Maud Gage Baum ( Gage; March 27, 1861 – March 6, 1953) was the wife of American children's publisher L. Frank Baum. Her mother was the suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage. In her early life, she attended a boys' high school.
Maud lived in Fayetteville, New York, with her aging parents until she married Frank in 1882, sacrificing her college education at Cornell University. At the onset of their marriage, she accompanied her husband's acting troupe throughout the United States. After she became pregnant, Maud and Frank settled down in a rented house, where she gave birth to Frank Joslyn in 1883. Complications arising from giving birth to her second son Robert Stanton in 1886 caused Maud to become afflicted with peritonitis. Ill for two years, she found solace in visiting her mother and siblings. In 1889 and 1891, she gave birth to Harry Neal and Kenneth Gage, respectively.
Described by her children as a no-nonsense mother, Maud took charge of the family finances and the disciplining of her children. She was their primary caretaker because her husband's business obligations frequently led to his being away for weeks at a time. The family moved to Aberdeen, South Dakota, in 1888 because Maud wished to be near her brother and two sisters. After her husband was unable to sustain a living there, they moved to Chicago. Because of their dire financial situation, Maud also worked, teaching embroidery and lace-making.
Beginning in 1900, her husband's best-selling picture book, Father Goose: His Book (first published in 1899), brought the family financial security that it had theretofore lacked. They began spending their summers at a cottage in Macatawa Park, Michigan. In November of that year, Frank transferred to Maud the literary rights of his most recent books, including Father Goose and From Kansas to Fairyland (later published as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz). By dint of Frank's literary successes, Maud and Frank were financially secure enough to tour Egypt and Europe for six months. Since Frank was frequently occupied with penning stories for his publishers, Maud was the one who wrote numerous letters home. These letters were later published in 1907 as In Other Lands Than Ours for friends and family. After Frank died, she authorized Ruth Plumly Thompson to write more Oz sequels and helped promote MGM's film The Wizard of Oz (1939). In 1953, she died at 91 years of age, surviving her husband by 34 years.
Early life
Born on March 27, 1861 to Matilda Joslyn Gage and Henry Hill Gage Maud was the youngest of their four children. She had two sisters, Helen Leslie Gage and Julia Gage Carpenter, and a brother, Thomas Clarkson Gage. Her mother was a feminist who fought for women's rights, and her father was a prosperous dry-goods retailer. A relative noted that Maud's mother was a "woman of force" who "ruled her mild, gentle husband and her four children with a rod of iron". Maud lived with her parents in a Greek Revival home in Fayetteville, New York. Baum scholar Evan I. Schwartz wrote that Maud had "dark hair, a shapely figure, and eyes as sharp as her mind". In her youth, Maud went to a boys' high school. Both she and her future husband, L. Frank Baum, attended Syracuse Classical School, a preparatory school in Syracuse, New York.
In September 1880, Maud headed to Cornell University, leaving on a train and arriving at an Ithaca depot two hours later. Her brother, Clarkson, had graduated as one of the top of the class, though her elder sisters did not attend a university. When Maud arrived at the university, she intended to be the family's first woman to receive a complete degree. Her mother dreamed of her becoming a doctor or a lawyer, which would be a rare accomplishment for a woman.
Though Maud had very little knowledge about being on her own, she was not timid. When she entered the parlor of her dormitory on her first day there, she recognized a tune from the piano. Telling the girls around her that "I dearly love dancing", Maud pretended to dance. A sophomore girl, Jessie Mary Boulton, who observed her wrote in a letter back home: "There is one that I think will make quite a stir. Her name is Gage and she is lively." Baum scholar Evan I. Schwartz remarked that "[l]ively may have seemed like a compliment of sorts but it was a code word for trouble". A girl characterized as "lively" would have a difficult time in college and was likely to produce gossip.
Maud's tuition cost $25 each term, roughly equivalent to the money her father made each week at his Fayetteville store. The cost of living at Sage College, a dormitory populated exclusively by females, was $7.50 every week, which amounted to $340 every year. If two students roomed together, each could save $40. To save money, Maud chose to room with a sophomore girl, Josie Baum. When they were still strangers to each other, they addressed each other formally, saying "Miss Gage" or "Miss Baum". After Maud passed the exam, she was included in the September 16, 1880, inaugural issue of the school daily, Cornell Sun, as "Miss M. Gage, Fayetteville". In her freshman class of 131 students, there were only 19 women.
The few young women compared to the number of young men led to the women being paid unwanted attention. Maud's classmate, Jessie Mary, wrote that the "[b]oys (or young men as I guess they call themselves) abound". She noted that girls were frequently ogled by the boys, who enjoyed teasing them. When a girl was late, the boys would loudly clap as she sat down. Each October, the freshman class would elect about twelve positions, including a president and vice president, a treasurer, a class essayist, and a marshal. The marshal was tasked with organizing parties and other social occurrences. Girls were generally barred from most of the positions. However, an annual tradition of the boys was to "nominate the most precocious girl" and then "gossip about her viciously". Maud was nominated.
