Love Conquers All

by Robert Benchley

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  Confessions of

  a Chess Champion

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  With the opening of the baseball season, the sporting urge stirs in one’s blood and we turn to such books as “My Chess Career,” by J.R. Capablanca. Mr. Capablanca, I gather from his text, plays chess very well. Wherein he unquestionably has something on me.

  His book is a combination of autobiography and pictorial examples of difficult games he has participated in and won. I could understand the autobiographical part perfectly, but although I have seen chess diagrams in the evening papers for years, I never have been able to become nervous over one. It has always seemed to me that when you have seen one diagram of a chessboard you have seen them all. Therefore, I can give only a superficial review of the technical parts of Mr. Capablanca’s book.

  His personal reminiscences, however, are full of poignant episodes. For instance, let us take an incident which occurred in his early boyhood when he found out what sort of man his father really was – a sombre event in the life of any boy, much more so for the boy Capablanca.

  “I was born in Havana, the capital of the Island of Cuba,” he says, “the 19th of November, 1888. I was not yet five years old when by accident I came into my father’s private office and found him playing with another gentleman. I had never seen a game of chess before; the pieces interested me and I went the next day to see them play again. The third day, as I looked on, my father, a very poor beginner, moved a Knight from a white square to another white square. His opponent, apparently not a better player, did not notice it. My father won, and I proceeded to call him a cheat and to laugh.”

  Imagine the feelings of a young boy entering his father’s private office and seeing a man whom he had been brought up to love and to revere moving a Knight from one white square to another. It is a wonder that the boy had the courage to grow up at all with a start in life like that.

  But he did grow up, and at the age of eight, in spite of the advice of doctors, he was a frequent visitor at the Havana Chess Club. As he says in describing this period of his career, “Soon Don Celso Golmayo, the strongest player there, was unable to give me a rook.” So you can see how good he was. Don Celso couldn’t give him a rook. And if Don Celso couldn’t, who on earth could?

  In his introduction, Mr. Capablanca (I wish that I could get it out of my head that Mr. Capablanca is possibly a relation of the Casablanca boy who did the right thing by the burning deck. They are, of course, two entirely different people) – in his introduction, Mr. Capablanca says:

  “Conceit I consider a foolish thing; but more foolish still is that false modesty that vainly attempts to conceal that which all facts tend to prove.”

  It is this straining to overcome a foolish, false modesty which leads him to say, in connection with his matches with members of the Manhattan Chess Club. “As one by one I mowed them down without the loss of a single game, my superiority became apparent.” Or, in speaking of his “endings” (a term we chess experts use to designate the last part of our game), to murmur modestly: “The endings I already played very well, and to my mind had attained the high standard for which they were in the future to be well known.” Mr. Capablanca will have to watch that false modesty of his. It will get him into trouble someday.

  Although this column makes no pretense of carrying sporting news, it seems only right to print a part of the running story of the big game between Capablanca and Dr. O.S. Bernstein in the San Sebastian tournament of 1911. Capablanca wore the white, while Dr. Bernstein upheld the honor of the black.

  The tense moment of the game had been reached. Capablanca has the ball on Dr. Bernstein’s 3-yard line on the second down, with a minute and a half to play. The stands are wild. Cries of “Hold ’em, Bernstein!” and “Touchdown, Capablanca!” ring out on the frosty November air.

  Brave voices are singing the fighting song entitled “Capablanca’s Day” which runs as follows:

  “Oh, sweep, sweep across the board,

  With your castles, queens, and pawns;

  We are with you, all Havana’s horde,

  Till the sun of victory dawns;

  Then it’s fight, fight, FIGHT!

  To your last white knight,

  For the truth must win alway,

  And our hearts beat true

  Old “J.R.” for you

  On Capa-blanca’s Day.”

  “Up to this point the game had proceeded along the lines generally recommended by the masters,” writes Capablanca. “The last move, however, is a slight deviation from the regular course, which brings this Knight back to B in order to leave open the diagonal for the Q, and besides is more in accordance with the defensive nature of the game. Much more could be said as to the reasons that make Kt - B the preferred move of most masters. . . . Of course, lest there be some misapprehension, let me state that the move Kt - B is made in conjunction with K R - K, which comes first.”

  It is lucky that Mr. Casablanca made that explanation, for I was being seized with just that misapprehension which he feared. (Mr. Capablanca, I mean.)

  Below is the box-score by innings:

  1. P - K4. P - K4.

  2. Kt - QB3. Kt - QB3.

  3. P - B4. P x P.

  4. Kt - B3. P - K Kt4.

  (Game called on account of darkness.)

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  “Rip Van Winkle”

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  After all, there is nothing like a good folk-opera for wholesome fun, and the boy who can turn out a rollicking folk-opera for old and young is Percy MacKaye. His latest is a riot from start to finish. You can buy it in book form, published by Knopf. Just ask for “Rip Van Winkle” and spend the evening falling out of your chair. (You wake up just as soon as you fall and are all ready again for a fresh start.)

