by Mary Morris
The American desert through which we travelled after leaving the mountains is not interesting. Sand and alkali plains as far as the eye can reach; as desolate as a great ocean bed from which “the waters were gone.” Sometimes a patch of grey melancholy-looking sagebrush appears, but the sun’s rays fall perpendicularly on this barren scene, burning and withering as though they would crush out any attempt which nature might make, to introduce vegetable life. Now and then we journeyed through a fertile valley where a little river made its way down from far-off mountains; people tell us there is more “fancy than fact” about these rivers, for, except at certain seasons, they dwindle away into sad-looking pools, where the thirsty emigrant has to dig for sufficient water to supply his beasts. Sometimes a curious mirage makes one quite certain that a lovely lake and trees and gardens lie far away on the horizon; but very little of anything green did we see till, early yesterday morning, we caught sight of the silver streak of “Great Salt Lake,” and descended on the wide valley in which it lies, where the Mormons have turned the unprofitable plain into corn-fields and orchards. A sign-board, with “ten miles of track in one day,” marks the place where the Central Pacific Company, with four thousand workmen, accomplished the feat and laid the last sleeper (which has had to be twice renewed, clipped away by enthusiastic relic-hunting tourists) on their eight hundred miles of railroad. Salt Lake City is about thirty miles off the main track, so we changed into the Saints’ railway—built, however, by Gentiles—and wound our way through cultivated land, and by ugly little wooden farmhouses, stopping once to pick up a Mormon family on their way to Zion for a Sunday outing. We thought the husband looked bored at having to carry three bundles, three umbrellas and three shawls, evidently belonging to the domestic circle—his three wives, who accompanied him.
A four-horse omnibus deposited us at the door of this large and comfortable hotel, built by an ex-Mormon, who, finding it inconvenient, as his income increased, to pay a tenth of it to the Church, became a Gentile. After luncheon—during which a scientific lady informed us that the butter was “oleomargarine,” and the honey “glucose”—we walked down the broad street, with young trees and a running stream of clear water at each side, where the Saints were enjoying Sabbath repose in rocking-chairs, chewing tobacco, with their heels elevated on the back of another chair. All was neat and orderly—and very, very ugly; the shops closed, and some of the thirty thousand Mormon Sunday-school children going about hymn-book in hand.
We entered the Tabernacle, a large oblong building, in the Mormon style of architecture—the ancient rule of thumb—over which these clever ignorant people have constructed one of the largest self-sustaining roofs in the world, and were conducted to the strangers’ seat, by a decorous German Elder. The building will hold eight thousand people; yesterday it was about half full. The large and really fine organ, also of native manufacture, was well played, and the choir of fashionably dressed young men and women sang nicely, out of the Mormon hymn-book, well-known Christian hymns. Church dignitaries and some of the twelve apostles sat on a high place round the velvet-covered desk, on which lay a large Bible and a small “Book of Mormon”—the divine revelation which, in 1827, “a holy Angel permitted the youth Joseph Smith of Manchester, New York, to take from the hill of Cumorrah, and translate through the aid of a sacred instrument, called the Urim and Thummim.” The metallic plates and sacred things were shown to three witnesses, by an angel from heaven, and five thousand copies of the inspired translation were printed in 1830.
Below the daïs stood rows of electro-plate bread-baskets and goblets of water; and, in the centre of the building, a fountain for Baptism. Men and women chiefly sat apart; looking round on the congregation, we thought ourselves back again in some remote part of Wales or Ireland; stupid good-natured, unintelligent faces—a curious contrast to the usual American crowd of keen-featured sharp-eyed citizens. And so indeed it is: Mormonism has gathered together the low-class type of humanity and uneducated of all countries, and formed them into an industrious community. One could not help feeling that many members of the congregation would have been in gaol, and living at the expense of the British taxpayer, had they not been sitting this pleasant Sunday afternoon drowsily listening—for they take their devotion easily—after a week’s hard work, to one of their twelve apostles, preaching a practical but somewhat prosy sermon. I never saw so many ugly women, or so many sad-looking black bonnets; of course, if a woman has only a share in a husband, pin-money must also be shared—and not many new bonnets obtained. We discoursed with the friendly Elder. “How many Mormons are there?” I impiously asked. “Brother, how many saints are we?” he inquired of his neighbour. “About one hundred and forty-four thousand,” was the reply. We were about to ask what proportion the womenkind bore to the population; but the preacher, Brother Orson Pratt, one of the original twelve apostles who led the Church into the wilderness—a venerable-looking old man (they say that through religious fervour and fasting his four wives were starved to death)—rose to preach.
