Date: Mon, 02 Jan 2006 21:20:16 -0500
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] QUEER VISITORS and other early comics

As a first comment on VISITORS, here's a question about the QUEER
VISITORS comic. Has anyone sampled the original pages? I suspect most of
us have seen these illustrated stories in reduced black and white
reproductions, either in the BAUM BUGLE or OZ SCRAPBOOK or on microfilm.
Seeing the pages full size could be quite a different experience.

A few years back, Fantagraphics reissued Winsor McKay's magisterial
LITTLE NEMO IN SLUMBERLAND comic pages. Those were full-color, but
reduced--still a great work of art. Last year a LITTLE NEMO fan put out
his own collection of pages at their original size, 16 x 21 inches:
<

>
(The collector also didn't correct the color registration errors, saying
that he preferred to show the images as newspaper readers would have
seen them. That sounds like a "bugs into features" explanation to
me.)

QUEER VISITORS in its original form must have been quite large as well.
But how was its color? (I'm assuming it had some.) As I recall,
McDougall's art never played with the form and break the frame as
McKay's did, but what details might have been visible in the original
that the reproductions haven't picked up?

In other news from the comic pages of that time, Hungry Tiger Press is
issuing W. W. Denslow's tangentially Ozzy SCARECROW AND TIN-MAN comic
pages as a print-on-demand book volume:
<

>
It's 7x10, larger than a typical Oz book but smaller than the original
pages (or even OZ-STORY, which republished many of Denslow's drawings).
I think the illustrations are being laid out anew for the smaller pages.

J. L. Bell                 
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 12:31:40 -0600
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] suffrage, laumer, visitors from

I think we were supposed to be going on to a discussion of "Queer Visitors 
from the Land of Oz" (plus "The Wogglebug Book") with the start of the new
year. There's a lot of interesting satire mixed through these, uneven though
they are. The QV stories get more interesting as they go on. At the start, I
get the impression that Baum really didn't have any idea of what to have
happen, except to have the Visitors look around a bit at something of
current interesting (they land at the St. Louis World's Fair -- "Meet me in
St. Louis, Louis," as you might say, although there's no mention in Baum of
an attractive short young lady belting her heart out on a passing trolley),
and then stick in one of those absurd "What did the Wogglebug say"
questions. I don't know how effective it was a marketing device, but it was
really awful as a story element. The questions almost never have anything to
do with the text (Baum was maybe depending on McDougall's illos to give
readers any kind of clue to the answers to the questions.) And in the middle
stories, where Baum starts to get into some interesting satiric themes -- 
the vanity of human wishes, what kinds of wishes are not after all in vain
(turkeys for food are apparently a Good Wish -- as a red car for pleasure
without thought of costs of upkeep or difficulties of operation is not), and
what it means to consider something full of wonder -- at the end of the
story the conversation has to be wrenched away from something actually
interesting to one of the idiotic questions for Wogglebug answering. In the
last third of the stories, Baum mercifully abandoned the WdtWs riddling, and
those concluding stories are maybe the most enjoyable to read of the lot -- 
4 Bad Wishes stories (#19 the Magic Automobile already mentioned, #21 The
Two Wishes with the unlucky twin who wishes to be a good boy and has to be
rescued by the generosity of his twin's wish to cancel it, #23 the
restoration of Mr. Wimble's leg, & #26 Eliza's growing pains from the magic 
lozenges), 2 good wishes (#25 Nan's choice of cookery button and #22 the
switch between animal-hating Tim Nichols and the abused cat imposed on Tim
to teach him a lesson), and the Wogglebug's ethical dilemmas over the value
of giving charity to the undeserving poor. (#20, The Tin Woodman's rescue of
the poodle trapped by fire, is maybe the weakest among these concluding
stories.) Some of these are kind of forced -- I suspect that Mr. Wimble,
given a little time to get used to having his own leg back and to scratch
round for a job would find the comfort of easy motion in exchange for losing
disability pay a good bargain after all.

And that's maybe enough to be going on with, and I'll add some Wooglebug
Book comments next time.

Ruth Berman

Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 15:16:28 -0600
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] therapy plot gimmick, visitor sizes

"J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net> wrote:
> As a first comment on VISITORS, here's a question about the QUEER VISITORS 
> comic. Has anyone sampled the original pages? I suspect most of us have
> seen these illustrated stories in reduced black and white reproductions,
> either in the BAUM BUGLE or OZ SCRAPBOOK or on microfilm. Seeing the pages 
> full size could be quite a different experience. >

Well, of course, for one thing, it's a lot easier to read the type fullsize.
Although even then it's a bit of a strain on the eyes. I re-read the
versions in "The Third Book of Oz" for these comments. (As we've discussed
before, the 3rdB version censors some not-very-funny racial stereotypes, but
the changes involved are so few, and the jokes so lame, that I'd just as
soon skip the eyestrain and re-read from the 3rdB version.) I have a set of
fullsize b&w reproductions, and plan to look at them again at some point
while we're discussing the Visitors. The "Bugle" has occasionally run color
reprints of these (fullsize reprints of some of the individual illos, and I
think maybe a couple of the whole pages in reduced size), but I feel some
doubt as to how "true" the colors are when this has been done. The
individual illos were, I think, back in the era when Dick Martin was doing
color separations by hand, and I think he may have used brighter colors and
maybe simplified colors in doing that. If I'm remembering correctly that
there were some entire pages done in reduced size but in color (I might be
confusing them with some of the copies of Denslow's S&T pages?), I seem to
remember, on the other hand, that the colors looked kind of pale.

I'll try to make time to take a look somewhere along the way at the "Bugle"
reduced-size versions (both b&w & color) as well as the fullsize b&w set I
have to see what kinds of details show up better which ways.

Ruth Berman

Date: Thurs, 5 Jan 2006 09:59:40 -0600
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] wbb

I think Doug Greene's introduction to the (b&w) facsimile edition of "The 
Woggle-Bug Book" sums up its overall effect nicely in saying: 

"At his best Baum rose above his age in emphasizing the importance of 
judging each person as an individual; why, then, did he fill _The Woggle-Bug 
Book_ with racial and national stereotypes? The answer, it seems lies in his 
interpretation of the lesson that he had learned from Julian Mitchell when 
_The Wizard of Oz_ became a successful play. _The Woggle-Bug Book_ is 
dominated by the kind of humor that Baum thought the public wanted. What he 
did not always understand is that jokes should not get in the way of the 
story. As in _The Woggle-Bug_ play the puns and ethnic gags slow down the 
action, and the Woggle-Bug's pursuits of the gown become repetitive. In _The 
Marvelous Land of Oz_ Baum made the reader smile at himself for enjoying 
puns; in _The Woggle-Bug Book_ the jokes are forced. Only the line 'Pop,' 
went the Weasel" seems really funny, if only because the pun is so 
outrageous.  

"_The Woggle-Bug Book_ indicates better than any of Baum's other books 
his main weakness as an author. If he continued to submerge his own beliefs 
in an attempt to satisfy public taste, his books would be neither literary 
nor popular successes. _The Woggle-Bug Book_ is based on a good idea, but 
Baum did not develop it. The insect's love of bright colors, the confusion 
of the dress with its wearer, might have been used for ironic effect. Baum 
may, however, have gained knowledge of his abilities from the popularity of 
_The Marvelous Land of Oz_, and the dismal failure of _The Woggle-Bug_ 
musical extravaganza, and the quick decline of sales of _The Woggle-Bug 
Book_."

By the way, I don't know how old the use of "go" for "say" is. Since it's 
more or less frowned on in formal usage, it could be a good deal older than 
its first uses in print. I wonder if this example from Baum is one of the 
first times it was used in print? As Doug says, it's perhaps the funniest 
line in the story.  

It's maybe assigning too much influence to the 1902 play to say that Baum 
was using jokes at the expense of various minorities mainly because he 
thought audiences wanted it. He had a fairish number of such jokes in his 
"Father Goose" writings, and even some (although not so many) in the Oz 
books. But he didn't pile them up one after another anywhere else the way he 
did in WBB.  

Ruth Berman 

Date: Thu, 05 Jan 2006 23:06:27 -0500
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: VISITORS ethnic humor

Ruth Berman wrote:
> It's maybe assigning too much influence to the 1902 play to say that Baum
> was using jokes at the expense of various minorities mainly because he
> thought audiences wanted it. He had a fairish number of such jokes in his
> "Father Goose" writings, and even some (although not so many) in the Oz
> books. But he didn't pile them up one after another anywhere else the way he
> did in WBB.

Ethnic humor wasn't confined to the turn-of-the-century stage, though it
was certainly most visible there. It steeped a great deal of American
society, and it would have inevitably affected Baum's outlook on other
people.

I get the feeling that Baum rarely passed up an opportunity for a joke
(he certainly went out of his way to find some opportunities). He was
happy to use ethnic humor if it would get a laugh. And in that period,
it probably would. In fact, we might find that Baum's versions of those
jokes were relatively gentle for their time.

I see QUEER VISITORS and WOGGLE-BUG BOOK, along with many of the
AMERICAN FAIRY TALES, the first part of JOHN DOUGH, and some non-fantasy
stories as comprising a distinct group of Baum's writing: the "urban
stories." Most of those tales are set in contemporary American cities,
not the lonely prairie or a quiet corner of California or a distant
and/or ancient fairyland. Many portray magic working in America; other
fantasies Baum wrote at the same time draw a sharp distinction between
"civilized" America and fairylands.

Urban stories are, by definition, set in cities. One hundred years ago,
American cities were the immigrants' stewpot. Thus, while Baum could
show only whites in Kansas and California and (for the most part) Oz, in
choosing an urban setting for a story he also chose a multiethnic
setting. And nearly the only popular way to write about minority ethnic
groups was through stereotype-based humor. So, especially in WOGGLE-BUG
BOOK, he went for it.

Quoting Douglas Greene:
>      "_The Woggle-Bug Book_ indicates better than any of Baum's other books
> his main weakness as an author. If he continued to submerge his own beliefs
> in an attempt to satisfy public taste, his books would be neither literary
> nor popular successes.

Greene may be giving Baum too much credit for "his own beliefs," and too
much blame for submerging those beliefs, at least when it comes to
thinking about racial or ethnic minorities. I don't sense Baum having a
strong system of beliefs in that regard. I think he was at heart
egalitarian and for his time unusually able to portray many sorts of
characters expressing their own outlooks. But to do that he really
needed a blank canvas. He could do it in Oz or another fantasy setting,
with fantastic characters. He had a much harder time doing it in an
American city with actual ethnic groups since contemporary expectations
hemmed in his thinking and that of his audience.

We can see Baum's struggle in how he wrote about the Lakota in the early
1890s. His "Landlady" columns cracked some jokes about them, but also 
showed a fictional Lakota man sticking up for his freedom to worship as
he chose, even if that meant the Ghost Dance. Yet Baum as newspaperman
was all to quick to jump on board the American myth of American Indians
as a dying, degraded race, worthy of extinction. And all in the space of
a few months.

Of course, simply having strong progressive beliefs didn't mean an
author was free of ethnic bias. E. Nesbit was a Fabian Socialist, not
shy about expressing her politics in her books. The Psammead trilogy
takes its young heroes to a future Britain where they discover a utopia
based on H. G. Wells's teachings. She literally remade London according
to her own beliefs. (The closest Baum came to that was his early
newspaper story projecting a female President in 1992. Still waiting.)

Yet Nesbit also populated those same stories with crude stereotypes of
Native Americans, South Sea Islanders, and other non-white peoples. She
indulged in class humor about the more common people (butcher's boys,
domestics, etc.) that her upper-class heroes come across.

J. L. Bell                 
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 13:45:54 -0600
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] Professor

I remember the first time I saw a copy of "The Wogglebug Book" was the time
I visited Dick Martin (maybe when I was visiting my older sister, who lived
for a few years in Chicago when her husband was studying there? -- I forget
just what the occasion was), and noticed the character of the Professor,
whose balloon is accidentally stolen by the Wogglebug just before the
Professor's scheduled balloon ascension. I suggested that the Professor
could easily enough be the Wizard (since the story is post-"Wizard" and
pre-"Dorothy/Wizard"). And Dick commented that Ike Morgan's illo of the
bald, somewhat elderly, and short Professor could just easily enough be a
depiction of the Wizard. Some years later he put this speculation into an
article in the "Bugle" (duly crediting me -- which startled me, as I'd
forgotten the conversation by then), and I think there's been a tendency to
accept the notion.

Ruth Berman

Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 15:13:29 -0600
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] wogglebug armature

I think Baum's portrayal of the Wogglebug in "Queer Visitors" and "The
Wogglebug Book" is another one of the cases where he drew details from the 
illustrators. I haven't checked to be sure, but I think McDougall was
drawing the Wogglebug as 6-legged (2 legs and 4 arms) from the opening of
the "QueerVisitors" episodes. In the 6th episode, "How the Scarecrow and Tin
Woodman Met Some Old friends, "Baum's text referred to the Wogglebug as
using "2 of his 4 arms" to keep Toto from biting him, and I think that's the
first place it shows up in the text. The four arms become a major plot
feature in the next-to-last episode, "The Wogglebug Encourages Charity,"
where he collects a lot of money for the (supposedly disabled) beggar by
waving four tin cups, one in each hand, for contributions. And he continued
this armed status (four warned is four armed?) in "The Wogglebug Book" and
had the Wogglebug talk the foreman into giving him double pay for digging
with double armature, to earn enough money to buy the beloved loud plaid
dress. Baum further expanded matters in that story, by giving the Wogglebug
wings functional enough to glide down on (not large enough for flight, and
apparently not even large enough for gliding horizontally -- or would that
change if the Wogglebug practiced enough to know about using thermals?).
That is, I think it was Baum's decision to add the wings. Ike Morgan's illos
include a wingled Wogglebug earlier in the book, on the title-page, but I
suspect that the title-page would have been one of the last ones drawn, so I
think he added wings in response to Baum, not the other way around.

In Oz, of course, Baum never mentioned anything extra in the way of
appendages for the Wogglebug, and Neill always drew him with 2 legs and 2
arms, and no wings. Are there any descriptions in Baum's text in the Oz
books where this (un-insectoid) number of limbs for the Wogglebug is
specified? There are maybe some points in the "Land of Oz" (when the Gump
crashes on the mountain and they don't know how to get down?) where the
Wogglebug might have used his wings, if Baum had known he had them, but are
there are any points in Oz where it's implicitly clear (none explicit, I
think?) that he doesn't have wings? It might be amusing to write an Oz story
allowing the Wogglebug the full (and again un-insectoid, but going the other
way) arrangement of 6 limbs plus 2 wings and try to come up with a plot that
would need them and would explain why they weren't mentioned (and maybe even
why they weren't visible in Neill's illos -- worn under his shirt for lack
of 4-armed shirts, maybe?).

Ruth Berman

Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 22:35:45 -0500
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: wogglebug armature

Ruth Berman wrote:
> I think Baum's portrayal of the Wogglebug in "Queer Visitors" and "The
> Wogglebug Book" is another one of the cases where he drew details from the
> illustrators. I haven't checked to be sure, but I think McDougall was
> drawing the Wogglebug as 6-legged (2 legs and 4 arms) from the opening of
> the "QueerVisitors" episodes. In the 6th episode, "How the Scarecrow and Tin
> Woodman Met Some Old friends, "Baum's text referred to the Wogglebug as
> using "2 of his 4 arms" to keep Toto from biting him, and I think that's the
> first place it shows up in the text.

I recall that evolution as well. And for me the Wogglebug's six arms are
one major reason why I see the QUEER VISITORS comic pages and their
offshoots (WOGGLE-BUG BOOK, VISITORS, THIRD BOOK, VISITORS) as a
separate branch off the Oz tree that began with WIZARD and LAND,
irreconcilable with the novels.

