GOLF AT OXFORD
When I went up to Oxford in the Christmas term of 1878 I found that
Royal and ancient city sunk in an ignorance that is scarcely credible in
regard to all connected with the royal and ancient game. I do not mean
to say that golf was altogether unknown. There was already a University
Golf Club in being, which I quickly joined, and we used to play on the
cricket fields in Cowley Marsh. That, of course, implied that there was
no golf in the summer term when the marsh was occupied by the cricket.
But the golfers were very few. Mr. "Pat" Henderson (now
Wright-Henderson) the Wadham don, was one of the most moving spirits.
Then there was the Principal of Hertford, there was Jim Lockhart, a
fellow of Hertford and a lecturer at my own college of Corpus, and
Lodge, then history lecturer at Brasenose. These and a very few others
of the dons used to play, and of undergraduates the ones I best remember
were Cathcart of Christ Church, son of old Mr. "Bob" Cathcart the
Fifeshire laird and for very many a year Convener of the Green Committee
of the Royal and Ancient Club, Baynes of Oriel, now a bishop, Pearson of
Balliol and several more. But their doings were a black mystery to most
of the undergraduates, and either the game was not heard of by them or
it was believed that the golfers practised some unholy rite in the not
very cheerful surroundings of Cowley Marsh.
I had known Jim Lockhart before I went up, for he was one of the
Westward Ho! lot and a cousin besides of Jack Lamont, to whom I owed
very much of my golfing education; so he saw to my election to the Club
as soon as I came to Oxford. Considering the nature of the ground on
Cowley Marsh, how singularly well it was suited by its dreary name, and
that the only hazards were the cricket pavilions and the occasional
hedges, it is wonderful how much real interest might be got out of the
golf there. Whatever else a cricket pavilion may be as a golfing hazard,
it is an uncompromising one. You have to be beyond or to the side of it.
If hard up against it, even the strongest driver cannot send the ball
through it; and it gives occasion for pulling and slicing round it which
are good fun and good practice. Jim Lockhart was a friend of my tutor at
Corpus whom we irreverently called "Billy Little," and it was on the
occasion of his taking his fellow don up to Cowley to be introduced to
golf that Little delivered himself of the immortal definition of the
game as "putting little balls into little holes with instruments very
ill-adapted to the purpose." In later years I have heard this brilliant
definition attributed to Jowett. It is thus that sayers of good things
attract to themselves, magnet-like, and increase their credit, with many
good things said by others.
At that time of day all who were golfers reared on the seaside links had
a very high and mighty contempt for all in the shape of inland golf. In
spite of the antiquity of Blackheath, the art and labour by which an
inland course can be brought up, when the weather is favourable, to a
condition almost rivalling that of the seaside links were quite unknown.
One of the earliest founded of the inland type--of course long ages
after such an ancient institution as Blackheath--was the course at
Crookham, near Newbury; and thereby hangs a tale of tragedy and comedy
commingled, associated with my golfing days at Oxford. There was a
certain trophy, open to all amateur golfers, given by the Club, and
called the Crookham Cup. The conditions were that it was to remain as a
challenge prize to be played for annually unless and until any man
should win it thrice: in which case it should become his property. Poor
Herbert Burn, who met his death not so very long after in a
steeplechase, had won this cup twice, and I was invited to go to
Crookham to see if I could put a check on his victory and keep the cup
for the Club. We were hospitably put up for the meeting by Mr. Stephens,
the banker, at his place near Reading. I had the luck to win the cup,
and again, going down the next year, won it again. If I should win it a
third time it became my very own, and, strong in the zeal of
pot-hunting, I went down the third year too. I remember that on this
occasion, for some reason, Mr. Stephens did not act host for the
meeting, but Captain Ashton and I stayed with Major Charley Welman at a
little house he had near the course; and what fixed the visit very
firmly in my mind is that Ashton and I returned to the house, after a
round on the first day of our arrival, with "dubbed," not blacked,
golfing boots. It appeared that there was no "dubbing" in the house, for
the next morning our boots were sent up to us black-leaded--with the
stuff that grates, I think, are done with. The effect was splendid. We
went forth quite argentine as to our understandings, like knights in
armour clad, and, thus glistening, I contrived to win that cup for the
third and final time, which made it my own. Now we come to the
tragi-comedy of the story. On the way back to Oxford there was the
inevitable change and wait at Didcot Junction, and there whom should I
see, with golf clubs under arm, but George Gossett? He was then living
at Abingdon. I greeted him and asked with interest where he was going.
"Well," said he, "there's a cup to be played for at Crookham, near
Newbury, to-morrow. I've won it twice and I'm going down to see if I can
win it again, because if I do I keep it."
"Oh dear," I had to reply, "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid you must have made
a mistake in the day. It's to-day it was played for, and what's more I'd
won it twice before, too, and I won it again to-day, so that it's mine
now, I'm afraid," and I opened its case, which I had in my hand, and
showed it to him. I was obliged to tell him; for it would have been
worse still if he'd gone on all the way to Crookham to find he was a day
behind the fair. As it was, it was comedy for me, but rather cruel
tragedy for him. No man ever took a knock more pleasantly: he was the
first to start a laugh against himself and to give me congratulations,
and express gratitude for being saved the journey to Crookham. So he
took train to Abingdon and I to Oxford, and shortly after, whether as
the effect or no of this blow, he went out to New Zealand, where he won
the championship of that country more than once.
What used to astonish all my friends in College almost more than
anything else, when I used vainly to try to describe to them what manner
of game golf is, was the fact that I did not "dress" for it. "Undress"
is rather what they meant. You see, they were accustomed to cricket,
where you flannelled yourself, and to football, rowing and athletic
sports wherein the mode of dress was to have as little of it as might
decently be, and that one should go forth in the very clothes in which
you might attend a lecture and play a game in them seemed hardly
thinkable. They used to take up the clubs and regard them curiously.
They began to think there must be something more than they had supposed
in the game when I showed them the Crookham Cup. They wanted to see how
it was done. The quad of a small College like Corpus makes rather a
small golf course. The only way was to tee the ball well up and flog it
out over the College buildings into Christchurch Meadows, or wherever
else it might choose to fall. Occasionally we used to try to astonish
Merton by a bombardment. But it meant a lavish expenditure of golf
balls, for there was no prospect of getting any of them back again. The
best possible tee to use, if you are driving, or ironing, off a hard
surface like a quad, is a clothes brush. It hoists the ball well off the
ground, so that you can do anything you like with it--that is, always
supposing you have had the blessing of a sound golfing education. But
there was not one of my friends of Corpus who had enjoyed this blessing.
On the other hand, it appeared to them a very simple matter to hit a
ball thus standing still: some of them were quite skilful at the job of
hitting balls in quick movement at various games. So of course I must
give them the club and they must have a hit at the ball too. They were
humiliated to find how possible it was to miss it altogether, but
infinitely terrified at the result when they did happen to hit. The
quadrangle was inadequate as a golf links. Nevertheless it was of more
than ample size as a racquet court. Yet that golf ball, stoutly, if
unscientifically, propelled, would fly round those old grey walls,
rebounding from one to other with a terrific force and pace. Finally its
career would generally terminate by a crash through somebody's window or
a resounding knock on the President's door, after which the golf meeting
broke up, like a dispersing covey, and disappeared till any suspicions
aroused by the outrage were calmed down.
About the middle of my time at Oxford we had a mighty accession to our
golfing strength in "Andy" Stuart. He came up to Christ Church, and took
part with me, not very gloriously as I am able to remember, in the first
Inter-University match against Cambridge.