“our” husband’s fiancée—a second wife’s sorrows—steps towards apostasy.
at one time i had almost begun to think that my husband had seen enough of the discomforts and heartlessness of polygamic life, and that his eyes were looking back wishfully to the time when, as the old scotch ballad says:
“one loving heart was all his own,
but there as king he reign’d supreme.”
my faith in my own acuteness and perception was, however, very considerably shaken when one day he told me that he thought it was about time for him to think of taking another wife. i suppose he expected that i should express some astonishment or offer objections, for he proceeded to give me excellent reasons for what he was about to do. his greatly improved circumstances; his desire to sustain his brethren; and, above all, the necessity that he should “build up a kingdom!”
there was no gainsaying all this. the lord had certainly very greatly blessed him in basket and in store; it was, moreover, praiseworthy in him to wish to sustain his brethren; and nobody could deny that he ought to have a “kingdom!” to crown all, the young lady whom he proposed to honour this time could not possibly be objected to by any loyal saint, for she was of the seed royal of the modern israel—a daughter of the high-priestly house of brigham young!
i suppose, if i had been a right-minded woman, i should have felt the great glory that there was in the proposed alliance. but, in point of fact, such is the perversity of human nature, i did not feel at all pleased, although i could say nothing in objection. i had had some slight suspicion that my husband’s eyes, to say nothing of his heart, had lately been inclined to wander in a certain direction, for he had become so particularly regular in his attendance at the theatre. i mentioned the[332] matter to him once or twice, but he answered that as an editor it was a matter of necessity for him to attend, and that he ought to be there always. this i might, perhaps, have believed, had it not been that it was now several years since his paper was first established, and hitherto his personal attendance at every representation had not been considered absolutely indispensable. reporters had been able to do all that was necessary.
his proposal to marry this young lady, now it was openly stated, shed light upon many things which had before appeared to me rather obscure. her name was zina, and she was the daughter of mrs. zina d. huntington jacobs, whom i have already mentioned as one of the prophet’s wives. she was one of the actresses in the theatre—for many of brigham’s daughters at that time took part in the representations—and i had frequently observed very pretty little notices of her in the salt lake daily telegraph.
i did not much care now how many wives my husband took—he might as well have twenty, as the one too many which he already had—his marriage to another could not possibly make me feel any worse, provided i was not compelled to associate with her. i had resolved that i would never live on familiar terms with his other wives—not because i might disrespect or dislike them personally, but because i could not overcome the purer and better teachings of my early life.
my husband in due form proposed, and was accepted; and it was soon rumoured abroad that he was going to many one of the “president’s” daughters—brigham is always spoken of as “president” young among the saints. in the course of a day or two they were formally “engaged,” and a more loving couple could not possibly have been found. the young lady herself afterwards told me that their love was of no ordinary kind, and i’m sure i did not doubt her word. but consider how pleasant such intelligence must have been to a wife!
zina’s friends, who wished to cheer me up and make me happy, told me that my husband’s love for her was perfectly engrossing; they “thought he could never have really loved before”—“there was something very beautiful in their loves!”
zina pitied us, i know, when she realized that we could never know the great depth of our husband’s love for her. she spoke and acted as if this were how she felt; and i have no doubt that she intended, after her marriage with our husband,[333] to treat us with great kindness and consideration, as a sort of recompense for what we never had truly known, and never could know now—our husband’s love!
as is almost always the case when the husband takes a third wife, a better state of feeling was brought about between my own husband’s second wife and myself. belinda no longer centred all her jealousy in me. she now, to a certain extent, began to realize what i had suffered when my husband courted her; she felt badly, and i really did sympathize with her when i remembered how young she was, and that she was the mother of three little children. she had her moiety of a husband, it is true; but, like all other polygamic wives, that was her misfortune rather than her comfort and strength. many a wife would be happier were she a widow; in fact, widows are the happiest class of women in utah, for they realize that it is far better to have a dead sorrow than a living one.