Obliquely addressing Blair Frodelius's question about which post-Reilly
& Lee books fit into my personal "canon," I'll note that I accept the
LITTLE WIZARD STORIES, but not the QUEER VISITORS stories. I accept all
the Reilly & Lee novels, but voice my own theories about their timing
(RINKITINK) and accuracy (all Neill books, especially LUCKY BUCKY).

My beliefs are subjective, obviously: I can make a case for every
choice, but they don't conform to hard and fast rules about an author's
past legal relationship with Reilly & Lee or familial relationship with
Baum. In the same vein I recognize OZMAPOLITAN and some of Eric
Shanower's work more influential on my view of Oz than other post-R&L
titles that might have, on paper, a stronger claim to canonicity.

J. L. Bell                 
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 14:23:57 -0500
From: Nathan DeHoff <fablesto at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Regalia] wogglebug armature

> In Oz, of course, Baum never mentioned anything extra in the way of
> appendages for the Wogglebug, and Neill always drew him with 2 legs and 2
> arms, and no wings. Are there any descriptions in Baum's text in the Oz
> books where this (un-insectoid) number of limbs for the Wogglebug is
> specified?

When the Wogglebug is first introduced, he is described as having "a
great, round, bug-like body supported upon two slender legs which
ended in delicate feet--the toes curling upward."  Later in the same
paragaph, Baum adds, "Its arms were fully as slender as its legs."  I
believe I assumed two arms upon reading this, but now that I look at
it again, I guess Baum doesn't really specify.

> There are maybe some points in the "Land of Oz" (when the Gump
> crashes on the mountain and they don't know how to get down?) where the
> Wogglebug might have used his wings, if Baum had known he had them, but are
> there are any points in Oz where it's implicitly clear (none explicit, I
> think?) that he doesn't have wings?

Maybe he keeps his wings under his clothes, making them difficult to use?
--
Brick is red, and Hitler's dead,
Nathan
DinnerBell at tmbg.org or fablesto at gmail.com

Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 21:43:10 -0700
From: "I. Van Laningham" <ivanlan at pauahtun.org>
Subject: [Regalia] Louisiana Purchase Exposition

Hi All--
I have finally started on my copy of _The Visitors From Oz_ (hangs head guiltily).  The
first story ends with the wogglebug declaring that they have landed in "The Athletic
Field at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition."  I am who I am, so I googled the Louisiana
Purchase Exposition and discovered it was the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis Missouri.
Here is an interesting site:

One of the sidebar links points to an amazon link:  _A World on Display 1904:
Photographs from the St. Louis World's Fair_.  Amazon offers this little gem of an
editorial review:

"Photography was an essential tool for scientists in many fields at the turn of the
century. The 1904 world's fair offered anthropologists an unprecedented chance to see
and record the world's "primitive peoples"--a final opportunity, many felt, for it was
then widely believed that these "vanishing races" would die out or be assimilated into
the dominant societies around them. The images here are largely the work of seven
photographers--notably Jessie Tarbox Beals, the first woman photojournalist, and Frances
Benjamin Johnston. Eric Breitbart discusses how and why the images were taken, and
examines the photographers' widespread disregard for accuracy (few subjects were
correctly identified by tribe, let alone name) and authenticity."

The third story refers to "The Naval Flag of Germany" and, since it was much too early
for WWI, I wondered about the flag that Eric drew.  According to the Flags of the World
website, it is clearly the War Ensign in use from 1871 to 1919:

Since it is the war flag, and not the Jack, or peacetime flag, I wonder if Germany was
at war with anyone in 1904?

Another interesting tidbit that turned up on FOTW was this:  "It is my understanding
that in Germany today, in addition to Nazi flags being banned, flags from the
Kaiserreich era are also banned, notably the German naval ensign." 
--From anonymous

(Kaiserreich era=Imperial Germany, 1871-1918, Deutsches Reich, Kaiserreich.)

More later.

Metta,
Ivan
----------------------------------------------
Ivan Van Laningham
God N Locomotive Works

Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
Author:  Teach Yourself Python in 24 Hours

Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 22:35:09 -0500
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] VISITORS - what did the Wogglebug mean?

Here's a question I've been musing about the Wogglebug for nigh on
twenty years now. Baum's story of how he came up with the term
"wogglebug" for a fiddler crab appeared in the PHILADELPHIA NORTH
AMERICAN in 1904. Piglet Press records the text:
<

>

My question is how the term "wogglebug" might relate to some other
nonsense words coined around the same time. A few years after Baum wrote
LAND, Yale undergrads formed singing groups named the "Whiffenpoofs" and
"Spizzwinks"--but those names apparently date from a few years before.
And they, like "wogglebug," were originally silly names for animals.

From a history of the Yale Whiffenpoofs:
<

>
+++++++++
It was Goat Fowler who suggested [in 1909] we call ourselves The
Whiffenpoofs. He had been tickled by the patter of one of the characters
in a Victor Herbert musical comedy called "Little Nemo" which recently
[1908] been running on Broadway. In a scene in which there was great
boasting of terrific exploits in big game hunting and fishing, comedian
Joseph Cawthorne told a fantastic tale of how he had caught a
Whiffenpoof fish. It seems that Cawthorn had coined the word some years
before when he and  a fellow actor were amusing themselves by making up
nonsense verses. One they particularly liked began: "A drivaling grilyal
yandled its flail, One day by a Whiffenpoof's grave." Cawthorn recalled
the verse in making up his patter for "Little Nemo" and put it into
his act.
+++++++++

And the follow-on history of the Yale Spizzwinks(?):
<

>
+++++++++
One night, late in 1913, these four young men met at Mory's Temple Bar,
Yale's historic tavern, to pick a name for their new singing group. This
new group was created to provide audiences with the musical quality of
the Whiffenpoofs, but with a more light-hearted air. After thinking and
drinking, one of them glimpsed the ghost of Frank Johnson - the
postmaster of his small Iowa hometown. Mr. Johnson had attributed the
Corn Blight of 1906 to a mythical insect called the Spizzwink. The
singer jumped up at once. "That's it!" he shouted. "We'll call the group
The Spizzwinks."
+++++++++

So Baum coined "Wogglebug" in 1903 or 1904. Frank Johnson coined
"Spizzwink" in 1906. And "Whiffenpoof" came to Joseph Cawthorne "some
years before" 1908. All three terms gravitated toward musical
performance. (The Victor Herbert LITTLE NEMO was one of the many
extravaganzas inspired by the success of the WIZARD stage adaptation.)

Was there a vogue for silly insect and other animal names at the time?
If so, did Baum's "wogglebug" start the trend in 1904? Or did Baum hop
onto an existing trend? Or are these dots not really connected?

One obvious influence on such a trend would be Lewis Carroll's
"Jabberwocky" and HUNTING OF THE SNARK, with all their wonderful beastie
names. And we might be able to spot some other examples from the same
time. For instance, it seems pretty likely that the Growleywogs in
EMERALD CITY were influenced by the term "Golliwoggs," for a blackface
doll featured in books from 1895 on. [That term was later grabbed by
Fantasy Records for the rock group that became Creedence Clearwater
Revival, but that's another story.]

Nathan DeHoff wrote of the Wogglebug:
> Maybe he keeps his wings under his clothes, making them difficult to use?

The Wogglebug also wears clothing in VISITORS--indeed, his clothing
drives the plot in WOGGLE-BUG BOOK. So if he can fly in the comic pages,
yet never in the Oz stories, his coat must have a radically different
cut when he goes to America. Or, as I prefer, he's simply a different
Wogglebug, playing by different rules.

Ivan Van Laningham wrote:
> One of the sidebar links points to an amazon link:  _A World on Display 1904:
> Photographs from the St. Louis World's Fair_. 

Thanks for sharing this. I'm exploring what Baum and his
audience might have thought about Hottentots at the time he wrote
PATCHWORK GIRL. Perhaps this book will have more clues.

The Hottentot ethnic group (actually the Khoikhoi or Khoisan of South
Africa) had been greatly changed by contact with Europeans and Zulus
between the early 1600s and when Baum wrote. As a result, they probably
weren't represented as such at the St. Louis Fair. But the name had
stuck around.

> The third story refers to "The Naval Flag of Germany" and, since it was much too early
> for WWI, I wondered about the flag that Eric drew.  According to the Flags of the World
> website, it is clearly the War Ensign in use from 1871 to 1919:
>
>

>
> Since it is the war flag, and not the Jack, or peacetime flag, I wonder if Germany was
> at war with anyone in 1904?

I looked in a nice little history reference that was originally
published in German, so it rarely misses a development in Central
Europe. It says nothing about war in 1904-05. The Balkans started
heating up in 1908, which of course led to the Great War in 1914.

I assume that QUEER VISITORS readers were to recognize the submarine's
flag from MacDougall's artwork since the text is so unhelpful. What does
the flag look like in the original? It's possible that Eric Shanower
drew the German War Ensign because it was simply easier for him to find
visual references of the Kaiser's navy in wartime, and he didn't realize
there were two flags.

This one QUEER VISITORS episode reflects the (largely British) genre
dubbed "invasion literature." The NEW YORKER had an article about it
last fall, and there's a great deal of overlap between that article and
this Wikipedia entry:
<

>
Invasion novels often involved the idea that Germans had "designs on our
coast," as in Childers's THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS. Wodehouse parodied the
form in THE SWOOP. Wells took it to new heights in WAR OF THE WORLDS.
And here the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman get involved.

J. L. Bell                 
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2006 13:39:44 -0500
From: Nathan DeHoff <fablesto at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Regalia] VISITORS - what did the Wogglebug mean?

On 1/13/06, J. L. Bell <jnolbell at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Nathan DeHoff wrote of the Wogglebug:
> > Maybe he keeps his wings under his clothes, making them difficult to use?
>
> The Wogglebug also wears clothing in VISITORS--indeed, his clothing
> drives the plot in WOGGLE-BUG BOOK. So if he can fly in the comic pages,
> yet never in the Oz stories, his coat must have a radically different
> cut when he goes to America. Or, as I prefer, he's simply a different
> Wogglebug, playing by different rules.

Considering that he (like the other visitors from Oz) can work magic
in VISITORS, I think I would have to agree with this.
--
Brick is red, and Hitler's dead,
Nathan
DinnerBell at tmbg.org or fablesto at gmail.com

Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 15:52:36 -0600
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] homes fauna flags illos extras

"J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Here's a question I've been musing about the Wogglebug for nigh on twenty
> years now. Baum's story of how he came up with the term "wogglebug" for a
> fiddler crab appeared in the PHILADELPHIA NORTH AMERICAN in 1904. <

Interesting discussion of the resemblances to other nonsense zoological
names. In addition to Carroll's "Jabberwocky" names, there's even more in
the way of nonsense naming in Edward Lear's verse, so I'm not sure if the
seeming turn-of-the-century concentration would hold up if you went looking
in mid-to-late 19th century nonsense writing generally. But there might be a
sudden upswing in them, even so?

> Ivan Van Laningham wrote:
>> The third story refers to "The Naval Flag of Germany" and, since it was
>> much too early for WWI, I wondered about the flag that Eric drew.
>> According to the Flags of the World website, it is clearly the War Ensign
>> in use from 1871 to 1919: >>
> I looked in a nice little history reference that was originally published
> in German, so it rarely misses a development in Central Europe. It says
> nothing about war in 1904-05. The Balkans started heating up in 1908,
> which of course led to the Great War in 1914. I assume that QUEER VISITORS

> readers were to recognize the submarine's flag from MacDougall's artwork
> since the text is so unhelpful. What does the flag look like in the
> original? It's possible that Eric Shanower drew the German War Ensign
> because it was simply easier for him to find visual references of the
> Kaiser's navy in wartime, and he didn't realize there were two flags.>

I've made a start at looking at my set of copies with MacDougall's artwork.
Like Eric's version, the corresponding MacDougall picture shows the flag
small and far away. With the problems of repro to make the material harder
to make out, I'm not sure if it's the same flag, but I think it is. The
large cross is clear, and it's clear enough that there's something in the
corner and the center, although not clear if what they are is the small
cross-on-stripes in the corner and the eagle in the center or not. Looking
at the website, I'm not sure if it's accurate to say that there's a
difference between a war ensign and a peace ensign -- are you sure it isn't
a difference between a military ensign and a civilian ensign? Wouldn't a
German naval ship be flying the eagle-on-cross with stripes in canton, and a
merchant ship the horizontal stripes alone, regardless of whether there was
a war on or not?

A couple of other illo notes -- Ozma's proclamation of the impending arrival
of the Visitors is given "under my hand and seal" -- and MacDougall's illo
of the seal shows that the marking on it is a pair of lips. Evidently he
decided it would be literally sealed-with-a-kiss. I said that I thought
MacDougall was drawing the Wogglebug as 4-armed from the Proclamation and
the 1st episode on, and that's correct, but I was incorrect in looking to
the 6th episode, when the Wogglebug uses 2 of his arms to keep Toto from
biting him, as the one where Baum picks up on it. In the second story, "the
Magic Flood," the Wogglebug uses 2 arms to grab the Tin Woodman out of the 
fountain and the other 2 to grab the Pumpkinhead.

Ruth Berman

Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 14:08:29 -0600
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] macdougall

Some more thoughts on MacDougall's artwork -- overall, I don't much care for
it, but a lot of the individual pictures have a lot of charm. The "Bugle" in
the past has printed a few of them full-size and in color as covers, and I
hope eventually we'll get some more of them so presented. Some of the Kansas
drawings, maybe -- especially the one of Dorothy running out of her house,
with wheat stalks in the foreground framing off the action. Some of the ones
with Santa Claus have (I think?) been used in this way, but not all of them.
Not as attractive, but interesting as a side-view of Oz "history" would be
MacDougall's illos of the Munchkin Farmer putting together the Scarecrow.

Ruth Berman

Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 08:58:42 -0600
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: Regalia Digest, Vol 18, Issue 22

Another McDougall QV thought -- a lot of the drawings are dark enough to
suggest that they lose a lot in b&w. Some that do show up well, even in b&w,
though, are some of the heading drawings. I've mentioned the one of
Dorothy's farmhouse with wheat growing in the foreground. Another couple
that seem quite impressive are the forlorn cat ("Tim Nichols and the Cat")
on top of a dreary shed, against a dreary cityscape, and the
lightning-struck Tin Woodman magnetizing.("A Magnetic Personality").

Ruth Berman

Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 08:00:15 -0700
From: Ivan Van Laningham <ivanlan at pauahtun.org>
Subject: Re: [Regalia] Re: Regalia Digest, Vol 18, Issue 22

Hi All--

Ruth Berman wrote:
>
> Another McDougall QV thought -- a lot of the drawings are dark enough to
> suggest that they lose a lot in b&w. Some that do show up well, even in
> b&w, though, are some of the heading drawings. I've mentioned the one of
> Dorothy's farmhouse with wheat growing in the foreground. Another couple
> that seem quite impressive are the forlorn cat ("Tim Nichols and the
> Cat") on top of a dreary shed, against a dreary cityscape, and the
> lightning-struck Tin Woodman magnetizing.("A Magnetic
Personality").
>

Are any of the McDougall illustrations online where we can see a few
samples?

Metta,
Ivan

--
Ivan Van Laningham
God N Locomotive Works

Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
Author:  Teach Yourself Python in 24 Hours

Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 14:57:19 -0600
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] mcdougall

Ivan Van Laningham <ivanlan at pauahtun.org> wrote:
> Are any of the McDougall illustrations online where we can see a few
> samples? >

Not from the "Queer Visitors," so far as I know. There's a site on newspaper
cartoonists with a page on McDougall,

with a
sampling of his editorial cartoons and of his illos from his own "stories
for good children." Some of the old "Baum Bugles" that have reprinted QV
episodes in b&w facsimile are still available. (As I've commented, the b&w
repro apparently loses a lot, but it gives an idea, and in some cases, where
the originals are not so highly shaded, probably a good idea.) I think only
a couple of the individual "Bugle" issues would be available, but the "Best
of the Baum Bugle" collections have some QVs in #3 1963-1964, #4 1965-1966,
& #7 1969-70. (See

and the Publications & Products
section for a list & prices.)

