30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wild

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Author: Oscar Wilde

Release Date: June 9, 2008 [EBook #174]

[This file last updated on July 2 2011]
[This file last updated on July 23 2014]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY ***

Produced by Judith Boss. HTML version by Al Haines.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

by

Oscar Wilde

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 1/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

CONTENTS
PREFACE CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 6 CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER 10 CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12 CHAPTER 13 CHAPTER 14 CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16 CHAPTER 17 CHAPTER 18 CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20

THE PREFACE
The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal
the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another
manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of

autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are
corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the

cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom
beautiful things mean only beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are

well written, or badly written. That is all.

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban

seeing his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban

not seeing his own face in a glass. The moral life of man forms part of
the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the
perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove
anything. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist has ethical
sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable
mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express
everything. Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an
art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art. From the point
of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 2/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type. All art is at
once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at
their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the
spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion
about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.
When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can
forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire
it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it
intensely.

All art is quite useless.

OSCAR WILDE

CHAPTER 1

The studio was filled with the rich odour 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 was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord
Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and
honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches
seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike 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 of Tokyo who,
through the medium of 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 dusty gilt horns of the straggling
woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. 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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 3/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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 the painter 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 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. Whenever I have
gone there, there have been either so many people that I have not been
able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I
have not been able to see the people, which was worse. The Grosvenor
is really the only place."

"I don't think I shall 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 himself out on the divan and laughed.

"Yes, I knew you would; 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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 4/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

Adonis, who looks as if he was made out 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 a
mode of 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 as a natural consequence 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 some brainless beautiful creature 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," answered the artist. "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 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 at their ease
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 art, whatever it may
be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks—we shall all suffer for what the
gods have given us, suffer terribly."

"Dorian Gray? Is that his name?" asked 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 is like surrendering a part of them. I have
grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 5/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is

delightful if one only hides it. When I leave town now 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, "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 absolutely 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, 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 ensconced themselves on a long bamboo
seat that stood in the shade of a tall laurel bush. The sunlight slipped
over the polished leaves. In the grass, white daisies were tremulous.

After a 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?" said the painter, keeping his eyes fixed on the
ground.

"You know quite well."

"I do not, Harry."

"Well, I will tell you what it is. I want you to explain to me why you
won't exhibit Dorian Gray's picture. I want the real reason."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 6/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"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
coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this
picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own
soul."

Lord Henry laughed. "And what is that?" he asked.

"I will tell you," said Hallward; but an expression of perplexity

came over his face.

"I am all expectation, Basil," continued his companion, glancing at

him.

"Oh, there is really very little to tell, Harry," answered the 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 as for believing things, I can believe anything,
provided that it is quite 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 by the wall, and like a blue thread a
long thin dragon-fly floated past on its brown gauze wings. Lord
Henry felt as if he could hear Basil Hallward's heart beating, and
wondered what was coming.

"The story is simply this," said the painter after some time. "Two
months ago I went to a crush at Lady Brandon's. You know we poor
artists 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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 7/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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 sensation
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. 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 grew afraid and turned to quit the room. It was not
conscience that made me do so: it was a sort of 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, and I don't believe you do either.
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
curiously shrill 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 parrot 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 reckless
of me, but I asked Lady Brandon to introduce me to him. Perhaps it
was not so reckless, 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."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 8/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"And how did Lady Brandon describe this wonderful young man?"
asked his companion. "I know she goes in for giving a rapid precis of
all her guests. I remember her bringing me up to a 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, the most astounding details. I
simply fled. I like to find out people for myself. But 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."

"Poor Lady Brandon! You are hard on her, Harry!" said Hallward
listlessly.

"My dear fellow, she tried to found a salon, and only succeeded in
opening a restaurant. How could I admire her? But tell me, what did
she say about Mr. Dorian Gray?"

"Oh, something like, 'Charming boy—poor dear mother and I

absolutely inseparable. Quite forget what he does—afraid he—doesn't
do anything—oh, yes, plays the piano—or is it the violin, dear Mr.
Gray?' Neither of us could help laughing, and we became friends at
once."

"Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far

the best ending for one," said the young lord, plucking another daisy.

Hallward shook his head. "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, like ravelled skeins of glossy
white silk, were drifting across the hollowed turquoise of the summer
sky. "Yes; horribly unjust of you. I make a great difference between
people. I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for
their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man
cannot 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."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 9/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"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!" exclaimed Hallward, frowning.

"My dear fellow, I am not quite serious. But I can't help detesting
my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can 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 orders. The masses 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 proletariat
live correctly."

"I don't agree with a single word that you have said, and, what is
more, Harry, I feel sure you don't either."

Lord Henry stroked his pointed brown beard and tapped the toe of
his patent-leather boot with a tasselled ebony cane. "How English you
are Basil! That is the second time you have made that observation. If
one puts forward an idea to a true 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 oneself. 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 will not be coloured 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, and I like persons with no principles
better than anything else in the world. Tell me more about Mr. Dorian
Gray. How often do you see him?"

"Every day. I couldn't be happy if I didn't see him every day. He is

absolutely necessary to me."

"How extraordinary! I thought you would never care for anything

but your art."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 10/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"He is all my art to me now," said the painter gravely. "I sometimes
think, Harry, that there are only two eras of any importance in the
world's history. 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
Antinous 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, sketch from him. Of course, I have done all that. But he is much
more to me than a model or a sitter. 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 recreate 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 it 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 vulgar, an ideality that is void. 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. Some subtle influence passed from him to me, and for
the first time in my life I saw in the plain woodland the wonder I had
always looked for and always missed."

"Basil, this is extraordinary! I must see Dorian Gray."

Hallward got up from the seat and walked up and down the garden.
After some time he came back. "Harry," he said, "Dorian Gray is to me
simply a motive in art. You might see nothing in him. I see everything
in him. He is never more present in my work than when no image of
him is there. He is a suggestion, as I have said, of a new manner. I find
him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of
certain colours. That is all."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 11/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"Then why won't you exhibit his portrait?" asked Lord Henry.

"Because, without intending it, I have put into it some expression of

all this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, I have never cared
to speak to him. He knows nothing about it. He shall 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," cried Hallward. "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. Some day 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?"

The painter 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. As a rule, he is charming to me, and
we 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," murmured Lord Henry.

"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-a-

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 12/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its
proper value. I think you will tire first, all the same. Some day you will
look at your friend, and he will seem to you to be a little out of
drawing, or you won't like his tone of colour, 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
perfectly cold and indifferent. It will be a great pity, for it will alter
you. What you have told me is quite a romance, a romance of art one
might call it, and the worst of having a romance of any kind 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 trivial side 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 satisfied air,
as if he had summed up the world in a phrase. There was a rustle of
chirruping sparrows in the green lacquer leaves of 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 pictured to himself with silent amusement
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 have
met Lord Goodbody there, and the whole conversation would have
been about the feeding of the poor and the necessity for model
lodging-houses. Each class would have preached the importance of
those virtues, for whose exercise there was no necessity in their own
lives. The rich would have spoken on the value of thrift, and the idle
grown eloquent over the dignity of labour. 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.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 13/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"Don't look so angry, Basil. It was at my aunt, 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, horribly
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."

"You don't want me to meet him?"

"No."

"Mr. Dorian Gray is in the studio, sir," said the butler, coming into
the garden.

"You must introduce me now," cried Lord Henry, laughing.

The painter turned to his servant, who stood blinking in the

sunlight. "Ask Mr. Gray to wait, Parker: I shall 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. 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 away from me the one person who
gives to my art whatever charm it possesses: my life as an artist
depends on him. 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.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 14/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

CHAPTER 2

As they entered they saw Dorian Gray. He was seated at the piano,
with his back to them, turning over the pages of a volume of
Schumann's "Forest Scenes." "You must lend me these, Basil," he
cried. "I want to learn them. They are perfectly charming."

"That entirely depends on how you sit to-day, Dorian."

"Oh, I am tired of sitting, and I don't want a life-sized portrait of

myself," answered the lad, swinging round on the music-stool in a
wilful, petulant manner. When he caught sight of Lord Henry, a faint
blush coloured his cheeks for a moment, and he started up. "I beg your
pardon, Basil, but I didn't know you had any one with you."

"This is Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian, an old Oxford friend of mine.

I have just been telling him what a capital sitter you were, and now
you have spoiled everything."

"You have not spoiled my pleasure in meeting you, Mr. Gray," said
Lord Henry, stepping forward and extending his hand. "My aunt has
often spoken to me about you. You are one of her favourites, and, I am
afraid, one of her victims also."

"I am in Lady Agatha's black books at present," answered Dorian

with a funny look of penitence. "I promised to go to a club in
Whitechapel with her last Tuesday, and I really forgot all about it. We
were to have played a duet together—three duets, I believe. I don't
know what she will say to me. I am far too frightened to call."

"Oh, I will make your peace with my aunt. She is quite devoted to
you. And I don't think it really matters about your not being there. The
audience probably thought it was a duet. When Aunt Agatha sits down
to the piano, she makes quite enough noise for two people."

"That is very horrid to her, and not very nice to me," answered
Dorian, laughing.

Lord Henry looked at him. Yes, he was certainly wonderfully

handsome, with his finely curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his
crisp gold hair. There was something in his face that made one trust
him at once. All the candour of youth was there, as well as all youth's
passionate purity. One felt that he had kept himself unspotted from the
world. No wonder Basil Hallward worshipped him.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 15/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"You are too charming to go in for philanthropy, Mr. Gray—far too

charming." And Lord Henry flung himself down on the divan and
opened his cigarette-case.

The painter had been busy mixing his colours and getting his
brushes ready. He was looking worried, and when he heard Lord
Henry's last remark, he glanced at him, hesitated for a moment, and
then said, "Harry, I want to finish this picture to-day. Would you think
it awfully rude of me if I asked you to go away?"

Lord Henry smiled and looked at Dorian Gray. "Am I to go, Mr.
Gray?" he asked.

"Oh, please don't, Lord Henry. I see that Basil is in one of his sulky
moods, and I can't bear him when he sulks. Besides, I want you to tell
me why I should not go in for philanthropy."

"I don't know that I shall tell you that, Mr. Gray. It is so tedious a
subject that one would have to talk seriously about it. But I certainly
shall not run away, now that you have asked me to stop. You don't
really mind, Basil, do you? You have often told me that you liked your
sitters to have some one to chat to."

Hallward bit his lip. "If Dorian wishes it, of course you must stay.
Dorian's whims are laws to everybody, except himself."

Lord Henry took up his hat and gloves. "You are very pressing,
Basil, but I am afraid I must go. I have promised to meet a man at the
Orleans. Good-bye, Mr. Gray. Come and see me some afternoon in
Curzon Street. I am nearly always at home at five o'clock. Write to me
when you are coming. I should be sorry to miss you."

"Basil," cried Dorian Gray, "if Lord Henry Wotton goes, I shall go,
too. You never open your lips while you are painting, and it is horribly
dull standing on a platform and trying to look pleasant. Ask him to
stay. I insist upon it."

"Stay, Harry, to oblige Dorian, and to oblige me," said Hallward,

gazing intently at his picture. "It is quite true, I never talk when I am
working, and never listen either, and it must be dreadfully tedious for
my unfortunate sitters. I beg you to stay."

"But what about my man at the Orleans?"

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 16/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

The painter laughed. "I don't think there will be any difficulty about
that. Sit down again, Harry. And now, Dorian, get up on the platform,
and don't move about too much, or pay any attention to what Lord
Henry says. He has a very bad influence over all his friends, with the
single exception of myself."

Dorian Gray stepped up on the dais with the air of a young Greek
martyr, and made a little moue of discontent to Lord Henry, to whom
he had rather taken a fancy. He was so unlike Basil. They made a
delightful contrast. And he had such a beautiful voice. After a few
moments he said to him, "Have you really a very bad influence, Lord
Henry? As bad as Basil says?"

"There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence

is immoral—immoral from the scientific point of view."

"Why?"

"Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He

does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions.
His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins,
are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor
of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-
development. To realize one's nature perfectly—that is what each of us
is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have
forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self.
Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the
beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone
out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society,
which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of
religion—these are the two things that govern us. And yet—"

"Just turn your head a little more to the right, Dorian, like a good
boy," said the painter, deep in his work and conscious only that a look
had come into the lad's face that he had never seen there before.

"And yet," continued Lord Henry, in his low, musical voice, and
with that graceful wave of the hand that was always so characteristic
of him, and that he had even in his Eton days, "I believe that if one
man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to
every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream—I
believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we
would forget all the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the
Hellenic ideal—to something finer, richer than the Hellenic ideal, it

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 17/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

may be. But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The
mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that
mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that
we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us. The body sins
once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification.
Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury
of a regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has
forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made
monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the
world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that
the great sins of the world take place also. You, Mr. Gray, you
yourself, with your rose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you
have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled
you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory
might stain your cheek with shame—"

"Stop!" faltered Dorian Gray, "stop! you bewilder me. I don't know
what to say. There is some answer to you, but I cannot find it. Don't
speak. Let me think. Or, rather, let me try not to think."

For nearly ten minutes he stood there, motionless, with parted lips
and eyes strangely bright. He was dimly conscious that entirely fresh
influences were at work within him. Yet they seemed to him to have
come really from himself. The few words that Basil's friend had said to
him—words spoken by chance, no doubt, and with wilful paradox in
them—had touched some secret chord that had never been touched
before, but that he felt was now vibrating and throbbing to curious
pulses.

Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many
times. But music was not articulate. It was not a new world, but rather
another chaos, that it created in us. Words! Mere words! How terrible
they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from
them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to
be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music
of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there
anything so real as words?

Yes; there had been things in his boyhood that he had not
understood. He understood them now. Life suddenly became fiery-
coloured to him. It seemed to him that he had been walking in fire.
Why had he not known it?

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 18/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

With his subtle smile, Lord Henry watched him. He knew the
precise psychological moment when to say nothing. He felt intensely
interested. He was amazed at the sudden impression that his words had
produced, and, remembering a book that he had read when he was
sixteen, a book which had revealed to him much that he had not known
before, he wondered whether Dorian Gray was passing through a
similar experience. He had merely shot an arrow into the air. Had it hit
the mark? How fascinating the lad was!

Hallward painted away with that marvellous bold touch of his, that
had the true refinement and perfect delicacy that in art, at any rate
comes only from strength. He was unconscious of the silence.

"Basil, I am tired of standing," cried Dorian Gray suddenly. "I must

go out and sit in the garden. The air is stifling here."

"My dear fellow, I am so sorry. When I am painting, I can't think of

anything else. But you never sat better. You were perfectly still. And I
have caught the effect I wanted—the half-parted lips and the bright
look in the eyes. I don't know what Harry has been saying to you, but
he has certainly made you have the most wonderful expression. I
suppose he has been paying you compliments. You mustn't believe a
word that he says."

"He has certainly not been paying me compliments. Perhaps that is

the reason that I don't believe anything he has told me."

"You know you believe it all," said Lord Henry, looking at him with
his dreamy languorous eyes. "I will go out to the garden with you. It is
horribly hot in the studio. Basil, let us have something iced to drink,
something with strawberries in it."

"Certainly, Harry. Just touch the bell, and when Parker comes I will
tell him what you want. I have got to work up this background, so I
will join you later on. Don't keep Dorian too long. I have never been in
better form for painting than I am to-day. This is going to be my
masterpiece. It is my masterpiece as it stands."

Lord Henry went out to the garden and found Dorian Gray burying
his face in the great cool lilac-blossoms, feverishly drinking in their
perfume as if it had been wine. He came close to him and put his hand
upon his shoulder. "You are quite right to do that," he murmured.
"Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the
senses but the soul."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 19/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

The lad started and drew back. He was bareheaded, and the leaves
had tossed his rebellious curls and tangled all their gilded threads.
There was a look of fear in his eyes, such as people have when they
are suddenly awakened. His finely chiselled nostrils quivered, and
some hidden nerve shook the scarlet of his lips and left them
trembling.

"Yes," continued Lord Henry, "that is one of the great secrets of life
—to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of
the soul. You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think
you know, just as you know less than you want to know."

Dorian Gray frowned and turned his head away. He could not help
liking the tall, graceful young man who was standing by him. His
romantic, olive-coloured face and worn expression interested him.
There was something in his low languid voice that was absolutely
fascinating. His cool, white, flowerlike hands, even, had a curious
charm. They moved, as he spoke, like music, and seemed to have a
language of their own. But he felt afraid of him, and ashamed of being
afraid. Why had it been left for a stranger to reveal him to himself? He
had known Basil Hallward for months, but the friendship between
them had never altered him. Suddenly there had come some one across
his life who seemed to have disclosed to him life's mystery. And, yet,
what was there to be afraid of? He was not a schoolboy or a girl. It was
absurd to be frightened.

"Let us go and sit in the shade," said Lord Henry. "Parker has
brought out the drinks, and if you stay any longer in this glare, you
will be quite spoiled, and Basil will never paint you again. You really
must not allow yourself to become sunburnt. It would be
unbecoming."

"What can it matter?" cried Dorian Gray, laughing, as he sat down

on the seat at the end of the garden.

"It should matter everything to you, Mr. Gray."

"Why?"

"Because you have the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one
thing worth having."

"I don't feel that, Lord Henry."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 20/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"No, you don't feel it now. Some day, when you are old and
wrinkled and ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its
lines, and passion branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel
it, you will feel it terribly. Now, wherever you go, you charm the
world. Will it always be so? ... You have a wonderfully beautiful face,
Mr. Gray. Don't frown. You have. And beauty is a form of genius—is
higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great
facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in
dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be
questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of
those who have it. You smile? Ah! when you have lost it you won't
smile.... People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. That
may be so, but at least it is not so superficial as thought is. To me,
beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not
judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not
the invisible.... Yes, Mr. Gray, the gods have been good to you. But
what the gods give they quickly take away. You have only a few years
in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes,
your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that
there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with
those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more
bitter than defeats. Every month as it wanes brings you nearer to
something dreadful. Time is jealous of you, and wars against your
lilies and your roses. You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked,
and dull-eyed. You will suffer horribly.... Ah! realize your youth while
you have it. Don't squander the gold of your days, listening to the
tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your
life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly
aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is
in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new
sensations. Be afraid of nothing.... A new Hedonism—that is what our
century wants. You might be its visible symbol. With your personality
there is nothing you could not do. The world belongs to you for a
season.... The moment I met you I saw that you were quite
unconscious of what you really are, of what you really might be. There
was so much in you that charmed me that I felt I must tell you
something about yourself. I thought how tragic it would be if you were
wasted. For there is such a little time that your youth will last—such a
little time. The common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom again.
The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month
there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green
night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get back our
youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish.
Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets,

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 21/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much

afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to
yield to. Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but
youth!"

Dorian Gray listened, open-eyed and wondering. The spray of lilac

fell from his hand upon the gravel. A furry bee came and buzzed round
it for a moment. Then it began to scramble all over the oval stellated
globe of the tiny blossoms. He watched it with that strange interest in
trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make
us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we
cannot find expression, or when some thought that terrifies us lays
sudden siege to the brain and calls on us to yield. After a time the bee
flew away. He saw it creeping into the stained trumpet of a Tyrian
convolvulus. The flower seemed to quiver, and then swayed gently to
and fro.

Suddenly the painter appeared at the door of the studio and made
staccato signs for them to come in. They turned to each other and
smiled.

"I am waiting," he cried. "Do come in. The light is quite perfect,
and you can bring your drinks."

They rose up and sauntered down the walk together. Two green-
and-white butterflies fluttered past them, and in the pear-tree at the
corner of the garden a thrush began to sing.

"You are glad you have met me, Mr. Gray," said Lord Henry,
looking at him.

"Yes, I am glad now. I wonder shall I always be glad?"

"Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear

it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying
to make it last for ever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only
difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice
lasts a little longer."

As they entered the studio, Dorian Gray put his hand upon Lord
Henry's arm. "In that case, let our friendship be a caprice," he
murmured, flushing at his own boldness, then stepped up on the
platform and resumed his pose.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 22/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

Lord Henry flung himself into a large wicker arm-chair and

watched him. The sweep and dash of the brush on the canvas made the
only sound that broke the stillness, except when, now and then,
Hallward stepped back to look at his work from a distance. In the
slanting beams that streamed through the open doorway the dust
danced and was golden. The heavy scent of the roses seemed to brood
over everything.

After about a quarter of an hour Hallward stopped painting, looked

for a long time at Dorian Gray, and then for a long time at the picture,
biting the end of one of his huge brushes and frowning. "It is quite
finished," he cried at last, and stooping down he wrote his name in
long vermilion letters on the left-hand corner of the canvas.

Lord Henry came over and examined the picture. It was certainly a
wonderful work of art, and a wonderful likeness as well.

"My dear fellow, I congratulate you most warmly," he said. "It is the
finest portrait of modern times. Mr. Gray, come over and look at
yourself."

The lad started, as if awakened from some dream.

"Is it really finished?" he murmured, stepping down from the

platform.

"Quite finished," said the painter. "And you have sat splendidly to-
day. I am awfully obliged to you."

"That is entirely due to me," broke in Lord Henry. "Isn't it, Mr.
Gray?"

Dorian made no answer, but passed listlessly in front of his picture

and turned towards it. When he saw it he drew back, and his cheeks
flushed for a moment with pleasure. A look of joy came into his eyes,
as if he had recognized himself for the first time. He stood there
motionless and in wonder, dimly conscious that Hallward was
speaking to him, but not catching the meaning of his words. The sense
of his own beauty came on him like a revelation. He had never felt it
before. Basil Hallward's compliments had seemed to him to be merely
the charming exaggeration of friendship. He had listened to them,
laughed at them, forgotten them. They had not influenced his nature.
Then had come Lord Henry Wotton with his strange panegyric on
youth, his terrible warning of its brevity. That had stirred him at the
time, and now, as he stood gazing at the shadow of his own loveliness,

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 23/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

the full reality of the description flashed across him. Yes, there would
be a day when his face would be wrinkled and wizen, his eyes dim and
colourless, the grace of his figure broken and deformed. The scarlet
would pass away from his lips and the gold steal from his hair. The life
that was to make his soul would mar his body. He would become
dreadful, hideous, and uncouth.

As he thought of it, a sharp pang of pain struck through him like a

knife and made each delicate fibre of his nature quiver. His eyes
deepened into amethyst, and across them came a mist of tears. He felt
as if a hand of ice had been laid upon his heart.

"Don't you like it?" cried Hallward at last, stung a little by the lad's
silence, not understanding what it meant.

"Of course he likes it," said Lord Henry. "Who wouldn't like it? It is
one of the greatest things in modern art. I will give you anything you
like to ask for it. I must have it."

"It is not my property, Harry."

"Whose property is it?"

"Dorian's, of course," answered the painter.

"He is a very lucky fellow."

"How sad it is!" murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed
upon his own portrait. "How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible,
and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never
be older than this particular day of June.... If it were only the other
way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was
to grow old! For that—for that—I would give everything! Yes, there is
nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for
that!"

"You would hardly care for such an arrangement, Basil," cried Lord
Henry, laughing. "It would be rather hard lines on your work."

"I should object very strongly, Harry," said Hallward.

Dorian Gray turned and looked at him. "I believe you would, Basil.
You like your art better than your friends. I am no more to you than a
green bronze figure. Hardly as much, I dare say."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 24/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

The painter stared in amazement. It was so unlike Dorian to speak

like that. What had happened? He seemed quite angry. His face was
flushed and his cheeks burning.

"Yes," he continued, "I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or

your silver Faun. You will like them always. How long will you like
me? Till I have my first wrinkle, I suppose. I know, now, that when
one loses one's good looks, whatever they may be, one loses
everything. Your picture has taught me that. Lord Henry Wotton is
perfectly right. Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I
am growing old, I shall kill myself."

Hallward turned pale and caught his hand. "Dorian! Dorian!" he

cried, "don't talk like that. I have never had such a friend as you, and I
shall never have such another. You are not jealous of material things,
are you?—you who are finer than any of them!"

"I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous

of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must
lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives
something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could
change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It
will mock me some day—mock me horribly!" The hot tears welled
into his eyes; he tore his hand away and, flinging himself on the divan,
he buried his face in the cushions, as though he was praying.

"This is your doing, Harry," said the painter bitterly.

Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "It is the real Dorian Gray—
that is all."

"It is not."

"If it is not, what have I to do with it?"

"You should have gone away when I asked you," he muttered.

"I stayed when you asked me," was Lord Henry's answer.

"Harry, I can't quarrel with my two best friends at once, but between
you both you have made me hate the finest piece of work I have ever
done, and I will destroy it. What is it but canvas and colour? I will not
let it come across our three lives and mar them."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 25/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

Dorian Gray lifted his golden head from the pillow, and with pallid
face and tear-stained eyes, looked at him as he walked over to the deal
painting-table that was set beneath the high curtained window. What
was he doing there? His fingers were straying about among the litter of
tin tubes and dry brushes, seeking for something. Yes, it was for the
long palette-knife, with its thin blade of lithe steel. He had found it at
last. He was going to rip up the canvas.

With a stifled sob the lad leaped from the couch, and, rushing over
to Hallward, tore the knife out of his hand, and flung it to the end of
the studio. "Don't, Basil, don't!" he cried. "It would be murder!"

"I am glad you appreciate my work at last, Dorian," said the painter
coldly when he had recovered from his surprise. "I never thought you
would."

"Appreciate it? I am in love with it, Basil. It is part of myself. I feel

that."

"Well, as soon as you are dry, you shall be varnished, and framed,
and sent home. Then you can do what you like with yourself." And he
walked across the room and rang the bell for tea. "You will have tea, of
course, Dorian? And so will you, Harry? Or do you object to such
simple pleasures?"

"I adore simple pleasures," said Lord Henry. "They are the last
refuge of the complex. But I don't like scenes, except on the stage.
What absurd fellows you are, both of you! I wonder who it was
defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition
ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational. I am glad he is
not, after all—though I wish you chaps would not squabble over the
picture. You had much better let me have it, Basil. This silly boy
doesn't really want it, and I really do."

"If you let any one have it but me, Basil, I shall never forgive you!"
cried Dorian Gray; "and I don't allow people to call me a silly boy."

"You know the picture is yours, Dorian. I gave it to you before it

existed."

"And you know you have been a little silly, Mr. Gray, and that you
don't really object to being reminded that you are extremely young."

"I should have objected very strongly this morning, Lord Henry."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 26/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"Ah! this morning! You have lived since then."

There came a knock at the door, and the butler entered with a laden
tea-tray and set it down upon a small Japanese table. There was a rattle
of cups and saucers and the hissing of a fluted Georgian urn. Two
globe-shaped china dishes were brought in by a page. Dorian Gray
went over and poured out the tea. The two men sauntered languidly to
the table and examined what was under the covers.

"Let us go to the theatre to-night," said Lord Henry. "There is sure

to be something on, somewhere. I have promised to dine at White's,
but it is only with an old friend, so I can send him a wire to say that I
am ill, or that I am prevented from coming in consequence of a
subsequent engagement. I think that would be a rather nice excuse: it
would have all the surprise of candour."

"It is such a bore putting on one's dress-clothes," muttered

Hallward. "And, when one has them on, they are so horrid."

"Yes," answered Lord Henry dreamily, "the costume of the

nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is
the only real colour-element left in modern life."

"You really must not say things like that before Dorian, Harry."

"Before which Dorian? The one who is pouring out tea for us, or the
one in the picture?"

"Before either."

"I should like to come to the theatre with you, Lord Henry," said the
lad.

"Then you shall come; and you will come, too, Basil, won't you?"

"I can't, really. I would sooner not. I have a lot of work to do."

"Well, then, you and I will go alone, Mr. Gray."

"I should like that awfully."

The painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the picture.
"I shall stay with the real Dorian," he said, sadly.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 27/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"Is it the real Dorian?" cried the original of the portrait, strolling
across to him. "Am I really like that?"

"Yes; you are just like that."

"How wonderful, Basil!"

"At least you are like it in appearance. But it will never alter,"
sighed Hallward. "That is something."

"What a fuss people make about fidelity!" exclaimed Lord Henry.

"Why, even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has
nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and
are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can
say."

"Don't go to the theatre to-night, Dorian," said Hallward. "Stop and

dine with me."

"I can't, Basil."

"Why?"

"Because I have promised Lord Henry Wotton to go with him."

