The Country Club

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28428, 7 November 1957, Page 17

The Country Club

“There are few institutions which, whether in point of date or of sheer fame, so stand alone that they need no defining or geographical epithet,” says “The Times” in a leading article. ‘‘No doubt it is possible to think of one or two in our own country. The Boat Race may still be said with-j out presumption to want no qualification as to between whom or from • where to where. Another such came into the news yesterday j when the American Amateur Goif Championship, in which our Walker Cup players are taking part, began at The Country Club. | That is the name that stands! lonely upon the club’s writing paper, but it may be permissible! to whisper a hint to the unlearned; thgt it is at Brookline, near Boston. It has every right to its name so simply and severely great, because in its historian’s words it was ‘‘first born of a huge family! which has spread from Maine to California and from Alaska to' Florida.” That family has now its branches all over the habitable globe; we ourselves harbour a necessarily humbler and less opulent one. Today everyone who goes tennis-playing or golfing, swimming or dancing in the green and pleasant spots should feel a moment’s gratitude to those enterprising Bostonians who joined together in 1882 to enjoy a lawn tennis court or two, a bowling alley and occasional music of an afternoon. "A Young Lady" “Golf was not added until 1893 and with it we came upon a very different namelessness. It appears that in that year ‘a young lady’i came from Pau to stay on a 1 neighbouring estate-and brought 1 her clubs with her. Such things had never before been seen in New England but she demon-, strated the use of them and a few enthusiasts were empowered to lay out an experimental course at a cost strictly limited to fifty dollars. It seems cruel that the (giver of the first impulse to sol mighty a movement should remain. like the last laird of Ravenswood,! whose name ‘shall be lost for evermore’; but so it is. Still she ?anks in an illustrious, company. First in it is the poor young clergyman who asked his question about Dodd’s sermons and received so annihilating a snub from Dr. Johnson. His anonymous shade has at least received the satisfaction of an essay by Max Beerbohm. And what of the boy who called his headmaster a beast but a just beast? No such honour has been paid him; the reference books call him merely a Rugby boy. At any rate ‘to be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history’ and the young lady’s deed was a very worthy I one.”