The Picture Of Dorian Gray - Chapter 11

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Episode Transcript

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Chapter eleven of the Picture of DorrianGray by Oscar Wilde bread by Babneuffeld.
For years, Dorian Gray could notfree himself from the influence of this book,
or perhaps it would be more accurateto say that he never sought to
free himself from it. He procuredfrom Paris no less than nine large paper

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copies of the first edition, andhad them bound in different colors, so
that they might suit his various moodsand the changing fancies of a nature over
which he seemed at times to havealmost entirely lost control. The hero,
the wonderful young Parisian in whom theromantic and the scientific temperaments were so strangely

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blended, became to him a kindof prefiguring type of himself. And indeed
the whole book seemed to him tocontain the story of his own life,
written before he had lived it.In one point, he was more fortunate
than the novel's fantastic hero. Henever knew, never indeed had any cause

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to know, that somewhat grotesque dreadof Mirrors had polished metal surfaces and still
water, which came upon the youngParisian so early in his life, and
was occasioned by the sudden decay ofa bow that had once apparently been so
remarkable. It was with an almostcruel joy, and perhaps in nearly every

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joy, as certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has its place, that he
used to read the latter part ofthe book, with its really tragic,
if somewhat over emphasized account of thesorrow and despair of one who had himself
lost what in others and the worldhe had most dearly valued. For the

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wonderful beauty that had so fascinated BasilHoward and many others besides him, seemed
never to leave him, Even thosewho had heard the most easy evil things
against him, and from time totime strange rumors about his mode of life
crept through London and became the chatterof the clubs. Could not believe anything
to his dishonor. When they sawhim, he had always the look of

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one who had kept himself unspotted fromthe world. Men who taught grossly became
silent when Dorian Gray entered the room. There was something in the purity of
his face that rebuked them. Hismere presence seemed to recall to them the
memory of the innocence that they hadtarnished. They wondered how one so charming

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and graceful as he was could haveescaped the stain of an age that was
at once sordid and sensual. Often, on returning home from one of those
mysterious and prolonged absences that gave riseto such strange conjecture among those who were
his friends or thought they were so, he himself would creep upstairs to the

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locked room, opened the door withthe key that never left him now,
and stand with a mirror in frontof the portrait that Basil Hollwood had painted
of him, looking now at theevil and aging face in the canvas,
and now at the fair, youngface that laughed back at him from the
polished glass. The very sharpness ofthe contrast used to quicken his sense of

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pleasure. He grew more and moreenamored of his own beauty, more and
more interested in the corruption of hisown soul. He would examine with minute
care, and sometimes with a monstrousand terrible delight, the hideous lines that
seared the wrinkling forehead and crawled aroundthe heavy, sensual mouth, wondering sometimes

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which were the more horrible the signsof sin or the signs of age.
He would place his white hands besidethe coarse, bloated hands of the picture,
and smile he marked the misshapen bodyand the failing limbs. There were
moments, indeed, at nights,when lying sleepless in his own delicately scented

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chamber, or in the sordid roomof a little, ill famed tavern near
the docks, which, under anassumed name and in disguise it was his
habit to frequent he would think ofthe ruin he had brought upon his soul
with a pity that was all themore poignant because it was purely selfish.

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But moments such as these were rare. That curiosity about life, which Lord
Henry had first stirred in him asthey sat together in the garden of their
friend, seemed to increase with gratification. The more he knew, the more
he desired to know. He hadmad hungers that grew more ravenous as he

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fed them. Yet he was notreally reckless at any rate in his relations
to society. Once or twice everymonth during the winter, and on each
Wednesday evening while the season lasted,he would throw open to the world his
beautiful house, and have the mostcelebrated musicians of the day to charm his
guests with the wonders of their art. His little dinners in the settling of

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which Lord Henry always assisted him,were noted as much for the careful selection
and placing of those invited as forthe exquisite taste shown in the decoration of
the table, with its subtle,symphonic arrangements of exotic flowers and embroidered cloths
and antique plate of gold and silver. Indeed, there were many, especially

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among the young men, who sawand fancied what they saw in Dorian Gray,
the true realization of a type ofwhich they had offered dreamed in Eton
or Oxford days, a type thatwas to combine something of the real culture
of the scholar with all the graceand distinction and perfect manner of a citizen

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of the world. To them,he seemed to be of the company of
those whom Dante dis cribes as havingsought to make themselves perfect by the worship
of beauty. Like Gautier, hewas one for whom the visible world existed,
and certainly to him life itself wasthe first, the greatest of the

