The Picture of Dorian Gray

THE PREFACE

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
The Picture of Dorian Gray

CHAPTER I.

The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred
amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or
the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.
From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was
his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the
honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed
hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic
shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front
of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of
those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily
immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees
shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence
round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more
oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.
In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young
man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the
artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the
time, such public excitement and gave rise to so many strange conjectures.
As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully mirrored in his art, a
smile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed about to linger there. But he suddenly
started up, and closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to
imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he might awake.
“It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done,” said Lord Henry languidly.
“You must certainly send it next year to the Grosvenor. The Academy is too large and too vulgar.
Whenever I have gone there, there have been either so many people that I have not been able
to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not been able to see the
people, which was worse. The Grosvenor is really the only place.”
“I don’t think I shall send it anywhere,” he answered, tossing his head back in that odd way
that used to make his friends laugh at him at Oxford. “No, I won’t send it anywhere.”
Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows and looked at him in amazement through the thin blue
wreaths of smoke that curled up in such fanciful whorls from his heavy, opium-tainted cigarette.
“Not send it anywhere? My dear fellow, why? Have you any reason? What odd chaps you
painters are! You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you
seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than
being talked about, and that is not being talked about. A portrait like this would set you far above
all the young men in England, and make the old men quite jealous, if old men are ever capable
of any emotion.”
“I know you will laugh at me,” he replied, “but I really can’t exhibit it. I have put too much of
myself into it.”
The Picture of Dorian Gray

Lord Henry stretched himself out on the divan and laughed.

“Yes, I knew you would; but it is quite true, all the same.”
“Too much of yourself in it! Upon my word, Basil, I didn’t know you were so vain; and I really
can’t see any resemblance between you, with your rugged strong face and your coal-black hair,
and this young Adonis, who looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-leaves. Why, my dear
Basil, he is a Narcissus, and you—well, of course you have an intellectual expression and all
that. But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a
mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to
think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in
any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the
Church. But then in the Church they don’t think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty
what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he
always looks absolutely delightful. Your mysterious young friend, whose name you have never
told me, but whose picture really fascinates me, never thinks. I feel quite sure of that. He is
some brainless beautiful creature who should be always here in winter when we have no
flowers to look at, and always here in summer when we want something to chill our intelligence.
Don’t flatter yourself, Basil: you are not in the least like him.”
“You don’t understand me, Harry,” answered the artist. “Of course I am not like him. I know
that perfectly well. Indeed, I should be sorry to look like him. You shrug your shoulders? I am
telling you the truth. There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of
fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings. It is better not to be
different from one’s fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit
at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the
knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live—undisturbed, indifferent, and without
disquiet. They neither bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and
wealth, Harry; my brains, such as they are—my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray’s
good looks—we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.”
“Dorian Gray? Is that his name?” asked Lord Henry, walking across the studio towards Basil
Hallward.
“Yes, that is his name. I didn’t intend to tell it to you.”
“But why not?”
“Oh, I can’t explain. When I like people immensely, I never tell their names to any one. It is
like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that
can make modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one
only hides it. When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am going. If I did, I would
lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I dare say, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of
romance into one’s life. I suppose you think me awfully foolish about it?”
“Not at all,” answered Lord Henry, “not at all, my dear Basil. You seem to forget that I am
married, and the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary
for both parties. I never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am doing.
When we meet—we do meet occasionally, when we dine out together, or go down to the
Duke’s—we tell each other the most absurd stories with the most serious faces. My wife is very
good at it—much better, in fact, than I am. She never gets confused over her dates, and I
The Picture of Dorian Gray

always do. But when she does find me out, she makes no row at all. I sometimes wish she
would; but she merely laughs at me.”
“I hate the way you talk about your married life, Harry,” said Basil Hallward, strolling towards
the door that led into the garden. “I believe that you are really a very good husband, but that you
are thoroughly ashamed of your own virtues. You are an extraordinary fellow. You never say a
moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your cynicism is simply a pose.”
“Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know,” cried Lord Henry,
laughing; and the two young men went out into the garden together and ensconced themselves
on a long bamboo seat that stood in the shade of a tall laurel bush. The sunlight slipped over
the polished leaves. In the grass, white daisies were tremulous.
After a pause, Lord Henry pulled out his watch. “I am afraid I must be going, Basil,” he
murmured, “and before I go, I insist on your answering a question I put to you some time ago.”
“What is that?” said the painter, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground.
“You know quite well.”
“I do not, Harry.”
“Well, I will tell you what it is. I want you to explain to me why you won’t exhibit Dorian Gray’s
picture. I want the real reason.”
“I told you the real reason.”
“No, you did not. You said it was because there was too much of yourself in it. Now, that is
childish.”
“Harry,” said Basil Hallward, looking him straight in the face, “every portrait that is painted with
feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It
is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas,
reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it
the secret of my own soul.”
Lord Henry laughed. “And what is that?” he asked.
“I will tell you,” said Hallward; but an expression of perplexity came over his face.
“I am all expectation, Basil,” continued his companion, glancing at him.
“Oh, there is really very little to tell, Harry,” answered the painter; “and I am afraid you will
hardly understand it. Perhaps you will hardly believe it.”
Lord Henry smiled, and leaning down, plucked a pink-petalled daisy from the grass and
examined it. “I am quite sure I shall understand it,” he replied, gazing intently at the little golden,
white-feathered disk, “and as for believing things, I can believe anything, provided that it is quite
incredible.”
The wind shook some blossoms from the trees, and the heavy lilac-blooms, with their
clustering stars, moved to and fro in the languid air. A grasshopper began to chirrup by the wall,
and like a blue thread a long thin dragon-fly floated past on its brown gauze wings. Lord Henry
felt as if he could hear Basil Hallward’s heart beating, and wondered what was coming.
“The story is simply this,” said the painter after some time. “Two months ago I went to a crush
at Lady Brandon’s. You know we poor artists have to show ourselves in society from time to
time, just to remind the public that we are not savages. With an evening coat and a white tie, as
The Picture of Dorian Gray

