THE MORMONS AND BRIGHAM YOUNG
I had long wished to see the capital of the Mormons. Their story was so
utterly unlike the nineteenth century, that in spite of much that was
vulgar and contemptible it seemed to have a flavour of medieval romance.
The visions of Joe Smith, the farmer’s boy; the golden plates containing
the book of Mormon, revealed by an angel in 1823, and deciphered with the
help of the Urim and Thummim; the persecutions and tortures endured by
the Saints with the heroism of martyrs; their flights, hounded from place
to place; the murder of the Prophet and his brother, Hyrum Smith, after
an audacious bid for the Presidentship of the United States; the Nauvoo
Massacre; the crossing of the Mississippi to Council Bluffs; Brigham
Young succeeding to the mantle of the Prophet, and, like a second Moses,
leading the Saints over the trackless desert and the terrors of the Rocky
Mountains, until on the 24th of July, 1847, decimated by all the horrors
of extreme heat and cold, fatigue, hunger, thirst and disease, they
reached their Pisgah! That much of all this, and more yet to come, should
have taken place within the memory of living men was indeed strange. And
when the Mormons looked down upon the plain below the Wahsatch Mountains,
and saw the great Salt Lake gleaming like a jewel in the sun, there arose
from them a great cry recalling the “Thalatta! Thalatta!” of Xenophon’s
ten thousand, and with one voice they shouted: “The Land of Promise! The
Land of Promise, held in reserve by the hand of God for the resting-place
of His Saints!”
The city sprang into existence as if by magic. Brigham Young was
all-powerful, bearing a more undisputed mastery than king or tsar or
kaiser. He was a law unto himself, and had his _Vehmgericht_, or rather
was also a secret court unto himself. True, there was no _Folterkammer_,
no _eiserne Jungfrau_, but those old methods were out of date; the
revolver and the bowie-knife were swifter and as sure; Jordan was the
oubliette. There has been some attempt to deny the existence of the
Danites or Destroying Angels who were Brigham Young’s executioners. That
is futile, for the men, as I can testify, were as well known in Salt Lake
City as the Prophet, and the Old Man of the Mountain himself was not more
faithfully or more bloodily served by his _hashishin_ than was the Lion
of the Lord by his band of bravos. There were wholesale murders like
the Mountain Meadow Massacre, but there were also other crimes, secret
murders actuated by private spite, jealousy or lust, the stories of which
are well known to those behind the scenes in Zion. It was not healthy for
a man to incur the wrath of the Prophet or of the leading Saints. It was
not conducive to long life to love a maid or wed a wife upon whom the
eyes of one of the holy ones might have fallen.
Brigham Young was a very different man from his predecessor, Joe Smith.
Both men were needed for the building up of this strange people. Joe
Smith, as some pretend an epileptic, but in any case a fanatic, probably
in the first instance believed in the dreams that he dreamed and the
visions that he saw. To convince others a man must first convince himself.
A Mohammed has faith in himself and founds a religion professed by
countless millions. A Grand Cophta Cagliostro believes in nothing—least
of all in himself—and dies miserably in the Castle of San Leone. Joe
Smith could never have obtained the steadfast adherence of the men who
rallied round him, especially of so strong a man as Brigham Young, four
years older than himself, had he not possessed something of the faith
which moves mountains. Moreover, his disciples were ready to die, and did
die, for their religion’s sake. The man who lays down his life for his
friends cannot be altogether damned as a wilful impostor.
On the other hand there was very little of the inspired prophet about
Brigham Young. He was essentially a ruler, an organizer, a law-giver.
His preaching was contemptible, but his strength of will inflexible;
that, and not any pretence to inspiration, was the secret of the power
which he wielded. He was entirely uneducated, and rather seemed to
pride himself upon the fact, but he was an admirable worker and had a
knowledge of several crafts besides that of painter and glazier, which
was his immediate business before joining Joe Smith. This served him in
good stead on the great trek; as a carpenter he helped to build anything
that might be needed from a boat to a tabernacle, and he was of great
practical utility when the New Zion was in course of erection.
As an organizer and business man he excelled. Under his guidance
industries of all kinds sprang up in the new community; he started
co-operative stores, banks and places of business. Schools were
established, even schools of music and dancing academies, for the Lion
of the Lord was himself a great dancer, and it was said that the austere
man would even condescend to perform in a breakdown. The drama was a
passion with him, so it was not long before a theatre was built. His own
trading was carried out on excellent principles. He bought cheaply and
sold dearly, even succeeding in getting the better of the United States
Commissariat Department. The Saints used to boast with pride of the
wealth of their Prophet. He was a sound financier, deeply penetrated by
the truth of the maxim, “Les affaires sont l’argent des autres.”
Such poor thunders as the Jupiter of the United States hurled at him
passed harmlessly over his head. Often, standing at the helm of the State
which he had created, he defied the supreme power, dauntless and unmoved.
Apart from all the crimes and all the baser sides of his character it is
impossible to deny that he had many of the qualities which go to make a
statesman. If he was a destroyer he was also a constructor, and the New
Zion as I saw it in 1873 was his work, and his alone.
The sun was dipping in the western sky as we were carried past the pretty
shores of the Great Salt Lake, a glorious metallic sheet glowing with
rosy light. In the distance were the Wahsatch Mountains rich in beauty,
silver and swindles, and as we drew near there was a pink haze over the
Zion of the Saints. The houses, each standing in its own little orchard,
with the fruit trees in the full bloom of spring-time, reminded me
of some Eastern city. There was only one shrieking ugliness, the huge
tabernacle with its great oblong white roof shaped like a dish cover—a
monstrosity upon which ingenuity had spent itself in the successful
endeavour to produce something which should defy the world to show
anything equally hideous.
The Mormon homes, when we reached them, were commonplace enough, but
the general effect of one great riotous luxury of blossom seen in the
opalescent light of that lovely gloaming was a dream. Blushing behind
so fair a veil the meanest buildings became glorified. Next morning,
no doubt, we should be affronted by the newness of a city which some
twenty-five years ago had sprung out of a wilderness that could show
nothing more imposing than a sage-bush; but the glamour of this April
evening transfigured everything in a glory of rosy light.
