Quote from: Mike Cirba on Today at 01:09:16am
David,At least it seems that you've finally conceded that you would like for us to believe that Macdonald/Whigham, and not that amateur Wilson, were largely responsible for the design and routing of the original course at Merion.
David Moriarty's response to Mike Cirba:
Mike,
Your posts continue to baffle me. You pop in each evening and accuse me of some dastardly, dishonest, and clandestine motive. Perhaps you need to try to set aside whatever animosity is driving you, and actually read my words.
From my post above, currently No. 100:
3. Based on what I know now, I still view MacDonald and Whigham as advisors, not the designers, even if Wilson did not go to Europe to study great courses before the initial routing, construction, and sowing of the initial version of the course. To view them as the designers would ignore the words of too many who were in a much better position to make that call than me. And if MacDonald did not call himself the designer of Merion East, then I am certainly not going to call him the designer. He was the committee’s advisor, but was likely a more important advisor than we realized.
Mike Cirba:
The above response seems to be typical of David Moriarty. In response to your statement above which seems to me to be a pretty accurate description of the direction he seems to be trying to go in on these threads with these “hypotheses” of his, he conveniently avoids including the following which I can certainly see would lead you and the rest of us to assume what you said above.
"4. If the trip occurred after the initial lay out, then the importance of MacDonald’s teaching, advice, and suggestions becomes much more apparent. Like H. Wilson said, the committee knew very little about what they were doing, and Macdonald taught them well, using his own courses as the exemplar. Not only that, CBM also inspected the site, then came down during the process to offer advice and suggestions on what the committee had done so far. And he was extremely helpful."
"You are still assuming that the purpose of the visit to NGLA was to prepare Wilson to go to Europe. What evidence supports this assumption? I do not know whether or the trip for Merion was in the works, or not."
"Isn't it possible that it was during the actual "construction" process when Wilson realized how little he knew, and at this point he decided to complete the rough draft, sow the course, and then he head off you Europe after the new yearthe next year, during grow in?"
"This is where I think many are selling both CBM and Wilson short. Apparently, many people believe that Wilson needed to go to Europe in order to learn to do what he did at Merion. They do not think he could lay out the course without that experience. I do not think this was necessarily the case, at least as it applies to the initial course. With CBM's help, advice, and suggestions, he could have layed out the backbone of the course, then gone to Europe, then taken what he learned from MacDonald and what he learned overseas, and GRADUALLY altered the course until he was satisfied."
Clearly David Moriarty's foregoing questions and hypotheses, which, again, he conveniently neglected to include in his response to you above, are intended to eventually set a scenario leading to his assumption and then conclusion whereby he will claim that in fact due to timing or inexperience Wilson and his Merion Committee actually needed Macdonald far more than the record shows that they probably did.
I think your remark above about where he is probably headed here is pretty accurate Mike.
And for what reason is he doing all this? None of us here have discounted anything that Merion, the Wilsons, Lesley, Travis, Tillinghast et al said about M&W and their "advice" or "involvement" in Merion East. It just appears that none of us are willing to place the importance on it that apparently David Moriarty is and has been for about 1,150 posts on two Merion threads he created.
Furthermore, David Moriarty is simply plying information on here that is convenient to his fairly ridiculous homespun "hypotheses". He is completely avoiding much of the other evidence such as Alan Wilson's report, Colt's letter and its ramification of probable GB trips of Hugh Wilson et al.
He has just about completely discounted Alan Wilson's report with the off-hand explanation that he believes Alan Wilson's memory must be faulty as his report was written a dozen years later and that Hugh was his brother who had recently died so Alan Wilson must be trying to glorify Hugh in that report.
I submit that almost every one of the Merion Construction Committee and other prominent Merion members were still very much alive when Alan Wilson wrote that report. I submit that any of them most definitely would've corrected Alan's report and Philler's history book explanation if Alan had made a mistake of the facts of the creation story of Merion like that and if Hugh Wilson had not in fact gone to GB BEFORE Merion went into construction and had in fact waited to go until perhaps a year after the course's plan began to be developed and it was routed, designed and constructed.
All these men may not have had perfect memories but I certainly doubt they were all collective liars.