XXXVII. A VISIT TO THE MORMONS
We tramped from ranch to ranch by the rutty roads that skirt the sections, walked away from the mountain-walls, and ever as we went the terrain extended. The sky had become wider; no rocky walls closed us in. The backs of our necks became swollen from the unusual heat of the sun on them. We kicked up dust as we walked, dust again! Our eyes traversed the scene to light, not on cascades or possible camping-grounds, but on far-away farmhouses. We met the oats and wheat and barley fields striving over the moors, and walked till all moor disappeared, till there was nothing in front of us but gold. Made dream-like by the forest fires, the long range of the Rockies seemed unreal—the mountains which we had climbed became remote and shadowy—and not part of our destiny. Our only reality was golden Alberta, which seemed to extend to infinitude, the plateau only gradually losing its altitude, unfolding and undulating downward—one vast resplendent area of golden harvest fields.
The sun gleamed on numberless shocks on the right, on the left, and ahead, and the whole horizon was massed with newly mobilised golden armies. We walked the rutty roads and were exhilarated, and counted the wheatfields which we passed, knowing that each, being a whole section, was a whole mile long.
We discussed a tragical line in one of Lindsay’s poems:
Election night at midnight
Boy Bryan’s defeat.
Defeat of Western silver,
Defeat of the wheat
... Defeat of the aspen groves of Colorado valleys,
The blue-bells of the Rockies,
And blue bonnets of old Texas
By the Pittsburg alleys.
Defeat of the wheat! How tragical that sounds in the soul, how calamitous and appalling! It is like the cutting off of golden youth, the extinction of all our dreams.
We boiled our pot by the side of the road; we sought milk and bread at farmhouses; we slept at night in the wheat with shocks piled on three sides of us to keep out the wind, and a broken shock underneath us to keep us soft—and the night sky above us was of swans’ plumage, and all the golden stalks and stubble about us and above us were exaggerated among the stars.
Night was very different on the plains from night in the mountains. No sound of waters, no castellated peaks rising in the moonlight, no sense of vast unevenness and disjected rocks; but instead, a feeling of being in a great encampment where the swarming shocks of wheat were tents, the tents of such a host that the numbers took away one’s breath. The poet rejoiced. He loved it. The odour of the yellow stalks was a new breath of life to him—for he was a prairie boy.
The dawn-twilight was long and quiet, and the mornings were serene. No workers were in sight. The disparity in numbers between men and wheat was remarkable to my eyes. In Russia, the whole plain would have been alive with the gay cottons of peasant lads and lasses. But here, harvesting machinery displaces whole populations of men and women.
Indians began to be numerous on the road as we approached the Blood Reservation, Indian farm-wagons with women and children sprawling on the hay at the bottom, and then Indians on horseback, all one piece with their horses. We left the golden grain behind and crossed the Reserve. Vachel explained what a squaw-man is—a white who marries an Indian girl in order to get hold of her portion of land, the Indians of to-day being almost all of them endowed with land by the Government. We found again the Kootenai, now brawling through the plains, and bathed again, and reverted in spirit to those mountains. Then we tramped from tent to tent across the green wilderness where the Indians lived. Indian boys in many-coloured garments pranced on their horses, chased lines of cattle and horses, and kept the lines straight by galloping incessantly between them from left to right to one end of the line, and then right to left to the other end.
We met Indians in voluminous seedy clothes, walking with a stoop; men with gloomy ruminating faces who tried to avoid contact with a white man. We talked to them; they raised their red romantic faces and glared at us like owls startled by light. They could not speak English, so they answered nothing, but just turned out of our way and slouched on. Or the livelier ones made signs to us. The stout squaws stared at us. The slender girls on their horses were almost indistinguishable from boys.
