for, odd as is his appearance and make up, one feels no inclination to
laugh. But such a figure! Brigham Young wears a long-tailed,
high-collared coat; the swallow-tails nearly touch the ground; the
collar is about his ears. In shape the garment is like the swallow-tail
coats which negro-melodists sometimes wear, or like the dandy English
dress coat one can still see in prints in some of the shops of St. James
street, London. But the material of Brigham's coat is some kind of
rough, gray frieze, and the garment is adorned with huge brass buttons.
The vest and trowsers are of the same material. Round the neck of the
patriarch is some kind of bright crimson shawl, and on the patriarch's
feet are natty little boots of the shiniest polished leather. I must say
that the gray frieze coat of antique and wonderful construction, the
gaudy crimson shawl, and the dandy boots make up an incongruous whole
which irresistibly reminds one at first of the holiday get-up of some
African King who adds to a great coat, preserved as an heirloom since
Mungo Park's day, a pair of modern top-boots, and a lady's bonnet. The
whole appearance of the patriarch, when one has got over the African
monarch impression, is like that of a Suffolk farmer as presented on the
boards of a Surrey theatre. But there is decidedly an amount of
composure and even of dignity about Brigham Young which soon makes one
forget the mere ludicrousness of the patriarch's external appearance.
Young is a handsome man--much handsomer than his portrait on the wall
would show him. Close upon seventy years of age, he has as clear an eye
and as bright a complexion as if he were a hale English farmer of
fifty-five. But there is something fox-like and cunning lurking under
the superficial good-nature and kindliness of the face. He seems, when
he speaks to you most effusively and plausibly, to be quietly studying
your expression to see whether he is really talking you over or not. The
expression of his face, especially of his eyes, strangely and
provokingly reminds me of Kossuth. I think I have seen Kossuth thus
watch the face of a listener to see whether or not the listener was
conquered by his wonderful power of talk. Kossuth's face, apart from its
intellectual qualities, appeared to me to express a strange blending of
vanity, craft, and weakness; and Brigham Young's countenance now seems
to show just such a mixture of qualities. Great force of character the
man must surely have; great force of character Kossuth, too, had; but
the face of neither man seemed to declare the possession of such a
quality. Brigham Young decidedly does not impress me as a man of great
ability; but rather as a man of great plausibility. I can at once
understand how such a man, with such an eye and tongue, can easily exert
an immense influence over women. Beyond doubt he is a man of genius; but
his genius does not reveal itself, to me at least, in his face or his
words. He speaks in a thin, clear, almost shrill tone, and with much
apparent _bonhomie_. After a little commonplace conversation about the
city, its improvements, approaches etc., the Prophet voluntarily goes on
to speak of himself, his system, and his calumniators. His talk soon
flows into a kind of monologue, and is indeed a curious rhapsody of
religion, sentimentality, shrewdness and egotism. Sometimes several
sentences succeed each other in which his hearers hardly seem to make
out any meaning whatever, and Brigham Young appears a grotesque kind of
Coleridge. Then again in a moment comes up a shrewd meaning very
distinctly expressed, and with a dash of humor and sarcasm gleaming
fantastically amid the scriptural allusions and the rhapsody of unctuous
words. The purport of the whole is that Brigham Young has been
misunderstood, misprized, and calumniated, even as Christ was; that were
Christ to come up to-morrow in New York or London, He would be
misunderstood, misprized, and caluminated, even as Brigham Young now is;
and that Brigham Young is not to be dismayed though the stars in their
courses should fight against him. He protests with especial emphasis and
at the same time especial meekness, with eyes half closed and
delicately-modulated voice, against the false reports that any manner of
force or influence whatever is, or ever was, exercised to keep men or
women in Salt Lake City against their will. He appeals to the evidence
of our own eyes, and asks us whether we have not seen for ourselves that
the city is free to all to come and go as they will. At this time we had
not heard the story told by the poor little maid at the hotel; but in
any case the evidence of our eyes could go no farther than to prove that
travellers like ourselves were free to enter and depart. We have,
however, little occasion to trouble ourselves about answering; for the
Prophet keeps the talk pretty well all to himself. His manner is
certainly not that of a man of culture, but it has a good deal of the
quiet grace and self-possession of what we call a gentleman. There is
nothing _prononce_ or vulgar about him. Even when he is most rhapsodical
his speech never loses its ease and gentleness of tone. He is bland,
benevolent, sometimes quietly pathetic in manner. He poses himself _en
victime_, but with the air of one who does this regretfully and only
from a disinterested sense of duty. I begin very soon to find that there
is no need of my troubling myself much to keep up the conversation; that
my business is that of a listener; that the Prophet conceives himself to
be addressing some portion of the English or American press through my
humble medium. So I listen and my companion listens; and Brigham Young
talks on; and I do declare and acknowledge that we are fast drifting
into a hazy mental condition by virtue of which we begin to regard the
Mormon President as a victim of cruel persecution, a suffering martyr
and an injured angel!
