Mrs. T. B. H. Stenhouse

“ There at the altar I was to give proof of my obedience and of my faith in my religion, by placing the hand of the new wife in that of my husband. The thought was almost madness. To have followed my husband to the grave would have been a terrible blow to me, but to live to see him the husband of another woman was something that seemed to me beyond endurance. Notwithstanding every effort of faith, doubts would arise, and in bitterest anguish I thought—this is more like the work of cruel man than of God. Why should man have this power over woman, and she so helpless? ”

“ Hereafter our hearts were to be daily and hourly trampled upon; the most sacred feelings of our sex were to be outraged, our affections were to be crushed. Henceforth we were to be nothing by ourselves; without a husband, we were told, we could not even enter heaven! But had our trials been limited to this life we might have borne them, as many a weary soul has done, waiting for the relief of death. But death was to bring no hope to us; we were told that in the other world polygamy should be the only order of marriage, and that without it none could be exalted in glory. ”

“ The Saints marry from principle and not from love, as Brother Brigham has often told us. I hope you believe me, dear, when I say that I am not at all a jealous woman, but if my husband dared to fall in love with a girl and to hide it from me, I could not stand it I am sure. No! principle is the only thing—there can be no love in Polygamy. If a man loved his wife, do you think he could have the heart to pain her by taking another? ”

“ Mary’s high spirit was always urging her into rebellion. In married life both husband and wife give way to each other in a thousand little things, of no consequence in themselves, but quite sufficient, without the presence of love, to sow the seeds of discord. But when love has fled, and the husband looks upon his wife—the companion of his youth, the mother of his children—not as the partner of his whole life and the sharer of all his joys and sorrows, but as a person whose presence is a reproach to him and who is an inconvenience rather than otherwise ”

“ My health was daily failing, and sometimes I doubted if I should ever be well and strong again. But all that I suffered was for the Church, and that thought sustained me.
Often I would sit alone and think—think of the past, and all my early day-dreams of love, and hope, and bliss; think of my husband in a far-off land devoting his life and all his energies to the preaching of the latter-day glory; think of those whisperings of that accursed doctrine which has since brought desolation and anguish to the hearts of so many weary women ”

“ We waited three long days for the return of Captain Willie. My heart was so full of thankfulness that my husband had been spared that I certainly did not feel so acutely the misery with which I was surrounded as I otherwise should have done; I was like the prisoner who feels happy in a reprieve from death, but whose situation is nevertheless such as would appear to any other person the most wretched in which he could be placed. The misery that was suffered in that camp was beyond the power of words to describe. On the second day they gave us some more beef-rations, but they did us little good. ”

“ How terribly these Mormon men deceive themselves! When peace, or rather quiet, reigns in their homes, they think that the Spirit of God is there. But it is not so. It is a calm not like the gentle silence of sleep, but as the painful stillness of death—the death of the heart’s best affection and all that is worth calling love. All true love has fled, and indifference has taken its place. ”

“ Their religion alone is to blame. It has been the destruction of that sweet confidence which should exist between husband and wife, and it has divided hearts and interests which should inseparably have been for ever one. This, slowly but no less painfully, I was beginning to understand. However earnestly I might try to combat the idea, my life was wretched with the one continual fear of what I might see or hear of my husband. I tried to drive away such thoughts, and I called to mind all the acts of kindness and devotion which he had shown to those whose love my heart held dear. ”

“ What living contradictions we were as we crossed the Plains—singing in a circle, night and morning, the songs of Zion and listening to prayers and thanksgivings for having been permitted to gather out of Babylon; and then during the day as we trudged along in twos and threes expressing to each other all our misgivings, and doubts, and fears, and the bitterness our thoughts against Polygamy; while each wife, confiding in her husband’s honour and faithfulness, solaced herself with the hope that all might yet be well. ”

“ She had obeyed counsel, and had left her husband and a happy home to go to Zion. She loved them all dearly; but, deluded by false teachings, and promises that she should soon have her children again, she had stolen away and left them all.
I reasoned with her, tried to make her see how wrongly she had acted, and persuaded her to return to her husband and seek his forgiveness. But it was all in vain. The salvation of her soul she thought was beyond all earthly considerations; she must stifle the suggestions of her heart within her; she must hasten to Zion. ”

“ I had felt like this for my own darling Clara.
I had now a companion in misery, some one who could sympathize with me. Even had my husband detested the doctrine as I did, he could not have comforted me as a woman and a mother could. My poor friend could feel as I felt, and her sympathy was very dear to me; misery loves companionship; we were sisters in affliction. Not only so, Madame Balif declared that this painful task should not rest on me alone; she would help me in speaking to the sisters. Thus we helped each other in the time of our trouble. ”

