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CHAPTER 3
At half-past twelve next day Lord Henry Wotton strolled from Curzon Street over to
the Albany to call on his uncle, Lord Fermor, a genial if somewhat rough-mannered
old bachelor, whom the outside world called
selfish because it derived no particular benefit from him, but who was considered
generous by Society as he fed the people who amused him.
His father had been our ambassador at Madrid when Isabella was young and Prim
unthought of, but had retired from the diplomatic service in a capricious moment
of annoyance on not being offered the
Embassy at Paris, a post to which he considered that he was fully entitled by
reason of his birth, his indolence, the good English of his dispatches, and his
inordinate passion for pleasure.
The son, who had been his father's secretary, had resigned along with his
chief, somewhat foolishly as was thought at the time, and on succeeding some months
later to the title, had set himself to the
serious study of the great aristocratic art of doing absolutely nothing.
He had two large town houses, but preferred to live in chambers as it was less trouble,
and took most of his meals at his club.
He paid some attention to the management of his collieries in the Midland counties,
excusing himself for this taint of industry on the ground that the one advantage of
having coal was that it enabled a gentleman
to afford the decency of burning wood on his own hearth.
In politics he was a Tory, except when the Tories were in office, during which period
he roundly abused them for being a pack of Radicals.
He was a hero to his valet, who bullied him, and a terror to most of his relations,
whom he bullied in turn.
Only England could have produced him, and he always said that the country was going
to the dogs.
His principles were out of date, but there was a good deal to be said for his
prejudices.
When Lord Henry entered the room, he found his uncle sitting in a rough shooting-coat,
smoking a cheroot and grumbling over The Times.
"Well, Harry," said the old gentleman, "what brings you out so early?
I thought you dandies never got up till two, and were not visible till five."
"Pure family affection, I assure you, Uncle George.
I want to get something out of you." "Money, I suppose," said Lord Fermor,
making a wry face.
"Well, sit down and tell me all about it. Young people, nowadays, imagine that money
is everything."
"Yes," murmured Lord Henry, settling his button-hole in his coat; "and when they
grow older they know it. But I don't want money.
It is only people who pay their bills who want that, Uncle George, and I never pay
mine. Credit is the capital of a younger son, and
one lives charmingly upon it.
Besides, I always deal with Dartmoor's tradesmen, and consequently they never
bother me.
What I want is information: not useful information, of course; useless
information."
"Well, I can tell you anything that is in an English Blue Book, Harry, although those
fellows nowadays write a lot of nonsense. When I was in the Diplomatic, things were
much better.
But I hear they let them in now by examination.
What can you expect? Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from
beginning to end.
If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman,
whatever he knows is bad for him."
"Mr. Dorian Gray does not belong to Blue Books, Uncle George," said Lord Henry
languidly. "Mr. Dorian Gray?
Who is he?" asked Lord Fermor, knitting his bushy white eyebrows.
"That is what I have come to learn, Uncle George.
Or rather, I know who he is.
He is the last Lord Kelso's grandson. His mother was a Devereux, Lady Margaret
Devereaux. I want you to tell me about his mother.
What was she like?
Whom did she marry? You have known nearly everybody in your
time, so you might have known her. I am very much interested in Mr. Gray at
present.
I have only just met him." "Kelso's grandson!" echoed the old
gentleman. "Kelso's grandson!...
Of course....
I knew his mother intimately. I believe I was at her christening.
She was an extraordinarily beautiful girl, Margaret Devereux, and made all the men
frantic by running away with a penniless young fellow--a mere nobody, sir, a
subaltern in a foot regiment, or something of that kind.
Certainly. I remember the whole thing as if it
happened yesterday.
The poor chap was killed in a duel at Spa a few months after the marriage.
There was an ugly story about it.
They said Kelso got some rascally adventurer, some Belgian brute, to insult
his son-in-law in public--paid him, sir, to do it, paid him--and that the fellow
spitted his man as if he had been a pigeon.
The thing was hushed up, but, egad, Kelso ate his chop alone at the club for some
time afterwards. He brought his daughter back with him, I
was told, and she never spoke to him again.
Oh, yes; it was a bad business. The girl died, too, died within a year.
