MR. ARTHUR BALFOUR AND HIS INFLUENCE IN GOLF
It is not on first sight very obvious how the appointment of a statesman
to the Chief Secretaryship for Ireland can have an intimate bearing on
the history of the game of golf. Nevertheless that appointment, in the
year 1886, of Mr. Arthur Balfour had, in my humble judgment, an
important influence and bearing on the game. It so happened that about
this time an eminent weekly journal had propounded the statement that
none but stupid people played golf, and even that the successful playing
of golf demanded, as an essential condition, that the player should be
stupid and destitute of all imagination and of all intellectual
interests. It was rather an extravagant statement. At the same time also
the office of the Irish Secretary was invested with a peculiar
importance in the public eye. It was not long after the tragic affair in
the Phoenix Park. Ireland was seething with murderous discontent. The
man who accepted the secretaryship took his life in his hand with that
acceptance, and this risk Mr. Balfour took with all his characteristic
coolness and courage. He became at once, both on this account and
because of his record as a still rather untried statesman, as a
"philosophic doubter" and as a distinguished figure in a certain set of
Society to which the name of "Souls" had been rather foolishly given,
perhaps the most popular figure in politics. The public eye was upon him
and it was known that this man of so many and so varied gifts was an
enthusiastic golfer. He went round the links as an object lesson to
contradict the unfortunate pronouncement of the aforesaid respectable
paper about the stupidity essential to the man who would confess himself
a golfer.
He also went round the links accompanied at a decent interval by two
detectives. I used to play a good deal with him at North Berwick at that
time, and it was rather curious to know that we were being stalked every
step of the way by these guardians skirmishing among the sandhills and
the fringes of the course. It did not in the least interfere with Arthur
Balfour's equanimity and concentration on the game. Of course he was not
a great golfer, though he brought to the game that faculty which was so
invaluable to him in politics of rising to an occasion. You were in good
hands if he were your partner and you left him with a putt of just the
doubtful distance to win the match at the last hole. But though he was
not a great golfer, he was a very great figure in golf; and just because
it is very human to be influenced by an example, the effect of his
example was to make many a man play golf, on the principle that "there
must be something in a game if a fellow like Arthur Balfour plays it."
He had been a fine tennis player at Cambridge, and was an
extraordinarily good shot at a stag. I used to stalk on the splendid
forest of Strathconan which he sold to Mr. Combe, the father of
Christian Combe, the present owner, and the stalkers there have spoken
to me with bated breath of his deadliness of aim with those
old-fashioned rifles which tossed the bullet along in a high curve, and
with black powder that made all nature invisible for a minute after the
shot. Twenty-six stags without a miss, was his record, as reported to me
by one of these stalkers, for one season, and it is a wonderful record
in the conditions, especially as he was short-sighted. But then he had,
by compensation, not only an accurate vision, but a coolness of nerve
which made any idea of "stag-fever" an impossibility to conceive in
connection with him. And "putt-fever" at golf was equally far from him.
I am very far indeed from saying that if golf had not been at this
moment just ready for a "boom" the example of Arthur Balfour would have
set the boom going, but as a matter of fact it was just ready. Courses
were being made and Clubs founded all over the country, the amateur
championship was both a cause and an effect of the new impulse, and then
came the beat of the Balfour drum and the note of "Ca ira" came from it
triumphantly. I date from that year, and principally as arising from the
sources indicated, that "boom" which has never ceased to march and which
is marching still. So much for what the incentive of one man's example
may be in a race still generously capable of hero-worship.
