Chapter III: Introduction (3)

If Mr. Wilde's romance resembles the productions of some of the writers of the French school in its reality and tone, it still more strongly resembles Mr. Stevenson's most powerfully wrought fairy tale, "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," although the moral of the story is brought out even more plainly--as plainly, indeed, as in the drama of "Faust." In both Mr. Stevenson's and Mr. Wilde's stories there is a transformation or substitution. In one the soul of Dr. Jekyll appears under different exteriors; in the other some fine influence passes from the soul of Dorian Gray into his portrait and there works a gradual and subtle change upon the pictured lineaments. Although. Mr. Wilde's extravaganza is far less dramatic than that of Mr. Stevenson, it has the advantage of richer colouring and a more human setting, if we may so express it. The characters in "The Picture of Dorian Gray," enjoy life more than Mr. Stevenson's creations, who seem to have had so dull a time of it at the best that they might have been expected to welcome a tragedy, as a relief to the tedium of their daily lives. Mr. Utterson, we are told, was good but he was evidently not particularly happy,[29] which was the case with the other personages of the drama, with the exception of those who were signally wretched. On the other hand, Mr. Wilde's characters are happy during their little day. Their world is a luxurious, perfumed land of delight, until sin transforms it, and, even after Lord Henry has corrupted the nature of Dorian Gray with evil books and worldly philosophy, he occasionally drinks of the waters of Lethe and enjoys some fragments of what may be called happiness, while Lord Henry himself seems to derive a certain satisfaction from the practice of his Mephistophelian art and in his entire freedom from the restraints of conscience. In a tale of the impossible it is not required that the writer should be true to life, animate or inanimate, yet in the fact that there are glimpses of light through the clouds that surround his _dramatis personæ_, that they inhabit a world in which the laburnum hangs out yellow clusters in June, and the clematis robes itself with purple stars, and the sun sheds gold and the moon silver, despite the tragedy that touches the lives of its inhabitants, is not Mr. Wilde quite as true to nature as to art?

The reader may reasonably question the author's good taste in displaying at such length his knowledge of antique decoration and old-world crime as in Chapter IX,[30] which, besides being somewhat tiresome, clogs the dramatic movement of the story. Yet, on the other hand, it must be admitted that none but an artist and an apostle of the beautiful could have so sympathetically portrayed the glowing hues and perfumes of the garden in which Dorian Gray had first presented to his lips the cup of life, and none other could have so pictured the luxurious surroundings of his home, for whose embellishment the known world had been searched for hangings, ornaments and _bric-à-brac_. Amid such an _entourage_ of modern London life, with its Sybaritic indulgence, its keenness of wit and its subtle intelligence, Mr. Wilde places his characters and works out his miracle.

Viewing his own portrait, just completed by an artist friend, Dorian Gray turns from it filled with envy and dissatisfaction, because it has been whispered in his ear that youth is the supreme possession in life, and that when youth and beauty have fled from his face and form this pictured presentment will live for ever, a perpetual mockery of himself, whom withering age has overtaken. Under the influence of his evil genius, Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian Gray utters a prayer that he may always remain young, and the portrait alone reveal the ravages of time, sin and sorrow. The realization of this idea is the theory of Mr. Wilde's romance, and the air of probability with which he has endowed the absolutely impossible evidences the artistic and dramatic power of the writer. The portrait of Dorian Gray, painted in days of innocence and loveliness, when his mere presence symbolized to the artist the entire harmony between beauty of body and beauty of soul, changes day by day with the degradation of his nature, while the living Dorian Gray, after years of sin, remorseless cruelty and corruption of thought and action, preserves all the grace and fairness of his Antinous-like youth.

Love in this romance is an incident, not its crowning event, although an important incident as a revelation of the character of Dorian Gray. The reader never meets Sybil Vane; he merely sees her on the stage and hears of her from the lips of her lover; yet even thus she appeals to us as an exquisite personation of maidenhood with all its purity and all its tenderness. As shadowy an outline as the fair child whom Bulwer allows to captivate the imagination of Kenelm Chillingly, who caught butterflies, talked philosophy and died young, yet who in her brief transit across his path realized to his poetic soul all the best possibilities of life, spiritual and material, Sibyl Vane comes to us girt about with ideal charm, to fulfil her widely different mission, which was to reveal to Dorian Gray the sad fact that his soul had passed beyond her sweet and ennobling influence. His artistic and intellectual senses were touched by her beauty and dramatic power, but to the beauty that made her worthy to be loved, his eyes were blind, his heart was insensible. The tragedy of the story, the climax of the situation, is not the death of Sybil Vane, nor even the pitiless murder of the friend who dared to give Dorian Gray good counsel, but the disclosure that Dorian's soul, once open to all good influences, had, by yielding to the malign domination of his evil genius, passed beyond the reach of love, pity or remorse.