What a beaten-down and untidy place a Reservation is, strewn with jetsam from the wigwam, hoofed till not a flower remains! The Indians spend more time on horseback than on foot—they can’t farm, or won’t farm, and possess only the roughest of comforts. We came to a Government Practice Farm where Indians were being taught, and saw squaws working there—but very little sign of decent cultivation on the reservations. The Indian asks enough on which to live. He wants no more, will work for no more. He makes plentiful use of canned foods, and lives from hand to mouth. Hence you never hear of Indian cooks. It is curious to contrast the genius of the negro for cooking and the absence of a taste for cooking in the Indians.
After the Indians we came to the Mormons. They were as much surprised as the Dukhobors. How should Mormons be here? Perhaps we are the first to make the discovery that the Mormons have invaded Canada. These are the first Mormons to invite the shelter of the Empire. As usual, they have made their settlement in a very obscure part, far from the centre of authority. And if trouble should arise they have only to trek through the Rockies, and then Uncle Sam and Senator Smoot will protect them.
We were regaled at farmhouses by sweet Mormon brides, who gave us bannocks, who gave us of their simmering greengages out of the great cauldron on the stove. Elders on horseback very politely, and with many details, showed us the way to Cardston and the Mormon Temple. We were happily and sympathetically disposed towards the Mormons, and Vachel, who has taught the Salt-Lake-City girls to dance whilst he chanted to them “The Queen of Sheba,” has a soft spot in his heart for the sect. It was really started by a renegade preacher from his own sect of Disciples, Sidney Rigdon, who revised the unsaleable manuscript of a novel called The Book of Mormon. He conspired with Joseph Smith, who discovered the book written in aboriginal American hieroglyphics on gold plates and translated it by the aid of certain miraculous spectacles into King’s English, or I should say President’s English, who was murdered; who therefore gave way to Brigham Young, to whom were revealed many mysteries.
“They are a whole lot nearer to Mahometanism than to Christianity,” said Vachel. “I think a Mahometan mission to the Mormons might not be a bad idea as a step on the road towards Christianity.”
We sat discussing this on the banks of the Kootenai, and I was facetious:
“Ye Mormons, there is no god but God, and Mahomet is His prophet. Whereas in Christ ye are now living in adultery and sin, in Mahomet ye are pure men and women. By Christ, in the after-life there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage, but in Mahomet connubial bliss for evermore, attended by your houris and your wives. Don’t say no. Think it over and I’ll call this afternoon!”
“Put that in,” said Vachel. “I think they’ve derived a good deal from the phallic religions too. They’ve made a much bigger thing of Mormonism than it was in the days of Joseph Smith. It has got hold of the sex mysteries. There’s a whole lot of masonry in it. The common sort of condemnation of the Mormons is all that’s ever been attempted by way of criticism of them. They’ve been stoned out of all the Middle West. We have even in Springfield in the Fair-grounds one of their altars taken from Nauvoo, Illinois, from which they were chased. They were a mistaken people—but they learned much through tribulation.”
The poet is by temperament on the side of any one or any institution which happens to be violently attacked. He was greatly interested by Mormonism, so I naturally heard from him many things in favour of it. First of all, he felt it had a great future in America—it was not a dying cult.
“One side of it is getting very popular,” I interjected, with some mirth. “It’s the word of abuse in England from an injured wife to her husband—‘You—Mormon!’”
“Well, the idea of polygamy does make a strong appeal to the male,” said the poet. “And the women feel happy in it when it is an accepted convention.”
“You mean, women only object to clandestine polygamy?”
“There is always jealousy,” said my companion. “But that is another matter. What I meant about the future of Mormonism did not refer to polygamy so much. But it’s our first real American religion. It started in America. It pretends to give American religious traditions. According to Mormon, one of the lost tribes of Israel came to South America. Mormonism links America to both Noah and Adam and to the hand of God. In their belief, too, Christ came to America—He did not wait till 1492 for Columbus to discover it first. He was here before Columbus. In Mormonism America is presented with a whole American tradition, going as far back as the Old World traditions, embodied in the Old and New Testaments.”