Time, surely, that the interview should come to a close. We tear
ourselves away, and the Prophet dismisses us with a fervent and effusive
blessing. "Good-bye--do well, mean well, pray always. Christ be with
you, God be with you, God bless you." All this, and a great deal more to
the same effect, was uttered with no vulgar, maw-worm demonstrativeness
of tone or gesture, no nasal twang, no uplifted hands; but quietly,
earnestly, as if it came unaffectedly from the heart of the speaker. We
took leave of Brigham Young, and came away a little puzzled as to
whether we had been conversing with an impostor or a fanatic, a Peter
the Hermit or a Tartuffe. One thing, however, is clear to me. I do not
say that Brigham Young is a Tartuffe; but I know now how Tartuffe ought
to be played so as to render the part more effective and more apparently
natural and lifelike than I have ever seen it on French or English
stage.
No one can doubt the sincerity of the homage which the Mormons in
general pay to Brigham Young. One man, of the working class, apparently,
with whom I talked at the gate of the Tabernacle, spoke almost with
tears in his eyes of the condescension the Prophet always manifested. My
informant told me that he was at one time disabled by some hurt or
ailment; and, the first day that he was able to come into the street
again, President Young happened to be passing in his carriage, and
caught sight of the convalescent. "He stopped his carriage, sir, called
me over to him, addressed me by my name, shook hands with me, asked me
how I was getting on, and said he was glad to see me out again." The
poor man was as proud of this as a French soldier might have been if the
Little Corporal had recognized him and called him by his name. There is
no flattery which the great can offer to the humble like this way of
addressing the man by his right name, and thus proving that the identity
of the small creature has lived clearly in the memory of the great
being. Many a renowned commander has endeared himself to the soldiers
whom he regarded and treated only as the instruments of his business, by
the mere fact that he took care to remember men's names. They would
gladly die for one who could be so nobly gracious, and could thus prove
that they were regarded by him as worthy to occupy each a distinct place
in his busy mind. The niggardliness and selfishness of John, Duke of
Marlborough, the savage recklessness of Claverhouse, were easily
forgotten by the poor private soldiers whom each commander made it his
business, when occasion required, to address correctly by their
appropriate names of Tom, Dick, or Harry. Lord Palmerston governed the
House of Commons and most of those outside it with whom he usually came
into contact, by just such little arts or courtesies as this. In one of
Messrs. Erckmann and Chatrian's novels we read of a soldier who declares
himself ready to go to the death for Marshal Ney because the Marshal,
who originally belonged to the same district as himself, had just
recognized his fellow-countryman and called him by his name. But the
hero of the novel is somewhat grim and sarcastic, and he thinks it was
not so wonderful a condescension that Ney should have recognized an old
comrade and called him by his name. Perhaps the hero of the tale had not
himself received any such recognition from Ney--perhaps if it had been
vouchsafed to him he, too, would have been ready to go to the death.
Anyhow, this correct calling of names, and quick recognition has always
been a great power in the governing of men and women. "Deal you in
words," is the advice of Mephistophiles to the student, in Faust, "and
you may leave others to do the best they can with things." I was able to
appreciate the governing power of Brigham Young all the better when I
had heard the expression of this poor Mormon's gratitude and homage to
the great President who had shaken hands with him and addressed him
promptly and correctly by his name.
