British Chess Literature to 1914: A Handbook for Historians [Annotated] 1476668396, 9781476668390

Table of contents :
Cover
Table of Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
Abbreviations and Annotation Symbols
Notes on Old British Money and on Chess Notation
1. The Earliest Chess Editors: Egerton Smith and Thomas Wakley
Definition of a Column
Some Notes on Bibliographies
Early Reporting of Chess Events
The First Chess Editor: Egerton Smith
Thomas Wakley and The Lancet
2. The Heyday of Walker and
Staunton
Early Years of Chess at Bell’s Life in London
Illustrated London News: The Early Years
Some Other Pre–1850 Columns
More Columns in the 1850s
Early Chess in The Field
The Chess Column of The Era
3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885
Wormald’s Start in Chess Journalism
The Illustrated Weeklies
A Fine Column: Land and Water
Heyday of the Field Column
Steinitz’s Other Columns
Columns in Various Periodicals
Chess in School Magazines
Bird’s Innovative Chess Column
Nottingham Newspapers
Confusions over Newcastle Papers
Early Scottish Columns
Welsh Columns
Irish Chess Columns
4. Latter Years of the Chess Column
“Captain King” and the Rise of Syndication
Hoffer at The Field (and Elsewhere)
Muddle Over The Standard
Later Years at The Field
Some Complicated Columns
Gunsberg as Columnist
Later Years at the Illustrated London News
Chess Columns in More Recent Days
5. A Short History of Chess
Magazines Up to 1914
The Earliest Chess Periodicals
Early Rivals to the Chronicle
The Chess Player’s Magazine
The Chess World
The Westminster Papers
The City of London Chess Magazine
Other English Magazines of the 1870s
Hoffer and Zukertort’s Magazine
American Magazines of the 1870s and
1880s
Early Years of the British Chess Magazine
Other Late Victorian Magazines
Other Edwardian Chess Magazines
6. The Saga of the Chess Player’s Chronicle
The Short Life of The British Miscellany
The Early Years of Staunton’s C.P.C.
Brien’s Tenure of the Chronicle
The Third Series
Skipworth and the Quarterly Chronicle
The Jenkin Interlude
The Ranken Years
Morgan Takes Over in 1881
The Final Series
7. A Century and a Half of British Chess Books
Earliest British Chess Books
The Era of Philidor
Sarratt and Cochrane’s Treatises
General Manuals from Lewis to Staunton
Early Game Collections
Jaenisch on the Openings
Problems and Studies
Miscellaneous Works
Later Game Collections and Tournament Books (1851 onwards)
Later Books about Problems
History and Culture of Chess
Books on the Openings
Annual Works and Directories
8. On Doing Chess History Today
On Archives, Libraries and Private Collections
The Murray Collection in Oxford
Genesis of the Chess Column List
About Digitization and Online Research
On Websites and Game Databases
The Uses of Genealogy
A Few Final Words
Appendix I. British and Irish Chess Columns to 1914: An Annotated List
Appendix II. British and Irish Chess Magazines, 1837–1914: A Summary
Appendix III. Some Corrections to The Oxford Companion to Chess
Appendix IV. Contents of The British Miscellany
Appendix V. Some Amendments to Gaige’s Chess Personalia
Appendix VI. The Chess Column of Our School Times
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
MSS in archives
Unpublished works
Secondary and reference works
Online services and useful weblinks
Other works by the present author
Index of Games
General Index

Citation preview

British Chess Literature to 1914

Also by Tim Harding and from McFarland Joseph Henry Blackburne: A Chess Biography (2015) Eminent Victorian Chess Players: Ten Biographies (2012) Correspondence Chess in Britain and Ireland, 1824–1987 (2011)

British Chess Literature to 1914 A Handbook for Historians

Tim Harding

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina

FIRST EDITION, first printing LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING -IN-PUBLICATION DATA Names: Harding, T. D., author. Title: British chess literature to 1914 : a handbook for historians / Tim Harding. Description: Jefferson, North Carolina : McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018003914 | ISBN 9781476668390 (softcover : acid free paper) Subjects: LCSH: Chess—Great Britain—History—19th century. | Chess—Press coverage—Great Britain—History—19th century. Classification: LCC GV1330.G7 H37 2018 | DDC 794.10941—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018003914 BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

ISBN 978-1-4766-6839-0 (print) ISBN 978-1-4766-3169-1 (ebook) © 2018 Tim Harding. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording , or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Front cover image of chess game © 2018 benoitb/iStock; background A chess column from The Home Circle, volume 2, 1850 (author’s collection) Edited by Robert Franklin Designed by Susan Ham and Robert Franklin Typeset by Susan Ham Printed in the United States of America

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com

♾

Table of Contents Preface and Acknowledgments Abbreviations and Annotation Symbols Notes on Old British Money and on Chess Notation

Chess in School Magazines Bird’s Innovative Chess Column Nottingham Newspapers Confusions over Newcastle Papers Early Scottish Columns Welsh Columns Irish Chess Columns

1 5 6

1. The Earliest Chess Editors: Egerton Smith and Thomas Wakley Definition of a Column Some Notes on Bibliographies Early Reporting of Chess Events The First Chess Editor: Egerton Smith Thomas Wakley and The Lancet

4. Latter Years of the Chess

7 12 14 17 19 23

Column “Captain King” and the Rise of Syndication Hoffer at The Field (and Elsewhere) Muddle Over The Standard Later Years at The Field Some Complicated Columns Gunsberg as Columnist Later Years at the Illustrated London News Chess Columns in More Recent Days

2. The Heyday of Walker and Staunton

25 Early Years of Chess at Bell’s Life in London 25 Illustrated London News: The Early Years 28 Some Other Pre–1850 Columns 33 More Columns in the 1850s 35 Early Chess in The Field 41 The Chess Column of The Era 42

Columns, ca. 1860–1885

97 98 100 103 106 108 113 118 119

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914 The Earliest Chess Periodicals Early Rivals to the Chronicle The Chess Player’s Magazine The Chess World The Westminster Papers The City of London Chess Magazine Other English Magazines of the 1870s Hoffer and Zukertort’s Magazine American Magazines of the 1870s and 1880s

3. The Golden Age of Chess Wormald’s Start in Chess Journalism The Illustrated Weeklies A Fine Column: Land and Water Heyday of the Field Column Steinitz’s Other Columns Columns in Various Periodicals

73 76 80 83 85 87 89

44 45 46 52 58 66 67

v

121 123 127 133 138 142 145 154 157 160

vi

Table of Contents

Early Years of the British Chess Magazine 164 Other Late Victorian Magazines 168 Other Edwardian Chess Magazines 174

6. The Saga of the Chess Player’s Chronicle The Short Life of The British Miscellany The Early Years of Staunton’s C.P.C. Brien’s Tenure of the Chronicle The Third Series Skipworth and the Quarterly Chronicle The Jenkin Interlude The Ranken Years Morgan Takes Over in 1881 The Final Series

178 178 192 202 206 211 214 216 218 225

7. A Century and a Half of British Chess Books Earliest British Chess Books The Era of Philidor Sarratt and Cochrane’s Treatises General Manuals from Lewis to Staunton Early Game Collections Jaenisch on the Openings Problems and Studies Miscellaneous Works Later Game Collections and Tournament Books (1851 onwards) Later Books about Problems History and Culture of Chess Books on the Openings Annual Works and Directories

231 232 235 237 240 246 249 251 253 255 258 264 266 273

8. On Doing Chess History Today On Archives, Libraries and Private Collections The Murray Collection in Oxford Genesis of the Chess Column List About Digitization and Online Research On Websites and Game Databases The Uses of Genealogy A Few Final Words

275 276 282 287 288 289 292 293

Appendices I. British and Irish Chess Columns to 1914: An Annotated List II. British and Irish Chess Magazines, 1837–1914: A Summary III. Some Corrections to The Oxford Companion to Chess IV. Contents of The British Miscellany V. Some Amendments to Gaige’s Chess Personalia VI. The Chess Column of Our School Times

Chapter Notes Bibliography MSS in archives Unpublished works Secondary and reference works Online Services and Useful Weblinks Other works by the present author

Index of Games General Index

297 341 344 346 349 352 355 369 369 369 369 370 370 371 372

Preface and Acknowledgments lications in English about chess, even before Philidor raised the profile of the game in the late 18th century. Even so, there is not much to report until the 1830s except for a handful of books and articles in general periodicals. Then in 1835 the first major newspaper chess column began. Soon afterwards, the first magazines devoted to chess appeared and chess columns were increasingly featured in periodicals from the 1840s onwards. As the market grew rapidly in response to sharply falling book prices, The Quarterly Review noted, in a special article about chess in its June 1849 number, that “chess has truly a literature of its own.” This literature provides the largest body of primary source material about chess, and amateur play in particular, for the 19th and early 20th centuries. Generally this book uses “Edwardian” as a shorthand for the period 1901 to 1914 although technically that is wrong because Edward VII died in 1910 and his son George V was on the throne for the last few years of the period. The year 1914 has been chosen as a stopping point because the outbreak of the First World War in August wrought a huge transformation in society, its collateral damage affecting all sports (including chess) and their publications. Many chess columns ended soon after the outbreak of hostilities although some chess clubs continued their activities

The 21st century has seen a considerable expansion of interest in chess history, along with a raising of standards in published biographies and historical works. This book surveys the various kinds of chess literature published in Britain and Ireland up to 1914, and in so doing it paints a picture of chess life in the United Kingdom from an angle that differs from most histories of the period. While this book is primarily intended for people active in chess history research, or who may consider undertaking a project in chess history, it should also interest anyone who cares about the history of the game and would like more insight into an historian’s methods, sources and outlook. This is not just a study of methods and sources; it does include along the way a fair amount of historical information. The book also includes 18 illustrative games taken from rare sources, but it is not a work of technical instruction. The growth of interest in chess history parallels an expansion in academic studies not only of sports history, but also of the relationship between print, literacy and the development of Western societies, with Victorian periodicals receiving much attention. Yet the space that many of these devoted to games and puzzles is a research topic that was until recently ignored by scholars. This book does discuss the earliest pub-

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Preface and Acknowledgments

throughout the war. After the scaled-down 1914 British Chess Federation congress, it was not until 1920 that the British Chess Championship for men was played again. (In 1919 there was a British Ladies’ Championship and a small international “Victory” tournament at Hastings instead.) Occasionally this book does stray into the later 20th century, or makes mention of works in other languages or published in other countries, but chiefly it deals with British and Irish chess literature to the outbreak of the First World War. This book has a special emphasis on columns. They were not only an important stimulus to interest in chess, but often contained more detailed information than the necessarily selective magazines. Many columns and magazines also sponsored competitions of various kinds, including postal and problem tourneys, and thus were directly instrumental in the game’s development. These columns are discussed in Chapters 1–4 and also the major Appendix I. They were not just an English phenomenon. The first Scottish chess column began in 1847, the first in Ireland in the 1860s, and the earliest in Wales in 1870. British emigrants also conducted some of the earliest chess columns abroad. The first columns in America were conducted in the New York papers Spirit of the Times (1845– 1848) and Albion (1848–1865) by an Englishman, Charles Henry Stanley (1819–1901). Aylmer Maude (later a friend and translator of Tolstoy) started a column in the Moscow magazine Zritel (“Spectator”) in October 1881: it was mentioned at the time in the Illustrated London News. The genesis of this book was a suggestion by McFarland’s founder and president emeritus, Robert Franklin, to provide a study of chess columns aimed at readers whose principal interest was in chess history, rather than the history of periodical literature which was the angle in a 2009 article for Victorian Periodicals Review, which is listed in the Bibliography. Eventually we decided that dealing

with columns alone would result in a thin book (in both physical and intellectual terms) and a more complete survey of the chess literature was required, including specialist magazines and books also. This book is not solely “meta-history.” It also aims to put on record numerous minor discoveries of the present author about chess history, and its sources, which do not fit into previous or planned future works, in order that they should not be lost to posterity. The appendices, especially the first, supplement and correct certain reference works which are often consulted and cited. Readers are welcome to read the chapters in any sequence that suits them and they may prefer to begin with the Chapter 7 on books, for example, but it is advisable to take the four chapters on columns in sequence. This is because there is a kind of chronological narrative here, and each chapter does to some extent presuppose that the reader has digested the information from its predecessors. Chapters 5 and 6 are devoted to British chess magazines of the period. This is probably the most authoritative section in this book. The time-frame of the two chapters overlaps but after a couple of drafts it became clear that there would be more clarity if The Chess Player’s Chronicle, in its various versions, was dealt with as a separate narrative. The other magazines are discussed first. Chapter 5 establishes, among other things, the detailed history of The Chess Player’s Magazine. Special attention is also paid to some lesser magazines that have escaped the attention of previous writers, whereas the history of The ChessMonthly and British Chess Magazine is quite well known and they do not require a yearby-year review. Chapter 6 starts with the fullest account yet of the publication which preceded, and led to the launch of, the Chronicle, namely The British Miscellany. Furthermore, it includes a fairly detailed account of the career of the

Preface and Acknowledgments magazine’s second editor, Oxford graduate Robert Barnett Brien (1827–1873). To say just that his failed stewardship of the magazine was due to his liking for alcoholic drink must be an over-simplification. The confused period of the Third Series is also clarified somewhat, as Kolisch’s brief involvement is teased out. Also Jenkin’s brief period in charge in 1876 receives more attention than it is usually given. The chapter ends with some littleknown information about the rare volumes of the Chronicle which were produced, most erratically, in the late 1880s and 1890s culminating in The Chess Chronicle about which we offer a tentative hypothesis connecting it to the well known chess writer Leopold Hoffer (1842–1913). The title of Chapter 7 refers to P. W. Sergeant’s A Century of British Chess, a book which for all its faults (and they are many) is a secondary source one would not want to be without. Century is not discussed in detail because it falls outside the time-frame of this book but there are many places where we refer to what Sergeant had to say about people and events. Nor does this chapter attempt to discuss every chess book that was published. There were far too many of them—turn to a bibliography if one wants lists—and their value to historians is limited compared to what the columns and magazines have to offer. Instead that chapter offers a less comprehensive and more personal view about old chess books, concentrating on some trends and particular titles that interest the author. Finally, in Chapter 8, personal observations are offered on the objects and methods of chess history, together with some practical advice and information. Any reader who is actively involved in a research project, and who is planning to visit the British Library, the Royal Dutch Library or the Bodleian, might do well to read Chapter 8 first. Another section of this chapter deals with manuscript sources, of which there are far fewer than chess historians would like. The digitization

3

of sources is also discussed but most readers are probably familiar with this phenomenon. There are also warnings about the dangers of relying on what is available on the internet. Chapter 8 does express some personal opinions to which some readers may object, but elsewhere in the book the aim has been complete objectivity. The first appendix, by far the largest, is an alphabetical index of British chess columns, based on the work of previous writers, supplemented by a decade and a half of additional research. The other five appendices are of less importance but may conceivably be of use to future researchers and writers too. Appendix I may be the most important part of the book for readers who undertake their own research into chess in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It is an attempt to correct and supplement Chess Columns: A List, the last work by Ken Whyld, published posthumously. Whyld himself was aware that it could be improved upon, and had he lived, further editions would have followed, of increasing reliability as readers sent in their own notes. Indeed his whole project, a bibliography of chess columns from all around the world, was vastly over-ambitious. By concentrating on British and Irish columns only, the present work tackles a more manageable, but still virtually infinite, job. Appendix I is not claimed to be definitive because, as the digitization of old newspapers rapidly progresses, new discoveries are constantly being made. The release of thousands of pages from half-forgotten publications is a never-ending process. Nevertheless we do believe Appendix I is a significant advance on all previous lists of its kind concerning British and Irish columns. Current and future researchers are encouraged to inform the author or publisher of their own additions and amendments. In this book, British spellings of words such as “colour” and “centre,” and terms such as “railway” (for railroad) and “draughts” (for checkers) are retained where they occur in

4

Preface and Acknowledgments

proper names or in direct quotations, including original game notes and extracts (or block quotes). Old British currency and chess notation are briefly explained in a separate note on page 6. Most numbered citations and supplementary notes will be found in the back of the book, but in a few cases it is better to present these as footnotes; they are indicated by asterisks or similar marks in the text. Readers of the author’s previous works (especially Eminent Victorian Chess Players) may find some repetition of facts and points, as it cannot be assumed every reader has seen those books, but this has been kept to a minimum. In other cases we dilate upon, or occasionally correct, what was said in former works.

Acknowledgments A large historical work of this kind cannot be written without the help of others. The support of Nottingham chess book collector, publisher and historian Tony Gillam was essential concerning the columns and we have exchanged many queries and information with him over a long period. Librarians and archivists are essential helpers for projects of

this kind. At the John G. White Collection of the Cleveland Public Library, Ohio, Pamela Eyerdam and Ray Rozman, chess librarian, assisted with some of the illustrations for this book, and in the past Lissa Waite and Kelly Ross Brown (who have since moved on) also assisted with my research. Henk Chervet and his colleagues at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague have also assisted in the past. In addition I especially wish to thank, in no particular order, the staffs of Trinity College Dublin library and the National Library of Ireland; the staff of the (now closed) British Library Newspapers at Colindale, and of the main British Library at St. Pancras. I should also like to thank Andy Ansel, Leonard Barden, William Breeze, Maurice Carter, Michael Clapham, Bert Corneth, Brian Denman, Rod Edwards, Rob Ensor, Vlastimil Fiala, Kathleen and Owen Hindle, Gerard Killoran, David McAlister, Robert Montgomery, John Saunders and Panagis Sklavounos for their support, with apologies to others whom I may have forgotten to mention. Lastly, I thank my wife Joan for once again supplying all kinds of help and putting up with long hours out of her company, spent on research and writing.

Abbreviations and Annotation Symbols B.C.A. B.C.C.A. B.C.F. B.C.M. B.L. B.L.L. B.N.A. C.P.C. C.P.M. I.L.N. I.S.D.N. J.G.W.C. jpg K.B. M.P. O.D.N.B. pdf Q.C.H. T.C.D. U.K. W.P. £ s. d. ! !! ? ?? !?

British Chess Association British Correspondence Chess Association British Chess Federation British Chess Magazine British Library Bell’s Life in London British Newspaper Archive Chess Player’s Chronicle [or variant title in the series] Chess Player’s Magazine Illustrated London News Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News John G. White Collection (at Cleveland Public Library, Ohio) Joint Photographic Experts Group (image format) Koninklijke Bibliotheek (Royal Dutch Library) Member of Parliament Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Portable Document Format Quarterly for Chess History Trinity College Dublin United Kingdom Westminster Papers (chess magazine) Pound sterling (British currency) Shillings (unit of old British currency) Pence (unit of old British currency) ?! † 1–0 0–1 ½–½

Strong move Brilliant move Weak move Blunder Interesting move

5

Dubious move Check White wins Black wins Drawn game

Notes on Old British Money and on Chess Notation you can reckon five U.S. dollars to the pound except during the American Civil War when the dollar weakened considerably. The dollar recovered during the 1870s and was back to antebellum rates by 1878.

Until decimalization on 15 February 1971, the British currency, the pound sterling, was divided into twenty shillings, each of which was worth twelve pence, so that there were 240 pence in the pound. A sum of money would be written, with abbreviations, as in this example: £4 3s. 6d. meaning four pounds, three shillings and six pence. If there were no pence, four pounds and three shillings might be written £4 3/– or £4 3s. Occasionally sums were expressed in guineas, and by the mid– 19th century the value of a guinea was standardized as £1 1s. For comparing sums of money in the old days with present values in pounds, and also historic exchange rates, we recommend using the calculator on the Measuring Worth website (www.measuringworth.com), which is an invaluable resource for historians. Some of the more important sums in the text have been given equivalent values based on the calculator at that site. During the 19th century exchange rates fluctuated, but as a rule of thumb

When printing game scores or move sequences, descriptive notation was almost exclusively used in the English-speaking world during the period covered by this book. In fact, until well after the Second World War, English descriptive notation was still by far the norm in Britain, the British Empire, and the United States. It gradually evolved from verbose descriptions into a kind of shorthand. Similar forms of notation were frequently used in French- and Spanish-language publications also. In this book all games and annotations are presented in the now universal algebraic notation (often called the “German notation” by British writers in the 19th century).

6

1. The Earliest Chess Editors: Egerton Smith and Thomas Wakley sports. Although a great deal of the output of Victorian printed presses was binned or pulped within days of publication, an astonishing amount was preserved for posterity in libraries and archives. Microfilming, from the late 20th century, made available many of the newspapers that had become too fragile for repeated handling by readers. Now digitization (especially when the sources are made available in effective word-searchable databases) has opened new horizons, as will be discussed further in the last chapter. Many of these documents are potentially of great interest to historians of chess. At first chess historians primarily saw them as sources for finding the scores of chess games that had never found their way into specialist chess magazines, but increasingly they are taking a broader view of how newspaper and periodical sources can be used for chess research. These printed materials enable us to trace not only the matches and tournaments of bygone eras, but also to research the lives of chess players, both professionals and amateurs. Even the opinion articles and sometimes casual comments can help us to understand the mindset of our ancestors and the social context in which they lived. Historian Edward Royle has warned that

The first four chapters of this book examine the origin and growth of chess reporting in English periodicals. Before going into detail about the earliest editors and their columns, the topic of columns should be introduced and some definitional distinctions and other general observations made. Historians love, and indeed rely upon, primary sources—documents created at the time of the events they describe. Newspapers, published within days of the events they report, are prime examples of primary sources which were created (in Britain at least) from the late 17th century onwards, and in abundance from the mid–19th century. They provide information that sometimes cannot be found anywhere else—although the fact that they are written so soon after the event means that they could be prone to unintentional error. Along with other issues (such as political bias), the historian must treat newspapers with care and find corroborative sources where possible. Other types of periodicals, especially weekly magazines, can also be extremely valuable and they have been increasingly studied by historians of the 19th century. That was the first period to produce a great wealth of printed primary sources about games and

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British Chess Literature to 1914

“the golden rule for all historians using the press … is to assume that, until you have reason to believe otherwise, it is not telling the truth”: important advice when one is reading political journalism. In general this advice may be less relevant in the case of chess, but Royle’s Law particularly needs bearing in mind when reading the output of Howard Staunton (1810?–1874) and, to a lesser extent, of William Steinitz (1836–1900) and others.1 Chess literature divides itself into three kinds: the polemical that immediately puts the critical reader on guard (and anyway usually stems from certain pens known generally to be controversial), technical and instructional chess material, about which truth-value questions do not arise, and factual announcements about forthcoming or recent events. Of course, misprints could occur, and mistakes were not always corrected later, but on the whole the chess editors (especially provincial columnists, less likely to have an axe to grind) did their best, and there is rarely reason to doubt matters they state as fact. There is one obvious exception: when a future event was announced (such a match fixture or the visit of a master to a chess club) this was subject to postponement or cancellation. Social, cultural, political and military historians are often able to draw on a wealth of primary source material in the form of diaries and letters (whether privately held in manuscript or published), official documents, and other forms of public record (such as statutes and white papers). Previously unpublished manuscript primary sources have formed the basis of countless doctoral dissertations, but very few chess masters have left us diaries or an abundance of letters. It is possible to strike it lucky, especially if one intends to research a biography of a player who lived comparatively recently and has left private papers to family members who are willing to allow access to them, but in general, the chess historian (especially dealing with periods more than fifty years in the past) is unlikely to find

many sources of this kind. A few successful chess biographies have been written which were able to draw on private papers, or whose subject had a significant life outside chess, but for many topics in chess history printed primary sources are likely to be central. Old newspapers and periodicals (other than specialist chess magazines) typically contain four different types of information of use to chess historians. The most significant of these, the regular chess columns that appeared (usually on a weekly basis) for months, years or sometimes decades in the same publication, are the main subject of this and the next three chapters, as well as of the extensive Appendix I. Secondly, there are straightforward reports of chess events or the activities of chess players, appearing on news pages on an irregular basis, usually one-off accounts but sometimes in concentrations over two or three weeks when a paper decided to report a chess tournament or match. These can be distinguished from a column simply because when the event is over, the reports cease. Also in some cases a local or regional newspaper reported chess activities in their area on a regular basis (such as results of league matches) but not as part of a regular weekly column that would carry other chess information. Thirdly, there are sometimes interviews with players or feature articles dealing with chess or chess players. Finally, one can sometimes find advertisements for forthcoming chess events or publications which provide information not available in news reports or columns. For the purposes of this book, a distinction should be made between “chess editor” and “chess author.” The writer of a book, or of a substantial article in a periodical, we shall call an author. Somebody (usually anonymous in the 19th century) who wrote a news report we can deem to be a reporter, although typically such reports were probably sent in by local chess club secretaries rather than by a staff reporter on the newspaper in question. The term “chess editor” was widely used

1. The Earliest Chess Editors: Egerton Smith and Thomas Wakley

9

The first female chess editors. Left: Frideswide Fanny Beechey (later Mrs. Rowland), who began in the Matlock Register, 1882/3, and later conducted several columns. The photograph is from her first book, Chess Blossoms (1883). Right: Mrs. Rhoda Bowles, chess correspondent of Womanhood magazine from 1899 to 1907. Photograph (1897) by George W. Bradshaw of Hastings (courtesy Cleveland Public Library Special Collections).

in Victorian Britain to refer to the person who conducted a regular column, but it can also be applied to the editor of a specialist chess magazine. (In a small number of cases, apart from chess magazines, the “chess editor” may also have been the editor of the publication as a whole.) The “chess editor” was indeed an editor in the tasks he performed when compiling his columns. When he had sufficient space in the paper, he might assemble his article from a variety of sources, such as letters, games, and problems submitted by his readers, items culled from the daily press or other editors’ columns of previous weeks, and of course there would also be parts of the column that he wrote himself. We say “he” because before the First World War the chess editor almost always was a man. There were two very important female chess editors—Galway-born Frideswide Beechey (afterwards Mrs. Thomas Rowland) and Mrs. Rhoda Bowles of the London Ladies’ Chess Club. In addition, though only for just over two years (1895–1897) because of her

premature death, there was Miriam Clarke, second wife of Isidor Gunsberg, writing in the Lady’s Pictorial. In her case it is fairly clear that her husband wrote the game notes and she did everything else. Both she and Bowles were writing for a predominantly female readership. Beechey wrote primarily for a general audience, in numerous papers (and only once for a woman’s magazine). As she was a stronger player than her husband, there is no question of his writing her columns; rather, it was often the other way about. The distinction between a newspaper and a periodical can be somewhat unclear. Until August 1855, when the stamp duty on newspapers was repealed by Parliament, this was a legal distinction. The publisher of a newspaper had to pay a tax (usually a penny) for each copy sold, which of course meant the price of copies sold on the street was higher than it would otherwise have been. At least, after the introduction of the Penny Post in 1840, the stamp did cover the cost of sending the newspaper by post to subscribers, so for

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British Chess Literature to 1914

a reader in the provinces taking a London paper it was not an extra expense. One effect of the removal of the stamp duty was greatly to increase the number of English newspapers, and to encourage daily publication where there was a sufficient market. In the second half of the nineteenth, and into the 20th century many publishers produced both daily and weekly papers, of which the latter might contain material from the former. (Such papers often had the word “Weekly” or “Budget” in their titles.) Weeklies usually appeared on Saturdays (sometimes Fridays) but of course there were also some Sunday newspapers, some of which had very significant chess columns. After the abolition of the stamp duty the distinction between a newspaper and a periodical could be blurred. In general, though, if a paper came out more than once a week, or if it was a weekly but was chiefly a record of recent events, then it will be classed as a newspaper. The title is usually some guide and so are the lengths of articles (typically fairly short in a newspaper), the size of paper that the periodical is printed on, and also its frequency. With rare exceptions, a daily newspaper paginated from 1 in each issue whereas a magazine or other periodical started at page 1 for each volume, which might run for three or six months or a year (not always starting in January). This facilitated indexing of the volume when it was complete. Anything appearing less often than once a week, but at least quarterly, is classed here as a magazine. Broadsheet publications of at least four pages would almost invariably be classed as a newspaper. If smaller than tabloid size, then the British Library catalog (which does not use the word “magazine” in its classification) will call it a journal, although “journal” really is just another old word for newspaper and many newspapers had the word Journal in

their title. Nowadays the term “journal” tends to be used for academic periodicals which sometimes appear just quarterly or even less frequently than that. Some other cataloguing systems use the word “serial” to refer to regular publications of all kinds, and this could even include Yearbooks. Chess historians do not need to be overly concerned with such terminology issues in this book; more important is the distinction between columns on the one hand, and one-off reports or other types of chess coverage on the other. In addition to printed sources in the form of periodicals, including the specialist chess magazines, the historian does have one other type of printed primary source available to her or him. That is, of course, books—especially tournament books that were produced soon after the completion of an event. Other types of chess books are also sometimes of use to historians, as will be discussed in Chapter 7, but of course many of the books of olden days have little to offer the historian unless he or she is in search of the answers to particular questions. Except for the tournament books, they are not usually a record of recent events. To explain in detail why chess was the most important indoor game of the Victorian era in the United Kingdom once took this author the length of a 100,000 word doctoral dissertation, but the case for this assertion may be briefly summarized.* Cards and other indoor pastimes (such as backgammon) which involved gambling were acceptable in society from the Restoration to the Regency, but by Queen Victoria’s accession in 1837 they were becoming restricted to private homes and a few gentlemen’s clubs. It is true that sometimes small sums of money changed hands at chess, but this was not exactly gambling. Bets usually took the form of a stake between opponents which often evened out over the

*The argument and evidence can be found in the Ph.D. dissertation by Timothy Harding, “Battle at Long Range”: Correspondence Chess in Britain and Ireland, 1824–1914, A Social and Cultural History (University of Dublin, 2009); online at www.tara.tcd.ie/handle/2262/76892.

1. The Earliest Chess Editors: Egerton Smith and Thomas Wakley course of several games in an evening, because the stronger player usually conceded odds (such as a handicap of pawn and move) to make the contest interesting. Putting up the stakes for one master in a set match was also not generally regarded as gambling, although a backer stood to make money if the player he supported was successful.2 Other forms of betting among third parties on a chess event was largely unknown. Chess enjoyed a centuries-old privileged status as a game for intellectuals. Increasingly recognized as being a game of pure skill, it was beginning to escape evangelical strictures on leisure activities. It was now coming to be considered a “rational recreation” and, as such, was promoted in mechanics’ institutes and some working-men’s clubs.3 From the 1840s onwards, interest in chess diffused to the lower-middle and artisan classes through the medium of literature, especially the columns discussed in this chapter and its successors. Playing chess in England was a respectable activity, although a few years earlier it might have been viewed with suspicion in some quarters. In other countries it was possibly different. Academic historians are beginning to take note of chess, as seen in the recent journal article by J. J. Sharples, which argued against the “respectability of chess” thesis, but on the basis of how the game was played at the Café de la Régence in Paris. Against that, Bernard Kiernan had already in 1957 written that “the ascendancy of the Café was fatal to French chess. Skittles, odds games, and all sorts of variants of the game itself were the vogue, while serious play languished.” Dr. Sharples has since published a second journal article and a full length study titled A Cultural History of Chess-Players.4 The Quarterly Review noted, in a special article about chess in its June 1849 issue, that “chess has truly a literature of its own.” At that time the market was growing rapidly in response to sharply falling book prices. The Quarterly article noted that chess was “ab-

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solutely divorced from gambling and intemperance.”5 Chess became notably popular among the clergy (Anglicans especially), several of whom, later in Victorian times, even wrote regularly on the game, edited magazines or columns, and organized competitions. The space devoted by many magazines and newspapers to games and puzzles is a research topic that has mainly been ignored by scholars. Familiar nowadays are crosswords, Sudoku and bridge columns. Some Victorian periodicals printed brainteasers of various kinds, but between the 1850s and 1914 chess problems were the most common form of intellectual exercise in periodicals. Chess grew from a feature seen in a handful of titles at mid-century into one that was almost required reading in a weekly paper by the 1880s, sometimes as part of an “amusements” package. The columns themselves were an important driver of growth for chess, showing examples of good play, offering advice of various kinds, and running competitions, as well as providing puzzles for readers to solve. It was its notation that gave chess an almost unique advantage for popularization through the press, although one shared to some extent with the game of checkers (called draughts in Britain and Ireland). Though this contention may be hard to prove, it is probably the case that most adults who played some chess understood its notation, whereas in the case of checkers there may have been a higher percentage who enjoyed the game but never bothered to record their moves or read about it. Checkers was somewhat more popular in Scotland than in England, partly because Scottish player James Wyllie (known as “The Herd Laddie”) was world champion for a long time. There were far more elementary treatises teaching chess than there were for checkers, but columns for that game started to appear in several British newspapers later in the 19th century. Also there were some periodicals which carried regular articles on card games (mostly whist) but, with the exception

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British Chess Literature to 1914

of The Field, these were rare until the 20th century, when bridge columns began to proliferate. There were always fewer checkers and cards articles than the columns catering to chess players. Diagrams of chess positions (important for illustrating the chess problems) at first had to made individually as woodcuts but eventually were made up with special type, which first came into use in the 1820s. Diagrams provided visual variety to brighten up the look of pages: especially valuable in broadsheet newspapers before the days of large headlines. Chess enjoyed increased press coverage from the 1840s onwards. In the second half of the 19th century an even more extensive chess literature developed, in English and several other languages, including more books and specialist magazines. Columns reached a wider audience, and catered not only to regular enthusiasts but also, even more perhaps, to people who never joined clubs or entered competitions, and it is certain their numbers included women.

Definition of a Column Strictly speaking, a “column” is a physical feature in a newspaper, a vertical area of a page. This was particularly evident in the days (up to the 1980s or even 1990s) when metal type was used to make up the pages in most British newspapers. By extension, the term “column” came to mean an article which appeared regularly and occupied a more or less fixed area of space on one of the pages. So a “chess column” is best defined as a regular series of articles in any periodical which deals with a wide range of news or other topics. A one-off article, or short series of articles always intended to be of a brief and finite nature, do not qualify as columns, which by their nature were open-ended and likely to evolve. Columns might appear either in weekly

publications, or one day of the week in a publication that appeared more frequently.6 A few were in monthlies and quarterlies and a very few in the (rare) fortnightlies. In practice the space devoted to chess varied considerably from publication to publication and even from one issue to another in the same periodical. Chess was typically allotted one-third of a three-column large magazine or tabloid page or half of a smaller format page. Some columns had insufficient space to do more than print a problem and a few answers or brief announcements; even major columns were occasionally truncated. On special occasions the allocated space might be significantly extended, notably when The Field was reporting a major chess tournament and sometimes the coverage overflowed a whole page into another. For anyone wishing to research the chess history of the 19th century—and to an increasing extent the early 20th century also— chess columns in newspapers and periodicals are an essential and almost inexhaustible resource, frustrating though they can often be. It seems that their importance to the historian has been recognized only comparatively recently, with John Hilbert being among those who led the way by publishing many articles based on his discoveries in American local newspapers.7 Ken Whyld, as will be discussed later in detail, also made a very important contribution to the bibliography of chess— and where would historians be without bibliographers? He was building on the work of some previous historians who had tried to document what columns had been published. Columns played multiple roles: to entertain, to instruct, to challenge the mind, to provide information, and to answer queries. Articles typically included a composed chess problem or puzzle from actual play, together with news, announcements, games, book reviews, replies to correspondents, and solutions to previous weeks’ puzzles. Literary material submitted by readers might be included

1. The Earliest Chess Editors: Egerton Smith and Thomas Wakley and many columns ran competitions: for problem composing, problem-solving, or correspondence play. The weekly series was ideal for this purpose. Apart from the light that weekly columns throw on periodical publishing and readership, they provide the most substantial body of primary source material about chess activity in general. These articles frequently contain facts and opinions not to be found, or only in summary form, in the necessarily more selective chess magazines. Moreover, they were frequently the forum for debates and controversies in the chess world. So even the biased parts are interesting, so long as they can be balanced (as is usually the case) by comparing what other columns and magazines say on the same issue. Moreover, when columns organized competitions of various kinds, we need not worry about Royle’s Law. In such cases the statements published about them can be classed as performative. When the column is running a competition and publishes the rules, results, or pairings for a match, then what it says goes, by definition. Certainly the pioneering chess historian Harold James Ruthven Murray (1868–1955) was aware that chess columns could be important sources, although in his actual writings he seems to have made little use of their content because he was mostly writing about times before they were common. Magazines, usually published monthly (though sometimes weekly, bimonthly or quarterly), by their nature contain a digest of information. Their information content has been filtered through the reflection and selection by the editor from a greater quantity of news, games, problems and opinion articles that were available to him. They had to leave things out that we would like to know. Especially at busy times (when major matches or tournaments had to be reported) a magazine editor might reluctantly have to omit, for space reasons, news or gossip or games that otherwise could have been included.

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The editor of a column, on the one hand, was able to react to recent events but, when little was happening, he could have the opposite problem, needing urgently to find something to fill his space on a weekly basis. A local editor was also generally in direct contact with many of his readers who would write in on a regular basis, with inquiries, opinion, comments on problems and various news. An editor also needed neat handwriting. Probably nearly all chess editors and writers until the 1890s, or even the early 1900s, delivered their copy in manuscript. Therefore correction of galley proofs was particularly important, especially to minimize the confusion between “K” and “Kt” in game scores. Where, however, a game had previously appeared in print elsewhere, a cutting could be pasted in, making life easier for both the columnist and the typesetter. Throughout the 19th century, it was essential for a chess editor (whether of a magazine or a column) to have some knowledge about what constituted a good chess problem, and many chess editors were leading experts in that field. Although chess editors could be strong players—and a few were even leading masters—skill at practical play was less important than being a good judge of a problem, and developing features that would make readers want to buy the paper each week. Editors who printed problems and games by readers, or who organized tourneys, created an element of interactivity between the periodical and its readers, establishing a “virtual community” loyal to the publication. Then the volume of incoming correspondence helped the columnist prove to his editor that the series was of value to the title and so contributed to the feature’s continuance. Game tourneys were played by post, usually on a knockout system until the 1880s, and the best games would be published in the column.8 The organization of problem tourneys is discussed in more detail later in this book, in connection with the Huddersfield College Magazine and

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British Chess Literature to 1914

other columns that were particularly successful in organizing them. The editor (especially of a column in a provincial newspaper) also exchanged articles and news with colleagues, including sometimes chess editors in other countries. Anyone who has read many Victorian chess columns knows that this process of dialogue with readers and other editors often enriches the value of the articles as historical sources, and that what may seem trivial when you are researching a particular project may come into focus when you revisit the same articles looking for information on something else. While chess columns are therefore primarily important as a primary source of information about chess activities in the past, the history of the chess column itself is also of interest.

Some Notes on Bibliographies In his History of Chess (1913), the standard work, Murray wrote that: “A list published by Mr. A. C. White in the Norwich Mercury in 1907 contained over 1,200 entries from all parts of the world, and yet made no pretence to completeness. Most of these columns exist primarily in the interest of the problem, but a few also contain articles of permanent historical value.”9 Of the columns listed by Alain C. White, 387 were published in Great Britain or Ireland, while later researchers, including the present writer, have found many more Victorian columns. Whyld’s bibliography Chess Columns: A List (1992) surveyed all the columns known worldwide in the 19th and 20th centuries, building on the work of the aforementioned Alain Campbell White (1880– 1951), John Griswold White (1845–1928), and Murray himself.10 John G. White, of Cleveland, Ohio, was a prominent lawyer who over decades purchased numerous books and manuscripts relating to board games and orientalia. Thanks to his foresight and benevolence, his collection became the foundation of the

important resource for historians in that city library. Chapter 8 also says more about the genesis of those earlier lists, and our Appendix I builds on all these forerunners. This book, with rare exceptions, is not concerned with columns published outside Britain and Ireland. Even so, in Appendix I readers will find entries on just over 600 separate titles. Some of these are cross-references to variant titles or turned out to be entries in Whyld which referred to one-off articles (like the Birmingham Advertiser of 1838). There are also uses of the term “ghost,” coined by Whyld, meaning that although some of his source lists mentioned a particular title, no such column (and sometimes no such publication) could be found. Even discounting these, and bearing in mind that a few publications actually had, at different times, more than one chess column, the true figure for 19th century British and Irish chess columns is probably in the region of 550. It would take a lifetime to read them all, and some are unobtainable in practice, but this author has attempted over the last 15 years to sample a great number, and many of the important ones have been read from beginning to end. This work has made use of the bibliographical information available in the (online) Waterloo Directory of English Newspapers and Periodicals, of which more later, and its (print-only) Irish and Scottish cousins. This series, produced by scholars at Waterloo University in Canada, was particularly valuable ten years ago when the catalogues of the British Library were far inferior to what they are today. Now that its current catalogue, Explore the British Library, incorporates a very detailed and much more reliable catalogue of newspapers, it has become much easier to trace the history of title changes and mergers, launches and cessations of publication, which gave rise to so many of the inaccuracies in Whyld’s book. There is more said about the experience of researching chess history at the British Library in the final chapter.

1. The Earliest Chess Editors: Egerton Smith and Thomas Wakley

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This is a good point to discuss some other chess bibliographies, although they are not concerned with columns. It is important to do so because these works will be mentioned many times later in this book. Chess: An Annotated Bibliography of Works Published in the English Language 1850–1968 was compiled by Douglas A. Betts “to fulfil the thesis requirement for Fellowship of the Library Association.”11 It was originally published in the United States in 1974, but it is easy to find since a facsimile reprint is also available. Betts devised a system of 55 categories (which he called sections) to classify all the works that he considered, including many works of literature that only mention chess incidentally. Some sections are organized chronologically, but others are confusing in their arrangement. Collector Michael Clapham has written in his Chess Book Chats blog about some works he has found which are not mentioned by Betts. Indeed there are omissions, but no improved bibliography covering this topic John G. White, founder of the world’s greatest public collection of chess literature, relaxing after lunch at a camp has since been produced, though in Newfoundland on his 1917 fishing trip. (Photograph there have been a few attempts. We from one of his scrapbooks, courtesy Cleveland Public may be waiting a long time for a re- Library Special Collections). placement but Betts does need to by Chris Ravilious and Whyld to complement be supplemented by information in some liit, namely Chess Texts in the English Language, brary catalogs, especially those of the John G. Printed before 1850. This was published in the White Collection in Cleveland, Ohio, and of Czech Republic in February 2003.* The list the Royal Dutch Library in The Hague. Needless to say, Betts’s book is an essenof works is arranged chronologically. Whyld tial item for any chess historian’s library. So is and Ravilious did not confine themselves to the (much smaller) work that was compiled books devoted to chess, or the bibliography *Ken Whyld and Chris Ravilious, Chess Texts in the English Language, Printed before 1850 (Olomouc: Moravian Chess 2003). This author’s personal copy, on the colophon page facing the introduction, bears no date and says, in error, “Reprint.” The late Chris Ravilious provided the correct date and said that it was no reprint. There may have been subsequent reprints.

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British Chess Literature to 1914

would have been much thinner. They included articles about chess in periodicals, and works like Hoyle which include chess. If you find a pre–1850 work on chess that is not listed in their bibliography, then you have probably made an important discovery. There is also a more recent bibliography, Chess Periodicals, by an Italian compiler of chess reference works, Gino di Felice, which will be corrected many times in this book.12 The bibliography contains 3,163 entries and many cross-references, covering chess magazines, bulletins, annuals and yearbooks (not columns) published worldwide. If we could trust it, it would be an invaluable aid to future researchers and chess historians. No attempt is made here to evaluate its coverage of periodicals in other languages, but the treatment of early English-language chess magazines is deficient and reveals flaws in his methodology. To begin with the treatment of Irish chess magazines, which will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 5, it is true that Di Felice does include the first two, which were published for short periods in the 1880s, but he omits The Four-Leaved Shamrock (more than fifty issues of which appeared during 1905–1914) although it is in the catalogues of the British Library and several other libraries that have strong chess collections, such as the Cleveland Public Library (Ohio), and the Koninklijke Bibliotheek. Perhaps he performed his British Library searches at an early stage, when the online catalogue was not nearly as helpful as it is now. Moreover, this is item #7–52 in the standard Betts bibliography. There is no good reason for a compiler to omit anything listed by Betts. The periodicals are all grouped together. Although Betts and the British Library catalogue are listed among Di Felice’s sources, they were not checked systematically. Moving briefly beyond the period under discussion in this handbook, it is less surprising that the Chess Periodicals author also failed

to mention two Irish periodicals which were also overlooked by Betts. Irish Chess was published for just three issues in 1937; George Koltanowski was a contributor. There are copies in the National Library of Ireland, whose catalogue was put online a few years ago. The next Irish chess magazine was Ficheall (briefly the organ of the Irish Chess Union in the 1950s), and then two other magazines which were published later than the period covered by Betts. Di Felice did find out something about them, saying correctly on page 102 that the Irish Chess Journal “replaces Fiacle Fichille.” Actually, whereas the Irish Chess Journal (edited by Michael Crowe for many years but now defunct) was totally different in style and appearance from Fiacle Fichille. The latter, edited by Tom O’Sullivan from 1980–1987, was mimeographed, not printed, and should have had its own listing. An international magazine from Ireland, Chess Mail, is not mentioned at all, although 82 issues were published and circulated worldwide between August 1996 and January 2006. Many periodicals of a far more ephemeral or local nature are listed in Di Felice’s book. Chess Mail’s omission is another sign that something has gone badly wrong. Had the compiler searched for “chess” in the British Library’s online catalogue, he could not have missed it. Moreover a complete run of Chess Mail is in both the John G. White Collection (Ohio) and the Royal Dutch Library, whose catalogues Di Felice claims to have been among his most important sources. The omission of this title is also indicative of a general failure in connection with periodicals concerning correspondence chess. This may be because publications that are produced for the benefit of the membership of clubs and associations often do not go on general sale (and there have been many of these relating to correspondence chess). Such periodicals are indeed probably hard for a bibliographer to trace, though some find their way into public library collections. Di Felice

1. The Earliest Chess Editors: Egerton Smith and Thomas Wakley has not recorded the periodicals published by the British Correspondence Chess Association quite correctly, for example.13 Erich von Freienhagen’s little magazine Brief-Schach (1929) is missing, although some copies survive in the John G. White Collection. Freienhagen also edited another short-lived journal called Fernschach-Courier which we have never seen. The Four-Leaved Shamrock and Chess Mail should not be viewed as just absentees. Their omission points to fundamental methodological flaws concerning the editor’s search for English language titles. There are possibly similar mistakes with publications in other languages. A German reader also informed the publisher that #1477 Mein Garten-Meine Welt “is by no means a chess-related item.” It was published by the firm Schacht KG but Schacht means “Shaft” in English; it is not Schach! It would be harsh to expect Chess Periodicals to be perfect, but a work of this kind would have had a better chance of being complete and accurate if the editor had recruited an international team of contributors rather than attempting to do all the work himself. In many ways it is remarkable how inclusive and accurate the book is about early British periodicals, although it is somewhat weak on identification of editors if they were not named explicitly. For example, Di Felice failed to name Staunton as the editor of The Chess World, 1865–1869, although it is well known to have been his baby.

Early Reporting of Chess Events Before going into detail about the earliest chess editors, whose columns should really rather be regarded as “proto-columns,” something should be said about earlier reporting of chess events in the press. Most important is that there was very little public

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chess activity at all until the 1840s and there were also very few chess clubs until that decade. It is also the case that in the 18th century there were far fewer periodicals and newspapers than in the second half of the 19th century, and the survival rate is also probably not as good. The Burney Collection (at the British Library, but now digitized) and The Times of London (founded in 1785 as The Daily Universal Register) provide the two best sets of reports of Philidor’s visits to England, but they really only cover his later years (including much on his musical activities). Searching for “Philidor” (and the common alternative spelling “Phillidor”) in the British Newspaper Archive yielded only one hit prior to 1779, which was a one-line listing in The Scots Magazine of Friday 2 November 1850. In a list of newly published books there appears “Chess analyzed. By A. D. Philidor. 3s.” François-André Danican Philidor (1726– 1795) had first come to England in 1747 and defeated Philip Stamma in a match, but as yet no contemporary news reports have been found of that contest and none of the game scores survive. The earliest reference to Philidor in the Burney Collection was in the General Advertiser (London) of Friday 17 February 1749, advertising a concert series, mentioning Philidor’s Coffee House. Then on 23 February 1753, the same newspaper says that after a rehearsal for one of his concerts many people and the best connoisseurs are of the opinion that Philidor (if he really is the composer) “is in a fair way of making the same figure in Musick as he doth at chess.” Until Philidor began to give blindfold exhibitions, it was always more likely that his music would be reported. Only in the last decade and a half of his life are there reports of his chess displays. The earliest found was the following: The great match at Chess now pending in the club, is between Monsieur Philidor on one side, and the Hon. Mr. Conway, Comte Bruhl and Mr. Erskine on the other. The nature of the

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British Chess Literature to 1914 abovementioned match is the most extraordinary that can be conceived. There are to be three games simultaneously subsisting on three separate boards, each under the conduct of … Philidor … playing the entire three games, merely on the report he has of every succeeding move!14

On the continent there was briefly a rival chess attraction. In 1783 Kempelen’s chess automaton was exhibited in Paris. The Morning Herald and Daily Advertiser claimed on 10 May that “all heads are turned here by the exhibition of an Automaton that plays at Chess, and would baffle the skill even of a Philidor.” This assertion was never tested. Philidor was back in London and the automaton never crossed the English Channel until after the Napoleonic wars. In Philidor’s last years, although there are descriptions of his feats, no chess moves were ever printed in the papers. Fortunately some of his late games do survive and were eventually published in a book, as will be recounted in Chapter 7. Meanwhile, a very significant publishing event occurred in October 1792: the launch of the first periodical devoted to sport: The Sporting Magazine: or, Monthly Calendar of the Transactions of the TURF, the CHASE, and every other Diversion interesting to the Man of Pleasure, and Enterprize. Naturally for those days during the reign of George III, the most space in this monthly magazine was given to the sporting activities that most interested the gentlemen of the era: horse racing, prize fighting, cockfighting and the like, but some space was given to indoor activities, though chess was covered only in the third (December) issue, and not very favorably. Chess was said to be a noble game of Indian invention carried west via Persia. The only objection to it “as a mere pastime” was that … it requires too much thought and study to answer the purposes of relaxation, as the mind should, on such occasions, be amused without any fatigue or exertion of its powers. For this reason, chess has been styled a philosophic game, fit only to be played by an Archimedes with a Newton.15

Nevertheless between 1793 and 1795 the Sporting Magazine did carry several reports concerning chess, including some about Philidor, but none of them were original. They relied on reports in newspapers and also on Richard Twiss’s anecdotal book on chess (to be discussed in Chapter 7) which had been published in two volumes, in 1787 and 1789. After the death of Philidor, the next significant date in British chess history was the formation of the London Chess Club in 1807 but this, too, escaped the notice of contemporary commentators, and we only know of it because the club endured until 1870. None of its earliest documents survive, but when George Perigal was secretary he compiled membership lists and other useful information, which survive in the London Metropolitan Archives, and have been written up by John Townsend in his second book.16 Perhaps a reference to it will turn up one day, as searches in the British Newspaper Archive did turn up the foundation of one (probably shortlived) chess club in Suffolk in 1813 and the existence of an early club in Hereford around the same time has also been documented in recent years, although not from newspaper sources. The following appeared in The Ipswich Journal on 9 October 1813: We are enabled to inform our readers, that a Chess Club is recently established in this town, which is held at the Waggon and Horses Inn once a fortnight, and which having for its object the extension of the knowledge of that pleasing and scientific game, is calculated to afford considerable pleasure to the amateurs of that amusement.

There was, though, very little reporting of current chess activity over the next decade. News coverage of chess really began to take off in 1824, excited by the start of the correspondence match between Edinburgh and London, dealt with extensively in an earlier book.17 One detail that may surprise today’s follower of chess events, which often are shown online simultaneously with their being played, is that there were no contemporary

1. The Earliest Chess Editors: Egerton Smith and Thomas Wakley

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reports in the English press during 1834 of the important matches played in London between the French champion Louis Charles Mahé de la Bourdonnais (sometimes referred to as Labourdonnais, 1797–1840) and Alexander McDonnell (1798–1835). Not even the results of matches were announced, let alone the results of individual games and the moves. It is a small miracle that the moves were recorded for posterity by a third party.

The First Chess Editor: Egerton Smith The dearth of early chess activity and scarcity of contemporary chess reporting therefore makes it all the more surprising that in the same year, 1813, the first chess column began. One man—even in the absence of any current events to report—attempted, and more than once, to put chess “on the map” by writing regularly about it in the press. It did help that he was the owner, editor and publisher of the papers concerned. He did not have to “sell” the idea to a skeptical editor. The early history of chess columns begins with this one man in Liverpool: Egerton Smith (1774–1841). In 1870, the periodical Notes and Queries was asked: “Can any of your readers inform me as to the best sources for obtaining particulars as to the life and writings of Egerton Smith, who founded the Liverpool Mercury, and was one of the prime movers in founding mechanics’ institutes, etc.?”18 There was no reply to this and Smith remains a “missing person” who is not included in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. While several modern articles discuss Smith’s life and journalism, none mentions chess. Smith was a progressive man, an innovator and a philanthropist, among other things, being an activist against the slave trade. He was involved in local Whig politics, through a local body (one of seven political clubs in

Egerton Smith, the reforming Liverpool editor who was responsible for the earliest two chess columns.

Liverpool at the time) known as the Concentric Society, which Smith cofounded and ran up to its closure in 1822. He also been credited with founding a night asylum for the homeless poor. Later, in the 1830s, he would support Rowland Hill’s campaign for cheap postal services.19 Smith was definitely a man of many parts. In the 1820s he was also involved in a company doing diorama shows and he coauthored (with Dominique Albert) a book entitled Homonymous Française, or the French homonymous words arranged in sentences (London 1831).20 Publishing the earliest series of newspaper chess problems, which began in the Mercury on 9 July 1813 and ended about 20 August 1814, 21 was just one of Egerton Smith’s minor claims to fame. Smith founded the Liverpool Mercury, which appeared on the streets for the first time on Friday 5 July 1811, price seven pence,

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announced as a new weekly paper to be “conducted upon liberal, yet steady, principles.” Publication in volume form with an index proved popular and enabled it to avoid the stamp duty. It could not be sent by post but was distributed by canal or coach. For many years thereafter, it was a weekly paper (of roughly tabloid size) and pages in each volume were numbered consecutively like a magazine. The normal practice of numbering each issue from page 1 was only adopted some years after his death, which probably followed a decision by Smith’s heirs to pay the stamp duty after all. At the start of volume three, the Mercury announced they had acquired new type, and the first chess article appeared on Friday 9 July, page 7. Headed “The game of chess” it was a basic introduction with a crude woodcut diagram and using an idiosyncratic notation. The Liverpool Mercury has now been mostly digitized in the British Newspaper Archive but a few early issues (including the issue with the first chess article, fortunately preserved elsewhere) are lacking because they are absent from the British Library holdings. The Liverpool Public Library has a set.22 Images of several of the articles can also be seen online in the Excavations section of the Chess Archaeology website which has many 19th century columns (mostly American). Later chess content can be found in the digitized Liverpool Mercury on the following dates: 16 & 23 July 1813; 6 August (#5 at www.chessarch.com/excavations/excavations. php/ but not in B.N.A.); 13 August (#6); 20 August (on page 7; also a reply to A Novice in the To Correspondents column on page 8); 27 August (#8; page 6 near foot of column 4); 3 September (#9 at www.chessarch.com); and then 17 September (#11) also apologizes that the unavailable puzzle no. 10 the previous (missing) week was the same as no. 2 inadvertently, being taken from different works. The series then continued with 24 September

(#12); 1 October (#13); 8 October (#14) but no chess was published on 15 October. The issue of 22 October had #15 and the explanation of #14, followed by 29 October and 5 November. The puzzle #18 of 12 November is unavailable at either the B.L., B.N.A. or Chess Archaeology. There followed 19 November (#19); 26 November and then 3 December when in issue #21, curiously, under the Philidorian rules then current, the puzzle was a win by stalemating the opponent. There followed puzzles 22 to 24 on 10, 17, and 24 December. The latter date also had a reply to a correspondent on page 8, not preserved on the chessarch site, where Egerton Smith wrote: “We are obliged to our Chess Correspondent but his plan would at present interfere with ours.” After #25 on 31 December, the series continued into 1814 as follows: 7 January (#26), 14 January (#27), 21 January (#28 on page 6); 28 January (#29); 4 February (#30); 11 February (with explanation of #30 but postpones #31); and then there was no chess on 18 February. The series resumed on 25 February with puzzle #31 and a discussion of the notation Smith was using. The series continued with 4, 11, 18 and 25 March, the latter also having a brief reply to a correspondent on page 8. Likewise the issue of 1 April also had, besides #36 on page 6, a reply on page 8. The following week the paper appeared a day early because of Good Friday, so number 37 was published on Thursday 7 April. There was no chess in Easter Week and then #38 appeared on 22 April 1914. The series was becoming irregular. Number 39 was published on 6 May, and number 40 on 20 May but number 41 of 27 May is unavailable. The last seen by the present author was #42 on 1 July 1814. Whyld’s Columns, page 251, said the last article was on 20 August but that was a Saturday; no chess was seen on 19 August. It is also noteworthy that on 3 January 1817 Smith’s name appeared in a small advertisement in the Mercury proposing to establish a Liverpool Chess Club, meeting weekly

1. The Earliest Chess Editors: Egerton Smith and Thomas Wakley “upon a respectable and economical plan,” but probably nothing came of this. In 1818, Smith began The Gleaner, as a literary supplement, but was forced to discontinue it after two issues because it was deemed to be a newspaper and, therefore, liable to stamp duty.23 So he revised the concept and on 28 July 1818 issued the first number of The Kaleidoscope, or Literary and Scientific Mirror, of which it has been said that: “this weekly publication, priced threepence, was conducted with very considerable ability for many years” and the title “was derived from the Kaleidoscope, a new optical instrument, invented by Dr. Brewster of Edinburgh.” 24 During 1824, The Kaleidoscope included a report on the founding of Liverpool Mechanics’ Library by Smith. Ironically his paper, designed to be abreast of its time, ceased publication on 6 September 1831 because of the march of progress. The Kaleidoscope had been sold on Liverpool’s streets by licensed hawkers but for sales further afield Smith relied on horsedrawn coaches, since, being unstamped, it could not be mailed economically. The Liverpool area was one of the first to have railroads, harming the coaching trade on which The Kaleidoscope relied for distribution. The chess content had mostly ended two years previously although there were occasional references to the game in 1831. In 1840 prominent chess writer George Walker (1803–1879) confirmed Smith’s personal involvement in the chess column, telling a correspondent that: “The first attempt to make chess a standing dish in a weekly periodical was in the ‘Liverpool Kaleidoscope,’ some years back. Our friend Mr. Egerton Smith there gave continuously a long series of problems etc.” 25 Some of Whyld’s statements about The Kaleidoscope in his bibliog-

21

raphy of columns are incorrect. It is hard to understand how his entry for that paper included the line “1st chess column in the world” when he also knew about Smith’s earlier column. Perhaps he entered information about each title into a database and forgot to update The Kaleidoscope after writing up the Mercury. Also Whyld’s suggestion “perhaps also 1833 & 1834,” which was after publication had ceased, may be due to confusion with an Eton College publication of the same title, which we have not seen. The Waterloo Directory gives the true publication history of The Kaleidoscope. It indicates that there were two volumes published between 28 July 1818 and 1820, followed by a “new series” with 11 volumes between 1820 and 1831. It used to be hard to find complete volumes of The Kaleidoscope but in 2006 Proquest digitized it all. Some chess articles up to June 1826 can also be seen at www.chessarch.com/excavations/excava tions.php/. Smith ran more than one series of chess articles in The Kaleidoscope and gradually they improved from something like the original crude attempts in the Mercury to what could be more justifiably called a column. The first volume had only one chess article, but a regular series of problems (from Lolli etc.), entitled “The Beauties of Chess,” began on 13 July 1819 and this ran until 17 October 1820. As in the Mercury, the board diagrams were crude without shaded squares. The last was number 61 on 17 October 1820. After chess ended there was no board game for a while until a series entitled “Critical situations in draughts” followed in volumes two and three. * The diagrams had roughly shaded squares. This series ran for more than a year but was not in volume 4.

*This was the game known as checkers in America, not the European version of draughts played on a 10 × 10 board. Later, the Leeds Mercury Weekend Supplement (from 1880) and the Glasgow Weekly Herald (from the mid– 1870s) were two important provincial weeklies running both games side by side for many years. Checkers moves could also be easily notated and replayed, but that game never achieved the same status outside Scotland and major cities; chess was played in gentlemanly clubs, checkers was played chiefly in pubs.

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Smith’s chess column revived in The Kaleidoscope, 6 July 1824; note the algebraic notation.

In volume five, “The Beauties of Chess” returned with improved graphics, starting in number 210 of 6 July 1824. Smith now preferred a system very like the “algebraic” notation used today, instead of the usual “descriptive” notation seen in nearly all 19th-century English chess literature. The famous correspondence chess match between the chess clubs of London and Edinburgh, the first of its kind, had begun in April, with much publicity. The interest aroused by that contest had perhaps prompted the revival of chess in The Kaleidoscope, which now gave some coverage of current chess events and readers’ correspondence. This series also included reader challenges and news of the Philidorean Chess Club in Dublin, for example on 13 March 1827. The Kaleidoscope chess series continued to the end of volume nine, with problem 222 appearing on 23 June 1829. Volume 10 had little chess while volume 11 included only one ar-

ticle. The last chess position was no. 237 on 8 February 1831 and the final chess item, a letter, appeared on 31 May 1831. Thus The Kaleidoscope series of articles was more extensive than is generally appreciated, but its influence was restricted because it did not circulate in London or nationwide. In 1837 the Liverpool Chess Club was founded, originally at the Lyceum in that city. Egerton Smith was never numbered among its members; perhaps he was just too busy with his newspaper work and reform campaigns. Smith died on 18 November 1841 and the tributes to him were generous. In 1843 a statue of him was erected in Liverpool, the inscription saying: The indefatigable friend of humanity; the protector of the brute creation; the fearless assailant of oppression in all its forms; the advocate of the universal diffusion of knowledge, of free trade, of civil and religious liberty in every land.

1. The Earliest Chess Editors: Egerton Smith and Thomas Wakley

Thomas Wakley and The Lancet Several inaccuracies have appeared in print about the chess column of The Lancet, the reforming medical weekly founded in 1823 and first edited by Dr. Thomas Wakley (1795–1862), who was later a Member of Parliament. This chess series, although better remembered than Egerton Smith’s contributions, was far less interesting. It can only be called a column by stretching a point to the limit. Its content was far from original. Nevertheless, it is worth discussing its authorship in some detail since two different people (Walker and surgeon Sir Astley Cooper) have been named wrongly as its chess editor. Wakley began publication of The Lancet on 5 October 1823 and printed its first chess article two weeks later. The next issue recommended chess as “the only game to which the medical student may profitably devote any portion of his time and attention,” and also said that the study of chess had been recommended by “the distinguished professor” whose lectures were a major feature of the magazine, namely surgeon Sir Astley Cooper.26 Probably misled by that comment, Staunton told a correspondent: “articles on Chess were published in the Lancet, under the sanction, we believe, of Sir Astley Cooper, himself no mean proficient in the game, as far back as 1823.” 27 The final Lancet article appeared at the end of volume two, on 28 March 1824, consisting of the solutions to problems set long before, some of which arose from actual play. Wakley wrote that he would only give three positions in each issue because “these problems are designed chiefly for medical students, and are intended to afford a relaxation from more serious pursuits” but he was unwilling “that a larger portion of time should be devoted to Chess than would be consistent with the prosecution of more important studies.”

23

Wakley’s biographer, S. Squire Sprigge, explained that the disappearance from The Lancet of the weekly columns on chess, the drama and “Table Talk” meant “a sacrifice of his own hobbies to the pressure of what he [Wakley] conceived to be his wholly absorbing duty.” 28 Sprigge states that Wakley was responsible for both the chess and drama articles, dropped when the journal became successful. Wakley, the biographer explains, had learned chess as a boy and it formed his chief recreation while he was studying medicine. “He was one of the very few players who contested successfully with the original and celebrated automaton player,” Sprigge also claimed. If that was in 1818 or early 1819, his human opponent would have been William Lewis (1787–1870); if later, then it was perhaps Jacques- François Mouret. Both were strong players who won most of their games while concealed inside the machine known as The Turk. Whereas the Cooper attribution is doubtful, the crediting of the series to Walker by the editors of the Oxford Companion to Chess is demonstrably incorrect.29 Yet on the authority of this much-revered book, it was repeated in the even more authoritative Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and henceforth the error may be very hard to stamp out. The original Dictionary of National Biography, relying on the obituary in the Chess Player’s Chronicle and notes supplied by Professor William Wayte (1829–1898), had not mentioned The Lancet, but somebody at Oxford University Press updated many of their old articles about chess players using the Companion as a secondary source.30 This case is a typical example of the modern propagation of repeated error. The original mistake was not made by either Hooper or Whyld (the editors of the Companion); their mistake was to take on trust something that was said in one of Walker’s obituaries, without doing their own checks. It has taken considerable research to trace this error back to its source. The offending passage

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appears on page 374 of the first edition of the Oxford Companion in its article on Walker, as follows: “At a time when he was receiving odds of a rook from Lewis he had the temerity to edit a chess column in the Lancet (1823–4); the first such column to appear in a periodical, it was, perhaps fortunately, short-lived.” Perhaps, when Whyld wrote this, he had temporarily forgotten about the columns by Egerton Smith, although in the same book there is an article headed Newspaper Columns (pages 223 and 224) which does mention the Liverpool Mercury although not The Kaleidoscope. The Companion’s error about Walker is compounded by another on page 224 which said The Lancet gave a chess game in 1822. In fact the medical journal did not start until 1823 and The Lancet series of 1823 to 1824 did not include any games. The misattribution to Walker stems from the following passage in the Illustrated London News obituary of Walker, which suggests that Dublin-born Patrick Thomas Duffy (1834– 1888), who then conducted that column, is ultimately responsible for the mistake. We can only conjecture that Duffy must have misunderstood something Walker once told him. The Glasgow Weekly Herald also attributed the column to Walker, on 24 May 1879, but probably because they had read it in the I.L.N. This is the relevant passage of the Illustrated’s obituary notice: … the younger amateurs were scattered over the great city, meeting occasionally only in the coffeehouses, which then served the purposes of the modern club. In 1823 these were brought together by Mr. Walker, and the first step towards the spread of chess in the metropolis was then taken in the opening of the Percy Chess Club. In the same year he originated the popular “Chess column” of our time by contributing an article to the Lancet, which was published in the issue of that periodical on Oct. 19, 1823.31

It is conceivable that Wakley had joined the same chess club as Walker in 1823, and that Walker may have suggested to him some of the material that was later included in the Lancet, but to go beyond that and say Walker contributed the column is unsupportable. Walker never in print claimed authorship of the column. Neither his brief memoir in the Westminster Papers about his career, nor the unsigned article about him that follows, mentions The Lancet.32 Hooper and Whyld did not check that very specific date reference, 19 October 1823; if they had, with their deep knowledge of chess history, they would surely have recognized that the article concerned was not original with Walker, or with Wakley either. Close examination of that article, “Origin of the Game of Chess,” shows it to be virtually identical with a French Academy paper of 1719 by M. Frevet which had been translated into English many years prior to its appearance in The Lancet. 33 The first English version appeared in The Country Journal, or the Craftsman on 6 February 1742 and soon afterwards reprinted in the Gentleman’s Magazine.34 Then in 1794 virtually the identical text was republished in the Sporting Magazine which claimed they had “with much difficulty obtained from the French of M. Frevet.”35Apparently that version was just given by Wakley to the Lancet printer to reproduce. Differences between the versions are very minor and attributable to the typesetters. There is no need to look further than Wakley himself for the authorship of those parts of the series that were not, like this one, simply plagiarized. Note also that the Illustrated London News did not attribute every Lancet article to Walker, but only the very one of which one can be absolutely certain that he was not the author!36

2. The Heyday of Walker and Staunton by editors and proprietors to satisfy a middleclass readership that was growing increasingly fascinated with the game. Probably the majority of the readership of national columns were not club members, and this included women who until late in the 19th century did not have the opportunity of joining chess clubs (with a few rare exceptions).

In this second chapter we move on to the mid–1830s and 1840s when George Walker and Howard Staunton laid the foundations for the chess column as an institution in newspapers. Walker was the first to establish a longrunning column with games and news, but it was Staunton who created a template which the majority of Victorian chess editors were to follow. In this chapter several other important chess columns of the 1840s and 1850s are also discussed. Chess activity grew from a low base in the 1830s but exponentially after 1840 when chess clubs began to multiply in cities and medium-sized towns, even starting in some small urban centers. The Penny Post, inaugurated in 1840, also gave a huge boost to the game by making correspondence chess very cheap and this brought players in different parts of Britain into contact with each other. Many columns featured games played by correspondence. Provincial chess columns were nearly always connected with local clubs and conducted by members of those clubs, often the honorary secretaries, in order to publicize their activities and gain new members. Chess in the national press generally arose independently of clubs, out of a perceived need

Early Years of Chess at Bell’s Life in London We saw already that the attribution of the Lancet chess articles to Walker was incorrect. Nevertheless he was the first major figure in the history of the chess column, thanks to his almost forty years of writing about chess for Bell’s Life in London, and Sporting Chronicle. This, his greatest service to chess, began with occasional articles in 1834 and the start of publishing games was in January 1835. This meant that Bell’s Life was the first London newspaper to run a chess column. Bell’s Life started in 1822, and had achieved a circulation of around 20,000 in the early years of its chess column. On 18 November 1838 the paper claimed an average circulation of 20,650. In

25

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1847, from 9 May onwards, page headers announced a circulation exceeding 26,000 and on 6 June 1847 they claimed to have exceeded 27,000. Since they had to pay stamp duty on every copy sold, the statistics are probably reliable. Bell’s Life principally reported on sport, but also sometimes covered sensational legal cases and political matters. It was usually published on Sundays but in some years it appeared on Saturdays. In this period it appears to have been read by people of all classes with sporting interests, throughout the United Kingdom. Until October 1845 it was a four-page broadsheet. Typically the front page was filled with advertisements and some news, usually reports of crimes and trials. The third and fourth pages were devoted to sports. Page two had miscellaneous items including politics, answers to correspondents on various matters, and a cartoon. Bell’s Life has now been completely digitized and is available in B.N.A. and elsewhere, but this author was fortunate to be able to read about seven early years in the original hard copy bound volumes. Some of its chess articles are available free at www. chessarch.com/excavations/excavations.php/.

Since the information about Bell’s Life in Whyld’s Chess Columns is not entirely accurate, it is important to give accurate dates here. Whyld said “Regular weekly column from 1845” with “just odd items” previously. While that statement might be correct if one insisted that, in order to qualify as a column, all elements must appear together, but his formulation seriously underestimates the amount of chess in Bell’s Life from January 1835 onwards.1 What perhaps misled Whyld was that in the early years news and games were normally printed on a separate page from answers to correspondents, which were generally to be found on page 2 along with answers about other games. Also it is true that Bell’s Life did not publish chess problems until the expansion of the newspaper in 1845. Looking back, Walker wrote on 10 July 1842 that “We began to give chess articles in our journal during the playing of the great match between Labourdonnais and McDonnell.” As already noted, that match (or rather matches) was not reported at the time, so Walker misremembered here. Bell’s Life had, though, mentioned on 29 June 1834 the arrival of the French master in London:

George Walker, pioneering chess editor of Bell’s Life in London. Pictured in his old age by the Westminster Papers, December 1876.

M. Labourdonnais, the celebrated Parisian chess player, is at present in London, where his arrival, for a limited period, has, we understand, excited great interest in the chess-playing world. The metropolis may, therefore, boast of having the three first players in Europe, Labourdonnais, Lewis, and Macdonald [sic] present together. Some interesting matches, we learn, are on the tapis, at the Westminster Chess Club, of which M. Labourdonnais is an Honorary Member. With respect to the match between Paris and London, which is still pending, it is understood that, from the very earliest moves, M. Labourdonnais declined taking part in the games; so that his name is to be considered as not at all connected with the result, concerning which, from the necessarily tardy pace of the movements on either side, the parties having only yet arrived at about the tenth move, nothing decisive can, at present, be predicted, although the English players seem to consider they have a slight advantage in position.

2. The Heyday of Walker and Staunton The match between Paris and London, referred to in that paragraph, was the correspondence match between the clubs of Paris and Westminster. The column can be dated from 4 January 1835 when Walker began publishing anonymous games played in the Westminster Chess Club, of which he was secretary, together with news items. Some of these were from the de la Bourdonnais–McDonnell matches, which had not previously appeared in print. Short paragraphs about chess— which had sporadically appeared during 1834 in the “To Correspondents: Answers” column—now became a regular feature, with chess almost invariably being the top item, followed by cards and other games. Although the two parts were rarely on the same page, and never together, one can speak of a chess column in Bell’s Life from January 1835 onwards. Some weeks there was no chess game and sometimes no chess answer, but there was only one issue in 1835 (25 October) which entirely lacked chess editorial content. From 1835 until 1840 Bell’s Life in London blazed the trail for chess virtually alone, appearing at just the time when many people were looking for “rational recreations”—even if “irrational” ones like cockfights, hare coursing and bare-knuckle boxing might be reported in the same issue, alongside swimming, cricket, horse racing, and various other outdoor pastimes. “Pedestrianism” (professional athletics for wagers, often over what would be called extreme feats nowadays) also made good copy. Some reports and challenges about checkers matches occasionally appeared adjacent to chess. Walker’s role as a proselytizer for chess was crucial in his early Bell’s years. He was fond of utterances such as “We hold that he who supports a chess institution does nearly the same sort of good to man as he who subscribes towards a new church,”2 and “We know more than six members of the present House of Commons who are fine chess-players. Chess is progressing throughout England at railway speed. We hope that to be ignorant of

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its rudiments will shortly be held to be impossible in an educated man.”3 A major expansion of the newspaper (and of the column) was undertaken in 1845, although several times postponed. The management of Bell’s Life announced prominently on 13 July 1845 that “arrangements are in progress for increasing the size of this Journal to the fullest extent allowed by law, which will take place as soon as new steam machinery can be manufactured, and other mechanical arrangements effected.” As early as 11 May they had promised larger type when the new steam press was ready. Finally, on 12 October 1845, the proprietors relaunched Bell’s Life with eight instead of four broadsheet pages (though of a slightly smaller size). Now all the chess items were collected together, and the game was given nearly a full column, a substantial increase on the space normally allocated to the game in the past. No chess games were printed after 11 May until 21 September, but 27 July was the only week in 1845 entirely without chess. The break in publishing games may have been due to Walker’s preparing articles for the delayed relaunch, and this hiatus may be why some writers such as Whyld state the column was only “occasional” prior to then. The October 1845 relaunch introduced diagrams, elementary chess lessons, and chess problems, which all appeared in Bell’s Life for the first time. Walker continued to work in the family music publishing business until 1847, when his father (of the same name) died.4 Changing his career to that of a stock broker, he became increasingly removed from the main centers of chess activity in London’s West End, as his loyalties returned to the old London Chess Club in the Square Mile. The Bell’s Life column also declined in importance as the years went by after the 1851 tournament. Walker reduced his involvement in chess, and the column was often perfunctory, with just a problem and a game or two. These were often from

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Continental events since the best games currently being played in England were going to Staunton and other editors. There were some short periods when Walker seemed to make more of an effort to cover current English chess, particularly in the periods when the Chess Player’s Chronicle was not being published in the late 1850s. This is especially evident in the second half of 1858 when Walker bestirred himself to report Paul Morphy’s visit to England in some detail. On 4 July the American master’s arrival was announced: “he is prepared to play any man living a match of chess for any sum from one hundred to one thousand pounds.” Matches if played on the terms announced would have been marathons, of 21 games exclusive of draws. On 11 July Walker wrote: “Mr. Morphy has played some chess games in London, but, probably, has not recovered the fatigues of his voyage from America, or has taken his opponents too lightly, the result of his play hitherto being hardly up to what was expected from him.” Land and Water reported Walker’s retirement on 10 May 1873, and the magazine Westminster Papers also carried an item about him, but Bell’s Life itself made no announcement. Walker’s last article was possibly the one that appeared on 31 May. Löwenthal wrote that: This distinguished writer and player has definitively given up all connection with the game which he adorned by his pen, and also illustrated by his skill over the board. During the period in which he was most prominent he might have been called the soul of chess at the west end of London. The early history of the St. George’s Chess Club is intimately bound up with the zeal and enthusiasm of this energetic supporter of the game.5

Subsequent to Walker’s retirement, a few more chess articles were published in Bell’s Life. The digitization of the newspaper has revealed that the column continued up to 30 August albeit with several missed weeks. These final articles were almost certainly written by

R. B. Wormald, whose career is discussed at the start of Chapter 3. His obituary in the Westminster Papers obituary said Wormald was coeditor of Bell’s Life for a time. There were even occasional chess items much later. On 10 October 1874 Bell’s Life published problem 823 (which had been incorrectly printed in the Westminster Papers) and this may have been a desultory attempt by person or persons unknown to relaunch the column in a small way. Another problem appeared on 17 October, then others with solutions and sometimes a brief news item. Chess continued sporadically thereafter. Problem 839 on 12 June 1875 was the last, but there were 36 news reports after that until publication ended in 1886. There was no chess content after a merger with Sporting Life.

Illustrated London News: The Early Years It is not often that an academic historian writes about chess columns, so the following observation by E. E. Kellett, from a major study of Victorian Britain written in the 1930s, is worth noting, although his paragraph contains some errors of fact. There was one feature of the Illustrated which must not be passed over, as it probably gained for the paper at least some readers in almost every country of the world. This was the chesscolumn, now so prominent in scores of periodicals, but then, if not quite unknown, exceedingly rare … for more than twenty years, this column was conducted by a famous chessplayer, Howard Staunton, who made it not only a centre of interest to enthusiasts for the game, but also … a vehicle for his personal antagonisms….6

Kellett’s passage is too long to quote in full, but he was certainly right to say that for all his faults, Staunton “was a real benefactor to the game” and to praise him as a pioneer in annotating chess games and setting a standard

2. The Heyday of Walker and Staunton for future columns. He was mistaken in some details, however. In fact, Staunton’s first Illustrated London News column appeared not in 1844, as he wrote, but on 22 February 1845, as the paper itself confirms. His contribution to chess publishing and the popularization of the game was in part through his books and his magazine, but the Illustrated London News gave him a much wider platform. However, he was not the first or even the second chess editor in that journal. The Illustrated London News commenced publication on 14 May 1842 and gradually grew into one of the world’s most famous journals, circulating worldwide. It printed its first chess article on 25 June. The first volume of the paper (which spanned seven and a half months) included twelve chess articles at irregular intervals, written by someone with little knowledge of the game. One issue included a game “played at the Westminster Chess Club during last summer, between the celebrated players M. de la Bourdonnais and Mr. McDonnell,” the writer being unaware that both were long dead.7 Soon afterwards, there was a break of several weeks until chess returned in October. Fifteen issues in the second volume, covering January–June 1843, had chess content, mostly problems of poor quality, sometimes printed incorrectly.8 A few items were substantial, and the paper began to take on the role of facilitating communication between players and helping them to arrange postal games, which hitherto only Bell’s Life had done. The numerically greater and socially wider readership of Illustrated London News made this significant.9 Chess continued through 1843, though not appearing every week, but there was hardly any chess at all in volume four ( January–June 1844) or in most of volume five. The solution to the problem published on 20 April did not appear until 6 July! This situation changed on 16 November, when it was announced that the chess column was resuming with “the co-operation of a dis-

29

tinguished member of the London Chess Club” and inviting “communications relative to matches pending at clubs, problems, or any well contested games.”10 This was accompanied by a brief but glowing notice of Walker’s Chess Studies; Whyld speculated that Walker himself may have been the “distinguished member of the London Chess Club” but there seems no clear evidence. Walker does meet that description, but so do several others. Then on 15 February 1845 the Illustrated London News announced “we have secured the valuable services of Mr. Staunton the eminent Chess Player” to conduct the column. While it was comparatively rare for a writer’s identity to be thus explicitly acknowledged, contemporaries active in chess probably usually knew who edited which column, although they may not have been officially acknowledged until retirement or death.11 Some attributions remain uncertain, but usually another column or a magazine provides the information eventually. Staunton’s contribution to the paper was acknowledged again on 27 June 1874, a few days after he died. Walker’s position as the leading chess columnist was effectively supplanted during 1845 by Staunton’s arrival at the Illustrated London News. Staunton’s first article appeared the week after his engagement by the paper was announced. This is clear from an answer on 8 March (page 160), reminding a correspondent calling himself “Scacchi” that the new chess editor is not responsible for any error in the column prior to 22 February. This was not his first chess column, and of course by now he had been editing the Chess Player’s Chronicle for almost four years. Staunton had first, in 1840, conducted a chess column for several months in a fashionable social weekly, the New Court Gazette,12 in which he employed some features that he later developed in the Illustrated London News. He usually published a chess problem and a game, together with answers to correspondents, which were often (as with Bell’s Life)

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British Chess Literature to 1914

on a different page. These replies often included barbed shots at adversaries and the literary allusions by which this self-made man was fond of displaying his learning. It appears that many readers of the Gazette were not interested in chess: “Articles on this game will only appear, for the future, occasionally; owing to several complaints of an over-dose. It is impossible to oblige every-body.”13 Although the Court Gazette column petered out, it gave

Howard Staunton, chess editor of the Illustrated London News from February 1845 to his death. Sketch by Wallis Mackay, from George MacDonnell’s book Chess LifePictures.

Staunton the taste for editorship, which he was able to indulge the following year when he became chess editor of the short-lived The British Miscellany. That soon led, as explained in detail in Chapter 6, after a few months, to the launch of The Chess Player’s Chronicle, Britain’s first successful chess magazine. As soon as Staunton took over at the Illustrated London News, he established what could be called the template or standard format for a chess column, which Bell’s Life in London then copied in October. From his very first week, Staunton included, together on the one page, substantial “Answers to Correspondents,” an annotated game, a diagrammed chess problem, and the solution to the previous week’s problem. Essentially, this plan never varied, although it was developed somewhat, with the addition of news items and announcements of forthcoming events (sometimes contributed by readers), occasional obituaries, and book reviews. The Answers were an important feature in many Victorian periodicals. Most chess columns had them at least until the 1880s, usually placed first in smaller print. These could vary from one terse reply to several lines in which the columnist felt freer to express a personal opinion than in the more formal sections of the article. Sometimes the question may have been invented for the purpose in order to make a point. Staunton was often accused of this—but everybody did it, not only chess columnists. Occasionally the editor’s irritability is evident, as he is obliged to confirm yet again that it is permissible to have more than one queen on the board or that stalemate is a drawn game. During the 18th century, the rule was different in England, and you could win (or sometimes lose) by stalemating the opponent. Reprints of Philidor and Hoyle’s books contrived to perpetuate the old error well into Victoria’s reign. Staunton, for example, wrote: “Hoyle is no authority at all upon chess.”14 The actual question usually has to be in-

2. The Heyday of Walker and Staunton ferred from the reply, though sometimes this is nearly impossible. The identity of the person inquiring is almost always disguised by nicknames, first names, or by initials. The fairly frequent appearance of female names is one indicator that women were interested in chess at this time. Several composed chess problems and occasionally games played by women were published, although they were more likely than the men to be anonymous. The names or nicknames of successful problem solvers were often listed; this recognition provided an incentive to find the right solution even if there were no prizes to be won. Chess editors also used this section to acknowledge receipt of communications, often stating that it was not possible to give private replies—because of the large volume received—although they did sometimes communicate privately with valued contributors. As with Bell’s Life, Staunton’s “Answers” section frequently contained items of more interest to the historian than the main part of the column. They provide information about where chess was played in various towns, opinions and facts about players of the past and present, observations on chess rules, etiquette, literature, and history. Some readers used the Answers columns in Bell’s Life and perhaps the Illustrated London News also, as an authority to settle bets. Staunton did not believe in a false politeness to his readers and, like Walker, sometimes expressed himself vigorously and did not suffer fools. When a reader claimed to have detected a fault, he responded: “Had ‘Philo-Philidor’ bestowed one-fiftieth part of the attention on Problem No. 97 which we have, he would have spared us the necessity of telling him he has discovered a ‘mare’s nest.’”15 Kellett, in the chapter quoted above, rightly refers to Staunton using the column as

31

a “vehicle for his personal antagonisms.” This was apparent in 1845 in connection with a long-running quarrel with Walker. For example, Staunton drew attention to a pamphlet of 1841 that had satirized Walker, saying “it certainly deserves a more extended circulation.”16 He also feuded with the Hungarian J. J. Löwenthal (1806?–1876), who originally was his friend, and with Steinitz, the future world champion, who had come to England in 1862. Staunton developed a xenophobic objection to foreigners’ making money from chess. An historian has estimated that by the early 1850s the chess column in the Illustrated London News was being read by 20,000 people weekly, which gave Staunton immense influence in the chess world, especially among the general public of amateurs who were not concerned with the niceties of metropolitan chess politics.17 That figure probably rose in later years. As the Illustrated became increasingly successful, however, Staunton was probably constrained by its editorial policies, as the proprietors would not wish to compromise its leading position in the market by becoming embroiled in needless controversies. In later years he managed to insert attacks on Löwenthal and Steinitz, but they had to be carefully worded and those readers who were not aware of controversies in the London chess scene would probably have remained unaware of the real significance of the pieces. Staunton’s tirade against “Professionalism” on 29 December 1866 is a good example; Steinitz is not once named in that piece but he knew very well that he was the target.* Likewise, the later editor Duffy was able to put personal attacks into the Westminster Papers that would not have been tolerated in the columns of the Illustrated. Staunton, from the mid–1850s, was virtually retired from chess play as he pursued

*On the amateur-professional tensions in Victorian chess, see also Chapter 6. This topic has not yet been systematically investigated, but a good start was the paper by Dr. Adrian Harvey: “You May Say What You Like to the Professional and Dismiss Them When You Want,” in Sport in History, 30:3 (2010), pages 402–421.

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British Chess Literature to 1914

Part of Staunton’s Illustrated London News chess column of 17 July 1847.

his editorial labors on Shakespeare. So he became increasingly isolated and reliant on others for information on what was happening. Like its conductor, the Illustrated London News column grew middle-aged, but it continued to appear almost every week. Whyld wrote in Columns, page 201, that there were “Gaps, e.g., 1863”; but this is incorrect; there was a column every week in 1863 and indeed, from the time Staunton took over, there was no break in the regular publication of the series until

well into the 20th century. Since the paper had a large worldwide circulation, it was read by far more people and in far more countries than any other. Because of the popularity of the publication, circulating globally, the column became the most widely-read bit of chess literature in the 19th century. Staunton’s annotations to the games in the column tended to be superficial, although sometimes he provided detailed notes. He was probably constrained by the limited space

2. The Heyday of Walker and Staunton available and by knowing that the majority of his readers were casual social players, for whom lengthy analyses might be tedious. Staunton rarely contributed on-the-spot coverage of important chess events. He missed, for example, the historic Oxford–Cambridge university match in 1873, although the second match in 1874 was possibly the last time he was seen at a public chess event. Staunton’s standard format for the column was not altered for at least fifty years, although the content fluctuated in quality. Staunton died suddenly of a heart attack at his desk on 22 July 1876. The 4 July issue in volume 65 printed his obituary separately from the regular column which may have included items written by Staunton that had already been set in type. The 11 July column was the work of the next editor. The story of the I.L.N. column is continued in Chapter 3.

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Some Other Pre–1850 Columns The adjoining table shows outline details of all the columns we have been able to discover which commenced by mid-century. Until the early 1850s, Bell’s Life and the I.L.N. remained the two major columns, and there were relatively few others. In this section, something will be said about all the others. In most cases, there is relatively little to be said. One of the earliest series of articles about chess in a London weekly periodical was in the Saturday Magazine. Between 1841 and 1844 it carried miscellaneous and elementary articles by Charles Tomlinson, but this was not a topical column. Later these items were reprinted in Tomlinson’s book Amusements in Chess (1845) where he explained that his sketches of the history, antiquities and curiosities of the game were scattered between

Chess Columns in British Periodicals Started by 1850 From–To 9 July 1813–20 Aug. 1814 13 July 1819–17 Oct. 1820 5 Oct. 1823–28 Mar. 1824 6 July 1824–23 June 1829 4 Jan. 1835–30 Aug. 1873 8 Sep. 1840–21 Oct. 1846 9 May 1840–5 Dec. 1840 Feb. 1841–April 1841 2 Jan. 1841–28 Dec. 1844 25 June 1842–30 Dec. 1843 16 Nov. 1844–15 Feb. 1845

Title (and City) Liverpool Mercury (Liverpool) Kaleidoscope (Liverpool) Lancet (London) Kaleidoscope (Liverpool) Bell’s Life in London (London) Bath & Cheltenham Gazette (Bath) New Court Gazette [Court Gazette] (London) The British Miscellany (London) Saturday Magazine (London) Illustrated London News (London) Illustrated London News (London)

1846–June 1847 June 1847–31 Jan. 1851 15 Jan. 1848–25 Oct. 1851 26 Aug. 1848–21 Feb. 1852 1 May 1849–27 Oct. 1854

Illustrated London News (London) Pictorial Times (merged with Lady’s Newspaper, 1848) (London) South Devon Literary Chronicle (Plymouth) Glasgow Citizen (Glasgow) Lady’s Newspaper (London) Gateshead Observer (Gateshead) Family Friend (London)

7 July 1849–June 1854 16 Nov. 1849–26 Sep. 1850

The Home Circle (London) Illustrated Historic Times (London)

22 Feb. 1845–June 1874 5 Feb. 1845–8 Jan. 1848

Chess editor Egerton Smith Egerton Smith Thomas Wakley Egerton Smith George Walker Elijah Williams Howard Staunton Howard Staunton Charles Tomlinson unknown “Member of London Chess Club” Howard Staunton unknown unknown A. G. McCombe unknown Silas Angas? Daniel Harrwitz (from vol. 2) Henry Cook Mott Elijah Williams

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British Chess Literature to 1914

fortnightly articles over four years and eight volumes of the periodical, and a demand had arisen to have them collected, and in some cases extended. Two of the earliest weekly newspaper columns were conducted by Elijah Williams (1809–1854), a pharmacist from the west of England who moved to London at some stage in the 1840s in search of greater chess opportunities. Starting on 8 September 1840 he began a column in the Bath and Cheltenham Gazette. The column consisted mostly of problems but with some games. Whyld states that the column ran to 21 October 1846, but there are gaps. Williams was also the person responsible for the chess column in The Illustrated Historic Times. This short-lived publication had his chess column from 16 November 1849 to at least 26 September 1850 (which is the last issue available in the British Library and may have been the final issue). There were seven articles in 1849 but the last had no problem as the diagram arrived too late, so it just had the game. On 14 December, Williams advised a player from Bristol that the “shilling stake, played for in clubs, has so many advantages that we should be sorry to see the custom abandoned,” but he condemned the practice, lately introduced, of playing for large stakes. There is also some interesting reading in the columns during 1850. On 5 July Williams objected to the Sunday closing of the Post Office, saying “There is something really monstrous in a set of men arrogating to themselves all the purity of the country” and he believed that in aggregate Sunday working would increase as a result. This was in a paper published by the Church of England! Probably not everybody of influence in that church agreed with the objectives of the Lord’s Day Observance Society. The Pictorial Times, published in London, is mentioned in Whyld also, on page 344. An anonymous chess column began in volume

5, no 101, on 15 February 1845 saying, “We have engaged the assistance of an eminent player, a member of the principal chess clubs.” (This was probably William Lewis as Gillam has suggested.) On 15 January 1848, it merged with The Lady’s Newspaper; which previously had no chess. The new title was The Lady’s Newspaper and Pictorial Times. The numbering of chess problems continued from the Pictorial and went on to 25 October 1851.18 The chess editor was probably male, maybe still Lewis. It was all about men’s chess, though some women sent in queries. There were lots of games by Szén; it appears the columnist had Continental contacts. The problemist Henry John Clinton Andrews (1828–1887) was often mentioned. There was a later run of 20 chess problems starting on 2 August 1856. The South Devon Literary Chronicle, a monthly magazine published in Plymouth, supposedly had a chess column in 1846 and 1847. There are some feeble articles in 1847 and publication ended in June that year. The issues for 1846 were unavailable in the B.L. The Gateshead Observer ran the earliest column on Tyneside; the editor was not bylined but it is easy to guess who he was. Regular chess articles began (with problem 1 and a game) on 26 August 1848 but they had published some games earlier (although not on 22 July 1848, the date stated by Whyld). This author has not seen all of it but according to Whyld, the column appeared most weeks until 21 February 1852. The title was Gateshead and County of Durham Observer from 14 April 1849 until 27 December 1851 and then changed back. By 1851 the column was in decline; there was rarely more than a problem and one or two replies to correspondents, but occasionally there is something of interest. On 18 January that year, the editor says: “The Northumberland Club was dissolved a few weeks ago. We believe, with the writer referred to, that the material for the formation of another

2. The Heyday of Walker and Staunton is both plentiful and sound, were it only brought together and united.” On the row concerning the organization of the great tournament, the editor wrote on 8 February: “We have read the correspondence between the St. George’s and the London Clubs and it certainly appears to us that the London Club deserves no censure for the course it has adopted.” As Silas Angas (1814–1867), who was from Tyneside, was a great supporter of Staunton, this is strong evidence that he conducted the column. On 15 March 1851 a game between two women was published, perhaps the first time such a game was ever published. The Glasgow Citizen was the first Scottish column but attempting to find it can be frustrating. The column was edited by A. G. McCombe, who later immigrated to Australia. It ran from June 1847 to 31 January 1851 according to Whyld, but that was not a publication day and 1847 is unavailable in the British Library, which does have microfilms covering 1848 to 1851.The last chess seen was 5 October 1850. However, an answer to a correspondent on 16 February 1850 stated: “We are often obliged to withdraw the Chess to make room for the late news which we publish in our Third or Evening edition.” This explains why the microfilm in the British Library does not have all the articles that appeared. In a few cases, extracts from the Citizen are quoted in the Chess Player’s Chronicle about a row between the Glasgow and Newcastle clubs over a correspondence match, but these were not found on the relevant microfilm.

More Columns in the 1850s When the Chess Player’s Chronicle was revived in 1859, it ran an article on “The Progress of Chess,” which included a survey of chess journalism. It said several pioneering series that had once existed were no more, yet there were now 11 weekly chess columns in London publications alone. The Chronicle

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had something to say about each of them: The Illustrated London News, Bell’s Life, The Era, The Field, The Sunday Times, Cassell’s Family Paper, The Illustrated News of the World, The Review, Reynolds’s Miscellany, The Family Herald, and The London Journal. Five of these could be classified as family papers with literary content, four as sporting papers, and two as illustrated newspapers. Most of the columns followed the Illustrated London News pattern although they varied in the quantity of original material they contained. The Chronicle list was incomplete, nor does this chapter mention every single column shown in Appendix I to have existed in the 1850s, but it does cover the important ones. The 1850s and early 1860s were the time of the “family magazine” and a chess column was often part of the package in many such papers. The Family Friend, which began in 1849, had a rather poor column from volumes 2–6 (1850–1852) and, briefly, another one in the next decade. The new (monthly) series began in January 1862 with chess by “Herr Loewenthal” for four issues up to April 1862; a May 1862 article looks as if it was probably not by him. The British Library could not supply volume 2 ( July–December 1862) while volume 3 had chess only in January, March and April, which Whyld (page 141) attributed to G. F. Pardon. The Family Herald was a more successful domestic weekly, which began publication in December 1842, and ran a chess column in volumes 16 and 17 (from 1 May 1858 to April 1860). Charles Tomlinson began the column and in the introductory article he wrote: Dear Reader,—Do you play at chess? No! Then you have hitherto missed one of the purest pleasures of intellect, one of the greatest charms of social life. We once heard a fine player remark, that of all the pleasures of mind, he knew of none superior to the act of playing a winning game against a stiff antagonist. There is also pleasure in playing a losing game against a finer player than yourself. You admire his skill and subtlety, even while the inevitable mate is dimly looming

36

British Chess Literature to 1914 in the distance; and though beaten, you feel that you have done your best, that your best is capable of improvement, and that you may probably one day beat your master.

The article mentions chess problems too and playing through fine games of the masters. It said the chess knowledge was cumulative, whereas “Games that depend on skill of hand, quickness of eye, swiftness of foot, such as fives, cricket, etc., are not of this character.” His remarks were not only addressed to “our own sex,” saying: “The pleasures of home cease to be pleasure unless shared in by our wives and sisters, our daughters and nieces. Woman’s nimble mind and quick perceptions tell well on the chessboard.” To the objection that chess is “too clever,” Tomlinson asked “Is Shakspeare too clever, or Milton, or Goldsmith, and do not these worthies belong to the poor as well as to the rich?” The next articles consisted of elementary instruction. One on the Laws of Chess on page 111 (12 June 1858) concluded the lessons; this was the last time the initials “C.T.” appeared on the column. David Levy’s book on Staunton quotes (without citation of source) a revealing letter that Staunton had written to Tomlinson in June: I was very glad to hear the chess of the F.H. [Family Herald] had fallen into British hands, as that preposterous custom of engaging a foreigner to edit Chess in an English newspaper makes us ridiculous wherever the game is known…. Indeed the practice if not checked would shortly have given to half-dozen refugees a complete monopoly of English periodical Chess. You have no conception of the exertions these fellows have been making to get the Chess in their hands….19

Staunton’s xenophobic attitude was not based on fact: The majority of columns were still in the hands of Englishmen. That letter was probably counter-productive because soon afterwards Tomlinson then passed the column on to Löwenthal himself, “whom he considered more qualified to write it,” according to Levy. Löwenthal’s series was a more

typical column, including problems and games. On page 783 of volume 16, replying to a correspondent, he expressed his opinion about two great players of the previous generation, which differed from the common opinion: In play, Labourdonnais won a large majority of games, and we think had greater genius for the game than McDonnell; but the latter possessed great knowledge, and for ourselves we should not pronounce in favour of the Frenchman, though we believe he is usually considered to have been somewhat the better player.