It is needless to say that Dorian Gray is not a very substantial character. The most entertaining, though not the most exemplary, personage of the story is Lord Henry Wotton, who by his preaching and practice of the doctrine of hedonism leads Dorian Gray into all known and unknown evil, until finally his darkling shadow outreaches in depravity the imagination of his tempter. When his victim has sunk so low in sin that the world shuns him, Lord Henry still enjoys his gay, conscienceless existence, and continues to utter the persiflage that constitutes much of the attraction of the book as well of his society. Debonair, witty, learned, giving expression to aphorisms as keen as the sayings of Thackeray's characters, with the moral element eliminated, and as cynical as those of Norris, with exquisite taste and the fascination of a finished man of the world, Lord Henry belongs as truly, on the material side of his nature, to the life of to-day, as he appertains on its spiritual side to the region of Pluto. A gay child of the great London social world, he hovers airily around and about the emotions of life, declaring that death is the only thing that ever terrifies him, and that death and vulgarity are the only facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away. The climax of Lord Henry's sardonic worldliness is reached when he becomes the spectator of his own domesticity, if he may be said to have any, and speaks to Dorian of his divorce from his wife as one of the latest sensations of London, remarking _apropos_ of his music, "The man with whom my wife ran away played Chopin exquisitely. Poor Victoria! I was very fond of her. The house is rather lonely without her."

Lord Henry is so entirely true to himself and the worst that is in him that towards the close of the book, when Dorian announces that he is "going to be good," and begs his friend not to poison another young life with the book with which he had corrupted his, we find ourselves trembling for Dorian's one remaining ally, especially when he exclaims, "My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralize. You will soon be going about warning people against all the sins of which you have grown tired. You are much too delightful to do that. Besides, it is no use. You and I are what we are, and we will be what we will be." Had not the hero stabbed himself, or his picture (which was it?) it is only a question of time how soon Dorian Gray, with the slightest obtrusion of conscience, would have ceased to charm him who had welcomed him as a _débutant_ on the Stage of Pleasure, where, to use his favourite saying, "the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it." Dorian Gray struggling against the temptations of the world would have proved an inartistic and disturbing element in the life of Lord Henry.

All that is needed to complete the tale is Lord Henry's own comment on the highly dramatic taking-off of his friend. This chapter, Mr. Wilde, true to his artistic instinct, has not finished, preferring to leave appetite unappeased, rather than to create satiety by making his Mephistopheles say precisely what one would expect him to say under the circumstances.

[28] _Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, September, 1890._

[29] "When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy."--DORIAN GRAY, chap. vi. (Ed.)

[30] Chapter XI. in the 1891 edition.

* * * * *

THE ROMANCE OF THE IMPOSSIBLE.

By JULIAN HAWTHORNE.[31]

Fiction which flies at all game, has latterly taken to the Impossible as its quarry. The pursuit is interesting and edifying, if one goes properly equipped, and with adequate skill. But if due care is not exercised, the impossible turns upon the hunter and grinds him to powder. It is a very dangerous and treacherous kind of wild-fowl. The conditions of its existence--if existence can be predicated on that which does not exist--are so peculiar and abstruse that only genius is really capable of taming it and leading it captive. But the capture, when it is made, is so delightful and fascinating that every tyro would like to try. One is reminded of the princess of the fairy-tale, who was to be won on certain preposterous terms, and if the terms were not met, the discomfited suitor lost his head. Many misguided or over-weening youths perished; at last the One succeeded. Failure in a romance of the Impossible is apt to be a disastrous failure; on the other hand, success carries great rewards.

Of course, the idea is not a new one. The writings of the alchemists are stories of the Impossible. The fashion has never been entirely extinct. Balzac wrote the "Peau de Chagrin," and probably this tale is as good a one as was ever written of that kind. The possessor of the Skin may have every thing he wishes for; but each wish causes the Skin to shrink, and when it is all gone the wisher is annihilated with it. By the art of the writer this impossible thing is made to appear quite feasible; by touching the chords of coincidence and fatality, the reader's common-sense is soothed to sleep. We feel that all this might be, and yet no natural law be violated; and yet we know that such a thing never was and never will be. But the vitality of the story, as of all good stories of the sort, is due to the fact that it is the symbol of a spiritual verity: the life of indulgence, the selfish life, destroys the soul. This psychic truth is so deeply felt that its sensible embodiment is rendered plausible. In the case of another famous romance--"Frankenstein"--the technical art is entirely wanting: a worse story from the literary point of view has seldom been written. But the soul of it, so to speak, is so potent and obvious that, although no one actually reads the book nowadays, everybody knows the gist of the idea. "Frankenstein" has entered into the language, for it utters a perpetual truth of human nature.