"He won't like you the better for keeping your promises. He always
breaks his own. I beg you not to go."

Dorian Gray laughed and shook his head.

"I entreat you."

The lad hesitated, and looked over at Lord Henry, who was
watching them from the tea-table with an amused smile.

"I must go, Basil," he answered.

"Very well," said Hallward, and he went over and laid down his cup
on the tray. "It is rather late, and, as you have to dress, you had better
lose no time. Good-bye, Harry. Good-bye, Dorian. Come and see me
soon. Come to-morrow."

"Certainly."

"You won't forget?"

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 28/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"No, of course not," cried Dorian.

"And ... Harry!"

"Yes, Basil?"

"Remember what I asked you, when we were in the garden this

morning."

"I have forgotten it."

"I trust you."

"I wish I could trust myself," said Lord Henry, laughing. "Come,
Mr. Gray, my hansom is outside, and I can drop you at your own place.
Good-bye, Basil. It has been a most interesting afternoon."

As the door closed behind them, the painter flung himself down on
a sofa, and a look of pain came into his face.

CHAPTER 3
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 on 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 dispatches, 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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 29/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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 button-hole 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.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 30/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"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 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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 31/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 32/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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 protege."

"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....

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 33/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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, Dryadlike 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 analyzed 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 every one 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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 34/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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, some one 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."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 35/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 36/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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 sympathize with everything except suffering," said Lord

Henry, shrugging his shoulders. "I cannot sympathize with that. It is
too ugly, too horrible, too distressing. There is something terribly
morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathize
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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 37/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 38/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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 demoralizing. 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 encyclopaedias.
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?"

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 39/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"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 Athenaeum. 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."

CHAPTER 4

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 40/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

One afternoon, a month later, Dorian Gray was reclining in a

luxurious arm-chair, in the little library of Lord Henry's house in
Mayfair. It was, in its way, a very charming room, with its high
panelled wainscoting of olive-stained oak, its cream-coloured frieze
and ceiling of raised plasterwork, and its brickdust felt carpet strewn
with silk, long-fringed Persian rugs. On a tiny satinwood table stood a
statuette by Clodion, and beside it lay a copy of Les Cent Nouvelles,
bound for Margaret of Valois by Clovis Eve and powdered with the
gilt daisies that Queen had selected for her device. Some large blue
china jars and parrot-tulips were ranged on the mantelshelf, and
through the small leaded panes of the window streamed the apricot-
coloured light of a summer day in London.

Lord Henry had not yet come in. He was always late on principle,
his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time. So the lad was
looking rather sulky, as with listless fingers he turned over the pages of
an elaborately illustrated edition of Manon Lescaut that he had found
in one of the book-cases. The formal monotonous ticking of the Louis
Quatorze clock annoyed him. Once or twice he thought of going away.

At last he heard a step outside, and the door opened. "How late you
are, Harry!" he murmured.

"I am afraid it is not Harry, Mr. Gray," answered a shrill voice.

He glanced quickly round and rose to his feet. "I beg your pardon. I
thought—"

"You thought it was my husband. It is only his wife. You must let
me introduce myself. I know you quite well by your photographs. I
think my husband has got seventeen of them."

"Not seventeen, Lady Henry?"

"Well, eighteen, then. And I saw you with him the other night at the
opera." She laughed nervously as she spoke, and watched him with her
vague forget-me-not eyes. She was a curious woman, whose dresses
always looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a
tempest. She was usually in love with somebody, and, as her passion
was never returned, she had kept all her illusions. She tried to look
picturesque, but only succeeded in being untidy. Her name was
Victoria, and she had a perfect mania for going to church.

"That was at Lohengrin, Lady Henry, I think?"

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 41/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"Yes; it was at dear Lohengrin. I like Wagner's music better than

anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other
people hearing what one says. That is a great advantage, don't you
think so, Mr. Gray?"

The same nervous staccato laugh broke from her thin lips, and her
fingers began to play with a long tortoise-shell paper-knife.

Dorian smiled and shook his head: "I am afraid I don't think so,
Lady Henry. I never talk during music—at least, during good music. If
one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it in conversation."

"Ah! that is one of Harry's views, isn't it, Mr. Gray? I always hear
Harry's views from his friends. It is the only way I get to know of
them. But you must not think I don't like good music. I adore it, but I
am afraid of it. It makes me too romantic. I have simply worshipped
pianists—two at a time, sometimes, Harry tells me. I don't know what
it is about them. Perhaps it is that they are foreigners. They all are,
ain't they? Even those that are born in England become foreigners after
a time, don't they? It is so clever of them, and such a compliment to
art. Makes it quite cosmopolitan, doesn't it? You have never been to
any of my parties, have you, Mr. Gray? You must come. I can't afford
orchids, but I spare no expense in foreigners. They make one's rooms
look so picturesque. But here is Harry! Harry, I came in to look for
you, to ask you something—I forget what it was—and I found Mr.
Gray here. We have had such a pleasant chat about music. We have
quite the same ideas. No; I think our ideas are quite different. But he
has been most pleasant. I am so glad I've seen him."

"I am charmed, my love, quite charmed," said Lord Henry,

elevating his dark, crescent-shaped eyebrows and looking at them both
with an amused smile. "So sorry I am late, Dorian. I went to look after
a piece of old brocade in Wardour Street and had to bargain for hours
for it. Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of
nothing."

"I am afraid I must be going," exclaimed Lady Henry, breaking an

awkward silence with her silly sudden laugh. "I have promised to drive
with the duchess. Good-bye, Mr. Gray. Good-bye, Harry. You are
dining out, I suppose? So am I. Perhaps I shall see you at Lady
Thornbury's."

"I dare say, my dear," said Lord Henry, shutting the door behind her
as, looking like a bird of paradise that had been out all night in the

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 42/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

rain, she flitted out of the room, leaving a faint odour of frangipanni.
Then he lit a cigarette and flung himself down on the sofa.

"Never marry a woman with straw-coloured hair, Dorian," he said

after a few puffs.

"Why, Harry?"

"Because they are so sentimental."

"But I like sentimental people."

"Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired;
women, because they are curious: both are disappointed."

"I don't think I am likely to marry, Harry. I am too much in love.

That is one of your aphorisms. I am putting it into practice, as I do
everything that you say."

"Who are you in love with?" asked Lord Henry after a pause.

"With an actress," said Dorian Gray, blushing.

Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "That is a rather commonplace

debut."

"You would not say so if you saw her, Harry."

"Who is she?"

"Her name is Sibyl Vane."

"Never heard of her."

"No one has. People will some day, however. She is a genius."

"My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex.

They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women
represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the
triumph of mind over morals."

"Harry, how can you?"

"My dear Dorian, it is quite true. I am analysing women at present,

so I ought to know. The subject is not so abstruse as I thought it was. I
find that, ultimately, there are only two kinds of women, the plain and

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 43/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

the coloured. The plain women are very useful. If you want to gain a
reputation for respectability, you have merely to take them down to
supper. The other women are very charming. They commit one
mistake, however. They paint in order to try and look young. Our
grandmothers painted in order to try and talk brilliantly. Rouge and
esprit used to go together. That is all over now. As long as a woman
can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly
satisfied. As for conversation, there are only five women in London
worth talking to, and two of these can't be admitted into decent society.
However, tell me about your genius. How long have you known her?"

"Ah! Harry, your views terrify me."

"Never mind that. How long have you known her?"

"About three weeks."

"And where did you come across her?"

"I will tell you, Harry, but you mustn't be unsympathetic about it.
After all, it never would have happened if I had not met you. You
filled me with a wild desire to know everything about life. For days
after I met you, something seemed to throb in my veins. As I lounged
in the park, or strolled down Piccadilly, I used to look at every one
who passed me and wonder, with a mad curiosity, what sort of lives
they led. Some of them fascinated me. Others filled me with terror.
There was an exquisite poison in the air. I had a passion for
sensations.... Well, one evening about seven o'clock, I determined to
go out in search of some adventure. I felt that this grey monstrous
London of ours, with its myriads of people, its sordid sinners, and its
splendid sins, as you once phrased it, must have something in store for
me. I fancied a thousand things. The mere danger gave me a sense of
delight. I remembered what you had said to me on that wonderful
evening when we first dined together, about the search for beauty
being the real secret of life. I don't know what I expected, but I went
out and wandered eastward, soon losing my way in a labyrinth of
grimy streets and black grassless squares. About half-past eight I
passed by an absurd little theatre, with great flaring gas-jets and gaudy
play-bills. A hideous Jew, in the most amazing waistcoat I ever beheld
in my life, was standing at the entrance, smoking a vile cigar. He had
greasy ringlets, and an enormous diamond blazed in the centre of a
soiled shirt. 'Have a box, my Lord?' he said, when he saw me, and he
took off his hat with an air of gorgeous servility. There was something
about him, Harry, that amused me. He was such a monster. You will

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 44/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

laugh at me, I know, but I really went in and paid a whole guinea for
the stage-box. To the present day I can't make out why I did so; and yet
if I hadn't—my dear Harry, if I hadn't—I should have missed the
greatest romance of my life. I see you are laughing. It is horrid of
you!"

"I am not laughing, Dorian; at least I am not laughing at you. But

you should not say the greatest romance of your life. You should say
the first romance of your life. You will always be loved, and you will
always be in love with love. A grande passion is the privilege of
people who have nothing to do. That is the one use of the idle classes
of a country. Don't be afraid. There are exquisite things in store for
you. This is merely the beginning."

"Do you think my nature so shallow?" cried Dorian Gray angrily.

"No; I think your nature so deep."

"How do you mean?"

"My dear boy, the people who love only once in their lives are
really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their
fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of
imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to
the life of the intellect—simply a confession of failure. Faithfulness! I
must analyse it some day. The passion for property is in it. There are
many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that
others might pick them up. But I don't want to interrupt you. Go on
with your story."

"Well, I found myself seated in a horrid little private box, with a

vulgar drop-scene staring me in the face. I looked out from behind the
curtain and surveyed the house. It was a tawdry affair, all Cupids and
cornucopias, like a third-rate wedding-cake. The gallery and pit were
fairly full, but the two rows of dingy stalls were quite empty, and there
was hardly a person in what I suppose they called the dress-circle.
Women went about with oranges and ginger-beer, and there was a
terrible consumption of nuts going on."

"It must have been just like the palmy days of the British drama."

"Just like, I should fancy, and very depressing. I began to wonder

what on earth I should do when I caught sight of the play-bill. What do
you think the play was, Harry?"

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 45/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"I should think 'The Idiot Boy', or 'Dumb but Innocent'. Our fathers
used to like that sort of piece, I believe. The longer I live, Dorian, the
more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is
not good enough for us. In art, as in politics, les grandperes ont
toujours tort."

"This play was good enough for us, Harry. It was Romeo and Juliet.
I must admit that I was rather annoyed at the idea of seeing
Shakespeare done in such a wretched hole of a place. Still, I felt
interested, in a sort of way. At any rate, I determined to wait for the
first act. There was a dreadful orchestra, presided over by a young
Hebrew who sat at a cracked piano, that nearly drove me away, but at
last the drop-scene was drawn up and the play began. Romeo was a
stout elderly gentleman, with corked eyebrows, a husky tragedy voice,
and a figure like a beer-barrel. Mercutio was almost as bad. He was
played by the low-comedian, who had introduced gags of his own and
was on most friendly terms with the pit. They were both as grotesque
as the scenery, and that looked as if it had come out of a country-
booth. But Juliet! Harry, imagine a girl, hardly seventeen years of age,
with a little, flowerlike face, a small Greek head with plaited coils of
dark-brown hair, eyes that were violet wells of passion, lips that were
like the petals of a rose. She was the loveliest thing I had ever seen in
my life. You said to me once that pathos left you unmoved, but that
beauty, mere beauty, could fill your eyes with tears. I tell you, Harry, I
could hardly see this girl for the mist of tears that came across me.
And her voice—I never heard such a voice. It was very low at first,
with deep mellow notes that seemed to fall singly upon one's ear. Then
it became a little louder, and sounded like a flute or a distant hautboy.
In the garden-scene it had all the tremulous ecstasy that one hears just
before dawn when nightingales are singing. There were moments, later
on, when it had the wild passion of violins. You know how a voice can
stir one. Your voice and the voice of Sibyl Vane are two things that I
shall never forget. When I close my eyes, I hear them, and each of
them says something different. I don't know which to follow. Why
should I not love her? Harry, I do love her. She is everything to me in
life. Night after night I go to see her play. One evening she is Rosalind,
and the next evening she is Imogen. I have seen her die in the gloom of
an Italian tomb, sucking the poison from her lover's lips. I have
watched her wandering through the forest of Arden, disguised as a
pretty boy in hose and doublet and dainty cap. She has been mad, and
has come into the presence of a guilty king, and given him rue to wear
and bitter herbs to taste of. She has been innocent, and the black hands
of jealousy have crushed her reedlike throat. I have seen her in every
age and in every costume. Ordinary women never appeal to one's

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 46/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

imagination. They are limited to their century. No glamour ever

transfigures them. One knows their minds as easily as one knows their
bonnets. One can always find them. There is no mystery in any of
them. They ride in the park in the morning and chatter at tea-parties in
the afternoon. They have their stereotyped smile and their fashionable
manner. They are quite obvious. But an actress! How different an
actress is! Harry! why didn't you tell me that the only thing worth
loving is an actress?"

"Because I have loved so many of them, Dorian."

"Oh, yes, horrid people with dyed hair and painted faces."

"Don't run down dyed hair and painted faces. There is an

extraordinary charm in them, sometimes," said Lord Henry.

"I wish now I had not told you about Sibyl Vane."

"You could not have helped telling me, Dorian. All through your
life you will tell me everything you do."

"Yes, Harry, I believe that is true. I cannot help telling you things.
You have a curious influence over me. If I ever did a crime, I would
come and confess it to you. You would understand me."

"People like you—the wilful sunbeams of life—don't commit

crimes, Dorian. But I am much obliged for the compliment, all the
same. And now tell me—reach me the matches, like a good boy—
thanks—what are your actual relations with Sibyl Vane?"

Dorian Gray leaped to his feet, with flushed cheeks and burning
eyes. "Harry! Sibyl Vane is sacred!"

"It is only the sacred things that are worth touching, Dorian," said
Lord Henry, with a strange touch of pathos in his voice. "But why
should you be annoyed? I suppose she will belong to you some day.
When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and
one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a
romance. You know her, at any rate, I suppose?"

"Of course I know her. On the first night I was at the theatre, the
horrid old Jew came round to the box after the performance was over
and offered to take me behind the scenes and introduce me to her. I
was furious with him, and told him that Juliet had been dead for
hundreds of years and that her body was lying in a marble tomb in

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 47/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

Verona. I think, from his blank look of amazement, that he was under
the impression that I had taken too much champagne, or something."

"I am not surprised."

"Then he asked me if I wrote for any of the newspapers. I told him I

never even read them. He seemed terribly disappointed at that, and
confided to me that all the dramatic critics were in a conspiracy against
him, and that they were every one of them to be bought."

"I should not wonder if he was quite right there. But, on the other
hand, judging from their appearance, most of them cannot be at all
expensive."

"Well, he seemed to think they were beyond his means," laughed

Dorian. "By this time, however, the lights were being put out in the
theatre, and I had to go. He wanted me to try some cigars that he
strongly recommended. I declined. The next night, of course, I arrived
at the place again. When he saw me, he made me a low bow and
assured me that I was a munificent patron of art. He was a most
offensive brute, though he had an extraordinary passion for
Shakespeare. He told me once, with an air of pride, that his five
bankruptcies were entirely due to 'The Bard,' as he insisted on calling
him. He seemed to think it a distinction."

"It was a distinction, my dear Dorian—a great distinction. Most

people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the
prose of life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honour. But
when did you first speak to Miss Sibyl Vane?"

"The third night. She had been playing Rosalind. I could not help
going round. I had thrown her some flowers, and she had looked at me
—at least I fancied that she had. The old Jew was persistent. He
seemed determined to take me behind, so I consented. It was curious
my not wanting to know her, wasn't it?"

"No; I don't think so."

"My dear Harry, why?"

"I will tell you some other time. Now I want to know about the
girl."

"Sibyl? Oh, she was so shy and so gentle. There is something of a

child about her. Her eyes opened wide in exquisite wonder when I told

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 48/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

her what I thought of her performance, and she seemed quite

unconscious of her power. I think we were both rather nervous. The
old Jew stood grinning at the doorway of the dusty greenroom, making
elaborate speeches about us both, while we stood looking at each other
like children. He would insist on calling me 'My Lord,' so I had to
assure Sibyl that I was not anything of the kind. She said quite simply
to me, 'You look more like a prince. I must call you Prince Charming.'"

"Upon my word, Dorian, Miss Sibyl knows how to pay

compliments."

"You don't understand her, Harry. She regarded me merely as a

person in a play. She knows nothing of life. She lives with her mother,
a faded tired woman who played Lady Capulet in a sort of magenta
dressing-wrapper on the first night, and looks as if she had seen better
days."

"I know that look. It depresses me," murmured Lord Henry,

examining his rings.

"The Jew wanted to tell me her history, but I said it did not interest
me."

"You were quite right. There is always something infinitely mean

about other people's tragedies."

"Sibyl is the only thing I care about. What is it to me where she

came from? From her little head to her little feet, she is absolutely and
entirely divine. Every night of my life I go to see her act, and every
night she is more marvellous."

"That is the reason, I suppose, that you never dine with me now. I
thought you must have some curious romance on hand. You have; but
it is not quite what I expected."

"My dear Harry, we either lunch or sup together every day, and I
have been to the opera with you several times," said Dorian, opening
his blue eyes in wonder.

"You always come dreadfully late."

"Well, I can't help going to see Sibyl play," he cried, "even if it is

only for a single act. I get hungry for her presence; and when I think of
the wonderful soul that is hidden away in that little ivory body, I am
filled with awe."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 49/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"You can dine with me to-night, Dorian, can't you?"

He shook his head. "To-night she is Imogen," he answered, "and to-

morrow night she will be Juliet."

"When is she Sibyl Vane?"

"Never."

"I congratulate you."

"How horrid you are! She is all the great heroines of the world in
one. She is more than an individual. You laugh, but I tell you she has
genius. I love her, and I must make her love me. You, who know all
the secrets of life, tell me how to charm Sibyl Vane to love me! I want
to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our
laughter and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their dust
into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain. My God, Harry, how
I worship her!" He was walking up and down the room as he spoke.
Hectic spots of red burned on his cheeks. He was terribly excited.

Lord Henry watched him with a subtle sense of pleasure. How

different he was now from the shy frightened boy he had met in Basil
Hallward's studio! His nature had developed like a flower, had borne
blossoms of scarlet flame. Out of its secret hiding-place had crept his
soul, and desire had come to meet it on the way.

"And what do you propose to do?" said Lord Henry at last.

"I want you and Basil to come with me some night and see her act. I
have not the slightest fear of the result. You are certain to acknowledge
her genius. Then we must get her out of the Jew's hands. She is bound
to him for three years—at least for two years and eight months—from
the present time. I shall have to pay him something, of course. When
all that is settled, I shall take a West End theatre and bring her out
properly. She will make the world as mad as she has made me."

"That would be impossible, my dear boy."

"Yes, she will. She has not merely art, consummate art-instinct, in
her, but she has personality also; and you have often told me that it is
personalities, not principles, that move the age."

"Well, what night shall we go?"

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 50/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"Let me see. To-day is Tuesday. Let us fix to-morrow. She plays

Juliet to-morrow."

"All right. The Bristol at eight o'clock; and I will get Basil."

"Not eight, Harry, please. Half-past six. We must be there before the
curtain rises. You must see her in the first act, where she meets
Romeo."

"Half-past six! What an hour! It will be like having a meat-tea, or

reading an English novel. It must be seven. No gentleman dines before
seven. Shall you see Basil between this and then? Or shall I write to
him?"

"Dear Basil! I have not laid eyes on him for a week. It is rather
horrid of me, as he has sent me my portrait in the most wonderful
frame, specially designed by himself, and, though I am a little jealous
of the picture for being a whole month younger than I am, I must
admit that I delight in it. Perhaps you had better write to him. I don't
want to see him alone. He says things that annoy me. He gives me
good advice."

Lord Henry smiled. "People are very fond of giving away what they
need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity."

"Oh, Basil is the best of fellows, but he seems to me to be just a bit

of a Philistine. Since I have known you, Harry, I have discovered that."

"Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming in him into his
work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for life but his
prejudices, his principles, and his common sense. The only artists I
have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good
artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly
uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the
most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely
fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they
look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets
makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write.
The others write the poetry that they dare not realize."

"I wonder is that really so, Harry?" said Dorian Gray, putting some
perfume on his handkerchief out of a large, gold-topped bottle that
stood on the table. "It must be, if you say it. And now I am off. Imogen
is waiting for me. Don't forget about to-morrow. Good-bye."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 51/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

As he left the room, Lord Henry's heavy eyelids drooped, and he

began to think. Certainly few people had ever interested him so much
as Dorian Gray, and yet the lad's mad adoration of some one else
caused him not the slightest pang of annoyance or jealousy. He was
pleased by it. It made him a more interesting study. He had been
always enthralled by the methods of natural science, but the ordinary
subject-matter of that science had seemed to him trivial and of no
import. And so he had begun by vivisecting himself, as he had ended
by vivisecting others. Human life—that appeared to him the one thing
worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any
value. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of
pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one's face a mask of glass,
nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making
the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams.
There were poisons so subtle that to know their properties one had to
sicken of them. There were maladies so strange that one had to pass
through them if one sought to understand their nature. And, yet, what a
great reward one received! How wonderful the whole world became to
one! To note the curious hard logic of passion, and the emotional
coloured life of the intellect—to observe where they met, and where
they separated, at what point they were in unison, and at what point
they were at discord—there was a delight in that! What matter what
the cost was? One could never pay too high a price for any sensation.

He was conscious—and the thought brought a gleam of pleasure

into his brown agate eyes—that it was through certain words of his,
musical words said with musical utterance, that Dorian Gray's soul had
turned to this white girl and bowed in worship before her. To a large
extent the lad was his own creation. He had made him premature. That
was something. Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its
secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed
before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art,
and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the
passions and the intellect. But now and then a complex personality
took the place and assumed the office of art, was indeed, in its way, a
real work of art, life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry
has, or sculpture, or painting.

Yes, the lad was premature. He was gathering his harvest while it
was yet spring. The pulse and passion of youth were in him, but he
was becoming self-conscious. It was delightful to watch him. With his
beautiful face, and his beautiful soul, he was a thing to wonder at. It
was no matter how it all ended, or was destined to end. He was like
one of those gracious figures in a pageant or a play, whose joys seem

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 52/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

to be remote from one, but whose sorrows stir one's sense of beauty,
and whose wounds are like red roses.

Soul and body, body and soul—how mysterious they were! There
was animalism in the soul, and the body had its moments of
spirituality. The senses could refine, and the intellect could degrade.
Who could say where the fleshly impulse ceased, or the psychical
impulse began? How shallow were the arbitrary definitions of ordinary
psychologists! And yet how difficult to decide between the claims of
the various schools! Was the soul a shadow seated in the house of sin?
Or was the body really in the soul, as Giordano Bruno thought? The
separation of spirit from matter was a mystery, and the union of spirit
with matter was a mystery also.

He began to wonder whether we could ever make psychology so

absolute a science that each little spring of life would be revealed to
us. As it was, we always misunderstood ourselves and rarely
understood others. Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely
the name men gave to their mistakes. Moralists had, as a rule, regarded
it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in
the formation of character, had praised it as something that taught us
what to follow and showed us what to avoid. But there was no motive
power in experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience
itself. All that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the
same as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing,
we would do many times, and with joy.

It was clear to him that the experimental method was the only
method by which one could arrive at any scientific analysis of the
passions; and certainly Dorian Gray was a subject made to his hand,
and seemed to promise rich and fruitful results. His sudden mad love
for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest.
There was no doubt that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and
the desire for new experiences, yet it was not a simple, but rather a
very complex passion. What there was in it of the purely sensuous
instinct of boyhood had been transformed by the workings of the
imagination, changed into something that seemed to the lad himself to
be remote from sense, and was for that very reason all the more
dangerous. It was the passions about whose origin we deceived
ourselves that tyrannized most strongly over us. Our weakest motives
were those of whose nature we were conscious. It often happened that
when we thought we were experimenting on others we were really
experimenting on ourselves.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 53/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

While Lord Henry sat dreaming on these things, a knock came to

the door, and his valet entered and reminded him it was time to dress
for dinner. He got up and looked out into the street. The sunset had
smitten into scarlet gold the upper windows of the houses opposite.
The panes glowed like plates of heated metal. The sky above was like
a faded rose. He thought of his friend's young fiery-coloured life and
wondered how it was all going to end.

When he arrived home, about half-past twelve o'clock, he saw a

telegram lying on the hall table. He opened it and found it was from
Dorian Gray. It was to tell him that he was engaged to be married to
Sibyl Vane.

CHAPTER 5
"Mother, Mother, I am so happy!" whispered the girl, burying her
face in the lap of the faded, tired-looking woman who, with back
turned to the shrill intrusive light, was sitting in the one arm-chair that
their dingy sitting-room contained. "I am so happy!" she repeated,
"and you must be happy, too!"

Mrs. Vane winced and put her thin, bismuth-whitened hands on her
daughter's head. "Happy!" she echoed, "I am only happy, Sibyl, when I
see you act. You must not think of anything but your acting. Mr. Isaacs
has been very good to us, and we owe him money."

The girl looked up and pouted. "Money, Mother?" she cried, "what
does money matter? Love is more than money."

"Mr. Isaacs has advanced us fifty pounds to pay off our debts and to
get a proper outfit for James. You must not forget that, Sibyl. Fifty
pounds is a very large sum. Mr. Isaacs has been most considerate."

"He is not a gentleman, Mother, and I hate the way he talks to me,"
said the girl, rising to her feet and going over to the window.

"I don't know how we could manage without him," answered the
elder woman querulously.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 54/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

Sibyl Vane tossed her head and laughed. "We don't want him any
more, Mother. Prince Charming rules life for us now." Then she
paused. A rose shook in her blood and shadowed her cheeks. Quick
breath parted the petals of her lips. They trembled. Some southern
wind of passion swept over her and stirred the dainty folds of her
dress. "I love him," she said simply.

"Foolish child! foolish child!" was the parrot-phrase flung in

answer. The waving of crooked, false-jewelled fingers gave
grotesqueness to the words.

The girl laughed again. The joy of a caged bird was in her voice.
Her eyes caught the melody and echoed it in radiance, then closed for
a moment, as though to hide their secret. When they opened, the mist
of a dream had passed across them.

Thin-lipped wisdom spoke at her from the worn chair, hinted at

prudence, quoted from that book of cowardice whose author apes the
name of common sense. She did not listen. She was free in her prison
of passion. Her prince, Prince Charming, was with her. She had called
on memory to remake him. She had sent her soul to search for him,
and it had brought him back. His kiss burned again upon her mouth.
Her eyelids were warm with his breath.

Then wisdom altered its method and spoke of espial and discovery.
This young man might be rich. If so, marriage should be thought of.
Against the shell of her ear broke the waves of worldly cunning. The
arrows of craft shot by her. She saw the thin lips moving, and smiled.

Suddenly she felt the need to speak. The wordy silence troubled her.
"Mother, Mother," she cried, "why does he love me so much? I know
why I love him. I love him because he is like what love himself should
be. But what does he see in me? I am not worthy of him. And yet—
why, I cannot tell—though I feel so much beneath him, I don't feel
humble. I feel proud, terribly proud. Mother, did you love my father as
I love Prince Charming?"

The elder woman grew pale beneath the coarse powder that daubed
her cheeks, and her dry lips twitched with a spasm of pain. Sybil
rushed to her, flung her arms round her neck, and kissed her. "Forgive
me, Mother. I know it pains you to talk about our father. But it only
pains you because you loved him so much. Don't look so sad. I am as
happy to-day as you were twenty years ago. Ah! let me be happy for
ever!"

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 55/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"My child, you are far too young to think of falling in love. Besides,
what do you know of this young man? You don't even know his name.
The whole thing is most inconvenient, and really, when James is going
away to Australia, and I have so much to think of, I must say that you
should have shown more consideration. However, as I said before, if
he is rich ..."

