Conspicuously not a Fortean.
Rupert Thomas Gould was born to a solid middle-class background in England 16 November 1890. He went into the navy early, where he studied navigation. His career, though, was waylaid an intense period of depression—one of many that would mark Gould’s life. At one point, he was in bed, mute, for a year. He was given a position in the hydrographer's department, and retired as a lieutenant commander.
He married Muriel Estall in 1917, and the two established a family; their son Cecil was born in 1918, and a daughter Jocelyne in 1920. Apparently, Gould had quite a bit of liberty in the hydrographer’s office. He studied naval history, especially British polar expeditions, and cartography. Most famously, he restored the marine chronometers of John Harrison, which had been essential in establishing ways for navigators to determine longitude. In 1923 he wrote “The Marine Chronometer, Its History and Development,” which, according to his biographer, the horologist Jonathan Betts, was a standard work for the next half century. (Gould had an engineering cast of mind, and also tinkered with—and wrote about—typewriters.)
Rupert Thomas Gould was born to a solid middle-class background in England 16 November 1890. He went into the navy early, where he studied navigation. His career, though, was waylaid an intense period of depression—one of many that would mark Gould’s life. At one point, he was in bed, mute, for a year. He was given a position in the hydrographer's department, and retired as a lieutenant commander.
He married Muriel Estall in 1917, and the two established a family; their son Cecil was born in 1918, and a daughter Jocelyne in 1920. Apparently, Gould had quite a bit of liberty in the hydrographer’s office. He studied naval history, especially British polar expeditions, and cartography. Most famously, he restored the marine chronometers of John Harrison, which had been essential in establishing ways for navigators to determine longitude. In 1923 he wrote “The Marine Chronometer, Its History and Development,” which, according to his biographer, the horologist Jonathan Betts, was a standard work for the next half century. (Gould had an engineering cast of mind, and also tinkered with—and wrote about—typewriters.)
Gould’s private life is a bit harder to suss out; Betts’ biography tries, but it is also clear that he was hemmed in a bit, as he relied on Gould’s children. Betts does show that the complications reached a climax in the mid-1920s. Muriel had suffered through Gould’s depressive episodes. (Indeed, she had married him against the wishes of her parents, who worried about his mental stability.) He spent an inordinate amount of time working on the chronometers, and then more in a social club, The Settee of Odd Volumes, which featured a number of his illustrations on the menus of its monthly meetings. Apparently, Gould was something of a sadist, too, with a penchant for masturbating to pornography showing bound and gagged women.
These revelations seem rather banal from our perspective, but int he 1920s, when they came out as a result of court proceedings, they were sensational. Muriel left him for a lesbian lover, and the couple’s dirty laundry was put on display for a still very prudish British public. His drinking habits were mentioned—he drank heavily, by his own admission—as were his sexual proclivities. Gould lost his wife—they were officially separated, not divorced—his job, and his best friend. He kept a position in the Settee only barely, and had to move back in with his mother.
It was out of this maelstrom that his best remembered—and most Fortean—works were born. He had been collecting material on scientific anomalies for years, and deiced to collate these into books—it was a way to make some money, when he and his mother were, at best, genteelly poor. “Oddities” was published in 1928. It’s a sign of how dedicated Gould could be to work that he wrote the 75,000 word manuscript in about a month, and also illustrated it and did the cover. “Enigmas,” the sequel, came out the following year.
“Oddities” comprised eleven chapters, many of them on what would become Fortean staples. The first was on the Devil’s Hoof-Marks of Devon, mysterious tracks that appeared across the county in 1855. The second was on the moving coffins of Barbados, another old case, from the 1810s. The third on the disposition of the lost polar-investigating ships, “Erebus” and “Terror.” The fourth on a community in the Philippines that included members able to convince an English observer that they could transform into ghouls. The sixth on the impossibility of perpetual motion and the creation of life with electrical experiments. The seventh on reported islands that have never been found—an extension of Gould’s interest in navigation and cartography. The eighth on discussed some mathematical theorems (which Gould himself had studied). The ninth on a native of Mauritius who seemingly predicted the future. The tenth on the supposed planet Vulcan, which reportedly existed between the sun and Mercury. The eleventh was a limited case for Nostradamus’s prognosticating power.
