The Real James Herriot

by Jim Wight

  He visited a herd of cows at Ampleforth one day, where he treated many of them to bring them into season. Brian, unknown to the herdsman, had erroneously calculated the dose of the drug, administering to each animal ten times the recommended amount.

  The herdsman was impressed. A day or two later when speaking to Alf, he said, ‘Ah’ve never seen owt like it! ’E injected all them cows an’ ’t whole bloody lot came on. Ah reckon it were t’ moustache as did it!’

  There was a touch of the gypsy about Brian who seemed to be at home in the wild. I used to accompany him on early morning trips into the hills around Thirsk where we would observe a rich variety of wild animals – creatures I hardly knew existed before Brian gave me a peep into their dark and secret world.

  He was one of the most popular assistants to grace the practice of Sinclair and Wight but, at times, he was also one of the most difficult. He had a personality which meant that anything approaching a routine lifestyle was alien to him; even such a basic pastime as eating was not followed regularly. On one occasion Alf observed Brian, who had eaten nothing the preceding day, demolish two whole fruit cakes, while I myself saw him consume two and a half roast ducks at one sitting. Brian’s was a free spirit – one that seemed to be forever trying to break loose – and, gifted veterinarian though he was, he always seemed to be looking for something beyond just veterinary practice.

  His singular approach to life was certainly not suited to the running of an organised practice. Preferring to get up very early, he asked Alf whether he could start work at six o’clock every morning and finish at three in the afternoon – a request which was not granted. He also had a habit of disappearing from the practice for long periods without anyone knowing where he was. He infuriated Donald by cooking large quantities of foul-smelling tripe for his badgers in the flat above the surgery, while foxes running around the garden and owls flying down the corridor of 23 Kirkgate did little to improve his employer’s mood!

  The practice cars had a rough time under Brian’s usage. Not only did he test the engines to their limits as he flew from call to call, but his badgers created havoc in the back seats which virtually ceased to exist after a week or two. He returned one day with one front wing of the car completely missing. When he saw the look of horror on Alf’s face, he broke into a smile and said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Mr Wight. I was hoping that perhaps you wouldn’t notice it!’ Brian’s abundance of charm meant that he always got away with it.

  Despite these local difficulties, Alf was very fond of him and had mixed feelings when he eventually left in November 1958. Alf already had a highly unusual colleague in Donald Sinclair and, much as he admired Brian, the presence of two of them in the same practice had been very demanding. Nevertheless, it was a sad day for Alf when Brian left to take a job in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He had been one of the most interesting and popular veterinary surgeons to grace the practice – another unforgettable character to be imprinted forever in the mind of the future James Herriot.

  Brian Nettleton may have upset Donald with his erratic lifestyle but the senior partner, in turn, tested the patience of a whole host of assistants who worked for him.

  Donald was a man of unusually limited patience. His being incapable of remaining on the telephone for long, made it nigh on impossible for clients to convey their full message. Veterinary surgeons know all too well the frustration of having to listen to long monologues issuing from the earpiece. Donald had a very simple solution. Upon tiring of the conversation, which he invariably did very quickly, he would simply say, very gently, and in the politest of voices, ‘Goodbye!’ This invariably resulted in the assistant’s arrival at the farm without some essential equipment to do a job that Donald had failed to note during the swiftest of telephone calls. A loud ‘ear bashing’ for the unfortunate young vet invariably followed.

  Whilst he was always polite to the clients, he was not so courteous to members of his family. His brother, Brian, once told Alf that he had had the misfortune to telephone Donald when he was watching his favourite television programme.

  Donald, as usual, had seized the telephone before it had had the chance to ring fully. The conversation had been brief.

  ‘206! Who’s there?’

  ‘Brian.’

  ‘Dad’s Army’s on!’ The receiver was banged down.

  Another of his habits, when in the mood, was that of taking on a huge number of calls. Despite protestations from his colleagues, he assured them that he would complete them all. He, of course, did not and the assistant on call would have to mop up Donald’s remaining visits during the evening.

  Donald always got away with it. He would apologise profusely, invite the young man for tea, and be totally forgiven every time. His natural charm was his saving grace.

  ‘You know,’ Alf said once, expounding on his partner, ‘everyone is born with some quality that helps them along life’s road. With Donald, it is his natural charm. No matter what he has done, you just cannot be annoyed with him for long. For as long as I have known him, he has possessed the ability to have people running around working for him. I wish that I could say the same of myself!’

  One of Donald’s genuinely endearing qualities, however, was his attitude to children. This phenomenally impatient man displayed a total reversal of character whenever a small child was involved. He gave plenty of time to his own two children, Alan and Janet – with whom Rosie and I played for many hours around the huge, magical Southwoods Hall – and he showed no less patience with those of others.

  I remember him talking one day to a client in our office, when he was abruptly interrupted by a little girl. She had just completed a drawing of a frog and was longing to show it to someone. She chose the right man in Donald Sinclair.

  He turned away from the client, stooped down towards the child and said, ‘How very interesting! Let me see.’ He examined the drawing carefully while the little girl jumped up and down with delight. ‘And what do you call this little frog?’ he asked gently.

