I think Simpson suffers from the fact that the great majority of his solo efforts were for private aristocrats (Mountbatten, Rothschild, Sassoon, etc.) and/or in France. Morfontaine certainly looks vaut le voyage from the pictures I've seen, but is that enough to put him in the pantheon of the greats? Some of his most noted work in the Englsih speaking world was in revisions (e.g. Cruden Bay, Ballybunion, Royal Aberdeen) but it is unclear in these cases what work was his and what the work of earlier or later designers/remodelers.
He surely is one of the contenders for most outrageous, from his unabashed foppiness to his legendary arrogance. I cherish his admonitions to a famous club who had asked him for some recommendations, where he first said, after perfunctorially praising the land:
"At the present moment however, there are many grave defects (to the course) which we shall enumerate."
And then later, when he suspected that the club might not accept all his recommendations and even choose to do the ones they wanted to by themselves, in their own way:
"Only one (or my clients) has attempted to do that and the result was a dismal and costly failure distressing to all parties."
What a sweet talking guy!
Rich
PS--does anybody have any info about the private courses Simpson designed? It was one helluva client list and I wonder how many (if any) of those courses still exist, and in what form. If even a fraction of them are lying out there either overgrown or otherwise neglected, there is a great opportunity for a forensic architect to (maybe) recreate some greatness.
R