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First signs of the change of the portrait

A month later Dorian visits Lord Henry and they discuss Dorian’s love to the actress Sibyl Wane and plan to attend with Basil Hallward to some of her performances. Dorian comments: “Dear Basil! I d have not laid eyes on him for a week. It is rather horrid of me, as he sent me my portrait in the most wonderful frame, specially designed by himself and, though I am a little jealous of the picture for being a whole month younger than I am, I must admit that I delight it.” (51)

As Whistler was designing frames for his paintings on his own, here can be seen possible influence.¹¹⁷

Dorian leaves and Lord Henry “began to think” of Dorian. “He was conscious – and the thought brought a gleam of pleasure into his brown agate eyes – that it was through certain words of his, musical words said musical utterance, that Dorian Gray’s soul had turned to this white girl and bowed in worship before her. To a large extent the lad was his own creation. He had made him premature.” (51) Gillespie comments the mentioned “white girl” as “A reference to Whistler’s picture of that name, on which Swinburne based his poem “Before the Mirror,” in Poems and Ballads (1866).” (Gillespie 51) If Wilde here really refers to the Whistler’s painting White girl he might refer to the story with the painting connected.¹¹⁸

Dorian falls in love with the actress Sybil Vane from the London suburb theatre. He loves her when she acts perfectly but in the moment when her good acting vanishes and she praises the real life more than her art Dorian loses interest in her and abandons her. This is the moment when he first time sees change in his portrait from Basil.

Even in this episode is noticeable in relation to the contradiction of Art and Nature. Till Sybil is acting well Dorian can love her (Art). In the moment she loses her ability he is not interested anymore (Nature).¹¹⁹

When is Dorian describing to Lord Henry and Basil the beauties of Sybil Vane¹²⁰, he says: “She had all the delicate grace of that Tanagra figurine¹²¹ that you have in your studio, Basil.” (Wilde 65) Soon Sybil plays her last – bad – play Romeo and Juliet. She cannot play well because is in love with Dorian. Acting was before’s the only reality of her life, but she now considers all art as a reflection of real life. Dorian sees it very differently and tells her that she killed his love. “Without your art you are nothing.” (74) Dorian leaves her and she commits suicide.

When Dorians comes home and firstly sees that the portrait is slightly changing he recalls his wish from Basil’s studio. (76-7) He still fully doesn’t believe his eyes. In the morning he examines the portrait again and asks himself “What should he do if Basil Hallward came and asked to look at his own picture? Basil would be sure to do that.” (80) As he thinks of it he decides to write a letter to Sybil and marry her. But it is too late – Lord Henry is coming and announcing Sybil’s dead. Dorian feels as if he had murdered her but as Lord Henry speaks Dorian’s thought are gone and he is again fully under Lord Henry’s influence. Lord Henry persuaded him that it was just a kind of romantic tragedy and they both leave to the opera the same evening. (81-89)

Basil’s wish to exhibit the picture

Basil who is visiting Dorian (next morning) acts as a moralist and cannot believe that Dorian went to the opera after what had happened. (90) Dorian asks Basil if he could paint the portrait of Sibyl, which Basil answers that he will try but insists on Dorian sitting again for the portrait. Dorian answers:

“ “I can never sit to you again, Basil. It is impossible!” he exclaimed, starting back.

The painter stared at him. “My dear boy, what nonsense!” he cried. “Do you mean to say you don’t like what I did of you? Where is it? Why you pulled the screen in front of it? Let me look at it. It is the best thing I have ever done. Do take the screen away, Dorian. It is simply disgraceful of your servant hiding my work like that. I felt the room looked different as I came in.” ” (93)

Dorian opposes it: “My servant has nothing to do with it, Basil … I did it myself. The light was too strong on the portrait.” (93)

Basil still wants to see it, but Dorian doesn’t want to let him to look. Basil reacts:

“But, really, it seems rather absurd that I shouldn’t see my own work, especially as I am going to exhibit it in Paris in autumn. I shall probably have to give it another coat of varnish before that, so I must see it some day, and why not to-day?”

“To exhibit it! You want to exhibit it?” exclaimed Dorian Gray……..

