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Many golfers, like others who are not golfers, have come to the conclusion that in the twentieth century it were better for them and their game to think and grow thin. One of the most enthusiastic and determined says that success in the game depends chiefly on the stomach, and one is half inclined to think that he is right. He is, to this extent, that it is hard to play fine golf when the interior mechanism is in bad working order. And it is quite apparent that we modern golfers, like other people who are outside the pale of our noble game, are not the possessors of such strong heads and tough digestive apparatus as our ancestors of the links used to be. The man in the street dare not for his life walk into the Cock Tavern and call the “plump head waiter” to bring him a pint of port just because it is five o’clock, as Tennyson used to do as regularly and deliberately when he was Fleet Street way, as if it were nothing more fortifying than tea that he demanded. The modern man would be too much afraid, lest perchance he should not know when it was six o’clock. We are not like our forefathers, and we can never be like them. There is a queer tale of a comparatively modern golfer who drank deeply overnight, so that his path to his bedchamber was one of tortuous difficulty, but who, nevertheless, got up in the morning to win a championship; and it is not many years since a picture was drawn for a text-book on golf in which it was suggested that “the man to back” was he who was sitting down to something in the nature of a Porterhouse steak with a not very small bottle of wine at the side of his plate.
From a high moral point of view those ancestors of ours who bred inferior stomachs for us were, of course, wrong, and yet they did many fine things on their pints of port. They wrote great prose and verse, they painted fine pictures, their taste and skill in handicrafts were superb, they won the battle of Waterloo and the battle of Trafalgar, and they could—most undoubtedly they could—play golf. Having regard to the quality of their tools and the state of the upkeep of their links, they made many fine rounds, which showed that they had great skill, that they had a fine steadiness of hand and eye, and even that they upon occasion went in for thinking golf!
And of all the types of the modern Britishers’ ancestors, give us for great courage at the board and for a capacity for high enjoyment according to his lights, the golfing ancestor! He was a rare fellow. He went out to play his round by day, and he foregathered the same evening with the others of his golfing society and celebrated the day as many persons say that a good day should be celebrated. And it was a matter of duty with him too, not merely inclination. On the morning of the play and dinner days of some of the fine old Scottish golfing societies, it was the custom to send the boy of the club round to each member’s house summoning him to the meeting, and taking his name if he promised to be present at the evening meal.
The old golfers saw to it that the quality of all the fine things of which they partook was of the very best, for leading features of their dinners were the gifts of various members of their own company, and it was the common custom before each gathering was ended to make large provision for the next one in the way of promises of food and drink, and these promises once made were exacted to the last ounce and drop, under penalty of fines of dozens and cases of wines and spirits.
No club has richer traditions in this respect than the old North Berwick. The viands that its own company sent to its table for its constant meetings were fine things. One time Mr. Hay of Rockville sent along a round of beef stewed in hock. Sir D. Kinloch sent Shetland beef, the Duke of Buccleuch contributed large quantities of venison and venison pasty, while the Earl of Eglinton, as an apology for his absence from one meeting when captain, sent a fine buck. As for liquids, Sir David Blair presented the club at the start with three dozens of champagne, and thereafter it became the custom to fine a member exactly that for any delinquency or omission on his part. Thus we have a minute on the books for 23rd September 1835, which reads: “At dinner it was voted unanimously, on the motion of the captain, that Mr. John Sligo be fined in a case of three dozen champagne for not sending a cook as proposed by himself, by which means the turtle, venison, and other delicacies were entirely destroyed.” Judging by the temper of these old North Berwickers, and of the importance that they attached to these things prandial, one would have been inclined to congratulate Mr. Sligo on the leniency with which his grave offence was treated. Whisky by the dozen and half-dozen came from Campbell of Glensaddell and Macdonald of Clanranald, shrub from Mr. Whyte-Melville, rum from Major Pringle, casks of beer and porter from various other members, and so on; claret, withal, which was presented in large quantities, being the favourite drink.
