The 19th Wife (23 page)

I cannot think of a time when a woman had reduced me so swiftly to a quivering mass of nerves. If I were a young man, I would wax rhapsodic over the beauty before me—the eyes, the lips, the small upturned nose! Yet I am no Romeo and shall leave the wordplay to the poets.

“Is it?” she pressed. “Don’t be shy. Tell me what’s on your mind.” She was teasing me, and I could not speak. “Why, Webby! You’re as red as the rose.”

A thought entered Eleanor’s head, and her own countenance darkened. “Or is it Margaret? Have you led me all the way here to ask me about my sister?”

“I hardly know where to begin,” I said.

Up until that point I had managed to hide my true feelings from myself. Now I understood I desired both.

Both! I cannot explain what had overcome me. Perhaps the long months of Missionary work had pent up an uncontrollable longing. Perhaps something within had been starved in Liverpool, and now I was inhaling a certain kind of nourishment just as the weary emigrants devoured loaf after loaf.

I tried my best to tamp down my yearnings. “I want to marry you,” I said.

Eleanor took my arm, bringing it close to her breast. “I’ll do it,” she said. “I want to have my place in this Church.”

I deposited Eleanor at Lydia’s gate and went to speak with the Bishop. As with all government, there is a certain amount of bureaucratic lethargy encrusted around the Church’s administrators, but not so when the issue is celestial marriage. It took only a few hours to arrange. Brigham himself conducted the ceremony that afternoon. To me he advised, “Treat her with equality.”

Eleanor and I spent our wedding night at Brigham’s hotel. She had been my wife no more than twelve hours before she summoned the dressmaker and the milliner. She wasted no time drawing up a list of items she would need in her future home: a stained-glass window, a visitor’s settee, a crystal chandelier. The list lengthened by the hour. One day as Mrs. Webb, and she had nearly bankrupted me.

Yet I worried not about the expense of maintaining three houses or the envy Eleanor’s demands would install in the hearts of Elizabeth and Lydia. Instead, my worries were those of the vain young man—did Eleanor find me appealing? Did she mind my odors? How did I appear to her when I stepped outside my clothes? I am not proud of this regression to boyish idleness. Yet here I am.

Thus my follies continued. If only they ceased that day.

The day after our nuptials Margaret visited us at the hotel. Eleanor showed her sister the embroidered ribbon that, when yanked, brought the butler to the door. She laid out on the sofa the swatches of material the dressmaker had left behind. The sisters turned to the list of household items. With Margaret’s help it doubled in length.

“You’ll live with us, won’t you?” asked Eleanor.

“I don’t want to intrude on Mr. Webb.”

Eleanor leapt across the room, attaching herself to my arm. “Mind? Don’t be silly! Webby doesn’t mind a thing!”

It was now apparent I had married a frivolous girl who would drain my accounts and ignore my orders. My mistake was clear: I had chosen the wrong sister. I had only myself to blame. Soon Elizabeth and Lydia would learn of the promised crystal chandelier, and each would rightfully demand her own. I would spend the rest of my life devoted to the wagon manufactory to support my domestic situations. What had I done? For what cause? I left the sisters to unwrap a bundle of packages delivered from the shops. The packing paper crackled so loudly, they did not hear me depart.

In Payson, Elizabeth froze in shock. “Another wife?”

“It’s not like that. They’re sisters. They’ll live together.”

I had found her outside busy beating her rugs on the line, while Ann Eliza twirled on the swing hanging from a nearby tree. “I won’t do it unless you consent.”

“You don’t care what I think.”

“You’re mistaken.”

Elizabeth continued beating her rugs. “This isn’t what the Lord had in mind. He didn’t mean it to be like this.”

“What do you want me to do? Tell me, and I’ll follow your command. You’re the first Mrs. Webb, you’ll always be the first.”

“I want you to leave my house.”

“May I marry this girl?”

“I don’t care what you do.” Her beater came down hard on the rug, bursting a cloud of dust in my face. Ann Eliza laughed at her ridiculous father.

“Are you withholding your consent? Because if you are, then I’ll drop this matter right now.”

“Stop,” she said. She leaned against the side of the house, exhausted. The dust had settled on her skin, and she appeared worn and gray. “It’s your choice, we both know that.”

“The Prophet says it’s your decision.”

“The Prophet.”

