by David Lawson
Fred. M. Edge
During the first week of December, Rivière received a letter from Anderssen about his approaching visit to Paris, and a few days later Morphy got a telegram from him saying he would arrive on December 15 or there-abouts. Since the beginning of December, Morphy had been confined to bed with intestinal influenza and, as was the practice at that time, he was well leeched. He lost a lot of good blood as a result, which did not help his condition. To quote Edge:
He was leeched, and lost a great quantity of blood—I told him three or four pints; to which he replied, “Then there’s only a quart left.” He was very low during a fortnight, and having to lift him out of bed only four days before the match with the great Prussian master, I found him too weak to stand upon his legs, although in bed he did not feel so helpless.
The day before Anderssen arrived, Edge received a letter from Carl Mayet saying Anderssen had left Breslau. On hearing the news, Edge relates:
Morphy said to me, “I have a positive chess fever coming over me. Give me the board and pieces, and I’ll show you some of Anderssen’s games.” And with astounding memory, he gave me battle after battle with different adversaries, variations and all. How he dilated on a certain game between him and Dufresne [“Evergreen” game, then unnamed]. . . . “There,” said Morphy, “that shows the master.”
The next day, Wednesday morning at ten o’clock, Edge found Anderssen in Morphy’s bedroom, dismayed at finding him ill, and very reluctant to start a match until Morphy had recovered. However, Morphy, knowing Anderssen’s time in Paris was very limited, assured him he would be quite well enough by the coming Monday. They settled the few necessary details about the match, agreeing that the first winner of seven games was to be the victor, and that the match was to be played for honor only, with no money stakes.
Since this was Anderssen’s first visit to Paris, Edge offered to show him around, and after visiting the Louvre and other sites, they ended up at La Régence, where they found Harrwitz. Anderssen and Harrwitz had met before. Although the latter claimed to have won the majority of their games together, Anderssen disputed the fact and wished to settle the matter. He proposed they have some games and the result of a total of six games between them was that Anderssen won three, Harrwitz one, and two were drawn.
Morphy told his doctor that he must get him well enough to start the match with Anderssen the coming Monday, December 20. He feared only that a hard battle might exhaust him to such a degree that he might not be able to continue the next day. He agreed not to leave the hotel and that only a few onlookers should be present at the match.
“On Monday morning,” Edge relates, “I got Morphy out of bed for almost the first time in nearly a fortnight[,] and at about noon assisted him into the room where the match was to come off.”
In a letter to Professor Allen of January 20, 1859, Fiske writes as follows about Morphy’s physical condition during the encounter:
Morphy had an inflammation in the bowels (thank God it was not the brain) and arose from his bed, with the reluctant consent of his physician, who was present during the first two sittings, to meet Anderssen.
Dr. Johnston, Paris correspondent of the New York Times, describes the opening of the match in his firsthand account, dated Paris, December 23 (published January 11, 1859):
For the last two years all the lions of Paris have been American. Young Morphy, the chess-player, is the last in the list. The great match between this gentleman and Professor Anderssen, of Breslau, commenced on Monday morning at 12 o’clock. M. Anderssen arrived in Paris the Wednesday previous, but Mr. Morphy was confined to bed with an attack of the influenza. In the meantime Mr. Anderssen played with several gentlemen at the Café de la Régence—among others, with Mr. Harrwitz. Six games were played between these two gentlemen, three of which were won by Anderssen, one by Harrwitz, and two were drawn. M. Anderssen also played with Mr. Schulten, of New York, a few games, which resulted in favor of the former.
The great match between the champions of the Old and the New World commenced, as I said, on Monday, at Mr. Morphy’s hotel [Breteuil], No. 1 Rue du Dauphin. The greatest excitement prevailed, and an arrangement was made by which the game was kept on three boards at the Café de la Régence (only a few blocks distant), a domestic carrying the moves every half hour. Thus the large crowd collected at the Café were enabled to follow the progress of the game. The game was commenced in the presence of Messrs. Lequesne, of the Institute, De Saint-Amant, Arnous de Riviere, Journoud, Prèti, Carlini, F. Edge, Jas. Mortimer, and your correspondent, all invited especially by Messrs. Morphy and Anderssen as witnesses of the game.