A year later, he published a sequel of sorts, “Enigmas,” which comprised nine chapters. He investigated reports of giants, which he thought possible, though exaggerated; strange sounds—which he could not explain and thought warranted further investigation; modern Methuselahs; debates over where Columbus landed in the New World (which was a revised version of an article he had published several years before); a 19th-century poltergeist; a persistent cartographic error (replaced in later editions by a chapter on the sinking of a ship during maneuvers); alchemists—with Gould thinking some had managed the transformation of lead into gold; a false report of an arctic island (replaced in the second edition by an analysis of an old court proceeding); and the canals of Mars, which Gould seems to disbelieve.
By 1930, Gould had re-established an equilibrium. He continued his interest in naval history—he published a book on Captain Cook in 1935—as well as dreaming up all manner of other projects, which were never finished. (Among these was “Nine Day Wonders,” a proposed continuation of his work on anomalies that never came to fruition.) He loved tennis, and officiated some matches. There is some strong evidence that he indulged sexual desires that were outside the range of acceptable behavior in Depression-era England: he engaged in group sex with prostitutes, and there were rumors that he also may have had homosexual encounters. In 1947, he proposed writing a book on bisexuals, called “The Third Sex,” but it also never saw the light of day.
What did come out, publicly, was his continued interest in scientific mysteries. As fitting someone with an interest in naval history, he became interested in sea serpents. In 1930, he published “The Case for the Sea Serpent.” As the title indicated, Gould had convinced himself that the sea serpent existed. A few years later, with reports coming out of Loch Ness, Gould involved himself with a sea monster closer to home. He wrote another book, this time claiming the Loch Ness Monster existed. (This interest drove deeper the wedge between him and the Settee of Odd Volumes, as another member, the zoologist E. G. Boulenger, gave the book a negative review.) To gather material, he circumnavigated the Loch on a motorcycle—which gave him an opportunity for more mechanical messing about.
Thus unfolded another act in Gould’s life. He was invited by the BBC to give radio talks for children; these were titled “The Star Gazer Talks.” They were on scientific topics—especially astronomy, as the name implies—but also on scientific anomalies, including the Loch Ness Monster. They were collected in a book in 1943. Some of these furthered his work on Fortean topics—he did a talk on the Devil’s Hoof-Marks, for example. (In 1937, he also put out a collection of essays titled “A Book of Marvels,” which just rehashed his two earlier books on anomalies.) Established on the radio, Gould became a member of the BBC’s “Brain Trust,” a panel show in which a group of experts answered audience questions.
Gould died 5 October 1948, aged 57, from heart failure.
******************************
Gould was a rough contemporary of Fort—born sixteen years after Fort, and passed away 16 years after him as well—and gathered about him a cultish following as well; one could imagine there being such a thing as Gouldian if there wasn’t already a Fortean. Indeed, there are many—including me—who encountered Gould before they did Fort. But the comparison can be overstated as well. Gould approached scientific oddities and enigmas with a very different frame of mind from Fort. Whereas Fort prophesied the coming of a new age—the age of Intermediatism, of the hyphen—Gould applied his analytical powers (exemplified in his mechanical work) to the mysteries, sorting them out, trying to come to a conclusion. He sometimes overstated his own ability—as in the case of his work on the Loch Ness Monster, which showed a lack of acquaintance with biology—could be credulous, and overvalued the reports of eyewitnesses, especially those of higher classes—leading him to accept the possibility of future-telling and alchemy; but the point was, He thought some kind of rigorous method, akin to if not the same as the scientific method, could sort the rubbish from the facts and determine the truth. Fort had no such illusions.
Gould and Fort were both in England at the same time, though it is highly unlikely they ever met each other. Gould, though, would have been in a position to read Fort’s books, since he had a developed interest in scientific anomalies. (Betts says in a footnote that Gould read Fort’s books—presumably his first two, “Book of the Damned” and “New Lands”—closely.) Gould apparently ran up against other early Forteans and Fortean favorites. He apparently read Maynard Shipley’s “War on Modern Science” (it confirmed the agnostic Gould’s opinion that fundamentalist religion was dangerous—though valued science in an un-Fortean way). The cover of “Oddities” shows a parade of personally-symbolic creatures, which it is possible might refer to Fort’s “Procession of the Damned,” with Gould—then at his lowest—among the accursed. The cover, like so much of Gould’s illustrations, is done in the style of Aubrey Beardsley, an artist of interest among Forteans such as Frank Pease, as well as aficionados of weird tales and decadent art.
