Complete Works of Artemus Ward Part 4, To California and Return — Ch 3
4. 9. GREAT SALT LAKE CITY.
How was I to be greeted by the Mormons?
That was rather an exciting question with me.
I had been told on the plains that a certain humorous sketch of mine (written some years before) had greatly incensed the Saints, and a copy of the Sacramento "Union" newspaper had a few days before fallen into my hands in which a Salt Lake correspondent quite clearly intimated that my reception at the new Zion might be unpleasantly warm.
I ate my dinner moodily and sent out for some cigars.
The venerable clerk brought me six.
They cost only two dollars.
They were procured at a store near by.
The Salt Lake House sells neither cigars nor liquors.
I smoke in my room, having no heart to mingle with the people in the office.
Dr. Hingston "thanks God he never wrote against the Mormons," and goes out in search of a brother Englishman.
Comes back at night and says there is a prejudice against me.
Advises me to keep in.
Has heard that the Mormons thirst for my blood and are on the lookout for me.
Under these circumstances I keep in.
The next day is Sunday, and we go to the Tabernacle, in the morning.
The Tabernacle is located on -- street, and is a long rakish building of adobe, capable of seating some twenty-five hundred persons.
There is a wide platform and a rather large pulpit at one end of the building, and at the other end is another platform for the choir.
A young Irishman of the name of Sloan preaches a sensible sort of discourse, to which a Presbyterian could hardly have objected.
Last night this same Mr. Sloan enacted a character in a rollicking Irish farce at the theatre!
And he played it well, I was told; not so well, of course, as the great Dan Bryant could; but I fancy he was more at home in the Mormon pulpit than Daniel would have been.
The Mormons, by the way, are preeminently an amusement-loving people, and the Elders pray for the success of their theatre with as much earnestness as they pray for anything else.
The congregation doesn't startle us.
It is known, I fancy, that the heads of the Church are to be absent to-day, and the attendance is slim.
There are no ravishingly beautiful women present, and no positively ugly ones.
The men are fair to middling.
They will never be slain in cold blood for their beauty, nor shut up in jail for their homeliness.
There are some good voices in the choir to-day, but the orchestral accompaniment is unusually slight.
Sometimes they introduce a full brass and string band in Church.
Brigham Young says the devil has monopolized the good music long enough, and it is high time the Lord had a portion of it.
Therefore trombones are tooted on Sundays in Utah as well as on other days; and there are some splendid musicians there.
The Orchestra in Brigham Young's theatre is quite equal to any in Broadway.
There is a youth in Salt Lake City (I forget his name) who plays the cornet like a North American angel.
Mr. Stenhouse relieves me of any anxiety I had felt in regard to having my swan-like throat cut by the Danites, but thinks my wholesale denunciation of a people I had never seen was rather hasty.
The following is the paragraph to which the Saints objected.
It occurs in an "Artemus Ward" paper on Brigham Young, written some years ago: "I girded up my Lions and fled the Seen.
I packt up my duds and left Salt Lake, which is a 2nd Soddum and Germorer, inhabited by as theavin' & onprincipled a set of retchis as ever drew Breth in eny spot on the Globe."
I had forgotten all about this, and as Elder Stenhouse read it to me "my feelings may be better imagined than described," to use language I think I have heard before.
I pleaded, however, that it was a purely burlesque sketch, and that this strong paragraph should not be interpreted literally at all.
The Elder didn't seem to see it in that light, but we parted pleasantly.
4. 10. THE MOUNTAIN FEVER.
I go back to my hotel and go to bed, and I do not get up again for two weary weeks.
I have the mountain fever (so called in Utah, though it closely resembles the old-style typhus) and my case is pronounced dangerous.
I don't regard it so.
I don't, in fact, regard anything.
I am all right, MYSELF.
My poor Hingston shakes his head sadly, and Dr. Williamson, from Camp Douglas, pours all kinds of bitter stuff down my throat.
I drink his health in a dose of the cheerful beverage known as jalap, and thresh the sheets with my hot hands.
I address large assemblages, who have somehow got into my room, and I charge Dr. Williamson with the murder of Luce, and Mr. Irwin, the actor, with the murder of Shakspeare.
