by Jim Wight
Mac and his wife often invited Alf round for an evening meal, which was frequently followed by a game of table tennis or Monopoly. The sessions round the Monopoly board could be serious engagements. If Mac started to lose, tension soon sprang into the atmosphere, with any further deterioration in his fortunes inevitably leading to raised voices and the children running upstairs in tears to bed.
Alf would always remember this explosive but clever man with great affection and as yet another of the great characters who have graced the veterinary profession.
The insecurity of his position at McDowall’s was never far from Alf’s mind. With the ever-present threat of dismissal should the practice fall upon leaner times, he regularly scanned the Veterinary Record for alternative employment. Mac himself had assured Alf that prospects of his obtaining a permanent post within the practice were remote. Not that he relished the idea of going into partnership with Mac: he was a delightful man in many ways but one who enjoyed the high life a little too much. Alf envisaged years of slavery stretching ahead.
There was another reason for casting his net in more distant waters, and this was a reluctance to spend his future in Sunderland. The north-east of England had been hit especially hard during the depression and there was little money about. Although he had great affection for the place of his birth, Sunderland could be a grim place in which to work. During the winter months, which seemed to last for half the year, the north-east winds screamed into the town and roared along the streets, often accompanied by sleet, snow or freezing rain. Huge waves smashing onto the roads on the sea front, and the rows of drab, terraced houses standing defiantly against the elements epitomised the aura of depression that hung over the town. It was a dismal place to begin a professional career.
There were very few positions advertised in the veterinary journals but one day, while leafing through the pages of the Record, he noticed that there was one available in Thirsk. He had never heard of the place. Where was Thirsk? Upon perusing a map, he discovered that it was in Yorkshire, only about fifty miles south of Sunderland. The job was described as ‘Mainly agricultural work in a Yorkshire market town’, with the principal of the practice being a veterinary surgeon by the name of D. V. Sinclair.
Although the majority of the work in Sunderland had been with dogs and cats, he was interested. He had enjoyed his taste of work with the larger animals and the thought of spending more time with farm animals intrigued him. Yorkshire held no particular appeal for him. He knew little about it – having an image of the county as a flat, industrial wasteland, full of smoking factory chimneys – but it was not far to go for a look. He wrote for an interview and, to his surprise, he received a reply. On a sunny day in June 1940, he set off to see Thirsk for himself.
Many people who have read the James Herriot books have their own particular favourites. My father’s family and his close friends have little hesitation in nominating the first book, If Only They Could Talk, closely followed by the second, It Shouldn’t Happen to a Vet. These two books, which were later combined into one volume under the title of All Creatures Great and Small for the American market, are full of the episodes that were already familiar to us since we had heard my father tell the stories so often.
The authenticity of the narrative added extra appeal. In these books are to be found many of the most colourful characters who entered his life at this point. Nowhere is his ability to manipulate the reader’s emotions more brilliantly illustrated than in that first book which quietly appeared on the bookshelves of Britain in 1970. Here, the whole foundation of the Herriot saga is laid, upon which successive best-sellers were built. The scene is set as the reader is introduced first to the stage upon which his show would be performed – the town of Thirsk, to be immortalised in the books as Darrowby, and the Yorkshire Dales, among whose green pastures and high, windswept moorland he determined that his stories would unfold. The main characters that run through James Herriot’s books appear in the pages of these early works – his partner Siegfried, Siegfried’s younger brother, Tristan, and James Herriot’s future wife, Helen. The reader is also introduced to many of the most colourful Yorkshire people among whom he worked. For any book – or television series – to be successful, rich and varied characterisation is essential. James Herriot’s books radiate with unforgettable characters. He did not have to invent them; they were all around him, contributing towards making his first years in Thirsk among the hardest but happiest of his life. Many of the incidents that James Herriot recounted in If Only They Could Talk were reproduced just as they happened. His first meeting with Siegfried was no exception.
