OF YOUNG TOMMY MORRIS AND OTHER GREAT MEN
My way down to the links, from our house, led right through the village
of Northam, wherein Johnnie Allan, the professional, had set up his
shop. Now if there is anyone who, being a golfer, has not appreciated
the delight of the compound smell of the club-maker's shop--the pitch,
the shavings, the glue, the leather and all the rest of the
ingredients--if anywhere there lives a golfer with nose so dead, then I
am very far indeed from thinking that words of mine can excite him to a
right appreciation of this savour. But if not, if the reader has the
truly appreciative nose, then he will realize what a delight it was to
me to look in each morning on the way down to golf to enjoy this, to
exchange a word with Johnnie Allan, to get something quite superfluous
done to a club, and if possible get my friend to come down to the links
with me. Often I would find him sitting on his bench with a golf ball
moulded, but not yet nicked, turning it about with his fingers in the
cup designed for its holding, and hammering it with the broad chisel end
of his hammer made for the purpose. This was in the days of
hand-hammered balls, before the mode had been invented of having the
marking engraved on the mould so as to turn them out what we then
called "machine hammered."
In course of the walk down to the links, if I could persuade him to be
my companion, he used to tell me tales of the great men in the North, of
Old Tom and Young Tommy, of Davie Strath and the rest of them. He was a
Prestwick man, and had come from there to work in Old Tom's shop at St.
Andrews before he journeyed South. He had never done as well as he would
have liked in the championship, but had twice won the first prize given
by way of consolation for those to play for who had not gained a place
in the prize-list in the championship proper. That will indicate his
class as a golfer as more than respectably high. It was about this time
that arrangements were made for bringing down Young Tommy and Bob Kirk
to Westward Ho! (the place was now thoroughly baptised with its new
name), and they played, with Johnnie Allan, a kind of triangular duel.
I well remember the immense excitement with which I followed those
matches. They did not play a three ball match for the prizes offered,
but a species of American tournament in singles, and my delight was huge
when our local friend defeated the renowned Tommy Morris. Then Tommy
defeated Bob Kirk. Now if our Johnnie could only beat Bob Kirk (as he
certainly would, we said, seeing that he had beaten Morris who had
beaten Kirk), why then he would prove himself beyond denial best man of
the three. Unhappily the propositions of golf do not work themselves out
as logically as those of Euclid, though often arriving at his conclusion
"which is absurd," and Bob Kirk had the better of our local hero most of
the way round. He was dormy one. Then, at the last hole, came a great
incident of golf which made on me so deep an impression that in my
mind's eye I can see the whole scene even now. Coming to that last
hole--mark this, that our favourite hero was one down, so that feeling
ran high--Bob Kirk got his ball on one of the high plateaux, with steep
sand cliffs, which at that date jutted out into the big bunker. His ball
lay just at the edge of the plateau, and on its left verge, as we looked
towards the hole, so that to play it in the direction that he wanted to
go it seemed that he would have to stand eight feet below it, in the
bunker. And, he being a little round man, we chuckled in glee and said
to one another, "He's done now." But what do you suppose that pernicious
little Scot did then? He went to his bag and selected a club--a
left-handed spoon! He had a couple of practice swings with it. Then he,
a right-handed man, addressed himself to that ball left-handedly, and
drove it, if not any immense distance, at all events as far as he needed
in order to make morally sure of his half of the hole, which was all
that he, being dormy, required. It was a great _tour de force_. It
exacted our grudging applause. We admired, but at the same time we
admired with suspicion. It was scarcely, as we thought in the
circumstances, a fair golf stroke. It savoured of the conjuring trick if
not of sheer black magic.
Really, considered after this lapse of years which allows cool
reflection, it was a good piece of golf. There are not many right-handed
men who trouble themselves to carry a left-handed club, even if they
have the ambidexterity to use it. In fact it is the only stroke of its
kind, played with a full swing in the crisis of a match, that I have
ever seen.
Young Tommy paid us another visit in the West not long after, and this
time in company with his own dearest foe at St. Andrews, Davie Strath.
