i8 ECHOES OF OLD COUNTY LIFE. 



arrived in town, forty miles, by ten o'clock ; found the 

 valet bad gone to Drury Lane Theatre ; went there and 

 brought him off; and by nine o'clock the next morning, 

 in a yellow post-chaise and pair, came the valet with a 

 change of costume for Sir Count, who appeared in full 

 hunting panoply, radiant with smiles, the admired of all 

 admirers, at the meet at Aston Abbotts. This freak 

 of fashion must have cost him at least £io, as the 

 railway was not then opened, and posting was a heavy 

 item. The old cook, who had come from IMerton 

 College, Oxford, when my father, Mr. Fowler, first 

 came to Aylesbury, more than twenty years previous, 

 was pronounced by the Count, who called his friends 

 around him and walked into the kitchen to show them, 

 "the finest specimen of the English cook he had ever 

 seen in his life." Poor old cook ! He was indeed a 

 wonder, living forty-seven years at the White Hart, 

 where, single-handed, he has sent up dinners for 400 

 guests, and never a sauce or condiment forgotten. He 

 was known to every nobleman and gentleman in the 

 county, and was one of the best servants a master ever 

 had. 



The Earl of Erroll was a most popular Master of 

 the Buckhounds, and his brothers-in-law, Lords Frederick 

 and Adolphus, were always with him at the Aylesbury 

 meetings ; the latter a most wonderful likeness to his 

 father, King William IV. Neither of them were good 

 men over so stiff a country as the Vale of Aylesbury, 

 but their genial manner, their handsome, good-natured 

 countenances, and the splendid style of all their 

 appointments, made them well noted in the field and in 



