"Donat, Interior Governor at Government House", P.11

Category

Museums & Galleries Item

Item no

19271

Title

p.11, Donat, Interior Governor and the population, on the steps of Government House, Fakarava

Description

Group of 5 men, 5 women and a small child, seated on the stone steps of government house. Francois Donat-Rimarau, the Interior Governor who is beside his wife and child. Four other men in white shirts and four ladies in dresses also sit beside them. A wooden veranda can be seen outside the house and in the background are trees.

The image is from the photograph album entitled 'The Cruise of the Casco' of Robert Louis Stevenson's travels around Hawaii and French Polynesia in 1888.

Artist / maker

Osbourne, Lloyd

Date

1888

Size

11.2 x 13 cm

Type

Photograph

Location

Writers' Museum

Francois Donat-Rimarau was the half-French, half-Tahitian acting French Vice-Resident (or interior minister) of the Paumotus Islands. He came to visit the Stevensons as soon as the Casco arrived at Fakarava in September 1888. Donat was very hospitable to the Stevenson party, and many gifts were exchanged, including to Fanny and Margaret a double oystershell with a gold pearl attached to one side.

The Stevensons were in Fakarava from 9th to 25th September, and stayed in a traditional platform house that Taniera Mahinui had found for them to stay in.

The Paumotus Islands are part of the Tuamotu-Paumotu group of atolls in French Polynesia in the Pacific Ocean. The islands are called the 'Pearl Islands' due to the quantity of pearls and to the trade in pearl shell. Fakarava is the second largest of the atoll and has the best harbour of the group.

Born in Edinburgh on 13th November 1850, Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, playwright and travel writer. Although he was plagued by ill health all his life, he was extraordinarily well-travelled, visiting Europe, America and the South Seas. He married American born Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne in 1880 and is best-known for works like Treasure Island (1883), Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (both 1886).

Robert Louis Stevenson spent the latter years of his life both travelling and resident in the Pacific. The family chartered the 'Casco' in San Francisco and spent several weeks travelling in French Polynesia, including an extended stay in Tahiti where Stevenson recovered from a bout of illness. After this the Stevenson group continued to Honolulu, Hawaii, where they landed in January 1889. In the summer of 1889 Stevenson embarked on a six month voyage through the Gilbert Islands to Samoa aboard the 'Equator'. It was here that Stevenson bought an estate he named Vailima. After another voyage, aboard the trading steamer the 'Janet Nicoll', Stevenson returned to Vailima. He died here on the 3rd December 1894 of a brain haemorrhage at the age of 44, leaving what many consider his best work, Weir of Hermiston (1896) unfinished.

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People > Adults > Men

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Places > Oceania > Paumotus Islands

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"Donat, Interior Governor at Government House", p.11