Book Reviews

Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth.

By SHIRLEY A. LECKIE (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993 xxiv + 419 pp $26.95.)

In the story of Elizabeth "Libbie" Custer and her darling "boy general" husband, the American Victorians of the latter nineteenth century stand revealed with much greater sensuality and complexity than they would have liked to admit for themselves Spouting pieties of domestic fidelity, self-restraint, and modest affection, Elizabeth and George Armstrong lived instead a passionate life in a manner reminiscent of aristocrats in the declining European empires: indulgent, willful, even tyrannical, and with practiced eroticism. This is the story Shirley A. Leckie, associate professor of history at the University of Central Florida, tells in luxurious detail She uses the occasion to develop broader themes, such as the workings of the domestic ideology whereby Elizabeth hid her ambitions, even from herself. Unfortunately, the deeper themes as well as the grand historical drama retreat somewhat under the assault of Leckie's unyielding devotion to chronological narrative In the long run, Leckie's day-planner approach may be a welcome drawback for subsequent scholars (and likely movie producers) who will find many a lead in this first comprehensive biography of the author and mythmaker who would be content to be remembered as Custer's wife.

The early chapters unfold the history of a girl who, like her later husband and like her nation, was certain she deserved to be at the center of attention. Leckie draws Elizabeth's character with details such as the confessional childhood diary entries that reveal her learning to manipulate people's sympathies when her mother died Leckie continues the story by relying not only on the voluminous records the two principals left behind (George Armstrong Custer's letters to his wife regularly expanded to forty pages) but also on everything from plays the couple attended to military history. The fulsome picture that emerges includes Elizabeth pressing dried ferns to the window pane in their military quarters to create "a bit of fairy land"; Elizabeth and George and friends romping with the couple's eighty (!) hounds; and Custer's courtmartial retold in the context of the longstanding tug-of-war of the Custers' extramarital flirtations.

The final third of the book chronicles the fifty-seven years of the subject's life after the great turning point of Custer's death Another drama unfolds there, as the self-identified devoted wife discovers in lesson after reallife lesson that she has no power under the ideology she herself embraces Burdened by Custer's gambling debts, she first seeks to improve her pension, then learns to find work herself as a secretary to the Society for the Decorative Arts in New York, and later becomes an accomplished writer and well-paid lecturer In the end, she finds her resources insufficient to create her own hoped-for legacy—a Custer Club for working women— choosing instead a more modest scholarship fund for Vassar.

Drawing upon work in women's and western history, Leckie's purposes in the book are multiple: the compensatory task of adding the forgotten sex to history; tracking the domestic paradigm down into lived experience; explicating the process of mythmaking And Leckie occasionally goes even further, asking harder questions about such tender topics such as Mrs Custer's complicity with an ideology that justified the brutal conquest of the Plains Americans But she does so only in very quiet, rare asides. One can only wonder how the book might have read if freed from the scholarly Victorianism that seeks to disguise passionate engagement with objective facts.

DOROTHEE E KOCKS University of Utah

Harold F. Silver: Western Inventor, Businessman, and Civic Leader.

By LEONARD J ARRINGTON and JOH N R ALLEY, JR (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1992 x + 250 pp $24.95.)

Though probably not intended, the authors have successfully justified the honors given Harold F Silver by Brigham Young University for his contributions far beyond the financial considerations. They have shown him to have been a man of vision, honor, philanthropy and civic responsibility, as well as a self-taught inventor, engineer, and entrepreneur of considerable talent who brought honor to the Mormon church because of his public image as a church member.

While his contributions to the sugar beet and cane industries, as well as coal mining, do not elevate him to the ranks of Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, et al., Silver's intensive involvement in community and national affairs, concurrent with his industrial achievement, made him an individual worthy of a published biography to which is attached the distinguished name of the eminent Mormon historian, LeonardJ Arrington.

This much said, there are a few things that might have been done in greater detail, even if at the expense of some of the more laborious technical industrial detail. Silver's philosophy of labor relations, including strong negative feelings toward labor unions, apparently enabled him to avert much labor strife during a very stressful period in labor history, the mid-1940s. That in itself was a notable achievement worthy of more substantial treatment.

Almost no rationale was presented for Silver's denying his oldest, faithful son what the latter understandably had reason to hope would be his birthright, the management of the various Silver enterprises. The casting off of his younger, favored son because of the latter's vocational and marital choices also remains an enigma, seemingly out of harmony with Silver's other, more admirable traits.

For a "devout" Mormon, Silver's self-determined view that he could best serve the interests of his church by his professional and societal contributions to the almost complete neglect of personal church involvement, even to the extent of turning down a call to a stake high council, is unusual. His financial contributions to the church, while apparently substantial, do not appear to have been greater than his other financial largesses.