The 50th anniversary of the Latter-day Saints has lately been held, and the Tabernacle was still hung with flowers and decorations, for, in 1830, “Joseph Smith was ordained by John the Baptist, to preach the last Revelation to the world”; and it was also divinely revealed that his wife, Emma Smith, “was to receive as many wives as he chose to take to himself, but that she was to abide and cleave to the prophet, and none else.” Persecution is proverbially good for a Church, and the Mormons had plenty of it, and throve accordingly. At last, in 1844, the Prophet Joseph Smith was murdered, “lynched” by a mob in Illinois; and the Saints, under the leadership of their apostles, and President Brigham Young, a Yankee carpenter, determined to fly to the wilderness, and seek a Land of Promise in the Rocky Mountains. After terrible sufferings, they with their wives and children, in worn-out waggons, a really heroic company of fanatics, having crossed 1,000 miles of desert, began to take possession of a land, certainly not flowing with milk and honey—not an ear of corn could be grown without irrigation; and armies of grasshoppers, wild Indians, and Mexican brigands, contantly descended on their scanty crops.
Still the people grew and multiplied, and sent out missionaries to all parts of the world (there were twenty-five nationalities represented in the Tabernacle at the festival the other day) under Brigham Young’s vigorous rule; and now out here, where thirty-three years ago the Mormon pioneers built their first mud fort, there is a flourishing town with 20,000 inhabitants, two lines of railway, school boards, daily papers, and co-operative societies.
Since the rich silver-mines of Utah and the transcontinental railway have brought in speculators and a wave of Gentile enterprise, the prosperity of Zion has increased rapidly; but Mormonism is losing its distinctive features—hard work, and plenty of wives to do it;—the younger women, who do not think “that the half is as good as the whole,” are declining co-operative matrimony, and actually want a husband all to themselves. No need for repressive measures and actions for bigamy; progress in civilisation and increased demand for the article, now that armies of silver-miners, digging up wealth, have come into the country, will soon make it impossible for a Saint to indulge in the luxury of more than one wife.
But all this time we were listening to Brother Orson Pratt’s apostolic sermon, from the 20th Chapter of Revelation, supplemented by nonsense out of the “Book of Mormon.” The latter is a silly mixture of the Koran and a modern romance, in which, however, it is allowed that “not only the Bible and Book of Mormon, but all other good books, are inspired by God,” and “that men will be punished for their own sins, not for Adam’s transgressions”—strangely liberal doctrines for the fiercely puritanical spirit of Mormonism to adopt. Like other would-be expounders of prophecy, the preacher turned the glorious visions of St. John into seemingly convincing proofs of his own theories—which none but the unconverted or sectarians could deny. Having triumphantly disposed of modern science, he proved that Adam had once resided in Jackson county,
east of the Missouri River, but did not seem quite clear as to the location of the ultimate New Jerusalem, only it would certainly be on the American Continent, and include amongst its citizens the American Indians, who undoubtedly were the living descendants of the Lost Tribes (I devoutly hope the latter may remain on American soil—they have followed us all round the world).
