By Anthony Sansonetti

Dollie Dutton (1852-1890), the “Little Fairy” of the United States of America and “the smallest girl in the world,”¹ was born Alice Dutton in Framingham, Massachusetts,² yet she was able to obtain wide acclaim for her unprecedented stature and weight on both sides of the Atlantic. Her father, mother, two brothers and older sister were all of “usual size,”³ but Dollie was labeled a “dwarf,”⁴ a “midget,”⁵ a “specimen of the lilliputian”⁶ and a “little doll of a woman.”⁷ She had another sister named Etta who did not weigh more than fifteen pounds and was tinier than three feet in height.⁸ Dollie and her sister performed together in the public sphere before Etta died at the early age of eight.⁹ Dollie’s father David Dutton, called “Mr. Dutton” by the popular press,¹⁰ played a colossal role in advertising, modeling and managing the talents of his daughter. Mr. Dutton wrote and helped publish the History of the Little Fairy, Dollie Dutton: Also Containing the Songs She Sings, which is said to be a “rare sideshow circus booklet” dating back to 1860.¹¹ The booklet appears to include the most favourable accounts of Dollie’s performances, the titles of songs she sang and Mr. Dutton’s own description of the workings of his daughter’s personal life and public persona. Mr. Dutton was obviously aware of the public’s interest in the making—with all the implications of the word—of an infant phenomenon. Dollie’s mother, on the other hand, was rendered invisible in the press, as if she had no part in Dollie’s career.

The period from 1859 onward marked the beginning of a time when Dollie entertained the public without her sister Etta by her side. Dollie was said to be two feet tall and weighed thirteen pounds at the age of nine; she stopped growing after the age of six—that is, by the time she began to tour the United States.¹² At the age of seven Dollie was singing eight solos, one song in concert with a band and performing “the character of an old lady”¹³ for months in numerous “assembly rooms” ¹⁴ and visitation “halls”¹⁵ across the United States. During the spring, summer and autumn of 1860, Dollie travelled to New Orleans,¹⁶ Cleveland,¹⁷ Columbus,¹⁸ Cincinnati,¹⁹ Burlington,²⁰ Boston²¹ as well as New York City,²² attaining the love and praise of audiences throughout the Eastern States of the United States and parts of Canada before December 1860.²³ The titles of the songs she sang were as follows: “When I Was Single,” “The Evening Star,” “My Grandmother’s Advice,” “I Am Sixty-Two,” “Our Country Girls,” “Shells of the Ocean,” “Oh! Give Me a Home by the Sea” and “Strike the Harp Gentle.”²⁴ In addition to her popular appearances alongside tables and chairs, Dollie was often showcased alongside girls²⁵ and boys²⁶ who were her age and of “ordinary size.”²⁷ In Ohio, a “giant” stood in for the children to prove the oddity of Dollie’s littleness.²⁸ Miss Sarah Belton,²⁹ Miss Jenny Lillie³⁰ and Miss Wilhelmina Kappes³¹ were among a few of the girls who accompanied Dollie on stage. This mode of corporeal comparison was part of Dollie’s public presentation; however, nothing was more celebrated than Dollie’s skill of entering a room. Sometimes, we are told, Dollie would appear in the palm of her father’s or a manager’s hand while other times she would spring from a “little” basket typically used for carrying flowers.³² Dollie would then be found seated in “doll’s furniture”—a “little sofa” or “side chair.”³³

The critics who were in unequivocal awe at the “Little Fairy” were particularly positive, since they were love-struck, seeing the world as cheerful and optimistic—through rose-coloured glasses—in the presence of Dollie. Not even the worst of weather could stop audiences from visiting Dollie.³⁴ A journalist from the New-York Tribune attacks the audience members of Barnum’s Museum, those who enjoy visiting a “woman who sports a ferocious beard,” yet settles for a communal understanding of the general public’s appeal to Dollie.³⁵ In consistently honouring the “symmetry” of Dollie’s material body, audience members across the United States were able to fantasize about the magical, holy or otherworldly possibilities of Dollie’s embodiment.³⁶ Described as “beautifully formed, quick, graceful, with the most sparkling eyes, the prettiest curls, the neatest little arms and exquisite hands,”³⁷ Dollie’s earnings in the eastern United States were rumoured to be above fifty thousand dollars by the end of 1860.³⁸ Dollie’s visitors across the United States ultimately seemed to appreciate that she had “none” of the characteristics or “repulsive anomalies of a dwarf,” but was, instead, “a beautiful child.”⁴⁰ Dollie was, in other words, notable for her corporeal appearance of a “wax doll” rather than a “living specimen” of humankind.³⁹

