John McCormack

1903–1919

In 1903 Stevens reprised his roles in Gounod’s Mors et Vita and Handel’s JudasMaccabeus, in Adelaide. An interesting footnote to the performance of the Gounod is the review in the Melbourne Age; “Mr Horace Stevens is so zealous and painstaking a singer that it is a pity his method of production is one not conducive to clarity of tone; there is so often a perceptible ‘buzz’ such as one hears in a bassoon”.¹ What the critic refers to as ‘buzz’ one can hear on his later recordings. It is a result of a highly-placed focus on the voice. It allows the amazing tonal flexibility Stevens could achieve but was not always pleasing at the time. As one reads so often, the ultimate achievement of the fin de siècle singer was purity of sound, rather like the ‘Early Music’ specialists that were popular in the 1990s.

On 29 September 1903, he added to his repertoire Handel’s Israel in Egypt. In the version of the score used today the duet for two basses, ‘The Lord is a Man of War’, is the only contribution of that voice type. W.A. Carne lists only one bass, Mr Horace Stevens,² who sang an additional aria titled ‘Wave on wave, congealed in thunder’. According to performance practice during the first half of the twentieth century, an additional bass aria was adapted from Handel’s opera, Orlando (1733), originally Sorge in fausta una procella.³ The critic for the Argus praised it as a “very laudable Handelian rendering”. He also observed that the tremolo that was present in Stevens’ early performances had gone, and he has a “much better voice”.⁴ On 24 December 1903, Stevens performed ‘The Toreador’s Song’ from Bizet’s Carmen for the first time, an aria that was to have a profound effect on his career in the future, in a Christmas ‘Smoke Concert’ with the Royal Melbourne Liedertafel.⁵

Concert d’Adieu of Mr Armes Beaumont, Town Hall, Melbourne, 31 January 1903

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Concert by the Lyric Orchestra, Town Hall, Melbourne, 23 November 1904

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

In 1904 Stevens had only one engagement with the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society, a repeat of Gounod’s Redemption.⁶ In June, Stevens sang in the title role of Rossini’s Moses in Egypt in a concert performance by the Lyric Orchestra, conducted by Charles Levy. “The character, vocally, is one of great difficulty. Mr Stevens, who has a rich, fluent bass voice, letter perfect, got clean home to the hearts of his audience. It was a fine effort—one of the best he has accomplished”.⁷ In August, Horace and Emilie performed Elijah once again, this time in Geelong. They both received glowing praise.⁸ The other new repertoire for the year was an appearance with Emilie in what was described by the Argus as “Haydn’s 16th Mass”. The performance was before the Governor General and Lady Northcote at the Melbourne Town Hall. Among the encores, Horace sang Robert Schumann’s ‘The Two Grenadiers’ which was judged “finely interpreted”.⁹ In December, Horace was best man for William George Frederic Steele, who married Emilie Stevens at Scots Church, Collins Street. ¹⁰

By 1905, Horace Stevens was an established singer in Melbourne. He was assisting in his father’s dental surgery in Collins Street, he was rowing competitively, played cricket and hunted. His performances with the various Liedertafel around Melbourne were well received, and his recital repertoire was well-formed. In April he sang with the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic in Gounod’s Mors et Vita.¹¹ In August, he sang the demanding role of Mephistopheles in Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust, a classic ‘Basse Chantante’ part of French repertoire. There were two reviews: “Mr. Horace Stevens sang the part of Mephistopheles with great vigour and dramatic feeling, and his rendering of the ‘Serenade’ and ‘The Flea Song’ was capital, though the speed at which both were taken was excessive”.¹² “Mr Horace Stevens did well in the important role of Mephistopheles and sang the Flea song and the Serenade with good effect; the latter was for the first time on local record taken at the proper rate of speed”.¹³

St Paul’s Cathedral, 1905, before the addition of the spire

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

On August 26, Horace married Nellie Chapman at St Paul’s Cathedral in a fully choral service. The wedding was a high end, glamorous affair, and described in detail in the “Novelties of the Season” section of The Australasian.¹⁴ The wedding reception was held at the Pianola Hall, in Collins Street, which is where the Kodak building now stands [now occupied by The Hour Glass].

In January 1906, Horace, billed as the “Premiere Scottish Soloist of Melbourne”, accompanied by fellow singers Gregor Wood and Madame Gregor Wood embarked on a series of concerts in Hobart and Devonport. Accompanied by a band of ten highland bagpipers, they were very popular, particularly “Mr Horace Stevens has a-baritone voice of great power” singing ‘Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled’ which had to be encored.¹⁵

In May Horace travelled to Ballarat to perform, once again, Elijah.

In September 1906, Nellie gave birth to twin boys. The children are unnamed in the announcement. Horace and Nellie had three sons, Kemble, Souther and Dudley. A fourth child, a boy named Ernest, died in 1907. From the birth notices it is surmised that Kemble and Souther were the twins, and that Dudley was born in 1910. Dudley appears to be the only one to attempt to follow his father into the Arts.¹⁶

Sir Edward Elgar’s oratorio The Apostles Op. 49 had its Australian premiere on 14 August 1906 at the Melbourne Town Hall, just three years after its very first performance at Birmingham. “Every part of the Town Hall was crowded. Extended press accounts to 14” commented on the new work as well as the performance” (the renovated organ was used).¹⁷ Stevens sang the part of Peter. It would have suited him perfectly, as it is more baritone-like than the other two parts requiring low men’s voices, the role of Jesus, sung by A.C. Bottoms, and the bass role of Judas, sung by Andrew Black, the role he had created under Elgar’s direction. Miss Lillian Reed sang Mary, Madame Gregor Wood sang Magdalene, and Gregor Wood, St John.¹⁸

Damnation of Faust, Town Hall, Melbourne, 1 August 1905

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Mose in Egitto, Town Hall, Melbourne, 20 June 1907

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

In March 1907, the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic performed Louis Spohr’s Calvary. The two lower-voiced protagonists are Judas Iscariot, and St Peter. Stevens sang the part of Judas. The reviewer for the Age wrote, “Mr A.C. Bottoms sang Peter’s ‘Tears of Sorrow’ effectively enough, and Mr Horace Stevens was very acceptable in ‘Woe, Horror, Grief’.¹⁹ The critic for Punch wrote of both singers, “Mr A. Bottoms, a broad, manly ringing baritone, always dramatic, accurate and telling, made a fitting herald to the fine basso cantante, Mr Horace Stevens.”²⁰

In August 1907, Stevens took on parts one and two of the Hiawatha trilogy for the Philharmonic, adding Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast to his repertory. In November, the Royal Victorian Liedertafel performed Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius. The performance was widely praised. “Mr Horace Stevens doubled the parts of the Priest and the Angel of the Agony. He has a fine, dramatic bass voice, and being in exceptional form, gave a most realistic reading of the music allotted these two sombre characters”.²¹ This was to become one of Stevens’s most important roles in Britain during the 1920s and 30s.

