The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde

  “I want you and Basil to come with me some night, and see her act. I have not the slightest fear of the result. You won’t be able to refuse to recognise her genius. Then we must get her out of the Jew’s hands. She is bound to him for three years—at least for two years and eight months—from the present time. I will have to pay him something, of course. When all that is settled, I will take a West-End Theatre and bring her out properly. She will make the world as mad as she has made me.”

  “Impossible, my dear boy!”

  “Yes, she will. She has not merely art, consummate art-instinct, in her, but she has personality also; and you have often told me that it is personalities, not principles, that move the age.”

  “Well, what night shall we go?”

  “Let me see. To-day is Tuesday. Let us fix to-morrow. She plays Juliet to-morrow.”

  “All right. The Bristol at eight o’clock; and I will get Basil.”

  “Not eight, Harry, please. Half-past six. We must be there before the curtain rises. You must see her in the first act, where she meets Romeo.”

  “Half-past six! What an hour! It will be like having a meat-tea. However, just as you wish. Shall you see Basil between this and then? Or shall I write to him?”

  “Dear Basil! I have not laid eyes on him for a week. It is rather horrid of me, as he has sent me my portrait in the most wonderful frame, designed by himself, and, though I am a little jealous of it for being a whole month younger than I am, I must admit that I delight in it. Perhaps you had better write to him. I don’t want to see him alone. He says things that annoy me.”

  Lord Henry smiled. “He gives you good advice, I suppose. People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves.”

  “You don’t mean to say that Basil has got any passion or any romance in him?”

  “I don’t know whether he has any passion, but he certainly has romance,” said Lord Henry, with an amused look in his eyes. “Has he never let you know that?”

  “Never. I must ask him about it. I am rather surprised to hear it. He is the best of fellows, but he seems to me to be just a bit of a Philistine. Since I have known you, Harry, I have discovered that.”

  “Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming in him into his work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for life but his prejudices, his principles, and his common sense. The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists give everything to their art, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in themselves. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.”

  “I wonder is that really so, Harry?” said Dorian Gray, putting some perfume on his handkerchief out of a large gold-topped bottle that stood on the table. “It must be, if you say so. And now I must be off. Imogen is waiting for me. Don’t forget about to-morrow. Good-bye!”

  As he left the room, Lord Henry’s heavy eyelids drooped, and he began to think. Certainly few people had ever interested him so much as Dorian Gray, and yet the lad’s mad adoration of some one else caused him not the slightest pang of annoyance or jealousy. He was pleased by it. It made him a more interesting study. He had been always enthralled by the methods of Science, but the ordinary subject-matter of Science had seemed to him trivial and of no import. And so he had begun by vivisecting himself, as he had ended by vivisecting others. Human life—that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. There was nothing else of any value, compared to it. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one’s face a mask of glass, or keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams. There were poisons so subtle that to know their properties one had to sicken of them. There were maladies so strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand their nature. And yet what a great reward one received! How wonderful the whole world became to one! To note the curious hard logic of passion, and the emotional coloured life of the intellect: to observe where they met, and where they separated, at what point they became one, and at what point they were at discord—there was a delight in that! What matter what the cost was? One could never pay too high a price for any sensation.

  He was conscious—and the thought brought a gleam of pleasure into his brown agate eyes—that it was through certain words of his, musical words said with musical utterance, that Dorian Gray’s soul had turned to this white girl and bowed in worship before her. To a large extent, the lad was his own creation. He had made him premature. That was something. Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of Art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect. But now and then a complex personality took the place and assumed the office of art, was indeed, in its way, a real work of art, Life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has, or sculpture, or painting.

  Yes, the lad was premature. He was gathering his harvest, while it was yet spring. The pulse and passion of youth were in him, but he was becoming self-conscious. It was delightful to watch him. With his beautiful face, and his beautiful soul, he was a thing to wonder at. It was no matter how it all ended, or was destined to end. He was like one of those gracious figures in a pageant or a play, whose joys seem to be remote from one, but whose sorrows stir one’s sense of beauty, and whose wounds are like red roses.

  Soul and body, body and soul—how mysterious they were! There was animalism in the soul, and the body had its moments of spirituality. The senses could refine, and the intellect could degrade. Who could say where the fleshly impulse ceased, or the psychical impulse began? How shallow were the arbitrary definitions of ordinary psychologists! And yet how difficult to decide between the claims of the various schools! Was the soul a shadow seated in the house of sin? Or was the body really in the soul, as Giordano Bruno thought? The separation of spirit from matter was a mystery, and the union of spirit with matter was a mystery also.

