Paul Morphy: The Pride and Sorrow of Chess

by David Lawson

  C. A. Buck, in his booklet Paul Morphy, His Later Life, states that J. H.Zukertort met Paul Morphy in New Orleans in 1882, and according to that account they had met before in Paris. Zukertort was not in New Orleans in 1882. He first visited there in 1884 from April 15 to May 21, but in the ample coverage of his visit in the American press and in his own magazine, the Chess Monthly, there is no suggestion of his meeting Morphy.

  Morphy died in July 1884, seven weeks after Zukertort’s visit, and Zukertort and his co-editor of the Chess Monthly designated the August issue of the magazine, “The Morphy Number,” saying:

  It is our duty to give expression to the high admiration we have always entertained for the phenomenal genius of the greatest master that ever lived. As a slight mark of this estimation we devote the present number to the memory of the Chess-Achilles.

  Without doubt, Zukertort would have added to the long obituary some comment on his having met Morphy just two months before, if in fact he had.

  The year 1883 was uneventful for Morphy except for his meeting with Steinitz, who was in New Orleans for a month’s engagement with the New Orleans Chess, Checker & Whist Club. He had arrived on December 28, 1882, and soon made inquiry about Morphy, whom he was most anxious to meet. On being told of Steinitz’s presence, Morphy said, “I know it,” and then added, “his gambit is not good.” Morphy could not help disclosing that he was au courant on chess news and developments.

  Failing to get a response from Morphy by writing, mutual friends arranged that they should meet as if by chance. The New York Tribune of March 22, 1883, has a most interesting account of that meeting, of what Morphy had to say to Steinitz and of what Steinitz had heard about Morphy. As Steinitz told it:

  “The first time I met him in the street I stopped him and presented him with my card. He took it and read it, giving me a wild, questioning look for the moment. Immediately recovering himself he shook hands with me, saying that my name was well known to him, and then he entered into conversation with me. Twice after that I met him, and on each occasion, he was exceedingly pleasant and agreeable. As a crowd collected round us on each occasion, he excused himself on the score of pressing legal engagements. I am very angry with that crowd still for interrupting us; Morphy is a most interesting man to talk to. He is shrewd and practical and apparently in excellent health. . . .

  I took the opportunity of remonstrating with him [about his lawsuit; actually there was no lawsuit]. I told him he had a number of legal friends; if he would allow them they would thoroughly investigate his business matters, and if he had a chance to recover his property, would tell him so. ‘Though,’ I added, ‘even Morphy may be mistaken, and you may not have taken a correct legal view.’ ‘That is it,’ he answered; ‘people think I am nothing but a chess-player, and that I know nothing about law.’”

  “Will Morphy ever play chess again, Mr. Steinitz?”

  “Probably, if his friends go to work in the right way. At present he will not look at a board and never visits his club, under the apprehension that they will make him play . . . What I said to the men at New Orleans was: Do not ask Morphy to play; let him sit and watch you play, perhaps one of his own games . . . !”

  “Why does the loss of his money affect him so much?”

  “That is another curious thing. Morphy wants to get married. He is perpetually having ‘love affairs.’ All the people in New Orleans know it and humor him a little. Mind you, he is the most chivalrous soul alive. He is a thorough gentleman. But if he sees a strange face in the street that pleases him, you will see him lift his hat and give a bow . . He regrets his loss (money) because he wishes to be married, and the cure is, I think, to play chess again determinedly.”

  Evidently there was no talk of chess between Morphy and Steinitz for Steinitz would surely have mentioned it during the Tribune interview.

  On Thursday morning, July 10, 1884, Paul Morphy dressed meticulously as always for his noonday walk, but meeting friends, returned a little later than usual. The weather was very warm, and he went immediately to his bath, which he ordinarily took at one o’clock, and lingered over. But this day his mother thought he was a very long time and finally knocked at the door to inquire. When she received no answer, she opened the door to see his head resting on the side of the bathtub, to which his hands were clinging. He was apparently unconscious.