We were lucky in having as our travelling companion Mr. McCook, the
Governor of Colorado, with whom we had struck up an alliance, and Colonel
Steinberger, who, it was said, was the bearer of a not very pleasant
message from President Grant to the Prophet, Brigham Young. Captain
Forbes, who had gone before, met us at the station, and led the way to
the Walker House Hotel, where we were comfortably lodged. The Walker
brothers were remarkable men in Zion. Hailing from Yorkshire, they had,
upon the ruin of their father, emigrated as boys to the United States
and found their way to Salt Lake City, where they joined the Mormon
community, of which they had learned something in the old country. They
were as poor as Lazarus, but by steady industry and integrity they became
wealthy merchants, prospering greatly.
There came a day when they grew disgusted with the Prophet, his
teachings, and his pretensions. They were boycotted and persecuted in
every way, but they held good, and ended by largely breaking the tyranny
of Brigham Young, hitting him hard by the _argumentum ad crumenam_, and
damaging the co-operative society which he had started in opposition
to them and to the various Gentile firms, the front of whose doors was
patrolled by Mormon police, taking note of any ill-advised Saint who
might try to do business with them.
The following morning—May the 1st—we were up betimes and went for a drive
with a Mr. Stanford, for whom I had a letter of introduction. At the foot
of the Wahsatch Mountains, on an eminence overlooking the plain, stood
Camp Douglas, where a park of United States artillery dominated the town
about two miles off—a standing threat against any violence on the part of
Brigham Young and his Latter-day Saints.
The site was chosen in 1862 by Colonel Connor at the time when incidents
arising out of the murder by the Mormons of the rival prophet Morris, a
poor, half-crazy Welshman, rendered it necessary for the United States
Government to bid the Saints behave themselves. However degrading for a
prophet it might be to have the guns of his country’s army turned upon
the windows of his harem, there the battery remained, ready at a moment’s
notice to blow the whole hierarchy of the Saints, their wives, and their
homesteads into the next world. The officers gave Oliver a soldier’s
welcome, and were most civil and courteous to us. But how they hated the
Mormons, and how one felt the delight that it would be to them to receive
orders to bombard the Eagle House, the Beehive House and the whole
detested city of lies, the “City of Confusion”!
But those orders were not likely to come, for the Government of the
United States never made up their minds to deal effectively with the
danger within their gates, and even the so-called Mormon war was but
a very half-hearted affair. Instead of boldly taking in hand what was
really high treason against the Stars and Stripes, successive Presidents
sheltered themselves behind the responsibility of the individual State
concerned, in order to shirk what was the duty of the Federation.
In the afternoon we went with Governor McCook to visit Brigham Young at
the Beehive House. We were shown into quite a modest parlour such as
you might find in a well-to-do farmhouse or humble Scottish manse. No
luxury, no sign of any artistic refinement, no pictures, no books. The
Prophet prided himself on a sublime contempt for study in any shape.
There were one or two elders in the room, waiting, like ourselves, for
an audience of the Lion of the Lord, who presently appeared. He was big
and burly, not conspicuously tall, but broad-shouldered and massive. He
was seventy-one years of age, but looked much younger, for he had plenty
of wavy fair hair turning grey, and his face was framed in what used to
be called in London slang, “a Newgate fringe.” Had it not been for a
marvellously strong lower jaw indicating the iron will which had carried
him through so many dangers and difficulties, he would have passed
unnoticed in a crowd; but the square jaw and chin, the firmly-set lips,
and a certain ominously suspicious look in the rather colourless eyes
spoke volumes.
He looked what he was—a master, and a cruel master to boot. He was
dressed in a frock coat of black broadcloth, a concession, as it was
said, to the whim of a recently wedded wife, to win whose consent he had
been compelled to plead sartorially in a way quite unusual to him, for
the lady objected to the home-spun suit which had been good enough for
him till her rule began. He was a very common man, vulgar and uneducated,
but his whole appearance indicated force, dogged determination, a
stubborn inflexibility. “I am and will be governor,” he once said in
a sermon, “and no power can hinder it, until the Lord Almighty says,
‘Brigham, you need not be Governor any longer.’”[34] Those words summed
up the whole character of the man, as it was written in his face. The
strength of a lion, the cunning of a weasel.
One of the twelve apostles who had come with us acted as master of the
ceremonies, and named Governor McCook and ourselves to the Prophet, who
was civil—for a prophet—but not genial nor making any pretence of being
pleased to see us. When the Governor addressed him as “Mr. Young” he
forgot his show of urbanity for a moment, and gave McCook a look which
in the days of miracles should have withered him up as the worm smote
Jonah’s gourd. The Prophet claimed to be called “Mr. President,” but how
could a high official of the United States give that title to any man
save one?
“You carry your years well, Mr. Young,” said the Governor. “I suppose you
attribute that to the fine, invigorating air of your mountains?”
“Say rather, sir, to a mind at peace,” and with those words, uttered
with a sanctimonious snuffle, the poisonous look disappeared, and
the holy man turned up the whites of his eyes with an air of saintly
beatitude.
I could hardly believe my ears. The audacity of it! Did the man think
that we had never heard of the Mountain Meadow Massacre, and of Heaven
knows how many other crimes with which his name was associated? If it be
true that conscience is a question of digestion his digestion must have
been perfect.
We were told that there had been a disagreeable interview that morning
with Colonel Steinberger and that the Prophet’s temper had been ruffled;
at any rate, our visit was not very pleasant and there was no temptation
to prolong it—indeed, the Lion of the Lord was evidently in a bad
humour, very much inclined to growl and show his teeth, so after a few
commonplaces we left him in his den. We had a further taste of his
quality when we went to hear him preach.
As we walked through the Garden City we were joined by several Mormon
notables, amongst others by a well-known Danite, or Destroying Angel,
who very appropriately volunteered to show us over the cemetery. It
was impossible among the graves not to notice the frequency of the
inscription, “Found dead in Jordan.” I asked the Angel how it was that
so many men had fallen into the river in a community of Rechabites where
soberness was the strict rule. He grinned a significant and ghastly grin.