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arts, and for it all theother arts seemed to be but a preparation
fashion by which what is really fantasticbecomes for a moment universal and dandyism,
which in its own way is anattempt to assert the absolute modernity of beauty,
had of course their fascination for him. His mode of dressing and the

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particular styles that from time to timehe affected, had their marked influence on
the young exquisites of the mayfair Ballsand the pal mall club windows, who
copied him in everything that he didand tried to reproduce the accidental charm of
his graceful, though to him onlyhalf serious fopperies. For Wali was but
too ready to accept the position thatwas almost immediately offered to him on his

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coming of age, and found indeeda subtle pleasure in the thought that he
might really become to the London ofhis own day, what to Imperial Neronian
Rome, the author of the SatyriKhan once had been. Yet in his
inmost heart he desired to be somethingmore than a mere arbiter elegantiarum, to

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be consulted on the wearing of ajewel or the knotting of a necktie or
the conduct of a cane. Hesought to elaborate some new scheme of life
that would have its reasoned philosophy andits ordered principles, and find in the
spiritualizing of the senses its highest realization. The worship of the senses has often

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and with much justice. Ben decriedmen feeling a natural instinct of terror about
passions and sensations that seems wronger thanthemselves, and that they are conscious of
sharing with the less organized forms ofexistence. But it appeared to Dorian Gray
that the true nature of the senseshad never been understood, and that they

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had remained savage an animal, merelybecause the world had sought to starve them
into submission or to kill them bypain, instead of aiming at making them
elements of a new spirituality, ofwhich a fine instinct for beauty was to
be the dominant characteristic. As helooked back upon man moving through history,

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he was haunted by a feeling ofloss. So much had been surrendered and
to such little purpose. There hadbeen mad, willful rejections, monstrous forms
of self torture and self denial whoseorigin was fear and whose result was a
degradation infinitely more terrible than that fancieddegradation from which, in their ignorance they

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had sought to escape. Nature inher wonderful irony, driving out the anchorite
to feed with the wild animals ofthe desert, and giving to the hermit
the beasts of the field as hiscompanions. Yes, there was to be,
as Lord Henry had prophesied, anew hedonism that was to recreate life

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and save it from that harsh,uncomely puritanism that is having in our own
day its curious revival. It wasto have its service of the intellect,
certainly, Yet it was never toaccept any theory or system that would involve
the sacrifice of any mode of passionateexperience. Its aim, indeed, was

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to be experience itself, and notthe fruits of experience, sweet or bitter
as they might be, as ofthe asceticism that deadens the senses, as
of the vulgar profligacy dulls them.It was to know nothing, but it
was to teach man to concentrate himselfupon the moments of a life that is

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itself but a moment. There arefew of us who have not sometimes wakened
before dawn, either after one ofthose dreamless nights that make us almost enamored
of death, or one of thoseknights of horror and misshapen joy, when
through the chambers of the brain sweepphantoms more terrible than reality itself, an

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instinct with that vivid life that lurksin all grotesques, and that lends to
Gothic art its enduring vitality, thisart being one might fancy, especially the
art of those whose minds have beentroubled with the malady of revery. Gradually,
white fingers creep through the curtains,and they appear to tremble in black

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fantastic shapes. Dumb shadows crawl intothe corners of the room and crowd out
there. Outside there is the stirringof birds among the leaves, or the
sound of men going forth to theirwork, or the sigh and sob of
the wind coming down from the hillsand wandering around the silent house, as
though it feared to wake the sleepers, and yet must needs call forth sleep

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from her purple cave, veil afterveil of thin dusky gauze is lifted,
and by degrees the forms and colorsof things are restored to them, and
we watch the dawn remaking the worldin its antique pattern. The wan mirrors
get back their mimic life. Theflameless tapers stand where we had left them,

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and beside them lies the half cutbook that we had been studying,
or the wired flower that we hadworn at the ball, or the letter
that we had been afraid to read, or that we had bread. Too
often nothing seems to us changed.Out of the unreal shadows of the night
comes back the real life that wehad known. We have to resume it

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where we had left off, andthere steals offer us a terrible sense of
the necessity for the continuance of energy. In the same wearisome round of stereotyped
habits, or the wild longing.It may be that our eyelids might open
some morning upon a world that hadbeen ref fashioned and new in the darkness

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for our pleasure, a world inwhich things would have fresh shapes and colors
and be changed or have other secrets, a world in which the past would
have little or no place, orsurvive at any rate in no conscious form
of obligation or regret. The remembrance, even of joy having its bitterness,

