Notes

In a typed note signed and dated 18 May 1999, Mr J E Holloway, son of the original owner, records how the family obtained this work.
“I was a boy of 13 or 14 when one day I went shopping with my mother, Tienie Holloway (wife of Dr J.E. Holloway, then secretary for Finance) in central Pretoria. It was during the war years and many bodies were collecting money for various causes. My mother spent three shillings on raffles that morning.

In her own words: “For St John’s Ambulance because my brother Baden was up North as a medic through his St John’s work; for the Belgian Relief Fund because I learnt to love the Flemish people when Jack was studying in Ghent before and at the outbreak of the First World War; and for the Dutch Relief Fund because I wanted the Daggaroker”

I well remember the little shop in the old African Arcade which the Dutch Relief Fund had rented for their fundraising. In pride of place in the window stood the Daggaroker with a notice:

Donated by Anton van Wouw
Tickets 1/-
Value Sixty Pounds

Time passed and one evening as the family was starting dinner I answered a knock at the front door. There was Mijnheer Johannes Postmus, Governor of the S.A. Reserve Bank, whom I knew well as his son and I were good friends. Postmus, who it transpired was also Chairman of the Dutch Relief Fund, asked to see my father. Presently my father called me back to the front door and together we took delivery of the Daggaroker. We returned to the dinner table and, much to my mother’s consternation said not a word. Dinner finished, we went to the lounge as usual, and there on the small stinkwood cabinet next to the front door reposed the Daggaroker, a place of honour which it retained for all our years in “Ellensgate”.

Caption to photograph.
Dr J.E. Holloway and his wife Tienie in the entrance hall of “Highveld”, the residence of the South African High Commissioner in London, with The Dagga Smoker on the table. Dr Holloway served as High Commissioner from 1956 to 1958.

Literature

Duffey, AE. (2008) Anton van Wouw: The Smaller Works, Pretoria: Protea Book House. Another cast from the edition illustrated on pages 61 to 62.

Duffey, AE. (1981) Anton van Wouw 1862-1945 en die Van Wouwhuis, Pretoria: University of Pretoria. Another cast from the edition illustrated on page 32.