Paul Morphy: The Pride and Sorrow of Chess

by David Lawson

  Oddly, neither Deacon nor Staunton ever mentioned or questioned the authenticity of the Evans game published as a Morphy–Deacon game, although Morphy and Rivière both agreed the latter had played it with Deacon. In this letter of May 9, 1860, Deacon said, “These games were played exactly as they were published in the Illustrated London News.”

  Staunton confined himself to a slashing and abusive attack on Morphy in the Illustrated London News of March 31, 1860 (see Appendix), the language of which Morphy would not have known how to cope with:

  The [Morphy–Deacon] games were published, accompanied by annotations from the pen of the English player, Mr. Deacon, in our paper of December 17, 1859. Upon their reaching America, Mr. Morphy flatly denied that he had ever played a single game with Mr. Deacon. This denial might be pardoned, if expressed in gentlemanly terms on the ground that the American had forgotten, among battles with so many eminent opponents, an encounter with one so little known. But Mr. Morphy, not content with denying ever having played with Mr. Deacon, condescends to depreciate his skill, and asserts, in the most offensive manner, that “some one has been guilty of deliberate falsehood. . . .”

  Now, apart from the incredible stupidity and grossness of such a charge, what is most remarkable in the affair (giving Mr. Morphy credit for really having forgotten his play with Mr. Deacon) is the surpassing vanity of that gentleman. . . . If there has been any “deliberate falsehood” in the matter, it originated on the other side of the Atlantic.

  Such abusive terms as “offensive manner,” “incredible stupidity,” “grossness,” “surpassing vanity,” and “deliberate falsehood,” do not seem to apply to Morphy, nor does the bold statement that he did not remember having played two games with Mr. Deacon eight months before and accusing him of “deliberate falsehood.”

  Deacon said in his letter of May 9 that “Col. Deacon is now in Westmoreland, but I will write to him, by to-day’s post, and he will give you his corroboration of these circumstances.” But this corroboration was a long time coming; only after being pressed by the chess editor of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, who appears to have been sympathetic to Staunton and Deacon, did Colonel Deacon finally write:

  4, Edwards-square, Kensington, London,

  Jan. 14, 1861

  Dear Sirs,—

  In reply to your note of December 17, accept my sincere acknowledgment for your fair and manly defense of my cousin, which we warmly appreciate; but the controversy to which you refer has been conducted by a portion of the American press in a manner which really precludes my entering into it—indeed, in the whole course of my life I have never known anything so outrageous and dastardly as the manner in which we have been attacked. Under different circumstances however, I should have been happy to have given you my testimony, which would have fully borne out the statement sent to you some time ago by Mr. Fred Deacon; and I must add, from the gentlemanly way in which you have put the case, I regret that, for the reason I have mentioned, I cannot give you a more complete answer.

  I am, dear Sirs, Yours truly

  Chas. Deacon

  The letter seems peculiarly evasive. Certainly it is not an outright statement that the colonel had accompanied Frederick Deacon to the British Hotel and had there witnessed Mr. Morphy playing chess with Mr.Deacon. He says that “under different circumstances” he would have given supporting testimony. Yet if there was unjust criticism, then one would imagine there to be all the more reason for his “testimony which would have fully borne out the statement” of Frederick Deacon.

  Staunton published Colonel Deacon’s letter of January 14, 1861, in his chess column of March 30, 1861 (see Appendix), together with comments on the behavior of Morphy and others. For him there was no shadow of a doubt about the authenticity of the Morphy–Deacon games. As he noted in that column:

  Mr. Deacon stated in writing [May 9, letter] that the disputed games were played, on a certain day named, at the British Hotel in Cockspur-street, where Mr. Morphy then resided, in the presence of Colonel Charles Deacon. Among gentlemen this explanation would, of course, have been conclusive.

  If one is to take Mr. Staunton literally, it should not have been necessary for Mr. Deacon to have named a date, place, or witness, for among gentlemen, his word should have been sufficient without details, and for Mr. Staunton and the Philadelphia Evening Bulleti n it was sufficient.

