TO
ALL CHILDREN
CHILDREN IN YEARS AND CHILDREN IN HEART
I DEDICATE THIS STORY
_INTRODUCTION TO THE TENTH PRINTING_
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
to-day. 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 153 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.”