MOBILE, Ala. (AP) - When “The Queen’s Gambit” became all the rage on Netflix last year, chess saw a massive jump in popularity and people became fascinated with its history and champions. But few may realize one of the champions mentioned in the series, New Orleans native Paul Morphy, is memorialized in Mobile, where he attended school.
Here’s the backstory.
Paul Charles Morphy was born June 22, 1837, in New Orleans to a wealthy family where his father and uncle spent their leisure time playing chess, according to David Lawson in the book “Paul Morphy: The Pride and Sorrow of Chess.”
In his 1993 article “Paul Morphy: Louisiana’s Chess Champion” (The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association), Michael L. Kurtz wrote that Morphy was known as “the pride and sorrow of chess” because “in a brief two-year career, he catapulted from the obscurity of the chess tables of the New Orleans’ Sazerac Coffee House to total domination of the world’s leading chess masters in a series of matches in London and Paris in 1858 and 1859, returning to America as the unofficial but universally acknowledged chess champion of the world. Then, just as suddenly, Morphy retired from active chess competition, spending the remainder of his life futilely trying to establish a law practice in New Orleans, exhibiting definite symptoms of mental illness and dying at the age of 47.”
He was a true prodigy, according to the 2012 book “Paul Morphy and the Evolution of Chess Theory” by Macon Shibut, playing only when he was young. Shibut theorizes in his book the direction fo Morphy’s career had he not retired.
In fact, a 2011 article by Karen Abbott in Smithsonian magazine proclaims that “as a young man, Paul Morphy vanquished eight opponents simultaneously while effectively blindfolded.”
Morphy enrolled in Spring Hill College in 1850 when he was only 13, Abbot said but played little chess while in school. “He was elected president of the Thespian Society during his freshman year and played Portia in The Merchant of Venice,” Abbott wrote. “He abhorred sports and tried to compensate for his slight, 5-foot-4 frame by briefly studying fencing. He played no chess in his college years, other than a few games with classmates in the summer of 1853.”
He graduated from the Jesuit college at 17 with a Bachelor of Arts degree and stayed for additional math courses until 1855 before returning to Louisiana to pursue law, according to an article by David Bagwell for Mobile Bay Magazine. Bagwell wrote: “Mobilian that local historian Erwin Craighead included a whole chapter about him in his well-regarded histories of Mobile. Craighead notes that, at Spring Hill, Morphy not only played chess but also placed first in Latin, Greek, and English, and second in Christian doctrine, French and math. He was president of the Thespian Society and prefect of the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary.” He was also a member of the military cadet company.
According to numerous accounts, Morphy’s two years’ touring as a chess champion came only after he graduated law school from what is now Tulane University in 1857 and was too young to practice law.
After leaving chess at age 22, Morphy returned to New Orleans in hopes of running a law practice but the Civil War interrupted his plans, Abbott wrote for the Smithsonian. The war, which he opposed, caused Morphy such anxiety that he wrote: “I am more strongly confirmed than ever in the belief that the time devoted to chess is literally frittered away. I have, for my own part, resolved not to be moved from my purpose of not engaging in chess hereafter.”
From there, Morphy began exhibiting signs of paranoia and mental illness. He died of a stroke on July 10, 1884.
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