FullReads

[Footnote 27: Mitchell Kennerley; 1906.]

“Vanity Square”[28] in Stella Sixmuth boasts such a “vampire” as even Theda Bara is seldom called upon to portray. Not until the final chapters of this mystery story do we discover that this lady has been poisoning a rich man’s wife, with an eye on the rich man’s heart and hand. Oraere is this slow and subtle poison which leaves no subsequent trace. She is thwarted but in a subsequent attempt she is successful. Robert Hichens has used this theme in “Bella Donna.” There is a suicide by pistol. An exciting story but little else, this book contains fewer references to the gods and the caesars than is usual with Saltus. To compensate there are long discussions about phobias, dual personalities (a girl with six is described) and theories about future existence. Vanity Square, we are told, is bounded by Central Park, Madison Avenue, Seventy-second Street and the Plaza.

[Footnote 28: J. B. Lippincott Co.; 1906.]

It will be remembered that Tancred Ennever was at work on “Historia Amoris”[29] in 1895, which would seem to indicate that Saltus had begun to collect material for it himself at that time. The title is a literal description of the contents of the book: it is a history of love. Such a work might have been made purely anecdotal or scientific, but Saltus’s purpose has been at once more serious and more graceful, to show how the love currents flowed through the centuries, to show what effect period life had on love and what effect love had on period life. Beginning with Babylon and passing on through the “Song of Songs” we meet Helen of Troy, Scheherazade (though but briefly), Sappho (to whom an entire chapter is devoted), Cleopatra (whom Heine called ” cette reine entretenue “), Mary Magdalen, Heloise…. The Courts of Love are described and deductions are drawn as to the effect of the Renaissance on the Gay Science. “Historia Amoris” is concluded by a Schopenhauerian essay on “The Law of Attraction.” Cicisbeism is not treated in extenso, as it should be, and I also missed the fragrant name of Sophie Arnould. Readers of “Love and Lore,” “The Pomps of Satan,” “Imperial Purple,” and “The Lords of the Ghostland” will find much of their material adjusted to the purposes of this History of Love, which, nevertheless, no one interested in Saltus can afford to miss.

[Footnote 29: Mitchell Kennerley; 1907.]

In “The Lords of the Ghostland, a history of the ideal,”[30] Saltus returns to the theme of “The Anatomy of Negation.” The newer work is both more cynical and more charming. It is, of course, a history and a comparison of religions. With Reinach Saltus believes that Christianity owes much to its ancestors. Brahma, Ormuzd, Amon-Ra, Bel-Marduk, Jehovah, Zeus, Jupiter, and many lesser deities parade before us in defile. Prejudice, intolerance, tolerance even are lacking from this book, as they were from “Imperial Purple.” “The Lords of the Ghostland” is neither reverent nor irreverent, it is unreverent. Mr. Saltus finds joy in writing about the gods, the joy of a poet, and if his chiefest pleasure is to extol the gods of Greece that is only what might be expected of this truly pagan spirit. Students of comparative theology can learn much from these pages, but they will learn it unwittingly, for the poet supersedes the teacher. Saltus is never professorial. The scientific spirit is never to the fore; no marshalling of dull facts for their own sakes. Nevertheless I suspect that the book contains more absorbing information than any similar volume on the subject. With a fascinating and guileful style this divine devil of an author leads us on to the spot where he can point out to us that the only original feature of Christianity is the crucifixion, and even that is foreshadowed in Hindoo legend, in which Krishna dies, nailed by arrows to a tree. This book should be required reading for the first class in isogogies.