Back in 2008, the FARMS Review published Gregory L. Smith's devastasting review of George D. Smith's Nauvoo Polygamy (Signature Books, 2008). One can find it here:
George D. Smith's Nauvoo Polygamy, The FARMS Review 20/2 (2008)
The following excerpt dealing with Sarah Ann Whitney shows the disingenuous nature of George D. Smith’s “research”:
The First Page
One cannot, it is said, judge a book by its cover. After reading George D. Smith’s Nauvoo Polygamy, however, I’ve found that one can sometimes judge a book by its first page.[2] “Readers can judge for themselves,” promises the book’s dust jacket. Why it was felt necessary to state the obvious becomes clear upon reading the first page: this book needs judging, and as that hasn’t been done by the author or the editor or the publisher, we, the poor readers (who must pay for the privilege) are obliged to do it ourselves. Fortunately, it isn’t hard. Unfortunately, the author won’t like it.[3]
Nauvoo Polygamy begins with an odd introduction to plural marriage—G. D. Smith makes Napoleon Bonaparte a Joseph Smith doppelgänger by quoting a letter from the future Emperor to Josephine about their first night together: “I have awakened full of you. The memory of last night has given my senses no rest. . . . What an effect you have on my heart! I send you thousands of kisses—but don’t kiss me. Your kisses sear my blood” (p. xi).
It is neither immediately nor ultimately clear what this has to do with Joseph Smith, except that we quickly learn that Joseph Smith also once wrote a letter to a lady. G. D. Smith informs us that “Joseph Smith . . . proposed a tryst with the appealing seventeen-year-old, Sarah Ann Whitney.” By now he had my attention—a new primary source about plural marriage perhaps? The text of this titillating document followed: “Come and see me in this my lonely retreat . . . now is the time to afford me succour. . . . I have a room intirely by myself, the whole matter can be attended to with most perfect saf[e]ty, I know it is the will of God that you should comfort me” (p. ix).[4]
Shocking! Not only has G. D. Smith proved at once that Joseph’s spelling hadn’t improved much since he allegedly made up the several-hundred-page Book of Mormon, but also that Joseph wrote this to his wife! Imagine, a man writing that to his wife! If the book’s title had not alerted us, we are certainly on notice that this is about plural marriage. (G. D. Smith hopes, one suspects, that we will emphasize the word plural rather than marriage.)
Alas, this document is merely a specimen of the hoary art of selective citation and textual distortion. One must admire G. D. Smith’s bravado. In his haste to firmly fix some naughty thoughts to Joseph’s character, he neglected to include much of the letter. He didn’t burden us with the fact that Joseph wrote to three people: “Brother and Sister, Whitney, and &c.” Now, this is a serious omission by G. D. Smith on two counts.
First, it is a lost opportunity to show that Joseph is a bit dimwitted in the seduction business, not having figured out that an invitation for Sarah to a steamy tryst should perhaps not include her parents.
Second, from the main text we would not have learned to whom this letter was sent. (One hundred and fifty pages later, G. D. Smith admits that “Joseph judiciously addressed the letter to ‘Brother, and Sister, Whitney and &c.'” but still insists that the letter is an example of Joseph “urg[ing] his seventeen-year-old bride to ‘come to night’ and ‘comfort’ him—but only if Emma had not returned” (p. 142). So G. D. Smith must have realized that this is an important bit of information. The entire letter has been available for decades. In fact, it was printed in full by Signature Books in 1995.[5]
Not content to rely on the reader’s memory of 1995, I include the entire letter below. Joseph begins:
I take this oppertunity to communi[c]ate, some of my feelings, privetely at this time, which I want you three Eternaly to keep in your own bosams; for my feelings are so strong for you since what has pased lately between us, that the time of my abscence from you seems so long, and dreary, that it seems, as if I could not live long in this way: and three would come and see me in this my lonely retreat, it would afford me great relief, of mind, if those with whom I am alied, do love me; now is the time to afford me succour, in the days of exile, for you know I foretold you of these things.[6]
G. D. Smith’s distortion is apparent. Joseph does not ask Sarah to come for a tryst, but asks “if you three” would come. Joseph also makes it clear that he is not seeking romance or relief of passion, since “it would afford me great relief, of mind” to see those “with whom I am alied.” The Prophet requests “you three . . . to keep in your own bosams; for my feelings are so strong for you [i.e., you three] since what has passed lately between us” (emphases added). One suspects Napoleon was less keen on having the whole family there for blood-searing kisses.
Joseph’s letter continues:
all three of y you come come and See me in the fore part of the night, let Brother Whitney come a little a head, and nock at the south East corner of the house at window; it is next to the cornfield, I have a room inti=rely by myself, the whole matter can be attended to with most perfect safty, I it is the will of God that you should comfort now in this time of affliction, or not at[ta]l now is the time or never, but I hav[e] no kneed of saying any such thing, to you, for I know the goodness of your hearts, and that you will do the will of the Lord, when it is made known to you; the only thing to be careful of; is to find out when Emma comes then you cannot be safe, but when she is not here, there is the most perfect safty: only be careful to escape observation, as much as possible, I know it is a heroick undertakeing; but so much the greater frendship, and the more Joy, when I see you I tell you all my plans, I cannot write them on paper, burn this letter as soon as you read it; keep all locked up in your breasts, my life depends up=on it. one thing I want to see you for is git the fulness of my blessings sealed upon our heads, &c. you wi will pardon me for my earnest=ness on when you consider how lonesome I must be, your good feelings know how to every allow=ance for me, I close my letter, I think Emma wont come tonight if she dont dont fail to come to night. I subscribe myself your most obedient, affectionate, companion, and friend.[7]
G. D. Smith misleads us even further when he insists (on a later page, unsourced) that “when Joseph requested that Sarah Ann Whitney visit him and ‘nock at the window,’ he reassured his new young wife that Emma would not be there, telegraphing his fear of discovery if Emma happened upon his trysts” (p. 65). Yet Joseph does not tell Sarah to knock at the window—he tells her father to do so. G. D. Smith makes the same claim again elsewhere—insisting that “writing to his newest wife,” Joseph declared that “my feelings are so strong for you . . . now is the time to afford me succour. . . . I know it is the will of God that you should comfort me now” (p. 53).
