Hugh Lofting: Doctor Dolittle's Circus

"Putting up the new sign"

Mr. Bellomy was very kind. Realizing that the Doctor and everyone had been left practically penniless, he offered to help the new management with loans of money or in any other way he could. However, John Dolittle was most anxious to avoid getting the circus further into debt than it already was, and all he asked of Mr. Bellamy was to visit some of the tradespeople of this town with him and ask them to give him credit, to trust him for a while. Mr. Bellamy was, of course, very well known for miles and miles around Manchester. And the local corn–dealer, grocer, butcher and the rest were perfectly willing, when he asked them, to give the Doctor provisions and to wait for their money till the circus had made enough to pay its bills.

For the same reason, to avoid getting into debt, the Doctor decided not to move back to Manchester, but to keep the show where it was for the present. And with better weather the attendance soon began to be quite considerable. Mr. Bellamy's arrival and his visit to the tradespeople of the town were a good advertisement for the Dolittle Circus. Another advertisement better still was, curiously enough, Blossom's theft and disappearance. No sooner had it become known in Manchester that the ringmaster had run away with a large sum of money than the newspapers took it up and wrote long stories of how the famous Puddleby Pantomime had been robbed and left stranded in a small town twelve miles from the city. The story was reprinted in country papers. And suddenly the people of this same small town woke up to the fact that they had the Puddleby Pantomime in their midst and hadn't noticed it (on account of the rain) till they read of it in the papers.

Then, of course, everybody began talking of the robbery and everybody wanted to go and see the pantomime and the Doctor and the famous animal actors who had made such a sensation in Manchester. And the next thing the whole town was tramping in at the gates of the Dolittle Circus.

As I have said, it was not a large town, but for the three days the business was good enough to enable the Doctor to pay all the bills off and to buy more provisions on which to keep going. There was even a little over to pay everybody a small— very small—amount of wages.

Too–Too, the expert accountant, was busier now than he had ever been. For not only did he keep record of how much the pushmi–pullyu made, but he kept the books for the whole circus. This, with the Doctor's new "coöperative*" arrangement, was no easy task. Strict account of all money paid out to tradespeople had to be carefully entered, and the profits left divided among all the people of the circus in proportion to the amount of work they did. For instance, some of the tent–riggers and wagon–drivers who really only worked one or two days a week did not get so large a share as the side–show performers who were at work all the week. But every one got more when business was good, and less when it was bad.

Although nearly the whole staff were glad to have the Doctor's management and willingly stayed on with the circus even in the distressful conditions under which the new management began, there were, nevertheless, one or two malcontents who wanted large wages right away before the debts and bills were paid. These, as a matter of fact, were people that the Doctor was glad to part with anyway. And as soon as he could raise the money to pay them off he sent them about their business. The Dolittle Circus began, in consequence, somewhat smaller than the Blossom Circus ended, but it began along strictly honest lines and with every man and animal in it united, hopeful and contented under the new management.

Another member of the staff, besides Too–Too, the accountant, to be more than usually occupied in the first days of the Dolittle Circus was Dab–Dab, the housekeeper.

"You know," said she to Too–Too and Jip one night, "all this looks very nice—and I certainly don't want to be a kill–joy—but I wish we had some one else besides the Doctor to take care of the business end of things. He is fine where working out of new animal shows is concerned. As a stage manager no one could be better. But I know what's going to happen: all the other partners, Hercules and Hop and the Pintos and the rest, are going to get rich; and the Doctor is going to stay poor. Why, only last night he was talking about sending the opossum back to Virginia. He wants to climb trees, it seems—in the moonlight—and we haven't got the right kind of trees or moonlight here. I told him the moon in England is just as good as it is in Virginia. But he says it isn't—not green enough. Heaven only knows how much his ticket to America would cost. Yet I'm certain that as soon as the Doctor has the price of it he'll send him. He spoke of the lion and the leopard, too—says the big hunting animals should never be kept in confinement. I do wish we had some other man as well—somebody with good business sense—who could keep an eye on the Doctor's schemes."

"I quite agree with you," said Jip. "But I have great hopes of Matthew Mugg, myself. He isn't nearly such a fool as he looks."

"He's a very kind fellow," Swizzle put in. "Almost every time he meets me or Toby he pulls a bone or something out of his pocket and gives it to us."

"Oh, yes," said Jip. "That used to be his profession— cat's–meat–man, you know. He has a good heart. And I think, Dab–Dab, you'll find he has a pretty good business head, too. It was he who arranged about the next three towns we're going to. The Doctor didn't know how to book the circus ahead or where to go next or anything about touring a circus around the country. He consulted Matthew. And Mugg went off at once to the next town and found out when the fair week was usually held and arranged for fodder supply and renting a show ground and everything. And he's just crazy about the circus business. I've often heard him boasting to gipsies and the like along the road that he's the partner of John Dolittle, M. D.—the famous showman. He knows how to advertise, too—and that's important in this game. It was Matthew who got the Doctor to have those big posters printed. I hear they're already stuck up in every street in Tilmouth, our next town. Yes, I'm quite helpful about Matthew. He's a good man."

The Dolittle Circus was an entirely new kind of circus. Now that he had the control of things in his own hands the Doctor proceeded to bring about the reforms and changes that he had so often wished for in the days of Blossom's management.

It was, as Jip had said, a good thing that Matthew was there to keep an eye on the Doctor. Otherwise he would most likely have begun by letting his new ideas run away with him. Certainly the average circus–going public had never seen anything like his show before. For one thing, John Dolittle insisted on the strictest politeness from all attendants. For another, he would allow no form of misrepresentation, as he called it. Ordinarily, circus folk had often been accustomed to say that their shows were "the greatest on earth," that their animals were "the only ones in captivity"—or something similarly extravagant and exaggerated.

This the Doctor would not permit. He said he wanted everything advertised just as it was, in order that the public should not be misled or cheated into paying to see something which they didn't see. To this, at the beginning, Matthew Mugg objected. He said you could never get a good crowd unless you "played it up big." But he soon found that the Doctor was right. When the people got to realize that whatever was promised in the Dolittle advertisements would be actually provided, the new circus earned a reputation for honesty that brought people in a way that nothing else would.