HUGH JOHN LOFTING – THE MAN BEHIND DR. DOLITTLE

Hugh John Lofting was born in England, on January 14, 1886. One of six children of an English father and an Irish mother, the future children’s author liked to tell stories to his siblings. Like the character he would later create, he showed a keen interest in nature, even bringing some of it indoors (as little boys often do!) and keeping a sort of personal “natural history museum and zoo,” until, that is, his mother found it in her linen closet. Animals, in particular, must have held some attraction to young Hugh, as it is said that one of his favorite outings was to go to London with his mother to look at the puppies in a certain pet shop.

From a Jesuit boarding school in Ireland, to M.I.T. in America, to England and The London Polytechnic, world travel became a standard in Lofting’s life. His civil engineering degree took him to Canada, West Africa, then Havana, Cuba. In 1912 he returned to America, married and settled in New York City to begin a writing career. Along with his published works came two children: Elizabeth Mary was born in 1913, and Colin MacMahon followed in 1915. Meanwhile, Europe went to war, and the Lofting family would not be unaffected.

The “Great War” broke out in 1914, and in 1915 Hugh Lofting, still a British subject, worked for the British Ministry of Information while remaining in New York. A year later, however, he was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Irish Guards, and he saw action in Flanders and France in 1917-18. Out of what was surely a terrible experience came something altogether lovely: the charming story, told in simply illustrated letters sent home to Elizabeth and Colin, of an endearingly sensible little man who values and cares for all creatures in and of themselves, and who is unsympathetic only to the falseness and hypocrisy which seems to characterize so much of human society.

“There seemed to be very little to write to youngsters from the front: the news was either too horrible or too dull. One thing that kept forcing itself more and more upon my attention was the very considerable part the animals were playing in that war. That was the beginning of an idea; an eccentric country physician with a bent for natural history and a great love of pets.”

So began Hugh Lofting’s first book about Dr. John Dolittle, M.D., later to be hailed as the first real children’s classic since Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. The charming form of Dolittle took shape in the head of the young lieutenant as he sat in the Flanders mud trying to write suitable letters home to his children. Sitting in his trench in 1917, the young Hugh Lofting projected his hatred of the cruelty of war—especially the cruel treatment of animals—into these amusing letters, illustrated with his own line drawings. When asked directly how Dr. Dolittle had originated, Lofting said that at the front he had been so impressed by the behavior of horses and mules under fire that he invented the little doctor to do for them what was not and could not be done in real life.

In 1918, Hugh Lofting was badly wounded and was discharged from the army before the War’s actual end. His family eventually joined him in England, and by 1919 they were ready to return home to New York. The precious Dr. Dolittle letters had, of course, been saved, and at some point Lofting began to seriously consider his wife’s suggestion of turning them into a book.

And so in 1920, a series of letters written to ease the strain of war became The Story of Doctor Dolittle: Being the History of His Peculiar Life at Home and Astonishing Adventures in Foreign Parts, Never Before Published, and an instant children’s classic.

Readers in both America and England wanted further adventures, and some children even wrote to him with story suggestions. Lofting seemed happy to comply with the requests for more, and in 1922 he produced the first of many Dolittle sequels. The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle introduced the character of Tommy Stubbins, who became the Doctor’s apprentice and also serves as narrator of the book. It was a sequel worthy of its original, and in 1923, it was awarded the Newberry Medal.

Ten more books followed, and after his death in 1947 two more volumes, composed of short unpublished pieces, appeared. The series has been adapted for film and television many times, for radio, and for the stage twice before now. The current tour is its third stage incarnation.