G. D. Smith also uses “Comfort me now” as the subtitle for chapter 2, “Joseph’s Wives” (p. 53). He later hints that Emma would have to sneak up on Joseph to check up on him, as evidenced by “his warning to Sarah Ann to proceed carefully in order to make sure Emma would not find them in their hiding place” (p. 236). Joseph’s hiding place from the mob and instructions to the Whitneys have been transmogrified into a hiding place for Joseph and Sarah Ann.
G. D. Smith eventually provides the full text of this letter (150 pages after its comparison with Napoleon) but precedes it with the claim that by
the ninth night of Joseph’s concealment . . . Emma had visited him three times, written him several letters, and penned at least one letter on his behalf. . . . For his part, Joseph’s private note about his love for Emma was so endearing it found its way into the official church history. In it, he vowed to be hers “for evermore.” Yet within this context of reassurance and intimacy, a few hours later the same day, even while Joseph was still in grave danger and when secrecy was of the utmost urgency, he made complicated arrangements for a visit from his fifteenth plural wife, Sarah Ann Whitney. (p. 142)
Joseph’s behavior is then pictured as callous toward Emma and also as evidence of an almost insatiable sexual hunger since G. D. Smith elsewhere tells us that Joseph’s “summer 1842 call for an intimate visit from Sarah Ann Whitney . . . vividly substantiate[s] the conjugal relationships he was involved in” (p. 185). G. D. Smith follows his reproduction of the Whitney letter with the claim that Sarah Ann was to “comfort” Joseph “if Emma not there,” further reinforcing his reading (p. 147). He later uses the supposed fact that “Joseph sought comfort from Sarah Ann the day Emma departed from his hideout” as emblematic of Joseph’s treatment of his first wife (p. 236). G. D. Smith’s distortion of this letter to the Whitneys provides the book’s leitmotif; it recurs throughout.
Yet, despite G. D. Smith’s efforts to control how the reader sees this text, Sarah is not the only invitee or addressee: Joseph repeats himself in asking that “all three of you can come and see me.” G. D. Smith hammers his view repeatedly, telling us elsewhere that “Joseph . . . pleaded with Sarah Ann to visit him under cover of darkness. After all, they had been married just three weeks earlier” (p. 53). “Elizabeth [Whitney] was arranging conjugal visits between her daughter, Sarah Ann, and [Joseph] . . . in 1842, as documented in chapter 2” (p. 366). A photograph of the letter is included, perhaps to convince us that this tale is genuine, with a caption that claims Sarah is to visit Joseph “with her parents’ help, in a nighttime visit” (p. 144). Once again, there is no hint from G. D. Smith that the letter insisted all three be present for the visit.
“Did Sarah Ann keep this rendezvous on that humid summer night?” asks G. D. Smith archly. “Unfortunately, the documentary record is silent.” But “the letter survives to illuminate the complexity of Smith’s life in Nauvoo” (p. 54). The documentary record is not silent, however, as to why Joseph sought a visit with his plural wife and her parents: to “tell you all my plans . . . [and] to git the fulness of my blessings sealed upon our heads, &c.” Small wonder that Joseph didn’t want a hostile Emma present while trying to administer what he and the Whitneys regarded as sacred ordinances. And, it is unsurprising that he considered a single private room sufficient for the purposes for which he summoned his plural wife and her parents. Napoleon’s full letter, one suspects, had far earthier priorities than Joseph’s. It is a shame that G. D. Smith bemoans fragmentary documentation while simultaneously twisting the available documents.
There are more clues of Joseph’s intent than G. D. Smith admits. Richard Bushman points out that the letter is “a reference perhaps to the sealing of Newel and Elizabeth in eternal marriage three days later.”[8] Todd Compton notes that “this was not just a meeting of husband and plural wife, it was a meeting with Sarah’s family, with a religious aspect.”[9] G. D. Smith, however, never indicates that such a view is possible, much less likely.
G. D. Smith knows that the letter is addressed to all three Whitneys, and he admits as much in a later reference to the same document (p. 31).[10] Yet the full text of the letter does not appear until G. D. Smith’s version has been urged at least four times (pp. ix, 53–54, 65, 142), and he returns to it again later (pp. 236, 366). And no analysis of the letter, save the small sliver of expurgated text favored by G. D. Smith, ever occurs. He has, in short, posed a passionate love letter from Napoleon with a carefully pruned text to give the false impression that Joseph was speaking in the same vein. And we are only on page 1.
Notes for the Above:
[3] My thanks to Robert B. White for generous feedback and to Blair Hodges, Edward (Ted) Jones, David Keller, Roger Nicholson, and Allen Wyatt for help locating some sources and drawing connections. Any mistakes and the conclusions herein remain my own.
[5] Joseph Smith, The Essential Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1995), 166–67. I use here the version published earlier in Dean C. Jessee, ed., The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1984), 538–42.
[9] Todd M. Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997), 350.