“I guess they died in their boots.” Everybody who ever was in the West
in the days described by Bret Harte knows the meaning of that euphemism.
How many booted men he personally had accounted for, if any, our Danite
friend did not say.
But the words of the Prophet were law and must be obeyed; persons
inconvenient to himself or to the Church and its apostles and elders, for
whatever reason, political or domestic, must not block the way; so they
“died in their boots.” The cemetery in Zion furnished something to think
about.
We were hospitably invited into a bar-room kept by a gentile, where a
United States judge asked us to “paint”—an expression derived from the
tendency of whisky to promote high colour in the face and nose. After one
cocktail another gentleman came in and said to me: “Pleased to know you,
sir—will you paint?” I excused myself on the ground that I had just gone
through the ceremony with the Judge. “What! not just a leetle sketch?”
said my new friend, with his head persuasively on one side.
Forbes and I were very anxious to go up the Cottonwood Canyon and have a
look at the Emma and Flagstaff Silver mines, which had not long before
been thrown on the London Market, highly over-capitalized. The Emma
mine had been brought out under the ægis of General Schenk, the United
States Minister at the Court of St. James’s, the hero who also introduced
poker into London Society. The Stock Exchange was quite taken in. It was
impossible that so high a personage as the diplomatic representative of
a great Power should give his name as director to a wildcat venture. The
shares were greedily bought, inflated to 50 per cent. premium or more,
and then collapsed.
The Flagstaff was fathered by one Williams, a very plausible benefactor
of mankind, who, as was afterwards found out, had been a waiter at an
hotel in San Francisco. It was a magnificent concern—paid 30 per cent.
dividends on such shares as were first bought, and when all were sold it
was discovered that the dividend on the earlier shares had been paid out
of the money subscribed, and the shares were not worth a lock of good
Mr. Williams’ hair. He, honest man, decamped with his spoils and was no
more heard of. His gains must have been considerable, for he had also
launched another mine, with equal success to himself, equal disaster to
the shareholders.
We chartered a cart and a pair of horses and set out on a lovely drive
among the mountains. Our teamster was a very amusing fellow, who, when
he found that Forbes was a naval man, interlarded his conversation with
much sea-talk. All of a sudden, as we were slowly jaunting up the canyon,
we heard a pistol shot, and a bullet came singing its way close to our
heads. Our driver stopped short. “Ah! that’s Bill Simmonds, he’s up the
canyon looking after a claim of his. He’s fired a shot across our bows,
and maybe, if we don’t stop, the next shot will be some nearer.” So we
waited, and in a few seconds Mr. Simmonds appeared out of the scrub by
the road-side, very drunk, with a revolver in one hand and a whisky
bottle in the other. He was grinning hospitality, and all he had stopped
us for was to give us a drink. When we accepted he was delighted, swore
eternal friendship, declaring that we possessed every social and moral
virtue, and disappeared again into the bushes. We went on our way without
further let or hindrance, and were shown over the two great swindles by
the most explanatory of managers.
The talk of one of those old-time mining bosses was quite an education
in enthusiasm, and so, much edified, we wended our way back to Salt Lake
City. If we were not able to send a crumb of comfort to the victims
in London we had at any rate had a delightful expedition in glorious
scenery, drinking in an air that was almost as intoxicating as Mr.
William Simmonds’ whisky.
There was no doubt, according to the geologists and mining experts, that
the beautiful mountains of the Cottonwood Canyon were rich in silver
mines—therein lay the danger. Brought out as they were by very clever
manipulators, with abundant proof of the existence of the metal, they
took in some of the very elect in the City of London, and to the small
investors, always captivated by the prospect of big dividends, they spelt
ruin. The poor parson, the widow, and the orphan, were specially created
for the benefit of promoters, as men of the Schenk and Williams type well
knew.
On the Sunday Forbes and I went to hear the Prophet preach. In the huge,
ugly tabernacle, capable, as we were told, of holding nine thousand
people, we were shown to the gentiles’ bench, just underneath Brigham
Young, who glared at us in the most hostile way. There was some singing
accompanied by an organ, not bad in its way, for music is one of the arts
which the Saints cultivate, the children being all taught to sing in
parts.
But the portion of the service which interested us the most was, of
course, the sermon. Brigham Young was no orator, he had no sacred spark
of eloquence; his strength, as I have said before, lay in his power as
a leader and master; there he was matchless. His sermon was very poor,
consisting of the commonest platitudes interlarded with grotesquely
barbarized Old Testament phraseology. Just the sort of stuff that is
spouted by the meanest of the Hyde Park ranters. All of a sudden
he stopped the current of a discourse which to us sounded almost
blasphemous, leant over and, looking us straight in the face, burst into
a violent inflammatory tirade against England. Quite forgetting the way
in which he had once been received, when, as he said himself on a former
occasion, he landed in our island penniless and without a friend, he
lashed himself into a fury of abuse of everybody and everything that was
British.
It was miserably poor stuff, but probably good enough for the purpose of
kindling the hatred of his audience against us; it would not have been
swallowed by the lowest and most ignorant socialism in England. It was
violent, truculent, absolutely unreal; I felt all the time as if the
man were out-talking his own reason. One passage was very amusing. He
looked at me with a fixed stare—shaking his forefinger at me, and said:
“I often wish that I had the power of Queen Victoria or Mr. Gladstone for
forty-eight hours. I guess” (here he paused)—“Yes! I’m a Yankee, I am,
and therefore I guess—I would soon see whether millions upon millions of
acres should lie fallow and bare in order that a parcel of idle noblemen
may _PUR_sue pheasants with their dogs!” I know not how to express the
stress which he laid upon the _pur_ in _pursue_ save by printing it in
capital letters. When he had reviled England to his satisfaction he
turned to an exposition of the beauties of the Mormon faith. Here again
he was not happy, though his none too classical language was remarkable
as showing the truth of what has always been said of his loyal devotion
to and faith in the first Prophet and Founder of Mormonism.
