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BOOK REVIEWS - POETRY 5. Saint Abe and his Seven Wives (1872) Saint Abe and His Seven Wives: a Tale of Salt Lake City (1872) The Daily News (9 December, 1871 - Issue 7992) SAINT ABE AND HIS SEVEN WIVES.*
_____ If the author of a “Tale of Salt Lake City” be not a new poet, he is certainly a writer of exceedingly clever and effective verse. They have the ring of originality, and they indicate ability to produce something still more remarkable than this very remarkable little piece. Even if it cannot be classed among poetry of the first order, it merits a place among works which everyone reads with genuine satisfaction. It is a piece which subserves one of the chief ends of poetry, that of telling a tale in an unusually forcible and pleasant way.
Saint Abe, otherwise known as Brother Abraham Clewson, is the hero of the chief poem. Another story, entitled “Joe Wilson’s Courtship,” is quite as curious as that which relates the life, and fall, and fate of St. Abe. Joe Wilson, a team-driver on the Prairie, falls in love with Cissy, a young widow who keeps a ranche and is quite prepared to wed again. Joe Wilson is
A Western boy well known to fame.
He goes about the dangerous land
His life for ever in his hand;
Has lost three fingers in a fray,
Has scalp'd his Indian, too, they say;
Between the White man and the Red
Four times he hath been left for dead;
Can drink, and swear, and laugh, and brawl,
And keeps his big heart thro’ it all
Tender for babes and women.
Joe’s courtship prospers till an Apostle, Hiram Higginson, pays a visit to the ranche, and sets himself to convert Cissy to Mormonism:
Three nights he stayed, and every night
He squeezed her hand a bit more tight;
And every night he didn’t miss
To give a loving kiss to Ciss;
And tho’ his fust was on her brow,
He ended with her mouth, somehow.
Ciss is so much edified by the Apostle’s interpretation of the Book of Mormon that she tells Joe “read aright, it is a book of blessed light,” breaks with him, and goes off to become the Apostle’s sixth wife,
And one fine morning off they druv
To what he called the Abode of Love—
A darn’d old place, it seems to me,
Jest like a dove-box on the tree,
Where every lonesome woman soul
Sits shivering in her own hole,
And on the outside, free to choose,
The old cock-pigeon struts and coos.
Joe has the miserable satisfaction of thinking that she finds out her mistake, when too late, and that she was quite ready to forsake the Apostle, if he would but take her, but that he disdains to take “a Saint’s leavings.” This tale is told as he drives the Stranger to Salt Lake City, the approach to which is depicted in spirited and beautiful lines. When first beheld, Joe
Said quick and sharp, shading his eyes
With sunburnt hand, “See, theer it lies—
Theer’s Sodom!”
And even as he cried,
The mighty valley we decried,
Burning below us in one ray
Of liquid light that Summer day;
And far away, ’mid peaceful gleams
Of flocks and herds and glistering streams,
Rose fair as aught that fancy paints,
The wondrous City of the Saints.
Arrived at Salt Lake City, the Stranger takes part in a conversation between Bishop Pete and Bishop Joss, both of the latter lament that the times are out of joint and that the portents are ominous, but chiefly bemoan the signs of weakness in their own camp, and in particular the shortcomings of Saint Abe. Bishop Pete thinks that the Yankees will be the ruin of Utah, owing to the external pressure they are bringing to bear, whereas Bishop Joss is of opinion that “’Tain’t from without the biler’ll bust, but ’cause of steam inside it”:
It isn’t Jonathan, I guess, would hurt us in a hurry,
But there’s sedition east and west, and secret revolution,
There’s canker in the social breast, rot in the Constitution;
And over half of us, at least, are plunged in mad vexation,
Forgetting how our race increased, our very creed’s foundation.
What’s our religious strength and force, its substance, and its story? STRANGER. Polygamy, my friend, of course, the law of love and glory! BISHOP PETE. Stranger, I’m with you there, indeed:—it’s been the best of nusses;
Polygamy is to our creed what meat and drink to us is.
Destroy that notion any day, and all the rest is brittle,
And Mormondom dies clean away like one in want of vittle.
It’s meat and drink, it’s life, it’s power! to Heaven its breath doth win us!
It warms our vitals every hour! it’s Holy Ghost within us!
Jest lay that notion on the shelf, and all life’s springs are frozen!
I’ve half a dozen wives myself, and wish I had a dozen!
Bishop Joss goes on to relate how he married his aunt Tabitha Brooks to Abraham Clewson, in the hope that she, “a virgin under fifty,” who had seen all the vanities of life, “was just the sort of wife to save poor Abe from ruin.” Tabitha kept both Saint Abe and his household in order. The Saint, however, did not perfectly appreciate the favour conferred, and, although “his house was peaceful as a church, all solemn, still, and stately,” yet “he’d tremble at the porch, and look about him faintly.” One day Anne Jones, a Yankee maiden, aged fourteen, arrives, saying that her father having been killed, she comes to her father’s friend for protection. He takes charge of the girl, educates her, and when at eighteen she had become very beautiful, he makes her his seventh wife. Bishop Joss disapproves of this, because he had desired to take sister Anne to wife, and several other Saints had cherished the same wish, but Brother Abe was one too many for them. The Stranger visits Saint Abe, and thus depicts his seven wives:—
Sister Tabitha, thirty odd,
Rising up with a stare and a nod;
Sister Amelia, sleepy and mild,
Freckled, Dudu-ish, suckling a child;
Sister Fanny, pert and keen,
Sister Emily, solemn and lean,
Sister Mary, given to tears,
Sister Sarah, with wool in her ears;—
All appearing like tapers wan
In the mellow sunlight of Sister Anne.
This much-married Mormon is described at length; the conclusion being that he was—
A Saint devoid of saintly sham,
Is little Brother Abraham.
Brigham’s right hand he used to be—
Mild though he seems, and simple, and free.
Sister Anne is depicted as
Frank and innocent, and in sooth
Full of the first fair flush of youth.
