The Fishy Smiths

by Mike Bruton

  As young women Marjorie and Margaret attended conferences as ‘… girls together. … If they all went to a conference, JLB would sleep in one room and the girls would share another and “get up to mischief”’ (N Tietz, pers. comm., 2017). Marjorie had been named William’s godmother, and her life and those of the Smiths would be forever interwoven. In her later years, Marge ‘became increasingly jealous of Margaret’s successes’ (N Tietz, pers. comm., 2017), although they remained good friends.

  Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer in her office at the East London Museum in about 1960.

  Marjorie was a founder member of the Border Historical Society and the Border Wildflower Association and received many honours and awards, including an Honorary Doctorate from Rhodes University in 1971 with the citation ‘for having built a cultural institution of which East London, the Eastern Cape and South Africa can be proud and for her important contributions to South Africa’s scientific and cultural life’. She also received the Freedom of the City of East London in 1974.

  On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the first coelacanth in 1988 the hotel group Sun International sponsored Marjorie on a trip to the home of coelacanths, Grande Comore, where she was treated like royalty by Comorian officials. On this trip she collected shells, studied wild flowers and met people in the villages who told her ‘tall stories’ about coelacanths.

  In 1998 the South African Mint produced a gold coin to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the discovery of the coelacanth and presented the first coin to her at a glittering ceremony in the new Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town.

  In 2003 clay casts of her footprints were placed in ‘Heroes Park’ in Quigney, East London, alongside those of icons Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, and the jetty where the first coelacanth was landed has been named ‘Latimer’s Landing’. Another remarkable accolade was the renaming of Oriel Hall at Rhodes University as Courtenay-Latimer Hall.

  After she retired, Marjorie spent 15 happy years at her holiday cottage, ‘Mygene’, at Witelsbos in Nature’s Valley. She eventually returned to East London, to a small house in Vincent next door to the one in which she had grown up, where she took up sculpting and painting flowers on ceramic tiles. She was working on a bust of JLB Smith when she heard of his suicide, and was unable to complete it (Jewett, 2004). She had accumulated a significant collection of coelacanth memorabilia as well as Wedgwood porcelain, including a plate depicting the coelacanth, made in 1963 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its capture. Marjorie remained professionally active well into her nineties, attending museum and conservation conferences – a remarkable achievement for someone who had been such a frail child. She died of pneumonia in East London on 17th May 2004 at the age of 97.

  Marjorie’s contributions to science and museology were hailed the world over (Thomson, 1992; Weinberg, 2000; Anon, 2004a and b; Oliver, 2004; Pearce, 2004; Smith, 2004; Bruton, 2015, 2017, 2018a and b), and the Border Historical Society published a special edition of their journal, The Coelacanth, with tributes by her friends and colleagues (Batten, 2004; Bursey, 2004; Jewett, 2004; Tietz, 2004; Watson, 2004). In addition to her major contributions to museology and natural history in South Africa, Marjorie is remembered in the name of the Indian Ocean coelacanth, Latimeria chalumnae, the genus Latimeria (as in Latimeria menadoensis), and the family, Latimeriidae.

  CHAPTER 10

  William Smith

  Larger than life

  WILLIAM MACDONALD Smith, JLB and Margaret’s first and only child, was born in Grahamstown on 25th June 1939. Glynis Horning (1979) later reported on an interview with Margaret:

  ‘By the time Margaret’s son was born, she was as involved in fish as her husband, and William arrived in the world with not even a bootie to his name – his parents had forgotten to buy them in the excitement of the coelacanth discovery’.

  In his Foreword to this author’s book, The Annotated Old Fourlegs. The Updated Story of the Coelacanth, William wrote:

  ‘We arrived at almost the same time – the coelacanth in December 1938 and I, six months later. I was told that during the months preceding my arrival it was all hands to “the fish” so when I was born there were no baby clothes (thank heaven for a granny). Fortunately I was not born with scales as some had predicted! My earliest recollections were of two parents who did nothing but work, both at university and at home (which I assumed all parents did). This, no doubt, was one of the reasons for their great success. And this shaped me so that when I chose a life partner, it had to be someone with whom I could share life and work and I was lucky enough to find Jenny.

