All that seems quite credible now; but it hardly seemed possible of belief in the South of England in the early sixties. I even knew what the weapon was called--"a club"--for I often asked my uncle about it, and he tried, with poor success, to make me understand its character; for I tried, in turn, to describe it to one of the orderlies, who was a particular friend of myself (or of my nurse), and he made me what he thought fitted the description. It fitted the name of "club"--for it was much like what the cannibals, in our boys' books, were depicted as using on the heads of their victims; but when I showed it to my uncle he shook his head sadly. It did not appeal to him as having any likeness to the delicate works of Hugh Philp, that master club-maker, with which he was familiar. Still, I did beat a ball about with it, and thus began golf. When I arrived at the age of five, we went to live at a house called Wellesbourne, in North Devon, about halfway between Bideford and Northam. Westward Ho! in those days did not exist. There was one farmhouse where all the houses of the watering-place now are. The very name belonged only to Charles Kingsley's fine book, and was only taken for the name of the place a year or so later than this. Captain Molesworth, to whom English golf was to owe a big debt, lived at a house called North Down, just at the entry into Bideford, and it was in this house that Charles Kingsley was living while writing _Westward Ho!_ That is the story of how the name came to be given to the place, and Borough House, by Northam, was about half a mile from our Wellesbourne. This Borough House, since restored, is where Mrs. Leigh, with her sons Frank and Amyas, were placed by the novelist. [Illustration: Borough House, Northam, in 1855, where Mrs. Leigh and her sons Frank and Amyas, the heroes of Kingsley's _Westward Ho!_ lived. (It has since been entirely reconstructed.)] [Illustration: Mr. Peter Steel driving the Gravel Pit at Blackheath, with forecaddie in distance.] The Reverend I.H. Gossett was Vicar of Northam, and related to the large family of Moncrieffes, of whom there were several resident then at St. Andrews. About that time one of its members, General Moncrieffe, came on a visit to his relative, the vicar of Northam, and from that chance visit great events grew. For Mr. Gossett, as it was likely he should, led out General Moncrieffe for a walk across that stretch of low-lying common ground known as the Northam, or Appledore, Burrows, to the famous Pebble Ridge and the shores of Bideford Bay; and as they went along and reached the vicinity of those noble sandhills later to be known to golfing fame and to be execrated by golfing tongues as "the Alps," the General observed: "Providence obviously designed this for a golf links."