The Fishy Smiths

by Mike Bruton

  A new secretary in the Ichthyology Department in the 1950s once dared to talk to her student boyfriend through the office window. Smith painted the window white so that they couldn’t see each other, and she soon left the staff.

  JLB Smith was, however, very kind to his diligent employees. When Jean Pote lost goods at the supermarket, he reimbursed her, and, when she was ill, he delivered health food to her home (Gon, 1996). When Nancy Tietz arrived in Grahamstown to take up a post as provincial museum librarian, JLB welcomed her with a bunch of gladioli from his garden.’

  Doris Cave, the first Ichthyology librarian, wrote of Smith after his death:

  ‘I feel I have been very privileged to have worked under the Professor, a kinder, more considerate and generous person it would be difficult to find. For most of that time I have not really thought of him as my employer but rather as a very kind and warm-hearted man to whom I would have gone with any trouble and been sure of ready sympathy and help’ (SAIAB archive).

  Staff of the original Department of Ichthyology in 1966. From left: Peter Castle, Gladys Arnot, Doris Cave, Jean Pote, Rose Spannenberg, Margaret Smith and JLB Smith, with Marlin.

  Hans Fricke (pers. comm., 2017) related a story told to him by Margaret that, many years earlier during a train trip to Cape Town, Smith’s false teeth had fallen out of the train window and he had stopped the train in order to retrieve them (this story has not been verified). Jenny Day (pers. comm., 2017) recounts that Professor John Day, then Head of Zoology at the University of Cape Town, once visited JLB Smith in his cottage at Knysna, and ‘JLB sat paring his toenails at the kitchen table while they were talking. I think that to John, this entirely summed up JLB.’

  Smith’s antisocial behaviour was probably the root cause of the animosity that developed between some marine biologists in Cape Town and Smith in Grahamstown; his publicity seeking, the fame he had acquired from the coelacanth, and his ‘amateur status’ as an ichthyologist were other probable causes. Margaret was never the target of this ire, although she was accused of hero-worshipping JLB and ‘probably pandered to him more than was good for either of them’ (J Day, pers. comm., 2017).

  An earlier example of this friction occurred in the late 1940s when John Day and his team of students were surveying the Knysna Lagoon:

  ‘The most scandalous incident happened at Knysna. Some young men from the village, including the mayor’s son, had joined our party and one morning the local policeman came to make a complaint. It appeared that Doc Smith of coelacanth fame had a cottage in Knysna which he had painted a startling blue to keep the mosquitoes away. During the night this had been splashed all over with whitewash and members of our party were suspected. Of course I assured the policemen that we had all been hard at work. We could see that he was still suspicious but he never did find out who the culprits were although most of the people in Knysna could have told him’ (Day, 1977).

  Smith’s lack of social finesse and uncompromising attitudes irritated and even infuriated some people. Mary-Louise Penrith, editor of the Annals of the South African Museum for several years, found that he was not a good reviewer as ‘any manuscript that criticised, did not agree with or refuted anything he had written’ was rejected by him. On one occasion she sent him a manuscript and received back the comment that it needed rewriting in good English as it was ‘full of Afrikanerisms’, even though the author of that paper did not speak or write Afrikaans.

  German researcher Professor Hans Fricke, who had been inspired to study coelacanths by reading Vergangenheit steigt aus dem Meer, the German edition of Old Fourlegs, was frank when asked about JLB Smith:

  ‘JLB was not my favourite character. In Old Fourlegs many hidden racist opinions – in a video clip dynamite fishing – a very unsympathetic behaviour towards a black person – he was egomanic [sic] towards many people. A hypochonder [sic] and not an easy person – as a neighbour he was unpleasant – if he was scientifically brilliant I almost doubt it, for example Miss Latimer’s find was not identified by him as a prehistoric fish, it was an expert (?palaeontologist) of the Rhodes University – also why JLB did not go straight away to East London when he was convinced of the importance of the fish but 6 weeks later? I would have gone immediately even in my sleeping dress’ (H Fricke, pers. comm., 2017).

