Victorian Pop Culture and the Dolly Varden Craze

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The St. Louis Post-Dispatch announced the revival of the "quaint fashion" represented by a Dickens' character, Dolly Varden.


When I was teenager, my family moved to Brazil for a year. It was long before the internet, cell phones and cable television. When we returned to the U.S., it was strangely disorienting, a reverse culture shock no one prepared me for. I was out of touch with pop culture. We had never seen the new TV shows, which means I hadn’t seen “Happy Days” or the Fonz. My classmates were incredulous. I had a bit of catching up to do. 

     Of course moving to Brazil itself often meant being the only person in the room who didn’t instantly understand something – a reference to a celebrity or a historical event, a symbol or piece of jewelry that imparted meaning to everyone else there. There was so much to learn!

     I’m reminded of this frequently when reading late nineteenth century newspapers. There are references to people, events and slang that leave me with no idea what is being talked about. I am reminded yet again of the saying, “The past is a foreign country,” and I will always be a foreigner. Sometimes I just let it go. One time, I spent an hour looking up every reference in a political poem to understand what the poet meant. When I keep seeing a phrase appearing, I know it was a common, once widely-understood phrase or phenomenon, like “donkey parties” and “drummers,” or “riding the goat,” all of which I wrote articles about.

     This time, I’m starting a series for an in-depth look at a few of these expressions and the concepts they embodied.  Some I have mentioned briefly in other articles.


The Dolly Varden Craze


     If you’ve heard the name Dolly Varden, you are likely to be either a Dickens’ fan or a trout fisherman. Dolly Varden is a character in a Dickens novel, Barnaby Rudge. She is the beautiful, rosy-cheeked daughter of a London locksmith and the love interest of young Joe, son of the proprietor of the Maypole Inn. Suddenly in the 1870s, the character became the “Hello Kitty” of her time. 

     Although Barnaby Rudge was published in 1841, a Dolly Varden craze didn’t start until around 1871 when American newspapers reported that the Dolly Varden dress was all the rage in London. Suddenly all sorts of things were named after this character – a style of dress and hat, and even a trout. My ancestors in both Fort Wayne and Coffeyville, Kansas would have seen mentions of this trend. In the Fort Wayne Sentinel, there were ads for C. Orff & Co., and competitor Frank & Thanhouser’s “Dolly Varden” sateens, chintzes, percales, alpacas and prints. In March 1872 the Coffeyville newspaper ran a piece answering the question – just who was this Dolly Varden?

     Her name was used in advertising everything, something that became parodied in short stories. In “Letter From Zekelville” a country rube, “Jonathan,” relates a conversation with his wife to explains the craze to a friend. It was written in country dialect, but I simplified the version below:


Jonathan to his wife: Please tell me what you mean by a Dolly Varden.

Amy: Oh…it’s the new fashion. Everything is Dolly Varden….the sweetest styles you ever saw. You just ought to have been at meeting today. The ladies was all Dolly Varden fashion. Dolly Vardens hats – Dolly Varden dresses – Dolly Varden chignon – Dolly Varden shoes – Dolly Varden shawls – Dolly Varden fans – Dolly Varden parasols and – a Dolly Varden sermon and Dolly Varden singin’ and prayin’....I got you a nice Dolly Varden cravat and some very nice Dolly Varden collars….you dear Dolly Varden husband.


     A facetious article in 1872 in the Chetopa, Kansas newspaper suggested seeing various merchants to get your Dolly Varden collar, dress goods, furniture, hardware, toothpicks, pills, perfume, bread, ice cream, yeast powder, vegetables, pictures, stationary, jimcracks, thingamabobs, hairpins, sleeve buttons, jewelry, pictures, arms and ammunition, saddlery and spittoons. “There may be such thing as a Dolly Varden coffin.” 

     Similarly, the New Orleans Times Picayune complained that, “Turn where you will, these two maddening words, “Dolly Varden” meet the eye in business, dry goods, cookery, clothes, society…If this Dolly Varden mania is not put a stop to, the peace of families will be imperiled and the inmate asylum will be enlarged.” There was an Ohio race horse named after the girl. 


