17. Oscar Wilde's Downfall: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Summary

The Book Club – Episode 17

Oscar Wilde’s Downfall: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Hosts: Dominic Sandbrook & Tabitha (Tabby) Syrett
Date: June 8, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this captivating episode, Dominic and Tabby delve into Oscar Wilde’s singular novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, exploring its decadent, gothic atmosphere; the personal and socio-political context behind its creation; and the devastating effect the novel would have on Wilde’s own fate. The discussion winds through Wilde’s biography, the legacy of the novel, its central themes of beauty, morality, and duplicity, and how Dorian’s story still resonates in today’s image-obsessed society.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Plot and Core Themes

• High-Level Summary (07:31 – 10:41)

  • Dorian Gray is a young, beautiful aristocrat painted by the infatuated artist Basil Hallward. The cynical Lord Henry Wotton exposes Dorian to the gospel of youth and pleasure, prompting Dorian to wish for eternal youth, with the portrait aging instead.
  • As Dorian pursues pleasure and vice, the painting grows hideous, reflecting the corruption of his soul while Dorian remains outwardly untouched.
  • The story climaxes as Basil learns the truth, Dorian’s crimes mount, and a violent resolution arrives.

• Dominic: “He gives his life over to hedonism and the pursuit of pleasure…rumors start to spread…the book sort of hurtles towards its exciting climax…” (09:13)

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2. Oscar Wilde: Biography and Influence

• Wilde’s Background (10:41 – 14:33)

  • Born in Dublin, Wilde’s parents were intellectual and literary figures; he was educated at Trinity College and then Oxford, absorbing the classics and the aesthetic movement.
  • Wilde married Constance Lloyd; they had two sons, but Wilde’s secret homosexual life, catalyzed by Robbie Ross, became a central part of his identity and writing.
  • Wilde called his nightlife “feasting with panthers,” reflecting the double-life theme present in Dorian Gray.

• Tabby: “He called this...‘feasting with panthers’. And then the other side of his personality...the Victorian family man. And you can see this massively in Dorian Gray...” (11:57 – 14:09)

• Wilde’s relationships—especially with Lord Alfred Douglas (“Bosie”)—and increasing public recklessness escalated tensions and public scrutiny, leading to his eventual downfall.

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3. Historical and Cultural Context

• Victorian Morality & Legal Backdrop (15:31 – 18:56)

  • The late Victorian period was rife with anxiety over social decline, gender roles, degeneracy, and sexuality.
  • The Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885-86 criminalized “gross indecency” between men, fueling moral panic and later underpinning Wilde’s prosecution.

• Dominic: “There’s a sort of atmosphere of moral panic...about homosexuality...the law has effectively been beefed up so you can catch more people.” (15:31 – 18:56)

• The Cleveland Street Scandal linked to a telegraph boy brothel implicated aristocrats and provided fodder for book reviewers to condemn Dorian Gray as “perverted” literature.

• Tabby: “Once Dorian Gray was published, people stopped talking to them...because it’s got quite overt homoerotic undertones.” (15:25)

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4. Origins and Inspirations

• Literary Influences (22:35 – 24:01)

  • Possible inspirations for Dorian: John Gray (Wilde’s pretty, poet friend), Disraeli’s Vivian Gray, and the famous anecdote of Wilde joking about a portrait staying young while he aged.

• Tabby: “In December 1887, I gave a sitting to a Canadian artist...when the sitting was over and I had looked at the portrait, I said in jest, what a tragic thing it is. This portrait will never grow older, and I shall.” (23:30 – 24:01)

• The story was commissioned at a dinner party attended by Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle, resulting in Dorian Gray and the Sherlock Holmes novel The Sign of Four.

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5. Publication History & Reception

• Scandal and Revision (26:58 – 29:26)

  • First published in 1890 magazine form, and heavily edited to remove explicit homoeroticism. Still, it was branded as “morbid,” “poisonous,” and “spiritual putrefaction” by critics.
  • The 1891 expanded edition included a defensive preface espousing “art for art’s sake” and toned down, but did not erase, homosexual subtext.

• Dominic: “A poisonous tale spawned by the leprous literature of French decadence, heavy with the odors of moral and spiritual putrefaction.” (27:32 The Daily Chronicle review)

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6. Decadence, Aestheticism, and Gothic

• Literary Movements (29:42 – 32:03)
  • Dorian Gray stands at the intersection of French Decadence, Aestheticism, and Gothic. Its preface famously asserts, “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” (33:38)
  • The moral ambiguity and heady, hedonistic sense of art permeate the novel.
  • The French novel À rebours (Against Nature) is referenced as Dorian’s “yellow book,” representing corrupting influence.

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7. The Novel’s Structure and Character Analysis

• In-depth Characterization (37:17 – 41:07)
  • Basil Hallward: The pure, infatuated artist (less explicitly romantic/sexual in later editions).
    • Dominic: “He's the only decent character in the book. Agree. Completely.” (38:35)
  • Lord Henry Wotton: Dorian’s witty corrupter, who is a hypocrite, urging Dorian to experience depravity while staying relatively uninvolved himself.
    • Tabby: “I think after a while…when I was trying to get a straight answer out of him, it would get a bit annoying...But actually, that reminded me of Oscar Wilde during his trial. He had these extraordinarily witty answers to everything.” (41:26)
  • Dorian Gray: Beautiful, enigmatic, deeply vain and ultimately monstrous. His exterior stays youthful, while the portrait corrupts and crumbles.

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8. Faustian Bargain & The Soul

• Corruption and Morality (49:02 – 52:17)
  • The novel’s supernatural core references Faust (bargaining one’s soul) but with a twist: Dorian’s wish is more an aside than a grand pact.
    • Dominic: “For that, I would give everything. Yes. There is nothing in the whole world that I would not give. I would give my soul for that. That’s the deal with the devil, as it were.” (51:18)
  • Faust’s thirst for knowledge is replaced by Dorian’s obsession with beauty and youth.

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9. Hedonism, Decadence, and the Modern Parallel

• Parallels to Today (57:59 – 60:22)
  • The pursuit of sensation and self-image echoes today’s culture of Instagram and influencers.
    • Tabby: “The concept of self-worth and putting yourself first has never been more revered...the idea of a very clear distinction between your public profile and your private profile...” (59:13)
  • Contemporary figures obsessed with beauty, like Braden Peters, are compared to Dorian.

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10. Doubling, Duality, & Psychoanalysis

• The Double Life (65:05 – 66:56)
  • Tabby and Dominic discuss the motif of doubling (Dorian/portrait, Jekyll/Hyde) and the Victorian fascination with the external face as a mirror to the soul, anticipating Freud and modern psychology.
  • Dominic: “This is the side of the book…Do you know what? I probably am going to up my mark as a result of this conversation.” (61:11)
  • Wilde, living as both a family man and a clandestine pleasure-seeker, embodies the duality.

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11. Sexuality and Subtext

• Camp & Queerness (68:47 – 70:13)
  • The homoerotic undertones are unmistakable, even with later censorship.
    • Tabby: “I think it’s so obvious. I think it’s wonderfully camp, the whole book...the way that Basil and Dorian speak to each other in this very affectionate, sort of very tender way.” (68:47)

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12. Wilde’s Downfall & The Trial

• Aftermath (73:54 – 77:33)

  • Wilde’s relationship with Bosie Douglas and the incriminating nature of Dorian Gray contributed to his ruin in the libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry.
    • Dominic: “Both in Wilde himself and in Bosie, Wilde is sentenced to two years of hard labor, the maximum penalty.” (76:24)
  • The government, pressured by scandal, prosecuted Wilde publicly. Wilde’s wit (“witticisms to the end”) won him no favors with the jury.

• Tabby: “He is simultaneously a victim. He's a victim and a martyr on one hand, but on the other hand, you know, he's a morally ambiguous figure...” (77:40)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Dominic:

  • “I suppose to say, there’s a hint of his sexuality interesting in his name because Dorian is a very unusual name in the 19th century...It’s a reference to the Greeks and therefore a coded reference to the love between, you know, man and man.” (45:35)
  • “He gives his life over to hedonism and the pursuit of pleasure. He collects beautiful things. He ruins people’s lives. He takes up all these young men, he smokes opium...rumors start to spread.” (09:13)

• Tabby:

  • “His is the purest form of love...Basil really believes that Dorian is a good man, too. Like, he's a pure angel.” (40:01)
  • “He literally breaks the bones in his face in order to create a more beautiful, you know, perfect image. And he does stuff like takes meth because it makes him thinner. Like it's beauty above anything.” (60:46)
  • “Wilde called this feasting with panthers.” (11:57)

• On the book’s reception:

  • “A poisonous tale spawned by the leprous literature of the French decadence, heavy with the odors of moral and spiritual putrefaction.” (The Daily Chronicle review read by Dominic, 27:32)

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Timestamps for Critical Segments

• Plot and Themes Introduction: 07:31 – 10:41
• Oscar Wilde’s Life: 10:41 – 18:56
• Historical/Sexual Context: 15:31 – 18:56
• Origins of the Novel: 22:35 – 24:11
• Publication Scandal: 26:58 – 29:26
• Art for Art’s Sake Debate: 33:38 – 34:36
• Character Analysis: 38:27 – 41:20
• Faust & Bargain with Devil: 51:18 – 53:43
• Modern Parallels (Instagram, etc.): 59:13 – 60:22
• Dualism & Psychoanalysis: 65:05 – 66:56
• Wilde’s Downfall: 73:54 – 77:33

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Episode Ratings & Final Thoughts

• Dominic’s Rating: 5/10 – Acknowledges the book’s brilliance and historical fascination but finds the prose overly lush and tiresome in places.
  • “I didn't enjoy it. I'm a bit sick of that kind of very lush, heady prose. Dare I say I felt like I've slightly grown out of it.” (79:26)
• Tabby’s Rating: 7.5/10 – Enjoys the opulent language, humor, and psychological intrigue, but wished for more likable characters.
  • “I like that opulence. I like that kind of flamboyant prose and yet it's also quite straightforward…But I didn't like any of the characters very much.” (80:08)

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Looking Ahead

Next week: PG Wodehouse’s The Code of the Woosters (with a promise of in-character readings); followed by Little Women, Game of Thrones, Wind in the Willows, and more.

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Summary by section for listeners:

• Riveting context on Wilde’s personal life and Victorian England’s repressive atmosphere
• Insightful analysis of the novel’s decadent, gothic, and philosophical themes
• Lively debate on aestheticism, morality, duality, and cultural aftershocks—including Instagram culture parallels
• Clear links between Dorian’s fate and Wilde’s own tragic fall

For anyone who hasn’t read the book or wants to understand its enduring relevance—to art, morality, queerness, and self-obsession—this episode unveils all the secrets behind that famous, decaying portrait.

Transcript

[Tabby]

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[Dominic]

It went perfectly.

[Tabby]

Real offer down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong. So what's the problem?

[Dominic]

That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes as smoothly. I'm waiting for the catch.

[Tabby]

Maybe there's no catch.

[Dominic]

That's exactly what a catch would want me to think.

[Tabby]

Wow.

[Dominic]

You need to relax. I need to knock on wood.

[Tabby]

Do we have.

[Dominic]

What is this? Table wood?

[Tabby]

I think it's laminate.

[Dominic]

Okay. Yeah, that's good.

[Tabby]

That's close enough. Car selling without a catch Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up. Fees may apply.

[Dominic]

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[Tabby]

He.

[Dominic]

His mouth twitched and his parched tongue seemed unable to articulate.

