The 19th Wife (44 page)

THE
19
TH WIFE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The Stones of Nauvoo

After a brief stop at the border between Utah and Wyoming, Lorenzo and I rode on to Laramie. It was my first time in a Gentile city, and I expected the highest form of civilization. Surely any metropolis ruled by law and reason, rather than superstition and tyranny, would have organized itself into a Great City. Yet in Laramie, this proved not to be the case. We exited the station to find a frozen town of dirt, cows, and pigs. The wind whipped from all ends and the livestock used much of downtown as its huddling shed. The ranchers and cowhands walked around in the caliper-legged manner of the man molded on horseback. The women, it seemed, were as rough as the men. I asked one the direction to my hotel. She was corseted up in red and black, with a velvet ribbon about her throat. She eyed me warily. “Why? You working there too?”

I must confess my disappointment. Brigham’s city outranked this town in every way but one. Walking down the street, dodging the hogs and the sheep, I counted six steeples, spires, and bell towers. At one crossroads, Baptist and Methodist Churches faced one another in seeming harmony. Despite the rustic quality of my environs, I was grateful to be free of Orthodoxy.

Lorenzo and I had sequestered ourselves in a hotel room for two days when Major Pond arrived from Salt Lake, carrying the newspapers. The
Tribune
had run an article on my escape entitled, “Godspeed, Mrs. Young!” He was very excited and worn from his journey, and I urged him to rest before we got on to business. But he would not hear of it. “Everyone wants to hear from you,” he said. “Look at this telegram, they want you to speak here in Laramie.” I told him I wanted to rest for a few days and spend time with Lorenzo, who had suffered much during our flight.

“I understand, but you’ll need to be in your finest form in Denver,” the Major advised. “We’ll need money for the trip, the hotels, a new dress for you.” With my consent, he wanted to rent a lecture hall at the Wyoming Institute. “We’ll charge a dollar fifty a head, and the hall can hold four hundred.”

Reader, I was not practicing false modesty when I said, “Surely there can’t be four hundred people in all of Wyoming who want to hear from me.”

But there were! My first night of lecturing in a free land was a success. Every seat was sold, and Major Pond regretfully turned many dozen away. I have been advised by my wise editor, to whom I owe a certain amount, that a personal story such as mine will inevitably lose the reader’s attention if I go on too long about triumphs and success. (“The reader wants challenges, obstacles, and despair!” he has suggested, and perhaps once too often.) Although I do not wholly agree with this fine man’s opinion, on this and other matters, I will spare my Reader any further description of my lecturing triumphs in Laramie, and move onward with my tale.
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After my evening at the Wyoming Institute, more invitations arrived. Major Pond convinced me that en route to Denver we should stop in Cheyenne and Fort Russell. I tried to decline, worried that I had already spoken to everyone in the Teton Range who might take interest in my tale. Major Pond assured me many more would be found. Again I will spare you the details of those events, but I can assure you (and the newspapers will attest) that my success at the lectern continued in Cheyenne and Fort Russell. Interest in the harem, it seems, runs deep.

In Denver, a newspaper out of Central City greeted me with my first blast of skepticism: “We can only hope Mrs. Young does not expect the citizenry of Denver to be as easily astonished as she has become accustomed to. Our ladies and gentlemen have listened to the greatest speakers of our day, company by no means which we include her in.”

“Ignore them,” advised the Major. “You will be loved.”

