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At the Hungry Tiger Talk blog, David Maxine has been presenting his research into the many maps of Oz. In his latest, he shares information about the map that appeared in Tik-Tok of Oz (1914), as shown above.

David quotes material showing that L. Frank Baum:

• sketched a map of Oz for a young reader while working on the musical that became Tik-Tok of Oz, according to his composer, Louis F. Gottschalk.
• sketched a supplemental map depicting the adventure in The Lost Princess of Oz (1917) based on the first.

He thus reaches the convincing conclusion that Baum himself sketched the preliminary version of the Tik-Tok map.

The main mystery of that map is why its compass is reversed, with east shown on the left and west on the right. Baum’s texts are consistent about east and west—the Winkie Country is always to the west of the Emerald City, for example, and traveling west in the Winkie Country takes one to the edge of Oz. Likewise, the Lost Princess map is consistent with the earlier Tik-Tok map, with west on the right. But if one were to hover in the air over Oz in a balloon facing north, would it look like that map?

For David, the consistency suggests that Baum actually pictured Oz that way, with east to the left and west to the right. I'm not so sure that’s the only explanation.

Even in its early years, the Reilly & Britton publishing firm seems to have been a bit slapdash in how it assembled the Oz books. A couple of years ago I wrote an article about the art program for The Patchwork Girl of Oz, which included reusing many of John R. Neill’s illustrations, including at least one that Baum had rejected.

I therefore think there’s a possibility the Tik-Tok map ended up with a reverse compass because no one noticed that mistake till all the hand-lettering was done. Then, with the book ready to go to the printers, everyone (including Baum) just decided to live with the oddity. As for the Lost Princess map, Baum clearly based that off the earlier one, and it would have been much easier for him to maintain its orientation than to redraw the borders in reverse.

Unfortunately, correspondence between Baum and his publisher during the time when the map was created appears to be lost. We therefore don’t know what Baum asked for or settled for. But it’s clear that he accepted the map as published, with its unorthodox orientation.

Breakfast in Oz

Perhaps L. Frank Baum’s biggest strength (and occasional weakness) as a writer was in how he exhibited all of his characters’ different outlooks and habits—usually without judgment.

For example, here’s a moment from The Lost Princess of Oz, as Scraps the Patchwork Girl, who doesn’t have to sleep, explains what she’s found in the night, and other characters eat their morning meals:

“The Sawhorse and I made a journey in the dark, while you were all asleep, and we found over there a bigger city than Thi. . . . It isn’t far to the city. We can reach it in two hours after you’ve had your breakfasts.”

Trot went back and, finding the other girls now awake, told them what Scraps had said. So they hurriedly ate some fruit—there were plenty of plums and fijoas in this part of the orchard—and then they mounted the animals and set out upon the journey to the strange city. Hank the Mule had breakfasted on grass and the Lion had stolen away and found a breakfast to his liking; he never told what it was, but Dorothy hoped the little rabbits and the field mice had kept out of his way. She warned Toto not to chase birds and gave the dog some apple, with which he was quite content. The Woozy was as fond of fruit as of any other food, except honey, and the Sawhorse never ate at all.

It all sounds very pleasant, except for those little rabbits and field mice Dorothy is worried about. But nobody says nothing.

Dubious Monarchy in the Work of L. Frank Baum

Last week I discussed the penchant of children’s fantasy for depicting monarchies instead of other forms of government. Such books show bad rulers as a source of societal unhappiness, but usually portray the solution as installing or restoring good rulers rather than, say, establishing democratically chosen legislatures and respect for individual rights.

L. Frank Baum’s books fit this pattern, in that most of his little societies are monarchies and few are republics. The most famous, Oz, is a benevolent dictatorship, with young Princess Ozma owning all goods, maintaining a monopoly on magic, and with Glinda keeping tabs on everyone through their Great Book of Records and Magic Picture.

But Baum he also tends to poke fun at monarchies by lampooning how rulers come to power. In Queen Zixi of Ix, young Bud becomes king of Noland simply because he’s the 47th person to enter the capital city one day. Among the Pinks of Sky Island, the woman with the palest skin is made queen—but in return she has to live in the worst house.

Other rulers, good and bad, have taken on different titles. The boss of Flathead Mountain calls himself the Su-Dic, short for “Supreme Dictator.” The Boolooroo bosses the Blues on Sky Island. And the High Coco-Lorum of Thi explains in The Lost Princess of Oz:

“In reality, I am the King, but the people don’t know it. They think they rule themselves, but the fact is I have everything my own way. No one else knows anything about our laws, and so I make the laws to suit myself. If any oppose me, or question my acts, I tell them it’s the law, and that settles it. If I called myself King, however, and wore a crown and lived in royal state, the people would not like me, and might do me harm.”

Though Baum occasionally showed hereditary dynasties being restored (most notably in the case of Ozma), more often he portrayed populations choosing their rulers:

• Before the events of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the Wizard became ruler of the Emerald City because the initials on his runaway balloon made people think that he was linked to the country. 
• At the end of that book, the Winkies choose the Tin Woodman to rule them because he seems kind and shiny. 
• In Hiland and Loland, a population divided between tall thin people and short round people can agree on only one person as their king: a gingerbread man who appears out of the sky one day.

My favorite example of such a scene comes at the end of the long Jinxland episode in The Scarecrow of Oz, which swirls together hereditary monarchy, democracy, feminism, and true love:

When all were assembled, the Scarecrow stood up and made a speech. He told how Gloria’s father, the good King Kynd, who had once ruled them and been loved by everyone, had been destroyed by King Phearce, the father of Pon, and how King Phearce had been destroyed by King Krewl. This last King had been a bad ruler, as they knew very well, and the Scarecrow declared that the only one in all Jinxland who had the right to sit upon the throne was Princess Gloria, the daughter of King Kynd.

”But,” he added, “it is not for me, a stranger, to say who shall rule you. You must decide for yourselves, or you will not be content. So choose now who shall be your future ruler.”

And they all shouted: “The Scarecrow! The Scarecrow shall rule us!”

Which proved that the stuffed man had made himself very popular by his conquest of King Krewl, and the people thought they would like him for their King. But the Scarecrow shook his head so vigorously that it became loose, and Trot had to pin it firmly to his body again. a ”No,” said he, “I belong in the Land of Oz, where I am the humble servant of the lovely girl who rules us all — the royal Ozma. You must choose one of your own inhabitants to rule over Jinxland. Who shall it be?”

They hesitated for a moment, and some few cried: “Pon!” but many more shouted: “Gloria!”

So the Scarecrow took Gloria’s hand and led her to the throne, where he first seated her and then took the glittering crown off his own head and placed it upon that of the young lady, where it nestled prettily amongst her soft curls. The people cheered and shouted then, kneeling before their new Queen; but Gloria leaned down and took Pon’s hand in both her own and raised him to the seat beside her.

”You shall have both a King and a Queen to care for you and to protect you, my dear subjects,” she said in a sweet voice, while her face glowed with happiness; “for Pon was a King’s son before he became a gardener’s boy, and because I love him he is to be my Royal Consort.”

That pleased them all, especially Pon, who realized that this was the most important moment of his life. Trot and Button-Bright and Cap’n Bill all congratulated him on winning the beautiful Gloria; but the Ork sneezed twice and said that in his opinion the young lady might have done better.

Even though Jinxland ends up as a small hereditary monarchy within a larger one, one could hardly say this scene is a ringing endorsement of the divine right of kings.

“The Little Dried-Up Cookie Cook”

This afternoon I finally got to listening to the Royal Podcast of Oz’s discussion of John R. Neill’s illustrations for The Lost Princess of Oz. The conversants were:

• energetic host Jared Davis.
• Shawn Maldonado, who brings the valuable perspective of an illustrator.
• Nathan DeHoff, whose memory for details in the Oz books has impressed me for years.

