Philidor certainly did much for chess, particularly in England. He possessed peculiar advantages for so doing. In the first place he had true talent; his powers for playing blindfold excited extraordinary interest at the time, not merely amongst chess players, but especially with the titled crowd. His political antecedents increased the general interest, and, last and best of all, he was a foreigner. If Philidor had been an Englishman he would hardly have sold a copy of his book.
Philidor organized a chess club in London, which met at Parsloe's Coffee House, St. James street. At the present day little is known of that early association, and we cannot even tell whether the members were numerous. After his death, chess seems to have languished; Parsloe's club dragged on its existence during some years, dying from inanition about 1825. The London Chess Club, first organized in 1807, kept alive the sacred fire; but that was the only community in England during the first quarter of this century where the game was publicly played. Some years after the establishment of the London, the Edinburgh Chess Club started into existence. In 1833, a great impetus was given to the game by the commencement of a weekly chess article in the columns of "Bell's Life in London." Amateurs now had an organ which could record their achievements; men hitherto unknown beyond their private circles felt, that the opportunity was afforded them to become famous throughout the country, and provincial clubs started up here and there. Chess players cannot but regard that paper as a very nursing mother for Caïssa, and certainly never hear it mentioned but their thoughts revert to the veteran--George Walker. I once heard that gentleman relate the following anecdote as a proof of how little was known of chess, in England, previous to the year 1833.
Travelling towards the north somewhere about that period, he put up one night at a hotel in Stratford-upon-Avon. Now any man with music or poetry in his soul, would, under such circumstances, wander towards the home of Shakspeare, or to his last resting-place; provided always that fear of rheumatism, or influenza, did not render him regardful of the rain which then fell "like cats and dogs." How to pass the evening was the question. Only one other traveller in the coffee-room, and he as uncommunicative as Englishmen proverbially are. Mr. Walker did not feel like going to bed at seven o'clock in the evening, and the idea of throwing out "a feeler" struck him as interesting. "Did Traveller play chess?" Traveller did. "Would he have a game?" Yes, he would. The waiter is thereupon summoned, and ordered to bring in a set of chessmen. Waiter, strongly suspicious that Mr. Walker means skittles, finally awaked to consciousness, and, with a smile of triumph, produces a backgammon board.