I don't know for sure if color copies would be available to copy from if the
"Bugle" undertook to start running some of the individual illos full-size
(or near full-size) as color covers, but I think Dick Martin had a set, and
would suppose that set would be available for copying from.

I reprinted one of the "stories for good children," about a mermaid named
Lurline, in a Dunkiton pamphlet on mermaids. Eventually, I'd like to reprint
another, "A Kidnapped Santa Claus" (published a year before Baum's -- not
similar except for the title and the basic gimmick of the kidnapping),
although I've been hanging back on it, hoping that eventually I may run
across a complete copy. The microfilm file was made from an original that
lost a couple of lines in the middle of the story where the library had
sliced the center-spread open for binding.

Ruth Berman

Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 23:03:05 -0500
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] base tin

Ruth Berman mentioned:
> lightning-struck Tin Woodman magnetizing.("A Magnetic Personality").
This brings up a more general question about how Baum portrayed the Tin
Woodman. He made a big deal of Nick making a big deal about being tin.

Yet tin doesn't rust easily the way the Tin Woodman does in WIZARD, and
it doesn't magnetize the way he does in QUEER VISITORS. Those imply a
fair amount of ferrous content in his body. (Denslow's plates colored
the tin man's joints a different color from the rest of him, perhaps
because that was the rust of him.) LAND gives Nick a patina of nickel as
well. So Baum may have thought of the Tin Woodman as an all-metal man at
the start, and only after ROAD focused just on the tinny aspects of his
makeup.

J. L. Bell               JnoLBell at earthlink.net

Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 13:38:31 -0600
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] magnetic personality

"J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Yet tin doesn't rust easily the way the Tin Woodman does in WIZARD, and it

> doesn't magnetize the way he does in QUEER VISITORS. Those imply a fair
> amount of ferrous content in his body. (Denslow's plates colored the tin
> man's joints a different color from the rest of him, perhaps because that
> was the rust of him.) LAND gives Nick a patina of nickel as well. So Baum
> may have thought of the Tin Woodman as an all-metal man at the start, and
> only after ROAD focused just on the tinny aspects of his makeup. >

Didn't someone suggest at some point that Nick might be tin-plated iron?
That would take care of a lot of the problems -- although it wouldn't
explain the silver and brass items that get pulled in by his personal
magnetism. (You'd think that Baum as a G&S fan,would have remembered,
"By no endeavour, Can magnet ever Attract a silver churn.")

Ruth Berman

Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 19:58:53 +0000 (GMT)
From: Boq Aru <boq_aru at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Tin & Tinsmiths

  Ruth Berman wrote:
>
> Didn't someone suggest at some point that Nick might be tin-plated iron?
> That would take care of a lot of the problems -- although it wouldn't
> explain the silver and brass items that get pulled in by his personal
> magnetism. (You'd think that Baum as a G&S fan,would have remembered,
> "By no endeavour, Can magnet ever Attract a silver churn.")

  Tin and nickel are very expensive and not all that strong. Tin as worked
by tinsmiths is ordinarily thin gauge steel with a very very thin plating of
tin. Zinc as a plating material is cheaper yet and retards corrosion also. What
usually happens is that the cut edges where the steel is exposed are the first
to corrode. Thus Nicks jaw parts and joints are particularly wont to rusting.
Rolling the edges helps but is tricky.

Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 16:11:52 -0500
From: mspote at aol.com
Subject: Re: [Regalia] Tin & Tinsmiths

Boq Aru informs us:

<< Tin and nickel are very expensive and not all that strong. >>

So, given that the Woodman has himself nickel-plated in "Land of Oz,"
he must be very valuable, indeed.  Perhaps even more so than the
currency-stuffed Scarecrow (who somehow lost his monetary innards between
"Land" and "Ozma" -- maybe by choice.)

Of course, if neither metal is very strong, would a nickel-plating really help
him, beyond the improved appearance?  I had forgotten, until re-reading
the books recently, how very vain both the Woodman and the Scarecrow seem to
become after the Wizard "grants their wishes."  Forever
prattling on about "my tender heart," "my most excellent
brains."  Fortunately, they stop *just* short of becoming
insufferable. Only the Lion seems to maintain any sense of modesty -- although
perhaps to a fault, when he tells Dorothy in "Ozma, "[I'm] still as
cowardly as ever."  I've wondered why he left being King of the
Forest behind in order to pull Ozma's chariot.

Mike Poteet

Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 16:32:30 -0500
From: Nathan DeHoff <fablesto at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Regalia] Tin & Tinsmiths

On 1/25/06, mspote at aol.com <mspote at aol.com> wrote:
> Boq Aru informs us:
>
> << Tin and nickel are very expensive and not all that strong.
>>
>
> So, given that the Woodman has himself nickel-plated in "Land of
Oz," he must be very valuable, indeed.  Perhaps even more so than the
currency-stuffed Scarecrow (who somehow lost his monetary innards between
"Land" and "Ozma" -- maybe by choice.)

I figured that he probably would have switched back to straw at the
first available opportunity.  Perhaps the money (which was presumably
foreign currency, since it was discovered a nest outside Oz) was left
in Nick Chopper's treasury.

> Of course, if neither metal is very strong, would a nickel-plating really
help him, beyond the improved appearance?  I had forgotten, until
re-reading the books recently, how very vain both the Woodman and the Scarecrow
seem to become after the Wizard "grants their wishes."  Forever
prattling on about "my tender heart," "my most excellent
brains."  Fortunately, they stop *just* short of becoming
insufferable. Only the Lion seems to maintain any sense of modesty -- although
perhaps to a fault, when he tells Dorothy in "Ozma, "[I'm] still as
cowardly as ever."  I've wondered why he left being King of the
Forest behind in order to pull Ozma's chariot.

I believe it's been proposed on this or another forum that he might
have fled the forest after his initial burst of courage wore off.
It's also possible that the forest just doesn't need much in the way
of ruling, so the Lion can be absent for long periods of time.
--
Brick is red, and Hitler's dead,
Nathan
DinnerBell at tmbg.org or fablesto at gmail.com

L. Frank Baum, Ike Morgan

Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 15:16:30 -0600
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] tin, straw, copper

mspote at aol.com wrote:
> So, given that the Woodman has himself nickel-plated in "Land of Oz," he
> must be very valuable, indeed.  Perhaps even more so than the
> currency-stuffed Scarecrow (who somehow lost his monetary innards between
> "Land" and "Ozma" -- maybe by choice.) >

Like Nathan, I'd guess that it was by choice. He's very proud of his straw
(giving Ozma a gift of woven straw in "Magic," for instance, and in the QV
episode where he retells the story of his making mentioning his delight once
his nose was painted on in the scents of the wildflowers and the newmown
hay)). Incidentally, Baum pretty much repeated the same jackdaws' money
incident as the start of one of the QV episodes, "The Scarecrow Becomes a
Man of Means." I suppose, considering that the QV episodes came out about
the same time as "Land" (anyone know offhand when it would have been getting
into the bookstores?), Baum may have been assuming that the two incidents
are the same incident, and even though the phrasing ("It was during a
morning ride among the mountains that a strange accident happened to the
queer people from the land of Oz") suggests that the accident happened just
before, during their US traels, perhaps Baum meant readers to assume that
the reference was really to the earlier incident, not to a separate and
duplicating event. Of course, if so, that would mean that the money they
found in "Land" was not only outside Oz but in the USA, or at any rate
somewhere near enough to it for the jackdaws to have picked up a lot of US
banknotes, as well as the odd Canadian and British notes, which would make
it one of the rare instances outside "Queer Visitors" where Baum shows magic
working in our world, since the Gump is still able to fly, Jack Pumpkinhead
is still alive, etc. (Or maybe it's in the Ozian world, but the jackdaws go
back and forth a lot.)

Maybe it was telling the children 3 episodes later about how he was
constructed that made the Scarecrow think he ought to get rid of the cash
(the "Man of Means" episode has him giving most of it to the Church Fair,
but changing the big banknotes into ones to restuff himself) and go back to
straw? The episodes don't tell when he changed back. You'd think that
visiting Dorothy would be a good time to do it, but the couple of episodes
when they visit Dorothy at home on the farm are earlier, and the Christmas
episode, when they get together with her again, is set in an unspecified
city (maybe Topeka?). In the "Magnetic" episode, the text specifically
mentions that it is the straw stuffing that got soaked and needs replacing,
so apparently he made the change somewhere in between. And the Tin Woodman
manages to find fresh straw in the un-named town where they are at the time,
so evidently straw is available even in towns. The Scarecrow also mentions
his straw stuffing in between the Christmas episode and the magnetic storm,
in the "Fire Hero." So maybe the Christmas visit with Dorothy is a
reasonable time to suppose that he changed insides.

Ruth Berman

Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 23:06:10 -0500
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: Tin & Tinsmiths / Straw & Strawmen

Mike Poteet wrote:
<both the Woodman and the Scarecrow seem to become after the Wizard
"grants their wishes." Forever prattling on about "my tender heart,"
"my most excellent brains." Fortunately, they stop *just* short of
becoming insufferable. Only the Lion seems to maintain any sense of
modesty -- although perhaps to a fault, when he tells Dorothy in "Ozma,
"[I'm] still as cowardly as ever.">>

I think the Cowardly Lion is just as puffed-up in the "last act" pf
WIZARD. But, unlike the other two companions, who became Broadway stars,
the lion didn't reappear in LAND. When Baum brought him back in OZMA, he
also brought back the lion's weakness.

From a literary perspective, that was a smart move. A live Scarecrow is
interesting, brainy or not. A man made of tin is interesting,
kind-hearted or not. But a courageous lion as king of beasts is simply a
cliche. A frightened lion living in a palace has much more potential.

Within the reality of Oz, it's possible that the Cowardly Lion comes to
believe his courage has worn off because:
a) unlike the Scarecrow's needly brains or the Tin Woodman's rattling
heart, he has no visible or audible reminder of his courage.
b) as a live animal that drinks and, we can presume, urinates, the lion
knows that the courage he drinks might eventually leave his body.

<
he must be very valuable, indeed. Perhaps even more so than the
currency-stuffed Scarecrow (who somehow lost his monetary innards
between "Land" and "Ozma" -- maybe by choice.)>>

Which brings us back to QUEER VISITORS, in which the Scarecrow is again
stuffed with paper currency.

One of the showstoppers in the 1902 WIZARD extravaganza was the
Scarecrow being taken apart and put back together on the other side of
the stage. I think Baum tried to recreate that moment in LAND (two
disassemblies, as well as the building of Jack Pumpkinhead) as well as
QUEER VISITORS. Adding money to that scene offered Baum an opportunity
for many puns, as well as a frisson of excitement for adult viewers.

As for the Tin Woodman's makeup, does anyone know whether the tin of the
late 19th century was pure, an alloy, or tin-plated iron or steel?

J. L. Bell JnoLBell at earthlink.net

L. Frank Baum, Dick Martin

Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 12:40:55 +0000 (GMT)
From: Boq Aru <boq_aru at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Tin tin

>J. L. Bell

>As for the Tin Woodman's makeup, does anyone know whether the tin of
>the late 19th century was pure, an alloy, or tin-plated iron or steel?

Always tin-plated steel. The steel is for function. The tin is to prevent
corrosion. There are other ways to treat steel to prevent corrosion that were
popular in the late 1800s but none of them were food safe. Browning and blueing
for firearms, various kinds of nitriding to retard corrosion and harden the
surface. Somebody might make jewelry out of pure tin but it would scrooch up
almost as badly as pure gold. A problem with plating steel is that if the
plating material is too dissimilar to iron it will cause the steel to rust
rather than protecting it. Tin, nickel, chrome and zinc were the plating materials
of choice. Tin is the best for protecting the steel, relatively low cost and
good at not reacting with food stuffs. Most cheap pots and pans were tin-plated
steel. Enameled pans cost much more and didn't last as long and couldn't as
easily be repaired by your local tinsmith or traveling tinker. If Nick were
made of pure tin he'd be almost as woggly as the Scarecrow unless his
material was so thick that he'd weigh hundreds of pounds. Making joints in
tinplate that dont rust up is very difficult. Punch a hole for a hinge or pivot
and that exposes the steel. Even if you wrap the tinplate around pivot points
it will wear through the plating in no time flat. The best solution in actual
use starting about 1890 was to build the external part of the hinge out of
tinplate which then held internal hinge parts of lignum vitae. That wood is
very tough and greasy, thus self lubricating. It would last for a long time and
could be replaced when necessary. Obviously that wasn't done with Nick. And
another thing. Nickel plating him later on couldn't be done by the technology
of the Great Outer World unless the tinplate was removed first. That means an
acid de-plating bath, then a deacidising bath, then an acid roughening bath and
finally the acid nickel plating bath. One wonders if he enjoyed all that or if
it was just done by magic.

Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 11:43:39 -0500
From: Nathan DeHoff <fablesto at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Regalia] tin, straw, copper

Ruth:
> Incidentally, Baum pretty much repeated the same jackdaws' money
> incident as the start of one of the QV episodes, "The Scarecrow Becomes a
> Man of Means." I suppose, considering that the QV episodes came out about
> the same time as "Land" (anyone know offhand when it would have been getting
> into the bookstores?), Baum may have been assuming that the two incidents
> are the same incident, and even though the phrasing ("It was during a
> morning ride among the mountains that a strange accident happened to the
> queer people from the land of Oz") suggests that the accident happened just
> before, during their US traels, perhaps Baum meant readers to assume that
> the reference was really to the earlier incident, not to a separate and
> duplicating event. Of course, if so, that would mean that the money they
> found in "Land" was not only outside Oz but in the USA, or at any rate
> somewhere near enough to it for the jackdaws to have picked up a lot of US
> banknotes, as well as the odd Canadian and British notes, which would make
> it one of the rare instances outside "Queer Visitors" where Baum shows magic
> working in our world, since the Gump is still able to fly, Jack Pumpkinhead
> is still alive, etc. (Or maybe it's in the Ozian world, but the jackdaws go
> back and forth a lot.)

Does LAND ever indicate what kind of currency is found in the
jackdaws' nest?  It's something that the Ozites recognize as money,
even though I don't recall any indications in that or other books that
paper money has ever been used in Oz.  Coins show up from time to
time, but not bills.
--
Brick is red, and Hitler's dead,
Nathan
DinnerBell at tmbg.org or fablesto at gmail.com

Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 14:20:12 -0600
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] lion, tin, currency

"J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
> When Baum brought him back in OZMA, he also brought back the lion's
> weakness. From a literary perspective, that was a smart move. A live
> Scarecrow is interesting, brainy or not. A man made of tin is interesting,

> kind-hearted or not. But a courageous lion as king of beasts is simply a
> cliche. A frightened lion living in a palace has much more
> potential.Within the reality of Oz, it's possible that the Cowardly Lion
> comes to  believe his courage has worn off <

Interesting suggestions, and plausible.

Boq Aru <boq_aru at sbcglobal.net> wrote on 19th century tin technology
-- interesting comments. Incidentally, checking the description of the money
in "Land," I see that the text (in describing Nick's fight with the
jackdaws) refers to his "brilliant plating," so evidently Baum was aware
that his Tin Woodman wouldn't be made of solid tin. (There may well be other
textual references to him as plated, but I don't recall any offhand.)

