“I’ve got a proposal for you,” he said.
My mother sat up and began a speech I had not known she had prepared. “Brigham, you know quite well I love you as much as anyone. But be kind to my daughter. She’s now barely a woman and sometimes she doesn’t know what she’s after. Please consider her happiness as well, not merely yours.”
“Sister Elizabeth, it’s her happiness I have in mind. Now let me make my proposition, then you’ll see for yourself. As you know, our theater had a successful opening this past March. Our second season begins on Christmas Day. I would like your daughter to join the company. As an actress.”
His gaze lingered upon me in such a mysterious fashion that I was at a loss to interpret his meaning. “I’m not an actress,” I said.
“I don’t want my daughter on the stage.”
“Of course not. You shouldn’t. Not just any stage. But this is my stage. We would never put up anything wicked. I can’t think of a more perfect setting for Ann Eliza’s talents.”
Since my apostasy, Brigham has publicly accused me of always loving an audience. Many newspapers have reported him as saying I all but begged him to put me on his stage. This could not be further from the truth! I pondered his proposal for several days, coming close to turning him down. But I sensed my mother wanted me to follow Brigham’s command; and I will admit I was at the age when any young woman has a mild curiosity about standing on the boards with the clam-shell lamps upon her. Thus, I reluctantly accepted Brigham’s proposal and joined his theatrical company.
I debuted on Christmas Day 1862 in the Irish lampoon Paddy Miles’ Boy in the minor role of Jane Fidget. Because my talents were new and untrained, I refrained from complaining about my limited time on stage. Next I appeared as the comedic heroine in The Two Polts. Thereafter I played the ingénue in Old Phil’s Birthday—a role more suitable for my physical attributes and instincts. In one week I had gone from novice to veteran. In one month I was a player the critics, some from as far as California, mentioned in their columns. If I am to believe them, my dramatic gifts were effortless and well-disposed. One wrote, “Miss Webb possesses the most natural beauty to be seen in Utah in recent memory.” Why I remember that particular line of criticism I cannot say.
By January I had become such a part of the company, and so enfolded in the weekly repertory, that the long drive to and from my mother’s house in South Cottonwood was no longer practical. It was decided the most practical thing would be for me to move into the Lion House.
At the time, the Lion House was one of the most infamous private homes in all of America. Many speculated about the activities taking place inside; and every Gentile visitor to Salt Lake, on his way to California, made certain to see it, standing before its wall, gazing up at its cream plaster and green shutters, hoping to witness a salacious endeavor within. Newspapers whose editors disliked Brigham ran cartoons of him, plumped up in bed in the Lion House, twenty wives about him, ten on each side. They called it by many names—Brigham’s harem, his seraglio, the hen house. Brigham’s supporters, on the other hand, often referred to it as “the Mount Vernon of the West.” Even in the Territory, were you to ask the most loyal Saint how many wives lived inside, he would not know. The mysteries of its hallways, and what transpired beyond its notorious dormer windows, kept tongues busy with speculation. I know this for, since my apostasy, everyone, it seems, wants to hear about the inner workings of the Lion House.
I arrived one afternoon just before dinner, greeted in the glassed-in vestibule by Sister Snow, my old friend from the Endowment Ceremony. She led me up the stairs to a hallway bisecting the length of the top floor, ten doors on each side. Along the way we passed half a dozen children and several women I did not recognize. The children ran past me as if I did not exist—excited, straining creatures accustomed to many women and few men. The women were Brigham’s wives, although they called one another “Aunt.” Each took me in with a silent glare.
At the end of the hall Sister Snow opened a door to a small room with a sunflower paper that was dirty where pictures used to hang. There was a bed, dresser, and a tiny stove. “I hope I didn’t drive someone out of her room.”
“You didn’t, so don’t let it trouble you. Dinner’s at four-thirty. See you downstairs.” Sister Snow has always given me the impression of a woman who is ready to die but will outlive everyone she knows.
Dinner was an affair for fifty, overseen by childless Aunt Twiss. She had been a young widow in Nauvoo when Brigham discovered her notable domestic skills. So industrious was she that other women gossiped about her as if she had committed a crime against them personally. Once a week Aunt Twiss stayed up through the night to scour down her hearth, so that it might gleam in the morning light—an effort that caused some women to boil red with envy. Others chittered on about her method of sweeping: on her knees with a hand-broom, from one corner of a room to the opposite, and back. If her thoroughness in keeping house angered some women, it pleased Brigham, who had been employing her many useful skills since their marriage a few days before departing Nauvoo in 1846.
The large dining room was in the western part of the basement. When I entered for the first time, Aunt Twiss sat me at the end of a table with a group of girls called the Big Ten—Brigham’s elder daughters, ten young women known all over the Valley for their interest in fine clothing and attachment to the curling iron. Aunt Twiss pointed out my chair and said, “I hope you like eggs.” She was neither hostile nor friendly, merely overwhelmed by a compulsive desire for efficiency. She wore a heavy, burdened brow and a complexion overheated from her work. I would soon learn, from four separate sources, that Brigham had never visited her conjugally and never would. “Yet every night, she props herself up in bed, in a fancy sleeping bonnet no less, as if he might come!” one of the Big Ten would go on to laugh in my ear.
