Tom Morris of St Andrews, page 32
In the Town, however, there was some resentment about the way that he would throw up the sash window of his sitting room overlooking the 18th green and bellow, ‘get aff that green’. No one was spared his command, young and old alike, as they walked across it or ventured on to it to try out a new putter; they were simply ordered off. There was even more resentment about the favouritism he showed to certain caddies and his brusque treatment of others. The verse of Andrew Lang and George Bruce leaves no doubt that he was generally perceived as the ‘Lord of the Links’ and that he behaved as such. To Lang, this was delightfully charming, but to Bruce, who felt that he was eschewing his roots, it was disgraceful.
Tom was certainly living like a lord in the fine family home that Lizzie and James Hunter had built and in the style that they aspired to. His closest friends and confidants were successfully middle-class and of some importance in the Town. Although he had two sisters living at the Cathedral end of North Street with his nieces and nephews, his closest family friends appear to have been the Bruce’s of Leven, his cousin’s family and as middle-class as his own. The workmen in his shop and his men on the Links may have regarded him as they always had, but to the townspeople he was certainly a man apart.
One example of his difficult situation concerned William Strath. Tom had known the Strath family all his life; the Strath brothers were born and brought up only yards from the Morris family home in North Street. Andrew was six years Tom’s junior and had succeeded him as professional at Prestwick, while John, a year younger than Andrew, had become a plumber in St Andrews. William was born in 1842, followed by George in 1844 and David (Davie) in 1849. George was the first professional at Troon from 1884 to1887 before he emigrated to America, his appointment being made at Tom’s recommendation. Davie, Tommy’s close friend and golfing adversary, was the professional at North Berwick from 1876 to 1878 when he left for Australia and an early death. Tom was a family friend and a central figure in the Strath brothers’ lives.
But then William broke into Tom’s shop and stole two golf clubs and a number of balls, not his first crime. A labourer and gardener, but more frequently a caddy and a player of sufficient stature to be matched against Bob Dow from Montrose for a small purse on at least two occasions, Willie had a whole string of convictions from 1860 until only months before his death in 1880. His first offence was assault with a golf club. He was accused of repeatedly striking William Mason over the legs outside James Wilson’s shop in Golf Place. In 1877, Tom, Jof and John appeared before the magistrates to give evidence against Willie, whom they had seen breaking and entering into Mr Denham’s house in Pilmour Links. Willie had strenuously denied the charge, claiming mistaken identity. When charged with breaking and entering Tom’s shop, however, Willie freely admitted the crime. He had sold the clubs and balls for 2s 6d and felt entirely justified in doing so for, as he explained in the court, he felt that Tom Morris owed him the money.
Willie’s reputation and the mounting number of charges of theft and drunken and disorderly behaviour brought against him, did not deter Tom engaging him as a caddy. On this occasion, Tom had engaged Willie for four days to caddy for a gentleman visitor who, because of bad weather, did not turn up to play one day. Willie felt that he should nevertheless have been paid, because although the gentleman was not prepared to play, he was prepared to caddy and was therefore due a day’s pay. When this payment was not forthcoming, he broke into Tom’s shop to seek recompense. Willie was convicted and sentenced but, as a loveable rogue, he carried the sympathy of many townspeople who felt that Tom had been somewhat severe in bringing the charge.
Certainly Tom had come a long way socially in thirty years. In 1888, the Thistle Golf Club of St Andrews honoured him with a dinner in Mason’s Golf Hotel, at which he was presented with ‘a very handsome and chastely-executed silver snuff-box . . . in recognition of his many achievements on his native and other greens, as well as of his 25 years’ connection with the subscribing Club’. The newspaper report stated that it was ‘Very neatly engraved on the lid . . . Presented to Tom Morris by the Thistle Golf Club. St Andrews, 1888’, which wording was not quite correct.
In 1893 he was Vice-President of the Curling Club that had built a fine new pond across the road at the bottom of Gibson Place, opposite the Swilken Bridge, now the local golf club’s car park. Major Bethune was the President and the membership comprised gentlemen of The Royal and Ancient and local businessmen; Tom was Vice-President. In the President versus the Vice-President match on New Years Day 1893, Tom ‘skipped’ a team made up of Major Carnegie, Colonel Marshall and Mr J. C. Constable. His team beat Major Bethune’s comfortably. Tom was a curler of some ability, winning his first medal for curling in 1870, and was ‘skip’ for many years.
Only a fortnight after this event, Tom was invited to a dinner given by the St Andrews Guild Golf Club at which he shared the guest of honour position at the top table with the literary lion, Andrew Lang, as well as Findlay Douglas. St Andrews born and bred, Findlay Douglas of the National Golf Links of America was instrumental in founding the United States Golf Association, and as its President was the first person to embrace Bobby Jones when he stepped ashore in New York after completing the first two hurdles (the Amateur and Open Championships) of the Grand Slam of Golf in 1930.
A week after the Guild Club dinner, Tom was at the Town’s Burns Club Dinner to celebrate the Bard’s birthday, again with the gentlemen and business people of the Town. In his social rise, Tom had left a few caddies and friends behind and, not surprisingly, there were a few who nursed an unreasonable resentment.
On his 70th birthday, after he had enjoyed a round of golf with H.S.C. Everard and returned a creditable score of 83, Tom remarked that he had enjoyed more years of golf than most people had lived in a lifetime. Few of the friends with whom he had shared his formative years were left. Among those remaining in St Andrews was George Murray, the Provost and Postmaster. The two had been friends for many years and appear to have held every view in common. George, who was also a widower, bought a house nearby on the Links Road and Tom rented the ground floor for two years, using it as a showroom for his workshop’s wares. The two were church elders and recognised as the venerable old men of the Town, attending church and taking their constitutional walks together.
David Louden, whom Tom had known since childhood, was another friend, a St Andrean by birth who had spent much of his life as a schoolmaster in the Borders. In 1874, he wrote a Biographical Sketch of the Late . . . Sir Hugh Lyon Playfair and was a frequent contributor to newspapers and magazines. The three made up a formidable trio of local dignitaries who were not the sort that you would meet in the pub and put the world to rights with; they were solidly and respectably middle-class citizens.
In his 80th year, Tom’s day, according to a contemporary newspaper account, consisted of rising early to take a morning walk on the Links and decide with David Honeyman on the work at hand. He would be in the workshop when the men arrived at 7 a.m. in the winter, 6 a.m. in the summer months, and, after breakfasting, would collect his clubs and make himself available to play with any gentleman of the Club who required him. After lunch, his main meal of the day, he would be in the shop or on the Links, according to the time of the year and depending upon what was most demanding of his attention. After his tea, a light meal at 5 o’clock, he would read the newspaper before ‘taking a turn’ outdoors. Religiously, it is reported, that before turning in for the night, he would read from his Bible, ‘the one with the big print’.
The account does not paint the picture of a demanding life and it does not include any reference to the sons about whom he must have been deeply concerned. Jof was now all but disabled with arthritis. The crippled John must always have found the back stairs up to the house above the shop difficult, and, confined to his trolley, the increasingly busy shop inhospitable.
John’s life was curtailed abruptly on 22 February 1893. Despite his infirmity, John was a hale and hearty man only 34 years old. Always active and in robust good health, he worked daily in the workshop where he helped in making gutta-percha balls. He was also said to be a perfectionist at binding and whipping grips.
John was at work the day before his death and his behaviour was normal, finishing at his usual time. He died of a heart attack during the night, a ‘heart spasm’ as reported in the St Andrews Citizen on 24 February. John, or Jack as he was known in the shop, was well-liked by everyone, the caddies and his workmates in particular. Because of his infirmity, John could never play golf, but he was said to be very knowledgeable about the game and knew everyone who played it well. Significantly, the Simpson brothers from Carnoustie and Aberdeen, and Ben Sayers from North Berwick, attended his burial in the Cathedral Yard where he was interred beside his mother, Tommy and Margaret, and his brother-in-law James Hunter, all of whom had brought so much into his life.