  He began to wonder whether we should ever make psychology so absolute a science that each little spring of life would be revealed to us. As it was, we always misunderstood ourselves, and rarely understood others. Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name we gave to our mistakes. Men had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain moral efficacy in the formation of character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow and showed us what to avoid. But there was no motive power in experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself. All that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do many times, and with joy.

  It was clear to him that the experimental method was the only method by which one could arrive at any scientific analysis of the passions; and certainly Dorian Gray was a subject made to his hand, and seemed to promise rich and fruitful results. His sudden mad love for Sybil Vane was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new experiences, yet it was not a simple but rather a very complex passion. What there was in it of the purely sensuous instinct of boyhood had been transformed by the workings of the imagination, changed into something that seemed to the boy himself to be remote from sense, and was for that very reason all the more dangerous. It was the passions about whose origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannised most strongly over us. Our weakest motives were those of whose nature we were conscious. It often happened that when we thought we were experime
nting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves.

  While Lord Henry sat dreaming on these things, a knock came to the door, and his valet entered, and reminded him it was time to dress for dinner. He got up and looked out into the street. The sunset had smitten into scarlet gold the upper windows of the houses opposite. The panes glowed like plates of heated metal. The sky above was like a faded rose. He thought of Dorian Gray’s young fiery-coloured life, and wondered how it was all going to end.

  When he arrived home, about half-past twelve o’clock, he saw a telegram lying on the hall-table. He opened it and found it was from Dorian. It was to tell him that he was engaged to be married to Sybil Vane.

  4

  “I suppose you have heard the news, Basil?” said Lord Henry on the following evening, as Hallward was shown into a little private room at the Bristol where dinner had been laid for three.

  “No, Harry,” answered Hallward, giving his hat and coat to the bowing waiter. “What is it? Nothing about politics, I hope? They don’t interest me. There is hardly a single person in the House of Commons worth painting; though many of them would be the better for a little whitewashing.”

  “Dorian Gray is engaged to be married,” said Lord Henry, watching him as he spoke.

  Hallward turned perfectly pale, and a curious look flashed for a moment into his eyes, and then passed away, leaving them dull. “Dorian engaged to be married!” he cried. “Impossible!”

  “It is perfectly true.”

  “To whom?”

  “To some little actress or other.”

  “I can’t believe it. Dorian is far too sensible.”

  “Dorian is far too wise not to do foolish things now and then, my dear Basil.”

  “Marriage is hardly a thing that one can do now and then, Harry,” said Hallward, smiling.

  “Except in America. But I didn’t say he was married. I said he was engaged to be married. There is a great difference. I have a distinct remembrance of being married, but I have no recollection at all of being engaged. I am inclined to think that I never was engaged.”

  “But think of Dorian’s birth, and position, and wealth. It would be absurd for him to marry so much beneath him.”

  “If you want him to marry this girl, tell him that, Basil. He is sure to do it then. Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.”

  “I hope the girl is good, Harry. I don’t want to see Dorian tied to some vile creature, who might degrade his nature and ruin his intellect.”

  “Oh, she is more than good, she is beautiful,” murmured Lord Henry, sipping a glass of vermouth and orange-bitters. “Dorian says she is beautiful; and he is not often wrong about things of that kind. Your portrait of him has quickened his appreciation of the personal appearance of other people. It has had that excellent effect, amongst others. We are to see her to-night, if that boy doesn’t forget his appointment.”

  “But do you approve of it, Harry?” asked Hallward, walking up and down the room, and biting his lip. “You can’t approve of it really. It is some silly infatuation.”

  “I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do. If a personality fascinates me, whatever the personality chooses to do is absolutely delightful to me. Dorian Gray falls in love with a beautiful girl who acts Shakespeare, and proposes to marry her. Why not? If he wedded Messalina he would be none the less interesting. You know I am not a champion of marriage. The real drawback to marriage is that it makes one unselfish. And unselfish people are colourless. They lack individuality. Still, there are certain temperaments that marriage makes more complex. They retain their egotism, and add to it many other egos. They are forced to have more than one life. They become more highly organized. Besides, every experience is of value, and whatever one may say against marriage, it is certainly an experience. I hope that Dorian Gray will make this girl his wife, passionately adore her for six months, and then suddenly become fascinated by some one else. He would be a wonderful study.”

  “You don’t mean all that, Harry; you know you don’t. If Dorian Gray’s life were spoiled, no one would be sorrier than yourself. You are much better than you pretend to be.”

  Lord Henry laughed. “The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror. We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbour with those virtues that are likely to benefit ourselves. We praise the Banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets. I mean everything that I have said. I have the greatest contempt for optimism. And as for a spoilt life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested. If you want to mar a nature, you have merely to reform it. But here is Dorian himself. He will tell you more than I can.”

  “My dear Harry, my dear Basil, you must both congratulate me!” said the boy, throwing off his evening cape with its satin-lined wings, and shaking each of his friends by the hand in turn. “I have never been so happy. Of course it is sudden. All really delightful things are. And yet it seems to me to be the one thing I have been looking for all my life.” He was flushed with excitement and pleasure, and looked extraordinarily handsome.

  “I hope you will always be very happy, Dorian,” said Hallward, “but I don’t quite forgive you for not having let me know of your engagement. You let Harry know.”

  “And I don’t forgive you for being late for dinner,” broke in Lord Henry, putting his hand on the lad’s shoulder, and smiling as he spoke. “Come, let us sit down and try what the new chef here is like, and then you will tell us how it all came about.”

  “There is really not much to tell,” cried Dorian, as they took their seats at the small round table. “What happened was simply this. After I left you yesterday evening, Harry, I had some dinner at that curious little Italian Restaurant in Rupert Street, you introduced me to, and went down afterwards to the Theatre. Sybil was playing Rosalind. Of course the scenery was dreadful, and the Orlando absurd. But Sybil! You should have seen her! When she came on in her boy’s dress she was perfectly wonderful. She wore a moss-coloured velvet jerkin with cinnamon sleeves, slim brown cross-gartered hose, a dainty little green cap with a hawk’s feather caught in a jewel, and a hooded cloak lined with dull red. She had never seemed to me more exquisite. She had all the delicate grace of that Tanagra figurine that you have in your Studio, Basil. Her hair clustered round her face like dark leaves round a pale rose. As for her acting—well, you will see her to-night. She is simply a born artist. I sat in the dingy box absolutely enthralled. I forgot that I was in London and in the nineteenth century. I was away with my love in a forest that no man had ever seen. After the performance was over I went behind, and spoke to her. As we were sitting together, suddenly there came a look into her eyes that I had never seen there before. My lips moved towards hers. We kissed each other. I can’t describe to you what I felt at that moment. It seemed to me that all my life had been narrowed to one perfect point of rose-coloured joy. She trembled all over, and shook like a white narcissus. Then she flung herself on her knees and kissed my hands. I feel that I should not tell you all this, but I can’t help it. Of course our engagement is a dead secret. She has not even told her own mother. I don’t know what my guardians will say! Lord Radley is sure to be furious. I don’t care. I shall be of age in less than a year, and then I can do what I like. I have been right, Basil, haven’t I, to take my love out of poetry, and to find my wife in Shakespeare’s plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth.”

  “Yes, Dorian, I suppose you were right,” said Hallward, slowly.

  “Have you seen her to-day?” asked Lord Henry.

 
Dorian Gray shook his head. “I left her in the forest of Arden, I shall find her in an orchard in Verona.”

  Lord Henry sipped his champagne in a meditative manner. “At what particular point did you mention the word marriage, Dorian? and what did she say in answer? Perhaps you forgot all about it.”

  “My dear Harry, I did not treat it as a business transaction, and I did not make any formal proposal. I told her that I loved her, and she said she was not worthy to be my wife. Not worthy! Why, the whole world is nothing to me compared to her.”

  “Women are wonderfully practical,” murmured Lord Henry,—“much more practical than we are. In situations of that kind we often forget to say anything about marriage, and they always remind us.”

  Hallward laid his hand upon his arm. “Don’t, Harry. You have annoyed Dorian. He is not like other men. He would never bring misery upon any one. His nature is too fine for that.”

  Lord Henry looked across the table. “Dorian is never annoyed with me,” he answered. “I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses one for asking any question, simple curiosity. I have a theory that it is always the women who propose to us, and not we who propose to the women, except, of course, in middle-class life. But then the middle classes are not modern.”

  Dorian Gray laughed, and tossed his head. “You are quite incorrigible, Harry; but I don’t mind. It is impossible to be angry with you. When you see Sybil Vane you will feel that the man who could wrong her would be a beast without a heart. I cannot understand how anyone can wish to shame what he loves. I love Sybil Vane. I wish to place her on a pedestal of gold, and to see the world worship the woman who is mine. What is marriage? An irrevocable vow. And it is an irrevocable vow that I want to take. Her trust makes me faithful, her belief makes me good. When I am with her, I regret all that you have taught me. I become different from what you have known me to be. I am changed, and the mere touch of Sybil Vane’s hand makes me forget you and all your wrong, fascinating, poisonous, delightful theories.”