At half-past twelve next day Lord Henry Wotton strolled from Curzon
Street over to the Albany to call on his uncle, Lord Fermor, a genial if
somewhat rough-mannered old bachelor, whom the outside world called
selfish because it derived no particular benefit from him, but who was
considered generous by Society as he fed the people who amused him. His
father had been our ambassador at Madrid when Isabella was young, and
Prim unthought of, but had retired from the Diplomatic Service in a
capricious moment of annoyance at not being offered the Embassy at
Paris, a post to which he considered that he was fully entitled by
reason of his birth, his indolence, the good English of his despatches,
and his inordinate passion for pleasure. The son, who had been his
father's secretary, had resigned along with his chief, somewhat
foolishly as was thought at the time, and on succeeding some months
later to the title, had set himself to the serious study of the great
aristocratic art of doing absolutely nothing. He had two large town
houses, but preferred to live in chambers, as it was less trouble, and
took most of his meals at his club. He paid some attention to the
management of his collieries in the Midland counties, excusing himself
for this taint of industry on the ground that the one advantage of
having coal was that it enabled a gentleman to afford the decency of
burning wood on his own hearth. In politics he was a Tory, except when
the Tories were in office, during which period he roundly abused them
for being a pack of Radicals. He was a hero to his valet, who bullied
him, and a terror to most of his relations, whom he bullied in turn.
Only England could have produced him, and he always said that the
country was going to the dogs. His principles were out of date, but
there was a good deal to be said for his prejudices.
When Lord Henry entered the room, he found his uncle sitting in a rough
shooting coat, smoking a cheroot, and grumbling over _The Times_. "Well,
Harry," said the old gentleman, "what brings you out so early? I thought
you dandies never got up till two, and were not visible till five."
"Pure family affection, I assure you, Uncle George. I want to get
something out of you."
"Money, I suppose," said Lord Fermor, making a wry face. "Well, sit down
and tell me all about it. Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is
everything."
"Yes," murmured Lord Henry, settling his buttonhole in his coat; "and
when they grow older they know it. But I don't want money. It is only
people who pay their bills who want that, Uncle George, and I never pay
mine. Credit is the capital of a younger son, and one lives charmingly
upon it. Besides, I always deal with Dartmoor's tradesmen, and
consequently they never bother me. What I want is information; not
useful information, of course; useless information."
"Well, I can tell you anything that is in an English Blue-book, Harry,
although those fellows nowadays write a lot of nonsense. When I was in
the Diplomatic, things were much better. But I hear they let them in now
by examination. What can you expect? Examinations, sir, are pure humbug
from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough,
and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him."
"Mr. Dorian Gray does not belong to Blue-books, Uncle George," said Lord
Henry, languidly.
"Mr. Dorian Gray? Who is he?" asked Lord Fermor, knitting his bushy
white eyebrows.
"That is what I have come to learn, Uncle George. Or rather, I know who
he is. He is the last Lord Kelso's grandson. His mother was a Devereux;
Lady Margaret Devereux. I want you to tell me about his mother. What was
she like? Whom did she marry? You have known nearly everybody in your
time, so you might have known her. I am very much interested in Mr. Gray
at present. I have only just met him."
"Kelso's grandson!" echoed the old gentleman.--"Kelso's grandson!... Of
course.... I knew his mother intimately. I believe I was at her
christening. She was an extraordinarily beautiful girl, Margaret
Devereux; and made all the men frantic by running away with a penniless
young fellow; a mere nobody, sir, a subaltern in a foot regiment, or
something of that kind. Certainly. I remember the whole thing as if it
happened yesterday. The poor chap was killed in a duel at Spa, a few
months after the marriage. There was an ugly story about it. They said
Kelso got some rascally adventurer, some Belgian brute, to insult his
son-in-law in public; paid him, sir, to do it, paid him; and that the
fellow spitted his man as if he had been a pigeon. The thing was hushed
up, but, egad, Kelso ate his chop alone at the club for some time
afterwards. He brought his daughter back with him, I was told, and she
never spoke to him again. Oh, yes; it was a bad business. The girl died
too; died within a year. So she left a son, did she? I had forgotten
that. What sort of boy is he? If he is like his mother he must be a
good-looking chap."
