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“The Casket”
Maurice Greiffenhagen
1888
Lithograph
10.5 cm high by 8.3 cm wide (4 ⅛ by 3 ¼ inches), facing p. 33, framed
Second illustration for H. Rider Haggard's SHE: A History of Adventure, facing page 33 in the Longman's British edition (1888).
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned images and text by Philip V. Allingham
“Now are you both ready?” I said, as people do when they are going to fire a mine. There was no answer, so I took the big key, rubbed some salad oil into the wards, and after one or two bad shots, for my hands were shaking, managed to fit it, and shoot the lock. Leo bent over and caught the massive lid in both his hands, and with an effort, for the hinges had rusted, forced it back. Its removal revealed another case covered with dust. This we extracted from the iron chest without any difficulty, and removed the accumulated filth of years from it with a clothes-brush.
It was, or appeared to be, of ebony, or some such close-grained black wood, and was bound in every direction with flat bands of iron. Its antiquity must have been extreme, for the dense heavy wood was in parts actually commencing to crumble from age.
“Now for it,” I said, inserting the second key.
Job and Leo bent forward in breathless silence. The key turned, and I flung back the lid, and uttered an exclamation, and no wonder, for inside the ebony case was a magnificent silver casket, about twelve inches square by eight high. It appeared to be of Egyptian workmanship, and the four legs were formed of Sphinxes, and the dome-shaped cover was also surmounted by a Sphinx. The casket was of course much tarnished and dinted with age, but otherwise in fairly sound condition. [Chapter III, "The Sherd of Amenartas," pp. 32-33]
The novel begins in a don's rooms on an evening at the University of Cambridge. Ludwig Horace Holly, who has recently acquired a fellowship in languages ancient and modern, receives an ominous visitor, his old friend, John Vincey. Vincey, heir to a brewing fortune somewhat impaired, morosely claims that for mystical reasons related to his ancient family lineage, he must inevitably die this very night. Worried about both his five-year-old son, Leo, and an ancient casket that has come into his possession from outside Europe, Vincey asks Holly to take care of both his boy, Leo, and the mysterious iron chest, which he insists not be opened until Leo reaches twenty-five years of age. Though hesitant, Holly agrees to his pleas, especially since John intends to leave him a thousand pounds annually to bring up the boy. The next day, he is astonished to learn from his servant that Vincey has been found dead. Greiffenhagen entirely leaves out of his narrative-pictorial programme the scene, depicted in The Graphic, when John Vincey arrives at Holly's door dragging the iron casket.
As requested, Holly goes on to raise Leo as if he is his own family. On Leo’s twenty-fifth birthday, they open the locked box together and discover a fragment of pottery called the "Sherd of Amenartas." Glyphs inscribed on the ancient Sherd seem to support Vincey’s account of his strange familial past. In search of the truth, Holly and Leo resolve to travel to its self-referenced place of origin, the East African ruins of Kôr, mentioned in the shard. This is the scene that appears in the second serial instalment, and which Greiffenhagen realizes as the first regular lithograph in his 1888 series of eighteen small-scale lithographs. He very likely saw Johnson's large-scale composite woodblock engraving of the same scene.
Having been permitted to do so by the college administration once his adopted son, Leo, turned sixteen, Holly is now back in his Cambridge rooms. He has retained his servant, Job, whom the illustrator has placed in the background. Greiffenhagen gives prominence to the startlingly blond-haired youth studying the casket, the Apollo-like Leo, who has been labelled "The Beauty" by the undergraduates, in contrast to their dubbing Holly "The Beast." He looks very much like Johnson's version in the magazine serial. However, the volume illustrator has greatly reduced the background, Holly's library, in order to emphasize the three figures.
Above: E. K. Johnson's serial illustration of the scene: “At last the lock yielded, and the casket stood open before us.” (9 October 1886).
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.
Created 5 May 2025