Greater Britain Part 9

On the morrow, we had the first and most formal of our four interviews with the Mormon president, the conversation lasting three hours, and all the leading men of the church being present. When we rose to leave, Brigham said: "Come to see me here again; Brother Stenhouse will show you everything;" and then blessed us in these words: "Peace be with you, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ."

Elder Stenhouse followed us out of the presence, and somewhat anxiously put the odd question: "Well, is he a white man?" "White" is used in Utah as a general term of praise: a white man is a man--to use our corresponding idiom--not so black as he is painted. A "white country" is a country with gra.s.s and trees; just as a white man means a man who is morally not a Ute, so a white country is a land in which others than Utes can dwell.

We made some complimentary answer to Stenhouse's question; but it was impossible not to feel that the real point was: Is Brigham sincere?

Brigham's deeds have been those of a sincere man. His bitterest opponents cannot dispute the fact that in 1844, when Nauvoo was about to be deserted, owing to the attacks of a ruffianly mob, Brigham rushed to the front, and took the chief command. To be a Mormon leader then was to be a leader of an outcast people, with a price set on his head, in a Missourian county in which almost every man who was not a Mormon was by profession an a.s.sa.s.sin. In the sense, too, of believing that he is what he professes to be, Brigham is undoubtedly sincere. In the wider sense of being that which he professes to be he comes off as well, if only we will read his words in the way he speaks them. He tells us that he is a prophet--G.o.d's representative on earth; but when I asked him whether he was of a wholly different spiritual rank to that held by other devout men, he said: "By no means. I am a prophet--one of many. All good men are prophets; but G.o.d has blessed me with peculiar favor in revealing His will oftener and more clearly through me than through other men."

Those who would understand Brigham's revelations must read Bentham. The leading Mormons are utilitarian deists. "G.o.d's will be done," they, like other deists, say is to be our rule; and G.o.d's will they find in written Revelation and in Utility. G.o.d has given men, by the actual hand of angels, the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Book of Covenants, the revelation upon Plural Marriage. When these are exhausted, man, seeking for G.o.d's will, has to turn to the principle of Utility: that which is for the happiness of mankind--_that is of the church_--is G.o.d's will, and must be done. While Utility is their only index to G.o.d's pleasure, they admit that the church must be ruled--that opinions may differ as to what is the good of the church, and therefore the will of G.o.d. They meet, then, annually, in an a.s.sembly of the people, and electing church officers by popular will and acclamation, they see G.o.d's finger in the ballot-box. They say, like the Jews in the election of their judges, that the choice of the people is the choice of G.o.d. This is what men like John Taylor or Daniel Wells appear to feel; the ignorant are permitted to look upon Brigham as something more than man, and though Brigham himself does nothing to confirm this view, the leaders foster the delusion. When I asked Stenhouse, "Has Brigham's re-election as prophet ever been opposed?" he answered sharply, "I should like to see the man who'd do it."

Brigham's personal position is a strange one: he calls himself prophet, and declares that he has revelations from G.o.d himself, but when you ask him quietly what all this means, you find that for prophet you should read political philosopher. He sees that a ca.n.a.l from Utah Lake to Salt Lake Valley would be of vast utility to the church and people--that a new settlement is urgently required. He thinks about these things till they dominate in his mind, and take in his brain the shape of physical creations. He dreams of the ca.n.a.l, the city; sees them before him in his waking moments. That which is so clearly for the good of G.o.d's people becomes G.o.d's will. Next Sunday at the Tabernacle he steps to the front, and says: "G.o.d has spoken; He has said unto his prophet, 'Get thee up, Brigham, and build Me a city in the fertile valley to the South, where there is water, where there are fish, where the sun is strong enough to ripen the cotton plants, and give raiment as well as food to My saints on earth.' Brethren willing to aid G.o.d's work should come to me before the Bishops' meeting." As the prophet takes his seat again, and puts on his broad-brimmed hat, a hum of applause runs round the bowery, and teams and barrows are freely promised.

Sometimes the ca.n.a.l, the bridge, the city may prove a failure, but this is not concealed; the prophet's human tongue may blunder even when he is communicating holy things.

