[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> Maurice Greiffenhagen —> Next]
[Leo and Holly on the Cliff]
Maurice Greiffenhagen
1896
Lithograph
11.5 cm high by 8.6 cm wide (4 ½ by 3 ½ inches), mid-page 300, framed
Penultimate illustration for H. Rider Haggard's SHE: A History of Adventure in the Longman's British-American edition (1896).
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham
Clearly all that we could do was to trust to our sense of feeling, and attempt the passage in the dark, so in we crept, fearing that if we delayed to do so our exhaustion would overcome us, and we should probably lie down and die where we were.
Oh, the horrors of that last tunnel! The place was strewn with rocks, and we fell over them, and knocked ourselves up against them till we were bleeding from a score of wounds. Our only guide was the side of the cavern, which we kept touching, and so bewildered did we grow in the darkness that we were several times seized with the terrifying thought that we had turned, and were travelling the wrong way. On we went, feebly, and still more feebly, for hour after hour, stopping every few minutes to rest, for our strength was spent. Once we fell asleep, and, I think, must have slept for some hours, for, when we woke, our limbs were quite stiff, and the blood from our blows and scratches had caked, and was hard and dry upon our skin. Then we dragged ourselves on again, till at last, when despair was entering into our hearts, we once more saw the light of day, and found ourselves outside the tunnel in the rocky fold on the outer surface of the cliff that, it will be remembered, led into it.
It was early morning — that we could tell by the feel of the sweet air and the look of the blessed sky, which we had never hoped to see again. It was, so near as we knew, an hour after sunset when we entered the tunnel, so it followed that it had taken us the entire night to crawl through that dreadful place. [Chapter XXVII, "We Leap," pp. 299-300]
Both concluding illustrations in the 1896 edition realise similar moments when Leo and Holly are risking their lives to escape the Cave of Fire, where both Job and Ayesha have perished. Having lost the board with which they initially traversed the gulf, Leo and Holly have had to leap across to grab the spur of rock (shown in the previous plate). Here Holly, two decades older than his lithe companion, leans on white-haired, prematurely aged Leo for support on the narrow ledge.
Of course, Greiffenghahen would have had amply opportunity to study Johnson's final serial illustration before composing his own; and for the summative 1896 edition he augmented the cliff-hanger suspense with this second scene on the cliff face. Although these lithographic plates lack the sharpness of Johnson's composite woodblock engraving, they effectively complement the suspenseful episode in Chapter XXVII, "We Leap." Whereas the first shows the yawning chasm of the gulf, this follow-up illustration realizes the close relationship between the physically fit undergraduate and the nervous, awkward Cambridge professor, not hinting at the outcome of this perilous passage through the volcanic caverns.
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 4 June 2025