by Oscar Wilde
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 flame-like as theirs; and
now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long
tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window,
producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those
pallid jade-faced painters of Tokio 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
In the centre of the
room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young
man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance
away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden
disappearance some years ago caused, at the time, such public excitement, and
gave rise to so many strange conjectures.
As 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 either been 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
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
“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 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 always be 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.” [Stop
Here: 1,083 words = 64,980/tot. sec. = words per minute]
“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 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.”
“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
Academicians, I suddenly became conscious that some one was looking at me. I
turned halfway 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 it: 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.” [Stop Here:
1,055 words = 63,300/tot. sec. = words per minute]
“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.”
“And how did Lady
Brandon describe this wonderful young man?” asked his companion. “I know she
goes in for giving a rapid précis 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.”
“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
“I don’t agree with a
single word that you have said, and, what is more, Harry, I feel sure that 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.” [Stop
Here: 1,040 words = 62,400/tot. sec. = words per minute]
“How extraordinary! I
thought you would never care for anything but your art.”
“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 Antinoüs was to late Greek sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will some
day be to me. It is not merely that I paint from him, draw from him, 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 re-create life in a way that
was hidden from me before. ‘A dream of form in days of thought:’--who is it who
says that? I forget; but it is what Dorian Gray has been to me. The merely
visible presence of this lad--for he seems to me little more than a lad, though
he is really over twenty--his merely visible presence--ah! I wonder can you
realize all that that means? Unconsciously he defines for me the lines of a
fresh school, a school that is to have in 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 his
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.”
“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 idea. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful
thing. It is like a bric-a-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.”
[Stop Here: 1,177 words =
70,620/tot. sec. = words per minute]
“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.
“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
“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
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. [Stop Here: 593 words = 35,580/tot. sec. = words per
minute]