  Three years later there appeared in the chess column of Philadelphia’s Forney’s War Press on April 27, 1864, a long letter reprinted from the Syracuse Daily Journal, to which it had been sent by an American in London:

  London, Jan. 26, 1864

  I called at the St. James Club Rooms to see Lowenthal, and while there was introduced to a person whose name I failed to catch. From his appearance and talk I very soon concluded that he was a very small nobody whose constant effort was to appear a very great somebody . . . when—imagine my sensation! someone addressed him as Mr. Deacon! . . . Deacon is rather laughed at than disliked. Whenever his name is mentioned, a smile comes up and somebody is pretty sure to say, “poor Deacon.”

  A person who dislikes the bottom of Morphy’s character, told me that there could, nevertheless, be no doubt that Deacon never played the disputed games with Mr. Morphy. Not satisfied with his success in his first effort at forging games, Deacon made a second display of his talents in the same direction. He published a number of games purporting to have been played between himself and Steinitz.

  The latter declares that these games were never played! A letter of repudiation was written for publication by Steinitz; but Lowenthal prevailed upon him to suppress it. Steinitz was a poor man, and a foreigner, and Lowenthal told him that he could not afford to make enemies; and that the cause of chess was injured by the constant controversies and bad deeds of chess-players. Another of Deacon’s misdeeds was to send old problems—or at least, one old problem—to compete for the prizes offered in connection with the Congress of 1862.

  The following note was added to the above letter by Forney: “There can be little question as to the veracity of the writer, who is a gentleman long and favorably known in the American Chess community.”

  The best proof of the veracity of the above letter was given by Steinitz himself some twenty years later, during a visit to New Orleans in 1883. His words were still later recorded in the New Orleans Times-Democrat of September 17, 1911:

  When the Deacon games came up for discussion—“What— Deacon win those parties?” broke in the great Bohemian master. “Nonsense! he has claimed to have won just such a game from me, though I never played any such with him.” And then he went on to explain that Deacon had a habit of getting master players to try out certain variations of particular openings with him, testing and re-testing sub-variations innumerable, taking back moves ad lib, and the like; and then lo and behold! reproducing some one line of play that had turned in favor of his side of the board as a game won from his distinguished adversary! And Steinitz thumped his stick on the pavement and chuckled grimly, as he imparted the data in relation to the even then somewhat ancient controversy.

  Steinitz told of his Deacon experience in greater detail in his International Chess Magazine of September 1891:

  I judge that Deacon played on Morphy a trick similar to the one which he practiced upon myself in the following manner. Shortly after I had played my match with him in 1863 he invited my attention on the one occasion when we were both alone in the rooms of the London Chess Club to a new move which he said he had invented in one of the openings. At that time a novelty in the openings was considered quite a revelation, and as I knew little of the books I got interested and consented at his request to examine the variation with him. . . .

  In the skittle analysis which followed I demolished his suggested novelty in several main lines of play as well as in subvariations which he tried after taking moves back. But at last, probably owing to some thoughtless move which I had adopted in the investigation, he got hold of a better position and then he began t
o move slowly. But when I wanted to amend my previous play as he had done repeatedly before, he begged of me to go on[,] on the plea that he believed that he would construct a fine position from that point for analytical purposes or perhaps for a problem (for he was also a composer). He then deliberated on each move as if it were a match game, and if anyone had come into the room he must have thought we were playing a real hard fight. After some more moves the position resolved itself into an ending in which he had a decisive advantage and he agreed ultimately not to go further.

  On another occasion shortly after that[,] another opening was made the subject of one experiment and the same story almost exactly repeated itself. Great was, however, my surprise when about six months later I saw two games published which were alleged to have been played between Deacon and myself in the Dutch Chess journal Sissa. They comprised the opening moves in the two “novelties” which were the subject of our investigation, but almost all the rest (and I am certain about the concluding six or eight moves on each side) was entirely a new and imaginary fabrication. . . .