As I took the lectern of Denver’s New Baptist Church, a heavy anxiety overtook me, burdening me with the sensation of walking through deep sand. Looking out into the mass of faces and the clamshell lights upon me, I recalled my days on Brigham’s stage. How easy that job was in comparison—simply spilling out someone else’s words! That evening I gave my well-practiced lecture, “My Life in Bondage.” I began nervously, I know, for many minutes I stirred no response in my audience. There is no greater silence than that of an auditorium waiting anxiously for something to happen. In the front row two young girls, each no older than ten, stared up at me. One was dark in the brow, with wide-set wondrous eyes. Her sister wore her red hair down in ringlets. They regarded me sincerely. If I had any doubt about my purpose, their lovely gaze blew it away. By the time I began recounting my mother’s conversion, I lost myself in my tale. The feeling was such that I was no longer lecturing, but re-living my ordeal. The Reformation, the hand-cart fiasco, Mr. Dee! Were someone to tap me on the shoulder and ask, Do you have the date and time? I would have regarded him blankly, unaware of where I was. My story possessed me, as that black ghost of Brigham had once possessed me. It controlled the words forming on my tongue. I have gone on to meet many great writers in my time. It was Mrs. Stowe who described the act of composition similar to this. “I become, quite simply, the vessel for the muse,” she said to me. For those of you who wonder how Joseph could put his face in a hat and dictate his Book: I offer this alternative explanation. Imagination can take command of the person. Ask the artist, the actress, the poet feverishly producing line after line of his Epic! Is it God speaking, or the mysterious mind?

Now it seemed my life’s adventure was in possession of my audience, too. Anyone who has stood before a gathering knows when he has captivated his audience, or when he has failed to do so. There is a spirit in the hall for each scenario, and they are as opposite in nature as the bright angel and the dark demon. Tonight the angel visited Denver, shining his light upon me. As I concluded my story, describing my escape through the night, my audience exploded with applause. When I left the lectern at least a hundred rushed the stage to meet me.

The lecture was such a success, even the skeptics out of Central City commended me: “There is no doubt her story, if true, holds a certain amount of interest for many.” Major Pond showed me a telegram from James Redpath, whose Lyceum Agency in Boston represented the talents of Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass, personas whose names I recognized but whose reputations, at the time, I little understood. He proposed a contract of fifty lectures for $10,000. Major Pond dismissed the offer: “We can get more.”

Major Pond concocted a plan for us to travel to Boston, where Mr. Redpath could listen to me in person. “I’m convinced once he has sat at your feet, and heard your tale, he’ll sign you on as his biggest attraction for whatever fee we demand.”

“As long as we get to Washington.”

“We will,” the Major promised. “Washington is our last stop. But tonight you’re the toast of the Rockies, the Queen of the Eastern Slopes.”

Despite my local triumphs, I felt little pleasure. My mission was not to entertain, nor to haul in high-grossing receipts, nor to serve as top-billing for Mr. Redpath, as much as Major Pond admired his roster. I took little reward from the thunder of twelve hundred hands beating in applause, or as many feet tramping upon the floorboards. The columns of newsprint praising my bravery and my orating skills, my sense of timing, and my gentle comic touch—these could not embolden me. None of this mattered except as a weapon in my larger Crusade. I had left Utah with a single purpose, and I would not rest, or find comfort, or sense joy, or measure pride, until at last I had presented my story to the men of Congress, and President Grant, too, forcing upon them, and our nation, the Truth of so many women like myself, and the plight of our children. I had but one hope—to witness the rewriting of our laws.

From Denver we toured the middle of the country—Topeka, Lawrence, Leavenworth, St. Louis, Peoria, Quincy, Chicago. In some cities the halls were full, in others only partially so, but each night I achieved my objective of informing those gathered of this relic of Barbarism. Wherever I went many good men and women greeted me with sympathy, the newspapers reported on me understandingly, and the editorials acknowledged my purpose. Even the more prurient columns, as undignified as they were, supported my cause, for there was hardly a soul in the vast middle of our great land who was not shocked by Mormondom’s peculiar institution. “How can this go on in America?” asked many. No one denounced, contradicted, or maligned me. I should have taken comfort in this general warm reception. Instead, my enemies’ silence concerned me.

“Nonsense,” said Major Pond. “In Utah, you might have enemies, but the rest of America loves you!” If ever there was a man meant for promotion and salesmanship, it was Major Pond. In a futile effort to console, he showed me Brigham’s Salt Lake papers. Only occasionally did they report on my crusade. By now, they mostly ignored me.

