Paul Morphy: The Pride and Sorrow of Chess

by David Lawson

  Dr. Jones observed in “The Problem of Paul Morphy” that “the slightest acquaintance with chess shows one that it is a play-substitute for the art of war.” But he then goes considerably further, claiming that “the unconscious motive actuating the players is not the mere love of pugnacity characteristic of all competitive games, but the grimmer one of father-murder.”

  He then says, “In Morphy’s mind chess must have signified a fully adult activity,” and so it was with Labourdonnais, Steinitz, Capablanca, Alekhine, and other great players. However, while Morphy accepted the game as an adult recreational activity, he resolutely refused from the beginning to consider it as a profession.

  Dr. Jones also says, “He [Morphy] knew, as though it was a simple fact of nature, that he was bound to win [Capablanca thought the same until he met Alekhine] and he quietly acted on that knowledge.” And, Jones adds, “It is not surprising that endowed with such confidence in his powers his play was marked by a boldness and even audacity.” S. S. Boden seemed to agree, for he said from firsthand knowledge ( Chess Life-Pictures by G. A.MacDonnell) that Morphy had a truly gigantic capacity for chess that was never fully called forth, and that his play “was rather over hazardous.”

  Calling on Freud in this same article, Dr. Jones goes on to ask, was Morphy one of “those wrecked by success,” his meaning being best expressed by a line that he quotes from Browning’s “Pictor Ignotus”: “The thought of success grew frightful, t’was so wildly dear!” However, it does not appear that Morphy was ever driven by anxieties to succeed; as has been noted, Jones himself suggests Morphy “knew, as though it was a simple fact of nature, that he was bound to win.” Perhaps he was wrecked by success, but not in the sense Freud intended. It can be said that Morphy’s chess success was largely the cause of his failure in his professional career. *

  Morphy’s acclamation in the United States and abroad was such as would have turned the heads of most, and not only great chess players like Anderssen, St. Amant, Lowenthal and others, but also such as Oliver Wendell Holmes and Samuel F. B. Morse. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow made a trip to Boston to see him, as he records in his “Journal and Letters.” But instead of being elated by his success, Morphy expressed dissatisfaction. As Dr. Jones says, “On his return home, far from being flushed with pride, he remarked that he had not done so well as he should have.” There is no evidence that Morphy ever succumbed to adulation: instead he was apparently embarrassed and put out by it, for he retained the unassuming modesty of a gentleman throughout his life.

  Dr. Jones makes much of Morphy’s failure to get Staunton to meet him in a match, and without doubt Morphy was greatly disappointed by it. Of Staunton’s treatment of Morphy in his chess column, Dr. Jones remarks, “It is hardly an exaggeration to call it scurrilous.” It was not so much Staunton’s refusal to play as it was his “scurrilous” (to use Jones’s word) conduct over a period of months that seared Morphy’s soul and left a lasting scar that without doubt was a contributing factor to his later condition.

  Also, Dr. Jones overlooks the added significance of the refusal to Morphy of a diplomatic or other appointment during the Civil War, and Morphy’s inactivity for the Confederacy when every young Southerner was expected to do his “duty.” Had not these factors combined against him, together with others mentioned, Morphy might well have established a law practice of some kind.

  Morphy did not wait to be “in the safety of his New Orleans home” as Dr. Jones states, before challenging the world at Pawn and move odds, for this was announced while he was in Paris in 1859. In view of Morphy’s overwhelming success here and abroad against the masters of his time and the opinions of such masters as Anderssen, Lowenthal, St. Amant and others, it is difficult to understand how Dr. Jones could feel qualified to make the statement that Morphy was “probably overestimating his power” in so challenging the world. None accepted his challenge and, none accepting, Dr. Jones may well ask, “Did he withdraw from the world with the disdainful consolation?” As in Browning—“At least no merchant traffics in my heart.”

  The following statement by Dr. Slater pertinent to the above discussion appeared in the British Chess Magazine of February 1952. It is preceded by a short summation of Dr. Jones’s article, “The Problem of Paul Morphy.”

