George H. D. Gossip
Encyclopedia
George Hatfeild Dingley Gossip (December 6, 1841 – May 11, 1907) was a minor American-English
chess
master
and writer. He competed in chess tournament
s between 1870 and 1895, playing against most of the world's leading players, but with only modest success. The writer G. H. Diggle
calls him "the King of Wooden Spoonists
" because he usually finished last in strong tournaments.
Gossip was also a noted writer. His treatise
The Chess-Player's Manual—A Complete Guide to Chess, a 900-page tome published in 1874 after several years of work, was harshly received by the critics, largely because he had included a number of informal skittles games that he had (atypically) won against stronger players. As a result, Gossip developed a lifelong enmity toward chess critics, whom he often attacked ferociously in his books. However, his 1879 book Theory of the Chess Openings was well received. Wilhelm Steinitz
, the first World Chess Champion
, wrote that the 1888 edition of The Chess-Player's Manual was one of the best available books on the game. Thanks in part to a 122-page appendix by S. Lipschütz in 1888, it became one of the standard opening
works of the time.
Gossip made his living primarily as a journalist, author, and translator. He wrote for publications in England, France, Australia, and the United States. At various times he resided in each of those countries, as well as in Germany and Canada. In 1898 and 1899, two publishers issued Gossip's sole book about a subject other than chess, The Jew of Chamant
. Published under the pseudonym
"Ivan Trepoff", it was virulently antisemitic.
Chess writers have often mocked Gossip's play, calling him a "grandpatzer" and the like. However, Kenneth Whyld, one of his previous critics, suggests that history may have judged him unfairly.
, Derbyshire
(the Rodes family seat) and at Hatfield, in Yorkshire
. Both the Gossip and Rodes families are listed in Burke's Landed Gentry
. He was educated at Windermere College, Westmorland
, and won a scholarship to Oxford University, but was unable to attend as his father, uncle, and aunts lost a lawsuit that ruined them financially. As a result, Gossip had to support himself through his own labors.
, 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:
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.
a game against Joseph Henry Blackburne
at a simultaneous exhibition
in April. He played in a number of chess tournament
s between 1870 and 1895, usually with unimpressive results. At London 1870, the Third British Chess Association Congress (won by John Wisker
after a playoff against Amos Burn
), Gossip scored two of six possible points, finishing in a tie for fifth–sixth out of seven players. He had the consolation of handing Burn his only loss. At London 1872 (won by Steinitz ahead of Johannes Zukertort
and Blackburne), he scored just one out of seven, finishing seventh out of eight players.
Gossip won the 1873–74 correspondence chess
tournament of the Chess-Players Chronicle, after which he "was thought by some to be the strongest correspondence player known". However, playing first board for England in an 1879 correspondence chess match against the United States, he lost all four of his games to Ellen Gilbert
of Hartford, Connecticut
. She "caused a sensation in the chess world" by announcing mate in 21 moves in one game, and mate in 35 moves in another. Gossip responded gallantly, dedicating his book Theory of the Chess Openings to her.
In 1874, Gossip lost a match for the Championship Cup of the Provinces to Rev. John Owen
, retiring because of illness after one win, two draws, and two losses. He won a local tournament at the Café de la Régence
in Paris in 1880. In 1882, he beat Wordsworth Donisthorpe
in a match held at Simpson's Divan in London.
Gossip's first significant success at over-the-board chess came at the 1883 London Vizayanagaram minor tournament. He scored 17½ out of 25, tying for fifth–sixth place out of 26 players with Charles Ranken
, who later co-authored the treatise Chess Openings Ancient and Modern (1889). Curt von Bardeleben
won with 21½ points; Isidor Gunsberg
, who would narrowly lose an 1890–91 World Championship
match to Steinitz, finished fourth with 19 points.
In 1885 Gossip, a year after emigrating to Australia, issued a challenge to any player in the Australian colonies to play a match with him for 20 pounds a side and the title of Australian champion. Frederick Karl Esling, a leading Melbourne player, accepted the challenge. Esling won the first game, and the second was adjourned in a position favorable to him. Gossip then pled illness and forfeited the match. Kenneth Whyld writes that the Australians probably considered Gossip a "whingeing Pom".
An Australian commentator observes, "Gossip may not have been the most popular itinerant to venture to these shores in the nineteenth century, but when he announced his challenge ... he at least brought the question of an official Chess Champion of Australia before the chess playing fraternity". In 1950, when Esling was 90, the Australian Chess Federation formally declared, belatedly, that he had become the first Australian Chess Champion by winning his 1885 match against Gossip. The Second Australian Chess Championship
, a tournament, was held at Adelaide in 1887. Gossip finished third with 6½ out of 9, behind Henry Charlick
(7½ points) and Esling (7 points).
After returning to America in 1888, Gossip obtained an appointment at the Columbia Chess Club
. The following year, he represented England at the Sixth American Chess Congress (New York 1889), one of the greatest tournaments of the 19th century. The Congress, a double round robin
that was one of the longest tournaments in history, was intended to select a challenger for the world championship title. There, Gossip had what G. H. Diggle
calls "perhaps the best performance of his career". He scored 13½ out of 38 (11 wins, 5 draws, 22 losses), finishing 17th–18th out of 20 players. He won games from S. Lipschütz, Max Judd
, Eugene Delmar
, Jackson Showalter
, William Pollock
(twice), Henry Bird (twice), David Graham Baird
, James Moore Hanham, and John Washington Baird
. Mikhail Chigorin
and Max Weiss
tied for first with 29 points, edging out Gunsberg (28½ points).
Gossip was unable to repeat even this modest level of success in his final tournaments. He finished last in five consecutive strong events: the Master Section at London 1889 (scoring 1½ out of 10; Bird won on tiebreak over Gunsberg); the Meisterturnier (Master Tournament) at Breslau 1889 (scoring three out of ten; Siegbert Tarrasch
won); the Master Section of Manchester
1890 (scoring four out of nineteen; Tarrasch won); the Master Tournament at London 1892 (scoring 2½ out of 11; future World Champion Emanuel Lasker
won); and New York 1893 (scoring 2½ out of 13; Lasker won with a perfect score). Gossip's run of last-place finishes moved Diggle to dub him "the King of Wooden Spoonists
". Gossip's last event was a minor tournament in Skaneateles, New York
in July–August 1895, where he scored three out of six, finishing in a tie for third–fifth of seven players.
A report in the BCM in 1889 observed that Gossip suffered from great nervousness that prevented him from fully displaying his abilities at chess tournaments, where he had to stop his ears "to keep out the low hum inseparable from a large concourse of people". Bird likewise wrote that minor distractions that he would not even notice would "drive ... Gossip to despair". The BCM commentator accordingly believed that Gossip "would make a good stand in a single encounter with men who are much higher in the tournament than he is".
Following his move to Montreal, Gossip in a letter to a friend dated October 20, 1894 complained, "The French Canadian
Chessplayers here are the poorest, meanest humbug
s I ever met – all Jesuits." He and Pollock played a match at the Montreal Chess Club in December 1894 and January 1895; each won six games, with five draws. This was an impressive result for Gossip "in view of Pollock's undoubted strength". Later in 1895, Pollock finished 19th out of 22 players, scoring 8 out of 21 (including wins over Tarrasch and Steinitz), at Hastings 1895, arguably at that time the strongest tournament in history. Diggle writes that Gossip's drawn match with Pollock vindicates the BCMs 1889 observation that Gossip would be more at home in a match than a tournament.
