– the first published version of The Picture of Dorian Gray for the grand price of 25 cents
The aphorism
There
is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or
badly written. That is all.
stands at the head of the novel as a warning to
critics by Oscar Wilde.
Priya
A single fateful wish for his youth to be
preserved, and his aging transferred to a painting of him, causes Dorian Gray
to descend into evil acts, that are only vaguely described in the novel.
Kavita, KumKum, Talitha, Thommo, Mathew, Sunil
Throughout, the brilliance of Wilde’s wit and his
ability to turn a dogma on its head is apparent. Whether this novel, his only
one, is the best vehicle for his writing was debated. But there is no doubt
about his mastery. Max Beerbohm, himself a well-known essayist with a graceful
style, described Wilde once as "A Lord of Language," in an article with
that title.
Talitha and Thommo
As to Wilde’s homosexuality, for which he was
persecuted in his time (even as homosexuals are being persecuted today in India
by the perverse judgment of a duet of lordships on the Supreme Court of India),
he wrote:
I believe that God made a world for each separate
man, and within that world, which is within us, one should seek to live.
(from De
Profundis)
Preeti and Zakia
Here are the readers at the end of the session:
KumKum found the use of
nitric acid to dispose of Basil Hallward’s (BH) body most gruesome, but
ingenious. Someone suggested the other option for removal without a trace would
have been a tandoor oven.
Preeti, Kavita, KumKum, Priya, Talitha, Thommo, Mathew, Sunil, Zakia, Joe
Read on to savour our pronouncements and
reflections on The Picture of Dorian Gray.
The
Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Full
account of readings Dec 12, 2013
Oscar Wilde
Present:
Kavita, KumKum, Talitha, Thommo, Priya, Joe, Mathew, Sunil, Preeti, Zakia, Gopa
(virtual)
Absent:
Sivaram
We
welcomed into our midst Ms. Preeti Nambiar, prospective KRG reader.
The
date of the next reading (Poetry) was agreed: Jan 31, Friday.
Readers
have to hand in their selections of fiction for the year 2014. All paired
selectors may please submit their choices at the earliest. The target date of Dec
15 has gone by.
In
order to make preparations for a week-long festival to mark the 450th Shakespeare Birth Anniversary on April 23,
2014, a core committee will meet on Tues, Dec 17. It consists of Talitha,
Thommo, Priya, Mathew, and Joe.
Kavita
The
passage she read is a sort of tutorial on women for the benefit of his protégé,
Dorian Gray (DG), by Lord Henry (LH). Kavita remarked how cynical it was and
utterly dismissive of women’s capabilities: “there are only five women in London worth talking to.” Thommo opined
that LH represents Oscar Wilde (OW) in the novel, the only one he wrote. Sunil
quoted an observation of the author regarding the characters in the novel:
Dorian Gray “contains much of me”:
Basil Hallward is “what I think I am,” Lord Henry “what the world thinks me,”
and “Dorian what I would like to be—in other ages, perhaps.”
Talitha
said OW had a serious side – which is missing in LH. But the epigrams and
witticisms of OW emanate from the mouth of LH, all right.
KumKum
In
this passage LH is still at it, instructing DG about women. He complains that “women never know when the curtain has fallen. They
always want a sixth act.” Joe discerned a great deal of
misogyny being expressed. LH has a contempt for women; he uses them and
discards them, and his lament is that they continue to pester him long after
the passion is gone, and they have become stout.
Kumkum
imagines that such was the general opinion of women in that era before their
emancipation. They did not even have the vote then. She noted the irony of
reading of this novel a few days after the 2-man bench of the Supreme Court of
India re-criminalised homosexuality, which had been set aside by the Delhi High
Court 4 years ago when it read down portions of Section 377 of the Indian Penal
Code. Their lordships’ reasoning has been soundly knocked by Vikram Seth in two
interviews, with Barkha Dutt of NDTV and Karan Thapar of CNN-IBN. Here is the
first:
Vikram
Seth observes, "I certainly do not propose to take permission of their
lordships in deciding whom to love or whom to make love with." It is
ironic that the yoke of a Victorian colonial law still weighs upon Indians 66
years after independence! Here is a second interview with Karan Thapar:
Mathew
noted that the Supreme Court has curtailed freedom; it could have shown more
percipience, a greater understanding of modern science and its researches into
the nature of homosexuality, an dlearn that it is not a disorder in nature but
a tendency that is found in a certain percentage of humans everywhere, to the
extent of 5 percent or more. And indeed in other orders of animal species.