As circulation of the Family Herald at that period was 260,000 declining to 200,000, the inclusion of chess may have been part of a drive to find new readers by going upmarket, which failed. Löwenthal’s last article was on 28 April 1860, on page 831. There was nothing to say the column was ending but so often they did not announce negative things like that, especially when it was the end of a volume, as in this case. The Family Herald had another chess column decades later, from 1902. Reynolds’s Miscellany of Romance, General Literature, Science, and Art, a London weekly, was published by George W. M. Reynolds from 1858 to 1869. Whyld underestimated the long run of the anonymous column in this magazine. The chess editor remains unidentified, but chess (problems, poor games, answers to correspondents) was included almost continuously from 4 December 1858 (in volume 21) to the end of publication (19 June 1869) when Reynolds announced that he was closing the magazine rather than sell it. One of the most successful family weeklies was Cassell’s Illustrated Family Paper, which ran from December 1853 to March 1867. It had an estimated circulation of 250,000– 285,000 in the years 1855–1858 and ran chess every week for more than 13 years. Not only was it good for chess problem enthusiasts, as the Chronicle noted, but its chess editor, Henry Cook Mott, interacted well with readers, run-

2. The Heyday of Walker and Staunton ning an important series of correspondence chess game tournaments. Mott had previously written for the humbler but rather interesting family weekly The Home Circle which, launched on Saturday 7 July 1849, ran weekly for 10 half-yearly volumes, ceasing publication in mid–1854. From December 1853 to June 1854 Mott had both columns but, on the closure of the Circle, he transferred his competitions.20 From the start, the German chess composers Joseph Kling (1811–1876) and Bernhard Horwitz (1807?–1885) were also named as contributors to The Home Circle, so they assisted Mott as well as perhaps advising on their specialist areas: art in the case of Horwitz, music in Kling’s case. One of the earliest columns stated: “We consider Herr Kling the foremost among the inventors of problems in the present day. Nothing can exceed the ingenuity and beauty of the problems which appear in the collection just published by him.” Towards the end of 1853, the Home Circle chess column announced that:

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Title page from The Home Circle, volume 9 (1853).

Mr. Kling has made such arrangements in regard to his musical engagements as have again enabled him to take premises at 454, New Oxford Street, and which he has opened as chess-rooms. True lovers of the royal game will again, therefore, have the opportunity of enjoying those chess gatherings which formed so pleasing a feature of Mr. Kling’s former establishment.

The exact closure date of the Home Circle is uncertain because title pages bear no date

from issue 157 onwards (the start of volume seven in 1852), though these may have appeared on covers not surviving in bound volumes. Dates were probably omitted because the paper was sold, like many periodicals, in monthly parts as well as weekly numbers. The final volume, for example, was available in various formats and prices: weekly, one penny; stamped 2d; monthly parts, 6d.* Twenty-six issues constituted a volume, the last being a

*The Home Circle not being a newspaper, a stamp was not compulsory, but as the stamp included postage, its provincial readers probably preferred that option.

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number of 24 pages instead of the usual 16, in which all fiction serials would be concluded. The bound volume 10 price was stated as “Plain 4s., Gilt edges and backs 4s. 6d.” A frontispiece and a two- page address, usually bound at the front, completed each volume. The circulation of The Home Circle was claimed after four or five months to be “about 43,000 … with a rapidly increasing sale.” 21

Around 1850, Manchester bookseller Abel Heywood claimed to be selling 600 copies weekly, compared to 1,500 weekly for the more sensational titles like the London Journal and Family Herald.22 Perhaps a higher peak was reached but, presumably, circulation fell in 1853–1854 before the paper closed. Distribution may have been inefficient. The literary reviewer of the Dundee Courier commented in 1850 that the Home Circle “reaches us rather irregularly” but “its general excellence is still kept up. The cheapest in its class, it exhibits no inferiority in talent.” 23 Few copies have survived. The last volume proved elusive, the British Library copy having been lost or destroyed. The Waterloo Directory could not locate any complete set in Britain or North America. Ultimately the search was rewarded when the John Rylands Library in Deansgate, Manchester, reopened in May 2007 after two years’ reconstruction work and one was able to see volume 10 at last. That library possibly possesses the only complete set in existence, forming part of the Douglas Munro–Alexandre Dumas, père, Collection.24 The editor of The Home Circle throughout was Pierce James Egan (1814–1880), a son of the famous boxing writer Pierce Egan (1772?– 1849).25 Egan, Jr., began as an illustrator and writer of popular historical serial novels; this was his only venture into magazine proprietorship.26 The claim in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography that Egan’s reign ended in December 1851 appears to be a misunderstanding inherited from Boase’s A chess column from The Home Circle, volume 2 (1850), 27 showing the numeric notation system that was adopted Modern English Biography. Egan for international correspondence chess after the Second was still named as editor on the final page of volume 10.28 What did World War (until the era of internet chess servers).

2. The Heyday of Walker and Staunton change was that by 1851 W. S. Johnson, who originally was listed as printer, became the publisher too and remained so until the end. By 1853 the magazine was in difficulties. The address to volume eight refers to its aim of “altering the taste of the masses” but complains that other publishers almost stole their title and copied their appearance.29 “Several religious publishing associations have followed in our van … tried to elbow us out of the field.” That may refer to the Home Friend, begun by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in 1852. In defense, a recommendation from the literary-minded Justice Talfourd was obtained, which appears on the title page in the final volume: “Your work is replete with innocent recreation and suggestions of practical good.”30 The abolition of the advertisement tax may have been a final blow, since this concession would have been more beneficial to lavish competitors such as Cassell’s.31 Ceasing publication was possibly Johnson’s decision. The fact that nothing was said about closure in the final issue, or in the address for the volume, suggests a late decision. Johnson later took over the London Journal and employed Egan as editor and writer.32 Chess appeared throughout the ten volumes of The Home Circle, and the column was significant for several reasons. It encouraged both chess problems and play by correspondence. In 1853 Mott began to organize the first correspondence chess tourney ever held, with 16 players. Run on a knockout basis, it continued in his Cassell’s column and ended in 1856.33 In March 1867 Cassell’s flagship periodical, the Illustrated Family Paper, was remodeled as Cassell’s Magazine, and chess was dropped. Although that may have been due partly to Mott’s health problems,34 it probably suited the new policy to concentrate on literature rather than amusements.35 By the late 1860s, the erstwhile readers of family paper chess columns had gone elsewhere—to the specialist chess magazines, or perhaps to other chess columns in smaller circulation pa-

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pers, and above all to the sporting papers published in London. George Frederick Pardon (1824–1884) was responsible for two of the columns of which the Chronicle disapproved: in The Review (a rival to The Field during 1858 and 1859) and The London Journal, which was at this period, along with Cassell’s and Reynolds’s Miscellany, one of the largest-selling London family weeklies. The London Journal chess column ran only from August 1858 to July 1859. Pardon is an example of how journalists involved in radical publishing of the 1840s were now adapting themselves to serve the growing family, juvenile, and sporting markets. He had sub-edited for Chartist editor Feargus O’Connor on the Evening Star, then edited the People’s and Howitt’s Journal.36 In the early 1850s Pardon was an employee of John Cassell, who had started as a carpenter and temperance orator before founding a major publishing house.37 Pardon seems to have specialized in start-ups. After hiring him to edit the Working Man’s Friend, Cassell gave him responsibility for the Illustrated Exhibitor (one of the titles covering the Great Exhibition of 1851).38 Eventually moving on from Cassell’s, Pardon wrote for The Boy’s Journal: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Adventure, and Amusement, a monthly that began in 1863 and included his chess and later checkers columns, which ran correspondence competitions until 1865. He sometimes used the pseudonym Captain Rawdon Crawley (a character borrowed from Thackeray’s Vanity Fair), not only for chess but also for writings on other games. Pardon complained that after John Crockford asked him to write for The Field on chess, he was then told that the paper “could not afford to pay ten shillings a week for chess, the circulation being so small,” but after he began to write for The Review, or Country Gentleman’s Journal, chess commenced in The Field “and now they could afford one of the leading players, Boden, to write it.”39

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British Chess Literature to 1914

Chess columns can be found in several papers aimed at youth from 1860s onwards, as Appendix I shows. The peculiar publishing history of Young Men of Great Britain requires clarification. Publisher Edwin Brett himself had moved from the chartist press to the “penny dreadfuls,” though his publications were not as black as they were painted.40 This title was aimed at graduates from his Boys of England. Ten half-yearly volumes appeared, from January 1868 to the end of 1872; then, starting in 1875, the complete run of Young Men of Great Britain was repeated. Thus it continued until 1879; holdings (e.g., at the British Library) often consist of a mixture of the original run and the reissue.41 The “Captain Crawley” column was passed on to Löwenthal, whose first article appears on page 308 of volume one. See page 72 for more on boys’ columns. One of the pioneering columns that were no more, as referred to in that Chronicle article, would have been that in Sharpe’s London Magazine. Whyld’s data on page 399 is incomplete. This monthly magazine had various titles over time but during the period of the chess column it was Sharpe’s London Magazine of Entertainment and Instruction, which has been digitized by Proquest in its British Periodicals database, available in many research and university libraries. This chess column ran from May 1855 to June 1857 (bar a few months) beginning as “Chess Exercises by Kling and Zytogorski.” It often included news and games from Kling’s chess rooms and from June 1856 only Kling was involved. Soon after the column ended, the publication changed from being a general literary magazine to a women’s magazine. The last of the columns mentioned in the article above, The Sunday Times, ran for two and a half years and was informative about London chess. Its editor, the Austrian Ernest Karl Falkbeer (1819–1885), was a proficient journalist as well as a chess master. The column ran in the Sporting and Agricultural

supplement of the newspaper from 26 April 1857 until 6 November 1859. The supplement ended the following week and that is probably why chess was stopped. Thereafter there was no chess in that newspaper until the 1890s. The column began with a greeting message signed by Falkbeer and a game from the current Bird–Falkbeer match. There was also a short game by Deacon and some news. In the following weeks more games between Falkbeer and Bird were published. Then in the second week there was a diagram with Problem 1 by Joseph Graham Campbell (1830–1891). Much of the column was rather dull but on 5 July it mentioned that attempts were being made to revive the McDonnell Chess Club. In August there was a game by Oxford graduate Valentine Green (1831–1877), then working in India, played against a “native.” Further games from India appeared in 1859. On 11 April 1858 it was stated that the Philidorian Rooms opened last week, and subsequent weeks carried good coverage of chess played there. In Chapter 6 is seen that the Third Series of The Chess Player’s Chronicle was published by the proprietor of those chess rooms. Then during Morphy’s European visit, from the summer in 1858, most reports concentrate on that, including his activities in France in early 1859. From late March 1859 until mid–May (except 8 May) most of the Sunday Times articles report on a handicap tournament played at Purssells chess rooms in the City of London, which has been well covered by Hans Renette in his biography of Henry Edward Bird (1829–1908).42 The first class players—Bird, Falkbeer and Hughes—had to give pawn and move or even pawn and two moves to everyone else. Falkbeer won the tournament. In the Final he defeated Henry Albert Reeves, despite conceding pawn and two, but it was a close contest: 3–2 with two draws. Reeves and Hughes then played a match at the same odds, and other matches being played were also reported later

2. The Heyday of Walker and Staunton in the year, including a protracted match between Campbell and Wormald.

Early Chess in The Field Another important column began in 1854, in The Field, which was to become the greatest sporting newspaper of the 19th century. Its first chess column—and also the last to be conducted by Williams—only lasted about a year and a half, and was but a curtainraiser to the important column in that paper which came later and whose heyday will be discussed in Chapter 3. The Field has not been digitized but some of the chess columns (the first two years, then 1858, 1870 and 1902) are available free at www.chessarch.com/excava tions/excavations.php. When it first appeared in January 1853, the proprietors of The Field had to pay—as the paper’s historian R. N. Rose, explained— one penny stamp duty on its 16 page main paper and another one penny when there was a supplement.43 This fixed cost had to be passed on directly to purchasers of the newspaper, though the stamp did cover the cost of postage to subscribers from the provinces. All periodicals, not just those classed as newspapers, also had to pay a tax on any advertisements they published and in addition there was duty levied on paper. That meant that the size of publications was usually much smaller than they later became. Changes in legislation at this period eventually resulted from an extensive campaign against what were called “the taxes on knowledge.” The advertisement duty was repealed in August 1853, the stamp duty was repealed in July 1855 and finally the paper duty came to an end in October 1861. It is universally acknowledged by historians of Victorian Britain that the removal of these taxes led, as the campaigners had expected, to a new era in newspaper and periodical publishing in the United Kingdom. Cover prices could fall and more

41

advertisements could be sold, and the periodical market grew enormously. Of course it helped that education was also being reformed so that literacy in the “lower classes” was much greater than in previous generations. There was a hunger for printed materials at a price that was now more affordable. A large number of new titles were launched or expanded thanks to the ending of stamp duty and paper duty and eventually the tax on advertisements. Some newspapers moved from weekly to daily (or at least to more

Chess article by Elijah Williams in the first issue of The Field, 1 January 1853, page 12.

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frequent) publication and numerous new titles appeared. This in turn led to a proliferation of new chess columns. The Field had a chess column by Williams from the very first issue, but in mid–1854 it was petering out, a casualty of the space given in the paper that year to Crimean War coverage. Then Williams died, a victim of the London cholera epidemic of that year, and he was not replaced. Rose has shown that The Field was not a great commercial success at first, and that its ownership changed in November 1854 when circulation was about 3,800 copies a week.4 4 Chess was only revived in The Field in 1858 and the further history of this column is traced in the next two chapters. The new proprietors made a great success of this paper and it is still being published today as a magazine, though without a chess column.

The Chess Column of The Era Another important column began on 19 February in a Sunday newspaper entitled The Era. According to The Home Circle, “The appointment advertised some weeks back in The Times newspaper, has, we are pleased to say, been conferred on Herr Lowenthal.”45 (Efforts to trace the advertisement have been unsuccessful.) In 1854 he was still friendly with Staunton, so it is possible that he got the job on Staunton’s recommendation. Löwenthal was a Hungarian who had spent two years in America as a refugee from reprisals after the Hungarian revolution of 1848. He arrived in England just in time for the London 1851 tournament, after which he assisted Staunton for a time before they fell out later in the 1850s. It seems paradoxical that the organ of the Licensed Vintners organization ran a column on chess, which requires sobriety for skilled performance, but that paper relied in its early years primarily on sporting readership and

Johann Jacob Löwenthal, first chess editor of The Era who later conducted several other columns.

content, although enjoying a circulation only one sixth the size of Bell’s.4 6 Nevertheless Löwenthal’s column prospered until the focus of the newspaper shifted primarily to theatrical matters. Historians of the periodical press have called it “the most important theatrical weekly of its day” and said “by the late 1860s it had become first and foremost a theatre paper.”47 The chess column ran from 19 February 1854, with a byline in the later years, until the Era explicitly stated that it ended on 29 April 1866. Editorial requirements were the ostensible reason for Löwenthal’s column closing, although there must be a suspicion that Staunton somehow engineered his ousting. Löwenthal had received a byline from 21 June 1858 onwards, the Era making capital of his being the first to play a match with visiting American champion Paul Morphy. Sergeant believed that Löwenthal chose to resign to make more time for his work with the British Chess As-

2. The Heyday of Walker and Staunton sociation. The timing is right—the B.C.A. was reorganized a few weeks before the column ended—but Duffy may have maneuvered to replace him. Dundee master George Brunton Fraser (1831–1905) attributed its second series to Duffy and attitudes sometimes expressed in the column support that view. Löwenthal could probably ill afford to lose the Era fees and there had already been a testimonial for him in 1864. A new anonymous column ran in The Era from 17 June 1866 to 6 January 1867, but it was mostly fortnightly. Then a “new series” (numbering the problems from #1) began on

43

10 February to 28 December. The tone of the column had definitely changed because the new editor wrote more entertainingly but in a biased way, critical of the British Chess Association (therefore anti–Löwenthal), and he was not a good annotator of games.48 On the other hand, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography associates Staunton with the later Era column; his obituary in that paper supports his having an association at some unclear date. It is hard to form a firm opinion about which years Duffy was in charge and which years were under Staunton, as the evidence is so thin.

3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885 stead. In general there were far more titles than before and several cities had competing newspapers, especially in the weekly market. By the 1880s there was usually at least one newspaper chess column in every major city, and indeed in most county towns, which would normally appear in the weekly paper or the Saturday edition of a daily, although there were exceptions. There was also an explosion in magazine publishing, again mostly weeklies. Sometimes chess appeared in surprising specialist publications, though often it did not last. Browsing through the titles in Appendix I will give the reader a good idea of the variety of periodicals, regional and national, which ran chess columns at one time or another. There were so many that is impossible for anyone to read every column and there remains plenty of scope for future research in this area. Columns did experience life cycles. Sometimes a column came to an end just because the chess editor became too busy at work, or he began to lose interest, fell ill or died. Some editors were replaced, but in other cases there was no replacement to be found. Columns could also come to an end because the publication in which they appeared changed its editor, or merged with another paper, or failed

The quarter of a century between 1860 and 1885 may be seen as a golden age of chess columns. Both years are chosen somewhat arbitrarily, but 1885 was the year that William Norwood Potter (1840–1895) ceased to write the excellent column in Land and Water. Certain of the major columns mentioned in this chapter will start before 1860 or continue a little beyond 1885 to a natural stopping point. Why speak of a golden age? The London 1862 tournament stimulated chess reporting, but the growth of clubs seems to have slowed for a time afterwards, partly because of economic variations. The collapse of the Overend and Gurney bank in 1866, which caused the failure of many businesses, was a contributing factor. By the early 1870s prosperity had returned in England, and with it came a considerable increase in the number of clubs. Matches and tournaments became more frequent so there was also more for columns to report. As noted already in the previous chapter, the economics of newspaper publishing improved in the 1860s. With the abolition of the last of the taxes on knowledge, there began to be a great expansion in provincial papers. Several cities and regions had their own morning papers; some newspapers that had formerly been weeklies adopted daily publication in-

44

3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885 altogether. If a newspaper editor started to squeeze the space available for chess, or dropped it from late editions, or omitted it for several weeks, the chess editor was likely to decide to quit, or seek a new home for his writings. Columns that transferred to other titles can be hard to trace; some examples will be given later.

Wormald’s Start in Chess Journalism Robert Bownas Wormald (1834–1876) was a sporting journalist with many interests. He conducted chess columns for only relatively brief periods, not much more than two years at any time, but he was a popular and influential figure in the chess world for over two decades. Wormald became a close associate of Staunton and it was he who inherited the column in the Illustrated London News when Staunton died in June 1874. Though already in poor health, Wormald had also launched the chess column of the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News earlier that same

Robert Bownas Wormald as portrayed, only a few weeks before his death, in The Westminster Papers, IX (October 1876), facing page 101.

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year and he conducted both columns until his own death in December 1876. (Further details on those columns are in the next section of this chapter.) They were the only two indexed to Wormald in Whyld’s Columns but he had earlier conducted at least one other. This distinguished writer was the third son of Bryan Wormald, of Bramham, a Yorkshire county gentleman. “Tommy” Wormald, as he was known to his friends, was only 15 years old when his first published chess problem (“enigma 605”) appeared in the Illustrated London News on 7 September 1850.1 By then he was living in Oxford (perhaps for preparatory studies), and he became a student at the age of 17 or 18, matriculating at Lincoln College on 2 June 1852. Until 1856 he was a “bible clerk” (a type of scholarship) and he graduated with a B.A. in 1857.2 While at Oxford, Wormald was a prominent member of the university’s first chess club, the Hermes, which had been founded around 1847 and was centered on Lincoln College. During his student years, he competed in the two earliest postal chess tournaments—run by the Home Circle (from 1853) and the Birmingham Mercury (from 1854)—which brought him into contact with some prominent amateurs elsewhere in the country. His opponents included Frederick George Rainger (1829–1871) of Norwich, Charles French Smith of London (1828–1868, an early rival of Bird), and Fraser, all expert players by the standards of the day.3 In 1853 Wormald was rather a weak player, as can be seen from the fact that Brien, an alumnus of his college, gave him odds of pawn and two moves in a match which ended in a tie 3½–3½. Wormald’s play improved as he drew 4–4 with Zytogorski in 1859 and the same year only lost a hard-fought match against Campbell by 11½–9½ and beat Frank Burden 5–4.4 In 1860 Wormald published an elementary book, The Hand-Book of Chess, “by an Oxford amateur.” He did not compete in the 1862 London Congress but did play for the B.C.A. Gold Cup in 1868. Wormald also

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British Chess Literature to 1914

wrote a small book on chess openings, published in 1864, which will be discussed in Chapter 7. His first essay into chess journalism came in The Sporting Gazette, which began publishing on 1 November 1862. This weekly tabloid magazine was, according to one of Wormald’s obituaries, then “owned by a limited aristocratic/officer circle.” His first column appeared in the second issue. Early articles included games by Joseph Henry Blackburne (1841– 1924), George Henry Mackenzie (1837–1891), and Steinitz. On 6 December Wormald published the originally declared results of the 1862 Congress problem tourney before faults were found in some of the prize-winners and the awards were changed. Early in 1863 there were more games from a match between Mackenzie and the Rev. George Alcock MacDonnell (1830–1899), “the progress of which has been watched with considerable interest in chess circles.” It was not mentioned that they had previously played a match in Dublin. The final score this time was given by the Gazette as Mackenzie 6, MacDonnell 3, with one drawn. This column was interesting in 1863 but several weeks were missed as the year wore on, and after May 1864 it only rarely appeared. In early 1865 there were a few chess problems, the last of which was on 6 May. It is possible, though, that Wormald was also conducting the anonymous column in The Illustrated Weekly News (a title unknown to Whyld’s bibliography) for at least some of its run between 1861 and 1866. The editor of that column appears to have been a strong player, wellinformed and a competent journalist. Some future historian may perhaps be able to confirm an identification.

The Illustrated Weeklies Although MacDonnell’s name is the one most closely associated with the chess column

of the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, which lasted a quarter of a century, its originator was Wormald, who conducted it for two and a half years. This lively paper, featuring many large engravings, can now be found in the British Newspaper Archive though one can spend dozens of hours reading it in the original hard copy. The I.S.D.N. first appeared on 28 February 1874—without chess but it was probably planned from the beginning as the column started in the next issue (of 7 March). The column had only been running a few weeks when Wormald’s friend Staunton died, and Wormald inherited the column of the Illustrated London News too. The obituary he wrote for Staunton in the I.S.D.N. on 11 July 1874 was one of the warmest; many others struck a critical note to some extent. Whyld says Wormald took over the I.L.N. as from 27 June, but Staunton had surely submitted some copy to the editors of the I.L.N. by then. Game annotations in the 4 July edition look like Staunton’s work too. In the days of metal typesetting, with galley proofs being sent to the writer for correction, it is probable that games and problems were prepared well in advance of being published. Likewise, there would be no break in publication on Wormald’s death on 4 December 1876, but in his case, in view of his known poor health, a deputy was probably already assisting. Wormald conducted the I.L.N. column from volume 65 through to volume 69 (bar the last few weeks of the latter). There was nothing particularly remarkable about his stewardship of the column, which continued much as before, minus the personal excesses that Staunton had sometimes introduced. On 3 April 1875 he wrote: “We are afraid that the British Chess Association must be considered to be defunct” and on 11 September 1875 that the Association “is, we fear, both defunct and insolvent.” Where Staunton might have gloated, Wormald was matter-of-fact. This marks the end of the first phase of chess organization in

3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885 Britain which had begun with the founding of the Yorkshire Chess Association in 1841.* The second British Chess Association, which also failed after a few years, was established in the 1880s. On 21 August Wormald replied to a correspondent who had raised two hypothetical rules issues that troubled Staunton. Of the dummy pawn, Wormald said it “had a very short-lived existence, and has been laughed out of court,” but we shall see later that the dummy pawn was disinterred a few years later and caused more trouble—or amusement.† The second arose from a claim some people had made that if one’s only legal move was to capture a pawn en passant then one could claim a draw by stalemate. They argued that capturing en passant was just an option which you should not be penalized for declining to exercise. Wormald was emphatically in support of the generally accepted rule: “If you have no other legal move you are compelled to take the Pawn in passing.” Wormald became embroiled in controversy when, on 28 August 1875, he published in the I.L.N. a paragraph that read: CITY OF LONDON CHESS CLUB.—At a meeting of a sub-committee appointed to revise the rules of this club, a resolution was proposed and carried, to the following effect:— “That in future no professional player shall be eligible to act on the committee of management.”

The club’s honorary secretary, F. W. Lord, wrote in to complain that this was a private matter but Wormald refused to publish his

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letter, saying (in the correspondence section on 11 September): “If you will furnish us with an unequivocal contradiction to the statement, which we had on the authority of one of the sub-committee, we shall be happy to insert it; but you cannot expect us to publish such a half-hearted denial as that contained in your letter.” The complete correspondence eventually appeared in the City of London Chess Magazine for October on pages 269 and 270, where the editor of that magazine said that “each and every member of the subcommittee” denied the leak and asked where Wormald had really obtained the information. Clearly somebody was telling lies and relying on what nowadays is called “plausible deniability.”5 By mid–1876 there were signs that Wormald’s illness was putting him out of touch with current chess events. On 5 August he wrote that “two numbers only” of the Chronicle (new series) had appeared. In fact there had been three. In October 1876 the Westminster Papers published a sketch and short profile of Wormald, outlining his chess career, and saying “his high personal qualities have secured for him the cordial regard of every one that knows him.” This article noted that Wormald’s “life-long friendship with the late Mr. Staunton marked him out as the fittest successor to that gentleman” at the I.L.N. An obituary was to follow in the January 1877 number which added a few more details about Wormald’s scholarship and professional achievements.

*The first formal meeting of the Yorkshire Chess Association was held at Leeds in January 1841, but it was initiated in 1840, as shown in George W. Medley’s prefatory “Memoir of the British Chess Association,” on page ix of Löwenthal’s book The Chess Congress of 1862 (London: Bohn 1864). That book is discussed further on in the present work, especially in Chapter 7. †The issue arose from the curious formulation of the pawn promotion rule adopted by the British Chess Association in 1862 which differed markedly from Staunton’s wording in his Chess Praxis. The B.C.A. rule (see The Chess Congress of 1862, page lxxi) gave the player who advanced a pawn to the eighth rank the option “of deciding that it shall remain a Pawn.” In a lengthy paragraph on page xci of the same book, Löwenthal attempted to give an intellectual justification for this provision but most practical players considered it absurd to have a man on the board that could no longer move, and gave it the name “dummy pawn.” The true motivation for this and other differences between the Praxis and B.C.A. laws was Staunton’s feud with Löwenthal. On later debates among chess editors about this topic, see Chapter 3.

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For Wormald, having to divide his energies between two columns at a time when he was in poor health meant something had to suffer; the I.L.N. column probably paid better and the other became relatively dull. Wormald’s last I.S.D.N. column appeared on 2 December 1876 and his column that day in the I.L.N. could also have been his last there. It is possible, though, that the annotations to the game published on the 9th, and comments on three problems the same day, had already been submitted by him. He had died on the 4th. The I.L.N. obituary notice, published below the chess column, said that Wormald’s terminal illness had begun two years earlier “and, incapacitating him for continued labour, cut short the promise of a brilliant future.” Nevertheless in those final years Wormald had managed to do some writing and completed Staunton’s last and unfinished work Chess: Theory and Practice, which was published in 1876. That obituary concentrated on praising Wormald’s personal qualities, his literary work and his problem composition. It also said “he was never in danger of sinking to the level of the mere chess-player” but “had won no undistinguished place in the field of journalism.” Whereas Wormald had to stick to Staunton’s formula when writing his I.L.N. columns; the I.S.D.N. sometimes gave him more freedom. The Divan tournament of 1876 was reported in more detail than was possible in the I.L.N. and it seems he had a later deadline in the Sporting and Dramatic. Then, when Wormald probably knew he was dying, he worked with the paper’s engraver to craft a special illustrated farewell article which appeared separately from the main column on 11 November. When this was reproduced in the English magazine Chess some years ago, the writer of that article missed the point because he believed that the column was being conducted at that date by MacDonnell. A lengthy obituary of Wormald was published in the I.S.D.N. on 23 December, on

page 247, which gave far more information about his general journalistic career than the others had done. He had worked on the Saturday Review and Literary Budget and Imperial Review (which had a brief existence) and: “He might some years since have had the post of editor of a leading journal in Yorkshire, which offer, however, he declined. The charms of a London life were too strong for him.” Wormald had done a “vast amount of honourable work in sporting journalism.” After the Sporting Gazette he had been involved in the launch of The Sportsman. He was subsequently yachting correspondent and occasional leader-writer in the Daily News and at one time joint editor with Mr. H. Smarthwaite, of Bell’s Life in London. The notice concluded by saying “He never made an enemy and never lost a friend.” Wormald’s death created two vacancies. Let us deal with the succession at the I.L.N. first. Duffy took over the column as from 9 December 1876 and remained chess editor until April 1888, at least nominally, as he was in poor health in the final year or so. Duffy had come to London during the 1860s after a chess apprenticeship in Newcastle, where there had long been a strong club. Bird had secured him a position at an accountancy firm, Turquand Coleman, where he himself held a senior position. Duffy’s chess expertise seems to have been confined to the problem department (essential for anyone who would conduct this column) but after coming to London he soon stopped active playing, probably because he found the standard of opposition in the capital to be beyond his capacity. Duffy had probably conducted the Era chess column at some point (as noted in the previous chapter) and his writings had been the mainstay of the chess section in the monthly games magazine The Westminster Papers from the second volume onwards. He also in 1882 (according to Whyld) wrote a column in the New York periodical Union Jack. Whereas his predecessors had appeared out of touch, Duffy

3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885 was at the center of the capital’s chess life. He was one of those chess editors who enlivened his copy with “personalities” although the scope for doing this at the I.L.N. was limited. Steinitz (never named) was a favorite target. As was the norm, the Illustrated only acknowledged Duffy’s services to the paper when he died, on 17 April 1888; various assistants probably conducted the column for him during his final illness. The statement in that obituary that after the closure of the Westminster Papers Duffy had “edited for some time three of the principal London columns” appears to be incorrect, although he was certainly associated with at least four columns at various times.6 For many years from March 1877 Duffy began to receive reports and games from Russia after Aylmer Maude (then only 18 years old) moved to Moscow. Maude’s first opponent there was Albert Hellwig, who was an American (though Duffy did not say this) and it may be that Hellwig helped Maude into Russian society as well as improve his chess. Maude, who frequently wrote to the English chess press thereafter, did not meet Tolstoy (whose translator he became) for another ten years or so, but chess then proved to be an interest they had in common. Duffy’s reply to a correspondent on 27 January 1877 sheds some light on procedures when games were adjourned: “Neither player should examine the position until the play is resumed.” This item also shows that in “important games” the practice of sealing a move was already in use. When John Cochrane (who was born in 1798) died on 16 March 1878, Duffy in his obituary observed that “Mr. Cochrane was a chessplayer of the attacking school, and it may be fairly said that his success was attained despite the brilliancy of his play, rather than because of it.” Duffy’s friends seem to have liked him and his eventual I.L.N. obituary praised his virtues, saying he was kind and “quick to see good in everybody.” Such a positive impres-

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Patrick Thomas Duffy, chess correspondent of the Illustrated London News from December 1876 to his death, who also conducted other columns at various times.

sion is hard to develop from reading his often sarcastic or vindictive attacks on foreign masters. In the fall of 1877 Duffy conducted a scurrilous campaign against Steinitz in another column, but he either was not allowed to do so in the I.L.N. or knew better than to attempt it. Volume 79 was chiefly of interest for Duffy’s venomous and disingenuous treatment of Hoffer. On 23 July 1881 Duffy naughtily informed a correspondent that there was “only one English chess monthly that we know of—the British Chess Magazine.” So Hoffer, coeditor of The Chess-Monthly, wrote in to complain, and this is the reply he received on 6 August (page 139): “Mr. Hoffer says that there is another English chess monthly that we ‘know of ’ and rudely accuses us of wilfully misleading our correspondent. We know nothing of Mr. Hoffer and are, consequently, somewhat surprised at his assumption of knowledge of our knowledge.” Duffy went on to say that about two years ago he had (some-

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what unfavorably) reviewed the first number of a chess monthly with which Mr. Hoffer’s name was associated, and “having never seen a copy since that time, we were under the impression that the world had, very willingly, let it die…. We recommend in this column only those periodicals as we see and approve.” However, on 9 December 1882 he did admit there were two English monthly chess magazines: The Chess-Monthly and the B.C.M. Duffy died in the seaside resort of Hastings on 17 April 1888 and before that he had also taken a break for the sake of his health. So it is clear he must have been assisted towards the end by the people named by Whyld (F. H. Lewis and W. H. Cubison) although there is no internal evidence of this. By the time of his death, the Illustrated London News was such a worldwide success that the management were certainly looking, even more than before, to place the column into a safe pair of hands rather than risk controversy. His successor, Joseph William Abbott (1840– 1923), had probably been one of those who helped out in those final months. The 1911 census shows that Abbott was a clockmaker until he retired. This could explain how his first column came about, from 1872 in the weekly English Mechanic (discussed below). Abbott was a member of a circle who used to meet at the Divan on Saturday afternoons to discuss chess problems.7 Then on 1 February 1876, he began a new chess column in the Ladies’ Treasury, which was then a monthly. He wrote (page 125) that chess divided into two parts: games and problems, and this column would be about the latter. After a few months he gave up the Mechanic column, which was taken over by another member of the circle.8 Abbott continued at the Ladies’ Treasury until some time in 1886, probably on his appointment at the I.L.N., whereupon he passed on that column to Frank Healey (1828– 1906). Unlike some chess editors who have conducted several columns simultaneously (e.g., Löwenthal, Gunsberg and, more recently,

Barden and Keene). Abbott seems to have found that managing one was usually sufficient. Abbott, like Duffy, was undistinguished as a player, but unlike Duffy he was not a polemicist. He quietly superintended the decline of the Illustrated London News column into dull senescence. Readers keen on chess and for whom the weekend arrival of a new chess column—full of news and exciting games—was an eagerly anticipated event, would have looked elsewhere, probably to The Field. Any historian seeking a lively account of current chess affairs in the succeeding decades must also look elsewhere. More on Abbott and the later editors at the Illustrated London News is in Chapter 4. After Wormald’s death, there was no chess in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News for three weeks. Then after this short interval, somebody restarted the column in January 1877. Although it is possible Duffy was responsible for a few weeks, it was probably MacDonnell from the start, though of course he received no byline. There are several references to MacDonnell that year, and news of his friend Blackburne. On 30 June 1877 there was a letter in the paper from MacDonnell headed “English chess and foreign critics.” This was a response to Steinitz’s publication in May of MacDonnell’s 11-move loss to Gunsberg. MacDonnell re-annotated it. Then in September, the I.S.D.N. and Westminster Papers joined forces in an attack on Steinitz, described in detail elsewhere.9 It is possible Duffy was writing for both papers at the time, but the style is different and it seems likely this was a planned concerted effort by MacDonnell and Duffy. Whyld’s Columns says MacDonnell’s start-date at I.S.D.N. was 21 April 1879, which was actually not a publication day. That was probably a misprint for 21 June, which was the first time that news snippets in the I.S.D.N. column developed into more lengthy, opinionated and entertaining pieces called “Chess

3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885 Chat” signed with the byline “Mars.” It seems likely we can date MacDonnell’s assumption of the column, though, to 1877. The only question is whether it was only in November (when Duffy went to America for a few months, retaining just the I.L.N.) or whether MacDonnell began in January 1877, or at some intermediate date. For much of this year the column had little character so it is hard to find internal evidence upon which to form a judgment. From 1879, the I.S.D.N. column became increasingly lively, with many pointed comments on current events and players of the past and present. The best of the pieces, mostly pen-portraits of many of his contemporaries, can be found recycled in MacDonnell’s two books of essays: Chess Life-Pictures and The Knights and Kings of Chess.10 Reading his commentaries, one is always aware that he is a strong supporter of British players and can be unfair to foreigners. Some of his personal attacks seem unworthy of a man of the cloth, especially when directed against his favorite target, whom he styled “Fieldwitz.” The Sporting and Dramatic column was of less interest where games were concerned, because MacDonnell’s annotations were mostly brief and shallow. One might say that as a player, MacDonnell was a candidate master but at entertaining he was a grandmaster. One good story he told in the column is the following, set during the London 1862 international tournament, concerning the game between James Robey (1826–1885) and Frederic Deacon (1830– 1875). This anecdote appeared in the I.S.D.N. column of 20 February 1886. In the course of the fight, which took place at St. James’s Hall, Mr. Deacon left the table and sought out his friend, the late Mr. Staunton. Finding that gentleman surrounded by a host of admirers—myself included—he invited us all to come and witness the grand finale with which he was going to crown his victory over James Roby [sic]. We at once accepted the invitation, and crowded round his board. “You see,” said Deacon, in a whisper to Staunton, “he must take

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The Rev. George Alcock MacDonnell, who wrote as “Mars” in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News. His signed photograph was the frontispiece for his 1883 book Chess Life-Pictures. the pawn or the bishop; if he takes the pawn I sacrifice the exchange and mate in four; and if he takes the bishop I sacrifice the queen, the queen, sir, and mate in seven.” “Indeed,” muttered the British autocrat. Scarce had this little scene been enacted when Roby looked up from the board, on which he had been gazing for a long time, and surveying the increased concourse of spectators, smilingly looked at Deacon, who was standing opposite to him, and exclaimed, “Won’t you take your seat, Mr. Deacon?’ The polite Deacon at once sat down. “It’s mate in five,” said Roby, still looking at his opponent. “No,” replied Deacon; “if you make the best move I cannot mate you in less than seven.” “It’s mate in five,” rejoined the hard-hearted Roby. “It is I who give the mate, not you.” Then followed rapidly a series of brilliant moves, and in two minutes Roby rose from the table triumphant, leaving his opponent to sit on there, utterly amazed and chap-fallen.

The facts somewhat spoil the story. Here is that game.

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British Chess Literature to 1914

F. Deacon–J. Robey B.C.A. Grand Tournament, St. James’s Hall, London, 1 July 1862 King’s Gambit Declined (C30) 1. e4 e5 2. f4 Bc5 3. Nf3 d6 4. c3 Bg4 5. Bc4 Nf6 6. f×e5 B×f3 7. Q×f3 d×e5 8. d3 0–0 9. Bg5 Nbd7 10. Nd2 c6 11. 0–0–0 b5 12. Bb3 a5 13. Rdf1 a4 14. Bd1 b4 15. Nc4 b×c3 16. b×c3 Qe7 17. Qg3 Ba3† 18. Kd2 Kh8 19. Rf5 Rad8 20. Rhf1 Rfe8 21. Qh4 Qc5 22. N×a3? 22. B×a4 should win easily. Löwenthal’s tournament book, page 87, said: “the combination contemplated by Mr. Deacon, commencing with R×f6, could then have been carried out with effect.” On the next page, after a diagram, he said, “If in reply, Black attacks Queen with one of the Rooks White’s Queen takes Rook with impunity.” This seems to match the anecdote but an intermediate sequence of moves must be missing that cannot be reconstructed. 22. … Q×a3 23. R×f6 Q×a2† 24. Bc2 N×f6 25. R×f6?? (see diagram) 25. B×f6 Rd6 26. Be7 was probably still good enough to hold the draw.

wDw4rDwi DwDwDp0p wDpDw$wD DwDw0wGw pDwDPDw! Dw)PDwDw qDBIwDP) DwDwDwDw

After 25. R×f6

25. … R×d3†! This must be what Deacon overlooked, but what he expected is not clear. There is no forced mate in five according to the computer but it is a forced win. 26. K×d3 Rd8† 27. Ke3 Q×c2 28. Qe1? Rd3 mate (0–1). On 3 March 1883, Potter noted in Land and Water that Chess Life-Pictures would be published soon. MacDonnell, he said, was

“nothing if not personal; and sometimes his bent in that direction has been indulged at the expense of charity and discretion” but could be forgiven as amusing. So it proved when the book actually appeared and on 18 August Potter reviewed it. He says MacDonnell was personally acquainted with all these stars of chess. “What he says of them, though not to be taken without salt, is nevertheless in the main credible.” He objected, though, that Staunton had been portrayed too favorably: “He too often used his sharp claws cruelly and unjustly. All this the author conceals, and, going from his account, the reader would never imagine how different the controversial Staunton was from the conversational Staunton.” Eventually somebody in the Church of England forgave MacDonnell the indiscretions of his youth (when he had married a divorced couple) and he was at last enabled to enter the semi-retirement of a country parish. MacDonnell was happy until poor health caught up with him; he continued to write the column up to 8 August 1896.11 He died on 3 June 1899. MacDonnell’s editorial chair was inherited by Antony Guest (1856–1925), who only enjoyed it for four years before the column was dropped altogether. Initially Guest had no byline but from 16 January 1897 he sometimes signed Chess Chat with the initial “G.” The last time he did so was on 16 June 1900, leading Whyld to identify that as Guest’s last column. Nevertheless, he may have continued for the final few weeks, which included an obituary of Steinitz published on 25 August. Towards the end some weeks had no chess and the last I.S.D.N. column was published on 22 September 1900.

A Fine Column: Land and Water Land and Water was a sporting and leisure weekly for country and city gentlemen,

3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885 which began publication in 1866, in competition with The Field. From August 1870 to September 1885, it had one of the best chess columns in England, really essential reading for chess historians of the period but harder to find than those just discussed. At the time of writing Land and Water has still not been digitized or even microfilmed—though this will probably change eventually—but there is a lot to be said for reading the original bound volumes, where the chess is found in context. The John G. White Collection at the Cleveland, Ohio, Public Library does have a scrapbook of the columns which has been microfilmed, but much of that is over-exposed and illegible. This was probably one of the scrapbooks belonging to John G. White which were damaged at a bindery, as he reported in one of his letters to Harold Murray. The chess column was begun by J. J. Löwenthal on 27 August 1870, at a time when the column of The Field was going through a bad patch. He began with a mission statement, not dissimilar to what he had written in 1854 in the Era. He also referred to the BadenBaden international congress (somehow managing not to mention the war), reported on a Newcastle meeting, and included a game of his own against the then editor of the Chess Player’s Chronicle, the Rev. Arthur Bolland Skipworth (1830–1898). Löwenthal’s second column included an obituary of William Lewis, the veteran player and chess writer, while on the 10th and 17th of September he contributed a piece on “Chess, Its Influence and Benefits.” In October the third tournament for the British Chess Association gold challenge cup was played—as usual at various London venues over a period of several weeks. There were several reports (both in Land and Water and in The Field, and some elsewhere) but very few games were ever published. This was definitely the worst organized and publicized of the first British Championship series, and the upshot is that most of the games are lost to

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posterity, which was probably in part the fault of Löwenthal. As one of the main people involved in the B.C.A. he may well have collected game scores that he did not publish, although there is a slight chance they may have been preserved in manuscript notebooks that might some day turn up in a collector’s auction. This was, nevertheless, a good column and the coverage was much better for the 1872 B.C.A. Congress, when there were two major tournaments as well as a Handicap and other events. In 1873 Löwenthal’s health began to fail and he was probably assisted by the British champion, John Wisker (1846–1884), because there are signs around August that the style of the column has changed.12 Löwenthal’s retirement was announced on 27 December (when he was named at last, on page 531), and he was replaced by “a gentleman well known in the chess world, and fully able to do ample justice to so important a subject.” Wisker was not named in the paper. The column in 1874 was somewhat shorter and less lively than before, though perhaps in more stylish English as one would expect with a native speaker in charge. It fell to Wisker to write Staunton’s obituary for the issue of 4 July and he contributed a well-balanced assessment of that complex man. His influence on the progress of the game of chess will ever remain a disputed question. The old maxim, nil de mortuis, etc. cannot be carried beyond a certain point; and it is indisputable that a large section of British players consider that the faction fights carried on under the banner of Mr. Staunton caused so much harm as to counterbalance the good he did by his play and his writings…. To him belongs the merit of having taken the first step to popularise the game.

Staunton’s Handbook, wrote Wisker, “had few pretensions to originality, but the arrangement was admirable and the style excellent.” Staunton’s win against Saint-Amant in 1843 he described as “famous beyond its merits.” In conclusion: “The greatest of his powers

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was his mastery of the art of conversation. For this he had a real genius; the kingdom did not contain his superior, and hence his society was sought after by men of rank and station.” On 28 November 1874, Wisker joined in the general condemnation of George Gossip’s pretentious The Chess-player’s Manual. Some excerpts of his review will be found in Chapter 7. During 1875 Wisker was also conducting a column in The Sportsman newspaper as well as Land and Water but he was starting to suffer the effects of tuberculosis. During March 1876 his health collapsed and he had to give up both his columns. There had been no chess on 19 February (possibly because of a missed deadline) but on 26 February the first game of the Blackburne–Steinitz match was published. On 4 March chess was short, with no diagram or game. The result of the Oxford University–Birmingham match appeared along with an item about indoor games which was possibly not written by Wisker. On 11 March there was a little chess and a double dummy whist item by F. H. Lewis. There was nothing on 18 March or 1 April, but it does look as if Wisker may have contributed the column for 25 March which included a problem, one of Morphy’s last games, and a first mention of the Divan tournament which was just starting. Wisker entered but his health broke down and he withdrew after five games, four of which he had lost. On 25 March there was also an item in the paper about the City of London Chess Club dinner, held on Tuesday 21 March. A speech by attorney Charles Mossop (1833– 1896?), editor of the Westminster Papers magazine, was hissed because he: … took upon himself to warn the company against “professionals,” who played only to win other people’s money. The diners decidedly resented the insinuation; nor can we see how they could fail to take notice of it. In all the London clubs the general rule is that games should be played for a shilling, simply in order to compel weaker players to accept odds. Peers of the realm, clergymen, and others accept a regulation which

is felt to be just and necessary. To contend for a miserable stake which would not provide a systematic winner with pockethandkerchiefs [sic] does not render a player a “professional” in any greater degree than playing for the high stakes common in London clubs renders whistplayers [sic] a professional body.

The transition to the next chess editor was a little unclear. Whyld indicates that Duffy took over “c. 4/1876.” It may be noted that on 8 April, after the missed week, the heading “Chess and Indoor Games” (introduced in March) appears for the last time— but there were no other games. Also the inclusion of Problem 315 by Duffy probably signifies this was his first column. Many new editors of chess columns seem to have made a coded announcement of their arrival in this way. The tenure of Duffy as editor of this column therefore ran from 8 April 1876 which means he was running this column in addition to the I.L.N. and his work for the Westminster Papers. Duffy started with some good reports of the Divan tournament, which was won by Blackburne ahead of Johannes Zukertort (1842–1888), MacDonnell, and other strong amateurs. In the Cleveland scrapbook, some of the columns were incorrectly dated by whoever compiled it; this appears to have led to errors of dating in Gillam’s little book of that tournament. Then on 20 May there was a curious report to the effect that: On Monday last there was a prize in store for the visitors to Simpson’s Divan, and it consisted in the unusual spectacle of two first-class players engaged in a serious game. The partie was played for a small stake, but it was not finished, owing to some misunderstanding having arisen between the players regarding the interpretation of one of the rules of the late tournament.

The players were not identified, but one may strongly suspect that this was the game published in the column the following week. The crosstable of the Divan tournament shows that some games had been left unplayed, including both the games between these two

3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885 gentlemen.13 Duffy pointed out that the tournament had ended with the distribution of prizes after which the organizing committee ceased to have corporate existence. “Although the game arose out of the late tourney, it cannot be considered to have formed any part of that affair.” Then on 27 May we find “The following amusing game was played some time ago between Mr. Macdonnell [sic] and Major Martin.”

G. A. MacDonnell–W. Martin London 1876 Evans Gambit (C52) Land and Water, 27 May 1876 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. b4 B×b4 5.  c3 Ba5 6.  d4 e×d4 7.  0–0 d×c3 8. Qb3 Qf6 9. e5 Qg6 10. N×c3 Nge7 11. Ba3 b5 12. N×b5 Rb8 13. Qa4 Bb7 If 13. … a6 14. Nd6† c×d6 15. e×d6 Nf5 16. Rfe1† B×e1 17. R×e1† Kf8 (or 17. … Kd8 18.  Ne5) 18.  Q×c6 Bb7 19.  Q×d7 B×f3 20. Qc8† R×c8 21. d7† (MacDonnell). 14. Rad1 Bb6 15. B×e7 Major Martin had presumably intended to improve upon a Blackburne–Martin, simultaneous display game earlier in the year which had gone 15.  Bd3 f5 16.  e×f6 Q×f6 17.  Rfe1 Kd8 18.  N×a7 Re8 19.  Qg4 Nd4 20.  Bb2 N×f3† 21.  g×f3 Q×b2 22.  Q×d7† K×d7 23. Bb5# 1–0. MacDonnell pre-empts him. 15. … K×e7 16. Qa3† Kd8 17. Rfe1 a6 18. Nc3 Nd4 19. Nd5 N×f3† 20. Q×f3 Re8 21. N×b6! Q×b6 22. R×d7† K×d7 23. Q×f7† 1–0. The content of this column over a decade and a half is very rich. To provide a full survey would require many pages. All we can do here us to draw attention to a few details among the many which future historians may care to investigate. We puzzled over the following answer to a correspondent on 19 May 1877. It is frustrating that the question was not repeated, but Duffy answered: “We have

55

never seen the pamphlet you describe. It was probably printed for private circulation only.” Perhaps this was the mysterious Economies of Chess penned by Steinitz which was referred to by Prof. James Mavor in his 1923 memoir, to which attention was drawn by Edward Winter on his historical website.14 No copy of that “little pamphlet” appears to be extant in any public library, but maybe some collector may be able to enlighten the world about it. In September and October 1877, Duffy’s campaign against Steinitz reached its height, so the future World Champion was probably relieved when Duffy sailed for the United States in November and gave up the column. He went on professional business for the accountancy firm but also with a private mission to persuade Bird to return to England.15 Land and Water of 3 November (Duffy’s last article for the paper) carried a long account of the City of London Club’s monthly committee meeting where Duffy was toasted by MacDonnell. Duffy, in his reply, referred to his labors as a chess journalist, saying: The aim which for the last two years he had had in view, namely, that efforts which had been persistently made to override and depreciate English chess should no longer be carried out in private, but should be made public, confident as he was that when such should be the case English chess-players might be trusted to form their own opinion upon the matter. He had succeeded, and should not now feel disposed to take any further notice of the parties whose hands he had forced.

Potter, who was to succeed Duffy in the column, was then called upon to respond and “he made some remarks upon the hard-andfast line which had become drawn between English and foreign players. He also alluded to the fact that the enemy was not now supported by any of the first-class English players.” Then MacDonnell, in a second speech, here paraphrased by Duffy, “pointed out the domineering character of foreign pretensions, and the observations of the three speakers seemed to give much satisfaction to their hearers.”

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British Chess Literature to 1914

Potter was a barrister’s clerk by profession. He had suddenly emerged at the start of the 1870s as one of the strongest chess players in England, although this is not always recognized. Statistician Professor Rod Edwards, on his historical ratings website www.edochess.ca, has calculated that Potter’s rating was over 2500 throughout the 1870s and early 1880s, and over 2600 in some years with a peak of 2634. However Potter never competed outside London, there being very few opportunities while he was active. His chief qualification for taking over the column was the two years (roughly 1874 and 1875) that he had

William Norwood Potter, chess editor of Land and Water from late 1877 to the close of the column in 1885. Sketch from The Westminster Papers, IX (May 1876), facing page 1.

done an excellent job of editing the City of London Chess Magazine (see Chapter 5), and before that he had contributed annotations to the Westminster Papers. In the winter of 1871-72 Potter had won the City of London Handicap tournament, showing considerable skill in defeating three amateurs while conceding large odds, and also (as part of that contest) winning a closely contested mini-match on level terms against Blackburne. The following winter Potter also progressed through three rounds before losing to Steinitz. When the City of London Chess Club played its high-stakes correspondence match against Vienna between 1872 and 1874, Potter was Steinitz’s chief assistant and collaborator. In 1875 he gave Zukertort a good fight in a head-to-head match in which many games were drawn. The final result was 8–6 to the Prussian professional who was then probably the second or third strongest player in the world. After that Potter played much less chess in most years, except for 1879 when he drew a protracted match against James Mason 10½—all, and at that time Mason was in the world top ten by Edwards’s calculations. Potter several times expressed views in favor of women’s chess and during the short life (1868 to 1870) of the Ladies’ College Chess Club in Holborn, which had members of both sexes, he was one of the men who joined. He wrote about the club several times and supported its activities. On 12 January 1878 he wrote in support of Mary Rudge who had won third prize in the Counties Chess Association second class tournament at Grantham. Everyone will be pleased to hear that the lady player should have been so successful in a contest in which she had nothing to hope from masculine generosity. Chess is generally looked upon as a chivalrous game, but that is a mistake. Gentlemen who, at some trouble and inconvenience, besides much expense to themselves, go to a distant town to take part in a chess competition, cannot afford to throw away their chances by

3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885

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yielding to any feeling of misplaced gallantry. If a lady, in the exercise of her undoubted right, chooses to enter herself as a competitor, she must look to it that she will have to match her brain and nerves against those of her opponents; nor expect any mercy, for none will be shown. But if, after all, she come out one of the victors, then even the vanquished, whose hopes she has disappointed, will, if they be gentlemen, offer her their hearty congratulations.

… played at some disadvantage, inasmuch as there were none of his fair co-members present to stimulate him with their smiles and amuse him with their chatter. The reason of their absence is not far to seek, for the chessplayers of London are the slaves of Misogny and Nicotine, two of the most selfish spirits that fell. In the provinces they manage things better, and consequently the presence of ladies at country chess gatherings is not at all unusual.

Prince Leopold, one of the sons of Queen Victoria, presented the prizes at the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institute, forerunner of today’s Birkbeck College in London University. Potter noted (in his column of 1 March 1879) that 22 prizes went to ladies. Potter said that there was great applause as the goodlooking teenager Louisa Rymer received the chess prize of chessboard and men. Earlier, on 23 September 1878, he had noted:

On 25 January 1879 Potter replied to a correspondent that the history of the game of chess had been treated in the then current ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Potter was too modest to say that he himself wrote that article, and also one on cards. He said that Twiss’s 18th century book was full of anecdotes “more fabulous than real.” The more recent book by Professor Duncan Forbes “contains a mass of valuable but heterogenous and badly- arranged information” although “the best authorities” agreed with him in assigning an Indian origin to the game. Even Antonius van der Linde (whose Geschichte und Litteratur des Schachspiels was published in 1874) did not escape censure:

Those peculiarly-constituted individuals who object to the daughters of Eve recreating themselves in any other way than by dancing and flirting will no doubt learn with displeasure that a young lady named Miss Rymer, was the winner of the late tournament of the chess club at the Birkbeck Literary Institution. As for ourselves, we feel nothing but the utmost pleasure in being the means of making public such a very interesting event, it being our opinion that chess is a pastime for which women are not naturally unfitted; while we also consider that, when practised in common by the male and female members of a household, it is eminently calculated to bring about a much-to-be-desired companionship and unity of feeling between them … the Birkbeck Chess Class consists of students of both sexes, the masculine element, as may be expected, largely predominating.

Potter had many nice turns of phrase which helped to make his column more lively than most. On 15 February 1879 he reported on Blackburne’s blindfold simultaneous (on 25 January) against representatives of various clubs. Since the event was played at the City of London Chess Club, the Ladies’ College Club were obliged to send a man to represent them and he was defeated. Potter remarked that Mr. Stiebel:

You would do well to disregard his attacks upon other writers, and to remember that even his very great industry cannot be considered to have attained to more than a relative amount of reliability, seeing that the historical facts of Chess lie hidden and undiscoverable beneath the fables of centuries.

This of course was before later researchers like Murray reckoned that much was discoverable by a more scientific method based on archaeology, philology and close study of texts. On 31 May 1879 the Chess Intelligence section reported: “Mr. W. N. Potter having found it necessary to bring his public Chess career to a close, we proceed to write his Obituary as a Chess-player. His achievements … have been almost exclusively confined to the City of London.” The writer did mention that, in conjunction with Herr Steinitz, Potter successfully conducted the correspondence match

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British Chess Literature to 1914

with Vienna, but abstaining from praise he seems to imply that Steinitz was chiefly responsible (probably true). On 7 June he clarified that Potter “retires as player and club official. The time thus saved will serve for the present, and there will therefore be no immediate relinquishment of literary labours.” However, Mason said Potter had already agreed to play him a match, which duly took place and ended in a draw after a very long contest. Potter thereafter continued writing—but cut down heavily on his play. On 20 September 1879 Potter wrote of the new Doughty Club formed for chess and billiards in London’s West End. “Billiards and chess are two games that may very well go together, both being in their different ways games of skill…. Cards and chess have never gone well together.” He did hope that the club rule that gambling is forbidden will be “so construed as to prevent chess being played for money. Thereby the real meaning of the word amateur, which is sometimes lost sight of, will be conserved….” On 13 March 1880 Potter published an obituary of the popular figure known as “Old Lowe,” whose age was “not precisely known to anyone, but considered to be nearer ninety than eighty.” Bohemian by birth, Löwe had come to London to be a professional chess player but saw sense and became a worker, opening a hotel where Morphy had stayed. His favorite saying was that “Pawns are not to be picked up in the street” and: He once beat Staunton in a match at pawn and two moves, an act of audacity which, in the eyes of the eminent English expert, was most intolerable and not to be endured, especially as Lowe expected to be paid the amount played for. Hence a certain blackball, which excluded Lowe from the Westminster Chess Club, was supposed to be of an ascertainable parentage, an idea which seemed to be confirmed when Mr. Lowe was elected a member of the same society after Mr. Staunton’s retirement therefrom [Land and Water, XXIX, 13 March 1880, page 235].

On 11 November 1882, Potter noted that Steinitz had left England during the latter part of October for Philadelphia. They had once been friends before a big falling-out. Now Potter seemed ready to bury the hatchet. He said Steinitz “has no peer amongst living chess-players, Morphy alone excepted…. Mr. Steinitz has his faults, but for our part we say let the memory of them be sunk in the Atlantic.” Then on 16 June 1883 Potter had this to say about Zukertort clinching first prize in the London international. There is no doubt that Zukertort, so far as genius and knowledge are concerned, was then [1872] what he is now, but, like Steinitz, he had to go through a course of what we will call the English style of play, which aims at methodic calculation, soundness of combination, and a severe accuracy. The result of a union between German genius and British self-mastery has been with Zukertort the same as it was with Steinitz, who came over here in 1862, expecting to do grand things, but who, in the congress of that year, received a salutary lesson, for he then only took sixth prize, whereas four years afterwards he was able to defeat the then world’s champion, Anderssen.

Potter continued for two more years with good observations on the chess world but then surprisingly, in the summer of 1885 the Land and Water column started to collapse. His column did not appear on either 11 or 18 July. Perhaps there was an editorial change or else Potter had some personal problem. The former seems more likely as it was explained on the 25th that due to pressure on other departments the “chess had to stand over.” Then 8 August was also missed. After the 29 August article this fine column by Potter ended without explanation.

Heyday of the Field Column The first brief column in The Field was briefly discussed in the previous chapter, but now it is time to look at the second phase of its run, culminating in the editorship of Stein-

3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885 itz. It is hardly possible for a chess historian to do justice to the period between 1858 and 1914 without reading the column of The Field and this represents a tremendous amount of material. Although the column was initially sometimes short, it grew longer in the time of Steinitz, especially when a major tournament was in progress, and the amount of space granted to his successor, Hoffer, on such occasions was sometimes even greater, extending in a few cases to more than a whole tabloid page. This shows that the editors of the paper had become well aware that a significant proportion of their readership perhaps bought the paper only for the chess column. Using The Field as an historical source does require a good deal of time and patience, partly because it has not yet been digitized. Some of its numerous volumes run to over a thousand tabloid pages for a six-month period so that situation may not change for a long while yet. The volumes were particularly large in the last two decades before the First World War. However, images of some of the chess columns have been made available at the Chess Archaeology website (listed as “London Field”). As of mid–2017, the following was available there: the Williams run (1853– 1854), May–September 1858 (the first period of the revival), July–December 1870, January–July 1902. Reprints of several years of the column, namely 1873 to 1882 and some of Hoffer’s years, have also been published by Moravian Chess. Many libraries still hold bound volumes of The Field but these are often held in remote storage and have to be ordered days in advance. Many readers will read this column in microfilm. With a microfilm one can usually scan through an issue quickly with the machine in fast-scrolling mode, taking advantage of the fact that chess diagrams generally stand out well from pages with plain text matter. This time-honored technique does not work so well with the new digital film readers as it

59

does with the old mechanical ones. Moreover, the contents tables for each issue can be hard to find, because of the way the paper was made up in order to enable it to cover as much of a week’s sport as possible, and to carry photographs once technology made it possible to reproduce them instead of line engravings. Rose explained on page 110 of his history: Before the First World War, The Field went to press in two sections, the art paper (illustrated) section on Thursday, and the rotary (solid type) section on Friday, at about 11 p.m. Late news was taken over the telephone until 9 p.m., and the paper came out on Saturday morning.

Especially in Hoffer’s time, reports of current tournaments could be supplemented by items in the late news page, which might be the whole results of a tournament round, not repeated the following week in the main column. When reading The Field in bound volumes, one problem is that chess did not appear in a settled position in each issue; it could be almost anywhere in the paper and some issues had more pages than others. Worse, in many 19th century volumes there appears to be no index for each volume to steer one quickly to the correct pages. It is a good idea, therefore, when reading a particular volume of The Field for the first time, to keep note of all the pages where chess is to be found, in case there is a need to return to the same volume at a later date. Researchers with access to the scrapbooks in the Cleveland Public Library, or the two microfilms derived from those scrapbooks, need to be aware that in many cases the stated dates of articles are incorrect, for example during much of 1872. There were weeks when the chess column was omitted and the person writing the dates into the scrapbooks must have been unaware of, or lost track of, these omissions. Consequently some recent chess books have wrong dates because of relying on the films from Cleveland. Only by checking against the original volumes or complete microfilms such as those from the

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British Library can one be sure that a particular article, and so often a particular game or event, is correctly dated. The first Cleveland microfilm of The Field has all the columns up to June 1884. The other is less satisfactory. It goes from July 1884 to the end of 1899 with just a few weeks in 1900. Then it reverts to the start of the second series in 1858 but peters out mid–1860. Also on that microfilm are a few unconnected items: Löwenthal’s column in The Dial, some cards articles by “Cavendish” (Henry Jones) from the Field, up to about 20 September 1873, then a single issue of the first volume of the Westminster Papers (October 1868) and finally some Field chess columns from between 4 July 1931 and December 1935.16 The initiative to revive chess in The Field probably came from John Henry Walsh (1810– 1888), who occupied the editor’s chair for more than thirty years from February 1857 until his death. Rose’s history of The Field describes Walsh as a “great all-rounder … under

whom the paper took a leading part in experimental work with shotguns and powders and in the staging of dog shows and field trials. Walsh even extended the multiplicity of his interests to the establishment of lawn tennis as we know it to-day.”17 Walsh trained as a medical doctor but became an expert on dogs and guns. He wrote a book on greyhounds under the pen name “Stonehenge.” An accident with a gun, which cost him the forefinger and thumb of his left hand led him to take great interest in the subject and, says Walsh, “It may almost be said that it was Walsh’s work which led to the production of the shotgun as we know it today.” Rose tells that in November 1858 the offices and printing works of The Field moved from their original location in Essex Street to the corner of 346 Strand and Wellington Street. “There in a commanding position, at the corner of the approach to the Strand from Waterloo Bridge, the offices were to remain until 1891.”18 The chess editors would prob-

Left: John Henry Walsh, editor of The Field from 1857 to 1887, who used to play chess regularly at the Divan in the Strand. Right: Samuel Standidge Boden, formerly chess editor of The Field, as depicted in the Westminster Papers, IX (September 1876), page 88.

3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885 ably have had a desk there, and would have become very familiar with this handy location, which was a five minute walk from the Divan and not too far from the chess clubs located in the City. The Field resumed chess on 24 April 1858. This revival was well timed because of a general revival of chess activity which was soon to be stimulated by the exploits of American chess prodigy Paul Morphy. The second chess editor of The Field, Samuel Standidge Boden (1826–1882), by vocation a landscape artist, was a native of Hull who had won the Provincial tournament at the 1851 London Congress. In the same year his chess book A Popular Introduction was published anonymously.19 Much of what is known about Boden comes from a profile in the Westminster Papers of September 1876. In 1853–1854 he was involved in editing the British Chess Review (discussed in Chapter 5) but his day job was as an accountant with the South Eastern Railway at Nine Elms. His last tournament was the 1861 B.C.A. Congress in Bristol where he lost to Paulsen after defeating Horwitz and Wayte, a pretty good indication of his relative standing. Increasingly with the passing of years, however, Boden seems to have preferred to devote his leisure hours to painting and he did not enter the 1862 London international, whereas some amateurs weaker than he did participate. In Boden’s hands, the column of The Field became a good source for chess news and occasionally he expressed strong personal opinions, for example about Blackburne’s being wrongly defaulted against Dubois in the 1862 tournament.20 The games Boden included in the column were usually interesting, but his annotations were generally brief, as was normal in those days. Staunton’s notes for the Illustrated London News and Löwenthal’s for the Era were only more detailed on a few occasions. In 1869, however, the column started to vanish from the paper. It is not clear whether

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this was Boden’s choice or for editorial reasons. A week was missed in February, two in March, two more each in June and July, and one in August. The last column to appear in 1869 was on 28 April and it was only a few lines long, with a problem solution. Then on 1 January 1870 a new series began, which is clear because the Problem is numbered 1. The game renumbering was also restarted. At the top was the following announcement: This department of THE FIELD has been, for some months, in abeyance. In resuming it, we purpose, whenever the more important features of the paper will permit, that chess shall be both more copiously and more continuously illustrated than it has been heretofore.

The question of when Boden actually resigned the column remains open. The Westminster Papers profile says he edited the column only “down to the early part of 1869,” which would imply that somebody else was responsible for the January 1870 resumption. The next editor, Valentine John Cecil De Vere (1846–1875), is not generally thought to have taken over at The Field as early as that, but Fraser, writing to White on 28 June 1877, said the Field column was edited by Boden, De Vere and Steinitz successively; nor was any other chess editor at this period named by contemporaries or by Rose. On the other hand, an earlier paragraph in the Westminster Papers for February 1872 (page 172) had said: “We observe that some of our American friends still refer to the Chess column in the Field as edited by Mr. Boden. That gentleman’s connection with The Field ceased in March 1870.” That seems to be the basis for the datings given in Whyld’s Columns, namely: “Boden 24/4/1858–3/70; 71–73; de Vere 1871; Steinitz 73–8/7/82.” None of those details is certain; certainly the closing date for Steinitz looks slightly premature. There does not seem to be any conclusive evidence to decide when Boden stopped writing for The Field but it seems more likely that he continued to March 1870 than that he

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quit altogether in 1869. Owen Hindle and Bob Jones, in their biography of De Vere, mentioned another detail from the 1876 profile: at some point Boden inherited money from a distant relative that enabled him to give up his railroad job and devote himself to art. Hindle and Jones, however, make a connection between Boden’s receiving the money, giving up the day job, and relinquishing the column to De Vere, dating all three to 1870.21 Here they went beyond the sources and made an unwarranted assumption. The 1876 profile did not precisely date Boden’s inheritance to 1870 and certainly it did not connect the inheritance to his ceasing to write for The Field. Hindle and Jones said that Boden arranged for De Vere to succeed him, which is probably true, but no primary source says precisely when this occurred. So many contradictory statements have appeared, both at the time and in more recent secondary sources, concerning the end of Boden’s stewardship and Steinitz’s assumption of the editorial throne that it is almost impossible to disentangle the threads. Did Boden and De Vere have a lengthy transition period working together, or did Boden return to help out later? Were there un-named assistants? How much did Steinitz do for The Field before his triumphant return from the Vienna 1873 tournament? These are the unanswered questions. The toughest issue is to date De Vere’s period in charge of the column, the only general agreement being that he was Chess Editor throughout 1871. There are two entangled issues: when did he really start and when did Steinitz replace him? De Vere might have seemed an excellent appointment at first. After all he had been the first English chess champion, by virtue of winning the B.C.A. challenge cup when it was first played for in 1866, although in the second championship he tied with Blackburne and lost the play-off. The problem was his character, and latterly his tuberculosis. Potter assessed De Vere’s strengths and shortcomings

Cecil de Vere, Steinitz’s predecessor as chess editor of The Field, drawn by Wallis McKay for MacDonnell’s book Chess Life-Pictures.

in his obituary notice published in the March 1875 number of the City of London Chess Magazine. He said that De Vere had many of the qualities of a strong master: “a calm, cool judgment, and a clear view of the board,” but he also lacked many of the qualifications required in a good chess editor. Potter continued: He [De Vere] had very little, or rather no book learning, his natural indolence standing in his way in this respect, just the same as it impeded his advancement in life. Owing to the same moral defect, his management of the Field Chess column during the two years it was edited by him can be considered as by no means satisfactory, and we look upon it as a good thing for Chess that such an important column should have been detached from his care about fifteen months ago, and delivered into the hands of its present capable and conscientious editor.

If we take Potter’s “two years” in conjunction with a start in April 1870 that would imply De Vere was replaced in 1872, which is too early, unless it was by the temporary return of Boden—which Whyld seems to imply but without any primary evidence. On the other hand, there are problems with stating

3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885 that Steinitz took over in January 1873, as his biographer Landsberger claimed. The publishing house Moravian Chess have issued a reprint volume entitled The Chess Columns of The Field, Edited by Wilhelm Steinitz. Volume 1: 1873–1876 but it is likely that 1873 was not all his work. Potter’s statement about a two-year tenure ending about 15 months prior to March 1875 implies that Steinitz was appointed editor not in early 1873 but only towards the very end of that year. Anyone reading the Field’s reports of the Vienna tournament in the summer of 1873, with sarcastic annotations about the weak opening play of Steinitz among others, can tell that Steinitz was not yet the editor. Steinitz may well have made some contributions, even as early as 1872. De Vere being so unreliable, Walsh probably had Steinitz lined up to deputize if copy fell short or did not meet the deadline. Steinitz later said that the notes to his win against Potter that was published in The Field on 9 March 1872 were by him, and it is fairly clear from internal evidence that this was true. Allowing for some vagueness in Potter’s dating, we may suppose Steinitz was probably eased into the role in the fall of 1873, following his victory at Vienna. A roughly two-year tenure by De Vere would thus imply that he had taken over in 1871 rather than 1870 as usually stated. Reading through those early columns of 1873 it is apparent that the game annotations were mostly as brief as in the previous years. In 1874 they become much more detailed in most weeks. In fact the first game that really receives the Steinitz treatment was the one published in The Field on 22 November 1873, in which Zukertort conceded odds of pawn and two moves to Vyse and drew. So Steinitz was probably formally confirmed in the post in November or December. A start date for Steinitz in late 1873 also accords with a letter that novelist R. D. Blackmore wrote to Nelson Fedden after Steinitz had spent Christmas Day 1873 at his house: “Steinitz, I

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am delighted to say, has a nice appointment, & vested English interest, as Chess-editor of The Field.”22 This sounds like it was a recent change. Moreover it fits with Potter saying in early 1875 that the column was “detached” from De Vere about 15 months previously. If this is correct, we are left with one problem: De Vere’s start date. The Westminster Papers said Boden quit in March 1870 from which Whyld assumed an immediate appointment of De Vere. However, if De Vere’s tenure began in April 1870 that would mean he had more than three years in charge instead of about two. There are other problems with supposing De Vere was conducting the column for most of that year. For about a month in July and early August, De Vere was at BadenBaden, or in transit; somebody else was doing the column while he was away. Telegraphing reports must have been very difficult because the town was close to a war zone; the first report in The Field, about the start of that tournament, was on 6 August so cannot have been received in London until the event was almost over. Also, in November 1870 the Westminster Papers pointed out various mistakes that had appeared a couple of weeks previously concerning entries for the Challenge Cup tournament, one of which was to say that “if Mr. De Vere (who, by-the-bye, never entered) won the largest number of games he would become the proprietor of the Cup, because he won the year before last.” This does not sound like an error De Vere would have made, since he would have known it was 1866 not 1868/9 that he won, and whether he was going to play for the Cup this year or not. From this it follows that De Vere had not yet taken over (at least on a regular basis). The Westminster Papers was sarcastic about such mistakes in both the columns of The Field and the Illustrated London News, saying “in future, we must refer to [them] as the ‘know-nothing’ papers” and that “if the Editor of The Field cannot be a little more accurate he had better give up his

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Chess column; or at any rate he might pay us something handsome for correcting his blunders.”23 There is an alternative possibility to the usual supposition that one editor followed another seamlessly; it may be that Walsh just delegated a member of The Field’s regular staff to compile the column at that period in 1870 when it was particularly unsatisfactory, while waiting for De Vere to take up his appointment. In a 2011 email, Hindle suggested to the present author that 24 December 1870 might be the start of the regular De Vere column, and the passage just quoted makes that plausible, but hard-and-fast evidence is lacking. Would an efficient editor like Walsh have tolerated an incompetent appointee for three years? It seems doubtful, but it seems that De Vere was retained for two years when he had Steinitz on hand to assist. There is no doubt that the Field column improved by the end of 1873 although the fact that Steinitz was both a foreigner and a professional made him unpopular in some quarters. His spoken English was said by contemporaries to be very poor, though they may have exaggerated, and he was sometimes mocked for this, but his written English was excellent. Steinitz had a tendency to become embroiled in bitter arguments, especially in print. This first affected his work in The Field in 1875 when a complaint about a serious inaccuracy he inserted in the column on 20 November, concerning the finances of the City of London Chess Club, was received from that club’s secretary. Three weeks later the Field published that secretary’s protest, the editor’s apology, and Steinitz’s groveling retraction.24 Nevertheless, for almost a decade Steinitz set new standards in chess journalism and his years in the editorial chair were marked by a high standard of game annotations, which were objective and instructive to readers of all skill levels. Only Löwenthal had previously given so much care to annotating games. Steinitz wrote on technical chess matters with

William Steinitz, chess editor of The Field from some time in 1873 until his resignation in the summer of 1882. Photograph from MacDonnell’s book The Knights and Kings of Chess.

an authority nobody else could match, except that in analysis of tactical complications Zukertort, Blackburne, and (later) Chigorin were sometimes his superiors. Now that he had a regular income, Steinitz was able to take time out from regular play to develop his ideas about positional chess and he came to understand the strategy of the game far more deeply than his editorial contemporaries. Steinitz attended the great Paris tournament of 1878 solely as a reporter. He sent back very lengthy accounts to London, setting a pattern for how Hoffer would report major events for the same paper in later years. In all the years Steinitz worked on The Field he hardly played any competitive chess, apart from his crushing match victory over Blackburne in 1876, until his re-emergence at Vienna in 1882. He did of course visit some clubs

3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885 for exhibition chess and played consultation games for prizes offered by wealthy amateurs but his income came mostly from The Field and his energies were mostly given to it, until he decided to emerge from retirement. Steinitz’s reign ended in July 1882, after the Vienna tournament; an acrimonious correspondence involving James Mason provoked his resignation. No blow-by-blow account will be rehearsed here as there are many versions of the story and the evidence remains inconclusive for what exactly happened. Rose rightly said that Steinitz put the column “in a position of pre-eminence” but said nothing about why he left.25 Steinitz’s biographer said cautiously that “research is unlikely to show just why he resigned his editorial duties,”26 although Hooper and Whyld (in the second edition of The Oxford Companion to Chess) suggested that there was a conspiracy, saying “The Field column was lost to him as a result of manœuvres made while he was away.”27 Steinitz appears to have believed, at least in later years, that there had been a conspiracy engineered by Hoffer to replace him. More likely Steinitz was the architect of his own downfall. Hoffer appears to have taken over at The Field from 5 August 1882; his career as a chess columnist is discussed in Chapter 4. Curiously, Whyld’s Columns (page 144) dates the end of Steinitz’s editorship as 8 July 1882 but no reason is found to suppose he did not also contribute the columns published on 15 and 22 July. It was on 29 July that a truncated column appeared together with the following statement signed by the Editor, i.e., Walsh, which began: We have to apologise to our readers for the absence of our usual annotated game, having received from Mr. Steinitz in lieu thereof a long letter, extending to fully a column, on the subject of a remark made in our leading article “The Chess World,” on 20 May, and the correspon-

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dence resulting from it. We feel bound to close this correspondence….

That leading article, which was probably not written by Steinitz (then competing in Vienna), had said something about Mason to which the latter objected once the tournament was over. In a letter to White on 23 November, Fraser summarized what had happened: Hoffer now edits the Field Column assisted, I suppose, by Zukertort.—Steinitz I understand wished to insert some letter or another, which the Chief Editor considered objectionable in some respect. & Steinitz, standing upon his dignity, insisted on its insertion which occasioned a quarrel and—resignation of the Editorship by little Steinitz.—There is no doubt he was very conscientious in all his analysis, and the change is not I should say for the better.

Walsh is known to have played chess at Simpson’s Divan and it was probably his influence which led to the Divan’s rescinding its ban on Steinitz after the controversies during the fall of 1877. Nevertheless Steinitz must have tried his patience sorely.* It is known that in 1880 (Rose does not say exactly when) Walsh “suffered a severe illness that incapacitated him for eighteen months.” Although Walsh was back in charge in 1882, the seeds of what got Steinitz into trouble may have been sown during Walsh’s absence. Because Hoffer was still writing the column up to the summer of 1913, discussion of his “reign” is deferred to the next chapter. A final observation is by Potter, in his Land and Water column on 9 September, reporting that Hoffer had recently acquired the column in The Field and now was rejoining the City of London Club: He retired therefrom in 1875, in company with Messrs Steinitz, Zukertort and others. No one can condemn the loyal partisanship which caused him so to act. For some time past, however, Mr. Hoffer has carved out for himself an independent position. He has become as it were a friendly neutral in his attitude towards English

*Steinitz’s crises at The Field are discussed in more detail in Harding, Eminent, especially page 189.

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British Chess Literature to 1914 chess…. It is well known that Mr. Hoffer’s position in chess has been materially strengthened by his appointment to an important editorial chair. The influence he has thus acquired will doubtless be well exercised; and should this reasonable anticipation be fulfilled, a chess career in every respect prosperous and satisfactory opens out before him.

Steinitz’s Other Columns Steinitz conducted two other columns while he was in England. The first of these, which he inherited from Löwenthal in 1876, was in The Figaro, a London satirical and literary paper edited by James Mortimer. He was an American journalist and chess expert who originally settled in Paris and was friendly with the Emperor Napoleon III and his family. Shortly before the downfall of that regime in the Franco-Prussian War, Mortimer moved to England where he resided for the rest of his life. He founded the London Figaro which first appeared on 17 May 1870; it usually appeared twice weekly. The main title, as the British Library catalog shows, varied over the years between plain Figaro and The London Figaro; sometimes this even varied between the front page and inner pages. The Figaro usually appeared twice weekly with chess in the midweek edition. Löwenthal’s column began on 17 February 1872 but it was almost entirely devoted to problems. Following his death, Steinitz conducted the column from 2 August 1876 until 19 April 1882, and sometimes it included news items, but not games. Generally this column is of less interest than The Field except sometimes in 1877 when Steinitz was under verbal attack from other chess columnists. Mortimer permitted him to make polemical replies in The Figaro which The Field might not have tolerated. Contrary to what the Oxford Companion to Chess says, the paper did not close when Mortimer was jailed over a libel case and there was no interruption of Steinitz’s column at

that point. The British Library lacks the volume in which Steinitz’s column actually ended but the Cleveland scrapbook has all the columns, and it has been turned into a pdf, which is downloadable from their Digital Gallery. That also includes the rather poor column The Figaro briefly ran in 1887. In the summer of 1883, after the London international tournament, Steinitz remained in England for a while. During this period he was able to start a new column in a minor London weekly, called Ashore or Afloat: A Weekly Review of Sport, Fisheries, etc., at Home and Abroad. This paper was published between 6 July 1883 and 11 January 1884 but Steinitz did not last long as chess editor. The column is significant only that it included some polemical pieces by Steinitz, targeting the organizers of the congress and also Zukertort whom he was challenging to a match. The management presumably did not like the

James Mortimer, proprietor of the Figaro, later profiled in The Chess-Monthly, XIV (November 1892), page 65.

3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885 tone of these, and possibly received complaints; his resignation was announced on 14 September. This was Steinitz’s last chess column in England, and he left permanently for America soon after the column ended. Chess was in the paper from the first issue until January 1884. Whyld called it “a dull column after Steinitz forced out.” These columns have been reprinted by Moravian Chess.

Columns in Various Periodicals During the late 1870s and early 1880s several excellent chess columns flourished, at least in the eyes of their readership and the opinion of other chess editors. Copies of weekly columns were exchanged between editors and they frequently quoted from each other and sometimes debated various topics such as the notorious “dummy pawn” which had arisen from the British Chess Association’s attempt in 1862 to improve upon Staunton’s formulation of the pawn promotion rule. These columns appeared in a wide variety of periodicals, including magazines serving particular regions, journals for people of a technical bent, women’s magazines, and not least papers for juveniles (including some school magazines). It was far from unusual to find a particular column being recommended in another, which could even lead to subscriptions coming in from classes of readership who might not otherwise have had any interest in the magazine or newspaper concerned. In the extreme case, to be discussed later, a school magazine broke out of its natural boundaries and mutated into a national chess magazine. Chess players were not infrequently people who were interested in modern scientific and technical ideas, which is probably what led to several magazines of this character to have chess columns. These included Knowl-

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edge (which was started by astronomer Richard Proctor, but continued after his death). Shorter lived was the Illustrated Science Monthly (originally The Science Monthly Illustrated in 1883), which had one of the earliest female chess editors: Miss Frideswide Beechey.28 A few women’s papers also had chess columns. Men usually conducted these,29 until Miriam Clarke, the second wife of chess master Isidor Gunsberg, started a chess column in the Lady’s Pictorial on 18 May 1895, including profiles of leading female players. That column ceased abruptly in August 1897 when Mrs. Gunsberg was dying. She had profiled many of the leading women players of the 1890s. Another prominent member of the London Ladies’ Chess Club, Rhoda Bowles, started writing about chess in 1899 in Ada Ballin’s Womanhood, continuing until that monthly magazine closed in June 1907. To return to science and technology magazines, the column with the longest run was in English Mechanic (for over thirty years), but the short-lived one in Design and Work (1878–1881) had one of the highest reputations among cognoscenti and still makes interesting reading today. The English Mechanic was a London weekly which ran (with variations in the title) for over 60 years up to 1926. Page 1 of volume 61 included a retrospective article about their completing 60 volumes. This stated that English Mechanic started on 31 March 1865 but completed its 60 volumes in less than 30 years. Its original price of one penny was raised to twopence and the size more than doubled on 12 January 1866, with a further enlargement on 29 June the same year. “Week in, week out, for 30 years, this paper has presented to its readers an epitome of the scientific news and discoveries of those 30 years. It has been an abstract and brief chronicle of the ‘scientific’ times.” They added on page 2 that “As to amusements, have we not had a Chess column ever since 7th June, 1872—the immediate outcome of a letter from one of our correspondents, Mr. William

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F. Denning of Bristol, who was kindly ‘willing to send problems.’” Abbott was the first chess editor of the English Mechanic, succeeded from October 1876 until March 1892 by James Pierce (1833– 1892). Pierce organized six postal tourneys from 1882 onwards, the management of the last competition (which ended in 1894) was completed by his brother. On the death of Pierce, after some discussion with readers, the column resumed on 20 May 1892 with an anonymous editor. Whyld named his brother William Timbrell Pierce (1839–1922) as editor until about 1899, then J. P. Taylor, but an A. G. Fellows, who was under the same impression as Whyld, was informed: “We do not understand your post-card. Mr. Pierce is not Chess Editor of ‘E.M.’”30 The 20th-century continuation also lacks a byline. Several volumes may be found in whole or part on Google Books. The last physical volumes this author has seen covered 1905 and 1906, while the index showed that chess content continued to at least the end of the publisher’s volume 84 (1 February 1907) and it may well have gone on much longer, but it now just consisted of a weekly problem. After James Pierce, this journal is of no interest to practical players or historians. While the English Mechanic, in its good early years, was popular with chess problem aficionados and correspondence players, more widely influential, praised and quoted by many of its contemporaries, was the column in Design and Work. Chess in this weekly was edited by William Robert Bland of Derby (1850– 1929). His column had games and news, and ran problem tourneys, but also debated issues with readers and other editors. The dummy pawn was one favorite topic. Staunton’s Chess Praxis had said, on page 6, that: “When a Pawn has reached the eighth or last square on its file, it immediately assumes the name and power of any Piece its player may select, except a King….” Staunton’s wording, Bland said, could be literally interpreted as allowing

one to choose an opposing piece, “a possibility which no doubt never occurred to the drafters or any player, but might to a problem composer.” The B.C.A. wording saw no necessity for saying that another King could not be chosen, but had deliberately introduced a new idea in its final clause: X III. Q UEENING A PAWN. When a pawn has reached the eighth square, the player has the option of selecting a piece, whether such piece has been previously lost or not, whose name and powers it shall then assume, or of deciding that it shall remain a Pawn.31

During Staunton’s lifetime, expressing opposition to his rules was a way of showing where you stood but it was surprising to see the row flaring up again several years after his death. Bland commented: “We should regret to see the Dummy pawn introduced into problems. That it would be of service to composers there is no doubt.” His Derby colleague Fred Thompson (1835–1906) was a particularly strong advocate and he received support from Potter who said “it’s in the rules.” Discussion of the “dummy pawn” continued on 30 August in Design and Work. Bland quoted J. Crake’s column in the Hull Bellman which said “it is an infringement of the rights of a player to compel him to make another piece where it would be prejudicial to his interest to do so.” This remark, indeed the whole debate, may be seen as offering an insight into the peculiar Victorian cast of mind. Bland returned to the topic on 6 September saying “The opponents of the Dummy Pawn take their stand on law; its advocates on equity.” He said laws not framed equitably should be amended and so the Design and Work editor was in favor of the dummy pawn. On the Staunton wording, which said a pawn must be immediately replaced, Crake thought that while the option of choice was purposely left to the player, really it just never occurred to Staunton that a player would choose a piece of the opposing color. The debate on the dummy pawn contin-

3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885 ued throughout the year, and more. For example, on 18 October, Bland wrote that a dummy pawn in the initial position of a problem must be objected to but non-promotion was also an issue. It had now been pointed out, as discussion continued in the chess press, that some problems could be ruined by Black non-promotion. Ultimately, when the London 1883 Congress was being planned, it was recognized by the organizing committee that neither wording conformed to the actual practice of chess players and that Continental masters could hardly be expected to play under either set of rules. A subcommittee was appointed to draft a revised set of rules and effectively came down on Staunton’s side as they ruled out the dummy pawn and decided that it was unnecessary to specify that a piece of the opposing color could not be selected. Their wording was different from the current FIDE laws but similar in its effect: A Pawn reaching the eighth square must be named as a Queen or piece, at option of player, independent of the number of pieces on the board. The created Queen or piece acts immediately in its new capacity. Until the Pawn has been so named the move is incomplete.32

Another topic that arose in this and other columns was the Continental (algebraic) notation which was rarely seen in British chess literature prior to the First World War (although Stamma had used it in the 18th century) but which was being advocated by W. T. Pierce in the Brighton Herald. On 24 January 1880 Bland printed a game using algebraic notation with 0–0 for castling and dagger for check but he had a P in pawn moves (“Pe4 Pe5” etc.). Perhaps he did this because Pierce favored this notation. Other games in Design and Work remained in descriptive notation. To be fair, not only Spanish but also French publications (such as La Stratégie) continued to use descriptive notation for a long time afterwards. A few chess editors, such as H. F. L. Meyer, sometimes tried to introduce idiosyncratic notations but the vast

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majority of publications adhered to English descriptive. Even minor amendments to notation that we think nothing of today met with objections. The December 1878 issue of Westminster Papers printed a two-page letter by the former Oxford University player Edwyn A. Anthony (1843–1932). who proposed a spacesaving simplification of the descriptive notation, and noted that the symbols x (for captures), 0–0, and 0–0–0 were now in use in some quarters, Potter joked (in Land and Water of 7 December) that Mr. Anthony “wants to describe a Kt by an N in order to please the editor of the Fonetic Nuz” and he mentioned that Blackburne (who had often played in German tournaments) was strongly in favor of the English notation. After some thought, Potter relented on 11 January 1879. He said he was in favor of English descriptive (though not using that term) but agreed that reforms should aim toward making the space taken up by each move approximately equal and to make the number of symbols denoting a move as few as possible. In view of the anomaly that Knight (beginning with the same letter as King) was denoted by two symbols, he now accepted the change to N. He had some objections to Anthony’s example which had no hyphens (e.g., 1. PK4). However Potter did not adopt these improvements in his own column! Chess editors were always at the mercy of the decisions of their superiors and of the commercial decisions that led to newspaper proprietors’ changing policy, merging titles or just going out of business. Some good columns that otherwise might have run for many years came to an end even in this “golden age” of columns, and both the notable Derby columnists were affected. Thompson had started his column in the Derby and Derbyshire Gazette on 24 March 1876, prompted by a visit by Blackburne to that city the following week, and this column continued almost to the end of 1877. At the start of January 1878 Thompson’s column transferred to

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the Derbyshire Advertiser, where it gave excellent coverage (not only of local events) for two years. But in early 1880 the column appeared irregularly and never returned after 21 May (datelined 20 May). On page 5 of the 28 May issue a short notice regretted the discontinuance of the column. Bland explained on 5 June that Thompson decided to end his Derbyshire Advertiser column because it was too often “crowded out” instead of receiving expected proofs. He wrote to Bland: “This, as you are aware, has been of too frequent occurrence to be agreeable. It is no joke to prepare matter for a Chess column and to have it repeatedly returned in manuscript only.” Bland himself was to suffer a similar fate the following year. His column, despite being widely praised and probably the sole reason why many chess players subscribed to Design and Work, became the victim of a policy change and eventual merger. Sussex chess stalwart Henry William Butler (1858– 1935), in his own column in the Brighton Guardian, was sorry to hear the news: We deeply regret to announce the discontinuance of the chess page in Design and Work, which has been most ably conducted by Mr. W. R. Bland, compiler of the Chess Club Directory. The paper has now assumed a new form and chess is considered foreign to its scope. We confess our inability to agree to this assertion, especially when it is considered that this column was universally acknowledged to be one of the best and most interesting extant. We are convinced that the chess world has sustained a substantial loss by this abrupt termination, and we feel confident that our sentiments will be fully endorsed by all chessists who have had any experience with Mr. Bland or his column.33

That was at the end of March 1881 and it seems that some attempt was made to persuade the management of Design and Work to reverse their decision. The column struggled on a few months more, but many articles included no game. Bland’s column last appeared on 20 August after which the journal was relaunched under its new title, Design and Work

and Mechanical World. Bland then applied himself to editing a second edition of his Directory, which appeared in 1882 but after that he appears to have retired from chess journalism, and passed on his rights to the Directory to the Rowlands in Dublin. On 27 August Potter regretted the ending of Bland’s column saying it would “undoubtedly be as much a shock as a very great loss to the Chess world at large.” It “had become one of the most valuable organs of the game” and its reputation had been growing. Sometimes columns came to an end at the choice of the chess editor himself, when he became too busy with work or family matters. William Pierce ended his column in the Brighton Herald early in 1881 because “he required some rest from chess work.” On the other hand, Edward John Winter Wood (1847– 1920), member of a well known chess playing family from Plymouth, was another chess editor whose column ended because of the failure of the publication in which it appeared, the Western Magazine and Portfolio. This was a monthly miscellany magazine, with a west of England (especially Devon) emphasis, published in Plymouth from July 1888 to December 1892. The original title was The Western Portfolio, edited by Godfrey Evans. The chess column began in February 1889 (the second issue of volume 2) and continued almost to the end of the publication. Winter Wood did not receive a byline but as already noted when Duffy took over at Land and Water, starting with one of one’s own problems appears to have been a common way for new editors to signal who was in charge (though this was not always the case because some chess editors were not problem composers). In this case some other columns stated that Winter Wood was responsible. The start of the column was announced the month before it began: “This department of our work will be conducted by well known and competent hands, and will contain an

3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885 original problem, as well as the current chess news of each month, together with games, criticisms, and reviews of everything appertaining to the Chess world.” Throughout, the column ran under a Latin motto, “Delectando Pariterque Monendo,” a line from the Roman poet Horace about mingling profit with pleasure. In April 1889 the title of the periodical changed to The Western Magazine and Portfolio. From volume 3 (1890) James McCleod became editor. Then in 1892 the magazine changed character, dropping the price from three pence to one pence and introducing color illustrations while reducing the text. This move, which signaled the imminent mortality of the chess column, was a commercial failure. In September 1892 the publisher changed and the last chess (very small) was seen in October. A curiosity of the final volume is that pages were not numbered. The title by then had changed to The Western Magazine: a monthly illustrated journal. Another chess editor who was highly regarded by his peers was Edward Marks, in north London, although not for his first effort. Marks began his work in August 1879 in the short-lived monthly North Middlesex Magazine published by Walter Pelham for 20 issues between July 1879 and February 1881. Although on 13 December 1879 Land and Water said Edward Marks was retiring from the chess editorship of North Middlesex Magazine, he appears to have been persuaded to continue. Both quantity and quality varied in the final year, some articles having little more than a problem while others were filled with detailed results from London club matches, and there was also detailed coverage of the Rosenthal versus Zukertort match of 1880. Marks gave more attention to his second column which enjoyed good space in a new weekly periodical, from the same publisher, which undoubtedly had a wider readership. Walter Pelham’s Illustrated Journal: A Miscellany of Romance, Wit, and Wisdom first appeared on

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4 October 1879 and Marks’s introductory article stated his manifesto. This column, he wrote, would normally include: 1. Answers to Correspondents etc.; 2. An endgame from actual play (by which he means practical finishes, not necessarily with limited material); 3. One or more games; 4.  Chess news “in which ‘parochial’ Chess will receive attention out of all proportion to its merits. Local secretaries will please note that we aspire to be their ‘organ.’” Marks was indeed a great promoter of cooperation between suburban and district clubs in London, and encouraged regular competition between them. He presented prizes for the best individual performers and ultimately his efforts, along with those of Hoffer and others, contributed to the eventual formation of the London Chess League about a decade later. On 25 September 1880, at the conclusion of the first year of publication of his column, it was announced that the editor of the column would, each year, so long as the editorship was entrusted to him, donate a silver medal to the most successful player in London interclub matches. Rules were printed and the prize came to be known as the Staunton Medal. This innovation seems to have been born out of frustration that club secretaries were very inconsistent in sending Marks match reports. He would decide the winning team (minimum 14 matches in a season to qualify); the secretary of the victorious club would then nominate the winning individual among his members. Unlike many chess editors, who gave much attention to mate problems and organized tourneys for their composition and solving, Marks was decidedly in favor of over the board play. His manifesto also said: “We have formed (no doubt erroneously) a strong opinion, in opposition to distinguished authority, of the comparative uselessness to the average player, of problems as contrasted with end games. The former are for the most part impossible positions, such as could never occur in actual play….”

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The final issue of Walter Pelham’s Journal was published on 19 February 1881 so Marks looked for a new home for his column. He found it in Society, a publication which is tricky to find in library searches because the single-word title occurs in so many publications. It originated as a weekly magazine edited by George W. Plant. Originally entitled The Mail Budget, its title changed to Society from 12 March 1880 and it became a twiceweekly, on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Society had (at least originally) the subtitle “A Journal of Fact, Fiction and Fashion.” Society is available in the British Library only, as what they call a “microform surrogate.”* The chess column of Society began on Saturday 9 April 1881 and ran to the end of June 1883, ending right after the conclusion of the London 1883 international tournament. There was no byline but Potter wrote in Land and Water, 16 April 1881, that the former chess editor of Walter Pelham’s Illustrated Journal (i.e., Marks) was now writing in Society. Potter again quoted Society in May and October. Whyld’s Columns mentions that “Mephisto” (meaning its operator, Isidor Gunsberg) was also involved. Probably Gunsberg just contributed some games and notes as he had previously done with the North Middlesex Magazine. Whyld had a duplicate entry under “Illustrated Society,” but although the word “Illustrated” sometimes appears on the front page it was not part of the title. In that entry Whyld implied that Crake had taken over from Marks during 1882, but no evidence of that is apparent and since

Crake lived in Hull it seems implausible. Also according to Whyld, Marks later had a column in the Holloway Press for a few months in 1889 to early 1890 (see Appendix I). Marks died in 1896 and had an obituary in The ChessMonthly. Several periodicals for youths and juveniles had chess columns. Generally speaking, though, they did not have very interesting content. Appendix I has summary details of the columns that ran in, for example, The Boy’s Journal. The chess column in Young Men of Great Britain had a curious publishing history; Whyld, page 506, did not get this one right, but can hardly be blamed. The column was indeed begun by G. F. Pardon, in issue 8 (ca. 22 February 1868), but he passed it on to Löwenthal after a few months. The run ended in volume 7, no. 180, in 1871. After ten volumes had been completed in 1872, there was a break in publication. Then the proprietor, Edwin J. Brett, realized that a new generation of young boys could enjoy the paper and the whole series was repeated starting in 1875. Another complicated case, in the early 1880s, was the column of The Boys’ Newspaper, which transferred to Youth when that paper was started. Whyld, understandably, had some trouble sorting out the similar titles in various sources that included the word “Boy’s” or “Boys,” some of which were involved in a previous merger. Potter mentioned the transfer in Land and Water on 5 August 1882. He referred to the Youth column again on 6 January 1883, saying it had run a chess

*The magazine cannot be found as Society but there are two ways to get this item after logging in as a reader. One is through the Explore the British Library main catalog by searching for Mail Budget on shelfmark Cup.701.a.10. After ordering the librarians should change this to a request for the first six reels of microfilm. The chess column is on reels 2 to 6. Reel 1 covers 1880, after which each reel covers six months. These must be read on the rather antiquated microfilm readers in the Rare Books and Music reading room. Should one wish to print something out, it can be done (awkwardly and at some expense) by bringing the reel into the copying department where they have modern machines linked to a printer. Alternatively, one should be able to order the surrogate directly by choosing “Request Other Items” (instead of the main search box) and then the link to the Humanities and Social Sciences collection, and finally entering the shelfmark 12881. This method may enable one to order the reels to “My Basket” and from there to the Newsroom, which has the most modern microfilm machines and free copying facilities. Other microform surrogates can be ordered this way also but only if one knows the shelfmark number.