Many admirable moral truths he preached, in the spirit of the last much-to-be-commended article of the Mormon Faith: “We believe in being honest, true, chaste, temperate, benevolent, virtuous, and upright; and in doing good to all men.” Indeed, it is allowed that the Saints’ treatment of the Indian tribes round them has been just and merciful. But of course there was much, to our minds, blasphemous rubbish in the sermon, like the hymn on “Celestial marriage” in the hymn-book beside me, setting forth that the Mormons were “to multiply wives, because, unlike other unprofitable servants, they made good use of their ten talents (ten wives), and that to him that hath shall be given.”
Our venerable-looking preacher, besides being an apostle, has done some fighting in his time. In 1857 he, at the head of the Mormon legion, completely routed the United States troops at Fort Bridger, carried off their stores, and left them in an almost destitute condition, to find their way back to civilisation across the desert.
We did not wait for the conclusion of the sermon, but took the excursion train to the Lake, where sundry Mormons of all ages were splashing about in quite elaborate bathing costumes. It is almost impossible to sink in the very clear salt water of this evaporating pan, which deposits salt and sulphur round its shores. The Great Salt Lake, more than 100 miles in length (like the Dead Sea on a large scale), has no outlet for the waters of the three rivers which flow into it; during the last twenty years it is said to have risen twelve feet, and to be rising steadily; yet, judging from the raised beaches, which can be distinctly traced high up on the sides of the surrounding hills, the lake must at one time have been an inland sea. No trees or vegetation, but picturesque islands, and distant mountain ranges, and wonderfully-coloured rocks in the foreground make a striking picture; but we certainly do not agree with Humboldt that “here the beauty of Como and Killarney are combined.” A Gentile lady passenger gave us a very unfavourable account of Mormons and their ways: “Guess they treat their women and children just like beasts; there’s one of them—the old sinner!” she said, pointing to a farmer driving up a waggon, laden with his womankind, to the station. Two rather depressed-looking wives, ugly middle-aged women in poke bonnets, holding unlovely babies, sat in the back, while the new young wife, with her baby in smart hat and feathers, occupied the front seat with their lord and master; not a pleasant or poetical domestic picture; and they were all so ugly!
The sad conviction is growing upon us since leaving Japan, the land of loveliness, that the British lower classes, from which Mormonism largely draws its converts, though in the main a hardworking and religiously-minded people, are entirely devoid of all perception of the beautiful in Life, Art, or Religion.…
This morning, accompanied by a friendly literary lady from Boston, we drove through some miles of amazing fertility, rich crops of Indian corn and wheat (the practical Mormons do not grow many flowers) created by industry and irrigation, till we drew up at the convict prison. Capital punishment is rarely enforced in America; hence in flagrant cases of murder the mob take the law into their own hands, and “lynch” the murderer on the spot. It seemed a misdirection of energy that about ten murderers should be taking unprofitable exercise round the prison yard, under the eye of an officer with loaded revolver, while the land beyond their gaol was lying barren for want of cultivation, waiting for human skill to turn it into the garden we had just passed through. Then we drove on to the Church farm—hundreds of acres of crops, representing the temporalities of the Mormon “Establishment”; part of the proceeds will go to build the grand new temple, whose cutstone pillars and walls are slowly rising beside the old “Tabernacle.” Some of the Saints are very rich. “That ere old woman who lives in that ranche,” said our driver, pointing to a tiny wooden hut, “owns the land my stables is on; I offered her most any money for it, and she declined; then I concluded to marry her right off” (he is a Gentile), “and she declined. Can’t come round them nohow,” he added with a sigh, and drove us off to Fort Douglas, where a garrison of United States troops overlook Zion, and keep the Saints in order. These are the first soldiers we have seen in America. It is remarkable how little show of force is required to keep the peace in this country. The few policemen in San Francisco looked more like Methodist preachers in long frock-coats and wide-brimmed hats than officers of justice.
