Читать книгу Defense of the Faith and the Saints (Vol.1&2) - B. H. Roberts - Страница 15

Table of Contents

I have just read the "Lions of the Lord," by Harry Leon Wilson. An extended friendly review of it in a leading Utah paper volunteers the statement that "Mr. Wilson gained his principal information during a few weeks' visit in Salt Lake last fall, and some time spent over the Schroeder Mormon library, now in Iowa." No one can doubt the accuracy of the statement; the treatment of the theme bears every evidence of the author's hasty and shallow thought upon the subject with which he attempts to deal. But he "spent some time over the Schroeder Mormon library;" yes, and what is more, he was undoubtedly "coached" by Mr. Schroeder while at work in the library; for the salacious fiction which that "gentleman" of unsavory reputation in Utah used to serve up to the delectation of the readers of his "Lucifer's Lantern" is altogether too evident in Mr. Wilson's book, and justly entitled him to recognition as collaborator with Mr. Wilson in its production.

Since inadvertently the source of the author's inspiration and information is disclosed, a word respecting Mr. Schroeder, the should-be-recognized collaborator of Mr. Wilson, becomes necessary in this review. Mr. Schroeder is known to fame in Utah first as a lawyer who stands under the recorded public censure of the Supreme Court of the state of Utah for unprofessional conduct, as is witnessed in the tenth volume of the Utah Reports of the Supreme Court of the state. Secondly he is known locally as the collector of a library on Mormonism, in which prominence and preference is given to anti-Mormon works redolent of that putridity so delectable to men of debased natures and perverted tastes. Thirdly, and perhaps most prominently, he is known as the author, proprietor, and publisher of "Lucifer's Lantern," that may be described as an intermittent periodical-now some time since happily defunct—most worthy of its title and its author. It is into such hands Mr. Wilson unfortunately fell, and by such a person he was evidently "coached," in his study of Mormonism.

The evidence of all this, apart from the inadvertent admission of the friendly Utah reviewer, is to be found in the identity of the sewer-stench that attaches to the work of both; in the use of the same materials; and the adoption of similar methods. As for instance: A somewhat eccentric writer in the early days of the Mormon Church characterized a number of the prominent Church leaders under what was to him descriptive titles, such as Brigham Young, "Lion of the Lord;" Wilford Woodruff, "Banner of the Gospel;" John Taylor, "Champion of Liberty." This evidently appealed to the erratic and fantastical intellect of Mr. Schroeder, and led him to adopt as the title of his intermittent, and now defunct anti-Mormon periodical, "Lucifer's Lantern;" and on the title page of the last number of the "Lantern" he gratuitously invents for Lorenzo Snow, then President of the Mormon Church, the descriptive title—as he supposes—"Boss of Jehovah's Buckler." Now, Mr. Wilson having his attention directed to the descriptive title of early leading Mormon Elders invented by the aforesaid eccentric, though friendly writer, conceived the idea of making the chief character of his story of the number of those who had received such titles, and hence confers upon "Joel Rae," the character in his book about whom he centers all the horrors of his gruesome tale, the blasphemous title—"Lute of the Holy Ghost!" Or was it Mr. Schroeder; for one dreads to think that a man of the order of talents of Mr. Wilson could stoop to the low blasphemy of such a performance; while it is altogether in accordance both with the principles and practice of his should-be-acknowledged collaborator, Mr. Shroeder; for blatant atheism was and is the latter's pride and boast; and he was wont, as we have seen by his use of it in "Lucifer's Lantern," to ascribe fanciful titles to leading Mormons.

