The Enchanted Golf Clubs (Classic Reprint), by Robert Marshall
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The Enchanted Golf Clubs (Classic Reprint), by Robert Marshall
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Excerpt from The Enchanted Golf ClubsI am a popular man and withal I am not vain.To the people who know me I am an acquaintance of importance.This is due to a combination of circumstances.First of all, I am a youthful (aged thirty-five) major in that smart cavalry regiment, the 1st Royal Light Hussars, commonly called the "Chestnuts."Secondly, I am an excellent polo player, standing practically at the top of that particular tree of sport; and again, I am a quite unusually brilliant cricketer. That I do not play in first-class cricket is due to long service abroad with my regiment; but now that we are at last quartered in England, I daily expect to be approached by the committee of my county eleven.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
The Enchanted Golf Clubs (Classic Reprint), by Robert Marshall - Published on: 2015-06-05
- Released on: 2015-06-05
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.02" h x .36" w x 5.98" l, .51 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 166 pages
The Enchanted Golf Clubs (Classic Reprint), by Robert Marshall Review "A brilliant book. By turns funny and extremely funny. . . . A true delight, worth every piffling penny and ten times more." -- Hugh Laurie"Beyond question one of the classics of golfing literature." -- Henry Longhurst"Classic-I have read it at least six times." -- The Times, London"What impresses me most in reading The Enchanted Golf Clubs is its urbane charm, of which there is practically none around these days." -- P. G. Wodehouse"With plenty of hooks, slices, worm-burners, flying divots and whiffs...explores and satirizes the humorous mysteries of golf and golfers." -- Publishers Weekly
About the Author Robert Marshall (1901-1939) was a prodigious hiker who took a Master of Forestry degree from Harvard, became Director of Forestry of the Office of Indian Affairs, and was Chief of the Division of Recreation & Lands from 1937 to his premature death in 1939. He is best remembered as a major figure in the early generation of environmental activists (he was a contemporary of Aldo Leopold) and as a cofounder, in 1935, of the Wilderness Society.The Wilderness Society receives all royalties from the sale of this book. Rick Bass is the author of many books including "Caribou Rising: Defending the Porcupine Herd, Gwich'in Culture, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge" (Sierra Club, 2004), and the forthcoming novel "The Diezmo "(2005).
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. An excerpt from the novel. (Practice your Scottish burr for Kirkintulloch.)
I BEGIN TO GOLF
THE morning of the 8th dawned with a warm flush of saffron, rose, and gold, behind which the faint purple of the night that was gone died into the mists of early morning. The pure, sweet air was delicious as the sparkling vapour that rises from a newly opened bottle of invigorating wine. The incoming tide plashed on the beach with lazy and musical kisses, and a soft, melodious wind was stirring the bending grasses that crowned the sand dunes on the outskirts of the links.
I inhaled the glorious air with the rapture of the warrior who sniffs the battle from afar. Kirkintulloch was waiting for me at the first putting green.
I may say at once that during my entire stay in St. Magnus I never quite mastered this man's name. It became confused in my mind with other curious-sounding names of Scotch towns, and I addressed him promiscuously as Tullochgorum, Tillicoutry, Auchtermuchty, and the like. To his credit, be it said that after one or two attempts to put me right, he suppressed any claim to nominal individuality and adapted himself philosophically to my weakness; answering cheerfully to any name that greeted his surprised but resigned ears.
He was the brawny son of honest fisher folk. Of middle height, he was sturdily yet flexibly built. His hands were large and horny; his feet, I have no doubt, the same. At all events his boots were of ample proportions. He had blue eyes, with that alert, steady, and far-seeing gaze that is the birthright of folk born to look out over the sea; sandy hair and moustache, and a ruddy colour that suggested equally sunshine, salt winds, and whisky. His natural expression was inclined to be sour, but on occasion this was dissipated by a quite genial smile. His manner and address had the odd deferential familiarity that belongs exclusively to the old-fashioned Scotch peasantry. His face I soon found to be a sort of barometer of my progress, for every time I struck a ball I could see exactly the value of the stroke recorded in the grim lines of his weatherbeaten features. In movement he was clumsy, except, indeed, when golfing, for then his body and limbs became possessed of that faultless grace which only proficiency in a given line can impart.
