by Win Blevins
“Brother Young,” said a middle-aged woman. “Brother Young,” echoed a young beauty. The two were evidently supervising the preparation of a luncheon.
“Mrs. Twiss,” said the Prophet. “Sister Abigail. These are our friends Captain Burton, Sister Sun Moon, and Brother Asie. They will be staying with us a few days, Mrs. Twiss. Whatever rooms you think fitting.”
Captain Richard Burton blanched. On four continents he had seldom been so surprised, or so delighted. I am being invited into the most secret of chambers, into the very harem of Brigham Young. For the first time in two decades, perhaps, his deeply tanned skin looked pale enough to be English.
The Prophet said, “We will see to your comfort and your safety.” Then the great man indulged himself in a small smile. “Even Porter Rockwell,” he said, “has no access to my bedrooms.”
For a moment the simple kitchen scene spun in Captain Burton’s mind, and he felt woozy.
Mrs. Twiss led them up a set of stairs to the second floor. Seething with curiosity, Burton noted a long, handsomely furnished parlor, with a floral Brussels carpet, mahogany tables, a rosewood piano, a melodeon, a woodstove, a velvet sofa, and gilt chairs. Across the long hall were rooms that appeared to be private. Bedrooms for the wives, he thought, and his mind spun with questions.
Up more stairs to the third floor, through a long parlor partitioned into receiving areas. Private rooms stretched in each direction, a score or two dozen by Burton’s guess. Compared to the second floor, this one was plain and homely.
Mrs. Twiss opened a door to two identical, connected rooms with high, narrow Gothic windows facing the street. Can this woman be one of his wives? Burton’s mind leapt all around the possibility. Mrs. Twiss was fortyish, plump, amiable, a bundle of motherly cheer—and I cannot not imagine her inspiring lust in so virile a man as the Prophet.
“Dinner is at five,” she said. “Very promptly at five.” He watched the round, matronly bottom of Mrs. Twiss as she bustled out of the room and closed the door behind her.
The three friends looked at each other, safe for the first time in days. Sun Moon sank into a chair.
Suddenly the door scraped open again. Sun Moon jumped up, and Burton saw the eyes of a bolting deer. “Would you care for anything you don’t see?”
“A lamp for reading and writing,” said Burton.
“Of course.”
I will fill pages and pages with scandal and delectation.
He looked at his companions. I wonder how long we can stay. Safely.
2
While his friends napped, Richard Burton wrote in his journal:
At last Sun Moon has told me more of her story. I think she broke her silence, in part, for the luxury of speaking her own language, and hearing it spoken back. She fingered her scar often as she talked. She does not realize that it makes her not less attractive but much more—the first mark of life on a cloistered existence, a mark of courage in the face of violence. I admire her.
She comes from the plains of Kham, far in the northeast of Tibet, of which I know only by report. Though the Tibet I know is high, dry plateaus surrounded by ranges of great mountains, she says her home country is a well-watered highland, lush with grass and wildflowers. Her convent is associated with the monastery at Zorgai, widely known for the tradition of scholarship in literature and philosophy. Zorgai is but a few days travel from the Chengdu, capital of the Chinese province Sichuan.
Entering the convent (ani gompa or tsunpo) as a mere child, she was thus shorn of family. Now she is stripped of all life’s small accommodations, even a flask of holy water, a rosary of 108 beads, and a prayer cylinder. Surely she also misses the brown robes she keeps hidden.
Though she avoided my inquiry about her abduction (how I long to lure that story from her!), she specified at length her doctrinal instruction, the memorizing and recitation of texts, the rigorous examinations which she stood, her beginning in the discipline of meditation. She stated, though, that her daily meditative practice has been intermittent in the time that has passed since her abduction, and admitted that she is a comparative beginner in the practice. She seems more the intellectual than the contemplative.
A fascinating incongruity then—a nun whose religious strength may not be the state of her consciousness, the supreme awareness of oneness that proceeds from meditation, but her learning, a creature not of spirit but intellect.