So she left a son, did she? I had forgotten that.
What sort of boy is he?
If he is like his mother, he must be a good-looking chap."
"He is very good-looking," assented Lord Henry.
"I hope he will fall into proper hands," continued the old man.
"He should have a pot of money waiting for him if Kelso did the right thing by him.
His mother had money, too.
All the Selby property came to her, through her grandfather.
Her grandfather hated Kelso, thought him a mean dog.
He was, too.
Came to Madrid once when I was there. Egad, I was ashamed of him.
The Queen used to ask me about the English noble who was always quarrelling with the
cabmen about their fares.
They made quite a story of it. I didn't dare show my face at Court for a
month. I hope he treated his grandson better than
he did the jarvies."
"I don't know," answered Lord Henry. "I fancy that the boy will be well off.
He is not of age yet. He has Selby, I know.
He told me so.
And ... his mother was very beautiful?" "Margaret Devereux was one of the loveliest
creatures I ever saw, Harry. What on earth induced her to behave as she
did, I never could understand.
She could have married anybody she chose. Carlington was mad after her.
She was romantic, though. All the women of that family were.
The men were a poor lot, but, egad! the women were wonderful.
Carlington went on his knees to her. Told me so himself.
She laughed at him, and there wasn't a girl in London at the time who wasn't after him.
And by the way, Harry, talking about silly marriages, what is this humbug your father
tells me about Dartmoor wanting to marry an American?
Ain't English girls good enough for him?"
"It is rather fashionable to marry Americans just now, Uncle George."
"I'll back English women against the world, Harry," said Lord Fermor, striking the
table with his fist.
"The betting is on the Americans." "They don't last, I am told," muttered his
uncle. "A long engagement exhausts them, but they
are capital at a steeplechase.
They take things flying. I don't think Dartmoor has a chance."
"Who are her people?" grumbled the old gentleman.
"Has she got any?"
Lord Henry shook his head. "American girls are as clever at concealing
their parents, as English women are at concealing their past," he said, rising to
go.
"They are pork-packers, I suppose?" "I hope so, Uncle George, for Dartmoor's
sake.
I am told that pork-packing is the most lucrative profession in America, after
politics." "Is she pretty?"
"She behaves as if she was beautiful.
Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm."
"Why can't these American women stay in their own country?
They are always telling us that it is the paradise for women."
"It is.
That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so excessively anxious to get out of it,"
said Lord Henry. "Good-bye, Uncle George.
I shall be late for lunch, if I stop any longer.
Thanks for giving me the information I wanted.
I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old
ones." "Where are you lunching, Harry?"
"At Aunt Agatha's.
I have asked myself and Mr. Gray. He is her latest protege."
"Humph! tell your Aunt Agatha, Harry, not to bother me any more with her charity
appeals.
I am sick of them. Why, the good woman thinks that I have
nothing to do but to write cheques for her silly fads."
"All right, Uncle George, I'll tell her, but it won't have any effect.
Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity.
It is their distinguishing characteristic."
The old gentleman growled approvingly and rang the bell for his servant.
Lord Henry passed up the low arcade into Burlington Street and turned his steps in
the direction of Berkeley Square.
So that was the story of Dorian Gray's parentage.
Crudely as it had been told to him, it had yet stirred him by its suggestion of a
strange, almost modern romance.
A beautiful woman risking everything for a mad passion.
A few wild weeks of happiness cut short by a hideous, treacherous crime.
Months of voiceless agony, and then a child born in pain.
The mother snatched away by death, the boy left to solitude and the tyranny of an old
and loveless man.
Yes; it was an interesting background. It posed the lad, made him more perfect, as
it were. Behind every exquisite thing that existed,
there was something tragic.
Worlds had to be in travail, that the meanest flower might blow....
And how charming he had been at dinner the night before, as with startled eyes and
lips parted in frightened pleasure he had sat opposite to him at the club, the red
candleshades staining to a richer rose the wakening wonder of his face.
Talking to him was like playing upon an exquisite violin.
He answered to every touch and thrill of the bow....
There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence.
No other activity was like it.
To project one's soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment;
to hear one's own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of
passion and youth; to convey one's
temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume: there
was a real joy in that--perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so
limited and vulgar as our own, an age
grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims....
