August  2005

from Morphy Gleanings by Philip W. Sergeant

The Hartford Times - 1874
by John G. Belden (born in 1833; died May 14 1886 - Chess editor of the Hartford Times for 17 years)

Morphy Crazy after all -----------     A New Orleans paper says: "There is a ridiculous story afloat the Paul Morphy has lost his reason and is an inmate of a lunatic asylum. Mr. Morphy was never in better health than now, and can be found daily at his law office, where he spends most his time. Having adopted law as a profession, he gave up chess and devotes himself exclusively to business."
Morphy has had lies enough retailed about him to upset an ordinary mind. First it was said that he had taken to law but was compelled to give it up because he did not know enough to make a decent lawyer. Next he was consigned to a grocery store where he peddled out 'pizen'* at three cents a glass, but, acquiring a taste for the poisonous fluid, he became his own best customer, and finally he became a 'gutter snipe.' The newspaper scribes, having dragged him into the gutter, refused to let him die there and consigned him to a lunatic asylum. Morphy is not a gutter drunkard; he never kept a grocery store; he is not crazy, never was crazy and never is going to be crazy. Now let him rest.

 

* an alteration of "poison," presumably referring to alcohol, possibly moonshine.

see also Charles A. Maurian's 1877 letter to the New York Sun.