The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde Chapter 08

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, chapter eight.
When his servant entered, he looked at him steadfastly and
wondered if he had thought of peering behind the screen.
The man was quite impassive and waited for his orders.

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Dorrian lit a cigarette and walked over to the glass
and glanced into it. He could see the reflection of
Victor's face perfectly. It was like a placid mask of servility.
There was nothing to be afraid of there. Yet he
thought it best to be on his guard. Speaking very slowly,
he told him to tell the housekeeper that he wanted

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to see her, and then to go to the frame
maker's and ask him to send two of his men
round at once. It seemed to him that as the
man left the room he peered in the direction of
the screen. Or was that only his fancy. After a
few moments, Missus Leaf, a dear old lady in a
black silk dress with a photograph of the late mister

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Leaf framed in a large gold brooch at her neck
and an old fashioned thread mittens on her wrinkled hands,
bustled into the room. Well Master Dorian. She said, what
can I do for you? I beg your pardon, sir.
Here came a courtesy. I shouldn't call you Master Dorrian
any more, but Lord bless you, sir. I have known
you since you were a baby, and many's the trick

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you've played on poor old Leaf. Not that you are
not always a good boy, sir, but boys will be boys,
Master Dorrian, and Jam is a temptation to the young,
isn't it, sir? He laughed. You must always call me
Master Dorrian Leaf. I will be very angry with you
if you don't. And I assure you I am quite
as fond of Jam now as I used to be,

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only when I am asked out to tea. I am
never offered any I want you to give me the
key of the room at the top of the house,
the old schoolroom, Dorian. Why it's full of dust. I
must get it arranged and put straight before you get
into it. It is not fit for you to see,
Master Dorian, it is not Indeed, I don't want it
put straight Leif I only want the key, well, Master Dorrian,

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you'll be covered with cobwebs if he goes into it.
Why it hasn't been open for nearly five years, not
since his lordship died. He winced at the mention of
his dead uncle's name. He had hateful memories of him.
That does not matter, Leif, he replied. All I want
is the key, and here is the key, Master Dorrian,

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said the old lady, after going over the contents of
a bunch with tremulously uncertain hands. Here is the key.
I'll have it off the ring in a moment. But
you don't think of living up there, Master Dorian, And
you are so comfortable here, No, Leaf, I don't. I
merely want to see the place and perhaps store something
in it. That's all, thank you, Leif. I hope your

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rheumatism is better, and mind you send me up jam
for breakfast. Missus Leaf shook her head. Them foreigners don't
understand jam, Master Dorian. They calls it compot. But I'll
bring it to you myself some morning, if he lets me.
That will be very kind of you, Leif, he answered,
looking at the key, and having made him an elaborate courtesy.

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The old lady left the room, her face wreathed in smiles.
She had a strong objection to the French valet. It
was a poor thing, she felt, for any one to
be born a foreigner. As the door closed, Dorian put
the key in his pocket and looked round the room.
His eye fell on a large purple satin coverlet heavily

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embroidered with gold, a splendid piece of late seventeenth century
Venetian work that his uncle had found in a convent
near Bologna. Yes, that would serve to rap the dreadful
Veni in It had perhaps served often as a pall
for the dead. Now it was to hide something that
had a corruption of its own, worse than the corruption
of death itself, something that would breed horrors and yet

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would never die. What the worm was to the corpse,
his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas.
They would mar its beauty and eat away its grace.
They would defile it and make it shameful, and yet
the thing would still live on It would always be alive.