"It's a fine moarn fur goalf," was his greeting.
"So I suppose," said I. "Where do we go ?"
"We'll gang ower here," he replied, as, tucking my clubs under his arm, he led me in the direction of a comparatively remote part of the links.
As we went I thought it advisable to let him know that, although not yet a golfer, I could more than hold my own in far higher branches of sport. I told him that I was one of the best-known polo players of the day. There was a considerable pause, but we tramped steadily on.
"Whaat's polo?" said he, at length.
I gave him a brief description of the game.
"Aweel, ye'll no hae a hoarse to help ye at goalf."
"But, don't you see, Tullochgorum-"
"Kirkintulloch, sir."
"Kirkintulloch, that the fact of playing a game on ponies makes it much more difficult ?"
"Then whaat fur d'ye hae them?"
"Well, it's the game, that's all."
"M'hm," was his sphinx-like response.
I felt that I had not convinced him.
I next hinted that I was a prominent cricketer, and, as a rule, went in first wicket down when playing for my regiment.
"Ay, it's a fine ploy fur laddies."
"It's a game that can only properly be played by men," I replied, with indignant warmth.
"Is't ?"
"Yes, is't-I mean it is." He had certain phrases that I often unconsciously and involuntarily repeated, generally with ludicrous effect.
The reader, of course, understands that I was not in any sense guilty of such gross taste as to imitate the man to his own ears. I simply could not help pronouncing certain words as he did.
"Aweel, in goalf ye'll no hae a man to birtstle the ba' to yer bat; ye'll just hae to play it as it lies."
"But, man alive," I cried, "don't you see that to hit a moving object must be infinitely more difficult than to strike a ball that is stationary ?"
"Ye've no bunkers at cricket," he replied, with irrelevant but disconcerting conviction, adding, with an indescribable and prophetic relish, "No, nor yet whins."
I could make no impression on this man, and it worried me.
"I take it," I resumed presently, "that what is mainly of importance at golf is a good eye."
"That's ae thing."
"What's ae thing?"
"Yer e'e. The thing is, can ye keep it on the ba'?"
"Of course I can keep it on the ba'- ball."
"We'll see in a meenit," he answered, and stopped. We had reached a large field enclosed by a wall, and here Kirkintulloch dropped the clubs and proceeded to arrange a little heap of damp sand, on which he eventually poised a golf ball.
"Noo, tak' yer driver. Here," and he handed me a beautifully varnished implement decorated with sunk lead, inlaid bone, and resined cord. "Try a swing"-he said "swung"-"like this," and, standing in position before the ball, he proceeded to wave a club of his own in semicircular sweeps as if defying the world in general and myself in particular, till suddenly and rapidly descending on the ball, he struck it with such force and accuracy that it shot out into the faint morning mist and disappeared. It was really a remarkably fine shot. I began to feel quite keen.
"Noo it's your turn," said he, as he teed a second ball, "but hae a wheen practice at the swung first." So I began "addressing" an imaginary ball.
We wrestled with the peculiar flourishes that are technically known as "addressing the ball" for some minutes, at the end of which my movements resembled those of a man who, having been given a club, was undecided in his mind as to whether he should keep hold of it or throw it away. I wiggled first in one direction, then in another. I described eights and threes, double circles, triangles, and parallelograms in the air, only to be assailed with-
"Na, na!" from Kirkintulloch.
"See here, dea it like this," he cried; and again he flourished his driver with the easy grace of a lifetime's practice.
"I'll tell you what, Kirkcudbright "
"Kirkintulloch, sir."
"Kirkintulloch, just you let me have a smack at the ball."
"Gang on then, sir. Hae a smack."
I took up position. I got my eye on the ball. I wiggled for all I was worth, I swung a mighty swing, I swooped with terrific force down on the ball, and behold, when all was over, there it was still poised on the tee, insolently unmoved, and Kirkintulloch sniffing in the direction of the sea.
"Ye've missed the globe," was his comment. "An' it's a black disgrace to a gowfer."
