GOLFING PILGRIMAGES
It is a singular thing that not a seaside course was designed, or opened
for play, in the decade from 1870 to 1880. I, at least, cannot remember
nor can find record of any such institution. In 1880 the Felixstowe Club
was started. I have a vivid recollection of my first visit to it, for I
tried the wrong line of approach, going to Harwich, which left the whole
of the river estuary to be crossed before Felixstowe could be reached.
It was late in the evening, the ferry had stopped running, but I got
myself and portmanteau and clubs put across in a row-boat. The mariner
landed me on the far side in the gathering dusk, got into his boat and
commenced to row away home again. "But," I said, as he moved off, "how
far is it to the hotel?" "About two miles," he answered, resting on his
oars. "But how am I to get there?" I asked. "I don't know," he said; and
then rowed away. I sat in the fast increasing gloom on my portmanteau,
and wondered. Then I saw the light of a providentially sent farm cart in
the distance. I hailed it. The carter was a kindly man, and in due time
I arrived at the Bath Hotel. Felixstowe course was of nine holes only,
if memory is a true servant, at that date, and the club-house was that
Martello tower which even now comes in as something of a hazard. So this
was the third of the English seaside courses. In 1882 four more were
added, Minehead, Hayling Island, Bembridge and Great Yarmouth.
Therefore, by the time I left Oxford there was already that beginning of
the chain of links around the island which has now been riveted so
close. Coming South, down the West coast of England, there was Hoylake,
a far cry from there brought you to Minehead, then Westward Ho! thence
round the Land's End and the South Coast till you came to Hayling Island
and Bembridge, then Felixstowe and up the East Coast to Great Yarmouth.
The golfing plot is thickening.
Bembridge had always a charming little course, though crossing like a
cat's cradle in places and more dangerous than most battles when there
were many players. I gave dire offence there by writing that after my
first tee shot, which was heavily pulled on to the seashore, the ball
was at length found inside a dead and derelict dog--emphatically a bad
lie! But there was not more than the licence almost permissible taken in
this account: the ball actually was very near a dead dog; and why should
there be offence in the suggestion? It was not implied that it was part
of the duty of the Bembridge green committee to scavenge the seashore.
However, the dog has been washed away now, and, I hope, the offence
also.
But the chain of links did not stop, northward, at Great Yarmouth. As
long ago as 1869 a nine-hole course had been made and a Club started at
Alnmouth, only a little South of the Border. I believe it will surprise
most people to know that there was this girdle of links thus early--in
1882--although the gaps were long and many.
An Oxford education is all very well, but it does considerably interfere
with the whole-souled attention that a man ought to apply to golf.
Nevertheless it has the aforesaid merit that the vacations give leisure
for many a golfing pilgrimage, and it was in course of these pilgrimages
that I made acquaintance with most of the English sea-links, as they
came into being. It was in 1879 that I paid my first visit to Hoylake.
Several of us went there from Westward Ho! to the autumn meeting. There
was much going to and fro between golfers of Westward Ho! and Hoylake,
and indeed of Scotland too, at this time. So much was this the case that
in arranging the dates of the spring and autumn meetings we used always
to have a care that they did not clash, and it was usually contrived
that the Hoylake meetings should fall sandwich-wise between those of St.
Andrews and of Westward Ho! so that Scottish golfers might work South
and take Hoylake on their way to Westward Ho! The golfing population of
the day was not a very large one, but it was very friendly. All, with
few exceptions, knew each other. Moreover, partly because they were a
small brotherhood, there was more _camaraderie_ amongst them than there
is now, and a term in common use then "the Freemasonry among golfers"
had its meaning. At that time if you met a man in the train or waiting
at a station with golf clubs, you would be sure to say to him, "I see
you are a golfer," and he would respond with a glad pleasure, saying,
"Yes--are you?" and you would begin comparing notes. To meet a fellow
golfer was something analogous to the meeting between Stanley and Doctor
Livingstone in the heart of Africa. It was a date at which such white
men as golfers were rare.
