The Picture of Dorian Gray
by
Oscar Wilde
Part 3 out of 5
been abject--which, of course, I would not have allowed--
but I assure you that in any case the whole thing would have been an
absolute failure."
"I suppose it would," muttered the lad, walking up and down the room
and looking horribly pale. "But I thought it was my duty.
It is not my fault that this terrible tragedy has prevented my doing
what was right. I remember your saying once that there is a fatality
about good resolutions--that they are always made too late.
Mine certainly were."
"Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere
with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity.
Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then,
some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain
charm for the weak. That is all that can be said for them.
They are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have
no account."
"Harry," cried Dorian Gray, coming over and sitting down beside him,
"why is it that I cannot feel this tragedy as much as I want to?
I don't think I am heartless. Do you?"
"You have done too many foolish things during the last fortnight
to be entitled to give yourself that name, Dorian," answered Lord
Henry with his sweet melancholy smile.
The lad frowned. "I don't like that explanation, Harry," he rejoined,
"but I am glad you don't think I am heartless. I am nothing of the kind.
I know I am not. And yet I must admit that this thing that has happened
does not affect me as it should. It seems to me to be simply like a
wonderful ending to a wonderful play. It has all the terrible beauty
of a Greek tragedy, a tragedy in which I took a great part, but by which I
have not been wounded."
"It is an interesting question," said Lord Henry, who found
an exquisite pleasure in playing on the lad's unconscious egotism,
"an extremely interesting question. I fancy that the true
explanation is this: It often happens that the real tragedies
of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt
us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence,
their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style.
They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give us
an impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that.
Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements
of beauty crosses our lives. If these elements of beauty are real,
the whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect.
Suddenly we find that we are no longer the actors,
but the spectators of the play. Or rather we are both.
We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder of the spectacle
enthralls us. In the present case, what is it that has
really happened? Some one has killed herself for love of you.
I wish that I had ever had such an experience. It would
have made me in love with love for the rest of my life.
The people who have adored me--there have not been very many,
but there have been some--have always insisted on living on,
long after I had ceased to care for them, or they to care for me.
They have become stout and tedious, and when I meet them,
they go in at once for reminiscences. That awful memory of woman!
What a fearful thing it is! And what an utter intellectual
stagnation it reveals! One should absorb the colour of life,
but one should never remember its details. Details are always
vulgar."
"I must sow poppies in my garden," sighed Dorian.
"There is no necessity," rejoined his companion. "Life has always
poppies in her hands. Of course, now and then things linger.
I once wore nothing but violets all through one season,
as a form of artistic mourning for a romance that would not die.
Ultimately, however, it did die. I forget what killed it.
I think it was her proposing to sacrifice the whole world for me.
That is always a dreadful moment. It fills one with the terror
of eternity. Well--would you believe it?--a week ago,
at Lady Hampshire's, I found myself seated at dinner next
the lady in question, and she insisted on going over the whole
thing again, and digging up the past, and raking up the future.
I had buried my romance in a bed of asphodel. She dragged
it out again and assured me that I had spoiled her life.
I am bound to state that she ate an enormous dinner, so I did
not feel any anxiety. But what a lack of taste she showed!
The one charm of the past is that it is the past.
But women never know when the curtain has fallen.
They always want a sixth act, and as soon as the interest
of the play is entirely over, they propose to continue it.
If they were allowed their own way, every comedy would have
a tragic ending, and every tragedy would culminate in a farce.
They are charmingly artificial, but they have no sense of art.
You are more fortunate than I am. I assure you, Dorian, that not
one of the women I have known would have done for me what Sibyl
Vane did for you. Ordinary women always console themselves.
Some of them do it by going in for sentimental colours.
Never trust a woman who wears mauve, whatever her age may be,
or a woman over thirty-five who is fond of pink ribbons.
It always means that they have a history. Others find
a great consolation in suddenly discovering the good qualities
of their husbands. They flaunt their conjugal felicity
in one's face, as if it were the most fascinating of sins.
Religion consoles some. Its mysteries have all the charm
of a flirtation, a woman once told me, and I can quite
understand it. Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told
that one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all.
Yes; there is really no end to the consolations that women find
in modern life. Indeed, I have not mentioned the most important
one."
"What is that, Harry?" said the lad listlessly.
"Oh, the obvious consolation. Taking some one else's admirer when one
loses one's own. In good society that always whitewashes a woman.
But really, Dorian, how different Sibyl Vane must have been from all the women
one meets! There is something to me quite beautiful about her death.
I am glad I am living in a century when such wonders happen.
They make one believe in the reality of the things we all play with,
such as romance, passion, and love."
"I was terribly cruel to her. You forget that."
"I am afraid that women appreciate cruelty, downright cruelty,
more than anything else. They have wonderfully primitive instincts.
We have emancipated them, but they remain slaves looking for their masters,
all the same. They love being dominated. I am sure you were splendid.
I have never seen you really and absolutely angry, but I can fancy how
delightful you looked. And, after all, you said something to me the day
before yesterday that seemed to me at the time to be merely fanciful,
but that I see now was absolutely true, and it holds the key
to everything."
"What was that, Harry?"
"You said to me that Sibyl Vane represented to you all the heroines
of romance--that she was Desdemona one night, and Ophelia the other;
that if she died as Juliet, she came to life as Imogen."
"She will never come to life again now," muttered the lad,
burying his face in his hands.
"No, she will never come to life. She has played her last part.
But you must think of that lonely death in the tawdry dressing-room
simply as a strange lurid fragment from some Jacobean tragedy,
as a wonderful scene from Webster, or Ford, or Cyril Tourneur.
The girl never really lived, and so she has never really died.
To you at least she was always a dream, a phantom that flitted
through Shakespeare's plays and left them lovelier for its presence,
a reed through which Shakespeare's music sounded richer and more
full of joy. The moment she touched actual life, she marred it,
and it marred her, and so she passed away. Mourn for Ophelia,
if you like. Put ashes on your head because Cordelia was strangled.
Cry out against Heaven because the daughter of Brabantio died.
But don't waste your tears over Sibyl Vane. She was less real than they
are."
There was a silence. The evening darkened in the room.
Noiselessly, and with silver feet, the shadows crept in from
the garden. The colours faded wearily out of things.
After some time Dorian Gray looked up. "You have explained me
to myself, Harry," he murmured with something of a sigh of relief.
"I felt all that you have said, but somehow I was afraid of it,
and I could not express it to myself. How well you know me!
But we will not talk again of what has happened. It has been
a marvellous experience. That is all. I wonder if life has still
in store for me anything as marvellous."
"Life has everything in store for you, Dorian. There is nothing that you,
with your extraordinary good looks, will not be able to do."
"But suppose, Harry, I became haggard, and old, and wrinkled?
What then?"
"Ah, then," said Lord Henry, rising to go, "then, my dear Dorian,
you would have to fight for your victories. As it is,
they are brought to you. No, you must keep your good looks.
We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that
thinks too much to be beautiful. We cannot spare you.
And now you had better dress and drive down to the club.
We are rather late, as it is."
"I think I shall join you at the opera, Harry. I feel too tired
to eat anything. What is the number of your sister's box?"
"Twenty-seven, I believe. It is on the grand tier.
You will see her name on the door. But I am sorry you won't
come and dine."
"I don't feel up to it," said Dorian listlessly. "But I am
awfully obliged to you for all that you have said to me.
You are certainly my best friend. No one has ever understood me
as you have."
"We are only at the beginning of our friendship, Dorian," answered Lord Henry,
shaking him by the hand. "Good-bye. I shall see you before nine-thirty,
I hope. Remember, Patti is singing."
As he closed the door behind him, Dorian Gray touched the bell,
and in a few minutes Victor appeared with the lamps and drew
the blinds down. He waited impatiently for him to go.
The man seemed to take an interminable time over everything.
As soon as he had left, he rushed to the screen and drew it back.
No; there was no further change in the picture. It had received
the news of Sibyl Vane's death before he had known of it himself.
It was conscious of the events of life as they occurred.
The vicious cruelty that marred the fine lines of the mouth had,
no doubt, appeared at the very moment that the girl had drunk
the poison, whatever it was. Or was it indifferent to results?
Did it merely take cognizance of what passed within the soul?
He wondered, and hoped that some day he would see the change taking place
before his very eyes, shuddering as he hoped it.
Poor Sibyl! What a romance it had all been! She had often mimicked
death on the stage. Then Death himself had touched her and taken
her with him. How had she played that dreadful last scene?
Had she cursed him, as she died? No; she had died for love of him,
and love would always be a sacrament to him now. She had atoned
for everything by the sacrifice she had made of her life.
He would not think any more of what she had made him go through,
on that horrible night at the theatre. When he thought of her,
it would be as a wonderful tragic figure sent on to the world's stage
to show the supreme reality of love. A wonderful tragic figure?
Tears came to his eyes as he remembered her childlike look, and winsome
fanciful ways, and shy tremulous grace. He brushed them away hastily and
looked again at the picture.
He felt that the time had really come for making his choice.
Or had his choice already been made? Yes, life had decided
that for him--life, and his own infinite curiosity about life.
Eternal youth, infinite passion, pleasures subtle and secret,
wild joys and wilder sins--he was to have all these things.
The portrait was to bear the burden of his shame:
that was all.
A feeling of pain crept over him as he thought of the desecration
that was in store for the fair face on the canvas. Once, in boyish
mockery of Narcissus, he had kissed, or feigned to kiss,
those painted lips that now smiled so cruelly at him.
Morning after morning he had sat before the portrait wondering at
its beauty, almost enamoured of it, as it seemed to him at times.
Was it to alter now with every mood to which he yielded?
Was it to become a monstrous and loathsome thing, to be hidden
away in a locked room, to be shut out from the sunlight that had
so often touched to brighter gold the waving wonder of its hair?
The pity of it! the pity of it!
For a moment, he thought of praying that the horrible sympathy
that existed between him and the picture might cease.
It had changed in answer to a prayer; perhaps in answer to a prayer
it might remain unchanged. And yet, who, that knew anything
about life, would surrender the chance of remaining always young,
however fantastic that chance might be, or with what fateful consequences
it might be fraught? Besides, was it really under his control?
Had it indeed been prayer that had produced the substitution?
Might there not be some curious scientific reason for it all?
If thought could exercise its influence upon a living organism,
might not thought exercise an influence upon dead and inorganic things?
Nay, without thought or conscious desire, might not things external
to ourselves vibrate in unison with our moods and passions,
atom calling to atom in secret love or strange affinity?
But the reason was of no importance. He would never again tempt
by a prayer any terrible power. If the picture was to alter,
it was to alter. That was all. Why inquire too closely
into it?
For there would be a real pleasure in watching it.
He would be able to follow his mind into its secret places.
This portrait would be to him the most magical of mirrors.
As it had revealed to him his own body, so it would reveal
to him his own soul. And when winter came upon it, he would
still be standing where spring trembles on the verge of summer.