I won’t recommend this recording for anyone who isn’t a hard-core fan of the Oz books, but of course that doesn’t bother me.

One detail of Neill’s Lost Princess illustrations that the gents didn’t talk about was how the artist depicted the character of Cayke the Cookie Cook. L. Frank Baum offers no physical description of the character when he introduces her in chapter 3, but chapter 13 refers to “the little dried-up Cookie Cook.”

“Dried up” is a term Baum usually used for very old people. Both the Wicked Witches in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz are described as “dried up.” The Road to Oz calls the Wizard “a dried-up, little, old man,” and The Emerald City of Oz says he is “little and old and withered and dried up, but as merry and active as a child.”

That phrase implies that Baum envisioned Cayke as an elderly woman, and there’s nothing in the story that would contradict that. Of course, there’s very little description at all, but the last chapter mentions the cook’s “skinny arms,” and Baum didn’t use that adjective as a compliment. Yet Neill gave Cayke the face he usually gave to pretty young women. Probably he started sketching her like that from the early chapters, and never revised his mental picture, even after the “dried-up” passage.

No Ultimate Evil in Oz

In an essay on the Awgwas and Phanfasms, who are about the nastiest, scariest creatures L. Frank Baum ever wrote about, Nathan DeHoff concluded:

One thing we really don’t see in Baum’s fantasy universe is an ultimate evil along the lines of Sauron or Voldemort. About the closest we get is Zog, and he’s killed off in the same book that introduces him [Sea Fairies]. I know some fans have tried writing such a being into Oz, but they’ve generally reported that it didn’t work out. Maybe that’s actually a good thing, as the Almighty Lord of Evil is sort of a cliché by this point.

Plus, the concept of embodied evil doesn’t fit with how the Oz books depict human nature.

Other fantasy universes include people naturally endowed with magical powers. In Oz, there are some magical beings (usually lumped together under the catch-all term “fairies”), but all humans can do magic if they have the right knowledge or the right tools. Baum often says that Dorothy is just an ordinary little girl, but when she gets hold of the Magic Belt—look out! There are no inherently magical people, just people who choose to learn magic.

Similarly, the books imply that all people can be good or bad, depending on their choices. True, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz offers characters named the Good Witch of the North and the Wicked Witch of the East, but it doesn’t say those women were born to those roles. And Baum’s storytelling in that book is in a different mode from how he created his others, as I wrote last year.

More typical is how Baum introduces the villain in The Lost Princess of Oz (1917):

A curious thing about Ugu the Shoemaker was that he didn’t suspect in the least that he was wicked. He wanted to be powerful and great, and he hoped to make himself master of all the Land of Oz that he might compel everyone in that fairy country to obey him. His ambition blinded him to the rights of others, and he imagined anyone else would act just as he did if anyone else happened to be as clever as himself.

Ugu isn’t the servant of a dark lord or black force—he’s just selfish.

But perhaps in this cosmology selfishness is evil. That could well be so, but characters in the Oz books don’t defeat selfishness through magic. Rather, villains are deprived of their powers and then pressed to make up their own minds about whether to behave better. Some do, and some don’t. Here’s how The Lost Princess of Oz ends, with Dorothy having transformed Ugu into a dove:

“Are you sorry, then?” asked Dorothy, looking hard at the bird.

“I am very sorry,” declared Ugu. “I’ve been thinking over my misdeeds for a long time,…and I’m surprised that I was such a wicked man and had so little regard for the rights of others. . . . But with the kind forgiveness of my former enemies, I hope to become a very good dove and highly respected.”

There are some fine fantasies about saving the world and defeating evil, but the Oz books aren’t in that group. They’re almost all stories about getting home, whether that home is Kansas or the Emerald City or some other safe place of one’s own choosing.