"He is very good-looking," assented Lord Henry.
"I hope he will fall into proper hands," continued the old man. "He
should have a pot of money waiting for him if Kelso did the right thing
by him. His mother had money too. All the Selby property came to her,
through her grandfather. Her grandfather hated Kelso, thought him a mean
dog. He was, too. Came to Madrid once when I was there. Egad, I was
ashamed of him. The Queen used to ask me about the English noble who was
always quarrelling with the cabmen about their fares. They made quite a
story of it. I didn't dare to show my face at Court for a month. I hope
he treated his grandson better than he did the jarvies."
"I don't know," answered Lord Henry. "I fancy that the boy will be well
off. He is not of age yet. He has Selby, I know. He told me so. And...
his mother was very beautiful?"
"Margaret Devereux was one of the loveliest creatures I ever saw, Harry.
What on earth induced her to behave as she did, I never could
understand. She could have married anybody she chose. Carlington was mad
after her. She was romantic, though. All the women of that family were.
The men were a poor lot, but, egad! the women were wonderful. Carlington
went on his knees to her. Told me so himself. She laughed at him, and
there wasn't a girl in London at the time who wasn't after him. And by
the way, Harry, talking about silly marriages, what is this humbug your
father tells me about Dartmoor wanting to marry an American? Ain't
English girls good enough for him?"
"It is rather fashionable to marry Americans just now, Uncle George."
"I'll back English women against the world, Harry," said Lord Fermor,
striking the table with his fist.
"The betting is on the Americans."
"They don't last, I am told," muttered his uncle.
"A long engagement exhausts them, but they are capital at a
steeplechase. They take things flying. I don't think Dartmoor has a
chance."
"Who are her people?" grumbled the old gentleman. "Has she got any?"
Lord Henry shook his head. "American girls are as clever at concealing
their parents as English women are at concealing their past," he said,
rising to go.
"They are pork-packers, I suppose?"
"I hope so, Uncle George, for Dartmoor's sake. I am told that
pork-packing is the most lucrative profession in America, after
politics."
"Is she pretty?"
"She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the
secret of their charm."
"Why can't these American women stay in their own country? They are
always telling us that it is the Paradise for women."
"It is. That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so excessively
anxious to get out of it," said Lord Henry. "Good-bye, Uncle George. I
shall be late for lunch, if I stop any longer. Thanks for giving me the
information I wanted. I always like to know everything about my new
friends, and nothing about my old ones."
"Where are you lunching, Harry?"
"At Aunt Agatha's. I have asked myself and Mr. Gray. He is her latest
_protégé_."
"Humph! tell your Aunt Agatha, Harry, not to bother me any more with her
charity appeals. I am sick of them. Why, the good woman thinks that I
have nothing to do but to write cheques for her silly fads."
"All right, Uncle George, I'll tell her, but it won't have any effect.
Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their
distinguishing characteristic."
The old gentleman growled approvingly, and rang the bell for his
servant. Lord Henry passed up the low arcade into Burlington Street, and
turned his steps in the direction of Berkeley Square.
So that was the story of Dorian Gray's parentage. Crudely as it had been
told to him, it had yet stirred him by its suggestion of a strange,
almost modern romance. A beautiful woman risking everything for a mad
passion. A few wild weeks of happiness cut short by a hideous,
treacherous crime. Months of voiceless agony, and then a child born in
pain. The mother snatched away by death, the boy left to solitude and
the tyranny of an old and loveless man. Yes; it was an interesting
background. It posed the lad, made him more perfect as it were. Behind
every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. Worlds
had to be in travail, that the meanest flower might blow.... And how
charming he had been at dinner the night before, as, with startled eyes
and lips parted in frightened pleasure, he had sat opposite to him at
the club, the red candleshades staining to a richer rose the wakening
wonder of his face. Talking to him was like playing upon an exquisite
violin. He answered to every touch and thrill of the bow.... There was
something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other
activity was like it. To project one's soul into some gracious form, and
let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views
echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to
convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid
or a strange perfume; there was a real joy in that--perhaps the most
satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an
age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims....