Even if one be but a drinker of tea and ginger ale, there is some interest in reading of the exploits of the old-time golfers of Edinburgh and Musselburgh. In the “bett book” of the Honourable Company, under date of 4th January 1766, there is the rule entered: “Each person who lays a Bett in the Company of the Golfers, and shall fail to play it on the day appointed, shall forfeit to the Company a pint of wine for each guinea, unless he give a sufficient excuse to their satisfaction”; and a most interesting entry in the minutes of 16th November 1776 tells us that “this day Lieutenant James Dalrymple, of the 43rd Regiment, being convicted of playing five different times at Golf without his uniform, was fined only in Six Pints, having confessed the heinousness of his crime.” To this minute, signed by the captain, there is appended a codicil, stating, “at his own request he was fined of Three Pints more.” Always pints, and never pounds or guineas. The Company even thought that it was a proper thing for it to pass a formal resolution adopting certain liquors as the club drink, just in the same way as they would adopt a uniform. Thus, on 11th December 1779, the sentiment of Christmas being already abroad, it was resolved and duly entered on the minutes, that “Port and Punch shall be the ordinary Drink of the Society, unless upon these days when the Silver Club and Cups are played for. At those meetings Claret or any other Liquor more agreeable will be permitted.”
O, say some, for the days of famous Jamie Balfour, secretary and treasurer of the Company in 1793! Never was jollier golfer. And never a man more honest, more deservedly popular, and loved by all his contemporaries than he, as witness the fact that when, alas! he went to the links of Valhalla before he reached the age of sixty, the company mourned for him as golfers had never mourned before. They met at a special meeting and dinner in the most solemn mourning, with the Captain in the chair and Sir James Stirling, Baronet, Lord Provost of the City of Edinburgh, beside him, and drank to Balfour’s memory in the most solemn of toasts.
Jamie looked upon the wine when it was red; he could see no virtue in self-denial. He liked the sound of the drawn cork. When he heard one drawn in any house that he happened to be in, which gave an unusually sharp report, he would call out, “Lassie, gie me a glass o’ that!” not troubling to ask what the wine was, but taking it for granted that for such a report it must needs be good of its class.
A story is told that a lady who lived in Parliament Close, Edinburgh, was wakened from her sleep one summer morning by a noise as of singing, when, going to the window to learn what was the matter, guess her surprise at seeing Jamie Balfour and some of his boon companions, evidently fresh from an orgie, singing “The King shall enjoy his own again” on their knees around King Charles’s statue. It used to be said that Balfour could run when he could not stand still, and the story is told that on one occasion, going home late from a festive night, he happened to tumble into the pit formed for the foundation of a house in St. James’s Square. A gentleman passing heard his wailing, and, going up to the spot, was entreated by Balfour to help him out. “What would be the use helping you out when you could not stand though you were out?” said the passer-by. Whereupon Jamie retorted, “Very true, perhaps, yet if you help me up I’ll run you to the Tron Kirk for a bottle of claret.” And he did; and having won the first bottle, Jamie exclaimed, “Well, ’nother race to Fortune’s for another bottle of claret,” and he won that one also.
