Chess History and Reminiscences Part 14

THE GAME OF CHESS

Elaborate and learned works have appeared treating on the supposed origin of chess. Oriental ma.n.u.scripts, Eastern fables, and the early poets have been quoted to prove its antiquity, and it would not be easy to name any subject upon which so much valuable labour and antiquarian research has been bestowed, with so little harmonious or agreed result as to opinions concerning the first source of this wonderful game.

That chess reached Persia from India in the first half of the Sixth century, during the reign of Chosroes, is well attested, and concurred in by all historians from the Arabian and Persian writers, the beautiful and accomplished Greek Princess Anna Comnena, and the Asiatic Society's famous ma.n.u.script to Dr. Hyde and Sir William Jones, and Sir Frederick Madden and Professor Duncan Forbes, China, also, admits the receipt of chess from India in the year 537, and got it about the same time as Persia.

Whatever difference of opinion may exist as to the exact spot from whence chess first sprung, its Asiatic origin is undoubted.

The elephant, s.h.i.+p, or boat in the game was ill.u.s.trative of its mode of warfare. The ident.i.ty of the pieces in the ancient game with ours of the present day affords striking confirmation of it, whilst the most competent and esteemed authorities who have devoted the greatest attention and research to the subject deem the evidence of language conclusive proof that the Persian Chatrang, which we first hear of under date of about 540 A.D., was derived from the ancient Hindu Chaturanga, found described in original Sanskrit records.

It is generally a.s.sumed on very fair inferences that the Arabians were expert chess players, and also excelled in blindfold play. The game was known among them in the days of the prophet, 590 to 632, who finding some engaged at chess asked them, "What images are these which you are so intent upon?"

For they seemed to have been new to him, the game having been very lately introduced into Arabia from Persia. Nice gradations of skill were observed among them, and thirteen degrees of odds are enumerated among them down to the rook. To give any odds beyond the rook, says one of the ma.n.u.scripts, can apply only to women, children, and tyros. For instance, a man to whom even a first-cla.s.s player can afford to give the odds of a rook and a knight has no claim to be ranked among chess players. In fact the two rooks in chess are like the two hands in the human body, and the two knights are, as it were, the feet. Now that man has very little to boast of on the score of manhood and valour who tells you that he has given a sound thras.h.i.+ng to another man who had only one hand and one foot. It may be observed, however, that proportionately to the value of all the pieces in the old game, as compared with the present, the rook and knight would be equivalent to queen and rook with us.

The earliest Greek reference brought to notice is in a laconic correspondence between the Emperor Nicephorus of Constantinople, successor to the Princess Irene, and the famous Harun Ar Ras.h.i.+d of Bagdad, the fifth of the Abba.s.side dynasty, in 802, which mentions p.a.w.n and Rook, implying that his predecessor in paying tribute resembled rather the former for weakness than the latter for strength; but it had probably been known among the Greeks before the death of Justinian, in 565, as he was contemporary with Chosroes, and these rulers were at peace and in friendly terms of communication, allowing interpretations of their respective records, which seem to have been of mutual interest.

All the writers who a.s.sert that the ancient Greeks and Romans were unacquainted with chess have overlooked the Roman edict of 115 B.C., in which both chess and Draughts were specially exempted from prohibition.

Such consideration as can be found devoted to the game or games of the Egyptians mainly relates to hypothesis and conjectures in regard to the inscriptions recorded to have been discovered on tombs and the temples generally, and especially on the wall of the great palace of Medinet Abu at Egyptian Thebes, which, according to the most approved authorities, derived from the scrolls, relates to the time of Ramesses Meiammun the 16th, out of the 17 monarchs of the 18th dynasty, who as is supposed, reigned from 1559 to 1493 B.C., and constructed Medinet Abu, and is p.r.o.nounced most likely to be the monarch represented on its walls. His t.i.tle is Ramses, and he is considered to have been the grandfather of Sesostris 1st of the 19th dynasty, whose reign is stated as from 1473 to 1418 B.C.

Some discussion arose in chess circles in 1872 in reference to Mr. Disraeli's mention of chess in one of his books. Chapter 16 of "Alroy" begins--"Two stout soldiers were playing chess in a coffee-house," and Mr. Disraeli inserts on this the following note (80). On the walls of the palace of Amenoph II, called Medinet Abuh, at Egyptian Thebes, the King is represented playing chess with the Queen. This monarch reigned long before the Trojan war.