The room was loud with women and children, but at precisely four-thirty Brigham arrived. Immediately everyone fell silent except for a few restless children, who were promptly pinched behind the ear. Brigham blessed our food, and afterward we ate a light supper of eggs and spinach, followed by composition tea. Brigham sat at the head of the table, with Sister Snow at his right and Aunt Twiss at his left. I quickly noticed that they dined on pigeon and gravy, with bread, butter, peach jam, and a bowl of strawberries and blackcaps.
Throughout the meal women approached Brigham to discuss their domestic business, and for some, I would later learn, this was their only chance to consult their husband on matters typically discussed between man and wife at the table. Brigham hardly had a chance to eat while advising his wives, although it would not take a sleuth to deduce he must have taken a second (or third?) meal elsewhere. The wives formed a line behind him. When her time came, which was limited to a minute or two, each wife had to leap into her topic while everyone, including her rivals, listened in.
“I need a new kettle.”
“I found my hand-glass in Sister Clara’s room.”
“Susannah isn’t reading properly.”
“There’ll be another next June.”
No matter how serious, or petty, the situation, this was the only opportunity most wives had to discuss their affairs with their husband.
Often a child—one of fifty-seven—climbed his leg and swung from his arm while he conversed with his wives. He was always playful with them, singing “too-roo-loo-rool-lool-or-lool” or producing a raisin from his pocket. It must be said that Brigham loved his children, was interested in their well-being, and guided his wives on discipline and other matters to their proper rearing. Yet even his sincerity could not compensate for the fact that fifty-seven children shared his fatherly heart.
During this the Big Ten huddled in the corner to discuss the topics all girls of this age find most urgent. I felt alone in this foreign world and assumed I would be excluded from it.
My brooding was interrupted by a touch to the wrist. “Aren’t you the actress?”
I turned to find a slender woman
a few years older than myself extending a gentle hand in greeting. Pinned to her breast was a brooch of glass grapes as green as her eyes. “I’m Maeve Cooper.”
“Are you one of his daughters?”
“Step-daughter. My mother is Amelia Cooper.” She pointed across the room. “Number thirty-four.”
“Thirty-four what?”
Maeve laughed brightly, throwing back her chin. “You are new here, aren’t you?”
“Do you mean his thirty-fourth wife?”
“Don’t worry, lately he’s slowed down.” She cocked her chin and thought about something for a moment. “I’d say about fifty.”
“Fifty what?”
“Weren’t you about to ask me how many he has in total?”
I liked Maeve immediately and embraced her as an ally in the Lion House. She told me she had been a small child when her mother married the Prophet. “But I might as well be a stranger to him,” she said. “I’m convinced he doesn’t know my name.” And then, “Not that I care.” She was a sly, dangerous girl and our bond was cemented that first evening.
“Here’s what you need to know. Never be late for supper, never be the last one in at night, the ironing is done from dusk to dawn, and don’t bother trying to speak with Brigham directly. Anything you need you can get from making friends with Aunt Twiss or Harriet Cook. Twiss is somewhere between number twenty-five and forty, I really don’t know. And Harriet, I’m pretty sure she’s down around number four or five, so I don’t need to tell you how long she’s been around. Anyway, they might look a bit grim, but they’re really sweet old girls.”
After supper we moved upstairs to the front parlor, also called the prayer room, where the women gathered in circles to knit, sing, and talk in the evenings. It was Sunday night and the theater was dark. There were some eight or ten wives present, plus daughters and friends. I felt as if each wife had a careful eye on me. “I won’t let it bother me,” I told my new friend. “At the end of the season, you and all these women will see me pack my trunk and move out. They have no reason to be jealous.”
“That’s what Elsa said.”
“Elsa?”
“Never mind. Tell me about the theater. What’s on tomorrow night?”
“No, Maeve, tell me. Who’s Elsa?”
It took no more pleading for Maeve to recount the story of what she called “wife number forty-seven or forty-eight, I think.” A coloratura soprano imported from Wadowice, where the beautiful girls are dark and cold. According to Maeve, she was a shapely creature with a mane of redblack hair who sang with one arm draped across an alabaster pedestal. Brigham hired her to entertain at his private occasions, commanding her to sing his favorite bel canto roles from the Italian repertory. “She lived in the room across from yours,” Maeve said. “Then he married her. She didn’t want to, but what choice did she have? She was all alone. Her money came from him. She barely spoke English. How could she leave Utah? The wives made her life miserable.”
“What happened?”
“She disappeared. Ran away, probably. But it’s not an easy crossing to California. I should know. Some say Brigham’s Danites went after her and murdered her in the desert. Forty miles out there’s a pile of white bones by the road and the girls say that’s Elsa. The way the wind whistles through the sockets in the skull, it sounds like her singing, practicing her scales.”
“That’s not true. I don’t believe it.”
“Neither did I. Not at first. But the truth is she was here one night, and gone the next. If you mention her to Brigham—and I’m warning you not to—he’ll turn red as a pepper and huff out of the room. A few wives, when they knew she was really gone, they raided her room and fought over her silk.”
