It is a luscious country for thrilling evening stories about
assassinations of intractable Gentiles. I cannot easily conceive of
anything more cosy than the night in Salt Lake which we spent in a Gentile
den, smoking pipes and listening to tales of how Burton galloped in among
the pleading and defenceless “Morisites” and shot them down,
men and women, like so many dogs. And how Bill Hickman, a Destroying
Angel, shot Drown and Arnold dead for bringing suit against him for a
debt. And how Porter Rockwell did this and that dreadful thing. And how
heedless people often come to Utah and make remarks about Brigham, or
polygamy, or some other sacred matter, and the very next morning at
daylight such parties are sure to be found lying up some back alley,
contentedly waiting for the hearse.
And the next most interesting thing is to sit and listen to these Gentiles
talk about polygamy; and how some portly old frog of an elder, or a
bishop, marries a girl—likes her, marries her sister—likes
her, marries another sister—likes her, takes another—likes
her, marries her mother—likes her, marries her father, grandfather,
great grandfather, and then comes back hungry and asks for more. And how
the pert young thing of eleven will chance to be the favorite wife and her
own venerable grandmother have to rank away down toward D 4 in their
mutual husband’s esteem, and have to sleep in the kitchen, as like
as not. And how this dreadful sort of thing, this hiving together in one
foul nest of mother and daughters, and the making a young daughter
superior to her own mother in rank and authority, are things which Mormon
women submit to because their religion teaches them that the more wives a
man has on earth, and the more children he rears, the higher the place
they will all have in the world to come—and the warmer, maybe,
though they do not seem to say anything about that.
According to these Gentile friends of ours, Brigham Young’s harem
contains twenty or thirty wives. They said that some of them had grown old
and gone out of active service, but were comfortably housed and cared for
in the henery—or the Lion House, as it is strangely named. Along
with each wife were her children—fifty altogether. The house was
perfectly quiet and orderly, when the children were still. They all took
their meals in one room, and a happy and home-like sight it was pronounced
to be. None of our party got an opportunity to take dinner with Mr. Young,
but a Gentile by the name of Johnson professed to have enjoyed a sociable
breakfast in the Lion House. He gave a preposterous account of the “calling
of the roll,” and other preliminaries, and the carnage that ensued
when the buckwheat cakes came in. But he embellished rather too much. He
said that Mr. Young told him several smart sayings of certain of his
“two-year-olds,” observing with some pride that for many years
he had been the heaviest contributor in that line to one of the Eastern
magazines; and then he wanted to show Mr. Johnson one of the pets that had
said the last good thing, but he could not find the child.
He searched the faces of the children in detail, but could not decide
which one it was. Finally he gave it up with a sigh and said:
“I thought I would know the little cub again but I don’t.”
Mr. Johnson said further, that Mr. Young observed that life was a sad, sad
thing—“because the joy of every new marriage a man contracted
was so apt to be blighted by the inopportune funeral of a less recent
bride.” And Mr. Johnson said that while he and Mr. Young were
pleasantly conversing in private, one of the Mrs. Youngs came in and
demanded a breast-pin, remarking that she had found out that he had been
giving a breast-pin to No. 6, and she, for one, did not propose to
let this partiality go on without making a satisfactory amount of trouble
about it. Mr. Young reminded her that there was a stranger present. Mrs.
Young said that if the state of things inside the house was not agreeable
to the stranger, he could find room outside. Mr. Young promised the
breast-pin, and she went away. But in a minute or two another Mrs. Young
came in and demanded a breast-pin. Mr. Young began a remonstrance, but
Mrs. Young cut him short. She said No. 6 had got one, and No. 11 was
promised one, and it was “no use for him to try to impose on her—she
hoped she knew her rights.” He gave his promise, and she went. And
presently three Mrs. Youngs entered in a body and opened on their husband
a tempest of tears, abuse, and entreaty. They had heard all about No. 6,
No. 11, and No. 14. Three more breast-pins were promised. They were hardly
gone when nine more Mrs. Youngs filed into the presence, and a new tempest
burst forth and raged round about the prophet and his guest. Nine
breast-pins were promised, and the weird sisters filed out again. And in
came eleven more, weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth. Eleven
promised breast-pins purchased peace once more.
“That is a specimen,” said Mr. Young. “You see how it
is. You see what a life I lead. A man can’t be wise all the
time. In a heedless moment I gave my darling No. 6—excuse my calling
her thus, as her other name has escaped me for the moment—a
breast-pin. It was only worth twenty-five dollars—that is, apparently
that was its whole cost—but its ultimate cost was inevitably
bound to be a good deal more. You yourself have seen it climb up to six
hundred and fifty dollars—and alas, even that is not the end! For I
have wives all over this Territory of Utah. I have dozens of wives whose
numbers, even, I do not know without looking in the family Bible.