Stevens added two important pieces to his repertoire during 1908. He performed the Prologue from Pagliacci (composed by Ruggero Leoncavallo 1857–1919, and first performed in 1892) at a Liedertafel concert in Adelaide for the Caledonian Society in June.²² This piece became a staple of future recitals. He recorded it twice, both times in English. In baritone Michael Lewis’s opinion, of all the repertoire Stevens sang, this aria seemed the most surprising, as it sits much higher than his other repertoire, but he may never have sung the role of Tonio in its totality on the stage and performed the aria only.

In August 1908 the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic performed the Australian premiere of Elgar’s The Kingdom, only two years after its composition for the Birmingham Triennial Festival. The work follows on from The Apostles in telling the story of the early church after the departure of Christ. The critic for the Australasian felt that “on the whole the work appeals less to the popular audience than its predecessor … Mr Horace Stevens, as Peter, distinguished himself by his noble, dramatic rendering of the part. It is the most important of the four, and he sang it admirably”.²³ The easy beauty and size of Stevens’s voice could have been tailor-made for these Elgar oratorios, with their lush orchestrations, and romantic melodiousness. Stevens’s performance must have impressed George Peake, then music director of the Philharmonic, because he was back performing Messiah that year following several years of being overlooked. Between 1909–1910 he was engaged by the Society as a principal soloist in The Redemption, Messiah, Mors et Vita and the Apostles. He sang the hymn ‘Nearer my God to thee’ in leading the congregation at the commemoration of the death of King Edward VII.²⁴

In April 1911, now 35, Stevens performed as Christus in the St. Matthew Passion by J.S. Bach for the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society. The piece had not been performed in Melbourne for thirty-five years.²⁵ The work was repeated in 1913 and received the following favourable review “Of the chief soloists, chief honours fall to Mr Horace Stevens, who brought considerable sympathy in his interpretation of the music allotted to the words of Christ”.²⁶ It shows the virtues that were the hallmarks of Stevens’s singing. Impeccable diction and phrasing, plus a sensitivity that belied the true size of his voice.

Apart from dentistry and singing, Stevens’s other great passion in life, to which he referred in interviews into old age, was his passion for rowing. In 1911 Stevens won the sculls at the Henley on Yarra regatta. Representing Essendon in the Yarra Challenge Sculls, he pipped K.J. Kirby of the Civil Service at the post to take out the championship.²⁷

Program cover for The Messiah, Exhibition Buildings, Melbourne, 1911

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Maria Voluntas Ranzenberg in costume for Dalila for the Melba opera season, 1911, photo by May Moore

The Australian Musical News, November 1911

Alberto Zelman took over directorship of the Philharmonic mid-1911. Melba was touring Australia at the time, and the opportunity was taken to secure two of her supporting artists as soloists for the annual Messiah alongside Stevens, namely German contralto, Maria Voluntas Ranzenberg and Irish tenor John McCormack. McCormack was, at the time, one of the great tenors of the world, and it was a great coup to have him in Australia, let alone on the stage of a sold-out Exhibition Building. Table Talk praised the beauty of his voice but bemoaned the fact that there was so little music in which to hear him. “The local artists have often been heard. Mr Horace Stevens as usual was most successful in the baritone music, especially the dramatic portions, but in the quieter parts, such as ‘But Who May Abide’ his voice does not tell in such a huge building as the exhibition”.²⁸ This criticism was levelled at him frequently in later years as he attempted to interpret the quieter dynamics in Wagner.

Throughout 1912 and 1913 Stevens kept busy with Philharmonic performances of TheDeath of Minnehaha, the St Matthew Passion and Elijah, the latter in Geelong.²⁹ He also sang the bass part in the finale of Beethoven’s Choral Symphony.³⁰ In April 1914, Stevens performed Mors et Vita twice more at the Melbourne Town Hall, with the Philharmonic.³¹ Despite the outbreak of war on 4 August, in the summer two performances of Messiah involving Stevens were given to sell-out houses at the Melbourne Town Hall, with Zelman’s Melbourne Symphony Orchestra accompanying the soloists and chorus for the first time.³²

Elijah, Geelong Musical Society, 1913

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Stevens had been a member of the Melbourne Savage Club since 1898, when he gave his first smoke concert at their rooms.³³ In March 1915, the club performed a variety concert for the Belgian Relief fund. Songwriter, and fellow Savage Horace Gleeson (1878–1959, and composer of ‘I thought I heard a magpie calling’) re-wrote the choral section to Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, titled ‘A Hymn to hate’. Horace sang it.³⁴ The Royal Melbourne Philharmonic donated the takings of that year’s performance of Judas Maccabeus, featuring Stevens, to the ‘Wounded Soldiers Fund’.³⁵

Farewell Complimentary Concert to Lieut. Horace Stevens, 25 April 1916

ABE Books

When the First World War began, the Australian Imperial Forces had no specialised Dental Unit. Dental maladies were treated by the general medical units, as was standard practice in the British Army. The nightmare of Gallipoli in 1915, where outbreaks of ulcerative gingivitis or ‘trench mouth’, were common and insufficiently treated, caused the creation of Dental Units. By April 1916 the Australian Army had 36 fully equipped Dental Units. Three dental sections were attached to each division, and one to each field ambulance. The Australian Dental Corps, by 1918, was leading the world in Dental practice, with a standing order that no teeth were to be extracted, if they could be saved.³⁶ Thus, the Australian Army needed experienced dentists, and in 1916 Horace Stevens enlisted into the 14th Field Ambulance, AIF, as ‘Honorary’ Lieutenant. This fact was announced in Punch on 6 April; “We hear that Mr Horace Stevens, a leading baritone of this city, will leave shortly for our military centres in the East. He will take a hand in caring for our soldiers’ teeth; Mr Stevens is also a Dentist, and his qualifications in this direction are quite as finished as they are in a vocal way. This is for public information.”³⁷

On 2 May he gave a complimentary concert at the Town Hall in Melbourne, a concert patronised by Madame Melba, who was also in attendance.³⁸ Mr J. Sutton-Crow accompanied. For Melba to have been present gives a measure of Stevens’s standing in the community at the time, and one can only marvel at a thirty-nine-year-old leaving his wife and three sons under ten. Furthermore, his father, Horace Stevens senior, died on 19 May.³⁹ Horace Junior embarked for France the following day, on the HMAT Medic A7.⁴⁰

Honorary Lieutenant Horace Stevens disembarked at Devonport, in Britain, from the Demosthenes, on the 18th of July 1916. The journey usually took around a month, but the new members of the Dental Corps disembarked in Egypt, where they collected clay to assist in their making of dental molds. The thirty-nine-year-old was listed as a British Subject and belonged to the Church of England. He stood 5 feet 10 ½ inches tall (179 cm) and weighed in at 12 stone (76 kg). Normal eyesight and an exceptional chest expansion of 36 inches to 40 inches (91inches-101 cm) made up the complete package. A photograph held at the Australian War Memorial shows him with a group of fellow officers of the Dental Corps, looking exceptionally dapper, and wearing jodhpurs and riding boots.

He was appointed the Officer commanding the 50th Dental Unit, attached to the newly formed 3rd Division of the Australian Imperial Force. Following the disaster of the Gallipoli campaign in 1915, the Australian Command realized the importance of keeping the soldiers entertained, and relaxed the rules regarding leave for entertainers, which was normally only one week per three months service. Stevens’s advanced years and reputation in Australia, it would appear, allowed him to appear in non-military concert work.⁴¹ On Monday, October 30th, 1916, he appeared in Belfast at a fund-raising concert for the Post Office, sharing the stage with, amongst others, soprano Dorothy Silk (1883–1942) and Bass Robert Radford (1874–1933)⁴² Silk was to establish herself as a champion of British Music during the twenties, while Radford, although only two years Stevens’s senior, was an established singer. He had made his debut at the Norwich Festival in 1899, and in 1904 had made his Covent Garden debut as the Commendatore in Don Giovanni, as well as appearing as Fasolt in the Ring Cycle under Hans Richter. In the Northern Whig, the singers were enthusiastically praised; “Mr. Radford’s resonant bass was used with artistic judgement”. “Lieutenant Horace Stevens infused the right spirit into his interpretations of the martial songs ‘The Two Grenadiers’ (Schumann), and ‘The Song of the Gun’ (Allister)”.⁴³

On the 16th of November, Lieutenant Stevens was then attached to the Machine Gun Training Depot at Grantham. In a letter to the sporting magazine, Winner, in 1917, a second Lieutenant Pitman attended a concert at Grantham, given by the Melbourne oarsman/vocalist, Captain Horace Stevens,⁴⁴ while in the same month, Melbourne Punch reported that Captain Stevens had visited Dublin on leave. There “he made several public appearances, where his singing created quite a furor”.⁴⁵

Stevens’s promotions were quite rapid. He was promoted from honorary Lieutenant to full lieutenant on the 6th of April 1917, and then to full captain eleven days later the 17th of April. On the 7th of August 1917 he was brought to the notice of the Secretary of State for War, George Barnes (1859–1940), leader of the Labor Party in the Lloyd George coalition “for valuable services rendered” Military Order 576/17.⁴⁶

Ireland had experienced the Easter Uprising in 1916. There was Australian involvement in quelling the rebellion, but the AIF records for this were destroyed in the late 1950s by the staff of the Australian War Memorial.⁴⁷ That same year the Roman Catholic Coadjutor Bishop of Melbourne, Daniel Mannix was denied permission to visit Ireland. Rumors of Australian war crimes had seeped back to Australia, and with a quarter of the population claiming Irish Catholic paternity Horace’s popularity with the Irish may have gone someway to easing tensions and taking the heat out of an Australian diplomatic incident.

Further to this, Ronan McGreevy for the Irish Times points out the general British fear of an Irish takeover of Australia.⁴⁸ This had gone right back to the Crimean War of 1853–1856 where the Australian colonies had been less than enthusiastic about providing financial backing for the British endeavor. 1916 was the first Australian plebiscite on conscription, which went against the Government of Billy Hughes. The following year the British government agreed to pay more for Australian wheat in an effort to sway the 1917 plebiscite, but again Hughes was defeated.

A third possibility rests with the importance the Australian General Staff placed on keeping soldiers entertained. Ireland was a popular destination for deserters, who, with the aid of Sin Fein, could obtain civilian clothes and disappear into the Irish countryside. Perhaps a voice from home might have lured them back to their duty as sons of the Empire!

Horse Ferry Road—Headquarters of the AIF during the war

Horace was amongst the soloists announced in the Belfast Newsletter of September 1917 for a performance by the Belfast Philharmonic Society the following year of Sir Granville Bantock’s ‘The Fire Worshippers’.⁴⁹ On the 30th of November he was moved briefly to Administration Headquarters at Horseferry Road, London, until, on the 5th of December a stamp appears in his war record “Proceeded overseas France”. There he joined number 32 Dental Hospital.

The Belfast Newsletter of the 23rd of March 1918 carried a review of the performance of ‘The Fire Worshippers’, but reviewed Mr. J.F. Newell “acting as substitute for Captain Horace Stevens, who is unfortunately seriously ill”.⁵⁰ It would appear the stressful conditions of the Western Front would be too much for the 42-year-old. On the 22nd of February 1918, just over two months caring for the ill and facially injured souls of the Australian Imperial Forces, Stevens was admitted to a dressing station with “Sub acute Rheumatism”. On the 23rd he was moved to another station and on the 26th to the Canadian General Hospital Dannes Camiers (Pas de Calais), where he was diagnosed with Myalgia. It was his ticket home, and on the 5th of March 1918, he found himself at the London General Hospital, Wandsworth.

The contemporary medical record for Horace states that he was suffering from the “sudden onset facia in left shoulder radiating down arm. Loss of power of grip. Has had two previous attacks of rheumatism”. A modern diagnosis reads as follows; “Centrally mediated chronic myalgia is a chronic continuous muscle disorder, originating in the central nervous system, which generates symptoms at the periphery of muscle tissues. Pain at rest is the key factor of the clinical characteristics of this disorder and probably occurs due to the sensitization of the muscle nociceptors by algogenic substances released in the neurogenic, inflammatory process”.⁵¹ One doctor has written “heart good” at the bottom of his medical notes, which, of course, must have been a worry to a middle-aged dentist on the front line.

Many articles on myalgia and dentistry talk about the splitting stress headaches, which are a constant companion, so he must have been in constant agony. One can imagine that having been part of one of Melbourne’s better dental surgeries, suddenly being thrust into the rough and ready atmosphere of the front line must have been extremely stressful. The regimental diary for the week before Horace was admitted to hospital notes that a sortie behind enemy lines had been ordered, and that medical staff were to be prepared for extra casualties. He remained in hospital, in terrible pain for two months, released to convalesce on the 9th of April 1918.

Postcard for the Imperial Restaurant, c.1920

Mrs Hamilton Earle (Louise Dale) 

From The Tatler, 10 March 1920

The Australian Imperial Forces utilized The Imperial Restaurant in Regent Street for their Masonic members. The Imperial Restaurant was a grand establishment in a flamboyant Edwardian style, with much stonework and private tables. Their menu featured portraits of the late Edward VII, the current George V and the future Edward VIII. It was there that Horace found himself on Armistice night, the eleventh of November 1918. ‘The War to end all Wars’ must have left the world in a state of painful numbness, and doubtless many crowded into the streets to drink away the horror which they must have thought would never end.

