finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Picture of Dorian Gray/section_7_part_0.txt
The Picture of Dorian Gray.chapter 11
chapter 11
{"name": "Chapter 11", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210421171214/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-picture-of-dorian-gray/study-guide/summary-chapter-11", "summary": "Over the next several years, Dorian becomes obsessed with the book given to him by Lord Henry. He buys multiple copies of the \"first edition, and them bound in different colors so that they might suit his moods.\" To Dorian, \"the whole book...seemed to contain the story of his own life, written before he had lived it.\" Like the book's young hero, Dorian begins immersing himself in varied interests, including religion, mysticism, music, jewels, ancient tapestries, and the study of his own ancestors. Dorian is, however, quick to change obsessions once they no longer interest him, following the whims of his desire with the passion of an artist. He clings to each current obsession fervently, studying it and acquiring as many fanciful examples of it as he can find. He buys extravagent gowns covered in hundreds of pearls to feed his interest in jewels, and ancient, golden-threaded tapestries to nourish his curiosity about embroidery. As soon as a given subject has exhausted itself in his mind, however, he drops it in favor of his next interest. For the next 18 years, capriciousness is a way of life for Dorian. In fact, Dorian's attitude recalls Lord Henry's own: \"certainly, to him, Life itself was the first, the greatest, of the arts.\" No matter how intensely Dorian embraces a subject, \"no theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life itself. He felt keenly conscious of how barren all intellectual speculation is when separated from action and experiment.\" Dorian's \"experiments\" are often social in nature. He becomes notorious among London's aristocratic circles as a trend-setter, wearing the latest fashions and looked to as a judge of tastefulness. Young men emulate him, and young women are drawn to him. Those whom he befriends, however, are often ruined, and Dorian is eventually disdained as much as he is admired. Lord Henry seems to be the only close friend who sticks by Dorian over the years. Gossip begins following Dorian wherever he goes, and he becomes infamous, even despicable, in some social circles. He does, however, remain as attractive and fashionable as ever, and continues to be admired for his exquisite taste. No matter how poorly people speak of him, his youthful beauty and the boyish innocence of his face never fail to win him new friends. Dorian also takes to making periodic visits to the attic to watch the painting transform, \"wondering sometimes which were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age.\" At first, as the painting grows uglier, Dorian becomes \"more and more enamored of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his soul.\" He even begins to mock the portrait. Over time, however, his various obsessions and social excursions become ways for him to escape what he knows to be the truth of his soul.", "analysis": "This chapter initiates the second half of the novel, in which Lord Henry's influence has fully bloomed and Dorian has become his own person, with his own interests, convictions, and notoreity amongst London's aristocracy. After this chapter, the protagonist is no longer a corruptable youth, and is rather a full-fledged corruptor in his own right.  We learn that Dorian's personality, charming as it may be, is defined by capriciousness, and a passion for new pleasures. Dorian's obsession with Lord Henry's book may be interpreted in a number of different ways.  The plot reminds him of his own life; the hero reminds him of himself.  The narrator mentions \"the latter part of the book, with its really tragic...account of the sorrow and despair of one who had himself lost what in others, and in the world, he most dearly valued.\"  This is a fitting description for the end of Dorian Gray, as well.  The question remains, however, of whether the book happens to describe Dorian's character, or whether Dorian is changing to mimic the book's protagonist.  Once again, Wilde is blurring the distinction between life and art. Indeed, we learn in this chapter that for Dorian, life and art are interchangeable.  Like Lord Henry, he considers pleasure and aesthetic value more important than anything else. To him, any new and pleasurable experience is worth having, even if that experience is hurtful to others.  The chapter closes with the statement that \"There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.\"  In these moments, Dorian is the most degraded, and his soul suffers the most disfiguration. Dorian reaches a point where he can only be happy when he forgets about the picture in his attic. He manages to avoid facing it for weeks at a time, but like any addict, he can't force himself to stay away from it for very long. The corruption of his soul torments him, and he escapes that torment by indulging in vices that aggravate his corruption and torment him further.  This vicious cycle consciously mimics the patterns of withdrawal and greater dependence commonly faced by drug addicts, an analogy that becomes much more explicit in later chapters, when we learn of Dorian's dependence on opium. The struggle to deny the nagging guilt he feels when faced with the portrait lies beneath all of Dorian's actions, which brings the nature of his fervent passion for his capricious endeavors into question. Is he naturally such a passionate person, or does his passion spring from a desperate need to occupy his mind with anything other than the undeniable and monstrous corruption of his soul?"}

For years, Dorian Gray could not free himself from the influence of
this book.  Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he never
sought to free himself from it.  He procured from Paris no less than
nine large-paper copies of the first edition, and had them bound in
different colours, so that they might suit his various moods and the
changing fancies of a nature over which he seemed, at times, to have
almost entirely lost control.  The hero, the wonderful young Parisian
in whom the romantic and the scientific temperaments were so strangely
blended, became to him a kind of prefiguring type of himself.  And,
indeed, the whole book seemed to him to contain the story of his own
life, written before he had lived it.