He said: “I have often wondered why it was that God Almighty chose Joseph
Smith, the poor uneducated farmer’s boy, to be the means of revealing
His Will to His people. I can only suppose that it was because He wanted
a white sheet of paper to write upon.” The image was not new, and not
particularly reverent or refined; but when he spoke of Joseph Smith I
could not but feel that there was in all that he said, in the tone of his
utterance, something of faith, and more than faith, love, which, in a man
so strong and of so coarse a fibre, was infinitely touching, infinitely
pathetic. He spoke in tears, and made me forget the cant and vulgarity
of the rest of his discourse; for if Brigham Young was not eloquent he
was at any rate a master of coarse abuse.
There is a speech of his against a federal judge who had attacked
polygamy, in which he is said to have “roared” a flood of abuse before
which Billingsgate must hide its head in the shame of defeat. It winds
up with a grand peroration: “If you or anyone else is such a baby calf,
we must sugar your soap to coax you to wash yourself Saturday nights! Go
home to your mammy straight away, and the sooner the better!”[35]
Brigham Young never claimed to have received more than one revelation and
that was, as its first verse says, “the Will of the Lord concerning the
Camp of Israel in their journeyings to the West.” It was really, so far
as the first part is concerned, a military order regulating the conduct
to be observed on the march from Council Bluffs in 1847. The latter
part is worth reading as a specimen of a style which was anything but
attractive even in a considered document, but which in the pulpit became
repellent. The congregation, however, were not a critical audience.
The doctrines of the Saints were not such as would appeal to men of
education, and I can honestly say that, although I became personally
acquainted with a good many Mormons, I did not find one with whom it
would have been possible to hold an intelligent conversation on any
question outside of his own particular business or that of the Community.
I am speaking of my own experience in the early seventies; I am told
by those who have been in Utah more recently that things have not
changed. If the preachers of Mormonism are twitted with this, the answer
is naturally: “If we are poor and uneducated so were the Apostles of
Christianity”; but they forget that the Apostles founded a faith which
has been for centuries the religion of the most civilized and cultured
portion of the world, whereas the Mormons have existed for nearly a
century without making a single convert of note. And yet a century, short
as the time is in comparison to the twenty centuries of Christianity,
has in these days of rapid communication given them opportunities of
spreading, such as Christianity did not possess until many hundred years
after its birth. Mormonism is growing and is now (1915) said to number
over four hundred thousand members. But these are still confined to the
ignorant classes. No scholar could be won by the book of Mormon.
As regards material prosperity Salt Lake City was already, when I saw
it, a triumph, and in all the Community, if what men said was true, no
man was more prosperous than Brigham Young. One gentile—a very moderate
man—told us that the Prophet had entered upon speculations of every sort.
If they succeeded they belonged to him, if they failed to the Church,
an easy and profitable way of doing business. If he did not have every
comfort that his heart could desire it was his own fault. He lived in
what to him, I suppose, was a sort of luxury in the Beehive House,
his wives in the larger Eagle House—and the two were joined by a low
building in which were his offices. His Court consisted of a dentist in
ordinary—doctors he could not abide.
The last time that I saw this wonderful man, who certainly must be
reckoned as one of the most striking apparitions of his century, was at
the theatre, of which, as I have said, he was an assiduous patron—indeed
it was reported that he himself was fond in his lighter moods of taking
part in theatricals. That he lived not a few tragedies is certain, but
it is difficult to think of that grim man in sock or buskin, or even to
believe that he could have any “lighter moods.”
The grand tier was filled with the wives of the much-wedded Saints; but
where were the lovely ladies over whose charms Messrs. Cannon and Knapp
have wasted so much printer’s ink? There must have been two or three
hundred women present, all of them apparently recruited from the slums of
London and Liverpool, Scandinavia, and, as we were told in the case of a
few, from Germany. The harems of the Mormons were no temptation to the
Gentile.
The next morning we left Salt Lake City. There is in Messrs. Cannon
and Knapp’s book a photograph of the town as it is to-day. The
picturesqueness which struck me so much appears to have been largely
improved off the face of the earth. Instead of the lowly but comfortable
houses standing in their own gardens the streets are bordered by huge
many-storied buildings scraping the sky—those monstrosities of which
America is so proud. It seems a sorry thing that the old patriarchal
simplicity of the place which made its beauty should have been ruthlessly
torn down by the almighty dollar. I left Zion the richer in that I had
had a personal interview with a prophet and hobnobbed with a Destroying
Angel.
NEVADA AND CALIFORNIA
Further and further west! Forbes and I were bound to see Virginia City in
Nevada, where the colossal mining industries were turning out fortunes.
John Mackay, the Silver King, a right good fellow with whom I kept up
a friendship for many years, was the head of the firm of Mackay, Fair,
Flood and O’Brien, a group of Irishmen, and they were the kings of the
place. Forbes knew them well, so we were sure of a good reception.
At the railway station we found the famous Curly Bill, a charioteer of
great renown who drove his team of six horses at a breakneck pace up
hill and down hill, round corners where the slightest mistake would have
meant being hurled down a precipice Heaven knows how deep, for the road
hugged the face of the rock—on one side the dead wall of the mountain,
on the other eternity. He must have had nerves of steel. Curly Bill was
a good-natured giant, very full of talk. In his humorous way he spun
many yarns about the old days of camp life among the wild devils of whom
forty-one years ago there were still a good few to be found. He had much
to say about the swift and summary justice of the Vigilance Committees,
of which we gathered, though he did not admit it in so many words, that
he had been a prominent member. Judge Lynch was the only power capable of
maintaining law and order in those stormy days, for the arm of the United
States was not long enough to reach the far away camps. Besides, the
miners had little respect for the procedure of the courts; there was too
much corruption and too much delay.
I thought of “The Tombs,” the famous prison in New York, where I had seen
eighteen murderers—among them Stokes, who killed Jem Fiske, the partner
of Jay Gould—all waiting month after month to be tried, condemned, or
bought off. I remembered how Stokes told me that he had been deprived
of his daily walk in the prison yard, and when I asked the reason, he
answered, “Oh, politics; in New York everything is politics!” He had good
cause to say so, for politics saved his neck in the end. I could not but
feel that there was much to be said for the Vigilance Committees. There
must be some protection for life and property, and I believe that they
seldom, perhaps never, acted without just cause. It was a case of a quick
trial, a short shrift, and the nearest tree! The members of the Committee
as well disguised as the executioners of the Holy Office, and they worked
in secret, under oath, but I fancy they were pretty well known, all the
same.