Cardston, which at length we reached, is largely a Mormon city. The Temple, a remarkable structure, exteriorily chaste and beautiful, dominates the scene, and the clouds rest upon it, obscuring its upper storeys in cloudy weather. It is not used for general worship; for that purpose there is a sufficiently ugly tabernacle. It is almost exclusively for the Mormon sacraments, the sealing of wives and children, and for the meditational recreation of the elders. Once the building has been completed and consecrated it will remain inaccessible to outsiders, but in order to avert suspicion, visitors are shown over it until that time. We were lucky, as the Temple is very nearly finished, and it is a rare experience for an outsider to gain access. There are only eight Mormon Temples in the world, and the rites performed therein are entirely secret.
The town is mostly inhabited by Mormons, and the great business “pull” of the sect is evidenced in the technical and structural growth of the place. The land between the city and the reservations is theirs, and also much that lies beyond. A strong propaganda for the sect is carried on all over America, and also in England and in Europe. Women converts seem especially desired. On the other hand, men of proved sincerity or simplicity are not rejected. The Mormons have land at their disposal, and they exert considerable influence on settlers and pioneers of the West. The elders help to organise business and to mormonise the community as much as possible. They can be of great help to any young Mormon starting life. On the other hand strange dooms are said to await any Mormons who give away their secrets, and apostasy is infrequent.
Some of them are, however, incautious. In my room at the hotel I found a heap of correspondence left there by the last man who had been in occupation. It was perhaps indelicate to pry into a Mormon’s private affairs, but I confess to a human weakness of curiosity under the circumstances. Here was the basic material for a novel on the Mormons; letters from one pal to another, letters from girls, sweet letters, despairing letters, telegrams. Technically there is not supposed to be polygamy any more, and legally there is not, but in reality something of the sort goes on, as may be judged from the following letter I transcribe, one of a packet I brought from Cardston.
S——d,
Mo.
Dear ——,
I received your letter written on the 21st from Ladysmith, B.C., yesterday, but I worked late last night and I had an answer to one of Ruth’s letters to write that I had put off for a week. So it was pretty near time to get up rather than to go to bed, but I will just drop a hurried line to let you know I still live.
I sure am glad to hear you are able to save a little because I also am trying to save a few pennies also and it sure comes hard. I also am glad to hear you are in a business that you like but you failed to tell me just what your line of selling is. What do you sell? buck handkerchiefs or iron toothpicks. Does Dan travel with you also. It sure is great to be able to see a lot of the world at some one else’s expense and your pleasure. I suppose S——d is about like Vancouver; rainy and not worth a dam. It sure has rained a lot here in the last few weeks. I believe we have had more rain here this month than Utah has in a year.
About my wife in Utah. I receive letters regularly. Eight or nine days apart as regular as 8 o’clock comes in the morning. Every 8 or 9 days I get a letter and just that often I get a letter from home also. I am going to try to get a vacation and get enough money to take me back to Utah next summer. I don’t know if I can or not because I will have to have an operation on my nose right away because I always have a cold as it is. If I do not keep on having this cold I now have I will not have the operation, but if it does not leave me pretty soon I will have the bone taken out and doubtless lose my chance of getting home.
I sure am glad you appreciate Peggy by now. You know, old Pal, that you never miss the water till the well runs dry, and it sure is true when a fellow leaves his friends and is out alone. You sure appreciate what you did have when it is gone completely. I believe that a fellow must live a life like we are to really appreciate the good things in life anyhow. If we did not taste of the sour things the sweet ones would seem sour to us. By gosh it sure is true in one respect I miss some one to darn my sox. I try to do it myself but it is slow work and I get so (nervous?) Try and imagine me sitting all night darning sox. It sure is a bellina (? hellish) job. I don’t like it at all.