At the present moment the most conspicuous success in the line we are considering is Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." The author's literary skill, in that awful little parable, is at its best, and makes the most of every point. To my thinking, it is an artistic mistake to describe Hyde's transformation as actually taking place in plain sight of the audience; the sense of spiritual mystery is thereby lost, and a mere brute miracle takes its place. But the tale is strong enough to carry this imperfection, and the moral significance of it is so catholic--it so comes home to every soul that considers it--that it has already made an ineffaceable impression on the public mind. Every man is his own Jekyll and Hyde, only without the magic powder. On the bookshelf of the Impossible, Mr. Stevenson's book may take its place beside Balzac's.

Mr. Oscar Wilde, the apostle of beauty, has in the July number of _Lippincott's Magazine_, a novel, or romance (it partakes of the qualities of both), which everybody will want to read. It is a story strange in conception, strong in interest, and fitted with a tragic and ghastly climax. Like many stories of its class, it is open to more than one interpretation; and there are, doubtless, critics who will deny that it has any meaning at all. It is, at all events, a salutary departure from the ordinary English novel, with the hero and heroine of different social stations, the predatory black sheep, the curate, the settlements and Society. Mr. Wilde, as we all know, is a gentleman of an original and audacious turn of mind, and the commonplace is scarcely possible to him. Besides, his advocacy of novel ideas in life, art, dress and demeanour had led us to expect surprising things from him; and in this literary age it is agreed that a man may best show the best there is in him by writing a book. Those who read Mr. Wilde's story in the hope of finding in it some compact and final statement of his theories of life and manners will be satisfied in some respects, and dissatisfied in others; but not many will deny that the book is a remarkable one and would attract attention even had it appeared without the author's name on the title-page.

"The Picture of Dorian Gray," begins to show its quality in the opening pages. Mr. Wilde's writing has what is called "colour," the quality that forms the mainstay of many of Ouida's works,--and it appears in the sensuous descriptions of nature and of the decorations and environments of the artistic life. The general aspect of the characters and the tenor of their conversation remind one a little of "Vivian Gray" and a little of "Pelham," but the resemblance does not go far: Mr. Wilde's objects and philosophy are different from those of either Disraeli or Bulwer. Meanwhile his talent for aphorisms and epigrams may fairly be compared with theirs: some of his clever sayings are more than clever,--they show real insight and a comprehensive grasp. Their wit is generally cynical; but they are put into the mouth of one of the characters, Lord Harry, and Mr. Wilde himself refrains from definitely committing himself to them; though one can not help suspecting that Mr. Wilde regards Lord Harry as being an uncommonly able fellow. Be that as it may, Lord Harry plays the part of Old Harry in the story, and lives to witness the destruction of every other person in it. He may be taken as an imaginative type of all that is most evil and most refined in modern civilization,--a charming, gentle, witty, euphemistic Mephistopheles, who deprecates the vulgarity of goodness, and muses aloud about "those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue, and those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin." Upon the whole, Lord Harry is the most ably portrayed character in the book, though not the most original in conception. Dorian Gray himself is as nearly a new idea in fiction as one has now-a-days a right to expect. If he had been adequately realized and worked out, Mr. Wilde's first novel would have been remembered after more meritorious ones were forgotten. But, even as "nemo repente fuit turpissimus," so no one, or hardly any one, creates a thoroughly original figure at a first essay. Dorian never quite solidifies. In fact, his portrait is rather the more real thing of the two. But this needs explanation.

The story consists of a strong and marvellous central idea, illustrated by three characters, all men. There are a few women in the background, but they are only mentioned: they never appear to speak for themselves. There is, too, a valet who brings in his master's breakfasts, and a chemist who by some scientific miracle, disposes of a human body: but, substantially, the book is taken up with the artist who paints the portrait, with his friend Lord Harry aforesaid, and with Dorian Gray, who might, so far as the story goes, stand alone. He and his portrait are one, and their union points the moral of the tale.

The situation is as follows. Dorian Gray is a youth of extraordinary physical beauty and grace, and pure and innocent of soul. An artist sees him and falls æsthetically in love with him, and finds in him a new inspiration in his art, both direct and general. In the lines of his form and features, and in his colouring and movement, are revealed fresh and profound laws: he paints him in all guises and combinations, and it is seen and admitted on all sides that he has never before painted so well. At length he concentrates all his knowledge and power in a final portrait, which has the vividness and grace of life itself, and, considering how much both of the sitter and of the painter is embodied in it, might almost be said to live. The portrait is declared by Lord Harry to be the greatest work of modern art; and he himself thinks so well of it that he resolves never to exhibit it, even as he would shrink from exposing to public gaze the privacies of his own nature.