Priya
thought the Supreme Court had passed the buck to Parliament, declaring that it
found no ‘constitutional infirmity’ in Sec 377 IPC. In other words, that the
law criminalised the loving acts of about 50 million or more Indians who had a
certain orientation did not deprive them of their fundamental rights!
Thommo
said it was strange that a Supreme Court that had been so activist in making
rulings in matters that went beyond their purview, still chose to be so
regressive when the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution against
discrimination came under threat. Subramanian Swamy’s position is quite
disappointing; but then he has had a history of speaking with prejudice against
minorities. One such instance got him removed the instructing faculty at
Harvard University.
Talitha
She
read the fateful passage from Ch 19 where LH casually interrogates DG to find
the secret of his youth. It is full of epigrams as much of LH’s speech is
throughout the novel, KumKum noted. Indeed like too many plums in a pudding,
said Talitha. But everything LH says is like a hammer blow to the guilty DG,
who succumbs and discloses his secret later on. The painting held the secret.
Priya
found the novel heavy going because she paused to ponder the meaning of each
epigram so effortlessly cast off in profusion by LH. Thommo on the other hand,
being familiar with much of OW’s epigrams and aphorisms, found the novel an
easy read. Epigrams dot every page and issue like an unstoppable torrent from
LH’s mouth; he is the voice of OW, indeed, said Priya.
Thommo
Thommo
chose for his first reading the Preface itself, which is a river of epigrams
containing this famous one:
There
is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or
badly written. That is all.
It
is a manifesto for artists, and every curator of art should be given this to
read.
From
the second passage Thommo read, who can forget this:
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield
to it.
OW
is the terror of God, said KumKum, restating the aphorism in this passage that ‘the
terror of God is the basis of religion.’ Mathew referred to the quotation, ‘It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the
great sins of the world take place also.’ So it’s in total recall that sins are born.
Joe
asked Thommo whether he liked the aphorisms so much that he read from the
Preface. Yes, said Thommo, for his first acquaintance with OW was through the
brilliance of his sayings. Aptly, Stephen Fry plays OW in the movie 'Wilde'
Stephen
Fry (SF) preparing to play OW read widely and in an interview we come to
understand the allure the author had for the acolyte, who says
not
only was this man as I said before, a lord of language, (it’s a phrase of his
own actually), but he was if you’d like a kind of secular messiah, a Bohemian
prince of the most fantastic power and beauty and grace and gravity
SF
attributes his own appreciation of literature to OW from whom he got
the
idea that language could be used to dance, that it could be used to delight,
that it could be used to enthrall quite so magnificently
You can read the full interview and see the video
at
The
Picture of Dorian Gray (1973) is
available as a complete movie on youtube:
Talitha’s
view is that because of the aphorisms the ‘wrongness’ of what OW says is
missed. Joe would rather credit OW for his aphorisms, of which that famous one
above-noted about books is a fundamental realisation about the nature of the
writer’s art that was totally misunderstood in Victorian times. Today, it is a
given in literary criticism. Talitha, on the other hand, said that OW stands
undone by the very book he wrote which is a moral one (in that the bad guy cops
it). Joe thought that OW’s remark about books being neither moral nor immoral,
was directed, not to his book, but to his moralistic critics who judged his
books by his life, and understood neither.
The
moral policing of books in contemporary India (indeed, of other art forms too)
stems from failing to understand what OW said. They become book-burners merely
because they disagree with something in the book. Thus, Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey was axed from Mumbai
University's syllabus for having derogatory references to the Shiv Sena:
Priya
In
this passage Basil is the voice of normalcy, when the death of Sybil Vane is
revealed. Zakia wondered if DG understood he was so good-looking. The answer is
yes, certainly, for otherwise why would he have made that fateful wish at the
beginning that marks his downward spiral through the novel. Sunil laughed and
said DG gets away with murder! His beauty caused his own downfall. However,
through all his evil actions, he seems to have entertained no remorse, except
at the end.
As
Talitha pointed out DG’s attitude in this passage is toward oblivion as a cure
for guilt:
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.
Joe
OW
is the first author to be featured twice in our fiction readings. We previously
read the play, The Importance of Being Earnest,
in 2009. OW is at his epigrammatic
best in this novel, and this faculty of his is represented in LH. Perhaps
Wilde’s best known aphorism in this book is a riposte to all those who
moralised against his decadence:
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral
book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
There are one or two aphorisms on every page:
Women are so fond of using ‘always.’ They spoil
every romance by trying to make it last forever.
