On the other hand, there are times when he is sadly mindful of failure, and he is much too serious a golfer ever to forget the most evil things he has done. One time we saw him playing in a foursome—his favourite form of golf—with Mr. Eric Hambro as his partner, and after foozling his approach in a deplorable manner, he called out wearily to his partner, “Do you know, Hambro, I once did that kind of thing for a whole fortnight!” It must have been the blackest fortnight in the right honourable gentleman’s career. He is something of a philosopher on the links, and when he makes a bad stroke he sometimes explains how it came about to those who are near him, or to the course and the sky, if he is momentarily isolated. This, indeed, is one of the very few respects in which the Prime Minister falls from what we may regard as the standard of the ideal golfer. He is inclined to reach too hastily at a conclusion, and some say to speak too much. Some masters have held that the perfect golfer plays in absolute silence, and Mr. Balfour is not an absolutely silent golfer, though in his case he is none the less earnest. It has been stated that never on the links does he make use of any other ejaculation than “Dear me!” but this statement, besides being untrue, is absurd, and is not complimentary to him as a golfer. Let him miss a shot or do anything which he ought not to have done, and the human man comes out above the statesman, though, of course, nobody has ever heard Mr. Balfour commit himself to any unbecoming remark. But in the production of effect from the minor expletives he is most skilful. “Botheration!” is the commonest of his ejaculations, and as he says it whilst witnessing the descent of his little white ball into a yawning bunker, one, as an old golfer, sometimes realises that the most satisfactory results in this respect are not always produced from the use of the strongest materials. “Oh, this is indeed shocking!” is another favourite form of expression, which, as he says it, speaks a volume upon the agony of the mind.
For the rest he is just a good, determined golfer, who is a first-class sportsman, never giving any quarter on the links, and never expecting any. You never see Mr. Balfour pick up his ball whilst there is still the remotest chance left of his dividing the hole with his opponent, and he would reject with scorn, like every other true golfer, the suggestion that he takes his golf for the sake of the exercise only. It is because he is thus keen that other and better players find it a constant pleasure to match themselves against him, or to become his partner in a foursome. They know then that they are out for golf.
“Big” Crawford, his old-time favourite caddie, who keeps a ginger-beer tent alongside the eighth green at North Berwick, flies the Scottish standard from the top of it when Mr. Balfour is on his most beloved course. A Russian grand duke, who did not know the truth, once naïvely suggested to Crawford that the flag was flying as a compliment to him, the Russian. “Na, na, sir,” said Crawford, “begging your pardon and with great respect, but it’s for one greater than you.”
“Who is looking after Mr. Balfour?” they whispered one time at St. Andrews, when the right hon. gentleman was playing himself into the captaincy of the Royal and Ancient Club, and was then Chief Secretary for Ireland, and regularly attended by plain-clothes detectives in case of accident. “I am looking after Mr. Balfour!” Crawford said when he overheard. “I’m enough.” And he would have been.
II
It should not be set against a golfer for foolishness or faddism that he gives pet names to some of his favourite clubs that have served him well through many hard campaigns, and between him and which there has grown up a very close degree of intimacy, for some of the greatest players have given this rank of name to their trusted clubs. “My driver,” even “My best driver” or “My old driver,” is a cold term to apply to that fine head and shaft that you think have no equals on the links—at least for you. All drivers may be called drivers; shall we have no other name for the champion that has roamed with us and played with us over courses all the way from Dornoch to Westward Ho!? Call him “Bill” if you like, and “Bill” is a very good name; or if your fancy leans that way, and she is slender and whippy, you may call her “Bess.” But better keep to human names. There is a man who calls his baffy “Jumbo,” and it does not seem a nice name. I have a golfing friend who has a driver that he calls “Ephraim,” and it is one of the most wonderful drivers ever seen, with such a long shaft that it needs a giant to wield it, but its owner is something of a giant too. When I hear him ask for Ephraim I know that mighty schemes are afoot, and, straining my eyes to the far distant green, I wonder that even old Ephraim should ever be called upon to make such efforts. But Ephraim has a way with him that makes for success. He is not to be used often, and then when he is he does his job well. That is Ephraim. And do not many of us know the famous golfer who has a dear wooden putter who goes by the name of Fanny? Fanny has done fine duty in championships ere this, and her master knows her every whim and mood. She is a delicate creature is Fanny, and she is not so young as she used to be, and Mr. John, her master, never takes her out in these days when it is wet.
