There are two outstanding events in golfing history—the bringing of golf to Westward Ho! by General Moncrieffe in 1863, and the bringing of golf to Blackheath by James VI. of Scotland and I. of England some three centuries earlier. When golf was started at Westward Ho! it was the worthies of the Blackheath Club that gave it a reputation which went growing like a snowball. The North Devon Club began to wax fat and so exceeding proud that at meeting times—for challenge medals were presented and meetings in spring and autumn were held to compete for them, after the model of St. Andrews—a bathing machine was dragged out by coastguards to the tee to the first hole, and therein sandwiches and liquid refreshment were kept during the morning round and actually consumed if the weather were wet. In fine weather the entertainment was al fresco. Then the Club acquired a tent; and an ancient mariner, Brian Andrews, of Northam village, father of the Philip Andrews who is now steward of the Golf Club, used to hoist this and care for it, and at length, as of natural process of evolution, came the crowning glory of a permanent structure of corrugated iron, built beside and even among the grey boulders of the Pebble Ridge.

This permanent object of care entailed the permanency of Brian Andrews as caretaker. Enormous was the career of extravagance on which the Club now embarked, engaging a resident professional all the way from St. Andrews—John Allan. He was the first Scot ever to come to England as a resident golf professional, and there never came a kinder-hearted or better fellow. He established himself in a lodging, with his shop and bench on the ground floor, in Northam village, which stands high on a hill above the level of the links, and was best part of a mile and a half from the present third, and then first, tee. A few years before, in the earliest days of the Club's history, old Tom Morris had been down to advise about the green, and when I came to my teens and therewith to some interest in golf, and to a friendship, very quickly formed, with poor Johnnie Allan, he told me that when he had asked old Tom for information about this new course in the new country that he was going to, he found that the old man (though he was not of any great age then) could tell him little enough about the course, but that all he seemed to remember was that there was a terrible steep hill to climb, after the day's work was done, on the way home.

So there is—Bone Hill, on which the village stands, so called from the bones of Danes killed in a great battle there, and of which bones, as we piously believed, the hill, save for a thin coat of soil over their graves, was wholly made—but it is quaint and characteristic of the old man that this steep place should have stuck in his mind and that all the salient features of the new course should have slipped out. It seems as if not even any of the points of the big rushes could have stuck and gone back to Scotland with him.

Soon after there came South from Scotland to the Wimbledon Club another most perfect of Nature's gentlemen, in Tom Dunn, of a great golfing family and father of several fine professional players.

And now, with a club-house, though it was but an iron hut, a resident professional and appointed times of meeting, the Club was a live thing, and the complete and final act of its lavish expenditure was to engage a permanent green man—only one, but he had what seemed the essential qualification of an education as a miner in the Western States of America—an excellent and entertaining fellow, Sowden by name, a North Devonian by birth, with a considerable gift of narrative and just about as much inclination to work on the course and knowledge of his duties as these antecedents would be likely to inspire in him.

While the Club was thus growing, my small body was growing too; but the way of my growth, all through life, has been rather that of an erratic powerful player, falling continually into very bad bunkers of ill-health, but making brilliant recoveries in the interims. My father tried two schools for me, but I was invalided home from both, and I expect it would have ended in my escape from all education whatever if it had not been that the United Services College was started at Westward Ho! only two miles from our house. But that was not till I reached the august age of fifteen or thereabouts, by which time English golf had developed largely. The first really fine English golfer that we produced in the West of England was George Gossett, son of the vicar of Northam. When the big men came down from Scotland and from Blackheath, to the meetings, they found a local golfer able to make a match with the best of them. And hard after him came Arthur Molesworth, a very fine player even as a boy. I remember that while he was still a Radley schoolboy, his father, the Captain, begged a holiday for him to enable him to come and play for the medal—I think he would have been about sixteen at the time—and he came and won it, in a field which included Sir Robert Hay and other well-known players. There were three brothers of the Molesworths, good golfers all, but Arthur, the youngest, the best of the three. The two elder have been dead for many years, but the father[2] and the youngest son still live at Westward Ho!

At this time I had an elder brother at home, invalided from his regiment in India. I was also assigned an almost more valuable possession, in the shape of an Exmoor pony which could jump like a grasshopper and climb like a cat any of the big Devonshire banks that it was unable to jump. So, in company with this big brother and this small pony, I used to follow the hounds over a country that seems specially designed for the riding of a small boy on a pony; and in company with the brother, the pony being left behind, I used to go badger digging—my brother had a kennel of terriers for the purpose—all over the countryside.

Of course it was a misspent youth. Of course I was neglecting great opportunities, for to tell the truth I greatly preferred the chase of the fox and the badger at that period of life to the chase of the golf ball. This sad fact should have been brought home to me by a severe comment of my Uncle Fred on the occasion of our playing for some prizes kindly given for the juveniles by some of the elder golfers. As I hit off from the first tee—all along the ground, if I remember right—he observed sadly, "There's too much fox and badger about his golf."

And so there was, but, for all that, I won a prize in that competition. I think it was in the under twelve class, for which I was just eligible by age, whereas my only rival in the same class was a child of nine. Therefore I returned in triumph with a brand-new driver as a reward of merit—my first prize—and I think it made me regard golf as a better game than I had supposed it to be, for, after all, a driver is of more practical use than a fox's brush, and this was the highest award that the most daring riding could gain for you. A boy's property is usually so limited that any addition to it is of very large importance.

About a year later I began to take my golf with gravity. The ball began to consent to allow itself to be hit cleanly. A very great day came for me when I beat my big brother on level terms. You see, he had only played occasionally, at intervals in soldiering, nor had he begun as a boy, whereas I had played, even then, more than he, and had begun, in spite of the wasted years, fairly early. I know I felt I had done rather an appalling thing when I beat him; I could not feel that it was right. But doubtless it increased my self-respect as a golfer and my interest in the game. The Blackheath visitors were very kind to me, and used to take me into their games. Of course I could not expect to be in such high company as that of the George Glennies and the Buskins, but Mr. Frank Gilbert, brother of Sir Frederick, the artist, Mr. Peter Steel and many others invited me now and then to play with them. I began to think myself something of a player. The most dreadful event, most evil, no doubt, in its effect on my self-conceit, happened when Mr. Dingwall Fordyce, who was a player of the class that we might to-day describe as "an indifferent scratch," asked me to play with him. He offered—I had made no demand for odds—to give me four strokes, and asked at what holes I would have them. At that date, be it remembered, there were no handicaps fixed by the card, nor were the holes determined at which strokes were to be taken. It was always at the option of the receiver of strokes to name, before starting, the holes at which he would take his strokes. I told Mr. Fordyce I would take the four he offered at the four last holes. He said nothing, though likely enough he thought a good deal. What he ought to have done was to thrash me, for an impertinent puppy, with his niblick; but what he did, far too good-naturedly, was to come out and play me at those strange terms, with the result that I beat him by five up and four to play without using any of the strokes at all! It was precisely what had been in my mind to do when I took the strokes at those last four holes, but I expect the reason I won was that he was a little thrown off his balance by my cheek.