The Story of Doctor Dolittle: Being the History of His Peculiar Life at Home and Astonishing Adventures in Foreign Parts Never Before Printed

Introduction
The First Chapter — Puddleby
The Second Chapter
— Animal Language
The Third Chapter
— More Money Troubles
The Fourth Chapter
— A Message from Africa
The Fifth Chapter
— The Great Journey
The Sixth Chapter
— Polynesia and the King
The Seventh Chapter
— The Bridge of Apes
The Eighth Chapter
— The Leader of the Lions
The Ninth Chapter
— The Monkeys' Council
The Tenth Chapter
— The Rarest Animal of All
The Eleventh Chapter
— The Black Prince
The Twelfth Chapter
— Medicine and Magic
The Thirteenth Chapter
— Red Sails and Blue Wings
The Fourteenth Chapter
— The Rats' Warning
The Fifteenth Chapter
— The Barbary Dragon
The Sixteenth Chapter
— Too-Too, the Listener
The Seventeenth Chapter
— The Ocean Gossips
The Eighteenth Chapter
— Smells
The Nineteenth Chapter
— The Rock
The Twentieth Chapter
— The Fisherman's Town
The Last Chapter
— Home Again

THE
Story of
DOCTOR DOLITTLE
BEING THE
HISTORY OF HIS PECULIAR LIFE
AT HOME AND ASTONISHING ADVENTURES
IN FOREIGN PARTS NEVER BEFORE PRINTED.

TO
ALL CHILDREN
CHILDREN IN YEARS AND CHILDREN IN HEART
I DEDICATE THIS STORY

There are some of us now reaching
middle age who discover themselves to be
lamenting the past in one respect if in none other,
that there are no books written now for children
comparable with those of thirty years ago. I
say written FOR children because the new
psychological business of writing ABOUT them as though
they were small pills or hatched in some
especially scientific method is extremely popular
today. Writing for children rather than about
them is very difficult as everybody who has tried
it knows. It can only be done, I am convinced,
by somebody having a great deal of the child
in his own outlook and sensibilities. Such was
the author of "The Little Duke" and "The
Dove in the Eagle's Nest," such the author of
"A Flatiron for a Farthing," and "The Story
of a Short Life." Such, above all, the author of
"Alice in Wonderland." Grownups imagine
that they can do the trick by adopting baby
language and talking down to their very critical
audience. There never was a greater mistake.
The imagination of the author must be a child's
imagination and yet maturely consistent, so that
the White Queen in "Alice," for instance, is
seen just as a child would see her, but she
continues always herself through all her distressing
adventures. The supreme touch of the white
rabbit pulling on his white gloves as he hastens
is again absolutely the child's vision, but the
white rabbit as guide and introducer of Alice's
adventures belongs to mature grown insight.

Geniuses are rare and, without being at all
an undue praiser of times past, one can say without
hesitation that until the appearance of Hugh
Lofting, the successor of Miss Yonge, Mrs.
Ewing, Mrs. Gatty and Lewis Carroll had not
appeared. I remember the delight with which
some six months ago I picked up the first
"Dolittle" book in the Hampshire bookshop at
Smith College in Northampton. One of Mr.
Lofting's pictures was quite enough for me.
The picture that I lighted upon when I first
opened the book was the one of the monkeys
making a chain with their arms across the gulf.
Then I looked further and discovered Bumpo
reading fairy stories to himself. And then
looked again and there was a picture of John
Dolittle's house.

But pictures are not enough although most
authors draw so badly that if one of them happens
to have the genius for line that Mr. Lofting
shows there must be, one feels, something in his
writing as well. There is. You cannot read the
first paragraph of the book, which begins in the
right way "Once upon a time" without knowing
that Mr. Lofting believes in his story quite
as much as he expects you to. That is the first
essential for a story teller. Then you discover
as you read on that he has the right eye for the
right detail. What child-inquiring mind could
resist this intriguing sentence to be found on the
second page of the book:

"Besides the gold-fish in the pond at the bottom
of his garden, he had rabbits in the pantry,
white mice in his piano, a squirrel in the linen
closet and a hedgehog in the cellar."

And then when you read a little further you
will discover that the Doctor is not merely a
peg on whom to hang exciting and various
adventures but that he is himself a man of original
and lively character. He is a very kindly,
generous man, and anyone who has ever written
stories will know that it is much more difficult
to make kindly, generous characters interesting
than unkindly and mean ones. But Dolittle is
interesting. It is not only that he is quaint but
that he is wise and knows what he is about. The
reader, however young, who meets him gets very
soon a sense that if he were in trouble, not
necessarily medical, he would go to Dolittle and ask
his advice about it. Dolittle seems to extend
his hand from the page and grasp that of his
reader, and I can see him going down the
centuries a kind of Pied Piper with thousands of
children at his heels. But not only is he a
darling and alive and credible but his creator has
also managed to invest everybody else in the
book with the same kind of life.