In one point he was more fortunate than the novel's fantastic hero.  He
never knew--never, indeed, had any cause to know--that somewhat
grotesque dread of mirrors, and polished metal surfaces, and still
water which came upon the young Parisian so early in his life, and was
occasioned by the sudden decay of a beau that had once, apparently,
been so remarkable.  It was with an almost cruel joy--and perhaps in
nearly every joy, as certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has its
place--that he used to read the latter part of the book, with its
really tragic, if somewhat overemphasized, account of the sorrow and
despair of one who had himself lost what in others, and the world, he
had most dearly valued.

For the wonderful beauty that had so fascinated Basil Hallward, and
many others besides him, seemed never to leave him.  Even those who had
heard the most evil things against him--and from time to time strange
rumours about his mode of life crept through London and became the
chatter of the clubs--could not believe anything to his dishonour when
they saw him.  He had always the look of one who had kept himself
unspotted from the world.  Men who talked grossly became silent when
Dorian Gray entered the room.  There was something in the purity of his
face that rebuked them.  His mere presence seemed to recall to them the
memory of the innocence that they had tarnished.  They wondered how one
so charming and graceful as he was could have escaped the stain of an
age that was at once sordid and sensual.

Often, on returning home from one of those mysterious and prolonged
absences that gave rise to such strange conjecture among those who were
his friends, or thought that they were so, he himself would creep
upstairs to the locked room, open the door with the key that never left
him now, and stand, with a mirror, in front of the portrait that Basil
Hallward had painted of him, looking now at the evil and aging face on
the canvas, and now at the fair young face that laughed back at him
from the polished glass.  The very sharpness of the contrast used to
quicken his sense of pleasure.  He grew more and more enamoured of his
own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul.
He would examine with minute care, and sometimes with a monstrous and
terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead
or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which
were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age.  He would
place his white hands beside the coarse bloated hands of the picture,
and smile.  He mocked the misshapen body and the failing limbs.

There were moments, indeed, at night, when, lying sleepless in his own
delicately scented chamber, or in the sordid room of the little
ill-famed tavern near the docks which, under an assumed name and in
disguise, it was his habit to frequent, he would think of the ruin he
had brought upon his soul with a pity that was all the more poignant
because it was purely selfish.  But moments such as these were rare.
That curiosity about life which Lord Henry had first stirred in him, as
they sat together in the garden of their friend, seemed to increase
with gratification.  The more he knew, the more he desired to know.  He
had mad hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them.

Yet he was not really reckless, at any rate in his relations to
society.  Once or twice every month during the winter, and on each
Wednesday evening while the season lasted, he would throw open to the
world his beautiful house and have the most celebrated musicians of the
day to charm his guests with the wonders of their art.  His little
dinners, in the settling of which Lord Henry always assisted him, were
noted as much for the careful selection and placing of those invited,
as for the exquisite taste shown in the decoration of the table, with
its subtle symphonic arrangements of exotic flowers, and embroidered
cloths, and antique plate of gold and silver.  Indeed, there were many,
especially among the very young men, who saw, or fancied that they saw,
in Dorian Gray the true realization of a type of which they had often
dreamed in Eton or Oxford days, a type that was to combine something of
the real culture of the scholar with all the grace and distinction and
perfect manner of a citizen of the world.  To them he seemed to be of
the company of those whom Dante describes as having sought to "make
themselves perfect by the worship of beauty."  Like Gautier, he was one
for whom "the visible world existed."

And, certainly, to him life itself was the first, the greatest, of the
arts, and for it all the other arts seemed to be but a preparation.
Fashion, by which what is really fantastic becomes for a moment
universal, and dandyism, which, in its own way, is an attempt to assert
the absolute modernity of beauty, had, of course, their fascination for
him.  His mode of dressing, and the particular styles that from time to
time he affected, had their marked influence on the young exquisites of
the Mayfair balls and Pall Mall club windows, who copied him in
everything that he did, and tried to reproduce the accidental charm of
his graceful, though to him only half-serious, fopperies.

For, while he was but too ready to accept the position that was almost
immediately offered to him on his coming of age, and found, indeed, a
subtle pleasure in the thought that he might really become to the
London of his own day what to imperial Neronian Rome the author of the
Satyricon once had been, yet in his inmost heart he desired to be
something more than a mere _arbiter elegantiarum_, to be consulted on the
wearing of a jewel, or the knotting of a necktie, or the conduct of a
cane.  He sought to elaborate some new scheme of life that would have
its reasoned philosophy and its ordered principles, and find in the
spiritualizing of the senses its highest realization.