“Yes; I don’t suppose you will object to that. Georges Petit is going to collect all my best pictures for a special exhibition in the Rue de Seze, which will open the first week in October. The portrait will only be away a month.” ” (94)

Here seems to be clear connection to Whistler, who “in 1887 … exhibited over fifty works at George Petit’s Gallery.” (Anderson 498)¹²² Gillespie comments: “Petit founded a popular gallery there in 1882, famous for its association with the French Impressionist painters.” (Gillespie 94)

Dorian wonders why Basil wants to exhibit it, because one month ago he did not want, and asks him what was his reason for refusing to exhibit the picture. (Wilde 94) Basil uncovers how Dorian’s personality influenced his work, that Dorian was for him the incarnation of unseen ideal.

“One day, a fatal day I sometimes think, I determined to paint a wonderful portrait of you as you actually are, not in the custom of dead ages, but in your own dress and in your own time. Whether it was the Realism of the method, or the mere wonder of your own personality, thus directly presented to me without mist or veil, I cannot tell. But I know that as I worked at it, every flake and film of colour seemed to me to reveal my secret. … I felt, Dorian, that I had put to much of myself into it. Then it was that I resolved never to allow the picture to be exhibited.” (96)

On the end of his speech Basil again tends not to exhibit the picture. Dorian admits he saw in the picture something that seems to him very curious, but still doesn’t want to allow Basil to look at it. (96)

It is not clear how it is here meant - ‚the Realism as a method’. It cannot be the realism as this term is used in the ninetieth century as this is what Wilde refuses. According Frankel “In his letter to the Daily Chronicle of June 30, 1890, when Wilde called Dorian Gray "an essay on decorative art," he was signaling his indebtedness to Morris and Rossetti. He was making a claim, too, about the novel's departure from nineteenth-century realism and the fact that its real power lay in its language."¹²³ (Frankel 23-4)

Also in “The Decay of Lying” Wilde clearly rejects Realism: ”All bad art comes from returning to Life and Nature, and elevating them into ideals ... As a method Realism is a complete failure, and the two things every artist should avoid are modernity of form and modernity of subject-matter. To us, who live in the ninetieth century, any century is a suitable subject for art except our own. The only beautiful things are things that do not concern us” (Wilde “The Decay of Lying” 52-3)

Thoughts of new style are presented also via Lord Henry and here is one possible explanation of Basil’s Realism - It can be Realism in Plato’s¹²⁴ sense or realism which is not Realism of Nature but Realism of Art. As Lord Henry says:

“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, Dryad-like and not afraid, because in his soul who sought for her there had been wakened that wonderfull 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! ” (Wilde 34-35)

Murder

After Basil’s visit Dorian decides to move the picture to his “schoolroom”, the room where he lived as a schoolboy. Housekeeper tells him it is full of dust, that it “hasn‘t been opened for nearly five years, not since his lordship died.” (98) When he saw the room “He shuddered, and for a moment he regretted that he had not told Basil the true reason why he had wished to hide the picture away. Basil would have helped him to resist Lord Henry’s influence, and the still more poisonous influences that came from his own temperament.” (99) He is also in doubts about the place for the the painting from different reason: “He recalled the stainless purity of his boyish life, and it seemed horrible to him that it was here the fatal portrait was to be hidden away.” (100)

When Dorian had the picture hidden he took the yellow book¹²⁵ which influenced him for whole next year (102-3) Whole chapter 11 seems to be inspired by the novel A Rebours and also by the Wilde’s own life.

In chapter 12 Hallward again meets Basil – for the last time.

“It was on the ninth of November, the eve of his own thirty-eight birthday,¹²⁶ as he often remembered afterwards. He was walking home about eleven o’clock from Lord Henry’s, where he had been dining, and was wrapped in heavy furs, as the night was cold and foggy. At the corner of Grosvenor Square and South Audley Street a man passed him in a mist, walking very fast, and with grey collar of his grey ulster turned up. He had a bag in his hand. Dorian recognized him. It was Basil Hallward. A strange sense of fear, for which he could not account came over him. He made no sign of recognition, and went on quickly, in the direction of his house. But Hallward had seen him. … In a few moments his hand was on his arm. ”Dorian, what an extraordinary piece of luck! I have been waiting for you in your library ever since nine o’clock. … I am off to the Paris by a midnight train, and I particularly wanted to see you before I left. ” ” (124)

Basil mentions he is going to be in Paris for six months and paint there. It can be reference to Whistler’s Paris stays as Whistler was exhibiting there and lived there before his London stay and also after.

