Читать книгу The Weald of Youth - Siegfried Sassoon - Страница 6

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I have already taken the liberty of remarking that Lamberhurst golf provided very poor practice for playing elsewhere. My ‘elsewhere’ in the fine April of 1910 was historic Westward Ho! There I played three full rounds daily during three consecutive weeks, Sundays excepted; and those fifty-four holes were an exacting journey, especially when one got into trouble among the clumps of head-high rushes in the middle of the round. ‘How on earth did I do it?’ I ask, seeing myself—after a hard single in the morning and a four-ball match on the top of a heavy lunch—chartering the assistant professional for yet another strenuous game, which would conclude when the sun had disappeared beyond Barnstaple Bay, and the actual position of the red flag on the eighteenth green was already becoming a matter for guess-work.

Glorious indeed, to be able to do that, and get up next morning fully resolved to do it again! But equally good, perhaps, to be able to put an equivalent amount of resolution into writing one’s reminiscences, when one has ceased to have any golf handicap at all, and the courses one played on have been remodelled out of recognition, and the queer-shaped heads and hickory shafts of one’s old set of clubs are as obsolete as the word ‘foozle’. (I hope to be told that I am at fault in deploring the devaluation of ‘foozle’, for I have always liked it, in spite of its infelicitous associations.) It was, I think, the celebrated Andrew Kirkaldy who uttered that authoritative saying ‘Gowf’s a funny game!’ So also is individual existence. And it is with the minutiae of mortality that I am mainly occupied in this half-humorous epitome of my career. What life means to the liver is much the same as what golf means to the golfer, who, like the rest of us, is decidedly dependent on the state of his health. And I take it—with a certain momentary sententiousness—to be highly significant of human affairs that a man like myself, who has done reasonably well in the arena of literature, should feel an almost equal regard for the sand-dunes among which he formerly straddled and swung and for those with whom he shared his enjoyment of the game. So to anyone who considers these golfing garrulities irrelevant to a literary autobiography I reply that they are included as evidence of my modest claim to be a transcriber of those oft-repeated words: Homo sum; humani nil a me alienum puto. To which I would add that when you get close up to life, little things are just as important as big ones.

I remember a huge sandy-haired Scotsman—wearing the somewhat tight and skimpy knickerbockers of the pre-plus-four period—who crouched over a two-foot put on the last green at Westward Ho! He had ‘that to halve the match’, and there was five bob on it. Happening to be his opponent, I watched him with hopeful anxiety, since his game was notorious for a combination of tremendous long hitting and pusillanimous putting. After an operose and portentous pause he somehow contrived to miss the hole.... Raising both freckled hands toward heaven, he exclaimed, with self-condoling emphasis, ‘I did not deserve that!’ In his opinion such treatment by fate was altogether unfair. ‘But Maconachie,’ I might well have remonstrated, ‘you surely did deserve it, because you hit your ball wide of the hole.’ Needless to say, I didn’t; for I was about half his age. I merely pocketed two half-crowns and felt pleased. At the present moment, however, I see Maconachie as representative of the whole human race, accusing the unresponsive sky of having behaved unjustly when he has made a mistake for which he alone is responsible. And then walking resignedly toward the club-house to console himself with a long and oblivion-creating drink.

My friend Thompson, with whom I took my golfing holidays when we were both in our early twenties, always remained philosophical when things went wrong with his game. Naturally, there were times when he became taciturn for a few holes; but he never went so far as refusing to answer a remark made with the object of easing the situation—which, I regret to say, I sometimes did.

