Produced by Alfred J. Drake. HTML version by Al Haines.
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
by
Oscar Wilde
1890, 13-CHAPTER VERSION
CONTENTS
Chapter I: 3-12
Chapter II: 12-22
Chapter III: 22-32
Chapter IV: 32-36
Chapter V: 36-43
Chapter VI: 43-52
Chapter VII: 52-58
Chapter VIII: 58-64
Chapter IX: 65-77
Chapter X: 77-81
Chapter XI: 81-86
Chapter XII: 86-93
Chapter XIII: 94-100
CHAPTER I
[3] The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses, and when the
light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden there came
through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more
delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.
From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was
lying, smoking, as usual, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton
could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-colored
blossoms of the laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able
to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs; and now and
then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long
tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window,
producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of
those pallid jade-faced painters who, in an art that is necessarily
immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen
murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass,
or circling with monotonous insistence round the black-crocketed spires
of the early June hollyhocks, seemed to make the stillness more
oppressive, and the dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a
distant organ.
In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the
full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty,
and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist
himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago
caused, at the time, such public excitement, and gave rise to so many
strange conjectures.
As he looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully
mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and
seemed about to linger there. But he suddenly started up, and, closing
[4] his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to
imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he
might awake.
"It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done," said
Lord Henry, languidly. "You must certainly send it next year to the
Grosvenor. The Academy is too large and too vulgar. The Grosvenor is
the only place."
"I don't think I will send it anywhere," he answered, tossing his head
back in that odd way that used to make his friends laugh at him at
Oxford. "No: I won't send it anywhere."
Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows, and looked at him in amazement
through the thin blue wreaths of smoke that curled up in such fanciful
whorls from his heavy opium-tainted cigarette. "Not send it anywhere?
My dear fellow, why? Have you any reason? What odd chaps you painters
are! You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you
have one, you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for
there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and
that is not being talked about. A portrait like this would set you far
above all the young men in England, and make the old men quite jealous,
if old men are ever capable of any emotion."
"I know you will laugh at me," he replied, "but I really can't exhibit
it. I have put too much of myself into it."
Lord Henry stretched his long legs out on the divan and shook with
laughter.
"Yes, I knew you would laugh; but it is quite true, all the same."
"Too much of yourself in it! Upon my word, Basil, I didn't know you
were so vain; and I really can't see any resemblance between you, with
your rugged strong face and your coal-black hair, and this young
Adonis, who looks as if he was made of ivory and rose-leaves. Why, my
dear Basil, he is a Narcissus, and you--well, of course you have an
intellectual expression, and all that. But beauty, real beauty, ends
where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself an
exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one
sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something
horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions.
How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But
then in the Church they don't think. A bishop keeps on saying at the
age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen,
and consequently he always looks absolutely delightful. Your
mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose
picture really fascinates me, never thinks. I feel quite sure of that.
He is a brainless, beautiful thing, who should be always here in winter
when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in summer when we
want something to chill our intelligence. Don't flatter yourself,
Basil: you are not in the least like him."
"You don't understand me, Harry. Of course I am not like him. I know
that perfectly well. Indeed, I should be sorry to look like him. You
shrug your shoulders? I am telling you the truth. There is a fatality
about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality
that [5] seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings. It
is better not to be different from one's fellows. The ugly and the
stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit quietly and
gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least
spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live,
undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin
upon others nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and
wealth, Harry; my brains, such as they are,--my fame, whatever it may
be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks,--we will all suffer for what the
gods have given us, suffer terribly."
"Dorian Gray? is that his name?" said Lord Henry, walking across the
studio towards Basil Hallward.
"Yes; that is his name. I didn't intend to tell it to you."
"But why not?"
"Oh, I can't explain. When I like people immensely I never tell their
names to any one. It seems like surrendering a part of them. You know
how I love secrecy. It is the only thing that can make modern life
wonderful or mysterious to us. The commonest thing is delightful if
one only hides it. When I leave town I never tell my people where I am
going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I
dare say, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into
one's life. I suppose you think me awfully foolish about it?"
"Not at all," answered Lord Henry, laying his hand upon his shoulder;
"not at all, my dear Basil. You seem to forget that I am married, and
the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception
necessary for both parties. I never know where my wife is, and my wife
never knows what I am doing. When we meet,--we do meet occasionally,
when we dine out together, or go down to the duke's,--we tell each
other the most absurd stories with the most serious faces. My wife is
very good at it,--much better, in fact, than I am. She never gets
confused over her dates, and I always do. But when she does find me
out, she makes no row at all. I sometimes wish she would; but she
merely laughs at me."
"I hate the way you talk about your married life, Harry," said Basil
Hallward, shaking his hand off, and strolling towards the door that led
into the garden. "I believe that you are really a very good husband,
but that you are thoroughly ashamed of your own virtues. You are an
extraordinary fellow. You never say a moral thing, and you never do a
wrong thing. Your cynicism is simply a pose."
"Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know,"
cried Lord Henry, laughing; and the two young men went out into the
garden together, and for a time they did not speak.
After a long pause Lord Henry pulled out his watch. "I am afraid I
must be going, Basil," he murmured, "and before I go I insist on your
answering a question I put to you some time ago."
"What is that?" asked Basil Hallward, keeping his eyes fixed on the
ground.
"You know quite well."
"I do not, Harry."
[6] "Well, I will tell you what it is."
"Please don't."
"I must. I want you to explain to me why you won't exhibit Dorian
Gray's picture. I want the real reason."
"I told you the real reason."
"No, you did not. You said it was because there was too much of
yourself in it. Now, that is childish."
"Harry," said Basil Hallward, looking him straight in the face, "every
portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not
of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is
not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on
the colored canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit
this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown with it the secret
of my own soul."
Lord Harry laughed. "And what is that?" he asked.
"I will tell you," said Hallward; and an expression of perplexity came
over his face.
"I am all expectation, Basil," murmured his companion, looking at him.
"Oh, there is really very little to tell, Harry," answered the young
painter; "and I am afraid you will hardly understand it. Perhaps you
will hardly believe it."
Lord Henry smiled, and, leaning down, plucked a pink-petalled daisy
from the grass, and examined it. "I am quite sure I shall understand
it," he replied, gazing intently at the little golden white-feathered
disk, "and I can believe anything, provided that it is incredible."
The wind shook some blossoms from the trees, and the heavy lilac
blooms, with their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the languid
air. A grasshopper began to chirrup in the grass, and a long thin
dragon-fly floated by on its brown gauze wings. Lord Henry felt as if
he could hear Basil Hallward's heart beating, and he wondered what was
coming.
"Well, this is incredible," repeated Hallward, rather
bitterly,--"incredible to me at times. I don't know what it means.
The story is simply this. Two months ago I went to a crush at Lady
Brandon's. You know we poor painters have to show ourselves in society
from time to time, just to remind the public that we are not savages.
With an evening coat and a white tie, as you told me once, anybody,
even a stock-broker, can gain a reputation for being civilized. Well,
after I had been in the room about ten minutes, talking to huge
overdressed dowagers and tedious Academicians, I suddenly became
conscious that some one was looking at me. I turned half-way round,
and saw Dorian Gray for the first time. When our eyes met, I felt that
I was growing pale. A curious instinct of terror came over me. I knew
that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was
so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole
nature, my whole soul, my very art itself. I did not want any external
influence in my life. You know yourself, Harry, how independent I am
by nature. My father destined me for the army. I insisted on [7]
going to Oxford. Then he made me enter my name at the Middle Temple.
Before I had eaten half a dozen dinners I gave up the Bar, and
announced my intention of becoming a painter. I have always been my
own master; had at least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray.
Then--But I don't know how to explain it to you. Something seemed to
tell me that I was on the verge of a terrible crisis in my life. I had
a strange feeling that Fate had in store for me exquisite joys and
exquisite sorrows. I knew that if I spoke to Dorian I would become
absolutely devoted to him, and that I ought not to speak to him. I
grew afraid, and turned to quit the room. It was not conscience that
made me do so: it was cowardice. I take no credit to myself for trying
to escape."
"Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience
is the trade-name of the firm. That is all."
"I don't believe that, Harry. However, whatever was my motive,--and it
may have been pride, for I used to be very proud,--I certainly
struggled to the door. There, of course, I stumbled against Lady
Brandon. 'You are not going to run away so soon, Mr. Hallward?' she
screamed out. You know her shrill horrid voice?"
"Yes; she is a peacock in everything but beauty," said Lord Henry,
pulling the daisy to bits with his long, nervous fingers.
"I could not get rid of her. She brought me up to Royalties, and
people with Stars and Garters, and elderly ladies with gigantic tiaras
and hooked noses. She spoke of me as her dearest friend. I had only
met her once before, but she took it into her head to lionize me. I
believe some picture of mine had made a great success at the time, at
least had been chattered about in the penny newspapers, which is the
nineteenth-century standard of immortality. Suddenly I found myself
face to face with the young man whose personality had so strangely
stirred me. We were quite close, almost touching. Our eyes met again.
It was mad of me, but I asked Lady Brandon to introduce me to him.
Perhaps it was not so mad, after all. It was simply inevitable. We
would have spoken to each other without any introduction. I am sure of
that. Dorian told me so afterwards. He, too, felt that we were
destined to know each other."
"And how did Lady Brandon describe this wonderful young man? I know
she goes in for giving a rapid précis of all her guests. I remember
her bringing me up to a most truculent and red-faced old gentleman
covered all over with orders and ribbons, and hissing into my ear, in a
tragic whisper which must have been perfectly audible to everybody in
the room, something like 'Sir Humpty Dumpty--you know--Afghan
frontier--Russian intrigues: very successful man--wife killed by an
elephant--quite inconsolable--wants to marry a beautiful American
widow--everybody does nowadays--hates Mr. Gladstone--but very much
interested in beetles: ask him what he thinks of Schouvaloff.' I
simply fled. I like to find out people for myself. But poor Lady
Brandon treats her guests exactly as an auctioneer treats his goods.
She either explains them entirely away, or tells one everything about
them except what one wants to know. But what did she say about Mr.
Dorian Gray?"
[8] "Oh, she murmured, 'Charming boy--poor dear mother and I quite
inseparable--engaged to be married to the same man--I mean married on
the same day--how very silly of me! Quite forget what he does--afraid
he--doesn't do anything--oh, yes, plays the piano--or is it the violin,
dear Mr. Gray?' We could neither of us help laughing, and we became
friends at once."
"Laughter is not a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is the best
ending for one," said Lord Henry, plucking another daisy.
Hallward buried his face in his hands. "You don't understand what
friendship is, Harry," he murmured,--"or what enmity is, for that
matter. You like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to
every one."
"How horribly unjust of you!" cried Lord Henry, tilting his hat back,
and looking up at the little clouds that were drifting across the
hollowed turquoise of the summer sky, like ravelled skeins of glossy
white silk. "Yes; horribly unjust of you. I make a great difference
between people. I choose my friends for their good looks, my
acquaintances for their characters, and my enemies for their brains. A
man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got
one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and
consequently they all appreciate me. Is that very vain of me? I think
it is rather vain."
"I should think it was, Harry. But according to your category I must
be merely an acquaintance."
"My dear old Basil, you are much more than an acquaintance."
"And much less than a friend. A sort of brother, I suppose?"
"Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die,
and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else."
"Harry!"
"My dear fellow, I am not quite serious. But I can't help detesting my
relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that we can't stand other
people having the same faults as ourselves. I quite sympathize with
the rage of the English democracy against what they call the vices of
the upper classes. They feel that drunkenness, stupidity, and
immorality should be their own special property, and that if any one of
us makes an ass of himself he is poaching on their preserves. When poor
Southwark got into the Divorce Court, their indignation was quite
magnificent. And yet I don't suppose that ten per cent of the lower
orders live correctly."
