Chapter II: Introduction (2)

When I first conceived the idea of a young man selling his soul in exchange for eternal youth--an idea that is old in the history of literature, but to which I have given new form--I felt that, from an æsthetic point of view, it would be difficult to keep the moral in its proper secondary place; and even now I do not feel quite sure that I have been able to do so. I think the moral too apparent. When the book is published in a volume I hope to correct this defect.

As for what the moral is, your critic states that it is this--that when a man feels himself becoming "too angelic" he should rush out and make a "beast of himself." I cannot say that I consider this a moral. The real moral of the story is that all excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its punishment, and this moral is so far artistically and deliberately suppressed that it does not enunciate its law as a general principle, but realises itself purely in the lives of individuals, and so becomes simply a dramatic element in a work of art, and not the object of the work of art itself.

Your critic also falls into error when he says that Dorian Gray, having a "cool, calculating, conscienceless character," was inconsistent when he destroyed the picture of his own soul, on the ground that the picture did not become less hideous after he had done what, in his vanity, he had considered his first good action. Dorian Gray has not got a cool, calculating, conscienceless character at all. On the contrary, he is extremely impulsive, absurdly romantic, and is haunted all through his life by an exaggerated sense of conscience which mars his pleasures for him and warns him that youth and enjoyment are not everything in the world. It is finally to get rid of the conscience that had dogged his steps from year to year that he destroys the picture; and thus in his attempt to kill conscience Dorian Gray kills himself.

Your critic then talks about "obtrusively cheap scholarship." Now, whatever a scholar writes is sure to display scholarship in the distinction of style and the fine use of language; but my story contains no learned or pseudo-learned discussions, and the only literary books that it alludes to are books that any fairly educated reader may be supposed to be acquainted with, such as the "Satyricon" of Petronius Arbiter, or Gautier's "Emaux et Camées." Such books as Le Conso's "Clericalis Disciplina" belong not to culture, but to curiosity. Anybody may be excused for not knowing them.

Finally, let me say this--the æsthetic movement produced certain curious colours, subtle in their loveliness and fascinating in their almost mystical tone. They were, and are, our reaction against the crude primaries of a doubtless more respectable but certainly less cultivated age. My story is an essay on decorative art. It re-acts against the crude brutality of plain realism. It is poisonous, if you like, but you cannot deny that it is also perfect, and perfection is what we artists aim at.

I remain, Sir, your obedient servant,

OSCAR WILDE.

16, Tite Street, June 30th.

[12] July 2nd, 1890.

* * * * *

_We allow absolute freedom to the journalist, and entirely limit the artist. English public opinion, that is to say, tries to constrain and impede and warp the man who makes things that are beautiful in effect, and compels the journalist to retail things that are ugly, or disgusting, or revolting in fact, so that we have the most serious journalists in the world, and the most indecent newspapers._

* * * * *

"THE SCOTS OBSERVER'S" REVIEW.

The following diatribe is from a journal, _The Scots Observer_[13], which had an ephemeral existence in the early 'nineties. Under the heading of "Reviews and Magazines" it launched forth in these words:--

"Why go grubbing in muck heaps? The world is fair, and the
proportion of healthy-minded men and honest women to those that are
foul, fallen or unnatural is great. Mr. Oscar Wilde has again been
writing stuff that were better unwritten; and while "The Picture of
Dorian Gray," which he contributes to _Lippincott's_, is ingenious,
interesting, full of cleverness, and plainly the work of a man of
letters, it is false art for its interest is medico-legal; it is
false to human nature--for its hero is a devil; it is false to
morality--for it is not made sufficiently clear that the writer
does not prefer a course of unnatural iniquity to a life of
cleanliness, health and sanity. The story--which deals with matters
only fitted for the Criminal Investigation Department or a hearing
_in camera_--is discreditable alike to author and editor.

Mr. Wilde has brains, and art, and style; but, if he can write for
none but outlawed noblemen and perverted telegraph-boys, the sooner
he takes to tailoring (or some other decent trade) the better for
his own reputation and the public morals."

[13] July 5th, 1890.

_The Scots Observer_ was edited by W.E. Henley. It was violently Tory in character, and afterwards became _The National Observer_, but not even a re-christening could save it from an early death.

* * * * *

_We are dominated by journalism.... Journalism governs for ever and ever._

* * * * *

OSCAR WILDE'S REPLIES.

To this vulgar abuse Wilde condescended to reply in the following terms:--

16, Tite Street, Chelsea,

9th July, 1890.

Sir,--You have published a review of my story, "The Picture of Dorian Gray." As this review is grossly unjust to me as an artist, I ask you to allow me to exercise in your columns my right of reply.

Your reviewer, Sir, while admitting that the story in question is "plainly the work of a man of letters," the work of one who has "brains, and art, and style," yet suggests, and apparently in all seriousness, that I have written it in order that it should be read by the most depraved members of the criminal and illiterate classes. Now, Sir, I do not suppose that the criminal and illiterate classes ever read anything except newspapers. They are certainly not likely to be able to understand anything of mine. So let them pass, and on the broad question of why a man of letters writes at all let me say this.

