Maud watched them go with a pinch of irritation, worried that she had failed to get her point across. Bolger, with his slapstick and silliness, seemed perfect to play his role, but ever since lunch she had been thinking about something Frank wrote in the book: “Neither the Woodman nor the Scarecrow ever ate anything, but she was not made of tin nor straw, and could not live unless she was fed.” There was no helping the little girl he’d been thinking of then. But what about the girl they were trying to squeeze into Dorothy’s costume now? And she knew that Frank didn’t just mean that children needed food, but love and care as well.
Back in the studio parking lot, light was glinting off the shiny chrome on the Bentleys and Duesenbergs, sparking up like heat lightning in a Dakota sky. Maud had read in Variety that The Wizard of Oz was slated to be M-G-M’s biggest-budget motion picture of 1939. As she made her way through the lines of parked cars, as elegant as a row of tuxedoed gents in a dance number, she was struck by the sheer amount of wealth contained in this studio parking lot. She thought of the dark-suited men who clustered around the stars in the commissary just as marsh wrens flocked to the Dakota sloughs. She remembered how people had swarmed around Frank—from the fans, to the publishers, to the newspaper hacks looking for a story. They had been happy to splash his great successes across the headlines. Each one of these elegant motorcars belonged to someone trying to earn a living on the backs of the few among them who possessed the inborn artist’s gift. It had been hard enough for Frank to bear, and he had been a grown man. What must the weight of so much expectation—of men, and their ambitions and desires—feel like on the shoulders of a lonely teenage girl?
CHAPTER
11
SYRACUSE, NEW YORK
1881
On the night of The Maid of Arran’s debut, Maud fussed with her hair in front of the looking glass. What would it be like to see Frank Baum up on a stage with everyone looking at him? She chided herself for being so nervous—not just her own sentiment in seeing him again, but also a worry about what Mother and Papa would think of him. Frank’s play was appearing at the Syracuse Grand Opera House, and he had given them four tickets so that the entire family could attend. Even Papa was healthy enough to come.
Maud’s father seemed at least neutral toward Frank Baum, but her mother was not yet won over to the young man’s charms. She had made several pointed remarks to Maud about his lack of education, his dubious career path, and her hopes that Maud would choose a college graduate. The main point in his favor was that he had declared his full support for women’s suffrage. That would have been enough for most men to obtain Matilda’s good graces, but in the case of a suitor for her Cornell daughter, even that was not enough to convince her of his merits.
On the spring evening when they set out to see Mr. Frank Baum’s play at the Syracuse Grand Opera House, the sun was shining, the trees were blooming, and Maud’s spirits were high.
In no time, they had entered the outskirts of Syracuse, and soon were arriving in the elegant district of Clinton Square. A sharp tang from the Erie Canal wafted over South Salina Street. Barges crowded up along the street’s edge, and the shouts and clanging from the docks vibrated in the air. Flanking the square on the other side was the towering turret of the Syracuse Savings Bank, topped with a flag that rippled in the light spring breeze.
Just adjacent was the Syracuse Grand Opera House, where snippets of excited conversation floated up from a crowd of well-dressed patrons debarking from carriages.
Mr. Baum had graciously provided a complimentary ticket to each member of the family, and Papa was suitably impressed when he learned that the price of a ticket was five dollars and fifty cents. His shopkeeper’s brain was always toting up numbers, and when he multiplied the ticket price by the more than three hundred seats in the Syracuse Grand Opera House, his esteem for the young theater man increased. Papa approved of any endeavor that turned a neat profit—especially those in which a man was his own master.
The usher led them down the aisle to the best seats in the house, in the center of the third row, just behind the orchestra pit.