Dorian comments “What a fashionable painter to travel! A Gladstone Bag, and an ulster!” (125) and they go into the house. ‘Fashionable’ can be probably understood as the reaction to one of Whistler’s invectives to Wilde’s often mentioned ‘customes’ in Whistler’s correspondence on the end of eighties.

Basil has only half of hour as he plans to catch the train but he needs to talk to Dorian. “I think it right that you should know that the most dreadful things are being said against you in London.” (126) Hallward insists that Dorian knows about it but says he doesn’t believe these rumour because Dorian’s appearance is not changing. “Sin is a thing that write itself across a man’s face … it shows itself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the moulding of his hand even.” (126) Further Basil talks about what he concretely has heard about Dorian, that he is said to corrupt everyone with whom he became intimate. Dorian opposes and plays everything down. Basil is asking himself if he knows Dorian.

“ “Before I could answer that, I should have to see your soul.”

“To see my soul!” Muttered Dorian Gray, starting up from the sofa and turning almost white form fear.

“Yes,” answered Hallward, gravely, and with deep-toned sorrow in his voice -”to see your soul. But only God can do that.”

A bitter laugh of mockery broke from the lips of younger man, “You shall see it yourself, to-night!”¹²⁷ he cried, seizing the lamp from the table. “Come; it is your own handy work. Why shouldn’t you look at it?” ” (128)

Basil sees he missed his train and follows Dorian upstairs.

And here comes the climax of whole story:

“When they reached the top landing, Dorian set the lamp down on the floor, and taking out the key turned it in the lock. “You insist on knowing, Basil?” he asked, in a low voice. “Yes.” “ …. [Dorian replies] “You are the one man in the world who is entitled to know everything about me. You have had more to do with my life than you think”: and, taking up the lamp, he opened the door and went in. A cold current of air passed them, and the light shot up for a moment in a flame of murky orange.” (129-30)

Wilde describes to detail where it is taking place:

“The room looked as if it had not been lived in for years. A faded Flemish tapestry, a curtained picture, an old Italian cassone¹²⁸ and almost empty bookcase - that was all it seemed to contain, besides a chair and a table. As Dorian Gray was lighting a half-burned candle that was standing on the mantelshelf, he saw that the whole place was covered with dust¹²⁹, and that the carpet was in holes. … “So you think that it is only God who sees the soul, Basil? Draw that curtain back, and you will see mine.“ The voice that spoke was cold and cruel. “You are mad, Dorian, or playing a part,“ muttered Hallward, frowning. “You won‘t? Than I must do it myself, “said the young man; and he tore the curtain from its rod, and flung it on the ground. An exclamation of horror broke from the painter‘s lips as he saw in the dim light the hideous face on the canvas grinning at him. There was something in its expression that filled him with disgust and loathing. Good heavens! It was Dorian Gray’s own face that he was looking at! The horror, whatever it was, had not yet entirely spoiled the marvelous beauty. There was still some gold in the tinning hair and some scarlet on the sensual mouth. … Yes it was Dorian himself. But who had done it? He seemed to recognize his own brush-work, and the frame was his own design. The idea was monstrous, yet he felt afraid. He seized the lighted candle, and held it to the picture. In the left hand corner was his own name, traced in long letters of bright vermilion.” (130)

As already mentioned above the vermilion signature can be understood as a trace of James Whistler as paintings signed in vermilion were typical of him.

Basil simply couldn’t believe that it is his own picture, but there was too much indication that it is.

Dorian observed the scene as a “spectator, with perhaps a flicker of triumph in his eyes. He had taken the flower out of his coat, and was smelling it, or pretending to do so.” (131)¹³⁰

Basil asks what does it mean and Dorian comments: “One day you introduced me to a friend of yours, who explained to me the wonder of youth, and you finished a portrait of me that revealed to me the wonder of beauty. In a mad moment, that, even now, I don’t know whether I regret it or not, I made a wish, perhaps you would call it a prayer ...” (131) Hallward recalls but still resists to believe and tries to find logical explanation: “No! The thing is impossible. The room is damp. Mildew has got into the canvas. The paints I used had some wretched mineral poison in them. I tell you the thing is impossible.” … “You told me you have destroyed it.” (131), which is replied by Dorian: “I was wrong. It has destroyed me.” (131)

Atmosphere of the dialogue is becoming explosive. “ “Each of us has Heaven and Hell in him, Basil,” cried Dorian” (131) Hallward “held the light up again to the canvas, and examined it. The surface seemed quite undisturbed, and as he had left it. It from within, apparently, that the foulness and horror had come. Through some strange quickening of inner life the leprosies of sin were slowly eating the thing away. The rotting of a corpse in a watery rave was not so fearful.” (131-2)

Hallward is devastated and asks Dorian to pray, which Dorian opposes that it is too late.