you told me once, anybody, even a stock-broker, can gain a reputation for being civilized. Well,
after I had been in the room about ten minutes, talking to huge overdressed dowagers and
tedious academicians, I suddenly became conscious that some one was looking at me. I turned
half-way round and saw Dorian Gray for the first time. When our eyes met, I felt that I was
growing pale. A curious sensation of terror came over me. I knew that I had come face to face
with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would
absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself. I did not want any external influence
in my life. You know yourself, Harry, how independent I am by nature. I have always been my
own master; had at least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray. Then—but I don’t know how to
explain it to you. Something seemed to tell me that I was on the verge of a terrible crisis in my
life. I had a strange feeling that fate had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows. I
grew afraid and turned to quit the room. It was not conscience that made me do so: it was a sort
of cowardice. I take no credit to myself for trying to escape.”
“Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name
of the firm. That is all.”
“I don’t believe that, Harry, and I don’t believe you do either. However, whatever was my
motive—and it may have been pride, for I used to be very proud—I certainly struggled to the
door. There, of course, I stumbled against Lady Brandon. ‘You are not going to run away so
soon, Mr. Hallward?’ she screamed out. You know her curiously shrill voice?”
“Yes; she is a peacock in everything but beauty,” said Lord Henry, pulling the daisy to bits with
his long nervous fingers.
“I could not get rid of her. She brought me up to royalties, and people with stars and garters,
and elderly ladies with gigantic tiaras and parrot noses. She spoke of me as her dearest friend. I
had only met her once before, but she took it into her head to lionize me. I believe some picture
of mine had made a great success at the time, at least had been chattered about in the penny
newspapers, which is the nineteenth-century standard of immortality. Suddenly I found myself
face to face with the young man whose personality had so strangely stirred me. We were quite
close, almost touching. Our eyes met again. It was reckless of me, but I asked Lady Brandon to
introduce me to him. Perhaps it was not so reckless, after all. It was simply inevitable. We would
have spoken to each other without any introduction. I am sure of that. Dorian told me so
afterwards. He, too, felt that we were destined to know each other.”
“And how did Lady Brandon describe this wonderful young man?” asked his companion. “I
know she goes in for giving a rapid précis of all her guests. I remember her bringing me up to a
truculent and red-faced old gentleman covered all over with orders and ribbons, and hissing into
my ear, in a tragic whisper which must have been perfectly audible to everybody in the room,
the most astounding details. I simply fled. I like to find out people for myself. But Lady Brandon
treats her guests exactly as an auctioneer treats his goods. She either explains them entirely
away, or tells one everything about them except what one wants to know.”
“Poor Lady Brandon! You are hard on her, Harry!” said Hallward listlessly.
“My dear fellow, she tried to found a salon, and only succeeded in opening a restaurant. How
could I admire her? But tell me, what did she say about Mr. Dorian Gray?”
The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Oh, something like, ‘Charming boy—poor dear mother and I absolutely inseparable. Quite
forget what he does—afraid he—doesn’t do anything—oh, yes, plays the piano—or is it the
violin, dear Mr. Gray?’ Neither of us could help laughing, and we became friends at once.”
“Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one,”
said the young lord, plucking another daisy.
Hallward shook his head. “You don’t understand what friendship is, Harry,” he murmured—“or
what enmity is, for that matter. You like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every
one.”
“How horribly unjust of you!” cried Lord Henry, tilting his hat back and looking up at the little
clouds that, like ravelled skeins of glossy white silk, were drifting across the hollowed turquoise
of the summer sky. “Yes; horribly unjust of you. I make a great difference between people. I
choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my
enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I
have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently
they all appreciate me. Is that very vain of me? I think it is rather vain.”
“I should think it was, Harry. But according to your category I must be merely an
acquaintance.”
“My dear old Basil, you are much more than an acquaintance.”
“And much less than a friend. A sort of brother, I suppose?”
“Oh, brothers! I don’t care for brothers. My elder brother won’t die, and my younger brothers
seem never to do anything else.”
“Harry!” exclaimed Hallward, frowning.
“My dear fellow, I am not quite serious. But I can’t help detesting my relations. I suppose it
comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as
ourselves. I quite sympathize with the rage of the English democracy against what they call the
vices of the upper orders. The masses feel that drunkenness, stupidity, and immorality should
be their own special property, and that if any one of us makes an ass of himself, he is poaching
on their preserves. When poor Southwark got into the divorce court, their indignation was quite
magnificent. And yet I don’t suppose that ten per cent of the proletariat live correctly.”
“I don’t agree with a single word that you have said, and, what is more, Harry, I feel sure you
don’t either.”
Lord Henry stroked his pointed brown beard and tapped the toe of his patent-leather boot with
a tasselled ebony cane. “How English you are Basil! That is the second time you have made
that observation. If one puts forward an idea to a true Englishman—always a rash thing to
do—he never dreams of considering whether the idea is right or wrong. The only thing he
considers of any importance is whether one believes it oneself. Now, the value of an idea has
nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the
probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be,
as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices. However,
I don’t propose to discuss politics, sociology, or metaphysics with you. I like persons better than
principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world. Tell me
more about Mr. Dorian Gray. How often do you see him?”
The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Every day. I couldn’t be happy if I didn’t see him every day. He is absolutely necessary to
me.”
“How extraordinary! I thought you would never care for anything but your art.”
“He is all my art to me now,” said the painter gravely. “I sometimes think, Harry, that there are
only two eras of any importance in the world’s history. The first is the appearance of a new
medium for art, and the second is the appearance of a new personality for art also. What the
invention of oil-painting was to the Venetians, the face of Antinous was to late Greek sculpture,
and the face of Dorian Gray will some day be to me. It is not merely that I paint from him, draw
from him, sketch from him. Of course, I have done all that. But he is much more to me than a
model or a sitter. I won’t tell you that I am dissatisfied with what I have done of him, or that his
beauty is such that art cannot express it. There is nothing that art cannot express, and I know
that the work I have done, since I met Dorian Gray, is good work, is the best work of my life. But
in some curious way—I wonder will you understand me?—his personality has suggested to me
an entirely new manner in art, an entirely new mode of style. I see things differently, I think of
them differently. I can now recreate life in a way that was hidden from me before. ‘A dream of
form in days of thought’—who is it who says that? I forget; but it is what Dorian Gray has been
to me. The merely visible presence of this lad—for he seems to me little more than a lad, though
he is really over twenty—his merely visible presence—ah! I wonder can you realize all that that
means? Unconsciously he defines for me the lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in it
all the passion of the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is Greek. The harmony of
soul and body—how much that is! We in our madness have separated the two, and have
invented a realism that is vulgar, an ideality that is void. Harry! if you only knew what Dorian
Gray is to me! You remember that landscape of mine, for which Agnew offered me such a huge
price but which I would not part with? It is one of the best things I have ever done. And why is it
so? Because, while I was painting it, Dorian Gray sat beside me. Some subtle influence passed
from him to me, and for the first time in my life I saw in the plain woodland the wonder I had
always looked for and always missed.”
“Basil, this is extraordinary! I must see Dorian Gray.”
Hallward got up from the seat and walked up and down the garden. After some time he came
back. “Harry,” he said, “Dorian Gray is to me simply a motive in art. You might see nothing in
him. I see everything in him. He is never more present in my work than when no image of him is
there. He is a suggestion, as I have said, of a new manner. I find him in the curves of certain
lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours. That is all.”
“Then why won’t you exhibit his portrait?” asked Lord Henry.
“Because, without intending it, I have put into it some expression of all this curious artistic
idolatry, of which, of course, I have never cared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it. He
shall never know anything about it. But the world might guess it, and I will not bare my soul to
their shallow prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope. There is too much
of myself in the thing, Harry—too much of myself!”
“Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication.
Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.”
“I hate them for it,” cried Hallward. “An artist should create beautiful things, but should put
nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a
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form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. Some day I will show the
world what it is; and for that reason the world shall never see my portrait of Dorian Gray.”
“I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won’t argue with you. It is only the intellectually lost who
ever argue. Tell me, is Dorian Gray very fond of you?”
The painter considered for a few moments. “He likes me,” he answered after a pause; “I know
he likes me. Of course I flatter him dreadfully. I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him
that I know I shall be sorry for having said. As a rule, he is charming to me, and we sit in the
studio and talk of a thousand things. Now and then, however, he is horribly thoughtless, and
seems to take a real delight in giving me pain. Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my
whole soul to some one who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to
charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer’s day.”
“Days in summer, Basil, are apt to linger,” murmured Lord Henry. “Perhaps you will tire sooner
than he will. It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than
beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the
wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds
with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed
man—that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful
thing. It is like a bric-à-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper
value. I think you will tire first, all the same. Some day you will look at your friend, and he will
seem to you to be a little out of drawing, or you won’t like his tone of colour, or something. You
will bitterly reproach him in your own heart, and seriously think that he has behaved very badly
to you. The next time he calls, you will be perfectly cold and indifferent. It will be a great pity, for
it will alter you. What you have told me is quite a romance, a romance of art one might call it,
and the worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic.”
“Harry, don’t talk like that. As long as I live, the personality of Dorian Gray will dominate me.
You can’t feel what I feel. You change too often.”
“Ah, my dear Basil, that is exactly why I can feel it. Those who are faithful know only the trivial
side of love: it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.” And Lord Henry struck a light on a
dainty silver case and began to smoke a cigarette with a self-conscious and satisfied air, as if he
had summed up the world in a phrase. There was a rustle of chirruping sparrows in the green
lacquer leaves of the ivy, and the blue cloud-shadows chased themselves across the grass like
swallows. How pleasant it was in the garden! And how delightful other people’s emotions
were!—much more delightful than their ideas, it seemed to him. One’s own soul, and the
passions of one’s friends—those were the fascinating things in life. He pictured to himself with
silent amusement the tedious luncheon that he had missed by staying so long with Basil
Hallward. Had he gone to his aunt’s, he would have been sure to have met Lord Goodbody
there, and the whole conversation would have been about the feeding of the poor and the
necessity for model lodging-houses. Each class would have preached the importance of those
virtues, for whose exercise there was no necessity in their own lives. The rich would have
spoken on the value of thrift, and the idle grown eloquent over the dignity of labour. It was
charming to have escaped all that! As he thought of his aunt, an idea seemed to strike him. He
turned to Hallward and said, “My dear fellow, I have just remembered.”
“Remembered what, Harry?”
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“Where I heard the name of Dorian Gray.”