  ‘Francis!’ cried the child, jumping higher and higher.

  ‘Francis Frog! What a nice name!’ Donald said.

  There followed an excited account about her frog while Donald listened intently. He then took the little girl by the hand and led her out into the garden to show her some flowers – having totally forgotten about his paying customer in the office. What an extraordinary man! He had little patience with his fellow men but he had all the time in the world for a small child.

  My father had two other ‘assistants’ – my sister and myself, and we accompanied him frequently on his rounds throughout the 1950s. One way we were of genuine assistance was through our dedication to opening and closing gates. The modern farm has far fewer gates, most of which have been replaced by cattle grids, but in those days a considerable slice of the veterinary surgeon’s time was spent leaping out of the car to deal with the gates. When visiting the Ainsley brothers of Nevison House, Alf had to climb in and out of his car fourteen times to open and shut the gates, every one of them held together with old string. It turned a visit to this farm into a marathon session, so much so that he wrote about the place with its ancient gates and deeply rutted track in the opening to The Lord God Made Them All

  Rosie took her task very seriously. When the time came for her to attend school in 1952, at the age of five, she was racked with worry lest her father could not cope on his rounds without her.

  During my years at secondary school, when I had already decided to become a vet, and had begun a more serious appraisal of my chosen profession, I had the opportunity to study him at work. I noticed his conscientious and caring approach, and particularly enjoyed watching him calving and lambing, procedures he performed with extreme gentleness. He said many times that lambing ewes was easily his favourite job, one he could perform quickly as well as gently when the need arose. One afternoon, he was confronted with sixteen visits to lambing ewes; three hours later, he had completed them all.

  Another animal he treated
very skilfully was the pig. I had little doubt, as a teenager, that I had chosen the right profession, but the visits to pigs with my father tested my resolve to its limits. I was terrified of pigs.

  In those days, with home-cured bacon still figuring prominently in the Yorkshire country person’s diet, there were many local smallholders with ramshackle sheds at the bottom of their gardens that housed huge, fat sows. These formidable animals did not appreciate needles being driven into their bodies and were especially aggressive when their piglets required treatment. Large sows possess a fine set of teeth but my father, who seemed to have no fear of them, would enter their domain, armed simply with a board or an old broom and skilfully inject them, despite their savage barks of protest.

  When the piglets needed attention, the sow would be tempted outside with some food and the door locked, enabling the vet to carry on with his work in safety. The pig has been described as a difficult animal to treat, one that ‘responds vociferously to the mildest of restraint’. This is certainly true and piglets are endowed with stupendous vocal chords from the moment they are born. I spent many an hour in my youth, helping my father inject squealing piglets, while outside, the enraged mother sow, driven on by the deafening noise of her offspring, furiously attacked our shaky refuge. My sole aim throughout these ear-splitting sessions was to establish an escape route should the colossal sow blast her way into the building.

  I remember my father once asking me to inject a sow when I was about fifteen years old. Quivering with terror, I shot the needle into her leg. The vast pig erupted from the straw with a roar and I vaulted back out of the pen, my needle still protruding from her thigh. I received a severe dressing down.

  ‘Damn it, Jim!’ he shouted. ‘You’ll never make a vet if you run away from your patient!’

  ‘I don’t want to lose a leg!’ I replied. ‘Have you seen the size of those teeth?’

  ‘You have got to get in and out quickly!’ he shouted. ‘It’s no good being frightened of the bloody things!’

  Although a sympathetic man, he was quick to chastise me if he thought I was not ‘framing’ properly, and would grunt with frustration should I fail to catch a young bovine by the nose first time, or receive a sharp kick from a cow through faulty milking technique.

  ‘Don’t stand back off her!’ he would yell. ‘Get in close! You’ll get your head knocked off if you stand back!’

  He repeatedly drummed into me that I would look an utter fool on a farm if I could not handle the animals properly. His instruction certainly stood me in good stead in later years. In 1975, in the Daily Express, I was amused to see a photograph of James Herriot chasing a small pig. This was, quite obviously, purely for the benefit of the article. Alf would have been the first to say that there is no future in chasing pigs; they can run at amazing speeds and possess superb body swerves. The only way to catch them is by the deployment of cunning tactics.

  My father and I often had to inject dozens of lively pigs at one time. When confronted by a pink, squealing wave hurtling around a yard, he would corner them with a large gate. Once trapped in a tight corner, the pigs would scream loudly and he would say, ‘Wait, they’ll calm down in a minute.’ He was always right. All at once the noise would stop and the pigs would freeze. He would then inject them all, using a multidose syringe, and hardly a pig would move. Simple.

  Although mainly a farm-animal vet, Alf Wight had to turn his hand occasionally to horse work. He had had plenty of experience in his first years in Thirsk, docking the tails of foals and castrating wild colts, while the foalings on the huge heavy draught mares were especially taxing. Donald, who had a fine reputation as an equine veterinarian – and was the Thirsk Racecourse Veterinary Surgeon for over forty years – did most of the horse work, but Alf was no novice when called upon to treat horses.