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and the memories of pleasure their pain. It was the creation of such worlds
as these that seems to Dorian Grayto be the true object, or among
the true objects of life. Andin his search of sensations that would be
at once new and delightful and possessedthat element of strangeness that is so essential

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to romance, he would often adoptcertain modes of thought that he knew to
be really alien to his nature,abandon himself to their subtle influences, and
then, having as it were,caught fair color and satisfied his intellectual curiosity,
leave them with that curious indifference thatis not incompatible with a real ardor

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of temperament, and that indeed,according to certain modern psychologists, is often
a condition of it. It wasrumored of him once that he was about
to join the Roman Catholic Communion,and certainly the Roman ritual had always a
great attraction for him. The dailysacrifice, more awful really than all the

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sacrifices of the antique world, stirredhim as much by its superb rejection of
the evidence of the senses, asby the primitive simplicity of its elements,
and the eternal pathos of the humantragedy that it sought to symbolize. He
loved to kneel down on the coldmarble pavement and watched the priest and his

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stiff flowered dalmatic, slowly and withwhite hands, moving aside the veil of
a tabernacle, or raising aloft thejeweled lantern shaped monstrance with that pallid wafer
that at times one would fain thinkis indeed the pani celestes the bread of
angels, or robed in the garmentsof the Passion of Christ, breaking the

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host into the chalice and smiting hisbreast for his sins. The fuming censers
that the grave boys, in theirlace and scarlet, tossed into the air
like great guilt flowers, had theirsubtle fascination for him. As he passed
out, he used to look withwonder at the black confessionals, and longed

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to sit in the dim shadow ofone of them and listen to men and
women whispering through the warned grating thetrue story of their lives. But he
never fell into the error of arrestinghis intellectual development by any formal acceptance of
creed or system, or by mistakingfor a house in which to live,

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an inn that is but suitable forthe sojourn of a night, or for
a few hours of a night inwhich there are no stars and the moon
is in travail. Mysticism, withits marvelous power of making common things strange
to us, and the subtle antignomianism that always seems to accompany it,
moved him for a season. Andfor a season he inclined to the materialistic

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doctrines of the Darwinismus movement in Germany, and found a curious pleasure in tracing
the thoughts and passions of men tosome pearly sell in the brain, or
some white nerve in the body,delighting in the conception of the absolute dependence
of the spirit on certain physical condition, morbid or healthy, normal or diseased.

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Yet, as has been said ofhim before, no theory of life
seemed to him to be of anyimportance compared with life itself. He felt
keenly conscious of how bare and allintellectual speculation is when separated from action and
experiments. He knew that the senses, no less than the soul, have

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their spiritual mysteries to reveal, andso he would now study perfumes and the
secrets of their manufacture. Distilling heavilyscented oils and burning odorous gums from the
east, he saw that there wasno mood of the mind that had not
its counterpart in the sensuous life,and set himself to discover their true relations,

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wondering what there was in frankincense thatmade one mystical, and an amber
grief that stirred one's passions, andin violets that woke the members of dead
romances, and in musk that troubledthe braid, and in champac had stained
the imagination, and seeking often toelaborate a real psychology of perfumes, and

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to estimate the several influences of sweetsmelling roots and scented pollen laden flowers,
of aromatic balms, and of dark, fragrant woods, of spikenard that sickens,
of hovenia that makes men mad,and of aloes that are said to
be able to expel melancholy from thesoul. At another time, he devoted

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himself entirely to music, and ina long latticed room with a vermilion and
gold ceiling and walls of olive greenlacquer. He used to give curious concerts
in which mad Gypsies tore wild musicfrom little zippers or grave yellow shawled Tennisians
plucked at the strained strings of monstrouslutes, while grinning Negroes beat monotonously upon

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coppered drums and crouching upon scarlet mats. Slim turbaned Indians blew through long pipes
of reed or brass, and charmedor feigned to charm great hooded snakes and
horrible horned adders. The harsh intervalsand shrilled discords of barbaric music stirred him

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at times when Schubert's Grace and Chopin'sBeautiful Sorrows, and the mighty harmonies of
Baethoven himself fell unheeded. On hisear, he collected together from all parts
of the world the strangest instruments thatcould be found either in the tombs of
dead nations or among the few savagetribes that have survived contact with Western civilizations,

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and loved to touch and try them. He had the mysterious houru paris
of the Rio Negro Indians, thatwomen are not allowed to look at,
and that even the youths may notsee till they have been subjected to fasting
and scourging. And the earthen jarsof the Peruvians that have the shrill cries
of birds and flutes of human bones, such as Alfonso de Ovarier heard in

