BOOK REVIEW

_Beyond the Cabbage Patch: The Literary World of Alice Hegan Rice_ by Mary
Boewe. Butler Books, 2010. Hardcover. Pp. 411. ISBN: 978-1-935497-33-2.
$34.95.

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Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:
Carolyn Leutzinger Richey
Tarleton State University


Alice Hegan Rice's first book is her most remembered and, I dare say, her
most successful. It was made into a movie three different times, one
starring W.C. Fields. _Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch_ is the tale of an
unfortunate woman, who despite her poverty and the deaths of her child and
husband, maintains a Victorian dignity and an eternal optimism that
overshadow all her misfortune. Mrs. Wiggs is the quintessential Victorian
woman, who despite her husband's vice of alcohol and his resulting death, is
the "angel" of her household and her community. In her book _Beyond the
Cabbage Patch: The Literary World of Alice Hegan Rice_ Mary Boewe presents a
literary biography which traces the life of Alice Hegan Rice, both in her
native Louisville, Kentucky, and in the literary milieu of the end of the
Victorian Era during the early twentieth century

Boewe structures the literary biography of Rice around the author's major
works, dividing her career into four periods that trace her first
publication of _Mrs. Wiggs_ in 1901 to her last and posthumous publication
in 1942 of _Happiness Road_. Beginning with the "Prologue: 1900," Mary Boewe
details the background of "Miss Alice," her life in Louisville, in the
broader literary world, and with her future husband, poet and author Cale
Young Rice. She also provides the basis for the character of Mrs. Wiggs and
of the Louisville neighborhood of the downtrodden, the Cabbage Patch.
Throughout all parts of the text, Boewe provides a plethora of details of
the literary world of the early twentieth century and of the authors whose
lives and careers intersect that of Rice. Of particular interest to this
forum will be the numerous parallels of Alice Hegan Rice and her career with
Mark Twain and his career.

The first of these parallels between Rice and Twain lies in each author's
view of the age in which they lived. Boewe juxtaposes the seemingly opposing
views of the Victorian Era that Twain defined in _The Gilded Age_ to the
world of Rice's _Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch_, describing the latter's
work as a "Victorian tract." Twain's American Victorianism is "a stuffy
America of grandiose dreams and dubious morality." Juxtapose Twain's gilded
view of the age with Rice's idyllic view and the reader can see through the
Wiggs story:

"the obvious elements of Victorianism: the virtues of domesticity, an
exaltation of motherhood, the work ethic, the evils of drink, female
interdependence, child-rearing techniques, child labor concerns, social
welfare programs, and the intricacies of etiquette" (7).

The two authors embodied separate sides of the coin of the gilded Victorian
Age. On one hand, Rice represented the female perspective of the angel of
the household while Twain defined the permissive attitude to the decadence
and over-indulgence of the male during the era. Likewise, each author
accepts the other's perception because each has her and his view of the
opposite gender of the era. The fictional character of Mrs. Wiggs acquiesces
to her husband's foibles when she describes his death as "travel[ing] to
eternity by the alcohol route, . . . bur[ying] his faults with him and for
want of better virtues . . . [extolling] . . . the fine hand he wrote"
(Rice, 4). Mark Twain depicts the women of the era (except for anomalies
such as Roxy) as gentle women of the home like the Widow Douglass who taught
their charges the virtues of memorizing Bible verses and having table
manners.

During the summer of 1904, shortly after his wife Livy's death, Twain and
the Rices coincidentally spent the summer in Tyringham, Massachusetts,
staying in neighboring residences. Boewe describes the two authors' views of
each other. While Twain is described by other members of the company as
"bitter and tragic," Rice graciously perceives him, as if with rose-colored
glasses. She describes his "wonderful shaggy head of snow white hair, . . .
[his] expression of . . . amused interest, and . . . his [listening]
attentively" (59).

While Alice Hegan Rice had long admired Mark Twain, having studied his use
of characterization and vernacular language in his classic works, Mark Twain
did not feel the same about her. Alan Gribben in _Mark Twain's Library: A
Reconstruction_ cites the harsh view Twain had of Rice and her work. Twain
once wrote his wife Livy a note criticizing Rice's book _Mrs. Wiggs_ "for
the poverty & crudeness & vulgarity" and comparing it to another work as
being "the difference between Emerson & a 'nigger-show'" (Gribben, p. 576).
During the summer of 1904, after Livy's death, Isabel Lyon accompanied Twain
to Tyringham and in her journal discussed meeting the Rices. According to
Boewe, Lyon explains that she was "disappointed with the author of _Mrs.
Wiggs_ . . . but to 'Mr. Clemens' . . . Alice's book was not literature.
Therefore the author was not literary." However, despite Twain's view of
Rice and her work, his friend and editor Albert Bigelow Paine described "the
humanity of Mrs. Wiggs [going] straight to the heart of the reader,
[despite] . . .  the matter of a little artistic crudity, more or less."
Perhaps, as Boewe explains, Twain's opinion of Rice could have been tainted
by her misinformed profession of admiration for Bret Harte, "learn[ing] too
late that Harte was Twain's nemesis, the target of many a furious tirade"
(59).