The worship of the senses has often, and with much justice, been
decried, men feeling a natural instinct of terror about passions and
sensations that seem stronger than themselves, and that they are
conscious of sharing with the less highly organized forms of existence.
But it appeared to Dorian Gray that the true nature of the senses had
never been understood, and that they had remained savage and animal
merely because the world had sought to starve them into submission or
to kill them by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements of a
new spirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty was to be the
dominant characteristic.  As he looked back upon man moving through
history, he was haunted by a feeling of loss.  So much had been
surrendered! and to such little purpose!  There had been mad wilful
rejections, monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose
origin was fear and whose result was a degradation infinitely more
terrible than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance,
they had sought to escape; Nature, in her wonderful irony, driving out
the anchorite to feed with the wild animals of the desert and giving to
the hermit the beasts of the field as his companions.

Yes:  there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a new Hedonism
that was to recreate life and to save it from that harsh uncomely
puritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious revival.  It was
to have its service of the intellect, certainly, yet it was never to
accept any theory or system that would involve the sacrifice of any
mode of passionate experience.  Its aim, indeed, was to be experience
itself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might
be.  Of the asceticism that deadens the senses, as of the vulgar
profligacy that dulls them, it was to know nothing.  But it was to
teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is
itself but a moment.

There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either
after one of those dreamless nights that make us almost enamoured of
death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through
the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality
itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques,
and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one
might fancy, especially the art of those whose minds have been troubled
with the malady of reverie.  Gradually white fingers creep through the
curtains, and they appear to tremble.  In black fantastic shapes, dumb
shadows crawl into the corners of the room and crouch there.  Outside,
there is the stirring of birds among the leaves, or the sound of men
going forth to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down
from the hills and wandering round the silent house, as though it
feared to wake the sleepers and yet must needs call forth sleep from
her purple cave.  Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by
degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we
watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern.  The wan
mirrors get back their mimic life.  The flameless tapers stand where we
had left them, and beside them lies the half-cut book that we had been
studying, or the wired flower that we had worn at the ball, or the
letter that we had been afraid to read, or that we had read too often.
Nothing seems to us changed.  Out of the unreal shadows of the night
comes back the real life that we had known.  We have to resume it where
we had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the
necessity for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of
stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids
might open some morning upon a world that had been refashioned anew in
the darkness for our pleasure, a world in which things would have fresh
shapes and colours, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in
which the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate,
in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of
joy having its bitterness and the memories of pleasure their pain.

It was the creation of such worlds as these that seemed to Dorian Gray
to be the true object, or amongst the true objects, of life; and in his
search for sensations that would be at once new and delightful, and
possess that element of strangeness that is so essential to romance, he
would often adopt certain modes of thought that he knew to be really
alien to his nature, abandon himself to their subtle influences, and
then, having, as it were, caught their colour and satisfied his
intellectual curiosity, leave them with that curious indifference that
is not incompatible with a real ardour of temperament, and that,
indeed, according to certain modern psychologists, is often a condition
of it.

It was rumoured of him once that he was about to join the Roman
Catholic communion, and certainly the Roman ritual had always a great
attraction for him.  The daily sacrifice, more awful really than all
the sacrifices of the antique world, stirred him as much by its superb
rejection of the evidence of the senses as by the primitive simplicity
of its elements and the eternal pathos of the human tragedy that it
sought to symbolize.  He loved to kneel down on the cold marble
pavement and watch the priest, in his stiff flowered dalmatic, slowly
and with white hands moving aside the veil of the tabernacle, or
raising aloft the jewelled, lantern-shaped monstrance with that pallid
wafer that at times, one would fain think, is indeed the "_panis
caelestis_," the bread of angels, or, robed in the garments of the
Passion of Christ, breaking the Host into the chalice and smiting his
breast for his sins.  The fuming censers that the grave boys, in their
lace and scarlet, tossed into the air like great gilt flowers had their
subtle fascination for him.  As he passed out, he used to look with
wonder at the black confessionals and long to sit in the dim shadow of
one of them and listen to men and women whispering through the worn
grating the true story of their lives.

But he never fell into the error of arresting his intellectual
development by any formal acceptance of creed or system, or of
mistaking, for a house in which to live, an inn that is but suitable
for the sojourn of a night, or for a few hours of a night in which
there are no stars and the moon is in travail.  Mysticism, with its
marvellous power of making common things strange to us, and the subtle
antinomianism that always seems to accompany it, moved him for a
season; and for a season he inclined to the materialistic doctrines of
the _Darwinismus_ movement in Germany, and found a curious pleasure in
tracing the thoughts and passions of men to some pearly cell in the
brain, or some white nerve in the body, delighting in the conception of
the absolute dependence of the spirit on certain physical conditions,
morbid or healthy, normal or diseased.  Yet, as has been said of him
before, no theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance
compared with life itself.  He felt keenly conscious of how barren all
intellectual speculation is when separated from action and experiment.
He knew that the senses, no less than the soul, have their spiritual
mysteries to reveal.