The great aristocratic art of doing absolutely
nothing.
His principles were out of date, but there was a
good deal to be said for his prejudices.
When DG, a handsome young aristocrat, makes this
wish, he can hardly guess that it will mark the beginning of a life descending
into hedonism, debauchery, and murder.
If only I
could remain young while the picture grows old. For that I’d give anything…
But there is little made explicit in the novel as
to what the nature was of the disrepute into which he fell, barring some opium
smoking, perhaps a seduction or two of either sex, etc. Nothing criminal is
made explicit except the murder of BH, and that was hidden from the world. It
is a bit puzzling that the character of DG is said to have become loathsome to
his circle, and yet the novel is virtually silent on his depravities. The
reader has to guess.
The novel was censored by the publisher, as KumKum
told Joe, but again, the passages replaced seem so mild. For instance:
BH tells DG,
in one passage,
"It
is quite true I have worshipped you with far more romance of feeling than a man
should ever give to a friend. Somehow I have never loved a woman."
The
censored version reads:
"From
the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence
over me".
For
heaven’s sake, what did the Victorians take readers to be: schoolboys who
needed protection from sodomy?
Joe
chose a passage that has no epigrams and belongs to the stage, like OW’s plays.
DG is describing Sibyl Vane to LH.
Further
into the novel, as DG waits for the arrival of Adrian Singleton to dispose of
BH’s body, he takes up a book given him by the chemist, titled Émaux et Camées
by Théophile Gautier, the
19th century French poet. Here are ‘those lovely stanzas upon Venice’ with a
translation that does the poet credit.
Sur une
gamme chromatique,
Le sein de perles ruisselant,
La Vénus de l'Adriatique
Sort de l'eau son corps rose et blanc.
Le sein de perles ruisselant,
La Vénus de l'Adriatique
Sort de l'eau son corps rose et blanc.
Les dômes, sur
l'azur des ondes
Suivant la phrase au pur contour,
S'enflent comme des gorges rondes
Que soulève un soupir d'amour.
Suivant la phrase au pur contour,
S'enflent comme des gorges rondes
Que soulève un soupir d'amour.
L'esquif
aborde et me dépose,
Jetant son amarre au pilier,
Devant une façade rose,
Sur le marbre d'un escalier
Jetant son amarre au pilier,
Devant une façade rose,
Sur le marbre d'un escalier
To see, her bosom covered o'er
With pearls, her body suave,
The Adriatic Venus soar
On sound's chromatic wave.
With pearls, her body suave,
The Adriatic Venus soar
On sound's chromatic wave.
The domes that on the water dwell
Pursue the melody
In clear-drawn cadences, and swell
Like breasts of love that sigh.
Pursue the melody
In clear-drawn cadences, and swell
Like breasts of love that sigh.
My chains around a pillar cast,
I land before a fair
And rosy-pale facade at last,
Upon a marble stair.
I land before a fair
And rosy-pale facade at last,
Upon a marble stair.
The word
frequencies in the novel are interesting, and illustrate how OW chose with care
to convey the peculiar atmosphere of the novel.
Word Frequency:
Life – 229
Death – 32
Romance – 25
Sense(s) – 57
Charm(s,ing) - 70
Sin(s) – 55
Beauty – 55
Beautiful – 44
Handsome – 4
Marvellous – 17
Delight(ful) – 36
Genius – 12
Passion(s) – 69
Soul – 68
Body – 27
Mind – 35
Intellect(ual) –
25
Love(s,ed,ing) –
140
Kiss(ed) – 16
Affection – 3
Lips – 57
Hair – 29
Eyes – 109
Blue – 28
Hand(s) – 118
Brain(s) – 26
Pleasure(s) – 50
Pain – 33
Horror – 24
Horrible – 48
Terror – 29
Terrible – 40
Art(s) – 81
Influence – 26
Scandal(s) – 11
Secret(s) – 50
Mathew
Mathew chose a delightful passage of banter among the crusty lords and ladies invited to
lunch at Aunt Agatha’s. The exchange is full of the kind of spirited repartee that
one encounters in OW’s plays. It elicited a great many chuckles among the
readers. When Mathew tripped up by reading ‘hitting below the intellect’ as
‘hitting below the belt,’ everyone appreciated how much we are
programmed by our prior familiarity with figures of speech.
Mathew noted that for aristocrats there was no
world outside England. For that matter, said Thommo, there was no world for
them outside of London. You are tired of the world when you are tired of
London, was the saying, Mathew recalled. Indeed if you came from Cornwall, you
were a foreigner, Thommo adverted.
