Interview with Pamela Joy Harvey and Gareth David Lloyd Harvey, the granddaughter and great grandson of the hurdler Edward Wyatt Gould

Description

EDWARD WYATT GOULD
a hurdler’s tale

as told by Pamela Joy Harvey, the granddaughter of Edward Wyatt Gould, and Gareth David Lloyd Harvey, the great grandson of Edward Wyatt Gould

Pamela: My name is Pamela Joy Harvey. I was born in 1945 and I now live in Cardiff.

Gareth: My name is Gareth David Lloyd Harvey. I was born in 1969 and I live in Barry. Edward Wyatt Gould ran in the 1908 White City Olympic Games. He came from a very famous sporting family based in Newport, the Gould family. There were six brothers, three of whom played for Wales, two of whom captained Wales at rugby. The most famous one was Wyatt’s older brother, Arthur Joseph Gould, known as ‘Monkey’ Gould. There’s a number of stories to explain the nickname. One is that, as a schoolboy, he used to climb trees; and another that in one game, when he was very young, he shinned up the posts to put back the cross-bar. Arthur ‘Monkey’ Gould was known throughout the rugby playing world. He’s been called the first superstar of Welsh rugby and, indeed, he was captain, in 1893, of the first ever Welsh team to win a Triple Crown, and one of Wyatt’s other brothers, Bert Gould, my mum’s great uncle, was also in that team.

In 2007, Arthur Gould was inducted into the Welsh Sporting Hall of Fame, and lots of the family members attended.

Pamela: My mum came down and it was wonderful. My brother and sister-in-law brought her down, and they got held up on the motorway and it was, literally, she’s coming into the house, needed to go to the loo, have a quick drink, and turn around and on to the City Hall. It was amazing, and she did that at 90.

Gareth: And her brother, Fraser was also there, a wonderful recognition of the Gould family, and particularly of Arthur Gould. Joseph Gould, their father, my great great grandfather, was a founder member of Newport Athletic Club, so they must have been brought up in quite an affluent family. From an early age, they were all encouraged to participate in sport and physical activity, but there must have been something in the genes, or in the Gwent water, for them to have been so successful. It certainly skipped the generations; I missed out! Having said, that my brother, Ian Harvey carried on the tradition in recent years and played for Newport himself, in fact, almost one hundred years to the actual season when our great grandfather Wyatt captained Newport.

Pamela: I have four sons and they all play rugby, they’re all good at sport. I’m one of six and my sisters were all good at running. It’s definitely in the genes.

Gareth: Having researched the family history, it’s clear that Arthur was really a superstar of his day. With the railway, he was able to travel the United Kingdom and compete in athletics, as well as rugby, and he was hailed wherever he went. He was compared to WG Grace. In athletics, they did earn money. Both Arthur and Wyatt travelled the UK and were able to compete and earn money through athletics, while still being pure amateurs as rugby players. With rugby football, they were amateurs and they played for the love of the sport. Wyatt Gould, when he wrote about athletics, his theories on practice and training were very much in line with the amateur ethos of the day.

Pamela: I can remember my grandfather, Edward Wyatt Gould. I can remember playing two ball and three ball and tried four, as well, against the wall at his home in Plymouth, and I always remember them saying about his long legs. (Gareth: Pity four ball isn’t in the Olympics, otherwise you’d be in it!) He was very lovable, very kind, as I remember him.

Gareth: In the 1908 Olympics, in the 400 metre hurdles, he got through to the semi-finals where he came third. As I understand it, only the winner of each of the four semis got into the final.
He was an athletics’ champion for a number of years in Wales, with the Amateur Athletics Association of Wales for, I think, the first ten years of the twentieth century. He won it on about six occasions, I think. We have all those medals which is wonderful. You have one of the medals don’t you?

Pamela: Yes I do, the Monmouthshire 3As. I remember when my mum gave it to me. She said, “It’s always been under the bed”, and one day I put it on, and she really filled up. She said, “Oh, it’s lovely to see that it’s being used”.

Gareth: The one thing that I’ve always been interested in is that Wyatt won all these Welsh titles and, I believe, UK titles, at the 120 metre hurdles, and yet, for the Olympic Games, he was entered in the 400 metre hurdles. I don’t know why that was.