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He shuddered, and for a moment he regretted that he
had not told Basil the true reason why he had
wished to hide the picture away. Basil would have helped
him to resist Lord Henry's influence and the still more
poisonous influences that came from his own temperament. The love
that he bore him for It was really love, had

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something noble and intellectual in it. It was not that
merely physical admiration of beauty that is born of the
senses and that dies when the senses tire. It was
such a love as Michael Angelo had known, and Montaigne
and Winkleman, and Shakespeare himself. Yes, Basil could have saved him,
but it was too late. Now the pass could always

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be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But
the future was inevitable. There were passions in him that
would find their terrible outlet, dreams that would make the
shadow of their evil reel. He took up from the
couch the great purple and gold texture that covered it,

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and holding it in his hands. Passed behind the screen
was the face on the canvas, viler than before. It
seemed to him that it was unchanged, and yet his
loathing of it was intensified. Gold hair, blue eyes, and
rose red lips, they all were there. It was simply

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the expression that had altered that was horrible in its
cruelty compared to what he saw in it, of censure
or rebuke, how shallow Basil's reproaches about sybil Vane had been,
how shallow and of what little account his own soul
was looking out at him from the canvas and calling
him to judgment. A look of pain came across him,

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and he flung the rich Paul over the picture. As
he did so, a knock came to the door. He
passed out as his servant entered. The persons are here, monsieur.
He felt that the man must be got rid of
it once. He must not be allowed to know where
the picture was being taken to. There was something sly
about him, and he had thoughtful, treacherous eyes. Sitting down

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at the writing table, he scribbled a note to Lord Henry,
asking him to send round something to read, and reminding
him that they were to meet at age fifteen that evening.
Wait for an answer, he said, handing it to him,
and show the men in here. In two or three
minutes there was another knock, and mister Ashton himself, the
celebrated frame maker of South Audley Street, came in with

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a somewhat rough looking young assistant. Mister Ashton was a florid,
red whiskered little man whose admiration for art was considerably
tempered by the inveterate impecuniosity of most of the artists
who dealt with him. As a rule, he never left
his shop. He waited for people to come to him,

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but he always made an exception in favor of Dory
and Gray. There was something about Dorian that charmed everybody.
It was a pleasure even to see him. What can
I do for you, mister Gray, he said, rubbing his
fat freckled hands. I thought I would do myself the
honor of coming round in person. I have just got

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a beauty of a frame, sir picked it up at
a sale. Old Florentine, came from Fontill I believe admirably
suited for a religious picture, mister Gray. I am sorry
you have given yourself the trouble of coming round, mister Ashton.
I will certainly drop in and look at the frame,
though I don't go in much for religious art, but

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to day I only want to picture carry to the
top of the house for me. It is rather heavy,
so I thought I would ask you to lend me
a couple of your men. No trouble at all, mister Gray.
I am delighted to be of any service to you,
Which is the work of art. Sir, this replied Dorion,
moving the screen back? Can you move it? Covering and

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all just as it is? I don't want it to
get scratched. Going upstairs there will be no difficulty, Sir,
said the genial FrameMaker, beginning with the aid of his
assistant to unhook the picture from the long brass change
by which it was suspended. And now where shall we
carry it to mister Gray. I will show you the way,

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mister Ashton, if you will kindly follow me. Perhaps you'd
better go in front. I am afraid it is right
at the top of the house. You will go up
at the front staircase, as it is wider. He held
the door open for them, and they passed out into
the hall and began the ascent. The elaborate character of
the frame has made the picture extremely bulky. And now

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and then, in spite of the obsequious protests of mister Ashton,
who had a true tradesman's dislike of seeing a gentleman
do anything useful, Dorian put his hand to it so
as to help them. Something of a load to carry, Sir,
gasped the little man. When they reached the top landing,
and he wiped his shiny forehead. A terrible load to carry,

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murmured Dorian as he unlocked the door that opened into
the room that was to keep for him the curious
secret of his life and hide his soul from the
eyes of men. He had not entered the place for
more than four years, not indeed, since he had used
it first as a play room when he was a child,
and then as a study when he grew somewhat older.

