[begin page 99]
CHAPTER 15
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
“MorrisitesⒶ” 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.
[begin page 100] 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
hennery
Ⓐ—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
homelike
Ⓐ 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
[begin page 101] 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.
[begin page 102] 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 [begin page 103] 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 assoil!) 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 [begin page 104] 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
[begin page 105] 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
[begin page 106] 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.
Explanatory Notes CHAPTER 15
Ⓔ how Burton galloped in
among the . . . defenceless “Morrisites” and shot them down . . . like so many dogs]
Joseph Morris (1824–62) was an English convert to Mormonism who emigrated to Utah
in 1853.
In 1857 he claimed the first of a series of revelations which led him to believe that
he, rather than Brigham Young, was the true
prophet. In April 1861, shortly after being excommunicated, Morris organized his own
church, whose tenets included the imminence of a
Second Coming
[begin page 598] and the rejection of polygamy. Within a year he had attracted several hundred followers,
who established a stronghold some thirty miles north of Salt Lake City. In the spring
of 1862 (several months after the Clemens
brothers had passed through Salt Lake City) the Morrisites captured several would-be
defectors, and then refused a judge’s
order to release them. To enforce the order, Acting Governor Frank Fuller sent a force
of five hundred men, primarily Mormons, under
the command of Deputy Territorial Marshal Robert T. Burton (1821–1907), also a Mormon.
After a three-day battle, the Morrisites
surrendered and stacked their guns. Burton then rode into the stronghold and, according
to an eyewitness account reproduced in
Waite’s
Mormon Prophet, murdered the unarmed Morris and three of his followers, including two women.
Burton claimed that he had fired only at Morris, and only when Morris urged his followers
to retrieve their weapons. In 1863, several
Morrisites were tried, and seven were convicted of seconddegree murder for the deaths
of two militiamen, while others were fined. All
were pardoned three days later by Governor Stephen S. Harding, who believed that Burton
had acted out of vengeance and religious zeal.
(Burton himself was tried and acquitted much later, in 1879.) Mark Twain could have
learned of these events from Frank Fuller, or
contemporary news reports, or both. His characterization of Burton may, however, indicate
the influence of a source hostile to
Mormons, such as Waite’s
Mormon Prophet (
Howard,
112–32;
Bancroft 1882–90, 21:615–21;
Rich, 299–301;
Neff, 650–52;
Waite, 39, 136–41;
Esshom, 784;
Hickman, 211–17).
Ⓔ
Bill Hickman, a
Destroying Angel, shot Drown and Arnold dead for bringing suit against him for a debt]
William Adams Hickman (1815–83)
joined the Mormon church in 1838 and was active in Mormon affairs until 1863, five
years before being excommunicated. He served both Smith and Young as a bodyguard, and was known as an Indian fighter,
cattle rustler, and
vigilante. He also sat in the Utah territorial legislature and served as a mail carrier,
county sheriff, assessor, tax collector, and
prosecuting attorney. Beginning in 1863, he worked as a spy and guide for the federal
forces in Utah. C. M. Drown and Josiah Arnold, a
former Mormon, were murdered together in Salt Lake City in July 1859. Mark Twain found
a brief account of the murder in Waite’s
Mormon Prophet:
A man by the name of Drown, brought suit upon a
promissory note for $480, against the Danite captain, Bill Hickman. The case being
submitted to the court, Drown obtained a
judgment. A few days afterwards, Drown and a companion named Arnold were stopping
at the house of a friend in Salt Lake City, when
Hickman, with some seven or eight of his band, rode up to the house, and called for
Drown to come out. Drown, suspecting foul play,
refused to do so, and locked the doors. The Danites thereupon dismounted from their
horses, broke down the doors, and shot down both
Drown and Arnold. Drown died of his wounds next morning, and Arnold a few days afterwards.
Hickman and his band rode off unmolested.
(Waite, 84)
[begin page 599] Although Hickman
was indicted for murdering Drown, he was never brought to trial. In 1872, too late
to affect Roughing It, J. H.
Beadle edited and published Hickman’s sensational autobiography, Brigham’s Destroying Angel.
There Hickman confessed to a number of grisly killings committed at the behest of
Young, but he denied killing Drown and Arnold,
pointing the finger instead at “a man by the name of Matthews,” who had acted upon
Young’s remark that Drown was
a “bad man, and should be used up” (Hickman, 110–11, 133–35;
Hilton, ix–xi, 7–13, 43, 84, 85–86, 87, 108–9, 114, 119,
125–31; Schindler, 280 n. 42, 357; Van
Wagoner and Walker, 119–24).
Ⓔ how Porter Rockwell did
this and that dreadful thing] As a boy, Orrin Porter Rockwell (1813–78) knew and idolized
Joseph Smith.
In 1830, he became one of the earliest converts to Mormonism, serving as Smith’s bodyguard
in
Illinois. Rockwell was notorious even before the Mormons left Illinois: he was arrested
in 1843 for the attempted murder of Lilburn W.