It was the first time I had heard her speak of him bitterly.

“Elizabeth, what should I do?”

“Marry the girl, I don’t care.”

“Elizabeth.”

“Go. Please go.” I tried again, but she shoved me off.

When I left, Ann Eliza followed me to my wagon. “Do you want to replace Mother?”

“No, no, no, no, nothing like that at all.”

“Then what are you doing?”

I tried to explain but failed. “One day you’ll understand.”

“I doubt it.”

My daughter’s rejection continues to sting. Perhaps that has been the most troubling aspect of reading Ann Eliza’s book—learning of the hatred I had inspired in her young heart.

Margaret accepted my proposal. Only after I had her consent did I inform Eleanor. She absorbed the news sourly, claiming I had deceived her. “If you think this gets you out of buying me that chandelier, you should think again,” she yipped. “And I mean the large one with the three tiers.” I assured her she would get her chandelier.

That evening the Prophet married Margaret and myself. Our wedding night was spent in a room down the hall from Eleanor’s suite. She was now mine, but at what cost? In the morning Margaret moved into Eleanor’s rooms. They were now sister wives in all senses, and I was their fool.

What occurred next, and how this conjugal folly ended, might be taken as proof that the Lord punishes those who misinterpret His words. In less than a week I had gone from two wives to four. Almost any Saint will tell you this was not what the Lord intended in His Revelation. Even I was surprised by my conduct. As Ann Eliza reports in
The 19th Wife
, neighbors and acquaintances commented. Although four wives is a small number compared to the dozen or more among the Apostles and the most powerful Elders, and the countless Brigham himself has amassed in the Lion House, the swiftness of my third and fourth matrimonies caused more than a few tongues to flap.

During my week of matrimonial indulgence, other men more selfless than myself had continued to rescue the emigrants stranded on the trail. Day after day teams left Great Salt Lake loaded with supplies. Brigham himself headed the organizational planning. I understand a large map was posted in his office, marked with red dots between Utah and Iowa where emigrant parties waited for assistance. He led the campaign like a commander in battle, and the swiftness of his decisions would go on to save many lives. At an encampment on the Sweetwater, near the Rocky Ridges, despair had already descended on dozens of emigrants. Food was gone, and death took one emigrant after the next. The survivors, weakened themselves, exerted their final energy to dig a mass grave. But with the arrival of nourishment, the survivors’ ordeal had come to an end. Brigham’s efforts were at last saving lives.

Such a scene repeated itself across the trail. Rescuers led the hand-cart expeditions over the mountains and into the Great Salt Lake Valley. Some arrived grateful for salvation. Others arrived angry for what they perceived as treachery. Some joined the community of Saints. Others, once restored to health, left for California, abandoning the leader who had brought them so far. Throughout the autumn the emigrant parties continued to arrive. Once or twice a week they appeared at the mouth of what became known as Emigration Canyon. They would descend from the mountains in a weary column, arriving at Temple Square, just as the party that brought Eleanor and Margaret to me had done a month before.

By November, the last party reached Zion. They were the most miserable of all. Noses, ears, and fingers blackened by frostbite. Mothers of dead children wandered with their arms cupped around the ghosts of their babes. Broken men wept. It was a terrible sight, but at least it was the last of the hand-cart fiasco.

Standing on Temple Street, I witnessed these final emigrants stagger into our beloved city. With me was my most recent wife, Margaret, who thankfully never showed as much interest in her tailor as her sister did. She cried for her fellow journeymen, her own ordeal still fresh, and showered them with white chrysanthemums. It was startling to see how starvation and deprivation had removed their individuality. Each now appeared similar—eyes sunk into their skulls, cheeks carved out, lips the color of ash. I held my new wife as we watched the last of the souls pass before us. All was silent, except for the creak of the cart-wheels—the crying iron will remain in my ear until my final day. As will the shout that rose up from the mass of starving souls: “Virginie, look! It’s Mr. Webb!”

At once Mrs. Cox and Virginie ran from the parade of misery into my arms. She was as much an image of wretchedness as the other souls, but in truth even more so, for I had known her previous beauty. “Mrs. Cox, I didn’t know,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

Stunned and wordless, I led Mrs. Cox and the girl to Lydia’s cottage. Once again my second wife welcomed strangers into her home. As Lydia worked through the evening, satisfying her visitors’ needs, on occasion she shot me a glance that said all too clearly: Another wife-to-be? I took Lydia outside. “It’s not what you think,” I said.

