Hugh Lofting: Doctor Dolittle's Circus

The Doctor spent the night in prison. But in the meantime the lion had taken refuge in the cellar of a bakery and neither the baker nor anybody else dared go down to him. Everybody in the house was scared to go to bed. Messages were sent to the circus to send someone to take the lion away. But the wily Matthew Mugg, although he knew the lion was easily handled by those who knew him, told the people that the Doctor was only one who dared go near him and they better hurry up and let him out of jail if they wanted the lion taken away.

So early the next morning they came and set the Doctor free. Then he went down into the cellar and talked to the lion.

"I'm fearfully sorry, Doctor," said he, "but I lose my way out on that moor. I wandered around all over the place. And it wasn't until the next day that I found my own tracks and made my way back to the circus. I tried to slip into the menagerie without being seen. But when that fool started firing a gun I got scared and ran for it."

"But the chickens?" said the Doctor. "I thought you promised me not to molest anything when you were out?"

"I only promised not to eat people," said the lion. "I had to eat something. I was starved to death after wandering around that moor all night. How much are they charging you for the chicken?"

"One pound, ten shillings and sixpence," said the Doctor. "Eleven at half a crown apiece."

"It's highway robbery," said the lion. "They were the toughest old things I ever tasted. And anyway I only ate nine."

"Well, in future," said the Doctor, "I think I had better accompany you on your walks."

Then he led the lion home. And the terrified townsfolk watched through the cracks of doors as the dread animal strolled down the street as John Dolittle's heels as meek and quiet as a lamb.

"He led the lion home"

And now that the Doctor could give the animals the kind of consideration he wished he really enjoyed the life himself a good deal. And poor Dab–Dab began to feel that her chance of getting him away from it, back to his own life at Puddleby, grew dimmer and more distant every day.

John Dolittle's chief occupation in his spare time was, as I have told you, thinking out new and interesting animal shows. And in doing this he always kept the children particularly in mind as an audience, and designed his plays and entertainments more for them than for the grown–ups. The success of the Talking Horse and the Puddleby Pantomime showed him that his knowledge of animal languages could be put to great use here. The snakes which he had bought from Fatima, for example, were later trained by him to give a little show of their own. Instead of a snake–charmer's tent with a stupid fat woman in it, pretending to be something that she wasn't, the Dolittle Circus had a side show where the snakes gave their own performance, entirely unaided by any person. To the tune of a music box they danced a very peculiar but graceful sort of dance. It was something like a mixture between a quadrille and a game of cat's cradle. On a little stage of their own they glided about on their tails in time to the music, bowing to their partners, doing the grand chain, looping into knots with one another, drilling like soldiers and doing a hundred fascinating things that people had never seen snakes do before.

"The Snakes' Quadrille"

Indeed, as time went on, the Dolittle Circus's animal side shows were almost without exception run independently by the animals themselves. There were a great number of them and each one was descriptive of that particular animal's special quality. The snakes' entertainment, for instance, was designed to show off their gracefulness; for, in John Dolittle's opinion, the snake was the most graceful creature in the world. The elephant, on the other hand, did feats of strength, instead of silly balancing tricks for which he wasn't suited.

"You don't want people in an animal performance," the Doctor said to Matthew one day. "Hercules and Hop and the acrobats, they're different. Those are shows, given by people, where the human performers are the whole thing. But what's the sense in seeing a stupid man in uniform driving a lion through hoops with a whip? People seem to think that animals have no ideas to express. If they're left to themselves they can give much better shows on their own, once they're told what kind of things amuse a human audience—especially in the funny shows. The animal sense of humor is far superior to the human. But people are too stupid to see the funniness of things that animals do to amuse one another. And in most cases I have to bring them down to our level—to have them make their style of jokes rather—er—crude and broad. Otherwise people mightn't understand them at all."

And so, you see, the Dolittle Circus was indeed quite different from any other. The Doctor's kind and hospitable treatment of all who came to see his show made it more like a sort of family gathering than a strictly business matter.

There were no rules, or hardly any. And if little boys wanted to see "behind the scenes," or to go into the elephant's stall and pet him, they were personally conducted wherever they wished to go. This alone gave the circus a quality quite individual. And whenever the wagon–train moved on its way, the children would follow it for miles along the road and for weeks after would talk of nothing but when it would come back again to visit their town. For children everywhere were beginning to regard the Dolittle Circus as something peculiarly their own.

THE END