Chess History And Reminiscences
of a single published complete and annotated game until the 19th
century, there is little advantage in conjecturing whether Al Suli
was equal to Philidor, Razi or Greco to A. McDonnell of Belfast,
Ali Shatranji to La Bourdonnais, Paoli Boi to Anderssen, Ruy
Lopez to Staunton, or Leonardo to Morphy, though these
conjectural comparisons in varied forms are not uncommon in
modern chess talk.
The records of incidents, and the anecdotes appertaining to chess
or chess players in the middle ages, are so scattered, scant, and
meagre, that no writer has attempted to put them into shape, or
make a consecutive or connected narrative of them. Even
Professor Duncan Forbes the most elaborate of all the European
writers on the history of chess, dismisses the period from 750 to
1500 A.D., in a very few words not vouchsafing to it in his volume
of 400 pages a chapter of a single page, though his book able as it
is, contains much description of games of the past in different
countries, the interest in which seems not considerable in present
days. The Hon. Daines Barrington writing in 1787, says, (and
others have followed him to a like effect), "Our ancestors
certainly played much at chess before the general introduction of
cards, as no fewer than twenty-six English families have
emblazened chess boards and chess rooks on their arms, and it
therefore must have been considered as a valuable
accomplishment."
The opinions so commonly entertained and expressed, however,
so far at least as they can be taken to apply to the period before
Queen Elizabeth's reign, rest upon but slender data, and it is
highly probable that even in that monarch's reign the practice of
chess was confined to a very limited circle for we read of no fine
player, great games, or matches, or public competitions of any
kind, in our climes until Philidor's time; his career in England
though intermittant extended close upon fifty years and from his
time may be dated the budding forth of the popularity of chess,
which began to come to full bloom about 1828, (33 years after his
death) and produced its fruits in the France and England
championship contests of 1834 and 1843, and the inception of
International Tournaments in 1851 which first established
Germany's great reputation and furnished a chess champion of the
world from among them.
Though the contests between the rival champions of Spain and
Italy, were promoted as tests of skill, at the courts of Philip and
Sebastian, and rewarded with a liberality unheard of, since the
days of Chosroes and Al Mamun, and took place during the
contemporary reign of Queen Elizabeth, when chess had become
decidedly fashionable in England, we find no record of the games,
or that any interest or enthusiasm appears to have been evoked by
them in any country except those where they took place. They
seem to have led to no emulation in other parts of Europe, and we
read of no chess competitions of any kind in France, Germany, or
England. It was not till a century later that the debut and
successes of the brilliant Greco the Calabrian, in Paris, began
to cause a little more chess ambition in France and gave the
ascendancy in the game to that country which it still held in
Legalle and Philidor's time in 1750, and continued to maintain
until the matches of 1834, between Alex. McDonnell of Belfast
and the famous Louis de La Bourdonnais of Paris, followed in 1843
by Staunton's victory over M. S. Amant, first advanced British
claims to a first class position in chess, and left our countryman
Staunton the admitted world's champion in chess, until the title
was wrested from him by Professor Anderssen of Breslau, in the
International tournament held in London during the Exhibition
year 1851.
The career of England's champion, Staunton, for about ten years
successful as it was, is considered generally to have been even
surpassed by that of Anderssen which lasted till his death in 1879
near thirty years. Their chess performances like those of Philidor
from 1746 to 1795, and of Paul Morphy from 1855 to 1858,
would well merit full record in a longer work.
NOTE. A translation of Greco was published in London in 1656,
with a likeness of Charles the First in it.
------
Space precludes the admission of the sketches and
comparisons of the chess careers of Philidor, Staunton, Anderssen,
and Morphy, and confines us to the brief account of Philidor's
extraordinary support and influence on the future of chess and
such references as occur in the sketches of Simpson's.
Continuously from the date of Philidor's death in 1795, to the
ascendancy of Deschapelles in 1820, France maintained the
lead in chess which she had held for one hundred and fifty years,
producing in the interval the famous de La Bourdonnais, who for
genius, invention and force has never been excelled, and may be
ranked with Anderssen, whose supremacy for Germany first became
manifested in 1851, and the unparalleled Paul Morphy, of New
Orleans, who in 1857 and 1858, electrified the whole chess world
by his signal successes in New York, London and Paris.
Taking strength, style, and rapidity of conception combined,
these are probably the three greatest players which the world has
produced since Al Suli in the Tenth century who was considered
a marvel among the best of the Eastern players, and Paolo Boi,
Leonardo and Ruy Lopez in the Sixteenth century.
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