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From the New Orleans Times-Democrat, Sunday, July 13th, 1884.
THE KING OF CHESS KINGS
The death of Paul Morphy has removed from our midst one who may justly
be pronounced a true phenomena of the present century. For, however much
it may be argued that genius consists of an infinite capacity for taking
pains, we hold that this applies in truth only to talent, which, in its
highest type, may sometimes attain even greater results than genius of a
moderate type, but which ever remains only talent still. Genius, true
genius in the exercise of its powers can be limited by no such
constrained definition. It sets through incomprehensible methods; it
reaches its ends or its conclusions by inexplicable means; it
differentiates itself from talent by lines unmistakable yet indefinable
in terms; it is in every sense and in every characteristic of its
existence a true phenomena. And Paul Morphy was a true phenomena, for
never before existed there so true, so unmistakable, so astounding a
genius for the noble and intellectual game with which his name and his
fame are indissolubly linked. Other great players had lived before him
and transmitted their masterpieces to subsequent generations; other
great players have come after him and claim to have discovered and
recorded a new and more perfect school of chess; but not one has ever
approached him that natural, innate, capacity for the game and for every
branch of it; in that complete possession of every faculty necessary for
its practice and rendering him the nearest, if not indeed the only
approximation to the perfect player.
Nor is the claim of superiority simply an empty assertion; the proofs
lie in the nearly complete collections of his recorded games,
collections embracing his every mood and manner of pay, from the deeply
meditated battle against a fellow giant of the chess world to the hasty
skirmish with a mere fourth rate, and yet how weighty is the proof thus
afforded? What other chess master could thus appear so deshabille, as it
were, before the judges and stand a comparison? In what other player’s
games can we find such an absence of dullness, such freedom from errors,
such abundance of sparkling surprises, such wonderful blending of attack
and defense, such profound, daring and subtle combinations, and above
all such originality, such freshness- the truest indication of genius,
after all? What Mozart as to innate, natural ability, was to music,
Morphy likewise was to chess. He stands, in this characteristic, unique,
alone, without a rival, however much in other respects his claims to
pre-eminence may be disputed. For Morphy’s rise to the front rank of
chess-players was not like that of Steinitz, or Anderssen, or Staunton,
or Zukertort, or Blackburne, or any one of a dozen other masters – nay,
even of LaBourdonnais himself, the result of long years of personal
study and practice with other great, and perhaps stronger, players than
himself. As a very child, and (as his uncle Ernest Morphy wrote to La
Régence as far back as 1851) before he had ever opened a chess work,
he was a finished player, selecting the coup justes in the
openings as if by inspiration! When he struck the kings of European
chess from their lofty thrones, it was not by virtue of the experienced
strategy of a practiced master, but by the sheer strength of an
irresistible genius that rose equal to the requirements and superior to
the difficulties of every occasion presented. Well might so profound a
judge as Mr. Boden declare that the possibilities of Morphy’s genius had
never been half revealed because only a very limited exercise of its
powers had always been sufficient to insure victory!
Indeed, the more searchingly we examine and compare with Morphy’s the
recorded masterpieces of the other kings of chess, the stronger grows
the conviction that no other lived whose capacity for the game from
every standpoint was so truly gigantic in whom, both mentally and even
physically, so wonderful a union of every characteristic of the complete
player was to be found. Coolness, patience, accuracy, perseverance,
imagination, enterprise, daring, judgment, rapidity and facility of
play, and memory of an astounding character, all were Morphy’s, and all
in a degree that no chess master in the history of the game ever
possessed before and that, we fear, in all likelihood none other will
ever possess hereafter. And despite all that the kings of the so-called
modern school of chess assert for it in the way of superiority over the
old style, of which Morphy may be claimed to have marked the grand and
final climax, who shall doubt for a moment that, if opposed to these,
his stupendous genius would not have dashed aside ingloriously the too
feeble network of counter-march and manoeuvre, and shattered their but
seemingly impregnable positions with the lightning strikes of mighty and
unfathomable combination? We frankly confess that no such doubt exists
for an instant for us.
Paul Morphy.
On Thursday last, the 10th instant, there silently passed away from the
theatre of this earth into the shades of the historic past, one whose
name is familiar in every quarter of the globe; the compass of whose
renown is coincident with the worldwide limits of Caïssa’s domain; the
immortality of whose fame is one with the perpetuity of man’s
appreciation of the beauties of the purely intellectual. Paul Morphy is
no more; so suddenly, so unexpectedly was he snatched away, that his
many friends are still dazed and bewildered with the shock. But
assuredly it is fitting that in this column- where if, while living, his
name was so seldom mentioned, it was solely in deference to his
well-known wishes- it is fitting that there should be done in death that
justice so often denied him in life; that here we should lay upon his
tomb the slight but sincere tribute of our defense and of our praise.
