Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, was born in 1847, in London. While still at school, he attracted attention both good and bad: He was a brilliant orator; and he purchased a horse despite a college rule against the ownership of horses by undergraduates. He was given the choice between selling the horse or leaving school … and he left school. Later that same year (1868), his grandfather died and Archibald succeeded to the title as Earl of Rosebery.

In 1878, Archibald married Hannah de Rothschild, the sole heir of Mayer de Rothschild, the wealthiest British heiress of her generation. The couple had four children; Hannah died in 1890.

Two of Britain’s greatest politicians of that era, political rivals – Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone – tried to enlist Archibald in their political parties. Gladstone won, and Archibald became an official in his government, serving as Gladstone’s foreign secretary, and after Gladstone’s retirement from politics, Archibald became Prime Minister for a short period (1894-95). My brief excursion into the history of British prime ministers tells me he wasn’t considered a very successful prime minister. After the end of his political career, he took to writing biographies, collecting rare books, and supporting the Scottish football program. He died in 1929, after 11 years of ill health following a stroke.

Where’s the Mormon history in there?

In 1873, Archibald Primrose, Earl of Rosebery made the first of three tours of the United States. Those tours provided some useful lessons for his political career – Rosebery is credited with using American political techniques, including having his candidate speak to crowds from open-air platforms on train cars, to win Gladstone’s 1879 campaign.

On that 1873 tour, Archibald went West on the new transcontinental railroad. He kept a diary of his experiences. The full relevant (to us) entries can be read here; I’ll summarize the fun stuff below.

Oct 12 [1873]

Today we gradually approached some very fine scenery. W breakfasted at Greenriver, a little hell of monte men and universal swindlers: one of our passengers having a ten dollar note snatched out of his hand in the little timber saloon. A worse danger is that of losing one’s train, for these decoys wear false tickets in their hats like real travellers, and invite them to come into a saloon saying that they are also passengers and know that the train is not going for ten minutes at least. We dined at Evanston in Utah.

He described the scenery of the canyons as the train approached Ogden, including this detail: “Some of these hills are crowned with little walls to shelter riflemen and with rocks prepared to roll down upon assailants: all the work of the Mormons when threatened by President Buchanan’s army in 185[7-58].” And he imagines, sympathetically, how the Mormon pioneers must have felt reaching that point (although he may be unaware that the scenery leading to the Salt Lake Valley is somewhat different from the scenery he saw leading into Ogden):

As the train approaches nearer Salt Lake or rather Ogden the scenery becomes more and more beautiful: and when at last we broke from out of the ravines to approach the plain on which Ogden is situated, one could form some idea of the feelings of the Mormons after their great march. It must have been a solemn moment, when, after toiling through the majestic canyons – some with great sandstone boulders like red fortresses of nature some bare and repulsive, they came to these last hills, (if there were as I saw them) rosy in the sun, but radiant with a hundred natural hues, violet and russet and crimson and gold, and were told by the inspired voice that these were the gates of the land of promise.

Archibald and his party stayed at the Walker House hotel in Salt Lake. The morning after his arrival, they toured Salt Lake, visiting ZCMI, the Tabernacle (“it is a very wonderful building, with a roof shaped like the long half of a cocoa-nut”), and the site of the future Temple, where he noted that the walls are no more than three feet above ground. “There were a good many men at work there, some I was told, to work off their tithing to the Church, and some out of piety. I am a little sceptical about the last.” They also visited the offices of the Herald newspaper, and drove out to Fort Douglas to meet the American military officers there. Then, after dinner, he attended a play at the Salt Lake Theatre. They saw Uncle Tom’s Cabin, where he spent more time examining and criticizing the audience than he did watching the play. As so many visitors did, he imagined he could discern the entire presumably wretched history of polygamy written on the faces of the women there.

After dinner Gurdon and I went to the play. We arrived at 7.30 punctually or a little before and remained without moving till 11.45. The mixture was curious and more especially when contrasted with the little spick and span French theatre. On one side was a Salt Lake Dandy with diamond studs and lavender gloves, with his young woman also smart and holding a fan she did not know how to hold. On the other side there was the mother of thirteen (to look at her) freely administering nature’s founts to her baby, weeping copiously and laughing loudly whenever the play demanded. In the middle of the piece a man marched in with five wives in the midst of whom he sat sultanically, and again after him two miners in flannel shirts and long boots.

