Edward Winter
ONE: From the Los Angeles Times, 22 October 1893, page 17:
‘Two years ago in the city of Havana, two men sat bent over a chess board. The greatest chess battle in recent years was nearing its end. The party which surrounded the table looked on with breathless interest. The quaint little clocks, which mark the time of the players, ticked away the flying seconds with feverish haste. Both players are pale. It is known that Steinitz is almost exhausted. He needs but another goal! Chigorin moves; Steinitz answers. The play is rapid, for the minute hands push hard upon the hour. Check! It was a mate as well. The victor had rounded the quarter of the century, the undisputed master of the chess world.
It was at the close of that memorable contest that Steinitz expressed his intention not to again undertake a championship match. He could, indeed, well afford to retire. For 25 years he had stood in the arena, meeting all comers, and never known defeat. Far back in 1867 [sic] he had wrested the championship from Paulsen [sic – confusion with Anderssen here, and at the end]; against him had come, successively, the chess masters of Europe and America – Anderssen, Blackburne, Zukertort, and finally Chigorin [sic – also Gunsberg], but none of them could take it from him. No-one before him had ever held the position half so long. The brilliant Morphy had held it hardly a year.
What was more, under Steinitz and his school, chess had taken on something of that marvelous advance such as had been witnessed in contemporary science, mechanics and industry. He had found it relatively a game of skill, a thing for a genius like Morphy to juggle with. He sought to develop it into something approaching an exact science. Of what is known as the modern game, he was not only prophet, but chief as well.
So when it became known a short time ago that this young German giant, Lasker, had challenged the champion to yet another contest it did not seem at all probable that the veteran would accept. He had no new trophies to win. He had not sprung into the arena at any extraordinary youthful age; he was past 30 when he won his first championship game. And the 27 years which had elapsed had told heavily on his far from rugged constitution. His answer was awaited with curious interest.
I paid a visit to Steinitz on the day he had determined to accept. He lives in a modest little house in the outskirts of Upper Montclair, NJ. His surroundings are as simple as his life is quiet. He stirs about but little, for he is, as is well known, a cripple, and walks with the aid of a pair of canes. He passes his day between two rooms, one of which he calls his workshop and the other his writing-room. Both present an utter disregard of any sort of order, and amid this bewildering litter of chess-boards, scrap-books, time clocks, a correspondence strewn pell-mell, and an extensive chess library, he works out his games and problems.
The personality of the man is one of curious interest. I had gone with certain preconceived notions, and when I met him I received one of those shocks which the prepossession of such notions often brings. None of his published portraits give you a recognizable impression. I had in mind the large, powerful head, which his pictures show, and in some way I had expected to meet a man of massive build. I was little prepared for the gnome-like apparition which greeted me as the door opened. Physically, Steinitz’s proportions are Napoleonic; that is to say, he stands hardly five feet high. Even this is largely comprised of head, to the disparagement of a rather slender body. (I doubt if he would weigh as much as ex-Senator Mahone.)
But his head is one that would interest a craniologist. It rises in something the shape of a flattened dome, high above the ears. Its longitudinal measurement, too, is notable, and his forehead is broad, ample, and inclined to be bulgy over the eyebrows. If the modern chart-makers of the brain are correct, it is such a head as should make history of some sort. We are told by the former that their centers of reflection, analysis and thought lie at the front of the skull; and sensory and motor areas at the back. Development in both directions, therefore, indicates a highly-organized, well-balanced brain, perhaps the brain of a genius. In any event, it is indicative of marked mental powers of some sort, and the higher it stands above the ears, which are the base line of the brain, the greater is apt to be its power. According to this, Steinitz’s brain is one of large capacity for reflection, reinforced by strong motive power – a combination that is essential if the mind is to be brought to its full working power. A large forehead merely is often simply the type of the dreamer.
Steinitz’s manner is an odd mixture of freedom and reserve. His eyes are small, rather deep set, and twinkle brightly. If you ask a rather suggestive question, he regards you with a curious, half suspicious look, and then, after a moment’s reflection, answers rapidly and freely. His talk is interesting, fresh and original. He is by no means a man of one idea. On the contrary, I find his range, alike of interest and information, wide, and his observations on such topics often spicy and unexpected. His sense of humor is entirely German, and a joke is gravely anticipated by: “I give you this anecdote.” I failed to detect any of that individual egotism which is so often the characteristic of men who have won a great success in a clearly circumscribed field of activity.
On the afternoon of my interview, the scene stands thus: Steinitz, in négligée, is perched in a large chair, in front of a small table, smoking industriously. A large box of tobacco, with a copious supply of matches, interferes seriously with the epistolary possibilities of the table. A lounge and several chairs are variously occupied with scrap-books, newspapers and others, and a diminutive terrier exercises a noisy guardianship over the house, and frequently projects himself into the conversation. I extricate an available chair from the mêlée, and I accept an invitation to a short bowl and a long stem. As the conversation began nowhere in particular, it may as well begin so here.
Sitting before this man, perhaps not only the greatest exponent of chess living, but who has exercised a greater influence on the game than any man who ever did live, I recalled not unnaturally the memory of that extraordinary genius who overran the chess world 30 years or more ago, a memory that still haunts either hemisphere. I said: “What of Morphy?”
“I never knew him. He had come and gone while I was yet a novice. I saw him once in New Orleans, but that was after the eclipse. Beyond question Morphy was a wonderful man. The source of his strength lay, I think, in his memory and his imagination. His memory was prodigious. It seemed as though he knew and could recall every game of note that he had ever played. With this he united singular imaginative powers, and here lay the secret of his then extraordinary feats. You remember he dazzled Europe by playing blindfolded as high as eight games simultaneously. At that time such a thing had never been heard of, and Morphy was regarded as a wizard. Of course, since that time we have had men who can play as many as 14 games in the same way. It is simply a question of being able to hold in the mind a distinct picture of a number of different games as they progress. It is a marvelous faculty, but I do not possess it in any particular degree. I can, of course, play a number of games in that fashion, but I have never cultivated it.”
“But Morphy was unquestionably a great chessplayer, one of the greatest that ever lived. A very foolish controversy has arisen as to whether or not he was the greatest. That no-one can tell. What he could do now, were he living, no-one can say. There is only this to be said: that in the past 25 years chess has undergone a wonderful development, and the feats with which Morphy astonished the world are simply impossible now. I mean that to such an almost mathematical exactness has the game been reduced in late years that to yield a pawn is to lose the game. So that were Morphy to come back and give away pawns, knights, bishops and all sorts of things, as he once did, any well-trained player could defeat him.”
“Morphy was a master of ‘mating’ moves. Perhaps, I cannot give you a better idea of the later developments of chess than to say that modern play aims to reduce the game to so exact an analysis from the very start as Morphy had reduced its closing stages.”
“Another notable faculty of Morphy’s was his capacity for judging men. In his great games he always lost at the start. It was after he had learned his opponent’s style of play that he began to win. And from this I infer that he played at his opponent rather than at the board.”
“But”, I said, “is not that true of all chessplayers?” I was interested in Steinitz’s reply.
“No”, he retorted with emphasis. “I never do. My entire attention is concentrated upon the board. Of my opponent I am oblivious. For all that I know or note, he might as well be an abstraction or an automaton.”
“Then you mean to say that a game with you is very much like the clash of two carefully planned battles.”
“Very much.”
“How early”, I asked, “did you begin to manifest your interest in chess? Do you come of a chessplaying family, as Mendelssohn did of a musical one?”
“Not at all. None of my family understood the game until, I think, I taught my brother. I was about 12 years old when a young man, a friend, began to teach me. I remember we cut the figures out of paper and drew a chess-board with a lead pencil. Later we carved a chess set for ourselves. I remember well my first encounter. A friend of mine, older than myself, was in the habit of going each evening to the café and playing with a doctor, a local expert. One evening my friend being absent, I offered to supply his place. The doctor smiled, for I was only a youngster, but consented. He gave me a heavy advantage, a knight and bishop. The first game he won; I took the second. So we proceeded, the advantage each time I won, being reduced. Soon I was winning with only a pawn or so, and finally I beat him on even grounds, very much to his chagrin.”
“I was born at Prague, you know. At the university I developed into a good player. Finally I began to play exhibition games occasionally, in the cafés, which you know are very different from anything in this country, a sort of public resort where people assemble of an evening. I imitated some of Morphy’s feats and acquired a considerable local reputation. When I found I could beat anyone I played with, I began to branch out and chess became the passion of my life.”
“I believe Tarrasch, your brilliant Nuremberg pupil, declared not long ago that while Morphy and Zukertort were men of high talent, you were to be regarded as a sort of incarnate genius of chess. Do you so regard it?” I asked.
