In article t.com, Louis Blair writes:
| 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,

Perhaps I am reading too much into the line on pg 292 "It was in 1875 that
Maurian first began to notice some strange talk by Morphy as mentioned in his
letter below."
|
| _
| 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.

I am not, in general, trying to be critical of Lawson's biograhy, which I feel is
very well done. Nevertheless, I think there is a tendency, quite common even in
good biographies, to be overly generous to the point of view of the person
studied. For example, pm page 282, Lawson states that "It is almost certain that
his success at the chessboard worked against his success at the bar." I disagree
strongly. As the son of a prominent lawyer and as a celebrity, Morphy had
advantages other potential lawyers could only dream of; that he did not benefit
from them needs some other explanation, in my opinion.

|
|
| 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?
|

Nothing as clear as direct evidence of irrational behavior, but there is enough
remarkable behavior so that it seems to be too simple to say that there was no
evidence of any disturbance before 1875 (or 1873, if we start with Woodbury's
letter).

Examples:
December 1862 (pg 273 Lawson): when declining all chess offers, the NY Times
correspondent sees fit to mention that Morphy says that "He has also matters of
more importance to occupy his mind, and seems to be in feeble health."

February 1863 (pg 275): Declining to go to Vienna and earn money with chess
giving as one key reason that he is too caught up following the course of the
war. Instead, he pawns a watch for getting a large loan from Riviere. This
strikes me at least as odd behavior, though it wouldn't get him institutionalized
of course.

1867 (page 286): .. "his mother grew concerned about his monotonous and melancholy
life" (so decides to take him to Paris). At the least, this hints at a fairly
severe depression.

1867 (page 287, from a letter recalling Morphy in Paris): "Events had proved
disastrous to his parents, and also blighted his prospects, which had such a
depressing influence on his over-wrought mind, that it perfectly paralyzed his
energies."

This does not sound like a healthy person to me. Many people suffered much worse
in the Civil War, and Morphy had opportunities available to few others; he just
chose not to take advantage of them.

Lawson says that we know very little of what Morphy did other than chess in 1865
and 66. My best guess is that Morphy's first signs of illness came with bouts of
depression in this period, escalating slowly until they became so severe in 1875
that even his dear ones had to seek drastic measures.



|
| 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]".

I don't think blindfold chess drove Morphy crazy. However, consider the view of
the people at the time. Blindfold chess was considered awesome but a potential
risk. Morphy, after astonishing the world, disappears except for a few
where-are-they-now columns, and the next thing they hear he is apparently insane
at quite a young age. People could not know that later we would find that some
masters could play far more than 8 games blindfold with no apparent harm, and
could quite rationally believe that Morphy was driven insane by blindfold chess.

Jerry Spinrad