The pleasure that one has in creating a work of art is a purely personal pleasure, and it is for the sake of this pleasure that one creates. The artist works with his eye on the object. Nothing else interests him. What people are likely to say does not even occur to him.

He is fascinated by what he has in hand. He is indifferent to others. I write because it gives me the greatest possible artistic pleasure to write. If my work pleases the few, I am gratified. If it does not, it causes me no pain. As for the mob, I have no desire to be a popular novelist. It is far too easy.

Your critic then, Sir, commits the absolutely unpardonable crime of trying to confuse the artist with his subject-matter. For this, Sir, there is no excuse at all.

Of one who is the greatest figure in the world's literature since Greek days, Keats remarked that he had as much pleasure in conceiving the evil as he had in conceiving the good. Let your reviewer, Sir, consider the bearings of Keats' criticism, for it is under these conditions that every artist works. One stands remote from one's subject-matter. One creates it, and one contemplates it. The further away the subject-matter is, the more freely can the artist work.

Your reviewer suggests that I do not make it sufficiently clear whether I prefer virtue to wickedness or wickedness to virtue. An artist, Sir, has no ethical sympathies at all. Virtue and wickedness are to him simply what the colours on his palette are to the painter. They are no more, and they are no less. He sees that by their means a certain artistic effect can be produced and he produces it. Iago may be morally horrible and Imogen stainlessly pure. Shakespeare, as Keats said, had as much delight in creating the one as he had in creating the other.

It was necessary, Sir, for the dramatic development of this story, to surround Dorian Gray with an atmosphere of moral corruption. Otherwise the story would have had no meaning and the plot no issue. To keep this atmosphere vague and indeterminate and wonderful was the aim of the artist who wrote the story. I claim, Sir, that he has succeeded. Each man sees his own sin in Dorian Gray. What Dorian Gray's sins are no one knows. He who finds them has brought them.

In conclusion, Sir, let me say how really deeply I regret that you should have permitted such a notice, as the one I feel constrained to write on, to have appeared in your paper. That the editor of the _St. James's Gazette_ should have employed Caliban as his art-critic was possibly natural. The editor of the _Scots Observer_ should not have allowed Thersites to make mows in his reviews. It is unworthy of so distinguished a man of letters.

I am, etc.,

OSCAR WILDE.

To this letter the following editorial note was added:--

It was not to be expected that Mr. Wilde would agree with his
reviewer as to the artistic merit of his booklet. Let it be
conceded to him that he has succeeded in surrounding his hero with
such an atmosphere as he describes. This is his reward. It is none
the less legitimate for a critic to hold and to express the opinion
that no treatment, however skilful, can make the atmosphere
tolerable to his readers. That is his punishment. No doubt, it is
the artist's privilege to be nasty; but he must exercise that
privilege at his peril.

During the next two weeks various correspondents aired their views on the subject, and in the third week[14] Oscar Wilde replied to them thus:--

Sir,--In a letter, dealing with the relations of art to morals, published in your columns--a letter which I may say seems to me in many respects admirable, especially in its insistence on the right of the artist to select his own subject-matter--Mr. Charles Whibley suggests that it must be peculiarly painful to me to find that the ethical import of "Dorian Gray" has been so strongly recognised by the foremost Christian papers of England and America that I have been greeted by more than one of them as a moral reformer.

Allow me, sir, to re-assure on this point not merely Mr. Charles Whibley himself, but also your, no doubt, anxious readers. I have no hesitation in saying that I regard such criticisms as a very gratifying tribute to my story. For if a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than æsthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame. It will be to each man what he is himself. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

And so in the case of "Dorian Gray," the purely literary critic, as in the _Speaker_ and elsewhere, regards it as a "serious and fascinating work of art"[15]: the critic who deals with art in its relation to conduct, as the _Christian Leader_ and the _Christian World_, regards it as an ethical parable: _Light_, which I am told is the organ of the English mystics, regards it as "a work of high spiritual import"[16]: the _St. James's Gazette_, which is seeking apparently to be the organ of the prurient, sees or pretends to see in it all kinds of dreadful things, and hints at Treasury prosecutions: and your Mr. Charles Whibley genially says that he discovers in it "lots of morality."

It is quite true that he goes on to say that he detects no art in it. But I do not think that it is fair to expect a critic to be able to see a work of art from every point of view. Even Gautier had his limitations just as much as Diderot had, and in modern England Goethes are rare. I can only assure Mr. Charles Whibley that no moral apotheosis to which he has added the most modest contribution could possibly be a source of unhappiness to an artist.

I remain, Sir, your obedient servant,

OSCAR WILDE

[14] August 2nd. [15] See ch. PROFUSE AND PERFERVID. [16] See ch. "THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY" - A Spiritualistic Review.

