The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde Chapter 13

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, chapter thirteen.
There is no good way telling me you are going
to be good, Dorian, cried Lord Henry, dipping his white
fingers into the red copper bowl filled with rose water.

(00:23):
You are quite perfect. Pray, don't change. Dorian shook his head. No, Harry,
I have done too many dreadful things in my life.
I am not going to do any more. I began
my good actions yesterday. Where were you yesterday in the country, Harry.
I was staying at a little inn by myself, My

(00:46):
dear boy, said Lord Henry, smiling. Anybody can do good
in the country. There are no temptations there. That is
the reason why people who live out of town are
so uncivilized. There are only two ways, as you know,
of becoming civilized. One is by being cultured. The other

(01:07):
is by being corrupt. Country people have no opportunity of
being either, so they stagnate. Culture and corruption murmured Dorian.
I have known something of both. It seems to me
curious now that they should ever be found together. For
I have a new ideal, Harry. I am going to alter.

(01:31):
I think I have altered. You have not told me
what your good action was or did you say you
had done more than one? I can tell you, Harry,
it is not a story I could tell to anyone else.
I spared somebody. It sounds vain, but you understand what

(01:51):
I mean. She was quite beautiful and wonderfully like Sybil Vaine.
I think it was that which first attracted me to her.
You remember Sybil, don't you? How longer that seems? Well?
Hetty was not one of our own class, of course,
she was simply a girl in a village. But I

(02:13):
really loved her. I am quite sure that I loved her.
All during this wonderful may that we have been having,
I used to run down and see her two or
three times a week. Yesterday she met me in a
little orchard. The apple blossoms kept tumbling down on her hair,
and she was laughing. We were to have gone away

(02:35):
together this morning at dawn. Suddenly I determined to leave
her as flower like as I had found her. I
should think the novelty of the emotion must have given
you a thrill of real pleasure, Dorian interrupted, Lord Henry,
But I can finish your idol for you. You gave
her good advice and broke her heart. That was the

(02:58):
beginning of your reformation. Harry, You're horrible. You mustn't say
these dreadful things. Hetty's heart has not broken. Of course,
she cried and all that, but there is no disgrace
upon her. She can live like Perdita in her garden
and weep over a faithless Florizelle, said Lord Henry, laughing,

(03:22):
My dear Dorian, you have the most curtious, boyish moods.
Do you think this girl will ever be really contented
now with any one of her own rank? I suppose
she will be married some day to a rough carter
or a grinning plowman. Well, having met you and loved you,

(03:42):
we'll teach her to despise her husband, and she will
be wretched from a moral point of view. I don't
really think much of your great renunciation, even as a beginning.
It is poor. Besides, how do you know that Hetty
isn't floating at them in some mill pond with water

(04:03):
lilies round her head like Ophelia. I can't bear this, Harry.
You mock at everything and then suggest the most serious tragedies.
I'm sorry, I told you now. I don't care what
you say to me. I know I was right in
acting as I did poor Hetty. As I rode past
the farm this morning, I saw her white face at

(04:25):
the window, like a spray of jasmine. Don't let me
talk about it anymore, and don't try to persuade me
that the first good action I have done for years,
the first little bit of self sacrifice I have ever known,
is really a sort of sin. I want to be better.
I am going to be better. Tell me something about yourself.

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What is going on in town. I have not been
to the club for days. The people are still discussing
poor Basil's disappearance. I should have thought they had got
tired of that by this time, said Dorian, pouring himself
out some wine and frowning slightly. My dear boy, they
have only been talking about it for six weeks, and

(05:12):
the public are not really equal to the mental strain
of having more than one topic every three months. They
have been very fortunate lately, however, they have had my
own divorce case and Alan Campbell's suicide. Now they have
got the mystidious disappearance of an artist. Scotland Yard still
insists that the man in the gray ulster who left

(05:34):
Victoria by the midnight train on the seventh of November
was poor Basil, and French police declare that Basil never
arrived in Paris at all. I suppose in about a
fortnight we will be told that he has been seen
in San Francisco. It is an odd thing, but every

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one who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco.
It must be a lifeful city and possess all the
attractions of the next world. What do you think has
happened to Basil? Asked Dorion, holding up his Burgundy against
the light and wondering how it was that he could
discuss the matter so calmly. I have not the slightest idea.