And so he would now study perfumes and the secrets of their
manufacture, distilling heavily scented oils and burning odorous gums
from the East.  He saw that there was no mood of the mind that had not
its counterpart in the sensuous life, and set himself to discover their
true relations, wondering what there was in frankincense that made one
mystical, and in ambergris that stirred one's passions, and in violets
that woke the memory of dead romances, and in musk that troubled the
brain, and in champak that stained the imagination; and seeking often
to elaborate a real psychology of perfumes, and to estimate the several
influences of sweet-smelling roots and scented, pollen-laden flowers;
of aromatic balms and of dark and fragrant woods; of spikenard, that
sickens; of hovenia, that makes men mad; and of aloes, that are said to
be able to expel melancholy from the soul.

At another time he devoted himself entirely to music, and in a long
latticed room, with a vermilion-and-gold ceiling and walls of
olive-green lacquer, he used to give curious concerts in which mad
gipsies tore wild music from little zithers, or grave, yellow-shawled
Tunisians plucked at the strained strings of monstrous lutes, while
grinning Negroes beat monotonously upon copper drums and, crouching
upon scarlet mats, slim turbaned Indians blew through long pipes of
reed or brass and charmed--or feigned to charm--great hooded snakes and
horrible horned adders.  The harsh intervals and shrill discords of
barbaric music stirred him at times when Schubert's grace, and Chopin's
beautiful sorrows, and the mighty harmonies of Beethoven himself, fell
unheeded on his ear.  He collected together from all parts of the world
the strangest instruments that could be found, either in the tombs of
dead nations or among the few savage tribes that have survived contact
with Western civilizations, and loved to touch and try them.  He had
the mysterious _juruparis_ of the Rio Negro Indians, that women are not
allowed to look at and that even youths may not see till they have been
subjected to fasting and scourging, and the earthen jars of the
Peruvians that have the shrill cries of birds, and flutes of human
bones such as Alfonso de Ovalle heard in Chile, and the sonorous green
jaspers that are found near Cuzco and give forth a note of singular
sweetness.  He had painted gourds filled with pebbles that rattled when
they were shaken; the long _clarin_ of the Mexicans, into which the
performer does not blow, but through which he inhales the air; the
harsh _ture_ of the Amazon tribes, that is sounded by the sentinels who
sit all day long in high trees, and can be heard, it is said, at a
distance of three leagues; the _teponaztli_, that has two vibrating
tongues of wood and is beaten with sticks that are smeared with an
elastic gum obtained from the milky juice of plants; the _yotl_-bells of
the Aztecs, that are hung in clusters like grapes; and a huge
cylindrical drum, covered with the skins of great serpents, like the
one that Bernal Diaz saw when he went with Cortes into the Mexican
temple, and of whose doleful sound he has left us so vivid a
description.  The fantastic character of these instruments fascinated
him, and he felt a curious delight in the thought that art, like
Nature, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and with hideous
voices.  Yet, after some time, he wearied of them, and would sit in his
box at the opera, either alone or with Lord Henry, listening in rapt
pleasure to "Tannhauser" and seeing in the prelude to that great work
of art a presentation of the tragedy of his own soul.

On one occasion he took up the study of jewels, and appeared at a
costume ball as Anne de Joyeuse, Admiral of France, in a dress covered
with five hundred and sixty pearls.  This taste enthralled him for
years, and, indeed, may be said never to have left him.  He would often
spend a whole day settling and resettling in their cases the various
stones that he had collected, such as the olive-green chrysoberyl that
turns red by lamplight, the cymophane with its wirelike line of silver,
the pistachio-coloured peridot, rose-pink and wine-yellow topazes,
carbuncles of fiery scarlet with tremulous, four-rayed stars, flame-red
cinnamon-stones, orange and violet spinels, and amethysts with their
alternate layers of ruby and sapphire.  He loved the red gold of the
sunstone, and the moonstone's pearly whiteness, and the broken rainbow
of the milky opal.  He procured from Amsterdam three emeralds of
extraordinary size and richness of colour, and had a turquoise _de la
vieille roche_ that was the envy of all the connoisseurs.

He discovered wonderful stories, also, about jewels.  In Alphonso's
Clericalis Disciplina a serpent was mentioned with eyes of real
jacinth, and in the romantic history of Alexander, the Conqueror of
Emathia was said to have found in the vale of Jordan snakes "with
collars of real emeralds growing on their backs." There was a gem in
the brain of the dragon, Philostratus told us, and "by the exhibition
of golden letters and a scarlet robe" the monster could be thrown into
a magical sleep and slain.  According to the great alchemist, Pierre de
Boniface, the diamond rendered a man invisible, and the agate of India
made him eloquent.  The cornelian appeased anger, and the hyacinth
provoked sleep, and the amethyst drove away the fumes of wine.  The
garnet cast out demons, and the hydropicus deprived the moon of her
colour.  The selenite waxed and waned with the moon, and the meloceus,
that discovers thieves, could be affected only by the blood of kids.
Leonardus Camillus had seen a white stone taken from the brain of a
newly killed toad, that was a certain antidote against poison.  The
bezoar, that was found in the heart of the Arabian deer, was a charm
that could cure the plague.  In the nests of Arabian birds was the
aspilates, that, according to Democritus, kept the wearer from any
danger by fire.