  Your columns, Sir, are obviously not the place for debate on matters of psychiatric theory. Nevertheless, your readers are entitled to know whether Dr. Jones’ views would be generally accepted in a circle of his colleagues. This is not so. Psychoanalysis is repudiated by a majority of psychiatrists, and, indeed, in the opinion of many of us is a body of dogma more than a scientific theory. To the non-analytic psychiatrists Morphy’s paranoia is an illness whose main cause is constitutional, determined by hereditary predisposition, and can be regarded as an accident of nature. In any case it did not come on till many years after his withdrawal from chess.

  The psychoanalytic theory of the psychology of chess presented by Dr. Jones must also be received with skepticism. It is a main motif of psychoanalysis to explain all human activities, even the highest, in terms of sex and hate, and to ignore all other drives. However, man, like all the higher animals, takes delight in the use of his powers to the fullest extent. To explain the enthusiasm of the chess player, particularly that of such a supreme player as Morphy, one need not go beyond this, and the father-murder motive is superfluous. Not only does psychoanalysis make no allowance for the pleasures we obtain from successful mental effort, it is also powerless to explain the aesthetic beauties of interaction and interference which appear, often with surprising unexpectedness, in the unfolding development of a game of chess. It is a matter for remark that Dr. Jones should ignore these aspects, for he is himself an accomplished and enthusiastic player.

  Yours faithfully, E. T. O. Slater,

  Senior Lecturer, Institute of Psychiatry, London University

  Dr. Reuben Fine, one of America’s great chess players, is another psy-choanalyst who has devoted some thought to the problem of Paul Morphy, among others, in the Psychoanalysis Journal, Number 3, 1956, which has been reprinted by Dover Publications as The Psychology of the Chess Player. With one prime exception, he is in agreement with Dr. Jones, but he has taken some liberties with his subject that the latter did not.

  Dr. Fine appears to be on firmer ground than Dr. Jones with reference to the significance of Morphy’s failure to get Staunton to meet him over the chessboard. As Fine suggests, originally the chess match with Staunton was Morphy’s great objective, but as time dragged on and he could get no starting date, the meeting itself became of less and less importance to Morphy. Later, the match with Anderssen assumed a great deal more meaning for him, and was of vastly greater import than any match with Staunton could have been.

  Certainly there may be reason to believe Dr. Fine’s statement that “more importance must be attached to Morphy’s repeated declaration that he was not a professional” chess player, but Dr. Fine enlarges upon this by declaring that Morphy’s refusal to accept chess “was followed by his refusal to embrace any profession.”

  Actually, Morphy made two earnest attempts to establish a law practice. Due mainly to the Civil War, he was over twenty-seven (not twenty-one as stated by Fine) when in November 1864 he opened a law office, advertised for four weeks in the New Orleans Picayune, but had no choice than to close up after two or three months, for reasons already discussed. Seven or eight years later he entered into partnership with E. T. Fellowes, which association did not flourish for the same reasons that the earlier attempt did not. That Morphy was a victim of his chess, as he told Steinitz years later, is undoubtedly true: “He [Morphy] said, ‘people think I am nothing but a chess player, and that I know nothing about law.’” One must also note that between his two attempts to establish a law practice, he was also engaged, in some capacity, with the banking house of Seligman, Hellman & Co. of New Orleans. He may also have been engaged with others at times.

  Fred Reinfeld observed in his Chess Prodigies tha
t Morphy “possessed to an astounding degree that uncanny quality of the child prodigy which consists in by-passing all the years of training and study that go into the making of a great practitioner of some art or science.” The significance of this seems to have escaped Dr. Fine’s notice, who says, “Throughout his adolescence Morphy must have spent a major portion of his time playing chess.” This appears not to be so. In fact Maurian wrote that Morphy “may be said to have virtually abandoned chess during his collegiate career” (1850–1857). He even remarked in a letter of 1875, given above, that Morphy “never was, strange as it will seem, an enthusiast” about chess.