In front of me there was a pitiful romance which I watched instead of the play. There was a gentleman called Harrison a tin-smith with whom I had had a transaction about a teapot in the afternoon. (“I reckon I’m out of them”. “When will you have some more?” “When I’ve made them”.) Well, Harrison was seated in the stalls a smug Welshman or Briton. On his right was his hideous legitimate wife: beyond her was her hideous legitimate daughter. On his left was his newly married wife with a young baby at her breast. The fat spouse was smartly dressed and the hideous daughter was also smart, but the poor Hagar with her pleasant kindly rather plain face was very simply dressed with no ornament but her wedding ring. The Sarah and daughter had sent her to Coventry it was obvious and tittered and laughed away amazingly – old Abraham joining. The other poor thing sat glum and melancholy clasping and fondling her baby. Her husband occasionally turned to her, but only getting sad answers and looks gave it up, and at last I saw the young mother shedding such bitter tears over her baby and trying to hide them. Presently she got up and left the house. The stepdaughter had occasionally looked round at her as if to observe how she took her exclusion, but Sarah studiously kept her head turned away. It was quite clear that the good man had taken unto himself the handmaid, an offence which his former family visited upon her.

As for the play, Archibald found it tedious, “a happy combination of a ‘penny deadful’ and the Athanasian creed.”

The play was long and dreary and Uncle Tom was intolerable. There was a dear little Eva a daughter of Elder Clawson’s. She died in the second act in bed, with a chorus of household blacks singing a hymn and uncle Tom uttering a sort of religious soliloquy. In the third act St Clare dies on a sofa with a chorus of household blacks singing a hymn and uncle Tom uttering a religious soliloquy. In the last act Uncle Tom happily expires on a pallet uttering a religious soliloquy with a chorus of household blacks singing a hymn.

The next morning, Archibald “got up pretty early on this cold gray morning, and went to the ‘Herald’ office and to the Zion Cooperative store to find out about president Young’s movements. It appears that he will not be back tonight, nor till tomorrow evening. I have therefore determined to follow him.”

That afternoon, in an early snow, Primrose caught the train from Salt Lake City to American Fork, as far south as it went in 1873. There he caught a ride in a cart heading to Provo. Once there, he asked to be taken to “the bishop’s house.”

“Which?” said they.

“The Bishop” said I this time with some dignity.

“But there are five here” said the driver.

So I had to strike a match and see who it was to whom my letter was directed: it was the Mayor Bishop Smoote. So to Smoote’s house we drove where a pretty young woman told me that Smoote was at the Town Hall. The Town Hall was brilliantly lighted up and I could see a supper going on. Sending in the letter I waited some time. At last Mayor Smoote came out with my letter, welcomed me.

Archibald stepped outside briefly to dismiss his driver.

Coming back softly I found a conclave examining my letter of introduction and debating upon my style and titles. As I came in the verdict was “he IS”, and henceforward I was addressed familiarly as “Earl”, and introduced as “the earl of – dear me sir I do not recall your name”.

I sat talking in the waiting room with a deputation of two bishops who were sent out to make conversation. Presently the door opened, there was a general sort of stir, everybody stood up, an old gentleman in a great coat comforter and shocking bad hat advanced taking off the hat, with the two other elderly gentlemen behind him. This was Brigham Young followed immediately by George A. Smith second president and Historian of the Church, and Elder Taylor who was with Joseph Smith when he died and now a leading member of the Twelve Apostles.

Brigham Young is something like Lord Ravensworth only of a smaller make. His mouth is firm, rather underjawed, his eye blue, his speech soft and deliberate, his teeth openly false. He was not well but was courteous and dignified, shewing me great attention and politeness, treating his followers who paid him devout and anxious homage with coolness if not haughtiness. Below him, I should say, there is wonderful fellowship and democracy – what one would hope and suppose were the manners of the primitive Christians: but of him the whole flock stand in obvious awe not to say fear.

George A. Smith is a stout tall florid Englishman of the middle class deriving a fictitious importance from spectacles.

John Taylor is a pleasant kindly garrulous old Englishman from Liverpool. He was in the cell with Joseph Smith when Joseph Smith was murdered. He received four balls, but escaped while the assassins were occupied in putting Smith’s semianimate body against a wall and firing at it. Joseph Q. Cannon followed if not at once at any rate almost at once. He is by far the most attractive Mormon dignitary I have ever seen. He has a bright and earnest eye and manner: knows much more of what is going on in the outer world than the other Mormons, and is consequently and also naturally much more of a man of the world than they are. He is a very charming companion, and though, as I have said, a man of the world he is obviously an earnest believer in Mormonism.

After dining with the Mormons at the Town Hall, Archibald went with the rest into the building’s ballroom.