I have a lucid spell now and then, in one of which James Townsend, the landlord, enters.
He whispers, but I hear what he says far too distinctly: "This man can have anything and everything he wants;
but I'm no hand for a sick room.
I NEVER COULD SEE ANYBODY DIE."
That was cheering, I thought.
The noble Californian, Jerome Davis -he of the celebrated ranch- sticks by me like a twin brother, although I fear that in my hot frenzy I more than once anathematised his kindly eyes.
Nursers and watchers, Gentile and Mormon, volunteer their services in hoops and rare wines are sent to me from all over the city, which, if I can't drink, the venerable and excellent Thomas can, easy.
I lay there in this wild, broiling way for nearly two weeks, when one morning I woke up with my head clear and an immense plaster on my stomach.
The plaster had OPERATED.
I was so raw that I could by no means say to Dr. Williamson, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant".
I wished he had lathed me before he plastered me.
I was fearfully weak.
I was frightfully thin.
With either one of my legs you could have cleaned the stem of a meerschaum pipe.
My backbone had the appearance of a clothesline with a quantity of English walnuts strung upon it.
My face was almost gone.
My nose was so sharp that I didn't dare stick it into other people's business for fear it would stay there.
But by borrowing my agent's overcoat I succeeded in producing a shadow.
.
.
.
.
I have been looking at Zion all day, and my feet are sore and my legs are weary.
I go back to the Salt Lake House and have a talk with landlord Townsend about the State of Maine.
He came from that bleak region, having skinned his infantile eyes in York county.
He was at Nauvoo, and was forced to sell his entire property there for 50 dollars.
He has thrived in Utah, however, and is much thought of by the Church.
He is an Elder, and preaches occasionally.
He has only two wives.
I hear lately that he has sold his property for 25,000 dollars to Brigham Young, and gone to England to make converts.
How impressive he may be as an expounder of the Mormon gospel, I don't know.
His beefsteaks and chicken-pies, however, were first-rate.
James and I talk about Maine, and cordially agree that so far as pine boards and horse-mackerel are concerned, it is equalled by few and excelled by none.
There is no place like home, as Clara, the Maid of Milan, very justly observes; and while J. Townsend would be unhappy in Maine, his heart evidently beats back there now and then.
I heard the love of home oddly illustrated in Oregon, one night, in a country bar-room.
Some well-dressed men, in a state of strong drink, were boasting of their respective places of nativity.
"I," said one, "was born in Mississippi, where the sun ever shines and the magnolias bloom all the happy year round."
"And I," said another, "was born in Kentucky--Kentucky, the home of impassioned oratory: the home of Clay, the State of splendid women, of gallant men!"
"And I," said another, "was born in Virginia, the home of Washington: the birthplace of statesmen: the State of chivalric deeds and noble hospitality!"
"And I," said a yellow-haired and sallow-faced man, who was not of this party at all, and who had been quietly smoking a short black pipe by the fire during their magnificent conversation--"and I was born in the garden-spot of America."
"Where is that?"
they said.
"SKEOUHEGAN, MAINE!"
he replied; "kin I sell you a razor strop?"
4. 11. "I AM HERE."
There is no mistake about that, and there is a good prospect of my staying here for some time to come.
The snow is deep on the ground, and more is falling.
The Doctor looks glum, and speaks of his ill-starred countryman, of Sir.
J.
Franklin, who went to the Arctic once too much.
A good thing happened down here the other day, said a miner from New Hampshire to me.
"A man of Boston dressin' went through there, and at one of the stations there wasn't any mules.
Says the man who was fixed out to kill in his Boston dressin', 'Where's them mules?'
Says the driver, 'Them mules is into the sage brush.
You go catch 'em--that's wot YOU do.'
Says the man of Boston dressin', 'Oh no!'
Says the driver!
'Oh, yes!'
and he took his long coach-whip and licked the man of Boston dressin' till he went and caught them mules.
How does that strike you for a joke?"
It didn't strike me as much of a joke to pay a hundred and seventy-five dollars in gold fare, and then be horse-whipped by stage-drivers, for declining to chase mules.
But people's ideas of humor differ in regard to shrewdness which "reminds me of a little story."
