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Certain Personal Matters - Concerning Chess · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter thirty of Certain Personal Matters. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
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  Speaker 1: by Larry Wilson, Certain Personal Matters by H. G. Wells
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  Speaker 1: Concerning chess, the passion for playing chess is one of
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  Speaker 1: the most unaccountable in the world. It slaps the theory
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  Speaker 1: of natural selection in the face. It is the most
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  Speaker 1: absorbing of occupations, the least satisfying of desires, an aimless
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  Speaker 1: excrescence upon life. It annihilates a man. You have, let
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  Speaker 1: us say, a promising politician, a rising artist, that you
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  Speaker 1: wish to destroy dagger are baumb or archaic, clumsy and unreliable.
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  Speaker 1: But teach him, inoculate him with chess. It is well,
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  Speaker 1: perhaps that the right way of teaching chess is so
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  Speaker 1: little known that consequently, in most cases the plot fails
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  Speaker 1: in the performance, the dagger turns aside. Else we should
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  Speaker 1: all be chess players. There would be none left to
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  Speaker 1: do the business of the world. Our statesmen would sit
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  Speaker 1: with pocket boards while the country went to the devil.
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  Speaker 1: Our army would bury it south in checkered contemplation. Our
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  Speaker 1: bread winners would forget their wives and seeking after impossible mates.
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  Speaker 1: The whole world would be disorganized. I can fancy this
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  Speaker 1: abominable hypnotism so wrought into the constitution of men, that
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  Speaker 1: the cabmen would go trying to drive their horses in knights,
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  Speaker 1: moving up and down Charring Cross Road, and now and
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  Speaker 1: again a suicide would come to hand with the pathetic
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  Speaker 1: inscription pinned to his chest. I checked with my Queen
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  Speaker 1: too soon. I cannot bear the thought of it. There
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  Speaker 1: is no remorse like the remorse of chess. Only happily,
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  Speaker 1: as we say, chess is taught the wrong way round
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  Speaker 1: people put out the board before the learner, with all
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  Speaker 1: the men in battle array sixteen a side, with six
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  Speaker 1: different kinds of moods, and the poor wretch is simply
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  Speaker 1: crushed an appalled. A lot of things happen, most disagreeable,
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  Speaker 1: and then a mate comes looming up through the haze
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  Speaker 1: of pieces. So he goes away, awe stricken but unharmed,
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  Speaker 1: secretly believing that all chess players are humbugs, and that
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  Speaker 1: intelligent chess, which is neither chancy nor wrote to learn,
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  Speaker 1: is beyond the wit of man. But clearly, this is
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  Speaker 1: an unreasonable method of instruction. Before the beginner can understand
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  Speaker 1: the beginning of the game, he must surely understand the end.
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  Speaker 1: How can he commence playing until he knows what he
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  Speaker 1: is playing for? It is like starting athletes on a
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  Speaker 1: race and leaving them to find out where the winning
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  Speaker 1: post is hidden. Your true teacher of chess, your subtle
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  Speaker 1: chess poisoner, your cunning comus who changed his men to
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  Speaker 1: chess players, begins quite the other way round. He will,
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  Speaker 1: let us say, give you king, Queen and pawn placed
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  Speaker 1: out in careless possible positions. So you must master the
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  Speaker 1: militant possibilities of queen and pawn without perplexing complications the king,
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  Speaker 1: queen and bishop, perhaps King Queen and knight, and so on.
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  Speaker 1: It ensures that you always play a winning game in
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  Speaker 1: these happy days of your chest childhood and tastes, the
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  Speaker 1: one suite of chess playing, the delight of having the
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  Speaker 1: upper hand of a better player. Then to more complicated positions,
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  Speaker 1: and at last back to the formal beginning. You begin
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  Speaker 1: now to see to what end the array is made,
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  Speaker 1: and understand why one gambit differeth from another. In glory
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  Speaker 1: and virtue, and the chess mania of your teacher cleaveth
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  Speaker 1: to you, thenceforth and forevermore. It is a curse upon man.
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  Speaker 1: There is no happiness in chess. Mister Saint George Miffert,
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  Speaker 1: who can find happiness in the strangest places, would be
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  Speaker 1: at a loss to demonstrate it upon the chess board.
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  Speaker 1: The mild delight of a pretty mate is the least
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  Speaker 1: unhappy phase of it. But generally you find afterwards that
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  Speaker 1: you ought to have mated to move before or at
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  Speaker 1: the time that an unforeseen reply takes your queen. No
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  Speaker 1: chess player sleeps well after the painful strategy of the
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  Speaker 1: day one fights one's battles over again, you see with
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  Speaker 1: more than daylight clearness that it was the rook you
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  Speaker 1: should have moved, and not the night. No, it is impossible.
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  Speaker 1: No common sinner, innocent of chess, knows these lower deeps
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  Speaker 1: of remorse. Vast desert boards lie for the chess player.
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  Speaker 1: Beyond the gates of horn Stalwart rooks ram headlong at
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  Speaker 1: one knights hop sidelong. One's ponds are all tied, and
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  Speaker 1: a mate hangs threatening and never descends. And once chess
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  Speaker 1: has been begun in the proper way. It is flesh
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  Speaker 1: of your flesh, bone of your bone, you are sold,
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  Speaker 1: and the bargain is sealed, and the evil spirit hath
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  Speaker 1: entered in the proper outlet for the craving of the
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  Speaker 1: playing of games. And there is a class of men, shadowy, unhappy,
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  Speaker 1: unreal looking men who gather in coffee houses and play
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  Speaker 1: with a desire that dieth not and a fire that
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  Speaker 1: is not quenched. These gathering clubs and play tournaments, such
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  Speaker 1: tournaments as he of the round table could never have imagined.