Nathan DeHoff <fablesto at gmail.com> wrote:
> Does LAND ever indicate what kind of currency is found in the jackdaws'
> nest?  It's something that the Ozites recognize as money, even though I
> don't recall any indications in that or other books that paper money has
> ever been used in Oz.  Coins show up from time to time, but not bills. >

Tip describes the jackdaws' currency: "In the bottom of the nest are
thousands of dollar bills -- and two-dollar bills -- and five-dollar
bills -- and tens, and twenties, and fifties." (When they stuff the
Scarecrow, there's also mention of bills for hundreds and thousands.) Canada
and some other countries might have the same denominations, but the most
obvious interpretation would be that Tip is looking at US currency. I think
Neill's color plate of the Scarecrow in the Treasury shows a visible "US" on
some of the bills.

Ruth Berman

Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 14:34:40 -0600
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] tin ps

On second thought, I realize that the mention of "plating" in "Land" doesn't
say anything about whether the Woodman's tin is plating or solid -- a few
chapters earlier he had just been getting himself nickel-plated. Still,
there's the mention of his favorite song (which book is that in?) as
"There's No Plate Like Tin Plate."

Ruth Berman

Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 16:07:55 -0500
From: Nathan DeHoff <fablesto at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Regalia] American currency in fairyland

Ruth:
> Nathan DeHoff <fablesto at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Does LAND ever indicate what kind of currency is found in the jackdaws'
> > nest?  It's something that the Ozites recognize as money, even though I
> > don't recall any indications in that or other books that paper money has
> > ever been used in Oz.  Coins show up from time to time, but not bills. >
>
> Tip describes the jackdaws' currency: "In the bottom of the nest are
> thousands of dollar bills -- and two-dollar bills -- and five-dollar
> bills -- and tens, and twenties, and fifties." (When they stuff the
> Scarecrow, there's also mention of bills for hundreds and thousands.) Canada
> and some other countries might have the same denominations, but the most
> obvious interpretation would be that Tip is looking at US currency. I think
> Neill's color plate of the Scarecrow in the Treasury shows a visible "US" on
> some of the bills.

Quok also uses dollars and cents as currency.  I doubt Baum had any
connection in mind here (especially since he never made any known
effort to tie the countries in his American Fairy Tales into the Oz
universe), but it might well have contributed to Haff and Martin's
decision to place the jackdaws' nest near Quok (albeit actually in
Aurissau, a country mentioned in "The Witchcraft of Mary-Marie").  I
think it's most likely that Baum originally intended for the nest to
be located in the United States.  Just before reaching the nest, the
Scarecrow says, "The Gump must have carried us entirely out of the
Land of Oz and over the sandy deserts and into the terrible outside
world that Dorothy told us about."  It wasn't until OZMA that Baum
decided that there were other fairylands beyond the desert surrounding
Oz, or that there was anything harmful about merely stepping on the
desert.  I would imagine that, if someone were to have asked Baum
about the location of the nest after he had decided that Oz was
surrounded by other fairylands, he would have said the Scarecrow was
wrong, and the nest was actually in another fairyland.  I obviously
don't know that for sure, though.
--
Brick is red, and Hitler's dead,
Nathan
DinnerBell at tmbg.org or fablesto at gmail.com

Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 12:16:35 -0600
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] american currency in the borderlands

Nathan DeHoff <fablesto at gmail.com> wrote:
> Quok also uses dollars and cents as currency.  I doubt Baum had any
> connection in mind here (especially since he never made any known effort
> to tie the countries in his American Fairy Tales into the Oz universe),
<

Well, not in a terms of indicating any geographic connection (or any
individuals in common, except that Tanko-Mankie the Yellow Ryl in "The Dummy
that Lived" is presumably the same as the Yellow Ryl mentioned in "Santa
Claus," and the King of the Knooks in "The Enchanted Types" is presumably
the same as the one in "Santa Claus"), but there are ryls and knooks living
in both this universe and the Oz universe. The "American Fairy Tales" 
stories came out in 1901, predating "Santa Claus" (1902), although he may
have been working on the writing of both at the same time.

> but it might well have contributed to Haff and Martin's decision to place
> the jackdaws' nest near Quok (albeit actually in Aurissau, a country
> mentioned in "The Witchcraft of Mary-Marie").  <

Sounds a likely suggestion.

> I think it's most likely that Baum originally intended for the nest to be
> located in the United States.  Just before reaching the nest, the
> Scarecrow says, "The Gump must have carried us entirely out of the Land of
> Oz and over the sandy deserts and into the terrible outside world that
> Dorothy told us about."  It wasn't until OZMA that Baum decided that there
> were other fairylands beyond the desert surrounding Oz, or that there was
> anything harmful about merely stepping on the desert.  I would imagine
> that, if someone were to have asked Baum about the location of the nest
> after he had decided that Oz was surrounded by other fairylands, he would
> have said the Scarecrow was wrong, and the nest was actually in another
> fairyland.  I obviously don't know that for sure, though. <

Possibly he would have said that from the point of view of Oz residents,
where there's so much more magic running loose than there is in most (but
not all) of the Borderlands countries, the Borderlands countries are really
part of "the terrible outside world." A related question here is whether
he's thinking of Oz's continent as somewhere on Earth although not
discovered by ordinary sailors (once it gets to be a continent -- the Oz of
"Wizard" and "Land" could be somewhere in the American desert, and that may
have been what Baum was thinking before "Ozma" took Dorothy to Ev and its
seacoast), or whether it's on some other-astral-plane (to use jargon Baum
would have known). If Oz and the Borderlands are on a different plane from
Earth, then presumably the Scarecrow would be simply wrong if he counted the
Borderlands as part of Dorothy's world -- and, of course, with Oz as
isolated geographically as it is, the Scarecrow's information about other
countries might very well be unreliable. The ryls and knooks evidently
travel freely between places in Oz and places of Earth, though, so maybe the
jackdaws do, too. If so, then even assuming their nest is in the Oz world,
the dollars in their Borderlands nest might be from the US. I lean towards
thinking that the nested dollars are US (and Canadian) dollars, and that the
"Queer Visitors" description of the Scarecrow's visit to the jackdaws' nest
that left him stuffed with dollars is not a separate, duplicating incident
taking place during his QV visit to the US, but refers back a short time to
the events of "Land." If you take them as separate incidents, though, then
the Borderlands jackdaws might, as you suggest, be getting their dollars
from Quok.

Ruth Berman

Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 22:16:53 -0500
From: Aaron Solomon Adelman <aaron.solomon.adelman at gmail.com>
Subject: [Regalia] Rusting tin people in Oz

Greetings.

I'd like to thank those who recently posted information on why tin 
would rust in real life.  I wish I had that information before I 
submitted "The Tin Soldier of Oz" for inclusion in Oziana this year; 
I had no idea that tin was as soft as it is, and I claimed that 
Captain Fyter had Orin remove a spell that made him rust.  
Fortunately none of that is critical to the plot.  If my story is 
accepted, I plan to ask for a minor edit so that Captain Fyter in his 
last full body replacement (needed due to wear and tear) had himself 
rebuilt with tin-plated stainless steel or tin-plated titanium 
instead of tin-plated ordinary steel on Orin's advice and that way 
becoming unrustable.

Aaron

-----
Aaron Solomon (ben Saul Joseph) Adelman
E-mail:  Aaron.Solomon.Adelman at gmail.com, adelmaas at musc.edu, prasmthrasm at yahoo.com
Web-sites:

AOL Instant Messenger & Yahoo! Messenger:  Hiergargo
ICQ:  258691118
Jabber:  Aaron.Solomon.Adelman at gmail.com

Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 13:11:23 +0000 (GMT)
From: Boq Aru <boq_aru at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Rin tin tin tin

  >Aaron Adelman
  >Captain Fyter in his last full body replacement (needed due to wear
and tear) had >himself  rebuilt with tin-plated stainless steel or
tin-plated titanium instead of tin->plated ordinary steel on Orin's advice
and that way becoming unrustable.

  Stainless steel as used in the late 1800s, early 1900s was corrosion
resistant, strong but rather soft for a steel, kind of dull grey in appearance.
The French made cutlasses of stainless steel. They wouldn't hold an edge very
long, but then, they usually didn't need to. Plating tin onto stainless was a
little tricky back then and involved a lot of different baths for surface
treatment. The tin would not improve the resistance to corrosion by much but
would make for an attractive shiny surface. Stainless as it exists now is a
rather complex alloy, not just 14% nickel and steel and needs no plating to be
bright and rust free.
  Titanium was a laboratory metal up until the 1940s. It's strong, light
and a good candidate for being Mithril. It's pretty good looking all by itself
and very corrosion resistant. Tin plating would shiny it up some, but not a
lot. The electrical interaction between tin and titanium would actually make it
corrode a bit faster, so Captain Fyter might just want to go with an all
titanium body and just keep it well buffed.

Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2006 18:25:46 -0500
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] McDougall in stores now

On Friday I found a book at the library that includes several full-color
comic pages that Walt McDougall created for Joseph Pulitzer's SUNDAY
WORLD newspaper around the same time as QUEER VISITORS. The book doesn't
have any VISITORS pages, but it shows their context in newspaper
publishing a century ago. The pages are reproduced at only one-third
their original size, however.

The book is THE WORLD ON SUNDAY, by Nicholson Baker (the NEW YORKER
writer) and Margaret Brentano (his wife), published in 2005 by Bulfinch
Press.

For fans of Winsor McCay's LITTLE NEMO IN SLUMBERLAND, this volume
contains several examples of "The Bad Dream That Made Bill a Better
Boy," a half-page comic by William J. Steinigans which preceded NEMO
with a similar storyline. Each episode involves little Bill having a
surreal nightmare and waking up at the end. The draftsmanship is less
than McCay's, of course, and the attitude is judgmental rather than
sympathetic.

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 00:35:29 EST
From: AGannaway7 at aol.com
Subject: [Regalia] QUEER VISITORS FROM THE MARVELOUS LAND OF OZ

Here is the latest installment in my series of just-under-the-wire BCF 
posts. Page references come from last year's Hungry Tiger Press edition, THE 
VISITORS FROM OZ, rather than from THE THIRD BOOK OF OZ (1986).

The  rather unambitious thematic M.O. of the comic series is neatly
summarized in the  beginning paragraphs (30-31) of "How the Scarecrow and the Tin
Woodman Met  Some Old Friends." It is an idea Baum expressed repeatedly in his
fantasy  works, that American achievements are just as magical as what Ozites can 
accomplish through literal magic. This concept is far too thin to be
stretched  over a series of 26 stories, but no one has ever accused Baum of doing his
best  writing in QUEER VISITORS.

Nevertheless, there are some interesting elements in play here.

One such element appears in Ozma's "Proclamation Extraordinary" (10), the 
prologue that launched the comic series on August 28, 1904. Ozma reveals that 
the queer visitors "should arrive upon your earth planet within a brief space
of  time." In the story for December 11, "Dorothy Spends an Evening with Her
Old  Friends and is Entertained with Wonderful Exhibitions," the Scarecrow tells
Dorothy that "we are quite different from your earth people" (88).  Then 
there is the series of teasers from August 1904 that led up to the strip's 
premiere, a number of which refer to an object (the Gump) approaching Earth 
(202-215). The authorship of the teasers has been disputed, of course, and  Baum's
ideas about the actual location of Oz remain highly debatable.

I find, upon this rereading, that what interested me the most was the matter
of characterization. Baum seems to stray somewhat from his previous 
portrayals of these characters in WIZARD and LAND. This occurs as early as his 
introductory note to the series, when he writes that "the Woggle-Bug is said to  be
very wise and quick to discover things, and the Scarecrow has proven more 
times than one that he can think clearly" (11). That seems to be an inversion of 
how this pair was depicted in LAND, but this is tempered early in the first 
installment, "How the Adventurers Lost and Found Themselves," when the
Scarecrow  spouts a characteristic bit of Scarecrowisdom:
"Something's got to happen; it always does. Something happened the minute we arrived" (14). And one of 
the  major conceits of the series, that the Woggle-Bug offers some useless 
piece of  trivia at the end of each story, shows him to be much more like he was
in LAND  than as Baum would have us believe from his introductory remarks.

"Quick to  discover things," perhaps; "wise," not so much.

The most interesting characterization quandary, though, involves the Tin 
Woodman. While Nick Chopper displayed occasional vanity in the first two Oz 
books, he more than compensated for that shortcoming with his extreme 
sensitivity, to the point where, in WIZARD, he weeps over stepping on a beetle.  Later,
in PATCHWORK GIRL, he refuses to let Ojo tear a wing from a butterfly.  Yet in
"How the Adventurers Encountered an Unknown Beast," he attacks what  seems to
be a relatively small baboon when it dents him with a rock (51-53), and when
the Woggle-Bug decides, in "How the Woggle-Bug Got a Thanksgiving Dinner,"  to
go after some poultry, the Tin Woodman casually tells him where some fine 
turkey-huntin' is to be had. Positively Cheneyesque! (The Woggle-Bug captures 
the wild turkeys with the aid of the Gump, and one wonders how the Gump, whose 
first life ended at the end of a gun barrel, felt about being involved in a 
hunting expedition.)

To me, these departures from established character  actually serve to
emphasize the distinctiveness of Baum's utopia in contrast  with the America of the
early twentieth century, in which humbler forms of life  were not usually as
highly valued as they were in Oz. Baum sometimes indicates a  greater reverence
for animal life, as in the tremendously didactic "Tim Nichols  and the Cat"
and in "How the Tin Woodman Became a Fire Hero"'s poodle  rescue (apparently the
cat will mew and dog will have his day, too).  Immediately after the dog
story, of course, Baum treats us to a  less palatable gem when a boy gives money
"to help buy neckties for the  heathen in Africa" (123). Oh, the mere idea of
them savages wearing cravats just  slays me every time.

Baum makes a few interesting flubs. In "How the Tin Woodman Escaped the 
Magic Flood," he writes of the visitors' resolve "to explore the country 
thoroughly--in the same way Columbus once did" (17). Of course, Columbus  seems never
to have set foot in North America during any of his four  voyages. In "How the
Saw-Horse Saved Dorothy's Life," the little girl refers  twice to "Uncle
Harry" (41). Of course, at this point Baum had mentioned  the man only a handful
of times, in a book published four years before.  There is a reference to the
Saw-Horse's "maple legs" (22) in "How the Strangers  Found Themselves Between
the Auto and the Deep Sea," but to his "hickory  pedigree" (56) in "Jack
Pumpkinhead and the Saw-Horse Win a Race and Incite a  Riot." Anything for a pun.
(As far as I can tell, the regular Oz books  never say what kind of wood the
Saw-Horse is made from.) In a related  vein, Jack has a "heart of oak" (132) in
"Mr. Wimble's Wooden Leg," though by  the time of PATCHWORK GIRL Jack claims to
be made of "good solid hickory." And  one wonders, in "Jack Pumpkinhead Pawns
the Saw-Horse," why exactly wooden Jack  needs a "comfortable" saddle to sit
on (81).

Certain details in QUEER VISITORS prefigure elements in later Oz books.  Baum
seems preoccupied here with the danger of automobiles, as is indicated by 
the events of "How the Strangers Found Themselves Between the Auto and the Deep 
Sea" and "The Scarecrow Presents a Magic Automobile to a Little Girl," and I
was  reminded of how, in OZMA, Billina told Dorothy that several of her
friends had  been run over. The Saw-Horse's agitation around real horses in "Jack
Pumpkinhead  and the Saw-Horse Win a Race..." (56) reminded me of his later
conflict with Jim  in DOROTHY AND THE WIZARD. Mr. Wimble, in "Mr.  Wimble's Wooden
Leg," seems an  early prototype of Cap'n Bill, and the Tin Woodman's extreme
magnetism in "A  Magnetic Personality" suggests the Shaggy Man's Love Magnet
quandary in  ROAD. When the Scarecrow, in "The Scarecrow Tells a Fairy Tale to
Children  and Hears an Equally Marvelous True Story," learns that a "wire rope"
between  America and Europe carries messages, he claims that "we have nothing
to match  that achievement in the country I came from" (75-76). Of course, a 
wireless device would render his humble statement obsolete by 1913.