"I don't agree with a single word that you have said, and, what is
more, Harry, I don't believe you do either."
Lord Henry stroked his pointed brown beard, and tapped the toe of his
patent-leather boot with a tasselled malacca cane. "How English you
are, Basil! If one puts forward an idea to a real Englishman,--always
a rash thing to do,--he never dreams of considering whether the idea is
right or wrong. The only thing he considers of any importance is
whether one believes it one's self. Now, the value of an idea has
nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses
it. Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is,
the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it [9]
will not be colored by either his wants, his desires, or his
prejudices. However, I don't propose to discuss politics, sociology,
or metaphysics with you. I like persons better than principles. Tell
me more about Dorian Gray. How often do you see him?"
"Every day. I couldn't be happy if I didn't see him every day. Of
course sometimes it is only for a few minutes. But a few minutes with
somebody one worships mean a great deal."
"But you don't really worship him?"
"I do."
"How extraordinary! I thought you would never care for anything but
your painting,--your art, I should say. Art sounds better, doesn't it?"
"He is all my art to me now. I sometimes think, Harry, that there are
only two eras of any importance in the history of the world. The first
is the appearance of a new medium for art, and the second is the
appearance of a new personality for art also. What the invention of
oil-painting was to the Venetians, the face of Antinoüs was to late
Greek sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will some day be to me.
It is not merely that I paint from him, draw from him, model from him.
Of course I have done all that. He has stood as Paris in dainty armor,
and as Adonis with huntsman's cloak and polished boar-spear. Crowned
with heavy lotus-blossoms, he has sat on the prow of Adrian's barge,
looking into the green, turbid Nile. He has leaned over the still pool
of some Greek woodland, and seen in the water's silent silver the
wonder of his own beauty. But he is much more to me than that. I
won't tell you that I am dissatisfied with what I have done of him, or
that his beauty is such that art cannot express it. There is nothing
that art cannot express, and I know that the work I have done since I
met Dorian Gray is good work, is the best work of my life. But in some
curious way--I wonder will you understand me?--his personality has
suggested to me an entirely new manner in art, an entirely new mode of
style. I see things differently, I think of them differently. I can
now re-create life in a way that was hidden from me before. 'A dream
of form in days of thought,'--who is it who says that? I forget; but
it is what Dorian Gray has been to me. The merely visible presence of
this lad,--for he seems to me little more than a lad, though he is
really over twenty,--his merely visible presence,--ah! I wonder can
you realize all that that means? Unconsciously he defines for me the
lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in itself all the
passion of the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that
is Greek. The harmony of soul and body,--how much that is! We in our
madness have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is
bestial, an ideality that is void. Harry! Harry! if you only knew
what Dorian Gray is to me! You remember that landscape of mine, for
which Agnew offered me such a huge price, but which I would not part
with? It is one of the best things I have ever done. And why is it so?
Because, while I was painting it, Dorian Gray sat beside me."
"Basil, this is quite wonderful! I must see Dorian Gray." Hallward
got up from the seat, and walked up and down the [10] garden. After
some time he came back. "You don't understand, Harry," he said.
"Dorian Gray is merely to me a motive in art. He is never more present
in my work than when no image of him is there. He is simply a
suggestion, as I have said, of a new manner. I see him in the curves
of certain lines, in the loveliness and the subtleties of certain
colors. That is all."
"Then why won't you exhibit his portrait?"
"Because I have put into it all the extraordinary romance of which, of
course, I have never dared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it.
He will never know anything about it. But the world might guess it;
and I will not bare my soul to their shallow, prying eyes. My heart
shall never be put under their microscope. There is too much of myself
in the thing, Harry,--too much of myself!"
"Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion
is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions."
"I hate them for it. An artist should create beautiful things, but
should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when
men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We
have lost the abstract sense of beauty. If I live, I will show the
world what it is; and for that reason the world shall never see my
portrait of Dorian Gray."
"I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won't argue with you. It is only
the intellectually lost who ever argue. Tell me, is Dorian Gray very
fond of you?"
