It has already been suggested that Blackheath led the way, and led it most effectively. For long after it had done so it was still the premier club in England, and in playing strength was the best. The club itself has few solid possessions - just a few fine old club heirlooms - but many great memories. In a very modern sense it is poor, having a comfortable but not a magnificent club-house, and no splendid links of eighteen holes. But the Royal Blackheath Golf Club is like a fine old English gentleman of the very best kind, ignoring all new ways of thought and life, eschewing all sordidness, clinging to the fine simple principles of wise forefathers. That is just what it is, the fine old English gentleman whom the age has outstripped. It is the Colonel Newcome of the clubs.

And in that pageant of London golf that we suggested there are many other picturesque and significant scenes. If we cannot be sure of the places where the holes were cut, nor of the situation of the teeing grounds, it is still certain, from documentary evidence, that a golf course that was made at Molesey Hurst was only second, in point of seniority, in England, to Blackheath itself, and it was very high up in the list of the golf clubs of the world. Manchester came next in I 8 1 8. There are concerned in the only existing record two people of no less credit and renown than David Garrick, the actor, and the eminent Dr. Alexander Carlyle, of Inveresk, who witnessed the Porteous riots, saw the fight at Preston-pans, and amid these many excitements cultivated his game to a fine point, was one of the keenest golfers of the eighteenth century, and won the Musselburgh medal in 1775. Carlyle was like many others of the Scottish parsons of those good times and the present, who would take their golf clubs with them wherever they might wander, on the chance of opportunity presenting itself. He came to London, and knowing of Blackheath, the clubs came with him. Garrick at that time had a house at Hampton which in recent days was occupied by the late Sir Clifton Robinson, the organiser of the London electric tramway system. Garrick asked John Home and a number of friends, including Carlyle, to dine with him at Hampton and bring their golf clubs and balls with them that they might play on the course at Molesey Hurst. When the six of them, who were in a landau, passed through Kensington, the Coldstreams, who were changing guard, observed their clubs, and gave them three cheers "in honour of a diversion peculiar to Scotland."

There might be a railway train in the pageant EOT London golf, one of the early trains with engines EOT the Stephensonian style. The period would be just after the accession of Queen Victoria, and there would be two gentlemen travelling together from London to Aldershot, one of them being Sir Hope Grant, a keen golfer, a member of the Royal and Ancient Club, who held a military appointment at Aldershot, while the other would be the Duke of Cambridge. It has been recorded that in matter of companionship this journey was a very dull affair, for Sir Hope Grant was moody, and failed to respond to the well-meant attempts of the Duke to open conversation. He seemed troubled. But suddenly after long silence he jumped up from his seat, rushed to the window of the compartment and opened it. At this stage the Duke of Cambridge felt that things could not be well with his companion, and jumping up after him, grabbed him by the tails of his coat. A moment later they both sat down, and looked at each other. "Well," said Sir Hope Grant, in the manner of a man recovering from a great surprise, "that is a thing that you seldom see near London; there were two men playing golf in a field out there."

And then in the pageant there would be represented the starting of golf at Wimbledon in 1865, with the Black-heath emissaries all on fire with the zeal of their enterprise. Wimbledon with its Royal Wimbledon and its London Scottish, its famous holes and its windmill, and all the rest of it, has played no small part in golfing history. At the beginning seven holes were made as they had them at Blackheath, and did you ever hear that at Wimbledon once there was a round that consisted of nineteen holes, the longest round in number of holes in the world? Tom Dunn, who was responsible for the extension of the course about 1870, told the story, and so far as I am aware he only told it in America. We may repeat it here in the words he used. The committee had asked him whether he thought they might make a full-sized course on their land, and, coming to the conclusion that they might, he was told to go on with the work, and eventually was satisfied that he had made a good job of it. The secretary of the period is said to have been somewhat imperfectly acquainted with the game in general just then, and went to Dunn with the inquiry as to how many holes they had on the old course at St. Andrews, and was told. "The secretary thought a moment," said Tom, "scratched his head and began to look wise. Then he approached very closely, and nodding his head for me to bend my ear, he whispered in a hoarse voice, ' Tom, let us have one more!' 'Oh, that is impossible,' I replied. 'It cannot be, for eighteen is the orthodox number.' ' I care not for that,' replied the secretary, who was accustomed to have his own way, ' we will have one more! ' I was very young at the time and I would do anything rather than offend the gentleman, for he had much influence, and I wanted his goodwill; so I reluctantly submitted to the demand. The committee met the next day, and I was asked if I had succeeded in making an eighteen-holes course. I replied, with some hesitation, that I had made a nineteen-holes course, and explained why I had done so. Well, you never in your life saw a more excited lot of men. There was an uproar in a moment, and all made a dive for the poor secretary, who never heard the last of it."

Within sight of Wimbledon now there is Coombe Hill, one of the best and most recent achievements in the new metropolitan golf. Here is a contrast indeed! One may sometimes wonder how those ill-tempered people who grumble that golfers in these days take their game, and all about it, too richly, and that fine clubhouses do not make plus players - such complainers still being eager for all the most modern comforts themselves - would like to live their golfing lives for a season after the early Wimbledon manner in all its great simplicity. The first club-house those golfers ever had, if you would call it by the name, was the old iron "shooting house," and it measured only eight yards by six. It served the purposes of club-room, clothes-room and others. If its floor space was small, its roof was high, and the members' clothes were hung up on hooks, to the very top; and were lifted up to their proper places, and reached down again by a pole. Most of the numerous members had their private hooks, and a boy who worked the pole had a most marvellous memory for the garments and their proper owners, so that when a member, coming in suddenly, called for his jacket and his stockings, up went the pole, and down came the goods without a moment's delay, and all correct. This remarkable young person has his proper and highly-developed successor in Gibbon, the house - steward at the present Mid-Surrey club at Richmond, who, though he has nearly a thousand members to consider, knows so well the particularities and possessions of them all. Tom Dunn had his workshop in this iron shooting house, and here he kept a fair stock of clubs and balls, and did his own repairs. Presently some of the members suggested to him that it would be agreeable if he stored some eatables and drinkables in his shop for their sustenance and comfort, before and after rounds; and so he laid in a stock of wines and spirits, sandwiches and eggs, and so forth, which had of necessity to be laid out on his bench where there were varnish, shavings, sawdust and pitch as well. Behold here the early London golfer! It is an interesting historical fact, that when a few years after its establishment, and just before the Tom Dunn era, the club first thought of engaging a professional, the committee set it on record that "they took a very favourable view of young Tom Morris's application for the post."