The 19th Wife (45 page)

Above all, I remembered the Temple on the hill. When I was little, no matter where I was in town, I would look for its tower topped by the golden statue of Moroni. The sun on the gold was as comforting as my mother’s hand upon my head. I thought of the limestone blocks, like enormous cubes of ice, and how my father and brothers, along with all the men and boys of Nauvoo, worked to put them in place with rope, pulley, and mule. And how the sun cut through the panes in the elliptical windows; and how the bronze bell rang. Perhaps most vividly, I recalled the Temple high above the Mississippi, standing firmly as we retreated across the river in our journey to Zion. For many miles I watched it as it became smaller and smaller, throwing back the sunlight, gleaming on the horizon, until it fell from sight.

“Are you sure this is the right way?” I asked our driver.

“Nauvoo. Straight ahead.”

I said there must be something wrong, I could not see the tower.

“What tower?”

As we entered town, and mounted the hill, the driver said, “You mean that?” He was pointing at a set of ruins, broken stones lying haphazardly atop one another. All that remained of the famous Temple was an end wall with two supporting columns, its edge jagged as if the rest of the building had been torn from it. The decay was similar to what you might encounter, I understand, in Rome or Greece.

Opposite us were a pair of pilgrims, an old couple, looking out over the destruction. They were small creatures, bent with age, their complexion an everlasting gray. They surveyed their lost sanctuary with dying eyes. They stood separate from us, yet the winter day was so clear I could peer across the distance to see the tears frozen to their cheeks.

There is a great shock to seeing a building you’ve known since childhood destroyed. There are certain structures in our lives—our first home, our first school, our first house of worship—which we naïvely believe will stand forever. To see these toppled bluntly delivers life’s coldest lesson: Time will take all.

We drove down the hill to the Flats. Where houses once stood, I found nothing but an empty lot or a pile of bricks. At the corner of Parley and Kimball Streets, I saw the outline of a foundation in the snow. The snow lay upon it higher than the rest of the ground. Other than that, there was nothing but a lonely fence post leaning in a drift. I told Lorenzo I once lived here.

“But there’s nothing here.”

“There used to be.” With that, I told the driver to head on. On our way out of Nauvoo we passed the site I knew to be Joseph Smith’s grave. There was no marker, only a neat mound of blue snow.

As much as I now opposed the Latter-day Saints, I took no joy in seeing such total destruction. I do not believe the mythologies of the Ancients, with their bickering gods and thunderbolts, yet even so I feel a loss when I see etchings of their ruins. Who cannot pity the lonely Doric column standing in a field of rubble? Or the severed marble torso of a precious youth? Seeing Nauvoo destroyed was like learning an acquaintance from long ago has been dead for years. Such news comes with an awkward guilt—how is it I did not know? As we drove on to Quincy, a difficult question formed in my mind—was my mission not to destroy the Saints in similar fashion? How would I feel if one day I found Great Salt Lake ruined to a pile of stone?

THE
19
TH WIFE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Distant Enemies

In Boston the lion roared. After a successful tour of the country’s middle parts, including a diversion into Wisconsin’s warm embrace, Major Pond, Lorenzo, and I traveled East. The journey was, above all, unpleasant to the nose. The railway car smelled of nothing but decay—the sloshing spittoon, the stale sandwiches, the unbathed travelers, and the sour latrine. As much as we could Lorenzo and I sat beside the window, preferring the cold blast to the stench. We spent hours looking out, surveying the winter flatlands of Indiana, then Ohio and beyond. The fields banked with snow, the brown cornstalks standing valiantly in the drifts, the farmhouses huddled against the gales—the train sped by these, and then they appeared again, on a different farm, all but the same. In the distance the land stretched flatly, nothing rising from it but a stand of chestnuts, skeletal in the winter light, or a silo, as solitary as a minaret. No mountains, no ravines, no vast valleys—already I missed the majesty of the West!

On February 18 at last we arrived in our nation’s cultural capital. Outside the station, while orienting ourselves to this busy metropolis, I found my name shrieking out from an advertising bill. Under sponsorship of Redpath’s Lyceum came an announcement of my lecture the following evening in Tremont Temple. I was grateful for such promotion, yet I felt uneasy. I assigned the feeling to fatigue and the anxiety over meeting Mr. Redpath for the first time. My lecture in Boston would determine whether I would join his roster, or if he would send me on my way. Under his sponsorship I could travel on to New York and Washington. Without it, it was doubtful we could arrange any more engagements in the world-weary East.

