Lloyd Chapman: In a Strange Garden: The Life and Times of Truby King

Reviewed by MARGIE THOMSON

Truby King - to me his name is irrevocably associated with starchy, apron-clad bosoms and severity, for he was the founder of Plunket and presided over that past era when Plunket nurses really were brisk and bossy.

In fact, there's a wonderful image at the end of this biography where King, deceased, lies in state in St Paul's Cathedral in Wellington, guarded by eight Plunket nurses, such a formidable barrier nobody would dare pass through.

King, we discover, was an astonishing man. He not only founded the Plunket Society (a marvellous organisation which must be saved at any cost) but despite lifelong health problems campaigned tirelessly to improve the mental and physical health of others, and for education.

He was the first private citizen to be given a state funeral, and the first to feature on a postage stamp. He was a genuine eccentric who simply did not perceive boundaries the way more ordinary people did.

It is equally astonishing that this is only his second biography, following one by his adopted daughter Mary King in 1948, a decade after his death.

Chapman's interest had, from an academic point of view, idiosyncratic beginnings. He loved gardening and was surprised to discover that King had also been a fanatical gardener, ordering thousands of plants from abroad, in particular from France, perhaps explaining, he suggests, the preponderance around Wellington of the rambling rose Alberic Barbier.

Chapman's prose is highly accessible and he has a nice touch in ironic humour which takes you by surprise. Chapman points out that Seacliff, near Dunedin, the country's largest mental institution, where King was medical superintendent from 1889 to 1921, was "structurally unsound and the inmates mentally unsound". Newspapers "donate their daily organs" to the cause of children's health.

Chapman records King's unstoppable drive and determination, and his almost unbelievable achievements harnessing energy to run his remote farm in the Catlins, adding, "It is perhaps fortunate that nuclear power had not been invented".

Born in New Plymouth in 1858, King first went into banking before heading to medical school at Edinburgh University, where he graduated top scholar of his year. He married his landlady's daughter, Bella, and the couple returned to New Zealand, soon after that establishing themselves at Seacliff. Choosing psychiatry at that time was regarded by orthodox men as "evidence of eccentricity more appropriate to a patient", Chapman reports.

There, King tried out his beliefs that good food, fresh air and exercise could combat insanity, an approach that didn't work as reliably as he had thought. There is a theory that it was on realising this that he turned his attention to the practical demands of babies' health.

He developed a method for turning cows' milk into "humanised milk" and set up the Karitane factory to produce products for babies whose mothers couldn't breastfeed, pouring his own money into project after project to improve the lives of others.

But Chapman illustrates what a contradictory character King was. Many of his attitudes seem abhorrent today. While glorifying motherhood, he was often disparaging about women's abilities and believed them "densely ignorant".

He was a eugenicist and a racist, his adoption of Mary has overtones of emotional cruelty that may or may not have simply been a reflection of the era, and he was incredibly arrogant, behaving in an almost feudal way towards his staff.

But he got things done, and he "brought about a better state of affairs". In time a fuller biography may appear, considering and explaining the broader social environment within which King was operating. In the meantime, Chapman has revealed a great New Zealand story.

Penguin, $39.95