S.R.Crockett, St Andrews and Golf
1894
In 1894 Crockett regularly spent time in St Andrews, both staying with Andrew Lang [ Lang’s influence over Crockett’s medieval works is an interesting area to explore. Lang also features in ‘Sweetheart Travellers’ (1896) as ‘Mr Sagaman’] and on summer holidays with his family, where they stayed at Seaton House (now the Scores Hotel). A letter to Dan Mowatt in July 1894 [ From his home at Penicuik] confirms that Crockett had not yet got the golf bug as he writes…
Some day I think you must teach me to play golf. I stay at St.A with Lang pretty often and he abuses me for a heathen man and a publican for not playing. I tell him I don’t believe he can play much – only enough to impose on a novice. Some day I shall see a real player to teach me and then I shall give him a hole; I think (providentially) you must be the man. Now I am hard on the track of the Covenant [ The work that would become ‘Men of the Moss Hags’ (1895)] and I have been so seedy these last few weeks that I have hardly done a stroke. Next week I must settle down in earnest.
In 1894 Crockett regularly spent time in St Andrews, both staying with Andrew Lang [ Lang’s influence over Crockett’s medieval works is an interesting area to explore. Lang also features in ‘Sweetheart Travellers’ (1896) as ‘Mr Sagaman’] and on summer holidays with his family, where they stayed at Seaton House (now the Scores Hotel). A letter to Dan Mowatt in July 1894 [ From his home at Penicuik] confirms that Crockett had not yet got the golf bug as he writes…
Some day I think you must teach me to play golf. I stay at St.A with Lang pretty often and he abuses me for a heathen man and a publican for not playing. I tell him I don’t believe he can play much – only enough to impose on a novice. Some day I shall see a real player to teach me and then I shall give him a hole; I think (providentially) you must be the man. Now I am hard on the track of the Covenant [ The work that would become ‘Men of the Moss Hags’ (1895)] and I have been so seedy these last few weeks that I have hardly done a stroke. Next week I must settle down in earnest.
1895
However by the following summer there are various letters which suggest that Crockett spent much of this year in St Andrews playing golf. Willie Auchterlonie opened his shop in St Andrews in this year, and he made a set of left handed clubs for Crockett, who kept them in the shop as he only played golf in St Andrews. Auchterlonie and Old Tom Morris became golfing partners and friends of Crockett, who was also made a member of the Royal and Ancient (R&A). When a member questions why Crockett played with professionals and caddies instead of ‘gentlemen’, Crockett replied ‘find me as fine a gentleman as Auchterlonie and I shall be glad to play with him.’
Back at Penicuik in the winter of 1895 Crockett’s letter to Mr Wallace observes: ‘Please excuse the delay and the unconvention of my extract. I have been golfing for eight weeks’ and to Mr Noble ‘I have been playing golf for nearly three months so I am in good health and spirits.’
During his 1895 stay Crockett was working on The Grey Man. While set on the Ayrshire coast, with Maybole Green noted as the golf course, it is likely that St Andrews beach is the closer inspiration for the murderous activities which take place on the links recounted in Chapters 29 and 44. Crockett writes humorously about golf within this context, no more so than when he describes his hero trying to alert the locals to a murder:
‘Murder! Foul murder!’ I cried. ‘Come hastily, for the Tutor of Cassillis is done to death!’
One of the citizens held up his hand to me as if to bid me be silent, for it was the putting stroke which his neighbour played, and of its kind difficult, so that men held their breath. But when it was made and the ball holed, they ran to me quickly enough, for, alas! murder was so common in those days, that men took little notice unless he that fell was one who was some kin to themselves.
However by the following summer there are various letters which suggest that Crockett spent much of this year in St Andrews playing golf. Willie Auchterlonie opened his shop in St Andrews in this year, and he made a set of left handed clubs for Crockett, who kept them in the shop as he only played golf in St Andrews. Auchterlonie and Old Tom Morris became golfing partners and friends of Crockett, who was also made a member of the Royal and Ancient (R&A). When a member questions why Crockett played with professionals and caddies instead of ‘gentlemen’, Crockett replied ‘find me as fine a gentleman as Auchterlonie and I shall be glad to play with him.’
Back at Penicuik in the winter of 1895 Crockett’s letter to Mr Wallace observes: ‘Please excuse the delay and the unconvention of my extract. I have been golfing for eight weeks’ and to Mr Noble ‘I have been playing golf for nearly three months so I am in good health and spirits.’
