Introduction 29

together. The few letters that exist between Helen and Avery and from Avery to both Helen and Owen offer a first-hand view of post-Manifesto “sister wives” and the curious relationship derived from sharing the same husband. Although both strived to be generous and kind to one another, a slight tone of jealousy and insecurity sometimes colors their rhetoric of love and friendship, as evidenced in Avery’s account of a visit Owen and Helen made while she was still living in Star Valley:

Owen and Helen came for a week’s visit enroute for the

Big Horn. My family made their stay pleasant as possible, especially were we careful to guard Helen’s feelings against any strain of sharing her husband’s time with another woman on this vacation trip. Mother kept me near her coaching me very frequently on how to play my part heroically. “Be happy about  it and don’t expect Bro. W. to give you much time or attention” mother said, “not in Helen’s presence. Remember she is our guest.” So I was thrilled when one morning while I was running the “separator” in a back room and Owen rushed in, taking me in his arms for an instant told me how sweet and brave I was. This lifted my spirits — primed me for the day ahead — reassured me of my husband’s love.

As Helen said of herself — “It is as natural for me to be jolly as for the sun to shine” proved to be a fact to all observers. She had hours and days of feeling blue she told me and had to struggle with self discipline. It worried her that I took life so seriously, and she often asked me if she had made me unhappy — she didn’t mean to.

As might be expected, Helen’s occasional insecurity expressed itself in her letters to Owen more than in her letters to Avery. However, in the following excerpt from an October 1903 letter to Avery, Helen demonstrates her understanding of how Avery might take her suggestions in a negative way that possibly could damage Avery’s sense of self-worth:

I have gone off on a tangent that sounds very much like preaching and you do not need preaching to one bit; you are just doing fine, it is myself that I need to labor with. (Letter 59)

Sometimes when Helen wrote to Owen, perhaps for validation, her fears and jealousies seemed more obvious, such as in the following from November 1900 and then later from July 1902: