Women In Chess According To Potter.
Afternoon everyone. My long suffering - and believe me, they have my sympathies - readers will be glad to hear that this is, by my standards, a quick blog! However, a fair bit of text, and then I will throw in some fun chess at the end.
A few days ago I mentioned the extraordinary William Norwood Potter. https://www.chess.com/blog/simaginfan/william-norwood-potter-the-most-extraordinary-chess-writer-ever
Well, obviously some do not find him worthy of quoting!! ( Just kidding mate!)
That reminded me that I had not yet got round to writing on this wonderful book.
Well, I must address that carelessness at some point, when I have had a chat to see what material the authors will allow me to use. For this blog I have just used public domain stuff that is sourced there.
Looking through for something of more general interest I decided to put this together.
Before I forget, my much missed friend Sarah Beth Cohen is the expert on all this. A list of her articles to be found here :- https://www.chess.com/blog/batgirl/about-women-and-chess . In relation to this blog, you will want to look at the Nellie Down article - the above book has biographical details that were not available to her when she wrote it.
So, 'Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin!' ( That was 'Listen with Mother', on the radio, when I was very young!)
There was a time when the phrase 'A woman's place is in the home' was actually a thing. However, in Victorian England women - or, as it was at the time ( things have changed!) ladies, in chess were very much encouraged by their male counterparts. Pillsbury and Lasker, for example, were big supporters, as well as some chess editors like Hoffer. And then there was the great William Norwood Potter!
Some chess journalists of the time could be pretty obnoxious, but Potter was not one of them. Always fair minded and objective. He always comes across as a decent man, with a great sense of humour and humility. His response to being attacked by his one time friend Steinitz ( they fell out over a matter I will refer to later) was ''Alas poor Potterio, I knew him well!''. One of the good guys. So let's get to the good stuff.
Zavatarelli quotes this, from one of Potter's newspaper columns ( apologies for the direct cut and paste - there seemed no point in going to the original.)
The game given there, with Potter's inimitable notes.
Well, the Downs were quite the chess family. There were the women mentioned, and at least three men who took part in some of the City of London Chess Club handicap tournaments. I know I have seen a picture of the family somewhere, but I can't recall where. One picture I definitely have contains the most important member, Henry Down. One of my very first blogs was about the picture.
The Gastineau Garden Party, 1873.
https://www.chess.com/blog/simaginfan/the-gastineau-garden-party-1873-a-chess-photograph
He was, at different times, both the Secretary and the President of the most important chess club in the world at the time, the City of London Chess Club. At the time of the above picture he was the Secretary - the guy who made everything work. In the mid 18970's there were a couple of big disputes within the club. One about opening a new branch of the club, and one about the status of professionals - including Steinitz and Zuckertort - as members. The latter was part of the anti - Steinitz campaign of the day - pretty unsavoury stuff. That led to the falling out of Steinitz and Potter, who tried to remain impartial. Down would have found himself right in the middle of it all.
Back to Potter on 'Ladies' in chess. As was his way, some lovely humorous poking here from him. Westminster Papers, June 1878.
Right click and open in new window to see it properly.
Right, a couple more games via Zavatarelli - they are not in the databases, proper primary source research stuff. . They are what they are - games played for enjoyment. People read far too much into the few such off-hand games from the era which have been preserved.
Well, putting this together dragged a long lost memory out of my head, so indulge me if I share it.
My friends and long time readers will know that chess is not my only passion. I grew up playing sport, not console games. In particular I LOVED cricket. Perhaps it was a family thing. My late mother loved the game. She was introduced to it by her Grandfather, who was the gamekeeper/gardener at what is now an estate owned by the family of the Princess of Wales. When she was 4 years old he took her to The Oval. My son and I did some research, and one of the first players she would have seen walk onto the pitch would have been either Sir Jack Hobbs or the greatest of all England Captains Douglas Jardine. Just WOW!
So, at a very young age – maybe 7 or 8 – I walked the couple of miles to the local cricket club to watch a charity '6 a side' tournament. The England Ladies – that dates it! - team was taking part. There were two wooden benches in front of the pavilion. On one of them was sitting the extraordinary Rachael Heyhoe-Flint, the England Captain, padded up ready to go in to bat. For those cricket fans who don't know, she was the person who came up with the idea of a 'Cricket World Cup'.
She was wearing the white pleated skirt that women played in at that time.
The others on the benches were men, including the captain of the West Indian team, who I later became good friends with. She had a drink in her hand of the alcholic type ( no kidding! They were different times) and was just 'one of the lads' talking cricket.
When she was talking ( with a name like that I expected her to be 'a bit posh', but she wasn't) the men listened. No sexism, no racism, just people who loved the game sharing their love for it.
You can not download a memory like that on the internet. I have been lucky in my life to have been able to have such memories. R.I.P. Rachael. Someone very special.