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If Basil chooses to hide himself, it is no business
of mine. If he is dead, un I don't want
to think about him. Death is the only thing that
ever terrifies me. I hate it. One can survive everything nowadays,
except that death and vulgarity are the only two facts
in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away. Let

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us have our coffee in the music room, Dorian, you
must play Chopin for me. The man with whom my
wife ran away played Chopin exquisitely Paul. Victoria was very
fond of her. The house is rather lonely without her.
Dorian said nothing, but rose from the table, and, passing

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into the next room, sat down to the piano and
let his fingers stray across the keys. After the coffee
had been brought in, he stopped and, looking over at
Lord Henry, said, Harry, did it ever occur to you
that Basil was murdered? Lord Henry yawned. Basil had no

(07:24):
enemies and always wore a Waterbury watch. Why should he
be murdered? He was not clever enough to have enemies.
Of course, he had a wonderful genius for painting. But
a man can paint like Velasquez and yet to be
as dull as possible. Bazil was really rather dull. He

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only interested me once, and that was when he told
me years ago that he had a wild adoration for you.
I was very fond of Basil, said Dorian, with a
sad look in his eyes. But don't be people say
that he was murdered. Oh, some of the papers do.
It does not seem to be probable. I know there

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are dreadful places in Paris, but Basil was not the
sort of man to have gone to them. He had
no curiosity. It was his chief defect. Play me a nocturne, Dorian,
and as you play, tell me in a low voice,
how you've kept your youth. You must have some secret.
I am only ten years older than you are, and

(08:28):
I am wrinkled and bald 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.
You are rather cheeky, very shy, and absolutely extraordinary. You
have changed, of course, but not in appearance. I wish
you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth, hm,

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I would do anything in the world except take exercise,
get up early, or be respectable youth. There's nothing like it.
It's absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth. The
only people whose opinions I listen to now with any
respect are people much younger than myself. They seem in

(09:12):
front of me. Life has revealed to them her last
wonder As for the aged, I always contradict the aged.
I do it on principle. If you ask them their
opinion on something that happened yesterday. They solemnly give you
their opinions current in eighteen twenty, when people wore high

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stocks and knew absolutely nothing. How wonderful that thing you
are playing is. I wonder did Chopin write it in
majorca mid the sea weeping around the villa, and the
spray salt dashing against the panes. This is marvelously romantic.

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What a blessing it is that there is one art
left to us that is not imitative. No, does I
want music tonight? It seems to me that you are
the young Apollo, and I am the young Marsias. Listening
to you, I have sorrows, Dorian, of my own, that
even you know nothing of the tragedy of old age.

(10:15):
Is not that one is old, but that one is young.
I am amazed sometimes at my own sincerity. Huh, Dorian,
How happy you are? What an exquisite life you have had.
You have drunk deeply of everything, You've crushed the grapes
against your palette. Nothing has been hidden from you, but

(10:37):
it has all been to you, no more than the
sound of music. It is not marred you. You are
still the same. I wonder what the rest of your
life will be spoiled by renunciations. At present you are
the perfect type. Don't make yourself incomplete. You are quite flawless.

(10:59):
Now you need not shake your head. You know you
are Besides, Dorian, don't deceive yourself. Life is not governed
by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves
and fibers, and slowly build up cells in which thought
hides itself and passion has its own dreams. You may

(11:21):
fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a chance
tone of color in a room or a morning sky,
a particular perfume though you had once loved, and that
brings strange memories with it, a line from a forgotten
poem that you would come across again, A cadence from
a piece of music that you had cease to play.

