SUA SI BONA NORINT.
A Special Correspondent's lot--Hypothecated wits--The Daughters
of Zion--Their modest demeanour--Under the banner of Woman's
Rights--The discoverer discovered--Turning the tables--"By Jove,
sir, you shall have mustard with your beefsteak!"
IT has been my good fortune to see many countries, and my ill-luck
to have had to maintain, during all my travels, an appearance of
intelligence. Though I have been over much of Europe, over all of
India and its adjoining countries, Afghanistan, Beloochistan, Burmah,
and Ceylon, in the north and west and south of Africa, and in various
out-of-the-way islands in miscellaneous oceans, I have never visited
one of them purely "for pleasure." I have always been "representing"
other people. My eyes and ears have been hypothecated, so to speak--my
intelligence been in pledge. When I was sent out to watch wars, there
was a tacit agreement that I should be shot at, so that I might let
other people know what it felt like. When run away with by a camel
in a desert that had no "other end" to it, I accepted my position
simply as material for a letter for which my employers had duly paid.
They tried to drown me in a mill-stream; that was a good half-column.
Two Afridis sat down by me when I had sprained my knee by my horse
falling, and waited for me to faint that they might cut my throat.
But they overdid it, for they looked so like vultures that I couldn't
faint. But it made several very harrowing paragraphs. I have been sent
to sea to get into cyclones in the Bay of Biscay, and hurricanes in
the Mozambique Channel, that I might describe lucidly the sea-going
properties of the vessels under test. I have been sent to a King to ask
him for information that it was known beforehand he would not give, and
commissioned to follow Irish agitators all over Ireland, in the hope
that I might be able to say more about them than they knew themselves.
It has been my duty to walk about inquisitively after Zulus, and to
run away judiciously with Zulus after me. Sometimes I have taken long
shots at Afghans, and sometimes they have taken short ones at me. In
short, I have been deputed at one time and another to do many things
which I should never have done "for pleasure," and many which, for
pleasure, I should like to do again. But wherever I have been sent I
have had to go about, seeing as much as I could and asking about all I
couldn't see, and have become, professionally, accustomed to collecting
evidence, sifting it on the spot, and forming my own conclusions. In a
way, therefore, a Special Correspondent becomes of necessity an expert
at getting at facts. He finds that everything he is commissioned to
investigate has at least two sides to it, and that many things have
two right sides. There are plenty of people always willing to mislead
him, and he has to pick and choose. He arrives unprejudiced, and speaks
according to the knowledge he acquires. Sometimes he is brought up to
the hill with a definite commission to curse, but like Balaam, the son
of Barak, he begins blessing; or he is sent out to bless, and falls
to cursing. Until he arrives on the spot it is impossible for him to
say which he will do. But, whatever he does, the Special Correspondent
writes with the responsibility of a large public. It is impossible to
write flippantly with all the world for critics.
Now, the demeanour of women in Utah, as compared with say Brighton or
Washington, is modesty itself, and the children are just such healthy,
pretty, vigorous children as one sees in the country, or by the seaside
in England--and, in my opinion, nowhere else. Utah-born girls, the
offspring of plural wives, have figures that would make Paris envious,
and they carry themselves with almost Oriental dignity. But remember,
Salt Lake City is a city of rustics. They do not affect "gentility,"
and are careful to explain at every opportunity that the stranger must
not be shocked at their homely ways and speech. There is an easiness of
manner therefore which is unconventional, but it is only a blockhead
who could mistake this natural gaiety of the country for anything
other than it is. There is nothing, then, so far as I have seen, in
the manners of Salt Lake City to make me suspect the existence of that
"licentiousness" of which so much has been written; but there is a
great deal on the contrary to convince me of a perfectly exceptional
reserve and self-respect. I know, too, from medical assurance,
that Utah has also the practical argument of healthy nurseries to
oppose to the theories of those who attack its domestic relations on
physiological grounds.
