Page:The Hambledon Men (1907).djvu/32

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xxvi
INTRODUCTION

lection of Mr. Gaston. Of the Lord's pictures three require special mention. First is the sheet of sketches of cricketers made from life by George Shepherd (1770?-1842) which I give, both in full as the frontispiece, and in detail, opposite pages 68, 76, 136, and 154. This picture is extremely interesting and valuable. It was acquired by the M.C.C. quite recently, and has never been reproduced before; and but for it we should have no pictorial record whatever of David Harris bowling, or Beldham at the wicket. Whether or not Shepherd has quite carried out Nyren's description of either is unimportant; the important thing is that here are sketches from life. Shepherd was himself a cricketer and played for Surrey: his is the figure beneath Harris's. Of the others represented here, Tom Lord was the Middlesex player who preserved the old ground in Dorset Square when these sketches were made. Later, he opened a ground at North Bank, Regent's Park, where the Paddington Canal now runs; and in 1813 or 1814 he opened the present historic ground that bears his name, carrying at each remove his turf with him. He came from Yorkshire and, like Nyren, was a Roman Catholic. He fielded well at the point of the bat, and was a good slow bowler. In 1830 he left London and became a farmer at Westmeon in Hampshire, where he died and was buried in 1832, aged seventy-four. The two Tuftons were the Hon. John who died in 1799, aged only twenty-six, and the Hon. Henry, afterwards Earl of Thanet, who lived till 1849—a good amateur