CHAPTER XII
ABOUT THE PYRENEES, AND THE CHARMS OF GOLF AT BIARRITZ AND PAU, WITH POSSIBILITIES FOR GREAT ADVENTURE.
It is not a bad thing to be at the Gare d'Orsay in Paris on a night in early February, seeing a porter attach to one's baggage a scarlet label with the words "Pyrenees—Côte d'Argent" printed diagonally across it on a bright yellow band. It indicates a journey southwards to the sun, to a corner of the Bay of Biscay where there are Biarritz and St. Jean-de-Luz and Pau, and the Pyrenees queening over all. Golf was played in these parts some ages back; indeed it was here that the foundations of continental winter golf were laid long before any stir was made elsewhere. It is not always warm at Biarritz; often it is windy; sometimes it is very cold; but generally it is genial and pleasant, constantly sunny, and there is something about the place that conduces to a strong and healthy sporting feeling. It is a matter of taste. I am not here to write down that from the golfing point of view it is either better or worse than the Riviera. They are not the same. They have bad holes at each, and some good ones at both. Biarritz, which is one of the most popular golfing winter resorts in existence and retains its great popularity in spite of its rivals (really when I was there lately in the month of February they told me they had already taken £700 in fees that month, though there was then still a week to go), has some holes which, as we think upon them at home in England, seem quite shockingly bad. They are not so much bad as nearly improper. And yet when we are at Biarritz we do love these holes, as do the great players without exception, and as lief would we suggest the filling up of the Cardinal bunker at Prestwick and the flattening of that range of Himalayas at the same glorious golfing place as touch an inch of the face of the Cliff hole at Biarritz. The course has the gravest faults, but it is very enjoyable to play upon in February, and in the winds that blow there one needs to be playing uncommonly well to get round in figures reasonably low. On the other hand, the golf at Nivelle by St. Jean-de-Luz and Pau is among the winter's best in Europe. There is indeed much difference between the coast of silver and the coast of blue, and the contrast comes out strongly in the golf. There is less of music and flowers and softness of life, less languor at Biarritz than at Cannes and Nice and other Riviera places. The games are everything, and the easy strolls and the social dalliances are much less. In the morning we seldom see the young ladies in fine costumes bought in Paris. They flit fast about the streets and along up the Avenue Edouard VII. in short skirts and the simplest semi-négligé dress, each with a brightly coloured jersey-jacket of a very distinctive colour—a brick red, a sulphur yellow, a cobalt blue, something that does not hide itself. Every one is keen and openly admits it. And the golf club beyond the lighthouse is a great institution, and it is splendidly governed by Mr. W. M. Corrie, the honorary secretary.
Biarritz golf is distinctly peculiar. The course is a short one; it offers a generous continental supply of holes that can be reached with a good shot from the tee (but they must be good and well-directed shots, for the guards of the greens are exacting), and the turf and putting greens are as good as one has any right to expect them to be in the south of France. These are generalities. Now the course, like the old Gaul of Caesar, is in three parts. We begin the play and go on for some seven holes on a flat tableland; then we plunge down over the cliffs to the level of the sea, come up again to the tableland at the thirteenth hole, and so finish on the level. One may leave the first part of the play out of consideration. It is neat, but one often feels the desire to be "getting down below," where there is better sport and much scope for skill and enterprise. At last we come to a teeing ground on the edge of the steep white cliff which is some hundred and thirty feet in height. It is a drive-and-iron hole that is before us, and quite a pretty thing, a hole that for feature and natural beauty it would not be easy to improve upon. To a part of the underland, where the drive must be placed, has been given the name of "Chambre d'Amour," and tales for sorrow and weeping are told of it, of lovers being caught by the tide and dying there. The green is away in a corner of the course, tucked up in the shadow of a towering lighthouse, and the bounding waves of Biscay come rolling almost to its very edge. If we are not convinced that it is technically perfect, this is at all events a charming hole, one of the most picturesque we can find in France, At the lighthouse we turn about, play some plainer things along the level of the sea, and then come to a piece of golf which is famous all over the world. The ascent to the higher surface has to be made at the thirteenth, and it is done at what is known to every one as the Cliff hole.
