30 The Old Surrey Fox Hounds 



The old hall at Garston, which boasts of a wonderful 

 cedar, lies rather more than a mile from the rail. It is 

 surrounded by a little colony of snug cottages, which 

 make up quite a pleasant village, with Tom as the patriarch. 

 The chalk-stone gout had used him rather ill of late, and 

 he had also a bad fall last season, which still makes it 

 difficult for him to raise his left arm to his head. This is 

 not the first of his misfortunes in that way, as he has 

 broken both arms, three ribs (by falling on his horn in 

 the days when they carried them slung), the cup of his 

 elbow in three or four bits, and his plate-bone as well. 

 Gout, however, bothers him most, and makes his action 

 rather short, but still he gets along as of old when he is 

 once on his pigskin throne. It was with reference to 

 his woes in this way that he said, when we observed that 

 his eyes were rather shut in a photograph, c Next time I'll 

 have it taken when I've got the gout ; that will make me 

 open them fast enough.' Still, we found him very 

 cheery, seated in his armchair, which the coat of his 

 once-honoured dark chestnut Paddy (one of the horses 

 portrayed in our frontispiece) has lined. The chairs in 

 the room had all hound-skin cushions, taken from nine of 

 the best of the seven couple of rare bitches which fell 106 

 feet down a cutting on the Brighton rail some seven years 

 ago. Will Long, Mr. Davis, Mr. Haigh (an old Master 

 of the pack), Squire Waring with his Kent harriers, Lord 

 Derby's staghounds with Jonathan Griffin on his grey, 

 and the Old Surrey Hunt, after Barraud, lent lustre to 

 the walls. Tom, as all the world knows, is in the centre 



