The Belle of Nauvoo - Book One

Chapter One

Chapter One

I had just settled down for the night and fallen asleep under my quilts, when I was awakened by what I believed to be a choir of angels singing in the birth of the Christ child. It was Christmas in Nauvoo, 1843. I was sixteen – the most wonderful of all ages, when life was full of countless possibilities and marriage lay just around the corner.

I heard my younger brothers running to their windows, throwing them open and hailing the angelic choirs. I too rushed to my window and threw up the sash, finding an earthly choir firmly standing upon the ground creating the angelic sounds. It was glorious! They sang:

Mortals, awake! With angels join,

And chant the solemn lay;

Love, joy, and gratitude combine

To hail the auspicious day.

In heav’n the rapt’rous song began,

And sweet seraphic fire

Through all the shining legions ran,

And swept the sounding lyre.

I waved to my acquaintances among the young men and women in the group. Can you wonder that I believed it to be a choir of angels? Sister Lettice Rushton, the blind sister from England, and her family, friends, and neighbors performed the kind service of serenading our family and that of the Prophet Joseph Smith, my uncle. Both he and my father, Hyrum Smith, still dressed, went out into the street to listen to the carolers and speak with them. The Law family and other neighbors, and the boarders at the Mansion House who were still awake, joined them outdoors.

Down through the portals of the sky

The pealing anthem ran,

To bear the news to man.

As Father was still awake and busy at that late hour, I wondered what on earth St. Nicholas was placing at my breakfast plate – perhaps a new hat pin or lace collar! I dearly wanted a lace collar for my newly-made dress to wear to the party on Christmas Day. As the song they sang was seven verses long, I had ample time to wonder greatly. But ‘twas on of my favorites and rendered with pure and simple voices:

Hail, Prince of Life, forever hail!

Redeemer, brother, friend!

Though earth, and time, and life should fail,

Thy praise shall never end.

At the song’s conclusion, both carolers and neighbors were friendly and full of the spirit of Christmas. My brother John shouted several greetings out the window to our cousin Joseph, his firm friend, both boys being age eleven. Others of the Prophet’s household also appeared at the windows, and I waved to my bosom companions Eliza and Emily Partridge, the Lawrence girls, and Lucy Walker. However, when her brother Lorin Walker leaned out of a window, I withdrew my own head quickly. I was wrapped in a tattered wool shawl, and I could never let Lorin Walker see me looking that way!

However, that brief glimpse of my favorite beau set my heart beating in my breast in anticipation of his favors the next day during the party. We would both dine and dance. Would he entreat me to dance a waltz? Would he ask me to dance more than one time? Whom else would he bestow his favors upon? Lorin was a very popular young man, a good man who gave most of his time to the building of the temple. He also kept the arms for the whole Nauvoo Legion and the receipts for the Young Gentlemen’s and Ladies Relief Society. He showed tremendous promise and had the confidence of his temporary father, my uncle Joseph. (His family had become part of my uncle’s when his father was sent on a mission and his mother died.) So naturally, several of the girls who were eligible for marriage sought his favor, though none more than I. And I had the privilege of intimacy with my uncle’s family, which gave me a decided advantage in the chase.

“Lovina! John! Shut the windows tight and climb back into your beds. Breakfast comes early!” Mother called from downstairs. She was my stepmother, but very dear to me. When my own mother had died, Father had courted and wed Mary Fielding, a convert from England. How she labored, through her teachings and kindnesses, to provide Father’s poor orphaned children with a loving mother. And how she succeeded! I loved her as if she were my own flesh and blood.

Obediently, though cautiously, lest I be sighted in my unbecoming attire by a certain young gentleman, I put down the sash and crawled between my icy sheets. My bedroom was freezing! Finding the wrapped warm bricks in my bed and placing one at my feet and one against the small of my back, I settled down to the sweet anticipation of a marriageable girl’s favorite pastime – dancing on Christmas Day.