As to which of all the schools provides the truest golf it is hard to say, since few men would agree on what is the truest golf. But quite likely the links of the Æsthetic school would be most frequently mentioned in this connection. There has been a subtle art at work in the planning of every hole. The architects have taken their patch of land, and, scorning all convention, have been inspired by great impulses in the selection and arrangement of the line of play. They have had moods and caprices, but they have been men of great genius, born and bred in a high atmosphere of the game. Like all other men of great independence of thought and action, they court and receive severe criticism; but at the end of it all the greatness, the superbness of the work is admitted, and its fame will for ever endure. There is character in it at every glance, but it is not such as is obtrusive, as at Troon. Here there is the perfect art that conceals art, and it is a testimony to its perfection that men go on discussing it for ever and ever, just as they still think and worry over the emotions that passed through the mind of Hamlet, and are not all agreed upon them. How many different readings, as it were, can one not give to a hole at St. Andrews—almost any hole on the old course. St. Andrews is the masterpiece of the Æsthetic school—profound, ingenious, intricate. Here and there we see a little of the influence of the Heroic school; the Romantic has had less. But always the Æsthetic school is a law unto itself, and its finished work is not to be likened to that of any other. Hoylake is of this school, though the example is not so pure and unaffected by the two great rival branches of architectural art as St. Andrews. Nevertheless it is distinctly Æsthetic, and there is no other course that is worthy of inclusion in this particular class.
We have another school, which should be called the Victorian. It has many merits, and it is very prolific. It represents a sober and industrious kind of golf, but it is utterly lacking in any inspiration. It is as business like and exact as you please, a six-o’clock-sharp morning-dress kind of golf. It conduces to good habits, and will make some good golfers. But on the whole it is rather prim and dull, and one never feels the blood running in the veins when contemplating it. Muirfield is one of the Victorian school, and there are one or two of the satellites of Hoylake, on its own seaboard, that are of it also. Sandwich has much of the Victorian element in it; but it is redeemed by the strong influence of other schools, as by the extreme romanticism of the Maiden. The suburbs in their own small way went over to Victorianism entirely at the outset, partly because their circumstances exerted such an irresistible tendency in that direction. A drive over one bunker and a pitch over the next one is Victorianism in its crudest form; but perhaps after all the suburbs are lucky in being able to attach themselves to any school. I am told that the Victorian school has had paramount influence in America.
VII
Of the links we know, those by the sea, to which do we return for the tenth or the twentieth time joyously as to a delightful friend in a charming home? Instantly we murmur the name of dear North Berwick. The old player has conviction in this immediate choice by instinct, though the question is not one which he answers lightly. In his heart he has corners for many old loves, and as he brings each one up for contemplation and counts her many charms, he thinks that surely she is the fairest of them all. But inevitably when they have all been passed in review his fancy brings him back to one, and he clings to the remembrance of her, confessing that she is not like the others. There is a subtlety in her charm, a fascination in her manners, an “altogether” which cannot be resisted. She is gentler than St. Andrews, a sweet innocent maiden wading with bare feet among the rocks of the Haddington coast, whom you love to tease and toy with; while my lady of Fifeshire is colder and of great dignity and compelling attractions. It is a fine sea at North Berwick, and though in the play one may think little enough of the sea, it is good to have the wavelets kissing the pebbles hard by an occasional green, and to hear their soothing lapping. The sound is grateful to the hard-tried nerves. There are few parts of the North Berwick course where one cannot see a little of the ocean, while here and there, such as at Point Garry and Perfection, the greens are placed in enchanting spots. Then the air is like wine. At North Berwick one is in East Lothian, in the centre of the finest golfing country in the world. In two or three weeks one may tire of the same links, the monotony of the same round, the same bunkers, the same greens. Here there are many others at hand, and all within the shortest of journeys. Chiefly there is Gullane the grand. When you are at Gullane you may think it is better than North Berwick as a place to stay and holiday in. It is quieter, quainter, more old fashioned, a trifle more like the country, and the golf is glorious. Such is the turf on old Gullane, that one feels that one should never tread upon the greens save in stockinged feet. And the man who has not captured the eighth and ninth up the hill in 4’s, and then on the summit stood hard by the Roundell to survey the finest panorama to be seen on a golf course, and taste the finest air, has something yet to know of the utmost pleasures of a golfer’s existence. Then there are Muirfield, and Archerfield, Kilspindie, and all the rest of them, so near that strong men have played on the whole collection in one day. But when you go back to North Berwick in the evening you think you will stay there still. You like the comfort of the place, and the green, and you want your Bass Rock.
It is the place to conjure up a mental picture of some great events of days gone by, as:
It is nearly sixty years ago, and there is tense excitement on the seven-hole course, as it was in those far-off days. A great foursome is being played, and there is £400 at issue. Old Tom and Allan Robertson are on one side, and the Dunns are against them on the other. They have played over two other greens and are even, and now they are to decide. The Dunns have had a great lead, but at the second last hole in the fifth and last round the game is square. Then the Dunns’ ball lodges behind a stone, and the brothers are in a frenzy, and lose their heads in several vain endeavours to extricate it. Old Tom and Allan are dormy, and the £400 goes to them at the last hole.
This picture fades away, and another framed in mournful black comes up in its place. Old Tom and his boy, the great Young Tom, are on the green, matched against old Willie Park and Mungo Park. Some news comes. It is bad news. It is taken to the green, and the others bow their heads for a moment but say nothing to the boy. But as soon as may be they take him off the links, and put him in a sailing boat to sail across the water with Old Tom, his father, to St. Andrews on the Fifeshire coast. And there he reels as he looks upon the pallid face of his much-beloved wife, her head laid upon a pillow, and the eyelids closed in death. Young Tom’s own death-warrant was signed that moment. The golfing history of North Berwick is full of the romance of the game.
VIII
In many sequestered places there are fine courses that the golfer in general knows little of. Demand of him suddenly that he shall tell you of a far-away seaside links where you may rest and play for a little while until the city calls you back, and by force of habit he will begin to murmur pleasantly about his Carnousties and his Gullanes and all the rest. They are excellent, most excellent; but we call for change, and where for the old wanderer is the change that is good enough? When he appeals to you, send him down in a cab to Paddington, bidding him take a ticket to Porthcawl, changing at Cardiff, for you may know that in the evening he will be happy, and that upon the next day the joy of life will have come again to a weary worker.