"Lofting, Hugh - Story Of Doctor Dolittle - dolit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lofting Hugh)

╖ 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
INTRODUCTION
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
The Story of Doctor Dolittle

The Story of Doctor Dolittle
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."