This same Mormon was very communicative. Indeed, as a rule, I found most
of the men in Salt Lake City ready and even eager to discuss their
"peculiar institution," and to invite Gentile opinion on it. He showed
us his two wives, and declared that they lived together in perfect
harmony and happiness; never had a word of quarrel, but were contented
and loving as two sisters. He delivered a panegyric on the moral
condition of Salt Lake City, where, he declared, there was no
dishonesty, no drunkenness, and no prostitution. I believe he was
correct in his description of the place. From many quite impartial
authorities I heard the same accounts of the honesty of the Mormons.
There certainly is no drunkenness to be observed anywhere openly, and I
believe (although I have heard others assert the contrary) that Salt
Lake City is really and truly free from this vice; and I suppose it goes
without saying that there is little or no prostitution in a place where
a man is expected to keep as many wives as his means will allow him.
Intelligent Mormons rely immensely on this absence of prostitution as a
justification of their system. They seem to think that when they have
said, "We have no prostitutes," all is said; and that the Gentile, with
the shames of London, Paris and New York burning in his memory and his
conscience, must be left without a word of reply. Brigham Young, in
conversation with me, dwelt much on this absence of prostitution. Orson
Pratt preached in the Tabernacle during our stay a sermon obviously "at"
the Gentile visitors, who were just then specially numerous; and he drew
an emphatic contrast between the hideous profligacy of the Eastern
cities and the purity of the Salt Lake community. I must say, for
myself, that I do not think the question can thus be settled; I do not
think prostitution so great an evil as polygamy. If this blunt
declaration should shock anybody's moral feelings I am sorry for it; but
it is none the less the expression of my sincere conviction. Pray do
not set me down as excusing prostitution. I think it the worst of all
social evils--except polygamy. I think polygamy the worse evil, because
I am convinced that, regarded from a physiological, moral, religious,
and even merely poetical and sentimental point of view, the only true
social bond to be sought and maintained and justified is the loving
union of one man with one woman--at least until death shall part the
two. Now, I regard the existence of prostitution as a proof that some
men and women fail to keep to the right path. I look on polygamy as a
proof that a whole community is going directly the wrong way. No man
proposes to himself to lead a life of profligacy. He falls into it. He
would get out of it if he only could--if the world and the flesh and the
devil were not now and then too strong for him. But the polygamist
deliberately sets up and justifies and glorifies a system which is as
false to physiology as it is to morals. Observe that I do not say the
polygamist is necessarily an immoral man. Doubtless he is often--in Utah
I really believe he is commonly--a sincere, devoted, mistaken man, who
honestly believes himself to be doing right. But when he attempts to
vindicate his system on the ground that it banishes prostitution, I, for
myself, declare that I believe a society which has to put up with
prostitution is in better case and hope than one which deliberately
adopts polygamy. I am emphatic in expressing this opinion because, as I
am opposed to any stronghanded or legal movement whatever to put down
Brigham Young and his system, I desire to have it clearly understood
that my opinions on the subject of polygamy are quite decided, and that
no one who has clamored, or may hereafter clamor, for the uprooting of
Mormonism by fire and sword, can have less sympathy than I have with
Mormonism's peculiar institution.