He was a marvellous type, too, this lad, whom by so curious a chance he had met in
Basil's studio, or could be fashioned into a marvellous type, at any rate.
Grace was his, and the white purity of boyhood, and beauty such as old Greek
marbles kept for us. There was nothing that one could not do
with him.
He could be made a Titan or a toy. What a pity it was that such beauty was
destined to fade!... And Basil?
From a psychological point of view, how interesting he was!
The new manner in art, the fresh mode of looking at life, suggested so strangely by
the merely visible presence of one who was unconscious of it all; the silent spirit
that dwelt in dim woodland, and walked
unseen in open field, suddenly showing herself, Dryadlike and not afraid, because
in his soul who sought for her there had been wakened that wonderful vision to which
alone are wonderful things revealed; the
mere shapes and patterns of things becoming, as it were, refined, and gaining
a kind of symbolical value, as though they were themselves patterns of some other and
more perfect form whose shadow they made real: how strange it all was!
He remembered something like it in history. Was it not Plato, that artist in thought,
who had first analyzed it?
Was it not Buonarotti who had carved it in the coloured marbles of a sonnet-sequence?
But in our own century it was strange....
Yes; he would try to be to Dorian Gray what, without knowing it, the lad was to
the painter who had fashioned the wonderful portrait.
He would seek to dominate him--had already, indeed, half done so.
He would make that wonderful spirit his own.
There was something fascinating in this son of love and death.
Suddenly he stopped and glanced up at the houses.
He found that he had passed his aunt's some distance, and, smiling to himself, turned
back.
When he entered the somewhat sombre hall, the butler told him that they had gone in
to lunch. He gave one of the footmen his hat and
stick and passed into the dining-room.
"Late as usual, Harry," cried his aunt, shaking her head at him.
He invented a facile excuse, and having taken the vacant seat next to her, looked
round to see who was there.
Dorian bowed to him shyly from the end of the table, a flush of pleasure stealing
into his cheek.
Opposite was the Duchess of Harley, a lady of admirable good-nature and good temper,
much liked by every one who knew her, and of those ample architectural proportions
that in women who are not duchesses are
described by contemporary historians as stoutness.
Next to her sat, on her right, Sir Thomas Burdon, a Radical member of Parliament, who
followed his leader in public life and in private life followed the best cooks,
dining with the Tories and thinking with
the Liberals, in accordance with a wise and well-known rule.
The post on her left was occupied by Mr. Erskine of Treadley, an old gentleman of
considerable charm and culture, who had fallen, however, into bad habits of
silence, having, as he explained once to
Lady Agatha, said everything that he had to say before he was thirty.
His own neighbour was Mrs. Vandeleur, one of his aunt's oldest friends, a perfect
saint amongst women, but so dreadfully dowdy that she reminded one of a badly
bound hymn-book.
Fortunately for him she had on the other side Lord Faudel, a most intelligent
middle-aged mediocrity, as bald as a ministerial statement in the House of
Commons, with whom she was conversing in
that intensely earnest manner which is the one unpardonable error, as he remarked once
himself, that all really good people fall into, and from which none of them ever
quite escape.
"We are talking about poor Dartmoor, Lord Henry," cried the duchess, nodding
pleasantly to him across the table. "Do you think he will really marry this
fascinating young person?"
"I believe she has made up her mind to propose to him, Duchess."
"How dreadful!" exclaimed Lady Agatha. "Really, some one should interfere."
"I am told, on excellent authority, that her father keeps an American dry-goods
store," said Sir Thomas Burdon, looking supercilious.
"My uncle has already suggested pork- packing, Sir Thomas."
"Dry-goods!
What are American dry-goods?" asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder
and accentuating the verb. "American novels," answered Lord Henry,
helping himself to some quail.
The duchess looked puzzled. "Don't mind him, my dear," whispered Lady
Agatha. "He never means anything that he says."
"When America was discovered," said the Radical member--and he began to give some
wearisome facts. Like all people who try to exhaust a
subject, he exhausted his listeners.
The duchess sighed and exercised her privilege of interruption.
"I wish to goodness it never had been discovered at all!" she exclaimed.