* * * * *

_When it (the public) says a work of art is grossly unintelligible, it means that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is new; when it describes a work as grossly immoral, it means that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true. The former expression has reference to style; the latter to subject-matter._

* * * * *

This again led to further correspondence, and after an interval of two weeks Oscar Wilde returned to the charges levelled against his book and replied for the third and last time.[17] His letter dated from 16, Tite Street, Chelsea, 13th August, 1890, was as follows:--

"Sir,--I am afraid I cannot enter into any newspaper discussion on the subject of art with Mr. Whibley, partly because the writing of letters is always a trouble to me, and partly because I regret to say that I do not know what qualifications Mr. Whibley possesses for the discussion of so important a topic. I merely noticed his letter because (I am sure without in any way intending it) he made a suggestion about myself personally that was quite inaccurate. His suggestion was that it must have been painful to me to find that a certain section of the public, as represented by himself and the critics of some religious publications, had insisted on finding what he calls "lots of morality" in my story of "The Picture of Dorian Gray."

Being naturally desirous of setting your readers right on a question of such vital interest to the historian, I took the opportunity of pointing out in your columns that I regarded all such criticisms as a very gratifying tribute to the ethical beauty of the story, and I added that I was quite ready to recognise that it was not really fair to ask of any ordinary critic that he should be able to appreciate a work of art from every point of view.

I still hold this opinion. If a man sees the artistic beauty of a thing he will probably care very little for its ethical import. If his temperament is more susceptible to ethical than to æsthetic influences he will be blind to questions of style, treatment and the like. It takes a Goethe to see a work of art fully, completely and perfectly, and I thoroughly agree with Mr. Whibley when he says that it is a pity that Goethe never had an opportunity of reading "Dorian Gray." I feel quite certain that he would have been delighted by it, and I only hope that some ghostly publisher is even now distributing shadowy copies in the Elysian fields, and that the cover of Goethe's copy is powdered with gilt asphodels.

You may ask me, Sir, why I should care to have the ethical beauty of my story recognised. I answer--simply because it exists, because the thing is there.

The chief merit of _Madame Bovary_ is not the moral lesson that can be found in it, any more than the chief merit of _Salammbô_ is its archæology; but Flaubert was perfectly right in exposing the ignorance of those who called the one immoral and the other inaccurate; and not merely was he right in the ordinary sense of the word, but he was artistically right, which is everything. The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

Allow me to make one more correction, Sir, and I will have done with Mr. Whibley. He ends his letter with the statement that I have been indefatigable in my public appreciation of my own work. I have no doubt that in saying this he means to pay me a compliment, but he really over-rates my capacity, as well as my inclination for work. I must frankly confess that, by nature and by choice, I am extremely indolent.

Cultivated idleness seems to me to be the proper occupation for men. I dislike newspaper controversies of any kind, and of the two hundred and sixteen criticisms of "Dorian Gray," that have passed from my library table into the waste-paper basket I have taken public notice of only three. One was that which appeared in the _Scots Observer_. I noticed it because it made a suggestion, about the intention of the author in writing the book, which needed correction. The second was an article in the _St. James's Gazette_. It was offensively and vulgarly written, and seemed to me to require immediate and caustic censure. The tone of the article was an impertinence to any man of letters.

The third was a meek attack in a paper called the _Daily Chronicle_. I think my writing to the _Daily Chronicle_ was an act of pure wilfulness. In fact, I feel sure it was. I quite forget what they said. I believe they said that "Dorian Gray" was poisonous, and I thought that, on alliterative grounds, it would be kind to remind them that, however that may be, it is at any rate perfect. That was all. Of the other two hundred and thirteen criticisms I have taken no notice. Indeed, I have not read more than half of them. It is a sad thing, but one wearies even of praise.

As regards Mr. Brown's letter, it is interesting only in so far as it exemplifies the truth of what I have said above on the question of the two obvious schools of critics. Mr. Brown says frankly that he considers morality to be the "strong point" of my story. Mr. Brown means well, and has got hold of a half truth, but when he proceeds to deal with the book from the artistic stand-point, he, of course, goes sadly astray. To class "Dorian Gray" with M. Zola's _La Terre_ is as silly as if one were to class Masset's _Fortunio_ with one of the Adelphi melodramas. Mr. Brown should be content with ethical appreciations. There he is impregnable.

Mr. Cobbam opens badly by describing my letter setting Mr. Whibley right on a matter of fact as an "impudent paradox." The term "impudent" is meaningless, and the word "paradox" is misplaced. I am afraid that writing to newspapers has a deteriorating influence on style. People get violent and abusive and lose all sense of proportion when they enter that curious journalistic arena in which the race is always to the noisiest. "Impudent paradox" is neither violent not abusive, but it is not an expression that should have been used about my letter.

However, Mr. Cobbam makes full atonement afterwards for what was, no doubt, a mere error of manner, by adopting the impudent paradox in question as his own, and pointing out that, as I had previously said, the artist will always look at the work of art from the stand-point of beauty of style and beauty of treatment, and that those who have not got the sense of beauty--or whose sense of beauty is dominated by ethical considerations--will always turn their attention to the subject-matter and make its moral import the test and touchstone of the poem or novel or picture that is presented to them, while the newspaper critic will sometimes take one side and sometimes the other, according as he is cultured or uncultured. In fact, Mr. Cobbam converts the impudent paradox into a tedious truism, and, I dare say, in doing so does good service.