So, even in the far West we were not without our great examples, and
Johnnie Allan himself was a golfer well worth following. As the course
then started, out by the Pebble Ridge and at the present third tee, we,
coming from Northam, had to walk out over the flatter part of the
Burrows which the first and second, and, again, the seventeenth and
eighteenth holes occupy now. That meant, of course, that we would take a
club with us and practise shots as we went along; and since I so often
had Johnnie Allan as my companion on those walks, it would be very hard
for me to say how much of golfing skill and wisdom I did not
unconsciously pick up as we went along and he watched me play the shots
and criticised them. I have never in my life been through the solemn
process of a set lesson with a professional, but have no doubt that I
assimilated wisdom in the best, because the unconscious and the
imitative, way, in those walks and talks, varied by occasional precept
and example, with Johnnie Allan.
And by the same route came Captain Molesworth and his three sons, but
they, having further to go, used to drive, the Captain generally
manipulating the reins in strictly professional style--as a sailor
clutches the rudder lines--and their carriage, going at full speed of
the horse, making very heavy weather of it over the ruts and bumps, and
only the sailor's special providence ever bringing them safe to port
before the Iron Hut. There the Captain would tie his horse, by a halter,
to the wheel of the cart and leave all to get itself into a tangle that
only a nautical hand could unravel, while all the world played golf.
Sometimes we too would ride or drive, and I have in mind a great
occasion on which my brother, home from India, and I were driving down
in my sister's donkey-cart. The cart broke down in Northam village, so
we left it there, in charge of the blacksmith, to repair, while we
proceeded on, both mounted on the donkey. Now my brother was very much
of what at that time was called a "dandy"--since "masher," and at the
present moment "nut." He was arrayed in Solomon-like glory of white
flannel trousers and red coat--for men did play golf in red coats in
those days. Now the donkey was a good donkey and strong, but he knew
how to kick, and he thought no occasion could be better than when he had
two on his back and the central and fashionable high street of Northam
village for the arena. Therefore he set to and quickly kicked us both
off, I being involved in my brother's debacle, and he, though a very
good man on a horse, not being accustomed to a saddleless donkey. The
glory of Solomon disposed on the village streets was a splendid
spectacle. But we rose, nothing daunted, though with the glory a little
sullied, and, my brother then excogitating the great thought that if we
put his, the greater, weight behind, with mine in front--it had been the
other way at our first essay--the donkey would then find it the harder
to lift its hindquarters for the act of kicking, we disposed ourselves
in that manner, and the donkey, whether for mechanical reasons or
because he perceived that we were not going to let him off the double
burden, proceeded with the proverbial patience of his kind and we
reached the links without further accident.
[Illustration: Westward Ho!
The Molesworths, father and three sons, returning from the Iron Hut,
with Major Hopkins, the golfing artist, in the forefront.]
[Illustration: An Old Hoylake Group.
The names, reading from left to right are: Milligan (Captain, 1875),
Alex. Brown (Captain, 1880), Major Hopkins, James Rodger, James Tweedle
(Secretary, 1873-81), F.P. Crowther, Jack Morris, ---- , Robert Wilson
(the "Chieftain"), Rev. T.P. Williamson, Dr. Argyll Robertson, Colonel
E.H. Kennard (Captain, 1871-73), John Ball, sen., ---- , J.F. Raimes, H.
Grierson (Captain, 1876), John Dunn (Captain, 1873-75), J.B. Amey,
Theophilus Turpin, ---- , T.O. Potter (Secretary, 1882-94), A. Sinclair
(Captain, 1887), Mat Langlands, Robert ("Pendulum") Brown, A.F. Macfie.
The Royal Hotel at that time had the Club rooms adjoining it.]
Mr. Gossett and his sons would be coming from the other direction, from
Westward Ho! for he gave up the cure of Northam about this time and went
to live at Westward Ho! and with others coming on the same line there
would be a great re-union at the Iron Hut before starting out on
matches--a great match-making too, for in those days we did not make our
matches very long beforehand, and such things as handicap competitions
were not known among us. They were soon evolved, but the idea of any
fixed handicap, by which each man should know his value, was not so much
as thought of. Matches were made by a process of stiff bargaining
between the parties concerned. "How much will you give me?" "A third."
"Oh, my dear fellow, I couldn't possibly play you at less than a half!"
The humility that was displayed was most edifying. We had twice the fun
over our matches then, just because of this bargaining and all the
talents of Uriah Heap that it brought into sharp prominence. One of the
best of the match makers, and one of the bravest, though very far from
the best of the golfers, was Captain Molesworth, familiarly known to all
and sundry as "the old Mole."