John’s death left a void in the Hunter household in Pilmour Links, as well as in the workshop and in Tom’s life. He had been an integral part of the Hunter children’s lives, a constant unchanging part, as he propelled himself about on his trolley, restricted to the confines of the house, the garden and the workshop. Lizzie and her children were clearly devoted to him as on at least two occasions they transported him to holiday with them in Prestwick, which could not have been an easy undertaking. His passing must have made a deep impact upon the young children’s lives.
Quite apart from the loss of a friend and a much-loved and respected workmate, his death must also have had a dramatic effect in the workshop, where his trolley had to be accommodated and allowances made for what he could reach and where he could work. John was an able workman who accepted his disability and did what he could to earn his way in the family business. He knew and was familiar with everyone who entered the shop for he, more than anyone, was a constant feature in it.
To Tom, John’s death must have been more painful than those of his family who had gone before, because he had witnessed his sufferings with the limitations of his life and, more importantly, had seen the fortitude with which he confronted his disability. Tom had seen greatness at first hand, had indeed felt the accolade accorded to greatness, but from within a family of remarkable men, Tom may have felt that John was the greatest of them all.
42 In Testimony
In his mid-70s, at an age when most would be seeking a comfortable armchair with peace and quiet to reminisce and take stock of their lives, Tom Morris was as active as ever. Indeed, from accounts of his travels and golfing engagements, it is safe to deduce that he was savouring his celebrity and relishing his social success.
Late Victorian society enjoyed its heroes and, in particular, those from the lower classes who, by dint of their ability, hard work, morality and loyalty, had raised themselves to respectability. Tom had all of the characteristics of the Victorian heroic figure and an abundance of masters ready to recognise his loyalty.
In July 1895, The Royal and Ancient appointed a committee to establish a Tom Morris Testimonial Fund. This was in response to articles and letters in the press following the successful completion of such a fund for W. G. Grace, the celebrated English cricketer who was to cricket what Tom was to golf. A. J. Balfour, the First Lord of the Treasury, together with other parliamentary figures in both the Commons and the Lords, had voiced their support for a similar fund and, from the number of letters in the press, the public was enthusiastic. Such was the response from within The Royal and Ancient that an Extraordinary General Meeting was called when it was agreed ‘That the sum of £100 be voted from the funds of the Club towards the Tom Morris Testimonial Fund’. The public interest was such that the appeal raised over £1,240. With this sum, the committee decided to purchase a £500 annuity paying £80 a year, with the balance invested in the names of the trustees of the Club, the interest of which was to be paid to Tom in his lifetime. In the event of his death, it was proposed that the interest be paid to Tom’s daughter, Mrs Hunter and her children, at the trustees’ discretion. It is interesting that at the May Meeting of the Club the following year, Mrs Hunter and her children were deleted from the provision. Presumably, somebody must have discovered that she and her children were already very well provided for. The disbursement of the fund was not, however, to everyone’s liking. From letters to the St Andrews Citizen, it is clear that some felt that, like W. G. Grace, Tom should have been given the capital sum in its entirety to use as he pleased. One report even suggested that he was not altogether happy with the arrangements made.
In addition to the income from his business, Tom was now in receipt of over £100 a year from the fund as well as his £50 salary as greenkeeper. The knowledge of his wealth would have raised a few eyebrows in the committee rooms and perhaps some unrepeatable expletives in the Town.
Tom is recorded in the local press as saying that the ‘Club had done him proud’: but it was the recognition of his services to the church that would bring him the greater satisfaction. The St Andrews Presbytery selected Tom as their representative at the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in Edinburgh in May 1896. This was momentous social recognition for Tom. Previous representatives from the St Andrews, or indeed any other presbytery for that matter, were drawn from the local landowning and professional classes. As someone born into a weaver’s household, raised to revere the Kirk and its ministers, Tom must have felt that this honour was the ultimate social accolade. He was clearly excited about attending the General Assembly. The letter to the Very Reverend James Rennie of Glasgow, which Jof penned and Tom signed, more than expresses the pride that he felt about it. Tom undoubtedly felt elated in May 1896 when he boarded the train for Edinburgh with Charles Grace and the Reverend Boyd. He stayed at the Tait family home for the week and was driven to and from the Grand Assembly rooms where he was treated like a lord.