“Dorian glanced at the picture, and suddenly an uncontrolled feeling of hatred for Basil Hallward came over him, as thought it had been suggested to him by the image on the canvas, whispered into his ear by those grinning lips. The mad passions of a hunted animal stirred within, and he loathed the man who was seated at the table, more than in his whole life he had ever loathed anything. He glanced wildly around. Something glimmered on the top of the painted chest that faced him. His eye fell on it. He knew what it was. It was a knife he had brought up, some days before, to cut a piece of cord, and had forgotten to take away with him. He moved slowly towards, passing Hallward as he did so. Hallward stirred in his chair as he was going to rise. He rushed at him and dig the knife into the great vein that is behind the ear, crushing the man’s head down on the table, and stabbing again and again.” (132)

Ellmann comments - having on mind Wilde’s dispute with Whistler about the supremacy of one art over the other and already mentioned “Lessing’s theory that painting was spatial and literature temporal” (Ellmann 312) - Wilde’s intention of Dorian’s Gray :

“For his novel he dreamed of transcending these generic limits. It had to be written in words, but with the words he could describe a painting with the attributes Lessing had denied to pictorial art: once the portrait had transfigured its object - the sitter – by concentrating him in one moment of perfection, it would disfigure its achievement as though it would claim time rather than space. That literature and painting could not exchange their roles was the idea which Dorian Gray would alter; in the end each art would revert to its norm, but literature would show itself capable of doing what painting could not do, exist temporally rather than eternally, and yet enshrine a portrait of its beautiful and monstrous hero. Though he had removed all traces of Whistler from the book, the novel carries on their old dispute about the relative merits of their two arts. Wilde wins by bringing together, as Whistler could not, the exalted moment and its disintegration.” (Ellmann 312)

Wilde further realistically describes Hallward’s suffering to death and Dorian’s afterthought: “How quickly it had been done! He felt strangely calm, and, walking over to the window, opened it, and stepped out on the balcony.” (133)

It is surprising that in such a moment Dorian things about some lamp a thinks what kind of workmanship it is:

“He felt that the secret of the whole thing was not to realize the situation. The friend who had painted the fatal portrait to which all his misery had been due, had gone out of his life. That was enough. Than he remembered the lamp. It was rather curious one of Moorish workmanship, made of dull silver inlaid with arabesques of burnished steel, and studded with coarse turquoises. Perhaps it might be missed by his servant, and questions would be asked. He hesitated for a moment, than he turned back and took it from the table. He could not help seeing the dead thing. How still it was! How horribly white the long hands looked! It was like a dreadful wax image.” (133)

Dorian further cold-bloodedly and rationally plans all what needs to be done after the murder. “Basil Hallward had left the house at eleven. No one had seen him come in again. Most of the servants were in Selby Royal.¹³¹ His valet had gone to bed … Paris! Yes. It was to Paris that Basil had gone, and by the midnight train as he intended. With his curious reserved habits, it would be months before any suspicions would be aroused. Months! Everything could be destroyed long before than.” (134)

He arranges that everything looks for his valet that he just came - ten minutes past two - to the house. He rings the bell and pretends he forgott his key and asks him to be awaken next day at nine. Dorian thinks in his room and decides to contact Alan Cambell¹³² next day.