now, our husband always maintained that he was not in love with miss zina, but that in making love to her he was acting entirely from principle. so all the brethren say, and i have never yet heard of any one of them ever confessing—except, of course, to the maiden herself—that he was in love. to the maiden herself he says, not only that, but a great deal more. but if our husband, at the time of which i speak, was not in love, the saints forbid that i should ever see him in that condition! i am sure when i heard his fiancée speaking of their devotion to each other, and of the fond attachment of her heart to him (for she felt no delicacy in speaking to me—his wife—about such matters), i came to the conclusion that i had never known what it was to really love, and that my nature was too crude and unrefined to understand the mysteries of the tender passion. there was no love in the case, our husband told us—all pure duty!
long courtships had become quite fashionable among the brethren in salt lake city, and i dreaded a long courtship more than anything else, for there is so much that is humiliating, and i might even say disgusting, to a wife when her husband is engaged in love-making to another woman, that i hoped, as much as possible, to be spared passing through such an ordeal a second time.
as the accepted lover and affianced husband of brother brigham’s daughter, our husband was, of course, constantly in attendance at the prophet’s house. but he was not the only good brother who spent his evenings in brigham young’s parlour; for it was then—and i suppose it is to-day—a regular[334] rendezvous for middle-aged and young men, and even boys; and there the prophet’s little girls, as well as those who were grown or growing up, obtained an excellent training in the art of flirting and courting.
it has always been said among the saints that brigham’s girls, and the daughters of daniel h. wells, were the boldest and least retiring maidens to be found in salt lake city, and that they presumed greatly upon their imaginary high position; which position nobody but themselves cared anything about. it is well known that the very people upon whom they look down are those who rightly should receive their warmest gratitude and respect, on account of the more than liberal support which they have given to their father, even to the detriment of their own children.
when first i heard that my husband had set his affections upon one of these girls, i felt convinced that he could not have made a very wise choice; and i could not help dreading that the mere fact of my husband having selected a daughter of the prophet as his future wife would bring trouble upon us all. what shape that trouble would take i could form no conjecture, but i felt sure that a change of some sort was fast approaching. my faith was almost gone; i felt the degrading position in which the “celestial” system placed me and my children, and it seemed to me that i could no longer endure it. my children i could not, and would not leave, but it was impossible for me to continue to live as i had been living; nor would i think of bringing up my children any longer to believe and live a religion which had so cruelly blighted my own life. it was for them that i feared now; i felt that for their sake i must break away from this horrible system.
my own life, i thought, was not worth caring for, but the idea of my little girls growing up and following in my footsteps and enduring as i had endured, was more than i could bear. something must be done to save them from such a fate.
about this time i procured a copy of the “revelation on celestial marriage,” and read it through carefully and calmly, from beginning to end. the reader may, perhaps, remember that when a copy of it was first given to me, in switzerland, years before, i was so angry and indignant that when i had got only partly through it i cast it from me in disgust as an outrage upon all that was good and true. from that time, although i had heard portions of it quoted and read, i had never perused it as a whole. on two occasions, at least, my[335] friend mary burton was very near reading it through with me, and had we done so, i have not the slightest doubt that my eyes would have been opened to the absurdity and wickedness of the whole system, and years of wretchedness would have been spared me.
such, however, was not the case. it was not until i had almost drained the cup of sorrow and degradation that, at last, i found an antidote in the deadly thing itself which had been the source of all my unhappiness. i was acting upon the hom?opathic principle—“similia similibus curantur”—and using a dose of poison to cure a disease caused by that poison.
as i read, i saw plainly, from the wording of the document, that if ever it was given to joseph smith—no matter by whom—it was given long after he had practised polygamy—or something as bad—and to sanction what he had already done. i had read in the book of mormon:
“david and solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing was an abomination before me, saith the lord.... hearken to the word of the lord: for there shall not any man among you have, save it be one wife; and concubines he shall have none.” [book of mormon, p. 118.]
in the book of the covenants, given through joseph smith, and held sacred by every saint, i had read:
“thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and cleave unto her and none else.” [book of covenants, p. 124.]
