The club-house at Pau is of the kind you would expect to discover at a good club of long and honourable standing up-country in England. The attributes or age and tradition are to be found within it. On a wall is a painting twelve feet long depicting the leading golfers of Pau in 1884, assembled on the course, and it was done by that Major Hopkins who did such work, now celebrated, concerning the earliest golfers at Westward Ho! gathered by their iron hut. In this picture of Pau there are some eminent golfers shown, such as Colonel Kennard, not long since dead, who was field-marshal of the Royal Blackheath Club; but the artist leads the eye to the gaunt figure of Sir Victor Brooke, a tam-o'-shanter on his head, addressing the ball on the tee in the way of a determined man. Sir Victor, for four or five years captain of the club, was the lion of the golf of Pau in those days, and when a match book, now lying musty in a corner, was started his was the first entry that was made in it. The course is beautifully situated on the Billere plain, a mile or so to the west of the middle of the town; and in the unusual absence of a friendly car it is a pleasant walk through a shaded avenue of lofty beeches in the splendid Pare du Chateau.

One is a little puzzled to estimate the quality of this course, being faced with a kind of semi-official printed statement that "Pau is undoubtedly the best course on the continent" which to some degree is intimidating. The turf, grown on a dark, sandy soil, is excellent, and more than fifty years of play upon it have given it the firmness and crispness that we miss elsewhere. The holes are of good length, well arranged, and not easy. Yet pancake was never flatter than the central part of the course, and with the very dullest and plainest kind of mid-Victorian bunkering - three low, straight grassy banks in line with each other right across the fairway - the golf hereabouts is less good to the eye, at all events, than it is to the spirit in the play. The first hole, a long one, with a road running diagonally across near the green, close to which there is a little cottage, somehow by its surroundings recalls memories of old "Mrs. Forman's" at ancient Musselburgh, and the second is a short hole of quality. From the fourth tee the line of the course bends round to the right, and for half a dozen holes we are away from that central part; there are ups and downs in the land that give more colour to the golf, and here and there are clumps of bushes that need consideration. All the time we are close to the bank of the River Gave, and at length, near to a point where a wild stream plunges into it, we cross to a spit of land between them and play a few holes there. They are nice holes. The ground heaves and rolls, and there must be good calculation and accuracy in approaching. Another stream runs through this isolated part of the course, and the green of the fourteenth hole closes to a point where two running waters nearly meet and there is a rutty road alongside. It is a pretty green, the situation is cunning and delightful, and that fourteenth hole is one of the best in France. Not a doubt about it - Pau is very good in parts. But we turn up a note on the golf in a little guide to Pau, and read: "Owing to the nature of the soil and their admirable preservation, the links at Pau compare favourably with the course at St. Andrews, in Scotland, where the conditions are almost ideal." O, Pau!

Now Pau is one of those places where the golf, excellent and admired, is not domineering, as one might say. You take it, you enjoy it, and yet you live in an easy contentment after your game without raving about it. It is a delightful little of a most happy and contenting whole. That is because Pau of all places on this planet makes one feel rested, contented, peacefully, languorously happy, and that is a most blessed state at which to arrive after a long season's course of tubes and taxi-cabs, noises and disturbances, crushes and crashes, late nights and far too early mornings, and, yes - for they also come with the burden of the Londoner - heavily bunkered five-hundred-yard-holes near our excellent London town. The air is famous for its sweet soothing properties. It wraps itself round your tired limbs, it steals into your nervy senses, and it comforts you. Pau lets you quietly down, rests you, gives you sleep, stills those jagged nerves that twitched so much in town. Every one says so, and it is true. One morning I gossiped on the course with Mr. Charles Hutchings, the wonderful man who won the Amateur Championship at Hoylake in 1902, and who has known what nerves are since. He told me he has now been wintering at Pau for the last twenty years, and it is the only place that is any good to him. "Before I come to Pau, and even when I am at Biarritz," said he, "my nerves are like this" - and he slowly passed his right hand up along his left arm from the hand to the shoulder - "and when I am at Pau they are like this," he added, and he smoothed the arm back again from the shoulder to the fingers. It was as if he had been stroking a cat the wrong way and the right one - that was the idea. Biarritz, so very bracing, certainly makes you jumpy, and many of us have played far better at Pau than at Biarritz; in fact, we find that at Pau we can hit the ball as cleanly and with as much confidence as anywhere.

That reflection leads us when gazing abstractedly upon those Pyrenees, which are so good for thought, to consider the effect of climate upon one's game. Undoubtedly the effect is great, and yet it is neither appreciated nor properly considered. After working hard for a spell in town we say we will go for a weekend's golf, and, when we can, we choose a highly bracing place, because we believe it is good for us and "bucks us up." But do you remember how often the golf that we play at such places is so extremely disappointing? The "bucking up " seems to have failed. Take Deal, for example. There is hardly a course in the world that I like and admire as much as this; but that strong air of Deal upsets the game of nearly every man at the beginning. Pau is supposed to be a little relaxing, but, except for the fact that we do not eat so much as at Biarritz, we hardly notice it. It soothes us, quietens us down, reduces our boiler and engine arrangements to low pressure, and voila! our game comes on, and it does so because the question of playing well or ill by a man who knows the game is nearly always a question of the steadiness of his nerves, and there are fine shades of this steadiness that we do not always realise. That is why we play well at Pau, and it makes us think sometimes that the relaxing places have not had full credit for their golfing quality hitherto.