When the blood crept from its face, and left behind a pallid mask
of chalk with leaden eyes, he would keep the glamour of boyhood.
Not one blossom of his loveliness would ever fade. Not one pulse
of his life would ever weaken. Like the gods of the Greeks,
he would be strong, and fleet, and joyous. What did it matter what
happened to the coloured image on the canvas? He would be safe.
That was everything.
He drew the screen back into its former place in front of the picture,
smiling as he did so, and passed into his bedroom, where his valet was
already waiting for him. An hour later he was at the opera, and Lord
Henry was leaning over his chair.
CHAPTER 9
As he was sitting at breakfast next morning, Basil Hallward was shown
into the room.
"I am so glad I have found you, Dorian," he said gravely.
"I called last night, and they told me you were at the opera.
Of course, I knew that was impossible. But I wish you had left
word where you had really gone to. I passed a dreadful evening,
half afraid that one tragedy might be followed by another.
I think you might have telegraphed for me when you heard of it first.
I read of it quite by chance in a late edition of The Globe
that I picked up at the club. I came here at once and was
miserable at not finding you. I can't tell you how heart-broken
I am about the whole thing. I know what you must suffer.
But where were you? Did you go down and see the girl's mother?
For a moment I thought of following you there. They gave
the address in the paper. Somewhere in the Euston Road, isn't it?
But I was afraid of intruding upon a sorrow that I could
not lighten. Poor woman! What a state she must be in!
And her only child, too! What did she say about it
all?"
"My dear Basil, how do I know?" murmured Dorian Gray, sipping some
pale-yellow wine from a delicate, gold-beaded bubble of Venetian
glass and looking dreadfully bored. "I was at the opera.
You should have come on there. I met Lady Gwendolen, Harry's sister,
for the first time. We were in her box. She is perfectly charming;
and Patti sang divinely. Don't talk about horrid subjects.
If one doesn't talk about a thing, it has never happened.
It is simply expression, as Harry says, that gives reality to things.
I may mention that she was not the woman's only child. There is
a son, a charming fellow, I believe. But he is not on the stage.
He is a sailor, or something. And now, tell me about yourself and what you
are painting."
"You went to the opera?" said Hallward, speaking very slowly
and with a strained touch of pain in his voice. "You went to
the opera while Sibyl Vane was lying dead in some sordid lodging?
You can talk to me of other women being charming, and of Patti
singing divinely, before the girl you loved has even the quiet
of a grave to sleep in? Why, man, there are horrors in store
for that little white body of hers!"
"Stop, Basil! I won't hear it!" cried Dorian, leaping to his feet.
"You must not tell me about things. What is done is done.
What is past is past."
"You call yesterday the past?"
"What has the actual lapse of time got to do with it? It is
only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion.
A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can
invent a pleasure. I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions.
I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them."
"Dorian, this is horrible! Something has changed you completely.
You look exactly the same wonderful boy who, day after day,
used to come down to my studio to sit for his picture.
But you were simple, natural, and affectionate then.
You were the most unspoiled creature in the whole world.
Now, I don't know what has come over you. You talk as if you
had no heart, no pity in you. It is all Harry's influence.
I see that."
The lad flushed up and, going to the window, looked out for
a few moments on the green, flickering, sun-lashed garden.
"I owe a great deal to Harry, Basil," he said at last,
"more than I owe to you. You only taught me to be vain."
"Well, I am punished for that, Dorian--or shall be some day."
"I don't know what you mean, Basil," he exclaimed, turning round.
"I don't know what you want. What do you want?"
"I want the Dorian Gray I used to paint," said the artist sadly.
"Basil," said the lad, going over to him and putting his hand
on his shoulder, "you have come too late. Yesterday, when I
heard that Sibyl Vane had killed herself--"
"Killed herself! Good heavens! is there no doubt about that?"
cried Hallward, looking up at him with an expression of horror.
"My dear Basil! Surely you don't think it was a vulgar accident?
Of course she killed herself."
The elder man buried his face in his hands. "How fearful,"
he muttered, and a shudder ran through him.
"No," said Dorian Gray, "there is nothing fearful about it.
It is one of the great romantic tragedies of the age.
As a rule, people who act lead the most commonplace lives.
They are good husbands, or faithful wives, or something tedious.
You know what I mean--middle-class virtue and all that kind of thing.
How different Sibyl was! She lived her finest tragedy.
She was always a heroine. The last night she played--
the night you saw her--she acted badly because she had known
the reality of love. When she knew its unreality, she died,
as Juliet might have died. She passed again into the sphere of art.
There is something of the martyr about her. Her death has all
the pathetic uselessness of martyrdom, all its wasted beauty.
But, as I was saying, you must not think I have not suffered.
If you had come in yesterday at a particular moment--
about half-past five, perhaps, or a quarter to six--
you would have found me in tears. Even Harry, who was here,
who brought me the news, in fact, had no idea what I was
going through. I suffered immensely. Then it passed away.
I cannot repeat an emotion. No one can, except sentimentalists.
And you are awfully unjust, Basil. You come down here to console me.
That is charming of you. You find me consoled, and you are furious.
How like a sympathetic person! You remind me of a story
Harry told me about a certain philanthropist who spent twenty
years of his life in trying to get some grievance redressed,
or some unjust law altered--I forget exactly what it was.
Finally he succeeded, and nothing could exceed his disappointment.
He had absolutely nothing to do, almost died of ennui, and became
a confirmed misanthrope. And besides, my dear old Basil,
if you really want to console me, teach me rather to forget what
has happened, or to see it from a proper artistic point of view.
Was it not Gautier who used to write about la consolation des arts?
I remember picking up a little vellum-covered book in your
studio one day and chancing on that delightful phrase.
Well, I am not like that young man you told me of when we
were down at Marlow together, the young man who used to say
that yellow satin could console one for all the miseries of life.
I love beautiful things that one can touch and handle.
Old brocades, green bronzes, lacquer-work, carved ivories,
exquisite surroundings, luxury, pomp--there is much to be got
from all these. But the artistic temperament that they create,
or at any rate reveal, is still more to me. To become
the spectator of one's own life, as Harry says, is to escape
the suffering of life. I know you are surprised at my talking
to you like this. You have not realized how I have developed.
I was a schoolboy when you knew me. I am a man now.
I have new passions, new thoughts, new ideas. I am different,
but you must not like me less. I am changed, but you must
always be my friend. Of course, I am very fond of Harry.
But I know that you are better than he is. You are not stronger--
you are too much afraid of life--but you are better. And how
happy we used to be together! Don't leave me, Basil, and don't
quarrel with me. I am what I am. There is nothing more to be
said."
The painter felt strangely moved. The lad was infinitely dear to him,
and his personality had been the great turning point in his art.
He could not bear the idea of reproaching him any more. After all,
his indifference was probably merely a mood that would pass away.
There was so much in him that was good, so much in him that
was noble.
"Well, Dorian," he said at length, with a sad smile, "I
won't speak to you again about this horrible thing, after to-day.
I only trust your name won't be mentioned in connection with it.
The inquest is to take place this afternoon. Have they summoned you?"
Dorian shook his head, and a look of annoyance passed over his face
at the mention of the word "inquest." There was something so crude
and vulgar about everything of the kind. "They don't know my name,"
he answered.
"But surely she did?"
"Only my Christian name, and that I am quite sure she never mentioned
to any one. She told me once that they were all rather curious to learn
who I was, and that she invariably told them my name was Prince Charming.
It was pretty of her. You must do me a drawing of Sibyl, Basil.
I should like to have something more of her than the memory of a few kisses
and some broken pathetic words."
"I will try and do something, Dorian, if it would please you.
But you must come and sit to me yourself again. I can't get on
without you."
"I can never sit to you again, Basil. It is impossible!"
he exclaimed, starting back.
The painter stared at him. "My dear boy, what nonsense!"
he cried. "Do you mean to say you don't like what I did of you?
Where is it? Why have you pulled the screen in front of it?
Let me look at it. It is the best thing I have ever done.
Do take the screen away, Dorian. It is simply disgraceful
of your servant hiding my work like that. I felt the room looked
different as I came in."
"My servant has nothing to do with it, Basil. You don't imagine I let
him arrange my room for me? He settles my flowers for me sometimes--
that is all. No; I did it myself. The light was too strong on
the portrait."
"Too strong! Surely not, my dear fellow? It is an admirable place for it.
Let me see it." And Hallward walked towards the corner of the room.
A cry of terror broke from Dorian Gray's lips, and he rushed
between the painter and the screen. "Basil," he said,
looking very pale, "you must not look at it. I don't wish
you to."
"Not look at my own work! You are not serious. Why shouldn't I look at it?"
exclaimed Hallward, laughing.
"If you try to look at it, Basil, on my word of honour I will
never speak to you again as long as I live. I am quite serious.
I don't offer any explanation, and you are not to ask for any.
But, remember, if you touch this screen, everything is over
between us."
Hallward was thunderstruck. He looked at Dorian Gray in
absolute amazement. He had never seen him like this before.
The lad was actually pallid with rage. His hands were clenched,
and the pupils of his eyes were like disks of blue fire.
He was trembling all over.
"Dorian!"
"Don't speak!"
"But what is the matter? Of course I won't look at it if you don't want
me to," he said, rather coldly, turning on his heel and going over towards
the window. "But, really, it seems rather absurd that I shouldn't see my
own work, especially as I am going to exhibit it in Paris in the autumn.
I shall probably have to give it another coat of varnish before that, so I
must see it some day, and why not to-day?"
"To exhibit it! You want to exhibit it?" exclaimed Dorian Gray,
a strange sense of terror creeping over him. Was the world going to be
shown his secret? Were people to gape at the mystery of his life?
That was impossible. Something--he did not know what--had to be done
at once.
"Yes; I don't suppose you will object to that. Georges Petit
is going to collect all my best pictures for a special exhibition
in the Rue de Seze, which will open the first week in October.
The portrait will only be away a month. I should think you could easily
spare it for that time. In fact, you are sure to be out of town.
And if you keep it always behind a screen, you can't care much
about it."
Dorian Gray passed his hand over his forehead. There were beads of
perspiration there. He felt that he was on the brink of a horrible danger.
"You told me a month ago that you would never exhibit it," he cried.
"Why have you changed your mind? You people who go in for being consistent
have just as many moods as others have. The only difference is that
your moods are rather meaningless. You can't have forgotten that you
assured me most solemnly that nothing in the world would induce you
to send it to any exhibition. You told Harry exactly the same thing."
He stopped suddenly, and a gleam of light came into his eyes. He remembered
that Lord Henry had said to him once, half seriously and half in jest,
"If you want to have a strange quarter of an hour, get Basil to tell you
why he won't exhibit your picture. He told me why he wouldn't, and it
was a revelation to me." Yes, perhaps Basil, too, had his secret.
He would ask him and try.
