CHAPTER IX
[65] For years, Dorian Gray could not free himself from the memory ofthis book. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he neversought to free himself from it. He procured from Paris no less thanfive large-paper copies of the first edition, and had them bound indifferent colors, so that they might suit his various moods and thechanging fancies of a nature over which he seemed, at times, to havealmost entirely lost control. The hero, the wonderful young Parisian,in whom the romantic temperament and the scientific temperament were sostrangely blended, became to him a kind of prefiguring type of himself.And, indeed, the whole book seemed to him to contain the story of hisown life, written before he had lived it.
In one point he was more fortunate than the book's fantastic hero. Henever knew--never, indeed, had any cause to know--that somewhatgrotesque dread of mirrors, and polished metal surfaces, and stillwater, which came upon the young Parisian so early in his life, and wasoccasioned by the sudden decay of a beauty that had once, apparently,been so remarkable. It was with an almost cruel joy--and perhaps innearly every joy, as certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has itsplace--that he used to read the latter part of the book, with itsreally tragic, if somewhat over-emphasized, account of the sorrow anddespair of one who had himself lost what in others, and in the world,he had most valued.
He, at any rate, had no cause to fear that. The boyish beauty that hadso fascinated Basil Hallward, and many others besides him, seemed neverto leave him. Even those who had heard the most evil things againsthim (and from time to time strange rumors about his mode of life creptthrough London and became the chatter of the clubs) could not believeanything to his dishonor when they saw him. He had always the look ofone who had kept himself unspotted from the world. Men who talkedgrossly became silent when Dorian Gray entered the room. There wassomething in the purity of his face that rebuked them. His merepresence seemed to recall to them the innocence that they hadtarnished. They wondered how one so charming and graceful as he wascould have escaped the stain of an age that was at once sordid andsensuous.
He himself, on returning home from one of those mysterious andprolonged absences that gave rise to such strange conjecture amongthose who were his friends, or thought that they were so, would creepup-stairs to the locked room, open the door with the key that neverleft him, and stand, with a mirror, in front of the portrait that BasilHallward had painted of him, looking now at the evil and aging face onthe canvas, and now at the fair young face that laughed back at himfrom the polished glass. The very sharpness of the contrast used toquicken his sense of pleasure. He grew more and more enamoured of hisown beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul.He would examine with minute care, and often with a monstrous andterrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling foreheador crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, [66] wondering sometimeswhich were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age. Hewould place his white hands beside the coarse bloated hands of thepicture, and smile. He mocked the misshapen body and the failing limbs.
There were moments, indeed, at night, when, lying sleepless in his owndelicately-scented chamber, or in the sordid room of the littleill-famed tavern near the Docks, which, under an assumed name, and indisguise, it was his habit to frequent, he would think of the ruin hehad brought upon his soul, with a pity that was all the more poignantbecause it was purely selfish. But moments such as these were rare.That curiosity about life that, many years before, Lord Henry had firststirred in him, as they sat together in the garden of their friend,seemed to increase with gratification. The more he knew, the more hedesired to know. He had mad hungers that grew more ravenous as he fedthem.
Yet he was not really reckless, at any rate in his relations tosociety. Once or twice every month during the winter, and on eachWednesday evening while the season lasted, he would throw open to theworld his beautiful house and have the most celebrated musicians of theday to charm his guests with the wonders of their art. His littledinners, in the settling of which Lord Henry always assisted him, werenoted as much for the careful selection and placing of those invited,as for the exquisite taste shown in the decoration of the table, withits subtle symphonic arrangements of exotic flowers, and embroideredcloths, and antique plate of gold and silver. Indeed, there were many,especially among the very young men, who saw, or fancied that they saw,in Dorian Gray the true realization of a type of which they had oftendreamed in Eton or Oxford days, a type that was to combine something ofthe real culture of the scholar with all the grace and distinction andperfect manner of a citizen of the world. To them he seemed to belongto those whom Dante describes as having sought to "make themselvesperfect by the worship of beauty." Like Gautier, he was one for whom"the visible world existed."
