"All Creatures Great and Small" by James Herriot (1972)

There are few phrases you enjoy hearing more than "Hey, Sam, I got you a book!" Your long time friend Tim Crawford said this to you not long ago and since he is the single most well read person you have ever had the pleasure of knowing you were excited to see what literary gem he was going to bequeath to you. You were surprised when he handed you a copy of "All Creatures Great and Small." He was a touch giddy and smiling as he handed it over as if you should be equally excited and maybe even honored since everyone has heard of this classic. Naturally you felt like an ass for having no idea what it was. He told you that he had read it several times because it was so enjoyable adding the most interesting endorsement you've ever heard for a book. "I found it on sale at Book People. The woman who sold it to me told me that in the ten years she'd been working there, she'd never seen James Herriot go on sale. That's how good this book is." Within a few days you were buried in its pages and realized that Tim and the woman at Book People were right, this book never needs to go on sale.

"All Creatures Great and Small" is a memoir of a country veterinarian in northern England in the 1930's. James Herriot is not the author's real name, he changed his own name and those of many of the book's characters to protect their anonymity. Immediately after graduating from college Herriot finds himself in Yorkshire hoping for a job interview. His potential employer is nowhere to be found once Herriot arrives at the vet's office, so Herriot begins answering rings on the doorbell and dispensing advice and making diagnoses as if he had any real world experience at all, which he does not. Eventually Herriot's would-be employer arrives and, unsurprisingly, hires him on the spot.

Herriot is instantly smitten with the parade of rural characters revolving through the office doors. The Yorkshire Dales are the hills and mountains that form the border between England and Scotland and the folks who live there have never really felt they belonged to either country. This instills in them a fierce self reliance and thriftiness that rings familiar to your Texan heart. The way Herriot writes it, Yorkshire sounds almost like The Shire in the real world. The folks are humble and kind and hearty with an endearing loyalty to family and a love of food and drink. Some barely move a muscle to help the young vet perform his jobs and others literally chase after and tackle bulls with their bare hands to assist Herriot in his endeavors.

One elderly widow called Madame Pumphrey becomes smitten with Herriot and her precious Pekingese adopts him as his uncle. Tricki-Woo, because what else would you name an over pampered Pekingese, showers Herriot with care packages in the mail and invitations to posh parties attended by the very finest of Yorkshire's upper crust. Herriot's adventures in meeting such a cast of eccentric and lovable people made you laugh out loud often in public places.

It was simply one of the most charming books you've read in years. Each chapter forms it's own perfectly crafted story. The book is almost episodic, which is ironic considering it spawned more than one sequel, a movie, and a long-running British TV show.

Herriot writes his dialogue phonetically, like Mark Twain often did, to try and capture the particular pronunciations he heard while in his practice. When arguing the lineage of a cow to be examined by Herriot, one farmer begins debating with his sons. "She was bought in, wasn't she? 'Nay, nay, she's out of awd Dribbler.' 'Don't think so-- Dribbler had nowt but bulls." Quotes like that bring you into the story in a way that a more clean prose simply can't do. It forces you to sound out the words the way the people who are now long dead and gone said them at the time, it brings the language back to life for a brief moment. It serves to make you the conduit for a momentary resurrection, if not of the people, of the time and place they existed.

Each call on the office phone brings Herriot out to far flung highlands and remote farms dealing with everything from cows suffering from difficult birthings to a horse whose intestines are twisted up too badly to survive. Herriot's boss Sigfried and his brother Tristan (what in the hell kind of names are those in Yorkshire?!) help guide Herriot into his new life and ease his transition into the fabric of his adopted society. The farmers and their families suffer from a natural generosity and help to ease his transition too by heaping pounds of homemade bacon and sausages and butter on Herriot in addition to insisting that he "come in for a drink" after every job is completed.

Through the course of the book it is clear that Herriot has become smitten with more than just the citizens of Yorkshire Dales. The landscape of Yorkshire itself becomes as much a character as the people. The haunting lonely highlands and the suicidally steep valleys are clearly enchanting to him. He makes a spring day high in the Dales sound like a piece of heaven and a sudden blizzard on a barren farmland feel like a slice of hell. Herriot quickly adopts the landscape into his heart and revels in the knowledge that his job allows him the freedom to roam this new found glorious countryside. Even in the closing moments of the book, working side by side with his new beautiful wife, Herriot is more interested in describing the majesty of the land around them than the charms of his new bride. In the Dales that form the transition between England and Scotland, Herriot found his home.

But it is not only the land that serves as a transition in the book, a place where one nation becomes another, a region between urban and rural, it is the time that is a transition as well. The 1930's were an in-between era for the western world, a region between the two greatest wars in human history, a transition between the ancient and the modern ways of life. Herriot describes his charge as a country vet as almost sacred in this decade because most of the people in Yorkshire still relied on horses for everything from transportation to providing the muscle power to pull a plow or wagon. Cars were scarce and terrifyingly unsafe. Corporations hadn't yet taken over the raising of livestock so the health of an individual cow could represent and entire family's future well being. Medical practices that would become common place within a few years seemed new and alien. The art of veterinary science still featured a dramatic flare held over from a now bygone era, an era when it was natural for a vet to employ a "therapeutic compound" more for it's tendency to create an impressive puff of purple smoke to awe the farmers more than its tendency to actually heal anything.

The stories are no doubt embellished to the point they might be unrecognizable to the men and women who participated in them, but who cares? It matters less that Herriot got the facts right than that he got the feeling right. "All Creatures Great and Small" felt wonderful. It made you envious of a humble man who lived in a much harder time in a more unforgiving place doing much more difficult work. It's good to be reminded that a humble life can still be an enviable one and that making an impact right where you live can be far more meaningful than seeking false significance and fleeting fame on a larger stage.





On to the next book!