Going to Hoylake, therefore, we were sure of finding ourselves among
friends. I think there were at that time, at Hoylake, in pilgrimage from
Westward Ho! besides myself, Captain Ashton, a sound golfer of the
second class, Major Hopkins, the golfing artist, Captain Logan White,
most amusing and caustic-tongued of companions. The native people showed
us no little kindness. Only a short while before I had taken part in a
match at Westward Ho! got up by the never-failing keenness of Captain
Molesworth--he and I against John Dunn, a famous man at Hoylake (there
is a hole named after him there to-day) and Jack Morris. We had won that
match handsomely, but there was no scrap of ill-feeling. Then there was
Kennard there--Colonel Hegan Kennard--ever most courteous, and arrayed
with beautiful neatness; a player of great neatness besides, and winner
of many scratch medals. There were also three generations of John Ball
at the Royal Hotel, and already the youngest of the team was of great
local repute and of such skill that his father would often issue the
proud challenge to the company assembled in the bar-parlour of the
hotel: "I and my son'll play any two." But those two were not very eager
in coming forward. The rooms of the Royal Liverpool Club were in those
days under the same roof as the Royal Hotel itself and the course
started with what is now the eighteenth hole. Argyll Robertson was
there, from Scotland, a first-class golfer, and surely the finest
advertisement of his own profession, which was that of oculist, that
ever was seen, for he was a singularly handsome man altogether, but the
most striking feature of his fine looks was an eye more eagle-like than
I ever saw in any other human face. There was also another little Scot
of very different aspect, short, rather round-about with sloping
shoulders like a champagne bottle, yet a terrible golfer and a
thrice-champion--Jamie Anderson. Him I knew, he had been down to
Westward Ho! taking part against Jamie Allan in a campaign of revenge
for that defeat which the latter had put upon Scotland (for we looked on
Jamie Allan's golf as wholly English) and on the man whom Scotland had
previously pitted against him, Bob Kirk. Jamie Anderson, playing him on
the same four greens of St. Andrews, Prestwick, Hoylake and Westward Ho!
had defeated him--not heavily, but sufficiently. But Jamie Allan at that
time was not playing as he had played against Bob Kirk. It was a fine
game enough, but it had not the same force and sting. I had even enjoyed
the honour of playing a foursome at Westward Ho! with Jamie Anderson,
and had wrung from him a compliment which pleased me more than a little,
for at one hole I had pitched up a long iron shot with some cut on it,
and a happy chance decreed that the ball should stop about six inches
from the hole. All Jamie said to me at the moment was "Ah--that's the
sort that saves a lot of trouble;" but afterwards he had counselled me,
"You should come up to St. Andrews: they shots of yours that pitch sae
deid are just what's wanted there."
I quote that saying principally for the sake of my own greater glory,
but secondarily because it is noteworthy as a comment on the St. Andrews
of that day, for if there is a quality of St. Andrews now which is
eminent above others it is that which puts value not on the pitched, but
on the running up approach. It may be noted that this was all before
the introduction of the mashie and while the use of the niblick for the
approach was still looked on as a _tour de force_. We did all that work
with a broad bladed iron.
Jamie Anderson walked round with Ashton and myself when we played for
the Kennard medal at Hoylake on that occasion. I played fairly well and
won it with a score which was then good--I am not sure it did not make a
competition record--of 83. Jamie was very friendly, though he did not
say much all the way round, but I was told that afterwards he had
remarked to somebody about my play that "It's a fine game, but it's no
gowf." I think I know what he meant by the dubious compliment. In those
youthful days my great idea was to hit as hard as ever I was able: the
result was numerous mistakes which were sometimes sufficiently redeemed,
when fortune favoured, by recoveries. Jamie Anderson's theory of the
game was very different. He never put anything like his full power into
the shot, but he was so desperately accurate that Mr. Everard has it on
the record that the little man (and he was anything rather than a
boaster) once told him that he had played ninety holes successively
without a shot that was not played as he intended it to be played. Quite
certainly, if that and that only was golf, it was not golf that I
played.