The Victorian "Small Boy"
Ah, summer and small boys! The “small boy” was a Victorian invention, a creation of an industrialized, urbanized America in which a rising middle-class meant large numbers of children had the luxury of not working, and rural pastimes were idealized. He was a carefree, innocent yet somewhat mischievous child who loved nature and enjoyed wide-open days of “free range” leisure time with very little adult supervision.
The small boy was a favorite of the Coffeyville, Kansas newspaper editors who commented year-round on the activities of this creature.
“The small boy can now take the padding out of the seat of his breeches as school is out, and he is monarch of the fish ponds and marbles.” – 1882.
“The small boy comes home with his hair wet and uncombed, yet declares he hasn’t been swimming.” – June 1885.
“Hunting young mockingbirds is a favorite pastime with the small boy.” –June 1887.
“The small boy has already begun to sort his fish hooks, preparatory to making an early campaign against the finny tribe.” – 1889.
And so it went. The small boy climbed trees hunting for birds' nests. He saved his pennies for firecrackers and the circus - or he schemed how to sneak under the circus tent. He put green apples and watermelons on his “free list.” He industriously worked at spading the garden – until it was noted that he was really digging for fishing worms.
Much has been written about the drastic change in beliefs about childhood in western society, and the Victorians’ idealization of childhood. Moving from beliefs that babies enter the world in a state of total depravity, and are damned if they die before baptism shifted to a view of angelic innocence and purity. By the late 1830s the concept of childhood innocence was beginning to be highly valued. Childhood for middle and upper classes was associated with home and a contrast from the marketplace and adult world of insincerity. Children were untainted by social artifice. They were genuine and sincere in a world of hypocrisy.
By the mid-Victorian period, with prosperity came increased leisure and a greater tolerance for pure amusement. “Happy as a small boy at the circus,” became a common expression. Childhood was a time of purity and innocence, true, but the small boy, who ranged from about ages seven to 14, was in a category of his own. He was old enough to leave the apron strings and roam about having adventures, free from feminine influence.
He was best defined by his likes and dislikes, and it was quite a list. It varied a bit depending on whether he lived in the city or country. Here is a compilation from newspaper commentaries in the 1870s and ‘80s:
He hates taking a bath but loves an hour in a river or pond. He loves fishing and skipping stones, making mud pies and sailing boats. He loves climbing trees and leaping from haylofts. He loves hopscotch, marbles, mumblety-peg, and games with names like “keeps,” and “purgatory.” He delights in catching insects, frogs, crawfish and garter snakes.
In spring he keeps his annual “appointment” with a catfish. He makes his own fishing rod or even uses bent pins. In summer he loves setting off firecrackers, pony riding and rolling in hay; in fall he starts a bonfire with friends; he may roast potatoes. In winter he loves to sled down a hill – he might even have the talent to build his own sledge. He ice skates for miles down the river, builds snowmen and has many-a snowball fight.
He likes to whistle, hates rainy days and getting a haircut. He is in his element on April Fool’s Day.
He thinks it’s funny to dunk another boy underwater in the pond, to attach an oyster can filled with pebbles to a dog’s tail, and to scare the cook with a snake.
He aspires to be an Indian scout or stagecoach driver out west, a pirate, or best of all, to join the circus.
There’s nothing he loves better than going to a show, though he rarely has the money for one. He hangs around the exit to the theater and as patrons leave early he begs them for their ticket and skips inside for the second act. He applauds every scene wildly and calls for an encore on every song. He puts his fingers in his mouth and emits an ear piercing whistle to show his appreciation.
He seeks excitement, and if there is some minor rule breaking and evading the cops, it’s all part of the fun. A New York City boy’s favorite sport is diving from the piers in New York. The city has an ordinance against this – but how often can the police catch him? Swimming nude is a given. He sees no point in the bathhouses, and the attendants ruin his fun because he can’t steal his friend’s clothes. He sees a towel as effeminate.
