The Fishy Smiths Read online

  Later we became more friendly and I even went on a few country walks with him. I remember him, then aged 69 years, as a stern man who led a very spartan lifestyle with all trivialities trimmed away so that he could focus his energy on fishes. Many years later, after completing my PhD in ichthyology and studying at the Natural History Museum in London, I joined the staff of the then JLB Smith Institute of Ichthyology as Senior Lecturer in Ichthyology. Margaret, by now widowed, was the Director at the time and we worked closely together to develop the teaching of ichthyology in South Africa, I later succeeded her as Director of the Institute, which subsequently was renamed the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity, SAIAB. From discussions with Margaret, as well as with Jean Pote, who had served as personal assistant to JLB (and subsequently to Margaret, this author and others), I learned about the Smiths’ extraordinary and inspirational lives.

  JLB Smith and, to a lesser extent, Margaret wrote extensively in the popular literature about their work, especially in Grocott’s Daily Mail, The Eastern Province Herald and in various outdoor and angling magazines, such as Field & Tide. JLB also wrote three popular books on his fish research and fish-collecting expeditions. The first, Old Fourlegs – The Story of the Coelacanth, his epic chronicle of the discovery of the first and second coelacanths, became one of the most popular books of science non-fiction in the world at the time; the other two (Our Fishes and High Tide) were published shortly after his death.

  Numerous short articles have been written about JLB and Margaret Smith, notably by Shirley Bell, Humphry Greenwood, Robin Stobbs, Peter Jackson and by me. In 1951 a Durban-based writer and photographer, Peter Barnett, accompanied the Smiths on a fish-collecting expedition to northern Mozambique and chronicled his experiences in an absorbing book, Sea Safari with Professor Smith (1953). Barnett provided valuable insight into the psyche of JLB Smith on this arduous trip, including his obsession with detail and his phenomenal work ethic, as well as the strongly supportive role played by his wife, Margaret. Shirley Bell also wrote an entrancing book, Old Man Coelacanth (1969), effectively a version of Old Fourlegs for a younger audience, which provides further insight into his character. In 1969 Margaret published J.L.B. Smith. His Life, Work, Bibliography and List of New Species, which provides a useful outline of his main accomplishments.

  I published a brief review of The Life and Work of Margaret M. Smith in 1982, and co-edited The Biology of Latimeria chalumnae and Evolution of Coelacanths (1991), together with John A Musick and Eugene K Balon, which reviews the Smiths’ work and brings coelacanth research up-to-date. In my autobiography, When I was a Fish – Tales of an Ichthyologist (2015), I describe my working relationship with JLB and Margaret and the role they played in the discovery of the first and second coelacanths. This theme is explored further in my two most recent books, The Annotated Old Fourlegs – The Updated Story of the Coelacanth (2017) and, for younger readers, The Amazing Coelacanth (2018).

  On 23rd January 1968, 16 days after JLB Smith had died, Margaret wrote to Shirley Bell, whom they regarded as their ‘literary daughter’: ‘I have had a number of people badger me to write his biography. This I do not think I can do, it must be left to some outsider. I feel I should write up my autobiography in other words my life with him. Now I am not a writer, I find it difficult to get down to any writing and in one way have to be forced to do it. My suggestion to you is this, that I should write this in a series of articles to Animals [the natural history magazine that Shirley edited] on the condition that I retain the copyright and later on can weld it into a book. How do you react to this suggestion?’

  In a follow-up letter to Shirley Bell dated 1st February 1968, Margaret wrote, ‘About his biography: you know you do not have to get my permission or anyone else’s for that matter. As far as I know people just decide to write a biography. His only brother whom I have never met and with whom he really had nothing in common … lives at Uvongo Beach … The name is Cyril Smith. Now about the production of the book: I think your suggestions are sound … I think it a good idea to approach Bulpin.’ (TV Bulpin was a popular and prolific non-fiction author of the time.) Unfortunately, nothing came of these plans.

