The 19th Wife

by David Ebershoff

  This was the doctrine of Blood Atonement—any man, woman, or child who did not believe in the doctrines of the Church, or the words of its leaders, could rightfully be destroyed by the sword. The Saints, already hot with religious fever, received the Prophet’s words as Wisdom and Truth. Brigham had established his new doctrine and sent the Saints on their way to kill in the name of faith. Terrified, I broke into tears. Although I was young, Brigham’s meaning was clear to me.

  After the services we walked over to Main Street, where a restaurant sold ice-cream for twenty-five cents a glass, a high luxury well beyond my mother’s crimped budget. Yet she knew I needed a distraction. As I probed the ball of ice-cream I asked, “Why does Brother Brigham want to kill?”

  “He didn’t mean it,” my mother said. “Not like that.”

  “He meant it,” said Aaron. He had finished his ice-cream and was digging into his wife’s. “Brigham means what he says.”

  “Generally, yes,” said my mother. “But this time he was speaking in metaphor.”

  Aaron looked confused, while Connie fidgeted with her curls. I thought, No doubt God had carefully selected them to be together.

  Perhaps my mother’s assessment was correct. Even so, the Prophet’s tirade had a profound effect on me, and on many others. Here was the leader of our Church, the Governor of our land, a man in control of nearly every institution that made up our Saintly civilization, announcing from the pulpit that murder was justified in order to save souls. There, before my own eyes and ears, he asked men to murder! If he did not mean it, he should have said so.

  Since then, I have heard the arguments against my interpretation of events: Brigham’s words have been taken out of their original context (true, he often preached mercy and compassion); he was speaking in metaphor (perhaps, for it is true no one rushed out of the Tabernacle that day and lifted his sword like Laban); Blood Atonement was a product of its time, for the fiercely independent Saints were on the verge of war with the United States of America (could be, but does that justify it?). Excuses—that is all these are.

  Those who disavow my testimony as merely (merely!) the tirade of a spurned wife, to them I say: You were not there! You did not hear the hatred in the Prophet’s words. You did not see his fury.

  I am neither theologian nor philosopher nor historian. I can only repeat that which I heard or which I know with near certainty others heard. The above quotes, as far as I know, are not in dispute. The dispute lies in their interpretation. Placing my full trust in my Dear Reader, I shall cease with interpretation now and leave that important task to you.

  Yet I ask: Even if Brigham Young was calling for Blood Atonement merely for rhetorical effect, as some have argued, one cannot believe such vicious words would have no consequence. Make no mistake, there is no doubt that he dropped these appeals into this world. As poison enters a well, contamination must follow.

  Word travels as swift as the horse. We returned to our hut in Payson to discover that Mrs. Myton had already heard of the Prophet’s sermon.

  “If Brigham declares this to be true, then it must be.” Such was the analysis Aaron offered to his mother-in-law.

  Connie, my dear sister-in-law, managed to peep, “Are we in danger?”

  Aaron ignored her. “There’s a lot of work in keeping souls clean.”

  “If Brigham’s really so interested in cleanliness, he wouldn’t have sent us to this dusty old town!” That was my contribution to the debate; you can imagine its reception.

  There followed more general discussion of what the Prophet had meant. My mother genuinely believed that the Prophet, although susceptible to extremes, did not mean to incite murder. My brother, on the other hand, said there was little doubt about what should be done should we encounter an unrepentant sinner. This argument was repeated in households throughout the Territory in the subsequent days. It seemed wrong, even to my underdeveloped mind, for the Prophet, no matter his meaning, to have left his followers with such violent but unclear instructions of how to proceed.