The King of Ceilan rode through his city with a large ruby in his hand,
as the ceremony of his coronation.  The gates of the palace of John the
Priest were "made of sardius, with the horn of the horned snake
inwrought, so that no man might bring poison within." Over the gable
were "two golden apples, in which were two carbuncles," so that the
gold might shine by day and the carbuncles by night.  In Lodge's
strange romance 'A Margarite of America', it was stated that in the
chamber of the queen one could behold "all the chaste ladies of the
world, inchased out of silver, looking through fair mirrours of
chrysolites, carbuncles, sapphires, and greene emeraults." Marco Polo
had seen the inhabitants of Zipangu place rose-coloured pearls in the
mouths of the dead.  A sea-monster had been enamoured of the pearl that
the diver brought to King Perozes, and had slain the thief, and mourned
for seven moons over its loss.  When the Huns lured the king into the
great pit, he flung it away--Procopius tells the story--nor was it ever
found again, though the Emperor Anastasius offered five hundred-weight
of gold pieces for it.  The King of Malabar had shown to a certain
Venetian a rosary of three hundred and four pearls, one for every god
that he worshipped.

When the Duke de Valentinois, son of Alexander VI, visited Louis XII of
France, his horse was loaded with gold leaves, according to Brantome,
and his cap had double rows of rubies that threw out a great light.
Charles of England had ridden in stirrups hung with four hundred and
twenty-one diamonds.  Richard II had a coat, valued at thirty thousand
marks, which was covered with balas rubies.  Hall described Henry VIII,
on his way to the Tower previous to his coronation, as wearing "a
jacket of raised gold, the placard embroidered with diamonds and other
rich stones, and a great bauderike about his neck of large balasses."
The favourites of James I wore ear-rings of emeralds set in gold
filigrane.  Edward II gave to Piers Gaveston a suit of red-gold armour
studded with jacinths, a collar of gold roses set with
turquoise-stones, and a skull-cap _parseme_ with pearls.  Henry II wore
jewelled gloves reaching to the elbow, and had a hawk-glove sewn with
twelve rubies and fifty-two great orients.  The ducal hat of Charles
the Rash, the last Duke of Burgundy of his race, was hung with
pear-shaped pearls and studded with sapphires.

How exquisite life had once been!  How gorgeous in its pomp and
decoration!  Even to read of the luxury of the dead was wonderful.

Then he turned his attention to embroideries and to the tapestries that
performed the office of frescoes in the chill rooms of the northern
nations of Europe.  As he investigated the subject--and he always had
an extraordinary faculty of becoming absolutely absorbed for the moment
in whatever he took up--he was almost saddened by the reflection of the
ruin that time brought on beautiful and wonderful things.  He, at any
rate, had escaped that.  Summer followed summer, and the yellow
jonquils bloomed and died many times, and nights of horror repeated the
story of their shame, but he was unchanged.  No winter marred his face
or stained his flowerlike bloom.  How different it was with material
things!  Where had they passed to?  Where was the great crocus-coloured
robe, on which the gods fought against the giants, that had been worked
by brown girls for the pleasure of Athena?  Where the huge velarium
that Nero had stretched across the Colosseum at Rome, that Titan sail
of purple on which was represented the starry sky, and Apollo driving a
chariot drawn by white, gilt-reined steeds?  He longed to see the
curious table-napkins wrought for the Priest of the Sun, on which were
displayed all the dainties and viands that could be wanted for a feast;
the mortuary cloth of King Chilperic, with its three hundred golden
bees; the fantastic robes that excited the indignation of the Bishop of
Pontus and were figured with "lions, panthers, bears, dogs, forests,
rocks, hunters--all, in fact, that a painter can copy from nature"; and
the coat that Charles of Orleans once wore, on the sleeves of which
were embroidered the verses of a song beginning "_Madame, je suis tout
joyeux_," the musical accompaniment of the words being wrought in gold
thread, and each note, of square shape in those days, formed with four
pearls.  He read of the room that was prepared at the palace at Rheims
for the use of Queen Joan of Burgundy and was decorated with "thirteen
hundred and twenty-one parrots, made in broidery, and blazoned with the
king's arms, and five hundred and sixty-one butterflies, whose wings
were similarly ornamented with the arms of the queen, the whole worked
in gold."  Catherine de Medicis had a mourning-bed made for her of
black velvet powdered with crescents and suns.  Its curtains were of
damask, with leafy wreaths and garlands, figured upon a gold and silver
ground, and fringed along the edges with broideries of pearls, and it
stood in a room hung with rows of the queen's devices in cut black
velvet upon cloth of silver.  Louis XIV had gold embroidered caryatides
fifteen feet high in his apartment.  The state bed of Sobieski, King of
Poland, was made of Smyrna gold brocade embroidered in turquoises with
verses from the Koran.  Its supports were of silver gilt, beautifully
chased, and profusely set with enamelled and jewelled medallions.  It
had been taken from the Turkish camp before Vienna, and the standard of
Mohammed had stood beneath the tremulous gilt of its canopy.

