Although W.E. Napier (1881-1952) was a highly quotable writer, he
produced only one chess work, Napier’s Amenities and
Background of Chess-Play (published in three ‘units’, the
first two in 1934 and the third the following year). After his
death they were adapted into a single volume entitled Paul
Morphy and The Golden Age of Chess (New York, 1957 and
1971).
In the quotations below (some of which have entered chess lore)
the figures refer to the item numbers in the Amenities work,
the pages of which were unnumbered:
3. ‘In the laboratory, the gambits all test unfavourably, but
the old rule wears well, that all gambits are sound over the
board.’
18. ‘Once I asked Pillsbury whether he used any formula for
castling. He said his rule was absolute and vital: castle
because you will or because you must; but not because you can.’
22. ‘John McCutcheon, of Pittsburgh and undying fame for his
research in the French Defense, often said about opening moves,
“Not new, but old enough to be new.”’
28. [On Bird] ‘He earned the rebuke of playing impulsively in
tournaments. It was disrespect and scandalous, some thought; but
if there is genius in chess, Bird of all players had it, I
think, in greatest abundance.’
32. [On Mason] ‘As player, he had the unique quality of
competently simmering thru six aching hours and scintillating in
the seventh. Others resembled him but forgot to scintillate.’
52. ‘Once in chatting with Janowsky at Lake Hopatcong, he
referred to Maróczy as the gentle iron-man of Hungary, which was
accurate as to both specifications.’
67. ‘Some of Marshall’s most sparkling moves look at first
like typographical errors.’
72. ‘I knew Dr Tarrasch pleasantly at Monte Carlo, 1902. One
day the fates had gone against me, malevolently, I felt, in a
game against a man I had counted on beating. I got, by way of
spur, this vitamin from the Doctor: “In these tournaments it is
never enough to be a connoisseur of chess; one must also play
well.”’
75. ‘The super-men of chess come by that distinction through
two rare capacities, an inscrutable vision in end play and a
bland sense of well-being in what, to lesser men, look like
predicaments.’
78. ‘No chess book, I think, can be complete without a page of
homage to Master Bird. If I had only one page to rejoice in, it
should own up to a kindly veneration for all his adventures and
misadventures, his farce and comedy and drama of the chess
board. The roots of his chess were deep sunk in the tradition of
Labourdonnais and McDonnell; he played Morphy; and half a
lifetime afterwards we see him at Hastings, playing a
thorough-bred game which Pillsbury declared was too beautiful to
annotate. A long stretch, that – and brim-full of enthusiasm. He
adored chess, – the play itself, I mean, which is not common
among masters.
I saw him once at Simpson’s Divan but not to speak to. I
brought away an impression of fulminating chess, of hearty
laughter and liberty and beefsteak. He romped.
Once I asked Teichmann what he thought of Bird’s chess; “Same
as his health”, he replied, – “always alternating between being
dangerously ill and dangerously well.”
England will not know his like again.’
85. [On the game Sim v Morrison, Toronto, 1918.] ‘This is a
Canadian game of exceptional worth in my collection, as
resembling, as few games do, a sustained, Charousek attack. That
slow-burning type of invasion, not essentially dependent on
preserving the queen, implies a grasp of endings and a
willingness to play them. As Pillsbury once said, “So set up
your attacks that when the fire is out, it isn’t out”.’
93. ‘Pillsbury was present [at Thousand Islands, 1897] on
other business, and I remember his taking me for a row on the
river, in the morning, before play started. He lectured a bit on
Steinitz’ opening vagaries; when we separated, he said –
revealing perhaps a glimpse of his ruling philosophy, “Be
steady, but not to the point of morbid restraint.”’
96. ‘Louis Paulsen. It was surely a frolic of fate that
translated an enviable potato planter of sedate Dubuque, Iowa,
to that evergreen, mellow fame he achieved in chess. Paulsen was
the landscape of that pioneer period from Morphy to the early
nineties, not given to gay, aggressive outbursts, but a quiet
pastoral ideal of sufficiency.’
115. [On the game Důras v Teichmann, Ostend, 1906]: ‘Důras
needs no better monument to his genius than this lofty and
exciting struggle with an eminent opponent. In my catalogue of
genuinely great contests it rises up close to the top. It is
chess all the way, but from move 43 it goes in a dignity
unsurpassed.’
128. ‘A genial disposition shines in all Tartakower’s chess.
It is infectious fun. And when he loses a game, he writes
sincere eulogies, fit for an epitaph, of the victor.
He is very unusual.’
166. ‘It has been my observation all through the years that
the master player nearly always makes lively games at
correspondence, even tho his play vis-à-vis is governed by more
conservative models.
The paradox is baffling.
The only theory I have adduced is that the social nature of
mail exchanges quite subordinates mere winning to joyful, yawing
chess.
In match games over the board, the killing instinct necessary
to success is the same that men take into Bengal jungles, – for
a day. A killing instinct which survives the day and endures
month in and month out, is stark pantomime; and mail chess is
the gainer by it.’
180. ‘Among tournament masters, Marshall has had few
superiors, and, as to style, has clearly been in a class of his
own, without forerunner or disciple. He is a whole school.’
191. ‘I have met no critic who could not detect, in Torre, a
potential world’s champion.’
196. [On Nimzowitsch’s win over Yates at Carlsbad, 1923]: ‘It
is witch chess, heathen and beautiful.’
225. ‘Once while walking over Waterloo Bridge, in London, with
stout-hearted Teichmann, we conversed of the ingredients that
associate to make a chessplayer. I ventured a remark that, if he
would name one indispensable ingredient, I would name an able
player wholly destitute of it. And Richard very tolerantly said,
“Have you given any thought to ‘vanity’?”’
230. [Of Lasker’s play beginning 17…Rxc3 against Pillsbury at
St Petersburg, 1895-96]: ‘Pillsbury told me that the exquisite
combination here initiated was the only startling and utterly
diabolical surprise he suffered in all his career abroad.’
237. ‘Spielmann plays always like an educated cave-man, who
fell asleep several thousand years ago, – and woke up quite
lately in the Black Forest.’
243. ‘The greatest difficulty of the game is to play it as
well as one knows how.’
253. ‘F.M. Teed, of Brooklyn, was one of America’s most
powerful master players. Business kept him out of match play;
and he describes well as a master “without portfolio”.’
253. [On Winawer v Englisch, London, 1883. Napier had given
the game as item six of unit one, where he stated that ‘it was a
revelation when first I studied its deliberate beauty while a
boy enthusiast; and it never seems to stale.’]: ‘The most
important single game ever played, I think.’
262. ‘It is astonishing how much hot water a master can wade
into within the first dozen moves, despite a century of opening
exploration.’
264. ‘I never see a King’s Bishop Opening without thinking of
the first of several lessons I took, when a youngster, from
Steinitz. He said, “No doubt you move your knight out on each
side before the bishop? And do you know why?” I was stuck for an
intelligent answer. He went on to say, “One good reason is that
you know where the knight belongs before you know that much of
your bishop; certainty is a far better friend than doubt.”’
268. ‘It has always been my doctrine that chess is easier to
play with many pieces than few; that ending play more strains
the mind than a middle-game involvement. Of many options, one
may be fit. Resource is likely to be present in a tangled,
critical situation.’
297. ‘Zugzwang is a very useful term. I sometimes think
it is best defined by the story of the negro who drew a razor
across the enemy throat:
Said the enemy, “I’m not cut.”
And the knight of the razor replied, “Just wait till you turn
yo’ head, before guessing at it.”’
‘What he was in the ’80s and ’90s he [Tarrasch] is now and
seemingly ever will be, one of the best. Only this and nothing
more. He is a vastly learned chess master, which quality,
coupled with stamina worthy of a Marathon runner, renders him
superior to everything but the pelting of downright genius.’
Napier in the Pittsburg Dispatch, quoted on page 127 of
the July 1907 American Chess Bulletin. The passage was
given on page 387 of Kings, Commoners and Knaves.
