The Staunton–Morphy controversy concerns the failure of negotiations in 1858 for a chess match between Howard Staunton and Paul Morphy and later interpretations of the actions of the two players. The details of the events are not universally agreed, and accounts and interpretations often show strong national bias.
Continuing uncertainties and controversy In the words of chess journalist Mark Weeks, "Staunton represents a unique challenge to chess history. Many players immediately associate his name with Paul Morphy, as in 'Staunton ducked a match with Morphy'. ... This is extremely unfair, as it concentrates the focus on Staunton to a relatively minor, factually controversial incident, while it ignores his significant achievements." As Edward Winter writes, "The issue of national bias does, unfortunately, require consideration in the Staunton–Morphy affair." When editing World Chess Champions (Oxford, 1981), Winter chose an Englishman to write about Staunton and an American to write about Morphy.
Backgrounds of the players
Staunton
Howard Staunton (April 1810 – June 22, 1874) was an English chess master who won a match in Paris in 1843 against the Frenchman Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant, and was regarded as the world's strongest player from 1843 to 1851 by many contemporary commentators, by later 19th-century commentators and by 20th-century world champion Garry Kasparov. According to match records collected by Jeremy P. Spinrad, the only players who were successful against Staunton without receiving odds from 1840 to 1851 were: Saint-Amant, who won the first and lost the second and longer of their matches in 1843; Adolf Anderssen, who eliminated Staunton from the 1851 London International tournament and won the event; and Elijah Williams, who beat Staunton in the play-off for third place in the same tournament.Williams beat Staunton by one game in the match. This was before time controls were used and Staunton resigned a crucial game because Williams was taking too long to move. Ref: Anne Sunnucks, The Encyclopedia of Chess, 1970, p. 459 The statistical website Chessmetrics ranks Staunton as world number one from May 1843 to August 1849, in the top ten from July 1851 to May 1853, and in the top five from June 1853 to January 1856.
Staunton proposed and was the principal organizer of the 1851 London International Tournament, which was the first ever international tournament. His disappointing fourth place in the tournament may indicate that he had over-loaded himself by being both secretary of the organizing committee and a competitor. The 1851 tournament and his subsequent match against Williams effectively ended Staunton's competitive career. Although Anderssen, who won the tournament, accepted Staunton's challenge for a match after the tournament, circumstances prevented them from playing it. In 1853 while in Brussels, Staunton played an impromptu match against von der Lasa but had to abandon it because of heart trouble, and von der Lasa later wrote that in his opinion Staunton had no chance of being physically fit enough for serious competition after 1853. at
Staunton was also an influential chess journalist and writer of chess books, and in 1847 embarked on an additional career as a Shakespearean scholar, gaining the respect of his contemporaries and of modern writers in that field also. Quotes the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. After the end of his competitive chess career, he remained an active writer about both chess and Shakespeare until his death, and was at work when he died.
Morphy
Paul Morphy (June 22, 1837 – July 10, 1884) was an American chess prodigy who learned the game as a young child simply from watching others play. In 1850, when Morphy was twelve, the strong professional Hungarian chess master Johann Löwenthal visited New Orleans where Morphy beat him 3–0. Morphy played little chess in his teens, concentrating instead on his studies, but was invited to play in the 1857 American Chess Congress. This was a knock-out tournament in which each round was a mini-match. Morphy, then 20 years old, lost only one game (to Louis Paulsen) while drawing three, two of them in the final which he won 6–2 (5 wins, one loss, and two draws) against Louis Paulsen, a German-American whom Chessmetrics rates as one of the world's top 10 from the late 1850s to the early 1890s. This book was reprinted as
The New Orleans Chess Club then issued a challenge on Morphy's behalf for a match against Staunton, who was still famous for his dominance in the late 1840s and for his influential chess writings. Morphy and his friends took Staunton's response to be an acceptance of the challenge, and Morphy set off for England in mid-1858. This is the 2nd of part of a series and is in the lower half of the Web page.
While the negotiations with Staunton dragged on, Morphy spent most of his time in London and Paris, where he achieved crushing victories against other top players of the time: 10–4 against Löwenthal;Chessmetrics rates Löwenthal in the world's top 5 in the years preceding and following this match: 5½–2½ against Daniel Harrwitz;Chessmetrics rates Harwitz in the world's top 5 around this time: 8–3 against Adolf Anderssen, who had won the 1851 London International Tournament and later won the 1862 London Tournament; This can be viewed online at or downloaded as PDF from Chessmetrics rates Anderssen in the world's top 5 for most of the period from 1851 to his death in 1879: and 7½–½ in 1859 against Augustus Mongredien.
