Thomas Jefferson Read Philidor

I cropped out most of the parlor setting to highlight the chess set, so click through to the linked Flickr page to see the original photo. (NB: Tough luck that the pieces are set up incorrectly and the position is artificial.)

Play Chess - Thomas Jefferson's Monticello © Flickr user Geoff Livingston under Creative Commons.

The page Chess | Thomas Jefferson's Monticello (monticello.org) says,

Chess was one of Jefferson's favorite games. The following are references to chess in Jefferson's and his family's papers compiled by Monticello researchers.

Here is a selection of the most interesting of those references.

1801 December 4. (Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph). "I will pray you at the same time to send me Philidor on chess, which you will find in the book room, 2d. press on the left from the door of the entrance: to be wrapped in strong paper also."

1818 December 4. "When Dr. Franklin went to France on his revolutionary mission, his eminence as a philosopher, his venerable appearance, and the cause on which he was sent, rendered him extremely popular. For all ranks and conditions of men there, entered warmly into the American interest. He was therefore feasted and invited to all the court parties. At these he sometimes met the old Duchess of Bourbon, who being a chess player of about his force, they very generally played together. Happening once to put her king into prise, the Doctor took it. 'Ah,' says she, 'we do not take kings so.' 'We do in America,' says the Doctor. "At one of these parties, the emperor Joseph II, then at Paris, incog. under the title of Count Falkenstein, was overlooking the game, in silence, while the company was engaged in animated conversations on the American question. 'How happens it M. le Compte,' said the Duchess, 'that while we all feel so much interest in the cause of the Americans, you say nothing for them?' 'I am a king by trade,' said he."

c.1853. (Ellen Wayles Randolph Coolidge). "So he was, in his youth, a very good chess-player. There were not among his associates, many who could get the better of him. I have heard him speak of 'four hour games' with Mr. Madison. Yet I have heard him say that when, on his arrival in Paris, he was introduced into a Chess Club, he was beaten at once, and that so rapidly and signally that he gave up all competition. He felt that there was no disputing such a palm with men who passed several hours of every evening in playing chess."

c. 1853. (Ellen Wayles Randolph Coolidge). "My grandfather taught me to play chess, liked to play with me, and after our dinner, in summer time, he would have the chess board under the trees before the door, and we would have our game together. He had made, by his own carpenter and cabinet maker, John Hemmings, and painted by his own painter, Burwell, a small light table, divided in squares like a chess board and with a sort of tray or long box at two of the sides to hold the men and put them into as they were taken off the Board. It was a very nice, convenient little thing and purfectly answered the purpose for which it was intended. This was called one of Mr. Jefferson's contrivances."

For more about the chess set, see Chess Set (English) on the same site.