  Alf was never to become regularly involved with equine work, but when it came to treating family pets, it was a different story. As the 1950s progressed, with the amount of small animal work gradually increasing, I had the opportunity to observe him perform in this vastly different arena. Here, not only did he display his all-round expertise as a sound and competent veterinarian but, as with his life out in the farmyards and fields of Yorkshire, he came across some fascinating characters whom, years later, he would masterfully and humorously commemorate to print.

  Chapter Seventeen

  During the years of the 1950s, despite the small animal cases taking second place to farm work in the Sinclair and Wight practice, Alf became highly regarded as a sound small animal clinician. He realised that this branch of veterinary medicine could become increasingly important in the years ahead, and that a sympathetic approach to his patients would be of paramount importance.

  The dictum, ‘It’s not what you do, it’s the way that you do it’ – one that he repeatedly drummed into every assistant – was something he carried out unfailingly himself. This quality of care and compassion towards a case is as important today as it was all those years ago. An article appeared in the newsletter of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in March 1992:

  ‘James Herriot is the yardstick by which the whole profession is judged and while his veterinary science may be, by today’s standards, painfully out of date, his veterinary art is not. Alf Wight’s promotion of veterinary surgeons remains the envy of every other profession.’

  He always thought carefully before he acted, and approached each case very thoroughly. Despite his sound clinical expertise, however, he never aspired to become a specialist in the field of small animal veterinary medicine. As new techniques came to the fore, he tended to leave this to the younger men in the practice; indeed, he remained suspicious of many of the modern anaesthetics, preferring to keep his patient conscious if at all possible.

  He retained his deep respect for general anaesthesia well into the 1960s and 1970s, preferring to perform comparatively major operations on animals simply under local anaesthetic. He removed large mammary growths from bitches and operated many times on dogs with entropion – where the ingrowing eyelid undergoes corrective surgery – purely under local anaesthetic. He always derived especial pleasure after entropion operations merely from observing the dog’s tremendous relief from pain and irritation.

  There was one procedure at which he regarded himself an expert – the ‘wrapping’ of cats. Using nothing more than an old blanket, he could reduce a savage, snarling cat to a trussed-up sausage in a matter of seconds. He was especially proud of his expertise in this ‘field of veterinary surgery’ and I remember him saying to me one day after completing one of these lightning performances, ‘I probably won’t be remembered for much after I’ve gone, Jim, but at least you’ll be able to say that your old man was good at one thing! He could sure wrap a cat!’

  It was his sympathetic approach to his cases that, more than anything, won him so many fans amongst his clients, with no one appreciating this more than Miss Marjorie Warner and her little dog, Bambi. This lady and her appealing Pekingese, who lived in a fine big house in Sowerby, were immortalised in the early James Herriot books as ‘Mrs Pumphrey’ and ‘Trickie Woo’, and they were to become two of the most well known of all his characters.

  Bambi Warner was a delightful dog who loved everyone – and how we loved him! Every time this thoughtful little animal took his holidays, which was frequently, magnificent hampers would arrive at our door, addressed simply to ‘Uncle Wight’. These contained foods we had previously only dreamed about: caviar, pâté de foie, honey-roast hams, exotic preserves and many other mouthwatering delicacies. Whenever Bambi visited the Yorkshire coast, large boxes of Whitby kippers were delivered to our door; it is hardly surprising that Alf, who loved kippers, wrote so affectionately about Bambi and Miss Warner in his books. He made the most of this situation, never forgetting to send prompt letters of appreciation.

  Unfortunately, he made two fundamental mistakes that almost resulted in the termination of these wonderful gifts. He addressed his first letter to Miss Warner
herself. After Bambi had expressed his displeasure, Alf promptly rescued the situation by dispatching a grovelling letter of apology to the little Peke. His second mistake was to address another one to ‘Master’ Bambi Warner when the correct mode of address should, of course, have read ‘Bambi Warner, Esq’. Writhing with guilt, he fired off another letter but this time received no response. These were worrying days for the family as weeks passed without the delivery of a single hamper! Happily, with the passage of time and several attentive visits to his little friend, Bambi forgave him and the stream of succulent hampers began again. Alf had learned his lesson; in future, Bambi would receive the deference his status deserved.

  So vivid were the descriptions of Mrs Pumphrey and Trickie Woo in the James Herriot books, Miss Warner quickly realised that they were based upon her and Bambi, but she bore no resentment. Alf always had a genuine liking for the lady and her charming little dog, portraying her as a warm-hearted and passionate, if slightly ‘over-the-top’, dog lover.

  Alf Wight, although a popular vet, was the first to admit that he could not please everyone. There were certain farms where, no matter how hard he tried, his efforts resulted in disaster. He called them his ‘bogey farms’ and would go to great lengths to avoid visiting them.

  One day Donald said to him, ‘There’s a cow with a bad eye at Furness’s, Alfred. It’s in your direction so will you go there?’

  ‘No,’ he replied firmly, ‘I’m sorry but I’d rather not. Every time I visit that farm, something drops dead! Frank Furness is a lovely man and, despite my record of decimating his stock every time I set foot on his farm, I think he still likes me. I have no wish to stretch his good nature any further.’