Let me return to Brigham Young. I saw the Prophet but twice--once in the
street and once in his own house, where the interview took place which I
have described. The day after that on which I last saw him he left Salt
Lake City and went into the country--some people said to avoid the
necessity of meeting Mr. Colfax, who was just then expected to arrive
with his party from the West. My impressions, therefore, of Brigham
Young and his personal character are necessarily hasty, and probably
superficial. I can only say that he did not impress me either as a man
of great genius, or as a mere _charlatan_. My impression is that he is a
sincere man--that is to say, a man who sincerely believes in himself,
accepts his own impulses, prejudices and passions as divine instincts
and intuitions to be the law of life for himself and others, and who,
therefore, has attained that supreme condition of utterly unsparing and
pitiless selfishness when the voice of self is listened to as the voice
of God. With such a sincerity is quite consistent the adoption of every
craft and trick in the government of men and women. Nobody can doubt
that Napoleon I. was perfectly sincere as regards his faith in himself,
his destiny, and his duty; and yet there was no trick of lawyer, or
play-actor, or priest, of which he would not condescend to avail himself
if it served his purpose. This is not the sincerity of a Pascal, or a
Garibaldi, or a Garrison; but it is just as genuine and infinitely more
common. It is the kind of sincerity which we meet every day in ordinary
life, when we see some dogmatic, obstinate father of a family or
sense-carrier of a small circle trying to mould every will and
conscience and life under his control according to his own pedantic
standard, and firmly confident all the time that his own perverseness
and egotism are a guiding inspiration from heaven. After all, the
downright, conventional stage-hypocrite is the rarest of all beings in
real life. I sometimes doubt whether there ever was _in rerum natura_
any one such creature. I suppose Tartuffe had persuaded himself into
self-worship, into the conviction that everything he said and did must
be right. I look upon Brigham Young as a man of such a temperament and
character. Cunning and crafty he undoubtedly is, unless all evidences of
eye, and lip, and voice belie him; but we all know that many a fanatic
who boldly and cheerfully mounted the funeral pile or the scaffold for
his creed had over and over again availed himself of all the tricks of
craft and cunning to maintain his ascendancy over his followers. The
fanatic is often crafty just as the madman is: the presence of craft in
neither case disproves the existence of sincerity.
I believe Brigham Young to be simply a crafty fanatic. That he professes
and leads his creed of Mormonism merely to obtain lands and beeves and
wives, I do not believe, although this seems to be the general
impression among the Gentiles who visit his city. I am convinced that he
regards himself as a prophet and a heaven-appointed leader, and that
this belief prevents him from seeing how selfish he is in one sense and
how ridiculous in another. Any man who can deliberately put on such a
coat in combination with such a pair of boots, as Brigham Young
displayed during my interview with him, must have a faith in himself
which would sustain him in anything. No human creature capable of
looking at any two sides of a question where he himself was concerned,
ever did or could present himself in public and expect to be reverenced
when arrayed in such uncouth and preposterous toggery.
I cannot pretend to have had any extraordinary revelations of the inner
mysteries or miseries of Mormonism made to me during my stay at Salt
Lake City. Other travellers, nearly all other travellers indeed, have
apparently been more fortunate or more pushing and persevering. I fancy
it is rather difficult just now to get to know much of the interior of
Mormon households; and I confess that I never could quite understand how
people, otherwise honorable and upright, can think themselves justified
in worming their way into Mormon confidences, and then making profit one
way or another by revelations to the public. But one naturally and
unavoidably hears, in Salt Lake City, of things which are deeply
significant and which he may without scruple put into print. For
example--there was a terrible pathos to my mind in the history of a
respectable and intelligent woman who, years and years ago, when her
life, now fading, was in its prime, married a man now a shining light of
Mormonism, whose photograph you may see anywhere in Salt Lake City. She
has been superseded since by divers successive wives; she is now
striving in a condition far worse than widowhood to bring up her seven
or eight children, and she has not been favored with even a passing call
for more than a year and a half by the husband of her youth, who lives
with the newest of his wives a few hundred yards away. I am told that
such things are perfectly common; that the result of the system is to
plant in Utah a number of families which may be described practically as
households without husbands and fathers. I believe the lady of whom I
have just spoken accepts her destiny with sad and firm resignation. Her
faith in the religion of Mormonism is unshaken, and she regards her
forlorn and widowed life as the heaven-appointed cross, by the bearing
of which she is to win her eternal crown. Of course the Indian widows
regard their bed of flames, the Russian women-fanatics behold their
mutilated and mangled breasts with a similar enthusiasm of hope and
superstition. But none the less ghastly and appalling is the monstrous
faith which exacts and glorifies such unnatural sacrifices. These dreary
homes, widowed not by death, seem to be the saddest, most shocking birth
of Mormonism. After all, this is not the polygamy of the East, bad as
that may be. "Give us," exclaimed M. Thiers in the French Chamber, three
or four years ago, when Imperialism had reached the zenith of its
despotic power--"give us liberty as in Austria!" So I can well imagine
one of these superseded and lonely wives in Salt Lake City, crying
aloud in the bitterness of her heart, "Give us polygamy as in Turkey!"
