Monthly Archives: January 2010

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Chess Queen

Born in Perm, Russia, and a chess player since the age of 5, Alexandra Kosteniuk became a Grandmaster at 14, and presently holds several titles. But it’s her website that sets her apart from your average Grandmaster. In addition to chess books, DVDs and souvenirs, she also offers images from her fashion photo shoots, described in lovely Russian English:

“The second fashion CD, “Fashion and More”, has surprising fashion photos featuring me, photographed by famous Paris fashion photographer Zhenia Minkovich, that will not leave you indifferent.”

Not indifferent indeed. Apparently there are people in the chess world who find her approach to be inappropriate, but she is intent on popularizing the game and telling the world that “Chess is cool!” Hail to thee, Alexandra.

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A Tale of One Polo Photo

On the face of it, it’s the trophy presentation at the 1929 Pacific Coast Open Championship, with the sweaty but pleased San Carlos Cardinals accepting accolades while a woman smiles under a cloche hat. Oh, but the history in this photo.

On the left, polo coat open and eyes on the prize, stands George Gordon Moore, the San Carlos patron, a man whose 20,000 acre estate outside Carmel gave the team its name. Born in Canada, Moore made a bundle in railroads, mining, and munitions on the eve of World War I. In 1912, he hosted a dinner in London at the Ritz where the flower arrangements alone cost $2,000.

After buying his California ranch in 1923, he built a polo field, and a stable in the shape of a horseshoe. He stocked the surrounding forests with wild Russian boar for the hunting pleasure of his guests; he stocked his 37-room “La Casa Grande” with champagne, bourbon, and starlets, up to and including an entire chorus line. It has been said that Moore, with his wealth and desire to impress, was the inspiration for Jay Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

Next, looking directly at the camera, is W. Averill Harriman; he inherited $100 million from his father, a railroad baron, and had one of the best strings of ponies in polo. After Yale and a successful business career, he served as U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Governor of New York, and U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union and Great Britain. In polo, he was on the winning U.S. Open teams in 1925 and ’27. Playing against Argentina in the Cup of the Americas in 1928, he scored 12 goals in three games, two more than teammate Tommy Hitchcock.

On the other side of the trophy, Tommy Hitchcock is all buttoned up. In his day, he was simply the best, and his presence on the San Carlos team speaks volumes about the patron’s desire to win. Of him, one writer said, “No one who has not seen a ten-goal player play fifteen-goal polo can imagine the stark power of this youth.” In a literary coincidence, Hitchcock was most probably the model for polo-playing Tom Buchanan in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

All the way to the right is William “Willie” Tevis, a Californian who had played on teams with Moore before. Tevis, whose grandfather was a founder of the Pony Express, lived for horses; his ranch had 18 stables, with stalls for 8 horses in each.

And then, the lady at the center: Lady Alexandra Metcalfe, daughter of Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India. I don’t know what she was doing in California at this time — she had been in Cowdray Park for polo earlier in the year — but she seems to have turned up everywhere in the world at least once.

Known as “Baba” to her father’s Indian servants, and to her friends ever after, she was a remarkable woman. She was said to be lovely, if somewhat imperious like her father. Although romanced by royals, she married Edward Dudley “Fruity” Metcalfe, the best friend of Edward VIII, the king who left his throne and became the Duke of Windsor so that he could marry Wallis Warfield Simpson, a twice-divorced American. Not one to desert a friend, Fruity served as the Duke’s Best Man at his wedding in exile. (In 1940, Fruity was rewarded for his loyalty by being abandoned when the Duke and Duchess fled Paris, and left to find his own way home as the German army advanced.)

Baba’s claim to popular fame, however, was as an unapologetic serial adulterer. She was rumored to have had affairs with Douglas Fairbanks and Jock Whitney, a line of wealthy and influential Englishman, including England’s domestic Facist Oswald Mosley, her late sister’s husband, and an imported Facist, Benito Grandi, Mussolini’s ambassador to England, which for a time earned her the nickname “Baba Blackshirt.” Nor did it help that she once had tea with Joseph Goebbels, Reichsminister of Propaganda for Adolph Hitler.

