H.G. Wells — Concerning Chess
Schaakessay uit de bundel Certain Personal Matters, 1898.
The passion for playing chess is one of the most
unaccountable in the world. It slaps the theory of natural selection in
the face. It is the most absorbing of occupations, the least satisfying
of desires, an aimless excrescence upon life. It annihilates a man. You
have, let us say, a promising politician, a rising artist, that you
wish to destroy. Dagger or bomb are archaic, clumsy, and unreliable —
but teach him, inoculate him with chess! It is well, perhaps, that the
right way of teaching chess is so little known, that consequently in
most cases the plot fails in the performance, the dagger turns aside.
Else we should all be chess-players — there would be none left to do
the business of the world. Our statesmen would sit with pocket boards
while the country went to the devil, our army would bury itself in
chequered contemplation, our bread-winners would forget their wives in
seeking after impossible mates. The whole world would be disorganised.
I can fancy this abominable hypnotism so wrought into the constitution
of men that the cabmen would go trying to drive their horses in
Knights' moves up and down Charing Cross Road. And now and again a
suicide would come to hand with the pathetic inscription pinned to his
chest: "I checked with my Queen too soon. I cannot bear the thought of
it." There is no remorse like the remorse of chess.
Only, happily, as we say, chess is taught the wrong
way round. People put out the board before the learner with all the men
in battle array, sixteen a side, with six different kinds of moves, and
the poor wretch is simply crushed and appalled. A lot of things happen,
mostly disagreeable, and then a mate comes looming up through the haze
of pieces. So he goes away awestricken but unharmed, secretly believing
that all chess-players are humbugs, and that intelligent chess, which
is neither chancy nor rote-learned, is beyond the wit of man. But
clearly this is an unreasonable method of instruction. Before the
beginner can understand the beginning of the game he must surely
understand the end; how can he commence playing until he knows what he
is playing for? It is like starting athletes on a race, and leaving
them to find out where the winning-post is hidden.
Your true teacher of chess, your subtle
chess-poisoner, your cunning Comus who changes men to chess-players,
begins quite the other way round. He will, let us say, give you King,
Queen, and Pawn placed out in careless possible positions. So you
master the militant possibilities of Queen and Pawn without perplexing
complications. Then King, Queen, and Bishop perhaps; King, Queen, and
Knight; and so on. It ensures that you always play a winning game in
these happy days of your chess childhood, and taste the one sweet of
chess-playing, the delight of having the upper hand of a better player.
Then to more complicated positions, and at last back to the formal
beginning. You begin to see now to what end the array is made, and
understand why one Gambit differeth from another in glory and virtue.
And the chess mania of your teacher cleaveth to you thenceforth and for
evermore.
It is a curse upon a man. There is no happiness in chess — Mr. St. George Mivart,
who can find happiness in the strangest places, would be at a loss to
demonstrate it upon the chess-board. The mild delight of a pretty mate
is the least unhappy phase of it. But, generally, you find afterwards
that you ought to have mated two moves before, or at the time that an
unforeseen reply takes your Queen. No chess-player sleeps well. After
the painful strategy of the day one fights one's battles over again.
You see with more than daylight clearness that it was the Rook you
should have moved, and not the Knight. No! it is impossible! no common
sinner innocent of chess knows these lower deeps of remorse. Vast
desert boards lie for the chess-player beyond the gates of horn.
Stalwart Rooks ram headlong at one, Knights hop sidelong, one's Pawns
are all tied, and a mate hangs threatening and never descends. And once
chess has been begun in the proper way, it is flesh of your flesh, bone
of your bone; you are sold, and the bargain is sealed, and the evil
spirit hath entered in.
The proper outlet for the craving is the playing of
games, and there is a class of men — shadowy, unhappy, unreal-looking
men — who gather in coffee-houses, and play with a desire that dieth
not, and a fire that is not quenched. These gather in clubs and play
Tournaments, such tournaments as he of the Table Round could never have
imagined. But there are others who have the vice who live in country
places, in remote situations — curates, schoolmasters, rate collectors
— who go consumed from day to day and meet no fit companion, and who
must needs find some artificial vent for their mental energy. No one
has ever calculated how many sound Problems are possible, and no doubt
the Psychical Research people would be glad if Professor Karl Pearson
would give his mind to the matter. All the possible dispositions of the
pieces come to such a vast number, however, that, according to the
theory of probability, and allowing a few thousand arrangements each
day, the same problem ought never to turn up more than twice in a
century or so. As a matter of fact — it is probably due to some flaw in
the theory of probability — the same problem has a way of turning up in
different publications several times in a month or so. It may be, of
course, that, after all, quite "sound" problems are limited in number,
and that we keep on inventing and reinventing them; that, if a record
were kept, the whole system, up to four or five moves, might be
classified, and placed on record in the course of a few score years.
Indeed, if we were to eliminate those with conspicuously bad moves, it
may be we should find the number of reasonable games was limited
enough, and that even our brilliant Lasker is but repeating the
inspirations of some long-buried Persian, some mute inglorious Hindoo,
dead and forgotten ages since. It may be over every game there watches
the forgotten forerunners of the players, and that chess is indeed a
dead game, a haunted game, played out centuries ago, even, as beyond
all cavil, is the game of draughts.
The artistic temperament, the gay irresponsible cast
of mind, does what it can to lighten the gravity of this too
intellectual game. To a mortal there is something indescribably
horrible in these champions with their four moves an hour — the bare
thought of the mental operations of the fifteen minutes gives one a
touch of headache. Compulsory quick moving is the thing for gaiety, and
that is why, though we revere Steinitz and Lasker, it is Bird we love.
His victories glitter, his errors are magnificent. The true sweetness
of chess, if it ever can be sweet, is to see a victory snatched, by
some happy impertinence, out of the shadow of apparently irrevocable
disaster. And talking of cheerfulness reminds me of Lowson's historical
game of chess. Lowson said he had been cheerful sometimes — but, drunk!
Perish the thought! Challenged, he would have proved it by some petty
tests of pronunciation, some Good Templar's shibboleths. He offered to
walk along the kerb, to work any problem in mathematics we could
devise, finally to play MacBryde at chess. The other gentleman was
appointed judge, and after putting the antimacassar over his head
("jush wigsh") immediately went to sleep in a disorderly heap on the
sofa. The game was begun very solemnly, so I am told. MacBryde, in
describing it to me afterwards, swayed his hands about with the fingers
twiddling in a weird kind of way, and said the board went like that.
The game was fierce but brief. It was presently discovered that both
kings had been taken. Lowson was hard to convince, but this came home
to him. "Man," he is reported to have said to MacBryde, "I'm just
drunk. There's no doubt in the matter. I'm feeling very ashamed of
myself." It was accordingly decided to declare the game drawn. The
position, as I found it next morning, is an interesting one. Lowson's
Queen was at K Kt 6, his Bishop at Q B 3,
he had several Pawns, and his Knight occupied a commanding position at
the intersection of four squares. MacBryde had four Pawns, two Rooks, a
Queen, a draught, and a small mantel ornament arranged in a rough
semicircle athwart the board. I have no doubt chess exquisites will
sneer at this position, but in my opinion it is one of the cheerfulest
I have ever seen. I remember I admired it very much at the time, in
spite of a slight headache, and it is still the only game of chess that
I recall with undiluted pleasure. And yet I have played many games.