  Dr. Fine mentions Morphy’s sex life, about which nothing is known except what little Steinitz revealed (about which more in the next chapter). Regina Morphy-Voitier writes that on opera nights, “he would call upon some of his lady friends,” while Edge and various letters bring out that he led an active social life in Paris during his three sojourns there. His company was sought by women of the French nobility, but Morphy left behind no such intimate notes as the one Benjamin Franklin sent to a Madame Brillon (see The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, by A. H. Smyth), in which he importunes, “Never hereafter shall I consent to begin a game in your boudoir. Can you forgive me this indiscretion?”

  On his first visit to Paris, about which we know most, he was the idol of society. Over twenty years later, in Brentano’s Chess Monthly of May 1881, Delannoy wrote, “His name, during his sojourn in Paris, made a great noise; it even fills it now.” It is known that during 1868 he was an invited guest to society’s soirées and enjoyed the society of the elite. Anything beyond this can only be surmised.

  Dr. Fine is in error when he states that Morphy played only fifty-five serious games, i.e., match and tournament. As has been listed elsewhere, the number of his match and tournament games totals ninety-five. And one must also ask, are all of Morphy’s blindfold and casual games to be taken lightly? Some are considered brilliant. As George Walker has been quoted as saying, one of them is “a gem of excellence, worthy of being written in letters of gold on the walls of the London Chess Club.”

  As for Morphy’s casual games, which Dr. Fine rather dismisses as un-important, “in the days before tournament play almost every casual game had an importance far greater than the casual games of today. And these were not casual games in the true sense, for a stake and indeed reputations were involved.” So say the authors of Howard Staunton, Raymond D.Keene and R. N. Coles. Sergeant says, “if we took only the friendly games recorded against such players as Barnes, Bird, Boden, Arnous de Rivière, Owen[,] etc., we should probably be justified in saying that Morphy’s marvelous powers are nowhere better shown than when he played, for the love of the game merely, against a high-class opponent.” And there are nearly one hundred such casual games (excluding match and tournament) if games with Anderssen, Paulsen, Stanley, and others are added.

  Unlike some others, Morphy was not careful about choosing his blindfold opponents: in fact, he often requested the very strongest players to take boards against him. And as with Anderssen’s “Immortal” and “Evergreen” casual games, some of Morphy’s casual games have found themselves on “brilliant” lists.

  Dr. Fine asks why so many of Morphy’s casual games were recorded. Probably it was because Staunton, Lowenthal, Walker, Lange, Falkbeer, Boden, and other chess editors were always eager to publish them. The chess columns of the day were almost completely dominated by Morphy’s games. Most of his European games printed in this country came from Staunton’s column, the most widely circulated. Even Fiske used Staunton’s column as a source for his column in the Chess Monthly. Morphy himself kept no record of his games, except in his head.

  During and before Morphy’s time, most games were played informally, and there were not dozens of tournaments a year as there are today. After 1851, no tournaments occurred until 1857.

  Dr. Fine states, “Morphy was active in chess for a period of a little over a year (1857–1858), a period in which the development of chess was most rudimentary,” presumably including the years before which gave us beautiful and significant games by Philidor, Labourdonnais, Anderssen, and others, and his remarks would seem unduly disparaging.

  A story that has had wide circulation in recent years about Morphy and shoes would seem to have little substance in fact. As Dr. Fine tells it, Morphy had an “eccentric habit of arranging women’s shoes in a semi-circle in his room. When asked why he liked to arrange shoes in this way he said: ‘I like to look at them.’” Regina Morphy, Paul’s little niece, appears to have been in Morphy’s room more than once, and in all likelihood is the prime source for this story. She describes the room in her pamphlet, The Life of Paul Morphy:

  This room had a peculiar aspect and at once struck the visitor as such, for Morphy had a dozen or more pairs of shoes of all kinds which he insisted in keeping arranged in a semi-circle in the middle of the room, explaining with his sarcastic smile that in this way, he could at once lay his hands on the particular pair he desired to wear.

  It seems strange that Regina’s description of the shoes and Morphy’s explanation should have become so changed as to fall into the account given by Dr. Fine, and the story has grown.