A writer, who styled himself the author of Fossil Chess, in criticising the above, refers to Sir Gardiner Wilkinson's work, "A popular account of the ancient Egyptians, which declares the game to resemble draughts, the pieces being uniform in pattern."

The same critic further remarks, "In the same work may be found some account of the paintings in the tomb of Beni Ha.s.san, presumably the oldest in Egypt, dating back from the time of Osirtasen I, twenty centuries before the Christian era, and eight hundred years anterior to the reign of Rameses III, by whom the temple of Medinet Abuh was commenced, and who is the Rameses portrayed on its walls. An unaccountable error on Mr. Disraeli's part in the same note a.s.signs its erection to Amenoph II, who lived 1414 B.C.

The eminent and revered writer and statesman may not have selected the supposed best authorities for his dates, but the sapient critic indulges in a strange admixture of misconception.

However, Egyptian chronology is not fully agreed upon, even Manetho and Herodotus differ some 120 years as to the time of Sesostris, and Bishop Warburton, we read, was highly indignant with a scholar, one Nicholas Man, who argued for the ident.i.ty of Osiris and Sesostris after he (the bishop) had said they were to be distinguished. Respecting English origin, all authorities down to the end of the Eighteenth century agreed in ascribing the first knowledge of chess to the time of William the Conqueror, or to that of the return of the first Crusaders.

Perhaps, however, it reached us in the days of Charlemagne, and may well have done so through Alcuin of York, his friend and tutor in the reigns of Offa and of Egbert.

Al Walid, 705-715; Harun, 786-809; the great Al Mamun, 813 to 833; and Tamerlane, 1375 to 1400, are monarchs who honoured their chess opponents when beaten. Charlemagne, 768-814, seems also to have taken defeat good-humouredly, and Queen Elizabeth, who liked chess, philosophised upon it. Canute, William the Conqueror, and Henry the Eighth, like the famous Ras, of Abyssinia, whom Salt and Buckle inform us of, preferred to win.

Chess, as it is now played, came down to us from the Fifteenth century, when the queen of present powers was introduced, and the extensions and improvements in the moves of the bishops and the p.a.w.ns and in castling effected, and which made the game exactly what it now is. It has been so practised for four hundred years without the slightest deviation or alteration, and with so much continued satisfaction and advanced appreciation that any change or modification suggested, however trifling, has been at once discouraged and rejected, and additions proposed in the 17th century (Carrera), 18th (Duke of Rutland), and 19th (Bird) were regarded with no favour, and the objection that the game was difficult enough already.

During the present century (especially in the second half) chess has become vastly popular. The game is innocent and intellectual, and affords the utmost scope for art and strategy, and for its practice we have about five hundred clubs and inst.i.tutions, compared with the one club in St. James' Street, and Slaughter's, in St. Martin's Lane, which existed in the last century, during the height of Philidor's career, and two of the first half dozen. Chess clubs started found rest on Irish soil, the first so early as the year 1819.

PHILIDOR,

BORN 1726, DREUX, NEAR PARIS, DIED 1795, IN LONDON.

Philidor's ascendancy and popularity in the last century, owing to his remarkable and perhaps unprecedented supremacy combined with the liberality of his treatment and the chivalry and enthusiasm of his opponents, tended to create an entirely new era in chess and its support. An interest became aroused of a most important character, unknown in any previous age in England, and which, though not fully maintained after his death, and least of all among the higher cla.s.ses who ranked so largely among his patrons, was yet destined to have a marked and lasting influence on the future development and progress of the game, most apparent at first in England, but later nearly equally manifested in Germany, since in America and other countries, and not exclusively confined to any country, cla.s.s, or creed.

Several auspicious circ.u.mstances had greatly contributed to aid Philidor in his London career. Prominent among which were his introduction to Lord Sandwich at the Hague. His patronage through the same source by the Duke of c.u.mberland and the never ceasing liberality of General Conway, the inestimable Count Bruhl, the Dowager Lady Holland, and the gallant Sir Gilbert Elliot of Gibraltar fame.

Of the players who encountered Philidor, Sir Abraham Janssens, who died in 1775, seems to have been the best, Mr. George Atwood, a mathematician, one of Pitt's secretaries came next, he was of a cla.s.s which we should call third or two grades of odds below Philidor, a high standard of excellence to which but few amateurs attain.

Some indication of the varied and important character of Philidor's patronage is afforded by the names on the cover of his edition of 1777, dedicated to the Duke of c.u.mberland.