“Where was it?” asked Hallward, with a slight frown.
“Don’t look so angry, Basil. It was at my aunt, Lady Agatha’s. She told me she had discovered
a wonderful young man who was going to help her in the East End, and that his name was
Dorian Gray. I am bound to state that she never told me he was good-looking. Women have no
appreciation of good looks; at least, good women have not. She said that he was very earnest
and had a beautiful nature. I at once pictured to myself a creature with spectacles and lank hair,
horribly freckled, and tramping about on huge feet. I wish I had known it was your friend.”
“I am very glad you didn’t, Harry.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want you to meet him.”
“You don’t want me to meet him?”
“No.”
“Mr. Dorian Gray is in the studio, sir,” said the butler, coming into the garden.
“You must introduce me now,” cried Lord Henry, laughing.
The painter turned to his servant, who stood blinking in the sunlight. “Ask Mr. Gray to wait,
Parker: I shall be in in a few moments.” The man bowed and went up the walk.
Then he looked at Lord Henry. “Dorian Gray is my dearest friend,” he said. “He has a simple
and a beautiful nature. Your aunt was quite right in what she said of him. Don’t spoil him. Don’t
try to influence him. Your influence would be bad. The world is wide, and has many marvellous
people in it. Don’t take away from me the one person who gives to my art whatever charm it
possesses: my life as an artist depends on him. Mind, Harry, I trust you.” He spoke very slowly,
and the words seemed wrung out of him almost against his will.
“What nonsense you talk!” said Lord Henry, smiling, and taking Hallward by the arm, he
almost led him into the house.

CHAPTER II.

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.”
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“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
The Picture of Dorian Gray

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.”
The Picture of Dorian Gray

“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.”

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
The Picture of Dorian Gray

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 mediævalism, 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. You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood,
you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror,
day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame—”

“Stop!” faltered Dorian Gray, “stop! you bewilder me. I don’t know what to say. There is some
answer to you, but I cannot find it. Don’t speak. Let me think. Or, rather, let me try not to think.”

For nearly ten minutes he stood there, motionless, with parted lips and eyes strangely bright.
He was dimly conscious that entirely fresh influences were at work within him. Yet they seemed
to him to have come really from himself. The few words that Basil’s friend had said to
The Picture of Dorian Gray

him—words spoken by chance, no doubt, and with wilful paradox in them—had touched some
secret chord that had never been touched before, but that he felt was now vibrating and
throbbing to curious pulses.

Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many times. But music was not
articulate. It was not a new world, but rather another chaos, that it created in us. Words! Mere
words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from
them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic
form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere
words! Was there anything so real as words?

Yes; there had been things in his boyhood that he had not understood. He understood them
now. Life suddenly became fiery-coloured to him. It seemed to him that he had been walking in
fire. Why had he not known it?

With his subtle smile, Lord Henry watched him. He knew the precise psychological moment
when to say nothing. He felt intensely interested. He was amazed at the sudden impression that
his words had produced, and, remembering a book that he had read when he was sixteen, a
book which had revealed to him much that he had not known before, he wondered whether
Dorian Gray was passing through a similar experience. He had merely shot an arrow into the
air. Had it hit the mark? How fascinating the lad was!

Hallward painted away with that marvellous bold touch of his, that had the true refinement and
perfect delicacy that in art, at any rate comes only from strength. He was unconscious of the
silence.

“Basil, I am tired of standing,” cried Dorian Gray suddenly. “I must go out and sit in the
garden. The air is stifling here.”

“My dear fellow, I am so sorry. When I am painting, I can’t think of anything else. But you
never sat better. You were perfectly still. And I have caught the effect I wanted—the half-parted
The Picture of Dorian Gray

lips and the bright look in the eyes. I don’t know what Harry has been saying to you, but he has
certainly made you have the most wonderful expression. I suppose he has been paying you
compliments. You mustn’t believe a word that he says.”

“He has certainly not been paying me compliments. Perhaps that is the reason that I don’t
believe anything he has told me.”

“You know you believe it all,” said Lord Henry, looking at him with his dreamy languorous
eyes. “I will go out to the garden with you. It is horribly hot in the studio. Basil, let us have
something iced to drink, something with strawberries in it.”

“Certainly, Harry. Just touch the bell, and when Parker comes I will tell him what you want. I
have got to work up this background, so I will join you later on. Don’t keep Dorian too long. I
have never been in better form for painting than I am to-day. This is going to be my masterpiece.
It is my masterpiece as it stands.”

Lord Henry went out to the garden and found Dorian Gray burying his face in the great cool
lilac-blossoms, feverishly drinking in their perfume as if it had been wine. He came close to him
and put his hand upon his shoulder. “You are quite right to do that,” he murmured. “Nothing can
cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.”

The lad started and drew back. He was bareheaded, and the leaves had tossed his rebellious
curls and tangled all their gilded threads. There was a look of fear in his eyes, such as people
have when they are suddenly awakened. His finely chiselled nostrils quivered, and some hidden
nerve shook the scarlet of his lips and left them trembling.

“Yes,” continued Lord Henry, “that is one of the great secrets of life—to cure the soul by
means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul. You are a wonderful creation. You
know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.”
The Picture of Dorian Gray

Dorian Gray frowned and turned his head away. He could not help liking the tall, graceful
young man who was standing by him. His romantic, olive-coloured face and worn expression
interested him. There was something in his low languid voice that was absolutely fascinating.
His cool, white, flowerlike hands, even, had a curious charm. They moved, as he spoke, like
music, and seemed to have a language of their own. But he felt afraid of him, and ashamed of
being afraid. Why had it been left for a stranger to reveal him to himself? He had known Basil
Hallward for months, but the friendship between them had never altered him. Suddenly there
had come some one across his life who seemed to have disclosed to him life’s mystery. And,
yet, what was there to be afraid of? He was not a schoolboy or a girl. It was absurd to be
frightened.

“Let us go and sit in the shade,” said Lord Henry. “Parker has brought out the drinks, and if
you stay any longer in this glare, you will be quite spoiled, and Basil will never paint you again.
You really must not allow yourself to become sunburnt. It would be unbecoming.”

“What can it matter?” cried Dorian Gray, laughing, as he sat down on the seat at the end of
the garden.

“It should matter everything to you, Mr. Gray.”

“Why?”

“Because you have the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one thing worth having.”

“I don’t feel that, Lord Henry.”

“No, you don’t feel it now. Some day, when you are old and wrinkled and ugly, when thought
has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion branded your lips with its hideous fires, you
will feel it, you will feel it terribly. Now, wherever you go, you charm the world. Will it always be
The Picture of Dorian Gray

so? ... You have a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr. Gray. Don’t frown. You have. And beauty is a
form of genius—is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts
of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we
call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of
those who have it. You smile? Ah! when you have lost it you won’t smile.... People say
sometimes that beauty is only superficial. That may be so, but at least it is not so superficial as
thought is. To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge
by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.... Yes, Mr. Gray,
the gods have been good to you. But what the gods give they quickly take away. You have only
a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go
with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to
content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter
than defeats. Every month as it wanes brings you nearer to something dreadful. Time is jealous
of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. You will become sallow, and
hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed. You will suffer horribly.... Ah! realize your youth while you have
it. Don’t squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless
failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly
aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost
upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.... A new
Hedonism—that is what our century wants. You might be its visible symbol. With your
personality there is nothing you could not do. The world belongs to you for a season.... The
moment I met you I saw that you were quite unconscious of what you really are, of what you
really might be. There was so much in you that charmed me that I felt I must tell you something
about yourself. I thought how tragic it would be if you were wasted. For there is such a little time
that your youth will last—such a little time. The common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom
again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month there will be purple
stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars.
But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish.
Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of
the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not
the courage to yield to. Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!”

Dorian Gray listened, open-eyed and wondering. The spray of lilac fell from his hand upon the
gravel. A furry bee came and buzzed round it for a moment. Then it began to scramble all over
the oval stellated globe of the tiny blossoms. He watched it with that strange interest in trivial
things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred
by some new emotion for which we cannot find expression, or when some thought that terrifies
us lays sudden siege to the brain and calls on us to yield. After a time the bee flew away. He
saw it creeping into the stained trumpet of a Tyrian convolvulus. The flower seemed to quiver,
and then swayed gently to and fro.
The Picture of Dorian Gray

Suddenly the painter appeared at the door of the studio and made staccato signs for them to
come in. They turned to each other and smiled.

“I am waiting,” he cried. “Do come in. The light is quite perfect, and you can bring your drinks.”

They rose up and sauntered down the walk together. Two green-and-white butterflies fluttered
past them, and in the pear-tree at the corner of the garden a thrush began to sing.

“You are glad you have met me, Mr. Gray,” said Lord Henry, looking at him.

“Yes, I am glad now. I wonder shall I always be glad?”

“Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of
using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last for ever. It is a meaningless word,
too. The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little
longer.”

As they entered the studio, Dorian Gray put his hand upon Lord Henry’s arm. “In that case, let
our friendship be a caprice,” he murmured, flushing at his own boldness, then stepped up on the
platform and resumed his pose.

