The Mormons declare that they incurred this funny amount of feminine wrath and suffered from its consequent pin-pricks by their not taking sufficient interest in, or notice of the writer, especially by the fact that on one occasion—it is made much of in the book—some rude men actually did walk over a bridge before her. But coming direct from the land of woman’s rights’ associations, lecturesses on propagandism and voluntary celibatarians, whose “mission” it is to reform, purify, and exalt the age, especially our wicked selves, what else could be expected of outraged delicacy and self-esteem? Not being “vivisectors,” we can not, however, quite join with Mrs. Ferris in the complacency with which she relates her “probing the hearts” of her Mormon guests and visitors “with ruthless questions” about their domestic affairs; and we remark with pleasure that in more than one place she has most unwillingly confessed the kindness and civility of the Latter-Day Saints.
29. Adventures among the Mormons, by Elder Hawthornthwaite, an Apostate Missionary. (1857.)
30. The Mormons, the Dream and the Reality; or, Leaves from the Sketchbook of Experience. Edited by a Clergyman. W. B. F. (8vo, London, 1857).
31. The Husband in Utah; or, Sights and Scenes among the Mormons. By Austin N. Ward. Edited by Mrs. Maria Ward, Author of “Female Life among the Mormons” (212 pages, 8vo, Derby and Jackson, Nassau Street, New York, 1857). It is regretable that a respectable publisher should lend his name to a volume like this. The authoress professes to edit the MS. left by a nephew of her husband, who lived among the Mormons en route to California, went on to the gold regions and died. I can not but characterize it as a pure invention. The writer who describes markets where not one ever existed, and “the tall spires of the Mormon temples glittering in the rich sunlight” (p. 15), there being no spires and no temples at Utah, can hardly expect to be believed, even when, with all the eloquence of Mr. Potts, of the “Eatanswill Gazette,” she dwells upon the “fanaticism and diabolism that ever attends (?) the hideous and slimy course of Mormonism in its progress over the world.” The imposture, too, is not “white;” it is premeditatedly mischievous. Although Brother Underwood is a fancy personage, Miss Eliza R. Snow, with whose name improper liberties are taken, is no myth, but a well educated and highly respectable reality.
32. Fifteen Years among the Mormons, being the Narrative of Mrs. Mary Ettie V. Smith, late of the Great Salt Lake City, a Sister of one of the Mormon High-Priests, she having been personally acquainted with most of the Mormon leaders, and long in the confidence of the Prophet Brigham Young. By Nelson Winch Green. (Charles Scribner, Broadway, New York, 1858, and unhappily republished by Messrs. Routledge, London.) This work, whose exceedingly clap-trap title is a key to the “popular” nature of the contents, is, par excellence, the most offensive publication of the kind, and bears within it marks of an exceeding untruthfulness. The human sacrifices and the abominable rites performed in the Endowment House are reproductions of the accounts of hidden orgies in the Nauvoo Temple, invented and promulgated by Mr. Bowes. The last words placed in the mouth of Mr. Joseph Smith, “My God! my God! have mercy upon us, if there is a God!”—a palpable plagiarism from Lord P——’s will—may be a pious fraud to warn stray lambs from the fold of Mormonism, but as a history shows, it is wholly destitute of fact. The murder in Mr. Jones’, the butcher’s house, so circumstantially related, never took place. Colonel Bridger, who is killed off by the Danites at the end of the book, still lives; and a dream (ch. xxxviii.) seems to be the only proof of Lieutenant Gunnison having been slaughtered by the Latter-Day Saints, not, as is generally supposed, by the Indians. “Milking the Gentiles,” coining “Bogus-money,” “whistling and whittling” anti-Mormons out of the town, the dangers of competition in love-matters with an apostle, and the imminent peril of being scalped by white Indians, are stock accusations copied from book to book, and rendered somewhat harmless by want of novelty. But nothing will excuse the reckless accusations with which Mrs. Smith takes away the characters of her Mormon sisters, and the abominations with which she charges the wives of the highest dignitaries. Among those thus foully defamed is Miss Snow, who also appears as a leading actress in Mrs. Ward’s fiction. The “poetess of the Mormons,” now married to the Prophet, has ever led a life of exceptional asceticism—cold in fact as her name. The Latter-Day Saints retort upon Mrs. Smith, of course, in kind, quoting Chaucer (but whether truthfully or not I can not say):
“A woman she was the most discrete alive,
Husbandes at chirche-dore had she had five.”
33. Mormonism; its Leaders and Designs, by John Hyde, Jun., formerly a Mormon Elder, and resident of Great Salt Lake City. (385 pages, 8vo, W. P. Fetridge & Co., Broadway, New York, 1857.) This is the work of an apostate Mormon, now preaching, I believe, Swedenborgianism in England: it has some pretensions to learning, and it attacks the Mormons upon all their strongest grounds. It is also satisfactory to see that in the circumstantial description of the mysteries of the Endowment House, Mrs. Smith and Mr. Hyde, whose account has apparently been borrowed by M. Remy, disagree, thus justifying us in doubting both; and it is curious to remark, that while the lady leans to the erotic, the gentleman dwells upon the treasonous and mutinous tendency of the ceremony. According to Mr. Hyde, he left the Mormons from conscientious motives. The Mormons, who, however, never fail thoroughly to denigrate the character of an enemy, especially of an apostate, declare that the author, when a missionary at Havre de Grâce, proved useless, always shirking his duty; and that, since dismissal from the ministry, he has left a wife unprovided for at Great Salt Lake City.
The now almost forgotten polemical and anti-Mormon works are,
M. Favez. Fragments sur J. Smith et les Mormons. A methodistical brochure.