And, certainly, to him life itself was the first, the greatest, of thearts, and for it all the other arts seemed to be but a preparation.Fashion, by which what is really fantastic becomes for a momentuniversal, and Dandyism, which, in its own way, is an attempt to assertthe absolute modernity of beauty, had, of course, their fascination forhim. His mode of dressing, and the particular styles that he affectedfrom time to time, had their marked influence on the young exquisitesof the Mayfair balls and Pall Mall club windows, who copied him ineverything that he did, and tried to reproduce the accidental charm ofhis graceful, though to him only half-serious, fopperies.
For, while he was but too ready to accept the position that was almostimmediately offered to him on his coming of age, and found, indeed, asubtle pleasure in the thought that he might really become to theLondon of his own day what to imperial Neronian Rome the author of the"Satyricon" had once been, yet in his inmost heart he desired to besomething more than a mere arbiter elegantiarum, to be consulted on thewearing of a jewel, or the knotting of a necktie, or [67] the conductof a cane. He sought to elaborate some new scheme of life that wouldhave its reasoned philosophy and its ordered principles and find in thespiritualizing of the senses its highest realization.
The worship of the senses has often, and with much justice, beendecried, men feeling a natural instinct of terror about passions andsensations that seem stronger than ourselves, and that we are consciousof sharing with the less highly organized forms of existence. But itappeared to Dorian Gray that the true nature of the senses had neverbeen understood, and that they had remained savage and animal merelybecause the world had sought to starve them into submission or to killthem by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements of a newspirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty was to be thedominant characteristic. As he looked back upon man moving throughHistory, he was haunted by a feeling of loss. So much had beensurrendered! and to such little purpose! There had been mad wilfulrejections, monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial, whoseorigin was fear, and whose result was a degradation infinitely moreterrible than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance,they had sought to escape, Nature in her wonderful irony driving theanchorite out to herd with the wild animals of the desert and giving tothe hermit the beasts of the field as his companions.
Yes, there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a new hedonism thatwas to re-create life, and to save it from that harsh, uncomelypuritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious revival. It wasto have its service of the intellect, certainly; yet it was never toaccept any theory or system that would involve the sacrifice of anymode of passionate experience. Its aim, indeed, was to be experienceitself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they mightbe. Of the asceticism that deadens the senses, as of the vulgarprofligacy that dulls them, it was to know nothing. But it was toteach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that isitself but a moment.
There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, eitherafter one of those dreamless nights that make one almost enamoured ofdeath, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when throughthe chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than realityitself, and i
nstinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques,and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, onemight fancy, especially the art of those whose minds have been troubledwith the malady of revery. Gradually white fingers creep through thecurtains, and they appear to tremble. Black fantastic shadows crawlinto the corners of the room, and crouch there. Outside, there is thestirring of birds among the leaves, or the sound of men going forth totheir work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down from the hills,and wandering round the silent house, as though it feared to wake thesleepers. Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and bydegrees the forms and colors of things are restored to them, and wewatch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern. The wanmirrors get back their mimic life. The flameless tapers stand where wehave left them, and beside them [68] lies the half-read book that wehad been studying, or the wired flower that we had worn at the ball, orthe letter that we had been afraid to read, or that we had read toooften. Nothing seems to us changed. Out of the unreal shadows of thenight comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume itwhere we had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of thenecessity for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome round ofstereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelidsmight open some morning upon a world that had been re-fashioned anewfor our pleasure in the darkness, a world in which things would havefresh shapes and colors, and be changed, or have other secrets, a worldin which the past would have little or no place, or survive, at anyrate, in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembranceeven of joy having its bitterness, and the memories of pleasure theirpain.
It was the creation of such worlds as these that seemed to Dorian Grayto be the true object, or among the true objects, of life; and in hissearch for sensations that would be at once new and delightful, andpossess that element of strangeness that is so essential to romance, hewould often adopt certain modes of thought that he knew to be reallyalien to his nature, abandon himself to their subtle influences, andthen, having, as it were, caught their color and satisfied hisintellectual curiosity, leave them with that curious indifference thatis not incompatible with a real ardor of temperament, and that indeed,according to certain modern psychologists, is often a condition of it.
