Lyster William

William Saurin Lyster

An Adventurous Young Man
William was born in Dublin on 21 March 1827, the son of Captain Chaworth Lyster, a captain with the Dublin Artillery. The Lysters were Protestant Irish landed gentry and he was named after his uncle, William Saurin, who was the Attorney General for Ireland in the English Parliament. Another uncle, Dr James Saurin, was the Bishop of Dromore.
William suffered an illness when he was about twelve years of age and his parents decided that a sea voyage would assist his recuperation. One would think that a few days afloat would have been sufficient, but no, his parents sent him off around the world on a whaling boat! In later life William enjoyed retelling the story of his great relief in reaching the fledgling settlement of Melbourne in 1842. The ship’s water supplies had run out some days short of its arrival in Melbourne and all aboard had to subsist on bottled beer. This enforced diet was enough to send all aboard eagerly in search of water the moment they landed; for the 13 year old William the experience disposed him towards temperance for the rest of his life.

India, Africa, America and Nicaragua
After some months in Melbourne William eventually returned safely to Ireland. By the time he was 18 his parents had sent him out to India to try his hand as an indigo planter. However, he found the climate too difficult and returned home. Within a year he was off to South Africa where he fought as a volunteer in the Kaffir war – and survived! In 1848 he sailed for America with two of his brothers, Frederick and Mark Anthony. Off the coast of Newfoundland tragedy struck when Mark Anthony fell overboard and drowned.
In America, William embarked on a series of commercial enterprises while Frederick decided on a stage career, making his New York debut in Fra Diavolo in 1849.
Having failed to make his fortune in America, William set off to Nicaragua with a bunch of mercenaries to support a violent campaign against the government. Under the command of a dubious character named Walker, William was given the rank of captain and when this rebel army was successful in overthrowing the government, Walker, now self appointed President of Nicaragua, sent William back to America to recruit more mercenaries. This decision turned out to be a luckv break for William as, in his absence, the armies of Honduras and Costa Rica invaded Nicaragua, restored the government and executed Walker. Most of the mercenaries also died in the fighting. William wisely stayed in America.
Meanwhile, Frederick had established a touring opera company that was badly in need of good management and William stepped in to assume the role that was destined to make his name in the history of the theatre in Australia.
The company played in New Orleans in 1857, Chicago in 1858 and in 1859 reached San Francisco where, with the addition of the voices of two very good American singers, it enjoyed great success.

William Returns to Melbourne
With the Civil War looming in America the company had to seriously consider its future and, as had been the case for many who had headed across America, the urge to continue the westward quest infected them and they decided to sail to Australia. In 1861 the company boarded the Achilles for the eight week voyage to Melbourne and the potential riches that the 1850s gold boom promised.
On arrival, William was amazed at the changes brought by the wealth of the goldfields to Melbourne since his visit as a 13 year old nineteen years previously. Within a month he had leased the Theatre Royal in Bourke Street and presented the company to a public eager for high quality entertainment.
The opening performance was well received and with it, history records, Lyster had launched what was to become known as the twenty year Golden Age of Australian Opera.

Lyster’s Company Delights Audiences For Eight Years
Under Lyster’s astute guidance the company enjoyed an unbroken run of successful seasons over the next eight years in Melbourne, Sydney and New Zealand. The original singers, Lucy Escott, Rosalie Durand, Georgia
Hodson (later to become William’s wife), Ada King, Henry Squires and Frederick Lyster were enduringly popular. The addition of Messrs Farquharson (bass) and Wharton (baritone) and, in particular, the Australian tenor, Armes Beaumont, enhanced the company’s reputation. “The repertory of the company was a most comprehensive one, embracing the works of the best Italian, German, French and English composers; and rarely, outside of the capital cities of Europe and the United States, have such operas as ‘Les Hugenots’, ‘Le Prophete’ and ‘L’Africaine’ as ‘Faust’ and ‘William Tell’ been interpreted more admirably than they were on the boards of the old Theatre Royal, under the generous management of Mr Lyster.” (Cyclopedia of Victoria, page 80)
When viewed from the present situation of opera where companies can only survive by way of heavy subsidies, endowments and high admission prices, Lyster’s success is all the more remarkable. He was tactful and just with his company members and paid generous salaries while, at the same time, he kept ticket prices at a lower level than was demanded in Europe. His secret seemed to have been – in addition to the high quality of his performers – in his keen awareness of what the public enjoyed. However, his love of opera was such that he was prepared to mount grand opera at a loss and then cover those losses by the staging of comic operas that were consistent money spinners.

