Talk:Robert Murray Gilchrist

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Crichton Porteous, a distinguished Derbyshire novelist, wrote the following in a 1950s edition of Derbyshire Life Magazine:

"I gave a talk at Chesterfield Library on 'Some Derbyshire Authors'. One was Robert Murray Gilchrist, who lived for 24 years at Cartledge Hall, Holmesfield. I spoke rather strongly about how Gilchrist had been neglected, because although he wrote almost always about Derbyshire and Derbyshire folk, neither Derby nor Chesterfield libraries had more than half-a-dozen of the thirty-two books that he wrote. Nor indeed had Sheffield or Nottingham libraries. In fact, I said that there did not seem to be a single complete set of Gilchrist's books in existence in the county; and that it was a shame that it should be so.

After the talk several persons came to me, among them Mr. Norman Dixon, English master at Dronfield Grammar School, who surprisingly said that he believed that there was a complete set at the school. He promised to look them up and let me know, with the sequel that eventually I visited the school, and saw the books (many of them autographed) on one of the top shelves in the library. I looked through them. while some members of the Senior Form did some geography prep., and a good deal of talking that had nothing to do with prep., but was very interesting. However, I did manage to concentrate on the books enough to be able to confirm that they are a complete set, probably the only complete Gilchrist that there is, though Derby County library is now busy collecting. .

Naturally, I was inquisitive to know how the Grammar School got these books, and Mr. Dixon introduced me to the Head, and thus I learned that the books had only been in the school a short time-not much over twelve month~s-although Gilchrist had died back in 1917. The books had been left. to the Grammar School by Gilchrist's last surviving sister, Isobel, who died only in 1947, Why had she left them that way? Because, so I learned, her brother had expressed a wish before his death that Dronfield Grammar School should have them. "And why had he done that"? I asked, knowing that he had been born at Heeley, Sheffield, and been educated at Sheffield Grammar School.

Now even Mr. Millican, the Headmaster, could not answer that 'query, but he gave orders for old records to be looked up, to see if Robert Murray Gilchrist was mentioned, and while the records were being searched he got on the telephone to friends who might know. It was somewhat like being in a detective office, ringing up here and there to try to find clues to this mystery. And then Mr. Millican ran the' truth down: Robert Murray Gilchrist for several years, until he died, had been a Governor of Dronfield Grammar School. So naturally, he wanted the school to have his books. I never knew Gilchrist, but he appears to have been a fine fellow. Mr. Eden Phillpotts; the Devonshire novelist, in a letter to me a short time back said that Gilchrist was one of the most generous men he ever knew. He was tall, broad, long-striding, a great walker, very fond of the open hills. and dales. He must also have had much determination, for when he' left school he was apprenticed to a Sheffield cutler, but as soon as he was twenty-one and able to please himself he.threw that work up and announced that he was going to make his living by writing and nothing else. He left home and went to live at Highcliffe Nook, near Eyam. ~ The house: is high on the hills and looks right over Eyam village, Middleton Dale, Stoney Middleton, and the dale at Calver leading to Chatsworth. And up there Gilchrist set himself to become an author. It isn't an easy thing to do. There are always disappointments, and Gilchrist must have had lots. But he stuck at his job, and soon got a publisher to take a book. This was Passion the Plaything. I had not seen it when I spoke at Chesterfield, but Mr. Dixon lent it from the Dronfield collection, and I was surprised by how well it was written. Gilchrist must have worked hard to be able to write in that way when he was only twenty-two.

Gilchrist was a student of Balzac, and also greatly admired Edgar Allan Poe. Many of Gilchrist's own novels tell of queer mysteries. Not far past Highcliffe Nook a high, open moor spreads away to Great Hucklow, and Gilchrist must often have wandered there, because bleak' moorlands like it are repeatedly being described in his books, and these moorland places suit his mysteries. But although as he got older he wrote only novels, they were not his finest books. His best tales were short ones, often with a lot of Derbyshire dialect in them, tales of country folk who lived in and around an imaginary village called Milton, which was much like Eyam.

If you want to see how to make rich little pictures of Derbyshire in few words, read some of the tales in A Peakland Faggot, Nicholas and Mary, Natives of Milton, or Good-bye to Market. Yet Gilchrist was more than a clever word-painter of scenes, for he had wide sympathy and was. very fond of fun. There is one tale of a man who was tricked into eating a pickled tree-lizard thinking it was veal; another about a dancing monkey named Lady Golightly; another pathetic little story of a "gaffer" who made a won~derful carved-wood model of "all Milton Dale and Village true to nayture" - in fact, Gilchrist had the happiest knack of using the simplest happenings.

It is usually said that Englishmen cannot write really short short-stories, as a number of Frenchmen and Americans have done, but Gilchrist could. Arnold Bennett, Hugh Walpole, and H. G. Wells all thought a lot of his work, and in any really representative collection of the world's best short stories usually there is one or more of Gilchrist's." --Technopat (talk) 14:15, 21 September 2013 (UTC)