Happy Valentine's Day

The 1st British Chess Champion was Cecil De Vere Matthews.  Like James Mason, his actual name has been hard to fathom. The OCC claims his name was Valentine Brown, ["De Vere, Cecil (1845?-75), pseudonym of Valentine Brown, winner of the first official British championship tournament, organized by the British Chess Association in 1866."] and so years ago I attempted this poem:

Gather 'round chessmen and sit right down
while I'll tell you the story of Valentine Brown.

Handsome, yet frail, this English lad won
the first British Championship at age twenty-one.

With casual ease his style did display
a mixture of fast and chivalrous play.

Though he played like a demon, he could simply disarm
any opponent just with his charm.

But this charm was only hid what he never could share-
his deadly disease and deep, deep despair.

He was called the "English Morphy", you see -
by the "Austrian Morphy", ironically -

But Valentine had more sorrow than pride
he was only thirty years old when he died.

So, remember Valentine Brown when you hear
his pseudonym: Cecil de Vere.

from the BCM, 1874:

OBITUARY.

The news of Mr. De Vere's death reached us just as the last sheet of our last number was being printed, and we were unable to do more than record the bare fact. Many of our readers, however, will be glad to know a little more about one so distinguished among the Chess players of his time.Cecil Valentine De Vere was born on St. Valentine's day, 1845, and died a few days before completing his thirtieth year, on the Oth of February last. In early youth he became a votary of Chess at the Divan, and enjoyed the inestimable advantage of playing from the first with the best players, and having nothing to unlearn. In December, 1865, while still under age. he won his first great match, defeating Steinitz at the Pawn and move by 7 to 3 and 4 draws. This result showed decisively that l;e had passed out of the category of odds receivers; and in 1866 he became for the time the champion player of England, winning the Challenge Cup of the British Association, and not losing a single game to any of his opponents. He had previously, in the same year, won the first prize at the Redcar meeting. At Dundee, in 1867, though he only divided the third prize with Mr. Macdonnell (Neumann and Steinitz being first and second) he won his game with Mr. Steinitz in a style which was warmly commended at the time, and to which attention has again been called by his generous opponent in the Ohess column of The Field. (We publish this elegant little game in our Select Reprints.) Thus early had Mr. De Yere culminated, and he never again showed the same form or steadmess. In 1868 he tied with Mr. Blackburne, and in 1872 with Mr. Wisker for the Challenge Cup, but on both occasions he lost the deciding game.

His natural aptitude for Chess has perhaps never been surpassed. If he did not attain to the undisputed pre-eminence of a Morphy or a Steinitz, this may be ascribed to two reasons, which yet were closely connected with one another, indolence and ill-health. Of all the first-rate players of his time, he was the most conspicuously deficient, perhaps the only one deficient, in book knowledge. Mr. De Vere's health was never strong. We ourselves first saw him at Redcar in 1866, when the delicacy of his appearance was generally remarked, and close observers already foreboded that he would not be a long lived man. The end has come, perhaps rather sooner than was expected; two or three years of failing health having ended in ten weeks of rapid decline.

Mr. De Vere was universally popular among his brother Chess players. Others, whose acquaintance with him was more intimate than our own, have testified to his chivalrous courtesy as an opponent, and his many attractive social qualities. We prefer to speak only of what we have known, but the little we saw of him fully bears out this estimate of his character.

Here's a Valentine for Louis Paulsen-