Charles Dickens and Chess

Edward Winter

We believe that Fred Reinfeld’s first non-chess book was an abridgment of Oliver Twist (New York, 1948). The front cover featured John Howard Davies in the title role in the film version released the same year, and the last two pages (313-314) had an Afterword by Reinfeld about Dickens’ life and work.

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Charles Dickens

Some references to Charles Dickens and chess:

• ‘Charles Dickens as a Chessplayer’, on page 12 of Lasker’s Chess Magazine, May 1905. A story stated to be from the Baltimore Sunday News about Dickens and Victoria Tregear, who allegedly played chess with him.
• ‘Charles Dickens and Chess’, on page 533 of the Chess Amateur, February 1912. A brief report about Dickens giving money to a 12-year-old boy whose workmanship in making a chess board with a hack knife and saw had impressed him.
• ‘The Falkbeer Counter-Gambit’, on pages 394-396 of the BCM, December 1916. A game (Piper v Davie) annotated with quotations from The Pickwick Papers.
• ‘Chess in Films’, on page 92 of Chess World, 1 April 1949. Reference to a chess scene in the 1948 film Oliver Twist which is not in the novel. The item asked whether there were any references to chess in Dickens’ work.
• ‘Dickens on Chess’, on page 243 of Chess World, 1 October 1949. A reply to the previous item from T.R. Dawson, quoting references to chess in The Pickwick Papers, Dombey and Son, The Detective Police and The Battle of Life.
• ‘Who was Victoria Tregear?’ by C. Ravilious on pages 52-53 of CHESS, December 2005. A detailed examination of the question.
  

The item from Lasker’s Chess Magazine (1905) was reproduced on pages 285-286 of The Treasury of Chess Lore by F. Reinfeld (New York, 1951). A complication is that we see Internet pages stating that the Baltimore Sunday News ceased publication in the 1890s. Has anyone ever traced the newspaper’s original report regarding ‘Victoria Tregear’?

Many writers have placed reliance (rashly, we feel) on the item published in Lasker’s Chess Magazine. It was, for instance, the sole basis for an entry on Dickens in B.J. Horton’s Dictionary of Modern Chess (New York, 1959).

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Russell Miller (Vancouver, WA, USA) has found an article ‘From Palace to Hovel’ by Miller Hageman which has the subtitle ‘The Strange Story of Victoria Tregear, Friend of Charles Dickens’. It was published in the Dallas Morning News of 21 June 1891, part two, page 16. The references to chess are in column three.

Caution is clearly still required with this curious matter, and the present feature article will report on further investigations and discoveries.

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Addition on 17 January 2011:

Mr Miller adds that the above newspaper report also appeared the same day (21 June 1891) in the Cleveland Plain Dealer (page 10), the Galveston Daily News (page 11) and the Salt Lake Herald (page 13). Furthermore, he has traced this item on page 3 of the Wichita Daily Eagle, 4 September 1891:

It has been mentioned that the game Piper v Davie was annotated on pages 394-396 of the December 1916 BCM with quotations from The Pickwick Papers.

We add that pages 119-120 of the May-June 1915 American Chess Bulletin reproduced from the Family Herald an article ‘Great Pickwickian Discovery’, comprising a game (J.H.B. v S. Pickwick) which also had annotations in the form of quotes from Dickens’ novel.

The game, not identified in the article, was Blackburne v N.N., Canterbury, 1903. We gave it in C.N. 182, with Blackburne’s notes from page 392 of the September 1903 BCM. See pages 31-32 of Chess Explorations.

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Jerry Spinrad (Nashville, TN, USA) points out a brief item on page 1 of the Weekly Georgian Telegraph of 28 June 1859:

Pending further information, this paragraph, referring to Dickens, chess and Morphy, needs to be treated cautiously, and not least because our correspondent has found that the same text had appeared on page 3 of the Washington Constitution of 14 June 1859, but with the quote attributed to ‘Diogenes’.

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These is an article entitled ‘George Cruikshank, Charles Dickens and Chess’ by Gareth Williams on pages 44-45 of CHESS, April 2004.

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