Quite a child—nineteen years old,
Not gushing, and self-possessed, and bold,
Like our Yankee women at nineteen,
But low of voice, and mild of mien—
More like the fresh young fruit you see
In the Mother-land across the sea—
More like that rosiest flower on earth,
A blooming maiden of English birth,
Such as we find them yet awhile
Scatter’d about the homely Isle,
Not yet entirely eaten away
By the canker-novel of the day,
Or curling up and losing their scent
In a poisonous dew from the Continent.
After leaving the house the Stranger walks along the streets, recording in rhymes the talk of the passers-by. He next visits the Temple, where President Brigham Young is preaching, and reproduces his sermon in very apt verse, “Feminine whispers” between each stanza serving the purpose of a chorus. We have room for the first and last stanzas only:
Sisters and brothers who love the right,
Saints whose hearts are divinely beating,
Children rejoicing in the light,
I reckon this is a pleasant meeting.
Where’s the face with a look of grief?
Jehovah’s with us and leads the battle;
We’ve had a harvest beyond belief,
And the signs of fever have left the cattle;
All still blesses the holy life;
Here is the land of milk and honey. A faithful vine at the door of the Lord,
A shining flower in the garden of spirits,
A lute whose strings are of sweet accord,
Such is the person of saintly merits.
Sisters and brothers, behold and strive
Up to the level of his perfection;
Sow, and harrow, and dig, and thrive,
Increase according to God’s direction.
This is the Happy Land, no doubt,
Where each may flourish in his vocation. . .
Brother Bantam will now give out
The hymn of love and of jubilation.
The scene changes to where the prophet and his elders are holding session, deciding various questions relating to the flock, among others whether formal praise would be beseeming to Brother Fleming for having extracted “from three or four potatoes, not much bigger than his great toes,” “four stone six, and nothing under.” While they are deliberating, a messenger comes and announces that “Brother Abe’s skedaddled.” He had gone off with Sister Anne. Brigham said, “With his own sealed wife eloping, It’s a case of craze past hoping.” His letter of explanation is read, beginning:
O Brother, Prophet of the Light!—don’t let my state distress you,
While from the depths of darkest night I cry, “Farewell! God bless you!”
I don’t deserve a parting tear, nor even a malediction,
Too weak to fill a saintly sphere, I yield to my affliction;
Down like a cataract I shoot into the depths below you,
While you stand wondering and mute, my last adieu I throw you.
He proceeds to explain that his situation had become intolerable; his wives were unruly and, what was worse, disrespectful; while he could not control them: “The pastor trembled at his sheep, the sheep despised the pastor.” Each successive wife had proved an additional mistake. Even when he had six, still his lot was lonely: “My house was like a cobbler’s shop, full, though with misfits only.” When he added Sister Anne to the number, he found that she was the wife for whom he had sought in vain. The others were jealous of her:
Ah me, the many nagging ways of women are amazing,
Their cleverness solicits praise, their cruelty is crazing!
And Sister Annie hadn’t been a single day their neighbour,
Before a baby could have seen her life would be a labour.
He resolves, then, to fly with the wife he loves, and who loves him, leaving his property to be divided among those left behind. He concludes his epistle by apostrophising Brigham:
I go, with backward-looking face, and spirit rent asunder.
O may you prosper in your place, for you’re a shining wonder!
So strong, so sweet, so mild, so good!—by Heaven’s dispensation
Made Husband to a multitude and Father to a nation.
Some time afterwards the Stranger meets Abraham Clewson and his wife Anne, at their farm in New England, and hears the tale of what happened after his departure from Salt Lake City:
Fanny and Amelia got
Sealed to Brigham on the spot;
Emmy soon consoled herself
In the arms of Brother Delf;
And poor Mary, one fine day
Packed her traps and tripped away
Down to Frisco with Fred Bates,
A young player from the States;
While Sarah—’twas the wisest plan—
Picked herself a single man—
A young joiner, fresh come down
Out of Texas to the town—
And he took her with her baby,
And they’re doing well as maybe.
As for Tabitha, she was
All alone and doing splendid—
Jest you guess, now, how she’s ended!
Give it up? This very week
I heard she’s at Oneida Creek,
All alone and doing hearty,
Down with Brother Noyes’s party,
Tried the Shakers first, they say,
Tired of them and went away,
Testing with a deal of bother
This community and t’other
Till she to Oneida flitted,
And with trouble got admitted.
Bless you, she’s a shining lamp,
Tho’ I used her like a scamp,
And she’s great in exposition
Of the Free Love folk’s condition,
Vowing, tho’ she found it late,
’Tis the only happy state.
The conclusion to which Saint Abe arrives is the natural one that he is far happier with one wife who loves him than when surrounded with several who are constantly bickering. If it be the author’s purpose to furnish a new argument against polygamous Mormons, by showing the ridiculous side of their system, he has perfectly succeeded. The extracts we have given show the varied, fluent, and forcible character of his verse. We ought to add that a neatly versified dedication to Chaucer constitutes the Introduction. None who read about Saint Abe and his Seven Wives can fail to be amused and to be gratified alike by the manner of the verse and the matter of the tale. * “Saint Abe and his Seven Wives; a Tale of Salt Lake City.” London: Strahan and Co., 1872. ___ Glasgow Herald (9 December, 1871 - Issue 9966) LITERATURE.