Twenty-six ladies of t.i.tle grace the list, including the historic chess names of Devons.h.i.+re, Northumberland, Bedford, Marlborough, Rutland, with upwards of 300 male names comprising heads of the Church, men ill.u.s.trious at the bar and on the bench, statesmen, politicians, cabinet ministers, and many most distinguished in science, both in England and in France, with a long list of our n.o.bility. Devons.h.i.+re is the earliest name mentioned in old Chronicles connected with English chess, Olgar or Orgar, Earl of Devons.h.i.+re is recorded to have been playing chess with his daughter Elstreth or Elpida when King Edgar's messenger Athelwold arrived to ascertain the truth of the reports of her extraordinary beauty. Northumberland is mentioned two centuries later as a house in which chess was played. Caxton's "Booke of Chesse," Bruges 1474, said by some to be the first book printed in London, was dedicated to the Duke of Clarence, Rowbotham's, 1561, to the Earl of Leicester, Lucy, Countess of Bedford accepted dedication of A. Saul's quaint work, 1597 and and Barbiere's edition of the same, 1640. The early love poem of Lydgate, emblematical of chess was dedicated to the admirers of the game, and the Duke of Rutland in the last century took sufficient interest in it to devise an extension of chess.

NOTE. The names of the subscribers on Philidor's a.n.a.lysis of Chess, 1777, include Lord Sandwich and the Duke of c.u.mberland for 10 and 50 copies respectively.

The d.u.c.h.ess of Argyle, the d.u.c.h.ess of Bedford, the d.u.c.h.ess of Buccleuch, R. H. Lady de Beauclerk, Viscountess Beauchamp, Miss Sophia Bristow, Marchioness of Carmarthen, Marchioness of Lothian, d.u.c.h.ess of Montrose, d.u.c.h.ess of Devons.h.i.+re, Countess of Derby, Lady Derby, Madame Dillon, La Countesse de Forbach, Dowager Lady Hunt, Dowager Lady Holland, La Countesse de Hurst, Miss Jennings, the d.u.c.h.ess of Manchester, the Countess of Ossery, the Countess of Powis, Lady Payne, the Marchioness of Rockingham, the Right Hon. Lady Cecil Rice, the Countess Spencer, Lady Frances Scott, Miss Mary Sankey, Miss West, and the Countess of Pembroke.

Notwithstanding the enormous advance in chess, appreciation and practice generally, we have never since been able to boast of a list at all of this kind. There are Dukes Argyle, Athol, Ancaster, Bedford, Bolton, Buccleuch, c.u.mberland, Devons.h.i.+re, Leeds, Manchester, Marlborough, Montague, Northumberland, Richmond, Roxburgh; Marquis Carmarthen, Rockingham; Earl Ashburnham, Besborough, Dartmouth, Egremont, Gower, Holderness, Northington, Ossory, Powis, Spencer, Shelburne, Waldegrave; Lords, E. Bentinck, Bateman, Barrington, Beauchamp, Breadalbane, G. Cavendish, John Cavendish, Clifford, Denbigh, Fitzmaurice, Fitzwilliam, Falmouth, Harrowby, Hillsborough, Irwine, Kerry, Kinnaird, March, Mountstenart, North, Oxford, Palmerston, Polnarth, Robert Spencer, Temple, Tyrunnell, Warwick, Willoughby de Broke, Amherst, Petre.

Among statesmen and politicians we find such names as the Earl of Chatham, Pitt, C. J. Fox, Lord G.o.dolphin, Lord Sunderland, St. John and Wedderburn.

Prominent as players as well as supporters were General Conway, Count Bruhl, the French Amba.s.sador, Duke de Mirepois, the Turkish Amba.s.sador, Dr. Black, Sir Abram Janssens, G. Atwood, (one of Pitts' secretaries), Mr. Jennings, Mr. Cotter, and the Rev. Mr. Bouldeer.

Voltaire and Roussca were friends of Philidor, so also was David Garrick the actor; supporters in the musical world were numerous. A combination of high appreciation for chess and music combined is often found.

Philidor died in 1795. Sir Abram Janssens had already departed in 1775, as the recognized best player and one of the greatest enthusiasts, his loss left a great void in chess, Scandigh, Benedict, Prout and Asfra are musicians with whom we have ourselves played chess.

THE CARLOVINGIAN DYNASTY

In A.D. 757 Constantine Cap.r.o.nymus, Emperor of the East sent to King Pepin as a rare present the first organ ever seen in France.

CHARLEMAGNE'S WAGER

The romance of Guerin de Montglave turns wholly upon a game of chess at which Charlemagne had lost his Kingdom to Guerin.