"Ah! Mother, Mother, let me be happy!"

Mrs. Vane glanced at her, and with one of those false theatrical
gestures that so often become a mode of second nature to a stage-
player, clasped her in her arms. At this moment, the door opened and a
young lad with rough brown hair came into the room. He was thick-set
of figure, and his hands and feet were large and somewhat clumsy in
movement. He was not so finely bred as his sister. One would hardly
have guessed the close relationship that existed between them. Mrs.
Vane fixed her eyes on him and intensified her smile. She mentally
elevated her son to the dignity of an audience. She felt sure that the
tableau was interesting.

"You might keep some of your kisses for me, Sibyl, I think," said
the lad with a good-natured grumble.

"Ah! but you don't like being kissed, Jim," she cried. "You are a
dreadful old bear." And she ran across the room and hugged him.

James Vane looked into his sister's face with tenderness. "I want
you to come out with me for a walk, Sibyl. I don't suppose I shall ever
see this horrid London again. I am sure I don't want to."

"My son, don't say such dreadful things," murmured Mrs. Vane,
taking up a tawdry theatrical dress, with a sigh, and beginning to patch
it. She felt a little disappointed that he had not joined the group. It
would have increased the theatrical picturesqueness of the situation.

"Why not, Mother? I mean it."

"You pain me, my son. I trust you will return from Australia in a
position of affluence. I believe there is no society of any kind in the
Colonies—nothing that I would call society—so when you have made
your fortune, you must come back and assert yourself in London."

"Society!" muttered the lad. "I don't want to know anything about
that. I should like to make some money to take you and Sibyl off the
stage. I hate it."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 56/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"Oh, Jim!" said Sibyl, laughing, "how unkind of you! But are you
really going for a walk with me? That will be nice! I was afraid you
were going to say good-bye to some of your friends—to Tom Hardy,
who gave you that hideous pipe, or Ned Langton, who makes fun of
you for smoking it. It is very sweet of you to let me have your last
afternoon. Where shall we go? Let us go to the park."

"I am too shabby," he answered, frowning. "Only swell people go to

the park."

"Nonsense, Jim," she whispered, stroking the sleeve of his coat.

He hesitated for a moment. "Very well," he said at last, "but don't be

too long dressing." She danced out of the door. One could hear her
singing as she ran upstairs. Her little feet pattered overhead.

He walked up and down the room two or three times. Then he

turned to the still figure in the chair. "Mother, are my things ready?" he
asked.

"Quite ready, James," she answered, keeping her eyes on her work.
For some months past she had felt ill at ease when she was alone with
this rough stern son of hers. Her shallow secret nature was troubled
when their eyes met. She used to wonder if he suspected anything. The
silence, for he made no other observation, became intolerable to her.
She began to complain. Women defend themselves by attacking, just
as they attack by sudden and strange surrenders. "I hope you will be
contented, James, with your sea-faring life," she said. "You must
remember that it is your own choice. You might have entered a
solicitor's office. Solicitors are a very respectable class, and in the
country often dine with the best families."

"I hate offices, and I hate clerks," he replied. "But you are quite
right. I have chosen my own life. All I say is, watch over Sibyl. Don't
let her come to any harm. Mother, you must watch over her."

"James, you really talk very strangely. Of course I watch over

Sibyl."

"I hear a gentleman comes every night to the theatre and goes
behind to talk to her. Is that right? What about that?"

"You are speaking about things you don't understand, James. In the
profession we are accustomed to receive a great deal of most
gratifying attention. I myself used to receive many bouquets at one

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 57/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

time. That was when acting was really understood. As for Sibyl, I do
not know at present whether her attachment is serious or not. But there
is no doubt that the young man in question is a perfect gentleman. He
is always most polite to me. Besides, he has the appearance of being
rich, and the flowers he sends are lovely."

"You don't know his name, though," said the lad harshly.

"No," answered his mother with a placid expression in her face. "He
has not yet revealed his real name. I think it is quite romantic of him.
He is probably a member of the aristocracy."

James Vane bit his lip. "Watch over Sibyl, Mother," he cried, "watch
over her."

"My son, you distress me very much. Sibyl is always under my

special care. Of course, if this gentleman is wealthy, there is no reason
why she should not contract an alliance with him. I trust he is one of
the aristocracy. He has all the appearance of it, I must say. It might be
a most brilliant marriage for Sibyl. They would make a charming
couple. His good looks are really quite remarkable; everybody notices
them."

The lad muttered something to himself and drummed on the

window-pane with his coarse fingers. He had just turned round to say
something when the door opened and Sibyl ran in.

"How serious you both are!" she cried. "What is the matter?"

"Nothing," he answered. "I suppose one must be serious sometimes.

Good-bye, Mother; I will have my dinner at five o'clock. Everything is
packed, except my shirts, so you need not trouble."

"Good-bye, my son," she answered with a bow of strained

stateliness.

She was extremely annoyed at the tone he had adopted with her,
and there was something in his look that had made her feel afraid.

"Kiss me, Mother," said the girl. Her flowerlike lips touched the
withered cheek and warmed its frost.

"My child! my child!" cried Mrs. Vane, looking up to the ceiling in

search of an imaginary gallery.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 58/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"Come, Sibyl," said her brother impatiently. He hated his mother's

affectations.

They went out into the flickering, wind-blown sunlight and strolled
down the dreary Euston Road. The passersby glanced in wonder at the
sullen heavy youth who, in coarse, ill-fitting clothes, was in the
company of such a graceful, refined-looking girl. He was like a
common gardener walking with a rose.

Jim frowned from time to time when he caught the inquisitive

glance of some stranger. He had that dislike of being stared at, which
comes on geniuses late in life and never leaves the commonplace.
Sibyl, however, was quite unconscious of the effect she was
producing. Her love was trembling in laughter on her lips. She was
thinking of Prince Charming, and, that she might think of him all the
more, she did not talk of him, but prattled on about the ship in which
Jim was going to sail, about the gold he was certain to find, about the
wonderful heiress whose life he was to save from the wicked, red-
shirted bushrangers. For he was not to remain a sailor, or a supercargo,
or whatever he was going to be. Oh, no! A sailor's existence was
dreadful. Fancy being cooped up in a horrid ship, with the hoarse,
hump-backed waves trying to get in, and a black wind blowing the
masts down and tearing the sails into long screaming ribands! He was
to leave the vessel at Melbourne, bid a polite good-bye to the captain,
and go off at once to the gold-fields. Before a week was over he was to
come across a large nugget of pure gold, the largest nugget that had
ever been discovered, and bring it down to the coast in a waggon
guarded by six mounted policemen. The bushrangers were to attack
them three times, and be defeated with immense slaughter. Or, no. He
was not to go to the gold-fields at all. They were horrid places, where
men got intoxicated, and shot each other in bar-rooms, and used bad
language. He was to be a nice sheep-farmer, and one evening, as he
was riding home, he was to see the beautiful heiress being carried off
by a robber on a black horse, and give chase, and rescue her. Of
course, she would fall in love with him, and he with her, and they
would get married, and come home, and live in an immense house in
London. Yes, there were delightful things in store for him. But he must
be very good, and not lose his temper, or spend his money foolishly.
She was only a year older than he was, but she knew so much more of
life. He must be sure, also, to write to her by every mail, and to say his
prayers each night before he went to sleep. God was very good, and
would watch over him. She would pray for him, too, and in a few
years he would come back quite rich and happy.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 59/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

The lad listened sulkily to her and made no answer. He was heart-
sick at leaving home.

Yet it was not this alone that made him gloomy and morose.
Inexperienced though he was, he had still a strong sense of the danger
of Sibyl's position. This young dandy who was making love to her
could mean her no good. He was a gentleman, and he hated him for
that, hated him through some curious race-instinct for which he could
not account, and which for that reason was all the more dominant
within him. He was conscious also of the shallowness and vanity of his
mother's nature, and in that saw infinite peril for Sibyl and Sibyl's
happiness. Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older
they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.

His mother! He had something on his mind to ask of her, something

that he had brooded on for many months of silence. A chance phrase
that he had heard at the theatre, a whispered sneer that had reached his
ears one night as he waited at the stage-door, had set loose a train of
horrible thoughts. He remembered it as if it had been the lash of a
hunting-crop across his face. His brows knit together into a wedge-like
furrow, and with a twitch of pain he bit his underlip.

"You are not listening to a word I am saying, Jim," cried Sibyl, "and
I am making the most delightful plans for your future. Do say
something."

"What do you want me to say?"

"Oh! that you will be a good boy and not forget us," she answered,
smiling at him.

He shrugged his shoulders. "You are more likely to forget me than I

am to forget you, Sibyl."

She flushed. "What do you mean, Jim?" she asked.

"You have a new friend, I hear. Who is he? Why have you not told
me about him? He means you no good."

"Stop, Jim!" she exclaimed. "You must not say anything against
him. I love him."

"Why, you don't even know his name," answered the lad. "Who is
he? I have a right to know."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 60/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"He is called Prince Charming. Don't you like the name. Oh! you
silly boy! you should never forget it. If you only saw him, you would
think him the most wonderful person in the world. Some day you will
meet him—when you come back from Australia. You will like him so
much. Everybody likes him, and I ... love him. I wish you could come
to the theatre to-night. He is going to be there, and I am to play Juliet.
Oh! how I shall play it! Fancy, Jim, to be in love and play Juliet! To
have him sitting there! To play for his delight! I am afraid I may
frighten the company, frighten or enthrall them. To be in love is to
surpass one's self. Poor dreadful Mr. Isaacs will be shouting 'genius' to
his loafers at the bar. He has preached me as a dogma; to-night he will
announce me as a revelation. I feel it. And it is all his, his only, Prince
Charming, my wonderful lover, my god of graces. But I am poor
beside him. Poor? What does that matter? When poverty creeps in at
the door, love flies in through the window. Our proverbs want
rewriting. They were made in winter, and it is summer now; spring-
time for me, I think, a very dance of blossoms in blue skies."

"He is a gentleman," said the lad sullenly.

"A prince!" she cried musically. "What more do you want?"

"He wants to enslave you."

"I shudder at the thought of being free."

"I want you to beware of him."

"To see him is to worship him; to know him is to trust him."

"Sibyl, you are mad about him."

She laughed and took his arm. "You dear old Jim, you talk as if you
were a hundred. Some day you will be in love yourself. Then you will
know what it is. Don't look so sulky. Surely you should be glad to
think that, though you are going away, you leave me happier than I
have ever been before. Life has been hard for us both, terribly hard and
difficult. But it will be different now. You are going to a new world,
and I have found one. Here are two chairs; let us sit down and see the
smart people go by."

They took their seats amidst a crowd of watchers. The tulip-beds

across the road flamed like throbbing rings of fire. A white dust—
tremulous cloud of orris-root it seemed—hung in the panting air. The

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 61/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

brightly coloured parasols danced and dipped like monstrous

butterflies.

She made her brother talk of himself, his hopes, his prospects. He
spoke slowly and with effort. They passed words to each other as
players at a game pass counters. Sibyl felt oppressed. She could not
communicate her joy. A faint smile curving that sullen mouth was all
the echo she could win. After some time she became silent. Suddenly
she caught a glimpse of golden hair and laughing lips, and in an open
carriage with two ladies Dorian Gray drove past.

She started to her feet. "There he is!" she cried.

"Who?" said Jim Vane.

"Prince Charming," she answered, looking after the victoria.

He jumped up and seized her roughly by the arm. "Show him to me.
Which is he? Point him out. I must see him!" he exclaimed; but at that
moment the Duke of Berwick's four-in-hand came between, and when
it had left the space clear, the carriage had swept out of the park.

"He is gone," murmured Sibyl sadly. "I wish you had seen him."

"I wish I had, for as sure as there is a God in heaven, if he ever does
you any wrong, I shall kill him."

She looked at him in horror. He repeated his words. They cut the air
like a dagger. The people round began to gape. A lady standing close
to her tittered.

"Come away, Jim; come away," she whispered. He followed her

doggedly as she passed through the crowd. He felt glad at what he had
said.

When they reached the Achilles Statue, she turned round. There
was pity in her eyes that became laughter on her lips. She shook her
head at him. "You are foolish, Jim, utterly foolish; a bad-tempered boy,
that is all. How can you say such horrible things? You don't know what
you are talking about. You are simply jealous and unkind. Ah! I wish
you would fall in love. Love makes people good, and what you said
was wicked."

"I am sixteen," he answered, "and I know what I am about. Mother

is no help to you. She doesn't understand how to look after you. I wish

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 62/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

now that I was not going to Australia at all. I have a great mind to
chuck the whole thing up. I would, if my articles hadn't been signed."

"Oh, don't be so serious, Jim. You are like one of the heroes of those
silly melodramas Mother used to be so fond of acting in. I am not
going to quarrel with you. I have seen him, and oh! to see him is
perfect happiness. We won't quarrel. I know you would never harm
any one I love, would you?"

"Not as long as you love him, I suppose," was the sullen answer.

"I shall love him for ever!" she cried.

"And he?"

"For ever, too!"

"He had better."

She shrank from him. Then she laughed and put her hand on his
arm. He was merely a boy.

At the Marble Arch they hailed an omnibus, which left them close
to their shabby home in the Euston Road. It was after five o'clock, and
Sibyl had to lie down for a couple of hours before acting. Jim insisted
that she should do so. He said that he would sooner part with her when
their mother was not present. She would be sure to make a scene, and
he detested scenes of every kind.

In Sybil's own room they parted. There was jealousy in the lad's
heart, and a fierce murderous hatred of the stranger who, as it seemed
to him, had come between them. Yet, when her arms were flung round
his neck, and her fingers strayed through his hair, he softened and
kissed her with real affection. There were tears in his eyes as he went
downstairs.

His mother was waiting for him below. She grumbled at his
unpunctuality, as he entered. He made no answer, but sat down to his
meagre meal. The flies buzzed round the table and crawled over the
stained cloth. Through the rumble of omnibuses, and the clatter of
street-cabs, he could hear the droning voice devouring each minute
that was left to him.

After some time, he thrust away his plate and put his head in his
hands. He felt that he had a right to know. It should have been told to

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 63/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

him before, if it was as he suspected. Leaden with fear, his mother

watched him. Words dropped mechanically from her lips. A tattered
lace handkerchief twitched in her fingers. When the clock struck six,
he got up and went to the door. Then he turned back and looked at her.
Their eyes met. In hers he saw a wild appeal for mercy. It enraged him.

"Mother, I have something to ask you," he said. Her eyes wandered

vaguely about the room. She made no answer. "Tell me the truth. I
have a right to know. Were you married to my father?"

She heaved a deep sigh. It was a sigh of relief. The terrible moment,
the moment that night and day, for weeks and months, she had
dreaded, had come at last, and yet she felt no terror. Indeed, in some
measure it was a disappointment to her. The vulgar directness of the
question called for a direct answer. The situation had not been
gradually led up to. It was crude. It reminded her of a bad rehearsal.

"No," she answered, wondering at the harsh simplicity of life.

"My father was a scoundrel then!" cried the lad, clenching his fists.

She shook her head. "I knew he was not free. We loved each other
very much. If he had lived, he would have made provision for us.
Don't speak against him, my son. He was your father, and a gentleman.
Indeed, he was highly connected."

An oath broke from his lips. "I don't care for myself," he exclaimed,
"but don't let Sibyl.... It is a gentleman, isn't it, who is in love with her,
or says he is? Highly connected, too, I suppose."

For a moment a hideous sense of humiliation came over the woman.

Her head drooped. She wiped her eyes with shaking hands. "Sibyl has
a mother," she murmured; "I had none."

The lad was touched. He went towards her, and stooping down, he
kissed her. "I am sorry if I have pained you by asking about my
father," he said, "but I could not help it. I must go now. Good-bye.
Don't forget that you will have only one child now to look after, and
believe me that if this man wrongs my sister, I will find out who he is,
track him down, and kill him like a dog. I swear it."

The exaggerated folly of the threat, the passionate gesture that

accompanied it, the mad melodramatic words, made life seem more
vivid to her. She was familiar with the atmosphere. She breathed more
freely, and for the first time for many months she really admired her

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 64/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

son. She would have liked to have continued the scene on the same
emotional scale, but he cut her short. Trunks had to be carried down
and mufflers looked for. The lodging-house drudge bustled in and out.
There was the bargaining with the cabman. The moment was lost in
vulgar details. It was with a renewed feeling of disappointment that
she waved the tattered lace handkerchief from the window, as her son
drove away. She was conscious that a great opportunity had been
wasted. She consoled herself by telling Sibyl how desolate she felt her
life would be, now that she had only one child to look after. She
remembered the phrase. It had pleased her. Of the threat she said
nothing. It was vividly and dramatically expressed. She felt that they
would all laugh at it some day.

CHAPTER 6
"I suppose you have heard the news, Basil?" said Lord Henry that
evening as Hallward was shown into a little private room at the Bristol
where dinner had been laid for three.

"No, Harry," answered the artist, giving his hat and coat to the
bowing waiter. "What is it? Nothing about politics, I hope! They don't
interest me. There is hardly a single person in the House of Commons
worth painting, though many of them would be the better for a little
whitewashing."

"Dorian Gray is engaged to be married," said Lord Henry, watching

him as he spoke.

Hallward started and then frowned. "Dorian engaged to be

married!" he cried. "Impossible!"

"It is perfectly true."

"To whom?"

"To some little actress or other."

"I can't believe it. Dorian is far too sensible."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 65/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"Dorian is far too wise not to do foolish things now and then, my
dear Basil."

"Marriage is hardly a thing that one can do now and then, Harry."

"Except in America," rejoined Lord Henry languidly. "But I didn't

say he was married. I said he was engaged to be married. There is a
great difference. I have a distinct remembrance of being married, but I
have no recollection at all of being engaged. I am inclined to think that
I never was engaged."

"But think of Dorian's birth, and position, and wealth. It would be

absurd for him to marry so much beneath him."

"If you want to make him marry this girl, tell him that, Basil. He is
sure to do it, then. Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it
is always from the noblest motives."

"I hope the girl is good, Harry. I don't want to see Dorian tied to
some vile creature, who might degrade his nature and ruin his
intellect."

"Oh, she is better than good—she is beautiful," murmured Lord

Henry, sipping a glass of vermouth and orange-bitters. "Dorian says
she is beautiful, and he is not often wrong about things of that kind.
Your portrait of him has quickened his appreciation of the personal
appearance of other people. It has had that excellent effect, amongst
others. We are to see her to-night, if that boy doesn't forget his
appointment."

"Are you serious?"

"Quite serious, Basil. I should be miserable if I thought I should

ever be more serious than I am at the present moment."

"But do you approve of it, Harry?" asked the painter, walking up

and down the room and biting his lip. "You can't approve of it,
possibly. It is some silly infatuation."

"I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd

attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our
moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say,
and I never interfere with what charming people do. If a personality
fascinates me, whatever mode of expression that personality selects is
absolutely delightful to me. Dorian Gray falls in love with a beautiful

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 66/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

girl who acts Juliet, and proposes to marry her. Why not? If he wedded
Messalina, he would be none the less interesting. You know I am not a
champion of marriage. The real drawback to marriage is that it makes
one unselfish. And unselfish people are colourless. They lack
individuality. Still, there are certain temperaments that marriage makes
more complex. They retain their egotism, and add to it many other
egos. They are forced to have more than one life. They become more
highly organized, and to be highly organized is, I should fancy, the
object of man's existence. Besides, every experience is of value, and
whatever one may say against marriage, it is certainly an experience. I
hope that Dorian Gray will make this girl his wife, passionately adore
her for six months, and then suddenly become fascinated by some one
else. He would be a wonderful study."

"You don't mean a single word of all that, Harry; you know you
don't. If Dorian Gray's life were spoiled, no one would be sorrier than
yourself. You are much better than you pretend to be."

Lord Henry laughed. "The reason we all like to think so well of

others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is
sheer terror. We think that we are generous because we credit our
neighbour with the possession of those virtues that are likely to be a
benefit to us. We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account,
and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may
spare our pockets. I mean everything that I have said. I have the
greatest contempt for optimism. As for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled
but one whose growth is arrested. If you want to mar a nature, you
have merely to reform it. As for marriage, of course that would be
silly, but there are other and more interesting bonds between men and
women. I will certainly encourage them. They have the charm of being
fashionable. But here is Dorian himself. He will tell you more than I
can."

"My dear Harry, my dear Basil, you must both congratulate me!"
said the lad, throwing off his evening cape with its satin-lined wings
and shaking each of his friends by the hand in turn. "I have never been
so happy. Of course, it is sudden—all really delightful things are. And
yet it seems to me to be the one thing I have been looking for all my
life." He was flushed with excitement and pleasure, and looked
extraordinarily handsome.

"I hope you will always be very happy, Dorian," said Hallward, "but
I don't quite forgive you for not having let me know of your
engagement. You let Harry know."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 67/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"And I don't forgive you for being late for dinner," broke in Lord
Henry, putting his hand on the lad's shoulder and smiling as he spoke.
"Come, let us sit down and try what the new chef here is like, and then
you will tell us how it all came about."

"There is really not much to tell," cried Dorian as they took their
seats at the small round table. "What happened was simply this. After I
left you yesterday evening, Harry, I dressed, had some dinner at that
little Italian restaurant in Rupert Street you introduced me to, and went
down at eight o'clock to the theatre. Sibyl was playing Rosalind. Of
course, the scenery was dreadful and the Orlando absurd. But Sibyl!
You should have seen her! When she came on in her boy's clothes, she
was perfectly wonderful. She wore a moss-coloured velvet jerkin with
cinnamon sleeves, slim, brown, cross-gartered hose, a dainty little
green cap with a hawk's feather caught in a jewel, and a hooded cloak
lined with dull red. She had never seemed to me more exquisite. She
had all the delicate grace of that Tanagra figurine that you have in your
studio, Basil. Her hair clustered round her face like dark leaves round a
pale rose. As for her acting—well, you shall see her to-night. She is
simply a born artist. I sat in the dingy box absolutely enthralled. I
forgot that I was in London and in the nineteenth century. I was away
with my love in a forest that no man had ever seen. After the
performance was over, I went behind and spoke to her. As we were
sitting together, suddenly there came into her eyes a look that I had
never seen there before. My lips moved towards hers. We kissed each
other. I can't describe to you what I felt at that moment. It seemed to
me that all my life had been narrowed to one perfect point of rose-
coloured joy. She trembled all over and shook like a white narcissus.
Then she flung herself on her knees and kissed my hands. I feel that I
should not tell you all this, but I can't help it. Of course, our
engagement is a dead secret. She has not even told her own mother. I
don't know what my guardians will say. Lord Radley is sure to be
furious. I don't care. I shall be of age in less than a year, and then I can
do what I like. I have been right, Basil, haven't I, to take my love out
of poetry and to find my wife in Shakespeare's plays? Lips that
Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I
have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the
mouth."

"Yes, Dorian, I suppose you were right," said Hallward slowly.

"Have you seen her to-day?" asked Lord Henry.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 68/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

Dorian Gray shook his head. "I left her in the forest of Arden; I
shall find her in an orchard in Verona."

Lord Henry sipped his champagne in a meditative manner. "At what

particular point did you mention the word marriage, Dorian? And what
did she say in answer? Perhaps you forgot all about it."

"My dear Harry, I did not treat it as a business transaction, and I did
not make any formal proposal. I told her that I loved her, and she said
she was not worthy to be my wife. Not worthy! Why, the whole world
is nothing to me compared with her."

"Women are wonderfully practical," murmured Lord Henry, "much

more practical than we are. In situations of that kind we often forget to
say anything about marriage, and they always remind us."

Hallward laid his hand upon his arm. "Don't, Harry. You have
annoyed Dorian. He is not like other men. He would never bring
misery upon any one. His nature is too fine for that."

Lord Henry looked across the table. "Dorian is never annoyed with
me," he answered. "I asked the question for the best reason possible,
for the only reason, indeed, that excuses one for asking any question—
simple curiosity. I have a theory that it is always the women who
propose to us, and not we who propose to the women. Except, of
course, in middle-class life. But then the middle classes are not
modern."

Dorian Gray laughed, and tossed his head. "You are quite
incorrigible, Harry; but I don't mind. It is impossible to be angry with
you. When you see Sibyl Vane, you will feel that the man who could
wrong her would be a beast, a beast without a heart. I cannot
understand how any one can wish to shame the thing he loves. I love
Sibyl Vane. I want to place her on a pedestal of gold and to see the
world worship the woman who is mine. What is marriage? An
irrevocable vow. You mock at it for that. Ah! don't mock. It is an
irrevocable vow that I want to take. Her trust makes me faithful, her
belief makes me good. When I am with her, I regret all that you have
taught me. I become different from what you have known me to be. I
am changed, and the mere touch of Sibyl Vane's hand makes me forget
you and all your wrong, fascinating, poisonous, delightful theories."

"And those are ...?" asked Lord Henry, helping himself to some
salad.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 69/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"Oh, your theories about life, your theories about love, your
theories about pleasure. All your theories, in fact, Harry."

"Pleasure is the only thing worth having a theory about," he

answered in his slow melodious voice. "But I am afraid I cannot claim
my theory as my own. It belongs to Nature, not to me. Pleasure is
Nature's test, her sign of approval. When we are happy, we are always
good, but when we are good, we are not always happy."

"Ah! but what do you mean by good?" cried Basil Hallward.

"Yes," echoed Dorian, leaning back in his chair and looking at Lord
Henry over the heavy clusters of purple-lipped irises that stood in the
centre of the table, "what do you mean by good, Harry?"

"To be good is to be in harmony with one's self," he replied,

touching the thin stem of his glass with his pale, fine-pointed fingers.
"Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others. One's own life
—that is the important thing. As for the lives of one's neighbours, if
one wishes to be a prig or a Puritan, one can flaunt one's moral views
about them, but they are not one's concern. Besides, individualism has
really the higher aim. Modern morality consists in accepting the
standard of one's age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept
the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality."

"But, surely, if one lives merely for one's self, Harry, one pays a
terrible price for doing so?" suggested the painter.

"Yes, we are overcharged for everything nowadays. I should fancy

that the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-
denial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the
rich."

"One has to pay in other ways but money."

"What sort of ways, Basil?"

"Oh! I should fancy in remorse, in suffering, in ... well, in the

consciousness of degradation."

Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "My dear fellow, mediaeval art
is charming, but mediaeval emotions are out of date. One can use them
in fiction, of course. But then the only things that one can use in fiction
are the things that one has ceased to use in fact. Believe me, no

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 70/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever

knows what a pleasure is."

"I know what pleasure is," cried Dorian Gray. "It is to adore some
one."

"That is certainly better than being adored," he answered, toying

with some fruits. "Being adored is a nuisance. Women treat us just as
humanity treats its gods. They worship us, and are always bothering us
to do something for them."

"I should have said that whatever they ask for they had first given to
us," murmured the lad gravely. "They create love in our natures. They
have a right to demand it back."

"That is quite true, Dorian," cried Hallward.

"Nothing is ever quite true," said Lord Henry.

"This is," interrupted Dorian. "You must admit, Harry, that women
give to men the very gold of their lives."

"Possibly," he sighed, "but they invariably want it back in such very

small change. That is the worry. Women, as some witty Frenchman
once put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always
prevent us from carrying them out."

"Harry, you are dreadful! I don't know why I like you so much."

"You will always like me, Dorian," he replied. "Will you have some
coffee, you fellows? Waiter, bring coffee, and fine-champagne, and
some cigarettes. No, don't mind the cigarettes—I have some. Basil, I
can't allow you to smoke cigars. You must have a cigarette. A cigarette
is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves
one unsatisfied. What more can one want? Yes, Dorian, you will
always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never
had the courage to commit."

"What nonsense you talk, Harry!" cried the lad, taking a light from
a fire-breathing silver dragon that the waiter had placed on the table.
"Let us go down to the theatre. When Sibyl comes on the stage you
will have a new ideal of life. She will represent something to you that
you have never known."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 71/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"I have known everything," said Lord Henry, with a tired look in his
eyes, "but I am always ready for a new emotion. I am afraid, however,
that, for me at any rate, there is no such thing. Still, your wonderful
girl may thrill me. I love acting. It is so much more real than life. Let
us go. Dorian, you will come with me. I am so sorry, Basil, but there is
only room for two in the brougham. You must follow us in a hansom."