On the day of the last sitting a singular incident occurs. Lord Harry, meeting with Dorian Gray for the first time, is no less impressed than was Hallward, the artist, with the youth's radiant beauty and freshness. But whereas Hallward would keep Dorian unspotted from the world, and would have him resist evil temptations and all the allurements of corruption, Lord Harry, on the contrary, with a truly Satanic ingenuity, discourses to the young man on the matchless delights and privileges of youth. Youth is the golden period of life: youth comes never again: in youth only are the senses endowed with divine potency; only then are joys exquisite and pleasures unalloyed. Let it therefore be indulged without stint. Let no harsh and cowardly restraints be placed upon its glorious impulses. Men are virtuous through fear and selfishness. They are too dull or too timid to take advantage of the godlike gifts that are showered upon them in the morning of existence; and before they can realise the folly of their self-denial, the morning has passed, and weary day is upon them, and the shadows of night are near. But let Dorian, who is matchless in the vigour and resources of his beauty, rise above the base shrinking from life that calls itself goodness. Let him accept and welcome every natural impulse of his nature. The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young: let him so live that when old age comes he shall at least have the satisfaction of knowing that no opportunity of pleasure and indulgence has escaped untasted.

This seductive sermon profoundly affects the innocent Dorian, and he looks at life and himself with new eyes. He realizes the value as well as the transitoriness of that youth and beauty which hitherto he had accepted as a matter of course and as a permanent possession. Gazing on his portrait, he laments that it possesses the immortality of loveliness and comeliness that is denied to him; and, in a sort of imaginative despair, he utters a wild prayer that to the portrait, and not to himself, may come the feebleness and hideousness of old age; that whatever sins he may commit, to whatever indulgences he may surrender himself, not upon him but upon the portrait may the penalties and disfigurements fall. Such is Dorian's prayer; and, though at first he suspects it not, his prayer is granted. From that hour, the evil of his life is registered upon the face and form of his pictured presentment, while he himself goes unscathed. Day by day, each fresh sin that he commits stamps its mark of degradation upon the painted image. Cruelty sensuality, treachery, all nameless crimes, corrupt and render hideous the effigy on the canvas; he sees in it the gradual pollution and ruin of his soul, while his own fleshly features preserve unstained all the freshness and virginity of his sinless youth. The contrast at first alarms and horrifies him; but at length he becomes accustomed to it, and finds a sinister delight in watching the progress of the awful change. He locks up the portrait in a secret chamber, and constantly retires thither to ponder over the ghastly miracle. No one but he knows or suspects the incredible truth; and he guards like a murder-secret this visible revelation of the difference between what he is and what he seems. This is a powerful situation; and the reader may be left to discover for himself how Mr. Wilde works it out.

[31] _Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, September, 1890._

* * * * *

_ ... Pater, who is, on the whole, the most perfect master of English prose now creating amongst us._

* * * * *

WALTER PATER ON "DORIAN GRAY."

There is always something of an excellent talker about the writing of Mr. Oscar Wilde, (wrote Pater, in reviewing "Dorian Gray" for _The Bookman_[32]) and in his hands, as happens so rarely with those who practise it, the form of dialogue is justified by its being really alive. His genial, laughter-loving sense of life and its enjoyable intercourse, goes far to obviate any crudity there may be in the paradox, with which, as with the bright and shining truth which often underlies it, Mr. Wilde, startling his "countrymen," carries on, more perhaps than any other writer, the brilliant critical work of Mathew Arnold. _The Decay of Lying_, for instance, is all but unique in its half-humorous, yet wholly convinced, presentment of certain valuable truths of criticism. Conversational ease, the fluidity of life, felicitous expression, are qualities which have a natural alliance to the successful writing of fiction; and side by side with Mr. Wilde's _Intentions_ (so he entitles his critical efforts) comes a novel, certainly original, and affording the reader a fair opportunity of comparing his practice as a creative artist with many a precept he has enounced as critic concerning it.