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It a large, well proportioned room which had been specially
built by the last Lord Sherard for the use of
the little nephew, whom, being himself childless, and perhaps for
other reasons, he had always hated and desired to keep
at a distance. It did not appear to Dorian to
have much changed. There was the huge Italian casson, with

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its fantastically painted panels and its tarnished gilt moldings in
which he had so often hidden himself as a boy.
There was a satin wood bookcase filled with his dogged
school books. On the wall behind it was hanging the
same ragged Flemish tapestry, where a faded king and queen
were playing chess in a garden while a company of

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hawkers rode by, carrying hooded birds on their gauntleted wrists.
Oh well, he recalled it all. Every moment of his
lonely childhood came back to him. As he looked round,
he remembered the stainless purity of his boyish life, and
it seemed horrible to him that it was here that
the fatal portrait was to be hidden away. How little

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he had thought in those dead days of all that
was in store for him. But there was no other
place in the house so secure from prying eyes as this.
He had the key, and no one else could enter it.
Beneath its purple pall, the face painted on the canvas
could grow bestial, sodden and unclean. What did it matter?

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No one could see it. He himself would not see it.
Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul?
He kept his youth, that was enough, And besides, might
not his nature grow finer? After all, there was no
reason that the future should be so full of shame.
Some love might come across his life and purify him,

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and shield him from those sins that seemed to be
already stirring in spirit and in flesh. Those curious unpictured
sins whose very mystery lent them their subtlety and their charm.
Perhaps some day the cruel look would have passed away
from the scarlet, sensitive mouth, and he might show to

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the world Basil Hallward's masterpiece. No, that was impossible. The
thing upon the canvas was growing old, hour by hour
and week by week. Even if it escaped the hideousness
of sin, the hideousness of age was in store for it.
The cheeks would become hollow or flacid. The yellow crow's

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feet would creep round the fading eyes and make them horrible.
The hair would lose its brightness. The mouth would gape droop,
would be foolish or gross, as the mouths of old
men are. There would be the wrinkled throat, the cold,
blue veined hands, the twisted body that he remembered in
the uncle who had been so stern to him in

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his boyhood. The picture had to be concealed. There was
no help for it. Bring it in, mister Ashton, please,
he said, wearily, turning round. I'm sorry I kept you
so long. I was thinking of something else. Always glad
to have a rest, mister Gray, answered the FrameMaker, who

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was still gasping for breath. Where shall we put it, sir? Oh?
Anywhere here this will do. I don't want to have
it hung up, Just lean it against the wall. Thanks,
Might one look at the work of art, Sir, Dorian started.
It would not interest you, mister Ashton, he said, keeping
his eye on the old man. He felt ready to

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leap on him and fling him to the ground if
he dared to lift the gorgeous hanging that concealed the
secret of his life. I won't trouble you any more now,
I am much obliged for your kindness in coming round.
Not at all, Not at all, mister Gray, ever ready
to do anything for you. Sir and mister Ashton trapped downstairs,
followed by the assistant, who glanced back at Dorian with

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a look of shy wonder in his rough, uncomely face.
He had never seen any one so marvelous. When the
sound of their footsteps had died away, Dorian locked the
door and put the key in his pocket. He felt
safe now. No one would ever look on the horrible thing,

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No eye but his would ever see his shame. On
reaching the library, he found that it was after five
o'clock and that the tea had already been brought up
on a little table of dark perfumed wood, thickly encrusted
with nacre, A present from his guardian's wife, Lady Radley,
who had spent the preceding winter in Cairo, was lying

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a note from Lord Henry, and beside it was a
book bound in yellow paper, the cover slightly torn and
the edges soiled. A copy of the third edition of
Saint James's Gazette had been placed on the tea tray.
It was evident that Victor had returned. He wondered if
he had met the men in the hall as they
were leaving the house, and had wormed out of them

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what they had been doing, he would be sure to
miss the picture, had no doubt missed it already while
he had been laying the tea things. The screen had
not been replaced, and the blank space on the wall
was visible. Perhaps some night he might find him creeping
upstairs and trying to force the door of the room.
It was a horrible thing to have a spy in

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one's house. He had heard of rich men who had
been blackmailed all their lives by some servant who had
read a letter or overheard a conversation, or picked up
a card with an address, or found beneath a pillow
a withered flower or a bit of crumpled lace. He sighed, and,
having poured himself out some tea, opened Lord Henry's note.