"Basil," he said, coming over quite close and looking him straight
in the face, "we have each of us a secret. Let me know yours,
and I shall tell you mine. What was your reason for refusing
to exhibit my picture?"
The painter shuddered in spite of himself. "Dorian, if I told you,
you might like me less than you do, and you would certainly laugh
at me. I could not bear your doing either of those two things.
If you wish me never to look at your picture again, I am content.
I have always you to look at. If you wish the best work I have ever done
to be hidden from the world, I am satisfied. Your friendship is dearer
to me than any fame or reputation."
"No, Basil, you must tell me," insisted Dorian Gray.
"I think I have a right to know." His feeling of terror
had passed away, and curiosity had taken its place.
He was determined to find out Basil Hallward's mystery.
"Let us sit down, Dorian," said the painter, looking troubled.
"Let us sit down. And just answer me one question.
Have you noticed in the picture something curious?--something that
probably at first did not strike you, but that revealed itself
to you suddenly?"
"Basil!" cried the lad, clutching the arms of his chair with trembling
hands and gazing at him with wild startled eyes.
"I see you did. Don't speak. Wait till you hear what I have to say.
Dorian, from the moment I met you, your personality had the most
extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul, brain, and power,
by you. You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen
ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream.
I worshipped you. I grew jealous of every one to whom you spoke.
I wanted to have you all to myself. I was only happy when I
was with you. When you were away from me, you were still present
in my art.... Of course, I never let you know anything about this.
It would have been impossible. You would not have understood it.
I hardly understood it myself. I only knew that I had seen perfection
face to face, and that the world had become wonderful to my eyes--
too wonderful, perhaps, for in such mad worships there is peril,
the peril of losing them, no less than the peril of keeping them....
Weeks and weeks went on, and I grew more and more absorbed in you.
Then came a new development. I had drawn you as Paris in
dainty armour, and as Adonis with huntsman's cloak and polished
boar-spear. Crowned with heavy lotus-blossoms you had sat on
the prow of Adrian's barge, gazing across the green turbid Nile.
You had leaned over the still pool of some Greek woodland and seen
in the water's silent silver the marvel of your own face.
And it had all been what art should be--unconscious, ideal, and remote.
One day, a fatal day I sometimes think, I determined to paint
a wonderful portrait of you as you actually are, not in the costume
of dead ages, but in your own dress and in your own time.
Whether it was the realism of the method, or the mere wonder
of your own personality, thus directly presented to me without
mist or veil, I cannot tell. But I know that as I worked at it,
every flake and film of colour seemed to me to reveal my secret.
I grew afraid that others would know of my idolatry. I felt, Dorian,
that I had told too much, that I had put too much of myself into it.
Then it was that I resolved never to allow the picture to be exhibited.
You were a little annoyed; but then you did not realize all that it
meant to me. Harry, to whom I talked about it, laughed at me.
But I did not mind that. When the picture was finished, and I sat
alone with it, I felt that I was right.... Well, after a few days
the thing left my studio, and as soon as I had got rid of the intolerable
fascination of its presence, it seemed to me that I had been foolish
in imagining that I had seen anything in it, more than that you
were extremely good-looking and that I could paint. Even now I
cannot help feeling that it is a mistake to think that the passion
one feels in creation is ever really shown in the work one creates.
Art is always more abstract than we fancy. Form and colour tell
us of form and colour--that is all. It often seems to me that art
conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him.
And so when I got this offer from Paris, I determined to make your
portrait the principal thing in my exhibition. It never occurred
to me that you would refuse. I see now that you were right.
The picture cannot be shown. You must not be angry with me, Dorian,
for what I have told you. As I said to Harry, once, you are made to be
worshipped."
Dorian Gray drew a long breath. The colour came back to his cheeks,
and a smile played about his lips. The peril was over.
He was safe for the time. Yet he could not help feeling
infinite pity for the painter who had just made this strange
confession to him, and wondered if he himself would ever
be so dominated by the personality of a friend. Lord Henry
had the charm of being very dangerous. But that was all.
He was too clever and too cynical to be really fond of.
Would there ever be some one who would fill him with a
strange idolatry? Was that one of the things that life had
in store?
"It is extraordinary to me, Dorian," said Hallward, "that you
should have seen this in the portrait. Did you really see it?"
"I saw something in it," he answered, "something that seemed
to me very curious."
"Well, you don't mind my looking at the thing now?"
Dorian shook his head. "You must not ask me that, Basil.
I could not possibly let you stand in front of that picture."
"You will some day, surely?"
"Never."
"Well, perhaps you are right. And now good-bye, Dorian.
You have been the one person in my life who has really influenced
my art. Whatever I have done that is good, I owe to you.
Ah! you don't know what it cost me to tell you all that I have
told you."
"My dear Basil," said Dorian, "what have you told me?
Simply that you felt that you admired me too much.
That is not even a compliment."
"It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession.
Now that I have made it, something seems to have gone out of me.
Perhaps one should never put one's worship into words."
"It was a very disappointing confession."
"Why, what did you expect, Dorian? You didn't see anything else
in the picture, did you? There was nothing else to see?"
"No; there was nothing else to see. Why do you ask?
But you mustn't talk about worship. It is foolish. You and I
are friends, Basil, and we must always remain so."
"You have got Harry," said the painter sadly.
"Oh, Harry!" cried the lad, with a ripple of laughter. "Harry spends
his days in saying what is incredible and his evenings in doing
what is improbable. Just the sort of life I would like to lead.
But still I don't think I would go to Harry if I were in trouble.
I would sooner go to you, Basil."
"You will sit to me again?"
"Impossible!"
"You spoil my life as an artist by refusing, Dorian. No man
comes across two ideal things. Few come across one."
"I can't explain it to you, Basil, but I must never sit to you again.
There is something fatal about a portrait. It has a life of its own.
I will come and have tea with you. That will be just as pleasant."
"Pleasanter for you, I am afraid," murmured Hallward regretfully.
"And now good-bye. I am sorry you won't let me look at the picture
once again. But that can't be helped. I quite understand what you feel
about it."
As he left the room, Dorian Gray smiled to himself. Poor Basil!
How little he knew of the true reason! And bow strange it
was that, instead of having been forced to reveal his own secret,
he had succeeded, almost by chance, in wresting a secret from
his friend! How much that strange confession explained to him!
The painter's absurd fits of jealousy, his wild devotion,
his extravagant panegyrics, his curious reticences--
he understood them all now, and he felt sorry. There seemed
to him to be something tragic in a friendship so coloured
by romance.
He sighed and touched the bell. The portrait must be hidden away
at all costs. He could not run such a risk of discovery again.
It had been mad of him to have allowed the thing to remain,
even for an hour, in a room to which any of his friends
had access.
CHAPTER 10
When his servant entered, he looked at him steadfastly
and wondered if he had thought of peering behind the screen.
The man was quite impassive and waited for his orders. Dorian lit
a cigarette and walked over to the glass and glanced into it.
He could see the reflection of Victor's face perfectly.
It was like a placid mask of servility. There was nothing
to be afraid of, there. Yet he thought it best to be on
his guard.
Speaking very slowly, he told him to tell the house-keeper that he wanted
to see her, and then to go to the frame-maker and ask him to send two of his
men round at once. It seemed to him that as the man left the room his eyes
wandered in the direction of the screen. Or was that merely his own fancy?
After a few moments, in her black silk dress, with old-fashioned thread
mittens on her wrinkled hands, Mrs. Leaf bustled into the library.
He asked her for the key of the schoolroom.
"The old schoolroom, Mr. Dorian?" she exclaimed. "Why, it is full of dust.
I must get it arranged and put straight before you go into it. It is not fit
for you to see, sir. It is not, indeed."
"I don't want it put straight, Leaf. I only want the key."
"Well, sir, you'll be covered with cobwebs if you go into it. Why, it hasn't
been opened for nearly five years--not since his lordship died."
He winced at the mention of his grandfather. He had hateful memories of him.
"That does not matter," he answered. "I simply want to see the place--
that is all. Give me the key."
"And here is the key, sir," said the old lady, going over
the contents of her bunch with tremulously uncertain hands.
"Here is the key. I'll have it off the bunch in a moment.
But you don't think of living up there, sir, and you so
comfortable here?"
"No, no," he cried petulantly. "Thank you, Leaf. That will do."
She lingered for a few moments, and was garrulous over some detail
of the household. He sighed and told her to manage things as she
thought best. She left the room, wreathed in smiles.
As the door closed, Dorian put the key in his pocket and looked round
the room. His eye fell on a large, purple satin coverlet heavily
embroidered with gold, a splendid piece of late seventeenth-century
Venetian work that his grandfather had found in a convent near Bologna.
Yes, that would serve to wrap the dreadful thing in. It had perhaps
served often as a pall for the dead. Now it was to hide something that
had a corruption of its own, worse than the corruption of death itself--
something that would breed horrors and yet would never die. What the worm
was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas.
They would mar its beauty and eat away its grace. They would defile
it and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on.
It would be always alive.
He shuddered, and for a moment he regretted that he had not told
Basil the true reason why he had wished to hide the picture away.
Basil would have helped him to resist Lord Henry's influence,
and the still more poisonous influences that came from his
own temperament. The love that he bore him--for it was really love--
had nothing in it that was not noble and intellectual.
It was not that mere physical admiration of beauty that is born
of the senses and that dies when the senses tire. It was such
love as Michelangelo had known, and Montaigne, and Winckelmann,
and Shakespeare himself. Yes, Basil could have saved him.
But it was too late now. The past could always be annihilated.
Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future
was inevitable. There were passions in him that would find
their terrible outlet, dreams that would make the shadow of their
evil real.
He took up from the couch the great purple-and-gold texture that
covered it, and, holding it in his hands, passed behind the screen.
Was the face on the canvas viler than before? It seemed to him
that it was unchanged, and yet his loathing of it was intensified.
Gold hair, blue eyes, and rose-red lips--they all were there.
It was simply the expression that had altered. That was horrible
in its cruelty. Compared to what he saw in it of censure or rebuke,
how shallow Basil's reproaches about Sibyl Vane had been!--
how shallow, and of what little account! His own soul was looking
out at him from the canvas and calling him to judgement. A look
of pain came across him, and he flung the rich pall over the picture.
As he did so, a knock came to the door. He passed out as his
servant entered.
"The persons are here, Monsieur."
He felt that the man must be got rid of at once. He must
not be allowed to know where the picture was being taken to.
There was something sly about him, and he had thoughtful,
treacherous eyes. Sitting down at the writing-table he scribbled
a note to Lord Henry, asking him to send him round something
to read and reminding him that they were to meet at eight-fifteen
that evening.
"Wait for an answer," he said, handing it to him, "and show the men in here."
In two or three minutes there was another knock, and Mr. Hubbard himself,
the celebrated frame-maker of South Audley Street, came in with a
somewhat rough-looking young assistant. Mr. Hubbard was a florid,
red-whiskered little man, whose admiration for art was considerably tempered
by the inveterate impecuniosity of most of the artists who dealt with him.
