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The recovered manuscripts In addition to the African objects, the RMV also houses Schuver's original journals, transferred to the museum in 1998. Before he began what was clearly to be his last journey, Schuver had sent his English and French texts to the journalist M.S. de Montmorency, his old acquaintance from the Second Carlist War, [51] who was to ensure the translation of the French texts into English, and publication of the whole. This never came about and the manuscripts were lost. A German publication, based on his French and English writings, appeared in 1883, but the manuscripts used for this translation were lost as well. [52] When the anthropologists Wendy James (British) and Gerd Baumann (German), and the American historian Douglas Johnson, wanted to publish an English-language version of Schuver's travel reports, they went in search of Schuver's manuscripts. H. Leyten, acting in their name, established contact with Schuver family's descendants. It was Jan Schuver in Hengelo who, in the course of his enquiries among family members, heard from a great-aunt that her father, a great-great nephew of Juan Maria Schuver, had once stored some relevant documents in a shoe box. Jan Schuver went in search of these papers in the house on the Amstel where his father had once lived with his family. In the long space between two sections of the double wall over a sliding door, he found the manuscripts described by his great-aunt. [53] Thus, over a century after Schuver's death, the English edition of his writings at last appeared in print. In 1998 Jan Schuver donated the manuscripts he had discovered to the RMV. | |