Sitting in a New England country store one day I overheard the following dialogue between two brothers: "Say, Bill, wot you done with that air sorrel mare of yourn?"
"Sold her," said William, with a smile of satisfaction.
"Wot'd you git?"
"Hund'd an' fifty dollars, cash deown!"
"Show!
Hund'd an' fifty for that kickin' spavin'd critter!
Who'd you sell her to?"
"Sold her to mother!"
"Wot!"
exclaimed brother No. 1, "did you railly sell that kickin' spavin'd critter to mother?
Wall, you AIR a shrewd one!"
A Sensation--Arrival by the Overland Stage of two Missouri girls, who had come unescorted all the way through.
They are going to Nevada territory to join their father.
They are pretty, but, merciful heavens!
how they throw the meat and potatoes down their throats.
"This is the first squar' meal we've had since we left Rocky Thompson's," said the eldest.
Then addressing herself to me, she said: "Air you the literary man?"
I politely replied that I was one of "them fellers."
"Wall, don't make fun of our clothes in the papers.
We air goin' right through in these here clothes, WE air!
We ain't goin' to RAG OUT till we git to Nevady!
Pass them sassiges!"
4. 12. BRIGHAM YOUNG.
Brigham Young sends word I may see him tomorrow.
So I go to bed singing the popular Mormon hymn: "Let the chorus still be sung, Long live Brother Brigham Young, And blessed be the vale of Desere't--ret--ret!
And blessed be the vale of Deseret."
At two o'clock the next afternoon Mr. Hiram B. Clawson, Brigham Young's son-in-law and chief business manager, calls for me with the Prophet's private sleigh, and we start for that distinguished person's block.
I am shown into the Prophet's chief office.
He comes forward, greets me cordially, and introduces me to several influential Mormons who are present.
Brigham Young is 62 years old, of medium height, and with sandy hair and whiskers.
An active, iron man, with a clear sharp eye.
A man of consummate shrewdness--of great executive ability.
He was born in the State of Vermont, and so by the way was Heber C. Kimball, who will wear the Mormon Belt when Brigham leaves the ring.
Brigham Young is a man of great natural ability.
If you ask me, How pious is he?
I treat it as a conundrum, and give it up.
Personally he treated me with marked kindness throughout my sojourn in Utah.
His power in Utah is quite as absolute as that of any living sovereign, yet he uses it with such consummate shrewdness that his people are passionately devoted to him.
He was an Elder at the first formal Mormon "stake" in this country, at Kirtland, Ohio, and went to Nauvoo with Joseph Smith.
That distinguished Mormon handed his mantle and the Prophet business over to Brigham when he died at Nauvoo.
Smith did a more flourishing business in the Prophet line than B. Y.
does.
Smith used to have his little Revelation almost every day-- sometimes two before dinner.
B.
Y.
only takes one once in a while.
The gateway of his block is surmounted by a brass American eagle, and they say ("they say" here means anti-Mormons) that he receives his spiritual dispatches through this piece of patriotic poultry.
They also say that he receives revelations from a stuffed white calf that is trimmed with red ribbons and kept in an iron box.
I
don't suppose these things are true.
Rumor says that when the Lion House was ready to be shingled, Brigham received a message from the Lord stating that the carpenters must all take hold and shingle it, and not charge a red cent for their services.
Such carpenters as refused to shingle would go to hell, and no postponement on account of the weather.
They say that Brigham, whenever a train of emigrants arrives in Salt Lake City, orders all the women to march up and down before his block, while he stands on the portico of the Lion House and gobbles up the prettiest ones.
He is an immensely wealthy man.
His wealth is variously estimated at from ten to twenty millions of dollars.
He owns saw mills, grist mills, woollen factories, brass and iron foundries, farms, brick-yards, &c. , and superintends them all in person.
A man in Utah individually owns what he grows and makes, with the exception of a one-tenth part: that must go to the Church; and Brigham Young, as the first President, is the Church's treasurer.
Gentiles, of course, say that he abuses this blind confidence of his people, and speculates with their money, and absorbs the interest if he doesn't the principle.