As a rule, he never left his shop. He waited for people to come to him.
But he always made an exception in favour of Dorian Gray. There was
something about Dorian that charmed everybody. It was a pleasure even to
see him.
"What can I do for you, Mr. Gray?" he said, rubbing his fat freckled hands.
"I thought I would do myself the honour of coming round in person. I have
just got a beauty of a frame, sir. Picked it up at a sale. Old Florentine.
Came from Fonthill, I believe. Admirably suited for a religious subject,
Mr. Gray."
"I am so sorry you have given yourself the trouble of coming round,
Mr. Hubbard. I shall certainly drop in and look at the frame--
though I don't go in much at present for religious art--but to-day
I only want a picture carried to the top of the house for me.
It is rather heavy, so I thought I would ask you to lend me a couple of
your men."
"No trouble at all, Mr. Gray. I am delighted to be of any service to you.
Which is the work of art, sir?"
"This," replied Dorian, moving the screen back. "Can you move it,
covering and all, just as it is? I don't want it to get scratched
going upstairs."
"There will be no difficulty, sir," said the genial frame-maker, beginning,
with the aid of his assistant, to unhook the picture from the long brass
chains by which it was suspended. "And, now, where shall we carry it to,
Mr. Gray?"
"I will show you the way, Mr. Hubbard, if you will kindly follow me.
Or perhaps you had better go in front. I am afraid it is right at
the top of the house. We will go up by the front staircase, as it
is wider."
He held the door open for them, and they passed out into the hall and began
the ascent. The elaborate character of the frame had made the picture
extremely bulky, and now and then, in spite of the obsequious protests
of Mr. Hubbard, who had the true tradesman's spirited dislike of seeing a
gentleman doing anything useful, Dorian put his hand to it so as to help them.
"Something of a load to carry, sir," gasped the little man when they
reached the top landing. And he wiped his shiny forehead.
"I am afraid it is rather heavy," murmured Dorian as he unlocked the door
that opened into the room that was to keep for him the curious secret of his
life and hide his soul from the eyes of men.
He had not entered the place for more than four years--not, indeed,
since he had used it first as a play-room when he was a child,
and then as a study when he grew somewhat older. It was a large,
well-proportioned room, which had been specially built by the last
Lord Kelso for the use of the little grandson whom, for his strange
likeness to his mother, and also for other reasons, he had always
hated and desired to keep at a distance. It appeared to Dorian
to have but little changed. There was the huge Italian cassone,
with its fantastically painted panels and its tarnished
gilt mouldings, in which he had so often hidden himself as a boy.
There the satinwood book-case filled with his dog-eared schoolbooks.
On the wall behind it was hanging the same ragged Flemish tapestry
where a faded king and queen were playing chess in a garden,
while a company of hawkers rode by, carrying hooded birds on their
gauntleted wrists. How well he remembered it all! Every moment
of his lonely childhood came back to him as he looked round.
He recalled the stainless purity of his boyish life, and it seemed horrible
to him that it was here the fatal portrait was to be hidden away.
How little he had thought, in those dead days, of all that was in store
for him!
But there was no other place in the house so secure from prying eyes as this.
He had the key, and no one else could enter it. Beneath its purple pall,
the face painted on the canvas could grow bestial, sodden, and unclean.
What did it matter? No one could see it. He himself would not see it.
Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul? He kept his youth--
that was enough. And, besides, might not his nature grow finer, after all?
There was no reason that the future should be so full of shame.
Some love might come across his life, and purify him, and shield him
from those sins that seemed to be already stirring in spirit and in flesh--
those curious unpictured sins whose very mystery lent them their subtlety and
their charm. Perhaps, some day, the cruel look would have passed away from
the scarlet sensitive mouth, and he might show to the world Basil Hallward's
masterpiece.
No; that was impossible. Hour by hour, and week by week, the thing
upon the canvas was growing old. It might escape the hideousness
of sin, but the hideousness of age was in store for it.
The cheeks would become hollow or flaccid. Yellow crow's feet
would creep round the fading eyes and make them horrible.
The hair would lose its brightness, the mouth would gape or droop,
would be foolish or gross, as the mouths of old men are.
There would be the wrinkled throat, the cold, blue-veined hands,
the twisted body, that he remembered in the grandfather who had been
so stern to him in his boyhood. The picture had to be concealed.
There was no help for it.
"Bring it in, Mr. Hubbard, please," he said, wearily, turning round.
"I am sorry I kept you so long. I was thinking of something else."
"Always glad to have a rest, Mr. Gray," answered the frame-maker,
who was still gasping for breath. "Where shall we put it, sir?"
"Oh, anywhere. Here: this will do. I don't want to have it hung up.
Just lean it against the wall. Thanks."
"Might one look at the work of art, sir?"
Dorian started. "It would not interest you, Mr. Hubbard,"
he said, keeping his eye on the man. He felt ready to leap
upon him and fling him to the ground if he dared to lift
the gorgeous hanging that concealed the secret of his life.
"I shan't trouble you any more now. I am much obliged for your
kindness in coming round."
"Not at all, not at all, Mr. Gray. Ever ready to do anything for you, sir."
And Mr. Hubbard tramped downstairs, followed by the assistant, who glanced
back at Dorian with a look of shy wonder in his rough uncomely face.
He had never seen any one so marvellous.
When the sound of their footsteps had died away, Dorian locked
the door and put the key in his pocket. He felt safe now.
No one would ever look upon the horrible thing. No eye but his
would ever see his shame.
On reaching the library, he found that it was just after
five o'clock and that the tea had been already brought up.
On a little table of dark perfumed wood thickly incrusted with nacre,
a present from Lady Radley, his guardian's wife, a pretty
professional invalid who had spent the preceding winter in Cairo,
was lying a note from Lord Henry, and beside it was a book bound
in yellow paper, the cover slightly torn and the edges soiled.
A copy of the third edition of The St. James's Gazette had been
placed on the tea-tray. It was evident that Victor had returned.
He wondered if he had met the men in the hall as they were leaving
the house and had wormed out of them what they had been doing.
He would be sure to miss the picture--had no doubt missed
it already, while he had been laying the tea-things. The screen
had not been set back, and a blank space was visible on the wall.
Perhaps some night he might find him creeping upstairs and trying
to force the door of the room. It was a horrible thing to have
a spy in one's house. He had heard of rich men who had been
blackmailed all their lives by some servant who had read a letter,
or overheard a conversation, or picked up a card with an address,
or found beneath a pillow a withered flower or a shred of
crumpled lace.
He sighed, and having poured himself out some tea, opened Lord Henry's note.
It was simply to say that he sent him round the evening paper, and a book
that might interest him, and that he would be at the club at eight-fifteen. He
opened The St. James's languidly, and looked through it. A red pencil-mark on
the fifth page caught his eye. It drew attention to the following paragraph:
INQUEST ON AN ACTRESS.--An inquest was held this morning at the Bell Tavern,
Hoxton Road, by Mr. Danby, the District Coroner, on the body of Sibyl Vane,
a young actress recently engaged at the Royal Theatre, Holborn. A verdict
of death by misadventure was returned. Considerable sympathy was expressed
for the mother of the deceased, who was greatly affected during the giving
of her own evidence, and that of Dr. Birrell, who had made the post-mortem
examination of the deceased.
He frowned, and tearing the paper in two, went across
the room and flung the pieces away. How ugly it all was!
And how horribly real ugliness made things! He felt a little
annoyed with Lord Henry for having sent him the report.
And it was certainly stupid of him to have marked it with red pencil.
Victor might have read it. The man knew more than enough English
for that.
Perhaps he had read it and had begun to suspect something.
And, yet, what did it matter? What had Dorian Gray to do
with Sibyl Vane's death? There was nothing to fear.
Dorian Gray had not killed her.
His eye fell on the yellow book that Lord Henry had sent him.
What was it, he wondered. He went towards the little,
pearl-coloured octagonal stand that had always looked to him
like the work of some strange Egyptian bees that wrought in silver,
and taking up the volume, flung himself into an arm-chair and began
to turn over the leaves. After a few minutes he became absorbed.
It was the strangest book that he had ever read. It seemed to him
that in exquisite raiment, and to the delicate sound of flutes,
the sins of the world were passing in dumb show before him.
Things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly made
real to him. Things of which he had never dreamed were
gradually revealed.
It was a novel without a plot and with only one character, being, indeed,
simply a psychological study of a certain young Parisian who spent his life
trying to realize in the nineteenth century all the passions and modes
of thought that belonged to every century except his own, and to sum up,
as it were, in himself the various moods through which the world-spirit had
ever passed, loving for their mere artificiality those renunciations that men
have unwisely called virtue, as much as those natural rebellions that wise
men still call sin. The style in which it was written was that curious
jewelled style, vivid and obscure at once, full of argot and of archaisms,
of technical expressions and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterizes
the work of some of the finest artists of the French school of Symbolistes.
There were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids and as subtle in colour.
The life of the senses was described in the terms of mystical philosophy.
One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies
of some mediaeval saint or the morbid confessions of a modern sinner.
It was a poisonous book. The heavy odour of incense seemed to cling about its
pages and to trouble the brain. The mere cadence of the sentences, the subtle
monotony of their music, so full as it was of complex refrains and movements
elaborately repeated, produced in the mind of the lad, as he passed from
chapter to chapter, a form of reverie, a malady of dreaming, that made him
unconscious of the falling day and creeping shadows.
Cloudless, and pierced by one solitary star, a copper-green
sky gleamed through the windows. He read on by its wan light
till he could read no more. Then, after his valet had reminded
him several times of the lateness of the hour, he got up,
and going into the next room, placed the book on the little
Florentine table that always stood at his bedside and began
to dress for dinner.
It was almost nine o'clock before he reached the club, where he found
Lord Henry sitting alone, in the morning-room, looking very much bored.
"I am so sorry, Harry," he cried, "but really it is entirely your fault.
That book you sent me so fascinated me that I forgot how the time
was going."
"Yes, I thought you would like it," replied his host, rising from his chair.
"I didn't say I liked it, Harry. I said it fascinated me.
There is a great difference."
"Ah, you have discovered that?" murmured Lord Henry.
And they passed into the dining-room.
CHAPTER 11
For years, Dorian Gray could not free himself from the influence
of this book. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say
that he never sought to free himself from it. He procured from
Paris no less than nine large-paper copies of the first edition,
and had them bound in different colours, so that they might suit
his various moods and the changing fancies of a nature over
which he seemed, at times, to have almost entirely lost control.
The hero, the wonderful young Parisian in whom the romantic
and the scientific temperaments were so strangely blended,
became to him a kind of prefiguring type of himself.
And, indeed, the whole book seemed to him to contain the story
of his own life, written before he had lived it.
In one point he was more fortunate than the novel's fantastic hero.