Throughout her book, Boewe offers several examples of Rice's failure to
acknowledge Twain's distaste of her and of his failure to consider her a
part of the literary community. Rice was not invited to Twain's birthday
dinner hosted by his publishers Harper and Brothers at Delmonico's in 1905
while other friends and authors attended. Rice seems to rationalize her
exclusion and relates in a letter that "I am crazy to be on hand for the
dinner, and I feel like a small boy on the _outside_ of a circus, but my
Poet and I are pledged to spend our Thanksgiving down in Tennessee" (79).
Boewe further explains that "Meanwhile, two Louisville friends [and authors]
were going to the party" (79). Boewe seems to suggest that Rice was aware of
Twain's real feelings, but would never fully acknowledge them. Later that
year, Rice wrote to a friend, almost admitting to some envy at not being
invited to the gala. "My one consolation in not being at that dinner lies in
the fact that my picture was not in _Harpers Weekly_. Weren't they funny? I
enjoyed them for a week!" (79). Rice was too much the Victorian woman to
profess any truly unladylike feelings such as envy or resentment.

Boewe additionally offers another example of the less than stellar
assessment Mark Twain (and other critics) gave to Alice Hegan Rice and her
works. Any scholar of Mark Twain knows that one of his primary goals in his
writing was authenticity, but Twain did not see that in Rice's 1909 novel
_Mr. Opp_. Inspired by a response from Mark Twain to a newspaper item she
sent him, Rice created the character Mr. Opp from the typically Twain
response and description of the writer of the piece, calling him "a brother
with an atrophied lung & a petrified brain" (96). Rice took this description
and used it to create the character who "was the personification of Optimism
when he wasn't in the depths of Despair" -- Mr. Opp (96). In one chapter of
this novel, Rice details a riverboat trip that earned Twain's ridicule. In a
rambling essay titled "Getting the Details Right" Mark Twain criticized the
author for "steamboaty details" and complained that writers describing the
technicalities of a trade they had never mastered would always make serious
errors. He went on to enumerate Rice's mistakes regarding steamboat piloting
and travel. However, Twain was not the only critic to pan the 1909 novel,
nor the author. One critic wrote that "_Mrs. Wiggs_ was going into its
fifty-second printing, but _Mr. Opp_ would be lucky to reach its fifth"
(104).

Throughout the book, Mary Boewe traces Alice Hegan Rice's literary career
and encounters. While her career is not much remembered in the twenty-first
century, the author of _Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch_ shared a table with
and rubbed shoulders with many of the literary, political and social elite
of America. However, the most touching story Boewe relates is that of the
love affair between Alice and her poet husband Cale Young Rice. Theirs is a
love affair not that dissimilar to Sam Clemens and Olivia Langdon,
especially regarding the death of the wives. When the Rices met Twain during
the Tyringham summer that followed Livy's death, Cale Rice describes Twain
as "bitter and tragic . . .  [and] the plight of [Twain's] mind . . . was
lamentable" (58). In very similar fashion, at the death of Alice in January
of 1942, Cale was inconsolable; "there was no mourning period. The grief and
loneliness went on and on and on" (349). On Saturday, January 23, 1943, Cale
Young Rice committed suicide: "Let me forget forever, or let me die!" (352).
The last line of his final poem, titled "Last Lines," foretold his final
act.

The period of the Gilded Age in America paralleled and overlapped the
Victorian Age of England and Europe. The Gilded Age denoted a lifestyle of
flamboyance and excess, much like the gilded edges of a classic book. The
Victorian Era emphasized the responsibility of the woman to be the moral and
spiritual center of society. As a student of Twain, I could not help but key
on the obvious parallels between Mark Twain and the literary life and career
of Alice Hegan Rice and this era which each author occupied. Just as Mark
Twain represents his own personal duality and view of life through his
works, together Twain and Rice embody the dichotomy that was the Victorian
Era. On one side, Twain is the quintessential Victorian male,
self-indulgent, extravagant and a willing participant in the gendered
"acceptable" vices of the era. Alice Hegan Rice, through her literary works
and her personal experiences, thus embodies the optimism, naiveté, virtue
and innocence of the Victorian woman. Through her detail of the life and
literary travels of Alice Hegan Rice, Mary Boewe offers an enlightening look
at one of the most prolific writers of the early twentieth century, if not
one of the last remnants of the Victorian Era.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER:  Carolyn Leutzinger Richey is a graduate of University
of Missouri (BS English and Education) and San Diego State University (MA
English).
She currently teaches in the English Department at Tarleton State
University, and she previously taught in the English Department of San Diego
State University. Having written her Master's Thesis on Mark Twain, Ms.
Richey has presented papers on Mark Twain and Children's Literature at
several Mark Twain conferences and American Literature conferences. She has
written numerous reviews on Twain and Children's Literature, along with
contributing the entries on Mark Twain,  _Tom Sawyer_ and _Huckleberry Finn_
for the _Cambridge Guide to Children's Books in English_.

Other Works Cited:

Gribben, Alan. _Mark Twain's Library: A Reconstruction_. Boston: G. K. Hall
and Company, 1980.

Rice, Alice Hegan. _Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch._  New York:  D.
Appleton-Century Company, 1936.