  In 1979 Margaret Smith reviewed the impact of their work in a paper entitled ‘The influence of the coelacanth on African ichthyology’, and several review articles appeared on or shortly after the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the first coelacanth, all of which chronicled the Smiths’ involvements with the coelacanth.

  This book, ambitiously called a biography, is an attempt to pull disparate pieces of information together and to create a chronicle of JLB and Margaret Smith’s extraordinary lives. It made sense to write a joint biography as their lives and careers were intimately intertwined, at home and at work, from the date of their marriage in 1938 until his death 30 years later. Even after 1968 Margaret’s main preoccupation was to preserve and build on JLB Smith’s legacy, which she did very effectively, as these pages will show.

  In addition to reviewing the existing literature, I have interviewed many people who knew the Smiths, with whom they worked or who were in some way players in their life story, and also conducted a questionnaire survey via email with those I could not interview. I received a very positive response to this survey. I also spent many hours in the library and archives of the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity, as well as in the archives of the JLB Smith Institute of Ichthyology, which are held in the Rhodes University Archive housed in the Cory Library for Humanities Research at Rhodes University in Grahamstown. Information was also retrieved from the National Archives in Cape Town and the archives of the Albany Museum, East London Museum, Stellenbosch University and other sources, and from private people.

  These researches revealed many previously unknown, or poorly known, facets of their lives, such as JLB Smith’s student years in Stellenbosch and Cambridge, his clashes with the Head of Chemistry, Sir George Cory, when he first arrived at Rhodes, his first marriage to Henriette Pienaar from a prestigious Afrikaans family, the impact of his teaching and research in organic chemistry, his failure to secure the Chair of Chemistry, and the remarkable fish-collecting expeditions that the Smiths mounted to East Africa. I also record the extraordinary metamorphosis that Margaret underwent after JLB Smith died in January 1968.

  Their story also embraces the lives of many people with whom they worked, in particular George Cory, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, Eric Hunt, an unlikely parade of politicians including the Prime Minister (Dr DF Malan), Rex and Hilda Jubb (the successful freshwater fish research team that the Smiths nurtured), Jean Pote (his devoted secretary), Shirley Bell (writer/journalist who became a close family friend), Rosamund Marian (‘Nancy’) Tietz (Director of the East London Museum from 1987 to 1997), Phil Heemstra, who took over JLB Smith’s mantle as the leading marine fish taxonomist in southern Africa, and many others. JLB and Margaret’s remarkable son, William, also receives extensive mention, as he is definitely a ‘chip off the old block’ and followed an amazing career of his own.

  Not being an historian, I may not have done justice to the Smiths’ endeavours and achievements. But as an ichthyologist and informal science educator, I hope that I have, at least, captured something of the essence of their lives and times. And as I am one of the few living people who knew both the Smiths as well as many of the other players in their lives, I do feel qualified to write this biography – they are ‘living people’ to me, not just historical figures.

  Storytelling is a sensory union of ideas and images, a process of re-creating the past in terms of the present. I have tried to bring the past to life through thoughts, illustrations and word pictures, while using a scientific, ‘evidence-based’ approach by supporting my conclusions or interpretations with concrete examples or first-hand opinions. My 27 years in the ichthyology establishment in Grahamstown in various capacities, including as Director, and years of extensive research, combined with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge about the coelacanth, which I ha
ve felt since I was a child, have made it possible for me to sketch this intimate portrait of two great South African lives.

  MIKE BRUTON

  2018

  Southern Africa

  East coast of Africa

  CHAPTER 1

  JLB Smith’s childhood

  Karoo to Bishops

  JAMES LEONARD Brierley Smith was born on 26th September 1897 in Graaff-Reinet, Cape Province (now Eastern Cape). His father, Joseph Smith, descended from seafaring folk, was a peripatetic postmaster; his mother, Emily Ann Beck, was a beautiful but bad-tempered woman who had a poor relationship with her son. Emily was convinced that she had married beneath herself and took out her bitterness on her husband and family. She showed little interest in her elder son or, later, in his children, even though she went on to become a librarian in Knysna, where the Smiths had a holiday cottage. By all accounts Smith had an unhappy and unsettled childhood (Ian and Ishbel Sholto-Douglas, pers. comm., 2016). When he won his first bursary, he bought himself some new shirts but his mother confiscated them on the grounds that his father had never been able to wear new shirts (W Smith, pers. comm., 2017). According to the Dictionary of South African Biography (Anon, 1968–1987), JLB’s parents ‘had little in common with their elder son as they were quite unable to understand his sensitivity, his enquiring mind, and his craving for knowledge, education and culture’, although this assessment does seem to be unfair to his father.