Hallward considered for a few moments. "He likes me," he answered,
after a pause; "I know he likes me. Of course I flatter him
dreadfully. I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I
know I shall be sorry for having said. I give myself away. As a rule,
he is charming to me, and we walk home together from the club arm in
arm, or sit in the studio and talk of a thousand things. Now and then,
however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight
in giving me pain. Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole
soul to some one who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his
coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a
summer's day."
"Days in summer, Basil, are apt to linger. Perhaps you will tire
sooner than he will. It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no
doubt that Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact
that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild
struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so
we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping
our place. The thoroughly well informed man,--that is the modern
ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well informed man is a dreadful
thing. It is like a bric-à-brac shop, all monsters and dust, and
everything priced above its proper value. I think you will tire first,
all the same. Some day you will look at Gray, and he will seem to you
to be a little out of drawing, or you won't like his tone of color, or
something. You will bitterly reproach him in your own heart, and
seriously think that he has behaved very badly to you. The next time he
calls, you will be [11] perfectly cold and indifferent. It will be a
great pity, for it will alter you. The worst of having a romance is
that it leaves one so unromantic."
"Harry, don't talk like that. As long as I live, the personality of
Dorian Gray will dominate me. You can't feel what I feel. You change
too often."
"Ah, my dear Basil, that is exactly why I can feel it. Those who are
faithful know only the pleasures of love: it is the faithless who know
love's tragedies." And Lord Henry struck a light on a dainty silver
case, and began to smoke a cigarette with a self-conscious and
self-satisfied air, as if he had summed up life in a phrase. There was
a rustle of chirruping sparrows in the ivy, and the blue cloud-shadows
chased themselves across the grass like swallows. How pleasant it was
in the garden! And how delightful other people's emotions were!--much
more delightful than their ideas, it seemed to him. One's own soul,
and the passions of one's friends,--those were the fascinating things
in life. He thought with pleasure of the tedious luncheon that he had
missed by staying so long with Basil Hallward. Had he gone to his
aunt's, he would have been sure to meet Lord Goodbody there, and the
whole conversation would have been about the housing of the poor, and
the necessity for model lodging-houses. It was charming to have escaped
all that! As he thought of his aunt, an idea seemed to strike him. He
turned to Hallward, and said, "My dear fellow, I have just remembered."
"Remembered what, Harry?"
"Where I heard the name of Dorian Gray."
"Where was it?" asked Hallward, with a slight frown.
"Don't look so angry, Basil. It was at my aunt's, Lady Agatha's. She
told me she had discovered a wonderful young man, who was going to help
her in the East End, and that his name was Dorian Gray. I am bound to
state that she never told me he was good-looking. Women have no
appreciation of good looks. At least, good women have not. She said
that he was very earnest, and had a beautiful nature. I at once
pictured to myself a creature with spectacles and lank hair, horridly
freckled, and tramping about on huge feet. I wish I had known it was
your friend."
"I am very glad you didn't, Harry."
"Why?"
"I don't want you to meet him."
"Mr. Dorian Gray is in the studio, sir," said the butler, coming into
the garden.
"You must introduce me now," cried Lord Henry, laughing.
Basil Hallward turned to the servant, who stood blinking in the
sunlight. "Ask Mr. Gray to wait, Parker: I will be in in a few
moments." The man bowed, and went up the walk.
Then he looked at Lord Henry. "Dorian Gray is my dearest friend," he
said. "He has a simple and a beautiful nature. Your aunt was quite
right in what she said of him. Don't spoil him for me. Don't try to
influence him. Your influence would be bad. The world is wide, and
has many marvellous people in it. Don't take [12] away from me the one
person that makes life absolutely lovely to me, and that gives to my
art whatever wonder or charm it possesses. Mind, Harry, I trust you."
He spoke very slowly, and the words seemed wrung out of him almost
against his will.
"What nonsense you talk!" said Lord Henry, smiling, and, taking
Hallward by the arm, he almost led him into the house.