"Really, our girls have no chance nowadays.
It is most unfair." "Perhaps, after all, America never has been
discovered," said Mr. Erskine; "I myself would say that it had merely been
detected."
"Oh! but I have seen specimens of the inhabitants," answered the duchess vaguely.
"I must confess that most of them are extremely pretty.
And they dress well, too.
They get all their dresses in Paris. I wish I could afford to do the same."
"They say that when good Americans die they go to Paris," chuckled Sir Thomas, who had
a large wardrobe of Humour's cast-off clothes.
"Really!
And where do bad Americans go to when they die?" inquired the duchess.
"They go to America," murmured Lord Henry. Sir Thomas frowned.
"I am afraid that your nephew is prejudiced against that great country," he said to
Lady Agatha.
"I have travelled all over it in cars provided by the directors, who, in such
matters, are extremely civil. I assure you that it is an education to
visit it."
"But must we really see Chicago in order to be educated?" asked Mr. Erskine
plaintively. "I don't feel up to the journey."
Sir Thomas waved his hand.
"Mr. Erskine of Treadley has the world on his shelves.
We practical men like to see things, not to read about them.
The Americans are an extremely interesting people.
They are absolutely reasonable. I think that is their distinguishing
characteristic.
Yes, Mr. Erskine, an absolutely reasonable people.
I assure you there is no nonsense about the Americans."
"How dreadful!" cried Lord Henry.
"I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable.
There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect."
"I do not understand you," said Sir Thomas, growing rather red.
"I do, Lord Henry," murmured Mr. Erskine, with a smile.
"Paradoxes are all very well in their way...." rejoined the baronet.
"Was that a paradox?" asked Mr. Erskine. "I did not think so.
Perhaps it was.
Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth.
To test reality we must see it on the tight rope.
When the verities become acrobats, we can judge them."
"Dear me!" said Lady Agatha, "how you men argue!
I am sure I never can make out what you are talking about.
Oh! Harry, I am quite vexed with you.
Why do you try to persuade our nice Mr. Dorian Gray to give up the East End?
I assure you he would be quite invaluable. They would love his playing."
"I want him to play to me," cried Lord Henry, smiling, and he looked down the
table and caught a bright answering glance. "But they are so unhappy in Whitechapel,"
continued Lady Agatha.
"I can sympathize with everything except suffering," said Lord Henry, shrugging his
shoulders. "I cannot sympathize with that.
It is too ugly, too horrible, too distressing.
There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain.
One should sympathize with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life.
The less said about life's sores, the better."
"Still, the East End is a very important problem," remarked Sir Thomas with a grave
shake of the head. "Quite so," answered the young lord.
"It is the problem of slavery, and we try to solve it by amusing the slaves."
The politician looked at him keenly. "What change do you propose, then?" he
asked.
Lord Henry laughed. "I don't desire to change anything in
England except the weather," he answered. "I am quite content with philosophic
contemplation.
But, as the nineteenth century has gone bankrupt through an over-expenditure of
sympathy, I would suggest that we should appeal to science to put us straight.
The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray, and the advantage of
science is that it is not emotional." "But we have such grave responsibilities,"
ventured Mrs. Vandeleur timidly.
"Terribly grave," echoed Lady Agatha. Lord Henry looked over at Mr. Erskine.
"Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin.
If the caveman had known how to laugh, history would have been different."
"You are really very comforting," warbled the duchess.
"I have always felt rather guilty when I came to see your dear aunt, for I take no
interest at all in the East End. For the future I shall be able to look her
in the face without a blush."
"A blush is very becoming, Duchess," remarked Lord Henry.
"Only when one is young," she answered. "When an old woman like myself blushes, it
is a very bad sign.
Ah! Lord Henry, I wish you would tell me how to
become young again." He thought for a moment.
"Can you remember any great error that you committed in your early days, Duchess?" he
asked, looking at her across the table. "A great many, I fear," she cried.
"Then commit them over again," he said gravely.
"To get back one's youth, one has merely to repeat one's follies."
"A delightful theory!" she exclaimed.
"I must put it into practice." "A dangerous theory!" came from Sir
Thomas's tight lips. Lady Agatha shook her head, but could not
help being amused.