A word, in headlines, as to the story itself; that it is possessed of dramatic force, and literary merit will go without saying when it is known that its author is also the author of "The Spenders." That it deals with elements capable of being so combined as to produce the most intense human interest will be conceded when I say that it treats of religious fanaticism—the faith—"fanatic faith," that

"Once wedded fast

To some dear idol,

Hugs it to the last;"

of love—the theme of the ages, the one theme ever old and ever new—the theme perennial; with human passions and ambitions, the desire for that most deceitful end of all human ambitions—the desire for sanctity while living, and a reputation for holiness when dead. These the elements of the story; and now the incidents:

Joel Rae, "bred in the word and the truth" of Mormonism, if not born in it, returns to Nauvoo from a mission just upon the time that the last remnant of the Saints have departed from that ill-fated city. He finds that the home of his parents in the outskirts of Nauvoo has been destroyed by mobs; and that his aged father and mother were driven into Nauvoo, where they are for the time under the protection of an apostate family; that his fiancee, with her family, has turned from the faith, and she is only awaiting his arrival to ascertain if he will join her in her apostasy. This he refuses to do, and with his parents prepares to follow his expatriated people in their great westward movement. While being ferried over the Mississippi, the aged father of young Rae—the son not being present—is pitched into the river by ruffian hands and is drowned; his aged mother dies from the shock of the horrible murder; and young Rae, made desperate by those events, becomes a "Son of Dan," a supposed secret society of the blood and thunder order, oath-bound to "support the First Presidency of the Church of, Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in all things, right or wrong!" He forms one of the band of pioneers which Brigham Young led to the Salt Lake valley in 1847, and gives numerous evidences of increasing fanaticism, much to the delight of the Mormon leaders, which delight is here and there expressed in silly, blasphemous sentences of which the following is a fair sample: "When that young man [Rae] gets all het up with the Holy Ghost, the Angel of the Lord just has to give down!" In the new home of the Saints young Rae does his full share of both manual and spiritual labor. In the latter he succeeded too well since he preached better, worked more seeming miracles, and prophesied more than the other "Lions of the Lord." Brigham declares him "soul proud," and sends him to the Missouri river in 1857 to bring in the handcart companies, in which expedition he witnesses enough distress and misery to humble the most "soul proud" man alive, since the sufferings of the handcart companies from cold, famine and over toil is the result of his own bad judgement in starting late in the season. Arriving in Salt Lake, however, his fanatical preaching starts a "reformation," i.e., an outburst of wild fanaticism attended upon by murders, and voluntary submissions to secret executions, to atone for the commission of the more heinous sins. Rae's fanaticism makes him a participant in the Mountain Meadows massacre in which it falls to his lot to kill the young militia captain—Grimway—who had assisted Rae to leave Nauvoo, and who subsequently married the woman to whom Rae was betrothed. She, too, was with the emigrants attacked at Mountain Meadows, and Rae, after killing her husband, saw her murdered and scalped by an Indian. From the number of emigrants doomed to death Rae rescued a white-haired boy and the little daughter of his one-time betrothed wife, Prudence Corson. The boy he leaves at Hamblin's ranch, whence he escapes, swearing vengeance against Rae, whom he saw kill the father of the little girl—Prudence Grimway. The girl Prudence—named after her mother—Rae leaves at a neighboring ranch, claiming her as his own child, for whom he will later return. Haunted by the memories of the awful slaughter of the gentile emigrants at Mountain Meadows, he goes north, actively participates in the resistance to the United States' army under Albert Sidney Johnston, then entering Utah, but is disgusted with the final submission of Brigham Young to United States authority, and takes up his abode in a new settlement far to the south of Salt Lake City, and not far from the Mountain Meadows. Here his life of penance begins. In a spirit of self-sacrifice he marries a woman with but one hand, and a disfigured face. The hand she lost by having it frozen while pushing a hand cart in the belated company Rae had led to Utah years before. He also married another woman—a poor half-starved, cast off wife of a prominent Mormon Bishop; and later still, another wife, a shallow-witted, talkative creature who is a cross indeed to the "man of many sorrows." He takes under his protection also a poor imbecile man, the victim of a horrible, and unnameable mutilation; and a woman who had gone insane because her husband married another wife. The wives, to his honor be it said, were such in name only. This collection of the woebegone, with the child Prudence added, make up the Rae household. The girl Prudence becomes beautiful, of course, and is much sought by men of middle life already possessed of many wives, no less a personage than Brigham Young being among the number; and it is represented that the latter "suitor" had but to send word in advance to the foster father of his intention to marry the girl on his next journey south, in order to close the matrimonial incident, except the formal word-ceremony, and taking away the bride! But Miss Prudence had visited Salt Lake, and while there witnessed the performance at the theater of "Romeo and Juliet," which is sufficient to give her ideas of love and matrimony all her own. The balcony scene much impressed her; and ever afterwards became her ideal of expressed love. A few years of dreaming on the part of the maiden, and a few years of silent suffering on the part of Joel Rae, now the "little man of sorrows," then the lad of the Meadows, Ruel Follett, who escaped from Hamblin's ranch swearing vengeance on Rae and two other participants in the massacre, returns, seeking his revenge. He is now a young man, handsome, brave, strong, aggressive. But he is baffled in his mission of retribution. Two of the murderers he seeks are already dead some time since, and Rae is so pitifully weak and distraught by the haunting memories of that awful butchery that young Follett cannot find the heart to kill him; besides there is Prudence, who loves the "little man of sorrows" with true filial affection. The upshot of it all is that young Follett leaves to time the duty of taking off Rae—an event that cannot be long deferred, since the little man is fast hastening to the end of his earthly career; and meantime Follett insidiously woos Prudence, and wins her love; while she makes an unsuccessful effort to convert him to Mormonism. In all their readings, and conversations upon the Book of Mormon and other subjects connected with the Mormon religion, Follett is given an easy victory over the poor girl by the employment of covert sneers, slightly concealed sarcasms and tender ridicule. Meantime Joel Rae has lost his faith in Mormonism; he discovers that polygamy is wrong; the Saints abandoned of God; and on the occasion of Brigham Young paying his annual visit to the settlement where Rae lives, he tells the prophet and the people his discoveries. Anticipating the vengeance of the "Sons of Dan," Rae flies to the cross and cairn of stones erected on the site of the Mountain Meadows massacre, that he may die—according to orthodox dramatic canons—at the place where his awful crime was committed. He is followed by Prudence and young Follett, who come up to him at the cross erected by Gentile hands on the site of the massacre, where, in company with two Indians, they watched him peacefully pass away in a rather protracted death scene, to the accompaniment of an Indian tom-tom drum, and notwithstanding one of the redmen waves before his eyes the yellow scalp-lock which years before he had seen reeking with blood snatched from the head of the woman he loved. Young Follett and Prudence, as soon as the "little man of sorrows" is buried, leave for the east with a passing wagon train, and having been married by Rae a few minutes before his death, the reader is left to infer that they "lived happily ever after," in some eastern city, far, far away from fanatical Mormons, and their wickedness, where only monogamous marriages obtain, and conjugal happiness is never disturbed by the haunting fears of marital infidelities, or polygamy, simultaneous or consecutive.