Prof. Anderssen arrived at precisely 12 o’clock, in the company of Messrs. Prèti and Carlini. Mr. Morphy, who had not yet risen from bed after his late indisposition, did not appear for half an hour, and when he did join the party, looked so pale and feeble that, it seemed as if he was risking too much in undertaking the task he had before him. However, he declared his head all right, and rapidly shaking hands with his adversary and the party present, he stepped at once to the board, seized a black and a white pawn, changed them under the table, and held out his hand for the Professor to make a choice. Mr. Morphy won the move, and the game commenced at once with Evans’ Gambit.
It had been agreed on, in previous interviews, that the winner of the first seven games should be the victor. No money was staked by the contestants, and but little by the friends of the parties, for it was generally conceded that Mr. Morphy was sure to win the match. His friends, however, were offering in the clubs of Paris and London ten to one without takers.
The first game lasted seven hours, and was won by Prof. Anderssen. During the course of his game, which was conducted in the most brilliant manner, and in which were displayed an immense number of the most ingenious combinations on both sides, I had a good opportunity of studying the contestants. Nothing could be more unlike than the physique of the two players. Mr. Morphy is a frail, small boy, with a fine face and head, and a modest, almost timid air. Prof. Anderssen, on the contrary, is a tall man, slim, about fifty [forty] years of age, with a small, bald head, a slight stoop in the shoulders, lively black eyes, a clean-shaven face and a decidedly German cast of features. He is a quiet, gentlemanly man, with a sympathetic expression of the face, which immediately predisposes in his favor.
During this first game M. Anderssen moved much more rapidly than Mr. Morphy. Not a word was spoken by either player during the whole seven hours. No demonstrations or false moves were made by either party, to indicate to the other his plans. There seemed to be more originality, more genius, more of the imprévu in Mr. Morphy’s moves, and more of study and experience in those of M. Anderssen. The two men are evidently more nearly matched than they ever were before.
On Tuesday the game commenced at 12 o’clock, and at the close was a draw. On Wednesday Mr. Morphy beat M. Anderssen two games in rapid succession—the first one in a few moves. The young giant is getting roused up.
M. Lequesne, the sculptor, has executed in marble a very fine bust of Mr. Morphy, which has been placed alongside of those of Labourdonnais and Philidor, at the Chess Club over the Café de la Régence. Small duplicates of this are on sale about town.
George Walker, in Bell’s Life in London of January 2, 1859, spoke in a somewhat different tone of the Morphy-Anderssen encounter:
Anderssen’s great soul seems occasionally broken by the prospect of almost certain defeat, and he plays with comparative difficulty and “don’t careishness,” but as a whole, he himself considers the games a fair average of his strength, and honorably admits he should not expect better results from a second match. . . .
In the course of one of the games between Messrs. Morphy and Anderssen, a move of the former excited much surprise among the bystanders. He had declined to take a piece, which, although apparently an exchange of knights, would have resulted, it was thought, conclusively in his favor. The game proceeded, nevertheless, without verbal comment, and was rapid
ly won by Mr. Morphy. No sooner did he deliver the “checkmate” than one of the most intense of the lookers-on, breathless with pent-up emotion, exclaimed, “for the love of heaven tell me why you did not take the knight.” “Because,” said Morphy, all alive to the nature of his friend’s concern, “it was a stale-mate. Mr. Anderssen saw the game was desperate, and he planned this snare for me.” So saying, he replaced the pieces as they had been at the critical moment, and demonstrated the result by a series of moves which would have been inevitable had he taken the Knight. “Was I not right, Mr. Anderssen?” “Precisely,” ejaculated the bewildered gentleman.
After winning four games, Morphy went on to win the match. The score stood Morphy seven, Anderssen two, and two drawn. Morphy won the ninth game in thirty minutes and seventeen moves; it is a game that Steinitz labeled “brilliant” in his International Chess Magazine of January 1885. After the loss and draw of the first two games, Morphy won the next five. Sergeant remarks in Morphy’s Games of Chess that Anderssen’s “loss of the third game (Ruy Lopez) had the remarkable effect on Anderssen of deterring him henceforth from answering Morphy’s P–K4 with P–K4, truly a compliment from an analyst like Anderssen!”