But then, later in life she had tea with the Dalai Lama. For 40 years, she worked unpaid for the Save the Children Fund. She made regular visits to Tibet, to Saigon during the Vietnam war, and spent her 80th birthday in Cambodia, looking at thousands of skulls left by the Khymer Rouge.

One week before her death in 1995, she lunched in London with the woman who was to write her obituary for The Independent. Sarah Bradford wrote, “with the temperature near the nineties, Baba was as cool, beautiful and immaculately dressed as ever. The term grande dame might have been invented for her.”

One wonders what thoughts prompted her smile on the day of the Pacific Coast Open, as the photographer tripped the shutter.

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In the Library

“There in my cool little corner of the stacks, surrounded by books and periodicals I but dimly understood, I had felt connected to something as large and wondrous as the planet itself. With no teacher to direct my reading or to tell me in advance what to make of it, there was the off chance that I would go in a new direction. I often chose books by smell and was often rewarded. Sometimes I would look inside the back cover, where I would find a borrowers’ history, due dates stamped in purple ink. Volumes that had not been checked out in twenty or thirty years held a special interest for me. I felt like I was in direct communication with the book’s lonely author, that I would not have to raise my voice to be heard above the clamor of recent due dates.”

– Richard Russo in The Risk Pool (1986) talking about the Mohawk Free Library, with thanks to Laurie and Margaret

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“Why?” Indeed

Prompted by Pat Robertson’s assertion that a 1791 voodoo ceremony in Haiti was the cause of this week’s earthquake, I am reminded of San Francisco preachers who, after the 1906 earthquake and fire, proclaimed the disaster to be God’s punishment. And I recall writer Charles Kellogg Field who, noticing that a Jackson Street warehouse filled with whiskey was untouched, wrote:

If, as they say, God spanked the town
For being over-frisky,
Why did He burn His churches down
And spare Hotaling’s whiskey?

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The Spreckels Cup

The sport of polo’s Spreckels Cup has a deliciously confusing history, a tangle to delight those who take pleasure in unraveling the strands.

:: The Spreckels ::

John D. Spreckels (1853-1926)

Adolph B. Spreckels (1857-1924)

We begin with the namesakes: John D. Spreckels and Adolph B. Spreckels, sons of California sugar baron Claus Spreckels (1823-1908). Working together, John and Adolph invested in the Oceanic Steamship Company, J.D. & A.B. Spreckels Securities, the Southern California Water Company, the San Diego and Southeastern Railway Company, the San Diego Union and San Diego Tribune, the First National Bank of San Diego, the Bank of Coronado, Coronado Water Company, the Hotel del Coronado, the Coronado Country Club, and many other enterprises.

John and Adolph enjoyed some success and thus were at liberty to indulge their sporting interests.

:: The Cups ::

In 1895, John commissioned the first John D. Spreckels Cup, for water polo. Made by Shreve & Co. in San Francisco, the Cup, bearing a water polo scene, was given to the California Swimming and Polo Club as a challenge cup.

Perhaps inspired by his sibling, Adolph offered a silver cup at the San Francisco Horse Show of 1895, and in 1896, a silver plate for best performance by an amateur driving a four-in-hand through obstacles.

In 1897, Adolph offered a towering silver trophy to the winner of the A.B. Spreckels Cup, a race for thoroughbred 3-year-olds at the Ingleside race track in San Francisco.

In March of 1900, Adolph offered a “president’s vase” for best bull terrier at the San Francisco Kennel Club Show, and in April of 1902, he provided a “president’s cup” for the best greyhound, won, interestingly, by a pooch named Rubber Ankles.

In December of 1902, John put up the cups for an AAU boxing event to be held at the Olympic Athletic Club in San Francisco, and in January of 1906, he awarded the John D. Spreckels Cup, for large touring cars, to Charles Hawkins and his White steamer, after a Los Angeles-to-Coronado endurance run.

