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Recreation

"No conversation, no laughter, no cheerfulness, no sociality, except in spitting; and that is done in silent fellowship round the stove, when the meal is over." Thus wrote Charles Dickens in disgust after his visit to America during the early 1840s. Another English traveler who saw little joy in American life was Charles Lyell, who wondered if the American motto should not be "all work and no play." Many Americans themselves recognized this national trait and heartily approved. When Boston workmen agitated to shorten the workday to ten hours, merchants and ship owners feared the detrimental "habits likely to be generated by this indulgence in idleness." There is no doubt about the strength of the Protestant work ethic in nineteenth-century America and its accompanying lack of "play." In Nauvoo, however, the traveler could see more balance in American life.

As the first primitive homes took shape in Nauvoo, the Saints enjoyed typical frontier entertainments-with a few notable exceptions. An editorial in the 9 October 1844 Nauvoo Neighbor warned: "It is a matter of fact . . . that the citizens of Nauvoo, are opposed to the sale and use of spirituous liquors in said city; that they are equally opposed to gambling in any way, whether by cards, dice, billiard tables, thimbles or other devices." In August 1844 a city ordinance prohibited brothels and disorderly characters, declaring them to be public nuisances. Customers of such places were subject to fines of fifty to five hundred dollars and six months' imprisonment for each offense. Such ordinances were an attempt to control the rougher elements usually associated with any frontier town.

The Saints in Nauvoo had only limited time for recreation. For the average family, economic activities took up twelve to sixteen hours per day in the summer and ten to twelve hours in the winter. These long hours of work were common for most working-class Americans in the nineteenth century. Relaxation among the common people, of Yankee stock especially, was considered a sign of weakness or even a sin. The Protestant work ethic, so strong in the northeastern United States, where so many Saints were from, suggested that ceaseless work was the only justification for man's presence on earth. The new doctrine that "men are that they might have joy" was hard for many of the early Saints to accept, but it was made easier when recreation was given an early stamp of approval by their young Prophet.

The simplest form of recreation for the Saints was the informal contact they made with each other in their daily activities. Sisters meeting at the apothecary would exchange news from back home or of births, deaths, fashions, or children-news that would then be passed on over garden fences on the way home. During their lunch hours, the workers on the partially completed Nauvoo House or the stone cutters on the hill pitched games of horseshoes while discussing the election chances of Polk or VanBuren. Brother Page, dropping off some cowhides at the tannery took time to catch up on the latest town ordinances from Brother Johnson before heading back to his farm east of town. Brother Foote, bringing in a load of chairs from his shop in Montebello to trade at the Red Brick Store, lingered to tell newly arrived immigrants about farming opportunities at China Creek.