I didn’t move on to All Things Bright and Beautiful this time around, but I remember liking that book better because there was less of the Siegfried-Tristan dynamic and much more Helen – with the focus shifting to happy married life. If anyone read it more recently (@HImom ?), they will have to verify whether my recollection is true.
I don’t think James Herriot ever tried–or intended to try–for character development. That just wasn’t the direction he was going in. I watched some of the new PBS series and there is much more nuance in the relationships (plus it gives Mrs. Hall a role with more depth and importance).
Watching just a few episodes also helped me picture the setting better (and I also enjoyed looking at the photos of “Skeldale House” in the link @ignatius posted above).
I agree that it is definitely best read in small episodic chunks. I became interested in the cover illustrations and what they communicated about the work. To my eye, there are three interpretations.
First, a focus on animals, mostly appearing solo, with humans in the background if at all. That makes sense, given the nature of the book.
The second theme might be called bucolic farm life, with humans and animals in peaceful coexistence, and sweeping views of the Yorkshire Dales. I got distracted by an image search of the area, and I’ve added it to my travel bucket list. In the summer.
Finally, and this is what got me interested in the notion, are the covers that contextualize Herriot as both vet and human being. The edition I had from the library was the middle illustration, and I was fascinated that the cover art continued around the spine to eventually include the tiny woman on the back cover.
The relative size of the woman and the man sparked an internal dialog, not to mention the visual importance given to the animals over her being relegated to the periphery. And when I started searching online, I was interested to see the difference where the hand reaching toward the woman is gloved in one variation. Insert Freudian dissertation here!
I have the 1975 version with the ungloved hand; otherwise, it’s identical to the one on the bottom left of @stradmom’s post. It’s fascinating that they decided to re-touch to include a glove at all, as the use of gloves doesn’t figure into any of the stories. The depiction is an anachronism. I did a search on my Kindle – only winter gloves or motoring gloves are mentioned.
I went on to my friend the internet and learned that exam gloves weren’t routinely used–for humans–until the late 1930’s. Farm vets did what James is constantly doing – soaping up to the elbows, then going into the body cavity bare-handed. I sure don’t blame him for trying out Mrs. Hall’s bath salts.
Helen is only slightly less tiny on the cover of All Things Bright and Beautiful, just down left from a horse’s behind.
That’s very funny about the covers. I read the one where Helen is relegated to the back cover. Which did not bother me that much as she was definitely not the focus of the book, though I did enjoy the bad date stories. I found it was perfect bathroom reading (and I mean that in a good way.) Books without plots are easy to put down and pick up again.
But sometimes the episodic nature of the story really irritated me. For example when he arrives at Siegfried’s he makes a big deal of the multiple dogs. And then you don’t see those dogs for 185 pages!
These covers are the same as I have. Just now I realized that the arm is abnormally long. No wonder he can get so far into a cow! It reminds me of the romance novel covers where the heroine appears to have legs twice the normal length.
I never really paid much attention to the cover nor how women were pictured. It’s true the stories are a series of short vignettes rather than something building to a climax. The people are almost incidental. The Siegfried/Tristan dynamic didn’t particularly resonate nor bother me.
The other books have Tristan off at his new job and the newer young vets that come into the practice plus several drunken episodes with Granville Bennett. One of the books focuses a lot more on his 4year war training experiences.
I liked the episodic nature because it jibed with my busy schedule over the past couple of months. Having previously read the book, I didn’t have any particular expectations to be fulfilled. I will say, though, in terms of editing, that it was clear to me where the original two books (If Only They Could Talk and It Shouldn’t Happen to a Vet) were pasted together into one. It was chapter 32, half-way through:
The case had started when my boss, Siegfried Farnon, who owned the practice in the little Dales market town of Darrowby, sent me to a milk fever.
^ That’s 200 pages in, when we clearly don’t need an introduction to Siegfried or the locale. Not a complaint, just an observation.
If I DID have a complaint, it would be that I had to read a version of this sentence one too many times:
I enjoyed this book. I think my favorite parts were where this vet, who thought he wanted city practice with small animals, glowed over the wee farm animals and lovely scenery. I really liked it when he’d stop the car in the countryside to drink it all in.
I’ve thought about why Siegfried became a country vet. Perhaps for the same reason Herriot does? Veterinary jobs may have been hard to come at the time he needed a job. If I remember correctly (and I may not), Siegfried entered an established practice as a young vet and then stayed when the older vet moved on.
Doubtless Siegfried was an excellent vet. Good with animals but less so with people (or managing a business). I totally understand why the book caused friction between the two men. It doesn’t show Siegfried in the best of lights and airs too much of his “family laundry” (relationship with his brother). I was shocked when he blew the chance to work with racehorses.
I think the vet practice sign acknowledging Herriot as partner the day he married Helen was lovely.