“No, not at all”, Steinitz declared, with a smile and a shrug. “As a matter of fact, the positive difference between fine chessplayers is not great. It is a narrow line. Indeed, is it not so in all life? – the margin of success is a fine one. One man fails, another succeeds. There is no appreciable difference between them. What is the secret?”
I noted the case of the hypothetical Rocky Mountain pebble, which, by its angle, determines the course of two rain-drops, one to the Atlantic, the other to the Pacific. Steinitz nodded, and added, “Yes. it is something like that.”
“Well, then”, I continued, “what is the secret of chess? You ought to know. Can it be hit off in a sentence?”
“Hardly. It might be described as a just balance of mind; besides that, power of analysis, imagination, oh, many things. There is this to be said. All great thinkers have been more or less great chessplayers. Buckle, the great English historian, was perhaps as fine a chessplayer as England ever knew, although he never played in public. So were Voltaire and Diderot in France, and Frederick the Great in Germany. Bolli, Moltke and Bismarck were fine players, although Emperor William could give them pawns and beat them. Curiously enough Napoleon could not play at all. He did not understand the game, and was very much chagrined at his inability. The fact might go to confirm the idea that great conquerors are madmen; that they have not well-balanced minds.”
“Chess may be described as mental athletics. It is the gymnasium of the mind. I believe that the mind can be trained as easily and perfectly as the body, and I know of no better exercise than chess. It develops, strengthens and clarifies the brain. When young Randolph Churchill became Chancellor of the Exchequer, the enormous duties entailed upon him threatened to break him down. He sought many forms of relief, but his brain kept whirling away at the problems of British finance. It was not until he tried chess that he found that complete absorption in other matters which his brain needed. It was just that sort of rest and relief which athletes find in changing from one form of exercise to another.”
“More than this, chessplayers are remarkable for the vigorous minds they display in old age. Morphy was an exception; he simply played to excess and broke down. No mind could stand such a strain as he put upon his. On the other hand, there are many notable examples of the results of a rational use of the game. I remember once when I was playing in London, a messenger brought me a note bearing the outlines of a game 16 moves deep. It was not only original but brilliant; I inquired the sender. it was Cochrane, who at 87 [sic] had just returned from India. A few weeks after I read of his death. I recall another notable example in my own experience. That was Horwitz, who, at 80 [sic] sent me three original ‘end games’, all of them valuable. He, too, died shortly after, retaining the full powers of his brilliant mind to the last. I could recount you many such examples to confirm my theory that chessplaying tends to build up a strong, vigorous and healthy brain.”
I was struck with the idea Steinitz developed as he proceeded.
“There could, I believe, be no more beneficial result than would follow the introduction of chess among the working men of this country and of Europe – the establishment of chess clubs and the general encouragement of the game. It would do more to eradicate the wild notions of anarchism, socialism and the like than any other means that could be devised. For the great point of chess is that it trains the brain to careful, accurate, connected thought. Nothing will banish erratic and fantastic ideas or notions so quickly and so well. And it is the greatest of mistakes to suppose that a thorough knowledge of the game is difficult of achievement. The game is easily learned in the course of a week, and an hour a day, either at play or reading a standard work upon the game, will, in the course of a 12-month, be sufficient to make the average man a good player. Once learned, it is a game that is never left off. The general establishment of chess clubs in New York would take the working man out of the saloon, and interest him in something that would train him to think, to act well, to vote as an intelligent citizen. It would stimulate his mental faculties, and afford him that emulation, rivalry and contest that every man needs to bring his full powers into play, and make him a good citizen. The man who exercises his muscles all day needs the relaxation of exercising his brain at night.”
“Has chess in America reached a very high standard of excellence?”, I asked.
“As high as exists”, Steinitz replied. “Generally speaking there is no difference between America and Europe, and in those two countries [sic] are to be found the best chessplayers in the world.”
“There is a prevalent superstition”, I suggested, “that the final finish [sic] chess experts are to be found among the natives of India. Has it any foundation in fact?”
“I think not. Cochrane, whom I spoke of, lived in India for a long while and played with a great many of the natives. Among some of the Maharajahs and some of the Indian Princes he found some good players. But certainly they are not the equal of those of Europe or America. I suppose the idea originated in the fact that chess is one of the oldest Indian games. It has existed there for centuries, and is still one of the most popular games. You know we have a sort of awe of the Indian’s power of legerdermain, and in this popular mind chess is still regarded as in some way connected with feats of skill and the like. In general I should say that Indian chessplayers occupy about the same place as does Indian intelligence to that of the Indo-Germanic race, generally.”