Gossip was only a minor master, "a mediocre player who figured at or near the bottom of every better than average tourney in which he participated". However, during his career he played tournament games against most of the world's leading players, including World Champions Lasker and Steinitz; World Championship challengers Zukertort, Tarrasch, Chigorin, and Gunsberg; Louis Paulsen
, Harry Nelson Pillsbury
, and James Mason
, all at some point ranked number 1 in the world by Chessmetrics
; Burn, Blackburne, Bird, and Cecil de Vere (all ranked number 2); and Weiss and Wisker (both ranked number 3).
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As of 1874, Gossip was the chess editor of The Hornet. In that year, after several years' work, he published his magnum opus
, The Chess-Player's Manual—A Complete Guide to Chess. It was "a handsomely produced work with more than 800 of its 900 pages devoted to openings and illustrative games". The book became the subject of biting criticism, largely because Gossip had included 27 illustrative games that he had won against leading players of the day, and only 12 games that he had lost. Steinitz later wrote:
In 1879, Gossip published Theory of the Chess Openings, a shorter work more in the style of Modern Chess Openings
, which sold out within six months. The preface and the concluding chapter of the book bitterly attacked the critics who had savaged his earlier treatise. This time the critics, "while deploring 'the outside slices of Mr. Gossip's sandwich' ", praised the main body of the work. William Wayte
in the Chess Players Chronicle called the book "fairly in possession of the field among English elementary treatises". Unfortunately for Gossip, he "was the victim of an act of gross piracy
, as many copies forming no part of the edition printed by his orders were circulated in America and the 'pirates' never brought to justice."
While in Australia, Gossip wrote a chess column that appeared in Once a Month magazine from February to October 1885.
A new edition of The Chess-Player's Manual was published in 1888, this one with a 122-page appendix by Lipschütz. Steinitz wrote that "Mr Gossip has produced a useful work, which in some respects must be regarded even superior to that of Staunton
or any other previous writers on the chess openings. ... But the most meritorious distinguishing feature of the Manual is the large collection of illustrative games by various first-class masters, and in that respect Mr Gossip's work stands second only to Signor Salvioli's Teoria e Pratica among the analytical works in any language." The following year, Steinitz cited it in The Modern Chess Instructor as one of the 12 principal authorities he had relied on in writing that treatise.
An anonymous reviewer in The New York Times
called the new edition of The Chess-Player's Manual "probably the most convenient, trustworthy, and satisfactory chess book accessible in the English language". The reviewer concluded that the games and problems in the volume would "afford great entertainment" to the casual enthusiast, "while for real students of chess ... it is very nearly indispensable". He also praised "Mr. Lipschütz's appendix, which brings the development of the openings almost down to date". David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld write in The Oxford Companion to Chess
that Lipschütz's appendix "helped to make this one of the standard opening books of the time". World Champion Bobby Fischer
had a copy of The Chess-Player's Manual in his personal library, and cited it in his famous 1961 article "A Bust to the King's Gambit
".
The June 1888 issue of Steinitz's International Chess Magazine
contained an article by Gossip that Robert John McCrary calls "a very illuminating, important, and detailed account of the state of San Francisco chess". For the last few months of 1888 Gossip was listed as being on the "Editorial Staff" of the Columbia Chess Chronicle. Its December 29, 1888 issue contained a lengthy article by him entitled "Chess in the Present Day", which offered a broad sweep of chess history and the advances made by chess in the United States. Gossip called Paul Morphy
and Steinitz "the two greatest chessplayers that have ever lived" and remarked that "no Englishman has yet attained, or probably ever will attain, to the eminence of chess champion of the world. ... The deep-thinking German, the brilliant Frenchman and the versatile American have always been too much for sober, stolid John Bull
."
Gossip in 1891 published a second revised edition of his Theory of the Chess Openings, which Diggle calls "a handsome volume with an appendix of sixty-one pages". Characteristically, he devoted much of the appendix to criticizing his detractors and anticipating their further attacks.
Gossip also wrote the lesser-known chess books The Chess Players' Text Book (1889), The Chess-player's Vade Mecum and Pocket Guide to the Openings (1891), Modern Chess Brilliancies (1892), The Chess Player's Pocket Guide to Games at Odds
(1893), The Chess Pocket Manual (1894), The Chess Player's Mentor (with Francis Joseph Lee
, 1895), The Complete Chess-Guide (with Lee, 1903), Gossip's Vest-Pocket Chess Manual (date unknown; pictured at above left), and a collection of his own games, Games: G. H. D. Gossip versus Bezkrowny, Clerc
, Donisthorpe, Gocher, Gunsberg, Hoffer
, Owen, Sanders, Vines Played During the Last 10 Years in England & France (1882, with Gunsberg and Steinitz).
Burn's biographer Richard Forster notes that Gossip "was well-known for his exaggerated self-esteem". Philip Sergeant
in his book A Century of British Chess remarks that his "play was never quite up to his own estimate of it". The New York Times portrays him at the Sixth American Chess Congress (1889) as follows:
Diggle observes that Gossip "developed 'a happy knack of treading on other people's corns' by rushing into print" his occasional wins in offhand games against such leading players as Bird and Zukertort. He also vehemently denounced his critics and those with whom he disagreed. For example, in 1888 the Columbia Chess Chronicle quoted a lecture he had given two days before on the Steinitz Gambit. After condemning as "utterly worthless" the analysis of that opening published in two English periodicals, Gossip declaimed:
Hooper and Whyld note Gossip's "unusual talent for making enemies" and attribute the critical reception of his books to this, since in their opinion "his books were not significantly worse than the general run of the time, and they were better than, for example, those by Bird, who was popular". They remark on his travels that, "Disliked in England, he travelled to Australia, the United States, and Canada, where he also became unpopular." Some measure of his talent for stirring up controversy is provided by a letter Pollock wrote during their 1894–95 match:
Chess historian Edward Winter
observes that "Gossip has always been a soft target for mockery". He notes that Hooper and Whyld in the first edition (1984) of The Oxford Companion to Chess "treated him essentially as light relief"; the second edition (1992) treated him more equitably, but like the first omitted any mention of his performance at New York 1889. Yakov Damsky in The Batsford Book of Chess Records (2005), addressing the question of which player "achieved the greatest negative distinction" on the international level, opines that Gossip "can probably feel safe from competition". Mike Fox and Richard James in their book The Even More Complete Chess Addict (1993) write that, "Of players who've entered chess history, perhaps the strongest claimant for the all-time grandpatzer title is George Hatfeild Dingley Gossip (1841–1907). George had a worse record in major tournaments than anyone in history (last at Breslau 1889, London 1889, Manchester 1890, London 1892, and New York 1893: a total of just four wins, 52 losses and 21 draws)." Like Hooper and Whyld, they overlook his result at New York 1889, a major tournament where he won 11 games and finished above the bottom. In a 2001 article, Whyld himself takes notice of Gossip's result at New York 1889 and suggests that "history has perhaps given him an unfair verdict".
By Arpad Elo's
calculation, Gossip's strength during his five-year peak was equivalent to an Elo rating of 2310. Today FIDE, the World Chess Federation, often awards the Grandmaster title to players with Elo ratings of 2500 and above, and the lesser International Master and FIDE Master titles to players rated at least 2400 and 2300, respectively.
Another assessment system, Chessmetrics
, calculates that Gossip's highest rating was 2470 (number 50 in the world) in April 1889. By comparison, the world's three highest-rated players at that time had Chessmetrics ratings over 2700. Chessmetrics also ranks Gossip number 17 in the world during four one-month periods between February and July 1873, when opportunities for high-level competition were much rarer. Like Diggle, Chessmetrics considers New York 1889 Gossip's best individual performance, concluding that he scored 39% against opponents with an average rating of 2595, giving him a performance rating of 2539 for that tournament. In 1904, the Deutsche Schachzeitung
, on the basis of its tabulation of players' percentage scores in all major international tournaments from London 1851
to Cambridge Springs 1904
, ranked Gossip the number 62 living player in the world.
