The Real James Herriot (43 page)

The video was launched at a private showing in Leeds that October, where the title of ‘Honorary Yorkshireman' was conferred on Alf Wight and Chris Timothy. As my father was not well enough to attend the reception, I accepted the honour on his behalf. He was very proud to have been recognised by his adopted county – one that he had done so much for.

In 1994, his book
James Herriot's Cat Stories
was published. This book was like the earlier
James Herriot's Dog Stories
in that it contained chapters taken from all his previous books, but otherwise it was very different. For a start, it was a small book and very short. The reason for this was simple – Alf had not written many stories about cats. Jenny Dereham at Michael Joseph read through the first seven books and found only five or six stories which would be suitable; the rest, she said, had a tendency to be about splattered cats arriving on the operating table after being hit by cars. Since the stories were to be illustrated throughout in colour, these were not very suitable. When she heard
that Alf was writing one more book,
Every Living Thing,
she asked if he could possibly write some ‘nice' cat stories which could go into the later compilation. Alf, as always, helpfully agreed.

Although a great lover of cats, Alf only ever owned a few and then for short periods; this meant that he referred less to them in his writings than to his dogs. He had them as a boy in Glasgow, and he and Joan once had a sweet little tabby called Topsy but, after her premature death, they did not get another for over ten years until Oscar arrived.

Oscar was a stray who turned up on the doorstep of Rowardennan but he was with us for only a few weeks before he simply disappeared one night, never to be seen again. Alf endured the agony, like so many of his clients when their own cats disappeared, of being left with the heart-rending uncertainty of their final demise. He later wrote a story about a cat called Oscar (which was also turned into one of the children's books) and he gave the story a happier ending.

No more cats were to share Alf's life until, in his final few years, two little wild strays took up residence in the log shed behind their house in Thirlby. After months of patient coaxing, he finally managed to get close enough to stroke them, but they never became house cats as Bodie pursued them relentlessly. These two, named Ollie and Ginny, made star appearances in both
Every Living Thing
and
James Herriot's Cat Stories.

Cat Stories
had exquisite water-colour illustrations by Lesley Holmes. It was a runaway bestseller, especially in the USA where it sold more copies than any other previous James Herriot book, staying on the
New York Times
best-seller list for almost six months. After Alf's death, two companion volumes were published:
James Herriot's Favourite Dog Stories
and
James Herriot's Yorkshire Stories.
Both were again illustrated by Lesley Holmes, who not only portrayed the animals so well but captured the magic of the Yorkshire landscape.

Towards the end of 1994, Alf received what was to be the last tribute paid to him prior to his death. It was also one that meant a great deal to him.

In November, he received a letter from the Dean of the University of Glasgow Veterinary School, Professor Norman Wright, in which it was proposed that the new library in the school be named the ‘James Herriot Library'. It was in recognition of his services to the profession and the letter went on to say that the Veterinary School was very proud that James Herriot was a graduate of Glasgow and could they have
permission to use his name? Deeply moved by this proposed dedication, he replied in his letter of acceptance: ‘I regard this as the greatest honour to ever have been bestowed upon me.'

He had many tributes paid to him throughout a distinguished veterinary and literary career, but his response to this final appreciation revealed an undiminished affection for the city in which he spent the formative years of his life.

As well as this final tribute from his old Alma Mater, visits to Sunderland to watch his football team served to lighten his flickering last few weeks. Despite his rapidly failing strength, he insisted on following the fortunes of his team – his last visit being in early 1995, only one month prior to his death. He needed constant support when making his way painfully to his seat in the stand, and Joan expressed great concern that he might suffer a final collapse, but Rosie was very positive about it.

‘It is a great thing that he still wants to go,' she told her. ‘At a time like this, we should give him as much pleasure as possible and, anyway, should he die at Roker Park, what better place to end his life.' We knew that he had not long to go and I have often thought, since his death, that had he not died at home, he would have approved of ending his days in the company of the red and white stripes – and less than a mile away from Brandling Street where he first looked upon the world all those years ago in 1916.

Right up until a few days before his death, he refused to give in – remaining determinedly mobile by walking around the house and garden every day. I have strong feelings of consolation that, remarkably, he was a bed-ridden invalid for no more than two days. If ever a man fought cancer with fortitude, it was my father.

Many people helped him through his illness. He was so grateful to the doctors and nursing staff at the Friarage Hospital that he gave a very substantial sum of money towards the acquisition of a scanner for the hospital, in appreciation of the wonderful treatment he had received.

Joan, of course, was the person who helped him more than any other. She bore the distress of watching him slowly but surely deteriorate, managing the vast majority of the work in tending to his needs. From their first days together, she had supported him through good times and bad – most of them good – but never would her devotion to her husband shine more brightly than during those final, dark months of his life.