  Well, a minority of men found the instructions clear enough to act upon them. It was but a week later that rumors began to spread that a certain Mrs. Jones and her son, Jacob, had gone flabby in their faith. I did not know Mrs. Jones personally, although I could recognize her on the street, for she was tall for the female species and often wore elaborately feathered bonnets. (During the Reformation, some Sisters were known to condemn others for the mortal sin of overly fine millinery.) Mrs. Jones was a widow, her husband was lost at Winter Quarters, yet she had long resisted offers to enter a plural marriage. Enough men had felt the slap of her rejection that she was already, at the outset of the Reformation, a woman whom many suspected of disloyalty to the doctrine of spiritual wifery. Her son, Jacob, was Aaron’s age but in many ways more of a man, and capable of growing a full brushy beard. Jacob held an unusual interest in the Indians, collecting headdresses and necklaces of beads. Outcast is too strong a word for Mrs. Jones and her son, yet this pair was never one with the provincial Payson.

  They fought the onslaught of the Reformation as best they could. Although they attended Church meetings and paid their tithings, they resisted the public confessions and turned the Home Missionaries away from their door (Aaron happily supplied this bit of information). With Blood Atonement officially in the air, and the Prophet’s words ringing in the ears of men inclined to violence, it took but seven days for the mob to settle on its prey.

  Late one night, while sleeping in our hut, we awoke to an argument down the road, a scream, a plea, the sound of something heavy falling on something soft but thick, like a mallet to a sack of flour.

  Connie flung the blanket along its wire, crying, “Aaron isn’t here!” In the moonlight stood the most pitiful creature I’ve ever seen: She was trembling and tears dripped like wax down her face. “He told me to stay in bed no matter what.”

  My mother’s face crumpled upon itself. “He’s out there with them,” she said. It is painful for me to recall, but my mother began to weep. Although my enemies have many times questioned my memory in accounting certain events, I will never let anyone accuse me of lying about my mother’s tears that night.

  Then two pistol shots cracked in the night, and each of us froze with genuine fear. Then came silence, and the long hours of uncertainty.

  In the morning, word came that Mrs. Jones and her son were dead, their bodies disfigured and defaced. Officially, the stated cause was slaughter by the Indians. Aaron, who came home before dawn, said “Jacob was always meeting up with the Indians for barter. Figures they’d go kill him one day. I heard he was stealing their feathers, or something like that.”

  “You can’t lie to me,” my mother said.

  “Ma, I’m not lying. Go ask the Bishop. Go ask the chief of police.”

  Aaron made his point: He was only repeating the official account. Justice would not come, not here. In the afternoon, the grave-digger drove the bodies to the cemetery. The wagon passed by our hut, but my mother refused to let me look out, holding me to her breast. Connie was crying too and made Aaron hold her as she heaved.

  The wagon made its way up the street. A few doors opened, the residents inside spitting at their fallen Sister and Brother. “Apostates!” they cried. “Go be with your Indians!” Others threw rotten fruit at the bodies; by the time the wagon reached the open graves, it rattled with old apples and wormy gourds. Yet the majority of residents, like my mother and me, stayed silent behind their doors, too frightened to peer out, or decry the violence, or doubt our Church. It is said that Mrs. Jones had been baking when the mob arrived at her door. There must have been a struggle, with her son coming to the hearth in her defense. We know this because the floury dough held to their fingers, and some in their hair, when the grave-digger drove them through Payson on their last ride before eternal sleep.

  X

  THE MISSION

  LDS CHURCH ARCHIVES

  SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

  Biographies & Autobiogra
phies

  Salt Lake City

  RESTRICTED ACCESS

  RECORD OF PETITION FOR ACCESS

  NAME: Professor Charles Green

  DATE: Jan. 17, 1940

  DOCUMENT NAME: Autobiography of C. G. Webb

  PURPOSE OF RESEARCH: Scholarly book on the end of plural marriage

  PETITION OUTCOME: Declined, by C. Bock, Archivist

  NAME: Kelly Dee

  DATE: July 10, 2005

  DOCUMENT NAME: Autobiography of Chauncey G. Webb, The

  PURPOSE OF RESEARCH: Master’s Thesis on Ann Eliza

  Webb Young and the legacy of polygamy

  PETITION OUTCOME: Approved by D. Savidhoffer,

  Archivist

  THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CHAUNCEY G. WEBB

  PART II

  As Ann Eliza notes in The 19th Wife, our family’s first years in Utah were marked by harmony and unified purpose. My two wives, once rivals, became companions—or at least it seemed so to me. If one of my wives nursed a deep wound in her heart, I never knew of it, for neither woman spoke of such injury during this time. In her book, Ann Eliza accuses me of “blithe unawareness” for failing to notice her mother’s suffering. Yet when I look back on those first years in Deseret, I believe our family, even in its unique configuration, had achieved a happiness most can only pray for. At least I hope this was the case.

