In March 1922 the Italian painter and sculptor Francesco La Monaca produced a bust of Sir Henry Rider Haggard, the author of King Solomon’s Mines, Allan Quatermain and She, which formed part of an exhibition at the Bromhead, Cutts and Company’s Fine Art Gallery, 18 Cork Street, London, featuring 34 busts in bronze and marble by La Monaca of eminent English figures of the time including George Bernard Shaw, Sybil Thorndike, and Randall Davidson, the Archbishop of Canterbury. According to Haggard the bust was judged ‘a fine and vital work of art.’
In 1932 the bronze found its way to Pretoria and was exhibited along with other Haggard related items in a glass case at the Pretoria Publicity Association where they were still available for viewing in 1955 according to an article in the Rand Daily Mail published in August of that year. Where they are now is a mystery.
Haggard died in 1925 and in 1932 his widow Lady Louisa Haggard donated the bust and seventeen other items connected with her late husband to the Pretoria Publicity Association. These included a single barrelled rifle made by J. Purdey of London in 1835 used by Haggard in life and in his books by his fictional alter ego Allan Quatermain. This was accompanied by Haggard’s stirrups, some Zulu artefacts and several Martini-Henry cartridge cases retrieved from the battlefield of Isandlwana by Haggard in 1914. There were also some photographs: one of the raising of the British flag over Pretoria...