The caterwauling of tuning violins filled the grand chamber, and the crowd fell silent in anticipation. The light man fired down the gas table, dimming the theater, as the orchestra struck up a lively Irish tune. The heavy velvet curtain parted. Up on the stage stood Frank Baum—or “Louis Baum,” since he was going by his stage name. He was dressed in velvet leggings and a fitted brocade jacket that accentuated his slim form and height. Bathed in the silvery light of the carbon arc spotlight, he appeared ethereal. Even at this distance, his lightness and his wit were evident. Maud’s heart swelled each time the grand hall erupted with laughter or sounded with applause. When he bent down upon one knee to sing a plaintive love song, she was certain that he caught her eye.
For the duration of the show, Maud was completely transported. She knew that Frank had built this marvel from the ground up. He was not just an actor, looming large on the stage. He had written the play, composed the music, created the lyrics, imagined the costumes, and engineered the elaborate and technically complex set. As she watched him, she realized that up until now, she had seen only bits and pieces of this remarkable person. Tonight, she was seeing the man in full. And she was enchanted. Never once since starting at Cornell had she been able to so fully escape the world and her place in it. It was as if the actors upon the stage had pulled back the curtain and revealed that there was another world on the other side of it—a world brighter, more colorful, more vivid, and more intense than the quotidian one in which she passed her days. It felt as if her humdrum heart soared and lifted out of her body and hung somewhere under the rafters—levitating as surely as the wooden table had refused to do when Maud had acted as the medium last Hallowe’en. For a few hours, Maud tasted a bit of the sublime. One thing she knew: she wanted more.
* * *
—
THE FINAL CURTAIN SWEPT SHUT. The audience exploded into applause. Then the curtain swept open again as the actors took their bows. Maud glanced at her companions’ expressions and saw their unmitigated delight.
In the foyer, a porter presented himself to Papa with a bow. He said that the Gage family was formally invited to visit the backstage area at the request of Louis F. Baum, and thus they were escorted away from the crowd, down a corridor that ran alongside the orchestra pit, up a flight of stairs, and onto a stage that surprised Maud with its size. From here, she could see that the set, a giant ship, which had appeared so real from their seats in the audience, was nothing more than a false-fronted wooden structure controlled by a complicated set of pulley ropes and guy lines.
From the shadowy recesses of the backstage emerged Frank himself, still wearing his costume, as well as a layer of makeup so thick upon his face that Maud was startled at the sight of him. Frank looked so odd in his costume—not bad, mind you, she thought, as he was tall and svelte, but the makeup was so garish up close that he seemed like a parody of himself, and something made her think of the neighbor’s scarecrow that had terrorized her childhood.
Maud’s mother began clapping, and Papa as well. Julia, usually reticent, proclaimed, “Magnificent!” Only Maud, tongue-tied, remained silent.
“Thank you for coming. Did you truly enjoy it?” Frank, who was half a head taller than Papa, bent over and spoke in an urgent tone, as if the Gage family’s pleasure was a matter of capital importance.
“The finest entertainment we have seen in Syracuse,” Papa said heartily.
“We all found it most enjoyable!” Mother chimed in with an enthusiasm she usually reserved for the finer points of law.
“Indeed we did!” Julia hastened to add.
“Why, up close you look like Captain McNally Jackson Blair,” Maud exclaimed, then immediately clapped her gloved hand over her mouth, mortified that she had blurted out the very first thought that came into her mind.
Frank only smiled. “And who might this captain be?”
Maud wanted to drop through the floor and she earnestly considered making up a story on the spot, but she did not get a chance as Matilda chimed in, “I certainly can see the resemblance…!” At the exact same moment, Papa said, “Like Bob Crouse’s old scarecrow? Why, not in the least.”
Julia cast a sympathetic glance toward Maud.
“Only in the sense that the makeup changes the aspect of your face,” Maud added, mortified that she could feel her face flushing red.
“The songs were lovely,” Julia said, deftly changing the subject. “I should think it would take much courage to sing in front of such a large audience.”
“Courage—no! Foolhardiness, rather,” Frank said.
“Not foolhardy at all,” Mother said. “You have a pleasing singing voice.”