I have been at the pains to give this rather full synopsis of the story, that my readers may be witnesses of the fact that Mr. Wilson has certainly massed enough of gruesome materials to furnish to repletion several chambers of horrors. Far be it from me to suggest that so prominent an author has stooped to the methods of yellow-backed, ten-cent novelists of a quarter of a century ago, in the matter at least of the quality and mass of incidents to be woven into story. This glance at the incidents of the story also reveals the opportunity they will afford the author for gathering into one view the bigotry, ignorance, weakness, fanaticism, and wickedness of individual Mormons, all to be interwoven with the mockery, sarcasm, ridicule, ribaldry, innuendo and insults of their enemies.

And now, as to the treatment of the theme. The author of the "Lions of the Lord" in his opening chapter—the prettiest piece of descriptive writing in the book—has drawn heavily upon, if he has not actually plagiarized from, the lecture of the late General Thomas L. Kane, of Philadelphia, delivered before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, on March 26, 1850. Mr. Wilson heads his first chapter "The Dead City," meaning Nauvoo after the departure of the last of the Mormons. Mr. Kane opens his Lecture under the caption "The Deserted City," meaning Nauvoo after the departure of the last of the Mormons. Mr. Wilson makes his hero, Joel Rae, enter the "dead city" in "September." Mr. Kane enters "the deserted city" late in the "autumn." Mr. Wilson's hero "from a skiff in mid-river" views the temple on the hill top; presently "landing at the wharf, he was stunned by the hush of the streets." Mr. Kane "procured a skiff," and rowing across the river, "landed at the chief wharf of the city. No one met me there. I looked and saw no one. I could hear no one move, though the quiet everywhere was such that I could hear the flies buzz."