We met Mr. Redpath in his Lyceum Bureau on Bromfield Street. “Here she is,” he said, “Brigham’s headache!” This little man, who weighed no more than 150 pounds, hustled about his office waving letters and telegrams concerning me. He had followed my progress across the country, sending for the local news accounts and gauging my appeal through a string of contacts. “You might be the most popular woman in America,” he said. Excited, he told us about the advance ticket sales and the general anticipation for my appearance. He had arranged a series of interviews with the Boston newspapers in the afternoon, with a precise plan for the stories to run in the morning. “Once they hit, we’ll be sold out. Now let me give you one piece of advice: Keep telling the truth.”

I assured him I had no other weapon in my arsenal.

“And another thing: Don’t shy away from the more—how should I put it?—difficult aspects of your ordeal. People are fascinated. Absolutely fascinated. You can’t tell them too much.” I came to see how such a small man, with his wispy side whiskers and rather high, feminine voice, had overwhelmed the nation with his speakers. He had made his name promoting John Brown, which was the connection to Major Pond, and had earned a specialty of putting talented women such as Anna E. Dickinson and Mrs. Stanton on the boards. I told him ultimately I had one goal: to speak to the highest levels of Government. “If everything goes according to my plan,” he said, “that will happen.” The meeting concluded with this little lively man calling me his future star and giving Lorenzo a yellow and green cup and ball.

We hurried to our rooms at the Parker House to begin the newspaper interviews. Major Pond organized the men outside the room, while I sat with each individually by the fire. Lorenzo played with the cup and ball all afternoon, challenging himself to catch the ball in the cup one hundred times consecutively. As I answered the reporters’ questions, which were of such a standard variety I had answered them a hundred times before, I kept a fond eye on my son at the bench by the window as he tossed the yellow ball and caught it in its green cup. He counted in his soft, careful voice, nine, ten, eleven…. When he missed, he said to himself, “Shooty shoot.”

Long after dusk Major Pond admitted the final reporter, a Miss Christine Lee representing the
Sun
of New York. “I hear you’re on your way to New York,” she began.

“If all goes well here.”

“I have to say, Utah feels very far away to most New Yorkers. Tell me why we should care about the Brighamites?”

I explained my purpose was to speak more about polygamy than the Saints themselves, but of course to do so I needed to provide some information on the religion and territory that introduced the practice to the United States. “As I see it,” I said, “it’s a relic of Barbarism, and I believe most Americans, especially New Yorkers, should be interested in banishing Barbarism from the land.”

“I see,” said Miss Lee, writing something down. She was not yet twenty-five, wore her yellow hair loose about her polished face, and had a small jagged smile. I had no doubt there was a dangerous quality to her beauty.

The interview began routinely. She asked the general questions about my experiences, and I answered them as I have always done. For thirty minutes we spoke in a straightforward manner and I sensed she was responding to my biography. When I described my early months of marriage and the indignities of my cottage, she clicked her tongue and said, “It must’ve been terrible.” When I depicted Brigham’s mistreatment of my mother, her reply was, “Such cruelty.” When I described my flight, and my son’s fear, she said, “Unbelievable.”

I concluded by describing my lectures and the general response.

“Let me ask you this,” said Miss Lee. “I still don’t understand why you married him.”

“I had no choice.”

“Yes, you said that, but what I don’t understand is why you went through with it. You disliked him already, or at least you said you did. You did not trust him. You had seen with your own eyes how his wives lived. If you knew all that, why on earth would you agree to marry such a man?”

I had encountered this skepticism before and clipped at it without concern. “You must remember, I was born into this system. It was all I knew. I did not know a Gentile until I was an adult woman. I had been told the world beyond Deseret was Babylon and Sodom combined. I had been raised to believe Brigham delivered messages from God. And above all, I was told this was my spiritual duty, and that if I wanted to enter Heaven—and who among us, Miss Lee, does not?—then I would need to submit to Brigham’s command and become a plural wife.”

“Yes, you’ve said that, but I still don’t understand.”

“What don’t you understand?”

“You despised this man, yet you married him. Is it possible, Mrs. Young, you didn’t despise him as much as you say? Is it possible, even a little, that you were enticed into his arms by thoughts of becoming the Queen of Utah?”

“Not at all.”

“I must tell you, Mrs. Young, before I came here, I spent some time following certain aspects of your story. Did you know I’ve been to Utah? I was in California. On my way home I stopped by. I happened to be at the Walker House the night you departed, and I read about your exit in the
Tribune.
It caught my eye. So I stayed a few extra days, then a week, to look around. I had the opportunity to visit the Lion House, in fact.”

“Good. Then you saw it for yourself.”

“Yes indeed. And it is as you described it.”

“I’m glad that’s not in dispute.”

“Except in one manner.”

“What’s that?”

“I didn’t see the misery.”

I would be dishonest if I withheld from my Reader my true feeling at this moment: I wanted to swat this woman with my handbag.

“Miss Lee,” I said, “sometimes, in my experience, misery is not always apparent to the casual visitor.”

