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

by Mrs. T. B. H. Stenhouse

She then told me that her husband had been, as one might say, compelled to marry a young Swiss girl whom they had brought out to Utah with them as a domestic. This girl had been a very faithful servant, and Madame Bailiff had become very much attached to her. During the Reformation the Bishop visited them, and “counselled” Monsieur Bailiff to take a second wife. The girl was also “counselled” to marry, and when she said that she did not know of any one to whom she would like to be married, the Bishop told her that he himself would find a suitable man.

“My husband told me what the Bishop had urged him to do,” said Madame Bailiff, “and we talked the matter over in a practical way. We knew that the girl would be forced to marry somebody, and that then she would have to leave us, which would put us to the very greatest inconvenience, for, situated as we were, we could hardly get on without her assistance. At the same time, he also would be compelled to obey counsel, and we came to the conclusion that as there was no way of evading the difficulty altogether, it would be better for him to marry the girl than to bring a stranger into the house. So he asked her, and she accepted him, and they were married. She is a good girl, and tries to do her best, but it is a great trial to me, and one which I trust you may never be called upon to bear. My husband is as kind and gentle a man as ever lived, and he has done all he could to keep me from feeling unhappy; had it been otherwise, I dare not think what I should have done—I believe I should have gone mad or died. In our household arrangements, of course it made very little difference, but it was inexpressibly painful to me, and though I suppose I shall remain a Mormon till the day of my death, I have learned to hate Mormonism.”

Poor Madame Bailiff! Hers was a life of privation and sorrow of late years. Happy as woman could be in her youthful days, she little dreamed what Providence had in store for her ere her earthly course had run. With a faithful and devoted husband; with a charming little family growing up around her; with all that could make life fair and beautiful. But that accursed thing—Polygamy—came and poisoned all her happiness, and blighted all her hopes; and when, but a few months ago, worn out and weary of life, she left behind her all her sorrows and all her misery, I could not weep that she had gone to a better land beyond the veil, but I thanked God that at last, poor soul, her days of trial were for ever over, and she had entered into her eternal rest.

One day Brother Brigham sent me word that he wished to see me.

I went to him, and he told me that he wanted me to become acquainted with a certain young girl in whom he took a great interest. She was the daughter, by his first wife, of Jedediah M. Grant, the famous Apostle of the “Reformation”—her name was Carrie, and she was now an orphan. Brother Brigham wished me to have her with me every day, for she was not “feeling well,” he said, and he thought I might do her some good. This “not feeling well” I afterwards discovered meant that she was almost ready to apostatize. If she desired it, I was to teach her my business; not that she needed to follow any profession, for, as President Young explained, she had a good home; but her mind needed occupation, and he did not care how she employed her time, so long as she was with me every day and could be made to “feel well.”

I listened to all that Brother Brigham said, and accepted the trust in good faith—not only to please him, but because the girl was an orphan, and my heart went out towards her even before I had seen her.

Before I returned home I called at the house where Carrie was stopping, and arranged that she should come every day to see me, under pretext of learning the business. Now it so happened that we each conceived a liking to the other the very first moment we met; we made friends together at once, and she wanted to begin coming to me the very next day. She was a sweet-looking and intelligent girl, fair, but fragile, and with a peculiar expression of melancholy sadness dwelling upon her features, which gave her a painfully interesting appearance. I never before, or since, met with a young girl who habitually looked so unhappy; and I thought that perhaps physical weakness might be the cause, for it was evident that in constitution she was extremely delicate—I almost feared consumptive.

The first day we spent together she told me that her parents had been among the pioneers to Utah, that her only sister had died on the Plains, and that she had lost her mother soon after they had arrived in Salt Lake City. As the only remaining child of her mother, she had been a great pet with her father, but he too had died about four years previous to the time of which I speak, and she had never been happy since. “I often long to die,” she said, “that I might join my mother and father; no one loves me here, and I have nothing to live for.” Her father had married four wives after her mother’s death, and they were all very kind to her, but she did not feel that she had a home. She told me that about six months before she came to me she had started to go east, to her mother’s friends, for they had frequently written to her, urging her to come to them, and that when she was about two weeks’ journey from Salt Lake City, Brigham Young sent after her, and she was brought back. “But,” she said, “I shall never be happy here, Sister Stenhouse, I know I never shall; and why should they not let me leave and go to my relatives?”

I knew very well that it was of no use for her to try to get away, for we had no railroad then, and escape was almost impossible. I therefore tried to make her more cheerful, and told her that a girl as young as she was—for she was scarcely seventeen—had much to live for. But her unhappiness had become almost a settled melancholy, and she seemed to be interested in nothing. Besides which, the task I attempted was all the more difficult as I was not at all happy myself.

One day the conversation happened to turn upon Polygamy, and in a moment I saw that all her trouble arose from that miserable doctrine, and from that alone. We had not exchanged many words upon the subject when she exclaimed: “Oh, how I hate Polygamy! God forgive me; but I cannot help it, Sister Stenhouse! I do hate it; and yet I believe that it is true.” Poor child! I understood her too well, for her position was exactly mine. From that moment we were fast friends.