Everyone will recognize Santa here, but I have a seven year old friend who can name all the others in this Oz illustration; we spent a happy hour not long ago discussing who was who, and how much fun it would be to be seated at that table. The piece was drawn 110 years before she was born, as a pen and ink for The Road to Oz, the fifth book in the long series making up the source material for so much, from The Wizard of Oz film of 1939 to the Wicked universe in books, on stage, and now on film.
I’m delighted that this child, dear to me, loves the Oz books as much as I did. We book-oriented Ozians are a rather arcane crowd, enjoying the films, but reveling in the original stories and illustrations of John R. Neill. This child is off to a fine start.
Santa Claus makes an appearance in the Road to Oz volume (1909) when the magical creatures from L. Frank Baum’s world gather to celebrate the birthday of royal Princess Ozma. Baum refers to him as “The most Mighty and Loyal Friend of Children, His Supreme Highness – Santa Claus!” In this image, Santa, drinking the health of the Princess, appears to be elf-sized, as he is described in “The Night Before Christmas” poem. (It was, after all, a “miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer.”)
Princess Ozma is at the head of the table with rays of light surrounding her, as sometimes appear in traditional artworks of rulers or holy beings. Oz is full of powerful confident females, starting with brave Dorothy, and the Princess is always referred to as a benevolent girl ruler. What a thing to read about, and to aspire to, at any age at all.
Along the table: the Wizard himself, the Scarecrow, Dorothy, Jack Pumpkinhead, the Tin Woodman, crowned as the Emperor of the Winkies, Glinda the Good, and more. My young friend recognizes the Queen of the Field Mice at the foot of the table: her thousands of subjects lived in the poppy field near the Emerald City, and in the original story were the ones who saved the Cowardly Lion from enchanted sleep. The Queen must be a special guest here since the text explains that the animals had their own banquet table. The Lion, Toto and the Hungry Tiger dined there. Perhaps the tiny Queen was more comfortable at the head table.
Santa Claus is an honored guest, and after the festivities asks the Wizard to send him home in a magical bubble. “Then I can float away home,” he says, “and see the country spread out beneath me as I travel. There isn’t a spot on earth that I haven’t visited, but I usually go in the night-time, riding behind my swift reindeer. Here is a good chance to observe the country by daylight, while I am riding slowly and at my ease.” Other guests returned to their far-flung countries by bubble “and Santa Claus directed the way they should go, because he knew exactly where everybody lived.”
Well, of course he would.
I am fond of the idea that L. Frank Baum dropped Santa Claus into Oz for a birthday banquet. I’ve read that he had a lively correspondence with his young readers, and many of the books were shaped by their ideas. Is there a child’s letter in an archive somewhere suggesting that Santa should make a visit to Oz? What a good idea.
Another thing about my shelf of Oz books: one carries my own glued-in bookplate, dated the year I was eight years old in my grandmother’s hand. It was given in May, probably a gift for my first Holy Communion. Other volumes, collected over the years, bear the names of long-ago children – Ann Marie, Frank, Billy, Linda – who, like my seven year old friend, read their way through a landscape of perils and magical adventures. When we open those books now, we flip past their old signatures, but a glance helps us give a thought to the happy moments they spent in the same pages we enjoy. It’s a crowd of children who, over nearly 125 years, have entered the created world of L. Frank Baum, the Royal Historian of the Land of Oz. Several on my shelf are inscribed 1929 and 1945 and marked Merry Christmas.
I’m giving an Oz book myself this Christmas to my small friend; The Patchwork Girl of Oz, written in 1913, was one of my favorites. I’ll inscribe it “Merry Christmas”, just as my predecessors did for their beloved children.
Happy holidays, one and all.
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Illustration from the author’s collection.