I agree. It showed the thoughtful side of Siegfried which we didn’t get to see very often. I also liked that when he complained about the timing of James’ wedding, and James decided to stay and do tuberculin tests on his honeymoon, Siegfried backed off and tried hard to get him to change his mind. (“He argued and protested and for once I got my way.”) Siegfried was mostly just bluster, good-hearted underneath it all.
Correct – Dr. Grant.
When Siegfried had bought the practice from the old vet who had worked on into his eighties these instruments had come with it and they lay there in rows, unused but undisturbed. It would have been logical to throw them out, but maybe Siegfried felt the same way about them as I did. The polished wooden boxes of shining, odd-shaped scalpels, the enema pumps and douches with their perished rubber and brass fittings, the Seaton needles, the ancient firing irons–they were a silent testament to sixty years of struggle.
Another redeeming moment for Siegfried was when he took one of those old instruments and used an unconventional method to save the gipsies’ pony, then stayed to chat with the children:
He pulled out the bag of peppermint drops which was an ever-present among his widely-varied pocket luggage and I settled myself for a long wait. I had seen him in action with the children on the farms and when that bag of sweets came out, everything stopped. It was the one time Siegfried was never in a hurry (p. 385).
Re the bloodletting of the pony, I learned that though the practice has been completely halted (“Yes, my boy, I’m going to take you back to the Middle Ages”), it was based on a bit of scientific truth, which may explain Siegried’s success: https://understandinglaminitis.com/blood-letting/
(Probably the one and only time in my life I’ll refer to a website for the book Laminitis: Understanding, Cure, Prevention. )
Haven’t read the whole thread; I’m visiting my grandkids. I’ll read all this tomorrow.
But, my overall impression was like eating a box of chocolates. Each one was good by itself, but reading/eating one right after the other was too sweet for me.
Here’s an article (encompassing both the book and the series) that does a good job of explaining what I could not quite articulate about why the book appeals to me.
The writer describes the chapter in the book where James is utterly exhausted and out of ideas during a difficult calving: “So he’s in this barn in the middle of the night with numb fingers, trying to force a cord between a fetal calf’s teeth, and everything about it seems impossible.”
As much as anything, this was what impressed me when I first read the books, and what impressed me again watching the series. Large animal veterinary work is so physical — often literally crushing — and there’s something so lonely and Sisyphean and also very, very simple about this young man doing backbreaking work for hours trying to help this calf be born. The drama of All Creatures Great and Small is life and death, and it’s also remarkably tiny. It’s one man, maybe one or two anxious farmers, and one very tired cow. And yet in spite of the job’s brutal bodily bluntness, Herriot’s descriptions of himself in the book and his depiction in this new series are incredibly tender. It is one of the gentlest, sweetest depictions of masculinity I ever encountered in my young reading life. Herriot is not brooding, not wounded, not thorny and dangerous, not distant or unemotional. He’s practical and patient. He loves the animals he cares for so much (even the ones he finds ridiculous or frightening), and he never confuses directness with harshness. He hates it when he can’t save an animal, but he is not afraid of helping animals die peacefully when there’s no other choice. He’s not infallible, and when he does make mistakes, he admits to them without defensiveness or anger. ‘All Creatures Great and Small’ Is the Perfect Winter Escape
In the same vein, of healthy masculinity was the guy who took such good care of his old horses even though they hadn’t done any farmwork for over 12 years.
I like the description you posted about what is impressive about All Creatures Great and Small. I agree. It made me think of question #7 above. I feel Herriot is telling what he believes, with a tiny bit of a white lie included. Here is his exchange with Miss Stubbs when she asks if her animals will go with her once she dies. Will she see them again?
When Miss Stubbs asked him if he thought animials had souls he answered:
Miss Stubbs answers “Oh I hope you’re right. Sometimes I lie at night thinking about it.”
Herriot:
I know I’m right, Miss Stubbs, and don’t you argue with me. They teach us vets all about animals’ souls.
Miss Stubbs goes on to ask him his specific beliefs and Herriot answered
Miss Stubbs, I’m afraid I’m a bit foggy about all this. But I’m absolutely certain of one thing. Wherever you are going, they are going too." … I do believe it, With all my heart I believe it.
I loved the Miss Stubbs conversation as well. It reminded me of when I was young and my siblings and I were fretting that our beloved cat couldn’t one day be with us in heaven. The parish priest told us, “Heaven is a place of perfect happiness. If you require your cat to in order to be perfectly happy, he’ll be there.” It wasn’t in the Catechism, but it was a great bit of theology. I’m still expecting our long-gone feline to meet me at the pearly gates.
When my BIL was a bit blue because the 14+ year dog he inherited from his sister had died, I told him his sister was probably missing her dog and they were now happy together. It made BIL a bit happier.
)