Three or four years ago I saw the death of Curly Bill recorded with no
little regretful praise in the _Times_. He was in his way a celebrity;
everybody who knew the country round about Carson liked him and he would
be greatly missed. It was a delight to look upon his good, wholesome,
honest face, to listen to his straight talk, and watch the strong skill
of his coachmanship.
Virginia City was quite a small, scattered place, perched like an eagle’s
nest among the mountains, just big enough to hold a few hundred miners,
a bar or two, and a small hotel. The first thing that struck me was
the great number of well-dressed, well-to-do loafers hanging about the
streets, apparently with no work and no interest in life. I asked what
it meant. “Them fellows is all rich miners,” said Curly Bill, “everyone
of them has a share in the mine in which he works. It’s their time off
now—they work eight hours, sleep eight hours, and loaf eight hours—yes,
sir! presently those men will all be going on their shift, and working
naked to the waist, with nothing on but a pair of cotton drawers and
their shoes, down a couple of thousand feet or thereabouts, in a heat
which would make Hell ashamed of itself.”
Mr. Fair was the only one of the four magnificos who happened to be in
Virginia City at the time of our visit: he was the most genial of hosts,
and we dined with him that evening; he lived in the simplest fashion
in a small white house with green shutters at one end of the town. The
order of architecture was that of the cheap toy doll’s house—a door in
the middle, windows on each side—a ground floor and first floor and of
necessity a roof. There was one maid-servant, and kind, handsome Mrs.
Fair cooked the dinner, over which, after a slight change of toilette,
she presided with all the grace of a charming hostess. An excellent leg
of mutton and a rice-pudding composed the bill of fare. That was the
frugal way in which this rich gentleman, worth millions of dollars—indeed
of pounds—lived while he was at work, and that was how the great
millionaire ladies seconded their husbands; when their day came they knew
how to be magnificent. It is almost impossible for us Englishmen to think
of another lady who in all the bloom of her youth and beauty did the
washing for her husband’s camp, and later in life girded at the pettiness
of the authorities of Paris for not allowing her to buy or even to hire
the Arc de l’Étoile in order that she might more brilliantly illuminate
a great entertainment! But those were the changes and chances of the
lives of those who worked in such places as Poker Flat or Roaring Camp.
Patriarchal simplicity followed by a prodigality exceeding even what the
vats and mash-tubs of the great brewers could aspire to.
Under the auspices of Jem Fair (Slippery Jem, as he was called; why, I
know not, for he was as straight and upright as the Nelson Column, but
in the old mining days every man had a nickname, whether it fitted or
not), we were shown much that the ordinary, haphazard traveller has no
opportunity of seeing. He took us down the famous Consolidated Virginia
Mine, where, far down in the bowels of the earth, we saw men stripped
to the waist, working for dear life, hacking out wealth from the solid
rock, like the Nibelungen of the Rhine Legends. Curly Bill had given the
heat no more than its due. The half naked miners were streaming with
perspiration, and we were glad when the lift swung us up again out of the
rich gloom of Tartarus into the bright air of Heaven.
The machinery of the mine was stupendous. Fair told me that much of it
was imported from England. He said that it was only in England that they
could rely upon the truthfulness of the make. Things have changed in the
last forty years! Now we hear of steel rails being bought for England in
America; then it was only the British manufacturer who could be trusted
to produce the most important articles needed by the miners, such as
steel belts, for instance.
Jem Fair’s talk, like that of all men who have done something in the
world, was worth listening to, and he had a way of expressing the shrewd
commonsense of his opinions in short, compact sentences that were almost
epigrams. I recollect an answer of his which was very much to the point.
Someone asked him what were the prospects of a certain mine which had
just been started; he replied: “Well, sir, a miner can see no further
than the end of his pick.” It was a golden rule with him that a man
should not invest money in a concern too remote for him to have any voice
in its management. He made his millions in the mines which he controlled;
he invested them in real estate in San Francisco.
To a young Englishman who wished to follow his lead he said: “No,
sir, you’re too far off.” “But,” said the Englishman, “see how you’ve
succeeded.” “Yes, sir, but I’m here.” There was all the wisdom of
a financial Solomon in that little word “here,” and the look which
accompanied it.
I saw Jem Fair again in the autumn, when he urged me to go and see him
before returning home. I wonder why it is that one seems to know a man
better if one sees him twice with an interval than if one were to spend
the same length of days or hours with him at one spell? Anyhow, I grew
very fond of Fair, and heard from him fitfully till his death. He became
Senator for Nevada, but never took kindly to politics, and I think the
happiest days of his life were those of the old mining outfit before he
had become a great money potentate, after which wealth and sorrow and
many cares weighed upon him heavily.
When we were on the railway, bound for San Francisco, we had a little
taste of the life of the Wild West. At a roadside station a great,
burly man got into the car, very rough, very dirty, very drunk and very
quarrelsome. Things had apparently not gone smoothly with him, and he
was thirsting for the blood of an enemy, failing whom, brandishing a
revolver, he declared himself determined to slay someone in the car. His
language was savage, indecent, and blasphemous. The women began to scream
and hide their children in their petticoats; but as quick as thought
the guard, a tiny little man, went up to the big bully twice his size,
disarmed him and turned him out cowering at the next station. Not much of
an adventure, but characteristic of the place and time.
San Francisco was amazing. It is probably much more marvellous now, since
its resurrection from the ruins of the great earthquake. But to me, who
could recollect the gold fever in the forties, when I was old enough to
take interest in the pictures of the _Illustrated London News_—the only
illustrated paper out at that time—it seemed simply miraculous to see
that city of palaces risen barely twenty-five years before out of the
sand-heaps of the Pacific Coast. The greatest marvel of all were the men.
