The real Dr. Funk - Tiki Drinks and Food

T TikiTomD Grand Member (6 years) Flagler Beach, FL Joined: Sep 20, 2009 Posts: 700	T TikiTomD Posted posted on Thu, Mar 29, 2012 11:52 AM Why, thank you, Surfacabra. Stay tuned, as there’s still a bit of telling in this tale. Though the cheery, booming voice of our bold medico no longer reverberates through the villages of Western Samoa, there remain many traces of Dr. Funk still to be found for those willing to dig, though they be scattered like the ashes of his cigar in a gale... Whenever Dr. Funk made an appearance, he filled the room with his ebullient presence. In the example cited below from Our Samoan Adventure, Fanny Stevenson wished he could have restrained it a bit... April 23, 1891 Dr. Funk and his wife were regular attendees at the fancy dress balls hosted by the Stevenson family. At one of these, Dr. Funk managed to create a spectacle by starting an argument with Wilhelm Ahrens, a local German clerk, as delightedly related by Louis in The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson – Volume 8... June 18, 1893 (Louis writing to Maggie Stevenson) Leilani Bargoyne in “Going ‘Troppo’ in the South Pacific: Dr. Bernhard Funk of Samoa 1844–1911” cited Otto Riedel, a German plantation owner, as recalling “that Funk was well-known in Apia for parties he hosted in his two Samoan huts (fale) at the back of his house.” In Sven Mönter’s PhD thesis, “Dr. Augustin Krämer: A German Ethnologist in the Pacific,” he states “Krämer, as his diaries illustrate, was also a guest on numerous parties and Bierabende (“Beer Nights”) organized by Dr. Bernhard Funk." Louis recounts his intention of attending one (of many) in The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson – Volume 8... July 17, 1894 (Louis writing to Sidney Colvin) Samoan fale under construction, from Lewella Pierce Churchill’s Samoa `Uma, where life is different... Architectural diagrams from Te`o Tuvale’s An Account of Samoan History up to 1918... Robert Louis Stevenson's birthday party, at Vailima, ca 1893 Reference Number: PA1-o-546-25 Robert Louis Stevenson's birthday party, at Vailima, taken ca 1893 by an unknown photographer The photo caption above, from the National Library of New Zealand archives, is actually mislabeled according to the “Image Library of Edinburgh City Libraries and Museums and Galleries “: The correct caption should be *Feast at Vailima* for the opening of the “Road of the Loving Hearts” (7 October 1894)*. The description is ”People line either side of the veranda at Vailima on Samoa. On the house side as well as native Samoans sit Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson; Lloyd Osbourne; Austin Strong and Margaret Stevenson. Some Samoan women on the right have kava bowls in front of them.” The photo from the RLS web site is clearer... This photo shows RLS sitting at a table flanked by two native women in the Sans Souci bar room on Butaritari in the Gilbert Islands; Lloyd Osbourne, his step-son, is at the bar wearing a stripy jacket and holding a small glass, from the RLS web site... This was taken during the Stevenson’s 1889 voyage of the South Seas on the Equator. In Chapter 24 of his posthumously published 1896 book, In the South Seas, Louis describes the San Souci bar... It was small, but neatly fitted, and at night (when the lamp was lit) sparkled with glass and glowed with coloured pictures like a theatre at Christmas. The pictures were advertisements, the glass coarse enough, the carpentry amateur; but the effect, in that incongruous isle, was of unbridled luxury and inestimable expense. Here songs were sung, tales told, tricks performed, games played. The Ricks, ourselves, Norwegian Tom the bar-keeper, a captain or two from the ships, and perhaps three or four traders come down the island in their boats or by the road on foot, made up the usual company. RLS (left, back) is honored at a Hawaiian luau given by His Majesty King Kalakaua (center, back) of the Hawaiian Islands at Waikiki in 1889, also from the RLS web site... To be continued... -Tom Edit Note: Corrected RLS Sans Souci bar photo origin as his voyage to Butaritari on the Equator, not the later voyage on the Janet Nicol*. Added RLS quote about the bar. [ Edited by: TikiTomD 2012-03-30 19:25 ]

Why, thank you, Surfacabra. Stay tuned, as there’s still a bit of telling in this tale. Though the cheery, booming voice of our bold medico no longer reverberates through the villages of Western Samoa, there remain many traces of Dr. Funk still to be found for those willing to dig, though they be scattered like the ashes of his cigar in a gale...