_____ SAINT ABE AND HIS SEVEN WIVES: a Tale of Salt Lake City. Strahan & Co., London. 1872. THE present poem is by an anonymous author, but the freshness of the story, and the amount of feeling and power of sarcasm which it displays, are sufficient to prevent his name being long concealed. He writes as an American—dating from Newport—and there is every indication that the book is really as American as it professes. Its pictures of Western life singularly resemble those of recent trustworthy travellers like Mr Farquhar Rae, and there seems no reason to doubt that the author is at least familiar, by long intercourse and close observation, with the society and the institution he describes. He permits himself a certain Chaucerian breadth of statement and vividness of colouring for which he thinks it better to prepare his readers beforehand. For our own part, we must say that we have seen nothing to justify his alarm. Remembering Mr Swinburne, one is a little afraid when a poet announces that he is not writing for boarding-school girls; but if the subject of polygamy and monogamy were a fit subject for these young ladies, we should say that it could hardly be discussed in a fairer or juster or more proper spirit. Brigham Young and his followers have compelled the Americans to discuss it as a very practical one, and the poem before us discusses it, not of course in a set argument, but in the way in which a close observation of the natural effects of polygamy upon different natures necessarily presents it to the mind.
The poem consists of three parts—a sort of introduction in which the writer is approaching Utah, a description of life there, and a sketch of the after life of two people who have left it and look back with wonder on their past. The second and third parts present us with the same story—the history of Abraham Clewson (Saint Abe) and his seven wives. The introduction presents us with some perfectly different people, noway related to Saint Abe. Were it not that the pictures in the introduction seem to us, at least, as vigorous and lifelike as those in the body of the book, we should have preferred to see the introduction all but abolished in the next edition. In its present disjointed state, it gives the book an appearance of two separate poetical papers on Mormonism tied together by the accident of a tape. Had it but been for form’s sake, Cissy and Hiram Higginson and Joe Wilson might surely have been tacked on somehow to the history of Abraham Clewson.
Joe Wilson is a western driver, who, in driving the stranger—i.e., the poet—towards Utah, passes a spot which arouses bitter memories. There lived Cissy whom he courted, and was almost engaged to marry, but whom the Mormon apostle, the “holy Hiram Higginson,” had got hold of and induced to go off with him to be sealed as one of his wives in Salt Lake City. The picture of Cissy is very good and very new:—
And down I’d jump, and all the go
Was “Fortune, boss!” and “Welcome, Joe!”
And Cissy with her shining face,
Tho’ she was missus of the place,
Stood larfing, hands upon her hips;
And when upon her rosy lips
I put my mouth and gave her one,
She’d cuff me, and enjoy the fun!
She was a widow young and tight,
Her chap had died in a free fight,
And here she lived, and round her had
Two chicks, three brothers, and her dad,
All making money fast as hay,
And doing better every day.
Waal! guess tho’ I was peart and swift,
Spooning was never much my gift;
But Cissy was a gal so sweet,
So fresh, so spicy, and so neat,
It put your wits all out o’ place,
Only to star’ into her face.
Skin whiter than a new-laid egg,
Lips full of juice, and sech a leg!
A smell about her, morn and e’en,
Like fresh-bleach’d linen on a green;
And from her hand when she took mine
The warmth ran up like sherry wine;
And if in liquor I made free
To pull her larfing on my knee,
Why, there she’d sit, and feel so nice,
Her heer all scent, her breath all spice!
This buxom young widow had taken Joe’s fancy, but his true love was crossed:—
The Apostle Hiram Higginson!
Grey as a badger’s was his heer,
His age was over sixty year
(Her grandfather was little older),
So short, his head just touch’d her shoulder;
His face all grease, his voice all puff,
His eyes two currants stuck in duff;—
Call thet a man!—then look at me!
Thretty year old and six foot three,
Afear’d o’ nothing morn nor night,
The man don’t walk I wouldn’t fight!
Women is women! Thet’s their style—
Talk reason to them and they’ll bile;
But baste ’em soft as any pigeon,
With lies and rubbish and religion;
Don’t talk of flesh and blood and feeling,
But Holy Ghost and blessed healing;
Don’t name things in too plain a way,
Look a heap warmer than you say,
Make ’em believe they’re serving true
The Holy Spirit and not you,
Prove all the world but you’s damnation,
And call your kisses jest salvation;
Do this, and press ’em on the sly,
You’re safe to win ’em. Jest you try!
The casual word pictures of scenery are extremely vigorous, and reveal the hand of a master. One needn’t go through the story. Of course,
Cissy goes to Utah—finds it another guess sort of paradise from that she expected—goes peeking and puling about the house of her lord and master—gets pulled down by suckling everlasting babies, and Joe drives his fare into full view of the Mormon City:—
From pool to pool the wild beck sped
Beside us, dwindled to a thread.
With mellow verdure fringed around
It sang along with summer sound:
Here gliding into a green glade;
Here darting from a nest of shade
With sudden sparkle and quick cry,
As glad again to meet the sky;
Here whirling off with eager will
And quickening tread to turn a mill;
Then stealing from the busy place
With duskier depths and wearier pace
In the blue void above the beck
Sailed with us, dwindled to a speck,
The hen-hawk; and from pools below
The blue-wing’d heron oft rose slow,
And upward passed with measured beat
Of wing to seek some new retreat.
Blue was the heaven and darkly bright,
Suffused with throbbing golden light,
And in the burning Indian ray
A million insects hummed at play.
Soon, by the margin of the stream,
We passed a driver with his team
Bound for the City; then a hound
Afar off made a dreamy sound;
And suddenly the sultry track
Left the green canyon at our back,
And sweeping round a curve, behold!
We came into the yellow gold
Of perfect sunlight on the plain;
And Joe abruptly drawing rein,
Said quick and sharp, shading his eyes
With sunburnt hand, “See, theer it lies—
Theer’s Sodom!” And even as he cried,
The mighty Valley we descried,
Burning below us in one ray
Of liquid light that summer day;
And far away, ’mid peaceful gleams
Of flocks and herds and glistering streams,
Rose, fair as aught that fancy paints,
The wondrous City of the Saints!
At the Salt Lake City we find a couple of bishops talking with the stranger in the summer evening among the pastures, grumbling especially about the inadequacy of Abraham Clewson,—a good man, who is supposed to be a kind of confidential adviser of the Prophet—to his duties as a polygamist. Abraham had five wives, but he couldn’t govern them, because he was soft-hearted, and any one of them could make a fool of him in turn. In fact, he was the kind of soft-hearted person for whom one woman—at a time, at least—is quite enough. Accordingly, his house was not full of happiness. Bishop Joss explains the case—
Tho’ day by day he did increase his flock, his soul was shallow,
His brains were only candle-grease, and wasted down like tallow.
