Coast to Coast (17 page)

The construction company had obligingly placed a little hut, on an eminence overlooking the dam site, for the benefit of the idle traveller, with pictures showing the course of the work, and a big model to demonstrate its purpose. A man in uniform was there to explain it all, and very willingly he chatted. He was a local man, and had watched the progress of the dam since its inception. How long ago, I asked, did the people living in the valley know that one day they would have to move? He considered for a few moments.

“Let me see, now. I was born in a farmhouse just beyond that ridge there—all gone now, of course, but it was a good old place—and I remember as a boy being told the old place was going to be pulled down because of the dam. Let me see, that must have been 1916 or 17—1917, I should say, I remember it quite clearly, the war was on and they said the old place was going to be pulled down.”

“Good gracious me,” I said, “all that time ago! So they had plenty of time to get ready.”

“Oh yes, we had twenty years and more, and then they fixed us up with a house in the town there, you must have passed through it, on the left-hand side it is, very comfortable. Oh yes, it was quite a break though, the family always lived in the valley, you know. Yes, my grandfather and grandmother were buried down there, to begin with.”

“Won’t they be washed out of the graves, when the water comes?”

“Oh, they’re not there now,” he said, eyeing me as if I were something of a simpleton. “They moved all them cemeteries. Two whole cemeteries they moved, dug ’em all up and moved ’em over the hill there. They couldn’t leave graves down there, you know, it wouldn’t be decent. They shifted the whole lot, gravestones and all, over the hill. Yes, there was my grandad, and my Uncle Joe, and a cousin or two—moved ’em all, couldn’t leave them there—it wouldn’t be right!”

I left him there trying to remember if Aunt Martha had been buried there too, and drove away wondering at the omniscience of these engineers, who harness the elements and bridge the great streams, split the atom and throw their roads across the continent, and yet (if only for the goodwill) manage to remember grandad’s bones.

A
lmost the first to introduce the benevolences of science to the western frontiers were the Mormons, the original American masters of irrigation.
whose home in Utah is still a showplace of induced fertility.

The Mormons like to say that they obey the most catholic and least contentious admonition of St. Paul: “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are holy, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” They have a reputation for eccentricity, and certainly some bases of their belief are marked by a decided oddness; but I have never encountered a community so generally contented, so prosperous, confident and well-disposed. The Mormons long ago gave up polygamy, in return for the granting of Statehood to their territory of Utah; but they believe that no man can go to heaven without his family, and that the accumulated piety of the generations is spiritually important, so that Utah is notable for a lively happiness of home life. They are by no means a morose or solemn sect, though alcohol, coffee and tobacco are officially forbidden. They are fond of music and dancing and bright colours, and their recent architecture is delicate and agreeable. (There was a time when Mormon ladies greatly outnumbered their menfolk, so they devised a special form of the cotillon, that gracious and elaborate dance, to allow every gentleman two partners at a go.)

I first came into the Mormon country from the west, after a day of desert driving. The first sign of Mormon activity was a series of irrigation canals, making the country (between dry hills) green and pleasant. There were rows of poplars, planted to act as windbreakers; neat barns; small farmhouses, rather in the English manner; and innumerable haystacks, each surmounted by a strange crooked derrick for hoisting the hay, which is very characteristic of the Utah countryside.

The first town was Delta, a small place with a double row of shops and a wide street, clean and well kept. There was a new Mormon chapel and assembly hail, with a spire as slim as a necdle‚ and a portico with four slender white columns. I asked the hotel-keeper if he was a Mormon. “Sure I am‚” he answered cheerfully, “we all are around here, mostly; and if you ask me, anyone who ain’t don’t know what he’s missing!” He told me about the community activities of the place—activities which, though scarcely to my own taste, certainly sounded worthy and well-intentioned. The Mormons set great store by voluntary work for the common good. They operate mines and factories, for example, and cultivate land, chiefly by voluntary labour; the projects provide work for those who need it, and the profits go to a great welfare fund. (Sometimes Utah even relies upon voluntary executioners. A criminal condemned to death may, if he chooses, be executed by a
firing squad instead of by hanging; and a team of volunteer riflemen then carries out the sentence, shooting through slits in a canvas screen at a range of 25 feet.) “Talk about the Welfare State!” said my informant. “We’ve had one for a hundred years! Did you ever see a disgruntled Mormon? Or a happier place than Utah?” The Mormons believe strongly in good education, and for years maintained their own excellent schools. They believe in proselytizing, and have missions in (among other places) Argentina, Australia, Brazil, England, Guatemala, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, Japan, Mexico, Holland, New Zealand, Norway, Samoa, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Tahiti, Tonga, and Uruguay.