The English public likes tediousness, and likes things to be explained to it in a tedious way.

Mr. Cobbam has, I have no doubt, already repented of the unfortunate expression with which he has made his _début_, so I will say no more about it. As far as I am concerned he is quite forgiven.

And finally, Sir, in taking leave of the _Scots Observer_, I feel bound to make a candid confession to you.

It has been suggested to me by a great friend of mine, who is a charming and distinguished man of letters (and not unknown to you personally), that there have been really only two people engaged in this terrible controversy, and that those two people are the editor of the _Scots Observer_ and the author of "Dorian Gray."

At dinner this evening, over some excellent Chianti, my friend insisted that under assumed and mysterious names you had simply given dramatic expression to the views of some of the semi-educated classes of our community, and that the letters signed "H." were your own skilful, if somewhat bitter caricature of the Philistine as drawn by himself. I admit that something of the kind had occurred to me when I read "H.'s" first letter--the one in which he proposed that the test of art should be the political opinions of the artist, and that if one differed from the artist on the question of the best way of mis-governing Ireland, one should always abuse his work. Still, there are such infinite varieties of Philistines, and North Britain is so renowned for seriousness, that I dismissed the idea as unworthy of the editor of a Scotch paper. I now fear that I was wrong, and that you have been amusing yourself all the time by inventing little puppets and teaching them how to use big words. Well, Sir, if it be so--and my friend is strong on the point--allow me to congratulate you most sincerely on the cleverness with which you have reproduced the lack of literary style which is, I am told, essential for any dramatic and life-like characterisation. I confess that I was completely taken in; but I bear no malice; and as you have, no doubt, been laughing at me up your sleeve, let me join openly in the laugh, though it be a little against myself. A comedy ends when the secret is out. Drop your curtain and put your dolls to bed. I love Don Quixote, but I do not wish to fight any longer with marionettes, however cunning may be the master-hand that works their wires. Let them go, Sir, on the shelf. The shelf is the proper place for them. On some future occasion you can re-label them and bring them out for amusement. They are an excellent company, and go well through their tricks, and if they are a little unreal I am not the one to object to unreality in art. The jest is really a good one. The only thing that I cannot understand is why you gave the marionettes such extraordinary and improbable names.

I remain, Sir, your obedient servant,

OSCAR WILDE.

The correspondence continued for three weeks longer, but Oscar Wilde took no further part in it.

[17] August 16th.

* * * * *

_If a man's work is easy to understand an explanation is unnecessary, and if his work is incomprehensible an explanation is wicked._

* * * * *

PROFUSE AND PERFERVID.

The review in _The Speaker_[18] which Oscar Wilde referred to in his letter to _The Scots Observer_ (see par. above starting with: 'And so in the case of "Dorian Gray,"'), was as follows:--

By a stroke of good fortune, singular at this season the two stories[19] which we have taken up to review this week turn out to be--each in its way--of no slight interest. Of Mr. Wilde's work, this was to be expected. Let it be granted, to begin with, that the conception of the story is exceedingly strong.

A young man of remarkable beauty, perfect in body, but undeveloped,--or rather, lacking altogether,--in soul, becomes the dear friend of a painter of genius. The artist under the spell of this friendship, is painting the youth's portrait. Enter to them the spirit of evil, in the shape of Lord Henry Wotton, an extremely "fin de siècle" gentleman, who, by a few inspiring words, supplies, or calls into life, the boy's missing soul, and it is an evil one. Henceforward, the tale develops the growth of this evil soul, side by side with this mystery--that while vice and debauchery write no wrinkle on the boy's face, but pass from it as a breath off a pane, every vile action scores its mark upon the portrait, which keeps accurate record of a loathsome life.

It has been insinuated that this story should be suppressed in the interest of morality. Mr. Wilde has answered that art and ethics have nothing to do with each other. His boldness in resting his defence on the general proposition is the more exemplary, as he might fairly have insisted on the particular proposition--that the teaching of the book is conspicuously right in morality. If we have correctly interpreted the book's motive--and we are at a loss to conceive what other can be devised--this position is unassailable. There is, perhaps, a passage or so in the description of Dorian's decline that were better omitted. But this is a matter of taste.

The motive of the tale, then, is strong. It is in his treatment of it that Mr. Wilde has failed, and his mistakes are easy of detection. Whether they can be as readily corrected is doubtful. To begin with, the author has a style as striking as his matter; but he has entirely missed reconciling the two. There is an amateurish lack of precision in the descriptive passages. They are laboured, finikin, overlaid with paint; and, therefore, they want vigour. "The Picture of Dorian Gray," has been compared, very naturally, with "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"--and we would invite Mr. Wilde to take up that story, and consider the bold, sharply defined strokes with which its atmosphere and "milieu" are put in. Such brevity as Mr. Stevenson's comes from sureness of knowledge, not want of care, and is the first sign of mastery. Nor is Mr. Wilde too wordy alone; he is too paradoxical. Only the cook who has yet to learn will run riot in truffles, We will admit at once that Lord Henry's epigrams are admirable examples, taken separately; but a story demands simplicity and proportion, and here we have neither; it demands restraint, and here we find profusion only; it demands point, and here the point is too often obscured by mere cleverness. Lord Henry's mission in the book is to lead Dorian Gray to destruction; and he does so, if you please, at the end of a string of epigrams.