"After all," Brigham said to me the day before I left, "the highest inspiration is good sense--the knowing what to do, and how to do it."

In all this it is hard for us, with our English hatred of casuistry and hair-splitting, to see sincerity; still, given his foundation, Brigham is sincere. Like other political religionists, he must feel himself morally bound to stick at nothing when the interests of the church are at stake. To prefer man's life or property to the service of G.o.d must be a crime in such a church. The Mormons deny the truth of the murder-stories alleged against the Danites, but they avoid doing so in sweeping or even general terms--though, if need were, of course they would be bound to lie as well as to kill in the name of G.o.d and His holy prophet.

The secret polity which I have sketched gives, evidently, enormous power to some one man within the church; but the Mormon const.i.tution does not very clearly point out who that man shall be. With a view to the possible future failure of leaders of great personal qualifications, the First Presidency consists of three members with equal rank; but to his place in the Trinity, Brigham unites the office of Trustee in Trust, which gives him the control of the funds and t.i.thing, or church taxation.

All are not agreed as to what should be Brigham's place in Utah.

Stenhouse said one day: "I am one of those who think that our President should do everything. He has made this church and this country, and should have his way in all things; saying so gets me into trouble with some." The writer of a report of Brigham's tour which appeared in the Salt Lake _Telegraph_ the day we reached the city, used the words: "G.o.d never spoke through man more clearly than through President Young."

One day, when Stenhouse was speaking of the morality of the Mormon people, he said: "Our penalty for adultery is death." Remembering the Danites, we were down on him at once: "Do you inflict it?" "No; but--well, not practically; but really it is so. A man who commits adultery withers away and perishes. A man sent away from his wives upon a mission that may last for years, if he lives not purely--_if, when he returns, he cannot meet the eye of Brigham, better for him to be at once in h.e.l.l._ He withers."

Brigham himself has spoken in strong words of his own power over the Mormon people: "Let the talking folk at Was.h.i.+ngton say, if they please, that I am no longer Governor of Utah. I am, and will be Governor, until G.o.d Almighty says, 'Brigham, you need not be Governor any more.'"

Brigham's head is that of a man who nowhere could be second.

CHAPTER XV.

MORMONDOM.

We had been presented at court, and favorably received; asked to call again; admitted to State secrets of the presidency. From this moment our position in the city was secured. Mormon seats in the theater were placed at our disposal; the director of immigration, the presiding bishop, Colonel Hunter--a grim, weather-beaten Indian fighter--and his coadjutors, carried us off to see the reception of the bull-train at the Elephant Corral; we were offered a team to take us to the Lake, which we refused only because we had already accepted the loan of one from a Gentile merchant; presents of peaches, and invitations to lunch, dinner, and supper, came pouring in upon us from all sides. In a single morning we were visited by four of the apostles and nine other leading members of the church. Ecclesiastical dignitaries sat upon our single chair and wash-hand-stand; and one bed groaned under the weight of George A.

Smith, "church historian," while the other bore aesop's load--the peaches he had brought. These growers of fruit from standard trees think but small things of our English wall-fruit, "baked on one side and frozen on the other," as they say. There is a mellowness about the Mormon peaches that would drive our gardeners to despair.

One of our callers was Captain Hooper, the Utah delegate to Congress. He is an adept at the Western plan of getting out of a fix by telling you a story. When we laughingly alluded to his lack of wives, and the absurdity of a monogamist representing Utah, he said that the people at Was.h.i.+ngton all believed that Utah had sent them a polygamist. There is a rule that no one with the entry shall take more than one lady to the White House receptions. A member of Congress was urged by three ladies to take them with him. He, as men do, said, "The thing is impossible"--and did it. Presenting himself with the bevy at the door, the usher stopped him: "Can't pa.s.s; only one friend admitted with each member." "Suppose, sir, that I'm the delegate from Utah Territory?" said the Congressman. "Oh, pa.s.s in, sir--pa.s.s in," was the instant answer of the usher. The story reminds me of poor Browne's "family" ticket to his lecture at Salt Lake City: "Admit the bearer and _one_ wife." Hooper is said to be under pressure at this moment on the question of polygamy, for he is a favorite with the prophet, who cannot, however, with consistency promote him to office in the church on account of a saying of his own: "A man with one wife is of less account before G.o.d than a man with no wives at all."