In the morning Dorian came to the room of the murder. “The dead man was still sitting there, too, and in the sunlight now. How horrible that was! Such hideous things were for the darkness, not for the day.” (135)

Dorian as the true aesthete “dressed himself with even more than his usual care, giving a good deal of attention to the choice of his nectie and scarf-pin, and changing his rings more than once. He spent a long time also over breakfast, tasting the various dishes, talking to his valet about some new livreries that he was thinking of getting made for servants at Selby, and going through correspondence.” (135-6)

Later he wrote two letters, one of them put to his pocket and the other one gave to his valet and asked him to give it to Alan Campbell. “As soon as he was alone, he lit the cigarette, and began sketching upon a piece of paper, drawing first flowers, and a bit of architecture, and then human faces. Suddenly he remarked that every face that he drew seemed to have fantastic likeness to Basil Hallward.” (136) Dorian begins to read stanzas about Venice in Gautier‘s “Emaux et Camées”given to him by Adrian Singleton. He recalls “Basil had been with him part of the time, and had gone wild over Tintoret. Poor Basil! What a horrible way for a man to die!” (138)

Dorian is blackmailing Campbell because he needs him to get rid of Hallward’s body. When Campbell arrives Dorian asks him to change Hallward’s body in the handful of ashes and because Campbell still refuses, Dorian writes him some message which makes him to do what Dorian needs. They go to the room with the body.

“Dorian half opened the door. As he did so, he saw the face of his portrait leering in the sunlight. On the floor in front of it the torn curtain was lying. He remembered that the night before he had forgotten, for the first time in his life, to hide the fatal canvas, and was about to rush forward, when he drew back with a shudder. What was the loathsome red dew that gleamed, wet and glistening, on one of the hands, as though the canvas had sweated blood? How horrible it was! - more horrible, it seemed to him for the moment, that the silent thing that he knew was stretched across the table, the thing whose grotesque misshapen shadow on the spotted carpet showed him that it had not stirred, but was still there, as he had left it.” (145)

Dorian flung the curtain over the picture. Campbell asks Dorian to leave and begins his work. Finishes long after seven. After he leaves. Dorian goes upstairs. “There was a horrible smell of nitric acid in the room. But the thing that had been sitting at the table was gone.” (145)

According Gillespie

“In chapter 14 … Dorian articulates a range of responses during the hours immediately following the death of Basil Hallward, with different – and, in some cases, conflicting – ethical percepts informing each expression. His initial reaction to recollections of the murder shows a mixture of anger, self-pity , and revulsion over the circumstances; but he displays no regret over commiting the act itself … Later, when he must blackmail into agreeing to dispose of Basil Hallward‘s body, Dorian feels genuine regret for what he must do … Finally, as Dorian contemplates the image of Campbell confronting the body of the murdered man, the innane social concerns that come to mind underscore a chilling detachment from all that is happening: “He began to wonder if [Allan Campbell] and Basil Hallward had ever met, and, if so, what they had thought of each other.” ” (Gillespie “Picturing Dorian Gray” 395-6) ¹³³

Motive of murder is present already during the last sitting scene in chapter 2 where Basil wants to rip the canvas with the pallete-knife and avoid quarrel between his two best friends. But in this moment Dorian stops him.

Ellmann supposes that by the Basil Hallward’s murder in the book Wilde solved long lasting disputes with Whistler. In the subchapter called ‘The Murder of Whistler’¹³⁴ Ellmann says:

“That Dorian Gray should kill a painter, who in the original draft (as Wilde told the translator Jean-Joseph Renaud¹³⁵) was clearly and libelously Whistler, makes the book more a record of Wilde’s personal feelings than might appear. His homicidal impulse towards Whistler ran concurrently with his homosexual impulse towards Ross, also shadowed in the novel. One fantasy remained fantasy and, for fear of a libel action, the image of Whistler was removed from the text. The other was realized. For Wilde homosexual love roused him from the pasteboard conformity to the expression of latent desires. After 1886 he was able to think of himself as a criminal, moving guiltily among the innocent.“ (Ellmann 278)

Ellmann’s presumption that Whistler was in reality the murdered painter is probable, it would be no surprise at all if Wilde decides to get rid of him and all these unpleasant disputes this way but there is no other evidence for it in place except the mentioned article from Jean-Joseph Renaud. There is nothing in relation to it mentioned in the original typescript published first time in full in 2011.¹³⁶ I am not sure if Ellmann refers to any even earlier version (if any) which might have disappeared during the auction of Wilde’s belonging in the time of his trial. ¹³⁷

Anderson is on Ellmann side, quotes him and adds: “On Wilde’s choice of the story, Ellmann writes: ’Wilde had hit upon a myth of the vindictive image, an art that turns upon its original as son against father or man against God.’ By producing such aesthetic inversion, Wilde was at last able metaphorically to put James in his place: the creator at last destroyed by his creation.” (Anderson 314-5)¹³⁸

Black cave of Time opened

After Basil (Whistler in Ellmann’s interpretation) is murdered he appears in the novel only in Dorian’s thoughts and in his later discussion with Lord Henry as nobody misses Basil for certain period of time because he is supposed to be in Paris.

