Mat Dawson's Residence.

Otago Witness, Issue 1892, 15 May 1890, Page 27

Mat Dawson's Residence.

After bidding adieu to St. Albans and its genial young host, we drive over to the residence of the principal, Mr Mat Dawson himself, whose place is about two miles distant, and are there courteously ushered into the snug library, where enters soon after one of the heartiest of the old type of English squires, with a jolly, red face, and pleasant, agreeable manner, who puts us at ease at once for the liberty we have taken in intruding upon him. Mr Dawson is past the middle age — he tells us he has been 40 years connected with the turf in England — with the trifle of thin hair he has on the lower part of his face turning to grey, but he bears hifi yeaas like a man who has spent his life well and carefully. Hi 3 accent is decidedly provincial, and he uses the colloquial " Aye " frequently by way of remark or assent. Before his entrance into the library we had time just to glance round the comfortable, neatly furnished room and take in the outlines of the scores of equine celebrities of the present and past, whose presentments find expression on the canvas adorning every inch almost of available space on the four walls, and to notice the well-stocked book case devoted to turf matters exclusively, and the smiling green lawn visible through the windows immediately behind the library table, and a small cast in bronze of the famous stallion St. Simon, carefully enclosed in a glass case 2ft high. "No occasion to apologise at all," said Mr Dawson. He was pleased to see us. We talked pretty well round the racing compass, and finally settled down to a discussion of the tbeme which was uppermost in our minds. He thought it a pity the time test, so universally and successfully used and applied in Australia, was not in operation in this country. Here the trainer did not judge of the merits or the demerits of bis charges by the watch, but by taking a line against other performers. There was no record kept which would enable a person to say which was the greatest or most meritorious performance on the English turf, or to compare the horses of the past with those of the present. The English racehorse belongs simply to his own generation, as far as actual performance is concerned, and beyond that period no parallel can be drawn. In speaking of any of the great performers Mr Dawson is careful, by habit apparently, to limit his remarks to the period covered by the horse's career, as "He was the best of his time," or such like.