Articles

 

 

 

 

 

Extracted by kind permission of the Editor

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Gentry Links to the Modern Game

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by Alastair Loudon (October 2023)

 

I used the medium of three of golf’s most iconic works of art of the nineteenth century to create The Gentry Links Trilogy which was published by Grant Books Ltd in August this year. In my books I traced the coming of age of the modern game of golf; by the “modern game”, I mean golf that is played to a uniform set of rules, over ground specifically prepared for the purpose, to hit a ball over a distance into a 4¼ inch cup, with regulated clubs and golf balls. These three paintings were completed in three distinct eras of golf development, the last of which, leading up to the Gilded Age in America, provides clues relating to the modern game of golf coming to America in the 1890s. Separately, an entirely different story in this painting explains the modern game of golf being adopted in Canada a decade earlier. 

 

Anecdotally, much of the North American focus on golf history is on the many Scottish players who had considerable success and influence abroad. Between 1895 and 1925 more than 350 players, course designers and greenkeepers emigrated from St. Andrews, North Berwick and Carnoustie, many to America, obtaining employment from Atlanta to Kansas City and to Oklahoma, to pick out just a few places. 

 

These players did so much on the “supply side” to service the burgeoning demand for golf in America. They were the essential “purveyors” of golf who sold their services to “patrons”: the consumers of the golfing experience who created the demand for the game. 

 

But who were the patrons? Why, and how, was the demand for the modern game created in the Gilded Age? Many publications celebrating the centenaries of some of the most famous Golf Clubs in America merely record that “a group of businessmen got together and decided to form a Golf Club.” To discover who those businessmen might have been, and why they had an interest in golf, involved reaching back into Scottish social history before the Gilded Age and examining putative first links with the gentlemen golfers of Scotland.

 

Needing a solid foundation as a starting point, I decided to research first the game’s most famous image: Charles Lees’ 1847 painting, The Golfers: The Grand Match over the Links of St Andrews. I next went back in time to investigate an 1832 painting known in Scotland as The Fathers of North Berwick Golf Club, by the leading Scottish artist, Sir Francis Grant, PRA (known by its current American owners as The First Meeting of North Berwick Golf Club, 1832) to corroborate my earlier findings. I then moved forward half a century to the famous painting entitled Captain Driving Off(more commonly known as Medal Day at St Andrews, 1894).

 

These works of art led to the discovery of biographical information of nearly 300 characters, which revealed very informative stories. The earliest painting of 1832 reflected the start of a broadening of attitudes about who was deemed acceptable in the company of gentlemen golfers, which would previously have been aristocratic landowners. It provided the base point against which to judge social change in golf later. The 1847 painting coincided with a significant change in the affordability of the game, due to the gutta percha rubber ball replacing the expensive feather-filled leather version. The characters in this painting had extensive ancestral links of over a century. The iconography of the 1894 painting reflected the coming of age of the modern game since 1847. An assembly of 191 characters symbolically illustrated the far greater number of people playing the game from across the United Kingdom and showed the social distinction between “gentlemen golfers” (who became known as “amateurs”) and “players” (subsequently identified as “professional golfers”). The gentlemen golfers in this painting included those who were selected to create the first Rules of Golf Committee, when The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews was requested to take a leading role in the governance of golf. This represented the codification of the modern game of golf and was the origin of the role of its successor, The R&A, in the world of golf today, in conjunction with the United States Golf Association.

 

Ancestors of characters in Medal Day at St Andrews, 1894 demonstrated that economic risk-taking of Scottish businessmen from 1850 was a key element in the introduction of the game across the Atlantic. In the middle of the nineteenth century the Scottish cities of Edinburgh and Dundee were the sources of significant investment capital in the Trans-Mississippi West, referred to as “Scottish Gold.” Businessmen from Dundee (mischievously referred to as “Dundonian Cowboys”) were also the owners of some of the largest cattle ranches in America. Thus, the introduction of golf into widespread locations in America was linked with the gentlemen golfers of Scotland. The 1894 painting also illustrated that the wealth amassed by Scottish industrialists (particularly from linen and jute) would mean that they, too, had been accepted into the company of the gentlemen golfers, further broadening golfing society in Scotland.

 

I found the most intriguing clues about golf crossing the Atlantic in the 1894 painting, because these provide an understanding of how gentlemen golfers from the Old World must have encountered the wealthy representatives of the New visiting Europe; leading to the introduction of golf at three of the original five Golf Clubs of the USGA, as recorded in the histories of those Golf Clubs. Southwest France (Pau and Biarritz) was a critical meeting place in the global evolution of golf. Pau Golf Club was where members of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews (six of whom featured in the 1894 painting) held memberships and played their golf when it was too cold to play at home, continuing their ancestors’ involvement of golf in Southwest France from much earlier in the century.

 

The records of Pau Golf Club significantly note the arrival of John Jacob Astor IV (1864–1912) in France on an “immense” yacht, Le Nourmahal, which evidenced the Astor and Newport golfing link with the Scottish golfing gentry in Pau. He was the son of Caroline Webster “Lina” Schermerhorn Astor (1830–1908), who was known, simply, as “Mrs Astor” in New York high society. Tragically, he would subsequently die in the Titanic disaster. These records refer to the marriage between Charles D. Lanier (1837–1926), one of New York’s wealthiest bankers and railroad executives, and Susan Ridgway Willing (1866–1933), a prominent New York socialite who was from a leading Philadelphia family. The wedding was the reason for the arrival in France of these top-drawer Americans, who continued to be visitors to the area for a number of years.

 

Up until this point, the three paintings had only featured gentlemen and not women but, following the links outlined above, it became clear that high society women were very influential in the sport. Of particular importance was the role of Mrs Astor, whose social influence built links between the Old World and the New: selection into her society lists from “The Four Hundred” of New York for the “Patriarch’s Balls” would be made easier for an American heiress by marrying a British aristocrat. There were over 300 transatlantic marriages; and what would these new American wives of British aristocrats write home about? For one thing, most likely, the game played by their husbands and other gentlemen in their new adopted home. Mrs Astor’s society list is even believed to be the basis for the original subscription list in 1895 for one of America’s oldest Golf Clubs: Baltusrol Golf Club.

 

A further golfing link with high society women of both New York and Philadelphia, perhaps due to their ownership of lavish estates in both Newport and Morristown N.J., was the establishment of Morris County Golf Club, by women, for women – until it was taken over by their husbands a few years later! The significance of this involvement of women in golf was recognised by a Scottish gentleman golfer, Robert Cox, whose business in America was importing photographic gelatine manufactured at his factory in Edinburgh. In 1896 he donated the Robert Cox Cup. This trophy, with its rich array of Scottish insignia and symbolism is the longest-serving original USGA championship trophy. It clearly links the origins of the game in America with Scotland. As an aside, perhaps one day a link will be found between Scottish golfer Robert Cox, and the popularity of the game in Rochester N.Y., through Kodak’s evolution of gelatine coated paper in photography?

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The case for researching Scottish golfing history was immortalised by Charles Blair Macdonald when he concluded his famous title with the words: “I should like to commend [readers] … to pursue the game of golf for a diversion, for health, and for companionship, forever endeavouring to find the soul of golf, for possibly if they do, they may discover their own souls.” So, this is what I mean by “gentry links” and I hope that The Gentry Links Trilogy will help others to find their own understanding of the soul of golf and, as “CB” wrote, “discover their own souls.”

 

 

Alastair Loudon is a Member of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, Gullane Golf Club, The Bruntsfield Links Golfing Society, the Senior Golfers’ Society and the British Golf Collectors Society.

 

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