During his 1895 stay Crockett was working on The Grey Man. While set on the Ayrshire coast, with Maybole Green noted as the golf course, it is likely that St Andrews beach is the closer inspiration for the murderous activities which take place on the links recounted in Chapters 29 and 44. Crockett writes humorously about golf within this context, no more so than when he describes his hero trying to alert the locals to a murder:
‘Murder! Foul murder!’ I cried. ‘Come hastily, for the Tutor of Cassillis is done to death!’
One of the citizens held up his hand to me as if to bid me be silent, for it was the putting stroke which his neighbour played, and of its kind difficult, so that men held their breath. But when it was made and the ball holed, they ran to me quickly enough, for, alas! murder was so common in those days, that men took little notice unless he that fell was one who was some kin to themselves.
1896
In 1896 Crockett spent some time on the Farne Islands in the summer and was at St Andrews for 10 days during the autumn, staying at Seaton House. His wife Ruth wrote of their holidays as follows: ‘when we go to St Andrews, you know, he gets up at four in the morning and works just as hard as if we were at home, so, although it is a change of scene, it is no holiday as far as work is concerned.’
Crockett himself wrote again to Dan Mowatt on October 2nd in a tone of excitement: 'I’ve beat Tom Morris! Two up. Afternoon. Tom beat me four up. The barometer falls. I’ll read your cousin’s book if in words of one syllable – all I’m capable of at present.
They are printing another 10,000 of Grey Man making 45,000 in all before publication. The Glasgow Herald is believed to be coming out in a mourning border and Mari Corelli is a permanent green.
But MY ambitions are to do the High Hole in 4 and make Willie Aughterlonie (sic) give me six strokes. )'
In 1896 Crockett spent some time on the Farne Islands in the summer and was at St Andrews for 10 days during the autumn, staying at Seaton House. His wife Ruth wrote of their holidays as follows: ‘when we go to St Andrews, you know, he gets up at four in the morning and works just as hard as if we were at home, so, although it is a change of scene, it is no holiday as far as work is concerned.’
Crockett himself wrote again to Dan Mowatt on October 2nd in a tone of excitement: 'I’ve beat Tom Morris! Two up. Afternoon. Tom beat me four up. The barometer falls. I’ll read your cousin’s book if in words of one syllable – all I’m capable of at present.
They are printing another 10,000 of Grey Man making 45,000 in all before publication. The Glasgow Herald is believed to be coming out in a mourning border and Mari Corelli is a permanent green.
But MY ambitions are to do the High Hole in 4 and make Willie Aughterlonie (sic) give me six strokes. )'
1897
Crockett was juggling his time and workload, with trips to London during 1896 and in the spring of 1897 he was diagnosed with ‘nervous exhuastion’ and sent abroad for six weeks. He used this time to research for The Red Axe. He was back at St Andrews in June, where he met up with Major Pond[ Impressario and agent for many famous authors including Mark Twain (and Winston Churchill)] who wanted Crockett to undertake a reading tour in the States. Pond had been ‘chasing’ Crockett in this regard from the beginning of 1897. Crockett’s stay in St Andrews that summer coincides with the opening of the Jubilee Course (named for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee) which was designed by John Angus in March and opened as a 12 hole course on 22nd June. It was originally created for Ladies and beginners, but it’s very likely that Crockett played there, perhaps even at the opening. We know he was in St Andrews then because on 23rd June he writes from Seaton House
My dear Major Pond,
My wife and I were delighted to get your kind letter and to learn how you had enjoyed yourself since leaving us. We were pleased indeed to think that St Andrews gave you some pleasure. It is, as you say, a charming old city, and we were delighted to show it to you. We had a very happy time together and I hope it will not be long before we see you at our own home
While Crockett had experimented with photography already [ See Crockett’s ‘A Romancers Local Colour’] it is possible that Major Pond is responsible for a photograph which is held in the St Andrews University archive titled ‘The Bearded Gentleman about to tee off’(see pic in 1896 above) as his letter on 30th June notes:
My Dear Major,
I am delighted to hear what you say about Mark Twain. We shall try to meet when I am next in London. The pen goes upon its way rejoicing. It was indeed good of you to give me such an old friend and I shall endeavour to use it well. I am still going round the links twice a day and wish very much you were here to Kodak us as you did upon your all too short visit. When you are settled back in America, my wife and I want to know your address, in order to send you some souveniers and photographs which will keep you from forgetting.