It was rumored of him once that he was about to join the Roman Catholiccommunion; and certainly the Roman ritual had always a great attractionfor him. The daily sacrifice, more awful really than all thesacrifices of the antique world, stirred him as much by its superbrejection of the evidence of the senses as by the primitive simplicityof its elements and the eternal pathos of the human tragedy that itsought to symbolize. He loved to kneel down on the cold marblepavement, and with the priest, in his stiff flowered cope, slowly andwith white hands moving aside the veil of the tabernacle, and raisingaloft the jewelled lantern-shaped monstrance with that pallid waferthat at times, one would fain think, is indeed the "panis caelestis,"the bread of angels, or, robed in the garments of the Passion ofChrist, breaking the Host into the chalice, and smiting his breast forhis sins. The fuming censers, that the grave boys, in their lace andscarlet, tossed into the air like great gilt flowers, had their subtlefascination for him. As he passed out, he used to look with wonder atthe black confessionals, and long to sit in the dim shadow of one ofthem and listen to men and women whispering through the tarnishedgrating the true story of their lives.
But he never fell into the error of arresting his intellectualdevelopment by any formal acceptance of creed or system, or ofmistaking, for a house in which to live, an inn that is but suitablefor the sojourn of a night, or for a few hours of a night in whichthere are no stars and the moon is in travail. Mysticism, with itsmarvellous power of making common things strange to us, and the subtleantinomianism that always seems to accompany it, moved him for aseason; and for a [69] season he inclined to the materialisticdoctrines of the Darwinismus movement in Germany, and found a curiouspleasure in tracing the thoughts and passions of men to some pearlycell in the brain, or some white nerve in the body, delighting in theconception of the absolute dependence of the spirit on certain physicalconditions, morbid or healthy, normal or diseased. Yet, as has beensaid of him before, no theory of life seemed to him to be of anyimportance compared with life itself. He felt keenly conscious of howbarren all intellectual speculation is when separated from action andexperiment. He knew that the senses, no less than the soul, have theirmysteries to reveal.
And so he would now study perfumes, and the secrets of theirmanufacture, distilling heavily-scented oils, and burning odorous gumsfrom the East. He saw that there was no mood of the mind that had notits counterpart in the sensuous life, and set himself to discover theirtrue relations, wondering what there was in frankincense that made onemystical, and in ambergris that stirred one's passions, and in violetsthat woke the memory of dead romances, and in musk that troubled thebrain, and in champak that stained the imagination; and seeking oftento elaborate a real psychology of perfumes, and to estimate the severalinfluences of sweet-smelling roots, and scented pollen-laden flowers,of aromatic balms, and of dark and fragrant woods, of spikenard thatsickens, of hovenia that makes men mad, and of aloes that are said tobe able to expel melancholy from the soul.
At another time he devoted himself entirely to music, and in a longlatticed room, with a vermilion-and-gold ceiling and walls ofolive-green lacquer, he used to give curious concerts in which madgypsies tore wild music from little zithers, or grave yellow-shawledTunisians plucked at the strained strings of monstrous lutes, whilegrinning negroes beat monotonously upon copper drums, or turbanedIndians, crouching upon scarlet mats, blew through long pipes of reedor brass, and charmed, or feigned to charm, great hooded snakes andhorrible horned adders. The harsh intervals and shrill discords ofbarbaric music stirred him at times when Schubert's grace, and Chopin'sbeautiful sorrows, and the mighty harmonies of Beethoven himself, fellunheeded on his ear. He collected together from all parts of the worldthe strangest instruments that could be found, either in the tombs ofdead nations or among the few savage tribes that have survived contactwith Western civilizations, and loved to touch and try them. He hadthe mysterious juruparis of the Rio Negro Indians, that women are notallowed to look at, and that even youths may not see till they havebeen subjected to fasting and scourging, and the earthen jars of thePeruvians that have the shrill cries of birds, and flutes of humanbones such as Alfonso de Ovalle heard in Chili, and the sonorous greenstones that are found near Cuzco and give forth a note of singularsweetness. He had painted gourds filled with pebbles that rattled whenthey were shaken; the long clarin of the Mexicans, into which theperformer does not blow, but through which he inhales the air; theharsh ture of the Amazon tribes, that is sounded by the sentinels whosit all day long in trees, and that can be heard, it is said, at adistance of three leagues; the teponaztli, that [70] has two vibratingtongues of wood, and is beaten with sticks that are smeared with anelastic gum obtained from the milky juice of plants; the yotl-bells ofthe Aztecs, that are hung in clusters like grapes; and a hugecylindrical drum, covered with the skins of great serpents, like theone that Bernal Diaz saw when he went with Cortes into the Mexicantemple, and of whose doleful sound he has left us so vivid adescription. The fantastic character of these instruments fascinatedhim, and he felt a curious delight in the thought that Art, likeNature, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and with hideousvoices. Yet, after some time, he wearied of them, and would sit in hisbox at the Opera, either alone or with Lord Henry, listening in raptpleasure to "Tannhaeuser," and seeing in that great work of art apresentation of the tragedy of his own soul.