Diggle writes that despite his faults, Gossip was "a man of dauntless courage and infinite capacity for hard work", which enabled him to become a recognized author despite the disastrous reception that the first edition of his Chess-Player's Manual received. His literary style was vigorous, and shows him to be an educated and well-read man.
The following game was played between future five-time U.S. Champion
Jackson Showalter
(White
) and Gossip (Black
) at the Sixth American Chess Congress, New York 1889.
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nxc6 bxc6 6.Bd3 d5 7.e5? 7.exd5 is correct. 7...Ng4 8.O-O Bc5 9.Bf4 9.h3 Nxe5 10.Re1 fails to 10...Qf6 11.Qe2 0-0! 12.Qxe5 Qxf2+ 13.Kh1 Bxh3! 9...g5! 10.Bd2 White is already in serious trouble. 10.Bg3 is met by 10...h5! 11.h3 h4! 12.Bh2 Nxh2 13.Kxh2 g4! 14.hxg4 Qg5 15.Be2 Qf4+ 16.Kh1 (or 16.Kg1 h3!) 16...Bxf2 and wins. 10...Nxe5 11.Re1 Qe7 12.Nc3 Bd7 13.Qh5 O-O-O! Since 13...h6 would still be answered by 14.Bxg5, Gossip sacrifices
the pawn
, anticipating a killing attack along the g-file. 14.Bxg5 f6 15.Bh4 Qg7 16.Ba6+ Kb8 17.Bg3 Rhg8 18.Qd1 Ng4 More accurate was 18...Bg4 followed by ...h5, initiating the same attack that Black begins on his 20th move. 19.Bf1 Ne5 20.b4 Bg4 21.Qb1? 21.Be2 was better than this attempt at counterattack. 21...Bd4 22.Qb3 h5! 23.Rab1 h4! Steinitz writes, "The initiation of a masterly combination
eight moves deep." 24.Bxh4? 24.Bxe5 holds out longer. Now, writes Andrew Soltis
, "Black crowned his play with one of the most beautiful combinations ever played". 24...Nf3+! 25.gxf3 25.Kh1 Nxh4 leaves Black a piece
ahead with a won game. 25...Bxf3+ 26.Bg3 Qxg3+! 27.hxg3 Rxg3+ 28.Kh2 If 28.Bg2, Rxg2+ 29.Kf1 Rh2 and mates
. 28...Bxf2 29.Bh3 Rxh3+! 0–1 30.Kxh3 is met by ...Rh8 mate
.
Fred Reinfeld
calls the game "a glorious masterpiece". Steinitz proclaims, "One of the finest specimens of sacrificing play on record. Mr. Gossip deserves the highest praise for the ingenuity and depth of combination which he displayed in this game." Soltis writes that "there were many raised eyebrows" when the tournament committee awarded the prize for the best-played game not to Gossip for this game, but to Gunsberg for his win over Mason. After comparing the two games, Whyld writes, "The verdict seems clear. Gossip was robbed!" Diggle states, "Gossip was, of course, the last man to keep quiet about this decision, and for once he had considerable public sympathy on his side."
When facing world-class opponents, Gossip more often fell victim to their combinations. A famous example is his loss, also at New York 1889, to Mikhail Chigorin
(White), who lost world championship matches to Steinitz in 1889 and 1892.
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.c3 d5 3...Nf6 is the safest response if Black is not well versed in the ensuing complications—as Gossip proves not to be. 4.Qa4 f6 5.Bb5 Ne7 6.exd5 Qxd5 7.O-O 7.d4! is the main line today. 7...Bd7? 7...e4! 8.Ne1 Bf5 9.f3 leads to equality. 8.d4 e4 9.Nfd2 Ng6? 9...f5! was correct. 10.Bc4 Qa5 11.Qb3 f5? 11...0-0-0! was the best chance. 12.Bf7+ Ke7? Yet another mistake; 12...Kd8 is forced. Yakov Damsky asks, "Just how many wrong moves is it possible to play?" 13.Nc4! Setting up a problem-like
finish with a fatal double check
two moves later. 13...Qa6 14.Bg5+! Kxf7 15.Nd6#
1–0
English American
English Americans are citizens or residents of the United States whose ancestry originates wholly or partly in England....
chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
master
Chess master
A chess master is a chess player of such skill that he/she can usually beat chess experts, who themselves typically prevail against most amateurs. Among chess players, the term is often abbreviated to master, the meaning being clear from context....
and writer. He competed in chess tournament
Chess tournament
A chess tournament is a series of chess games played competitively to determine a winning individual or team. Since the first international chess tournament in London, 1851, chess tournaments have become the standard form of chess competition among serious players.Today, the most recognized chess...
s between 1870 and 1895, playing against most of the world's leading players, but with only modest success. The writer G. H. Diggle
G. H. Diggle
Geoffrey Harber Diggle was a British chess player and writer. Diggle contributed articles to the British Chess Magazine from 1933 to 1981, and to the British Chess Federation's publications Newsflash and Chess Moves from 1974 to 1992. C.H.O'D. Alexander called Diggle "one of the best writers on...
calls him "the King of Wooden Spoonists
Wooden spoon (award)
A wooden spoon is a mock or real award, usually given to an individual or team which has come last in a competition, but sometimes also to runners-up. Examples range from the academic to sporting and more frivolous events...
" because he usually finished last in strong tournaments.
Gossip was also a noted writer. His treatise
Treatise
A treatise is a formal and systematic written discourse on some subject, generally longer and treating it in greater depth than an essay, and more concerned with investigating or exposing the principles of the subject.-Noteworthy treatises:...
The Chess-Player's Manual—A Complete Guide to Chess, a 900-page tome published in 1874 after several years of work, was harshly received by the critics, largely because he had included a number of informal skittles games that he had (atypically) won against stronger players. As a result, Gossip developed a lifelong enmity toward chess critics, whom he often attacked ferociously in his books. However, his 1879 book Theory of the Chess Openings was well received. Wilhelm Steinitz
Wilhelm Steinitz
Wilhelm Steinitz was an Austrian and then American chess player and the first undisputed world chess champion from 1886 to 1894. From the 1870s onwards, commentators have debated whether Steinitz was effectively the champion earlier...
, the first World Chess Champion
World Chess Championship
The World Chess Championship is played to determine the World Champion in the board game chess. Men and women of any age are eligible to contest this title....
, wrote that the 1888 edition of The Chess-Player's Manual was one of the best available books on the game. Thanks in part to a 122-page appendix by S. Lipschütz in 1888, it became one of the standard opening
Chess opening
A chess opening is the group of initial moves of a chess game. Recognized sequences of opening moves are referred to as openings as initiated by White or defenses, as created in reply by Black. There are many dozens of different openings, and hundreds of named variants. The Oxford Companion to...
works of the time.
Gossip made his living primarily as a journalist, author, and translator. He wrote for publications in England, France, Australia, and the United States. At various times he resided in each of those countries, as well as in Germany and Canada. In 1898 and 1899, two publishers issued Gossip's sole book about a subject other than chess, The Jew of Chamant
Chamant
Chamant is a small village in northern France. It is designated municipally as a commune within the département of Oise.It is situated about 50 km to the north of Paris, and just 2 km to the northeast of Senlis....
. Published under the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
"Ivan Trepoff", it was virulently antisemitic.
Chess writers have often mocked Gossip's play, calling him a "grandpatzer" and the like. However, Kenneth Whyld, one of his previous critics, suggests that history may have judged him unfairly.
