The following is an excerpt from an unpublished manuscript by
Hans Kmoch (1894-1973). Kmoch's career as a player, journalist,
and arbiter brought him into contact with some of the greatest
players of all time. We extend our thanks to Burt Hochberg, who
owns the manuscript, for allowing us to publish this excerpt, which
he has edited especially for The Chess Cafe.

Grandmasters I Have Known
by Hans Kmoch

Frank James Marshall (1877-1944)

I first saw Marshall when he gave an exhibition in Vienna a few
years before World War I. I did not get to know him, however,
until 1925, when he took part in the tournaments at Baden-Baden,
Marienbad, and Moscow, all of which I attended as a reporter.

At Baden-Baden and Marienbad, Marshall was accompanied by his
wife, Caroline, a lively and attractive woman who looked
amazingly youthful. Both of them were eager to meet old friends
and remember old times. Until war broke out in 1914, Europe had
been where Frank Marshall had played most of his tournaments
and collected most of his prizes. In the fateful summer of 1914 he
participated in the Mannheim tournament, which had been
scheduled for seventeen rounds but was aborted after eleven.

The changed political atmosphere of postwar Europe sometimes
deceived Marshall into making certain faux pas. It was not a good
idea, for instance, to order Bismarck herring in Czechoslovakia in
1918. In Liuk (LiŠge), Belgium, where the players were lodged in a
new but miserable hotel, Marshall publicly blamed the Germans
for not retaining possession of the place so that it could be kept
clean.

Marshall, though a fierce attacker over the board, was otherwise a
peaceful, simple man. Certainly he was not a man of the pen. I
noticed when he gave his autograph and he gave a great many of
them he drew his name using several strokes instead of writing it
in a single motion. In Moscow 1925, I was present when
psychiatrists were handing out questionnaires to the participants.
Marshall recoiled from the horrible task of filling his out. "No,
no," he protested. "Come after the tournament." At the team
tournament in Hamburg 1930, when he had just won a ten-mover
against Petrov and was finishing the delicate job of correcting his
scoresheet, I jokingly remarked that there might still be some
errors. He defiantly offered to wager a cigar that there were none. I
must say I really enjoyed that cigar.

An incident at the last round of an American tournament well
illustrates Marshall's sense of humor as well as his merciless
efficiency in chess competition. His game was adjourned in the
first session, and the position promised nothing but prolonged
maneuvering leading nowhere. Marshall's opponent, anxious to
catch a train that day, offered a draw when the game was resumed,
explaining that he needed to get home. Marshall wanted to know
whether it was very important. On being told that it was, Marshall
made his move, punched his clock, and said, "All right, go home."

He always behaved with Victorian delicacy. At the tournament at
Kissingen in 1928, there was an official named Dr. Bomhardt,
whose name Marshall found offensive. (The reason for this is not
quite clear. Perhaps the syllable "Bom" sounded to Marshall
uncomfortably like "bum," which is British slang for "buttocks"
but is also mildly derogatory in American English.)  "I'll call him
Dr. Hardt," he told me. After Marshall's death I learned from his
physician that he was so prudish that even giving him a medical
examination was a problem.

Marshall like to drink, and although he never got drunk like
Alekhine or Stoltz, he did have one too many now and then. On
one such occasion, at his own chess club in New York City, he
gave a speech at a meeting to honor Oscar Chajes, who had died in
1928. Chajes, who was born under the Austrian monarchy but lived
in New York and was a member of the Marshall club, had one of
the most often mispronounced names in chess history. It is
correctly pronounced KHAH-yes (a form of the Hebrew word for
"life"). R‚ti reported how amusing it was at the Karlsbad
tournament of 1923 to hear the wild variety of attempts to get the
name right. I had noticed the same thing when Chajes once visited
Vienna. It seemed to be especially difficult for English-speakers.
On that day at the Marshall club, Marshall concluded his speech by
saying: "I think it is good that the man died, because we couldn't
pronounce his name anyway."

Pronunciation never bothered Marshall. He simply used English
pronunciation when attempting to use his broken French or
German, sometimes with funny results. At the Moscow tournament
of 1925, when his game against Grnfeld had reached a crucial
stage, he told me in his own special form of German that he was
two pawns down for a "huge little attack." ("kolossal wenig Angriff").

Marshall's career as a participant in international tournaments,
most of them in Europe, ended in LiŠge 1930, where he did poorly.
After that he played in Europe only as head of the United States
team at the Olympiads in Prague 1931, Folkestone 1933, Warsaw
1935, and Stockholm 1937. On his way home from Stockholm he
gave an exhibition in Amsterdam, and that was our last meeting.
He had aged greatly in the six years since I had last seen him, but
he still played well and he impressed me by expressing his
admiration for a player who had just defeated him.

By the time I moved to New York, Frank J. Marshall, born August
10, 1877, was no longer alive. On November 9, 1944, while in
New Jersey getting some provisions what were hard to get in New
York during the war, he suffered a heart attack and collapsed on
the street. A policeman brought Mrs. Marshall the news.

She continued to manage the Marshall Chess Club with the help of
her son Frankie, and when Frankie died at the age of about fifty,
she continued alone. I became better acquainted with her after I
settled in New York and was named secretary of the Manhattan
Chess Club. Caroline Marshall was no longer young, of course, and
toward the end of the 1960s her deteriorating health forced her to
retire. She died in 1971, having reached her mid-eighties.