On another occasion he took up the study of jewels, and appeared at acostume ball as Anne de Joyeuse, Admiral of France, in a dress coveredwith five hundred and sixty pearls. He would often spend a whole daysettling and resettling in their cases the various stones that he hadcollected, such as the olive-green chrysoberyl that turns red bylamplight, the cymophane with its wire-like line o
f silver, thepistachio-colored peridot, rose-pink and wine-yellow topazes,carbuncles of fiery scarlet with tremulous four-rayed stars, flame-redcinnamon-stones, orange and violet spinels, and amethysts with theiralternate layers of ruby and sapphire. He loved the red gold of thesunstone, and the moonstone's pearly whiteness, and the broken rainbowof the milky opal. He procured from Amsterdam three emeralds ofextraordinary size and richness of color, and had a turquoise de lavieille roche that was the envy of all the connoisseurs.
He discovered wonderful stories, also, about jewels. In Alphonso's"Clericalis Disciplina" a serpent was mentioned with eyes of realjacinth, and in the romantic history of Alexander he was said to havefound snakes in the vale of Jordan "with collars of real emeraldsgrowing on their backs." There was a gem in the brain of the dragon,Philostratus told us, and "by the exhibition of golden letters and ascarlet robe" the monster could be thrown into a magical sleep, andslain. According to the great alchemist Pierre de Boniface, thediamond rendered a man invisible, and the agate of India made himeloquent. The cornelian appeased anger, and the hyacinth provokedsleep, and the amethyst drove away the fumes of wine. The garnet castout demons, and the hydropicus deprived the moon of her color. Theselenite waxed and waned with the moon, and the meloceus, thatdiscovers thieves, could be affected only by the blood of kids.Leonardus Camillus had seen a white stone taken from the brain of anewly-killed toad, that was a certain antidote against poison. Thebezoar, that was found in the heart of the Arabian deer, was a charmthat could cure the plague. In the nests of Arabian birds was theaspilates, that, according to Democritus, kept the wearer from anydanger by fire.
The King of Ceilan rode through his city with a large ruby in his hand,as the ceremony of his coronation. The gates of the palace of John thePriest were "made of sardius, with the horn of the horned [71] snakeinwrought, so that no man might bring poison within." Over the gablewere "two golden apples, in which were two carbuncles," so that thegold might shine by day, and the carbuncles by night. In Lodge'sstrange romance "A Margarite of America" it was stated that in thechamber of Margarite were seen "all the chaste ladies of the world,inchased out of silver, looking through fair mirrours of chrysolites,carbuncles, sapphires, and greene emeraults." Marco Polo had watchedthe inhabitants of Zipangu place a rose-colored pearl in the mouth ofthe dead. A sea-monster had been enamoured of the pearl that the diverbrought to King Perozes, and had slain the thief, and mourned for sevenmoons over his loss. When the Huns lured the king into the great pit,he flung it away,--Procopius tells the story,--nor was it ever foundagain, though the Emperor Anastasius offered five hundred-weight ofgold pieces for it. The King of Malabar had shown a Venetian a rosaryof one hundred and four pearls, one for every god that he worshipped.