A wholesome dislike of the common-place, rightly or wrongly identified by him with the _bourgeois_, with our middle-class--its habits and tastes--leads him to protest emphatically against so-called "realism" in art; life, as he argues, with much plausibility, as a matter of fact, when it is really awake, following art--the fashion of an effective artist sets; while art, on the other hand, influential and effective art, has taken its cue from actual life. In "Dorian Gray" he is true, certainly, on the whole, to the æsthetic philosophy of his _Intentions_; yet not infallibly, even on this point: there is a certain amount of the intrusion of real life and its sordid aspects--the low theatre, the pleasures and griefs, the faces of some very unrefined people, managed, of course, cleverly enough. The interlude of Jim Vane, his half-sullen but wholly faithful care for his sister's honour, is as good as perhaps anything of the kind, marked by a homely but real pathos, sufficiently proving a versatility in the writer's talent, which should make his books popular. Clever always, this book, however, seems intended to set forth anything but a homely philosophy of life for the middle-class--a kind of dainty Epicurean theory, rather--yet fails, to some degree in this; and one can see why. A true Epicureanism aims at a complete though harmonious development of man's entire organism. To lose the moral sense therefore, for instance, the sense of sin and righteousness, as Mr. Wilde's hero--his heroes are bent on doing as speedily, as completely as they can, is to lose, or lower, organisation, to become less complex, to pass from a higher to a lower degree of development. As a story, however, a partly supernatural story, it is first-rate in artistic management; those Epicurean niceties only adding to the decorative colour of its central figure, like so many exotic flowers, like the charming scenery and the perpetual, epigrammatic, surprising, yet so natural, conversations, like an atmosphere all about it. All that pleasant accessory detail, taken straight from the culture, the intellectual and social interests, the conventionalities, of the moment, have, in fact, after all, the effect of the better sort of realism, throwing into relief the adroitly-devised supernatural element after the manner of Poe, but with a grace he never reached, which supersedes that earlier didactic purpose, and makes the quite sufficing interest of an excellent story.

We like the hero and, spite of his somewhat unsociable, devotion to his art, Hallward, better than Lord Henry Wotton. He has too much of a not very really refined world in him and about him, and his somewhat cynic opinions, which seem sometimes to be those of the writer, who may, however, have intended Lord Henry as a satiric sketch. Mr. Wilde can hardly have intended him, with his cynic amity of mind and temper, any more than the miserable end of Dorian himself, to figure the motive and tendency of a true Cyrenaic or Epicurean doctrine of life. In contrast with Hallward the artist, whose sensibilities idealise the world around him, the personality of Dorian Gray, above all, into something magnificent and strange, we might say that Lord Henry, and even more the, from the first, suicidal hero, loses too much in life to be a true Epicurean--loses so much in the way of impressions, of pleasant memories, and subsequent hopes, which Hallward, by a really Epicurean economy, manages to secure. It should be said, however, in fairness, that the writer is impersonal; seems not to have identified himself entirely with any one of his characters; and Wotton's cynicism, or whatever it be, at least makes a very clever story possible. He becomes the spoiler of the fair young man, whose bodily form remains un-aged; while his picture, the _chef d'oeuvre_ of the artist Hallward, changes miraculously with the gradual corruption of his soul. How true, what a light on the artistic nature, is the following on actual personalities and their revealing influence in art. We quote it as an example of Mr. Wilde's more serious style.

"I sometimes think that there are only two eras of any importance
in the world's history. The first is the appearance of a new medium
for art, and the second is the appearance of a new personality for
art also. What the invention of oil-painting was to the Venetians,
the face of Antinous was to late Greek sculpture, and the face of
Dorian Gray will some day be to me. It is not merely that I paint
from him, draw from him, sketch from him. Of course I have done all
that. But he is much more to me than a model or a sitter. I won't
tell you that I am dissatisfied with what I have done of him, or
that his beauty is such that Art cannot express it. There is
nothing that Art cannot express, and I know that the work I have
done, since I met Dorian Gray, is good work, is the best work of my
life. But in some curious way ... his personality has suggested to
me an entirely new manner in art, an entirely new mode of style. I
see things differently. I can now recreate life in a way that was
hidden from me before."[33]

Dorian himself, though certainly a quite unsuccessful experiment in Epicureanism, in life as a fine art, is (till his inward spoiling takes visible effect suddenly, and in a moment, at the end of his story) a beautiful creation. But his story is also a vivid, though carefully considered, exposure of the corruption of a soul, with a very plain moral, pushed home, to the effect that vice and crime make people coarse and ugly. General readers, nevertheless, will probably care less for this moral, less for the fine, varied, largely appreciative culture of the writer, in evidence from page to page, than for the story itself, with its adroitly managed supernatural incidents, its almost equally wonderful applications of natural science; impossible, surely, in fact, but plausible enough in fiction. Its interest turns on that very old theme; old because based on some inherent experience or fancy of the human brain, of a double life: of Döppelgänger--not of two _persons_, in this case, but of the man and his portrait; the latter of which, as we hinted above, changes, decays, is spoiled, while the former, through a long course of corruption, remains, to the outward eye, unchanged, still in all the beauty of a seemingly immaculate youth--"the devil's bargain." But it would be a pity to spoil the reader's enjoyment by further detail. We need only emphasise once more, the skill, the real subtlety of art, the ease and fluidity withal of one telling a story by word of mouth, with which the consciousness of the supernatural is introduced into, and maintained amid, the elaborately conventional, sophisticated, disabused world Mr. Wilde depicts so cleverly, so mercilessly. The special fascination of the piece is, of course, just there--at that point of contrast. Mr. Wilde's work may fairly claim to go with that of Edgar Poe, and with some good French work of the same kind, done, probably, in more or less conscious imitation of it.