Perhaps there was no way to get at Silver's theological views, or lack of them, and more of his spiritual values; but to fully understand him as a Mormon, it would be helpful to know more about how he felt about tithing, the Latter-day scriptures, and such essential spiritual aspects of Mormonism as temple attendance beyond the ceremonial rite of marriage From this biography it would appear that he was at best neutral about much of the spiritual foundation of the church he unofficially represented.

J KENNETH DAVIES Brigham Young University

Set in Stone, Fixed in Glass: The Great Mormon Temple and Its Photographers.

By NELSON A WADSWORTH (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992 xii + 388 pp $39.95.)

The treasures of Utah's photographic history have remained in the dusty, back room shelves of archives for too long. And Utah has more than its share of gems. Early on, due to the coincidence of improved camera technology and the Mormon migration of 1847, Utah had active resident photographers. Nelson Wadsworth's book gives Utah a place to recognize its mainstream photographic roots.

For Wadsworth, himself the most prominent collector of Utah's historic photography, this is the culmination of years of study and revision of an earlier effort. In 1975 he wrote Through Camera Eyes, a book whose text and images obviously provide a basis for this book. But many of these images come to us because of his passion for the pre-Kodak (1890) technologies and his knack for recovering antique images.

Despite the title, the book is hardly confined to such a narrow topic as the temple Instead, Wadsworth uses the temple as a framework to present the photographers In nine chapters he reviews the lives of (at least) ten nineteenth- and early twentieth-century photographers who, at one time or another, photographed the temple during its construction. These short biographies, written with a folkloric flair, discuss how the photographers came to Utah, how they became photographers, their travels, and their photographic techniques and equipment.

Likewise, the photographs go beyond the temple and show the growing settlement of Salt Lake City, notable leaders, portraits of people, the early industries of Utah (mostly mining), Native Americans, Nevada, and other places that the photographers traveled The temple's construction is well documented. Ample room is given to the numerous well-reproduced images which offer hours of perusal

At times, however, there is genuine confusion as to which photographer took certain images. This confusion is compounded by the notable lack of credit to the holding institution of most images Wadsworth says this is a result of his early work when he did not record the source of the images. While it does not hinder the viewing, it depletes the historical merit.

The book simply proffers too much information, leading to incongruities between and within chapters The overload dispels any thematic thread and clutters a basic understanding of the evolution of Utah photography In chapter 3, for example, Wadsworth deviates from the extensive works of C R Savage, the central figure in Utah's early photography, to display well known, previously published images by Jack Hillers and James Fennemore on the 1871 Powell expedition. This digression is a typical departure from the temple and local photographer outline It is especially aggravating when numerous Savage prints of exceptional quality remain unpublished.

The book's historical unveiling is the autobiography ofJames H Crockwell Wadsworth, through his persistence, prompted the recovery of Crockwell's 100-page, handwritten story, bringing definition to an important landscape photographer who was little known until now. Crockwell's life and work are given in rich personal detail as he travels from Salt Lake City to the mines of Virginia City, Nevada. It is a rare, intimate view of the challenging life of a nineteenth-century photographer.

Wadsworth claims to have collected 100,000 images "covering the beginning of photography among the Mormons through the Utah photographers of the 1930s and 1940s." Hopefully we will be treated to more, though we should expect a more consistent, historically precise work.

DREW ROSS University of Utah

Letters of Catharine Cottam Romney, Plural Wife.

Edited byJENNIFER MOULTON HANSEN. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992 xxii + 317 pp $32.50.)

Much has been written about the first-generation Mormon pioneers, the village founders, the first turners of soil, the builders of canals and civic structures, the missionaries to the Indians—the establishers of Great Basin Mormondom Those small villages, fed by mountain streams, often did not have water for the next generation, particularly because the families, both polygamous and monogamous, produced so many offspring.

As Charles Hatch has shown in his prizewinning master's thesis at Utah State University, the second and third generation often went searching for new land where they could tap unused water and establish yet another cordon of Mormon villages. In the north this pressure took young families to the Snake River Valley and the Teton Valley In the south those from Dixie often went across the Colorado River to the Little Colorado where they founded communities with names like Snowflake, St. Johns, Woodruff, Taylor, Holbrook, St Joseph, Sunset, Cameron, and even Tuba City. These have been marvelously described by Charles Peterson in Take Up Your Mission (1973).

Miles Park Romney was one such second-generation opportunity seeker. Son of Miles Romney, the famed builder of the St. George Tabernacle and Temple, Miles Park Romney took his three wives and his considerable talents to the Little Colorado where he alternated as a carpenter, newspaper editor, and farmer.

