The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb - Melanie Benjamin [114]
“We’ll be in Utah in the morning. I’m anxious to see how the polygamists live, aren’t you? It seems more barbaric than the Indians,” I said one evening as we dined alone in our hotel room—a corner of a canvas structure; the proprietor had proudly offered Charles and me “a romantic dinner for two,” apart from the communal table set up in the middle of the tent. He had found a small table and two camp stools, and hung up a thin curtain to shield us from the others. Yet we were taunted by the merry dinner talk, the convivial clinking of glasses, on the other side of the curtain.
“Charles? Did you hear me?” I spoke louder, trying to drown out the guffaws accompanying Rodney Nutt as he told a story about a man who once raced a horse the wrong way around a track. “About the polygamists?”
“Oh, I’m—of course, of course, polygamists! Dreadful insects, aren’t they—always buzzing around your ears! My dear, did I ever tell you about the time that I swallowed a bug? I was onstage during a sweltering heat, and a fly was buzzing about, and just as I opened my mouth to sing ‘Yankee Doodle,’ that creature flew into it and down my windpipe! I tell you, I couldn’t sing a word after that! I coughed and coughed until …”
Smiling tightly, I nodded at Charles as he continued his story, and allowed my mind to wander elsewhere—along railroad tracks, over mountains, across oceans. Dear God, please don’t ever let the world stop expanding, stop sprouting new cities and railroads and passageways for me to visit, for me to dream about—I almost prayed it out loud.
It was in Ogden, Utah, that I had the opportunity to correct Charles’s impression about polygamy. For it was here that I first saw it in practice. Ogden was a town of about two thousand people; compared to the other communities along the Union Pacific, it was a model of cleanliness and order, and we could not help but attribute this to the fact that the Mormon bishop controlled the town. Neat clapboard buildings lined clean streets; there were none of the usual saloons and houses of ill repute that had followed the progression of the railroad in other villages.
The bishop offered us the use of their Tabernacle for our entertainment; I thought this very good of him, indeed, and quite surprising. I could not imagine any Baptist church doing the same! So my initial impression of the Mormons was quite favorable.
He asked that the first two rows be reserved for his family. Over fifty seats in all, and I was amused, thinking, logically, that there were far more seats than could be filled by one brood. Yet in a flash the bishop returned with his brother, followed by seven adult females and forty-two children varying in ages from three to fourteen years; then came three more females and twenty-two children, whom the bishop referred to, casually, as “my family”!
It may have been amusing at first, as we peered out from behind the curtain, sure that at any minute the endless parade of children would stop, but soon I ceased to find it so. During our entertainments, Mr. Bleeker always invited a dozen children, from the ages of three to ten, to stand with Minnie onstage to compare their height to hers. When the invitation was extended on this night, Bishop West immediately turned to his family and beckoned the requisite number to the platform. Mr. Bleeker placed the smallest of them nearest to Minnie and then requested the parents to give their ages. Pointing to the first child, Mr. Bleeker inquired, “What is this child’s age?”
“Four years,” replied the Bishop with a satisfied smile.
“And this?” Mr. Bleeker pointed to the next.
“Four years,” the Bishop answered placidly.
“They’re both your children?” Mr. Bleeker could not help himself from asking.
The Bishop nodded. A faint blush mottled his cheeks.
“How old is this one?” Mr. Bleeker pointed to the next largest.
“Four,” the Bishop said, his voice becoming a bit strangled.
“Yours,