  Of course it is a little rough in spots, but you know what Percy MacKaye is when he gets loose on a folk-opera. It is good, clean Rabelaisian fun, such as was in “Washington, the Man Who Made Us.” I always felt that it was very prudish of the police to stop that play just as it was commencing its run. Or maybe it wasn’t the police that stopped it. Something did, I remember.

  But “Rip Van Winkle” has much more zip to it than “Washington” had. In the first place, the lyrics are better. They have more of a lilt to them than the lines of the earlier work had. Here is the song hit of the first act, sung by the Goose Girl. Try this over on your piano:

  Kaaterskill, Kaaterskill,

  Cloud on the Kaaterskill!

  Will it be fair, or lower?

  Silver rings

  On my pond I see;

  And my gander he

  Shook both his white wings

  Like a sunshine shower.

  I venture to say that Irving Berlin himself couldn’t have done anything catchier than that by way of a lyric. Or this little snatch of a refrain sung by the old women of the town:

  Nay, nay, nay!

  A sunshine shower

  Won’t last a half an hour.

  The trouble with most lyrics is that they are written by song-writers who have had no education. Mr. MacKaye’s college training shows itself in every line of the opera. There is a subtlety of rhyme-scheme, a delicacy of meter, and, above all, an originality of thought and expression which promises much for the school of university-bred lyricists. Here, for instance, is a lyric which Joe McCarthy could never have written:

  Up spoke Nancy, spanking Nancy,

  Says, “My feet are far too dancy, Dancy O!

  So foot-on-the-grass,

  Foot-on-the-grass,

  Foot-on-the-grass is my fancy, O!”

  Of course this is a folk-opera. And you can get away with a great deal of that “dancy-o” stuff when you call it a folk-opera. You can throw it all back on the old folk at home and they can’t say a word.

  But even the local wits of Rip Van Winkle’s time would have repudiated the comedy lines which Mr. MacKaye gives R
ip to say in which “Katy-did” and “Katy-didn’t” figure prominently as the nub, followed, before you have time to stop laughing, by one about “whip poor Will” (whippoorwill – get it?). If “Rip Van Winkle” is ever produced again, Ed Wynn should be cast as Rip. He would eat that line alive.

  Ed Wynn, by the way, might do wonders by the opera if he could get the rights to produce it in his own way. Let Mr. MacKaye’s name stay on the programme, but give Ed Wynn the white card to do as he might see fit with the book. For instance, one of Mr. MacKaye’s characters is named “Dirck Spuytenduyvil.” Let him stand as he is, but give him two cousins, “Mynheer Yonkers” and “Jan One Hundred and Eighty-third Street.” The three of them could do a comedy tumbling act. There is practically no end to the features that could be introduced to tone the thing up.

  The basic idea of “Rip Van Winkle” would lend itself admirably to Broadway treatment, for Mr. MacKaye has taken liberties, with the legend and introduced the topical idea of a Magic Flask, containing home-made hootch. Hendrick Hudson, the Captain of the Catskill Bowling Team, is the lucky possessor of the doctor’s prescription and formula, and it is in order to take a trial spin with the brew that Rip first goes up to the mountain. Here are Hendrick’s very words of invitation:

  You’ll be right welcome. I will let you taste

  A wonder drink we brew aboard the Half Moon.

  Whoever drinks the Magic Flask thereof

  Forgets all lapse of time

  And wanders ever in the fairy season

  Of youth and spring.

  Come join me in the mountains

  At mid of night

  And there I promise you the Magic Flask.

  And so at mid of night Rip fell for the promise of wandering “in the fairy season,” as so many have done at the invitation of a man who has “made a little something at home which you couldn’t tell from the real stuff.” Rip got out of it easily. He simply went to sleep for twenty years. You ought to see a man I know.

  There is a note in the front of the volume saying that no public reading of “Rip Van Winkle” may be given without first getting the author’s permission. It ought to be made much more difficult to do than that.

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  Literary Lost and Found Department

  With Scant Apology

  to the Book Section

  of the New York Times.

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  “OLD BLACK TILLIE”

  H.G.L. – When I was a little girl, my nurse used to recite a poem something like the following (as near as I can remember). I wonder if anyone can give me the missing lines?

  “Old Black Tillie lived in the dell,

  Heigh-ho with a rum-tum-tum!

  Something, something, something like a lot of hell,

  Heigh-ho with a rum-tum-tum!

  She wasn’t very something and she wasn’t very fat

  But—”

  “VICTOR HUGO’S DEATH”

  M.K.C. – Is it true that Victor Hugo did not die but is still living in a little shack in Colorado?

  “I’M SORRY THAT I SPELT THE WORD”

  J.R.A. – Can anyone help me out by furnishing the last three words to the following stanza which I learned in school and of which I have forgotten the last three words, thereby driving myself crazy?

  “I’m sorry that I spelt the word,

  I hate to go above you,

  Because—” the brown eyes lower fell,

  “Because, you see, ––– ––– –––.”

  “GOD’S IN HIS HEAVEN”

  J.A.E. – Where did Mark Twain write the following?

  “God’s in his heaven:

  All’s right with the world.”