I settled to the ball again-and with a running accompaniment from Kirkintulloch of "Keep yer eye on the ba'; up wi' yer richt fut; tak' plenty time; dinna swee ower fast" -I let drive a second time, with the result that the ball took a series of trifling hops and skips like a startled hare, and deposited itself in rough ground some thirty yards off, at an angle of forty-five degrees from the line I had anxiously hoped to take.
"Ye topped it, sir," was Kirkintulloch's view of the performance.
"I moved it, anyhow," I muttered moodily.
"Ay, ye did that," was the response; "and ye'll never move that ba' again, fur it's doon a rabbit hole and oot o' sicht."
Nevertheless, I went steadily on, ball after ball. They took many and devious routes, and entirely different methods of reaching their destinations. Some leapt into the air with half-hearted and affrighted purpose; others shot along the ground with strange irregularity of direction and distance; a number went off at right or left angles with the pleasing uncertainty that only a beginner can command; whilst not a few merely trickled off the tee in sickly obedience to my misdirected energy. At length I struck one magnificent shot. The ball soared straight and sure from the club just as Kirkintulloch's had, and I felt for the first time the delicious thrill that tingles through the arms right to the very brain, as the clean-struck ball leaves the driver's head. I looked at Kirkintulloch with a proud and gleaming eye.
"No bad," said he, "but ye'll no do that again in a hurry. It was guy like an accident."
"Look here, Kirkincoutry," I said, nettled at last, "it's your business to encourage me, not to throw cold water; and you ought to know it."
"Ma name's Kirkintulloch," he answered phlegmatically; "but it doesna' maitter." (And this was the last time he corrected my errors as to his name.) "An' I can tell ye this, that cauld watter keeps the heed cool at goalf, and praise is a snare and a deloosion." Then with the ghost of a smile he added, "Gang on, ye're daein' fine."
The field was now dotted with some fifteen balls at such alarmingly varied distances and angles from the tee that they formed an irregular semicircle in front of us (one ball had even succeeded in travelling backwards); and as I reflected that my original and sustained purpose had been to strike them all in one particular line, I began to perceive undreamt-of difficulties in this royal and ancient game.
But I struggled on, and Kirkintulloch himself admitted that I showed signs of distinct, if spasmodic, improvement. At seven o'clock the driver was temporarily laid aside, and I was introduced in turn to the brassey, the iron, the creek, the putter, and the niblick, the latter a curious implement not unlike a dentist's reflector of magnified proportions. The brassey much resembled the driver, but the iron opened out quite a new field of practice; and my first attempts with it were rather in the nature of sod-cutting with a spade, varied at intervals by deadly strokes that left deep incisions on the ball.
As the clock of the parish church tolled the hour of 8.30, I returned to the hotel with an enormous appetite and a thoughtful mind.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Ur-Wodehouse By A Customer originally published (and still available as) The Haunted Major, this is a minor comic masterpiece. The narrator is Major Jacky Gore, the self-proclaimed 'greatest sportsman living'. He excels at all sports but despises golf on the grounds that it is not dangerous enough. However, in order to win the hand of a rich American widow he finds he has to defeat the US Open golf champion... With the aid of a ghostly and vengeful 16th century Scottish Cardinal Jacky goes head to head... Despite Jacky being pompous, vain, disdainful, arrogant, he is an attractive character. This is the kind of paradox that masterpieces are made of, and this is certainly one.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Enchanting Scottish Tale By rodboomboom This book was originally published under another name in England in 1920, then in American in the twenties. Now, reprinted again.Almost put it down at the beginning first forty pages or so. Just wasn't going anywhere, setting up this arrogant, pompish, stuffy British guy who excels at everything, and thinks he can do the same with golf.Stay in there as I did, until the golf begins, and it becomes a good read. Then, I kept waiting for some twist or such, and none came.Almost quit again before the last chapter, but am glad I continued and encourage you to do the same. The outcome was unexpected, and I resonated to it, as a golfer.You know, golf is about life. What other games calls penalties on themselves?Golfers, you'll enjoy this Scottish tale!
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