I have not noticed that Gould ever referenced Fort, though Fort discussed some of the same topics—the Devil’s hoof-marks, Vulcan, and unusual animals (though not the Loch Ness Monster, as that was not reported until 1933). Once the Fortean Society got going, though, Thayer reached out to Gould. I am not sure when he first made contact, but by August 1943, Thayer was sending issues of “Doubt” to him. (We know this because the FBI intercepted one.) There was also, apparently, correspondence between Thayer and Gould, with Thayer inviting Gould to join—and probably even offering to waive dues—but Gould never did.
Gould did not like Forteans or, apparently, Fort. Thayer—styling himself YS, for Your Secretary—wrote, “YS had some interesting correspondence with this Brains Truster in the years 7 and 8 FS [1937 and 1938], but the Briton could not appreciate Fort’s humor and so never became one of us.” Gould, after all, in his first book said he had no truck with spiritualists and Flat-Earthers and circle-squarers and those who saw metaphysical import in the pyramids; which groups composed much of the Fortean Society, and which topics filled the pages of the magazine and engaged even Thayer. (Vulcan was important to some Theosophists, such as A L. Joquel.) Fort saw the anomalies as a sign that science itself was exhausted, and all attempts to resuscitate it as a joke; Thayer echoed and extended this—not only was science a joke, so was politics and economics. Forteans, for their part, tended to see the anomalies as signs of a different, hidden order—generally speaking, of course. Meanwhile, for Gould, they were puzzles, to be deciphered by the proper mind or proper technology.
So, despite Gould remaining aloof from the Society, Forteans embraced him. Peppered throughout the correspondence between Thayer and Russell were attempts to find and obtain copies of Gould’s books—even after they were reprinted during the War, they were hard to find. (Randolph Banner had even heard of Gould’s Nine Day Wonders, and wanted a copy, though the book was never written, even if it had possibly been advertised.) Thayer frequently offered them for sale in the magazine and its book-sale circulars. Thayer and Russell’s own appreciation of Gould was tempered: it’s notable that Gould was not included in Thayer’s proposed curriculum for a Fortean University. And in “Great World Mysteries,” Russel gave Gould the backhanded compliment of calling him “a shrewd if somewhat irascible author.”
There’s a reason, then that the adjective Fortean found a place in the language, but Gouldian did not—beyond Fort publishing first and Ben Hecht’s coinage of the term: Fort was more expansive, able to be read on a number of different levels, including just those that were only interested in anomalies as scientific puzzles. Those who read him in this last way—as provider of puzzles, as proof scientists did not know everything—included the nascent cryptozoology community, and this group especially appreciated Gould. The cryptozoologists, like Gould, were trying to solve a scientific mystery, not propound some strange philosophy or eccentric metaphysics. Gould’s work on sea serpents and the Loch Ness Monster was taken up by them enthusiastically. Bernard Heuvelmans, one of the father’s of cryptozoology, called his book “a model of scientific rigour” and took it as a given that the cases Gould evaluated had been vouchsafed as genuine.
Thayer kept an eye on Gould, and there were a few mentions of him in “Doubt,” beyond the selling of his books. The first came in Doubt 18 (July 1947); Thayer called out the other father of cryptozoology, Ivan Sanderson, for his apparent ignorance of Gould’s work—a sign that Thayer, though he had not included Gould in the Fortean University curriculum, considered familiarity with his writing a standard part of being a Fortean. Two issues later—Doubt 20, March 1948—Thayer called out Charles Honce, an AP writer, for a story on sea serpents which did not mention Gould (or Fort)—more proof that Gould was considered de rigueur be Thayer. That same issue had two credits to someone named Gould, though in long acknowledgments that cannot be easily tied to specific reports. It is entirely possible, though, that both referred to cryptozoological matters, and so perhaps Gould did send in some material, even if he was not a member. He was, presumably, still receiving “Doubt” in the mail, after all. (It is of course also possible that the Gould mentioned in this issue was someone else entirely.)
