The City of the Saints, and Across the Rocky Mountains to California

by Sir Richard Francis Burton

It will be asked, What view does the softer sex take of polygyny? A few, mostly from the Old Country, lament that Mr. Joseph Smith ever asked of the Creator that question which was answered in the affirmative. A very few, like the Curia Electa, Emma, the first wife of Mr. Joseph Smith—who said of her, by-the-by, that she could not be contented in heaven without rule—apostatize, and become Mrs. Bridemann. The many are, as might be expected of the easily-moulded weaker vessel, which proves its inferior position by the delicate flattery of imitation, more in favor of polygyny than the stronger.

For the attachment of the women of the Saints to the doctrine of plurality there are many reasons. The Mormon prophets have expended all their arts upon this end, well knowing that without the hearty co-operation of mothers and wives, sisters and daughters, no institution can live long. They have bribed them with promises of Paradise—they have subjugated them with threats of annihilation. With them, once a Mormon always a Mormon. I have said that a modified reaction respecting the community of Saints has set in throughout the States; people no longer wonder that their missionaries do not show horns and cloven feet, and the federal officer, the itinerant politician, the platform orator, and the place-seeking demagogue, can no longer make political capital by bullying, oppressing, and abusing them. The tide has turned, and will turn yet more. But the individual still suffers: the apostate Mormon is looked upon by other people as a scamp or a knave, and the woman worse than a prostitute. Again, all the fervor of a new faith burns in their bosoms with a heat which we can little appreciate, and the revelation of Mr. Joseph Smith is considered on this point as superior to the Christian as the latter is in others to the Mosaic Dispensation. Polygamy is a positive command from heaven: if the flesh is mortified by it, tant mieux—“no cross, no crown;” “blessed are they that mourn.” I have heard these words from the lips of a well-educated Mormon woman, who, in the presence of a Gentile sister, urged her husband to take unto himself a second wife. The Mormon household has been described by its enemies as a hell of envy, hatred, and malice—a den of murder and suicide. The same has been said of the Moslem harem. Both, I believe, suffer from the assertions of prejudice or ignorance. The temper of the New is so far superior to that of the Old Country, that, incredible as the statement may appear, rival wives do dwell together in amity, and do quote the proverb “the more the merrier.” Moreover, they look with horror at the position of the “slavey” of a pauper mechanic at being required to “nigger it” upon love and starvation, and at the necessity of a numerous family. They know that nine tenths of the miseries of the poor in large cities arise from early and imprudent marriages, and they would rather be the fiftieth “sealing” of Dives than the toilsome single wife of Lazarus. The French saying concerning motherhood—“le premier embellit, le second détruit, le troisième gâte tout,” is true in the Western world. The first child is welcomed, the second is tolerated, the third is the cause of tears and reproaches, and the fourth, if not prevented by gold pills or some similar monstrosity, causes temper, spleen, and melancholy, with disgust and hatred of the cause. What the Napoleonic abolition of the law of primogeniture, combined with centralization of the peasant class in towns and cities, has effected on this side of the Channel, the terrors of maternity, aggravated by a highly nervous temperament, small cerebellum, constitutional frigidity, and extreme delicacy of fibre, have brought to pass in the older parts of the Union.

Another curious effect of fervent belief may be noticed in the married state. When a man has four or five wives, with reasonable families by each, he is fixed for life: his interests, if not his affections, bind him irrevocably to his new faith. But the bachelor, as well as the monogamic youth, is prone to backsliding. Apostasy is apparently so common that many of the new Saints form a mere floating population. He is proved by a mission before being permitted to marry, and even then women, dreading a possible renegade, with the terrible consequences of a heavenless future to themselves, are shy of saying yes. Thus it happens that male celibacy is mixed up in a curious way with polygamy, and that also in a faith whose interpreter advises youth not to remain single after sixteen, nor girls after fourteen. The celibacy also is absolute; any infraction of it would be dangerous to life. Either, then, the first propensity of the phrenologist is poorly developed in these lands—this has been positively stated of the ruder sex in California—or its action is to be regulated by habit to a greater degree than is usually believed.

I am conscious that my narrative savors of incredibility; the fault is in the subject, not in the narrator. Exoneravi animan meam. The best proof that my opinions are correct will be the following quotation. It is a letter addressed to a sister in New Hampshire by a Mrs. Belinda M. Pratt,MRS. PRATT’S OPINION. the wife of the celebrated apostle. M. Remy has apparently dramatized it (vol. ii., chap. ii.) by casting it into dialogue form, and placing it in the mouth of une femme distinguée. Most readers, feminine and monogamic, will remark that the lady shows little heart or natural affection; the severe calm of her judgment and reasoning faculties, and the soundness of her physiology, can not be doubted.

“Great Salt Lake City, Jan. 12, 1854.

“Dear Sister,—Your letter of October 2 was received on yesterday. My joy on its reception was more than I can express. I had waited so long for your answer to our last, that I had almost concluded my friends were offended, and would write to me no more. Judge, then, of my joy when I read the sentiments of friendship and of sisterly affection expressed in your letter.

“We are all well here, and are prosperous and happy in our family circle. My children, four in number, are healthy and cheerful, and fast expanding their physical and intellectual faculties. Health, peace, and prosperity have attended us all the day long.

“It seems, my dear sister, that we are no nearer together in our religious views than formerly. Why is this? Are we not all bound to leave this world, with all we possess therein, and reap the reward of our doings here in a never-ending hereafter? If so, do we not desire to be undeceived, and to know and to do the truth? Do we not all wish in our very hearts to be sincere with ourselves, and to be honest and frank with each other?

“If so, you will bear with me patiently while I give a few of my reasons for embracing and holding sacred that particular point in the doctrine of the Church of the Saints to which you, my dear sister, together with a large majority of Christendom, so decidedly object. I mean, a ‘plurality of wives.’

“I have a Bible which I have been taught from my infancy to hold sacred. In this Bible I read of a holy man named Abraham, who is represented as the friend of God, a faithful man in all things, a man who kept the commandments of God, and who is called in the New Testament ‘the father of the faithful.’ See James, ii., 23; Rom., iv., 16; Gal., iii., 8, 9, 16, 29.