[SHEET MUSIC; GLEBE, SYDNEY] Such is life

Words by Walter Allen. Music by Harry Mackenzie. Cover: Written by Walter Allen Esqr., composed by Harry Mackenzie. Sydney : J. Reading & Co., Music-sellers & Publishers, 356 George Street, [ ]. Folio (335 x 250 mm), upper wrapper lettered in decorative fonts (faint early music seller’s stamp to upper margin); [6] pp. of music notation; wrappers toned, some very light foxing; a good example.

A later (though still scarce) edition of Walter Allen and Harry Mackenzie’s ballad, which has a strong connection with the Allen family of Toxteth Park, Glebe.

The music was originally published by Henry Marsh in Sydney in 1855; a second Sydney edition by J. R. Clarke appeared in 1857.

We could not trace another example of this particular front cover variant of J. Reading’s 1874 edition in Australian collections.

Walter Bourne Allen (1839-1867) was a son of New South Wales politician George Allen (1800-1877), of Toxteth Park, Glebe. The front cover of the first edition of Such is life carried the statement: ‘The music composed and respectfully dedicated to the Misses Allen, (Toxteth Park) by Harry Mackenzie’. This is evidently a reference to Walter’s surviving younger sisters Richarda (b. 1841), Catherine (b. 1845), and Marian (b.1849).

Walter was married to June Ferguson on 9 June 1866 in the chapel on the Toxteth Park estate. Scarcely ten months later, on 9 April 1867, Walter’s death notice appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald:

‘The Cottage, Toxteth Park, WALTER ALLEN, Esq., fourth son of the Hon. George Allen, M.L.C., aged 28 years.’

Remarkably, in the very same issue of the SMH, just above the death notices, the following birth notice appeared:

‘On the 2nd instant, at her residence, The Cottage, Toxteth, the wife of WALTER ALLEN, Esq., of a daughter.’

Sadly, Walter did not live long enough to greet the birth of his only child.