Alex and Lynne Taylor, too, played their part in brightening his days while Donald Sinclair still managed to make him smile as he had done, unconsciously, since they first met all those years before.

The last thing he ever wrote was the foreword to a small booklet about the White Horse Association. It was at the request of one of his friends, a farming client called Fred Banks, who was president of the association. The famous White Horse, which had been cut into the hillside above the village of Kilburn in 1857, is a vivid landmark which, together with the Whitestone Cliffs, formed a majestic background to Alf's work in veterinary practice for almost fifty years. He wrote the foreword only three days before he died, saying in it:

I had spent only a few days in Thirsk when … I had one of my most delightful surprises – my first sight of the White Horse of Kilburn. I find it difficult to describe the thrill I felt at the time and it is something which has remained with me over the years. As a young man, it was one of my favourite outings to take my young children to sit up there on the moorland grass and savour what must be one of the finest panoramic views in England; fifty miles of chequered fields stretching away to the long bulk of the Pennines.

Alf's love of writing, and his willingness to cooperate with so many requests, had lasted up until his final days.

In late January 1995, on one of my visits to his house, I was alarmed at his appearance. He was always a man who hid his pain from others, but he could not conceal it this time. He told me that he had an excruciatingly sore point in his back. There was little to see, but to touch the area provoked an agonised response.

The last time that I had seen something similar was many years before, when I had visited my old Chemistry master, John Ward, who was suffering from lung cancer that had finally spread to his spine. He was in tremendous pain and died only a day or two after my visit.

As I spoke to my father that day, I could not help but notice the similarity and I knew that the end was near. I left his house with one thought on my mind – a fervent hope that he would not have to suffer for much longer. He had been through some bad days and it could only get worse.

I did not have to wait long. On the evening of Tuesday, 21 February, unable to remain on his feet, he was confined to his bed. A syringe
pump, delivering morphine into his system, helped to ease the pain.

I visited him that evening but his usually lively conversation was absent. Heavily drugged, he could only talk slowly and unsteadily but still managed a smile or two as Alex Taylor reminded him of some of the countless funny times they had shared in their youth.

He deteriorated steadily throughout the following day and soon could no longer speak coherently. I remember, having at one point sat gently on the side of his bed, being startled to see him gasp and grimace with pain. Knowing how stoically he had borne his disease for so long, I wondered what sort of horrendous assault his body had endured to generate such a reaction.

I saw him alive for the last time on the evening of 22 February and I knew the end was very close. I shot out to a farm visit the following morning before visiting him again, but he was dead before I arrived at the house. My mother, Rosie and Emma were by his side when he died.

As I looked at him that morning, I felt utterly alone. The shock of his death was not as severe as the one I had received over three years earlier when I first knew he had cancer; instead, I felt nothing but an overwhelming sorrow, and I knew that my life would never be quite the same again. On that morning of 23 February 1995, the world lost its best-loved veterinary surgeon. His family, and those close to him, lost a great deal more.

Within twenty-four hours of my father's death, letters of condolence began to arrive on his family's doorsteps. My mother received literally thousands, while Rosie and I had hundreds to read. They came not only from close friends, but from clients of the practice, local people who had felt privileged to know him personally, former assistants who had worked at 23 Kirkgate, many members of the veterinary profession and, of course, admirers of his work from all over the world. With so many, including those who knew him only through his writing, feeling that they, too, had lost a great friend, we were not alone with our thoughts at that time.

As he would have wished, the funeral – conducted one week later by the Reverend Toddy Hoare in the nearby village of Felixkirk – was a quiet family affair. As well as the immediate family, only Donald Sinclair, his daughter Janet, Alex and Lynne Taylor, their daughter, Lynne, too, and Eve Pette, Denton's widow, were present. A small service was conducted afterwards at the crematorium in Darlington.

On the day after he died, the James Herriot Library was due to be opened at the Veterinary School in Glasgow. I had agreed, at the time that it was proposed to him three months before, to accept the honour on his behalf.

When they heard the sad news, the Veterinary School suggested that the ceremony be postponed, but I felt that it was something that I had to do. This was the last honour he had received – and one that had meant so much to him. It presented me with an emotionally challenging task but I had a feeling of great pride when I saw my father's portrait looking, almost poignantly, across the library and out of the window to the Campsie Fells where he had spent so many happy hours in his youth.

On either side of the plaque in the James Herriot Library there are two photographs, one of Alfred Wight and the other of Sir William Weipers – two very famous graduates who made enormous contributions to their profession. I have often wondered what my father would have thought, all those years ago as an insignificant student at
Glasgow Veterinary College, had he known that one day he would be pictured alongside the man he had so admired? I feel sure that he would have been a very proud man had he lived just those few more days to have seen it.

