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[Footnote 9: Scribner and Welford; 1887. Revised edition, Belford, Clarke and Co.; 1889.]

“Tales before Supper, from Theophile Gautier and Prosper Merimee, told in English by Myndart Verelst and delayed with a proem by Edgar Saltus.”[10] Translation again. The stories are “Avatar” and “The Venus of Ille.” The essay at the beginning is a very charming performance. This book is dedicated to E. C. R.

[Footnote 10: Brentano’s; 1887.]

“Mr. Incoul’s Misadventure,”[11] Saltus’s first novel, is also the best of his numerous fictions. It, too, should be triple-starred in any guide book through this opus -land. In it will be found, super-distilled, the very essence of all the best qualities of this writer. It is written with fine reserve; the story holds; the characters are unusually well observed, felt, and expressed. Irony shines through the pages and the final cadence includes a murder and a suicide. For the former, bromide of potassium and gas are utilized in combination; for the latter laudanum, taken hypodermically, suffices. There are scenes in Biarritz and Northern Spain which include a thrilling picture of a bull-fight. There is an interesting glimpse of the Paris Opera. There is a description of an epithumetic library which embraces many forbidden titles, (How that “baron of moral endeavour … the professional hound of heaven,” Anthony Comstock, would have gloated over these shelves!), a vibrant page about Goya, and another about a Thibetian cat. Many passages could be brought forward as evidence that Mr. Saltus loves the fire-side sphynx. The Mr. Incoul of the title gives one a very excellent idea of how inhuman a just man can be. There is not a single slip in the skilful delineation of this monster. The beautiful heroine vaguely shambles into a tapestried background. She is moyen age in her appealing weakness. The jeune premier, Lenox Leigh, is well drawn and lighted. Time after time the author strikes subtle harmonies which must have delighted Henry James. Why is this book not dedicated to author of “The Turn of the Screw” rather than to “E. A. S.”? The pages are permeated with suspense, horror, information, irony, and charm, about evenly distributed, all of which qualities are expressed in the astounding title (astounding after you have read the book). There is a white marriage in this tale, stipulated in the hymeneal bond. In 1877 Tschaikovsky made a similar agreement with the woman he married.

[Footnote 11: Benjamin and Bell; 1887.]

“The Truth About Tristrem Varick”[12] is written with the same restraint which characterizes the style of “Mr. Incoul’s Misadventure,” a restraint seldom to be encountered in Saltus’s later fictions. One of the angles of the plot in which an irate father attempts to suppress a marriage by suggesting incest, bobs up twice again in his stories, for the last time nearly thirty years later in “The Monster.” Irony is the keynote of the work, a keynote sounded in the dedication, “To my master, the philosopher of the unconscious, Eduard von Hartmann, this attempt in ornamental disenchantment is dutifully inscribed.” The heroine, as frequently happens with Saltus heroines, is veiled with the mysteries of Isis; we do not see the workings of her mind and so we can sympathize with Varick, who pursues her with persistent misunderstanding and arduous devotion through 240 pages. He attributes her aloofness to his father’s unfounded charge against his mother and her father. When he learns that she has borne a child he suspects rape and, with a needle-like dagger that leaves no sign, he kills the man he believes to have seduced her. Then he goes to the lady to receive her thanks, only to learn that she loved the man he has killed. Varick gives himself into the hands of the police, confesses, and is delivered to justice, the lady gloating. A strikingly pessimistic tale, only less good than “Mr. Incoul.” There is superb writing in these pages, many delightful passages. La Cenerentola and Lucrezia Borgia are mentioned in passing. Saltus has (or had) an exuberant fondness for Donizetti and Rossini. Here is a telling bit of art criticism (attributed to a character) descriptive of the Paris Salon: “There was a Manet or two, a Moreau and a dozen excellent landscapes, but the rest represented the apotheosis of mediocrity. The pictures which Gerome, Cabanel, Bouguereau, and the acolytes of these pastry-cooks exposed were stupid and sterile as church doors.” This required courage in 1888. One wonders where Kenyon Cox was at the time! Give this book at least two stars.