The closeness with which Mr. Wilson follows Mr. Kane's beautifully descriptive passages, however, will best be seen and appreciated when placed in parallel paragraphs, as follows:

Mr. Wilson. "The Dead City."	Mr. Kane. "The Deserted City."
"The city without life lay handsomely along a river in the early sunlight of a September morning. … .From the half-circle around which the broad river bent its moody current, the neat houses, set in cool green gardens, were terraced up the high hill, and from the summit of this a stately marble temple, glittering of newness, towered far above them in placid benediction."	"Half encircled by the bend of the river, a beautiful city lay glittering in the fresh [autumn] morning sun; its bright new dwellings, set in cool green gardens, ranging up around a stately dome shaped hill which was crowned by a noble marble edifice, whose high tapering spire was radiant with white and gold."
"Mile after mile the streets lay silent, along the river front, up to the hilltop, and beyond into the level. … And when they had run their length, and the outlying fields were reached, there, too, the same brooding spell-and the land stretched away in the hush and haze."	"The city appeared to cover several miles; and beyond it, in the background, there rolled off a fair country, checquered by the careful lines of fruitful husbandry."
"The yellow grain, heavy-headed with richness, lay beaten down and rotting, for there were no reapers. The city, it seemed, had died calmly, painlessly, drowsily, as if overcome by sleep."	"Fields upon fields of heavy headed yellow grain lay rotting ungathered upon the ground. No one was at hand to take in their rich harvest. As far as the eye could reach, they stretched away, they sleeping, too, in the hazy air of autumn."
"He started wonderingly up a street that led from the i waterside. … He was now passing empty workshops, hesitating door after door with ever mounting alarm. … . Growing bolder, he tried some of the doors and found them to yield. … . He passed an empty rode walk, the hemp strewn about, as if the workers had left hurriedly. He peered curiously at idle looms and deserted spinning wheels—deserted apparently but the instant before he came … He entered a carpenter's shop. On the bench was an unfinished door, a plane where it had been shoved half the length of its edge, the fresh pine shaving still curling over the side. … . He turned into a baker's shop and saw freshly chopped kindling piled against the oven, and dough actually on the kneading tray. In a tanner's vat he found fresh bark. In a blacksmith's shod he entered next the fire was out, but there was coal headed beside the forge, with the ladling pool and the crooked water horn, and on the anvil was a horseshoe that had cooled before it was finished."	"I walked through the solitary streets. … I went about unchecked. I went into empty workshops, ropewalks and smithies. The spinner's wheel was idle; the carpenter had gone from his work bench and shavings, his unfinished sash and casing. Fresh bark was in the tanner's vat, and the fresh chopped lightwood stood piled against the baker's oven. The blacksmith shop was cold, but his coal heap, and lading pool, and crooked water horn were all there as if he had just gone off for a holiday."
"He entered one of the gardens, clinking the gate-latch loudly after him, but no one challenged. He drew a drink from the Well with its loud rattling chain and clumsy water-bucket, but no one called. At the door of the house he pounded, and at last flung it open with all the noise he could make. Still his hungry ears fed on nothing but sinister echoes, and barren husks of his clamour. There was no curt voice of a man, no quick questioning tread of a woman. There were dead white ashes on the hearth, and the silence was grimly kept by the dumb household gods."	"If I went into the gardens, linking the wicket latch after me, to pull the marigolds, heart's ease and lady slippers and draw a drink with the water-sodden bucket and its noisy chain, or knocked off with my stick the tall headed dahlias and sunflowers, hunting over the beds for cucumbers and love-apples; no one called out to me from any open window, or dog sprang forward to bark alarm. I could have supposed the people hidden in their houses, but the doors were unfastened; and when at last I timidly entered them, I found dead ashes white upon the hearth, and had to tread a-tip-toe as if walking down the aisles of a country church."