Sometimes anger and violence inhabit her eyes—for which none could blame her! Abducted, perhaps raped, enslaved, attacked by an infamous killer, and now hounded by him. In these misadventures has her faith been shaken? Affirmed? Does she abide yet in the dark night of the soul, seeking, seeking, and as yet seeing only darkness?
Her traveling companion, Asie Taylor, might be the Tibetan instead of Sun Moon, with his tawny coloring, round facial structure, and physiognomy. Where she is often closed to the scrutinizing eye, he is open-faced, easy, open in his emotions, an amiable fellow traveler, good-hearted, curious, showing a trusting spirit, bearing hardship cheerfully, like lamas I have known. Thus this irony: Asie has more of the spiritual serenity which is the object of meditation than even the nun. Perhaps his spirit is his strength! Perhaps her intellect is hers! Oh, delicious!
However, he is not quite at ease. In many postures of body, gestures of arms, and hesitations of speech is the pull of something he seeks, yearns for. That something is churning in Asie Taylor, keeping him from the serenity which is his nature. Yet what goal could surpass serenity? I know not. Neither does Asie Taylor.
3
Burton put away his pen and slid the notebook into a jacket pocket. Asie was sleeping. Burton listened to his quiet, even, peaceful breathing and felt envious. He was often sleepless—sometimes he barely slept for months on end. Often that was because he was afraid for his life. Such was the fate of a spy among enemies. The last year, though, he had suffered the pangs of hell for another reason—a reason he had in common with far more ordinary men than he—his wife, whose name was Isabel.
He got up, walked to the high, narrow window, and looked out unseeing onto South Temple Street. Burton had known Isabel for a decade, meeting her first in the south of France, where he loved to go, then in Italy, then in England, whose society he at once despised and longed for acceptance in. She was his ideal of feminine beauty, beauty of face, of form, and of soul. He courted her. She responded to his feelings with similar emotion. Praise be to Allah, not just sentiment but passion! He asked her to marry him. Her family were opposed—they were Catholic, his Church of England. (Praise be to Allah, no Britons knew what faith Burton actually embraced!) Though he converted formally to Catholicism, and Isabel accepted his proposal, the family still opposed the marriage.
Then he descended truly into hell. They were engaged, but Isabel refused to set a date for the wedding. She wanted to wait until her mother acceded. Wait and wait. Years now, torturous years. Burton knew Isabel’s mother would never abandon her opposition. Meanwhile, he had got to be forty years old. He wanted marriage. He was frustrated.
Richard Burton had copulated and cohabited with many, many women. In the East women were available, sometimes easier to get than clean drinking water. He wanted Isabel. He had not touched her, and would not before the nuptials. He nearly went mad with frustration. When he came to America the first time, he gave her an ultimatum. On his return they would be married with dispatch, or he would break the engagement, and they would never see each other again.
She made her choice. They were married.
His marriage taught Burton what Dante had not imagined—that a man could at the same moment be in paradise and descend to a lower circle of hell.
Isabel in herself was everything he had hoped for, passionate, intelligent, vitally interested in his adventures, enthusiastic about his writing, dedicated to his career.
She demanded fidelity, which was no surprise, but was difficult. He was not a man to keep his passions within. She insisted that he give up cannabis, hashish, laudanum,
and other journeys into the lotus state. And she asked that he cease drinking hard liquor, and be content with the solace of wine.
Not unreasonable, he had told himself at first, for he did love her, and not exceedingly difficult, save for three factors:
The first was that he was naturally clandestine, a lover of keeping secrets.
The second was the necessity of keeping his religious life hidden from view of everyone, even his wife. Burton was a Sufi, a member of the passionately mystical Persian sect of Islam. This devotion required certain customs and rites. One demand of Sufism was concealment: No one outside your family must know of your devotion and practices. In Burton’s case, his family was forbidden as well. So he turned a false face not only to his enemies but to his countrymen, the family he was born to, and even his wife.
