Polish Adventurer Who Became N.Z. Hero

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 27, 23 April 1927, Page 17 (Supplement)

Polish Adventurer Who Became N.Z. Hero

Armine von tempsky, a young Californian authoress, granddaughter of Major Von Tempsky, ;he famous guerrilla leader, who led the Forest Rangers in the Waikato campaign against the Maoris, recently unearthed a signed water-colour picture of the Golden Gate, painted by her versatile grandfather and in the course of an interview with a reporter of the San Francisco “Examiner” gave an interesting story of the career of the famous Polish adventurer. “Dad’s father was a remarkable man,” says Miss von Tempsky, as she exhibits her little treasure. “He was a Pole, by nature a wanderer and a fighter. He was exiled and went to England, then to California in ’47. This was before the gold rush, when California was a fairy country in the imagination of Europeans. “Grandfather rode from Mazatlan to Panama on horse-back in about 1850 and took two to do it. He wrote a fascinating book about his journey and illustrated it himself with the most delicate water-colour drawings. After the Mexican trip, where he had all the riding and fighting he wanted, he went and got mahogany out of Nicaragua for the Mosquito King. “The headquarters of the place was Bluefields. Later he went to New Zealand to the Coramandel goldfields and then he organised a company of Forest Rangers to fight the Maoris in Taranaki. He was killed there about 1868.” According to the clippings from hyperborean papers ranging over a period of 30 years, which the von Tempsky family has religiously preserved, the fighting Polish nobleman is still the hero of New Zealand. There is a beautiful monument erected to his memory near Hawera. The “Australasian” wrote about the exile at the time of his death: “Von Tempsky is dead, but he fell nobly in battle. His death is a national loss, though he is an alien—to have seen him playing with his little ones or working in his flower garden or at his music and painting, no one could have guessed him to be the Terrible von Tempsky, the Terror of the Maori warriors.” A quarter of a century later, on March 25, 1893, an Auckland paper wrote in an editorial: “Xqn Tempsky though dead and

gone, is still the living ideal, the perfect type of colonial hero. He is the Robin Hood of Maoriland, coloured by the new environment and atmosphere of the antipodes. In the mind of the young New Zealander von Tempsky is a strange combination of Dick Turpin, Ned Kelly and the American scalp-hunter of the six-penny novel.” It is not only from her grandfather that Armine von Tempsky inherited her literary talent, and adventurous spirit, which led her to run a “dude” ranch on the island of Maui w'hile writing her three novels. One of these, “Hula,” though recently issued, is already fti its third printing. She must have inherited much of her tenacity of purpose from her grandmother, who was a certain Miss Bell. The English girl married the gentle-

man adventurer when he was in Bluefields, and was the only white woman to dwell among the Mosquito Indians. While living out there, her brother, C. N. Bell, wrote a book called “Tangwerra” about ihe mahogany-getting, and von illustrated it for him.

Both this book and the fascinating journal of von Tempsky’s residence in California and his horseback ride through Central America are now in the possession of their granddaughters. The young author plans to edit these curious, historical and travel documents and issue them some time in the future.