Disaster In San Francisco
By 1869 the company members were keen for a change of scene and became enthusiastic about a return to San Francisco where they had been so well received in 1861. However, they were not long ashore after the eight week voyage from Melbourne when they found that times and tastes had changed. The critics were harsh and the season was a failure. The company was forced to disband with some members going into retirement while others found places in minstrel shows which were enjoying great popularity in America at that time. For Lyster this unaccustomed reversal was a shock but his time in San Francisco was not altogether an unhappy experience for he and Georgia Hodson cemented their long association by marrying. For William it was his first (and only) marriage; for Georgia it was her third time at the altar.
The couple returned to Melbourne where Lyster resolved to repair his fortunes.

Lyster Fights Back
On his return he formed an association with another enterpreneur, Mr John Smith, and soon afterwards set sail for Europe where, by September 1869, he had engaged several singers with whom he returned to Melbourne in January 1870. Meanwhile Armes Beaumont had sailed from San Francisco to rejoin Lyster and the new company opened its season in February with ‘Ernani’.
In 1871 Signor Cagli brought a company of outstanding Italian singers to Melbourne. Lyster arranged for the two companies to combine for a series of successful operas. Apart from opera, Lyster and his partners brought out famous overseas concert instrumentalists (notably the pianist Arabella Goddard and the cornet player, Levey). As well, they staged seasons of drama and pantomimes.

Narree Worron Grange
Lyster’s family had, for generations, been land owners in Ireland but when William was still young the Lysters were dispossessed of their holdings. With his fortunes at such a buoyant level by 1865 it was not surprising that William was attracted to the opportunity presented by the new Selection Acts that saw the breaking of the squatters’ grip on the broad acres of the Victorian countryside. Suddenly land became readily available and William selected 400 acres at a cost of one pound an acre in the foothills of the Dandenongs along the Monbulk Creek. He subsequentIv extended his estate to beyond 1200 acres. The area at the time was part of Narree Warren and so Lyster called his property ‘Narree Worron Grange’.
Lyster’s love for his land was not merely sentimental. With the energy and enthusiasm that marked his nature he set about establishing a farm that would not only be profitable but that would be a model of good, modern farming practices. Part of his property was a swampy area known as ‘The Flats’ through which the Monbulk Creek struggled to flow. He employed a group of aborigines to drain the swamp and to dig a new channel for the creek. His fellow selectors were highly amused by what they saw as the wasteful expenditure of this city man and referred to his property as “Lyster’s Folly”. However, when they saw the rich black soil exposed as the water level fell they gradually changed their tune and eventually followed his lead. Lyster had the land fenced into 10 acre blocks and then planted for two years with potatoes, carrots and peas. In the third year a cereal crop was grown after which clover was sown to produce a rich pasture for the steadily growing dairy herd based on the progeny of Lyster’s prize shorthorn cow, Rosa 4th.
While William was in San Francisco with the company in 1869 on its ill fated season, George Dickson, the husband of Lyster’s step daughter, continued the work of clearing and bringing the land into production.
Characteristically, William returned from that American disaster with some new gadgetry and new ideas for his farm. It was never far from his mind. By 1874 there was a paved cow yard and a milking shed measuring 66 feet by 38 feet constructed of bricks that had been handmade on the property. From the milking shed the milk was piped to a bluestone dairy where it was converted to high quality cheese – 700 pounds of it every week and selling at the time for ten pence per pound.
The homestead was originally a wattle and daub building that Lyster extended to create a rambling, comfortable home. A feature was a music room constructed with hollow panels to provide resonance. Eventually there was an ornamental lake, a croquet lawn and extensive gardens. The property was a wonderful retreat for William away from the pressures of the theatrical world in the city. Theatre people valued their invitations to join William and Georgia in the peace of Narre Worron Grange. One guest, Emily Soldene, the most popular singer on the London comic opera stage at the time, recorded the following about her visit to Narre Worron Grange with her young daughters: “drove in a four in-hand down a ‘corduroy’ road constructed at an angle of 45 degrees, had a lovely dinner and a lovely day, crept down the gully and saw the huge ferntrees, rode bush ponies over stumps through and over and under trees … : saw heaps of cows milked mechanically, and the fine horses sent out to sleep in the paddock instead of in stables.”
The Grange also served as a place of convalescence. When one of his stars, Joseph Emmet, was taken ill during a Vice Regal command performance, Lyster immediately took him to Narree Worron Grange where he soon recovered, missing only two evening performances.
There was, however, one incident that did not accord with the generally happy and peaceful life at the Grange. On 26 February 1869 William had organized for his principal tenor Armes Beaumont and two other friends to join him in a shooting party. As William took aim at a bird, Beaumont stepped into his line of fire and his face was peppered with shot. Armes recovered sufficiently to be able to continue his career but lost one eye completely and most of the sight in the other. Lyster was cleared of any blame but was very distressed by the accident. He organized a benefit performance by the company which raised 585 pounds, an extraordinary amount of money at that time.