  His mother called out for help, and Dr. Meux, who happened to be passing by the house at the moment, came in and tried in vain to restore him to consciousness. Paul Morphy was pronounced dead at 2:30 p.m., July 10, 1884, from congestion of the brain brought on by entering the cold water while very warm after his walk.

  The funeral took place the following day at 5 p.m. from the family residence at 89 Royal Street. The ceremony was performed by the Reverend Father Mignot of the St. Louis Cathedral, after which internment took place in the family tomb at the old St. Louis Cemetery.

  The pallbearers were his brother, Edward, his cousin Captain E. A.Morphy, Charles A. Maurian, Edgar Hincks, Leonard J. Percy, and Henry F. Percy.

  The news of Morphy’s passing spread rapidly here and abroad. Sheriff Spens announced receipt of a special telegram on July 11, and the Glasgow Weekly Herald of July 19, 1884, eulogized Paul Morphy in a five-stanza poem by the Sheriff, given in part below:

  The Manhattan Chess Club, which only three months before had acquired the oil painting of Morphy by Charles Loring Elliott, called a special meeting for July 15, 1884, when it was

  Resolved that the Portrait of Paul Morphy in the rooms of this Club be draped in mourning for a period of three months, and that a full record of these proceedings be entered upon the minutes of this club, and that an engrossed copy thereof, attested by the officers of the Club, be transmitted to the family of the deceased.

  Whereas, the Manhattan Chess Club have learned with deepest regret of the death of Paul Morphy and desire to express their sorrow at the loss of one who, by his matchless skill in their noble game earned for himself the FIRST PLACE in the roll of chess-masters, and by his true modesty and worth gained the esteem and respect of all who knew him.

  And Mrs. Telcide Morphy received the following:

  Manhattan Chess Club

  104 East 14th St.

  New York, August 13th 1884

  Dear Madam,

  I have the honor of transmitting you herewith a copy of the Resolutions passed by the Manhattan Chess Club at a Special Meeting held July 15th, on receiving the sad intelligence of the sudden death of your son, and which we beg you will accept as a slight token of the esteem in which Paul Morphy was held by the members of our Club.

  Trusting that the knowledge of the high place he occupied in the hearts of all whose fortune it was to know him personally, and of the respect and admiration he gained of those who knew him through his achievements in the game of Chess alone, may serve, in a small measure to lessen the grief which we know you to feel in your bereavement,

  I remain, dear Madam,

  Your’s very respectfully

  W. M. De Visser

  Corresponding Sect’y M.C.C.

  Mrs. T. Morphy

  89 Royal St.

  New Orleans

  To this his mother replied:

  New Orleans, August 20, 1884

  89 Royal Street

  To the Manhattan Chess Club

  Very Honorable Gentlemen,

  The homage which you have rendered to my dear son, and your just appreciation of his talent and of his qualities, have, for an instant, softened my grief. I am deeply grateful in thinking that there are superior minds who have not forgotten him, in this world where every thing disappears so rapidly.

  I beg of you to accept my cordial thanks, you who have given a thought to that which was the glory of the son and the everlasting grief of the mother.

  Receive Gentlemen, the expression of my respect.

  Telcide Morphy.

  The little household, now composed of Morphy’s mother and her daughter Helena, was stricken
and deeply affected by Paul’s passing, the one for whom they had lived and looked after for years. For long years, Helena and her mother had helped provide for the family by giving music lessons. On January 11, 1885, Telcide Morphy also died. Apparently, Dr.Max Lange had written to Helena previously, asking for information about Morphy, for he received a letter from her dated January 17, 1885:

  . . . I have experienced the intense grief of losing my poor mother whose health had been fatally impaired by her son’s loss. . . . We possess the first and second edition of my brother’s biography written by you; and as to the information you desire I am very sorry to say we had no letters, in fact not the least paper from our dear Paul. For years preceding his death, he was averse to any social intercourse and confined himself to a gloomy retirement apart from his former friends. It pains me etc.

  Helena Morphy

  The magic of Paul Morphy called forth from I. O. Howard Taylor of England a tribute to his mother, to be found in the Appendix.