When discussing old days, I have more than once reminded him of an incident—it was at Littlestone-on-Sea in the spring of 1908—when I discourteously declined to allow him a short but crucial put. Nonchalantly he knocked it in with one hand, and it leapt out of the tin, as such puts sometimes do. Unlike the aforementioned Maconachie he said nothing; but his demeanour demonstrated undisguised huffiness while we marched to the next tee, which was on the other side of a deep and wide dyke spanned by a single solid plank. Thompson’s nailed shoes slithered on the rain-wet wood, and it was only after a series of acrobatic attitudes that he recovered his equilibrium. Years afterwards I asked him what the sequel would have been if he had fallen into those brown and brackish waters. ‘I should certainly have returned to Cumberland by the next train’, he replied, adding, ‘With your usual tactlessness you’d have burst into a loud guffaw, and I was already simply paralytic with annoyance at missing the put—which you’d have given me if you’d possessed a spark of gentlemanly feeling!’ Whereupon I reminded him that the put was of paramount importance, for we were in the middle of the first round of our seventy-two-hole match on four consecutive courses. Littlestone, Rye, Sandwich, and Deal were the four, and the match was to decide, for the time being, which of us really was the sounder player. When crossing the dyke, Thompson was several holes up on me. But I am pleased to remember that I squared the match with a rather brilliant eighty-one at Rye. We left Sandwich still all square—Thompson’s game having struck a bright patch after a couple of lessons from Tom Vardon, the professional there, who was a genially loquacious brother of the peerless Harry. At Deal, however, we found ourselves playing off the medal tees, and those long carries were too much for Thompson, who hadn’t the physique for such heroic feats with a stiff breeze blowing. Also the new driver and brassy which he had hopefully acquired from Tom Vardon proved advantageous to me rather than to their owner; for some reason they caused him to produce low skimming shots—wind-cheaters, no doubt, but ineffective for outdistancing those Alp-like hazards into which he dourly descended to do battle with his heavy niblick. So I am obliged to record that our famous contest concluded disappointingly somewhere near the fourteenth green, where Thompson emerged from a deep bunker after a series of sandy explosions. And the only reason why the golden sovereign that he gave me isn’t on my watch-chain is that I’ve never worn a watch-chain in my life. The coin would remind me—not only of our many happy days together—but also of the sterling metal of his character—a fact which nobody can be any the worse for hearing about, although its significance, like the result of our match, remains private and personal.

At Deal, by the way, we watched one of Harry Vardon’s graceful victories, in a thirty-six-hole match against the burly Basque Frenchman Arnaud Massy, who, I think, tied with Vardon for the Open Championship in the following year and was defeated in the replay. Such a match would nowadays be followed by about ten thousand spectators; but on that pleasant breezy morning at Deal only a few hundred people were there, and the proceedings were in no danger of developing into a stampede. It was a decently-conducted game between two experts, and not an agglomeration of golf-ball advertisement and mass suggestion. But I must not give way to regretful thoughts on things as they were when famous golfers had yet to learn to play their strokes to the click of cameras. Rather must I rejoice that—until September, 1939—all forms of sport could attract a multiplicity of adherents, that the whole affair had become a sound commercial proposition for everyone concerned, and that the simplicity and vintage variety of games-playing had been superseded by a general uproar of unruminative technicality.

Nevertheless I retain a wistful regard for—among other matters—the county cricket I used to watch when I was young. The players all looked so unlike one another then; and there was an air of alfresco intimacy about their exploits which lent them a fuller flavour than seems perceptible now. For one thing, a fair number of obviously fat men were still taking plenty of wickets with slow medium-pace bowling. Quite comfortably corpulent some of them were, with impressive untrimmed moustaches which might sometimes be seen emerging from a tankard of beer in the pavilion. One of the stoutest bowlers I ever saw on the field was Baldwin of Hampshire. For some reason it gave me peculiar pleasure when I was told that in everyday life he was a wheelwright. It was nice to think of him making honest farm-waggons all the winter; and there was something about the way he hitched up his large loose trousers at the end of an over which made me see him standing outside an old workshop door daubed with the trial smearings of red, blue, and yellow paint that he’d used these many years on the wheels. But perhaps Baldwin wasn’t a wheelwright after all, in which case I owe his rotund memory a respectful apology. Old Walter Humphreys, the Sussex lob-bowler, used to appear in a pale pink flannel shirt—made for him, I hope, by his wife—with an artfully flapping sleeve which deceived the batsman’s anticipation of the break of the ball. It seemed more like home-made cricket in those days, and the people who played it really went home after the game, instead of—as one imagines now—being incorporated into the machinery of the popular Press. I have always maintained that the proper place for a first-class cricketer to achieve perpetuity is in Wisden’s Almanack. Once there, he is academically preserved for future reference. If he chooses to be a wheelwright when away from the public eye it is nobody’s business but his own, though the fact enriches his personality when divulged with decorum. And the stouter he is when nearing the age of retirement the better I like him. Even the slim, silk-shirted Ranjitsinhji had put on weight when he reappeared in his later years. The willowy magician had become an almost ponderous potentate. As for W. G. Grace, the last time I beheld him he was trotting doggedly along behind a pack of foot-beagles; and while he pushed his way through a gap in a hedge I reverently computed that he must turn the scale at somewhere near fifteen stone.