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Chile. And the sonorous green jaspersthat are found near Akuzca and give forth
a note of singular sweetness. Hehad painted goods filled with pebbles that rattle
when they were shaken. The longclarin of the Mexicans, into which the
performer does not blow, that throughwhich he inhales the air. The harsh

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ture of the Amazon tribes that issounded by the sentinels who sit all day
long in high trees and can beheard, it is said, at a
distance of three leagues. The taponnastri that has two vibrating tongues of wood
and is beaten with sticks that aresmeared with an elastic gum obtain from the
milky juice of plants. The yotelbells of the Aztecs that are hung in

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clusters like gray apes. And ahuge cylindrical drum covered with the skins of
great serpents, like the one thatBernard Dillard saw when he went with Cortes
into the Mexican Temple, and ofwhose doleful sound he had left us so
vivid a description. The fantastic characterof these instruments fascinated him, and he

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felt a curious delight in the thoughtthat art, like nature, has her
monstrous things, of bestial shape andwith hideous voices. Yet after some time
he wearied of them, and wouldsit in his box at the opera,
either alone or with Lord Henry,listening in rapt pleasure to Tarnoiser, and

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seeing in the prelude to that greatwork of art a presentation of the tragedy
of his own soul. On oneoccasion he took up the study of jewels
and appeared at a costume ball asAnne Dejoieu's Admiral of France, in a
rests covered with five hundred and sixtypearls. This taste enthralled him for years,

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and indeed may be said never tohave left him. He would offer
spend a whole day settling and resettlingin their cases the various stones that he
had collected, such as the olivegreen chryso berrow that turns red by lamplight,
the symophane with its wirelike line ofsilver, the pistachio colored parido rose

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pink and wine yellow topazes, carbunclesof fiery scarlet with tremulous four rayed stars,
flame red cinnamon stones orangine violet spinels, and amethysts with their alternate layers
of ruby and sapphire. He lovedthe red gold of the sunstone, and

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the moonstones pearly whiteness, and thebroken rainbow of the milky opal. He
procured from Amsterdam three emeralds of extraordinarysize and richness of color, and had
a turquoise de la vier roche thatwas the envy of all the connoisseurs.
He discovered wonderful stories also about jewels. In Alfonso's Clericalis Disciplina, a serpent

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was mentioned with eyes of real Jacinth, and in the Romantic History of Alexander,
the conqueror of Amethea was said tohave found in the veil of Jordan
snakes with collars of real emeralds growingon their backs. There was a gem
in the brain of the dragon PhilostratusToleus, and by the exhibition of golden

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letters in a scarlet robe, themonster could be thrown into a magical sleep
and slain. According to the greatalchemist Pierre de Boniface, the diamond rendered
a man invisible, and the agateof India made him eloquent. The Cornelian
appeased anger, and the hyacinth provokedsleep, and the amethyst drove away the

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fumes of wine. The garnet castout demons, and the hydropicus deprived the
Moon of her color. The Seloniteswaxed and weighed with the moon, and
the melicus that discovers thieves could beeffected only by the blood of kids.
Leonardus Camillus had seen a white stonetaken from the brain of a newly killed

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toad that was a certain antidote againstpoison. The bazure that was found in
the heart of the Arabian deer wasa charm that could cure the plague,
and the nests of Arabian birds wasthe aspilates that, according to Democritus,
kept the wearer from any danger byfire. The King of Ceylon rode through

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his city with a large ruby inhis hand as the ceremony of his coronation.
The gates of the Palace of John, the priest were made of sardius,
with the horn of the horned snakein rot, so that no man
might bring poison within. Over thegable were two golden apples, in which
were two carbuncles, so that thegold might shine by day in the carbuncles

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by night. In Lodges Strange Romance, a marguerite of America, it was
stated that in the chamber of thequeen one could behold all the chaste ladies
of the world, in chaste,out of silver, looking through fair mirrors
of chrysolites, carbuncles, sapphires,and green emeralds. Marco Polo had seen

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the inhabitants of a zimponggu placed rosecolored pearls in the mouths of the dead.
A sea monster had been enamored ofthe pearl that the diver brought to
King Parosis, and had slain thethief, and mourned for seven moons over
its loss. When the huns luredthe king into the great pit, he

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flung it away. Procopius tells thestory, nor was it ever found again,
though the Emperor Anastasius offered five hundredweight of gold pieces for it.
The king of Malabar had shown toa certain Venetian a rosary of three hundred
and four pearls, one for everygod that he worshiped. When the Duke