  But some time afterward it also came out that Deacon had played similar tricks on Signor Dubois and also to Mr. Blackburne and the Rev. J. Owen, and especially the latter gentleman threatened to take action against Deacon at the St. George’s Chess Club, of which both were members. Deacon then disappeared and retreated to his Belgian refuge. He was never seen in London again, and about a year afterward his death was announced. Judging from that[,] I have no doubt that Morphy was entrapped to answer some analytical questions and to investigate some suggestions of Deacon over the board. What Colonel Deacon saw was nothing more than experimenting, in the course of which Morphy most probably had given back moves, as I did subsequently.

  We now come to the final stage of the Morphy–Deacon affair. As Sergeant says in the Preface to his Morphy Gleanings on the question of the genuineness of the “Evans” game given on page 65 as a Morphy game, it has been “for very many years relegated to the category of spurious.” The Evans game Staunton printed lost all credibility as a Morphy game when Morphy and Rivière both agreed it belonged to the latter. There has never been any serious consideration of the other game Staunton published, beyond Deacon’s “ipse dixit” (“he himself said so”), as London’s July Chess World of 1868 points out:

  Why did not Mr. Deacon hand about among his friends the game he won of Morphy at the time it was played? Or, if he did, why did he not adduce their testimony? I understand that nobody that has played with Mr. Deacon is likely to forget him, and Morphy had an extraordinary power of recollecting trains of play; so, if he was beaten by Mr. Deacon, it is impossible that he could have forgotten either the fact or the games.

  In Part II, Section 6 of Morphy Gleanings, Sergeant discusses an attempt made by B. Goulding Brown to make a case for Deacon in the matter of the Evans game. Sergeant nevertheless concludes that

  it is difficult to get over the statement in the American Chess Magazine [ Chess Monthly] of May 1860: “We are authorized to state that the games in question are forgeries, and that Mr. Morphy never played any games whatever with Mr. Deacon.” It was pointed out in the New Orleans Times-Democrat of September 16 [September 17], 1911, that neither Staunton nor Deacon ever seems to have challenged Morphy’s call upon Arnous de Riviere as his witness in the matter.

  In the same volume, Sergeant states that Brown said Deacon “gave evidence very fully” when asked for it, providing a date, place, and a witness. But Brown does not mention that Morphy named two reliable witnesses, Rivière and Sybrandt, who would testify that no such meeting ever took place. Nevertheless, Brown is very satisfied with Deacon’s “evidence.” It would seem from Brown’s account of the Morphy–Deacon controversy that he stretched the circumstances of the case in favor of Deacon and Staunton, just as he had slanted the case in Staunton’s favor in the earlier Morphy–Staunton controversy (see Chapter 11).

  Again, in Morphy’s Gleanings, Sergeant discusses the manner in which Brown arrived at his seemingly untenable position in defense of Deacon in this matter:

  Now comes [as Brown says] de Riviere’s contribution to this mystery. An Evans Gambit was published in The Illustrated London News, February 18th, 1860, as won by de Riviere against Deacon, but de Riviere believed, first, that he had never played this game, and, secondly, that he was the winner of the alleged Morphy–Deacon Evans. The games were the same up to White’s ninth move, and it was de Riviere’s opinion that this similarity had caused Deacon to confuse them, and to publish de Riviere’s win as Morphy’s, and Morphy’s win as de Riviere’s.

  Brown relies greatly upon Rivière, not only on account of Rivière’s opinion as reported by Staunton, but also because of the known friendship between Rivière and Morphy. Brown makes the point that Rivière’s interpretation

  shows that a witness favorable to Morphy, and in fact the European chess player whom Morphy most liked[,] believed in the bonafides of Deacon, at any rate to the extent of accepting the fact that Morphy had beaten him.

  It is true enough that Rivière was the European chess player whom Morphy liked most. But, if quoted correctly by Staunton, Rivière expressed an opinion about an error Deacon might have made in choosing as a Morphy game the one he (Rivière) had played with Morphy, before he (Rivière) knew that Morphy had categorically denied having ever played a game with Deacon and had recognized the Evans game as one Rivière himself had shown him (Morphy) as a game he had won from Deacon.