And so, for a whole year, he sought to accumulate the most exquisite
specimens that he could find of textile and embroidered work, getting
the dainty Delhi muslins, finely wrought with gold-thread palmates and
stitched over with iridescent beetles' wings; the Dacca gauzes, that
from their transparency are known in the East as "woven air," and
"running water," and "evening dew"; strange figured cloths from Java;
elaborate yellow Chinese hangings; books bound in tawny satins or fair
blue silks and wrought with _fleurs-de-lis_, birds and images; veils of
_lacis_ worked in Hungary point; Sicilian brocades and stiff Spanish
velvets; Georgian work, with its gilt coins, and Japanese _Foukousas_,
with their green-toned golds and their marvellously plumaged birds.

He had a special passion, also, for ecclesiastical vestments, as indeed
he had for everything connected with the service of the Church.  In the
long cedar chests that lined the west gallery of his house, he had
stored away many rare and beautiful specimens of what is really the
raiment of the Bride of Christ, who must wear purple and jewels and
fine linen that she may hide the pallid macerated body that is worn by
the suffering that she seeks for and wounded by self-inflicted pain.
He possessed a gorgeous cope of crimson silk and gold-thread damask,
figured with a repeating pattern of golden pomegranates set in
six-petalled formal blossoms, beyond which on either side was the
pine-apple device wrought in seed-pearls. The orphreys were divided
into panels representing scenes from the life of the Virgin, and the
coronation of the Virgin was figured in coloured silks upon the hood.
This was Italian work of the fifteenth century.  Another cope was of
green velvet, embroidered with heart-shaped groups of acanthus-leaves,
from which spread long-stemmed white blossoms, the details of which
were picked out with silver thread and coloured crystals.  The morse
bore a seraph's head in gold-thread raised work.  The orphreys were
woven in a diaper of red and gold silk, and were starred with
medallions of many saints and martyrs, among whom was St. Sebastian.
He had chasubles, also, of amber-coloured silk, and blue silk and gold
brocade, and yellow silk damask and cloth of gold, figured with
representations of the Passion and Crucifixion of Christ, and
embroidered with lions and peacocks and other emblems; dalmatics of
white satin and pink silk damask, decorated with tulips and dolphins
and _fleurs-de-lis_; altar frontals of crimson velvet and blue linen; and
many corporals, chalice-veils, and sudaria.  In the mystic offices to
which such things were put, there was something that quickened his
imagination.

For these treasures, and everything that he collected in his lovely
house, were to be to him means of forgetfulness, modes by which he
could escape, for a season, from the fear that seemed to him at times
to be almost too great to be borne.  Upon the walls of the lonely
locked room where he had spent so much of his boyhood, he had hung with
his own hands the terrible portrait whose changing features showed him
the real degradation of his life, and in front of it had draped the
purple-and-gold pall as a curtain.  For weeks he would not go there,
would forget the hideous painted thing, and get back his light heart,
his wonderful joyousness, his passionate absorption in mere existence.
Then, suddenly, some night he would creep out of the house, go down to
dreadful places near Blue Gate Fields, and stay there, day after day,
until he was driven away.  On his return he would sit in front of the
picture, sometimes loathing it and himself, but filled, at other
times, with that pride of individualism that is half the
fascination of sin, and smiling with secret pleasure at the misshapen
shadow that had to bear the burden that should have been his own.

After a few years he could not endure to be long out of England, and
gave up the villa that he had shared at Trouville with Lord Henry, as
well as the little white walled-in house at Algiers where they had more
than once spent the winter.  He hated to be separated from the picture
that was such a part of his life, and was also afraid that during his
absence some one might gain access to the room, in spite of the
elaborate bars that he had caused to be placed upon the door.

He was quite conscious that this would tell them nothing.  It was true
that the portrait still preserved, under all the foulness and ugliness
of the face, its marked likeness to himself; but what could they learn
from that?  He would laugh at any one who tried to taunt him.  He had
not painted it.  What was it to him how vile and full of shame it
looked?  Even if he told them, would they believe it?

Yet he was afraid.  Sometimes when he was down at his great house in
Nottinghamshire, entertaining the fashionable young men of his own rank
who were his chief companions, and astounding the county by the wanton
luxury and gorgeous splendour of his mode of life, he would suddenly
leave his guests and rush back to town to see that the door had not
been tampered with and that the picture was still there.  What if it
should be stolen?  The mere thought made him cold with horror.  Surely
the world would know his secret then.  Perhaps the world already
suspected it.

For, while he fascinated many, there were not a few who distrusted him.
He was very nearly blackballed at a West End club of which his birth
and social position fully entitled him to become a member, and it was
said that on one occasion, when he was brought by a friend into the
smoking-room of the Churchill, the Duke of Berwick and another
gentleman got up in a marked manner and went out.  Curious stories
became current about him after he had passed his twenty-fifth year.  It
was rumoured that he had been seen brawling with foreign sailors in a
low den in the distant parts of Whitechapel, and that he consorted with
thieves and coiners and knew the mysteries of their trade.  His
extraordinary absences became notorious, and, when he used to reappear
again in society, men would whisper to each other in corners, or pass
him with a sneer, or look at him with cold searching eyes, as though
they were determined to discover his secret.