Paul Charles Morphy was born in the city of New Orleans on the 22nd of
June,1937. His paternal grandfather was a native of Madrid, Spain, and,
emigrating to America, resided for some years at Charleston, South
Carolina in which city Paul Morphy’s father, Alonzo Morphy was born in
the latter part of 1798. The family not long afterwards removed to New
Orleans, where Alonzo Morphy, after receiving a collegiate education,
studied law under that great jurisconsult Edward Livingstone, practiced
his profession with great success, and for a number of years previous to
his death was an honored justice of the Supreme Court of Louisiana.
Judge Morphy’s wife was a Miss Le Carpentier- one of the oldest French
Creole families of the State. Paul was the second son of four children
born to his parents. He received a good academical education in this
city, and when about thirteen years old was enrolled as a student of St.
Joseph’s College, conducted by the Jesuit Fathers; at Spring Hill, near
Mobile, Ala. Here, after four years attendance, he graduated with the
highest honors ever awarded in the institution, in October, 1854 but
remained a year longer, occupying himself almost exclusively with the
study of mathematics and philosophy. He was a hard, indeed a very hard
student, and his intense application, combined, as it was, with
phenomenal power of mind, and especially of memory, gave him such
success in his studies that his classmates actually came to consider as
surprising no mental feat, however great or difficult, when accomplished
by him. But unfortunately this intense devotion to study was not broken
and relieved, as it should have been, by that participation in athletic
physical exercise usual in youth, and so essential under such
circumstances, and we would not be surprised, though we cannot affirm,
that in these years thus were largely laid the foundations of the feeble
physical health that subsequently afflicted him. It must be added here,
however, that amid the hard work that marked the years of his college
life, the study of chess formed almost absolutely no part,
notwithstanding a very general impression to the contrary. In 1855 he
became a student in the law department of the University of Louisiana,
and again, in the prosecution of his legal studies, showed the same
intensity of application and notable success as in his college life. He
graduated in April, 1957, when but twenty years of age, and we have
heard it reliably said, was pronounced by an eminent member of the
faculty the most deeply read and most thoroughly prepared student that
had ever graduated from the law school of the University.
Chess had always been a conspicuous feature
in the amusements of the Morphy family. Paul’s maternal grandfather, old
Mr. Le Carpentier was devoted to the game; Judge Alonzo Morphy was a
player of fair strength, while his brother, Ernest Morphy, was not only
almost a first rate of his day, but was also a particularly strong and
deep analyst. Among a number of frequent visitors who played chess was,
also, Eugene Rousseau, whose hard-fought match, contested in this city
in 1845, with Stanley, the English player, is one of the landmarks in
the early history of American Chess. Paul Morphy’s father taught him the
moves of the game in the latter part of 1847, when he was a little over
ten years old, and through his indulgence in its pleasures was then, as
indeed all through his boyhood, limited to certain days of the week he
proved so apt a pupil under the instructions of his father and uncle
that almost from his first game he was able
to fight on even terms against either. His strength of play increased
with incredible rapidity, and within two years he had defeated by
overwhelming majorities all the strongest players of the city, among
them Rousseau, who, out of upwards of fifty games played, lost at least
nine-tenths! But the crowning proof of the young player’s genius for the
game was given when in May, 1850, he contested three games against Lowenthal,
the eminent Hungarian player, who was then passing through this city,
and who not many years previously, in consultation with Szen and Grimm
at Budapest, had defeated the foremost players of France in a memorable
match by correspondence. Any victory over such an antagonist by a mere
child of less than thirteen years would have been an astonishing feat,
but Paul Morphy achieved it by the unique score of two games won and one
drawn! His departure for Spring Hill in the autumn of the same year
seems to have caused a prolonged interruption in the youthful prodigy’s
practice of the game, for excepting such play as he may have had at home
during his brief vacations, he may be said to have virtually abandoned
chess during his collegiate career. It was only in the summer of 1853,
the year before his graduation, that, to oblige some college mates who
had become enthusiastic over chess, he played with them a number of
games and these at odds of Queens, or of rook and knight combined. After
leaving college and during his legal studies from November, 1855, to
April, 1857, he played more though still not very frequently, but nearly
always yielding such large odds that his play should have been rather
deteriorated than improved by such practice. It was during this period,
that he contested on two occasions ten games with Judge A.B. Meek, then
the strongest player in Alabama, winning all, and also two from Dr.
