Once upon a time there was a Texas cowboy that the other cowpokes called “Kid Cave.” He had been born in 1869, and was English, but it’s hard to know how many of the stories told about him were true, how many were cowboy tall tales, and how much was newspaper invention. Had he really been 12 years old, serving on a British navy gunboat when the rest of the crew deserted on the Australian coast to join the gold rush, leaving him practically alone on board? Had he been in Burma, where his partner was killed in a tiger hunt? That vicious scar on his arm, from wrist to elbow – how had he got it? Had he served in the British army in India? in China? in the Spanish-American War? Maybe.

What was sure was that he rode horses as well as any cowboy, and handled his rope far better than even the best – around the turn of the century he was winning competitions with his rope stunts, working in Wild West shows, and even staging his own. He appears to have been well liked by his fellow cowboys, at ease in any society, well spoken and easily adapting to new circumstances. Report also indicates that he was a skilled bartender.

But in 1880 his older brother died. And in 1907, his father died. As surviving son, Kid Cave had to return home to take up the family business, one normally far removed from cattle branding and fancy rope tricks. Kid Cave became Genille Cave-Browne-Cave, Baronet of Stanford, 12th heir to a title dating back to 1641.

By most accounts, there was little material accompaniment to the title – some heavily romanticized newspaper accounts have him returning to a shell of house, weeds thick before the front door, his mother dead of a broken heart – but a baronetage is a baronetage, after all, and Sir Genille set about earning a place and a living for himself. This took two forms: Reviving for a time his Wild West show for European audiences, and adding “Reverend” to his title of “Sir” by becoming a minister in the Church of England.

Kid Cave became the Reverend Sir Genille Cave-Browne-Cave just at the time when Latter-day Saints, both local members and the elders from abroad, faced some of the worst persecution they had ever known in England. The British press was filled with allegations that Mormon missionaries were shipping boatloads of innocent young English girls to the United States, to enroll them in polygamous harems in Utah. Mormon meetings were disrupted, Mormon elders were stoned, Mormon members faced discrimination in social and employment settings.

By 1922 (hey! my grandfather was a missionary in England then!) Mission President Orson F. Whitney was complaining in private about the “silly and asinine” charges in the press. “No amount of denial, or reasoning, or positive proof to the contrary, is accepted in refutation of this infamous falsehood. They don’t want the truth; it is not the facts that they are after. Their one purpose is to ‘down the Mormons,’ and bring such a pressure to bear upon the ruling powers that they will be forced to take the action that these plotters desire.” He complained that they distorted everything – even twisting the 13th Article of Faith: “… if there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things. ‘These things,’ of course, are the British girls!”

And who do you suppose was one of “the most virulent of our defamers,” according to Elder Whitney? Why, none other than our former Texas cowboy, the Reverend Sir Genille Cave-Browne-Cave! (or, “this Cave-Man,” as one of the elders called him).

“The ferocious ravings of this man have been copied and recopied, and are quoted against our missionaries wherever they go. He tells the British public that Mormons are shot down on sight in Texas, and that they either murder their women outright, or give them a strong alkali drink that gradually destroys them, thus making way for younger wives who are recruited through the labors of the Elders in Great Britain.” Elder Whitney told one of the reporters “that no alkali in Utah could beat that lie.”

In private correspondence, Elder Whitney told a story that he probably would never tell in public:

Last Sunday night [mid-January, 1922], at the regular service of the North London Branch, two newspaper men put in an appearance at “Deseret,” and after the meeting was over they began to quiz the Elders and Saints. Dan Smedley, of Davis County, Utah, happened to be present – lately released from the presidency of the Sheffield Conference – and when one of the reporters inquired: “What about these articles by the Rev. Cave-Browne-Cave?” Dan promptly answered: “They are a tissue of lies.”

“What!” exclaimed the reporter, “do you mean to say that this reverend gentleman is a liar?”

“I do,” said Dan.

“He’s not a liar, you’re a liar,” said the newspaper man – and the next moment he was sprawling on his back, with Dan on top of him, clutching his throat with panther-like tenacity. The fellow was frightened almost out of his wits.

“He flew at me like a fiend,” said he through his paper next day. “I was completely overpowered, and had to be rescued by the Elders.”

He will probably long remember his first encounter with a real Dan-ite.

The cowboy-turned-churchman, however, did not hesitate to tell his own stories in public.

“Every chivalrous man in England should rise up and help to drive the Mormons from this country,” he began one sermon in the same month of January 1922.

Mormonism not only kills the body; it drags the soul down to hell.

These missionaries are here to take back the best of our girlhood to be handed out in Salt Lake City, where men are more unclean than lepers, and their whole city, morally, is rotten to the core.

I read this week of an English convert advertising her pride at being a Mormon, and her desire to marry a Mormon and go to Salt Lake City. My blood runs cold when I think of the fate that awaits her in Utah. She will find no difficulty in marrying a Mormon. She will be sealed soon enough to a man in that hideous temple, for ten years, perhaps for twenty. When the man has tired of her he will turn her over to some subordinate.

I have seen with my own eyes the blood-stained boulder at the back of [Joseph F.] Smith’s house, freshly stained with the blood of rebellious girl converts.

But the hullaballoo, as usual, proved encouraging to the missionaries.

“My brethren,” wrote Elder Whitney, “I am happy to be able to report that this anti-Mormon stir-up is doing us a whole lot of good. Every mail brings inquiries about the Mormon Church and Religion, with requests for our literature, and not infrequently enclosures of money for subscriptions to the Star. There is also an awakening among the Saints; the lukewarm and indifferent are becoming zealous once more, and our meetings, all over the land, I am told, are better attended and more spirited than they have been for years. God be praised, say I; and may his enemies be scattered and confounded!”