A few more issues down the line—Doubt 23, December 1948—Thayer noted Gould’s passing. It was in that context he told about his correspondence with Gould and Gould’s inability to appreciate Fort’s humor and the Society. But Gould remained on the mind of Forteans, even after his death. With his books, how could it have been otherwise? Thayer and Russell mentioned him in correspondence as late as 1956, Thayer taking back some of his reservations about Gould, since he learned that Gould had called Fort to the attention of the British engineer Archibald M. Low (who was in the news for illness). Thayer said he would not usually change his opinion but Gould’s actions in this case warranted posthumous “Special treatment.” He predicted Low would have to go back to the hospital, now with a busted gut, after reading Fort.
To be fair, it is possible that Thayer was referring to the other-Gould, and not Rupert. But it is still a fact that Forteans loved reading Gould’s books. In the 1960s, Leslie Shepard, the Fortean, then working in publishing, got his press to put out four of Gould’s books. “Oddities” came out in 1965—with Shepard’s introduction—and was reprinted in 1966, a sign of continued interest. “Enigmas” had the same publishing history, out in 1965, reprinted in 1966. The Loch Ness Monster book came out in 1969, with a foreword by Shepard. “The Stargazer Talks”—retitled “More Oddities and Enigmas” came out in 1973, with a foreword by Shepard.
For all that Gould remained aloof toward Forteans, he was warmly embraced by them.
These revelations seem rather banal from our perspective, but int he 1920s, when they came out as a result of court proceedings, they were sensational. Muriel left him for a lesbian lover, and the couple’s dirty laundry was put on display for a still very prudish British public. His drinking habits were mentioned—he drank heavily, by his own admission—as were his sexual proclivities. Gould lost his wife—they were officially separated, not divorced—his job, and his best friend. He kept a position in the Settee only barely, and had to move back in with his mother.
It was out of this maelstrom that his best remembered—and most Fortean—works were born. He had been collecting material on scientific anomalies for years, and deiced to collate these into books—it was a way to make some money, when he and his mother were, at best, genteelly poor. “Oddities” was published in 1928. It’s a sign of how dedicated Gould could be to work that he wrote the 75,000 word manuscript in about a month, and also illustrated it and did the cover. “Enigmas,” the sequel, came out the following year.
“Oddities” comprised eleven chapters, many of them on what would become Fortean staples. The first was on the Devil’s Hoof-Marks of Devon, mysterious tracks that appeared across the county in 1855. The second was on the moving coffins of Barbados, another old case, from the 1810s. The third on the disposition of the lost polar-investigating ships, “Erebus” and “Terror.” The fourth on a community in the Philippines that included members able to convince an English observer that they could transform into ghouls. The sixth on the impossibility of perpetual motion and the creation of life with electrical experiments. The seventh on reported islands that have never been found—an extension of Gould’s interest in navigation and cartography. The eighth on discussed some mathematical theorems (which Gould himself had studied). The ninth on a native of Mauritius who seemingly predicted the future. The tenth on the supposed planet Vulcan, which reportedly existed between the sun and Mercury. The eleventh was a limited case for Nostradamus’s prognosticating power.
A year later, he published a sequel of sorts, “Enigmas,” which comprised nine chapters. He investigated reports of giants, which he thought possible, though exaggerated; strange sounds—which he could not explain and thought warranted further investigation; modern Methuselahs; debates over where Columbus landed in the New World (which was a revised version of an article he had published several years before); a 19th-century poltergeist; a persistent cartographic error (replaced in later editions by a chapter on the sinking of a ship during maneuvers); alchemists—with Gould thinking some had managed the transformation of lead into gold; a false report of an arctic island (replaced in the second edition by an analysis of an old court proceeding); and the canals of Mars, which Gould seems to disbelieve.
By 1930, Gould had re-established an equilibrium. He continued his interest in naval history—he published a book on Captain Cook in 1935—as well as dreaming up all manner of other projects, which were never finished. (Among these was “Nine Day Wonders,” a proposed continuation of his work on anomalies that never came to fruition.) He loved tennis, and officiated some matches. There is some strong evidence that he indulged sexual desires that were outside the range of acceptable behavior in Depression-era England: he engaged in group sex with prostitutes, and there were rumors that he also may have had homosexual encounters. In 1947, he proposed writing a book on bisexuals, called “The Third Sex,” but it also never saw the light of day.