  “SHE DWELT BESIDE”

  N.K.Y. – Can someone locate this for me and tell the author?

  “She dwelt among untrodden ways,

  Beside the springs of Dove,

  To me she gave sweet Charity,

  But greater far is Love.”

  “THE GOLDEN WEDDING”

  K.L.F. – Who wrote the following and what does it mean?

  “Oh, de golden wedding,

  Oh, de golden wedding,

  Oh, de golden wedding,

  De golden, golden wedding!”

  ANSWERS

  “WHEN GRANDMA WAS A GIRL”

  LUTHER F. NEAM, Flushing, L.I. – The poem asked for by “E.J.K.” was recited at a Free Soil riot in Ashburg, Kansas, in July, 1850. It was entitled, “And That’s the Way They Did It When Grandma Was a Girl,” and was written by Bishop Leander B. Rizzard. The last line runs:

  “And that’s they way they did it, when Grandma was a girl.”

  Others who answered this query were: Lillian W. East, of Albany; Martin B. Forsch, New York City, and Henry Cabot Lodge, Nahant.

  “LET US THEN BE UP AND DOING”

  Roger F. Nilkette, Presto, N.J. – Replying to the query in your last issue concerning the origin of the lines:

  “Let us then be up and doing,

  With a heart for any fate.

  Still achieving, still pursuing,

  Learn to labor and to wait.”

  I remember hearing these lines read at a gathering in the Second Baptist Church of Presto, N.J., when I was a young man, by the Reverend Harley N. Ankle. It was said at the time among his parishioners that he himself wrote them and on being questioned on the matter he did not deny it, simply smiling and saying, “I’m glad if you liked them.” They were henceforth known in Presto as “Dr. Ankle’s verse” and were set to music and sung at his funeral.

  “THE DECEMBER BRIDE, OR OLD ROBIN”

  Charles B. Rennit, Boston, N.H. – The whole poem wanted by “H.J.O.” is as follows, and appeared in Hostetter’s Annual in 1843.

  1

  “’Twas in the bleak December that I took her for my bride;

  How well do I remember how she fluttered by my side;

  My Nellie dear, it was not long before you up and died,

  And they buried her at eight-thirty in the morning.

  2

  “Oh, do not tell me of the charms of maidens far and near,

  Their charming ways and manners I do not care to hear,

  For Lucy dear was to me so very, very dear,

  And they buried her at eight-thirty in the morning.

  3

  “Then it’s merrily, merrily, merrily, whoa!

  To the old gray church they come and go,

  Some to be married and some to be buried,

  And old Robin has gone for the mail.”

  “THE OLD KING’S JOKE”

  F.J. BRUFF, Hammick, Conn. – In a recent issue of your paper, Lillian F. Grothman asked for the remainder of a poem which began: “The King of Sweden made a joke, ha, ha!”

  I can furnish all of this poem, having written it myself, for which I was expelled from St. Domino’s School in 1895. If Miss Grothman will meet me in the green room at the Biltmore for tea on Wednesday next at 4:30, she will be supplied with the missing words.

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  “Darkwater”

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  We have so many, many problems in America. Books are constantly being written offering solutions for them, but still they persist.

  There are volumes on auction bridge, family budgets and mind-training. A great many people have ideas on what should be done to relieve the country of certain undesirable persons who have displayed a lack of sympathy with American institutions. (As if American institutions needed sympathy!) And some of the more generous-minded among us are writing books showing our duty to the struggling young nationalities of Europe. It is bewildering to be confronted by all these problems, each demanding intelligent solution.

  Little wonder, then, that we have no time for writing books on the one problem which is exclusively our own. With so many wrongs in the world to be righted, who can blame us for overlooking the one tragic wrong which lies at our door? With so man
y heathen to whom the word of God must be brought and so many wild revolutionists in whom must be instilled a respect for law and order, is it strange that we should ourselves sometimes lump the word of God and the principles of law and order together under the head of “sentimentality” and shrug our shoulders? Justice in the abstract is our aim – any American will tell you that – so why haggle over details and insist on justice for the negro?

  But W. E. B. Du Bois does insist on justice for the negro, and in his book “Darkwater” (Harcourt, Brace & Co.) his voice rings out in a bitter warning through the complacent quiet which usually reigns around this problem of America. Mr. Du Bois seems to forget that we have the affairs of a great many people to attend to and persists in calling our attention to this affair of our own. And what is worse, in the minds of all well-bred persons he does not do it at all politely. He seems to be quite distressed about something.

  Maybe it is because he finds himself, a man of superior mind and of sensitive spirit who is a graduate of Harvard, a professor and a sincere worker for the betterment of mankind, relegated to an inferior order by many men and women who are obviously his inferiors, simply because he happens to differ from them in the color of his skin. Maybe it is because he sees the people of his own race who have not had his advantages (if a negro may ever be said to have received an advantage) being crowded into an ignominious spiritual serfdom equally as bad as the physical serfdom from which they were so recently freed. Maybe it is because of these things that Mr. Du Bois seems overwrought.