Welcome to another episode of the History Islands.
Harry Vardon grew up in poverty, in a tiny cottage in rural Jersey. He would live to become a legendary sportsman and a household name. Today he is remembered worldwide as a founding father of the modern game of golf. In the previous episode, we met him as a small boy, on the day that strangers came to seize the common land around his home. They created the Royal Jersey Golf Club before his eyes - and the young lad was entranced. In this episode, Vardon's story continues...
Harry Vardon
Grouville, Jersey, 1878
The arrival of the golf course changed everything. We Vardon lads began to carry clubs for the golfers outside our front door; quick work for a shiny penny. As we watched the play, we plotted how we could get our hands on the magic staves and play a round for ourselves. Money was scarcer than hen’s teeth; but we were hungry and determined. We would forge our own weapons like the knights of old. Father refused to lend us his tools, so we simply decided to ‘borrow’ them when he was out on a job.
We eyed up the 'Lady Oak', the queen of our backyard. Then we sawed off a stout branch from her; trimmed it into a rudimentary head; and stuck a poker in the fire to burn a neat hole. We lovingly trimmed thorn sticks to finish the job. My brother Tom found a great white marble – that would serve as our makeshift ball. Half the size of a real gutty, but it would do. Easy enough for us to mark out a course, scratching a few holes in the dunes some fifty yards apart. And that was enough. The days were always heavy with chores; tedious schoolwork, gathering vraic on the beach or churning butter. Father disapproved of our burgeoning obsession, this childish golfing nonsense. That golf course had blighted his hearth and home; it added insult to injury that we should be besotted by the new-fangled craze as well.
Only nightfall brought our freedom. Then we played golf under the moonlight, under the clear bright stars. We were no longer in little Jersey, at the edge of the dunes. In our fantasies, we were up there at Prestwick, boldly contesting the Open, to gasps and hurrahs and thunderous acclaim. Tom and I were jousting for the title and it was always a fight to the finish. The summer stars smiled on our antics. And only in the small hours before dawn would we creep homewards, as softly and silently as the field mice on the dunes.
Domestic service was the fate of many a poor Victorian boy, and Harry would prove no exception. At twelve his years of formal schooling came to an abrupt end. It had been a Sisyphean struggle to drum any letters into him; he was a scrappy, rough lad who seemed to have no natural inclination for the pen. His despairing schoolmaster, Mr Boomer, could scarcely have imagined that his errant pupil would one day author seven sporting best-sellers. The next two years almost broke Harry, as he was worked to the bone on a farm; days of hard labour exploiting every ounce of youthful energy he could offer. Fat hope of any golf in those years; his first love withered on the vine.
Seeking escape from the farm, he entered into service with a certain Dr Godfrey. Waiting at table; minding the horses; knowing his place. Yet his secret passion continued to smoulder, unfulfilled. It surfaced in his dreams, in the mirror-smooth fairways of the night, but he still had to bide his time. He needed to find a way to work outside, close to the green, where he could perhaps find the odd hour to grab a club and indulge in a little practice. At last, he resolved to become a gardener. This decision would change everything.
At seventeen, Harry Vardon signed up as a trainee gardener in the household of a certain Major Spofforth. The old chap, it transpired, was a keen sportsman, the brother of the famous Australian cricketer Fred Spofforth, the notorious “demon bowler” who had on occasion confounded W.G. Grace himself. Cricket was not the only household pastime; the Major also owned a sterling set of wooden golf clubs. Harry gawped at them. They were stained and lightened to perfection, as smooth as silk, and nestled in his hands with perfect poise and weight. They were a world away from the clumsy thorn-tree clubs of Harry’s childhood.
The legend goes that on a summer’s day, the illustrious Major Spofforth came home from Town at a most unexpected hour. He strode into the garden to greet his newly employed manservant – but instead of tending the rhododendrons, that Vardon lad was practising his golf swing! Caught red-handed, Harry’s heart burst and his throat clamped shut. The two men eyed each other for a moment, the ruddy imperial tiger and the Jersey common mouse, until the latter dropped his gaze to the ground. It was a comically theatrical moment.
