This is my appropriation of The Picture of Dorian Gray originally by Oscar Wilde, done by me.
Priscilla, read the mighty letters embedded in the ceaderwood ship, bold amongst the various levels of sea life and spray which had attached to the vessel.
Docking after a journey, halfway around the world; with it a cargo of the upper class, restless after the longer than expected journey.
Cargo unloaded from the ship. A collection of three fine white chests. Initials, C.W carved to perfection in the leather strapping. Being moved from trolley to carriage, ready for transport.
He took a firm and steady step, right onto the gang plank. Legs emerging from the cargo ship. A deep gray trouser leg emerging one at a time, oxfords on his feet and a simple cashmere jacket on his back and a fine hat to finish the look. A man of his youth required no more formal attire than what he wore.
The plank launched, squirming in the light summer breeze. The stench of the docks hit him. It was like being hit by a freight train, packed with scents and sights. There was the scent of his perfume, Roses and Tulips galore, the scents of lilac the putrid musty stench of the ship in which he had spent the last few months travelling in. There were people dashing around the docks, smoke outlets gushing and people disembarking and embarking on journeys. The gang plank was intended for one person walking at a time, but as one can expect after months of being couped up like livestock, there was a mad rush for freedom. With assistance and shoving he made it from the boat, narrowly avoiding a fall into the deep murky water.
People walking past, all in a hurry, always busy, always need to be somewhere. It seemed that time stopped in place, as he stood there. Just soaking in the atmosphere. People all dressed in such formal attire, all prim and proper. A man next to him, clasping his satin black top hat as a gust tried to steal what was not its.
The year was 1890, and the destination was that of that of a brave new world full of busting entrepreneurs and the rest who follow; New York, a city recommended for those who are lost in life or for those seeking a better one.
Reaching into his breast pocket, fiddling through his cashmere jacket looking for the letter, given to him before his journey. His gloves catching on a button, removing it clean off his jacket. Again rustling through his pockets, searching, however this time for his pocket watch, in order to clarify the time.
11:52 am, Read the watch.
The docks were full of life. People running around, the scent’s of fish, spices and all that one could imagine. People hauling wooden crates off boat’s full of wonder’s and people replacing the wooden crates on other ships, crates which much like young Charles had travelled around the world, moving from city to city. People calling, “Sir, buy my goods” as Charles continued to be embodied in the amazement of the city.
Again Charles gazed upon the letter,
“Charles I will meet you when your boat docks,
I may run late, so pop into the pub down near the docks
Regards your Uncle”
“Alas, my Uncle really does live up to his reputation of having no merit of time”, Charles huffed.
Young street boys ran up to Charles; there scent would have been smelt from miles away, burning the nostrils, covered in filth and grime, almost looking like mud people if it wasn’t for their movement. “Come on Sir, can you give us some money”, however just as Charles went to open his mouth to retort, the street children were off, their putrid stench with them a handful of coins from the cashmere pocket.
Charles walked through the mud stricken docks, avoiding major puddles and hunting for this supposed bar. A strong storm had hit the docks the eve before; leaving an assortment of chaos behind, only for the next shift at the docks to sort things out.
Eventually finding the pub, “Ye Old Sea Dog” the sign read, however the sea spray had hidden half the sign along with a crusted layer of filth.
Charles pushed the splintered wooden door open, revealing a musty tavern filled with those to wash away sorrows and those to forget what needed to be forgotten. The beams of light surrounding Charles as he entered the tavern made him look almost God like, with half the tavern stricken with a gaze.
Charles took a wooden stool, screeching on the floorboards as he pulled it from the bar. Still the glare from the bar engulfing him. Charles was not much of a drinker, so nothing was ordered however the bar keep still asked.
“Son, whatcha want, Need somefing to carm ye nerves eh lad?” a thick accent engulfed his words.
Hours must have past while Charles sat and waited; waiting for his uncle.
Just as Charles had mustered the will to order a drink, after much deliberation of the various bottles which lined the bar choosing a Gin which had just been shipped into the docks the day earlier; a man sat right down on the stool next to Charles, stool screeching.
The man was well dressed like Charles, unlike most of who occupied the tavern. A primp suit, topped off with a fine satin top hat.