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of Valentine Noir, son of Alexanderthe sixth, visited Louis the twelfth in
France, his horse was loaded withgold leaves, according to Brontons, and
his cap had double rows of rubiesthat threw out a great light. Charles
of England had ridden in stirrups hungwith four hundred and twenty one diamonds.
Richard the Second had a coat valuedat thirty thousand marks, which was covered

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with balas rubies. Paul described Henrythe eighth on his way to the tower
previous to his coronation, as wearinga jacket of raised gold, the placard
embroidered with diamonds and other rich stones, and a great batterik about his neck
of large bellasses. The favorites ofJames the First wore earrings of emeralds set

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in gold. Philigrain Edward the Secondgave to Piers Gaveston a suit of red
gold armor studded with jacinths, acollar of gold roses set with turquoise stones,
and a skull cap par seam withpearls. Henry the second wore jeweled
gloves reaching to the elbow, andhad a hot glove sown with twelve rubies

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and fifty two great orients. Theducal hat of Charles the Rash, the
last Duke of Burgundy of his race, was hung with pear shaped pearls and
studded with sapphires. How exquisite lifehad once been, how gorgeous in its
pomp and decoration, even to breed. The luxury of the dead was wonderful.

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Then he turned his attention to embroideriesand to the tapestries that performed the
office of frescoes in the chill roomsof the northern nations of Europe. As
he investigated the subject, and hehad always had an extraordinary faculty of becoming
absolutely absorbed for the moment. Inwhatever he took up, he was almost
saddened by the reflection of the ruinthat time brought on beautiful and wonderful things

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he at any rate had escaped.That summer followed summer, and the yellow
Junquls bloomed and died many times,and knights of horror repeated the story of
their shame. But he was unchanged, No winter marred his face or stained
his flowerlike bloom. How different itwas with material things. Where had they

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passed to? Where was the greatcrocus colored robe on which the gods fought
against the giants, that had beenworked by brown girls for the pleasure of
Athena. Where the huge valerium thatNero had stretched across the colisseum at Rome,
that Titan sail of purple, onwhich was represented the starry sky,

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and Apollo driving a cheriet drawn bywhite, gilt brained steeds. He longed
to see the curious table napkins wroughtfor the priests of the Sun, at
which was displayed all the dainties andvins that could be wanted for a feast.
The mortuary cloth of King Chalperic withits three hundred golden bees, the

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fantastic robes that excited the indignation ofthe Bishop of Pontus, and were figured
with lions, panthers, bears,dogs, forests, rocks, hunters,
all in fact that a painter couldcopy from nature. And the coat that
Shier of Ourrion once wore, onthe sleeves of which were embroidered the verses

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of a song beginning Madame jesuite toJoieu, the musical accompaniment of the words
being wrought in gold thread, andeach note of square shape in those days
formed with four pearls. He readof the room that was repaired at the
Palace of ram for the use ofQueen Joan of Burgundy, and was decorated

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with thirteen hundred and twenty one parrotsmade embroidery emblazoned with the king's arms,
and five hundred and sixty one butterflies, whose wings were similarly ornamented with the
arms of the Queen. The wholeworked in gold. Catherine de Medici had
a morning bed made for her ofblack velvet powdered with crescents and suns.

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Its curtains were of damask with leafyreefs and garlands, figured upon a gold
and silver ground, and fringed alongthe edges with embroideries of pearls. And
it stood in a room hung withrows of the Queen's devices and cut black
velvet upon cloth of silver. Louisthe fourteenth had gold embroidered caryatides fifteen feet

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high in his apartments. The statebed of Sobieski, King of Poland,
was made of Smyrna gold brocade,embroidered turquoises with verses from the Koran.
Its supports were of silver guilt,beautifully chaste and profusely set with enameled and
jeweled medallions. It had been takenfrom the Turkish camp before Vienna, and

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the standard of Mohammed had stood beneaththe trembulous guilt of its canopy, and
so for a whole year he soughtto accumulate the most exquisite specimens that he
could find of textual and embroidered work, getting the dainty Delhi muslins, finely
wrought with gold threaded palmates and stitchedover with iridescent beetles wings the Daka gauzes

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that, from their transparency are knownin the East as woven air and running
water and evening dew, strange featheredclaws from Java, Elaborate yellow Chinese hangings,
books found in tawny satins or fairblue silks and wrought with fleur de
lis birds and images, veils oflosses worked in Hungary, point Sicilian brocades

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and stiff Spanish velvets. Georgian workwith its gilt coins, and Japanese faucusas
with her green toned golds and theirmarvelously plumaged birds. He had a special
passion also for ecclesiastical vestments, asindeed he had for everything connected with the