His table, at some stage in the evening, persuaded Horace to sing, and he obliged the company with ‘The Toreador’s Song’ from Carmen, by Bizet. An Australian lady at the table, a Mrs. G.H. James was greatly impressed, and later introduced Horace to a Mrs. Earle, an Australian soprano who had performed at the 1916–17 Proms under Sir Henry Wood as Louise Dale.⁵² Mrs. Earle was able to get Captain Stevens to audition for the great conductor. A letter from Sir Henry to Mrs. Earle and forwarded to Mrs. James read “You will be pleased to hear I am delighted with Captain Horace Stevens, and that he is really studying most seriously. He sang magnificently Wotan’s Abschied at a Wagner night at the Promenades, and his voice came over the orchestra quite superbly. I have recommended him for the Birmingham festival Choral Society, and for Amfortes [sic] in Parsifal with the Liverpool Philharmonic Society, so he is really getting on.” This from an interview given by Mrs. James on her return to Australia in 1920. She concluded, rather unfairly I believe, with “Mr. Stevens, though a huge favorite in Melbourne, was not given any great opportunity as a vocalist”!⁵³

A problem facing the Australian Imperial Force at the end of hostilities was how to occupy an army, while they were waiting for repatriation to Australia. The Australian government set up the Non-military Employment Scheme, whereby all soldiers were required to fill out AIF Demobilisation Form 534, listing their full-time career intentions, prospects of employment, wishes for education, retraining and employment while awaiting repatriation. The Government would pay for a certain amount of retraining. The scheme started on the 17 December 1918.⁵⁴

Sir Henry Wood, 1919

Birmingham City Council

Stevens later recalled his version of these events in a speech he gave to the Centenary Club in 1935. “He recalled that under the non-military employment scheme, instituted at the end of the war to help returned soldiers to re-equip themselves for their old professions and trades, the famous conductor applied for his services, but was refused because, it was pointed out that Mr Stevens’ attestation papers had labelled him a dentist. The departmental attitude was that there was no reason why he should waste his time dabbling in music when he could be assiduously regaining his old employment as a dentist”.⁵⁵

Letter from Henry Wood to the Director of Education, AIF, 26 July 1919

National Archives of Australia, Canberra

The records also contain a letter from Sir Henry Wood himself to substantiate Stevens’s letter. Lessons with Sir Henry had started on 15 April 1919. Wood’s letter states that the experience gained from his concert engagements would be of the greatest value on his return to Australia as a “teacher and vocalist”. By this stage Stevens was sending his entire military wage to Melbourne to support Nellie and the boys, while he lived on his earnings as a singer. Even Lieutenant General Sir John Monash wrote to support Stevens, but the bureaucracy won out, and on the 20 October 1919 his application for discharge in the UK was cancelled.⁵⁷

Horace's London residence in Maida Vale

Nevertheless, his concert appearances proceeded. On Monday 29 September 1919, Horace Stevens made his Promenade Concert debut in Concert No. 38 at the Queen’s Hall, London, under the direction of Sir Henry Wood. In an all-Wagner program he sang ‘Wotan’s Farewell’, with ‘The Magic Fire Music’.⁵⁸ That year he also sang Elijah under Wood’s baton in Birmingham. The next day the London Morning Post critic hailed him as “the greatest Elijah since Santley”.⁵⁹ On 4th July 1919 he appeared in a post war celebration at the Brand Lane concerts, sharing the stage with Madame Melba, Dame Clara Butt, Elsa Stralia and the pianist/composer Busoni.⁶⁰

To be continued...

Endnotes

1. The Age (Melbourne), 11 April 1903, p.10. Trove. Accessed 28 July 2017.

2. W.A. Carne, A Century of Harmony: The official Centenary History of the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society,Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society, Melbourne, 1954, p.135.

3. Jason Lester, Antonio Montagnana: Progression of a Handelian Bass, Florida State Universities Library, Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations. 2006, p.39. Accessed online 30 July 2017, https://fsu.digital.flvc.org/islandora/object/fsu:181469/datastream/PDF/view

4. The Argus (Melbourne), 30 September 1903. Trove. Accessed 28 July 2017.

5. The Age (Melbourne), 22 December 1903, p.8. Trove. Accessed 19 April 2017.

6. Ibid, Carne, p.136.

7. Punch (Melbourne), 27 June 1907, p.29. Trove. Accessed 21 July 2017.

8. Geelong Advertiser, 25 August 1904. Trove. Accessed 14 June 2017.

9. The Argus (Melbourne), 24 November 1904, p.5. Trove. Accessed 30 July 2017.

10. Table Talk (Melbourne), 8 December 1904, p.20. Trove. Accessed 1 July 2017.

11. ibid, Carne p.137.

12. ‘Music’, The Age (Melbourne), 5 August 1905. Trove. Accessed 30 July 2017.

13.‘Amusements’, The Argus (Melbourne), 2 August 1905. Trove. Accessed 31 July 2017.

14. The Australasian (Melbourne), 2 September 1905, p.44. Trove. Accessed 12 July 2017.

15. The North-Western Advocate and Emu Bay Times, 19 January 1906. Trove. Accessed 7 July 2017.

16.‘Family Notices’, The Age, 23 June 1906. Trove. Accessed 12 July 2017.

17. Ibid, Carne, p.139.

18. Ibid, Carne, p.139.

19. The Age (Melbourne), 30 March 1907, p.10. Trove. Accessed 17 April 2017.

20. Punch (Melbourne), 4 April 1907, p.29. Trove. Accessed 17 April 2017.

21. Punch (Melbourne), 7 November 1907, p.30. Trove. Accessed 17 April 2017.

22. The Register (Adelaide), 30 June 1908, p.6. Trove. Accessed 7 June 2017.

23. The Australasian (Melbourne), 15 August 1908, p.28. Trove. Accessed 7 June 2017.

24. Gippsland Times, 23 May 1910, p.3. Trove. Accessed 23 November 2017.

25. ibid, Carne, p.146.

26. The Age (Melbourne), 22 March 1913, p.11. Trove. Accessed 22 August 2017.

27. Tasmanian News (Hobart), 28 October 1911, p.4. Trove. Accessed 7 June 2017.

28. Table Talk (Melbourne), 28 December 1911, p.10. Trove. Accessed 3 August 2017.

29. The Geelong Advertiser, 27 October 1913, p.4. Trove. Accessed 14 June 2017.

30. ibid, Carne, pp.153–154.

31. ibid, Carne, p.154.

32. ibid, Carne, pp. 156–157.

33. David M. Dow, Melbourne Savages. A History of the First Fifty Years of the Melbourne Savage Club, Melbourne Savage Club, Melbourne, 1947.

34. Punch (Melbourne), 13 May 1915, p.8. Trove. Accessed 21 June 2017.

35. ibid, Carne, p.157.

