The Last Samurai

RD put the pieces back. HC said he had to read the Agamemnon. RD said This won’t take long. He was black. This time he played the defence he knew the best, and he played a version of a middle game he had read in Keres & Kotov, and the end played itself.

He said: Checkmate. And he said: I know what you think you’re doing, but it’s stupid. It’s not the same.

And HC said: It’s a game. It’s a stupid game. Opening, middle game, endgame, opening, middle game, endgame, opening middle game endgame. Let’s set the clock to 5 minutes.

RD said: It’s not the same.

HC said: 10 minute game.

HC set out the pieces and he started the clock. They played 5 games and RD won 4.

RD said: It’s not the same.

They played until 2:00 in the morning. RD kept saying It’s not the same, but he was laughing now because he was winning most of the time. You are probably thinking that HC was letting him win but he wasn’t. HC had none of the Socratic scruples that plagued RD, but he carried sportsmanship to so fanatical an extreme that it had a very similar effect; he knew he would have no real competition if RD was not there, & left to his own devices & composing Socratic answers to Gorgianic questions RD was certainly not going to be there. So even though he could hardly keep his eyes open he said to RD: Don’t think of arguments. Look at a question and say: Queen’s Indian. Sicilian Defence.

RD thought this was ridiculous but no sooner had he dismissed it as ridiculous than it suddenly seemed to him, as a matter of fact, that you actually could start a discussion of the influence of Homer on Virgil using the Sicilian Defence.

Ruy Lopez, said HC, pursuing his advantage.

RD: Ruy LOPEZ! How can I POSSIBLY use the Ruy LOPEZ?

HC hesitated—

RD: If they set the question they are OBVIOUSLY, ALWAYS white.

& he was again briefly plunged into despair.

HC: Black to win in 4 moves. Two knights & a rook, checkmate in 6.

No, said RD, and he stood up and wrapped his arms around his head in a pretzel formation. He paced up and down & at last he said: Yes. NOW I see. He said: You don’t actually ARGUE all the way THROUGH you decide the endgame you want to play you incorporate an opening which might lead to it by REFERENCE as it might be Black played an unusual version of the Queen’s Indian you incorporate the middle game largely by REFERENCE—

Whether this really is what you do or not RD did get in under the impression that you did and get a scholarship on the strength of [opening] [middle game] endgame, and he and HC were friends & rivals. HC made him go in for prizes because if he won a prize RD had not gone in for it would not really count, & every time he had to play chess with RD to counterbalance the hold Socrates had regained on his mind in the meantime. He had to play chess to counteract the influence of Fraenkel.

Fraenkel was a Jewish refugee from the Nazis, and on coming to England he had been made Professor of Latin at Corpus Christi College and gave seminars on Greek. Very few undergraduates went to these, and the few that went went with the approval of their tutor because Fraenkel was very formidable. Somehow or other HC heard of these seminars and instantly decided to go. He asked his tutor and his tutor said he thought it would be better to wait, and HC thought: But that’s stupid, if I go now people will always say He went to Fraenkel’s seminar in his first term when he was only 15. His birthday was in mid-October, and if he waited even a term it would be too late.

Now if HC went RD had to go too, because otherwise HC would have felt he was getting an unfair advantage. RD was naturally diffident and said he thought he should wait till his second or even third year; a chessboard was no use in a situation like this, but HC with the genius of desperation said That’s ridiculous, and stealing shamelessly from Socrates he said there was no shame in ignorance but in the refusal to learn. He said he had heard that Fraenkel had deplored the lack of rigour in English scholarship; he said surely it was of the ESSENCE that they should not pick up slipshod methods at the very OUTSET of their scholarly careers. RD said Yes but he probably won’t let us in the class and HC said Leave everything to me.

HC was 15 and looked 12. He went over to Corpus before breakfast and waited outside Fraenkel’s room, and when the great man appeared he brought out the phrases ‘slipshod methods’ and ‘outset of scholarly career’. He was taken into the room and shown some Greek he had never seen before and made to comment on it, and when he did not absolutely disgrace himself he was told that he and his friend could come to the class on probation.