe. We found ourselves surrounded by the spirits of the trees, and became a part of an evolution other than human. Nature spirits, gnomes and fairies peeped in and out of the shrubs, as Mr. Saltus' imagination soared on delightfully. There was no pain in this world,—no mundane muddle to mess it up. Living more or less in a subjective universe, our rambles in thought were better tonics than medicine to him. Pan lived again, while nymphs and satyrs chased through the brush at our feet.
Day after day we sat there on the same seat and in a dream world, till the sun beginning to sink, and the chill in the air which followed,recalled Mr. Saltus to aching legs and a man-made world.
Realizing as I did then that his condition was critical, it seemed the moment to effect a reconciliation with his daughter. The long hours he had to spend shut in an apartment would have been brightened by her presence. During this time we had written one another at intervals, and she knew that I would do my best to bring it about. Photographs of her in various places in our rooms, although not referred to by Mr. Saltus, helped to keep her in mind. One day, while we were on the subject of parents and children, I thought the psychological moment had arrived, and, reversing the role a stepmother is supposed to take, I led up to the subject, suggesting that I ask Mrs. Munds and her husband up to see him. Ill as he was, Mr. Saltus flamed.
"Thou too, Brutus!" he exclaimed. "You, too, are going to fail me at last? That I have lived to this!"
It was the one subject on which he couldnot talk rationally. From his reaction I could see how much he loved her, for only a great affection can be hurt so deeply.
"If you want to kill me, send for her. I will know then that my case is hopeless, and between you it most certainly will be."
It was futile to persist. I could not make him see that she had not put him out of her life deliberately. That was his view of it. Having been put out, he refused to go back. In his condition arguments reacted badly upon his heart.
There was a time when the papers meant much to Mr. Saltus. For an hour, at least, every morning he would absorb them with his coffee and rolls. They meant not only material for articles, but links with the world from which he was shut off. With his increasing disability his interest in the papers waned, and he would scan the headlines only and read a few book reviews. There was one reviewer who especially interested him. Frequently of a Sunday morning he would call out:—
"Anything worth while in the paper to-day?"
This meant one thing. If there was a book review or an article by Benjamin de Cassères it was worth while, and that part of the paper was taken in to him. If not, it could wait until he had an idle moment during the day. Mr. Saltus admired de Cassères' work very much. He used to chuckle over it, and say:—
"That man was born a hundred years too soon."
The pity was that, admiring each other as they did, they never met. The hermit habit had so encroached with the years, that it had become impossible for Mr. Saltus even to think of meeting people in the flesh, however much he admired them in the spirit. His world becoming subjective more and more each day as he internalized, objective existence became shadowy and unsatisfying. With entire unselfishness he concerned himself more and more for me, always a frail and fragile being in his eyes, one possessing little physicalstrength to fight her way alone in a sordid and selfish world. The fear of it haunted him.
"I'm a pretty ill man, am I not, Mowgy?" he asked me one day. "It will not kill me to die, but I should be prepared."
"Indisposed for the moment," I told him. "Now that you can eat and grow young again, I may have to take out an insurance at Lloyd's against someone stealing you."
This remark, no matter how often I made it, pleased him. He hated the idea of being old in my eyes, almost as much as hearing disagreeable things. The pleasing lies he loved were tonics, and I had to be very diplomatic with him.
"Yes, I am on the mend a bit,—but you never know."
Subconsciously he knew that he could not live long at best, but objectively he was always talking of getting better and planning for the future. On this occasion, however, he kept repeating "You never know" several times, following it with the remark:—
"I've been an incident to you,—a big one, but only an incident after all."
It was not like him to repeat himself, and I asked what he meant by it. What follows I have put in and taken out of this biography several times. There is too much concerning myself in it to be of interest to the public, and yet the unusual nature and quality of Mr. Saltus' mind are nowhere more forcefully exemplified.
"You might be my child. You may marry again some day?" he said.
"I might be struck by a comet or tumble on the third rail, with more probability. Jamais! Having broken you in has taken me to the door of the asylum. No more experiments. My arm is tired from wielding a cat-o'-nine-tails."
"Quite so, but all literary men are not 'litterers,' and all men are not literary. You might select more wisely next time."
"Disabuse your mind of that," I told him. "Such small wisdom as I have acquired has beenpaid for too dearly. Besides, there is only one Snipps, and no one else would understand me."
"That's it," he said. "I was awake half of last night thinking about it. It's an awful thing to leave a helpless little girl all alone in a world of demons and vultures. The possibility haunts me."
"Then take your medicine like a good boy and stay here to look after me," he was told. "If it comes to a wheeled chair, I will wheel it, and we will go to California and live under blue skies and rose bushes, or to India, and sit at Mrs. Besant's feet."
This comforted him. Although he spoke constantly of dying, and quite as a matter of course, it was to be contradicted. He knew it was possible, but never did he admit that it was probable. The next day opened with a surprise. On my breakfast tray was the following, carefully written in Mr. Saltus' best copper-plate hand:—
Read, mark, learn and inwardly reject.
