'" This Royal Ancient Irritating Sport"
IN the dear dim days almost now beyond recall one can Well remember how at St. Andrew's the only golf-reporter Was a local tradesman who was not himself a golfer, and Who, but for the fact that he belonged to "a city given over, soul and body, to a tyrannising game," knew nothing about golf. For what papers he reported cannot be stated, but at every big match—no matter Whether half a gale was blowing over the Elytian Fields, no matter whether an easterly haar Made club-handles aknott ungrippable and everything , generally miserable—his stating little figure could be seen bustling merrily along, his busy pencil recording the Match almost stroke by stroke. The result of methods such as these Were worthy but indescribably wooden, and golf-reports Were in consequence nearly as dull as ditchwater or Belgian
acenery. -
From those times and those methods we have travell far, and now there has entered into the lists of golf a new Sort of reporter like the author of Green Memories—awriter of infinite resource, a humorist, a notable player himself (though ever so self-depreciatory) and one who can deliver discerning judgment about every nice point and every human point Of what a St. Andrews singer (proh pudor !) has called "this royal ancient irritating sport." A dyed-in-the-wool conser- vative may perhaps be allowed just to throw oiii the hint litre that nowadays there is almost too much talked and written about golf, with the result of making players over self-consciousi and so causing-them to commit just those golfing crimes against Which the assiduous golf-writer spends his days in warning the World. The ideal would seem to be that fine careless rapture Which used to be 'exhibited in enviable perfection by Hugh Iiirkaldy, who would hastily walk up to his ball, commonly spit on it first, and then, with the merest fraction of a second's pause, beat it some 280 yards into the empyrean. And then there is Mr. Edward Blackwell who (as the author himself admits) enjoys his golf "without worrying his head too much about it." If, as Mr. Charles Hutchings is credited with Saying, golf is " nine-tenths mental," is not much thinking and writing about its pitfalls only a weariness to the nerves ?
But this is controversy, and about so charming a book as this of Mr. Bernard Darwin's controversy ought not to be allowed to raise its peevish voice. For sour of heart and dull of interest indeed would he be that cannot . cleek! -
out of this varied dish of toothsome _ bates: sonie s,deliCious Minrsel to, sivicair on his 'partienliir palate. Gott- of course, is the book's main Story; but -not' by any .-means its OnlY:," theme, and 'anyhow the author Saks) if a: man "'writes about what interests himself he will not go so very far wrong as to interesting other people." That a prophet is not without hiinour save in his own country is evidenced by Mr. Darwin's infantile reminiscence of his illustrious grandfather : "I licld no notion that he was a person of any save domestic consideration." and of whom "a nurse who had come to us from-the Thackerays said that it was a-pity that:Mi.-Dar** had not something to do like Mr. Thackeray ; she had seen him watching an ant-heap for a whole hour." Francis Galton, too, another famous Darwin kinsman, is here recorded as compiling statistics to ascertain which town in Great Britain contained the prettiest and which the plainest woment . The statistic w.lts completed and is in the author's possessiont but he refuses to be guilty of a secondjudgnient of Paris:-:• , Pleasant reminiscences of Eton and Trinity bring us up to the main theme—golf and a reasoned catalogue of itS heroes... We are permitted to dip into a vanished and infinitely,- romantic past, and from it are called back some of the great figures of the game. Willie Fernie (who was the first to play: in a loose brown woollen cardigan) was the earliest figure, that entranced the author's young vision. Then across tim. screen march, amongst many others, stalwarts like Mr. Murd Fergusson, formidable of mien and mighty of arm ; Mr: . Leslie Balfour (later Balfour-Melville), whose style was that of an elegant cricketer ; -Freddie Tait, the &Ott popular golfer the world ever saw, unless Mr. Tolley or Mr. H. T. Jones has dethroned him ; Mr. J. E. Laicllay, who used the Vardon grip while Vardon was still in petticoats ; Mr. Horace. Hutchinson, loose-wristed but of infinite resource (but oh I the turf he used to take !) ; and the greatest warrior of them all, Mr. John Ball, tertius, who next to the Molesworth brothers. was the first to convince Scotland that Englishmen could
Play golf!
Of professional players . we hear but little. . Just a word of poor Bob Martin who won two open championships and whom in another the present Writer once saw take ten strokes to get across the burn at St. Andrews, and another of Jamie Anderson, thrice open champion, who at Hoylake "once put five balls out of bounds and exclaimed at last : Ma God I it's like playing up a spout.' " It was Jamie Anderson (or was it another St. Andrean ?) who, when he first witnessed.. the machine-like precision of Harry Vardon's style, observed that "The man plays like a bluidy tomato," by which last word the, best judges understood him to mean automaton.,
Very wisely Mr. Darwin does not venture to compare links—as idle a pastime as the comparison of players. Waking. he owns as his spiritual home, and to it is due his longest and closest allegiance. But in all sorts of greens he finds special beauties and attractions, and Most attractive of all (though he was of too fender years to enjoy it) must have, been Formby Golf Club House ; king ago this consisted principally of a cupboard in a shed, which contained a bottle of whisky bearing the legend" A moderate go. 4d."
Green Memories will keep , the memories of most of us, green ton, and are from end to end a pure delight. M. J. C. MnixT.R.ionx.
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