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| The World of James Herriot, Thirsk, UK |
In his novel All Creatures Great and Small, writer James Herriot paints an intriguing portrait of his younger colleague Tristan Farnon. Unlike in the 1970s TV series, we don't see his first arrival in town by train. Instead, Tristan hitchhikes his way home from veterinary college in Edinburgh.* When James picks him up at a cafe on the Great North Road, Tristan carries his own luggage out to the car, instead of expecting James to carry it.
As in the TV series, Tristan gets on well with older folks. There are, for example, his fellow members of the Darrowby Bellringers Society. But there is also old Boardman, a character not featured in the TV series.
The old man, a WWI veteran, serves as gardener for Siegfried. Although he's friendly with James, Tristan is the one whom he's most taken with. Perhaps it's the youthful high spirits that prompt Tristan to ride a bike through Skeldale House while performing his errands.
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| The back garden of "Skeldale House" |
I suspect that easygoing Tristan possesses vast stores of patience, and is a good listener. Old Boardman always welcomes Tristan into his little gardening headquarters, whereas, according to Herriot, few others are ever invited. There, surrounded by his tools and Bairnsfather cartoons, the veteran regales Tristan with his wartime adventures.
Tristan may be training to be a veterinarian, but he also loves to study personalities. When Siegfried strongarms him into caring for the chickens, he spectacularly fails to do so regularly enough to produce eggs. Yet on the occasions he does feed them, he studies them intensely, learning to distinguish each by sounds and mannerisms.
When Tristan is forced to feed the pigs Siegfried buys, he finds himself attracted to the piglets. Yet as they mature, and trade in their youthful personalities for increased girth and determination to consume, his affection for and interest in them wanes. Perhaps Tristan missed his calling as a psychologist?
Additionally, despite not always doing well at university, Tristan possesses a keen mind for facts. James Herriot finds it humiliating to do the daily newspaper at Skeldale House, as Tristan can finish them in the time it takes James to fill in one answer.
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| Actor Peter Davison (Tristan) visits the real "Skeldale House"** |
All these little observations that James Herriot puts into his novel may not be at odds with the Tristan that we saw on our TV screens in the original All Creatures Great and Small series, but they do enhance our understanding of him. Or at least, the fictional character based on Brian Sinclair, as chronicled by James Herriot, the pen name of veterinarian Alf Wight.
Perhaps sometime I'll have to watch the 2020 TV series, and see how they portray Tristan in the updated show.
Dragon Dave
*That's a 180 mile journey. Given the state of the roads back then, I wonder how long it would have taken him to reach Thirsk (Darrowby), and if he managed it in one day.
**Photo from The World of James Herriot, Thirsk, UK
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