HOW GOLF IN ENGLAND GREW
There are two outstanding events in golfing history--the bringing of
golf to Westward Ho! by General Moncrieffe in 1863, and the bringing of
golf to Blackheath by James VI. of Scotland and I. of England some three
centuries earlier. When golf was started at Westward Ho! it was the
worthies of the Blackheath Club that gave it a reputation which went
growing like a snowball. The North Devon Club began to wax fat and so
exceeding proud that at meeting times--for challenge medals were
presented and meetings in spring and autumn were held to compete for
them, after the model of St. Andrews--a bathing machine was dragged out
by coastguards to the tee to the first hole, and therein sandwiches and
liquid refreshment were kept during the morning round and actually
consumed if the weather were wet. In fine weather the entertainment was
_al fresco_. Then the Club acquired a tent; and an ancient mariner,
Brian Andrews, of Northam village, father of the Philip Andrews who is
now steward of the Golf Club, used to hoist this and care for it, and at
length, as of natural process of evolution, came the crowning glory of a
permanent structure of corrugated iron, built beside and even among the
grey boulders of the Pebble Ridge.
This permanent object of care entailed the permanency of Brian Andrews
as caretaker. Enormous was the career of extravagance on which the Club
now embarked, engaging a resident professional all the way from St.
Andrews--John Allan. He was the first Scot ever to come to England as a
resident golf professional, and there never came a kinder-hearted or
better fellow. He established himself in a lodging, with his shop and
bench on the ground floor, in Northam village, which stands high on a
hill above the level of the links, and was best part of a mile and a
half from the present third, and then first, tee. A few years before, in
the earliest days of the Club's history, old Tom Morris had been down to
advise about the green, and when I came to my teens and therewith to
some interest in golf, and to a friendship, very quickly formed, with
poor Johnnie Allan, he told me that when he had asked old Tom for
information about this new course in the new country that he was going
to, he found that the old man (though he was not of any great age then)
could tell him little enough about the course, but that all he seemed to
remember was that there was a terrible steep hill to climb, after the
day's work was done, on the way home.
So there is--Bone Hill, on which the village stands, so called from the
bones of Danes killed in a great battle there, and of which bones, as we
piously believed, the hill, save for a thin coat of soil over their
graves, was wholly made--but it is quaint and characteristic of the old
man that this steep place should have stuck in his mind and that all the
salient features of the new course should have slipped out. It seems as
if not even any of the points of the big rushes could have stuck and
gone back to Scotland with him.
Soon after there came South from Scotland to the Wimbledon Club another
most perfect of Nature's gentlemen, in Tom Dunn, of a great golfing
family and father of several fine professional players.
And now, with a club-house, though it was but an iron hut, a resident
professional and appointed times of meeting, the Club was a live thing,
and the complete and final act of its lavish expenditure was to engage a
permanent green man--only one, but he had what seemed the essential
qualification of an education as a miner in the Western States of
America--an excellent and entertaining fellow, Sowden by name, a North
Devonian by birth, with a considerable gift of narrative and just about
as much inclination to work on the course and knowledge of his duties as
these antecedents would be likely to inspire in him.
While the Club was thus growing, my small body was growing too; but the
way of my growth, all through life, has been rather that of an erratic
powerful player, falling continually into very bad bunkers of
ill-health, but making brilliant recoveries in the interims. My father
tried two schools for me, but I was invalided home from both, and I
expect it would have ended in my escape from all education whatever if
it had not been that the United Services College was started at Westward
Ho! only two miles from our house. But that was not till I reached the
august age of fifteen or thereabouts, by which time English golf had
developed largely. The first really fine English golfer that we produced
in the West of England was George Gossett, son of the vicar of Northam.