The School & District Is Named In His Honour
In 1874 the Iocal settlers were agitating for the establishment of a school and it was the ever generous Lyster who donated two acres of his land on Wellington Road as a school site. It was appropriate that the locals pressed for the school to be called Lysterfield, a name that quickly extended to the whole district (including the area of present day Rowville).

Final Years
In 1877 William fell ill and the robust health that he had so long enjoyed gradually deteriorated. Despite this he continued to involve himself in new projects. His final achievement was the production of a comic opera, ‘The
Royal Middy or the Chess Tournament’, to coincide with the opening of the great International Exhibition in October 1880. ‘The Exhibition, held in the newly completed Exhibition Buildings in the CarIton Gardens, was the grandest event ever to be held in the southern hemisphere. It was fitting that Lyster’s final production enjoyed a successful season and was part of the celebrations that confirmed Melbourne’s place among the great capital cities of the world.
By November William was too ill to visit Narree Worron Grange any longer and was taken to the home of a friend in Hawthorn where he died on 27 November. Obituaries in the Age and Argus were full of praise for the warm-hearted and impulsive man whose ‘indefatigable exertions had supplied the people of Melbourne with a class of entertainment’ that will see him held ‘in affectionate remembrance as the real founder of the lyric drama in Australia, and as a manager who valued public approbation and his own good name more than money’.
Georgia Lyster survived her husband by 21 years. She inherited an estate under William’s will valued at 3065 pounds which included Narree Worron Grange which had, by 1880, been reduced to 205 acres. Around 1890 Georgia sold the Grange which was later subdivided into two smaller properties, Netherbrae and Netherlea. The latter, containing the Lyster homestead, was bought in 1928 by Gus Powell for his daughter Cr Violet Lambert after she was forced off her property ‘Chandanagore’ in Hallam Road when it was compulsorily acquired by the State Rivers and Water Supply Commission as part of the catchment area for the Lysterfield Reservoir.
Netherlea became the final resting place of Gus Powell’s famous Mosstrooper, the greatest jumping horse Australia has ever seen. The old homestead which had brought so much happiness to William and Georgia was demolished in the early 1980s.
With the death of William Lyster the production of grand opera declined significantly and it was not until the 1960s that it became re-established within the Australian theatrical landscape at a level that could challenge the quality of the productions staged by Lyster.
Writing in the Argus on 11 October 1911, a correspondent looked back to the wonderful Lyster years with this tribute: “I think sufficient has been written to prove that for 20 years 1861 to 1880 we had a perfect feast of grand opera, rendered by first class artists, and given us at merely nominal charges from 1/- to 7/6 ; the Verdi prices being 5/- to 10/-. Those of us who got such a splendid education in the works of the best masters should be filled with gratitude; certainly those of the present day will never have our opportunities. It was owing to the untiring energy and love of operatic music of the late William Saurin Lyster that we had all those happy years of music given us.”
Bryan Power

This account of the life of William Lyster is largely based on the excellent book by Harold Love, ‘The Golden Age of Australian Opera: W.S.Lyster and his Companies 1861-1880’. The book is out of print but copies may be read at the State Library. All interested in our local history are indebted to Mr Love for preserving the memory of our most renowned local pioneer.

Other references consulted were:
Pike, Douglas (Ed): Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol 1851 1890;
Mennell, P: The Dictionary of Australasian Biography
The Cyclopedia of Victoria
Ronald, Heather: Farewell my Heart
Coulson, Helen: Story of the Dandenongs
The Argus 29 November 1880
The Age 29 November 1880
The Weekly Times 12 September 1874
The Leader 12 December 1874
Illustrated Melbourne Post 11 October 1862.