3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885 verse competition, won by E. J. Winter Wood with Miss Beechey second. Perhaps the longest-running of this type was the column in Boy’s Own Paper. Volume 1 ( January–September 1879) is bound as Boy’s Own Annual in the British Library. Chess starts on page 80 and seems to have been edited by H. F. L. Meyer who contributed many problems and the first game. Volume 2 (October 1879–September 1880) was published at the Leisure Hour office and among the contributors were listed “Captain Crawley” (i.e., Pardon, who wrote on checkers), Herr Meyer, and Jules Verne. Whyld says Meyer wrote this column until 1925 and that it was continued by Edwin Gardiner to 1935. He also mentions a column by London civil servant J. B. Howson in 1964–1965 at least. This is definitely correct because the paper offered to send Howson to give free simultaneous displays at schools, and our mathematics master engaged him to give one.

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lege Magazine, the Mill Hill Magazine, The Norvicensian, the Oldhallian, Ours (from the Jews’ Free School in London), Ulula (from Manchester), the Whitgift School Magazine, and the Woodbridgian. Some of these are in Whyld’s bibliography and others were discovered elsewhere. The present author has seen only a few of these. The chess series in The Felstedian and The Norvicensian were roughly simultaneous and ran while a correspondence match was in progress between the pupils of the two grammar schools. Whyld also noted that chess historian Harold Murray was a pupil at Mill Hill. His father, James Murray, the lexicographer (later Sir James), taught at the school from 1870 to 1885 but Whyld was incorrect to say that he was headmaster.34 The most extraordinary case of a school magazine chess column was the one which grew and grew until it was relaunched as a new magazine entirely devoted to chess. Huddersfield, in west Yorkshire, had been an

Chess in School Magazines There are in Appendix I several examples of school magazines which ran chess columns, although most are of only minor interest or curiosities. Several schools in both England and Ireland ran magazines, some aimed at a readership among current pupils, others at “old boys” (alumni), but mostly at both. There was also the special case of the Blackfriars Chess Journal, mentioned in Chapter 5, which was produced by school pupils; Whyld included it in his Columns bibliography although it was a chess magazine not a column in a magazine. Three Irish schools had chess columns and these are discussed in the Irish section towards the end of this chapter. Ten Victorian schools in England have so far been identified as having chess in their magazines at some time or other: The Aylestonian, The Felstedian, the Huddersfield Col-

John Watkinson, who began writing on chess in the Huddersfield College Magazine, which led to his becoming founding editor of British Chess Magazine.

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important chess center since the early 1840s and one of the club’s leading members by the early 1860s was John Watkinson (1833–1923) who was to be B.C.M.’s first editor. Huddersfield College was a secondary school for boys instituted in 1838, “for the purpose of affording, at a moderate expense, a superior Collegiate and Commercial Education upon a Scriptural basis.” 35 In October 1872, when Samuel Sharpe was principal, the Huddersfield College Magazine was started as a monthly for pupils and old boys and it ran until the August–September 1880 double number. The magazine is unavailable at any U.K. copyright library, but it is said that Huddersfield Public Library may have it. Complete sets are held by the special chess collections at the Royal Dutch Library, the State Library of Victoria (in Melbourne), and at the Cleveland Public Library in Ohio. The Betts and Di Felice bibliographies name W. J. C. Miller as editor from the beginning until June 1876, and Watkinson thereafter, but Watkinson (now Huddersfield’s leading player) was probably always in charge of the chess pages. This chess column originally spanned four small pages but gradually grew in extent and fame, while Watkinson became coeditor and eventually sole editor. Many subscribers had no connection with either town or college. Other school magazines included regular chess features for at least a year or two, but in no other did the coverage become so extensive although at least half the magazine always dealt with other topics. On page 15 of the first issue, this was stated: It has been thought that a page of the “H.C.M.” might not inappropriately be devoted to the game of chess. Not a few of the former pupils have attained to considerable proficiency in this scientific recreation, and the writer of these lines, an “old boy,” has undertaken to edit this department for twelve months, or longer, if it meets with the approbation of the subscribers.

A problem and game was to be given in every number “and the names or initials of

those who send correct solutions to the problems will be published.”36 In September 1873, the last number of the first volume, the chess editor said the column “has been to us a labour of love, and we have devoted to it no little time and thought.” In April 1874, the Dubuque Chess Journal was reviewed. The Huddersfield editor said he did not mind their using + for check or 0–0 and 0–0–0 for castling but “S for Kt sticks in our throat.” The title page of volume 4 clarified the editorial situation, saying: “Edited by W. J. C. Miller, B.A., Vice-Principal of Huddersfield College; and John Watkinson.” On page 207 of volume IV, Miller signed a paragraph saying that “with this number I resign my duties in connexion with the Magazine” and that in future all communications should be sent to Watkinson. The latter’s involvement had steadily grown and he was now in sole charge for the remaining issues of that volume and for the whole of volume 5. The December issue of volume 5, on page 56, said that all literary articles for the magazine, all communications relating to chess and subscription orders should go to John Watkinson. He was not a member of the school’s teaching roster, but a staff list in the November issue shows Miller was the mathematics teacher and Edwards Watkinson Esq., possibly a relative, was a director. In March 1877 it was announced that Henry Jefferson of Clapham would take over as principal of the college after Easter. Jefferson, like his predecessor who died in June, was a Wesleyan Methodist, and his academic department was modern linguistics. He seemed happy to let chess take a larger share of the magazine. On page 250, Watkinson said to have given up match playing “on account of his engrossing duties in connection with the Editorship of this Magazine.” He seems to have been given a free hand. The September 1877 number, last of the volume, said that this was the only monthly school periodical, and the subscribers related to school have reached their

3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885 maximum, so the editor appealed to their readers to recruit new ones. Volume 5, in the October 1876 issue, saw the introduction of a chess problem composition tourney, which was to prove a popular feature. On page 24 it was said that they offered book prizes to encourage a high standard of submissions. Several other columns were to copy this idea in future. Of course a weekly column might run a speedier competition than a monthly like the Huddersfield. The way it worked was that problem composers were invited to submit problems, which would in effect be judged partly by the solvers, who themselves earned points for correct (or partly correct) solutions over a period of time. Readers would often send in verbal comments which were printed later along with the solutions in a subsequent issue. Sometimes there was really a double competition: the solving tourney for readers, and the problem tourney for composers, which would ultimately be judged by experts who would take into account the difficulty that solvers had had, and any flaws that had been uncovered in the process. In volume 7 the Huddersfield’s second problem tourney was run in connection with a solution competition in this way. It was also possible for a chess column to run a solving tourney without a problem tourney, by using previously published problems, but this would not work in a publication that catered for real problem experts who might have seen the puzzles before. In June 1877 it was said that Watkinson “has given up match playing on account of his engrossing duties in connection with the Editorship of this Magazine.” At the start of volume 6 it was announced that a meeting of the Magazine Committee had been held, on 6 September 1877, at which “Mr. Watkinson expressed a wish to be relieved of part of his duties.” A member of staff, Mr. Stubbs, offered to assist and in future he was to edit “the literary portion” while Watkinson continued to act as treasurer and chess editor. The Febru-

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ary 1878 number included a three-page article, in Stubbs’s department, about the invention of the telephone, which he welcomed. Its advantages, compared with the telegraph, were privacy and “uncurtailed sentences” and hearing the voice of our friend at a distance. The first games of chess by telephone also got a mention on a later page. It is but a short time ago that the generally developed impression was dispelled that we had reached the end of great inventions, that the steam engine and telegraph crowned the labours of human ingenuity, and that it only remained to perfect those in order to reach the limit of man’s influence over the natural powers of the world. The production of the telephone, the greatest of modern inventions, has surprised us with evidence of the possibility of existence of a far more extended field of power for humanity to exercise in the universe.37

At the start of volume 8, in October 1879, Watkinson acknowledged that they were now in competition with The Chess-Monthly (which was reviewed on page 25). He pointed out that each issue of the new magazine cost a shilling whereas the Huddersfield College Magazine remained “marvellously cheap” at three pence (a quarter of the price). The March 1880 number dealt with the American Chess Congress and other matters, but, as usual, the Huddersfield’s own problem tourney took up lots of the space. Its good coverage of chess problems was one of the main reasons why the magazine had subscribers unconnected with the College. The July number had extra pages including a special report on the Rosenthal–Zukertort match, which was the major chess event in London in 1880. This issue also announced that the August–September numbers would be a double issue published on about 15 August. That issue included a report on the school prize-giving and cricket but on page 299 the discontinuance of magazine was announced. Various chess items of interest followed, including more on Rosenthal versus Zukertort. At this stage Watkinson was

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beginning to set up the launch of a new venture devoted entirely to the game. The position was clarified by a farewell article headlined “Our Future” on pages 317 and 318. Here are some excerpts: When the first number of the Huddersfield College Magazine appeared in October, 1872, we had no idea that its modest Chess department of a couple of pages would eventually develop into its present proportions…. The announcement has already been made in various quarters that our new Chess magazine would commence in October next, but we have decided to postpone the publication of the first number till January, 1881…. We shall be able in future to give more prominence to the game department, which we are free to admit has not hitherto had that share of attention which its importance deserves…. The title of the magazine is an open question at the time we write….

Advertisements for a Huddersfield Chess Magazine even appeared but eventually British Chess Magazine was decided upon. The continuation of this saga will be found towards the end of Chapter 5. It is worth noting that Henry Ernest Atkins (1872–1955), from Leicester, the great British chess champion of the Edwardian era, was principal of Huddersfield College from 1909 to 1936 so perhaps a chess tradition was maintained there after the closure of the magazine.

Bird’s Innovative Chess Column The heyday of provincial newspapers was from the 1860s to the late 1880s. Press Association telegraphs meant that they could compete with London titles on fresh news. Literacy levels were rising and after the 1867 Reform Act more men were entitled to vote in political elections. Most cities and counties had at least one weekly chess column from the 1870s but they tended to have a shorter life span than national ones, partly because editors were probably writing for love, not for money.38 They re-

lied on contributions from local readers, also including national chess news and information from other columns to fill any vacant space. The Derby and Derbyshire Gazette columnist, Fred Thompson, complained on 26 October 1877 that local players often preferred to submit their games to London editors, and incidentally confirmed he was not paid: “The way in which some of the leading players in the provinces ignore their local Chess columns is a standing blot…. We confess to being just a shade sprung with this indifference to the work of local honorary Chess Editors.” Professional journalists, leading players, and writers for major London papers were paid but provincial columnists probably enjoyed private incomes or salaried jobs. In most cases it is not known what they did in their “other” lives, but some were Anglican clergymen; James White (Leeds Mercury), James Pierce (English Mechanic), and William Mitcheson (1834–1888; Newcastle Courant) were all teachers; James Thomas Palmer (1853–1929) was a policeman when he was editing the Preston Guardian column.39 Butler stopped his Brighton Guardian column after a few months; it was too time-consuming for the proprietor of a small business. Each column was unique, with its own editor, serving its own constituency. There was one striking exception, the chess column written by Bird for about twelve months starting in December 1882. His innovation was to write a column which, with a little tailoring at times, could be submitted to more than one newspaper at the same time. This was the beginning of what came to be known as syndication, a process that is discussed further in the next chapter. Bird’s column had problems, chess news and games (including many of his own), and of course in the early summer of 1883, the column reported on the London 1883 international tournament in which Bird himself competed. It should first be noted that Whyld was confused about this paper and assigned Bird’s

3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885

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column to the wrong title. How his column came about, and whether Bird employed an agent or secretary, or did all the work himself remains unclear. Renette’s biography of Bird is somewhat incurious about the practicalities that may have been involved. The author briefly discusses the column, on page 288, but does not go into much detail about it. The main thing Renette has to say is the following: Bird’s only regular, full-blooded, column appeared from 2 December 1882 until 24 November 1883. This was a syndicated effort that was first published in the Sheffield and Rotherham Independent and the Boston [sic] Weekly Journal. Several other newspapers purchased Bird’s column, which consequently could be seen in the Nottinghamshire Guardian, the Northampton Mercury and even in the Illustrated Sydney News in Australia. The column was quite voluminous and interesting, especially for his numerous fans and chess historians with a predilection for him.40

Firstly it should be pointed out that “Boston” was a misprint for “Bolton.” There was no such title in Boston, Lincolnshire. We have been able to ascertain that Bird's column did indeed run throughout the period Renette stated in both the Sheffield and Rotherham Independent and the Bolton Weekly Journal, and also ran elsewhere for part of the period. The Northampton Mercury began the column on 2 Dec. 1882 but dropped it during June 1883, while the Nottinghamshire Guardian and Midland Counties Advertiser took up the column on 1 June 1883 and ran it to the end. The column also appeared from January 1883 in the Tyldesley Weekly Journal, Leigh and Atherton news. In addition to the titles mentioned by Renette, Whyld mentions the Leigh Weekly Journal as having chess ca. November 1882; without mentioning Bird but either it was the Leigh Journal (the new title from 1875) or, much more likely, the Tyldesley Weekly Journal column was meant. Leigh and Tyldesley are close to each other geographically in what is now Leigh, Greater Manchester, while Bolton lies a few miles to the north. Possibly Bird's column may yet turn up elsewhere.

Henry Bird, who conducted a chess column in multiple papers during 1882–1883. Photograph from his 1893 book Chess History and Reminiscences.

In those days, writing out multiple copies of an article would have been exceptionally tedious for a columnist. There were of course no photocopiers until the late 20th century, and in Victorian times few journalists had one of the novel and expensive typewriters. This perhaps explains why in some of the papers where it appeared, Bird’s column was running one week behind others. For example, the problem in the Northampton Mercury on Saturday 2 June 1883 (by John Skinner of Sheffield) was the one in the Sheffield Independent on 28 July, but on 2 July the problem in the Independent was the same one in the Nottinghamshire Guardian, where the column only began that day. The Australian newspaper would have been sent printed copies of one of the English articles to work from. It may be the case that Bird (who had good connections with America and often traveled there) did not have to write out multiple copies of his articles by hand. It is possible that in order to reduce the labor involved in his journalism—and of course to greatly reduce the likelihood of error when printers transcribed game notations—he may have ac-

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quired one of the early models of typewriter which would have certainly eased the task of contributing essentially the same material (with sometimes minor variations) by post to several different editors. The largest circulation newspaper in which Bird’s column appeared was not an independent title, but was a weekend supplement of the Sheffield and Rotherham Independent. In 1882 and 1883 that was an eight-page newspaper on Mondays to Fridays but on Saturdays the additional eight-page supplement was added, where the chess column appeared. Readers had the option of buying the news section only for a penny or to pay two pence and have the weekly supplement also. The supplement was paginated continuously (9–16) but page 9 had its own masthead, Supplement to the Sheffield & Rotherham Independent. On British Library microfilms and the B.N.A. digitization, the weekly supplement can be found each week immediately after the main Saturday paper. The editors believed they had achieved a coup by securing the services of the veteran master; they had already announced on Saturday 18 November that the column would start next month. A more detailed announcement was repeated the following week, saying they had concluded arrangements for the weekly publication “of an original article on chess, by Mr. H. E. Bird, the distinguished chess player, Chess Correspondent of The Times, Author of Chess Openings, Chess Masterpieces, etc.” Hiring Bird was perhaps part of a larger plan to launch the weekly supplement as a separate newspaper, and towards the end of 1883 puzzle and checkers columns were also introduced. However the supplement remained just that changed until 1884 after Bird had ceased writing the column. Bird only visited Sheffield once during the period of the column, on and around Saturday 26 May, taking advantage of a short break in the London 1883 tournament schedule.41 Conducting the column would have been time consuming, so it is perhaps unsurprising that after a year Bird

decided voluntarily to discontinue his column. Renette does suggest, though, that there could have been another reason—a dispute between Bird and the Sheffield Chess Club, arising from that visit. On 17 November a “personal notice” signed by Bird appeared in both the Bolton and Sheffield newspapers, announcing that this was his 51st column and that there would only be one more. He said that his work on “Railways and National Finances” alone would have been sufficient reason to discontinue writing the chess articles, but “the jealousy and apparent envy of certain local chess representatives, however, is my main reason…. I take the opportunity of expressing the hope that future chess editors may have to chronicle more enthusiasm than at present appears to prevail out of London.” It is clear that his dispute was not with players in Bolton (which he had not visited) but with the Sheffield club, whose secretary H. C. Twist sent in a reply letter which was published in the Sheffield newspaper at the end of Bird’s final column on 24 November. Renette also wrestled (on the same page) with the thorny question of what contributions Bird may have made to the London Times newspaper. Bird certainly used his technical accountancy expertise to contribute some articles of a financial nature to The Times,42 and this may also have given him the entrée to write for the famous paper about chess. He liked to describe himself as the “chess correspondent” of The Times but any articles he wrote were unsigned, like most of the articles in that newspaper in those days. In general, a paper’s appointing somebody as their “chess correspondent” does not necessarily imply that they contributed a regular column. As Renette observes, Bird’s October 1887 claim, in a letter to The Chess-Monthly, that Bird started his contributions in 1878 may not be taken at face value. “Until the 1890s articles dedicated to chess in The Times remained very sparse, with no regularity whatever.” However, he did manage to get several of his own games

3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885 published in The Times (for example his draw against Blackburne from Hereford 1885 which otherwise would have been lost to posterity) so it would appear that Bird’s claim was justified, albeit exaggerated, but at some point in the 1890s when he became too unwell to work, Bird was replaced by Samuel Tinsley (1847– 1903), who also contributed a column to The Times Weekly Edition (a separate title from the same publisher) for many years from 1893, which his son Edward Samuel Tinsley (1869– 1937) took over in 1903. Tinsley Sr. was a minor master who, perhaps because of his journalistic work, was accepted for a few international tournaments including Hastings 1895. Further research into chess columns in the related titles connected with The Times is required. One idea that would require time consuming cross-checking of two different titles is that the column from March 1900 (mentioned by Whyld) in Literature was the same as that in The Times Weekly Edition. When Literature was relaunched on 17 January 1902 as The Times Literary Supplement, the problems did not begin at 1 but rather at 652. The T.L.S. has been entirely digitized so the whole run of the column in that paper is easy to trace. Chess last appeared on 24 January 1935 (problem 4765) but the following week there was an announcement that chess had been transferred to The Times Weekly Edition. To return to the Sheffield Independent, the management did not at first seek a local player to write the column, although they do seem to have lined up one or more local players to contribute news and chess problems. It was several years before eventually they did hire a local editor. When Bird’s last article appeared, on 24 November 1883, it was announced that he had “relinquished” the column and that “a very fine chess-player” would take his place. Then in the January 1884 number of British Chess Magazine, on page 31, it was observed that, Bird having “relinquished” the editorship of the chess column in the Sheffield Independent, the proprietors an-

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nounce that “they have made arrangements with a very competent Chess-player to take his place.” The magazine’s editor complained: We notice that the first game of the new column is copied from the B.C.M., notes and all, without the customary acknowledgment. We presume that this is an inadvertence and that the rest of the column consists of original matter. A very liberal amount of space is allotted every week to the department, which promises to become one of the best in the Provinces.

Although not named in the newspaper or the magazine, it is known that the new editing team was Frideswide Beechey, who at the time was residing in the Derbyshire spa town of Matlock Bath, about 24 miles from industrial Sheffield. She had recently begun writing on chess for a small local paper, the Matlock Register, which gave her some celebrity as the first woman to edit a chess column. Soon afterwards she published a collection of her problems, Chess Blossoms. The editors of the Sheffield paper somehow thought to pair her with Thomas Rowland, a Dublin expert on problems. She recalled later in a retrospective article: The proprietor of the Sheffield Independent wrote inviting me to conduct their chess department in collaboration with Mr. T. B. Rowland, who at this time had sprung into fame, so though parted by the Irish Channel we agreed to accept the Sheffield Independent post and eventually met. After our marriage we conducted as many as six columns in different papers, and there has never been a break in this work.43

The address for readers’ correspondence to their column was initially “Chess Editor, Independent Office, Sheffield,” but almost immediately Beechey moved back to her native land. From 29 December the address for correspondence was changed to 10 Prince of Wales Terrace, Merrion Road, Dublin, which was presumably where Thomas Rowland then lived. On 29 March the correspondence address changed to Leinster Lodge, Fort View, Clontarf, Dublin. That was where Beechey lived before their marriage, which took place

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on 5 June 1884, with MacDonnell officiating at the ceremony. That continued to be their address for some time after the wedding. During 1884 the newspaper they wrote for underwent some restructuring, as can mostly be followed in the digitized pages in the British Newspaper Archive. The chess column continued in the weekend supplement but the proprietors also launched a separate newspaper in March, entitled the Sheffield and Rotherham Weekly Independent Budget.4 4 Although the British Library catalog suggests that the first issue of this new paper was on Saturday 29 March, it can be seen from an advertisement in the daily paper on Friday 21 March that it was a week earlier. This advertisement sits beside the masthead in one of the two positions known to newspapermen as the “ears” and states that it was “Ready this (Friday) morning. Contains portraits, views, tales, chess. An excellent family journal.” The Budget cost one penny or a penny halfpenny by post. Comparing the digitized columns with this author’s notes from the 1884 bound volume of the Budget, it is clear that the same column was published each week in both papers. So Whyld was not incorrect when he said that “for part of the time, at least” the two newspapers had the same column. The last date the chess column appeared in the daily paper appears to have been Saturday 5 September 1885. From 12 September 1885 onwards chess was only in the Budget. Then, from 11 June 1887, the reference to Rotherham was dropped and the title of the weekly paper changed to the Sheffield Weekly Independent. From 4 May 1889 the format of that paper changed to a 16-page tabloid instead of an 8-page broadsheet. The Rowland column last appeared on 19 October 1889, their competitions transferring to the Bristol Mercury. An unidentified new editor took over in Sheffield from 26 October 1889 when the Weekly Independent said chess was now under the care of a new editor, “a man of undoubted ability, both as a chess

player and a student of the game.” There were more games and local news, elementary lessons, fewer problems. Whyld says R. J. Buckley took over from 26 October 1891 (but perhaps it was already him in 1889?) and he continued the column to 1893 or later.

Nottingham Newspapers Rob Ensor’s master’s thesis of 2016, examining the history and social constitution of Nottingham Chess Club (founded 1829), shows that many of the members held influential positions in other voluntary societies in the city, but that gradually the club seems to have lost its elite status as a consequence of social change in the late 19th century. There was another chess club in the city, at the Nottingham Mechanics’ Institute, whose membership was of a lower social class, but on the whole friendly relations obtained between the two. Eventually there may have been a merger because, Ensor found, the original Nottingham Chess Club seems to have dissolved after the 1902-1903 season although there is no formal record of this. There is no extant minutes book of the club after the one that ends at 1900. The Nottinghamshire Guardian of 20 June reported briefly on the club’s final meeting of the 190203 season, where “the treasurer announced a satisfactory balance on the right side,” and the following Saturday an enjoyable garden party was held, with tea and tennis as well as chess, hosted by J. N. Derbyshire who later was president of the British Chess Federation at the time of 1936 Nottingham international congress. The Nottinghamshire Guardian of 4 July reported that about 50 gentlemen attended the party including “nearly the whole of the Notts. members and the first team from the Mechanics’ Institute, besides visitors from Leicester and Derby.” Yet when the new chess season began in the fall, the column reports on the activities of the Mechanics club and

3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885 says nothing about the old club, not even the apparent fact that it had failed to reconvene. What had happened? This is a mystery still waiting for some historian to solve.45 The Nottingham Mechanics Institute, however, continues to this day (with a bridge club and chess club among other activities), though of course with a different social makeup from its original foundation.46 The famous San Francisco Mechanics and the less known Nottingham Mechanics chess clubs stand today as really the last relics of a great Victorian social movement that was originally aimed at providing technical instruction and rational recreation for the hordes of young men flooding into the major cities in search of employment.47 With this background information in mind, the Victorian newspapers of Nottingham and their chess columns can now be examined. The present author has pursued research into Nottingham columns but it has not been possible to see everything; Tony Gillam and Rob Ensor have thankfully been of some help in disentangling them. Except for a few months when Bird’s syndicated column was running in the Nottingham papers, the columns were, so far as can be seen, always in the hands of local players and provided primarily local chess information—a wealth of it. There are however some difficulties in researching these papers which cannot be easily summarized in the appendix, and therefore they are dealt with at some length in this chapter. The earliest column in the city was published in the Nottingham and Midland Counties Daily Express and it ran for over a decade. The editor of the column was a local lace merchant, the German-born businessman Sigismund Hamel, who came from a family of chess players.48 Whyld, page 318, said chess began on 22 June 1872, but there is an earlier start. It is much harder to spot a chess column in a newspaper, especially when reading microfilms, if there is no diagram; that was prob-

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ably the difficulty Whyld had in this case. Checking the date in his book led to the discovery that Hamel began contributing chess information to the paper much earlier. On 2 January 1872 Hamel said he hoped soon to be able to publish diagrams but it was several months before that became possible. Thanks to Tony Gillam helping with the research, it is now evident that the commencement of chess reporting in the city was prompted by a three-day visit of Joseph Henry Blackburne to Nottingham starting Thursday 19 October 1871. The Nottingham Daily Express carried advertisements each day and there were reports from the 20th onwards. Blackburne gave two over-the-board simuls and a dinner was held after the second of these; then on the Saturday he played blindfold against ten opponents.

Sigismund Hamel, chess editor of the Nottingham Daily Express for more than a decade. (Undated photograph by A. W. Cox & Son, Nottingham, courtesy Cleveland Public Library Special Collections).

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From 24 October Hamel supplied several games from the “recent tournament” and from 12 December his contribution appeared to be weekly (mostly on Tuesdays). The column proper, with diagrams, actually began on Thursday 13 June when Hamel published Problem 1 but Tuesday remained the usual day of the week for chess. By 1876, when the Nottingham Chess Club’s correspondence match with Ipswich was in progress, the Tuesday article was even being repeated on Saturdays. Whyld correctly stated the column ended in 1884 but provided no definite date. By chance we discovered that the newspaper digitized at this period by B.N.A. under the title Nottingham Journal was in fact the Express. (There was no connection between the Express and the Journal until a 1918 merger but the B.N.A. has a strange and unhistorical approach to such matters.) The digitization starts in 1860 but does not include 1871, the first chess year. Nor does it, at least at the time of writing, include 1874, 1877 or 1879. The British Library catalog says that on Thursday 19 July 1883 the title of the newspaper was shortened to Nottingham Daily Express but the page headers of inside pages still said Nottingham and Midland Counties Daily Express, but that changed later. Sometimes there was more than one chess article in a week when there was also news of local matches to report. By now, the chess column did not appear on a regular day of the week and once this starts happening with a column in a daily paper (where the articles are separated by many pages), the chess content can be hard to find, especially on microfilm, so the digitization of the Express is of great assistance. On Saturday 5 January 1884, problem 435 by S. Hamel was published. The next article was on Thursday 24 January (and repeated next day), previewing the forthcoming match against Manchester, and this article included an unnumbered problem by F. J. Hamel of Manchester, a nephew of Sigismund. There

was a report of the Manchester match on the following Monday but the usual column did not return until Thursday 7 February, including a game but otherwise with essentially the same information. That article may be understood as being the final column to appear in this newspaper. There were sometimes other reports but not very much until, on Saturday 24 May, the following (signed “F.F.S.”) appeared by way of explanation: CHESS. We regret to say that in consequence of the severe and protracted illness of the Chess Editor, no column has appeared in the Express for some months past. We are, however, glad to say that, although he is not sufficiently recovered to undertake the preparation of a weekly column, should any event of special importance occur in the chess-world, the same will have due notice here.

In Whyld’s Columns (page 319), the entry under the heading Nottingham Guardian confuses two titles, both of which had chess columns, at least during part of 1884. Contra Whyld, F. F. Beechey was not an editor of either of them. Whyld mentions her as a contributor for several months that year but there is no evidence of that. She and her fiancé were writing the Sheffield column in succession to Bird, as well as a column in Dublin, but not the one in Nottingham. The correct details, so far as they can be ascertained, are as follows (and are also summarized in the Appendix). The Nottinghamshire Guardian and Midland Counties Advertiser was a weekly paper, published between 1846 and 1969. Most years until 1900 have been digitized in the B.N.A. but not 1888, 1890, 1891, 1897, nor any year after 1900. It was during the London international tournament, on 1 June 1883, that the Nottinghamshire Guardian began taking Bird’s column which had already begun in the Sheffield Independent and elsewhere. After Bird resigned on 23 November 1883, only one week was missed before a new column by young local expert Arthur Towle Marriott began on 7 December 1883.

3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885 When Marriott died from tuberculosis in December 1884, the Nottinghamshire Guardian column was continued by anonymous local players. Ensor has said that the editors, at least at first, were probably Thomas and Edwin Marriott (brothers of Arthur) and Dr. Henry Reginald Hatherley, as named by Whyld. It ran until 1903, at least, when the collapse of the old Nottingham Chess Club may have led to its demise. There was also a checkers column up to at least 1901 in this newspaper. The Nottingham Daily Guardian was from the same publisher as the previous (weekly) title. The Nottinghamshire announced on 4 July 1884 that a column by anonymous local players on Thursdays had begun in the daily the previous day. This column ran until at least the end of April 1885. Gillam informed us that a later Gunsberg column ran in the daily Guardian from 5 November 1901 to 4 August 1914 (the dates as given by Whyld). The B.L. catalog shows that title changed to The Nottingham Guardian from 10 October 1905 and stayed that way until 1953.

Confusions over Newcastle Papers Whyld can be excused his confusions over various newspapers published in the same city because, in his day, the British Library catalogs were much harder to use than they are today. The original Integrated Catalogue— introduced only in 2003 and not very integrated, though a great improvement on its predecessor—did not provide all the information that was available only at the old Colindale newspaper library. Only since the introduction of the current catalog, Explore the British Library, has it been possible to search everything together and place orders from home for reading on future visits to the library. Part of the problem was that much of

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the content of Whyld’s bibliography was not actually written at one time as text. It was, instead, the output of a database of his own construction, which he worked on over years, and Whyld died suddenly before he could really knock the final List into shape. Title changes and mergers often complicate the search for chess columns and the work of the bibliographer, and it is clear he had not succeeded in tracking all these changes correctly. In fact a general problem with Whyld’s book is that columns are often listed under titles that were not actually those in use at the time the chess column was running. There is no ideal way to handle this, and the B.N.A.’s use of generic titles (sometimes placing “London” at the start of titles in which the place-name did not actually appear) has also created some new problems for researchers. Another point the historian needs to keep in mind is that a newspaper may have been published weekly even if the word “weekly” did not appear in the title. For example, in the case of Newcastle upon Tyne, the largest city in the north-east of England, there was a Weekly Chronicle but also earlier a Chronicle that was weekly but did not say so. There are several inaccuracies in Whyld concerning papers published on Tyneside. He listed six different Newcastle papers on pages 306 and 307 (not counting the one in Newcastle, Australia) in addition to another on page 93 which did not have the city name in the title, namely the Daily Chronicle. Concerning that, Whyld said that it was founded in 1764, but actually it began in 1858, though presumably started by the same publisher of the original (and weekly) Chronicle. There was also an important title (the Newcastle Courant) for which Whyld failed to have a separate entry. Implausibly, the same column of 1861 by C. P. Lloyd was listed for three of the seven titles Whyld listed. With a view to making the Newcastle entries in the appendix as brief and clear as possible, the complications are explained here.

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First let us look at what the B.L. catalog tell us about which newspapers were actually published. One of the papers in Whyld we can disregard because the Newcastle Evening Chronicle had no chess content until 1930. It remains to disentangle the history of newspapers named with variants of the Chronicle, the Courant, and the Journal. For example, the Newcastle Daily Journal has been digitized by B.N.A. under the generic “Newcastle Journal” but the word “Daily” was only added to the title from the start of 1861. The Daily Chronicle and Northern Counties Advertiser (1858–1861) was continued by The Newcastle Daily Chronicle and Northern Counties Advertiser (1862–1864), which in turn became simply The Newcastle Daily Chronicle (1864–1922), where we can stop. Confusing readers further, the B.N.A. digitization uses the generic title Newcastle Daily Chronicle. Separate from this, there was the newspaper which began in 1764 as The Newcastle Chronicle, or, General Weekly Advertiser. (Whyld’s first listing on page 306 was the Newcastle Chronicle & Weekly Advertiser but the B.L. catalog shows that this was never an actual title.) From 1793 to 1864 the title was plainly The Newcastle Chronicle and then, to distinguish from the daily, the title Newcastle Weekly Chronicle was adopted on 18 June 1864 and it continued to 21 December 1940. The Newcastle Courant, perhaps the oldest newspaper in the city, was founded in 1723 and continued with that title until its frequency of publication was indicated by a change in 1884 to Newcastle Weekly Courant. There was also The Newcastle Journal (1832– 1860) which was continued as the Newcastle Daily Journal up to 6 March 1915 when a merger with the Courant group created the Newcastle Daily Journal and Courant, which expired in 1924. Briefly there was also the unsuccessful Newcastle Evening Courant (1870–1874) which then became the Newcastle Daily Courant but expired in 1876. The earliest chess column in Newcastle

appears to have been one that Whyld did not mention. On Monday 14 November 1859, The Daily Chronicle & Northern Counties Advertiser said on page 3: The racing season having nearly terminated, we yield to the requests of numerous correspondents, and furnish for the winter months a weekly half-column of chess. The problems and games will appear every Monday until the return of spring introduces us to more athletic recreations.

The commencement of that column followed closely in time the start of a two-game correspondence match between the Newcastle Chess Club and that of Berwick-uponTweed, the northernmost town in England just south of the border with Scotland. The opening column published the first few moves in both games, which continued through the winter; one of which was eventually won by Berwick and the other was drawn. The Norfolk News of 18 April 1860 named the “chief ” players on each side. For the border town they were the Rev. T. C. Durham, Mr. Macaskie (editor of the Berwick Warder) and J. White, later chess editor of the Leeds Mercury. The main players for Newcastle were Puncher, Mitcheson and Lloyd, who was named as chess editor of the Newcastle Chronicle. Problem 1 was by “P.T.D.,” evidently Duffy, who a few years hence was (thanks to the influence of Henry Bird) to move to London and take up a post with the accountancy firm Turquand Coleman and end up being a very influential chess writer and editor. Whyld, page 93, mentions another column by Lloyd in 1861 but this seems incorrect; it was in a different title, the Journal. The Chronicle for 1861 has not been digitized yet but we inspected a bound volume and can now be certain there was no column in it that year. Nor does there appear to have been any later revival of chess in this paper. The 1861 column that C. P. Lloyd did edit was in the Newcastle Daily Journal and it ran from 18 February to 29 July 1861, although

3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885 its frequency was irregular in the summer. Lloyd was identified as the editor in the Chess Player’s Chronicle that year, on page 66. Whyld (page 306) states that the column continued to 1867 with Lloyd editing until some time in 1863, but actually there was a break. A new column (starting again at problem 1) began 29 September 1862 and ended on or soon after 3 June 1867 (problem 200). Probably Lloyd was not involved. The Norfolk News of 17 January 1863 attributed this series to Mitcheson and Duffy. Whyld had no separate entry under the Newcastle Courant. This resulted in a confusion in his page 307 listing of the Newcastle Weekly Journal & Courant that arose from a subsequent merger. The newspaper of this plain title, Newcastle Courant, did however, have a chess column, conducted by Mitcheson from 14 April 1876 to 27 December 1878. Only after 4 July 1884 did the title of this paper change to Newcastle Weekly Courant. Then, typical of many newspapers, the full title appeared only on the masthead, for example in 1901, with the simple “Newcastle Courant” on the running headers of inside pages. Confusingly, the B.N.A. digitizes it as plain “Newcastle Courant.” The digitization covers some relevant years up to 1900, but not 1894 (available on microfilm in the B.L.) and 1897 (which the B.L. lacks altogether). Checkers started in this paper in April 1892. Then its second chess column (plausibly attributed by Whyld to local expert H. W. Hawks, although there was no byline) began on Saturday 10 December 1892. From 5 July 1902, the Newcastle Weekly Journal and Courant was the successor to the previous title. The chess column (apparently still by Hawks, though not bylined) and the checkers column both continued. After this merger, the masthead of the new title read “The Newcastle Weekly Journal and Courant (established 1711).” Whether that date claim was valid is unclear; the original Newcastle Journal was founded in 1832 according to the

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British Library catalog. The year 1903 is not available in that library, but all subsequent years have been consulted. It can definitely be stated that the chess (and also the checkers) column ran until 26 February 1910 when publication of this newspaper ceased with no successor. This column is a good record of chess on Tyneside in the early 1900s with some coverage of national news also. The information on Whyld’s page 306 about the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle is not entirely accurate. The first column, by John Charleton, indeed began on 20 September 1873 but space for chess was very limited. In late January and February 1874 it started to be a proper column, but it ended in February 1875. The more important later column was conducted from 4 January 1890 (not the 8th) by George Carm Heywood. He was a printer, formerly of Devon and then London, who ran the chess club at the Newcastle Art Gallery for several years but died suddenly on 8 March 1895. During that year at least, the chess was normally on page 8 of the supplement. The column on 9 March was as normal (probably already in type) but Heywood’s obituary appeared on page 7 of the news section on 16 March, confirming he was the chess editor. It said he had revived the column about five years previously. Chess continued, however. According to Whyld the column was now conducted by Mrs. Heywood, whose maiden name is unknown. Chess certainly continued to the end of 1896 at least and possibly as late as 1917 if Whyld is right. There were subsequent columns postwar, at least from 1923 in the hands of E. G. Sergeant, according to Gillam.

Early Scottish Columns There were many Scottish chess columns in the 19th century, mostly in newspapers published in Glasgow, which is by far Scotland’s largest city. Edinburgh, the capital,

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despite having Britain’s oldest chess club, was not well blessed with columns. There were in addition some short-lived columns published in Aberdeen, Ayr, and Dundee, and some other towns, not forgetting the amazing Falkirk Herald column which lasted 47 years and ended only during the Second World War. The first Scottish column, in the Glasgow Citizen (1847 until 1851), is discussed in Chapter 2. Much later there was another column in the Glasgow Weekly Citizen, conducted by Georges Emile Barbier (1844– 1895), a Frenchman long resident in Scotland; he received a byline. This was one of the best Scottish columns during the period it ran. Barbier began it on 19 March 1887 and wrote it until his death on 16 December 1895, although he had returned to France a few months previously. Some publication changes should be noted. At the start of 1891 the magazine’s title changed to plain Weekly Citizen (not indexed by KW) at the start of 1891. Then from November 1896 the title changed to Saturday Weekly Citizen. The article on 21 December 1895 was also bylined Barbier. Then the issue of Saturday 28 December 1895 had “Chess edited by John Russell” and Barbier’s obituary. Russell continued the column for another 14 months until the last article was published on 27 February 1897. It is noteworthy that the “Saavedra” rook versus pawn endgame study arose from the columns of 4, 11, 18 and 25 May 1895, as discussed by A. J. Roycroft (in Test Tube Chess) and Harrie Grondijs (in his book No Rook Unturned). The second Scottish column was conducted by Fraser in the Dundee Courier & Argus, from 14 July 1862 to 23 May 1864. These articles have been digitized. It should also be noted that in 1867 there were valuable news reports, both in the Dundee Courier (a later title) and in the Dundee Advertiser at the time of Steinitz’s visit to Dundee, early in the year, and later at the time of the international congress in September. The most important Scottish chess col-

umn for the period from the early 1870s to at least the mid–1890s was that probably begun in the Weekly Star by John Jenkin in 1872, though it is difficult to check this, as the relevant issues are unavailable in the British Library. It would need to be sought in Glasgow or Edinburgh. From 2 November 1872 Jenkin’s column began in the Glasgow Weekly Herald, which was the sister paper of the daily Glasgow Herald. The first column included Problem 1 by Sheriff Spens (Walter Cook Spens). It should also be mentioned that besides the chess column on the page there was usually also a checkers column. The exact succession of editors is not clear because they mostly did not have bylines. More research on the editors is definitely needed. It is possible that Jenkin ran this column for ten years or he may have been succeeded by somebody unidentified. During 1878 the column added a lively London correspondent who is also unidentified. The idea that it was West of Scotland champion Andrew Hunter proved unfounded with the discovery that he did not move to London until 1879. One candidate is Archibald Keir Murray, a former honorary secretary of the Glasgow Chess Club, who much later was chess editor of Hobbies and first president of the British Correspondence Chess Association. Potter noted in Land and Water, 5 August 1882, that there had been a change of reins at the Glasgow Weekly Herald as the old editor left for Edinburgh and Potter was sorry to see that the new editor had dispensed with the London correspondence; 22 July 1882 was the last issue with a London letter. James Marshall (not mentioned by Whyld) was named in the paper as the new chess editor of the Glasgow Weekly Herald, “though a young player, already one of the strongest players in Scotland.” Marshall may not have conducted the column for long, and possibly handed over quickly to Sheriff Spens whom Whyld credits for 1887–1897. On the other hand, the usually reliable compilation

3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885 The Chess Bouquet says Spens was editor from 1882 and that David Forsyth (whom Whyld names for 1886–1887) “assisted in editing” the column. Forsyth (who was the deviser of the compact Forsyth notation for recording game positions) possibly started in 1885 but on 14 May 1887 the newspaper reported he was moving to Edinburgh. Spens was still editor in 1897 when The Chess Bouquet was published, and may have continued the column until he died in 1900. Forsyth subsequently started a column in the Weekly Scotsman at the time of one of Blackburne’s visits to Edinburgh. That column ran from 4 November 1893 until 3 April 1897. Forsyth later immigrated to New Zealand where he died at the end of 1909. Back in Glasgow, Whyld names W. Black as editor from about 1900 to 1906 and W. Gibson (one of Scotland’s strongest players at the time) in 1914 and 1915. The daily Glasgow Herald had news reports occasionally but no column until 1921, when one (probably by Carrick Wardhaugh) started on Saturdays. Some of these articles may be found in the images at Google News but the scores of games are sometimes illegible. Finally there must be mentioned the important and long-running column in the Falkirk Herald, which is particularly useful because it has been digitized. This series, conducted throughout by Archibald Johnston Neilson, commenced on Wednesday 10 April 1895 (not 1894 as Whyld said) and continued until his death on Friday 17 April 1942 at the age of 70. The last column he had prepared appeared on 22 April with problems 4849– 4851. This run of 47 years, though not a world record for a chess column, is probably a Scottish record that is unlikely ever to be broken. The column is all the more valuable because relatively few chess columns running beyond 1914 have so far been digitized, and because Neilson took a great interest in chess affairs throughout Britain and indeed the world so that this was by no means a parochial column.

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An obituary and photograph of Neilson was printed in the paper on Wednesday 22 April. More tributes were published on 29 April. In an announcement on 3 June 1942 the editors of the Falkirk Herald regretted that, especially due to the circumstances of the war, they had been unable to find anybody to replace Neilson and so had to discontinue the column.

Welsh Columns Relatively little research has been done into chess columns published in Wales. Only a few are mentioned in Martyn J. Griffiths’s book Chess in Wales and it seems likely that none were widely read beyond the principality. Briefly, the following is what we discovered. The first Welsh newspaper to have some substantial chess reporting was The Cambrian, a Swansea weekly which was the first English language newspaper in south Wales. However, there was never a real column in the paper until one was started by James Glass (bylined) from 9 October 1891 running to at least the end of 1893, possibly to 1899. Very useful for historians is the Cambrian Index Online, a project of Swansea libraries which can be found at www.Swansea.gov.uk/cambrian. The first mention of chess was on 5 April 1828. At present the index ends around 1881 so it does not cover the period of Glass’s column. The first Welsh column, as opposed to occasional news reports, was probably that in the Western Mail, a Cardiff daily paper, which began publication in 1869. Gillam has discovered a chess column not mentioned by Whyld, which ran from 4 December 1869 to 29 January 1870. As this is just before the start of the first column in the sister paper Weekly Mail, discussed below, it is likely to have been a precursor with the same contributor. These few articles may be found online as they have been digitized by the B.N.A.

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The Weekly Mail commenced publication on 12 February 1870. The chess column began on page 6 in the very the first issue (not 1871 as Whyld had said), with this justification: “The game of chess has become so very popular in South Wales and the west of England, that in devoting a corner of the Weekly Mail to it, we feel that we are supplying an acknowledged want.” Readers were informed that Cardiff Chess Club was now engaged in a correspondence match with Chester. Moreover, Messrs. Solomons and Wakeford of Cardiff were engaged in a postal match against Messrs. Burn and Cox of Liverpool, while “the Rev. Walter Evans, like a Paladin of old, is playing a match, single-handed against the rising chess club of Aberdare.” The correspondence games involving the future master Amos Burn (1848–1925) were published in the column on 12 March and 2 April. Richard Forster’s biography of Burn says the games began late in 1869 as the result of a challenge from the Cardiff to the Liverpool club. Forster identified Burn’s partner as Charles Hudson Cox (1829–1901) who is known from other sources. Forster published the game that Burn and Cox won with White; he could not find the other. Here it is for the sake of posterity, though it is not very interesting.

Solomons and Wakeford– A. Burn and C. H. Cox Liverpool–Cardiff match, corr 1869–1870 King’s Bishop’s Gambit (C36) Notes from the Western Mail, 2 April 1870, probably by Walter Evans. 1. e4 e5 2. f4 e×f4 3. Bc4 Nf6 This defence to the King’s Bishop’s Gambit is, by many good players, considered preferable to the older ones of 3. … Qh4† and 3. … g5. 4. Nf3 d5 5. e×d5 Bd6 6. 0–0 0–0 7. d4 Ne4 8. Ne5 g5 9. Qh5 This is premature. We should have preferred freeing the pieces on the Queen’s side before commencing an attack. 9. … f5

10. b3 This and the following move on White’s part involves a loss of time, and tends to shutting the Queen’s Bishop out of play. The doubled pawn on the queen’s file must delay the opening of the diagonal to the bishop. 10. … Nd7 11. Bb2 Ndf6 12. Qe2 The force of our remark on White’s 9th move is now apparent. 12. … Qe8 13. Nd2 N×d2 14. Q×d2 Ng4 15.  Rae1 Qh5 16.  g3 f×g3 17.  h×g3 Rf6 18. N×g4 Q×g4 19. Re8† Kf7 20. Qe1 Rh6 It appears to us that Black might now have taken the P ch, compelling an exchange of queens, not only with safety, but with the better game. 21. Rd8 Kg7 22. R×d6 c×d6 ½–½. Black has no way of avoiding the perpetual check. If the players of the white pieces attempt to win, they must lose the game. The Liverpool players thus won the match. The chess editor made an effort to publish games by the strongest players in the south Wales region, many of which would not have got into print otherwise. On 19 February there was a game played over the board between Fedden and Richard Henry Falkland Fenton (1837–1916), who now lived in Bath but had formerly been in Swansea. Fenton was soon to move to London where he became an habitué of the Divan and a minor professional player, despite the fact that Potter was able to beat him in a match conceding odds. In 1870 the column also published some games by Eugene Sevich who was an amateur from St. Petersburg, Russia, then residing in Newport, Monmouthshire. On 17 September the column said Sevich had left Britain but was expected to return in a few months. The column remained active for over two years but started to fail towards the end of 1872 when there was often no game. The last article in the series was on 24 May 1873; it was very short and included problem 168. A second column began in the Western Mail on 1 March 1884. There was no byline but Griffiths (page 39) names W. Heitzman,

3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885 a German immigrant who lived in Pontypridd. Griffiths says the column “ran for several years and gave news of all important chess events in Britain and indeed the world, as well as chess problems, opening theory, games etc.” The end-date of this column is unknown, but a third column in the Weekly Mail began about the middle of November 1890 and continued at least into early 1891, problem 11 by Heitzman appearing on 10 January. It seems likely that Heitzman was the pseudonymous chess editor, “Plutarch.” This revival occurred shortly after another column had begun in the rival Cardiff Evening Express. The column in the Cardiff Evening Express therefore predated the third series in the Weekly Mail. Whyld’s entry for this title was vague, and appears inaccurate; he said there was chess from 1890 to 1899 and later, naming Heitzman as the editor and citing various sources for this information. In fact the column began on Friday 3 October 1890 and continued every Friday at least to the end of that year, but it was not by Heitzman, although it is certainly possible he took over later. In 1890 the chess editor was George W. Lennox, who received a byline. Lennox, of Scottish origin, was another prominent south Wales player of the period but his first article did feature a problem by Heitzman. It is not known how long this column, which Griffiths does not mention in his book, may have continued.

Irish Chess Columns The present author has made a special study of Irish chess columns, but to present all the findings here in detail would rather unbalance the chapter, especially as the title of this book is British Chess Literature. Nevertheless, in Appendix 1 the most important findings and entries are summarized chronologically for all the Irish columns discovered— and also some that Whyld listed but which

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did not exist. It should also be noted that detailed information about the Dublin Evening Mail is presented in this author’s history of correspondence chess (and is not repeated here).49 For convenience, there will not be a separate discussion of later Irish columns in Chapter 4. Irish chess columns of the 19th and early 20th centuries can be roughly categorized as follows. Firstly, national newspapers with columns published in Dublin. Then there were columns in regional or local newspapers, the most important of which were published in Belfast. These catered to the province of Ulster (which is not the same as present day Northern Ireland). Thirdly there were columns in Cork, catering to the south, and for a few years the Sligo Times (in the north-west) had a column, but these were in the early 20th century. Fourthly, there were columns in various magazines or small journals, most of which were short-lived. A large number of the columns in the first and fourth categories were conducted by the Rowlands, either jointly or separately. This couple has already been introduced in connection with the Sheffield Independent, and they also had a column in the Bristol Mercury which lasted into the 1890s. (They are discussed in the History of Correspondence Chess in Britain and Ireland.) It was the 1880s before any long-running Dublin newspaper columns become established although there had been some shortlived ones. The earliest Irish columns were in fact those in the second category, serving the North. A curiosity worth a brief mention, although it was not a true column, was the series of chess articles in the early 1840s in the Newry Commercial Telegraph. This paper was published in Newry, County Armagh, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. It was generally known locally as the Newry Telegraph and has been digitized by B.N.A. under that name. After a short paragraph on 17 March 1840, announcing the start of the Armagh Chess Club’s correspondence match

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with Liverpool, an anonymous series of news items and games appeared nearly every week between 29 May and 5 October 1841, mostly concerning the Armagh Club, its lectures and correspondence match. It was probably contributed by George Cochrane, who gave those lectures, and including also in August, a romance about Ruy Lopez. In late 1843 they also reprinted reports and game scores of Staunton’s match against Saint-Amant in Paris, taken from Galignani’s Messenger, an English language newspaper published in the French capital. The first true Irish chess column found is that in the Weekly Northern Whig, between 8 March 1862 and 5 December 1868, albeit with several breaks. This Belfast paper had chess by an anonymous editor from 1862 to 1868, often weekly but with interruptions, as

J. A. Conroy, chess editor of the Irish Sportsman in 1887–1890, who is also said to have conducted the lost column of the Irish Sporting Times in 1861–1862. Photograph (unknown date) by F. Coghlan, Londonderry (courtesy Cleveland Public Library Special Collections).

detailed in Appendix I. This column published many games by Irish players and reported well on local events, including some in Dublin, and also included some retrospective information about early Belfast chess in the days of Alexander McDonnell. Whyld made no distinction between this paper and the daily Northern Whig which revived chess in 1886. Some sources say that there was a slightly earlier column, published in Dublin, in an untraceable newspaper called the Irish Sporting Times. There are references to it in the Chess Player’s Chronicle of 1861.50 According to the Rowlands, “…the first chess column that appeared in Ireland was in the Irish Sporting Times, some thirty years ago. It was conducted by Mr. J. A. Conroy.”51 As Conroy was still alive (and also MacDonnell, who could have corroborated the information), this is probably true, but no publication of that name is known to the British Library or the bibliographers of the Waterloo Directory. This was certainly not the 1876 paper of that title which had only a very brief existence. The likeliest explanation is that it was not an independent title but a supplement with Saturday editions of the Irish Times which failed to be preserved in the files of that paper that have been microfilmed and digitized. The best evidence in favor of this argument is that the Irish Times report on Thursday 26 December 1861 of the Belfast–Dublin telegraph match refers in its introduction to the earlier Liverpool match “fully reported in our paper, 2nd November.” Yet the microfilms and digitized Irish Times of Saturday 2 November contain no such report. There were a few reports of chess events in the Irish Times but no regular column until 1955. The next Dublin column was that in Irish Sportsman and Farmer, a Dublin weekly. The series lasted only a few weeks. The column by James Alexander Rynd (1846–1917) was announced 12 November and began seven days later. It ran to 18 February 1871 with one final article on 8 April 1871. Later the title of

3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885 this newspaper was shortened to the Irish Sportsman, which had a column in the 1880s as discussed below. There are occasional references to chess in another similar Irish title, Practical Farmer, of which little trace remains. The Weekly Irish Times, published in Dublin by the proprietors of the daily paper, has been digitized so it is no longer difficult to find the chess content. There was initially a column by Alfred S. Peake which started on 25 January 1879 to coincide with Zukertort’s visit to the city. The column continued through 1880 and 1881, albeit with some weeks missed, and its frequency eventually reduced to fortnightly. It became irregular and last appeared on 18 March 1882. Whyld misleadingly wrote of a problem tourney in 1882; it was just an award for best problem published in 1882. He also wrote “irregular in 1886” but actually there was no chess column at all. A new column by Mrs. Rowland was said (e.g., in the English Mechanic) to be starting in early 1889 but it did not happen, as shown by the electronic database edition of the Irish Times. Later there was a quite good column by Mrs. Rowland which ran from 23 February 1895 except for a lengthy hiatus during the Boer War. There was no chess in 1900 or 1901; the column resumed in November 1902. It was brought to an end in August 1914, immediately on the outbreak of war. The great increase of chess activity in Ireland in the mid–1880s, consequent to the forming of the Irish Chess Association and the emergence of the Irish champion, Rynd, from retirement, saw several columns started. The first of these was in the Irish Sportsman, begun by Rowland (assisted by Beechey) from 8 December 1883 until 21 November 1885 when he gave up the column because of his contributions to the Dublin Evening Mail. The subsequent history of this column is a bit confused and the information presented in Whyld’s bibliography is doubtful. He (following Harold Murray’s notes) named Peake as editor from 18 December 1885, preceded briefly by K. A.

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Thomas Rowland, chess editor of the Dublin Evening Mail and some other columns. Picture from The Chess Bouquet (1897).

Rynd from 28 November 1885. As Kenneth Rynd was only born on 9 October 1873 this seems implausible but he is known to have been keen on chess well before this; presumably his father helped him. Peake’s editorship ended on 30 November 1886 after the outbreak of a lengthy feud between him and Rowland which spilled into the column; probably the editor sacked him. The column was resumed in January 1887 under Conroy, finally ending on 22 March 1890 (but with no chess between 27 April and 13 July 1889 inclusive). There is no direct evidence that the Rowlands were involved in the later period, but Conroy (who was now living well away from Dublin in Listowel, County Kerry) was friendly with them and thanks them for help. Possibly the Rowlands took over in July 1889. In 1889 the Mail and Sportsman columns disagreed over the history of Dublin chess clubs which does suggest different editors. The Irish Sportsman was subsumed into the Irish Field in 1894 without a chess column.

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The chess column of the Dublin Evening Mail was begun by Thomas Rowland on 16 July 1885 and continued on Thursdays until March 1900 when it moved to Saturdays. Whyld’s information on page 116 is not fully correct; for example, there was no apparent connection with the Daily Express. The following announcement appeared in the Irish Sportsman on 25 July 1885: In order to meet the demands of chess players, the Warder and Dublin Weekly Mail wisely commences in time the publication of a chess column. It will also appear in the Evening Mail on every Thursday afternoon. The chess column will be attractive to both beginners and advanced players, for the former is promised a series of simple and comprehensive instructions on how to play, also articles on the constructions of problems and the art of solving. The advanced players will also be well catered for, as the chess editor is a well known reliable authority. We wish our confrere that success which we fully expect he will have.

The Warder and Dublin Weekly Mail was a weekly paper from the same proprietor, which also circulated in England where there were now large numbers of Irish emigrants. From 12 November 1892, until 1902, the title changed to simply The Warder. The column on Saturdays was usually identical with the one in the evening paper two days previously, e.g., Saturday 26 January 1889 (first year this author has seen) had the same content as the Mail of Thursday 24 January, but the Warder fell a week behind after the Mail column moved to Saturdays in 1900. This was the most important Irish column of the late 19th century; running problem tourneys, five major postal tourneys and other postal matches with much British participation. There was some irregularity around 1900, probably due to the Boer War. The column finally ended on 29 March 1902 and the style of writing and content suggests that Mrs. Rowland had a much larger hand in it towards the end. For completeness, it should also be noted that Mrs. Rowland briefly had a wartime column in the Irish Weekly Mail and Warder.

Chess historians not based in Ireland face a serious problem in connection with the Mail and Warder column, namely that the British Library holdings lack the Thursday editions of the Dublin Evening Mail until 1894. In fact the Mail was published six days a week, but until that year the B.L. has only the Monday, Wednesday and Friday editions. This misled the Waterloo Directory into thinking the paper was only published thrice weekly. The recent B.N.A. digitization of the Mail only reflects the B.L. holdings. Researchers in England can seek the column instead in the Warder but the B.L. does not have that for 1885 either, and its later holdings are incomplete, but they do now appear to have it on microfilm for most years from 1889. The National Library of Ireland does have a full set of the Mail from 1886 onwards but they also lack the Thursday editions in 1885. Those articles only survive in a scrapbook at the Cleveland Public Library (of which the Royal Dutch Library has rather poor photocopies). The column in the Dublin Evening Herald was begun on Saturday 5 March 1892 by J. A. Rynd, who was initially bylined “Mr. J. Porterfield Rynd The Irish Champion.” (In recent years he had adopted the name “Porterfield” but the genesis of this remains obscure.) For most of this period (though not in 1892) the masthead of the weekend edition (where chess appeared) was the Saturday Herald, but it is on the same microfilms as the weekday editions. The column continued to 1914, but in some years (especially when it is called “Neochess”) the articles make strange reading, making one wonder about Rynd’s mental health. Or perhaps he just was not very interested in conducting a normal type of column. During a more lucid period, in the second half of 1903 at least, “M. W.” (who was probably Moffatt Wilson, a Dublin Chess Club member) was assisting the editor. Rynd was certainly writing the column around 1912–1914 until it ceased on 15 August 1914, soon after war broke out. Thomas Rowland revived the

3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885 Herald column on 9 December 1922, until he died on 13 August 1929. The column (and postal tournaments) were continued afterwards by two long-serving chess editors, T. P. Donnegan and Jim C. Corby, until at least the late 1990s when a syndicated puzzle replaced the old weekly local column. In the 1880s and 1890s there were a few other columns in Dublin newspapers and journals of less importance, for which readers are referred to Appendix I. The titles concerned are the Celtic Times, Irish Fireside, Irish Figaro, and To-day’s Woman. A curiosity is that in 1897 Mrs. Rowland’s readers subscribed to buy her a typewriter, which would have greatly eased her work of writing multiple columns. In the Irish Figaro on 19 June 1897 it was reported that the presentation had been made to her. Just over £9 was raised from 78 people in Ireland, England, and Scotland. The Hon. H. C. Plunkett MP and the Rev. Fernando Saavedra were among those who contributed. Meanwhile several newspapers in Belfast also ran chess columns from the 1880s onwards. Fuller details are to be found in Appendix I. For some of this period the content in the Belfast News-Letter and the Northern Whig was essentially the same, since the articles were contributed by Belfast Chess Club members. The Belfast News-Letter claims, on its website, to be “the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the Englishspeaking world,” having been established in 1737. Originally a radical Presbyterian paper, it had become staunchly Unionist by the time the chess columns appeared. Since the NewsLetter has been extensively digitized, it is a very convenient source for historians about chess in the north of Ireland.52 A difficulty to be found with this and some other Belfast columns is that they frequently consisted of just text without diagrams. The News-Letter column, began 19 March 1886 with news, games, and some problems but in the New Year it became irregular and ended in June 1887. On 21 September 1887

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William Steen (not Stern as in Whyld) was named as having conducted the column and reports of the 1886 Irish Chess Association Congress, but regretted he was now unable to continue. The same announcement appeared on 29 September in the Northern Whig: From the commencement of this “Chess Department” our readers have been indebted to Mr. W. Steen, of Belfast, for kindly contributing the information contained in it from week to week. In March, 1886, Mr. Steen undertook the task of compiling a weekly chess column, the chief object at the time being to give publicity to the meeting of the Irish Chess Association, which took place in the month of October last year. Chess players will regret to learn that Mr. Steen has found it impossible for him to continue the work which he has carried on so ably in connection with this department, but we are glad to say that arrangements have been made by which the column is still to be continued by a member of B. C. C.

A new series of articles, contributed by Belfast Chess Club, resumed in the NewsLetter (not the Whig) from 15 September 1887 (but with no regular day of the week). From October to December the same articles appeared in the Belfast Weekly News. This column continued in 1888 (still with no diagrams and no regular day of the week) until it settled down on Thursdays from 26 April. The Irish Sportsman of 19 May 1888 credits William Campbell with reviving chess in the NewsLetter and the Northern Whig. A later chess editor was W. J. Allen from 1911 to 1956. Whyld names Thomas Martin as editor in 1889, but that was probably a confusion with the Belfast Weekly News whose column Martin was to conduct for many years, roughly from 14 January 1888 to the end of 1901. The Northern Whig, like the News-Letter, was a Protestant daily paper but with a more liberal outlook. Whyld’s page 317 reference to a column in 1860s is incorrect: see the Weekly Northern Whig [q.v.]. This paper has not yet been digitized for the years with chess but Ulster chess historian David McAlister informed this author some years ago:

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British Chess Literature to 1914 The column in the Northern Whig started I believe Thursday 18th March 1886. The material in its chess column was usually but not invariably the same as that in the Belfast News-Letter chess column (at least until 1911). Eventually the Northern Whig largely stopped having local material, though the Belfast News-Letter carried on until 1956. I think it’s only available in hard copy.

The newspaper columns published in Cork, the largest city in the far south of Ireland, are all easy to find in Appendix I because “Cork” is in all the titles. The most important of these for chess was the Cork Weekly News, another Protestant paper. Whyld mentions only a column starting in 1907, but there was much more chess than that. It began with a local column edited by Archibald Smith from 12 October 1901 to 6 September 1902, before he moved to Dublin. It resumed on 20 September 1902, now probably conducted by Richard Archer (named in Kingstown Society, November 1903) until 24 December 1904. Between 1905 (4 February) and the end of 1906 the column was supplied by the British Chess Company and attributed to W. Moffatt on 23 October 1905. It promoted their correspondence tournaments. The fact that the run begins with Problem D17 suggests the same column must have begun already in at least one English paper since 1903; see the entry in Appendix I on the Gloucester Citizen. The column did include some local content, more in 1905 than in 1906. On 6 January 1906 it was said that the column was “Conducted by the British Chess Co., with the assistance of Philip H. Williams, author of The Modern Chess Problem.” The B.C.C. byline was dropped when Chess Amateur began (in October 1906), but the contributors and style to the end of 1906 are similar. On 4 January 1907 Mrs. Rowland began a new series which continued for ten years though the content was often very similar to her Weekly Irish Times column, but with some local information when it was available. At the end of April 1916 she gave up the column

through ill health but it was continued by an unknown person (possibly a local Cork player) until a closure announcement appeared on 27 January 1917. The Irish correspondence chess tournaments were then taken over by W. J. Allen of the Belfast News-Letter until, after his wife’s death, Thomas Rowland took them back to the Herald. Finally, magazines may be briefly mentioned. The Rowlands (or one of them) were again involved in the Clontarf Parochial Magazine, of which no examples survive, and in The Visitor, and more importantly in Kingstown Monthly and its successor Kingstown Society. These are available only in the British Library. Chess ceased in Kingstown Society when Mrs. Rowland started her little magazine, The Four-Leaved Shamrock, discussed in Chapter 5. One Irish school magazine has already been discussed. The other two, of which brief details may be found in Appendix I, were the Rathmines School Magazine from the 1870s, the Wesley College Quarterly (which ran problem tourneys that were entered by people unconnected with the school). The Rathmines School Magazine was published at a Protestant secondary school in that south Dublin suburb and included chess articles by Thomas Long (1827–1907) for about two years. The examples found were all in the British Library; no copies of the magazine with chess content have been located in Ireland although the Trinity College Dublin Library has some issues that lack chess. Wesley College is a Methodist secondary school for boys founded in south Dublin from July 1881, which since relocated to the suburb of Dundrum and eventually became coeducational. Chess began in the Quarterly mid–1888, with a problem tourney and games. Gradually the magazine became one more for the pupils and the final issue with some chess was that for October–November 1897. The chess editors were R. F. Crook, R. T. White (named in the 1891 Rowland Directory), A. T.

3. The Golden Age of Chess Columns, ca. 1860–1885 Bassett (from January 1892), and lastly William E. Thrift (from August 1893), who at the end of his life was provost of Trinity College Dublin from 1937 to 1942. The College has some copies of the Quarterly but no complete set is known. The University of Kansas Library has the first 12 issues ( July 1881–August 1884). Cleveland has issues 3/ and 4/1888 and all four issues of 1889; scans have been donated to T.C.D. Library. The July 1890 and October 1891 issues are the only ones found from those two years. A less-known example is Our School Times, which is detailed in Appendix VI because of the discoveries made (with local help) about this rare column. That series was conducted by Irish scholar William Henry Stanley Monck and it included the following game he played against the future World Champion during the latter’s brief visit to Dublin in 1881. This game is not to be found in Bachmann’s Schachmeister Steinitz or any other collection of his games.53 The score was garbled in the magazine from move 14, but a reconstruction has been managed.

Wilhelm Steinitz–William Henry Stanley Monck Simultaneous display, Dublin Chess Club, 14 January 1881 Italian Game (C50) Our School Times, 13 June 1881, with notes by Monck [TH is the present author, with additional notes]. 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. 0–0 Nf6 5. d4 B×d4 This is now considered the best way of taking the pawn. 6. N×d4 N×d4 7. f4 d6 8. Nc3 [TH: Monck has a note “Not the usual move but good enough apparently.” It is not attached to any move in the score but seems to belong here, because White almost invariably played 8. f×e5 now. 8. Nc3 was an experiment by Steinitz which he wisely did not repeat.] 8. … c6 9. Be3 b5 10. Bd3 Ng4 11. B×d4 Herr Steinitz would have got a bad

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position by retaining his B and prefers giving up the exchange to abandoning the attack. 11. … e×d4 12. Ne2 Ne3 12. … Qh4 looks tempting, but White could reply 13. h3 and reply to 13. … Ne3 by 14. Qe1 Still, Black would have obtained an attack by the move which might have proved formidable. 13. Qd2 N×f1 14. R×f1 [TH: “P. to QB4” was printed as both Black’s 14th and 16th move but cannot have been played here because Steinitz would have replied B×b5†.] 14. … Qb6 15. f5 f6 16. Qf4 c5 17. Qg4 c4 The capture of the B is tempting, but perhaps Black should rather have advanced his g-pawn, which cannot be taken in reply without sacrificing White’s queen. [TH: Computers do not condemn the text, but dislike Monck’s suggestion. They prefer 17. … 0–0 or 17. … Qb7.] 18. Q×g7 Rf8 19.  Nf4 c×d3?? This move loses the game. Black would, I believe, have retained the advantage by 19. … Qb7 or 19. … Bb7 … [TH: omitted here is Monck’s inaccurate analysis of the latter move.] The present move leads to a very pretty finish. Black overlooked his opponent’s move 22. 20. Nd5 Qb7 20. … Rf7, returning the rook to f8 if the queen checks, is better but would probably not save the game. He would at all events have enabled White to draw. [TH: The accuracy of the reconstruction is proved because 20. … Rf7 would otherwise be impossible. Also White’s next move would just lose the knight if 15. … f6 had not been played.] 21.  Nc7† Kd8 22. Ne6† B×e6 Hardly an oversight, for 22. … Ke8 loses the game equally, e.g., 23. Q×f8† Kd7 24. Qd8† Kc6 25. N×d4† Kc5 26. Nb3† and wins the queen next move, unless 26. … Kb4 in which case White mates in two moves with the queen. 23. Q×b7 Rc8 24. f×e6 Rc7 25. Qb8† 1–0. Finally, there were two temperance journals in Dublin which ran chess columns. Both were published by the Dublin Total Abstinence Society, a Protestant-run voluntary body, which, according to one of its publications,

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was “established to promote the Social and Moral Well-being of the Community, without distinction of Creed or Politics.”54 In 1875 it had founded a Coffee Palace in Townsend Street (near the River Liffey in the south inner city), modeled on many similar Coffee Palaces in England in the late 19th century. This one ran various social alcohol-free social events and the City Chess Club met there. This was probably established around 1887 after the failure of the St. Patrick’s Chess Club by one of Dublin’s leading freemasons, Dr. E. MacDowel Cosgrave, along with Thomas Rowland and other supporters. This gave rise to a chess column in the Coffee Palace and Temperance Journal which is mentioned in some club Directories edited by the Rowlands, who had resumed that annual publication after the first two numbers Bland produced earlier in the decade. The National Library of Scotland holds one complete 12-page issue of the Journal, bound in with some other pamphlets. The start of Elementary Lessons on Chess, by the Editor, suggests this was the first article in the series; a problem editor was named ( J. M. Kenny, of Clonskeagh, Dublin) but no problems were included. Since this was the first number of volume 12, for January 1889, that suggests the journal had begun in either 1878 (if volumes were annual) or 1884 (if they were semi-annual). The other article in that first column was a report on Dr. W.H. K. Pollock’s simultaneous display at the

City Club on Tuesday 18 December 1888. “There were as many as sixty present to meet him—a number much larger than has as yet come together in a chess-room in Dublin.” Pollock took White in all games, winning 16, drawing two and losing three, one of them to Cosgrave. The Irish champion, “Porterfield Rynd” and Professor Mir Aulad Ali of T.C.D. respectively proposed and seconded a vote of thanks. Some further copies of this column appear to exist in a scrapbook at Cleveland. Whyld dates these as May to September 1888 based on one of Murray’s lists; it is uncertain how accurate these were. Gillam surmised that only five articles appeared; there may have been more but most are lost. Peake, though named as editor on a Murray list, is questionable; the fifth (1891) edition of the Rowlands’ Directory said T. Willson Fair was editor. In 1893 the Dublin Total Abstinence Society replaced the Journal by a better magazine called Common Sense, edited by Cosgrave, which was published until 1901. This is not mentioned in Whyld, but it was published until 1901 and some issues (at least October 1895 and October 1896) included chess articles by Monck. This author has been able to see only a few copies in the National Library of Ireland, so these two columns are historical curiosities of little practical value unless more examples can be found.

4. Latter Years of the Chess Column ism that lay behind much provincial culture was being made to look archaic in an age that turned increasingly to ‘professionals’ and ‘experts.’” Irish and Scottish papers were probably less affected by these changes because of the somewhat different cultures as well as the greater distance involved making the timely circulation of English newspapers in those countries impractical, although some people might have bought London papers a day late to keep in touch. Readers of chess columns, too, probably looked to London, especially The Field, for the best coverage, although provincial columns still carried local news, and a few with expert editors still carried original material in the early 1900s, notably the Norwich Mercury in the hands of problem expert John Keeble.2 The role of chess and indeed of other sporting, intellectual and cultural activities in British society had also changed. Well before 1914, hobbies of various kinds had established their place in the modern leisure world. The early Victorian idea that chess could be “improving” was now “old hat.” The institutions that had sprung up in the 19th century to cater to the young artisans and clerks, many newly arrived in the big towns and cities, had now changed their nature or closed down. There

This chapter (which occasionally strays into postwar periodicals) discusses the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, when numerically there was a large number of chess columns but their significance in general had somewhat changed. The historian Lord Asa Briggs identified the 1890s as the decade when centripetal forces began to operate in English society, especially affecting journalism.1 Advertising came to be organized more on a national basis and provincial papers were restricted to what they could earn from their local markets. In the late 1880s and 1890s the Linotype, which mechanized and greatly speeded up the typesetting process, probably gave a competitive advantage to the London newspaper proprietors who could afford the capital investment. Another factor influencing the increasing dominance of London journalism may have been the increased speed of railroad trains, enabling papers and journals published in the capital to be brought more speedily to English provincial centers in time for early morning sales, thus challenging the provincial daily papers in their own markets. For example, the Nottingham Daily Express ceased publication in 1918, becoming a paper of a different title and character. Moreover, Briggs wrote, “The amateur-

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was so much more on offer now and by the outbreak of war, chess had declined into being a hobby for the middle classes. As early as 1895 a new weekly publication called Hobbies was launched, catering to these young men, with chess as one of its regular features from 1897 onwards. Ross McKibbin, probably the only previous social historian to use the magazine Hobbies as a source, was interested chiefly in working-class men. Although he did not mention chess (perhaps he had seen only the first volumes), it is striking that much of his analysis seems true of chess players too. He noted that “most hobbies were intensely competitive”—even gardening—and in the breeding of dogs or birds “‘a man’s success at his hobby was measured by public competition.”3 Competition came to dominate and, he wrote, even private hobbies “usually involved some public

display.” (In chess, sending in one’s best game to a chess editor in the hope of publication can be viewed as a form of display.) McKibbin referred to the “individualism of hobbies” and also discussed their function. His observation that they provided “an acceptable competitiveness to lives otherwise circumscribed” is close to the arguments of sociologists Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning about sports (whether participatory, or enjoyed vicariously as a spectator) providing excitement in “unexciting societies.”4 He says another function was that “they permitted a socially-acceptable level of intellectual activity…. The mastery of a craft-hobby or sport demanded accuracy, knowledge, discipline, and skill.”5 Similarly, Helen Meller’s study of Bristol says that by the First World War, “leisure was becoming more than an antidote to work. For some it could even be the major source of emotional and intellectual satisfaction in their lives.”6 So it was the fate of chess (except among its most dedicated and proficient exponents) to decline into a hobby, and ultimately to cede its premier position among indoor recreations to the almost equally skillful bridge, a partnership game more suited to an era when women could readily participate and card games were no longer stigmatized as gambling. Articles in periodicals on “royal auction bridge” began to appear, changing eventually by the early 1930s (in papers like The Referee and The Field) into columns about the more highly evolved contract bridge.

“Captain King” and the Rise of Syndication John Keeble of Norwich, chess editor, author, and problem specialist. (Photograph dated 1935, courtesy Cleveland Public Library Special Collections).

Nowadays many newspapers run chess columns which consist of little more than a puzzle for solution, which these days is normally a game position rather than a composed problem. Often the editors obtain these arti-

4. Latter Years of the Chess Column cles at low cost from a news features agency which circulates identical or near-identical articles to several papers all over the world. This is an aspect of the history of chess literature which remains under-researched. Features agencies have advantages for editors in that they can purchase weekly copy on generic subjects (such as crosswords, games, puzzles, cookery recipes etc.) without much effort, and very cheaply, because the writers are paid by the agency a small sum for each separate newspaper or magazine that takes their contributions. It is of course the agency’s responsibility that they do not distribute the same copy to competing titles in the same geographical area, so agency copy is more useful for provincial than national titles, although what is a “national” article in one country might be sent to papers in other countries. Alternatively, a newspaper company owning titles in neighboring towns or suburbs that might have distinct circulation areas, could place identical features into each of those separate papers, knowing that nobody was likely to buy more than one of the titles. Whyld noted the case of the column by Gittins, appearing in both the Birmingham News and Handsworth Herald. In the case of Ethelbert Holt’s column for the Rossendale Free Press (which started in 1889), it also appeared in other newspapers owned by the same proprietor: the Darwen News, Ramsbottom Observer and the Haslingden Guardian, so the owner got value for money. The idea that a chess column might be written in such a way that it could be reproduced in several different journals, with little or no modification, was unheard of until the 1880s as we saw in the last chapter, in the case of Bird’s column. The typewriter and early duplicating machines in the late 19th and early 20th centuries removed the last technical obstacles to producing multiple copies. Even in the early 1900s, we know of only two syndicated chess columns whereas nowadays the vast majority of the few columns that survive

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are of that type. The case of the British Chess Company was also already mentioned in Chapter 3 in connection with the Gloucester Citizen and the Cork Weekly News. This was on a relatively small scale, though there may have been other titles, as yet unidentified, that took the same column. The case of the as yet unidentified “Captain King” is worth more detailed examination.7 This was definitely an agency-handled column. Beginning with the case of the chess column (not mentioned in Whyld) in the Western Weekly Mercury, published in Plymouth: In the years 1903 and 1904, at least, “Captain King” was bylined and the address given for correspondence was Whitefriars House, Carmelite Street, London EC. The chess column of the Bridlington Free Press, published far away in north-east Yorkshire, had essentially the same content and the same address for correspondence. It was noteworthy that on 13 February 1904 the column reported the death of Miss Eliza Mary Thorold who lived in Bridlington. In this case, either the agency was asked to insert something for their readers about this well-known local player, or more likely the local editor just added a paragraph to the agency copy. Another advantage of agency copy is that if editors wished to take a break (perhaps because chess was not popular with readers in the summer), the series could be dropped for a while and not paid for, but resumed when the autumn season began. Both the Plymouth and Bridlington papers did this with “Captain King.” The correspondence address in those two papers, and others, matches almost identically an entry to be found in the Newspaper Press Directory for 1903 and several years before and after. There was no other agency in the Directory with a similar address. Their entry read: ATHLETIC NEWS AGENCY (THE) supplies Special Reports, Notes, Articles, and London Letters on all kinds of Athletic and Cycling Sport,

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each branch being under a Specialist’s supervision. Particular attention paid to golf. Notes supplied, and reports wired on the shortest notice. Dixon, J. E. & Co., 11, 15, 16 & 18 East Temple Chambers, 2, Whitefriars street, EC.8

Surely this agency was “Captain King’s” employer or took his contributions on a freelance basis. The use of a pseudonym even meant they could change the writer if they wished. A good clue to whether a column is syndicated is that the problems and games will usually not be numbered, because this facilitated starting the column in a newly subscribed paper at any time, and it also facilitated breaks and helped to avoid errors. “Captain King” usually just named the problem composer and wrote “solution to last week’s problem” without reference to a number. Originally contributed columns to nonsyndicated columns usually started with problem 1 and sometimes numbered the games they published also. The earliest “Captain King” column we have so far discovered was in the Leicester Chronicle in the fall of 1901, but there may have been earlier ones which the B.N.A. has not yet digitized. A chess column actually began in the Leicester paper on 28 September, with no local content, and the article was headed “Chess and Chess Players.” There was no byline and correspondents were asked to address the Chess Editor. After 26 October there was a three-week break and then from 23 November they started “Chess and Draughts” edited by “Captain King” and giving the Whitefriars address in London. The Leicester column ran (with gaps) until 13 December 1902 and then from 3 October 1903 to 6 February 1904 (without checkers). It appears that the clients of the Athletic News Agency had two subscription series from “Captain King” to offer to provincial newspaper editors: either with or without the checkers. Whyld drew no attention to this phenomenon, but in his name index on page 518, he also mentioned the following papers as hav-

ing had “Captain King” columns at one time or other: Birmingham News (uncertain dates, possibly 1913 to September 1914), Cheshire Daily Echo (1913), Stockport Advertiser (1913), and the West Sussex Gazette & South of England Advertiser (21 November 1901 to 12 February 1903). Apart from the Leicester paper, three more can be added to that list. The Burnley Gazette (in the British Newspaper Archive) had “Chess and Draughts by Captain King” running from 28 July 1906 to 18 February 1911. Also in the B.N.A. is the Morpeth Herald which ran Chess and Draughts “Edited by Captain King,” from 29 December 1911 to 4 April 1913. Then the Middlesex County Times had in 1911 (at least) chess by “Captain King” whereas Whyld only mentions a later (postwar) column in that paper. This one was not discovered in the B.N.A. but instead by the kind of serendipity that all diligent historians deserve to enjoy once in a while. While doing research in the old Colindale library, another researcher at a table nearby, who noticed this author was looking for chess articles, spotted this item in the Middlesex paper he was reading for an entirely different reason. This shows there could well be several other columns yet to be discovered.

Hoffer at The Field (and Elsewhere) The most extensive, and usually the highest quality, chess column in Britain from the 1870s up to 1923 was that in The Field. It is now time to examine its continuance in the post–Steinitz era. Steinitz’s replacement at The Field, the club-footed Hoffer, was a good chess reporter and organizer, but decidedly inferior as an analyst. The departure of Steinitz immediately meant the quality of annotations fell, although perhaps to the majority of readers it made little difference. As a player,

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Hoffer in fact largely avoided formal chess contests, and never entered tournaments, so it is hard to assess his playing strength. He kept in regular practice—first at the Divan and later at chess clubs—and was frequently involved in consultation games with masters. Hoffer also played in team matches. Notably, in the 1895 cable match against Brooklyn, he played board 2 against Jackson Whipps Showalter, then U.S. champion, and drew his game, which is an indication Hoffer could play at near master strength. This is what Rose had to say about him: Leopold Hoffer, born at Budapest in 1842, replaced Steinitz, and for thirty-one years, from 1882 to 1913, kept the chess columns of the paper at their highest level. Hoffer took no part in tournaments, limiting himself to journalism, but there were few of importance that he failed to attend. At chess congresses he was as familiar a figure as the masters themselves. He had a keen eye for combination and in annotating he could see at a glance if either of the players had missed the opportunity of a brilliant sacrifice. Linguistic ability enabled him to gather from players themselves the ideas they had in mind during the progress of a game and this lent vivid interest to his notes. From time to time promoters of tournaments made use of Hoffer’s organizing ability by entrusting him with the management of a contest.

For the first 14 years that Hoffer conducted The Field column, he was also editing The Chess-Monthly. Moreover, he was active as secretary and chief organizer of the British Chess Association (until that failed after about 1892) which, with the support of newspaper proprietor George Newnes (1851–1910), Hoffer was instrumental in founding. Hoffer also wrote a beginners’ manual, simply entitled Chess, which was first published in 1892 and went through numerous editions and impressions until it was mercifully killed off in the 1980s when books in algebraic notation took over on booksellers’ shelves. Rose says that in January 1891 The Field, along with Hoffer, moved from the Strand to Breams Buildings, Chancery Lane, which was

The last likeness of Leopold Hoffer, chess editor of The Field for thirty years from 1883 to 1913. This sketch, made a few weeks before his death by Dutch artist M. Nardus of Paris at the 1913 Scheveningen international tournament, was printed in The Field, CXXII (2 August 1913), page 270.

less convenient for the Divan than the office’s previous location, but not too far from the City of London Chess Club’s meeting rooms. Apparently the files of The Field must have contained more information about Hoffer than his predecessors, or else Rose heard anecdotes from somebody old enough to remember him. For example: No one could wish for a more delightful companion, yet his best friends would have to admit that he had a quick temper. It was not improved by the office boys of the pre–1914 era, who, when at night he had set out his board in working out a problem, would move the pieces before he came in next day.9

Gunsberg, in a biographical sketch for The Field after Hoffer’s death, recalled meeting him for the first time at the 1867 Paris tournament when, he said, Hoffer was the stronger player, but Gunsberg was only 12 years old. During the 46 years since then, Gunberg wrote, “I have watched his chess career, his ambition to rise, and his success, due both to a domineering will power and to a great capacity for taking pains.”10 Gunsberg

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also mentioned that Hoffer, despite his lack of ambition as a player, “had a vast amount of experience and knowledge of the game” and “a very abstemious mode of life.” He did not mention that in 1873 Hoffer had married an English widow but she died three years later and they had no children. Afterwards he appears to have lived alone until a niece joined him from abroad in 1901.11 Until he obtained sufficient income from chess writing, Hoffer, who was an accomplished linguist, probably worked as a teacher of languages, as stated as his occupation on his marriage certificate. One of the anecdotes told in The Field shortly after Hoffer’s death was that one night he had worked late to complete his column but when he went out about midnight to post it to the office, he found the doors barred and could not get out. His landlady and servants lived next door and did not hear him ring. So he stood at a window overlooking the street until, about 1 a.m., a postman came to empty a nearby mailbox. With some difficulty Hoffer managed to attract his attention and hand over the letter. It may seem remarkable that in those days mail would be collected in the middle of the night and delivered the same day. As one of the chief chess organizers and journalists in London in this period, Hoffer always had very good information about what was happening in the chess world. Hoffer (unlike Gunsberg) was not constrained by family commitments and was able to attend many chess events and organizational meetings on a regular basis, as well as having excellent contacts abroad. Hoffer has left detailed reports of many major chess tournaments that took place during his decades in charge of The Field and accounts of numerous minor events. He effectively summed up much of his career in a special illustrated article (on 31 December 1910) spanning five pages entitled “Progress of the game from the early days to the present time.” This included some personal recollections and some good pictures.

On the Paulsen–Kolisch match at the St. George’s Club of 1861, an engraving was reproduced, belonging to the Oxford University Chess Club. Of Potter and Steinitz, Hoffer wrote: Mr. Potter was one of the strongest English players, and the indirect originator of the modern school as propounded by Steinitz. Potter had a peculiar defensive style, so irregular that Steinitz and Zukertort used to say derisively, if you place the black pieces into a hat and shake them out over the board, you have exactly Potter’s style of defence. Strange to say, Steinitz himself adopted that style later on—in a scientific and modified form—and called it the Modern School…. By temperament, Steinitz really was a Romanticist, as testified by his match games against Anderssen, whom he defeated, as well as Bird, Blackburne, Zukertort, and others, by whether consciously or unconsciously, feeling that a more cautious method was necessary with the rapid progress of the game, he changed his style, but after all he only remained un romantique détruit.

This article includes memories of some tournaments, including Paris 1867 where Hoffer said he was “the acting secretary.” Winawer’s name was unknown previously. Arnous de Rivière was “chiefly instrumental in bringing about the tournament, and knew how to enrol influential high personages to favour the project.” At Baden-Baden 1870, “Blackburne and Steinitz and De Vere had some trouble on their home journey, the railway being fully occupied with the transport of troops. As a matter of fact, the boom of the artillery could be heard at Baden-Baden during the progress of the tournament.” Jules Grévy (later president of the French Third Republic) was one of the patrons of the Paris 1878 tournament. London 1872 was: … a small tournament, chiefly notable for the advent of Zukertort. He made a name in Germany both as a practical player and writer on the game, was invited by the St. George’s Chess Club (or, as Steinitz said out of spite, by Lowenthal, who was the secretary of the club) to make the little tournament more attractive, as otherwise the issue would have been a foregone conclusion for Steinitz; but Zukertort could only tie with

4. Latter Years of the Chess Column De Vere and the Rev. G. A. MacDonnell, Steinitz being first and Blackburne second.

The Field, as mentioned, has not been digitized but is widely available in major libraries, either on microfilm or the original bound volumes. Hoffer’s later columns (1900 onwards) are not included in a Cleveland scrapbook but Moravian Chess has published reprint volumes covering the years 1900 to 1909, and perhaps more will follow. Until Hoffer’s death in 1913, and indeed under its next editor also, The Field was an excellent source of information about all chess activities, not only in Britain but also on the continent, and the column continued with a succession of editors until the late 20th century. Hoffer’s journalism was not confined to The Field. Briefly, in 1893, he had a column in another weekly Black and White, which sponsored a small master tournament won by Blackburne.12 Especially after the close of The Chess-Monthly, he acquired further columns. Whyld mentions that the Weekly Dispatch ended on his death in 1913; Gillam says he saw nothing before 1908 so this needs more investigation. Hoffer definitely had important columns in the Westminster Gazette and The Standard, and other titles associated with those two. According to Whyld, the column in the Westminster Gazette (which was a daily newspaper) began in 1899 but the impression one gets is that this was a continuation of the column which had begun in the Westminster Budget on 1 May 1896. This was a London weekly illustrated magazine published on Fridays from 1893 to 4 November 1904; the B.L. catalog names a John Marshall as publisher but Sir George Newnes, a keen chess player, was involved for much or all of this time (at least as financial backer). Newnes’s biographer Hulda Friederichs was editor from 1896 as she mentions in her book. The existence of this column, overlooked by Whyld, was mentioned by the late Chris Ravilious when

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reviewing Whyld’s Columns for B.C.M.13 Readers can find the articles from 1896 free online at www.chessarch.com/excavations/excava tions.php/. Some earlier news reports in this paper are digitized in the American newspaperarchive.com. At least by the end of 1902, the Budget column seems to have had the same editor as the Westminster Gazette and it is likely Hoffer was editor of both. Sometimes the articles each week in the two papers may have been the same, but in 1904 at least, the Budget reprinted the column that had first appeared in its stablemate the previous Saturday. The last issue of the Westminster Budget was published on 4 November 1904. Its chess column had problem number 458: one less than the number of the Westminster Gazette problem next day. Although the Budget closed in November 1904, the publisher began a new weekly paper entitled the Saturday Westminster Gazette, which from at least 1913, and perhaps much earlier, started to run Hoffer’s chess column also. The further history of this column is discussed below in the section on the war years and their aftermath.

Muddle Over The Standard There has been a real muddle over Hoffer’s second most important column, which was in the London daily paper The Standard. The publication history is complicated, so that is examined before a discussion of the chess column. There are two important facts that the chess historian needs to be clear about. Firstly, the information in connection with the Evening Standard on page 137 of Whyld’s Columns actually relates to The Standard. Secondly, a similar confusion between the papers has been made by the British Newspaper Archive, whose digitized pages designated the “London Evening Standard” are actually also The Standard. From 1857 the two titles were distinct newspapers (although under the same

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ownership until 1915) and the British Library online catalog distinguishes between them correctly. If in doubt when reading a digitized chess article found through the search engine, turn to page 1 and look at the title on the masthead. The Encyclopædia of the British Press tells us that The Standard was “launched on May 21, 1827, as an afternoon paper by Charles Baldwin … [and] ceased publication as a morning paper on March 17, 1916.”14 The B.L. catalog appears to show that it continued until the end of 1920, but these were just singlepage “registration issues” (of small book size, each with a few snippets of news), the purpose of which was merely to retain copyright to the title in case the owner wished to sell or relaunch it. The publication history of the London Evening Standard is even more complicated. Both sources agree that The Standard began as an evening newspaper on 21 May 1827 and continued as such up to 27 June 1857; from 29 June 1857 it became a morning newspaper. The Encyclopædia entry on this newspaper tell us that when James Johnstone (1815–1878) became owner of the Standard in 1857 he converted it into a morning paper “which became a direct threat to The Times.” Then on 11 June 1859, Johnstone launched a sister paper, the Evening Standard, which has since absorbed nine other titles in its long history. Johnstone’s family continued to own the papers after his death and the two papers ran in tandem for many years, with the same editor as before (William Mudford) up to 1899. In 1892 Mudford introduced chess articles and it appears Whyld’s attribution of the column to Hoffer is correct, although there was no byline. For more than a decade, Hoffer wrote regularly for The Standard but also some-

times contributed news reports to the evening paper. Eventually, as will be explained further on, a change of proprietor led to his either resigning or being replaced. Writing about the start of this column, which is now established to have been in The Standard not the Evening Standard, Whyld said that chess reports began on 15 March 1892 (“3 or 4 a week”) until the end of May 1892. There were also games (sometimes two in the same article). Then problems were added (mostly on Mondays) from 9 May 1892— which was a special problem contributed by prize-winning composer Conrad Bayer but not numbered. It appears that Hoffer had already sometimes reported on chess events for the Standard papers for several years prior to the column starting, at least about chess events taking place in London, of which he was often a chief organizer. An example is the 1887 British Chess Association Congress played between 30 November and 8 December 1887. More than once the Evening Standard included games in its late edition that had actually been played the same day, the copy being filed (either by telephone or a human “runner”) before play had finished in most of the games.* During most of the 1890s and the early 1900s, national and metropolitan chess news was well reported by a combination of The Standard column, that conducted by Antony Guest in the Daily News and Samuel Tinsley’s coverage in The Times group of newspapers. Then after 1901 the Daily News column petered out and a few years later the Standard column also began to fail. Whyld said the column continued until January 1905 but the digitization has shown that reports and problems continued for four more months, albeit with some weeks missed. The last problem published was number 671

*Harding, Blackburne, page 257, expressed some doubt about whether the score of Mortimer–Blackburne (game 557 in that book) had really been published in the Evening Standard on the day it was played, 5 December 1887, but the British Library microfilm shows that this was indeed the case. Probably final editions were printed much later in the day than in more recent times, and it was usually the final edition of any newspaper that survived in the files that have been preserved.

4. Latter Years of the Chess Column on 15 May 1905 when the article also included two games from Charousek’s manuscript collection. That is known to have been in Hoffer’s possession, as he often published games from it in The Field, so this is supporting evidence for his having been the chess editor. Also in the column on 15 May there was a short paragraph reporting the death (on 9 May) of the problemist and army doctor Lt. Col. Charles White (1840–1905), who was known to the chess world as “C. W. of Sunbury.” It may be that White had been managing the problems for Hoffer; at any rate, White’s passing was the proprietor’s cue to stop chess in the morning paper and transfer it to the evening paper, with a new editor. Newspaper magnate C. Arthur Pearson (1866–1921), who had made his fortune with the Daily Express (launched in 1900), was the eldest son of a retired clergyman and chess writer. The Rev. Arthur Cyril Pearson (1838– 1916) had been the author of a book One Hundred Chess Problems, which was first published in 1879 and went through three editions up to 1883. Now it seems he wanted to conduct a chess column. Pearson, Jr., had bought both the Standard titles from the Johnstone family in 1904. He decided to merge the evening paper with the St. James’s Gazette, which he already owned, so it was relaunched on 14 March 1905 as the Evening Standard and St. James’s Gazette. On 27 May 1905 there was an announcement in the Standard that “chess cameos,” selected from “the best work of acknowledged experts” would appear every Saturday, from that day, in the Evening Standard and St. James’s Gazette. A few of these “cameos,” the positions described without diagrams, had been introduced to the column earlier in the year. Now it was explained that they were termed “cameos” in order “to distinguish them from ordinary Chess problems, which, however good they may be, are often not of the first quality.” So on 27 May 1905, soon after the column in the morning Standard ended, the eve-

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ning paper began a series of “chess cameos” (high-quality problems) which ran on Saturdays. Readers of the morning paper were reminded of the existence of the series by the following announcement which appeared in The Standard on both the 23rd and 29th of 29 May 1907: CHESS PROBLEMS. A series of rare chess problems, specially selected by a well-known expert, is appearing in the Evening Standard and St. James’s Gazette. In this way a collection of chess “cameos” differing from anything which has been published before is offered to those who are interested in the game.

There can be no doubt that Pearson père was responsible, because on 11 October 1907 The Standard carried a review of The Twentieth Century Standard Puzzle Book by A. C. Pearson which stated that the book included “chess cameos.” We have verified that the evening paper continued to publish its weekly “chess cameos” until at least the end of 1909. This arrangement probably came to an end in April 1910 when Arthur Pearson, his eyesight failing, sold the Standard titles to Davison Dalziel, M.P.15 Later, during the period of Dalziel’s proprietorship, there was a chess column from January 1912 to 1914, which Whyld attributed to Gunsberg. A sample was found on a microfilm for October 1913: a column on Saturdays, without a byline but headed “The Chess World,” having news and annotated game but no problem or diagram. Dalziel, in turn, sold the Evening Standard to Edward Hulton, Jr., which the article on Dalziel in the Encyclopædia shows occurred in 1915, and the following year the editor of that work claims Dalziel closed down the Standard. In 1916 Hulton reverted the title of the newspaper he had bought to simply Evening Standard and in 1923 it was taken over by Beaverbrook. Further changes were to follow later. In the 1950s and 1960s it still faced The Star and the Evening News as competitors, and they appeared six days a week. Since 1980 the Evening Standard has been London’s only

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evening paper, though much reduced. Readers in a position to research the Evening Standard at the British Library in St. Pancras should note that it is available on microfilm in open access cabinets in the Newsroom at reference MLD24. The Evening Standard included chess again from 1929 according to Whyld. In 2009 it switched to being a freesheet, published on Mondays to Fridays only, and the chess column in the print edition ended on 30 July 2010. This meant that Leonard Barden’s run as the longest daily chess column in print ended at 54 years and 1 month, having overtaken the previous record set by George Koltanowski for the San Francisco Daily Chronicle, which lasted 51 years and 9 months until his death.16 Following representations by chess players, Barden’s column was continued in the online edition of the Evening Standard where it was still running, five days a week, in the summer of 2017.

Later Years at The Field Hoffer suffered from some serious “internal complaint” in August 1913 and he wrote to the editor of The Field from a nursing home, saying doctors told him he needed an operation. It was unsuccessful and Hoffer died on Thursday 28 August. The Westminster Gazette confirmed this and also said he had been their chess editor from the commencement of publication. His two remaining columns were continued, but with different editors. On page 141 of Rose’s history of The Field, he tells how Amos Burn came to be appointed as Hoffer’s successor. The coming of Burn had its amusing side. The letter he wrote applying for the post did not indicate modesty, so much so that a rather truculent individual was expected to arrive. To the surprise of the assistant-editor the new member turned out to be a bearded man of benign appearance and the mildest demeanour.

Amos Burn in later life; this was the photograph that accompanied his obituary in The Field.

