Page 30 - Francis Cotes - A winning end-game
P. 30
Fig 12. LIBERALE DA VERONA, The Chess Players, Fig 13. LUCAS VAN LEYDEN, The Chess Players,
Metropolitan Museum, New York. Staatlichen Museen, Berlin.
was actually far earlier, and were much admired dazzling the public with exhibitions of two to
for their simple elegance, shape, feel and three simultaneous blindfold games. In 1777
balance. his revised and greatly expanded edition of
Analyze, published in London in both English
The Welbys were literally ahead of the game, and French, was dedicated to members of the
as the real shift from France to England as the club. On the subscription list were a galaxy
leading chess nation started just after their of thinke rs, including Diderot, Voltaire and
portrait was displayed. In 1770, a year after the Gibbon, a garland of Dukes, and a host of
inaugural Royal Academy show, a select group noblemen and politicians.
of players formed a club at the Salopian Coffee
House, Charing Cross, and two years later, Cotes is thus positioning the Welbys as
another club formed at Parsloe’s Subscription devotees of a cherished aristocratic intellectual
Room, on St James’s Place. This was the first pursuit. But he is also subtly placing them in a
organized chess club in England, limited to 100 long-established tradition of viewing chess as a
players at a three-guinea subscription. The game that provokes amity as well as opposition,
money was used to pay for Philidor’s expenses: and can also be a form of tender combat between
he visited the Parsloe club annually until 1793, lovers. While chess acts as a metaphor for
30
