John Saunders wrote: ↑Mon Feb 08, 2021 2:13 pm
We don't seem to any further forward here than we were back in 2019. The 1901 census record that Gerard has posted is
the same one that I posted in 2019. And the link to the Jim Hayes article is
the same one I posted in 2019.
Perhaps it is worth quoting what Edward Winter had to say in Kings, Commoners and Knaves, page 386 (Russell Enterprises, 1999):
Kings, Commoners and Knaves, page 386 wrote:James Mason
In an article on pages 364-365 of the December 1956 Chess Review Bruce Hayden wrote:
‘But imagine my surprise when I asked the great old warrior [Bernstein] who was his favourite among the players of the past. “James Mason”, he replied, “Not because he was the strongest but because he played my two favourite combinations”.’
The item was reprinted on pages 116-120 of Hayden’s book Cabbage Heads and Chess Kings. The two combinations occurred in Mason v Winawer, Vienna, 1882 and Mason v Janowsky, Monte Carlo, 1902. Both games can be found in an article on Mason by Jim Hayes on pages 10-15 of the March 1997 CHESS. On the basis of detailed research in Kilkenny, Ireland, where Mason was born, Mr Hayes attempted to solve one of chess history’s most enduring mysteries: what was James Mason’s real name? Although ‘absolute final proof was admitted to be lacking, he expressed the view that there was ‘overwhelming evidence in favour of him being Patrick Dwyer’. (Chess Café 1998)
Tim has already alluded to the March 1997 CHESS article by Jim Hayes. I'm afraid I don't have a copy either.
The Robert John Buckley article from the Birmingham Weekly Mercury, 15 April 1905, to which Tim alludes is
quoted at some length by Winter here. Again, I think we mulled over this back in 2019.
I would have thought the next step would be for someone to re-examine immigration records for New Orleans in 1861. (I'm assuming that Jim Hayes and/or the author of 'James Mason in America' have already done this to some degree, but additions to online records might turn up something new.)
Further to all of the above -
"... What actual evidence is there, apart from what Mason is supposed to have said to Robert J.Buckley?" (See further above.)
1905 in the year of Mason's death Buckley wrote -
[From the chess column of R.J. Buckley in the Birmingham Weekly Mercury of 15 April 1905, page 25] -
... Mason was a Kelt of the Kelts, a really Irish Irishman...
James Mason’s true name was neither James nor Mason. His real name was confided to me years ago, as it were, sub sigilla confessionis. Later he wrote:
“My father adopted the name of Mason on landing in New Orleans when I was 11..."
It may be that in the time to come this column may present a few extracts from Mason’s letters, of which about 400, some of them very long, regular essays, addressed to the writer, are available.
Mason was a great letter-writer, and when addressing people with whom he was in sympathy, was apt to let himself go...
The Masonic secret should be interesting. Perhaps Mason had other confidants. Yet he was never one of those who wear their hearts on their sleeves for daws to peck at.
https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/buckley.html
"... Where is it documented that he was born in Kilkenny?" (See further above.)
1888 Mason sojourned in Dublin -
“CHESS CELEBRITY IN DUBLIN Mr James Mason, the chess-player, is in Dublin and can be seen daily in play in the newly opened Chess Divan and Café of Mr J. Morphy at No. 79 Grafton Street. In addition to simultaneous games and general play, Mr Mason has undertaken a match of 'the first five games up' with a Dublin amateur …. Mr Mason is an Irishman, having been born in Kilkenny..."
[Irish Times, 23 vii 1888]
https://irishchesshistory.files.wordpre ... h-1888.pdf
How appropriate that the match was played at the premises of Mr. J. Morphy.
1861 - if, as recounted, the 11 year old James Mason and his family arrived in New Orleans "early" in that year they would have been in the same city at the same time as Paul Chas. Morphy, who was still only 23 years of age and already retired from playing chess in public.
(Mason's family emigrated from Ireland during a time of mass Irish immigration into the United States, due to famine in Ireland. Irish immigrants often found cheap passage to New Orleans on cotton ships that had unloaded their cargoes of cotton in Liverpool and did not wish to make the return voyage empty.)
In Jan. 1861 the city of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana seceded from the Union. In April that year the first shots in US Civil War were fired.
In April 1862 New Orleans, the most populous city in the Confederacy, was captured by Union forces. That would have made it much easier for Mason and his family to think about moving north, by sea, to New York City.
(In October 1862 Paul C. Morphy, "a patriotic Southerner", left New Orleans for his second visit to Europe, incognito, aboard a Spanish warship bound first for Cuba and then on to Cadiz, Spain, and finally Paris, France. Not returning to his native New Orleans home until early in 1864, during the closing years of the Civil War.)
Mason eventually secured employment at the
New York Herald where earlier Frederick Milnes Edge (Morphy's 'private secretary' during Morphy's first visit to Europe) - was a roving reporter.
Could Mason be said to have been led by a quirk of fate into a sort of search for Morphy?
Will further searches of the 1861 emigration and immigration records draw a complete blank?
Has Mason's marriage certificate still not been tracked down?
However, perhaps when all is said and done, what does it matter if the "Masonic secret" remains undisclosed. The man himself seems to have preferred that might remain the case.