For a while at North Berwick Arthur Balfour's chief henchman was
Crawford, Big Crawford, as he was most appropriately called, about whom
many a legend clings in North Berwick tradition. The big Crawford was
also the caddie of little Sayers in any of the important matches played
by that great little man. The Crawford legend might run to far lengths,
farther than I care to spin it now, but of all the instances of his wit
and repartee the best I think is that which he produced, perfectly
impromptu, so far as I know, when there arose a great discussion as to
the precise nature of a toad-stool in course of a match which Sayers,
his little man, played against Andrew Kirkaldy at St. Andrews. It was
lifted, the lifter saying that it was a dead and loose-lying toad-stool,
the objector that it had been rooted in the ground and therefore was not
legally liftable. The discussion instantly raised numerous side-issues,
as to one of which Crawford, having delivered his opinion, heavily, of
course, in favour of the view of the case that would assist Ben
Sayers--pronounced, finally, "Weel, het's the rule o' the game, an'----"
at this point he paused an instant and lifted an enormous fist, "an',"
he repeated, indicating this leg of mutton bunch of knuckles, "there's
the referee!" It is not the first time, nor the seventh time, that I
have told this story; nor do I care if I repeat it seventy times seven.
It is good enough to bear it.
At the conclusion of an historic home and home foursome in which Sayers
and Davie Grant defeated Andrew and Hugh Kirkaldy, Crawford would demand
of any whom he could get to listen who it was, in their opinion, that
had won the match, and when they professed a doubt, he would draw
himself up with enormous dignity to his immense height, and striking
himself dramatically on the chest, would exclaim with conviction, if not
with grammar--"Me!" and really it was not altogether too large a claim.
His overmastering size and the fearsome aggressiveness of his manner
might very well give pause to any tactics of an aggressive nature on the
other side. He was a tower of moral (or immoral) support to little
Sayers, and his presence at the hole when a hostile putter was
attempting to approach it had all the effect of a black cloud
overshadowing the atmosphere. But beneath all his dourness, and his
sardonic air, he had a kindly nature, and of his loyalty to him whom he
regarded as his chief, and incidentally the greatest man that ever
lived, Arthur Balfour, there is not the slightest question.
With his rugged independence, he might stand as the type of the old
Scottish caddie, now practically extinct. In later years he set up a
booth at the far end of the North Berwick links where he would dispense
ginger-beer and the like innocent refreshment, though it was said that
to the initiate few a more generous and cordial liquid might be
proffered. I do not know. What I do know is that when we went out, of a
morning, and came to Crawford at his booth, he would often ask us, "Is
Ar-rthur oot the day?" rolling the "r's" upon his tongue as if he loved
to prolong the sound of his hero's name. It is thus that he would put
the question--for all his worship, making use of the familiar first
name. And then, if we were able to comfort his soul by the assurance
that the great man would soon appear, he would hoist a little flag on
the booth's peak, for honour's sake. And one day it happened that the
Grand Duke Michael of Russia, coming to the tent and seeing the flag,
inquired of Crawford in whose honour it was flying. I do not know
whether the Grand Duke had been put up to making the inquiry, and asked
it humorously, to see what Crawford would say. At all events he had his
satisfaction, for in answer to the query, "Whom is yon flag flying for?"
the uncompromising reply was given, "A better mon than you." No doubt
loyalty here leaped over the bounds of courtesy, but there is sign of a
better quality than mere rudeness in the reply. Very well must Crawford
have known that if he had chosen to reply to the foreign prince that it
was in his honour that the bunting waved, it might have meant a piece of
gold transferred from the princely pocket to Crawford's, but he did not
hesitate. Partly perhaps the native disdain of the foreigner rang in the
reply, but chiefly I think a very rugged honesty, which, in spite of the
lamentably rude form of the speech, has its dignity.
[Illustration: A.J. Balfour.]
[Illustration: Crawford.
Dispenser of refreshing drinks and counsel.]
We had great fun on the short North Berwick course, in those days, where
nothing really paid you but accuracy in the pitch, developed to a nicety
by Johnny Laidlay, who was always there. And besides him were Walter de
Zoete, poor John Penn and many good golfers besides. I think it was with
me as partner that Arthur Balfour first played that foursome against De
Zoete, and Penn, which afterwards, with Johnny Laidlay taking my place,
was played times without number. "Mike" Mitchell was one of the regular
frequenters, in the Eton holidays, and playing with him as partner he
and I once did three successive holes in two each on that old short
course.