* * * * *

_The Athenæum_ in reviewing "The Picture of Dorian Gray," in its issue of June 27th, 1891, under the heading of "Novels of the Week," said:--

Mr. Oscar Wilde's paradoxes are less wearisome when introduced into
the chatter of society than when he rolls them off in the course of
his narrative. Some of the conversation in his novel is very smart,
and while reading it one has the pleasant feeling, not often to be
enjoyed in the company of modern novelists, of being entertained by
a person of decided ability. The idea of the book may have been
suggested by Balzac's "Peau de Chagrin," and it is none the worse
for that. So much may be said for "The Picture of Dorian Gray," but
no more, except, perhaps, that the author does not appear to be in
earnest. For the rest, the book is unmanly, sickening, vicious
(though not exactly what is called "improper"), and tedious.

Mr. R.H. Sherard, in his recently published "Life of Oscar Wilde" (Werner Laurie, 1906), gives some interesting particulars as to the reasons which induced Wilde to write the book, while the views of a French _littérateur_ on "Dorian Gray" may be read in M. André Gide's "Study," a translation of which, by the present editor, was issued from the Holywell Press, Oxford, in 1905.

[32] November 1891.

[33] Pp. 14, 15 (1891 edition).

* * * * *

_A critic cannot be fair in the ordinary sense of the word._

* * * * *

THE MORALITY OF "DORIAN GRAY."

The question of the morality of "Dorian Gray" was dealt with very fully during the trial of the Marquis of Queensberry for libel, and also in the subsequent trials of Wilde himself, when, the libel action having collapsed, Wilde was transferred from the witness-box to the dock.

At the trial of Lord Queensberry at the Old Bailey on April 3rd, 1895, Sir Edward Clarke, in his opening speech for the prosecution, referred to what he called "an extremely curious count at the end of the plea," namely, that in July, 1890, Mr. Wilde published, or caused to be published, with his name upon the title page, a certain immoral and indecent work, with the title of "The Picture of Dorian Gray," which was intended to be understood by the readers to describe the relations, intimacies and passions of certain persons guilty of unnatural practices. That, said Sir Edward, was a very gross allegation. The volume could be bought at any bookstall in London. It had Mr. Wilde's name on the title page, and had been published five years. The story of the book was that of a young man of good birth, great wealth and great personal beauty, whose friend paints a picture of him. Dorian Gray expresses the wish that he would remain as in the picture, while the picture aged with the years. His wish was granted, and he soon knew that upon the picture and not upon his own face the scars of trouble and bad conduct were falling. In the end he stabbed the picture and fell dead. The picture was restored to its pristine beauty, while his friends find on the floor the body of a hideous old man. "I shall be surprised," said Counsel in conclusion, "if my learned friend (Mr. Carson) can pitch upon any passage in that book which does more than describe as novelists and dramatists may, nay, must, describe the passions and the fashions of life."

Lord Queensberry's Counsel was Mr. (now Sir Edward) Carson, M.P. He proceeded, after Sir Edward's Clarke's speech, to cross-examine Mr. Wilde on the subject of his writings.

Counsel: You are of opinion, I believe, that there is no such thing as an immoral book?

Witness: Yes.

Am I right in saying that you do not consider the effect in creating morality or immorality?--Certainly, I do not.

So far as your works are concerned you pose as not being concerned about morality or immorality?--I do not know whether you use the word "pose" in any particular sense.

It is a favourite word of your own?--Is it? I have no pose in this matter. In writing a play or a book I am concerned entirely with literature, that is, with art. I aim not at doing good or evil, but in trying to make a thing that will have some quality of beauty.

After the criticisms that were passed on "Dorian Gray" was it modified a good deal?--No. Additions were made. In one case it was pointed out to me--not in a newspaper or anything of that sort, but by the only critic of the century whose opinion I set high, Mr. Walter Pater--that a certain passage was liable to misconstruction, and I made one addition.

This is in your introduction to "Dorian Gray": "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all."--That expresses my view of art.

Then, I take it that no matter how immoral a book may be, if it is well written it is, in your opinion, a good book?--Yes; if it were well written so as to produce a sense of beauty which is the highest sense of which a human being can be capable. If it were badly written it would produce a sense of disgust.

Then a well-written book putting forward perverted moral views may be a good book?--No work of art ever puts forward views. Views belong to people who are not artists.