I had letters for Mr. Ralston, the manager of the Bank of California;
Mr. Gänsel, the agent of the Rothschilds, and others; and through their
good offices I made the acquaintance with most of the heroes whose toil
and industry had landed them winners in these great welter races of
prosperity. It is notorious that new communities, especially those where
there are pigeons ready for the plucking, attract the failures of the
world, the flotsam and jetsam of the sea of rascaldom. The worst case
that I ever came across was Port Said in 1870, where the griffins on
their way out to India, and older men homeward bound on furlough, who
might be accredited with having shaken such poor remnants of fruit as
might yet hang here and there on the pagoda tree, fell easy victims to
the croupiers of the hells and the sirens of the _cafés-chantants_. San
Francisco, in its salad days, was no exception to the rule. Gamblers,
professors of poker, of euchre and other games, were there by the
hundred; bullies, and swindlers, men living upon their wits, but chiefly
on the lack of wits in others; hawks ready to pounce upon any simple
miner with brains lighter than his pouch who might come under the clutch
of their talons. Evil men enough and to spare, but happily many more good
ones, rare pioneers, endowed with that grip and holdfast purpose which
have raised the United States to their proud position among the nations
under the sun.
Sitting in the luxurious hall of the Occidental Hotel, it was strange
to hear some of the older men talk of the bygone times, when they lived
in huts that were sent out to them in pieces from the Eastern States
round Cape Horn, to be delivered through the Golden Gates and put up in
the old Spanish Town; and those log cabins meant soft comfort after the
hardships of camp life, and the toil of the hunt for gold.
John Mackay was one of the first men to call upon me, and we were much
together. We used generally to have luncheon and dine at some restaurant.
For the former being a one-idea man his order was always the same, given
with a brogue, and a comic little stammer which were very amusing.
“Waiter! let us have a t-t-tenderloin steak and let it be cooked r-rare!”
In spite of Dryden’s authority, I never could get quite used to the word
_rare_ in that sense. At last one day I said to him: “Mackay, you are
an Irishman, and of course you know Moore’s ‘Irish Melodies.’ Do you
remember that lovely song which begins: ‘Rich and underdone were the gems
she wore’?” Mackay laughed, but he continued to order his steak “r-rare.”
He was one of the simplest and kindest of men, with not a particle of
purse-pride about him; just as modest and unpretentious as he was when
as a lad he owned little more than the clothes he stood in; and now,
still a comparatively young man, he had achieved riches which made him
a real power in the world. A man who, among other ventures, can start a
trans-Atlantic cable off his own bat, is something to be reckoned with.
Kind as everybody in San Francisco was to the stranger that was within
his gates, none was more hospitable than my poor friend Ralston. It was
not only that he was lavish of expenditure. That in the ’Frisco of those
days was nothing. Everybody threw money out of the window—the more the
better. He was lavish of painstaking thoughtfulness for the comfort
and pleasure of his friends; lavish of genuine and heartfelt kindness;
lavish of a welcome which I felt was a joy to himself and which therefore
could be accepted as it was offered. He organized the most delightful
expeditions for the benefit of his many guests—long drives into the
glorious mountain scenery, with three or four teams of four horses in
readiness for a change at various points, and everything that forethought
could devise for our comfort.
Among his guests whom I met almost daily was Mr. Blaine, the Speaker of
the House of Representatives, and the sworn foe of England. There was
no such Anglophobe in all the United States and though perhaps it was
not in the best of taste to show his antipathy in our presence, he lost
no opportunity of doing so. However, I was determined not to be drawn,
and so gradually he became tamer. At the last, when after a few days we
said good-bye, he said, “Well, Mr. Mitford, there are at any rate two
things in England of which you may be proud. A House of Commons in which
the courtesy and self-restraint are a model for the world, and a Press
which never is inquisitorial in men’s private affairs.” Soon after I got
back to England the editor of a “Society Paper” was put in prison for
libel, and the House of Commons had started upon its all-night sittings
under the lead of Mr. O’Donnell, Mr. Biggar, and others. I should hardly
like, as an Englishman, to write down the opinion expressed by some of my
American friends upon Mr. Speaker Blaine. It would be taking a leaf out
of his book.
One of our drives was to the country house of Mr. D. O. Mills, the
father-in-law of that most distinguished Ambassador, Mr. Whitelaw
Reid. Mr. Mills’ house and surroundings were as beautiful as might be
expected in the midst of some of the most lovely scenery in the world.
He was the President of the Bank of California, and no man was more
respected. He had a great collection of modern pictures, many of which
were old acquaintances of previous years in the Royal Academy, and
elsewhere. Kind, genial, and courteous, he made us very welcome in his
beautiful home. His daughter, at whose house I saw him again when she was
Ambassadress in London, was then a very little girl in short petticoats.
Not long after I left San Francisco came the tragedy of the Bank of
California. The old story, mismanagement, a crash, ruin. Mr. Mills, who
in the meantime had given up his position in the bank, stepped into the
breach, went heroically into harness again, and pulled round the concern.
Poor Ralston could not face the shame. He died of a broken heart, a
suicide in the foul water of the docks of San Francisco.
All California rang with the praise of Mr. Mills and admiration for
his self-sacrifice. A grateful American gentleman once said: “You see
that gentleman there—well, that’s D. O. Mills. He’s worth millions upon
millions of dollars, and there is not a dirty coin among them.” A grand
tribute!
Before sailing again westward until the furthest East should be reached,
it was a solemn duty to make a pilgrimage to the Yosemite Valley. What
lover of trees could leave California without having seen the great
Wellingtonias? The trip is probably made much easier now, but forty
years ago a great deal of red dust, as fine and all-penetrating as the
black dust of a sand storm from the desert of Gobi, at Peking, had to be
swallowed before reaching the goal.
It was a popular saying that the teamsters of California, by a natural
process, developed gizzards to enable them to digest the quantities of
grit which they had to swallow. But the beauty of the country through
which we travelled paid for all, and a bath, with a long, cool drink
of many ingredients in crushed ice, prepared by the cunning hands of
Public-spirited Smith, the famous barman of the Valley, was a drink of
the water of Lethe, killing all memory of heat and that dust which adds
so greatly to fatigue. But I was already under the spell, for as I rode
into the Yosemite Valley at nightfall the scene was striking. The huge,
eerie rocks, rising some two thousand feet sheer on either side, looked
like gigantic, black, threatening fortresses, built by the Titans in
their war against the gods.