Lord Henry flung himself into a large wicker arm-chair and watched him. The sweep and dash
of the brush on the canvas made the only sound that broke the stillness, except when, now and
then, Hallward stepped back to look at his work from a distance. In the slanting beams that
streamed through the open doorway the dust danced and was golden. The heavy scent of the
roses seemed to brood over everything.
The Picture of Dorian Gray

After about a quarter of an hour Hallward stopped painting, looked for a long time at Dorian
Gray, and then for a long time at the picture, biting the end of one of his huge brushes and
frowning. “It is quite finished,” he cried at last, and stooping down he wrote his name in long
vermilion letters on the left-hand corner of the canvas.

Lord Henry came over and examined the picture. It was certainly a wonderful work of art, and
a wonderful likeness as well.

“My dear fellow, I congratulate you most warmly,” he said. “It is the finest portrait of modern
times. Mr. Gray, come over and look at yourself.”

The lad started, as if awakened from some dream.

“Is it really finished?” he murmured, stepping down from the platform.

“Quite finished,” said the painter. “And you have sat splendidly to-day. I am awfully obliged to
you.”

“That is entirely due to me,” broke in Lord Henry. “Isn’t it, Mr. Gray?”

Dorian made no answer, but passed listlessly in front of his picture and turned towards it.
When he saw it he drew back, and his cheeks flushed for a moment with pleasure. A look of joy
came into his eyes, as if he had recognized himself for the first time. He stood there motionless
and in wonder, dimly conscious that Hallward was speaking to him, but not catching the
meaning of his words. The sense of his own beauty came on him like a revelation. He had never
felt it before. Basil Hallward’s compliments had seemed to him to be merely the charming
exaggeration of friendship. He had listened to them, laughed at them, forgotten them. They had
not influenced his nature. Then had come Lord Henry Wotton with his strange panegyric on
youth, his terrible warning of its brevity. That had stirred him at the time, and now, as he stood
The Picture of Dorian Gray

gazing at the shadow of his own loveliness, the full reality of the description flashed across him.
Yes, there would be a day when his face would be wrinkled and wizen, his eyes dim and
colourless, the grace of his figure broken and deformed. The scarlet would pass away from his
lips and the gold steal from his hair. The life that was to make his soul would mar his body. He
would become dreadful, hideous, and uncouth.

As he thought of it, a sharp pang of pain struck through him like a knife and made each
delicate fibre of his nature quiver. His eyes deepened into amethyst, and across them came a
mist of tears. He felt as if a hand of ice had been laid upon his heart.

“Don’t you like it?” cried Hallward at last, stung a little by the lad’s silence, not understanding
what it meant.

“Of course he likes it,” said Lord Henry. “Who wouldn’t like it? It is one of the greatest things in
modern art. I will give you anything you like to ask for it. I must have it.”

“It is not my property, Harry.”

“Whose property is it?”

“Dorian’s, of course,” answered the painter.

“He is a very lucky fellow.”

“How sad it is!” murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. “How
sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It
The Picture of Dorian Gray

will never be older than this particular day of June.... If it were only the other way! If it were I who
was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that—for that—I would give
everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for
that!”

“You would hardly care for such an arrangement, Basil,” cried Lord Henry, laughing. “It would
be rather hard lines on your work.”

“I should object very strongly, Harry,” said Hallward.

Dorian Gray turned and looked at him. “I believe you would, Basil. You like your art better than
your friends. I am no more to you than a green bronze figure. Hardly as much, I dare say.”

The painter stared in amazement. It was so unlike Dorian to speak like that. What had
happened? He seemed quite angry. His face was flushed and his cheeks burning.

“Yes,” he continued, “I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or your silver Faun. You will like
them always. How long will you like me? Till I have my first wrinkle, I suppose. I know, now, that
when one loses one’s good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything. Your picture has
taught me that. Lord Henry Wotton is perfectly right. Youth is the only thing worth having. When
I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself.”

Hallward turned pale and caught his hand. “Dorian! Dorian!” he cried, “don’t talk like that. I
have never had such a friend as you, and I shall never have such another. You are not jealous
of material things, are you?—you who are finer than any of them!”

“I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have
painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes
something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture
The Picture of Dorian Gray

could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some
day—mock me horribly!” The hot tears welled into his eyes; he tore his hand away and, flinging
himself on the divan, he buried his face in the cushions, as though he was praying.

“This is your doing, Harry,” said the painter bitterly.

Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. “It is the real Dorian Gray—that is all.”

“It is not.”

“If it is not, what have I to do with it?”

“You should have gone away when I asked you,” he muttered.

“I stayed when you asked me,” was Lord Henry’s answer.

“Harry, I can’t quarrel with my two best friends at once, but between you both you have made
me hate the finest piece of work I have ever done, and I will destroy it. What is it but canvas and
colour? I will not let it come across our three lives and mar them.”

Dorian Gray lifted his golden head from the pillow, and with pallid face and tear-stained eyes,
looked at him as he walked over to the deal painting-table that was set beneath the high
curtained window. What was he doing there? His fingers were straying about among the litter of
tin tubes and dry brushes, seeking for something. Yes, it was for the long palette-knife, with its
thin blade of lithe steel. He had found it at last. He was going to rip up the canvas.
The Picture of Dorian Gray

With a stifled sob the lad leaped from the couch, and, rushing over to Hallward, tore the knife
out of his hand, and flung it to the end of the studio. “Don’t, Basil, don’t!” he cried. “It would be
murder!”

“I am glad you appreciate my work at last, Dorian,” said the painter coldly when he had
recovered from his surprise. “I never thought you would.”

“Appreciate it? I am in love with it, Basil. It is part of myself. I feel that.”

“Well, as soon as you are dry, you shall be varnished, and framed, and sent home. Then you
can do what you like with yourself.” And he walked across the room and rang the bell for tea.
“You will have tea, of course, Dorian? And so will you, Harry? Or do you object to such simple
pleasures?”

“I adore simple pleasures,” said Lord Henry. “They are the last refuge of the complex. But I
don’t like scenes, except on the stage. What absurd fellows you are, both of you! I wonder who
it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is
many things, but he is not rational. I am glad he is not, after all—though I wish you chaps would
not squabble over the picture. You had much better let me have it, Basil. This silly boy doesn’t
really want it, and I really do.”

“If you let any one have it but me, Basil, I shall never forgive you!” cried Dorian Gray; “and I
don’t allow people to call me a silly boy.”

“You know the picture is yours, Dorian. I gave it to you before it existed.”

“And you know you have been a little silly, Mr. Gray, and that you don’t really object to being
reminded that you are extremely young.”
The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I should have objected very strongly this morning, Lord Henry.”

“Ah! this morning! You have lived since then.”