He stoop’d a mighty heap too much, and let his household rule him,
The weakness of the man was such that any face could fool him.
Aye! made his presence cheap, no doubt, and so contempt grew quicker,—
Not measuring his notice out in smallish drams, like liquor.
His house became a troublous house, with mischief overbrimmin’,
And he went creeping like a mouse among the cats of women.
Ah, womenfolk are hard to rule, their tricks is most surprising,
It’s only a dern’d spoony fool goes sentimentalising!
But give ’em now and then a bit of notice and a present,
And lor, they’re just like doves, that sit on one green branch, all pleasant!
But Abe’s love was a queer complaint, a sort of tertian fever,
Each case he cured of thought the Saint a thorough-paced deceiver;
And soon he found, he did indeed, with all their whims to nourish,
That Mormonism ain’t a creed where fleshly follies flourish.
Bishop Pete chimes in:—
Ah, right you air! A creed it is demandin’ iron mettle!
A will that quells, as soon as riz, the biling of the kettle!
With wary eye, with manner deep, a spirit overbrimmin’,
Like to a shepherd ’mong his sheep, the Saint is ’mong his women;
And unto him they do uplift their eyes in awe and wonder;
His notice is a blessed gift, his anger is blue thunder.
No n’ises vex the holy place where dwell those blessed parties;
Each missus shineth in her place, and blithe and meek her heart is!
They sow, they spin, they darn, they hem, their blessed babes they handle,
The Devil never comes to them, lit by that holy candle!
When in their midst serenely walks their Master and their Mentor,
They’re hush’d, as when the Prophet stalks down holy church’s centre!
They touch his robe, they do not move, those blessed wives and mothers;
And, when on one he shineth love, no envy fills the others.
They know his perfect saintliness, and honour his affection—
And, if they did object, I guess he’d settle that objection!
Bishop Joss had seen that this wouldn’t do, and kind of compelled him to marry an old maiden aunt of the bishop’s, called Tabitha, to be a sort of first wife, housekeeper, or mistress of the women. Of course, poor Abraham has peace, but equally of course he finds himself the slave of the new mistress. Fortunately for him, a young girl, an orphan, whom a dying friend of his had commended to his care, finds her way at 14 to Salt Lake City. He brings her up as his daughter—falls in love with her, marries her when she grows 18—finds that the other wives make her life intolerable, and finally elopes with his seventh wife, leaving his property in Utah to the other six. The curtain falls on a bright, well-kept farm in one of the New England States, where Abraham, who has discovered that he is by nature an inferior creature, and properly a monogamist, is as happy as possible with his Annie.
Let us introduce the reader to Abraham’s household:—
Sister Tabitha, thirty odd,
Rising up with a stare and a nod;
Sister Amelia, sleepy and mild,
Freckled, Dudu-ish, suckling a child;
Sister Fanny, pert and keen,
Sister Emily, solemn and lean,
Sister Mary, given to tears,
Sister Sarah, with wool in her ears;—
All appearing like tapers wan
In the mellow sunlight of Sister Anne. With a tremulous wave of his hand, the Saint
Introduces the household quaint,
And sinks on a chair and looks around,
As the dresses rustle with snakish sound,
As curtsies are bobb’d, and eyes cast down
Some with a simper, some with a frown.
And Sister Anne, with a fluttering breast,
Stands trembling and peeping behind the rest. Every face but one has been
Pretty, perchance, at the age of eighteen,
Pert and pretty, and plump and bright;
But now their fairness is faded quite,
And every feature is fashion’d here
To a flabby smile, or a snappish sneer.
Before the stranger they each assume
A false fine flutter and feeble bloom,
And a little colour comes into the cheek
When the eyes meet mine, as I sit and speak;
But there they sit and look at me,
Almost withering visibly,
And languidly tremble and try to blow—
Six pale roses all in a row! Six? ah, yes; but at hand sits one,
The seventh, still full of the light of the sun.
Though her colour terribly comes and goes,
Now white as a lily, now red as a rose,
So sweet she is, and so full of light,
That the rose seems soft, and the lily bright.
Her large blue eyes, with a tender care,
Steal to her husband unaware,
And whenever he feels them he flushes red,
And the trembling hand goes up to his head!
Around those dove-like eyes appears
A redness as of recent tears.
Alone she sits in her youth’s fresh bloom
In a dark corner of the room,
And folds her hands, and does not stir,
And the others scarcely look at her,
But crowding together, as if by plan,
Draw further and further from Sister Anne.
A rapid picture of society is given—the people out for an afternoon of holiday—the immigrants from Norway, Glasgow, Yorkshire, and Germany—the Red Indian hanging on the outskirts of the crowd, and glad to get a glass of rum—
What shape antique looks down
From this green mound upon the festive town,
With tall majestic figure darkly set
Against the sky in dusky silhouette?
Strange his attire: a blanket edged with red
Wrapt royally around him; on his head
A battered hat of the strange modern sort
Which men have christened “chimney pots” in sport;
Mocassins on his feet, fur-fringed and grand,
And a large green umbrella in his hand.
The Prophet’s sermon is not bad. Here is a bit of it:— THE PROPHET.
Sisters and Brothers by love made wise,
Remember, when Satan attempts to quell you,
If this here Earth isn’t Paradise
You’ll never see it, and so I tell you.
Dig and drain, and harrow and sow,
God will bless you beyond all measure;
Labour, and meet with reward below,
For what is the end of all labour? Pleasure!
Labour’s the vine, and pleasure’s the grape,
The one delighting, the other bearing.
FEMININE WHISPERS.
THE PROPHET.
But I hear some awakening spirit cry,
“Labour is labour, and all men know it;
But what is pleasure?” and I reply,
Grace abounding and Wives to show it!