“Sir, if I may trouble you, would it be possible to... Get a painting or photograph of you, your splendour, almost god like, your appearance. How could one resist you?
I am an artist/photographer, if I could Photograph/paint you, it would be my best piece yet. Oh sir, please may you consider my offer.” Nervously spoke Cyril.
After some deliberation Charles thought to himself that he wasn’t going to meet people in any odder fashion than he was to meet Cyril. Plus for a man dress with such class, who can argue. Agreeing Charles nodded and spoke for sometime before being offered a ride to his homestead as Uncle was more than 5 hours late.
The walk to the carriage was that of a merry nature as both men were in a mellow state after a few drinks.
The bustling state of the dock’s had died down and had become like a desolate zone, no one was to be found. But this was what to be expected as it was nearing midnight. Moon in full glory beaming on the two gentlemen.
Horses trotting on the cobble stone, clopping of the hooves with each step the horses made a bumpy ride for the passengers in the carriage.
Minimal speech was made between the two men as they departed from one another however the date for the next meet was to be noon the next day.
Charles was there, exactly on time, just as Cyril has requested.
The city bells rung, ringing as far as one could imagine. With that the door to Cyril’s homestead was opened.
Ascending the stone stairs, leaving the city behind. The noises of city soon to disappear, the smog to leave Charles and with that the big wooden door was opened.
The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the garden there came though the open door the heavy scent of lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowing thorn.
From the corner of the divan of Persian saddlebags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Colonel Henry Hallward could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremolos braches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like 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.
To Charles disclosure there was another man in the lilac scented studio. Puffs of smoke travelling with the summer wind however he laid there in on the Persian saddle bags, no intent for movement.
Charles paced to the gentlemen about to ask who he was, when the man cried for Cyril.
“Cyril, there appears to be a young gentlemen in the studio”
This was all done with the gentleman’s back to Charles, astonishing the boy.
As Charles was invited to enter the room he saw Basil. He was seated at the piano with his back to them, turning over the pages of a volume of Schumann’s “Forest Scenes”.
“You must lend me these, Henry” he cried. “I want to learn them. They are perfectly charming”
“That entirely depends on how young Mr. Wotton sit’s today”
“Oh excuse me, for I have been ever so rude. Charles this is Colonel Henry Hallward, Charles an Old friend from Oxford. I have been telling him what potential you have young boy, such beauty and grace not found in gentlemen of your age.”
“You have not spoiled my pleasure in meeting you, Mr Wotton, “said Henry, stepping forward extending his hand.
The gentlemen conversed for hours as Cyril painted Charles’s portrait, as he felt it best captured his essence.
After a multitude of sitting’s the final piece was soon to be finished. However Cyril had been paying less and less attention to the conversing Charles and Henry. Henry, always in his manor, always looking to speak along with Charles, however Cyril would never allow something like that.
There was the chance later on in the painting where Henry did speak to Charles, as if it was the two of them along while Cyril deep in concentration.
Charles Wotton stepped up on the dais, with the air of a young Greek martyr, and made a little moue of discontent to Colonel Henry Hallward, to whom he had rather taken a fancy. He was so unlike Cyril. They made a delightful contrast. And he had such a beautiful voice. After a few moments he said to him, “Have you really a very bad influence, Colonel Henry? As bad as Cyril says?
“There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr Wotton. All influence is immoral-immoral from the scientific point of view.”
"Why?"
"Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things
as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly--that is what
each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God,
which is the secret of religion--these are the two things that govern us. And yet--"
"Just turn your head a little more to the right, Charles, like a good boy," said the painter, deep in his work and conscious only that a look had come into the lad's face that he had never seen there before.
"And yet," continued Colonel Henry, in his low, musical voice, and with that graceful wave of the hand that was always so characteristic of him, and that he had even in his Eton days,
"I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream--I believe that the world
would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of medievalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal-- to something finer, richer than the Hellenic ideal, it may be. But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it and your soul grow sick with longing for the things
it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. You, Mr. Wotton, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have fined you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame--"
"Stop!" faltered Charles Wotton, "stop! You bewilder me.
