History from New Zealand's early colonial days is traversed in this
"triple biography." Prize-winning investigative journalist and now
retired newspaper editor, Geoff Adams. explores three intertwined
characters: Judge Dudley Ward, his wife Anne, and his mistress
Thorpe Talbot. All three were celebrities in the 19th century.
After two decades of research in New Zealand, England and
Australia, the author has located many facts about this fascinating
but at present largely forgotten trio. Dudley came from a rich and
powerful English family, progressing from Rugby School, Oxford and
the Inner Temple (London) to be an MP, magistrate and finally judge
in NZ courts. He bought much land, presided over some trials that
were national sensations, and successfully quarrelled publicly with
the Chief Justice and other judges, who soon retired. Anne was the
first national president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union
in New Zealand and a suffragist campaigner. (New Zealand women won
the vote in 1893, the first in the world.) Thorpe was a writer and
poet, winning an Australian newspaper's valuable first prize in a
novel competition; the book "Philiberta" was then published in
London, New York and Sydney and featured on a select list with
works by Dickens, Thackeray and Mark Twain, Anne died in 1896 and
the judge remarried in 1902 - to Thorpe Talbot, with whom he had
enjoyed a long romantic link. Dudley had been called (by another
judge) a "man of infamous private character, and has not the
decency to conceal it." He publicly espoused the Arab phrase
"Praise Allah for beautiful women." Judge Ward had powerful
friends, was a giant of a man in every sense, and a hero on the
beach at a shipwreck scene in Timaru in 1878. As well as hearing
murder trials and other court sensations, he featured in a bank's
action against him personally for a guarantee (arguing his defence
right up to the Privy Council in London) and was named as the
"ghost writer" of an editorial that was the subject of a remarkable
libel case against a newspaper, His resolute actions, in court and
out of it, over the bankruptcy of a mayor led to the resignation of
a Colonial Secretary and a parliamentary by-election. The judge's
father was a former diplomat, Secretary for the Admiralty, and
colonial Governor of Ceylon and Madras. When he died in India, his
widow Lady Ward returned to London, where Queen Victoria installed
her in a large "grace and favour" apartment in Hampton Court Palace
for the rest of her years. Swinburne, the poet, was Dudley's cousin
and his siblings were well connected with the British aristocracy.
The Judge purchased land in various parts of New Zealand and was an
MP in New Zealand's second Parliament in 1855, just 13 months after
he landed in the country. One of the appendices to this book is a
full reprint of Thorpe Talbot's epic poem "Guinevere of the South,"
which had previously been considered to be a "lost novel" by the
author. It was located, after much searching, in a short-lived
early newspaper the "Geraldine County Chronicle."
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