What did come out, publicly, was his continued interest in scientific mysteries. As fitting someone with an interest in naval history, he became interested in sea serpents. In 1930, he published “The Case for the Sea Serpent.” As the title indicated, Gould had convinced himself that the sea serpent existed. A few years later, with reports coming out of Loch Ness, Gould involved himself with a sea monster closer to home. He wrote another book, this time claiming the Loch Ness Monster existed. (This interest drove deeper the wedge between him and the Settee of Odd Volumes, as another member, the zoologist E. G. Boulenger, gave the book a negative review.) To gather material, he circumnavigated the Loch on a motorcycle—which gave him an opportunity for more mechanical messing about.
Thus unfolded another act in Gould’s life. He was invited by the BBC to give radio talks for children; these were titled “The Star Gazer Talks.” They were on scientific topics—especially astronomy, as the name implies—but also on scientific anomalies, including the Loch Ness Monster. They were collected in a book in 1943. Some of these furthered his work on Fortean topics—he did a talk on the Devil’s Hoof-Marks, for example. (In 1937, he also put out a collection of essays titled “A Book of Marvels,” which just rehashed his two earlier books on anomalies.) Established on the radio, Gould became a member of the BBC’s “Brain Trust,” a panel show in which a group of experts answered audience questions.
Gould died 5 October 1948, aged 57, from heart failure.
******************************
Gould was a rough contemporary of Fort—born sixteen years after Fort, and passed away 16 years after him as well—and gathered about him a cultish following as well; one could imagine there being such a thing as Gouldian if there wasn’t already a Fortean. Indeed, there are many—including me—who encountered Gould before they did Fort. But the comparison can be overstated as well. Gould approached scientific oddities and enigmas with a very different frame of mind from Fort. Whereas Fort prophesied the coming of a new age—the age of Intermediatism, of the hyphen—Gould applied his analytical powers (exemplified in his mechanical work) to the mysteries, sorting them out, trying to come to a conclusion. He sometimes overstated his own ability—as in the case of his work on the Loch Ness Monster, which showed a lack of acquaintance with biology—could be credulous, and overvalued the reports of eyewitnesses, especially those of higher classes—leading him to accept the possibility of future-telling and alchemy; but the point was, He thought some kind of rigorous method, akin to if not the same as the scientific method, could sort the rubbish from the facts and determine the truth. Fort had no such illusions.
Gould and Fort were both in England at the same time, though it is highly unlikely they ever met each other. Gould, though, would have been in a position to read Fort’s books, since he had a developed interest in scientific anomalies. (Betts says in a footnote that Gould read Fort’s books—presumably his first two, “Book of the Damned” and “New Lands”—closely.) Gould apparently ran up against other early Forteans and Fortean favorites. He apparently read Maynard Shipley’s “War on Modern Science” (it confirmed the agnostic Gould’s opinion that fundamentalist religion was dangerous—though valued science in an un-Fortean way). The cover of “Oddities” shows a parade of personally-symbolic creatures, which it is possible might refer to Fort’s “Procession of the Damned,” with Gould—then at his lowest—among the accursed. The cover, like so much of Gould’s illustrations, is done in the style of Aubrey Beardsley, an artist of interest among Forteans such as Frank Pease, as well as aficionados of weird tales and decadent art.
I have not noticed that Gould ever referenced Fort, though Fort discussed some of the same topics—the Devil’s hoof-marks, Vulcan, and unusual animals (though not the Loch Ness Monster, as that was not reported until 1933). Once the Fortean Society got going, though, Thayer reached out to Gould. I am not sure when he first made contact, but by August 1943, Thayer was sending issues of “Doubt” to him. (We know this because the FBI intercepted one.) There was also, apparently, correspondence between Thayer and Gould, with Thayer inviting Gould to join—and probably even offering to waive dues—but Gould never did.
Gould did not like Forteans or, apparently, Fort. Thayer—styling himself YS, for Your Secretary—wrote, “YS had some interesting correspondence with this Brains Truster in the years 7 and 8 FS [1937 and 1938], but the Briton could not appreciate Fort’s humor and so never became one of us.” Gould, after all, in his first book said he had no truck with spiritualists and Flat-Earthers and circle-squarers and those who saw metaphysical import in the pyramids; which groups composed much of the Fortean Society, and which topics filled the pages of the magazine and engaged even Thayer. (Vulcan was important to some Theosophists, such as A L. Joquel.) Fort saw the anomalies as a sign that science itself was exhausted, and all attempts to resuscitate it as a joke; Thayer echoed and extended this—not only was science a joke, so was politics and economics. Forteans, for their part, tended to see the anomalies as signs of a different, hidden order—generally speaking, of course. Meanwhile, for Gould, they were puzzles, to be deciphered by the proper mind or proper technology.