All of a sudden a bright light began to search the gloom. I looked up,
and just above the Bridal Veil Waterfall the full moon was rising. For
a few minutes it looked as if that thin, airy veil of the most delicate
gossamer lace, waving from side to side in the gentlest of breezes, were
being poured, a silvery stream, out of the very centre of the fairy
disc, scattering diamonds and opals as it touched the ground. I stopped
my horse and watched, half hoping that I, poor mortal, might surprise
the revels of the gnomes and fairies who surely must be holding high
festival among the moonlit patches in the thickets. Soon, in full glory,
the valley was lighted up, and I rode on, listening to the music of
the water, knowing that I had seen a sight full of mystery, the most
beautiful that ever had been or ever would be vouchsafed to my eyes.
How captivating is the charm even of the idea of beautiful scenery. Poor
blind Bob Lowe, Lord Sherbrooke, used to say that the greatest enjoyment
of which he was capable was that of travelling through beautiful
scenery—beautiful scenery which he, unhappy man, never saw, but of which
the idea possessed him, dominated him as nothing else could. And what a
pity it was that he should have been so afflicted, for with his power of
words he would have brought home to us so much. There have been a few, a
very few, lords of language who have been able to describe, but even they
are baffled by the masterpieces of God’s handiwork. Of these the Yosemite
Valley is one; it is too great for mere words; the most we can do is to
fall down and worship in silence in one of God’s own cathedrals.
I had just written the above lines about Lord Sherbrooke when, on turning
over Aston’s “History of Japanese Literature” for a quite different
purpose, I happened upon a quotation culled from the _Tsuré-Dzure-Gusa_
(literally “Idle blades of grass” or “_obiter dicta_”) of Kenkō, a
Japanese priest who lived in the fourteenth century, so appropriate that
I feel inclined to quote his words. “It is not only when we look on the
moon or flowers with our eyes that they give us pleasure; but on a spring
day, though we leave not the house, on a moonlight night, though we
remain in our chamber, the mere thought of these cheers and delights.”
Many wise, and, let me add, many pious thoughts, did the old priest who
died seven hundred years ago set down in writing, and they are as good
to-day as when he wrote them.
Something of a _bon vivant_, too, in spite of his Buddhism, which ought
to be so ascetic, was this dear old Kenkō (whose name before he entered
religion was Kanéyoshi), a man with a righteous respect for a cup of good
wine and the joy of sharing it with a friend.
“Two things fill my spirit with ever new and increasing admiration and
awe the oftener and the more constantly my thoughts are occupied with
them: the star-studded heaven above me and the moral law within me.” So
wrote Kant: had he seen them, he must have added as a third the giant
trees of California. To me they were more impressive than any of the
great phenomena of Nature that I had seen. The vastness and the appalling
roar of Niagara itself did not excite in me the same awe as did these
great silent witnesses of the ages.
How old they might be I cared not. Their measurements left me
indifferent. It was a wonder to see a great hollow tree lying on the
ground, to ride in on horseback at one end and out at the other. But
that was not what moved me; you cannot measure majesty, and when I saw
these great sequoias towering above the pines[36] which would themselves
have been Brobdingnagian anywhere else, the sense of majesty was almost
oppressive.
There are few subjects upon which more nonsense has been talked and
written than there has been about the age of trees. Some years ago I
saw a letter written to the _Times_ (I think) about a catalpa tree in
Gray’s Inn Garden, which was said to have been planted by Sir Walter
Raleigh (the catalpa, by the by, was first introduced into England in the
year 1726!), and in that letter the writer alluded to the sequoias or
Wellingtonias, which he said must have been already mature trees “when
Abraham was a little boy!” I felt how pleased that gentleman was with
himself when he concocted that phrase. Sir Joseph Hooker, Mr. Carruthers
and I once took the trouble to count accurately the rings on the section
of the sequoia in the Natural History Museum. They numbered one thousand
three hundred and thirty-five. “This particular tree was sixty-two feet
in girth at eight feet from the ground; three hundred feet high, and
without branches for two hundred feet of its height.” (Veitch’s “Manual
of Conifers.”) “From these and other authentic data,” says Veitch’s
book, “it is not unsafe to infer that none of the existing Wellingtonias
antedate the Christian Era, or that with very few exceptions, the oldest
of them reach within five hundred years of that epoch, whose ages,
therefore, do not much exceed that of the oldest yews in Great Britain.”
The yew is, as is well known, the oldest tree that we have; but here
again there is great exaggeration. I was once shown a yew tree in Hayling
Island which I was solemnly assured was standing there at the time of
Julius Cæsar’s landing. That a yew tree stood there is very possible; but
that particular yew tree, no! I have seen a young tree growing out of an
old one that was a mere hollow shell, the seed having germinated within
it. Many a legend in regard to yews may have started in that way; the
old host gradually rotting away to make room for the guest. Seedlings may
rise close to the recorded tree and in the course of centuries be taken
by ignorant or careless observers for it. As regards the age of oaks,
the old homely tradition is probably founded on something like fact.
Three hundred years of growth, three hundred standing still—which is,
of course, nonsense, for in this world nothing stands still—and three
hundred years in which to decay. Dryden put it into verse.
“The monarch oak, the patriarch of trees
Shoots rising up, and spreads by slow degrees:
Three centuries he grows, and three he stays
Supreme in state: and in three more decays.
“PALAEMON AND ARCITE.”
That there are many ancient oaks, veterans battered by the storms
of centuries, we well know; but a Wellingtonia of Abraham’s time is
unthinkable; so are the legends of the Mount of Olives. Surely enough,
there are trees there, grey and gnarled, that are the descendants of
those under which our Lord preached. Some of them are hoary with age and
may have been a third, hardly a second, generation from those sacred
ancestors. But though standing on the holy mount I looked upon them with
all the veneration, all the awe inspired by the divine traditions of the
place, I could not persuade myself that they were the very trees among
which the Saviour had so often wandered. The oldest tree in the world
of the planting of which there is any record, is the famous Bō tree of
Anuradhapura, of which I shall tell later on.
