A Card.
HOWARD STAUNTON.
It will be remembered that the Illustrated News
of London, under date of
December 17th, 1859, published, in its chess column, two games
purporting
to have been played between Mr. MORPHY
and Mr. DEACON. These
contests
have been extensively copied into the chess journals of this
country, and doubt-
less, by this time, have been reprinted in many of the chess
periodicals of
Europe. Since their appearance, it has been a matter of surprise,
with many,
that Mr. MORPHY, in
the very full list of his European competitors, which was
published in the CHESS
MONTHLY, should have
omitted the name
of Mr. DEACON. The
matter is explained by the following extract from a pri-
vate note, just received from Mr. MORPHY
by W. J. A. Fuller, Esq., of New
York City.
NEW ORLEANS, January 19th, 1860.
DEAR FULLER:
The two games published by Staunton in the Illustrated London
News of
December 17th, were not played by myself with Deacon. I never
contested a
single game with Deacon, either on even terms or at odds. Had I
played at
all, I would have given him the Pawn and Move at least, as public
estimation
does not rank him as a player on an equality with Owen, to whom I
yielded
those odds successfully. One of the games published in the
Illustrated News,
--the Evans Gambit--was shown to me in London by Rivière, as having
been played between Deacon and himself. I do not know who Deacon's
com-
petitor was in the other game, but must repeat that someone has been
guilty
of deliberate falsehood in both instances.
Ever Yours,
PAUL MORPHY.
This hardly need and comment. The world has long been familiar with
the
weakness of the Chess-Editor of the Illustrated New. It has seen him
guilty
of a thousand misrepresentations, of a thousand prevarications, of a
thousand
mis-statements, But it could hardly expect to see him originate a
gross liter-
ary fraud --a fraud which, without any of the genius, exhibits all
the moral
depravity of a Chatterton, a Macpherson, or an Ireland.
After this, it will hardly be necessary to caution the chess public
against Mr.
Staunton's new volume, which he styles, it is believed, Chess
Praxis. It is to
contain, as Mr. Staunton says, the games alluded to above, together
with many
other contests purported to have been played by Mr. Morphy. How many
of
these will be spurious, it is impossible, as yet, to state. But it
is to be hoped
that Mr. Bohn, the publisher, will not run the risk of injuring his
large Ameri-
can trade by encouragement of an imposture so bare-faced as a
collection
of PAUL MORPHY's
games, edited by Howard Staunton, must necessarily be.
New York, February 1st, 1860
