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 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 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 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 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
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."
"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."
"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-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.
"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.