36. Ian Finlayson—Australian Army History Unit, Pull the Other One!—Dentistry in the 1st AIF. Accessed online, 7 June 2017, https://www.army.gov.au/our-history-in-focus/pull-the-other-one-dentistry-in-the-1st-aif

37. Punch(Melbourne), 6 April 1916, p.44. Trove. Accessed 14 June 2017.

38. The Essendon Gazette and Keilor, Bulla and Broadmeadows Reporter, 27 April 1916. Trove. Accessed 14 June 2017.

39. Ringwood and Croydon Chronicle, 19 May 1916. Trove. Accessed 14 June 2017.

40. Australian War Memorial. Accessed online 7 June 2017, https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/R1936838

41. Shelley Blakely, Information Services/ Research Centre. Australian War Memorial, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

42. Belfast Newsletter, 28 September 1916.

43. Northern Whig, 31October 1916.

44. Winner, 26 September 1917, p.26.

45. Punch (Melbourne), 13 September 1917, p.26.

46. Australian War Memorial.

47. Dr. Jeff Kildea, Called to Arms: Australian Soldiers in the Easter Rising 1916. Australian War Memorial.

48. Ronan McGreevy, http///www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/British-feared-irish-takeover-of-australia-in-1916-1.2687874

49. Belfast Philharmonic Society, Belfast Newsletter, 21 September 1917.

50. Belfast Philharmonic Society, Belfast Newsletter, 23March 1918.

51. Franischetti; Ferraz Junior; Ferreira; Carvalho; Guimaraes. Chronic Myalgia centrally medicated. (Myalgia cronica mediada centralmente), http//dx.doi.org/10.1590/1981-86372014000200000161437

52. Table Talk (Melbourne), 22 January 1920. Trove.

53. Ibid, Table Talk. Trove.

54. Clem Lloyd & Jacqui Rees, The Last Shilling: A history of Repatriation in Australia,Melbourne University Press, 1994.

55. The Age (Melbourne), 25 May 1935, p. 17. Trove. Accessed 14 September 2017.

56. ibid, National Archive of Australia.

57. ibid, National Archive of Australia.

58. BBC Proms Calendar by Year. Accessed online 26 May 2017, https://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/events/by/date/1919

59. ibid, Barbara & Findlay MacKenzie, p.91.

60. Samuel Langford, Manchester Guardian, 4 July 1919. ProQuest. Accessed 3 May 2017.

During the afternoon of 3 September 1931 Walter Kirby was arrested in the men’s toilet at Victoria Station, and charged with indecency in a public convenience, specifically ‘importuning males’. The incident and its aftermath were widely reported in Australia, but again it was the New Zealand press that gave more details, even though Kirby was always referred to as an Australian, not a New Zealander, and his age was given as 48, though he was 57.

Walter appeared in Westminster Police Court on 8 October. The police prosecutor, Vernon Gattle, said that Walter had been under surveillance for an hour. The arresting inspector testified that when the charge was read to him Walter had said, ‘I am sorry. I did not think I had been here an hour.’ He had spoken ‘in a very peculiar, husky voice, and was constantly making grimaces,’ and he had vehemently denied the charge. Walter listened to the police evidence ‘with his head buried in his hands’.

Walter described the throat operation that he had undergone earlier that day as ‘shockingly painful’. He said he had haemorrhaged in the bus on his way home, and had gone to the toilet ‘to attend to himself’. He claimed to have thought he had suffered a stroke and lost his memory, and that he felt that he had twenty heads. Sir James Dundas-Grant testified that the cocaine may have affected Walter ‘more than it would an ordinary person’ and that ‘his ordinary moral controls might have been temporarily suspended’. Walter’s counsel, the distinguished Edward Marjoribanks (thankfully pronounced ‘Marchbanks’), said that he would be able to ‘bring most distinguished evidence of good character’. Representatives of the Australian government were present during the hearing. Bail was refused, and Walter was remanded for a week in custody under medical supervision in Brixton Prison Hospital.

Walter was back in court on 15 October. Edward Marjoribanks was in fine form. He told the court that the alleged offence was ‘a sordid incident, so eccentric and extraordinary that I ask you to believe that, at the time, his moral control was suspended. People have been inspired and comforted by the beauty of his voice, and he still has a long career in front of him if it is not impeded by a term of imprisonment. Already his appearance in court has interfered with contracts, and it would be a real pity and a real shame if a man gifted in this way should have his career destroyed by a single incident of this nature. This was a sordid and unfortunate incident in a distinguished career. His ordinary moral controls were suspended, as Sir James Dundas-Grant had said in the earlier proceedings. Kirby was subject to the extreme apprehensions of men of his age—he was over 50—and was sometimes led into these actions through purely physical causes. He had already paid very dearly for his lapse. He had a long and artistic career before, him, if not given terms of imprisonment. Contracts already made would be affected. l feel sure that if you take a merciful course events will justify it. It would be a pity if a man of his artistic calibre had his career destroyed by one single instance of this nature which can be attributed to a temporary physical aberration, due to a physical cause.’

The Victorian Agent-General, Sir Walter Leitch, said that he had known the defendant for thirty years, and that he enjoyed a great reputation in Australia. He had never heard of him ‘being nasty or sordid in his ways’.

It was no use. In delivering his sentence, magistrate Harold McKenna said that he had considered the defendant’s previous good character and the fact that he had already spent a week in custody. Nevertheless, he sentenced him 21 days’ imprisonment in ‘the second division’, a system designed to handle first-time and short-term offenders.

Walter was said to have left the dock without uttering a word.

Most of the subsequent Australian press coverage was factual and non-judgmental but, given Water’s colourful reputation, it could have been expected that the country’s popular papers would have pilloried him. The fact that they did the opposite sheds a different light on what we have assumed were the times’ stern attitudes to ‘difference’. Two widely read weeklies, Hugh D. McIntosh’s Sydney broadsheet The Arrow and the Melbourne-based tabloid Smith’s Weekly, published moving stories in the weeks and months after his release.

Advertisement for Columbia Graphophone Recordings, Table Talk (Melbourne), 9 June 1927

Trove, National Library of Australia

‘Prosecution of Australian’s songster’,The Arrow, 23 October 1931, p.5

Trove, National Library of Australia

The first to come to Water’s defence was The Arrow. An illustrated feature story in its 23 October 1931 edition was headed ‘Anti-Climax of Eventful Career’. It’s worth quoting at length:

‘It needs a sympathetic hand to write “Poor Walter” to the epilogue of the career of Australia’s most remarkable native-born [sic] tenor. For no-one knowing Walter’s sensitive complex, forever dreading, like a blow, the imminence of publicity attacking him on the moral side, would expect him to emerge from the ordeal through which he is passing, 21 days’ imprisonment for an act of indecency, except as a broken man.

‘The curtain that had seemed to lift for a moment on a new and pleasant career for Kirby in England in the autumn of his life, has come down upon a black-out. And with it go his dreams of dignified retirement at Hendon, where he had pictured himself passing the rest of his days upon the earnings of investments which lean years have since cut down to the merest fraction.

‘Kirby’s is not the nature to recover from such a blow. Most of his life has been a recoil from infamous suggestions which, in the judgment of those who knew him, or thought they knew him best, contained no germ of truth. To be a tenor, in the time of Walter Kirby’s youth, was to be set apart from one’s fellow men, in a sense, and given a special classification if, as was Kirby’s misfortune, he exhibited none of the expected vices of a successful singer, but displayed the inconsistencies and vanities of a prima donna. Constantly in the society of women, he was never a lover. They flattered him in droves, and he accepted their homage. He accompanied them to afternoon teas and was their guest. But the very fact that Walter’s relations with the fair sex seem never to have contained a trace of sex interest reacted to his detriment, and a legend grew about him that caused his name to be bandied about in music hall jests, and himself to be lampooned in terms suggesting moral perversion. All this Kirby accepted in silence, but he felt himself a marked man, shunned old acquaintances in the street, and expressed tearful gratitude on occasions when friends of better understanding sought him out in public places to demonstrate their faith in him.