Early life and education
Gossip was born in New York City on December 6, 1841, to George Hatfeild Gossip, an Englishman, and his wife Mary Ellen Dingley Gossip, of New York. When he was sixteen months old, his mother died; about two years later, he and his father moved to England. His aunt, Mrs. Reaston Rodes, raised him, apparently with little involvement by his father. Gossip grew up at Barlborough HallBarlborough Hall
Barlborough Hall is a Grade I listed 16th century country house, located in Barlborough, Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England.Originally built by Sir Francis Rodes, , circa 1583-84, as the family seat, the hall’s Elizabethan design is attributed to Robert Smythson, one of a noted family of...
, Derbyshire
Derbyshire
Derbyshire is a county in the East Midlands of England. A substantial portion of the Peak District National Park lies within Derbyshire. The northern part of Derbyshire overlaps with the Pennines, a famous chain of hills and mountains. The county contains within its boundary of approx...
(the Rodes family seat) and at Hatfield, in Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
. Both the Gossip and Rodes families are listed in Burke's Landed Gentry
Burke's Landed Gentry
Burke's Landed Gentry is the result of nearly two centuries of intense work by the Burke family, and others since, in building a collection of books of genealogical and heraldic interest,...
. He was educated at Windermere College, Westmorland
Westmorland
Westmorland is an area of North West England and one of the 39 historic counties of England. It formed an administrative county from 1889 to 1974, after which the entirety of the county was absorbed into the new county of Cumbria.-Early history:...
, and won a scholarship to Oxford University, but was unable to attend as his father, uncle, and aunts lost a lawsuit that ruined them financially. As a result, Gossip had to support himself through his own labors.
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 censusesCensus in the United Kingdom
Coincident full censuses have taken place in the different jurisdictions of the United Kingdom every ten years since 1801, with the exceptions of 1941 and in both Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State in 1921; simultaneous censuses were taken in the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, with...
, 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
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
of London's office in Paris. He also lived in Germany.
Jersey
Jersey, officially the Bailiwick of Jersey is a British Crown Dependency off the coast of Normandy, France. As well as the island of Jersey itself, the bailiwick includes two groups of small islands that are no longer permanently inhabited, the Minquiers and Écréhous, and the Pierres de Lecq and...
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
Ipswich
Ipswich is a large town and a non-metropolitan district. It is the county town of Suffolk, England. Ipswich is located on the estuary of the River Orwell...
, 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
Adelaide
Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia and the fifth-largest city in Australia. Adelaide has an estimated population of more than 1.2 million...
), 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
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
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
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
flying ace
Flying ace
A flying ace or fighter ace is a military aviator credited with shooting down several enemy aircraft during aerial combat. The actual number of aerial victories required to officially qualify as an "ace" has varied, but is usually considered to be five or more...
for Australia, "shooting down six enemy aircraft while flying his Sopwith Camel
Sopwith Camel
The Sopwith Camel was a British First World War single-seat biplane fighter introduced on the Western Front in 1917. Manufactured by Sopwith Aviation Company, it had a short-coupled fuselage, heavy, powerful rotary engine, and concentrated fire from twin synchronized machine guns. Though difficult...
along the Belgian coast".
In 1889, Gossip returned to Europe. By 1891, he was living as a tenant in a London boarding house
Boarding house
A boarding house, is a house in which lodgers rent one or more rooms for one or more nights, and sometimes for extended periods of weeks, months and years. The common parts of the house are maintained, and some services, such as laundry and cleaning, may be supplied. They normally provide "bed...
. 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
British Chess Magazine
British Chess Magazine is the world's oldest chess magazine in continuous publication. First published in January 1881, it has appeared at monthly intervals ever since. It is frequently known in the chess world as BCM....
(BCM) and June 1897 American Chess Magazine reported that he was living in Buffalo, New York
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
.
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
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Count of Monte Cristo is an adventure novel by Alexandre Dumas. It is often considered to be, along with The Three Musketeers, Dumas's most popular work. He completed the work in 1844...
" 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
Liphook
Liphook is a large village in the East Hampshire district of Hampshire, England. It is 4.1 miles west of Haslemere, on the A3 road, and lies on the Hampshire/West Sussex border.Liphook has its own railway station, on the Portsmouth Direct Line....
, England.
Chess career
By 1864, Gossip was appearing in London chess circles, drawingDraw (chess)
In chess, a draw is when a game ends in a tie. It is one of the possible outcomes of a game, along with a win for White and a win for Black . Usually, in tournaments a draw is worth a half point to each player, while a win is worth one point to the victor and none to the loser.For the most part,...
a game against Joseph Henry Blackburne
Joseph Henry Blackburne
Joseph Henry Blackburne , nicknamed "The Black Death", dominated British chess during the latter part of the 19th century. He learned the game at the relatively late age of 18 but quickly became a strong player and went on to develop a professional chess career that spanned over 50 years...
at a simultaneous exhibition
Simultaneous exhibition
A simultaneous exhibition or simultaneous display is a board game exhibition in which one player plays multiple games at a time with a number of other players. Such an exhibition is often referred to simply as a "simul".In a regular simul, no chess clocks are used...
in April. He played in a number of chess tournament
Chess tournament
A chess tournament is a series of chess games played competitively to determine a winning individual or team. Since the first international chess tournament in London, 1851, chess tournaments have become the standard form of chess competition among serious players.Today, the most recognized chess...
s between 1870 and 1895, usually with unimpressive results. At London 1870, the Third British Chess Association Congress (won by John Wisker
John Wisker
John Wisker was an English chess player and journalist. By 1870, he was one of the world's ten best chess players, and the second-best English-born player, behind only Joseph Henry Blackburne.Wisker moved to London in 1866 to become a reporter for the City Press and befriended Howard Staunton...
after a playoff against Amos Burn
Amos Burn
Amos Burn was an English chess player, one of the world's leading players at the end of the 19th century, and a chess writer....
), Gossip scored two of six possible points, finishing in a tie for fifth–sixth out of seven players. He had the consolation of handing Burn his only loss. At London 1872 (won by Steinitz ahead of Johannes Zukertort
Johannes Zukertort
Johannes Hermann Zukertort was a leading chess master of German-Polish-Jewish origin. He was one of the leading world players for most of the 1870s and 1880s, and lost to Wilhelm Steinitz in the World Chess Championship 1886, which is generally seen as the first World Chess Championship match, he...
and Blackburne), he scored just one out of seven, finishing seventh out of eight players.
Gossip won the 1873–74 correspondence chess
Correspondence chess
Correspondence chess is chess played by various forms of long-distance correspondence, usually through a correspondence chess server, through email or by the postal system; less common methods which have been employed include fax and homing pigeon...
tournament of the Chess-Players Chronicle, after which he "was thought by some to be the strongest correspondence player known". However, playing first board for England in an 1879 correspondence chess match against the United States, he lost all four of his games to Ellen Gilbert
Ellen Gilbert
Ellen E. Gilbert was a strong 19th century correspondence chess player, and one of the first significant women players in chess history. She became famous for her match victory against George H. D. Gossip...
of Hartford, Connecticut
Hartford, Connecticut
Hartford is the capital of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960, it is the second most populous city on New England's largest river, the Connecticut River. As of the 2010 Census, Hartford's population was 124,775, making...
. She "caused a sensation in the chess world" by announcing mate in 21 moves in one game, and mate in 35 moves in another. Gossip responded gallantly, dedicating his book Theory of the Chess Openings to her.
In 1874, Gossip lost a match for the Championship Cup of the Provinces to Rev. John Owen
John Owen (chess player)
John Owen was an English vicar and strong amateur chess player.In 1858 he won a game against Paul Morphy, which led to a match between the two...
, retiring because of illness after one win, two draws, and two losses. He won a local tournament at the Café de la Régence
Café de la Régence
The Café de la Régence in Paris was an important European centre of chess in the 18th and 19th centuries. All important chess masters of the time played there.The Café' masters include, but are not limited to:* Paul Morphy...
in Paris in 1880. In 1882, he beat Wordsworth Donisthorpe
Wordsworth Donisthorpe
Wordsworth Donisthorpe was an English individualist anarchist and inventor, pioneer of cinematography and chess enthusiast. His father was George E...
in a match held at Simpson's Divan in London.
Gossip's first significant success at over-the-board chess came at the 1883 London Vizayanagaram minor tournament. He scored 17½ out of 25, tying for fifth–sixth place out of 26 players with Charles Ranken
Charles Ranken
Charles Edward Ranken was a Church of England clergyman and a minor British chess master. He co-founded and was the first president of the Oxford University Chess Club. He was also the editor of the Chess Player's Chronicle and a writer for the British Chess Magazine...
, who later co-authored the treatise Chess Openings Ancient and Modern (1889). Curt von Bardeleben
Curt von Bardeleben
Curt von Bardeleben was a Count and a German chess master who committed suicide by jumping out of a window in 1924. His life and death were the basis for that of the main character in the novel The Defense by Vladimir Nabokov, which was made into the movie The Luzhin Defence...
won with 21½ points; Isidor Gunsberg
Isidor Gunsberg
Isidor Arthur Gunsberg began his career as the player operating the remote-controlled chess automaton Mephisto, but later became a chess professional....
, who would narrowly lose an 1890–91 World Championship
World Chess Championship
The World Chess Championship is played to determine the World Champion in the board game chess. Men and women of any age are eligible to contest this title....
match to Steinitz, finished fourth with 19 points.
In 1885 Gossip, a year after emigrating to Australia, issued a challenge to any player in the Australian colonies to play a match with him for 20 pounds a side and the title of Australian champion. Frederick Karl Esling, a leading Melbourne player, accepted the challenge. Esling won the first game, and the second was adjourned in a position favorable to him. Gossip then pled illness and forfeited the match. Kenneth Whyld writes that the Australians probably considered Gossip a "whingeing Pom".
An Australian commentator observes, "Gossip may not have been the most popular itinerant to venture to these shores in the nineteenth century, but when he announced his challenge ... he at least brought the question of an official Chess Champion of Australia before the chess playing fraternity". In 1950, when Esling was 90, the Australian Chess Federation formally declared, belatedly, that he had become the first Australian Chess Champion by winning his 1885 match against Gossip. The Second Australian Chess Championship
Australian Chess Championship
The Australian Chess Championship is a tournament organised by the Australian Chess Federation and held every two years. The tournament is usually restricted to Australian chess players, although exceptions have been made on occasion. The winner of the tournament holds the title of Australian Chess...
, a tournament, was held at Adelaide in 1887. Gossip finished third with 6½ out of 9, behind Henry Charlick
Henry Charlick
Henry Charlick was a leading Australian chess master in the 1880s. He won the second Australian Chess Championship at Adelaide 1887 with 7.5 points out of 9 games, ahead of reigning champion Frederick Karl Esling and George H. D. Gossip...
(7½ points) and Esling (7 points).
After returning to America in 1888, Gossip obtained an appointment at the Columbia Chess Club
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
. The following year, he represented England at the Sixth American Chess Congress (New York 1889), one of the greatest tournaments of the 19th century. The Congress, a double round robin
Round-robin tournament
A round-robin tournament is a competition "in which each contestant meets all other contestants in turn".-Terminology:...
that was one of the longest tournaments in history, was intended to select a challenger for the world championship title. There, Gossip had what G. H. Diggle
G. H. Diggle
Geoffrey Harber Diggle was a British chess player and writer. Diggle contributed articles to the British Chess Magazine from 1933 to 1981, and to the British Chess Federation's publications Newsflash and Chess Moves from 1974 to 1992. C.H.O'D. Alexander called Diggle "one of the best writers on...
calls "perhaps the best performance of his career". He scored 13½ out of 38 (11 wins, 5 draws, 22 losses), finishing 17th–18th out of 20 players. He won games from S. Lipschütz, Max Judd
Max Judd
Max Judd was an American chess master....
, Eugene Delmar
Eugene Delmar
Eugene Delmar , was one of the leading US chess masters of 19th century and the four-time New York State champion in 1890, 1891, 1895 and 1897. He won a match against Robert Henry Barnes with only a single draw .-External links:...
, Jackson Showalter
Jackson Showalter
Jackson Whipps Showalter was a five-time U.S. Chess Champion: 1890, 1892, 1892–1894, 1895-1896 and 1906–1909.-Chess career:...
, William Pollock
William Pollock (chess player)
William Henry Krause Pollock was an English chess master, and a surgeon.Pollock was born in Cheltenham, England, the son of the Rev. William J. Pollock. He was educated at Clifton College. He studied for the medical profession in Dublin, Ireland from 1880–82, at which time he was a member of the...
(twice), Henry Bird (twice), David Graham Baird
David Graham Baird
David Graham Baird was an American chess master. He was the brother of John Washington Baird, who was also an American chess master. A writer in the New York Times, describing the players in the Sixth American Chess Congress , portrayed Baird and his brother as follows:Of the Baird brothers, David G...
, James Moore Hanham, and John Washington Baird
John Washington Baird
John Washington Baird was a minor American chess master, who played in a number of American and international chess tournaments between 1880 and 1906...
. Mikhail Chigorin
Mikhail Chigorin
Mikhail Ivanovich Chigorin also was a leading Russian chess player...
and Max Weiss
Max Weiss
Miksa Weisz was an Austrian chess player born in the Kingdom of Hungary.Weiss was born in Sereď. Moving to Vienna, he studied mathematics and physics at the university, and later taught those subjects....
tied for first with 29 points, edging out Gunsberg (28½ points).
Gossip was unable to repeat even this modest level of success in his final tournaments. He finished last in five consecutive strong events: the Master Section at London 1889 (scoring 1½ out of 10; Bird won on tiebreak over Gunsberg); the Meisterturnier (Master Tournament) at Breslau 1889 (scoring three out of ten; Siegbert Tarrasch
Siegbert Tarrasch
Siegbert Tarrasch was one of the strongest chess players and most influential chess teachers of the late 19th century and early 20th century....
won); the Master Section of Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
1890 (scoring four out of nineteen; Tarrasch won); the Master Tournament at London 1892 (scoring 2½ out of 11; future World Champion Emanuel Lasker
Emanuel Lasker
Emanuel Lasker was a German chess player, mathematician, and philosopher who was World Chess Champion for 27 years...
won); and New York 1893 (scoring 2½ out of 13; Lasker won with a perfect score). Gossip's run of last-place finishes moved Diggle to dub him "the King of Wooden Spoonists
Wooden spoon (award)
A wooden spoon is a mock or real award, usually given to an individual or team which has come last in a competition, but sometimes also to runners-up. Examples range from the academic to sporting and more frivolous events...
". Gossip's last event was a minor tournament in Skaneateles, New York
Skaneateles (town), New York
Skaneateles is a town in Onondaga County, New York, United States. The population was 7,323 at the 2000 census. The name is from the Iroquois "Indian" tribe term for the adjacent lake: "long lake." The town is on the western border of the county and includes a village, also called Skaneateles...
in July–August 1895, where he scored three out of six, finishing in a tie for third–fifth of seven players.
A report in the BCM in 1889 observed that Gossip suffered from great nervousness that prevented him from fully displaying his abilities at chess tournaments, where he had to stop his ears "to keep out the low hum inseparable from a large concourse of people". Bird likewise wrote that minor distractions that he would not even notice would "drive ... Gossip to despair". The BCM commentator accordingly believed that Gossip "would make a good stand in a single encounter with men who are much higher in the tournament than he is".
Following his move to Montreal, Gossip in a letter to a friend dated October 20, 1894 complained, "The French Canadian
French Canadian
French Canadian or Francophone Canadian, , generally refers to the descendents of French colonists who arrived in New France in the 17th and 18th centuries...
Chessplayers here are the poorest, meanest humbug
Humbug
Humbug is an old term meaning hoax or jest. While the term was first described in 1751 as student slang, its etymology is unknown. Its present meaning as an exclamation is closer to 'nonsense' or 'gibberish', while as a noun, a humbug refers to a fraud or impostor, implying an element of...
s I ever met – all Jesuits." He and Pollock played a match at the Montreal Chess Club in December 1894 and January 1895; each won six games, with five draws. This was an impressive result for Gossip "in view of Pollock's undoubted strength". Later in 1895, Pollock finished 19th out of 22 players, scoring 8 out of 21 (including wins over Tarrasch and Steinitz), at Hastings 1895, arguably at that time the strongest tournament in history. Diggle writes that Gossip's drawn match with Pollock vindicates the BCMs 1889 observation that Gossip would be more at home in a match than a tournament.
Gossip was only a minor master, "a mediocre player who figured at or near the bottom of every better than average tourney in which he participated". However, during his career he played tournament games against most of the world's leading players, including World Champions Lasker and Steinitz; World Championship challengers Zukertort, Tarrasch, Chigorin, and Gunsberg; Louis Paulsen
Louis Paulsen
Louis Paulsen was a German chess player.In 1860s and 1870s, he was among the top five players in the world. He was a younger brother of Wilfried Paulsen....
, Harry Nelson Pillsbury
Harry Nelson Pillsbury
Harry Nelson Pillsbury , was a leading chess player. At age 22, he won one of the strongest tournaments of the time , but his illness and early death prevented him from challenging for the World Chess Championship.- Early life :Pillsbury was born in Somerville, Massachusetts, moved to New York City...
, and James Mason
James Mason (chess player)
James Mason was a famous chess player and writer. He was born in Kilkenny in Ireland. His original name is unknown: he was adopted as a child and only took the name James Mason when he and his family moved to the United States in 1861...
, all at some point ranked number 1 in the world by Chessmetrics
Chessmetrics
Chessmetrics is a system for rating chess players devised by Jeff Sonas. It is intended as an improvement over the Elo rating system.-Implementation:...
; Burn, Blackburne, Bird, and Cecil de Vere (all ranked number 2); and Weiss and Wisker (both ranked number 3).
Chess books and articles
Masterpiece
Masterpiece in modern usage refers to a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or to a work of outstanding creativity, skill or workmanship....
, The Chess-Player's Manual—A Complete Guide to Chess. It was "a handsomely produced work with more than 800 of its 900 pages devoted to openings and illustrative games". The book became the subject of biting criticism, largely because Gossip had included 27 illustrative games that he had won against leading players of the day, and only 12 games that he had lost. Steinitz later wrote:
Mr Gossip had practiced the unfair ruse of carefully preserving stray skittles games which he had happened to win or draw, generally after many defeats, against masters whose public records stood far above his own, ... thus leading the public to believe that the author stood on a par with them, or was even their superior.According to Diggle, this edition of the book "failed utterly". The harsh reception accorded it embittered Gossip against chess critics for the rest of his life.
In 1879, Gossip published Theory of the Chess Openings, a shorter work more in the style of Modern Chess Openings
Modern Chess Openings
Modern Chess Openings is an important reference book on the chess openings, first published in 1911 by the British players Richard Clewin Griffith and John Herbert White...
, which sold out within six months. The preface and the concluding chapter of the book bitterly attacked the critics who had savaged his earlier treatise. This time the critics, "while deploring 'the outside slices of Mr. Gossip's sandwich' ", praised the main body of the work. William Wayte
William Wayte
William Wayte was a Church of England clergyman and a British chess master. He was one of a group of ministers who played a prominent role in English chess in the late nineteenth century...
in the Chess Players Chronicle called the book "fairly in possession of the field among English elementary treatises". Unfortunately for Gossip, he "was the victim of an act of gross piracy
Copyright infringement
Copyright infringement is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.- "Piracy" :...
, as many copies forming no part of the edition printed by his orders were circulated in America and the 'pirates' never brought to justice."
A new edition of The Chess-Player's Manual was published in 1888, this one with a 122-page appendix by Lipschütz. Steinitz wrote that "Mr Gossip has produced a useful work, which in some respects must be regarded even superior to that of Staunton
Howard Staunton
Howard Staunton was an English chess master who is generally regarded as having been the world's strongest player from 1843 to 1851, largely as a result of his 1843 victory over Saint-Amant. He promoted a chess set of clearly distinguishable pieces of standardised shape—the Staunton pattern—that...
or any other previous writers on the chess openings. ... But the most meritorious distinguishing feature of the Manual is the large collection of illustrative games by various first-class masters, and in that respect Mr Gossip's work stands second only to Signor Salvioli's Teoria e Pratica among the analytical works in any language." The following year, Steinitz cited it in The Modern Chess Instructor as one of the 12 principal authorities he had relied on in writing that treatise.
An anonymous reviewer in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
called the new edition of The Chess-Player's Manual "probably the most convenient, trustworthy, and satisfactory chess book accessible in the English language". The reviewer concluded that the games and problems in the volume would "afford great entertainment" to the casual enthusiast, "while for real students of chess ... it is very nearly indispensable". He also praised "Mr. Lipschütz's appendix, which brings the development of the openings almost down to date". David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld write in The Oxford Companion to Chess
The Oxford Companion to Chess
The Oxford Companion to Chess is a reference book on chess written by David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld. The book is written in an encyclopedia format. The book belongs to the Oxford Companions series.-Details:...
that Lipschütz's appendix "helped to make this one of the standard opening books of the time". World Champion Bobby Fischer
Bobby Fischer
Robert James "Bobby" Fischer was an American chess Grandmaster and the 11th World Chess Champion. He is widely considered one of the greatest chess players of all time. Fischer was also a best-selling chess author...
had a copy of The Chess-Player's Manual in his personal library, and cited it in his famous 1961 article "A Bust to the King's Gambit
King's Gambit
The King's Gambit is a chess opening that begins with the moves:White offers a pawn to divert the Black e-pawn so as to build a strong centre with d2–d4...
".
International Chess Magazine
International Chess Magazine was a chess magazine established in 1885 by World Chess Champion Wilhelm Steinitz until 1891.-External links:* * * *...
contained an article by Gossip that Robert John McCrary calls "a very illuminating, important, and detailed account of the state of San Francisco chess". For the last few months of 1888 Gossip was listed as being on the "Editorial Staff" of the Columbia Chess Chronicle. Its December 29, 1888 issue contained a lengthy article by him entitled "Chess in the Present Day", which offered a broad sweep of chess history and the advances made by chess in the United States. Gossip called Paul Morphy
Paul Morphy
Paul Charles Morphy was an American chess player. He is considered to have been the greatest chess master of his era and an unofficial World Chess Champion. He was a chess prodigy...
and Steinitz "the two greatest chessplayers that have ever lived" and remarked that "no Englishman has yet attained, or probably ever will attain, to the eminence of chess champion of the world. ... The deep-thinking German, the brilliant Frenchman and the versatile American have always been too much for sober, stolid John Bull
John Bull
John Bull is a national personification of Britain in general and England in particular, especially in political cartoons and similar graphic works. He is usually depicted as a stout, middle-aged man, often wearing a Union Flag waistcoat.-Origin:...