He never knew--never, indeed, had any cause to know--that somewhat
grotesque dread of mirrors, and polished metal surfaces, and still
water which came upon the young Parisian so early in his life,
and was occasioned by the sudden decay of a beau that had once,
apparently, been so remarkable. It was with an almost cruel joy--
and perhaps in nearly every joy, as certainly in every pleasure,
cruelty has its place--that he used to read the latter part of the book,
with its really tragic, if somewhat overemphasized, account of the sorrow
and despair of one who had himself lost what in others, and the world,
he had most dearly valued.
For the wonderful beauty that had so fascinated Basil Hallward,
and many others besides him, seemed never to leave him.
Even those who had heard the most evil things against him--
and from time to time strange rumours about his mode of life
crept through London and became the chatter of the clubs--
could not believe anything to his dishonour when they saw him.
He had always the look of one who had kept himself unspotted
from the world. Men who talked grossly became silent when Dorian
Gray entered the room. There was something in the purity of his
face that rebuked them. His mere presence seemed to recall
to them the memory of the innocence that they had tarnished.
They wondered how one so charming and graceful as he was could
have escaped the stain of an age that was at once sordid
and sensual.
Often, on returning home from one of those mysterious and
prolonged absences that gave rise to such strange conjecture
among those who were his friends, or thought that they were so,
he himself would creep upstairs to the locked room, open the door
with the key that never left him now, and stand, with a mirror,
in front of the portrait that Basil Hallward had painted of him,
looking now at the evil and aging face on the canvas, and now at
the fair young face that laughed back at him from the polished glass.
The very sharpness of the contrast used to quicken his sense
of pleasure. He grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty,
more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul.
He would examine with minute care, and sometimes with a monstrous
and terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling
forehead or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes
which were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age.
He would place his white hands beside the coarse bloated hands
of the picture, and smile. He mocked the misshapen body and the
failing limbs.
There were moments, indeed, at night, when, lying sleepless
in his own delicately scented chamber, or in the sordid
room of the little ill-famed tavern near the docks which,
under an assumed name and in disguise, it was his habit
to frequent, he would think of the ruin he had brought upon
his soul with a pity that was all the more poignant because it
was purely selfish. But moments such as these were rare.
That curiosity about life which Lord Henry had first stirred
in him, as they sat together in the garden of their friend,
seemed to increase with gratification. The more he knew,
the more he desired to know. He had mad hungers that grew more
ravenous as he fed them.
Yet he was not really reckless, at any rate in his relations to society.
Once or twice every month during the winter, and on each Wednesday
evening while the season lasted, he would throw open to the world
his beautiful house and have the most celebrated musicians of the day
to charm his guests with the wonders of their art. His little dinners,
in the settling of which Lord Henry always assisted him, were noted
as much for the careful selection and placing of those invited,
as for the exquisite taste shown in the decoration of the table,
with its subtle symphonic arrangements of exotic flowers,
and embroidered cloths, and antique plate of gold and silver.
Indeed, there were many, especially among the very young men, who saw,
or fancied that they saw, in Dorian Gray the true realization
of a type of which they had often dreamed in Eton or Oxford days,
a type that was to combine something of the real culture of the scholar
with all the grace and distinction and perfect manner of a citizen
of the world. To them he seemed to be of the company of those whom
Dante describes as having sought to "make themselves perfect
by the worship of beauty." Like Gautier, he was one for whom "the
visible world existed."
And, certainly, to him life itself was the first, the greatest,
of the arts, and for it all the other arts seemed to be but
a preparation. Fashion, by which what is really fantastic
becomes for a moment universal, and dandyism, which, in its
own way, is an attempt to assert the absolute modernity
of beauty, had, of course, their fascination for him.
His mode of dressing, and the particular styles that from time
to time he affected, had their marked influence on the young
exquisites of the Mayfair balls and Pall Mall club windows,
who copied him in everything that he did, and tried to reproduce
the accidental charm of his graceful, though to him only
half-serious, fopperies.
For, while he was but too ready to accept the position that
was almost immediately offered to him on his coming of age,
and found, indeed, a subtle pleasure in the thought that he might
really become to the London of his own day what to imperial
Neronian Rome the author of the Satyricon once had been,
yet in his inmost heart he desired to be something more than a mere
arbiter elegantiarum, to be consulted on the wearing of a jewel,
or the knotting of a necktie, or the conduct of a cane.
He sought to elaborate some new scheme of life that would have
its reasoned philosophy and its ordered principles, and find
in the spiritualizing of the senses its highest realization.
The worship of the senses has often, and with much justice,
been decried, men feeling a natural instinct of terror about
passions and sensations that seem stronger than themselves,
and that they are conscious of sharing with the less highly
organized forms of existence. But it appeared to Dorian Gray
that the true nature of the senses had never been understood,
and that they had remained savage and animal merely because
the world had sought to starve them into submission or to kill
them by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements
of a new spirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty was
to be the dominant characteristic. As he looked back upon man
moving through history, he was haunted by a feeling of loss.
So much had been surrendered! and to such little purpose!
There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous forms
of self-torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear
and whose result was a degradation infinitely more terrible
than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance,
they had sought to escape; Nature, in her wonderful irony,
driving out the anchorite to feed with the wild animals of
the desert and giving to the hermit the beasts of the field as
his companions.
Yes: there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a new Hedonism
that was to recreate life and to save it from that harsh uncomely
puritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious revival.
It was to have its service of the intellect, certainly, yet it was
never to accept any theory or system that would involve the sacrifice
of any mode of passionate experience. Its aim, indeed, was to be
experience itself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter
as they might be. Of the asceticism that deadens the senses,
as of the vulgar profligacy that dulls them, it was to know nothing.
But it was to teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life
that is itself but a moment.
There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn,
either after one of those dreamless nights that make us almost
enamoured of death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy,
when through the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible
than reality itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks
in all grotesques, and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality,
this art being, one might fancy, especially the art of those whose
minds have been troubled with the malady of reverie. Gradually white
fingers creep through the curtains, and they appear to tremble.
In black fantastic shapes, dumb shadows crawl into the corners
of the room and crouch there. Outside, there is the stirring
of birds among the leaves, or the sound of men going forth
to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down from
the hills and wandering round the silent house, as though it feared
to wake the sleepers and yet must needs call forth sleep from
her purple cave. Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted,
and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them,
and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern.
The wan mirrors get back their mimic life. The flameless tapers
stand where we had left them, and beside them lies the half-cut book
that we had been studying, or the wired flower that we had worn at
the ball, or the letter that we had been afraid to read, or that we
had read too often. Nothing seems to us changed. Out of the unreal
shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known.
We have to resume it where we had left off, and there steals over us
a terrible sense of the necessity for the continuance of energy
in the same wearisome round of stereotyped habits, or a wild longing,
it may be, that our eyelids might open some morning upon a world
that had been refashioned anew in the darkness for our pleasure,
a world in which things would have fresh shapes and colours,
and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in which the past
would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate,
in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance
even of joy having its bitterness and the memories of pleasure
their pain.
It was the creation of such worlds as these that seemed to Dorian
Gray to be the true object, or amongst the true objects, of life;
and in his search for sensations that would be at once new and delightful,
and possess that element of strangeness that is so essential to romance,
he would often adopt certain modes of thought that he knew to be really
alien to his nature, abandon himself to their subtle influences,
and then, having, as it were, caught their colour and satisfied his
intellectual curiosity, leave them with that curious indifference
that is not incompatible with a real ardour of temperament, and that,
indeed, according to certain modern psychologists, is often a condition
of it.
It was rumoured of him once that he was about to join the Roman
Catholic communion, and certainly the Roman ritual had always
a great attraction for him. The daily sacrifice, more awful
really than all the sacrifices of the antique world, stirred him
as much by its superb rejection of the evidence of the senses
as by the primitive simplicity of its elements and the eternal
pathos of the human tragedy that it sought to symbolize. He loved
to kneel down on the cold marble pavement and watch the priest,
in his stiff flowered dalmatic, slowly and with white hands moving
aside the veil of the tabernacle, or raising aloft the jewelled,
lantern-shaped monstrance with that pallid wafer that at times,
one would fain think, is indeed the "panis caelestis," the bread
of angels, or, robed in the garments of the Passion of Christ,
breaking the Host into the chalice and smiting his breast for his sins.
The fuming censers that the grave boys, in their lace and scarlet,
tossed into the air like great gilt flowers had their subtle
fascination for him. As he passed out, he used to look with wonder
at the black confessionals and long to sit in the dim shadow of one
of them and listen to men and women whispering through the worn
grating the true story of their lives.
But he never fell into the error of arresting his intellectual development
by any formal acceptance of creed or system, or of mistaking, for a house
in which to live, an inn that is but suitable for the sojourn of a night,
or for a few hours of a night in which there are no stars and the moon is
in travail. Mysticism, with its marvellous power of making common things
strange to us, and the subtle antinomianism that always seems to accompany it,
moved him for a season; and for a season he inclined to the materialistic
doctrines of the Darwinismus movement in Germany, and found a curious pleasure
in tracing the thoughts and passions of men to some pearly cell in the brain,
or some white nerve in the body, delighting in the conception of the absolute
dependence of the spirit on certain physical conditions, morbid or healthy,
normal or diseased. Yet, as has been said of him before, no theory of life
seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life itself. He felt
keenly conscious of how barren all intellectual speculation is when separated
from action and experiment. He knew that the senses, no less than the soul,
have their spiritual mysteries to reveal.
And so he would now study perfumes and the secrets of their manufacture,
distilling heavily scented oils and burning odorous gums from the East.
He saw that there was no mood of the mind that had not its counterpart
in the sensuous life, and set himself to discover their true relations,
wondering what there was in frankincense that made one mystical,
and in ambergris that stirred one's passions, and in violets that woke
the memory of dead romances, and in musk that troubled the brain,
and in champak that stained the imagination; and seeking often to elaborate
a real psychology of perfumes, and to estimate the several influences
of sweet-smelling roots and scented, pollen-laden flowers; of aromatic balms
and of dark and fragrant woods; of spikenard, that sickens; of hovenia,
that makes men mad; and of aloes, that are said to be able to expel melancholy
from the soul.
At another time he devoted himself entirely to music, and in a long
latticed room, with a vermilion-and-gold ceiling and walls of olive-green
lacquer, he used to give curious concerts in which mad gipsies tore wild
music from little zithers, or grave, yellow-shawled Tunisians plucked
at the strained strings of monstrous lutes, while grinning Negroes
beat monotonously upon copper drums and, crouching upon scarlet mats,
slim turbaned Indians blew through long pipes of reed or brass and charmed--
or feigned to charm--great hooded snakes and horrible horned adders.
The harsh intervals and shrill discords of barbaric music stirred
him at times when Schubert's grace, and Chopin's beautiful sorrows,
and the mighty harmonies of Beethoven himself, fell unheeded on his ear.