Any euphoria, however, that Tom Morris was enjoying as the nineteenth century drew to its close was dashed in the summer of 1898. On 8 June, Lizzie died. She was his only daughter, who had forfeited her life with her husband to look after him and her brothers, and who had brought so much joy into his life with her marriage to James Hunter and the births of his only surviving grandchildren.
In the Town, the news was lost in the aftermath of the funeral of Lyon Playfair, 1st Baron Playfair of St Andrews. Playfair had died on 29 May, and Tom and Robert Forgan were listed in the local press at the end of two columns of dignitaries’ names that attended his funeral in the Cathedral graveyard. For weeks afterwards, both the St Andrews Citizen and Fifeshire Journal devoted pages of print to his distinguished career.1
Intimation of Lizzie’s death appeared in the Fife and Ayrshire newspapers: ‘At 6 Pilmour Links, St Andrews, Mrs Elizabeth Hunter, widow of James Hunter and daughter of Tom Morris, on the 8th of June. Funeral on Saturday 11th of June at 2 p.m.’
The only mention of Lizzie’s death in the columns of the local paper read: ‘Owing to the death of Mrs Hunter, daughter of Tom Morris, the veteran missed his first Championship meeting for thirty-five years. Old Tom reached his seventy-seventh birthday last Wednesday but did not celebrate it as usual by playing a round on the Links.’ This terse commentary is incorrect. The Open Championship had been played 38 times and Tom had not attended in recent years on at least three occasions.
Lizzie died of pneumonia, and while of slight build and never robust, she was nevertheless a vigorous woman for most of her life. Although shy and socially retiring, privately she was joyous and witty. Like Tom and her late husband James, she was a devout churchgoer and a tireless worker for charitable causes, taking stalls and engaging in events at the charity bazaars run by the Townswomen’s Guild and the Women’s Guild of the Church. She was not a lady golfer, although her children and many of her close friends were. She had few friends in St Andrews and, given that she was born and raised in Prestwick, it is not surprising that she and her husband purchased a cottage and land there. She was a frequent visitor to Florence Cottage in Prestwick to where, even after James’s death, she would transport her children with a maid and, on at least two occasions, John on his trolley. In St Andrews, her closest friends appear to have been her female second cousins, the daughters of Robert Bruce from Leven.
Robert Bruce was Tom’s cousin; their respective fathers and mothers were siblings born in the Bruces’ weaver’s cottage in Kilrenny near Anstruther. Like Tom, Robert Bruce had come some way in society. He was a master tailor employing five men and three apprentice boys as well as his son, George, who was a good golfer and member of the Innerleven Club. His shop premises occupied a prominent place in Leven High Street and his residence at The Pleasance in Scoonie, Leven, was one of the grander houses of the township. Catherine Bruce had been Lizzie’s bridesmaid and both she and her sisters, Helen and Agnes, acted as housekeepers in the Morris household when Lizzie visited Mobile or sojourned in Prestwick. After Lizzie’s death, Agnes continued to help in the Morris household, nursing Tom through periods of illness and assisting Agnes, the eldest of Lizzie’s daughters, who was left with the responsibility of running it.
Lizzie’s life appears to have been one of total devotion to her husband, children, her father and her brothers. She died leaving Tom and Jof living above the shop and her children still residing at 6 Pilmour Links. Agnes Hunter was 21, Bruce 19, Gray 14 and Jamesina 12. Tom was their next-of-kin and he was 77 years old. The depth of his grief for his only daughter must have been heavily compounded by how keenly he felt the suffering of Gray and Jamesina.
Lizzie’s will was much as James’s had been. Tom and Mr Keiller-Bruce were nominated as trustees with full discretion over her estate. Tom immediately paid off his bond of £800 to James Hunter’s estate, which was then wound up and amalgamated with Lizzie’s into one trust.
