page_title: Maud Gage Baum
section_title: Oz and later years (1900–1953)
hierarchical_section_title: Maud Gage Baum / Life with L. Frank Baum / Marriage / Oz and later years (1900–1953)
caption_attribution_description: English: Ozcot, Hollywood, California library in 1911
context_page_description: Maud Gage Baum 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.
context_section_description: One night, Frank told his family a story about how a cyclone propelled a young boy to an enchanted world. Peering down at a file cabinet marked O–Z, he answered his son's query about the enchanted land's name: "Oz". Maud supported him in this venture, and he began penning the stories which he would submit for publishing. Author Marlene Wagman-Geller stated that Maud "was, in this manner, the mother of Oz".
  Traveling from her home in Chicago to Bloomington, Maud frequently paid visits to her sister Helen and her infant daughter, Dorothy Louise Gage. The infant became gravely sick and died on November 11, 1898, of "congestion of the brain" at exactly five months. When the baby, whom Maud adored as the daughter she never had, died, she was devastated and needed to consume medicine. In a letter to her sister, Maud wrote, "Dorothy was a beautiful baby. I could have taken her for my very own and loved her devotedly. To assuage her distress, Frank made his protagonist of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz a female named Dorothy. Frank dedicated the book to her, writing "to my good friend and comrade, My Wife". Historian Sally Roesch Wagner, who discovered Dorothy Gale's namesake, told the Associated Press in 1982, "He gave Maud her Dorothy in an immortal way."
  Although The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was very profitable, the family remained low on cash in 1900 near Christmas. The book's initial royalty was slated to be given to Frank in January. However, Maud told Frank to ask for it in advance to purchase Christmas gifts. Begrudgingly, Frank requested and received the money, pocketing it. Not glancing at the money, Frank returned home, finding Maud ironing his shirt. He gave her the money after she asked for it, whereupon she became shocked. Anticipating it to be no more than $100, Maud was delighted to learn that the check was for $3,432.64. Maud misremembered the iron during the ensuing flurry and burned Frank's shirt.
  In 1906, because of Frank's literary successes and the profitable royalties from the 1902 Wizard of Oz musical, Maud and Frank were wealthy enough to travel around Egypt, Greece, Italy, North Africa, Switzerland, and France on a six-month expedition. During their traveling, Maud saw an Egyptian harem and enthusiastically climbed the Great Pyramid of Giza. A year later, her husband published In Other Lands Than Ours, which he compiled from Maud's letters to people at home. Published in modest quantity, the book was for friends and family. She asked Frank to edit her work, and he also included a foreword and sixteen photographs that he had taken of the trip. Maud loved Egypt, writing that "never have we enjoyed anything more or been so intensely interested". Baum scholar Katharine M. Rogers noted that Maud's letters "demonstrate intellectual curiosity and a sense of humor".
  
  In celebration of their Silver Jubilee in 1907, Frank sent out an invitation to their friends and family that included a summation of their marriage: 
  Quarrels: Just a few.
  Wife in tears: Three times (cat died; bonnet spoiled; sore toe).
  Husband swore: One thousand one hundred and eighty-seven times; at wife, 0.
  Causes of jealousy: 0. (Remarkable in an age of manicured men and beauty doctor women.)
  Broke, occasionally; bent, often.
  Unhappy, 0.
  Frank sent the "tongue-in-cheek" letter without telling Maud.
  Moving to Hollywood from Chicago due to Frank's failing health, the family purchased a house they called Ozcot in 1910 using Maud's inheritance money from her mother. They obtained a puppy that they christened Toto. Frank plastered the full length of one of Ozcot's walls, which he named "Yard of Maud", with his most beloved pictures of her.
  
  On the night of Frank's death on May 16, 1919, Maud imparted in a letter to her relatives, Helen Leslie and Leslie Gage: 
  He told me many times I was the only one he had ever loved. He hated to die, did not want to leave me, said he was never happy without me, but it was better he should go first, if it had to be, for I doubt if he could have got along without me. It is all so sad, and I am so forlorn and alone. For 
caption: Ozcot library in 1911
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