  JLB Smith in Graaff-Reinet, aged 3 or 4 years, wearing a sailor suit that he apparently hated.

  According to Professor Dr Andree-Jeanne Tötemeyer (pers. comm., 2017), youngest sister of Smith’s first wife’s niece, who knew JLB’s mother, she was a domineering and violent woman (‘a real virago’) who beat Len mercilessly as a child. He developed a lifelong aversion to the female singing voice as his mother was in the habit of beating her children and then singing loudly to cover their cries (J Smith, pers. comm., 2017).

  Joseph Smith was himself a keen angler but, as he spent most of his life inland, he could only pursue his hobby on occasional visits to Knysna and more frequently after the family had settled in Stellenbosch in 1912, and later in Somerset West, when he was probably in his 40s and JLB was in his late teens. JLB Smith had a ‘slightly younger’ brother, Cyril, with whom he spent his early childhood. Nothing is known of him except that he lived as an adult in Uvongo, KwaZulu-Natal, until at least February 1968, had little or no contact with JLB, and never met either of JLB’s wives. JLB also had a sister, Gladys, of whom very little is known except that she broke off their relationship at a very early age; the only record of any contact with her is in January 1968 when Margaret Smith, JLB’s second wife, wrote to inform her of his death.

  Eastford House in Knysna where JLB Smith spent childhood holidays in the early 1900s, and developed a love for fishing. Note the Cape cart, in which the family travelled to and from George.

  Thus, having endured a difficult childhood, JLB Smith left his unhappy home as early as he could, breaking off all relations with his mother, brother and sister (Weinberg, 1999; Maylam, 2017; J Smith, pers. comm., 2017). He does not mention his blood relatives at all in his voluminous popular writings later in life.

  In Old Fourlegs – The Story of the Coelacanth (1956), Smith briefly describes his early life:

  JLB Smith at the age of 8 years with his father and mother.

  ‘My life has throughout been a series of contrasts and changes, many due to the peculiar circumstances of South Africa. Of English parents, I was born in 1897 in the inland Karoo town of Graaff Reinet. In the midst of the stress and bitterness of the Boer War my early years were spent in an atmosphere of deification of all that was British, and hatred and scorn for the “Boers”, and indeed of anything South African as distinct from British, including the country itself.

  ‘It has always been my uncomfortable instinct not to accept uncritically the opinions of others, and while this has ultimately been an asset in my scientific career, it did not always create the most cordial relations at home or at school.

  ‘My early education was at several small Karoo village mixed schools, and later at the abruptly different atmosphere of “Bishops”, modelled on an English Public School. The next violent contrast was the Victoria College at Stellenbosch, predominantly Afrikaans and reputedly steeped in Nationalism and Politics, but I encountered a peaceful tolerance towards my firm political views. There I gave my heart to Chemistry.

  ‘When the Great War came, in company with thousands of others of like age, on the 7th August 1914, I was called up from school and put into khaki and barracks in Wynberg, then into the tender care of a Regular British regiment for training. The enforced close company of this strange unnatural substratum of society was a bewildering experience. … After about a month some of us were returned to school as too young for campaign, and I went on to University life at Stellenbosch. As I was set on taking part in the war, I arranged at once to go to England to join the Royal Flying Corps after my “Intermediate” Examination at the end of the year (1915). However, General Smuts, at that time almost a god to me, appealed to everyone to enlist for German East Africa first, so instead of learning to soar through the skies, I became an earth-bound, foot-slogging infantry-man instead. Thousands of half-trained men of all ages were jammed into a transport at Durban, and fed mainly on bread, tinned rabbit, and tea. While most others gambled I counted heads and life-boats and was appalled at the quotient, but we got safely to Mombasa, and thence to the badly mismanaged campaign that followed.

