Part 11
Our friend came out of the club-house and stood for a few minutes with the professional watching our work. But the presence of a "gallery" did not disturb us. We were beyond all that. We had Colonel Bogey down and were thumping the life out of him. When we had finally and reluctantly finished--it was time to go in and get something to eat--our friend told us that the professional had said: "That man has the makings of a real golfer in him."
It may seem to the reader that it was very nice of our friend to pass this compliment on to us--especially after the exhibition of golf he himself had given. But it wasn't nice. It was the refinement of cruelty. Then and there our doom was sealed. The mid-iron was in our soul. That glorious first drive had done it. A few days later we went out with another friend and played our first game. But that is quite another story.
*That Awful First Game*
In a previous article we have told of picking up a friend's golf-club in a spirit of gay nonchalance and making a glorious drive--our first. How our friend artfully left us alone with his bag of tools, how we drew a club out of it, how we carelessly set a quivering little white ball on a neat little pyramid of sand, how we swung the deadly weapon with serene insouciance, and how that doomed spheroid tore a shrieking gash in the atmosphere and lit on a hillside in the next county--all that we detailed to our friends with a frankness untempered by any feeling of personal modesty. We were not modest about it. We saw no reason to be modest. On the contrary, we felt we had every reason to be proud of ourself, and we were at the time.
Naturally, we were not satisfied to let things go at that. If we had stopped then and there, if we had refused firmly and with cuss-words ever to touch a club again, we might to-day be able to go about with the pleasant conviction that we were a champion in possibility. When people talked of young Ouimet, as they still do occasionally--it is a great man who is famous for more than a few months in these bustling times--we could smile in a thoughtful way and ask casually if we had ever told them of that time when we had picked up that club and placed that ball, etc., etc.
Of course, they would probably be bored by the recital--especially after we had told it a few dozen times--but think of the satisfaction it would be to us to know that if we turned our giant intellect and steel muscles to the subject of golf, we would have Ouimet wishing that his parents had apprenticed him to a grocer or a plumber instead of making him a little caddy.
Unfortunately, we did not refrain from golf. We allowed ourself to be persuaded into going out and playing a game--starting a game, that is--and now whenever we hear the word "golf," we turn a peculiar bright salmon pink, and get a trembling all over us. That first game of ours was a thing no man who respects himself could look back on with anything but agony. Nothing but our passion for truth, even at the risk of exposing all the weakness of our nature--it is the same determination with us as with St. Augustine and Rousseau and the other great confessors--nothing but this could lead us to mention the game at all. But our favorite motto is, "The whole truth and then some." So with trembling pen we tear the veil from this crying gash on the milestones of memory--there seems to be something wrong with this metaphor. But never mind. On with the tale, let truth be unrefined!
A few days after that famous first drive we dropped into a friend's office to discuss several important matters of business--such as the weather and the market quotations in the leading blind-pigs. Our real purpose, however, was to tell him, quite incidentally, how we picked up that club and placed that ball, etc., etc., etc.
"Ah, ha, sounds like a pretty nice drive," said Bjones--let's call him that, anyway--when we had finished our modest little recital of how we had established a new record for the course. "You must come out and have a game with me at Boozedale to-morrow afternoon--hope I can give you a game all right."
As a matter of fact, this friend of ours is a mighty golfer. He's the sort of player that spends a bad night every time he takes more than eighty-five to go around in. And when he plays he drags around with him a leather barrel--or rather, the caddy drags it--containing enough carnal weapons to arm a division of the Bolshevik army. To see him coming to a decision between a jigger and a driving mashie, to see him taking his stance and addressing the ball, would fill the breast of the least reverent with awe. Napoleon playing his famous approach-shot with the Old Guard at Waterloo had nothing on our friend Bjones dropping one dead on the eighteenth green. But, alas, it was only later on that we discovered all this.
"Hope I can give you a game," said he.
We knew not the irony that lurked in his suave tones. It ran right off the umbrella of our self-satisfaction. We could see in it nothing but deference to our huge natural genius for the game. Besides, we were delighted at this chance to give free rein to our golfing abilities. We felt that to refuse the invitation would be flying in the face of Providence, which had obviously designed us for a champion. We did not accept too eagerly, however. We felt a certain reluctance about taking a fellow out to his own club and making a holy show of him. But finally we allowed ourself to be persuaded. The hour was named and the car.
Next day at the appointed time we were on the job. It was a lovely day, not too warm and not too cold--just the right temperature to call out the best that was in us. We felt that we would make our previous driving record look like something that had been done in the palaeozoic age. When we caught sight of Bjones, however, we felt twinges of regret. Bjones seemed to look older than usual. And his stoop was more apparent than ever. We thought we could see lines of anxiety on his face.