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It was simply to say that he sent him round
the evening paper and a book that might interest him,
and that he would be the club at eight fifteen.
He opened the Saint James's languidly and looked through it.
A red pencil mark on the fifth page caught his eye.
He read the following paragraph. Inquest on an Actress. An

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inquest was held this morning at the Bell Tavern, Hoxton Road,
by mister Danby, the District Coroner, on the body of
Sybil Vane, a young actress recently engaged at the Royal Theater, Holborn.
A verdict of death by misadventure was returned. Considerable sympathy
was expressed for the mother of the deceased, who was

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greatly affected during the giving of her own evidence, and
that of doctor Byyl, who had made the post mortem
examination of the deceased. He frowned slightly, and, tearing the
paper in two, went across the room and flung the
pieces into a gilt basket. How ugly it all was,
and how horribly real ugliness made things. He felt little

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annoyed with Lord Henry for having sent him the account,
and who was certainly stupid of him to have marked
it with red pencil. Victor might have read it. The
man knew more than enough English for that. Perhaps he
had read it and had begun to suspect something. And
and yet what did it matter? What had Dorian Gray

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to do with sybil Van's death? It was nothing to
fear Dorian Gray had not killed her. His eye fell
on the yellow book that Lord Henry had sent him.
What was it, he wondered. He went towards the little
pearl colored octagonal stand that had always looked to him
like the work of some strange Egyptian bees who rotten silver,

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and took the volume up. He flung himself into an
arm chair and began to turn over the leaves. After
a few minutes he became absorbed. It was the strangest
book he had ever read. It seemed to him that,
in exquisite raiment, and to the delicate sound of flutes,
the sins of the world were passing in dumb show
before him. Things that he had dimly dreamed of were

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suddenly made real to him, things of which he had
never dreamed were gradually revealed. It was a novel without
a plot, and with only one character, being indeed simply
a psychological study of a certain young Parisian who spent
his life trying to realize in the nineteenth century all

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the passions and modes of thought that belonged to every
century except his own, and to sum up, as it were,
in himself the various moods through which the world spirit
had ever passed, loving for their mere artificiality those renunciations
that men had unwisely called virtue as much as those

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natural rebellions that wise men still call sin. The style
in which it was written was that curious, jeweled style,
vivid and obscure at once, full of argot and archaisms,
of technical expressions, and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterizes the
work of some of the finest artists of the French

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School of Decadence. There were in it metaphors as monstrous
as orchids, and as evil in color. The life of
the senses were described in the terms of mystical philosophy.
One hardly knew at times whether one was reading this
spiritual ecstasies of some medieval saint or the morbid confessions

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of a modern sinner. It was a poisonous book. The
heavy odor of incense seemed to cling about its pages
and to trouble the brain. The mere cadence of the senses,
The subtle monotony of their music, so full as it was,
of complex refrains and movements elaborately repeated, produced in the

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mind of the lad as he passed from chapter to chapter,
a form of reverie, a malady of dreaming that made
him unconscious of the falling day, and the creeping shadows,
cloudless and pierced by one solitary star, a copper green
sky gleamed through the windows. He read on by its

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wan light till he could read no more. Then, after
his valid had reminded him several times of the lateness
of the hour, he got up, and, going into the
next room, placed the book on the little florentine table
that always stood at his bedside, and began to dress
for dinner. It was almost nine o'clock before he reached
the club, where he found Lord Henry, sitting alone in

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the morning room, looking very bored. I am so sorry, Harry,
he cried, But really it is entirely your fault. That
book you sent me so fascinated me. I forgot what
the time was. I thought you would like it, replied
his host, rising from his chair. I didn't say I
liked it, Harry, I said it fascinated me. There is

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a great difference. Ah, if you have discovered that, you
have discovered a great deal, murmured Lord Henry with his
curious smile. Come let us go in to dinner. It
is dreadfully late, and I'm afraid the champagne will be
too much iced. End of chapter eight of the Picture

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of Dorrian Gray