and yet when i turned to the “revelation” i found in the very first clause:
“verily, thus saith the lord unto my servant joseph, that inasmuch as you have enquired at my hand, to know and understand wherein i, the lord, justified [!] my servants abraham, isaac and jacob, as also moses, david and solomon, my servants, as touching the principle and doctrine of their having many wives and concubines,” &c.
what could i possibly think of a “prophet” who, after having the law laid down so clearly, and being told so distinctly that the doings of david and solomon were an “abomination,” and that a man should have but one wife, should enquire of the lord how he “justified” the very things which he had just declared were “an abomination” unto him?—then, too, what blasphemy to represent god as one day giving a “revelation” declaring a thing sinful, and the next day “justifying” it! i felt perfectly humiliated with myself that i had never before had the courage to look the[336] matter calmly in the face and discover, as i must have discovered, had i only used my unaided reason, the shameful imposture which had been palmed upon us. i now made careful enquiry, and it was soon clear to me that evidence was not wanting to prove that the doctrine of plural marriages originated in the licentious hearts of joseph smith and those associated with him. when once i was convinced of that, the whole fabric of my religion crumbled before my eyes; and from that time i can hardly say that i had faith in anything that had been taught me.
my husband’s second wife was also very unhappy now. she, too, after the general rule, had flattered herself that she was “his first and only love,” and it was not pleasant to have her dream of happiness dispelled; but now that another “jewel” was to be added to our husband’s crown, she could no longer deceive herself. she little knew, poor girl, when she married, that a mormon’s heart is like a honeycomb—there is always a vacant cell wherein another may nestle.
real trouble, too, she had. one of her children was taken very sick, and after a very severe illness died. i remained with her night and day, and did what i could for the poor child. had it been possible for me to have felt a greater loathing and detestation for that vile system of polygamy, that feeling would have been conceived while i watched at the bedside of my husband’s dying child. it was there that i vowed that no polygamists should ever marry another daughter of mine, and resolved that to my dying day my voice should be raised against the unholy and unnatural teachings of the mormon priesthood. i looked at that lonely young mother, who in her hour of trial ought to have had all her husband’s sympathy, all his attention, to support her; but who, instead, knew that, however kind he might be to her, he was contemplating a new marriage, and his thoughts must of necessity be more or less with his purposed bride. all unkind feeling was banished from my heart—i forgot that she was my husband’s wife, and remembered only that, like myself, she was a suffering woman, a victim to a false faith; and i felt very deeply for her in her time of sorrow and bereavement.
my husband, at this time, had been a member of the mormon church for twenty-five years. he had lectured, preached, written and published, in great britain, switzerland, and the united states, in support of the mormon faith. he had been a most earnest and consistent member of the church, and devotedly attached to brigham young. this attachment to[337] brother brigham he shared in common with all the staunchest of his brethren; for while the members of the church retain unshaken confidence in the new revelation, they naturally acquire a great regard for the prophet, and render him unquestioning obedience. i believe that my husband would willingly have laid down his life, if by so doing he could have shielded brigham young from harm or have been of essential service to him.
but causes were now in operation which, by-and-by, detached him from the church, and made it possible for me also to leave the mormon faith. hitherto, for my children’s sake, i dared not leave the church without my husband, and i therefore anxiously watched for anything which might rescue him from the bondage in which he was held.
as proprietor of a daily paper, his business had frequently called him to the eastern states for several months at a time, and i observed that after those visits his editorials took a more liberal turn. my mormon friends frequently said to me, “brother stenhouse is doing himself no good by his constant association with the gentiles;” and subsequently, when he did apostatize, our secession from the church was attributed to contaminating gentile influences.
then, too, we had frequent visits from strangers passing through salt lake city. i saw, with pleasure, that this intercourse with the outside world was gradually undermining my husband’s confidence in the teachings of the elders, and it gave me courage to hope that, after all, the day of liberty might dawn at last. feeling as i did thus, it will not surprise the reader that i regarded with more and more distrust the proposed marriage of my husband to brother brigham’s daughter; for i felt that then he would be deeper than ever in the toils of the priesthood, and i sometimes almost believed that it was my duty to use every influence in my power to prevent it.
