The sun., 1918-12-01

the solid old earth h,r-r!:.,> anrh . garden
rs one sees In the Kingdoms OF the Pipe.
But the upshot Of the fable is (and l
am not telling the story strictly on the
level) that Fame gives the Poet 4 rem
dezvous-behind his tombstone one hun
dred years from date.
recalled this story when, after looking
through Carl Van Vechtens new and racy
book, The Merry CO. oHnd-in which
food is mixed with music, Mimi Agulia
and Bernard Shaw trip the divine fan
tastic with Isadora Duncan, and James
Huneker, Margaret Angiin and Johann
Strauss take flicr at the Moulin de la
Galette-I came across the name of Edgar
Saltus. The second chapter of the book is
devoted TO him.
Saltusi Saltus! In what stored urn
of memory reposed the word? In what
sarcophagus of the past had laid that
verbal cOrpse7 In what penetralia had |
met the man with that name? At what
Petronius feast of intelectuals had
clinked glasses with that being?
The superscrption to the chapter is
taken from an old ballad:
"Oh, no, we never mention him,
His name is never heardw
And as l turned page after page Of Mr..
Van Vechten's superb tribute to this Lost
American the bandolettcs slipped from
hidden face and the blood came surging
back INTO petriffed arteries, and eyes that
thought forever sealed opened wide, and
great jewels fell from them that sang in
words and formed themselves into daggers
called epigrams. And Edgar Saltus rose
out of his Pompeii. Well, as a matter Of
fact, he had only been summering in
Oblivion.
There are three mysteries in American
lterature-the appearance of Edgar Al
Ian Poe, the disappearance of Ambrose
Bierce and the burial alive of Edgar Sal
tus. 1t is fairly certain that the latter
was pretty comfortable in his grave; and
it is still more certain that he begemmed
his coffin with prose poems scratched into
the pine wood with worms-worms, which
are the epigrams of the sod. Then, too,
without doubt, he had his Theophile Gau-
tier with him, his Baudelaire, and was fed
from the amphore of those two angelic
ghosts, Leconti de Lisle and Villiers de
PIsle Adam.
Saltus still lives, though, in the flesh, and
we lately read a tremendous prose smash
at the Huns from his pen in the Herald.
For here is an American that knows his
language, that knows the creative and
mystical power of words, that knows the
phrase that kills and The sentence that is
winged. As exotic as Poe and Lafcadio
Hearn, his books should be called Pomp
and Purple.
A lyrical intellect, an implacable pessi-
mist, sublime snob, he stands aloof and
alone in his work. His contempt and dis
dain of "merely human things is beauti-
full. 1t is a gesture toward the Infinite.
This accounts for his unpOpularity. He
will have none of the mob. The sweat Of
everyday life to him is just sweat. The
life of the poor is not drama; it is a
disease. The poor, the weary laden and
the heartbroken exist no more for him
than they did for Emerson. Whatever is
not genius is dross. Whatever is beautiful
is right. All life aspires to fiction. HUI
NOR is an attribute of God Life itself
is the conundrum Of jester.
His books take apart the mechanism of
tine quick. When he wrote The PhitOs-
ophy Of DiSenchantment he was crowned
by some one as "the Prose Laureate of
Pessimism." All is illusion in the worst
possible words-"so let US live in Paris"
The characters in his novels of New York
life moves like hallucinated automatons.
There is a heroine in each book-Maya,
the Hindu Goddess of Illusion. There is
a hero in each book-Mephistopheles.
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