A novel of "a certain kind" might be a good book?--I do not know what you mean by "a novel of a certain kind."

Then I will suggest "Dorian Gray" as open to the interpretation of being a novel of that kind.--That could only be to brutes and illiterates.

An illiterate person reading "Dorian Gray" might consider it such a novel?--The views of illiterates on art are unaccountable. I am concerned only with my view of art. I do not care twopence what other people think of it.

The majority of persons would come under your definition of Philistines and illiterates?--I have found wonderful exceptions.

Do you think the majority of people live up to the position you are giving us?--I am afraid they are not cultivated enough.

Not cultivated enough to draw the distinction between a good book and a bad book?--Certainly not.

The affection and love of the artist of "Dorian Gray" might lead an ordinary individual to believe that it might have a certain tendency?--I have no knowledge of the views of ordinary individuals.

You did not prevent the ordinary individual from buying your book?--I have never discouraged him.

Mr. Carson then read an extract extending to several pages from "Dorian Gray," using the version as it appeared in _Lippincott's Magazine_[34], describing the meeting of Dorian Gray and the painter Basil Hallward. "Now, I ask you, Mr. Wilde," added Counsel, "do you consider that that description of the feeling of one man towards another, a youth just grown up, was a proper or an improper feeling?"--"I think," replied the author, "it is the most perfect description of what an artist would feel on meeting a beautiful personality which was in some way necessary to his art and life."

Counsel: You think that is a feeling a young man should have towards another?

Witness: Yes, as an artist.

Mr. Carson proceeded to read another long extract. Mr. Wilde asked for a copy, and was given one of the complete edition. Mr. Carson in calling his attention to the place, remarked, "I believe it was left out in the purged edition?"

Witness: I do not call it purged.

Counsel: Yes, I know that; but we will see.

Mr. Carson then read a lengthy passage from "Dorian Gray" as originally published[35], and said, "Do you mean to say that that passage describes the natural feeling of one man towards another?"--"It would be the influence produced on an artist by a beautiful personality," was the reply.

Counsel: A beautiful person?

Witness: I said "a beautiful personality." You can describe it as you like. Dorian Gray was a most remarkable personality.

May I take it that you, as an artist, have never known the feeling described here?--I have never allowed any personality to dominate my heart.

Then you have never known the feeling you describe?--No; it is a work of fiction.

So far as you are concerned you have no experience as to its being a natural feeling?--I think it is perfectly natural for any artist to admire intensely and love a young man. It is an incident in the life of almost every artist.

But let us go over it phrase by phrase. "I quite admit that I adored you madly." What do you say to that? Have you ever adored a young man madly?--No; not madly. I prefer love; that is a higher form.

Never mind about that. Let us keep down to the level we are at now.--I have never given adoration to any body except myself. (Loud laughter.)

I suppose you think that a very smart thing?--Not at all.

Then you never had that feeling?--No; the whole idea was borrowed from Shakespeare, I regret to say; yes, from Shakespeare's sonnets.

Mr. Carson, continuing to read: "I adored you extravagantly?"--Do you mean financially?

Oh, yes, financially. Do you think we are talking about finance?--I do not know what you are talking about.

Don't you? Well, I hope, I shall make myself very plain before I have done. "I was jealous of every one to whom you spoke." Have you ever been jealous of a young man?--Never in my life.

"I wanted to have you all to myself." Did you ever have that feeling?--No, I should consider it an intense nuisance, an intense bore.

"I grew afraid that the world would know of my idolatry." Why should he grow afraid that the world should know of it?--Because there are people in the world who cannot understand the intense devotion, affection and admiration that an artist can feel for a wonderful and beautiful personality. These are the conditions under which we live. I regret them.

These unfortunate people, that have not the high understanding that you have, might put it down to something wrong?--Undoubtedly; to any point they chose. I am not concerned with the ignorance of others.

In another passage Dorian Gray receives a book.[36] Was the book to which you refer a moral book?--Not well written?

Pressed further upon this point, and as to whether the book he had in mind was not of a certain tendency, Mr. Wilde declined with some warmth to be cross-examined upon the work of another artist. It was, he said, "an impertinence and a vulgarity." He admitted that he had in his mind a French book entitled _A Rebours_. Mr. Carson wanted to elicit Mr. Wilde's view as to the morality of that book, but Sir Edward Clarke succeeded, on an appeal to the Judge, in stopping any further reference to it.

Counsel then quoted another extract[37] from the _Lippincott_ version of "Dorian Gray," in which the artist tells Dorian of the scandals about him, and finally asks, "Why is your friendship so fateful to young men?" Asked whether the passage in its ordinary meaning did not suggest a certain charge, witness stated that it described Dorian Gray as a man of very corrupt influence, though there was no statement as to the nature of his influence. "But as a matter of fact," he added, "I do not think that one person influences another, nor do I think there is any bad influence in the world."