Holy is he beyond compare
Who tills his acres and takes his blessing,
Who sees around him everywhere
Sisters soothing and babes caressing.
And his delight is Heaven’s as well,
For swells he not the ranks of the chosen?
FEMININE WHISPERS.
THE PROPHET.
Learning’s a shadow, and books a jest,
One Book’s a Light, but the rest are human.
The kind of study that I think best
Is the use of a spade and the love of a woman.
Here and yonder, in heaven and earth,
By big Salt Lake and by Eden river,
The finest sight is a man of worth,
Never tired of increasing his quiver.
He sits in the light of perfect grace
With a dozen cradles going together!
FEMININE WHISPERS.
THE PROPHET.
A faithful vine at the door of the Lord,
A shining flower in the garden of spirits,
A lute whose strings are of sweet accord,
Such is the person of saintly merits.
Sisters and brothers, behold and strive
Up to the level of his perfection;
Sow, and harrow, and dig, and thrive,
Increase according to God’s direction.
This is the Happy Land, no doubt,
Where each may flourish in his vocation. . .
Brother Bantam will now give out
The hymn of love and of jubilation.
On this happy society falls the news that Abraham Clewson has bolted with his seventh wife. He leaves a letter for the Prophet to explain his motives, his temptations, and his excuses. It is in this letter that the whole of the argument is contained. It may be put briefly in the following passage:—
Instead of going in and out, like a superior party,
I was too soft of heart, no doubt, too open, and too hearty.
When I began with each young sheep I was too free and loving,
Not being strong and wise and deep, I set her feelings moving;
And so, instead of noticing the gentle flock in common,
I waken’d up that mighty thing—the Spirit of a Woman.
Each got to think me, don’t you see,—so foolish was the feeling,—
Her own especial property, which all the rest were stealing!
And, since I could not give to each the whole of my attention,
All came to grief, and parts of speech too delicate to mention!
Bless them! they loved me far too much, they erred in their devotion,
I lack’d the proper saintly touch, subduing mere emotion:—
The solemn air sent from the skies, so cold, so tranquilising,
That on the female waters lies, and keeps the same from rising,
But holds them down all smooth and bright, and, if some wild wind storms ’em,
Comes like a cold frost in the night, and into ice transforms ’em!
Abraham’s advice to good Mormons is as follows:—
Into a woman’s arms don’t fall, as if you meant to stay there,
Just come as if you’d made a call, and idly found your way there;
Don’t praise her too much to her face, but keep her calm and quiet,—
Most female illnesses take place thro’ far too warm a diet;
Unto her give your fleshly kiss, calm, kind, and patronising,
Then—soar to your own sphere of bliss, before her heart gets rising!
Don’t fail to let her see full clear, how in your saintly station
The Flesh is but your nigger here obeying your dictation;
And tho’ the Flesh be e’er so warm, your Soul the weakness smothers
Of loving any female form much better than the others!
He describes the growth of his passion for Sister Anne. The end of it was this:—
Well! then I went to Sister Anne, my inmost heart unclothing,
Told her my feelings like a man, concealing next to nothing,
Explain’d the various characters of those I had already,
The various tricks and freaks and stirs peculiar to each lady,
And, finally, when all was clear, and hope seem’d to forsake me,
“There! it’s a wretched chance, my dear—you leave me, or you take me.”
Well, Sister Annie look’d at me, her inmost heart revealing
(Women are very weak, you see, inferior, full of feeling),
Then, thro’ her tears outshining bright, “I’ll never, never leave you!
“O Abe,” she said, “my love, my light, why should I pain or grieve you?
I do not love the way of life you have so sadly chosen,
I’d rather be a single wife than one in half a dozen;
But now you cannot change your plan, tho’ health and spirit perish,
And I shall never see a man but you to love and cherish.
Take me, I’m yours, and O, my dear, don’t think I miss your merit,
I’ll try to help a little here your true and loving spirit.”
“Reflect, my love,” I said, “once more,” with bursting heart, half crying,
“Two of the girls cut very sore, and most of them are trying!”
And then that gentle-hearted maid kissed me and bent above me,
“O Abe,” she said, “don’t be afraid,—I’ll try to make them love me!”
It would not do. They could not be made to love her, of course. They made her life misery. She sickened and nearly died of it. As soon as she got better, Abraham saw light, recognised his inadequacy for the position he held, and escaped for his life to a monogamic society. The epilogue is the usual epilogue of right-thinking novels. After all their troubles, they are married, have a rosy-cheeked young family, and live happy ever after. Provided for out of Abraham’s relinquished wealth, the six widows find other mates, all except Tabitha, who deserts the Mormons for the Free Lovers, an arrangement which the author may perhaps show the folly of in a companion poem. Whatever he does, the world will be glad to see. The poem is perhaps rather much of a thesis with a purpose as well defined as that of a sermon, but it could not have been written by anybody without true poetic power of a very high order. Its sarcasm is happily relieved by its tenderness, and its sermons enlivened by the fresh breezes, laden with the scents of a prodigal nature, that blow through the open windows of the Mormon church. ___ The Graphic (13 January, 1872 - Issue 111) Review of The Drama of Kings, followed by Saint Abe and His Seven Wives. ___ The Pall Mall Gazette (25 January, 1872 - Issue 2168) “SAINT ABE.”* AMERICAN authors have had a happy time in England lately. Especially fortunate have been the poets of America, and they most lucky who have least deserved the good opinion of the world. There seems to be a constant necessity for the gratification of a savage taste in some shape: in dress, in domestic furniture, in house building, in the collection of all sorts of earthenware crudities and monstrosities. And, strangely enough, this perversion of taste, common amongst the common and in common things, appears with equal frequency amongst the devotees of poetry and the arts. Titania fondling the ass’s ears is a mere epitome of the way in which the favours of the public are bestowed sometimes—at any rate amongst the Gothic nations. Nothing but a prevalent literary madness, for instance, could have given a day’s reputation to such coarsely stupid compositions as the Breitman Ballads, the fun of which is never of a higher quality than is to be found at a country fair. According to our view of things, any man of sense would sooner be caught laughing at the contest for the pig with the soapy tail than at the humour of productions that read thus, when they are written in a plain and not in broken English.
