The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Smythe, Robert Sparrow
Smythe, Robert Sparrow, was born in London, and arrived in Melbourne in 1855. For seven years he was connected with the press in Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia, occupying himself as a musical and dramatic critic, editor of a squatting newspaper, and of the first illustrated journal published in Australia—the Illustrated Post, which developed into the Illustrated Australian News. Commencing his career as a theatrical manager in 1862, he claims to be the first manager who ever took an artistic company to Japan, to Simla in the Himalayas, and across the Orange River in South Africa. His first tour with "professionals," the longest on record, lasted from May 1863 to Oct. 1868; when he returned to England, where he lived for about a year, contributing occasionally to the Cornhill Magazine and the Pall Mall Gazette. In 1869 he returned to Australia with Daniel E. Bandmann, the tragedian. For the next three years he managed various musical and theatrical companies, until in 1872 he was appointed director of the concerts given at the exhibition held in Melbourne in connection with the Victorian International Exhibition. In 1873, the popular entrepreneur discovered Miss M. E. Christian, a gifted contralto, trained in the Royal Academy of Music, London, whose interests he never ceased to promote for eighteen years; he also organised the tour of Madame Arabella Goddard, the English pianiste. In the following year he introduced the Rev. Charles Clark, the former minister of Broadmead Chapel at Bristol, as a popular lecturer in Australia. Having travelled with Mr. Clark for more than five years in Australia, America, and Africa, Mr. Smythe saw that the lecture-platform was a popular institution at the Antipodes, and his ambition since 1879, when he again visited the old country, has been to "run" celebrities. Beginning with the lamented Richard Anthony Proctor, the astronomer, he has since directed the Australian tours of Archibald Forbes, the war-correspondent, George Augustus Sala, Charles Santley the eminent baritone, and other notabilities; while more recently the great explorer, H. M. Stanley, and Max O'Rell lectured through Australasia under his management. At Nagasiak in Japan, in 1863, Mr. Smythe married Miss Amelia Bailey, the accomplished soprano of the concert company with whom he was then travelling.