Our best opportunity of judging of the Mormon ladies was at the theater, which we attended regularly, sitting now in Elder Stenhouse's "family"

seats, now with General Wells. Here we saw all the wives of the leading churchmen of the city; in their houses, we saw only those they chose to show us: in no case but that of the Clawson family did we meet in society all the wives. We noticed at once that the leading ladies were all alike--full of taste, full of sense, but full, at the same time, of a kind of unconscious melancholy. Everywhere, as you looked round the house, you met the sad eye which I had seen but once before--among the Shakers at New Lebanon. The women here, knowing no other state, seem to think themselves as happy as the day is long: their eye alone is there to show the Gentile that they are, if the expression may be allowed, unhappy without knowing it. That these Mormon women love their religion and reverence its priests is but a consequence of its being "their religion"--the system in the midst of which they have been brought up.

Which of us is there who does not set up some idol in his heart round which he weaves all that he has of poetry and devotion in his character?

Art, hero-wors.h.i.+p, patriotism are forms of this great tendency. That the Mormon girls, who are educated as highly as those of any country in the world--who, like all American girls, are allowed to wander where they please--who are certain of protection in any of the fifty Gentile houses in the city, and absolutely safe in Camp Douglas at the distance of two miles from the city-wall--all consent deliberately to enter on polygamy--shows clearly enough that they can, as a rule, have no dislike to it beyond such a feeling as public opinion will speedily overcome.

Discussion of the inst.i.tution of plural marriage in Salt Lake City is fruitless; all that can be done is to observe. In a.s.saulting the Mormon citadel, you strike against the air. "Polygamy degrades the women," you begin. "Morally or socially?" says the Mormon. "Socially." "Granted," is the reply, "and that is a most desirable consummation. By socially lowering, it morally raises the woman. It makes her a servant, but it makes her pure and good."

It is always well to remember that if we have one argument against polygamy which from our Gentile point of view is unanswerable, it is not necessary that we should rack our brains for others. All our modern experience is favorable to ranking woman as man's equal; polygamy a.s.sumes that she shall be his servant--loving, faithful, cheerful, willing, but still a servant.

The opposite poles upon the women question are Utah polygamy and Kansas female suffrage.

CHAPTER XVI.

WESTERN EDITORS.

The attack upon Mormondom has been systematized, and is conducted with military skill, by trench and parallel. The New England papers having called for "facts" whereon to base their homilies, General Connor, of Fenian fame, set up the _Union Vedette_ in Salt Lake City, and publishes on Sat.u.r.days a sheet expressly intended for Eastern reading. The mantle of the _Sangamo Journal_ has fallen on the _Vedette_, and John C.

Bennett is effaced by Connor. From this source it is that come the whole of the paragraphs against Brigham and all Mormondom which fill the Eastern papers, and find their way to London. The editor has to fill his paper with peppery leaders, well-spiced telegrams, stinging "facts."

Every week there must be something that can be used and quoted against Brigham. The Eastern remarks upon quotations in turn are quoted at Salt Lake. Under such circ.u.mstances, even telegrams can be made to take a flavor. In to-day's _Vedette_ we have one from St. Joseph, describing how above one thousand "of these dirty, filthy dupes of the Great Salt Lake iniquity" are now squatting round the packet depot, awaiting transport. Another from Chicago tells us that the seven thousand European Mormons who have this year pa.s.sed up the Missouri River "are of the lowest and most ignorant cla.s.ses." The leader is directed against Mormons in general, and Stenhouse in particular, as editor of one of the Mormon papers, and ex-postmaster of the Territory. He has already had cause to fear the _Vedette_, as it was through the exertions of its editor that he lost his office. This matter is referred to in the leader of to-day: "When we found our letters scattered about the streets in fragments, we succeeded in getting an honest postmaster appointed in place of the editor of the _Telegraph_--an organ where even carrots, pumpkins, and potatoes are current funds--directed by a clique of foreign writers, who can hardly speak our language, and who never drew a loyal breath since they came to Utah." The Mormon tax frauds, and the Mormon police, likewise come in for their share of abuse, and the writer concludes with a pathetic plea against arrest "for quietly indulging in a gla.s.s of wine in a private room with a friend."