★★★

Having got on to the pleasant subject of cricket, I may as well take the opportunity of saying a little more about my own doings in that serious pastime. By the season of 1910 I was playing regularly for the Blue Mantles Club, which had its headquarters on the county ground at Tunbridge Wells. There were—and still are, I believe—about thirty ‘B-M. fixtures’ in a season, and as about half of them were two-day matches I was able to get some good cricket. To be candid, the cricket was a good deal better than I was; but by being always available if someone ‘chucked’ I often obtained a place in the side at the eleventh hour. Certain of my fox-hunting friends, who were in the habit of following my performances in the club cricket reports of that long defunct daily The Sportsman, used to assert that my name always appeared as ‘S. L. Sassoon did not bat’. That this was sometimes so I freely admit. But the Blue Mantles averages in my old scrap-book show that in the years 1910 and 1911 I had fifty-one innings, with ten not-outs, and an average of nineteen. This I consider quite a creditable record for a poet, and I don’t mind saying that it gives me fully as much satisfaction as the royalty statements I have received from the publishers of my verse, some of which have been pecuniarily unimpressive. Anyhow, I am doing what I can to draw attention to my modicum of success at the wicket, there being no likelihood of anyone else doing it! I ought to add that the most eminent batsman who belonged to our club at that period was N. F. Druce, who had been top of the first-class averages as a young man, and had played five times for England versus Australia before his too early retirement from representative cricket. Referring to my scrap-book again, I find that in two seasons Druce scored nearly two thousand runs for us, with an average of eighty-six. To suggest, on statistics, that he was only about four times as good as I would be pretentious. The real difference between us was that while he, apparently, could make as many runs as he liked, I considered myself fortunate if I reached double figures. For his bat was like a barn-door, and the way he timed spin-bowling on a sticky wicket was a wonder to behold. To be appearing in the company of such a stylist was in itself something of an achievement, I used to think, when I was laboriously keeping my end up while he placed the ball where he pleased with juicy precision.

This brings me to a point where I feel that I must relate a little episode connected with motoring which I had in mind when—as I said some way back—I formed an unparticularized intention of making motor-cars the constructive theme of a chapter. Blue Mantle motorists were at that time still uncommon enough to be conspicuous. Druce owned a roomy car, and so did Osmund Scott, the famous golfer. ‘Camel’ Kelsey, who skippered the team, had also recently taken to this method of getting about, though he preferred old ways to new ones. Kelsey—a tremendous club cricketer—was tall and unhurrying, with a drawling, kindly voice. The voice was the man—uncensorious and totally likeable. I remember, by the way, that when I asked him how he enjoyed motoring he replied that the only thing against it was that it made his behind feel so tired; and I have since realized that there was a certain amount of truth in this observation. On the whole he liked walking better, and his long arms and sun-browned face suggested that he would be no bad hand at scything a hayfield. There was something majestic about his deliberate movements, and he had made a century on almost every ground in Sussex. Other motorists there must have been, but the one who figures in the present anecdote was Captain Disney. Taller even than Kelsey, and resplendent in I Zingari colours, ‘old Disney’ as we called him—though he wasn’t much over thirty at the time—was seldom absent from the team, in spite of twinges of rheumatism around the shoulders which caused him to talk gloomily about giving up the game. Disney was an essentially amiable character, but his demeanour gave one the impression that he found it difficult to take a rosy view of life as a whole. To watch him when he went on to bowl was a recurrent comedy, especially in dull and chilly weather. With an air of Hamlet-like infestivity he would skin-off his two sweaters, spin his arm stiffly a few times, indicate sadly to some of the fielders that they might as well get a bit deeper and prepare for the worst, and finally deliver the widest of wides. I must however do Disney justice by adding that he was a tolerably effective trundler when he had got warmed up to it; and his batsmanship was done in the grand style—left leg and shoulder well forward and a fine follow-through.

