A short stay in Utah, still frontier territory by Eastern standards in the early 1890s, sounded like a lark to vivacious, adventurous Maud May Babcock.
In 1892, she was completing a stint as elocution instructor for the Harvard University summer program. She was intrigued by the picture of Utah Territory painted by a student, Susa Young Gates. The young daughter of LDS leader Brigham Young extolled the qualities of pioneering Saints who had an "enthusiastic love for progress." The prospect of working in such a "wide and fallow field was not be be resisted by the young enthusiast," Gates later wrote of the friendship.From her viewpoint, Babcock wrote of her envisioned role as an educator in frontier Utah as being "chief reaper in this field already white for the harvest." The Old Testament quote, adopted into the canon of Latter-day scripture, was one frequently used by the young church. Babcock may not have recognized the connection, but once in Utah, she quickly learned more about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She was baptized about four months after her arrival, fulfilling dire prophecies by her parents and friends that her trip West could be "not only fanatical, but even dangerous."
Her parents, who didn't learn of her baptism until six months after the fact, were horrified. Her mother, a dressmaker by trade and a social climber by inclination, told her she could more easily have come home with an illegitimate child than with the news that she had become Mormon.
Leah Dunford (Widtsoe), a young LDS student friend who visited the Babcock home with Maud in 1893, described the confrontation: "Her mother was shocked beyond words to express her disappointment and disgust. . . . She believed all the lies that had been told about the church." The mother was convinced that young Maud was being held captive and would be murdered if she left the church. "She won't leave because she daren't," she concluded.
Mrs. Babcock lived in fear that family friends would learn of her daughter's "indiscretion." She sent Maud a letter saying that if family acquaintances who visited Utah learned of her affiliation with the church, " . . . then I shall say you can decide between me and that Hell-born sect and I pray daily to God if you open your lips to defend that cause in publick (sic) your tongue may be paralyzed."
A paralyzed tongue was not one of Maud's worries. At 25, she already was establishing herself as one of the leading elocution authorities in the United States. Over the years, she helped lead the movement from its elocution emphasis to the broader field of English, and she shared her prestige with the University of Utah. Dr. Charles H. Woolbert of the University of Iowa ultimately wrote of the Utah program, "there is no other university speech department with a better organized system of courses."
Babcock came to Salt Lake City to accept the U. job at the invitation of President Joseph Kings-bury. He had caved in to Gates' badgering, even though his budget was "taxed already and the faculty quota for the year is full." He finally scraped up $500 for Babcock's first year's part-time salary - a third what she had been offered to head the elocution and physical education programs in a Connecticut school system. She was the first regular female faculty member at the U., although several women had previously taught particular classes.
Her erect posture and back-East accent gave students a fine outlet. They paraded the halls of the university (then located where West High School later found a home) mocking her precise discussions of "the budhs and the beeeez." She was, nevertheless, a highly popular instructor and an absolute advocate for her students. When a young woman named Wanda told the teacher she couldn't afford to pay for private instruction, Babcock told her, "Well, get the money somehow and we'll run it through the registrar's office and then I'll give it back to you." Her penchant for bypassing university protocols and waging an occasional verbal battle over her salary became part of Babcock lore at the U.
Her Salt Lake home and a cabin in Brighton often were the scenes of large gatherings of friends or students. Visitors were subjected to her own rigorous health routines, including strenuous mountain hikes. For breakfast, they ate her famous "mush" made of cracked wheat with dates, raisins and nuts and they dined on her "inimitable chop suey," according to a biography written as a thesis by Ronald Quayle Frederickson in 1965.
In the classroom, however, she was a tyrant, harshly criticizing student performances and demanding perfection. She was determined that each student should "get the thought, hold the thought and give the thought." Her own grammar and diction were precise and she required the same of her students, even in casual conversation. She often repeated the story of the little boy whose teacher ordered him to write "I have gone" a hundred times on the board. The lad then added a postscript: "I have wrote `I have gone' a hundred times and now I have went.' "
Babcock was petite, but not easily pushed. Frederickson recounts that when one of her colleagues, Professor E.E. Ericksen, commented that "The speech department at this university is given far too much prominence in the curriculum, compared with fields of more academic significance," she accosted him in the school's library. Using "all the rhetorical technique at her command," she "sent Dr. Ericksen into figurative exile." When a librarian tried to intervene, she waved her off with a gesture and a glance. Ericksen himself conceded that she got the best of the argument, "since she was an elocutionist and I was only a professor of philosophy."
At least one professor left the university, rankled by her "excess of enthusiasm," her persistence when she had a point to make and what he felt was her undue influence with the U.'s administrators and board.
For years, Babcock waged the university's historic debate on debate. She felt the discipline should be in her department, but others wouldn't let it go. She finally compiled an impressive set of statistics showing that most of the country's leading universities had placed their debate programs in the English department. The well-conceived arguments finally helped persuade university officials to make the changes she desired.
From her arrival at the university, she pushed for a "physical culture" program for women. The university's response was niggardly. Her facilities were makeshift and inadequate and her classes were conducted in a hallway outside a musuem. A Professor Montgomery complained that the exercises going on outside his bailiwick "jarred the cases and specimens in the museum and it is likely to cause injury."
When things didn't improve at the U., Babcock set up a private school to promote women's fitness. In November 1893, the Deseret News announced a reception given by Babcock and her assistants to celebrate its opening. Later, she was instrumental in the founding of the Deseret Gymnasium.
At age 83 in 1950, Babcock prepared a tape to be played at the annual convention of the Speech Association of America, of which she was a charter member. Her voice was still resonant and full, her articulation beautiful and precise, giving the impression that she was much younger. Four years later, she died, the undisputed grande dame of the disciplines to which she had dedicated her life.