Of such insolences and attempted slights he, of course, took no notice,
and in the opinion of most people his frank debonair manner, his
charming boyish smile, and the infinite grace of that wonderful youth
that seemed never to leave him, were in themselves a sufficient answer
to the calumnies, for so they termed them, that were circulated about
him.  It was remarked, however, that some of those who had been most
intimate with him appeared, after a time, to shun him.  Women who had
wildly adored him, and for his sake had braved all social censure and
set convention at defiance, were seen to grow pallid with shame or
horror if Dorian Gray entered the room.

Yet these whispered scandals only increased in the eyes of many his
strange and dangerous charm.  His great wealth was a certain element of
security.  Society--civilized society, at least--is never very ready to
believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and
fascinating.  It feels instinctively that manners are of more
importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability
is of much less value than the possession of a good _chef_.  And, after
all, it is a very poor consolation to be told that the man who has
given one a bad dinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in his private
life.  Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold _entrees_, as
Lord Henry remarked once, in a discussion on the subject, and there is
possibly a good deal to be said for his view.  For the canons of good
society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art.  Form is
absolutely essential to it.  It should have the dignity of a ceremony,
as well as its unreality, and should combine the insincere character of
a romantic play with the wit and beauty that make such plays delightful
to us.  Is insincerity such a terrible thing?  I think not.  It is
merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.

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

Yet one had ancestors in literature as well as in one's own race,
nearer perhaps in type and temperament, many of them, and certainly
with an influence of which one was more absolutely conscious.  There
were times when it appeared to Dorian Gray that the whole of history
was merely the record of his own life, not as he had lived it in act
and circumstance, but as his imagination had created it for him, as it
had been in his brain and in his passions.  He felt that he had known
them all, those strange terrible figures that had passed across the
stage of the world and made sin so marvellous and evil so full of
subtlety.  It seemed to him that in some mysterious way their lives had
been his own.

The hero of the wonderful novel that had so influenced his life had
himself known this curious fancy.  In the seventh chapter he tells how,
crowned with laurel, lest lightning might strike him, he had sat, as
Tiberius, in a garden at Capri, reading the shameful books of
Elephantis, while dwarfs and peacocks strutted round him and the
flute-player mocked the swinger of the censer; and, as Caligula, had
caroused with the green-shirted jockeys in their stables and supped in
an ivory manger with a jewel-frontleted horse; and, as Domitian, had
wandered through a corridor lined with marble mirrors, looking round
with haggard eyes for the reflection of the dagger that was to end his
days, and sick with that ennui, that terrible _taedium vitae_, that comes
on those to whom life denies nothing; and had peered through a clear
emerald at the red shambles of the circus and then, in a litter of
pearl and purple drawn by silver-shod mules, been carried through the
Street of Pomegranates to a House of Gold and heard men cry on Nero
Caesar as he passed by; and, as Elagabalus, had painted his face with
colours, and plied the distaff among the women, and brought the Moon
from Carthage and given her in mystic marriage to the Sun.

Over and over again Dorian used to read this fantastic chapter, and the
two chapters immediately following, in which, as in some curious
tapestries or cunningly wrought enamels, were pictured the awful and
beautiful forms of those whom vice and blood and weariness had made
monstrous or mad:  Filippo, Duke of Milan, who slew his wife and
painted her lips with a scarlet poison that her lover might suck death
from the dead thing he fondled; Pietro Barbi, the Venetian, known as
Paul the Second, who sought in his vanity to assume the title of
Formosus, and whose tiara, valued at two hundred thousand florins, was
bought at the price of a terrible sin; Gian Maria Visconti, who used
hounds to chase living men and whose murdered body was covered with
roses by a harlot who had loved him; the Borgia on his white horse,
with Fratricide riding beside him and his mantle stained with the blood
of Perotto; Pietro Riario, the young Cardinal Archbishop of Florence,
child and minion of Sixtus IV, whose beauty was equalled only by his
debauchery, and who received Leonora of Aragon in a pavilion of white
and crimson silk, filled with nymphs and centaurs, and gilded a boy
that he might serve at the feast as Ganymede or Hylas; Ezzelin, whose
melancholy could be cured only by the spectacle of death, and who had a
passion for red blood, as other men have for red wine--the son of the
Fiend, as was reported, and one who had cheated his father at dice when
gambling with him for his own soul; Giambattista Cibo, who in mockery
took the name of Innocent and into whose torpid veins the blood of
three lads was infused by a Jewish doctor; Sigismondo Malatesta, the
lover of Isotta and the lord of Rimini, whose effigy was burned at Rome
as the enemy of God and man, who strangled Polyssena with a napkin, and
gave poison to Ginevra d'Este in a cup of emerald, and in honour of a
shameful passion built a pagan church for Christian worship; Charles
VI, who had so wildly adored his brother's wife that a leper had warned
him of the insanity that was coming on him, and who, when his brain had
sickened and grown strange, could only be soothed by Saracen cards
painted with the images of love and death and madness; and, in his
trimmed jerkin and jewelled cap and acanthuslike curls, Grifonetto
Baglioni, who slew Astorre with his bride, and Simonetto with his page,
and whose comeliness was such that, as he lay dying in the yellow
piazza of Perugia, those who had hated him could not choose but weep,
and Atalanta, who had cursed him, blessed him.

