feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/The Picture of Dorian Gray/section_11_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Picture of Dorian Gray.chapter 12
feat_summary_id: chapter 12
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter 12", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210304030722/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/picture-dorian-gray/summary/chapter-12", "summary": "It's the night before Dorian's thirty-eighth birthday, and he's walking home from dinner at Lord Henry's. He runs into Basil, who's walking in the other direction, suitcase in hand. He pretends not to see him, but Basil notices. Dorian feels strangely apprehensive. Basil apparently just came from Dorian's house, where he'd been waiting for hours. Dorian makes an excuse for ignoring Basil and asks where he's off to. Basil's plan it to leave England for half a year and hang out in Paris until he's painted a masterpiece. The pair reaches Dorian's house, and Basil invites himself in, saying that he's got something to say to Dorian. Dorian vaguely tries to get Basil to leave, but Basil isn't to be stopped--he's got everything he needs for his trip, so he's in no rush. The two men settle in Dorian's library, and Basil gets down to business: he wants to talk to Dorian about Dorian. Basil lays it all out there--though Basil himself can't believe that someone as innocent looking and beautiful as Dorian could commit any crimes, Dorian's name has been dragged through the mud, and pretty much everyone else in London either loathes him or fears him. Rumor has it that he's ruined the lives of loads of young women and men in various ways. Dorian revolts, saying that people gossip about how he's ruined so many of his ex-friends, but it's actually their fault--he just brings out tendencies that are already innate in people . Dorian then tries to blame it all on English society... kind of a lame excuse. But Basil's not done--he continues to enumerate the horrible things he's heard about Dorian, who has apparently even ruined the reputation of poor Lady Gwendolen, Henry's sister. We wonder how Lord Henry feels about that. Gravely, Basil says he thought he knew Dorian, but he obviously doesn't, for he can't see into Dorian's soul. For obvious reasons, this comment really gets to Dorian. He laughs bitterly, and announces that Basil will see his soul tonight, since it's his own work. Uh oh--this can't possibly end up well for Basil. Dorian is excited--and insane! He can't wait to show the portrait to Basil, and hopes that the painter will feel bad for what he's done. Basil is understandably frightened. He begs Dorian to simply answer one question--are all these charges against him true? Dorian smiles contemptuously, and lures Basil upstairs, saying that he has a diary in which he records all of his actions . Basil agrees to go with him. Cue ominous organ music...", "analysis": ""}
text: 
  It was on the ninth of November, the eve of his own thirty-eighth
  birthday, as he often remembered afterwards.
  
  He was walking home about eleven o'clock from Lord Henry's, where he
  had been dining, and was wrapped in heavy furs, as the night was cold
  and foggy.  At the corner of Grosvenor Square and South Audley Street,
  a man passed him in the mist, walking very fast and with the collar of
  his grey ulster turned up.  He had a bag in his hand.  Dorian
  recognized him.  It was Basil Hallward.  A strange sense of fear, for
  which he could not account, came over him.  He made no sign of
  recognition and went on quickly in the direction of his own house.
  
  But Hallward had seen him.  Dorian heard him first stopping on the
  pavement and then hurrying after him.  In a few moments, his hand was
  on his arm.
  
  "Dorian!  What an extraordinary piece of luck!  I have been waiting for
  you in your library ever since nine o'clock. Finally I took pity on
  your tired servant and told him to go to bed, as he let me out.  I am
  off to Paris by the midnight train, and I particularly wanted to see
  you before I left.  I thought it was you, or rather your fur coat, as
  you passed me.  But I wasn't quite sure.  Didn't you recognize me?"
  
  "In this fog, my dear Basil?  Why, I can't even recognize Grosvenor
  Square.  I believe my house is somewhere about here, but I don't feel
  at all certain about it.  I am sorry you are going away, as I have not
  seen you for ages.  But I suppose you will be back soon?"
  
  "No:  I am going to be out of England for six months.  I intend to take
  a studio in Paris and shut myself up till I have finished a great
  picture I have in my head.  However, it wasn't about myself I wanted to
  talk.  Here we are at your door.  Let me come in for a moment.  I have
  something to say to you."
  
  "I shall be charmed.  But won't you miss your train?" said Dorian Gray
  languidly as he passed up the steps and opened the door with his
  latch-key.
  