  ‘It was only some years later that I realized that JLB and Margaret were not like other parents. Dad was incredibly bright (considered at the time to be one of the three greatest minds South Africa had ever produced) and, as a result, he had only select friends. He hated parties and small-talk, and people were scared of him. As a youngster growing up it was impossible for me to win at anything – he always came out on top, which was tough but I had to learn to cope. This made me the person I am today’ (W Smith, 2017).

  William attended St Andrews Preparatory and Secondary Schools in Grahamstown and then completed his last two years of schooling as a boarder at Union High School in Graaff-Reinet, where he matriculated in 1956. He attended St Andrew’s College barefoot, as his father said that it was ‘unhealthy for a young boy to wear shoes’. Throughout his life JLB Smith was of the opinion that closed shoes are bad for your health and he preferred to wear open sandals, even on the most formal occasions (such as a visit to the Prime Minister). William’s nickname at school was ‘Rorfie Smith’ (I Sholto-Douglas, pers. comm., 2016; J Rennie, pers. comm., 2017).

  William (pers. comm., 2016, 2017) has said that he had a different but special childhood. The Smith family was always on the go, mostly outdoors, walking along endless beaches, hunting in rock pools for obscure specimens, or talking to fishermen as they stood in the surf or when their ski boats returned to shore. His childhood was also unusual in that his father was bent on forcing his somewhat eccentric views on diet, exercise, work ethic and diligence onto his son, whereas Margaret strove to offer him a ‘normal’ childhood.

  According to John Rennie (pers. comm., 2016), a childhood friend of William’s – and son of a family friend, Professor JVL (‘Jack’) Rennie, Head of Geography at Rhodes University College (RUC) in the 1940s – William was forbidden to play with toys ‘for fun’, but he did have a stash of old Dinky toys hidden in the hedge in the garden, with which he would play when Smith was away. JLB did encourage ‘educational play’ and bought William a crystal radio set, which he thoroughly enjoyed and used to the full. William also showed signs of being a budding scientist. One of the ‘experiments’ that he did in the garden was to dip the tails of chameleons to varying depths in a bottle of black ink so that he could identify the individual lizards in the garden.

  William Smith as a teenager, on a fishing expedition with his parents.

  John Rennie also recalls:

  ‘One Christmas holiday Wm being older by a year or so organized the Hewson boys and me to form a gang/club. We had been watching a nest of owl chicks growing up from white fluffy stage in a small quarry off the old bay road a little beyond the Leather Institute and now the later much newer residences. We became “The Owls” with Wm’s guidance for those few holiday weeks and from rudimentary Latin I think even I had at least one shirt with embroidered owl on the pocket and motto “Strages Enim Semper” hopefully correctly meaning “Owls For Ever”!’ (J Rennie, pers. comm., 2017).

  The Smith family’s fervour for collecting specimens seems to have rubbed off on William’s friends too. During his Christmas holidays in 1961 John Rennie collected a strange fish at Mpekweni, east of Port Alfred, and took it to JLB Smith for identification. ‘I picked up the tiny fish at the water edge, only about 6 or 7 centimetres long, before the green sand whelks cleaned up’. He also found a dead 3-metre long oarfish on the beach that day (John Rennie, pers. comm.,
2017). JLB Smith found that the strange fish belonged to a new species, which he named the scaly sandlance, Bleekeria renniei, after John Rennie. This is a rare species that is only known from the Eastern Cape coast between East London and Port Alfred and from the Seychelles (Smith & Heemstra, 1986).