  But another, F. F. Beechey, had feared the worst in 1882, and sorrowed for Morphy when the rumors of his death reached England. The below appeared in the British Chess Magazine of that October:

  Some paid their homage to Morphy in prose, others in verse and music. In Italy, Professor Ottolenghi penned a sonnet, and Giuseppe Liberali composed an elegy for the piano, dedicating it to the American chess players.

  The auction of Morphy’s trophies, together with other items of the estate, now took place, and soon after, on September 8, 1886, Helena Morphy followed her mother to the grave. There now remained of the Morphy family but the brother, Edward, and the sister Malvina (Mrs. J. D. Sybrandt). The Sybrandt family took over and occupied the house at 89 Royal Street for a short time and then, forty-five years after its purchase by Alonzo Morphy, it was occupied by strangers. But the memory of Paul Morphy still lingers round that house, now known as the Morphy House.

  CHAPTER 26

  Trophies and Authenticity*

  New Orleans without Morphy was different. During his last years, the chess amateurs seemed to lose spirit. However, in the early 1880s an effort was made to reorganize, and the chess players united with others to found the New Orleans Chess, Checkers & Whist Club. It was this club that invited Steinitz in 1883 and Zukertort in 1884 to the city, and both of them for their match in 1886.

  With Morphy gone, no longer living his solitary existence and insisting on being left alone by the press, he once again came into his own. No longer was he thought of as an obsessed and ailing man. His idiosyncrasies were forgotten. Now he was again proclaimed Paul Morphy, “The Incomparable,” as Kolisch had called him.

  The Chess, Checkers & Whist Club now flourished with some seven hundred members, a valuable chess library, and many relics, including a replica of Lequesne’s bust of Morphy, considered by both Fiske and Maurian as the best likeness of him. On the night of January 22, 1890, fire broke out below the club, which occupied the second, third, and fourth floors of the building, and the morning of January 23 saw the building, including all the club’s possessions, reduced to ashes.

  With a good amount in its treasury, the club soon found suitable quarters elsewhere and immediately commissioned Sr. Perelli, an accomplished sculptor, to “bring Morphy back,” and on April 15, 1891, a life-size plaster bust was put on view for all to see. The bust has never been recast or reproduced and is presently possessed by Cletus G. Fleming.**

  Of the whereabouts or fate of Morphy’s testimonial chessmen and board, nothing is presently known. The chessmen were first noticed by Fiske in the window of the renowned Tiffany & Company at 550 Broadway, below Houston Street in New York City. He mentioned them in the January 1858 Chess Monthly: “Tiffany & Co. have for sale a splendid set of gold and silver Chessmen. The price demanded for them is fifteen hundred dollars.” He did not known at the time that they were destined for Morphy.

  Later, when the chessmen were considered for presentation, Tiffany also wished to be a contributor to Morphy’s testimonial, and, when asked about them, wrote the Committee of Management of the First American Chess Congress on March 21, 1859, that

  the set of chess cost us $800 besides the case but we propose to offer them to the members of the Club (including a board to cost us $150.) at whatever price they may suggest and we hereby authorize you to submit this proposition. The difference between the price you may conclude upon and $800 we would prefer added to the subscription list in our name.

  And so, at an impressive ceremony on May 25, 1859, they were presented to Morphy. He took his chessmen with him both times he went to Europe and brought them back with him. One year after his decease, his brother Edward offered them to the St. George’s Chess Club of London for £1,000. Presumably they had been first offered to American Clubs, but apparently they had been overpriced. Steinitz expressed the hope that means would be found to retain them in the United States.

  On July 24, 1886, the chessmen and board, together with Morphy’s other trophies, were put up for auction by Mather & Homes. The chessmen were auctioned first, and were acquired by Walter Denegre for $1,550. The silver laurel crown brought $250, and the silver service set $400. The latter was Morphy’s First Prize at the 1857 National Chess Congress. Both the crown and the service were acquired by Mr. J. Samory, one of Paul Morphy’s intimate friends.

  At the auction, Mr. Denegre had acted for an unknown party in acquiring the chessmen, and not until many years later did the true owner become known. C. A. Buck, in his booklet Paul Morphy, His Later Life, is in error when he states that Denegre had acted for the Manhattan Chess Club, for that club never owned them.