Partly because even the sins of ignorant ancestors can be expiated by present conduct, they are keenly interested in the past, and in forebears and origins (only their motives being different from those of the ladies of Charleston or Nantucket). One of their odder convictions is that in ancient times the American continent, especially South America, was inhabited by a race of extremely early Christians. The dates of their dynasties are obscure; but the founder of the Latter Day Saints, Joseph Smith, was guided by a spiritual personage named Moroni who had been, in his earthly existence, a prophet among these archaic Americans. A Mormon girl happened to tell me that her father was out of town that week, doing a series of lectures. “He lectures about South America,” she said, “and of course he’s very busy.” “He’s lived in South America, has he?” said I, wondering a little, for the family ran a modest grocery store. “Oh no, he hasn’t—but
all our folks lived there, you know, in the olden days!
”

She was referring to Moroni’s people, and accepted without question all the peculiarities of history and circumstance which are entwined in this strange Mormon theory. This is typical of the Mormons. They are an eminently practical people, good planners and agriculturists and social organizers. The visitor, inevitably impressed by the results of their faith, is tempted to slur over its more unlikely tenets on the grounds that so happy a society more than makes up for a few implausibilities. But the Mormons will have none of this. Not only do they readily agree that Mormonism triumphantly succeeds, but they also insist that all its claims are literally true.

To those whose vision is less glazed by faith, the origins of the church seem enshrouded in dubious vagueness. In 1823 Joseph Smith, the founder (then aged 18), was visited by angels at his home in New York State, and was told of some gold plates buried in a nearby hill, which concerned the history of the ancient Christian Americans and would
become “a new witness for Christ”. After many exchanges with divine messengers and advisers, he dug them up, found them to be written in Egyptian, Chaldaic, Assyriac and Arabic, and set about translating them. The consequent writings constitute one of the sacred books of the Mormons.

Smith later had some witnesses to the existence of the plates. Three friends, of exceedingly religious temperament, joined him in praying fervently that the plates, removed by the messenger, should be shown to all of them. One, Martin Harris, withdrew after a period of prayer because he felt that his presence was impeding the process. Before long the other three were visited by an angel, who showed them the plates, turned over the leaves, and announced that Smith’s translation was an excellent one. Meanwhile Harris had gone elsewhere to pray by himself, and Smith joined him. Again, the prayers were answered. “The same vision was opened to our view [wrote Smith], at least it was again opened to me, and I once more beheld and heard the same things; whilst at the same time Martin Harris cried out, apparently in an ecstasy of joy, ‘Tis’ enough, ’tis enough! Mine eyes have beheld; mine eyes have beheld!’ and jumping up he shouted ‘Hosanna’, blessing God, and otherwise rejoicing exceedingly.”

Later twelve other witnesses said that they had actually handled the plates, apparently while they were in Smith’s possession, and they signed a testimonial saying: “This we bear record with words of soberness, that the said Smith has shown unto us, for we have seen and hefted, and know of a surety that the same Smith has got the plates of which we have spoken!” These testimonials are taken very seriously by Mormons who are of course aware that many Gentiles (as they call the rest of us) regard the story of the plates with some degree of scepticism. But they do not all agree about the eventual fate of the plates. Some say that they are now in divine hands, others that they were returned to their original cache in the hillside (a sparse and scrubby little hill in New York State) never to be disturbed again until a divinely-appointed hour.

Whatever the truth of these obscure matters, Smith’s followers were infused with a resolve that brought them, after cruel persecutions and harsh journeys, across the mountains to Salt Lake City, where their splendid leader, Brigham Young, looked out across the desert and made his celebrated pronouncement: “This is the Place!” The phrase has become a slogan, at once sacred and patriotic, encountered everywhere across Utah: and when you drive across the border into naughty Nevada, you find near the State line a gaudy, neon-lit, clinking, hooting
gambling saloon which has applied the words to its own premises. When we drove into Salt Lake City, past the incredible waste fastness of the Great Salt Lake, we could see across the plain to the mountains which the Mormons traversed with such hardship (dismantling their ox-wagons on the eastern slopes, manhandling them across the range, and reassembling them on the other side).

It is a handsome and spacious city, dominated in every way by the huge sacred edifices of Mormonism. On Sunday morning the green Temple Square, in the centre of the place, is gay and animated, full of people in colourful clothes on their way to service, or to listen to the enormous Mormon choir whose Sunday concerts are broadcast throughout the nation. The chief building, the Temple, is vast and Gothic, with six pinnacled towers, one surmounted by a gold figure of Moroni, unfortunately at such an elevation that it is difficult to see what such an ancient American prophet looked like. The Temple is not open to the public; only a few spiritually eminent Mormons are allowed to enter it. Nearby, among the landscaped gardens dotted with memorials and monuments, is the Tabernacle, a massive domed building largely made of wood, with a famous organ.

