The Voice in The Rice
(Dodd, Mead, & Co., 1911)
Gouverneur Morris is one of the forgotten craftsmen of American fiction. Although he wrote dozens of short stories and novels-- including at least two or three confirmed classics-- he is very seldom read today, and hardly ever mentioned. Indeed, his main claim to fame is that he is the great-grandson of the better-known Gouverneur Morris-- one of the writers of the Constitution. One recently visiting one of my favorite old book haunts, I ran across a copy of Morris's 1908 collection The Footprint and Other Stories. I had known of Morris from reading his encomium on Richard Harding Davis. But I had never personally perused any of his fiction. After reading that book, however, I became more interested in the author's career and work. The following book came in very good season, for it's a perfect example of the type of fiction Morris specialized in-- that bordering on the shadowy realms of the mainstream and the outré.
The Voice in the Rice is a novel of 158 pages. The story concerns Michael Bourne, a young man who is shipwrecked off the coast of South Carolina, near the Santee River. When he washes ashore, he is found by "Sir Peter Moore," an odd hunchbacked character, who takes him deep into the Santee swamp districts, to where a secret community lives. Of this secret community the American government has no knowledge whatever, and they wish to keep it that way. They are a slaveholding community, where all the slaves are reportedly happy. Unfortunately, this utopia is presided over by Lord Nairn, a bizarre, sinister, incredibly obese tyrant, who sits hunched in a wheelchair most of the day, issuing commands and orders. He has hypnotic powers, too, and allows himself to be repeatedly bit by snakes, which he keeps hidden in his pocket to throw at people who thwart his schemes.
Matters get interesting when Lord Nairn's wife dies under strange circumstances. Immediately Nairn gets a hankering for young Mary Moore, who's father is deeply in debt to the overlord. Peter Moore, brother of the girl's father, attempts to stop the inevitable proposed "marriage" from going through, and it seems that Michael Bourne arrives just in time-- for a matchmaking effort must take place. Michael never sees Mary Moore's face, but he hears her voice calling through the rice in the swamps, and he falls madly in love with her. Every time he tries to meet her in person, however, his efforts are mysteriously thwarted. And soon Lord Nairn, perceiving him as a threat to his own lusts, attempts to kill him. Bourne escapes narrowly, and Nairn, in an act of unusual diplomacy, sends word to Bourne asking for reconciliation, and even offers to give the marriage of the two young people his blessing. So, Michael and Mary Moore will get married. Or is this just an attempt of Santee's sinister overlord to eliminate his competition once and for all? Watch out for those snakes!
I found this novel very exciting. It never lags, and makes for a good rousing adventure with a mild romantic element thrown in. Morris's prose is not so clear and lucid as might be. Some of it seems oddly turned, but this idiosyncrasy is not from any educational or artistic deficiency. It appears, however, that contemporary reviews were lukewarm, at best. Upon the book's release, a critic wrote: "The Voice in the Rice is a typical example of this author's tendency to take a really good idea, play with it ingeniously, and then apparently weary of it, as a child wearies of its rattle, and fling it aside." While The Voice in the Rice is by no means any effort of literary genius, it provides a brisk and refreshing break from the heaps of namby-pamby conventional fiction, while never surpassing the boundaries of good taste and mainstream interest. On the whole, we recommend it. The only edition we are aware of is the original one published by Dodd, Mead,& Co. It contains five or six attractive color plates by C. Lyendecker, and the page margins contain ornamental illustration.
--B.A.S.
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