But the "Woman's Rights" aspect of polygamy is one that has never been
theorized at all. It deserves, however, special consideration by those
who think that they are "elevating" Mormon women by trying to suppress
polygamy. It possesses also a general interest for all. For the plural
wives of Salt Lake City are not by any means "waiting for salvation"
at the hands of the men and women of the East. Unconscious of having
fetters on, they evince no enthusiasm for their noisy deliverers.
On the contrary, they consider their interference as a slur upon their
own intelligence, and an encroachment upon those very rights about
which monogamist females are making so much clamour. They look upon
themselves as the leaders in the movement for the emancipation of their
sex, and how, then, can they be expected to accept emancipation at the
hands of those whom they are trying to elevate? Thinking themselves
in the van of freedom, are they to be grateful for the guidance of
stragglers in the rear? They laugh at such sympathy, just as the brave
man might laugh at encouragement from a coward, or wealthy landowners
at a pauper's exposition of the responsibilities of property. Can the
deaf, they ask, tell musicians anything of the beauty of sounds, or
need the artist care for the blind man's theory of colour?
Indeed, it has been in contemplation to evangelize the Eastern
States, on this very subject of Woman's Rights! To send out from
Utah exponents of the proper place of woman in society, and to teach
the women of monogamy their duties to themselves and to each other!
"Woman's true status"--I am quoting from their organ--"is that of
true status companion to man, but so protected by law that she can
act in an independent sphere if he abuse his position, and render
union unendurable." They not only, therefore, claim all that women
elsewhere claim, but they consider marriage the universal birthright
of every female. First of all, they say, be married, and then in case
of accidents have all other "rights" as well. But to start with, every
woman must have a husband. She is hardly worth calling a woman if she
is single. Other privileges ought to be hers lest marriage should
prove disastrous. But in the first instance she should claim her right
to be a wife. And everybody else should insist on that claim being
recognized. The rest is very important to fall back upon, but union
with man is her first step towards her proper sphere.
Now, could any position be imagined more ludicrous for the would-be
saviours of Utah womanhood than this, that the slaves whom they talk
of rescuing from their degradation should be striving to bring others
up to their own standard? When Stanley was in Central Africa, he was
often amused and sometimes not a little disgusted to find that instead
of his discovering the Central Africans, the Central Africans insisted
on "discovering" him. Though he went into villages in order to take
notes of the savages, and to look at their belongings, the savages used
to turn the tables on him by discussing him, and taking his clothes
off to examine the curious colour, as they thought it, of his skin. So
that what with shaking off his explorers, and hunting up the various
articles they had abstracted for their unscientific scrutiny, his time
used to be thoroughly wasted, and he used to come away crestfallen,
and with the humiliating consciousness that it was the savages and not
he that had gained information and been "improved" by his visit. They
had "discovered" Stanley, not Stanley them. Something very like this
will be the fate of those who come to Utah thinking that they will be
received as shining lights from a better world. They will not find
the women of Utah waiting with outstretched arms to grasp the hand
that saves them. There will be no stampede of down-trodden females.
On the contrary, the clarion of woman's rights will be sounded, and
the intruding "champions" of that cause will find themselves attacked
with their own weapons, and hoisted with their own petards. 'With
the sceptre of woman's rights the daughters of Zion will go down as
apostles to evangelize the nation. 'Who is she that looketh forth as
the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an
army with banners?' The Daughter of Zion!"
Mormon wives, then, are emphatically "woman's-rights women," a title
which is everywhere recognized as indicating independence of character
and an elevated sense of the claims of the sex, and as inferring
exceptional freedom in action. And I venture to hold the opinion that
it is only women who are conscious of freedom that can institute such
movements as this in Utah, and only those who are enthusiastic in
the cause, that can carry them on with the courage and industry so
conspicuous in this community.
A Governor once went there specially instructed to release the women
of Utah from their bondage, but he found none willing to be released!
The franchise was then clamoured for in order to let the women of Utah
"fight their oppressors at the polls," and the Mormon "tyrants" took
the hint to give their wives votes, and the first use these misguided
victims of plurality made of their new possession was to protest,
20,000 victims together, against the calumnies heaped upon the men of
Utah "whom they honoured and loved." To-day it is an act of Congress
that is to set free these worse-than-Indian-suttee-devotees, and
whether they like it or not they are to be compelled to leave their
husbands or take the alternative of sending their husbands to jail.
It reminds me of the story, "Sir, you shall have mustard with your
beefsteak." A man sitting in a restaurant saw his neighbour eating
his steak without mustard, and pushed the pot across to him. The
stranger bowed his acknowledgment of the courtesy and went on eating,
but without any mustard. But the other man's sense of propriety was
outraged. "Beefsteak without mustard--monstrous," said he to himself;
and again he pushed the condiment towards the stranger. "Thank you,
sir," said the stranger, but without taking any, continued his meal as
he preferred it, without mustard. But his well-wisher could not stand
it any longer. He waited for a minute to see if the man would eat his
beef in the orthodox manner, and then, his sense of the fitness of
things overpowering him, he seized the mustard-pot and dabbing down a
great splash of mustard on to the stranger's plate, burst out with, "By
Jove, sir, you shall have mustard with your beefsteak!"
In the same way the monogamist reformers, having twice failed to
persuade the wives of Utah to abandon their husbands by giving them
facilities for doing so, are now going to take their husbands from
them by the force of the law. "Sua si bona norint" is the excuse of
the reformers to themselves for their philanthropy, and, like the old
Inquisitors who burnt their victims to save them from heresy, they
are going to make women wretched in order to make them happy. Says
the Woman's Exponent: "If the women of Utah are slaves, their bonds
are loving ones and dearly prized. They are to-day in the free and
unrestricted exercise of more political and social rights than are the
women of any other part of these United States. But they do not choose
as a body to court the follies and vices which adorn the civilization
of other cities, nor to barter principles of tried worth for the tinsel
of sentimentality or the gratification of passion."
It is of no use for "Mormon-eaters" to say that this is written "under
direction," and that the women who write in this way are prompted by
authority. Nor would they say it if they knew personally the women who
write thus.
Moreover, Mormon-eaters are perpetually denouncing the "scandalous
freedom" and "independence" extended to Mormon women and girls. And the
two charges of excessive freedom and abject slavery seem to me totally
incompatible.
I myself as a traveller can vouch for this: that one of my first
impressions of Salt Lake City was this, that there was a thoroughly
unconventional absence of restraint; just such freedom as one is
familiar with in country neighbourhoods, where "every one knows every
one else," and where the formalities of town etiquette are by general
consent laid aside. And this also I can sincerely say: that I never
ceased to be struck by the modest decorum of the women I meet out of
doors. After all, self-respect is the true basis of woman's rights.
This aspect of the polygamy problem deserves, then, I think,
considerable attention. An Act has been passed to compel some 20,000
women to leave their husbands, and the world looks upon these women
as slaves about to be freed from tyrants. Yet they have said and
done all that could possibly be expected of them, and even more than
could have been expected, to assure the world that they have neither
need nor desire for emancipation, as they honour their husbands,
and prefer polygamy, with all its conditions, to the monogamy which
brings with it infidelity at home and prostitution abroad. Again and
again they have protested, in petitions to individuals and petitions
to Congress, that "their bonds are loving ones and dearly prized."
But the enthusiasm of reformers takes no heed of their protests. They
are constantly declaring in public speeches and by public votes, in
books and in newspapers--above all, in their daily conduct--that they
consider themselves free and happy women, but the zeal of philanthropy
will not be gainsaid, and so the women of Utah are, all else failing,
to be saved from themselves. The "foul blot" of a servitude which
the serfs aver does not exist is to be wiped out by declaring 20,000
wives mistresses, their households illegal, and their future children
bastards!
"By Jove, sir, you shall have mustard with your beefsteak!"