Counsel: A man never corrupts a youth?--I think not.

Nothing could corrupt him?--If you are talking of separate ages.

Mr. Carson: No, Sir, I am talking common sense.

Witness: I do not think one person influences another.

You do not think that flattering a young man, making love to him, in fact, would be likely to corrupt him?--No.

On the assembling of the court on the following day, Mr. Wilde, who arrived ten minutes late, after saying to the Judge, "My lord, pray accept my apologies for being late in the witness-box," was examined by Sir Edward Clarke. In reference to "Dorian Gray" the witness said: "Mr. Walter Pater wrote me several letters about it, and in consequence of what he said I modified one passage. The book was very widely reviewed, among others by Mr. Pater himself. I wrote a reply to the review that appeared in the _Scots Observer_."

The subject then dropped.

On the last day of Mr. Wilde's first trial at the Criminal Central Court, May 1st, 1895, the Judge, Mr. Justice Charles, in his summing-up, dealt with "the literary part of the case," and again "Dorian Gray" came under consideration. The Judge said that a very large portion of the evidence of Mr. Wilde at the trial of Lord Queensberry was devoted to what Sir Edward Clarke had called "the literary part of the case." It was attempted to show by cross-examination of Mr. Wilde, as to works he had published, especially in regard to the book called "Dorian Gray," that he was a man of most unprincipled character with regard to the relation of men to boys. His lordship said he had not read that book, and he assumed that the jury had not, but they had been told it was the story of a youth of vicious character, whose face did not reveal the abysses of wretchedness into which he had fallen, but a picture painted by an artist friend revealed all the consequences of his passion. In the end he stabs the picture, whereupon he himself falls dead, and on his vicious face appear all the signs which before had been upon the picture. His lordship did not think that in a criminal case the jury should place any unfavourable inference upon the fact that Mr. Wilde was the author of "Dorian Gray." It was, unfortunately, true that some of their most distinguished and noble-minded writers, who had spent their lives in producing wholesome literature had given to the world books which were painful to persons, of ordinary modesty and decency, to read. Sir Edward Clarke had quoted from Coleridge, "Judge no man by his books," but his lordship would prefer to say "Confound no man with the characters of the persons he creates." Because a novelist put into the mouth of his villain the most abominable sentiments it must not be assumed that he shared them.

It will be remembered that on this occasion the jury were unable to agree on a verdict as to whether Mr. Wilde was guilty or not of the charges brought against him.

In the second trial, which began on May 22nd following, the subject of his books was not mentioned.

[34] Pp. 6-10.

[35] Pp. 57-58.

[36] p. 63, 64.

[37] p. 79.

* * * * *

MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN ON PAGAN VICIOUSNESS.

Mr. Robert Buchanan, the well-known writer, in a letter dated April 23rd, 1895, expressed his own views on this subject in the columns of _The Star_. Referring to an anonymous correspondent in the same newspaper who had accused Mr. Wilde of "pagan viciousness"--this was more than a month before a verdict of "Guilty" had been returned against him--Mr. Buchanan asks, "Has even a writer like this no sense of humour? Does he seriously contend that the paradoxes and absurdities with which Mr. Wilde once amused us were meant as serious attacks on public morality? Two thirds of all Mr. Wilde has written is purely ironical, and it is only because they are now told that the writer is a wicked man that people begin to consider his writings wicked."

"I think," he adds, "I am as well acquainted as most people with Mr. Wilde's works, and I fearlessly assert that they are, for the most part, as innocent as a naked baby. As for the much misunderstood "Dorian Gray," it would be easy to show that it is a work of the highest morality, since its whole purpose is to point out the effect of selfish indulgence and sensuality in destroying the character of a beautiful human soul. But it is useless to discuss these questions with people who are colour-blind. I cordially echo the cry that, failing a little knowledge of literature, a little Christian charity is sorely wanted."

* * * * *

COMPARATIVE TABLE OF CHAPTERS IN THE FIRST TWO EDITIONS OF 'THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY'.

1890 1891 I I II II III III IV V IV VI V VII VI VIII VII IX VIII X IX XI X XII XI XIII XII XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIII XIX, XX

* * * * *

PASSAGES WHICH APPEAR IN THE 1890 EDITION ONLY.

The following are the chief passages in the 1890 edition which are omitted (or have undergone alteration) in the 1891 edition. (_The figures in brackets refer to the page in the 1891 edition where the omission or alteration is made_).

LIPPINCOTT'S MONTHLY MAGAZINE, 1890 (Volume xlvi.)