  This interlude of domestic contentment ended abruptly when Brother Brigham ordered Gilbert and me to England on a Mission. We departed in the winter of 1855, journeying via Saint Louis, reaching Liverpool’s damp shores in the early days of a limp gray spring. There we rented a room from a young, talkative widow called Mrs. Cox, who shared a narrow house with her small daughter, Virginie, whose likeness to Ann Eliza made me miss my family even more.

  That first day in Liverpool, and the early days thereafter, we were quick to learn what type of man will refuse to greet a plain stranger speaking of God on the refined streets of St. James and Great George. The gentleman strolling with his family and nurse; the nobleman nibbling toffees in his coach; the lady ornamented in satin and jewel; the sisters preoccupied with society and fashion—these busy people had no time, or disposition, to respond to our “Good day” or “Afternoon.” Before them I felt like a ghost, for they had no awareness of me.

  In Liverpool, God’s most wretched souls congregated along the streets near Prince’s Dock, for it was here they could rake through the piles of rubbish tossed over the shipyard’s masonry walls. The one-armed sailor, the toothless hag, the skimpy orphan smeared with a lifetime of grime—here the saddest allotment of humankind sifted through the dirt with picking-irons in hopes of finding bread crusts, fruit rinds, and strips of filthy cotton that could be rinsed and sold for a penny. Every day at noon the sailors from the many ships from all over the world disembarked to dine at taverns such as the Baltimore Clipper and the Unicorn. This throng of salty men, with their odor of sea mist, and their ribald, foreign talk, poured past the beleaguered souls. Occasionally a sailor would toss a spare copper to a beggar, and a commotion would erupt in the chase for it. What pity it engendered in my heart and Gilbert’s—a dozen hopeless men and women fighting one another for the smallest of coins.

  On our first visit to the deprived neighborhood we passed a legless maiden perched on a wood platform with four small iron wheels. Her skirt was a cheap green calico, dirty and patched, yet she had fluffed it up and spread it about her with a touching amount of purpose and hope, so that she appeared, despite her missing limbs, almost as a lass sitting atop a picnic blanket. Propped before this stalwart girl was a panel on which a clear, strong hand had written out the brief narrative of her fate: Sucked in by the harvesting machine. At her side squatted a classically handsome young man, with silken black locks and Roman nose. His misery rested in his eyes, which had milked over with disease. Next to him crouched a skeletal woman with a starving babe latched to her shriveled blue breast. Beside her huddled a desperate young pair, brother and sister, I presume. They called out, “Please, we ain’t eaten in four days.”

  “May we speak to you,” I said, “about the Lord?”

  “Please, do you have some bread?”

  Gilbert broke off half of the butter sandwich Mrs. Cox had packed. He was offering it to the girl when the hag with the babe stole it, devouring it before our eyes.

  “That was for the girl and her brother,” I complained.

  “It might as well’ve been for me and my child.” The woman sat beatifically, as if she bore no remorse for her theft.

  Gilbert offered the girl the second half, careful it landed in the intended hands. She shared it with her brother, while others all around shouted and cried for a morsel of their own.

  “Now,” I said to the pair of siblings. “May we have a word about Jesus Christ?”

  “I’m sorry,” replied the girl. “But I don’t believe any of it. Not any more.”

  I could not fault her. If I had been handed her fate, I cannot say for certain my faith would hold firm. Such misery is too profound to suppose we can know its meaning.

  My son and I tried the young lass on the wooden cart. “May we have a word?”

  “I don’t want your pity, I want work.”

  “May we talk to you about Jesus Christ?”

  “I don’t need salvation, I need work.”

  We approached the young man with the clouded eyes. “Sir, do you have a moment to spare?”

