The 19th Wife

by David Ebershoff

  “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?”

  Soon thereafter Miss Lee departed, leaving me to worry over the story that would await me in New York City.

  Later that night I sat restlessly by the window. It was very late and Lorenzo was snoring lightly in the bed. Outside it was sleeting, the street lamps burning a thick ugly yellow upon the fog. Although I had won my spar with Miss Lee, the encounter had left me uncertain of my path. I returned to the image of the ruined Temple in Nauvoo—the piles of stone, the column holding up nothing, the chipped piece of the baptismal font. Did any sect or creed, any group of men, deserve such a fate? I believed in everything I said at the lectern, I knew it was true. Surely Brigham, when he stands before his people, would say the same. He believes everything he says, and he knows it is true. How to reconcile our competing truths? By obliterating one? Is it the only way? I turned the question this way and that, doing my best to look at it from each end, pressing upon its points, and I began to feel anxious. Perhaps the Temple ruins were not a symbol of the Mormons’ fate, but my own. If one side must be right, and the other wrong, how could I be so certain of everything I knew? Inevitably we were both right, and both wrong, or was this not true? It was a circular question, like an iron hoop, and I could trace my finger along it, around and around, and never reach its end. I fumbled with this idea for a long time, losing my grasp on my beliefs, until the early sun came through the fog, and the streets illuminated with the goodness of day.

  It was time to dress, and just as I went to wake Lorenzo, Major Pond knocked on my door. “Mrs. Young?… Mrs. Young?”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m sorry to disturb you so early, but there’s something you must see.”

  The situation was written out in the Major’s eyes. He handed me a newspaper. The story came from the Chicago Times. The author was identified simply as Special Correspondent. It began with a benign description of my lectures through Illinois and Iowa and a general appreciation of my appearance. Yet soon enough the secretive writer began his assault:

  Now I shall turn to the portion of this report that will no doubt most interest the reader. Mrs. 19, like other lecturesses, employs an agent who arranges her schedule and travels along her side. In most cases these are wise old gentlemen, blunt in manner but also efficient, capable of settling whatever matter that might arise on the road. Mrs. 19, however, has chosen as her business partner a debonair and suave military gentleman by the name of Major Pond. Pond’s reputation begins with his features—his good square jaw, a fine nose, and teeth as white as china. He speaks elegantly, with all the powers of persuasion, and there are rumors of his physicality, which can be previewed through his snug uniform, that have caused more than one woman to swoon—as far as this Correspondent knows. While the pair visited Bloomington, Iowa, residing in its most luxurious hotel, several guests and maids noted an unusual closeness between Mrs. 19 and the Major, an intimacy that needs no further explanation to be understood.

  I did not need to read any more. I was as aware as anyone that the people who came to my lectures, those who rewarded me with their applause and approval, the newspaper editors who spent ink on my cause, did so because they sensed I was a modest woman. Were they to think I was an adulteress just as my husband was an adulterer, my message would be lost in the haze of scandal.

  How to describe the day? Even now, after writing so many pages, I feel incapable of depicting those first lonely hours after this attack. I forced myself to dress and traveled to Mr. Redpath’s office. Had my new sponsor seen the news? Of course, as had most of Boston, by his estimation. A few inquiries supported my larger fear: the telegraphs had carried the story to news outlets across the country. Anyone interested in my tale, or the plight of Utah’s women, knew of it by noon. I imagined Brigham in his office at the Beehive House, cloistered by his account books and maps, settling into his armchair and reviewing the reports. His assistants would come and go, bringing him accounts from the East and the West, each more devastating to me than the previous. The effect was like a shovelful of dirt into a grave—slowly the hole fills in and the body is buried. I imagined the thin smirk upon Brigham’s lips, imperceptible even to the clerks. I was certain one word was running through his mind—Success.

  I asked Mr. Redpath if I should cancel my appearance.

  “I’ll tell you in an hour.” He set about gauging the effect of the scandal on my repute, sending half a dozen nimble assistants and clerks about the city to listen in on the morning talk. He would trot over to the Tremont Temple himself. Were tickets being returned? Were people gathering to denounce me? “I’ll find out,” he said, and out he went, like a red fox.

  He returned an hour later with good news. “We’ve sold out. It seems there was a stampede for tickets when the box office opened.”

  The afternoon brought more hostile news. A second report, also from our nameless friend at the Chicago Times, had run across the telegraph lines. Now Mrs. Woodhull was claiming she too had encountered evidence of my indiscretions while in Burlington. Yet this great lady, friend to the female race, wanted Americans everywhere to know she was not denouncing me. In fact, she fully supported my “right” to amorous liberty. “Now she is truly free,” the woman said of me.

  “What time’s the next train?” I said. “I don’t care where it’s headed, but I need to leave right away.”