Quoted on page 388 of Kings, Commoners and Knaves:
‘The great players also lose in short order. We hear very often
from a modest player of small proficiency that he shirks taking
on players of renown because they would “wind him up” in a
trice; and, per contra, we often hear it boasted by the
same sort that he was the last to capitulate in a simultaneous
performance. Yet the length of the game is relatively
unimportant. It is no praise to have won in 15 moves nor any
disparagement to lose as speedily.
Great chessplayers are only comparatively great; and they all
have weak moments, and occasionally whole seasons of disability,
when their best moves are not better than their worst at other
times. Duration is no reliable criterion of a game’s quality;
indeed, there is a certain wooden style of play which is quite
devoid of spirit, but is for all that tenacious and hangs on to
insufferable length. Let the tyro take heart, and not proclaim
himself a duffer for the brief compass of his games.’
W.E. Napier in the Pittsburgh Dispatch, quoted on page
16 of the January 1907 BCM.
Michael McDowell (Westcliff-on-sea, England) asks for the origin
of a remark attributed to W.E. Napier on page 260 of 777
“Chess Miniatures in Three” by E. Wallis (Scarborough,
1908):
‘A good problem – to the connoisseur is a canvas, a poem, a
symphony, and quite as permanent.’
(5829)
We note that when the passage was attributed to Napier on page
72 of Lasker’s Chess Magazine, June 1905, there was no
reference to chess problems:
A brief item on page 151 of the May 1952 CHESS:
‘W.E. Napier won the British Championship in 1904 then
emigrated to the USA and for some years challenged Marshall and
Pillsbury. His three slim volumes of Chess Amenities
(selected games annotated with a delightfully light touch) are
much-sought literary gems. He is suffering from advanced cancer
of the throat but has written a new book Evergreen Chess.’
Napier died a few months later. The manuscript of Evergreen
Chess had been conveyed to Hermann Helms but has never been
traced, let alone published. Further information is available on
pages 352-354 of Napier The Forgotten Chessmaster by John
S. Hilbert (Yorklyn, 1997).
(6843)
What is the peculiarity of the text below?
That page, picked at random, is the first of unit three of Amenities
and Background of Chess-Play (New York, 1935).
William Ewart Napier (Wiener
Schachzeitung, August-September 1904, page 260)
The textual peculiarity was mentioned by K.O. Mott-Smith in a
letter on page 353 of the December 1952 Chess Review:
(10689)
From pages 179-181 of CHESS, February 1939:
In the first diagram a black pawn is missing from c5. The remark
by Napier in the ensuing paragraph is notable:
‘The history of chess is largely a chronicle of self-imposed
intimidation and untimely excitement.’
It is also worth highlighting the CHESS Editor’s comment
about Napier in the box on page 179: ‘one of the wittiest writers
among British or American chess masters of all time.’
Napier’s article and the game against Helms were discussed on
pages 13 and 339-341 of Napier The Forgotten Chessmaster
by John S. Hilbert (Yorklyn, 1997). Helms wrote tributes to Napier
on pages 86-87 of the September-October 1952 American Chess
Bulletin and on page 70 of CHESS, Christmas
1952/January 1953.
(10690)
The first paragraph of ‘Chess Lore’, an article by W.E. Napier on
pages 98-99 of Checkmate, February 1903:
‘The best book on chess? The question blossoms afresh with
every new student of the game, and the answer, if candid, is
ever the same: “Gather all you can from every good source, and
let experience prove the worth or worthlessness of your
harvest.” As in other things, mere bookishness is not knowledge,
nor on the other hand is a fine disregard of chess literature a
key to proficiency; and the beginner drinking in the plausible
hallucinations of a Gossip or a Staunton is quite as misguided
as he who heeds the warning of a Lasker to give the chess book a
wide berth.’
(10699)
From page 118 of the February 1905 issue of The Rice Gambit,
Souvenir Supplement to the American Chess Bulletin:
