George H. D. Gossip - Non-chess Adult Life

Non-chess Adult Life

Gossip made his living primarily as a writer and translator, writing for newspapers and magazines on three continents. His profession is described in the 1871, 1881, and 1891 United Kingdom censuses, respectively, as a "translator of languages", an "author of work on chess", and a member of the "literary profession". He lived for over five years in Paris, contributing to French publications. From 1879 to 1880 he was "employed occasionally as translator and otherwise" in The Times of London's office in Paris. He also lived in Germany.

Gossip married Alicia (the name is sometimes given as "Alice"), a music teacher from Dublin, in Jersey in 1868. As of 1871, they were living in London with their 11-month-old son George and two servants. By 1881, Gossip and his wife had moved to Ipswich, and had three more children: Helen (born c. 1872), Harold (c. 1874), and Mabel (c. 1879). After Gossip's father died in 1882, the Gossips and their four children emigrated to Australia, arriving in January 1883. While in that country, Gossip wrote articles for the Sydney Star, Sydney Globe, Sydney Evening News, Town and Country Journal, The Advertiser (Adelaide), and other publications. He contributed literary articles to Once a Month magazine (Melbourne) and the Sydney Quarterly Magazine.

Gossip moved to the United States in 1888, departing in April from Sydney on the steamship Alameda. In May, the ship arrived in San Francisco, where, Gossip wrote, "I first set foot on my native soil after an absence of over forty years." He wrote articles for the San Francisco Examiner on the "Chinese Question in Australia" and the San Francisco Chronicle on "Protection and Free Trade in New South Wales".

His family apparently remained in Australia, where Alicia died of cancer in October 1888. In 1894, Gossip's children Helen and Harold both married, in Victoria and Melbourne, respectively. Gossip's grandson, George Hatfield Dingley Gossip, born in Sydney in 1897, was a World War I flying ace for Australia, "shooting down six enemy aircraft while flying his Sopwith Camel along the Belgian coast".

In 1889, Gossip returned to Europe. By 1891, he was living as a tenant in a London boarding house. In 1894, he moved to Montreal, Canada. While living there, Gossip contributed articles to a newspaper in Manchester, England. The June 1895 British Chess Magazine (BCM) and June 1897 American Chess Magazine reported that he was living in Buffalo, New York.

Under the pseudonym "Ivan Trepoff", Gossip wrote a book, The Jew of Chamant, which was published by Hausauer (Buffalo) in 1898, and by F.T. Neely (London and New York) in 1899. The two versions are subtitled, respectively, "or, the modern Monte Cristo" and "a romance of crime". The book is intensely antisemitic. The author explains in its preface:

My object in the present work is to paint the rich Jew in his true colors, as the enemy of society; to show that the Jew who steals millions, can, in Europe, at any rate, defy the laws with impunity, and that he almost invariably escapes punishment owing to improper occult influences, and the mighty power of Israelitish gold.

The chess literature is silent about the last decade of Gossip's life. He died of heart disease on May 11, 1907, at the Railway Hotel in Liphook, England.