All Things Wise and Wonderful Read online

  All Things Wise and Wonderful

  James Herriot

  To my dogs,

  Hector and Dan

  Faithful companions of the daily round

  All things bright and beautiful,

  All creatures great and small,

  All things wise and wonderful,

  The Lord God made them all.

  Cecil Frances Alexander 1818-1895

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  A Biography of James Herriot

  CHAPTER 1

  “MOVE!” BAWLED THE DRILL corporal. “Come on, speed it up!” He sprinted effortlessly to the rear of the gasping, panting column of men and urged us on from there.

  I was somewhere in the middle, jog-trotting laboriously with the rest and wondering how much longer I could keep going. And as my ribs heaved agonisingly and my leg muscles protested I tried to work out just how many miles we had run.

  I had suspected nothing when we lined up outside our billets. We weren’t clad in PT kit but in woollen pullovers and regulation slacks and it seemed unlikely that anything violent was imminent. The corporal, too, a cheerful little cockney, appeared to regard us as his brothers. He had a kind face.

  “Awright lads,” he had cried, smiling over the fifty new airmen. “We’re just going to trot round to the park, so follow me. Le-eft turn! At the double, qui-ick march! ’eft-ight ’eft-ight ’eft-ight!”

  That had been a long, long time ago and we were still reeling through the London streets with never a sign of a park anywhere. The thought hammered in my brain that I had been under the impression that I was fit. A country vet, especially in the Yorkshire Dales, never had the chance to get out of condition; he was always on the move, wrestling with the big animals, walking for miles between the fell-side barns; he was hard and tough. That’s what I thought.

  But now other reflections began to creep in. My few months of married life with Helen had been so much lotus eating. She was too good a cook and I was too faithful a disciple of her art. Just lounging by our bed-sitter’s fireside was the sweetest of all occupations. I had tried to ignore the disappearance of my abdominal muscles, the sagging of my pectorals, but it was all coming home to me now.

  “It’s not far now, lads,” the corporal chirped from the rear, but he struck no responsive chords in the toiling group. He had said it several times before and we had stopped believing him.

  But this time it seemed he really meant it, because as we turned into yet another street I could see iron railings and trees at the far end. The relief was inexpressible. I would just about have the strength to make it through the gates—to the rest and smoke which I badly needed because my legs were beginning to seize up.

  We passed under an arch of branches which still bore a few autumn leaves and stopped as one man, but the corporal was waving us on.

  “Come on, lads, round the track!” he shouted and pointed to a broad earthen path which circled the park.

  We stared at him. He couldn’t be serious! A storm of protest broke out.

  “Aw no, corp …!” “Have a heart, corp …!”

  The smile vanished from the little man’s face. “Get movin’, I said! Faster, faster … one-two, one-two.”

  As I stumbled forward over the black earth, between borders of sooty rhododendrons and tired grass, I just couldn’t believe it. It was all too sudden. Three days ago I was in Darrowby and half of me was still back there, back with Helen. And another part was still looking out of the rear window of the taxi at the green hills receding behind the tiled roofs into the morning sunshine; still standing in the corridor of the train as the flat terrain of southern England slid past and a great weight built up steadily in my chest.

  My first introduction to the RAF was at Lord’s cricket ground. Masses of forms to fill, medicals, then the issue of an enormous pile of kit. I was billeted in a block of flats in St. John’s Wood—luxurious before the lush fittings had been removed. But they couldn’t take away the heavy bathroom ware and one of our blessings was the unlimited hot water gushing at our touch into the expensive surroundings.

  After that first crowded day I retired to one of those green-tiled sanctuaries and lathered myself with a new bar of a famous toilet soap which Helen had put in my bag. I have never been able to use that soap since. Scents are too evocative and the merest whiff jerks me back to that first night away from my wife, and to the feeling I had then. It was a dull, empty ache which never really went away.

  On the second day we marched endlessly; lectures, meals, inoculations. I was used to syringes but the very sight of them was too much for many of my friends. Especially when the doctor took the blood samples; one look at the dark fluid flowing from their veins and the young men toppled quietly from their chairs, often four or five in a row while the orderlies, grinning cheerfully, bore them away.

  We ate in the London Zoo and our meals were made interesting by the chatter of monkeys and the roar of lions in the background. But in between it was march, march, march, with our new boots giving us hell.

  And on this third day the whole thing was still a blur. We had been wakened as on my first morning by the hideous 6 a.m. clattering of dustbin lids; I hadn’t really expected the silvery tones of a bugle but I found this totally unromantic din intolerable. However, at the moment my only concern was that we had completed the circuit of the park. The gates were only a few yards ahead and I staggered up to them and halted among my groaning comrades.

  “Round again, lads!” the corporal yelled, and as we stared at him aghast he smiled affectionately. “You think this is tough? Wait till they get hold of you at ITW. I’m just kinda breakin’ you urgently. You’ll thank me for this later. Right, at the double! One-two, one two!”

  Bitter thoughts assailed me as I lurched forward once more. Another round of the park would kill me—there was not a shadow of a doubt about that. You left a loving wife and a happy home to serve king and country and this was how they treated you. It wasn’t fair.

  The night before I had dreamed of Darrowby. I was back in old Mr. Dakin’s cow byre. The farmer’s patient eyes in the long, drooping-moustached face looked down at me from his stooping height.

  “It looks as though it’s over wi’ awd Blossom, then,” he said, and rested his hand briefly on the old cow’s back. It was an enormous, work-swollen hand. Mr. Dakin’s gaunt frame carried little flesh but the grossly thickened fingers bore testimony to a life of toil.

  I dried off t