  William’s childhood friend Glyn Hewson remembers:

  ‘William, their son, and I became close friends those school years; I had a few days with the three of them down at Knysna, staying in the famous Blue House (kept away the mosquitoes, so it was said), a prototype of the somewhat gaunt style which we had got used to next door [in Grahamstown]. Wonderful days of boating on that magnificent estuary, camping overnight at Featherbed, below the one Head which they owned, sampling the strictly-separation-of-protein-and-starch diet presented rather expedition style. Fish, fish and more fish. Sweetened bread rusks with guavas. Coffee. William and I were ravenous and I certainly ate my delicious fill at mealtimes.

  ‘I remember the downstairs rooms filled with files and papers, press cuttings, photographs and sketches, watercolours and Indian ink pens as well as the inevitable bottles of specimens and a plethora of expedition equipment. … All overlaid with the patina of Margaret’s exuberant commentary, stories and humour. JLB was very preoccupied for the most part; but there were moments over meals when he would ask leading questions and, like her, make an observation or tell a story from the fund of experiences which they had had. I travelled the world. William and I had some good times growing up: exploring the hills around Grahamstown …; linking up our bedrooms with a marvellous kind of crystal-set communication wire; writing letters while the Smiths were in the Seychelles – receiving replies in envelopes awash with the most exotic stamps; being intrigued a few years later on by the brilliant success of William’s extra Chemistry lessons for first year students (his mother passed on her gift of exceptional teaching). Recognising a niche in the market. … A powerful personality in a 6’ 6” frame garbed usually in shirt and shorts under a white chem coat just on his knees with lime green fluorescent ankle socks disappearing into size 12 leather shoes was not easily ignored’ (G Hewson, unpublished memoir).

  William commented in the 1976 SATV documentary about his father that he ‘had a wonderful childhood’ during which his dad taught him ‘how to fish, how to dig things’, but also said, ‘I didn’t think he was a very good father’ as ‘he was difficult’. ‘If I got home and we hadn’t fought for three hours, mom would take my temperature.’ Apparently Margaret had to act as the ‘shock absorber’ between the two as William was the only one of the four children from two marriages who had the strength of personality to stand up to JLB Smith.

  ‘He was single-minded to the point of being unbelievable’, said William later of his father, ‘and while this was a formula for success, certainly, it was not the route to happiness. As a child, living with that intellect was very difficult; I could never win. … His behaviour, with hindsight, was in danger of breaking me. But it didn’t, and I wouldn’t change him for anything’ (William Smith, cited in Weinberg, 1999).

  William Smith the angler.

  Kathleen Heugh (pers. comm., 2017), eldest daughter of Tony Heugh, a student in JLB’s last Chemistry class, provides further insight into William’s boyhood:

  ‘The story that sticks in my mind is how William used, as a young boy, [to] visit my father in his university room, begging for a sweet/s and terrified that either JLB or Margaret would find out [and afterwards he] would need to brush his teeth and then ask Tony whether he could smell anything on his breath! This had to do with the abstemious and minimalist life style of the Smiths and JLB’s conviction that people did not need to consume volumes of food, but rather train their bodies to endure very meagre portions (fresh vegetables or fish mainly I believe …). William had to learn how to endure weather changes – he only ever wore shorts and a thin shirt – no shoes, winter, summer, in the cold, wet or heat!’

  At the age of 15 William participated in his parents’ epic 1954 fish-collecting expedition to Kenya, Seychelles, Aldabra and Dar es Salaam. This was a life-changing experience for the young man as he was able to visit exotic places, do dangerous things, fish and dive to his heart’s content, and endure with his parents the hardships of field research. During this trip Margaret had to keep an eagle-eye on the adventurous young man in the hostile East African environment.

  William with Margaret Smith (in pith helmet) on the 1954 expedition to East Africa.