Nearly all who have never even seen it have heard of the Cliff hole of Biarritz, have studied pictures of it, and speculated upon its peculiar difficulties. No hole on the continent of Europe has nearly such a reputation; indeed, it is perhaps the only one with a special celebrity. I have been asked questions about it in America. I have seen and played it, examined it thoroughly, and thought it out. It is a queer thing, quite different from any other hole I know. It needs such a shot to play it properly as is not demanded elsewhere. And yet it requires absolute skill, the proper shot must be played and played thoroughly well, and it is practically impossible to fluke it. Why, then, should this not be reckoned a good golfing hole? The circumstances are these: The teeing ground is on the lower level, and it is only some fifty yards from the base of the cliff. The ground in between is rough and stony. The cliff here is about forty yards in height, and, if not vertical in the face, bulges outwards frowningly at the top, while a thin stream of water trickling down at one side seems to add a little more to the fearsomeness of the thing. At the top edge of the cliff there is grassy ground sloping quickly upwards for about a dozen yards until a line of wire is reached, and there the green begins. The fact that the green (which is tolerably large and in two parts, an upper and a lower) then slopes downwards away from the player does not make matters easier. Beyond it is another precipice, but wire netting is there to save the ball from this, and there is some wooden palisading to keep it out of trouble on the left. Then there is a local rule saying that if the ball reaches the top of the cliff, but does not pass the wire, it must be teed again, with loss of distance only, the man not being allowed to play it from the tee side of the wire. (He would do so at peril of toppling over the cliff!) But all these things do not make this awful hole much easier in the play. One day I sat on the edge of the cliff and watched the people playing it, and the ball that reached the green and stayed there was a rarity. It can be done. Braid and Taylor and Vardon would do it all the time, and it is no trick shot that is wanted. You might hit hard at the ground in front of the wire and make the ball trickle on, but that would call for more than human accuracy. Or you might sky your ball up to the heavens and let it fall straight down on to the green, and that would be superb. But champion Taylor would take his mashie and play, perhaps, some fifteen yards above the cliff with all the cut that he could put upon the ball, and then he would be putting for a two. A difficult hole follows, but after that the work is easier.
§
With a pair of prism glasses looking Spainwards to the left, we may just discern the quaint and quiet little town of St. Jean-de-Luz. It is one of the best of the winter places for golf, for health and sunshine, and no nonsense. The little town is thoroughly Basque, and the player in his hours away from the game will have a good satisfaction in wandering about it and peering into such places as the old thirteenth-century church which is a perfect specimen of the religious architecture of the Basques, and such a thing in churches as you would not see elsewhere. It was here that Louis XIV. came for his wedding two and a half centuries back. And in this locality we have three courses to play upon—three! There is the old one of St. Barbe, which is a nine-holes affair, and has one hole—the third—called the "Chasm," which is a very strong piece of golf, for the drive is over a deep fissure in the rocks, with the sea running in below. St. Barbe is the second oldest course in France—Pau being the oldest—and there are some fears, perhaps exaggerated, that it may not be in existence for many years more. Another of the three is the course of the St. Jean-de-Luz club at Châlet du Lac, and this also is one of nine holes. Until a little while since there were twelve, but then three were captured by the terrible builders, who seem to oppress the golfers all over the world; but the club received some compensation in having a new and neat little club-house erected for them at the landlord's expense. And here also they make the claim that "the scenery surrounding the course is probably the finest to be obtained from any course in Europe." Certainly it is very good. The nine holes are very tolerable in golfing quality. Here and there the driving must be very straight. A pull, for instance, at the third, will deliver the unhappy ball to the Bay of Biscay, and the sea will bang it about the rocks for a long time after. At the fifth, again, one must respect the ocean when approaching. Generally, however, the holes are somewhat easy, and do not worry so much as to hinder appreciation of the surrounding views, which are indeed magnificent. Out one way is the grand panorama of the snow-topped Pyrenees, and the light and colour effects upon them change at nearly every hour throughout the day. Below is the pretty harbour and town of St. Jean-de-Luz. Away to the west is the great expanse of the Atlantic, framed here at the course with a wildly rocky coast, and up along to the north is a rough fringe of shore, the innermost corner of the Bay of Biscay, which leads the eyes out to the most distant point, where a cluster of buildings gleams in the sunlight, and the tall, white lighthouse beyond them indicates that the place is Biarritz.