He loves making noise and blowing a tin horn at Christmas time.
The extreme depth of misery, the Coffeyville editor said in 1885, was a small boy with a new pair of boots and no mud puddle.
There was definitely a “boys will be boys” attitude of tolerance towards this mischievous but good-natured soul. None of those activities were tolerated in little girls. A former English schoolmaster, Ascott R. Hope, wrote in A Book About Boys, “I like the happy, healthy, unsophisticated boy who is a boy, not a young gentleman; active, restless, generous, brave, truthful, simple and pure-minded who thinks it half a pleasure to bear pain without crying, climbs trees, tears his trousers, has frequent tumbles, bumps and bruises, and comes home now and then splashed with mud.”
When he was a schoolmaster he would watch after lessons were over what the boys did. The “real boys” he said, “would begin to revel in their boyhood, by jumping, wrestling, chasing each other ‘round tables, scrambling, rolling on the floor and otherwise behaving in a way calculated to terrify prudent mothers and sisters, the whole performance being accompanied by a mingled din of shouting, laughing, whistling, chattering and pure howling for howling’s sake.”
He wished he could turn into a boy and join in the “riotous fun.” He condoned fighting among boys because he said they resolved their differences quickly in this manner and forgave each other in contrast to grown men harboring secret, long-term animosity towards each other.
Huck Finn or Peck’s Bad Boy?
The small boy was idealized and celebrated, a source of amusement and wistful nostalgia for grown men fighting battles in the dog-eat-dog world. But he was also recognized as a problem. Was he more Huck Finn or Peck’s Bad Boy, Hennery? Once these characters were created, it was up for debate. The latter referred to an enormously popular character mostly forgotten today. There were a series of seven novels published about Hennery beginning in 1883. The stories were produced in theaters, and starting in 1905 a series of movies. This included a 1934 version with Jackie Cooper. Peck’s bad boy was constantly getting the best of his bumbling father and was generally a mean-spirited mischief maker, a “vicious little swaggerer” whom Victorians generally thought was hilarious, but whose cruelty is appalling to most modern readers today.
Before Twain or Peck created their small boy characters, the Kansas City Times editorialized against the small boy.
Of late there has been a loud outcry in this city against the hordes of untamed, incorrigible street Arabs that are playing the very “dickens” in all portions of our city. The time has arrived when our city must rise in its royal might and declare against the tyranny of the small boy…He is the mosquito of our streets maddening us by his peskiness…he is invincible, incorrigible and irrepressible.
One example was a gang of “small boys” swimming naked in a pond, nearly blockading the street beside it and throwing mud at those who attempted to pass. They eluded police by a system of look-outs and warning signals to each other.
“There is not a peach orchard or a watermelon patch within five miles of this city that his eyes have not spied out, and the fences and location of watch dogs have been duly noted,” the editor continued. “He never pays fare. He steals a ride out and begs his way home and never gets lost.” Several Kansas City small boys made it to New York or New Orleans without paying a cent, he claimed. “He takes and holds undisputed control of the roofs of passenger cars and though he takes fire and burns in spots from the shower of sparks from the locomotive, he was never known to entirely burn up.”
The editor categorized small boys as follows:
The Tadpole - Found in any of our ponds from the first of May till the end of October. Speckled from constant sun and a “bright yellow hue peculiar to Kansas City mud.”
The Arabs - Found in boxcars, steamboats and hidden in cellars and frequent fairs, following circus and shows. They are very shrewd and incorrigible.
The Gamins - Most numerous. from respectable families but run wild. Hidden in orchards and watermelon patches, hanging on streetcars, climbing the scaffolding of buildings under construction
The Paper Boy - The most respectable of all. Shrewd, knows all the latest news and local gossip, can tell at a glance by the headlines just how many papers he can sell.
Others - Not large enough for a category; the meanest type - persecutes drunks and steals pennies from little girls on their way to the stores.