Boggs, a former governor of Missouri, and again in 1845 for killing a man implicated
in Smith’s murder the year before. Neither
charge resulted in conviction. Rockwell was in the first party of Mormon immigrants
to Utah in 1847. Known for his skills as a rider
and marksman, he served as a scout, hunter, deputy marshal, express rider and, in
1857–58, guerrilla leader. Among the crimes
ascribed to him was the 1857 killing of four wealthy travelers in Utah whom the Mormons
suspected of being federal spies. No one was
ever convicted of their murders. Rockwell was alleged to have killed as many as a
hundred men, and was routinely identified as a
“Destroying Angel” (
Schindler, 3–6, 61–62, 70–73, 82,
94, 99, 148–49, 181, 192, 193, 223, 251, 268–78;
Van Wagoner and Walker,
249–53).
Ⓔ their religion teaches
them that the more wives a man has . . . the higher the place they will all have in
the world to come] Beginning
in 1835, Mormon doctrine held that the marriage bonds continued in an afterlife,
an idea essential
to the theological rationale for plural marriage, according to which a man’s progression
toward “exalted godhood”
in heaven depended on the number of wives and children “sealed to him for eternity”
(
Van Wagoner, 56). Founder Joseph Smith was the first to practice plural marriage, albeit surreptitiously,
as
early as the 1830s. He did not develop the theological justification for it until
1843, when he claimed that a revelation from God
called for the restoration of biblical polygamy. That revelation was known only to
his closest associates, however, and he never
publicly acknowledged it. In 1852, when the church under the leadership of Brigham
Young announced plural marriage as a tenet, Mormons
were exhorted, even commanded, to practice it, but only a small minority ever did
so (
Van
Wagoner, 4–6, 85–86, 90–92, 97–98).
Ⓔ Brigham Young’s
harem contains twenty or thirty wives . . . children—fifty altogether] At the time
of the
Clemenses’ visit, Young
[begin page 600] had seventeen wives (two of them sisters), ranging in age from about
thirty-one to fifty-nine, and at least forty-one children (
Arrington 1985,
420–21).
Ⓔ
Johnson professed
to have enjoyed a sociable breakfast in the Lion House] No evidence has been found
that Johnson was modeled on a real person.
Mark Twain’s description of Young’s family closely resembles the farcical treatment
that Artemus Ward had used to poke
fun at Mormon polygamy. Clemens was probably familiar with Ward’s “A Visit to Brigham
Young,” first published in Vanity Fair on 10 November 1860 as “Artemus Ward Visits Brigham
Young” and collected two years later in Artemus Ward: His Book:
He don’t pretend to know his children, thare is so many of um, tho they all know him.
He sez about every child
he meats call him Par, & he takes it for grantid it is so. His wives air very expensiv.
Thay allers want suthin & ef he
don’t buy it for um thay set the house in a uproar. He sez he don’t have a minit’s
peace. . . . “I find that the keers of a marrid life way hevy onto me,” sed the Profit,
“& sumtimes I wish I’d remaned singel.” (Charles Farrar Browne
1862, 99–100)
Clemens met Ward in Virginia City in late 1863, and the two men quickly
developed a mutual affection and professional respect (
L1
,
267–68, 269–70 n. 5). For further discussion of Ward’s influence on Mark Twain, see
Branch 1967, Branch 1978, Rowlette, and Cracroft.
Ⓔ Joseph Smith] See the
note at 107.5–10.
Ⓔ By the slaughtered
body of St. Parley Pratt] Parley Parker Pratt (1807–57) from New York joined the church
in 1830 and five years later
became one of Joseph Smith’s original twelve apostles.
He served as a missionary in the
United States, Canada, Great Britain, the Pacific islands, and South America, and
published several theological defenses of Mormon
doctrine. He helped organize the first government in Utah and served in the territorial
senate. He was murdered in Arkansas in May
1857 by the undivorced husband of his tenth plural wife, and was thereafter regarded
by Mormons as a martyr (
Van Wagoner and Walker, 217–23;
Jenson,
1:83–85).
Ⓔ I will hang him higher
than Haman] Haman, the chief minister of King Ahasuerus (Xerxes), persuaded the king
to massacre all the Jews, and prepared a
gallows to hang his own enemy, Mordecai. Queen Esther, a Jew, intervened, and Haman
was hanged on his own gallows (Esther
3–7).
Ⓔ Shade of Nephi] See the
note at 107.12.
Ⓔ I had married her
. . . and of course I could not remember her name] Mark Twain may have known a similar
anecdote in
Richardson’s
Beyond the Mississippi in which Young, startled by a woman’s claim to be his wife,
consults his records and remarks, “Well, I believe you are right. I
knew your face was familiar!”
(
Richardson, 355).
Ⓔ
[begin page 601] by the ghost of Orson Hyde] Originally from Connecticut, Orson Hyde (1805–78) was
no ghost when
Roughing It was published.
He joined the Mormon church in 1831, became an
apostle in 1835, and in the next few years led important missions to England and Jerusalem.
For most of 1855 and 1856 he served as
ecclesiastical leader and probate judge for newly formed Carson County, Utah (later
Nevada) Territory. In 1858 he was appointed by
Young to preside over a district of south-central Utah, where he lived until his death
in 1878. Hyde was also elected to several terms
in the Utah legislature, serving a total of more than fifteen years (
Jenson,
1:80–82).