An Englishwoman in Utah: The Story of a Life's Experience in Mormonism

by Mrs. T. B. H. Stenhouse

Let me ask my lady readers—those, I mean, who have never been in Utah. Ladies, how do you think you would feel if you were kept waiting long after the hour of midnight, far away into the morning, until your husbands had got through with their dancing and flirting, while your own hearts were breaking? I think I hear you say, “I would not stand it.” You do not know, I assure you, what you would do under the circumstances. How can you possibly judge what the feelings of a Mormon woman are, who has been taught to believe that “her desire shall be unto her husband, and he shall rule over her.”

In very early days Brigham built a theatre, and a very fair amount of histrionic talent was developed among the Saints. The Social Hall, in which were held balls, public entertainments, and other amusements, was used for histrionic performances before the theatre was built. Brigham owned the theatre. Money was to be made out of it; and the chance of making money Brother Brigham never permitted to slip through his fingers. Brigham’s eyes were sharp enough to see that a theatre would be to him a source of profit, but he did not look far enough. That theatre—under the immediate direction of the Prophet, with his own daughters acting in it, with the plays which were performed under his own censorship—has been one of the many causes which have perceptibly, although perhaps indirectly, shaken the hold which Mormonism had upon many a woman’s mind.

A man would probably witness the performance of a play and return from the theatre with no other thought than the remembrance of an hour’s amusement. But not so a woman. To her the play suggested something more, and her daughters would share her thoughts. Daily and hourly, it might be, the effects of Polygamy would be brought under their notice as a matter affecting themselves personally. They might be firm in the faith, but the observant instincts of their sex could never be wholly crushed. They would notice the neglect which wives endured even from good husbands; they would see a man leaving the wife of his youth, the mother of his children, and, careless of the cruel wrong he did her, leave her in lonely sorrow while he was spending his time in love-making with some young girl who might have been his daughter. They would see a wife crushing out from her heart the holiest impulses which God had implanted there, striving to destroy all affection for him whose dearest treasure that affection should have been, because, indeed, Polygamy could not exist with love. They would see and know, and themselves personally feel, the degradation and misery of the “Celestial Order of Marriage;” and that to them would be the practical picture of life.

But in the theatre—short-sighted Brigham, to allow it to be so!—another picture would be presented for their consideration; a picture it might be, ideal in its details and surroundings, but true to the letter in the lesson which it conveyed and the thoughts which it suggested. The disgusting, the brutalizing cruelties of Polygamy, were never represented on the stage. Thoughts so coarse, so sensual, could never inspire the true poet’s pen. No; the tale of love, as the poet tells it, is all that is refined, and chaste, and delicate, and pure; the commingling of two souls, the unison of two loving hearts, the hopes, the aspirations, the tender joyful sorrows of two fond natures—of two alone! Such is the picture presented as the ideal of the beautiful and of the good. Then, too, the delicate attentions of the devoted lover, his happiness even in the shadow of a smile from her, the lofty pedestal upon which to his imagination she stands, a queen and peerless; or the confiding love of the heroine of the story; blushingly confessing to herself that there is one heart on earth which is all her own, and in which none but herself can ever rule or reign.

The Mormon women are not devoid of common sense, nor are they destitute of those quick perceptions which, under all circumstances, distinguish their sex. They see on the stage representations of the happiness attendant upon love and marriage, such as God ordained, and such as finds a response in every heart; and they compare such pleasant pictures with what they know and have witnessed of Polygamy, and they draw painful inferences therefrom. Their faith may be proof against apostasy, but the impression left upon their minds produces its effect notwithstanding.

The spring came on, and our prospects began to brighten. My husband not only found remunerative employment for his pen in Salt Lake City, but was also engaged as special correspondent to the New York Herald and several of the California papers.

One morning, a countryman, roughly dressed and looking the picture of care, called at our house and asked to see Mr. Stenhouse. I gazed at him for a moment, for I thought there was something familiar in the sound of his voice. He looked at me, and I at once recognized him; it was Monsieur Balif himself, in whose house we had lived in Switzerland. But, oh, how changed he was! Once a refined, handsome, gentlemanly man; now a mere wreck of his former self, careworn, rough-looking, poorly clad. He and his family had been in Utah six years, and had suffered all the ills that poverty can induce: the change which was wrought in him was so great, that for some moments I was so overcome by my feelings that I could not utter a word. In the few short years which had elapsed since I saw him in his own bright and happy home, he had become quite an old man. I hardly dared to ask about his wife, for I feared what his answer might be; but after a little while he told me that she had sent her love, and would like to see me whenever I could find an opportunity to call upon her. They lived some miles from the city, but I told him that I would not fail to visit them whenever it was possible for me to do so.

I talked a long while with Monsieur Balif, and was much interested in what he told me. He made no complaints; he had still firm faith in Mormonism, and said that if the brethren had not dealt fairly by him they would be answerable to God for what they had done. “Besides,” he added, “I do not blame them so much, for they are Americans, and would not be happy if they did not get the advantage in some way.”

I was anxious to ask him if he had been induced to take another wife, as he had been in Utah during the “Reformation,” and I did not see how it was possible for him to have escaped; but while I was thinking how I might put the question delicately, he saved me the trouble by himself telling me that he had married the young servant-girl, whom his wife had taken from Switzerland with her. This information was quite a shock to me, for I well knew the proud spirit of his wife, and I could realize what anguish this second marriage must have caused her; I did not, however, like to question him on the subject. So I turned the conversation into another channel, and when he went away I sent kind messages to Madame Balif, saying that I would seize the very first opportunity of hearing from her own lips the story of all they had gone through.