Only after the following three chapters seems that Dorian, staying at the country house (Selby Royal) begins to regret what he had done. “Oh! In what a wild hour of madness he had killed his friend! How ghastly the mere memory of the scene! He saw it all again. Each hideous detail came back to him with added horror. Out of the black cave of Time¹³⁹, terrible and swathed in scarlet, rose the image of his sin. When Lord Henry came in at six o’clock, he found him crying as one whose heart will break.” (Wilde 166)

Later, in next chapter, they talk again and Lord Henry says that Basil’s ‘mysterious disappearance’ is being discussed in public. It is almost unbelievable how superficially he is interested in his friend’s fate. Also Dorian seems to discuss the case as not being involved in it at all. Lord Henry considers even the possibility that Basil is dead, but this is something what is out of the concept of his ideology. He says:

“ “Scotland Yard still insist that the man in the grey ulster who left for Paris by the midnight train on the night of November was poor Basil, and the French police declare that Basil never arrived in Paris at all. I suppose in about a fortnight we shall be told that he has been seen in San Francisco. It is an odd thing, but every one who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be delightful city, and posses all the attractions of the next world.”

“What do you think has happened to Basil?” asked Dorian, holding up his Burgundy against the light, and wondering how it was that he could discuss the matter so calmly.

“I have not the slightest idea. If Basil chooses to hide himself, it is no business of mine. If he is dead, I don’t want to think about him. Death is the only thing that ever terifies me. I hate it.”

“Why?”, said the younger man, wearily. “Because,” said Lord Henry, passing beneath his nostrils the gilt trellis of an open vianigrette box, “one can survive everything nowadays except that.” (174-5)

When Dorian further asks if Harry thinks that Basil was murdered. Lord Henry reacts:

“ “Basil was very popular, and always wore a Waterbury watch.¹⁴⁰ Why should he have been murdered? He was not clever enough to have enemies. Of course he had a wonderful genius for painting. But a man can paint like a Velasquez and yet be as dull as possible. Basil was really rather dull. He only interested me once, and that was when he told me, years ago, that he had a wild adoration for you, and that you were the dominant motive in his art.”

“I was very fond of Basil,” said Dorian, with a note of sadness in his voice. “But don’t people say that he was murdered?”

“Oh, some of the papers do. It does not seem to me to be at all probable. I know there are dreadful places in Paris, but Basil was not that sort of man to have gone to them. He had no curiosity. It was his chief defect.”

“What would you say, Harry, if I told you that I had murdered Basil?” said the younger man. He watched him intently after he had spoken.

“I would say, my dear fellow, that you were posing for a character that doesn’t suit you. All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is a crime. It is not you, Dorian, to commit a murder.” (175) ¹⁴¹

Here is Basil described even more than when he was alive. We learn that he was popular, wore a Waterbury watch, was not clever enough to have enemies, was rather dull and had no curiosity. Are these the characteristics of Whistler if he is presumed to be his original according Ellmann? Popular Whistler was, but remarks about not having enemies and being dull and not curios must be ironic remarks if about him. About Whistler was known that he made enemies from his friends¹⁴² and in 1890 published book of him The Gentle art of making enemies based mainly on his libel suit against Ruskin contained also part of the published correspondence between him and other artists, Wilde as well.

Lord Henry wants to leave the topic of Basil, belittles Basil’s work of last years and recalls Dorian’s portrait:

“Do you know, I don’t think he would have done much more good work. During the last ten years his painting had gone off very much.” … “It seemed to me to have lost something. It had lost an ideal. When you and he ceased to be great friends, he ceased to be a great artist. … By the way, what has become of that wonderful portrait he did of you? I don’t think I have ever seen it since he finished it. Oh! I remember your telling me years ago that you have send it down to Selby, and that it had got mislaid or stolen on the way. You never got it back? What a pity! It was really a masterpiece. I remember I wanted to buy it. I wish I had now. It belonged to Basil’s best period. Since then his work was that curious mixture of bad painting and good intentions that always entitles a man to be called a representative British artist. Did you advertise for it? You should.”