When the big men came down from Scotland and from Blackheath, to the
meetings, they found a local golfer able to make a match with the best
of them. And hard after him came Arthur Molesworth, a very fine player
even as a boy. I remember that while he was still a Radley schoolboy,
his father, the Captain, begged a holiday for him to enable him to come
and play for the medal--I think he would have been about sixteen at the
time--and he came and won it, in a field which included Sir Robert Hay
and other well-known players. There were three brothers of the
Molesworths, good golfers all, but Arthur, the youngest, the best of the
three. The two elder have been dead for many years, but the father[2]
and the youngest son still live at Westward Ho!
At this time I had an elder brother at home, invalided from his regiment
in India. I was also assigned an almost more valuable possession, in the
shape of an Exmoor pony which could jump like a grasshopper and climb
like a cat any of the big Devonshire banks that it was unable to jump.
So, in company with this big brother and this small pony, I used to
follow the hounds over a country that seems specially designed for the
riding of a small boy on a pony; and in company with the brother, the
pony being left behind, I used to go badger digging--my brother had a
kennel of terriers for the purpose--all over the countryside.
Of course it was a misspent youth. Of course I was neglecting great
opportunities, for to tell the truth I greatly preferred the chase of
the fox and the badger at that period of life to the chase of the golf
ball. This sad fact should have been brought home to me by a severe
comment of my Uncle Fred on the occasion of our playing for some prizes
kindly given for the juveniles by some of the elder golfers. As I hit
off from the first tee--all along the ground, if I remember right--he
observed sadly, "There's too much fox and badger about his golf."
[Illustration: The Ladies' Course at Pau, in the Days of the
Crinoline.]
[Illustration: Miss Cecil Leitch.]
And so there was, but, for all that, I won a prize in that competition.
I think it was in the under twelve class, for which I was just eligible
by age, whereas my only rival in the same class was a child of nine.
Therefore I returned in triumph with a brand-new driver as a reward of
merit--my first prize--and I think it made me regard golf as a better
game than I had supposed it to be, for, after all, a driver is of more
practical use than a fox's brush, and this was the highest award that
the most daring riding could gain for you. A boy's property is usually
so limited that any addition to it is of very large importance.
About a year later I began to take my golf with gravity. The ball began
to consent to allow itself to be hit cleanly. A very great day came for
me when I beat my big brother on level terms. You see, he had only
played occasionally, at intervals in soldiering, nor had he begun as a
boy, whereas I had played, even then, more than he, and had begun, in
spite of the wasted years, fairly early. I know I felt I had done rather
an appalling thing when I beat him; I could not feel that it was right.
But doubtless it increased my self-respect as a golfer and my interest
in the game. The Blackheath visitors were very kind to me, and used to
take me into their games. Of course I could not expect to be in such
high company as that of the George Glennies and the Buskins, but Mr.
Frank Gilbert, brother of Sir Frederick, the artist, Mr. Peter Steel and
many others invited me now and then to play with them. I began to think
myself something of a player. The most dreadful event, most evil, no
doubt, in its effect on my self-conceit, happened when Mr. Dingwall
Fordyce, who was a player of the class that we might to-day describe as
"an indifferent scratch," asked me to play with him. He offered--I had
made no demand for odds--to give me four strokes, and asked at what
holes I would have them. At that date, be it remembered, there were no
handicaps fixed by the card, nor were the holes determined at which
strokes were to be taken. It was always at the option of the receiver of
strokes to name, before starting, the holes at which he would take his
strokes. I told Mr. Fordyce I would take the four he offered at the four
last holes. He said nothing, though likely enough he thought a good
deal. What he ought to have done was to thrash me, for an impertinent
puppy, with his niblick; but what he did, far too good-naturedly, was to
come out and play me at those strange terms, with the result that I beat
him by five up and four to play without using any of the strokes at all!
It was precisely what had been in my mind to do when I took the strokes
at those last four holes, but I expect the reason I won was that he was
a little thrown off his balance by my cheek.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: While writing the later pages of these reminiscences I
heard, to my great sorrow, that Captain Molesworth had died, at Westward
Ho! of pneumonia, at nearly ninety years of age.--H.G.H.]