After each game Anderssen would walk over to the Café de la Régence to expedite the transmission of the moves to Berlin and Leipzig, for interest was intense in Germany. One may be sure there was much rejoicing in Germany after the first game.
Morphy had ventured the Evans Gambit against Anderssen—“that most beautiful of openings,” as he called it—and lost after seventy-two moves. Perhaps his illness had something to do with the result, but Morphy told Edge afterward that the game “proved to him that the Evans is indubitably a lost game for the first player, if the defense be carefully played; inasmuch as the former can never recover the gambit pawn, and the position supposed to be acquired at the outset, cannot be maintained.” Yet of all the Evans Gambits Morphy played (some eighty on record), he lost only two in even games, one other to Rivière, and a few when giving odds of Knight or Rook. Whether he offered or was offered the Evans Gambit, he almost invariably won, regardless of odds.
Reinfeld’s analysis of the Morphy–Anderssen match games in The Human Side of Chess calls for some comment. Of course, post mortems have their value, but if one believes Reinfeld, Morphy was indeed lucky. Reinfeld’s remarks on the third game are of special interest. He says:
Morphy had White and played a Ruy Lopez. Morphy followed a variation recommended by Max Lange in his Schachpartien to the 12th move. Anderssen, on the other hand, had seen neither the book nor the variation. The line was extremely unfavorable for Anderssen, leaving him with a hopeless game, even at so early a stage.
Did Reinfeld really know that Morphy had seen Max Lange’s Schachpartien and had profited by his variation? Did he really know that Anderssen had not seen Schachpartien (a book his partner and co-editor of Schachzeitung had published just the year before), and so knew nothing of Lange’s important variation, which he says was the cause of Anderssen’s downfall?
One must also question Reinfeld’s judgment of Morphy (and Steinitz) as expressed elsewhere in The Human Side of Chess:
But at bottom both of these geniuses were actuated by the same feeling: pride, the pride that comes from being unsure of oneself. In Morphy this lack of self-confidence paralyzed his abilities.
If either Morphy or Steinitz lacked self-confidence, it was not apparent. Probably no other two players were more sure of themselves. Reinfeld also maintains that “Morphy caved in at the first great rebuff.” His first great rebuff was delivered by Staunton, but almost immediately thereafter he achieved his greatest successes in his matches with Harrwitz and Anderssen.
Reinfeld is frequently in error in his facts and assessments, as when he cites the incident when Morphy told Fuller, “Paulsen shall never win a game of me while he lives.” And Reinfeld makes the point that “facts are stubborn things, and the fact is that Morphy lost his next game with Paulsen!” But Reinfeld places the incident after the second game, when it actually occurred before the sixth game. Morphy did not lose another game to Paulsen.
It is undoubtedly true, as Reinfeld says, that he had no thought of “diminishing any of the glory which rightfully belongs to Morphy,” but nothing could be further from the truth than his statement, “In a telling phrase [italics added] Morphy later admitted that the desire for fame, the ultimate infirmity of noble minds, was the spur that goaded him on to victory.” And Reinfeld also mentions “vaulting ambition,” but neglects to quote or give sources for his statements.
One may ask where or when did Morphy admit that “desire for fame . . . goaded him on to victory.” One may dismiss Morphy’s statement in his letter to Staunton, dated October 6, 1858, that “reputation is the only incentive I recognize,” as making the point that he had no professional or monetary interest in chess. One has only to consider Morphy’s attitude and correspondence prior to the Morphy–Anderssen match. Certainly this match was the most momentous incident in Morphy’s chess career and of the greatest significance to him and his position in the chess world, yet ambition had no part whatsoever in the match materializing. As Edge had put it to him strongly, “His voyage to Europe was useless, if he did not play Anderssen. All was of no effect. Morphy did not appear to have the slightest ambition.”
Morphy had hoped to meet Anderssen, but when he learned that Anderssen could not come to Paris before mid-December, he dismissed the matter in his letter of October 14, 1858, to the Breslau Chess Club, given above, with a finality and lack of concern in line with his attitude to Edge about the match.