(11:42):
I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like
these that our lives depend. Browning writes about that somewhere,
but our own senses will imagine them for us. There
are moments when the odor of Heliotrope passes suddenly across me,
and I have to live the strangest year of my

(12:04):
life over again. I wish I could change places with you, Dorian.
The world has cried out against us both. But it
has always worshiped you, It always will worship you. You
are the type of what the age is searching for
and what it is afraid it has found. I am

(12:29):
so glad that you have never done anything, never carved
a statue or painted a picture, or produced anything outside
of yourself. Life has been your art. You've set yourself
to music, Your days have been your sonnets. Dorian rose

(12:49):
from the piano and passed his hand through his hair. Yes,
life has been exquisite, he murmured. But I'm not going
to have the same life, Harry, and you must not
say these extravagant things to me. You don't know everything
about me. I think that if you did, even you

(13:09):
would turn for me. You laugh, don't laugh. Why have
you stopped playing, Dorian? Go back and play the nocturn
over again. Look at that great honey colored moon that
hangs in the dusky air. She is waiting for you
to charm her, and if you play, she will come

(13:30):
closer to the earth. You won't let us go to
the club. Then it has been a charming evening, and
we must end it charmingly. There is some one who
wants immensely to know you, young Lord pool Bornmouth's eldest son.
He has already copied your neckties and has begged me

(13:50):
to introduce him to you. He's quite delightful and rather
reminds me of you. I hope not, said Dorian, with
a touch of pathos said his voice. But I am
tired to night, Harry. I won't go to the club.
It is nearly eleven, and I want to go to
bed early. Do stay. You have never played so well

(14:16):
as to night. There was something in your touch that
was wonderful. It had more expression than I have ever
heard from it before. It is because I'm going to
be good, he answered, smiling. I am a little changed already.
Don't change, Dorian at any rate. Don't change to me.

(14:37):
We must always be friends. Yet you poison me with
a book once. I should not forgive you that. Harry.
Promise me that you will never lend that book to
any one. It does harm my dear boy, you are
really beginning to morowize. You will soon soon be going

(15:01):
about warning people against all the sins of which you
have grown tired. You're much too delightful to do that. Besides,
it is no use you and I are what we
are and will be what we will be come round tomorrow.
I am going to ride at eleven and we might
go together. The park is quite lovely now, I don't

(15:23):
think there have been such lilac since the year I
met you. Very well, I will be here at eleven,
said Dorrian. Good Night Harry. As he reached the door,
he hesitated for a moment, as if he had something
more to say. Then he sighed and went out. It

(15:44):
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
a cigarette, two young men in evening dress past him.
He heard one of them whisper to the other, that
is Dorry and Gray. He remembered how pleased he used

(16:05):
to be when he was pointed out, or stared out,
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 told the girl whom he had
made love him that he was poor, and she had
believed him. He had told her once that he was

(16:26):
wicked and she had laughed at him and told him
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, and she had
everything that he had lost. When he reached home, he

(16:49):
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 he 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,

(17:11):
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

(17:31):
lives that had crossed his own, it had been the
fairest and most full of promise that he had brought
to shame. But was it all irretrievable? Was there no
hope for him? It was better not to think of
the past. Nothing could alter that. It was of himself

(17:53):
and of his own future that he had to think.
Alan Campbell had shot himself one night in his laboratory
and had not revealed the secret that he had been
forced to know. The excitement, such as it was over
Basil Hallward's disappearance would soon pass away, was already waning.
He was perfectly safe there. Nor indeed, was it the

(18:15):
death of Basil Hallward that weighed most upon his mind.
It was the living death of his own soul that
troubled him. Basil had painted the portrait that had marred
his life. He could not forgive him that it was
the portrait that had done everything. Basil had said things

(18:36):
to him that were unbearable, and that he had yet
borne with patience. The murder had been simply the madness
of a moment. As for Alan Campbell, his suicide had
been his own act. He had chosen to do it.
It was nothing to him. A new life, that was

(18:57):
what he wanted, that was what he was waiting for.
Surely had begun it already. He had spared one innocent thing.
At any rate, he would never again tempt innocence. He
would be good as he thought of hetty Merton. He
began to wonder if the portrait in the locked room
had changed. Surely was not still so horrible as it

(19:21):
had been. Perhaps if his life became pure, he would
be able to expel every sign of evil from the face.
Perhaps the signs of evil had already gone away. He
would go and look. He took the lamp from the
table and crept upstairs. As he unlocked the door, a

(19:41):
smile of joy flitted across his young face and lingered
for a moment about his lips. Yes, he would be good,
and the hideous thing that he had hidden away would
no longer be a terror to him. He felt as
if the load had been lifted from him already. He
went in, quietly, locking the door behind him, as was