Women, children and “lovers of God’s wonderful works” were the most discussed members of Dollie’s fanbase.⁴¹ In a poem written by a lady of Cleveland, an unnamed admirer of Dollie refers to her as “my darling little girl” and a “talented” “treasure,”⁴² admitting that she is envious of those who surround Dollie on a regular basis.⁴³ Journalists continuously praised Dollie for her “clear” and “distinct” speaking and singing voice, signaling us to realize that Dollie had talent as well as physical beauty.⁴⁴ During her performances in New York, Dollie added dance to her repertoire. She danced the polka at each levee while moving audiences with the many facets of her talent.⁴⁵ Intelligence was also among Dollie’s most distinctive features inasmuch as those who talked to her one-on-one were impressed by how “bright” and “active” she was.⁴⁶ Dollie soon surpassed the likes of General Tom Thumb in popular opinion. There were claims that Thumb could no longer impress audiences with his “stumpy figure” after they paid witness to the “petite and dainty-featured” Dollie in performance.⁴⁷ As one journalist from Michigan tells us, Dollie “is a prodigy beside whom Tom Thumb ceases to be a curiosity.”⁴⁸ There are, however, some discrepancies between the year of birth Mr. Dutton provides us with in History of the Little Fairy and the year of birth the press shared with the public. In fact, the press usually added two or three years to Dollie’s life, stating, for example, that she was nine years old⁴⁹ when, in Mr. Dutton’s account, she was seven.⁵⁰

Mr. Dutton’s influence on his daughter’s career, during the early years of her life and a short time afterward, was loudly established, yet several other players also contributed to the grand success of Dollie’s theatrical performances and meet-and-greets. In January 1857, her aunt Mrs. Sarah P. Davis took over the running of Dollie’s career during her stay in Boston.⁵¹ It was her aunt who suggested that Dollie should be schooled in the art of dance by a popular instructor named Sylvanus Kneeland, Jr., who resided in Boston at the time of Dollie’s visit.⁵² Reverends, lawyers as well as theatrical agents and managers readily offered their voices of praise and encouragement to local newspapers. The names of agent J. H. Lillie and manager Albert Norton appear on almost all of Dollie’s New York-based advertisements at the heat of her career as a performing child.⁵³ The names of these men provide us with a taste of the collaborative nature of Dollie’s career.

As Dollie matured, she became acquainted with and, later, close friends of Thumb and his wife Lavinia Warren while touring the United States with the “Tom Thumb Troupe.”⁵⁴ Though Dollie never travelled to London with Thumb, his wife, and the rest of his troupe, she appears to have provided a creative template for creative writers on both sides of the Atlantic. Stories from both sides of the Atlantic follow a similar premise: a young girl resembling the ethos of Dollie fears she has been deceitful to God. This figure of the young girl with the same name was clearly used in religious propaganda disguised as children’s literature in the United States wherein “Dollie” has trouble “trusting in God,”⁵⁷ although I was surprised to find multiple caricatures of Dollie in a London-based magazine following a similar premise,⁵⁸ since she had never travelled to London as a child. Dollie prefigures to some extent these literary characters insofar as critics in the United States “admitted” that she was “the prettiest and most cunning little being they have ever seen.”⁵⁵ Most critics also maintained that Dollie surpassed “many children of her years” with her intellectual capacities.⁵⁶ Only ever likened to “an elf, a fay, a fairy” or Puck from William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in empty words instead of a description of action,⁵⁹ I could not find probable reason to believe that Dollie had or showed skill in achieving her ends by deceit or evasion. How do we engage with these transatlantic interpretations of Dollie? And what does the “Little Fairy” and, more specifically, her embodied performances of a living, breathing angel, doll or imp teach us about Dollie’s role of the “perfect” girl amid the nineteenth-century?⁶⁰ The 1850s and 1860s do in fact mark a controversial upsurge of Catholic presence in the United States as well as the United States.⁶¹ This fact cultivates the following question: did Dollie inspire transatlantic audiences, writers, and critics with a convenient opportunity to assimilate her miraculous, rare, and mysterious ideal into religious matters for personal and political gain?