  Abnormal as were Morphy’s actions at times, he retained until the end of his life all his keenness on chess and other subjects. As late as March 1883, Steinitz said in the New York Tribune, “Morphy is a most interesting man to talk to.”

  According to Lombroso in Men of Genius, Schopenhauer apparently had a mental condition similar to, but more pronounced than, Morphy’s. Like Morphy, he feared a razor and would not trust a barber. He walked the streets of Frankfort “gesticulating and talking aloud to himself,” but later the condition passed. Dr. Fine mentions that Steinitz, too, had strange delusions, and the former mentions in The Psychology of the Chess Player one story about Steinitz’s last year, when he believed “that he could give God Pawn and move.”

  FOOTNOTES

  ______________

  * EDITOR’S NOTE: Jones’s article, “The Problem of Paul Morphy: A Contribution to the Psycho-Analysis of Chess,” is still available through the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, but it has also been reprinted in many collections and is available in online formats from distributors such as Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing. See http://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=IJP.012.0001A. As Lawson notes later in the chapter, Reuben Fine’s The Psychology of the Chess Player is still available from Dover, originally reprinted in 1956.

  * EDITOR’S NOTE: As shall be seen, Lawson does not agree with Jones’ Freudianism, but an even more strident critique came later from Robert Philipson, who argues that Jones’s work was “predictably Oedipal” and overly simplisitic in its focus on father murder and queenly power. See his “Chess and Sex in Le Devoir Du Violence.” Callaloo 38 (Winter 1989): 216-232, included in the annotated bibliography following Lawson’s text.

  CHAPTER 25

  The Pride and Sorrow of Chess

  In July 1882, the New Orleans French newspaper l’Abeille announced plans for a biographical work on Famous Louisianans and proposed to include Paul Morphy as “the most celebrated chess-player in the World.” Morphy immediately wrote an indignant letter, which he asked them to publish, and it appeared in l’Abeille the following day, August 1, 1882:

  New Orleans, July 31, 1882

  Editors of The Bee:

  I read in yesterday’s Bee “that Mr. Meyiner, Editor of the ‘Louisiana Biographies’ will begin tomorrow the publication of the first part or section, that of the ‘Governors of the State’ and ‘that following those biographies the reader will find that of Paul Morphy, the most celebrated chess player of the world, and that of Jean Lafitte.” [Lafitte, the pirate who fought side-by-side with Andrew Jackson in the defense of New Orleans.]

  My father, Judge Alonzo Morphy, of the Supreme Court, at his death having left a fortune (the inventory of the succession made in December, 1856, which can be seen at the office of Theodore
Guyol, Esq., Notary Public, amounts to $146,162.54) (one hundred and forty-six thousand and one hundred and sixty-two dollars and fifty-four cents), and the share of each heir being ample enough to allow him to decently defray all his expenses I have followed no calling, and have given no cause for a biography. I have received a diploma as a lawyer.

  I am ignorant of the spirit in which the “Louisiana Biographies” are conceived, but Louisianan by birth and in heart, son of a father who acquired a reputation of juris-consult at the Louisiana Bar, who was a member of the Legislature, Attorney-General and Judge of the Supreme Court, grandson of a grandfather who had the honor of representing Spain in New Orleans during a part of the first quarter of this century, I could but approve of a work that would bring to light the services, recent or of old, rendered to our Louisiana.

  I have the honor, Messrs. Editors, of presenting you with my most distinguished sentiments.

  Paul Charles Morphy

  When displeased, Morphy usually added his middle name to his signature. It seemed that this time his only eccentricity or obsession was to mention or repeat to friends the sum that his father’s estate had amounted to.

  Perhaps some misrepresentation arose abroad from l’Abeille’s mention of a Paul Morphy biography, for some time later in 1882, English and other papers were commenting on his demise at forty-five years of age. Sheriff Walter C. Spens, chess editor of the Glasgow Weekly Herald, quoted an announcement about it in his chess column of November 25, 1882, and added a five-stanza sonnet. It is owing to Sheriff Spens that we have “The Pride and Sorrow of Chess.”