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  Speaker 1: But there are others who have the vice, who live
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  Speaker 1: in country places, in remote situations, curates, schoolmasters, rate collectors
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  Speaker 1: who go consume from day to day and meet no
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  Speaker 1: fit companion, and who must needs find some artificial vent
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  Speaker 1: for their mental energy. No one has ever calculated how
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  Speaker 1: many sound problems are possible, and no doubt the psychical
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  Speaker 1: research people would be glad if Professor Carl Pearson would
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  Speaker 1: give his mind to the matter. All the possible dispositions
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  Speaker 1: of the pieces come to such a vast number, however, that,
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  Speaker 1: according to the theory of probability, and allowing a few
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  Speaker 1: thousand arrangements each day, the same problem not never to
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  Speaker 1: turn up more than twice in a century or so.
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  Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, it is probably due to
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  Speaker 1: some flaw in the theory of probability. The same problem
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  Speaker 1: has a way of turning up in different publications several
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  Speaker 1: times in a month or so. It may be, of course, that,
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  Speaker 1: after all, quite sound problems are limited in number, and
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  Speaker 1: that we keep on inventing and reinventing them. That if
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  Speaker 1: a record were kept the whole system, up to four
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  Speaker 1: or five moves might be classified and placed on record
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  Speaker 1: in the course of a few score years. Indeed, if
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  Speaker 1: we were to eliminate those with conspicuously bad moves, it
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  Speaker 1: may be we should find the number of reasonable games
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  Speaker 1: was limited enough, and that even our brilliant Lascar is
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  Speaker 1: but repeating the inspirations of some long buried Persian, some mute,
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  Speaker 1: inglorious Hindu, dead and forgotten ages. Since it may be
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  Speaker 1: over every game there are watches, the forgotten forerunners of
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  Speaker 1: the players, and the chess is indeed a dead game,
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  Speaker 1: a haunted game played out centuries ago. As beyond all
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  Speaker 1: evil is the game of drafts. The artistic temperament, the gay,
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  Speaker 1: irresponsible cast a mind as what it can to lighten
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  Speaker 1: the gravity of this too intellectual game to immortal. There
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  Speaker 1: is something indescribably horrible in these champions, with their four
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  Speaker 1: moves an hour, the bare thought of the mental operations
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  Speaker 1: of the fifteen minutes given on a touch of headache.
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  Speaker 1: Compulsory quick moving is the thing for gayety, and that
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  Speaker 1: is why though we revere steinitz in Lasker, it is bird,
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  Speaker 1: we love his victories, glitter his error are magnificent. The
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  Speaker 1: true sweetness of chess, if it ever can be sweet,
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  Speaker 1: is to see victory snatched by some happy impertinence out
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  Speaker 1: of the shadow of apparently irrevocable disaster. And talking of
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  Speaker 1: cheerfulness reminds me of Lauson's historical game of chess. Lauson
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  Speaker 1: said he had been cheerful sometimes, but drunk perish. The
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  Speaker 1: thought challenged, he would have proved it by some petty
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  Speaker 1: tests of pronunciation, some good templar chibalus. He offered to
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  Speaker 1: walk along the curb to work any problem in mathematics
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  Speaker 1: we could devise. Finally, to pay McBride at chess, the
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  Speaker 1: other gentleman was appointed judge, and after putting the antimachusar
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  Speaker 1: over his head, just Wiggish immediately went to sleep in
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  Speaker 1: a disorderly heap on the sofa. The game was begun
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  Speaker 1: very solemnly, so I am told McBride, in describing it
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  Speaker 1: to me afterwards, swayed his hands about with the fingers
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  Speaker 1: twiddling in a weird kind of way, and said the
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  Speaker 1: board went like that. The game was fierce, but brief.
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  Speaker 1: It was presently discovered that both kings had been taken.
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  Speaker 1: Lawson was hard to convince, but this came home to
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  Speaker 1: him man. He is reported to have said to mc bride,
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  Speaker 1: I'm just drunk. There's no doubt in the matter. I'm
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  Speaker 1: feeling very ashamed of myself. It was accordingly decided to
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  Speaker 1: declare the game drawn. The position as I found it
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  Speaker 1: next morning is an interesting one. Lawson's queen was at
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  Speaker 1: King's Night sixth, his bishop at Queen's Bishop three. He
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  Speaker 1: had several pawns, and his knight occupied a commanding position
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  Speaker 1: in the intersection of four squares. But Bride had four ponds,
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  Speaker 1: two rooks, a queen, a draft, and a small mantle
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  Speaker 1: ornament arranged in a rough semicircle afoart the board. I
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  Speaker 1: have no doubt chess exquisites will sneer at this position,
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  Speaker 1: but in my opinion, it is one of the cheerfulest
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  Speaker 1: I have ever seen. I remember I admired it very
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  Speaker 1: much at the time, in spite of a slight headache,
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  Speaker 1: and it is still the only game of chess that
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  Speaker 1: I recall with undiluted pleasure. And yet I have played
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  Speaker 1: many games. End of Chapter thirty