Cicely Fox Smith's (pronounced "sigh-sli" as in precisely) produced some excellent poetry books and contributed to many more. She is best known as a writer of maritime poetry and as a knowledgeable writer on maritime themes. She has however written poetry on many other themes and has produced some excellent travel books and some standard fiction work.
Born Feb 1st 1882
Died April 8th 1954
Cicely was born into a middle class family in Northern England during the later half of the reign of Queen Victoria. Her father was a lawyer and her grandfather was a clergyman. A typical female child of that era might have been expected to have a short education and then to settle down to life as a homemaker either for her family or her marriage partner. Thankfully that did not happen in Cicely's case.
She was well educated at Manchester Grammar School and started writing poems at a comparatively early age. In an article for the school magazine Cicely wrote "I have a hazy recollection of epic poems after Pope's Iliad, romantic poems after Marmion stored carefully away in tin tobacco boxes when I was seven or eight." Much of that early work is unfortunately lost.
Among her contemporaries was Sylvia Pankhurst, of suffragette fame, but it is well documented that Cicely and Sylvia did not get on very well, especially with regard to Cicely's ardent support of the British stance over the Boer War in South Africa.
She published her first book of verses when she was 17 and it received good press comments.
One can easily imagine Cicely wandering the moors near her home and developing a spirit of adventure that never left her in later life. It is believed that she followed the Holcombe hunt on foot as a girl, no mean feat.
She had a wish to see the world and began with a voyage to Canada in 1904. Smith likely sailed in 1904 on a steamer to Montreal, where she would have then traveled by train to Lethbridge, Alberta, where she stayed for a time before continuing on to British Columbia. From 1905 to 1913 she resided in Victoria at the southern tip of Vancouver Island, working as a typist for the BC Lands Department and later for an attorney on the waterfront.
Much of her spare time was spent roaming nearby wharves and ship alleys, talking to residents and sailors alike. She listened to and learned from the sailor's tales until she was able to speak with that authoritative nautical air that pervades much of her written work.
One of the features of the Vancouver area was timber and it is known she visited lumber yards and docks at that time. Sailing ships were then still the dominant cargo carrier for transporting timber and so she had an excellent opportunity to learn of these vessels (and their crews) at first hand before they finally were supplanted by mechanical powered vessels.
So well did she learn the ins and outs of ships and the sailors life that many readers mistook her for a sailor (and a man) and would write to her as such. (Part of this was also due to her early by-line of CFS.) It is probably this that led to the speculation that she herself sailed on working ships but there is as yet no hard evidence of that and most believe it never happened.
In the BC area she could not help also learning some of the ways of the cowboys and lumbermen. Ways which, like sailing ships and sailors were coming to an end. One correspondent wrote to her as "Captain Fox Smith" and when she tried to correct him he wrote back "You say you are not a master but you must be a practical seaman. I can always detect the hand of an amateur." He was almost correct. After all she was a practical woman and had learned well from authentic sources so she was no armchair amateur. It was only when she was well established that she started routinely using the by-line Miss C. Fox Smith or Cicely Fox Smith.
Although Cicely did write much poetry in her early life and entered several competitions both in the UK and in British Columbia it was not until she returned to England in late 1913 that she really came to prominence. At that time she put her experience to use in a great outpouring of poetry. Much of it was from the point of view of a sailor but she used her other experiences to add authentic background to whatever she wrote.
Cicely also wrote children's stories with her sister Madge (about the sea of course), novels, short stories, travel books, history books, at least one biography (Grace Darling) and was contributor to and editor of many collections of sea tales and poetry. In addition to her books of poetry Cicely wrote for many magazines and newspapers such as The Spectator, Outlook, Country Life, The Times Literary Supplement, The Windsor Magazine and, of course, Punch for which magazine she wrote many pieces between 1914 and her death in 1954.
The art work of her brother Phil W. Smith illustrates several of her poetry and prose books.
Her literary outpourings were such as to persuade the Government to award her, at the age of 67, a pension for "her services to literature."
Cicely kept writing to the end of her life about many things and many places but always with the accuracy and knowledge of an expert. She even penned her own gravestone epitaph:
But from this earth
This grave
This dust
My Lord shall raise me up
I trust
A quote from the famous writer Joseph Conrad
"In her I verily believe the quintessence of the collective soul of the latterday seamen has found its last resting-place, and a poignant voice, before taking its flight forever from the earth."
[ thanks to Retired German sailor Hans W. Gruenthal for this quote]
Some contemporary reviews on this remarkable woman were reprinted in SONGS AND CHANTIES, edited by Cicely Fox Smith, published by Elkins Mathews, London, ©1919, p. 232:
Spectator
"No one, not even Mr. Masefield, has written finer sea ballads or come closer to the heart of those who go down to the great waters. In any anthology of the sea Miss Fox Smith's 'Ballad of the Matterhorn,' 'Bill the Dreamer,' 'The Last of the Sealing Fleet' and 'Rathlin Head' must occupy a high place."
Times
"It is not likely that many lovers of sea-songs have missed the voice of Miss Fox Smith, but if they do not know her 'Songs in Sail' let them read 'Sailor Town' — the dancing colours and fresh scents of the harbour, the rush of the sea and wind, the cheery pathos of the outward-bound, the sailor's homesickness — all this is carried on the rhythm of her verses with a vividness hardly equalled by any other verse writer of the day."