Mr. Wilson certainly has a remarkably similar taste to that of Colonel Kane for flowers and gardens. Young Rae meets Prudence in the gardens—now observe:

Mr. Wilson.	Mr. Kane.
"He ran to her—over beds of marigolds, heart's ease and lady slippers, through a row of drowsy looking heavy headed dahlias, and passed other withering flowers, all but choked out by the rank garden growths of late summer."	"If I went into the gardens … to pull the marigolds, heart's ease and lady slippers, … or knock off the tall, heavy headed dahlias and the sunflowers, hunting over the beds for cucumbers and love-apples—no one called out to me."

After Mr. Wilson had followed General Kane in the matter of flowers so closely, one marvels that he did not go with him as far as the "sunflowers and love-apples;" but General Kane was hunting "over beds of cucumbers," and perhaps the author of the "Lions of the Lord" found that his taste for vegetables did not run so closely with the General's in the vegetable line as in the matter of flowers. But seriously, does not the code of ethics in literature require that our rising young author should either have the grace to put these descriptive passages in quotation marks, or else frankly give the source whence he draws the prettiest bits of description in his much-vaunted book? In the event of the work reaching a second edition, I suggest that he adopt the whole of General Kane's description of "The Deserted City," for his opening chapter; for beautiful as his own is, it but shines with a borrowed light, and when compared with the General's it appears to great disadvantage.

A word as to the purpose of the "Lions of the Lord;" for Mr. Wilson's performance must be classified with the "purpose novel." Undoubtedly there is such a thing as instructive fiction, and the "purpose novel" has its place as one of the agencies which contribute to the enlightenment of humanity. But if it takes hold of our respect it must be, in harmony with the truth—though fiction, it must speak truly; and keep within the probabilities of the subject in hand. Or, to slightly paraphrase an utterance in Mr. Wilson's preface, if the writer now and again has to divine certain things that do not show—yet must be—surely this must not be less than truth. For a writer of "purpose fiction" to do other than this is to make himself as much liable to censure as the historian who would pervert the truth which he is in honor bound to state whether it fits in with his personal theories or not. In his preface, Mr. Wilson informs us that he designed to make a tale from his observations of western life in Salt Lake and Utah; but in his search for things on which to found his fiction he was so dismayed by facts so much more thrilling than any fiction he might have imagined, that he turned from his first purpose in order "to try to tell what had really been." "In this story then," says he, "the things that are strangest have most truth. The make-believe is hardly more than a cement to join the queerly wrought stones of fact that were found ready." Hence we are to be turned from considering his work as fiction in order to regard it as truth.

It is exactly at this point that I arraign Mr. Wilson before the bar of public opinion, and tell him that what he represents as true I denounce as false; and this quite apart from any books from which he has paraphrased much of the matter he weaves into his story. The trouble is that the sources whence he makes his deductions are as untrue in their statements as his paraphrases of them are. Mr. Wilson is as one who walks through some splendid orchard and gathers here and there the worm-eaten, frost-bitten, wind-blasted, growth-stunted and rotten fruit, which in spite of the best of care is to be found in every orchard; bringing this to us he says: "This is the fruit of yonder orchard; you see how worthless it is; an orchard growing such fruit is ready for the burning." Whereas, the fact may be that there are tons and tons of beautiful, luscious fruit, as pleasing to the eye as it would be agreeable to the palate, remaining in the orchard to which he does not call our attention at all. Would not such a representation of the orchard be an untruth, notwithstanding his blighted specimens were gathered from its trees? If he presents to us the blighted specimens of fruit from the orchard, is he not in truth and in honor bound also to call our attention to the rich harvest of splendid fruit that still remains ungathered before he asks us to pass judgement on the orchard? I am not so blind in my admiration of the Mormon people, or so bigoted in my devotion to the Mormon faith as to think that there are no individuals in that Church chargeable with fanaticism, folly, intemperate speech and wickedness; nor am I blind to the fact that some in their over-zeal have lacked judgement; and that in times of excitement, under stress of special provocation, even Mormon leaders have given utterance to ideas that are indefensible. But I have yet to learn that it is just in a writer of history or of "purpose fiction," that "must speak truly," to make a collection of these things and represent them as of the essence of that faith against which said writer draws an indictment.

