'Arthur Ford Mackenzie, recognized by some chess experts as the greatest chess problem composer of all time, was without dispute one of the three greatest in chess composition.' (written in 1934)
Arthur Ford Mackenzie - one of Jamaica's most remarkable sons - a chess genius known world-wide in the age of the penny post and the telegraph. He succumbed to one of Jamaica's plagues which was only defeated later in the 20th century. |
Arthur Ford Mackenzie was one of the most unusual men Jamaica has produced. He was indeed a Jamaican: although his parents were from England, he was born in Kingston on October 6, 1861, and he died in Kingston on June 23, 1905. There is no indication that he ever left the island, maybe never even travelling further than Spanish Town.
He was educated at the Church of England High School and the Collegiate School, and taught for a number of years after leaving school, until ill-health made it impossible for him to continue. He learned to play chess early and started on the career which marked him out as unique while still at school. His first venture into chess journalism was the column he was involved with in the Jamaica Family Journal, a weekly published by the Gleaner from 1879 to 1881. Then in May 1883, during the recovery after the great fire of December 1882, he started in the Tri-Weekly Gleaner the weekly chess column which, in some form and with some breaks, continued for the rest of his life.
In 1880-1 he first competed in an international tournament for chess problems; he won third prize in the Burnley Express problem tournament. Over the years he won some 200 prizes for chess problems, and quickly established a reputation as one of the most outstanding composers of chess problems in the world. In 1887 he published a book, Chess: Its Poetry and Its Prose , under the patronage of distinguished men, such as the Bishop of Jamaica, and the Governor, and the British politicians Lord Randolph Churchill and Sir Robert Peel. The book dealt with the basics of chess and with the art of the chess problem; references to this book and copies for sale can be found today on the Internet, and some of Mackenzie’s chess problems can be found there as well.
Mackenzie’s family did not have an easy time during these years. His father’s watch-making business was destroyed in the 1882 fire, and over the years he turned to running a livery stables and contracting with the City Council to clean the streets, to support his family. Arthur’s brother, Joseph, worked with his father, but Arthur, as his health deteriorated, was forced to give up his teaching job. In 1896 he became blind, and for a time gave up the composition of chess problems. However he came to find that he was even better able to compose problems in his head, than he could when he had had his sight. With the help of his brother he was able to resume writing a column and entering competitions. His fame as the blind chess genius spread even further; he was known and his problems were published from New Zealand to Russia, from the USA to India.
Soon after he went blind there had been rumours of his death, but in June 1905 the rumours became reality. When the news of his death spread, both newspapers and individuals responded, voicing their sorrow at the loss of such a remarkable figure in the world of chess. The British Chess Magazine published a long tribute in their August 1905 issue. In January 1906 Chess Lyrics: a Collection of Chess Problems by A. F. Mackenzie was published in the USA. Mackenzie had been collaborating on this work with a noted chess writer, Alain C. White, who finished the work as a tribute to his friend.
The final twist to the story of Arthur Mackenzie is provided by H. P. Jacobs in his eulogy of Adolphe Roberts in 1962, made at the Memorial Service on November 18, and printed in the Jamaican Historical Society Bulletin Vol. 3, page 115. He records that the young Roberts, around 1903, as the newest reporter at the Gleaner, was given the job of collecting Mackenzie’s chess columns from his home. He apparently never saw Mackenzie as the article was handed to him through the crack of a barely opened door. The explanation for this, and for Mackenzie’s illness, blindness and early death, was that he suffered from Hansen’s disease, or leprosy, still at that time incurable, and usually kept a shameful secret.
He was educated at the Church of England High School and the Collegiate School, and taught for a number of years after leaving school, until ill-health made it impossible for him to continue. He learned to play chess early and started on the career which marked him out as unique while still at school. His first venture into chess journalism was the column he was involved with in the Jamaica Family Journal, a weekly published by the Gleaner from 1879 to 1881. Then in May 1883, during the recovery after the great fire of December 1882, he started in the Tri-Weekly Gleaner the weekly chess column which, in some form and with some breaks, continued for the rest of his life.
In 1880-1 he first competed in an international tournament for chess problems; he won third prize in the Burnley Express problem tournament. Over the years he won some 200 prizes for chess problems, and quickly established a reputation as one of the most outstanding composers of chess problems in the world. In 1887 he published a book, Chess: Its Poetry and Its Prose , under the patronage of distinguished men, such as the Bishop of Jamaica, and the Governor, and the British politicians Lord Randolph Churchill and Sir Robert Peel. The book dealt with the basics of chess and with the art of the chess problem; references to this book and copies for sale can be found today on the Internet, and some of Mackenzie’s chess problems can be found there as well.
Mackenzie’s family did not have an easy time during these years. His father’s watch-making business was destroyed in the 1882 fire, and over the years he turned to running a livery stables and contracting with the City Council to clean the streets, to support his family. Arthur’s brother, Joseph, worked with his father, but Arthur, as his health deteriorated, was forced to give up his teaching job. In 1896 he became blind, and for a time gave up the composition of chess problems. However he came to find that he was even better able to compose problems in his head, than he could when he had had his sight. With the help of his brother he was able to resume writing a column and entering competitions. His fame as the blind chess genius spread even further; he was known and his problems were published from New Zealand to Russia, from the USA to India.