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service of the church. In thelong cedar chests that line the west gallery
of his house, he had storedaway many rare and beautiful specimens of what
is really the raiment of the brideof Christ, who must wear purple and
jewels and fine linen that she mayhide the pallid, macerated body that is

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worn by the suffering that she seeksfor, and wounded by self inflicted pain.
He possessed a gorgeous cape of crimsonsilk and gold thread damask, figured
with a repeating pattern of golden pomegranatesset in six petalled blossoms, beyond which
on either side was the pineapple devicebrought in seed curls. The orfrees were

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divided into panels representing scenes from thelife of the Virgin, and the coronation
of the Virgin was figured in coloredsilks upon the hood. This was Italian
work of the fifteenth century. Anothercape was of green velvet embroidered with heart
shaped groups of acanthus leaves from whichspread long stemmed white blossoms, the details

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of which were picked out with silverthread and colored crystals. The morse boris
Seraff's head in gold thread braised work. The orfrees were woven in a diaper
of red and gold silk, andwere starred with medallions of many saints and
martyrs, among whom was Saint Sebastian. He had chassibles also of amber colored

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silk and blue silk, and goldbrocade and yellow silk damask and cloth of
gold figured with representations of the Passionand the crucifision of Christ, and embroidered
with lions and peacocks and other emblems. Dalmatics of white satin and pink silk,
damask colored with tulips and dolphins,and fleur de lis all their frontals

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of crimson velvet and blue linen,and many corporals chalice, vales and sedaria.
In the mystic offices to which suchthings were put, there was something
that quickened his imagination, for thesetreasures and everything that he collected in his
lovely house were to be to himmeans of forgetfulness, modes by which he

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could escape for a season from thefear that seemed in him at times to
be almost too great to be born. Upon the walls of the lonely locked
room where he had spent so muchof his boyhood, he had hung with
his own hands the terrible portrait,whose changing features showed him the real degradation

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of his life, and in frontof it had draped the purple and gold
pole as a curtain. For weekshe would not go there, would forget
the hideous painted thing, and getback his light heart, his wonderful joyousness,
his passionate absorption in mere existence.Then suddenly some night he would creep

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out of the house, go downto dreadful places near Bluegate Fields, and
stay there day after day until hewas driven away. On his return he
would sit in front of the picture, sometimes loathing it and himself, but
filled at other times with that prideof individualism that is half the fascination of

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sin, and smiling with secret pleasureat the misshapen shadow that had to bear
the burden that should have been hisown. After a few years, he
could not endure to be long outof England, and gave up the villa
that he had shared at through Villewith Lord Henry, as well as the

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little white Walden house at Algiers,where they had more than once spent the
winter. He hated to be separatedfrom the picture that was such a part
of his life, and was alsoafraid that during his absence some one might
gain access to the room in spiteof the elaborate bars that he had caused
to be placed upon the door.He was quite conscious that this would tell

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them nothing. It was true thatthe port were still preserved under all the
foulness and ugliness of the face,its marked likeness to himself, But what
could they learn from that? Hewould laugh at anyone who tried to taunt
him. He had not painted it. What was it to him? How
vile and full of shame it looked? Even if he told them, would

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they believe it? Yet he wasafraid. Sometimes, when he was at
his great house in Nottinghamshire, entertainingthe fashionable young men of his own rank
who were his chief companions, andastounding the county by the wanton luxury and
gorgeous splendor of his mode of life, he would suddenly leave his guests and

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rush back to town to see thatthe door had not been tampered with.
And that the picture was still there. What if it should be stolen?
The mere thought made him cold withhorror. Surely the world would know his
secret. Then perhaps the world alreadysuspected it. For while he fascinated many,

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there were not a few who distrustedhim. He was very nearly blackball
at the West End Club, ofwhich his birth and social position fully entitled
him to become a member. Andit was said that, on one occasion,
when he was brought by a friendinto the smoking room of the Churchill,
the Duke of Berwick and another gentlemangot up in a marked manner and

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went out. Curious stories became currentabout him after he had passed his twenty
fifth year. It was rumored thathe had been seen brawling with foreign sailors
in a low den at the distantparts of Whitechapel, and that he consorted
with thieves and coiners and knew themysteries of their trade. His extraordinary absences

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became notorious, and when he usedto reappear again in society, men would
whisper to each other in corners,or pass him with a sneer, or
look at him with cold, searchingeyes, as though they were determined to
discover his secrets. Of such insolencesand attempted slights, He of course took

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no notice, and in the opinionof most people, his frank, debonair
manner, his charming, boyish smile, and the infinite grace of that wonderful
youth that seemed never to leave him, were in themselves a sufficient answer to
the calumnies, for so they termedthem, that were circulated about him.