To hear this great instrument, we went to a recital there and enjoyed a characteristically Mormon half-hour. The Latter Day Saints are talented publicists and we were welcomed by a smooth young man who made a little speech about the precepts of the Church. The programme was an odd mixture of the classical, the sentimental, and the home-grown. There was some Handel and some Bach, played thunderingly; a piece called “The Thrush”, which set the old ladies of the audience smiling winsomely; a scherzo composed by the organist; an “Old Melody” arranged by the organist; and the favourite Mormon hymn, Come, Come ye Saints. During my stay in Utah I came to know this hymn well and to like it. It was written during the march of the Mormons westward across the continent, in the 1840’s, and it has a fine jovial exuberance: “Why should we mourn, or think our lot is hard? ’Tis not so; all is right!” But carefully though I have listened to it and tried to analyse its shape, I remain baffled by the complicated balance of its rhythms, which always seem to be coming to one conclusion, but inevitably break away to another.

There is a little museum near the Tabernacle, with some interesting things in it, and some mementos full of curious nostalgia; a ’cello, for example, brought by one of the pioneers with the ox-trains, and some desert crickets, preserved under glass, of the kind that almost destroyed the Mormons’ first crop after the establishment of Salt Lake City.
(The crops were saved by a swarm of seagulls, which arrived miraculously in the nick of time, ate up all the crickets, and are commemorated by a tall memorial pillar near the Temple.) The first cabin in Salt Lake City is preserved behind iron railings and protected by a classical pergola. There is also a war memorial. The Mormon pioneers naturally made magnificent fighting men. I was once driving down almost as lonely a highway as you could find in America, across a stretch of the Nevada desert, hot, empty, forbidding, when I saw a small monument beside the road; it commemorated the young Mormon volunteers who had fought in the war against Mexico in 1846. The Mormons had begun their slow journey westward into Utah when the war broke out, and they were asked by the Federal Government to provide 500 young men for the war. The men instantly volunteered and made a famous forced march southwards in the heat of summer, from Council Bluffs in Iowa to San Diego on the southern California coast, across some of the hardest and hottest country in America, with a speed and cohesion that astonished professional soldiers. They had passed down my own road (before the road was there) and as I stood beside the monument I could all but see the pious columns of the Saints streaming across the desert in this tour deforce.

On summer nights there are film shows in the gardens of Temple Square. Hollywood once made a film of the life of Brigham Young, and this is shown by earnest Mormon operators to silent crowds of tourists, sitting on deck-chairs, strolling by in the shadows of the plane trees, sprawling on the grass. An efficient publicity organization has its offices in the square and issues slick, shiny booklets about Mormonism and its buildings, answering questions with automatic courtesy, like a slot machine responding to pennies. This organized self-advertisement is conducted partly, no doubt, because the Mormons are such avid missionaries, and partly because the great tourist traffic which now finds its way to Temple Square contributes usefully to the prosperity of the place. The Mormon Church is financed chiefly by tithes; every member contributes a part of his income to the central funds, administered in a big building in the classical manner, suitably dignified with broad steps, Ionian columns and an air of unfathomable probity. “But take a look around you‚” a man remarked to me one evening as we stood at the gates of Temple Square, “and it all belongs to us. See that hotel, the best in the city? That’s ours. See that one there, the second best? That’s ours. Buy a paper, sir? It’s ours. Listen to the radio? It’s ours. Want to open a bank account? We can fix it. Yes sir, don’t worry, we know all about making money!”

Indeed, the Latter Day Saints, who founded Salt Lake City, still firmly control it. Even if you wander away from Temple Square, which is the fulcrum of the city, you will constantly find yourself up against smaller sacred edifices, statues of Brigham Young declaiming “This is the place!”, emblems of Mormonism, the offices of Mormon-owned companies, Mormon pamphlets, Mormon music and the talkative Mormons themselves, who live their lives with persistent sprightliness.

Whenever I think of Salt Lake City, with the dome of its State Capitol and the pinnacles of the Temple shining there beneath the mountains, I think of bright clothes and urgent smiles; the sickly harmonies of the “Old Melody”, as played by the organist at the Tabernacle; the strains of his vast choir seeping across the square on Sunday morning; this unquenchable cheerfulness of the people; the general air of satisfied competence; and the extraordinary blandness of the old lady who told me one fine summer morning that for high religious purposes she had been tracing the course of her ancestry, and had succeeded in establishing it back to 64
B.C
, “only a few years‚” as she rightly remarked, before Caesar went to England, but of course, the ancient Americans had been civilized for centuries, as the blessed prophet Moroni told our founder—“that’s him, that’s the prophet Moroni, right up there on the Temple tower—see?”—and I looked again, shading my eyes against the sun, but could perceive only the vague outline of that antique Saint, holding what looked like a trumpet.