  “Mrs. Young,” said Mr. Redpath, “you need to steady yourself.”

  But I could not—I hurried about his office, gathering my hat and bag, my gloves, and the purple coat that had brought me so much luck since Denver. I called for Lorenzo. The boy, at one corner of Mr. Redpath’s desk, was preoccupied with a drawing he was making. When I told him it was time to go, he held up his artwork. “It’s you.” And it was—a kind, loving portrait on the very newspaper that ma
ligned me. The black ink of his art had all but covered over the lies.

  It was the betrayal of strangers that most alarmed me. Who was the Special Correspondent so intent on destroying me? And Mrs. Woodhull—had she punished me for ignoring her call? For some time that afternoon I could not speak. I sat anxiously in Mr. Redpath’s office, looking about at the framed telegrams from Presidents and Generals, and the memorabilia from the stage, the engraved swords, the autographed playbills, and a dusty ostrich plume. I felt something slip out from beneath me. The Temple ruins returned to mind—the piles of rubble, the winter sun bright on the worn white stones.

  Since the news that morning, a feeling had been taking shape in my heart. At first I could not identify it, but now it was there, as solid as a stone. “It’s Brigham,” I said.

  “What’s that, Mrs. Young?”

  “Brigham did this. He bought that story in the press.”

  Historians speak of the unintended consequences of planned events. The consequence of this attack on my character was a mob on the steps of Tremont Temple. Nearly one thousand people had to be turned away. Behind the curtain, waiting to take the stage, I heard the commotion, the shouts and calls, the irate voices claiming they had been promised a seat. “I could fill this place twice over,” said Redpath. “Ninety-five percent of them are on your side.”

  My lecture in Boston was standard, but its reception was not. I was received with the greatest wave of enthusiasm I had yet to encounter. I concluded the discussion with a rebuttal of the charges and a challenge: “I do not know how, or by what means, but I know in my heart, just as surely as I know the faces of my sons, that Brigham’s Church was involved in this assault on my character. In time I will prove it, and if anyone here tonight remains skeptical of my ordeal, of the truthfulness of my life, you shall see, with this lie exposed, the extent to which Brigham Young can deceive.”

  The triumph in Boston was followed by failure in New York, for Miss Lee’s pointed story preceded me. The editors of her newspaper buttressed her opinion by a handful of essays questioning the veracity of my life. The reports out of Boston failed to impress the doubting Thomases of New York. More than half the seats of Association Hall stared back at me empty. My declaration of innocence was met with a phlegmatic yawn.

  I asked Mr. Redpath if the scandal had wounded my appeal.

  He stroked his whiskers. “New York is an odd place. I suspect the scandal hasn’t hurt you as much as your response to it. This town loves a sinner more than a saint.”

  While in New York, I met with editors from the publishing houses to discuss my memoirs. Mr. E—— of Easton & Co. impressed me the most. He is a lean, subtle, Prussian-looking man, with a full nose like a small turnip. He spoke intelligently, if nervously, about my plight, his brittle, alabaster fingers fluttering about. “The important thing,” he said, “is to show everyone what it’s like for the women of Utah. You’ll need to make it clear how bad polygamy is, how it’s not only disagreeable, but how it destroys the soul. You need to show it’s not only a conjugal issue, but a moral one. That’s how to draw readers to your side. It’s a travesty, and it seems to me Brigham’s making a mockery of the rest of us and the very foundations of this country.” For a man who has never taken a wife, and of whom I suspect deep theological skepticism, he showed unusual sympathy for my topic. I agreed to pen a summary of my life for this young, feline editor. A contract was produced, a date agreed upon, and we signed on our respective lines.

  (Since then many critics have wrongly accused me of walking out of the offices of Easton & Co. with bags of money. One newspaper even ran an illustration of me dragging a large sack of gold with Brigham’s head on the side. This is another distortion. I received nothing for my efforts, not until Easton’s salesmen began to canvass the nation, selling subscriptions to the volume you are now reading. Mr. E—— sent a telegram announcing advance orders comparable to Mrs. Stowe’s and, only then, my first remuneration. Is it wrong for an authoress to earn a penny for her toil? For the record, Mr. E—— urged me not to include this paragraph. The parentheses are a concession to his concern.)

  We continued on to Rochester, Buffalo, and Baltimore. During this time, Major Pond and I spent many hours, and much money, investigating Brigham’s libel. With Mr. Redpath’s help, we collected a list of every newspaper in the country that had reprinted the falsehoods. I personally wrote a letter to the editor of each. Major Pond did the same. My story was widely known, but his was not. He was a widower when he arrived in Salt Lake, having lost his wife only recently. There was not a day in our relationship when he did not speak of her, and how he longed for the peal of her laugh.

