Jeremy Spinrad wrote:

Lawson sometimes seems to say that it came
from his family, but at other times seems to
think that he took this more strictly than
his family did, since they approved of some
earlier money matches.

_
It has to be remembered that there was more
than one person in Morphy's family. Reports
of Morphy's early chess activity seem to me
to be pretty consistant in depicting Morphy's
mother as only reluctantly agreeing to his
activities.


Jeremy Spinrad wrote:

The New Orleans chess club was happy to
back him in matches, showing that it was
not an attitude of New Orleans society in
general.

_
It strikes me as a little questionable to
take the attitude of the New Orleans chess
club as a reflection of the attitude of
New Orleans society in general.


Jeremy Spinrad wrote:

People ... would like to have [Morphy] as a
lawyer.

_
Fact or imagination?

"The men of the good families in New Orleans,
a group to which young Morphy certainly
belonged, were nearly all members of the
'Louisiana Tigers,' the Seventh Regiment of
New Orleans. Morphy had refused to join with
these old-time associates in the attempt
to over-throw the Republic. This brought
him into social isolation." - Putnam


Jeremy Spinrad wrote:

Many people would be charming, tell some
chess stories, and make everyone happy; that
doesn't seem to be Morphy's reaction when
the subject of chess came up.

_
To judge from the 1859 reports, Morphy made
people happy for awhile, making many social
appearances in the U. S. and also in France
and England before his return to the U. S.
It was only as the years passed that:

"[Morphy's aversion to chess] was caused, no doubt,
by his being constantly bored to death by all sorts
of persons who thought it a nice thing to play a game
with the champion of the world, or to ask him in how
many moves he could force mate in a game, or what was
the best way to open the game, or to be kind enough
to solve this or that problem &c, to say nothing of
the mountains of stupid letters he was called upon
to read." - Maurian