  Rivière could not know that Morphy had never played with Deacon in London before going to Paris. Deacon did not mention the April 1859 date of the game until months later, May 9, 1860. It is not known when Rivière played with Deacon but it has to have been before September 1858, for Rivière lived in Paris and was there when Morphy arrived, and from then on he was with Morphy until the latter left London in April 1859. Rivière’s retention of such matters was not equal to Morphy’s. About these games he expresses an opinion. It is quite probable that the game Staunton printed on February 18 as a Rivière–Deacon game was his also, played perhaps two or more years before. But Rivière had reason to remember the December 17 game as he had shown it to (and talked about it with) Morphy. And so, in writing to Staunton he offered a possible explanation for the confusion created by Deacon. Deacon himself never admitted being confused over the games. In fact, in his letter, as late as May 9, he said, “These games were played exactly as they were published in the London Illustrated News.” And it may be noted that nowhere in Edge’s book, or elsewhere in the chess press going back to 1857, is there mention of Deacon’s name.

  Brown classed Morphy with those chess players who do not remember about the games they lose. He says:

  If he (Morphy) were certain that he had never won (played) this (Evans) game against Deacon, it may have been easier for him to think that he had never lost the King’s Gambit, for it was a commonplace of those times that chess-players were notoriously forgetful of the games they lost.

  So Morphy did not remember playing the King’s Gambit game because he had lost it, Brown suggests. It is evident that Brown was satisfied that Morphy played two games with Deacon, winning the first and losing the second, as Deacon said. He then wished to seal the case against Morphy by mentioning “strong language,” indicating a mental weakness as the explanation for Morphy’s repudiation. The only “strong language” Morphy used was that in his letter to Fuller of January 19, 1860, when he declared, “someone has been guilty of deliberate falsehood.”

  Perhaps Brown thought that Morphy had lost his grip on the game (losing to Deacon) and things in general because he knew of the mental disturbance that began to emerge about fifteen years later in Morphy’s life. Obviously no one had reason to think of it at the time, but Brown was delving into the matter some seventy-five years later.

  We only need quote Charles A. Gilberg to deny Brown’s intimation that Morphy was suffering from a mental debility prior to and during the Deacon controversy. Gilberg, in an article on Morphy for T
he Fifth American Chess Congress book, published in 1881, mentions that in 1865 he was working closely with Morphy almost daily for several weeks, and “it would then have been a freak of the maddest folly to have discredited his complete possession and control of that finely balanced intellectual organism which six years before had carried him triumphantly through his severest ordeals.”

  In light of the new evidence and information that we now have on the so-called Morphy–Deacon games, it would seem that they should remain, in the words of Philip W. Sergeant, “in the category of the spurious.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Odds Before Even

  Morphy was in New Orleans during the first few months of the Deacon controversy, which began after he had enjoyed but one month’s rest and relaxation, during which time he is not known to have played any chess in New Orleans or even to have visited the New Orleans Chess Club (though he may have). And except in connection with the Deacon matter, his name rarely appeared in the New Orleans Sunday Delta until August, when it was announced that he was leaving for New York. On August 4, undoubtedly to his great relief, his Ledger contract came to an end.

  But Morphy continued his game annotations for the Chess Monthly, a number of which had been prepared before January, including those for the newly discovered Philidor games. He was invited to attend the Western Chess Congress, to be held in St. Louis in April, but declined. In April, the American Chess Association canceled the chess congress to have been held in Philadelphia in 1860, considering, as the New Orleans Sunday Delta of April 15, 1860, states, that “it is inexpedient to convene the Congress this year,” and it was deferred until 1861. The Deacon affair had been a disturbing factor.

  Leaving New Orleans on August 1 by the New Orleans, Jackson & Northern Railroad, Morphy arrived in New York on August 4. During a stay in the city of about a week, he visited the New York Chess Club two or three times, but played no chess. He then visited Saratoga and Newport, spending altogether several weeks before returning to New York early in September.