  The lamplight struggled out through the fog, and Hallward looked at his
  watch.  "I have heaps of time," he answered.  "The train doesn't go
  till twelve-fifteen, and it is only just eleven.  In fact, I was on my
  way to the club to look for you, when I met you.  You see, I shan't
  have any delay about luggage, as I have sent on my heavy things.  All I
  have with me is in this bag, and I can easily get to Victoria in twenty
  minutes."
  
  Dorian looked at him and smiled.  "What a way for a fashionable painter
  to travel!  A Gladstone bag and an ulster!  Come in, or the fog will
  get into the house.  And mind you don't talk about anything serious.
  Nothing is serious nowadays.  At least nothing should be."
  
  Hallward shook his head, as he entered, and followed Dorian into the
  library.  There was a bright wood fire blazing in the large open
  hearth.  The lamps were lit, and an open Dutch silver spirit-case
  stood, with some siphons of soda-water and large cut-glass tumblers, on
  a little marqueterie table.
  
  "You see your servant made me quite at home, Dorian.  He gave me
  everything I wanted, including your best gold-tipped cigarettes.  He is
  a most hospitable creature.  I like him much better than the Frenchman
  you used to have.  What has become of the Frenchman, by the bye?"
  
  Dorian shrugged his shoulders.  "I believe he married Lady Radley's
  maid, and has established her in Paris as an English dressmaker.
  Anglomania is very fashionable over there now, I hear.  It seems silly
  of the French, doesn't it?  But--do you know?--he was not at all a bad
  servant.  I never liked him, but I had nothing to complain about.  One
  often imagines things that are quite absurd.  He was really very
  devoted to me and seemed quite sorry when he went away.  Have another
  brandy-and-soda? Or would you like hock-and-seltzer? I always take
  hock-and-seltzer myself.  There is sure to be some in the next room."
  
  "Thanks, I won't have anything more," said the painter, taking his cap
  and coat off and throwing them on the bag that he had placed in the
  corner.  "And now, my dear fellow, I want to speak to you seriously.
  Don't frown like that.  You make it so much more difficult for me."
  
  "What is it all about?" cried Dorian in his petulant way, flinging
  himself down on the sofa.  "I hope it is not about myself.  I am tired
  of myself to-night. I should like to be somebody else."
  
  "It is about yourself," answered Hallward in his grave deep voice, "and
  I must say it to you.  I shall only keep you half an hour."
  
  Dorian sighed and lit a cigarette.  "Half an hour!" he murmured.
  
  "It is not much to ask of you, Dorian, and it is entirely for your own
  sake that I am speaking.  I think it right that you should know that
  the most dreadful things are being said against you in London."
  
  "I don't wish to know anything about them.  I love scandals about other
  people, but scandals about myself don't interest me.  They have not got
  the charm of novelty."
  
  "They must interest you, Dorian.  Every gentleman is interested in his
  good name.  You don't want people to talk of you as something vile and
  degraded.  Of course, you have your position, and your wealth, and all
  that kind of thing.  But position and wealth are not everything.  Mind
  you, I don't believe these rumours at all.  At least, I can't believe
  them when I see you.  Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's
  face.  It cannot be concealed.  People talk sometimes of secret vices.
  There are no such things.  If a wretched man has a vice, it shows
  itself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the
  moulding of his hands even.  Somebody--I won't mention his name, but
  you know him--came to me last year to have his portrait done.  I had
  never seen him before, and had never heard anything about him at the
  time, though I have heard a good deal since.  He offered an extravagant
  price.  I refused him.  There was something in the shape of his fingers
  that I hated.  I know now that I was quite right in what I fancied
  about him.  His life is dreadful.  But you, Dorian, with your pure,
  bright, innocent face, and your marvellous untroubled youth--I can't
  believe anything against you.  And yet I see you very seldom, and you
  never come down to the studio now, and when I am away from you, and I
  hear all these hideous things that people are whispering about you, I
  don't know what to say.  Why is it, Dorian, that a man like the Duke of
  Berwick leaves the room of a club when you enter it?  Why is it that so
  many gentlemen in London will neither go to your house or invite you to
  theirs?  You used to be a friend of Lord Staveley.  I met him at dinner
  last week.  Your name happened to come up in conversation, in
  connection with the miniatures you have lent to the exhibition at the
  Dudley.  Staveley curled his lip and said that you might have the most
  artistic tastes, but that you were a man whom no pure-minded girl
  should be allowed to know, and whom no chaste woman should sit in the
  same room with.  I reminded him that I was a friend of yours, and asked
  him what he meant.  He told me.  He told me right out before everybody.
  It was horrible!  Why is your friendship so fatal to young men?  There
  was that wretched boy in the Guards who committed suicide.  You were
  his great friend.  There was Sir Henry Ashton, who had to leave England
  with a tarnished name.  You and he were inseparable.  What about Adrian
  Singleton and his dreadful end?  What about Lord Kent's only son and
  his career?  I met his father yesterday in St. James's Street.  He
  seemed broken with shame and sorrow.  What about the young Duke of
  Perth?  What sort of life has he got now?  What gentleman would
  associate with him?"
  
