Edgar Saltus: The Man

by Marie Saltus

"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 have referred, 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.