The short dialogue which preceded this game on which so great a stake depended, as narrated by the hero of the story to his sons is characteristic, and has thus been modernized by the Compte de Tressan, "I bet," said the Emperor to me "that you would not play your expectation against me on this chess board, unless I were to propose some very high stake." "Done, replied I, I will play then, provided only you bet against me your Kingdom of France." "Very good, let us see," cried Charlemagne, who fancied himself to be strong at chess. We play forthwith, I win his Kingdom, he falls a laughing at it, but I swear by St. Martin and all the Saints of Aquitain, that he must needs pay me by some sort of compensation or other. The Emperor therefore by way of equivalent surrenders to Guerin, all right to the City of Montglave, (Lyons), then in the hands of Saracens which is forthwith conquered by the hero, who afterwards names Mabolette the Soldan's daughter.

The earliest chess anecdote in France is given by Augustus, Duke of Luneburg in his great work on chess. It is extracted from an old Bavarian Chronicle, then in Library of Marcus Welsor, and states that Okarius, Okar or Otkar, Prince of Bavaria had a son of great promise, residing at the Court of King Pepin. One day Pepin's son when playing at chess with the young Prince of Bavaria, became so enraged at the latter for having repeatedly beaten him that he hit him on the temple with one of his rooks so as to kill him on the spot. This anecdote is confirmed in another Bavarian Chronicle, and in the Guirinalia 1060. The acts of Saint Guirin by Metellus of Tegernsee. The murder of Okar happened during the reign of Pepin 752 to 768.

In another romance containing the history of Les Quatre Fils Aymsn, we read that Duke Richard of Normandy was playing at chess with Ivonnet, son of Regnant, (Rinalde) when he was arrested by the officers of Regnant, who said to him, "Aryse up Duke Rycharde, for in despite of Charlemagne who loveth you so much, ye shall be hanged now. When Duke Rycharde saw that these sergeantes had him thus by the arms and held in his hande a lively (dame) of ivory where at he wolde have given a mate to Yennet he withdrew his arme and gave to one of the sergeantes such a strike with it into the forehead that he made him tumble over and over at his feete, and then he tooke rocke and smote another at all opon his head that he all loost it to the brayne.

THE HABITS AND IDIOSYNCRACIES OF CHESS PLAYERS (MYSELF)

NOTE. Speaking as a chess player, Bird is used, for matters common or general, the editorial us or we is adopted, but when expressing my own individual knowledge or opinion only, I is preferred.

The temperaments of chess players vary, some get easily disconcerted, disturbed and even distracted; others seem little affected by pa.s.sing events, a few, apparently not at all: some even like a gallery and don't object to reasonable conversation; by conversations or little interruptions which would pa.s.s unheeded by a McDonnell or a Bird, or perhaps a Zukertortian would sadly disconcert a Buckle or a Morphy, make Staunton angry, and drive a Gossip to despair.

The att.i.tude as well as the deportment and demeanour of chess players at the board shows many varieties: Anderssen and Captain Mackenzie were statuesque; Staunton, not quite so tall as the Rev. J. Owen, seeming to be soaring up aloft. Harrwitz not quite so small as Gunsberg, seemed sinking to the ground, but the story that he once disappeared overawed by Staunton's style and manner of moving, and was, after a search, found under the table, is a mere canard of Staunton's which need not be too confidently accepted. Harrwitz disliked being called a small German by Staunton because it savoured too strongly of the sausage element, saying if he makes sausage meat of me I will make mincemeat of him.

Staunton pretended sometimes not to see Harrwitz, and would look round the room and even under the chairs for him when he was sitting at his elbow, which greatly annoyed Harrwitz, who, however, sometimes got a turn, and was not slow to retaliate. In a game one day, Staunton materially damaged his own prospects by playing very tamely and feebly, and testily complained--"I have lost a move." Harrwitz told the waiter to stop his work, and search the room until he had found Staunton's lost move, and his manner of saying it caused a degree of merriment by no means pleasing to the English Champion.

Staunton was considered full-blooded, and his amiable French opponent, who used to play for 5 pounds a game no doubt thought he expressed himself favorably and forcibly when he said he is one very nice, charmant man, but he is a "---- fool."

Staunton's celebrated stories about Lowenthal and Williams, though very amusing to chess ears, I omit for obvious reasons, though extremely funny as Staunton originally told them, and as MacDonnell repeats them, they are probably not strictly founded on fact, and are lacking of the respect to which the memories of two such amiable and chivalrous chess players as Williams and Lowenthal are ent.i.tled.