Soon after he went blind there had been rumours of his death, but in June 1905 the rumours became reality. When the news of his death spread, both newspapers and individuals responded, voicing their sorrow at the loss of such a remarkable figure in the world of chess. The British Chess Magazine published a long tribute in their August 1905 issue. In January 1906 Chess Lyrics: a Collection of Chess Problems by A. F. Mackenzie was published in the USA. Mackenzie had been collaborating on this work with a noted chess writer, Alain C. White, who finished the work as a tribute to his friend.
The final twist to the story of Arthur Mackenzie is provided by H. P. Jacobs in his eulogy of Adolphe Roberts in 1962, made at the Memorial Service on November 18, and printed in the Jamaican Historical Society Bulletin Vol. 3, page 115. He records that the young Roberts, around 1903, as the newest reporter at the Gleaner, was given the job of collecting Mackenzie’s chess columns from his home. He apparently never saw Mackenzie as the article was handed to him through the crack of a barely opened door. The explanation for this, and for Mackenzie’s illness, blindness and early death, was that he suffered from Hansen’s disease, or leprosy, still at that time incurable, and usually kept a shameful secret.
Mackenzie wrote two books on chess, both of which are now available for purchase on line in a print-on-demand format (I don't know how good the reproduction is.)
Chess Lyrics is also available to read or download at archive.org.
Chess Lyrics is also available to read or download at archive.org.
CHESS LYRICS: A COLLECTION OF CHESS PROBLEMS BY A. F. MACKENZIE
[The whole book can be read or downloaded at - http://archive.org/details/chesslyricscolle00mack] Mackenzie wrote of the start of his career as a composer of chess problems: . . . let me hark back to the first days of my association with chess and indulge in a little autobiography. I think I must have been about nine or ten years of age when my father instructed in the rudiments of the game my elder brother and me—my elder brother now happy in brighter realms, him to whose memory I dedicated the last problem I thought I would ever compose, him who always took the keenest interest in all my chess doing, and for whose invaluable aid in the compilation of " Chess: Its Poetry and Its Prose" I now take this opportunity of recording my grateful acknowledgement. After our father thought we had been sufficiently initiated into the mysteries of the Noble Game, in order to stimulate and foster our interest, he offered a copy of Staunton's Handbook as a prize to the winner of a series of games. Never did rivals for the championship of the world enter upon their encounter with greater energy and determination—never were games rattled off with such lightning-like rapidity. It was an exhibition of play that would have delighted the heart of the late John Ruskin and other lovers of "skittles," albeit it would, I fancy, have as well afforded them some food for reflection. Now, it happened in the course of one of these remarkable games, after some skirmish more spirited than the rest, and in which more than the usual havoc was wrought among the forces, we numbered amid the slain the two Monarchs. It seems that during the melee we had succeeded somehow in capturing each other's King! This naturally brought us face to face with a contingency we were not prepared to meet. With the board minus the Monarchs, how was checkmate to be effected, how a win determined? After comparing notes as to the rules of the game, and vainly endeavouring to arrive at a satisfactory solution of the problem, we decided to repair to our father for further elucidation. I do not propose to give here the details of that interview. It is not altogether pleasant to have even happy parental mirth excited at one's expense, and the meeting must be taken as having been held in camera. Suffice it to say that, wiser, but not one whit the sadder, the youthful players returned to the combat, and continued with unabated enthusiasm to the end. I must not forget to add that I did not win that copy of Staunton's Handbook. I would like to say, too, that some years ago there was narrated in the chess press a somewhat similar incident as to the capturing of kings. That was evidently given as a joke, but the foregoing account as to myself is strictly true in every particular. It was a few years after this, somewhere about the end of 1878, or early in 1879, before my interest in the game became really aroused. I had often turned an enquiring eye on the problems in the Illustrated London News and in Brief, a London weekly started about that time, and one day the thought struck me that I should try to solve one of these problems. I thereupon set up on the board a position from Brief, a two-mover by no less a personage than Mr. B.G. Laws, and after two or three hours hard work, I succeeded in solving it. I cannot attempt to give expression to the effect that problem had upon me. I never dreamt that such charm was to be found in Chess. I was captured and held a fascinated slave of Caissa. And, as problem after problem was eagerly solved, and as each unfolded to my delighted gazesome new gem of beauty, more and more I realized what a rich and inexhaustible mine of intellectual pleasure I had discovered. The novitiate as a solver scarcely passed, came dreams of composing. It was Tennyson's grandfather who, on being shown some of the yoimg poet's earliest efforts, presented him at once with half-a-sovereign and the very encouraging prediction that he could depend upon it that was the first and last money he would ever receive for his poetry. There is a far cry between the two episodes, but that one always reminds me of the amused smile and sceptical shake of the head with which my father greeted my announcement that I intended to compose a problem. Yet, when a few days later I showed him my first problem, a three-mover, he was greatly pleased, and straightway submitted it for solution to a friend, who, however, seemed to have had no previous experience in solving, since he returned two or three days after with the problem and the assertion that he was prepared to stake his existence there was no checkmate in three-moves. I am not inflated with pride at the recollection of my first problem, but, looking back upon it now, I see it was not altogether a colourless production. The key-move was a check, but the second move was quiet and was the promotion of a Pawn to a Knight. It was this move which floored my father's friend, and, when it was shown him, his admiration of my genius was unbounded. In order to excuse his defeat, however, he laid down a very original dictum, which is certainly worth recording. "You know," he said, "it is far easier to compose a problem than to solve one! " . . . for, such was my enthusiasm, or perhaps, impudence, I had already volunteered to start the first Chess column ever published in Jamaica, and which, save for a short interruption after the great fire in Kingston in 1882, I conducted until I lost my sight. He also wrote of losing his sight:
MY SANS VOIR WORK. After fading slowly for some months, the light went altogether out of my eyes in February, 1896, and then began what may be termed the second stage of my career as a problemist, my work as a sans voir composer. For some years before the loss of sight, Chess had been the one great diversion which a riven health had left me; and even in face of such a calamity as blindness, where so many far-reaching considerations were involved, I could not shut out of my mind the contemplation that my chess pursuits were seemingly ended. And as time wore on, and the dreariness of my position became more and more manifest, a yearning for a return of the lost pleasures often possessed me. But, as contentedly as might be, these longings were dismissed as a thing that was not to be—as a thing that was buried in the grave which had closed over all my earthly hopes. I had no thought then of the happy resurrection that was so soon to come. At the end of the same year, however, when my father was reading to me the Chess in a New Orleans Times-Democrat, in which there was a two-mover by Dr. Gold, I was suddenly thrilled with a hitherto unthought of hope. What if I could solve that problem by having it called out to me from the notation and then mentally picturing it ? I asked my father to give it me, and after some difficulty, and many a request for the repetition of the place of this or that piece, succeeded in getting a fairly clear picture of the position and solving it. It can easily be imagined how delighted I was, it can easily be imagined that for some time my readers were kept busy in giving me problems. The possibility of composing sans voir did not at first occur to me. It was enough that the pleasure of studying the works of others was not to be denied me, and for some weeks I revelled in my new-found joy. When, however, practice enabled me quite easily to get a clear picture on the mental camera, and I found that when this was once done there was no more difficulty in solving in this manner than from the diagram, it was only natural that I should not rest satisfied with this alone, but should take the higher flight of composing. My efforts in this direction have been entirely mental, unaided by board and men of any description, and the world has seen what patience and perseverance have accomplished. And I, in dreamily weaving out these chessic webs, shaping nebulous fancies into structures of chessic truths, how happy I have made many and many an hour that would otherwise have been weary indeed. But even here the Fates have not been as kind as they might; for, strangely enough, with anything approaching exertion in this mental work, I suffer much in both eyes and head. This may be due to the nature of my eye trouble, and, perhaps, another working as I do might not be similarly affected. Despite this drawback, however, and fully realizing that the sans voir composer has difficulties to contend with which do not present themselves to one who works with his sight, the conclusion has long since been forced upon me that problem construction is essentially a work of the mind, and that the board and men are to a great extent a hindrance,—that, in short, sans voir is at once the more fascinating and satisfactory method of composing. Certainly taken collectively, my best problems have been composed, and my most important honours won since my loss of sight. Might not this use of board and men be, after all, another instance of matter hampering and confining the legitimate instance of matter hampering and confining the legitimate action of the mind ? My presumption does not carry me so far as the promulgating of a new theory, or the propounding of a new psychological problem, but does it seem altogether beyond the pale of possibility that if during the process of construction the mental faculties were relieved of what may be termed the more physical duties of watching, directing and controlling the moves of the men, and subject to none of the distractions natural to the wandering eye, they would find more concentrative force and greater scope for action in more congenial directions? Thus, the imagination might become more keenly alert, fancy take wing more freely, and the position at which one is working the more readily yield its latent possibilities. Then, by reason of the ease and rapidity with which changes of position may be effected (and it is all done with the quickness of thought), see with what facility the practical application of those possibilities may be examined and accepted or rejected. And, of course, those found unsuitable or undesirable blends for the original setting might, independently or in combination, become the nuclei of new problems. Again, moved by an inspiration, the sans voir composer has not to wait until an opportunity is afforded of seeking board and men, but at any time and anywhere can flash a position on the mental camera, and start dreaming away delightfully. Truly the sans voir composer can in many ways sympathize with his hapless confrere whom circumstances have condemned to sit poring over board and men, with them the limit of his mental vision, the field of his mental action! I have often asked myself whether if my sight were restored I would return to the use of the board and men, or continue composing as at present. The answer has always been that the latter would be the case. But, alas! this is not destined to go beyond the stage of an academic consideration, for the organs which make applicable to its earthly environment the sense of sight have forever ceased to perform their functions, and the light is not to come into my eyes again "Until the day break and the shadows flee away." |