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It was remarked, however, thatsome of those who had been most intimate
with him appeared after a time toshun him. Women who had wildly adored
him, and for his sake,had braved all social censure and sat convention
at defiance, were seen to growpallid with shame or horror if Dorian Gray

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entered the room. Yet these whisperedscandals only increased in the eyes of many
his strange and dangerous charm. Hisgreat wealth was a certain element of security
society. Civilized society, at least, is never very ready to believe anything

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to the detriment of those who areboth rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively
that manners are of more importance thanmorals, and in its opinion, the
highest respectability is of much less valuethan the possession of a good chef.
And after all, it is avery poor consolation to be told that the

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man who has given one a baddinner or a poor wine is irreproachable in
his private life. Even the cardinalvirtues cannot atone for half cold entrees.
As Lord Henry remarked once in adiscussion on the subject, and there is
possibly a good deal to be saidfor his view. For the canons of
great society are or should be thesame as the canons of art. Form

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is absolutely essential to it. Itshould have the dignity of a ceremony as
well as its unreality, and shouldcombine the insincere character of a romantic play
with the wit and beauty that makessuch plays delightful to us. Is insincerity
such a terrible thing, I thinknot. It is merely a method by

(39:53):
which we can multiply our personalities suchat any rate. Dorian Gray's opinion.
He used to wonder at the shallowpsychology of those who conceive the ego in
man as a thing simple, primitive, reliable, and of one essence.
To him, man was a beingwith myriad lives and myriad sensations, a

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complex, multiform creature that bore withinitself strange legacies of thought and passion,
and whose very flesh was tainted withthe monstrous maladies of the dead. He
loved to stroll through the gaunt,cold picture gallery of his country house and
look at the various portraits of thosewhose blood flowed in his veins. Here

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was Philip Herbert, described by FrancisOsborne in his Memories on the Reigns of
Queen Elizabeth and King James, asone who was caressed by the court for
his handsome face, which kept himnot long company. Was it young Herbert's
life that he sometimes led had somestrange, poisonous germ crept from body to

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body till it had reached his own. Was it some dim sense of that
ruined grace that made him so suddenlyand almost without cause, give utterance in
Basil Hallward Studio to the mad prayerthat had so changed his life. Here,
in gold embroidered red doublets, jeweledsur coats, and gilt edged rough

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and wristbands, stood Sir Anthony Charard, with his silver and black armor piled
at his feet. What had thisman's legacy been had the lover of Jiovanna
of Naples bequeathed him some inheritance ofsin and shame? Were his own actions
merely the dreams that the dead manhad not dared to realize. Here from

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the fading canvas smiled Lady Elizabeth Devereux, in her gauze hood, pearl stomacher
and pink slashed sleeves. A flowerwas in her right hand, and her
left clasped an enameled collar of whiteand damask roses. On a table by
her side lay a mandolin and anapple. There were large green rosettes upon

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her little pointed shoes. He knewher life and the strange stories that were
told about her lovers. Had hesomething of her temperament in him? These
oval, heavy lidded eyes seemed tolook curiously at him. What of George
Willoughby, with his powdered hair andfantastic patches, How evil he looked?

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The face was saturnine and swarthy,and the sensual lips seemed to be twisted
with disdain. Delicate lace ruffles fellover the lean, yellow hands that were
so overladen with rings. He hadbeen a macaroni of the eighteenth century,
and the friend in his youth ofLord Ferris, what of the back,

(43:00):
and Lord Beckenham, the companion ofthe Prince Regent in his wildest days,
and one of the witnesses of thesecret marriage of Missus fitz Herbert. How
proud and handsome he was, withhis chestnut curls and insolent pose. What
passions had he bequeathed? The wildhad looked upon him as infamous he had

(43:22):
led the orgies at Carlton House.The star of the Garter glittered upon his
breast. Beside him hung the portraitof his wife, a pallid, thin
lipped woman in black. Her bloodalso stirred within him. How curious it
all seemed. And his mother,with her Lady Hamilton face and her moist

(43:44):
wine dashed lips. He knew whathe had got from her. He had
got from her his beauty, hispassion for the beauty of others. She
laughed at him in her loose,baccanted dress. There were vine leaves in
her hair, the purple spilled fromthe cup she was holding. The carnations
of the painting had withered, butthe eyes were still wonderful in their depth,

