ORIGINALLY PREFACED TO SAINT ABE AND HIS SEVEN WIVES.
Reading edition
TESTIMONIES OF DISTINGUISHED PERSONS.
I. From P—————t G———t, U.S. Smart. Polygamy is Greek for Secesh. Guess Brigham will have to make tracks.
II. From R. W. E———n, Boston, U.S.
Adequate expression is rare. I had fancied the oracles were dumb, and had returned with a sigh to the enervating society of my friends in Boston, when your book reached me. To think of it! In this very epoch, at this very day, poetry has been secreting itself silently and surely, and suddenly the whole ocean of human thought is illumined by the accumulated phosphoresence of a subtle and startling poetic life.. . . Your work is the story of Polygamy written in colossal cipher the study of all forthcoming ages. Triflers will call you a caricaturist, empty solemnities will deem you a jester. Fools! who miss the pathetic symbolism of Falstaff, and deem the Rabelaisan epos fit food for mirth.... I read it from first page to last with solemn thoughts too deep for tears. I class you already with the creators, with Shakespere, Dante, Whitman, Ellery Channing, and myself.
III. From W———t W—————n, Washington, U.S.
I
Our own feuillage;
A leaf from the sweating branches of these States;
A fallen symbol, I guess, vegetable, living, human;
A heart-beat from the hairy breast of a man.
2
The Salon contents me not;
The fine feathers of New England damsels content me not;
The ways of snobs, the falsettos of the primo tenore, the legs
of Lydia Thomson's troupe of blondes, content me not;
Nor tea-drinking, nor the twaddle of Mr. Secretary Harlan,
nor the loafers of the hotel bar, nor Sham, nor Long-
fellow's Village Blacksmith.
3
But the Prairies content me;
And the Red Indian dragging along his squaw by the scruff of
the neck;
And the bones of mules and adventurous persons in Bitter
Creek;
And the oaths of pioneers, and the ways of the unwashed,
large, undulating, majestic, virile, strong of scent, all
these content me.
4
Utah contents me;
The City by the margin of the great Salt Lake contents me;
And to have many wives contents me;
Blessed is he who has a hundred wives, and peoples the
solitudes of these States.
5
Great is Brigham;
Great is polygamy, great is monogamy, great is polyandry,
great is license, great is right, and great is wrong;
And I say again that wrong is every whit as good as right, and
not one jot better;
And I say further there is no such thing as wrong, nor any
such thing as right, and that neither are accountable, and
both exist only by allowance.
6
O I am wonderful;
And the world, and the sea, and joy and sorrow, and sense
and nonsense, all content me;
And this book contents me, with its feuillage from the City of
many wives.
IV. From Elder F———k E—————s, of Mt. L———n, U.S.
An amusing attempt to show that polygamy is a social failure. None can peruse it without perceiving at once that the author secretly inclines to the ascetic tenets of Shakerism.
V. From Brother T. H. N———s, O—————a C————k.
After perusing this subtle study, who can doubt that Free Love is the natural human condition? The utter selfishness of the wretched monogamist-hero repels and sickens us; nor can we look with anything but disgust on the obtusity of the heroine, in whom the author vainly tries to awaken interest. It is quite clear that the reconstruction of Utah on O————a C———k principles would yet save the State from the crash which is impending.
VI. From E————-a F———-n H———-m, of S—————n Island.
If Polygamy is to continue, then, I say, let Polyandry flourish! Woman is the sublimer Being, the subtler Type, the more delicate Mechanism, and, strictly speaking, needs many pendants of the inferior or masculine Type to fulfil her mission in perfect comfort. Shall Brigham Young, a mere Man, have sixteen wives; and shall one wretched piece of humanity content me, that supreme Fact, a perfect Woman, highest and truest of beings under God? No; if these things be tolerated, I claim for each Woman, in the name of Light and Law, twenty ministering attendants of the lower race; and the day is near when, if this boon, or any other boon we like to ask, be denied us, it will be taken with a strong hand!
VII. From T———s C————e, Esq., Chelsea, England.
The titanic humour of the Conception does not blind me to the radical falseness of the Teaching, wherein, as I shall show you presently, you somewhat resemble the miserable Homunculi of our I own literary Wagners; for, if I rightly conceive, you would tacitly and by inference urge that it is expressly part of the Divine Thought that the Ewigweibliche, or Woman-Soul, should be happy. Now Woman's mundane unhappiness, as I construe, comes of her inadequacy; it is the stirring within her of the Infinite against the Finite, a struggle of the spark upward, of the lower to the higher Symbol. Will Woman's Rights Agitators, and Monogamy, and Political Tomfoolery, do what Millinery has failed to do, and waken one Female to the sense of divine Function? It is not happiness I solicit for the Woman-Soul, but Identity; and the prerogative of Identity is great work, Adequacy, pre-eminent fulfilment of the Function; woman, in this country of rags and shams, being buried quick under masses of Sophistication and Upholstery, oblivious of her divine duty to increase the population and train the young masculine Idea starward. I do not care if the wives of Deseret are pale, or faint, or uncultured, or unhappy; it is enough for me to know that they have a numerous progeny, and believe in Deity or the Divine Essence; and I will not conclude this letter without recording my conviction that yonder man, Brigham Young by name, is perhaps the clearest Intellect now brooding on this planet; that Friedrich was royaller but not greater, and that Bismarck is no more than his equal; and that he, this American, few in words, mark you, but great in deeds, has decided a more stupendous Question than ever puzzled the strength of either of those others,—the Question of the Sphere and Function in modern life of the ever-agitating Feminine Principle. If, furthermore, as I have ever held, the test of clearness of intellect and greatness of soul be Success, at any price and under any circumstances, none but a transcendental Windbag or a pedantic Baccalaureus will doubt my assertion that Young is a stupendous intellectual, ethical, and political Force—a Master-Spirit—a Colossal Being, a moral Architect of sublime cunning—as such to be reverenced by every right-thinking Man under the Sun.
VIII. From J———n R———n, Esq., London.
I am not generally appreciated in my own country, because I frequently change my views about religion, art, architecture, poetry, and things in general. Most of my early writings are twaddle, but my present opinions are all valuable. I think this poem, with its nervous Saxon Diction, its subtle humour, its tender pathos and piteousness, the noblest specimen of narrative verse of modern times; and, indeed, I know not where to look, out of the pages of Chaucer, for an equally successful blending of human laughter and ethereal mystery. At the same time, the writer scarcely does justice to the subject on the aesthetic side. A City where the streets are broad and clean and well-watered, the houses surrounded by gardens full of fruit and flowers; where the children, with shining, clean-washed faces, curtsey to the Philosophers in the public places; where there are no brothels and no hells; where life runs fresh, free, and unpolluted,—such a City, I say, can hardly be the symbol of feminine degradation. More than once, tired of publishing my prophetic warnings in the Daily Telegraph, I have thought of bending my weary footsteps to the new Jerusalem; and I might have carried out my intention long ago, if I had had a less profound sense of my own unfitness for the duties of a Saint.
IX. From M————w A————d, Esq., England.
Your poem possesses a certain rough primitive humour, though it appears to me deficient in the higher graces of sweetness and light. St. Paul would have entirely objected to the monogamical inference drawn in your epilogue; and the fact that you draw any such inference at all is to me a distressing proof that your tendency is to the Philistinism of those authors who write for the British Matron. I fear you have not read "Merope."