Photo: Players at Friends House, Euston.
Across the board: Graham Taylor checks out a chess tournament at Friends House
‘Friends favoured chess for its moral aura.’
I first attended Westminster Meeting on a Tuesday lunchtime. I was startled by what I was told: ‘We have three Meetings per week. This one is half an hour, for people working in central London. Wednesday evening is three-quarters of an hour. There’s also a Sunday one for a whole hour, but you might find it easier to start with the shorter ones in case an hour’s silence is too long.’
Just one hour? Too long? As a chess player, I was used to three hours of total, and immersive, silence. If I watched a world championship match, that was four hours. The Quakers obviously had no idea of what a real silence was. Later, I found Friends stood up and interrupted their silence, which would never be allowed at chess, even in a Londonleague match. Worse still, after one Meeting, when the silence did reach chess standards of self-absorption, a Friend observed that they felt, ‘the Spirit was in the room’. To me it was like a national chess tournament instead of the London league.
Historically, silent Quakers and silent chess players have often drifted together. Our Friend Neave Brayshawe (1861-1939), teacher at Bootham School, lecturer at Woodbrooke, and author of The Personality of George Fox, was a distinguished composer of chess problems. His compositions were published in the Illustrated London News. In the same period, Joseph Blackburne (1841-1924), from a Quaker family, became one of the strongest chess players in the world. He regularly played a dozen opponents simultaneously, while blindfolded, calling out his moves to an arbiter. Blackburne is also credited with introducing the use of chess clocks, setting a time limit on each player’s moves. It is these clocks that account for the intense silence that envelops modern competitive chess.
There were also strong chess players in the Quaker families of Crosfield, Priestman and Penrose. Jonathan Penrose was British chess champion eleven times. The Quaker socialists Ada Salter and Ben Vincent were also strong players. Ada ran a chess club for working-class girls as early as the 1890s, and the club eventually sent a representative to the international tournament in Ostend, though by then it was run by Ada’s successor, Constance Britton. Constance was also the head of a wonderful organisation called the Guild of Joyful Surprises. Ben Vincent wrote a letter to the Friend in 1969 arguing against the Quaker testimony to simplicity. He said simple solutions are nearly always wrong. He offered capital punishment as one example, or a ‘simple diet’ that usually turns out to be inadequate in some way. And, oh dear, how awful, just ‘fancy a world without chess!’
Quaker chess also flourished in Philadelphia in the early twentieth century. Walter Penn Shipley (1860-1942), a lawyer and graduate from Haverford College, was in 1901 rated twelfth in the world, with a rating of 2634 (today that would make him a grandmaster). Frank Morley (1860-1937), the professor of Mathematics at Haverford College, was a chess boy prodigy, outplaying world champion Emmanuel Lasker in a simultaneous display.
With all this history it felt natural when, for a week earlier this month, Friends House was taken over by Global Chess and its teams of professional chess players, including two former world champions: Magnus Carlsen (Norway), and Vishy Anand (India). The large Meeting room, now known as The Light, was converted into a chess arena, and the above picture shows how it looked before play started and total silence descended.
‘It should not be thought that silence in chess is the only attraction for Quakers.’
I attended the event, not just to watch the game between Carlsen and Anand, but also to compare a chess silence with Quaker silence. Alas, the event was very much a commercial operation. At chess events, spectators look on with bated breath at large screens above the players, waiting expectantly for (and striving to predict) the next move. It’s this that generates a physically-palpable silence. But this did not apply on this occasion. The screens were small, and it took an effort to watch. The games were short, in line with the demands of sponsors. Anxious camera operators moved around trailing cables, and important officials in grey suits shuffled about. The profound silence of a top chess tournament was lacking; no comparison with Quaker practice was possible; and I was disappointed even from the chess point of view.
It should not be thought that silence in chess is the only attraction for Quakers. In the nineteenth century Friends and other nonconformists favoured chess for its moral aura. Chess was possibly created in India, around the sixth century CE. The legend goes that a philosopher called Sissa wanted to offer the Indian king an alternative to violence and war. For obvious reasons, Quakers took to this pacifist ancestry. Chess was also esteemed as a game of pure skill, the only major game where luck has no role. If you lose, it’s entirely your own fault. This, the Victorian Quakers saw, meant it was the opposite of gambling. Nor could it be played with success under the influence of alcohol or opium. In addition, adult schools found that the game taught students self-discipline, reasoning and concentration. Chess is the ultimate meritocracy.
There was also another attraction, perhaps most important of all. For those liable to persecution, prejudice and discrimination, there is joy and relief to be found in any activity where ability reigns supreme and social status does not count. This particularly applies when the activity in question can be practised, quietly and privately, outside the gaze of state power. This is perhaps why such a large percentage of leading players have been Jewish, including the first two world chess champions, Steinitz and Lasker. For Quakers and for Jewish people, chess was a sanctuary. Although one player beats another, each enjoys freedom and equality, and in the end they shake hands. It is different in a pogrom.
While chess silences and Quaker silences share the same quality, impressiveness and power, they are utterly different in one vital respect. Chess players do submerge themselves into their analysis in search of the truth. This may sometimes be elegant or beautiful, but its aim is to win the game. Quakers, however, enter the depths of their innermost selves in search of conscience, reason, spirit, Christ or God. The apparent similarity is in fact superficial. As Lasker used to say, our little chess is just a game. Its moral and aesthetic qualities are laudable but not to be ranked, Lasker thought, with the music of Debussy, or the physics of Einstein, let alone with his sincere religious belief.