He collected together from all parts of the world the strangest instruments
that could be found, either in the tombs of dead nations or among the few
savage tribes that have survived contact with Western civilizations,
and loved to touch and try them. He had the mysterious juruparis of the Rio
Negro Indians, that women are not allowed to look at and that even youths
may not see till they have been subjected to fasting and scourging,
and the earthen jars of the Peruvians that have the shrill cries of birds,
and flutes of human bones such as Alfonso de Ovalle heard in Chile,
and the sonorous green jaspers that are found near Cuzco and give forth
a note of singular sweetness. He had painted gourds filled with pebbles
that rattled when they were shaken; the long clarin of the Mexicans,
into which the performer does not blow, but through which he inhales
the air; the harsh ture of the Amazon tribes, that is sounded by
the sentinels who sit all day long in high trees, and can be heard,
it is said, at a distance of three leagues; the teponaztli, that has
two vibrating tongues of wood and is beaten with sticks that are
smeared with an elastic gum obtained from the milky juice of plants;
the yotl-bells of the Aztecs, that are hung in clusters like grapes;
and a huge cylindrical drum, covered with the skins of great serpents,
like the one that Bernal Diaz saw when he went with Cortes into the Mexican
temple, and of whose doleful sound he has left us so vivid a description.
The fantastic character of these instruments fascinated him, and he felt
a curious delight in the thought that art, like Nature, has her monsters,
things of bestial shape and with hideous voices. Yet, after some time,
he wearied of them, and would sit in his box at the opera, either alone
or with Lord Henry, listening in rapt pleasure to "Tannhauser" and seeing
in the prelude to that great work of art a presentation of the tragedy of
his own soul.
On one occasion he took up the study of jewels, and appeared
at a costume ball as Anne de Joyeuse, Admiral of France,
in a dress covered with five hundred and sixty pearls.
This taste enthralled him for years, and, indeed, may be said
never to have left him. He would often spend a whole day
settling and resettling in their cases the various stones that he
had collected, such as the olive-green chrysoberyl that turns red
by lamplight, the cymophane with its wirelike line of silver,
the pistachio-coloured peridot, rose-pink and wine-yellow topazes,
carbuncles of fiery scarlet with tremulous, four-rayed stars,
flame-red cinnamon-stones, orange and violet spinels,
and amethysts with their alternate layers of ruby and sapphire.
He loved the red gold of the sunstone, and the moonstone's
pearly whiteness, and the broken rainbow of the milky opal.
He procured from Amsterdam three emeralds of extraordinary size and
richness of colour, and had a turquoise de la vieille roche that was
the envy of all the connoisseurs.
He discovered wonderful stories, also, about jewels.
In Alphonso's Clericalis Disciplina a serpent was mentioned with
eyes of real jacinth, and in the romantic history of Alexander,
the Conqueror of Emathia was said to have found in the vale of Jordan
snakes "with collars of real emeralds growing on their backs."
There was a gem in the brain of the dragon, Philostratus told us,
and "by the exhibition of golden letters and a scarlet robe"
the monster could be thrown into a magical sleep and slain.
According to the great alchemist, Pierre de Boniface, the diamond
rendered a man invisible, and the agate of India made him eloquent.
The cornelian appeased anger, and the hyacinth provoked sleep,
and the amethyst drove away the fumes of wine. The garnet cast
out demons, and the hydropicus deprived the moon of her colour.
The selenite waxed and waned with the moon, and the meloceus,
that discovers thieves, could be affected only by the blood of kids.
Leonardus Camillus had seen a white stone taken from the brain of a newly
killed toad, that was a certain antidote against poison. The bezoar,
that was found in the heart of the Arabian deer, was a charm that could
cure the plague. In the nests of Arabian birds was the aspilates,
that, according to Democritus, kept the wearer from any danger
by fire.
The King of Ceilan rode through his city with a large ruby in his hand,
as the ceremony of his coronation. The gates of the palace of John
the Priest were "made of sardius, with the horn of the horned
snake inwrought, so that no man might bring poison within."
Over the gable were "two golden apples, in which were two carbuncles,"
so that the gold might shine by day and the carbuncles by night.
In Lodge's strange romance 'A Margarite of America', it was stated
that in the chamber of the queen one could behold "all the chaste
ladies of the world, inchased out of silver, looking through fair
mirrours of chrysolites, carbuncles, sapphires, and greene emeraults."
Marco Polo had seen the inhabitants of Zipangu place rose-coloured
pearls in the mouths of the dead. A sea-monster had been
enamoured of the pearl that the diver brought to King Perozes,
and had slain the thief, and mourned for seven moons over its loss.
When the Huns lured the king into the great pit, he flung it away--
Procopius tells the story--nor was it ever found again,
though the Emperor Anastasius offered five hundred-weight of gold
pieces for it. The King of Malabar had shown to a certain Venetian
a rosary of three hundred and four pearls, one for every god that
he worshipped.
When the Duke de Valentinois, son of Alexander VI, visited Louis XII
of France, his horse was loaded with gold leaves, according to Brantome,
and his cap had double rows of rubies that threw out a great light.
Charles of England had ridden in stirrups hung with four hundred and
twenty-one diamonds. Richard II had a coat, valued at thirty thousand marks,
which was covered with balas rubies. Hall described Henry VIII,
on his way to the Tower previous to his coronation, as wearing "a
jacket of raised gold, the placard embroidered with diamonds and other
rich stones, and a great bauderike about his neck of large balasses."
The favourites of James I wore ear-rings of emeralds set in gold filigrane.
Edward II gave to Piers Gaveston a suit of red-gold armour studded
with jacinths, a collar of gold roses set with turquoise-stones, and a
skull-cap parseme with pearls. Henry II wore jewelled gloves reaching
to the elbow, and had a hawk-glove sewn with twelve rubies and fifty-two
great orients. The ducal hat of Charles the Rash, the last Duke
of Burgundy of his race, was hung with pear-shaped pearls and studded
with sapphires.
How exquisite life had once been! How gorgeous in its pomp and decoration!
Even to read of the luxury of the dead was wonderful.
Then he turned his attention to embroideries and to the tapestries
that performed the office of frescoes in the chill rooms of
the northern nations of Europe. As he investigated the subject--
and he always had an extraordinary faculty of becoming absolutely
absorbed for the moment in whatever he took up--he was almost
saddened by the reflection of the ruin that time brought on
beautiful and wonderful things. He, at any rate, had escaped that.
Summer followed summer, and the yellow jonquils bloomed and died
many times, and nights of horror repeated the story of their shame,
but he was unchanged. No winter marred his face or stained his
flowerlike bloom. How different it was with material things!
Where had they passed to? Where was the great crocus-coloured robe,
on which the gods fought against the giants, that had been worked
by brown girls for the pleasure of Athena? Where the huge
velarium that Nero had stretched across the Colosseum at Rome,
that Titan sail of purple on which was represented the starry sky,
and Apollo driving a chariot drawn by white, gilt-reined steeds?
He longed to see the curious table-napkins wrought for the Priest
of the Sun, on which were displayed all the dainties and viands that
could be wanted for a feast; the mortuary cloth of King Chilperic,
with its three hundred golden bees; the fantastic robes that excited
the indignation of the Bishop of Pontus and were figured with
"lions, panthers, bears, dogs, forests, rocks, hunters--all, in fact,
that a painter can copy from nature"; and the coat that Charles
of Orleans once wore, on the sleeves of which were embroidered
the verses of a song beginning "Madame, je suis tout joyeux,"
the musical accompaniment of the words being wrought in gold thread,
and each note, of square shape in those days, formed with four pearls.
He read of the room that was prepared at the palace at Rheims for
the use of Queen Joan of Burgundy and was decorated with "thirteen
hundred and twenty-one parrots, made in broidery, and blazoned
with the king's arms, and five hundred and sixty-one butterflies,
whose wings were similarly ornamented with the arms of the queen,
the whole worked in gold." Catherine de Medicis had a mourning-bed
made for her of black velvet powdered with crescents and suns.
Its curtains were of damask, with leafy wreaths and garlands,
figured upon a gold and silver ground, and fringed along the edges
with broideries of pearls, and it stood in a room hung with rows
of the queen's devices in cut black velvet upon cloth of silver.
Louis XIV had gold embroidered caryatides fifteen feet high
in his apartment. The state bed of Sobieski, King of Poland,
was made of Smyrna gold brocade embroidered in turquoises with verses
from the Koran. Its supports were of silver gilt, beautifully chased,
and profusely set with enamelled and jewelled medallions.
It had been taken from the Turkish camp before Vienna, and the
standard of Mohammed had stood beneath the tremulous gilt of its
canopy.
And so, for a whole year, he sought to accumulate the most exquisite
specimens that he could find of textile and embroidered work,
getting the dainty Delhi muslins, finely wrought with gold-thread palmates
and stitched over with iridescent beetles' wings; the Dacca gauzes,
that from their transparency are known in the East as "woven air,"
and "running water," and "evening dew"; strange figured cloths from Java;
elaborate yellow Chinese hangings; books bound in tawny satins or fair blue
silks and wrought with fleurs-de-lis, birds and images; veils of lacis
worked in Hungary point; Sicilian brocades and stiff Spanish velvets;
Georgian work, with its gilt coins, and Japanese Foukousas, with their
green-toned golds and their marvellously plumaged birds.
He had a special passion, also, for ecclesiastical vestments,
as indeed he had for everything connected with the service
of the Church. In the long cedar chests that lined the west
gallery of his house, he had stored away many rare and beautiful
specimens of what is really the raiment of the Bride of Christ,
who must wear purple and jewels and fine linen that she may
hide the pallid macerated body that is worn by the suffering
that she seeks for and wounded by self-inflicted pain.
He possessed a gorgeous cope of crimson silk and gold-thread damask,
figured with a repeating pattern of golden pomegranates set
in six-petalled formal blossoms, beyond which on either side
was the pine-apple device wrought in seed-pearls. The orphreys
were divided into panels representing scenes from the life
of the Virgin, and the coronation of the Virgin was figured
in coloured silks upon the hood. This was Italian work
of the fifteenth century. Another cope was of green velvet,
embroidered with heart-shaped groups of acanthus-leaves, from
which spread long-stemmed white blossoms, the details of which
were picked out with silver thread and coloured crystals.
The morse bore a seraph's head in gold-thread raised work.
The orphreys were woven in a diaper of red and gold silk,
and were starred with medallions of many saints and martyrs,
among whom was St. Sebastian. He had chasubles, also,
of amber-coloured silk, and blue silk and gold brocade,
and yellow silk damask and cloth of gold, figured with
representations of the Passion and Crucifixion of Christ,
and embroidered with lions and peacocks and other emblems;
dalmatics of white satin and pink silk damask, decorated with
tulips and dolphins and fleurs-de-lis; altar frontals
of crimson velvet and blue linen; and many corporals,
chalice-veils, and sudaria. In the mystic offices to which
such things were put, there was something that quickened
his imagination.