They got up and put on their coats, sipping their coffee standing.
The painter was silent and preoccupied. There was a gloom over him.
He could not bear this marriage, and yet it seemed to him to be better
than many other things that might have happened. After a few minutes,
they all passed downstairs. He drove off by himself, as had been
arranged, and watched the flashing lights of the little brougham in
front of him. A strange sense of loss came over him. He felt that
Dorian Gray would never again be to him all that he had been in the
past. Life had come between them.... His eyes darkened, and the
crowded flaring streets became blurred to his eyes. When the cab drew
up at the theatre, it seemed to him that he had grown years older.

CHAPTER 7
For some reason or other, the house was crowded that night, and the
fat Jew manager who met them at the door was beaming from ear to
ear with an oily tremulous smile. He escorted them to their box with a
sort of pompous humility, waving his fat jewelled hands and talking at
the top of his voice. Dorian Gray loathed him more than ever. He felt
as if he had come to look for Miranda and had been met by Caliban.
Lord Henry, upon the other hand, rather liked him. At least he declared
he did, and insisted on shaking him by the hand and assuring him that
he was proud to meet a man who had discovered a real genius and
gone bankrupt over a poet. Hallward amused himself with watching
the faces in the pit. The heat was terribly oppressive, and the huge
sunlight flamed like a monstrous dahlia with petals of yellow fire. The
youths in the gallery had taken off their coats and waistcoats and hung
them over the side. They talked to each other across the theatre and
shared their oranges with the tawdry girls who sat beside them. Some
women were laughing in the pit. Their voices were horribly shrill and
discordant. The sound of the popping of corks came from the bar.

"What a place to find one's divinity in!" said Lord Henry.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 72/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"Yes!" answered Dorian Gray. "It was here I found her, and she is
divine beyond all living things. When she acts, you will forget
everything. These common rough people, with their coarse faces and
brutal gestures, become quite different when she is on the stage. They
sit silently and watch her. They weep and laugh as she wills them to
do. She makes them as responsive as a violin. She spiritualizes them,
and one feels that they are of the same flesh and blood as one's self."

"The same flesh and blood as one's self! Oh, I hope not!" exclaimed
Lord Henry, who was scanning the occupants of the gallery through
his opera-glass.

"Don't pay any attention to him, Dorian," said the painter. "I
understand what you mean, and I believe in this girl. Any one you love
must be marvellous, and any girl who has the effect you describe must
be fine and noble. To spiritualize one's age—that is something worth
doing. If this girl can give a soul to those who have lived without one,
if she can create the sense of beauty in people whose lives have been
sordid and ugly, if she can strip them of their selfishness and lend them
tears for sorrows that are not their own, she is worthy of all your
adoration, worthy of the adoration of the world. This marriage is quite
right. I did not think so at first, but I admit it now. The gods made
Sibyl Vane for you. Without her you would have been incomplete."

"Thanks, Basil," answered Dorian Gray, pressing his hand. "I knew
that you would understand me. Harry is so cynical, he terrifies me. But
here is the orchestra. It is quite dreadful, but it only lasts for about five
minutes. Then the curtain rises, and you will see the girl to whom I am
going to give all my life, to whom I have given everything that is good
in me."

A quarter of an hour afterwards, amidst an extraordinary turmoil of

applause, Sibyl Vane stepped on to the stage. Yes, she was certainly
lovely to look at—one of the loveliest creatures, Lord Henry thought,
that he had ever seen. There was something of the fawn in her shy
grace and startled eyes. A faint blush, like the shadow of a rose in a
mirror of silver, came to her cheeks as she glanced at the crowded
enthusiastic house. She stepped back a few paces and her lips seemed
to tremble. Basil Hallward leaped to his feet and began to applaud.
Motionless, and as one in a dream, sat Dorian Gray, gazing at her.
Lord Henry peered through his glasses, murmuring, "Charming!
charming!"

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 73/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

The scene was the hall of Capulet's house, and Romeo in his
pilgrim's dress had entered with Mercutio and his other friends. The
band, such as it was, struck up a few bars of music, and the dance
began. Through the crowd of ungainly, shabbily dressed actors, Sibyl
Vane moved like a creature from a finer world. Her body swayed,
while she danced, as a plant sways in the water. The curves of her
throat were the curves of a white lily. Her hands seemed to be made of
cool ivory.

Yet she was curiously listless. She showed no sign of joy when her
eyes rested on Romeo. The few words she had to speak—
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss—

with the brief dialogue that follows, were spoken in a thoroughly

artificial manner. The voice was exquisite, but from the point of view
of tone it was absolutely false. It was wrong in colour. It took away all
the life from the verse. It made the passion unreal.

Dorian Gray grew pale as he watched her. He was puzzled and

anxious. Neither of his friends dared to say anything to him. She
seemed to them to be absolutely incompetent. They were horribly
disappointed.

Yet they felt that the true test of any Juliet is the balcony scene of
the second act. They waited for that. If she failed there, there was
nothing in her.

She looked charming as she came out in the moonlight. That could
not be denied. But the staginess of her acting was unbearable, and
grew worse as she went on. Her gestures became absurdly artificial.
She overemphasized everything that she had to say. The beautiful
passage—
Thou knowest the mask of night is on my face,
Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek
For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night—

was declaimed with the painful precision of a schoolgirl who has

been taught to recite by some second-rate professor of elocution.
When she leaned over the balcony and came to those wonderful lines
—

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 74/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

Although I joy in thee,

I have no joy of this contract to-night:
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say, "It lightens." Sweet, good-night!
This bud of love by summer's ripening breath
May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet—

she spoke the words as though they conveyed no meaning to her. It

was not nervousness. Indeed, so far from being nervous, she was
absolutely self-contained. It was simply bad art. She was a complete
failure.

Even the common uneducated audience of the pit and gallery lost
their interest in the play. They got restless, and began to talk loudly
and to whistle. The Jew manager, who was standing at the back of the
dress-circle, stamped and swore with rage. The only person unmoved
was the girl herself.

When the second act was over, there came a storm of hisses, and
Lord Henry got up from his chair and put on his coat. "She is quite
beautiful, Dorian," he said, "but she can't act. Let us go."

"I am going to see the play through," answered the lad, in a hard
bitter voice. "I am awfully sorry that I have made you waste an
evening, Harry. I apologize to you both."

"My dear Dorian, I should think Miss Vane was ill," interrupted
Hallward. "We will come some other night."

"I wish she were ill," he rejoined. "But she seems to me to be

simply callous and cold. She has entirely altered. Last night she was a
great artist. This evening she is merely a commonplace mediocre
actress."

"Don't talk like that about any one you love, Dorian. Love is a more
wonderful thing than art."

"They are both simply forms of imitation," remarked Lord Henry.

"But do let us go. Dorian, you must not stay here any longer. It is not
good for one's morals to see bad acting. Besides, I don't suppose you
will want your wife to act, so what does it matter if she plays Juliet
like a wooden doll? She is very lovely, and if she knows as little about
life as she does about acting, she will be a delightful experience. There
are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating—people who

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 75/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

Good heavens, my dear boy, don't look so tragic! The secret of
remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.
Come to the club with Basil and myself. We will smoke cigarettes and
drink to the beauty of Sibyl Vane. She is beautiful. What more can you
want?"

"Go away, Harry," cried the lad. "I want to be alone. Basil, you
must go. Ah! can't you see that my heart is breaking?" The hot tears
came to his eyes. His lips trembled, and rushing to the back of the box,
he leaned up against the wall, hiding his face in his hands.

"Let us go, Basil," said Lord Henry with a strange tenderness in his
voice, and the two young men passed out together.

A few moments afterwards the footlights flared up and the curtain

rose on the third act. Dorian Gray went back to his seat. He looked
pale, and proud, and indifferent. The play dragged on, and seemed
interminable. Half of the audience went out, tramping in heavy boots
and laughing. The whole thing was a fiasco. The last act was played to
almost empty benches. The curtain went down on a titter and some
groans.

As soon as it was over, Dorian Gray rushed behind the scenes into
the greenroom. The girl was standing there alone, with a look of
triumph on her face. Her eyes were lit with an exquisite fire. There
was a radiance about her. Her parted lips were smiling over some
secret of their own.

When he entered, she looked at him, and an expression of infinite

joy came over her. "How badly I acted to-night, Dorian!" she cried.

"Horribly!" he answered, gazing at her in amazement. "Horribly! It

was dreadful. Are you ill? You have no idea what it was. You have no
idea what I suffered."

The girl smiled. "Dorian," she answered, lingering over his name
with long-drawn music in her voice, as though it were sweeter than
honey to the red petals of her mouth. "Dorian, you should have
understood. But you understand now, don't you?"

"Understand what?" he asked, angrily.

"Why I was so bad to-night. Why I shall always be bad. Why I shall
never act well again."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 76/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

He shrugged his shoulders. "You are ill, I suppose. When you are ill
you shouldn't act. You make yourself ridiculous. My friends were
bored. I was bored."

She seemed not to listen to him. She was transfigured with joy. An
ecstasy of happiness dominated her.

"Dorian, Dorian," she cried, "before I knew you, acting was the one
reality of my life. It was only in the theatre that I lived. I thought that it
was all true. I was Rosalind one night and Portia the other. The joy of
Beatrice was my joy, and the sorrows of Cordelia were mine also. I
believed in everything. The common people who acted with me
seemed to me to be godlike. The painted scenes were my world. I
knew nothing but shadows, and I thought them real. You came—oh,
my beautiful love!—and you freed my soul from prison. You taught
me what reality really is. To-night, for the first time in my life, I saw
through the hollowness, the sham, the silliness of the empty pageant in
which I had always played. To-night, for the first time, I became
conscious that the Romeo was hideous, and old, and painted, that the
moonlight in the orchard was false, that the scenery was vulgar, and
that the words I had to speak were unreal, were not my words, were
not what I wanted to say. You had brought me something higher,
something of which all art is but a reflection. You had made me
understand what love really is. My love! My love! Prince Charming!
Prince of life! I have grown sick of shadows. You are more to me than
all art can ever be. What have I to do with the puppets of a play? When
I came on to-night, I could not understand how it was that everything
had gone from me. I thought that I was going to be wonderful. I found
that I could do nothing. Suddenly it dawned on my soul what it all
meant. The knowledge was exquisite to me. I heard them hissing, and I
smiled. What could they know of love such as ours? Take me away,
Dorian—take me away with you, where we can be quite alone. I hate
the stage. I might mimic a passion that I do not feel, but I cannot
mimic one that burns me like fire. Oh, Dorian, Dorian, you understand
now what it signifies? Even if I could do it, it would be profanation for
me to play at being in love. You have made me see that."

He flung himself down on the sofa and turned away his face. "You
have killed my love," he muttered.

She looked at him in wonder and laughed. He made no answer. She

came across to him, and with her little fingers stroked his hair. She
knelt down and pressed his hands to her lips. He drew them away, and
a shudder ran through him.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 77/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

Then he leaped up and went to the door. "Yes," he cried, "you have
killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even
stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because
you were marvellous, because you had genius and intellect, because
you realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to
the shadows of art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and
stupid. My God! how mad I was to love you! What a fool I have been!
You are nothing to me now. I will never see you again. I will never
think of you. I will never mention your name. You don't know what
you were to me, once. Why, once ... Oh, I can't bear to think of it! I
wish I had never laid eyes upon you! You have spoiled the romance of
my life. How little you can know of love, if you say it mars your art!
Without your art, you are nothing. I would have made you famous,
splendid, magnificent. The world would have worshipped you, and
you would have borne my name. What are you now? A third-rate
actress with a pretty face."

The girl grew white, and trembled. She clenched her hands together,
and her voice seemed to catch in her throat. "You are not serious,
Dorian?" she murmured. "You are acting."

"Acting! I leave that to you. You do it so well," he answered

bitterly.

She rose from her knees and, with a piteous expression of pain in
her face, came across the room to him. She put her hand upon his arm
and looked into his eyes. He thrust her back. "Don't touch me!" he
cried.

A low moan broke from her, and she flung herself at his feet and lay
there like a trampled flower. "Dorian, Dorian, don't leave me!" she
whispered. "I am so sorry I didn't act well. I was thinking of you all the
time. But I will try—indeed, I will try. It came so suddenly across me,
my love for you. I think I should never have known it if you had not
kissed me—if we had not kissed each other. Kiss me again, my love.
Don't go away from me. I couldn't bear it. Oh! don't go away from me.
My brother ... No; never mind. He didn't mean it. He was in jest.... But
you, oh! can't you forgive me for to-night? I will work so hard and try
to improve. Don't be cruel to me, because I love you better than
anything in the world. After all, it is only once that I have not pleased
you. But you are quite right, Dorian. I should have shown myself more
of an artist. It was foolish of me, and yet I couldn't help it. Oh, don't
leave me, don't leave me." A fit of passionate sobbing choked her. She
crouched on the floor like a wounded thing, and Dorian Gray, with his

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 78/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

beautiful eyes, looked down at her, and his chiselled lips curled in
exquisite disdain. There is always something ridiculous about the
emotions of people whom one has ceased to love. Sibyl Vane seemed
to him to be absurdly melodramatic. Her tears and sobs annoyed him.

"I am going," he said at last in his calm clear voice. "I don't wish to
be unkind, but I can't see you again. You have disappointed me."

She wept silently, and made no answer, but crept nearer. Her little
hands stretched blindly out, and appeared to be seeking for him. He
turned on his heel and left the room. In a few moments he was out of
the theatre.

Where he went to he hardly knew. He remembered wandering

through dimly lit streets, past gaunt, black-shadowed archways and
evil-looking houses. Women with hoarse voices and harsh laughter had
called after him. Drunkards had reeled by, cursing and chattering to
themselves like monstrous apes. He had seen grotesque children
huddled upon door-steps, and heard shrieks and oaths from gloomy
courts.

As the dawn was just breaking, he found himself close to Covent

Garden. The darkness lifted, and, flushed with faint fires, the sky
hollowed itself into a perfect pearl. Huge carts filled with nodding
lilies rumbled slowly down the polished empty street. The air was
heavy with the perfume of the flowers, and their beauty seemed to
bring him an anodyne for his pain. He followed into the market and
watched the men unloading their waggons. A white-smocked carter
offered him some cherries. He thanked him, wondered why he refused
to accept any money for them, and began to eat them listlessly. They
had been plucked at midnight, and the coldness of the moon had
entered into them. A long line of boys carrying crates of striped tulips,
and of yellow and red roses, defiled in front of him, threading their
way through the huge, jade-green piles of vegetables. Under the
portico, with its grey, sun-bleached pillars, loitered a troop of draggled
bareheaded girls, waiting for the auction to be over. Others crowded
round the swinging doors of the coffee-house in the piazza. The heavy
cart-horses slipped and stamped upon the rough stones, shaking their
bells and trappings. Some of the drivers were lying asleep on a pile of
sacks. Iris-necked and pink-footed, the pigeons ran about picking up
seeds.

After a little while, he hailed a hansom and drove home. For a few
moments he loitered upon the doorstep, looking round at the silent

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 79/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

square, with its blank, close-shuttered windows and its staring blinds.
The sky was pure opal now, and the roofs of the houses glistened like
silver against it. From some chimney opposite a thin wreath of smoke
was rising. It curled, a violet riband, through the nacre-coloured air.

In the huge gilt Venetian lantern, spoil of some Doge's barge, that
hung from the ceiling of the great, oak-panelled hall of entrance, lights
were still burning from three flickering jets: thin blue petals of flame
they seemed, rimmed with white fire. He turned them out and, having
thrown his hat and cape on the table, passed through the library
towards the door of his bedroom, a large octagonal chamber on the
ground floor that, in his new-born feeling for luxury, he had just had
decorated for himself and hung with some curious Renaissance
tapestries that had been discovered stored in a disused attic at Selby
Royal. As he was turning the handle of the door, his eye fell upon the
portrait Basil Hallward had painted of him. He started back as if in
surprise. Then he went on into his own room, looking somewhat
puzzled. After he had taken the button-hole out of his coat, he seemed
to hesitate. Finally, he came back, went over to the picture, and
examined it. In the dim arrested light that struggled through the cream-
coloured silk blinds, the face appeared to him to be a little changed.
The expression looked different. One would have said that there was a
touch of cruelty in the mouth. It was certainly strange.

He turned round and, walking to the window, drew up the blind.

The bright dawn flooded the room and swept the fantastic shadows
into dusky corners, where they lay shuddering. But the strange
expression that he had noticed in the face of the portrait seemed to
linger there, to be more intensified even. The quivering ardent sunlight
showed him the lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had
been looking into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing.

He winced and, taking up from the table an oval glass framed in

ivory Cupids, one of Lord Henry's many presents to him, glanced
hurriedly into its polished depths. No line like that warped his red lips.
What did it mean?

He rubbed his eyes, and came close to the picture, and examined it
again. There were no signs of any change when he looked into the
actual painting, and yet there was no doubt that the whole expression
had altered. It was not a mere fancy of his own. The thing was horribly
apparent.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 80/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

He threw himself into a chair and began to think. Suddenly there

flashed across his mind what he had said in Basil Hallward's studio the
day the picture had been finished. Yes, he remembered it perfectly. He
had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain young, and the
portrait grow old; that his own beauty might be untarnished, and the
face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins; that the
painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and thought,
and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness of his then
just conscious boyhood. Surely his wish had not been fulfilled? Such
things were impossible. It seemed monstrous even to think of them.
And, yet, there was the picture before him, with the touch of cruelty in
the mouth.

Cruelty! Had he been cruel? It was the girl's fault, not his. He had
dreamed of her as a great artist, had given his love to her because he
had thought her great. Then she had disappointed him. She had been
shallow and unworthy. And, yet, a feeling of infinite regret came over
him, as he thought of her lying at his feet sobbing like a little child. He
remembered with what callousness he had watched her. Why had he
been made like that? Why had such a soul been given to him? But he
had suffered also. During the three terrible hours that the play had
lasted, he had lived centuries of pain, aeon upon aeon of torture. His
life was well worth hers. She had marred him for a moment, if he had
wounded her for an age. Besides, women were better suited to bear
sorrow than men. They lived on their emotions. They only thought of
their emotions. When they took lovers, it was merely to have some one
with whom they could have scenes. Lord Henry had told him that, and
Lord Henry knew what women were. Why should he trouble about
Sibyl Vane? She was nothing to him now.

But the picture? What was he to say of that? It held the secret of his
life, and told his story. It had taught him to love his own beauty. Would
it teach him to loathe his own soul? Would he ever look at it again?

No; it was merely an illusion wrought on the troubled senses. The

horrible night that he had passed had left phantoms behind it. Suddenly
there had fallen upon his brain that tiny scarlet speck that makes men
mad. The picture had not changed. It was folly to think so.

Yet it was watching him, with its beautiful marred face and its cruel
smile. Its bright hair gleamed in the early sunlight. Its blue eyes met
his own. A sense of infinite pity, not for himself, but for the painted
image of himself, came over him. It had altered already, and would
alter more. Its gold would wither into grey. Its red and white roses

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 81/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

would die. For every sin that he committed, a stain would fleck and
wreck its fairness. But he would not sin. The picture, changed or
unchanged, would be to him the visible emblem of conscience. He
would resist temptation. He would not see Lord Henry any more—
would not, at any rate, listen to those subtle poisonous theories that in
Basil Hallward's garden had first stirred within him the passion for
impossible things. He would go back to Sibyl Vane, make her amends,
marry her, try to love her again. Yes, it was his duty to do so. She must
have suffered more than he had. Poor child! He had been selfish and
cruel to her. The fascination that she had exercised over him would
return. They would be happy together. His life with her would be
beautiful and pure.

He got up from his chair and drew a large screen right in front of
the portrait, shuddering as he glanced at it. "How horrible!" he
murmured to himself, and he walked across to the window and opened
it. When he stepped out on to the grass, he drew a deep breath. The
fresh morning air seemed to drive away all his sombre passions. He
thought only of Sibyl. A faint echo of his love came back to him. He
repeated her name over and over again. The birds that were singing in
the dew-drenched garden seemed to be telling the flowers about her.

CHAPTER 8
It was long past noon when he awoke. His valet had crept several
times on tiptoe into the room to see if he was stirring, and had
wondered what made his young master sleep so late. Finally his bell
sounded, and Victor came in softly with a cup of tea, and a pile of
letters, on a small tray of old Sevres china, and drew back the olive-
satin curtains, with their shimmering blue lining, that hung in front of
the three tall windows.

"Monsieur has well slept this morning," he said, smiling.

"What o'clock is it, Victor?" asked Dorian Gray drowsily.

"One hour and a quarter, Monsieur."

How late it was! He sat up, and having sipped some tea, turned over
his letters. One of them was from Lord Henry, and had been brought

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 82/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

by hand that morning. He hesitated for a moment, and then put it aside.
The others he opened listlessly. They contained the usual collection of
cards, invitations to dinner, tickets for private views, programmes of
charity concerts, and the like that are showered on fashionable young
men every morning during the season. There was a rather heavy bill
for a chased silver Louis-Quinze toilet-set that he had not yet had the
courage to send on to his guardians, who were extremely old-
fashioned people and did not realize that we live in an age when
unnecessary things are our only necessities; and there were several
very courteously worded communications from Jermyn Street money-
lenders offering to advance any sum of money at a moment's notice
and at the most reasonable rates of interest.

After about ten minutes he got up, and throwing on an elaborate

dressing-gown of silk-embroidered cashmere wool, passed into the
onyx-paved bathroom. The cool water refreshed him after his long
sleep. He seemed to have forgotten all that he had gone through. A dim
sense of having taken part in some strange tragedy came to him once
or twice, but there was the unreality of a dream about it.

As soon as he was dressed, he went into the library and sat down to
a light French breakfast that had been laid out for him on a small round
table close to the open window. It was an exquisite day. The warm air
seemed laden with spices. A bee flew in and buzzed round the blue-
dragon bowl that, filled with sulphur-yellow roses, stood before him.
He felt perfectly happy.

Suddenly his eye fell on the screen that he had placed in front of the
portrait, and he started.

"Too cold for Monsieur?" asked his valet, putting an omelette on the
table. "I shut the window?"

Dorian shook his head. "I am not cold," he murmured.

Was it all true? Had the portrait really changed? Or had it been
simply his own imagination that had made him see a look of evil
where there had been a look of joy? Surely a painted canvas could not
alter? The thing was absurd. It would serve as a tale to tell Basil some
day. It would make him smile.

And, yet, how vivid was his recollection of the whole thing! First in
the dim twilight, and then in the bright dawn, he had seen the touch of
cruelty round the warped lips. He almost dreaded his valet leaving the
room. He knew that when he was alone he would have to examine the

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 83/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

portrait. He was afraid of certainty. When the coffee and cigarettes had
been brought and the man turned to go, he felt a wild desire to tell him
to remain. As the door was closing behind him, he called him back.
The man stood waiting for his orders. Dorian looked at him for a
moment. "I am not at home to any one, Victor," he said with a sigh.
The man bowed and retired.

Then he rose from the table, lit a cigarette, and flung himself down
on a luxuriously cushioned couch that stood facing the screen. The
screen was an old one, of gilt Spanish leather, stamped and wrought
with a rather florid Louis-Quatorze pattern. He scanned it curiously,
wondering if ever before it had concealed the secret of a man's life.

Should he move it aside, after all? Why not let it stay there? What
was the use of knowing? If the thing was true, it was terrible. If it was
not true, why trouble about it? But what if, by some fate or deadlier
chance, eyes other than his spied behind and saw the horrible change?
What should he do if Basil Hallward came and asked to look at his
own picture? Basil would be sure to do that. No; the thing had to be
examined, and at once. Anything would be better than this dreadful
state of doubt.

He got up and locked both doors. At least he would be alone when

he looked upon the mask of his shame. Then he drew the screen aside
and saw himself face to face. It was perfectly true. The portrait had
altered.

As he often remembered afterwards, and always with no small

wonder, he found himself at first gazing at the portrait with a feeling of
almost scientific interest. That such a change should have taken place
was incredible to him. And yet it was a fact. Was there some subtle
affinity between the chemical atoms that shaped themselves into form
and colour on the canvas and the soul that was within him? Could it be
that what that soul thought, they realized?—that what it dreamed, they
made true? Or was there some other, more terrible reason? He
shuddered, and felt afraid, and, going back to the couch, lay there,
gazing at the picture in sickened horror.

One thing, however, he felt that it had done for him. It had made
him conscious how unjust, how cruel, he had been to Sibyl Vane. It
was not too late to make reparation for that. She could still be his wife.
His unreal and selfish love would yield to some higher influence,
would be transformed into some nobler passion, and the portrait that
Basil Hallward had painted of him would be a guide to him through

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 84/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

life, would be to him what holiness is to some, and conscience to

others, and the fear of God to us all. There were opiates for remorse,
drugs that could lull the moral sense to sleep. But here was a visible
symbol of the degradation of sin. Here was an ever-present sign of the
ruin men brought upon their souls.

Three o'clock struck, and four, and the half-hour rang its double
chime, but Dorian Gray did not stir. He was trying to gather up the
scarlet threads of life and to weave them into a pattern; to find his way
through the sanguine labyrinth of passion through which he was
wandering. He did not know what to do, or what to think. Finally, he
went over to the table and wrote a passionate letter to the girl he had
loved, imploring her forgiveness and accusing himself of madness. He
covered page after page with wild words of sorrow and wilder words
of pain. There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves,
we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not
the priest, that gives us absolution. When Dorian had finished the
letter, he felt that he had been forgiven.

Suddenly there came a knock to the door, and he heard Lord

Henry's voice outside. "My dear boy, I must see you. Let me in at
once. I can't bear your shutting yourself up like this."

He made no answer at first, but remained quite still. The knocking

still continued and grew louder. Yes, it was better to let Lord Henry in,
and to explain to him the new life he was going to lead, to quarrel with
him if it became necessary to quarrel, to part if parting was inevitable.
He jumped up, drew the screen hastily across the picture, and unlocked
the door.

"I am so sorry for it all, Dorian," said Lord Henry as he entered.

"But you must not think too much about it."

"Do you mean about Sibyl Vane?" asked the lad.

"Yes, of course," answered Lord Henry, sinking into a chair and

slowly pulling off his yellow gloves. "It is dreadful, from one point of
view, but it was not your fault. Tell me, did you go behind and see her,
after the play was over?"

"Yes."

"I felt sure you had. Did you make a scene with her?"

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 85/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"I was brutal, Harry—perfectly brutal. But it is all right now. I am

not sorry for anything that has happened. It has taught me to know
myself better."

"Ah, Dorian, I am so glad you take it in that way! I was afraid I

would find you plunged in remorse and tearing that nice curly hair of
yours."

"I have got through all that," said Dorian, shaking his head and
smiling. "I am perfectly happy now. I know what conscience is, to
begin with. It is not what you told me it was. It is the divinest thing in
us. Don't sneer at it, Harry, any more—at least not before me. I want to
be good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous."

"A very charming artistic basis for ethics, Dorian! I congratulate

you on it. But how are you going to begin?"

"By marrying Sibyl Vane."

"Marrying Sibyl Vane!" cried Lord Henry, standing up and looking

at him in perplexed amazement. "But, my dear Dorian—"

"Yes, Harry, I know what you are going to say. Something dreadful
about marriage. Don't say it. Don't ever say things of that kind to me
again. Two days ago I asked Sibyl to marry me. I am not going to
break my word to her. She is to be my wife."

"Your wife! Dorian! ... Didn't you get my letter? I wrote to you this
morning, and sent the note down by my own man."

"Your letter? Oh, yes, I remember. I have not read it yet, Harry. I
was afraid there might be something in it that I wouldn't like. You cut
life to pieces with your epigrams."

"You know nothing then?"

"What do you mean?"

Lord Henry walked across the room, and sitting down by Dorian
Gray, took both his hands in his own and held them tightly. "Dorian,"
he said, "my letter—don't be frightened—was to tell you that Sibyl
Vane is dead."

A cry of pain broke from the lad's lips, and he leaped to his feet,
tearing his hands away from Lord Henry's grasp. "Dead! Sibyl dead! It

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 86/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

is not true! It is a horrible lie! How dare you say it?"

