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1For, while he fascinated many, there were not a few who distrusted him. He was very nearly blackballed at a West End
2club of which his birth and social position fully entitled him to become a member, and it was said that on one occasion,
3when he was brought by a friend into the smoking-room of the Churchill, the Duke of Berwick and another gentleman got up
4in a marked manner and went out. Curious stories became current about him after he had passed his twenty-fifth year. It
5was rumoured that he had been seen brawling with foreign sailors in a low den in the distant parts of Whitechapel, and
6that he consorted with thieves and coiners and knew the mysteries of their trade. His extraordinary absences became
7notorious, and, when he used to reappear again in society, men would whisper to each other in corners, or pass him with
8a sneer, or look at him with cold searching eyes, as though they were determined to discover his secret. Of such
9insolences and attempted slights he, of course, took no notice, and in the opinion of most people his frank debonair
10manner, his charming boyish smile, and the infinite grace of that wonderful youth that seemed never to leave him, were
11in themselves a sufficient answer to the calumnies, for so they termed them, that were circulated about him. It was
12remarked, however, that some of those who had been most intimate with him appeared, after a time, to shun him. Women who
13had wildly adored him, and for his sake had braved all social censure and set convention at defiance, were seen to grow
14pallid with shame or horror if Dorian Gray entered the room. Yet these whispered scandals only increased in the eyes of
15many his strange and dangerous charm. His great wealth was a certain element of security. Society--civilized society, at
16least--is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It feels
17instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of
18much less value than the possession of a good chef. And, after all, it is a very poor consolation to be told that the
19man who has given one a bad dinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in his private life. Even the cardinal virtues
20cannot atone for half-cold entrées, as Lord Henry remarked once, in a discussion on the subject, and there is possibly a
21good deal to be said for his view. For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form
22is absolutely essential to it. It should have the dignity of a ceremony, as well as its unreality, and should combine
23the insincere character of a romantic play with the wit and beauty that make such plays delightful to us. Is insincerity
24such a terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities. Such, at any rate,
25was Dorian Gray's opinion. He used to wonder at the shallow psychology of those who conceive the ego in man as a thing
26simple, permanent, reliable, and of one essence. To him, man was a being with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a
27complex multiform creature that bore within itself strange legacies of thought and passion, and whose very flesh was
28tainted with the monstrous maladies of the dead. He loved to stroll through the gaunt cold picture-gallery of his
29country house and look at the various portraits of those whose blood flowed in his veins. Here was Philip Herbert,
30described by Francis Osborne, in his Memoires on the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James, as one who was "caressed
31by the Court for his handsome face, which kept him not long company." Was it young Herbert's life that he sometimes led?
32Had some strange poisonous germ crept from body to body till it had reached his own? Was it some dim sense of that
33ruined grace that had made him so suddenly, and almost without cause, give utterance, in Basil Hallward's studio, to the
34mad prayer that had so changed his life? Here, in gold-embroidered red doublet, jewelled surcoat, and gilt-edged ruff
35and wristbands, stood Sir Anthony Sherard, with his silver-and-black armour piled at his feet. What had this man's
36legacy been? Had the lover of Giovanna of Naples bequeathed him some inheritance of sin and shame? Were his own actions
37merely the dreams that the dead man had not dared to realize? Here, from the fading canvas, smiled Lady Elizabeth
38Devereux, in her gauze hood, pearl stomacher, and pink slashed sleeves. A flower was in her right hand, and her left
39clasped an enamelled collar of white and damask roses. On a table by her side lay a mandolin and an apple. There were
40large green rosettes upon her little pointed shoes. He knew her life, and the strange stories that were told about her
41lovers. Had he something of her temperament in him? These oval, heavy-lidded eyes seemed to look curiously at him. What
42of George Willoughby, with his powdered hair and fantastic patches? How evil he looked! The face was saturnine and
43swarthy, and the sensual lips seemed to be twisted with disdain. Delicate lace ruffles fell over the lean yellow hands
44that were so overladen with rings. He had been a macaroni of the eighteenth century, and the friend, in his youth, of
45Lord Ferrars. What of the second Lord Beckenham, the companion of the Prince Regent in his wildest days, and one of the
46witnesses at the secret marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert? How proud and handsome he was, with his chestnut curls and
47insolent pose! What passions had he bequeathed? The world had looked upon him as infamous. He had led the orgies at
48Carlton House. The star of the Garter glittered upon his breast. Beside him hung the portrait of his wife, a pallid,
49thin-lipped woman in black. Her blood, also, stirred within him. How curious it all seemed! And his mother with her Lady
50Hamilton face and her moist, wine-dashed lips--he knew what he had got from her. He had got from her his beauty, and his
51passion for the beauty of others. She laughed at him in her loose Bacchante dress. There were vine leaves in her hair.
52The purple spilled from the cup she was holding. The carnations of the painting had withered, but the eyes were still
53wonderful in their depth and brilliancy of colour. They seemed to follow him wherever he went. Yet one had ancestors in
54literature as well as in one's own race, nearer perhaps in type and temperament, many of them, and certainly with an
55influence of which one was more absolutely conscious. There were times when it appeared to Dorian Gray that the whole of
56history was merely the record of his own life, not as he had lived it in act and circumstance, but as his imagination
57had created it for him, as it had been in his brain and in his passions. He felt that he had known them all, those
58strange terrible figures that had passed across the stage of the world and made sin so marvellous and evil so full of
59subtlety. It seemed to him that in some mysterious way their lives had been his own. The hero of the wonderful novel
60that had so influenced his life had himself known this curious fancy. In the seventh chapter he tells how, crowned with
61laurel, lest lightning might strike him, he had sat, as Tiberius, in a garden at Capri, reading the shameful books of
62Elephantis, while dwarfs and peacocks strutted round him and the flute-player mocked the swinger of the censer; and, as
63Caligula, had caroused with the green-shirted jockeys in their stables and supped in an ivory manger with a
64jewel-frontleted horse; and, as Domitian, had wandered through a corridor lined with marble mirrors, looking round with
65haggard eyes for the reflection of the dagger that was to end his days, and sick with that ennui, that terrible tædium
66vitæ, that comes on those to whom life denies nothing; and had peered through a clear emerald at the red shambles of the
67circus and then, in a litter of pearl and purple drawn by silver-shod mules, been carried through the Street of
68Pomegranates to a House of Gold and heard men cry on Nero Caesar as he passed by; and, as Elagabalus, had painted his
69face with colours, and plied the distaff among the women, and brought the Moon from Carthage and given her in mystic
70marriage to the Sun.
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