When Alf Wight knocked on the door of Donald Sinclair’s surgery, at 23 Kirkgate in Thirsk, he was about to experience the first of a lifetime of surprises with his future partner. Donald had completely forgotten that the young vet from Sunderland was coming for the interview and was not at home. The housekeeper, Mrs Weatherill, did not seem particularly surprised that her employer had overlooked the appointment; she apologised, gave him a cup of tea and told him to make himself at home. I am not in the least surprised that Donald forgot that appointment. After joining the practice myself, over twenty-seven years later, it was not long before I realised that whenever Donald was involved in the organisation of anything, confusion and disarray inevitably followed. Little had changed in the passing years. By the time he finally returned home that day back in 1940, Alf had fallen asleep under an old acacia tree in the garden. He woke to find Donald standing in front of him. He staggered hastily to his feet.
‘My name is Donald Sinclair. You must be Alfred Wight!’ he said, as the two men shook hands and, at that moment, the association between Sinclair and Wight was born. It would have a very shaky beginning, and there would be times when Alf would doubt his judgement in hitching his life to such a singular man, but it would survive.
The description of Donald in the first Herriot book fits him perfectly: ‘He was just about the most English-looking man I had ever seen. Long, humorous, strong-jawed face. Small, clipped moustache, untidy, sandy hair. He was wearing an old tweed jacket and shapeless flannel trousers. The collar of his check shirt was frayed and the tie carelessly knotted. He looked as though he didn’t spend much time in front of a mirror.’
James Herriot’s last sentence of that paragraph is very true. Donald was the archetypal gentleman, very much the ladies’ man, but over many years in his company, I never saw him comb his hair, let alone admire himself in a mirror. Perhaps he had become bored of the image of himself, as he seemed to remain unchanged with the passage of time. Alf said once, describing his partner, ‘When Donald was thirty he looked fifty and when he was seventy he looked fifty.’
Donald exuded charm. Everyone liked him, but he was also a most erratic and unpredictable man. ‘Eccentric’ is almost too mild a term to describe him but, above all, he was a warm, humorous and interesting person. As ‘Siegfried’, he would be the pivotal character in the Herriot books, and a heaven-sent personality around which Alf was to set so many of his stories.
Many people believe that the character of Siegfried was grossly exaggerated in the books. ‘Surely he was not really like that?’ is a question that has been put to me many times.
‘You are right!’ is my usual reply. ‘He was not like that at all. His character was considerably toned down.’
This opinion was shared by those who knew him best, specifically the Yorkshire farmers who observed him for years, hurtling impatiently into and out of their farmyards. ‘By gaw, yer Dad’s got old Sinclair right in them books!’ was something I heard more than once during the early years of my father’s literary success. There was never a man quite like Donald Sinclair and no one knew him better, or portrayed him more vividly, than that great observer of human character, James Alfred Wight.
Alf first observed Donald’s impulsive nature during the course of that interview in 1940. Donald suggested they should go to see a few of the farms in the practice. He allowed Alf about two second
s to get into the car before hurtling off down the road. The two men roared round the country roads at breakneck speed while Alf concentrated on maintaining his composure in a seat that moved freely backwards and forwards on the floor of the car. They were accompanied on this hair-raising ride by six dogs who seemed to enjoy every minute of it.
It was not only the speed that alarmed Alf as they shot round the practice; Donald had a rather unorthodox method of holding the steering wheel – steering with his elbows while his chin remained cupped in his hands. This disturbing habit, which he maintained until his old age, was one that was observed with disbelief by many more rigid passengers.
Alf soon realised that he was in the company of a man very different from the average human being and he was to receive another surprise when, after a lightning tour of the surgery premises at Kirkgate, Donald offered him the job. There had been other applicants but this impulsive man, who had taken an instant liking to the young vet, did not wish to waste any time. Not only was he about to join the Royal Air Force himself, but his then assistant – a young man called Eric Parker – had informed Donald that he, too, would soon be leaving the practice to join the Air Force. Donald, who urgently wanted someone to run his practice while he was away, warned Alf that it would be hard work as he would be running the business single-handed for an indeterminate length of time. His head reeling, Alf thanked him and returned to Sunderland to ponder his future.