  (In this excerpt Fricke pulls no punches in his reference to the ‘created myth’, but he is wrong – see Chapter 8).

  JLB’s lack of social graces was legendary. Ian Sholto-Douglas (pers. comm., 2016), Margaret’s sister Flora’s son, first met JLB (whom he knew as ‘Len’) in 1937. He remarked that Smith ‘had aggressive traits, rude, self-centred, selfish. He was arrogant, expected everyone to run around meeting his every need, ordered people around, dominating.’ When Ian referred to Margaret as ‘Mary’, JLB would respond, ‘There is no Mary here, her name is Margaret’, even though everyone in the family called her ‘Mary’.

  Smith’s politics were pragmatic rather than ideological: he supported politicians who supported his work, irrespective of whether they were liberal or conservative. He disliked Field Marshall Jan Smuts, Prime Minister of South Africa during some of Smith’s most productive years, after Smuts spurned his requests for help and was unsupportive of his research, even though he himself was a published scientist. In contrast, he had high regard for the conservative Afrikaner Daniel (‘DF’) Malan, who, against all odds, provided a military airplane in December 1952 for Smith to fetch the second coelacanth from the Comoros.

  Peter Jackson (1996) had this to say:

  ‘Smith was a nationalist, with little concern for other countries. He was a fluent Afrikaans speaker and as he states in his autobiographical book (1956) he found himself resentful of criticism of South Africa. I suspect his antipathy to Field-Marshall Smuts clearly stated to me, to everybody else and in writing (Smith 1956), had almost as much to do with Smuts’ internationalism and pro-Britishness as with his refusal to supply him (probably in about 1945) with a military aircraft to take him to Walvis Bay to collect specimens killed by a submarine disturbance. … In discussions on taxonomy he was hostile to the idea of my research staff and myself lodging type specimens of new species overseas, particularly the British Museum of Natural History. “These are African fish and you should keep them in Africa”, he told me.’

  Maylam (2017), in his recent history of Rhodes University, comments on Smith’s politics:

  ‘And his political leanings were towards the National Party. He admired D.F. Malan, while disliking Smuts; he resented outside criticism of South Africa’s apartheid policies; and evidence of his own racism can be found in Old Fourlegs. The extent to which a scholar’s reputation can be tarnished by politics is a matter of debate.’

  JLB Smith expressed racist views in Old Fourlegs as well as in High Tide and some other popular articles; these statements are not condoned here. For instance, in Old Fourlegs he comments:

  ‘The Comoran natives are not distinguished by great energy; indeed, in that respect they fall below the average, already low, and they are not uniform in performance – those on Anjoaun being considered the most progressive and energetic, while those on badly disease-ridden Mohilla [Moheli] are notoriously lethargic and hard to move.’

  In Old Fourlegs as well as in some of his popular articles in angling and outdoor magazines, JLB projects a patronising attitude of colonial superiority to native people and even to foreign colonials. In a letter dated 6th August 1946 to a Portuguese friend, Commandante Tomas Vitar Duque, Port Captain in Lourenço Marques, he makes a revealing comment,

  ‘I am rather aloof in my life and have few friends in my own race, and it has been queer to find myself feeling for a man of another race [Portuguese!] what I hardly ever expected to feel again. I judge men mainly by whether I could rely on them in what we call in English “A tight corner”, any desperate emergency. There are few men I know whom I would sooner have with me than you in such circumstances’ (Rhodes University Archive).

  In an article about
JLB’s book The Sea Fishes of Southern Africa in The Rhodian magazine, Smith (1949) makes the following statement:

  ‘Ever since commencing scientific work on fishes some twenty years ago, I have been increasingly impressed by the widespread interest, almost fanatical interest, shown by a great proportion of people in these finny creatures. Apparently common to most civilised peoples, this interest seems indeed to be most highly developed in the Anglo-Saxons who may justifiably be classed among the most enlightened peoples’ (Smith, 1949).