Whenever Dr. Funk made an appearance, he filled the room with his ebullient presence. In the example cited below from Our Samoan Adventure, Fanny Stevenson wished he could have restrained it a bit...

April 23, 1891

Dr. Funk and his wife were regular attendees at the fancy dress balls hosted by the Stevenson family. At one of these, Dr. Funk managed to create a spectacle by starting an argument with Wilhelm Ahrens, a local German clerk, as delightedly related by Louis in The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson – Volume 8...

June 18, 1893 (Louis writing to Maggie Stevenson)

Leilani Bargoyne in “Going ‘Troppo’ in the South Pacific: Dr. Bernhard Funk of Samoa 1844–1911” cited Otto Riedel, a German plantation owner, as recalling “that Funk was well-known in Apia for parties he hosted in his two Samoan huts (fale) at the back of his house.” In Sven Mönter’s PhD thesis, “Dr. Augustin Krämer: A German Ethnologist in the Pacific,” he states “Krämer, as his diaries illustrate, was also a guest on numerous parties and Bierabende (“Beer Nights”) organized by Dr. Bernhard Funk." Louis recounts his intention of attending one (of many) in The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson – Volume 8...

July 17, 1894 (Louis writing to Sidney Colvin)

Samoan fale under construction, from Lewella Pierce Churchill’s Samoa `Uma, where life is different...

Architectural diagrams from Te`o Tuvale’s An Account of Samoan History up to 1918...

**Robert Louis Stevenson's birthday party, at Vailima, ca 1893
Reference Number: PA1-o-546-25**
Robert Louis Stevenson's birthday party, at Vailima, taken ca 1893 by an unknown photographer

The photo caption above, from the National Library of New Zealand archives, is actually mislabeled according to the “Image Library of Edinburgh City Libraries and Museums and Galleries “: The correct caption should be Feast at Vailima for the opening of the “Road of the Loving Hearts” (7 October 1894). The description is ”People line either side of the veranda at Vailima on Samoa. On the house side as well as native Samoans sit Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson; Lloyd Osbourne; Austin Strong and Margaret Stevenson. Some Samoan women on the right have kava bowls in front of them.” The photo from the RLS web site is clearer...

This photo shows RLS sitting at a table flanked by two native women in the Sans Souci bar room on Butaritari in the Gilbert Islands; Lloyd Osbourne, his step-son, is at the bar wearing a stripy jacket and holding a small glass, from the RLS web site...

This was taken during the Stevenson’s 1889 voyage of the South Seas on the Equator. In Chapter 24 of his posthumously published 1896 book, In the South Seas, Louis describes the San Souci bar...

It was small, but neatly fitted, and at night (when the lamp was lit) sparkled with glass and glowed with coloured pictures like a theatre at Christmas. The pictures were advertisements, the glass coarse enough, the carpentry amateur; but the effect, in that incongruous isle, was of unbridled luxury and inestimable expense. Here songs were sung, tales told, tricks performed, games played. The Ricks, ourselves, Norwegian Tom the bar-keeper, a captain or two from the ships, and perhaps three or four traders come down the island in their boats or by the road on foot, made up the usual company.

RLS (left, back) is honored at a Hawaiian luau given by His Majesty King Kalakaua (center, back) of the Hawaiian Islands at Waikiki in 1889, also from the RLS web site...

To be continued...

-Tom

Edit Note: Corrected RLS Sans Souci bar photo origin as his voyage to Butaritari on the Equator, not the later voyage on the Janet Nicol. Added RLS quote about the bar.

[ Edited by: TikiTomD 2012-03-30 19:25 ]

Post #630550 by TikiTomD on Thu, Mar 29, 2012 11:52 AM