Naturally, details of Baum's previous writings and life experiences crop up 
in the comic series. Mme.Qui-Sym (a play, I assume, on "kiss him"), in "How 
the Ozites Met a Beauty Doctor," is as much of a humbug figure as Oscar Diggs 
was. The Tin Woodman's magic word "chugaremolumchug" (88) resembles the name
of  Choggenmugger, who appears in the manuscript of KING RINKITINK that Baum
would  complete in 1905. Both words, in turn, bear some resemblance to
"Chicago," where  Baum then lived. One of the most psychologically telling passages in
the book  may be the depiction of the farmer Uncle Eli in "How Uncle Eli
Laughed Too  Soon": "Eli had never heard of the queer people from Oz, because--as
he said--he  never had any time to waste reading newspapers" (26).  Eli laughs
at the  visitors' perceived misfortune in stirring up a hornets' nest, until he
himself  falls victim to their stings. It is hard not to wonder whether this
was Baum's  dig at the agricultural population of Aberdeen, who had failed to
support his  ABERDEEN SATURDAY PIONEER in 1890 and 1891.

Speaking of business ventures, when reading "How the Woggle-Bug and His 
Friends Visited Santa Claus," I was at first struck by the characters'  narcissism
in manufacturing miniature versions of themselves to give to children  as
Christmas gifts. But then I reached the part when Santa says that "these toys 
are so pretty that next year I will make a lot of them myself, so that every 
child may get one for Christmas" (98). It occurred to me then that Baum may have
been engaged in advanced product placement, anticipating another theatrical
hit  in his upcoming WOGGLE-BUG musical.

Another trail of thought involved Dorothy's exact location in Kansas. In 
"Jack Pumpkinhead and the Saw-Horse Win a Race..." the visitors and Dorothy 
attend the Jones County Fair (55). There is no Jones County in Kansas, but there 
is a Jones County in Georgia, Iowa, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Dakota,
and Texas. Iowa, therefore, seems the most likely candidate in terms of 
proximity to Kansas. And there happens to be, in reality, a Great Jones County 
Fair in Monticello, Iowa.

Finally, I was interested in potential literary influences. "Eliza and the 
Lozenges," with its expanding and shrinking lozenges, clearly takes its cue 
from ALICE IN WONDERLAND, right down to a treacherous body of water created by a
giant girl's giant tears (149). But most interesting of all to me is the 
parallel I perceive between a certain QUEER VISITORS story and one by O. 
Henry.

"Jack Pumpkinhead Pawns the Saw-Horse," with Jack trading his horse for  the
saddle he means to put on it, immediately brought to mind "The Gift of  the
Magi." I searched for the respective publication dates to see who beat whom  to
the punch. The QUEER VISITORS installment originally appeared on  December 4,
1904, while O. Henry's famous short story first appeared in the  Sunday
section of the NEW YORK WORLD almost exactly one year later, on December 10, 1905,
meaning that Baum's "Magi"-type story was published before "The Gift  of the
Magi" itself. According to Wikipedia's entry on O. Henry, in fiction there is
a subset of the stereotypical "O. Henry ending" (a surprise final plot  twist)
known as the "Gift of the Magi ending," "in which two story protagonists 
unknowingly work at cross-purposes to fulfill the goal of the other, 
irretrievably sacrificing their own possessions or ambitions in the process."  But in
Baum's case, he wrote a "Gift of the Magi ending" in which Jack Pumpkinhead
unknowingly works at cross purposes with his own self. Now *that's* interesting.

I will have some (briefer) comments to make next time about  THE WOGGLE-BUG BOOK.

Atticus Gannaway

Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 13:29:32 -0500
From: "Nathan DeHoff" <fablesto at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Regalia] Would a wooden horse in a woodland go?

On 2/28/06, AGannaway7 at aol.com <AGannaway7 at aol.com> wrote:
> There is a reference to the
> Saw-Horse's "maple legs" (22) in "How the Strangers Found Themselves Between
> the Auto and the Deep Sea," but to his "hickory pedigree" (56) in "Jack
> Pumpkinhead and the Saw-Horse Win a Race and Incite a  Riot." Anything for a pun.
> (As far as I can tell, the regular Oz books  never say what kind of wood the
> Saw-Horse is made from.) In a related  vein, Jack has a "heart of oak" (132) in
> "Mr. Wimble's Wooden Leg," though by  the time of PATCHWORK GIRL Jack claims to
> be made of "good solid hickory."

In Chapter 24 of SCARECROW, the Sawhorse says that he will think "[o]f
the acorn that grew the tree from which I was made."  So I suppose
he's primarily made of oak.  In LAND, one of Jack's legs is cut up to
make a leg for the Sawhorse, and later the Tin Woodman makes a new leg
for Jack out of a mahogany table.  So, if Jack is correct about being
made of hickory, the Sawhorse ends LAND with one hickory leg (just
like Cap'n Bill!), and Jack with a mahogany one.  In later books, the
Sawhorse has various other body parts replaced with whatever kind of
wood happens to be handy, but I'm sure he's still mostly oak.
--
Brick is red, and Hitler's dead,
Nathan
DinnerBell at tmbg.org or fablesto at gmail.com

L. Frank Baum, Eric Shanower

Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 10:58:51 -0800 (PST)
From: Ken Cope <residualecho at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Regalia] Would a wooden horse in a woodland go?

This is another one of those themes Baum explored with the tin man, part of a
long tradition. If you have a knife, and you replace the blade, and you replace
the handle, do you have the same knife? The best known form is "The Ship
of Theseus." This site explores the paradox thoroughly:

  From Plutarch:
  
  "The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned had thirty
oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius
Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new
and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing
example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow;
one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that
it was not the same."

Nathan DeHoff <fablesto at gmail.com> wrote:
  On 2/28/06, AGannaway7 at aol.com wrote:
> There is a reference to the
> Saw-Horse's "maple legs" (22) in "How the Strangers Found Themselves Between
> the Auto and the Deep Sea," but to his "hickory pedigree" (56) in "Jack
> Pumpkinhead and the Saw-Horse Win a Race and Incite a Riot." Anything for a pun.
> (As far as I can tell, the regular Oz books never say what kind of wood the
> Saw-Horse is made from.) In a related vein, Jack has a "heart of oak" (132) in
> "Mr. Wimble's Wooden Leg," though by the time of PATCHWORK GIRL Jack claims to
> be made of "good solid hickory."

In Chapter 24 of SCARECROW, the Sawhorse says that he will think "[o]f
the acorn that grew the tree from which I was made." So I suppose
he's primarily made of oak. In LAND, one of Jack's legs is cut up to
make a leg for the Sawhorse, and later the Tin Woodman makes a new leg
for Jack out of a mahogany table. So, if Jack is correct about being
made of hickory, the Sawhorse ends LAND with one hickory leg (just
like Cap'n Bill!), and Jack with a mahogany one. In later books, the
Sawhorse has various other body parts replaced with whatever kind of
wood happens to be handy, but I'm sure he's still mostly oak.
--
Brick is red, and Hitler's dead,
Nathan
DinnerBell at tmbg.org or fablesto at gmail.com

Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 15:56:46 -0600
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] qv etc

AGannaway7 at aol.com -- enjoyed your Visitorial discussion!

> The  rather unambitious thematic M.O. of the comic series is ... that 
> American achievements are just as magical as what Ozites can accomplish
> through literal magic. This concept is far too thin to be stretched over
> a series of 26 stories, but no one has ever accused Baum of doing his best 
> writing in QUEER VISITORS. >

Well, he comes up with other themes for the episodes -- it isn't all the
comparison of wonders. True that no one would look to QV for Baum's best,
but an interesting theme that crops up in several of the episodes (maybe
mostly the better ones?) is the question of what kinds of wishes are worth
wishing and what kinds are only trouble.

> I find, upon this rereading, that what interested me the most was the
> matter of characterization. Baum seems to stray somewhat from his previous 
> portrayals of these characters in WIZARD and LAND. This occurs as early as 
> his introductory note to the series, when he writes that "the Woggle-Bug
> is said to be very wise and quick to discover things, and the Scarecrow
> has proven more times than one that he can think clearly" (11). That seems
> to be an inversion of how this pair was depicted in LAND <

Is it? The Woggle-Bug is always interested in both in piling up knowledge
(sometimes trivial, but always the interest in learning lessons), and I
suppose that's about the same as being quick to discover things. The
Scarecrow is the one who comes up with ideas/analyses in both, yes? They
both have their pompous moments, and usually the Woggle-Bug has more of
them -- but his factoids maybe come off as more helpful in QV than they
usually are in the Oz books, so maybe he looks rather more admirable in QV
than he usually does. But he has his helpful moments in Oz, too (like the
arithmetic double-talk for counting to 17 by 2s).

> And one of the  major conceits of the series, that the Woggle-Bug offers
> some useless piece of  trivia at the end of each story, shows him to be
> much more like he was in LAND  than as Baum would have us believe from his
> introductory remarks. "Quick to  discover things," perhaps; "wise," not so
> much. >

The factoids are generally useful, or at least something that the listeners
said they would like to know. I think the irritating quality they have (for
this reader, certainly) isn't that they're useless, but that they're not as
interesting as whatever was going on in the story previously, so that they
usually make a lame anticlimax.

> a few interesting flubs ... There is a reference to the Saw-Horse's "maple
> legs" (22) in "How the Strangers  Found Themselves Between the Auto and
> the Deep Sea," but to his "hickory  pedigree" (56) in "Jack Pumpkinhead
> and the Saw-Horse Win a Race and Incite a  Riot." .... Jack has a "heart
> of oak" (132) in "Mr. Wimble's Wooden Leg," though by the time of
> PATCHWORK GIRL Jack claims to be made of "good solid hickory." And  one
> wonders, in "Jack Pumpkinhead Pawns the Saw-Horse," why exactly wooden
> Jack  needs a "comfortable" saddle to sit on (81). <

The saddle would probably make him more comfortable mentally by making it
easier for him to keep his seat? Nathan points out that the Sawhorse in
"Scarecrow" thinks of the acorn that grew the tree he was made from,
implying oak. I suppose these variations could be explained away by
suggesting oak main body and maple Sawhorse legs/hickory Pumpkinhead limbs.
(With, as Nathan points out, one hickory Pumpkinhead limb on the Sawhorse as
of the end of "Land," thus providing justification of a sort for him to have
that "hickory pedigree.")

> When the Scarecrow, in "The Scarecrow Tells a Fairy Tale to Children  and
> Hears an Equally Marvelous True Story," learns that a "wire rope" between
> America and Europe carries messages, he claims that "we have nothing to
> match  that achievement in the country I came from" (75-76). Of course, a
> wireless device would render his humble statement obsolete by 1913 >

-- and provide Neill with material for a striking "Patchwork" illo!

> Mme.Qui-Sym (a play, I assume, on "kiss him"), <

Possible, but doesn't seem to fit her actions much? Might also be "quiz him"
with "quiz" in the sense of "make fun of," but even that seems a bit of a
stretch.

Discussion of "Alice" influence on Eliza's growth and shrinking -- sounds
likely. Discussion of influence of Jack's self-defeating saddle/Sawhorse
trade on O.Henry's "Magi" -- possible, although maybe both are going back to
tales from folklore, like the "wishes" story where the wisher wishes a
sausage on his nose and has to use up the other wishes getting it off? (Not
a trade as such, but a similar kind of irony.)

Ruth Berman

Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2006 00:25:37 EST
From: AGannaway7 at aol.com
Subject: [Regalia] THE WOGGLE-BUG BOOK

[One brief note before I lay--er, launch--into THE WOGGLE-BUG BOOK. In my 
previous post about QUEER VISITORS, I'd meant to mention that, regarding the 
ALICE influence on "Eliza and the Lozenges," "Eliza" happens to be an almost 
perfect anagram of "Alice."]

In a long article in the Winter 2004 BAUM BUGLE about THE MARVELOUS LAND OF 
OZ and its spinoffs, Michael Patrick Hearn referred to THE WOGGLE-BUG BOOK as 
"an atrocious tie-in," "nothing more than fluff," "dreadful," and "the worst 
children's book [Baum] ever wrote."

This description strikes me as accurate, but not simply because of the 
stupid puns, painful racism, and poor plot. For me, the most egregious aspect of 
the book is its fundamental betrayal of the core of the Woggle-Bug's character: 
the fact that he is only really in love with himself, or, more precisely,
with  his own pedantry.

THE WOGGLE-BUG BOOK was published on January 12, 1905, the same day that the
musical THE WOGGLE-BUG opened in Milwaukee for its initial trial run before 
the mercifully short-lived Chicago production the following summer. With the 
professor foremost in his thoughts, Baum understandably used the Woggle-Bug's 
name in the titles of four of the QUEER VISITORS strips that appeared in 
November and December 1904. (In a complete tally, the Tin Woodman's name is used 
in three of the titles, the Saw-Horse's in three as well, Jack Pumpkinhead's
in  two, the Scarecrow's in four, and the Woggle-Bug's in a whopping six; the
poor  Gump is shut out entirely.) The Woggle-Bug is also the only Oz character
to  appear in the comic strip's three final installments, thus creating a
smooth  transition to the Woggle-Bug-centric conclusion of the Queer Visit in THE
WOGGLE-BUG BOOK.

Well...some say smooth transition, some say steady plummet. And many 
probably wish that Baum would have called the whole thing off.

What arrested my attention on this rereading (my first exposure to the 
uncensored text) was the baldness of Baum's prejudices in this work. The most 
consistent prejudice expressed is, of course, his aversion to Wagner; the dress 
that infatuates H. M. is described throughout the story as "Wagnerian plaid" 
because its pattern is "so loud" (160). Incidentally, I checked OED to see when
"loud" became a synonym for "garish." The first recorded usage is in
Thackeray's  THE HISTORY OF PENDENNIS (1849).

Baum voiced his dislike for Wagner in two other fantasies, one earlier and 
one later. In our next BCF, THE MAGICAL MONARCH OF MO (published as A NEW 
WONDERLAND in 1900), Baum tells us that "the thunder [in Mo] is usually a chorus 
from the opera of Tannhauser." A case could actually be made that this is not
a  disparaging statement; after all, the lightning in Mo "resembles the most 
beautiful fireworks." But two passages from JOHN DOUGH AND THE CHERUB  (1906)
erase any ambiguity.

In the first, John Dough "knew no tune whatever, but he could whistle, and 
so he managed to express an erratic mixture of notes that would have made Herr 
Wagner very proud." In the second, John encounters a musician on the Isle of 
Phreex: "[John] imagined someone was pounding upon the keys of the piano with
a  sledge-hammer." The musician tells him, "I am great! I am magnificent!...
I am  greater than Vogner!...Some folks can understand Vogner a little. No one
can  understand me at all! I am wonderful! I am superb!... Ah! glorious
moment, in  which I produce music that is not understood and sounds like
discord!"

Subtlety, that.

Back to the dress. We learn that its "greatly reduced" price is $7.93  (162).
This happens to be the exact same price as the "fine Mexican saddle" that 
Jack Pumpkinhead covets in "Jack Pumpkinhead Pawns the Saw-Horse" (81). 
Coincidence? Or was that a common price point back then, much as $19.99
is  today?

So the Woggle-Bug's love-crazed pursuit of a dress commences. It is a 
nonsensically insipid plot engine, and Baum admits as much: "It is very queer,  when
we think of it, that the Woggle-Bug could not separate the wearer of his 
lovely gown from the gown itself. Indeed, he always made love directly to the 
costume...without any regard whatsoever to the person inside it; and the only 
way we can explain this remarkable fact is to recollect that the Woggle-Bug is 
only a woggle-bug, and nothing more could be expected of him" (173). Well, 
that  clears that up.