That the thing is a religion, however hideously it may show, I do not
doubt. I mean that I feel no doubt that the great majority of the Mormon
men are drawn to and kept in Mormonism by a belief in its truth and
vital force as a religion. I do not believe that conscious and
hypocritical sensuality is the leading impulse in making them or keeping
them members of the Mormon church. I never heard of any community where
a sensual man found any difficulty in gratifying his sensuality; nor are
the vast majority of the Mormons men belonging to a class on whom a
severe public opinion would bear so directly that they must necessarily
wander thousands of miles away across the desert in order to be able
comfortably to gratify their immoral propensities. To me, therefore, the
possibility which appears most dangerous of all is the chance of any
sudden crusade, legal or otherwise, being set on foot against this
perverted and unfortunate people. Left to itself, I firmly believe that
Mormonism will never long bear the glare of daylight, the throng of
witnesses, the intelligent rivalry, the earnest and active criticism,
poured in and forced in upon it by the Pacific railroads. But if it can
bear all this then it can bear anything whatever which human ingenuity
or force can put in arms against it; and it will run its course and have
its day, let the Federal Hercules himself do what he may. Meanwhile it
would be well to bear in mind that Mormonism has thus far cumbered the
earth for comparatively a very few years; that all its members there in
Utah counted together would hardly equal the population of a respectable
street in London; and that at this moment the whole concern is ricketty
and shaky, and threatens to tumble to pieces. I know that some of the
ruling elders are panting for persecution; that they are openly doing
their very best to "draw fire;" that they are daily endeavoring to work
on the fears or the passions of Federal officials resident at Salt Lake
by threats of terrible deeds to be done in the event of any attempt
being made to interfere with Mormonism. Many of these Mormon apostles,
dull, vulgar and clownish as they seem, have foresight enough to see
that their system sadly needs just now the stimulus of a little
persecution, and have fanatical courage enough to put themselves gladly
in the front of any danger for the sake of sowing by their martyrdom the
seed of the church. "That man," said William the Third of England,
speaking of an inveterate conspirator against him "is determined to be
made a victim, and I am determined not to make him one." I hope the
United States will deal with the Mormons in a similar spirit. At the
same time, I would ask my brothers of the pen whether those of them who
have visited Salt Lake City have not made the place seem a good deal
more wonderful, more alluringly mysterious, more grandly paradoxical in
its nature, than it really is? I feel convinced that if people in
Lancashire and Wales and Sweden had all been made distinctly aware that
Salt Lake City is only a dusty or muddy little commonplace country
hamlet, where labor is not less hard and is not any better paid than in
dozens or scores of small hamlets this side the Missouri, one vast
temptation to emigrate thither, the temptation supplied by morbid
curiosity and ignorant wonder, would never have had any conquering
power, and Mormonism would have been deprived of many thousand votaries.
For, regarded in an artistic point of view, the City of the Saints is a
vulgar sham; a trumpery humbug; and I verily believe that it has swelled
into importance not more through the fanatical energy of its governing
elders and the ignorance of their followers, than through the
extravagant exaggeration and silly wonder of most of its hostile
visitors and critics.
THE LIBERAL TRIUMVIRATE OF ENGLAND.
A year ago I happened to be talking with some French friends at a
dinner-table in Paris, about the Reform agitation then going on in
England. "We admire your great orators and leaders," said an
enthusiastic French gentleman; "your Bright, your Beales"--and he was
warming to the subject when he saw that I was smiling, and he at once
pulled up, and asked me earnestly whether he had said anything
ridiculous. I endeavored to explain to him gently that in England we did
not usually place our Bright and our Beales on exactly the same
level--that the former was our greatest orator, our most powerful
leader, and the latter a respectable, earnest gentleman of warm emotions
and ordinary abilities whom chance had made the figure-head of a passing
and vehement agitation, and who would probably be forgotten the day
after to-morrow or thereabouts.