  He appeared to be in denial about the socio-economic problems faced by most South Africans living under apartheid. In a letter circulated to colleagues around the world in early June 1965, he claimed that ‘Despite the often deliberately falsified reports about South Africa that repeatedly appear in the world press, I have visited no other country in which life generally is more normal, secure and pleasant, for all races.’

  JLB was nevertheless revered by the ‘Coloured’ fisherfolk of Knysna, with whom he readily shared his knowledge of fish and fishing. And in an article published in Grocott’s Daily Mail on 30th August 1955, he strikes a more moderate tone:

  ‘Racial “bitterness” will soon be confined largely to a naturally diminishing number of older “die-hards” and to the more isolated small towns and villages where one or other racial group predominates. What happened in America [racial integration] is taking place as naturally here, and there is emerging, especially in the cities, a growing South African element, whose outlook from both sides is broader and more racially tolerant, indeed truly international.’5

  There is no doubt that JLB Smith was territorial, both in terms of his academic discipline and the real estate that he owned, as the following two examples illustrate. George Branch, famed marine biologist from the University of Cape Town, recalls an encounter with JLB Smith during an excursion organised by Professor John Day to sample marine life in Knysna Lagoon in 1964:

  ‘He packed off me and one other student to the westward side of the heads to survey the intertidal there. We were engrossed in sampling with the usual bucket, spade and sieves, when JLB emerged, enraged that we should be invading “his” shore. I suspect he thought we were bait-diggers as I know he zealously guarded the shore. I protested with righteous indignation that we had every right to be on the shore and had been sent there by Professor John Day to do sampling. I was unaware of the animosity, and that invoking John Day’s name was probably adding fuel to the indignation. JLB used a few choice words indicating we should “go away”, and when I failed to respond, he retreated, only to appear with a shotgun. One blast over our heads was enough to persuade us that retreat was better than buckshot, and we rowed back in record speed! I remember John Day being outraged, but he failed to convince us [that] we should return to complete the sampling’ (G Branch, pers. comm., 2016).

  George Branch relates another story, this time about Frank Talbot, a zoology graduate from the University of Cape Town, who visited JLB Smith in Grahamstown on 7th January 1957:

  ‘In his youth, Frank Talbot was infatuated with the idea of becoming an ichthyologist, and his father packed him off to Grahamstown to talk to JLB to find out what is really involved … a fairly arduous journey by bus and train at that time. After he arrived, he was kept waiting for ages before finally gaining an audience, and explained his life’s desire. JLB glowered over his desk and then pronounced, “My boy, there is only room for one ichthyologist in this country, and that’s me!” And that was the end of the interview. Frank told me this story himself while we were in Australia’ (G Branch, pers. comm., 2016).6

  William Smith summed up his father’s eccentricity well:

  ‘He was considered eccentric by many who did not know him for he mostly kept to himself, preferring the long stretches of beach and the wild waves pounding the rocks, to other men’s company. But he did have a range of people who got to know him over the years, from the very highest to the very lowest. And friends these people were. People he could count on and who admired him greatly. He was a fine scientist, seeking the truth, pioneering the future in ichthyology, and sparing none, let alone himself’ (W Smith, 1996).

  A young William Smith with his parents in Grahamstown, early 1950s.

  1Thomson (1991) was quite wrong, however, in another comment on the Smiths, in which he claims that JLB’s ‘second wife, Margaret, was instrumental in rekindling his old love of fishes’. His love affair with fishes, hatched in his youth, had needed no rekindling. Furthermore, prior to their marriage, Margaret’s interests had been chemistry and music, and she had had no prior involvement with fishes or angling.

  2Examples are the ‘low-carb’ diets (Atkins, Dukan and Pioppi), which reduce the risk of the body storing energy from food as fat, and the ‘Palaeo’ diet, which recommends shunning all processed foods and following a natural diet similar to that of our Palaeolithic ancestors. Both diets encourage eating fresh food.

