Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde

The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirredamidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, orthe more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn. From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as washis custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honeysweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardlyable to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadowsof birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of thehuge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of thosepallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarilyimmobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the beesshouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistenceround the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness moreoppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ. In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of ayoung man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, wassitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, atthe time, such public excitement and gave rise to so many strange conjectures. As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed about to linger there. But he suddenlystarted up, and closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to imprisonwithin his brain some curious dream from which he feared he might awake."It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done," said Lord Henry languidly."You must certainly send it next year to the Grosvenor. The Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone there, there have been either so many people that I have not been able tosee the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not been able to see thepeople, which was worse. The Grosvenor is really the only place.