( If you haven't read Part I, see here. )
It’s past time we checked in with the Calthorpes, to see how things are going now that Jack has discovered golf.
George and Jack survey the acreage of the Calthorpe estate and lay out a golf course. And then proceed to spend their days on said course. Jane congratulates herself on helping her husband find something new to do outside that he enjoys, and keeps him out of her hair. Her first inkling that maybe things aren’t as peachy keen as she thinks, comes when it’s time to pay the servants their monthly wages and she needs Jack to write a check. She waits all morning but he is nowhere around. So after lunch she sets out on the course to find him.
Which she does. And instead of doing the proper husbandly thing and acquiescing to Jane and coming inside and writing the check, he tells her she will just have to wait until he is done with his round. ( Strike one ) Needless to say she is not pleased. He is about ready to drive off the tee and asks her to stay and watch. She tells him she doesn’t know what ‘drive off the tee’ means. He calls her an ignoramus. ( Strike two ) Barker, the stud groom, is serving as caddy. He takes some sand from a box on the tee and uses his hand to shape it into a pyramid, and places the ball on top. ( Little bit of interesting golf history there ). Jack steps up, takes a big swing, and wiffs. ( Only he doesn’t call it a wiff. Calls it a ‘foozle’. I like that word. Foozle. Much better than wiff. Next time I wiff, I’m going to say I foozled. ) Completely misses the ball. Jane can’t help herself and laughs out loud. Jack gets mad and says it’s because he was trying to show off to her. To which she replies:
‘You are but taking a leaf out of your ancestor’s book who inhabited the Garden of Eden’.
In other words ‘just like a man to blame the woman’. ( Steeeeerike three )
Jack tells Jane she should give it a try and offers her the club to hit the ball off the sand tee. But by now she is totally fed up with the whole thing and replies:
‘Not I. It is an idiotic game, and for my part, I can see nothing whatever in it.’ From that day, partly from ill-humour, partly from an inward conviction that golf required an immense deal of skill and practice, I set my face obstinately against it.’
The beginnings of dissension in the household.
Soon after the above incident George Donaldson takes his leave. At this point all male members of the household staff are pressed into service. Barker is elevated to ‘player’. Charles, the stable boy, becomes the caddy. Mr. Johnson, the gardener, is set to rolling the greens. ( More golf history: this involves taking a heavy steel roller, sort of a manual steam roller, hauling it over the course to each green, and using it to roll them as flat as possible. Hard work. ) Mr. Johnson is the only staff member who is not happy with the situation. He would much rather be tending the vegetable garden and makes his opinion quite clear to Jane.
Jane assures him she will take this up with Mr. Calthorpe. Jack doesn’t take much interest in household matters, and generally leaves handling the servants to Jane. She is used to having her own way when it comes to running the household. So she is sure Mr. Johnson will be back to gardening in no time. She brings up Mr. Johnson’s plight and the fact that no one is tending the garden and soon they will have to pay a green grocer to deliver vegetables. Jack says ‘the garden be blowed’ ( which was some pretty serious cursing in those days ), the greens were to be Johnson’s first and foremost responsibility. Jane is NOT pleased.
‘Jack had suddenly developed disagreeably masterful spirit and would brook no opposition.
As the days went by, he developed a most reprehensible spirit of independence.’
Not, she is quick to assure us, that he was hen-pecked. She wouldn’t have married him if he was. But usually in household matters he deferred to her.
A few days later Jane suggests they go visit a neighbor, Mrs. Marshall. The Calthorpes have two very high spirited horses, and normally Jack would take the reins and drive Jane around to visit neighbors. But now he complains he will miss an afternoon of golf. He eventually begs off citing his injury. Which Jane knows is a lie. She tries to guilt him into it, but instead he asks if she would mind if the stable boy, Charles, drives her. Jane is not happy because she doesn’t think the stable boy has enough experience to handle the two horses. (More history: they have a ‘mail cart’, for more than one person, a ‘Victoria’ for one person being driven, and a ‘pony cart’ for one person driving themselves. The 1896 version of the mini-van, the town-car-with-chauffer, and the sports car. ) When she asks ‘why not Barker?’ Jack says because he needs Barker to play with. But oh well, if she insists she can have him, and Jack will just stay inside and be bored. He will give in, like he always does, SIGH. At which point she decides he now loves golf more than her, and throws in the towel. Very sarcastically tells him oh no, she will take the stable boy, and he must forgive her for not thinking of his needs first, but after all she is only a woman. And leaves before he can say anything.
Classic end to a marital spat. Just classic. I love it.
So, it would appear things are not sailing smoothly along at maison Calthorpe. Will Jack change his mind? If not, will Charles be able to handle the horses? Which will give out first, Jane’s patience or Johnson’s back? We’ll find out in the next installment of The Sorrows Of A Golfer’s Wife. Stay tuned.
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