We adjourned to what Steinitz called his “workroom”. It likewise was in “négligée”. It contained several chess tables, each set with a game. It is here that he works out his problems and evolves his methods of play. Books and papers are scattered about and round the walls are hung tournament groups and pictures of the past giants of the chess world. As I glanced from one to the other and recalled that the most of them meant to the man I was with a hard-fought battle or victory, I found myself asking: “Of all the chessplayers you have ever met, whom do you regard as the strongest?”
Steinitz replied quickly:
“I do not know. I never played against the man! I know only the board and the pieces as they move.”
“Is that generally true of great players?”
“I cannot say. Possibly not. Morphy, as I said, always lost at the beginning of a match, and seemed to win after he had studied his opponent. That would indicate that his intuitive judgment of men contributed much to his success.”
“How often do you engage in a championship contest?”
“It has happened that I have played about once in two years, though, of course, I generally played in tournaments in the meantime. But I do not care to play match games much oftener.”
“The strain is something terrible?”
“It cannot be described. I have been for hours with my eyes staring wide open and burning like fire, and nothing would bring sleep. At the close of a contest I am wrought to such a nervous tension that for weeks afterward I am in an almost uncomfortable state, living on champagne or some stimulant that will bring artificial strength.”
“Do you resort to stimulants of any kind when you are playing?”
“Generally speaking, no. I have tried everything I know of and I have never found anything of avail. After all, what is required is not an excitant, but a sedative, something that will let my brain stop working for a few hours. It is usually active enough and does not need to be roweled with a spur.”
“But in this state of intense excitement do you find that you can do your best work? Can you play as firm a game?”
“Yes and no. I suppose this very excitement stimulates one’s faculties to an unusual degree, and a player will, so to speak, surpass himself. On the other hand, a great player in a match is liable to make the greatest blunders, errors that the most ordinary players would not be subject to. This is always true.”
“Will your contest with Lasker be your last?”
“Ah, who knows?”, Steinitz replied. “I am no longer young. Perhaps I should retire now. But who knows”, he added, “that I may not go on playing until I am defeated or forced by age to stop?”
There is nothing, however, to indicate that the term of Steinitz’s long supremacy is at an end. On the contrary, the impression I gained from the afternoon I spent with him was that he is now in the full maturity of his powers. Against his waning strength, he can set all the experience, the training and the knowledge gained in his long career, and more than all the conscious power that always comes with long continued success.
Herr Lasker, who comes against him, is the giant of the chessplayers of Germany, although he has hardly turned 30 [sic]. He is slight of build, with an intensely dark eye. Stooping shoulders, eye-glasses, and a high forehead, from which his black hair is roughly brushed back, give him a scholarly air. He has met many of the foremost chessplayers of Europe, and like Steinitz he has never been defeated in a match.
It was Paulsen [sic], the German, and Steinitz, the Austrian, who came together 27 years ago. It was with the battle with Paulsen that Steinitz became the world’s champion [sic]. As he rose, the victor from that memorable game, he observed, gaily: “This is the revanche of Sadowa!”
“I wait for the revanche of Paulsen”, retorted the German, firmly. But he waited long and in vain. More than a quarter of a century has elapsed. It is Steinitz, the Austrian, and Lasker, the German, who will meet now. Has the time for the revenge of Paulsen arrived?’
See also the Philadelphia Inquirer, 22 October 1893, page 21 and an adapted/abridged version in the Daily Pioneer Press (Saint Paul), 23 October 1893, page 6. Long afterwards, there was a shortened version, attributed to the Saint Louis Globe, on pages 364-368 of the September 1894 BCM.
TWO: From the Cleveland Plain Dealer, 6 May 1894, page 8:
‘When a man has led the world for 28 years in any department of intellectual effort it is fair to presume that he is the best authority on all matters pertaining to his profession. It was natural, therefore, when I decided to write an article on the relation of physical qualities to success in chessplaying that I should go to William Steinitz for the information. Mr Steinitz has been champion of the chess world since 1866, having met and defeated all comers on both sides of the Atlantic. As I write he is spending an interval of a week between the ending of the series of games played in New York and the series to be played in Philadelphia between himself and Emanuel Lasker. Another week will elapse between the contest in Philadelphia and those to be decided in Montreal, where the great match will be concluded. Mr Steinitz is now 58 years of age. No other man has been champion after he was 40 years old, nor has any other person possessed the honor for a longer period than ten years. Evidently, then, Mr Steinitz speaks from a remarkably wide experience.