Well, old pal, I have a Missouri wife now so S——d seems to be a pretty good place after all. She is a girl I met in church and is about the size and looks about like Ruth W——. Some girl I will say. We have been to a couple of parties and to a couple of shows in two weeks beside being at her place all day last Sunday. Sunday we are going to have a picnic and take a few pictures, and Monday night a large masquerade party is on and we are going to it also. So you see I stop her right off and she don’t object either, I don’t believe.
I wrote W—— a letter on the 3rd of this month and as yet I have not received a letter. I guess he wanted to have a good time while his “heaven” lasts, and I don’t blame him either. I believe he is a little worried over his mission and rather hates to go, but I believe he will be alright.
I am getting along fine here. I order all the shoes here so I am the shoe desk manager. The boss gives me all the shoe mail, and I just order what I want and leave the rest. It is quite a large job, but our store is not quite as large as Salt Lake’s, but the shoe department could keep a regular man busy. So you see I am doing fine. To-morrow is pay-day and I also get a nice raise, so I have no kick except to darn my sox. They are the greatest worry I have had.
Well, old pal, I gave this letter and your last one pretty good service considering all the work we have now that the winter business is just opening up. Here it is after 12.30 again, so I will go to bed and get up again at 6 a. m. Try to be good, old pal, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t—Your old pal,
Ed.
You cannot learn much of the ways of the Mormons by asking them, but when one of them leaves a whole packet of correspondence behind him in a hotel he “sure is” giving things away.
We walked up to the Temple at three in the afternoon, the designated time when visitors are shown round, and punctually at that hour the doors were opened and the curious were admitted.
“Wherever we locates we builds temples,” said the guide, a curious old fellow, so illiterate that he strewed the temple floor with his aitches, an Englishman from the provinces, squat, confidential, insinuating. “This is the eighth Mormon Temple,” said he. “The ninth is now rising in Phœnix, Arizona.”
The visitors were mostly farm-women, and Vachel and I looked like a couple of tramps in their midst. Our clothes hung on us; we held in our hands a couple of the most weather-beaten of old hats. I was the “big un” and Vachel was the “little un.” We looked to have a little less intelligence than gopher-rats.
“The ’ole edifiss is of stone,” said the guide, “and the foundation is of rock and concrete. There’s not five dollars’ worth of wood in the construction. All the wood you see is haksessories.”
“Are all the temples built of stone only?” I asked cautiously, with the air of a stone-mason out of a job.
“No,” said he. “Each is built on a seprit plan.”
“’Ere,” said he, turning to the rest of the company, “’ere we seals. This ’ere room is for ordinances only. No, we don’t worship in the Temple. It’s not used for public worship. You see the red-brick building as you came up to the Temple. That is the Tabernacle where public worship is held, and that is free to all. But ’ere in the Temple we ’as the ordinances and the meditations.”
The guide was naturally a Mormon, and as he showed us around I thought his main objects were to tell us nothing while pretending to tell us all, and yet at the same time to make converts among the women. He did all he could to interest the latter in the cooking and lighting and warming and washing arrangements.
“You ’ave ’ere the electric stoves to cook the meals. You couldn’t keep running in and out of the Temple in yer sacred garments to get meals at resterongs, so we cooks ’ere. But there can be no smell of cooking—as this exhaust takes all the smell away out of the building. Very convenient, eh, ain’t it? We’ve had over ten thousand applications from women to come and cook in the Temple.”
The farm-women giggled appreciatively. The guide led them on to the laundering establishment. As the Mormons wear secret underlinen with signs, they naturally don’t care to send their laundry out to wash. And in the Temple we were given to understand every man and woman wore special white garments. Consequently there would be much laundering. But all was to be done by the latest machinery, driven by electric power. “No hand-work, no scrubbing, no drudgery and gettin’ your fingers red and ’ard,” said the guide. “Then, when the wash is done, hpp, in they go to the drying chamber, and in a few seconds they are sufficiently dry to be taken out and ironed on the electric irons.”
For a moment it was like being at an ideal home exhibition. “Then the radiators,” said the guide, “you see, they don’t project into the rooms, but are fixed in the walls dead level with the surface of the walls.”