  “If you have a copper to spare.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then neither do I.”

  Thus our efforts passed, with no success for nearly a year.

  Each night we would return to a coal fire lit by Mrs. Cox. In our room Gilbert and I would fall to our knees and pray for success and fortitude. By the glow of the candle I would write two letters, one to each Mrs. Webb. Often I struggled to offer each woman a unique account of my day, for I feared they might share the letters and find I had copied my sentiments from one to the next. If I signed my letters to Elizabeth Your true husband, then I carefully signed those to Lydia Your husband most sincere. As time passed, my longing for both women grew, and often I stayed up late, with Gilbert asleep beside me, writing out my desire to see each; and imagining the day I would. Any man who has endured a long separation from his wife will understand these yearnings.

  One night, while on our knees, Gilbert said, “Father, I’m not sure how much longer I can do this.”

  It had been a difficult day at the end of a lonely week. The weather was damp, the city’s mood foul, and a frivolous young woman done up in fox fur had passed us on the street, giggling to her companion, “What a waste of a good young man!”

  “Father,” said Gilbert, “I’m not sure we’re achieving anything.”

  Startled by his quivering faith, there, before Mrs. Cox’s glowing grate, I promised my son the next day would bring success. “I can’t tell you how, or who, but you’ll see your efforts rewarded.” There is but one explanation for why I promised what I could not—desperation to tamp down my son’s kindling doubt. He was an unknowable young man, distant in every way. Sometimes I suspected he privately accused me of vanity, hypocrisy, and the other sins of the wealthy and well-stationed. No doubt his questions about faith and the Church itself had deepened during our stay abroad; and I worried he might rashly choose to defy, or even depart, the creed that had saved his mother and brought them to me. I worried over his future, as all fathers do. It was this worry that kept me from sensing my own doubt unfolding within. In The 19th Wife my daughter accuses me of blind faith, “a blindfold woven from mammon and power tied across his eyes,” she says. Her assault is cruel, I know, but I often wonder if her assassin’s blade has been forged from an unalloyed truth.

  The next day was bright with sun, as clear as the previous day had been gray. We spent nearly twelve hours in the quadrangle of the Merchant’s Exchange near the statue of Lord Nelson. Everywhere windows were open to the breeze. Benign weather can add difficulty to the M
issionary’s work, for the general hopefulness of the climate helps Man forget his woes. Thus, the day was no different than all the previous, except one woman, done up in jelly-colored silk, wrongly accused us of stealing a bundle of lace which later turned up on a bench.

  We returned to Mrs. Cox’s little house dispossessed and weary. I carried a heavy shame for attempting prophecy. I could hardly muster a greeting to our landlady and her child.

  “Right, ’ave a nice day, did you?” said Mrs. Cox. “Virginie, dear, leave the gentlemen alone, they’ve been out working for the Lord. Now I set your fire the way you like it, and I’ve just put the kettle on. Go and settle yourselves in and I’ll fetch some biscuits, or if you like I can bring some swipes.”

  Always loquacious, with very little to say but many words at her disposal, Mrs. Cox seemed particularly eager to hold us at the foot of her staircase longer than usual. “May I ’ave a word? If you’re not too tired”—and when she saw we had failed to understand her intent she continued—“about your Church and your Book? I was born into the Anglican Church, of course. But ever since Mr. Cox’s passing I ’ave to say I’ve ’ad me doubts.”

  It was then I understood. I moved to begin to speak, but Gilbert interrupted. “Father, may I try?”

  His sudden eagerness to proselytize surprised me, and left me proud. We passed the evening in Mrs. Cox’s parlor, Gilbert, for the most part, leading our discussion. Virginie lay upon the carpet, dressing and undressing her doll. Gilbert recounted the story of Joseph’s Revelations, and the Latter-day Saints, a few times forgetting an important point which I added delicately, careful not to insult his capabilities. Mrs. Cox listened patiently, providing delightful commentary to the events of the Church’s early history: “And ’e found the plates of gold in the earth, did ’e? Right lucky no one else came along. Most men would boil ’em down, they would.”