Bab Bab 3 · At half-past twelve next day Lord Henry Wotton strolled from Curzon

. 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 His principles were out of date, but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.

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 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 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?”

“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 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.

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.”

“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.”

“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.

“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 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.

“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.

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?”

“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.”

“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.”