While this report of Morphy's most eloquent, and humble response to a request for materials to produce a biography about notable Louisianians, was being circulated and published in The Baltimore Sun Baltimore, Maryland Wednesday, September 06, 1882 — “Paul Morphy, the chess-player, having recently been asked to furnish materials for a biographical notice in a proposed volume, writes to the New Orleans Bee that his father having left him an estate “ample enough to allow me to decently defray all my expenses, I have followed no calling and have given no cause for a biography. I have received a diploma as a lawyer.” He, however, adds, with pardonable pride: “A Louisianian by birth and in heart, a son of a father who acquired a reputation of jurisconsult at the Louisiana bar, who was a member of the Legislature, attorney-general and judge of the Supreme Court, and a grandchild of a grandfather who had the honor of representing Spain in New Orleans during a part of the first quarter of this century, I could but approve of a work that would bring to light the services, recent or old, rendered to our Louisiana.”
Simultaneously, on November 20, 1882 of the same year, the false report was being circulated that Morphy “has died at the early age of 45.” and most absurd of all, “For the last six years he [Paul Morphy] had entirely lost his memory.”
As everyone here probably knows, Paul Morphy died under mysterious circumstances in 1884, without benefit of a autopsy! Although the scurrilous news reports lied to the public, claiming a postmortem had been carried out. In a final mockery of the dumbfounded readers, proclaimed the imaginary autopsy (which was never done) confirmed ‘beyond any reasonable doubt’ that Paul Morphy died from a stroke as a result of having a “cool bath on a hot day”. Consider that!! because it's what the papers then circulated: “A cool bath on a hot day, killed Paul Morphy,” but a cool bath is the very thing recommended by modern medicine to PREVENT stroke.
However, we see above from the Baltimore Sun, Mr. Morphy was certainly suffering no “loss of memory”!