putting my own feelings out of the question, it is probable that i might have done this simply for his own good; for i doubted not that some day the scales must fall from his eyes, and then he would be thankful that i had prevented the marriage. our paths by this time had certainly diverged far asunder, and my husband had another wife and family; but i believed that he was sincere, though sadly mistaken, or i should not have felt so kindly towards him as i did.
at other times, and observing his devotion, i almost myself began to think that perhaps the nonsense that i had heard[338] was, after all, true, and that this girl was the only one he had really loved; and, if so, of course he ought to marry her. in fact, so divided was my attention that i hardly knew what to think; i therefore resolved to act according to circumstances.
brigham young, in one of his sermons, says that “the first thing manifested in the case of apostasy was the idea that the prophet was liable to make a mistake: when a man believes that, he has taken the first step towards apostasy; he need only take one step more, and he is out of the church.” this was spoken of joseph and his saints, but it suits just as well brigham and his; i knew very well that my husband had taken the first step, and i sincerely hoped that he might soon take the second. for my own part, i had for some time not only believed that a prophet might be mistaken, but, as brother heber would say, i knew it.
my husband and his bride elect, like all other lovers, had frequent little quarrels—i suppose for the purpose of making up again, and being then all the more ardent in their affection. but they now had a disagreement which lasted longer than all that had gone before; although i suppose that neither of them had, at that time, the slightest idea how it was going to end. they had been courting for fifteen months at least, and after so much devotion on the part of my husband, and so much fervent affection on the part of the young lady, it really did seem too bad that so large an amount of love should be thrown away. it was hard that after such a long strain upon their religious and devotional feelings—for they were both very pious lovers—all their labour of love should come to nought. things had certainly taken a twist, for i knew well enough that at one time they both firmly believed that their marriage was pre-ordained in heaven, and that they were as completely one in feeling as mortals ever could be. the mother, too, who was a very pious woman, once told my husband that she had had a vision in which it was revealed to her that they were destined for each other in the eternal worlds:—the lovers of course firmly believed her. but, for all that, the estrangement still continued, and my husband was constantly making it wider by the articles which appeared in his paper, until at last certain of the sisters whispered that the heart of the lady had been attracted towards some brighter luminary.
long courtships often end disastrously; but when i heard rumours of the lady’s presumed faithlessness, it seemed to me hardly fair, for the day had been fixed for the marriage and[339] the wedding-dress actually made. of course i sympathized with my husband. would any wife like to see her husband disappointed in his love-affairs with another woman, i wonder?
while under these natural feelings of indignation, i one day told brigham young that i thought, after all the courting that had been done—and it was not a trifle—they certainly ought to be married. he said he was willing enough himself, if they wished it; but girls, he said, often changed their minds, and as they could but have one husband, it was only fair that their wishes should be consulted. “if zina has really changed her mind,” he added, “i have plenty of other daughters, and they have all got to be married; let him take one of them—if one won’t another will!” the reader will see the liberal ideas which brother brigham entertains on the subject of marriage.
it may, perhaps, seem rather strange that i should be anxious to have them marry; but, after all that i had seen and endured in polygamy, can it be wondered at that i should no longer regard the father of my children as my own husband? had i thought him a bad man, or had he acted as i know many of the good brethren do act; had he brought home girl after girl with the hope of alluring one or more of them into polygamy, or had he been utterly reckless of my feelings, i might perhaps have been able to cast him from my heart without a single regret. but i really believed that he was acting consistently with the teachings of his religion, and if i felt degraded by the life i lived, it was not his fault—it was the fault of the system. i therefore felt that if things came to the worst, and if i were driven to extremities, and forced to separate from him, i should like to know that he had a wife whom he loved. i felt certain that there was now but little love between him and his second wife, and that some day a separation was sure to take place. the idea of divorce was so repugnant to my feelings that it was only in moments when grief overpowered me, and my heart was wrung with anguish, and i felt utterly reckless, that i for one moment thought of anything like it. even then i only entertained the idea of a separate life—not divorce.
