[SHEET MUSIC] The Rupertswood waltzes

Cover: Dedicated to the Hon. W. J. Clarke. Melbourne : Nicholson & Ascherberg, [1878]. Folio (365 x 270 mm), lithographed by Charles Troedel, the front wrapper featuring an illustration of Rupertswood, residence of William Clarke near Sunbury, Victoria; [6] pp. of music notation (Waltzes nos. 1-3, and Coda); wrappers detached, otherwise a very good, clean example without foxing.

The Rupertswood waltzes were composed by a young Hobart woman, Augusta Blanche Elizabeth Gresley (1861-1888). She was the fifth daughter of Nigel Gresley (1817-1879), a manager of the Union Bank in Hobart and a resident of Sandy Bay, and his wife Mary Ann (Abbott).

The music is dedicated to businessman, philanthropist and politician William Clarke (later Sir William Clarke, 1st Baronet), the largest property owner in the Colony of Victoria. His magnificent mansion, Rupertswood, near Sunbury, north of Melbourne, had been built by his father, William senior, an early Van Diemen’s Land colonist who accumulated extensive pastoral holdings in Tasmania, Victoria, South Australia and New Zealand.

It seems reasonable to speculate that the Gresleys and Clarkes were known to each other through their shared Tasmanian background (the younger William had lived in Tasmania for much of his twenties), and that young Augusta Blanche may have been inspired to compose her musical tribute to William Clarke after a personal visit to Rupertswood – perhaps chaperoned by one of her relatives from the well-connected Lempriere family of Hobart and Melbourne.

In February 1881, when still only 19, Augusta married Irishman Henry James Bennett Hargrave in Bombay; she died at the age of just 27 in Dublin in December 1888, after giving birth to her second child.

Trove locates only two copies of The Rupertswood waltzes sheet music in Australian libraries (NLA; Libraries Tasmania)