In the frozen days after the New Year of 1874, I visited Burlington, Iowa, a red-brick metropolis approximately thirty miles up the Mississippi from my birthplace of Nauvoo. It was here that I encountered my first rival on the lecture circuit. On the same night I was to speak, by coincidence a second, somewhat smaller venue had booked Mrs. Victoria Woodhull, the suffragist, spiritualist, labor reformer, newspaper editoress, Wall Street broker, and unsuccessful candidate for President. Of course I did not know Mrs. Woodhull in person, but her character had long before made my acquaintance—for Brigham often invoked her as an example of Gentile depravity. Among her many beliefs, for which she was paid handsomely to discuss, Mrs. Woodhull held a deep conviction in the open sensuality of women and the female’s “right” to amorous satisfaction. Her other accomplishments included the exposure of Reverend Beecher’s compromising interlude with the wife of his dear friend, thus destroying his repute; and, I am told, a sojourn in the squalid Ludlow Street Jail. To call Mrs. Woodhull’s reputation notorious is to label the lion timid or the buffalo delicate on the foot.

Having become familiar with the public’s interest in the lurid, I worried that she would draw away my natural audience. Major Pond assured me not to concern myself, and set out from our hotel, with its fine view of the icy river, to gather information on my competitor’s numbers.

I was in the room reading to Lorenzo when a clerk announced Mrs. Woodhull was downstairs, calling to pay her respects.

“Tell her I’m not in,” I said.

“But, Mrs. Young, you are in.” The boy was young, with waves of corn-colored hair, and hobbled by a limited understanding of the ways of women. I told him I was busy with my son, this was my only time to spend with him, and that he should inform Mrs. Woodhull that I was not present. The boy persisted. “She knows you’re here. She said she saw you return an hour ago.”

“Then tell her I cannot see her but I’ll accept her card.” I closed the door, dropping the woman’s card into the stove. From the window I saw Mrs. Woodhull move down the street, her sturdy comportment making way, the plum ribbon of her hat fluttering with the snow flurries. Suddenly she stopped and turned around. Her eyes quickly found me in the window, and I shall always remember how they acknowledged me and dismissed me in one succinct glare.

That evening, at my lecture, I expected some sort of return of favor from Mrs. Woodhull, but none came. At the end of the night my audience embraced me for sharing with them my story. The lecture was a success, but I went to bed needled by concern.

In the morning, we crossed the Mississippi and drove by sleigh down to Nauvoo. We approached from the North, our hired team stamping happily in the crisp snow. It was a clear day, the sun high and cold, the sky a thin, brittle blue. Lorenzo kept peering from beneath the blanket, anxious to see the city he had heard so much about from his grandmother. Major Pond was in a fouler mood. “It’s another fifty miles to Quincy,” he said repeatedly. “We don’t have much time.”

My memories of Nauvoo were both distinct and limited, the miniature portraits of the young child’s mind. They came to me with a warm bathing sensation, as memories of early childhood often do. I recalled the orderly streets where we had lived, our tidy brick house facing its opposite across the way. Thinking of my father’s wainwright shop churned up other memories I had not conjured for years. I recalled the bitter smell of the thick smoke in the blacksmith’s chimney, the glowing red of iron in the flame, and the sparks spraying from Gilbert’s shodding hammer. From there, I thought of the fetid, almost animal smell of the river in summer, the way the stench rolled up the bank slowly; and the dry, lifeless scent of winter’s wind running down the Temple’s hill. I recalled my mother as a young woman, her pure devotion, her simple manner. And my father, quick and hard-working, his complexion yet to toughen and brown. Brigham’s younger self came to mind, sturdy but not yet fat, with his boyish grin. How I remember him walking down the streets of Nauvoo, touching his followers, inviting them in, feeding them, helping them, praying with them, lending them a hand in building a house, a barn, or planting a field. He had a sense of humor in those days, for I recalled the day he visited our barn and named our buckling, with his unusual high-hat of white hair, Mr. Pope.