"It is quite true, Dorian," said Lord Henry, gravely. "It is in all the
morning papers. I wrote down to you to ask you not to see any one till
I came. There will have to be an inquest, of course, and you must not
be mixed up in it. Things like that make a man fashionable in Paris.
But in London people are so prejudiced. Here, one should never make
one's debut with a scandal. One should reserve that to give an interest
to one's old age. I suppose they don't know your name at the theatre? If
they don't, it is all right. Did any one see you going round to her room?
That is an important point."

Dorian did not answer for a few moments. He was dazed with
horror. Finally he stammered, in a stifled voice, "Harry, did you say an
inquest? What did you mean by that? Did Sibyl—? Oh, Harry, I can't
bear it! But be quick. Tell me everything at once."

"I have no doubt it was not an accident, Dorian, though it must be

put in that way to the public. It seems that as she was leaving the
theatre with her mother, about half-past twelve or so, she said she had
forgotten something upstairs. They waited some time for her, but she
did not come down again. They ultimately found her lying dead on the
floor of her dressing-room. She had swallowed something by mistake,
some dreadful thing they use at theatres. I don't know what it was, but
it had either prussic acid or white lead in it. I should fancy it was
prussic acid, as she seems to have died instantaneously."

"Harry, Harry, it is terrible!" cried the lad.

"Yes; it is very tragic, of course, but you must not get yourself
mixed up in it. I see by The Standard that she was seventeen. I should
have thought she was almost younger than that. She looked such a
child, and seemed to know so little about acting. Dorian, you mustn't
let this thing get on your nerves. You must come and dine with me,
and afterwards we will look in at the opera. It is a Patti night, and
everybody will be there. You can come to my sister's box. She has got
some smart women with her."

"So I have murdered Sibyl Vane," said Dorian Gray, half to himself,
"murdered her as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife. Yet
the roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as happily
in my garden. And to-night I am to dine with you, and then go on to
the opera, and sup somewhere, I suppose, afterwards. How
extraordinarily dramatic life is! If I had read all this in a book, Harry, I

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 87/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

think I would have wept over it. Somehow, now that it has happened
actually, and to me, it seems far too wonderful for tears. Here is the
first passionate love-letter I have ever written in my life. Strange, that
my first passionate love-letter should have been addressed to a dead
girl. Can they feel, I wonder, those white silent people we call the
dead? Sibyl! Can she feel, or know, or listen? Oh, Harry, how I loved
her once! It seems years ago to me now. She was everything to me.
Then came that dreadful night—was it really only last night?—when
she played so badly, and my heart almost broke. She explained it all to
me. It was terribly pathetic. But I was not moved a bit. I thought her
shallow. Suddenly something happened that made me afraid. I can't tell
you what it was, but it was terrible. I said I would go back to her. I felt
I had done wrong. And now she is dead. My God! My God! Harry,
what shall I do? You don't know the danger I am in, and there is
nothing to keep me straight. She would have done that for me. She had
no right to kill herself. It was selfish of her."

"My dear Dorian," answered Lord Henry, taking a cigarette from his
case and producing a gold-latten matchbox, "the only way a woman
can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all
possible interest in life. If you had married this girl, you would have
been wretched. Of course, you would have treated her kindly. One can
always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing. But she
would have soon found out that you were absolutely indifferent to her.
And when a woman finds that out about her husband, she either
becomes dreadfully dowdy, or wears very smart bonnets that some
other woman's husband has to pay for. I say nothing about the social
mistake, which would have 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."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 88/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"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.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 89/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"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."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 90/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"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."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 91/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 92/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 93/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 94/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 95/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 96/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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?"

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 97/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 98/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 99/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 100/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 101/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"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."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 102/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"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 how 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?

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 103/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 104/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 105/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"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-

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 106/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 107/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"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.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 108/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 109/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 110/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 111/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 112/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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,

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 113/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 114/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 115/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 116/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 117/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 118/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 119/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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-

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 120/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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
picture, sometimes loathing it and himself, but filled, at other 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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 121/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 122/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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?

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 123/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 124/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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,

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 125/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 126/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 127/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 128/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 129/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 130/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

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."

"You think so?" He laughed again.

"I know so. As for what I said to you to-night, I said it for your
good. You know I have been always a stanch friend to you."

"Don't touch me. Finish what you have to say."

A twisted flash of pain shot across the painter's face. He paused for
a moment, and a wild feeling of pity came over him. After all, what
right had he to pry into the life of Dorian Gray? If he had done a tithe
of what was rumoured about him, how much he must have suffered!
Then he straightened himself up, and walked over to the fire-place,
and stood there, looking at the burning logs with their frostlike ashes
and their throbbing cores of flame.

"I am waiting, Basil," said the young man in a hard clear voice.

He turned round. "What I have to say is this," he cried. "You must

give me some answer to these horrible charges that are made against
you. If you tell me that they are absolutely untrue from beginning to
end, I shall believe you. Deny them, Dorian, deny them! Can't you see

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 131/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

what I am going through? My God! don't tell me that you are bad, and
corrupt, and shameful."

Dorian Gray smiled. There was a curl of contempt in his lips.

"Come upstairs, Basil," he said quietly. "I keep a diary of my life from
day to day, and it never leaves the room in which it is written. I shall
show it to you if you come with me."

"I shall come with you, Dorian, if you wish it. I see I have missed
my train. That makes no matter. I can go to-morrow. But don't ask me
to read anything to-night. All I want is a plain answer to my question."

"That shall be given to you upstairs. I could not give it here. You
will not have to read long."

CHAPTER 13
He passed out of the room and began the ascent, Basil Hallward
following close behind. They walked softly, as men do instinctively at
night. The lamp cast fantastic shadows on the wall and staircase. A
rising wind made some of the windows rattle.

When they reached the top landing, Dorian set the lamp down on
the floor, and taking out the key, turned it in the lock. "You insist on
knowing, Basil?" he asked in a low voice.

"Yes."

"I am delighted," he answered, smiling. Then he added, somewhat

harshly, "You are the one man in the world who is entitled to know
everything about me. You have had more to do with my life than you
think"; and, taking up the lamp, he opened the door and went in. A
cold current of air passed them, and the light shot up for a moment in a
flame of murky orange. He shuddered. "Shut the door behind you," he
whispered, as he placed the lamp on the table.

Hallward glanced round him with a puzzled expression. The room

looked as if it had not been lived in for years. A faded Flemish
tapestry, a curtained picture, an old Italian cassone, and an almost
empty book-case—that was all that it seemed to contain, besides a

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 132/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

chair and a table. As Dorian Gray was lighting a half-burned candle

that was standing on the mantelshelf, he saw that the whole place was
covered with dust and that the carpet was in holes. A mouse ran
scuffling behind the wainscoting. There was a damp odour of mildew.

"So you think that it is only God who sees the soul, Basil? Draw
that curtain back, and you will see mine."

The voice that spoke was cold and cruel. "You are mad, Dorian, or
playing a part," muttered Hallward, frowning.

"You won't? Then I must do it myself," said the young man, and he
tore the curtain from its rod and flung it on the ground.

An exclamation of horror broke from the painter's lips as he saw in

the dim light the hideous face on the canvas grinning at him. There
was something in its expression that filled him with disgust and
loathing. Good heavens! it was Dorian Gray's own face that he was
looking at! The horror, whatever it was, had not yet entirely spoiled
that marvellous beauty. There was still some gold in the thinning hair
and some scarlet on the sensual mouth. The sodden eyes had kept
something of the loveliness of their blue, the noble curves had not yet
completely passed away from chiselled nostrils and from plastic throat.
Yes, it was Dorian himself. But who had done it? He seemed to
recognize his own brushwork, and the frame was his own design. The
idea was monstrous, yet he felt afraid. He seized the lighted candle,
and held it to the picture. In the left-hand corner was his own name,
traced in long letters of bright vermilion.

It was some foul parody, some infamous ignoble satire. He had

never done that. Still, it was his own picture. He knew it, and he felt as
if his blood had changed in a moment from fire to sluggish ice. His
own picture! What did it mean? Why had it altered? He turned and
looked at Dorian Gray with the eyes of a sick man. His mouth
twitched, and his parched tongue seemed unable to articulate. He
passed his hand across his forehead. It was dank with clammy sweat.

The young man was leaning against the mantelshelf, watching him
with that strange expression that one sees on the faces of those who are
absorbed in a play when some great artist is acting. There was neither
real sorrow in it nor real joy. There was simply the passion of the
spectator, with perhaps a flicker of triumph in his eyes. He had taken
the flower out of his coat, and was smelling it, or pretending to do so.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 133/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"What does this mean?" cried Hallward, at last. His own voice
sounded shrill and curious in his ears.

"Years ago, when I was a boy," said Dorian Gray, crushing the
flower in his hand, "you met me, flattered me, and taught me to be
vain of my good looks. One day you introduced me to a friend of
yours, who explained to me the wonder of youth, and you finished a
portrait of me that revealed to me the wonder of beauty. In a mad
moment that, even now, I don't know whether I regret or not, I made a
wish, perhaps you would call it a prayer...."

"I remember it! Oh, how well I remember it! No! the thing is
impossible. The room is damp. Mildew has got into the canvas. The
paints I used had some wretched mineral poison in them. I tell you the
thing is impossible."

"Ah, what is impossible?" murmured the young man, going over to

the window and leaning his forehead against the cold, mist-stained
glass.

"You told me you had destroyed it."

"I was wrong. It has destroyed me."

"I don't believe it is my picture."

"Can't you see your ideal in it?" said Dorian bitterly.

"My ideal, as you call it..."

"As you called it."

"There was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful. You were to me

such an ideal as I shall never meet again. This is the face of a satyr."

"It is the face of my soul."

"Christ! what a thing I must have worshipped! It has the eyes of a

devil."

"Each of us has heaven and hell in him, Basil," cried Dorian with a
wild gesture of despair.

Hallward turned again to the portrait and gazed at it. "My God! If it
is true," he exclaimed, "and this is what you have done with your life,

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 134/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

why, you must be worse even than those who talk against you fancy
you to be!" He held the light up again to the canvas and examined it.
The surface seemed to be quite undisturbed and as he had left it. It was
from within, apparently, that the foulness and horror had come.
Through some strange quickening of inner life the leprosies of sin
were slowly eating the thing away. The rotting of a corpse in a watery
grave was not so fearful.

His hand shook, and the candle fell from its socket on the floor and
lay there sputtering. He placed his foot on it and put it out. Then he
flung himself into the rickety chair that was standing by the table and
buried his face in his hands.

"Good God, Dorian, what a lesson! What an awful lesson!" There

was no answer, but he could hear the young man sobbing at the
window. "Pray, Dorian, pray," he murmured. "What is it that one was
taught to say in one's boyhood? 'Lead us not into temptation. Forgive
us our sins. Wash away our iniquities.' Let us say that together. The
prayer of your pride has been answered. The prayer of your repentance
will be answered also. I worshipped you too much. I am punished for
it. You worshipped yourself too much. We are both punished."

Dorian Gray turned slowly around and looked at him with tear-
dimmed eyes. "It is too late, Basil," he faltered.

"It is never too late, Dorian. Let us kneel down and try if we cannot
remember a prayer. Isn't there a verse somewhere, 'Though your sins
be as scarlet, yet I will make them as white as snow'?"

"Those words mean nothing to me now."

"Hush! Don't say that. You have done enough evil in your life. My
God! Don't you see that accursed thing leering at us?"

Dorian Gray glanced at the picture, and suddenly an uncontrollable

feeling of hatred for Basil Hallward came over him, as though it had
been suggested to him by the image on the canvas, whispered into his
ear by those grinning lips. The mad passions of a hunted animal stirred
within him, and he loathed the man who was seated at the table, more
than in his whole life he had ever loathed anything. He glanced wildly
around. Something glimmered on the top of the painted chest that
faced him. His eye fell on it. He knew what it was. It was a knife that
he had brought up, some days before, to cut a piece of cord, and had
forgotten to take away with him. He moved slowly towards it, passing
Hallward as he did so. As soon as he got behind him, he seized it and

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 135/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

turned round. Hallward stirred in his chair as if he was going to rise.

He rushed at him and dug the knife into the great vein that is behind
the ear, crushing the man's head down on the table and stabbing again
and again.

There was a stifled groan and the horrible sound of some one
choking with blood. Three times the outstretched arms shot up
convulsively, waving grotesque, stiff-fingered hands in the air. He
stabbed him twice more, but the man did not move. Something began
to trickle on the floor. He waited for a moment, still pressing the head
down. Then he threw the knife on the table, and listened.

He could hear nothing, but the drip, drip on the threadbare carpet.
He opened the door and went out on the landing. The house was
absolutely quiet. No one was about. For a few seconds he stood
bending over the balustrade and peering down into the black seething
well of darkness. Then he took out the key and returned to the room,
locking himself in as he did so.

The thing was still seated in the chair, straining over the table with
bowed head, and humped back, and long fantastic arms. Had it not
been for the red jagged tear in the neck and the clotted black pool that
was slowly widening on the table, one would have said that the man
was simply asleep.

How quickly it had all been done! He felt strangely calm, and
walking over to the window, opened it and stepped out on the balcony.
The wind had blown the fog away, and the sky was like a monstrous
peacock's tail, starred with myriads of golden eyes. He looked down
and saw the policeman going his rounds and flashing the long beam of
his lantern on the doors of the silent houses. The crimson spot of a
prowling hansom gleamed at the corner and then vanished. A woman
in a fluttering shawl was creeping slowly by the railings, staggering as
she went. Now and then she stopped and peered back. Once, she began
to sing in a hoarse voice. The policeman strolled over and said
something to her. She stumbled away, laughing. A bitter blast swept
across the square. The gas-lamps flickered and became blue, and the
leafless trees shook their black iron branches to and fro. He shivered
and went back, closing the window behind him.

Having reached the door, he turned the key and opened it. He did
not even glance at the murdered man. He felt that the secret of the
whole thing was not to realize the situation. The friend who had

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 136/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

painted the fatal portrait to which all his misery had been due had gone
out of his life. That was enough.

Then he remembered the lamp. It was a rather curious one of

Moorish workmanship, made of dull silver inlaid with arabesques of
burnished steel, and studded with coarse turquoises. Perhaps it might
be missed by his servant, and questions would be asked. He hesitated
for a moment, then he turned back and took it from the table. He could
not help seeing the dead thing. How still it was! How horribly white
the long hands looked! It was like a dreadful wax image.

Having locked the door behind him, he crept quietly downstairs.

The woodwork creaked and seemed to cry out as if in pain. He stopped
several times and waited. No: everything was still. It was merely the
sound of his own footsteps.

When he reached the library, he saw the bag and coat in the corner.
They must be hidden away somewhere. He unlocked a secret press that
was in the wainscoting, a press in which he kept his own curious
disguises, and put them into it. He could easily burn them afterwards.
Then he pulled out his watch. It was twenty minutes to two.

He sat down and began to think. Every year—every month, almost

—men were strangled in England for what he had done. There had
been a madness of murder in the air. Some red star had come too close
to the earth.... And yet, what evidence was there against him? Basil
Hallward had left the house at eleven. No one had seen him come in
again. Most of the servants were at Selby Royal. His valet had gone to
bed.... Paris! Yes. It was to Paris that Basil had gone, and by the
midnight train, as he had intended. With his curious reserved habits, it
would be months before any suspicions would be roused. Months!
Everything could be destroyed long before then.

A sudden thought struck him. He put on his fur coat and hat and
went out into the hall. There he paused, hearing the slow heavy tread
of the policeman on the pavement outside and seeing the flash of the
bull's-eye reflected in the window. He waited and held his breath.

After a few moments he drew back the latch and slipped out,
shutting the door very gently behind him. Then he began ringing the
bell. In about five minutes his valet appeared, half-dressed and looking
very drowsy.

"I am sorry to have had to wake you up, Francis," he said, stepping
in; "but I had forgotten my latch-key. What time is it?"

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 137/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"Ten minutes past two, sir," answered the man, looking at the clock
and blinking.

"Ten minutes past two? How horribly late! You must wake me at
nine to-morrow. I have some work to do."

"All right, sir."

"Did any one call this evening?"

"Mr. Hallward, sir. He stayed here till eleven, and then he went
away to catch his train."

"Oh! I am sorry I didn't see him. Did he leave any message?"

"No, sir, except that he would write to you from Paris, if he did not
find you at the club."

"That will do, Francis. Don't forget to call me at nine to-morrow."

"No, sir."

The man shambled down the passage in his slippers.

Dorian Gray threw his hat and coat upon the table and passed into
the library. For a quarter of an hour he walked up and down the room,
biting his lip and thinking. Then he took down the Blue Book from one
of the shelves and began to turn over the leaves. "Alan Campbell, 152,
Hertford Street, Mayfair." Yes; that was the man he wanted.

CHAPTER 14
At nine o'clock the next morning his servant came in with a cup of
chocolate on a tray and opened the shutters. Dorian was sleeping quite
peacefully, lying on his right side, with one hand underneath his cheek.
He looked like a boy who had been tired out with play, or study.

The man had to touch him twice on the shoulder before he woke,
and as he opened his eyes a faint smile passed across his lips, as
though he had been lost in some delightful dream. Yet he had not
dreamed at all. His night had been untroubled by any images of

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 138/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

pleasure or of pain. But youth smiles without any reason. It is one of

its chiefest charms.

He turned round, and leaning upon his elbow, began to sip his
chocolate. The mellow November sun came streaming into the room.
The sky was bright, and there was a genial warmth in the air. It was
almost like a morning in May.

Gradually the events of the preceding night crept with silent, blood-
stained feet into his brain and reconstructed themselves there with
terrible distinctness. He winced at the memory of all that he had
suffered, and for a moment the same curious feeling of loathing for
Basil Hallward that had made him kill him as he sat in the chair came
back to him, and he grew cold with passion. The dead man was still
sitting there, too, and in the sunlight now. How horrible that was! Such
hideous things were for the darkness, not for the day.

He felt that if he brooded on what he had gone through he would

sicken or grow mad. There were sins whose fascination was more in
the memory than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified
the pride more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened
sense of joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to
the senses. But this was not one of them. It was a thing to be driven out
of the mind, to be drugged with poppies, to be strangled lest it might
strangle one itself.

When the half-hour struck, he passed his hand across his forehead,
and then got up hastily and dressed himself with even more than his
usual care, giving a good deal of attention to the choice of his necktie
and scarf-pin and changing his rings more than once. He spent a long
time also over breakfast, tasting the various dishes, talking to his valet
about some new liveries that he was thinking of getting made for the
servants at Selby, and going through his correspondence. At some of
the letters, he smiled. Three of them bored him. One he read several
times over and then tore up with a slight look of annoyance in his face.
"That awful thing, a woman's memory!" as Lord Henry had once said.

After he had drunk his cup of black coffee, he wiped his lips slowly
with a napkin, motioned to his servant to wait, and going over to the
table, sat down and wrote two letters. One he put in his pocket, the
other he handed to the valet.

"Take this round to 152, Hertford Street, Francis, and if Mr.

Campbell is out of town, get his address."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 139/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

As soon as he was alone, he lit a cigarette and began sketching upon

a piece of paper, drawing first flowers and bits of architecture, and
then human faces. Suddenly he remarked that every face that he drew
seemed to have a fantastic likeness to Basil Hallward. He frowned, and
getting up, went over to the book-case and took out a volume at
hazard. He was determined that he would not think about what had
happened until it became absolutely necessary that he should do so.

When he had stretched himself on the sofa, he looked at the title-

page of the book. It was Gautier's Emaux et Camees, Charpentier's
Japanese-paper edition, with the Jacquemart etching. The binding was
of citron-green leather, with a design of gilt trellis-work and dotted
pomegranates. It had been given to him by Adrian Singleton. As he
turned over the pages, his eye fell on the poem about the hand of
Lacenaire, the cold yellow hand "du supplice encore mal lavee," with
its downy red hairs and its "doigts de faune." He glanced at his own
white taper fingers, shuddering slightly in spite of himself, and passed
on, till he came to those lovely stanzas upon Venice:
Sur une gamme chromatique,
Le sein de perles ruisselant,
La Venus de l'Adriatique
Sort de l'eau son corps rose et blanc.

Les domes, sur l'azur des ondes

Suivant la phrase au pur contour,
S'enflent comme des gorges rondes
Que souleve un soupir d'amour.

L'esquif aborde et me depose,

Jetant son amarre au pilier,
Devant une facade rose,
Sur le marbre d'un escalier.

How exquisite they were! As one read them, one seemed to be

floating down the green water-ways of the pink and pearl city, seated
in a black gondola with silver prow and trailing curtains. The mere
lines looked to him like those straight lines of turquoise-blue that
follow one as one pushes out to the Lido. The sudden flashes of colour
reminded him of the gleam of the opal-and-iris-throated birds that
flutter round the tall honeycombed Campanile, or stalk, with such
stately grace, through the dim, dust-stained arcades. Leaning back with
half-closed eyes, he kept saying over and over to himself:

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 140/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"Devant une facade rose,

Sur le marbre d'un escalier."

The whole of Venice was in those two lines. He remembered the

autumn that he had passed there, and a wonderful love that had stirred
him to mad delightful follies. There was romance in every place. But
Venice, like Oxford, had kept the background for romance, and, to the
true romantic, background was everything, or almost everything. Basil
had been with him part of the time, and had gone wild over Tintoret.
Poor Basil! What a horrible way for a man to die!

He sighed, and took up the volume again, and tried to forget. He

read of the swallows that fly in and out of the little cafe at Smyrna
where the Hadjis sit counting their amber beads and the turbaned
merchants smoke their long tasselled pipes and talk gravely to each
other; he read of the Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde that weeps
tears of granite in its lonely sunless exile and longs to be back by the
hot, lotus-covered Nile, where there are Sphinxes, and rose-red ibises,
and white vultures with gilded claws, and crocodiles with small beryl
eyes that crawl over the green steaming mud; he began to brood over
those verses which, drawing music from kiss-stained marble, tell of
that curious statue that Gautier compares to a contralto voice, the
"monstre charmant" that couches in the porphyry-room of the Louvre.
But after a time the book fell from his hand. He grew nervous, and a
horrible fit of terror came over him. What if Alan Campbell should be
out of England? Days would elapse before he could come back.
Perhaps he might refuse to come. What could he do then? Every
moment was of vital importance.

They had been great friends once, five years before—almost

inseparable, indeed. Then the intimacy had come suddenly to an end.
When they met in society now, it was only Dorian Gray who smiled:
Alan Campbell never did.

He was an extremely clever young man, though he had no real

appreciation of the visible arts, and whatever little sense of the beauty
of poetry he possessed he had gained entirely from Dorian. His
dominant intellectual passion was for science. At Cambridge he had
spent a great deal of his time working in the laboratory, and had taken
a good class in the Natural Science Tripos of his year. Indeed, he was
still devoted to the study of chemistry, and had a laboratory of his own
in which he used to shut himself up all day long, greatly to the
annoyance of his mother, who had set her heart on his standing for
Parliament and had a vague idea that a chemist was a person who

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 141/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

made up prescriptions. He was an excellent musician, however, as

well, and played both the violin and the piano better than most
amateurs. In fact, it was music that had first brought him and Dorian
Gray together—music and that indefinable attraction that Dorian
seemed to be able to exercise whenever he wished—and, indeed,
exercised often without being conscious of it. They had met at Lady
Berkshire's the night that Rubinstein played there, and after that used
to be always seen together at the opera and wherever good music was
going on. For eighteen months their intimacy lasted. Campbell was
always either at Selby Royal or in Grosvenor Square. To him, as to
many others, Dorian Gray was the type of everything that is wonderful
and fascinating in life. Whether or not a quarrel had taken place
between them no one ever knew. But suddenly people remarked that
they scarcely spoke when they met and that Campbell seemed always
to go away early from any party at which Dorian Gray was present. He
had changed, too—was strangely melancholy at times, appeared
almost to dislike hearing music, and would never himself play, giving
as his excuse, when he was called upon, that he was so absorbed in
science that he had no time left in which to practise. And this was
certainly true. Every day he seemed to become more interested in
biology, and his name appeared once or twice in some of the scientific
reviews in connection with certain curious experiments.

This was the man Dorian Gray was waiting for. Every second he
kept glancing at the clock. As the minutes went by he became horribly
agitated. At last he got up and began to pace up and down the room,
looking like a beautiful caged thing. He took long stealthy strides. His
hands were curiously cold.

The suspense became unbearable. Time seemed to him to be

crawling with feet of lead, while he by monstrous winds was being
swept towards the jagged edge of some black cleft of precipice. He
knew what was waiting for him there; saw it, indeed, and, shuddering,
crushed with dank hands his burning lids as though he would have
robbed the very brain of sight and driven the eyeballs back into their
cave. It was useless. The brain had its own food on which it battened,
and the imagination, made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as
a living thing by pain, danced like some foul puppet on a stand and
grinned through moving masks. Then, suddenly, time stopped for him.
Yes: that blind, slow-breathing thing crawled no more, and horrible
thoughts, time being dead, raced nimbly on in front, and dragged a
hideous future from its grave, and showed it to him. He stared at it. Its
very horror made him stone.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 142/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

At last the door opened and his servant entered. He turned glazed
eyes upon him.

"Mr. Campbell, sir," said the man.

A sigh of relief broke from his parched lips, and the colour came
back to his cheeks.

"Ask him to come in at once, Francis." He felt that he was himself

again. His mood of cowardice had passed away.

The man bowed and retired. In a few moments, Alan Campbell

walked in, looking very stern and rather pale, his pallor being
intensified by his coal-black hair and dark eyebrows.

"Alan! This is kind of you. I thank you for coming."

"I had intended never to enter your house again, Gray. But you said
it was a matter of life and death." His voice was hard and cold. He
spoke with slow deliberation. There was a look of contempt in the
steady searching gaze that he turned on Dorian. He kept his hands in
the pockets of his Astrakhan coat, and seemed not to have noticed the
gesture with which he had been greeted.

"Yes: it is a matter of life and death, Alan, and to more than one
person. Sit down."

Campbell took a chair by the table, and Dorian sat opposite to him.
The two men's eyes met. In Dorian's there was infinite pity. He knew
that what he was going to do was dreadful.

After a strained moment of silence, he leaned across and said, very

quietly, but watching the effect of each word upon the face of him he
had sent for, "Alan, in a locked room at the top of this house, a room to
which nobody but myself has access, a dead man is seated at a table.
He has been dead ten hours now. Don't stir, and don't look at me like
that. Who the man is, why he died, how he died, are matters that do
not concern you. What you have to do is this—"

"Stop, Gray. I don't want to know anything further. Whether what

you have told me is true or not true doesn't concern me. I entirely
decline to be mixed up in your life. Keep your horrible secrets to
yourself. They don't interest me any more."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 143/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"Alan, they will have to interest you. This one will have to interest
you. I am awfully sorry for you, Alan. But I can't help myself. You are
the one man who is able to save me. I am forced to bring you into the
matter. I have no option. Alan, you are scientific. You know about
chemistry and things of that kind. You have made experiments. What
you have got to do is to destroy the thing that is upstairs—to destroy it
so that not a vestige of it will be left. Nobody saw this person come
into the house. Indeed, at the present moment he is supposed to be in
Paris. He will not be missed for months. When he is missed, there
must be no trace of him found here. You, Alan, you must change him,
and everything that belongs to him, into a handful of ashes that I may
scatter in the air."

"You are mad, Dorian."

"Ah! I was waiting for you to call me Dorian."

"You are mad, I tell you—mad to imagine that I would raise a finger
to help you, mad to make this monstrous confession. I will have
nothing to do with this matter, whatever it is. Do you think I am going
to peril my reputation for you? What is it to me what devil's work you
are up to?"

"It was suicide, Alan."

"I am glad of that. But who drove him to it? You, I should fancy."

"Do you still refuse to do this for me?"

"Of course I refuse. I will have absolutely nothing to do with it. I

don't care what shame comes on you. You deserve it all. I should not
be sorry to see you disgraced, publicly disgraced. How dare you ask
me, of all men in the world, to mix myself up in this horror? I should
have thought you knew more about people's characters. Your friend
Lord Henry Wotton can't have taught you much about psychology,
whatever else he has taught you. Nothing will induce me to stir a step
to help you. You have come to the wrong man. Go to some of your
friends. Don't come to me."

"Alan, it was murder. I killed him. You don't know what he had
made me suffer. Whatever my life is, he had more to do with the
making or the marring of it than poor Harry has had. He may not have
intended it, the result was the same."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 144/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"Murder! Good God, Dorian, is that what you have come to? I shall
not inform upon you. It is not my business. Besides, without my
stirring in the matter, you are certain to be arrested. Nobody ever
commits a crime without doing something stupid. But I will have
nothing to do with it."