Events had moved so fast he could hardly believe his luck. He had been offered a job while hundreds of other hopeful applicants were being turned down all over the country, but what would the future hold for him in Thirsk? Donald Sinclair was quite obviously an extraordinary man and he had only had a glimpse of the practice on the whirlwind tour. An unknown world with a different way of life lay before him, but there was one aspect of Donald’s offer that he knew he could not refuse.
In those difficult days for young veterinary surgeons, the acquisition of some job security was, for most of them, little more than a dream. Alf was, astonishingly, offered a salaried partnership before he had even accepted the job. Rather than receiving a salary while Donald was away in the Royal Air Force, Alf would receive five-eighths of the profits of the practice – helping himself to any cash that he could generate in the course of his work. After Donald’s return, Alf was promised a salary of four guineas per week in addition to a share in the profits made while doing extra work for the Ministry of Agriculture.
Alf knew he would have a busy time ahead if he accepted. As well as doing the work of two men while Donald was away, he would also be balancing the books and running the Kirkgate premises, but it all added up to a tempting financial carrot for a penniless young man.
Money, however, was not everything. Alf knew he wanted to work in an environment that he could enjoy, and his first glimpse of Yorkshire had been an eye-opener. Instead of a drab, industrial landscape, he had seen rich, green fields and attractive little villages nestling at the foot of the Hambleton Hills. The thought of working in such pleasant surroundings appealed to him. Thirsk, with its collection of uneven buildings clustered around the cobbled market place, had an atmosphere of friendliness and charm. It was in marked contrast to the grey, windswept streets of Sunderland.
The unusual character of his prospective employer did not mar these positive thoughts. Donald Sinclair may have been a little eccentric in his behaviour but Alf had instinctively liked him from the moment they had first shaken hands. He had an honest and open face, together with a sharp sense of humour and an appealing personality.
The dearth of available jobs in 1940 decreed that Alf needed to make his mind up quickly, and he did. He informed McDowall of Donald’s offer and then wrote immediately to Donald advising him that he would accept the job.
Mac was sorry to lose his young colleague, but he knew that Alf would not have stayed in Sunderland for long. He understood why the ambitious young man had been looking for a permanent post, with better prospects than he could ever offer him.
Alf travelled down to Yorkshire with his meagre belongings, arriving in Thirsk on 18 July 1940, and took up residence in one of the upstairs rooms of 23 Kirkgate. After spending a few days travelling round the practice with Donald and Eric Parker to acquaint himself with the area, he signed his contract as a salaried partner on 24 July, and began work two days later. As he set off on his rounds on that July day, little did he know that, many years later, he would turn Donald Sinclair’s business at 23 Kirkgate into the most famous veterinary practice in the world.
Chapter Eight
In the early years of his literary success as James Herriot, Alf Wight wrapped a cloak of secrecy around the true location of Darrowby, revealing to no one the identity of the people on whom his characters were based. His portrayal of Darrowby was deliberately altered and is described in the books as being in the High Dales country, surrounded by wild fells and green valleys, with drystone walls snaking down towards the little town. His efforts to insulate himself, his friends and this area of Yorkshire from the explosion of publicity in the early 1970s were not very successful. It was not long before the media publicity had revealed that he lived in Thirsk, and it was his experiences in this Yorkshire market town that provided the greater part of the material for his books.
The vast majority of the incidents recounted within the stories happened in and around Thirsk, not in the Yorkshire Dales over twenty miles away. Thirsk was Darrowby and Alfred Wight, despite his enormous love for that area, could never be described as a Dales veterinary surgeon.
