Then, in 1983, a large cache of his watercolors was found in a battered and dusty red album and bought from an African antiques dealer peddling his wares at the Camden Lock Market.

Due to the notoriety of the Sotheby's sale, the Old Course – elated to receive such historical works on the history of golf – billed Hodge as "artist to the Royal & Ancient Golf Club" when the pictures were displayed by them at the University of St Andrews art gallery in April 1986.

[3] At the urging of his father, Hodge enrolled in the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, near London, on 1 August 1842.

His banker father, who had squandered his wealth on bad investments in a proposed Cornwall and Devon Railway, had difficulty paying the yearly Academy dues of £80 for board and tuition and as a result Hodge was discharged on 6 March 1846.

[3] Down on his luck and nearly penniless, he moved to St Andrews, Scotland, in the 1850s and opened a boarding school that was intended mainly for the children of Scottish parents who lived abroad and were working for the East India Company.

One sister, Sarah Frances "Fan" Hodge, was very helpful to him when he founded his boarding school.

It was during this time in the 1850s that Hodge became a friend and frequent playing companion of Gilbert Mitchell-Innes,[3] a crack amateur golfer who would later post a top-10 finish in the 1869 Open Championship.

[4] Hodge was an avid sportsman who excelled at cricket, boxing, running, and racquet sports.

In the case of a pen and monochrome watercolor depicting J. O. Fairlie (a mentor to Old Tom Morris), the hammer price at an 8 July 1999 Christie's auction in London, South Kensington, was $13,386 (£8,050).