"When he recovered his head was leaning on Haroun's knee" by John McLenan for Bulwer-Lytton's "A Strange Story" in "Harper's Weekly" (23 November 1861)

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"When he recovered his head was leaning on Haroun's knee."

John McLenan

1861

Wood engraving

11.5 cm. by 11.5 cm. (4 ½ inches)

Bulwer-Lytton's A Strange Story

Harper's Weekly 5 (23 November 1861): 747.

Image scan 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 the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Passage Illustrated in the Vignette: Grayle pleads with Haroun for the Elixir of Life

And Grayle bowed his head and covered his face with his hands in silence and in trembling.

Then Sir Philip, seized with compassion, pleaded for him. “At least, could not the soul have longer time on earth for repentance?” And while Sir Philip was so pleading, Grayle fell prostrate in a swoon like that of death. When he recovered, his head was leaning on Haroun’s knee, and his opening eyes fixed on the glittering phial which Haroun held, and from which his lips had been moistened.

“Wondrous!” he murmured: “how I feel life flowing back to me. And that, then, is the elixir! it is no fable!” [Chapter XXXIX: 747.]

Commentary: The Elixir of Life Sought After by Grayle to Avert Certain Death

The figure seated is the mystic sage himself, Haroun himself; at his knee, in a begging posture is the amoral Louis Grayle — not looking nearly as decrepit as Bulwer-Lytton describes him: a fallen and unhappy wretch wh has fallen on his knees, and now trembling as he utters despairing entries, begging for the glittering phial which Haroun holds.

However, John McLenan's Louis Grayle hardly looks as if he is an aged traveller approaching death, and McLenan's aged sage looks much more like a conventional European chemist than a religious visionary. The third figure, Sir Philip Derval, who intercedes on Grayle's behalf, looks rather like Haroun. Consequently, McLenan has hardly made the most of this realisation of a highly dramatic moment in this sixteenth instalment.

Bibliography

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G. D. A Strange Story. Illustrated by John McLenan. Harper's Weekly V, 10 August — 8 March 1862.

Bulwer Lytton, Edward (Lord Lytton). A Strange Story. The Works of Edward Bulwer Lytton, Vol. VII. New York: P. F. Collier, n. d. Pp. 7-242.

Created 21 November 2007

Last modified 4 July 2026