You could buy Dolly Varden taffy at B. Selig's in Norfolk, Virginia in 1881. 

     A piece from the Philadelphia Ledger that went out over the wire service and ran in many newspapers commented on the puzzle that the fashion was. “The novel was written thirty years ago and there seems to be no apparent reason why the locksmith’s pretty daughter should suddenly start out into a popularity greater than she enjoyed when she was first introduced to the world.” 

     Of course there were Dolly Varden poems. Here’s a sample, from a Santa Barbara newspaper:


This is what happened to a nice old man,

But the women called him a hard one,

‘Cause he came to town with his nice young wife,

Who wanted a Dolly Varden!


They went to Frost’s and looked at the stuff,

When he swore that a weedy garden,

Was a prettier sight to him by far

Than that horrible Dolly Varden.


     The husband hardens his heart and refuses to buy his wife a Dolly Varden dress. She leaves him for a younger man who bought the fashion for her. The poem ends with him in the California state insane asylum:


He’s at Stockton now, with the crazy ones,

And I was told by the Wardens,

That there is no hope, he can’t get well

Till they stop wearing Dolly Vardens. 


     Dolly Varden's name was even given to a colorful species of trout found on the Pacific coast. It had red and golden spots similar to the colorful petticoat worn by Dickens' appealing character.

Dolly Varden was also used in politics, and at least initially, as one might expect, it was not a compliment to call a man a Dolly Varden. The Democratic editor of the Fort Wayne Sentinel called Vice President Henry Wilson, who served with Ulysses S. Grant, a Dolly Varden after his visit to the city in August 1872. “He presents all the shades of a chameleon in his past career,” the editor wrote, “and is the most perfect specimen of a Dolly Varden candidate yet presented to the American people.”

     In California a Dolly Varden political party formed around 1872. The San Francisco Examiner indicated that it got its name by bending to popular desire. “The gentlemen described as “Dolly Vardens” …are just as reliable, man for man, to obey the popular will.” The name was used to cast ridicule, but was embraced by its proponents in the way that American Revolutionary War soldiers embraced the “Yankee Doodle” epithet. The party was organized by Newton Booth, the governor of California. With their help, he was elected to the U.S. Senate. A group also existed in Nevada. In a May 1880 letter to the editor of the Carson City Daily Appeal, the writer argued that contrary to what the paper said, the Dolly Varden Party had not merged with the Republican Party, and he was still a “Dolly Varden.” 

     There was a silver mine named for Dolly Varden in 1880, but by then the craze had pretty much run out. No more Dolly Varden spittoons, toothpicks and ammo!


Sources:


 Newspapers:


   “A Favorite Fashion,” The Charleston Daily News (Charleston, South Carolina), 9 Oct 1871, p. 2.

     Dolly Varden Dress: The Times Record (Brunswick, Maine), 4 Dec 1871, p. 3. 

     Dolly Varden Mania: The Times Picayune (New Orleans), 2 May 1872, p. 4. 

     “Dolly Varden,” Chetopa Advance (Chetopa, Kansas), 15 May 1872, p. 2.

     “Dolly Varden At a Fort Wayne Dance,” Fort Wayne Sentinel, 11 June 1872, p. 4. 

     “Letter From Zekelville,” Rockingham Register (Harrisonburg, Virginia), 28 June 1872, p. 1.

     Dolly Varden Poem: Santa Barbara Times, 17 July 1872, p. 1. 

     “The Capers of Dolly,” The San Francisco Examiner, 12 Nov 1873, p. 2. 

     “A Dolly Varden Heard From,” Daily Appeal (Carson City, Nevada),  2 May 1880, p. 3.


Other:


McCort, Emily. “Truth Is Stranger Than Fictional Characters: Dolly Varden in the 1870s,” Maryland Center For History and Culture, 2019, https://www.mdhistory.org/truth-is-stranger-than-fictional-characters-dolly-varden-in-the-1870s/


Copyright by Andrea Auclair  © 2024 

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