As Forster’s biography shows, the veteran master Burn was eminently qualified for the role, in that (in between periods of inactivity when his businesses were going well) he had proved himself a genuine master player, culminating in his victory in the 1898 Cologne international tournament. Burn had some previous experience of conducting a weekly chess column, in both the Liverpool Weekly Albion (in the 1870s) and currently in the Liverpool Courier (from 1910). Following the 1912 Breslau international tournament, Burn retired from playing all but minor events in England. By then, he was separated from his wife and living as a bachelor. In the 1911 census he was recorded in Liverpool, but he moved to London soon after being appointed to The Field. A friend wrote: “He was to be seen nearly every day at the City of London Chess Club. For his advice, always readily given, the members of that club owe him a deep debt of gratitude.”17

4. Latter Years of the Chess Column Once Burn took over the Field column, he followed Hoffer’s policy of being a diligent chronicler of all events in the chess world. Chess continued in The Field during the war years 1914–1918. The nature of the paper was such that it did not fill pages with war news but existed to remind readers of normality and fill their leisure hours. The absence of major matches and tournaments was a problem, however. On 1 April 1916 Burn reported the death of Fenton who, he noted, had helped Hoffer with the column.18 Burn said he was only about second class as a player, and yet a professional. Burn continued through the war years to report at length and conscientiously on whatever significant chess events he could find, though naturally he was largely concerned with such activity as continued in London. In particular, both the City of London Chess Club (to which Burn belonged) and the Hampstead Chess Club continued their activities which provided Burn with news and games. He also included such news as he was able to obtain about chess in Europe (even in Germany) as well as in America and elsewhere. Burn’s column shows that there was a surprising amount of chess in the war years. Another factor was that chess was an activity available to wounded soldiers who had been repatriated. On 23 February 1918 The Field reported on a match played the previous Saturday between a team from the City of London and the Canadian Convalescent Chess Club from a camp in Surrey, with Burn making a speech and Blackburne adjudicating unfinished games. The Canadians lost 13–1, but their top board, Driver W. W. Robson of Toronto, defeated the City co-champion G. E. Wainwright. There was correspondence chess, and news of chess in Australia, occasionally elsewhere, throughout the war. English clubs with membership mostly over military conscription age kept going. At the end of 1917, however,

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the price of a single number of The Field doubled from sixpence to one shilling because of newsprint costs. The first British international tournament following the hostilities was held in Hastings in 1919, including Capablanca. Burn informed a correspondent that Dr. Lasker would not be welcome in England because of the “gratuitous insults to England and En glishmen” that he made during the war.19 On 17 January 1920 came the first mention of eight-year-old Rzeschewski [sic]; there was more about the prodigy on 24 April. Later that year he reported on Reshevsky in London. It is noteworthy that on 30 September 1922, the Field ran a “70th birthday” issue although really its 70th birthday was in January 1923. This special number included Burn’s recollections of British chess, particularly in London, during his career.20 Burn kept working until felled by a stroke on the evening of 24 November 1925, and he died next day. His passing marked the end of the Victorian generation of English masters who had been active in the formative decade of the 1870s. In his obituary notice for The Observer on 29 November, Brian Harley remarked that Burn was not as outgoing as Blackburne, and so not as popular with the public, but he was “very likeable when you knew him. His column in The Field was a classic in its way, but no jests were allowed to creep in.” The obituary in the Manchester Guardian the day after his death said that Burn “appeared to be in usual good health” at home in London, until he had a stroke “while chatting with his friend and fellow- member of the committee of the City of London Chess Club, Mr. G. E. Smith.” The man named in that sentence was surely the same George Ernest Smith who was to succeed Burn as columnist of The Field. Incidentally the obituary perhaps explains why The Field now appointed, for the one and only time, a man to that post who was not a player of any distinction. It was almost certainly Smith, therefore, who wrote

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the obituary in The Field from which we quote the following extracts: To the Field [Burn] brought his vast knowledge of the game and a conscientious and untiring devotion to duty. His annotations in this column were known and admired all over the world, and were frequently quoted in foreign chess magazines. Few of those who studied his notes could, however, know of the careful and untiring work he devoted to them. Frequently he would sit up all the night, engaged in the analysis of a difficult position…. Mr. Burn was of an exceedingly modest and retiring disposition, but those who were privileged to know him intimately found him a most delightful companion, quietly humorous and possessed of a very rich fund of kindness and affection.

Smith at first conducted the column along the same lines but, unlike Burn, he did not receive a byline. Whereas one of Burn’s last articles (on 19 November 1925) filled a page, chess would be reduced over the following few years to about a third of a page, which it had to share with (usually) bridge and billiards, the card game having the greatest space of the three. Perhaps it now suited the proprietors to leave the management of a reduced column in the hands of a relative nonentity who could be relied upon to file a shorter column (a problem, a game, and brief news items) without asking for more. Rose’s history of The Field ignored Smith, and Whyld says his period in charge ended “c. 1935” but Smith possibly conducted the column until 1946. In April that year The Field suspended its bridge and chess columns for a time, apparently because of paper shortages, but both resumed on 14 September. In the meantime Smith had died (on 17 July 1946). Julius Maurice du Mont (1881–1956), who at that time was editor of the British Chess Magazine, became the penultimate chess editor of The Field and he was first given a byline on 26 October 1946. Paris-born Du Mont had been a piano teacher with chess as his sideline but appears to have increasingly devoted himself to chess journalism after the First World

War. His facility with languages gave him an advantage that he shared with Steinitz and Hoffer before him. Du Mont finally became incapacitated, probably in September 1955; he died in a nursing home on 7 April 1956. His obituary in the Diary column of The Field on 19 April said he had been chess editor for ten years, succeeding Smith, who was not bylined (at least in the 1920s and up to 1936).21 Leonard Barden and Du Mont had a joint byline on the column from early 1955 up to 12 April 1956; thereafter it was just Barden. He informed us: “I began The Field in early September 1955 … when Du Mont had his stroke, but I don’t have a record or a firm memory of the final Field column. It eventually … was terminated … with the payoff for the decades of work being a bottle of whisky.”22 Whyld’s Chess Columns gives 1994 as the final year for the chess column in The Field, by which time it had mutated into a glossy monthly magazine. This author found that the November 1994 article was its last appearance and it rather looks as if Barden wrote the column’s own obituary by reporting that “Chess will never be the same again after the latest highspeed computer, Pentium Genius, knocked Garry Kasparov out of the Intel Grand Prix at the Sedgwick Centre in the City of London.” So after an almost unbroken run of 132 years of chess in The Field, that paper never was the same again.

Some Complicated Columns This section provides some information about certain columns which may present problems, in the hope of saving future researchers time and effort. One of those columns it would be very helpful to have fully digitized is the Hereford Times, running from the late 1880s to 1910, with four different editors. The last two of these were minor London-based chess professionals, Francis Joseph Lee and later Louis van Vliet. So far only the articles

4. Latter Years of the Chess Column from the year 1899 are available in the B.N.A. Most other years usually have to be read in the original broadsheet hard copy. Whyld says that the column had the “same matter as the Perthshire Advertiser” from 1890 to 1893 when Lee was in charge, but no precise dates are known for the Scottish version. The Hereford Times was a weekly paper, edited during this period by Charles Anthony, who was probably also the proprietor, as was the case with many provincial papers. He was a brother of Edwyn Anthony who had been, for the summer term of 1870, the second president of the Oxford University Chess Club. At that time the club, which had been reformed in 1869, changed its officers every term, and the first presidents were older men who had been students at the university several years previously.23 The chess column began some time in 1885. Contra Whyld, page 191, there was no sign of any chess column in 1881; this author found only a report in the 8 January issue of Steinitz’s visit to Hereford earlier that week. A search up to April saw no diagrams. A spot check in 1887 found chess on page 3 “edited by the author of The Book of Chess etc.” This confirms that the editor was G. H. Selkirk, as stated by Whyld; Selkirk’s book of that name was published in 1868. The statement that the column began in 1885 is derived from the problem numbering in the volume examined, on the basis of one column per week. That Book of Chess byline last appeared on 10 December 1887. On 17 and 31 December there was only some chess news but no problem, and no chess at all on 24 December. Chess resumed on a regular basis from 7 January 1888 but without a byline. Then on 13 September 1890, when Edwyn Anthony announced he was giving up the column he had been conducting for nearly three years, he thus retrospectively confirmed that he was the second chess editor. He was succeeded by Lee, who was bylined from 20 September 1890 (i.e., he started a week later than Whyld

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says). According to Whyld, Louis van Vliet took over in July 1893 and continued in that position until 1910. A check in the B.N.A. for 1899 showed the column by Van Vliet ran throughout that year. For example, problems 835 and 836, and games 970 and 971, were published on 30 December 1899. The columns of the 1900s, in particular, should well repay study. A column, or columns, often referred to by contemporary editors, which has proved peculiarly difficult to trace is that which was commonly referred to as the Hackney Mercury, published in a north-east inner London borough. The editor of this column is usually said to have been Canadian-born Dr. Joseph William Hunt (1851–1920), perhaps in association with colleagues. The local newspaper in question was originally entitled the Hackney Mercury and North London Herald, and it began publication on 4 July 1885. Searches at the (mostly) American newspaperarchive.com show that a chess column began in the first issue, which appeared to peter out in the summer of 1886, the last seen being 31 July 1886 (problem 63, games 80 and 81). The focus of the content was mostly on the North London Chess Club, and the very first game was one in which Dr. Hunt gave odds of pawn and move. The editor was anonymous, but was possibly the C. E. Biaggini who is unknown to us but was named in Whyld. The British Library catalog shows that the title of the newspaper changed to The Mercury with issue number 117 on 24 September 1887 (and so remained until 1905), perhaps with a view to competing with other local papers with an overlapping catchment area and hoping to attract readers from neighboring metropolitan districts. Despite the official name change, it seems to have been generally referred to as the Hackney Mercury nonetheless. A second column, which was definitely by Dr. Hunt (as confirmed by references to it in other publications) ran from 3 January 1891 to 21 April 1894, as can be

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seen from the (as yet incomplete) digitization at newspaperarchive.com. Any historian trying to find this newspaper at the British Library may be disappointed. The volumes for 1891 through 1894 have not yet been microfilmed or digitized by the B.N.A. If one tries to order the bound volumes, the message “Restricted—Item is too fragile” will probably come up. This would not matter if the newspaperarchive digitization were complete, but much of 1891 and some later weeks seemed to be missing. Moreover both the search engine and the viewing software on that web service is far inferior to the British Newspaper Archive so we must hope that the situation improves in future. One option for persistent researchers with good credentials might be to go to the British Library’s reading room at Boston Spa in Yorkshire and try to negotiate to see restricted items. As the volumes then would not need to be transported to London, this approach might conceivably succeed. It is likely that items now deemed too fragile will not be made available until the B.N.A. gets around to scanning them. The difficulties described above are by no means the end of the problems with Dr. Hunt’s column. Readers of Whyld’s bibliography may have noted references to two other titles in which the column previously appeared. These, also, are almost totally unavailable and they are not in the American digitization either. The profile of Dr. Hunt in The Chess Bouquet dates the start of his career as a chess editor to 1887 in the Shoreditch Citizen, afterwards named the East Central Times. The British Library has just one bound volume from 1889 containing only a few issues of these two titles, which is extremely frustrating (because they show it was an excellent column at this period) but at least they provide some clues to what was going on. Whyld gives the start date of the column as 29 October 1887, which could not be verified because of an inability to trace any archive that holds

this newspaper except for those few issues in 1889. He also named a coeditor, E. Dale. Shoreditch is adjacent to Hackney, and in fact the modern London Borough of Hackney comprises three old metropolitan boroughs: Hackney, Shoreditch, and Stoke Newington. Clearly a newspaper in any of these was competing with those in the adjacent boroughs and also probably with papers in Islington and other districts close by. In 1889 the full title of the paper that had started the column was the Shoreditch Citizen and Hackney & Bethnal Green Advertiser; it may have been something different previously. The British Library holdings begin with number 213 of 13 July 1889, which indicates the paper had been running since about June 1885, at least two years before chess content began. From 17 August 1889 the cumbersome title was changed to the East Central Times, bound in the same B.L. volume, with the column continuing to the end of 1890 and afterwards transferring to the Mercury. Again the British Library says that its volume of the East Central Times for 1890 is too fragile to issue to readers. Here at least the American digitization does help. An editorial in the Mercury of 27 December 1890 mentioned “the increasing interest which has taken place in the study of chess in this neighbourhood,” naming eight clubs including the North London and the Shoreditch. Then it announced “we have made arrangements by which the chess column hitherto conducted by our contemporary, the East Central Times, will be transferred to our pages, commencing with our next issue, January 3rd.” It was also possible to discover when the column ended: 21 April 1894 was the last date it appeared. That issue printed the results of competitions, and announced that “owing to circumstances over which we have no control, this column will come to a conclusion in [sic] our next issue.” The Chess Bouquet says that when his Hackney column was stopped, Dr. Hunt “determined to relinquish editorial work

4. Latter Years of the Chess Column altogether, but he is now hard at work again, in his favourite pursuit for leisure hours, in the columns of Brighton Society.” Whyld said that column in the Brighton magazine had begun on 2 September 1893 and Dr. Hunt took it over from 15 December 1894; he conducted it for just over seven years.24 According to The Chess Bouquet, although he was not a composer of problems himself, Hunt “is the author of a variety of highly meritorious and instructive end-games.” Moreover: No man knows better than Dr. Hunt how to render a chess-column attractive with the chess community. He ascribes his success in this matter to the careful attention he bestows upon problems. He has initiated many a tourney, always with acceptable prizes for composers as well as solvers; accordingly his competitions are ever successful and productive of some of the finest specimens of the problem art.

Since the story of West of England columns, especially those published in Plymouth after 1900, seems to be very complicated, with some unclear details, some of these are also discussed at length in this chapter, in order that the listings in the Appendix may be simplified. Apart from the syndicated column in the Western Weekly Mercury, this author found the following, presented roughly in chronological order. The earliest major newspaper column to start in the West of England region was in the Western Morning News, published in Plymouth. Whyld, page 494, said it had chess from 1891 to March 1906. The pseudonymous chess editor was Carslake Winter Wood (1849–1924), who had earlier conducted a column in The Torquay Directory while he lived in that town. He was the younger brother of E. J. Winter Wood and of problem composer Mrs. Baird. In the section about Carslake Winter Wood in The Chess Bouquet, it says, “His weekly Chess Notes in the Western Morning News are racy, and the authority in the West of England.” Our finding is that “Chess Notes (spe-

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cially contributed)” began on 31 July 1890 and usually appeared on Thursdays, but not every week; there was local news but no chess problem. Gradually games were introduced and became more frequent. From 22 April 1897 the byline “QUEEN’S KNIGHT” appeared at the foot of the text. Later that year some problems were set, but by stating the positions of the pieces; there were still no diagrams! The first diagram found by this author was printed on 2 March 1899. Actually the final date of the column was 1 March 1906 with an announcement that, with the same conductor, it would transfer the next week to the Western Weekly News. In fact that title was almost immediately changed to the Illustrated Western Weekly News. The B.L. catalog shows that from 10 March 1906 (until early March 1921) the actual title of the newspaper was the Illustrated Western Weekly News and it then again became the Western Weekly News (to October 1939). It is unknown whether there was chess in the paper at any time during this later period. Between the transfer of the column in 1906 and 1921, some news items about chess appeared in the Western Morning News but no column. The Devon and Exeter Daily Gazette was published in Exeter and ran a column that lasted more than thirty years, probably by the same contributor—although, since the byline was a pseudonym, it could have been used by successive editors. There were some confusing title changes. Prior to March 1903 the word “Daily” was not in the title and the B.N.A. has digitized this newspaper as the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, a title not used after 1885. B.N.A. policies with merged and changed titles are sometimes baffling, but complaints to them about such inconsistencies always seem to meet with an insistence that their way of doing things is right. It evidently suits their way of working to use a generic title. The Devon and Exeter Daily Gazette became the full title during April 1903.

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Whyld stated that there was chess in this paper from October 1898 to December 1908 “& later.” Articles were usually published on Tuesdays and bylined “King’s Rook,” the nomde-plume of a local player. Although not appearing every week, he was still contributing his articles throughout the First World War. From 1920 and up to the end on 25 February 1932 the column was moved to Thursdays but still conducted by “King’s Rook.” There were occasional news reports after that. The important column in the Western Daily Mercury (also a Plymouth newspaper) was usually published on Fridays before World War I, but later probably on Saturdays as Whyld states. So far only 1912 has been digitized by the B.N.A. but there is a good chance this may have been greatly extended by the time the present book is published, which would be a great boon to chess researchers. Several years in hard copy were sampled in the old British Newspaper Library, but with four cumbersome volumes per year it was not possible to examine everything. The publishing history and the chess editing is complicated. Whyld, page 493, says the first editors (from August 1902) were Charles Thomas Blanshard (1852–1924) and P. J. Dancer. Our old notes on Irish sources mention that there was a column in 1901– 1902 edited by Philip Dancer, who arranged a correspondence match with Mrs. Rowland. In 1903, chess in the Daily was generally on page 4 and not bylined. It contained local and international news whereas the sister paper, the Western Weekly Mercury had the syndicated column discussed in Chapter 3. From 1905, chess in the Western Daily Mercury bore Blanshard’s byline; he was apparently a graduate linguist (described as “M.A.”), and several games from Continental sources were reprinted, many of which were correspondence games. In 1893 Blanshard had been responsible for Examples of Chess Master-play (first series), translated from Jean Dufresne’s Schachmeisterpartien and two fur-

ther series of games, grouped by openings, followed in 1894 and 1896.25 He repeated this exercise with three volumes of Classified Chess Games in 1904 and 1905, some of which were reprinted in the Mercury.26 Also in the Mercury, Blanshard included, for example, on 20 January 1905 a game from the Aftonbladet postal tournament in Sweden, on 10 February a game from the Offiziers Schachzeitung (a German chess magazine for military officers), and on 24 March a game from the German Wochenschach. On 7 April it was noted that the Mercury chess columnist subscribed to four different Bohemian columns. English postal games were also included. Later that year the first of two correspondence matches against Bohemia was started, in association with Narodny Listu.27 The Western Daily Mercury column appears to have had a wide following among chess players outside the south-west of England. At the head of the chess column it was regularly stated that each week’s issue of the paper containing the chess column could be sent by post. The price quoted in 1912 was 1s. 6d. per quarter to addresses in the U.K., or 2s 6d per quarter if sent overseas. In 1906 chess in the Mercury was explicitly stated to be by Blanshard, assisted by W. Mears (solving editor) and, for West Country news, “King’s Rook” of the Devon and Exeter Gazette. In 1907 the first match with Bohemia ended and a second one was started. On 20 November 1908 the byline changed to W. Mears with “foreign news by C. T. Blanshard.” The following week it was added that “King’s Rook” was still a contributor. From this date, the foreign and postal chess content of the column was reduced and was much lower in 1909. At this point a warning to researchers is required. The library in Cleveland has scrapbooks said to be from the Western Weekly Mercury, in very bad condition, and the present author bought from them a microfilm covering October 1906–April 1909. It caused considerable puzzlement because the content did

4. Latter Years of the Chess Column not seem to match notes made in the British Newspaper Library. It seems likely that at least some of the clippings therein are from 1906 in the chess column of the Kidderminster Shuttle. Some of the content may have been the same, because Blanshard was involved in both cases. He worked in the carpet trade and had moved to Bewdley in Worcestershire, which is near Kidderminster. A byline on 13 October 1906 says he was assisted in that column by a man in Birmingham (Leonard A. Dutton). Whyld also names Dutton in connection with the Kidderminster Shuttle, quoting Lasker’s Chess Magazine of November 1906 as calling it “a carpet trade magazine of world-wide circulation.” The Western Daily Mercury carried on 3 September 1909 a profile of Joseph Henry Blake, the Southampton-born expert who was a regular annotator of games for British Chess Magazine. Blake was now in his fiftieth year and living in the London suburb of Surbiton. He had learned chess at the age of 11 from his father, then after 18 months or so he obtained Staunton’s Handbook and progressed. He tied first in his earliest public tournament, the 1881 Counties Chess Association second class at Leamington Spa. He then played in all their events until the last in 1893. He won unbeaten in 1887 and again won a silver tea service in 1892. He also captained the Hampshire team since its first county match in 1887. It was also mentioned that Blake played a lot of postal chess between 1881 and 1896; indeed he was England’s strongest exponent of this form of the game in the 19th century. In 1912 Mears (of Torquay) was bylined as principal chess editor with “foreign games and notes from abroad” by C. T. Blanshard. By the end of that year “Problem solving, A. Barnett” had been added. Whyld says the column continued until 19 July 1914 and that subsequently A. R. Cooper was chess editor from April 1916 until 1921. This implies a break of about 18 months, which needs checking. Then from 12 February 1921 Cooper’s

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column transferred to the Western Morning News. On 1 January 1920 the Devon and Exeter Daily Gazette announced the death on Saturday 27 December 1919 of W. M. Mears, “a life-long sufferer from an incurable affliction,” at the age of 38. The paper said that Mears had succeeded C. T. Blanshard in conducting the Western Daily Mercury column and had done an excellent job. Gaige’s Personalia, probably following B.C.M.’s obituary, gives his full name as “William Marcham Meares” but in Devon papers the spelling “Mears” was always seen.28 It is now evident that the chess column which transferred to the Western Morning News from 12 February 1921 was not that which Winter Wood used to conduct, but rather the one that had originated in the Western Daily Mercury and had been in the hands of A. R. Cooper since about 1916. When it first appeared in the Western Morning News, it was headed “Chess Problems. Solutions and Notes for our Readers. (By A.R. Cooper, 104, Manners-Road, Southsea, Portsmouth.).” Since the first problem was numbered 2,650 it was evidently a continuation. The Western Morning News has been digitized by B.N.A. from 1890 to 1949 inclusive (except for 1912 and 1913), so this newspaper appears to be a source worth researching for 20th century Devon chess. Whyld gave the dates of Cooper as 1927 [sic] to 1939, and there were also columns after World War II that he lists.

Gunsberg as Columnist There has always, since the second half of the 19th century, been a tendency for some chess editors to accumulate multiple columns. Writing one column is a big distraction from playing and does not bring much financial return, but various writers have shown it is possible to make a reasonable living by conducting several columns simultaneously in newspapers and other periodicals. We have

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seen that Duffy and Löwenthal and Hoffer sometimes had more than one column on the go, but Isidor Gunsberg (1854–1930) was probably the most prolific chess editor of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. His literary career began at the time when he was operating the chess “automaton” known as “Mephisto.”29 From 1881 to 1883 he contributed articles and games under that pseudonym to the chess column of the magazine Knowledge, edited by astronomer R. A. Proctor. Also in 1882 he was named as Games Editor for The Chess Player’s Chronicle. That work possibly continued later. Gunsberg also wrote a few articles on chess in the monthly magazine Our Corner although these only ran in 1883 until December.30 All this was only a prelude. Whyld’s index to editors in Columns lists more than twenty different titles after Gunsberg’s name. His work as a chess editor really became intensive in the 1890s and remained so up to 1914. Gunsberg’s first important column began in the Weekly Echo in November 1884, run-

Isidor Gunsberg as a young man, probably taken in the early 1880s when he was becoming famous as a chess player and editor.

ning for 19 months. Other longer-running series were the London Evening News and Post (1889–1894) and the Penny Illustrated Paper (1894–1902), and eventually Gunsberg was appointed to run the chess column in various London daily newspapers. He did other work too, during his rise. For a few years around 1886 he is known to have been employed in the office of the Liberty and Property Defence League for whom he wrote at least one pamphlet lobbying against temperance campaigners.31 He obtained this job thanks to Wordsworth Donisthorpe, a chess player and prominent League member; the League also employed Mason. In the late 1880s and in 1890 Gunsberg was very active as a professional player, spending long periods out of England, and he gave up his column in the Cheltenham Examiner (and perhaps other titles) because of this. This episode in his life culminated in his unsuccessful world title match against Steinitz.32 Gunsberg’s lifestyle then underwent a huge change in the summer of 1891 shortly after his return from America. His first wife, Jane, died on 8 May 1891, leaving him with a young family to care for. After this he never played another serious match. Instead he earned his living by literary work (including a book on chess openings, published in 1895) and by visiting clubs to give lectures and simultaneous displays. On the rare occasions thereafter when he played a few tournaments, such as Hastings 1895, Gunsberg never recovered his former playing strength. On 12 May 1893, a few months before he re-married, Gunsberg began one of his more important columns, entitled “Over the ChessBoard,” in the St. James’s Budget, a relaunched pictorial weekly, and this ran for seven years. Between 1895 and 1897 he helped his second wife, Miriam, with her column for the Lady’s Pictorial. It is clear from the content that she wrote most of it herself but he probably helped with game annotations and revisions. After her death he soon remarried, and by the

4. Latter Years of the Chess Column turn of the century one of his sons, Alfred, may have been helping with the columns. Also in the summer of 1893, it was probably Gunsberg who began the chess column in the Daily News, which has been digitized in the B.N.A. Monday 17 July was the start, although there were sometimes news reports on other days of the week, and previously. Then and again on the 24th there was chess news and games from a match that had just finished between Herbert Jacobs and Rudolf Loman. On the 31st two consultation games by Blackburne were published and from 7 August a series of original chess problems by Blackburne began. These continued for the next seven weeks (usually Mondays), together with news and games, so the true column began much earlier than the 1896 date cited by Whyld. As Gunsberg and Blackburne are known to have been close, this is a clue to the editorship of the column. The column later moved to Tuesdays and gradually petered out early in 1902 (Problem 419 on 18 January) although occasional news reports appeared, e.g., about the Monte Carlo international tournament. This was possibly the end of Gunsberg’s column, perhaps because he was now writing for the rival Telegraph, but the problem numbering was continued whenever chess appeared, until a definitely new column began on Thursday 17 March 1904 starting at problem 1. So there are two possible dates for the end of Gunsberg’s involvement and no decisive evidence was found to choose between them. The Daily Telegraph, a major national newspaper supportive of the Conservative Party, is not yet digitized but is available in the B.L. Newsroom on open access microfilms at reference MLD7. The column began in the Sunday Daily Telegraph when that was not a separate title, but just the Sunday edition of the weekday paper. There were just seven Sunday articles, from 9 April 1899 to 21 May 1899. Whyld, page 97, said that there was maybe a Daily Telegraph column in 1902

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and a spot check has shown this was true. On Saturday 8 March 1902, problem 158 was published, implying one a week since the start, but there was little other content and no byline. This series possibly continued without a break, but that remains to be verified. Isidor Gunsberg was certainly writing for the Telegraph later on, as can be seen from the spring of 1914. His article on page 18 of the issue for Saturday 4 April 1914 had two problems, numbered 1239 and 1240, with solutions of previous ones, but no news or game. The numbering does imply a reasonably continuous column. In addition that month, the paper reported on two tournaments in which Gunsberg was personally involved: the Kentish chess congress in Dartford followed by the St. Petersburg international. Curious mistakes appeared in some of the news reports, perhaps because of Russian telegraphists struggling to cope with an English journalist. Thus the report on 24 April included a sentence saying “Alechin resumed his game against Blackburne, and won by a pawn advantage in the end game.” As in fact Alekhine was lucky to draw, this comment might refer to a different game. The next day’s report reversed a result, saying: “Gunsberg met Tarrasch, who defended with an irregular opening, which led to brilliant play on both sides. At the critical point in the middle game Tarrasch failed to make the most of his opportunities, and Gunsberg won.” In fact, he lost. In 1916 Gunsberg won libel damages of £250 against Associated Newspapers: a windfall that eased his financial situation for a while. The Evening News had published an article, critical of errors in Gunsberg’s column, and the court upheld his claim that it had been unfair. Chess expert Herbert Jacobs was a barrister on his legal team and several leading chess players, including Blackburne and the B.C.M. problem editor B. G. Laws, testified as expert witnesses in his favor.33 Evidence

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was given that the Daily Telegraph was his only column that continued after the outbreak of war. The column in The Field was even mentioned in evidence, when Gunsberg’s defense lawyers showed that other columns also occasionally published erroneous problems. On 16 December, Burn denied that The Field had done so, but the following week he had to retract this and admit that early in 1915 three consecutive problems in the Field had been faulty.34 The obvious reason why many chess columns were halted at the outbreak of war was that reports and analysis of the conflict, departures for the Front, and later of the casualties, occupied the majority of space in most publications. Moreover, newspapers mostly shrank in size through shortage or greater cost of paper (newsprint often being sourced from Norway). “Frivolous” topics such as chess became relegated to weeklies, if the columns survived at all. Moreover the decline in chess activity meant there was much less activity for a column to report and a smaller audience as many players were shipped off to die in the trenches. The case of one daily paper, the Westminster Gazette, is indicative. When Hoffer died, on 28 August 1913, the Westminster Gazette series was continued seamlessly by Dr. Jacob Schumer. Unlike the earlier case with the Budget, the columns were not repeated in arrears; instead the same articles appeared in the two papers from the same publisher every Saturday. This practice continued for some time until the daily Gazette ran chess for the last time on Saturday 1 August. Schumer was able to continue it in the magazine-style Saturday Westminster Gazette which also included a bridge column and many articles aimed at a female audience. That was fortunate because this was one of the few columns to report in detail on the 1914 British Chess Championships, held in Chester from 10 to 21 August, in which Schumer himself was a competitor. Not only did his column in the

Saturday Westminster Gazette survive the war, it even continued throughout 1922 when the title was relaunched as the Weekly Westminster Gazette, but early in 1923 the paper and the column ceased publication. In 1928 Schumer produced a book, now scarce, entitled Chesslets.35 Notwithstanding the war, some chess columns survived in weekly provincial papers. In certain cases the columnists may have been on the papers’ staff. The Field noted during 1916 that W. L. Biggs was chess editor of the Oxford Times and honorary treasurer of the Oxfordshire county chess association.36 His column had begun in 1910 when the British Championships were held in Oxford. Gunsberg was able to continue the Daily Telegraph column well into the 1920s but it is unclear whether he did so to the end of his life. For a few months in 1920 (from 10 January until May) he also had a new column in Nash’s Illustrated Weekly. This soon ended, leaving him with just the Telegraph again— until 1925 at least, and probably until 1928, although he had no byline. Whyld said F. D. Yates conducted the column from 1929 until his own death in 1932, and subsequently there were columns by B. H. Wood and others. One of the Gunsberg columns that halted at the outbreak of war was in the Manchester Guardian, which he seems to have taken over in 1906 or 1907. Originally a weekly in 1821, then twice-weekly from 1836, the Manchester Guardian had become a daily in 1855 and gradually came to have a national circulation during the 57-year editorship of C. P. Scott. The title was eventually changed to The Guardian in 1959 but the editor moved to London only in 1964. There is a digitized database of the complete historic Manchester Guardian together with the Observer Sunday newspaper, which is available by subscription in many libraries. An anonymous chess column on Fridays began in the Manchester Guardian on 11 November 1904, following a series of news re-

4. Latter Years of the Chess Column ports and an article on 5 November. This continued to 17 May 1907 but Gunsberg may have already been writing the later ones. Whyld attributes some early columns to B.C.M. editor Isaac McIntyre Brown (1858– 1934), which is plausible. Reports on the 1907 Ostend international tournament and the 1907 British Championship followed through the summer; Gunsberg would surely have been contributing them. Then a bylined column by Gunsberg ran on Tuesdays from 5 November 1907 to 4 August 1914 inclusive. Whyld names F. D. Yates from an unknown date until his death in November 1932 but apparently there is no sign of a regular column, so presumably he was just named as “chess correspondent” to contribute reports when there were newsworthy events. Similarly, Du Mont, who is named by Whyld as Yates’s successor, may only have been “chess correspondent” in the same sense until some time after the Second World War. Searches in the digitized archive have shown that it was on 28 April 1949 that Du Mont first published a numbered problem. The fact that it was said to have been specially contributed by T. R. Dawson (1889–1951), the eminent problem composer, is a sure sign that this marked a significant event in the Guardian’s coverage of chess and should be counted as the start of the true column. It may also be noted that Du Mont’s commencement of this column roughly coincided with when he ceased to be Editor of British Chess Magazine, as discussed in the next chapter. Chess in the Manchester Guardian continued on subsequent Thursdays for many years, though later switching to different days of the week. In September 1955, when Du Mont became incapacitated, Leonard Barden took over. In his hands this became a superb column which still continues, now on Fridays (formerly Saturdays), and can be read online. On 26 October 2016 The Guardian, quoting a report on the ChessBase website, announced that Barden had set a new record. His 61-year

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Isidor Gunsberg as pictured in Chess Pie (1922) when he was probably still contributing chess articles to the Daily Telegraph, his last column.

stint as the newspaper’s chess columnist, unbroken since September 1955, had just “overtaken the old record of 60 years and six months set by Tom Widdows, who wrote weekly for the Worcester News from October 1945 until April 2006.” Since the articles of The Observer are to be found in the same database as the Guardian, it deserves a mention, although there was no chess column prior to the end of the First World War. This London Sunday newspaper is now part of the same publishing group as The Guardian. Originally it was separate, and indeed it has a longer history, having been founded in 1791. Its chess column by Brian Harley ran from 30 November 1919 to 15 May 1955, publishing 1909 problems. Harley died on 18 May and an announcement that Harry Golombek would replace him appeared on 5 June 1955. Golombek’s first column (12 June) made the significant statement that he intended to cater to players because problems were well covered elsewhere, and so he published game positions instead. This began a trend which had completely taken over by the late 20th

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century. Composed mate problems are mostly the preserve of specialist journals and some websites nowadays, though they still have a following and there are annual national and international competitions. Golombek remained nominal chess correspondent of The Observer up to the end of the 1978/9 Hastings tournament (final report 7 January 1979) but his weekly column last appeared on 6 December 1970 and several weeks were missed in the last three years. Later chess correspondents were Michael Stean and Jon Speelman. It was Speelman who wrote Golombek’s obituary in 1995.

Later Years at the Illustrated London News The other major chess column to run regularly throughout the First World War was that in the Illustrated London News. Searches in the digitized archive of the Illustrated London News enable definite statements to be made about the history of the column, whereas Whyld’s book left many details unclear. As noted in the previous chapters, the succession of I.L.N. chess editors, after the early anonymous period, was Staunton, Wormald, Duffy, and then Abbott, who had taken over in April 1888. The approximate date Whyld gave for the end of Abbott’s tenure as chess editor was “c. 1924” but it is now known that he died the previous year. His decades in charge of the column are not of great interest since his coverage of national chess events was patchy. He reduced the column to not much more than the house organ of the City of London Chess Club. Yet the column remained in his hands until he died, on 5 August 1923. He left an estate valued at £7347 11s. 10d. and probate was granted to his son Howard Staunton Abbott, a grocer.37 His name implies that Abbott had recognized a debt of gratitude to the founder of the column he inherited.

Abbott had enjoyed a tenure even longer than that of Staunton himself. When the Illustrated London News of 18 August 1923 announced the death, it said that Abbott “was almost the solitary surviving representative of the great days of English chess when London drew to its centre the leading masters of all countries.” The column continued with a new anonymous editor. Abbott was succeeded by H. J. Menzies, who died in late 1927, after which the column went into decline. Once again the chess editor was named posthumously. The issue of 7 January 1928 ended by announcing with regret the death “of our Chess contributor, Mr. H. J. Menzies, who passed away on December 28 [1927] after a sudden and short illness…. The arrangements for the carrying-on of the feature will be announced in due course.” Like Abbott and most of his predecessors, Menzies never had a byline during his lifetime. In view of the Christmas holiday it is likely that Menzies had contributed the 7 January column. Chess articles with no byline then appeared on a fortnightly basis from 28 January, 11 and 25 February, 10 and 24 March. These were almost certainly contributed by Kelville Ernest Irving who first had a byline on 7 April 1928, when he published Problem 4024 and answers to correspondents, together with a game and some news. Irving is hard to trace, perhaps because he rarely used his unusual first name, which is sometimes mistranscribed as “Melville.” His dates appear to have been 1877–1953 and he appears in the 1911 census as a boarder in a house in Sculcoates, Yorkshire. His occupation is described as “Musical Director Theatre,” which suggests he may have been working for a traveling repertory company. His chess career is otherwise unknown. On 28 April Irving wrote that chess would appear weekly in future “when space allows” and, starting from that date, a fortnightly series of “Game Problems,” which he described as “positions of interest from actual

4. Latter Years of the Chess Column play.” In the alternate weeks he continued to publish mate problems, maintaining the old numbering from previous chess editors. His column, though, did not last to 1935, as Whyld believed; it was discontinued in 1932. Problem 4098 was published on 22 October 1932 and Irving’s final contribution was on 5 November 1932 after which there was no regular chess series in the I.L.N. until after the Second World War. On 30 April 1949 the I.L.N. announced the revival, to commence the following week, of two old favorites from before the war, one of which was “A Page for Collectors” by Frank Davis, which had been halted “for obvious reasons” especially the shortage of paper. The return of chess was also announced by “Mr. B. H. Wood, a well-known figure in the Chess world.” So on 7 May 1949 the impressive byline of “Baruch H. Wood MSc” appeared for the first time in the pages of the I.L.N., who began his series with the words: “It is a pleasure to resume the Chess Notes for which The Illustrated London News was famed for so many years.” Barry Wood, editor and publisher of the famous Chess magazine based in Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham since 1935, was to continue as chess editor for over 30 years. The I.L.N. switched from weekly to monthly publication thirty-two years before its ultimate decease in 2003. The issue of 24 April 1971 (volume 258 number 6873) was followed by volume 259 number 6874, datelined “May 1971.” In the later years of Wood’s weekly tenancy (1960s and 1970), the chess column was sometimes omitted through pressure on space, a fate common to most columns, especially when they were in decline. Wood continued as chess editor when the paper switched to monthly publication, until his last column appeared in the October 1979 issue. After a brief hiatus, Wood was succeeded by grandmaster John Nunn, whose

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first column was published in the March 1980 issue and his series continued until Nunn’s final column appeared in November 1986.

Chess Columns in More Recent Days In the mid–1960s, when the author was starting to play competitively in England, there were still several thriving chess columns. A visit to the school or public library at the weekend was a chance to catch up with some excellent chess writing. The weekly column in the Conservative-leaning weekly The Spectator was begun by International Master C. H. O’D. Alexander in 1968 but ended in 1970 if Whyld is correct. A later column followed which ultimately came into the hands of grandmaster Ray Keene who also writes on chess for The Times and (until recently) The Sunday Times.* Leonard Barden’s column in the Financial Times, he informed this author, began around April 1974 after Alexander’s death, and was still continuing in the summer of June 2017. There was also a column in The Listener, a magazine published by the BBC for its more intellectual audience. According to Whyld (page 250, naming no editor) this ran only from 1959 to 1964 but was good in its day. Barden informed this author that he wrote this for a time. The most idiosyncratic of the weekly columns in its day was that conducted in a left-wing weekly, the New Statesman, by “Assiac” (Heinrich Fraenkel, 1897–1986). Whyld, on page 301, was uncertain about the dates of the editors of this column, and the subject deserves some investigation. Possibly Du Mont began the column, but another of his sources says it was Fraenkel from the start, in 1949; he was certainly conducting it in the 1960s and much of the 1970s, ending on 24 September

*In the summer of 2017, grandmaster David Howell replaced Keene on The Sunday Times.

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1976 if Whyld is right. Tony Miles succeeded Fraenkel, and then others conducted it for a time, but it was the endgame studies one remembers. Each week there would be three, the first of which would be easy, with competitions for solvers. Leonard Barden’s feat at running some long-lasting columns simultaneously have already been mentioned. He is the heir to Gunsberg and Hoffer in that respect but we shall probably never see another like him. Also, in Dublin, the Irish Times column conducted by J. J. Walsh set a new world record for a daily column on 27 October 2015, exceeding the 61 years and four months duration set by Hermann Helms in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle between 1893 and 1955. Jim Walsh, who played for Ireland in the 1956 Moscow Chess Olympiad, first wrote for the Irish Times on 5 July 1955. This was a weekly column at first but when chess increased in popularity after the Fischer–Spassky match, Walsh’s column became daily although it rarely carries news

and is just a daily puzzle like so many syndicated ones. Nevertheless Barden and Walsh vie for the record as the longest-running columnists, having overtaken the marks set previously by Helms and Koltanowski. The numbers of people playing chess and the readership of chess columns have at all times been much greater than the membership of chess clubs. One factor was that women and older children could read about chess in the columns. For men also, the periodical literature provided a leisure option that did not require leaving home. Through the press, readers belonged to a virtual chess club. Correspondence matches and tournaments, organized by many columns in the second half of the 19th century, also offered a competitive option for experienced players and novices alike. The vogue for chess problems, again from the 1840s onwards, also provided a form of intellectual exercise and a way for people to enjoy the game even if they lacked a congenial opponent for regular play.

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914 ers; there were rarely enough of them. There were also probably few advertisers, although it is hard to be certain because binders of Victorian periodicals frequently omitted the covers, where advertisements were placed. The majority of chess magazines in nineteenth and early 20th century Britain had short life spans and probably never broke even financially. Some failed after only a handful of issues. Even the few that did survive through several volumes are unlikely to have generated enough subscriptions and advertising to provide a living income for their editors, except in a few good years. For those who had associated sources of income, such as from writing chess columns, running a magazine could be a useful adjunct. A few other editors were gentlemen of leisure, or clergymen, who could edit a magazine as a hobby and afford the associated financial losses. Selling chess sets and other paraphernalia of the game was probably the best way to make a chess magazine pay. Few chess magazine publishers seem to have exploited that marketing opportunity in the 19th century but in the mid–20th century Baruch H. Wood of Sutton Coldfield perfected this business model. Even the world champions Steinitz, with

The principal aim of this chapter is to provide a chronological overview of the British and Irish magazines of the period, with a more detailed examination of some of them. A few of the more important magazines from other countries, especially the U.S.A., are also mentioned where relevant, particularly in one section dealing with magazines of the 1870s and 1880s. Chapter 6 deals separately and in much more detail with the first important magazine, The Chess Player’s Chronicle, founded by Staunton in 1841, and the subsequent successors to that title. For reference purposes, a brief summary of the most important information about British and Irish chess magazines of the period may also be found in the alphabetical list in Appendix II. There are some preliminary points to be made, and also a warning about the inaccurate or incomplete information readers are likely to find in bibliographies and earlier histories of the field. Economics have always dictated that publishing a magazine wholly or largely about chess is no way to get rich. The history of chess magazines in general, nowadays as much as in the 19th century, shows much enthusiasm but often little staying power. English chess magazines had to rely chiefly on subscriptions purchased by middle-class play-

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his International Chess Magazine (seven volumes in New York, 1885–1891), and Emanuel Lasker (nine volumes of Lasker’s Chess Magazine, also New York, 1904–1909) did not enjoy longterm success. There were some heroic failures along the way, including various attempts to serve the tiny Irish and Scottish markets. The world record for longevity among chess periodicals was long held by the Deutsche Schachzeitung (founded in Berlin in 1846) but it ceased publication in 1988, and although it lived on for another decade in a merged publication, the ancient name finally disappeared from the cover in 1998. The one gritty survivor from the 19th century is the British Chess Magazine, which began in 1881 and (as of March 2018) has never missed a month, despite the bombing of the editor’s home (1940), a national printer’s strike (1959), and the sudden death of its typesetter/business manager (1980). Yet even B.C.M. was not really run on a commercial footing until Brian Reilly (1901– 1991) took over and adopted Wood’s model in the 1950s, having himself worked at Sutton Coldfield for a time. Until then B.C.M. was largely or wholly supported by unpaid contributors in its early decades, and indeed that is how it was able to survive. For sixty years B.C.M. was, as a former editor Bernard Cafferty once described it, “a cottage industry” (though not in his time).* After another crisis threatened the existence of the magazine in 2010 or 2011, B.C.M. returned to those amateur roots, at least for a time, no longer able to compete with the coverage of international master chess provided since the mid–1980s by the Dutch-published New in Chess. More recently, British Chess Magazine has entered a partnership agreement with Serbian-based Chess Informant in January 2016 and appears to have entered a new phase of its existence, which is beyond the scope of this book. *In a talk to members of the Ken Whyld Association at Norwich, April 2012.

Any attempt to survey the field of nineteenth and early 20th century chess magazines is fraught with difficulty. Previous writers and bibliographers who have attempted to do so have made errors and omissions, and the present writer apologizes to readers should it turn out that he also has done so. Problems with Di Felice’s bibliography Chess Periodicals have already been discussed at some length in Chapter 1. Philip Sergeant in A Century of British Chess mentioned in passing the most important chess magazines but overlooked others and did not attempt any systematic list.1 He was, of course, much more interested in the principal personalities and competitions in the world of chess and for him the magazines were a source of information rather than a topic of interest in itself. In the last

Philip Walsingham Sergeant, author of A Century of British Chess. His method, at least for the 19th century, was a year-by-year trawl through the chess magazines. This photograph was the frontispiece of his book.

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914 thirty years or so, however, historians have put publications themselves under the microscope. Many years ago, G. H. Diggle (who jokingly called himself the “Badmaster”) wrote a two-part article about “British Chess Periodicals of the Nineteenth Century” for British Chess Magazine (December 1980 and January 1981). Although containing some interesting observations on the magazines Diggle had read, his survey was far from complete, as is evident from his statement in the second paragraph that The Chess Player’s Chronicle was the earliest magazine. It had in fact two predecessors. There were also other minor magazines which Diggle failed to mention, perhaps because he was unaware of their existence. To be fair to him, in those days before online library catalogues and the publication of the Betts bibliography, it doubtless was hard for him to know what he was missing and harder still to access rare items.

The Earliest Chess Periodicals The earliest chess magazine was in fact published in France: Le Palamède, Revue Mensuelle des échecs was edited in Paris by de la Bourdonnais (the strongest player in the world at that time) with Josef Méry, first appearing in 1836 and continuing for two further years until the fourth volume ended abruptly, with no index, in 1839. The somewhat curious title derives from an old legend that wrongly ascribed the invention of chess to Palamedes who was among the Greek leaders involved in the war against Troy. The Palamède had a big advantage: wealthy aristocratic subscribers. Subsequently, after the death of de la Bourdonnais, a second series of Le Palamède ran from 1841 to 1847 under the editorship of P. C. F. de Saint-Amant. A third series, unconnected but with a similar title, appeared in 1864 and 1865: Le Palamède Français. Described as a review of chess “and

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other games of combination,” its editor-inchief was Paul Journoud. In between the Saint-Amant series and this, there had been La Régence (1849–1851), published by a “society of amateurs,” then a second series of La Régence (1856–1857), edited by Journoud, and also Journoud’s La Nouvelle Régence (1861–1864). There were also early chess magazines in several other countries, notably Germany, the U.S.A. and the Netherlands, but the French came first and then the English. The British chess scene was more successful than the French in sustaining the existence of a least one chess magazine from 1841 onwards. Yet there were some periods of a year, or more, when there was no magazine, until the summer of 1863, since when there has always been at least one monthly magazine published in the country, and often at least two. The first chess magazine in the English language was The Philidorian, subtitled “a magazine of Chess, and other scientific games,” edited and published by Walker. He realized from the start that there would probably be insufficient material, and insufficient interest from the public, if he devoted the magazine to only one game. In the opening article, Walker wrote: “In consecrating a magazine solely to domestic games, we open up ground entirely new. We believe and trust the soil will prove fertile…. We raise our banner in the name of Philidor, whose ashes rest in England.”2 Even so The Philidorian lasted for only six numbers, from December 1837 to May 1838. In fact a reader of his column had already suggested in 1836 that a chess magazine might be launched, and this had been his reply: If L. be so confident as to the success of a Chess Magazine, why does he not try it himself ? We believe there would be found no encouragement for any thing of the sort. The aristocracy don’t like Chess, because, when they meet with Tom or Jack, they get beaten. How many noblemen are to be found in the list of subscribers to the London or Westminster Chess Clubs? During the war, Chess was more played by the upper

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classes: they were immured in the tight little island, and like Stern’s starling, “they couldn’t get out.” The yachts, and similar enjoyments, have beaten poor Chess half-way down-stairs though, among the middle classes, its votaries increase daily.3

The first issue of The Philidorian included articles on Polish draughts (the Continental version of checkers, played on 100 squares) and on two card games, Whist and Écarté, as well as reviews of books on cards and chess. There were also articles on chess theory (the Cochrane Gambit in the Petroff Defense, and a line in the Double Muzio Gambit), new chess problems and some games actually played but with the players not identified. In later issues, including some games by foreign players (Szén and Boncourt), they were named. The January 1838 number mostly consists of a fanciful chess story by Walker Vincenzio the Venetian which had been first published in French in Le Palamède and was later included in Walker’s 1850 essay collection Chess & Chess-Players. Issue 3 was more varied, similar to the first. It included notes on Continental chess players and clubs, mentioning some correspondence matches. Issue 4 for March included many chess endgames, draughts (both kinds), écarté, and some chess games with players identified. The greater part of April’s issue 5, which also included cards, chess problems and checkers, consisted of Caïssa Rediviva, a long poem on a chess theme, written by the Rev. Alexander D’Arblay, which had previously been printed in only a few copies for private circulation. The poem is about the McDonnell and de la Bourdonnais matches, with some names disguised. D’Arblay was the son of Frances Burney (the diarist and novelist) and her émigré husband. The poet had already died on 19 January 1837, not forty years of age. Walker noted that Mr. D’Arblay “received the odds of the Rook from Mr. McDonnell.” The final issue of The Philidorian began with an article on a sideline in the Evans

Gambit, followed by rules for playing a version of four-handed chess, which some readers may have seen. The board is extended with 8 × 3 sections on each side; and played with white, green, black and red men. Finally the number included a bibliographical catalogue of works on chess which Walker compiled. Walker himself explained afterwards, in his column for Bell’s Life, that The Philidorian was stopped after six issues because it: … did not pay; and the proprietor (who was also the editor) did not choose to burn his fingers beyond skin-deep. All the Chess players praised the work, but to praise a thing and to purchase were found to be two things. It might, perhaps, have been carried on by subscription, but, if we know anything of the Editor thereof, he is one who would rather take a broom, and sweep a respectable crossing, than turn beggar of his friends for shillings.4

This implies that Walker tried to sell his magazine through newsstands and bookshops. Selling advance subscriptions to finance printing was at that time becoming an obsolete way to finance book publication, but it was to become and has remained to this day the principal way of financing specialist journals, including chess magazines. The next venture into chess periodical publishing in England evolved very differently. It was really only a sideline for John Henry Huttmann (1805–1868), a chess café proprietor who in the early 1830s, and after, had started a chess café which led to his being connected with the foundation and management of the original Westminster Chess Club. Now he was trading under the name Garrick Cigar Divan at 4 Little Russell Street near London’s Covent Garden fruit and vegetable market. In January 1840 he printed the first of his Curious Chess Problems. Later numbers included chess gossip below in small type. In March Huttmann began a weekly series of sheets, each bearing a chess game and small notices.

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914 The best account of Huttmann’s venture comes from Professor Charles Tomlinson, who looked back from a decade later in his The Chess-Player’s Annual for 1856.5 The chapter “A Reminiscence of Mr. Huttmann’s Chess Soirées” said Huttmann’s little magazine was at first sold for sixpence, advertised as “including two of the finest Havannah [sic] Cigars,” or “a fine Havannah and a delicious cup of coffee.” The problem solutions were withheld for a week “and it was quite a contest who should be the first to anticipate the printed solution.” Then Huttmann became more ambitious. He advertised in Bell’s Life in London on 10 May as follows: … Published at the above address every Wednesday, Curious Chess Problems, price 1d., and every Saturday, Games of Chess, price 1d. Both can be sent in one envelope, to any part of the kingdom, for the additional expence [sic] of a single postage.6

In an earlier advertisement, on 5 April in the same newspaper, he had offered samples free except for postage, saying the object was to put him “in communication with the chess clubs and chess players in the kingdom, prior to bringing out a New Chess Periodical” and he solicited suggestions and contributions. “A diagram, beautifully printed, accompanies each problem.” Walker wrote in Bell’s Life on 26 September 1841 that “our old friend Huttmann has just re-commenced his modest little Chess miscellany under the old title of the Palamedes. Twopence for four pages of valuable Chess matter is cheap indeed.” This publicity did not help; the last issue appeared on 23 October 1841.7 One difficulty was that he was now competing with a proper magazine edited by Staunton. The chief problem, though, was that Huttmann had ambitiously moved his chess divan to larger, more expensive premises, which failed.8 “Circumstances, temporarily insurmountable, have compelled Huttmann to discontinue the publication of his little chess sheet,” wrote his greatest supporter,

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Walker, on 16 January 1842. By then Huttmann appears to have already been in prison for nonpayment of debts. On 7 December 1842 his name appeared on lists of Insolvent Debtor’s Petitions, the first move towards discharge from prison. In January 1843, Walker complained that Huttmann was “still a resident of White-cross Street prison”; his conduct was “unimpeachable” but some people owed him money. The London Gazette of 20 January listed Huttmann as one of several men who would have discharge hearings on 13 February.9 If any creditor opposed the discharge they were required to appear in court that day to make their application. The Morning Post of that date listed Huttmann’s as one of the applications that would be opposed. Apparently that hearing was adjourned for a week, perhaps because Huttmann asked for time to produce money he now expected to receive. The Morning Advertiser of Tuesday 21 February carried the crucial information missing from other accounts, although it did not state what sums were being claimed by the creditors: I NSOLVENT DEBTORS C OURT, F EB 20. In re John Henry Huttmann.—This insolvent, the chess-player, was opposed by Mr. Cooke, for a Mr. Hemsworth; as also by Mr. Sturgeon, for a creditor named Ridgway. He was supported by Mr. Nichols. The court eventually discharged the insolvent.

On 5 March 1843 Walker reported that after 14 months Huttmann was finally free. That is sometimes stated to be the date of his release. In order to have been reported that day, he must have been free a few days previously, and perhaps he was even released immediately after the hearing of 20 February. There are insufficient grounds for stating categorically, as Whyld and others have done, that the sum Huttmann owed in 1843 was precisely £5 6s. The London Gazette does not actually say how much was owed, or to whom. The origin of that figure appears to be Walker’s saying that it “seems a monstrous anomaly

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that a man should be kept so long in prison because he cannot raise the five or six pounds necessary for the lawyer’s fees.”10 The reference is to the money needed to obtain legal representation in the Insolvency Court. This was probably forthcoming in early 1843 as a result of some comments Walker had made on 29 January and 12 February, calling on chess players to repay money owed to Huttmann. His original debts were probably of a business nature, the money most likely being owed to landlords or suppliers. From Tomlinson’s account and various references to Huttmann in the press, it seems likely that Huttmann’s debts arose from his unwise move from one address to another in Russell Street (he was also briefly at 35 Craven Street, Strand). This was by no means his only business failure. He had also been in debtors’ prison for a shorter period in 1838.11 This author has seen only a few examples of Huttmann’s work; if any complete sets survive they are in the vaults of private collectors. Whyld was able to provide a little information in his August 1989 “Quotes and Queries” column in B.C.M. but it is not entirely accurate. Recently two chess historians (Tony Gillam of Nottingham and Henri Serruys of Belgium) have succeeded in greatly extending our knowledge of Huttmann’s life, career, and publications. Their findings have so far been published only in The Chess Stalker’s Quarterly, the now-discontinued members’ magazine of the Ken Whyld Association,* and anyone seeking more details about the content of Huttmann’s publications should look there. It is clear from what Serruys writes that very little of the content was original, and that it is rather stretching a point to call them a “chess magazine.” Publication of Huttmann’s “slips” (as Walker called them) was at first fairly regular.

According to lists compiled by Whyld, improved by Gillam and Serruys, the sequence was as follows. The first four Curious Chess Problems appeared monthly between January and April 1840 and then continued weekly on Wednesdays starting with number 5 on 6 May, up to number 19 on 12 August. There were 22 numbers of Games of Chess published weekly on Saturdays between 21 March and 15 August 1840.12 Then they were merged into a four-page, two-penny periodical called The Palamede, “a magazine devoted exclusively to the game of chess, conducted by J. H. Huttmann, founder of the Westminster Chess Club.” The numbering was consecutive with Games of Chess, starting at 23 on 29 August. It continued fortnightly for a short while, with number 24 on 12 September 1840. Gillam was unable to find copies of numbers 25 and 26 but Serruys was later able to provide further information. Those two issues of The Palamede were published on 26 September and 10 October 1840 respectively. There was then a break of almost a year until Huttmann relaunched his publication, as noted above, with number 27 dated 11 September 1841 and the address was now 15 Russell Street. The series continued with number 28 on 25 September, 29 on 9 October and number 30, which Serruys believes was the last to appear, on 23 October 1841. Whyld and Ravilious, in Chess Texts, stated that the last was number 32 but Serruys points out that the final date given in that bibliography is the same as the date he has been able to confirm for number 30.13 Serruys also investigated, in two further articles, both Huttmann’s chess and business career, and also tried to trace (with some limited success) the fate of various collections of Huttmann’s publications.14 Serruys’s articles did not, however, narrate any more chess involvement by Huttmann

*As of January 2018, the Ken Whyld Association officially changed its name to The Chess History and Literature Society (CHLS), in order to reflect its purpose more clearly. Despite the name change, its web address remains as www.kwabc.org and the webmaster informs that the pdf archive of The Chess Stalker’s Quarterly will remain available to members.

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914 after his release from prison. So, as a coda, it may be noted that by early summer Huttmann was back in the chess café business, in a small way. He no longer attempted to compete in the chess magazine business. Walker wrote on 4 June 1843 in Bell’s Life in London: “We never smoked finer Havannahs than Huttmann has got at his modest little Chess room in Handcourt.” On 2 July 1843 Walker mentioned his chess rooms again in passing. The same paper carried a front page advertisement on 23 July 1843 as follows: CHESS. MR. HUTTMANN’S CHESS EVENINGS are held No. 10, Hand-court, Holborn, nearly opposite Chancery-lane. Visitors get the use of an extensive Chess Library, including the current periodicals of France and England; also an opportunity of playing with amateurs of every degree of strength. Members of Provincial Clubs are respectfully requested to make the above address a point of union during their visits to London. Cigars, Coffee, and other refreshments of the best quality, and at a moderate charge.

On 20 August 1843 Walker replied to a correspondent mentioning Huttmann. Finally on 26 November he reported that Aaron Alexandre (1766–1850), now resident in England, who had some “curious chess books” for sale, could be contacted at Ries’s Divan in the Strand or Huttmann’s rooms in Hand Court. Walker did not mention current activities by Huttmann after that; so late 1843 was probably the last time Huttmann was active in the chess world.

Early Rivals to the Chronicle The first chess magazine that can be considered a success, at least in its early years, was The Chess Player’s Chronicle, founded and initially edited by Staunton, the leading player of his day. Because that magazine’s publication history was extremely lengthy and complicated, detailed coverage of it is postponed to the next chapter. During its many different series between 1841 and 1902, there were sev-

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eral changes of editor and publisher and variations in the title, not to mention several interruptions to publication. Indeed the word “Chronicle” was the only element in common through the successive incarnations. However, historians have usually found convenient to refer to it generically as the “Chronicle” or by the abbreviation “C.P.C.” Enough will be said in this chapter to orient the reader who needs to be aware of what magazines were being published at any particular date. From the Chronicle’s inception in May 1841 until the summer of 1851, it faced no competitors in the English language, except for one short-lived magazine published in the United States and generally known by its short title, The American Chess Magazine. During this period there were also magazines in a few countries on the European continent; those in France have already been mentioned. Unsurprisingly, German was the next language in which a chess magazine was launched—in 1846. Germany was by no means a united nation at that time, and in fact two separate magazines were launched in 1846. The one which originally bore the name Deutsche Schach zeitung was published in Leipzig and ran for three years, ceasing publication in 1848. Also in 1846, the Berlin Chess Club launched its own magazine with Ludwig Bledow as first editor. The original title was Schachzeitung der Berliner Schachgesellschaft which was only changed to Deutsche Schachzeitung with the 27th volume in 1872. In the meantime there had been a split, when the Neue Berliner Schachzeitung was launched, which ran for eight years from January 1864. The original editors were Adolf Anderssen and Gustav R. Neumann but Zukertort succeeded Neumann as coeditor for the four final volumes which ended in late 1871. A few months later, Zukertort immigrated to London. Two chess magazines were founded in 1847. One was in the Dutch language and need not concern us beyond noting that Sissa (the name of the mythical Indian prince

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sometimes associated with the birth of chess) was a monthly magazine published in Wijk bij Duurstede and ran for 27 annual volumes until 1874. The other was in English but survived for only one volume, covering 1847 only. This was billed on the title page as The American Chess Magazine: a periodical organ of communication of American Chess-Players for the arbitration of disputed points and doubtful questions arising in the study and practice of The Game of Chess. For the instruction of young players, and the amusement of all. The editor, C. H. Stanley, was an Englishman who spent much of his adult life in the United States and eventually took American citizenship. He had already con-

Charles Henry Stanley, editor of the first American chess columns, and of the American Chess Magazine (1847), and later (from 1860–1862) of a column in a Manchester newspaper.

ducted the first two American chess columns and later he wrote an important column in a Manchester weekly paper between 1860 and 1862 during his final period of residence in Britain.15 Stanley’s origins and personal life are quite confusing. English genealogist and chess historian John Townsend made a few discoveries about him, but could not establish his birth details with certainty. Townsend also pointed out, for example, that this Stanley had sometimes been confused, even by some contemporaries, with a Charles Stanley of Brighton.* There was also a Henry Stanley in Preston, Lancashire, active in chess in the 1840s. In the late 1840s, before the rise of Paul Morphy and the arrival from Europe of the Paulsens and Löwenthal, Stanley was probably the strongest chess player in the New World, as shown by his results, and in particular his match victory against Eugène Rousseau (of New Orleans) in late 1845. As Stanley wrote hopefully in his Introduction, the relatively recent introduction of a weekly chess series in the New York Spirit of the Times had awakened “an interest and spirit of inquiry, amounting almost to a public thirst for information on all subjects connected with that noble game.” Nevertheless, the American market for a magazine must have been very small at that time and the publisher R. Martin probably hoped for some British sales, also naming Wiley & Putnam of London as associate publisher. Each issue includes Lessons for Learners, games, problems and miscellaneous items. The level of chess activity in America in the 1840s, although increasing, remained however, rather low and restricted to principal cities, with the rest chiefly involved in correspondence matches. Ultimately the American

*John Townsend, Historical notes, pages 91–107. C. H. Stanley’s period in Manchester when he edited a chess column in 1860–1862 was discussed in the first chapter of the present author’s biography of Blackburne; there it was suggested that the Stanley who returned to America in April 1862 was the chess player and that the last few articles in his column (up to early May) were probably written by James Kipping, thus resolving the contradiction pointed out by Townsend.

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914 Chess Magazine* constituted one fairly substantial volume but there was insufficient support to justify its continuation for a second year. Its cost would have been one factor limiting its potential circulation in Europe. Partly because of shipping costs, a single 32-page issue cost 2s. 6d. in England, whereas C.P.C. cost one shilling for 100 pages.16 Stanley seems to have been well informed about chess in some of the Atlantic seaboard states and also in Kentucky but he also included games and other material from Europe. Thus Stanley’s magazine reported on matches between Norfolk (Virginia) and New York, between Philadelphia and Boston, and matches by Lexington against both St. Louis and Louisville. In the latter match, a dispute arose over a clerical error made by Lexington, which was referred to Stanley for judgment.17 He also included a correspondence game he had lost two years previously, with his name lightly disguised. Typical of the play of that era, here it is, with Stanley’s own notes supplemented by comments from others. He identified the players as follows: “Played in the year 1845, by Correspondence, between Mr. C. V. of Philadelphia, and Mr. C. H. S. of New York.” The game was republished in B.L.L. 23 April 1848 but Walker gave White’s name wrongly as “Vernon.” It was later re printed, with identification of the players, in the book Chess in Philadelphia (ed. Reichhelm, 1898), pages 66–67.

C. Vezin–C. H. Stanley Correspondence, USA 1845 Kieseritzky Gambit (C39) American Chess Magazine (1847), pages 202–203. Notes are by Stanley unless otherwise stated.

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1. e4 e5 2. f4 e×f4 3. Nf3 g5 4. h4 g4 5. Ne5 Be7 In a game by correspondence, it would have been better judgment to have acted on the now more generally approved system of defense, playing 5. … h5 etc. Reichhelm: “Very like him. He proceeds to blaze a path through the gambit all for himself.” 6. Bc4 Far better than taking Pawn with Knight; in which latter case, second player should win. 6.  … Nh6 7.  d4 d6 8.  Nd3 B×h4† 9. Kf1 f5 We do not remember to have seen this mode of defense adopted by other players; it may be sound play, but it certainly appears risky. 10. e5 Mr. V. probably acts judiciously, in declining to capture any of the pawns so kindly left at his disposal. 10. … d×e5 11. N×e5 Bg5 12. Qe1 Kf8 13. c3 Qf6 Some of the inconveniences of Mr. S’s defense begin now to appear. 14. Rh5 Bd7 15. N×d7† N×d7 (see diagram)

After 15. … N×d7

rDwDwiw4 0p0nDwDp wDwDw1wh DwDwDpgR wDB)w0pD Dw)wDwDw P)wDwDPD $NGw!KDw

16. Qe6 Stanley: This is, without doubt, the deciding move of the partie; from this point, Mr. V’s game is to all intents and purposes won. Walker: A really fine move. 16. … Qg6 17. R×g5 Reichhelm: Good play. Mr. Vezin had well calculated how he could escape from his apparent danger. 17. … Q×g5 18. Q×d7 Qh5 19. B×f4 Qh1† 20. Kf2 g3† 21. Kf3! Qh5† 22. Ke3 Re8† 23. Kd2 Nf7

*Coincidentally, 170-some years later a new quarterly titled the American Chess Magazine began publication in the U.S. by Chess Informant. A large format heavily illustrated glossy magazine of about 152 pages had by mid– 2017 seen three issues of deeply annotated games, columns by such as Vassily Ivanchuk and general chess news of events in the U.S. and abroad.

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24. Q×f7† Reichhelm: With a sure advantage for the end game, but it requires staying to win. 24. … Q×f7 25. B×f7 K×f7 26. B×c7 Re7 27. Be5 R×e5 28. d×e5 Ke6 29. Ke2 h5 30. Nd2 K×e5 Walker: Mr. Stanley could not reasonably expect to win such a game as this. He seems to have treated his opponent quite too carelessly, like a spoilt child, intoxicated by the deep draughts of victory he has imbibed in every American city he has visited since he left England. 31. Nf3† Kf4 32. Rh1 The American Chess Magazine had a final note to the game, but the indication letter to show the position to which it should relate was omitted. This seems a likely point. “The game might as well have been abandoned at this period, as it is utterly hopeless to contend, under such circumstances, against Mr. V’s wellknown good generalship and great precision of play.” 32. … Re8† 33. Kf1 Rh8 34. Rh4† Ke3 35. Rd4 Re8 36. Ne1 Re4 37. Nc2† Kf4 38.  Rd7 h4 39.  R×b7 Kg5 40.  Nd4 h3 41. g×h3 1–0. From 1848 to mid–1851 The Chess Player’s Chronicle had no competitors in the English language. Then on 19 July 1851 The Chess Player was launched in London. Its German-born editors were Kling and Horwitz, and the publisher was R. Hastings who had been the publisher of the first few volumes of the Chronicle. Kling and Horwitz in the same year also collaborated on a book entitled Chess Studies, chiefly concerned with endgames, which will be discussed in Chapter 7. It is indeed for their high-class analytical work on endgames that these two are now principally remembered. Publication began weekly in the summer of 1851 to take advantage of the interest occasioned by the great tournament and presence of foreign masters in Britain. In all there were four volumes, running to November 1853 (although the Betts bibliography says December). It cannot be said that The Chess Player was a successful magazine but initially

it must have done well enough to be continued. Volume 2 began on 3 January 1852. It was in that year that Kling opened his chess coffee house in New Oxford Street and sales there may have helped the magazine to keep going. It may be noted on page 168 of this volume that a reply to a correspondent styling himself Simple Simon reads: “The prejudice in favour of the old notation is so great that it is vain to attempt any new scheme.” Although Kling and Horwitz would have been brought up on algebraic notation, they must have recognized that only a minority of English chess players understood it and so they had to adapt to the custom of the country where they were living. The Chess Player later subsided to monthly publication. Volume 3, begun on 14 August 1852, had 330 pages. However, after the fourth number, dated 4 September, it becomes hard to see where new issues begin and they began to use inferior paper, which was a bit heavier and rougher in texture. The fourth volume began in June 1853 and had only 188 pages, the final issue appearing in November. In 1971 Gillam paid homage to Kling and Horwitz by starting a series of periodicals called The Chess Player with a later series likewise called The New Chess Player. Sterner competition for Staunton arrived in January 1853 with the launch of The British Chess Review, so that for the first time there were (albeit briefly) three chess magazines in London. The Review represented not only a commercial rival for the Chronicle but a wholly different editorial viewpoint, hostile to Staunton’s virtual domination of the English chess publishing market at that time. (Previously only Walker’s Bell’s Life column was his chief critic.) The editor of the Review was Daniel Harrwitz (1821–1884), but with some involvement by Samuel Standidge Boden, Charles French Smith and others. Several of Smith’s games appear in this volume, some of them against his old rival Bird. As Townsend has

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914

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Previously they competed at the chess board; now in 1851 they were rival editors: Howard Staunton (left) and Bernhard Horwitz, as published in the Illustrated London News, VIII (7 February 1846), page 100.

discovered, Smith (who had been a most promising young player in the late 1840s) missed the tournament year of 1851 because of mental illness but was active again a year or two later, which roughly coincided with the first postal chess tournament, which he won. When Boden died in 1882, Potter went so far as to give him most of the credit for the editorial work, saying: “The veteran in question would, we imagine, admit being almost a nominal co-operator.”18 That was perhaps an exaggeration. The first volume of The British Chess Review, which ran to 384 pages, is well worth reading; the second (six issues only, totaling 186 pages) rather less so. The games included were played mostly at the London Chess Club and the Divan, “two sources which Staunton had often ignored” according to Diggle. On page 191 it was reported that Kieseritzky had

died; his late “derangement” was blamed on blindfold chess play. The anti–Staunton tone became increasingly clear during 1853, but readers who know this magazine only from digitized volumes lacking the covers (for example, in Google Books) will miss some of the fun. This is because the “answers to correspondents” section, where Harrwitz and Staunton started wrangling over the former’s challenge for a match, were mostly printed on the inside back covers. In August, for example, one can read: “T.M.”—There is nothing surprising in the announcement to which you call our attention. Chess-players are now beginning to be aware of the shifting, delaying, and humbuging system by which the ex–Champion now seeks to maintain his remnant of reputation.

In December, there were two separate replies devoted to attacks by Harrwitz on

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Staunton. The first made negative comments about both the I.L.N. column and the Chronicle. Who, he asked, now read these “for any other purpose than to enjoy a laugh at the gross vanity of their Editor, or at the petty malice of his attacks upon those players who have beaten him?” Lower down, concerning some comments in the I.L.N. about stakes to which the questioner had alluded, Harrwitz replied: “it would be more becoming if the scrupulous writer of them were to pay the stakes of the match which he lost with Mr. Lowe some years ago.” Since the latter point perhaps called for some explanation, this appeared on page 26 of the January 1854 number, where he spoke of “the courageous determination with which that gentleman

Daniel Harrwitz, editor of The British Chess Review, 1853/4, and previously of a chess column in The Family Friend. His tenure of the editorial chair at the Chess Player’s Magazine lasted precisely one issue in 1863.

postponed the playing of the closing game of his memorable match with Mr. Lowe.” Staunton’s side was conducted in the Illustrated London News. After Harrwitz defeated Löwenthal in their protracted match, he had the temerity to challenge Staunton himself. The debate between the two masters can also be seen on pages 381–382 where Harrwitz wrote that Staunton himself played for shillings and even sixpences not long ago. “It is against his principles to play for money,— when he fears to lose.” The arguments continued into the second volume in 1854 where the final breakdown of negotiations for a Staunton–Harrwitz match can be seen. Diggle’s account of the British Chess Review is well worth reading, except that he did not discuss the extent of Boden’s involvement, mentioning only Harrwitz as editor. Diggle explained how the closure of the Review came about in the summer of 1854 after Harrwitz fell ill. As he wrote to a friend in July (in a letter that surfaced 30 years later in British Chess Magazine), Harrwitz went to the Isle of Wight to recover and resolved to give up the magazine unless he could find somebody to carry it on, which he was unable to do. Soon afterwards Harrwitz left England and went to Paris. In this section, it should also be mentioned that the Betts bibliography lists four chess periodicals published in the United States during the 1850s: items #7-5 through #7-8 on pages 34–35. According to Betts, the Bulletin of the American Chess Association (1858) was intended to be half-yearly but only one issue, of eight pages, was produced. There were also just two issues of The Philidorian, produced in Charleston, South Carolina, in July and August 1859. We have seen neither of those publications. We did see all five issues of The Gambit, a weekly published in New York between 22 October and 19 November 1859. It was printed on quite large paper and was edited by Theodore Lichtenhein, who had won the third place play-off in the first American Chess Congress of 1857.

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914 The only one of the four to be of any great significance was The Chess Monthly: An American Chess Serial, edited in New York by Daniel Willard Fiske up to the end of 1860 and with Paul Morphy involved from 1858. This magazine began in January 1857 and four volumes came out under Fiske’s supervision, although he said on page 384 of volume four that he was not managing editor for “a few months of the present year, during which I was obliged to devote myself to other duties.” On the same page he announced that he was ceasing to be editor, since he had insufficient leisure, and also said “I am requested by Mr. Morphy to announce at the same time the withdrawal of his name from the title page.” The title page of volume four (1860) said the magazine had been edited that year by Morphy and Fiske (in that order) with the problem department supervised by Sam Loyd, who is best known as a problemist and setter of non-chess puzzles, but who became a strong enough player to compete in the 1867 Paris international tournament. Both Fiske and Morphy said they hoped to continue to contribute copy to the magazine. On the same page, there was a brief publisher’s announcement, signed W. C. Miller, saying that “Arrangements have been made with a gentleman of distinguished ability, who will, with the commencement of the year, assume the editorship of the Monthly.” This author has not seen any of volume 5; Betts says that five issues were produced, up to May 1861, but does not state who the new editor was. The outbreak of the American Civil War on 12 April 1861 must certainly have put an end to any hopes of this magazine’s continuing.

The Chess Player’s Magazine Following the end of the London Chess Congress of 1862, there was a hiatus of about 11 months when no British chess magazine was being published, following the cessation

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of the Third Series of the Chronicle. Then came the launch in July 1863 of a new title which in many ways imitated its predecessor. It is understandable that Diggle regarded it as a revival of the Chronicle although really there was no connection. The Chess Player’s Magazine was in essence an attempt to recapture the original style of the Chess Player’s Chronicle in its Stauntonian heyday; in this it was quite successful. In all it ran for five volumes, in two series, covering just over four years and ceasing publication in October 1867. One of the errors in Diggle’s article for B.C.M. was to say that Löwenthal edited the magazine throughout. Some other secondary sources (including the Betts bibliography and the Oxford Companion to Chess, whose editors should have known better) have put the same mistake into print, making it all the more important to provide a full discussion that corrects the record.19 Di Felice’s Chess Periodicals bibliography correctly names Löwenthal as editor from 1865 to 1867 but names nobody for the first two volumes, which carried no byline on their title pages or leading articles. Indeed the second series was explicitly stated to be edited by Löwenthal, but what about the first two years? Philip Sergeant was broadly correct in his account, but what he wrote in Century may usefully be supplemented by what appeared about the magazine in various contemporary chess columns. A prospectus appears to have been issued and the following announcement appeared in The Field chess column of 27 June 1863 on page 623. NEW CHESS PERIODICAL.—Readers and correspondents will be gratified to learn that a new monthly periodical devoted to the game of chess is to appear on July 1 next. It is to be entitled The Chess-player’s Magazine, is to have Herr Harrwitz as chief editor, and will be published by E. Owen of 67, Strand. Amongst other features worthy of notice we may mention that the new chess serial is to contain occasional portraits of famous players (from photographs by Mayall), and that Mr. Healey has undertaken the supervision of the problem department.20

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It has never been made entirely clear who “The Proprietors” were, who signed the opening article of the first issue, which ran to 32 pages. Sergeant pointed out that the publisher named on the title page of the first volume was E. Healey of 27, Change Alley, Cornhill, in the City of London (close to the London Chess Club’s premises), and he wrote that this was Edward Healey, “one of the two brothers Healey of whom we have heard as playing at Kling’s and at Starie’s Chess Rooms; for he is known to have had a business in the City.” Edward Healey was the elder brother of the eminent problem-composer Frank Healey and it is likely they were the initial, if not chief, movers behind the magazine’s launch. Since title pages of volumes were printed only upon completion of each volume of a periodical, so the publisher of its early numbers might have been different from that listed latterly. The chess column of the Newcastle Journal on 6 July 1863, welcoming the new arrival, named E. Owen of 67, Strand, as the publisher. Several other columns also named Owen, while an advertisement in The Era on 25 October named both Healey and Owen as publishers. Owen’s name was evidently on a prospectus, but disappeared at some stage before the end of 1863. The Newcastle Journal added: “The analyses and notes to the games are by Herr Harrwitz, and the problem department is under the supervision of Mr. F. Healey. These names are a sufficient indication of the ability engaged in the management of the new candidate for the favour of English Chess players.” Moreover the Dublin Daily Express of 9 July named not only Harrwitz and Healy [sic], but also said that “Messrs. Kling, Horwitz, Zgtognski [sic], and others have promised to contribute a series of instructive end games.” Bell’s Life in London, reviewing the first number on 26 July, confirmed that Harrwitz was the editor, backed up by Horwitz and Kling, with the problem department handled by “the chief English professor of that ingenious art,” Healey.

The Harrwitz of 1853 (the British Chess Review days) might have been an excellent editor, and Walker said he had high hopes for the new publication with Harrwitz at the helm; the reality ten years on was different. Instead, the outcome tended to support the acerbic view of Staunton which appeared in the Illustrated London News on 11 July after he read the prospectus. “We have no faith in its stability,” he sniffed. “A well managed English Chess Magazine, edited by an Englishman of competent literary ability and knowledge of the game, would supply an admitted want.” Perhaps Staunton was already thinking of starting such a periodical? On the other hand he considered that a magazine professing to be “the organ of English Chess”—this was in quotation marks and so was probably a phrase from the prospectus—but “edited by a foreigner and produced under foreign auspices, has, however, been already tried, and the result was not such as to warrant a repetition of the experiment.” Staunton’s xenophobic opinion is in no way surprising; what is a little puzzling is his reference to “foreign auspices.” Did he know, or believe, that the new magazine had foreign money behind it? That is not proven to have been the case, unless Falkbeer was one of the backers, which is possible. Critical notices of the first issue soon appeared. When the chess editor of the Newcastle Journal actually obtained a copy of the magazine, he was disappointed, to put it mildly and said that of some items “it is impossible to say anything in commendation.”21 Löwenthal, writing in The Era, on 12 July, found several things to like in the new magazine but added “We trust, however, that in the future the Editor will take more pains with the analysis. There are no notes, whatever, to several of the games.” The selection had begun with all seven games of the match between Steinitz and Deacon, but only the last of those had been recently conducted, after a suspension of play that had lasted five or six weeks. The first six match games had been played be-

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914 tween 27 April and mid–May, and had all previously appeared in various columns. Further games in the magazine were by the Prussian nobleman Tassilo von Heydebrand und der Lasa, and also by Anderssen, Morphy, Harrwitz and Löwenthal. The fullest discussion of what happened next is to be found in The Field but whom to blame must be left to the reader to judge. On 11 July the following lengthy review appeared, no doubt written by Boden, which in turn introduced a letter of complaint from Harrwitz himself. Loth as we are to write any statements or publish any opinions detrimental to the career of the new Chess Magazine, justice and impartiality compel us to confess that an inspection of the first number has resulted in no little disappointment. As we believe that few chess players will accuse the Chess column of THE FIELD of any want of impartiality, we shall make a few remarks and suggestions with freedom, doubting not that they will be taken as they are meant—rather as hints than fault-finding—especially as the faults and defects of the inaugural issue are such as an intelligent publisher could easily correct and remedy in a second number. The English composition of the Introduction, and indeed of the whole number, is, although clear and ingenious, clearly that of a foreigner, and should have been, before printing, revised by some English writer of experience. Where games have appeared previously in English newspapers, they ought, upon republication in a chess magazine, to be accompanied by a statement to that effect. The heading of the two games between MM. De Riviere and Morphy, considering that these parties originally appeared a month ago in the Illustrated London News, is particularly absurd, not to say outrageous.22 As we wish not to detract from any measure of success likely to attend this literary enterprise of certain lovers of chess, we shall only further observe that its appearance and getting up are in good taste and style, and that the problem department looks exceedingly promising. Its shortcomings appear to be more strongly felt by its chief editor than by ourselves, as the following letter testifies. TO THE EDITOR OF THE FIELD. Sir.—Permit me, through the medium of your Chess column, to repudiate all responsibility for

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the discreditable way in which the first number of the Chess Player’s Magazine has been made up. Although I am the appointed editor, some incompetent persons have taken upon themselves to exclude a great portion of the matter which I had destined for this month’s number, and to insert in its place games that have gone the round of the papers some three months since. I would no more think of telling the subscribers to a chess magazine that “chess is played by two persons on a board of sixty-four squares” than the Cornhill Magazine would devote any of its pages to instruct its readers in the art of spelling. At the same time, I beg to assure the subscribers that steps have been taken to prevent the recurrence of such obtrusive interference. London, 3 July. D. HARRWITZ.

The steps that were taken, unsurprisingly, involved the proprietors removing the man who had called them incompetent. They sent a letter to The Field, a paraphrase of which appeared in that paper the following Saturday, as follows: We have received from the proprietors of the Chess Player’s Magazine a letter explaining the circumstances which prejudicially influenced the compilation of the first number of the new chess periodical. They show that there has been no disposition on their part to ill treat Mr. Harrwitz, nor to undervalue his services, but they state that the matter supplied by Mr. Harrwitz did not reach the printer’s hands until too late for “magazine day,” and that the said matter was not eligible in the mass. This state of affairs would obviously necessitate hasty recourse to such matter, or “copy,” as could be had. The proprietors of the Chess Player’s Magazine add that they regret having to state that Mr. Harrwitz’s connection therewith has ceased. We have abstained from printing the entire letter from the proprietors of the new magazine, solely from a reluctance to increase (possibly) already existing misunderstandings.23

The Dublin Daily Express of 7 August said that the second number was a great improvement, and mentioned the sacking of Harrwitz. “The editorship has since been undertaken by a committee of the finest players of the day resident in London.” That sounds like the wording of a press release. Wormald

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reviewed the first two numbers in The Sporting Gazette on 15 August, saying that although the new periodical “does not exactly fulfil the somewhat pretentious promises of its opening address, nevertheless possesses many interesting features, and starts in life with a fair prospect of success.” The problem department and the second issue’s portrait and biography of Morphy were praised, “but the games, on the whole, are scarcely up the mark, and, what is worse, are carelessly printed and annotated.” The two pages devoted to Lessons for Beginners were “ridiculous.” Wormald also noted that “Herr Harrwitz, who was originally announced as editor” had “retired from that office on the appearance of the first number.” Staunton had noted on 25 July that the proprietors of the new magazine “intend to intrust the editorship of their periodical to an Englishman in future.” It was probably their failure to do so that prompted a typical Stauntonian outburst to “A Subscriber” on 15 August: “A chess periodical so inefficiently conducted as the one named is a misfortune, for, while there is no hope of its doing anything to promote the interests of English players itself, it serves, perhaps, to retard the publication of a magazine which would represent and further those interests in an able and effectual manner.” Others were more easily satisfied. The third number was praised in the Newcastle Journal of 8 September, and The Field of 12 September considered that this issue “is a great improvement in all respects on its predecessors.” Sergeant judged that “From other sources, though never in the magazine, it may be gathered that the editor-in-chief was Ernest Falkbeer.” This is probably true; at least for issue three onwards in volume one and most of volume 2. The Austrian master Falkbeer was resident in London at this period, he certainly wrote some signed articles in the magazine and he had prior editorial experience, having conducted the chess column of The Sunday

Times from 1857 to 1859. Prior to that he had edited the first short-lived Wiener Schachzeitung, which ran for nine numbers in 1855. Sergeant says nothing about Harrwitz’s abortive involvement at the start, but that is consistent with the fact that in his book he does not often refer to historical chess columns, perhaps because he had no access to them. The first volume of The Chess Player’s Magazine consisted of six numbers, each of 32 pages, making 192 in total. The second volume, for 1864, continued in the same vein until a major upset occurred in the fall. The proof that Löwenthal was not in fact the editor of the magazine until 1865 soon becomes apparent to anybody who reads the last three issues of volume 2 closely. Moreover, there is clear evidence elsewhere that Falkbeer had been in charge. Bell’s Life in London for 10 December 1864 carried the following paragraph: CHESS PLAYERS’ MAGAZINE.—We have a letter from Herr Falkbeer, stating that his connection with this periodical as editor ceased in September last, and that he is about to settle in Vienna to fulfil an engagement connected with the press there. We presume this will account for the delay in the publication of the December number of the magazine. From the 1st of January Herr Lowenthal takes the editorship … and assuredly no man is better fitted for the post.

It is hard to understand how so many writers have got this wrong because Sergeant explained what had happened in his widely read Century of British Chess. The background to the events of September 1864 is that the book of the 1862 Chess Congress (edited chiefly by Löwenthal with contributions by George Medley) was very late in appearing. The delay was due (Löwenthal claimed) to “many of the foreign games having been inaccurately and unintelligibly written down,” so that he had had to write many letters abroad seeking clarification about what had actually been played. Another factor was probably the major dispute that had arisen concerning the judging of the problem composition tourney.

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914 The book of the Congress was finally published early in 1864. The exact date is uncertain but advertisements appeared in late February saying it would be published “in a few days,” price six shillings.* The Field reviewed the book on 26 March 1864 but by late summer still no review had appeared in the C.P.M. A member of the St. George’s Chess Club wrote in to ask why not, and received the following reply on page 284—which can be calculated to be part of the September number (there being 32 pages in each issue) although Sergeant said it was October. The review of the work you mentioned has been unavoidably delayed. The difficulty of the task, and the desire of doing justice to the editors, Messrs. Medley and Lowenthal, with fairness and impartiality, must serve as an apology to our shortcomings in this respect. It shall be given shortly in extenso.

For his information about what happened next, Sergeant credits MacDonnell’s book Chess Life-Pictures but in fact the passage concerned was in his later book, The Knights and Kings of Chess in a biographical article about Falkbeer. Like most of that book, the anecdote first appeared in the Chess Chat section of The Illustrated Dramatic and Sporting News. This is what MacDonnell wrote: He was ejected from the Chessplayer’s Magazine by Löwenthal who, having learned that an unfavourable review of his book of the 1862 Congress, from the pen of Brien, was about to appear in that publication, went to the proprietor thereof, bought up the magazine, took possession himself of the editorial chair, and of course suppressed the hostile article† [G.A. MacDonnell,

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Knights and Kings, pages 81–82; originally in I.S.D.N., 9 January 1886].

Neither MacDonnell nor Sergeant fully explained who was responsible for the final issues of the 1864 volume but most likely the Healey brothers undertook this, chiefly using whatever copy was in hand. The November number ends with answers to correspondents, one of whom was told: “You are right with reference to the misprints in our last number. They were caused by the prolonged absence of the editor from town.” Two other replies confirm that Löwenthal would take over in January; this was evidently a current rumor. “The December issue is obviously just thrown together,” commented Sergeant. It also included on page 384 an announcement, signed “The Proprietor” (singular this time), that Löwenthal would take over the editorship of the magazine in January. Sergeant does not speculate about where Löwenthal found the money to buy out the original owners, but it almost certainly came from the testimonial that had recently been raised on his behalf by the St. George’s Club, in recognition of his services to chess. The Field of 6 August printed a long subscription list showing that that about £300 had already been raised. That was a very substantial sum in those days (equivalent to at least £27,000 sterling today) and would certainly have been more than sufficient to buy the magazine from its shareholders. Whether Falkbeer was sacked or just decided to quit is unknown. On the title page of volume 2, the publishers were named as Kent and Co. of Pasternoster Row

*For example, advertisements in Bell’s Weekly Messenger on 27 and 29 February 1864. A review in B.L.L., 9 April, explained that first prize in the problem tourney had been awarded to Joseph Campbell, but then an error in one of his set of problems was discovered and he was disqualified, but only after the prize money of £20 had been sent to him. He refused to refund it “on principle.” Walker added that “He has, however, not stated, and neither we nor the committee are aware what the ‘principle’ may be.” †I.S.D.N., XXIV (9 Jan. 1886); reprinted verbatim in MacDonnell, Knights and Kings, pages 81–82. Sergeant’s version is in Century, pages 135–136. Sergeant also points out that the October number of C.P.M., in a review of the newly-relaunched Palamède, defends Löwenthal against an “unjust misrepresentation” in the French magazine. Sergeant, on page 136, is unclear whether this defense was written before or after Löwenthal bought up C.P.M., but that is because of his confusion over the date of the reply to the St. George’s member. Perhaps Löwenthal had already bought the magazine in September.

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and E. Healey, with no mention of Owen, and the Healey name disappears in 1865. It is possible, though, that Frank Healey continued to conduct the problem department; there are certainly problems by him in the volume. The Field did not comment on the editorial change but the Western Daily Press of 10 January 1865 noted that a “new and improved series” had begun at the start of the year under the editorship of “Herr Lowenthal, the distinguished player” and expected the magazine “to eclipse even the deservedly high character it has hitherto enjoyed.” To the first issue Löwenthal contributed a review of chess in 1864 and an address “To Our Readers.” Also towards the end of 1864, Manchester businessman T. H. Hopwood (known in the chess world by his nickname “Toz”) planned a magazine aimed principally at novices, with assistance from Blackburne. However, he chose a bad time to launch it and found no welcome from Staunton who had plans of his own. Unsurprisingly, the Household Chess Magazine was a big flop, just lasting three issues in 1865 ( January to March).24 Löwenthal edited the Chess Players’ Magazine for just over two and a half years. It lasted just long enough to report on the Paris 1867 tournament, on the judging of the B.C.A. Problem Tourney (in the September issue), and briefly on the Dundee congress (in the final issue, for October). In that number, announcing the discontinuance, he claimed that the monthly circulation had been increasing, a fact “attested by the railway stalls, as well as other offices.” He admitted that a chess magazine “cannot look for a very large circulation; its editorship must be assumed in the interest of the public or for the love of art.” He put a brave face on the closure, trying to pretend that the reasons were not financial, saying: It is indeed a cause for regret that a Magazine increasing in circulation should appear to collapse as if upon a sudden emergency. No such emergency has occurred; the simple question was whether we should stop the Magazine at the end

of 1866 or during the current year. Our engagements are so numerous that we feel it impossible to give the time required for a superior chess periodical. It would ill become us to be content with reprinting articles which have appeared in other Chess magazines. Originality we have ever been determined to have, and, if that failed, to give up our organ. For original writing in a periodical we have no longer the requisite leisure.25

Wayte’s memoirs in B.C.M. (1888) told a different story, saying that part of a later testimonial in 1874 “went to clear a debt on the Chess Players’ Magazine, which commercially was not a success.”26 What Löwenthal’s “numerous engagements” may have been is unclear. He now had no chess magazine and no chess column, and would not acquire new ones until Pardon passed on Young Men of Great Britain in 1868. Perhaps, since becoming a British citizen by naturalization in 1866, and losing the Era column around the same time, Löwenthal had acquired new (non-chess) sources of income which involved much of his time. It is true that he did have in hand the task of compiling a book, The Transactions of the British Chess Association for 1866 and 1867, which included the B.C.A.’s 1866 competitions and the Dundee congress. Almost certainly he was receiving some official stipend as manager of the B.C.A. (up to June 1868) and some private financial support from a benefactor, specifically the Rev. William George Ward, of Ware in Hertfordshire, who was chairman of the committee of the St. James’s Chess Club in London.27

The Chess World The Chess Player’s Magazine might have lasted longer if it had had no competitors. The British chess world was too small to support two or three rivals, but Staunton thought otherwise. Two of his comments (already quoted) show that in 1863 he must have been thinking about starting a new magazine. Apart from his column in the Illustrated London News, Staun-

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914 ton had been inactive in chess for several years and had otherwise largely devoted himself to Shakespearian scholarship. Then in March 1865 he (along with the publisher Trübner) launched his second magazine, The Chess World, subtitled “a magazine devoted to the cultivation of the game of Chess, etc.” One of his aims, and those of such supporters as he retained, was to oppose what he saw as the foreign element dominating London chess and the British Chess Association, not least his one-time protégé, but now despised (and ultimately defeated) enemy, Löwenthal. The Chess World ran for four volumes, whose publication dates do not correspond to calendar years: the magazine appeared between March 1865 and March 1869. The content is on the whole tedious reading but this magazine first appeared at a time when there was little significant chess activity to report. This situation improved greatly later, especially during its second and third volumes. Steinitz’s matches with De Vere, Anderssen, Bird and Fraser are all covered, as are the great tournaments in the summer of 1867: Paris and Dundee. As the tournament book of the Paris congress is of course in French, it is certainly helpful to have had many of its game annotations translated in this magazine. The first number of The Chess World, for March 1865, began with an introductory article entitled “To our Readers,” an unattractive piece of little–Englandism signed by “The Editors,” as if they numbered more than one. Staunton began by saying on page 1: The want of a Magazine which shall faithfully represent the interests of English Chess has long been felt. It has been the fashion of late years to descant with complacence on the so-called cosmopolitan character of the game, and theoretically we admit the general correctness of this view; but practically the history of the game teaches us that the existence of every individual School of Chess must depend on the preservation of a separate and distinct nationality, the loss of which is the immediate forerunner of decay.

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He made medieval and foreign comparisons. He claimed English chess used to be national and strong, but now it had become cosmopolitan and weak. Without giving a date, but probably thinking the good time started to become bad in the 1850s, he made the claim on page 2 that: Years ago, when the game in this country was of a thoroughly national type, we could boast of an independent school of players, represented by Lewis, McDonnell, Staunton, Cochrane, and Buckle, second to none in originality, in brilliance, and in power. Chess, both in theory and practice, was here in its zenith; the game enjoyed a vitality unprecedented in any other country; individual players of eminence sprang up in all directions throughout the provinces; and no fewer than 140 Chess Clubs were at one time in active operation. But from the time when the wholesome national feeling first degenerated into a spurious universalism, we may date the gradual decline of English Chess. Player after player seceded from the arena; no new generation arose to supply their place; club after club was closed, until at the present day scarcely forty British Chess Societies remain alive, and unhappily many of these exist only in name.

The Chess World appealed to the aid of its countrymen and aimed to arrest “the progress of this lamentable decay.” It probably did not help either magazine that at this time there was not a great deal of high-level chess activity to report. It did not help, in Staunton’s view naturally, that not only the Chess Player’s Magazine but also the so-called British Chess Association (now being revived in 1865 after a lull) was largely in the hands of J. J. Löwenthal. Staunton did not have a good word to say about the British Chess Association since, in 1862, it had published a rival code of laws instead of adopting those which he had published in Chess Praxis. He also did have some support, notably from Silas Angas (“Alpha”), a Tyneside amateur who had competed in the Provincial Tournament in the 1851 congress. Pages 87–93 ran a lengthy letter by “Alpha” complaining about the B.C.A. chess code.

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The fourth issue began on page 97 with another moan about the decay of chess in England. The following issue reported on plans for the Dublin Chess Congress, to coincide with the international exhibition there. Staunton said chess events should be held separately although his own 1851 tournament had been staged to coincide with the Great Exhibition. Xenophobia again, or possibly just a personal dig at Steinitz, was to be seen in this sentence: “It is a most objectionable system to pay the expenses of foreign players, in order that they may come over to compete for the prizes offered by English amateurs.”28 Nevertheless when the Dublin Congress actually happened, it was judged to have been a small success on the whole. The September number carried a “Decease of the B.C.A.” letter from “Alpha” and a complaint from W.S. Pavitt that the “dummy pawn” (a feature of the B.C.A.’s version of the pawn promotion rule) was adversely affecting problems. In the February 1866 issue, another letter from “Alpha” on the “PseudoManagement of the British Chess Association” especially attacked George Medley who had announced in a journal that the B.C.A. was to be reconstituted. “Alpha” also described Löwenthal as “being in the peculiar position not merely of being a Chess ‘Champion’ who will not play, but of a Chess ‘Editor’ who cannot write….” Since Staunton was also a champion who did not play, that was a little daring, but Staunton was certainly able to write. By the mid-point of the second volume of The Chess World, Staunton’s position in the chess world was looking stronger than it had for many years. He held (for a year and a half in 1866/67) a prominent position in a new metropolitan chess club, the Westminster, but this revival in his chess fortunes did not last. Staunton even forced Steinitz out of the Westminster, before a new dispute led to Staunton’s quitting the club himself early in 1868 and forming a new one, which was not a suc-

cess. Also Staunton may have had some hand in silencing his chief opponent, since he had seen Löwenthal lose first his Era column and later his magazine. As noted, when the Era revived its column, Staunton appears to have been involved. Volume 3 of The Chess World (covering March 1867 to March 1868) is probably the most interesting of the four, covering as it does the two major international tournaments played in the summer of 1867. It also includes articles on Philidor by George Allen and Von der Lasa (also to be found in Allen’s book on Philidor). This volume begins with a typically Stauntonian essay on “the influence of chess upon the character.” Here is a taste: Its admirers and teachers are of every nation, rank, profession, and trade. It has a dignity peculiarly its own. The distinctions which it confers are coveted by the monarch, the noble, the clergyman, the lawyer and the scholar. Ladies give many hours to it and consider it time well spent…. Prove yourself a great chess player and you are accepted as having those talents which well used have made men great in every other game of life…. Chess is not only an amusement, but the one most in harmony with the ordinary pursuits of clever men.

