Eulogy for Victor Mathias in his own words 20 January 2012

20 November 2011

Dear Aaron,
           
            At her local bridge club a few years ago, Maureen made the acquaintance of a retired Anglican vicar and his wife.  The vicar, despite being retired, was in the habit of conducting two or three funerals a week - often for people whose lives he was unfamiliar with.  So, in advance of each ceremony, he would visit the bereaved family and make some notes about the deceased.  This struck me as very conscientious of him but the person who knew most about the deceased person was the deceased person themselves.  Their own story of their lives was never taken into account.

            I have recently been diagnosed as suffering from acute leukaemia.  It is not necessarily an immediate death sentence but it is a warning to me to “put my affairs in order”.  As you and I knew each other only when you were a child, I thought this short letter would sum up for you the facts of my life, whenever you come to need them.  Of course, you can simply file them away if you like.  But they may prove of use to you when the time comes to invoke my memory and carry out the necessary formalities at Edgwarebury Cemetery.
           
            I was born in Willesden Green.  At that time, my father ran a small timber firm in the East End, while my mother’s father ran a much larger company in the same trade.  This grandfather of mine, who died while I was in my infancy, had never had any sons.  After my birth, he told my father: “Now you’ll have someone to look after the business.”  Thus my fate was sealed long before I had any say in the matter.

            I was educated at Haberdashers’ Aske’s School where my story was that of so many “bright” kids in the neighbourhood.  At my Primary School, I’d been used to topping the class.  At Habs., I soon found I was a little fish in a big barrel.  Of the thirty boys in my Habs. First Form, three went on to earn entries in “Who’s Who”, two became world renowned professors of medicine, one became a Fellow of Christ Church, Oxford and a number of others entered teaching either as university dons or in secondary education.  My career, by contrast, was very modest.  I worked quietly for 43 years in my father’s timber-yard, until he died and I retired in the 1990s.  During all that time, I used to boast that our family firm employed only one person and we were grossly overstaffed.

            My own Further Education continued as an evening student at the City of London College (4 years), the London School of Economics (6 years) and Birkbeck College (4 years).  Until 5:30 in those days I was an office worker, from 6:00 onwards I was a student.

            One of the secrets of a happy and fulfilling life is to find what one’s best at and specialise in that as a labour of love.  I found that I had a talent for Italian, ending up with an Honours Degree in the language and several impressive looking diplomas awarded to me in Viareggio for a series of summer courses I attended there in the 1950s.  Later on, in London, I took up teaching Italian privately and had pupils who seemed to enjoy paying for my lessons over a period of many, many years.

            In the mid-1960s, Maureen and I met on the Committee of a Jewish cultural club named DELTA.  Maureen had her dentistry, I had my many other interests.  We married and settled down in Northwood for 38 years, moving to our present flat in Ruislip in 2007.  Maureen has been the finest wife anyone could wish for.  We have never been a talkative couple.  In fact, Maureen once said that what she most appreciated about being married to me was the “companionable silence”.  In later years, I have got into the habit of telling our friends we’ve discovered the secret of a happy marriage: “We seldom see each other!”

            No account of my life would be complete without an emphasis on the role played in it by chess.  I “discovered” the game in 1972 when Bobby Fischer hit the world’s headlines.  I took every opportunity to improve my chess skills.  Although I have never been more than a reasonably competent club player (I was known as the Drawing Master because so many of my games ended in draws), I began to specialise in playing chess very slowly i.e. by post, where there is no adrenaline rush but each individual has time to play the best chess he is capable of.  In 1990, after writing several successful articles for ordinary players, I took over a quarterly chess publication - POPULAR CHESS - which I have managed and edited as a one man operation for almost a quarter of a century.  My readers mainly live in the U.K. but the magazine also circulates on the Continent and in the United States.  In 1994, I began to run a national Postal Chess Club for ordinary players which has thrived for almost 20 years and has been a source of great pleasure both to me and to the many enthusiastic club members, most of whom live in remote parts of Britain where they cannot easily find an opponent to pit their chess wits against.  In 2009, BBC4 decided to make an hour long programme about chess.  They wanted to cover the game in all its aspects.  They asked people: “ Is there anyone left who still plays chess by correspondence?”  They were directed to me, as my POPULAR CHESS POSTAL CLUB was just the kind of club they were looking for.  I was interviewed at some length and was allowed during the programme to make the case for playing chess as slowly as possible. 

            You will note that I ran my first business as a one man operation (with my father’s assistance when it came to starting out).  I have also run my chess business on my own, although the production side of the magazine I have left to others.

            I have been industrious in those fields where I enjoyed the work (running a small business, teaching, writing and editing) but as for work of a more practical or “useful” nature I have followed a simple principle - viz. the greatest labour saving device yet invented is money…

            When my father died, I arranged for the following words to be put on his memorial stone: “He was his own man.”  I too have tried to be my own man.  I hope I’ve succeeded.