All Creatures Great and Small (61 page)
Read All Creatures Great and Small Online
Authors: James Herriot
We began on a sunny hillside where a group of young animals had been penned. Jack and Robbie plunged in among the beasts while Mr. Allen took off his cap and courteously dusted the top of the wall.
“Your missus can sit ’ere,” he said.
I paused as I was about to start measuring. My missus! It was the first time anybody had said that to me. I looked over at Helen as she sat cross-legged on the rough stones, her notebook on her knee, pencil at the ready, and as she pushed back the shining dark hair from her forehead she caught my eye and smiled; and as I smiled back at her I became aware suddenly of the vast, swelling glory of the Dales around us, and of the Dales scent of clover and warm grass, more intoxicating than any wine. And it seemed that my first two years at Darrowby had been leading up to this moment; that the first big step of my life was being completed right here with Helen smiling at me and the memory, fresh in my mind, of my new plate hanging in front of Skeldale House.
I might have stood there indefinitely, in a sort of trance, but Mr. Allen cleared his throat in a marked manner and I turned back to the job in hand.
“Right,” I said, placing my callipers against the beast’s neck. “Number thirty-eight, seven millimetres and circumscribed,” I called out to Helen. “Number thirty-eight, seven, C.”
“Thirty-eight, seven, C,” my wife repeated as she bent over her book and started to write.
James Herriot (1916–1995) was the pen name of James Alfred “Alf” Wight, an English veterinarian whose tales of veterinary practice and country life have delighted generations. Many of Herriot’s works were bestsellers and have been adapted for film and television. His stories rely on numerous autobiographical elements taken from his life in northern England’s Yorkshire County, and they depict a simple, rustic world deeply in touch with the cycles of nature.
Wight was born on October 3, 1916, in Sunderland, in the northeast corner of England. Shortly after his birth, his parents moved to Glasgow, Scotland, where his father worked as a shipbuilder and as a pianist in a local cinema. His mother was a seamstress and professional singer. At age twelve, Wight adopted his first pet, an Irish setter named Don. The bond he formed with his dog led to his interest in veterinary medicine.
Wight graduated from the Glasgow Veterinary College in 1939 at the age of twenty-three. After working briefly in Sunderland, the town where he was born, he moved to the town of Thisk in Yorkshire County, England, where he settled down. In Yorkshire, he met Joan Danbury, whom he married in 1941. The couple had two children. Son James Alexander, born 1943, would go on to become a vet and partner in his father’s practice, and daughter Rosemary, born 1947, became a family physician.
Though he’d always had literary ambitions, Wight got a late start as a professional writer. Starting a family, serving in the Royal Air Force during World War II, and then establishing his own busy veterinary practice all delayed his literary debut. In 1966 at the age of fifty, he finally began writing regularly with the encouragement of his wife. After trying his hand unsuccessfully in areas such as sportswriting, Wight found modest success with the publication of
If Only They Could Talk
in 1970 and
It Shouldn’t Happen to a Vet
in 1972. He adopted the pen name James Herriot because self-promotion for doctors and veterinarians was frowned upon in England at that time. In the United States, his first two books were combined by his New York publisher and released as
All Creatures Great and Small
(1972), the volume that would make the name James Herriot famous. Within a couple of years,
All Creatures Great and Small
had been adapted as a successful film starring Simon Ward and Anthony Hopkins and as a long-running BBC program.
Throughout the seventies, Wight released several writing collections in England as James Herriot. In the States, these volumes would be paired up and released under new titles as omnibuses, including
All Things Bright and Beautiful
(1974) and
All Things Wise and Wonderful
(1977). Wight declared his intentions to retire from writing life after publication of
The Lord God Made Them All
in 1981, but released a final volume,
Every Living Thing
, in 1992.
Wight passed away in 1995 at the age of seventy-eight at his home in Thirlby, near Thisk, Yorkshire.
Wight with his first dog, Don, a beautiful, sleek-coated Irish setter, as a puppy.
Wight while he was at Hillhead High School. It was the strong discipline and fine standards of Hillhead that helped develop his optimism, work ethic, and ambition.
Wight (center row, left) matriculated at Glasgow Veterinary College in 1933, qualifying as a member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in 1939. While there, he played on the football team.
Wight at work with his son, James, who followed in his father’s footsteps, first training as a vet in Glasgow, then at the practice of Sinclair and Wight in Thirsk, England, and finally as an author, penning a biography of his father,
The Real James Herriot
, which was published in 2000.
Wight with his two favorite driving buddies, Hector, a Jack Russell terrier, and Dan, a Black Labrador. He dedicated his book
All Things Wise and Wonderful
“To my dogs, Hector and Dan, faithful companions of the daily round.” (Photo courtesy of
Life Magazine
.)
Wight and his wife, Joan, with Hector and Dan. Joan was as fond of the dogs as her husband was. (Photo courtesy of
Daily Express
.)
Wight with his dog Bodie. After the deaths of Hector and Dan, who passed away within a year of each other, Wight was hesitant to get another dog. But soon his car rides began to feel lonely, and when a litter of Border Terriers was born nearby, Bodie joined the Wight household.
The brass plates outside 23 Kirkgate, announcing Mr. D. V. Sinclair and Mr. J. A. Wight, veterinary surgeons.
