Edgar Saltus: The Man Part 13

The sound of a vacuum cleaner was the last straw. Waving his arms like a dervish he would appear in working attire,--hair on end, light blue flannel shirt open at the neck, and make what I called a few "cursery remarks."

Late in the afternoon only, when he left the house for his walk--he did not care what transpired during his absence--could the maid get in to make up his rooms. Even then he accepted it because he was compelled to submit. His study was as closely guarded as a Bluebeard's den. No one entered it--and no one wanted to, for cigar b.u.t.ts and ashes were the rose-leaves scenting his sanctum.

When working on a novel Mr. Saltus was living in another world. He knew where his things were, but no other, unless possessed of second sight, could have hazarded a guess. Under cigar b.u.t.ts, half burned cigarettes, piles of ma.n.u.scripts, note-books and pencils, which were scattered all over the floor, anything might be hidden, and often was. Until he had finished a novel or other prolonged work, any attempt at clearing up would have been fatal, not only to himself but to the sanity of the one who did the cleaning. With the knowledge that most literary men were "litterers" the room was divested of anything which could be injured before it was turned over to him.

Unfitted for housekeeping both by temperament and inclination, and having none of the responsibility of it, I could look on and laugh. In later years the laugh was not quite as spontaneous.

In spite of the extreme untidiness of his study, Mr. Saltus was scrupulously particular about his person, changing his linen several times a day after a tub and a shower. In fussing over his linen he was almost as fearful as over losing his luggage or getting a disease. Whenever the laundryman was late in arriving he was sure that it was lost forever. His worry was not so much over replacing the things, as over the fact that to do so he must go into a shop. Linen and luggage fears arose from the same cause.

The laundry terror persisted also until the end of his life. All these peculiarities must have been trying to normal women. He recognized it himself fully, and used to say:--

"I'm a panicky pup, and I know it; and only a pampered puss could put up with me. If she should turn me out I'd go 'round and 'round in circles like a mad dog till some one took me to the pound and dropped me in the lethal chamber."

CHAPTER X

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 alb.u.m 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 a.s.sociation 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 n.o.blest and most selfless beings on earth.

This acquaintance was pa.s.sed 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, const.i.tuted 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 const.i.tution 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 a.s.s 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 att.i.tude 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 trans.m.u.ted 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:--