Now this business of giving life to animals,
making them talk and behave like human
beings, is an extremely difficult one. Lewis Carroll
absolutely conquered the difficulties, but I
am not sure that anyone after him until Hugh
Lofting has really managed the trick; even in
such a masterpiece as "The Wind in the Willows"
we are not quite convinced. John Dolittle's
friends are convincing because their creator
never forces them to desert their own
characteristics. Polynesia, for instance, is natural
from first to last. She really does care about
the Doctor but she cares as a bird would care,
having always some place to which she is going
when her business with her friends is over. And
when Mr. Lofting invents fantastic animals he
gives them a kind of credible possibility which
is extraordinarily convincing. It will be
impossible for anyone who has read this book not
to believe in the existence of the pushmi-pullyu,
who would be credible enough even were there
no drawing of it, but the picture on page 145
settles the matter of his truth once and for all.

In fact this book is a work of genius and, as
always with works of genius, it is difficult to
analyze the elements that have gone to make
it. There is poetry here and fantasy and humor,
a little pathos but, above all, a number of
creations in whose existence everybody must believe
whether they be children of four or old men of
ninety or prosperous bankers of forty-five. I
don't know how Mr. Lofting has done it; I
don't suppose that he knows himself. There it
is—the first real children's classic since "Alice."

HUGH WALPOLE.

ONCE upon a time, many years ago when our grandfathers were
little children—there was a doctor; and his name was Dolittle—
John Dolittle, M.D. "M.D." means that he was a proper doctor
and knew a whole lot.

He lived in a little town called, Puddleby-
on-the-Marsh. All the folks, young and old,
knew him well by sight. And whenever he
walked down the street in his high hat everyone
would say, "There goes the Doctor!—He's
a clever man." And the dogs and the children
would all run up and follow behind him; and
even the crows that lived in the church-tower
would caw and nod their heads.

The house he lived in, on the edge of the
town, was quite small; but his garden was very
large and had a wide lawn and stone seats and
weeping-willows hanging over. His sister,
Sarah Dolittle, was housekeeper for him; but
the Doctor looked after the garden himself.

He was very fond of animals and kept many
kinds of pets. Besides the gold-fish in the pond
at the bottom of his garden, he had rabbits in
the pantry, white mice in his piano, a squirrel
in the linen closet and a hedgehog in the cellar.
He had a cow with a calf too, and an old lame
horse-twenty-five years of age—and chickens,
and pigeons, and two lambs, and many other
animals. But his favorite pets were Dab-Dab
the duck, Jip the dog, Gub-Gub the baby pig,
Polynesia the parrot, and the owl Too-Too.

His sister used to grumble about all these
animals and said they made the house untidy.
And one day when an old lady with rheumatism
came to see the Doctor, she sat on the hedgehog
who was sleeping on the sofa and never came
to see him any more, but drove every Saturday
all the way to Oxenthorpe, another town ten
miles off, to see a different doctor.

Then his sister, Sarah Dolittle, came to him
and said,

"John, how can you expect sick people to
come and see you when you keep all these animals
in the house? It's a fine doctor would have
his parlor full of hedgehogs and mice! That's
the fourth personage these animals have driven
away. Squire Jenkins and the Parson say they
wouldn't come near your house again—no matter
how sick they are. We are getting poorer
every day. If you go on like this, none of the
best people will have you for a doctor."

"But I like the animals better than the 'best
people'," said the Doctor.

"You are ridiculous," said his sister, and
walked out of the room.

So, as time went on, the Doctor got more and
more animals; and the people who came to see
him got less and less. Till at last he had no one
left—except the Cat's-meat-Man, who didn't
mind any kind of animals. But the Cat's-meat
Man wasn't very rich and he only got sick once
a year—at Christmas-time, when he used to give
the Doctor sixpence for a bottle of medicine.

Sixpence a year wasn't enough to live on—
even in those days, long ago; and if the Doctor
hadn't had some money saved up in his money-
box, no one knows what would have happened.

And he kept on getting still more pets; and of
course it cost a lot to feed them. And the money
he had saved up grew littler and littler.

Then he sold his piano, and let the mice live
in a bureau-drawer. But the money he got for
that too began to go, so he sold the brown suit
he wore on Sundays and went on becoming
poorer and poorer.

And now, when he walked down the street
in his high hat, people would say to one another,
"There goes John Dolittle, M.D.! There was a
time when he was the best known doctor in the
West Country—Look at him now—He hasn't
any money and his stockings are full of holes!"