In fact we should doubt that Mr. Wilde possessed the true story teller's temperament were it not for some half a dozen passages. Here is one where, Dorian tells of his engagement to Sibyl Vane, the actress:--

"Lips," he says, "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?" said 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....[20]"

The last chapter of the tale is good story telling throughout, in style and matter--as good as Chapter IX is bad.[21] And when Mr. Wilde thoroughly sees why two particular sentences in that last chapter--"The Park is quite lovely now. I don't think there have been such lilacs since the year I met you,"--though trivial in themselves are full of significance and beauty in their setting he will be far on the road to eminence in fiction. He has given us a work of serious art, strong and fascinating, in spite of its blemishes. Will he insist on being taken seriously, and go on to give us a better?

[18] Vol. III., No. 27. July 5, 1890.

[19] The second story was "Perfervid: the Career of Ninian Jamieson," by John Davidson (Ward and Downey).

[20] p. 34.

[21] Chapter IX in the _Lippincott_ version is Chapter XI in later editions, the last chapter (XIII) being afterwards divided into two (XIX and XX).

* * * * *

"THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY."

A Spiritualistic Review. By "NIZIDA."

The following review of "Dorian Gray" referred to by Oscar Wilde in his second letter to the _Scots Observer_ (see page 71) was published in the issue of _Light_ dated July 12th, 1890. This is "a Journal of Psychical, Occult, and Mystical Research."

"M.A., Oxon," writing in the same paper a few weeks later mentions that "Oscar Wilde says of _Light_ that it is 'The organ of the English mystics,' and adds 'I do not like that word 'organ.'" At the same time "M.A., Oxon," refers to the _Scots Observer_ as being "bright, wise, witty, and not at all aggressive."

The review is here given in its entirety:

Mr. Oscar Wilde has created a new character in fiction, one likely to absorb public attention with a similar weird fascination to that produced by the renowned Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; and with a more lasting and beneficial moral effect than had Mr. Stevenson's surprising creation. A deeply conceived psychological study, upon entirely new lines, enriched by the stored wealth of a mind which has spared no pains in the pursuit of sensuous beauty, and which has, to all appearance, revelled in deepest draughts from that sparkling and alluring fountain. But what a spiritual lesson has he drawn therefrom--a lesson graphically and powerfully set forth in the fascinating pages which present to us the life of Dorian Gray. A modern Narcissus, enamoured of his own beauty, which proves a lure to draw him down into the deepest hells of sensual indulgence, from whence he sinks into a still deeper abyss of crime.

Introduced as an innocent, rather effeminate youth of extraordinary and fascinating beauty, Dorian Gray has his eyes opened to the fact that he possesses beauty, and his slumbering vanity and egotism, awakened by the insidious flatteries of a hardened cynic, spring at once into activity, and from that moment begins the downward course. Skilfully the author depicts the budding and gradual unfolding of this baleful life-blossom of the animal soul, seeking only the selfish gratification of the senses, refined indeed by education and artistic culture, but, notwithstanding, purely animal--nay, at times, bestial. By degrees, the still, small voice--the voice of the higher self which spiritually overshadows the unsophisticated youth--is deadened in the soul. All the humane, merciful, spiritually beautiful sentiments and emotions of the better nature, are strangled in their infancy, for Dorian Gray drinks so deeply of the intoxicating cup of sensuous gratification, that his nature becomes transformed to that of a demon--beautiful outwardly, but within hideous. All this is depicted with a master hand; the underlying lesson, for those who can find it, being the danger to the soul which lies in an egotistic love and idolatrous cherishing of one's own personal beauty--for male or female equally perilous. But the author by an ingenious device presents to us an objective image of the subjective transformation gradually going on in Dorian Gray's soul, which, for startling vividness and horror, surpasses the effects usually produced by the novelist's art.

Dorian Gray, whilst retaining the youthfulness, vigorous health, and unimpaired beauty of his external form, at the same time witnesses the objective presentment of his soul's growing, loathsome hideousness; and its falling into diseased decrepitude, into an ugliness beyond conception. At first horrified by this, he becomes at length accustomed to it, and at certain stages of his downward course, after the commission of new excesses, he repairs to this silent recorder of his deeds, and unveiling it, seeks for fresh indication of the gradual decay and corruption which are unfailingly represented on this physical side of his being. As time went on--

"He grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more
interested in the corruption of his own soul. He would examine with
minute care, and often with a monstrous and terrible delight, the
hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead, or crawled around
the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which were the more
horrible, the signs of sins or the signs of age. He would place his
white hands beside the coarse bloated hands of the picture, and
smile. He mocked the misshapen body and the failing limbs."[22]

Never does he feel a moment of repentance. The disgusting image, however, haunts him with a terror of discovery, drawing him back from distant places to assure himself of its hidden security, and to contemplate it with a hideous fascination. The loathsome horror never departs from his consciousness. From its veiled seclusion it exerts over him a spell of diabolical enchantment, and he knows that it is he himself; but his mirror presents to his gaze the personal beauty he cherishes, and the world continues to be fascinated by his charm. Many become fascinated to their serious moral and spiritual injury. His victims are numerous; innocent women and upright young men, who, but for him, would have led virtuous, useful lives. With his beautiful body--cared for as one would care for some rare exotic blossom--going about the world with a charming appearance of harmlessness and even innocence, he murdered souls in secret, as completely as if with his slender, white, taper fingers he might have clutched their throats and strangled the life out of their bodies.