When the Duke de Valentinois, son of Alexander VI., visited Louis XII.of France, his horse was loaded with gold leaves, according toBrantome, and his cap had double rows of rubies that threw out a greatlight. Charles of England had ridden in stirrups hung with threehundred and twenty-one diamonds. Richard II. had a coat, valued atthirty thousand marks, which was covered with balas rubies. Halldescribed Henry VIII., on his way to the Tower previous to hiscoronation, as wearing "a jacket of raised gold, the placardembroidered with diamonds and other rich stones, and a great bauderikeabout his neck of large balasses." The favorites of James I. woreear-rings of emeralds set in gold filigrane. Edward II. gave to PiersGaveston a suit of red-gold armor studded with jacinths, and a collarof gold roses set with turquoise-stones, and a skull-cap parseme withpearls. Henry II. wore jewelled gloves reaching to the elbow, and hada hawk-glove set with twelve rubies and fifty-two great pearls. Theducal hat of Charles the Rash, the last Duke of Burgundy of his race,was studded with sapphires and hung with pear-shaped pearls.
How exquisite life had once been! How gorgeous in its pomp anddecoration! Even to read of the luxury of the dead was wonderful.
Then he turned his attention to embroideries, and to the tapestriesthat performed the office of frescos in the chill rooms of the Northernnations of Europe. As he investigated the subject,--and he always hadan extraordinary faculty of becoming absolutely absorbed for the momentin whatever he took up,--he was almost saddened by the reflection ofthe ruin that time brought on beautiful and wonderful things. He, atany rate, had escaped that. Summer followed summer, and the yellowjonquils bloomed and died many times, and nights of horror repeated thestory of their shame, but he was unchanged. No winter marred his faceor stained his flower-like bloom. How different it was with materialthings! Where had they gone to? Where was the great crocus-coloredrobe, on which the gods fought against the giants, that had been workedfor Athena? Where the huge velarium that Nero had stretched across theColosseum at Rome, on which were represented the starry sky, and Apollodriving a chariot drawn by [72] white gilt-reined steeds? He longed tosee the curious table-napkins wrought for Elagabalus, on which weredisplayed all the dainties and viands that could be wanted for a feast;the mortuary cloth of King Chilperic, with its three hundred goldenbees; the fantastic robes that excited the indignation of the Bishop ofPontus, and were figured with "lions, panthers, bears, dogs, forests,rocks, hunters,--all, in fact, that a painter can copy from nature;"and the coat that Charles of Orleans once wore, on the sleeves of whichwere embroidered the verses of a song beginning "Madame, je suis toutjoyeux," the musical accompaniment of the words being wrought in goldthread, and each note, a square shape in those days, formed with fourpearls. He read of the room that was prepared at the palace at Rheimsfor the use of Queen Joan of Burgundy, and was decorated with "thirteenhundred and twenty-one parrots, made in broidery, and blazoned with theking's arms, and five hundred and sixty-one butterflies, whose wingswere similarly ornamented with the arms of the queen, the whole workedin gold." Catherine de Medicis had a mourning-bed made for her ofblack velvet powdered with crescents and suns. Its curtains were ofdamask, with leafy wreaths and garlands, figured upon a gold and silverground, and fringed along the edges with broideries of pearls, and itstood in a room hung with rows of the queen's devices in cut blackvelvet upon cloth of silver. Louis XIV. had gold-embroideredcaryatides fifteen feet high in his apartment. The state bed ofSobieski, King of Poland, was made of Smyrna gold brocade embroideredin turquoises with verses from the Koran. Its supports were of silvergilt, beautifully chased, and profusely set with enamelled and jewelledmedallions. It had been taken from the Turkish camp before Vienna, andthe standard of Mohammed had stood under it.
And so, for a whole year, he sought to accumulate the most exquisitespecimens that he could find of textile and embroidered work, gettingthe dainty Delhi muslins, finely wrought, with gold-threat palmates,and stitched over with iridescent beetles' wings; the Dacca gauzes,that from their transparency are known in the East as "woven air," and"running water," and "evening dew;" strange figured cloths from Java;elaborate yellow Chinese hangings; books bound in tawny satins or fairblue silks and wrought with fleurs de lys, birds, and images; veils oflacis worked in Hungary point; Sicilian brocades, and stiff Spanishvelvets; Georgian work with its gilt coins, and Japanese Foukousas withtheir green-toned golds and their marvellously-plumaged birds.
