[4] After teaching at Fort Street and Glen Innes, he obtained a scholarship which enabled him to travel to Germany in 1912 and study German at the Institut Tilly in Berlin.
[8] He taught honours German courses during fellow modern languages academic Associate Professor Augustin Lodewyckx's sabbaticals in 1924, 1931 and 1937.
[8] In 1938 he published his "sensitive and penetrating essay on the lengthy poem by Paul Valéry entitled "Le Jeune Parque".
[9] During World War II he espoused the cause of Free French and Italia Libera and published numerous articles in the Melbourne Argus newspaper calling for support for France.
[the University of Melbourne in the time of Professor Chisholm was a veritable breeding ground of Mallarméan studies, and from Christopher Brennan to Lloyd James Austin, Australia can claim to be the second homeland of Mallarmé.]
More broadly, "the 'Melbourne school', as it came to be known the world over, became a byword for outstanding published contributions to the study of 19th and 20th century French poetry, especially Baudelaire, Mallarmé and Valéry.
[13] Lloyd Austin described his personality and influence as follows: His gentle, friendly personality won him the deep affection of many of his students; his great generosity in appreciation endeared him to younger scholars; the originality and authority of his thought and the elegance and precision of his writing earned him high esteem from junior and senior colleagues alike throughout the world.
In addition to greatly improving the quality of teaching and research in Melbourne University's French department, it was Chisholm's "special achievement ... to raise French studies here [in Australia] (until then, barely tolerated, along with German and English, by hard-line classicists) to the status of a highly relevant and authentic academic discipline".
In November of the same year he married Lillian Norah Mulholland (died 1968) and they had one daughter, Amélie ("Mimi") Madeline Alice (1924–2009).