There came a knock at the door, and the butler entered with a laden tea-tray and set it down
upon a small Japanese table. There was a rattle of cups and saucers and the hissing of a fluted
Georgian urn. Two globe-shaped china dishes were brought in by a page. Dorian Gray went
over and poured out the tea. The two men sauntered languidly to the table and examined what
was under the covers.

“Let us go to the theatre to-night,” said Lord Henry. “There is sure to be something on,
somewhere. I have promised to dine at White’s, but it is only with an old friend, so I can send
him a wire to say that I am ill, or that I am prevented from coming in consequence of a
subsequent engagement. I think that would be a rather nice excuse: it would have all the
surprise of candour.”

“It is such a bore putting on one’s dress-clothes,” muttered Hallward. “And, when one has
them on, they are so horrid.”

“Yes,” answered Lord Henry dreamily, “the costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It
is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.”

“You really must not say things like that before Dorian, Harry.”

“Before which Dorian? The one who is pouring out tea for us, or the one in the picture?”
The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Before either.”

“I should like to come to the theatre with you, Lord Henry,” said the lad.

“Then you shall come; and you will come, too, Basil, won’t you?”

“I can’t, really. I would sooner not. I have a lot of work to do.”

“Well, then, you and I will go alone, Mr. Gray.”

“I should like that awfully.”

The painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the picture. “I shall stay with the real
Dorian,” he said, sadly.

“Is it the real Dorian?” cried the original of the portrait, strolling across to him. “Am I really like
that?”

“Yes; you are just like that.”

“How wonderful, Basil!”

The Picture of Dorian Gray

“At least you are like it in appearance. But it will never alter,” sighed Hallward. “That is
something.”

“What a fuss people make about fidelity!” exclaimed Lord Henry. “Why, even in love it is purely
a question for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful,
and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say.”

“Don’t go to the theatre to-night, Dorian,” said Hallward. “Stop and dine with me.”

“I can’t, Basil.”

“Why?”

“Because I have promised Lord Henry Wotton to go with him.”

“He won’t like you the better for keeping your promises. He always breaks his own. I beg you
not to go.”

Dorian Gray laughed and shook his head.

“I entreat you.”

The lad hesitated, and looked over at Lord Henry, who was watching them from the tea-table
with an amused smile.
The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I must go, Basil,” he answered.

“Very well,” said Hallward, and he went over and laid down his cup on the tray. “It is rather
late, and, as you have to dress, you had better lose no time. Good-bye, Harry. Good-bye,
Dorian. Come and see me soon. Come to-morrow.”

“Certainly.”

“You won’t forget?”

“No, of course not,” cried Dorian.

“And ... Harry!”

“Yes, Basil?”

“Remember what I asked you, when we were in the garden this morning.”

“I have forgotten it.”

“I trust you.”
The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I wish I could trust myself,” said Lord Henry, laughing. “Come, Mr. Gray, my hansom is
outside, and I can drop you at your own place. Good-bye, Basil. It has been a most interesting
afternoon.”

As the door closed behind them, the painter flung himself down on a sofa, and a look of pain
came into his face.

CHAPTER III.

At half-past twelve next day Lord Henry Wotton strolled from Curzon Street over to the Albany
to call on his uncle, Lord Fermor, a genial if somewhat rough-mannered old bachelor, whom the
outside world called selfish because it derived no particular benefit from him, but who was
considered generous by Society as he fed the people who amused him. His father had been our
ambassador at Madrid when Isabella was young and Prim unthought of, but had retired from the
diplomatic service in a capricious moment of annoyance on not being offered the Embassy at
Paris, a post to which he considered that he was fully entitled by reason of his birth, his
indolence, the good English of his dispatches, and his inordinate passion for pleasure. The son,
who had been his father’s secretary, had resigned along with his chief, somewhat foolishly as
was thought at the time, and on succeeding some months later to the title, had set himself to the
serious study of the great aristocratic art of doing absolutely nothing. He had two large town
houses, but preferred to live in chambers as it was less trouble, and took most of his meals at
his club. He paid some attention to the management of his collieries in the Midland counties,
excusing himself for this taint of industry on the ground that the one advantage of having coal
was that it enabled a gentleman to afford the decency of burning wood on his own hearth. In
politics he was a Tory, except when the Tories were in office, during which period he roundly
abused them for being a pack of Radicals. He was a hero to his valet, who bullied him, and a
terror to most of his relations, whom he bullied in turn. Only England could have produced him,
and he always said that the country was going to the dogs. His principles were out of date, but
there was a good deal to be said for his prejudices.
The Picture of Dorian Gray

When Lord Henry entered the room, he found his uncle sitting in a rough shooting-coat,
smoking a cheroot and grumbling over The Times. “Well, Harry,” said the old gentleman, “what
brings you out so early? I thought you dandies never got up till two, and were not visible till five.”

“Pure family affection, I assure you, Uncle George. I want to get something out of you.”

“Money, I suppose,” said Lord Fermor, making a wry face. “Well, sit down and tell me all about
it. Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything.”

“Yes,” murmured Lord Henry, settling his button-hole in his coat; “and when they grow older
they know it. But I don’t want money. It is only people who pay their bills who want that, Uncle
George, and I never pay mine. Credit is the capital of a younger son, and one lives charmingly
upon it. Besides, I always deal with Dartmoor’s tradesmen, and consequently they never bother
me. What I want is information: not useful information, of course; useless information.”

“Well, I can tell you anything that is in an English Blue Book, Harry, although those fellows
nowadays write a lot of nonsense. When I was in the Diplomatic, things were much better. But I
hear they let them in now by examination. What can you expect? Examinations, sir, are pure
humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not
a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.”

“Mr. Dorian Gray does not belong to Blue Books, Uncle George,” said Lord Henry languidly.

“Mr. Dorian Gray? Who is he?” asked Lord Fermor, knitting his bushy white eyebrows.

“That is what I have come to learn, Uncle George. Or rather, I know who he is. He is the last
Lord Kelso’s grandson. His mother was a Devereux, Lady Margaret Devereux. I want you to tell
me about his mother. What was she like? Whom did she marry? You have known nearly
The Picture of Dorian Gray

everybody in your time, so you might have known her. I am very much interested in Mr. Gray at
present. I have only just met him.”