."
Gossip in 1891 published a second revised edition of his Theory of the Chess Openings, which Diggle calls "a handsome volume with an appendix of sixty-one pages". Characteristically, he devoted much of the appendix to criticizing his detractors and anticipating their further attacks.
Gossip also wrote the lesser-known chess books The Chess Players' Text Book (1889), The Chess-player's Vade Mecum and Pocket Guide to the Openings (1891), Modern Chess Brilliancies (1892), The Chess Player's Pocket Guide to Games at Odds
Chess handicap
A handicap in chess is a way to enable a weaker player to have a chance of winning against a stronger one. There are many kinds of such handicaps, such as material odds, extra moves A handicap (or "odds") in chess is a way to enable a weaker player to have a chance of winning against a stronger...
(1893), The Chess Pocket Manual (1894), The Chess Player's Mentor (with Francis Joseph Lee
Francis Joseph Lee
Francis Joseph Lee was an English chess master.-Chess career:Lee played in a number of matches, and British and international chess tournaments, between 1883 and 1907...
, 1895), The Complete Chess-Guide (with Lee, 1903), Gossip's Vest-Pocket Chess Manual (date unknown; pictured at above left), and a collection of his own games, Games: G. H. D. Gossip versus Bezkrowny, Clerc
Albert Clerc
Albert Clerc was a French chess master.-Chess career:He won at Paris 1856, tied for 9-10th at Paris 1878 , took 2nd, behind Samuel Rosenthal, at Paris 1880 , took 4th at Paris 1881 Albert Clerc (January 1830, Besançon – June 1918, Saint-Denis-en-Val) was a French chess master.-Chess career:He won...
, Donisthorpe, Gocher, Gunsberg, Hoffer
Leopold Hoffer
Leopold Hoffer was an English chess player and journalist.He left Budapest for Switzerland. From 1867, he lived in Paris, where he won matches against, among others, Ignatz von Kolisch, Samuel Rosenthal and Jules Arnous de Rivière...
, Owen, Sanders, Vines Played During the Last 10 Years in England & France (1882, with Gunsberg and Steinitz).
Manner and reputation
Philip Sergeant
Philip Walsingham Sergeant was a British professional writer on chess and popular historical subjects. He collaborated on the fifth , sixth , and seventh editions of Modern Chess Openings, an important reference work on the chess openings...
in his book A Century of British Chess remarks that his "play was never quite up to his own estimate of it". The New York Times portrays him at the Sixth American Chess Congress (1889) as follows:
Gossip, with his long, flowing beard, looks like one of the old-time monks. He has a good-shaped cranium, bald at the top, and is a little above the medium height. ... He believes himself to be one of the greatest chessplayers in the world, and thinks that if everything had gone on to his liking he could have beaten all the champions at the tournament. He is a deliberate player, but every now and then he takes a nip from a flask of brandy that generally stands on his table. He complained that his chair was too low, and he once attributed a defeat to that. Finally, he got a large ledger and sat upon it. He did, in fact, seem to derive some inspiration from its contents, for he played two or three excellent games afterward.
Diggle observes that Gossip "developed 'a happy knack of treading on other people's corns' by rushing into print" his occasional wins in offhand games against such leading players as Bird and Zukertort. He also vehemently denounced his critics and those with whom he disagreed. For example, in 1888 the Columbia Chess Chronicle quoted a lecture he had given two days before on the Steinitz Gambit. After condemning as "utterly worthless" the analysis of that opening published in two English periodicals, Gossip declaimed:
In order, therefore, to establish an important point of theory, and at the same time to prevent American chessplayers from being misled and deceived by the superficial analysis of incompetent British chess editors, whose object in condemning the Steinitz Gambit has obviously been mainly to depreciate the originality of its illustrious inventor, whom they invariably try to drag down to their own miserable level of shallow incompetency and self-conceit, I submit the following variations which at any rate possess the undeniable merit of exposing the hollow analytical twaddle continually published in the two London journals above named.
Hooper and Whyld note Gossip's "unusual talent for making enemies" and attribute the critical reception of his books to this, since in their opinion "his books were not significantly worse than the general run of the time, and they were better than, for example, those by Bird, who was popular". They remark on his travels that, "Disliked in England, he travelled to Australia, the United States, and Canada, where he also became unpopular." Some measure of his talent for stirring up controversy is provided by a letter Pollock wrote during their 1894–95 match:
I and Gossip are six each and may draw the match. He has proved a terrible crank and has had several games by forfeit, and one "cancelled". He now has a libel suit against the chess column of the Herald. ... We have just agreed, per the committee, to call the match a draw. Whereby all parties are relieved.
Chess historian Edward Winter
Edward Winter (chess historian)
Edward Winter is an English journalist, archivist, historian, collector and author about the game of chess. He writes a regular column on that subject, Chess Notes, and is also a regular columnist for ChessBase.-Chess Notes:...
observes that "Gossip has always been a soft target for mockery". He notes that Hooper and Whyld in the first edition (1984) of The Oxford Companion to Chess "treated him essentially as light relief"; the second edition (1992) treated him more equitably, but like the first omitted any mention of his performance at New York 1889. Yakov Damsky in The Batsford Book of Chess Records (2005), addressing the question of which player "achieved the greatest negative distinction" on the international level, opines that Gossip "can probably feel safe from competition". Mike Fox and Richard James in their book The Even More Complete Chess Addict (1993) write that, "Of players who've entered chess history, perhaps the strongest claimant for the all-time grandpatzer title is George Hatfeild Dingley Gossip (1841–1907). George had a worse record in major tournaments than anyone in history (last at Breslau 1889, London 1889, Manchester 1890, London 1892, and New York 1893: a total of just four wins, 52 losses and 21 draws)." Like Hooper and Whyld, they overlook his result at New York 1889, a major tournament where he won 11 games and finished above the bottom. In a 2001 article, Whyld himself takes notice of Gossip's result at New York 1889 and suggests that "history has perhaps given him an unfair verdict".
By Arpad Elo's
Árpád Élo
Arpad Emrick Elo is the creator of the Elo rating system for two-player games such as chess. Born in Egyházaskesző, Austro-Hungarian Empire, he moved to the United States with his parents as a child in 1913.Elo was a professor of physics at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was...
calculation, Gossip's strength during his five-year peak was equivalent to an Elo rating of 2310. Today FIDE, the World Chess Federation, often awards the Grandmaster title to players with Elo ratings of 2500 and above, and the lesser International Master and FIDE Master titles to players rated at least 2400 and 2300, respectively.
Another assessment system, Chessmetrics
Chessmetrics
Chessmetrics is a system for rating chess players devised by Jeff Sonas. It is intended as an improvement over the Elo rating system.-Implementation:...
, calculates that Gossip's highest rating was 2470 (number 50 in the world) in April 1889. By comparison, the world's three highest-rated players at that time had Chessmetrics ratings over 2700. Chessmetrics also ranks Gossip number 17 in the world during four one-month periods between February and July 1873, when opportunities for high-level competition were much rarer. Like Diggle, Chessmetrics considers New York 1889 Gossip's best individual performance, concluding that he scored 39% against opponents with an average rating of 2595, giving him a performance rating of 2539 for that tournament. In 1904, the Deutsche Schachzeitung
Deutsche Schachzeitung
Deutsche Schachzeitung was the first German chess magazine.Founded in 1846 by Ludwig Bledow under the title Schachzeitung der Berliner Schachgesellschaft, it took the name Deutsche Schachzeitung in 1872...