“The time will come when it will be a question whether the thousands of neglected half-wild children in this city should not be taught a new code of street manners, and be made to understand that tenderness of years is no excuse for toughness of character,” the editor concluded.
Also in 1872, a Chicago editor claimed the velocipede was a failure because of the small boy.
Crowds of them surrounded and harassed riders, he said. “This shameless and exasperating mouthpiece of crude and unreasoning public opinion….drove its patrons into the obscurity of backyards and private piazzas,” he said. “No man would consent to ride even the finest Arabian horse in existence were he to be surrounded by hundreds of shrill-voiced enemies shouting, “He can’t ride! Look at his boots! He’s afraid of falling; see how pale he is” and betting peanuts on it.
But in Coffeyville, Kansas, the small boy was always an innocent and endearing character, who conjured warm memories of the editor’s supposedly carefree boyhood. When school started up again in September 1895, C.W. Kent wrote, “For long months the small boy has fished and swam and hunted; gone camping, has had his back sunburned and his nose peeled and his clothes torn; and has been generally happy and dirty and contented. Now, painfully clean and carefully dressed he dragged himself reluctantly to school.
In 1896 he wrote, “There’s something about the small boy which always appeals to the heart. He is so sturdy, so full of manliness, that both mother and father are justly proud of him.” Kent said he would always look back on his ‘small boy’ days as the best of his life.
Note:
Happy as a small boy at the circus - Here are some ways that I saw this used:
“If we can only manage till pumpkin pie comes along, we will be as thankful and happy as a small boy at the circus. Yum, yum.” 7 Sept 1882, Shelby Sentinel (Kentucky)
“Tom Hopkins is as happy as a small boy at a circus. It is a girl.” 27 Sept 1881, South Kentuckian (Hopkinsville, Ky.) [This was commonly used in birth announcements.]
“We noticed the smiling face of Rigley at the Literary last week. He looked as happy as a small boy at the circus.” 19 Feb 1891, The Times (Clay Center, Kansas)
Peck’s Bad Boy - A typical “prank” that Hennerly pulled involved a time when his mother was out of town. Hennery failed to tell his father that his mother was staying over in Chicago for one more night, or what time to pick her up at the depot. Then he borrowed a friend’s sister’s clothes and corset, and when his father was asleep, arranged them in his parents’ bedroom. When his mother got home early the next day she was very displeased that no one met her at the depot – and then she saw the women’s clothing in her bedroom.
Sources:
Hope, Ascott R. A Book About Boys, Edinburgh: William P. Nimmo, 1868.
Peck, George W. Peck’s Bad Boy and His Pa, Chicago: Belford, Clark & Co., 1883.
Snyder, Ellen Marie. “Innocents In a Worldly World: Victorian Children’s Gravemarkers,” chapter from Cemeteries Gravemarkers, edited by Richard E. Meyer, University Press of Colorado: Utah State University Press.
Newspapers:
“The “Small Boy’” The Evansville Daily Journal (Evansville, Indiana), 12 Oct 1865, p. 3.
“Small Boys - The Mosquito of City Life - What Shall Be One With Them,” Kansas City Times (Kansas City, Missouri), 28 July 1872, p. 4.
“The Bicycle - Why It Is a Failure,” Chicago Evening Mail, 12 Nov 1872, p. 2.
“The Small Boy and His Horn,” The Norfolk Virginian, 25 Dec 1873, p. 2.
“A Defense of the Small Boy,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 18 July1874 p. 4.
“Sadler and Green. What the Average Small Boy of Nashville Thinks of Them,” Nashville Union and American, 14 Mar 1875, p. 4.
“School Begins,” Twice-A-Week Independent (Coffeyville, Kansas), 17 Dec 1895, p. 6.
“Mother’s Small Boy,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 26 Mar 1898, p. 15.
“Fancies of Dame Fashion,” The Coffeyville Daily Journal, 12 June 1896, p. 2.
Copyright by Andrea Auclair © 2024
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