He was a marvellous type, too, this lad, whom by so curious a chance he
had met in Basil's studio; or could be fashioned into a marvellous type,
at any rate. Grace was his, and the white purity of boyhood, and beauty
such as old Greek marbles kept for us. There was nothing that one could
not do with him. He could be made a Titan or a toy. What a pity it was
that such beauty was destined to fade!... And Basil? From a
psychological point of view, how interesting he was! The new manner in
art, the fresh mode of looking at life, suggested so strangely by the
merely visible presence of one who was unconscious of it all; the silent
spirit that dwelt in dim woodland, and walked unseen in open field,
suddenly showing herself, Dryad-like and not afraid, because in his soul
who sought for her there had been wakened that wonderful vision to
which alone are wonderful things revealed; the mere shapes and patterns
of things becoming, as it were, refined, and gaining a kind of
symbolical value, as though they were themselves patterns of some other
and more perfect form whose shadow they made real: how strange it all
was! He remembered something like it in history. Was it not Plato, that
artist in thought, who had first analysed it? Was it not Buonarotti who
had carved it in the coloured marbles of a sonnet-sequence? But in our
own century it was strange.... Yes; he would try to be to Dorian Gray
what, without knowing it, the lad was to the painter who had fashioned
the wonderful portrait. He would seek to dominate him--had already,
indeed, half done so. He would make that wonderful spirit his own. There
was something fascinating in this son of Love and Death.
Suddenly he stopped, and glanced up at the houses. He found that he had
passed his aunt's some distance, and, smiling to himself, turned back.
When he entered the somewhat sombre hall the butler told him that they
had gone in to lunch. He gave one of the footmen his hat and stick, and
passed into the dining-room.
"Late as usual, Harry," cried his aunt, shaking her head at him.
He invented a facile excuse, and having taken the vacant seat next to
her, looked round to see who was there. Dorian bowed to him shyly from
the end of the table, a flush of pleasure stealing into his cheek.
Opposite was the Duchess of Harley; a lady of admirable good-nature and
good temper, much liked by everyone who knew her, and of those ample
architectural proportions that in women who are not Duchesses are
described by contemporary historians as stoutness. Next to her sat, on
her right, Sir Thomas Burdon, a Radical member of Parliament, who
followed his leader in public life, and in private life followed the
best cooks, dining with the Tories, and thinking with the Liberals, in
accordance with a wise and well-known rule. The post on her left was
occupied by Mr. Erskine of Treadley, an old gentleman of considerable
charm and culture, who had fallen, however, into bad habits of silence,
having, as he explained once to Lady Agatha, said everything that he had
to say before he was thirty. His own neighbour was Mrs. Vandeleur, one
of his aunt's oldest friends, a perfect saint amongst women, but so
dreadfully dowdy that she reminded one of a badly bound hymn-book.
Fortunately for him she had on the other side Lord Faudel, a most
intelligent middle-aged mediocrity, as bald as a Ministerial statement
in the House of Commons, with whom she was conversing in that intensely
earnest manner which is the one unpardonable error, as he remarked once
himself, that all really good people fall into, and from which none of
them ever quite escape.
"We are talking about poor Dartmoor, Lord Henry," cried the Duchess,
nodding pleasantly to him across the table. "Do you think he will really
marry this fascinating young person?"
"I believe she has made up her mind to propose to him, Duchess."
"How dreadful!" exclaimed Lady Agatha. "Really, someone should
interfere."
"I am told, on excellent authority, that her father keeps an American
dry-goods store," said Sir Thomas Burdon, looking supercilious.
"My uncle has already suggested pork-packing, Sir Thomas."
"Dry-goods! What are American dry-goods?" asked the Duchess, raising her
large hands in wonder, and accentuating the verb.
"American novels," answered Lord Henry, helping himself to some quail.
The Duchess looked puzzled.
"Don't mind him, my dear," whispered Lady Agatha. "He never means
anything that he says."
"When America was discovered," said the Radical member, and he began to
give some wearisome facts. Like all people who try to exhaust a subject,
he exhausted his listeners. The Duchess sighed, and exercised her
privilege of interruption. "I wish to goodness it never had been
discovered at all!" she exclaimed. "Really, our girls have no chance
nowadays. It is most unfair."
"Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered," said Mr.
Erskine. "I myself would say that it had merely been detected."
"Oh! but I have seen specimens of the inhabitants," answered the
Duchess, vaguely. "I must confess that most of them are extremely
pretty. And they dress well, too. They get all their dresses in Paris. I
wish I could afford to do the same."
"They say that when good Americans die they go to Paris," chuckled Sir
Thomas, who had a large wardrobe of Humour's cast-off clothes.
"Really! And where do bad Americans go to when they die?" inquired the
Duchess.
"They go to America," murmured Lord Henry.
Sir Thomas frowned. "I am afraid that your nephew is prejudiced against
that great country," he said to Lady Agatha. "I have travelled all over
it, in cars provided by the directors, who, in such matters, are
extremely civil. I assure you that it is an education to visit it."
"But must we really see Chicago in order to be educated?" asked Mr.
Erskine, plaintively. "I don't feel up to the journey."
Sir Thomas waved his hand. "Mr. Erskine of Treadley has the world on his
shelves. We practical men like to see things, not to read about them.
The Americans are an extremely interesting people. They are absolutely
reasonable. I think that is their distinguishing characteristic. Yes,
Mr. Erskine, an absolutely reasonable people. I assure you there is no
nonsense about the Americans."
"How dreadful!" cried Lord Henry. "I can stand brute force, but brute
reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It
is hitting below the intellect."
"I do not understand you," said Sir Thomas, growing rather red.
"I do, Lord Henry," murmured Mr. Erskine, with a smile.
"Paradoxes are all very well in their way...." rejoined the Baronet.
"Was that a paradox?" asked Mr. Erskine. "I did not think so. Perhaps it
was. Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test Reality we
must see it on the tight-rope. When the Verities become acrobats we can
judge them."
"Dear me!" said Lady Agatha, "how you men argue! I am sure I never can
make out what you are talking about. Oh! Harry, I am quite vexed with
you. Why do you try to persuade our nice Mr. Dorian Gray to give up the
East End? I assure you he would be quite invaluable. They would love his
playing."
"I want him to play to me," cried Lord Henry, smiling, and he looked
down the table and caught a bright answering glance.
"But they are so unhappy in Whitechapel," continued Lady Agatha.
"I can sympathise with everything, except suffering," said Lord Henry,
shrugging his shoulders. "I cannot sympathise with that. It is too ugly,
too horrible, too distressing. There is something terribly morbid in the
modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the
beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better."
"Still, the East End is a very important problem," remarked Sir Thomas,
with a grave shake of the head.
"Quite so," answered the young lord. "It is the problem of slavery, and
we try to solve it by amusing the slaves."
The politician looked at him keenly. "What change do you propose, then?"
he asked.
Lord Henry laughed. "I don't desire to change anything in England except
the weather," he answered. "I am quite content with philosophic
contemplation. But, as the nineteenth century has gone bankrupt through
an over-expenditure of sympathy, I would suggest that we should appeal
to Science to put us straight. The advantage of the emotions is that
they lead us astray, and the advantage of Science is that it is not
emotional."
"But we have such grave responsibilities," ventured Mrs. Vandeleur,
timidly.
"Terribly grave," echoed Lady Agatha.
Lord Henry looked over at Mr. Erskine. "Humanity takes itself too
seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the caveman had known how
to laugh, History would have been different."
"You are really very comforting," warbled the Duchess. "I have always
felt rather guilty when I came to see your dear aunt, for I take no
interest at all in the East End. For the future I shall be able to look
her in the face without a blush."
"A blush is very becoming, Duchess," remarked Lord Henry.
"Only when one is young," she answered. "When an old woman like myself
blushes, it is a very bad sign. Ah! Lord Henry, I wish you would tell me
how to become young again."
He thought for a moment. "Can you remember any great error that you
committed in your early days, Duchess?" he asked, looking at her across
the table.
"A great many, I fear," she cried.
"Then commit them over again," he said, gravely. "To get back one's
youth, one has merely to repeat one's follies."
"A delightful theory!" she exclaimed. "I must put it into practice."
"A dangerous theory!" came from Sir Thomas's tight lips. Lady Agatha
shook her head, but could not help being amused. Mr. Erskine listened.