“Kelso’s grandson!” echoed the old gentleman. “Kelso’s grandson! ... Of course.... I knew his
mother intimately. I believe I was at her christening. She was an extraordinarily beautiful girl,
Margaret Devereux, and made all the men frantic by running away with a penniless young
fellow—a mere nobody, sir, a subaltern in a foot regiment, or something of that kind. Certainly. I
remember the whole thing as if it happened yesterday. The poor chap was killed in a duel at Spa
a few months after the marriage. There was an ugly story about it. They said Kelso got some
rascally adventurer, some Belgian brute, to insult his son-in-law in public—paid him, sir, to do it,
paid him—and that the fellow spitted his man as if he had been a pigeon. The thing was hushed
up, but, egad, Kelso ate his chop alone at the club for some time afterwards. He brought his
daughter back with him, I was told, and she never spoke to him again. Oh, yes; it was a bad
business. The girl died, too, died within a year. So she left a son, did she? I had forgotten that.
What sort of boy is he? If he is like his mother, he must be a good-looking chap.”

“He is very good-looking,” assented Lord Henry.

“I hope he will fall into proper hands,” continued the old man. “He should have a pot of money
waiting for him if Kelso did the right thing by him. His mother had money, too. All the Selby
property came to her, through her grandfather. Her grandfather hated Kelso, thought him a
mean dog. He was, too. Came to Madrid once when I was there. Egad, I was ashamed of him.
The Queen used to ask me about the English noble who was always quarrelling with the
cabmen about their fares. They made quite a story of it. I didn’t dare show my face at Court for a
month. I hope he treated his grandson better than he did the jarvies.”

“I don’t know,” answered Lord Henry. “I fancy that the boy will be well off. He is not of age yet.
He has Selby, I know. He told me so. And ... his mother was very beautiful?”

“Margaret Devereux was one of the loveliest creatures I ever saw, Harry. What on earth
induced her to behave as she did, I never could understand. She could have married anybody
she chose. Carlington was mad after her. She was romantic, though. All the women of that
family were. The men were a poor lot, but, egad! the women were wonderful. Carlington went
The Picture of Dorian Gray

on his knees to her. Told me so himself. She laughed at him, and there wasn’t a girl in London at
the time who wasn’t after him. And by the way, Harry, talking about silly marriages, what is this
humbug your father tells me about Dartmoor wanting to marry an American? Ain’t English girls
good enough for him?”

“It is rather fashionable to marry Americans just now, Uncle George.”

“I’ll back English women against the world, Harry,” said Lord Fermor, striking the table with his
fist.

“The betting is on the Americans.”

“They don’t last, I am told,” muttered his uncle.

“A long engagement exhausts them, but they are capital at a steeplechase. They take things
flying. I don’t think Dartmoor has a chance.”

“Who are her people?” grumbled the old gentleman. “Has she got any?”

Lord Henry shook his head. “American girls are as clever at concealing their parents, as
English women are at concealing their past,” he said, rising to go.

“They are pork-packers, I suppose?”

The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I hope so, Uncle George, for Dartmoor’s sake. I am told that pork-packing is the most
lucrative profession in America, after politics.”

“Is she pretty?”

“She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their
charm.”

“Why can’t these American women stay in their own country? They are always telling us that
it is the paradise for women.”

“It is. That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so excessively anxious to get out of it,” said
Lord Henry. “Good-bye, Uncle George. I shall be late for lunch, if I stop any longer. Thanks for
giving me the information I wanted. I always like to know everything about my new friends, and
nothing about my old ones.”

“Where are you lunching, Harry?”

“At Aunt Agatha’s. I have asked myself and Mr. Gray. He is her latest protégé.”

“Humph! tell your Aunt Agatha, Harry, not to bother me any more with her charity appeals. I
am sick of them. Why, the good woman thinks that I have nothing to do but to write cheques for
her silly fads.”

“All right, Uncle George, I’ll tell her, but it won’t have any effect. Philanthropic people lose all
sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic.”
The Picture of Dorian Gray

The old gentleman growled approvingly and rang the bell for his servant. Lord Henry passed
up the low arcade into Burlington Street and turned his steps in the direction of Berkeley
Square.

So that was the story of Dorian Gray’s parentage. Crudely as it had been told to him, it had
yet stirred him by its suggestion of a strange, almost modern romance. A beautiful woman
risking everything for a mad passion. A few wild weeks of happiness cut short by a hideous,
treacherous crime. Months of voiceless agony, and then a child born in pain. The mother
snatched away by death, the boy left to solitude and the tyranny of an old and loveless man.
Yes; it was an interesting background. It posed the lad, made him more perfect, as it were.
Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. Worlds had to be in
travail, that the meanest flower might blow.... And how charming he had been at dinner the night
before, as with startled eyes and lips parted in frightened pleasure he had sat opposite to him at
the club, the red candleshades staining to a richer rose the wakening wonder of his face. Talking
to him was like playing upon an exquisite violin. He answered to every touch and thrill of the
bow.... There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other activity
was like it. To project one’s soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to
hear one’s own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and
youth; to convey one’s temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange
perfume: there was a real joy in that—perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so
limited and vulgar as our own, an age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its
aims.... He was a marvellous type, too, this lad, whom by so curious a chance he had met in
Basil’s studio, or could be fashioned into a marvellous type, at any rate. Grace was his, and the
white purity of boyhood, and beauty such as old Greek marbles kept for us. There was nothing
that one could not do with him. He could be made a Titan or a toy. What a pity it was that such
beauty was destined to fade! ... And Basil? From a psychological point of view, how interesting
he was! The new manner in art, the fresh mode of looking at life, suggested so strangely by the
merely visible presence of one who was unconscious of it all; the silent spirit that dwelt in dim
woodland, and walked unseen in open field, suddenly showing herself, Dryadlike and not afraid,
because in his soul who sought for her there had been wakened that wonderful vision to which
alone are wonderful things revealed; the mere shapes and patterns of things becoming, as it
were, refined, and gaining a kind of symbolical value, as though they were themselves patterns
of some other and more perfect form whose shadow they made real: how strange it all was! He
remembered something like it in history. Was it not Plato, that artist in thought, who had first
analyzed it? Was it not Buonarotti who had carved it in the coloured marbles of a
sonnet-sequence? But in our own century it was strange.... Yes; he would try to be to Dorian
Gray what, without knowing it, the lad was to the painter who had fashioned the wonderful
portrait. He would seek to dominate him—had already, indeed, half done so. He would make
that wonderful spirit his own. There was something fascinating in this son of love and death.
The Picture of Dorian Gray

Suddenly he stopped and glanced up at the houses. He found that he had passed his aunt’s
some distance, and, smiling to himself, turned back. When he entered the somewhat sombre
hall, the butler told him that they had gone in to lunch. He gave one of the footmen his hat and
stick and passed into the dining-room.