  Keith Hunt, Registrar at Rhodes University from 1986 to 1995 and a neighbour of the Smiths in Gilbert Street while he was Warden of Jan Smuts Hall, commented:

  ‘William was fed a strict vegetarian diet (+ I guess some fish!) & he used to come to the kitchens of Jan Smuts where the matrons used to feed him! I got to know the family better when William was a first year student in Smuts [Jan Smuts Hall, where Keith Hunt was Warden]. He was as large as life & very noisy! He began his teaching career in Smuts – giving classes in 1st year chemistry – I suspect on notes from JLB! Poor Billy Barker who was prof of chemistry seemed unable to handle the big classes from a discipline point of view – hence the need for extra lessons’ (Keith Hunt, pers. comm., 2016).

  William, whom Nancy Tietz (pers. comm., 2017) described as ‘a huge Margaret’, had a stellar career, like his father. Although, from the outset, he decided that ‘I never wanted to live in my [parents’] shadow and tried to be my own person’ (W Smith, pers. comm., 2017). After matriculating he studied at Rhodes University where he obtained his BSc and BSc (Hons) degrees, both with distinction, graduating in 1961. It was during his second year at Rhodes (1959) that he realised that he had a talent for teaching.

  At that stage, the Professor of Chemistry at Rhodes University was still the redoubtable Billy Barker, who had ousted JLB Smith in the race for the Chair of Chemistry 34 years earlier. Barker, a brilliant researcher, was a poor lecturer and had no control over his classes, which often degenerated into riots. The more serious students were reduced to a desperate search for textbooks or other ways of making sense of the subject. The students would chant ‘Billy, Billy’, stamp their feet, and roll balls down the stairs, resulting in a very unscholarly atmosphere (John Rennie, pers. comm., 2016, 2017; J Maree, pers. comm., 2017).

  George Cory, who had strongly endorsed Barker’s appointment, should have known better than to appoint into a teaching post a brilliant researcher who was a poor lecturer, as he himself had experienced substandard teaching during his stint at Cambridge University. For instance, in his lectures on ‘heat’, Sir William Napier Shaw, the famous meteorologist, mumbled at the blackboard and his students couldn’t make head or tail of what he was talking about. Sir Joseph John (‘JJ’) Thomson, the Nobel laureate in physics who discovered the electron, also muttered incoherently during his lectures on electricity and filled the blackboard with mathematical formulae that did not add up (Shell, 2017).

  Into the pandemonium of Barker’s lectures, and to the relief of a concerned student body, strode William Smith, who saw an ‘edupreneurial’ opportunity. Towards the end of Barker’s career, in 1959, William – who had a thorough understanding of chemistry – approached Jack Rennie of Geography and asked him to make a space available where he could give informal lectures on chemistry to students, even though he was still a student himself. He started by tutoring his girlfriend in chemistry but, by the end of the year, he had attracted a class that was big (about 80 students) and lucrative enough for him to buy his first car from the proceeds – a brand new turquoise Volkswagen Beetle (J Smith, pers. comm., 2017)!

  William with his new Volkswagen Beetle, bought from the proceeds of his teaching.

  According to Johann Maree, who attended William’s lectures:

  ‘His lectures were interesting, he talked with confidence that built up our confidence in turn, and he told us what we needed to know. I remember writing to my parents asking them for the money to pay for William’s lectures and promised them a first class pass if they gave me the money. I r
eceived the money and I passed Chemistry 1 with a first!

  ‘William’s personality was almost larger than life. William himself was a large person and his personality matched his physique. He was self-confident and always gave the impression that he knew what he was talking about. He was a good talker with the ability to explain complex things in a simple way. He was also a warm person so that one could warm to him easily’ (J Maree, pers. comm., 2017).

  In 2017, William wrote:

  ‘When I discovered JLB’s disinterest and disdain for film and television, I knew I had found my own passion. When I produced my first movie as a student he was convinced I would become a criminal. Fortunately he was wrong or at least I never got “caught” but despite being perplexed, I think he would have been proud.’

  William and his cine equipment.