Then on page 2 Staunton warned that “for an amusement to become an all absorbing passion would be a misfortune and perhaps a disgrace.” Shilling sharks or “men who let themselves out to play matches for other people’s money” are pitiful, he continued, but (thinking of Steinitz no doubt) “happily there are not many of these black sheep, and for the most part they are not English.” They are like street musicians. Staunton admires not such gladiators but rather wants to see “the harmony of these pursuits with solid work … in the quiet country mansion” or “in the study of the literary man making a pleasing relief to the more arduous toil of the brain,” or in the home of the merchant. If chess, he said, reflecting the “rational recreation” ideas of the Victorians, “is often in the cottage of the intelligent workman, filling up the vacant hours

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914 which else he might have spent less wisely, it is doing good service.” The closure of the C.P.M. meant that for just a few months, the field of chess magazine publication was left free for Staunton. It cannot be said that he made good use of the brief lack of competition. Then volume 4 of The Chess World, for April 1868 to March 1869, was duller still and included some fictional items. Not only was little exciting chess being played until late in 1868 but, most serious of all, since Staunton’s resignation from the Westminster Club he was now irretrievably out of touch with the real “chess world,” except for a few ever-loyal friends like Wormald. In the first half of this volume Staunton published more games from Paris 1867. Towards the end he could include games from the B.C.A. championship which was won by Blackburne shortly before publication ceased. Staunton may have become bored with the editorial responsibilities and it is known his health was deteriorating. Moreover, his own financial position was probably not strong enough to sustain a magazine that was losing money. He in turn was faced in 1868 with new competitors, one of which (discussed in the next section) appealed greatly to metropolitan players while the other, The Chess Players’ Quarterly Chronicle (discussed in Chapter 6), was geared to the tastes of provincial gentlemen and appears to have received more support. In a last attempt to sustain the magazine, Staunton issued a circular in December 1867, probably sent out with that month’s issue, though how it was otherwise circulated is unknown. It said that a single specimen number would be forwarded on receipt of 12 stamps (i.e., stamps to the value of one shilling.) The circular, which was headed with the address 66 Paternoster Row, London, did not state what the cost of annual subscription would be. The text read as follows. The Chess World Magazine was established, as a Prospectus which heralded its appearance

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intimated, to restore the diminished and fast diminishing reputation of the British School of Chess. How far during its career of nearly three years it has contributed to this end, is now well-known; but it is not known that all which it has accomplished has been done, in the main, at the expense in time and money of two or three individuals. But this is the fact, and those already acquainted with it feel, as doubtless others will when it becomes known to them, that it would be ungenerous in the extreme for this state of things to continue. An organ exclusively devoted to the game is found to be indispensable wherever Chess is much practiced, and the expense of its maintenance should be shared by those who participate in its advantages. By the energy and liberality of the gentlemen alluded to, The Chess World has already taken a position which warrants our assuming that, with very little encouragement from those whose cause it has espoused, it will shortly become self-supporting. To ensure this, about 200 or 250 additional subscribers are all that are really required. Of that number about 40 have already signified their desire to subscribe. Amateurs wishing to follow their example, are requested to sign and transmit the annexed Form, addressed to “H. STAUNTON, Esq., DULWICH, S near London,” who has undertaken to become Treasurer. We have the honour to be, Sir, Truly yours, THE EDITORS OF THE CHESS WORLD.29

Apparently this rather pitiful appeal was doomed to meet with little response. Actual subscription figures and the identities of Staunton’s backers can only be a matter for speculation. After the March 1869 issue the Chess World closed. There was no final announcement and the termination of publication appears to have been passed over in silence by chess columns. Perhaps the magazine never had many readers. For any chess magazine, getting new subscribers was difficult enough and keeping them could be just as hard. Several years later, in his column, Potter recalled a barrister friend who could well have afforded to continue his subscription to the City of London Chess Magazine but didn’t take it in any more because he could read it at a friend’s house.30

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The Westminster Papers As mentioned already, one of Staunton’s new competitors was the Quarterly Chronicle, which chiefly appealed to the clergy and provincial gentlemen. A more direct threat, both to his circulation and to his pride, was a metropolitan rival: The Westminster Chess Club Papers, launched in April 1868 by a team headed by Thomas Hewitt and Boden along with Duffy and others. Staunton himself had cofounded the Westminster club in 1866 but fell out with its managing committee the following year and formally resigned at some point early in 1868.* The appearance of a new magazine from this quarter was a stab in the back with its anti–Stauntonian tone struck from the very first page. The opening article in the Papers, purporting to state the magazine’s policy, was a satirical attack on Staunton’s conduct of his own magazine and the I.L.N. column. Diggle, in his article for B.C.M., says this article was written by Boden but from the style we suspect that either the “guilty party” was Duffy, or else it may well have been a collaborative effort. Since Diggle already quoted a large part of that prefatory article, it’s worth pointing out that the poem on page 3 also targets Staunton. It begins as follows: Who taught me how to play at chess, And laud my genius to excess. Ban others’ play and mine own bless? My Master. Who showed me how foes might be lower’d— Though victors o’er the chequered board? How lost games in my favour scor’d? My Master. Who taught me, if I’m asked to play By champions “eager for the fray,” To answer “Yes,” though meaning “Nay?” My Master.

And so on for a few more stanzas. Further satires and attacks on Staunton followed in subsequent issues. The members responsible for the first volume invented (for the June number) a fictional editor, “Telemachus Brownsmith” who was occasionally named on the title page up to the March 1869 number which completed the volume. The Papers was not exclusively a chess magazine; its title page also mentioned “whist, games of skill, and the drama.” The first volume of the Papers was amateurish, and it seems that most of the original writers including Hewitt and Boden had no interest in continuing the magazine. No issue for April 1869 was published. Nevertheless, the magazine was relaunched in May 1869 with Duffy in charge of the chess while the overall editor from volume 2 onwards was attorney Charles Mossop, whose interest was chiefly in whist. Mossop was friendly to chess, and perhaps recognized that a magazine devoted to cards alone had even less chance of success. He brought in some new contributors (including Henry “Cavendish” Jones on cards), dropped the word “Club” from the title to give the magazine wider appeal, dispensed with the services of the mythical Brownsmith, and retitled the monthly as simply The Westminster Papers. Thus the magazine became a quirky hybrid dealing with various recreations of a gentleman about town. Chess, though, always came first in each issue and Mossop allowed the chess department great autonomy.31 Organizing the chess content, and writing much of it, was mostly in the hands of Duffy with contributions by Zukertort (after he came to London in 1872), Potter, and some others. Mossop’s aim seems to have been to keep the magazine going on a break-

*Harding, Eminent, pages 67–69, had some discussion of this and, in a note, quoted Staunton saying in the I.L.N. of 20 June 1868 that he had withdrawn from the club. It is unknown when he formally resigned but it had probably occurred quite early in the year and at any rate before the first issue of the Papers was written. Sergeant, Century, note 2 on page 146, mentions that the May 1868 number of The Chess World includes one of his notorious “anonymous” letters, attacking the committee of the club. This was evidently his response to the opening article in the Papers.

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914

A page from the September 1876 number of the Westminster Papers.

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even basis, paying small amounts to the professional writers on chess. The magazine was never published with the aim of making money, but after the 1869 transformation it became a very good source of information about chess in London and environs, without being boring. As before, the chess pages in the Westminster Papers were often opinionated and sarcastic, sometimes even vitriolic (especially when Duffy was holding the pen and his target was Steinitz), but the magazine was also lively and informative and published the cream of British chess during its lifetime—and was the only British chess magazine to publish for the whole of the year 1876. Another noteworthy service the magazine performed came in its final volume, when the Papers (which normally carried only a small ration of games in each issue) published a large number of the games played in the great Paris 1878 international tournament, for which the French had failed to produce the tournament book it deserved. Eventually the Berlin archivist Emil Schallopp edited a book of that tournament, using the Papers as one of his sources, but several games remain lost to posterity. Gradually the card-playing element had largely taken over at the parent club, which chess-lovers tended to dismiss as “The Whistminster.” Finally, on 26 June 1875 Wormald reported in the I.L.N. that the Westminster Club had ceased to exist, being absorbed into another club. The Westminster Papers continued for a little longer: a club magazine which had eventually become detached from its club. The Papers eventually ran for 11 volumes during some of which it could even be seen as the principal chess magazine in the world, despite the fact that about a third of its content (on average) was about other leisure activities including even croquet. Issues varied in length, with the chess content sometimes excellent, occasionally perfunctory. Suddenly Mossop called a halt in April 1879. He boasted in his farewell editorial that

the price of each issue had been kept to sixpence so that working men could afford it and stated that “the work was done by lovers of games for love alone, and never for profit.”32 That was the amateur spirit in which nearly all British chess magazines were produced, until B. H. Wood’s launch of Chess in 1935 was literally a game-changer. Mossop did have to endure some criticism of his decision not to offer somebody else the chance to continue the Westminster Papers. He replied to Bland, the Design and Work chess editor, as follows. (It was later explained that he had not intended the letter for publication, but fortunately it was, on 31 May 1879, page 527, so we have an insight into his thinking.) Dear Sir,—I thank you heartily for the kindly notice of the Westminster Papers. You say there was some hitch in the Whist department. This simply is that I have worked eleven years for the cause of Chess and Whist, and eleven years is, I think, sufficient time to devote to such an amusement. Some of the writers say I might give up the Whist; but then, first of all, Whist is my department. Whist gave me more pleasure than Chess. With whist-players I made friends, with chess-players I made nothing but enemies; and until the Papers died I did not know that anyone outside our own circle cared for our existence. The lesson for chess players is this.—If they get a paper they care for they must say so, and if they want a paper that will pay its way they must extend their indulgence to other games, because without other games Chess cannot pay. For ten years I tried hard to get a good Chess paper. I was never satisfied with it, and as no one else seemed to be I gave up the Psapers, feeling that I had failed to gauge the thing which chessplayers wanted, and believing that a chess game and problem was all that they wanted.—Yours very truly, CHAS. MOSSOP.

Bland agreed that 11 years “is sufficient time for a man to work in the way he has done” for those games. But he wrote that the Papers did get much praise and he saw no evidence that the Papers did not pay its way. He added: Though chess players are, as a body, very apathetic respecting chess publications and columns,

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914 we think they are not quite so bad as our correspondent implies. When a man makes nothing but enemies at Chess the cause cannot be far to seek. Perhaps his associates are at fault, perhaps not. There is nothing in Chess to create illfeeling. That there are spites and jealousy in Chess circles there is no doubt. We believe that more ill-feeling exists in metropolitan Chess circles now than ever; and they are not generally considered beds of roses.

Bland said he had never made anything but friends at Chess. Sergeant, in his 1942 review of old periodicals for B.C.M., surprisingly wrote that the “extinction” of the Westminster Papers was “no great loss to chess literature” but that was not the view of Bland or its loyal readership, and nor is it this author’s. The chess historian can learn a lot about British chess in the late 1860s and 1870s from a close study of its pages. The closure of the Westminster Papers created an opportunity for a new magazine, which was soon taken up by Hoffer and Zukertort, but before discussing their magazine there were other titles in the 1870s that must be reviewed.

The City of London Chess Magazine One short-lived magazine of the mid– 1870s was of more significance than most and deserves close attention from historians of the period. This was The City of London Chess Magazine which also began as the house magazine of a club but always aimed at a broader audience. It first appeared in February 1874. Although it ran for only just over two years, in Potter it had an excellent editor. He included few games of his own over the two years but perhaps felt it necessary to show one example early on, so he modestly presented the following draw and got Steinitz to write the notes.

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W. N. Potter–H. Coburn & Dr. W. R. Ballard Consultation game, London 1874 Dutch Defense (A81) From the City of London Chess Magazine volume 1, pages 36–37. Comments inside quote marks were by Steinitz. 1. d4 f5 2. g3 Nf6 3. Bg2 c6 4. Nh3 d6 5. f3!? This move spoils the modern appearance of Potter’s previous choices! Steinitz however did not criticize it in his notes. Nowadays Nh3 would normally be followed by Nf4 at some point, with the bishop left unobstructed on its diagonal. Potter, however, is thinking in terms of preparing e2–e4. 5. … g6 So we now have an anticipation of the Leningrad Dutch! 6. c3 Bg7 7. Na3 Be6 8. Nf2 The point of move 5 but Steinitz preferred Ng5. 8.  … Bf7 9.  e4 f×e4 10.  f×e4 Qc7 11. Be3 Nbd7 12. Qe2 0–0 13. 0–0?! Steinitz indicated 13. Nd3 to meet 13. … e5 by 14. d×e5 N×e5 15. N×e5 d×e5 16. Bc1. 13.  … e5! 14.  b3 a6 15.  Rac1 Kh8 16. Rfd1 Rfe8 17. Nb1 Rad8 18. Qd2 Potter can only wait. 18. … d5 19. e×d5 B×d5 20. Bg5 B×g2 21. K×g2 e×d4 22. c×d4 Nb6 23. Na3 Rd5 24. Nc4 Ne4 25. N×e4 R×e4 26. Re1 N×c4 27. b×c4 Rd×d4 (see diagram)

After 27. … Rd×d4

wDwDwDwi Dp1wDwgp pDpDwDpD DwDwDwGw wDP4rDwD DwDwDw)w PDw!wDK) Dw$w$wDw

28. Q×d4 “A capital resource.” 28. … R×e1 “If 28. … B×d4 White gains at once two rooks for the Q with a fine attack by 29. R×e4;

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and if 28. … R×d4 White replies by 29. Re8† followed by Rf1 with a winning position.” 29. Qa7 Re8? “The allies here missed an opportunity of winning the game by checking first: 29. … Re2† when if 30.  Kg1 (or Kh1) 30.  … h6 must have won with the pawn ahead, and if Kf1 or Kh3 Black could then have retreated the Re8 with greater effect, threatening a formidable check with the Q.” 30. Re1! Qf7 30. … R×e1?? would of course allow mate in 4 by 31. Qa8†. 31. Q×b7! Beautifully played, observes Steinitz. 31. … Q×b7 32. R×e8† Bf8 33. Bh6 c5† 34. Kg1 Qb1† 35. Kg2 ½–½. “Black can do no more than draw the game by perpetual check, for if he attempt to take the a-pawn, White would escape with K to h3 and even win the game.” Potter’s gifts as a game annotator were on display in the Westminster Papers from about 1868 onwards, but he saw a need for a different type of magazine, one which gave no space to other games such as cards and billiards. At the start of the first issue, after a literary flourish of Shakespearian allusions typical of the era, Potter got to the point: The first point upon which we claim the support of the public is, that our Magazine will be devoted entirely to Chess; and we say this without any disparagement of our contemporary, the Westminster Papers, which, while it appeals to a more general class of readers than is contemplated by us, nevertheless, never ceases to bestow the greatest possible attention upon that portion of its pages which is devoted to Chess…. Secondly, we shall publish, every month, a varied selection of games, by the finest players of the day, and which will be annotated by some of the most competent of living authorities. Our problems will be by British and foreign composers of the highest standing; while our Chess intelligence will be, as far as unsparing effort and untiring energy can make it so, a succinct but complete résumé of all the doings in “our petty burgh”; and we intend taking especial pains to collect for that purpose all kinds of interesting and useful information. We shall also publish analyses of the openings, in which the most re-

cent discoveries will be elucidated; and it is our intention, from time to time, to give a few useful hints to the receivers of odds, whereby they may avoid many of the pitfalls into which they are accustomed to fall. Thirdly, the Magazine will be published at a cheap price, so as to be within the reach of the humblest income. It would seem desirable to add that our purposes are not in any way local, or even merely Metropolitan; on the contrary, we aspire to be, if possible, the organ of all English Chess circles, and, therefore, shall hope for the generous support of the provincial, as well as of the London players.

Potter asked rhetorically whether there were sufficient players of the game to support such a magazine and he observed not only that chess was growing in popularity in mid– Victorian Britain, but that the level of play was rising, especially among the very young. However, we can scarcely, we think, be accused of exaggeration, if we fix the number of Chess players in the United Kingdom at about 100,000. Assuming this figure, or even, out of deference to pessimists, dividing it by two, it is clear that the amount of Chess provender at present provided for such an important body is altogether insufficient; and the force of this consideration is strengthened by the fact that the Chess player, unlike his brother of the cue, requires a great amount of literary nourishment…. Another important fact is that Chess players, as a body, belong to the middle and upper classes; and there must be few among them to whom such a small subscription as that charged for this journal can be any object whatever…. We are amongst those who would be glad to see the ancient game burst through the barriers of social rank and gladden every walk of life, so that the handicraftsman and the labourer, after the day’s toil, might find pleasure in a recreation which would give them no headache next day, and would leave their pockets in a satisfactory condition…. Still it is a fact, and this more concerns our present object, that Chess, as a game, is becoming extensively practised, and is making gigantic strides in the public esteem; so much so, that it has upon more than one notable occasion of late aroused the general attention of society, and compelled the not very willingly accorded ministrations of the daily press. It is a curious concomitant circumstance, and

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914 one not necessarily to have been expected, that the level of Chess strength has correspondingly risen…. It is comical to watch a Chess playing Rip Van Winkle struggling in the grasp of some stripling, innocent altogether of facial vegetables. Amusing, but painful, is the contrast presented by the aimless wanderings, feeble little dodges, and blind gropings of the one, in comparison with the scientific precision, ingeniously conceived combinations, and clear-eyed foresight of the other. No fact is more obvious to the observing mind, than that we of this generation shall find ourselves sorely tried ere long by the young knights who are now putting on their armour.

The very first contribution published by Potter was the first part of a series “Analytical Excursions” by Zukertort, dealing with the Giuoco Piano at a fairly elementary level. This series kept popping up through the year, sometimes postponed by the pressure of space. Problems followed, and then some games. As with all magazines discussed in this chapter, game scores were of course presented in the English descriptive notation, with the moves tabulated and annotations appended as footnotes. The abbreviations † for check, – for “to” and x for captures were unknown in those days and Kt (not N) was employed for knight. Thus instead of PxR they would write “P takes R” and instead of Q–B5† the fashion was “Q to B5 ch.” The use of punctuation annotations such as ! and ? was not employed in The City of London Chess Magazine or other English publications at this period. Likewise, the numeral 1 was not used for the back rank; f1 for example was regarded as the king’s bishop’s square so if the queen went there it would be “Q to B sq” and possible ambiguities could be resolved thus “R from K sq to K7.” Nevertheless, compared with the way games were written in the 18th century (e.g., “the knight of the king to the seventh square of the bishop of the king”) the chess notation of the 1870s was fairly efficient shorthand. Even in the space of a few years, notation had simplified. For example, in 1866 The Chess Player’s Magazine used such forms as “Kt. to K. R.

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sixth (check).” By dispensing with the full stops, using numerals and abbreviating checks, Potter saved a lot of space and effort. The City of London Chess Magazine, during 1874, included games of all kinds: amateur against amateur, amateur against master, exhibition and correspondence and tournament games, and also some classic games. These included a previously unpublished win by Morphy against Boden in 1858. Cochrane, now retired and returned to London from Calcutta, sent in some previously unpublished games he had played against his regular sparring partner, Moheschunder Bannerjee, who was probably the first Indian to master the Western form of chess.

John Cochrane–Moheschunder Bannerjee King’s Indian Defense, Four Pawns Attack (E76) Notes based on those by Steinitz and Potter in the City of London Chess Magazine, vol. 1, pages 39–41. 1.  e4 d6 2.  d4 g6 “The Indian player seems to be thoroughly aware of the strategical principle often ignored by strong players of the present day, that P to K3 cannot with advantage be played in combination with P to K Kt3.” 3. c4 “This move renders the Queen’s Pawn very weak. 3.  c3 is much to be preferred.” Modern theory does not agree with that appraisal. 3. … Bg7 4. Nc3 Nf6 5. f4 0–0 6. Nf3 Bg4 Not the most critical move, yet this position sometimes arises even today. White should break the pin with 7. Be2 after which he is threatening 8. e4–e5. Steinitz and Potter failed to remark on this. 7. Bd3? e5! They did see that this is “A good move, breaking up White’s centre.” 8. f×e5 d×e5 9. d5 N×e4!? “A very bold sacrifice but we question its

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A page of problems from The City of London Chess Magazine, volume II (1875).

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914 soundness.” 10. B×e4 would have given White the better game claimed Steinitz and Potter: 10. … f5 11. h3 f×e4 (11. … Bh5 12. g4 f×e4 13.  N×e4) 12.  h×g4 e×f3 13.  g×f3 Qf6 14. Rh3. To a modern eye, it is not that clear that White is safe here and Cochrane’s choice could be just as good. 10. N×e4 f5 11. Neg5 e4 12. Ne6 e×f3! (see diagram) “Played in fine style; losing the exchange, but obtaining an enduring attack.”

rhw1w4kD 0p0wDwgp wDwDNDpD DwDPDpDw wDPDwDbD DwDBDpDw P)wDwDP) $wGQIwDR

After 12. … e×f3

13. N×d8?! We do not know how Moheschunder intended to continue after 13.  g×f3 Qh4† 14. Ke2 and the magazine’s annotators neglect to mention this possibility. Black obviously has a lot of possibilities for piece or exchange sacrifices. The heavy defensive commitment this would have imposed on White would not have appealed to many 19th century players. Objectively, however, Black’s play may be unsound. 13. … f×g2 14. Rg1 B×d1 15. Ne6 Bg4 16. N×f8 Maybe 16. N×g7 (as Cochrane said later) was better but Black then remains a pawn ahead. 16. … K×f8 17. R×g2 Nd7 18. Bf4 Nc5 19.  Kd2 Rc8 20.  Kc2 Bf3 21.  Rf2 N×d3 22. K×d3 Be4† 23. Ke3 b5 24. c×b5 B×d5 25. Rd2 Bc4 26. Rad1 Bf6 27. Bh6† Kg8 28.  Kf4 Re8 29.  b3 B×b5 30.  Rc1 Be2! Threatening 31. … Re4† followed by 32. … g5. 31. Re1 Re4† 32. Kg3 Bh4† 0–1. “An exceedingly interesting game, and one in which

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great fertility of resource is displayed by the Indian player.” After the games, an item entitled “The Month” dealt with chess news, including the announcement of the establishment of two new metropolitan chess clubs, one of which was the Athenaeum Chess Club which still survives today and is London’s oldest chess club. Coverage of the London–Vienna correspondence match took up nearly the whole of one issue, but regular reports resumed in the summer of 1874. Apart from Blackburne’s visit to Holland, the death of Staunton was reported, news of various American matters was included (including the genealogy of Paul Morphy) and even news from Australia. An inter-colonial match between New South Wales and South Australia was to take place, the third of its kind, and a chess tournament was being held in Adelaide. A fair amount of space in the magazine was devoted to problems, to book reviews and to games played at odds. It was common for masters to concede odds of queen’s knight to amateurs and handicap tournaments were held. In one such case, a Mr. Cohen employed the French Defense against Zukertort who answered (1. e4 e6) 2. f4 d5 3. e5 and won in 29 moves. Potter observed of Black’s first move: This defence is much favoured by receivers of the above odds, and the reason is obvious. Thereby they avoid the dangers of all the gambits and obtain an apparently equal position with a piece ahead, but what is the frequent, if not the usual result? The strong player, pushing all his pawns on the King’s Side, is able to deploy his forces behind them with rapidity and effect, while on the other hand, the weaker player’s advantage on the Queen’s side is slower in developing, and its conduct requires a nicety of calculation such as one who receives the odds of a Knight can scarcely be expected to possess.

This logic is hard to fault and the paragraph shows the clarity typical of Potter’s expositions. A “movement” was “set on foot” to

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raise and present a substantial testimonial to Löwenthal, who had been seriously ill. The initial subscription list included several eminent names from the chess world and public life, including Lord Randolph Churchill (father of Sir Winston). The same issue carried a laudatory three-page obituary of Staunton, which began: The eventful career of the late Howard Staunton has naturally been the chief topic of the past month, and very divergent views have been put forward concerning him. The Westminster Papers, Glasgow Herald, and Liverpool Albion, concur in considering the deceased, in his prime, to have been the finest player of his day. The Figaro places him in the very foremost rank of European players. Land and Water expresses no opinion upon the point; while the Field considers that Buckle was Staunton’s superior. We ourselves usually place our faith in results; they are sometimes fallacious, but explanations of them in a vitiating sense are usually much more so. From 1843 to 1851 Staunton defeated all opponents whom he came in contact with, and during that time he was continually engaged in playing matches; moreover, during the same period, it was claimed for him by his friends, and, as it would appear, was the general opinion, that he was the strongest living player. It was open to any one to question that proposition in a practical manner; some, in fact did, and they were decisively defeated. Appearances, therefore, would seem to indicate that at this time there was no stronger Chess expert than Staunton, if indeed, there were any so strong.

From 1851, Potter admitted, Staunton could no longer be considered pre-eminent. However, he served chess in other ways, not only as organizer of the London 1851 tournament but also as a writer. As an author, Staunton’s influence upon Chess play in this country has been immense, and it is no exaggeration to say that his literary labours are the basis upon which English Chess Society, as at present constituted, stands. Had it not been for the educating influence of his many and important Chess works, the practice of the game would have been far from attaining to the high order of excellence by which it is now characterised amongst English Chess players as a body.

On the contrary, the prevailing type of play here would, in all probability, be miserably unscientific and barbarous.

On the question of Staunton’s character, however, Potter was not afraid to be negative. The deceased often acted, not only with signal lack of generosity, but also with gross unfairness towards those whom he disliked, or from whom he had suffered defeat, or whom he imagined likely to stand between him and the sun. His attacks upon Anderssen, Williams, Harrwitz, Lowenthal and Steinitz must ever be considered as a sad misuse of his vigorous intellect, especially as they were often conducted in a manner not at all consistent with a truthful spirit; nor were his innuendoes concerning Morphy otherwise than an utterly unworthy means of getting out of an engagement, which he could have either declined with a good grace at first, or afterwards have honourably asked to be released from. Nevertheless, all said and done, Staunton was, as we have often heard a distinguished enemy of his say, emphatically a MAN. There was nothing weak about him, and he had a backbone that never curved with fear of any one. Of him may be averred, what was said of the renowned Duke of Bedford by Louis the Eleventh, when the courtiers of the latter were venting their depreciatory scoffs over the tomb of the great Englishman, “There lies one, before whom if he were still alive, the boldest amongst us would tremble.” For the rest we consider that Staunton was beginning of late to change for the better in his pen and ink dealings with others, and might, had life been spared him, have attained to a softened and mellow old age.

The next issue reported on the Chicago Congress, won by Captain George Henry Mackenzie (1837–1891), a Scot by birth, who was a professional soldier in his youth and had immigrated to America to fight on the Union side in the Civil War. Presenting Mackenzie’s win against the tournament runner-up, Hosmer, Potter credited the Hartford Daily Times as the source of the moves. Other items from that journal were often quoted in the magazine. It seems that Mrs. Gilbert of Hartford, Connecticut, was a good source of American chess information for Potter.

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914 The final issue of the first volume (for January 1875) included a lengthy and critical review by the now- retired Löwenthal of George Gossip’s large book The Chess-player’s Manual. That same issue reported that from February 1 the magazine would be enlarged from 24 to 32 pages with the same price as before. Subscribers in the United Kingdom paid 6 shillings (post free), with single numbers sixpence each. The price for the European continent, the colonies and America was seven shillings and sixpence. A cloth-bound volume 1 could be ordered for seven shillings. It appeared at this stage that Potter’s venture was prospering. Then the February 1875 issue, the first of volume 2, included in the news items the following intriguing paragraph. A self-registering Chessboard has long been a want in the chess world, but if the information we have received on very good authority be correct it need be so no longer. We are informed that Dr. G. F. W. Baehr, Professor at the Polytechnic School, Delft, Holland, has, after much trouble, succeeded in inventing a board which registers each move as it is made. Its mechanism is so simple that it is not likely to get out of order even with rough treatment, and the cost price will be low enough to enable all lovers of the game to purchase it…. We shall be glad to hear of the invention having been properly tested by competent judges, and a report made, so that the Chess public may have a guarantee that it will satisfactorily answer the intended purpose…. We think there is nothing like bringing such claims to a practical issue…. That such a Chessboard would be an inestimable boon to matchplayers is clear enough, while even in ordinary games the players would like such an easy method of scoring their moves, so that they might play them over afterwards and see where they had gone astray. Not the least advantage to be derived from the invention, if it answer its purpose, would be the preservation of beautiful and instructive games played by great masters such as are now daily lost for want of being registered.

It would have been a wonderful invention, had it really been so easy as it sounded, but the technology of 1875 could not have been up to such a task. It is hard to imagine

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that any real useful “self-registering board” was possible before the invention of the computer and modern sensory board! Later in the year, the magazine published a letter from two Dutchmen who had been called upon to give an independent report. It seems that the pieces had to be placed in holes in the center of each square, making a mark on a piece of paper, the same size as the board, to be placed between board and table. Then a knob at the side of the board had to be turned before a move for the opponent could be registered. At any time after the game, the marks on the paper could be transcribed to create a game score in the usual notation. The verdict seems to have been that the invention was ingenious and did work, but was perhaps not very practical, especially for match games played with clocks. A few issues later, a second and lengthy appreciation of Staunton’s career was contributed by Von der Lasa, editor of the Handbuch des Schachspiels, who stressed Staunton’s health problems in the early 1850s at the time they met for some friendly games. It is noteworthy that neither Potter nor Von der Lasa make any reference to Paul Morphy, which may surprise those who were brought up on the view that Staunton ducked a match with the young American genius in 1858. On the contrary, it is clear from their accounts that such a match was never a serious possibility, given the state of Staunton’s health and the literary work he was engaged upon in the late 1850s. The second issue of volume 2, from pages 42–44, reported the death of Cecil de Vere, who died of tuberculosis in his 30th year, alcohol probably being a contributory factor to his early demise. Potter called this “a serious loss to the English chess world,” saying De Vere was one of the players who “have raised so high the reputation of this country, being as they were the exponents of a school of Chess, which, as we believe, for soundness, depth, accuracy of calculation, and breadth of grasp cannot be matched anywhere, Germany

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certainly not excepted.” De Vere had won the first official British Chess Championship at the age of 21 and had performed creditably in the Paris 1867 and Baden-Baden 1870 international tournaments. “In playing he was patient and considerate to his opponents, and was one who would have scorned to play any trick or take any mean advantage of them.” As chess correspondent of The Field, he proved less successful, as noted in Chapter 3. Annotating one of his games, Potter spoke of De Vere’s “usual straightforward style. He always chose the nearest road to the end, and was not one to delight in elaboration where none was required.” The same issue also carried a review of the second edition of Wormald’s Chess Openings, consideration of which is postponed to the chapter on chess books. Several issues of The City of London Chess Magazine carried articles by Potter in his series “A few hints to receivers of odds,” which is of no relevance to players of today but other magazines also sometimes included such articles. Potter occasionally played matches against amateurs conceding odds, usually with success. The news items also, being ephemeral, would probably not be of interest to any general reader nowadays, and yet an historian might find within these pages some snippets of interest. In May 1875 the news section included a somewhat sarcastic observation about the principal French chess magazine of the day. “La Stratégie for April is not very interesting to those who expect to find some account of French Chess doings. We suppose this is because here is nothing going on in France worth recording. Chess, in fact, seems struck with paralysis in the country of Philidor.” That was a bit sarcastic! Later in the year Potter was able to report that the seaside resort of Trouville was popular with French chess players for their summer holidays. Potter also commented on various journals he received, including the Oesterreiches Schachzeitung which he finds (like other unnamed Continental magazines) strangely

lacking in news of events in their own countries. There must be Chess events of interest happening each month in the Empire of Austria such as one would suppose both home and foreign readers would like to hear about, but they go unrecorded. It seems to occur to none of them that the daily life of Chess requires the stimulus and encouragement of a public recognition.

It seems that these publications concentrated on problems and master games, neglecting the amateur sphere that Potter was serving so well in Britain. The corollary of this was that the City of London Chess Magazine frequently gave space to games of low quality, although they contained episodes instructive to the weaker player when pointed out by good annotators like Potter himself and Zukertort. However, some sparkling master games and occasional quality amateur games were included too, making a well-balanced magazine. There was also a fair amount of space given to political wranglings within London chess, including disputes over the rules of the City of London Club which was semiassociated with the magazine. Potter himself, unwisely but perhaps inevitably, became dragged into this. A special general meeting of the club was held on November 12, with a large attendance. There were at least three contentious issues, which the present author has dealt with in another book.33 If not for these disputes in the parent club in the second year, The City of London Chess Magazine might have continued to be published for much longer. The same December 1875 issue that carried the announcement of the Potter–Zukertort match (played in November and early December), was also the penultimate number of the magazine. The latter part of the second volume of the magazine gave good space to this match, and rightly so. In view of the preponderance of 1. e4 e5 in the Magazine (still the fashion among most players at this time), it is interesting that both

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914 masters employed closed openings. It carried on its final page the following announcement, which was probably no surprise to most of the readers after the report of the special general meeting of the City of London Club. Potter may also have had other reasons for wishing to step down, but the resignation of several of his friends (including his principal contributor) from the club would have made continuing as editor very difficult. Without directly blaming these difficulties, Potter wrote: We beg to announce that, after the appearance of the January number, which will complete the Second Volume, The City of London Chess Magazine will cease to exist. The reason of its fairly prosperous career being brought to a close is, that it has become impossible for us any longer to spare the time which hitherto we have willingly devoted to the service of Caissa. Our intention to retire upon this account from the Editorship of the Magazine was formed some time ago, and has been known in our own circle. Of course it did not necessarily follow that the publication of the Magazine would be discontinued, for there might, perhaps, have been found some one with sufficient time and inclination to whom we might have resigned our pen. However, the Proprietors, upon our giving them notice of our being obliged to retire from our Editorial position, have not seen their way to continue the publication of the Magazine, and it must therefore be discontinued. The City of London Chess Magazine does not go down under any pecuniary difficulty. Though the result of its two years’ working may or may not show any profit—that appears to be at present uncertain—yet it has paid its expenses, and the small capital which the Proprietors invested therein will be returned to them, without any deduction. Neither have the internal dissensions, which, unhappily, have been fermenting in the Metropolitan Chess world, been the cause of dissolution; though how they might have affected the prosperity of the Magazine, if it had continued to appear, would have remained to be seen. We think it very likely, however, that they would have caused us to consider the advisability of our present step, apart from the primary necessity imposed upon us by our own private concerns; and certainly the fact of such dissensions prevailing, and of our having become, unfortunately, personally involved in them, cannot

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be said to have been without some effect in clearing away any lingering hesitation as to whether or not we could not have managed, though it would have been at a great sacrifice, to remain at our post. With respect to the Problem Prizes offered by us, we shall take means to have the decision of the judges announced in the various Metropolitan Chess columns, after which they will be duly given as awarded. We have nothing more to say at present, but next month we shall very likely have a few words to add by way of farewell to our readers. We have always looked upon them as our friends, as likewise masters, whom we were proud to serve. We shall part from them with regret, and there will be for some time a vacuum in our thoughts which it will be difficult to fill; but as it is, so it is, and next month we write—FINIS.

The final issue began with the result of the Zukertort–Potter match, and then went on to other news, of London chess clubs in particular. Also mentioned was that Skipworth was standing down as editor of the Chronicle and his successor was to be Jenkin, as narrated in the next chapter. Potter did indeed post a short closing message at the end of this issue, but his real farewell was the foregoing announcement. This issue also discussed at some length on page 357, as follows: Very sad news comes from America—viz. that Morphy has become insane, and is confined in a lunatic asylum. This intelligence does not surprise ourselves at all, for about two years since a Chess-player well known in this country, who was then lately from the States, gave us an account of a visit he paid to the great American in New Orleans. According to our informant Morphy presented the appearance of a man out of his mind, and his mother, who was present at the interview, trembled at hearing the visitor attempt to engage her son in conversation, for the game was never allowed to be mentioned in Morphy’s presence, nor was there a Chess-board kept in the house, and, in fact, he had not played a game for years….34

Potter went on to reject the suggestion that blindfold play might have been the cause of Morphy’s illness.

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Chess, of course, may have been the cause of Morphy’s mental fall; he may have loved it not wisely but too well…. However, the disaster which has overtaken him may be accounted for in another way. Success came to him too early and was too complete. So far as Chess was concerned he had conquered the world, and henceforth he had no motive in life.

In terms of balance and quality of information and games, The City of London Chess Magazine could be seen as a model for chess magazines to come, and indeed it is likely that it was regarded as such by the proprietors of The Chess-Monthly a few years later. Potter himself was to show his journalistic skill again when he took over the column in Land and Water a few months after the magazine closed. Yet this was not the final word on The City of London Chess Magazine. Some people wanted to continue it into a third volume, maybe even Steinitz, but eventually Wisker got the chance. However he only managed to produce one issue, for March 1876, which is quite rare. This was probably a financial risk, although he too was a strong player who, only a few years previously, had won the Gold Cup of the British Chess Association by his tournament victories in 1870 and 1872. He had also run a more than competent column in The Sportsman for over a year, in addition to taking over that of Land and Water from Löwenthal. The problem was that his health was breaking and in early April he had to withdraw from all chess activities, soon sailing for Australia, where he died some years later. There is little to be said about the one issue he produced; it had some coverage of the onesided Blackburne–Steinitz match, played in February, but it was clear that Wisker lacked the energy to annotate the games thoroughly as he might have done a few years earlier. The upshot was that two magazines failed in the same month (both the City of London and the Chronicle), leaving historians with a serious paucity of sources for the rest of 1876.

Other English Magazines of the 1870s Two minor English magazines that appeared during the lifetime of the Westminster Papers must also be mentioned. The first of these to appear was the Amateur Chess Magazine: A Monthly Miscellany of General Literature, which began in June 1872, published in London. Its editor at first employed an unusual notation using the letter T (for tower) instead of the customary R for rook, and S (for German Springer) instead of Kt for knight. The first numbers included articles by a Dr. James Kendrick about early chess pieces discovered by archaeologists. Correspondence tournaments were organized for both chess and checkers. In all, three volumes of the Amateur were published between June 1872 and June 1874, after which it ended without warning. There had been a significant change with the ninth issue, in May 1873, when it was retitled The Amateur: A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Miscellaneous Amusements. This carried an explanation “to our readers” explaining that “we have received several hints, that our Miscellany had ceased to be entirely devoted to Chess, and therefore could scarcely be still termed an Amateur Chess Magazine.” The checkers contributor was named as F. Bownas. The original monthly publication schedule was reduced to quarterly shortly before the end. Several issues included lists of subscribers who were called “members” and some of the names may seem quite significant to historians of chess. Among the early members were Charles Benbow of Birmingham (who later became a chess editor in New Zealand), Francis Charles Collins (noted in the problem world and later chess editor of Brief), C. J. Lambert (a prominent player from Exeter for several decades), Thomas Long of Dublin (a chess author), Major C. Minchin of Penzance

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914 (brother of J. I. Minchin of the St. George’s Club), William Nash of St. Neot’s (later an important organizer of postal tournaments), Mary Rudge of Leominster, and some others whose names crop up in other contexts over the next ten or twenty years. What they thought of the magazine is unknown but the Westminster Papers remarked that the second number “has disappointed the very moderate expectations engendered by the first.”35 Something more should be said about the man behind this magazine, James Thomas Chipperfield Chatto (1854–1907). Although prolific, he can probably be reckoned as consistently the least successful of Victorian chess editors and postal tournament organizers. Chatto began his journalistic career as a young adult when at some point in 1872 he was the chess editor of Puzzler’s Manual which only lasted one issue. He began the Amateur Chess Magazine in June the same year and ended it shortly before going to university two years later. Some details of James Chatto’s family can be gleaned from the 1861 census, when he was said to be six years old. His father Robert, a London curate, was then 55 and the household included a half-sister Elizabeth Chatto, a 21-year-old teacher. James’s mother, 26year-old Catharine Chatto, was (unusually for a middle-class married woman of that time) in employment; she was said to be an accountant in the Gray’s Inn Road, near their St. Pancras home. Possibly her husband was in poor health and the household needed her income. In 1867, Chatto’s father died. With this background it is perhaps unsurprising that he had to amuse himself for many hours and became interested in chess and other games. Family circumstances may also have had something to do with Chatto’s delay in going up to Cambridge University as a student. He matriculated in the Michaelmas Term of 1874 when he was already 20 years old, which would have been about two years older than most freshmen.36 However, he was ordained deacon

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in 1875, three years before he graduated with a B.A. degree—a reversal of the normal sequence. So he may have begun theological college in London before going to Cambridge. While at Cambridge he played against Oxford in three university matches (1876 to 1878), being Cambridge captain on the last occasion. Chatto was ordained a priest of the Church of England in 1879 and then went to north-east Yorkshire where at first he was curate of East Coatham, near Redcar, and assistant master of Coatham High School, up to 1881. Then he became vicar of a Dorset parish and various other clerical positions in different parts of England followed, culminating in his becoming rector of Blunsdon, Wiltshire, in the diocese of Bristol, in 1900. Other minor columns followed, with associated postal tournaments. In 1874, while still a Cambridge undergraduate, he started a correspondence tournament in Lads of the Village.37 In 1875 the City of London Chess Magazine referred to Chatto as “an old worker in Caïssa’s orchard,” the editor (Potter) probably being unaware that Chatto was barely 21 years old. The London and Brighton Magazine (a sixpenny monthly) was to start a chess column in 1876, with a 64 player postal tournament, but that was cancelled when the magazine closed.38 There were just three chess articles. Chatto entered the first Bow Bells tournament in 1874, as did several others who later played in the Postcard Match against the United States, but lost his first round game on time. He was nevertheless a strong player and won the only game that has survived of his four against America.39 While a curate at Redcar, he began a column and postal tournament in the Royal Exchange and Weekly Journal of Social Topics, an upmarket buy-and-sell and what’s-on magazine. This was possibly part of a late attempt to attract new readership or reposition the journal in the market. Chatto soon relinquished that column to another editor, Palmer.40 In the 1880s he tried his hand at chess editing

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again, with a revived column briefly in the Figaro from 2 July to 15 October 1887. Next Chatto ran the column in the Norwich Mercury from 15 February 1888 to the end of 1889, during which time he managed to complete two tournaments. The first had eight players but the second had only four entrants, two of whom withdrew. His last column was probably in the West London Advertiser from 24 February 1894 to 25 January 1896. While it is easy to make fun of the Rev. James Chatto, Philip Sergeant, who met him on several occasions, had a good word to say of him: [He was] a most versatile person. He had studied medicine and law, as well as theology and chess. At chess, for which he used to visit my father occasionally till early morning hours, he was a player of the old school, and abnormally slow. At the same time he was a great enthusiast, and worked hard for the game in Hammersmith and Kensington.41

The Recreationist only requires a brief mention, but since the entries for it in both Whyld’s Chess Columns and Betts’s bibliography are somewhat misleading, more details are given here. Firstly, it needs to be said that this was primarily a checkers magazine and has very little interest for chess historians. There were also puzzle pages. In its second volume there was no chess at all. This author read The Recreationist in the Royal Dutch Library many years ago. Their copy has a bookplate from the Brooklyn Public Library, the volume having been presented to them by W. T. Call (author of the Literature of Checkers bibliography). Meindert Niemeijer seems to have acquired it somehow, as it is in the 1955 printed catalogue of the Dutch collection. The only public library in the U.K. to hold The Recreationist is probably the Mitchell Library in Glasgow, as part of the extensive Hillhouse Collection of checkers literature. The Recreationist is also listed in the Cleveland (Ohio) public library catalogue as part of the John G. White Collection but it is unknown whether their holdings are complete.

The February 1873 number of The Huddersfield College Magazine carried a review: We have received the first number of a new publication, entitled The Recreationist, which “is intended to be a magazine of general sports and pastimes, and a medium of communication between admirers of the scientific games of Chess and Draughts.” We can speak favourably of the Chess department, which contains a couple of correspondence games, now becoming so popular, but for which we confess we have not much liking… . The Draught section is remarkably able, and on the whole we think the new venture deserves the support of those who delight in unravelling the tangled skeins which other minds have ingeniously twisted. The magazine will be published monthly, and its price is threepence.

Volume 1, which had 12 issues, ran from January 1873 to January 1874. Whyld lists “B. S. Barrett” as editor but this name is not to be found in this author’s notes. When The Recreationist was started in Southampton, F. J. B. Peters was overall editor, with James White (of Leeds) contributing the chess content (and organizing correspondence tourneys) and J. Hedley, the checkers section. There was no May 1873 issue, publication then being transferred to White in Leeds. The June 1873 number was announced as a “new series,” with the price raised to fourpence. The issue numbering and pagination continued from April. The subtitle was now changed to the more accurate description: A Monthly Magazine of Draughts, Chess and Puzzles. Peters and White were coeditors from June 1873 to the end of volume 1. In November the subtitle was shortened to Draughts, Chess and Puzzles. In volume 2 (which had only ten issues, from February through November 1874), it was a checkers magazine only. White was named as publisher with Hedley as editor and there was no more mention of Peters. Some articles in the second volume, prompted by some comments by Edgar Allan Poe, made comparisons between chess and checkers which were unfavorable to the former.

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Hoffer and Zukertort’s Magazine One of the most important Victorian chess magazines, The Chess-Monthly, ran for a highly respectable 17 volumes beginning in September 1879 until it closed with the August 1896 issue. The editors from the start were the immigrants Hoffer and Zukertort; then it was Hoffer only from Zukertort’s death towards the end of volume 9 in 1888. For the first three years Hoffer could devote most of his energies to the magazine, but from volume 4 onwards he was also conducting the chess column of The Field and must have been very busy. The closure of the Westminster Papers in the summer of 1879 had created a vacuum which the launch of this magazine was designed to fill, but in style and content it followed the pattern of The City of London Chess Magazine with a good balance between news, games, problems and various articles. Moreover, with their extensive Continental contacts, Hoffer and Zukertort were well placed to report on developments throughout the chess world, but the coeditors of The ChessMonthly, even before they started, had two difficulties to contend with: they were both foreigners and professionals. The prospectus they issued in August 1879 already drew some fire from the British amateur brigade, headed by MacDonnell in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News. “Mars” in his Chess Chat on the 16th had said of the editors, rather unfairly: “As for their fitness for such work, I know little or nothing, but the little is not over favourable to them.” It is true that Hoffer, at the start, was not well known outside London and had not yet a track record in chess literature. Principally MacDonnell objected to some of the language in the prospectus (which appears not to have survived) which he considered somewhat supercilious, especially when they

Leopold Hoffer, drawn by Wallis McKay for Chess Life-Pictures.

spoke of the causes of failure of former magazines conducted by amateurs. He pointed out that both the Westminster Papers and the City of London Magazine “enjoyed a good circulation, and brought not a pecuniary loss but a reasonable gain to their respective proprietors.”42 The following week Duffy wrote dismissively in his column of 23 August in the Illustrated London News: We have received a prospectus for a new periodical, entitled the Chess Monthly, the first number of which is announced to be published in September next … at the price of a shilling. Seeing that London has already a Chessplayer’s Chronicle issued monthly at half the cost, there does not appear to be any good reason for attempting to establish another magazine running on precisely the same lines—news, games (original and selected), problems and reviews, etc. It is, however, a matter for the consideration of the promoters of the new adventure whether or not there is a genuine demand for their wares. It concerns the public only, as suggesting the reflection that a great deal of talent must be unnecessarily diffused, which if concentrated might serve to produce a chess journal worthy of the Victorian age.43

In the Introduction to their first issue, Hoffer and Zukertort indirectly replied to

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these comments. They stated that their intention was to produce “a high-class Chess Magazine.” They were “not over-sanguine” in their expectations of making much money from it and “we are actuated not altogether by mercenary motives.” Against the objection that they were not English, they wrote that “We are Chess-players, and the Chess-Monthly shall be the organ of the Chess World, and not of a nationality or clique.” Fortunately for them, the third principal London weekly columnist, Potter, was much fairer and waited until he had the first issue in his hands before giving an opinion. He said that its strength was games annotated “by the most capable of living analysts,” but the magazine was rather lacking in news and “phraseological liveliness.” The editors took note and the news section was soon enlarged. As for the language, Hoffer (like Löwenthal before him) wrote in clear and functional English but dry, without any pretensions to style. As for what Duffy and MacDonnell had said, Potter’s view was:

tially thought it would “prove unsuccessful. The magazine has not got a very cordial reception from its English rivals, and the price will not contribute to increased circulation.”45 Nevertheless, it received enough support to continue, as the editors noted at the start of the August 1880 issue. “Trusting to the kind support of all lovers of an impartial publication devoted entirely to Chess, we pledge ourselves to increased energy, and shall strive to elevate the Chess-Monthly to the highest standard of excellence.” They said they had broken even financially and thanked the players, writers, club secretaries and problem composers who had supported them. The magazine was here to stay. Particularly in the matter of games and international news, the Chronicle could not compete. Its editor, the Rev. Charles Edward Ranken (1828–1905), though well-meaning and a competent amateur player, was a country

While we remain steadily adherent to the opinions we have often enough expressed that the foreign players resident among us can have no claim to be our rulers, though they are welcome to be our guests, we do not share in the apprehensions felt by some that a chess magazine edited in England by foreigners is necessarily a step towards the assertion of an alien predominance.44

Potter also indirectly met Duffy’s suggestion that the Chess Player’s Chronicle was adequately supplying the needs of chess players. He said that the September number of that magazine had plenty of chess intelligence “though in that dry, statistical style which the Chronicle affects. The game department is weak, as it always has been in this periodical. There is not a single original game in the entire number.” This indeed put the finger on the matter. The meat of The Chess-Monthly was to be its reports on major matches and tournaments, and while Zukertort was alive, readers could be assured of high quality analysis. Nonetheless, Dundee master Fraser ini-

Johannes Zukertort, coeditor with Hoffer of The Chess-Monthly. The picture is a sketch entitled “A Chess Apostle” in the Westminster Papers, IX ( June 1876) facing page 25.

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914 gentleman living in a small Worcestershire town, far from the cities where the best chess in the country was being played and without contacts to chess players abroad. A more conscientious editor than Skipworth had been, he would eventually come to recognize that the Chronicle was not good enough for the 1880s and after The Chess-Monthly had survived its first year and was prospering, Ranken was to join forces with those who sought to produce a better English magazine. The British Chess Magazine was launched in January 1881 and yet the Chronicle struggled on in new hands. So from 1881 onwards there were often three chess magazines in England and the rivalry became intense. Moreover they also had in some years some serious American competition, as discussed in the next section. There were no clear winners in the battle for circulation, with probably nobody making any money from their publications, but the chess consumer had a wide choice and perhaps some of the better-off players even subscribed to all of them. Somehow The ChessMonthly did find and for a long time retain a readership, although after Zukertort died in 1888, Hoffer struggled to keep it going; in 1896 he stopped after 17 volumes. The editors, from time to time, showed poor judgment in allowing their magazine to be dragged into controversies, which, especially where Steinitz was concerned, were arguments he could not win. The first “Ink War” as Whyld liked to call it, broke out in the December 1881 number after they printed a six-page letter from Steinitz in which the chess editor of The Field complained about criticisms that had appeared of his annotations to some games from the Blackburne versus Zukertort match earlier that year. The following issue carried no fewer than 14 pages of rather intemperate reply by Hoffer and so it continued. Steinitz’s biographer, Kurt Landsberger, devoted several pages to the bickering that followed.46 Personal attacks between Hoffer and Steinitz became more bitter after the latter re-

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signed from The Field in 1882 and Hoffer took over the column. It is doubtful whether Hoffer had engineered the ousting of Steinitz, but that is what the latter chose to believe. Later, in America, Steinitz used the pages of the International Chess Magazine to attack Hoffer who, especially after Zukertort’s death, was equally culpable. This culminated in the first issue of volume 11 (September 1889) when The Chess-Monthly carried a defamatory poem punning on Steinitz’s name and comparing him to eggs of a louse inhabiting a pig-sty. The poem is included in full in Landsberger’s biography. Readers with access to the Moravian Chess reprint of the magazine’s Volume 11 can compare the original pages 7–9 (at the back of the book) with the replacement pages that Hoffer was obliged to send out for inclusion in bound volumes. One has to wonder whether all the space given to these analytical controversies and, later, personal attacks helped the circulation of the magazines concerned. Did the subscribers look forward to reading the latest twists or take out their chess sets to see whether they agreed with one party or the other in their analytical disagreements about some detail in a game? Or would they rather have read something more useful? Perhaps when the time came to renew a subscription, many switched their allegiance from The ChessMonthly to the British Chess Magazine. Zukertort’s success in the London 1883 international tournament represented the high point for the magazine. However, this meant that increasingly he was in demand abroad and his extensive traveling put a strain on the magazine schedule, and also on Hoffer who sometimes had to apologize for delays in publication. Then after his loss in the world championship match Zukertort’s health broke down. One excellent feature was introduced to the magazine after the death of Zukertort. From the start of volume X onwards each issue began with “Our Portrait Gallery”—a monthly profile of a prominent player or eminent

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amateur with his photograph on the front. These pieces would usually be accompanied by a career summary and a selection of their best games. The first person to be honored in this way was Isidor Gunsberg (1854–1930), in the September 1888 number. The Chess-Monthly finally came to an end in the summer of 1896. Readers of the June number were warned that the next issue would be a double number in August because Hoffer was going to be away for a month. The very last issue was a double number for July and August, reporting on the Nuremberg congress. “It is the second time in seventeen years that the Editor has been compelled to take the liberty of breaking the regular issue of The ChessMonthly.” Nothing was said about closing. Readers were still informed about subscription rates and asked, if in arrears, to send in the money due, but the magazine never appeared again. After that, Hoffer concentrated on newspaper columns, which he accumulated. A curiosity is that Hoffer silently changed the title of the magazine for its last four volumes, dropping the hyphen. From its launch in 1879 it was called The Chess-Monthly (perhaps to distinguish it from the earlier American magazine with which Morphy had been associated) but the hyphen was last used in volume 13, the August 1892 number. From the start of volume 14 (September 1892) the title page and running headers (also on page 32 referring to subscriptions) just said “The Chess Monthly” and so it remained hyphenless to the end. It appears that Hoffer took a definite decision to drop the hyphen but did not draw attention to this by any explicit statement in the magazine.

American Magazines of the 1870s and 1880s This is a good point to have a lengthy digression about the Americans. The English

magazines circulated in North America and to a limited extent the reverse was also the case. The present author having no pretensions to expertise on American chess publications, the following is primarily bibliographical in nature. The first American Chess Magazine, edited by Stanley, and some titles from the 1850s, were already discussed early in this chapter. The Civil War and its aftermath effectively curtailed chess publication in the next decade and it was not until 1870 that the next chess periodical emerged in the United States: The Dubuque Chess Journal, begun by Orestes Augustus Brownson, Jr. (1828–1892). This and associated titles had a complex publishing history which is not well reflected by the summary in Betts, where it falls under the entries #7-14, 7-22, 7-24, and 7-26. On a 2007 visit to the John G. White Collection in Cleveland, Ohio, this author made a careful memorandum of what was found there. This, supplemented by later inspection of some of the volumes at the Royal Dutch Library, is the basis of the following bibliographical analysis. The Dubuque Chess Journal was started by Professor Brownson in 1870 and he stopped it after number 73 in summer 1876. So far all is straightforward. Brownson did not wish to continue as a chess editor, or was unable to do so, and he thought he had sold the rights. The next editor was W. S. Hallock of Hannibal, Missouri, who, not being in Dubuque, changed the title to The American Chess Journal. Hallock numbered his issues consecutively from Brownson, starting with number 74. This publication is #7-22 in Betts. The problem department was by Sam Loyd. The Cleveland library held Hallock’s series in two books, one complete and one not. Initially, Hallock’s first volume was reviewed; it began in June 1876 and ended with March 1877. The curators of the John G. White Collection then found a box marked American Chess Journal 1876–77 which was complete and also in better condition than the other

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914 one. All the Hallock issues are bound in that one book. The last three numbers (comprising his incomplete volume 2) were bimonthly. Hallock’s final issue, for November and December 1877, was very short and announced the sale of the title to Dr. C. C. Moore. This is where things began to get complicated. Hallock did not pay Brownson (or at least that is what Brownson said) so Brownson restarted his magazine as Brownson’s Chess Journal in February 1877, also resuming with number 74, as Betts says on page 36. Here Brownson wrote: FEBRUARY, 1877. No 74. Last April we supposed that the Dubuque Chess Journal establishment was sold, as per announcement on page 246 of the May number, but difficulties having arisen, we are again before the chess public, pledged to work for Caissa, and anxious to regain the CHESS JOURNAL’S former proud position.

The volume continued to December 1877 with 344 pages. On page 14, Brownson observed on the flourishing chess culture in Hartford, the state capital of Connecticut. … eminently the chess city of the United States. The chess column in the Hartford Globe is the most extensive and the most interesting weekly chess paper that we have seen this many a day; for true wit, kindly humor and genial cussedness, the editor is ahead of his comic, good hearted, sarcastic rival. In this city dwells also Mrs. J. W. Gilbert, the best lady chess player living; here, too, Capt. O’Farrell, and a host of other strong chess players congregate, and even the historic Charter Oak has been taken for Belden’s chess pieces. Happy is the travelling chess player that can stop over at Hartford.

It sounds from this that Brownson was not on good terms with John G. Belden, who conducted the column in the rival Hartford Weekly Times. There do seem to have been factions in the city, one loyal to Belden and the other to the Globe editors. Mrs. Ellen Gilbert (née Strong) was becoming famous for her successes at postal chess, while Patrick O’Farrell (formerly of Belfast) was to go on to win the championship of Washington, D.C.,

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in 1901.47 Later, on page 232, the Hartford Globe is quoted as saying that Brownson sold out to Hallock “and the terms were rather mixed and not complied with by either.” Now that Brownson was out again, Hallock had issued a circular accusing him of bad faith and publishing some details. To this, Brownson replied at length saying the Dubuque Chess Journal was sold to Russell and Hallock, “never to Hallock alone.” On page 234 Brownson said: “We may give the JOURNAL away some day, but hope not to be swindled out of it.” He called the rival the Hannibal Journal. Dr. Moore transferred publication to New York with Loyd continuing as problem editor. Because of moving everything to another city, there was a delay and the new series of The American Chess Journal only began in March 1878. Meanwhile, having re-established his rights, Brownson stopped with number 85 (also March 1878). Dr. Moore wrote in his August number on page 128 that the professor’s health would not permit any renewal of the Dubuque Chess Journal yet. Brownson resumed editing only many years later. Moore produced just one volume, which ended in July 1879. In his Valedictory statement, on page 387, he revealingly said “we have never printed less than 300 per month, the largest part of which were subscribed for.” Apparently criticizing Hallock, but maybe referring to an unnamed third party (perhaps the Russell named by Brownson?), Moore went to say: It is unnecessary to allude to the shortcomings of the past management… . Mr. Loyd would never have joined in purchasing the magazine were is [sic] not agreed that he should confine his labours to the problem department; the party who was to to have assumed the editorship was totally unable to meet his obligations, and the burden fell upon Mr. Loyd….

Loyd “determined to get on as best he could.” Then an offer came from Emanuel Barbe in Chicago, whom Moore had known for a long time “as a promising player, a clever

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Orestes Brownson and his wife playing chess, from the Dubuque Chess Journal.

problemist and an able solver.” Believing that Barbe (“an invalid with plenty of leisure and means”) had the leisure and ability to produce a worthy magazine, Moore agreed to hand it over. Barbe did his best to continue The American Chess Journal as a quarterly; his series is Betts #7-26. Perhaps, though, he was more severely disabled than Moore knew when accepting his proposition.48 At Cleveland, the large bound volume titled American Chess Journal March 1878–April 1881 has both the Moore and Barbe series. Betts wrote that Barbe ran “Vol 1–vol 2, no 3 (Oct. 1879–April 1881).” The careful reader will note an anomaly. The number for

October 1880 was headed “vol. 1 no. 5” on the title page, but it should have been the first number of volume 2, as Barbe realized subsequently. So when he produced his next issue in January 1881 he headed it volume 2 number 2 but numbered the pages consecutively from the October issue. The next, for April 1881, is the last issue in the Cleveland book; blank pages follow. Betts is probably right that no more were published. If there had been more issues, we can assume John G. White would have obtained them since he was already active then. After the end of Barbe’s series there were no more Journals for five years.

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914 Then Brownson resumed in April 1886, taking up his old numbering so that the first issue of his new series was number 86. Fraser wrote to James White on 8 July about Brownson: It is amusing by the way to see the reappearance of the Journal after a lapse of 8 years. I had a note recently from him, in which he mentioned that he had been severely hurt by his horse, some years ago, which laid him aside for a long time.

Brownson’s latest version of his magazine, which had ugly large print, was just called Chess Journal. Some of the late issues, which this author has not studied closely, are called Brownson’s Chess Journal. The last to appear was number 160 which was “third series June 1892” although Gaige’s Personalia said Brownson had died on 28 April. Perhaps his widow put together a final issue from his papers or his death had delayed it at the printer. The various American chess journals, whether by Brownson or others, are not of great interest to the British chess historian, but there are nuggets of information and the historian of American chess would do well to work through them. Some other American chess periodicals of the 1870s also should be noted. Betts lists as #7-16 The Chess Record, edited in Philadelphia by Gustavus Reichhelm from 1873 to 30 November 1877, which we have not seen. Then his #7-19 was the Maryland Chess Review, edited from January 1874 to December 1875 by J. K. Hanshew. As chess historians have already discovered, this magazine has considerable interest, both from its organization of the first correspondence tournament on round-robin lines, and for the information it includes on Theophilus Thompson, an early African American chess expert. Next on Betts’s list of American periodicals (item #7-21) is a second American Chess Magazine, launched in April 1875 by the men responsible for the Hartford Globe column, together with contributions by James Mason.

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However it only lasted two issues, in 1875, the first being in April. The City of London Chess Magazine had reported on its first two issues. Potter found the first disappointing, with too much reprinted material, but the second was a great improvement (less so in the problem department). The game annotations by James Mason were especially commended “for he brings not only ability but conscientious hard work to the task.”49 However, the second issue was also the last. The next chess magazine produced in America could have had a big international success if it had been a little less ambitious, and more soundly based financially. Brentano’s Chess Magazine, begun in May 1881, had sprung from a chess column in a general magazine, Brentano’s Monthly. The editor was H. C. Allen, with G. Reichhelm in charge of the games department, J. N. Babson of the problem department, and they also had the services of an artist, G. R. Halm, so that this magazine was better illustrated than the norm for chess periodicals. It was far too lavishly produced. Initially this magazine was on a grand scale never seen before, but the publishers gave too much value for money. There were over 620 pages in the first volume but the second volume of Brentano’s Chess Magazine was much skimpier. The magazine collapsed after the August-September 1882 number, having lasted less than a year and a half. Had Brentano’s continued at the standard set in the first volume, it would hardly have been possible for both the British Chess Magazine and The Chess-Monthly to survive the competition. One or the other would probably have failed. Duffy observed that the magazine was “from the first, well supported in England, but it failed to secure the subscriptions of American amateurs.”50 Potter said in his column that two-thirds of the subscription money for the year would be returned. As that one closed, another American magazine was launched in October 1882: the Brooklyn Chess Chronicle (#7-29 in Betts),

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edited by the Munoz brothers. It was a decent magazine and ran for five years but would not have been a threat to the British magazines on their home territory since its European games and news were mostly borrowed from their pages. Also of largely American interest were the American Chess Review (seven issues in 1886–1887), the Columbia Chess Chronicle (1887–1890, the organ of the Columbia Chess Club in New York), and further magazines from the 1890s onwards (not considered here). The most important chess magazine to be published in the 1880s and early 1890s was American, not British, and so any detailed consideration falls outside the scope of this book. To omit any mention of it, though, would be seriously misleading. Steinitz, having definitively immigrated to the United States in 1883, launched The International Chess Magazine in 1885 and with his authority as world champion (from 1886) it commanded worldwide attention. The seven volumes he edited and published in New York between 1885 and 1891 are still worthy of close attention today. Steinitz combined objective coverage of major chess events, including of course his own matches, with personal reflections of a highly subjective nature that included many attacks on Hoffer, as already noted. He received regular reports from London, supplied mostly by his loyal ally James G. Cunningham (1838–1905), but these reported events were covered already in the British press, so it is hard to know how many British players would have subscribed to this magazine. The same was probably true of Lasker’s Chess Magazine, edited in New York by Dr. Emanuel Lasker, the second world champion. It went through nine volumes, running from November 1904 to January 1909. Lasker had to compete with the American Chess Bulletin which began its 60-volume run in June 1904 but which would have had less interest for Europeans.

Early Years of the British Chess Magazine The origins and early history of the world’s oldest surviving chess periodical, British Chess Magazine, was researched and written up for its centenary by Alfred (Freddy) Reilly, who was the son of the then editor Brian Reilly, and was business manager and typesetter of the magazine. Freddy Reilly died suddenly in June 1980 but the article he had prepared, “Our First Hundred Years, 1881– 1980,” was published in the December 1980 issue which completed the 100th volume. In Chapter 3 it was shown that the history of B.C.M., as it is universally known, can be traced back to the chess column in the Huddersfield College Magazine. As the foreignedited Chess-Monthly was nearing the end of its first volume in the summer 1880, moves were afoot behind the scenes, especially among amateurs in the north of England, to challenge it with a home-grown periodical that would have wider appeal than the Chess Player’s Chronicle. Ranken was now well into his fourth year of editing that journal and was perhaps looking for an exit strategy; his final words to the Chronicle readers will be quoted in their proper place in the next chapter. Meanwhile Watkinson definitely wanted to satisfy broader ambitions. Waiting until January 1881, when the staff and contributors of the Chronicle could feel released from their obligations to that title, was a good policy. A new start, combining the best of both publications and drawing on the subscription base of both, must have seemed attractive, especially if the main contributors to both would agree to join forces. The title eventually settled upon, namely British Chess Magazine, had three advantages: it was new, it was national, and it subtly hinted at its difference from The Chess-Monthly. In his valedictory article in the Huddersfield, Watkinson had written:

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914 In glancing through our Chess columns we cannot but feel proud at the array of brilliant names who have given us of their best in all branches of the royal game. Standing outside of the cliques into which a portion of the Chess world is unhappily divided, we have been able to secure contributions from all quarters of the horizon. The experiement has been tried—and we hope not without success—of attaining a certain amount of liveliness and entertainment without having recourse to personalities or attacks on private character.

The same article had announced that the new magazine would have “the valuable cooperation” of Ranken, Wayte, and Andrews. These three were all key members of the Chronicle team in 1880: Ranken and Wayte for annotating games and sharing the editorial work, while Andrews was one of the leading experts on chess problems in Britain. The title page of the first volume of B.C.M. also names G. B. Fraser, Thomas Long, J. H. Finlinson, W. T. Pierce, A. E. Studd, and W. R. Bland as people who cooperated in the work. Of these, Fraser in particular had long been a contributor of analytical pieces to the Chronicle but initially he had not been impressed by the B.C.M. Fraser, who was a wine merchant and so accustomed to the bureaucracy involved in international shipments, was a purchasing agent for the Cleveland, Ohio, lawyer and book collector John G. White. They had a revealing correspondence lasting decades. White’s letters to Fraser are unknown, but the Scotsman’s communications are preserved in Cleveland and have been microfilmed. In a letter to White on 5 January 1881, he said that “Watkinson’s magazine came out punctually on 1st, but it does not look quite so good as I expected.” Later, writing on 31 December he told White that: “The Chess Player’s Chronicle is a rather lively Journal, much more so than the British Chess Magazine. They would require to have the editors ‘mixed up’ in order to improve both.” He added, presciently, that Brentano was “well got up but probably won’t pay and will be discontinued.”

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A short introductory article in the initial issue of B.C.M. said that the magazine would aim at variety and should not be judged on the contents of a single issue. Also “we are not all sanguine of achieving anything very large in the way of circulation.” Ranken’s experience as an editor “has taught us that the majority of players are quite content with a glance at a Chess periodical at the club room, and never dream of investing a few shillings in it themselves.” They announced at the start that the aim was to break even and one major concern was the size of the magazine: too many pages and the printer’s bills would be back-breaking, but too few would mean dissatisfied subscribers and insufficient space for all the matter that the editor and his team wanted to include. At first they said they expected to average 28 pages per issue but might sometimes have four pages more or four fewer. The first two issues each had 32 pages. The February number included on page 36 a letter from Long, proposing what he called a “sustentation fund” but which came to be known as the B.C.M. “enlargement fund.” The idea was that subscribers who could afford a little extra would donate extra money to help pay for additional pages beyond the 28 pages which the editors could draw on when they had long articles to include. Long started the ball rolling by subscribing one guinea (which he soon increased), and in the March issue Ranken made it clear that donations would be used solely to pay for extra pages and not to defray losses. Thanks to money that already had come in, they were able to have 40 pages in both the March and April numbers; the latter on page 133 listed 11 donations so far received, totaling £10 13s. 6d. By the end of the year the fund had raised £16 6s., and the complete 1881 volume had 400 pages, an average of just over 33 pages per issue. The first two or three years must definitely have been a struggle for survival, eased somewhat when Brentano’s failed and the

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Chronicle also suspended publication for the early months of 1883. B.C.M. survived because its writers and editors did not expect payment, and so it was able to subsist where others failed. A low point was reached around May 1882 when, as Reilly noted in his article, “We say now very decidedly that unless things alter, the present year will, so far as we are concerned, see the last of the British Chess Magazine.” In October (page 333) readers were informed that, including the fund, they had only enough money for 40 pages to complete the volume, so instead of issuing two numbers of only 20 pages each they had decided to issue a single 40-page number about 15 November, and then bring out the January 1883 number for Christmas. The editor and his co-operators called on readers to help extend the circulation. The final issue of volume two in fact only had 36 pages plus separate November and December title pages to conclude the “almanac” that had been running all year. On page 379, the editor announced that “although we have been requested by several subscribers to raise the price of the magazine,” they wished to keep it at 6 shillings per year as a minimum, “leaving it open to those who can afford to add what they think proper for our enlargement fund.” The January 1883 issue, of 40 pages, announced that Edward Freeborough (1830– 1896), whose column in the Hull Packet had come to an end, had now joined the B.C.M. staff. At the end of the year it could be seen that 12 distinct issues had been produced with a total of 432 pages, of which 40 pages had been paid for out of the Enlargement Fund. There had been an average of 36 pages each month, and Ranken was able to report that “the circulation of the magazine has steadily increased during the year and was never so large as it is at present.” In January 1884 the first photographic plate went out with the first issue of the fourth volume, at considerable expense as Reilly notes, but in subsequent years the magazine continued to grow.

B.C.M. was faced with a new crisis towards the end of 1886, which was only resolved the following year. Reilly’s centenary article gives only a bare hint of what happened. There was talk of a rival being launched. The International Chess Magazine for December 1886 (page 365) had information, though Steinitz probably received and published the news with some time lag. He reported: A new monthly Chess magazine, under the title The Yorkshire Chess Magazine, is projected if a sufficient number of subscribers can be found. The subscription price five shillings per annum, and applications should be directed to either Mr. James Rayner, Secretary of the Yorkshire County Chess Club, or Mr. Brown, Secretary of the Leeds Chess Club.

This would have undercut B.C.M.’s subscription price by a shilling. Since Watkinson was himself a Yorkshireman, this insurrection on his home territory certainly suggests some growing dissatisfaction with the way he was doing things, though grievances were not aired in public, so it is hard to know what exactly was the issue, except probably that chess in Yorkshire and Lancashire was not receiving sufficient coverage. Also there was a “generation gap”; the new men who would come were all born between 1856 and 1859, and so were more than twenty years younger than the founding generation. On 4 February 1887, Fraser wrote to White mentioning a prospectus for the Northern Chess Magazine and said he had put him down for a subscription, and in a letter of 21 February Fraser says the literary editor of the Northern Chess Magazine may have a portrait of Egerton Smith. Since Smith (the first chess columnist) was a Liverpudlian, this is a strong clue that the unnamed editor was also from that city, and so most likely Robert Frederick Green (1856–1925).51 The last heard of the rival publication was on a postcard of early April to White, where Fraser wrote: “the New magazine has been absorbed by the B. C.

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914 Magazine—all the staff going over to the latter journal.”52 This was confirmed by a circular (reprinted in the delayed April B.C.M. on pages 158–159) sent out by the promoters of the proposed Northern Chess Magazine to their supporters. There had been negotiations behind the scenes, facilitated circumstantially by the sudden death of Andrews on 26 February. Watkinson said that the proposal to amalgamate was made by the B.C.M. staff. The resulting vacancy in the problem department was accepted by James Rayner (1859–1898), and (though this is not stated in April) most likely a promise of the succession was made to Green. Finally in November (on page 436) Watkinson announced his retirement “owing to the increasing pressure of other engagements.” Green would take over as editor while orders for the magazine in 1888 were to be sent to I. M. Brown, who in turn became Green’s successor after a few years. The title page of volume 7 (which would, per normal practice, have been issued at the end of 1887) bears the names of Brown and Green along with Rayner and the old team. Rather surprisingly, Chatto had also been planning to launch a new monthly chess magazine in September, as announced in the Illustrated London News on 18 June. The subscription price was to be 5s. per annum and, according to the Dublin Evening Mail of 23 June, the intended title was Caïssa. That was a different project and did not materialize. Back at B.C.M., the changing of the guard commenced as the end of volume 7 approached. Green had some editorial experience from conducting the column in the Liverpool Weekly Courier since November 1885 and he continued it until January 1889. Meanwhile Long and Studd, in brief letters published in December, announced their retirement from the magazine. In the December 1887 number, Watkinson signed off, thanking his “co-operators who have laboured so un-

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selfishly for the Magazine during so many years.” Bland wrote to express his regret that Watkinson was retiring. Green began his tenure in 1888 by thanking Watkinson and announcing the “permanent enlargement” of the magazine in a bumper issue running to 76 pages. This was by no means typical, of course; presumably he wanted to make an immediate impression. He asked every reader to try and enlist one new subscriber. February’s number had 52 pages but later issues were more normal in size and at the end of the year volume 8 weighed in at 492 pages, an average size of 41 pages per issue. Freeborough, Ranken and Wayte continued to contribute, although the former two were probably now also working on the first edition of their openings book which was first published in 1889. In 1889 J. H. Blake joined the editorial team and he would continue to annotate games for several decades. Reilly’s article noted that in 1892 some modernization was evident in the presentation of game scores. The former somewhat verbose notation was compressed, so that “P tks P” became “PxP” and “P to K Kt4” was now “P–KKt4.” A real revolution was that annotations to moves began to appear within the score instead of at the end where hitherto they always languished in all chess books and columns, with miserable indications (sometimes omitted or misplaced) to show where they belonged. In 1891 the annual subscription rose for the first time, to six shillings, and in 1898 it went up again to eight shillings, but readers were not getting substantially larger magazines than in the early 1880s. Then in 1893 Green gave up the editorial chair, after just five volumes, and control passed back to Yorkshire with Brown’s assumption of the editorial chair he was to continue occupying until after the end of the First World War, although he would probably have gladly given it up sooner. Rayner died in 1898, having handed over the problem department to the able B. G. Laws

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who continued in that role until well into the postwar era. The great London international congress in 1899 was the last tournament in which Steinitz and Henry Bird competed, and it was also the last time that many famous masters were seen in England. As such, it forms a watershed. No master tournament of any significance was held thereafter in the United Kingdom until 1919, and really there was no tournament in Britain of comparable strength until the 1930s. British chess, and the magazines that served it, became increasingly parochial. It took the arrival of B. H. Wood’s Chess magazine in 1935 to shake things up with a really 20th century style but that is beyond the scope of this volume to consider in any detail. To summarize, Brown retired as editor in 1920, and was succeeded by Richard Clewin Griffith (1872–1955), coeditor of Modern Chess Openings. In 1937 B.C.M. became a limited company. Harry Golombek was appointed in 1938 but eventually he was called up for war service. The September 1940 B.C.M. editorial

is somewhat amusing to read. It said Golombek resigned the editorship to join the Royal Artillery when he was actually posted to do secret work in Bletchley Park alongside Alexander, P. S. Milner-Barry and other chess masters and experts. At least once during the war when he had leave to play in a chess match, he turned up in an army officer’s uniform. One almost suspects it was the only time he wore it. As announced in October, B.C.M. briefly recalled Griffith as acting editor, but the December number said that Du Mont was now general editor from that issue, which also mentions the loss of records due to bombing. Du Mont was to continue until 1949 but was no businessman and debts accumulated; he had disagreements with the board and decided to quit. Brian Reilly was invited to replace him and having edited the magazine as an employee for a few months, in 1950 Reilly bought the magazine.53 He remained editor until his retirement at the end of August 1981 after ownership was taken over by the British Chess Federation and he was succeeded by Bernard Cafferty (who joined as deputy editor in January 1981) for about ten years. It is probably fair to say that B.C.M. remained rather staid and strait-laced by comparison with Chess until the editorial reign of Cafferty began. Ownership changed again when grandmaster Murray Chandler bought B.C.M. and moved it to London, and there have been several changes since then.

Other Late Victorian Magazines

Isaac McIntyre Brown, editor of British Chess Magazine from 1893 to 1920.

Some magazines were primarily produced to serve local chess communities. The Blackfriars Chess Journal, was a curiosity published between 23 February and 26 July 1884, and is very rare because of its unfortunate history. It is unclear why Whyld included

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914 this publication in his Chess Columns bibliography since this was a magazine not a column. Moreover he misprinted the date as 1936 perhaps because that was the publication year of his source, P. H. Bannock’s History of the Norfolk and Norwich Chess Club. On page 20, Bannock named F. & J. Howitt as editors, and wrote of this journal: There were twelve fortnightly numbers, the editors then being boys in the school in St. George’s, Norwich. The journals were lithographed by Messrs. Fletcher & Sons, where the boys’ father was an artist. A complete set is in the Norwich Public Library; Mr. John Keeble owns a single copy, and another single copy is in the Cleveland (U.S.A.) library in the John G. White collection. These are the only copies known to exist. F. Howitt’s own set was destroyed by his mother during a spring-clean.

The issue held in Cleveland was number 7 for 17 May 1884 and the British Library has a copy of number 8 (shelfmark P.P.1831.add), dated 31 May, which was perhaps the copy Keeble used to own. The old Norwich Public Library had been replaced in 1963 by a new Central Library in 1963 but on 1 August 1994 it was destroyed by a fire and thousands of historic documents were lost, including records of the school and the only known complete set of the Blackfriars Chess Journal. Whyld’s book said a set is held at the school but this is doubtful; there does not appear to be a secondary school of that name (St. George’s) in the city today. It is not known if a full set now exists anywhere. Probably the most important series of local magazines were produced in Sussex, which was the first region of southern England to establish a county chess association (on 21 October 1882). They arranged for local events to receive thorough coverage in the press, which was sometimes done by means of a magazine and sometimes through the medium of chess columns. The Sussex Chess Magazine (item #7-30 in Betts) was edited by Walter Mead in Brighton. The first issue expressed regret at the ending of Butler’s col-

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umn in the Brighton Guardian (begun in 1881). It included an advertisement for Butler’s window ticket-show card business; he was a commercial artist, calligrapher and business printer. It seems he was too busy to do any more literary work for a time, but he brought the correspondence and problem tourneys of the Guardian to a close and also (according to the magazine’s second issue) Butler took over running the postal tourney that Thursby began in the Burnley Express. There were 13 issues between 22 November 1882 and 9 May 1883. While the content was mostly local, there were also chess short stories: How Frank Won his Wife by J. Russell (of Glasgow) and My Game with Stranger by James Pierce. This magazine is not available in any of the research libraries indexed by the COPAC union catalog, but is held at the Royal Dutch Library and in Cleveland, also probably (as a photocopy perhaps) in a Sussex archive. Mead stopped editing the magazine when he obtained a weekly column in the Southern Weekly News, which ran from 19 May 1883 to 21 December 1889 and provided excellent coverage of south-east English chess news. Just before Mead’s column ended, the Sussex Chess Journal was launched. This and its successor title, The Southern Counties Chess Journal, both published in Brighton, are treated as one magazine by both Betts (item #7-39) and Di Felice. Probably only Cleveland has a complete set of the original issues but it has been microfilmed, with the two titles on separate reels. The Royal Dutch Library has some issues from volumes 2 and 3 of the first series and only a few issues from volume 7 in the second series. The Sussex Chess Journal was produced in four volumes and 48 numbers from November 1889 until December 1892. Volume 1 had no page numbers. It was fortnightly for a while; then monthly in volumes 2–4. The first Cleveland microfilm actually starts with the Programme of the Sixth Annual Sussex

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A two-page spread from the Sussex Chess Magazine showing local news and advertisements, including one for H. W. Butler’s business.

Chess Association Congress, held 5–6 May 1893. Next comes the first issue of the Journal whose original title was Sussex Chess Association Official Monthly Report and Programme, volume 1, no. 1 (November 1889), and dealt with the launch of the new headquarters of the association. The second issue adopted the title Sussex Chess Journal. The fifth issue (3 February 1890) named Butler and F. Monk as the editors. Volume 2, which started at No. 23 (3 November 1890) adopted page numbers and monthly publication. The subscription price was 1s. 6d. per annum post free. This is an important volume which historians of the period should try to see. As before, both over-theboard and postal chess events were reported,

Sussex players being very active in both departments as well as ahead of most other regions of England in the promotion of women’s chess. Issue 28 for April 1890 reported on page 48 that as a “momento” [sic] of Mrs. Arthur Smith’s achievement in winning both Handicaps restricted to lady players, “she has been presented by [sic] a beautifully hand painted plaque by Mrs. W. J. Baird, who, it would appear, is as clever at this interesting art as she is at composing chess problems.” The Baird family was now living in Brighton. Page 98 in the October number 98 listed 25 paid-up women members of the association. In 1892, as issue 37 reported, the first steps were taken to forming the Southern Counties Chess Union. This was at a time

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914 when the second British Chess Association was collapsing and the Sussex president, the Rev. Arthur Mackreth Deane (who used to write to chess editors as “East Marden”), had long ago argued that a national body should be built from the bottom up not the top down.54 Meanwhile, the Counties Chess Association held one of its last congresses in Brighton that August, and it included a strong ladies’ tournament. Issue 32, for August, reported that Butler wanted to resign as county secretary due to work pressure, unless someone would share the work. Eventually he agreed to remain as they found somebody to take over the treasurer’s role. The August issue also reported that Butler got help to continue the journal. There were reports on the Counties Association meeting and progress to form the Southern Counties Chess Union and hold a North versus South match. Number 45 (for September 1892) was the first number of the Sussex Chess Journal under joint proprietorship with the Rev. Edward Ilbert Crosse; the annual subscription price was raised to 2s 6d. This issue noted that Emanuel Lasker had launched the London Chess Fortnightly (see below) which it described as “the Chess Player’s Chronicle in another guise” but commented that Lasker’s price was too high at 6d. a copy for a magazine about four times the size of their own journal. It was compared with the better value British Chess Magazine. The October number reported that the Southern Counties Chess Union was formed at last. After the end of the year the title was changed to Southern Counties Chess Journal to reflect the broadening of scope as this was now to be the organ of the S.C.C.U. The numbering of volumes and issues was continued to reflect the continuity but, Butler having resigned as editor, the magazine was now conducted by the Rev. Crosse and F. W. Womersley (of Hastings) with the cooperation of W. V. Wilson.

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This second series ran from vol. 4, no. 49 ( January 1893) to vol. 7, no. 4 ( January 1896). On the Cleveland microfilm, between numbers 53 (May) and 54 comes the program of the 6th annual Sussex Chess Association congress at the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, 5– 6 May 1893, including a ladies’ handicap tournament. Arthur Smith was to referee the first class tournament. Jasnogrodsky would play a 20-board simultaneous display on the Saturday, followed by six games blindfold. Reports followed in the next issue. Number 56, for August, said the editor “wishes it to be understood that he is not responsible for the reports and comments on the Sussex matches in British Chess Magazine.” Number 61 for January 1894 reported on a recent five-board match between Brighton Chess Club’s men and Sussex Ladies’ Branch. The men won 6–3, only one game being played on the top board. On board 3, Mrs. Zantzig, who lost both her games, was surely the Miss Florence Down whose feats in the days of the Ladies’ College Club in Holborn were reported in the press about 15 years previously. She was probably long out of practice. Later, in a Sussex tournament for women, she finished fourth of ten competitors. Moving on to 1895, numbers 10 and 11 of volume 6 both had a blank second page with the message: “This page to let for advertisements,” which suggests financial problems for the Journal. Number 12 gave notice of a price increase to 3 shillings for next year unless paid in advance. Volume 7, number 3 (in December) warned that due to the poor health of the secretary, Crosse, he was giving up all his engagements to play simuls. The next issue, number 4 for January 1896, was the last. The Journal collapsed and a few months later Crosse died by falling off a cliff at Bournemouth, probably a case of suicide. Hoffer’s obituary mentioned that Crosse had suffered a serious accident in 1894 and lost an eye.55 Two unusual magazines were published in Dublin in the mid–1880s. Manuscript

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magazines were the “desktop publishing” of that decade, utilizing duplicating machines that made copies from wax stencils on which one wrote with a stylus. The result looked unprofessional but one could produce for sale short-circulation documents that were uneconomical to print. The best known system was the cyclostyle, invented by David Gestetner in 1881, while an earlier version was the trypograph introduced in London by Eugenio Zuccato in 1877. Handwriting was necessary because early stencils could not withstand the impact of the heavy keys in early typewriters. By 1887 or 1888 this problem had been solved, leading to stencils that could be typed for use with Edison’s mimeograph and later Gestetner’s automatic duplicator (1891).56 Earlier versions of this technology existed, since the Bristol Draught Player (1872–1874) mixed manuscript and letter-press.57 The St. Patrick’s Chess Club Pamphlet, in 1885, was the first Irish chess magazine and probably the first manuscript magazine dealing with chess. It was reissued as a booklet in 1887 (with some editing) “in compliance with popular demand.”58 Fortunately both are held at Cleveland and they have microfilmed the 1885 original; possibly some other copies survive. The St. Patrick’s Chess Club had been launched to coincide with the formation of the Irish Chess Association and this magazine was its organ. It was produced weekly from No. 1 (23 March 1885) to No. 7–8 (undated but possibly May). The original manuscript was said to have been reproduced by trypograph. The editor was not named but internal evidence suggests that the Rynds, father and son, were possibly responsible. This author was able to see only the reissue but received a report from somebody who was able to compare the two versions after the original was returned to Cleveland following microfilming.59 The original has 92 pages, the reissue only 74, perhaps because the pages are slightly larger. The content is very similar, but some game notes were omitted in the reissue.

Also the original has on pages 7 and 8 information about an Easter meeting in Dublin which is not in the reissue. There was also some topical news on pages 33–34 not reproduced in the reissue. The handwriting in the reissue is said to be clearer to read so it was probably by a different hand. The content is chiefly of interest for Irish historians, but it may be noted that it includes the following game by Steinitz that is not to be found in any collection of his games published up until now. “His youthful opponent is now one of the most promising players of The St. Patrick’s Chess Club.” Morphy (whose original surname was probably Murphy) later opened a Chess Divan in one of Dublin’s principal thoroughfares, Grafton Street, but after a few years it failed and he emigrated, joining Brooklyn Chess Club.

W. Steinitz–J. Morphy Dublin simultaneous, 1881 King’s Gambit (C38) Notes from St. Patrick’s Chess Club Pamphlet 6, pages 50–51. 1. e4 e5 2. f4 e×f4 3. Nf3 g5 4. Bc4 Bg7 5.  0–0 d6 6.  d4 Nc6? 7.  c3 h6 8.  g3 g4 9. B×f4! g×f3 10. Q×f3 Qe7 11. Nd2 Bd7 12.  b4? N×d4! 13.  c×d4 B×d4† 14.  Kh1 B×a1 15. R×a1 0–0–0 16. Rc1 Nf6 17. Be3 Underrating the novice Steinitz found himself smashed up with surprising cleverness. 17. … Ng4? 18. B×a7 Be6? 19. Be2 Ne5 20. Qc3 f6 21. Bb6 Rh7 22. Qa3 c6 23. Qa8† Kd7 24. Q×b7† Ke8 25. Bh5† Bf7 26. Q×e7† K×e7 27. B×d8† K×d8 28. B×f7 R×f7 A faltering came however which reduced Black to a desperate plight. 29. Nc4 Ra7 30. N×e5 f×e5 31.  R×c6 Kd7 32.  Rc2 Ra3 33.  Re2 Ra4 34. Rb2 Kc6 35. Kg2 Kb5 36. Kf3 h5 37.  h3 Ra3† 38.  Kf2 h4! 39.  g×h4 R×h3 40. Kg2 R×h4 41. Kf3 Rf4† 42. Ke3 Rh4 43. Rd2 Rh6 44. Rb2 Rh3† 45. Kd2 Rh2† 46. Kc3 R×b2 47. K×b2 K×b4 48. Kc2 Kc4 49. a3 Black’s cleverness has again given him

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914 a winning advantage. By playing 49. … Kd4 now he could have won. If then 50. a4 Kc4 wins the pawn, and if 50. Kb3 K×e4 and Black can stop and win White’s a-pawn and afterwards Queen his own d-pawn. 49. … Kc5? 50. Kc3 d5 51. e×d5 K×d5 ½–½. The Irish Chess Chronicle, edited and published by Alfred S. Peake, was launched in the early months of 1887. It aimed more ambitiously to be a national chess magazine. The first series, like the St. Patrick’s Pamphlet, was a duplicated manuscript magazine, and may be found in Cleveland or on the microfilm made from their copies. There were seven issues from No. 1 (10 January 1887), no. 2 (1 February), fortnightly (it used the term “bimonthly” incorrectly) to no. 7 (15 April). The Illustrated London News said that it was “interesting but rather difficult reading” and advised them to “get into print as soon as possible.”60 From 1 May to 15 December 1887 it was printed fortnightly in London, in a tiny page format. Both series contain much information on developments in Ireland and the chess world at large. The printed series is available in Cleveland (also on microfilm) and at the Royal Dutch Library (shelfmark KW 350 F56). Chess Review: A Monthly Journal for Chess and Whist was edited by Nicholas Theodore Miniati, the son of Greek-born Salford merchant Theodore Miniatis. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, N. T. Miniati was one of the strongest players in Manchester and had played in the 1889 British Championship run by the B.C.A., scoring a respectable 5½ out of 10 including a win against Mason. Miniati was a member of the local committee that organized the 1890 Manchester Congress and it is a little surprising that he chose not to enter the subsidiary tournament then. He might even have been a candidate for inclusion in the international tournament had it not been so heavily over-subscribed. In the late 1890s Miniati appears to have given up chess but he lived until 1943.61

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Five issues of his Chess Review were published in Manchester, with a hiatus after the first two numbers. They were dated as follows: September 1892, October 1892, then February, March and April 1893. The British Library has only three of these, which misled Sergeant when researching his article on “British Chess Periodicals” for B.C.M. in 1942, where on page 198 he refers to this magazine. He wrote: “There seem to have been only three issues, for the third, that of April, 1893, is marked in the British Museum copy with the words ‘no more received.’ I do not remember that I found anything of interest in it.” He failed to notice it was numbered 5. At least Sergeant did mention this and some other minor magazines, whereas Diggle’s article in 1980 did not mention this or several other lesser titles. In fact there are complete sets in Cleveland and in the Royal Dutch Library and Moravian Chess has made a reprint. Di Felice follows Betts in wrongly stating, “Not published during the months Nov. 1892– March 1893” which probably means he never saw it.62 Despite the erratic publication there are some items of interest in Miniati’s magazine. The first issue included a report on the Dresden international, Winawer’s first tournament since Nuremberg 1883. Whist and solo whist occupied a few pages at the back of this and every other issue but it was mostly about chess. Issue 2 is mostly about chess in Liverpool and Manchester, and mentions the start of the former club’s correspondence match with Glasgow which had begun in December 1891. “Soon after the game commenced Mr. Burn left England, and after the tenth move the Liverpool Club was deprived of his assistance,” wrote Miniati. This is more specific than what Forster wrote in his Burn biography, viz., that Burn was on the playing committee, but his influence over the development of the two games was limited. The third issue still claimed to be a “monthly journal” despite the gap since the

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previous number. An apology on the inside front says that “owing to the extreme indisposition of the editor it was impossible to bring out the missing issues, and instead subs will be extended.” Single copies were priced at 8d. each, postage extra. An annual subscription was seven shillings payable in advance, a bad deal for anyone who took it up. This number had lots of news of northern and midlands chess, including the Bird–Heywood match in Newcastle, and also some London news. The bibliographies mentioned above say “April issue enlarged” but actually it was issue 4 for March that was substantial, with about 30 pages of chess and little whist. The principal report was about the first North– South match played on 21 January 1893 at the Great Western Hotel in Birmingham. Miniati played board 16 for the North on that historic occasion and drew with Nelson Fedden of Bristol. The main organizers were I. M. Brown for the North and L. P. Rees of Surrey for the South. Miniati says the chess was well arranged but the waiters inefficient and thus many played hungry, having arrived just before the start at 1:15 p.m. The final issue of his magazine, however, was short and rather dull. The London Chess Fortnightly was edited by Emanuel Lasker, but this was not one of his finest displays. Published between 15 August 1892 and 30 July 1893, it could almost be described as a fraud upon its subscribers. Its single slim volume of 19 numbers comprised only 178 pages, some of which were full page advertisements. Issues varied greatly in size (the first two each had only eight pages) and the publication did not even keep to the promised schedule of an issue every two weeks. Number 8 (14 December) appeared 29 days after its predecessor and was followed by a double number (9 & 10) of 28 pages a month later. Two double numbers (13 & 14, 15 & 16) had only 12 pages each, and then number 17 (30 April) announced the “permanent enlargement” with 16 pages per issue in lieu of

12 pages, “its original size,” and that the magazine would now be published on the 14th and 30th of each month. However, number 18 did not appear until 14 July, with an announcement that the delay was caused by “difficulties connected with the affairs of our late printer.” Maybe he had not been paid? That issue did indeed have 16 pages but two of them bore only advertisements and the last was blank. The final issue only had 13 pages of text. Moreover the contents are disappointing. Since Lasker was not even in London for much of the time the magazine was published, one wonders who was really in charge and how much of the content was written by him. The magazine announced on page 31 that Lasker had sailed for America on 28 September for a month-long engagement at the Manhattan Chess Club and probably would not return until after Christmas. In fact he stayed across the Atlantic far longer. Later contents show that he also visited Montreal and Havana (where he arrived on 16 January 1893), and then New Orleans and elsewhere. During the 11 months the Fortnightly was being published he spent very little time in England. No doubt the magazine was a commercial failure and Lasker was primarily interested in raising the stakes for a title match against Steinitz which finally came to pass in 1894.

Other Edwardian Chess Magazines The Four-Leaved Shamrock, the Irish chess magazine, was edited by Mrs. Rowland between January 1905 and July 1914. Originally subtitled “An Irish monthly paper devoted to the royal game of chess,” it was actually sometimes bimonthly, sometimes quarterly, and increasingly irregular. Usually there were four pages (as the title indeed indicated); but there were some double issues and occa-

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914 sionally photographs on extra sheets. The National Library of Ireland has a bound volume that is almost complete. The Royal Dutch Library appears to have all issues, in two volumes (request number KW 64 B 24). There is a partial set at the B.L. (fortunately including the parts missing in Dublin) and an incomplete set in Cleveland. The content mostly concerns Irish chess and the various problem and correspondence tourneys run by Mrs. Rowland. The Chess Amateur was a successful monthly magazine, launched by the British Chess Company and published by Harry Harmer up to volume 7, based in Stroud, Gloucestershire. Afterwards the publisher was named as the Stroud News Publishing Co. and in the last years it was Hollings. The first editor was William Moffatt (1842?–1918), though he was not named initially. In the last two years of his life he was in failing health

Mrs. Frideswide Rowland (née Beechey) in later life when she edited her magazine The Four-Leaved Shamrock and chess columns in the Weekly Irish Times and Cork Weekly News. Picture from The Chess Bouquet (1897).

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and his successor as editor is unknown. From October 1916 until at least September 1923, Carslake Winter Wood (who died in February 1924) conducted the introductory News and Notes pages. Problem composer T. R. Dawson conducted News and Notes from October 1925 to March 1927, but much of the writing in the magazine was anonymous.63 In total there were 24 volumes of the Chess Amateur, starting in October 1906 and ending in June 1930, all volumes beginning in October and running into the following year. These have been reprinted by Moravian Chess. From the start they organized correspondence chess tournaments.64 In 1908 they were claiming to have twice the circulation of British Chess Magazine. Clearly The Chess Amateur found its niche but it has little to offer historians. It managed to keep going throughout the First World War but from April 1916 they had to use inferior paper due to government restrictions on imports. Towards the end, a Mr. Hamblin ran its correspondence chess league while it is a special point of interest that William Fairhurst (the bridge designer who later represented Scotland internationally) ran the games pages. In the early years, though, games were often quality amateur efforts or games that had already been published elsewhere, and the layout of pages was unattractive. However circulation was low and the April 1930 issue, on page 149, announced imminent closure because “for a long time the expenses of production have not been covered by the receipts.” Readers had been invited to make suggestions to improve the magazine but opinions were so diverse it was hard to form a clear judgment. The magazine finally closed in June 1930, the 285th issue, leaving B.C.M. free of serious competition for a few years. Sergeant commented in his 1942 article: Possibly this magazine’s title was one cause of its limited success, as it invited the accusation of its contents being “amateurish,” to some

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extent justified. There was some good matter in it, however, of which I remember chiefly the contributions of Philip Williams. I am not much interested in Problems, but I had a sincere liking for Williams, and was always diverted by his capand-bells style of comment on chess and other subjects.65

The Chess Review: A Fortnightly Magazine was edited and published in Manchester but only ran for three issues, dated 3, 17 and 31 August 1907. Each had eight pages making a total of 24. Copies are very rare but it is available in Cleveland, Ohio, and in the Royal Dutch Library. It was conducted by F. Baird and E. Millins, while the American editor was said to be Alain C. White, and the editor of a column in the Esperanto international language (in each issue) was C. T. Blanshard. A correspondence tournament was announced in the second issue but the third said they were keeping it open as they still needed a few more players. This final issue said nothing about the magazine’s stopping. The first issue of the magazine included the following:

Arthur William Daniel–W. D. Barrow British Chess Company correspondence tourney, 1907 Queen’s Gambit Declined (D51) Notes, The Chess Review, 3 August 1907. 1.  d4 d5 2.  c4 e6 3.  Nc3 Nf6 4.  Bg5 Nbd7 5.  e3 c6 6.  Bd3 Qa5 7.  B×f6 N×f6 8. Nge2 d×c4 9. B×c4 Bd6 10. f4 Nd5 11. Qd2 f5 12.  0–0 0–0 13.  Rf3 Bd7 14.  Raf1 b5 15. Bb3 Kh8 Loses time; 15. … b4 is worth considering. 16. h3 Qb6 17. g4 g6 18. g5 a5 19. h4 a4 20. Bd1 Rf7 21. h5 Ra7 We fail to see why. 22. Rh3 Kg8 23. Ng3 Be8 24. N×d5 c×d5 25. Qh2 Rg7 26. h×g6 B×g6 27. Kh1 A wasted move; 27. Bh5 is better. 27. … Be7 28. Rg1 Bd8 29. Rh6 Rac7 30. Nh5 Rgf7 31. Qh4 Rc1? 31.  … Qb7.  32. Nf6† B×f6 33. g×f6 R×d1 34. R×d1 Qd8 35. Rc1 Q×f6 36. R×g6†! 1–0. Black Resigns: 36. … h×g6 (or 36. … Q×g6 37. Rg1) 37. Rc8† Rf8 (37. … Kg7 38. Qh8 mate) 38. Q×f6. The British Correspondence Chess Association Magazine was a members’ organ

A two-page spread from the manuscript magazine The Chess Board.