“Of course the Temple ’asn’t got its upolstery in yet, but in every room the furniture will be all of a piece with the inlay wood of the walls. If the walls is oak the furniture will be oak to match; if it’s bird’s-eye maple, the furniture’ll be bird’s-eye maple; if it’s Circassian mahogany the furniture will be Circassian mahogany too. Every room will have its colour scheme. ’Ere you see the thermometer. Now the temperature of the building will be regulated. It won’t matter wot the weather is like outside, it will be controlled inside. The engineer will ’ave ’is orfice outside the Temple and don’t never need come in. All they ’as to do is telephone ’im to raise the temperature ten degrees or lower it five and he’ll do it.”
“We comes to the baths” (they are pretty elaborate). “’Ere’s the men’s section, over there’s the women’s. You natcherally bathe first of all when you enter the Temple and remove every speck of dust or dirt from your body. And ’ere are the robing-rooms where spotless garments is waiting you to put on. You walks all in white wherever you go in the Temple, and when it ’as been consecrated no more folks will ever go in it in ordinary clothes like as you and me to-day.”
The Temple proved to be the last word in luxury and modern convenience. In the most elegant club in London, Paris, or New York I have not seen such luxury and sensual comfort as was in this Temple in the rough wild west. Every room was inlaid with precious woods. The baths and robing-rooms were worthy of a Sultan, the lounge and one-piece carpets all suggested a material heaven. The guide showed us the vast font reposing on the life-size figures of twelve oxen, the symbols of the twelve tribes of Israel. This font was the centre of a stately chamber with galleries running round it. From the galleries the friends of the candidates could watch the ceremony of immersion. The font was large enough to baptize families at once.
“And you can be baptized many times,” said the guide. “For yourself, then for your friends, and then for the dead—for any one you would like to have saved.”
“Baptized for the dead?” said one of the women in horror. “Yes,” said he. “You think it strange, but the early Christians all used to do it. Just turn up First Corinthians, chapter fifteen. ‘What shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead?’ which shows plainly that the apostles recommended it.”
“Is the water cold?” asked a farm-girl, timorously.
“Cold,” said the guide ingratiatingly, “oh, no! It’s warmed. It’s just nice. I should say about the temperature of warm milk.”
“Oh!” “Oh!” There was chorus of approval from the women, who had been considering the whole matter from a purely personal point of view.
We were then led to the Creation Room, the Garden of Eden Room, and the Earth-natural Room, all adorned with works of art. There were pictures of the world before Creation, and then of each stage in the process of Creation.
“God don’t love chaos. ’E’s a great organiser. ’E organised it, and ’e divided the water from the hearth and gave us light and made the hanimal creation—yes, all that lives and breeves,” said the guide. “’Ere we meet to meditate on the Creation. Isn’t it a beutiful room?”
Some one asked him if the artists were Mormons. “Yes, all of them,” said he, and then went on—
“You’d think it gets stuffy in ’ere. But no; we ’as the hair taken out and washed and then returned. It’s a new device for washing the hair.”
We passed to Eden. Here were pictures of the whole animal creation in benevolent and sentimental happiness; the tiger browsing beside the lamb, and the lion and the giddy goat frisking around.
The guide purveyed the story of the Garden of Eden, but left out Adam and Eve, and I walked away from him to wander round and seek the portraits of our first parents. They were not included. But I found that the painting of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and of the Tree of Life were concave at the base, and that there was a recess and an alcove to each. So there was a place for a living Adam and Eve to sit, side by side, when the meditation on the Garden was going on. My idea is that Eve would be seated in the Tree of Life and Adam in the Tree of Knowledge. But that is surmise. The guide would not tell us what the alcoves were for, but in the eye of curious imagination I saw Adam and Eve sitting there in primitive innocence whilst the hearts of the elders were inditing of a good matter.
