Occasional Magazine N.S. Vol.2 (2004)
Adelaide Maude Speed, née Maturin, later Marsh (1856-1958) by Clare Church. Adelaide Maude Maturin was born in 1856, the eldest daughter of the Vicar of Lymington, the Rev. Benjamin Maturin. Her happy country childhood was thrown awry by being sent away to a regimented school in London, where her independent spirit was already evident, but matters were righted by changing to a school in Bristol. Her first husband was a barrister, Harry Fiennes Speed; she eloped from Lymington to London for the wedding, only narrowly avoiding her father, who happened to be on the same train. Speed changed his career completely by training as a priest, becoming curate at Spernall in Warwickshire 1886-88 at which Maude was at once immersed in parochial and social life. Ordained at Worcester Cathedral in 1887, Harry Speed held successive curacies at Pennington, Hythe and Poole, before he and Maude settled in Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, in 1895 on his appointment as Rector of St. James’s Church. His passion was sailing his own craft, but the couple took liner cruises too. They had been pioneer cyclists in the 1880s during his theological training in Chichester; now they bought their first car in 1904 and Maude thrilled to travelling by air to Paris in 1910. The Speeds stayed at Yarmouth until Harry retired in 1913, when they moved to Keyhaven and built the house Sedge End in Saltgrass Lane looking over the Solent and the marshes. Harry died unexpectedly, probably of heart failure, on his yacht in Yarmouth Harbour in 1925 when he was 68. Maude remained at Sedge End for the remainder of her long life. Continued travelling and being active after his death still left her bereft and in 1933 she remarried in Milford Church a much younger man, an accomplished lecturer and musician, Carl David Marsh. She was 77 but her new husband was a splendid companion because of their mutual interests in travel, music, writing and art. Maude sketched and painted all her life, the Marshes worshipped regularly in Milford Church and were active in the community and among the local sailing fraternity. The remarkable Maude remained alert and vigorous to the end of her very long life, dying in 1958 at the grand age of 102. Seven photographs and a list of sources complement this interesting, well crafted biography. The Society has possession of invaluable documentation of the family and, fortunately, Maude herself wrote articles and two autobiographical books contributing to a rounded picture also.
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