I don't know what to say. There is some answer to you, but I
cannot find it. Don't speak. Let me think. Or, rather, let me try not to think”
Twenty minutes passed, he stood there, motionless, with parted lips, and eyes strangely bright. Deep in thought, thinking over what Henry had just mentioned.
With his subtle smile, Colonel Henry watched him. He knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing. He felt intensely interested. He was amazed at the sudden impression that of his words had produced, and, remembering, a tale which was read in a previous life, a book which had revealed to him much that he had not known before, he wondered whether Charles Wotton was passing through a similar experience. He had merely taken a shot into the air. Had he hit the bullseye? How fascinating young Charles was!
“Charles, may I enquire you to a question?” Asked Henry
Charles nodded wilfully.
“"Let us go and sit in the shade," said Colonel Henry.
"Parker the butler, has brought out the drinks, and if you stay any longer in this glare, you will be quite spoiled, and Basil will never paint you again. You really must not allow yourself to become sunburnt. It would be unbecoming."
"What can it matter?" cried Charles Wotton, laughing, as he sat down on the seat at the end of the garden.
"It should matter everything to you, Mr. Wotton."
"Why?"
"Because you have the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one thing worth having."
"I don't feel that, Colonel Henry."
"No, you don't feel it now. Some day, when you are old and wrinkled and ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you will feel it terribly. Now, wherever you go, you charm the world. Will it always be so? . . . You have a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr. Wotton. Don't frown. You have. And beauty is a form of genius-- is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it. You smile? Ah! When you have lost it you won't smile.
. . . People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. That may be so, but at least it is not so superficial as thought is. To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
. . . Yes, Mr. Wotton, the gods have been good to you. But what the gods give they quickly take away. You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats. Every month as it wanes brings you nearer to something dreadful. Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed.
You will suffer horribly.... Ah! realize your youth while you have it. Don't squander the gold of your days,
listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for
new sensations. Be afraid of nothing. . . . A new Hedonism-- that is what our century wants. You might be its visible symbol. With your personality there is nothing you could not do. The world belongs to you for a season. . . . The moment I met you I saw that you were quite unconscious of what you really are,
of what you really might be. There was so much in you that charmed me that I felt I must tell you something about yourself. I thought how tragic it would be if you were wasted. For there is such a little time that your youth will last--such a little time. The common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars.
But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to.
Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!"
After about a quarter of an hour Cyril stopped painting, looked for a long time at Charles Wotton, and then for a long time at the picture, biting the end of one of his huge brushes, and frowning. “It is quite finished,” he cried at last, and stooping down he wrote his name in long vermilion letters on the left-hand corner of the canvas.
Colonel Henry came over and examined the picture. IT was certainly a wonderful work of art, and a wonderful likeness as well.
“My dear fellow, I congratulate you most warmly,” He said. “It is the finest portrait of modern times. Mr Wotton, come over and look at yourself.’
The lad stared, as if awakened from some dream. “Is it really finished?” he murmured, stepping down from the platform.
“Quite finished,’ said the painter. “And you have sat splendidly today.
Out of gratitude Charles couldn’t muster the words to respond. However when Cyril handed him the painting explaining that a painting of such skill belonged to none other than the muse.
“Charles, you would wilfully trade your soul to the devil, to say young and full of beauty, would you not?” Inquired the Colonel
“From how you have explained how youth and beauty is all one needs to live for than yes. I would”
Charles accepted the gift and made haste to leave the studio as darkness was approaching.
After the farewell’s were made Charles made forth for the exit. This was when he slipped, tripped up on his loose laces and fell to the ground. A monstrous fall, to be met with the door handle. Painting under one arm, the other unable to support the weight of the crash. Falling, falling a sudden impact with the door handle, slicing the young lad’s face from brow to lips. A deep gash that would leave a permanent scar.
Both Henry and Cyril ran to aid young Charles after his monstrous fall. To their demise they had thought Charles had cut his face. Clenching was the appearance of his face. However when Charles was able to gain control of his faculties, standing in full posture once again; there was no damage.
There was no damage to his seamless face. Both Cyril and Henry stood and shook their heads in disbelief.
Only when Charles arrived home and hung his portrait up did he see the large gash shown in the picture. The gash which would had scarred him for life.