They had begun dancing. I did not dance but sat and looked on. All the dances were Square or ‘cotillons’ as they were called, and each figure was called out in a loud voice by a sort of master of the revels who stood apart and called the figures as his fancy dictated. The chief beauties were the two Misses Smoote daughters of Bishop Smoote, Miss Sharp daughter of bishop Sharp (the chairman of the Utah Central Railway) and the Miss — I was introduced to down stairs. Then in the midst of dancing a little man like a Jew fiddler ‘Brother Maibin’ came forward and sang a song about a fair, another about a man being frozen by ice creams, and another about ‘Our Village’ by Tom Hood. Moved to this by the general applause, a large brother with a bass voice now came forward and sang a somewhat dreary and tragical ballad. Soon after this we went to bed. I was introduced in the ballroom to a brilliant crowd of Bishops, colonels and Judges. Everybody danced, old as well as young, and the president himself would have danced but for rheumatism, as he is very fond of it and dances well. He soon went to bed taking with him Amelia, to whom I was introduced. She is a pleasant shrewd looking woman of about forty. I was also introduced to Bishop Hunter the genial old patriarch of the church.

He stayed that night with one of the city’s five bishops – not Bishop Smoot, whose house was full – and the next day he toured the sights of Provo. Archibald’s notes of that tour reflect his mix of appreciation with condescension:

This morning Elder Taylor came over to breakfast and we breakfasted alone together, Bishop Miller sitting by. Elder Taylor discoursed at great length on religion – and presently Hiram Woodruff or Wilford Woodruff I understood Hiram but now think it was Wilford – came in. then Taylor, Woodruff and I got into Bishop Smoote’s cart – driven by young Smoote – and splashed through the city which is grandly situated between the mountains and the lake. It contains 4000 inhabitants and is the third Mormon city, Ogden being the second. It is spread over an immense space of ground relatively to the population, as each house is surrounded by a quantity of ground. We drove to the woollen factory they have established here which is the largest building I have seen since Chicago. They are justly proud of it. Its architecture and proximity to the snow clad hills brought Turin to my mind. We went carefully over the whole building which is filled with the newest kinds of machinery which the pleasant and intelligent foreman explained to us. There was an Indian girl working there and she was said to be one of the best workers there.

Afterwards we drove to the university, or as we should call it Dayschool. There were no children there but a strong smell of apples: the children had all gone home to their dinners. The building had originally been a theatre and was occasionally used for dancing, besides obviously at present being also a fruit cupboard.

Then we went into the Cooperative Store– or rather the principal one for there are two both agencies of the central Zion Store.

In the early afternoon, Archibald and his party went to meet Brigham Young’s carriage, to form a convoy driving from Provo to American Fork where they would all catch the train back to Salt Lake.

My way had been beguiled by Apostle Taylor telling me all the narrative of how Joseph and Hyrum Smith had been shot in Nauvoo when he was with them in the cell. He told it circumstantially but without the slightest sign of emotion, although it should have been to him much as the Crucifixion was to the Twelve Christian Apostles. Joseph Smith when he saw Hyrum Smith shot dead, came forward, and taking a small revolver form Taylor fired it several times into the mob. Then Taylor attempted to get out of the window but received four balls and fell back into the room and crept under the bed. Joseph Smith then tried to get out of the window but receiving several shots fell to the ground outside. The assassins seeing this hurried down stairs to join the crowd round Smith’s body, and put the body up against the wall and fired at it. Meanwhile Taylor and Willard Richards who was mysteriously unhurt escaped. Few men have been so near death and lived.

He excused the suppression of the Gentile Journal which led to the riot by saying that they considered it came under the powers given them in their charter to suppress nuisances. He said he had no doubt from the direction of several of the balls fired into Joseph Smith’s dungeon that they came from the United States Militia placed outside to protect the Mormon prisoners.

Well we arrived at the end of the line, and president Young dismounted from his cart with a red handkerchief tied under his chin like a bonnet and a hat over it. President George A. Smith had also a flaming bandana tied round his head in the same way. We remained on this open spot for nearly if not quite an hour, president Young returning to his waggon. At last the train appeared: and we all crowded into the welcome warmth of the private presidential car. Into a room at the end of this car the prophet and Amelia retired. I sat and talked with Joseph Cannon, who was however presently summoned with George A. Smith to see the president, whom they found with a good deal of fever and wandering in the head. It was seven before we got back to Salt Lake. I could not say good-bye to Young as he was too unwell but I said goodbye to Amelia instead and to all the kindhearted Mormons in the train. I then went off to buy relics of Salt Lake – an oxhide whip and the spurs they use, and two pairs of the gloves which the Mormon ladies make and sell with cuffs of beaver fur. Some of them have flowers embroidered on the back.

Archibald returned to his room at the Walker House hotel. Later that night, “I was visited by kind old Apostle Taylor who presented me with a French copy of the Book of Mormon issued under his directions, and one or two controversial pamphlets by himself.”

He rose at 4:30 the next morning, to catch his train back to Ogden and then back to Chicago and points East. Salt Lake City was the westernmost point of his travels on that tour, and he came considerably out of his way with the express purpose of seeing the Mormon city and meeting some of its leaders.