“ If Polygamy is the true order of marriage, I do not see that it makes much difference whether one is the first or the twentieth wife?”
“Oh dear, yes,” she replied, “it does make a great deal of difference; for the first wife will be queen over all the others, and reign with her husband. If I had known that before I was married, I should have made my husband promise to place me first. Men can do that if they like.” ”

“ There is not a true-hearted woman in Utah who does not feel as I do this day. Do you think that when they have ruined all our hopes for time and for eternity we shall love them still? Here, but for this wretched system, I should have been a happy wife and mother, and now see what I am—husband, child, all lost—all lost! ”

“ It is evening, and the family are all assembled in their pleasant home—a home made happy by the kind and thoughtful care of a loving father. Peace and tranquillity dwell in every heart, and the father is happy in being surrounded by his children, to whom he is fondly attached. He listens to the prattle of the little ones, or the music and songs of the elder children; and for a time he is forgetful of everything save the happiness of the hour. ”

“ A much less noble fate than assassination was reserved for us. The wretches, although otherwise well armed, were not holding revolvers in their hands as I first supposed. They were furnished with huge garden-syringes charged with the most disgusting filth, in the preparation of which they took especial pains. So kindred to their own base natures was such an act, that I doubt not they found it quite a labour of love. The moment the syringes were pointed at us, my husband, thinking a shot was coming, moved his head, and thus to a certain extent escaped the full force of the discharge. ”

“ But when she has become your wife, if she ever does, and you have time to cool down, you’ll begin to see things in another light. You’ll find that she is only an ordinary woman, made of flesh and blood, like all the other daughters of Eve, and with, I daresay, quite as many whims, and fancies, and perverse ways as any of them; and then, when she ceases to be ‘an angel’ in your eyes, and becomes merely a woman, you’ll begin to assert your right to think and judge for yourself, and very probably all your former devotion to your religion will return. ”

“ I never for a moment supposed that any man would have been so wicked as to fabricate a “Revelation,” or so blasphemous as to palm it off in the name of the Lord.
Oh yes, I hated polygamy in my heart. And my efforts in teaching it only increased my hatred; for when I was gravely told by the Elders that woman had been cursed in the garden of Eden, and that polygamy was one of the results of that curse—“her desire shall be unto her husband, and he shall rule over her!”—I must confess that my heart within me was rebellious. ”

“ The great object of marriage, we were told, was the increase of children. Those diviner objects—the companionship of soul, the devotion of a refined and pure affection, the indissoluble union of two existences—were never presented to the yearning hearts of those poor women who listened to the miserable harangues of the Tabernacle: such aspirations had nothing to do with the hard, cruel facts of their life in polygamy. ”

“ Ere I slept at night one dreadful thought was haunting my pillow—it disturbed my very dreams; and when I awoke in the morning, it was with [77] a feverish apprehension of coming evil hanging over me. All through the long, weary day it haunted my footsteps like a spectre; and like a fearful blight that had fallen upon me, it seemed to be withering my soul. One thought was ever present in my mind—that thought, polygamy!
It can be no wonder that I lost all interest in life, and that I should almost wish to die rather than live that life of degradation which I dreaded would be mine. ”

“ The first wife is said to hold the keys of this power, by which is meant that she can refuse. But then it goes on to say that when her husband has taught her the law of the Priesthood—that is Polygamy—‘she shall believe or she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord your God, for I will destroy her.’ You see there is no loophole of escape for the woman. Her husband is to teach her the law, and she shall believe; and if she does not—and of course people have no power to make themselves believe what they please—she is to be destroyed, and God will destroy her! ”

“ Men and women can train and discipline their minds, they can crush out the affections of their hearts if they will; but no effort of man can change man’s nature entirely, or root out altogether humanity from the soul. Women may endure, as that poor woman did whose story I have just related, but they never can get perfectly adapted to the system of “Celestial Marriage.” The nearer they approach to its requirements, the further they recede from all that is held good and noble in womanhood; and as for the men, they are brutalized by every effort which they make to conform to it. ”

“ I was “in doubt;” when one day, discussing the point, Elder Stenhouse made use of the very same expression which had fallen from the sister’s lips at the testimony-meeting—“Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” My mind unsettled, with all the strength of argument and religion on the one side, and on the other no one to plead for reason and for my return to France, who can wonder that I—at best only a weak and inexperienced girl—listened to the entreaties of my friends, and resolved to stay. ”

“ There are moments of our life when silence is better than speech; and it is safer to trust in the mercy of God than to try to shape our own destiny.
The Saints are noted for the fraternal spirit which exists among them. There are, of course, exceptions; but, as a rule, every Mormon is willing to help his brother in the faith, acting upon the principle “One is your Master, even Christ: and all ye are brethren.” The Southampton Saints were no exception to this rule, but showed their kindness both to my husband and myself in a thousand little ways. ”