The Mormons deny this, and say that whatever of their money he does use is for the good of the Church; that he defrays the expenses of emigrants from far over the seas; that he is foremost in all local enterprises tending to develop the resources of the territory, an that, in short, he is incapable of wrong in any shape.
Nobody seems to know how many wives Brigham Young has.
Some set the number as high as eighty, in which case his children must be too numerous to mention.
Each wife has a room to herself.
These rooms are large and airy, and I suppose they are supplied with all the modern improvements.
But never having been invited to visit them I can't speak very definitely about this.
When I left the Prophet he shook me cordially by the hand, and invited me to call again.
This was flattering, because if he dislikes a man at the first interview he never sees him again.
He made no allusion to the "letter" I had written about his community.
Outside guards were pacing up and down before the gateway, but they smiled upon me sweetly.
The veranda was crowded with Gentile miners, who seemed to be surprised that I didn't return in a wooden overcoat, with my throat neatly laid open from ear to ear.
Nobody seems to know how many wives Brigham Young has.
Some set the number as high as eighty, in which case his children must be too numerous to mention.
Each wife has a room to herself, These rooms are large ans airy, and I suppose they are supplied with all the modern improvements.
But never having been invited to visit them, I can't speak very definitely about this.
When I left the Prophet he shook me cordially by the hand, and invited me to call again.
This was flattering, because if he dislikes a man at the first interview he never sees him again.
He made no allusion to the "letter" I had written about his community.
Outside guards were pacing up and down before the gateway, but they smiled upon me sweetly.
The verandah was crowded with Gentile miners, who seemed to be surprised that I didn't return in a wooden overcoat, with my throat neatly laid open from ear to ear.
.
.
.
.
I go to the Theatre to-night.
The play is Othello.
This is a really fine play and was a favourite of G. Washington, the father of his country.
On this stage, as upon all stages, the good old conventionalities are strictly adhered to.
The actors cross each other at oblique angles from L. U.
E.
to R. I. E.
on the slightest provocation.
Othello howls, Iago scowls, and the boys all laugh when Roderigo dies.
I stay to see charming Mrs. Irwin (Desdemona) die, which she does very sweetly.
.
.
.
.
I was an actor once, myself.
I supported Edwin Forrest at a theatre in Philadelphia.
I played a pantomimic part.
I removed the chairs between scenes, and I did it so neatly that Mr. F.
said I would make a cabinet-maker if I "applied" myself.
.
.
.
.
The parquette of the theatre is occupied exclusively by the Mormons and their wives and children.
They wouldn't let a Gentile in there any more than they would a serpent.
In the side seats are those of President Young's wives who go the play, and a large and varied assortment of children.
It is an odd sight to see a jovial old Mormon file down the parquette aisle with ten or twenty robust wives at his heels.
Yet this spectacle may be witnessed every night the theatre is opened.
The dress circle is chiefly occupied by the officers from Camp Douglas and the Gentile Merchants.
The upper circles are filled by the private soldiers and Mormon boys.
I feel bound to say that a Mormon audience is quite as appreciative as any other kind of an audience.
They prefer comedy to tragedy.
Sentimental plays, for obvious reasons, are unpopular with them.
It will be remembered that when C. Melnotte, in the Lady of Lyons, comes home from the wars, he folds Pauline to his heaving heart and makes several remarks of an impassioned and slobbering character.
One night when the Lady of Lyons was produced here, an aged Mormon arose and went out with his twenty-four wives, angrily stating that he wouldn't sit and see a play where a man made such a CUSSED FUSS OVER ONE WOMAN.
The prices of the theatre are: Parquette, 75 cents; second and third upper circles, 25 cents.
In an audience of two thousand persons (and there are almost always that number present probably a thousand will pay in cash, and the other thousand in grain and a variety of articles; all of which will command money however.
Brigham Young usually sits in the middle of the parquette, in a rocking-chair, and with his hat on.
He does not escort his wives to the theatre.
They go alone.
When the play drags he either falls into a tranquil sleep or walks out.
He wears in winter time a green wrapper, and his hat in the style introduced into this country by Louis Kossuth, Esq.
the liberator of Hungaria.
I
invested a dollar in the liberty of Hungaria nearly fifteen years ago.
4. 13. A PIECE IS SPOKEN.