My low spirits following my father's last days were not improved by the death, shortly afterwards, of Donald Sinclair. Donald had had an emotionally turbulent few months. The death of my father had hit him so hard that he could not summon up the courage to speak to me until a full week later. When he did, it was in typical fashion. The telephone rang in my house and when I lifted the receiver, a voice said, simply, ‘Jim?'

‘Yes, Donald?' I replied.

There was a long pause, which was unusual for such an impatient man. When he spoke, his voice was unsteady. ‘I'm fed up about your dad.'

I had no chance to respond. The telephone went dead. It had been the briefest of conversations but I knew how he felt – and what he had tried to say.

Worse was to come Donald's way. His wife, Audrey, who had been failing for some time, died that June, three and a half months after my father. Donald had been totally devoted to her throughout their fifty-two years together and, following this devastating blow, he seemed like a lost person, drained of all his humour and vitality.

One day not long after Audrey's death, he walked into the surgery in Kirkgate and stood beside me as I operated on a dog. He had always been a startlingly thin man but, on that day, he seemed to have shrunk to almost nothing. That gloriously volatile aura of eccentricity was absent as he stood quietly, observing me at work. The wonderful character I had known for so many years bore little resemblance to the old man at my side, and I felt a pang of sympathy as I glanced at his face – one that betrayed an air of loneliness and hopelessness.

Suddenly, he broke his silence. ‘Jim, do you mind if I come and live here?' he asked quietly.

‘These premises belong to you,' I said, ‘so you can do what you like.'

‘I have always wanted to live in that top flat. Looking over Thirsk to the hills – the one where your mother and father had their first home,' he continued.

‘Yes, there is something very nice about the flat,' I replied. Although
I knew that Donald had become depressed living alone in Southwoods Hall, I hardly expected him to move house at such an advanced age.

‘I'll move in tomorrow,' he said, and disappeared as suddenly as he had arrived. It was the last time that I saw Donald Sinclair alive.

The following morning he was found, at Southwoods Hall, in a coma. He had taken an overdose of barbiturate, leaving a scribbly note indicating his desire not to be resuscitated. His children, Alan and Janet, were soon by his side and, after five days of heartache and uncertainty, he finally passed peacefully away.

Surprisingly, for such a mercurial man as Donald, his death was, in some ways, predictable. Many years ago, when I first joined the practice, Donald had once talked to me about his enthusiasm for voluntary euthanasia, with the conversation eventually becoming focused upon death and final resting places. For a young man of twenty-four, it was a rather disconcerting subject.

One of Donald's acquaintances had recently suddenly died at a Rotary Club luncheon, and I had said to him, ‘It's not a bad way to go really. He was a good age and he died at his favourite pastime – eating!'

‘I know a better way,' Donald had said.

‘Oh? And what is that?'

‘Shot in the back of the head, at ninety, by a jealous husband!'

He had continued our slightly morbid discussion with, ‘When I die, Jim, I would like to be buried at Southwoods in that field below the pine wood near the third gate, the one that looks up to the hill.'

‘I think that would be a splendid place,' I had replied.

‘Do you really think so?'

‘Yes, I do!'

I have never forgotten his spontaneous reply, ‘I'll save you a place next to me!'

Donald did not die at the hand of a jealous husband; his own hands were to finally end his life as he remained true to his lifelong dedication to voluntary euthanasia.

In July, a memorial service for Donald and Audrey was held in Thirsk church, followed by refreshments at Southwoods Hall. I felt heavy-hearted as I gazed around the grounds of the fine old house where I had spent such good times but, as my eyes rested upon that grass field below the pine wood at the foot of the hill, I could not help smiling as memories of Donald flooded back. He had been one of the most engaging, as well as impossible, men I had known. The traumas
that we experienced while trying to persuade him to retire when well over eighty are still fresh in my mind, and many people have said that no one but Alf could have worked with him for so long, but he did have many special qualities.

Only weeks before my father died, I had been listening to him reminiscing about his life with Donald. I asked him how he had coped with Donald's eccentricities over all their years together, and he paused before replying.

‘I don't really know,' he said, ‘but I can tell you this. We had a hell of a lot of laughs together and, from the first day I met him, I knew that he would never stab me in the back.'

He became immersed in thought again before continuing with his appraisal of his unforgettable partner. His face broke into a smile. ‘Where else would I have found such a wonderful character to weave into my stories?'