Nasty rumors about Maud circulated around campus, causing her to angrily lock herself in her dorm, where she cried for several hours. Her roommate, Jessie, wrote in a letter home that:
Because the boys knew her mother was the women's rights activist Matilda Joslyn Gage, Maud was subjected to more bullying than the other girls. Divided on the issue of women's rights, some Cornell boys believed it to be a farce, ripe for mockery. Others thought it to be a plague, a danger that had to be ended. In the September 29, 1880, issue of the Cornell Suns humor column a boy included the limerick: The poem was an undisguised attack on Maud for being her mother's substitute. Unaccustomed to the boys' nasty behavior, Maud was severely wounded.
Not all the men condoned such behavior. The all-male editorial board of the Cornell Sun wrote that the boys were being cruel in entering a fake ticket to mock girls. They wrote that "[t]here is not the slightest reason ... to hold the ladies up to ridicule. They have neither sought nor do they aspire to class politics, but have left politics to the more experienced sex." The abuse she suffered at Cornell emotionally scarred her, possibly coloring her view of Cornell men and revealing to her the taxing nature of a woman's forging her way through a world dominated by men.
Life with L. Frank Baum
While she was studying English and American literature at Cornell University, Maud first met her future husband L. Frank Baum at 678 W. Onondaga St., the house of his sister Harriet Baum Neal, and her husband, William Neal. Her roommate, Josie Baum, was Frank's cousin and urged her to meet Frank. During an 1881 Christmas party, Josie's mother, Josephine, walked hand in hand with Maud to Frank and introduced them to each other, saying, "This is my nephew, Frank. Frank, I want you to know Maud Gage. I'm sure you will love her." Frank replied, "Consider yourself loved Miss Gage", whereupon Maud countered, "Thank you, Mr. Baum. That's a promise. Please see that you live up to it." Not a week elapsed before Frank was certain he was drawn to her; however, she had other beaus. The two were merely friends when she continued her second year in college and Frank went back to working in the theater. On May 15, 1882, Maud traveled to Syracuse to watch Frank perform in The Maid of Arran. In the summer of that year, Frank paid frequent visits to Maud by using his father's horse and buggy to travel eight miles from his theater company in Syracuse to Maud's house in Fayetteville. Not only in awe of Maud's beauty, Frank was also captivated by her poise and sagacity. For Maud, as she wrote in a letter to a friend, Frank was "very handsome and attractive".
Marriage proposal and wedding
A sophomore at Cornell University, Maud made a significant sacrifice when she accepted Frank's marriage proposal. She was twenty, and he was twenty-five. Maud's mother, suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage, initially disapproved of Maud's marrying Frank. Matilda considered Frank an "impractical dreamer" who would be unable support a family. Matilda, who once dreamed of being a doctor and was not accepted by any medical schools, was distressed that her daughter would sacrifice the chance of higher education to marry a traveling actor. After Maud accepted Frank's proposal, she asked him to remain in her front parlor while she broke the news to her mother in the back parlor. In a conversation that Frank "could not help hearing", he listened to Matilda's harsh disapproval.
Matilda told Maud she refused to "have my daughter be a darned fool and marry an actor". Maud retorted, "All right, mother, if you feel that way about it, good bye." After her mother requested clarification, she said, "I'm going to marry Frank, so, naturally you don't want a darned fool around the house." Upon recognizing that Maud would marry Frank whether or not she supported her, Matilda laughed and acquiesced. On November 9, 1882, Maud and Frank were married by W. H. Hawley, the minister of Fayetteville Baptist Church. The wedding ceremony was held in the parlor of Matilda's home, which was packed with people. Many relatives and friends of Matilda attended the wedding, including Maud's three sisters and women's rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her husband Henry Stanton. Frank's parents, Benjamin and Cynthia, and his sisters, Hattie and Mattie, also attended the wedding. The parlor was so crowded that the hired string quartet had to play upstairs. The local paper praised the marriage ceremony as "one of equality". Whereas most marriages of the era had the bride's wedding vows include a pledge to obey her husband, the local paper said "the promises required of the bride [were] precisely the same as those required of the groom". The couple honeymooned in Saratoga Springs, New York, whereupon they passed Thanksgiving with their relatives.
Marriage
Maud's marriage with Frank abounded with passion. The two did not abide by the customary gender roles of a husband and a wife. Whereas at the advent of their marriage Maud was very assertive of her authority, Frank was charming and yielding. In a frequently related family tale, Frank bought a dozen bismarks (jelly doughnuts) and took them home. Affronted, Maud enjoined him to tell her whether he disliked the food she purchased and cooked. Frank told her that her meals were satisfying, but he grinned that he also enjoyed to eat Bismarks for breakfast. For three consecutive mornings, she gave him bismarks to eat. Frank, sick of the now stale doughnuts, placed them in the cupboard after bundling them up in newspaper. Taking the doughnuts back from the cupboard, Maud forced him to eat them.