  3Smith was not always such a pescatarian: during his marriage to Henriette Pienaar, he had a liking for underdone meat, ‘consuming large quantities of almost completely raw meat from which the blood was still running out’ (A-J Tötemeyer, pers. comm., 2017).

  4Margaret Smith also detested smoking, especially pipe smoking, and she and Peter Jackson had an ongoing battle in this regard in the new Ichthyology building. His malodorous pipe fumes would permeate the Ichthyology building and she would storm up the stairs and confront him; he, of course, always backed down and henceforth sought succour from his pipe in the garden or on the roof. Although Margaret had largely lost her sense of smell (due to formalin fumes), she still had an uncanny ability to detect cigarette or pipe smoke. She abhorred smoking in the Ichthyology Institute and pursued every miscreant with vigour.

  5Many other early writers expressed views that would be regarded as racist by today’s standards, including Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, Hugh Lofting (in The Adventures of Dr Dolittle), Jack London, HC McNeile (‘Sapper’) and his character, Hugh ‘Bulldog’ Drummond (the 1920s and 1930s equivalent of James Bond), HP Lovecraft, Ernest Hemingway and even Agatha Christie. Some of their writings reflect the unfortunate attitudes of their times.

  6Fortunately, this rebuff didn’t appear to dent Talbot’s ambition: after leaving South Africa in the 1960s and turning down opportunities at Yale and Harvard, he was appointed curator and then Director of the Australian Museum in Sydney before going on to appointments at Macquarie University, the California Academy of Sciences and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

  CHAPTER 25

  Margaret’s metamorphosis

  Caterpillar to butterfly

  MANY PEOPLE have commented on the extent to which Margaret Smith’s personality, as well as her dress code, sociality, participation in music and singing, and her engagement in social work and conferences, changed dramatically after JLB Smith’s death. People who knew her both before and after his death talk of a visible ‘blossoming’. She dispensed with her severe bun and cut her hair, and moved from their small, rather awkward house in Gilbert Street, designed by JLB, into a lovely old colonial manor house at 37 Oatlands Road in Grahamstown. She also took to committee life like a fish to water and would often be seen scurrying between meetings; she loved meetings and talking, and particularly enjoyed the social aspects of conferences, assiduously collecting the names and details of everyone she met at such events and recording them in a little ‘black book’. After JLB Smith died Margaret was also in the habit of knitting during conferences and workshops, often for the benefit of one of her favourite charities, the Red Cross.

  Keith Hunt (pers. comm., 2017) highlighted the extreme contrast between their personalities: JLB Smith, he recalled,

  ‘took himself very seriously. Didn’t smile much and was very reserved. Margaret was totally devoted to JLB & was really remarkably subservient to him and dressed dowdily. … What nobody could believe was the change in Margaret after JLB died. She must have gone on
a round-the-world tour when she first became Director to see other Institutes & she returned quite flamboyant. It was a delight to see she never lost her positive outlook on life.’

  Shirley Bell observed:

  ‘Margaret had almost a sort of reverence for JLB and devoted her life to helping him in his research in every way she could, although she also remained very much her own person since she had such a strong personality. She was such a bright woman herself, but she protected JLB in every way she could and devoted herself to smoothing life for him so that he could get on with his work. She was the perfect wife for him. There was certainly nothing even vaguely subservient about her, though. She had a great sense of what her mission was, just as she had a sense of his mission. They were partners, which JLB never failed to acknowledge. He was so proud of her. He trusted her completely and relied on her. And that was what Margaret most wanted. … When [her sister, Flora] went to live with Margaret, she devoted herself to Margaret’s well-being, rather like Margaret had devoted herself to JLB’s well-being. It was Margaret’s time, she felt, and certainly Margaret deserved Flora’s devotion and revelled in it. After his death she made a new life for herself. She had to do this because of who she was. I never saw her as living in his shadow, because he did not see this in the least. For him, their work was their shared endeavour. But once he had gone, she had to re-make her life, and she re-made it in her own terms’ (S Bell, pers. comm., 2017).