Ayers, another strong amateur of the same State. It was with this
practice and with this experience that Paul Morphy entered in October,
1857, the lists of the First American Chess Congress convened in New
York- an assemblage including the strongest players of the Union,
paladins and veterans of the game, but destined to become ever memorable
as the occasion of the young hero’s first public appearance in that
world of chess whose universal sceptre he was so soon destined to sway
with undisputed right. Stanley, the conqueror of Rousseau, Montgomery of
Philadelphia, Fiske, Thompson, Perrin, Marache and Lichtenhein of New
York, Paulsen of Iowa, Raphael of Kentucky, and many others were opposed
to him in the tournament proper or in side-tilts, off-hand or formal,
during its progress, but his triumph was so absolute, his victories so
overwhelming, that the defeated felt not even a twinge of jealousy
Comparisons were simply impossible, and the idea of rivalry would have
been an absurdity. Out of about 100 games thus contested during the
period of the congress, Paul Morphy lost three, only a few more being
drawn.
The discovery of such a genius for the most intellectual of games
naturally aroused the greatest enthusiasm throughout the whole chess
world of the Union, and there were not a few members of the then
National Chess Association who wished at once to issue a cartel on
behalf of their champion to all Europe, but overborne by the prestige
clinging to the reputations of the European masters, the more timid
sentiments of the others prevailed and no action was taken. The New
Orleans Chess Club, however, lacked no confidence in Morphy’s powers,
and in February, 1858, singling out no less a master than Howard
Staunton, the champion of British chess, they addressed a challenge to
him to play a match of eleven games up in this city for stakes of $5000
a side, and offering him $1000 for expenses. Staunton, in reply, simply
declined to come to New Orleans to play, but in terms clearly indicative
of a willingness to contest the match in London. Not to be bilked of
their desire that their youthful champion should measure swords with the
masters of Europe a deputation from the club called upon Morphy’s family
and entreated their consent to the plan. After some hesitation this was
at length accorded, and in May, 1858, Morphy set out on what proved to
be the most bewilderingly brilliant career of successes recorded in the
history of chess; successes so numerous, so unbroken, so dazzling, that
we can but epitomize them here.
Paul Morphy arrived in London on the 21st of June, 1858, and met with
a most cordial reception at the hands, not only of the British chess
public, but of English society at large, and more particularly through
the medium of the two great London clubs, the St. George’s and London,
within the precincts of which all of his most important contests in
England were played. Of course, his first step, looking to the principal
object of his journey, was to issue a défi to Staunton, which the
latter first accepted, then postponed, then clearly sought to evade and
finally peremptorily declined. Judging the English champion without
bias and with all possible charity, it certainly does seem impossible to
ascribe his varying action in the "pr mises to ght" [promises to fight?] else than the
gradually alteration in his opinion of Morphy’s play, brought about by
the surprising series of victories that marked the latter’s visit to
Great Britain. For in offhand play and more or less formal matches
Morphy, during his stay of a little over two months in England, met and
vanquished nearly, if not every, strong player in that country. Bird,
Boden, Medley, Barnes, Lowe, Mongredien, and numbers of others all went
down before his victorious lance, and all in the same decisive style
that had marked his conquests in America. Of his more serious contests,
the most important were his match with his old adversary Löwenthal, whom
he defeated by 9 to 3 with 2 draws; his match yielding pawn and move to
“Alter” (Rev. J. Own), which he won by the remarkable score of 5 wins
and 2 draws; his two games won in consultation with Barnes against
Staunton and “Alter”; and three brilliant exhibitions of blindfold play,
conducting eight games each time simultaneously- one at Birmingham, where
he won six, lost one and drew one; one at the London Chess Club where he
gained two, the other six being abandoned as drawn owing to the lateness
of the hour; and one at the St. Georges Club, winning five and drawing
three. His decisive victories over the British chess players had almost
as thoroughly convincing a result as those in his American triumphs.
Nearly every feeling of doubt or of rivalry disappeared, and when he
crossed the channel to Paris in the early part of September, 1958,
almost exclusively the good wishes of friends and admirers followed him
in his forthcoming battles with the continental champions.