“ I had thought to lead her into the way of holiness and heavenly peace by winning her to the religion of the Saints, but that which I in my enthusiasm had believed would be the greatest blessing which one poor mortal could communicate to another, had turned to a curse, and, instead of the happy wife and mother which she once had been, she had become a victim to that faith which in its very existence is an insult to womanhood. ”

“ I lectured upon Mormon Polygamy in Washington and Boston, and other large cities, and attempted in my humble way to attract the attention of the Gentile world to the iniquities of that terrible superstition which, in Utah, has degraded womanhood and wrecked the happiness of thousands of my deluded sisters. I met with sympathy everywhere; and then, as now, I resolved that efforts like these I would never relax until, if God spared my life, I should see the last stone in the fabric of Mormonism overturned and Mormon Polygamy counted among the sins and follies of the past. ”

“ What could I possibly think of a “Prophet” who, after having the law laid down so clearly, and being told so distinctly that the doings of David and Solomon were an “abomination,” and that a man should have but one wife, should enquire of the Lord how He “justified” the very things which He had just declared were “an abomination” unto Him?—Then, too, what blasphemy to represent God as one day giving a “Revelation” declaring a thing sinful, and the next day “justifying” it! ”

“ I heard that woman was an inferior being, designed by the Lord for the special glory and exaltation of man, that she was a creature that should feel herself honoured if he would only make her the mother of his children—a creature who if very obedient and faithful through all the trials and tribulations in life, might some day be rewarded by becoming one of her husband’s queens, but should even then shine only by virtue of the reflected light derived from the glory of her spouse and lord. ”

“ Indeed, even then it made me feel that there was no justice in heaven, if this love which is the best part of woman’s nature—this love that we had always believed was a part of divinity itself—this principle, without which there would be nothing worth living for—if this was to be our greatest curse, and the woman who showed herself most actuated by this gentle influence was to be the greatest victim. ”

“ More than six hundred Mormon emigrants were gathered there, all on their way to Zion, and burning with zeal and enthusiasm worthy of a better cause. There were aged men and women, whose heads were hoary with the snows of many a winter, and whose tottering steps had borne them to the verge of three score years and ten; there were stout-hearted fathers and families, and matrons with sons and daughters growing up around them; there were young men in the pride and strength of manhood; and maidens in the modest blush of womanly beauty ”

“ Poor Elder Marsden! He was branded with the most opprobrious titles which Mormon ingenuity or malice could fling against him: and yet I know of many men—not one nor two, associated most intimately with Brigham Young to-day, whose faith is not a whit stronger than that apostate’s, who serve the Prophet because it is their interest to do so, but who in their hearts no more believe in his high pretensions than did James Marsden, the President of the London Conference. ”

“ Let any wife picture to herself how she would feel, if, after schooling her heart to submission, after realizing that she was no longer to be first and dearest in her husband’s affections, she were to be constantly hearing the friends and relations of the young girl to whom her husband was engaged, boasting of his devotion to her, and openly expressing their belief that he had never loved before! ”

“ At the time of which I speak, every unmarried woman, or girl who could by the utmost stretch of possibility be thought old enough to marry, was forced to find a husband, or a husband was immediately found for her, and without any regard to her wishes was forced upon her. Young men, and even boys, were forced, not only into marriage, but even polygamy, and none dared resist. The marrying mania, in fact, was universal and irresistible—everyone must marry or be given in marriage. ”

“ Then, too, the delicate attentions of the devoted lover, his happiness even in the shadow of a smile from her, the lofty pedestal upon which to his imagination she stands, a queen and peerless; or the confiding love of the heroine of the story; blushingly confessing to herself that there is one heart on earth which is all her own, and in which none but herself can ever rule or reign. ”

“ I longed to make them feel, as I do, the cruel degradation, the humiliating tyranny, which Polygamy inflicts. I wanted to arouse them to a sense of their own womanhood, and a just appreciation of those rights and duties which, as women, God has conferred upon them. I was anxious that they should understand and know the inconsistency and folly of that superstitious faith by which they have been so egregiously deluded; that they might learn to hate and loathe the falsely-named “Celestial” system of marriage ”

“ Long courtships often end disastrously; but when I heard rumours of the lady’s presumed faithlessness, it seemed to me hardly fair, for the day had been fixed for the marriage and [339] the wedding-dress actually made. Of course I sympathized with my husband. Would any wife like to see her husband disappointed in his love-affairs with another woman, I wonder?
While under these natural feelings of indignation, I one day told Brigham Young that I thought, after all the courting that had been done—and it was not a trifle—they certainly ought to be married. ”