Some of his religious practice he could pass off as mere eccentricity: He never touched food with his left hand. He shaved his body hair, all of it. He never took the name of God in vain, even among his profane fellow officers. He gave alms generously.
Other practices were trickier to hide: He knelt facing Mecca and prayed five times a day. He observed the Feast of Ramadan in the ninth lunar month, meaning that he did not eat during daylight hours and in that month permitted himself no indulgences whatsoever. Making his hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca was a fine device on his part—he had gone under the guise of a daring episode of espionage for his government.
The third factor was the trickiest: Burton suspected sometimes that he was quite mad, and that he had become a sensualist and libertine to control the madness. So Isabel’s fetters upon his indulgences, intended to ensure sanity in their lives, might well loose his demons.
He had promised her that he would abide by these principles of good sense. Then he had gone out to Fernando Po alone, irked at such an ignominious posting. For a year he had written his pages, kept his journal, practiced his religion, dispensed with the easy tasks at the consulate, and followed his regime of sensible behavior.
Then the mission to America. In New Orleans he maintained sobriety, except for the occasional brandy. In St. Louis he had kept it up, except for laudanum. In Salt Lake he had no opportunity to do otherwise. Yet he felt his demons clanking their chains.
It is discipline that keeps a life in order, he told himself.
First pray. Burton washed himself in the basin provided. He got out his compass and calculated the direction of Mecca. He spread a prayer rug on the floor between the beds. He took off his shoes, knelt on the rug facing Mecca, and recited the great favorite of all Muslim prayers, the Sura 1:
In the name of Allah the merciful, the compassionate. Praise be to Allah, the lord of the worlds, the merciful, the compassionate, the ruler of the judgment day! Thee we serve and Thee we ask for aid. Guide us in the right path, the path of those to whom Thou art gracious; not of those with whom Thou art wroth; nor of those who err.
Now he went to his traveling cases and removed a phial. He held it to the dusky light. Tincture of opium, laudanum. It had the singular advantage of being easily available in America, from every chemist’s shop and every army surgeon. Since it was a usual treatment for diarrhea, any traveler would be expected to carry it. Gratifyingly, it contained two of his necessary elixirs, opium and alcohol. As long as I keep the use under control…
He drank deeply. He went and lay down on his bed. Before he floated away to the land of Xanadu, he pictured Isabel in his mind. He said to her, You do not understand.
The next morning the three travelers borrowed an atlas from Brother Young and inspected Asia. Asie was quiet as Burton and Sun Moon showed him Tibet. Burton pointed out the great mountains that define the region topographically, and the great rivers that flow from the Tibetan plateau and become the life blood of the countries below. He traced the Indus and the sacred Ganges, and told of his travels in India, the Hind, and Persia. Asie’s eyes, though, were for Kham and the long river route Sun Moon traveled across China. He ran his finger across the vast blue of the Pacific Ocean from China to San Francisco.
The afternoon Burton spent observing the Young household and writing furiously again in his notebook. Journals were his secret treasure, the ore of his books.
As a writer and spy Burton was caught in a contradiction: His life abounded in real incidents and characters he could not publish.
He delighted in jolting British sensibilities with truths they did not want to hear. Whoever had not been offended by his writing about native mistresses, courtesans, prostitutes, boys for hire, and the like, would be scandalized by his eventual translation of the Kama Sutra. He had told many other truths his countrymen were unwilling to hear, even going so far as to advocate passionately the idea that females could and should enjoy sex.
Yet these notes about the domestic life of Brigham Young represented his dilemma. This he could not publish. He held up his pen in exasperation. Damn all.
Yet Captain Richard Burton had a splendid secret. One day, when he was in the grave beyond everyone’s reach, he would tell all. All about the East India Company. All about England’s foolish, self-defeating, blind, murderous, and racist ways in India. All about the British Army. All about the Royal Geographic Society, sponsor of many a Briton’s journey of exploration. All about his colleagues and competitors in the mapping of Africa. All about the insanity of the African slave trade. And all, certainly, about his host in the City of the Saints, and his two dozen wives.
