Langdon Smith

Langdon Smith (4 January 1858 – 8 April 1908) was an American journalist and author. His most well-known work is the poem "Evolution", which begins with the line "When you were a tadpole and I was a fish". The line later became the title of an essay about this "one-poem poet" written by Martin Gardner.

According to Lewis Allen Brown's 1909 biographical sketch of Smith,

Gardner, who consulted Who's Who In America 1906–07 adds that Smith went to school in Louisville, KY, 1864–1872.

On February 12, 1894 Smith married Marie Antionette Wright, described as "a Louisville girl" and soon after went to Cuba, reporting for the New York Herald on the guerilla operations of Antonio Maceo Grajales. He later returned to Cuba, at the outbreak of the Spanish–American War (1898), reporting for the New York Journal. According to Brown,

In October 1897 Smith, along with fellow sports reporter Danny Smith, was sent by the New York Herald to Carson City, Nevada, where he covered the boxing match between James J. Corbett and English boxer Bob Fitzsimmons.

Smith continued reporting for William Randolph Hearst's Journal after the war. He was involved in at least one "scoop" for which Hearst papers became notorious, delivering the first newspaper copy of the 20th century to President McKinley. According to historian W. Joseph Campbell,

In the early years of the century he wrote for the New York Evening World as a featured writer, identified by his byline. Judging from the articles he published, he seems to have begun as a featured sports writer, with such articles as "Cock Fight Draws Out Millionaires"Beginning about 1904 his byline begins to appear frequently in the Sunday World and Sunday World Magazine on investigative articles such as "New York's Smiling Army of Factory Girls", "A Night With a Tenderloin 'Cop'", "A Day in the Hotel Astor Kitchen".

Although Smith's most famous work is the poem "Evolution", according to Brown, Smith also wrote short stories, and a novel, On the Pan Handle, that were well received at the time. Gardner was unable to verify any of this and doubts the novel and poems existed, except perhaps for a single poem, "Bessie McCall of Suicide Hall", which was reprinted in a 1907 issue of "Pandex of the Press". "Bessie McCall" was mentioned in an article on Smith in The New York American of April 21, 1939 by one Hype Igoe. "Suicide Hall" was a saloon at 295 Bowery run by John McGurk from 1895 to 1902, when suicides by young prostitutes there forced him out of business. The building that had housed "Suicide Hall" was not demolished until 2005. The complete text of "Bessie McCall" is available on WikiSource.

The first few stanzas of the poem "Evolution" were written and published in the New York Herald in 1895. It was worked upon for many years and later published in full in the New York Journal sometime before 1906, and posthumously published in illustrated and annotated book form as Evolution : A Fantasy (1909).

Smith died at his home, 148 Midwood Street, Flatbush, New York on 8 April 1908.

His grief-stricken wife committed suicide on June 10 of the same year after having tried to do so on April 25. Lewis Allen Browne in his preface to Evolution : A Fantasy (1909) wrote:

Aside from his journalism Smith's only known work is the romantic poem "Evolution", sometimes sub-titled or mistakenly called "A Tadpole and a Fish". The poem became very popular even before his death. It has been reprinted many times since.

In his biographical sketch of Smith Lewis Allen Brown describes it as follows:

Brown described how Evolution was composed:

Gardner claims to have located the precise issue of The New York Herald in which Evolution was first published: that of September 22, 1895. He also notes that Brown's information was taken from the Who's Who In America 1906-1907 article and an obituary published in The New York American on April 9, 1908, page 6, and that Brown does not add any new information to these sources.

According to a statement in The New York Times Book Review of July 23, 1910 it was "printed in full and illustrated in The Scrap Book of June 1909." Tributes to him on his death invariably emphasize the poem. According to a notice in the Ocala (Florida) Evening Star of April 17, 1908:

Evolution is reprinted, with hyperlinks and comments, on the Wikiquote page devoted to the poem and to Smith.