The chase is on, and in relatively few pages Baum manages to insult Swedes 
(171), African Americans (177), the Chinese (178), and Arabs (186), throwing in 
two racial slurs that remain among the most deeply offensive in 
contemporary English. (They start with C and N, respectively, for those contestants who
wish to buy a letter.)

A couple of puzzling moments. To what is the Weasel King alluding when he 
says, "I am sufficiently humiliated at this moment to recognize you as a 
Sullivanthauros, should you claim to be of that extinct race"? (196). And while 
we're at it, what allusion is intended when the Woggle-Bug says to the 
wash-lady, "Stop, my fair Grenadine, I implore you!" (177)?

In fairness, I must say there was a phrase I liked for its vivid simile: 
"Fritzie Casey doubled two fists that looked like tombstones" (170).

That seems somehow appropriate for a work of fiction that is  D.O.A.

Atticus Gannaway

Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2006 07:37:25 EST
From: AGannaway7 at aol.com
Cc: dhmaxine at pacbell.net
Subject: [Regalia] Fwd: Wogglebugs, Wagner, and Baum, oh my!

Dear David, 
Thank you for your note. Since you gave permission to do so, I'm going to go
ahead and forward your interesting comments to Regalia.

You make some intriguing points, but I can't say I'm 100% convinced  by your
email that Baum was actually a lover of Wagner. The music  alluded to in MO
may be "a quiet hymn," but that could be read to mean that Baum simply felt
even Wagner's quiet pieces were too much for him. And it is  exceedingly clear in
THE WOGGLE-BUG BOOK, no matter how the adjective  "Wagnerian" is usually
applied, that the Wagnerian plaid dress is not a  pleasant "loud" sight.

The simple fact of plot similarities between OZMA and TIK-TOK and the RING 
cycle isn't enough to persuade me that it was a loving homage. For example, 
Lewis Carroll's "You Are Old, Father William" may be an "homage" to Robert 
Southey's "The Old Man's Comforts," but I'd hardly call it a loving one. As for 
Kenneth Baum's Wagner records, well, when I was younger my dad was often 
horrified by my CD collection. The more albums I owned from a certain artist,  the
less likely it was that Dad could stand to listen to said artist. If there  is
unambiguous, *direct* evidence that Baum *himself* loved Wagner, I'd  love to
hear about it.

Atticus Gannaway

Date: Wed, 01 Mar 2006 09:40:37 -0500
From: mspote at aol.com
Subject: Re: [Regalia] qv etc

Ruth Berman wrote:

<< Discussion of "Alice" influence on Eliza's growth and
shrinking -- sounds likely. >>

Does anyone else think that "Alice" influenced the Bunnytown episode
in EMERALD CITY?  I am reading it aloud to my four-year-old and my wife
overheard that chapter and said, "Ah, he stole that from Alice in
Wonderland!"  I think that perhaps "stole" is a bit harsh,
but, seeing as Alice was published in 1866, and had been in the atmosphere of
children's literature for some 40 years by the time EMERALD CITY came around,
at least a subconscious influence seems likely.

Has any Ozzy scholarship been done on parallels between Carroll and Baum?

Ozzily yours,
Mike Poteet

Date: Wed, 01 Mar 2006 10:09:00 -0500
From: agannaway7 at aol.com
Subject: [Regalia] Baum and Wagner

The email from David Maxine seems not to have forwarded correctly. Here is its text.

Atticus Gannaway

 
Hi Atticus,

Edward Einhorn forwarded me your regalia posting on
WOGGLE-BUG BOOK since it was a recent Hungry Tiger
project and he thought I'd be interested. I am not on
Regalia but thought I'd send you a few comments. If
you like you may post this to Regalia.

I can't help but agree that WBB is fairly vile as a
kids book. That said it should also be mentioned that
it was in reality a fairly disposable pamphlet meant
to be sold in theatre lobbies for a mediocre musical
comedy.

The racist and topical humor is no worse than it is in
Baum's script for WOGGLEBUG but that isn't saying much
I suppose.

However, one thing I must strongly disagree with you
about, and that is Baum's dislike of Wagner. Depite
the references in JOHN DOUGH there is ample evidence
that LFB loved Wagner's music deeply. The reference to
MO lightning can in no way be considered offensive. If
one is familiar with the music it is actually a quiet
hymn -- that's part of the joke. And of course
"Wagnerian" is a common adjective meaning big, loud,
huge. Baum was certainly not the first or last to use
it as such.

But regarding LFB's love of Wagner one need look no
further than the plots of OZMA and TIK-TOK. You may
recall Dan Mannix's article from 1978 or so. Quox is
only a small homage compared to Roquat who is 100%
Alberich from the RING cycle. The malevolent King of
the underground who has a super-powerful magical
device that can only do two things: Perform perfect
transformations and provide instantaneous
transportation. It is taken away by "the good guys"
and the angered and perhaps wronged dwarf follows and
bugs the good goys for years to come.

Aside from that Baum raised his sons to love opera and
Wagner and they had multiple piano rolls and records.
I actually own all of Kenneth Baum's Wagner records --
Ozma gave them to me when she died.

Its kind of akin to Baum making fun of pop-music with
Victor Columbia Edison. While it SOUNDS like LFB
didn't think much of that sort of music he also is
know to have sung it at homemade concerts with the
boys at Macatawa "The Bullfrog and the Coon" one of
Baum's favorites! And Baum even wrote a number of the
pop music pseudo-ragtime racist pieces like "Down
Among the Marshes."

Just cause a fellow makes fun of something doesn't
mean he doesn't lap it up like cream : )

Best, David Maxine

Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2006 08:55:49 -0800 (PST)
From: Scott Hutchins <scottandrewhutchins at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Regalia] THE WOGGLE-BUG BOOK

I'm not sure this proves anything about his opinion on Wagner.  Portions
of the same passage that you have omitted say similar things about a character
named after Tietjens.  I believe there was an article in the Bugle in the
early '80s about Wagner's influence on Baum, notably _The Lost Princess of Oz_.
  
  Scott

AGannaway7 at aol.com wrote: 

What arrested my attention on this rereading (my first exposure to the
uncensored text) was the baldness of Baum's prejudices in this work. The most
consistent prejudice expressed is, of course, his aversion to Wagner; the dress 
that infatuates H. M. is described throughout the story as "Wagnerian plaid"
because its pattern is "so loud" (160). Incidentally, I checked OED to see when
"loud" became a synonym for "garish." The first recorded usage is in
Thackeray's THE HISTORY OF PENDENNIS (1849).

Baum voiced his dislike for Wagner in two other fantasies, one earlier and
one later. In our next BCF, THE MAGICAL MONARCH OF MO (published as A NEW
WONDERLAND in 1900), Baum tells us that "the thunder [in Mo] is usually a chorus
from the opera of Tannhauser." A case could actually be made that this is not
a disparaging statement; after all, the lightning in Mo "resembles the most
beautiful fireworks." But two passages from JOHN DOUGH AND THE CHERUB (1906)
erase any ambiguity.

In the first, John Dough "knew no tune whatever, but he could whistle, and 
so he managed to express an erratic mixture of notes that would have made Herr
Wagner very proud." In the second, John encounters a musician on the Isle of
Phreex: "[John] imagined someone was pounding upon the keys of the piano with
a sledge-hammer." The musician tells him, "I am great! I am magnificent!...  
I am greater than Vogner!...Some folks can understand Vogner a little. No one
can understand me at all! I am wonderful! I am superb!... Ah! glorious
moment, in which I produce music that is not understood and sounds like
discord!"

Subtlety, that.

Scott Andrew Hutchins

"The progress of a love-story is tedious to all those who are not
concerned, and I leave such themes to the hack novel-writers, and the young
boarding-school misses for whom they write."
--William Makepeace Thackeray, _Barry Lyndon_.

Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2006 13:47:49 -0500
From: "Nathan DeHoff" <fablesto at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Regalia] qv etc

On 2/28/06, Ruth Berman <berma005 at umn.edu> wrote:
> The Scarecrow is the one who comes up with ideas/analyses in both, yes?  They
> both have their pompous moments, and usually the Woggle-Bug has more of
> them -- but his factoids maybe come off as more helpful in QV than they
> usually are in the Oz books, so maybe he looks rather more admirable in QV
> than he usually does. But he has his helpful moments in Oz, too (like the
> arithmetic double-talk for counting to 17 by 2s).

It's actually the Sawhorse who comes up with the ridiculous but
apparently effective counting method that is used.  The Wogglebug does
help out by actually swallowing the pill (thanks to his strong
stomach), and the same book has him responsible for the idea of
replacing the Sawhorse's missing leg with one of Jack's.
--
Brick is red, and Hitler's dead,
Nathan
DinnerBell at tmbg.org or fablesto at gmail.com

Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2006 15:20:02 -0600
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] wagner & carroll

AGannaway7 at aol.com put together the various Baumian comments on Wagner

Thanks. This topic was discussed quite a while back on Wagner. I think
comment by comment, any of these could be loving spoofery, as David Maxine
argued (then and again now), but the group of them taken together sounds
more like a genuine dislike. David's argument that Baum enjoyed singing the
kind of mindless pop songs he spoofed in Victor Columbia Edison is a good
point, though, so I suppose it's possible that Baum didn't think Wagner's
music was too noisy and discordant -- or maybe it's possible in some moods
he enjoyed the energy of it even if in others he didn't. The (probable)
influence of Wagnerian plot elements on "Ozma" and "Tik-Tok" (and "Lost
Princess," as Scott mentioned) doesn't really say anything one way or the
other about Baum's opinion of the music, although it might indicate that he
found Wagner's use of mythology as a basis for narrative of interest, even
if he didn't care for the music.

> A couple of puzzling moments. To what is the Weasel King alluding when he
> says, "I am sufficiently humiliated at this moment to recognize you as a
> Sullivanthauros, should you claim to be of that extinct race"? (196).  And
> while we're at it, what allusion is intended when the Woggle-Bug says to
> the wash-lady, "Stop, my fair Grenadine, I implore you!" (177)?
>

Beats me. Maybe topical jokes that it would take a period expert to explain?

mspote at aol.com wrote:
> Does anyone else think that "Alice" influenced the Bunnytown episode in
> EMERALD CITY?  I am reading it aloud to my four-year-old and my wife
> overheard that chapter and said, "Ah, he stole that from Alice in
> Wonderland!"  I think that perhaps "stole" is a bit harsh, but, seeing as
> Alice was published in 1866, and had been in the atmosphere of children's
> literature for some 40 years by the time EMERALD CITY came around, at
> least a subconscious influence seems likely. Has any Ozzy scholarship been 
> done on parallels between Carroll and Baum? >

Yes, I think influence from Carroll on both Bunbury and Bunnybury got
mentioned in discussion a good while back -- maybe it was as far back as
"Emerald City" discussion on Ozzy Digest, or maybe it was some other, more
recent context? There's been a lot of incidental discussion of Carroll's
influence on Baum, but I don't think anyone has sat down and made that a
focus for an article. MPHearn has some comments in his Annotated "Wizard" on
the choice of a little girl for protagonist in "Alice" as influencing choice
of Dorothy for protagonist in "Wizard," and we've also had discussions here
when Carrollian bits show up in Thompson's work comparing her use and Baum's
use of Carrollian material, for instance.

Ruth Berman

Date: Wed, 01 Mar 2006 16:30:11 -0500
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: QUEER VISITORS quirks

Atticus Gannaway wrote:
> One such element appears in Ozma's "Proclamation Extraordinary" (10), the 
> prologue that launched the comic series on August 28, 1904. Ozma reveals that 
> the queer visitors "should arrive upon your earth planet within a brief space
> of  time." In the story for December 11, "Dorothy Spends an Evening with Her
> Old  Friends and is Entertained with Wonderful Exhibitions," the Scarecrow tells
>  Dorothy that "we are quite different from your earth people" (88).

The SNUGGLE TALES/OZ-MAN TALES version of JOHN DOUGH (called THE
GINGERBREAD MAN and created like the JACK PUMPKINHEAD volume I described
earlier in the week) ends with an exchange that implies the Fourth of
July rocket has carried John to a new planet or other off-earth place:
+++++++++++++
    "I don't see anything queer about me," objected John Dough.
    "There must be, or you wouldn't be here. You came from the earth, didn't you?"
    "Isn't this the earth?"
    "I told you it was the Isle of Phreex. A place has to be what it is, doesn't it?"
    "I suppose so," agreed the Gingerbread Man doubtfully.
+++++++++++++

I, of course, suppose otherwise.

> In "How the
> Saw-Horse Saved Dorothy's Life," the little girl refers  twice to "Uncle
> Harry" (41). Of course, at this point Baum had mentioned  the man only a handful
> of times, in a book published four years before. 

Did Uncle Henry get any mention in the 1902 extravaganza or Baum's early
script for it? It's interesting to consider how Baum's first return to
Dorothy and first writing about the Nome King come in this gap of
little-known between WIZARD and OZMA, not in the latter book.

Baum had both a brother and a son named "Harry," so it makes sense for
that name to have been on his mind.

> There is a reference to the
> Saw-Horse's "maple legs" (22) in "How the Strangers Found Themselves Between
> the Auto and the Deep Sea," but to his "hickory  pedigree" (56) in "Jack
> Pumpkinhead and the Saw-Horse Win a Race and Incite a  Riot." Anything for a pun.

A fine credo for life.

> Certain details in QUEER VISITORS prefigure elements in later Oz books.  Baum
> seems preoccupied here with the danger of automobiles, as is indicated by 
> the events of "How the Strangers Found Themselves Between the Auto and the Deep 
> Sea" and "The Scarecrow Presents a Magic Automobile to a Little Girl," and I
> was  reminded of how, in OZMA, Billina told Dorothy that several of her
> friends had  been run over.

That no doubt reflects life in America at the time, especially in the
urban and suburban areas where most newspaper readers lived. Which
brings me to...

> the depiction of the farmer Uncle Eli in "How Uncle Eli
> Laughed Too  Soon": "Eli had never heard of the queer people from Oz, because--as
> he said--he  never had any time to waste reading newspapers" (26). Eli laughs
> at the  visitors' perceived misfortune in stirring up a hornets' nest, until he
> himself  falls victim to their stings. It is hard not to wonder whether this
> was Baum's  dig at the agricultural population of Aberdeen, who had failed to
> support his  ABERDEEN SATURDAY PIONEER in 1890 and 1891.

The line also congratulates its readers on their superior taste.

> Mr. Wimble, in "Mr. Wimble's Wooden
> Leg," seems an  early prototype of Cap'n Bill

And Cap'n Joe. And Sam Steele's father. And the general in JOHN DOUGH.
And Jack Pumpkinhead in LAND. And Nick Chopper and Captain Fyter. And a
prince in MO. And Scraps in the PATCHWORK GIRL movie (when she was being
played by a male actor). I've probably missed a couple more examples of
men losing legs in Baum's writings. The motif recurs so often it almost
makes one think that losing a leg symbolizes something.

Ruth Berman wrote:
> an interesting theme that crops up in several of the episodes (maybe
> mostly the better ones?) is the question of what kinds of wishes are worth
> wishing and what kinds are only trouble.

Though Baum used the theme of foolish wishes in ZIXI, he seems to have
kept off it in most of his fantasy writing. Trot isn't chastised for
wishing to use the Magic Umbrella for a picnic, for instance; it's just
a natural thing to think about if you happen to have a magic umbrella,
and she couldn't have foreseen what trouble she'd get into.

But perhaps when he's writing stories set wholly in contemporary
America, he might have felt some psychological pressure to depict life
as better without the power of making wishes come true.