“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.”
The Picture of Dorian Gray

“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.”
The Picture of Dorian Gray

“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.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

“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.”

“I want him to play to me,” cried Lord Henry, smiling, and he looked down the table and
caught a bright answering glance.

“But they are so unhappy in Whitechapel,” continued Lady Agatha.

“I can sympathize with everything except suffering,” said Lord Henry, shrugging his shoulders.
“I cannot sympathize with that. It is too ugly, too horrible, too distressing. There is something
terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathize with the colour, the
beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores, the better.”

“Still, the East End is a very important problem,” remarked Sir Thomas with a grave shake of
the head.

“Quite so,” answered the young lord. “It is the problem of slavery, and we try to solve it by
amusing the slaves.”
The Picture of Dorian Gray

The politician looked at him keenly. “What change do you propose, then?” he asked.

Lord Henry laughed. “I don’t desire to change anything in England except the weather,” he
answered. “I am quite content with philosophic contemplation. But, as the nineteenth century
has gone bankrupt through an over-expenditure of sympathy, I would suggest that we should
appeal to science to put us straight. The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray,
and the advantage of science is that it is not emotional.”

“But we have such grave responsibilities,” ventured Mrs. Vandeleur timidly.

“Terribly grave,” echoed Lady Agatha.

Lord Henry looked over at Mr. Erskine. “Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world’s
original sin. If the caveman had known how to laugh, history would have been different.”

“You are really very comforting,” warbled the duchess. “I have always felt rather guilty when I
came to see your dear aunt, for I take no interest at all in the East End. For the future I shall be
able to look her in the face without a blush.”

“A blush is very becoming, Duchess,” remarked Lord Henry.

“Only when one is young,” she answered. “When an old woman like myself blushes, it is a
very bad sign. Ah! Lord Henry, I wish you would tell me how to become young again.”

He thought for a moment. “Can you remember any great error that you committed in your
early days, Duchess?” he asked, looking at her across the table.
The Picture of Dorian Gray

“A great many, I fear,” she cried.

“Then commit them over again,” he said gravely. “To get back one’s youth, one has merely to
repeat one’s follies.”

“A delightful theory!” she exclaimed. “I must put it into practice.”

“A dangerous theory!” came from Sir Thomas’s tight lips. Lady Agatha shook her head, but
could not help being amused. Mr. Erskine listened.

“Yes,” he continued, “that is one of the great secrets of life. Nowadays most people die of a
sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never
regrets are one’s mistakes.”

A laugh ran round the table.

He played with the idea and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and transformed it; let it escape
and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy and winged it with paradox. The praise of folly,
as he went on, soared into a philosophy, and philosophy herself became young, and catching
the mad music of pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy,
danced like a Bacchante over the hills of life, and mocked the slow Silenus for being sober.
Facts fled before her like frightened forest things. Her white feet trod the huge press at which
wise Omar sits, till the seething grape-juice rose round her bare limbs in waves of purple
bubbles, or crawled in red foam over the vat’s black, dripping, sloping sides. It was an
extraordinary improvisation. He felt that the eyes of Dorian Gray were fixed on him, and the
consciousness that amongst his audience there was one whose temperament he wished to
fascinate seemed to give his wit keenness and to lend colour to his imagination. He was
brilliant, fantastic, irresponsible. He charmed his listeners out of themselves, and they followed
his pipe, laughing. Dorian Gray never took his gaze off him, but sat like one under a spell,
smiles chasing each other over his lips and wonder growing grave in his darkening eyes.
The Picture of Dorian Gray

At last, liveried in the costume of the age, reality entered the room in the shape of a servant to
tell the duchess that her carriage was waiting. She wrung her hands in mock despair. “How
annoying!” she cried. “I must go. I have to call for my husband at the club, to take him to some
absurd meeting at Willis’s Rooms, where he is going to be in the chair. If I am late he is sure to
be furious, and I couldn’t have a scene in this bonnet. It is far too fragile. A harsh word would
ruin it. No, I must go, dear Agatha. Good-bye, Lord Henry, you are quite delightful and dreadfully
demoralizing. I am sure I don’t know what to say about your views. You must come and dine
with us some night. Tuesday? Are you disengaged Tuesday?”

“For you I would throw over anybody, Duchess,” said Lord Henry with a bow.

“Ah! that is very nice, and very wrong of you,” she cried; “so mind you come”; and she swept
out of the room, followed by Lady Agatha and the other ladies.

When Lord Henry had sat down again, Mr. Erskine moved round, and taking a chair close to
him, placed his hand upon his arm.

“You talk books away,” he said; “why don’t you write one?”

“I am too fond of reading books to care to write them, Mr. Erskine. I should like to write a
novel certainly, a novel that would be as lovely as a Persian carpet and as unreal. But there is
no literary public in England for anything except newspapers, primers, and encyclopaedias. Of
all people in the world the English have the least sense of the beauty of literature.”

“I fear you are right,” answered Mr. Erskine. “I myself used to have literary ambitions, but I
gave them up long ago. And now, my dear young friend, if you will allow me to call you so, may I
ask if you really meant all that you said to us at lunch?”

“I quite forget what I said,” smiled Lord Henry. “Was it all very bad?”
The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Very bad indeed. In fact I consider you extremely dangerous, and if anything happens to our
good duchess, we shall all look on you as being primarily responsible. But I should like to talk to
you about life. The generation into which I was born was tedious. Some day, when you are tired
of London, come down to Treadley and expound to me your philosophy of pleasure over some
admirable Burgundy I am fortunate enough to possess.”

“I shall be charmed. A visit to Treadley would be a great privilege. It has a perfect host, and a
perfect library.”

“You will complete it,” answered the old gentleman with a courteous bow. “And now I must bid
good-bye to your excellent aunt. I am due at the Athenaeum. It is the hour when we sleep
there.”

“All of you, Mr. Erskine?”

“Forty of us, in forty arm-chairs. We are practising for an English Academy of Letters.”

Lord Henry laughed and rose. “I am going to the park,” he cried.

As he was passing out of the door, Dorian Gray touched him on the arm. “Let me come with
you,” he murmured.

“But I thought you had promised Basil Hallward to go and see him,” answered Lord Henry.

“I would sooner come with you; yes, I feel I must come with you. Do let me. And you will
promise to talk to me all the time? No one talks so wonderfully as you do.”
The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Ah! I have talked quite enough for to-day,” said Lord Henry, smiling. “All I want now is to look
at life. You may come and look at it with me, if you care to.”