  Years later, as given in an article in the British Chess Magazine of May 1929, John Keeble translated from the French magazine Les Cahiers de L’Échiquier the following mention of the chessmen by Count Gasquet in response to a questioner:

  Morphy’s chessmen used to be in my family following a transaction between the family of the famous player and M. de Gasquet living at New Orleans. The pieces represent the Gaelic and Roman armies, in gold and silver, very cleverly worked on bases of rose colored stone. The rooks are represented by four elephants with rubies as eyes. Unfortunately I do not know what has become of these pieces. The board is at my home at Dinard. It bears a silver plate on which is inscribed the names of the donors (Sic.). The board is in ebony and the squares in mother of pearl (nacre). If one day I find the pieces I will let you know.

  So apparently for years, W. A. Gasquet, a Morphy friend and member of the New Orleans Chess Club, had possessed them. Evidently on his death or return to France, the chessmen eventually came into the possession of the Count. Nothing more is known of the whereabouts of the chessmen and board. It is likely that due to war conditions the chessmen were melted down for the metal; as for the board, nothing is known.

  Mr. J. Samory left the silver service set to Judge Edward Bermudez in his will. It was later acquired by the Claiborne family of New Orleans, descendants of Louisiana’s first governor, and it is presently in that family’s possession. It might be of interest to mention that a copy of Eugene Lequesne’s bust of Paul Morphy, published by W. Lay of London in 1858, and the life cast of Morphy’s right hand taken by Lequesne are possessed by the author, together with other Morphy memorabilia.*

  Paul Morphy was memorialized at Spring Hill College on April 27, 1957, when a plaque and monument presented by E. Forry Laucks were unveiled by the Mayor of Mobile, Henry R. Luscher, with an honor guard from the Spring Hill ROTC.

  It would seem that Paul Morphy should now come into his own and be recognized as the first official world chess champion, for he was the first to meet and defeat the several strongest players of his time in formal matches, and in addition he was recognized as world champion in public ceremonies in both hemispheres and in the press of the world.

  William Steinitz has been generally mentioned as the first official world chess champion, because he was the first to claim to be such. As Al Horowitz says in his recent book, The World Chess
Championship, in 1886, “the world championship was at stake because both players [Steinitz and Zukertort] said so,” however “official” that might have made it. And true enough, the first article of the “Contract between the Players” reads: “Agreement made this twenty-ninth day of December, 1885, by and between William Steinitz of New York, and J. H. Zuckertort, of London, to play a match at Chess for the Championship of the World and a stake of Two Thousand Dollars a side.” At that time neither claimed to be world champion.

  For various reasons, a number of games have been falsely ascribed to Paul Morphy. A hydra-headed game appeared in the first edition of Morphy’s Games of Chess by P. W. Sergeant (GAME CCXCIV) but it was never played by Paul Morphy. The game was played by Ernest Morphy against P.Shaub in 1862 and it was published in the Dubuque Chess Journal of 1873. However, it got into Brentano’s Chess Monthly in 1880 as a Paul Morphy game, from which Sergeant may have taken it. It would appear that two others at least, G. Reichhelm and W. Steinitz, have played the same game move by move, but Steinitz is given credit for having first played and published it. Sergeant replaced it with another when his attention was called to it by J. H. Blake, who reviewed Sergeant’s book in the British Chess Magazine of February 1916.

  It has been shown in Chapter 2 that GAME XCVII in Sergeant’s Morphy’s Games of Chess was played by Ernest Morphy against Dr. A. P. Ford, and that it should not appear in any collection of Paul Morphy’s games.

  And it would seem that the Deacon games, associated with Morphy by Staunton, have been thoroughly discredited in Chapter 18 as having been played by Morphy. Maróczy in his 1909 collection of 407 Morphy games, including endings, listed the Deacon games and one each by F. H. Lewis, G. Medley and T. Barnes as doubtful Morphy games, but he excluded all of them in his revised 1925 edition.

  Of the F. H. Lewis game it may be said that there is no evidence that Lewis ever played with Morphy. His name never appeared on any list of Morphy games, and he never suggested that he had played with Morphy.