  "Stop, Basil.  You are talking about things of which you know nothing,"
  said Dorian Gray, biting his lip, and with a note of infinite contempt
  in his voice.  "You ask me why Berwick leaves a room when I enter it.
  It is because I know everything about his life, not because he knows
  anything about mine.  With such blood as he has in his veins, how could
  his record be clean?  You ask me about Henry Ashton and young Perth.
  Did I teach the one his vices, and the other his debauchery?  If Kent's
  silly son takes his wife from the streets, what is that to me?  If
  Adrian Singleton writes his friend's name across a bill, am I his
  keeper?  I know how people chatter in England.  The middle classes air
  their moral prejudices over their gross dinner-tables, and whisper
  about what they call the profligacies of their betters in order to try
  and pretend that they are in smart society and on intimate terms with
  the people they slander.  In this country, it is enough for a man to
  have distinction and brains for every common tongue to wag against him.
  And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead
  themselves?  My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land
  of the hypocrite."
  
  "Dorian," cried Hallward, "that is not the question.  England is bad
  enough I know, and English society is all wrong.  That is the reason
  why I want you to be fine.  You have not been fine.  One has a right to
  judge of a man by the effect he has over his friends.  Yours seem to
  lose all sense of honour, of goodness, of purity.  You have filled them
  with a madness for pleasure.  They have gone down into the depths.  You
  led them there.  Yes:  you led them there, and yet you can smile, as
  you are smiling now.  And there is worse behind.  I know you and Harry
  are inseparable.  Surely for that reason, if for none other, you should
  not have made his sister's name a by-word."
  
  "Take care, Basil.  You go too far."
  
  "I must speak, and you must listen.  You shall listen.  When you met
  Lady Gwendolen, not a breath of scandal had ever touched her.  Is there
  a single decent woman in London now who would drive with her in the
  park?  Why, even her children are not allowed to live with her.  Then
  there are other stories--stories that you have been seen creeping at
  dawn out of dreadful houses and slinking in disguise into the foulest
  dens in London.  Are they true?  Can they be true?  When I first heard
  them, I laughed.  I hear them now, and they make me shudder.  What
  about your country-house and the life that is led there?  Dorian, you
  don't know what is said about you.  I won't tell you that I don't want
  to preach to you.  I remember Harry saying once that every man who
  turned himself into an amateur curate for the moment always began by
  saying that, and then proceeded to break his word.  I do want to preach
  to you.  I want you to lead such a life as will make the world respect
  you.  I want you to have a clean name and a fair record.  I want you to
  get rid of the dreadful people you associate with.  Don't shrug your
  shoulders like that.  Don't be so indifferent.  You have a wonderful
  influence.  Let it be for good, not for evil.  They say that you
  corrupt every one with whom you become intimate, and that it is quite
  sufficient for you to enter a house for shame of some kind to follow
  after.  I don't know whether it is so or not.  How should I know?  But
  it is said of you.  I am told things that it seems impossible to doubt.
  Lord Gloucester was one of my greatest friends at Oxford.  He showed me
  a letter that his wife had written to him when she was dying alone in
  her villa at Mentone.  Your name was implicated in the most terrible
  confession I ever read.  I told him that it was absurd--that I knew you
  thoroughly and that you were incapable of anything of the kind.  Know
  you?  I wonder do I know you?  Before I could answer that, I should
  have to see your soul."
  
  "To see my soul!" muttered Dorian Gray, starting up from the sofa and
  turning almost white from fear.
  
  "Yes," answered Hallward gravely, and with deep-toned sorrow in his
  voice, "to see your soul.  But only God can do that."
  
  A bitter laugh of mockery broke from the lips of the younger man.  "You
  shall see it yourself, to-night!" he cried, seizing a lamp from the
  table.  "Come:  it is your own handiwork.  Why shouldn't you look at
  it?  You can tell the world all about it afterwards, if you choose.
  Nobody would believe you.  If they did believe you, they would like me
  all the better for it.  I know the age better than you do, though you
  will prate about it so tediously.  Come, I tell you.  You have
  chattered enough about corruption.  Now you shall look on it face to
  face."
  
