“Come!”, twelfth lithograph by Murice Greiffenhagen, R. A., in H. Rider Haggard's She: A History of Adventure (1888), 3 ⅝ by 5 ¼ inches (9.1 cm high by 13.4 cm wide), facing p. 233 in Chapter XX, “Triumph.” [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Passage Illustrated: Kallikrates' Descendant, Leo, Now the Beloved of Ayesha
“Oh, great Heaven!” gasped Leo, “art thou a woman?”
“A woman in truth — in very truth — and thine own spouse, Kallikrates!” she answered, stretching out her rounded ivory arms towards him, and smiling, ah, so sweetly!
He looked and looked, and slowly I perceived that he was drawing nearer to her. Suddenly his eye fell upon the corpse of poor Ustane, and he shuddered and stopped.
“How can I?” he said hoarsely. “Thou art a murderess; she loved me.”
Observe, he was already forgetting that he had loved her.
“It is naught,” she murmured, and her voice sounded sweet as the night-wind passing through the trees. “It is naught at all. If I have sinned, let my beauty answer for my sin. If I have sinned, it is for love of thee: let my sin, therefore, be put away and forgotten;” and once more she stretched out her arms and whispered “Come,” and then in another few seconds it was all over. I saw him struggle — I saw him even turn to fly; but her eyes drew him more strongly than iron bonds, and the magic of her beauty and concentrated will and passion entered into him and overpowered him — ay, even there, in the presence of the body of the woman who had loved him well enough to die for him. It sounds horrible and wicked enough, but he should not be too greatly blamed, and be sure his sin will find him out. The temptress who drew him into evil was more than human, and her beauty was greater than the loveliness of the daughters of men.
I looked up again and now her perfect form lay in his arms, and her lips were pressed against his own; and thus, with the corpse of his dead love for an altar, did Leo Vincey plight his troth to her red-handed murderess — plight it for ever and a day. For those who sell themselves into a like dominion, paying down the price of their own honour, and throwing their soul into the balance to sink the scale to the level of their lusts, can hope for no deliverance here or hereafter. As they have sown, so shall they reap and reap, even when the poppy flowers of passion have withered in their hands, and their harvest is but bitter tares, garnered in satiety. I looked up again and now her perfect form lay in his arms, and her lips were pressed against his own; and thus, with the corpse of his dead love for an altar, did Leo Vincey plight his troth to her red-handed murderess — plight it for ever and a day. For those who sell themselves into a like dominion, paying down the price of their own honour, and throwing their soul into the balance to sink the scale to the level of their lusts, can hope for no deliverance here or hereafter. As they have sown, so shall they reap and reap, even when the poppy flowers of passion have withered in their hands, and their harvest is but bitter tares, garnered in satiety. [Chapter XX, “Triumph,” pp. 233-234 ]
Commentary: A Complicated "Romantic Triangle" — KalliKrates Mummified and Reincarnated
Queen Ayesha and Leo, stunningly handsome Cambridge graduate, looking into each other’s eyes, seem blissfully unaware of the "stone-dead" Ustane, hovering over her, the incensed narrator, the bearded Horace Holly, in jungle kit like Leo's, with a prominent revolver-case at his hip. With its beautifully dressed ancient-world backdrop of the tomb and dramatic freeze of the five characters, including the rival whom Ayesha has just slain with a mere gesture, Greiffenhagen has imbued the dramatic moment realized with an almost baroque theatrical intensity. In the background (right), one of Ayesha's mute attendants seems puzzled at her mistress's behaviour. The small-scale plate, the second of his horizontally oriented lithographs in the series for this novel, is among his most “painterly,” but rendered in murky black-and-white lithography it is not entirely successful. Although he enjoyed illustrating his friend Haggard’s highly picturesque romances, Greiffenhagen was apparently not comfortable with being limited to such small-scale, black-and-white illustration:
His friendship with H. Rider Haggard led to him illustrating the author's popular adventure books, starting with an edition of She: A History of Adventure in 1889 [sic] – though Greiffenhagen apparently "disliked doing black-and-white work". He illustrated the serialisation of Ayesha: The Return of She (1904–05). [Ellis, 179]
Related Material: Ustane, Leo, and Holly in The Graphic
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose, as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned it, and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Brantlinger, Patrick. Introduction. She: A History of Adventure. By H. Rider Haggard. London: Penguin, 2004. vii-xxviii.
Ellis, P. B. H. Rider Haggard: A Voice from the Infinite. London: Routledge, 1978.
Haggard, H. Rider. "SHE:" A History of Adventure. Illustrated by E. K. Johnson. The Graphic Magazine, Vols. XXXIV and XXXV. 2 October 1886 to 8 January 1887.
Haggard. H. Rider. SHE: A History of Adventure. Illustrated by E. K. Johnson. New York: Harper & Bros., 1887.
Haggard, H. Rider. SHE: A History of Adventure. Illustrated by Maurice Greiffenhagen and Charles H. M. Kerr. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1888, rpt. 1927.
Haggard, H. Rider. She. Project Gutenberg EBook #3155 produced by John Bickers; Dagny; William Kyngesburye; David Kyngesburye; David Widger. 2016. Web. Accessed 9 May 2025.
Created 16 May 2025