by
Oscar Wilde
1890, 13-CHAPTER VERSION
CONTENTS
Chapter I: 3-12
Chapter II: 12-22
Chapter III: 22-32
Chapter IV: 32-36
Chapter V: 36-43
Chapter VI: 43-52
Chapter VII: 52-58
Chapter VIII: 58-64
Chapter IX: 65-77
Chapter X: 77-81
Chapter XI: 81-86
Chapter XII: 86-93
Chapter XIII: 94-100
[3] The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses, and when thelight summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden there camethrough the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the moredelicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.
From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he waslying, smoking, as usual, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wottoncould just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloredblossoms of the laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly ableto bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs; and now andthen the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the longtussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window,producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think ofthose pallid jade-faced painters who, in an art that is necessarilyimmobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullenmurmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass,or circling with monotonous insistence round the black-crocketed spiresof the early June hollyhocks, seemed to make the stillness moreoppressive, and the dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of adistant organ.
In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood thefull-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty,and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artisthimself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years agocaused, at the time, such public excitement, and gave rise to so manystrange conjectures.
As he looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfullymirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, andseemed about to linger there. But he suddenly started up, and, closing[4] his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought toimprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared hemight awake.
"It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done," saidLord Henry, languidly. "You must certainly send it next year to theGrosvenor. The Academy is too large and too vulgar. The Grosvenor isthe only place."
"I don't think I will send it anywhere," he answered, tossing his headback in that odd way that used to make his friends laugh at him atOxford. "No: I won't send it anywhere."
Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows, and looked at him in amazementthrough the thin blue wreaths of smoke that c