, on the basis of its tabulation of players' percentage scores in all major international tournaments from London 1851
London 1851 chess tournament
right|thumb|[[Adolf Anderssen]] won both the London International Tournament and the rival London Club Tournament.London 1851 was the first international chess tournament. The tournament was conceived and organised by English player Howard Staunton, and marked the first time that the best chess...
to Cambridge Springs 1904
Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania
Cambridge Springs is a borough in Crawford County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 2,363 at the 2000 census.- History :The village of Cambridge was settled in 1822 and was named for the town of Cambridge, Massachusetts...
, ranked Gossip the number 62 living player in the world.
Diggle writes that despite his faults, Gossip was "a man of dauntless courage and infinite capacity for hard work", which enabled him to become a recognized author despite the disastrous reception that the first edition of his Chess-Player's Manual received. His literary style was vigorous, and shows him to be an educated and well-read man.
Showalter–Gossip, New York 1889
The following game was played between future five-time U.S. Champion
U.S. Chess Championship
The U.S. Chess Championship is an invitational tournament held to determine the national chess champion of the United States. Since 1936, it has been held under the auspices of the U.S. Chess Federation. Until 1999, the event consisted of a round-robin tournament of varying size...
Jackson Showalter
Jackson Showalter
Jackson Whipps Showalter was a five-time U.S. Chess Champion: 1890, 1892, 1892–1894, 1895-1896 and 1906–1909.-Chess career:...
(White
White and Black in chess
In chess, the player who moves first is referred to as "White" and the player who moves second is referred to as "Black". Similarly, the pieces that each conducts are called, respectively, "the white pieces" and "the black pieces". The pieces are often not literally white and black, but some...
) and Gossip (Black
White and Black in chess
In chess, the player who moves first is referred to as "White" and the player who moves second is referred to as "Black". Similarly, the pieces that each conducts are called, respectively, "the white pieces" and "the black pieces". The pieces are often not literally white and black, but some...
) at the Sixth American Chess Congress, New York 1889.
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nxc6 bxc6 6.Bd3 d5 7.e5? 7.exd5 is correct. 7...Ng4 8.O-O Bc5 9.Bf4 9.h3 Nxe5 10.Re1 fails to 10...Qf6 11.Qe2 0-0! 12.Qxe5 Qxf2+ 13.Kh1 Bxh3! 9...g5! 10.Bd2 White is already in serious trouble. 10.Bg3 is met by 10...h5! 11.h3 h4! 12.Bh2 Nxh2 13.Kxh2 g4! 14.hxg4 Qg5 15.Be2 Qf4+ 16.Kh1 (or 16.Kg1 h3!) 16...Bxf2 and wins. 10...Nxe5 11.Re1 Qe7 12.Nc3 Bd7 13.Qh5 O-O-O! Since 13...h6 would still be answered by 14.Bxg5, Gossip sacrifices
Sacrifice (chess)
In chess, a sacrifice is a move giving up a piece in the hopes of gaining tactical or positional compensation in other forms. A sacrifice could also be a deliberate exchange of a chess piece of higher value for an opponent's piece of lower value....
the pawn
Pawn (chess)
The pawn is the most numerous and weakest piece in the game of chess, historically representing infantry, or more particularly armed peasants or pikemen. Each player begins the game with eight pawns, one on each square of the rank immediately in front of the other pieces...
, anticipating a killing attack along the g-file. 14.Bxg5 f6 15.Bh4 Qg7 16.Ba6+ Kb8 17.Bg3 Rhg8 18.Qd1 Ng4 More accurate was 18...Bg4 followed by ...h5, initiating the same attack that Black begins on his 20th move. 19.Bf1 Ne5 20.b4 Bg4 21.Qb1? 21.Be2 was better than this attempt at counterattack. 21...Bd4 22.Qb3 h5! 23.Rab1 h4! Steinitz writes, "The initiation of a masterly combination
Combination (chess)
In chess, a combination is a sequence of moves, often initiated by a sacrifice, which leaves the opponent few options and results in tangible gain. At most points in a chess game, each player has several reasonable options from which to choose, which makes it difficult to plan ahead except in...
eight moves deep." 24.Bxh4? 24.Bxe5 holds out longer. Now, writes Andrew Soltis
Andrew Soltis
Andrew Eden Soltis is a chess Grandmaster, author and columnist.He won at Reggio Emilia 1971–72 and was equal first at New York 1977. He was awarded the International Master title in 1974 and became a Grandmaster in 1980...
, "Black crowned his play with one of the most beautiful combinations ever played". 24...Nf3+! 25.gxf3 25.Kh1 Nxh4 leaves Black a piece
Chess piece
Chess pieces or chessmen are the pieces deployed on a chessboard to play the game of chess. The pieces vary in abilities, giving them different values in the game...
ahead with a won game. 25...Bxf3+ 26.Bg3 Qxg3+! 27.hxg3 Rxg3+ 28.Kh2 If 28.Bg2, Rxg2+ 29.Kf1 Rh2 and mates
Checkmate
Checkmate is a situation in chess in which one player's king is threatened with capture and there is no way to meet that threat. Or, simply put, the king is under direct attack and cannot avoid being captured...
. 28...Bxf2 29.Bh3 Rxh3+! 0–1 30.Kxh3 is met by ...Rh8 mate
Checkmate
Checkmate is a situation in chess in which one player's king is threatened with capture and there is no way to meet that threat. Or, simply put, the king is under direct attack and cannot avoid being captured...
.
Fred Reinfeld
Fred Reinfeld
Fred Reinfeld was an American chess master and a prolific writer on chess and many other subjects, whose books are still read today.-Biography:...
calls the game "a glorious masterpiece". Steinitz proclaims, "One of the finest specimens of sacrificing play on record. Mr. Gossip deserves the highest praise for the ingenuity and depth of combination which he displayed in this game." Soltis writes that "there were many raised eyebrows" when the tournament committee awarded the prize for the best-played game not to Gossip for this game, but to Gunsberg for his win over Mason. After comparing the two games, Whyld writes, "The verdict seems clear. Gossip was robbed!" Diggle states, "Gossip was, of course, the last man to keep quiet about this decision, and for once he had considerable public sympathy on his side."
Chigorin–Gossip, New York 1889
When facing world-class opponents, Gossip more often fell victim to their combinations. A famous example is his loss, also at New York 1889, to Mikhail Chigorin
Mikhail Chigorin
Mikhail Ivanovich Chigorin also was a leading Russian chess player...
(White), who lost world championship matches to Steinitz in 1889 and 1892.
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.c3 d5 3...Nf6 is the safest response if Black is not well versed in the ensuing complications—as Gossip proves not to be. 4.Qa4 f6 5.Bb5 Ne7 6.exd5 Qxd5 7.O-O 7.d4! is the main line today. 7...Bd7? 7...e4! 8.Ne1 Bf5 9.f3 leads to equality. 8.d4 e4 9.Nfd2 Ng6? 9...f5! was correct. 10.Bc4 Qa5 11.Qb3 f5? 11...0-0-0! was the best chance. 12.Bf7+ Ke7? Yet another mistake; 12...Kd8 is forced. Yakov Damsky asks, "Just how many wrong moves is it possible to play?" 13.Nc4! Setting up a problem-like
Chess problem
A chess problem, also called a chess composition, is a puzzle set by somebody using chess pieces on a chess board, that presents the solver with a particular task to be achieved. For instance, a position might be given with the instruction that White is to move first, and checkmate Black in two...
finish with a fatal double check
Double check
In chess, a double check is a check delivered by two pieces at the same time. In chess notation, it is often symbolized by "++".-Discussion:...
two moves later. 13...Qa6 14.Bg5+! Kxf7 15.Nd6#
Checkmate
Checkmate is a situation in chess in which one player's king is threatened with capture and there is no way to meet that threat. Or, simply put, the king is under direct attack and cannot avoid being captured...
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