Hans Breitmann gave a party;
They had piano playing;
I fell in love with an American girl,
Her name was Matilda Jane.
She had hair as brown as a plum-cake,
Her eyes were heavenly blue,
And when they looked into mine
They split my heart in two. Hans Breitmann gave a party,
I went there you’ll be bound;
I waltzed with Matilda Jane
And went spinning round and round.
The prettiest damsel in the house
She weighed two hundred pound;
And every time she gave a jump
She made the windows sound.
But this poor nonsense—illumined by the fun of spelling “party” “barty,” “jump” “joomp,” and so forth—made for its author a considerable reputation in America and England; critics with characters to lose praised it as the language of a new peculiar and subtle kind of humour, and the booksellers sold it in amazing quantities.
Since the time when Hans Breitman appeared, even worse matter—matter, that is to say, which is contemptible and something more—has found a ready market and much admiration in England. There is a sort of doctrine in these later productions—a doctrine always the same and very simple. Reduced to prose for personal use or practical application, it comes to this: A man may be very blameable, he may even be a drunkard and a ruffian to the end of his days, and yet be sure of the constant guardianship of God’s angels in this life and of a place in heaven hereafter, if he is only capable of doing his duty as bagman, stoker, soldier, and if his heart is tenderly disposed toward women. There is a ballad of much fame entitled “Little Breeches,” of which the following is a faithful account. It is the narrative of an American settler who tells the world in his first stanza that he “don’t go much on religion”—he “don’t pan out on the prophets and free will and that sort of thing;” but he has believed in God and angels ever since a child of his was saved in a snowstorm. The child of the farmer who thinks it smart to say he doesn’t pan out on the prophets is a boy of four years old; and he is described by his fond father as “peart and chipper and sarsy, always ready to fight; and I’d larnt him to chaw terbacker, jest to keep his milk-teeth white.” One snowy night his father’s waggon-horses bolted with this dear babe, and “went hell-to-split over the prairie.” The father got assistance and followed in search, with torches, and presently found the team snowed under a soft white mound—but of little Gabe, “neither hide nor hair.” Thereupon, says the father, “I jest flopped down on my marrow bones” and prayed. Immediately afterwards the party came upon a sheepfold:—
The reflection of the good man who trained this interesting child is, that the angels have saved him; “they jest scooped down, and toted him to where it was safe and warm;” and, says the grateful parent in conclusion—
In these lines we have the gem and moral of the piece; it is this which has kindled admiration for the ballad of Little Breeches throughout the American Continent, and amongst religious and philosophical critics in Great Britain too:—the Spectator greatly approves it. “A damned sight better business than loafing around The Throne.” So charmingly audacious! so splendidly concrete!
The same author has a similar little work, “Jim Bludso”—also much admired. Jim Bludso was the engineer of a Mississippi steamboat, the Prairie Belle. He was no saint. He was “a keerless man in his talk;” he was an “awkward man in a row” (which means that he was sudden and dexterous with the knife); and he had two wives, though the ladies were not aware of it. But this man was of rare goodness in one particular; “he never lied”—which, as we all know, marks a degree of virtue scarcely to be expected of human nature. As for the rest of his religion, it was comprised in such a delicate desperate love for his engine that he could not allow any other boat to pass the Prairie Belle. He preferred—such was the natural beauty of his character—to risk the lives of all on board the boat by explosion; but not without a stern resolve to do his duty in the event of his being compelled to bring on such an emergency. This was well known; for
A time came that should test the self-sacrifice of this heroic man. There appeared on the river a better boat, the Movastar; but Jim Bludso would not be passed. So he sent his boat tearing along in the night, “with a nigger”—(the noble Jim!)—“with a nigger squat on the safety valve,” and her furnace “crammed with rosin and pine.” She took fire, according to Bludso’s expectations; and then the tender noble nature of the man was manifested. He turned his boat to the shore, yelling out “through the hot black breath of the burning boat, I’ll hold her nozzle agin the bank till the last galoot’s ashore.” He kept his determination; all the passengers got off before the smoke-stack fell, but Jim lost his life—his own furnace being probably stimulated by like applications to those he had made to the engine fire. And then comes the moral-verse at the end—conceived in the same really religious though apparently indecent spirit that dictated the tag to Little Breeches:—
He wernt no saint, but at jedgment
I’d run my chance with Jim.
He’d seen his duty, a dead-sure thing,
And went for it thar and then;
And Christ aint going to be too hard
On a man that died for men.
Jim was sure of heaven; and we may expect another poem, in which he will acquaint his Maker that, hailing from an enlightened Republic, he is up to “a damned sight better business than loafing around The Throne.”
With these new and popular productions of American genius in our minds, it was with some apprehension of being startled with a like display of originality that we opened a book of verse entitled “St. Abe and his Seven Wives: a Tale of Salt Lake City.” Our anticipations were altogether mistaken. Although in a striking address to Chaucer the author intimates an expectation that Prudery may turn from his pages, and though his theme is certainly a delicate one, there is nothing in the book that a modest man may not read without blinking, and therefore, we suppose, no modest mature woman. On the other hand, the whole poem is marked with so much natural strength, so much of the inborn faculties of literature—(though they are wielded in a light, easy, trifling way)—that they take possession of our admiration as of right. The chief characteristics of the book are mastery of verse, strong and simple diction, delicate accurate description of scenery, and that quick and forcible discrimination of character which belongs to men of dramatic genius. This has the look of exaggerated praise. We propose, therefore, to give one or two large samples of the author’s quality, leaving our readers to judge from them whether we are not probably right. If they turn to the book and read it through, we do not doubt that they will agree with us.