‘The worst of these attacks was that they were all by innuendo. Nothing definite, in all the years that Kirby sang in Australia, was alleged against him concerning his moral behaviour. Mainly the curiosity of the vulgar expressed itself in relation to his sex, and it was reported some years ago that certain bold young ladies engaged in charity work at the Melbourne Town Hall, in connection with a Button Day Appeal, unbuttoned Walter in a spirit of mischief, and left him thus, but it was an episode that left no sting, and was never investigated. He probably gave his services to charity more freely than any other singer who has performed in Australia.

‘It must always be remembered to Walter Kirby’s credit that though he pursued the path of bachelorhood through life, and cherished no liaisons, he was a father to numerous nephews, whom he had educated at his expense, and was good to his relatives in other ways besides. His friends here knew him for a pampered tenor, whose only faults were his eccentricities—strange outbursts that were the expression of a high-strung temperament. His friends will refuse to believe that this escapade that drew upon him stern retribution at the hands of a London magistrate was a self-revelation of a moral pervert. Far more likely that a sinister reputation, unfortunately and unjustly acquired, has followed him to London, where an unsympathetic magistrate, with an Australian before him, has waved aside the accused man’s story of an utterly irrational act, committed in a state of irresponsibility following upon an operation performed that morning. Those who know Kirby feel that something wrong has occurred—they do not accept this as a final brand of his degradation. He deserved too well of his country for that.’

Then, on 20 November 1931, Smith’s Weekly published this piece from its London correspondent: ‘Australia has recently heard of the terrible plight that has overcome its great songster, Walter Kirby. Looking drawn and haggard, he told Smith’s that his imprisonment had plunged him into the deepest depths of despair. “I don’t know what to do,” he said, “nor where to turn. My career has been wrecked.” In disheartened tones, Kirby spoke of the bright prospects that had been his before his arrest. “I think it’s ruined my life,” he exclaimed passionately. “No more exclusive clientele was ever given to a human being than mine. There were three Royal command performances to be given, and contracts with the BBC and a leading gramophone company. What my future will be I cannot say. I don’t know whether I am not contemplating the river. Why should I be treated thus?” Kirby added in a burst of despairing passion, “I have devoted my whole life to charity. I have donated to every hospital in London, and I have helped every charity, here and in Australia”.’

Nevertheless, new research in the BBC archives has revealed that on 20 October 1931 Walter broadcast a song recital with contralto Mary Ogden, and that on 2 April 1932 he was soloist in a concert by the Wireless Military Band.

Smith’s kept its eye on Walter. On 16 April 1932, it announced that he had been given a ‘fresh start’ and was singing again in London, but under an assumed name: ‘Ever since the cabled report of Walter Kirby’s enforced three weeks’ holiday at His Majesty’s pleasure, speculation as to his whereabouts and doings has been rife in Australia. From time to time all kinds of rumors have been in circulation. One persistent story was that Kirby had entered a monastery in Italy. Another was that he had married a countess, who was an ardent supporter of artistic aims. All, however, are without the slightest foundation. Kirby is continuing the even tenor of his ways under the name of Keating. Recently, at the Albert Hall, Kirby was one of the artists on an important program that included other Australian musicians. The daily newspapers spoke favorably of the other artists, but did not even mention Kirby, although he was singing under his new appellation. It is extremely unlikely that Walter will ever return to Australia. In conversation recently with another Australian, he said: “My deepest regret is that I shall never return to Australia and all my dear friends there.” His future plans are indefinite, but he has expressed an intention of conducting a concert tour of the Continent.’ Instead, he went to Ireland.

‘The Voice of Ireland’, beloved tenor John McCormack

RCA Victor archive

On 2 July 1932 the Irish Independent reported that Walter had been among the vast crowd—said to be approximately 25% of the country’s population—at Phoenix Park in Dublin for the final public Pontifical Mass of the 31st International Eucharistic Congress. Walter had warm praise for the choir and for its conductor, the distinguished Irish composer and musician Vincent O’Brien, and for the singing of the great Count John McCormack. McCormack had begun his career with tuition from O’Brien, and he and Walter had become friends when Walter had visited Ireland in 1903.

On 12 July, according to a piece in The Cork Examiner: ‘A number of ladies made their vows at the Good Shepherd Convent in Limerick, and among them was Sister Mary of Our Lady of Lourdes, daughter of an Irish divine and cousin of Walter Kirby, the renowned Australian tenor. Mr. Kirby sang most delightfully some of his own compositions at the Mass.’ The Melbourne Herald reported that: ‘Mr. Kirby gave a song recital recently in the ballroom of Flesk Castle, Killarney, before a large and fashionable audience,’ and he sang at the Irish Industrial and Agricultural Fair in Cork and at Tipperary’s historic Rock of Cashel. He also spent time with his cousin, Rev. John Wallace PP, in the tiny village of Cratloe near Limerick.

On 2 September 1932 The Arrow brought welcome news of Walter’s ‘rehabilitation’. It was headed ‘A Cloud Lifted’ and concluded: ‘All who have heard his golden voice will read with pleasure the news that he has been accepted in the land of his ancestors.’

Back in London, Walter quietly resumed teaching, only to find that music hall star Randolph Sutton had introduced a saucy little number called ‘When Are You Going to Lead Me to the Altar, Walter?’ It’s been credited to several different composers and lyricists, but its sentiment is remarkably similar to Jack O’Hagan’s 1923 hit, ‘Walter’:

First verse:

Walter and me, we’ve been courtin’ for years,

But he’s never asked me to wed.

When Leap Year comes ’round I give three hearty cheers,

As I do the askin’ instead.

I don’t want to die an old maid,

So I sing him this serenade:

First chorus:

Walter-er, Walter, lead me to the altar,

I'll make a better man of you.

Walter, Walter, buy the bricks and mortar,

And we’ll build a love nest for two.

My bottom drawer’s all packed and ready,

My bridal gown’s as good as new.

Walter, Walter, lead me to the altar.

And make all me nightmares come true!

Second chorus:

Walter, Walter, lead me to the altar,

I don’t cost much to keep in food.

Walter-er, Walter, mother says you oughta,

So take me while she’s in the mood.

You know I’m very fond of chickens.

We'll raise a lovely little brood.

Walter, Walter, lead me to the altar,

And I'll show you where I'm tattooed.

Third chorus:

Walter, Walter, lead me to the altar,

Don’t say I’ve met me Waterloo.

Walter, Walter, tears are tasting salter,

And I’ve lost me handkerchief too.

Don’t muck the goods about no longer,

My old age pension’s nearly due.

Walter, Walter, lead me to the altar,

It’s either the workhouse or you.

Sutton’s interpretation of the song was released on the budget Panachord label in November 1932, but it did not truly become popular until Gracie Fields sang it in the 1938 film We’re Going to be Rich. Her studio recording of it remains a classic. While the song’s creation may have had nothing to do with Walter’s reputation, it remains an intriguing possibility.