And all this rottenness, all this corruption, had been proximately caused by a seed dropped into a soil prepared for it--the soul left doubtless from the Karma of some previous life. A seed dropped from the flattering tongue of Lord Henry Wotton, tended and skilfully fostered into a surprising precociousness by his insidious, worthless cynicisms, and oracular sophistries. A man out of whose life had departed every wholesome savour, who poisoned the lives of others, and led them to sin, whilst, apparently, he sinned not himself. As a friend once said to him, "You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your cynicism is simply a pose." His whole life was, however, a sin, concealed behind a mask of _bonhommie_, a fashionable cheerfulness and pleasantness of manner; a hollow _cadavre_ full of the dust and ashes of a burnt-out life. One of Lord Henry Wotton's specious sophistries was this: "The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it." As well wrap oneself confidingly in the folds of a boa-constrictor, hoping to save one's life thereby. Lord Henry's apt pupil, Dorian Gray, followed this advice scrupulously, only to increase the power of temptation, which never after found him unwilling, until at last all of his higher nature was suffocated. The author skilfully depicts the insidious, baleful influence of Lord Henry Wotton, but attributes the corruption of Dorian Gray's soul to a book which Lord Henry loaned him. He says:--

"The Renaissance knew of strange manners of poisoning--poisoning by
a helmet, and a lighted torch, by an embroidered glove, and a
jewelled fan, by a gilded pomander, and by an amber chain. Dorian
Gray was poisoned by a book. There were moments when he looked on
evil simply as a mode through which he could realise his conception
of the beautiful."[23]

Dorian Gray had conceived the idea that his life was the product of many preceding lives. The author causes him to make the following reflections:--

"He used to wonder at the shallow psychology of those who conceive
the Ego in man as a thing simple, permanent, reliable, and of one
essence. To him, man was a being with myriad lives and myriad
sensations, a complex multiform creature that bore within itself
strange legacies of thought and passion, and whose very flesh was
tainted with the monstrous maladies of the dead. He loved to stroll
through the gaunt cold picture-gallery of his country house and
look at the various portraits of those whose blood flowed in his
veins. Here was Philip Herbert, described by Francis Osborne in his
_Memoirs on the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James_ as one
who was "caressed by the Court for his handsome face, which kept
him not long company." Was it young Herbert's life that he
sometimes led? Had some strange poisonous germ crept from body to
body till it had reached his own? Was it some dim sense of that
ruined grace that had made him so suddenly, and almost without
cause, give utterance, in Basil Hallward's studio, to that mad
prayer which had so changed his life? Here in gold embroidered red
doublet, jewelled sur-coat, and gilt edged ruff and wrist-bands,
stood Sir Anthony Sherard, with his silver and black armour piled
at his feet. What had this man's legacy been? Had the lover of
Giovanni of Naples bequeathed him some inheritance of sins and
shame? Were his own actions merely the dreams that the dead man had
not dared to realise? Here, from the fading canvas smiled Lady
Elizabeth Devereux, in her gauze hood, pearled stomacher, and pink
slashed sleeves. A flower was in her right hand, and her left
clasped an enamelled collar of white and damask roses. On a table
by her side lay a mandolin and an apple. There were large green
rosettes upon her little pointed shoes. He knew her life, and the
strange stories that were told about her lovers. Had he something
of her temperament in him? Those oval heavy-lidded eyes seemed to
look curiously at him. What of George Willoughby, with his powdered
hair and fantastic patches? How evil he looked! The face was
saturnine and swarthy, and the sensual lips seemed to be twisted
with disdain. Delicate lace ruffles fell over the lean yellow hands
that were so overladen with rings. He had been a macaroni of the
eighteenth century, and the friend, in his youth, of Lord Ferrars.
What of the second Lord Sherard, the companion of the Prince Regent
in his wildest days, and one of the witnesses of the secret
marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert? How proud and handsome he was, with
his chestnut curls and insolent pose! What passions had he
bequeathed? The world had looked upon him as infamous. He had led
the orgies at Carlton House. The Star of the Garter glittered upon
his breast. Beside him hung the portrait of his wife, a pallid,
thin-lipped woman in black. Her blood also stirred within him. How
curious it all seemed!"[24]

What a pity Dorian did not see that the sole reason for a plurality of lives was that very thirst of the animal soul for the sensual pleasures of the material life in which he so wildly indulged, and yet with a diabolical, smooth, and easy method in his madness, seeking ever the externally beautiful. Beauty fled indeed before the gaunt ugliness of crime; but when this happened to Dorian, he coolly turned his back and went in search of new sensations.