In its ancient days the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews was great on fines in wine. It promoted conviviality on every possible occasion, and, indeed, one of the first of its minutes that are now discoverable says, under date 4th May 1766, “We, the Noblemen and Gentlemen subscribing, did this day agree to meet once every fortnight, by Eleven of the clock, at the Golf House, and to play a round of the links; to dine together at Bailie Glass’, and to pay each a shilling for his dinner—the absent as well as the present.” It was some two or three years after this that means were devised for augmenting the dinner wine through the various social delinquencies of members. Thus, on 4th September 1779, a resolution is passed as follows: “It is enacted that whoever shall be Captain of the Golf, and does not attend all the meetings to be appointed throughout the year, shall pay Two Pints of Claret for each meeting he shall be absent at, to be drunk at such meeting; but this regulation is not to take place if the Captain be not in Fife at the time.” Many years later, in 1818, the wine tax on absentees was applied to members generally, under interesting circumstances, as indicated in the terms of the resolution that was passed, which read: “The Club, taking into consideration that the meetings have of late been thinly attended by the Members residing in town, in consequence of several members giving parties on the ordinary days of meeting, and thereby preventing those who would otherwise give their presence at the Club, from attending them, Do Resolve, that in future such Members as shall invite any of their friends, Members of this Club, to dinner on the days of meeting, shall forfeit to the Club a Magnum of Claret for himself, and one bottle for each Member so detained by them, for each offence, and the Captain and Council appoint this Resolution to be immediately communicated to General Campbell.” On 16th September 1825 a minute is entered, “Which day the present Captain, having imposed on himself a fine of a Magnum of Claret for failure in public duty, imposed a similar fine on the old Captains present.” It is quite evident that in these rich old days the social side of golf was cultivated in a manner that makes the worthiest efforts in this direction in the twentieth century look mean in comparison.
The men of the old Musselburgh Club were great in conviviality. Here is a remarkable entry taken from their minute-book: “Musselburgh, 11th January 1793.—The Club met according to adjournment. The meeting was so merry that it was agreed that matching and every other business should be delayed till next month.”
On 11th May 1798, when the Club held its meeting, the question was put as to whether the funds should be disposed of by the members present or delayed till the December meeting, when it was resolved by a majority that the company then present should determine it. Thereupon it was put to the vote as to whether the funds should be drunk, or part of them taken to “give their Myte to the Voluntary Subscription in aid of the Government,” and it was carried unanimously that Five Guineas should be sent to this fund in the name of the Club, and that the remainder of the funds should be disposed of at the December meeting. Meeting at Moir’s on 16th February 1810, the members “Resolve, That an annual subscription of One Guinea be paid by each member, from which fund the expense of the dinners is to be in future defrayed, but all the expenses of liquors to be defrayed by the company present. And any overplus at the end of each season to be sunk in a General Gaudeamus.”
The old records of the Bruntsfield Links Golf Club are similarly entertaining. On 27th April 1822, “Captain Kilgour informed the meeting that Mr. Williamson had sent a small cask of spirits of his own manufacture as a present to the Club. The Secretary was ordered to transmit the thanks of the Society to Mr. Williamson, and to inform him that he was unanimously elected an Honorary Member.” On 29th June 1842 we are told that “a very large party dined at Cork’s, and the evening was spent with more than stereotyped happiness, harmony, and hilarity. A number of matches were made. Mr. S. Aitken (not, of course, when madness ruled the hour) pledged himself if, and when, Deacon Scott married, to present to the Club half a dozen of wine, and the like quantity to the object (lovely, of course) of his choice! This happy evening ‘through many a bout of linked sweetness long drawn out,’ partook of the transitory nature of all earthly things, and, as one [of] our poets says, broke up!”
After the meeting of the Bruntsfield members on 17th December 1842, “A large party dined at Goodman’s, and spent a very happy evening, not the less so that some member, to the company unknown, made the handsome present of half a dozen of Champagne. Mr. Brown, after some very apposite remarks, read an interesting paragraph from the Bombay Times of the 19th October last, noticing certain proceedings of a Golf Club formed in the East Indies, which gave rise to much felicitous discussion, and the appointment of a deputation, consisting of the Captain and Mr. Paterson, to meet and compete with the like, or any number of the Indian Club, the deputation to travel at the Club’s expense and by the new Aerial Transit, which is expected to start early in February next.” They were in a happy mood that evening.
The minutes record that on 18th October 1845, “The Club dined in the Musselburgh Arms Inn, and spent a very happy evening; but the meeting having been prolonged beyond the period at which the omnibus (in which seats had been taken) started, the members found it necessary to walk the greater part of the way to town.”
Rich, indeed, were those ancient days of golf!