The Sea-Serpent. A paper read before Ye Sette of Odd Volumes, Assembled at Oddenino's Restaurant, on March 24th, 1925 [Opusculum LXXX.]

Bookseller Notes

Scarce. Inscribed by the author on the limitation-page, to a fellow member of Ye Sette: [Presented unto] Chorographer [By] Hydrographer'. Gould was the latter; also, the title-page clarifies, the President at this point. He had been introduced to the dining club at the beginning of the decade, by the author Ralph Straus.In 1923, Gould published his major work, 'The Marine Chronometer'; this work represents the first statement of another preoccupation, similarly related to his naval career, but with a cryptozoological basis - he would publish a monograph on the same topic in 1930, 'The Case for the Sea-Serpent', having published a few other books with paranormal themes in the preceding years. Gould's various consuming obsessions, a feature of his personality that also left him vulnerable to depression - a succession of mental breakdowns (the first during his Great War service) provided watershed moments in his life, precipitating also the collapse of his marriage. His talk here begins piquantly in this respect, aligning the question of the titular beast's existence with questions such as 'Is Marriage a Failure?' - their judicial separation, a high-profile case, was heard at the High Court in 1927 '...and Gould lost everything: the custody of the children, his home and, because of the adverse publicity, his job at the Admiralty' (ODNB).