A postcard from Thirsk, sent by Alf to his parents on the day he arrived there in July 1940, shows that the town has not really changed a great deal in appearance over the years. There is a refreshing absence of motor vehicles in the old picture, but the unevenly roofed buildings surrounding the cobbled market place are very familiar. It was in this rural environment, far removed from his city upbringing, that he was to lay the foundations of a successful career as a veterinary surgeon. 23 Kirkgate, that he would years later make famous as ‘Skeldale House’, would be his home for the next twelve years, and his practice premises for the whole of his professional life.
Alf’s feelings for the house and garden are clearly expressed in chapter 2 of his book If Only They Could Talk, where he describes seeing it for the very first time:
I liked the look of the old house. It was Georgian with a fine, white-painted doorway …. The paint was flaking and the mortar looked crumbly between the bricks, but there was a changeless elegance about the place….
I was shown into a sunlit room. It had been built in the grand manner, high-ceilinged and airy with a massive fireplace flanked by arched alcoves. One end was taken up by a french window which gave on a long, high-walled garden. I could see unkempt lawns, a rockery and many fruit trees. A great bank of peonies blazed in the hot sunshine and at the far end, rooks cawed in the branches of a group of tall elms….
Sunshine beat back from the high old walls, bees droned among the bright masses of flowers. A gentle breeze stirred the withered blooms of a magnificent wistaria which almost covered the back of the house. There was peace here.
Although there may have been peace at 23 Kirkgate, he had little time to sample it. During those first months in Thirsk, Alf discovered that the life of a country veterinary surgeon was fascinating, challenging and extremely hard. The ‘free’ salaried partnership into which he had entered with Donald Sinclair was a two-edged sword. Although he did not have to find the money to buy his partnership, he repaid Donald’s gesture with something he had in abundance – a willingness to work hard – and his repayments got off to a flying start during that summer of 1940.
Donald left to join the Royal Air Force within days of Alf’s arrival and Eric Parker departed four weeks later. Alf was left to run a strange practice entirely single-handed in an area with which he was almost totally unfamiliar. Having had most of his experience with small animals, he now had to transform himself into a large animal vet –
and pretty quickly, too. The days were long and tiring but he managed to enjoy them as well as learning an enormous amount.
It is interesting to study the old practice ledgers which reveal how different the nature of the work was from the present day. Much of Alf’s time was spent visiting individual animals on small family farms and, of course, his patients received very different treatment in those days before the arrival of modern drugs. He was continually drenching bovines with strange concoctions such as ‘Stimulant Stomach Powders’ or ‘Universal Cattle Medicine’. He washed out cows’ stomachs with these quaint mixtures, and irrigated their genital tracts and their udders with Acriflavine to combat infertility or mastitis. Acriflavine, an antiseptic, was a great standby for the veterinary surgeon; it was syringed up just about every available orifice that needed cleaning. In those days, the veterinary surgeons spent many long hours mixing medicines to their own ‘recipes’. These seem so outdated now but many of them were actually quite effective. The more dramatic side of the work was never far away – the calvings, foalings, castrations and various stitching jobs that have always punctuated the veterinary surgeon’s day.
The enjoyment of tackling his new job was heightened by the surroundings in which he found himself. Thirsk is situated in the Vale of York on some very fertile, flat arable land, but a few miles to the east is the western boundary of the North York Moors. At the foot of this great escarpment are numerous picturesque villages and Alf derived great pleasure from driving around this beautiful area, revelling in his visits to Boltby, Thirlby, Kilburn, Coxwold and other charming places. He was equally entranced when he coaxed his little car up to the top of the Hambleton Hills, where he would spend a large part of his working life in the years to come. This area of the practice, 800 feet above the flat land around Thirsk, was the domain of the hill farmer and the sparse landscape was dotted with grey, stone farmsteads, standing defiantly in the face of the howling north-east winds that whipped across the plateau in winter.