The ‘Kodak’ camera [ Kodak as a company was founded in 1892 so it was relatively new when Crockett encountered it. Newman and Guardia’s ‘Universal’ camera dates from the same time.] was certainly of interest to Crockett and later in August, back home at Penicuik he writes again:
Dear Major Pond,
A greeting to all that isn’t worked to death and burned to cinders of you and your charming wife.
I’ve been back in Penicuik now for some weeks where I hope you will one day see us. I am going it strong and feel very fit. I’ll take on anybody except Conan Doyle and Fitzsimmons with the [unclear] and you should just see me kick – send on your interviewers now.
My wife has some pictures for your wife, but she is lazy in writing so I suspect she will wait till your Kodaxers arrive and then answer and send…
…If you think the little note to Mr Clemens damned cheek don’t send it – I leave it to you. I wouldn’t intrude upon so great a fellow for the world , but I like him the best of the lot. And I guess he’d like me, specially if he let me teach him golf. He could teach me Mumblety Peg[ Mumblety peg is an outdoor game with knives mentioned in Tom Sawyer.] and call it square. '
Although Crockett told Major Pond in August that he’d been back in Penicuik for some weeks, he pops up in an article in the Manchester Guardian that month as follows:
When will the ‘record’ at St Andrews become impregnable? The Kirkcaldys who had tied for it at 73, seemed to have set their successors a hard task. Then came Mr Tait with 72, and now W.Auchterlonie, the ex-open champion, has brought it to 71. He had a three-yard putt for 70 but preferred to be safely ‘deal’ rather than risk a strong putt for the hole. It is said that the tees were not all at ‘full medal stretch’ but this does not invalidate the record. Auchterlonie was playing a three-ball match with Mr J.J.Wilson and Mr S.R. Crockett. Perhaps Mr Crockett will see his way to an imaginative treatment of the event. It may be well to mention the detailed score of so remarkable an occasion. Out 4,5,4,4,3,5,4,3,4 – 36; in 4,2,4,4,4,4,5,4 – 35: Total 71. Such is the skeleton of the round. Mr Crockett has a great opportunity to clothe it with the flesh of picturesque descriptions , and the sporting public is a very large one.
Despite The Manchester Guardian suggesting Crockett might turn his hand to fictionalising more about golf, after The Grey Man, Crockett did not write about golf again in his fiction until Sandy’s Loves (1913) where he writes about both Leith Links and Portrush. In this work one of his feisty female characters McComie, is a golfer (and actress) who gives the men a run for their money. Chapter 26 once more uses humour to get across his point:
The next day some of their new acquaintances called to take them to play golf at Portrush and to lunch at the Golf Hotel. Sandy, being inland born, had more length of drive and good-will than strict science, but he went to look after McComie. Now McComie fallaciously stated that she could play a little— for on Leith Links and within reach of half a dozen of the best greens in the country, she had practically been born with a golf-club in her hand.
She took one glance at the lady players and then said: ‘I will play with some of you men. Clubs?— Oh, a cleek and a driver— that's all I need. Where is the shop?’
She did the first hole in a good medium four and then settled down. She was three up at the turn, to the delight of ‘the boys,’ who carefully concealed from her the fact that she was beating the club champion on his own ground.
‘Is that what you call playing a little?' said Laurence Perkins, when McComie, with a long slow sweep of her cleek, holed a sixteen-foot putt on roughish ground.
‘Oh,’ said McComie, ‘you have only got to think out beforehand how it is going to roll. See, I will show you.’
And she repeated the dose.
‘I say, Miss Jones, why are you not lady champion?' said Laurence Perkins, after the lady was dormy six and he was hoping for a half at the next hole to ease matters a little.
‘Oh,’ said McComie lightly,’I do not care to play with ladies—a good caddy if I can get one is best, and a man if he is young enough to be up to his game and sensible enough not to make love to me through the greens!’
Back to December 1897, which finds Crockett writes again to Major Pond… ‘I am still deep in the writing of books with little time for golf, though I have taken up photography of late, having perhaps caught the infection from your box Kodak which did such execution on the links of St Andrews.’