Hard by was the grave of a Gentile who, rumour says, was finally put out of the way by Brigham Young. Beyond, a lovely view over the fertile country dotted with villages, and far away the mountains and shining lake. A little later we passed Brigham Young’s private residence, surrounded by the hencoop-like houses in which we were told his various wives were lodged, and, further on, the grand “villa residence” built for his last wife. Not far off was his grave, under the hill where he sat and had visions and revelations, and where he now lies buried in a commodious coffin, which, according to his will, was “not to be scrimped in length, but leave comfortable room to turn in, where I can rest and have a good sleep until the morning of the first resurrection.” No doubt Brigham Young was a man of much talent and strength of character, and governed his subjects on the whole wisely; but like other and wiser rulers, he embarked too largely in matrimony. The United States Government prosecuted him latterly for bigamy and murder, but he died a few years ago before the case was decided.…
Seeing “Woman’s Exponent Office” over a door, we drew up, and went in (sending H. first of all to explore). A pretty, nicely-dressed young lady, niece of the lady editor, received us in the “Editor’s parlour.” She seemed pleased to give us information concerning her faith, and presented us with copies of the “Woman’s Exponent,” a neat little monthly magazine—written, published, and printed entirely by “the women of Zion.” “Yes, we all vote in Utah,” she said, and seemed to think there was no need to agitate for women’s suffrage; but when Utah becomes a state (at present it is only a territory and cannot vote in Congress) the Federal Government may object that women are not “persons”—nowhere in the States have women the political suffrage.
Evidently polygamy is rather a sore subject; but our young lady informed us that her father had seven wives and twenty-six children. “I call them aunts, you know, and I like most of my brothers and sisters.” Some of the wives live together, but the majority have separate establishments. We remarked that last year we were in a country where it was the fashion to have many husbands, and had the pleasure of knowing a lady who had made sixteen lawful marriages; that it appeared to us that both customs (having many wives or many husbands) had their inconveniences—to which our young friend assented, and said that her sisters had married with the understanding that no additional ladies were to be “sealed” to their husbands; adding, “The young folks like marrying single, and feel bad when there is another wife now-a-days.” She was really a lady-like girl—a niece of the late Brigham Young— and seemed sensible and well-informed, more so than most of her sisterhood, we imagine, if they are to be judged of by the “Address of the Women of Utah” at the festival the other day, in which, after much very “tall talk,” they ask, “What would the Pilgrim Fathers have done without the Pilgrim Mothers?” and pronounce that the year of Jubilee, which is now being celebrated, “historically resurrects the past, and prophetically opens up the future.”
Our Mormon friend seemed to regard matrimony as an almost sacred duty imposed on women; but I felt, in spite of many explanations, that Mormon marriages were difficult to understand. “Till death us do part,” is easy of comprehension; but here you may marry for “Time and Eternity,” or you may enter into a matrimonial engagement for “Time,” or “Eternity,” or you may unite yourself in Celestial marriage to
some defunct Saint; or a widow may, with the consent of the Church, arrange a marriage for her deceased husband with some eligible deceased friend; and at last I got puzzled and came away with the impression that in Utah a man may marry his own widow.
After luncheon we visited the funny little museum, and the very funny little old Mormon professor who had collected most of the curiosities in it: minerals from the rich mines of Utah, prehistoric implements, Indian scalps, stuffed birds, and Mormon relics; the trumpet and compass which led the Saints through the wilderness; and amongst these various odds and ends a richly embroidered apron, once belonging to Queen Elizabeth, inherited by some New England family, which has finally found its way to this strange place. The poor old self-taught professor, who appeared to be a really sincere believer in the martyr-prophet Joseph Smith, was glad to talk to an English Gentile, and tell of the long and eventful years that had passed since he lived as caretaker or something of the sort of Warwick Castle. Afterwards we were taken to a large building with “Holiness to the Lord,” “Zion’s Co-operative Institution,” over the door—quite the Army and Navy stores on a rather smaller scale. “Brother, what may this be worth?” asked an intelligent Mormon shopman to another Saint, when I inquired the price of Crosse and Blackwell’s marmalade. Piles of goods of every description lay around this large and exclusively Mormon establishment, and I believe a velvet gown would have been forthcoming had we asked for it.