For these treasures, and everything that he collected in his lovely house,
were to be to him means of forgetfulness, modes by which he could escape,
for a season, from the fear that seemed to him at times to be almost too
great to be borne. Upon the walls of the lonely locked room where he had
spent so much of his boyhood, he had hung with his own hands the terrible
portrait whose changing features showed him the real degradation of his life,
and in front of it had draped the purple-and-gold pall as a curtain.
For weeks he would not go there, would forget the hideous painted thing,
and get back his light heart, his wonderful joyousness, his passionate
absorption in mere existence. Then, suddenly, some night he would creep
out of the house, go down to dreadful places near Blue Gate Fields,
and stay there, day after day, until he was driven away. On his return
he would sit in front of the her times, with that pride of individualism
that is half the fascination of sin, and smiling with secret pleasure
at the misshapen shadow that had to bear the burden that should have been
his own.
After a few years he could not endure to be long out of England,
and gave up the villa that he had shared at Trouville with Lord Henry,
as well as the little white walled-in house at Algiers where they
had more than once spent the winter. He hated to be separated from
the picture that was such a part of his life, and was also afraid
that during his absence some one might gain access to the room,
in spite of the elaborate bars that he had caused to be placed upon
the door.
He was quite conscious that this would tell them nothing.
It was true that the portrait still preserved, under all
the foulness and ugliness of the face, its marked likeness
to himself; but what could they learn from that? He would laugh
at any one who tried to taunt him. He had not painted it.
What was it to him how vile and full of shame it looked?
Even if he told them, would they believe it?
Yet he was afraid. Sometimes when he was down at his great house
in Nottinghamshire, entertaining the fashionable young men of his
own rank who were his chief companions, and astounding the county
by the wanton luxury and gorgeous splendour of his mode of life,
he would suddenly leave his guests and rush back to town to see
that the door had not been tampered with and that the picture was
still there. What if it should be stolen? The mere thought made
him cold with horror. Surely the world would know his secret then.
Perhaps the world already suspected it.
For, while he fascinated many, there were not a few who distrusted him.
He was very nearly blackballed at a West End club of which his birth
and social position fully entitled him to become a member, and it
was said that on one occasion, when he was brought by a friend into
the smoking-room of the Churchill, the Duke of Berwick and another
gentleman got up in a marked manner and went out. Curious stories
became current about him after he had passed his twenty-fifth year.
It was rumoured that he had been seen brawling with foreign sailors
in a low den in the distant parts of Whitechapel, and that he consorted
with thieves and coiners and knew the mysteries of their trade.
His extraordinary absences became notorious, and, when he used to reappear
again in society, men would whisper to each other in corners, or pass him
with a sneer, or look at him with cold searching eyes, as though they
were determined to discover his secret.
Of such insolences and attempted slights he, of course,
took no notice, and in the opinion of most people his frank
debonair manner, his charming boyish smile, and the infinite
grace of that wonderful youth that seemed never to leave him,
were in themselves a sufficient answer to the calumnies,
for so they termed them, that were circulated about him.
It was remarked, however, that some of those who had been
most intimate with him appeared, after a time, to shun him.
Women who had wildly adored him, and for his sake had braved
all social censure and set convention at defiance, were seen
to grow pallid with shame or horror if Dorian Gray entered
the room.
Yet these whispered scandals only increased in the eyes of many
his strange and dangerous charm. His great wealth was a certain
element of security. Society--civilized society, at least--
is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those
who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that
manners are of more importance than morals, and, in its opinion,
the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession
of a good chef. And, after all, it is a very poor consolation
to be told that the man who has given one a bad dinner,
or poor wine, is irreproachable in his private life.
Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold entrees,
as Lord Henry remarked once, in a discussion on the subject,
and there is possibly a good deal to be said for his view.
For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same
as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it.
It should have the dignity of a ceremony, as well as
its unreality, and should combine the insincere character
of a romantic play with the wit and beauty that make such plays
delightful to us. Is insincerity such a terrible thing?
I think not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply
our personalities.
Such, at any rate, was Dorian Gray's opinion. He used to wonder
at the shallow psychology of those who conceive the ego in man
as a thing simple, permanent, reliable, and of one essence.
To him, man was a being with myriad lives and myriad sensations,
a complex multiform creature that bore within itself strange
legacies of thought and passion, and whose very flesh was tainted
with the monstrous maladies of the dead. He loved to stroll
through the gaunt cold picture-gallery of his country house and look
at the various portraits of those whose blood flowed in his veins.
Here was Philip Herbert, described by Francis Osborne,
in his Memoires on the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James,
as one who was "caressed by the Court for his handsome face,
which kept him not long company." Was it young Herbert's
life that he sometimes led? Had some strange poisonous
germ crept from body to body till it had reached his own?
Was it some dim sense of that ruined grace that had made
him so suddenly, and almost without cause, give utterance,
in Basil Hallward's studio, to the mad prayer that had so changed
his life? Here, in gold-embroidered red doublet, jewelled surcoat,
and gilt-edged ruff and wristbands, stood Sir Anthony Sherard,
with his silver-and-black armour piled at his feet.
What had this man's legacy been? Had the lover of Giovanna
of Naples bequeathed him some inheritance of sin and shame?
Were his own actions merely the dreams that the dead man
had not dared to realize? Here, from the fading canvas,
smiled Lady Elizabeth Devereux, in her gauze hood, pearl stomacher,
and pink slashed sleeves. A flower was in her right hand,
and her left clasped an enamelled collar of white and damask roses.
On a table by her side lay a mandolin and an apple.
There were large green rosettes upon her little pointed shoes.
He knew her life, and the strange stories that were told about
her lovers. Had he something of her temperament in him? These oval,
heavy-lidded eyes seemed to look curiously at him. What of
George Willoughby, with his powdered hair and fantastic patches?
How evil he looked! The face was saturnine and swarthy,
and the sensual lips seemed to be twisted with disdain.
Delicate lace ruffles fell over the lean yellow hands that
were so overladen with rings. He had been a macaroni of the
eighteenth century, and the friend, in his youth, of Lord Ferrars.
What of the second Lord Beckenham, the companion of the Prince
Regent in his wildest days, and one of the witnesses at
the secret marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert? How proud and
handsome he was, with his chestnut curls and insolent pose!
What passions had he bequeathed? The world had looked upon
him as infamous. He had led the orgies at Carlton House.
The star of the Garter glittered upon his breast. Beside him hung
the portrait of his wife, a pallid, thin-lipped woman in black.
Her blood, also, stirred within him. How curious it all seemed!
And his mother with her Lady Hamilton face and her moist,
wine-dashed lips--he knew what he had got from her.
He had got from her his beauty, and his passion for the beauty
of others. She laughed at him in her loose Bacchante dress.
There were vine leaves in her hair. The purple spilled
from the cup she was holding. The carnations of the painting
had withered, but the eyes were still wonderful in their depth
and brilliancy of colour. They seemed to follow him wherever he
went.
Yet one had ancestors in literature as well as in one's own race,
nearer perhaps in type and temperament, many of them, and certainly
with an influence of which one was more absolutely conscious.
There were times when it appeared to Dorian Gray that the whole
of history was merely the record of his own life, not as he had lived
it in act and circumstance, but as his imagination had created
it for him, as it had been in his brain and in his passions.
He felt that he had known them all, those strange terrible figures
that had passed across the stage of the world and made sin so marvellous
and evil so full of subtlety. It seemed to him that in some mysterious
way their lives had been his own.
The hero of the wonderful novel that had so influenced his life had
himself known this curious fancy. In the seventh chapter he tells how,
crowned with laurel, lest lightning might strike him, he had sat,
as Tiberius, in a garden at Capri, reading the shameful books
of Elephantis, while dwarfs and peacocks strutted round him and
the flute-player mocked the swinger of the censer; and, as Caligula,
had caroused with the green-shirted jockeys in their stables and supped
in an ivory manger with a jewel-frontleted horse; and, as Domitian,
had wandered through a corridor lined with marble mirrors,
looking round with haggard eyes for the reflection of the dagger
that was to end his days, and sick with that ennui, that terrible
taedium vitae, that comes on those to whom life denies nothing;
and had peered through a clear emerald at the red shambles of the circus
and then, in a litter of pearl and purple drawn by silver-shod mules,
been carried through the Street of Pomegranates to a House of Gold
and heard men cry on Nero Caesar as he passed by; and, as Elagabalus,
had painted his face with colours, and plied the distaff among the women,
and brought the Moon from Carthage and given her in mystic marriage
to the Sun.
Over and over again Dorian used to read this fantastic chapter,
and the two chapters immediately following, in which, as in some
curious tapestries or cunningly wrought enamels, were pictured
the awful and beautiful forms of those whom vice and blood
and weariness had made monstrous or mad: Filippo, Duke of Milan,
who slew his wife and painted her lips with a scarlet poison
that her lover might suck death from the dead thing he fondled;
Pietro Barbi, the Venetian, known as Paul the Second,
who sought in his vanity to assume the title of Formosus,
and whose tiara, valued at two hundred thousand florins,
was bought at the price of a terrible sin; Gian Maria Visconti,
who used hounds to chase living men and whose murdered
body was covered with roses by a harlot who had loved him;
the Borgia on his white horse, with Fratricide riding beside
him and his mantle stained with the blood of Perotto;
Pietro Riario, the young Cardinal Archbishop of Florence,
child and minion of Sixtus IV, whose beauty was equalled only by
his debauchery, and who received Leonora of Aragon in a pavilion
of white and crimson silk, filled with nymphs and centaurs,
and gilded a boy that he might serve at the feast as Ganymede
or Hylas; Ezzelin, whose melancholy could be cured only by
the spectacle of death, and who had a passion for red blood,
as other men have for red wine--the son of the Fiend,
as was reported, and one who had cheated his father at dice
when gambling with him for his own soul; Giambattista Cibo,
who in mockery took the name of Innocent and into whose torpid
veins the blood of three lads was infused by a Jewish doctor;
Sigismondo Malatesta, the lover of Isotta and the lord of Rimini,
whose effigy was burned at Rome as the enemy of God and man,
who strangled Polyssena with a napkin, and gave poison
to Ginevra d'Este in a cup of emerald, and in honour of a
shameful passion built a pagan church for Christian worship;
Charles VI, who had so wildly adored his brother's wife that a
leper had warned him of the insanity that was coming on him,
and who, when his brain had sickened and grown strange,
could only be soothed by Saracen cards painted with the images
of love and death and madness; and, in his trimmed jerkin
and jewelled cap and acanthuslike curls, Grifonetto Baglioni,
who slew Astorre with his bride, and Simonetto with his page,
and whose comeliness was such that, as he lay dying
in the yellow piazza of Perugia, those who had hated him
could not choose but weep, and Atalanta, who had cursed him,
blessed him.