It is apparent that the “desire for fame” and “vaulting ambition” played no part in arrangements for the match, and it becomes evident from all the above that but for Edge and his scheming, there would have been no Morphy–Anderssen match, which came to pass in spite of Morphy and his intended plans.
And certainly Anderssen did not share Reinfeld’s opinion that Morphy was fortunate in having won their match. At La Régence, Anderssen always found friends to tell him he should have won, to which he replied several times, “Tell that to Mr. Morphy.” Edge also remarks that to another who said, “You are not playing anything like as well as with Dufresne,” Anderssen replied, “No, Mr. Morphy won’t let me.” He then added, “It is no use struggling against him; he is like a piece of machinery which is sure to come to a certain conclusion.” And as Falkbeer mentions in Paul Morphy, “at dinner before the last game was played, Anderssen said, jokingly and in good temper, ‘He was glad to have already two sheep in safety.’”
The Paris correspondent of the New York Express said in his January 20 dispatch, referring to Anderssen:
On the morning previous to his departure he said in my hearing—“I consider Mr. Morphy the finest chess player who ever existed. He is far superior to any now living, and would doubtless have beaten Labourdonnais himself. In all his games with me, he has not only played, in every instance, the exact move, but the most exact. He never makes a mistake (Morphy, present, here quietly smiled); but, if his adversary commits the slightest error, he is lost.”
Edge notes that in reply to a question of Rivière’s, Anderssen said, “It is impossible to play better than Mr. Morphy; if there be any difference in strength between him and Labourdonnais, it is in his favor.”
The match ended on December 28 when Morphy won the eleventh game after four hours of play. The next day, while photographers were arranging for the group picture that appeared as the frontispiece in Max Lange’s Paul Morphy, Skizze aus der Schachwelt (Part Two), which was published a few months later in 1859, Morphy and Anderssen played six offhand games in three hours, of which Morphy won five. As he was quoted in Bell’s Life in London of January 2, 1859, after these games Anderssen said, “Morphy is too strong for any living player to hope to win more than a game here and there.”
Morphy’s match and association with Anderssen appears to have benefited him. He was thereafter in much better heal
th, although he continued to shun La Régence. On the evening before Anderssen left (New Year’s Day), he, Morphy, Edge, and probably others dined together, such was the friendship that had grown between the two opponents. Edge remarks:
I have never seen a nobler-hearted gentleman than Herr Anderssen. He would sit at the board, examining the frightful positions into which Morphy had forced him, until his whole face was radiant with admiration of his antagonist’s strategy, and, positively laughing outright, he would commence resetting the pieces for another game, without a remark. I never heard him make a single observation to Morphy complimentary of his skill; but, to others he was loud in admiration of the young American. He said to me,—“I win my games in seventy moves but Mr. Morphy wins his in twenty, but that is only natural. . . .”
As he wished us good-bye, he said slyly to Morphy, “They won’t be pleased with me in Berlin, but I shall tell them[,] ‘Mr. Morphy will come here himself.’”
In his dispatch of January 5, 1859, to the New York Herald, Edge reported that “Anderssen particularly requested Morphy to visit Berlin, to close the mouths of the Berliners,” and added that “Mr. Morphy may shortly pay a flying visit to Berlin for the purpose of playing a few games with Lange, Dufresne and Mayet.”
Max Lange, co-editor with Anderssen of the Schachzeitung, was very critical of Anderssen—considered the strongest European player—for making advances to Morphy and going to Paris to meet him, instead of obliging Morphy, “a young and rising player,” to come to him. As Lange said in his Paul Morphy book:
It was clear that the American champion would be compelled to encounter the far-renowned German master ere he could boast of the championship of the world. His chivalrous mind would have doubtlessly led him to that final and decisive combat.
What Lange did not know was that Morphy was becoming disillusioned with chess playing. He had seldom gone to La Régence after failing to get Harrwitz to try some more games. In fact, as Edge had said, “For two months he had had an antipathy to chess, and I experienced the greatest difficulty in inducing him to go to the Régence at all.”