This we call good, racy verse; it is the opening address to Chaucer.
Maypole dance and Whitsun ale,
Sports of peasants in the dale,
Harvest mirth and junketing,
Fireside play and kiss-in-ring,
Ancient fun and wit and ease,—
Gone are one and all of these;
All the pleasant pastime planned
In the green old Mother-land:
Gone are these and gone the time
Of the breezy English rhyme,
Sung to make men glad and wise
By great Bards with twinkling eyes:
Gone the tale and gone the song
Sound as nut-brown ale and strong,
Freshening the sultry sense
Out of idle impotence,
Sowing features dull or bright
With deep dimples of delight. Thro’ the Mother-land I went,
Seeking these, half indolent:
Up and down, I saw them not;
Only found them, half-forgot,
Buried in long-darken'd nooks
With thy barrels of old books,
Where the light and love and mirth
Of the morning days of earth
Sleeps, like light of sunken suns
Brooding deep in cob-webb’d tuns,
Everywhere I found instead,
Hanging her dejected head,
Barbing shafts of bitter wit,
The pale Modern Spirit sit—
While her shadow, great as Gog’s,
Cast upon the island fogs,
In the midst of all things dim
Loom’d, gigantically grim.
Next we quote what seems to us remarkably good description. The poet (he calls himself the Stranger) visits Brother Abe in the City of the Saints. Abe has seven wives, and is so much in love with the last that he finally runs away with her, out of Mormondom.
With a tremulous wave of his hand, the Saint
Introduces the household quaint,
And sinks on a chair and looks around,
As the dresses rustle with snakish sound,
As curtsies are bobb’d, and eyes cast down
Some with a simper, some with a frown.
And Sister Anne, with a fluttering breast,
Stands trembling and peeping behind the rest. Every face but one has been
Pretty, perchance, at the age of eighteen,
Pert and pretty, and plump and bright;
But now their fairness is faded quite,
And every feature is fashion’d here
To a flabby smile, or a snappish sneer.
Before the stranger they each assume
A false fine flutter and feeble bloom,
And a little colour comes into the cheek
When the eyes meet mine, as I sit and speak;
But there they sit and look at me,
Almost withering visibly,
And languidly tremble and try to blow—
Six pale roses all in a row!
* * * * * *
I try to rattle along in chat,
Talking freely of this and that—
The crops, the weather, the mother-land,
Talk a baby could understand;
And the faded roses, faint and meek,
Open their languid lips to speak,
But in various sharps and flats, all low,
Gave a lazy “yes” or a sleepy “no.”
Yet now and then Tabitha speaks,
Snapping her answer with yellow cheeks,
And fixing the Saint who is sitting by
With the fish-like glare of her glittering eye,
Whenever the looks of the weary man
Stray to the corner of Sister Anne.
Another and a longer extract we shall make from Brigham Young’s sermon in the synagogue. THE PROPHET.
Sisters and brothers who love the right,
Saints whose hearts are divinely beating,
Children rejoicing in the light,
I reckon this is a pleasant meeting.
Where’s the face with a look of grief?—
Jehovah’s with us and leads the battle;
We’ve had a harvest beyond belief,
And the signs of fever have left the cattle;
All still blesses the holy life
Here in the land of milk and honey.
FEMININE WHISPERS.
THE PROPHET.
Out of Egypt hither we flew,
Through the desert and rocky places;
The people murmur’d, and all look’d blue,
The bones of the martyr’d filled our traces.
Mountain and valley we crawl’d along,
And every morning our hearts beat quicker.
Our flesh was weak, but our souls were strong,
And we’d managed to carry some kegs of liquor.
At last we halted on yonder height,
Just as the sun in the west was blinking.
FEMININE WHISPERS.
THE PROPHET.
That night, my lambs, in a wondrous dream,
I saw the gushing of many fountains;
Soon as the morning began to beam,
Down we went from yonder mountains,
Found the water just where I thought,
Fresh and good, though a trifle gritty,
Pitch’d our tents in the plain, and wrought
The site and plan of the Holy City.
“Pioneers of the blest,” I cried,
“Dig, and the Lord will bless each spadeful.”
FEMININE WHISPERS.
THE PROPHET.
This is a tale so often told,
The theme of every eventful meeting;
Yes! you may smile and think it old;
But yet it’s a tale that will bear repeating.
That’s how the City of Light began,
That’s how we founded the saintly nation,
All by the spade and the arm of man,
And the aid of a special dispensation.
“Work” was the word when we begun,
“Work” is the word now we have plenty.
FEMININE WHISPERS.
THE PROPHET.
I say just now what I used to say,
Though it moves the heathens to mock and laughter,
From work to prayer is the proper way—
Labour first, and religion after.
* * * * * * * Beauty, my friends, is the crown of life,
To the young and foolish seldom granted;
After a youth of honest strife
Comes the reward for which you’ve panted.
O blessed sight beyond compare,
When life with its halo of light is rounded,
To see a Saint with reverend hair
Sitting like Solomon love-surrounded!
One at his feet and one on his knee,
Others around him, blue-eyed and dreamy!
FEMININE WHISPERS.
THE PROPHET.
There in the gate of Paradise
The Saint is sitting serene and hoary,
Tendrils of arms, and blossoms of eyes,
Festoon him round in his place of glory;
Little cherubs float thick as bees
Round about him, and murmur “father!”
The sun shines bright and he sits at ease,
Fruit all round for his hand to gather.
Blessed is he both ngiht and day,
Floating to Heaven and adding to it!
FEMININE WHISPERS.
THE PROPHET.
But I hear some awakening spirit cry,
“Labour is labour, and all men know it;
But what is pleasure?” and I reply,
Grace abounding and Wives to show it!
Holy is he beyond compare
Who tills his acres and takes his blessing,
Who sees around him everywhere
Sisters soothing and babes caressing.
* * * * * * * Learning’s a shadow, and books a jest,
One Book’s a Light, but the rest are human.