But Nivelle, the course that rises up from the bank of the broad river of that name, is the chief course of the group and quite a wonder of golfing France. When I first saw it and inquired upon its origin I felt that here was something which was undoubtedly among the best in Europe, and yet only five or six years ago all the land, except a small piece which is occupied by two of the eighteen holes, was bare soil on which cabbages, turnips, and other edibles were being grown. Listen to the story of the creation of Nivelle. One day Mr. Frank Jacobs, the secretary of the St. Jean-de-Luz Club, and a Spanish doctor, went exploring the country round, and they hastened to Count O'Byrne to tell him that there was ground on the banks of the stream Nivelle which looked to have the possibilities of such a full-sized golf course as was needed then. He agreed with them. They were men of keen discernment; for even then while a little of that land was pasture the rest was under cabbages and other growths. It was ascertained that a hundred and sixty acres could be bought for six thousand pounds, but such a sum of money was not at hand. Count O'Byrne told the local hotel-keepers the truth that unless there was a first-class golf course there St. Jean-de-Luz would lose in the race for winter popularity, and he asked them to guarantee the money in the first place, a company to relieve them afterwards. They did so accordingly, and the land was secured; but the farmers could not be turned off at once, and some time was lost thereby. When they came to make the course they followed an interesting and, as we would think, an extraordinary procedure. The farmers, recovering from their grief and resentment, gave up to the incoming golfers a priceless secret. They said that if they would leave the bare land alone to look after itself it would from its own sources grow for them the most beautiful grass for their purposes that they could ever dream of on the happiest summer's night. So the Count and his comrades gathered their men about them, the land was raked and smoothed out, and then they borrowed the town roller, being the heaviest thing of the kind in the district, to flatten it down. And so they left it and waited. Sure enough up came the tender blades of grass, and in a season there was a thick coating there, fine, beautiful turf, and I can answer for it that it is nice to the touch of the feet and excellent for the game. The climate in these parts is most times a little moist and better for the production and preservation of golfing turf than that of the Riviera. The hotel-keepers were soon relieved of the full responsibility by a company floated for ten thousand pounds, the capital afterwards being increased to twelve thousand, but they were so much enamoured of the project, believed in it so utterly, that they and the tradesmen took up as many shares as they could get. But some great personal driving force was needed, and it was found. A Dundee gentleman, a keen golfer and a great lover of this sweet spot in France, Mr. W. R. Sharp, came forward and increased his commanding interest in the club and the course, and he has done wonders for them. That he is president of the club is a good thing for the club. Now there is a charming club-house; Arnaud Massy, once open champion, has a pretty villa for himself close by, some hundred and forty golfers are playing on the course at the busy time—and play goes on all through the year—and only four years after the course was opened the company was able to pay a dividend. So I say that this is a miracle of golf.
Of course, the story is not complete at this. Fine turf and a prosperous club do not necessarily make good holes. But St. Jean-de-Luz has holes as good as most in Europe. They would even be good on a first-class inland course in Britain. They are, thanks to the broad undulations of the land, good in character. The round is opened with a fine two-shotter of a full four hundred yards, with an incline against the player from the tee. The drive must be properly placed, and that is the case nearly all the way round. The second is a pretty short hole; the third presents a fearsome drive across a yawning quarry; at the fourth the return over it is made in the progress to the longest hole, one of five hundred and fifty yards, and so on to the end, some of the middle holes being very good, the seventeenth a fine full one-shot hole, and a good drive and iron of three hundred and eighty yards downhill to terminate. The view from the seventeenth and eighteenth tees, the town of St. Jean-de-Luz shining in the sun, the Nivelle pressing itself into it, and the pretty harbour white-flaked with the waves, is peaceful and pleasant, and it gives that sense of "going home" which one always likes to have when playing the last holes of a round.