My own overriding memories of Donald are of a man who would never do anyone a wrong turn, a loyal colleague who did not speak a single disparaging word of his fellow professionals, and one with that endearing quality of total humility. He would regale us all, not with his successes, but his failures, and I remember his words, ‘If there are mistakes to be made, I have made them. Listen to me and you will learn a lot!'

Above all, I remember a man forever surrounded with an aura of humour and laughter, and whenever I think of him, I am smiling – just as my father did throughout his many years spent enriched by the company of one of the most colourful and entertaining men he had ever known.

Although my father's quiet and unassuming funeral was something that he himself would have wished for, we realised that many others, besides his own family, would want the opportunity to pay their final respects. With these thoughts foremost in our minds, the memorial service for James Alfred Wight was planned during the summer of 1995 and, on 20 October, eight months after his death, the service was held in the magnificent setting of York Minster. This occasion was a memorable one, not only for the moving service and the glorious music, but for the humour rather than the sadness that pervaded the Minster that day. It was truly a celebration of a life that had meant so much to so many.

Chris Timothy and Robert Hardy both gave virtuoso performances reading extracts from James Herriot and P. G. Wodehouse. I gave an address, Rosie's daughter, Emma, gave a reading, and Alex Taylor delivered a moving tribute to his oldest friend. My daughter, Zoe, played the trumpet during the ceremony, as part of the St Peter's School brass group, part of which included a fanfare on the theme music from ‘All Creatures Great and Small', especially composed by the St Peter's School Music Master, Andrew Wright.

Two thousand three hundred people attended the service. There were representatives from the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, the British Veterinary Association and many other professional bodies. His associates from the publishing world were represented, as well as countless friends, clients of the practice, and former assistants who had learned so much from him in those first uncertain steps in their careers.

Fans of his books came from all over the country, from Scotland to the south coast of England – many to honour a man who, simply through his writing, was someone they felt they really knew. My father had remained astonished by his success until the very end of his life and I, too, found the occasion at the Minster almost too much to grasp. I felt privileged to have had a father who had achieved so much from modest beginnings – one to whom so many people had poured into York Minster to pay their respects.

No one, of course, felt the death of my father more keenly than my mother. She had not only lost a husband whom she had loved dearly, but one with whom she had shared a happy and fulfilling life. The quiet house after his death was something that she – as with so many other widowed people – had to learn to live with. Fortunately, in Bodie, the Border Terrier, she still had someone to look after, but this ceased when I put Bodie to sleep eighteen months after my father's death.

My mother, however, is not alone. My father was almost never without a dog, but the only animal that still stalks around his house is a tortoiseshell cat called Cheeky. Around the time I had the sad task of putting Bodie to sleep, this gentle little creature arrived on the doorstep completely uninvited. I have always regarded this as a remarkably providential incident and my mother has proved to be every bit as soft with her animals as her husband had been.

This fortunate cat, as well as being fed as well as Alf Wight had been,
has a centrally-heated porch in which to sleep. The man who installed it could not quite believe what he was doing. ‘I've been asked to do some funny things in my time,' he said to me, ‘but central heating … for a
cat
?'

In March 1996, the veterinary practice of Sinclair and Wight moved from 23 Kirkgate to new premises on the outskirts of Thirsk. The old house may have had a certain charm but with its long winding corridors, lack of space and inadequate parking facilities, it had become a liability. We, literally, had to move to survive.

The famous ivy-covered front with its red door, however, has been preserved as a memorial to James Herriot. In 1996, the local authority, Hambleton District Council, purchased the premises and have converted it into a visitor centre under the title of ‘The World of James Herriot'. Skeldale House will live on for many years to come and it is a fitting tribute by the people of North Yorkshire to one of its most distinguished adopted sons.

I have been asked many times whether my father would have approved of such a massive venture being undertaken in his name – especially as he always tended to shun publicity. He was always grateful for the low-key approach to his success by the local people, but they have revealed their true feelings for him in their overwhelming support for the project. I know that he would have been greatly moved by this gesture of appreciation and respect.

The innumerable tributes paid to Alfred Wight since his death reveal that respect and affection in which he was held by so many throughout the world.

One, from the
Chicago Tribune –
the newspaper that was so influential in igniting the name of James Herriot across the United States of America in 1973 – echoed the feelings of so many people. Mary Ann Grossman wrote:

People often ask me about my favourite author, probably expecting me to wax eloquent about Proust or Shakespeare, so I used to be a little embarrassed to honestly reply, ‘James Herriot'. But not any more. After spending a wonderful weekend re-reading Herriot's books, I realized that his writing has everything; finely-drawn and colorful characters, empathy for humans and animals, a good story set in a gentler time, humor, respect for uneducated but hardworking people and an appreciation of the land.