Was Staunton afraid to play Morphy?

I just read Morphys bibliography from wikipedia. There were always "complications" so they could never play. Was he afraid? Sorry, i don't know much chess history but it seems Morphy was the best at the time.

Morphy played 4 significant matches: Won by 4 x 2 against Paulsen, by far the second best american player, Won by resignation in the middle of the match against Horowitz and won by a large margin against Andersen, the best player in Europe. And also played a blindfold match against 10 strong players ( considered the strongest players ever to play in a blindfold match ) and won all games, in 10 hours.  Because of all this, I don`t agree that he can not be considered an "official" World Champion. And Staunton was an idiot that was afraid to lose. He should consider an honour to play against Morphy.

And after all that, Morphy dissapeared, like Bobby.

Depends who you ask.  Technically, Staunton had been more or less retired from active chess play for at least five years when Morphy arrived in Europe, but it would have been a gentlemanly gesture to symbolically pass the torch to Morphy with a match, much as Lasker did with Capablanca in 1920 (though of course Lasker "unretired" soon after and went on to some of his greatest triumphs).

That said, Staunton, unlike Morphy, was not independently wealthy and had various employments that required his attention in 1858, and it is likely that he had little to gain and much to lose from a match unless financially compensated for his time and effort.  IIRC, the loser (EDIT: winner - it's unclear if the loser would get anything) of the match would have gotten about five hundred pounds (I could be wrong about this - ask batgirl!), and that does seem to be scant compensation for the likely hopeless task before him.  From this angle, perhaps the real underlying problem with the match was that Morphy was forbidden to use any of his family's fortune to help coax Staunton out of hibernation and thus, inadvertently or not, appeared somewhat disdainful of (or, at best, merely aloof from) the petty affairs of the working class, a position Staunton - a self made man if ever there was one - could hardly have had any great sympathy for.

500 pounds was a huge sum of money back then.

Compared to what Staunton might lose from his publishers, I'm not sure five hundred pounds was fantastic compensation.  As Staunton himself writes:

The experience, however, of some weeks, during which I have laboured unceasingly, to the serious injury of my health, shows that not only is it impracticable for me to save time for that purpose, but that by no means short of giving up a great work on which I am engaged, subjecting the publishers to the loss of thousands, and myself to an action for breach of contract, could I obtain time even for the match itself. Such a sacrifice is, of course, out of all question.

How truthful Staunton is being about his situation is, of course, open to some speculation.

Btw, according to http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons/lib/research/rp99/rp99-020.pdf, five hundred pounds would be worth roughly thirty-six thousand pounds in 1998.  Kramnik, in contrast, won two million dollars for beating Kasparov in 2000.

Staunton comes across as a dick in this sad and sordid incident because he wasn't man enuff to just come out and say he was retired, or outclassed, or anything else that a real mensch would have said to explain his bowing out of a match with Morphy.

The real mystery to me is why did Morphy think so highly of Staunton when it appears obvious that the strongest opponent in the world for him at the time was Anderssen?

Staunton repeatedly said he was retired.  I guess he could have added "outclassed", but I'm not sure what satisfaction Morphy would have really gotten out of that.   The situation is really a lot like the Capablanca-Lasker match, but there Capa was able to compensate Lasker for the humiliation of undertaking the defense of a title he no longer wanted.

Great as Morphy was, there can't be an official World Champion when there is no World Championship. Otherwise one might declare England equally official football World Champions of the 1880s as Spain is today. And if Morphy was indeed the official World Champion, who were his predecessors, and when did he lose this official title?

Just as long as old Howie isn't around any longer to defend himself, I was an English BA major and never heard Staunton's name mentioned once in 2 semesters of Shakespeare. When I asked my professor (who had a PhD in English Lit) what he knew about Staunton, he replied "Didn't he invent the modern chess set?"

 As strange as it is for me to defend Staunton, an odious individual if ever there was one, much of this fails to convince me.  First off, Staunton's evasive and ambiguous tone in each and every response makes it obvious, and not simply in retrospect, that he was never eager to play a match with Morphy - it takes little imagination to immediately perceive that only the old (and many years retired from chess) man's pride prevented him from an outright refusal.  Secondly, why Morphy was so keen on humiliating Staunton in a match is unclear, as Staunton was by almost every account no longer considered the champion of anything outside of London.  As Boden wrote at the time,

...we cannot avoid entering our protest against the selection on the part of our rivals of a champion for our side....that he is champion of even London alone, over the board, we unhesitatingly deny ... while on the Continent the idea of being considered the champion of Europe would be ridiculed as the height of absurdity....

Secondly, I'm not sure what real basis you have to mock Staunton's literary work.  The fact that it is obscure over one hundred and fifty years after the fact is hardly relevant, and the only actual scholarly assessment I can find of him is quite favorable:

"Staunton's text was based on a collation of the folio editions with the early quartos and with the texts of modern editors from Rowe [1709] to Dyce [1857].  The conjectural emendations, which were usually sensible, were kept within narrow limits, and showed much familiarity with Elizabethan literature and modes of speech.  The general notes combined common-sense with exhaustive research" (DNB, 1004).

It should also be noted that your "Staunton incorrectly assumes" line is a mild plagarism of Reuben Fine, or possibly Reinfeld or Horowitz - I have to admit I can no longer remember which potboiler of theirs it came from, but I do distinctly recall wondering on what authority the author had to sum up Staunton's work in such manner.  Later I learned that most of the American chess writers of that day (and, apparently, this as well) did it on no basis other than their own prejudices.

Anyhow, to summarize, ah, never mind.  Here is a quick dialogue in modern prose to illustrate what I really think occured:

...

Morphy: Yo Howard, you down for a game?

Staunton: No man, I gots work to do, maybe later.

Morphy: Sure thing bro, tell me when and I'll be there.

Staunton: Yeah, uh, OK.

time passes...

Morphy: Yo, H-Bomb, howz it hangin?  I'm in yur hood, beatin yur countymen.

Staunton: That's special, man.

Morphy: So, er, when are we gunna hoop this thing up?

Staunton: Look man, I know you from some candyland where money wipes yur arse, but some of us have jobs and shiat, so back off, homie, and get off my lawn until November.

Morphy: Dayum, that's cold.

Afraid? He was simply busy with his work. Back then, people actually treated their work seriously.