On 6 November 1934 Walter led a party of Australian singers in an entertainment for nearly 100 blind ex-servicemen at St. Dunstan’s, the Regents Park headquarters of the Blinded Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Care Committee. It was to form a fitting finale to his long, illustrious career.

Walter’s final address, beautiful Bedford Square, London

The Bedford Estates photograph

Smith’s Weekly had confided to its readers that Walter was living in grand style in a flat in Bedford Square—an elegant Georgian garden enclave that housed many of the city’s artistic elite—and that he had found ‘an ultimate haven of calm in the retirement of English hostesses on a backwater of the Thames.’ Sadly, it was not to last.

Towards the end of November he suffered a heart seizure at his flat. Four doctors were called, nurses were in constant attendance, but pneumonia ensued. He died in St. Dunstan’s Nursing Home on 5 December 1934. He was 61. Smith’s Weekly told its readers: ‘The patient, resigned to the inevitable, met the end calmly. So died untimely one who, in the opinion of his staunchest friends, had been dealt with by fate not according to his deserts.’

After a Requiem Mass at St. Francis of Assisi Church, Notting Hill, Walter Joseph Regis Kirby was buried at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Cemetery in Kensal Green.

On 9 February 1935 Smith’s Weekly published a follow-up piece:

‘Two months have passed since the death of Walter Kirby in London, yet the mails have brought letters that tell of the enduring devotion of his friends in Britain to the greatest of Australia’s lyric tenors.

‘Walter Kirby, most discussed of Australian singers, left the world guessing of how much money he possessed when he died. Some people, taking too literally his jocular remarks about ‘the poor artist’, were inclined to believe that he was perpetually on his uppers and were disposed either to patronise or to ignore him. Others went to the other extreme and credited him with miserliness and almost fabulous wealth. The truth probably lay between the two extremes.

‘Unappreciated, if not misunderstood, he responded to friendly gestures almost gratefully, and held his own as an entertainer. The key of his sideboard was outside the door of his three-guinea flat at the top of Collins Street—a signal to callers to go in and help themselves—and no tightwad ever took such a risk.

‘It was no secret that Walter had paid for the education of several young relatives who had not been favoured with the same opportunities as he had. He was ‘discovered’ by two ladies of quality in London—Lady Wantage and her aunt—who provided him with a sound training. When ultimately he returned to Australia in 1912 his reputation was made, and he was able to command good tuition fees and to refuse a performance at less than 25 guineas [$2600], except when he organised one of his numerous concerts for charity. It is denied that when he visited Australia on a concert trip from England many years ago, it was necessary for anyone to finance the tour; but he used to complain that in this profit-sharing venture the usher who showed patrons to their seats did better than he, his share amounting to only 18 shillings [$90] for four concerts. When the then Chief Justice of Victoria (the late Sir John Madden) heard of this he arranged another concert for Kirby, and the prestige attached to the sponsor resulted in a financial success, Walter of the golden voice receiving £200 [$20,000] this time.

‘Kirby, who had known poverty, having once worked in a country post office and later sold articles from door to door, put his later earnings into investments, some of which he used to say turned out badly. On the stage it was computed that his invested money totalled about £15,000 [$1,500,000] but it has been explained that this figure, which might have been his total during the depression, increased subsequently. Among his investments was money in tobacco, and in Kandos Cement.

‘The rumour that he allowed lady friends to pay for his afternoon tea parties is hotly denied by one of his closest friends, who used to meet him daily, while his hotel acquaintances could not complain that Walter’s throat dried up when it was his turn to “shout”. At any rate, he kept an eye on the future, and in conversations with the writer about three years ago, he had apparently acquired a modest competence, for he spoke of his desire to return to England and live quietly in retirement at Croydon. Instead of which the brighter lights of London lured him.

‘Idle curiosity is speculating on the terms of his will. It Is believed that he made one will 12 years ago, by which certain charities of his former benefactresses will derive advantage. But if these provisions existed, they may be discounted by one or more subsequent dispositions.

‘A woman who, by the rule of long association, might reasonably have expectations, declined to offer any surmise, and deprecated discussion with the remark, “Very soon we will all know.” But until that moment arrives there will be many who will continue to assess the worth of this remarkable man in strictly cash terms, and remain unsatisfied until Walter “cuts up” for probate purposes in cold, hard figures.’

The cold, hard figures, when they came, revealed a substantial personal estate totalling more than £19,000 [$1,896,000]—£15,893 [$1,586,000] in Victoria and £3138 [$313,123] in New South Wales. And they raised many questions.

In March 1935 the Union Trustee Company of Australia Ltd applied for probate on his will, which he had made in Melbourne on 8 November 1923. There were many carefully thought through bequests. Mount St. Evins Private Hospital in East Melbourne, the Little Sisters of the Poor, Northcote, and the St. Vincent de Paul’s Girls' Orphanage in South Melbourne were each to receive £100 [$10,000]; the Sisters of Mercy, Fitzroy, and the reverend mother of the Faithful Companions of Jesus Convent in Richmond were each to receive £150 [$15,000]; while Auckland’s Sacred Heart College and the Auckland Marist Brothers College would each receive £100 [$10,000] to establish an annual ‘Walter Kirby Prize for Singing’. Walter’s two treasured pictures of King Edward’s visit to Chatsworth were bequeathed to Xavier College in Melbourne and to the ‘Melbourne Art Gallery’, and his books to Xavier and the Marist Brothers College in Sydney. He stipulated that ‘my diamond rings, together with my silver cigar and cigarette case presented to me by Princess Christian and the fob presented to me by the King of Sweden to go to Miss E.J. Sheehan.’ It is believed that this refers to Estelle Sheehan, a Melbourne pianist who had accompanied Walter on several occasions. The rest of his personal effects were to go to his niece, Madge Kirby, in the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn. This was the only provision for his family. The will’s most notable provisions were amounts of £1000 [$100,000] each to the Universities of Melbourne and Auckland to establish annual singing scholarships to be known as ‘The Walter Kirby Singing Scholarships’, and a stipulation that the residue of the estate—estimated to be around £14,000 [$1,398,000]—was to be divided equally among certain public hospitals and charities in Wantage a little Berkshire village which, at the time, was home to 4000 people. Its pride and joy was a statue commemorating the birth there of England’s first king, Alfred the Great, in 849 AD.

It appears that on refection Walter had decided that his much-loved nieces and nephews should be provided for. His plans were confirmed for Smith’s Weekly by several of his ‘most intimate Victorian friends’: ‘He told them he was very dissatisfied with his first will and intended to alter it in favour of his relations. He hated having anything to do with wills—considering them to be the “death warrant” of the testator—and so he continually kept putting off the task of altering the terms of his original testament.’

Eventually, in London in November 1932, Walter had drafted a codicil virtually negating the original will and, instead, stipulating that his nephews and nieces should have ‘an equal share each in the values of the estate, to be paid to them every half year from the profits of the said estate.’ The codicil was witnessed by two friends and sent to his solicitors in Melbourne.

