



Produced by Judith Boss.  HTML version by Al Haines.










The Picture of Dorian Gray

by

Oscar Wilde




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 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-
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
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
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
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  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 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."

"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
