THE SPREAD OF GOLFING IN ENGLAND
It seems to me that the establishment of the Club at Westward Ho! and
the discovery that it was possible to play golf, and the very best of
golf, in England, even as in Scotland, sent a new thrill of life into
all the dormant golfing energies of the country. It stirred up the
Blackheathens; then it led to the institution of the Golf Club
associated with the London Scottish Volunteers, which was later to
develop a schism, of which one division became the Royal Wimbledon Golf
Club. The great man of the volunteers was the still present Lord
Wemyss,[3] then Lord Elcho, and he was as keen a golfer as rifle shot.
To us at Westward Ho! the Wimbledon Club sent down Henry Lamb, Dr.
Purves and many more; but these two were perhaps their strongest. Of the
Blackheathens I have spoken, but I want to give a special word to Mr.
Frank Gilbert, both because he was especially kind, of all the others,
to me as a boy and also because his gift of nomenclature survives in the
popular name still often ascribed to one of the Westward Ho! holes. At
times of excitement his aspirates used to fly. He was perfectly aware of
it and did not in the least mind gentle chaff on the subject. I even
think he often sent them flying purposely, for sake of effect. After
all, he used just as many aspirates as anyone else, only that he used
them in rather different places: that was all. The hole that his genius
named was that which is now the ninth, and its naming was on this wise:
after hacking his ball out of first one bunker, thence into another, and
from that into a third, he exclaimed in accents of inspiration and
despair, "I call this 'ole the halligator 'ole, because it's full of
gaping jaws waiting to devour you." Therefore the "halligator 'ole" it
remained for many a year afterwards and is so known to some even to this
day. I remember another exclamation of his that gave us purest joy at
the time, when, having made what he believed to be a lovely shot over a
brow to a "blind" hole in a hollow he ran up to the top of the brae in
exultation, only to turn back with tragic dismay on his face and on his
lips the eloquent expostulation, "Oh, 'ell, they've haltered the 'ole."
I used to play him for a ball--a shilling gutta-percha ball--on the
match, and for a long while, when I was a boy, we were fairly equal, and
how often, towards the end of the match, he would miss a short putt in
order that he might pay me the shilling, and not I him, I should be
sorry to say. I know it was pretty frequently.
And then this thrill of new golfing life started at Westward Ho!
communicated itself to the many Scots established in Liverpool, so that
in 1869 they so far organised themselves as to institute that which is
now the Royal Liverpool Golf Club, playing at Hoylake. What that meant
for us at Westward Ho! was that men of Hoylake came down to play matches
with our local heroes and to take part in our medal competitions. There
were Mr. John Dunn and Mr. John Ball, the father of our many times
champion. Colonel Hegan Kennard was another who was associated with the
Hoylake club, though his association with Blackheath was closer--of that
venerable Club he was Field Marshal for very many years. But some of the
first of the big matches, matches with sums of money depending on their
result which seemed to me fabulous in days when a sixpence in the pocket
was a rare coin, were those which were planned by the enterprise of
Captain Molesworth--himself and Johnnie Allan in partnership against Mr.
John Dunn and Jack Morris, who had come as professional to Hoylake. Now
John Dunn made very much more show as a player than the old Mole. "The
mole--an animal that keeps to the ground" was a definition which we used
to be fond of quoting as we grew out of the years of veneration to those
of impertinence. He had an absolute inability to drive the ball any
height in the air. No other man ever played golf so cheaply as the old
Mole: he had but three clubs, sometimes profanely stigmatized as Faith,
Hope and Charity, a driving weapon of sorts, an iron and a putter, which
he carried himself, never taking a caddie, and his ball was generally of
the colour of a coal from long and ill usage. But he would bet you L50
on a match if you cared about it, and would play you with fine pluck to
the very finish. He was in fact a miserable driver; nor was there any
"class" or science at all about his iron play. But he would shovel the
ball along, and up to the green somehow or other with his iron: he had a
knack of getting there; and when once on the green there was not nor
ever has been a better putter.
Now the man who has his wits about him, to perceive what this
description implies, will see that it is the description of an uncommon
good partner in a foursome. And he was all the better partner on account
of the way in which the chances of any match in prospect were likely to
be reckoned; for John Dunn might argue it out, "I can give Molesworth a
third," which he probably could, "and John Allan cannot give Jack Morris
a third," which he surely could not, "therefore we have the best of it."