1.—Thou shalt have no other God before or behind Mowgy. She will be supreme or nothing. Safety first.2.—Few people will ever understand Mowgy. You will get the key quickly or never. If you haven't it,—run.3.—Mowgy must have her own way entirely and in all things. It makes her ill to be contended with. Besides, her way is usually the best in the end. Save trouble and take it first.4.—Mowgy can never be questioned. The slightest interrogation irritates her beyond expression. Let her alone. She is too frank for comfort. She will tell you everything sooner or later, and you will wish she hadn't.5.—Mowgy never remembers anything you ask her to do, unless it is vital or concerns animals. Don't expect it. On the planewhere she lives, trifles do not exist. She forgets her own requirements. How can she remember yours?6.—Mowgy is no housekeeper. Her intentions, not the results, are excellent. If she remembers to order meals be thankful. If she doesn't, be thankful that she is as she is. Keep accounts at the nearest restaurants and shut up.7.—Mowgy is truthful. Don't ask her a question unless you want the unvarnished truth. It is better to take it varnished.8.—Mowgy never picks up anything. Absent-mindedness only. Look carefully under chairs and tables before leaving a place. Gold bags, money, jewelry or important papers may be on the floor. She will drop you if you are not on the alert to avoid it.9.—Mowgy does not live on this plane. Understand that clearly. She cannot be made to conform to the image and likenessof others. Don't try. You would not like her if you could make her over. Let well enough alone.10.—The foregoing are Mowgy's limitations from the normal viewpoint. You must be abnormal or this will not apply to you. If she takes you it will be to make you over. The process is crucifying but curative. You will wonder how you ever managed to live without her. She has a world of her own, and it is the best world I know of to live in. If you have a chance to get there, make a fight for it. She is the only one of her kind on earth. My blessing, E. S.
1.—Thou shalt have no other God before or behind Mowgy. She will be supreme or nothing. Safety first.
2.—Few people will ever understand Mowgy. You will get the key quickly or never. If you haven't it,—run.
3.—Mowgy must have her own way entirely and in all things. It makes her ill to be contended with. Besides, her way is usually the best in the end. Save trouble and take it first.
4.—Mowgy can never be questioned. The slightest interrogation irritates her beyond expression. Let her alone. She is too frank for comfort. She will tell you everything sooner or later, and you will wish she hadn't.
5.—Mowgy never remembers anything you ask her to do, unless it is vital or concerns animals. Don't expect it. On the planewhere she lives, trifles do not exist. She forgets her own requirements. How can she remember yours?
6.—Mowgy is no housekeeper. Her intentions, not the results, are excellent. If she remembers to order meals be thankful. If she doesn't, be thankful that she is as she is. Keep accounts at the nearest restaurants and shut up.
7.—Mowgy is truthful. Don't ask her a question unless you want the unvarnished truth. It is better to take it varnished.
8.—Mowgy never picks up anything. Absent-mindedness only. Look carefully under chairs and tables before leaving a place. Gold bags, money, jewelry or important papers may be on the floor. She will drop you if you are not on the alert to avoid it.
9.—Mowgy does not live on this plane. Understand that clearly. She cannot be made to conform to the image and likenessof others. Don't try. You would not like her if you could make her over. Let well enough alone.
10.—The foregoing are Mowgy's limitations from the normal viewpoint. You must be abnormal or this will not apply to you. If she takes you it will be to make you over. The process is crucifying but curative. You will wonder how you ever managed to live without her. She has a world of her own, and it is the best world I know of to live in. If you have a chance to get there, make a fight for it. She is the only one of her kind on earth. My blessing, E. S.
Such a document! Though written in jest, there was an undercurrent of seriousness about it. One could not read it unmoved. From that paper alone a psychologist could rebuild Edgar Saltus as he was. To me it is the most characteristic bit of writing he left behind him.
The manuscript of "The Ghost Girl" finished, one might have supposed Mr. Saltus would take a rest, particularly as his heart became worse so rapidly that nitroglycerin was necessary most of the time. Carl Van Vechten had written of him so charmingly in The Merry-Go-Round, and with so much insight, that Mr. Saltus was encouraged to keep on working, as it was the only way in which he could lose himself for the time.
Sending the manuscript of "The Ghost Girl" to a typist at Columbia, he suffered another periodical cleaning of his "kennel" and started in on the outline of another novel. That also was an enlarged and amplified rendering of an earlier book, torn to pieces and baked en casserole with an occult sauce, to its enormous and entire benefit. He was not reminded of the fact that the central situation had beenused before. He was borrowing from himself, to be sure, and it was quite permissible, but in other circumstances I would have urged him to let his original creation stand. As it was I was glad to see him begin it as soon as "The Ghost Girl" was off his hands, realizing that he must have mental food and constant distraction.
The lease on our apartment bothered Mr. Saltus. During the years "things" had become relative to both of us. They had not only lost all value but they had become transformed into fetters. To get rid of the encumbrance of "things," and be free to pack a suitcase and go at will, was an intriguing idea to him. In discussing it, and the process of elimination necessary to reach the desired results, we agreed to get rid of all but two articles,—the carved olive-wood table at which he had written most of his books, and the arm-chair in which our little Toto had died. Mr. Saltus did not live to see it, but "things"—all the things we wanted to get rid of and forget,—are scattered now to the winds in every direction,—all but the table and the chair.