From Eden we went to the Earth-natural, which was a hideous place where every animal was depicted with a vicious expression. A large mad coyote or, was it a hyena? seemed to control the atmosphere of the chamber.
“’Ere we ’ave the Hearth after sin ’as crept in,” said the guide. “’Ere is life as we know it, full of sin which you can’t escape. You can all learn a great deal from them pictures. Think of Hadam and Eve. ’Ave you ever thought of it—’ow God gave them the garden of Eden, and of the ‘experience’ ’e made them ’ave there. Isn’t it true about us? ’E didn’t mean that nothin’ should ever ’appen to us. ’E brought us into the world that we might ’ave an experience.”
So we went on to the Marriage Room, which was entirely bare, and no one could say what it would be like when the decorations and the furniture had been added. I judged it time for me to cease being Simple Simon, so I asked the guide as humbly as I could whether the marriages were legal when the ceremony was performed.
“Yes,” said he. “You ’ave a legal marriage.”
“But polygamy?” I queried, and I saw his eyes flame.
“Polygamy ’as been done away with long ago when Utah was received into the Union,” he answered in a gruff way.
“And what happened to the other wives when it was abolished?” asked some one else very softly. But the guide did not reply. Instead he began to hurry us out of the building. We had only seen a third of it and were loth to go. But there was nothing for it. We managed to get a last glimpse of an assembly hall with large frescoes on the walls, depicting Christ distributing the Bread and the Wine to the Mound-Builders, or Indians of South America, and underneath was written III. Nephi 15. Another fresco had reference to the Book of Josiah, which is part of Mormon Holy Writ—found by Joseph Smith, written on gold plates.
The guide hurried us to the door. “I’ve some pictures of the Temple for sale,” said he to the farm-women. But they seemed all to have been scared by my question about polygamy. Vachel and I stopped to look at the pictures. After all, they were only picture-postcards of the exterior. We bought three.
“Good-b’ye,” said I. “And much obliged.” And I offered him my hand. He gave me his left.
“Good-b’ye,” said Vachel. “Most interesting.” And he offered him his hand. The guide gave him his left also.
“A left-handed shake,” said Vachel, meditatively, as we went down the steps. “You know what that means.”
“No?”
“That means—Go to Hell!”
We were much intrigued by all this, and found out that Adam is God to the Mormons, and Christ only one of a series which culminated in Brigham Young. Mormonism is the story of a passionate sensual man with a fake religion, a leader, however, of men and women, capable of starting a church, murdered and then succeeded by the great Brigham. The Mormon community, persecuted ever, loathed and detested yet not destroyed, plunged ever westward through the deserts with new revelations all the way, always, however, being overtaken by the tide of other pioneers and chased again. They were secret, and wanted to be secret. But the United States always overtook them. Now they have compromised in many ways and are not persecuted, and they multiply and spread and propagandise. They are disciplined. In politics they all vote one way—as ordered. They begin to be proud of America.
Vachel and I went up to the Temple at night. It looked like a place produced by enchantment—the highest thing on the highest eminence of the widespread but low-built city of Cardston. Clouds hid the top of it. There was no one near but ourselves, apparently not even a watchman. The massive gates were locked and barred, and above them gleamed electric lanterns in large and graceful M’s.
We have learned an elementary lesson about them.
“Remember that, Vachel,” said I. “M for Mormon.”
“The guide said a true word,” said the poet. “God sent us into the world that we might have an experience.”
With that our tramping ended. We left our pine-staffs leaning against a Cardston wall. We slept in beds again and bought our coffee at a shop. Gathering prose invaded the clear blue of our poetry. Some sadness, like a shadow, settled on us. And it was good-b’ye to the mountains.
Thy Kingdom come, O Lord,
As once it came,
May it come again!
For once it came upon the mountains,
It came upon the wings of the morning
Amid the flowers and adown the streams.
It came into our eyes,
It came into our hearts.
Thy Kingdom come, O Lord,
As once it came,
May it come again!
THE WORLD IS MY PARISH