(20:02):
his custom, and dragging the purple hanging from the portrait.
A cry of pain and indignation broke from him. He
could see no change, unless that in the eyes there
was a look of cunning, and the mouth the curved
wrinkle of the hypocrite. The thing was still loathsome, more loathsome,

(20:22):
if possible, than before, and the scarlet dew that spotted
the hands seemed brighter and more like blood newly spilt.
Had it been merely vanity that made him do his
one good deed, or the desire of a new sensation,
as Lord Henry had hinted with his mocking laugh, or

(20:46):
that passion to act apart that sometimes makes us do
things finer than we are ourselves, or perhaps all these?
Why was the red stain larger than it had been?
It seemed to have crept like a horrible disease over
the wrinkled fingers. There was blood on the painted feet,

(21:06):
as though the thing had dripped blood, even on the
hand that had not held the knife. Confess? Did it
mean that he was to confess, to give himself up
and be put to death? He laughed. He felt that
the idea was monstrous. Besides, who would believe him? Even
if he did confess. There was no trace of the

(21:28):
murdered man anywhere. Everything belonged to him had been destroyed.
He himself had burned what had been below stairs. The
world would simply say he was mad. They would shut
him up if he persisted in his story. Yet it
was his duty to confess, to suffer public shame, and
to make public atonement. There was a god who called

(21:49):
upon men to tell their sins to earth as well
as to heaven. Nothing that he could do would cleanse
him till he had told his own sin, his sin.
He shrugged his shoulders. The death of Basil Hallward seemed
very little to him. He was thinking of Hetty Merton.

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It was an unjust mirror, this mirror of his soul
that he was looking at. Vanity, curiosity, hypocrisy. Had there
been nothing more in his renunciation than that? There had
been something more? Or at least he thought so? But
who could tell? And this murder? Was it to dog

(22:30):
him all his life? Was he never to get rid
of the past? Was he really to confess? No? There
was only one bit of evidence left against him, the
picture itself. That was evidence. He would destroy it. Why

(22:55):
had he kept it so long? It had given him
pleasure once to watch it changing and growing old. Of
late he had felt no pleasure. It had kept him
awake at night when he had been away. He had
been filled with terror lest other eyes should look upon it.
It had brought melancholy across his passions. Its mere memory

(23:17):
had marred many moments of joy. It had been like
conscience to him, Yes, it had been conscience. He would
destroy it. He looked around and saw the knife that
had stabbed Basil Hallward. He cleaned it many times till
there was no stain left upon it. It was bright,

(23:38):
and it glistened as it had killed the painter. So
it would kill the painter's work and all that that meant.
It would kill the past, and when that was dead,
he would be free. He seized it had stabbed the
canvas with it, ripping the thing right up from top
to bottom. There was a crash heard and a cry.

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The cry was so horrible in its agony that the
frightened servants woke and crept out of their rooms. Two
gentlemen who were passing in the square below, stopped and
looked up at the great house. They walked on till
they met a policeman and brought him back. The man
rang the bell several times, but there was no answer.
The house was all dark, except for a light in

(24:23):
one of the top windows. After a time he went
away and stood in the portico of the next house
and watched. Whose house is there? Constable asked the elder
of two gentlemen, mister Dorian Gray, Sir. They looked at
each other as they walked away and sneered. One of
them was Sir Henry Ashton's uncle. Inside, in the servant's

(24:48):
put of the house, the half clad domestics were talking
in low whispers to each other. Old Missus Leaf was
crying and wringing her hands. Frances was as pale as death.
After about a quarter hour, he got the coachman and
one of the footmen and crept upstairs. They knocked, but
there was no reply. They called out, everything was still. Finally,

(25:12):
after vainly trying to force the door, they got on
the roof and dropped down on to the balcony. The
windows yielded easily, the bolts were old. When they entered,
they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of
their master as they had last seen him, in all
the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on

(25:34):
the floor was a dead man in evening dress, with
a knife in his heart. He was withered and wrinkled,
and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had
examined the rings that they had recognized who it was.

(25:55):
End of Chapter thirteen and end of the Picture of
Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde read by John Gonzalez w
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