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Nat Gould name stamped top right corner .
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The
works of prolific writer of novels and stories in which horses and racing loomed large , Nat Gould ( 1857-1919) , were popular with troops in
the trenches before they went “ over the top” during WW1
. It comes as a deep
surprise to think that the legion of unfortunate soldiers in that
bloodbath had any time
to read . Another
unexpected surprise for this blog
was to find
an old piece of sheet music
in Townsville stamped NAT GOULD ...
WARD STREET , BRISBANE . By calculation , this obviously was not the
author Nat Gould
, who was dead at the time
the sheet music , for a song from the World War l comedy-drama movie , What Price Glory? , was issued in the 1920s
. It could be one of his sons .
Nat
Gould , a turf writer in Lancashire, came to Australia in 1884 and worked on the Brisbane Telegraph, covering shipping , commercial and racing news . He also corresponded for the
Sportsman and the Sydney Referee .
In
Brisbane he married EliZabeth Madelaine Ruska
and they had three sons and two
daughters. Moving
to Sydney, he became the turf
editor of the Referee and a race tipster under the nom- de- plume , Verax. He also wrote for the
Bulletin and for a time edited the Bathurst Times , NSW.
He
churned
out a popular racing serial, made
into a book released in London at the time of the 1891 Melbourne
Cup. In turn it was made into a play by George Durrell with 20 horses on stage. Gould left Australia
in 1895 aboard the ship which carried
the champion racehorse , Melbourne
Cup winner Carbine . More than
30 of his novels
were set in Australia with titles such as On and Off The Turf in Australia , Town and Bush , Bred In
The Bush , Settling Day , The Magic of Sport . So homesick Australian soldiers
in the trenches
may have avidly read his works to escape
the madness of war before going over the top and facing a photo finish with death . The State library of Queensland has 68
of Gould’s books.
Originally released in 1926, the American Fox Film Corp movie , What Price Glory ? , based on a 1924 play, was in 1952
made into another film starring James Cagney . The name Robino
which appears on the cover is apparently a name from
North Queensland and
appears on numerous other pieces of old
sheet music
seen by Little Darwin and will feature in future
posts .