“It can’t be true.”
“You’re probably right. Even so, no one can explain what happened to her.”
The next night at the theater my mind was preoccupied. I fear I gave one of my lesser performances, but the audience forgave me. Looking out into the theater, with thousands of eyes glowing in the dark, it was impossible not to wonder: What would become of me?
THE 19TH WIFE
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Marriage and Its Aftermath
For the next three months, I turned my attention to the theater. The more time I spent on stage, the more comfortable I became and, perhaps, the more my talent took root. I was cast as the little sister or ingénue in a number of slight plays no longer remembered, including That Blessed Baby and The Good-for-Nothing. The players, myself included, launched a movement to offer more serious fare, but Brigham re-enforced his ban on tragedy. “I won’t have our women and children coming here to be frightened so they can’t sleep at night.” (He would later revise this policy, when he discovered he could not attract a certain beautiful Gentile actress to play in Macbeth rewritten with a happy ending.) There was also, for a time, a prohibition against sentimental romances that glorified monogamous love. I remember one evening when a Saint of about seventy stood up in his seat and hollered, “I ain’t sitting through no play where a man makes such a cussed fuss over one woman.” He turned to his twenty-four wives: “Git up!” They filed out of the theater, all twenty-five, in a noisy column. For any actor pursuing his art, Brigham’s theater was not always a venue of ideals.
Despite these restrictions, the theater became my refuge from the Lion House. I spent most of my time there, arriving early in the morning and staying until long after the curtain fell. The Lion House served as nothing more than a way-station, and I had little time to consider the plight of the women stranded there. For several weeks, the only time I saw Brigham was when I was on stage and looked into the Presidential box. He was often with six or seven wives and a number of children, watching raptly from his velvet-padded rocker.
After each performance, I would sit at my dressing table, my heart anxious whenever a knock fell on my door. Yet always it would turn out to be one of my new company friends coming to share in the triumph of our evening, or my director, with notes to improve my technique. One night—it was during my run as Emily Wilton in The Artful Dodger—I sensed Brigham’s gaze upon me with special intent as he leaned forward on his cane. The director had placed me upon the stage so close to Brigham’s box I could nearly feel his eyes upon my flesh. In the final act, I stumbled on my lines. For a long moment—one of the longest in my life—I could not think of what to say. I looked about me, but my co-actor offered no assistance, for my stumble had thrown off his presence of mind as well. I turned and found myself looking into the Presidential box. Brigham mouthed the words I shall be … and it was as if an invisible hand had reached down and turned a crank to revive my memory and I carried on to the end with a particular intensity that brought the audience, Prophet included, to its feet.
Afterward, sitting at my table, I waited for the inevitable knock. I knew Brigham would come tonight, and I would have to thank him for his assistance. Up until then I had tried to deny the grasp he had about me, but this incident had made everything clear. I worked in his theater, I lived in his house, he was my spiritual leader, now he even told me what to say!
Then it came: the knock on my door. “Brother Brigham—”
Yet I opened the door to find a stranger greeting me with a box of sugar-stick jaw. “Will you permit an admirer to commend you on your performance?” The man spoke with an English accent, had a rugged complexion, and wore boots caked in plaster. His name, I soon learned, was James Dee. We spoke for what turned into an hour about the theater, his passion for Shakespeare, and Brigham’s silly ban on tragedy. “What a lovely Ophelia you would make!” he said. Dee plastered log cabins for a living, a more lucrative practice than I might have realized, for he owned a fine six-room house not far from Temple Square. “I might be revealing too much in telling you I have been following your career.”
“It’s hardly a career, Mr. Dee. I’ve only been on the stage a few months.”
“Yes, but already your talent outshines your peers.”
I sco
lded him for his flattery and decided this was a good time to open the box of candy. We sampled the sweets, then, alas, parted company. “Farewell!” he cried. “Thou art too dear for my possessing.”
There might be no greater cause for caution than a suitor who quotes the Bard on the threshold. Yet, Dear Reader, please recall at the time I was eighteen. I had been standing guard against Brigham’s inscrutable affections for so long that Mr. Dee’s slipped unnoticed under the gate. He promised he would return the following night, and he did. He said he would bring me a yellow rose and there it appeared, on my dressing table, a tight bud upon a long red-green stem. He said he would read Twelfth Night aloud to me, and he did so. In the first week of our acquaintance he kept each promise he made. He offered to help my mother with a crack in her ceiling, arriving at the promised hour. He balanced atop his ladder while my mother and her visiting sister wives looked on with interest. “Who’s this one, then?” Eleanor asked. “Wish I had someone bringing me a box of sugar-stick jaw.”
Mr. Dee made his presence felt so quickly and with such command that I could not help but grow feelings for him. By the seventh day of our friendship, we were in love and engaged.
“Engaged?” cried my mother. “You hardly know the man.”
I reminded her she hardly knew my father when they married. “Even so, I must tell you something: I don’t trust him.”
“How can you say that? After he plastered your ceiling!”
The 19th Wife Page 26