He had a special passion, also, for ecclesiastical vestments, as indeedhe had for everything connected with the service of the Church. In thelong cedar chests that lined the west gallery of his house he hadstored away many rare and beautiful specimens of what is really theraiment of the Bride of Christ, who must wear purple and jewels andfine linen that she may hide the pallid macerated body that is worn bythe suffering that she seeks for, and wounded by self-inflicted pain.He had a gorgeous cope of crimson silk and gold-thread damask, figuredwith a repeating pattern of golden pomegranates set in six-petalledformal blossoms, beyond which on either side was the pine- [73] appledevice wrought in seed-pearls. The orphreys were divided into panelsrepresenting scenes from the life of the Virgin, and the coronation ofthe Virgin was figured in colored silks upon the hood. This wasItalian work of the fifteenth century.
Another cope was of greenvelvet, embroidered with heart-shaped groups of acanthus-leaves, fromwhich spread long-stemmed white blossoms, the details of which werepicked out with silver thread and colored crystals. The morse bore aseraph's head in gold-thread raised work. The orphreys were woven in adiaper of red and gold silk, and were starred with medallions of manysaints and martyrs, among whom was St. Sebastian. He had chasubles,also, of amber-colored silk, and blue silk and gold brocade, and yellowsilk damask and cloth of gold, figured with representations of thePassion and Crucifixion of Christ, and embroidered with lions andpeacocks and other emblems; dalmatics of white satin and pink silkdamask, decorated with tulips and dolphins and fleurs de lys; altarfrontals of crimson velvet and blue linen; and many corporals,chalice-veils, and sudaria. In the mystic offices to which thesethings were put there was something that quickened his imagination.
For these things, and everything that he collected in his lovely house,were to be to him means of forgetfulness, modes by which he couldescape, for a season, from the fear that seemed to him at times to bealmost too great to be borne. Upon the walls of the lonely locked roomwhere he had spent so much of his boyhood, he had hung with his ownhands the terrible portrait whose changing features showed him the realdegradation of his life, and had draped the purple-and-gold pall infront of it as a curtain. For weeks he would not go there, wouldforget the hideous painted thing, and get back his light heart, hiswonderful joyousness, his passionate pleasure in mere existence. Then,suddenly, some night he would creep out of the house, go down todreadful places near Blue Gate Fields, and stay there, day after day,until he was driven away. On his return he would sit in front of thepicture, sometimes loathing it and himself, but filled, at other times,with that pride of rebellion that is half the fascination of sin, andsmiling, with secret pleasure, at the misshapen shadow that had to bearthe burden that should have been his own.
After a few years he could not endure to be long out of England, andgave up the villa that he had shared at Trouville with Lord Henry, aswell as the little white walled-in house at Algiers where he had morethan once spent his winter. He hated to be separated from the picturethat was such a part of his life, and he was also afraid that duringhis absence some one might gain access to the room, in spite of theelaborate bolts and bars that he had caused to be placed upon the door.
He was quite conscious that this would tell them nothing. It was truethat the portrait still preserved, under all the foulness and uglinessof the face, its marked likeness to himself; but what could they learnfrom that? He would laugh at any one who tried to taunt him. He hadnot painted it. What was it to him how vile and full of shame itlooked? Even if he told them, would they believe it?
Yet he was afraid. Sometimes when he was down at his great [74] housein Nottinghamshire, entertaining the fashionable young men of his ownrank who were his chief companions, and astounding the county by thewanton luxury and gorgeous splendor of his mode of life, he wouldsuddenly leave his guests and rush back to town to see that the doorhad not been tampered with and that the picture was still there. Whatif it should be stolen? The mere thought made him cold with horror.Surely the world would know his secret then. Perhaps the world alreadysuspected it.
For, while he fascinated many, there were not a few who distrusted him.He was blackballed at a West End club of which his birth and socialposition fully entitled him to become a member, and on one occasion,when he was brought by a friend into the smoking-room of the Carlton,the Duke of Berwick and another gentleman got up in a marked manner andwent out. Curious stories became current about him after he had passedhis twenty-fifth year. It was said that he had been seen brawling withforeign sailors in a low den in the distant parts of Whitechapel, andthat he consorted with thieves and coiners and knew the mysteries oftheir trade. His extraordinary absences became notorious, and, when heused to reappear again in society, men would whisper to each other incorners, or pass him with a sneer, or look at him with cold searchingeyes, as if they were determined to discover his secret.
