Believe me, I'm both humbled and intimidated by the extent of knowledge various members exhibit on the pages of this site.

I do find Lawson, for whatever reasons, to be over-zealous in his attempts to debunk Buck, who, while not the most fastidious of researchers, did make personal contact with various persons acquainted with Morphy.

I'm not so sure whether it's a question of whether Zukertort attempted to meet Morphy, but rather whether Morphy deigned to meet Zukertort... as to whether they actually did meet. Zukertort claimed they met, but, as we've seen, Zukertort claimed other things that weren't necessarily true.

Steinitz, though there's no doubt he met Morphy and spoke with him briefly, seemed to me to stretch out his article with filler based on gossip and about which he had no genuine knowledge. However, the part about getting Morphy to play chess again, does indicate that Morphy wasn't frequenting the Chess club - or at least not during times when he felt he might be nagged about testing his skills against noted visiting players.

My interpretatin of that anecdote is that in 1867 Zukertort was still a nobody, chess-wise. When Morphy supposedly met him, in 1881 or 1884, he addressed him in French, indicating that he remembered him from Paris around 15 years earlier, even though their introduction in Paris must have been just a perfunctory and extremely unimportant thing for the Great Morphy. All this was meant to demonstrate Morphy's unfailable memory was still quite effectively operational.

The question still remains, not whether Zukertort sought out Morphy, but whether Morphy allowed himself to be cornered. I lean towards what others have mentioned - if Zukertort had indeed met Morphy there would be more mentioned of the fact than a one sentence reply to a reporter (who, in turn, wrote completely inaccurate "facts"). It sounds more like the reporter asked Zukertort if he met Morphy while in N.O. and Zukertort said, "Yeah, sure, several times.. next question."

My idea about Seguin is purely intuitive. Part of it, I imagine, is due to the feud between Seguin and Steinitz, which, in my mind, makes Seguin more predisposed to Zukertort and a sort of link between him and Morphy. Also he was associated with de Maurian, as both were chess editors of the Times Democrat. So, Seguin was in the loop and he was a writer on Chess. I think if anything is to be discovered, he's the man. Now, I don't know anything about whether old copies of the Times Democrat exist. The fact that every reference I find to it's chess column is always second-hand (that is, the column was re-printed elsewhere) gives me pause.

I have one instance of a column by Seguin - on Thelcide Morphy's death http://sbchess.sinfree.net/Thelcide... - sent to me by the wonderful Harrie Grondijs, but even it was re-printed in Steinitz' IBC column.

Mr. Grondijs may be of some assistance.

<WilhelmThe2nd>

Seguin, I believe, started writing for the Times Democrat from 1883- 1893. But besides the chess column, Seguin might have personal documents.

I didn't know you could get things like that through the intralibrary loan system. Thanks.

<chancho>

Thanks. Yeah, we have another Keyes on our hands.

Chess board among the stars?>

If one does not appear to be manifesting Grandmastery at Chess (or even if one does), one might consider Grandmastery at some of these other things. Perhaps one is gifted in these ways far more than one may know.

(Our man Paul seemed well aware that, wonderful as Chess is, it is not quite as important as some other things....)

(: ♗ Bishop Berkeley ♗ :)

STEINITZ ON MORPHY

"The leading feature of the ‘International Chess Magazine’ for January, February and March, is Herr Steinitz’s critique of Paul Morphy. Both his premises and conclusions have been furiously assailed by the leading chess writers in the United States. They appear to have enshrined Morphy as the God of Chess, and to resent with the bigotry of idolators the slightest approach to scepticism on the part of those who reject their creed.

However much we may doubt his discretion there can be no question of Mr. Steinitz’s courage. A stranger in America, his chief object to firmly establish his new literary venture, he dares to assail at the outset of his American career the pet dogma of the very people on whom he must depend for the support necessary to the success of his undertaking.

The question in dispute is simply this: Americans everywhere declare that Morphy, the peerless chess player of twenty-five years ago, was the superior, not only of the best men of his time, but also of the doughty champions of to-day. Steinitz begs leave to doubt this. Hence the storm. For ourselves we cannot but think that those who so firmly believe in the genius of their late champion would choose a more dignified course if they confuted Herr Steinitz’s arguments instead of abusing himself. However, we believe firmly that Paul Morphy would have defeated just as easily Messrs. Zukertort, Steinitz and Co., as he did their teachers.

One point relied by Steinitz is the fact that there were a number of errors of judgment or analysis in many of Morphy’s games. Now, while this if proved (and we think it has been) would demonstrate Morphy was not infallible, it by no means demonstrates that Morphy was inferior to the men of to-day. First, he may have made less mistakes proportionately than they, and secondly, his play on the whole may have been so superior to theirs as to more than counterbalance the errors. The records of modern match and tournament play abundantly testify that both these suppositions are correct.

Another point made by the editor is that Morphy did not have to play under the modern time limit, and therefore was not hampered by this restriction. Surely Steinitz cannot but be aware that the time by Morphy in his matches was accurately recorded, and that he averaged between twenty and thirty moves per hour.

Thanks.

Rather incendiary writing by Charles Phillips. Was he the Canadian-born chess-player?

May I archive this posting?

Actually, due to certain time contraints, I second-guessed you and went ahead and archived your posting at http://sbchess.sinfree.net/STEINITZ...

I hope that's ok.

Where did you get that great picture of him?

I did it the old-fashioned way - Google.

I had never heard of Charles Phillips, so I searched his name and found this wonderful site on the history of Canadian chess - http://web.ncf.ca/bw998/canchess.html that mentioned that a chess player named Charles Phillips was born in Canada but lived in the US and that he won first place in the Continental Correspondence Chess Tournament of 1894. Since the time frame was right, I assumed that was the same person, so I searched further and found a entry in Winter's Chess notes #4021 - http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/... - about photo archives at the Chicago Daily News - http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoo... in which he listed Charles Phillips are one of the 38 photos found there with a "chess" keyword. I located the picture which just listed him as "Phillips" but since Winter already identified him by his full name, who am I to quibble?

It took approximately 6 minutes.

<WilhelmThe2nd>

I have a digital copy of 'Poems and prose sketches, with a biographical memoir of Paul Charles Morphy' by Louis Albert Morphy (minus the poems, which are terrible anyway and have nothing to do with Morphy)

I been meaning to put it online. It's very, umm... rambling and drivel-ish. In my opinion, it isn't worth more than it's curiousity value. If I find I can't get it online soon, I'll send it to you.

The biographical memoir from
'Poems and prose sketches, with a biographical memoir of Paul Charles Morphy' by Louis Albert Morphy

http://sbchess.sinfree.net/LouisAlb...

Thank you! Even though it contains no new information, it satisfies the curiosity. Early last year, I had maybe a dozen Morphy rarities on a list and now have read about half of them.

For the hardcore, "The Morphy File" examines small details of Morphy's games including authenticity, opponents, date of the game and score. Recently revealed is the true identity of "F. de L'A":

http://morphyfile.blogspot.com/