FORE!
This book marks an epoch in my literary career. It is written in
blood. It is the outpouring of a soul as deeply seared by Fate's
unkindness as the pretty on the dog-leg hole of the second nine was
ever seared by my iron. It is the work of a very nearly desperate man,
an eighteen-handicap man who has got to look extremely slippy if he
doesn't want to find himself in the twenties again.
As a writer of light fiction, I have always till now been handicapped
by the fact that my disposition was cheerful, my heart intact, and my
life unsoured. Handicapped, I say, because the public likes to feel
that a writer of farcical stories is piquantly miserable in his private
life, and that, if he turns out anything amusing, he does it simply in
order to obtain relief from the almost insupportable weight of an
existence which he has long since realized to be a wash-out. Well,
today I am just like that.
Two years ago, I admit, I was a shallow farceur. My work lacked
depth. I wrote flippantly simply because I was having a thoroughly good
time. Then I took up golf, and now I can smile through the tears and
laugh, like Figaro, that I may not weep, and generally hold my head up
and feel that I am entitled to respect.
If you find anything in this volume that amuses you, kindly bear in
mind that it was probably written on my return home after losing three
balls in the gorse or breaking the head off a favourite driver: and,
with a murmured 'Brave fellow! Brave fellow!' recall the story of the
clown jesting while his child lay dying at home. That is all. Thank you
for your sympathy. It means more to me than I can say. Do you think
that if I tried the square stance for a bit.... But, after all, this
cannot interest you. Leave me to my misery.
POSTSCRIPT
In the second chapter I allude to Stout Cortez staring at
the Pacific. Shortly after the appearance of this narrative in serial
form in America, I received an anonymous letter containing the words,
'You big stiff, it wasn't Cortez, it was Balboa.' This, I believe, is
historically accurate. On the other hand, if Cortez was good enough for