Of such insolences and attempted slights he, of course, took no notice,and in the opinion of most people his frank debonair manner, hischarming boyish smile, and the infinite grace of that wonderful youththat seemed never to leave him, were in themselves a sufficient answerto the calumnies (for so they called them) that were circulated abouthim. It was remarked, however, that those who had been most intimatewith him appeared, after a time, to shun him. Of all his friends, orso-called friends, Lord Henry Wotton was the only one who remainedloyal to him. Women who had wildly adored him, and for his sake hadbraved all social censure and set convention at defiance, were seen togrow pallid with shame or horror if Dorian Gray entered the room.
Yet these whispered scandals only lent him, in the eyes of many, hisstrange and dangerous charm. His great wealth was a certain element ofsecurity. Society, civilized society at least, is never very ready tobelieve anything to the detriment of those who are both rich andcharming. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importancethan morals, and the highest respectability is of less value in itsopinion than the possession of a good chef. And, after all, it is avery poor consolation to be told that the man who has given one a baddinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in his private life. Even thecardinal virtues cannot atone for cold entrees, as Lord Henry remarkedonce, in a discussion on the subject; and there is possibly a good dealto be said for his view. For the canons of good society are, or shouldbe, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it.It should have the dignity of a ceremony, as well as its unreality, andshould combine the insincere character of a romantic play with the witand beauty that make such plays charming. Is insincerity such a [75]terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by which we canmultiply our personalities.
Such, at any rate, was Dorian Gray's opinion. He used to wonder at theshallow psychology of those who conceive the Ego in man as a thingsimple, permanent, reliable, and of one essence. To him, man was abeing with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex multiformcreature that bore within itself strange legacies of thought andpassion, and whose very flesh was tainted with the monstrous maladiesof the dead. He loved to stroll through the gaunt cold picture-galleryof his country-house and look at the various portraits of those whoseblood flowed in his veins. Here was Philip Herbert, described byFrancis Osborne, in his "Memoires on the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth andKing James," as one who was "caressed by the court for his handsomeface, which kept him not long company." Was it young Herbert's lifethat he sometimes led? Had some strange poisonous germ crept from bodyto body till it had reached his own? Was it some dim sense of thatruined grace that had made him so suddenly, and almost without cause,give utterance, in Basil Hallward's studio, to that mad prayer that hadso changed his life? Here, in gold-embroidered red doublet, jewelledsurcoat, and gilt-edged ruff and wrist-bands, stood Sir AnthonySherard, with his silver-and-black armor piled at his feet. What hadthis man's legacy been? Had the lover of Giovanna of Naples bequeathedhim some inheritance of sin and shame? Were his own actions merely thedreams that the dead man had not dared to realize? Here, from thefading canvas, smiled Lady Elizabeth Devereux, in her gauze hood, pearlstomacher, and pink slashed sleeves. A flower was in her right hand,and her left clasped an enamelled collar of white and damask roses. Ona table by her side lay a mandolin and an apple. There were largegreen rosettes upon her little pointed shoes. He knew her life, andthe strange stories that were told about her lovers. Had he somethingof her temperament in him? Those oval heavy-lidded eyes seemed to lookcuriously at him. What of George Willoughby, with his powdered hairand fantastic patches? How evil he looked! The face was saturnine andswarthy, and the sensual lips seemed to be twisted with disdain.Delicate lace ruffles fell over the lean yellow hands that were sooverladen with rings. He had been a macaroni of the eighteenthcentury, and the friend, in his youth, of Lord Ferrars. What of thesecond Lord Sherard, the companion of the Prince Regent in his wildest
days, and one of the witnesses at the secret marriage with Mrs.Fitzherbert? How proud and handsome he was, with his chestnut curlsand insolent pose! What passions had he bequeathed? The world hadlooked upon him as infamous. He had led the orgies at Carlton House.The star of the Garter glittered upon his breast. Beside him hung theportrait of his wife, a pallid, thin-lipped woman in black. Her blood,also, stirred within him. How curious it all seemed!
