The Emily Chesley Reading Circle

William Thudworth St.John-Smith (1835 - 1906)

(From The Complete Oxfjord Compendium of Not-So-Good Poets, 1974)

William Thudworth St.John-Smith, Poet of Spidgy-on-the-Thames, was actually not born in the hamlet that celebrated his name. St. John-Smith (pronounced SinJin-Smith) was in fact born down river in the even lesser known area of Ludlow Marsh.

"The Meaningless Slaughter of the Light Brigade" was more historically accurate than the other poem about the Light Brigade but unsuccessful for the same reason.

A scholar, a noted diplomat, and a true man of his age all went to school with St. John Smith. Unfortunately little of their talent seems to have rubbed off. The great literary critic Roger DeMaid is said to have died while reading St. John-Smith’s poetry. It is, however, still a subject of great debate as to whether DeMaid’s last word “Bad” referred to St.John-Smith’s poetry or the pressed duck sandwich he had eaten an hour before his death. While there is little argument that St. John-Smith’s poetry was indeed “Bad”, there is also mounting evidence that Roger DeMaid died of botulism.

If there is any common characteristic of St. John Smith’s poetry it is a fixation with violence, death and putrefaction. This can be seen in some of his earliest poems such as:

Ode to a dead carp on the river bank

Oh carp! Oh carp!
Thy pungent odor airing.
Oh carp! Oh carp!
One skyward eye staring.

Once you were a fine fish
That frolicked in the foam
Now you are a fetid carcass
A place the flies call home.

A fine dinner you might have made
With some thyme and lemon and mint
Now you only feed the maggots
Your flesh is the color of flint

Many a brave man has lived
Many born to noble rank
Yet they’ve all ended up, more less
Like this fish on the river bank.

In 1853 the young St. John-Smith was swept up in the excitement of the Crimean War. He joined the Expeditionary Force as a correspondent for the London Sentinel Telegraph and Shopping News. It was there that St. John Smith penned his most nearly memorable poems. These include “The Sun on the Dead Cossack’s Brain”, “The Meaningless Slaughter of the Light Brigade” (Which was more historically accurate than the other poem about the Light Brigade but unsuccessful for the same reason), “Ode To Johnny the Brave”, and the lighthearted “Oh What To Do With A Turk’s Severed Foot.” This final poem had some success as the lyric for a British marching song of the period.

An aging St.John-Smith in Perth County, shortly before the cranial trauma that ended his life

St. John-Smith returned to England after the war to accept a teaching position at Oxford. He was unceremoniously drummed out of the university four years later when it was discovered that his credentials came not from Eton but from the E. Tonne School for Girls, an unremarkable technical school located near Spidgy-on-the-Thames.

The Oxford embarrassment pretty much destroyed what little creative gift William Thudworth St. John Smith possessed. Little survives of his life from here on. It is known that he emigrated to Canada in 1865 and had a somewhat successful life as a peanut farmer in Perth County near London in Upper Canada.

In a bizarre final act, St. John Smith died at the age of 71 when he was beaten to death with harp at a Dominion Day band recital in Mount Brydges, Canada. The murder, which was committed by an insane women, was completely random.

St. John-Smith may have been completely forgotten if not for the people of Spidgy-on-the-Thames who erected a statue to him in 1908. It is not known for sure why the people of Spidgy adopted St. John-Smith as their poet. The only known reference to the hamlet in his poetry comes from “A Day On The River”

Rowing on the river
Enjoying the sweet spring air
There are some dead fish up ahead
and Spidgy is over there.

One theory has suggested that the statue was sponsored by some of the old matrons of Spidgy who remembered with fondness “that strapping boy who used to hang about the E. Tonne School.” In any event the statue stood until an errant Nazi buzz bomb destroyed it and most of Spidgy in 1944. The place is now known as Spidgy Park.

–”Scholarship” by Thuder

An afterword:
Though it seems impossible, there is one more poem in the William Thudworth St.John-Smith body of work, transmitted to us by the Seer of Ivey in his Posthumous Poetry.