Attacks such as these make one understand the suspiciousness of the Mormon leaders, and the slowness of Stenhouse and his friends to take a joke if it concerns the church. Poor Artemus Ward once wrote to Stenhouse, "If you can't take a joke, you'll be darned, and you oughter;" but the jest at which he can laugh has wrought no cure. Heber Kimball said to me one day: "They're all alike. There was ---- came here to write a book, and we thought better of him than of most. I showed him more kindness than I ever showed a man before or since, and then he called me a 'h.o.a.ry reprobate.' I would advise him not to pa.s.s this way next time."

The suspicion often takes odd shapes. One Sunday morning, at the tabernacle, I remarked that the Prophet's daughter, Zina, had on the same dress as she had worn the evening before at the theater, in playing "Mrs. Musket" in the farce of "My Husband's Ghost." It was a black silk gown, with a vand.y.k.e flounce of white, impossible to mistake. I pointed it out in joke to a Mormon friend, when he denied my a.s.sertion in the most emphatic way, although he could not have known for certain that I was wrong, as he sat next to me in the theater during the whole play.

The Mormons will talk freely of their own suspiciousness. They say that the coldness with which travelers are usually received at Salt Lake City is the consequence of years of total misrepresentation. They forget that they are arguing in a circle, and that this misrepresentation is itself sometimes the result of their reserve.

The news and advertis.e.m.e.nts are even more amusing than the leaders in the _Vedette_. A paragraph tells us, for instance, that "Mrs. Martha Stewart and Mrs. Robertson, of San Antonio, lately had an impromptu fight with revolvers; Mrs. Stewart was badly winged." Nor is this the only reference in the paper to shooting by ladies, as another paragraph tells us how a young girl, frightened by a sham ghost, drew on the would-be apparition, and with six barrels shot him twice through the head, and four times "in the region of the heart." A quotation from the _Owyhee Avalanche_, speaking of gambling h.e.l.ls, tells us that "one hurdy shebang" in Silver City s.h.i.+pped 8000 dollars as the net proceeds of its July business. "These leeches corral more clear cash than most quartz mills," remonstrates the editor. "Corral" is the Mexican cattle inclosure; the yard where the team mules are ranched; the _kraal_ of Cape Colony, which, on the plains and the plateau, serves as a fort for men as well as a fold for oxen, and resembles the _serai_ of the East.

The word "to corral" means to shut into one of these pens; and thence "to pouch," "to pocket," "to bag," to get well into hand.

The advertis.e.m.e.nts are in keeping with the news. "Everything, from a salamander safe to a Limerick fish-hook," is offered by one firm.

"Fifty-three and a half and three and three-quarter thimble-skein Schuttler wagons," is offered by another. An advertiser bids us "Spike the Guns of Humbug! and Beware of Deleterious Dyes! Refuse to have your Heads Baptized with Liquid Fire!" Another says, "If you want a paper free from entanglements of cliques, and antagonistic to the corrupting evils of factionism, subscribe to the _Montana Radiator_." Nothing beats the following: "Butcher's dead-shot for bed-bugs! Curls them up as fire does a leaf! Try it, and sleep in peace! Sold by all live druggists."

If we turn to the other Salt Lake papers, the _Telegraph_, an independent Mormon paper, and the _Deseret News_, the official journal of the church, we find a contrast to the trash of the _Vedette_.

Brigham's paper, clearly printed and of a pleasant size, is filled with the best and latest news from the outlying portions of the Territory, and from Europe. The motto on its head is a simple one--"Truth and Liberty;" and twenty-eight columns of solid news are given us. Among the items is an account of a fight upon the Smoky Hill route, which occurred on the day we reached this city, and in which two teamsters--George Hill and Luke West--were killed by the Kiowas and Cheyennes. A loyal Union article from the pen of Albert Carrington, the editor, is followed by one upon the natural advantages of Utah, in which the writer complains that the very men who ridiculed the Mormons for settling in a desert are now declaiming against their being allowed to squat upon one of the "most fertile locations in the United States." The paper a.s.serts that Mormon success is secured only by Mormon industry, and that as a merely commercial speculation, apart from the religious impulse, the cultivation of Utah would not pay: "Utah is no place for the loafer or the lazy man." An official report, like the _Court Circular_ of England, is headed, "President Brigham Young's trip North," and is signed by G.