5. A Short History of Chess Magazines Up to 1914 entirely devoted to postal play. This author has in a previous book told the history of this (still-existing) association up to recent times.66 The magazine was published in London and begun in 1909 (probably October), rather than in 1906 as stated by Betts. Some early issues are unavailable and publication became irregular from 1914 onwards. The British Chess Bulletin lasted just four issues published in London between October 1910 and January 1911. Priced at two pence, it was edited by H. T. Dickinson, who had been a founder member of the B.C.C.A. and had been joint editor of a few of the early issues of their magazine. However the minutes of that association’s meeting of 15 October 1910 show that he had fallen out with

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them, because he published in the Bulletin games provided to him for the B.C.C.A.’s own magazine. The launch of the Bulletin appears to have been a bid to start a rival postal chess league, probably foredoomed since apart from the B.C.C.A. there were also the tournaments being run by the Chess Amateur. Finally, The Chess Board was a manuscript magazine produced in Edinburgh between 1913 and 1915 by J. Stewart. This is extremely rare. This author has seen some issues from volume two which are in the possession of Edinburgh Chess Club and knows of an English collector who picked up a copy of volume 1 as a bargain a few years ago. In some issues at least, the board diagrams were handcolored, truly a labor of love.

6. The Saga of the Chess Player’s Chronicle magazine. The word “Chronicle” was the only element in common through the successive incarnations which began in 1841 and finally came to an end in 1902. The genesis of the magazine was almost an accident. Staunton, who by 1841 was becoming established as England’s leading chess player, had literary aspirations. He had briefly conducted a chess column in the Court Gazette during 1840 but this publication afforded him little scope. His next venture into publishing did not begin more promisingly, but after a months it provided him with an unexpected opportunity that he seized.

In the 1840s and early 1850s the Chronicle was the most important chess magazine in Britain, if not the world, but thereafter it generally played second fiddle (or even third or fourth) to competitors. The publishing history of The Chess Player’s Chronicle, and its successors in name, was extremely complicated. The full story has probably never been told without some serious inaccuracies or omissions, partly because the late volumes were very hard to find. Recent reprints by Moravian Chess and the availability of some volumes online at Google Books have eased the situation somewhat but there is still no complete set readily available. Tracing the history of the C.P.C. through its various editors and publishers who succeeded Staunton has been a challenge. There remain some unanswered questions, or at least ones with answers that are “best guesses.” The subject is indeed confusing. The Chess Player’s Chronicle title had only apparent longevity. With successive relaunches, subtitle and format changes, different editors and proprietors, and long periods of nonpublication, it can hardly be considered one

The Short Life of The British Miscellany This opportunity arose from the launch on 2 January 1841 of a new literary magazine, The British Miscellany. It was published by R. Hastings, of 13 Carey Street, and the editor-proprietor was James Hemming Webb.* Knowledge of the background to this

*In view of the failure of the original Miscellany and bankruptcy of its proprietor, the address of its publisher might seem ironic but it was only later in the 1840s that the London bankruptcy court moved to Carey Street and the phrase “on Carey Street” came to mean one was insolvent.

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6. The Saga of the Chess Player’s Chronicle magazine is based chiefly on examining the one volume of The British Miscellany held by the British Library, but it has been enhanced by the researches of Townsend who presented his discoveries about Webb and the magazine in his self-published book on Staunton.1 Advance advertisements for the magazine began to appear in December 1840, the first this author found being placed in The Era of Sunday 13 December. It read as follows: A NEW WEEKLY AND MONTHLY MAGAZINE. On Saturday, Jan. 2. 1841, will appear. No. I. of a Weekly Publication, price 6d. (to be issued in Monthly Parts), beautifully printed, and illustrated with fine Engravings on wood, entitled THE BRITISH MISCELLANY; which will be supported by the First Writers of the day. London: R. Hastings, Carey-street; H. Hooper, Pall-mall; and all Booksellers and Newsmen in Town and Country.

Another advertisement on the eve of publication, placed in The Times of 30 December 1840 (and possibly in other newspapers), announced a small price cut and promised articles by “Dr. Maginn, Miss Strickland, Leigh Hunt, P. Tritton, J. Hemming Webb, etc.” Tritton was apparently F. Tritton, author of the first article in the first number after the editor’s introduction, on the subject of “Ancient Philosophy and Modern Learning.” A later advertisement stated that Part I contained an article by Dr. Maginn but it is hard to identify which it was since it must have been one of those published under a pseudonym or with no name attached. Nevertheless we can accept that Irish-born William Maginn did write in the Miscellany since he was a prolific journalist contributing to many papers. The announcement in The Times differed from the Era advertisement in lowering the price by a penny, and also in saying that the Miscellany was about to appear on the 31st of December (though the nominal date was probably still 2 January). It repeated that it would be “a new weekly and monthly mag-

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azine … price 5d. (to be released in monthly parts)….” In February, however, they returned to the originally envisaged price of sixpence per number. The statement about “weekly and monthly” would have been clear to early Victorian readers though it may seem confusing to us today. The price of five pence referred to each weekly number. Many periodicals of that era offered the choice between buying a single number with a few pages each week (or sometimes fortnight), or waiting until the end of the month to buy the whole part (comprising four or five numbers) together. Several parts would make a complete volume (covering usually a year or half-year, but sometimes bridging calendar years). It was up to the purchasers to organize hard binding of each volume if they so wished, once it had been completed. Binders often discarded the wrappers from the weekly numbers and monthly parts, so making it hard for modern readers to determine where each number began and ended, or the exact date of publication of particular articles. Six of The British Miscellany articles are available free at the Chess Archaeology website, dated there 23 January, 6 February, 13 February, 20 February, 13 and 20 March, but those dates are not necessarily correct. See Appendix IV for an analysis of when the articles appeared. The British Library holds what may possibly be the only surviving complete set of the Miscellany, in one bound volume of 310 pages. The binder, lacking a title page (never issued) for volume One as a whole, retained at the front the blue cover for April, Part III, on which a librarian some time in the past has written “No more published,” and also the contents page for Part III. At the end of the contents list it says a blindfold game played by Bilguer did not arrive in time for inclusion. Since the binder discarded the covers from the first two Parts, it has been a tricky exercise to work out when each Staunton contribution first appeared. Even Whyld was

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misled, writing, in an interesting but inaccurate article about the history of the Chronicle, that The British Miscellany “had three numbers only, around February and March 1841.”* He should have said three Parts only. So far as can be ascertained by scrutiny of the British Library volume and of advertisements for the Miscellany, the initial plan for weekly numbers was never really carried out, even in January and February, as there appear to have been double or even treble numbers in the first month while Part II in February consisted of two numbers of 40 pages each and the other two of only eight pages apiece. Then the title page of Part III states, “Our Subscribers are respectfully informed that ‘The British Miscellany’ is now Published only in Monthly, price 2s.” From April, then, it was to be just a monthly magazine, but sales were insufficient to justify continuation.

The picture of Staunton that was published with his obituary in the Illustrated London News, LXV (4 July 1874), page 17.

The reader may find a detailed account of the Miscellany in Appendix IV together with the basis for calculations of when the chess articles were published. A summary is given here. Part I contained 120 pages, made up of five numbers of 24 pages each, which in theory would each have appeared on one of the five Saturdays in January 1841, before being collected together to complete the first part for those readers who preferred to wait and purchase it in that form. The breaks between the numbers mostly fall in the middle of an article or poem. This strongly implies that the weekly schedule may not have been followed in practice, with some missed weeks alternating with double or treble numbers. This hypothesis can only be confirmed if a set of the Miscellany turns up somewhere complete with the weekly covers showing exactly what was published on what date. A tentative analysis of the publication schedule is as follows. Part 1 (starting in January, complete part issued on 1 February): #1 January 2, pages 1– 24; #2 January 9, pages 25–48; #3 January 16, pages 49–72; #4 January 23, pages 73–96; #5 January 30, pages 97–120, soon followed by the complete Part I for those who preferred the magazine in that format. Then Part 2, which was nominally four weekly numbers of uneven size, but actually #6 and #7 together, respectively pages 121–160 and pages 161– 168, known to have appeared on February 13; #8 and #9 together, consisting of pages 169– 208 and 209–216, probably issued on or after February 20; with the complete Part II advertised as having been published on February 27 but dated March. Finally, no weekly numbers appeared during March but Part 3 (pages 217–310) appeared together on 1 April as advertised.

*Q.C.H. 8, pages 458–462. Nominally this volume was dated 2002 but actually it appeared much later so Whyld’s article was published posthumously, and he did not have the opportunity to make any corrections. It is unknown whether Whyld had seen a collector’s copy of the Miscellany; he would hardly have written what he did had he carefully inspected the British Library copy. The present author is grateful to Tony Gillam for comparing notes on the B.L. copy.

6. The Saga of the Chess Player’s Chronicle Probably The British Miscellany, entering a crowded market, was a commercial risk from the start, despite having some distinguished writers. A brief notice in the Morning Advertiser of 14 January said it contained several essays on interesting subjects and “on the whole, it is a cheap desirable new work.” A more lengthy but pointed review of the first number in The Era of 10 January had been more discouraging. It remarked on the newcomer to “our editorial table covered with the periodicals which pour in on the 1st day of the month.” The critic continued: Now, when a party is already a little too full, where seats are all occupied, an unexpected guest must look for a little supercilious examination; and unless he has some very particular attraction, or the power of being himself quite at ease and making himself pleasant to others, he must count on being voted a bore by the rest of the party. Our new guest comes in a modest yellow surtout….2

There was no mention of chess in the early advertisements and no chess appeared in the first two numbers (or first double number) of the magazine. The editor, Hemming Webb, was interested in chess, and after that review he may have decided he needed “some very particular attraction” to make his magazine stand out from its competitors. This presumably led him to introduce this new feature in the hope of broadening the Miscellany’s appeal.3 Staunton’s first, small, chess article is to be found on pages 90–91, towards the end of the fourth number (or rather in the middle of what is believed was a treble number) so we can tentatively assign a date of 16 January 1841 to its appearance, or possibly 23 January. There was no byline for the chess article, the inclusion of which Webb justified by introducing it as follows: CHESS. In conformity with our professed object, to combine solid with pleasing information, we purpose giving a series of articles, illustrative of this intellectual and deservedly attractive recreation, the popularity of which, at the present time,

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affords a gratifying proof of the refined taste and improving intelligence of the age. This department of the British Miscellany is under the auspices of the leading Chess-clubs in the Kingdom; and with the view to render it, in every aspect, deserving the attention of Chess players, arrangements have been made to secure the cooperation of gentlemen, eminent for their practical knowledge of the game, whose contributions will consist of remarks on the origin and antiquity of Chess, anecdotes of distinguished individuals who were Chess players, a general record of proceedings at the various institutions devoted to the game, and, as a leading characteristic, ORIGINAL GAMES AND PROBLEMS, by the most celebrated Chess professors and Amateurs in Europe.

During the short life of the Miscellany, only a very small part of this prospectus was fulfilled, but we may view it as the brief which Staunton had agreed with Hemming Webb, and which he subsequently set out to accomplish when he became editor of the Chess Player’s Chronicle. So far as the problems in the Miscellany are concerned, they are not of special interest except as they reflect the tastes of the day. Thus Problem 1 on page 90 (see below), composed by the Rev. Horatio Bolton (1793–1873), who was regarded as a leading problem composer of the day, had a typically convoluted task for problems of that era: “White, with the advantage of playing first, checkmates with pawn in 13 moves.” More will be said about the evolution of problems in Chapter 7, when discussing books about chess problems.

wDKDkDq4 DwDwDwDw wDw!p)w0 DwHwDwHw w$wDwDpg GwDwDwDw wDwDwDwD DwDwDwDw White to move and win (see text)

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The area in which the Miscellany chess column did carry out the “leading characteristic” of its plan was in publishing recently played games by leading experts of the day. In all, seven games were published in the Miscellany and since most of them are not to be found in current databases, they are all included in this chapter. The first game to be published, with an introduction on Miscellany page 90 and the bare score (no annotations) on page 91 was the following. It was a game played at odds by de la Bourdonnais, who had come to England for a chess engagement late in 1840, but became gravely ill and died in London on 13 December, leaving an English widow.* Five of the seven chess games in the Miscellany were played by de la Bourdonnais; the other two involved Staunton himself. The first to appear in The British Miscellany was introduced as follows: The following fine game was among the last played by De La Bourdonnais. His opponent on this occasion was the Honorary Secretary of the London Chess Club, a gentleman who has deservedly attained the reputation of being one of the most accomplished players of the day. La Bourdonnais gives the odds of Pawn and move.

George Perigal–L. C. M. de la Bourdonnais London 1840 Remove Black’s f-pawn The British Miscellany, pages 90–91. Notes by Tim Harding. 1.  e4 e6 2.  d4 d5 3.  e5 c5 4.  c3 Nc6 5. Bd3 Nge7 6. Nf3 g6 7. Bg5 Bg7 8. Qe2 Qb6 9. d×c5 Q×c5 10. Nbd2 Bd7 11. Be3 Qa5 12. Nb3 Qc7 13. Bd4 Nf5 14. 0–0 0–0 15.  Rae1 b6 16.  h3 Rae8 17.  Nh2 Rf7 18. Qg4?

White’s plan is hard to comprehend as he abandons his extra pawn without obtaining any attack and then unsoundly sacrifices the exchange. He appears to have miscalculated, overlooking that Black’s 20th move attacks his queen. 18. … B×e5 19. R×e5? N×e5 20. Qf4 N×d4 21. Q×d4 N×d3 22. Q×d3 Bc6 23. Ng4 Kg7 24. Nd4 e5 25. Nf3 Rf5 26. Re1 Kf8 27.  Nh4 Rf7 28.  Qe3 e4 29.  Qh6† Kg8 30. Qg5 (see diagram)

After 30. Qg5

wDwDrDkD 0w1wDrDp w0bDwDpD DwDpDw!w wDwDpDNH Dw)wDwDP P)wDw)PD DwDw$wIw

White is beginning to fight and threatens knight forks on both f6 and h6. His opponent, perhaps due to his ill health, has let him back into the game but would still stand better after 30. … Kh8. 30. … Kg7? 31. Nh6? The threats of 32. N×f7 and 32. N4f5† are easily parried, whereas 31. Qh6† Kg8 (not 31. … Kh8? 32. N×g6†) 32. Qg5 would repeat the position. 31. … Re5? Better 31. … Rff8! 32. N4f5† Kh8 and White’s attack runs into the sand. 32. Qe3 Rf8 33. Ng4 Re6 34. Qh6†? 34. Qd4† would have forced Black to return the exchange. 34. … Kg8 35. Qg5 Qf4 Now the queens should come off and Black is winning once more.

*Bell’s Life in London also published some of the Frenchman’s last games. It had on 20 December 1840 carried a long letter to the editor from Walker about the funeral of de la Bourdonnais and launched an appeal for his English widow. Then in B.L.L. 10 January 1841, Walker published his own last game with the Frenchman, saying that he left “left no papers that could be fashioned into a pamphlet for the sake of his widow, but not a jot, not a scrap of Chess paper did he bequeath us. His Chess was all in his head.” On 13 March 1842 Walker was able to report that the widow had married a wealthy Cornwall merchant, James Budge of Cromartin, near Truro.

6. The Saga of the Chess Player’s Chronicle 36. Nh6† Kg7 37. N6f5† In a lost position, Perigal prefers to give up more material in order to retain his Queen. The Miscellany does not specify which Knight moved to f5 first. 37. … R×f5 38. N×f5† Q×f5 39. Qe3 g5 40.  b3 Rf6 41.  c4 d×c4 42.  b×c4 Kg6 43.  Rd1 Qc5 44.  Qe2 Rd6 45.  Re1 Rd4 46.  Qg4 Qf5 47.  Qg3 Rd2 48.  h4 Qf4 49. h5† Kh6 0–1. “And the first player resigns.” In 1840 de la Bourdonnais was only a shadow of his former self, but nevertheless his fame among chess lovers was such that acquiring the scores of his last games was a selling point for the Miscellany, although some had already been published in Bell’s Life. So the next set of advertisements to appear promoting the Miscellany mentioned chess and de la Bourdonnais prominently. Their appearance was timed to coincide with the reissue of the early numbers as the first monthly Part, and with the early numbers of Part Two. Advertisements this author has seen, with similar wordings, appeared in The Times on 6 February, the Morning Chronicle on 6 and 12 February, Bell’s Life in London and the Era on 7 February, and the Morning Post of 8 February. For example, the wording in the notice on the front page of Bell’s Life was probably geared to the fact that this was the only paper at that time with a well-established weekly chess column: TO CHESS PLAYERS.—LAST GAMES OF BOURDONNAIS . T HE B RITISH M ISCELLANY , price 6d., published weekly. The whole of the unpublished games played by this celebrated professor will appear in the British Miscellany.—Also the CONFESSIONS of a CABMAN, with notes by the Waterman, Christopher South. Part I, containing articles by Dr. Maginn, Agnes Strickland, Leigh Hunt, Hemming Webb etc. etc. was published on Feb. 1, price 2s. 6d.—London: R. Hastings, 13 Carey-street, and all Booksellers.4

This meant the numbers from January were now available as a complete part. The appearance of Part I gave the magazine a sec-

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ond chance to gain favorable attention from critics and a wealthier class of reader who could afford to lay out half a crown at one time instead of sixpence. The Miscellany was noted by a critic for Bell’s New Weekly Messenger on 7 February, who began by saying: “A new literary candidate for public favour conducted with talent and spirit; and containing several well written articles by popular authors.” It then quoted a section of an article by Leigh Hunt to give a flavor of the magazine. A reviewer in The Era on 14 March, which had Part II to hand, did not mention the chess articles, however, but quoted from the Cabman memoirs. The reviewer noted, “This is but a young periodical, but it gave promises at its birth which bid fair to be realized in its after life,” and then continued with a prophetic warning on the mortality of periodicals which “die of course of the natural diseases incidental to literature.” The advertisement in the Morning Chronicle on Friday 12 February stated that number 7, now priced at sixpence (a 20 percent increase!), would be published next day, “containing the Confessions of a Cabman—Susan Rouslie [sic]—The Piraeus Street—My Brother’s Grave—Sonnet by Major Calder Campbell—Chess etc. etc.” without mentioning de la Bourdonnais. However, since the Morning Chronicle advertisement on Friday 12 February stated that No. VII would be issued next day, mentioning many of the items from Part VI, it is most probable that 6–7 was a double number, and that there had been no weekly publication on 6 February, in order chiefly to give more time for the stocks of the monthly Part I to sell out. Number 7 itself (according to printers’ marks) was only of eight pages so hardly long enough to be sold on its own for sixpence. Later, an advertisement in The Times on 27 February said that Part 2 had been completed and Part 3 would be issued on 31 March. The chess content of Part 2 may be found on pages 132–133, 160–161 and 189–190. If

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an analysis of publication dates is correct, the implication is that Staunton was asked to provide three articles for Part II but a late change of editorial plan meant that two of these appeared on the same date, separated by other articles. Page 132 is only half about chess, containing a poem followed by Problem II, which “occurred in play, and is taken from the choice collection of unpublished Chess MSS, in the possession of Mr. [William] Lewis.” The stipulation is that: “Black, having to move, captured the adverse Queen, and White then gave checkmate in six moves.” This author has not been able to identify the source of this game. The reader may wish to do so, and perhaps to solve the position from the diagram below without moving the pieces or resorting to computer assistance:

rhwDwDri 0pDwHpDp wDwDw0wD DwDwDwDw wDwDw)wD DwDwDw!w P1wDwDP) Dw$wDRDK Black to move (see text)

The second game appeared on page 133, followed by—and this is a typical Staunton touch—a quotation from a famous book for the education of aristocratic youth in Tudor times, The Governour: “The Chess of all games, wherein is no bodily exercise, is most to be commended, for therein is righte subtile engine, whereby the wit is made more sharp and remembrance quickened.”—Sir Thomas Elyot, 1534.5 The introduction to the second game published in The British Miscellany was as follows: The recent death of the great Chess-player, La Bourdonnais, has attached a melancholy interest to the last few games played by him, during his

too brief sojourn in this country. The subjoined specimen of masterly Chess-skill was played, only a few days before his decease, with Mr. P—t, the strongest opponent whom he encountered on this occasion of his visiting England. La Bourdonnais gives the odds of pawn and move.

William Popert–L. C. M. de la Bourdonnais London 1840 Remove Black’s f-pawn The British Miscellany, page 133. 1. e4 Nh6 2. d4 Nf7 3. Bd3 e6 4. Nf3 d5 5. e5 c5 6. c3 Nc6 7. 0–0 Qb6 8. a4 Bd7 9. Bc2 Be7 10. Qd3 0–0–0 11. d×c5 Qc7 12. b4 g5 13. Na3 Nc×e5 14. N×e5 N×e5 15. Qg3 h5 16. f4 h4 17. Qe1 Ng4 18. Nb5 Qb8 19. h3 a6 20. Nd4 e5 21. h×g4 g×f4 22.  Nf5 Rde8 23.  c4 h3 24.  c×d5 h×g2 25. K×g2 f3† 26. R×f3 e4 27. B×e4 Qh2† 28. Kf1 B×c5 29. b×c5 Qh1† 30. Ke2 Rh2† 31.  Kd1 R×e4 32.  Q×h1 R×h1† 33.  Kc2 R×g4 1–0. “At this point, from physical exhaustion, La Bourdonnais was compelled to resign the game.” On page 160, a set of answers to correspondents was provided, followed by Problem III, another from Lewis’s collection:

rDwDwDwD 0pDwDp4w wDwDpDwg Dw$NiwDp w!wDwDnD DwDwDwDb nDwDw)wD DwDwDwIw White to win in five moves

This was followed on page 161 by Game III, followed by another quotation from literature. Here readers received the first actual item of chess news, because the game was introduced as follows:

6. The Saga of the Chess Player’s Chronicle A match of Chess between Messrs. P——t and St——n, two of the first Metropolitan players, which has excited much attention in Chess circles, was concluded last week. The games in this contest have been obtained exclusively for the British Miscellany, and will appear, conjointly, with those last played by De La Bourdonnais.

Because of the uncertainty over the date of publication, we cannot be sure whether “last week” refers to the end of January or the start of February, since the game may not have appeared precisely on the date Staunton expected. Nor we can we know at what point in the long match between the two men this game actually was played, since “Game III” on the page refers to the numbering in that magazine not the sequence in the contest. No result was published at the time, but the Chronicle for 1859 says on page 194 says that the match was for the first to win 11 games and that Staunton won by the odd game. The result was probably 11–10 with about six draws, and the match is likely to have begun in the fall or early winter of 1840, but the evidence is inconclusive. The score of the following game may be found in ChessBase’s Mega Database 2017 but is there attributed incorrectly to the year 1842 and with an additional move added at the end. Staunton did not annotate this game in the Miscellany but did add some light notes when reprinting it in C.P.C. volume 2, page 179.

Howard Staunton–William Popert Staunton–Popert match, London 1840–1841 Scotch Gambit (C44) The British Miscellany, page 161. Notes by Tim Harding. 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 e×d4 4. Bc4 Bb4† 5. c3 d×c3 6. 0–0 c2 7. Q×c2 d6 8. a3 Ba5 9. b4 Bb6 10. Bb2

185

Against Rives at Brussels in 1853, Staunton was to prefer 10. Qb3 and won quickly. 10. … Nf6 In 1842, Eugene Rousseau here played 10. … f6 against Saint-Amant and won the game. 11. e5 d×e5 12. N×e5 N×e5 13. B×e5 0–0 14. Nc3 Ng4 15. Bg3 Qg5 16. Rae1 Bf5 17. Qb3 Nf6!? This sacrifices a pawn and leads to sharp play. In another game from the match, Popert played 17. … c6 and drew in 59 moves. 18. Re7 (see diagram)

After 18. Re7

rDwDw4kD 0p0w$p0p wgwDwhwD DwDwDb1w w)BDwDwD )QHwDwGw wDwDw)P) DwDwDRIw

18. … Bg6 19. B×c7 Ng4? This vacillation costs Popert the game. Both last move and here Black had various ways to obtain strong counterplay, especially 19. … Ne4. 20. Nd5 B×c7 21. R×c7 Rae8? This just loses by force. 21. … Be4 was the best practical chance. If 21.  … b5?! 22.  B×b5 N×h2 23.  Re1 (not 23.  K×h2?! Be4). 22. Qg3 h6 23. f4 Qf5 24. Ne7† R×e7 25.  R×e7 Qf6 26.  Q×g4 Q×e7 27.  Q×g6 Qe3† 28. Kh1 Q×a3 29. Qe4 Qc3 30. h3 Rc8 31. Bd3 Rd8 32. Rf3 g6 33. Bc4 Rd1† 34. Kh2 The Miscellany here had a misprint “Kt to R. second.” This mistake was corrected when the game was reprinted in C.P.C. 34. … Qe1 35. Q×g6† 1–0. The final chess content of Part II is on pages 189–190, beginning with Problem IV from the Lewis manuscript, with the stipulation “White to win in seven moves.”

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British Chess Literature to 1914

wgwDw$wD 1pDwDw0k wDwDw0w0 DwDB$w4P wDwDPDND 4whwDwIw wDwDwDwD Dw!wDwDw

K×d7 27. Rf7† Ke6 28. Rf6† Ke7 29. Bh6 Rg6 30. R×g6 h×g6 31. b3 Nb6 32. R×c8 This is the winning style; the first player has now the great advantage of a “passed pawn,” and can well afford exchanges. 32. … N×c8 33. Kg2 Ke6 34. Kf3 Kf5 (see diagram)

White to move (see text)

The fourth game to appear in the Miscellany was the following, described as: “Fine Game, played a few weeks since, between M. De La Bourdonnais and the Honorary Secretary of the London Chess Club. The former giving the odds of ‘Pawn and move.’”

George Perigal–L. C. M. de la Bourdonnais London 1840 Remove Black’s f-pawn The British Miscellany, pages 189–190. Notes by Howard Staunton. 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. e5 c5 4. Bd3 Qa5† 5. Bd2 Qb6 6. Qh5† Kd8 The celebrated player, Deschapelles, when giving the odds of “Pawn and two moves,” frequently adopted this mode of opening the game, permitting the check from the adverse Queen, and then playing his K to Q’s sq. 7. Nc3 Bd7 The b- pawn could not be safely captured. 8. Nf3 c×d4 9. Ne2 Nc6 10. Nf×d4 N×d4 11.  Qh4† Be7 12.  Q×d4 Q×d4 13.  N×d4 Bc5 14. c3 Ne7 15. Be3 B×d4 16. c×d4 Nc6 17. a3 Rc8 18. f4 Na5 19. 0–0 g6 20. Rac1 Ke7 21. g4 Played with commendable boldness; when the Queens are gone, these pawns may generally be advanced without danger. 21.  … b5 22.  f5 g×f5 23.  g×f5 e×f5 24.  B×f5 Rhg8† 25.  Kh1 Nc4 26.  B×d7

After 34. … Kf5

wDnDwDwD 0wDwDwDw wDwDwDpG DpDp)kDw wDw)wDwD )PDwDKDw wDwDwDw) DwDwDwDw

35. h3? Not criticized by Staunton, but White misses the chance to immobilize the knight by 35. Bf8! and if 35. … a6 36. Bc5. Thereafter Black will eventually run out of moves and be forced to allow the White king to advance, e.g., 36. … Kg5 37. Kg3 a5 38. b4 a×b4 39. a×b4 Kf5 40.  h4 Ke6 41.  Kg4 Kf7 42.  Kg5 Kg7 43. e6 etc. 35. … Ne7 36. Bf8 Nc6 37. Bc5 a5 38. a4 b×a4 39. b×a4 Kg5 40. Kg3 Kf5 41. h4 Nd8 42.  Bb6 Ne6 43.  Kf3 g5 44.  h×g5 K×g5 45.  Ke3 Kf5 46.  B×a5 Nf8 47.  Bb6 Ke6 48. a5 Kd7 49. a6 Kc6 50. a7 Kb7 51. Kd3 Nd7 52. Bc5 1–0 After a few more moves, La Bourdonnais resigned. His play in these, his last efforts, although unquestionably lacking the vigour and invention which so peculiarly characterised his games in earlier and brighter times, still affords amazing evidence of his almost matchless powers at Chess.

So far as we can tell from the contents of the British Library volume and from newspaper advertisements, the original plan of weekly publication completely collapsed in March and that no weekly issues of the Miscellany were published that month. It only appeared in monthly Part form. Significantly, no adver-

6. The Saga of the Chess Player’s Chronicle tisements for the Miscellany appeared in early March, a pretty sure sign that no weekly numbers were issued. In an attempt to relaunch the publication, the word chess was added to the title. A notice to potential advertisers appeared on Wednesday 17 March, and again on the 19th, 22nd and 24th, saying that ads and bills “for insertion in the April Part of The British Miscellany and Chronicle of Chess must be sent to the Publisher by the 26th instant.” It stated that “as agents are appointed for the sale of the British Miscellany in the principal towns of England, Ireland, and Scotland, it will be found a favourable medium for advertising.” If advertisements were in fact placed, in this or earlier numbers, they must have been in pages of the outer wrapper which were not preserved by the binder of the British Library volume. The decision was also taken to reduce the price of the monthly Part from half a crown (2s. 6d.) to just two shillings. A review (which did not mention the chess content) appeared in the Morning Post on 29 March which welcomed the switch to monthly. “This we cannot think but a considerable improvement, as the work will thereby, we are sure, gain many contributors who would not have liked to have been under the necessity of furnishing matter weekly.” However, this was not to be and the appearance of Part III was probably the end of Hemming Webb’s involvement. An advertisement in the Morning Post on Wednesday 31 March (also in The Times of 1 April and Morning Chronicle of 2 April) shows: The April Number (price 2s.) of THE BRITISH MISCELLANY and CHRONICLE OF CHESS contains, among other Articles … [various literary contributions listed] … The Automaton Chessplayer, Chess Games and Problems, Critical Notices, etc., etc.

Notwithstanding the advertisements men tioning chess in the title, the running header on pages is always simply “The British Miscellany.” Also throughout last page in each

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part says “Printed by J. Truscott, Blackfriarsroad, London.” (It was a legal requirement for a publication’s printer to be identified.) After the failure of the Miscellany, and the change to a chess magazine, the printer was changed. Part III begins on Page 217 and the chess elements were not all placed together, being found on pages 256–257 and also on pages 283–286, in addition to the article on the automaton that preceded the last games in the magazine. The fifth game to be published in the Miscellany appeared on page 256 (with some notes on page 257). Most likely it (and indeed all these games involving de la Bourdonnais) was played at the London Chess Club. Apparently the French master, having succeeded in giving Perigal the normal odds of pawn and move, now attempted the larger odds of pawn and two. Staunton introduced the game thus: “Brilliant Partie, played a few weeks since, between M. De La Bourdonnais and the Honorary Secretary of the London Chess Club.” His annotations do not reflect the actual state of the position as de la Bourdonnais was lost long before the end.

George Perigal–L. C. M. de la Bourdonnais London 1840 Remove Black’s f-pawn from the board The British Miscellany, pages 256–257. Notes by Howard Staunton. 1. e4 AND 2. d4 e6 3. Bd3 The adversary having no king’s bishop’s pawn, this move is one of the most attacking that can be made at this point of the opening. 3. … c5 This is not an advisable mode of defence against the “pawn and two moves” attack. The first player might have taken a pawn, or played his KP one square, in either case obtaining a strong offensive position. 4. d5 d6 5. c4 Nf6 6. f4 e×d5 7. e×d5 Be7 8.  Nf3 b5 9.  b3 Nbd7 10.  0–0 Nb6 11. Bb2 a5 12. Nbd2 a4 13. Qe2 0–0 14. Ng5

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h6 15. Ne6 B×e6 16. Q×e6† Kh8 17. Qf5 Qd7 18. Qg6 Qe8 19. Rae1 Q×g6 20. B×g6 Ra7 21. Re6 a×b3 22. a×b3 Ra2 23. Bc3 b4 (see diagram)

wDwDw4wi DwDwgw0w whw0RhB0 Dw0PDwDw w0PDw)wD DPGwDwDw rDwHwDP) DwDwDRIw

After 23. … b4

24. Ra1 Boldness indeed! We should have preferred however 24. B×f6 as safer, and we believe, much better play. 24. … b×c3 25. R×a2 c×d2 26. R×d2 Nc8 27. Ra2 Nd7 28. Ra8 Ndb6 29. Rb8 Bd8 30. Re8 R×e8 31. B×e8 Bc7 32. Rb7 Bd8 33. h4 Kg8 Labourdonnais appears here to have overlooked the advantage of winning the K. R. P. (Staunton means 33.  … B×h4, but then 34. Bf7 should soon lead to a decisive win of material for White by means of Be6 followed by Rb8.) 34. Bf7† Kf8 35. Be6 Ne7 36. h5 Ke8 37. g4 Na8 38. Bd7† Kf7 39. Rb8 Bb6?? “Throwing away the game!” exclaimed Staunton, but Black is lost even without this help-mate. 40.  Be6† Kf6 41.  Rf8 mate (1 – 0). Staunton added this comment: The interest attached to these last relics of La Bourdonnais’ skill, is mainly ascribable to the melancholy circumstances connected with them. As specimens of play, they appear to us, upon examination, to afford but a very imperfect and unsatisfactory notion of the pre-eminent powers of invention and combination, which this distinguished player at one time exhibited. In the game before us, he omits to seize the most obvious advantages, and, even when his opponent had sacrificed a piece, permits the victory within his grasp to be wrested from him.

Also on page 257 there was this unusual problem (Problem V) with no byline.

wDwDwDwi DwDwDwDw wDwDwDwD DwDwDKDP wDwDwDwD DwDwDw$w wDwDwDwD DwDwDwDw White to move (see text)

The task stipulated was: “White to checkmate in eight moves without moving his king.” It is ingenious but not a good problem by modern standards because the order of White’s first two moves is immaterial and he has several moves of equivalent value at 3 and 6. The final chunk of chess in the volume was more substantial, running from page 280 to page 286. This began with the first part of an article entitled “The Chess Automaton,” which was much enlarged in the C.P.C. proper later in the year. If Part III had originally been intended to be just one very large number, the material would probably have been organized differently. As it is, there were three separate articles by Staunton, with games and problems. It is likely that the article about the “automaton” was written by William Lewis, who at one point in 1818 had been the master concealed inside operating the machine. On page 283 there was “chess intelligence” (various news items) and more answers to correspondents. One of these (to G.C.S. on page 284) has the flavor of later Staunton put-downs, and while the target may have been Walker, this is not entirely clear. Staunton also said that Cochrane might send a collection of games that were “played by the Brahmins of Hindoostan” and that there was a new chess club in Bath. Also, on page 283, there was another peculiar task problem.

6. The Saga of the Chess Player’s Chronicle

wDwDwDwi DwDwDwDw w0w0w$wD DpDpDRDw w0w0wHwD DKDQDNDw wDPDwDwD DwDwDwDw White to move (see text) For this ingenious and elaborate stratagem we are indebted to the kindness of the Rev. H. Bolton. White engages to checkmate the adversary with his pawn in 44 moves, without taking any of the adverse pawns, or permitting them to be moved.

Apparently this can only be done by advancing the c-pawn on the final move, discovering a horizontal or diagonal check, but whether any reader has the patience to check this problem and determine whether it is sound, we rather doubt. Computers can hardly be of any assistance. There followed two games. The sixth game to be featured in the Miscellany was another “played in the match just concluded between Messrs. P—t and St—n.” As often in Staunton’s publications, he assigned the Black pieces to the player who made the first move. This and the following game were reprinted in volume 2 of the Chess Player’s Chronicle since, as he wrote, many of Staunton’s new subscribers would not have seen them before. Most of the notes are by Staunton, but the present author has added comments to the opening and computer-checked analysis of the fascinating minor piece ending.

William Popert–Howard Staunton Staunton–Popert match, London 1840–1841 French Defense (C02) Notes in italics are by Staunton. 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3

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This is not considered to be so good a move as 2. f4. 2. … Nc6 3. c3 e6 4. d4 d5 5. e5 By transposition, the Advance Variation of the French Defense has been reached. 5. … Bd7 6. Bd3 Qb6 At this stage of the defence, Lewis, de la Bourdonnais, and other first-rate players, invariably bring out the Queen thus. 7. Bc2 Nowadays White would usually castle, offering the d-pawn as a gambit. 7. … g6 ChessBase has a different game said to be between the same players where the same position arose via 1. e4 c5 2. c3 e6 3. Nf3 d5 4. e5 Nc6 5. d4 Qb6 6. Bd3 Bd7 7. Bc2 and Black now played 7. … Rc7, Popert winning in 23 moves.6 8.  0–0 Rc8 9.  a4 a5 10.  Na3 c×d4 11. c×d4 Nb4 12. Qe2 By this move the first player loses a pawn. 12.  … N×c2 13.  N×c2 Qb3 14.  Ne3 B×a4 15. Nd2 Qb4 16. Qg4 Threatening N×d5. 16. … Bd7 Instead of moving this Bishop, 16. … h7– h5 might have been played. 17. Nf3 h5 18. Qg3 b6 19. Bd2 Qe7 It would have been injudicious play to take the b-pawn. 20. Rac1 Bc6 21. Rc2 Qd7 22. Rfc1 Ne7 23. Ng5 Bh6 24. h4 0–0 25. Qf4 For the purpose of advancing g2–g4. 25. … Bg7 26. Nf3 He was compelled to retire the Kt. from apprehension of his opponent playing f-pawn. 26. … f6 27. Qg3 f×e5 28. d×e5 Bb7 If the second player had now advanced 28. … d4 he would speedily have lost all the advantage acquired at the beginning of the game. 29. Nd4 R×c2 30. R×c2 Rc8 31. R×c8† B×c8 32. Qg5 Kh7 33. g4 Bh6 34. Qf6 Ng8 35. Qf3 h×g4 36. Q×g4 Qa4 37. Kg2 Ne7 38. Kg3 Nc6 We should have preferred 38.  … Nf5†.

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British Chess Literature to 1914

(This note was not in the Miscellany; Staunton presumably found this idea when reexamining the game.) 39. N×c6 Q×c6 40. h5 Qe8 41. h×g6† Q×g6 42. Q×g6† K×g6 43. f4 Bf8 44. f5† Well played; by the disunion of these valuable pawns, the strength of [the opponent’s] position is materially diminished. 44. … e×f5 45. N×d5 Bc5 46. b4 a×b4 47. B×b4 If 47. N×b4 not 47. … B×b4 but 47. … Bb7. 47. … B×b4 48. N×b4 (see diagram)

wDbDwDwD DwDwDwDw w0wDwDkD DwDw)pDw wHwDwDwD DwDwDwIw wDwDwDwD DwDwDwDw

After 48. N×b4

An instructive seven-man endgame has now arisen which the Lomonosov tablebase at tb7.chessok.com/probe assesses as drawn with best play. Of course it might be difficult even for masters of today to find all the best moves, especially if short of time, but there were no time-limits in the early 1840s. 48. … Kg5 49. Nd5? Now Black can win by force. The tablebase finds two moves that hold the game, the clearest being 49. Nc6 (49. Nd3 is the other adequate, but less forcing, move.) 49. … b5 50. Nd4 b4 (50. … Bd7 51. e6 Be8) 51. e6 Kf6 52.  e7! Kf7 (52.  … K×e7 53.  Nc6† and 54. N×b4) 53. Kf4 Bd7 54. Ke5 K×e7 55. Kd5! b3 56. N×b3 Be6† 57. Ke5. 49. … b5! 50. Kf2 f4? 50. … Be6 was correct. 51. Nb4? It is understandable that Popert wanted to blockade the pawn with his N on a dark square but now he cannot save his own pawn. More

aggressive play was necessary, viz. 51. Nc7! b4 52. e6! holds the position, because of 52. … b3 (52. … Kf6 53. Nd5† and 54. N×b4) 53. e7 Bd7 54. Ne6†!! Kf6 (54. … Kf5 55. Nd4†, and not 54. … B×e6?? 55. e8Q) 55. N×f4 b2 (55. … Bc6 56. e8Q) 56. Nd5† and Nc3. 51. … Bb7? There are five winning moves for Black (including the natural 51. … Kf5) but this is not one of them. Black takes his eye off the epawn which could now be used to create a diversion. The other moves that do not spoil the win are Kg4, Bd7, Be6 and Bf5. 52. Nc2? Passivity fails. The last chance was 52. e6!! Kf6 53. Nd3 f3 54. Nc5 Bc6 55. Nb3! K×e6 56. Nd4† Kd5 (56. … Kd6 57. N×b5† B×b5 58. K×f3) 57. N×f3 b4 (57. … Kc4 58. Ne5† Kc5 59. Nd3†) 58. Ke3 (not the only move to hold) and White is able to stop the b-pawn. 52. … Bd5 53. Ke2 Kf5 54. e6 54. Nd4† would have been useless, because if 54. … K×e5 55. N×b5 he must have lost his Kt. 54. … K×e6 55. Kf2 Ke5 56. Ne1 Be4 57. Ke2 Kd4 0–1. After a few defensive moves, the first player resigned. His efforts to recover the advantage which his adversary obtained in the opening of the game evinced considerable skill, and ought, probably, as they at one period promised, to have drawn the battle. The seventh and last game to appear in the Miscellany was introduced by Staunton thus: “The following was the last game De La Bourdonnais ever played, giving the odds of a rook. His opponent on this occasion was a very promising player in the London Chess Club.” Black was called just “Mr. W,” but Walker later named him as “Mr. W*v*ll.” This is sufficient to identify Marmaduke Wyvill (1815–1896), who was then only 25 years old.7 In 1851, when a Member of Parliament, Wyvill played with surprising success in the 1851 tournament and, helped by a favorable draw, took the second-place prize. Although he was defeated despite receiving heavy odds

6. The Saga of the Chess Player’s Chronicle in this game, he played quite well until the complications became critical. This game had in fact already been published, in Bell’s Life in London on 27 December 1840.  Walker dated the game precisely to Wednesday 9 December and provided more circumstantial details. The previous day Walker had played some games against the French master, which he published in his column on 3 and 10 January 1841. Walker says the game with Wyvill (whom he named when reprinting the game in his collection Chess Studies) was played at de la Bourdonnais’ lodgings, No 4, Beaufort-buildings, on a board which was Walker’s property and using chessmen belonging to Mr. Ries, proprietor of the Divan in the Strand. The move order in the Encyclopædia of Chess Games is the same as that in Bell’s Life and Walker’s Chess Studies.8 Here is Staunton’s version of the score.

L. C. M. de la Bourdonnais– Marmaduke Wyvill London, 9 December 1840 The British Miscellany, page 286. Notes by Tim Harding. Remove White’s rook from a1. 1. e4 e5 2. f4 e×f4 3. Bc4 Qh4† 4. Kf1 g5 5. Nc3 Bg7 6. d4 d6 7. Nf3 Qh5 8. Nd5 Kd8 Here Walker wrote: “Second player carries out his opening with great correctness; playing all the best moves.” 9. h4 c6 10. Nc3 h6 11. Kf2 Bg4 12. h×g5 B×f3 “Very well played move; quite out of the style of Rook players,” wrote Walker. 13. g×f3 Q×g5 14. Ne2 Nd7 15. B×f4 Qf6 16. Be3 Kc7 17. f4 Ne7 In Walker’s version, Black’s 16th and 17th moves are reversed but the difference is insignificant. Black, as Walker observed, links his rooks and is playing quite solidly. 18. Ng3 Rad8? Criticized by Walker. This loses some of

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the surplus material, although Black should still win. 18. … d5 is best, or 18. … h5 to prevent White’s next. 19. Nh5 Qg6 20. Rg1 Q×e4 21. R×g7 Nf5 22. Rg3 N×g3 23. N×g3 Qe7 24. d5 Rde8 25. Nf5 Qe4 26. d×c6 “Here we find the hand of the master,” wrote Walker. “Anything to make a break that his genius may have room to work.” 26. … b×c6? “Perhaps not the best answer” observed Walker. 26. … Q×f5 27. c×d7 Re7 is playable according to the engines. 27. Q×d6† Kd8 28. Bd3!? 28. B×a7 threatens mate in two but then Black has at least a draw by perpetual check playing obvious moves: 28. … Q×c2† 29. Kf3 Qe4† 30. Kf2 Qe1†, and could play for a win. 28. … Qh1 29. Qb4 (see diagram) Here Walker was effusive: “A coup de repos of the highest order. As fine a move as the annals of chess can show. A last beam of the setting sun; the expiring taper flash of genius.” 29. B×a7 would be the engine preference but La Bourdonnais, wanting to win the game, probably saw no way forward after 29. … Qe1† 30. Kf3 Qa5 so he gave Black some rope to hang himself.

After 29. Qb4

wDwirDw4 0wDnDpDw wDpDwDw0 DwDwDNDw w!wDw)wD DwDBGwDw P)PDwIwD DwDwDwDq

29. … Rhg8? Now the game should be drawn. Black could retain good winning chances by returning one of his two exchanges: 29. … Qh2† (or immediately 29.  … R×e3) 30.  Kf3 Qh3† 31. Kf2 R×e3 32. Qa5† Ke8 33. N×e3 Qh2† 34. Kf3 Rg8. Neither Staunton nor Walker pointed this out.

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British Chess Literature to 1914

30.  Qa5† Nb6 31.  B×b6† a×b6 32. Q×b6† Kd7 33. Qb7† Ke6 Since Walker was an eyewitness to the game, it seems likely that Staunton “corrected” the finish for the Miscellany (and also in his republication in C.P.C., II pages 169–170). In the version given in Bell’s Life, Walker’s Chess Studies and O.E.C.G, Black now blundered with 33. … Kd8?? allowing 34. Qb8† Kd7 35. Qd6† Kc8 36. Ba6 mate. Walker’s final note in Bell’s Life was: “The last mate of the greatest player of the age cannot be contemplated without feelings of peculiar interest. In chess, he dies, as he has lived, a conqueror.” He also said de la Bourdonnais “began a second game, but could only play a few moves, severe indisposition coming on.” 34. Qb3† Kf6?? Walker pointed out that if 34. … Qd5? White wins by 35. Bc4. Neither Walker not Staunton examined the consequences of 34. … Kd7!, probably not wanting to spoil a good story. Computer engines give the assessment 0.00, but we can be sure that de la Bourdonnais would have tried to win from here because there are still opportunities for his opponent to go wrong, e.g., 35.  Qb7†! Ke6 36. Bc4†! K×f5 37. Q×f7† Kg4 (Black had to find three “only” moves.) 38. Be6† Kh4! (After 38. … R×e6 39. Q×e6† the master might yet achieve something in the queen endgame.) 39. Qf6† Kh5 when White has various ways of forcing a draw but nothing better than that. 35. Qc3† Ke6 36. Qe5† Kd7 37. Qd6† Kc8 38. Ba6 mate (1–0). Staunton wrote that “The game is admirably contested throughout, but the play of De La Bourdonnais at the latter part of it, is especially commendable.”

The Early Years of Staunton’s C.P.C. The Times of 3 May 1841 carried an advertisement (similar to those in other news-

papers at the weekend) which began with the word CHESS in bold type. CHESS.—Just published, No. 1, price 6d. (to be continued weekly) of the new series of the BRITISH MISCELLANY, and Chess Player’s Chronicle, containing, besides other matter, original chess games, problems etc. The Chess Chronicle is published under the auspices of the principal chess clubs in Great Britain. It is conducted by one of the most distinguished professors in Europe….9

This “most distinguished professor” was not named. The chess columnist of the Bath and Cheltenham Gazette, Elijah Williams, had seen an early issue of the Miscellany. He said the chess editor was “a gentleman not unknown to us, who is understood to be one of the finest chess-players in Europe”: meaning Staunton. Then on 8 June, Williams noted that “the proprietors have been induced to remodel the plan of the work,” the chess editor being “aided by Mr. [William] Lewis, the eminent chess-professor, and the leading amateurs of the Metropolis.” So it was, in fact, on 1 May 1841 that The British Miscellany and Chess Player’s Chronicle first appeared, on a weekly schedule, and later it also became possible to buy it in monthly Parts.10 The printer was now William Stevens of Bell Yard, Temple Bar, but R. Hastings was still the publisher. It may be that Hastings was in some way protecting his investment by transforming the magazine and bringing in Staunton to replace Hemming Webb, but no actual details of the financial arrangements are known. The Morning Post of 31 July 1841 carried an appreciative review of the new magazine, which began as follows: We have before us several numbers of a new periodical entitled The Chess-Player’s Chronicle, devoted almost exclusively to this most ancient and renowned of games. The ability and judgment with which it is up got up merit the acknowledgments of all chess amateurs, and as these have now become a numerous class it ought to obtain extensive patronage….

6. The Saga of the Chess Player’s Chronicle Some further good reviews followed, for example in the Morning Advertiser of 3 September: We have perused several numbers of this work, illustrative of the sublime game in which great men have delighted, and we are convinced that all chess-players who will be persuaded to spare a glance at the work, will thank us for recommending it to their attention, as a valuable standard of elementary instruction and practical reference.

That could have been useful, not only for gaining new subscribers, but also advertisers for this exciting novelty, a chess magazine. A few weeks later, Bell’s Weekly Messenger added its own commendation: This is a very useful work for chess-players; the problems are very ingenious, and the one on the cover we have not been yet able to solve. It has afforded us so much amusement and instruction in the game, that we can strongly recommend this work to all lovers of chess.

The early issues contained some nonchess articles, which soon disappeared, and after volume one The British Miscellany tag itself was dropped. Staunton’s profile in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography states incorrectly that the start year of the Chronicle was 1840, but this may eventually be corrected in the online edition of the dictionary. This error used to be prevalent in old sources but it is surprising now to see it repeated in an eminent reference work. Several other newspapers carried early advertisements for the new magazine, such as Bell’s Life and The Era on 2 May, the Morning Chronicle on 15 May, with more following in June. The new publication may have been of specialist interest but in the present case, this was an advantage. It was thus distinguished from the ordinary run of literary weeklies and monthlies among which Hemming Webb had failed to find a niche. As Whyld noted in an article in Q.C.H.8, the dates on the early volumes of the Chronicle are often stated incorrectly. This arose from

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the practice (with many Victorian periodicals) of issuing to subscribers a title page and index along with the first issue of the subsequent volume, and the title page sometimes had the new year on it instead of the one in which the contents had actually appeared. Whyld pointed out that volumes IV, V, VI and IX of C.P.C. all had the year of binding rather than that of publication on the title page, while volume XII had XI printed in error on the title page. Murray apparently at first believed that the “1841” on the title page of volume 1 was an error of this type. Whyld established that volume 1 of The British Miscellany and Chess Player’s Chronicle had 26 numbers and ran to 23 October 1841. This can be confirmed by the advertisement which appeared in the Morning Post on 20 October saying that: On the 30th … will be published Vol. 1 of THE CHESS-PLAYER’S CHRONICLE, illustrated with an Engraving of the celebrated Automaton ChessPlayer, and 50 Diagrams of Critical Positions by the leading Players in Europe. This work may be had in Weekly Numbers, price 6d., and in Monthly Parts.

Early issues in the first volume contained several lengthy articles unrelated to chess which presumably had been written or commissioned for the Miscellany. Hemming Webb himself wrote on the philosophy of education and there were some unsigned articles, for example on the life of Galileo. When these were exhausted, Staunton filled space by reprinting lengthy chess-historical articles by the antiquarians the Hon. Daines Barrington (1727– 1800) and Francis Douce (1757–1834) as well as by Sir Frederic Madden of the British Museum; these had originally been published long before in the journal Archaeologia. Reprinted, these now became available to a wider audience. Volume 1, as it is usually to be found today in original volumes or reprints, includes near the front this engraving depicting Kempelen’s “automaton” and a much enlarged

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version of the article about it that had appeared in the Miscellany. The pages containing the article are Roman numeraled from iii to xviii, ending with a game Lewis played when he was operating the machine. He was almost certainly the author, or wrote it in conjunction with Staunton. While it is not entirely clear when this article actually appeared, it was not mentioned in the early advertisements, and the reviews cited below suggest that it was the final number of the volume in October. If so, it was well judged as a bonus to encourage subscribers to renew. Also some new readers may have bought a complete volume as a result of this advertisement. The conclusion of the first volume also led the Morning Advertiser, on 5 November, to repeat its recommendation of the Chronicle. As well as saying that the numbers before them “maintain the previous reputation of their predecessors in all problems of the game,” but the addition of this detailed account of the automaton player “will be read with great interest by many who may not be adepts of the royal game.” The Morning Post, next day, agreed that the 27 first numbers now made into a volume presented “perhaps the most interesting treatise that has yet appeared on the subject of the famous game to which it is devoted.” The extensive collection of actual games contained therein, especially those between McDonnell and de la Bourdonnais, gave to the work “a freshness and spirit quite distinct from the formality of ordinary treatises.” The review column of The Era on 7 November also praised the work, noting that “foreign contributors lend their aid to perfect the good design, by forwarding problems for solution.” The reviewer noted that the editor had met the objection that chess was too absorbing a game, and quoted from Staunton’s reply to “A Young Student” in which he reminded that “Chess is unquestionably the finest game known; but still it is only a game.” Thus far we have followed the origin and development of Staunton’s venture in some

detail, and seen how it came to succeed where a more conventional literary predecessor had failed. It is not necessary to examine his subsequent volumes in any great detail, but some highlights will be picked out for mention. Volume 2, which had 27 numbers, then ran from 30 October 1841 to 30 April 1842 while volume 3, which had 26 issues, ran from 7 May to 29 October 1842. This schedule provided a break which left Staunton with two free months to travel to Paris for his great match against the French champion, Saint-Amant. Subsequent volumes were published on a calendar year basis. Staunton was to continue editing the magazine for another decade. As he was to do later when he took the helm at the Illustrated London News, Staunton made good use of the Notices to Correspondents section in most issues of the Chronicle. Historians should always pay as much attention to these as to the formal articles for they sometimes contain snippets or clues unavailable elsewhere. Some of his replies are of course rather tedious, being no more than acknowledgments of private communications, or those that comment on attempts to solve the problems in the magazine. Several, though, provide basic factual information which it is useful to know, for example that “The subscription to the London Chess Club is three guineas per annum; no entrance fee.”11 Or that the Chronicle went to the press on Wednesdays, and that by paying eight shillings per quarter to the publisher, it could be received by post on the morning after publication.12 On the same page as the latter, Staunton informs “Subscriber” of the score of games played between Stanley and himself at the odds of pawn and two moves. Other replies relate to historical queries from readers while some encourage the formation of chess clubs, for example in Brighton (early in volume two). Staunton often comments on submitted games or problems, which sometimes are said to be not up to the mark. He advises, usually patiently on rules to novices, for example, “A piece can-

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A two-page spread from the first volume of The Chess Player’s Chronicle, specifically the number which Whyld dated to 11 September 1841. Note the running header in which The British Miscellany is still mentioned, and the reply to “Post-Captain” (evidently William Davies Evans) in which Staunton attacks Walker.

not be taken during the act of Castling.”13 Sometimes he gives advice to players, as when (volume 2, page 317) he tells “R.G.” that, other things equal, “two Bishops are better at the latter end of a game than two Knights.” Occasional items are quite spicy, when Staunton turns his acerbic wit on a target, although they can be tantalizing when it is uncertain who that target may be, as well as the correspondent’s own identity, disguised by initials or a pseudonym. Here are some examples. On page 191 of volume 2, Staunton replied to an “old friend,” self-styled “Veteran,” that “The drivelling, despicable puppy he mentions,

is not worth castigating.” Usually, though, it is a good guess that Walker is the target for whom Staunton delighted in inventing new terms of abuse. By 1841 Staunton had surpassed Walker as a player and his increasing journalistic activity created professional rivalry. An anonymous pamphlet early that year made fun of the new edition of Walker’s Treatise.14 In the very first issue of The British Miscellany and Chess Player’s Chronicle, Staunton drew attention to this in sarcastic terms, in two different replies to correspondents, using language more scathing than the jocular tone of the

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pamphlet itself. He spoke of “the egregious conceit and deplorable ignorance which this Titmouse of Chess professors exhibits in his lucubrations upon the game” and whose “puerilities” were laughable.15 We can also instance this reply to “R.A.” on pages 10 and 11 of the first volume. The new Chess Club may probably exist for twelve months; but no Club can take a lasting stand while its interests are made subservient to the vanity and caprice of any individual. The person holding the situation alluded to is peculiarly unfitted for the office;—no Club in which he has been permitted to take an active part, and we remember several, has ever obtained a permanent establishment; and none, we feel convinced, subjected to such influence, ever will.

Walker is not named there, but he had been involved in the Percy Club in the 1820s (well before Staunton’s time), and then the Westminster Chess Club in the 1830s, which went through some vicissitudes, Staunton himself sometimes involved. Most recently Walker had started the St. George’s Chess Club which, when first established in 1840, soon failed. However the St. George’s, when re-established in 1841 at the Polytechnic Institute, before transferring elsewhere, was to outlive Staunton. A passage on page 31 of volume 2 of the Chronicle shows that Staunton was constrained in his attacks on Walker by the laws of libel, and perhaps had been warned about this by his printer and publisher, who would have been codefendants if any writ had been served. QUID-NUNC’s Account of the Formation and Dissolution of the Westminster Chess Club would subject us as he must be aware to an action. Divested of many inadmissible personalities, his description would be well deserving a place in our Magazine.

The second volume of the Chronicle is considerably more interesting than the first from the point of view of a practicing chess player, and provides more information about the chess activity in Britain in the early 1840s,

but the context in which the editor was working must be remembered. Staunton was trying to fill his pages with varied material of interest to gentlemen of leisure and at the same time he needed to work out for himself what balance of material a chess magazine should contain—a task that Walker had failed in a few years previously. Compared with the material available to magazine editors even one decade later, Staunton was working at a time when there was a great dearth of quality games to publish and indeed of chess news in general to be reported. It was not until 1849—his tenth volume—that there was a chess tournament in England on which he could report. That was the knockout tournament held in Ries’s Divan early in that year. Match play, rather than tournaments, and correspondence games (very popular in the early 1840s when the Penny Post was still a novelty) provided much of the available material, together with games played in the past and casual games. In many of the games there was a wide divergence in strength between the contestants and odds were frequently given to equalize the chances of success between opponents of widely differing skill. So the games available for publication were often of poor quality, although in volume 3 at least Staunton had a wealth of material available in the many games he played against John Cochrane, then back in London on furlough from his work in India. Then on page 127 of volume 4, early in 1843, the Chronicle reported that Cochrane had departed for his second spell in India. It was not unusual in the 1840s to publish games without giving the names of the players in full. Just looking at the early pages of the Chronicle’s second volume shows that Staunton was inconsistent about this, or perhaps he followed rules not quite familiar to us. Sometimes there is no indication of names, for example “Between two Amateurs of the Berlin Chess Club” on page 21 of volume two, whereas de la Bourdonnais and Alexander

6. The Saga of the Chess Player’s Chronicle McDonnell, being both deceased, are named on page 26. Often Staunton as in the example from the Miscellany cited above, would print only the first initial of his opponents and identify himself as “St——n.” Zytogorski is named in full on page 5 although he loses the game (to Staunton). The Bristol player Williams also had his full surname printed. It is possible that Staunton asked people whether they minded having their full name published. Sometimes the last letter of a surname was also printed, or ancillary information provided, which enables the reader sometimes to work out who was involved. For example, P— —T was likely to be Popert, while Cochrane played numerous games with Staunton and is generally identified as “Mr. C——E.” In the case of a game on page 4 of the second volume we are told it was between “Mr. M——n, the President, and Dr. M——n, another skilful Player, of the Liverpool Chess Club.” Just a casual acquaintance with the chess personalities of the day is probably sufficient for the reader to guess that White was Augustus Mongredien, Sr., the economist, while reference to the membership list of the Liverpool club may lead us to the conclusion that Mongredien’s opponent was Dr. W. T. Morrison,” since J. S. Edgar’s Short Sketch of the Liverpool Chess Club shows Morrison was elected a member in 1840.16 There are not many such club membership lists. Volume 2 of the Chronicle has numerous games by Staunton, especially against Cochrane, but sometimes one has to guess, or it may be impossible to determine, who was his opponent. There are several games in which he gave odds of pawn and two moves to a Mr. “B——N,” and Staunton even lost one of them. He became notorious for not publishing his losses but was fairer when it came to players he liked or respected. The first two of these games were reprinted in the Oxford Encyclopaedia of Chess Games on page 74, giving the name of White as “Brown, J.” and the Chron-

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icle as the source, and moreover calling it a match (for which there is no evidence). There are at least three plausible opponents but the most likely candidate is the man who, described as “Mr. J—B——N, Temple” contributed problems published on pages 145 and 158 of this same volume, and some “problems for young players later.” Townsend has identified him as the barrister Joseph Brown QC, whom Staunton’s obituary in the Westminster Papers was to name as one of his early opponents. On balance, he is probably right though there can be no certainty.17 Here is one of their games.

J. Brown–Howard Staunton London 1841 C.P.C., II, pages 97–98. “Game CLXXXI between Messrs. B—n and St—n; the latter giving the Pawn and two moves.” Remove Black’s pawn from f7; White makes the first two moves. 1. e4 AND 2. d4 e6 3. Bd3 c5 4. d5 d6 5. c4 e×d5 6. c×d5 Nf6 7. Nc3 Bg4 8. f3 Bh5 9. g4 Bf7 10. Bf4 a6 11. a4 Be7 12. Nge2 0–0 13.  Qd2 Nbd7 14.  Ng3 Bg6 15.  Nf5 Ne8 16. Ke2 Ne5 17. B×e5 d×e5 18. h4 (see diagram)

After 18. h4

rDw1n4kD DpDwgw0p pDwDwDbD Dw0P0NDw PDwDPDP) DwHBDPDw w)w!KDwD $wDwDwDR

18. … Nd6 Black might have gained the Rook’s Pawn by taking the Knight, but in doing so at this point he would have strengthened the enemy’s position. 19. b3 19. h5 would have been better play. 19. … Rc8 20. Bc2 B×f5 21. g×f5 B×h4 22.  Rag1 Nf7 23.  Rg4 Bg5 24.  Qe1 h6

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25.  Qg3 c4 26.  b4 Qb6 27.  R×g5 N×g5 28. Q×e5 Rce8 29. Qg3 Q×b4 30. f4 Qb2 This move was certainly stronger than playing the Knight. 31. f×g5 Q×c2† 32. Kf1 R×e4 33. N×e4 Q×e4 34. Rh2 R×f5† 35. Rf2 Qb1† 36. Ke2 Qb2† “After a few moves White abandoned the game.” 0–1. There was little chess news as such in the Chronicle. However, as with the chess columns in periodicals and newspapers, careful reading of the answers to correspondents often reveals useful snippets of information, such as that another match between Staunton and Popert was envisaged. In a chess magazine nowadays one would expect to find opening theory articles but these would not be a feature until volume three. There were, however, some elementary endgame articles. There were also explanations of how to win with two bishops, or with bishop and knight, against a bare king. Later the ending of queen against two knights was discussed, correctly saying this can be impossible to win if the knights defend each other. Then the method of drawing with bishop against rook was presented. One indication of the level of education expected of readers was that numerous pages, in several successive numbers, were devoted to Vida’s poem Scacchia Ludus in the original Latin. William Lewis (from his book First Series of Progressive Lessons on the Game of Chess) contributed the text of the laws of chess “as lately revised by a committee of the London Chess Club,” saying that an attempt had recently been made (presumably in one of Walker’s books) “to introduce into the Chess Clubs some new, and, I venture to add, ridiculous laws.” In volume 3 (May to October 1842) Staunton translated an opening theory article by Kieseritzky, taken from the Palamède, dealing with a new way of handling the Queen’s Gambit Accepted for Black: 1. d4 d5 2. c4 d×c4 3. e4 f5!? 4. e3 Be6. Later in the volume came a review, by a German contributor, of

Jaenisch’s French language openings work (discussed in Chapter 7). There were also some elementary opening articles and endgame articles. The magazine took a two-month break while Staunton went to Paris, where his victory over Saint-Amant in Paris established him as the premier player, though certainly not world champion as some have claimed on his behalf, for there was no such championship in the 1840s. On his return to London, Staunton switched to monthly publication with volumes covering a calendar year, starting with the first issue of volume 4 in January 1843. He did this for four years although volume 6 was the last to have the name of R. Hastings as publisher on the title page. The content gradually became more varied, but the expectations of a gentleman’s education remained high. Pages 151–155 of volume 5 consisted of Saint-Amant’s reply to Staunton in Le Palamède, about a possible return match, “without comment and in the original French, despairing of doing justice to this unique production in a translation.” The matter was discussed in English on pages 124–128 and 159– 160 (the latter, signed “An Englishman,” perhaps being one of Staunton’s famous “anonymous” letters of support that he wrote himself.) Eventually Staunton traveled to Paris, leaving London some time in October 1844. By this stage he had either published, or left with the printer, the greater part of that year’s volume, with the November issue either out early or ready to be distributed in his absence. He presumably had some assistants in London to handle business, if not editorial matters, during an absence which he probably expected would be of only about four weeks. He probably hoped, indeed expected, to fill the final issue of the year with an account of a new victory over Saint-Amant, but it was not to be. Bell’s Life in London had reported on 13 October that the match was to start on the 17th but probably not all details had definitely

6. The Saga of the Chess Player’s Chronicle been settled about the terms of the new match before Staunton’s arrival in the French capital. On the 20th Bell’s Life said that “Mr. Staunton has been in Paris some days, and conditions are being arranged,” with the match now expected to commence the following week. Staunton had hoped that Captain Evans (of the gambit) could accompany him as second but when Evans was unavailable, “Mr. Wilson at once dashed off ” to Paris to act as umpire and secretary, only to find Staunton in his sickbed at the Hotel de Lille. On the 27th of October Bell’s Life reported that “Mr. Staunton caught cold on his journey to Paris, and has had a severe attack, in consequence, of inflammation on the lungs.” Staunton fell gravely ill with pneumonia in France and then, after appearing to recover in early November, he had a relapse. He was finally out of danger but warned not to travel. When reading these accounts, we must bear in mind the time lags for news to travel by horse-drawn carriage and ship between the two capitals. This was a decade before the cross- channel telegraph was instituted and the post then took several days each way. Staunton, convalescing. removed to the home of an American resident in Paris, Thomas Jefferson Bryan, where he stayed until some time in January 1845. There were still hopes early in the New Year that the match might take place, but the Illustrated London News reported on 18 January 1845 (which is before Staunton took over that column) that the English master, still weak after illness, would play only in a private room with seconds but Saint-Amant refused, so Staunton went home. Arguments were to continue in the English and French press for many months afterwards about whether Saint-Amant had any real intention of playing the “revenge” match he had sought. It is fairly clear from reading the final issue of volume 5 that it cannot have been published until late in January 1845, with the publication of volume 6 not commencing

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until February or March. Staunton and SaintAmant set to debating, in their respective magazines, their self-justifications for why the match had never taken place and what conditions each had been demanding. The respected veteran Harry Wilson, who had accompanied Staunton to France for part of the 1842 match, wrote on 7 February 1845 from the Isle of Wight to Saint-Amant a letter which the latter published in his magazine Le Palamède in both French and English.18 Wilson apologized for “a hasty and intemperate expression” used by Staunton in the last issue of the Chronicle, namely the word “violate.” Wilson said that “to witness such a scurrilous attack as is made upon you in the last number … must be sensibly felt and deplored by every English gentleman, and if all entertain the same opinion as I do, they will never open another page of such printed indecencies.” The passage Wilson objected to actually appears near the end of volume 5—that is, in the issue that was nominally for December 1844, on page 393, where Staunton had written (in a letter to SaintAmant) at an uncertain date during November 1844: My sole object, however, in visiting Paris, was to play the match; and although you have thought it proper to violate your oft-repeated promises to modify the unjust and one-sided conditions of our former contest, I am still most anxious to carry into effect the purpose for which I came here.

The sixth volume of the Chronicle covers the year 1845 but the fact that the title page says 1846, for reasons explained above, has led several historians into new error. A clear example can be found on page 124 of Gaige’s Chess Personalia, where he gives the date of death of the Irish player Charles Forth (who died in 1845) as 27 July 1846, giving as his reference “C.P.C. 1846, p. 281.” This is a trap that any historian working with Victorian publications must be aware of. Early in volume six, on pages 63–64, we

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find Staunton’s announcement that the proposed re-match is definitely off. “After three months’ residence in Paris, the debility consequent on his alarming illness, has compelled Mr. Staunton to seek his native shores again, without the satisfaction of accomplishing the purpose of his journey.” Staunton repeated his challenge to Saint-Amant to play another match in England, but also averred that the Frenchman “has vainly tried by every subterfuge to avoid an encounter he has neither the skill nor courage to undertake,” which (whatever you think of Staunton’s own rather devious character) may well have been true.19 When Staunton attended the meeting of the Yorkshire Chess Association in Leeds on 14 May 1845, he traveled up from London with Bryan, and took the opportunity of his speech at the Leeds dinner to thank Bryan profusely for his care during his illness “which brought him to death’s door.” For a month Bryan had watched by his sickbed: “No day, scarcely for an hour, was this true Samaritan absent from his sick room.” 20 Then Bryan tended Staunton in his own home for two months, and finally “he boldly took up his pen in defence of his cause against the misstatements of his opponent” by writing a pamphlet (in French) about it. Bryan was loudly applauded at the meeting and replied briefly.21 On 22 February 1845 Staunton also began to conduct the chess column in the Illustrated London News, where he obtained a wider and indeed almost worldwide audience, but for nearly another decade the Chronicle was the principal organ in which he could conduct his personal feuds. One of his difficulties was that after Cochrane’s return to India, Staunton had no regular sparring partner with whom he was on roughly level terms as a player, having instead to give odds to inferior players to keep in practice. Late in 1847, for example, he commenced a match, giving his usual odds of pawn and two moves, against Eduard Löwe,

a hotel-keeper, and at the start of volume 8 (1848) Staunton began to publish the games. Then Staunton lost the match and never published the later games which he had promised to do. This gave new ammunition to his enemies in the chess world and occasioned the publication of a small book by a friend of Löwe, which related the saga and included the games Staunton had lost.22 The title page for volume 7 of the Chronicle (1846) names H. Hurst as the new publisher. Then in volume 8 for 1847 Staunton experimented with a return to weekly publication, for reasons which are unclear but were possibly a commercial decision dictated by Hurst. The pagination of that volume is complicated but Whyld worked it out in detail.23 Most numbers had eight pages and were priced at three pence, but the 52nd, dated Christmas Day, was double the size but priced at nine pence. Presumably this change cannot have been a success, at least from Staunton’s point of view, because page 412 announced that “to enable the proprietors … to carry out the improvements they contemplate in the Magazine, it has been found desirable to discontinue the Weekly Numbers.” The next issue would appear on 31 January 1848. Staunton thus returned to monthly publication in 1848, with Hurst continuing as publisher, but the title page for volume XI announces C. J. Skeet as publisher. This change must have occurred in 1850 or 1851. In the year 1851 the organization of the London chess tournament consumed many of Staunton’s energies, and this together with, in 1852, his book of the tournament, made him some new enemies. His enthusiasm for conducting a chess magazine was probably lessening after a decade of this fairly intensive type of work. The first run of the Chronicle continued to the end of volume 13 in 1852. While there was no apparent reason from the content itself why a New Series should be announced, a change of publisher must have been the rea-

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A two-page spread from volume XI (1850) of The Chess Player’s Chronicle, showing a typical presentation of a game between two experts in Staunton’s day.

son. Skeet was now publishing the rival British Chess Review (see previous chapter), requiring a new start from Staunton. The title page for the first volume of the new series (incorrectly dated 1854) names W. Kent as publisher. This volume, with monthly issues of 32 pages, was actually published during 1853 in direct competition with Staunton’s great rival, Harrwitz. This was Staunton’s last full year as editor as he became increasingly involved in his Shakespearian studies. However, his contract with the publisher Routledge to edit Shakespeare’s complete plays was dated 28 April 1856, which shows that he wished to divest himself of the magazine long before then, relying on his income from the Illustrated London News and perhaps other occasional writ-

ings. Negotiations with Routledge had probably taken some time and Staunton would have needed to prepare and show them some completed work, perhaps more than one play, before obtaining their agreement.24 However there were probably two other reasons why Staunton did not quit the Chronicle at an earlier date. Firstly, rather than just close it (which would be an unacceptable failure), Staunton wanted to find a reasonably capable successor, and moreover one who would pay money to acquire the title from him. Most important of all, though, Staunton first wanted to see through to the end of the competition from Harrwitz and it was only after the Review closed down that Staunton was ready to retire from the magazine.

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Brien’s Tenure of the Chronicle The life and career of Howard Staunton is very well known; the same cannot be said of his chosen successor, Brien, whom the editors of Oxford Companion to Chess did not deem worthy of an entry. The reference work Alumni Oxoniensis 1715–1886, which gives brief details of men who attended Oxford University during that period, provides a little background information on him. Brien was said to be the son of a gentleman from Clerkenwell, London, but Townsend has further discovered that Brien went to school at St. Paul’s College and that his father was a naval officer.25 Brien matriculated on 7 June 1845 at the age of 18. Unusually, he appears to have changed colleges, because Balliol was given at his college for matriculation, but by the time he took his BA in 1850 Brien had migrated to Lincoln College. In 1853 Brien took his MA there. This did not require passing any examinations but meant he was now a senior member of the university, entitled to vote in certain elections and no longer subject to the discipline of the university proctors. Brien also joined Lincoln’s Inn in 1853 (preparatory to training as an advocate), but he never was called to the Bar, because if he had been, his name should appear in the Black Books of the Inn. Brien had been one of the founder members, during 1847, of the Hermes, Oxford University’s first chess club, which was centered on, but not confined to, Lincoln College.26 During the academic year 1847–1848 the Hermes Club played a correspondence match against Trinity College Cambridge, winning one game and drawing the other. This match was reported in the Chronicle and that may be how Brien and Staunton first came into contact. In 1851 Brien was one of ten competitors in the Provincial Tournament that was sub-

sidiary to the international tournament. This was a knockout competition, arranged as minimatches for the best of three games, draws not counting. In the first round Brien defeated John Salusbury-Trelawny, M.P. for Tavistock in Devon (and heir to a baronetcy), by 2–0. As there were five first-round winners but only four prizes, lots were then drawn to see who should play an extra elimination round; Ranken and Deacon were drawn, and Ranken was successful. In the first semifinal, Ranken defeated a Mr. Hodges of Reading, probably W(illiam?) Hodges junior, then honorary secretary of the Reading and Berkshire Chess Club.27 Brien was paired with the strong amateur Samuel Standidge Boden and managed to draw the first game with Black. He was then the beneficiary of an extraordinary blunder as, in the second game, Boden failed to notice that Brien’s 10th move Ne5 attacked his queen on d7. Boden then got down to business and won Games 3 and 4. He then beat Ranken 2–1 in the final. Brien and Hodges played off for the third and fourth prizes. After a draw, Hodges won the second and fourth games while Brien won game three, so the young Oxford man had to be content with fourth prize. The tournament book was to comment on page lxxi: “The fault in these games was a merit when contrasted with others in the Tournament. They were played too rapidly.” In the mid–1850s, after coming to London, Brien was a frequenter of Kling’s Chess Rooms, in New Oxford Street, and its successor, the McDonnell Chess Club and played numerous matches in the mid–1850s. Canadian chess historian and statistician Professor Rod Edwards has calculated that Brien was already of FIDE Master strength in the early 1850s, reaching International Master level by 1854 and gives him a peak rating of 2465 in 1858. Brien won a match 11–6 (with six draws) on level terms against F. G. Janssens, and was approximately level with both

6. The Saga of the Chess Player’s Chronicle Ernst Falkbeer and Adolphus Zytogorski in long series of games. Whereas in 1850 Brien scored 8–5 against Williams in two short matches in which he received pawn and two moves from the Bristol expert, by 1853 only Löwenthal and Staunton could give Brien odds, and by no means with success all the time. A match on level terms between Brien and Löwenthal was contemplated at one point, says Sergeant. So Brien’s playing qualifications to be a chess magazine editor, while certainly not equal to Staunton’s, were by no means negligible. He liked writing, as a letter in the Illustrated London News on 27 December 1851 shows. There he argued in favor of time limits being imposed on players, pointing out that there had been calls in the French parliament to limit the duration of speeches and that university examinations were subject to definite time schedules. Brien’s writings are best remembered, though, for the polemics he wrote in support of Staunton and the 1851 tournament. The pen of “Oxoniensis” (as he styled himself ) was always ready at Staunton’s service. For example, on page 26 of the 1851 volume of the Chronicle, he wrote a letter in support of the tournament from the point of view of a provincial player. A game won by him was printed by Staunton on pages 65–66. Later, when Staunton’s plans for the tournament met with hostility from the London Chess Club, “Oxoniensis” was one of several allies whom Staunton rallied to the cause (on pages 91–93 of the same volume). Subsequently, it is clear from page lxiii of the Introduction that Brien wrote substantial amounts of the tournament book concerning Staunton’s part in the project “to relieve me from a duty that could not with propriety be omitted, and was yet difficult for me to discharge without a measure of egotism that might be unbecoming.” In short, while Silas Angas of Newcastle may have been for many years the leader of Staunton’s orchestra, Brien was certainly the loudest player in the trumpet section. More-

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over, he made a financial contribution also. The list of subscribers to the expenses of the tournament (on page lix of the book) shows that Brien also contributed a one guinea donation in addition to his one guinea entry fee. Brien’s involvement in chess increased after his time in Oxford was over. In 1853 there were some curious items in the press concerning a testimonial being subscribed for Staunton. On 30 October, an answer to correspondents appeared in Bell’s Life saying that the money collected for him “was paid to that gentleman, at his own request, in the month of September, 1852, at which time the board containing the list of subscriptions was removed from the place it had occupied for more than a year on the chimney-piece of a room in the St. George’s Chess Club, and the affair was then considered finally settled.” Yet now it seemed, new subscriptions were being solicited, and the treasurer of the fund was Brien, at the St. George’s Club. A somewhat disingenuous confirmation of this appeared in the I.L.N. on 12 November 1853 saying: “The present treasurer to the fund is R. B. Brien, Esq., of the St. George’s Chess-club, a note to whom will obtain you all of the particulars; which we cannot furnish, knowing nothing whatever of the details.” This mysterious matter of the testimonial, or testimonials, to raise money for Staunton have received little or no attention in the past, not being mentioned by Sergeant for example, and it remains unclear who instigated the subscription(s) or how much money was raised. Brien’s role at the St. George’s Club is also unclear. At some point, on Staunton’s proposal, Brien was elected as the new honorary secretary of the St. George’s Chess Club, which had hosted the tournament. From 1 January 1854 the club had moved to premises in St. James’s Street, its previous lease having expired, and at this point Löwenthal took up a paid position with the club, although the details are somewhat unclear due to a

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contradiction in Sergeant’s account of the matter. * A few months later Brien became proprietor and editor of the Chronicle. Perhaps a career in the law would have been suitable for Brien but it is doubtful whether he ever made much effort to qualify as a barrister. It seems he preferred to play chess and to assume the honor and responsibility of being Staunton’s successor, although he was far from being Staunton’s equal as a player nor could he match his eloquent style as a writer. Townsend has shown that it was in July 1854 Staunton sold the Chronicle magazine and signed over the copyright to Brien.28 The first issue under the new editorship was therefore that for August 1854 which included the following announcement of Staunton’s retirement on page 225, headed Address To Our Readers. It was either written by Brien, or perhaps a text was agreed by the two men: A change in the proprietorship and management of the Chess Player’s Chronicle obliges us to make a few remarks to our readers. For nearly fifteen years Mr. Staunton has been the sole editor, and for most of that time the proprietor of this periodical. It is not too much to say, that it has been mainly through his ability and tact that the Chess Player’s Chronicle has been supported with undiminished vigour for so many years. There has arisen frequently the competition of friendly rivals; sometimes a passing acrimony has stirred up an enemy, but experience has proved that the old magazine has had lasting claims upon the chess community, and that other periodicals, whether through the freak of fortune, or through inattention or even incompetency, have not met with equal favour from the public. It is therefore with deep regret that the present proprietors announce Mr. Staunton’s retirement from his editorial labours. Declining health, increasing business, and a more assiduous devotion to the higher and nobler portions

of literature have, we believe, led to his determination. At the same time, we may state with satisfaction that the new managers have established the most friendly relations with the retiring editor. He has placed at their disposal much valuable matter, and has intimated his intention of continuing this kind assistance from time to time. On our side, as representing the proprietors, we may promise that our best endeavours will be used to preserve unimpaired the honour of the Chess Player’s Chronicle. We shall imitate the fearlessness of the late editor. We should not deserve the name of journalists, if, by the adoption of any other standard save that of merit, we were to select games for publication, or afterwards subject them to criticism. In analysis, we trust to show patient painstaking and unwearied industry, of which few appreciate the labour, but all reap the advantage. The scientific character of the game will be developed in accordance with new discoveries, and with the exactness with which it deserves to be treated. We shall also occasionally intersperse with the more serious matter lighter topics, such as reports of meetings affecting the interests of chess, and similar subjects. Every contribution that we receive will be carefully considered, and not dismissed without a searching examination; but we must once for all beg it to be understood that we cannot undertake to return rejected communications, nor yet to assign reasons for their rejection. We have under our consideration several methods of enhancing the interest of this periodical, which will be suggested as the time seems ripe for their discussion. We may however close these prefatory remarks by observing, that we meditate carrying out the idea entertained by the late editor, and intend either to give our subscribers occasionally an extra half sheet, or to reduce the price of the magazine. The latter alternative, it is obvious, cannot be adopted this year, on account of the arrangements which have been made with old subscribers, and which of course must be regarded as paramount to any other consideration.

*Sergeant, Century, page 88 (citing the contemporary C.P.C. of 1854 and a differing account in the Westminster Papers, written much later) says that Brien became Hon. Sec. when the club left the Polytechnic for St. James’s, with the reservation (in a footnote) that the club may have had a temporary home elsewhere for a time. However, in a reply to a correspondent of the I.L.N. on 11 March 1854 Staunton says 53 St. James’s Street, Piccadilly, is the address of the St. George’s. Yet on page 92 Sergeant says that when the St. George’s Club moved from the Polytechnic to St. James’s “Löwenthal was appointed paid secretary, Brien retiring from the honorary post.”

6. The Saga of the Chess Player’s Chronicle So the Chronicle continued with Brien at the helm, and the character of the content did not greatly change, with one important exception. The covers (available for many of the issues at the British Library) continued to carry lists of the chess clubs of England with contact details, which was a most valuable service that Staunton had begun a few years earlier. The exception was that Brien, who appears at some point to have severed his connection with the St. George’s Club, gave increasing coverage to play elsewhere in London, and distanced himself more and more from his old mentor. Close study of the volume for 1855 is most revealing in this respect. On page 67 Brien even had the temerity to publish a game he had won in only 20 moves from Staunton, admittedly receiving the latter’s favorite odds of odds of pawn and two moves, following another game at the same odds which was drawn. The implication was that Brien was telling his readers he was close to being able to engage Staunton on level terms. A few weeks later, there is another pair of games and they win one each. More seriously perhaps, for Staunton was quick to take offense, Brien began to write things to which he may have objected. On page 104 he wrote “There is no room for a ROBESPIERRE in Chess.” Later on the same page he announces that in the match between him and Staunton at the usual odds, Brien leads 3–1 with one draw and “the match has been suspended through the indisposition of Mr. Staunton.” Brien’s third win appears a few pages later. Then on page 176, in a brief obituary of Perigal, Brien credited him with fostering Staunton’s career; Sergeant identified this as the beginning of the breach between the two men. Staunton probably considered he owed Perigal nothing. These, though, were perhaps unintended slights. The same cannot be said of the article beginning on page 363 of the 1855 volume entitled “Senile illusions and delusions” which referred to “our contemporary,” meaning the

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other leading organ in the chess world of the time, the column in the Illustrated London News. Sergeant is correct in identifying this article as a slightly veiled attack on Staunton, who tended to write in his columns things disparaging of the current state of English chess. Since Brien gave no specific examples, we have to hunt for them, and they can be found. Thus on 1 September 1855 in reply to “An Old Spectator,” Staunton had written “There has been a great increase of third and fourth rate players of late years, but a serious falling off of higher grades…. There are not above three players, if so many, in the United Kingdom to whom a first-rate player like Labourdonnais could not give the Pawn and two moves and win without much difficulty.” Now de la Bourdonnais, it is true, was a player of great talent (probably the greatest who lived between Philidor and Paul Morphy) but the above statement is preposterous and must have seemed so to Brien and his friends at the McDonnell Club. The following week, when Staunton published a game he had won against Stanley, he included a note that referred to “the palmy days of Chess when the present games were fought.” The introduction to this game implied that there were not games of interest being played today so it was better to print old ones. It is fairly clear from reading Staunton’s column of this period that Brien was not attacking a “straw man” but really complaining about a genuine trend in Staunton’s writing. Indeed, further on in his article, Brien quoted that very phrase “the palmy days.” Brien’s article went on to say that standards in Chess were in fact rising and new men were appearing “upon the muster-roll of fine players.” The eyes of the “contemporary” did not see this. “His eyes always turn to the good old times in which Mr. STAUNTON gave ‘the Pawn and two moves’ to other English players.” What was wrong with even play, mocked Brien. It was a “mere matter-of-fact expression” whereas (here hinting at Staunton’s

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work on Shakespeare, in case anyone had missed previous hints of who the writer’s target might be) “the Pawn and two moves to the best players of the day might woo a listening Desdemona.” Coming directly to the point, Brien wrote that Staunton’s play was in clear decline. He could have spared himself the remainder of the article which only hammered home the same points less subtly. Brien may have felt he had scored a victory but he may well have lost himself dozens of subscribers thereby for his next volume. After this the magazine went into decline. The fourth volume of the New Series came to an end after eight issues in August 1856. This included on page 225 a brief notice: “TO OUR CONTRIBUTORS. As this number will close the present series of the Chess-Player’s Chronicle, we take this opportunity of thanking our contributors for their valuable assistance.” Was the breach with the St. George’s Club, and with Staunton, which led to the Chronicle’s failing on Brien’s watch, cause or effect? The downfall of the magazine is usually attributed to Brien’s ill-health, possibly of the alcoholic variety. Tomlinson, in his memoirs published at the end of his life in British Chess Magazine, mentioned “Brien’s indulgence in a bad habit.” Philip W. Sergeant said Tomlinson meant drinking to excess.29 If so, Brien had originally chosen a career at the legal bar but ended up frequenting bars of a more liquid variety. Alternatively, given the easy availability of laudanum and other opiates in Victorian London, he possibly indulged in other drugs. Can anyone be certain it was (only) alcohol? Is there other evidence? For more than two years, until January 1859, there was no English chess magazine: the longest break. This was of course extremely unfortunate, not least because the important

Manchester 1857 and Birmingham 1858 tournaments did not receive contemporary coverage in a magazine. Most regrettable of all, though, is the absence of any magazine reporting on Paul Morphy’s first visit to England and his negotiations with Staunton over the match that never took place.

The Third Series At the start of 1859 the Chronicle was revived for the so-called Third Series. It was proudly announced in an advertisement on page 16 of the 2 January number of The Era, the same Sunday newspaper where Löwenthal’s column regularly appeared. The history of that series, which ended in July 1862, remains somewhat confused. Readers were informed: This day, Price One Shilling, No. 1 of the CHESS PLAYER’S CHRONICLE (Third Series). Contents:—Introduction.—The American Stars and the English Lions.—Six Games of the Match between Morphy and Anderssen.—Two Games of Löwenthal and Falkbeer, played at the Birmingham Chess Tournament.—Two Consultation Games, Staunton and Alter against Löwenthal and Barnes.—Games of Brien and Campbell.— Campbell and Wormald.—Morphy and Barnes.—Zytogorski and Falkbeer, etc., etc., and Four Problems by F. Healey, Esq., and R. B. Wormald, Esq. London: Published by J. H. STARIE, Philidorian Chess Rooms, 46 Rathboneplace.*

Starie was a bookseller, not a chess player of any note. An eight-page “list of cheap books” he offered for sale for cash, and dated April 1859, was bound (following page 128) in the New York Public Library copy of the 1859 volume of C.P.C. which has been digitized by Google Books. He had previous history as a publisher, having in 1850 published

*Rathbone Place is a street running north-west from the eastern end of Oxford Street in London, not far from where the entry to Tottenham Court Road subway station is now situated. “Alter” was a well-known nom-de-guerre of the Rev. John Owen. Löwenthal’s name lacked umlauts in the advertisement, presumably because they were not in the printer’s font.

6. The Saga of the Chess Player’s Chronicle A Guide to the British Museum by Henry Warren; at that date Starie’s business address was 59, Museum Street. As early as 1837 he published a periodical entitled Materials for Thinking , Extracted from the Works of Ancient and Modern Authors, “By an investigator.”30 Towards the end of 1858, Starie had become also the proprietor or business manager of the Philidorian Rooms, more or less as a sideline it seems likely. Löwenthal’s review of chess in the year 1858 (published in The Era on 26 December) noted that: “The Philidorian Rooms have been opened in Rathbone-place, and among the stars who shine in this new sphere are Messrs. Brien, Falkbeer and Zytogorski.” The chess rooms were located upstairs above Starie’s bookshop, as a July 1889 memoir for B.C.M. shows. Norwich attorney and chess writer John Odin Howard Taylor (1837–1890) described how during his time as a law student in London, from about the latter part of 1859, he used to frequent the Philidorian as it was close to his lodgings: There was a little book shop below, where one could buy the Chess Players’ [sic] Chronicle or Greco. One went up a modest staircase and turned to the right, entering a small room not over well supplied with chess boards and men, but where some of the greatest players of that day were wont to meet, sometimes vanishing into an inner chamber for whist…. The place being Anti-Stauntonian was “not fashionable”; nor had it the glory of the “Divan”…. Among the frequenters were Zytogorski, Harrwitz, Falkbeer, Campbell, Wormald, Healey, Kling, and Duffy, and many strong and enthusiastic amateurs….31

No editor was named at the start of the Third Series. Later accounts of the editorship vary but it seems probable that there were changes during the three and a half years the series lasted, and we discuss this question in detail a little further on. In the first issue, the unsigned introductory article looked back on the preceding years, and explained that: “The illness of those engaged on the first two series,

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and the impossibility of finding, at the last moment, successors with proper qualifications, were necessary causes of our temporary retirement from the scene of action.”32 Tantalizingly, the article continued by stating that “an accomplished Cambridge scholar” (possibly William Wayte?) was willing to undertake “for a time” the management of the magazine “if coadjutors could have been found.” Evidently they had not been found and so the period of silence ensued, and the missed opportunity to report on the European visit of Morphy, and important past events and games, some of which the advertisement had mentioned. In his column of 9 January, Löwenthal welcomed the magazine’s revival “as it cannot fail of benefiting the cause of chess in England.” He had one reservation, adding “If conducted with impartiality, it will no doubt command the success which we heartily wish it may obtain.” This was an indirect reference to the divisions in the capital’s chess life around the person of Staunton. In reply to an inquiry from a correspondent, Löwenthal wrote in the Era of 15 May 1859, that the Chronicle “is edited by the amateurs frequenting the [Philidorian] rooms, among whom Messrs. Brien, Wormald and Zytogorski are the chief.” This appears to confirm that Brien was certainly connected with it at least initially. After all, it was he who owned the title after buying it from Staunton, with whom he had subsequently fallen out. Brien at some point sold it on to Starie or licensed it. Therefore the Third Series can be considered a true successor to the original Chronicle. Zytogorski, too, had had a fallingout with Staunton; only Wormald of those named above was a lifelong friend of Staunton’s. As Sergeant said, several of the regulars at the Philidorian Rooms—including the three above and some of the others listed in the advertisement (Falkbeer, and Campbell especially)—were members of a coterie known to have frequented Starie’s establishment in

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preference to the Divan, and who in the mid– 1850s had been patrons of Kling’s chess rooms. It might be added that when those closed, having failed financially, some of them founded the McDonnell Chess Club. Diggle stated vaguely that the editorial was “under Kolisch, Zytogorski and Kling” but admitted in his B.C.M. article that he “had not succeeded in obtaining access” to the Third Series, so presumably he was relying on Sergeant for that misleading information. The involvement of Kolisch only began in May 1861 when there was a clear statement of editorial change, which probably signaled the end of Brien and Wormald’s involvement. The view that the editorship was initially a collaborative effort also seems to have been Philip Sergeant’s judgment on the question. He was, of course, far closer in time than we to the events and personalities of those days, but he was unable to find out who the editor might have been. In a footnote on page 104 of his Century of British Chess, we may read a partial answer to the question:

Illustrated News of the World etc. is informed that there is a regular Editor for the C.P.C., so that any future inquiries on the subject he can answer satisfactorily.” Either this was deliberate obfuscation, or we must take their word for it. Since “he” was not named, inquiries would have had to be addressed to “the Editor.” The mystery has never been satisfactorily resolved; there is no conclusive evidence to settle the question. Failing the invention of a time machine, the following analysis of the question is offered as being the best hypothesis available. There would appear to be three or possibly four candidates for the editorial chair prior to May 1861, those named by Löwenthal. Falkbeer was the only other in the group with journalistic experience and he was

It would seem that the editorship was in commission for rather more than two years. (In the resuscitated magazine we read of “the impossibility of finding a qualified successor” to R. B. Brien.) In May, 1861, when “Herr Kolisch and Mr. Zytogorski” appear on the magazine-cover as editors, with “Herr Kling” as in charge of the problem section, we read of “the gentlemen who have managed this present series”; but no names are given. Kolisch’s and Zytogorski’s names disappeared off the cover after the May issue, only Kling’s being retained.

What exactly Sergeant meant by “in commission” we are not entirely sure; the meaning of the phrase may have subtly changed since the 1930s. We take him to be saying that for the first two years Starie had delegated the editorship to a group of people—but that is just what Löwenthal was told was not the case. His reply to a correspondent mentioning a triumvirate received the following refutation on the inside cover of the May 1859 Chronicle: “The Chess Editor of the Era,

Ignaz Kolisch, whose role in the third series of The Chess Player’s Chronicle may have been overstated in the past. He appears to have made a major contribution to only one issue, and perhaps a smaller one for a few later numbers.

6. The Saga of the Chess Player’s Chronicle certainly in London for at least part of this period but nobody seems to have suggested he was editor of the Third Series. The recent biography of the aforementioned Ignaz Kolisch, by Fabrizio Zavatarelli, plumps for Zytogorski, saying (on page 97): “He [Zytogorski] was the editor of the third series of the Chess Player’s Chronicle, to which he called to collaborate Kolisch, too.” Sadly there is to be found in this book no further discussion of the extent, if any, of Kolisch’s role at the Chronicle, beyond that single issue in May 1861 in which he was named. Zytogorski’s precise involvement in the Third Series of the Chronicle has also never been made entirely clear. Is it even true that he was, as Zavatarelli implies, the editor throughout the third series? In the 1861 English census, taken on the night of 7/8 April Zytogorski stated his occupation as “writer on the periodical press,” which is supporting evidence for the claim that he was at least at that date writing for the Chronicle.* Perhaps the most authoritative evidence we have that his role changed was that on 20 April 1861 Charles Stanley’s column in the Manchester Weekly Express and Guardian reported that: “We are pleased to learn that this popular periodical will henceforth be edited by Herr Kolisch conjointly with its late manager Mr. Zytogorski.” What is to be understood here by “manager”? Our supposition is that Starie looked after the actual printing and circulation, the un-named editor selected and corrected copy to make it ready for the press, and Zytogorski did whatever else was necessary while also writing some articles. One is definitely inclined to accept Stanley’s account since he was an experienced journalist who kept in touch with all chess events and would have known all the people concerned personally. His statement, however,

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does not tell us who had been the editor when Zytogorski was manager. A likely candidate is Robert Bownas Wormald, profiled in Chapter 3 in connection with chess columns he edited. It is true he was never explicitly credited in obituaries with a role on the Chronicle; perhaps it had been forgotten because never publicly acknowledged at the time. For example, the brief portrait of him in the October 1876 Westminster Papers (only a few weeks before his death) does not say anything about it. Wormald, though, was an old friend of Brien’s from their Oxford University days; he went to the same college as Brien (Lincoln) just a few years after the older man graduated and helped continue the Hermes Chess Club there, of which Brien had been cofounder. Wormald was a man of many parts in the world of sports journalism. The labor involved in editing a monthly magazine would have left him time to do many other things—including writing his book on Chess Openings, which appeared in 1864 and is discussed in Chapter 7. In fact, editing the Chronicle for a reasonable salary would have been an ideal job to have while writing a book of that kind. Brien can be ruled out as having returned to the editorial chair. An article headed “Editorial Qualifications” in the May 1861 number referred to a “change of management” although Starie was still the publisher. Something else had changed. Here are some excerpts from that article, probably written by either Zytogorski or Starie: A Chess Magazine is not exempt from the vicissitudes which its literary contemporaries encounter…. In Chess a succession of real ability is not found so readily. Specialities there are in the world, and such there always will be. When therefore a change of management takes place in the Chess Player’s Chronicle, it behoves its promoters to bestow the utmost attention upon a matter of so extremely delicate a nature. Pecuniarily the Magazine has never aimed at trade

*Regarding Adolphus Zytogorski, aka John A. Hanstein (1812?–1882): see Harding, Eminent, pages 41–42 for a summary of this author’s discoveries. In 1861 Zytogorski was, for matters literary and non-chessical, using the surname Hanstein, which has been wrongly transcribed by ancestry.co.uk as “Haustein.”

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success; intellectually, it has been content with the adhesion of the Chess-playing public…. The able player, who first edited this paper, did not quit his post, until he had inspired a successor…. That successor, the same spirit breathing on him, preferred to see the Magazine suspended for a time, to beholding it in unworthy and incapable hands…. To whom was the management [of the Third Series] to be confided?