"You must have something to do with it. Wait, wait a moment;

listen to me. Only listen, Alan. All I ask of you is to perform a certain
scientific experiment. You go to hospitals and dead-houses, and the
horrors that you do there don't affect you. If in some hideous
dissecting-room or fetid laboratory you found this man lying on a
leaden table with red gutters scooped out in it for the blood to flow
through, you would simply look upon him as an admirable subject.
You would not turn a hair. You would not believe that you were doing
anything wrong. On the contrary, you would probably feel that you
were benefiting the human race, or increasing the sum of knowledge in
the world, or gratifying intellectual curiosity, or something of that
kind. What I want you to do is merely what you have often done
before. Indeed, to destroy a body must be far less horrible than what
you are accustomed to work at. And, remember, it is the only piece of
evidence against me. If it is discovered, I am lost; and it is sure to be
discovered unless you help me."

"I have no desire to help you. You forget that. I am simply

indifferent to the whole thing. It has nothing to do with me."

"Alan, I entreat you. Think of the position I am in. Just before you
came I almost fainted with terror. You may know terror yourself some
day. No! don't think of that. Look at the matter purely from the
scientific point of view. You don't inquire where the dead things on
which you experiment come from. Don't inquire now. I have told you
too much as it is. But I beg of you to do this. We were friends once,
Alan."

"Don't speak about those days, Dorian—they are dead."

"The dead linger sometimes. The man upstairs will not go away. He
is sitting at the table with bowed head and outstretched arms. Alan!
Alan! If you don't come to my assistance, I am ruined. Why, they will
hang me, Alan! Don't you understand? They will hang me for what I
have done."

"There is no good in prolonging this scene. I absolutely refuse to do

anything in the matter. It is insane of you to ask me."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 145/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"You refuse?"

"Yes."

"I entreat you, Alan."

"It is useless."

The same look of pity came into Dorian Gray's eyes. Then he
stretched out his hand, took a piece of paper, and wrote something on
it. He read it over twice, folded it carefully, and pushed it across the
table. Having done this, he got up and went over to the window.

Campbell looked at him in surprise, and then took up the paper, and
opened it. As he read it, his face became ghastly pale and he fell back
in his chair. A horrible sense of sickness came over him. He felt as if
his heart was beating itself to death in some empty hollow.

After two or three minutes of terrible silence, Dorian turned round

and came and stood behind him, putting his hand upon his shoulder.

"I am so sorry for you, Alan," he murmured, "but you leave me no

alternative. I have a letter written already. Here it is. You see the
address. If you don't help me, I must send it. If you don't help me, I
will send it. You know what the result will be. But you are going to
help me. It is impossible for you to refuse now. I tried to spare you.
You will do me the justice to admit that. You were stern, harsh,
offensive. You treated me as no man has ever dared to treat me—no
living man, at any rate. I bore it all. Now it is for me to dictate terms."

Campbell buried his face in his hands, and a shudder passed

through him.

"Yes, it is my turn to dictate terms, Alan. You know what they are.
The thing is quite simple. Come, don't work yourself into this fever.
The thing has to be done. Face it, and do it."

A groan broke from Campbell's lips and he shivered all over. The
ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece seemed to him to be dividing
time into separate atoms of agony, each of which was too terrible to be
borne. He felt as if an iron ring was being slowly tightened round his
forehead, as if the disgrace with which he was threatened had already
come upon him. The hand upon his shoulder weighed like a hand of
lead. It was intolerable. It seemed to crush him.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 146/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"Come, Alan, you must decide at once."

"I cannot do it," he said, mechanically, as though words could alter

things.

"You must. You have no choice. Don't delay."

He hesitated a moment. "Is there a fire in the room upstairs?"

"Yes, there is a gas-fire with asbestos."

"I shall have to go home and get some things from the laboratory."

"No, Alan, you must not leave the house. Write out on a sheet of
notepaper what you want and my servant will take a cab and bring the
things back to you."

Campbell scrawled a few lines, blotted them, and addressed an

envelope to his assistant. Dorian took the note up and read it carefully.
Then he rang the bell and gave it to his valet, with orders to return as
soon as possible and to bring the things with him.

As the hall door shut, Campbell started nervously, and having got
up from the chair, went over to the chimney-piece. He was shivering
with a kind of ague. For nearly twenty minutes, neither of the men
spoke. A fly buzzed noisily about the room, and the ticking of the
clock was like the beat of a hammer.

As the chime struck one, Campbell turned round, and looking at

Dorian Gray, saw that his eyes were filled with tears. There was
something in the purity and refinement of that sad face that seemed to
enrage him. "You are infamous, absolutely infamous!" he muttered.

"Hush, Alan. You have saved my life," said Dorian.

"Your life? Good heavens! what a life that is! You have gone from
corruption to corruption, and now you have culminated in crime. In
doing what I am going to do—what you force me to do—it is not of
your life that I am thinking."

"Ah, Alan," murmured Dorian with a sigh, "I wish you had a
thousandth part of the pity for me that I have for you." He turned away
as he spoke and stood looking out at the garden. Campbell made no
answer.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 147/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

After about ten minutes a knock came to the door, and the servant
entered, carrying a large mahogany chest of chemicals, with a long coil
of steel and platinum wire and two rather curiously shaped iron
clamps.

"Shall I leave the things here, sir?" he asked Campbell.

"Yes," said Dorian. "And I am afraid, Francis, that I have another

errand for you. What is the name of the man at Richmond who
supplies Selby with orchids?"

"Harden, sir."

"Yes—Harden. You must go down to Richmond at once, see

Harden personally, and tell him to send twice as many orchids as I
ordered, and to have as few white ones as possible. In fact, I don't want
any white ones. It is a lovely day, Francis, and Richmond is a very
pretty place—otherwise I wouldn't bother you about it."

"No trouble, sir. At what time shall I be back?"

Dorian looked at Campbell. "How long will your experiment take,

Alan?" he said in a calm indifferent voice. The presence of a third
person in the room seemed to give him extraordinary courage.

Campbell frowned and bit his lip. "It will take about five hours," he
answered.

"It will be time enough, then, if you are back at half-past seven,
Francis. Or stay: just leave my things out for dressing. You can have
the evening to yourself. I am not dining at home, so I shall not want
you."

"Thank you, sir," said the man, leaving the room.

"Now, Alan, there is not a moment to be lost. How heavy this chest
is! I'll take it for you. You bring the other things." He spoke rapidly
and in an authoritative manner. Campbell felt dominated by him. They
left the room together.

When they reached the top landing, Dorian took out the key and
turned it in the lock. Then he stopped, and a troubled look came into
his eyes. He shuddered. "I don't think I can go in, Alan," he murmured.

"It is nothing to me. I don't require you," said Campbell coldly.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 148/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

Dorian half opened the door. As he did so, he saw the face of his
portrait leering in the sunlight. On the floor in front of it the torn
curtain was lying. He remembered that the night before he had
forgotten, for the first time in his life, to hide the fatal canvas, and was
about to rush forward, when he drew back with a shudder.

What was that loathsome red dew that gleamed, wet and glistening,
on one of the hands, as though the canvas had sweated blood? How
horrible it was!—more horrible, it seemed to him for the moment, than
the silent thing that he knew was stretched across the table, the thing
whose grotesque misshapen shadow on the spotted carpet showed him
that it had not stirred, but was still there, as he had left it.

He heaved a deep breath, opened the door a little wider, and with
half-closed eyes and averted head, walked quickly in, determined that
he would not look even once upon the dead man. Then, stooping down
and taking up the gold-and-purple hanging, he flung it right over the
picture.

There he stopped, feeling afraid to turn round, and his eyes fixed
themselves on the intricacies of the pattern before him. He heard
Campbell bringing in the heavy chest, and the irons, and the other
things that he had required for his dreadful work. He began to wonder
if he and Basil Hallward had ever met, and, if so, what they had
thought of each other.

"Leave me now," said a stern voice behind him.

He turned and hurried out, just conscious that the dead man had
been thrust back into the chair and that Campbell was gazing into a
glistening yellow face. As he was going downstairs, he heard the key
being turned in the lock.

It was long after seven when Campbell came back into the library.
He was pale, but absolutely calm. "I have done what you asked me to
do," he muttered. "And now, good-bye. Let us never see each other
again."

"You have saved me from ruin, Alan. I cannot forget that," said
Dorian simply.

As soon as Campbell had left, he went upstairs. There was a

horrible smell of nitric acid in the room. But the thing that had been
sitting at the table was gone.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 149/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

CHAPTER 15
That evening, at eight-thirty, exquisitely dressed and wearing a
large button-hole of Parma violets, Dorian Gray was ushered into Lady
Narborough's drawing-room by bowing servants. His forehead was
throbbing with maddened nerves, and he felt wildly excited, but his
manner as he bent over his hostess's hand was as easy and graceful as
ever. Perhaps one never seems so much at one's ease as when one has
to play a part. Certainly no one looking at Dorian Gray that night could
have believed that he had passed through a tragedy as horrible as any
tragedy of our age. Those finely shaped fingers could never have
clutched a knife for sin, nor those smiling lips have cried out on God
and goodness. He himself could not help wondering at the calm of his
demeanour, and for a moment felt keenly the terrible pleasure of a
double life.

It was a small party, got up rather in a hurry by Lady Narborough,

who was a very clever woman with what Lord Henry used to describe
as the remains of really remarkable ugliness. She had proved an
excellent wife to one of our most tedious ambassadors, and having
buried her husband properly in a marble mausoleum, which she had
herself designed, and married off her daughters to some rich, rather
elderly men, she devoted herself now to the pleasures of French
fiction, French cookery, and French esprit when she could get it.

Dorian was one of her especial favourites, and she always told him
that she was extremely glad she had not met him in early life. "I know,
my dear, I should have fallen madly in love with you," she used to say,
"and thrown my bonnet right over the mills for your sake. It is most
fortunate that you were not thought of at the time. As it was, our
bonnets were so unbecoming, and the mills were so occupied in trying
to raise the wind, that I never had even a flirtation with anybody.
However, that was all Narborough's fault. He was dreadfully short-
sighted, and there is no pleasure in taking in a husband who never sees
anything."

Her guests this evening were rather tedious. The fact was, as she
explained to Dorian, behind a very shabby fan, one of her married
daughters had come up quite suddenly to stay with her, and, to make
matters worse, had actually brought her husband with her. "I think it is

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 150/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

most unkind of her, my dear," she whispered. "Of course I go and stay
with them every summer after I come from Homburg, but then an old
woman like me must have fresh air sometimes, and besides, I really
wake them up. You don't know what an existence they lead down
there. It is pure unadulterated country life. They get up early, because
they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so
little to think about. There has not been a scandal in the neighbourhood
since the time of Queen Elizabeth, and consequently they all fall
asleep after dinner. You shan't sit next either of them. You shall sit by
me and amuse me."

Dorian murmured a graceful compliment and looked round the

room. Yes: it was certainly a tedious party. Two of the people he had
never seen before, and the others consisted of Ernest Harrowden, one
of those middle-aged mediocrities so common in London clubs who
have no enemies, but are thoroughly disliked by their friends; Lady
Ruxton, an overdressed woman of forty-seven, with a hooked nose,
who was always trying to get herself compromised, but was so
peculiarly plain that to her great disappointment no one would ever
believe anything against her; Mrs. Erlynne, a pushing nobody, with a
delightful lisp and Venetian-red hair; Lady Alice Chapman, his
hostess's daughter, a dowdy dull girl, with one of those characteristic
British faces that, once seen, are never remembered; and her husband,
a red-cheeked, white-whiskered creature who, like so many of his
class, was under the impression that inordinate joviality can atone for
an entire lack of ideas.

He was rather sorry he had come, till Lady Narborough, looking at

the great ormolu gilt clock that sprawled in gaudy curves on the
mauve-draped mantelshelf, exclaimed: "How horrid of Henry Wotton
to be so late! I sent round to him this morning on chance and he
promised faithfully not to disappoint me."

It was some consolation that Harry was to be there, and when the
door opened and he heard his slow musical voice lending charm to
some insincere apology, he ceased to feel bored.

But at dinner he could not eat anything. Plate after plate went away
untasted. Lady Narborough kept scolding him for what she called "an
insult to poor Adolphe, who invented the menu specially for you," and
now and then Lord Henry looked across at him, wondering at his
silence and abstracted manner. From time to time the butler filled his
glass with champagne. He drank eagerly, and his thirst seemed to
increase.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 151/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"Dorian," said Lord Henry at last, as the chaud-froid was being

handed round, "what is the matter with you to-night? You are quite out
of sorts."

"I believe he is in love," cried Lady Narborough, "and that he is

afraid to tell me for fear I should be jealous. He is quite right. I
certainly should."

"Dear Lady Narborough," murmured Dorian, smiling, "I have not

been in love for a whole week—not, in fact, since Madame de Ferrol
left town."

"How you men can fall in love with that woman!" exclaimed the
old lady. "I really cannot understand it."

"It is simply because she remembers you when you were a little
girl, Lady Narborough," said Lord Henry. "She is the one link between
us and your short frocks."

"She does not remember my short frocks at all, Lord Henry. But I
remember her very well at Vienna thirty years ago, and how decolletee
she was then."

"She is still decolletee," he answered, taking an olive in his long

fingers; "and when she is in a very smart gown she looks like an
edition de luxe of a bad French novel. She is really wonderful, and full
of surprises. Her capacity for family affection is extraordinary. When
her third husband died, her hair turned quite gold from grief."

"How can you, Harry!" cried Dorian.

"It is a most romantic explanation," laughed the hostess. "But her

third husband, Lord Henry! You don't mean to say Ferrol is the
fourth?"

"Certainly, Lady Narborough."

"I don't believe a word of it."

"Well, ask Mr. Gray. He is one of her most intimate friends."

"Is it true, Mr. Gray?"

"She assures me so, Lady Narborough," said Dorian. "I asked her
whether, like Marguerite de Navarre, she had their hearts embalmed

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 152/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

and hung at her girdle. She told me she didn't, because none of them
had had any hearts at all."

"Four husbands! Upon my word that is trop de zele."

"Trop d'audace, I tell her," said Dorian.

"Oh! she is audacious enough for anything, my dear. And what is

Ferrol like? I don't know him."

"The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal

classes," said Lord Henry, sipping his wine.

Lady Narborough hit him with her fan. "Lord Henry, I am not at all
surprised that the world says that you are extremely wicked."

"But what world says that?" asked Lord Henry, elevating his
eyebrows. "It can only be the next world. This world and I are on
excellent terms."

"Everybody I know says you are very wicked," cried the old lady,
shaking her head.

Lord Henry looked serious for some moments. "It is perfectly

monstrous," he said, at last, "the way people go about nowadays
saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and
entirely true."

"Isn't he incorrigible?" cried Dorian, leaning forward in his chair.

"I hope so," said his hostess, laughing. "But really, if you all
worship Madame de Ferrol in this ridiculous way, I shall have to marry
again so as to be in the fashion."

"You will never marry again, Lady Narborough," broke in Lord

Henry. "You were far too happy. When a woman marries again, it is
because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is
because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk
theirs."

"Narborough wasn't perfect," cried the old lady.

"If he had been, you would not have loved him, my dear lady," was
the rejoinder. "Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of
them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects. You will

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 153/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

never ask me to dinner again after saying this, I am afraid, Lady

Narborough, but it is quite true."

"Of course it is true, Lord Henry. If we women did not love you for
your defects, where would you all be? Not one of you would ever be
married. You would be a set of unfortunate bachelors. Not, however,
that that would alter you much. Nowadays all the married men live
like bachelors, and all the bachelors like married men."

"Fin de siecle," murmured Lord Henry.

"Fin du globe," answered his hostess.

"I wish it were fin du globe," said Dorian with a sigh. "Life is a
great disappointment."

"Ah, my dear," cried Lady Narborough, putting on her gloves,

"don't tell me that you have exhausted life. When a man says that one
knows that life has exhausted him. Lord Henry is very wicked, and I
sometimes wish that I had been; but you are made to be good—you
look so good. I must find you a nice wife. Lord Henry, don't you think
that Mr. Gray should get married?"

"I am always telling him so, Lady Narborough," said Lord Henry
with a bow.

"Well, we must look out for a suitable match for him. I shall go
through Debrett carefully to-night and draw out a list of all the eligible
young ladies."

"With their ages, Lady Narborough?" asked Dorian.

"Of course, with their ages, slightly edited. But nothing must be
done in a hurry. I want it to be what The Morning Post calls a suitable
alliance, and I want you both to be happy."

"What nonsense people talk about happy marriages!" exclaimed

Lord Henry. "A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does
not love her."

"Ah! what a cynic you are!" cried the old lady, pushing back her
chair and nodding to Lady Ruxton. "You must come and dine with me
soon again. You are really an admirable tonic, much better than what
Sir Andrew prescribes for me. You must tell me what people you
would like to meet, though. I want it to be a delightful gathering."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 154/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"I like men who have a future and women who have a past," he
answered. "Or do you think that would make it a petticoat party?"

"I fear so," she said, laughing, as she stood up. "A thousand
pardons, my dear Lady Ruxton," she added, "I didn't see you hadn't
finished your cigarette."

"Never mind, Lady Narborough. I smoke a great deal too much. I

am going to limit myself, for the future."

"Pray don't, Lady Ruxton," said Lord Henry. "Moderation is a fatal

thing. Enough is as bad as a meal. More than enough is as good as a
feast."

Lady Ruxton glanced at him curiously. "You must come and explain
that to me some afternoon, Lord Henry. It sounds a fascinating theory,"
she murmured, as she swept out of the room.

"Now, mind you don't stay too long over your politics and scandal,"
cried Lady Narborough from the door. "If you do, we are sure to
squabble upstairs."

The men laughed, and Mr. Chapman got up solemnly from the foot
of the table and came up to the top. Dorian Gray changed his seat and
went and sat by Lord Henry. Mr. Chapman began to talk in a loud
voice about the situation in the House of Commons. He guffawed at
his adversaries. The word doctrinaire—word full of terror to the
British mind—reappeared from time to time between his explosions.
An alliterative prefix served as an ornament of oratory. He hoisted the
Union Jack on the pinnacles of thought. The inherited stupidity of the
race—sound English common sense he jovially termed it—was shown
to be the proper bulwark for society.

A smile curved Lord Henry's lips, and he turned round and looked
at Dorian.

"Are you better, my dear fellow?" he asked. "You seemed rather out
of sorts at dinner."

"I am quite well, Harry. I am tired. That is all."

"You were charming last night. The little duchess is quite devoted to
you. She tells me she is going down to Selby."

"She has promised to come on the twentieth."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 155/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"Is Monmouth to be there, too?"

"Oh, yes, Harry."

"He bores me dreadfully, almost as much as he bores her. She is

very clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm
of weakness. It is the feet of clay that make the gold of the image
precious. Her feet are very pretty, but they are not feet of clay. White
porcelain feet, if you like. They have been through the fire, and what
fire does not destroy, it hardens. She has had experiences."

"How long has she been married?" asked Dorian.

"An eternity, she tells me. I believe, according to the peerage, it is

ten years, but ten years with Monmouth must have been like eternity,
with time thrown in. Who else is coming?"

"Oh, the Willoughbys, Lord Rugby and his wife, our hostess,
Geoffrey Clouston, the usual set. I have asked Lord Grotrian."

"I like him," said Lord Henry. "A great many people don't, but I
find him charming. He atones for being occasionally somewhat
overdressed by being always absolutely over-educated. He is a very
modern type."

"I don't know if he will be able to come, Harry. He may have to go

to Monte Carlo with his father."

"Ah! what a nuisance people's people are! Try and make him come.
By the way, Dorian, you ran off very early last night. You left before
eleven. What did you do afterwards? Did you go straight home?"

Dorian glanced at him hurriedly and frowned.

"No, Harry," he said at last, "I did not get home till nearly three."

"Did you go to the club?"

"Yes," he answered. Then he bit his lip. "No, I don't mean that. I
didn't go to the club. I walked about. I forget what I did.... How
inquisitive you are, Harry! You always want to know what one has
been doing. I always want to forget what I have been doing. I came in
at half-past two, if you wish to know the exact time. I had left my
latch-key at home, and my servant had to let me in. If you want any
corroborative evidence on the subject, you can ask him."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 156/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "My dear fellow, as if I cared!

Let us go up to the drawing-room. No sherry, thank you, Mr.
Chapman. Something has happened to you, Dorian. Tell me what it is.
You are not yourself to-night."

"Don't mind me, Harry. I am irritable, and out of temper. I shall

come round and see you to-morrow, or next day. Make my excuses to
Lady Narborough. I shan't go upstairs. I shall go home. I must go
home."

"All right, Dorian. I dare say I shall see you to-morrow at tea-time.
The duchess is coming."

"I will try to be there, Harry," he said, leaving the room. As he

drove back to his own house, he was conscious that the sense of terror
he thought he had strangled had come back to him. Lord Henry's
casual questioning had made him lose his nerve for the moment, and
he wanted his nerve still. Things that were dangerous had to be
destroyed. He winced. He hated the idea of even touching them.

Yet it had to be done. He realized that, and when he had locked the
door of his library, he opened the secret press into which he had thrust
Basil Hallward's coat and bag. A huge fire was blazing. He piled
another log on it. The smell of the singeing clothes and burning leather
was horrible. It took him three-quarters of an hour to consume
everything. At the end he felt faint and sick, and having lit some
Algerian pastilles in a pierced copper brazier, he bathed his hands and
forehead with a cool musk-scented vinegar.

Suddenly he started. His eyes grew strangely bright, and he gnawed

nervously at his underlip. Between two of the windows stood a large
Florentine cabinet, made out of ebony and inlaid with ivory and blue
lapis. He watched it as though it were a thing that could fascinate and
make afraid, as though it held something that he longed for and yet
almost loathed. His breath quickened. A mad craving came over him.
He lit a cigarette and then threw it away. His eyelids drooped till the
long fringed lashes almost touched his cheek. But he still watched the
cabinet. At last he got up from the sofa on which he had been lying,
went over to it, and having unlocked it, touched some hidden spring. A
triangular drawer passed slowly out. His fingers moved instinctively
towards it, dipped in, and closed on something. It was a small Chinese
box of black and gold-dust lacquer, elaborately wrought, the sides
patterned with curved waves, and the silken cords hung with round

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 157/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

crystals and tasselled in plaited metal threads. He opened it. Inside was
a green paste, waxy in lustre, the odour curiously heavy and persistent.

He hesitated for some moments, with a strangely immobile smile

upon his face. Then shivering, though the atmosphere of the room was
terribly hot, he drew himself up and glanced at the clock. It was twenty
minutes to twelve. He put the box back, shutting the cabinet doors as
he did so, and went into his bedroom.

As midnight was striking bronze blows upon the dusky air, Dorian
Gray, dressed commonly, and with a muffler wrapped round his throat,
crept quietly out of his house. In Bond Street he found a hansom with
a good horse. He hailed it and in a low voice gave the driver an
address.

The man shook his head. "It is too far for me," he muttered.

"Here is a sovereign for you," said Dorian. "You shall have another
if you drive fast."

"All right, sir," answered the man, "you will be there in an hour,"
and after his fare had got in he turned his horse round and drove
rapidly towards the river.

CHAPTER 16
A cold rain began to fall, and the blurred street-lamps looked
ghastly in the dripping mist. The public-houses were just closing, and
dim men and women were clustering in broken groups round their
doors. From some of the bars came the sound of horrible laughter. In
others, drunkards brawled and screamed.

Lying back in the hansom, with his hat pulled over his forehead,
Dorian Gray watched with listless eyes the sordid shame of the great
city, and now and then he repeated to himself the words that Lord
Henry had said to him on the first day they had met, "To cure the soul
by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul." Yes, that
was the secret. He had often tried it, and would try it again now. There
were opium dens where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 158/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that
were new.

The moon hung low in the sky like a yellow skull. From time to
time a huge misshapen cloud stretched a long arm across and hid it.
The gas-lamps grew fewer, and the streets more narrow and gloomy.
Once the man lost his way and had to drive back half a mile. A steam
rose from the horse as it splashed up the puddles. The sidewindows of
the hansom were clogged with a grey-flannel mist.

"To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means
of the soul!" How the words rang in his ears! His soul, certainly, was
sick to death. Was it true that the senses could cure it? Innocent blood
had been spilled. What could atone for that? Ah! for that there was no
atonement; but though forgiveness was impossible, forgetfulness was
possible still, and he was determined to forget, to stamp the thing out,
to crush it as one would crush the adder that had stung one. Indeed,
what right had Basil to have spoken to him as he had done? Who had
made him a judge over others? He had said things that were dreadful,
horrible, not to be endured.

On and on plodded the hansom, going slower, it seemed to him, at

each step. He thrust up the trap and called to the man to drive faster.
The hideous hunger for opium began to gnaw at him. His throat
burned and his delicate hands twitched nervously together. He struck
at the horse madly with his stick. The driver laughed and whipped up.
He laughed in answer, and the man was silent.

The way seemed interminable, and the streets like the black web of
some sprawling spider. The monotony became unbearable, and as the
mist thickened, he felt afraid.

Then they passed by lonely brickfields. The fog was lighter here,
and he could see the strange, bottle-shaped kilns with their orange,
fanlike tongues of fire. A dog barked as they went by, and far away in
the darkness some wandering sea-gull screamed. The horse stumbled
in a rut, then swerved aside and broke into a gallop.

After some time they left the clay road and rattled again over rough-
paven streets. Most of the windows were dark, but now and then
fantastic shadows were silhouetted against some lamplit blind. He
watched them curiously. They moved like monstrous marionettes and
made gestures like live things. He hated them. A dull rage was in his
heart. As they turned a corner, a woman yelled something at them

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 159/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

from an open door, and two men ran after the hansom for about a
hundred yards. The driver beat at them with his whip.

It is said that passion makes one think in a circle. Certainly with

hideous iteration the bitten lips of Dorian Gray shaped and reshaped
those subtle words that dealt with soul and sense, till he had found in
them the full expression, as it were, of his mood, and justified, by
intellectual approval, passions that without such justification would
still have dominated his temper. From cell to cell of his brain crept the
one thought; and the wild desire to live, most terrible of all man's
appetites, quickened into force each trembling nerve and fibre.
Ugliness that had once been hateful to him because it made things real,
became dear to him now for that very reason. Ugliness was the one
reality. The coarse brawl, the loathsome den, the crude violence of
disordered life, the very vileness of thief and outcast, were more vivid,
in their intense actuality of impression, than all the gracious shapes of
art, the dreamy shadows of song. They were what he needed for
forgetfulness. In three days he would be free.

Suddenly the man drew up with a jerk at the top of a dark lane.
Over the low roofs and jagged chimney-stacks of the houses rose the
black masts of ships. Wreaths of white mist clung like ghostly sails to
the yards.

"Somewhere about here, sir, ain't it?" he asked huskily through the
trap.

Dorian started and peered round. "This will do," he answered, and
having got out hastily and given the driver the extra fare he had
promised him, he walked quickly in the direction of the quay. Here and
there a lantern gleamed at the stern of some huge merchantman. The
light shook and splintered in the puddles. A red glare came from an
outward-bound steamer that was coaling. The slimy pavement looked
like a wet mackintosh.

He hurried on towards the left, glancing back now and then to see if
he was being followed. In about seven or eight minutes he reached a
small shabby house that was wedged in between two gaunt factories.
In one of the top-windows stood a lamp. He stopped and gave a
peculiar knock.

After a little time he heard steps in the passage and the chain being
unhooked. The door opened quietly, and he went in without saying a
word to the squat misshapen figure that flattened itself into the shadow

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 160/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

as he passed. At the end of the hall hung a tattered green curtain that
swayed and shook in the gusty wind which had followed him in from
the street. He dragged it aside and entered a long low room which
looked as if it had once been a third-rate dancing-saloon. Shrill flaring
gas-jets, dulled and distorted in the fly-blown mirrors that faced them,
were ranged round the walls. Greasy reflectors of ribbed tin backed
them, making quivering disks of light. The floor was covered with
ochre-coloured sawdust, trampled here and there into mud, and stained
with dark rings of spilled liquor. Some Malays were crouching by a
little charcoal stove, playing with bone counters and showing their
white teeth as they chattered. In one corner, with his head buried in his
arms, a sailor sprawled over a table, and by the tawdrily painted bar
that ran across one complete side stood two haggard women, mocking
an old man who was brushing the sleeves of his coat with an
expression of disgust. "He thinks he's got red ants on him," laughed
one of them, as Dorian passed by. The man looked at her in terror and
began to whimper.