  We hired a detective out of Chicago to investigate the story’s origins. The man’s fees totaled nearly half of what I had earned at the lectern, but I was happy to turn over every cent when he delivered his findings. After two weeks of sleuthing, he unearthed a check in the amount of $20,000 made out to the editor of the Chicago Times. The signature on the check was a man named George Reef. I knew nothing of Mr. Reef. It took the detective another week to locate him in Provo. Rich from mining, devout to Brigham, married to two dozen women, perhaps more, Mr. Reef was prepared, he later confessed, to wage war for his right to an infinity of wives. Upon the exposure of his bribery, it is reported he said, “I should have paid more.”

  Brigham denied any relationship with Mr. Reef. A statement bellowed out of the Beehive House: “This man, whoever he may be, has acted without my authority or consent, and his actions should be punished, as the law sees fit.” Our detective never could produce the evidence to make the connection between Brigham and Mr. Reef. It seems only fair, then, to give him the last word on the matter. But first I must make a point—even if Brigham did not coordinate this attack, is there not something foul in his Church that would inspire a believer to launch such an assault? Is the leader responsible in any way? To you, Friend, I leave this question to ponder.

  Within two weeks of the scandal’s debut, reports began to appear declaring my innocence. Editorials cleared my name and restored my relationship with Major Pond to propriety. More followed, and soon nearly every paper that had printed the rumor was forced to correct its error. Yet when the fire burns itself out, ash and the stench of smoke remain. When we are told a woman is an adulteress, and then this description is revised, the untruth will continue to linger in the mind. It is a ghost-thought—an idea proven unreal yet present even so. Such is the subtle shaping of reputation and legacy; and such was the perception I had to contend with. Wherever I went I recognized the look in the eyes of men with profane imaginations. They assessed me as they might a whore. In Rochester, on the street, a young man outside a foundry called out, “I live around the corner, Mrs. Young!” In Baltimore, a man as old as my father hollered, “Go get another one of those wives and meet me upstairs!” When this happened, I held Lorenzo close to me, continued on, and sealed my eyes to fight away the tears. He understood my pain, for every time I was assaulted with insults, the boy squeezed my hand within the tiny mitt of his.

  Out of this interlude of slander, libel, and the clearing of my name, I found my purpose even more defined. I had learned something I had heretofore failed to see—in fact, I was not Mormondom’s destroying angel, as so many claimed me to be, intent on reducing the creed to a pile of lonely, winterblown stones. In truth, it was plural marriage itself, with all its inherent corruptions, that would destroy the religion, razing its temples and tabernacles, and poisoning its way of life. This cruel practice would end the Saints’ legitimate right to their faith. The day would come when the religion would collapse upon itself—a future implosion now so very clear to me, I was surprised that I had not perceived it before. I came to understand that were I to succeed in my mission, and eradicate celestial marriage from Deseret, I would also be saving the Latter-day Saints from themselves.

  With this awareness came another. A few days later, after the libelous episode had seemed to blow clear from the fields, our
detective in Chicago wrote with news of his investigation’s final clue.

  Dear Mrs. Young—

  Although I have failed to find any connection between Mr. Reef and Brigham Young, and now do not expect to do so, there is one link of another sort that has recently come to light. I do not know the meaning of it, yet it stands out among the many clues and therefore I bring it to you. Mr. Reef is an associate of your brother, Aaron Webb. The two share a title to a small, not especially productive copper mine in Southwestern Utah, near a settlement called Red Creek. Your brother’s first wife, Connie (my records show he has taken an even dozen in total)—she is the sister to Mr. Reef’s seventh wife. I have yet to turn up evidence connecting your brother to Mr. Reef’s actions pertaining to you, but the coincidence of association is noteworthy. Before I investigate any further, is there any reason to suspect your brother might have had a hand in this libelous plot?

  I await your instructions.

  Yours sincerely,

  CARL CUMMINGS, INVEST., CHICAGO

  Although no betrayal is as painful as that inflicted by a family member, Mr. Cummings’s revelation, distressing as it was, did not come wholly as a surprise. Ever since his involvement in the Reformation, Aaron had become a blind defender of polygamy. He reveled in his right to acquire women, blithely bringing a fresh bride into his bed whenever he desired conjugal variety. He embodied the hypocrisy of the Mormon polygamist so well that even before my apostasy I had done my best to limit my boys’ interaction with their uncle. For his part, I am sure Aaron recognized my skepticism even before I did; although brother and sister, it was obvious we were enemies.

  At this point, after having endured so much, I chose to ignore Mr. Cummings’s ominous but circumstantial evidence. What good would come from it? I looked to my conscience for counsel and never responded to Mr. Cummings’s letter. The truth would have to lie privately in Aaron’s heart and mine, where God would judge it.