"Yes," he continued, "that is one of the great secrets of life. Nowadays
most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it
is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes."
A laugh ran round the table.
He played with the idea, and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and
transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with
fancy, and winged it with paradox. The praise of folly, as he went on,
soared into a philosophy, and Philosophy herself became young, and
catching the mad music of Pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her
wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a Bacchante over the
hills of life, and mocked the slow Silenus for being sober. Facts fled
before her like frightened forest things. Her white feet trod the huge
press at which wise Omar sits, till the seething grape-juice rose round
her bare limbs in waves of purple bubbles, or crawled in red foam over
the vat's black, dripping, sloping sides. It was an extraordinary
improvisation. He felt that the eyes of Dorian Gray were fixed on him,
and the consciousness that amongst his audience there was one whose
temperament he wished to fascinate, seemed to give his wit keenness, and
to lend colour to his imagination. He was brilliant, fantastic,
irresponsible. He charmed his listeners out of themselves, and they
followed his pipe laughing. Dorian Gray never took his gaze off him, but
sat like one under a spell, smiles chasing each other over his lips, and
wonder growing grave in his darkening eyes.
At last, liveried in the costume of the age, Reality entered the room in
the shape of a servant to tell the Duchess that her carriage was
waiting. She wrung her hands in mock despair. "How annoying!" she cried.
"I must go. I have to call for my husband at the club, to take him to
some absurd meeting at Willis's Rooms, where he is going to be in the
chair. If I am late, he is sure to be furious, and I couldn't have a
scene in this bonnet. It is far too fragile. A harsh word would ruin it.
No, I must go, dear Agatha. Good-bye, Lord Henry, you are quite
delightful, and dreadfully demoralising. I am sure I don't know what to
say about your views. You must come and dine with us some night.
Tuesday? Are you disengaged Tuesday?"
"For you I would throw over anybody, Duchess," said Lord Henry, with a
bow.
"Ah! that is very nice, and very wrong of you," she cried; "so mind you
come;" and she swept out of the room, followed by Lady Agatha and the
other ladies.
When Lord Henry had sat down again, Mr. Erskine moved round, and taking
a chair close to him, placed his hand upon his arm.
"You talk books away," he said; "why don't you write one?"
"I am too fond of reading books to care to write them, Mr. Erskine. I
should like to write a novel certainly; a novel that would be as lovely
as a Persian carpet, and as unreal. But there is no literary public in
England for anything except newspapers, primers, and encyclopædias. Of
all people in the world the English have the least sense of the beauty
of literature."
"I fear you are right," answered Mr. Erskine. "I myself used to have
literary ambitions, but I gave them up long ago. And now, my dear young
friend, if you will allow me to call you so, may I ask if you really
meant all that you said to us at lunch?"
"I quite forget what I said," smiled Lord Henry. "Was it all very bad?"
"Very bad indeed. In fact I consider you extremely dangerous, and if
anything happens to our good Duchess we shall all look on you as being
primarily responsible. But I should like to talk to you about life. The
generation into which I was born was tedious. Some day, when you are
tired of London, come down to Treadley, and expound to me your
philosophy of pleasure over some admirable Burgundy I am fortunate
enough to possess."
"I shall be charmed. A visit to Treadley would be a great privilege. It
has a perfect host, and a perfect library."
"You will complete it," answered the old gentleman, with a courteous
bow. "And now I must bid good-bye to your excellent aunt. I am due at
the Athenæum. It is the hour when we sleep there."
"All of you, Mr. Erskine?"
"Forty of us, in forty arm-chairs. We are practising for an English
Academy of Letters."
Lord Henry laughed, and rose. "I am going to the Park," he cried.
As he was passing out of the door Dorian Gray touched him on the arm.
"Let me come with you," he murmured.
"But I thought you had promised Basil Hallward to go and see him,"
answered Lord Henry.
"I would sooner come with you; yes, I feel I must come with you. Do let
me. And you will promise to talk to me all the time? No one talks so
wonderfully as you do."
"Ah! I have talked quite enough for to-day," said Lord Henry, smiling.
"All I want now is to look at life. You may come and look at it with me,
if you care to."