“I forget,” said Dorian. “I suppose I did. But I never really liked it. I am sorry I sat for it. The memory of the thing is hateful for me. Why do you talk of it? It is used to remind me of those curious lines in some play -‘Hamlet,’ I think - how do they run? - ‘ “Like a painting of a sorrow, a face without a heart”

Yes: that is what it was like.” Lord Henry laughed. “If a man treats life artificially, his brain is his heart.” ” (176-7)

They are further discussing a soul. Henry asks “what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose … his own soul?” (177) Dorian later adds: “The soul is terrible reality. It can be bought, and sold, and bartered away. It can be poisoned or made perfect. There is a soul in each of us. I know it.” (177)

When Dorian is alone, he goes again to check the painting. He sees the painting is the only evidence left against him and decides to destroy it. “He looked around, and saw the knife that had stabbed Basil Hallward. …. He seized the thing, and stabbed the picture with it. There was a cry hard, and a crash.” (183)

His servant and other people came in. “When they entered, they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was whithered, wrinkled and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was.” (184)

According Sammells "Wilde had carefully balanced the ending of Dorian Gray on a ... graphic evocation of multiformity, which thwarts the protagonits's attempt to authenticate himself with the slash of a knife: Dorian is simultaneously present 'in all the wonder of his ecquisite youth and beauty' (the portrait) and as 'withered, wrinkled and loathsome of visage' (the body) and is identified by the transferable, empty signifies of is rings.” (Sammles 76)

Ellmann adds: “By unintentional suicide¹⁴³, Dorian becomes aestheticism‘s first martyr.” (Ellmann 315)

The Picture of Dorian Gray and the Press

The critics published in reaction to The Picture of Dorian Gray were not very positive in general. Positive critiques surprisingly appeared in Christian publications. As Pearce comments “Amis the condemnation of many secular critics, a few eyebrows were raised by the praise that Wilde’s novel elicited from several Christian publications. Christian Leader and the Christian World referred to it as an ethical parable, and Light, a journal of Christian mysticism, regarded it as a ‘work of high spiritual import’.” (Pearce 238-9) Wilde was “pleased by the Christian approval of the morality in Dorian Gray”. (239)

When Wilde reacted to the critique published in Daily Chronicle he described the novel as a moral, but simply did not want to have it as a main theme – as he explicitly said the moral was secondary theme subordinated to artistic effect. (238)¹⁴⁴ This critique also claims that the novel is “spawned from the leprous literature of French Décadents …”(Gillespie 368), which Wilde replied that only books to which it alludes are “The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter, or Gautier’s Emaux and Camées.” (Gillespie 371) This note is interesting because it might disprove the widely spread opinion that it is Huysmann’s A Rebours and Pater’s Renaissance which influenced The Picture of Dorian Gray the most.

To the article A Study in Puppydom¹⁴⁵ published in St. James Gazette Wilde replies¹⁴⁶ to the editor mentioning that “the sphere of art and the sphere of ethics are absolutely distinct and separate...” (Gillespie 361-2)

The debate culminates. Oscar Wilde writes in his second letter to the editor of the St. James Gazette¹⁴⁷

“But ‘alas’ they will find that it is a story with a moral. And the moral is this: All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment. The painter, Basil Hallward, worshipping physical beauty fair too much, as most painter do, dies by the hand of one in whose soul he has created a monstrous and absurd vanity. Dorian Gray, having led a life of mere sensation and pleasure, tries to kill conscience, and at the moment kill himself. Lord Henry Wotton seeks to be merely the spectator of life. He finds that those who reject the battle are more deeply wounded than those who take part in it.” (Gillespie 364)

Last reaction in this dispute was already mentioned article from St. James Gazette about 1887 Wilde’s portrait from Canadian lady artist with the ironic overtones regarding probable influence of this session on the novel. ¹⁴⁸

Quite offensive was also the critique published in Scots Observer followed by the immediate Wilde’s defence. (Gillespie 372-4) ¹⁴⁹

As we see Wilde’s claim in the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray that - “There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book” (Gilespie 3) - doesn’t necessarily mean that there is no moral in the book.