Simpson's has done most to assist in cultivating force and style
in chess, and to prevent it becoming the idle amusement which
at least one great philosopher has told us it is not, and ought not
to be, and the only three recognized new masters which have risen
up in the Metropolis during the present generation, can be
directly traced to its opportunities and influence. This same
period has witnessed the rise and fall of two chess clubs, the
Westminster formed in 1867, at Covent Garden, and the West
End in Coventry St., in 1875, both (wonderfully successful at
first), having lamentably failed through the predominating card
influence and lack of undivided fealty and devotion to their
legitimate and avowed objects, viz., the chivalrous practice and
earnest cultivation of the noble and royal game of chess. Cards
and social pleasures (so called) cliquism, with the principles of
mutual admiration so strongly in force there, have already
seriously undermined the constitution of the British Chess Club,
or the British Club as it is now more properly called, and the fate
of this third combination from its original avowed point of view
that is for chess purposes, may be considered as virtually sealed,
unless chess be at once restored to something nearer approaching
its acknowledged true position.
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