The article went on to say that “weighty reasons” precluded the “old lion” (Staunton) from resuming his labors, while Brien (though not named, he was of course the successor), although he “endeavoured to remove impediments out of her way, and afford us partial co-operation,” was unwilling to undertake “so laborious a revival.” The article went on to thank “the gentlemen who have managed the present series,” without naming them, but went on to say “we have constantly been on the look-out for ability of the highest order. That, we rejoice to say, we have at length secured.” The article went on to praise their new contributor, whom subscribers should welcome: “The accession of genius, combined with practical ability in the person of Herr Kolisch, will be as welcome to them, as it was to us.” Also mentioned was “that great master of invention, Kling,” who was to take charge of the problem department.33 Kling appears not to have been in London at the start of the Third Series, but by the time of the 1861 census he was living in St. Pancras with his Norwich-born wife Rachael and described himself as a “Professor of music.” In his memoir, already quoted above, Howard Taylor went on to say of the chess resort in Rathbone Place: “Through that room I made the acquaintance of the lamented Baron Kolisch….”34 In the May 1861 C.P.C., Kolisch had been named on the cover and although he was not actually named as editor in the article on editorial qualifications, but the implication was that raising the quality of game annotation and analytical work would be his responsibility. We are now left with the question of what happened with the Third Se-

ries after May 1861 to its demise a year later, and what exactly was Kolisch’s role? Zavatarelli has shown that the Hungarian master first arrived in England on 29 May 1860, originally intending to stay only a month, but eventually remaining in Great Britain until November, when Kolisch returned to his former residence, Paris. During these few months he showed he was more than the equal of any British resident, defeating (among others) both Harrwitz and Horwitz in matches. Whether he had any connection with the Chess Player’s Chronicle during that year is unclear, but there is no evidence he did.35 But by early February 1861 he was back in London where he spent most of that year, although he spent a few weeks in France in early March before returning to London. Kolisch’s input is certainly evident in that May 1861 number. The second article in the issue concerns Kolisch’s challenge to Morphy that year to play a match and the formation of a committee of backers to help him organize it; but ultimately the American declined to play him in Europe or for any financial stake.36 Then on pages 132 to 138 there are annotated games between Kolisch and George Maude, of the London Chess Club, where Kolisch gave odds of a knight. Other annotated games in the magazine were probably contributed by Kolisch also, and perhaps some in subsequent issues but it is hard to tell. All this is certainly consistent with Kolisch having a brief, but only brief, involvement with the magazine in the summer of 1861. Kolisch, a professional chess player at that time in his career, was probably glad of the paid work. This was not least because his Russian friend and patron Baron KushelevBezborodko, who accompanied Kolisch to London on his early 1861 visit, had returned to Russia in March. So the money Starie would have paid him was welcome but it is not evident to what extent Kolisch actually participated in the magazine. Conducting an extensive tour of northern England (in June) and

6. The Saga of the Chess Player’s Chronicle narrowly losing a match with Anderssen in London (in July) might not have left Kolisch much time or energy to work on the Chronicle. As already noted by Sergeant, from June 1861, only Kling’s name remained on the cover of the magazine. The tentative conclusion seems to be that Kolisch just worked on articles and games when he could, submitting some contributions by post. Kolisch finally returned to Paris by December, after his lengthy and inconclusive match against Louis Paulsen. Therefore Kolisch’s involvement in the Chronicle lasted at most six months. It is even possible that after a short period he resigned, or was sacked. It is also not clear whether Zytogorski’s involvement in the Third Series lasted until its abrupt end. The big change announced in May had not really materialized. If Zytogorski had persuaded Starie to bring in Kolisch with the big fanfare, only to be disappointed, then Zytogorski’s own position could have been undermined. The last suggestion that he had an active role came in the Era report on 8 September 1861 that Zytogorski and Healey were chosen to be the secretaries at the Divan for the telegraph match played against Bristol on Saturday 12th, as part of that year’s B.C.A. congress. The last year Zytogorski competed in chess events was probably 1862 but he did not play in the Handicap at the London Congress and may have left the capital for a time. An aspect of the 1861 volume which historians rarely remark upon, but would do well to read closely, is the series of imaginary dialogues, “Horae Matutinae,” Latin for “morning hours.” These are mostly set in the Philidorian Chess Rooms, where a group of characters, drawn from life, meet and talk about current events in the chess world, including the appearance of new columns, and the dearth of activity among leading players. The author of these articles has never been identified and it would be an amusing game to try to identify the dramatis personae: these

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include Professor Long, Doctor MacIvor, Behnes, Sartorius, Captain O’Millan, Mr. Grumble, and Herr Miller. Towards the end Professor Kling himself appears, and perhaps he wrote these pieces. Most likely, the responsibility for the Third Series was left towards the end of 1861 in the hands of Kling, and in 1862 it only struggled on long enough to report the conclusion of the London Chess Congress, the last issue being nominally that for July but probably actually published in August. The failure of the Third Series meant the end of what could be called the “apostolic succession” from Staunton to Brien, and on to whomever Brien passed the rights. Whyld says that “was effectively the end of the periodical but its name lived on.” Starie’s chess rooms continued for a while longer. Bell’s Life in London announced on 22 October 1864 that the chess rooms in Rathbone Place had closed: “Apply to the editor of the Chess Player’s Magazine for particulars of a new chess room on moderate terms of admission, recently opened in Charlottest.” In fact Walker’s news was well out of date because the September Chess Player’s Magazine said that the Philidorian Rooms “were closed several months ago,” and gave the address of the new rooms as 48 Charlotte Street, not far from Fitzroy Square.37

Skipworth and the Quarterly Chronicle The later publications with Chronicle in the title had only family resemblance to the original periodical. The Chess Players’ Quarterly Chronicle was the first of these, and plans for it appear to have been put in place in the fall of 1867 soon after the closure of The Chess Player’s Magazine was announced. A circular notice was printed to encourage subscriptions and this was probably circulated through chess

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clubs.38 This confidently worded document (especially by comparison with the contemporaneous circular for The Chess World, quoted in the previous chapter) named an impressive list of supporters, with a strong northern flavor. It read as follows: THE CHESS PLAYERS’ QUARTERLY CHRONICLE will appear early in 1868, and be issued Quarterly. 4s. per Annum, Post-free. Single copies forwarded on receipt of thirteen postage stamps. This magazine is brought out under the patronage and support of Lord Lyttelton, Lord Ravensworth, and other Members of the St. George’s Club, London; Lord Benholme; A. Mongredien, Esq., President of the London Club; the Rev. J. Owen; Herr Löwenthal; Herr Horwitz; Members of the Hull, Lincoln, Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester, Bradford, and Halifax Clubs; Members of the North Yorkshire Chess Association; and numerous amateurs throughout the kingdom. All Games, problems, or Notices intended for the First Number must be sent in on or before January 15th, 1868, to the Editor of The Chess Players’ Quarterly Chronicle, Gazette Office, York, to whom all Communications must be addressed. Subscriptions payable by Post office Order to: Mr. James Lancelot Foster, Gazette Office, York.

From its launch in February 1868 until 1875, and perhaps until 1880, the Chronicle was not under professional editorship. The circular did not name the editor, perhaps because his identity was yet to be finally decided, but more likely because it was not yet general practice to always name editors. Skipworth, the man in charge, was originally from Lincolnshire, and would soon return there, but at this point he was Vicar of Bilsdale, a small village in the North Riding of Yorkshire. His career has been narrated by this author in a previous book.39

Being a quarterly, the annual cost of subscribing was significantly less than for the monthlies that had preceded it, and when the magazine proved a success, it was changed to bimonthly publication.40 The Field of 4 January 1868 reported on chess in the provinces, mentioning that a match between the West and North Ridings of Yorkshire had been played in Leeds on 18 December. At the social meeting that followed, Mr. Werner of Bradford (then one of the strongest players in Yorkshire) made a speech in which he “mentioned the influential and extensive support already promised to the magazine.” Already 50 copies had been ordered for two Yorkshire towns alone. A curious bibliographical detail is that the placement of the apostrophe had changed, making the third word (Players’) plural instead of singular. Whether this was deliberate or careless has never been clarified, but the singular was restored in 1876.* Diggle, in his 1980 article for B.C.M., correctly stated that the Chronicle “was never again … the leading British chess periodical.” He was inaccurate when he went on to say that apart from a small break in 1876, it “lived through a long and peaceful old age from 1868 right through to 1902.”41 This was far from being the case from 1882 onwards. Moreover, Diggle wrongly implied that Ranken had continued his connection with the Chronicle to the end. Presumably Diggle never saw the late volumes discussed below and made an unwarranted assumption of continuity. The first volume of the Chess Players’ Quarterly Chronicle, covering 1868 and 1869, was published by John Sampson in York, in association with Bell and Daldy of London. It was indeed a quarterly: there were just eight

*An article (Kibitzer 146) this author wrote for the Chess Café website in 2008 credited John Hilbert with pointing out that during Skipworth’s reign the apostrophe in the title he used for C.P.C. implied a plural: Players’ instead of Player’s as under the other editors. That article also noted that Sergeant’s footnote on page 169 of Century appears to make the same point but is an exact reversal of the true situation. Moreover, Sergeant’s footnote on page 168 says Ranken “started the C.P.C. once again in 1867” and on the facing page he has “The magazine did not appear again till January, 1887.” In both cases it should have been 1877. (Hilbert’s article, like this author’s, is no longer online nor was it included in his printed essay collections.)

6. The Saga of the Chess Player’s Chronicle issues in the two years. Skipworth did not aim to be comprehensive in his coverage of chess events and anyone wanting deeper analysis and news of master chess had better read the Westminster Papers instead. The second volume, with the same publishers, also covered two years, 1870 and 1871. However, it now appeared bimonthly although “Quarterly Chronicle” was still stated on the running headers of each page. This is some measure of success although the subscribers were mostly from the provinces as little attention was paid to metropolitan chess. This volume consisted of 12 issues from February 1870 to December 1871. The printer for the first three volumes was stated to be J. L. Foster of York. The third volume, for 1872 and 1873, likewise had 12 issues and the publishers remained the same.

The Rev. Arthur Bolland Skipworth: autographed photograph from MacDonnell’s book The Knights and Kings of Chess.

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A notice at the top of the first page of the February 1872 issue said that “As this magazine has long ceased to be a quarterly publication, it will henceforth appear as the Chess Players’ Chronicle.” The running headers were now changed to The Chess Players’ Chronicle. By early 1872 Skipworth had moved back to his native Lincolnshire after obtaining an appointment to do with education in the Lincoln diocese. At the start of the year it was announced that the British champion, John Wisker, had joined as coeditor,42 and probably he expected to be paid something for his work. He appears to have contributed some games during the year and news of events in London. As no editors were announced on the covers or title pages it is unclear how long he remained, perhaps only that volume. At the end (inside back cover of the December 1873 issue) it was announced that “Mr. Löwenthal has kindly undertaken to assist the Editors during the coming year.” There were also promises to be more punctual and it was stated that the magazine would no longer be printed in York. The fourth and final volume of the Chronicle ran from February 1874 to December 1875. There was a slight change to the publication arrangements as indicated by the title pages of the individual issues. Bell and Daldy had become George Bell & Sons, an imprint that continued well into the late 20th century. The former copublisher, Sampson of York, was replaced by James Williamson of High Street, Lincoln, also named as the printer. An announcement on the back cover of the first number shows that money had probably been owing to the old printer, which would have accounted for the delays: The debt upon the last Volume having been most unexpectedly cleared off by the liberality of a friend, who desires to remain anonymous, more help from various quarters being promised for the future, and universal regret having been expressed at even the possibility of the discontinuance of this Magazine, we have pleasure in continuing the work, and in now issuing the February number of the seventh year, No. I of Vol. IV.

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While Skipworth was in charge, he filled its pages mostly with games and problems. The chess editor of the Glasgow Weekly Herald, John Jenkin, complained that: “in a journal solely devoted to chess we are entitled to expect a pretty complete summary of the doings of the chess world generally, and in this respect the Chronicle has been lamentably deficient.”43 Skipworth eventually gave up editing the Chronicle when he obtained a comfortable living as Rector of Tetford in Lincolnshire. At the end of October 1875 number he announced, “There will be a change of editorial staff of this Magazine after this year. Mr. Skipworth regrets that he has not sufficient leisure to enable him to give sufficient attention to the work.”44

The Jenkin Interlude Jenkin, who had been so critical of Skipworth, was keen to show that he could do better, but when he had his turn in 1876 as editor of volume 5 (continuing Skipworth’s numbering) his interlude at the helm was so brief that it has sometimes been overlooked. Whyld’s article in Q.C.H.8 said nothing about a Chronicle in 1876 but mistakenly said that the January to April 1877 issues were published from Glasgow, “ed. Jenkin?” In fact Jenkin produced three issues, for January to March of 1876.45 Unlike most of the Chronicle volumes up to the 1880s, for a long time it was not reprinted, until it was taken on by the Moravian Chess reprint house, where it is now available. Publishing of the magazine was now based in Glasgow, but only in 1876. The apostrophe was moved so that the title reverted to The Chess Player’s Chronicle and a subtitle was added: A Monthly Record of Provincial Chess. The title page of the January number named Jenkin as editor, “with the co-operation of ” the clergymen Skipworth, Ranken and Wayte, and Andrew Hunter, who was a leading player in the west of Scotland. To these the name of

Fraser was added in February. The problem department was conducted by John Crum of Glasgow. Clearly Jenkin intended to publish 12 issues a year but he failed financially. That subtitle cannot have helped its chances of obtaining metropolitan subscribers against competition from the Westminster Papers, although if he could have lasted a little longer the failure of the City of London Chess Magazine might have gained him some subscribers. Jenkin’s newspaper column was good and he had some ideas to enliven the content of the magazine—too many probably. The readers of the sleepy Chronicle of those Skipworth years may well have been shocked by the change of tone. His account of the 1875 Counties Chess Association meeting, held in Glasgow, was amusing, if rather long after the event. Sergeant noted in Century that “It was evident from the first number that candour was to be the dominant note of the new C.P.C.” and he quoted some controversial sentences from the second and third issues.46 Perhaps Jenkin might have made a success of the journalistic side had he been more effective as a businessman and recognized that therefore he could not afford to offend subscribers, especially at the start. Sergeant highlighted the items in the second and third issues submitted by Jenkin’s London correspondent “A LookerOn” (possibly the same anonymous writer who later contributed London letters to the Glasgow Weekly Herald) might have irretrievably damaged his prospects of sales in the capital. This can be seen especially in Jenkin’s final issue, for March, which managed to offend everyone by insulting both Steinitz and Blackburne when reporting on their match: Of course, the great Chess match—I beg pardon, the “momentous match” (vide Field)—has been our one all-absorbing topic of conversation during the last three weeks. Well—it ought to have been—but, as a matter of fact, it has not. I never remember a match hang fire so terribly. Beyond the sacred precincts of the West-End Club it has scarcely ever been mentioned, and

6. The Saga of the Chess Player’s Chronicle the apathy which has been manifested in Chess circles as to the result has been somewhat extraordinary. I am utterly at a loss to account for this, except on the supposition that the “hole and corner” manner in which the contest originated, and the thoroughly mercenary spirit in which this latest exhibition of professionalism was conducted throughout, has heartily disgusted all true Chess players. But the fact remains— Steinitz has achieved the feat of winning a “love” match, and Blackburne has apparently no excuse to offer in extenuation of his shameful defeat. His friends allege that he “was not in form,” but if this were the case, one would think, he must have been aware of the fact previously, and why, therefore, did he consent to play at a time when he knew he was courting defeat? I cannot, however, accept this explanation, for the simple reason that, in every game, with the exception of the first and, perhaps, the last, Blackburne had a manifestly superior, and more than once an actually won position at the time of the adjournment; but after dinner, he, in every case, went hopelessly to pieces. Was it the cuisine, or the wine, or the salmon, or—can you suggest any other obfuscating agency? It is really beyond my fathom….47

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being again the editor. “It will be satisfactory to have a monthly periodical which really represents chessplayers; but to do this Mr. Jenkin must alter the tone of his London correspondence,” he warned. Fraser, a contributor to the Chronicle for many years, explained to John G. White that an attempt was being made to amalgamate with a failing competitor, the City of London Chess Magazine (discussed above).49 Evidence of the small budget, and little prospect of profit, involved in these magazines is Fraser’s remark that Jenkin “writes me that he has lost £25 on last three Nos, which is rather too much for him.”50 The planned merger failed but later a rescue was arranged. On 30 October 1876 Fraser wrote that the magazine was to be edited next year by Ranken, “whose love for the game will I think keep matters

The John G. White Collection in Cleveland includes, among his many letters from Fraser of Dundee, a printed slip which Jenkin had mailed out to subscribers in April. Fraser scribbled some words on the back and forwarded it to White. Jenkin’s announcement reads as follows: DEAR SIR, For several reasons it has been found necessary that I should withdraw from the management of the “Chess Player’s Chronicle,” and as arrangements for the continuance of the Magazine under proper guidance have not yet been completed, it is probable that this month’s number may have to be dropped. I have therefore to crave your kind indulgence for a short space. Should the negotiations now pending come to nought, and it be decided to stop the Magazine, those Subscriptions which have been paid in advance will be returned. Yours faithfully, J. JENKIN.48

In the Figaro of 5 July 1876 Löwenthal said it had been announced that the Chronicle would probably reappear in August, Jenkin

George Brunton Fraser, who contributed to the Chess Player’s Chronicle for many years and subsequently to British Chess Magazine. He had briefly been a columnist in the Dundee Courier and Argus from 1862 to 1864. From the 1870s to early 1900s, Fraser was John G. White’s purchasing agent in Europe. Undated photograph by J. Abbot (courtesy Cleveland Public Library Special Collections).

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going very smoothly. It is to be published in London and I expect this will yield a good deal more support than it has enjoyed under provincial management.”51

The Ranken Years The January 1877 number of The Chess Player’s Chronicle (New Series) restored the original title and monthly publication but the volume numbering was reset to one. The title page says the 1877 volume was published jointly by Dean & Son of Fleet Street, London, and Thos. Murray & Son of Buchanan Street, Glasgow. Communications about the magazine were requested to be sent to Ranken in Malvern, except for the Problem department which was run by J. Crum in Glasgow. As this was the second “New Series” and the fifth “volume 1,” any confusion is perhaps forgivable.52 Anyway this is where Diggle made one of his most serious mistakes in his B.C.M. survey. Diggle wrote that the Chronicle then “lived through a long and peaceful old age from

The Rev. Charles Edward Ranken, editor of The Chess Player’s Chronicle from 1877 to 1880.

1868 right up to 1902” and that it “remained, under the steadier direction of Ranken, chiefly assisted by Wayte.” Diggle must have overlooked Ranken’s resignation in 1880 and appears not to have been familiar with the later issues, as he showed no awareness of the many breaks in publication detailed below. It is improbable that Ranken had any involvement in the later years, as this was never stated in the magazine or his obituaries. Moreover, he joined the editorial board of B.C.M. and Wayte was also associated to some extent with B.C.M. after its foundation. Ranken oversaw four volumes and the Chronicle improved somewhat. Presumably thanks to a private income, he had retired some years previously from active Church ministry (“without cure of souls” as he styled his occupation in the 1881 census). Ranken’s time was, unlike Skipworth, not taken up with parish work or local politics; also Ranken took a less active role in the Counties’ Chess Association than his colleague. He was more conscientious as an editor than Skipworth, though perhaps not as strong (and certainly not as original) a player. On 10 March 1877 Fraser told White the Chronicle “is getting on very well, as regards subscribers & I believe will soon pay its way.” In November, Archibald Murray appealed for more subscribers but at last they found a commercial publisher.53 The name of Thomas Murray disappears from the title page in 1878 and while Dean remains, he has a subsidiary role to W. W. Morgan of 67 Barbican, whose name is in larger type.54 Also on the last page of each issue readers are told that all communications respecting subscriptions are to be addressed to Morgan, described as the publisher. Ranken now had to concern himself only with the editorial matter. Then at the end of 1880 there was a wholesale defection of editor and contributors (all unpaid volunteers) to the project that became British Chess Magazine. Ranken also wanted to reduce the quantity of his chess

6. The Saga of the Chess Player’s Chronicle

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The front page of the July 1880 number of The Chess Player’s Chronicle, then edited by Ranken.

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work, as he said in his final, December, editorial.55 On 16 October 1880 the Rev. G. A. MacDonnell (under his pen-name “Mars”) wrote in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News that the Chess Player’s Chronicle was very good that month but rumors were flying about. The facts so far as he could discover were that At the end of this year the present staff of the Chronicle will associate themselves with Mr. Watkinson, under whose editorship a new monthly journal will be started. But this desertion of the Chronicle will not necessarily terminate the existence of this magazine; on the contrary, I understand that it will very probably be continued under very distinguished management.

Ranken said farewell to his readers in his December editorial, announcing that “With the present number the Editor and his Cooperators close their connection with this magazine.” He thanked Wayte, “who has acted all along as a sort of co-editor,” and specially acknowledged Fraser (who had contributed articles on chess openings), and “Messrs. Crum, Pierce, and Andrews, who have successively undertaken the management of the Problem Department.” Ranken said that his principal reason for retiring from the chair was “to have in the future a less engrossing, and less laborious amount of Chess work than he has had in the past.” Defection to a rival magazine was not mentioned, nor did he encourage readers to follow his example, but it was probably fairly common knowledge by now that he would be writing for the newcomer. Properly, Ranken did conclude by saying that the Chronicle “will be henceforth carried on by other hands, and we trust that it will meet with the same amount of acceptance and support in the future which it has received in the past.”

Morgan Takes Over in 1881 On 30 October 1880 MacDonnell told his readers that C.P.C. would reappear next year in weekly numbers at twopence each.

Perhaps the B.C.M. founders had expected that the Chronicle would be allowed to die quietly but the publishing company asserted its right to continue the title. On the first page of the December 1880 issue, above Ranken’s editorial, it was stated that: “It is requested that in future all communications for this Magazine be sent direct to the Publisher, W. W. Morgan, 23 Great Queen Street, London, W.C.” Readers reliant for their history on Sergeant’s Century of British Chess would remain in ignorance of the history of the Chronicle from 1881 onwards. Perhaps even its author had forgotten about the sequel. Sergeant said on page 179 that the Chronicle “under the editorship of the Rev. C. E. Ranken had come to an end with its issue of September, 1880.” Not only was that the wrong month; the afterlife of the Chronicle was entirely ignored by him. This can perhaps be taken as a sign that serious amateur chess players were concerned only with the British Chess Magazine and The Chess-Monthly thereafter. Morgan is a shadowy figure in the history of British chess publishing, overlooked by Sergeant. Actually “figures” is more correct because they were namesakes, father and son, both associated with the late years of the Chronicle. Gaige conflated the two in a minimal entry on page 290 of Chess Personalia. William Wray Morgan, Sr., who was born about 1833, described himself as a printer in censuses of 1861 and 1871; his son of the same name was born in 1855. In the 1881 English census, taken soon after the Morgans took full control of the Chronicle, the father and his wife Mary Ann, also W. W. Morgan, Jr., and his siblings were living together in Islington. Most likely they ran the Chronicle together and their occupations as stated in that census give a good clue to their respective roles. The father, aged 48, described himself as a journalist and it was now the son, aged 26, who called himself a publisher. It is Morgan junior who is described as such on the title pages of all the later volumes.

6. The Saga of the Chess Player’s Chronicle On 15 November William Morgan, Jr., married Emma Grace Baxter, daughter of a pawnbroker from Harrow; on the marriage certificate young Morgan is described as a printer. In the 1891 census he had his own household, with wife and children aged eight and four. Long before, the younger Morgan may have been completely in charge. The advertisements for sales of chess books and other chess goods, which become increasingly prominent as the editorial content reduces, are in his name. In the censuses of 1901 and 1911 Morgan junior described his occupation as a printer; he died on Christmas Day in 1926. The Morgans relaunched the Chronicle in January 1881, making radical changes. It became a weekly, with larger format pages. The full title became The Chess Player’s Chronicle and Journal of Indoor and Outdoor Amusements, although the non-chess content was minimal. Despite the physical and other changes, Morgan called this volume number five, to follow Ranken’s four, and thus perhaps retained some subscribers from the previous years. The opening editorial, thanking the late Editor and his staff (naming Ranken, Wayte, Andrews, Fraser, Pierce, and Skipworth) was all part of the policy of maintaining an illusion of continuity. The usually well-informed Fraser told White, in a letter dated 5 January 1881, that MacDonnell was editor but he was almost certainly wrong in that belief, which is inconsistent with various statements MacDonnell made in his column early in 1881. On 22 January he reviewed the new C.P.C. saying the 12-page first issue covered other cards, cricket, football, billiards, and pedestrianism in addition to chess. * He said “I have not yet had time to examine the games,” but commended

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the notes. Frank Healey was doing the problems. One topic in the new series of the magazine makes it clear that MacDonnell could not have been the editor. Whether seeking controversy or not, the Chronicle and Journal soon launched itself into the topic of money in chess. A leading article in only the second issue was headlined “Chess Playing and Chess Gambling.” The writer argued that Chess held, among games of skill (instancing billiards and whist for comparison), a special and elevated status which was in jeopardy because of the practice of offering money prizes in competitions among amateur players, though he recognized that there was a place for professionals whose role was to “impart the knowledge they have been at the pains of acquiring, and these cannot be expected to enact the rôle of teachers without something in the way of honorarium.”56 In amateur tournaments, the prizes should be anything but money, for example cups or chess sets. The Chronicle expanded in its issue of 18 January on “The Amateur and Professional Question.” When a man of independent means, or who earned his living from business or a profession, took up a particular pastime he does not need income from it. On the contrary, “he loses caste when he competes publicly for a money profit, and, what is still more important, he lowers the game of his choice from an innocent pastime to a species of gambling.” The writer did not object to private games of whist or chess played for a money stake “if they think it will give interest to their combat.” He did think that public play for a money prize “should be made a disqualification from taking part in every future nonprofessional tourney.” A letter from an anonymous amateur, published in the 25 January

*“Pedestrianism” was the usual term in Victorian Britain for all forms of athletic competition on foot, whether walking or running, and frequently involved endurance feats performed for money prizes or as the subject of wagers. In the case referred to (4 January 1881 on page 9) the magazine reported that the celebrated pedestrian Gale had attempted to accomplish 2,500 miles in 1,000 hours but had failed by just under 95 miles to do so. He had previously set a record of 1500 miles in the same time.

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number, supported the author of this editorial. The context of their view was that only a few months earlier (on 24 April 1880), the Amateur Athletic Association had been founded to distinguish gentleman athletes from professional pedestrians. At the start of the 19th century, the term amateur usually just had its literal sense taken from the French language, namely one who loved a particular game or pastime. Participating in almost any game or sport in those days, whether as participant or spectator, almost inevitably involved money to some extent. The rise of the urban middle classes, many from a nonconformist Christian background, and consequent gradual redefinition of what it was to be a gentleman changed perspectives on the matter. In particular, mid–Victorian England, the 1870s and 1880s, was greatly concerned with respectability. As is well known among sports historians, middle-class Victorians were obsessed by the amateur- professional issue and similar amateur bodies were being formed to organize other sports, notably rowing where the debate was particularly intense. Henley Royal Regatta’s regulations excluded not only those who rowed for money as part of their employment (such as Thames watermen) but even anyone “who is or has been by trade or employment for wages a mechanic, artisan or labourer.” Such a definition makes it absolutely clear this was a class issue. In chess, though, matters were much more complicated and to this day it has rarely been easy to make a clear distinction between amateurs and professionals. In 1881 there were still probably not many tournaments with money prizes, but the practice of playing games in chess cafes and divans, and even in clubs, for a sixpence or shilling stake had been common for

half a century. The “shilling shark” was frowned upon by some if that particular expert were a foreigner like Steinitz, while a blind eye might be turned if his name was Blackburne or Bird, who was a “shamateur” if ever there was one in chess. Further articles related indirectly to the professionalism issue and then the leading article on 8 February was explicitly headed “Chess amateurs and professionals.” This began by admitting the difficulty of defining an amateur in chess. “There is, in fact, a kind of intermediate state of amateur-professionals or professional-amateurs,” and their position had been criticized in the Glasgow Weekly Herald. MacDonnell replied to all this at length in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News on 12 February, under his byline “Mars.” He asked, what is a professional chess player? “That is, in what respect does he differ, and therefore ought to be distinguished from, an amateur?” This question was now being frequently discussed in clubs and journals and the arguments were often contradictory arising out of varying use of the terms: A professional is one who adopts a profession, and a profession is a vocation or calling, not mercantile or mechanical. It follows then as the day the night, that a chess-professional is one who adopts chess as a means of earning a livelihood.

Openly avowed professionals delighted in calling first-class amateurs professionals, and insult and degrade them by so doing. The line between reimbursed expenses and fees for exhibitions could be blurred. “Mars” said he was opposed to the adoption of chess as a profession but held “that circumstances might arise which would justify a player in becoming a professional for a time.” Here he was probably thinking of Henry Bird who was at the time officially prevented by bankruptcy from practicing his profession as an accountant.*

*Bird’s biographer, Hans Renette, has shown that the chess master became bankrupt in 1870–1871, as the result of the failure of an accountancy partnership. He may have practiced illegally from 1879 and he was finally discharged from bankruptcy in April 1883. See Renette, H.E. Bird, pages 117–118, 228 and 276.

6. The Saga of the Chess Player’s Chronicle MacDonnell said he disagreed that playing for a money prize in a match or tournament after a day’s work in itself made you a professional. He followed Buckle in supporting the small stake that makes a man play more carefully. “He may or may not care for the money in itself, but he does not like to see his opponent taking and carrying off the coin which is the token and proof of his defeat.” At the City of London Chess Club, play for money between individuals was strictly prohibited, “but matches and tourneys are organised by the committee” with handicappers classifying players. He concluded that it was absurd to say a man who plays for a stake and always loses is a professional. Also playing chess for money was not gambling. On 22 February the Chronicle in its leading article explicitly addressed the arguments offered by “Mars.” In particular, while agreeing that playing chess for any other game for money did not necessarily amount to gambling, nevertheless “playing for money is the basis of all gambling.” On 5 March, “Mars” debated the professionalism issue with the Chronicle again, making the telling point that on the 22nd the magazine absurdly says it is “public playing for money that marks a professional.” On this definition, said Mars, “a man who plays for money regularly but only in private houses and clubs would not be a professional!” This virtually ended the debate, and this comment in particular makes it clear that MacDonnell was not then (or probably ever) editor of C.P.C. Perhaps he had been offered the post, but in fact from now to the end nobody was ever named in its pages as editor. Further confusion for chess historians has been caused by the listing item #7-23 on page 37 in Betts’s bibliography for the last series of the Chronicle. That names an unknown and probably fictitious person, “C. C. Weekly,” as the last editor. This appears to be a misunderstanding based on poor note-taking, as publication was sometimes weekly.

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The rising star Gunsberg was however named as games editor in volume six (1882), and may have had a larger role throughout. Fraser told White that the Chronicle “is a rather lively Journal, much more so than the British Chess Magazine. They would require to have the editors ‘mixed up’ in order to improve both.”57 Publication ceased after two years and Gunsberg was not named again in this role on the resumption, perhaps because he was getting busy as a columnist for various publications, and as a professional player for a few years. It is likely, though, that he continued his association with the magazine, at least through the younger Morgan. The proof is in Gunsberg’s naturalization papers at the British National Archives, which show that in 1908 Morgan junior gave him a testimonial, saying he had known Gunsberg for thirty years. Moreover at the time of the 1901 census Gunsberg lived in the next street to Morgan in New Barnet. Gunsberg frequently changed his residence and he may well have moved deliberately to be adjacent to Morgan to facilitate their collaboration on literary work. The revived Chess Player’s Chronicle was very erratic and usually of low quality, with numerous advertisements. Much of the time it was just a digest of news and games reprinted from periodical chess columns and other sources, though with some original content. Neither the British Library nor the Royal Dutch Library has complete set of these late volumes, but we eventually established that only two issues were missing in London. Eventually we saw them in Cleveland, Ohio. As information about these late volumes is hard to come by, a detailed list of what was published now follows. The Chronicle had begun a correspondence tournament in 1882; there was no mention of this when the journal was revived with volume 7, which began with issue 153 on 6 June 1883. The relaunch was to coincide with the London international congress since the Morgans must have perceived that interest in

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chess should now grow, but from now on the younger Morgan seems to have been in charge. Thereafter the volume numbers of this series did not correspond to calendar years, although the issue numbers do help to trace what happened. The Chronicle was now purely a chess magazine although the subtitle remained until the end of volume 10. The last issue of volume 7 (number 207) was dated 16 June 1884, and then volume 8 ran from 23 June 1884 (issue 208) to 3 June 1885 (issue 256). Volume 9 was 10 June 1885 (issue 257) to 7 July 1886 (issue 308). From the summer of 1886 onwards, publication became irregular, issues thinner and even more rarely included original matter. Volume 10, which is the start of chaos, was the last with the long-winded “Journal of Indoor and Outdoor Amusements” subtitle. From this point the dates and issue numbers in Whyld’s Q.C.H. 8 article do not correspond with the present author’s findings, having traced all the succeeding issues in various libraries. Volume 10 began on 14 July 1886 with issue 309 but did not end until March 1889.* There were issues on 21 and 28 July 1886 but only one in August, because of holidays. Weekly publication then resumed in September and continued up to issue 330 on 29 December 1886. No magazines were published for the next three months. Issue 331 was dated 6 April 1887 after which weekly issues appeared up to issue 338 of 25 May. Then number 339, which reported on the Frankfurt international tournament (played from 18 July to 2 August) was headed the “June–September 1887” issue. On page 241 the anonymous editor apologized for the irregularity of publication; pleading ill health etc.: Our wish has always been to interest our supporters; if we have succeeded in doing so in the

past we are quite satisfied, while if we fail to do so in the future it will be from inability rather than lack of desire on our part.

It did not get much better. Issue 340 was dated “November 1887”and issue 341 was for “January 1888.” Issues 342 and 343 were for February and March but number 344 did not appear until 17 October and the content of these issues is almost worthless. Number 345 for 24 October was more interesting and to the end of the volume there was some attempt at regular publication although the intervals varied from one to three weeks. This was followed by numbers 346 (7 November), 347 (21 November), 348 (28 November), 349 (12 December), 350 (19 December), 351 (2 January 1889), 352 (9 January), 353 (16 January), 354 (23 January), 355 (13 February), 356 (20 February), 357 (27 February), 358 (6 March), 359 (13 March) and finally issue 360 on 20 March 1889. Number 340 in volume 10 saw the commencement of an intermittent series of articles on “Chess at Odds of Pawn and Move: Examples of Openings” arranged mostly in a tabular format. Play at odds had been very popular earlier in the century, when Staunton had devoted much of one book (The Chess Player’s Companion, 1849) to advice on the subject. This series may be a sign that such handicap play persisted in many clubs and was not being catered to elsewhere in the chess literature. This series was afterwards turned into a book entitled Chess at Odds of Pawn and Move which went through two editions (1890 and 1891), although Betts observed on page 183 that an advertised companion work on the pawn and two-move odds appears never to have been published. As to the byline “Baxter Wray,” it is reasonably evident that the author

*The box in the British Library containing this volume says it contains numbers 309–359 but actually it also contains number 360, which corresponds with Whyld’s list, but he was wrong to say the volume ended on 20 March 1887; the last digit was presumably a misprint. It should also be noted that there are Google Books pdfs for some of these late volumes but they can omit some of the issues as they were scanned from imperfect volumes in some libraries.

6. The Saga of the Chess Player’s Chronicle was actually W. Morgan, Jr., “Wray” was his middle name and “Baxter” was his wife’s maiden name. Volume 11 was also very long-drawn-out and spanned May 1889 to March 1891. It began with numbers 361, 362, and 363 for 1, 8 and 15 May 1899. As Whyld pointed out in Q.C.H., the 15 May issue was wrongly dated 8 May. There was then another hiatus until 3 August which was followed by issues on 10, 17, and 24 August after which three weeks were missed. Perhaps that is when the Morgans took a family holiday because there was a similar break at this time the following year. The run continued with numbers 368 to 372 at weekly intervals from 21 September to 19 October 1889 inclusive. There was then a very long gap until number 373 on 22 March 1890. Then 374 came out on 12 April, followed in successive weeks by three more issues. But number 377, published on 3 May, announced the next issue would be on 17 May but actually it appeared on 7 June. Numbers 379 and 380 followed on 14 and 21 June before another hiatus. The reason for the irregularities could have been financial or the health of Morgan, Sr., but nothing was explained. Publication resumed with numbers 381 to 384 on 2, 9, 16 and 23 August and then the three-week break as in 1889. The Chronicle was back on 20 September with number 385, announcing the opening of the metropolitan chess season. In a somewhat remarkable feat of endurance, given the Morgans’ track record hitherto, weekly publication was thereafter sustained throughout the winter up to the close of this volume with number 412 on 28 March 1891. There is little in volume 11 of great note, as most of the facts and games therein can probably be found elsewhere, but a paragraph from number 406 (14 February 1891) is worth quoting. On page 363 the anonymous editor rightly deplored a noteworthy example of class snobbery at Deal, in Kent. The local chess club, recently formed,

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refused to admit as members some NCOs from the adjoining army depot at Walmer. The Deal civilians would not have the military, and rejected their applications by a very large majority… . The event has called forth some very strong comments, not only from civilians, but also from commissioned officers of the Services, who in a very large majority of cases are known to favour the association of officers and men in all sports and pastimes. It is such absurd distinctions and insults as these which keep good men out of the army, and makes it shunned by those would really prove a benefit to it.

Volume 12 covered April 1891 to May 1892, numbers 413 (4 April) to 446. They were trying to publish every Saturday at the price of three pence per issue but as there were only 34 issues there were gaps again. The book in the British Library appears to be complete but the currently available Google Books pdf file is missing several issues.58 The first issue of this volume commenced publication of an Index to the Chess Openings by Signor C. Salvioli of Venice “which we have long desired to place before our readers”—in a tabular format which has to be read across spreads. It began with the French Defense. Extra illustrative games had been added by the Chronicle. It was clear that they were trying to make a new start and cater to the elementary standard player who was keen enough to want a little magazine weekly rather than a fat one monthly. Weekly publication continued up to number 426 on 4 July but there was then a break until 15 August, when it was announced that the office had moved from Medina Road, Holloway, to Bulwer Road, New Barnet. This may have happened because Morgan needed to move closer to his ailing father. More weeks started to be missed in the fall. There was no publication on 5 September and 3 October, 31 October and 7 November. Then Number 437 was dated 21 November. A break followed and then 438 appeared on Wednesday 16 December, beginning with an article on “rapid play” which deplored the “system of slow play

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which finds favour” with many players. The article continued: Happily the practice of slow play seems to be losing the firm hold it once possessed on amateurs of the game, and in no few quarters efforts are being actively pushed forward with the view of inducing a better state of things, “lightning,” “express,” and other forms of fast play being introduced with marked success into Club tournaments and individual encounters. A move a minute, or thirty moves within the half hour, and other restrictions equally lively are making their way into public favour….59

An advertisement at the start said the magazine was now to appear every Wednesday. It did not. The next published was number 439 on 24 February 1892, weekly issues following until number 444 on 30 March. The volume then lurched to its conclusion with numbers 445 and 446 on 27 April and 4 May 1892. Nothing was said about publication ending but C.P.C. did not resume until March 1895. The British Library volume had a pencil note at the end saying no more published until March 1895, “see letter rec 8 Aug. 1894.” So the old British Museum library management had made some effort to contact the publisher inquiring why it had not received publications due to it under British copyright law, but the letter itself is perhaps not preserved. The note on page 37 of Betts saying “Publication suspended June 1892– February 1895, March 1896–February 1899, July–December 1899” is therefore not quite accurate. It is probable that the letter received by the British Museum explained that the hiatus in publication had been due to the ill health, and eventually the death, of the elder Morgan, which occurred in Barnet on 23 June 1893.60 No digitized probate record for him was found online and it may be that if he died intestate complications over his estate could have made it difficult for his son to relaunch the magazine. Equally there could have been financial or other business reasons.

Number 447, commencing volume 13, appeared on 13 March 1895 with the following announcement on page 1: The present appears a particularly opportune moment for restarting the Chess Player’s Chronicle, in view of the increased popularity of the game, and possible international tournament in London next year…. It is nearly three years since we last had the pleasure of addressing the Chess world through the medium of the CHRONICLE.

Number 448 appeared the following Wednesday, 20 March 1895, although Whyld pointed out that this was wrongly numbered “vol XII no 445.” The British Library copies had no covers, but Whyld was apparently reporting on a set of volumes in the library of the late grandmaster Lothar Schmid which had formerly been in Whyld’s own possession so that he was familiar with this mistake. Then No. 449 of Wednesday 27 March 1895 in the British Library does have a cover, so confirming the numbering. The price of a single issue was still three pence. Publication of this volume continued in an orderly fashion through the summer and fall without missing any weeks. Number 460 on 12 June reported (page 159) on the origins of the London Ladies’ Chess Club started by Miss M. W. von Sandau and others in Elgin Crescent, London, under the name the “Equitable British and International Club for Ladies.” Its prospectus said chess should be … more than merely a pastime for women: we want to gather all women of intellectual tastes, and especially we wish to give a continued opportunity to our sex of a training in logical thinking and mathematical accuracy … essential as a counterpoise to woman’s more universally designed emotional tendencies.

This volume continued up to number 483, published on 20 November 1895, and so covered the important period of the Hastings international congress when general interest in chess activities were at their height. Whyld’s posthumous checklist in Q.C.H.8 stated the range of this volume as numbers 447–482

6. The Saga of the Chess Player’s Chronicle dated 13 March until 13 November 1895 but the British Library’s copy shows there was this one further issue in volume 13, and so the next volume begins with number 484 and not 483 as he thought. Perhaps the set he used to own had not been made up correctly. Volumes 14, 15, and 16 (covering 1896– 1900) are very disappointing. The British Library holdings are in one book in very bad condition and missing two numbers. Volume 14 in fact consisted of only four issues, numbers 484 through 487, all published in February 1896 (on the 5th, 12th, 19th and 26th of the month). There is one curiosity in the last issue, on page 40, saying that The Vegetarian had started a chess column edited by Miss Field, daughter of the late Frederick Field and niece of Sir Frederick Abel; this column could not be found. (In 1897 Gertrude Alison Beatrice Field competed in the first Ladies’ International Tournament in London and in May 1898 she married Donald Anderson, a prominent member of the British Chess Club. As Mrs. Anderson, she twice won the British Ladies’ Championship.) After those four issues in February 1896, publication of the Chronicle again ceased abruptly. No more appeared until 1899. So there was nothing at the time of the Ladies’ International. After August 1896, when Hoffer ceased publication of The Chess-Monthly, the British Chess Magazine was left with the field virtually to itself for a decade. When Sergeant remarked in Century on the end of Hoffer’s magazine, he made no mention of the Chronicle’s erratic reappearances. It is not clear whether he saw any of the post–Ranken volumes. Volume 15 ran from numbers 488 to 501, between 15 March and 14 June 1899. Both the British Library and the Royal Dutch Library have volume 15 but the latter is missing one issue. The restart was timed to coincide with the London international tournament. Morgan was full of unrealized good intentions throughout the final years. The an-

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nouncement in number 488 strangely echoes his editorial at the start of number 447 four years previously. The first few phrases are identical and were evidently copied. The present appears a particularly opportune moment for restarting the Chess Player’s Chronicle, for in the course of a very few weeks we shall see the commencement of two important tournaments in London … and generally there are signs of great activity in the Chess world. When we discontinued our labours in this direction, in February 1896, we had so many calls on our time that it was absolutely necessary to give up something.

This short volume ran weekly up to number 501 on 14 June. Then publication ceased once more for six months. Volume 16, the last to be called The Chess Player’s Chronicle, ran from 3 January to 7 February, and then a final issue on 21 March 1900, comprising numbers 502–508. The British Library is lacking numbers 505 and 506, though they are not of great interest. The only complete set this author has found as yet is in the John G. White Collection at Cleveland Public Library, but presumably there are other sets in private hands.

The Final Series The final series was entitled simply The Chess Chronicle and published in two smallformat volumes from 4 September 1901 to 25 June 1902. Despite the change of format, it continued the volume numbering (17 and 18) and the issue numbering, commencing with #509. The back cover of the first issue boasted: “The only weekly paper devoted to the game of chess.” It was indeed a much better magazine than its immediate predecessors, indicating there was a new editor, but he was never named. Morgan still had advertisements in it, including the front cover, right up until the end in 1902. These were for chess books and stationery; he did not seem to be selling chess sets any longer.

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This final series was, we suspect, connected with the British Chess Club Company and possibly under the editorship of Hoffer, who was one of the directors of that company.61 It is necessary here to explain about the complex history of the British Chess Club, which lasted 17 years and was reformed at least three times, albeit with Hoffer’s constant involvement and support. The British Chess Club had originally been founded on 12 November 1885, when Wordsworth Donisthorpe was chairman and Daniel Yarnton Mills was honorary secretary. Later the Earl of Wemyss & March accepted the presidency.62 With a subscription of one guinea for town and half a guinea for country members, the British Chess Club aimed at national status, and its name linked it to the recentlyreformed British Chess Association. Renette’s biography of Bird makes that point and also explains that the club’s closing time of midnight, instead of 11 p.m. at the Divan, was designed to draw support away from that traditional chess resort.63 An attractive program of early competitions early in 1886 helped the new club become popular, aided by the publicity that Hoffer (whom Sergeant describes as its “moving spirit”) gave it in The ChessMonthly. The British soon attracted many strong amateur players, as well as veteran problem composer Campbell, and it awarded honorary membership to Bird, Blackburne and other masters. In the 1880s and 1890s the British Chess Club organized several interesting tournaments and matches. It became a serious rival to the long-running City of London Chess Club, providing an alternative venue in the West End. If one’s work was not in the City, or one wanted a club that was open six days a week, then the British was more suitable. Some players were members of both clubs. During late 1886 and early 1887 they challenged the St. Petersburg Chess Club to a correspondence match, with moves transmitted by telegraph. Although Bird was on the club’s play-

ing committee at first, he soon withdrew and it is likely that Mills (later several times Scottish champion after he moved north) had to do much of the analytical work. At any rate, the British were severely outclassed, chiefly because the Russian end of the match was largely in the hands of M. I. Chigorin, the strongest correspondence player of the 19th century. The British Chess Club’s change of premises in January 1887 was due to the expiry of its lease at 49 Leicester Square. It moved to 37 King Street in Covent Garden (the former home of the Fielding Club) and was reestablished as a private company, rather than an ordinary voluntary association like most chess clubs. Whereas most chess clubs rented their rooms for a few evenings or afternoons each week, the British now offered all the facilities of a gentleman’s club, which involved a much bigger financial undertaking. The chess loving publisher George Newnes, who had moved to London from Manchester in 1885 after being elected an M.P., became president and he purchased the lease and furniture. In his sketch of Hoffer, Gunsberg noted that he seemed able to persuade Newnes to give generous monetary support to chess enterprises, and Newnes “bore the brunt of the cost of establishing and maintaining the British Chess Club on a scale of splendour and comfort unknown before.”64 It was to the club’s rooms at King Street that Zukertort was brought after he collapsed at the Divan on the evening of 19 June 1888. Zukertort was transferred to the Charing Cross Hospital but died next morning.65 In 1896 the British Chess Club inaugurated the series of transatlantic cable matches against America, following a private match on 9 March 1895 against the Brooklyn Chess Club which involved amateur players only and had received little publicity. In subsequent years guest players were brought in on both sides and the contest assumed the character of a true international match, or at least an inter-

6. The Saga of the Chess Player’s Chronicle city contest.66 On Wednesday 21 July 1897 the club had to move again because the lease at King Street had expired. It moved to new premises at Carrington House, 4 Whitehall Court, and changed its status again. Hoffer explained in The Field that the old club was dissolved “and reformed with such alteration in the constitution as required by the new condition of things.” He said that chess was the main thing but the premises also had a magnificent billiard room, cozy card room, and a reading room.67 Thus the British Chess Club reverted to being a voluntary association of members but perhaps this proved unsatisfactory in the long run; it was never quite as thriving as in its Covent Garden heyday. Nevertheless it retained some strong amateur players as members, including E. V. Jones, James Mortimer, and George Edward Wainwright.* The fourth and last “avatar” of the club came into being four years later, and once more a change of premises was involved. For the second time in its history, a British Chess Club Company was formed, as a file in the National Archives at Kew show. Again it was a private limited company (shares not being offered to the general public) and it was registered on 2 September 1901, following an application for incorporation on 30 August. Eight directors were named and signed the form, among whom was Hoffer, chess correspondent of The Field. Newnes was a notable absentee; he had transferred his allegiance some time since to the City of London Chess Club, of which he was now president, and the loss of his financial backing may have been ultimately fatal to the British Chess Club.68 The first name on the list was Captain

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Alexander Beaumont of South Norwood, a captain in the army, who had long been associated with chess organization in Surrey. Two of the other directors were also prominent in the chess world: William Ward Higgs, a solicitor, and businessman Frank G. Naumann who a few years later became president of the British Chess Federation. The other directors were Major General Minto Elliott, John Sidney Smith (a solicitor), Meyler H. Dunn (a merchant) and Thomas Edward Vickers, said to be an ordnance manufacturer. Another list of directors, dated 22 January 1902, shows that Elliott and Smith were no longer active but a new (seventh) director was civil servant Hubert F. Lowe. The final list of directors, dated 20 June 1902, names (in this order) Vickers, Beaumont, Ward Higgs, Naumann, Hoffer, Lowe and Dunn. The registered office of the company was said to be 5 Whitehall Court, London, which was the club’s meeting place. The directors were also shareholders. A list of them in the file, dated 22 January 1902, showed that Hoffer had 10 shares, Beaumont 50 shares, and the wealthy Naumann (who died in the sinking of the Lusitania in the First World War) had 212, so had perhaps taken up all the remainder of the thousand shares that did not find other buyers. The membership target had not been achieved. Among the ordinary shareholders were the prominent amateur player George Wainwright, said to be a civil servant from Guildford, who owned three shares. Some of the other shareholders are recognizable as having names that appear from time to time in chess columns but the great majority were just ordinary club players.

*The Field, LXXXXVII (30 March 1901), page 430 reported on matches between various London clubs and a joint Oxford and Cambridge university team which included some past members. On 25 March the university team beat Metropolitan Chess Club but next day lost to the British, whose team of 20 was headed by the three named experts, followed by blind Kent expert P. Hart Dyke and William Ward Higgs. This “university week,” in the days leading up to the varsity chess match and Boat Race, was a traditional event at this period but may have come to an end in the late 1960s (unless it was later revived). In 1967 there was just one match (in which this author played): Oxford and Cambridge versus the Metropolitan Chess Club at St. Bride’s Institute, which no longer exists.

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The Articles of Association, filed with the other registration documents, show that the principal aims of the company were: a. To establish a club called The British Chess Club… b. To lease the premises at Whitehall Court… c. To undertake any business the undertaking whereof may seem to enhance the comfort or convenience of the members… d. To buy, sell, and deal in tobacco, cigars, and provisions of all kinds … and to print and publish any books, papers, and periodicals…. This last point is not conclusive, but together with the coincidence of the opening and closing dates of The Chess Chronicle with the fate of the company, is strongly suggestive of a connection. The third issue of The Chess Chronicle, dated 18 September 1901, announced:

Leopold Hoffer, known to be a director of the British Chess Club Company. Was he also the editor of The Chess Chronicle? Photograph from MacDonnell’s book The Knights and Kings of Chess.

The British Chess Club Company, limited, has been registered, with a capital of £1,000, in £1 shares with objects as indicated by the title. The number of Directors is not to be less than five; the first are the Officers and two members to be appointed by the company; remuneration as fixed by the Company.

Number 521 of 18 December 1901 announced the sad news that the Rev. John Owen, vicar of Hooton in Lancashire “until he retired about two years ago,” had died at the age of 74. Until very recently he had been playing at the British Chess Club and had been its top board player in the 1895 cable match. This detail, which did not appear in The Field’s obituary of Owen, may be taken as an indirect confirmation of the association between The Chess Chronicle and the British Chess Club. Hoffer said of him: “Mr. Owen was a true type of a sturdy Englishman of the old school, and will always be remembered as an ardent devotee of the game and a chivalrous opponent.”69 Owen’s death meant that Ranken alone remained as the last of the “fighting reverends” of mid–Victorian England, while Blackburne was now the only surviving player from the 1862 London tournament. Betts said the last issue of The Chess Chronicle was number 537 but in fact (judging from the volume at the British Library) it continued until number 540, published on 25 June 1902, although that did not include any announcement to say it was to be the last. Such was the fate of many magazines that died. Morgan was neither a director nor a shareholder in the British Chess Club Company. The impression, therefore, is that Morgan (who had held the rights to the Chronicle title) had come to an arrangement with the Company which wished to publish a magazine in connection with the relaunch of the club. Either he leased them the title or sold it to them, but he received advertising as part of the deal. Whichever it was, the magazine was never relaunched after the company closed.

6. The Saga of the Chess Player’s Chronicle In the spring of 1902, the British Chess Club as usual hosted the Oxford v. Cambridge university match and the transatlantic cable match, but it was for the last time. On 16 July 1902 an extraordinary general meeting of the British Chess Club Company was held, at which the following resolution was adopted: That it had been proved to the satisfaction of this meeting that the Company cannot by reason of its liabilities continue its business and that it is advisable to wind up the same, and accordingly that the Company be wound up voluntarily and that Frederick William Lord of No. 60 Watling Street EC be and he is hereby appointed Liquidator for the purposes of such winding up.70

Probably the club recruited too few members and the magazine had too few subscribers. The Field briefly noted the demise of the British Chess Club. Arrangements were made for it to merge with another club, but that meant its name came to an end after more than a quarter of a century. Although the company was now ended, the lease had presumably been paid up to the end of September so that the premises remained available to members for a few weeks longer. Hoffer reported on 27 September that: The members of the British Chess Club have amalgamated with the present Pall Mall Club, 12 St. James’s-square, Piccadilly. We understand that the name of the club is to be changed in conformity with the new arrangement. A farewell dinner was given in the old premises on Wednesday, and on Thursday the members emigrated to their new quarters.71

The new quarters was the Pall Mall Club—a grand but misleading name for a club not actually in that street, and had been owned by a James Edgcome, who was running it at a loss. A court case in June 1902 resolved to liquidate that company.72 Presumably somebody bought it with a view to amalgamation with the chess club, after which the name was changed. On 10 January 1903 Hoffer published a game he had played against “Mr. X” at the Blenheim Club, 12 St. James’s Square,

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“the present home of the members of the British Chess Club, who have amalgamated with the above club.” After this the British Chess Club passes into obscurity. Meanwhile, on 8 November 1902 the Shoreditch Observer pondered over who would now organize the cable matches against America, and in fact the City of London Club assumed this role from 1903. The Shoreditch paper said: To chess-players, however, an almost equally interesting matter is the claim of the City to be considered the premier chess club. The honour has hitherto attached to the British Chess Club, but that organization having blended with an ordinary social club there is an undoubted vacancy. Many of those interested in the matches would like to see an organisation really representative of the whole country take its place.

The final document in the file at Kew is a brief “Return of Final Winding-Up Meeting of the British Chess Club Company, Limited” in a standard form submitted to the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies. Signed by the Liquidator, F. W. Lord, it states: I have to inform you that a Meeting of the British Chess Club Company, Limited, was duly held on the thirtieth day of December 1904 (pursuant to Section 142 of “The Companies Act, 1862”) for the purpose of having an account laid before them showing the manner in which the winding-up of the Company has been conducted, and the Property of the Company disposed of, and that the same was done accordingly.

Thus ends the saga of a once proud chess club, as well as that of a chess magazine which never recaptured the importance of its first decade and, refusing to be put out of its misery, died a painful and lingering death. Few attended the funeral. So eventually the club closed, the company failed and the magazine came to an end, but what was cause and what was effect is hard to determine. The exact connection between club and magazine, and the extent of Hoffer’s involvement, may remain unconfirmed but it seems likely that he

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was the guiding hand in the publication, though he may have been too busy with his other roles in the chess world to be its full-time editor. Hoffer’s almost complete silence about the club in The Field during 1901 and 1902 is somewhat puzzling but he may have felt constrained from mentioning in one publication

details of what might be a competitor; he does not refer to British Chess Magazine either at this period. Hoffer, in The Field at least, did not state that he was a director and he never mentioned The Chess Chronicle. It was probably an episode of which he was not very proud and the less said about it, the better.

7. A Century and a Half of British Chess Books fetched in book auctions shows that certain rare classics—especially those about chess problems—can be highly sought after by collectors, assuming of course that the copies are in good condition. The present work is chiefly concerned with what historians can learn from studying old books, which will depend on what is relevant to their particular research interests. In this author’s view, early chess books are of much less value than chess columns, or even chess magazines, in terms of the factual information they can provide. One is relatively unlikely, for example, to find a game score or a result in a book (tournament books excepted) which had not previously been published elsewhere, although there are of course exceptions to all such generalizations. On the whole, old chess books are principally of value for what they can tell us about the mentalities of the past, rather than for what they can tell us about the game itself. Cultural history, which has become increasingly influential in academic history departments worldwide since the late 20th century, seeks to understand the past through evidence of how people then viewed their lives and times, and expressed themselves. This might be in unwritten forms (such as monuments

This chapter provides an overview of chess books published in the United Kingdom from early times to the First World War. Firstly it must be admitted that few, if any, books published before 1914 are of practical use to 21st century players seeking to improve their play. Chess knowledge and practice has developed, especially in the computer era, so much that, bar a few classics, only books published in the last 25 years or so should be consulted where opening theory is concerned. Nearly all old English-language books use the now obsolete descriptive notation, which presents a barrier to younger chess players today and will be an increasing problem for future generations. Even in the 1970s, the chess book publisher Batsford felt obliged to publish its earlier titles in descriptive notation until, from about 1976, editions in algebraic began to appear. British Chess Magazine abandoned descriptive notation from the January 1976 issue onwards; its problem articles had been using algebraic (with “S” for knight) for many years previously. For an historian or a book collector, the factors mentioned above are beside the point. From their point of view, few old books are entirely worthless. The high prices sometimes

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and architectural forms) but more accessibly in what they wrote and said. Sports history (including chess history), which has overwhelmingly, until recent times, been obsessed with seeking out results of competitions and the life stories of leading players, still has a long way to go, although a start has been made. There is certainly scope for the chess historian of the future to raise new questions and seek answers through finding new sources, or making unexpected use of familiar sources. Perhaps the main reason collectors continue to value early books about chess problems more highly than most other types is that the content “dates” much less quickly than books on practical play. For the chess historian, nearly every old chess book has the potential to be evidence. Even those longoutdated openings textbooks can teach us something about the development of the game, and the way our ancestors approached it. Prior to the 19th century, just about every chess book could be classed as a general manual, explaining rules, giving practical advice, showing some openings and maybe problems. What they did not include were game scores of complete games between identified persons, and indeed it is generally supposed that many of the examples were contrived for effect. It is possible to draw up a simpler classification of types of 19th century chess book than that devised by Betts, though some books overlapped his categories. There were some problem books that also included games, for example. In the first half of the century we can find elementary works and general manuals (including chapters on openings), collections of games, chess problems and studies, treatises on chess openings and some miscellaneous works. From 1850 onwards there is a greater variety of works including some tournament books, and there were also more openings books and more collections of problems.

Earliest British Chess Books While actual printed copies of many of the early English chess books mentioned below may be very rare, they can be found as page images in scholarly databases like Early English Books Online and the Eighteenth Century Collection Online. In several cases many slightly different editions have been preserved in this way. For a fuller discussion of early books and their social context, we recommend Chapters 3 and 4 of Chess: The History of a Game by Richard Eales.1 The first work listed in the Whyld and Ravilious bibliography is Caxton’s The Game and Playe of the Chesse, a translation of Jacopo da Cessole’s De ludo scacchorum, which can be classed as a morality of chess rather than an instructional work. The first edition was printed in Bruges in 1475. Caxton’s second edition, published in Westminster in 1483 (or possibly 1482), is generally reckoned the first book of any kind to be printed in England. A facsimile reprint of that was produced in London in 1855 and further reprints were made since. The first book in English to actually give instruction about playing the game was published in 1562 under the title The Pleasaunt and Wittie Playe of the Cheasts Renewed.2 Chess grew in popularity during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, which began in 1558; she enjoyed playing it with her courtiers. Treatises giving practical advice to players had become available from the continent, and this was the first to be translated into English. Publisher James Rowbothum says he “founde it translated out of Frenche into Englishe” but the Preface to the Reader is unsigned. Whyld and Ravilious said the translation had probably been made by Ralph Lever, archdeacon of Northumberland, although Richard Eales (page 89 of his history) was of a different opinion. Rowbothum, who made a second edition in 1569, dedicated the book to Robert Dudley, flattering the future Earl of Leicester that he could

7. A Century and a Half of British Chess Books play as well as the French, Italians and Spaniards, and recommended the game’s use for military training: Whiche game as it is kinglye and honest, and meete for divers sortes of men, so is it (in manye mennes judgement) not altogether unprofitable for Captains, Conductors of armies, and common Soldiours. For out of those wooden men may some knowledge bee had how to marche and sette furth Soldiours in the fielde, how to garde a King, and what forces ought to be in the sides of ye battaile.3

Leonard Wright, in 1589, expressed a similar opinion to Elyot and Rowbothum. He even hinted that just studying chess, without actually competing with an opponent, could in itself be interesting: “for recreation of the mind Chesse play is much commended, as a delectable pastime, a pleasant study, and a princely exercise….”4 Early in the 17th century, the game met with the disapproval of King James I,5 but this did not prevent the publication in 1614 of the second English book on chess (third if you count Caxton), The Famous Game of Chess-Play, attributed to Arthur Saul.6 Further editions followed in 1618, 1640, 1652 (edited by Jo. Barbier) and later. Historian Richard Eales noted of this work that it “contained only the absolute minimum of technical information and had much more to say about the etiquette and social advantages associated with the game.”7 A work offering more technical advice appeared in 1656: The Royal Game of ChessPlay, which was based on a translation of a lost manuscript by Giacchino Greco (1600– 1634), which he wrote for a rich patron while visiting England in 1622–1623. In 1624, after returning to Paris, Greco produced a final version upon which the 1669 Continental version of his book was based; it was not published in his lifetime.8 Some useful information about this book may be found under •1656-2 in the Whyld and Ravilious bibliography, which notes that the name of Greco nowhere appears, his forename having been

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distorted to “Biochimo” in the subtitle. Eales further points out (page 97) that publishing the book with its provocative subtitle during the rule of Oliver Cromwell “was clearly intended as a gesture of political defiance…. Perhaps a book on chess, while harmless in itself, seemed an ideal vehicle for a literary reassertion of the royalist cause.” Eales also points out that the book had no imitators and Greco’s work did not appear again in English until 1750. Although the manuscript on which Beale based his book is lost, at least two other Greco manuscripts of this period do survive in England. One shows the cumbersome (albeit already quite abbreviated) notation that he used. Thus the move Bc4×f7† was rendered as: “Bp of ye Kg takes ye p: of ye contr: Kgs Bp & checks.”9 All this was of course modernized in Lewis’s 19th century translation. The very attractions of chess meant it could be taken to excess. A correspondence player, who always has some games in progress, would recognize the psychological truth in a 1648 diary entry by the Rev. Ralph Josselin: “Wheras I have given my minde to unseasonable playing at chesse, now it run in my thoughts in my illnes as if I had been at chesse, I shall bee very sparing in the use of that recreation and that at more convenient seasons.”10 Chess, and games in general, also encountered some criticism from Puritans. One killjoy wrote: “That student that needeth Chess or Cards to please his Mind I doubt hath a carnal empty mind.”11 As those words hint, more serious for chess’s popularity was Restoration and Georgian England’s fondness for gambling games. Chess for a time was mostly featured in various literary compendiums. Charles Cotton (1630–1687), in his much-reprinted The Compleat Gamester,12 had known a game to last a fortnight. His book testifies to the decline of chess in those times: “the tediousness of the Game hath caus’d the practice thereof to be so little used….”13 Editions of Cotton continued to appear up to 1734 and a rival

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Left: Title page from Lewis’s translation of Greco, with the signature of Professor Mountifort Longfield of Trinity College Dublin, who was honorary secretary of the Dublin Library Chess Club. Right: A page from Lewis’s translation of Greco. The diagram (from Greco’s First Game) shows the position after 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. c3 Nf6 5. d4 e×d4 6. c×d4 Bb4† 7. Nc3 N×e4 8. 0–0 N×c3 9. b×c3 B×c3 10. Qb3 B×a1 11. B×f7† Kf8 12. Bg5 Ne7 13. Ne5.

work was The Court Gamester by Richard Seymour from 1719 to 1732; the later editions of Cotton up to 1754 were edited by him. A few gamesters did have a reputation for winning money at chess, notably Major-General Fielding, whose “talent lay much in Chess and Backgammon, which two games have often lin’d his Pockets with large Sums of Gold, got from Persons of Quality who were mere Novices… .”14 Eventually Cotton and Seymour were superseded by the numerous editions of Edmund Hoyle’s books on games (from about 1744 onwards) in which chess had to take a back seat to card games. The phrase “according to Hoyle” came to mean an

appeal to the most authoritative work on games (even into the 20th century), but not where chess was concerned. Notwithstanding the popularity of various card games, the ancient board game retained some adherents. Slaughter’s CoffeeHouse, in London’s St. Martin’s Lane, emerged as a favorite meeting-place for players during the 1730s. When Captain Joseph Bertin’s book The Noble Game of Chess appeared in 1735, it was said to be sold only at Slaughter’s.15 Eales observes that this book was some advance on Greco and, although soon superseded, was “the first original chess book of any size to be printed for a century.” Some private libraries

7. A Century and a Half of British Chess Books no doubt held manuscripts, such as the Caze manuscript of 1706, now in Cleveland, which at this time would have been at Blenheim Palace and which Bertin (a Huguenot army officer) had possibly seen.16 The next step forward was taken by Philip Stamma of Aleppo, who had come to England from France in 1739 when a patron found him a job as interpreter of Oriental languages to the British Government. It remains a curiosity that his book, The Noble Game of Chess (1745), used algebraic notation, more than two centuries before that became the norm in British chess publishing. Earlier editions of Stamma’s book had been in French. Eales sees the greatest significance of his book’s being in the rejection of many of Greco’s ideas, especially the King’s Gambit, thus opening the way to new ideas. It was not long before these were to arrive, also from France.

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an opponent of master strength who could contend with him on more or less equal terms and so force him to reconsider his ideas or develop them further. A large number of his known games were played by him under a handicap: material odds, or blindfold, or both. In 1748, Philidor composed his first treatise on chess, probably in the Netherlands where he obtained numerous subscriptions for it, before returning to London in 1749 to arrange for publication. In the preface, he propounded for the first time his thesis that correct play of the pawns is the basis for attack and defense in the game.* The book appeared

The Era of Philidor The young music composer FrançoisAndré Danican Philidor (1726–1795) comfortably defeated Stamma in a match during his first visit to London in 1747. The terms were that drawn games counted as wins for Stamma, but Philidor was victorious by 8–2, only actually losing one game. He also beat Sir Abraham Janssen by four wins to one.17 Thereafter he defeated all comers (though he never met the leading Italian players) and dominated, at the board and in print, the chess worlds of France and England until long after his death, in London in 1795. Philidor was a child of the 18th century Enlightenment and he brought a more analytical approach to the game, including some advances in the analysis of certain endgames. After his youth he never had to contend with

Title page from one of the editions of Philidor’s book.

*The saying “Pawns are the soul of chess” is usually attributed to Philidor. In the French edition, page xix, he used the word âme, which can fairly be translated as “soul,” but in the first English edition, pages ix–x, pawns are called the “Life of this Game.”

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first in French, as L’Analyze des Echecs, dedicated to the Duke of Cumberland, whom he had met in Eindhoven and who underwrote 50 copies. The subscription list included other noblemen, officers and gentlemen, several ladies and clergymen from many countries, including the Primate of Ireland, who subscribed for eight copies.18 In 1750 the Italian edition of Greco was translated into English and published as Chess Made Easy, but in the same year the first edition in English of Philidor’s first book also appeared. The General Evening Post (a London newspaper) of Saturday 24 November 1750 advertised that “this day was published,” price three shillings, Philidor’s Chess Analysed. The original French edition was also available at 3s. 6d., which is roughly £21 for the English or £24.50 for the French version in 2017. In the next few years Philidor traveled between England, Germany, and France where in 1755 he established himself as the best player by winning a match against Legall, who had been the foremost player in Philidor’s youth and whose chess pupil he had been. Philidor married in 1760 and thereafter family life and professional success in music held him in France. He next returned to London only in 1772, according to his biographer Allen, who surmises that a visit of the Saxon aristocrat Count Brühl (1736–1809) to Paris may have led to an invitation to meet a new chess circle based in the Salopian coffee house.19 Allen claims Philidor spent a month in England then, and at some point in the early 1770s, Philidor certainly did visit London. The diary of the novelist Fanny Burney records that he presented a letter of introduction from the philosophe Denis Diderot to her father, Dr. Charles Burney, who helped him with translation. Philidor returned to London in 1775 after arrangements were made for an exclusive new chess club, limited to 100 members, to be formed at Parsloe’s in St. James’s Street. The main, or at least a principal, purpose of

this club, formed in 1774, was to engage Philidor as (essentially) a professional to visit London annually for a season of about four months (between February and June). This was briefly a fashionable club to which people who had no special interest in chess were keen to belong; the historian Gibbon was among them. Perhaps because of the stimulus of the club, Philidor decided to extend and reissue his chess book around this time. In 1777 it appeared both in French and English, the latter being under the title Analysis of the Game of Chess; A New Edition, Greatly Enlarged. The English edition was for general sale but the French original (also published in London) was issued by subscription. Several women were on the list of underwriters, including Caroline Howe,20 whose chess games in 1774 and 1775 with Benjamin Franklin had been partly a cover for her brother Earl (Richard) Howe’s attempts to avoid an American war.21 Confusingly, advertisements appearing from 3 October 1777 in the Gazeteer and New Daily Advertiser speak of the third edition, which is also how that of 1773 had been described. The price was lower, 2s. 6d., about £15 in 2017, and cheap compared with the price of tickets to his concerts. The high point of Philidor’s musical career in England was the period 1779–1785, especially the first of those years, but press coverage of Philidor’s chess feats in the early 1780s may reflect a gradual change back towards the game in his priorities. He attempted more ambitious exhibitions, perhaps as a counterweight to a decline in his musical fashionability. Revising his book was perhaps less of a strain than his blindfold exhibitions. No chess reports appear in the Burney Collection of newspapers for the years 1784 through 1786, but Philidor gave at least one blindfold exhibition in 1787. This may have helped to promote the new English edition of the Analysis which appeared that year (confusingly called the fourth edition, as it was really the fifth) and also the first volume of Richard

7. A Century and a Half of British Chess Books Twiss’s Chess which included Philidor’s biography. The final, and important, edition of Philidor’s book was published in 1790. At the end of his preface, Philidor struck a new note when he wrote that “I … flatter myself of having brought to some degree of perfection the theory of a game, that learned authors, such as Leibnitz [sic] and others, have classed among the sciences.” Chess was becoming the subject of scholarship and not merely amusement. Richard Twiss was a general writer on travel and other topics, and it must be said that his reputation for accuracy is not high. He wrote on chess in two volumes (1787 and 1789), compiling a large amount of diverse material, and added some more about chess in his later Miscellanies (1805). This is sometimes all dismissed as anecdotage. In Twiss’s defense it must be said that he was a friend of the more scholarly Francis Douce, who bequeathed the whole of his library to the Bodleian in Oxford. He did this, despite being keeper of manuscripts at the British Museum, because he learned that in Oxford his bequest would be kept together as the Douce collection. Whyld and Ravilious, in their entry numbered 1787-7, quote two 19th century sources saying that Douce was a major contributor to Twiss’s work on chess. This seems to be an exaggeration and requires some clarification. Researchers wishing to investigate this matter need to go to Oxford and call up Douce SS457 and Douce SS458. They should receive three bound books. The first is volume 1 of Twiss interleaved with a lot of comments and corrections, so apparently Douce had his copy specially bound in this way in order to annotate it. For example, facing page 6 where Twiss mentions Voltaire, Douce adds “Mr. Wilbraham told me that he had played at chess with Voltaire & beat him. V. said ‘I must go to Paris to learn chess.’” Just below, regarding Rousseau, Douce has added: “The author of Le Voyageur a Paris [Tome 1 p37] says that

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“Rousseau’s playing chess in this coffee-house attracted so many people that the Lieutenant de Police was obliged to place a sentinel at the door.” The second of the three books to be received is a standard copy of Twiss volume 2, but with a few cuttings pasted in front and back. The third was a Douce scrapbook, where a note near the front says: “Mr. Twiss made several extracts from this volume, reprinted them in his Miscellanies, vol. 2, 1805.” Some items in the scrapbook are dated as late as 1827. Our impression, therefore, is that Douce had no input into the first volume of Twiss, but did his best to ensure that his friend’s subsequent writings on chess were accurate and Twiss included items supplied by Douce.

Sarratt and Cochrane’s Treatises The market for elementary and general works on chess was far larger than for any other type of book in the first half of the 19th century, if only because nearly everyone who played chess was a relative novice; there were too few advanced players to make a market for more detailed and specialized works. This began to change only in the early 1840s when postal chess became popular, after the introduction of the penny post, and the number of chess clubs in towns greatly multiplied. A gentleman with only a casual interest in chess might have one or two books on the subject in his library, if only to help his children learn the game. Any such book needed to teach the basic rules and moves of the pieces, perhaps proceeding to some coverage of openings or other matters. Many of the elementary works listed by Whyld and Ravilious were dependent on Philidor for their material. Peter Pratt issued numerous editions based on Philidor under

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the title Studies of Chess between 1803 and 1825. Gaige’s Personalia says Pratt was born about 1770; Bell’s Life in London, 11 June 1837, said “This gentleman, unfortunately, died last winter.” Walker was very dismissive of his book: “The work contains some clever things, but they are sadly overlaid in rubbish.” Books by Montigny (translated from French), and William Stopford Kenny, author of the Practical Chess Grammar (first published in 1818), also feature in the bibliography, but the most important original works of the early century were those by Jacob Henry Sarratt (1772?– 1819) and John Cochrane. Sarratt, a Jerseyman, was the first English expert to write a major work on how to play chess well. Until quite recently, there was very little biographical information available about this man. He was the leading English player of his generation, and just old enough to have met Philidor and even draw a game against him. The Oxford Companion to Chess has a short article about Sarratt, and then a bit more was revealed in the article for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, which chiefly dealt with his second wife, the singer Camilla Dufour.22 The fullest life of Sarratt is to be found in a 30-page chapter in Townsend’s book Historical Notes on Some Chess Players.23 Townsend seems to have used completely different sources, not mentioning either essayist William Hazlitt’s recollections of Sarratt (in his “Table Talk”) or the O.D.N.B. article, so he does not address the claim in the latter work that Sarratt had been a prizefighter. The word may have been a misunderstanding of Hazlitt’s remark that Sarratt was “one of the fancy,” which certainly meant that he followed the fight game but not necessarily that he ever stepped into the ring. Sarratt is said to have taught chess for a guinea a lesson, which only a rich man could afford in those days; it would be as if a grandmaster charged $100 today. He described himself as a “Professor of Chess” on the title page of his two-volume A Treatise on the Game

of Chess, published in 1808.24 In his introduction, Sarratt claimed that his book improved on its predecessors by dealing with how the second player should open the game, and with pawn endings, which Philidor had largely neglected. Sarratt begins with a review of earlier chess literature and then teaches the rules, being at pains to stress that stalemate is a draw, contrary to the rule at Parsloe’s in Philidor’s time. Sarratt follows Continental practice: “In France, Italy, Germany etc. stalemate has always been considered a drawn game.” Sarratt’s book runs to well over 600 pages and makes rather tedious reading, partly because of the laborious way in which the examples had to be set out. The amount of information contained in the book could today be compressed into far fewer pages with modern notation. The description of each move was long-winded, e.g., “The Q.B.P. one step” for c2–c3. Moreover there were very few diagrams of game positions (as opposed to problems) in chess literature until the midcentury, so the location of each piece had to be written out. After the rules, Sarratt deals for nearly 200 pages with the openings from White’s point of view, giving mostly 1. e4 openings but also some examples of the Queen’s Gambit. These are presented in 31 main opening “games” with subsequent variations which, following Philidor’s example, are called “back-games.” The final section of the first volume offers puzzles, the solutions to be given in the second volume: “Seventy-Five Critical Situations, won or drawn by brilliant and scientific moves.” This can be seen as a modern didactic touch, an advance on Philidor. Also it was also good marketing by the author and publisher, to encourage the purchase of the second volume. For example, on pages 268–270 of the first volume, the following “situation occurred lately while playing against a Gentleman, who bids fair to be a first-rate Player.”

7. A Century and a Half of British Chess Books

wDrDwDwi 0p1wDw0w rDwDwDw0 DwDwDwDw wDwDwHbD DwDQDn)w P)wDw)RD DKDRDNDw “The White having the move, played 1. Nh2. What ought the Black to play?” (The solution was in the second volume on its page 348.)

Volume 2 begins with advice to Black on the openings, in 27 games, including a little on the Queen’s Gambit. Starting on page 102, elementary mates are discussed: with the rook, with both bishops, with knight and bishop. Then the method of drawing with knight against rook, or bishop against rook. The next example (starting on page 131) is faulty but Sarratt can be forgiven for not having access to a computer tablebase which shows that the start position is drawn with best play. He could not have known that the general case of this endgame is now considered drawn. The example is still quite good as showing the approach the stronger side may adopt.

QDwDwDwD DwDwDwDw wDwDwDwD DwDwhwDw wDniwDwD DwDwDwDw wDwDwDwI DwDwDwDw White to move

1. Kg3 Kd3?? The tablebase shows that Black should choose among Nd3, Nd6, Ne3, Nb2, Kc5 and Kc3. 2. Qd5†? It is understandable that Sarratt wants to improve the Q position but this should not win. 2. Kf4 mates

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in 46. 2. … Kc3 3. Kf4 Nd3† The only correct move. 4. Kf3 Nde5†?? The knights should regroup to defend the king after it is forced towards the corner. The computer suggests Nd2, Na3, Nc1, and Ndb2. Also paradoxically 4. … Kb4 holds because there is a knight fork after 5.  Q×d3.  5.  Ke4! The only winning move; mate in fewer than 20 moves in all variations. 5.  … Kb3 6.  Kd4 Best. 6.  … Kb4 7.  Qb7† Ka4 8.  Kc5 Ka3 9.  Qb4† Ka2 10. Kd5 Ka1? 11. Qb3 and wins. Sarratt does not mention the tricky attempt 10. … Nb2, setting up a knight fork, when the win is by 11. Qa5† Kb1 (11. … Kb3 12. Qb5† and captures the knight next move.) 12. Qe1† Kc2 (or 12. … Ka2) 13. Q×e5 winning. Sarratt continued by showing how to draw with two bishops against queen and then some cases of how to win with rook and bishop against rook. Next he dealt with queen against pawn on the seventh rank. Starting on page 160 he discusses a case which a previous writer got wrong.

wDwDwDwD IwDQDwDw wDwDwDwD DwDwDwDw wDwDwDwD DwDwDwDw piwDwDwD DwDwDwDw White to move

1.  Qd4† Kb1 2.  Qg1† Kb2 3.  Qg2† Kb1 4. Qb7† Ka1?? “Salvio directs this move; it however occasions the loss of the game.” Sarratt points out that 4. … Kc2 draws (as does 4. … Kc1). 5. Kb6 Kb2 6. Kc5† Kc2 Or 6. … Ka1 7. Kb4 Kb2 8. Qg2† Kb1 9. Kb3 etc. 7. Qg2† Kb1 8. Kb4 a1Q 9. Kb3 and wins. From pages 165 to 227 Sarratt has the promised discussion of elementary king and pawn endgames, which is much more comprehensive than that by any previous author. The

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final section discusses the solutions of the situations given at the end of volume 1. In the middle-game position shown above, Black wins by 1. … Bf5 which wins the queen unless 2. Q×f5 is played, in which case Black has two different ways to force mate in four moves. Sarratt prefers the flashy queen sacrifice 2.  … Qc1† but 2. … Nd2† first is equally effective. In 1813 Sarratt published a book about the works of Damiano, Ruy Lopez and Salvio on chess, and in 1817 another about the chess works of Gianutio and Gustavus Selenus. Near the end of his life, Sarratt started to rewrite his manual completely as A New Treatise on the Game of Chess, on a Plan of Progressive Improvement, also in two volumes.25 It includes a question-and-answer section for beginners, but it is likely that Sarratt’s death more than a year before publication means that the work did not appear in the form the author intended. The lengthy preface preceding the introduction to the Treatise proper (which starts on page 1) includes several examples critical of previous writers and Sarratt did not commence on giving the elementary rules until page 29. Since the previous matter requires some detailed knowledge of chess, an impression of disorganization had already been created, contrary to the “progressive” promise of the title. It is likely that William Lewis, probably London’s strongest player after the death of Sarratt, saw it through the press. Lewis then went back to Sarratt’s 1808 edition and reorganized it as a single-volume work, including a table of contents (which the original had lacked), and put this out with a different publisher in 1822.26 Murray noted in one of his manuscripts that: “It merely adds a couple of unimportant variations by Sarratt, one by Lewis, and alters the play in the First Defence game.”27 In the same year, Cochrane’s own treatise was published.28 He and Lewis had visited Paris in 1821, where they played against the leading French masters and probably improved their skill considerably in the process. Like Sarratt, Cochrane had been influenced

by the Italian writers on chess as the subtitle of his book shows. It deals with a wider range of openings than Sarratt’s. Briefly discussing 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4, Cochrane wrote: “I shall call it by that name which among some players in England it is already known by, ‘THE QUEEN’S PAWN TWO GAME.’ On the propriety or elegance of this appellation I can have little to say in defence….” Ironically, after the London Chess Club adopted this against Edinburgh in the correspondence match of 1824, the opening became known as the Scotch! (It is true that Edinburgh subsequently adopted the opening themselves as White.) London had achieved a winning position before Cochrane sailed for India to take up a legal appointment; months later he found out that his teammates had spoiled the game and lost it.29 Cochrane also, starting on page 260, gave detailed consideration to what he called the “King’s Pawn One Game,” i.e., the French Defense, but it was not yet called that. He said it had been “hastily passed over as bad by almost every writer.” They had not given it proper attention: “it is a game entirely of position, and, consequently, one of extreme difficulty,” remarking that Captain Bertin had mentioned it but his example was not well played. After examining some variations where White over-extended his position, Cochrane remarked that the defense is “perfectly sound” although he made this admission with “considerable reluctance.” He said that those who adopt this defense “seek to weary out an antagonist with whom, in open combat, they could not, for a moment, contend.” He recommended his readers not adopt the French because it was “sterile.”

General Manuals from Lewis to Staunton In the 1830s and early 1840s there were two principal authors of general manuals on

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From left: William Lewis, author of several chess books; George Walker, chess editor of Bell’s Life, and rival author to Lewis; Augustus Mongredien, president of the London and Liverpool chess clubs. From Edge’s book about Morphy’s European tour.

chess, Lewis and Walker, and a price war developed between them, as Richard Eales has noted in his Chess: The History of a Game.30 There were also a few other chess authors of less significance, such as the Rev. Henry Wood (1834).31 Eventually both Lewis and Walker were undercut by writers of very cheap editions aimed at working men with smaller budgets, and ultimately Staunton wrote a book which effectively “retired” Lewis and Walker from the market. Lewis, who was already a strong player by about 1820, was the most prolific author of that decade but the younger Walker gradually caught up to him. Many of their early books have been made available in pdf on Google Books or similar online services, as part of the preservation projects undertaken by many major libraries in conjunction with Google. Lewis retired from active play early in the 1830s and from that time Walker was more in touch with current developments.

After his edition of Sarratt and some minor books, Lewis issued his own first original work, Elements of the Game of Chess, in 1822.32 This was not a complete manual, but was intended to complement Sarratt’s treatment of the openings. Apart from giving the rules and moves of the pieces, Lewis taught the methods of winning various endgames. This book featured what was potentially a major advance in chess publishing: the use of diagrams to illustrate positions. These were used sparingly, no doubt because they were expensive to produce individually in woodcuts. For most of the book, positions were describe in the usual laborious way. By 1830 Lewis had obtained a post with the Family Endowment Society. Advertisements show that he still gave lessons sometimes but he also had the leisure to write more books. The first fruit, in 1831, was A Series of Progressive Lessons on the Game of Chess, aimed at beginners. Lewis followed up in 1832 with

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the more important work, A Second Series of Lessons on the Game of Chess, aimed at readers who had absorbed that work or were already more advanced in skill. Some editions had this bound with his Fifty Games, published in the same year (discussed below). An advertisement in the Morning Post on publication day, 21 May 1832, showed that the price of the combined volume was one pound (the equivalent of £85 in 2017) or the 50 Games could be bought separately for five shillings. The Second Series discussed the openings in more detail than the first series had done, beginning with Philidor’s beloved Bishop’s Opening (1. e4 e5 2. Bc4) before moving on to openings with 2. Nf3. One variation analyzed in some detail was 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6 4.  Ng5 N×e4, after which discussion moved on to the more usual 4. … d5 and then to 3. … Bc5, and finally the Scotch, 3. d4. Then on page 133 Lewis introduced “Capt. Evans’s Game,” 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. b4, including some variations which Evans had personally supplied him.33 This was the first chess book to mention the Evans Gambit and the analysis continued to page 150. It is somewhat curious in mentioning, as one of the motives for the gambit, to deflect the Black bishop from the a7–g1 diagonal in order to advance f2–f4 as quickly as possible after castling, as in the variation (which stems from Evans himself ) 4. … B×b4 5. c3 Ba5 6. 0–0 Nf6 7. Ng5 0–0 8. f4. This is not an idea which later formed part of the mainstream theory of this popular gambit, but players may have started playing 5. … Bc5 instead of 5. … Ba5 in order to rule it out. In the same year of 1832, Walker (whose father was a publisher) entered the lists with A New Treatise on Chess, which apart from instructional matter included “a selection of fifty chess problems never before printed in this country.”34 Some of these were by Walker

himself, or by his friend W. B. (Bone), several by Hirsch von Silberschmidt of Brunswick, and others by various Continental composers. At just three shillings (about £12.79 today), according to an advertisement in The Examiner, on 20 May 1832, this was considerably cheaper than Lewis’s rival work, although not as good. Longer print runs would have made for economies of scale, enabling prices to be much lower. Previously Lewis’s publishers could charge whatever the market would bear. Now Walker’s competition drove down prices. An advertisement in the Morning Post on 25 January 1833, and headed “Cheap Books,” said that Lewis had authorized the publishers to sell his chess works at half the original prices, but they still looked very expensive. His First Series of Lessons still cost ten shillings. By 1835 Walker was also advertising in the press that he gave private chess lessons at his own house or that of the pupil. A second “enlarged and improved” edition of Walker’s Treatise appeared in 1833, advertised in the Morning Chronicle of 8 July for 5s. 6d. (about £24 in today’s money). It was indeed an improvement, being better organized and having a table of contents, and ten pages on the Evans Gambit were included. Walker also issued his own elementary treatise Chess Made Easy in 1836 (at 3s 6d.), to compete with Lewis’s Chess for Beginners which first appeared in 1835. Walker undercut him with the 111-page Chess-board Companion for 2s. 6d. in 1838. By comparison, Wood’s 72page New Guide to Chess cost just 1s. 6d. in June 1834, roughly comparable at £6.62 with the price of a small paperback today, but the content was far inferior to the works by Lewis and Walker which, as Eales said, were the first to be an advance on Philidor. A few years later, Pinnock’s A Catechism of Chess was being recommended by Walker as a suitable book for mechanics, at nine pence a copy. The writers

Opposite, top: Title page from the 1842 edition of Hoyle’s Games. Bottom: Chess advice from the 1842 edition of Hoyle’s Games.

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A page spread from Staunton’s Chess Player’s Handbook (1847) analyzing the position after 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. d4 e×d4.

of chess books also had to compete with Hoyle’s Games, an antiquated compendium (1842 edition on page 331: “the king, who is stale-mated, wins the game in England, but in France this situation makes a drawn game”). In 1841, when the third and “much enlarged” final edition of Walker’s New Treatise was published, it ran to nearly 300 pages and retailed at eight shillings, equivalent to about £33.50 in 2017.35 This would be the best single-volume general chess treatise available until Staunton’s Hand-Book came out six years later. Nevertheless, it still had to compete with reissues of Lewis’s books: a revised edition of one, under the title First Series of Progressive Lessons, was issued in 1842. When Walker’s

New Treatise was first published it came under attack from a 20-page pamphlet issued by an anonymous “Society of Amateurs,” chiefly objecting to the laws of chess as stated there by Walker.36 As an item on page 10 of the first issue of The Chess Player’s Chronicle mentions this, there is a strong suspicion that the pamphlet’s authors were Lewis and Staunton. Staunton’s The Chess Player’s Hand-Book aimed to be, as an advance advertisement stated in the Illustrated London News of 2 January 1847, “the most comprehensive synopsis of the various methods of opening and playing the game which has yet been published.” It was published in June that year and at over 500 pages in one volume, written by the best

7. A Century and a Half of British Chess Books known and strongest English player of the day, it was assured of success. All previous manuals became instantly out-of-date. Staunton’s book provided just what a beginner or weak club or social player required to improve his game. It was reprinted countless times, with the final word of the title eventually truncated to Handbook. It would be many decades before anyone would attempt to rival it in the English language. The only area the Handbook did not cover was the playing of chess at odds, a subject (important at that time) to which Staunton devoted a separate book, The ChessPlayer’s Companion in 1849. The royalty system that developed later was still in its infancy. Staunton made the terrible mistake of selling the copyright to his Handbook outright to the publisher so that he made no money from the many reprints. In those days pages of a book had to be laboriously made up in metal type by compositors but a publisher could stereotype the pages of a successful book so that reprints were easy and cheap to produce, while the original type could be broken up and re-used. Early in 1888, Steinitz said he had found out that the total sales of Staunton’s Handbook by then amounted to 50,000 copies; if Staunton had been paid for the book on a royalty basis he would have lived comfortably all his life.37 Staunton himself eventually issued in 1860 Chess Praxis: A Supplement to the Chess Player’s Handbook. That book consisted of three main sections: (a) A new code of laws with discussion of same; (b) An update of the openings coverage in the Handbook with illustrative games from recent years; (c) An appendix of games by Paul Morphy. Staunton’s Preface says the Handbook had come out 12 years earlier. In the interval, through the medium of periodicals and Associations, a knowledge of Chess has been so widely diffused, that the game now occupies perhaps a more prominent position among sedentary recreations than at any former period…. One consequence of this enlarged activ-

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ity in the cultivation of Chess-playing has been the introduction of many changes in its elementary formulæ. Certain systems of attack which were thought to be irresistible a few years ago, are now regarded as defective, and some lines of defence which the best authorities then deemed impregnable, are found to have their vulnerable points.

Staunton’s Praxis was also a useful work but did not meet with the success he hoped for, at least in respect of the code of chess laws, a subject dear to his heart for twenty years. As already noted, he had by 1860 made himself so unpopular that the British Chess Association rejected his laws and drafted an alternative code. Staunton’s final book, Chess Theory and Practice was not completed at his

A page from Staunton’s Handbook showing his favorable opinion of the Sicilian Defense prior to the London 1851 tournament.

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death and although Wormald saw it through the press, and it went through a few editions, it made little impact now that Staunton was no longer alive.

Early Game Collections The first game collection to be published, in 1817, was compiled by merchant and economist John Cazenove (1788–1979), who was probably a member of the London Chess Club.38 This little book was published anonymously “for private circulation.” The British Library’s copy was destroyed. The copy in Cleveland bears a handwritten inscription on the title page saying: “H. Lawson Esq, with John Cazenove’s kind respects.” The game scores were only printed on the recto pages; the players and occasions unidentified. There are some notes on verso pages. A note in ink on the inside back cover shows that George Walker had purchased this copy from a bookseller in 1831. The first game has “GW poor game” written at the head in ink and pencil. There are other such ink marks. Walker evidently used this copy when compiling his own game collection Chess Studies many years later. In 1820 a collection of 50 games played in London by the “automaton” was published.39 This may be found in Google Books. The preface is signed “W.H.” In these games the human expert concealed within the machine invariably conceded odds of pawn and move. Some of the players were partially identified by the first and last letters of their surnames, others were left completely anonymous. Game 21 was lost by a woman after a good fight: Professor Charles Tomlinson, in his memoir for British Chess Magazine written shortly before his death, remembered the automaton’s visit and says it was then operated by Mouret. He included that game in his article: “As it was thought impossible in those days for a lady to conduct a game with any chance of success

against a strong player, I select a game in which Miss Hook holds out with great credit.”40 The next publication of actually played games, apart from a few in newspapers and periodicals, was in connection with the historic Edinburgh–London correspondence match (1825–1829), about which this author has written at length elsewhere.41 Both Lewis, for London, and the Bailie Donaldson, for Edinburgh, gave their opinions on what had transpired. A few years later, Lewis published a collection of 50 games, mostly but not entirely by himself; there were some by Captain Evans. Again the players were not identified although in later years Walker and others revealed the identities of some of the players.42 This book also included Lewis’s account of chess in the village of Stroebeck, Germany, which was often reprinted thereafter. Lewis was also responsible for the first selection of games to be published from the series of matches in 1834 between “an English Amateur of first rate skill” and de la Bourdonnais.43 He said he “was not at liberty to publish” Alexander McDonnell’s name. He ran into some criticism for not including some of the best games. Some of them had also been published anonymously in Bell’s Life in London where Walker defended the practice of anonymity: “Gentlemen do not like to be dragged unnecessarily into print, and they are right in this feeling.”44 After McDonnell’s death, another book appeared, collected by W. Greenwood Walker (no relation to George), who was the honorary secretary of the Westminster Chess Club. It had many games by McDonnell including an almost complete record of the matches between the French master and his Irish rival.45 An appendix included three games played between Lewis and the enigmatic Deschapelles in Paris in 1821 but neglected to mention that the Frenchman (who lost one game and drew the other two) had conceded odds of pawn and move in each case.

7. A Century and a Half of British Chess Books One incidental reason why historians have shown an interest in early chess books is that many include subscription lists that can be revealing about who was buying books, what clubs existed at the time, and other useful details. Soliciting advance purchases, sometimes by means of a prospectus, was quite a frequent way for chess authors to raise the money to have their books printed, and subscribers would hope to receive the first copies, perhaps at a discount. This also offered authors the prospect of a profit if the subscriptions were sufficient to pay for the original batch of printed and bound copies. The impressive subscription list for the book of McDonnell’s games shows about 300 pre-paid copies including the names of Andrew Jackson (USA: presumably the president), the Duke of Wellington, Deschapelles, SaintAmant, Captain Evans, and many other minor celebrities and chess clubs. Quite a large number were subscribed by members of the Belfast, Dublin Philidorean and Edinburgh chess clubs. It needs to be borne in mind that sometimes subscribers might prefer to receive the loose printed sheets, which they could then have bound to their own taste and expense. Different copies of the same edition might be found, in different libraries, at different page sizes, depending on how the original owner decided to have the sheets cut down and bound. In the meantime, during 1835, George Walker had filled a serious void by publishing virtually all the known games played by Philidor and his contemporaries in London in the late 18th century. Up to that time it was not customary for players to record the moves of chess games they played, and it was rare for bystanders to do so. The illustrative games that were included by Philidor in most of his editions were idealized examples of his strategy, chosen and edited for their instructional value; no names of players or occasions of play were stated. Consequently there are no authentic records of games played by Philidor

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until the final phase of his career. The final, and most important, edition of his book was published in 1790 and had included a dedication to Count Brühl and some actual games for the first time: “several parties, played by the author blindfold, against three adversaries.” Yet most of Philidor’s games remained unknown to the general public until Walker’s book in which 47 of the 74 games in the book were by the French master. It was a Cambridge mathematician and pupil of Philidor, the Rev. George Atwood (1745–1807), who recorded many of the master’s games; the earliest is dated 1788. Atwood’s manuscripts finally came to light in a book sale in 1833, when George Walker purchased them in a sale. His preface details the circumstances by which the games survived and came into his hands.4 6 It is unknown whether any of Atwood’s notebooks still survive.47 Walker, who spoke with players who had known Philidor in their youth, stated that he “never met with an opponent who could attempt to play even with him, and his utmost energies were, therefore … never put in requisition.”48 To make an assessment of Philidor’s qualities in chess is therefore much more difficult than to assess his merits as a musical composer. The first time that a great quantity of historic games were published was in 1844 when George Walker issued his misleadingly-titled Chess Studies containing no fewer than 1,000 game scores, including all the games from the aforementioned books, crammed tightly into the pages with a fairly abbreviated notation. Since Walker had been publishing games almost weekly since January 1835 in Bell’s Life in London he was in the best position to issue a work of this kind. Walker’s book in many places named the players whose identities had hitherto been concealed. Chess Studies was reissued in 1893 in a photographic reprint, with an introduction by E. Freeborough, acknowledging the assistance of Wayte.49 The introduction assessed the state of chess at the

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date the book was produced, stressing it was shortly before Staunton’s Handbook. The following assessments sound as if they were Wayte’s opinions. “Whether Staunton was so strong a player as his two predecessors is questionable. He was certainly a steadier and surer player than McDonnell, if less elegant in his style than Labourdonnais,” was one judgment. They also commented: “St. Amant was a fine player, sagacious, ingenious, and careful, but slow in his movements, and in this respect very different from Labourdonnais.” Once Walker had opened the floodgates, it became more usual to publish games. In 1845 a collection of games played by members of the Bristol Chess Club appeared. It was anonymous, but is usually attributed to Elijah Williams.50 The editor’s preface states: A very large proportion of the games was played within the last six months; and he believes none of them have been published before, with the exception of three or four, which were printed in the Bath and Cheltenham Gazette newspaper a year or two ago. This circumstance the editor was not aware of until it was too late to be remedied.