At the end of the room there was a little staircase, leading to a

darkened chamber. As Dorian hurried up its three rickety steps, the
heavy odour of opium met him. He heaved a deep breath, and his
nostrils quivered with pleasure. When he entered, a young man with
smooth yellow hair, who was bending over a lamp lighting a long thin
pipe, looked up at him and nodded in a hesitating manner.

"You here, Adrian?" muttered Dorian.

"Where else should I be?" he answered, listlessly. "None of the

chaps will speak to me now."

"I thought you had left England."

"Darlington is not going to do anything. My brother paid the bill at

last. George doesn't speak to me either.... I don't care," he added with a
sigh. "As long as one has this stuff, one doesn't want friends. I think I
have had too many friends."

Dorian winced and looked round at the grotesque things that lay in
such fantastic postures on the ragged mattresses. The twisted limbs,
the gaping mouths, the staring lustreless eyes, fascinated him. He
knew in what strange heavens they were suffering, and what dull hells
were teaching them the secret of some new joy. They were better off
than he was. He was prisoned in thought. Memory, like a horrible
malady, was eating his soul away. From time to time he seemed to see

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 161/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

the eyes of Basil Hallward looking at him. Yet he felt he could not
stay. The presence of Adrian Singleton troubled him. He wanted to be
where no one would know who he was. He wanted to escape from
himself.

"I am going on to the other place," he said after a pause.

"On the wharf?"

"Yes."

"That mad-cat is sure to be there. They won't have her in this place
now."

Dorian shrugged his shoulders. "I am sick of women who love one.
Women who hate one are much more interesting. Besides, the stuff is
better."

"Much the same."

"I like it better. Come and have something to drink. I must have
something."

"I don't want anything," murmured the young man.

"Never mind."

Adrian Singleton rose up wearily and followed Dorian to the bar. A

half-caste, in a ragged turban and a shabby ulster, grinned a hideous
greeting as he thrust a bottle of brandy and two tumblers in front of
them. The women sidled up and began to chatter. Dorian turned his
back on them and said something in a low voice to Adrian Singleton.

A crooked smile, like a Malay crease, writhed across the face of one
of the women. "We are very proud to-night," she sneered.

"For God's sake don't talk to me," cried Dorian, stamping his foot
on the ground. "What do you want? Money? Here it is. Don't ever talk
to me again."

Two red sparks flashed for a moment in the woman's sodden eyes,
then flickered out and left them dull and glazed. She tossed her head
and raked the coins off the counter with greedy fingers. Her
companion watched her enviously.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 162/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"It's no use," sighed Adrian Singleton. "I don't care to go back.

What does it matter? I am quite happy here."

"You will write to me if you want anything, won't you?" said

Dorian, after a pause.

"Perhaps."

"Good night, then."

"Good night," answered the young man, passing up the steps and
wiping his parched mouth with a handkerchief.

Dorian walked to the door with a look of pain in his face. As he

drew the curtain aside, a hideous laugh broke from the painted lips of
the woman who had taken his money. "There goes the devil's bargain!"
she hiccoughed, in a hoarse voice.

"Curse you!" he answered, "don't call me that."

She snapped her fingers. "Prince Charming is what you like to be

called, ain't it?" she yelled after him.

The drowsy sailor leaped to his feet as she spoke, and looked wildly
round. The sound of the shutting of the hall door fell on his ear. He
rushed out as if in pursuit.

Dorian Gray hurried along the quay through the drizzling rain. His
meeting with Adrian Singleton had strangely moved him, and he
wondered if the ruin of that young life was really to be laid at his door,
as Basil Hallward had said to him with such infamy of insult. He bit
his lip, and for a few seconds his eyes grew sad. Yet, after all, what did
it matter to him? One's days were too brief to take the burden of
another's errors on one's shoulders. Each man lived his own life and
paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one had to pay so
often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed. In
her dealings with man, destiny never closed her accounts.

There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin,
or for what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature that every fibre
of the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful
impulses. Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their
will. They move to their terrible end as automatons move. Choice is
taken from them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all,
lives but to give rebellion its fascination and disobedience its charm.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 163/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

For all sins, as theologians weary not of reminding us, are sins of
disobedience. When that high spirit, that morning star of evil, fell from
heaven, it was as a rebel that he fell.

Callous, concentrated on evil, with stained mind, and soul hungry

for rebellion, Dorian Gray hastened on, quickening his step as he went,
but as he darted aside into a dim archway, that had served him often as
a short cut to the ill-famed place where he was going, he felt himself
suddenly seized from behind, and before he had time to defend
himself, he was thrust back against the wall, with a brutal hand round
his throat.

He struggled madly for life, and by a terrible effort wrenched the

tightening fingers away. In a second he heard the click of a revolver,
and saw the gleam of a polished barrel, pointing straight at his head,
and the dusky form of a short, thick-set man facing him.

"What do you want?" he gasped.

"Keep quiet," said the man. "If you stir, I shoot you."

"You are mad. What have I done to you?"

"You wrecked the life of Sibyl Vane," was the answer, "and Sibyl
Vane was my sister. She killed herself. I know it. Her death is at your
door. I swore I would kill you in return. For years I have sought you. I
had no clue, no trace. The two people who could have described you
were dead. I knew nothing of you but the pet name she used to call
you. I heard it to-night by chance. Make your peace with God, for to-
night you are going to die."

Dorian Gray grew sick with fear. "I never knew her," he stammered.
"I never heard of her. You are mad."

"You had better confess your sin, for as sure as I am James Vane,
you are going to die." There was a horrible moment. Dorian did not
know what to say or do. "Down on your knees!" growled the man. "I
give you one minute to make your peace—no more. I go on board to-
night for India, and I must do my job first. One minute. That's all."

Dorian's arms fell to his side. Paralysed with terror, he did not know
what to do. Suddenly a wild hope flashed across his brain. "Stop," he
cried. "How long ago is it since your sister died? Quick, tell me!"

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 164/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"Eighteen years," said the man. "Why do you ask me? What do
years matter?"

"Eighteen years," laughed Dorian Gray, with a touch of triumph in

his voice. "Eighteen years! Set me under the lamp and look at my
face!"

James Vane hesitated for a moment, not understanding what was

meant. Then he seized Dorian Gray and dragged him from the
archway.

Dim and wavering as was the wind-blown light, yet it served to

show him the hideous error, as it seemed, into which he had fallen, for
the face of the man he had sought to kill had all the bloom of boyhood,
all the unstained purity of youth. He seemed little more than a lad of
twenty summers, hardly older, if older indeed at all, than his sister had
been when they had parted so many years ago. It was obvious that this
was not the man who had destroyed her life.

He loosened his hold and reeled back. "My God! my God!" he

cried, "and I would have murdered you!"

Dorian Gray drew a long breath. "You have been on the brink of
committing a terrible crime, my man," he said, looking at him sternly.
"Let this be a warning to you not to take vengeance into your own
hands."

"Forgive me, sir," muttered James Vane. "I was deceived. A chance
word I heard in that damned den set me on the wrong track."

"You had better go home and put that pistol away, or you may get
into trouble," said Dorian, turning on his heel and going slowly down
the street.

James Vane stood on the pavement in horror. He was trembling

from head to foot. After a little while, a black shadow that had been
creeping along the dripping wall moved out into the light and came
close to him with stealthy footsteps. He felt a hand laid on his arm and
looked round with a start. It was one of the women who had been
drinking at the bar.

"Why didn't you kill him?" she hissed out, putting haggard face
quite close to his. "I knew you were following him when you rushed
out from Daly's. You fool! You should have killed him. He has lots of
money, and he's as bad as bad."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 165/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"He is not the man I am looking for," he answered, "and I want no

man's money. I want a man's life. The man whose life I want must be
nearly forty now. This one is little more than a boy. Thank God, I have
not got his blood upon my hands."

The woman gave a bitter laugh. "Little more than a boy!" she
sneered. "Why, man, it's nigh on eighteen years since Prince Charming
made me what I am."

"You lie!" cried James Vane.

She raised her hand up to heaven. "Before God I am telling the

truth," she cried.

"Before God?"

"Strike me dumb if it ain't so. He is the worst one that comes here.
They say he has sold himself to the devil for a pretty face. It's nigh on
eighteen years since I met him. He hasn't changed much since then. I
have, though," she added, with a sickly leer.

"You swear this?"

"I swear it," came in hoarse echo from her flat mouth. "But don't
give me away to him," she whined; "I am afraid of him. Let me have
some money for my night's lodging."

He broke from her with an oath and rushed to the corner of the
street, but Dorian Gray had disappeared. When he looked back, the
woman had vanished also.

CHAPTER 17
A week later Dorian Gray was sitting in the conservatory at Selby
Royal, talking to the pretty Duchess of Monmouth, who with her
husband, a jaded-looking man of sixty, was amongst his guests. It was
tea-time, and the mellow light of the huge, lace-covered lamp that
stood on the table lit up the delicate china and hammered silver of the
service at which the duchess was presiding. Her white hands were
moving daintily among the cups, and her full red lips were smiling at

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 166/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

something that Dorian had whispered to her. Lord Henry was lying
back in a silk-draped wicker chair, looking at them. On a peach-
coloured divan sat Lady Narborough, pretending to listen to the duke's
description of the last Brazilian beetle that he had added to his
collection. Three young men in elaborate smoking-suits were handing
tea-cakes to some of the women. The house-party consisted of twelve
people, and there were more expected to arrive on the next day.

"What are you two talking about?" said Lord Henry, strolling over
to the table and putting his cup down. "I hope Dorian has told you
about my plan for rechristening everything, Gladys. It is a delightful
idea."

"But I don't want to be rechristened, Harry," rejoined the duchess,

looking up at him with her wonderful eyes. "I am quite satisfied with
my own name, and I am sure Mr. Gray should be satisfied with his."

"My dear Gladys, I would not alter either name for the world. They
are both perfect. I was thinking chiefly of flowers. Yesterday I cut an
orchid, for my button-hole. It was a marvellous spotted thing, as
effective as the seven deadly sins. In a thoughtless moment I asked one
of the gardeners what it was called. He told me it was a fine specimen
of Robinsoniana, or something dreadful of that kind. It is a sad truth,
but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names
are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with
words. That is the reason I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man
who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is
the only thing he is fit for."

"Then what should we call you, Harry?" she asked.

"His name is Prince Paradox," said Dorian.

"I recognize him in a flash," exclaimed the duchess.

"I won't hear of it," laughed Lord Henry, sinking into a chair. "From
a label there is no escape! I refuse the title."

"Royalties may not abdicate," fell as a warning from pretty lips.

"You wish me to defend my throne, then?"

"Yes."

"I give the truths of to-morrow."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 167/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"I prefer the mistakes of to-day," she answered.

"You disarm me, Gladys," he cried, catching the wilfulness of her

mood.

"Of your shield, Harry, not of your spear."

"I never tilt against beauty," he said, with a wave of his hand.

"That is your error, Harry, believe me. You value beauty far too
much."

"How can you say that? I admit that I think that it is better to be
beautiful than to be good. But on the other hand, no one is more ready
than I am to acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly."

"Ugliness is one of the seven deadly sins, then?" cried the duchess.
"What becomes of your simile about the orchid?"

"Ugliness is one of the seven deadly virtues, Gladys. You, as a good

Tory, must not underrate them. Beer, the Bible, and the seven deadly
virtues have made our England what she is."

"You don't like your country, then?" she asked.

"I live in it."

"That you may censure it the better."

"Would you have me take the verdict of Europe on it?" he inquired.

"What do they say of us?"

"That Tartuffe has emigrated to England and opened a shop."

"Is that yours, Harry?"

"I give it to you."

"I could not use it. It is too true."

"You need not be afraid. Our countrymen never recognize a

description."

"They are practical."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 168/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"They are more cunning than practical. When they make up their
ledger, they balance stupidity by wealth, and vice by hypocrisy."

"Still, we have done great things."

"Great things have been thrust on us, Gladys."

"We have carried their burden."

"Only as far as the Stock Exchange."

She shook her head. "I believe in the race," she cried.

"It represents the survival of the pushing."

"It has development."

"Decay fascinates me more."

"What of art?" she asked.

"It is a malady."

"Love?"

"An illusion."

"Religion?"

"The fashionable substitute for belief."

"You are a sceptic."

"Never! Scepticism is the beginning of faith."

"What are you?"

"To define is to limit."

"Give me a clue."

"Threads snap. You would lose your way in the labyrinth."

"You bewilder me. Let us talk of some one else."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 169/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"Our host is a delightful topic. Years ago he was christened Prince

Charming."

"Ah! don't remind me of that," cried Dorian Gray.

"Our host is rather horrid this evening," answered the duchess,

colouring. "I believe he thinks that Monmouth married me on purely
scientific principles as the best specimen he could find of a modern
butterfly."

"Well, I hope he won't stick pins into you, Duchess," laughed

Dorian.

"Oh! my maid does that already, Mr. Gray, when she is annoyed
with me."

"And what does she get annoyed with you about, Duchess?"

"For the most trivial things, Mr. Gray, I assure you. Usually because
I come in at ten minutes to nine and tell her that I must be dressed by
half-past eight."

"How unreasonable of her! You should give her warning."

"I daren't, Mr. Gray. Why, she invents hats for me. You remember
the one I wore at Lady Hilstone's garden-party? You don't, but it is
nice of you to pretend that you do. Well, she made it out of nothing.
All good hats are made out of nothing."

"Like all good reputations, Gladys," interrupted Lord Henry. "Every

effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one must
be a mediocrity."

"Not with women," said the duchess, shaking her head; "and
women rule the world. I assure you we can't bear mediocrities. We
women, as some one says, love with our ears, just as you men love
with your eyes, if you ever love at all."

"It seems to me that we never do anything else," murmured Dorian.

"Ah! then, you never really love, Mr. Gray," answered the duchess
with mock sadness.

"My dear Gladys!" cried Lord Henry. "How can you say that?
Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 170/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

an art. Besides, each time that one loves is the only time one has ever
loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It
merely intensifies it. We can have in life but one great experience at
best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as
possible."

"Even when one has been wounded by it, Harry?" asked the
duchess after a pause.

"Especially when one has been wounded by it," answered Lord

Henry.

The duchess turned and looked at Dorian Gray with a curious

expression in her eyes. "What do you say to that, Mr. Gray?" she
inquired.

Dorian hesitated for a moment. Then he threw his head back and
laughed. "I always agree with Harry, Duchess."

"Even when he is wrong?"

"Harry is never wrong, Duchess."

"And does his philosophy make you happy?"

"I have never searched for happiness. Who wants happiness? I have
searched for pleasure."

"And found it, Mr. Gray?"

"Often. Too often."

The duchess sighed. "I am searching for peace," she said, "and if I
don't go and dress, I shall have none this evening."

"Let me get you some orchids, Duchess," cried Dorian, starting to

his feet and walking down the conservatory.

"You are flirting disgracefully with him," said Lord Henry to his
cousin. "You had better take care. He is very fascinating."

"If he were not, there would be no battle."

"Greek meets Greek, then?"

"I am on the side of the Trojans. They fought for a woman."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 171/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"They were defeated."

"There are worse things than capture," she answered.

"You gallop with a loose rein."

"Pace gives life," was the riposte.

"I shall write it in my diary to-night."

"What?"

"That a burnt child loves the fire."

"I am not even singed. My wings are untouched."

"You use them for everything, except flight."

"Courage has passed from men to women. It is a new experience for

us."

"You have a rival."

"Who?"

He laughed. "Lady Narborough," he whispered. "She perfectly

adores him."

"You fill me with apprehension. The appeal to antiquity is fatal to

us who are romanticists."

"Romanticists! You have all the methods of science."

"Men have educated us."

"But not explained you."

"Describe us as a sex," was her challenge.

"Sphinxes without secrets."

She looked at him, smiling. "How long Mr. Gray is!" she said. "Let
us go and help him. I have not yet told him the colour of my frock."

"Ah! you must suit your frock to his flowers, Gladys."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 172/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"That would be a premature surrender."

"Romantic art begins with its climax."

"I must keep an opportunity for retreat."

"In the Parthian manner?"

"They found safety in the desert. I could not do that."

"Women are not always allowed a choice," he answered, but hardly

had he finished the sentence before from the far end of the
conservatory came a stifled groan, followed by the dull sound of a
heavy fall. Everybody started up. The duchess stood motionless in
horror. And with fear in his eyes, Lord Henry rushed through the
flapping palms to find Dorian Gray lying face downwards on the tiled
floor in a deathlike swoon.

He was carried at once into the blue drawing-room and laid upon
one of the sofas. After a short time, he came to himself and looked
round with a dazed expression.

"What has happened?" he asked. "Oh! I remember. Am I safe here,

Harry?" He began to tremble.

"My dear Dorian," answered Lord Henry, "you merely fainted. That
was all. You must have overtired yourself. You had better not come
down to dinner. I will take your place."

"No, I will come down," he said, struggling to his feet. "I would
rather come down. I must not be alone."

He went to his room and dressed. There was a wild recklessness of

gaiety in his manner as he sat at table, but now and then a thrill of
terror ran through him when he remembered that, pressed against the
window of the conservatory, like a white handkerchief, he had seen the
face of James Vane watching him.

CHAPTER 18

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 173/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

The next day he did not leave the house, and, indeed, spent most of
the time in his own room, sick with a wild terror of dying, and yet
indifferent to life itself. The consciousness of being hunted, snared,
tracked down, had begun to dominate him. If the tapestry did but
tremble in the wind, he shook. The dead leaves that were blown
against the leaded panes seemed to him like his own wasted
resolutions and wild regrets. When he closed his eyes, he saw again
the sailor's face peering through the mist-stained glass, and horror
seemed once more to lay its hand upon his heart.

But perhaps it had been only his fancy that had called vengeance
out of the night and set the hideous shapes of punishment before him.
Actual life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the
imagination. It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of
sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen
brood. In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor
the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust
upon the weak. That was all. Besides, had any stranger been prowling
round the house, he would have been seen by the servants or the
keepers. Had any foot-marks been found on the flower-beds, the
gardeners would have reported it. Yes, it had been merely fancy. Sibyl
Vane's brother had not come back to kill him. He had sailed away in
his ship to founder in some winter sea. From him, at any rate, he was
safe. Why, the man did not know who he was, could not know who he
was. The mask of youth had saved him.

And yet if it had been merely an illusion, how terrible it was to

think that conscience could raise such fearful phantoms, and give them
visible form, and make them move before one! What sort of life would
his be if, day and night, shadows of his crime were to peer at him from
silent corners, to mock him from secret places, to whisper in his ear as
he sat at the feast, to wake him with icy fingers as he lay asleep! As the
thought crept through his brain, he grew pale with terror, and the air
seemed to him to have become suddenly colder. Oh! in what a wild
hour of madness he had killed his friend! How ghastly the mere
memory of the scene! He saw it all again. Each hideous detail came
back to him with added horror. Out of the black cave of time, terrible
and swathed in scarlet, rose the image of his sin. When Lord Henry
came in at six o'clock, he found him crying as one whose heart will
break.

It was not till the third day that he ventured to go out. There was
something in the clear, pine-scented air of that winter morning that
seemed to bring him back his joyousness and his ardour for life. But it

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 174/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

was not merely the physical conditions of environment that had caused
the change. His own nature had revolted against the excess of anguish
that had sought to maim and mar the perfection of its calm. With subtle
and finely wrought temperaments it is always so. Their strong passions
must either bruise or bend. They either slay the man, or themselves
die. Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and sorrows
that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude. Besides, he had
convinced himself that he had been the victim of a terror-stricken
imagination, and looked back now on his fears with something of pity
and not a little of contempt.

After breakfast, he walked with the duchess for an hour in the

garden and then drove across the park to join the shooting-party. The
crisp frost lay like salt upon the grass. The sky was an inverted cup of
blue metal. A thin film of ice bordered the flat, reed-grown lake.

At the corner of the pine-wood he caught sight of Sir Geoffrey

Clouston, the duchess's brother, jerking two spent cartridges out of his
gun. He jumped from the cart, and having told the groom to take the
mare home, made his way towards his guest through the withered
bracken and rough undergrowth.

"Have you had good sport, Geoffrey?" he asked.

"Not very good, Dorian. I think most of the birds have gone to the
open. I dare say it will be better after lunch, when we get to new
ground."

Dorian strolled along by his side. The keen aromatic air, the brown
and red lights that glimmered in the wood, the hoarse cries of the
beaters ringing out from time to time, and the sharp snaps of the guns
that followed, fascinated him and filled him with a sense of delightful
freedom. He was dominated by the carelessness of happiness, by the
high indifference of joy.

Suddenly from a lumpy tussock of old grass some twenty yards in

front of them, with black-tipped ears erect and long hinder limbs
throwing it forward, started a hare. It bolted for a thicket of alders. Sir
Geoffrey put his gun to his shoulder, but there was something in the
animal's grace of movement that strangely charmed Dorian Gray, and
he cried out at once, "Don't shoot it, Geoffrey. Let it live."

"What nonsense, Dorian!" laughed his companion, and as the hare

bounded into the thicket, he fired. There were two cries heard, the cry

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 175/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

of a hare in pain, which is dreadful, the cry of a man in agony, which is

worse.

"Good heavens! I have hit a beater!" exclaimed Sir Geoffrey. "What

an ass the man was to get in front of the guns! Stop shooting there!" he
called out at the top of his voice. "A man is hurt."

The head-keeper came running up with a stick in his hand.

"Where, sir? Where is he?" he shouted. At the same time, the firing
ceased along the line.

"Here," answered Sir Geoffrey angrily, hurrying towards the

thicket. "Why on earth don't you keep your men back? Spoiled my
shooting for the day."

Dorian watched them as they plunged into the alder-clump,

brushing the lithe swinging branches aside. In a few moments they
emerged, dragging a body after them into the sunlight. He turned away
in horror. It seemed to him that misfortune followed wherever he went.
He heard Sir Geoffrey ask if the man was really dead, and the
affirmative answer of the keeper. The wood seemed to him to have
become suddenly alive with faces. There was the trampling of myriad
feet and the low buzz of voices. A great copper-breasted pheasant
came beating through the boughs overhead.

After a few moments—that were to him, in his perturbed state, like

endless hours of pain—he felt a hand laid on his shoulder. He started
and looked round.

"Dorian," said Lord Henry, "I had better tell them that the shooting
is stopped for to-day. It would not look well to go on."

"I wish it were stopped for ever, Harry," he answered bitterly. "The
whole thing is hideous and cruel. Is the man ...?"

He could not finish the sentence.

"I am afraid so," rejoined Lord Henry. "He got the whole charge of
shot in his chest. He must have died almost instantaneously. Come; let
us go home."

They walked side by side in the direction of the avenue for nearly
fifty yards without speaking. Then Dorian looked at Lord Henry and
said, with a heavy sigh, "It is a bad omen, Harry, a very bad omen."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 176/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"What is?" asked Lord Henry. "Oh! this accident, I suppose. My

dear fellow, it can't be helped. It was the man's own fault. Why did he
get in front of the guns? Besides, it is nothing to us. It is rather
awkward for Geoffrey, of course. It does not do to pepper beaters. It
makes people think that one is a wild shot. And Geoffrey is not; he
shoots very straight. But there is no use talking about the matter."

Dorian shook his head. "It is a bad omen, Harry. I feel as if

something horrible were going to happen to some of us. To myself,
perhaps," he added, passing his hand over his eyes, with a gesture of
pain.

The elder man laughed. "The only horrible thing in the world is
ennui, Dorian. That is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness.
But we are not likely to suffer from it unless these fellows keep
chattering about this thing at dinner. I must tell them that the subject is
to be tabooed. As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen.
Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.
Besides, what on earth could happen to you, Dorian? You have
everything in the world that a man can want. There is no one who
would not be delighted to change places with you."

"There is no one with whom I would not change places, Harry.

Don't laugh like that. I am telling you the truth. The wretched peasant
who has just died is better off than I am. I have no terror of death. It is
the coming of death that terrifies me. Its monstrous wings seem to
wheel in the leaden air around me. Good heavens! don't you see a man
moving behind the trees there, watching me, waiting for me?"

Lord Henry looked in the direction in which the trembling gloved

hand was pointing. "Yes," he said, smiling, "I see the gardener waiting
for you. I suppose he wants to ask you what flowers you wish to have
on the table to-night. How absurdly nervous you are, my dear fellow!
You must come and see my doctor, when we get back to town."

Dorian heaved a sigh of relief as he saw the gardener approaching.

The man touched his hat, glanced for a moment at Lord Henry in a
hesitating manner, and then produced a letter, which he handed to his
master. "Her Grace told me to wait for an answer," he murmured.

Dorian put the letter into his pocket. "Tell her Grace that I am
coming in," he said, coldly. The man turned round and went rapidly in
the direction of the house.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 177/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"How fond women are of doing dangerous things!" laughed Lord

Henry. "It is one of the qualities in them that I admire most. A woman
will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking
on."

"How fond you are of saying dangerous things, Harry! In the

present instance, you are quite astray. I like the duchess very much, but
I don't love her."

"And the duchess loves you very much, but she likes you less, so
you are excellently matched."

"You are talking scandal, Harry, and there is never any basis for
scandal."

"The basis of every scandal is an immoral certainty," said Lord

Henry, lighting a cigarette.

"You would sacrifice anybody, Harry, for the sake of an epigram."

"The world goes to the altar of its own accord," was the answer.

"I wish I could love," cried Dorian Gray with a deep note of pathos
in his voice. "But I seem to have lost the passion and forgotten the
desire. I am too much concentrated on myself. My own personality has
become a burden to me. I want to escape, to go away, to forget. It was
silly of me to come down here at all. I think I shall send a wire to
Harvey to have the yacht got ready. On a yacht one is safe."

"Safe from what, Dorian? You are in some trouble. Why not tell me
what it is? You know I would help you."

"I can't tell you, Harry," he answered sadly. "And I dare say it is
only a fancy of mine. This unfortunate accident has upset me. I have a
horrible presentiment that something of the kind may happen to me."

"What nonsense!"

"I hope it is, but I can't help feeling it. Ah! here is the duchess,
looking like Artemis in a tailor-made gown. You see we have come
back, Duchess."

"I have heard all about it, Mr. Gray," she answered. "Poor Geoffrey
is terribly upset. And it seems that you asked him not to shoot the hare.
How curious!"

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 178/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"Yes, it was very curious. I don't know what made me say it. Some
whim, I suppose. It looked the loveliest of little live things. But I am
sorry they told you about the man. It is a hideous subject."

"It is an annoying subject," broke in Lord Henry. "It has no

psychological value at all. Now if Geoffrey had done the thing on
purpose, how interesting he would be! I should like to know some one
who had committed a real murder."

"How horrid of you, Harry!" cried the duchess. "Isn't it, Mr. Gray?
Harry, Mr. Gray is ill again. He is going to faint."

Dorian drew himself up with an effort and smiled. "It is nothing,

Duchess," he murmured; "my nerves are dreadfully out of order. That
is all. I am afraid I walked too far this morning. I didn't hear what
Harry said. Was it very bad? You must tell me some other time. I think
I must go and lie down. You will excuse me, won't you?"

They had reached the great flight of steps that led from the
conservatory on to the terrace. As the glass door closed behind Dorian,
Lord Henry turned and looked at the duchess with his slumberous
eyes. "Are you very much in love with him?" he asked.

She did not answer for some time, but stood gazing at the
landscape. "I wish I knew," she said at last.

He shook his head. "Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty

that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful."

"One may lose one's way."

"All ways end at the same point, my dear Gladys."

"What is that?"

"Disillusion."

"It was my debut in life," she sighed.

"It came to you crowned."

"I am tired of strawberry leaves."

"They become you."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 179/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"Only in public."

"You would miss them," said Lord Henry.

"I will not part with a petal."

"Monmouth has ears."

"Old age is dull of hearing."

"Has he never been jealous?"

"I wish he had been."

He glanced about as if in search of something. "What are you

looking for?" she inquired.

"The button from your foil," he answered. "You have dropped it."

