Under the Microscope
Author James McCreet takes a forensic look at Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece for lessons in excellence
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses,1 and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees2 of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac,3 or the more delicate perfume of the pinkflowering thorn.4
From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags5 on which he was lying, smoking,6 as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes,7 Lord Henry Wotton8 could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms9 of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches10 seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs11; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted12 across the long tussore-silk curtains13 that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect,14 and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters15 of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion.16 The sullen murmur of the bees17 shouldering their way through the long unmown grass,18 or circling with monotonous insistence19 round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine,20 seemed to make the stillness more oppressive.21 The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.22