There was a horrible fascination in them all. He saw them
at night, and they troubled his imagination in the day.
The Renaissance knew of strange manners of poisoning--
poisoning by a helmet and a lighted torch, by an embroidered glove
and a jewelled fan, by a gilded pomander and by an amber chain.
Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book. There were moments when
he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize
his conception of the beautiful.
CHAPTER 12
It was on the ninth of November, the eve of his own thirty-eighth birthday,
as he often remembered afterwards.
He was walking home about eleven o'clock from Lord Henry's, where he had
been dining, and was wrapped in heavy furs, as the night was cold and foggy.
At the corner of Grosvenor Square and South Audley Street, a man passed him in
the mist, walking very fast and with the collar of his grey ulster turned up.
He had a bag in his hand. Dorian recognized him. It was Basil Hallward.
A strange sense of fear, for which he could not account, came over him.
He made no sign of recognition and went on quickly in the direction of his
own house.
But Hallward had seen him. Dorian heard him first stopping
on the pavement and then hurrying after him. In a few moments,
his hand was on his arm.
"Dorian! What an extraordinary piece of luck! I have been
waiting for you in your library ever since nine o'clock. Finally
I took pity on your tired servant and told him to go to bed,
as he let me out. I am off to Paris by the midnight train,
and I particularly wanted to see you before I left.
I thought it was you, or rather your fur coat, as you passed me.
But I wasn't quite sure. Didn't you recognize me?"
"In this fog, my dear Basil? Why, I can't even recognize Grosvenor Square.
I believe my house is somewhere about here, but I don't feel at all certain
about it. I am sorry you are going away, as I have not seen you for ages.
But I suppose you will be back soon?"
"No: I am going to be out of England for six months.
I intend to take a studio in Paris and shut myself up till I have
finished a great picture I have in my head. However, it wasn't
about myself I wanted to talk. Here we are at your door.
Let me come in for a moment. I have something to say
to you."
"I shall be charmed. But won't you miss your train?" said Dorian Gray
languidly as he passed up the steps and opened the door with his latch-key.
The lamplight struggled out through the fog, and Hallward looked
at his watch. "I have heaps of time," he answered. "The train
doesn't go till twelve-fifteen, and it is only just eleven.
In fact, I was on my way to the club to look for you, when I met you.
You see, I shan't have any delay about luggage, as I have sent on my
heavy things. All I have with me is in this bag, and I can easily
get to Victoria in twenty minutes."
Dorian looked at him and smiled. "What a way for a fashionable
painter to travel! A Gladstone bag and an ulster! Come in,
or the fog will get into the house. And mind you don't
talk about anything serious. Nothing is serious nowadays.
At least nothing should be."
Hallward shook his head, as he entered, and followed Dorian into the library.
There was a bright wood fire blazing in the large open hearth. The lamps
were lit, and an open Dutch silver spirit-case stood, with some siphons of
soda-water and large cut-glass tumblers, on a little marqueterie table.
"You see your servant made me quite at home, Dorian. He gave me
everything I wanted, including your best gold-tipped cigarettes.
He is a most hospitable creature. I like him much better than
the Frenchman you used to have. What has become of the Frenchman,
by the bye?"
Dorian shrugged his shoulders. "I believe he married Lady Radley's maid,
and has established her in Paris as an English dressmaker. Anglomania is
very fashionable over there now, I hear. It seems silly of the French,
doesn't it? But--do you know?--he was not at all a bad servant.
I never liked him, but I had nothing to complain about. One often
imagines things that are quite absurd. He was really very devoted to me
and seemed quite sorry when he went away. Have another brandy-and-soda? Or
would you like hock-and-seltzer? I always take hock-and-seltzer myself.
There is sure to be some in the next room."
"Thanks, I won't have anything more," said the painter,
taking his cap and coat off and throwing them on the bag
that he had placed in the corner. "And now, my dear fellow,
I want to speak to you seriously. Don't frown like that.
You make it so much more difficult for me."
"What is it all about?" cried Dorian in his petulant way,
flinging himself down on the sofa. "I hope it is not about myself.
I am tired of myself to-night. I should like to be somebody else."
"It is about yourself," answered Hallward in his grave deep voice,
"and I must say it to you. I shall only keep you half an hour."
Dorian sighed and lit a cigarette. "Half an hour!" he murmured.
"It is not much to ask of you, Dorian, and it is entirely for your own sake
that I am speaking. I think it right that you should know that the most
dreadful things are being said against you in London."
"I don't wish to know anything about them. I love scandals
about other people, but scandals about myself don't interest me.
They have not got the charm of novelty."
"They must interest you, Dorian. Every gentleman is interested
in his good name. You don't want people to talk of you as
something vile and degraded. Of course, you have your position,
and your wealth, and all that kind of thing. But position
and wealth are not everything. Mind you, I don't believe these
rumours at all. At least, I can't believe them when I see you.
Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face.
It cannot be concealed. People talk sometimes of secret vices.
There are no such things. If a wretched man has a vice, it shows
itself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids,
the moulding of his hands even. Somebody--I won't mention his name,
but you know him--came to me last year to have his portrait done.
I had never seen him before, and had never heard anything
about him at the time, though I have heard a good deal since.
He offered an extravagant price. I refused him.
There was something in the shape of his fingers that I hated.
I know now that I was quite right in what I fancied about him.
His life is dreadful. But you, Dorian, with your pure,
bright, innocent face, and your marvellous untroubled youth--
I can't believe anything against you. And yet I see you
very seldom, and you never come down to the studio now,
and when I am away from you, and I hear all these hideous things
that people are whispering about you, I don't know what to say.
Why is it, Dorian, that a man like the Duke of Berwick leaves
the room of a club when you enter it? Why is it that so many
gentlemen in London will neither go to your house or invite
you to theirs? You used to be a friend of Lord Staveley.
I met him at dinner last week. Your name happened to come up
in conversation, in connection with the miniatures you have lent
to the exhibition at the Dudley. Staveley curled his lip and said
that you might have the most artistic tastes, but that you
were a man whom no pure-minded girl should be allowed to know,
and whom no chaste woman should sit in the same room with.
I reminded him that I was a friend of yours, and asked him what
he meant. He told me. He told me right out before everybody.
It was horrible! Why is your friendship so fatal to young men?
There was that wretched boy in the Guards who committed suicide.
You were his great friend. There was Sir Henry Ashton,
who had to leave England with a tarnished name. You and
he were inseparable. What about Adrian Singleton and his
dreadful end? What about Lord Kent's only son and his career?
I met his father yesterday in St. James's Street. He seemed broken
with shame and sorrow. What about the young Duke of Perth?
What sort of life has he got now? What gentleman would associate with
him?"
"Stop, Basil. You are talking about things of which you know nothing,"
said Dorian Gray, biting his lip, and with a note of infinite contempt
in his voice. "You ask me why Berwick leaves a room when I enter it.
It is because I know everything about his life, not because he knows
anything about mine. With such blood as he has in his veins, how could
his record be clean? You ask me about Henry Ashton and young Perth.
Did I teach the one his vices, and the other his debauchery?
If Kent's silly son takes his wife from the streets, what is that to me?
If Adrian Singleton writes his friend's name across a bill, am I his keeper?
I know how people chatter in England. The middle classes air their moral
prejudices over their gross dinner-tables, and whisper about what they
call the profligacies of their betters in order to try and pretend
that they are in smart society and on intimate terms with the people
they slander. In this country, it is enough for a man to have
distinction and brains for every common tongue to wag against him.
And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral,
lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land
of the hypocrite."
"Dorian," cried Hallward, "that is not the question.
England is bad enough I know, and English society is all wrong.
That is the reason why I want you to be fine. You have not
been fine. One has a right to judge of a man by the effect
he has over his friends. Yours seem to lose all sense of honour,
of goodness, of purity. You have filled them with a madness
for pleasure. They have gone down into the depths.
You led them there. Yes: you led them there, and yet you
can smile, as you are smiling now. And there is worse behind.
I know you and Harry are inseparable. Surely for that reason,
if for none other, you should not have made his sister's name
a by-word."
"Take care, Basil. You go too far."
"I must speak, and you must listen. You shall listen.
When you met Lady Gwendolen, not a breath of scandal had ever
touched her. Is there a single decent woman in London now
who would drive with her in the park? Why, even her children
are not allowed to live with her. Then there are other stories--
stories that you have been seen creeping at dawn out of dreadful
houses and slinking in disguise into the foulest dens in London.
Are they true? Can they be true? When I first heard them,
I laughed. I hear them now, and they make me shudder.
What about your country-house and the life that is
led there? Dorian, you don't know what is said about you.
I won't tell you that I don't want to preach to you.
I remember Harry saying once that every man who turned himself
into an amateur curate for the moment always began by saying that,
and then proceeded to break his word. I do want to preach to you.
I want you to lead such a life as will make the world respect you.
I want you to have a clean name and a fair record.
I want you to get rid of the dreadful people you associate with.
Don't shrug your shoulders like that. Don't be so indifferent.
You have a wonderful influence. Let it be for good, not for evil.
They say that you corrupt every one with whom you become intimate,
and that it is quite sufficient for you to enter a house
for shame of some kind to follow after. I don't know whether
it is so or not. How should I know? But it is said of you.
I am told things that it seems impossible to doubt.
Lord Gloucester was one of my greatest friends at Oxford.
He showed me a letter that his wife had written to him when she
was dying alone in her villa at Mentone. Your name was implicated
in the most terrible confession I ever read. I told him that it
was absurd--that I knew you thoroughly and that you were incapable
of anything of the kind. Know you? I wonder do I know you?
Before I could answer that, I should have to see your
soul."
"To see my soul!" muttered Dorian Gray, starting up from the sofa
and turning almost white from fear.
"Yes," answered Hallward gravely, and with deep-toned sorrow in his voice,
"to see your soul. But only God can do that."
A bitter laugh of mockery broke from the lips of the younger man.
"You shall see it yourself, to-night!" he cried, seizing a
lamp from the table. "Come: it is your own handiwork.
Why shouldn't you look at it? You can tell the world all about
it afterwards, if you choose. Nobody would believe you.
If they did believe you, they would like me all the better for it.
I know the age better than you do, though you will prate
about it so tediously. Come, I tell you. You have chattered
enough about corruption. Now you shall look on it face
to face."
There was the madness of pride in every word he uttered.
He stamped his foot upon the ground in his boyish insolent manner.
He felt a terrible joy at the thought that some one else
was to share his secret, and that the man who had painted
the portrait that was the origin of all his shame was to be
burdened for the rest of his life with the hideous memory of what
he had done.
"Yes," he continued, coming closer to him and looking steadfastly
into his stern eyes, "I shall show you my soul. You shall see
the thing that you fancy only God can see."
Hallward started back. "This is blasphemy, Dorian!" he cried.
"You must not say things like that. They are horrible, and they
don't mean anything."
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