The Craft of the Cobbler's Son: Tommy Stubbins and the Narrative Form of the Doctor Dolittle Series

"My name was Tommy Stubbins, son of Jacob Stubbins, the cobbler of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh; and I was nine years old" (Lofting, Voyages 3). So begins the second of the Newbery Award winning books, Hugh Lofting's The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, the first of a highly popular series of twelve novels. Most critics have suggested that it is the Doctor himself who holds these novels together and who represents the main source of interest for their younger audience. And he is an unquestionably jolly and appealing fellow, with wonderful aplomb and cheery goodness. His paunchy figure and habitual top hat strike a resonance of Victorian security. But despite the prominence of the Doctor's name in the titles, the character who is most important in terms of the craft of the tales and the reader's response is not the Doctor, but is instead Tommy Stubbins, son of Jacob Stubbins the cobbler, and Doctor Dolittle's fellow voyager. Stubbins is Lofting's finest and most subtly crafted creation, the only character who undergoes recognizable development and change, and the major vehicle for meaning and interpretation in these novels.

The most important element in Stubbins' role as narrator is his sensibility, for in all the novels, his is the only character whose sensibility is close to that of ours. Because of his unchanging nature and absorbing interests, the Doctor remains a bit remote from us. We never see things entirely from his perspective alone; he is always being created and interpreted for us. Dolittle becomes central for the reader only because he is central to Stubbins. So Stubbins, the practical, dependable lad, with somewhat limited perspectives but an inordinate desire to journey and to adventure, becomes our vicarious adventurer. He interprets and understands the way we would interpret and understand. He moves and has his being in the world of the novels in the same way that we would move and have our being if suddenly, mysteriously, we were transported to the sea-wall overlooking Puddleby-on-the-Marsh.

The prologue of The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle is enormously important in terms of the meaning of what is to come and the role of the narrator in conveying that meaning. Stubbins begins without announcing his name; that is to come in the opening chapter. Yet he instantly establishes rather significant links with the first novel of the series, The Story of Doctor Dolittle. "All that I have written so far about Doctor Dolittle," Stubbins writes, "I heard long after it happened from those who had known him—indeed, a great deal of it took place before I was born. But now I come to set down that part of the great man's life which I myself saw and took part in" (1). This passage represents a dramatic change in stance, for Lofting here announces his intention to move from the omniscient narrator of The Story of Doctor Doolittle to the first person limited narrator, a change which invigorates most of the other novels in the series.

It is also a move which shifts the focus of attention, for the first three chapters deal almost exclusively with Stubbins. And even when the Doctor is introduced as the two characters collide in a rainstorm, our focus remains on Stubbins, for we see what we see only because he sees it. We watch with Stubbins as Dab-Dab, holding the lighted candle, comes down the stairs; we share his astonishment. With Stubbins, we see Doctor Dolittle plunge his head into a tank of water to learn the language of the Wiff-Waff; we share Stubbins' incredulity. And even the voyages which they undertake together come about in principle because of Stubbins' yearning to follow the mast of the tall ships down the Puddleby River and out to unknown faerie seas.

This passage has another implication which most critics have ignored: Stubbins himself claims that he is the narrator of The Story of Doctor Dolittle. There are a number of difficulties with this claim. Perhaps the least...