:: Polo ::

The first John D. Spreckels Cup in polo was a solid silver punchbowl offered at the Coronado Country Club in 1906. Won by Burlingame in 1906, 1907 and 1908, the cup became the property of the Burlingame club and was replaced in 1909 by a new, more traditional “loving cup,” again in silver, on a dark base, with two handles sporting horse heads. The cup read, “Polo Challenge Trophy, presented by John D. Spreckels.” It was known variously as “The California Challenge Trophy,” “The Coronado Country Club Trophy” and as — no surprise — “The John D. Spreckels Cup.”

Also in 1909, Coronado offered another trophy, to attract national and international competitors to California. Its inscription read, “All America Championship Polo Trophy, Presented by Members & Friends of the Coronado Country Club, Coronado Beach, California. Open to Recognized Teams Throughout the World. In Memory of John D. Spreckels and Adolph B. Spreckels and of Their Great Interest in the Establishment of Polo on the Pacific Coast.”

This trophy could only be awarded if at least two teams from outside of California were competing. It was known as “The All America Trophy,” “The International Challenge Trophy,” “The Pacific Coast All American Trophy” and eventually the “Pacific Coast Open Championship Trophy.” Its present home is at the Santa Barbara Polo Club. On occasion, it has been identified as the Spreckels Cup, but this way madness lies. The trophy is identified with the Spreckels family, but it is not the Spreckels Cup.

To sow a bit more confusion, in March of 1907, Adolph offered the A.B. Spreckels Challenge Cup to the winning polo pony racing over a mile and one quarter at Coronado. (I do not know if the actual trophy was Adolph’s 1897 thoroughbred racing cup being repurposed, or a new trophy made specifically for polo pony racing.)

:: The Cups Runneth Over ::

The Spreckels would keep the silversmiths busy for years to come. In 1910, yachting enthusiasts competed at the San Francisco Yacht Club for three Spreckels Cups, one for each class of boat.

In 1930, the A. B. Spreckels Golf Cup, shown above, was played for at Coronado Country Club. The trophy was sterling silver, made by Reed and Barton.

In July of 1935, Dorothy (Spreckels) Dupuy sprang for a trophy named for her late father, A.B. Spreckels. Shown above, dominating a table on the banks of the Seine, the trophy was for motorboat racing. The first race was held in Paris and the winner was Jean Dupuy, Dorothy’s husband.

:: Today’s Spreckels Cups ::

In the present day, there are two Spreckels Cups in play, both in San Diego.

Since 1988, the 1909 John D. Spreckels Cup, from Coronado, has been played for annually at the San Diego Polo Club. The cup spends most of the year in the art collection of the California Thoroughbred Foundation (CTF), having made its way there from the estate of legendary horseman Carleton F. Burke, whose Midwick polo team was the first to win the cup three times (in 1921, ’24 and ’25). The CTF loans the Spreckels Cup to the club each September, and it’s a beauty.

The Tri Tech team holds aloft the Spreckels Cup in October, 2009, at the San Diego Polo Club. Photo by Gina McGalliard.

Also, golfers at the Coronado Women’s Golf Club compete for a Spreckels Cup each year, keeping the Spreckels name alive on the links.

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My virtual thanks to Google, the New York Times, the California Digital Newspaper Collection, and my real thanks to Heather Chronert at the San Diego Polo Club.

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Bowling in Polo

“The finals for the Spreckels challenge cup took place this afternoon between the Riverside B team and the Burlingame team. It was a walkover for the latter, who scored twelve goals to nothing, winning the $500 cup for the third successive time.

“The Riversides did not do as well on their last appearance, but Mr. Jenkinson made a record which beat Mr. Redmayne’s previous best. He came down the side lines and knocked down seven people who did not know enough to get out of the way. He nearly made a strike, because he only just missed two others, and he had no time to make a spare on account of the ball being taken to a different part of the field.”

– From “Riverside B’s Lose $500 Cup” by G.L. Waring in the Los Angeles Herald, March 21, 1908