Mormon History
Mark Twain on Gentile Rumors - 1861
"I am not given to exaggeration, and when I say a thing I mean it." Page 85
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 assail!) 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.