So, despite Gould remaining aloof from the Society, Forteans embraced him. Peppered throughout the correspondence between Thayer and Russell were attempts to find and obtain copies of Gould’s books—even after they were reprinted during the War, they were hard to find. (Randolph Banner had even heard of Gould’s Nine Day Wonders, and wanted a copy, though the book was never written, even if it had possibly been advertised.) Thayer frequently offered them for sale in the magazine and its book-sale circulars. Thayer and Russell’s own appreciation of Gould was tempered: it’s notable that Gould was not included in Thayer’s proposed curriculum for a Fortean University. And in “Great World Mysteries,” Russel gave Gould the backhanded compliment of calling him “a shrewd if somewhat irascible author.”
There’s a reason, then that the adjective Fortean found a place in the language, but Gouldian did not—beyond Fort publishing first and Ben Hecht’s coinage of the term: Fort was more expansive, able to be read on a number of different levels, including just those that were only interested in anomalies as scientific puzzles. Those who read him in this last way—as provider of puzzles, as proof scientists did not know everything—included the nascent cryptozoology community, and this group especially appreciated Gould. The cryptozoologists, like Gould, were trying to solve a scientific mystery, not propound some strange philosophy or eccentric metaphysics. Gould’s work on sea serpents and the Loch Ness Monster was taken up by them enthusiastically. Bernard Heuvelmans, one of the father’s of cryptozoology, called his book “a model of scientific rigour” and took it as a given that the cases Gould evaluated had been vouchsafed as genuine.
Thayer kept an eye on Gould, and there were a few mentions of him in “Doubt,” beyond the selling of his books. The first came in Doubt 18 (July 1947); Thayer called out the other father of cryptozoology, Ivan Sanderson, for his apparent ignorance of Gould’s work—a sign that Thayer, though he had not included Gould in the Fortean University curriculum, considered familiarity with his writing a standard part of being a Fortean. Two issues later—Doubt 20, March 1948—Thayer called out Charles Honce, an AP writer, for a story on sea serpents which did not mention Gould (or Fort)—more proof that Gould was considered de rigueur be Thayer. That same issue had two credits to someone named Gould, though in long acknowledgments that cannot be easily tied to specific reports. It is entirely possible, though, that both referred to cryptozoological matters, and so perhaps Gould did send in some material, even if he was not a member. He was, presumably, still receiving “Doubt” in the mail, after all. (It is of course also possible that the Gould mentioned in this issue was someone else entirely.)
A few more issues down the line—Doubt 23, December 1948—Thayer noted Gould’s passing. It was in that context he told about his correspondence with Gould and Gould’s inability to appreciate Fort’s humor and the Society. But Gould remained on the mind of Forteans, even after his death. With his books, how could it have been otherwise? Thayer and Russell mentioned him in correspondence as late as 1956, Thayer taking back some of his reservations about Gould, since he learned that Gould had called Fort to the attention of the British engineer Archibald M. Low (who was in the news for illness). Thayer said he would not usually change his opinion but Gould’s actions in this case warranted posthumous “Special treatment.” He predicted Low would have to go back to the hospital, now with a busted gut, after reading Fort.
To be fair, it is possible that Thayer was referring to the other-Gould, and not Rupert. But it is still a fact that Forteans loved reading Gould’s books. In the 1960s, Leslie Shepard, the Fortean, then working in publishing, got his press to put out four of Gould’s books. “Oddities” came out in 1965—with Shepard’s introduction—and was reprinted in 1966, a sign of continued interest. “Enigmas” had the same publishing history, out in 1965, reprinted in 1966. The Loch Ness Monster book came out in 1969, with a foreword by Shepard. “The Stargazer Talks”—retitled “More Oddities and Enigmas” came out in 1973, with a foreword by Shepard.
For all that Gould remained aloof toward Forteans, he was warmly embraced by them.