He had impressed me as having a touch of the artistic temperament about him—in fact it had come to my knowledge that he was something of an amateur musician—so it was quite a surprise when he broke new ground by appearing as the earnest advocate of an invention which, according to him, was going to revolutionize tyre-trouble. He told everyone about it, non-motorists such as myself included. Its name, if I remember rightly, was ‘Proofax’. And if it wasn’t, I can only say that it ought to have been, because it had yet to prove its efficaciousness. Like all great inventions it was perfectly simple. You merely pumped it into people’s tyres, and—to paraphrase a line of Praeraphaelite poetry—they drew it in as simply as their breath. What they drew in, through Disney’s zealous agency, was a forbidding-looking fluid which resembled liquid tar, or better still, black molasses—molasses being a word which suggests consistent stickiness. Meanwhile old Disney, with the full force of his sincerity, proceeded to urge the adoption of his puncture panacea upon all who arrived at Blue Mantle matches in motor-cars. The main merit claimed for ‘Proofax’ was that, once safely inside the inner-tube, it neither liquefied nor solidified, as some substances might have done, but retained its puncture-proofing properties in all their original non-corrosive consistency for an indefinite period. When pressed to reveal exactly how long it would last, Disney replied, with a certain evasiveness, that it would last as long as the inner-tube did. It was, in fact, practically guaranteed to prolong rather than lessen the life of inner-tubes, thus combining comfort with economy. My old friend Fred Buzzaway (number ten or eleven on the Blue Mantle batting order and a rather bow-legged runner after the ball) was heard to remark, in his usual knowing way, that Master Disney’s sticky stuff might be a workable proposition now, but how would it be shaping by the end of next hunting season? He added that in his humble opinion it would soon be carrying a breast-high scent. But Fred was inclined to be sceptical about most things, barring his own ability to see the end of a good hunt, whether he was grinning along after the Burstow Hounds on his old horse or acting as an honorary whipper-in to the Hadlow foot-harriers.

Anyhow, in the first flush of his persuasiveness Disney induced some of our team to submit their wheels to his experiment. Druce, with his customary good-nature, was one of them. Conan Doyle—who still turned out occasionally, though his batting was rather on its last legs and his artful slows had lost their former effectiveness—gave ‘Proofax’ his august consideration but decided against it, no chemical analysis being forthcoming; while Kelsey announced that he preferred fresh air to treacle in his tyres. Disney then applied himself to visiting teams. I used to observe him in serious confabulation with someone during the luncheon-interval; and soon, if the notion had been favourably received, he would produce the apparatus from his own car at the back of the pavilion and become busy with what must have been some sort of re-adapted foot-pump. He was a bit aloof toward anyone who went to watch, but there was usually an interested little knot of onlookers around him, offering advice and encouragement while he pumped away for all he was worth, straightening himself up now and again to reassure the optimistic owner of the tyres that ‘Proofax’ was the brightest idea of the century. And when the job was completed and the match at an end he probably told the departing driver that if he returned next season he wouldn’t have had any cause to complain about punctures. By the next cricketing season, however, Disney had discarded his patent pump and no longer carried cylinders of ‘Proofax’ about in the back of his car. If anyone mentioned the matter—and Fred Buzzaway did so more than once—he affected a melancholy unconcern. The truth was that something in the nature of spontaneous combustion had supervened. What else could one call it, when Norman Druce had found himself spinning along a lonely road with both back tyres spouting a lava-like substance, reported, perhaps inaccurately, to have been actually luminous? And one of someone else’s front tyres had unluckily exploded just as his wife’s mother was stepping in to go to some swell garden-party.