“What do I think?”

“You think I’ve brought her here as a future wife. Well, I haven’t.”

“I hope four is enough.”

I assured Lydia four women could meet my needs. “I have another plan for Mrs. Cox. You’ll see.”

Despite my previous affection for Mrs. Cox, I had come to realize that the feelings generated for her in Liverpool had been supplanted by my present conjugal duties. My plan was this: I would reunite Mrs. Cox with Gilbert in Payson. I would be more than happy to see my son take over as her betrothed. After all, this is what he wanted. Even Elizabeth would respect this arrangement. “You’ll like Payson very much,” I told Mrs. Cox on the journey south. “I know Gilbert will be glad to see you.”

I deposited Mrs. Cox and Virginie at Elizabeth’s house. If Lydia had restrained her displeasure, Elizabeth did not hesitate to unload hers. She pulled me into the barn, where Ann Eliza was watering the horse. “Don’t tell me she’s another one of your brides.”

“No, no, no—you don’t understand. Gilbert’s the one who wants to marry her. He’s long had his heart set upon Mrs. Cox. True, she’s a widow, but she isn’t a year or two past thirty. And although she comes with a child, she also comes, I believe, with an income that should help our boy establish himself beyond our purse.”

Elizabeth softened. “Does he know she’s here?”

“I was just about to set out to find him.”

I left my wife with the feeling one has after a narrow escape from danger and located my son at the manufactory. “She’s arrived,” I reported.

“Who?”

“Mrs. Cox.”

Gilbert dropped his mallet. “Mrs. Cox? And she’s well? Virginie, too?”

“Weary but well. The child, too. Very much the same indeed. She’s waiting for you at your mother’s house.”

I was not privy to his first conversation with Mrs. Cox, but I know its outcome. Later that evening I found my son in a tavern, drunk on whiskey. I lifted him by the collar to carry him home when he said, “It’s you.”

“Of course it’s me. I’m here to take you home.”

The boy swatted me away, stumbling, trying to right himself by gripping the bar. “That’s not what I mean,” he said. “It’s you she wants.”

“You’re drunk.”

“Not drunk enough not to know that she came all this way to marry you.”

Although intoxicated by the quart, he spoke the truth. Mrs. Cox had journeyed to be my wife. I had given her enough signal to ensure, in her mind, my intentions. I had a promise to keep.

“She will be the last,” I begged of Elizabeth. “But I must go through with it.”

“Three in one month,” she said. “Three!”

“There’ll be no more. You have my word.”

“Your word.”

“I promise.”

“If you marry her, you’ll never live with me again.”

So it was. I married Mrs. Cox in Salt Lake and settled her in a cottage between Lydia’s and the one shared by Margaret and Eleanor. I have spent the years since shuttling between their beds. I do not believe I have ever in my life behaved more like a beast than during this period, for this is how a dog acts, not man. Three wedding nights in three weeks—alas, all excessive pleasures must be repaid.

Yet to say I regret my marriages would imply I regret knowing these women. Only with Eleanor is this the case. Among the others, each is a kind-hearted woman who has been asked to bear more than she should. I have vowed to them all never to marry again. I shall keep this promise. Already I had more than my share. I tried to apologize to Elizabeth. She waved me off. “What’s done is done,” she said. I tried again, but she shut her door in my face. On the third attempt she said with quiet resignation, “I forgave you long ago.”

The noteworthy sorrow had reached its climax and was now in retreat. My family, in its new form, would press on for many successful years. I only wish I could say the same for Ann Eliza. Often I wonder if it was I who set her on a path of antipathy to our faith. How else to explain the root of her rage?

Here beside my writing table lays open her book. How many people across the country hold
The 19th Wife
in their hands? How many are meeting me through its pages? And yet now that I have recounted my own memories, and peered into the well of my soul, I can see that my daughter has portrayed me with accuracy. Her words have destroyed me because they are true. She concludes her long assessment by writing, “In the end, I suppose my greatest disappointment has been in realizing my father, like Joseph and Brigham before him, tried to shroud his passions in the mantle of religion. He used God to defend his adultery. I have yet to hear him acknowledge his lies.”