There was a horrible fascination in them all.  He saw them at night,
and they troubled his imagination in the day.  The Renaissance knew of
strange manners of poisoning--poisoning by a helmet and a lighted
torch, by an embroidered glove and a jewelled fan, by a gilded pomander
and by an amber chain.  Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book.  There
were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he
could realize his conception of the beautiful.



Chapter 11
Over the next several years, Dorian becomes obsessed with the book given to him by Lord Henry. He buys multiple copies of the "first edition, and them bound in different colors so that they might suit his moods." To Dorian, "the whole book...seemed to contain the story of his own life, written before he had lived it." Like the book's young hero, Dorian begins immersing himself in varied interests, including religion, mysticism, music, jewels, ancient tapestries, and the study of his own ancestors. Dorian is, however, quick to change obsessions once they no longer interest him, following the whims of his desire with the passion of an artist. He clings to each current obsession fervently, studying it and acquiring as many fanciful examples of it as he can find. He buys extravagent gowns covered in hundreds of pearls to feed his interest in jewels, and ancient, golden-threaded tapestries to nourish his curiosity about embroidery. As soon as a given subject has exhausted itself in his mind, however, he drops it in favor of his next interest. For the next 18 years, capriciousness is a way of life for Dorian. In fact, Dorian's attitude recalls Lord Henry's own: "certainly, to him, Life itself was the first, the greatest, of the arts." No matter how intensely Dorian embraces a subject, "no theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life itself. He felt keenly conscious of how barren all intellectual speculation is when separated from action and experiment." Dorian's "experiments" are often social in nature. He becomes notorious among London's aristocratic circles as a trend-setter, wearing the latest fashions and looked to as a judge of tastefulness. Young men emulate him, and young women are drawn to him. Those whom he befriends, however, are often ruined, and Dorian is eventually disdained as much as he is admired. Lord Henry seems to be the only close friend who sticks by Dorian over the years. Gossip begins following Dorian wherever he goes, and he becomes infamous, even despicable, in some social circles. He does, however, remain as attractive and fashionable as ever, and continues to be admired for his exquisite taste. No matter how poorly people speak of him, his youthful beauty and the boyish innocence of his face never fail to win him new friends. Dorian also takes to making periodic visits to the attic to watch the painting transform, "wondering sometimes which were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age." At first, as the painting grows uglier, Dorian becomes "more and more enamored of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his soul." He even begins to mock the portrait. Over time, however, his various obsessions and social excursions become ways for him to escape what he knows to be the truth of his soul.
This chapter initiates the second half of the novel, in which Lord Henry's influence has fully bloomed and Dorian has become his own person, with his own interests, convictions, and notoreity amongst London's aristocracy. After this chapter, the protagonist is no longer a corruptable youth, and is rather a full-fledged corruptor in his own right.  We learn that Dorian's personality, charming as it may be, is defined by capriciousness, and a passion for new pleasures. Dorian's obsession with Lord Henry's book may be interpreted in a number of different ways.  The plot reminds him of his own life; the hero reminds him of himself.  The narrator mentions "the latter part of the book, with its really tragic...account of the sorrow and despair of one who had himself lost what in others, and in the world, he most dearly valued."  This is a fitting description for the end of Dorian Gray, as well.  The question remains, however, of whether the book happens to describe Dorian's character, or whether Dorian is changing to mimic the book's protagonist.  Once again, Wilde is blurring the distinction between life and art. Indeed, we learn in this chapter that for Dorian, life and art are interchangeable.  Like Lord Henry, he considers pleasure and aesthetic value more important than anything else. To him, any new and pleasurable experience is worth having, even if that experience is hurtful to others.  The chapter closes with the statement that "There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful."  In these moments, Dorian is the most degraded, and his soul suffers the most disfiguration. Dorian reaches a point where he can only be happy when he forgets about the picture in his attic. He manages to avoid facing it for weeks at a time, but like any addict, he can't force himself to stay away from it for very long. The corruption of his soul torments him, and he escapes that torment by indulging in vices that aggravate his corruption and torment him further.  This vicious cycle consciously mimics the patterns of withdrawal and greater dependence commonly faced by drug addicts, an analogy that becomes much more explicit in later chapters, when we learn of Dorian's dependence on opium. The struggle to deny the nagging guilt he feels when faced with the portrait lies beneath all of Dorian's actions, which brings the nature of his fervent passion for his capricious endeavors into question. Is he naturally such a passionate person, or does his passion spring from a desperate need to occupy his mind with anything other than the undeniable and monstrous corruption of his soul?