206 THE FAT OF THE LAND 
é 
of exceeding softness. His nose was straight 
in spite of many a contusion, and his whole 
expression was that of a high-bred gentleman 
somewhat the worse for wear. Sir Tom was 
perfectly groomed when he came forth from 
his chamber, which was usually about ten in the 
morning. 
Those of us who had access to his rooms often 
wondered how he ever got out of them looking so 
immaculate, for they were a perfectly impassable 
jungle to the stranger. Such a tangle of trunks, 
hand-bags, rug bundles, clothes, boots, pajamas, 
newspapers, scrap-books, B. & S. bottles, could 
hardly be found anywhere else in the world. 
He had a fondness for newspaper clippings, 
and had trunks of them, sorted into bundles or 
pasted in scrap-books. Old volumes of Bell’s 
LIfe filled more than one trunk, and on one 
occasion when he and I were spending a long 
evening together, in celebration of his recent 
recovery from an attack of gout, and when he 
had done more than usual justice to the B. & S. 
bottles and less than usual justice to his gout, 
he showed me the record of a long-gone year in 
which this same Bell’s Zzfe called him the “ first 
among the gentlemen riders in the United King- 
dom,” and proved this assertion by showing how 
he had won most of the great steeple-chases in 
England and Ireland, riding his own horses. 
This was the nearest approach to boasting that 
ever came to my knowledge in the years of our 