She laughed. "I have still the mask."

"It makes your eyes lovelier," was his reply.

She laughed again. Her teeth showed like white seeds in a scarlet
fruit.

Upstairs, in his own room, Dorian Gray was lying on a sofa, with
terror in every tingling fibre of his body. Life had suddenly become
too hideous a burden for him to bear. The dreadful death of the
unlucky beater, shot in the thicket like a wild animal, had seemed to
him to pre-figure death for himself also. He had nearly swooned at
what Lord Henry had said in a chance mood of cynical jesting.

At five o'clock he rang his bell for his servant and gave him orders
to pack his things for the night-express to town, and to have the
brougham at the door by eight-thirty. He was determined not to sleep
another night at Selby Royal. It was an ill-omened place. Death
walked there in the sunlight. The grass of the forest had been spotted
with blood.

Then he wrote a note to Lord Henry, telling him that he was going
up to town to consult his doctor and asking him to entertain his guests
in his absence. As he was putting it into the envelope, a knock came to
the door, and his valet informed him that the head-keeper wished to

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 180/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

see him. He frowned and bit his lip. "Send him in," he muttered, after
some moments' hesitation.

As soon as the man entered, Dorian pulled his chequebook out of a

drawer and spread it out before him.

"I suppose you have come about the unfortunate accident of this
morning, Thornton?" he said, taking up a pen.

"Yes, sir," answered the gamekeeper.

"Was the poor fellow married? Had he any people dependent on

him?" asked Dorian, looking bored. "If so, I should not like them to be
left in want, and will send them any sum of money you may think
necessary."

"We don't know who he is, sir. That is what I took the liberty of
coming to you about."

"Don't know who he is?" said Dorian, listlessly. "What do you

mean? Wasn't he one of your men?"

"No, sir. Never saw him before. Seems like a sailor, sir."

The pen dropped from Dorian Gray's hand, and he felt as if his heart
had suddenly stopped beating. "A sailor?" he cried out. "Did you say a
sailor?"

"Yes, sir. He looks as if he had been a sort of sailor; tattooed on

both arms, and that kind of thing."

"Was there anything found on him?" said Dorian, leaning forward

and looking at the man with startled eyes. "Anything that would tell
his name?"

"Some money, sir—not much, and a six-shooter. There was no

name of any kind. A decent-looking man, sir, but rough-like. A sort of
sailor we think."

Dorian started to his feet. A terrible hope fluttered past him. He

clutched at it madly. "Where is the body?" he exclaimed. "Quick! I
must see it at once."

"It is in an empty stable in the Home Farm, sir. The folk don't like
to have that sort of thing in their houses. They say a corpse brings bad

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 181/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

luck."

"The Home Farm! Go there at once and meet me. Tell one of the
grooms to bring my horse round. No. Never mind. I'll go to the stables
myself. It will save time."

In less than a quarter of an hour, Dorian Gray was galloping down

the long avenue as hard as he could go. The trees seemed to sweep
past him in spectral procession, and wild shadows to fling themselves
across his path. Once the mare swerved at a white gate-post and nearly
threw him. He lashed her across the neck with his crop. She cleft the
dusky air like an arrow. The stones flew from her hoofs.

At last he reached the Home Farm. Two men were loitering in the
yard. He leaped from the saddle and threw the reins to one of them. In
the farthest stable a light was glimmering. Something seemed to tell
him that the body was there, and he hurried to the door and put his
hand upon the latch.

There he paused for a moment, feeling that he was on the brink of a

discovery that would either make or mar his life. Then he thrust the
door open and entered.

On a heap of sacking in the far corner was lying the dead body of a
man dressed in a coarse shirt and a pair of blue trousers. A spotted
handkerchief had been placed over the face. A coarse candle, stuck in
a bottle, sputtered beside it.

Dorian Gray shuddered. He felt that his could not be the hand to
take the handkerchief away, and called out to one of the farm-servants
to come to him.

"Take that thing off the face. I wish to see it," he said, clutching at
the door-post for support.

When the farm-servant had done so, he stepped forward. A cry of

joy broke from his lips. The man who had been shot in the thicket was
James Vane.

He stood there for some minutes looking at the dead body. As he

rode home, his eyes were full of tears, for he knew he was safe.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 182/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

CHAPTER 19

"There is no use your telling me that you are going to be good,"

cried Lord Henry, dipping his white fingers into a red copper bowl
filled with rose-water. "You are quite perfect. Pray, don't change."

Dorian Gray shook his head. "No, Harry, I have done too many
dreadful things in my life. I am not going to do any more. I began my
good actions yesterday."

"Where were you yesterday?"

"In the country, Harry. I was staying at a little inn by myself."

"My dear boy," said Lord Henry, smiling, "anybody can be good in
the country. There are no temptations there. That is the reason why
people who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilized. Civilization
is not by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways
by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by
being corrupt. Country people have no opportunity of being either, so
they stagnate."

"Culture and corruption," echoed Dorian. "I have known something

of both. It seems terrible to me now that they should ever be found
together. For I have a new ideal, Harry. I am going to alter. I think I
have altered."

"You have not yet told me what your good action was. Or did you
say you had done more than one?" asked his companion as he spilled
into his plate a little crimson pyramid of seeded strawberries and,
through a perforated, shell-shaped spoon, snowed white sugar upon
them.

"I can tell you, Harry. It is not a story I could tell to any one else. I
spared somebody. It sounds vain, but you understand what I mean. She
was quite beautiful and wonderfully like Sibyl Vane. I think it was that
which first attracted me to her. You remember Sibyl, don't you? How
long ago that seems! Well, Hetty was not one of our own class, of
course. She was simply a girl in a village. But I really loved her. I am
quite sure that I loved her. All during this wonderful May that we have
been having, I used to run down and see her two or three times a week.
Yesterday she met me in a little orchard. The apple-blossoms kept
tumbling down on her hair, and she was laughing. We were to have

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 183/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

gone away together this morning at dawn. Suddenly I determined to

leave her as flowerlike as I had found her."

"I should think the novelty of the emotion must have given you a
thrill of real pleasure, Dorian," interrupted Lord Henry. "But I can
finish your idyll for you. You gave her good advice and broke her
heart. That was the beginning of your reformation."

"Harry, you are horrible! You mustn't say these dreadful things.
Hetty's heart is not broken. Of course, she cried and all that. But there
is no disgrace upon her. She can live, like Perdita, in her garden of
mint and marigold."

"And weep over a faithless Florizel," said Lord Henry, laughing, as

he leaned back in his chair. "My dear Dorian, you have the most
curiously boyish moods. Do you think this girl will ever be really
content now with any one of her own rank? I suppose she will be
married some day to a rough carter or a grinning ploughman. Well, the
fact of having met you, and loved you, will teach her to despise her
husband, and she will be wretched. From a moral point of view, I
cannot say that I think much of your great renunciation. Even as a
beginning, it is poor. Besides, how do you know that Hetty isn't
floating at the present moment in some starlit mill-pond, with lovely
water-lilies round her, like Ophelia?"

"I can't bear this, Harry! You mock at everything, and then suggest
the most serious tragedies. I am sorry I told you now. I don't care what
you say to me. I know I was right in acting as I did. Poor Hetty! As I
rode past the farm this morning, I saw her white face at the window,
like a spray of jasmine. Don't let us talk about it any more, and don't
try to persuade me that the first good action I have done for years, the
first little bit of self-sacrifice I have ever known, is really a sort of sin.
I want to be better. I am going to be better. Tell me something about
yourself. What is going on in town? I have not been to the club for
days."

"The people are still discussing poor Basil's disappearance."

"I should have thought they had got tired of that by this time," said
Dorian, pouring himself out some wine and frowning slightly.

"My dear boy, they have only been talking about it for six weeks,
and the British public are really not equal to the mental strain of
having more than one topic every three months. They have been very
fortunate lately, however. They have had my own divorce-case and

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 184/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

Alan Campbell's suicide. Now they have got the mysterious

disappearance of an artist. Scotland Yard still insists that the man in
the grey ulster who left for Paris by the midnight train on the ninth of
November was poor Basil, and the French police declare that Basil
never arrived in Paris at all. I suppose in about a fortnight we shall be
told that he has been seen in San Francisco. It is an odd thing, but
every one who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. It must
be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world."

"What do you think has happened to Basil?" asked Dorian, holding

up his Burgundy against the light and wondering how it was that he
could discuss the matter so calmly.

"I have not the slightest idea. If Basil chooses to hide himself, it is
no business of mine. If he is dead, I don't want to think about him.
Death is the only thing that ever terrifies me. I hate it."

"Why?" said the younger man wearily.

"Because," said Lord Henry, passing beneath his nostrils the gilt
trellis of an open vinaigrette box, "one can survive everything
nowadays except that. Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the
nineteenth century that one cannot explain away. Let us have our
coffee in the music-room, Dorian. You must play Chopin to me. The
man with whom my wife ran away played Chopin exquisitely. Poor
Victoria! I was very fond of her. The house is rather lonely without
her. Of course, married life is merely a habit, a bad habit. But then one
regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them
the most. They are such an essential part of one's personality."

Dorian said nothing, but rose from the table, and passing into the
next room, sat down to the piano and let his fingers stray across the
white and black ivory of the keys. After the coffee had been brought
in, he stopped, and looking over at Lord Henry, said, "Harry, did it
ever occur to you that Basil was murdered?"

Lord Henry yawned. "Basil was very popular, and always wore a
Waterbury watch. Why should he have been murdered? He was not
clever enough to have enemies. Of course, he had a wonderful genius
for painting. But a man can paint like Velasquez and yet be as dull as
possible. Basil was really rather dull. He only interested me once, and
that was when he told me, years ago, that he had a wild adoration for
you and that you were the dominant motive of his art."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 185/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"I was very fond of Basil," said Dorian with a note of sadness in his
voice. "But don't people say that he was murdered?"

"Oh, some of the papers do. It does not seem to me to be at all

probable. I know there are dreadful places in Paris, but Basil was not
the sort of man to have gone to them. He had no curiosity. It was his
chief defect."

"What would you say, Harry, if I told you that I had murdered
Basil?" said the younger man. He watched him intently after he had
spoken.

"I would say, my dear fellow, that you were posing for a character
that doesn't suit you. All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime.
It is not in you, Dorian, to commit a murder. I am sorry if I hurt your
vanity by saying so, but I assure you it is true. Crime belongs
exclusively to the lower orders. I don't blame them in the smallest
degree. I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply
a method of procuring extraordinary sensations."

"A method of procuring sensations? Do you think, then, that a man

who has once committed a murder could possibly do the same crime
again? Don't tell me that."

"Oh! anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often," cried

Lord Henry, laughing. "That is one of the most important secrets of
life. I should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake. One
should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner. But
let us pass from poor Basil. I wish I could believe that he had come to
such a really romantic end as you suggest, but I can't. I dare say he fell
into the Seine off an omnibus and that the conductor hushed up the
scandal. Yes: I should fancy that was his end. I see him lying now on
his back under those dull-green waters, with the heavy barges floating
over him and long weeds catching in his hair. Do you know, I don't
think he would have done much more good work. During the last ten
years his painting had gone off very much."

Dorian heaved a sigh, and Lord Henry strolled across the room and
began to stroke the head of a curious Java parrot, a large, grey-
plumaged bird with pink crest and tail, that was balancing itself upon a
bamboo perch. As his pointed fingers touched it, it dropped the white
scurf of crinkled lids over black, glasslike eyes and began to sway
backwards and forwards.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 186/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"Yes," he continued, turning round and taking his handkerchief out

of his pocket; "his painting had quite gone off. It seemed to me to have
lost something. It had lost an ideal. When you and he ceased to be
great friends, he ceased to be a great artist. What was it separated you?
I suppose he bored you. If so, he never forgave you. It's a habit bores
have. By the way, what has become of that wonderful portrait he did of
you? I don't think I have ever seen it since he finished it. Oh! I
remember your telling me years ago that you had sent it down to
Selby, and that it had got mislaid or stolen on the way. You never got it
back? What a pity! it was really a masterpiece. I remember I wanted to
buy it. I wish I had now. It belonged to Basil's best period. Since then,
his work was that curious mixture of bad painting and good intentions
that always entitles a man to be called a representative British artist.
Did you advertise for it? You should."

"I forget," said Dorian. "I suppose I did. But I never really liked it. I
am sorry I sat for it. The memory of the thing is hateful to me. Why do
you talk of it? It used to remind me of those curious lines in some play
—Hamlet, I think—how do they run?—
"Like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a heart."

Yes: that is what it was like."

Lord Henry laughed. "If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his
heart," he answered, sinking into an arm-chair.

Dorian Gray shook his head and struck some soft chords on the
piano. "'Like the painting of a sorrow,'" he repeated, "'a face without a
heart.'"

The elder man lay back and looked at him with half-closed eyes.
"By the way, Dorian," he said after a pause, "'what does it profit a man
if he gain the whole world and lose—how does the quotation run?—
his own soul'?"

The music jarred, and Dorian Gray started and stared at his friend.
"Why do you ask me that, Harry?"

"My dear fellow," said Lord Henry, elevating his eyebrows in

surprise, "I asked you because I thought you might be able to give me
an answer. That is all. I was going through the park last Sunday, and
close by the Marble Arch there stood a little crowd of shabby-looking
people listening to some vulgar street-preacher. As I passed by, I heard

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 187/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

the man yelling out that question to his audience. It struck me as being
rather dramatic. London is very rich in curious effects of that kind. A
wet Sunday, an uncouth Christian in a mackintosh, a ring of sickly
white faces under a broken roof of dripping umbrellas, and a
wonderful phrase flung into the air by shrill hysterical lips—it was
really very good in its way, quite a suggestion. I thought of telling the
prophet that art had a soul, but that man had not. I am afraid, however,
he would not have understood me."

"Don't, Harry. The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought, and

sold, and bartered away. It can be poisoned, or made perfect. There is a
soul in each one of us. I know it."

"Do you feel quite sure of that, Dorian?"

"Quite sure."

"Ah! then it must be an illusion. The things one feels absolutely

certain about are never true. That is the fatality of faith, and the lesson
of romance. How grave you are! Don't be so serious. What have you or
I to do with the superstitions of our age? No: we have given up our
belief in the soul. Play me something. Play me a nocturne, Dorian,
and, as you play, tell me, in a low voice, how you have kept your
youth. You must have some secret. I am only ten years older than you
are, and I am wrinkled, and worn, and yellow. You are really
wonderful, Dorian. You have never looked more charming than you do
to-night. You remind me of the day I saw you first. You were rather
cheeky, very shy, and absolutely extraordinary. You have changed, of
course, but not in appearance. I wish you would tell me your secret. To
get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take
exercise, get up early, or be respectable. Youth! There is nothing like
it. It's absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth. The only people to
whose opinions I listen now with any respect are people much younger
than myself. They seem in front of me. Life has revealed to them her
latest wonder. As for the aged, I always contradict the aged. I do it on
principle. If you ask them their opinion on something that happened
yesterday, they solemnly give you the opinions current in 1820, when
people wore high stocks, believed in everything, and knew absolutely
nothing. How lovely that thing you are playing is! I wonder, did
Chopin write it at Majorca, with the sea weeping round the villa and
the salt spray dashing against the panes? It is marvellously romantic.
What a blessing it is that there is one art left to us that is not imitative!
Don't stop. I want music to-night. It seems to me that you are the
young Apollo and that I am Marsyas listening to you. I have sorrows,

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 188/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

Dorian, of my own, that even you know nothing of. The tragedy of old
age is not that one is old, but that one is young. I am amazed
sometimes at my own sincerity. Ah, Dorian, how happy you are! What
an exquisite life you have had! You have drunk deeply of everything.
You have crushed the grapes against your palate. Nothing has been
hidden from you. And it has all been to you no more than the sound of
music. It has not marred you. You are still the same."

"I am not the same, Harry."

"Yes, you are the same. I wonder what the rest of your life will be.
Don't spoil it by renunciations. At present you are a perfect type. Don't
make yourself incomplete. You are quite flawless now. You need not
shake your head: you know you are. Besides, Dorian, don't deceive
yourself. Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of
nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides
itself and passion has its dreams. You may fancy yourself safe and
think yourself strong. But a chance tone of colour in a room or a
morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that
brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you
had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had
ceased to play—I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that
our lives depend. Browning writes about that somewhere; but our own
senses will imagine them for us. There are moments when the odour of
lilas blanc passes suddenly across me, and I have to live the strangest
month of my life over again. I wish I could change places with you,
Dorian. The world has cried out against us both, but it has always
worshipped you. It always will worship you. You are the type of what
the age is searching for, and what it is afraid it has found. I am so glad
that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a
picture, or produced anything outside of yourself! Life has been your
art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets."

Dorian rose up from the piano and passed his hand through his hair.
"Yes, life has been exquisite," he murmured, "but I am not going to
have the same life, Harry. And you must not say these extravagant
things to me. You don't know everything about me. I think that if you
did, even you would turn from me. You laugh. Don't laugh."

"Why have you stopped playing, Dorian? Go back and give me the
nocturne over again. Look at that great, honey-coloured moon that
hangs in the dusky air. She is waiting for you to charm her, and if you
play she will come closer to the earth. You won't? Let us go to the
club, then. It has been a charming evening, and we must end it

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 189/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

charmingly. There is some one at White's who wants immensely to

know you—young Lord Poole, Bournemouth's eldest son. He has
already copied your neckties, and has begged me to introduce him to
you. He is quite delightful and rather reminds me of you."

"I hope not," said Dorian with a sad look in his eyes. "But I am tired
to-night, Harry. I shan't go to the club. It is nearly eleven, and I want to
go to bed early."

"Do stay. You have never played so well as to-night. There was
something in your touch that was wonderful. It had more expression
than I had ever heard from it before."

"It is because I am going to be good," he answered, smiling. "I am a

little changed already."

"You cannot change to me, Dorian," said Lord Henry. "You and I
will always be friends."

"Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that.
Harry, promise me that you will never lend that book to any one. It
does harm."

"My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralize. You will soon
be going about like the converted, and the revivalist, warning people
against all the sins of which you have grown tired. You are much too
delightful to do that. Besides, it is no use. You and I are what we are,
and will be what we will be. As for being poisoned by a book, there is
no such thing as that. Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates
the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls
immoral are books that show the world its own shame. That is all. But
we won't discuss literature. Come round to-morrow. I am going to ride
at eleven. We might go together, and I will take you to lunch
afterwards with Lady Branksome. She is a charming woman, and
wants to consult you about some tapestries she is thinking of buying.
Mind you come. Or shall we lunch with our little duchess? She says
she never sees you now. Perhaps you are tired of Gladys? I thought
you would be. Her clever tongue gets on one's nerves. Well, in any
case, be here at eleven."

"Must I really come, Harry?"

"Certainly. The park is quite lovely now. I don't think there have
been such lilacs since the year I met you."

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 190/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

"Very well. I shall be here at eleven," said Dorian. "Good night,

Harry." As he reached the door, he hesitated for a moment, as if he had
something more to say. Then he sighed and went out.

CHAPTER 20
It was a lovely night, so warm that he threw his coat over his arm
and did not even put his silk scarf round his throat. As he strolled
home, smoking his cigarette, two young men in evening dress passed
him. He heard one of them whisper to the other, "That is Dorian Gray."
He remembered how pleased he used to be when he was pointed out,
or stared at, or talked about. He was tired of hearing his own name
now. Half the charm of the little village where he had been so often
lately was that no one knew who he was. He had often told the girl
whom he had lured to love him that he was poor, and she had believed
him. He had told her once that he was wicked, and she had laughed at
him and answered that wicked people were always very old and very
ugly. What a laugh she had!—just like a thrush singing. And how
pretty she had been in her cotton dresses and her large hats! She knew
nothing, but she had everything that he had lost.

When he reached home, he found his servant waiting up for him.

He sent him to bed, and threw himself down on the sofa in the library,
and began to think over some of the things that Lord Henry had said to
him.

Was it really true that one could never change? He felt a wild
longing for the unstained purity of his boyhood—his rose-white
boyhood, as Lord Henry had once called it. He knew that he had
tarnished himself, filled his mind with corruption and given horror to
his fancy; that he had been an evil influence to others, and had
experienced a terrible joy in being so; and that of the lives that had
crossed his own, it had been the fairest and the most full of promise
that he had brought to shame. But was it all irretrievable? Was there no
hope for him?

Ah! in what a monstrous moment of pride and passion he had

prayed that the portrait should bear the burden of his days, and he keep
the unsullied splendour of eternal youth! All his failure had been due
to that. Better for him that each sin of his life had brought its sure swift

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 191/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

penalty along with it. There was purification in punishment. Not

"Forgive us our sins" but "Smite us for our iniquities" should be the
prayer of man to a most just God.

The curiously carved mirror that Lord Henry had given to him, so
many years ago now, was standing on the table, and the white-limbed
Cupids laughed round it as of old. He took it up, as he had done on that
night of horror when he had first noted the change in the fatal picture,
and with wild, tear-dimmed eyes looked into its polished shield. Once,
some one who had terribly loved him had written to him a mad letter,
ending with these idolatrous words: "The world is changed because
you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite
history." The phrases came back to his memory, and he repeated them
over and over to himself. Then he loathed his own beauty, and flinging
the mirror on the floor, crushed it into silver splinters beneath his heel.
It was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he
had prayed for. But for those two things, his life might have been free
from stain. His beauty had been to him but a mask, his youth but a
mockery. What was youth at best? A green, an unripe time, a time of
shallow moods, and sickly thoughts. Why had he worn its livery?
Youth had spoiled him.

It was better not to think of the past. Nothing could alter that. It was
of himself, and of his own future, that he had to think. James Vane was
hidden in a nameless grave in Selby churchyard. Alan Campbell had
shot himself one night in his laboratory, but had not revealed the secret
that he had been forced to know. The excitement, such as it was, over
Basil Hallward's disappearance would soon pass away. It was already
waning. He was perfectly safe there. Nor, indeed, was it the death of
Basil Hallward that weighed most upon his mind. It was the living
death of his own soul that troubled him. Basil had painted the portrait
that had marred his life. He could not forgive him that. It was the
portrait that had done everything. Basil had said things to him that
were unbearable, and that he had yet borne with patience. The murder
had been simply the madness of a moment. As for Alan Campbell, his
suicide had been his own act. He had chosen to do it. It was nothing to
him.

A new life! That was what he wanted. That was what he was
waiting for. Surely he had begun it already. He had spared one
innocent thing, at any rate. He would never again tempt innocence. He
would be good.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 192/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

As he thought of Hetty Merton, he began to wonder if the portrait in

the locked room had changed. Surely it was not still so horrible as it
had been? Perhaps if his life became pure, he would be able to expel
every sign of evil passion from the face. Perhaps the signs of evil had
already gone away. He would go and look.

He took the lamp from the table and crept upstairs. As he unbarred
the door, a smile of joy flitted across his strangely young-looking face
and lingered for a moment about his lips. Yes, he would be good, and
the hideous thing that he had hidden away would no longer be a terror
to him. He felt as if the load had been lifted from him already.

He went in quietly, locking the door behind him, as was his custom,
and dragged the purple hanging from the portrait. A cry of pain and
indignation broke from him. He could see no change, save that in the
eyes there was a look of cunning and in the mouth the curved wrinkle
of the hypocrite. The thing was still loathsome—more loathsome, if
possible, than before—and the scarlet dew that spotted the hand
seemed brighter, and more like blood newly spilled. Then he trembled.
Had it been merely vanity that had made him do his one good deed?
Or the desire for a new sensation, as Lord Henry had hinted, with his
mocking laugh? Or that passion to act a part that sometimes makes us
do things finer than we are ourselves? Or, perhaps, all these? And why
was the red stain larger than it had been? It seemed to have crept like a
horrible disease over the wrinkled fingers. There was blood on the
painted feet, as though the thing had dripped—blood even on the hand
that had not held the knife. Confess? Did it mean that he was to
confess? To give himself up and be put to death? He laughed. He felt
that the idea was monstrous. Besides, even if he did confess, who
would believe him? There was no trace of the murdered man
anywhere. Everything belonging to him had been destroyed. He
himself had burned what had been below-stairs. The world would
simply say that he was mad. They would shut him up if he persisted in
his story.... Yet it was his duty to confess, to suffer public shame, and
to make public atonement. There was a God who called upon men to
tell their sins to earth as well as to heaven. Nothing that he could do
would cleanse him till he had told his own sin. His sin? He shrugged
his shoulders. The death of Basil Hallward seemed very little to him.
He was thinking of Hetty Merton. For it was an unjust mirror, this
mirror of his soul that he was looking at. Vanity? Curiosity?
Hypocrisy? Had there been nothing more in his renunciation than that?
There had been something more. At least he thought so. But who could
tell? ... No. There had been nothing more. Through vanity he had

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 193/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

spared her. In hypocrisy he had worn the mask of goodness. For

curiosity's sake he had tried the denial of self. He recognized that now.

But this murder—was it to dog him all his life? Was he always to be
burdened by his past? Was he really to confess? Never. There was only
one bit of evidence left against him. The picture itself—that was
evidence. He would destroy it. Why had he kept it so long? Once it
had given him pleasure to watch it changing and growing old. Of late
he had felt no such pleasure. It had kept him awake at night. When he
had been away, he had been filled with terror lest other eyes should
look upon it. It had brought melancholy across his passions. Its mere
memory had marred many moments of joy. It had been like conscience
to him. Yes, it had been conscience. He would destroy it.

He looked round and saw the knife that had stabbed Basil Hallward.
He had cleaned it many times, till there was no stain left upon it. It was
bright, and glistened. As it had killed the painter, so it would kill the
painter's work, and all that that meant. It would kill the past, and when
that was dead, he would be free. It would kill this monstrous soul-life,
and without its hideous warnings, he would be at peace. He seized the
thing, and stabbed the picture with it.

There was a cry heard, and a crash. The cry was so horrible in its
agony that the frightened servants woke and crept out of their rooms.
Two gentlemen, who were passing in the square below, stopped and
looked up at the great house. They walked on till they met a policeman
and brought him back. The man rang the bell several times, but there
was no answer. Except for a light in one of the top windows, the house
was all dark. After a time, he went away and stood in an adjoining
portico and watched.

"Whose house is that, Constable?" asked the elder of the two

gentlemen.

"Mr. Dorian Gray's, sir," answered the policeman.

They looked at each other, as they walked away, and sneered. One
of them was Sir Henry Ashton's uncle.

Inside, in the servants' part of the house, the half-clad domestics

were talking in low whispers to each other. Old Mrs. Leaf was crying
and wringing her hands. Francis was as pale as death.

After about a quarter of an hour, he got the coachman and one of

the footmen and crept upstairs. They knocked, but there was no reply.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 194/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

They called out. Everything was still. Finally, after vainly trying to
force the door, they got on the roof and dropped down on to the
balcony. The windows yielded easily—their bolts were old.

When they entered, they found hanging upon the wall a splendid
portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of
his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in
evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled,
and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings
that they recognized who it was.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY ***

***** This file should be named 174-h.htm or 174-h.zip *****

This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/174/

Produced by Judith Boss. HTML version by Al Haines.

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions

will be renamed.

Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. They may be modified and printed and given away—you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
redistribution.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 195/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

*** START: FULL LICENSE ***

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free

distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
http://gutenberg.net/license).

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm

electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm

electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be

used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation

or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you fro
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms o
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 196/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived

from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted

with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked
to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm

License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this

electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 197/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

Gutenberg-tm License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.net)
you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,

performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing

access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
that

- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is
owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments
must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."

- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License. You must require such a user to return or
destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
Project Gutenberg-tm works.

- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any

money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
of receipt of the work.

- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm

electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 198/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from

both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the
Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable

effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right

of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a

defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied

warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 199/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be

interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm

Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of

electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the

assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive

Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit

501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.

The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.

Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at
809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
[email protected]. Email contact links and up to date contact

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 200/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official

page at http://pglaf.org

For additional contact information:

Dr. Gregory B. Newby
Chief Executive and Director
[email protected]

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg

Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide

spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating

charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To
SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
particular state visit http://pglaf.org

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we

have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make

any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
donations. To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic

works.

Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm

concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 201/202
30/04/2020 The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed

editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:

http://www.gutenberg.net

This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,

including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.

www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm 202/202