Yet one had ancestors in literature, as well as in one's own race,nearer perhaps in type and temperament, many of them, and certainlywith an influence of which one was more absolutely conscious. There[76] were times when it seemed to Dorian Gray that the whole of historywas merely the record of his own life, not as he had lived it in actand circumstance, but as his imagination had created it for him, as ithad been in his brain and in his passions. He felt that he had knownthem all, those strange terrible figures that had passed across thestage of the world and made sin so marvellous and evil so full ofwonder. It seemed to him that in some mysterious way their lives hadbeen his own.
The hero of the dangerous novel that had so influenced his life hadhimself had this curious fancy. In a chapter of the book he tells how,crowned with laurel, lest lightning might strike him, he had sat, asTiberius, in a garden at Capri, reading the shameful books ofElephantis, while dwarfs and peacocks strutted round him and theflute-player mocked the swinger of the censer; and, as Caligula, hadcaroused with the green-shirted jockeys in their stables, and supped inan ivory manger with a jewel-frontleted horse; and, as Domitian, hadwandered through a corridor lined with marble mirrors, looking roundwith haggard eyes for the reflection of the dagger that was to end hisdays, and sick with that ennui, that taedium vitae, that comes on thoseto whom life denies nothing; and had peered through a clear emerald atthe red shambles of the Circus, and then, in a litter of pearl andpurple drawn by silver-shod mules, been carried through the Street ofPomegranates to a House of Gold, and heard men cry on Nero Caesar as hepassed by; and, as Elagabalus, had painted his face with colors, andplied the distaff among the women, and brought the Moon from Carthage,and given her in mystic marriage to the Sun.
Over and over again Dorian used to read this fantastic chapter, and thechapter immediately following, in which the hero describes the curioustapestries that he had had woven for him from Gustave Moreau's designs,and on which were pictured the awful and beautiful forms of those whomVice and Blood and Weariness had made monstrous or mad: Filippo, Dukeof Milan, who slew his wife, and painted her lips with a scarletpoison; Pietro Barbi, the Venetian, known as Paul the Second, whosought in his vanity to assume the title of Formosus, and whose tiara,valued at two hundred thousand florins, was bought at the price of aterrible sin; Gian Maria Visconti, who used hounds to chase living men,and whose murdered body was covered with roses by a harlot who hadloved him; the Borgia on his white horse, with Fratricide riding besidehim, and his mantle stained with the blood of Perotto; Pietro Riario,the young Cardinal Archbishop of Florence, child and minion of SixtusIV., whose beauty was equalled only by his debauchery, and who receivedLeonora of Aragon in a pavilion of white and crimson silk, filled withnymphs and centaurs, and gilded a boy that he might serve her at thefeast as Ganymede or Hylas; Ezzelin, whose melancholy could be curedonly by the spectacle of death, and who had a passion for red blood, asother men have for red wine,--the son of the Fiend, as was reported,and one who had cheated his father at dice when gambling with him forhis own soul; Giambattista Cibo, who in mockery took the name ofInnocent, and into whose torpid veins the blood of three lads wasinfused by a [77] Jewish doctor; Sigismondo Malatesta, the lover ofIsotta, and the lord of Rimini, whose effigy was burned at Rome as theenemy of God and man, who strangled Polyssena with a napkin, and gavepoison to Ginevra d'Este in a cup of emerald, and in honor of ashameful passion built a pagan church for Christian worship; CharlesVI., who had so wildly adored his brother's wife that a leper hadwarned him of the insanity that was coming on him, and who could onlybe soothed by Saracen cards painted with the images of Love and Deathand Madness; and, in his trimmed jerkin and jewelled cap andacanthus-like curls, Grifonetto Baglioni, who slew Astorre with hisbride, and Simonetto with his page, and whose comeliness was such that,as he lay dying in the yellow piazza of Perugia, those who had hatedhim could not choose but weep, and Atalanta, who had cursed him,blessed him.
There was a horrible fascination in them all. He saw them at night,and they troubled his imagination in the day. The Renaissance knew ofstrange manners of poisoning,--poisoning by a helmet and a lightedtorch, by an embroidered glove and a jewelled fan, by a gilded pomanderand by an amber chain. Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book. Therewere moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which hecould realize his conception of the beautiful.