"And in his search for sensations that would be at once new and
delightful and possess that element of strangeness that is so
essential to romance, he would often adopt certain modes of thought
that he knew to be really alien to his nature, abandon himself to
their subtle influences, and then, having, as it were, caught their
colour and satisfied his intellectual curiosity, leave them with
that curious indifference that is not incompatible with a real
ardour of temperament, and that, indeed, according to certain
modern psychologists, is often a condition of it."[25]

Veil it as he would, his extreme moral corruption became known, crept out from behind skilful concealments, and was borne by the breath of gossip and scandal--whispering of its enormities. He was black-balled in a West End Club,

"and when brought by a friend into a smoking-room of the Carlton,
the Duke of Berwick and another gentleman got up in a marked manner
and went out. Curious stories became current about him after he had
passed his twenty-fifth year. ... Men would whisper to each other
in corners, or pass him with a sneer, or look at him with cold,
searching eyes. Of such insolences and attempted slights, he, of
course, took no notice; and in the opinion of most people his frank
manner, his charming, boyish smile, and the infinite grace of that
wonderful youth that seemed never to leave him were in themselves a
sufficient answer to the calumnies (for so they called them) that
were circulated about him."[26]

The life at length culminates in the commission of a crime of the most cruel, treacherous, and dastardly character. It is successfully concealed. The extraordinary coolness, even peace of mind, which Dorian experiences after this deed of horror is powerfully depicted. But he does feel a few momentary, weak qualms of conscience. He spares one of his victims, and he thinks of beginning a new life. Then imagining himself becoming purified he longs to see how his silent recorder looks. He expects to find some wonderful improvement in the aspect of the loathsome hidden self he has created, so he repairs to its hiding place. It is more loathsome than ever, and presents new aspects of ugliness. In a moment of supreme disgust and aversion he seizes a knife to destroy it. By so doing he ends his physical life.

The only occult explanation of the catastrophe which befalls him is, that he commits astral suicide by the murderous attack he ignorantly makes upon that which represented to him his own soul. The blow reverts to his physical body, and he falls dead.

There is in this book a wonderful spiritual insight into the inner life of the human being. Arising, in all probability from that intuition we all more or less possess; a sort of flash of truth upon the mind, which is not known at the moment to be really true, but is supposed to be the mere weaving of a graceful prolific fancy. A similar power lay at the back of Mr. R. Stevenson's creation of Dr. Jekyll, casting upon the tale so powerful a spiritual light, that all readers were held by the spell of its enchantment. The same feeling of being under a spell fills the reader of "The Picture of Dorian Gray." The same subtle, spiritual effect of the _aura of evil_ flows out from the book--especially at those moments when Dorian is contemplating the image of his soul's corruption, not, in this instance, that the evil so powerfully felt poisons the mind as poor Dorian was poisoned for life by his French novel; but one gets a feeling of painful horror, and sickening disgust, it is not easy to shake off. One seems to have glanced momentarily into the deepest abysses of hell, and to have drawn back totally sickened by a subtle effluvium. This singular power possessed by both these writers reveals a certain growth or development in them of the spiritual nature, which need not necessarily, as yet, convert either of these gentlemen into saints, or angels, although doubtless they are both very good Men.

The lesson taught by Mr. Oscar Wilde's powerful story is of the highest spiritual import; and if it can be, not _believed_ merely, but accepted as a literal fact, a mysterious verity in the life of a human being, that the invisible soul within the body, that alone which lives after death, is deformed, bestialised, and even murdered by a life of persistent evil, it ought to have the most beneficial effect upon society.

Let him depict the soul as he may, except in the case of Basil Hallward, Mr. Wilde never rises above the animal soul in man. It is the animal soul alone, dominated by a refined but perverted intellect, seeking an animal gratification in sensuous beauty, which he puts before us. Dorian Gray suffocated in its infancy the only germ of spiritual soul he possessed.

[22] Pp. 65, 66.

[23] p. 77.

[24] p. 75.

[25] p. 68.

[26] p. 74.

* * * * *

_The fact of a man being a poisoner is nothing against his prose._

* * * * *

PARALLEL. Joe, the Fat Boy in Pickwick, startles the Old Lady; Oscar, the Fad Boy in Lippincott's, startles Mrs. Grundy:-- _Oscar, the Fad Boy_: "I want to make your flesh creep!"

_Reproduced by special permission of the proprietors of "Punch."_

PUNCH on "DORIAN GRAY."

By special permission of the Proprietors of _Punch_ the following
review is reproduced from the issue of that journal dated July
19th, 1890.

OUR BOOKING OFFICE.

The Baron has read Oscar Wilde's wildest and Oscarest work, called "Dorian Gray," a weird sensational romance, complete in one number of _Lippincott's Magazine_. The Baron recommends any body who revels in _diablerie_, to begin it about half-past ten, and to finish it at one sitting up; but those who do not so revel he advises either not to read it at all, or to choose the daytime, and take it in homoeopathic doses.