Since it is supposed to be Williams who also conducted the Bath and Cheltenham column, this may be disingenuous—or perhaps some of the work on the book was done by others. There is no index of players, although, like several of the books already mentioned, there is a list of subscribers’ names: 147 individuals and also the clubs of Edinburgh, Dumfries, Liverpool, Maidstone, Plymouth, and of course Bristol. In the second half of the 19th century, subscription lists are rarer, and books more uniform, as authors instead put their books into the hands of publishers like Bohn and Trübner. There is a clear watershed at the point where Staunton’s The Chess- Player’s Handbook (first published in 1847) takes over from the older style of manual which was often modeled upon (and not infrequently

plagiarized from) Philidor. From that point, and the subsequent publication of Staunton’s book of the 1851 London tournament (the first of its kind), there is a much greater emphasis on current practical play, and the variety and number of chess books greatly increases up to 1914. Some of these changes, though, were prefigured from the 1820s as Europe emerged from the chaos of the Napoleonic wars and interaction between leading players of different countries began. British chess, though, was at first influenced by the French only (as it had been in Philidor’s day). During the 1840s, chess in the Germanspeaking part of the European continent, which had its own strong development at the same time, and in Russia, also made an impact on English chess—initially through publications and only afterwards through personal contact. Carl Jaenisch’s openings book was published in two volumes (1842 and 1843), in French. The 1847 English edition is discussed in detail below.51 Jaenisch’s book was influential for a while, but more significant in the long term was the Handbuch des Schachspiels, the first (1843) edition of which was written by P. R. von Bilguer and his associates in Berlin. Bilguer died before the book was complete but thanks to his friends (chiefly Von der Lasa), it became his memorial. This first Handbuch began a major series of systematic works and would certainly have received close study by Staunton and other English experts, though it was never published in translation. Both these books were hugely influential as nothing like them had been previously written, although the general treatises by Lewis and Walker had covered some of the ground. By the time of the 1862 London tournament, the international cross-fertilization of chess ideas which had received a big boost in 1851 was fully under way and we can trace the beginnings of today’s global chess culture back to those two great chess congresses.

7. A Century and a Half of British Chess Books

Jaenisch on the Openings

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that Black may take the pawn and hold it to the end of the game, but in practice to do is very difficult:

Carl Andreyevich von Jaenisch (1813– 1872) was the author of the first chess book Still the great superiority of position on the side devoted to openings, published in French of first player so narrows the line of defence, and so multiplies the sources of attack, that the during 1842 and 1843.* It was then translated King’s Gambit, although really hazardous, may into English and rearranged, by George Walker, be fearlessly played, even in a game by correin 1847; his introduction says he compressed spondence. This opening gives rise to the most the text but retained all Jaenisch’s moves. ingenious and complicated combinations that Walker’s edition of Jaenisch’s treatise provides can arise in Chess.54 some idea of how the principal openings were The name Sicilian Defense was not yet viewed in the 1840s prior to Staunton’s Handin use, and when Jaenisch was writing there book. A practical difficulty with this, as with was little theory on it or practical examples, many other early books, is the absence of poexcept for a few games by Philidor and nearly sition diagrams, so that all variations had to be played through from the beginning. Jaenisch gave a lot of attention to the French Defense, which was beginning to acquire that name after its use by the Paris Chess Club to defeat Westminster in their correspondence match which began in 1834.52 In his introduction he remarked that the defenses 1. e4 e6 and 1. e5 c5 were commonly called “irregular” but far from being irregular, they furnished a safer defense than 1. …e5 because they exposed the king less and led to a much slower game. In particular, the author warned, “There exists, in our opinion, Carl Friedrich Andreyevich von Jaenisch (1813–1872), left, and Alexander Dmitrievich Petroff (1794–1867) from Rusno completely satisfactory man- sia; it was Jaenisch’s pioneering book on openings that ner of evading the King’s Gam- revealed Petroff ’s analysis of 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 to the world. bit.”53 His introduction to the (Composite engraving, courtesy Cleveland Public Library analysis of that opening says Special Collections). *It would be good to find a primary source to establish Jaenisch’s correct second forename. He was an officer in the Russian army engineers and the title page of his book in French calls him “Major C. F. de Jaenisch”; Walker’s English edition does not state what the second initial stood for. Wikipedia, at the time of writing, says “Ferdinand” which is probably wrong but one wants to see proof. Gaige, Personalia, has “Carl Friedrich von,” implying ancestry in the German nobility, while the Oxford Companion added his Russian patronymic but dropped the preposition, calling him “Carl Friedrich Andreyevich,” as did Golombek’s encyclopedia. The Russian Encyclopaedia (edited by Karpov) and Sunnucks’s encyclopedia just have his patronymic with no second Christian name. (Also, Petroff or Petrov does not seem to have had a second Christian name. Jaenisch calls him “A. de Petroff ” while modern works drop the “de” but have D. for his patronymic, Dmitrievich.)

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twenty by de la Bourdonnais against McDonnell. Nevertheless Jaenisch wrote (in 1842) that “1. …c5 is, according to us, the best possible reply to 1. e4.”55 Jaenisch came to the conclusion that 2. Nf3 was not the best reply, but that the Wing Gambit, 2. b4, might favor Black with correct defense, and so in Walker’s English edition he recommended 2.  d4. Staunton had already begun to play the Sicilian by 1840, in his match against Popert, and tested it many times against Cochrane in 1842 before employing it against Saint-Amant. The Sicilian became extremely popular among advanced players in the 1840s and was much employed in the 1851 London tournament, but we can already begin to see, in embryo, the modern development of theory. In the second round Szén defeated Anderssen in a game which began 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 c×d4 4. N×d4 e6 and now Szén introduced his novelty 5. Nb5. This gave rise to new investigations, chiefly by his fellow Hungarian, Löwenthal, in the Report of the 1857 Manchester tournament. Eventually Anderssen abandoned what is now called the “Taimanov Variation” after losing two more important games against 5. Nb5, one against Löwenthal at Manchester in 1857 (where Anderssen tried 5. … a6) and then against Morphy in 1858. The latter game was annotated by Kasparov in the first volume of his My Great Predecessors, where he expressed surprise that the modern tabiya that arose after 5. … d6 6. Bf4 (see diagram) was already known in 1858.

rDb1kgn4 0pDwDp0p wDn0pDwD DNDwDwDw wDwDPGwD DwDwDwDw P)PDw)P) $NDQIBDR

After 6. Bf4

Kasparov appears to have been unaware of the Szén game which had already reached

the same position, continuing 6. … e5 7. Be3 a6; Anderssen tried to improve with 7. … f5 against Morphy. The correct move 7. … Nf6 seems to have been played first in 1878 by Johannes von Minckwitz (editor of the Deutsche Schachzeitung) against Adolf Schwarz. Even after these setbacks, Anderssen did not abandon the Sicilian entirely, but switched to playing 2. … e6 and after 3. d4 c×d4 4. N×d4 Nf6 or sometimes Paulsen’s 4. … a6. Where Open Games are concerned, Jaenisch noted that after 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 the reply 2. … Nc6 “presented, as the best, by the great masters of Italian Chess” had by now supplanted Philidor’s recommendation 2. … d6. One of the most important sections of Jaenisch’s work, for English players at least, was his coverage of what became known as the Petroff Defense, 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6, although he called it the Début des deux Cavaliers du Roi. It was Jaenisch’s Russian contemporary and friend A. D. Petroff,56 the dedicatee of the work, who, Jaenisch said, improved on Cozio’s cursory examination of this opening by showing that the best reply to 3. N×e5 is 3. … d6 and Petroff had also examined the 3. d4 variation. Before the second volume of his book appeared in French, Jaenisch had sent analysis of the defense to Saint-Amant, who published it in the Palamède of April 1842, after which some improvements for White had been found. By 1843 Jaenisch was having doubts, with which Walker concurred, about the value of 2. … Nf6, but ever since the Petroff Defense has remained a serious option for Black and has been employed in World Championship matches.57 After 2. … Nc6 Jaenisch considered that it was the Scotch “which, in our opinion, is decisive of the grand question as to whether 2. … Nc6 presents a defence entirely satisfactory.” He meant the Scotch Gambit, meeting 3. … e×d4 with 4. Bc4, because he thought 4. N×d4 well met by 4. … Qh4, a move (invented by Wellington Pulling of the London Chess Club) that Walker had probably told him about.

7. A Century and a Half of British Chess Books Walker added in a footnote that Jaenisch originally thought the Scotch too strong but “in a note appended to his work Jaenisch recants this opinion.” Jaenisch later believed he had found a defense, based on 4. … Bc5 5. c3 Nf6 (transposing to the Giuoco Piano), although he also briefly mentioned 4. … Nf6, which is what most people would play nowadays, transposing to the Two Knights Defense. Jaenisch’s discussion of the motive behind the Ruy Lopez (on page 165 of Walker’s English translation) was quite sophisticated. After 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 he advised White not to play the Exchange Variation, as the Italian authors prescribed, but rather 4. Ba4 “and the pawn will then have been advanced without effect, for 4. … b5 would give them a bad game by weakening their flank, and replacing your B upon his line of attack.” Jaenisch believed that doubling Black’s pawn when he could recapture with the d-pawn was not advantageous but playing it when the bpawn must recapture was a good idea, and therefore Black should avoid an early QP advance. Steinitz had a different opinion about that many years later. Jaenisch discussed 3. … Bc5 and then on page 167 he recommended as the best defense 3. … Nf6, “as indicated by M. Der Lasa,” and this became the principal weapon Kramnik used to dethrone Kasparov. In reply to 4. d3, Jaenisch suggested 4. … Bc5 (with which Kramnik beat Ivanchuk in 2001) and if then 5. 0–0 Nd4, which has been successful in some modern master games! Since Jaenisch had little or no examples of practical master play on which to base his judgments, his perspicacity is admirable. Anderssen evidently studied his book carefully; in 1851 he used this very variation to win a game as Black against Löwenthal. It is a pity that Jaenisch arrived in London too late to compete in the tournament himself. Jaenisch also discussed the Giuoco Piano. He did know of the Evans Gambit, from Lewis’s 1832 book and because it had been employed in some games between McDon-

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nell and de la Bourdonnais, but his coverage was only brief. After 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. c3 Nf6 he remarked that “We will not deign to notice the insignificant move 5. d3.” He chiefly examined 5. d4 e×d4 6. e5.

Problems and Studies Chess problems are almost as old as chess itself, though their nature has changed a good deal. Books on chess problems were not issued in the first half century in such great numbers as would later be the case, and we have not had the opportunity of examining most of them in any detail. In 1827 William Lewis issued his first book of problems collected from numerous sources (#1827-8 in the Whyld and Ravilious bibliography) and there was a reissue in 1833 (#1833-5). Then in 1844 R. A. Brown of the Leeds Chess Club issued his own collection, which was dedicated to Staunton who may have helped it to get published, since it was printed by the same company that printed The Chess Player’s Chronicle at that time.58 The book included 100 modern problems by various people including Angas, Kling and the author; it also included the games of the recent Leeds versus Liverpool correspondence match in which Brown had been involved. The subscription lists names 106 people, buying 121 copies, including Staunton (who bought six), and Cazenove’s name is on the list. Then in 1845 Kuiper, a German chess teacher, issued a small book (62 pages) of original problems.59 Chess Texts says its contents were 60 problems by himself and 60 by Adolf Anderssen of Breslau, who at this time was much better known as a problemist than a player. The bibliography adds: “Kuiper is said by Anton Schmid to have been a resident of Leipzig.” He was resident in England by the time the book appeared. His name appears several times in Bell’s Life in London, starting on 11 May 1845 when Walker said he was living at Chichester, “preparing for the press the

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problems of Anderssen” and intending to include many “ingenious chess stratagems” of his own. His name was given as D’Orville Kuiper. During 1846, Walker often puffed him as a teacher of chess. Kuiper was offering to play correspondence games for two guineas plus postage, and in September he was giving lessons in the Yorkshire seaside resort of Scarborough. On 1 November, Walker advised, “Kuiper gives twelve chess lessons, of about two hours each, for two guineas. He lives 2, Tavistock-row, Covent-garden. Gentlemen who want the rust taken off in secret, should get a polishing from Mr. Kuiper.” On 6 June 1847 the column said Kuiper played daily at Goode’s Divan on Ludgate Hill. Kuiper was still receiving recommendations from Walker occasionally up to 1848 and finally on 19 November 1848 he wrote that Kuiper “has left England for Germany, the land of his birth. His return is more than doubtful.” Another overseas visitor, Alexandre, also issued a problem collection and was publicized by Walker. In 1837 he had issued his Encylopédie des échecs, a very large work with text in English, German and Italian as well as French. By the late 1830s, at least, he was living in England, promoting his book and attempting to make a living as a chess professional, as various references to him in Bell’s Life show. A letter from Samuel Newham of Nottingham, in that paper on 24 July 1842, makes it clear that Alexandre in his seventies was “far from first-rate” and had become destitute. Then in 1846 Alexandre issued a monster collection of more than 2,000 problems entitled The Beauties of Chess, printed in Paris. On 25 January 1846 Walker recommended English players to buy it “as the last honourable effort of a veteran nearly eighty years of age, whose whole life has been spent in the cause of Chess, to furnish a resource in the last hours of that life.” Alexandre died in 1850.

During 1849 there appeared The Chess Euclid, a collection of 200 problems and endgames by Kling, which he explained was originally intended to be a supplement to a larger work on endgames that he was engaged upon with Horwitz. “My professional avocations have so long delayed the completion of our labours” that he decided to issue the problems first. The diagrams in this book are rather attractive, with the dark squares printed in blue ink and the “black” pieces in red. It must have been expensive to buy. In Bell’s Life on 14 October 1849, Walker praised it as “the best original collection of problems ever published.” Kling and Horwitz’s important coauthored work on endings finally appeared in 1851. Despite the possible confusion with the similarly titled game collection by Walker, Chess Studies really was the appropriate title for it and this is the book that gave rise to the term “endgame studies.”60 It was (metaphorically speaking) a quantum leap in the theory of endgame play, being the first really useful and systematic study of a wide range of endgame positions. Most of Kling and Horwitz’s findings are still correct and some can be found in modern books on the endgame. Here are two examples which, with slight modifications, are in the modern classic, Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual (fourth edition) and Dvoretsky used some of their other positions too.

wDwDwDwD DwDwDwDw wDwDwDwD Dw0wDwDw wDP0wDwD DwDKDw)k wDwDwDw) DwDwDwDw White to play and win*

*Position XIV on page 14. In fact White can even win by the same method with the three queenside pawns and WK occupying the b and c files although it requires some additional triangulation with the king. See Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual, 4th edition, #1–153.

7. A Century and a Half of British Chess Books 1. Ke4 Kg4 2. h4 Kh5 3. Kf4 Kh6 4. g4 Kg6 5. h5† The tablebase says this is slightly inexact and that 5. g5 checkmates two moves faster in the main variation. 5. … Kh6 6. Ke4 Kg5 7. Kf3 Kh6 8. Kf4 Kh7 9. g5 Kg7 10. g6! The crucial moment; 10.  h6† only draws. 10. … Kh6 11. Kg4 Kg7 Now all is optimized and the WK must now leave the square of the Black passed pawn and make his dash to the finish line: 12. Kg5 d3 13. h6† Kh8 14. Kf6 d2 15. Kf7 d1Q 16. g7† Kh7 17. g8Q† K×h6 18. Qg6 mate. Not only did they analyze basic, and some advanced, pawn endgames, but Kling and Horwitz also examined many cases of unbalanced material. They showed several positions, for example, where two bishops can win against a knight (without pawns) and that is now known to be the expected result in the general case with that material balance, although Reuben Fine (in Basic Chess Endings, 90 years after them) believed otherwise. Here is another example that Dvoretsky (example 11-1) took from Kling and Horwitz, page 88. In their diagram the Black King is on h8 but it makes no difference to the solution as after the first move by each side the position is the same. Where they fall short of what a modern endgame manual would do to help the reader is in not explaining the reasoning. In this case, the point is that there is a safe and a dangerous corner for the defending king in such situations.

wDwDwDkD DRDwDwDw wDwDwDPD DwDwDwDK wDwDwDwD DwgwDwDw wDwDwDwD DwDwDwDw White to move

1. g7! Kh7 Kling and Horwitz gave no

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variation here. They left it to readers to infer from previous examples, or calculate, that 1. … B×g7 2. Kg6 Be5 3. Re7 Bd6 4. Re8† Bf8 5. Rd8 wins by zugzwang. Similar positions in the safe corner (Kh8, Bg8) are drawn because of stalemate. 2. Rf7! This is not literally “the only move to win” as they said, since White can play some other rook or king moves first and still win, but essentially they were right. The method is correct: the black king must be trapped in the dangerous corner and then White gets rid of the pawn which is in his way: 2. … Bd4 3. g8Q†! K×g8 4. Kg6 Dvoretsky explained that White plans Rd7 with the double threat Rd8 mate or capturing the bishop. 4. … Bg1 This move holds out longest; the bishop hides in the “shadow” of the White King. 5. Rf1 Bh2 6. Rf2 6. Rh1 is one move quicker to mate according to the tablebase. 6. … Bg1 7. Rg2! and wins.

Miscellaneous Works In 1820 two satirical/political pamphlets were issued concerning the attempt by King George IV (the former Prince Regent) to divorce his wife Queen Caroline. A plate by the famous engraver Robert Cruikshank was a big selling-point for The King the avowed enemy of the Queen.61 This little work purported to describe “a new royal game of chess, played for half-crown stakes,” in which the movements of the King are “very irregular, now proceeding headlong forward, now shifting obliquely or sideways, but he never takes any grand or noble step.” As for the object of the game, this was a reference to George’s refusal to allow her attend his Coronation: “At the side of the King is a place, where a player of the old-fashioned game would say that the Queen ought to be; but the very spirit of the new game is to keep her out of it.” A lesserknown satire on the same theme, The Queen and her pawns, was in the form of a poem, also accompanied by an engraving.62

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Detail from the cartoon engraving accompanying the 1820 political poem The Queen and her pawns against the King and his Pieces.

Engraved political plates on a chess theme, even without accompanying texts, were seen in later years also. The John Johnson collection of ephemera at the Bodleian Library includes a series of political cartoons by “H. B.”63 In the first, which was associated with the Reform Bill of 1832, Earl Grey, at the chess table, says “I check the king” and William IV concedes: “I don’t know how to move, the game is yours.” On 29 September 1837 Moritz Retzsch’s lithograph of Satan playing at chess with a man for his soul was adapted to depict Irish reformer Daniel O’Connell getting the better of Lord Melbourne, the prime minister, while Britannia palely looks on. The chess theme recurred on 20 October 1837 for “The Queen in danger,” a cartoon showing Victoria with Melbourne and Lord Palmerston. Finally, “You may give perpetual check, but I defy you to win the game” (6 August 1840) featured a game between Lord Russell and Sir Robert Peel, then leader of the opposition at Westminster. The cartoonist expected the general public to understand the term “perpetual check.”

There were two chess books published in India early in the 19th century. The first, in 1814, was Essays on Chess adapted to the European mode of play by T. Shastree, translated from Sanskrit and printed in Bombay (Mumbai).64 It is currently available at the British Library and in Google Books; many years ago a copy was reviewed at Manchester Central Library but it is only a curiosity. The other, printed 15 years later in Madras (Chennai) is rarer, and deals with two subjects: the correspondence match between Madras and Hyderabad, and an analysis by the Indian author of a variation of the King’s Gambit that came to known after him as the Ghulam Kassim Gambit.65 When this author first saw this in the British Library, it was in the form of large unbound sheets, but there is a good bound copy in the National Library of Ireland, Dublin, which bears some marginal manuscript notes. Signed on the back of the title page is “Robert Travers” with some writing in an Indian language, also saying “This little work is for the exclusive benefit of Ghulam Kassim.”

7. A Century and a Half of British Chess Books Continuing in the vein begun by Sarratt, there were some editions of ancient authors such as Lewis’s edition of Greco (1833), while Sir Richard Penn’s Maxims and Hints (1833) contained pithy advice for anglers, but also for chess players. George Walker’s Chess and Chess Players (1850) contained essays published years previously in various magazines and periodicals, but chiefly in Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country, which is still well worth reading today. Most curious of all, however, is Letters on Chess published in 1848, which was probably Lewis’s last chess book.66 This purports to consist of letters about chess literature, dated at the latest 1834, to a German from his friend Vogt (a fictitious person, it is said) whose widow let the translator “U. Ewell” have the letters. The introduction laments the lack of games between the leading players of old, even Sarratt, and says (on pages 2 and 3): How often have we both regretted that the great players of former days have not transmitted to us the games of the principal matches played between them…. As it is one can alone judge of the skill of former players either by their works or by the estimation in which they were held by their contemporaries; and it is difficult even with these helps to form a correct judgment; for, with regard to the reports of others, we must first ascertain their degree of skill before we can place reliance on their testimony; then, as to written works, it is very possible for a man who has much patience and diligence to analyse and write tolerably well on the subject, and yet be but a moderate player; and, on the other hand, it is well known that a few confessedly first-rate players have left but sorry specimens of their skill in the works they have composed.

On page 109 Sarratt’s work is said to be “superior to Philidor’s from its variety and greater accuracy, and being written on a better system it is more instructive to beginners,” although the writer says it contained very little original matter and Sarratt’s translations were unworthy. Three letters about Lewis’s Lessons discussed some opening variations. Walker wrote in Bell’s Life in London on

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12 March 1848 that he thought it “more than probable” that Letters on Chess was the work of Lewis himself and said he was duped into paying four shillings for this “volume, or rather pamphlet.” The debate about the authorship continued in Fiske’s Chess Monthly in 1857/8 (when Lewis still alive). Later Murray seemed more confident that Lewis was responsible although Whyld and Ravilious’s bibliography is tentative on this. Murray gave two reasons for his opinion: Lewis is praised in the Letters and the book discusses Lucena’s manuscript, which Murray said was unknown in 1834 in Germany. Also Murray noted that Walker was not discussed in the letters.67

Later Game Collections and Tournament Books (1851 onwards) The first tournament book ever published was Staunton’s collection of the games played in the London tournament; it came out in 1852, but to a mixed response.68 Instead of concentrating on just the games, Staunton dragged up the disputes about the organization of the Congress that had occurred between the St. George’s Club and the London Chess Club (with which Walker was involved). This provoked a response in the form of a 26page booklet by an anonymous member of the latter club, attacking Staunton’s behavior and character. This booklet may be found in Google Books, and Cleveland has a copy, but the British Library’s copy is destroyed.69 The next tournament book to appear is not mentioned in Betts’s bibliography. This was the Report of the 1857 Manchester meeting of the British Association; it was anonymous as to editor, presumably Löwenthal who was the association’s principal organizer.70 The 42-page booklet included several game scores, some of which were annotated. Next came the 1862 London Congress, which was

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A two-page spread from Staunton’s book of the London 1851 tournament. Observe the comment about Williams’s slow play in the asterisked note three-quarters down page 161.

very well reported, with a detailed (though delayed) official tournament book by Löwenthal and George W. Medley, and also a slim tournament book in German by Suhle. Some game scores were lost and are not included in either book, which was frequently the case with 19th century tournament books. The English book included a section by Medley about the history of the (British, originally Yorkshire) Chess Association. By a strange error, it omitted any mention of its Leeds meeting in 1850, although Saint-Amant had attended and it was reported in France, as well as in some English newspapers. Over the next few years there were few tournaments to report, but Löwenthal was again responsible for two volumes of Trans-

actions of the British Chess Association. The first, for 1866 and 1867, covered the British Chess Association’s first Challenge Cup tournament of 1866 (won by De Vere) and the 1867 Dundee international. The volume for 1868 and 1869 dealt with the second Challenge Cup tournament (won by Blackburne) and associated events. After that, no British congresses had books until the London congress of 1883, when the editor, J. I. Minchin, included every game from the principal tournament—and that book made a small profit. The reprint made by B.C.M. in the 20th century omitted the selection of games from the supporting Vizayanagaram tournament. Next came Skipworth’s Book of the Counties Chess Association, issued in three slim parts

7. A Century and a Half of British Chess Books but very incomplete. The first (1885) was a very poor attempt to report on the Hereford international tournament of that year, many games from which have not survived. Part 2 (1886) included some more Hereford games, some games from the Nottingham 1886 international and a few others. The final part (1887) had more Nottingham games and some from the Counties Chess Association meeting in Stamford. Likewise the 1888 Bradford international tournament was not properly reported. Despite the fact that separate booklets were issued by B.C.M. and by the Chess Player’s Chronicle office (Morgan), once more many games have been lost to posterity. In 1890 Morgan published a booklet on the Manchester international (won by Tarrasch ahead of Blackburne) but it contained only a small fraction of the games played. At least the tournaments of Hastings 1895 and London 1899 were well recorded in handsome volumes and with a complete record of the games played. The London 1900 tournament run by the City of London Chess Club was also preserved in a small booklet including all the game scores. Booklets were also published of the 1897 and 1898 Counties and Craigside tournaments, played in Llandudno in North Wales, but with only a few games in each. No British tournaments played between 1901 and 1918 had tournament books, although two of the British Championships were fully recorded in B.C.M. So a very large number of potentially valuable games have either been lost to posterity, or have with luck and diligence been rescued from newspaper archives by Gillam and others. As for game collections other than tournament books, there were a few booklets of match games, some published by Morgan, including one about Gunsberg’s matches with Chigorin and Steinitz. Two separate booklets were produced in England on the first match between Steinitz and Lasker in 1894, one by Bird and the other by Cunningham. There were other types of game collec-

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tion too. Elijah Williams compiled a wide selection of games played at Ries’s Divan in the Strand, in the late 1840s and early 1850s. He published these in 1852, in a useful book entitled Horæ Divanianæ (Hours at the Divan); copies were mostly sold there.71 Its subscription list included Kieseritzky, Lewis and Captain Evans. The collection includes early games by Bird and by Buckle, as well as by Williams himself and many others, but the book lacked a player index. Also one of a kind, much later in the century, was G. B. Fraser’s collection of 200 games played in various postal tournaments that he had organized in the 1880s and 1890s. He did not include the results of the various tournaments or say which competitions the games were from, which one would expect from such a collection nowadays.72 Very few books dealt with just the games of one player. The earliest was Löwenthal’s collection of Morphy’s Games (1860). Morphy’s career was also dealt with, from a journalistic point of view, by his one-time secretary Frederick M. Edge in a book that appeared in two slightly different editions. The version published in England, in 1859, was entitled Paul Morphy, the Chess Champion while that published the same year in New York was called The Exploits and Triumphs in Europe of Paul Morphy, the Chess Champion. Betts notes that according to Philip Sergeant the text is identical except for a few additions in the English edition. The only other major single-player game collection of the period was Mr. Blackburne’s Games at Chess, issued in 1899. Lesser ones included Frideswide Rowland’s Pollock Memories (1899), a compilation of games and writings by and about the Cheltenham-born master Dr. William Henry Krause Pollock (1859–1896), whose medical studies had been undertaken in Dublin, and who was Steinitz’s secretary for a time from 1892. Neither book is a systematic career study. There were several collections of games by many players, often concentrating on games

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with attractive finishes. Henry Bird’s Chess Masterpieces (1875) was one of the earliest but it has few annotations. His subsequent Bird’s Modern Chess and Chess Masterpieces (1887) was issued as a part-work and is organized by openings. Howard Taylor was responsible for two books of this type. The first, early in his career, was entitled Chess Brilliants; a quarter of the games in it were played at odds.73 It consisted of just an introduction, followed by the game scores, without diagrams or notes, but there were 16 diagrammed finishes at the back. Twenty years later, Taylor’s Chess Skirmishes, published shortly before he died, also included articles he had written over the years, including several obituaries of chess masters, penned mostly for American papers.74 Howard Taylor’s memoirs are the most valuable part of his book for posterity. Several are worth quoting because many masters at one time or another had been his guests in Norwich and visited the chess club there. Taylor regretted, though (pages 23–24), that he never saw Paul Morphy. Looking back on his chess career in the Preface, Taylor wrote (page iii) that: “Published analyses have practically annihilated some delightful and chivalrous debûts. Strategy has undergone revolution. The comments of Steinitz and Zukertort revealed new principles of attack and defence.” On page vi he mentions Bolton, the problemist, and “his successors in art,” J. A. Miles and John Keeble. On pages 140–141 Taylor wrote that Löwenthal was courteous to a fault, but lacked stamina: He excelled in the openings, and had studied end games profoundly. In the middle there was absent that even level of skill which is so necessary to success in match play…. A disastrous nervous excitement marred his play and cost him many a game fairly won—but alas! not scored.

Taylor added that Löwenthal was an admirable chess editor, writing “notes and analyses of rare value to the diligent amateur…. Pa-

tronized at one juncture by Staunton, he was subjected afterwards to scathing attack from that master of invective, but he bore it with dignity, and resisted the desire to retaliate.” The obituary of Boden (pages 156–161), referring to the inheritance mentioned in Chapter 3, says “circumstances had delayed his serious devotion to art until too late in life for conspicuous success; he passed the good; attained not the great” and in chess “he had seen the rise of an alien school.” Other game collections are those by Blanshard referred to in Chapter 4, the 132game selection Chess Exemplified by the Newcastle player William John Greenwell (1890); Chess Sparks (1895) by the Rev. John Henry Ellis, and Memorable Chess Games (1913) by William Moffatt, editor of The Chess Amateur. (This is far from a complete list; section 24 of Betts has more.)

Later Books about Problems Chess problems, as already noted, were a principal element in nearly all chess columns and the sole element in several. Every chess magazine also featured problems to some extent. Mate problems evolved hugely from the 1840s onwards with the principal emphasis being on two-movers and threemovers. Through the 1850s and early 1860s the style of chess composition was becoming more subtle than the multi-move tasks beloved of Bolton and his predecessors. The famous Indian problem by the Rev. H. A. Loveday (1845) made a strong impression on contemporaries, although its solution was not unique. Such thematic problems, often promoted in The Chess Player’s Chronicle, and the studies of Kling and Horwitz, were having a strong influence on other composers in the 1850s and 1860s. These decades are known as the “transitional period,” and were characterized by the first public competitions for composing. The judging was usually based on sets of

7. A Century and a Half of British Chess Books problems rather than choosing the best single problem. The vogue for problems was not just a British phenomenon; problems were international. Indeed many of the major composers of the 19th century were from the European continent and North America. The number of skilled composers at any one time could perhaps be numbered in the dozens, but there were thousands of regular solvers eager for new puzzles to test their wits and occupy their time. These included many women, who until late in the century usually had little or no opportunity to frequent chess clubs or other resorts; their names can be seen in the lists of solvers published in chess columns. A few of them became notable problem composers too. Although some particularly challenging problems were sometimes discussed in clubs and divans, the majority of solving—and probably all composition—was done in the quiet of one’s home, or perhaps (using a pocket set) to distract from the tedium and discomfort of a long railroad journey. The chess problem was increasingly seen as an aesthetic exercise rather than an intellectual test with the principal aim of finding a practical playing solution. During the 19th century, mate problem settings became increasingly detached from natural game-like positions, although endgame studies, with a small number of pieces and more naturalistic settings, did have a small following. Of the large number of books about chess problems that were published in this period, just a few will be mentioned (the present author claims no expertise in this department and has examined only a few). Betts devoted sections 30 through 42 of his bibliography to different types of works on problems, which probably seems excessive to readers whose interest is mostly in chess playing. Some of these books were just collections of problems by one or several composers. Others, especially towards the latter part of the 19th century, sought to teach the composing and solving of mate problems.

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Some composers of problems in the midcentury hid behind pseudonyms and one of these was “J. B. of Bridport,” now known to be John Brown (1827–1863). After Brown’s untimely death, Staunton called for a collection of his problems to be produced in the Illustrated London News. Rainger wrote to Staunton offering his services in editing the book for the benefit of his widow. The rather misleading title chosen was Chess Strategy. However, as Howard Taylor complained, in his Chess Skirmishes, although Staunton had promised Rainger an acknowledgment of his services in the Preface, this was neglected. “No reference whatever to his [Rainger’s] labours was made, and his connection with the work has remained unknown.”75 In 2011, Brian Gosling edited a new collection based on the old one, entitled John Brown: The Forgotten Chess Composer. Frank Healey, whose connection with the Chess Player’s Magazine we noted in Chapter 5, was one of the leading problem composers of England in the mid-century and his 1866 Collection of 200 problems included prize-winning compositions from several of the early competitions. Increasingly, twomove and three-move mate problems became the dominant forms, as they are in the 21st century, although in 1884 Horwitz issued a new edition of Chess Studies (without acknowledging then deceased Kling as coauthor) to which a further 201 endgame studies by Horwitz for The Chess-Monthly were added. His omission was rectified in a posthumous second edition, edited by Wayte in 1889, who restored Kling’s name as coauthor of the first part. Endgame studies were brought to general attention again when, in 1910 and 1911, a two-volume collection of a thousand studies was published, compiled by C. E. C. Tattersall (1877–1957).76 Tattersall was a strong player who had competed in the two major tournaments held in England in 1904: the City of London Chess Club’s national tournament,

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followed by the first British Championship run by the British Chess Federation. Thereafter he turned his attention to composition and produced this anthology. His principal claim to fame, though, was as an expert on Persian and British carpets. Tattersall worked for the Victoria and Albert Museum in Kensington and later wrote several books about carpets. Checkmate problems were the main fashion, not just in Britain but also on the continent and in America, where Loyd was still active as well as many significant composers in the next generation. Four of the principal English composers, led by Dr. Charles Planck (1856–1935), combined in 1887 to produce The Chess Problem, a “text book” illustrated by 400 compositions from the coauthors.77 This work is probably still of interest today to

Dr. Charles Planck, problem composer, author and briefly chess editor of The Bohemian. (Undated photograph by Emberson & Sons, Chertsey, with his autograph, courtesy Cleveland Public Library Special Collections).

anyone wishing to delve into the history of chess problems and the types of composition in favor at that time. Some comparable but smaller works that sought to educate readers in the topic were probably aimed at a chess playing readership. The Problem Art by the Rowlands is one example.78 We shall look at one such book in detail. James Rayner, mentioned above as the problem editor for several years of the British Chess Magazine, wrote a book aimed at recruiting more enthusiasts to his favorite branch of the game. His Chess Problems: Their Composition and Solution was published in the series “The Young Collector” and went through two editions.79 In his Preface, he stated that his purpose was to popularize the solving and composing of problems among young chess playing “problematists,” coining a word that probably never really caught on. His Preface outlined the nature of mate problems, and the approach to them from both aspects (those of the solver and the would-be composer), citing instances from the problems that made up the body of the work. “The chief requisites of a problem are possibility and soundness,” Rayner wrote. Possibility meant that a position could legally occur—it might be highly implausible with wildly misplaced kings or material imbalances that would induce resignation from the weaker side in games. Soundness principally meant uniqueness of solution. Possibility and soundness, though, were just a sine qua non; a problem required elegance and a point that was more than just finding the quickest checkmate. Old-fashioned problems such as many of those by Bolton and involving, for example, a long sequence of checks, were called “obsolete” by Rayner. The Victorian era of problem composition really began with two-movers and threemovers (occasionally four-movers but almost never more) embodying strategic ideas. Rayner instanced Healey’s 1861 prizewinning “Bristol problem” and the further develop-

7. A Century and a Half of British Chess Books ment of the strategic school led by Healey and John Brown. Later, said Rayner, came the multitheme problem, for example by Planck. Rayner’s preface continued to introduce the main points with great clarity, chiefly for the benefit of young solvers. He classified direct mate problems into two kinds: attacking and waiting-move, explaining that the solver presented with a new position should seek first to determine which category this problem fell into. This could be readily done by examining the situation of the Black king: did it have any legal moves? If so, were mating replies already provided for in the position? If so, it was a waiting-move problem; if not, the key must be an attacking move, creating a threat. All this might seem elementary to the sophisticated problem aficionado of the present day but it was good advice nevertheless. Rayner went on to say that two-movers cannot display much depth in strategy. Experts, such as the leading composers Loyd and Laws, could, he said, solve two-movers “almost as soon as they are put in front of them.” He might have added that the great master Blackburne could generally solve twomovers blindfold without being told the position of the White king—this partly, perhaps, being due to the fact that finding an ideal square for the White king was often the last detail the composer of a problem decided upon. Regular solvers, by the latter part of the 19th century, would know that a good problem would not have what Rayner called an “objectionable” key, such as a check, capture, castling or promotion, or “obviously powerful and active” moves, and so would not look at such tries. The exception, he noted later, was in “judging tourneys,” where new problems submitted by novice composers might be marred by such defects. The solver should start by trying to make a move, not for White, but for Black. The extreme example of the waiting-move problem, Rayner explained, was “the complete block”

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in which every move was immediately answered by checkmate. The solver’s task, then, was to find a key move which did not ruin that situation, though of course some of the mates would change. On the other hand, if Black had one move that was not provided for, the problem would be classed as an “incomplete block.” Attacking problems, he went on to say, are harder to solve, but it helps the solver to know that in a two- mover, the key move must threaten checkmate. He said that the average number of variations in a two-mover is four in an attacking problem, and six in a waiting problem. Four-movers, on the other hand, are the “most majestic and most difficult” of problems, said Rayner. They take considerable skill and hard work to compose, skill and patience to solve. Three-movers he considered ideal. “Nearly all the themes known to composers can be presented in three-move form, and many to greater advantage” compared with two- or four-movers. Classification of three-movers is harder, Rayner wrote. There are problems which have the character both of waiting and attacking settings. For the solver of three-movers he had the following advice: (a) Try the effect of checks to see how the problem composer has dealt with them. (b) Beware attacks on White. If Black can give check in two moves, then White’s second move is likely to be a check. (c) Look carefully at the position of the White pawns. They should all have a reason for their existence and placement. (d) Be prepared for sacrifices. (e) Notice inactive pieces. Why are they on the board? (f ) Be patient. (g) When you think you have found the solution, recheck. For example, a key that threatens mate in one is inartistic and may have a hidden refutation.

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For the would-be composer of threemovers, Rayner advised that the aim was originality not difficulty. Difficulty should arise from the theme. There should be a novelty of ideas or of treatment, but now that problems had greatly developed, finding a distinctly new idea was almost unattainable. Themes in chess problems, he said, should be “piquant and well presented.” Freedom of action and fertility of resource for the defense were important characteristics. Also the final mating position should be “pure”: no square in the Black king’s vicinity is attacked or occupied more than once. The composer should use just sufficient force and use it to the fullest extent. The subsequent development of problems would perhaps have surprised Rayner. “Suicidal problems” were already one category in the 1862 London tourney but nowadays there is a clear distinction between selfmates and help-mates. In the former, White must force his opponent to checkmate him; in the latter they cooperate. Retrograde analysis problems became a specialty of one of the most famous Edwardian composers, Mrs. W. J. Baird (née Edith Elina Helen Winter Wood, 1859–1924), whose The Twentieth Century Retractor (1907) was a sumptuously produced coffee table book printed in color.80 In recent times, the late Raymond Smullyan, an American mathematician, produced some masterpieces of retrograde analysis, wrapped in stories from the Arabian Nights and Sherlock Holmes. The Chess Bouquet, compiled by Frederick Richard Gittins (1867–1948?) and published in 1897, has been mentioned several times in connection with chess columns, but also deserves further elucidation.81 His book is a compilation of biographical articles about problem composers and chess editors (categories that definitely overlapped), illustrated with photographs in most cases and including several examples of their compositions. As Gittins consulted the people included, it can

mostly be trusted and indeed this book is a mine of information about personalities of the period. Gittins did not include some significant chess editors because they had died, so there is no Francis Collins or James Pierce (though his brother is included), no Bland or Mott. Also Blackburne was not included, although known as a composer, perhaps because he was a professional or because Gittins saw him only as a player. Sir John Thursby was not included either; he was very much alive but perhaps no longer composing and his column had ended long before. On 16 November 1907 The Field reported that Gittins was “in straightened [sic] circumstances” and that P. H. Williams had launched a testimonial appeal for his benefit. On 15 January 1910 Hoffer reported that Gittins planned a second volume of The Chess Bouquet and in The Field of 6 August he said that Gittins announced One Hundred British Chess Players and Chess Bouquet, volume 2. Finally on 17 June 1911, The Field said that Gittins was going to issue The Chess Bouquet in monthly parts. However, this new edition is not listed in Betts or the main library catalogs, so the presumption must be that in fact it never appeared. John Keeble (1855–1939), whose career bridged the last decades of the 19th century and the first third of the twentieth, was another member of the rich school of Norwich amateurs. He has left a little puzzle of a different kind for chess historians to solve, if they can. Between 1908 and 1910 his column in the Norwich Mercury ran a competition for self-mate problems. He then edited a book of the best problems from it, which he called The Caduceus, but also printed a special limited edition of it on tinted paper with a different title page, which he called Vive la Beauté, and gave copies as Christmas presents to selected recipients.82 There were ten copies on pink paper and ten on lemon paper. The lemon was a bad choice, since it always seems to fade to white. The puzzle is firstly to identify all the

7. A Century and a Half of British Chess Books original recipients, and secondly to find out where those copies are now. When the huge Schmid collection is finally sold or redistributed, perhaps more answers will emerge. Keeble swore his recipients to secrecy in his lifetime, and eventually when the problem composer T. R. Dawson wrote about Vive la Beauté in B.C.M., he only knew half the truth.83 Dawson received a pink copy but was not told about the lemon ones, a piece of mischief by Keeble that remains unexplained. Betts’s bibliography (item #40-10) only repeats what Dawson told the world after Keeble’s death, although some recipients knew there were two sets. Problem specialist Alain C. White received one of each, but in August 1917 he gave his lemon copy to American collector Charles Willing, whose collection ended up in the Philadelphia Free Library. (Their catalogue says it is a pink copy, which may be a mistake, or possibly Willing later acquired one of the other pink copies.) We know what White was told because American collector David DeLucia eventually acquired White’s pink copy, numbered 1A, and has revealed the contents of a letter from Keeble that accompanied it84: This morning I received from the Binder the copies of Vive la Beauté and I am mailing 2 lots to you tonight…. One parcel contains 2 specially bound copies in which I have written your name. I am keeping 2 exactly similar. I have also had 4 sets bound up in cloth in order that you may see what they are like. I am also sending a set of those, thinking perhaps you would like Mr. J. G. White to have them. I told you I would reserve 3 copies of each in sheets besides the calf bound ones which I send tonight. I am numbering the title page of each book. No 1.A to 10.A the Pink ones; No. 1 B to 10 B the Lemon. I shall keep the British Museum set back until I can insert the original owners of the 20 books. I have sent you No.1 and am keeping No.2 set…. The real meaning of the word [Caduceus] seems to be a Herald or messenger and this is very appropriate to the book.

Another part of the difficulty may arise from the secrecy of some collectors. Although

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this author has circulated queries about this mystery for several years, the whereabouts of some copies have not come to light. Moreover it is also known, more or less for certain, that some of the original twenty copies no longer exist because of the depredations of the Blitz. Keeble told White he was keeping number 2 of each set, and it is also known that he bequeathed his library to the British Chess Federation. That was almost certainly held in the National Chess Centre at the John Lewis department store in Oxford Street, which was bombed by the Luftwaffe and burned out in 1940. As the letter to White shows, Keeble also intended to give the last copy to the British Museum with a list of all 20 recipients, but that copy (believed to be pink copy numbered 5B) is also shown in the British Library catalog to have been destroyed. So his list is lost and at most 17 books survive. This author has seen the copies in Oxford and The Hague, and received reports on some others. The pink copies have P on the spine (for Pink, not Private as Dawson speculated) and the Lemon copies have L. Added in pencil by J. K. (Keeble) on the Bodleian’s copy 7A are the words “Nos. 1, 3, and 8 are in America.” It would not be right to reveal here the names of individual collectors who own copies, especially as that information could anyway go out of date, except that DeLucia made his possession of a copy public knowledge. At the time of writing the situation seems to be as follows. Pink copies: 1A. Alain C. White (later De Lucia); 2A. Keeble (presumed destroyed); 3A. John G. White (now in his collection at Cleveland); 4A. J. W. Allen (now with a British collector); 5A. British Museum (destroyed); 6A. Unknown (Dawson was not told the recipient.); 7A. Bodleian Library, Oxford (the original owners); 8A. E. B. Cook (now in Princeton Library); 9A. unknown (Lothar Schmid duplicate sale); 10A. Dawson (now with an English collector). Lemon copies: 1B. Alain C. White gave to Willing (Philadelphia Free Library); 2B. Keeble (pre-

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sumed destroyed); 3B. John G. White (Cleveland); 4B. Planck (current owner unknown); 5B. and 6B. unknown; 7B. E. Cordingley (now in the Royal Dutch Library, so had presumably been purchased by Niemeijer); 8B. E. B. Cook (now Princeton?); 9B. Harold Murray (now in Bodleian Library); 10B. unknown. One confusion is that (according to De Lucia’s first book), Keeble told White he would send the British Museum a lemon copy but he seems to have changed his mind and sent them a pink one instead. Since one copy, possibly 9A, was auctioned among Schmid’s duplicates in 2014, this means that Schmid had another copy.

History and Culture of Chess During the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was considerable interest in the history and early culture of the game, though much of what was published in books and articles would not satisfy today’s standards of scholarship. The first, and largely anecdotal, History of Chess in English was published in 1764 by a country clergyman, Lambe, drawing in part upon a book in Latin by Dr. Hyde of Oxford.85 Towards the end of the 18th century, British involvement in India led to greater appreciation of the Asiatic origin and variants of chess, led by the Bengal judge Sir William Jones (1746–1794) and Eyles Irwin (1751– 1817), an Irishman who worked for the East India Company.86 Their writings, and other learned papers from the journal Archæologia and elsewhere, can sometimes be found reprinted in the mid–19th century in The Chess Player’s Chronicle, and there was also considerable interest in early European writers on chess. In the 1830s Sir Frederic Madden, who worked at the British Museum, took a special interest in chess history and wrote about the Lewis chessmen.87 The first attempt to put some order on this, in articles (for the I.L.N. and C.P.C.) and

later a book, was by Duncan Forbes, a professor of Oriental languages at King’s College in London University, but his History also came in for much criticism by later, more scientific, writers.88 The Brunswick-like Dutch scholar Antonius van der Linde, who wrote three books on chess history and literature, had a low opinion of Forbes’s work.89 Harold Murray’s mammoth History of Chess, published in 1913, was the culmination of about twenty years’ research, but chiefly it covered the Asiatic origins of chess, medieval and early modern chess in Europe, and just about stopped with the 1851 London tournament.90 Murray had envisaged it as two volumes, each complete in itself. The actual writing of the book seems to have begun around 1906 but only on 13 September 1910 was he ready to write a formal letter to the secretary of the University Press, Oxford, offering his book for publication.91 Murray said that the first volume (dealing with the origin of chess and its development in Asia and Russia) was ready in typescript for them to inspect at his father’s house in Oxford should they wish to do so. The second volume, dealing with chess in Europe, was approaching completion. He estimated an overall length of 450–500 pages but the final result was a single-volume work about twice that size. The treatment of the 18th century might have been better but the Press urged Murray to complete the manuscript and then did nothing with it for months. Eventually it took about two years for the book to complete the publication process: organizing illustrations, proofreading and so on. The present author, being no expert on the periods and sources chiefly dealt with by Murray, will pass no opinion on the reliability of its content, assuming that much of it has been revised by more recent scholarship. It cannot be said that Murray wrote with style in his books, though his meaning is always clear. The reader has to put in some work. By today’s standards, it is surprising that the scholarly apparatus in Murray’s 900-page tome

7. A Century and a Half of British Chess Books is so flimsy. His early work with his father on the first Oxford English Dictionary, where everything possible had to be abbreviated to minimize the number of lines taken by a headword while maximizing the content, must have imposed a discipline on Murray that he found hard to shake off. Even so, his index and footnotes are skimpy in the extreme and a bibliography is nonexistent. Nevertheless the manuscripts and typescripts that Murray bequeathed to the Bodleian contain a lot of potentially valuable material for the games historian, and more will be said about this in the final chapter. Henry Bird’s Chess History and Reminiscences has more interest for the latter sections than the former. Bird gave many indications during his career that he was incapable of writing an authoritative and well-organized work although there are some glimpses of gold among the dross in his several books.92 Also largely anecdotal, but much more readable, are MacDonnell’s two books drawn from his Chess Chats as discussed in Chapter 3. It would be interesting to find out more about early chess clubs, but much of what has appeared was in the 20th century, based on such old records as survived. There are a few contemporary accounts. The Oxford University Chess Club, refounded by Ranken in the late 1860s with Sir Winston Churchill’s father an early member, produced a booklet of its history in 1885, based on its minute books.93 In 1873 the club had printed its rule book. Bristol chess was featured in two books. The early collection by Williams has already been mentioned; then in 1884 there was a second book by John Norman Burt (1834–1888).94 Also the Liverpool Chess Club is especially well represented. Some of their early dinners were reported at length in the C.P.C. and in the 1890s one of the club’s secretaries compiled a club history, the Short Sketch, to commemorate the club’s first 60 years including a complete list of past and present members and officials.95 Less well known is a pamphlet

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about the club’s 1860 dinner, which is bound with 20 other disparate small items about Liverpool in a volume at the British Library.96 There were two humorous sections, the first (of three pages) being an address delivered (apparently before the meal) to members of the chess club by Mr. Frederick Partridge. From this we learn that Schüll and Roose were recently married and that many of the club sets were in need of repair. Also three pages long and in verse form, was the Laye of Ye Tournament, by Mr. C. H. Deekens. This, which probably amused the members greatly over the port, was an account of a five-a-side Liverpool versus Manchester match (by telegraph) in which each game was described: Along the line the signal ran In wild electric flashes— The lots are drawn, and man to man Into the combat dashes…

The first result came when Sparke (the Liverpool secretary) beat Cohen. Then Szabo (rhyming with “Dab O”) beat Birch. Schüll (rhymes with “cool”) lost to Hammill, and Smith beat Duval. Finally Soul drew with Kipping in very long game (“rosy streaks proclaim the dawn before the strife is ended”). So Liverpool won 3–1 with one draw. The Philosophy of Chess (December 1857), by Lancashire surgeon William Cluley, argued that “The main object to be aimed at in the cultivation of chess ought not to be eminence as players, in which many would be disappointed, but a skilful training of the mental faculties, in which all would be gainers.”97 Almost harking back to the medieval moralities of chess, Cluley included some religious references here and there. He wrote on page 12: … We have in chess an illustration of the principles daily operating in the great economy of human life, especially those of truth and justice … and the sure retribution which awaits their disregard … the importance of keeping constantly in view the relation between chess and life cannot well be overrated.

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In a lengthy reply to a correspondent on 30 January 1858 in the Illustrated London News, Staunton mocked this book and quoted some long- winded passages but there are some other sections that seem quite modern. For example, Cluley sometimes anticipates Steinitz’s principles in saying that a game starts equal and a win is only possible when the balance is disturbed by a mistake. There are two ways of looking at this book: as a pretentious attempt by an amateur unqualified to write on the subject, or an effort by a rather perceptive individual who was unafraid to challenge authority. Staunton may have thought some of the section On the Advancement of Chess (from page 102) was an attack on his editorial practices, and indeed they may have been intended as such although Staunton is not named and Cluley was probably thinking of other columns too which followed the same pattern. In this section, Cluley complained about the “curt editorial (magisterial) notices to correspondents which at present appear [in chess columns and magazines], but, which, so far as the public are concerned, might frequently be as well transmitted privately.” Space given to “those unnatural positions—so-called problems” would in Cluley’s opinion have been better given to “unabridged communications, embracing questions of scientific interest.” Then on page 108 he wanted better annotations to games, tracing the roots of error to their sources, instead of “meagre commentaries.” Much less worthy of respect is a book of 1905, Chess Humanics, which also sought to put forward a philosophy of chess.98 This is a very strange book, by an unknown player named Nevill, essentially being a compilation of quotations. On page 232 there is a quote from Samuel Smiles’s famous book Self-Help (though we are not told which edition): “It is the close observation of little things which is the secret of success in Chess, in business, in art, in science, and in every pursuit of life.” At

least that is to the point. Most of the book is rubbish and fails to distinguish between the author’s own text and quotations, and when terms like King, Bishop, etc., are being use in a chess sense or not.

Books on the Openings Comparing the chess literature of today with what was published in the 19th century, or even the first half of the 20th century, most striking is the absence of opening monographs in the old days. Victorian openings books attempted to deal with the whole field, though the coverage they gave to openings which began other than 1. e4 e5 was in most cases limited to a few pages. That is because most 19th century amateurs played open games almost exclusively, and even if they were in the minority who sometimes opened differently, they mostly had to meet 1. e4 when they were Black. A question was raised some years ago in the History section of the English Chess Forum, asking “when did the first books about individual openings, as opposed to general openings guides” start being published, in the U.K., in English anywhere, or published anywhere in any language? (Three different questions.) General openings treatises are dealt with in section 13 of Betts’s bibliography and works on specific openings or classes of openings are dealt with in sections 14 to 17. The problem in answering the first two parts of the question, therefore, is not so much in finding the basic information, but rather of deciding whether a 23-page or similar-length pamphlet counts as a book. If so, item #15-7 in Betts, namely The Rice Gambit by Samuel Lipschütz, would be first. Against that, there were earlier works which had sections of a similar length on one opening variation although it was not the sole topic of the work. In that respect, Ghulam Kassim’s book (already mentioned)

7. A Century and a Half of British Chess Books was first, and then there was the appendix on the Muzio Gambit in Chess Studies by Kling and Horwitz. The work with the greatest claim to be the first English book on an opening might be Pierce Gambit, Chess Papers and Problems by the brothers Pierce in 1888 (item #15-6 in Betts), which is a substantial work of 226 pages. The problem here is that the section on the opening variation is only about a third of the book.99 Leonard Barden’s 1963 study of the Ruy Lopez was certainly one of the earliest full-length works devoted to a single opening, and it started a new trend in English chess publishing, but there were some examples between the two world wars. Probably, therefore, the best answer to the first part of the question is J. du Mont’s 1919 work on the Scandinavian Defense (Betts #15-2) which is reasonably long (75 pages) and all about one opening.100 As to the second part, books published in English although not in the U.K., a case might be made for Steinitz’s Modern Chess Instructor, which was published in America and was not solely a book on openings, though chiefly it dealt with the analysis of several of them. Betts included it in Section 14: Open and semi-open games; Part 1 (1889) is #14-1 and the incomplete Second Part, covering the Ponziani and Giuoco Piano (1895), is #14-6. Really, it must be stated that no single opening had a book completely devoted to it in the English language up to 1914. Therefore the answer to the third part of the Forum question, so far as we are aware, is that the earliest openings monograph along modern lines was an 80-page work in German: Die Wiener Partie by Curt von Bardeleben, written in 1892 and published in 1893 in Leipzig, dealing with the Vienna, 1. e4 e5 2. Nc3. In a book published in 1985, grandmaster Raymond Keene attempted to cover a large subject: The Evolution of Chess Theory: From Philidor to Kasparov but there is certainly a lot more that could be done along

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these lines. The inclusion of Kasparov in the title (and short final chapter) must have been something of an afterthought because the publication date is much too early to include openings innovations from the greater part of his career. Since the greater part of that book covered 20th century openings, only the first five chapters (about a third of the book) are relevant here. Keene there concentrated on early writers’ views of the Philidor Defense, the French Defense (including quoting at length from the Cochrane treatise mentioned above), early views on gambit openings, some debates about the Ruy Lopez from the 1880s and 1890s, and Tarrasch’s search for “a perfect defense to the Queen’s Pawn Opening.” That was all very interesting so far as it went. He included selections from a few early authors including Cochrane, George Walker’s 1846 treatise and some of Staunton’s writings. It would be interesting to undertake further investigations along these lines, and really trace the development of certain openings in detail, but whether they would yield ideas of practical value for today’s players is somewhat doubtful. Should it happen that a strong move discovered by the ancients became forgotten, a computer by now would have rediscovered it. Such a study might show, however, that the strongest players and most perceptive writers of the 19th century were deeper thinkers than the majority of games of the period, and myths about Victorian chess, might suggest. Many chess players believe, for example, that in the 19th century gentlemen accepted sacrifices as a matter of honor; many years of research have not turned up one statement to that effect in primary sources. Players captured “poisoned pawns” because of book recommendations, or because they believed that “the only way to refute a gambit is to accept it,” or they miscalculated. They did not risk defeat for the sake of outmoded chivalry. Victorian experts recognized that the strategic Ruy Lopez opening was the hardest to defend

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against, and gambits such as the Evans were in fact sometimes declined. It is true that many amateurs enjoyed risky attacking play, probably because of what sociologist Norbert Elias called the “quest for excitement.” He described industrialized societies as “unexciting” by comparison with their predecessors, by which he meant “the type and degree of restraint which is imposed in our type of society upon the spontaneous, elementary, and unreflected type of excitement, in joy as in sorrow, in love as in hatred.”101 Anyway the present work is not the place to enlarge on Keene’s project, and ideally it would require a collaboration between an historian and a grandmaster. Here we shall just outline some suggestions about how the task could be undertaken. Among the openings that would be worth surveying in this manner would be the Ruy Lopez (especially prior to the period Keene considers), the Scotch and Italian Games (in view of their 21st century popularity), the Evans Gambit, the King’s Gambit, and of course the Sicilian Defense. After Walker’s edition of Jaenisch’s book, players without access to the German Handbuch would have relied mostly on Staunton’s Handbook, and later his Praxis, for advice on the first phase of the game. The next English book to deal exclusively with this subject was the first edition of Wormald’s book simply entitled The Chess Openings, published in 1864.102 This 299 page book, with 50 problems composed by the author, mostly dealt with open games. Wormald introduced references to recent games and some new analysis to update what previous works had covered, so in this respect his book would have been useful to players as collecting up-to-date ideas in one place. He also sometimes included previously unpublished suggestions by some of his friends. He began with the Philidor and Petroff Defenses, before moving on to the Giuoco Piano and the Scotch. From pages 56 to 72 Wormald covered what is nowadays known as the Ponziani Open-

ing, 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. c3, which as he said was first seriously examined in Staunton’s Handbook. One of the lines he considered was Fraser’s piece sacrifice 3. … Nf6 4. d4 N×e4 5.  d5 Bc5, which in recent years has been claimed by some to be virtually a refutation of the Ponziani, but on the basis of 6. d×c6 B×f2† 7. Ke2 Bb6 (a novelty proposed by N. Ntirlis) instead of the continuations considered for Black in the 19th century. Wormald’s discussion of the Ruy Lopez ran from pages 73 to 85, first pointing out that after 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. d4, the German Handbuch had neglected to examine 5. … e×d4. Next Wormald discussed the Evans Gambit, which would more logically have been placed immediately after the Giuoco Piano. Pages 86 to 132 were devoted to this gambit. His overall opinion was that although theory might indicate that White “can recover the pawn at the cost of a slight inferiority of position,” the practical chances were “greatly in favour of the gambit player.” Wormald devoted much of his coverage of the Evans to the position arising after 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. b4 B×b4 5. c3 Bc5 6. d4 e×d4 7. 0–0 d6 8. c×d4 Bb6 (and other move orders) which later came to be known as the “Normal Position” though Wormald did not use that term. This is a line of defense that was tested in numerous games by Anderssen, Morphy, Chigorin and other elite players of the 19th century, and in numerous published analyses, but nowadays is very rarely played. In some cases Wormald’s variations went beyond move 20, which was rarely the case with other openings in his book. The Two Knights Defense, 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6 was considered in Chapter IX, from pages 133 to 140. Wormald pointed out that Black’s third move had been known for centuries but had received very little attention until “Bilguer’s masterly analysis.” Then after brief discussions of the countergambits 2. … d5 and 2. … f5 Wormald pro-

7. A Century and a Half of British Chess Books ceeded in Chapter XI (page 146) to the Bishop’s Opening, beloved of Philidor, and then 2. d4. The King’s Gambit, in its many forms, was analyzed from pages 163 to 248. Starting on page 198, Wormald applied the term “The Great Gambit” (translated from Italian authors) to the line nowadays named after Kieseritzky: 1. e4 e5 2. f4 e×f4 3. Nf3 g5 4. h4 g4 5. Ne5. Then from page 218 he considered the Bishop’s Gambit, 3. Bc4, saying it “has undergone a complete revolution within the last few years,” referring to Jaenisch’s analysis in the early 1850s in the Chess Player’s Chronicle. Openings other than 1. e4 e5 were dismissed briefly, between pages 249 and 264. There were five pages on the Queen’s Gambit, dealing first with 1. d4 d5 2. c4 d×c4 and then with the gambit declined, 2. … e6. Then the French Defense (“French Game” as Wormald called it) received two pages; this was inadequate but reflects the unpopularity of the opening in England. The important variation nowadays named after Winawer, 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Bb4, was already known before the Paris 1867 tournament but Wormald did not even mention 3. Nc3. In Chapter XXIV, on the Sicilian Defense, which was five pages long, he reported that 1. … c5 was now considered inferior to 1 … e6. “The high estimate formerly entertained of this opening has of late undergone a complete revolution, owing to some recent discoveries by which the force of the attack has been considerably augmented.” He cited the improvements by Szén and Löwenthal mentioned above. Wormald was probably reflecting the current opinion of his friend Staunton who in the 1840s had been one of the earliest regular practitioners of the Sicilian. To sum up, Wormald’s book was quite good where 1. e4 e5 openings were concerned, and would have served to bring readers of Staunton’s books up to date if they had not being following developments in the chess columns and periodicals, but for all other

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openings it was totally inadequate. However, a serious flaw to modern eyes is that position diagrams were only used for the problems; there were none in the analytical sections. From 1870 onwards books on openings appeared more frequently. A little book of that year by F. W. Longman of Balliol College, Oxford, would probably not have been published had the author not been a member of the publishing family.103 He was hardly a player of any note. However, as his material was quite well organized and less detailed than Wormald, it would have served readers who wanted a quick overview of the main variations then current in amateur play. As with Wormald, there were no diagrams. Then in 1871 Long, later a senior Dublin civil servant, issued the first of several books and charts that he produced up to 1894 aimed at elementary coverage of openings for novices. His 191-page Key to the Chess Openings had one big advance on its predecessors in this field: the use of diagrams.10 4 Evidently his printer had moveable type with which to make them up, a great advance on the woodcuts of earlier books. Sometimes Long resorted to a trick he often used later: he printed a piece sideways in the diagram in order to show that it was the most recent piece moved, or was significant for some other reason. Variations seldom went beyond move 10, and often not that far, but for the class of player for whom his book was intended, that was probably a great advantage. The next major work on openings was The Synopsis of Chess Openings by William Cook (1850–1917), a Bristol accountant who was also associated with Birmingham Chess Club during his career.105 He was the first British chess author to adopt the tabular system of presenting opening variations which had been employed by the German Handbuch ever since its first edition of 1843. There was a difference, however; the Germans presented the move sequences horizontally, as Continental works down to the late 20th century

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Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings have done. Instead Cook used a vertical arrangement which subsequent British authors have used ever since, until databases rendered such works virtually redundant. Reviews were generally favorable with rival author Wormald admitting that the tabular form of notation “strikes us as being at once both simple and concise, and a great improvement on the method generally employed.”10 6 This arrangement of Cook’s work was quite successful and in his second (1876) edition, he omitted the illustrative games in order to increase the number of synoptical tables. The edition was somewhat delayed, however, so that he had to include in a two-page appendix some updates

Title page from the fourth edition of Cook’s Synopsis.

which would have been better inserted in the main text. The British Library has the first edition; its copy of the second edition is destroyed but this may be found in Google Books. There was a third edition in 1882, an American version of which appeared in 1884 with a supplement by J. W. Miller in 1885. The fourth edition, in which Cook was assisted by Frank P. Wildman, was published in 1888, and Cook wrote further books on the openings in the early 1900s. One of these, The Evolution of the Chess Openings (1906), attempted to trace the origins and development of the principal openings and variations popular during Cook’s long career, and should certainly be consulted by anyone attempting the kind of historical survey of chess openings proposed earlier in this chapter. While the tabular system enabled a clear tree-like relation between variations to be shown, it did not allow for much detailed explanation of the history of opening development and the ideas behind the openings. Wormald, in the second edition of his Chess Openings (1875), followed the same method of exposition as he had a decade previously, but now with the addition of diagrams, which made the book much easier for readers to follow. This is the book that drew a hostile review from Steinitz—unprecedented in the detail with which particular opening variations in a book of this type were dissected by anyone, let alone a leading master.* The review may not have harmed sales of the book, but it certainly would have done nothing for Wormald’s poor state of health and it certainly increased the animosity against Steinitz among the majority of English chess writers and metropolitan players. Other openings works also appeared in the mid–1870s. The first edition of The ChessPlayer’s Manual by George Gossip also ap-

*The hostile review of Wormald’s book appeared in the City of London Chess Magazine II (November 1875 and December 1875), pages 297–304 and 331–336. For the reaction to Steinitz’s review see Harding, Eminent, pages 178–179.

7. A Century and a Half of British Chess Books

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A two-page spread from the fourth edition of Cook’s Synopsis, showing the tabular layout employed for the first time in an English chess book.

peared in 1875; it was 884 pages long, mostly consisting of games arranged by openings, but the author’s qualifications for writing the book were rather thin. Wisker’s review in Land and Water was particularly scathing about it. It started in an ironical tone by saying: The great interest excited by the appearance of this work is a significant mark of the progress of chess as a popular amusement. Time was when a treatise on this subject would only be written by a player who could find no prospect of remuneration in any other way, and could be published only by subscriptions, which took more or less the form of charity.

Wisker went on to say that a publisher (Routledge) had taken the risk of issuing “by

far the most superb chess-book ever,” aiming to fill the Staunton Handbook gap since “no master of the game showed any disposition to undertake the task.” He went on: “We are sorry to say the public expectation has been wholly disappointed. The want remains unsupplied.” Land and Water joined in the general condemnation, especially of the title page with Gossip’s supposed credentials. The contents by no means answered to the description. Endings were wholly ignored: just one page. The author’s explanations, for example of perpetual check, were said to be unintelligible to a beginner.107 Then in 1877 Bird’s The Chess Openings, Considered Critically and Practically, which he

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had been writing while in America, appeared on the market. As usual with Bird, it was not a very systematic work. On 20 July 1878, the Land and Water column (now in Potter’s hands) complained that there were now three English books on openings (Cook, Wormald, and Bird) but none give “the reasons why” of the moves. Such tuition would be “difficult if not impracticable,” he admitted, but he thought some attempt should have been made. Nevertheless, as chess competition increased, amateurs wanted to keep up with developments and authors kept trying to satisfy the demand. Undeterred by the previous criticism, Gossip tried again with Theory of the Chess Openings (1879), whose preface included an attack on his critics. A second edition followed in 1881, while Bird also went to press again with Chess Practice (1882) and later the more interesting, though of course disorganized, Modern Chess of 1887. The next entrants to this increasingly crowded field were two of British Chess Magazine’s regular contributors, Freeborough and Ranken. The first edition of their Chess Openings Ancient & Modern appeared in 1889; this was a tabular work along similar lines to Cook’s Synopsis but, at 256 pages, nearly double the size and so much more detailed. The same year saw the first part of Steinitz’s Instructor. Gunsberg and Mason were to jump on the bandwagon later, and some lesser works also appeared over the years, including the Rev. E. E. Cunnington’s little Chess Openings for Beginners of 1900, last revised (by Du Mont) in 1951 and kept in print until 1960. The second edition of Freeborough and Ranken was published in 1893, the third in 1896 (the year of the former’s death). There was also a fourth edition in 1910, five years after Ranken’s death, where the title page claimed “numerous original variations and suggestions” by the British champion, Atkins, and also by D. Y. Mills (“Scottish Champion” but he too was long dead, in 1904), J. H. Blake “and numerous other eminent analysts.” This

publication was blatant dishonesty by the publisher. No editor was named, and Blake, reviewing the edition for B.C.M. in June 1910, said it had very little revision, and that he and Atkins had no part in its production. The last work of the period that requires a special mention is Modern Chess Openings, which was to go through numerous editions by various editors until quite recent times. It was sometimes known as “the chess player’s bible.” The first edition, edited by R. C. Griffith and J. H. White, was published in 1911, soon followed by the second edition of 1913. Betts records that the third edition was in 1916. White died on 18 November 1920, run over by a truck while cycling. His name still appeared on the fourth edition of 1925

Title page from the “dishonest” fourth and final edition of Freeborough and Ranken’s openings book. The principal authors and Mills were long dead while both Atkins and Blake denied being involved in the revisions.

7. A Century and a Half of British Chess Books but it was M. E. Goldstein who assisted Griffith with the revisions. The fifth edition was in 1932, with P. W. Sergeant joining the editorial team, and the sixth appeared in 1939 with openings arranged alphabetically. This was a coproduction with an American publisher and Reuben Fine was the principal reviser. Revision for the seventh edition of 1946 (the first published by Pitman) was by W. Korn who remained in charge for several years. He was also responsible for the eighth edition (1952) and, with J. W. Collins, the ninth of 1957. The last recorded by Betts is the tenth edition of 1965, “completely revised by Larry Evans under the editorship of Walter Korn.” The eleventh edition came out in 1972, with a reprint in 1976, and the twelfth edition was in 1982, still under Korn’s name, but now published by A. & C. Black. This was the last in descriptive notation. The thirteenth edition (1990) was said to be edited by Korn (for the last time) but revised by American grandmaster Nick de Firmian, by which time Batsford was producing rival compilations, the first edited by Keene (with some input by Kasparov, 1982 and 1989) and subsequently the much better Nunn’s Chess Openings (1999). Since then De Firmian was responsible for the 14th edition (1999), which in Britain was issued in 2000 as Batsford’s Modern Chess Openings after a change of ownership at Batsford. Wikipedia says there was also a 15th edition by De Firmian published in 2008 by Random House.

Annual Works and Directories There were at various times attempts at annual publications, of which the first, Charles Tomlinson’s, lasted only issue: The ChessPlayer’s Annual for the year 1856, which has already been mentioned in connection with Huttmann in Chapter 5. That book includes miscellaneous items including games, poems,

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and articles by other people. Next came W. R. Bland of Derby, whose initial aim was to compile a full list of the chess clubs in Britain, together with other information. His Chess Club Directory for 1880 was criticized for not including Ireland or Scotland, but it did get the ball rolling and more information came into him. His more ambitious Chess Player’s Annual and Club Directory of 1882 was on similar lines but included more articles, including an interesting one by Thomas John Beardsell (1841–1886) about chess clubs. Bland did not compile a third edition but later passed on the rights to the Rowlands, the Irish-based chess editors, who revived the series in 1889. Their first, called the third edition, included “A Glance at 1888,” Notations, Laws, Problems, a list of first class players available to give exhibitions, lists of chess associations and clubs, and other information. The Rowlands produced further editions in 1890, 1891, 1892 and finally an edition for 1893/4 after which the series ended. On the continent, Bachmann was issuing his Schachjahrbuch series from the mid–1890s, with reviews of each year and a selection of games, but there was nothing comparable in English for many years. The third and final pre-war annual series in Britain was The Year-Book of Chess, begun by E. A. Michell in 1907, which apart from reporting on the events of 1906 also included a club directory.108 Subsequent volumes appeared in 1908, 1909 (when Frank Hollings became publisher), but publication increasingly ran late in succeeding years. The 1911 volume appeared in June and the 1912 volume in July that year, which included the Chess Lover’s Kalendar [sic], a list of birth and death dates of chess personalities, compiled by Miss Clara Millar of the Manchester Ladies’ Chess Club. The cover of the 1913 Year-Book says it was “founded by E. A. Michell” and Frank Hollings was now the owner. This volume was published only in mid–1914 with an addendum covering January to May 1913. Michell

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contributed the “General Review of the Year,” after which (according to Michael Clapham who has made a study of this series) he “pursued his career as a concert director.” The Year- Book for 1914 was edited by H. W.

Stevens and published in 1915, after which he left for military service. The last in the series, the “war number” for 1915 and 1916, was edited jointly by W. H. Watts and A. W. Foster and appeared in 1917.

8. On Doing Chess History Today very time-consuming and expensive. Some, though not all, of the works read in this way are now available in word-searchable online databases, although to read them you generally need access through a major university or library or else a personal subscription. Nowadays there is also a lot of “chess history” online, in Wikipedia and elsewhere, of vastly uneven reliability. Anyone who relies too much on what is available online is not doing a thorough job as an historian. There is not really one subject called “chess history” and no “right way” either of doing chess history. Much sports history, intended for ordinary fans, consists of a compilation of results together with narratives of some famous events and biographies or anecdotes of famous players. There are of course now some academic sports history works which address the social context of games, but the majority of published sports books are popular biographies and histories, written by journalists, fans, players, or former players. Source citations and bibliographies are a rarity or perfunctory in such books. A prevalent but mistaken view is that recording and analyzing results are the central task of the sports historian. A classic example is a book by Clive Everton, who was, among other things, a well-known television commentator on snooker. The author apologized

This final chapter offers personal observations on the objects and methods of chess history, together with some tentative advice for anyone thinking of making a start in the subject. Modern tools (digitized texts, game databases and analysis engines) are discussed as to how these are changing the nature of a chess historian’s work. The author’s own intensive work in chess history and print culture began at a period when nearly all text sources had to be read in the original hard copy, which often meant newspaper bound volumes that crumbled away as you turned the pages, however carefully. Even today you sometimes have to handle such volumes, if they are issued at all. Sometimes the source is available on microfilm which is not ideal either, depending on how well the filming was done and what type of machine was available on which to read it. Nowadays there are much better digital microfilm readers, although for a quick scan through a film to find a particular item, they can sometimes be less satisfactory than the older type of machine. At the turn of the 21st century, just a few newspaper titles (chiefly The Times of London) and a few chess ancient books had been digitized. The hunt for missing volumes in a periodical series more than once has involved visiting three different libraries in two countries, which was part of the fun but was also

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for all the statistics, there having been no previous work on the subject, and he did prodigious research into the leading players, their matches and techniques.1 Everton was the acknowledged expert on the technicalities and personalities of the games but his book lacks any social context. Results are the raw material of history; a mere compilation of results and statistics is not history. The social history of billiards and other table games in 18th and 19th century Britain awaits an author. Chess is a special case in the field of sports history because the notation used to record games enables them to be preserved in print and computer databases for future study, an advantage it shares with checkers. This partly explains why much effort has gone into finding game scores and tracing the technical development of chess masters rather than exploring the social context of the game. It has been done because it is possible, unlike the situation with most sports before the invention of film and video. This author’s first venture into chess history, in the late 1970s and 1980s, was almost entirely a game score–seeking exercise of the old kind, to collect the games of the early Correspondence Chess World Championships.2 This also served as an introduction to some periodicals and to interesting contacts with some great postal players, some of whom were met personally as a result. Biography and history are not the same in their approach to their subject matter but the biographer needs both the research skills and objectivity of the historian combined with some degree of imagination sympathetic to the person who is the subject of the study. Until quite recently, chess “biographies” usually just record a master’s performances; many have been merely game collections. Typical master game collections tend to contain virtually no biographical material, and did not pretend to be biographies: Golombek’s book on Réti is a typical example. This began to change about twenty years ago including some

quality work on American chess history, where John Hilbert was a pioneer. To see what has changed it is only necessary to compare Hannak’s life of Emanuel Lasker, published in the 1950s, with some books published half a century later.3 Hannak included 100 games, very lightly annotated, which he collected from a variety of sources. His narrative of Lasker’s life is anecdotal with no sources cited. In recent years, a massive cooperative effort among several historians led to the publication of a very large scholarly book in the German language on Lasker; now a new edition in English is in preparation though we may have some time to wait before it is completed. In English, the game-changer was Richard Forster’s gigantic, and fullyreferenced, study of Amos Burn which discussed his life in some detail, while managing to find almost every serious game he ever played.4 That book (published by McFarland) is widely considered to be somewhat overthe-top: did Burn really deserve such a big book, given that his life was rather dull and his achievements somewhat below the élite most of the time? Nevertheless this huge labor of love by Forster did set a standard for future writers to follow and also established his own reputation.

On Archives, Libraries and Private Collections The principal distinction between archives and libraries is that the former preserve unpublished material, so their holdings are usually unique, whereas libraries mostly hold printed matter, although they may also have some other media (such as photographs and prints) and also hold manuscripts. In Britain, most major cities and counties have their own archives, but in some cases the archive may be part of the local studies department of the principal library. The county archives run a

8. On Doing Chess History Today joint system called the County Archive Research Network (CARN) so if you obtain a CARN card at one of them, this will give you access to the others without having to bring your proof of identity documents for separate registration at each one. Also noteworthy is the London Metropolitan Archives in Clerkenwell. To read original documents there you will need to obtain their History Card. The largest U.K. archive is the National Archives (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk) at Kew, not far from the botanical gardens and accessible via the District Line of the London subway. From central London, allow an hour to get there: 45 minutes on the “tube” and then a ten minute walk. Kew does have its own reader registration system which is quite rigorous so be sure you are familiar with what they require, and that you really need to go there first. The National Archives used to have a separate family research center in Islington. They closed it some years ago because so much data was becoming available online that the number of visitors dropped markedly; everything was moved to Kew. A useful search engine is Access to Archives (discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk) where you can see what may be of interest to you in either Kew or other archives in England and Wales. For some genealogical information, such as copies of birth, marriage and death certificates, you may need the General Registry Office (https://www.gro.gov.uk/content/ certificates) while for wills and probate records go to www.gov.uk/search-will-probate. North of the border in Scotland, its national archive merged with the General Register Office in 2011 to form the National Records of Scotland (https//www.nrscotland. gov.uk) in Edinburgh. Family and historical research can be carried out at 2 Princes Street. The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) relocated a few years ago to 2 Titanic Boulevard; its website is https:// www.nidirect.gov.uk/proni. The National Archives of Ireland (www.

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nationalarchives.ie), based in Dublin, is the official archive for the Republic of Ireland and in practice has a lot of documents relating to the whole island of Ireland, as does the National Library of Ireland (www.nli.ie) which is also in Dublin. Note, however, that the only census household records available for Ireland as yet are those of 1901 and 1911 because previous ones were destroyed during the Irish Civil War. Those two censuses were digitized a few years ago and are freely available for searching. While it may be possible to undertake certain chess history projects without ever visiting an archive, most researchers will need to undertake at least part of their research in one or more libraries. There are three major libraries in the world that have, through donations and purchases, built up major collections of material relating to chess, and sometimes other games, in the English language (and other languages). The largest in the southern hemisphere, it is said, is the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. For information go to https://www.slv.vic.gov.au. It is also worth noting that there are excellent collections of digitized Australian newspapers online. The largest public chess collection of all, at least as far as manuscript material is concerned, is the John G. White Collection in the Cleveland Public Library, in Ohio. White, already mentioned in Chapter 1 and elsewhere, was one of the City Fathers involved in planning the library building, which is situated downtown at 325 Superior Avenue. He ensured that the Special Collections reading room on the third floor has a magnificent view across a park towards Lake Erie, slightly spoiled in more recent times by the erection of a modern sports stadium. Unusually for a major public library, this building is even open on Sunday afternoons in the coldest months of the year, which gives more options to visitors. It can be extremely cold there, even in April, if the wind blows down from Canada

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across the lake. This author experienced three different seasons in one week. Upon arrival, it had just finished snowing and the scheduled Cleveland Indians baseball game was postponed. On the last day it was sunny and more than 20 degrees Celsius. A pilgrimage to this library at least once in your life is a must for all serious chess historians. You could spend a month there and still come nowhere near exhausting what they have to offer, especially if you are interested in material other than chess. None of the special collection material is on open shelves, so you need to order everything in advance or during your stay, but the people there are always very helpful. You may even be invited to give a talk there about your research. It is also possible to buy copies of much of their microfilmed material, but copies are only made to order and can take several weeks to arrive; in some cases you may be disappointed by the image quality or what you receive may not match the catalog description. For up- to-date information about the Cleveland library and John G. White Collection, please visit https://cpl.org/ and follow links to Special Collections. For their impressive Digital Gallery, which includes many downloadable photographs of chess players (jpg format) and chess columns and documents (pdf format), go instead to cplorg.cdm hostwww/. The largest chess collection in Europe, which cannot be recommended too highly, is at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (Royal Dutch Library) at The Hague, Netherlands. The K.B. is a modern building centrally located next to the Dutch national archives, just a short walk from a side entrance of Den Haag Centraal railroad station. You can be there within 90 minutes of landing at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport. The staff are very helpful and of course everybody speaks English. For information about the library go to https:// www.kb.nl/en. It is best to obtain your annual reader card in advance and keep it renewed.

It is very cheap and that way you support the work of the library even if you do not visit for a whole year. The establishment of this collection was the initiative of Dr. Meindert Niemeijer (1902– 1987), who in 1948 donated his collection to the Royal Library (where it was already stored during the war years) on condition that it be merged with the collection they had already acquired in 1876 from Antonius van der Linde. Before leaving Holland to become a librarian in Wiesbaden, he sold his library of some 750 volumes to the K.B. for 3,000 guilders (about £62,000 in 2017). Since Niemeijer’s day, it has remained a priority of the K.B. to keep its collection up to date by subscribing to all journals and buying as many of the new chess books as possible, and of course they accept donations to fill gaps in their holdings.

Antonius van der Linde, who wrote the first books on chess history in the Dutch and German languages. His library laid the foundations for the splendid chess collection at the Royal Dutch Library. Photograph (1875) by G. Schmuckler, Berlin (courtesy Cleveland Public Library Special Collections).

8. On Doing Chess History Today Until about 2005 there was a separate chess reading room, but everything has been reorganized more than once since then. Since about 2014 the chess books have been in their own area on the ground floor, and arrangements were most satisfactory. The most popular chess reference books, biographies and periodicals are available on open shelves, which is not the case anywhere else. Unless a volume is away for rebinding, which can happen, you will find immediately accessible the complete runs of the British Chess Magazine, Chess, The Chess-Monthly, Deutsche Schachzeitung , New in Chess and magazines from many other countries, including of course the Dutch ones dating back to the early issues of Sissa. This immediate availability of so much chess reference material is of tremendous value to researchers in a hurry, especially if you just want to check lots of things in a variety of different sources. Many other libraries will restrict how much you can order from the stacks in one day. Most of the material not on open shelves can be received on the day you order. Manuscripts and rarer books are delivered to their special collections room. Their holdings are not as strong on manuscripts in English as Cleveland, however. There is also quite a lot of chess material on microfilm in cabinets where you just go to find what you need. Copying is cheap at the Royal Library. There (as at Cleveland) you are also allowed to use your own camera, even in the special collections room. So in fact you should not need to pay anything except for copies printed from microfilms. Another advantage of the K.B., especially in winter, is that the building opens early. You can prepare for your visit in the locker room, and then go to have coffee or even breakfast in the restaurant before the reading room opens at 10 a.m. Lunch is also a good value there. If you take a break later in the day, just walk to the station. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays the library stays open until 8 p.m. so if you have a

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lot of research to do, those are the best days to visit. The British Library, now based on London’s Euston Road close to St. Pancras railroad terminus, only formally came into being as an institution in 1973, its principal ancestor being the library department of the British Museum. That collection goes back to 1753 but the famous domed reading room of the Museum (which accommodated Dickens, Lenin, Marx and George Bernard Shaw among others) opened in 1857. An Act of Parliament in the early 19th century provided that a copy of every U.K. publication had to be given by the publisher, in order to establish copyright, to the British Museum. Such gaps as there are in British Library holdings (other than newspapers) are chiefly due to war damage. Some books included in its catalog (carried over from former catalogs of the library when it was at the British Museum) turn out to be casualties of the World War II bombing of London. It is only when you are a registered reader and try to order them that you will see they are marked “destroyed.” Gaining admission to read at the British Library requires some preparation, though they have made it easier in recent years. You will need proof of identity and residence and to show that you need to see holdings that are not readily available in other libraries. As with many other research libraries, it is essential to make lists and to order what you need at least two days in advance if you wish to consult material that is stored offsite. In general, when planning a visit, even months ahead, it is a good idea to make lists of the works you wish to prioritize. You are only allowed to order ten items per day, though one item may be up to six consecutive volumes (or microfilms) of the same periodical. The catalog program has a personalized feature called My Basket in which you can store up to 30 items that interest you, without your having to specify when you want to see them. Later, after you order them for a specific

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date and reading room, they are released from My Basket to free up more space there. The British Library should in theory hold every British chess book and magazine, although there are some gaps. Some small publishers who do not buy ISBN numbers because they sell through their own channels are able to evade this obligation. It should also be noted that they only receive free the books which are published in either the U.K. or Ireland; overseas publications have to be purchased if they so decide. So the B.L. does in fact have some of the chess books published in America, but not all of them. The British Library was constructed on an abandoned railroad marshalling yard, the closest large site to the British Museum that could be found, following objections to another large building’s being situated in the crowded Bloomsbury district near the Museum. In 1988 the Thatcher government would provide sufficient funds for a building only two-thirds of the size originally planned. Consequently, although the Library (which Queen Elizabeth II opened in 1998), is a wonderful resource, it is often overcrowded, especially since a decision was taken some years ago to grant reader passes to London university undergraduates. In particular it can be hard at certain times of the year, if you don’t arrive in the morning, to find a seat in the Humanities One reading room although the Newsroom (the reading room for newspapers) has not yet been seen full. Further expansion of the library is planned, as you can read about on the British Library website, https://www. bl.uk/. Special mention needs to be made about the British Library’s treatment of newspapers, since this is of special relevance to chess researchers. The project to archive old British newspapers began shortly before the First World War when a storage building was established at Colindale in north London. Initially there was no facility for readers to do research, but a reading room was opened during

the 1930s which was later expanded. As an article by Fiala in an early number of his Quarterly for Chess History describes, a visit to Colindale could often be a frustrating adventure. Opening hours were shorter than in the main British Library and few of the desks had power points for computers. Within the last ten years, British Library management took the decision to close the Newspaper Library, moving nearly all its holdings to purpose-built storage at their secondary site at Boston Spa in Yorkshire, where they also have a small reading room. There was a hiatus of a couple of years when many bound newspapers were unavailable to researchers. The finding of asbestos in one of the storage buildings at Colindale meant that most 19th century provincial titles could not be accessed during the final months there. Then the move of the bound volumes to purpose-built storage buildings in Yorkshire meant that no hard copy papers were available at all for another year except for some of the more popular journals, such as the Illustrated London News, which were moved to St. Pancras. Colindale finally closed on 8 November 2013. After a hiatus of several months, a new reading room (the Newsroom) was opened at the main British Library site, giving access again to the microfilms. Several more months elapsed before it was possible to read bound newspaper volumes there. Bound volumes now have to be ordered more than 48 hours in advance from Yorkshire to London, instead of being available within an hour as they were in Colindale, if you were lucky. In practice it is a good idea to order them for the day before you expect to be reading, as everything will be held in St. Pancras for three days. In other respects, the situation for researchers is much improved, not least because the Newsroom remains open in the early evenings. The use of cameras is allowed and in the case of microfilmed newspapers, it is a simple matter to make copies of articles on the Newsroom’s

8. On Doing Chess History Today digital readers and email them to yourself at no charge at all. Therefore the prospects for future researchers are bright. It should also be noted that there are several other copyright libraries besides the British Library which are entitled to receive every British publication, so if you have access to one of these then you may find it more convenient than going to London. These are the National Library of Scotland (https://www. nls.uk/) on George IV Bridge in Edinburgh, the National Library of Wales (https://www. nls.uk/) on Penglais Road in Aberystwyth, Cambridge University Library (www.lib.cam. ac.uk) on West Road, the Bodleian Library in Oxford (various locations but principally off Broad Street), and the library of Trinity College Dublin. The last is somewhat anomalous because Dublin has not been in the U.K. for almost a century now, but by a reciprocal arrangement Irish publishers must send their books and periodicals to the U.K. copyright libraries. In practice storage pressures mean that some of the copyright libraries do not claim all the specialist non-academic publications they are entitled to receive, so do not assume that they will have what you are looking for, but check their catalogs and make inquiries if appropriate. This author has never used the libraries in Aberystwyth or Cambridge, but has paid a short visit to the Scottish library (found to be excellent) and has extensive experience of doing research in the other three. Like the British Library, the Bodleian receives a copy of everything published in print in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and has done so (under copyright legislation) since the 1820s or earlier. In practice, many old items may be unavailable, and the collection of chess literature is probably less complete than at the B.L. For more advice about the Bodleian, see the separate section below about the Murray collection. Trinity College Dublin is the only copyright library in Ireland. Its holdings of Victo-

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rian publications is patchy because there were probably long periods when items were not claimed, and periodicals received may not have been retained when no longer current. Nevertheless it is a great resource for Irish scholars, while visitors to Dublin should also check out the National Library of Ireland which also has a few chess items of interest. The English Chess Federation (formerly British Chess Federation) some years ago accumulated quite a large collection of chess books, periodicals and other material, through bequests and donations. This collection has had a long and sad history. After not being available to view anywhere, this “National Chess Library” was housed for a few years in Hastings, at the local branch of the University of Sussex. This was an inconvenient location for the majority of people who might have been interested. From Dublin, for example, or even a northern or central city like Birmingham or Manchester, Leeds or Newcastle, it was probably easier and hardly more expensive to go to the British Library or The Hague. Eventually the University of Sussex declined to house the collection any longer; at the time of writing everything is back in storage and no decision has been made yet about what to do with it. By the time this book is published, the collection may be available again at the English Chess Federation premises in Eastbourne, Sussex. For up-to-date information search www.englishchess.org.uk. It is possible that the collection includes fascinating and important manuscripts but nobody seems to know because although the books were catalogued, the manuscripts were not really investigated by an expert. Since not all books, and certainly not all chess manuscripts, are available in public or university libraries, an important issue for chess historians is the question of cooperation with private collectors. Some of the latter are extremely helpful; others are secretive or perhaps do not even have a catalog of what their holdings are. The late grandmaster

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Lothar Schmid was in the latter category and until his collection, probably the world’s largest, is finally broken up and sold, the whereabouts of many rare books and important manuscripts may not be known, let alone their being made available to historians. Despite the efforts of the Ken Whyld Association (now The Chess History and Literature Society) to foster good relations and cooperation among all people interested in chesshistorical matters, the situation is far from satisfactory. One example of this will show the nature of the problem. In this author’s biography of Blackburne, published during 2015, we explained that several games of his first match with Steinitz (played from December 1862 to January 1863) could not be included because they were never published. The first issue of the historical magazine Caïssa, published in Germany in 2016, had as its “headline act” an article by Robert Hübner about the first match between Blackburne and Steinitz. It was certainly interesting to have the eminent grandmaster’s annotations to the known games but his article sprang one big surprise. Hübner had seen a manuscript notebook which included the score of the only game in that match which Blackburne had won. Hübner hinted that this manuscript had changed hands in a large sale in the 1920s. It is plausible that the game score was recorded by J. W. Rimington Wilson, or perhaps by Löwenthal, whose manuscripts were acquired by Wilson in 1876. The present author sought, in vain, more information from the Caïssa editor, pointing out that it is normal in academia for anyone citing an unpublished manuscript to say in whose possession it is, and to provide provenance to show its authenticity. This manuscript may be one from the late Lothar Schmid’s collection which has not in 2017 come on the market. There are concerns that the same manuscript book, or others like it from the same collection, may contain further unpublished games by Steinitz or

other notable players. Whoever has this manuscript, or who eventually acquires it, is urged to make the contents available to chess historians. The game score in question is printed below, though of course without Hübner’s notes. It would have been number 62 in the Blackburne biography; internal evidence strongly suggests that the score is probably authentic. One guessed that editors did not consider it worth publishing because Steinitz made a bad blunder; this turns out to be confirmed.

W. Steinitz–J. H. Blackburne Third match game (probably), December 1862 Sicilian Defense (B40) Caïssa 2016/1, from an unidentified manuscript. 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 e6 3. Nc3 d5 4. d4 c4 5. Bd2 Nc6 6. Be2 Bb4 7. 0–0 Nge7 8. e×d5 e×d5 9. b3 c×b3 10. a×b3 0–0 11. Na2 Bd6 12. c4 Bg4 13. Bc3 Re8 14. Nc1 Rc8 15. h3 Bh5 16. Nd3 Bb8 17. g4?! Bg6 18. Re1 h5 19.  g×h5 B×h5 20.  Nfe5 B×e2 21.  Q×e2 d×c4 22. b×c4 N×d4 23. Qh5 g6 24. Qg4 Ndf5 25. h4 Nh6 26. Qg2 Nef5 27. N×g6?! f×g6? After 27. … Kh7! White would struggle to draw; now he should win. 28. Q×g6† Kf8 29. R×e8† Q×e8 30. Qf6†?? Qf7 31. Qg5 Q×c4 32.  Rc1 Qe6 33.  Kh1 Kf7 34.  Be1 Qd5† “and won” (0–1).

The Murray Collection in Oxford The Bodleian library in Oxford is one of Britain’s oldest research libraries and the most famous. (Readers with no opportunity or need to do research there can skip this section if they wish.) It is not as straightforward to gain access as it is for the British Library, unless you are an Oxford University graduate.

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The family of lexicographer Sir James Murray (with the large white beard). His eldest son, the future chess historian Harold Murray, is to the left, with the black handlebar moustache.

The Bodleian is very much a working library for the staff and students, so it is better to visit out of term if possible (between July and September for example) when there is less pressure on the library staff, desks, and ordering systems, although the opening hours are shorter. In practice, we have found the staff unfailingly helpful and it is a very pleasant place to do research once you find your way around. You should visit their website (http:// www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/) and especially check the pages about admissions requirements and their online SOLO catalog. That includes items held in some other local libraries, including college libraries which may be closed out of term, so it may be better to search with the option “All Bodleian libraries” rather than “all libraries/collections.” The standard reader’s ticket does not allow access to manuscript materials so you need to convince the admissions office that you have a real need to see their holdings and can be trusted to do so. In order to prove a research need, a track record in published work, or a letter from your publisher or your university department (if you have either or both) will help open doors. As with all major

libraries and archives, it is important to read the information pages at their website so you do not have a wasted visit. Some of the following information may help you if you want to consult the material that Harold Murray left to the Bodleian. Just finding out what Murray papers are held by the Bodleian takes a little know-how, and here the results are shared of investigations that took this author much time over ten years ago. Perhaps some of the information is now more readily available online, at least if you visit Oxford, but it is always good to do as much advance preparation as possible because time in archives is precious and you want to be sure of ordering the files that are likely to be of most use to you. The starting point is the Summary Catalogue of PostMedieval Western Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library.5 Many big libraries should hold a copy of this and from it you can see a summary list of the Murray collection with call numbers. For more detailed information, there is a detailed catalogue held only in the Bodleian itself, which has a number “R. Ref 722” and is kept in the wonderfully restored Duke Humfrey Library in the Old Bodleian.

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Even this is still not a complete description of contents and does not indicate when several catalogue numbers are actually together in one box. While some items are bound, others are just loose folios numbered by an archivist and put into large envelopes. Apart from the letters and draft articles, Murray also collected scrapbooks of chess columns in the form of cuttings and galley proofs (many of them still loose). These were taken especially from W. S. Branch’s column in Cheltenham and John Keeble’s in Norwich. For some unknown reason, these items were catalogued along with Murray’s book collection rather than the manuscripts but should not be called up by anyone inexperienced in handling delicate material. These and the book collection are listed in a manuscript catalogue called “Printed Book Handlist 265.” These items are all in the Bodleian’s online catalogue, which can be viewed by anyone, but it can be convenient when actually doing research to have the little booklet to hand. Readers are probably aware

that Murray, author of The History of Chess, also wrote a History of Board Games Other Than Chess (Oxford 1952) and a Short History of Chess was published posthumously with additional material of inferior quality by other writers. Many of the materials held in the Murray manuscript collection relate to the Board Games book rather than to chess. The following table may be of use to any serious researcher who needs to look at the Murray papers, although it should be used in conjunction with the full catalogue. This author has examined few of the manuscript boxes up to number 50 because the catalogue shows they mostly contain material relating to ancient and mediaeval chess. After that, most boxes were inspected (some in great detail), except those relating to problems, the knight’s tour, and checkers, which were given a cursory examination. Since writing an article for the Chess Cafe website in 2006 (which is no longer freely available online), two further research sessions were spent among the Murray papers.

MS HJR# Description of File Contents 1–39 40–41 42–48 49 50 51 52–53 54–58 59 (a) 59 (b) 60–61 62–63 64–66 67–68 68

Miscellaneous transcripts from old MSS held in libraries or owned by collectors Miscellaneous transcripts re modern chess (includes Caze MS transcript in #40) More transcripts from MSS References to chess in literary works Extracts from Rowbothum Extracts from the notebook of W. Lewis then in the Von der Lasa library. Mostly game scores written in pencil with hand diagrams (see #59b for typescript) Miscellaneous transcripts Problem collections Games of John Cochrane in Calcutta 1855–1861, from a MS now in J.G.W.C.? Typescript transcript of Lewis notebook #51 (important file) Games by Adolf Anderssen (should all be available in databases) “Chess miscellanies” (not of much use; #62 includes an index of opening names) Handwritten collections of miscellaneous early games (mostly English) Tabulated variations of chess moves from various books and MSS, with interesting Captain Evans material (#68 comes in a small envelope with #67) Small collection of games (apparently noted by Atwood at Parsloe’s, late 18th cent.)

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(MS HJR# Description of File Contents) 69–71

Games played by Murray himself

72–73

Murray collected papers (including typescripts of his articles for B.C.M.); #73 similar but includes Murray game selection

74

Chess maxims from various authors in small bound booklet

75

Primitive Chess and a History of the Baring Victory: various articles on Murray’s debate (1908 onwards) with German writer Johannes Köhtz, dated Birmingham 1915. Murray opposed his theory propounded in Deutsche Wochenschach etc.

76

Material relating to Seyferth’s theories about primitive chess. Oriental chess notes

77

Problem notes and queries; starts with Arabic mansubat etc.

78

References to chess and games in Irish and Welsh literature

79–80

Collections of references to chess in literature of various countries (both items together)

81

“Slips containing definitions of chess terms in English and Latin”

82–86

Miscellaneous papers and notes that come in one box. #83–84 is a history of problems and H. M. articles. #84 includes notes on the history of pawn promotion, MS. #85 contains translations and conjectures about chess in Iceland; #86 is in German, about medieval German chess terminology

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Miscellaneous translations from Schachzeitung about chess in Europe mid–19th century.

88

The Louis Rou MS mystery (in two parts)

89–91

Cuttings, transcripts and translations (#89 relates to problems, #90 critiques articles by Branch on chess history in the Wolverhampton Journal; #91 about Asiatic chess)

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Transcribed article by Amelung, re: chess in the Baltics

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Transcribed articles, re: educational value of chess (first item is in German)

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Index to chess items in Notes and Queries up to 1923, compiled by John Keeble

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Transcr