* * * * *
A few days later I was steaming out of the Golden Gates into the Pacific
Ocean—anything but pacific, as my experience went to show. For the first
day or two mountainous fogs that looked so solid that we almost expected
to hear the ship crash and be shattered to splinters as we charged into
them. Then a succession of gales, in one of which our starboard paddle
was smashed, and we had to steam the second half of our voyage steering
against the remaining one. Not a pleasant experience, for we were in the
month of June, and as the old rhyme in regard to typhoons goes, a risky
time.
June, coming soon.
July, mind your eye.
August, must.
September, remember.
October, all over!
However, in time the old slowcoach of a walking-beam ship landed us in
Japan, of which I need say nothing here.
Looking back upon my sojourn in California, it is a sad thought that none
of the men with whom I spent those happy days are left—my three English
travelling companions all gone—Mackay, Fair, Ralston, D. O. Mills, Curly
Bill and the rest all dead. I believe that Mrs. Whitelaw Reid is the only
person whom I knew out in the Far West who is yet alive. But she was a
little child!
The return voyage across the Pacific was very pleasant. We had as
shipmates several very agreeable Americans, among them Governor Lowe,
the U. S. Minister at Peking, and Mr. Lothrop, a Boston man, who had
been in business in Japan and seemed to have read almost every book that
was worth reading. Governor Lowe (he had been Governor of California
before entering diplomacy, and retained the title) was one of the best
_raconteurs_ that I ever met. One day I asked him why it was that his
stories were so incomparably better than anybody else’s. His answer was
instructive. “Well, sir! I’m going to tell you. You will notice that I
never tell a story about _a man_. Nobody wants to hear anything about
that _man_. He isn’t a circumstance. No, sir, when I tell you a story I
tell it with a name and a place, and sometimes a date. If I don’t know
them I invent them. That gives the anecdote a living interest. That’s my
secret, sir, and I make you a present of it.”
He kept our small company very much alive for about three weeks, for he
had a fine dry wit of his own besides his memory. He was going back now
after having held high office to join a bank in ’Frisco. Such is America.
He and Lothrop are, alas! both gone. The sister of the latter, when he
died, sent me as a remembrance of him a book which he had loved, and
there is at this moment, ticking away in my drawing-room, a tiny clock
which he gave me when I married. The ticking of that little clock often
carries me thousands and thousands of miles away into the cloud-land of
memory.
I found Forbes at Salt Lake City, and we determined to make a shooting
excursion in the Rocky Mountains before going East. We were assured that
we should have sport to our hearts’ content and we were told of a hunter
and tracker beside whom Fenimore Cooper’s Pathfinder was a mere baby. The
intimate secrets of the lair of the grizzly were an open book to him, and
as for the lordly wapiti—well, we should see! There was no need to take
any meat with us, for game would be plentiful and our larder would be so
stocked that we should not know what to do with its contents. Encouraged
by these grand assurances we engaged waggons and teams, and set out on
our great _shikar_.
It was now October and the nights were bitterly cold. We had no tents,
but lay out in the open in our buffalo robes. We had some fine tramps
over the mountains amid the most glorious scenery. But where were the
doomed grizzly bears? Where the vast herds of antlered wapiti? Not a
spoor did we see during all the days that we were out; our famous tracker
turned out to be an utter fraud and most unscrupulous liar; in spite of
which he went on romancing, brazen and unashamed. It was impossible not
to admire his audacity, it was so perfect. The worst of it was that,
putting our faith in his promises, we took no meat with us; we had plenty
of biscuits, potatoes, coffee and a little whisky; so far, our condition
was better than that of the Mormons on the great trek, and as we lay
round the camp fire at night, we regaled ourselves in imagination with
the juicy venison steaks that ought to be frizzling in the frying-pan.
Many miles we climbed and wandered, changing our camp every day. One
evening an old sage-hen came and stood watching us about seventy or
eighty yards off. We had no scatter-guns with us, so I took a pop shot at
her with my rifle and luckily got her; we cleaned her (very important to
do that at once, otherwise the strong taste of sage becomes intolerable),
plucked her, cut her in little pieces and threw her into the stew-pot;
that impudent bird, nasty as she was, seemed like a dish from a feast of
Heliogabalus.
One night it was my turn to keep the camp-fire going, and I ought to
have remained awake till the time should have come to put on new logs; I
was very tired, having had an unusually tall climb that day, and I fell
asleep before even having cut the needful logs of dead wood. All of a
sudden I awoke, roused by the rays of the moon, which was shining through
the trees—a lovely, weird sight. To my dismay I saw that the fire was all
but out. I had neglected my duty. I jumped up, took the axe, and began
cutting down a dead birch tree which I had marked the evening before; my
fingers were numb with cold, for it was freezing hard, and the axe more
than once turned in my grip. However, at last I got together some logs,
which were soon crackling merrily above the ashes; then I thought that I
would make myself a cup of coffee to warm me.
I went to the little stream—a mere runlet of water—now frozen quite hard,
broke some ice, melted it, and put it in the kettle to boil. When my
coffee was ready I heard a voice from under one of the buffalo robes:
“Wal! Wal! Wal! Blame me if you ain’t got quite a nice cup of corfy! I
guess I’ll come and have some.” It was the voice of one of the teamsters,
who had been watching me take all the trouble without even offering to
lend a hand, and now claimed his share of what my labour had earned.
I was savage, but it was no use showing it, for these men are very
independent, and if I had been sulky, he would have been off at daylight
with his waggon and team, leaving us to get on as best we could with
those that remained.
On our last evening, as hungry and disconsolate we sat shivering by the
camp fire, we were startled by the tinkling of a bell. It was a kind old
cow who had strayed out into the wilderness and came to be milked. Was
there ever sweeter music or a more royal feast than what she brought us?
Moreover she told us that we were nearing civilization.
We had had enough of this very barren hunting, tightening our girdles day
by day, and breaking the ice night and morning; so we settled up with our
teamsters and Ananias the hunter, caught a train at the wayside station,
and steamed away to New York.