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“Strike, and strike home!”
Maurice Greiffenhagen
1888
Lithograph
12.4 cm high by 8.7 cm wide (5 by 3 ½ inches), facing p. 257 in Chapter XXII, “Job Has a Presentiment,” framed
Fourteenth regular illustration for H. Rider Haggard's SHE: A History of Adventure, facing page 257 in the Longman's British edition (1888).
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham
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“Did I not tell thee one day, when we did talk of good and evil, O Holly — it was when my beloved lay so ill — that out of good came evil, and out of evil good — that they who sowed knew not what the crop should be, nor he who struck where the blow should fall? See, now: this Egyptian Amenartas, this royal child of the Nile who hated me, and whom even now I hate, for in a way she did prevail against me — see, now, she herself hath been the very means to bring her lover to mine arms! For her sake I slew him, and now, behold, through her he hath come back to me! She would have done me evil, and sowed her seeds that I might reap tares, and behold she hath given me more than all the world can give, and there is a strange square for thee to fit into thy circle of good and evil, oh Holly!
“And so,” she went on, after a pause — “and so she bade her son destroy me if he might, because I slew his father. And thou, my Kallikrates, art the father, and in a sense thou art likewise the son; and wouldst thou avenge thy wrong, and the wrong of that far-off mother of thine, upon me, oh Kallikrates? See,” and she slid to her knees, and drew the white corsage still farther down her ivory bosom — “see, here beats my heart, and there by thy side is a knife, heavy, and long, and sharp, the very knife to slay an erring woman with. Take it now, and be avenged. Strike, and strike home! — so shalt thou be satisfied, Kallikrates, and go through life a happy man, because thou hast paid back the wrong, and obeyed the mandate of the past.”
He looked at her, and then stretched out his hand and lifted her to her feet. [Chapter XXII, “Job Has a Presentiment,” pp. 257-258]
1. I regret to say that I was never able to ascertain if She was invulnerable against the ordinary accidents of life. Presumably this was so, else some misadventure would have been sure to put an end to her in the course of so many centuries. True, she offered to let Leo slay her, but very probably this was only an experiment to try his temper and mental attitude towards her. Ayesha never gave way to impulse without some valid object. — L. H. H. [Footnote at the curtain of Chapter XXII, 260]
Whatever is Ayesha up to here? Is this an exercise in pure theatrics? How can this immortal being be slain? Or, if she is indeed vulnerable, surely she knows hat the youth in her power and utterly devoted to her is not about to stab her to avenge the murder of Kallikrates, his distant ancestors, two millenia earlier? The atmospheric picture is not without merit, as its dark-and-light chiaroscuro reflects the contention between life and death. The effect betokens white-clad Ayesha's love for the young Englishman in the darkness, which may suggest his lack of understanding. And the scene reflects, too, Ayesha's having offered to make both Leo and Holly immortal (or, at least, incredibly long-lived) by taking them to bathe in a mystical fire at the lost city of Kôr. Her real object, then, seems to be to make Leo as herself, and therefore able to enjoy a physical relationship with her after a miraculous transformation in "the place of Life": "then, Kallikrates [Leo], thou mayest call me wife, and I will call thee husband" (253). And thus suitably matched, she adds, they can travel back to England, where she will somehow wrest power from Queen Victoria and rule the British Empire.
Brantlinger, Patrick. Introduction. She: A History of Adventure. By H. Rider Haggard. London: Penguin, 2004. vii-xxviii.
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 17 May 2025