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

Date: Wed, 01 Mar 2006 16:37:04 -0500
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: Baum and Carroll

Mike Poteet wrote:
<<Does anyone else think that "Alice" influenced the Bunnytown episode
in EMERALD CITY? I am reading it aloud to my four-year-old and my wife
overheard that chapter and said, "Ah, he stole that from Alice in
Wonderland!" I think that perhaps "stole" is a bit harsh, but,
seeing as
Alice was published in 1866, and had been in the atmosphere of
children's literature for some 40 years by the time EMERALD CITY came
around, at least a subconscious influence seems likely.>>

Definitely. Dorothy's shrinking as she comes to the door until she's
rabbit-sized is so similar to some moments early in ALICE, in fact, that
I think Baum must have seen the similarity.

Carroll was immensely influential on fantasy writers, and Baum mentioned
admiring him. With the title A NEW WONDERLAND, Baum made no secret of
trying to emulate Carroll, just as the later title of that book, MAGICAL
MONARCH OF MO, is a clear attempt to replicate WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ.

The Bunnybury episode as a whole is quite different from what Alice
encounters in her adventures, however. (Bunbury bears more resemblance
to the moment when Alice is introduced to the roast.) Carroll wrote
about chaos and small-group encounters. Baum wrote more about queer
societies and governments. Bunnybury's reluctant king is a novelty who
fits into Baum's many gentle satires of how people get to rule.

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

Date: Wed, 01 Mar 2006 16:48:56 -0500
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Cc: David Maxine <Tigerbooks at aol.com>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: WOGGLE-BUG quirks

Atticus Gannaway wrote:
> In a long article in the Winter 2004 BAUM BUGLE about THE MARVELOUS LAND OF 
> OZ and its spinoffs, Michael Patrick Hearn referred to THE WOGGLE-BUG BOOK as 
> "an atrocious tie-in," "nothing more than fluff," "dreadful," and "the worst 
> children's book [Baum] ever wrote."

Baum may in fact not have thought of it as a children's book primarily.
In the early printings of JOHN DOUGH, WOGGLE-BUG was advertised this way:
    "In this book Mr. Baum has told in his inimitable style, the remarkable
tale of the Woggle-Bug's love affairs. It will be enjoyed by every
one--men, women and children. Different from any other book. Novel in
story, pictures, size, printed and general make-up. Illustrated on every
page with grotesque pictures by Ike Morgan."

"Children" come last in that description's list of target readers.  And
is "grotesque" a good selling-point for parents and kids?  "You'll like
it, sweetums! It's full of grotesque ethnic caricatures!"

Like the WOGGLE-BUG show, Baum seems to have been aiming this book for a
mass audience led by low-level adult tastes rather than for young
readers. That kind of effort seems to have produced his worst fantasy
writing and hokiest plots. (At least by modern standards.)

> Back to the dress. We learn that its "greatly reduced" price is $7.93  (162).
> This happens to be the exact same price as the "fine Mexican saddle" that 
> Jack Pumpkinhead covets in "Jack Pumpkinhead Pawns the Saw-Horse" (81). 
> Coincidence? Or was that a common price point back then, much as $19.99 is  today?

Baum also plays on shop prices in "The Dummy That Lived," I believe.  I
think it was the merchandising expert in him having fun with details.

> what allusion is intended when the Woggle-Bug says to the 
> wash-lady, "Stop, my fair Grenadine, I implore you!" (177)?

A reference to Grenada, the Atlantic island with a largely Afro-British
population?

> Baum voiced his dislike for Wagner in two other fantasies, one earlier and
> one later. In our next BCF, THE MAGICAL MONARCH OF MO (published as A NEW
> WONDERLAND in 1900), Baum tells us that "the thunder [in Mo] is usually a chorus
> from the opera of Tannhauser." A case could actually be made that this is not
> a  disparaging statement; after all, the lightning in Mo "resembles the most
> beautiful fireworks." But two passages from JOHN DOUGH AND THE CHERUB (1906)
> erase any ambiguity.

I see the MO reference as complimentary, but the two references in JOHN
DOUGH (written at least months apart, given the history of that book)
are clearly not. But, as with the mentions of Wagnerian plaid, Baum
seems to have been reflecting a societal consensus in order to make
jokes rather than expressing a considered critical opinion.

The popular caricature of Wagner was apparently volume and discord (for
people who had no idea what was coming in the next decades of orchestral
music). Similarly, today we share some ideas about what a
(stereo)typical rap, country, or heavy metal song is today that don't
necessarily reflect the best of each genre. Today we treat the Wagnerian
soprano with braids and a horned helmet as a symbol of established
music, but Wagner was still fairly new and radical in Baum's time, and
thus perhaps treated with some distrust.

David Maxine wrote:
> Aside from that Baum raised his sons to love opera and
> Wagner and they had multiple piano rolls and records.
> I actually own all of Kenneth Baum's Wagner records --
> Ozma gave them to me when she died.

What vintage are the records? If Kenneth was buying them after his
father had died, then they don't necessarily reflect the family tastes
of 1905.

> Its kind of akin to Baum making fun of pop-music with
> Victor Columbia Edison. While it SOUNDS like LFB
> didn't think much of that sort of music he also is
> know to have sung it at homemade concerts with the
> boys at Macatawa "The Bullfrog and the Coon" one of
> Baum's favorites! And Baum even wrote a number of the
> pop music pseudo-ragtime racist pieces like "Down
> Among the Marshes."

This seems like a stronger argument, and fits in with the playing to
popular tastes I suggest above. On the other hand, I still don't see
positive evidence that Baum appreciated Wagner as much as David does.

It's been many years since I read the BUGLE article about similarities
between Wagner productions and some elements of Baum's later Oz books.
But I remember being struck by two things. First, it was one of the
first bits of criticism that I read which talked about how books might
have been influenced by art in another medium. Second, even so, I wasn't
convinced that the parallels were more than coincidences.

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2006 01:14:11 EST
From: AGannaway7 at aol.com
Subject: [Regalia] More on Baum and Wagner

I wanted to pass along David Maxine's response to my previous comments on 
his email.

*****

Hi Atticus,

Thanks for yuor reply and again feel free to add  this
to REGALIA -- perhaps I should join : ) I will address
a couple of  your points below:

<<The simple fact of plot similarities between  OZMA
and TIK-TOK and the RING cycle isn't enough to
persuade me that it  was a loving homage.>>

While on the face that's true but it  indicates a
strong familiarity with a work that takes 14 hours to
see.  Generally anyone who learns as much about the
RING cycle and Wagner's music  doesn't have a huge
aversion to Wagner.

I think my paragraph about  Baum's attitudes to pop
music in PATCHWORK GIRL is pretty good proof that  just
because LFB poked fun at something doesn't mean
doesn't mean he  doesnt own a phonograph and enjoy and
sing racist ragtime songs--heck, LFB  even composes
them on occasion.

While you are correct that none of  this "proves" a
love of Wagner's music -- I must point out that none
of  your commnets "proves" he didn't. Thus we have no
absolutes on whether LFB  loved the WAG or despised
him. If you hadn't made so strong a statement  about
the Wagnerian plaid, the MO thunder, and Tietjamus
Toips, showing  that LFB dislike Wagner -- I probably
wouldn't have written about LFB's love  of Wagner based
on Roquat/Alberich; Quox/Fafner; Magic  Belt/Tarnhelm;
Kaliko/Mime, etc.

Based on WOGGLEBUG BOOK atleast as  strong a case could
be made that Baum hated Swedes! I don't think he  did,
mind you, but then again I suspect LFB like
GOTTERDAMMERUNG :  )

Ho jo to HO!

David M.

*****

Also, I emailed Baum expert Michael Patrick Hearn to see what he might know 
about Baum's feelings toward Wagner, and received the following response.

*****

True, Baum was a Wagner fan.  To say he was deeply in
love with his  music is pushing it.  He liked to listen
to it on his Victrola.   But that didn't prevent him
from kidding about the music.  Baum was a  satirist and
poked fun at everything and everyone--even those  he
loved.  He was just making a joke about how loud the pattern on  the
dress was and Wagner's music was famous for being  loud
too.   I have no evidence that Baum ever attended  a
performance of  "The Ring."  He went to concerts but
I'm not  sure he was that fond of opera in general.

*****

In light of what I have been told, I must reevaluate my impressions about 
Baum's musical tastes. I made the assumptions that I did because I've heard the 
claim more than once that Baum disliked Wagner, claims probably based on the 
passages from MO, JOHN DOUGH, and WOGGLE-BUG. It still does seem odd to me
that  someone who actually liked Wagner would repeatedly rib him in print, but
so be  it.

Atticus Gannaway

Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2006 23:30:41 -0500
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: Gotterdammerung

In an earlier posting, I asked about the vintage of Kenneth Baum's
Wagner recordings. David Maxine reported:
+++++++++++++++
The records I have are priomarily from the 30s so as
you say that proves little. Generally I agree with you
that Baum was making fun of Wagner because it was the
trendy thing to do.
+++++++++++++++

The best formulation might be that Baum made fun of Wagner so
convincingly (especially in JOHN DOUGH) that careful readers might well
conclude, in the absence of private evidence, that he actually disliked
the music.

For Wagner fans, here's a book by a friend:

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2006 09:55:06 -0600
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] grenadine weave

AGannaway7 at aol.com wrote:
> what allusion is intended when the Woggle-Bug says to the wash-lady,
> "Stop, my fair Grenadine, I implore you!" (177)? >

I checked a Webster's Unabridged, and I see that one of the meanings of
"grenadine" is a type of cloth, either of silk, or of a mixture of fibers. I
think the Wogglebug is addressing the Wagnerian plaids. Didn't find any
leads on a Sullivanthauros, though.

Ruth Berman

Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2006 19:15:45 EST
From: AGannaway7 at aol.com
Subject: [Regalia] QUEER VISITORS and WOGGLE-BUG wrap-up

On 2/28/06, Nathan DeHoff wrote:

<<In Chapter 24 of SCARECROW, the Sawhorse says that he will think "[o]f
the acorn that grew the tree from which I was made."  So I suppose
he's primarily made of oak.  In LAND, one of Jack's legs is cut  up to
make a leg for the Sawhorse, and later the Tin Woodman makes a new  leg
for Jack out of a mahogany table.  So, if Jack is correct about being
made of hickory, the Sawhorse ends LAND with one hickory leg  (just
like Cap'n Bill!), and Jack with a mahogany one.  In later books, the
Sawhorse has various other body parts replaced with whatever kind  of
wood happens to be handy, but I'm sure he's still mostly  oak.>>

Thanks for the reference. I'd remembered the leg replacements in LAND, but 
that didn't help me figure out the Sawhorse's actual make-up.

On 2/28/06, Ruth Berman wrote:

<<Well, he comes up with other themes for the episodes -- it isn't all the
comparison of wonders. True that no one would look to QV for Baum's  best, 
but an interesting theme that crops up in several of the episodes  (maybe
mostly the better ones?) is the question of what kinds of wishes are worth
wishing and what kinds are only trouble.>>

Yes, the "be careful what you wish for" theme does come up as well--too 
often for my tastes.

<<> I find, upon this rereading, that what  interested me the most was the
> matter of characterization. Baum seems  to stray somewhat from his previous
> portrayals of these characters in  WIZARD and LAND. This occurs as early as
> his introductory note to the  series, when he writes that "the Woggle-Bug
> is said to be very wise and  quick to discover things, and the Scarecrow
> has proven more times than  one that he can think clearly" (11).  That seems
> to be an inversion of  how this pair was depicted in LAND <

Is it? The Woggle-Bug is always  interested in both in piling up knowledge 
(sometimes trivial, but always the  interest in learning lessons), and I
suppose that's about the same as being  quick to discover things. The
Scarecrow is the one who comes up with  ideas/analyses in both, yes? They
both have their pompous moments, and  usually the Woggle-Bug has more of
them -- but his factoids maybe come off  as more helpful in QV than they
usually are in the Oz books, so maybe he  looks rather more admirable in QV
than he usually does. But he has his  helpful moments in Oz, too (like the 
arithmetic double-talk for counting to  17 by 2s).>>

I wrote that comment somewhat carelessly. My conception of the characters 
has always been that the Wogglebug may have some book smarts, but it's the 
Scarecrow who's supposed to be wise--and mostly is. The joke about the Wogglebug 
in LAND is that he's too busy going on about his own intellectualism to be of 
much practical use. As Nathan DeHoff pointed out in response to this comment,
it  is actually the Sawhorse who suggests the counting method, and the
Wogglebug who  has a strong enough stomach to swallow a pill. Later on, of course,
he would  start a college that wouldn't even require him to bother teaching--he
became,  instead, a Highly Magnified Pharmacist.

<<The factoids are generally useful, or at least something that  the listeners
said they would like to know. I think the irritating quality  they have (for
this reader, certainly) isn't that they're useless, but that  they're not as
interesting as whatever was going on in the story previously,  so that they
usually make a lame anticlimax.>>

Other than the satisfying of curiosity, I don't see how the factoids are 
useful to the characters. And yes, they are lame  anticlimaxes.

<<> Mme.Qui-Sym (a play, I assume, on "kiss him"), 
<

Possible, but doesn't seem to fit her actions much? Might also be "quiz him"
with "quiz" in the sense of "make fun of," but even that seems a  bit of a
stretch.>>

The French pronunciation would transliterate basically as "Kee-Sim," which 
seems to me much more like what Baum would have  intended.

<<Discussion of "Alice" influence on Eliza's growth and shrinking -- sounds
likely. Discussion of influence of Jack's self-defeating  saddle/Sawhorse
trade on O.Henry's "Magi" -- possible, although maybe both  are going back to
tales from folklore, like the "wishes" story where the  wisher wishes a
sausage on his nose and has to use up the other wishes  getting it off?  (Not
a trade as such, but a similar kind of  irony.)>>

I think you're right about the possibility of common folkloric origins for 
both stories, but I thought it notable that Baum published such a Magi-like 
story a full year before O. Henry published "Magi" itself.

On 3/1/06, Ruth Berman wrote:

<<The (probable) influence of Wagnerian plot elements on "Ozma" and 
"Tik-Tok" (and "Lost Princess," as Scott mentioned) doesn't really say  anything one way
or the other about Baum's opinion of the music, although it  might indicate that he
found Wagner's use of mythology as a basis for  narrative of interest, even
if he didn't care for the music.>>

Yes, and it's worth emphasizing that the plot elements did not originate 
with Wagner.

On 3/1/06, J. L. Bell wrote:

<<"Children" come last in that description's list of target readers.  And
is "grotesque" a good selling-point for parents and kids?  "You'll like 
it, sweetums! It's full of grotesque ethnic caricatures!"

Like the  WOGGLE-BUG show, Baum seems to have been aiming this book for a
mass  audience led by low-level adult tastes rather than for young
readers. That  kind of effort seems to have produced his worst fantasy
writing and hokiest  plots. (At least by modern standards.)>>

Thanks for the quotation of the description, though I can't imagine why 
anyone would think the book would appeal to an adult. Or a child. Or anyone 
literate.

On 3/3/06, Ruth Berman wrote:

< "grenadine" is a type of cloth, either of silk, or of a mixture of fibers. I
think the Wogglebug is addressing the Wagnerian plaids. Didn't find any
leads on a Sullivanthauros, though.>>

Thanks for that citation. I hadn't been able to figure out any way in which
the wash-lady could be compared to pomegranate syrup.

I did a little online sleuthing re: Sullivanthauros but still came up short.
It does turn out that one Emmet Sullivan sculpted the five dinosaurs in 
Dinosaur Park in Rapid City, South Dakota, but he wasn't born until 1895, and  the
park wasn't dedicated until 1936. Sullivan also worked on Mount  Rushmore.

