The Picture Of Dorian Gray
contributor: Eric Lease Morgan (Infomotions, Inc.)
creator: Wilde, Oscar
date: 0000-00-00
extent: 449867
format: text/plain
language: en
publisher: Eris Etext Project
rights: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/
source: 3
subject: dorian
subject: lord
subject: henry
subject: life
subject: gray
subject: picture
subject: oscar
subject: wilde
subject: chapter
subject: studio
subject: filled
subject: rich
subject: odour
subject: roses
subject: english
subject: literature
type: text
local mirror: wilde-picture-615.txt
concordance: http://infomotions.com/alex/cgi-bin/concordance.pl
plain html: wilde-picture-615.htm
sort title: Picture Of Dorian Gray, The
full text: 1890 THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY by Oscar Wilde CHAPTER I The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the 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 was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid jade-faced painters of Tokio who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the burdon note of a distant organ. In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the 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 suddenly started up, and, closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from w…