Morphy proved so much stronger than his contemporaries that Chessmetrics rates him the world's top player from 1858 until early 1862, 3 years after Morphy announced his retirement from chess. It is difficult to compare Morphy objectively with more recent top-class players because he was so far ahead of his opponents. (now as available as paperback from Dover Publications; page numbers may differ).
The events of 1858
Initial challenge and response In the mid-1850s Staunton obtained a contract with the publishers Routledge to edit the text of Shakespeare. This edition appeared in parts from 1857 to 1860, and Staunton's work was praised by experts. While Staunton was busy with the Shakespeare edition, he received a courteous letter from the New Orleans Chess Club, inviting him to that city to play Paul Morphy, who had won the 1857 First American Chess Congress; This challenge, which was sent in February 1858, proposed that the stake should be $5,000 and that, if Staunton lost, he would be paid $1,000 to cover expenses.Full text of the original challenge at The proposed stake would be worth about $877,000 in 2007's money.$877,145.92 using incomes as the bases for conversion; if prices are used as the base, the result would be about $129,913.53. Interestingly, the Chess Club had not negotiated with Morphy before sending the letter.
Staunton replied on April 4, 1858:
On the same day Staunton wrote in his column in the Illustrated London News: The web page describes this as "(most likely) from Howard Staunton's chess column in the Illustrated London News, April 3, 1858". The words match excerpts which Murray quotes and attributes to Staunton in the Illustrated London News. There may be room for slight uncertainty about the exact date.
There has been debate ever since about whether Staunton's letter and article should be regarded as a polite refusal or a conditional acceptance of the challenge. Morphy, however, took Staunton's writing as a challenge. Although Staunton had not said anything about playing against Morphy, Morphy assumed that the match could easily be arranged once he just got to England.
Samuel Boden, who was then the chess editor of The Field, a prestigious English countryside and sporting magazine, disputed the Americans' selection of Staunton as representing the best that Europe had to offer:
Staunton did offer to play Morphy by electric telegraph, a technology whose progress and uses for chess he reported enthusiastically. However this offer arrived after Morphy had left for Europe – which perhaps was fortunate, as the newly laid cable broke down after a month and was not replaced until 1866. This cites the entry for "telegraph chess," in
Morphy sets off for Europe When Morphy left New Orleans for Europe on May 31, 1858, he was still legally a minor, and would come of age on June 22, 1858. Hence he required his family's permission for the journey. However his immediate family opposed the trip on the grounds that it would delay his entry into the legal profession, and it took some time for one uncle and a family friend to persuade them to let him go. The New Orleans Chess Club also played a notable part in trying to persuade Morphy's family into letting him travel; it also offered to pay Morphy's travel expenses, but he declined this offer since he did not want to be seen as a professional chess player.
Morphy's explanation for the voyage was that he intended to play in the chess tournament that had been scheduled for 22 June 1858 in Birmingham. Staunton welcomed the news that "Mr. Paul Morphy has definitely settled to visit England and attend the meeting of the British Association at Birmingham...", which was the published aim of Morphy's visit.
After Morphy's arrival in England Morphy arrived in Liverpool on June 20, 1858, and immediately caught the train to Birmingham. However, on arrival he found that the tournament had been postponed by two months, to August 24. Morphy traveled to London the following day but had fallen ill, and was not fit to visit the London chess clubs until June 23. The Illustrated London News, of which Staunton was the chess editor, printed an article "Arrival of Mr. Morphy" on June 26. At the St. George's club he met Staunton and re-issued the challenge, which Staunton accepted provided he was given a month to prepare. Although he declined to play a few casual games against Morphy, Staunton invited him to his home in Streatham, which in those days was a country village whose first railway station had opened only two years earlier. There they played a couple of consultation games, with Staunton partnered by John Owen and Morphy by Thomas Wilson Barnes. The Morphy-Barnes team defeated Staunton-Owen in both consultation games. A little later Staunton proposed that they delay their match until after the Birmingham tournament in August, and Morphy reluctantly agreed. Staunton announced in the Illustrated London News:
Around this time Morphy wrote asking friends in the US to send him the money for the stake. However, in late July 1858 his family informed his friend Charles Maurian that "they had resolved not only not to help raising the amount wanted but that moreover they should not allow him to play a money match either with his own money or anyone else's ... that he will be brought home by force if necessary; that they were determine to prevent a money match by all means." Maurian persuaded New Orleans Chess Club to send £500, but apparently it was not in Morphy's hands until early October.