Notes

1. “Levees of the Little Fairy, Miss Dollie Dutton,” New-York Tribune, December 13, 1859, 2.
2. Mertie E. Romaine, General Tom Thumb and His Lady (New York: W. S. Sullwold Publishing, 1976), 59.
3.  Ibid.
4. “Remarkable Dwarfs,” Staunton Spectator, June 26, 1860.
5. Romaine, General Tom Thumb, 59.
6. “Remarkable Dwarfs,” Staunton Spectator.
7. “Dollie Dutton,” The Daily Exchange, May 30, 1860.
8. “1860 Dollie Dutton Sideshow Circus Booklet,” last modified 2015, http://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1860-dollie-dutton-sideshow-circus-1781622890.
9.  Ibid.
10. “History of the ‘Little Fairy,’ Miss Dollie Dutton,” Burlington Free Press, September 28, 1860.
11. “1860 Dollie Dutton Sideshow Circus Booklet.”
12. “One of the Light Weights,” New Orleans Daily Crescent, October 11, 1859.
13. “Levees of the Little Fairy,” Burlington Free Press, September 21, 1860.
14. “Dollie Dutton,” The Daily Exchange.
15. “Dollie Dutton to be at East Westminster and Brattleboro,” Vermont Phœnix, September 8, 1860.
16. “One of the Light Weights,” New Orleans Daily Crescent.
17. “Dollie Dutton, the Little Fairy, Standing on Her Father’s Hand,” Cleveland Morning Leader, November 17, 1860.
18. “To the Little Fairy,” Cleveland Morning Leader, November 26, 1860.
19. “Varieties,” Cincinnati Daily Press, April 26, 1860.
20. “Levees of the Little Fairy,” Burlington Free Press, September 21, 1860.
21. “History of the ‘Little Fairy,’ Miss Dollie Dutton,” Burlington Free Press.
22. “Levees of the Little Fairy, Miss Dollie Dutton,” New-York Tribune.
23. “Dollie Dutton,” Cleveland Morning Leader, November 9, 1860.
24. “Levees of the Little Fairy,” Burlington Free Press.
25. Ibid.
26. “Dollie Dutton to be at East Westminster and Brattleboro,” Vermont Phœnix.
27. “Dollie Dutton,” The Daily Exchange, June 1, 1860.
28. “Dollie Dutton and Her Levees,” Cleveland Morning Leader, November 23, 1860.
29. “Levees of the Little Fairy,” Burlington Free Press.
30. “Levees of the Little Fairy, Miss Dollie Dutton,” New-York Tribune, 2.
31. “Dollie Dutton and Her Levees,” Cleveland Morning Leader.
32. “Dollie Dutton, the Little Fairy, Standing on Her Father’s Hand,” Cleveland Morning Leader.
33. Romaine, General Tom Thumb, 59.
34. “Dollie Dutton,” Cleveland Morning Leader, November 22, 1860.
35. “Dollie Dutton,” The Daily Exchange, May 30, 1860.
36. “Dollie Dutton and Her Levees,” Cleveland Morning Leader.
37. “Dollie Dutton to be at East Westminster and Brattleboro,” Vermont Phœnix.
38. “Varieties.” Cincinnati Daily Press, July 28, 1860.
39. “History of the ‘Little Fairy,’ Miss Dollie Dutton,” Burlington Free Press.
40. “Dollie Dutton,” The Daily Exchange, May 30, 1860.
41. “History of the ‘Little Fairy,’ Miss Dollie Dutton,” Burlington Free Press.
42. “To the Little Fairy,” Cleveland Morning Leader.
43.  Ibid.
44. “Dollie Dutton,” Cleveland Morning Leader, November 21, 1860.
45. “Levees of the Little Fairy, Miss Dollie Dutton,” New-York Tribune.
46. “History of the ‘Little Fairy,’ Miss Dollie Dutton,” Burlington Free Press.
47. “Dollie Dutton,” Cleveland Morning Leader, November 22, 1860.
48. “Dollie Dutton of Springfield, Mass.,” The Cass County Republican, November 10, 1859.
49. “One of the Light Weights,” New Orleans Daily Crescent.
50. “1860 Dollie Dutton Sideshow Circus Booklet.”
51. “History of the ‘Little Fairy,’ Miss Dollie Dutton,” Burlington Free Press.
52.  Ibid.
53. “Levees of the Little Fairy,” Burlington Free Press.
54. Romaine, General Tom Thumb, 59.
55. “History of the ‘Little Fairy,’ Miss Dollie Dutton,” Burlington Free Press.
56. “Remarkable Dwarfs,” Staunton Spectator.
57. Ina Hervey, “Dollie Dutton’s By-Word,” in The Children’s Hour, ed. T. S. Arthur, vol. 4. (Philadelphia: T. S. Arthur & Son, 1868), 141.
58. Alice Radclyffe, “Dolly’s Dream,” The Cornhill Magazine, December 1885.
59. “Dollie Dutton,” The Daily Exchange, May 30, 1860.
60. “Dollie Dutton of Springfield, Mass.,” The Cass County Republican.
61. Julie Byrne, “Mission and Metamorphosis: Narrating Modern Catholic History,” in The Other Catholics: Remaking America’s Largest Religion (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 94.