Mr. Erskine listened. "Yes," he continued, "that is one of the
great secrets of life.
Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it
is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes."
A laugh ran round the table.
He played with the idea and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and transformed it;
let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy and winged it with
paradox.
The praise of folly, as he went on, soared into a philosophy, and philosophy herself
became young, and catching the mad music of pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her
wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced
like a Bacchante over the hills of life, and mocked the slow Silenus for being
sober. Facts fled before her like frightened
forest things.
Her white feet trod the huge press at which wise Omar sits, till the seething grape-
juice rose round her bare limbs in waves of purple bubbles, or crawled in red foam over
the vat's black, dripping, sloping sides.
It was an extraordinary improvisation.
He felt that the eyes of Dorian Gray were fixed on him, and the consciousness that
amongst his audience there was one whose temperament he wished to fascinate seemed
to give his wit keenness and to lend colour to his imagination.
He was brilliant, fantastic, irresponsible. He charmed his listeners out of themselves,
and they followed his pipe, laughing.
Dorian Gray never took his gaze off him, but sat like one under a spell, smiles
chasing each other over his lips and wonder growing grave in his darkening eyes.
At last, liveried in the costume of the age, reality entered the room in the shape
of a servant to tell the duchess that her carriage was waiting.
She wrung her hands in mock despair.
"How annoying!" she cried. "I must go.
I have to call for my husband at the club, to take him to some absurd meeting at
Willis's Rooms, where he is going to be in the chair.
If I am late he is sure to be furious, and I couldn't have a scene in this bonnet.
It is far too fragile. A harsh word would ruin it.
No, I must go, dear Agatha.
Good-bye, Lord Henry, you are quite delightful and dreadfully demoralizing.
I am sure I don't know what to say about your views.
You must come and dine with us some night.
Tuesday? Are you disengaged Tuesday?"
"For you I would throw over anybody, Duchess," said Lord Henry with a bow.
"Ah! that is very nice, and very wrong of you," she cried; "so mind you come"; and
she swept out of the room, followed by Lady Agatha and the other ladies.
When Lord Henry had sat down again, Mr. Erskine moved round, and taking a chair
close to him, placed his hand upon his arm. "You talk books away," he said; "why don't
you write one?"
"I am too fond of reading books to care to write them, Mr. Erskine.
I should like to write a novel certainly, a novel that would be as lovely as a
Persian carpet and as unreal.
But there is no literary public in England for anything except newspapers, primers,
and encyclopaedias.
Of all people in the world the English have the least sense of the beauty of
literature." "I fear you are right," answered Mr.
Erskine.
"I myself used to have literary ambitions, but I gave them up long ago.
And now, my dear young friend, if you will allow me to call you so, may I ask if you
really meant all that you said to us at lunch?"
"I quite forget what I said," smiled Lord Henry.
"Was it all very bad?" "Very bad indeed.
In fact I consider you extremely dangerous, and if anything happens to our good
duchess, we shall all look on you as being primarily responsible.
But I should like to talk to you about life.
The generation into which I was born was tedious.
Some day, when you are tired of London, come down to Treadley and expound to me
your philosophy of pleasure over some admirable Burgundy I am fortunate enough to
possess."
"I shall be charmed. A visit to Treadley would be a great
privilege. It has a perfect host, and a perfect
library."
"You will complete it," answered the old gentleman with a courteous bow.
"And now I must bid good-bye to your excellent aunt.
I am due at the Athenaeum.
It is the hour when we sleep there." "All of you, Mr. Erskine?"
"Forty of us, in forty arm-chairs. We are practising for an English Academy of
Letters."
Lord Henry laughed and rose. "I am going to the park," he cried.
As he was passing out of the door, Dorian Gray touched him on the arm.
"Let me come with you," he murmured.
"But I thought you had promised Basil Hallward to go and see him," answered Lord
Henry. "I would sooner come with you; yes, I feel
I must come with you.
Do let me. And you will promise to talk to me all the
time? No one talks so wonderfully as you do."
"Ah!
I have talked quite enough for to-day," said Lord Henry, smiling.
"All I want now is to look at life. You may come and look at it with me, if you
care to."