Harry began to stutter out an apology. What would happen if he was sacked? It might mean a return to the back-breaking labour of the farm, of digging potatoes and churning milk. He felt the sudden pang of a life unlived, a stifled dream. For a moment, he remembered the hour when he had stood on the dunes on the day the course opened, when he glimpsed the future opening like buried treasure at his feet. What would become of him now?
But the old Major looked at Harry, and his weathered, whiskered face creased into an intrigued smile. “You seem to have some skill with this, lad, that I can see. Join me at the Royal tomorrow and we’ll play a round”. With that, he ducked into the smoking room for a sherry and a cigar. Harry picked up his secateurs and returned to his duties, perspiring with relief, his mind blazing with joy.
It was of course unthinkable for a commoner to become a member of the Royal Jersey Golf Club. However, on Sundays, when the great and good attended church and took their ease, the ‘lower orders’ were granted permission to play.
It transpired that Tom and Harry Vardon, the barefoot brothers who had grown up in the shadow of the course, had been egregiously blessed with an innate talent for the game. They played together, sparred together, as they had done long ago, in their childhood days. Both flourished and soon Harry won his first local competition.
Harry had fallen in love with Jessie, a local girl, and whenever he wasn’t hard at work gardening or practising his golf, he was courting her. But the burgeoning romance was not his only dream.
Jersey was a dead-end for the would-be golfing professional. England, by contrast, offered a plethora of opportunities to work as a green-keeper, repair clubs, and offer lessons for a fee. Before long, older brother Tom had made the leap to the mainland. He was soon counting his astounding prize money of twelve pounds and ten shillings – an astonishing haul for a single afternoon’s ‘work’!
Harry could scarcely have imagined such lavish rewards might be possible simply for doing something he loved. He was itching to follow suit. And a few months after his twentieth birthday, Harry took the leap into the unknown.
Tom had heard on the grapevine that Lord Ripon was looking for a professional, and so Harry seized the opportunity to apply for this arduous but coveted role. Tom met him on arrival, and they took the train together, hundreds of miles up to Yorkshire. Harry was thunderstruck by the teeming vastness of England; the sprawling cities, the wide roads, the great trunk railways.
As their train snaked through the endless miles of countryside, stopping and starting at rural stations, the locals eyed them suspiciously, peering at their bulging bags of golf clubs. “They think we’re poachers”, Tom laughed. “They’ve never seen golfers before”. And they both collapsed in laughter.
The next two years were blissful. In Yorkshire, Harry enjoyed the bachelor life of a young man carving his way in the world. He repaired clubs, scoured for lost golf balls, and above all honed his uncanny talent for the game, his eerie sixth sense that catapulted the ball to within a quarter inch of its target, time after time.
Yet his heart was in Jersey. The love letters arrived weekly; his beloved Jessie bursting with news and gossip from home. And when Harry made it home for his leave, they enjoyed a whirlwind of romance, and all the pent-up frustration of parting melted away. Meanwhile the Bury Golf Club in Lancashire moved to offer him a permanent contract – at last, giving the security and opportunity that he craved to develop his craft. Wedding bells were glimmering on the horizon, and the future beckoned like a pristine fairway on a summer’s morning.
And even when an unusually frantic and rushed letter from Jersey arrived, it was merely a delightful coda in the fairy tale. Harry felt his iron grip weaken on the club as he trembled with nervous, joyous anticipation. Plans had to be advanced, and a church booked in short order. The words written in ink were clear enough.
Jessie, his beautiful Jessie, was great with child.
Harry Vardon smiled inwardly and strolled back to the clubhouse. The oak door closed behind him. Somewhere over the horizon, a storm was turning out to sea, scattering the first stings of winter rain.
To be continued...
(c) Paul Darroch 2023
Paul is the author of Jersey: Secrets of the Sea and Jersey: The Hidden Histories, which are available on Amazon and in a range of Jersey bookstores.
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