Crockett was juggling his time and workload, with trips to London during 1896 and in the spring of 1897 he was diagnosed with ‘nervous exhuastion’ and sent abroad for six weeks. He used this time to research for The Red Axe. He was back at St Andrews in June, where he met up with Major Pond[ Impressario and agent for many famous authors including Mark Twain (and Winston Churchill)] who wanted Crockett to undertake a reading tour in the States. Pond had been ‘chasing’ Crockett in this regard from the beginning of 1897. Crockett’s stay in St Andrews that summer coincides with the opening of the Jubilee Course (named for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee) which was designed by John Angus in March and opened as a 12 hole course on 22nd June. It was originally created for Ladies and beginners, but it’s very likely that Crockett played there, perhaps even at the opening. We know he was in St Andrews then because on 23rd June he writes from Seaton House
My dear Major Pond,
My wife and I were delighted to get your kind letter and to learn how you had enjoyed yourself since leaving us. We were pleased indeed to think that St Andrews gave you some pleasure. It is, as you say, a charming old city, and we were delighted to show it to you. We had a very happy time together and I hope it will not be long before we see you at our own home
While Crockett had experimented with photography already [ See Crockett’s ‘A Romancers Local Colour’] it is possible that Major Pond is responsible for a photograph which is held in the St Andrews University archive titled ‘The Bearded Gentleman about to tee off’(see pic in 1896 above) as his letter on 30th June notes:
My Dear Major,
I am delighted to hear what you say about Mark Twain. We shall try to meet when I am next in London. The pen goes upon its way rejoicing. It was indeed good of you to give me such an old friend and I shall endeavour to use it well. I am still going round the links twice a day and wish very much you were here to Kodak us as you did upon your all too short visit. When you are settled back in America, my wife and I want to know your address, in order to send you some souveniers and photographs which will keep you from forgetting.
The ‘Kodak’ camera [ Kodak as a company was founded in 1892 so it was relatively new when Crockett encountered it. Newman and Guardia’s ‘Universal’ camera dates from the same time.] was certainly of interest to Crockett and later in August, back home at Penicuik he writes again:
Dear Major Pond,
A greeting to all that isn’t worked to death and burned to cinders of you and your charming wife.
I’ve been back in Penicuik now for some weeks where I hope you will one day see us. I am going it strong and feel very fit. I’ll take on anybody except Conan Doyle and Fitzsimmons with the [unclear] and you should just see me kick – send on your interviewers now.
My wife has some pictures for your wife, but she is lazy in writing so I suspect she will wait till your Kodaxers arrive and then answer and send…
…If you think the little note to Mr Clemens damned cheek don’t send it – I leave it to you. I wouldn’t intrude upon so great a fellow for the world , but I like him the best of the lot. And I guess he’d like me, specially if he let me teach him golf. He could teach me Mumblety Peg[ Mumblety peg is an outdoor game with knives mentioned in Tom Sawyer.] and call it square. '
Although Crockett told Major Pond in August that he’d been back in Penicuik for some weeks, he pops up in an article in the Manchester Guardian that month as follows:
When will the ‘record’ at St Andrews become impregnable? The Kirkcaldys who had tied for it at 73, seemed to have set their successors a hard task. Then came Mr Tait with 72, and now W.Auchterlonie, the ex-open champion, has brought it to 71. He had a three-yard putt for 70 but preferred to be safely ‘deal’ rather than risk a strong putt for the hole. It is said that the tees were not all at ‘full medal stretch’ but this does not invalidate the record. Auchterlonie was playing a three-ball match with Mr J.J.Wilson and Mr S.R. Crockett. Perhaps Mr Crockett will see his way to an imaginative treatment of the event. It may be well to mention the detailed score of so remarkable an occasion. Out 4,5,4,4,3,5,4,3,4 – 36; in 4,2,4,4,4,4,5,4 – 35: Total 71. Such is the skeleton of the round. Mr Crockett has a great opportunity to clothe it with the flesh of picturesque descriptions , and the sporting public is a very large one.
Despite The Manchester Guardian suggesting Crockett might turn his hand to fictionalising more about golf, after The Grey Man, Crockett did not write about golf again in his fiction until Sandy’s Loves (1913) where he writes about both Leith Links and Portrush. In this work one of his feisty female characters McComie, is a golfer (and actress) who gives the men a run for their money. Chapter 26 once more uses humour to get across his point:
The next day some of their new acquaintances called to take them to play golf at Portrush and to lunch at the Golf Hotel. Sandy, being inland born, had more length of drive and good-will than strict science, but he went to look after McComie. Now McComie fallaciously stated that she could play a little— for on Leith Links and within reach of half a dozen of the best greens in the country, she had practically been born with a golf-club in her hand.
She took one glance at the lady players and then said: ‘I will play with some of you men. Clubs?— Oh, a cleek and a driver— that's all I need. Where is the shop?’