The portrait represents the soul of the beautiful Ganymede-like Dorian Gray, whose youth and beauty last to the end, while his soul, like John Brown's, "goes marching on," into the Wilderness of Sin. It becomes at last a devilled soul. And then Dorian sticks a knife into it, as any ordinary mortal might do, and a fork also, and next morning

"Lifeless but 'hideous,' he lay," while the portrait has recovered the perfect beauty which it possessed when it first left the artist's easel.

If Oscar intended an allegory, the finish is dreadfully wrong. Does he mean that, by sacrificing his earthly life, Dorian Gray atones for his infernal sins, and so purifies his soul by suicide? "Heavens! I am no preacher," says the Baron, "and perhaps Oscar didn't mean anything at all, except to give us a sensation, to show how like Bulwer Lytton's old-world style he could make his descriptions and his dialogue, and what an easy thing it is to frighten the respectable Mrs. Grundy with a Bogie." The style is decidedly Lyttonerary. His aphorisms are Wilde, yet forced. Mr. Oscar Wilde says of his story, "it is poisonous if you like, but you cannot deny that it is also perfect, and perfection is what we artists aim at."[27] Perhaps, but "we artists" do not always hit what we aim at, and despite his confident claim to unerring marksmanship, one must hazard the opinion, that in this case Mr. Wilde has "shot wide." There is indeed more of "poison" than of "perfection" in "Dorian Gray."

The central idea is an excellent, if not exactly a novel, one; and a finer art, say that of Nathaniel Hawthorne, would have made a striking and satisfying story of it. "Dorian Gray" is striking enough, in a sense, but it is not "satisfying" artistically, any more than it is so ethically. Mr. Wilde has preferred the senuous and hyperdecorative manner of "Mademoiselle de Maupin," and without Gautier's power, has spoilt a promising conception by clumsy unideal treatment.

His "decoration" (upon which he plumes himself) is indeed "laid on with a trowel." The luxuriously elaborate details of his "artistic hedonism," are too suggestive of South Kensington Museum and æsthetic Encyclopædias. A truer art would have avoided both the glittering conceits, which bedeck the body of the story, and the unsavoury suggestiveness which lurks in its spirit.

Poisonous! Yes. But the loathly "leperous distilment" taints and spoils, without in any way subserving "perfection," artistic or otherwise. If Mrs. Grundy doesn't read it, the younger Grundies do; that is, the Grundies who belong to Clubs, and who care to shine in certain sets wherein this story will be much discussed. "I have read it, and, except for the ingenious idea, I wish to forget it," says the Baron.

[27] See letter to _Daily Chronicle_ page 61.

* * * * *

_The note of doom that like a purple thread runs through the texture of "Dorian Gray."_

* * * * *

A REVULSION FROM REALISM.[28]

By ANNE H. WHARTON.

In all ages and climes mankind has found delight in romances based upon the mystic, the improbable and the impossible, from the days when the Norse poets sang their Sagas through long Northern nights, and the fair Scheherezade, under Southern moon, charmed her bloodthirsty lord by her tales of wonder, to our own day, when Stevenson and Crawford and Haggard hold fancy spellbound by their entirely improbable stories. Scott and Bulwer played with master hands upon the love of the mysterious and supernatural inherent in mankind; Dickens and others have essayed to gratify its demands, but with less daring, and, having an eye always on the moorings of the actual, their success has been less marked. With the elder Hawthorne such romance-writing seemed the natural growth of an exquisitely sensitive and spiritual nature, while among later French writers Théophile Gautier and Edmond About have entered into the domain of the impossible as into the natural heritage of their genius, sporting in its impalpable ether with the tuneful _abandon_ of a fish in the sea, or a bird in the air, hampered by no bond of the actual, weighted by no encumbrance of the material.

It is not strange that the great influx of realistic novels that has flowed in upon the last decade should be followed by a revulsion to the impossible in fiction. Men and women, wearied with meeting the same characters and events in so-called romance that they encounter in every-day life, or saddened by the depressing, if dramatic, pictures of Tolstoi and the cool vivisection of humanity presented by Ibsen, turn with a sense of rest and refreshment to the guidance of those who, like Robert Louis Stevenson and Rider Haggard, lead them suddenly into the mystic land of wonder, or, like Marion Crawford and Mrs. Oliphant, delight to draw them, by gentle and easy stages, from the midst of a well-appointed setting of every-day life into the shadowy borderland that lies between the real and the unreal. Much of the success of such romance writing rests upon the rebound, natural to humanity, from intense realism to extreme ideality; more, perhaps, upon the fact that this age which is grossly material is also deeply spiritual. With these two facts well in view, Mr. Oscar Wilde has fallen into line, and entered the lists with some of the most successful masters of fiction. In his novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray," written for the July _Lippincott's_, Mr. Wilde, like Balzac and the authors of "Faust" and "John Inglesant," presents to us the drama of a human soul, while, like Gautier and About, he surrounds his utterly impossible story with a richness and depth of colouring and a grace and airiness of expression that make the perusal of its pages an artistic delight.