As the secession crisis intensified in the last years of the 1850s, the most famous Southerner known on the European continent was likely not Maryland-born Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, nor Mississippi senator and future president of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis, nor South Carolina poet and novelist William Gilmore Simms. Rather, that honor would almost certainly go to New Orleans-born savant Paul Charles Morphy, who would in time come to be known as the “The Pride and Sorrow of Chess,” perhaps the greatest player of his generation. His story, though little known today, is one of both remarkable brilliance and Faulkneresque misery.
Morphy was born in 1837 into families of venerable old Southern Catholic pedigree: his Spanish-Irish father, a lawyer, served as a Louisiana state legislator, Attorney General, and a Louisiana State Supreme Court Justice; his mother derived from a prominent French Creole family. Sources differ over the exact age at which Morphy was exposed to the game of chess — some claim he did not learn until the age of ten, others that by the age of nine he was already considered one of the best players in New Orleans.
According to one story, the Virginian General Winfield Scott visited the city in 1846 en route to Mexico, where he would soon become a war hero. Scott requested his hosts arrange a game of chess with an accomplished local opponent. The child Morphy was fetched, which, unsurprisingly, occasioned some offense on the part of the sixty-year-old Scott. His hosts however insisted that Morphy was a child prodigy who would prove his mettle against the officer. The general and the child played two games, both of which Morphy won handily, ending the second game after a mere six moves.
In 1850, the young teenager defeated visiting Hungarian chess master Johann Löwenthal, a refugee of the 1848 revolutions that had just rocked Europe. Despite such successes, for the next several years Morphy largely ignored chess for the sake of his studies. The thesis for his bachelor’s degree, awarded in 1854 from Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, was on the justifications for war and secession by the southern states. A graduate degree achieved the following year was in mathematics and philosophy. Two years after that, he received an undergraduate law degree from the University of Louisiana (now Tulane University), reportedly memorizing the entire Louisiana Civil Code during his studies.
Since Morphy was not old enough to practice law, he spent his post-graduation leisure time playing chess. In 1857, he was invited to participate in the month-long First American Chess Congress in New York. German chess master Louis Paulsen, who was in attendance, openly declared before the tournament that Morphy would be the victor, and that if he were to visit Europe, he would prove himself the game’s greatest living player. After defeating German master Theodor Lichtenhein in the semifinals, Morphy faced and beat Paulsen himself to secure the trophy/.
Following his success in New York, Morphy was acclaimed the chess champion of the United States. He had his photograph taken by Mathew Brady (later, Winslow Homer would craft an engraving of him). Yet he remained known for his Southern gentility and humility. “His genial disposition, his unaffected modesty and gentlemanly courtesy have endeared him to all his acquaintances,” was the estimate of Morphy in the December 1857 issue of Chess Monthly.
The following year, the New Orleans Chess Club, which Morphy founded, decided to make a direct challenge to then-European champion Howard Staunton. The Englishman made his reply through The Illustrated London News:
… If Mr. Morphy—for whose skill we entertain the liveliest admiration—be desirous to win his spurs among the chess chivalry of Europe, he must take advantage of his purposed visit next year; he will then meet in this country, in France, in Germany, and in Russia, many champions whose names must be as household words to him, ready to test and do honor to his prowess.
So off to England Morphy went. Staunton, who was working on an edition of the complete works of Shakespeare, avoided the American, later blaming Morphy for lacking the funds required for match states. In his defense, Morphy, ever the southern gentleman — and influenced by his family’s mores — was decidedly opposed to playing chess for money.
His ultimatum to Staunton frustrated, Morphy crossed the English Channel and began challenging the best players he could find on the continent, including resident Paris chess professional Daniel Harrwitz and visiting German master Adolf Anderssen, who declared in his opinion Morphy was the best player to ever play the game. While in Paris, Morphy put on various exhibitions, including defeating eight opponents simultaneously, while blindfolded, no less. He was celebrated by the visiting Russian aristocrat Prince Nikolai Borisovich Galitzin, who encouraged him to travel to St. Petersburg. At an 1859 Paris banquet held in his honor, attendees placed a laurel wreath over the head of a bust of Morphy, carved by the sculptor Eugène-Louis Lequesne, and on multiple occasions in Paris and London he was declared “the Champion of the Chess World.”
The accolades continued upon Morphy’s return to the United States. Prominent Americans such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Louis Agassiz, and Oliver Wendell Holmes celebrated his abilities, while, in classic American entrepreneurial style, vendors hawked such consumer products as the “Morphy Hat” and the “Morphy Cigar.” There was even a Morphy Baseball Club in Brooklyn.
Morphy never intended to make a career out of chess, and the Civil War delayed his attempts to start his law practice. His brother Edward joined the Confederate army, while his mother and sisters emigrated to Paris. Some historical documentation places him on the staff of P. G. T. Beauregard and serving at the First Battle of Manassas. During the conflict he also spent time in New Orleans, as well as in Paris and Havana, where he challenged local Cuban champions.
After the cessation of hostilities, Morphy on at least three separate occasions attempted to open and advertise a law office, each time abandoning the effort, perhaps because his reputation overshadowed his legal aspirations. Subsequent years during Reconstruction were essentially spent in idleness, Morphy being financially secure thanks to the family fortune. Displaying symptoms of a persecution complex, Morphy was described by a close confidante as “deranged” and “not right mentally.” He sued his brother-in-law and attempted to provoke a duel with a close friend. Family attempted (and failed) to have him admitted to a Catholic sanitarium.
On 10 July 1884, Morphy was found dead in his New Orleans bathtub. He was 47. An autopsy assessed he had suffered a stroke caused by entering cold water after walking in the midday Louisiana heat. He was buried in the family tomb in the city.
The famed Russian chess master Garry Kasparov called Morphy, who was fluent in French, English, Spanish, and German, the “most erudite player of his time.” Kasparov has also argued that Morphy understood three principles that would in time become central to later analysis of the game: rapid development, domination of the center, and creation of open files. Anderssen in turn noted that after one bad move against Morphy, his adversary was doomed to failure and might as well simply resign. And the great American player Bobby Fischer believed Morphy to be among the ten greatest chess players in history, labeling him, “perhaps the most accurate player who ever lived.”
Southerners visiting New Orleans today would do well to make a brief sojourn to the Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1 to pay their respects to a man who, though little known today, was one of history’s finest chess players — and perhaps one of the greatest minds of the nineteenth century.
