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.