They are scattered far and wide among the mountains and valleys of my
realm. And mark you, every solitary one of them will hear of this wretched
breast pin, and every last one of them will have one or die. No. 6’s
breast pin will cost me twenty-five hundred dollars before I see the end
of it. And these creatures will compare these pins together, and if one is
a shade finer than the rest, they will all be thrown on my hands, and I
will have to order a new lot to keep peace in the family. Sir, you
probably did not know it, but all the time you were present with my
children your every movement was watched by vigilant servitors of mine. If
you had offered to give a child a dime, or a stick of candy, or any trifle
of the kind, you would have been snatched out of the house instantly,
provided it could be done before your gift left your hand. Otherwise it
would be absolutely necessary for you to make an exactly similar gift to
all my children—and knowing by experience the importance of the
thing, I would have stood by and seen to it myself that you did it, and
did it thoroughly. Once a gentleman gave one of my children a tin whistle—a
veritable invention of Satan, sir, and one which I have an unspeakable
horror of, and so would you if you had eighty or ninety children in your
house. But the deed was done—the man escaped. I knew what the result
was going to be, and I thirsted for vengeance. I ordered out a flock of
Destroying Angels, and they hunted the man far into the fastnesses of the
Nevada mountains. But they never caught him. I am not cruel, sir—I
am not vindictive except when sorely outraged—but if I had caught
him, sir, so help me Joseph Smith, I would have locked him into the
nursery till the brats whistled him to death. By the slaughtered body of
St. Parley Pratt (whom God assoil!) there was never anything on this earth
like it! I knew who gave the whistle to the child, but I could, not
make those jealous mothers believe me. They believed I did it, and
the result was just what any man of reflection could have foreseen: I had
to order a hundred and ten whistles—I think we had a hundred and ten
children in the house then, but some of them are off at college now—I
had to order a hundred and ten of those shrieking things, and I wish I may
never speak another word if we didn’t have to talk on our fingers
entirely, from that time forth until the children got tired of the
whistles. And if ever another man gives a whistle to a child of mine and I
get my hands on him, I will hang him higher than Haman! That is the word
with the bark on it! Shade of Nephi! You don’t know anything
about married life. I am rich, and everybody knows it. I am benevolent,
and everybody takes advantage of it. I have a strong fatherly instinct and
all the foundlings are foisted on me.
“Every time a woman wants to do well by her darling, she puzzles her
brain to cipher out some scheme for getting it into my hands. Why, sir, a
woman came here once with a child of a curious lifeless sort of complexion
(and so had the woman), and swore that the child was mine and she my wife—that
I had married her at such-and-such a time in such-and-such a place, but
she had forgotten her number, and of course I could not remember her name.
Well, sir, she called my attention to the fact that the child looked like
me, and really it did seem to resemble me—a common thing in the
Territory—and, to cut the story short, I put it in my nursery, and
she left.
“And by the ghost of Orson Hyde, when they came to wash the paint
off that child it was an Injun! Bless my soul, you don’t know
anything about married life. It is a perfect dog’s life, sir—a
perfect dog’s life. You can’t economize. It isn’t
possible. I have tried keeping one set of bridal attire for all occasions.
But it is of no use. First you’ll marry a combination of calico and
consumption that’s as thin as a rail, and next you’ll get a
creature that’s nothing more than the dropsy in disguise, and then
you’ve got to eke out that bridal dress with an old balloon. That is
the way it goes. And think of the wash-bill—(excuse these tears)—nine
hundred and eighty-four pieces a week! No, sir, there is no such a thing
as economy in a family like mine. Why, just the one item of cradles—think
of it! And vermifuge! Soothing syrup! Teething rings! And ‘papa’s
watches’ for the babies to play with! And things to scratch the
furniture with! And lucifer matches for them to eat, and pieces of glass
to cut themselves with! The item of glass alone would support your
family, I venture to say, sir. Let me scrimp and squeeze all I can, I
still can’t get ahead as fast as I feel I ought to, with my
opportunities. Bless you, sir, at a time when I had seventy-two wives in
this house, I groaned under the pressure of keeping thousands of dollars
tied up in seventy-two bedsteads when the money ought to have been out at
interest; and I just sold out the whole stock, sir, at a sacrifice, and
built a bedstead seven feet long and ninety-six feet wide.”
“But it was a failure, sir. I could not sleep. It appeared to
me that the whole seventy-two women snored at once. The roar was
deafening. And then the danger of it! That was what I was looking at. They
would all draw in their breath at once, and you could actually see the
walls of the house suck in—and then they would all exhale their
breath at once, and you could see the walls swell out, and strain, and
hear the rafters crack, and the shingles grind together. My friend, take
an old man’s advice, and don’t encumber yourself with a
large family—mind, I tell you, don’t do it. In a small family,
and in a small family only, you will find that comfort and that peace of
mind which are the best at last of the blessings this world is able to
afford us, and for the lack of which no accumulation of wealth, and no
acquisition of fame, power, and greatness can ever compensate us. Take my
word for it, ten or eleven wives is all you need—never go over it.”
Some instinct or other made me set this Johnson down as being unreliable.
And yet he was a very entertaining person, and I doubt if some of the
information he gave us could have been acquired from any other source. He
was a pleasant contrast to those reticent Mormons.