The kind of study that I think best
Is the use of a spade and the love of a woman.
Here and yonder, in heaven and earth,
By big Salt Lake and by Eden river,
The finest sight is a man of worth,
Never tired of increasing his quiver.
He sits in the light of perfect grace
With a dozen cradles going together!
FEMININE WHISPERS.
THE PROPHET.
A faithful vine at the door of the Lord,
A shining flower in the garden of spirits,
A lute whose strings are of sweet accord,
Such is the person of saintly merits.
Sisters and brothers, behold and strive
Up to the level of his perfection;
Sow, and harrow, and dig, and thrive,
Increase according to God’s direction.
This is the Happy Land, no doubt,
Where each may flourish in his vocation. . .
Brother Bantam will now give out
The hymn of love and of jubilation.
The dramatic instinct in this extract is manifest; and it appears, of course, in a far stronger light in the whole and unbroken chapter from which we quote. The scene, and the man, and his sermon are borne in upon the mind as above all things faithfully rendered;—and there is a description of the going to the synagogue, and one of the arrival of a party of immigrants, which give the same strong and confident impressions though we see plainly enough that the grotesque is mixed in with the hardest and grittiest matter-of-fact detail. But, altogether, this book, though it is of little importance in itself, manifests everywhere some of the very best capabilities of literary workmanship, and some of the highest faculties of a mind that is literary by birth, and not simply by reading and exercise. * “Saint Abe and his Seven Wives.” A Tale of Salt Lake City. (London: Strahan and Co. 1872.) ___ The New York Times (26 January, 1872) SAINT ABE AND HIS SEVEN WIVES. New York: GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS. This is a poetical romance drawn from experiences of life at Salt Lake City. The characters are capitally sketched in a light but truthful manner, and the entire poem is literally mined with concealed humor, which, with slight penetration, produces the most startling mirth explosions. It may be urged by some in way of objection that the conclusion drawn from the sorrows and trials consequent to polygamy is not carried to its highest possible ground; but then every one knows what the deductions would be from a strictly moral standpoint, while it is both novel and gratifying to know that the condition is far from an agreeable one, even when judged by the easy cynical tests of a modern man of the world. ___ The Pall Mall Gazette (29 January, 1872 - Issue 2171) CORRESPONDENCE. AMERICAN POETS. To the EDITOR of the PALL MALL GAZETTE. SIR,—Will your reviewer of “St. Abe” accept the most sincere thanks of an oppressed American? The incomprehensible, and to the minds of Many American students unjustifiable, pæans so numerously chanted in honour of some of the newest and most garish expressions of Americanism, such as Walt Whitman, Miller, Bret Harte, Hans Breitmann, and “Little Breeches,” have done more to lower the value of English criticism in America than all the sarcasms and depreciation of a quarter of a century.
The critics have taken what the American knows to be only local flavour for a new fruit, and, confounding the agreeableness of a new sensation with the discovery of a new greatness, run with the unthinking haste of competitive heralds to spread abroad the dignity of a novel poetic ideal, remarkable rather because they were its discoverers than because it was so great. These men owe their reputation almost entirely to England; not because they were not appreciated in their own time and country, but because that which imposes in them—their newness of form and their impatience of the restraints, as well as ignorance of the leadings, of art—we know to be only the provincialisms of our half-formed national expression and the crudeness of the national artistic development. To those of us who have been reared in the old tastes of the habit of restraint and the love of purity of style, this Ossianic turgidity, incoherent jumble of crude inspirations with commonplace Byronisms, vulgar posturing of a stage piety and witless jangle of uncouth words, seem but the diseases of our literature—the things which our newness apologizes for but our attainment cannot boast of: and that they should in this country find a circulation and acceptation they have not in their native land does not in the least convince us that we are wrong in our estimate, but that, as we have often heard of late, the canons of criticism are lost in England or turned into very small bores of unprecision. “Little Breeches” may have kindled admiration in Bohemian America, but, believe me, the “religious and philosophical critics” of the country have in regard to the class of works to which it belongs only the wonder that such little prophets should have gone so far and found their honour so soon.
And to this day I am unable, in conjunction with many of my countrymen, to comprehend how the English critics can find these works ornaments to the literature that includes Irving, Prescott, Hawthorn, Dana, Longfellow, Lowell (as humorous poet), Holmes.
We are no more than the finders of new luminaries blind to what our country is producing of material for poetry and literature or the divergent paths which it has begun to mark out, but we are neither flattered nor persuaded by the critics who mistake ore for a statue or vigour of speech for intellectual completeness.—Yours respectfully,
London, Jan. 25. AN OLD-SCHOOL YANKEE. ___ The Stage (20 January, 1898 - p.13) Mr. Robert Buchanan, whose opinion of the publishing fraternity might almost be summed up in the historic phrase in which Barabbas is mentioned, has latterly set up in business for himself as publisher of his own works. He now sends for notice the first cheap edition (price 2s. 6d.) of his clever satire on the Mormon movement, “Saint Abe and His Seven Wives, a Tale of Salt Lake City,” which was published anonymously early in the seventies, and was then freely attributed to the author of “The Biglow Papers,” James Russell Lowell. This and much more Mr. Buchanan tells us in the caustically and characteristically written Bibliographical Note, which he appends to the present issue, together with reprints of some of the Press notices of the first edition, and of his semi-humorous “Anticipatory Criticisms” with which the satire was originally prefaced.
However, “Saint Abe and His Seven Wives” is for its intrinsic merits well worth reading over again, quite apart from any adventitious attractions of polemical literature, and I would advise the reader not to skip the Dedication to Old Dan Chaucer. The late A. B. Houghton’s original frontispiece yet precedes Mr. Buchanan’s racy and trenchantly expressed verse satire. The author’s name has never before been placed upon the title page of this “Tale of Salt Lake City.” Back to the Bibliography or Poetry _____ Book Reviews - Poetry continued 5. White Rose and Red (1873) to The Poetical Works (1884) |
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