Life, 1914-09-03 · page 30 of 48
Life — September 3, 1914 — page 30: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page combines a satirical cartoon with G.K. Chesterton's essay on golf. The illustration depicts a rowdy Scottish golf match—"A Famous Gowf-Match in Bonnie Scotland"—featuring exaggerated Scottish characters (indicated by the phonetic spelling "Wullie Macleerie" and "Auchterlonie") playing with boisterous informality. Chesterton's accompanying essay contrasts Scottish and English temperaments regarding golf and national character. He argues that Scots play golf with healthy levity and friendliness, while Englishmen take their leisure—and themselves—too seriously. More broadly, he satirizes English behavior: they comically depict farmers (John Bull) while actual farming struggles, yet treat serious imperial tragedies with frivolity rather than appropriate gravity. The cartoon illustrates Chesterton's point about Scottish informality, showing golf as a communal, lighthearted pursuit rather than the stern, competitive endeavor it became fashionable in England.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
A FAMOUS GOWF-MATCH IN BONNIE SCOTLAND WHEN WULLIE MACLEERIE PLAYED WU] I AM just old enough to remember playing golf as a boy on a holi- day in Scotland, about a year before golfing crossed the border. To the average Englishman then the word “golf” was senseless as “plunk” or “ squank"—as perhaps it is. I did not play it well; on the contrary, I enjoyed it very much. And though the Scotch have a name for severity, it is my impression that my old friends in North Berwick played with more healthy levity and friendliness than is now fashionable in England. I think the Englishman is severer than the Scotchman; about unimportant things. It is true to say that the Englishman often takes his pleasures sadly; and SHILLIN’S AN’ > Golf By G. K. Chesterton there would be no harm in that, if it were not also true that his pleasures are the only things he does take sadly. He too often tends to take his tragedies frivolously. He still draws John Bull as a prosperous and comic farmer; because farming is the one thing in England that is not at all prosperous nor (for those who are doing it) comic, In a hundred other English departments there is really an accu- mulation in wealth; but it has never occurred to us to touch up John Bull by altering so much as the tassel on his top-boots. Or again, the tragedy commonly called Imperialism is not treated in the grand or Greek style; which was scarcely noticeable on TE AUCHTERLONIE THIR-R-RTY-SAX HOLES FOR TWA NEPENCE A SIDE—AN’ WON! Mafeking Night. Real national quali- ties are always both good and evil; and this trick of facing fatality with frivolity is a great strength to the English, especially in their colonial adventures. If a man can laugh in Johannesburg, I should think he could laugh anywhere. The English settler or explorer will really laugh at danger and laugh at death; but if he is of the upper middle classes, he will not laugh at golf. The next year everybody in England had heard of golf; and I could no longer tell them all about it, or re- count my adventures as freely as a man describes shooting the walrus, or spearing, hooking, netting, trapping,