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and brilliancy of color. They seemedto follow him wherever he went.
Yet one had ancestors in literature aswell as one's own race, nearer perhaps
in type and temperament, many ofthem, and certainly with an influence of
which one was more absolutely conscious.There were times when it appeared to Dorian

(44:30):
Gray that the whole of history wasmerely the record of his own life,
not as he had lived it inact and circumstance, but as his imagination
had created it for him, asit had been in his brain and in
his passions. He felt that hehad known them, all, those strange,
terrible figures that had passed across thestage of the world and made sin

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so marvelous, an evil so fullof subtlety. It seemed seems to him
that in some mysterious way their liveshad been his own. The hero of
the wonderful novel that had so influencedhis life had himself known this curious fancy.

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In the seventh chapter, he tellshow, crowned with laurel lest lightning
might strike him, he had satas Tiberius in a garden at Capri,
reading the shameful books of Eliphontis,while dwarfs and peacocks strutted round him,
and the flute player marked the swingerof the censer. And as Caligula had

(45:34):
caroused with the green shirted jockeys intheir stables and supped in an ivory manger
with a jewel frontletted horse, Andas Domitian had wandered through a corridor lined
with marble mirrors, looking around forthe reflection of the dagger that was to
end his days, and sick withthat own, we had terrible tedium vitae

(45:55):
that comes on those to whom lifedenies nothing. And had peered through a
clear emerald at the red shambles ofthe circus, And then, in a
litter of pearl and purple, drawnby silver shod mules, had been carried
through the streets of pomegranates to ahouse of gold, and heard men cry
on Nero Caesar as he passed by. And as Elagabulus had painted his face

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with colors and plied the distaff amongthe women, and brought the moon from
Carthage and given her in mystic marriageto the Sun. Over and over again,
Dorian used to read this fantastic chapterand the two chapters immediately following,
in which, as in some curioustapestries or cunningly wrought enamels, were pictured

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the awful and beautiful forms of thosewhom vice and blood and weariness had made
monstrous or mad. Philippo, Dukeof Milan, who slew his wife and
painted her lips with a scarlet poison, that her lover might suck death from
the dead thing he fondled. PietroBarbi, the Venetian known as Paul the

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Second, who sought in his vanityto assume the title of Formosis, and
whose tiara, valued at two hundredthousand florins, was bought at the price
of a terrible sin. Johan MariaVisconti, who used hounds to chase living
men, and whose murdered body wascovered with roses by a harlot who had

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loved him, the Borgia on hiswhite horse, with Fratricide riding beside him,
and his mantle stained with the bloodof Perotto. Pietro Riario, the
young cardinal Archbishop of Florence, childand minion of Sixtus the Fourth, whose
beauty was equalled only by his debauchery, and who received Leonora of Aragon in

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a pavilion of white and crimson silk, filled with nymphs and centaurs, and
gilded a boy that he might serveat the feast of Ganymede. Or Islas
Ezzelin, whose melancholy could be curedonly by the spectacle of death, and
who had a passion for red blood, as other men have for red wine,
the son of the fiend, aswas reported, and one who had

(48:14):
cheated his father at dice when gamblingwith him for his own soul. John
Battista Chibo, who in mockery tookthe name of Innocence, and into whose
torpid veins the blood of three ladswas infused by a Jewish doctor. Zegismondo
Malatesta, the lover of Ezota andthe lord of Rimini, whose effigy was

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burned at Rome as the enemy ofGod, and man who strangled Polesina with
a napkin and gave poison to Jenavardestein a cup of emerald, and in
honor of a shameful passion, builta pagan church for Christian worship. Charles
the sixth, who had so wildlyadored his brother's wife that a leper had

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warned him of the insanity that wascoming on him, and who, when
his brain had sickened and grown strange, could only be soothed by saracen cards
painted with the images of love anddeath and madness, and in his trimmed
jerkin and jeweled cap and acanthus likecurls Griffinotto Balioni, who slew a story

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with his bride and simonetto with hispage, and whose comeliness was such that
as he lay dying in the yellowpiazza of Perugia, those who had hated
him could not choose but weep,and at Atalanta, who had cursed him,
blessed him. There was a horriblefascination in them all. He saw

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them at night, and they troubledhis imagination. In the day, the
Renaissance knew of strange manners of poisoning, poisoning by a helmet and a lighted
torch, by an embroidered glove anda jeweled fan, by a gilded pomander,
and by an amber chain. DorianGray had been poisoned by a book.

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There were moments when he looked onevil simply as a mode through which
he could realize his conception of thebeautiful end. Of Chapter eleven