That looks logical, but it leaves out the important fact that the
Molesworth qualities were just those of most value to a strong driver
like Johnnie Allan, while his short game and his pluck were clear assets
to the good. In fact he and Johnnie Allan used to get round the course
in scores that Allan himself would not think amiss, and they had all the
better of these matches against the men of Hoylake.
The Hoylake men came to Westward Ho! and Captain Molesworth took himself
and his sons to Hoylake. Arthur Molesworth won the medal there when he
was only a boy at school, and I remember with awe and admiration hearing
his father describe how the boy had to sit beside the Mayor of Liverpool
at the Club dinner and of all the mighty honour done him. And the
present-day golfer should make no mistake about it nor doubt that this
Arthur Molesworth was a very fine golfer. George Gossett beat him, in a
set match that they played, but I think that Molesworth, who was several
years younger, was really the finer golfer. Certainly he had greater
power. He played in an ugly style, with a short swing, but his driving
was long and he could play all his clubs. There were several years
during which he was certainly the best amateur golfer that England had
then produced, and I think he was better than any in Scotland. A few
years later he went far towards proving it; but I will come to that
story in its place.
[Illustration: An Old Westward Ho! Group.
From left to right: Mr. P. Wilmot, Mr. T. Oliphant (of Rossie), Major
Hopkins, Hon C. Carnegie, J. Allan, Admiral Thrupp, General Maclean, Sir
R. Hay, General Sir Hope Grant, Mr. T. MacCandlish (putting), Rev. T.
Gosset, Colonel Hutchinson, Mr. J. Brand, Mr. Peter Steel, Mr. R.
Molesworth, Mr. Lindsay Bennett, General Wilson, Mr. Eaton Young.
Sitting: Mr. Baldwin, Colonel Hegan Kennard, Mr. George Gosset.
Mr. John Dunn (driving), Captain Molesworth, R.N.]
[Illustration: Thomas Owen Potter (Hon. Sec. from 1882 to 1894 Royal
Liverpool Golf Club).]
What I am trying to show for the moment is not only a gallery of great
players in the past, but also the way in which the game was brought home
to us at Westward Ho! how golf gradually spread in England and gathered
in players, more Clubs being started, and for how much the influence of
Westward Ho! and its golfers--of that most enterprising of all of them,
in particular, the old Mole--counted in the diffusion of knowledge of
the game. We were still, of course, far from the era when a man could go
about travelling in England without causing quite a sensation among
those who saw his clubs. The Englishman, as a rule, believed golf, if he
had heard of it at all, to be a game that was played on horseback. And
about that time, I being then sixteen years of age, so that the year
would be 1875, there happened what made a bigger impression upon me than
any event that has ever occurred since--I won the bronze scratch medal
annually given by the club for competition by boys under eighteen years
of age. Having a year to spare, of the age limit, I possibly might have
won it again the next year also, but by that time I had done even
greater things. I thought comparatively little of that second medal;
but, as for that first, I gazed at it as if it were the Koh-i-noor, and
certainly should not have valued it as highly if it had been. I can get
some of that glamour back by gazing at it now, but it is only a rather
faint reflection. Still, it gives far more comfort than the view of any
other trophy that I ever won in later years, and I am grateful to the
burglar who took all my gold medals some years back that he regarded
this thing of bronze as beneath his notice. Arthur Molesworth must just
have crossed the age limit which put him out of the play for this boys'
medal; but there were a number of boys there at that date, in the
holidays--Brownes, Burns, Roddy and Hugh Owen--there was quite a big
competition. It is very sad to think how many of them are dead--Herbert
Burn, the best player of the lot, among them. But Charlie (now Colonel
and M.P.--he went into the Royals) was quite of the scratch class at his
best. But still the leaders of the golf were older men: Henry Lamb, Dr.
Purves, George Glennie, Mr. Buskin, Mr. Adamson, Colonel Kennard, Sir
Robert Hay, Tom Oliphant. And I am sure there are a great number of good
men whom I have forgotten. My Uncle Fred was only a little behind the
best of them, but he had by this time given up his house at Westward Ho!
and was living abroad, so he only came down occasionally. There was a
small local contingent of very zealous golfers, men who never missed
their two rounds every week-day--we had no Sunday golf.
Thus we bring down the story to a point at which golf is really launched
in England with a full sail, and myself having a taste of just so much
success as to make me firmly believe henceforth, for some years, that
success in golf was the one thing worth living and working for. I might
still have a hankering after the occasional fox and badger, to say
nothing of the rabbits, partridges and wild fowl; but these began to
seem only the relaxations, and golf the true business of a well-spent
life.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 3: He died during the War.]