Smythe's father, whomever he was, died in a carriage accident and the deceased's family cut off support, leaving the "Smiths" destitute.
[2] He started his career in theatrical management when he piloted the opera-singers Eugenio Bianchi and wife Giovanna di Casali da Campagna, around South Australia in early 1861.
By this time he had resigned from his editorship and formed a new concert company consisting of pianist, James Marquis Chisholm, Scots elocutionist, Margaret Edith Aitken and Miss Bailey.
The contract was to tour the East commencing at Shanghai with Simmons, Italian violinist Agostino Robbio, French pianist Edouard Desireé Boulanger, James Marquis Chisholm and Miss Bailey.
Poussard sailed to Ceylon to meet them with his own 'wife', contralto and serio-comic vocalist Florence Calzado but Douay had suffered a breakdown and been returned to France.
The new group toured India from 1864 until late 1866, taking a route that included Ceylon, Bombay, Delhi, Simla, Agra, Udaipur, Umballa, Pondicherry, Madras, and all major towns that held British populations or garrisons, even going as far as Peshawur.
In October 1868 Smythe and Poussard left for England just after their 150th concert and 'the Ladies' stayed at the Cape until June 1869 when they engaged to sail directly back to Melbourne.
Later that year he undertook to manage the struggling Zavistowski Sisters (Christine, Emmeline and Alice), an American burlesque trio imported by George Coppin.
Goddard's inability to cope with the tropics led to many cancelled concerts in India, and forced Smythe to return to Australia to form once again, the Exhibition Concert Company now consisting of Miss Mary Ellen Christian, a gifted contralto, who trained in the Royal Academy of Music, London (and whose interests he never ceased to promote for eighteen years), Solange Navarro and Edward Farley.
While in Sydney, Smythe added tenor Edward Armes Beaumont, basso Agostino Giuliano Susini and the American contralto Cassie Everett Dyer (Mrs. A. H. Cutter) to Goddard's company.
Clark managed well on his own, Smythe having gone ahead to arrange bookings, ticket takers, puff pieces, broadsides, transport and other details.
Having travelled with Clark for more than five years in Australia, America, and Africa, 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.
Moncure Daniel Conway followed in 1883, then George Augustus Sala, who had earlier written to Smythe after hearing how much money Forbes had cleared during his tour.
A local consortium then engaged Sala, brought him to Australia, and upon finding him difficult to manage, asked Smythe to take him off their hands.
1888 saw the American Civil War lecturer, Major Henry Craige Dane, and the larger than life speaker on the Holy Land, Lydia Von Mamreoff Finklestein, with whom he toured the usual circuits and New Zealand well into 1889.
Harry Furniss, the much loved illustrator and lecturer, toured under contract to Smythe in 1897 and in 1898, Gilbert & Sullivan star Durward Lely did likewise.