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

by Mrs. T. B. H. Stenhouse

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 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, 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 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.