When we made that famous first drive we were, of course, in our ordinary street-clothes--not that they are so ordinary, you know, not at all--but still the garb of convention. This time, however, we removed our civilized habiliments and got into a curious assortment of garments that Bjones dug out of his locker for us. They must have been in his family a long time. There was an old khaki shirt, and a pair of lavender trousers with a tendency to open-work effects. The boots had evidently been worn for years by a gigantic policeman, till a blacksmith came along and filled the soles full of horse-shoe nails. Bjones said they were fine for side-hills. Perhaps they were, but they made us feel like a touring-car travelling in chains.
After Bjones had succeeded in making us look like a tramp that had just been run off a farm by a couple of bull-dogs, he led us out to the first tee--right in front of the verandah where a number of ladies were sitting. They smiled at us and seemed to wonder if our escape had been noticed, or if we had been discharged as cured. It was a mortifying position. We found consolation, however, in the thought that our first stroke would show them that a champ' is a champ' for a' that.
A couple of men who were ahead of us drove off and hurried down after their balls into the valley below. After a suitable pause Bjones teed his ball up and whacked it into space in the general direction of a little white flag on the other side of the valley. But we waited. We could see the pair ahead of us putting on the first green, and we weren't taking any chances of slaughtering a fellow-creature, even if he did take four to the hole--mentally we allowed ourself about two.
Finally they holed out and disappeared on their way to the next tee. Carelessly we jabbed down a little lump of wet sand, set the ball on it, took a good look at the flag in the distance, waggled the club a few times in a business-like manner, and swung. There was no joyous crack. We gazed off over the landscape, but could see no ball wildly careering.
"Ahem, you were a little too hurried, old man," said Bjones.
We retrieved the ball. It had rolled about six inches under the impulse of the wind raised by the club. It was a painful moment, and we murmured a few words which we hope will not be remembered against us in the day of final reckoning. Then we erected a slender column of moist sand, somewhat on the model of the tower of Babel. It was a miniature campanile. On the top we carefully set the ball.
This time we were cautious--there could be no question about that. We were still confident, but were running no risks. Half a dozen times did we change our grip. For a full minute we wobbled the club about the ball, picking out the exact spot where we were going to hit it. Then slowly we brought the club back, higher and higher. Keeping our eye glued with maniacal intensity on the globule, we finally made a tremendous swipe at it and--carefully cut the sand from under it, so that it came down kerplunk! We had driven it just two inches--straight down. Bjones said nothing. There are times when silence is more precious than radium. And the caddy--the caddy was beyond speech.
We don't know how we finally managed to persuade the ball to vacate the tee and seek the green expanse of the valley below. But we did at last, and stumbled down the hill after it with vengeance in our eye. Selecting the ugliest-looking iron club in the bag Bjones had given us, we remorselessly drove that ball and a number of sods right up to the edge of the green--in eight, we believe. Or was it eighteen?
"Now, a nice little tap, a wrist-shot," said Bjones, who had holed out and had smoked half a cigar in the meantime.
It was a nice little tap. Tearing a hole in the flag and just missing the caddy's head by a fraction of an inch, that perverted pellet plunged screaming into an oak-forest, where it buried itself and will probably in the course of time grow into a cork-and-rubber plant.
"Hard luck, old man," Bjones murmured. But there was something very wistful in his smile. You see, that ball was brand new, and had cost Bjones just one dollar. The next ball he gave us was not quite so new--not by several gashes.
We have no intention of going into all the painful details of that game. Suffice it to state that after three hours of play and seven balls we had made eight holes. We didn't count our strokes. It would require one of those patent calculating machines that can add up three columns of figures at a time. When we hit the ball a good wallop, it invariably sought refuge in the woods or in a creek. The rest of the time it just dribbled along.
"Your game isn't so bad," said Bjones in answer to our apologies, "if you could only get it distributed properly. The trouble seems to be that you do all your putting from the tee and on the fairway, and all your driving on the green. If you could only reverse that, you would be a real winner." But, of course, that was precisely what we couldn't do.
One hole was an especially depressing experience. The tee is on the edge of a cliff, at the foot of which a little bubbling brook burbles beauteously. Now, any human being with the full use of one leg could kick a golf-ball over that stream without the slightest difficulty. So could we. But we made the mistake of going at it with a driver. We swung with savage determination, nicked the ball neatly on top, and had the pleasure of seeing it describe a pretty parabola and plunge with a gurgle to a watery grave. That, if we remember well, was the fourth ball. Of course, about thirty or forty pairs went "through" us. That is, some sixty or eighty gentlemen in more or less mussy garments came up behind us, watched us cynically, and then with grins more or less politely disguised went on ahead. Again and again, when we had just made a wicked drive of several yards, a fat duffer old enough to be one of our remote ancestors, with a red face and a girth that indicated years of reckless indulgence in pork and port, would come along, watch us for a moment, and then, growling apologetically, would drive like a rifle-bullet straight for the green we wouldn't reach for half an hour. And we have always rather fancied our lithe and athletic build!--or so we like to describe it.