“Very true, but I had a chance to speak to a number of his wives, and no one gave me a report that was at all similar to yours.”

“I cannot tell you about anyone else’s experience but my own.”

“Of course, but it makes me wonder if yours is perhaps exaggerated?”

“It isn’t.”

“Or if not exaggerated, then perhaps unique to you? That you and President Young were simply not compatible and so you fought, as all incompatible couples do, and it’s this reason you have stories to tell from an unhappy marriage?”

“I wish that were true. I wish my experience was wholly alien to the women of Utah. If that were the case, I could go home to my other son today and settle into a house somewhere with my boys, and live out the rest of my life in privacy. My mission would be done. But this is not the case. And until it is the case, I intend to speak about what I know.”

“Do you know what people say about you?”

“I’ve heard many things.”

“You know the expression ‘The lady doth protest too much’?”

“I can’t say I do.”

“What? How can’t you know that? It’s Shakespeare.
Hamlet.
Surely you’re familiar with
Hamlet,
being a former actress.”

“In fact, no, I’m not. Do you know why I’m not familiar with
Hamlet
? Because Brigham banned Shakespeare from the stages of Deseret, unless the scripts were revised to suit his theology. So in my days on the stage I never encountered
Hamlet,
nor in my schooling, nor upon the shelves of my parents, or in the homes of friends, because, Miss Lee, anything or anyone who contradicts Brigham’s doctrine is edited, banished, or destroyed.”

“May I read a quote to you? This is one of President Young’s wives answering some of your charges. ‘She is a liar of considerable skill. She uses her dramatic training to bring her inventions to life. If half the things she speaks of were true, this Church, and family, would have been devoured already by its own rotten soul. I’m here to tell you this is a happy household, with sister wives loving one another and our children, and nothing brings us greater joy than knowing we have set out on the path to Heaven.’ Do you have a reply to that, Mrs. Young?”

“Miss Lee, do you plan to marry?”

“Yes, in fact I’m engaged. How did you know?”

“I had a sense. That’s wonderful for you. Tell me: Who’s your groom?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“All right. But tell me one thing about him, so I might begin to form an image of him in my mind.”

“One thing? He’s a printer.”

“Very nice. A man of your trade. Then imagine this man, this printer, with his inky fingers, and, I’ll venture to say, handsome appearance, and a way with words—for knowing you now a little, Miss Lee, any man you’ve settled on must have a way with words. So think of the day your printer first told you he loved you, that he hoped to marry you, to spend his life with you, to begin a family with you. Think of that day. Yes, it’s a fond memory, is it not, Miss Lee? Of course it is, as it should be. A man, an attractive printer, he must be strong—for those plates are heavy, aren’t they? This printer wants to be with you all his life. It is the definition of love, of Christian love, I will add. It’s a wonderful thought, even the hardest cynic would have to agree. Where is this printer now? While you’re on your journeys?”

“He’s in New York. He prints seven days a week.”

“Of course. He’s industrious, isn’t he? Like yourself. But he can’t work day and night. What does he do when he puts the press to bed? He has a meal, he talks with his friends, they drink whiskey? He talks about you, perhaps? And why not? Now imagine he spent his free time, what little of it there is, not with his friends from the print-shop, but with eighteen other women. So that when he’s not at his letter press, not slaving over those boxes of letters and all those tiny dingbats, he is slicing his time and affection and money and everything else into nineteenths. You will get your share, and your future children will get their share. One-nineteenth. What is rightfully yours will be yours, but no more and no less. Now, Miss Lee, will such a situation bring you happiness or misery? And if someone were to tell you it brought her happiness, could it possibly be true? Isn’t it possible she’s been told to lie? Or, isn’t it also possible she’s deceived herself into believing she’s happy when in fact she’s anything but? And why shouldn’t she lie? Either way, she’s been told her marital suffering will be rewarded in the Afterlife. She’s been told she must defend the system to death. She’s been told that Gentiles will be left on Earth at the time of the Resurrection. Now if you’ve never known anything else, anything other than these statements which sound so impossibly untrue to your keen New York ears, isn’t it perfectly possible you would claim to a reporter from the East that you were happy? Even if you were not? Miss Lee, do not present me with your cold, skeptical questions. Not when I’m describing a world founded on fear, intimidation, and anti-reason.”

The woman sat back, all courage and puffery eliminated from her soul. “I have one final question.”

“Please.”

“If polygamy is a religious practice, if it’s part of the Mormons’ eternal beliefs, why should you, or anyone, stop them from pursuing their faith? Don’t the Mormons have the right to practice their religion as they please under the Constitution?”

“And if someone were to say, I believe in slavery because it appears in the Bible, would you say, Go then, and be free to practice it. I believe this country has answered that question rather firmly. Anything else, Miss Lee?”