"No one would measure the belief of Christians," says a truly great writer, "by certain statements in the Fathers, nor judge the moral principles of Roman Catholics by prurient quotations from the casuists; nor yet estimate Lutherans by the utterances and deeds of the early successors of Luther, nor Calvanists by the burning of Servitus. In such cases the general standpoint of the times has to taken into account." (Edeshiem's Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, preface, page 8.)

A long time ago the great Edmund Burke, in his defense of the rashness expressed in both speech and action some of our patriots of the American Revolution period, said: "It is not fair to judge of the temper or the disposition of any man or set of men when they are composed and at rest from their conduct or their expressions in a state of disturbance and irritation." The justice of Burke's assertion has never been questioned, and without any wresting whatsoever it may be applied to Mormon leaders who sometimes spoke and acted under the recollection of rank injustice perpetrated against themselves and their people; or rebuke rising evils against which their souls revolted.

Mr. Wilson's book is a false indictment against Mormonism, and against the leading characters of the Mormon Church. The speeches he represents as falling from their lips, could never be recognized in the utterances of Mormons, either among the leaders, or the rank and file. The blasphemous phraseology was never heard in Mormon camps or pulpits. Such expressions as "When that young man gets all het up with the Holy Ghost, the angel of the Lord just has to give down;" or "Lord, what won't Brother Brigham do when the Holy Ghost gets a strangle-holt on him?" are blasphemies utterly impossible to the Mormon mind. Such expressions as the following, represented as coming from Brigham Young: "The Lute of the Holy Ghost will now say a word of farewell from our pioneers to those who must stay behind," is equally impossible; and so are many other speeches which he puts into the mouths of leading characters of the Mormon Church. Even this blasphemous phrase-name given to Joel Rae—"Lute of the Holy Ghost"—is not original with Mr. Wilson. It was a cognomen given to Ephraem Syrus, "the greatest man," says Andrew D. White, author of "A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom,"—"the greatest man of the old Syrian Church, widely known as the 'Lute of the Holy Ghost.'" [1]

The most serious injustice Mr. Wilson does the Mormon people, however, the thing in which he most departs from the facts established, not only by history but by the decisions of the United States courts in Utah, is in that he makes the awful crime of the massacre of emigrants at Mountain Meadows, in 1857, the crime of the Mormon Church. Over and over again in fact he makes that charge, and represents his chief character, "Joel Rae," as seeking to take upon himself the sins of the "Church" for committing that crime; and in one place represents him as saying: "For fifteen years I have lain in hell for the work this Church did at Mountain Meadows." To bear false witness against one's neighbor even in matters that may be trivial, is a contemptible crime; but when in bearing false witness the charge is that of murder, wholesale murder, and that under circumstances the most revolting and horrible, the crime then of bearing false witness rises above the merely contemptible, and to be seen in its true enormity, must be regarded as bearing a due proportion to the crime charged. That is, next to being guilty of the crime itself must be the crime of falsely charging it to the innocent. I care nothing for the fact that the predecessors of Mr. Wilson, in works of fiction on the West have made similar charges. He will not be justified in following their evil example. A man of his standing in the world of letters, starting out to "try to tell what had really been," to write fiction that must speak "no less than truth"—he was under obligations both to himself and the people to whom his message should go, to investigate all the facts, and speak truly in harmony with them in every case.

It is not necessary here to enter into any argument or even produce the evidence that the Mormon Church was in no wise responsible, in no wise connected with the awful butchery at Mountain Meadows. The evidence of these things appear upon the very surface of our history in Utah, and also in decisions of United States judges who would only have been too happy to have implicated the Mormon Church officials in that awful crime if it had been possible. In fact they tried to so fix the responsibility, and failed. But it is enough here to tell Mr. Wilson, that he has Committed an act of injustice for which I would not like to stand responsible at the judgement bar of God; I am confident that he will be driven to the necessity of choosing between these alternatives: either that he has consciously spoken contrary to truth in the matter; or else he has given merely surface consideration to one side of the subject only which he represents himself as having considered profoundly; in either event Mr. Wilson has assumed a most serious responsibility.

[1 Vol. I, p. 92 of work named in text.]