KumKum said she read this novel when she was young.
Mathew himself was re-reading it. He said that he recalls some illustration in the
Catechism or Moral Science book in primary school about good and evil based OW’s
novel – probably about how sin disfigures not only the soul, but the human
visage of the sinner!
Sunil
Sunil chose the passage in which DG
rejects Sybil Vane (SV) because she forgets her acting and puts on a poor
performance. SV is shattered by the announcement. Obviously, DG loved her
acting, not SV herself. Priya noted the selfishness (and self-importance) displayed
by DG, expressed as, ‘I would have given you my name.’
Talitha explained SV’s decline in
acting as the woman’s reaction to securing the real thing in her life (love),
which was so far only imagined through her acting. The art seemed fake by
comparison.
Preeti
Preeti had come unprepared, as she was
appearing at KRG for the first time to get to know us. However, Thommo gave a
piece for her to read which she gamely took up. It is from the end of the novel
where DG has a pang of remorse at what he had become in the eyes of other
people, and the ill deeds he had committed in his life. He longs once more for
former times when he had been innocent.
Zakia
Zakia, having chosen the same passage as Sunil,
stood down from her reading.
Gopa
Gopa was away but contributed her
passage as a recording which Joe played. You can hear by clicking on the link below:
It was the passage for the fateful
first encounter between DG and LH at BH’s studio. LH seems to take an immediate
fancy to the DG, inspired by his youthful beauty and blue eyes.
A subsequent discussion between Gopa,
KumKum and Joe was not played for lack of time. But Gopa said in her opinion KH
does not manipulate DG artfully, but does influence him. Gopa agreed that it was
curious that the novel is not explicit on what was the bad DG did. It is left
to be imagined.
The question of censorship came up. The
book had to be published in USA by Lippincott, and even so 500 hundred words
were changed by the editor at the publishing firm without the knowledge of OW. We
agreed that the matter in the book is
laughably mild by modern standards, but one must recall that a great battle
against censorship had to be waged before the latitude available to modern
authors was established. DH Lawrence faced it, Nabokov faced it, and in India
we continue to face it because we are still like children who have not
internalised OW’s great maxim, quoted earlier.
Joe also noticed how at the beginning of
the book the men are calling each other beautiful - not men calling women
beautiful, or women calling men handsome. Beauty seems personified in youthful
men as other men see it, and that is a characteristic of the homosexual
inclination common to anywhere from 5 to 12% of men worldwide. Men are
infatuated by other men. And this homosexual underpinning was not lost on
readers of this novel.
A difference arose on the quality of
the writing, KumKum veering to great praise, and Gopa merely finding in OW a
very natural flow of fluid prose. KumKum
claimed that to make epigrams in the quantity and quality of OW demanded a very
exact knowledge of words and a wide learning; that is his charm, what made him
a ‘lord of language,’ a term used by OW himself in another context.
Joe remarked that in the culture of
English public schools and Oxford-Cambridge it was quite commonplace for young
men to become very fond of each other, and even if not necessarily homosexual,
indulge in the kind talk and carrying on as if it were the most natural thing
in the world for men to disport with men, as in in the same universities, other
men disported with women.
Readings
Kavita Ch 4. – Lord Henry imparts his cynical view of
women to Dorian Gray.
"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 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?"
KumKum Ch 8 – LH continues to instruct DG on
the tediousness of women
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.
"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."
Talitha Ch 19 – LH and DG have a heart-to-heart talk about
the soul, as LH tries to extract the secret of DG’s youth.
"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 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.
Thommo
(a) Preface – Epigrams advertising to the
reader OW’s thinking on art, beauty, morality, etc.
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
OSCAR WILDE
(b) Ch 2 – DG poses for BH and they talk of morality, temptation, and
the Hellenic ideal
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 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.
Priya Ch 9. – Sybil Vane is dead. Basil is upset.
"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 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."
Joe Passage:Ch 4 – (DG’s description of SV to LH)
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
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?"
Mathew Ch 3 – Banter among the worthies invited to lunch
at Aunt Agatha’s
"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 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."
"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 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."
Sunil Ch 7 – DG rebuffs SV after she fails as an actress
on stage
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."
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.
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 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."
Preeti Ch 20 – DG feels a wild longing for the unstained
purity of his boyhood
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 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.
Gopa Ch 2 – DG first encounters LH in BH’s studio
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.
"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?"
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."
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