The Picture of Dorian Gray
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Chapter 1 of The Picture of Dorian Gray. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Picture of Dorian Gray. The studio was filled with the rich odor 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 salad bags in which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, and numeral cigarettes, Lorne Henry Watson could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-colored blossoms of a lambrenom whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs. And now and then, the fantastic showers of birds and flight floated across the long, tassel-soaked 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 Tokyo who, through the meme of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The solemn murmur of the bees, shouldering their way through the long, unmown grass or circling with monotis and since-since round the dusty gilt-horns of the struggling wind vine seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bird on note of a distant organ. In the center 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 standing the artist himself, Basil Howard, who suddenly disappeared some years ago, because, at the time, such public excitement gave rise to so many strange conjectures. As the painter looked at the creature's accumulating form he had so skillfully 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 for 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 rather been so many people that I have not been able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not been able to see the people, which was worse. The Grosvenor is really the only place.' "'I don't think I shall send it anywhere,' he answered, tossing his head back in that odd way that used to make his friends laugh at him at Oxford. "'No, I won't send it anywhere.' Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows