Jeremy Spinrad wrote:

Hartston seems to be sugar-coating the issue a
bit, doesn't it? Lawson (pg 292) also seems to
indicate that there was no evidence of any
disturbance in Morphy's mind before 1875,

_
I would agree that Hartston is somewhat careless
about chronology, but, at the moment, I can find
no Lawson quote that could reasonably be taken
as indicating that there is no evidence of any
disturbance in Morphy's mind before 1875. In
what I could find, Lawson seemed to me to be
indicating that the dating of Morphy's mental
problems is approximate. Lawson himself mentioned
the 1873 Woodbury letter.


Jeremy Spinrad wrote:

Do you really think that Paul Morphy was well at
any time from 1873 until his death?

_
Depends on what one means by well. In 1877, Maurian
wrote that Morphy was "practicing law". Can we rule
out that this was true?


Jeremy Spinrad wrote:

I imagine that his illness started well before this,
though excuses were made for him; distraught over
the war, loss of fortune, etc.

_
Imagination is no substitute for fact. If there were
instances of illness well before 1873, where are
the reports of them, with or without excuses?


Jeremy Spinrad wrote:

Hard to pin down when his illness started, but
Hartston's quote seems to underplay it considerably.

_
It seems to me that "considerably" has not yet
been established.

Anyway, this discussion was originally about the
notion that "given the medical knowledge of the time,
it was very rational to believe that blindfold chess
.... drove Morphy crazy". It may be true that "after
Morphy's death ... there was a feeling" expressed by
some "that his blindfold stunts had caused his insanity",
but one must ask whether this opinion was held by
anyone properly acquainted with the chronology of
Morphy's life. Few were better acquainted with
Morphy than Maurian, and he seemed to think that
chess had "nothing to do with [Morphy's derangement]".