Atticus Gannaway

Date: Sun, 05 Mar 2006 14:16:10 -0500
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Regalia] Re: Wogglebug v. Scarecrow

Atticus Gannaway wrote:
> <<> I find, upon this rereading, that what  interested me the most was the
>> matter of characterization. Baum seems  to stray somewhat from his previous
>> portrayals of these characters in  WIZARD and LAND. This occurs as early as
>> his introductory note to the  series, when he writes that "the Woggle-Bug
>> is said to be very wise and  quick to discover things, and the Scarecrow
>> has proven more times than  one that he can think clearly" (11). That seems
>> to be an inversion of  how this pair was depicted in LAND <
>
> Is it? The Woggle-Bug is always  interested in both in piling up knowledge
> (sometimes trivial, but always the  interest in learning lessons), and I
> suppose that's about the same as being  quick to discover things. The 
> Scarecrow is the one who comes up with  ideas/analyses in both, yes?  They
> both have their pompous moments, and  usually the Woggle-Bug has more of
> them -- but his factoids maybe come off  as more helpful in QV than they
> usually are in the Oz books, so maybe he  looks rather more admirable in QV
> than he usually does. But he has his  helpful moments in Oz, too (like the
> arithmetic double-talk for counting to  17 by 2s).>>
> 
> I wrote that comment somewhat carelessly. My conception of the characters 
> has always been that the Wogglebug may have some book smarts, but it's the 
> Scarecrow who's supposed to be wise--and mostly is. The joke about the Wogglebug 
> in LAND is that he's too busy going on about his own intellectualism to be of 
> much practical use. As Nathan DeHoff pointed out in response to this comment,
> it  is actually the Sawhorse who suggests the counting method, and the
> Wogglebug who  has a strong enough stomach to swallow a pill. Later on, of course,
> he would  start a college that wouldn't even require him to bother teaching--he
> became,  instead, a Highly Magnified Pharmacist.

I think Baum got rather enamored of the Woggle-bug after inventing him,
and let him run away with the rest of LAND, QUEER VISITORS, and of
course his own stage show and picture book. The Scarecrow doesn't do
much that requires brains in LAND after the Woggle-bug shows up, as I
recall. The Wogglebug finds the solution for the Sawhorse's broken leg,
brings a head for the Gump, figures out the wishing pills, etc.

When Baum returned to the series, he may have been a little wiser for
having trusted in wogglebugs while Fred Stone's Scarecrow remained his
biggest star. With OZMA, Baum also returned to the conception of the
Scarecrow as the Emerald City's brainiest thinker. The now-unhyphenated
Wogglebug settled into a new role as professor and pedant (and, as you
note, pharmaceutical pusher), who no longer went on adventures. Thompson
and Neill pushed that conception even further. That distinction between
the characters may not have been as clear-cut for Baum or his readers
when he wrote QUEER VISITORS, however,

J. L. Bell                
JnoLBell at earthlink.net

L. Frank Baum, Walt McDougall

Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2006 09:18:16 -0600
From: "Ruth Berman" <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] giants & dragons & others

AGannaway7 at aol.com wrote:
> Other than the satisfying of curiosity, I don't see how the [QV] factoids
> are useful to the characters. And yes, they are lame anticlimaxes. >

Oh, a few of them are useful -- the Seidlitz powders get them back Jack's
head.

Ruth Berman

Date: Tue, 08 Sep 2009 14:58:48 -0500
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] lion & visitors

I went to the Minnesota State Fair this weekend and was amused to see 
that the scarecrows in the Horticulture Building's displays included a 
Cowardly Lion scarecrow, complete with a gold COURAGE medal. (I didn't 
try for a photo -- a sore shoulder had me reluctant to take my camera 
with me.)

Ivan suggested that we begin discussion of "Queer Visitors from the Land 
of Oz," starting Sept. 6, taking advantage of the new edition, with 
color repro. The color artwork is a lot of fun -- especially Denslow's 
"Scarecrow and Tin Man." McDougall's artwork isn't as striking as 
Denslow's, but it's a lot of fun. When we discussed it before, J.L. Bell 
(I think it was) wondered if the intrusive submarine in one of the early 
QV's was more identifiable in color as bearing a German flag than it was 
in the b&w versions available before. Well, not really. The flag is 
still pretty tiny, viewed from as far away as it is. Someone who already 
knew the German flag would know what it was, but if you didn't already 
know it and tried to explain what the design elements are, the elements 
are hard to identify. Seems a pity, by the way, that this edition 
doesn't include the answers to "What did the Woggle-Bug say?" (unless 
they're tucked away on a page in the back and I haven't spotted them on 
a quick page-through).

Also on the previous discussion, we were wondering in the late episode 
where the Scarecrow has had himself stuffed with money, if we should 
consider that as a second money-stuffing happening just before the 
incidents that the episode goes on to describe, or if we should view it 
as taking place earlier than that, and referring to the Jackdaws' Nest 
chapter of "Land." I think Baum really intended it to be a flashback to 
"Land," but, if so, he wasn't planning from the beginning on having such 
an episode among the QV adventures -- because I notice in the first 
episode a reference to the sound of the Scarecrow's straw crinkling. (No 
indication in the QV episodes of when he would have replaced the money, 
which he'd still had as of the end of "Land," with straw, or when after 
the second money-stuffing, if second it is, he reverted to straw.) The 
theory that this is an alternate Oz, and doesn't need to be consistent 
with the books, is helpful here, of course, but I prefer to think that 
Baum had in mind a single money-stuffing incident, and that the 
reference to the sound of straw should be considered as an error for the 
sound of crinkling paper. But I've only re-read the first few QVs at 
this point -- I'll keep an eye out for any further mentions of straw 
stuff inside.

I continue to think that the "What did the Woggle-Bug say?" questions, 
no matter how successful as a promotional gimmick to build interest, are 
kind of a bore. The early incidents are kind of boring, too, as the 
characters just stand around and look to see what they can see -- the 
St. Louis World Fair (and what a pity the pictures don't show a trolley 
in the background, that one could imagine Judy Garland clang-clanging 
away on), the ocean, etc. My recollection is that as we get into the 
middle, the story-lines get more interesting, and the dullness of the 
questions becomes more jarring by contrast. Haven't come to those yet in 
re-reading, though.

Ruth Berman

Date: Thu, 10 Sep 2009 15:49:45 -0500
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] wogglebug

> > ericshanower <shanower at pacbell.net> wrote:
> The answers to the What did the Woggle-Bug say? questions are included in the book. I don't have a 
copy handy, but they're on one of the text pages in a box near the bottom of the page.
>   

Thanks for the correction.

I've been looking at Neill's and McDougall's (& Morgan's) illustrations 
of the Wogglebug, and noticing similarities and differences. Neill, 
following Baum's description of the Wogglebug's dandyish clothes, had a 
dandy-style Wogglebug, with a sort of frock coat over close-fitting 
knickerbockers, "tall silk hat," and cane. As we've previously noted, 
Neill drew him as having only 2 arms, for a total of four limbs, a 
non-insectoid structure. But I suspect it was actually what Baum had in 
mind -- he specified in the "Land" text that the Wogglebug had 2 legs, 
but didn't say how many upper limbs he had. In spite of the mammalian 
number of limbs, Neill drew a much more insecty-looking creature than 
McDougall or Morgan did, with a pair of long antenna, long thin neck, 
long pointy-chinned face, and a broad body that reminds me of a 
brown-banded cockroach -- although I don't think banded cockroaches have 
banded legs, as the Wogglebug does.

I didn't spot this looking at the various illos last night, but looking 
at J.L. Bell's website today, which has up the color plate of the 
Wogglebug introducing himself to Tip and friends, I think the colorist 
made a small error. The Wogglebug's body (as described by Baum) is 
banded, and Neill drew it that way, making the torso visible in spite of 
the Wogglebug's fancy clothes by putting him in a low-cut vest with no 
shirt beneath it. But in the color plate, the banding of legs and torso 
differ -- the legs are banded brown and black and are presumably meant 
to be the actual leg markings. It's the same brown as the Wogglebug's 
knickerbockers ("fawn colored," according to Baum), so I suppose the 
legs might possibly be interpreted as each having a ribbon of fabric 
coming down from the knickers and wrapping around, or as a pair of 
striped stockings with the brown stripes matching the knickers. But the 
torso stripes are brown and white, and come across so colored as looking 
like a striped shirt worn under the vest. The shirt-effect is increased 
by a white collar, but I think Neill meant the white collar as part of 
the  white vest, although the connection between the white collar and 
white vest is obscured by the frock coat.

McDougall's Wogglebug was lower class in outfit, maybe to match up 
better with the Scarecrow and Jack, whose clothes have to look old and 
worn, given their construction. Anyway, McDougall's Wogglebug wears a 
derby, not a tall top hat, his jacket is not tailed, and his 
knickerbockers, in a loud red-and-black-diamonds pattern, are kind of 
baggy. He has a somewhat more humanoid face than Neill's, rounder, and 
without antennas. Instead of antennas, he has a pair of mustaches, 
giving somewhat the effect of antennaes as they reach up. Nevertheless, 
the immediate effect of McDougall's Wogglebug is much more insect-like 
than Neill's, because he has (as has been pointed out here before) four 
arms, for a properly insect-like total of six limbs. Baum evidently 
enjoyed the thought that the Wogglebug really ought to have those extra 
arms, and picked up on it for his texts, mentioning it in the second 
episode, and using the extra arms as a minor plot point in some of the 
later "Queer Visitors" episodes (the better to grab Jack's lost 
pumpkinhead with), and as a larger plot point in "The Woggle-Bug Book," 
where he demands double-pay from the foreman, as he can do twice as much 
digging as a human, and so earns the money to buy those loud Wagnerian 
plaids (except that the dress was bought by someone else first). 
McDougall's Wogglebug has fly-like hairy legs instead of banding.

Morgan followed McDougall in drawing the extra arms prominently, and 
having a pair of mustaches instead of antennas. Morgan drew the 
mustaches as even longer and curlier than McDougall had -- Morgan was 
following Neill (and Baum's text in the "Book" -- I don't remember if he 
described the Wogglebug's clothes in the QV) in making the Wogglebug a 
fancily-dressed dandy, with cane, tall hat, and frock coat. He follows 
McDougall in giving the Wogglebug fly-like hairy legs and in patterning 
the knickers with red and black diamonds, but makes it a fancier pattern 
or red and black diamonds within white diamonds, and follows Neill in 
making them close-fitting. His Wogglebug is even more of a dandy than 
Neill's, because he does wear a shirt, and it is buttoned with what 
appear to be gleaming diamond studs. He has a rather more human-looking 
face than either of the other two, with eyes not so much bugged out. 
Late in the story, Baum evidently decided to get more extreme with the 
bugginess, and revealed that the Wogglebug had wings -- not big enough 
for him to fly with in his Highly Magnified state, but enough to let him 
glide to the ground from a height. Morgan duly drew the wings unfolded 
and visible in that part of the story and liked them enough to show them 
in the frontispiece drawing. (And never mind that this gives us an 
arachnoidal, non-insectoidal total of 8 limbs! After all, spiders are 
bugs, too, I suppose.)

These major anatomical differences make it hard to see the US-visiting 
Wogglebug as the same guy as the one who showed up in "Land," besides 
causing considerable difficulties to whatever tailor made the clothes 
that so effectively hide the wings while leaving them free for 
deployment. (I suppose a tailor who could do that could hide the extra 
arms, too, in such a way as to leave it possible for the Wogglebug to 
free them to use them when he'd a mind to. Pastoria, anyone?)

Ruth Berman

Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:43:50 -0500
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] more wogglebug

Looking again the McDougall's illos, I see that he does draw the 
Wogglebug in a tailed coat. It looks distinctly less dandyish than the 
one Neill puts on him, though. Is it the short sleeves that give that 
effect?

I also looked at a couple of Neill's Wogglebug portraits from later 
years (in RPT's "Royal Book" and Neill's "Wonder Book"), and I see that 
Neill's Wogglebug became distinctly less human and yet less insect-like 
over the years. his long thin nose becomes longer and less thin, and 
acquires a spiral marking that makes it look like some kind of horn. The 
antenna likewise become thicker and spiral-marked and look like horns.

Ruth Berman

Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:57:19 -0500
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] scarecrow straw

Baum doesn't seem to have bothered to hang on to the plot line of the 
Scarecrow's money stuffing for more than the single QV episode. In the 
following episode, there's a mention of the Scarecrow as using a wisp of 
his straw to dry Jack's head. (Has anyone counted how often poor Jack 
loses his head to get things moving?) So they did after all find a 
supply of straw close by. I wonder what they did with the money the 
Scarecrow was stuffed with after they changed the few big bills to ones. 
Baum has a couple of places after that where money would have come in 
handy, and they don't seem to have it. In the final episode,the 
Wogglebug could have given money to the fraudulent beggar instead of 
borrowing four tin cups (which he could have bought or rented if he'd 
had money) to wave about getting the beggar extra alms. Maybe they'd 
managed to spend the rest of the monies already.

Ruth Berman

Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 11:11:30 -0500
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at umn.edu>
Subject: [Regalia] an amen & some hyphens

On a pleasanter, albeit trivial note -- I thought I would check the 
first appearances of the Woggle-Bug/Wogglebug and Saw-Horse/Sawhorse in 
Baum's later Oz books to see when they lost their hyphens. (That's 
assuming that the usage didn't vary within a single book, and that the 
later Oz authors stuck to the simplified spelling consistently, and 
those assumptions are not necessarily correct. But they seem likely 
enough.) The hyphens stayed through "Queer Visitors" and "Woggle-Bug 
Book" and "Ozma." The Sawhorse was temporarily dehyphenated in 
"Dorothy/Wizard," but rehyphenated in "Road." He and the Wogglebug went 
to the simpler spellings in "Emerald City," and stayed with them from 
then on.

Ruth Berman

Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 20:24:08 -0700 (PDT)
From: Jared Davis <scarecrowandtinman2002 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Regalia] an amen & some hyphens

Oddly enough, I tend to write "Sawhorse," but use the hypens in "Tik-Tok" and "Woggle-Bug."

Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 23:34:53 -0400
From: Nathan DeHoff <fablesto at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Regalia] an amen & some hyphens

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 11:24 PM, Jared Davis
<scarecrowandtinman2002 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Oddly enough, I tend to write "Sawhorse," but use the hypens in "Tik-Tok"
> and "Woggle-Bug."

Tik-Tok's name is sort of the opposite of the others, since it's
spelled without the hyphens in OZMA, but with them in subsequent
books.  I usually use the hyphens in "Tik-Tok," but not for the other
two.
-- 
Ozma and Oz Forever,
Nathan
fablesto at gmail.com or nathandehoff at gmail.com

Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:25:01 -0700
From: <tyler.jones at cox.net>
Subject: [Regalia] The hyperbolic Hyphenators of Oz

I'm like Nathan. I tend to hyphenate Tik-Tok, but not the Sawhorse or the Wogglebug.

Tyler Jones

Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:26:28 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <jnolbell at earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [Regalia] Tik-Tok

The spelling of Tik-Tok's name evolved in three stages. And as usual 
Baum wasn't consistent.

OZMA, EMERALD CITY, LITTLE WIZARD STORIES: Tiktok.
DOROTHY & WIZARD, ROAD, PATCHWORK GIRL: Tik-tok.
from TIK-TOK on: Tik-Tok.

And there are a couple of complications. Even in books that spell the 
name "Tiktok," his own pronunciation looks like "Tik-tok."

And even in books that spell the name "Tik-tok," it appears in chapter 
titles as "Tik-Tok."

So I can see why Baum might have gotten confused.

J. L. Bell                 JnoLBell at earthlink.net

    Musings about some of my favorite
    fantasy literature for young readers.
    http://ozandends.blogspot.com