He is a small man, but well knit in figure, and must have been endowed with unusual vitality to bear the strain that he has undergone, for while chess is pre-eminently a mental exercise, it also taxes the powers of the body. When I saw him at his home in Upper Montclair, NJ, and stated my first question as to whether he considered physique an important element in the make-up of a chessplayer, he replied without hesitation:
“Yes, undoubtedly physique has a great deal to do with winning in long, hard-fought matches of chess. When I played the last match with Chigorin in Havana, in the early part of 1892, a doctor, who was backing me for a large amount and who knew from experience what he was talking about, said that in his opinion there was nothing that would produce so severe a strain on all the vital organs, brain, heart, kidneys, liver and nerves, as chess. At that time I was suffering terribly from insomnia, and so was my opponent. Night after night I lay with scarcely any sleep, and in a burning fever. But my physician advised me that it would be detrimental even then to get sleep by artificial means. Sometimes, indeed, men have accomplished some of their most brilliant plays while in this excited condition. Let me give you an example. When the present match began in New York, one night I had only three hours’ sleep, and on another night none at all, yet in the second game, which I won, I achieved some of the finest results, while one night preceding a game which I lost by a blunder, I had slept for nine hours. I felt much better on the day following the sleepless night than I did after the nine hours’ slumber, when the reaction was too great to be overcome. I have told you this to illustrate the physical effect of a professional match. The amateur who only plays an easy game does not feel this wearying process, but the professional actually suffers. To answer your question more directly I would say that, other things being equal, a man with superior physical endurance ought to overcome a weaker opponent in a long series of games.”
“Generally speaking, however, the celebrated masters of chess have been frail men. Paul Morphy, Chigorin, Zukertort and Lasker, none of them had or has a robust constitution. I have a theory that the pioneers in any intellectually creative art or science are apt not to be vigorous in physique.”
“Before a great match do you undergo any special physical preparation?”, I asked.
“I used to. My plan was to take Turkish and Russian baths and sometimes I tried the hydropathic treatment, but of late years, since I injured my leg so badly, it has been impossible for me to do this. I would advise chessplayers who are able to walk and exercise moderately in other ways, just enough, that is, to stimulate them.
“As for my diet, I have adopted the system prescribed by Dr Schweninger, Prince Bismarck’s physician, who tells his patients not to eat and drink at the same time, but after taking solid food to wait a while before consuming any liquids. One of Dr Schweninger’s friends, a German nobleman, told me that the doctor had observed that animals do not take their food and drink together. I eat most of my victuals when they are cold, because I have found that the effect of cold things on the brain is better than that of warm fare. Olive oil is also very soothing. While I am playing I frequently drink a little Somloi, a white Hungarian wine. I have smoked a great deal, and I must confess that it has been harmful to me. I have tried to break away from it, too, and sometimes I tell my friends that I am sorry I ever began and sorry I ever stopped.”
“Do you now feel the strain of the games you have just played in New York?”
“I did while they were going on, but I seem to have recovered from it now, having had a good sleep. I do not know, however, how long the improvement would last if I should begin playing again. Between now and the opening of the series in Philadelphia I shall rest and attend to my business affairs, but I shall not be making plans for the remainder of the match.
“With regard to chess as a diversion I believe that it is becoming more popular all the time. It is a species of mental gymnastics, which, when properly applied, should be to the hygiene of the mind just what athletics are to the hygiene of the body. In other words, chessplayers may help brain workers to know how to take care of themselves.
“The great chess men have generally been long lived and have preserved their faculties to the last. I remember well receiving a note from John Cochrane, a famous player, in London just before the tournament in Paris in 1878. He was then 90 [sic] years of age and said that he would like to explain to me some new ideas. He did so, and I was surprised to see a man of his advanced years write out from memory variations 16 moves deep. The next day I read in the papers a notice of his death. I cannot imagine a happier way to die. It is so with almost all who devote their time to the game of chess. They live long and they retain their mental vigor to the end of their days.”
George M. Smith.’
The article also appeared in the Sunday World-Herald (Omaha), 6 May 1894, page 19, and the Sioux City Journal, 6 May 1894, page 11. It was reproduced on pages 283-284 of the July 1894 BCM, attributed to the Pittsburg Dispatch. Some of the text was quoted on pages 283-284 of The Steinitz Papers by K. Landsberger (Jefferson, 2002), with no source other than the vague heading ‘Interviewed by a reporter by the Pittsburgh [sic] Dispatch, Steinitz is quoted’.
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