Bjones was awfully decent about the whole thing. Bjones is a thorough-bred. He kept framing excuses for us, blaming the clubs he loaned us and the clothes he had induced us to wear. He even spoke harshly of the state of the turf in several places. We must admit that it did look pretty rough--after we got through with it.
In the end even he fell silent--that was when we had broken the second club. Unbroken gloom settled like a pall on our soul. We were too depressed even to swear. Besides, we had used up all the expressions we had been treasuring up for a time of mental stress, and we ceased to find consolation in the repetition.
The only sensible thing for us to do was to put the clubs--those that remained of them--back in the bag and refuse to take another swing. But no one is ever sensible at golf. We still kept hoping that the next shot would reveal the superb natural genius for the game that we had possessed only a few days before. And now and then a shot really would go right--usually when we lost our temper completely and simply took a savage swing at the ball without any formalities whatever. But the next stroke always plunged us into more horrible depths than ever. When we had finally managed to dribble and stagger our way to the last green, we felt so sick and lonesome and helpless that we could have lain right down there on the velvet sward and cried into the little cup--only we probably would have missed it even with our tears.
The only hole we could have played in really masterly fashion was the nineteenth--the one they used to keep in the club-house. Only it wasn't there any more. The Prohibitionists have seen to that. Driving right on to the green carpet, we would have putted discreetly with our right hand, and would have holed out with a quart bottle and a glass in two. Vardon himself couldn't play it any better than we would have done if--oh, those "ifs!"
We might moralize easily and at great length on this experience of ours, but what's the use? Besides, the moral is obvious. It is this. Once you have made a fine drive in a moment of reckless inspiration, either keep your hands off golf-clubs for the rest of your life, or go away somewhere and practice in secret for several years with an instructor to whom you have given hush money, before you display yourself and your golfing skill on the links. Otherwise, you will fill the caddy's soul with loathing---we did.
*On Keeping Cool*
The worst of hot spells is that they always occur in the summer. Now a nice hot spell in the middle of winter or the beginning of March, when we are all getting sick of the snow and heavy woollens, would be--but enough of this! We are not the man to fly in the face of Divine Providence and suggest changes in the climatic arrangements. We leave that to the parsons.
It is quite possible, of course--in fact, with our usual luck in such matters, it is highly probable--that by the time this has been printed, bound, and inflicted on the public, the public will be sitting in front of a grate-fire with a shawl and a cold in the head, having been caught in the sleet on the way home from the office. The public will therefore regard our advice on the best way to keep cool as an impertinence and an imposition. And we hate to have the public think us a jackanapes or a darn fool. Of course, the public is bound to find us out some time, but we would like to postpone the dread day as long as possible.
Whatever the weather may be like at the time of reading, at the time of writing and for some days back we have been going through a period of torridity during which keeping cool has been an art--a lost art, we regret to state. Having devoted to it all the powers of our mind and all the energy we had left after the business of perspiring, we feel qualified to speak on the subject with assurance and authority. Not that we have ever considered it necessary for us to feel qualified before speaking, but it is just as well.
As soon as the heat-wave hit us in our office-chair, we took off our coat, vest, collar and tie, and knotting our suspenders around our editorial waist, we sent out for all the heat-literature that could be obtained for love or money--preferably for love. And then we plunged with characteristic impetuosity into the task of mastering this subtle science or esoteric philosophy or whatever it is. Only we didn't master it.
We never in all our life became so hot as we did reading the various directions for keeping cool. When we got through we were stuck to the back of our chair, the pattern of our shirt had been roughly transferred to our epidermis, and we had gone into liquidation to the extent of several pounds--avoirdupois, not sterling. But we had the satisfaction of feeling that we knew all there was to be known about keeping cool, all the hints, surmises, suggestions, and epizootic bosh generally.
Advice on how to keep cool, so far as we can find out, usually concerns itself with clothes, food, rest, and the state of one's mind. The crest of the heat-wave is always littered with suggestions as to what one should wear and eat and drink--especially what one shouldn't--how much one should rest, and how peaceful and serene one's mind, or what one uses in its place, should always remain. This last is considered very important. Perhaps if one can only get cool, a cool mind will help one to keep so. But we never get--not till the hot spell is over.
Concerning clothes we are told that we should wear as little as possible--as little, that is, as the crossing-policemen will let us get by with. And what little we do wear should be of silk or linen or thin flannel, and very light in color, preferably white.
Now, so far as the girls are concerned, this is easy. They have already at the dictate of fashion removed all the lower strata of clothing, retaining only the extreme outer layer. And even this they have cut so low and slit so high, that there is practically no obstacle in the way of the weakest zephyr that ever zephed. And, as for mosquitoes, a really sporting mosquito would scorn to take opportunities so easy.
But men are somewhat handicapped. We still retain vestiges of primitive reticence. Or perhaps it is only that we do not think we would look so well in transparent garments. The thought of wearing muslin trousers tastefully slashed to the knee causes us to shrink painfully. Nor would we like our shirts cut low to display our collar-bone and Adam's-apple. There is something crude and ungainly about masculine architecture when exposed in that unabashed way.
Of course, there are linen suits and mohair suits. Now and then one even sees a silk suit--very seldom, though, for few men are dare-devils of this unfaltering type. But, though cool enough in a way, there are disadvantages to all such clothes. We know, for we have tried them.
Five or six years ago, we recall, there was a hot spell of the good old blast-furnace type. In its tropical glare one's ordinary suit felt like the winter garb of an Esquiman. Fat men became slim, though not graceful, in a single afternoon. It was like being rendered in one of those German plants for producing glycerine.
Personally, we became desperate. Not that we are of a fat or particularly full-blooded type. But then neither are we a lightning-rod--not, except in the most figurative sense. We rushed out to our barber and had him reduce our dome of thought somewhat to the appearance of a stubble-field. We got a pair of canvas shoes and a Panama hat. We tried beer. Then we tried ice-cream sodas. Then we tried beer again--this time we gave it a really good trial. Still no relief. As a last resort we bought two linen suits. We were desperate, that's all! The idea in buying two was to wear one while the laundry was hanging, drawing, and quartering the other.
They were nice suits--not a doubt about it! On the stage they would have caused matinee-girls to dream about us. But for private life, especially such a modest and retiring private life as ours, they were rather pronounced. One of them was made out of a genteel sort of gunny-sacking; while the other was smooth with hair-line stripes at wide intervals. But both had the same general color-effect. It suggested a sick canary--yellow, you know, but not up to its usual form.
The first time we put one of them on, we sneaked out the back way. We didn't dare step out where the neighbors could see us. Of course, there would not be the same occasion for nervousness nowadays, when suits of this airy character have become so much more familiar. But this was five or six years ago, when masculine tastes were less Arcadian.
While we stood waiting for a street-car--we felt as though we had been waiting several hours--hot blushes coursed over us from head to foot. The perspiration fairly sizzled on our cheeks. We couldn't have felt hotter in a coon coat.
As the car bore down upon us, we noticed that the motorman kept his eye fixed on us with withering contempt. He fairly snorted with indignation as he applied the air-brake. We put it down to jealousy. He was wearing one of those nice serge suits, blue and shiny, made of cloth weighing half a pound to the square foot, and bound with leather at the wrists, as is popular in municipal-traction circles. A coat like that is about as pervious to air as a zinc roof. We tried to persuade ourself that he envied us.
The conductor, while he held out the box for our yellow ticket--no, we didn't choose it to match the suit--studied us as though we were a new and exotic specimen at the local zoo. Then he went up to the front of the car, and as he went the motorman turned halfway round and said in a stage-whisper that carried easily the full length of the car: "Fer gawd's sake, did yuh see what got on?" Then they talked seriously together for a moment or two. They seemed to be considering whether or not they ought to throw us off. It was very difficult to look unconcerned, but we tried.
There are many painful recollections connected with that day. We bore up against the flood of contumely and ridicule as best we could. But in the end it was too much for us. We passed a group of boys on a street-corner. We had passed several such groups during the day, and had been obliged to listen to many personal remarks of a vulgar character utterly lacking in true wit. As we went past this last group the usual derisive comments were made, but we neither slackened nor hastened our stately progress. Then in the midst of them a shrill voice suddenly piped up: "Oh, you Votes-for-Women!"
It was too much. Our cup was full--in fact, it was sloshing over our anguished soul. We hurried home and tore the suit off, and were only prevented by fear of our landlady from burning it in the corner of our room. We never wore it again.
As we pointed out before, however, the public attitude towards garments of this sort has changed very considerably in the past few years. A man may now clothe himself like the lily--the orange lily, that is--without causing people on the street to suspect him of being a poet or a professional fox-trotter. Think of the vogue of the Palm Beach suit in the past few years!--which reminds us.