I always thought he would have perhaps gotten into the final or done slightly better if he’d been in the 120 metre hurdles where he had, literally, a track record of success
.
My great grandfather wrote about the history of athletics in the Newport Athletic Club History book, 1875-1925, and, when he spoke about the 1908 Olympics, he did so in a very understated manner, and I respect that in him, and I’d like to think that I take something from that attitude and approach. We’ve all seen the film, Chariots of Fire which was about the 1924 Olympics. It was very laid back, it seems, in those days, sort of champagne on the hurdle. But, when you look at the times these athletes clocked up, the clock doesn’t lie. Obviously, equipment such as shoes and spikes have improved, the technology for the track has improved, so they must have been naturally-gifted athletes to be able to clock up the times that they did.

The Olympic movement, today, is wonderful. The twenty-first century is a sort of global village, and to have the Olympics bring people together in harmony and in peace through sport is absolutely wonderful. Mum mentioned that Wyatt was a very kind and gentle man, and I’m sure that he would embrace the Olympic family ethos of today, as he did in 1908.

Gareth: He was born in 1879 so he would have been about 30 when he competed in the Olympics, and he moved in 1928 to Plymouth. What was his job? Where did he work?

Pamela: In the Welsh building, down the docks.

Gareth: The docks manager, wasn’t he, at a very busy time when Cardiff was the exporting king of the world in terms of the coal?

Pamela: I think that’s why he moved to Plymouth.

Gareth: It was a naval docks. In the year that he left Newport, Newport Athletic made him Honorary President in recognition of his services to the Club, and his contribution to rugby, and athletics in particular. I think it was a rather nice gesture.

Pamela: My mum felt very proud to have been Welsh, and I’m sure that that came from Wyatt, her dad.

Gareth: The Goulds were an example of industrial South Wales, the influx of entrepreneurs and workers. Joseph Gould, my great great grandfather came from Oxfordshire, and for my mum to say that, within a generation, how proud they were to be Welsh is another example of how the new Wales evolved. And one of the expressions of that Welshness was sport.

Pamela: He stayed in Plymouth right up until he died. I remember going down there as a little girl, with my mum, to see my grandparents, and him taking us out, and I was very keen on playing tennis and he played tennis with me.
My Mum used to talk about Wyatt and his running, but I didn’t know then – you don’t take things in when you’re younger, do you? – about his achievements. It was only in later years, really, I suppose, with Gareth looking into the history. You researched the family tree, didn’t you?

Gareth: But Gran always spoke about Wyatt being in the Olympics, didn’t she?

Pamela: Yes, but not when I was younger. She talked to her grandchildren more than she did to me.

Gareth: It was always understated, as my mum has mentioned. I think it’s wonderful that you are interviewing us today and that he will be recognised in celebration of the 2012 Olympics. And I know my gran – who sadly passed away quite recently – she will be looking down on us and feeling immensely proud that her father is being celebrated and, I think, that is all, as a family, we would wish.

Pamela: It makes you wonder. Wyatt had an older brother who was a very good rugby player, and all the brothers were good at rugby, so he’s also playing rugby, but he’s also good at athletics. Perhaps his achievement didn’t come out so much because of the rugby.

Gareth: Yes, I think you’re absolutely right. There’s always been a focus on the rugby in Wales, and it’s now, with this celebration of the Olympics, that the torch, if you like, has been passed to illuminate Wyatt.

Pamela: It makes me feel very proud, thinking back.

Gareth: When I was young, Jack Gould who was Arthur’s son, came on a visit to my aunty’s in Cardiff, and he told us a number of stories about the brothers, including Wyatt, and that night – I was only about twelve years of age – I went home and I wrote them all down. This is what Jack Gould said: “Wyatt Gould was a great character. When his sister, who liked the boys, came home with many different lads –there’s something else in the genes that’s carried on, I think –Wyatt used to play practical jokes on her. On this particular occasion, he took everything out of a room in the house where his sister was to entertain the boy, the furniture, the carpet, everything. When the two appeared and walked in and found absolutely nothing, Wyatt said, ‘We couldn’t keep the bailiffs away any longer!’”. Another time: “Wyatt dressed up as an old woman and went up to his mother and told her what terrible boys her sons were. He kept talking with her, pulling her leg for about half an hour, until she realised that this old woman was her own son!”.

Pamela: He had a sense of humour, didn’t he?

Gareth: Really happy memories?

Pamela: Oh, yes, really happy.

Gareth: Granny adored her father, didn’t she?

Pamela: Oh yes, my mum worshipped Wyatt. She was very, very fond of him.

*Interviewed for the Following the Flame project by Phil Cope on 10 May 2010