D. Watt, "Reporter" to the church. The Old Testament is not spared.

"From what we saw of the timbered mountains," writes one reporter, "we had no despondency of Israel ever failing for material to build up, beautify, and adorn pleasant habitations in that part of Zion." A theatrical criticism is not wanting, and the church actors come in for "praise all round." In another part of the paper are telegraphic reports from the captains of the seven immigrant trains not yet come in, giving their position, and details of the number of days' march for which they have provisions still in hand. One reports "thirty-eight head of cattle stolen;" another, "a good deal of mountain fever;" but, on the whole, the telegrams look well. The editor, speaking of the two English visitors now in the city, says: "We greet them to our mountain habitation, and bid them welcome to our orchard; and that's considerable for an editor, especially if he has plural responsibilities to look after." Bishop Harrington reports from American Fork that everybody is thriving there, and "doing as the Mormon creed directs--minding their own business." "That's good, bishop," says the editor. The "Pa.s.senger List of the 2d Ox-train, Captain J. D. Holladay," is given at length; about half the immigrants come with wife and family, very many with five or six children. From Liverpool, the chief office for Europe, comes a gazette of "Releases and Appointments," signed "Brigham Young, Jun., President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the British Isles and Adjacent Countries," accompanied by a dispatch, in which the "President for England" gives details of his visits to the Saints in Norway, and of his conversations with the United States minister at St. Petersburg.

The _Telegraph_, like its editor, is practical, and does not deal in extract. All the sheet, with the exception of a few columns, is taken up with business advertis.e.m.e.nts; but these are not the least amusing part of the paper. A gigantic figure of a man in high boots and felt hat, standing on a ladder and pasting up Messrs. Eldredge and Clawson's dry-goods advertis.e.m.e.nt, occupies nearly half the back page. Mr. Birch informs "parties hauling wheat from San Pete County" that his mill at Fort Birch "is now running, and is protected by a stone-wall fortification, and is situate at the mouth of Salt Canyon, just above Nephi City, Juab County, on the direct road to Pahranagat." A view of the fort, with posterns, parapets, embrasures, and a giant flag, heads the advertis.e.m.e.nt. The cuts are not always so cheerful: one far-western paper fills three-quarters of its front page with an engraving of a coffin. The editorial columns contain calls to the "brethren with teams"

to aid the immigrants, an account of a "rather mixed case" of "double divorce" (Gentile), and of a prosecution of a man "for violation of the seventh commandment." A Mormon police report is headed, "One drunk at the calaboose." Defending himself against charges of "directing bishops"

and "steadying the ark," the editor calls on the bishops to shorten their sermons: "we may get a crack for this, but we can't help it; we like variety, life, and short meetings." In a paragraph about his visitors, our friend, the editor of the _Telegraph_, said, a day or two after our arrival in the city: "If a stranger can escape the strychnine clique for three days after arrival, he is forever afterward safe.

Generally the first twenty-four hours are sufficient to prostrate even the very robust." In a few words of regret at a change in the Denver newspaper staff, our editor says: "However, a couple of sentences indicate that George has no intention of abandoning the tripod. That's right: keep at it, my boy; misery likes company."

The day after we reached Denver, the _Gazette_, commenting on this same "George," said: "Captain West has left the _Rocky Mountains News_ office. We are not surprised, as we could never see how any respectable, decent gentleman like George could get along with Governor Evans's paid hireling and whelp who edits that delectable sheet." Of the two papers which exist in every town in the Union, each is always at work attempting to "use up" the other. I have seen the Democratic print of Chicago call its Republican opponent "a radical, disunion, disreputable, bankrupt, emasculated evening newspaper concern of this city"--a string of terms by the side of which even Western utterances pale.

