Paul Morphy the Pride and Sorrow of Chess 

Paul Morphy The Pride and Sorrow of Chess Paul Morphy The Pride and Sorrow of Chess David Lawson edited by Thomas Aiello University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press 2010 Cover credits: background courtesy iStockphoto.com; Morphy pho- tography (front cover) by Matthew Brady, courtesy Dale Brandreth and www.chessbookstore.com; Morphy engraving (rear cover) by D. J. Pound, courtesy Dale Brandreth and www.chessbookstore.com. All uncredited images within this volume are reproduced from the origi- nal edition of Paul Morphy: The Pride and Sorrow of Chess. University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press P.O. Box 40831 Lafayette, LA 70504-0831 http://ulpress.org © 2010 by University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press All rights reserved. Printed on acid-free paper ISBN 13: 978-1-887366-97-7 ISBN 10: 1-887366-97-0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lawson, David. Paul Morphy : the pride and sorrow of chess / David Lawson, edited by Thomas Aiello. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-887366-97-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-887366-97-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Morphy, Paul Charles, 1837-1884. 2. Chess players--Louisiana--Biogra- phy. I. Aiello, Thomas, 1977- II. Title. GV1439.M7L36 2010 794.1092--dc22 [B] 2010023091 CONTENTS Acknowledgments ...........................................................vii Editor’s Introduction ........................................................ ix A Note on the Text ..........................................................xix Author’s Introduction ................................................ xxvii Lawson Photo Gallery ............................. after page xxiii CHAPTER 1: The New World Welcomes ............................................. 1 CHAPTER 2: Three Encounters and a Problem .................................. 9 CHAPTER 3: A Surprise Encounter .....................................................21 CHAPTER 4: From School to the Mississippi ....................................33 CHAPTER 5: The National Chess Congress ......................................49 CHAPTER 6: First Prize and Congress Aftermath ...........................65 CHAPTER 7: The Challenge ..................................................................81 CHAPTER 8: London and Lowenthal ..................................................91 CHAPTER 9: Staunton and Stakes .....................................................107 CHAPTER 10: Harrwitz and “Letters of Gold” .................................125 CHAPTER 11: The Staunton Miscarriage ..........................................135 CHAPTER 12: La Régence and Society ...............................................157 CHAPTER 13: “Morphy Won’t Let Me” ..............................................165 Morphy Image Gallery ...........................after page 184 CHAPTER 14: “The World Is His Fatherland” ..................................199 CHAPTER 15: Farewell to England ..................................................... 207 CHAPTER 16: Testimonials and the Queen’s Knight ......................217 CHAPTER 17: Morphy and the Ledger ................................................241 CHAPTER 18: The Deacon Games ......................................................253 CHAPTER 19: Odds Before Even ........................................................ 269 CHAPTER 20: Kolisch, Secession, and Cuba .....................................275 CHAPTER 21: Paris and Petroff ........................................................... 285 CHAPTER 22: Paul Morphy, Attorney at Law ...................................293 CHAPTER 23: Paris, Frustration, and Obsessions ...........................299 CHAPTER 24: Psychoanalysts and Paul Morphy .............................313 CHAPTER 25: The Pride and Sorrow of Chess .................................321 CHAPTER 26: Trophies and Authenticity ..........................................329 Appendix ..........................................................................341 Author’s Bibliography ....................................................281 Editor’s Annotated Bibliography ................................385 Index ..................................................................................391 AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is with appreciation and pleasure that acknowledgment is made for help- fulness with material for this biography by Dale Brandreth, G. H. Diggle, Robert Sinnott, and Mrs. Alice N. Loranth, head of the John G. White Department of the Cleveland Public Library. I wish particularly to express gratitude for the suggestions and generous help of James J. Barrett, with special reference to the selection, preparation, and proofreading of the games. And to my wife, Rosalind, I owe much for help and patience in the preparation of the material for this biography of Paul Morphy. This is the culmination of some years of trial for her, what with the time I have spent engrossed with my Morphy material and in the search for more. I may add, her help in the reading and correcting of the manuscript has been invaluable. EDITOR’S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The editor would like to thank Dale Brandreth and Edward Winter for their help and advice. Both were incredibly kind and patient, answering a barrage of questions with timely grace. This project could not have come about without their help. The U. S. Copyright Office was also incredibly helpful, answering a landslide of repetitious, elementary questions without frustration or insults. (Or, perhaps, answerers dutifully kept their frustration and insults to themselves. That, in itself, deserves the questioner’s gratitude.) Karen Kukil of the Smith College Special Collections library was fundamentally helpful in the development of Lawson’s biographical material, as was noted Lola Ridge scholar Elaine Sproat. Both of them vol- unteered invaluable advice and information. Finally, Jennifer Ritter provided interest, advice, and support when the editor needed it most. vii EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION In 1846, Paul Morphy became a legitimate child prodigy. In 1857, he became the United States chess champion. In 1875, he went crazy. Such are the plot points that common biographical sketches use to trace the portrait of an otherwise unassuming New Orleans lawyer. But the outlines of Morphy’s rise to fame and his descent into madness miss the marrow that provides the bulk and heft of such a skeletal presentation. He was a wealthy urbanite with an overbearing, overprotective mother. He was a prisoner to the expectations of a family name in a place, Louisi- ana, where family names still provided the scope of both initial possibility and later reputation. He was a southerner in an age of Civil War (and might very well have been a Confederate spy). He was a propitious, quiet loner who was thrust into the spotlight of fame, even as he fought it at every turn. And he was, finally, a global phenomenon who usually saw himself as nothing more than a Louisiana gentleman. Such are the plot points that any armchair psychologist could use to trace a crucible of frustration and discontent. There are places in Morphy’s biography that remain enigmatic, and most biographical treatments of the chess champion pick and choose from various elements of the dominant themes of his life. All treatments of Mor- phy published after 1976, however, have one commonality that binds each through varied arguments and emphases—David Lawson’s Paul Morphy: The Pride and Sorrow of Chess. As William Caverlee has noted, the book “remains the chief text for Morphy devotees.”1 The breadth of Lawson’s research and the care with which he applies his analysis present the fullest possible portrait of the nineteenth-century’s most celebrated chess player. Paul Morphy was born in June 1837 to a prominent New Orleans family. He learned to play chess by watching his relatives, all chess enthusiasts, play recreationally. It was in these formative stages that Morphy began practicing what would become his trademark strategy, early and rapid development. As a child, he played and defeated the American general and chess player Winfield Scott, providing him with his first measure of celeb- rity. He also defeated European chess master Eugène Rousseau, as well as Johann Lowenthal. But his years at Spring Hill College provide Lawson and his readers the first real inkling that Morphy’s uniqueness went be- ix x Editor’s Introduction yond his preternatural chess ability. Morphy abandoned chess during his college days, just as he would abandon it after his European conquest. As his friend Charles Maurian noted, Morphy was never so passionately fond, so inordinately devot- ed to chess as is generally believed. An intimate acquaintance and long observation enables us to state this positively. His only devotion to the game, if it may be so termed, lay in his ambition to meet and to defeat the best players and great masters of this country and of Europe. He felt his enormous strength, and never for a moment doubted the outcome. Indeed, before his first departure for Europe he privately and modestly, yet with per- fect confidence, predicted to us his certain success, and when he returned he expressed the conviction that he had played poorly, rashly; that none of his opponents should have done so well as they did against him. But, this one ambition satisfied, he appeared to have lost nearly all interest in the game. He was pushed in his early days by his Uncle Ernest Morphy, who rushed his young nephew into matches and publicized his successes. At the same time, his parents seemed reticent to allow

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