  ‘After sundry misadventures, including contracting malaria, dysentery, and the acute rheumatic enlargement of several major joints, I spent some months in military hospitals, first in Kenya, where I nearly died, then was shipped, helpless, back to the Union, and to hospital at Wynberg. Eventually I returned, virtually a physical wreck, to University life at Stellenbosch … Then came another abrupt change from Afrikaner Stellenbosch to Cambridge in England, where I carried out research in chemistry … Despite my undiluted English blood and early upbringing, I found myself resentful of criticism of South Africa, especially of comments on Smuts I heard in quite high circles. I became conscious for the first time of being a “South African”, and those from my own country I met over there were no longer “English” or “Afrikaans”, but my own people. The childhood-fostered gap between “Briton” and “Boer” in my mind just closed up’ (Smith, 1956).

  JLB Smith was educated at schools in Noupoort, De Aar, Aliwal North (all inland towns) and finally in Cape Town, as his parents relocated around the Cape Province of South Africa to their eventual home in Somerset West. Although it was a cultural shock moving from unsophisticated rural schools to a traditional ‘English’ private school, he was fortunate to complete his schooling at the prestigious Diocesan College (‘Bishops’) in Cape Town between 1912 and 1914. This school, named after its founder, Bishop of Cape Town, the Right Reverend Robert Gray, states in its founding prospectus published in the late 1820s, ‘That a college be founded in Cape Town, for the promotion of sound Learning and religious Education in Southern Africa … especially for the diffusion of such knowledge in the higher branches of Literature and Science’ (Gardener, 1997).

  The mission includes ‘creating a climate characterised by high expectations, respect for excellence in all areas, tolerance, mutual respect and caring concern for human kind and the natural world around us’ (Gardener, 1997). Smith identified with these lofty goals and benefited greatly from his formal tuition as well as his interactions with the other scholars at Bishops. His education had reached a new level after assorted mediocre experiences in rural schools, and his self-esteem and confidence began to assert themselves for the first time.

  JLB Smith entered Bishops in the first term of 1912 in Junior Sixth Form A, and won the Mathematics Prize in that year. The first headmaster, Henry Master White, was ‘One of that happy band of mid-nineteenth-century scientists who, before the grim days of specialisation, took all nature to their pr
ovince … he loved to wander around his domain, botanizing, geologizing and zoologizing. His boys went with him. They could not have found a surer way of mastering science’ (McIntyre, 1950). The young Len Smith (or ‘LB Smith’, as he was called then), whose curiosity would probably have been suppressed in the rural schools that he had attended thus far, must have thrived in this environment.

  The period 1912 to 1914 was difficult at Bishops. The school was in financial trouble and the number and quality of students had declined, although the staff were still first class. Uncertainty had surrounded the declaration of the Union of South Africa in 1910, and war clouds were looming in Europe. The withdrawal of government funds, and the possible need for the school to amalgamate with its great rival, the South African College School (SACS), had created an air of despondency. However, in an editorial in the June 1905 Diocesan School Magazine it is reported that, ‘Our chemical laboratory is already as well equipped as could possibly be desired’ and it was also noted that ‘On Saturday evening, May 27th, Mr. Brackenbury Bayly very kindly came and lectured to the School Boarders on Radium. The lecture was illustrated by lantern slides and by a piece of radium which was passed all round and reverently handled and inspected.’

  During JLB Smith’s time at Bishops the Headmaster was Canon Owen Jenkins, a capable cleric; but Smith’s main teacher was Professor RND (‘Barty’) Sutton, the Vice-Principal, who influenced him to develop an interest in chemistry (McIntyre, 1950), a discipline that had been taught at the college since 1869 when it became a compulsory subject in the Cape Board examinations (Gardener, 1997).