A paragraph headed "The Millennium" tells us that the editors of the _Telegraph_ and _Deseret News_ were seen yesterday afternoon walking together toward the Twentieth Ward. Another paragraph records the ill success of an expedition against Indians who had been "raiding" down in "Dixie," or South Utah. A general order, signed "Lieut.-General Daniel H. Wells," and dated "headquarters Nauvoo Legion," directs the a.s.sembly, for a three days' "big drill," of the forces of the various military districts of the Territory. The name of "Territorial Militia," under which alone the United States can permit the existence of the legion, is carefully omitted. This is not the only warlike advertis.e.m.e.nt in the paper: fourteen cases of Ballard rifles are offered in exchange for cattle; and other firms offer tents and side-arms to their friends.

Amus.e.m.e.nts are not forgotten: a cricket match between two Mormon settlements in Cache County is recorded: "Wellsville whipping Brigham City with six wickets to go down;" and is followed by an article in which the First President may have had a hand, pointing out that the Salt Lake Theater is going to be the greatest of theaters, and that the favor of its audience is a pa.s.sport beyond Wallack's, and equal to Drury Lane or the Haymarket. In sharp contrast to these signs of present prosperity, the First Presidency announce the annual gathering of the surviving members of Zion's camp, the a.s.sociation of the first immigrant band.

There is about the Mormon papers much that tells of long settlement and prosperity. When I showed Stenhouse the _Denver Gazette_ of our second day in that town, he said: "Well, _Telegraph's_ better than that!" The Denver sheet is a literary curiosity of the first order. Printed on chocolate-colored paper, in ink of a not much darker hue, it is in parts illegible--to the reader's regret, for what we were able to make out was good enough to make us wish for more.

The difference between the Mormon and Gentile papers is strongly marked in the advertis.e.m.e.nts. The _Denver Gazette_ is filled with puffs of quacks and whisky shops. In the column headed "Business Cards," Dr.

Ermerins announces that he may be consulted by his patients in the "French, German, and English" tongues. Lower down we have the card of "Dr. Treat, Eclectic Physician and Surgeon," which is preceded by an advertis.e.m.e.nt of "sulkies made to order," and followed by a leaded heading, "Know thy Destiny; Madame Thornton, the English Astrologist and Psychometrician, has located herself at Hudson, New York; by the aid of an instrument of intense power, known as the Psych.o.m.otrope, she guarantees to produce a lifelike picture of the future husband or wife of the applicant." There is a strange turning toward the supernatural among this people. Astrology is openly professed as a science throughout the United States; the success of spiritualism is amazing. The most sensible men are not exempt from the weakness: the dupes of the astrologers are not the uneducated Irish; they are the strong-minded, half-educated Western men, shrewd and keen in trade, brave in war, material and cold in faith, it would be supposed, but credulous to folly, as we know, when personal revelation, the supernaturalism of the present day, is set before them in the crudest and least attractive forms. A little lower, "Charley Eyser" and "Gus Fogus" advertise their bars. The latter announces "Lager Beer at only 10 cents," in a "cool retreat," "fitted up with green-growing trees." A returned warrior heads his announcement, in huge capitals, "Back Home Again, An Old Hand at the Bellows, the Soldier Blacksmith:--S. M. Logan." In a country where weights and measures are rather a matter of practice than of law, Mr.

O'Connell does well to add to "Lager beer 15 cents," "Gla.s.ses hold Two Bushels." John Morris, of the "Little Giant" or "Theater Saloon," asks us to "call and see him;" while his rivals of the "Progressive Saloon"

offer the "finest liquors that the East can command." Morris Sigi, whose "lager is p.r.o.nounced A No. 1 by all who have used it," bids us "give him a fair trial, and satisfy ourselves as to the false reports in circulation." Daniel Marsh, dealer in "breech-loading guns and revolvers," adds, "and anything that may be wanted, from a cradle to a coffin, both inclusive, made to order. An Indian Lodge on view, for sale." This is the man at whose shop scalps hang for sale; but he fails to name it in his advertis.e.m.e.nt; the Utes brought them in too late for insertion, perhaps.