Edgar Saltus: The Man. Marie Saltus
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His school days in the States over, Edgar Saltus went abroad with his mother for an indefinite time. Europe became their headquarters during what must have been the most constructively interesting part of his early life. Heidelberg, Munich, the Sorbonne, and an elderly professor supplementing certain studies did their best for him. At an age when the world seemed his for the taking, with brilliant mind, unusual physical attractiveness, the ability to charm without effort, and sufficient means, his path was if anything too rosy.
The pampered only child of an adoring mother, he had only to express a wish to have it gratified. He became selfish and self-centered as the result. His motto was "Carpe diem," and he carefully contrived to live down to it.
During a summer in Switzerland without his mother Mr. Saltus met a charming young girl of semi-royal birth, whom we will call Marie C——, and eloped with her. Her furious family followed, overtaking them in Venice. As she was unable, because of her exalted station, to be married by a priest without credentials and permission, the ceremony had been omitted for the moment. That complicated matters. Marie was whisked off to a convent, where, the year following, she died. As usual the woman paid. Meanwhile, a young and charming Venetian countess did her best to console the explorer in hearts.
On the heels of this episode came his mother. Funds were stopped, and to the chagrin of the countess who had braved disgrace, her charmer was taken back to Heidelberg.
With an insight and interest almost paternal, the old professor who had tutored him at times gave Mr. Saltus a lesson he never forgot. Realizing as he must have that the youth had a quality of fascination seldom encountered, a quality likely to lead to his early ruin if not circumscribed, he assigned himself the job. Taking him to an exhibit where wax figures representing parts of the human body in different stages of disease were set up for a clinic, he let it do its work.
Illness, ugliness, unsightliness of any kind, had a horror for Mr. Saltus. It was an intrinsic part of his inner essence. That exhibit nearly did for him. It made him ill for a week—the most profitable illness he ever had in his life. Never in his wildest and least responsible moments did he have an affair with any woman other than of his own class.
A student of the classics, with Flaubert sitting on the lotus leaf of perfection before his eyes, it soon became the desire of his heart to meet some of the great ones of letters. Even then the young Edgar was trying his hand at it.
Through the friendship of Stuart Merrill, a young American poet living in Paris, he had the supreme bliss of being presented to Victor Hugo. The anticipation of it alone made him tremble. It was to him like meeting the Dalai Lama in person. Reverently he approached the great one repeating, as he did so, the Byzantine formula, "May I speak and live?"
The magnificent one condescended to permit it. From a great chair which resembled a shrine and in which he looked like an old idol, he deigned to speak to his admirer. Mr. Saltus left his presence with winged feet.
The author of "Poèmes Antiques," Leconte de Lisle, was another to whom the youthful aspirant was on his knees. Through Stuart Merrill again he was admitted to Olympus.
"You are a church. You have your worshipers," he told the poet. Leconte de Lisle listened, or pretended to listen, with indifference. That attitude of his appealed as much to Mr. Saltus as his poems. It was the way genius should act, he reflected.
Another meteor crossing his orbit was Verlaine. It was at the Café François Premier that they met. Shabby, dirty, and a little drunk, he talked delightfully as only poets and madmen can. He talked of his "prisons" and of his "charity hospitals," quite unaffectedly and as a landed proprietor speaks of his estates. One of these Edgar Saltus visited. It was an enclosure at the back of a shop in a blind alley, where he had a cot that stood not on the floor, for there was no floor, but on the earth.
Of Oscar Wilde and Owen Meredith, he had at that time only a peep in passing. His particular chums were the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Francis Hope. Among the interesting personalities with whom he became friends was the Baron Harden Hickey. In what way he became a Baron was never elucidated to Mr. Saltus' satisfaction. Poet, scholar, and crack duelist, his sword was as mighty as his pen. At my hand is a book of his called "Euthanasia," and inscribed in his writing are the words:
To
Edgar Saltus … … … … … … … … … the unique,
From his extravagant admirer
H. H.
Harden Hickey had ambitions. One of them was to found a monarchy at Trinidad and rule there. He was nothing if not original. The post of Poet Laureate he offered to Edgar Saltus. Owing to the intervention of the Powers, the project failed. Harden Hickey killed himself. Such friends in any event were not commonplace.
Deciding at last that he must have some kind of an occupation, his mother having on his account drawn liberally from her principal, Mr. Saltus decided to return to the United States. Once there he entered Columbia Law School. Terse, clear, and versatile with his pen, the law seemed more or less to beckon. Plead he could not; owing to his acute nervousness and his slight hesitancy of speech that was out of the question. The uninteresting but necessary technical side of the law could alone be his. In some climates and altitudes Mr. Saltus' speech became almost a stammer. In others it vanished. Never was it unpleasant, and many thought it rather fascinating. People affected him in this way. Most of them got on his nerves, and the peculiar hesitancy followed, while with those to whom he was accustomed, he could talk for hours without a trace of it. Even as a youth his disinclination to meet people, his horror of crowds, and his desire to be alone a great deal were becoming marked characteristics. So also was the quality he had developed as a child, the increasing inability to face a disagreeable issue.
During his life in Germany, Schopenhauer had been his daily food. From his angle religions were superstitions for the ignorant and credulous. They offered nothing. With Schopenhauer came Spinoza. Between them the Columbia student became saturated like a sponge.
At intervals Mr. Saltus had tried his hand at verse as well as prose. A sonnet written in Venice and published afterward under the title of "History" was among his first. Timidly, almost apologetically, he took it to his brother Frank.
"Splendid! Better than anything I ever did," was the unexpected praise. "I write more easily, but it is too much fag for me to polish my work. You are slower, but you scintillate. Go in for letters. It is your place in the scheme of things."
Thus encouraged, and by the brother who was the flame of the family, Edgar Saltus took up his pencil in earnest. Fundamentally, both Edgar and Frank Saltus were alike. They seemed to be oriental souls functioning for a life in occidental bodies, and the clothes pinched. Neither could endure routine, nor could they tolerate the prescribed and circumscribed existence of the western world. It was difficult to internalize in an environment both objective and external. They were subtle, indolent, exotic, living in worlds of their own, as far removed from those with whom they brushed elbows as is the fourth dimension.
Frank let himself go the way of least resistance, without effort or desire to fit in with his environment. Having traveled everywhere, and exhausted to its limit every emotion and experience, bored to tears with the world outside of his imagination and finally even with that within, he stimulated what remained with alcohol and drugs. As the mood took him he composed, tossing off sonnets and serenades like champagne, carelessly and without effort, a Titan with the indifference of a pigmy. What he might have been, had he forced his furtive and fertile fancy to grapple with the tedium of sandpaper and polish, only an extension of consciousness could reveal.
Writing of him in those days James Huneker said:
"He had the look of a Greek god gone to ruin. He was fond of absinthe and I never saw him without a cigarette in his mouth. He carved sonnets out of solid wood and compiled epigrams for Town Topics as a pastime. He composed feuilletons that would have made the fortune of a boulevardier. He was a ruin, but he was a gentleman. Edgar Saltus was handsome in a different way, dark, petit maitre."
Of Frank Saltus' multiple love affairs one alone