Spectator
"Miss Fox Smith is one of the few people living who can write a real 'chanty' combining a mastery of sea-lingo with perfect command of sea rhythms."
Times
"These are the right stuff."
Evening Standard
"Ballads and songs of the war, reeking of spindrift and spume, breezy and direct as those who go down to the sea in ships."
Nautical Magazine
"Mr. C. Fox Smith must be congratulated on his dainty little volume of poems, 'The Naval Crown.' We remember how well we enjoyed the author's 'Sailor Town' and can say that the enjoyment and high opinion we then formed of the author have been in no way lessened by the present volume."
Navy
"The writer's vocabulary of sea phrases is striking and characteristic; the technicalities proclaim a real sea lover, and the tone and colour are only excelled by the lilt of the verses."
Times
"Miss C. Fox Smith's naval verse . . . shows here, as in her former collection, her exceptional metier for apt metrical celebration of the spirit, the humour of the pathos of war and of the fighting man."
Syren
"An excellent little collection of ballads referring to various phases of the war, some of which our readers have doubtless made the acquaintance of in the pages of 'Punch.' The 'Rhyme of the Inisfail' . . . is the gem, and an excellent one, of the collection. The author has a capital vein of humour."
Manchester City News
"The sea songs have the breath and the sound and the motion of the waters in them."
Cicely Fox Smith or CFS as she is mostly commonly known, is gaining a wider audience once again as more and more musicians are putting her words to music and producing many fine songs in the Maritime Folk Genre.
Bibliography
Her books include:
Men of Men [pub:1898] Poetry
Songs Of Greater Britain [pub:1899] Poetry
The Foremost Trail [pub:1899] Poetry
details here
http://allpoetry.com/Column/2065072
Wings Of The Morning [pub:1904] Poetry
Lancashire Hunting Songs [pub:1909] Poetry
details here
http://allpoetry.com/Column/1982007
The City Of Hope [pub:1914] Romantic Novel
Sailor Town: Songs & Ballads [pub:1914] Poetry
Songs In Sail [pub:1914] Poetry
The Naval Crown [pub:1915] Poetry
Fighting Men [pub:1916] Poetry
Small Craft [pub:1917] Poetry
http://allpoetry.com/column/2333689
Singing Sands [pub:1918] Romantic Novel
Rhymes Of The Red Ensign [pub 1919] Poetry
details here
http://allpoetry.com/Column/1986814
Songs And Chanties 1914-1916 [pub:1919] Poetry
Sailor Town: Songs And Chanties [pub:1919] Poetry
Peregrine In Love [pub:1920] Romantic Novel
Ships And Folks [pub:1920] Poetry
Rovings: Songs And Ballads [pub:1921] Poetry
details here
http://allpoetry.com/Column/1982652
Sailor Town Days [pub:1923] Prose
Sea Songs And Ballads 1917-22 [pub:1923] Poetry
details here
http://allpoetry.com/Column/1992501
A Book Of Famous Ships [pub:1924] Prose
The Return Of The "Cutty Sark" [pub:1924] Prose
Ship Alley [pub:1925] Prose
Full Sail: More Sea Songs & Ballads [pub:1926] Poetry
Tales Of The Clipper Ships [pub:1926] Prose
A Book Of Shanties [pub:1927] Traditional Sea Songs
A Sea Chest (ed) [pub:1927] Prose and Poetry
Ancient Mariners [pub:1928] Prose
There Was A Ship [pub:1929] Prose
The Thames [pub:1931] Prose
Ocean Racers [pub:1931] Prose
Sailor's Delight [pub:1931] Poetry
True Tales Of The Sea [pub:1932] Prose
Anchor Lane [pub:1933] Prose
All The Other Children [pub:1933] Poetry
Peacock Pride (with Margaret S SMITH) [pub:1934] Children's Prose
Adventures And Perils (ed) [pub:1936] Prose
Pontifex (short story in ALL CLEAR AFT) [pub: 1936] Fiction
Three Girls In A Boat (with Margaret S SMITH) [pub:1938] Children's Prose
All The Way Round: Sea Roads to Africa [pub:1938] Prose
The Ship Aground [pub:1940] Children's Prose
The Voyage Of The Trevessa's Boats [pub:1940] Prose
The Story Of Grace Darling (biography) [pub:1940] Prose
Here And There In England With The Painter Brangwyn [pub:1945] Prose and Poetry
Thames Side Yesterdays [pub:1945] Prose
Country Days And Country Ways, Trudging Afoot in England [pub:1947] Prose and Poetry
Painted Ports [pub:1948] Children's Prose
Knave-Go-By [pub:1951] Children's Prose
Ship Models [pub:1951] Prose and Poetry
Seldom Seen (with Madge S SMITH) [f:1954] Children's Prose
The Valiant Sailor [pub:1951-1955]) Children's Prose
Oldpoetry thanks Jim Saville plus grateful thanks to:
Ian "Nobby" Dye
Alan Hardy
Tom Perry
Danny McLeod
Joyce McLeod
for biographical information.
and especially to Charlie Ipcar [Charley Noble] for his sterling work in helping to build this excellent collection of poetry
Text Notes
There is as yet no definitive collection of the work of Miss Cicely Fox Smith and this collection at Oldpoetry is the first on-line anthology of her poetry. It has been patiently assembled piece by piece, book by book. In this process we have received valuable assistance from other devoted C. Fox Smith fans from all over the world, and we thank them for their contributions.
If you have authentic poems not listed here please leave a message so we can get in touch.