She did the first hole in a good medium four and then settled down. She was three up at the turn, to the delight of ‘the boys,’ who carefully concealed from her the fact that she was beating the club champion on his own ground.
‘Is that what you call playing a little?' said Laurence Perkins, when McComie, with a long slow sweep of her cleek, holed a sixteen-foot putt on roughish ground.
‘Oh,’ said McComie, ‘you have only got to think out beforehand how it is going to roll. See, I will show you.’
And she repeated the dose.
‘I say, Miss Jones, why are you not lady champion?' said Laurence Perkins, after the lady was dormy six and he was hoping for a half at the next hole to ease matters a little.
‘Oh,’ said McComie lightly,’I do not care to play with ladies—a good caddy if I can get one is best, and a man if he is young enough to be up to his game and sensible enough not to make love to me through the greens!’
Back to December 1897, which finds Crockett writes again to Major Pond… ‘I am still deep in the writing of books with little time for golf, though I have taken up photography of late, having perhaps caught the infection from your box Kodak which did such execution on the links of St Andrews.’
1898
In the spring of 1898 Crockett took off for Europe (with a Newman & Guardia camera) and began to take photographs of his travels. Many of these made it into the 1900 work published by Newman & Guardia and the 1903 non-fiction The Adventurer in Spain.
Crockett was staying at Seaton House again in June where he writes to Major Pond about The Red Axe along with his golfing ambitions:
Dear Major Pond,
I was delighted to hear that ‘The Red Axe’ had gone so well in Harpers. I think the best book I have yet written, though no doubt lovers of Scotch will not agree. I am much obliged for your kind offer which is both magnanimous and pecuniarily admirable, but I must defer to a more distant date. I am again at St Andrews and playing better than last year. My chief desire at present is to do the high hole in four! Pardon the meanness of my ambitions…
In August he was back home in Penicuik where he writes to a correspondent saying ‘I have had a fine summers golf and am now again at work’
This is the last mention (in the archive) of Crockett playing golf - so we cannot tell what his experiences were of golf and St Andrews between 1899 and his death in 1914, though the semi autobiographical nostalgic Sandy’s Love (1913) suggests it still held a place in his heart. Crockett’s daughter’s Maisie and Margaret both attended St Leonard’s School in the early years of the 20th century so it’s likely Crockett maintained some connection with the town throughout this period. But from 1899 he spent more and more time abroad.
There is more to this story, however. In September 1899 Crockett writes to Mrs Watt (wife of his agent) telling her about his recent travails with dentists and surgeons. There is archival evidence that Crockett had a tumour removed from his jaw, probably around then, which may have been the consequence of being hit on the jaw by a golf ball at St Andrews as early as 1897. However, as so often with Crockett, the facts can be hard to sift from the fiction in this regard.
In the spring of 1898 Crockett took off for Europe (with a Newman & Guardia camera) and began to take photographs of his travels. Many of these made it into the 1900 work published by Newman & Guardia and the 1903 non-fiction The Adventurer in Spain.
Crockett was staying at Seaton House again in June where he writes to Major Pond about The Red Axe along with his golfing ambitions:
Dear Major Pond,
I was delighted to hear that ‘The Red Axe’ had gone so well in Harpers. I think the best book I have yet written, though no doubt lovers of Scotch will not agree. I am much obliged for your kind offer which is both magnanimous and pecuniarily admirable, but I must defer to a more distant date. I am again at St Andrews and playing better than last year. My chief desire at present is to do the high hole in four! Pardon the meanness of my ambitions…
In August he was back home in Penicuik where he writes to a correspondent saying ‘I have had a fine summers golf and am now again at work’
This is the last mention (in the archive) of Crockett playing golf - so we cannot tell what his experiences were of golf and St Andrews between 1899 and his death in 1914, though the semi autobiographical nostalgic Sandy’s Love (1913) suggests it still held a place in his heart. Crockett’s daughter’s Maisie and Margaret both attended St Leonard’s School in the early years of the 20th century so it’s likely Crockett maintained some connection with the town throughout this period. But from 1899 he spent more and more time abroad.
There is more to this story, however. In September 1899 Crockett writes to Mrs Watt (wife of his agent) telling her about his recent travails with dentists and surgeons. There is archival evidence that Crockett had a tumour removed from his jaw, probably around then, which may have been the consequence of being hit on the jaw by a golf ball at St Andrews as early as 1897. However, as so often with Crockett, the facts can be hard to sift from the fiction in this regard.