As well known as he was there, it is likely that his second wife, Catharine Cottam, will be remembered best because she was a letter writer One of her descendants, Jennifer Moulton Hansen, has collected Catharine's letters, edited them, and presented us with this significant volume, capturing daily life in the new colonies.

Catharine was an optimist. Or maybe she would be better called a defender If one would contrast this book with Annie Clark Tanner's reflective memoir, A Mormon Mother, Catharine's would have to be considered a positive report on polygamous family life. To her polygamy was just natural,just matter of fact

Certainly Catharine had challenges in starting anew in new Mormon colonies—on the Little Colorado and later in several Mormon villages in Mexico. She struggled with many health challenges, the death of a son, and real persecution from anti-Mormon neighbors and federal officials Yet her letters show genuine affection for her sister wives and dogged defense of her husband, who diligently devoted his time to all three wives whether they lived in one house or three (Late in the story Miles married a fourth wife who was less integrated.)

Fortunately, Catharine was given to describing domestic life Her pen portrays births, visits of Apostles Erastus Snow and George Teasdale, difficulties with mail contacts with St George, making molasses, soap, and cheese, relationships with Mexican workers, life on the underground, quilting, knitting and sewing, clashes with non-Mormons over elections and land, medicating the ill, schooling (including night schools for adults), bartering, and above all, visiting—the favored entertainment.

For present-day readers, laden with current feelings about women and monogamy, the book is sometimes perplexing. It seems surprising to some today that Catharine would reject a single man's proposal of marriage in favor of a polygamist's. Are her letters selectively positive because she is trying to make her husband look good to her parents who were critical of the union? We get a hint early in the book that Park had some difficulties with alcohol, yet we find no mention of it later as he steadily moved into prominence.

The book allows the reader to become his or her own historian Careful readers will find important insights tucked among the daily details, much as Laurel Thatcher Ulrich has taught us to look for in her Pulitzer Prizewinning research on women's daily work in New England. Certainly the saga of struggle and faith is vital in these pages. The setbacks are finally overcome as the families achieve comfort, only to be undone by the Mexican Revolution.

This story of three generations (Catharine's parents, her peers, and her children) concludes as we get an insight into her offspring and that of her neighbors who produced some of Mormondom's most distinguished people named Romney and Eyring. The vast circle of descendants and devotees of these communities will cherish the book, but those interested in social history will also find it genuinely important.

DOUGIAS D ALDER Dixie College

Living in the Depot: The Two-story Railroad Station.

By H ROGER GRANT (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993 xiv + 131 pp $32.95.)

As the railroads expanded throughout North America during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries they needed depots for freight and passenger service and personnel to operate the depots at key locations along their routes. In what became the industry's version of company housing, many of the railroads constructed depots that combined both freight and passenger facilities with living quarters for the railroad agents and typically their families. The most common of these depots was a twostory arrangement with public facilities on the main floor and living facilities on the upper floor. In Living in the Depot, H. Roger Grant examines both the historical development and the social and cultural aspects of these livein depots that for a period of time could be found virtually everywhere throughout the settled areas of North America.

Living in the Depot provides a brief but well-researched description of how several railroads approached the livein depot. The descriptions range from the early railroads that were constructed in the already populated Northeast to the westward expansion where the railroads usually pushed ahead of civilization and permanent settlements sprang up in their wake. The book also explores the effects of economics on the design and construction of two-story depots The more prosperous railroads, usually in the Northeast and Canada, built hundreds of architecturally well designed two-story depots from numerous standardized plans In the South, however, and particularly following the devastation of the Civil War, the typically shaky railroad companies built few live-in depots and frequently relied instead on a local general store proprietor or perhaps a resident to represent their interests for a modest compensation.

Living in the Depot also looks at how agents and their families typically struggled to cope with the intrusion of the railroad operation into their daily lives For most agents' families, life in the two-story depot was one of extremes; living on the edge of civilization, and sometimes away from the permanent settlements, meant isolation and loneliness that was only punctuated on a regular schedule by the hustle and bustle that accompanied the noisy arrival and departure of the trains. Day-to-day life in the depot could be fraught with danger for the agent's family, particularly the children, but could also provide opportunities for adventure, excitement, and even status that most of the "regular" citizens in the community could only dream of.

The text of Living in the Depot is well illustrated with photographs, but the real bonus for readers is the collection of historic photographs with informative captions that make up the last half of the volume The photographs richly illustrate the diversity of size and architectural styles employed in the twostory depots and also provide a window through which to glimpse the golden age of railroading and the lives of the railroad agents and their families that were so much a part of this chapter of industrial and architectural history in North America.

DON HARTLEY Utah State Historical Society