Presentation made to Mrs T Stevenson at Tautira, p. 38

Category

Museums & Galleries Item

Item no

19357

Title

p. 38, Presentation made to Mrs T Stevenson by women communicants of Protestant church, Tautira

Description

A large group of women and children stand with Margaret Stevenson (Mrs Thomas Stevenson) in the centre at Tautira on Tahiti. Gifts are laid out on the ground in front. The women are mostly wearing long dresses and hats. Palm trees can be seen in the background.

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

13.5 x 15.2 cm

Type

Photograph

Location

Writers' Museum

Margaret Stevenson, mother of the author and poet Robert Stevenson, attended services in the Protestant Church in Tautira and was befriended by the women of the congregation who presented her with gifts, laying them on the grass in front of the house - "Six hens, one dozen eggs, one lobster, one hundred cocoa-nuts, two large bunches of green bananas, two baskets of ripe bananas, two bunches of wild bananas for cooking, one basket of sweet potatoes, two bundles of taro, two bunches of bread-fruit, and three pineapples!". She was keen to return the gift, and had been unsatisfied with the old beer bottles used as communion vessels, and so on her return to Scotland in July 1889, she arranged to send the congregation a set of communion vessels.

This image was taken in November-December 1888 while the Stevenson family were staying at Tautira. Princess Moe had organised for the Stevenson party to move into the house of Ori a Ori, the sub chief of the village and deacon of the Protestant Church in Tautira after it became apparent that they were to have an extended stay on the Island. Ori, and his family moved to another house during this time.

Tahiti is one of the Windward Islands of French Polynesia, in the southern Pacific Ocean. The capital is Papeete which is situated on the northwest coast.

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). From the late 1880s, Stevenson stayed in the South Pacific with his family on his own estate in Vailima in Samoa. 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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Related subjects

Clothing and dress > Garments > Dresses

People > Adults > Women

Places > Oceania > Tahiti

Plants > Trees > Palms

Religion > Religious facilities > Protestant churches

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