With the taste of revenge fresh on his tongue, he dipped his pen.
Surely the domestic arrangements of the world’s most famous or notorious polygamist are of interest. Brigham Young’s principal residence is Lion House, so called from the lion of stone reclining above the entrance. Here live the greater number of his wives and children. In the companion residence adjacent, called Beehive House, live at least two more wives. Additionally, wives and children live at his farm and several other residences at Great Salt Lake City or within an easy ride thereof. I gather that others yet live in residences in remote parts of the Territory.
Though gentiles luridly imagine otherwise, the atmosphere of Lion House is not voluptuous as the harem of a sultan, conducive to carnal fantasy, or even in the slightest sensual. A male is apt to feel smothered by the femininity of the furnishings, and neutered by the sober and stark spirit of devotion. After inhabiting there for several days, I easily believed that the Prophet, as he declared of himself, “never entered into the order of plurality of wives to gratify passion.” His purpose is purely and simply to “raise up a righteous generation.”
(As an aside I will say that Americans generally and Mormons in particular are as misguided as we English in their view of female sexuality. In England the word is, “Lie still and think of Empire.” In America in general and Utah in particular it is, “Men have orgasms and women have children.”)
An unmistakable pecking order reigns. Emmeline Free is the queen bee. Handsome, tall, graceful, of fair complexion, she is the mother of eight of the Prophet’s children. At dinner she sits at Brother Young’s right hand at the head table, and he favors her with his conversation, his smiles, and his glances. At his left sits Eliza R. Snow, a former wife of Joseph Smith himself and therefore much honored in Deseret and in Lion House. Guests are also favored with the head table, except for Sun Moon, Asie, and me. Wishing to avoid dangerous gossip, he placed us at one of the two lower tables, as though we were guests of one of his lesser wives. I am grateful for his perspicacity, for some sense reminds me that we are not safe. (No, not safe, though the faces of my companions show a touching longing for sanctuary.)
At long tables running away from the head table sit most of the other wives and children, and the childless wives. Their menus are plainer than those at the same meal at the head table. Though I have been unable, even by devious questioning, to determine how many wives the Lion has taken to himself, nearly twenty made their appearance at dinner at one time or another during our stay, and so presumably live in Lion House or the adjace
nt residences, Beehive House and White House …
4
“Captain Burton?” The speaker was a tall woman with a waspish mouth.
Burton got to his feet, inconspicuously closing his notebook and concealing it in a pocket.
“I’d … I’m Harriet Washer, the fourth wife.”
She identifies herself by a number! He inclined his head as a way of accepting this self-introduction. “Would you speak with my son Oswald a little?”
The lad stepped up alongside his mother. He was fourteen or fifteen from appearance, strong-looking, and of bestial aspect, and now of downcast expression. Burton regarded the mother. She had the demeanor of a woman who has endured much, none of it in silence.
“Sit down, lad,” and Burton took his chair again. “What do you wish?”
The boy slouched up to Burton’s writing table, pulled out a chair grumpily, and clomped his bottom down onto it. He radiated ill spirit so strongly Burton could have bagged it and sold it by the pound. “Ma says I oughta find out about the real world from you.”
“Real world?” Burton refused to glance up at the mother.
She intruded anyway. “The world outside Lion House, outside Mormonism, outside Deseret. The normal world. I grew up in New York, I know what I’m talking about.”
Burton regarded her. She looked like she knew her own mind, at least, and that perhaps to a fault. “Madam, will you sit with us?” He indicated another hard-backed chair with a nod. She took it.
“What would you like to know, Oswald?”
The lad shrugged. Finding out about the “real world” certainly wasn’t his idea. He ambled his eyes sideways at his mother, and her look reprimanded him. “Wha’s it like, the rest of the world? Special the big cities?”
“What do you think it’s like?”
“The old man says it’s all whoring.”
“The old man?” Burton was scarcely prepared to believe …