Nor were those good wishes disappointed. His experiences in the French
capital were but a repetition of his preceding triumphs; every French
player of note lowered his colors before the crushing attacks of the new
monarch of the chess world, and many even of the best did not disdain to
accept, nor often successfully at that, varying odds at his hands. His
principal victories in Paris, however, were that over the famous
Harrwitz, who abruptly abandoned the match after winning the first two
games and then losing five out of the next six, one being drawn: that
over his English friend Mongredien, by 7 to 0; and finally, that over
the renowned Prussian master, Anderssen, then the acknowledged champion
of the world. The score in the latter contest was even more surprising
than that of any of its predecessors, the result being: Morphy, 7;
Anderssen, 2; drawn, 2. It was in Paris, moreover, that perhaps Morphy’s
greatest feat of blindfold play was given, taking into consideration the
remarkable strength of the eight players simultaneously opposed to him,
and against whom, nevertheless, he won six and drew two. A superb
specimen from this contest forms one of our games given today. As in
England, his stupendous feats and triumphs caused a profound sensation
in the Parisian world. He was, during his stay, its greatest lion: “
victories and ovations”, in the language of one of his biographers,
“became the monotonous order of his seven month’s residence in that
fascinating city. His extremely modest, quiet and courteous bearing
under the most exciting applause which attended his unparalleled
achievements added to his immense popularity as an unrivalled chessplayer, and he became the courted favorite of every circle of
society.” Nor were his countrymen at home slow in catching the same
impulse, and on his return to America in May, 1959, his whole homeward
journey was simply a succession of
fêtes,
entertainments and ovations of every description. In the presence of
a grand assembly in the chapel of the University of New York, he was
presented with a superb testimonial in the shape of a magnificent set of
gold and silver chessmen; he was given a splendid banquet in Boston, at
which Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Lowell, Agassiz and many other
eminent citizens were present to tender him their congratulations.
Reaching this city not long afterward, and having issued, without
response, a final challenge offering to yield the odds of pawn and move
to any player in the world, he declared his career as a chessplayer
finally and definitely closed- a declaration to which he held with
unbroken resolution during the whole of the remainder of his life. Even
in private and among intimate friends his participation in chess was of
rare occurrence, and in brief contests nearly always at considerable
odds; indeed, we believe his only subsequent games on even terms were a
few contested with his friend, Mr. Arnous de Riviere, on the occasion of
a second visit to Paris in 1862. He paid that city a third visit during
the world’s exhibition of 1867, and the completeness of his abandonment
of the game may be inferred from the fact that although at that period
the great international chess tournament of 1867 was going on in Paris,
he never even once visited the scene of its exciting and splendid
battles. His actual retirement from all serious play may be said to date
from 1860 at least- many long years before the melancholy mental
affliction that clouded and darkened his later days fell upon him. And
it is but just to the noble game whose history and whose lore he so
enriched and adorned during his brief career as a player, to say here
that it was in no wise responsible for the disaster that befell its
afflicted monarch. Sorrows, misfortunes and trials of other character,
and such as might have destroyed the balance in a far less delicate
organization than his, were the potent agents that wrought the ruin of
which Caïssa is so generally and so unjustly accused. The frailty of his
physique was evident at a glance and the very manner of his death
demonstrated it more clearly. A cold bath on a summer's day brought on a
congestion of the brain that proved almost immediately fatal.
And here, before we close, speaking as knowing whereof we
speak, we deem it best to correct two generally received impressions as
to the departed master. First, then, Paul Morphy was never so
passionately fond, so inordinately devoted to Chess as is generally
believed. An intimate acquaintance and long observation enable 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
perfect 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 kept in some degree, the run of its general
news, even up to the date of Mr. Steinitz's visit to this city last
year, but he could rarely be induced to discuss chess, and nothing more
annoyed him, even years ago, than to be designated as "Morphy, the chess
player."
In the second place, Morphy was a thoroughly educated and cultivated
man, and there is not the shadow of a doubt that but for the misfortunes
of his times, and the melancholy affliction of his later years, he would
have been capable of great results in lofty spheres of human action.
There is no graver error than to suppose he was capable of nothing but
playing chess. He was, moreover, in every sense, a gentleman- of high
delicacy, culture and refinement, both innate and acquired; and even
clouded as his mind was in the latter years of his life, these qualities
were marked. There was much of the true Hidalgo about him.
Of Morphy’s stupendous powers as a chessplayer and of his comparative
rank as to other masters, we do not propose to speak here. In another
column of this paper these subjects are properly discussed. Caïssa
mourned his loss many a year ago, and today our regrets for the loss of
the man and the gentleman are chastened by the hope that he has found
surcease from the sorrows of this life in the happiness of a better
world. (END)
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