Larger-than-life chess masters turned Montreal into a world hotbed of chess

Steinitz, left and Lasker, right battle in Montreal 1894

  Montreal became a global hotbed of chess in the 1890s thanks to a number of wild characters who lived in the city.
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  Chess in Montreal got a major boost when the German Emmanuel Lasker, 24,  challenged champion Wilhelm Steinitz, 58, in a world championship match that to be played in New York, Philadelphia and Montreal.
   The upstart Prussian was well-ahead by the time they rolled into Montreal but Steinitz proved steady in the matches played at the Cosmopolitan Club, which sat on the corner of Cathcart and University, south side.
   Chess master and columnist William Pollock moved up from Albany to cover the match, which saw the 12th and all further games in the match played at the Cosmopolitan. Pollock was friends with Lasker and the two dined at the Windsor Hotel during the showdown.
   Henry Pillsbury, also a chess star, hit town for the event and almost upstaged the contest with his own blindfolded multi-board challenge.
    Pillsbury told the Pollock that Montreal had gone chess mad (as reported in Pollock's May 19 column in the Boston Herald.)

No end of persons have learned the game and picked up a respectable knowledge of its science within the past week since Steinitz and Lasker have been paying. It is the common talk. Persons who have not the slightest knowledge of the game go to the Cosmopolitan Club to see the masters play, or else form parts of the vast crowd which so blocked the way in St. James street at times that the carriage and cabs have been obliged to drive around another street. At the opera performance here on Saturday last a chess scene was introduced, one of the players being designated Steinitz and the other Lasker, and the crowd applauded wildly, In the hotels at dinner every one discusses the match with great zest and yet I venture to say that not over 25 percent of them even know the moves." 

  

   Steinitz blamed insomnia for his earlier efforts but he played well in Montreal. A popular rumour suggested that Lasker had been drugged but he denied it.
   Steinitz was in town for his 58th birthday on May 15 and admirers lavished him with a silver walking stick and $125 cash.
   Lasker finally prevailed over Steinitz in Montreal on May 26, 1894, winning $2,000 and became the second World Chess Champion.
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  George H.. Stevens was no fan of the drunken louts who stumbled around Montreal so he aimed to encourage sobriety by opening a cafe at the southeaster corner of St. Alexander and Craig (St. Antoine). The building is gone but his Hope Coffee House thrived from its debut on Thursday Nov 9 1881 and stayed upon until the 1910s.
     "A number of gentlemen who had become convinced of the evil of intemperance" aimed "to provide the public not only with wholesome light refreshments of every description but we good substantial dinners and lunches at very moderate rates."
   The Hope Coffee House served 100 cups of coffee a day and similar total of meals, making for a profit of $2,000 for he first year, as noted in The Coffee Public-House news asnd temperawtnce hotel Journal.
   It would also become a hotbed of chess after 1884 as the Brooklyn Chess Chronical of Oct. 1884-Sept 1885 noted the launch of its chess club, joining three other Montreal chess clubs.
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   Frank Marshall's father was in the  flour business and so the family moved to Montreal in 1885 (the same year as the great smallpox outbreak) and by age Frank 11 was beating his father at chess. Dad then hauled little Frank to the Hope Coffee House where he started beating some good players.

Marshall

  Young Marshall took one board in a 16-board challenge against visiting chess master Steinitz on Nov. 13, 1893. Steinitz won but was much impressed by the young challenger and predicted a brilliant future for Marshall.

Pillsbury

  Henry Pillsbury did a 16-board exhibition blindfolded and won most of his games but Marshall beat him.
   Marshall, in his autobiography, later suspected that Pillsbury, who was 21 had gone easy on him. Pillsbury died 13 years later.
   Marshall claims in his autobiography that he won the championship of the Montreal Chess club in 1894 but there's no evidence of that being the case. But he worked with Pollock to launch a chess club from the Hope Coffee House.
   Marshall went on to become the U.S. Chess Champion for 27 straight years from 1909 to 1936.
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  William H. Pollock, a chess master and chess reporter, born in 1859 in England, came to Montreal from Albany to cover the Steinitz-Lasker contests and moved to Montreal in 1894 officially.

Pollock

   He was no slouch and on 22 September gave a 19 board exhibition at the Central Chess Club at the Hope Coffee House and won them all. George Gossip, who would later become his bitter rival, was in attendance.
  Pollock did a 22-board show on Nov. 1894 in which he went 14-5-2, losing one of his matches to Marshall, who duplicated the feat in another multi-board exhibition.
  Pollock would end up staying for two and a half years. He became Executive director of the Chess and Checker Club of  Montreal with 16-year-old Marshall as Secretary. The two were slated to have a five game challenge, which the Montreal Daily Star suggested would be won by Pollock but they didn't go through with it.
  Instead Pollock aimed his intentions towards George Gossip in what would become a bitterly-fought duel starting Dec. 1894.
    Gossip had written several books about chess and would later write a book denouncing Jews under a pseudonym.
   Gossip would prove to be easily-irritable and would complain of noise during games, which then left Pollock flummoxed.
   Gossip wrote in News flash Oct 20 1894

   The French Canadian chess players here are the poorest, meanest humbugs I have ever met - all Jesuits. An old priest promised me $10 Dollars for a simultaneous, but of course a Jesuit can only be relief on not to keep his word. Another club treated me similarly. The only real patron of Chess here is an American, Mr. J.N. Babson (of Sussex Street) I have only made 27 dollars in six weeks, 18 dollars thanks to him. A Manchester paper has published already four columns of articles by myself, for which of course I expect payment, if I am not dead before the money can reach me. A very nice man, Mr. Cox, Professor of Physics at the University here, who had promised to take a course of chess lessons off me, has OF COURSe been laid up with lumbago, so I have not made a cent with him. "

George Gossip at right

   By Dec. 15 Pollock was cruising in the match over Gossip with a 3-0 lead but was irritated by a judge's decision and then refused to play. Soon it was 4-3 with two draws and then 4-4.
   Gossip meanwhile was threatening to sue the Montreal Herald for libel concerning their coverage of his match against Pollock.
   The match got up to 6-6 and the two agreed to call it a draw and split the purse.
  Gossip left for Buffalo immediately after the match.
   Pollock found it hard to make ends meet in Montreal so he lobbied for the right to represent Canada at the Hastings Tournament in 1895 and left on the Labrador Steamer and never returned to Montreal, according to W.H.K. Pollock A chess Biography with 523 Games