Preparation
The Committee of Management was under the leadership of the Duke of Marlborough, but Staunton was its Secretary and most of its members were from Staunton's chess club, St George's. Rivalries in British chess at that time led the powerful London Chess Club to boycott the competition, and George Walker used his column in Bell's Life to try to disrupt the tournament preparations. Despite these obstacles, Staunton raised £500 for the prize fund, a considerable sum in 1851, and worth about £359,000 in 2006's money. Subscriptions were obtained from chess clubs in England and overseas. From France, collections were made at the Café de la Régence, and from India, the Calcutta Chess Club contributed £100, and in addition its principal officers John Cochrane and T.C. Morton made two of the four largest personal contributions. The tournament was scheduled to coincide with The Great Exhibition in London, and began on 26 May 1851.
Read more about this topic: London 1851 Chess Tournament
Famous quotes containing the word preparation:
“It’s sad but true that if you focus your attention on housework and meal preparation and diapers, raising children does start to look like drudgery pretty quickly. On the other hand, if you see yourself as nothing less than your child’s nurturer, role model, teacher, spiritual guide, and mentor, your days take on a very different cast.”
—Joyce Maynard (20th century)
“With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man’s past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavours and the tinglings of a merited shame.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Living each day as a preparation for the next is an exciting way to live. Looking forward to something is much more fun than looking back at something—and much more constructive. If we can prepare ourselves so that we never have to think, “Oh, if I had only known, if I had only been ready,” our lives can really be the great adventure we so passionately want them to be.”
—Hortense Odlum (1892–?)