Chess History And Reminiscences
responsibilities of chess editorship, and as some are wont to say
"kept watch over The Field Office lest it should disappear before
the morning," to the time when he unfortunately left us for
America he was nearly always a fertile theme of amusement with
the joke-loving members of the chess fraternity. We fancy we
see him now with pen behind the ear pacing up and down the
Divan rooms with horried start and whisper dread, saying, "O
have you seen my article! How many K's in occur? and is there
more than one H in editor?" He has improved since then and is
a match for Hoffer. The clocks (implements of torture I call
them) used for regulating the time consumed in chess matches
have led to several facetious stories at Steinitz's expense, some,
however, not too good natured. Still it was curious to see his
gymnastics, mental and physical, between observance of the chess
board and the time pieces on occasions when time run short and
indeed sometimes when it did not.
A game between Steinitz and Rosenthal in the London Criterion
Tournament of 1883 furnished an example which will doubtless
be familiarly remembered by those present. With eight moves to
make in about as many minutes in his excitement he had apparently
unwillingly climbed the back of a chair and not till he had
completed the requisite number within the hour and began to breathe
freely did he seem conscious of where he was. Though anxious
for a moment or so he succeeded in getting down very cleverly
without mishap, not however escaping some signs of trepidation.
A St. Louis writer in 1886, after one of his games with Zukertort,
described in true American fashion Steinitz's tall chair and short
legs and his frantic efforts to regain terra firma, as the writer
described it, to reach the American hemisphere. Steinitz's high
appreciation of proficiency in the game and what is due to one
who attains it was once illustrated before a great man at Vienna,
who rebuked him for humming whilst playing at chess, saying,
"Don't you know that I am the great Banker?" The reply was
characteristic of Steinitz. "And don't you know that I am the
Rothschild of chess?"
A beautiful chess position with Steinitz beats any work of art
as Al Solis chess, in the opinion of the Caliph, one thousand years
ago far excelled the flowers in his most beautiful garden and
everything that was in it. More than this, Prime Ministers and
Lord Chancellors, Liberal and Conservative, come and go but
there is but one first Lord in chess, says Steinitz.
Steinitz was so much gratified with the reminder of mine at
Simpson's, that three of the greatest minds ever known have had
the same initials that he will pardon the little addition joke from
Paternoster Row. The three mighty W.S.'s are Wilhelm Steinitz,
William Shakespeare and Walter Scott. He was not so well
pleased with the addition of the unnecessary missing words
William Sykes.
Steinitz was introduced at a club once as the Champion. "Of
what?" was the reply.
Steinitz has been known to grieve much when he has lost
at chess; at Dundee, for example, in 1866 after his defeat by
De Vere his friends became alarmed at his woe and disappearance.
Again, after his fall to Rosenthal in a game he should have won
at the Criterion in 1883, news were brought that he was on a seat
in St. James' Park quite uncontrollable.
Steinitz is liberally disposed to others in mind and purse. The
following brevities on chess are known to have been much admired
by him, I therefore append them for his artistic eye.
So old and enthusiastic a chess player as Bird, and one who
has travelled about so much professionally, and on chess, has
naturally been the object of many pleasantries, and bon mots,
although he escaped the Fortnightly Review writers, being
regarded, at least by one of them as a very serious person,
L'Anglais comme il faut of the Vienna Neue Frie Presse. The
despised Britisher of custom house officers (who always chalk
him away, hardly deigning to examine his luggage even). He
has figured as the sea captain of the New York Sun, the farmer
of the Rochester Press, the ladies chess professor of the Albany
Argus, and the veteran of the Montreal Press, his vicissitudes
have led him into strange places, among others to a wigwam of the
Indians at Sarnia in 1860, and a representation of one in the
Vienna Exhibition of 1873, when much to the amusement of
Professor Anderssen and Baron Kolisch he received such a cordial
reception from a lady who recognized him as an old friend and
customer at Niagara falls, the lady in question being commonly
termed a squaw (not a disrespectful word for a lady it is hoped).
Bird has been in the Nest at Amsterdam, in the Bowery at New
York, and in the accident ward at Vienna, and has witnessed
many strange things and distressing circumstances, and has
endured interviewers and Irish Home Rulers in America without
a shudder, and has perhaps been asked more questions about
chess than any man living, because he good naturedly always
answers them, and has furnished matter enough in ten minutes
for a two-column article. He has been accused of a partiality for
whisky hot, especially when served by female hands, of ordering
soles by special train at Nuremberg, though he only disposed or
them at breakfast not knowing their price or from whence they
came. Blackburne and Hoffer are responsible for the statement
that he sat up through the night at Vienna preparing statistics,
with nothing but his hat on. The allegation in the Field and
elsewhere that he instructed the French President to fetch a cab
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