Early in May 1933, on letterhead from the Pierpont Hotel, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, Walter wrote to his Melbourne niece, Madge: ‘I have been ill for many months, and I am afraid I will never be strong again. But don’t worry, I am leaving you and your sisters and [a cousin in Sydney] all I have left during your lifetime, and to go to charity at death.’ It was signed: ‘Your affectionate uncle, Walter’.

The codicil was sent to Melbourne, but because it was signed ‘Walter Kirby’ rather than ‘Walter Joseph Regis Kirby’, it was disallowed, and the original 1923 will was granted probate.

This was challenged by Walter’s brother, John Thomas Kirby, a volatile Melbourne jack-of-all-trades. He called for an investigation into the circumstances under which the original will was made. He claimed that the town of Wantage had only two small hospitals housing seven patients between them, and that the New Zealand university to which Walter had bequeathed money for a singing scholarship did not exist. He was partly right: Auckland University did not teach singing, but the donation prompted it to hastily establish a school of music. Melbourne University was said to be mystified about its bequest. A spokesperson for the University’s Conservatorium of Music said that as Kirby was a friend of the former director, Professor William Laver, he might have remembered the school for that reason.

There was similar uncertainty in London. On 2 May 1935 the Christchurch Starreported that the Matron of Wantage Hospital had said: ‘We should like to share in the money left by Walter Kirby, but I am afraid there has been some mistake. I cannot trace any Kirby treated here in the last thirty-two years except Walter Kirby, an aged farmer, who dislocated his shoulder in 1905. He had no connection with Australia.’

In London, a gentleman described as ‘a close friend’ told The Evening News, ‘I am surprised that Walter was so wealthy. He earned big money but spent it readily. It was a bigger surprise that he left the money to Wantage, which, so far as I know, he has never seen. And it is even more astonishing that Walter left the money to England, which he did not love. He considered that England had not appreciated him as well as Australia.’

On 29 April 1935 Brisbane’s Courier Mail brought news from London that Walter’s cousin, Mrs. McCourt, had said that he had left his money to Wantage, ‘because he repeatedly visited the town, and sang in the Roman Catholic Church there. Tragically enough, he caught the fatal chill there.’

Of course, it was not quite so simple. Eventually Walter’s connection with Wantage was explained by two of his Melbourne friends, Esmond Lawrence Kiernan, a Member of the Victorian Legislative Council, and Thorold Waters, his former housemate in London, and now music critic for the city’s Sun News Pictorial. They revealed that this was Walter’s way of showing his appreciation for the help and encouragement of his benefactress, Lady Wantage, who had died in 1920.

Thanks to the recordings that he had made in Sydney in 1927, Walter was heard occasionally on radio in the years following his death. After the Second World War many old traditions of music making—and of life itself—were swept away. As new generations of Australian singers came to the fore, Walter was all but forgotten. Though John Hetherington included snide references to him in his 1967 biography of Dame Nellie Melba, there was no mention of him in Barbara and Findlay’s seminal work Singers of Australia (1967), nor in Adrienne Simpson’s two books on New Zealand singers, Southern Voices (with Peter Downes, 1992) and Opera’s Farthest Frontier (1996). He is also missing from James Glennon’s Australian Music and Musicians (1968) and The Oxford Companion to Australian Music (1997). 

In recent years his four surviving recordings have been digitized, and they can now be heard via the internet and, as noted earlier, his recording of ‘Ben Bolt’ is included in the important 4-CD set From Melba to Sutherland: Australian Singers on Record.

Perhaps most significantly, Walter’s name lives on in the musical awards he provided for in his will. His old Auckland school, Sacred Heart College, still awards Walter Kirby prizes, but now they cover instrumental and group work as well as voice. Future rock icons Tim and Neil Finn were winners in 1971.

The finale of the 85th annual Walter Kirby Music Competition at Auckland’s Sacred Heart College, June 2021

Photograph supplied by the college.

Over the years the prestigious Walter Kirby Singing Scholarships in Auckland and Melbourne have helped start the careers of innumerable aspiring young singers. ‘Receiving the Walter Kirby Singing Scholarship in 1951 gave me confidence and a sense of the continuity of musical training and, of course, access to the best teachers and vocal coaches,’ says distinguished Melbourne soprano Loris Synan OAM. Her subsequent career in Australia and Great Britain has included grand opera on stage and on television, oratorio, concerts, radio and recordings, culminating in a seven-year tenure as Head of the Voice Department at the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music at Monash University.

A later recipient, soprano Miranda Rountree, has performed in concert, opera, operetta and musicals in Australia and overseas. She also studied piano, stagecraft and the role of modern technology in vocal performance. She is passing on her knowledge—and her enthusiasm—to new generations of aspiring youngsters through her Queensland-based chain of Rising Stars music studios.

An early pupil of Miranda’s was soprano Margaret Jarvis. Although her subsequent professional career was limited, she represents a unique link to Walter Kirby: her great-great-grandfather, Daniel David Kirby was Walter’s brother. She and a now vast network of Kirby family members respect and admire their forebear’s artistry and treasure his significant contribution to fine music in Australia, Great Britain and Ireland.

Walter Joseph Regis Kirby would have been delighted!

John McCormack: signed photograph to Walter Kirby, 9 October 1920. Photo by Hartsook.

Kirby Family collection

‘He the sweetest of musicians

Sang his songs of love and longing …

That the feast may be more joyous,

That the time may pass more gaily…

… Sang in accents sweet and tender,

Sang in tones of deep emotion,

Songs of love and songs of longing …’

—Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Postscript

Walter Kirby’s Melbourne relatives have recently identified his unmarked grave, and are hoping to arrange for an appropriate maker to be installed.

Listen

Listen to Walter Kirby singing ‘A Hundred Moonlit Miles’ (Columbia 0605)

Special thanks to

Christine Buck, Margaret Jarvis, and the extended Kirby Family

Peter Burgis

Brian Castles-Onion AM

Dr Mimi Colligan AM

Jo Gilbert

Miranda Rountree

Loris Synan OAM

Jason Thomson

Claudia Funder, Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

Xavier College, Melbourne

National Library of Australia

State Library of Victoria

AusStage

Trove

Principal references

Jeff Brownrigg, A New Melba? The Tragedy of Amy Castles,Crossing Press, Darlinghurst, 2006

Mimi Colligan, Canvas Documentaries,Melbourne University Press, Carlton South, 2002

Peter Game, The Music Sellers,The Hawthorn Press, Melbourne, 1976

Alison Gyger, Opera for the Antipodes,Currency Press, 1990

John Hetherington, Melba,F.W. Cheshire, Melbourne, 1967

Roger Neill & Tony Locantro, From Melba to Sutherland,Universal Music, Australia Pty Ltd, 2016

Fred Page, ‘The Auditorium—Birth of a Showcase’, CinemaRecord, Winter 2001

John Ross, The Sound of Melbourne,ABC Books, Sydney, 1999

Thorold Waters, Much Besides Music,Georgian House, Melbourne, 1951