III
Many golfers carry in their minds a fairly clear picture of a club that they regard as their ideal. They have some notion as to its looks, the shape of the head, and the length and the thickness of the shaft. Particularly do they know what that club feels like in their hands as they grip it to make the shot for which it, and it alone, is perfectly adapted. They have never seen such a club, and they fear sometimes that they never will. Some old favourite of theirs has some of the points that are possessed by this ideal, but it has not got them in the same ripe perfection, and it has obvious faults which at times have cost their master dearly. There is no reproachful word to say against that old favourite. It is a good club, and it has done a fine service on the links, and as for its imperfections, are they not what its maker gave to it, trifling imperfections, too, which we are generously disposed to overlook when considering that fine record of service. But it is not the ideal club; it does not feel like that club that we sometimes handle in our imagination, and then enjoy a glorious sense of power as with no other.
It is a pleasant thing to treasure in the mind such a club as this; but let it stop at that. If one grand delusion in which there is nothing harmful, and which on the whole but makes for good, as most ideals do, is not to be destroyed, never set out to reduce that club, now made of but filmy thought, to cold iron or clumsy wood. It will not be the same, be the fancy ever so exact. The first efforts will bring forth results that will be far poorer in quality than those made by old favourites of whom we have spoken, and it will be as if the favourites have jealousy and resent these new-born interlopers, so that they will for the time being cease to give their best work to the man who is so plainly discontented, and who, being so, is lacking in confidence. And the faults that are in those first models that come thus from the mind only increase and aggravate the more as attempts are made to repair them. It is a Will-o’-the-wisp, indeed, is this ideal club, be it driver or brassey or cleek or iron, and it may lure the golfer to a shocking fate. Let us cling to the old favourites and be kind and generous to them. It has been said, and it is no doubt true, that the perfect wife has never yet been born, and some men may reflect upon the advantages of life if they had a perfect wife such as one whom they have painted in their fancy. But in their honesty they will turn their thoughts away from such conceits, and let them dwell upon the manifold excellences of the wives they have, who have hearts that beat, and who, kind and patient and generous, have those human weaknesses which would be faults in the ideal, but which only seem to give to the being the greater human completeness and even perfection. Thus, with this tolerant affection and appreciation, must we look upon our favourite clubs, and leave the ideal to lie unmaterialised and worthless in the mind, a pretty thing to think about, but impossible.
Once there was a man who made a grand effort to materialise the ideal that he had cherished through many seasons. It was a brassey. Some twenty brasseys had he had made, but none of them was quite the thing that he craved. There was something wanting, and thus his shots had not the sting that they ought to have, or that he thought they should possess. But, so often disappointed, he let alone his search for the ideal for a while, and made good friends with one of the real. But he could not forget the ideal brassey, and it grew more and more definite in his imagination. He would look at it there with a smile on his face as he would be going home in the train, and he would handle it and make with it that long carry against the wind that no club of wood and brass in his hands had ever made. Then he took the professional clubmaker into his confidence, and in odd moments after rounds, in the shop they would sometimes talk of this great club, but neither would venture to suggest that it should be made, though they spoke of it as if it were made. They would pick a new one from the stand, and the idealist would say, “Now, Solomon”—he always called it Solomon—“has a shade more hook than that, and there is a little sharper angle to his nose.” The worthy clubmaker entered fully into the spirit of the fancy, and seriously, and he would answer, “Ay, sor, but Sawlaman wasna made by my apprentice!” Another day the golfer would recount the story of his play at a fateful hole, and of the narrow margin by which a fine long shot failed to clear the hazard. It was a moving theme, and after a moment of silence the maker of clubs would say in summary, “Ay, ay, sir; it was a pity ye no had Sawlaman in yer bag!” Yes, it was Solomon that was wanted, just Solomon.