The Hundred and One Dalmatians
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 First edition cover |
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| Author | Dodie Smith |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone |
| Cover artist | Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Children's novel |
| Publisher | Heinemann |
| Released | 1956 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | NA |
The Hundred and One Dalmatians, or the Great Dog Robbery is a 1956 children's novel by Dodie Smith. A sequel entitled The Starlight Barking continues from the end of the first novel.
Contents |
[edit] Plot introduction
The plot revolves around a woman who steals Dalmatian puppies in order to make a fur coat out of them.
[edit] Plot summary
Pongo and Missis Pongo (or just Missis) are a pair of dalmatians. They live with the newly married Mr and Mrs Dearly (their "pets"; dogs allow humans to think they are the owners when it is really the other way round) and their two nannies, Nanny Cook and Nanny Butler. Mr Dearly is a "financial wizard" who has been granted exemption from income tax for life and lent a house by the Outer Circle of Regent's Park as a favour for wiping out the government's national debt. Before marrying the Dearlys lived in bachelor flats with their nannies. After marriage they all move in together and the nannies decide to train as a cook and a butler to match their surnames.
Missis gives birth to a litter of 15 puppies, including the Cadpig, Lucky and Patch. The Dearlys are concerned that Missis will not be able to feed them all and the humans join in to feed them. Mrs Dearly looks for another dog to act as a wet nurse and by chance finds an abandoned dalmatian mother in the middle of the road in the pouring rain. She has the dog treated by a vet and gives her the name Perdita, from the Latin for "lost". Later Perdita tells Pongo about her lost love and the circumstances that led to her being abandoned in the middle of the road.
Mr and Mrs Dearly are invited to a dinner party hosted by Cruella de Vil, an intimidating woman with one side of her hair coloured white and the other side coloured black. They meet her furrier husband and her cat, and discover her love of pepper, very high temperatures, and furs. They are disconcerted by her suggestion that animals which are not valuable should be drowned, including her own cat's kittens.
Shortly after the dinner party the puppies disappear. The humans fail to trace them but through the "Twilight Barking", a form of communication by which dogs can relay messages to each other across the country, the dogs manage to track them down to Hell Hall, the ancestral home of the de Vil family in Suffolk.
Pongo and Missis try to explain to the Dearlys where the puppies are but fails. The dogs then take the decision to run away and find them. They explain to Perdita that she should stay behind and look after the Dearlys.
After a journey cross country they are met by the Colonel, an Old English Sheepdog who shows them Hell Hall and tells them its history. He tells them to rest overnight and that they will see their puppies the next day. They then discover there are 97 puppies including their own 15 and many others who later turn out to have been legally bought. They also discover Cadpig's love of television.
Cruella de Vil appears and tells the crooks in charge of Hell Hall that the dogs must be slaughtered and skinned as soon as possible because of the publicity surrounding the theft of the Dearlys' pups. Pongo and Missis devise an escape plan and agree that they must take all the puppies with them, not just their own 15. They escape on the day before Christmas Eve.
Cadpig is too weak to walk the long distance from Suffolk to London so she is lent a toy carriage by Tommy, the Colonel's 2 year old "pet". When the cart loses a wheel, they have a rest on the hassocks of a country church to escape the cold. The group almost meet Cruella as she drives towards a burning building; Pongo says that they need a miracle and find one when they are offered a lift in a removal van. Having previously rolled in soot to disguise their white hair, they are able to hide in the darkness of the removal van with the help of a Staffordshire terrier whose pets are the movers.
When they arrive back in London they find Cruella's (empty) house. Her cat is still there and invites them in to destroy Cruella's collection of animal skins and fur coats. She gladly joins in as revenge for her lost kittens.
The Dalmatians then return to the Dearlys' house where they are not recognised due to being covered in soot. They try again, bursting through the door and rolling around on the floor to get rid of the soot. Mr Dearly then recognises them and sends out for steaks to feed them.
Later the cat drops by to tell them Cruella has fled. The shock of discovering her furs have been destroyed has turned the black side of her hair white and the white side green. She has also abandoned Hell Hall. It has been put up for sale and Mr Dearly buys it with a sum of money he has been given by the government for sorting out another tax problem. He renames it to Hill Hall and intends to use it to start a "dynasty of Dalmatians" (and a "dynasty of Dearlys" to take care of them).
Finally, Perdita's lost love, Prince (the 101st dalmatian) visits. His "pets" can clearly see that the two wish to be together and allow him to stay with the Dearlys.
[edit] Locations
The book includes details of a number of locations. One source[1] suggests that the "smart little house" on the Outer Circle is 1 St Andrew's Place which is now used by the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine.
For the journey to Suffolk, the book mentions that "Pongo had no difficulty in taking the right road out of London, for he and Mr Dearly had done much motoring in their bachelor days and had often driven to Suffolk". This is consistent with the route of the old A11. From details given in the book, the route to the village of Dympling is as follows:
- Regent's Park/Outer Circle
- Camden Town
- Outskirts of London
- Epping Forest (Overnight stop according to the chapter "At the Old Inn")
- cross country ("Their journey across the fields had saved them many miles and they were now deep in Essex... By going north, they would reach Suffolk.")
- Small hamlet with rundown hall
- Bridge across the River Stour
- Sudbury
- Dympling
The return route given is:
- Dympling
- Gypsy camp
- village with bakery ("Only 5 miles was to be travelled before dawn - where a friend of the Colonel's lived at a bakery")
- country church
- village where bakery burns down ("Then you'll do another 5 miles as soon as it's dark tomorrow.")
- Picked up by removal van (with the Staffordshire Terrier)
- St John's Wood ("Next stop, St John's Wood!")
- Regent's Park/Outer Circle and back to the Dearly's house
Dympling does not appear in any road atlas or online map service and is therefore likely to be fictitious. However there is a village just outside Sudbury called Shimpling.
[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
The novel was made into a Disney animated film in 1961, under the title One Hundred and One Dalmatians. In this film, and its live-action remake 101 Dalmatians, the four adult dalmatians were compressed into two, with two more anonymous puppies added to make up the numbers.