Bibliography

Byrne, Julie. “Mission and Metamorphosis: Narrating Modern Catholic History.” In The Other Catholics: Remaking America’s Largest Religion, 75-125. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016.

“Dollie Dutton.” Cleveland Morning Leader. November 21, 1860.

“Dollie Dutton.” Cleveland Morning Leader. November 22, 1860.

“Dollie Dutton.” The Daily Exchange. May 30, 1860.

“Dollie Dutton and Her Levees.” Cleveland Morning Leader. November 23, 1860.

“Dollie Dutton of Springfield, Mass.” The Cass County Republican. November 10, 1859.

“Dollie Dutton, the Little Fairy, Standing on Her Father’s Hand.” Cleveland Morning Leader. November 17, 1860.

“Dollie Dutton to be at East Westminster and Brattleboro.” Vermont Phœnix. September 8, 1860.

Hervey, Ina. “Dollie Dutton’s By-Word.” In The Children’s Hour, edited by T. S. Arthur, vol. 4, 141-143. Philadelphia: T. S. Arthur & Son, 1868.

“History of the ‘Little Fairy,’ Miss Dollie Dutton.” Burlington Free Press, September 28, 1860.

“Levees of the Little Fairy.” Burlington Free Press, September 21, 1860.

“Levees of the Little Fairy, Miss Dollie Dutton.” New-York Tribune, December 13, 1859.

“One of the Light Weights.” New Orleans Daily Crescent, October 11, 1859.

Radclyffe, Alice. “Dolly’s Dream.” The Cornhill Magazine. December 1885.

“Remarkable Dwarfs.” Staunton Spectator. June 26, 1860.

Romaine, Mertie E. General Tom Thumb and His Lady. New York: W. S. Sullwold Publishing, 1976.

“To the Little Fairy.” Cleveland Morning Leader, November 26, 1860.

“Varieties.” Cincinnati Daily Press, April 26, 1860.

“Varieties.” Cincinnati Daily Press, July 28, 1860.

WorthPoint. “1860 Dollie Dutton Sideshow Circus Booklet.” Last modified 2015. http://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1860-dollie-dutton-sideshow-circus-1781622890.