  There was the madness of pride in every word he uttered.  He stamped
  his foot upon the ground in his boyish insolent manner.  He felt a
  terrible joy at the thought that some one else was to share his secret,
  and that the man who had painted the portrait that was the origin of
  all his shame was to be burdened for the rest of his life with the
  hideous memory of what he had done.
  
  "Yes," he continued, coming closer to him and looking steadfastly into
  his stern eyes, "I shall show you my soul.  You shall see the thing
  that you fancy only God can see."
  
  Hallward started back.  "This is blasphemy, Dorian!" he cried.  "You
  must not say things like that.  They are horrible, and they don't mean
  anything."
  
  "You think so?"  He laughed again.
  
  "I know so.  As for what I said to you to-night, I said it for your
  good.  You know I have been always a stanch friend to you."
  
  "Don't touch me.  Finish what you have to say."
  
  A twisted flash of pain shot across the painter's face.  He paused for
  a moment, and a wild feeling of pity came over him.  After all, what
  right had he to pry into the life of Dorian Gray?  If he had done a
  tithe of what was rumoured about him, how much he must have suffered!
  Then he straightened himself up, and walked over to the fire-place, and
  stood there, looking at the burning logs with their frostlike ashes and
  their throbbing cores of flame.
  
  "I am waiting, Basil," said the young man in a hard clear voice.
  
  He turned round.  "What I have to say is this," he cried.  "You must
  give me some answer to these horrible charges that are made against
  you.  If you tell me that they are absolutely untrue from beginning to
  end, I shall believe you.  Deny them, Dorian, deny them!  Can't you see
  what I am going through?  My God! don't tell me that you are bad, and
  corrupt, and shameful."
  
  Dorian Gray smiled.  There was a curl of contempt in his lips.  "Come
  upstairs, Basil," he said quietly.  "I keep a diary of my life from day
  to day, and it never leaves the room in which it is written.  I shall
  show it to you if you come with me."
  
  "I shall come with you, Dorian, if you wish it.  I see I have missed my
  train.  That makes no matter.  I can go to-morrow. But don't ask me to
  read anything to-night. All I want is a plain answer to my question."
  
  "That shall be given to you upstairs.  I could not give it here.  You
  will not have to read long."
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter 12
target: It's the night before Dorian's thirty-eighth birthday, and he's walking home from dinner at Lord Henry's. He runs into Basil, who's walking in the other direction, suitcase in hand. He pretends not to see him, but Basil notices. Dorian feels strangely apprehensive. Basil apparently just came from Dorian's house, where he'd been waiting for hours. Dorian makes an excuse for ignoring Basil and asks where he's off to. Basil's plan it to leave England for half a year and hang out in Paris until he's painted a masterpiece. The pair reaches Dorian's house, and Basil invites himself in, saying that he's got something to say to Dorian. Dorian vaguely tries to get Basil to leave, but Basil isn't to be stopped--he's got everything he needs for his trip, so he's in no rush. The two men settle in Dorian's library, and Basil gets down to business: he wants to talk to Dorian about Dorian. Basil lays it all out there--though Basil himself can't believe that someone as innocent looking and beautiful as Dorian could commit any crimes, Dorian's name has been dragged through the mud, and pretty much everyone else in London either loathes him or fears him. Rumor has it that he's ruined the lives of loads of young women and men in various ways. Dorian revolts, saying that people gossip about how he's ruined so many of his ex-friends, but it's actually their fault--he just brings out tendencies that are already innate in people . Dorian then tries to blame it all on English society... kind of a lame excuse. But Basil's not done--he continues to enumerate the horrible things he's heard about Dorian, who has apparently even ruined the reputation of poor Lady Gwendolen, Henry's sister. We wonder how Lord Henry feels about that. Gravely, Basil says he thought he knew Dorian, but he obviously doesn't, for he can't see into Dorian's soul. For obvious reasons, this comment really gets to Dorian. He laughs bitterly, and announces that Basil will see his soul tonight, since it's his own work. Uh oh--this can't possibly end up well for Basil. Dorian is excited--and insane! He can't wait to show the portrait to Basil, and hopes that the painter will feel bad for what he's done. Basil is understandably frightened. He begs Dorian to simply answer one question--are all these charges against him true? Dorian smiles contemptuously, and lures Basil upstairs, saying that he has a diary in which he records all of his actions . Basil agrees to go with him. Cue ominous organ music...