[Tabby]

What does this mean?

[Dominic]

Cried Hallward at last. His own voice sounded shrill and curious in his ears.

[Tabby]

Years ago, when I was a boy, you met me, flattered me, and taught me to be vain of my good looks. One day you introduced me to a friend of yours who explained to me the wonder of youth. And you finished a portrait of me that revealed to me the wonder of beauty. In a mad moment that even now I don't know whether I regret or not, I made a wish. Perhaps you would call it a prayer.

[Dominic]

Gosh. Hello, everybody. So those were the dulcet tones of Dorian Gray. Welcome to the book club. Because we are talking, of course, about Oscar Wilde's one and only novel, the Picture of Dorian Gray. And this is the moment in the book that many of you will recognize or have heard of. It's the moment when Dorian reveals the truth about his terrible secret. So Dorian is preserving his beauty and his youth, but at the same time, his once perfect portrait, painted by his friend Basil, Basil Hallward, is decaying and showing signs of the kind of moral ugliness that's tainted Dorian's character. So why has this happened, and what are the implications? We'll talk about this later in the show. Just tabby, a little bit of context for everybody. Dorian Gray was published in Lippincott's Monthly magazine in 1890. There was then a backlash, wasn't there, which we'll talk about.

[Tabby]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

And a revised and expanded edition came out a year later. It's seen as one of the great masterpieces of Victorian decadent and gothic literature. It's lots of stuff about the darkness of the human soul, lots of stuff about vanity, about beauty and pleasure and hedonism, but it's also seen as a critique of Victorian hypocrisy and Victorian attitudes to morality and beauty and so on. And here's the twist. This book was used against Oscar Wilde when he was tried for gross indecency five years later. This was seen as proof of his homosexuality, and it played a key part in his fall and his eventual imprisonment, which basically destroyed his reputation and indeed his life. So, again, onto all this, because there's the story behind the book in this case. I mean, that's so often is just as good, I think, as the book itself. But first of all, you're a big fan of this book, aren't you? The picture of Dorian Gray?

[Tabby]

I am. I am, actually. I don't think I was always a massive fan. I loved Oscar Wilde's plays because I thought they were so funny, but Dorian Gray didn't. Didn't sort of massively enchant me or anything. This time, though, rereading it, I did find it sort of pretty hypnotic almost. I love the language and the writing. I didn't massively care for any of the characters, though. But we will. We'll talk more about that in due course. But I know you, Dominic, were not a fan of this book at all, to the horror of our producer, Nicole, who loves this book.

[Dominic]

Well, the truth is, I'd never read it before we did this podcast, so that's a shocking revelation.

[Tabby]

Philistine.

[Dominic]

Complete philistine. So on the rest is history, which we both work on. Tabby, we did a series about Oscar Wilde and the trials of Oscar Wilde and his fall from grace. And so I've really interested in Wilde and the. The sort of period of the book, the 1890s. But I'd actually never read the novel, to my great shame. So I was really interested to read it. Yeah, I have. I have mixed views about it, and maybe I'll reveal in the second half exactly what I think about the book.

[Tabby]

Maybe our discussion will win you over to the court.

[Dominic]

Maybe. Well, that has happened before. You know, I have actually raised my score sometimes because I'm very suggestible, actually. Yeah, I don't like. I don't like to. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So shall we give people a sense of the story before we talk about the context. So you've got this character who Tabby was playing so brilliantly there, this handsome, rich, young aristocrat, Dorian, becomes the subject of a painting by his friend Basil Hallwood. And Basil is completely infatuated with Dorian. He thinks Dorian is absolutely wonderful.

[Tabby]

So beautiful, pure, innocent.

[Dominic]

And innocent, yes. He loves all the purity and innocence of Dorian. And right at the beginning of the book, Basil's mate, who is this very witty, cynical, acerbic character called Lord Henry, who speaks entirely in witticisms and kind of. And. And epigrams and stuff.

[Tabby]

He's a charming rake.

[Dominic]

Yeah. Lord Henry sees Doriam, also kind of falls for him, is infatuated with him, and basically says, oh, I'm going to take him under my wing and I'm, you know, I'm going to give him the love of pleasure and beauty that I have. Anyway, in the course of this, Dorian, partly because he's already, you could say, become tainted by Lord Henry's kind of attentions, he sees his painting and he says, gosh, I wish I could stay young forever and the painting could age instead of me. Later on, he meets this beautiful actress and he falls in love with her, but then he treats her very badly and he casts her aside. We can talk about this a little bit more later. And then he goes home after he's cast her aside, and he finds that his painting has changed because now the lips have this kind of cruel twist. And basically he realizes that his wish has come true, that as he ages, the painting will grow old and ugly. And as he behaves in a morally depraved way, the painting will show the. The sort of physical taint of his corruption, but he himself will stay young and beautiful forever. And he says, oh, well, in that case, I'll just, you know, do what I like. And he gives his life over to hedonism and the pursuit of pleasure. And he collects beautiful things. He ruins people's lives. He takes up all these young men, he smokes opium, he does all these kinds of things. You know, rumors start to spread. The sort of respectable world of Victorian high society begins to turn its back on him. Basil, his. His mate, who painted the portrait but doesn't realize what's happening, starts to sort of worry about him. And the book sort of hurtles towards its exciting climax as Basil will end up confronting Dorian and seeing what's become of the painting. This is the scene that we began with, and the question is, you know, is Dorian doomed or will he get back the soul that he has kind of Sold in order to. To stay young and beautiful forever. So we'll. We'll get into all this story. And also there's a bloke hunting him for revenge, which, you know, is a little subplot which we'll get into. But we'll talk about the book itself in more detail later. Let's set the scene and talk, as we often do, about the author. So, Oscar Wilde. Tabby, tell us about Oscar Wilde.

[Tabby]

I mean, Oscar Wilde, he's such a colorful character, isn't he? I mean, if everyone has a version of Oscar Wilde that they think they know. So it's really interesting to. To dig into his life a bit more. So he's born Oscar Fingal o' Flaherty Willis Wills Wilde. And he was born in Dublin on 16th October, 1854 to his father, Sir William Wilde, who was a leading ear and eye surgeon and a very respected writer. And he would kind of write about folklore and mythology and stuff like that. And then his mother, who was called Lady Jane Francesca Wilde, and he was devoted to her throughout his life and she to him. And she was a successful poet and journalist, and she would write patriotic Irish verse under the pseudonym Speranza, which I think is kind of interesting. So he's from, you know, a fairly kind of artistic background.

[Dominic]

Yes.

[Tabby]

He then went on to attend Trinity in Dublin, and then he went to Oxford where he studied classics. And I think that Dorian Gray is full of the influence of the classics, I think, particularly in terms of its kind of idealized version of kind of male relationships and the beauty of that. But we'll get this Platonic ideal.

[Dominic]

Yeah. So common in late Victorian society.

[Tabby]

Totally. Yeah. They're revering the classics again.

[Dominic]

Yeah.

[Tabby]

But then it's while he's at Oxford that he starts getting into this kind of this aesthetic movement that was rising at the time. But even so, he's still considered a very respectable figure at this time. He was actually notoriously kind of proper and quite prim at this point. There was not a whiff of scandal shadowing him. And then after he graduated, he moved to Chelsea, where he became a writer and wrote poetry. And he'd write reviews and he'd do lectures kind of across the world in the US and in Paris. And then. And this might surprise people who kind of know wild as principally kind of an icon, a gay icon. He married in 1884 a woman called Constance Lloyd, and she was an Irish writer. I mean, I don't think theirs was. Would turn out to be a particularly happy marriage, but More on that later. And they had two sons, Cyril and Vivian. And then we kind of come to the turning point in his life. This is when scandal, the things for which he's most notorious, begin. So in 1886, he meets a 17 year old boy called Robbie Ross. And Robbie Ross is, unusually for the time, he's kind of overtly gay. And he essentially seduces Wilde and introduces him to this whole other side of his nature that I suppose he'd sort of kept locked up all this time. And Wilde actually, he really enjoys it. He enjoys it physically, he enjoys it emotionally, but he also enjoys kind of the danger associated with living two distinct lives. You know, this nightlife of indulging his homosexuality and living more hedonistically. And he called this, that he actually was name, he called this feasting with panthers. And then the other side of his personality, which is kind of the Victorian family man with his sons and his wife. Yeah, and you can see this massively in Dorian Gray as we'll discuss, you know, this idea of a mercurial nature existing as a walking paradox, having a kind of complex identity. And he also believes that this side of him, this relationship with men, and you know, in this instance a man younger than himself, it kind of elevates him, it allows him to step into this classical world, you know, of, as I said earlier, this kind of Platonic ideal of masculine relationships.

[Dominic]

Yeah, and his trial in the mid-1890s, he gave a very, very celebrated speech. Celebrated now, but seen as infamous at the time, in which he basically says, you know, there's a great nobility and a, and a grace and there's a sophistication and a nuance and a beauty about relationships between men. An older man and a younger man. It's the relationship that you see in the Greeks and the Iliad and all of these kind of.

[Tabby]

Yeah, it's pederasty. With which in ancient Greece, I mean, this was institutionalized, it was a part of society, is how a young man became a proper man, really, with the help of an older man. But he also kind of saw it in Shakespeare. He thought that, you know, Shakespeare's sonnets had, was sort of between men more than between Shakespeare and women. And so it's, you know, a noble tradition, essentially, as you say. But even so, he's still publishing, he's still writing. So in 1888 he published the Happy Prince, which I believe was the title of the Rupert Everett movie about him, which came up a couple of years ago. And he writes fairy tales and stuff like that for his two sons. And then he obviously publishes the Picture of Dorian Gray in 1891. And this is received with great outrage. Like his wife Constance said that once Dorian Gray was published, people stopped talking to them and. Because it's kind of quite overt homoerotic undertones.

[Dominic]

But also the time.

[Tabby]

Yeah, exactly. And for the time in particular, this is very controversial.

[Dominic]

Well, I suppose it's because it's. We're in late Victorian England, so 1890, 1891. We talked about this a little bit in the Woman in White, didn't we? About the sort of.

[Tabby]

Exactly.

[Dominic]

Idea of respectability, the idealization of the family, the idea of social hierarchy, all of these kinds of things. This huge anxiety. I think it's a very anxious time. The late 1880s and 1890s, essentially the period of Jack the Ripper. It's the period that, you know, Dracula gets written a few years later. There's a lot of anxiety about national decline and degeneracy. Ideas about eugenics are coming in. A lot of anxiety about crime, about gender relations. So this is the age of the. What's called the new woman, the kind of proto feminism. So challenging the idea that there are rigid boundaries between male roles and female roles and so on. So there's all of this sort of swirling around. We don't need to massively go into it, but, you know, there's a. It's a febrile kind of intellectual and cultural environment. And specifically, when it comes to sexuality, there's been a change in the law. So to cut a very long and complicated story short, in 1885, 1886, there was a sort of reform of the laws that was designed to protect women and girls because there'd been a great upsurge of anxiety about what was called the white slave trade. So basically prostitution and young girls being sold into prostitution. But when they passed the Criminal Law Amendment act, there was an amendment that also criminalized gross indecency between two men. So previously, insofar as homosexuality was punishable by law, it was basically sodomy that was punished. But now the category is much more vague and undefined, and it's gross indecency. And so there's a sort of atmosphere of moral panic, I suppose, about homosexuality. You know, that the law has effectively been beefed up so you can catch more people. And just a few years after this law is passed, there is a huge scandal. And it's the perfect scandal already because it's a high society one, which means the newspapers love it, called the Cleveland Street Scandal. So basically what happened was messenger boys at a telegraph office were found. They were banned usually from having money. And they were found with. One boy in particular was found with a lot of cash, basically a lot of money. And people were worried that he was stealing. He said, no, I'm not stealing, I basically earned it. And it turned out that he'd earned it in this brothel as a rent boy. And it turned out that other messenger boys had been making money as well. The brothel was raided. It was a big story. And it turned out that it was being patronized by some very rich and very well connected people, most infamously the Erie to the Prince of Wales, who was called Lord Arthur Somerset, who ended up fleeing to the continent to avoid prosecution. So that's the sort of context. There's a lot about that in the newspapers. And later on there's one of the early reviews of the Picture of Dorian Gray mentioned, effectively mentions this scandal and says, this is a book written for the kind of people who would go to this brothel or would work in it. And Wilde himself, although he's not swept up in this scandal by the time this happens and by the time he writes Dorian Gray, he is becoming increasingly reckless and open, isn't he, in his own sexual life?

[Tabby]

Yeah, I mean, he is, he's doing stuff like he's letting waiters and or butlers see him in hotels when he's with young men. He is kissing people openly on the mouth. And he's also, you know, he's having more and more of these affairs really. So there's Edward Shelley who's 18 and they're having an affair in 1892 for instance. But then in 1891 he meets kind of the love of his life, essentially, although it'll become a very, very toxic relationship. And this is Lord Alfred Douglas and he is the Marquess of Queensberry's son. And there'll be more to be said about him in due course. And he's nicknamed Bosie and he's only 20. And Jude Law plays him extremely well in the movie Wilde in which Stephen Fry plays Oscar Wilde and he's actually a mega fan of Dorian Gray. So he seeks out a meeting with Wilde because, you know, he wants to talk to him about Dorian Gray and how much he admires his work. And I actually thought when I was reading about him that in the descriptions of him, he's incredibly beautiful, he's kind of quite dangerous, he's quite eccentric.

[Dominic]

Yeah, Vain. Very vain.

[Tabby]

He's very vain. I don't know, it reminded me of Dorian Gray, which is interesting.

[Dominic]

Definitely, definitely. Like if you were casting a film of Dorian Gray, a young Jude Law would be perfect, ideal.

[Tabby]

But then, I mean, he wasn't the inspiration for Dorian Gray because the book was already written. But he's also unlike Wilde, or I suppose, increasingly much more so than Wilde. Rather, he's very experienced in terms of his kind of gay relationships. He's been having relationships with boys since school. So he and Wilde then together start on a particularly controversial stage of Wilde's life. And this is when they start sleeping with rent boys from the 1890s. So both he and Wilde together, their public recklessness is mounting and the question is whether or not this is all quite exploitative from Wilde. You know, he's richer, he's more powerful, these boys are very young and they need money. Anyway, word of this obviously reaches Bosie's father, the Marquess of Queensberry. Old fashioned, powerful, wealthy, and he is furious and he threatens to expose Wilde and cause a massive public scandal. Still, Wilde continues having sex and picking up very young boys, even by the standards of the day. And this is, you know, increasingly, you know, there's a world of scandal surrounding him. But his. But professionally, he's having immense success still at this time, particularly with his plays.

[Dominic]

Yeah. Lady Windermere's fan. A woman of no importance. An ideal husband. Now, which is the one you were in?

[Tabby]

An ideal husband? I played Mrs. Cheveley. You should read the reviews. Brilliant.

[Dominic]

What, what's the character?

[Tabby]

She's like the femme fatale. She's kind of the villain. So me down to a T. Yeah. And I had these amazing costumes. I actually found them online the other day. Classic vanity.

[Dominic]

You found. You googled yourself and found the costumes?

[Tabby]

No, I found my old school website. My life's been one downhill slope since that starring role.

[Dominic]

You should share these with people on social media, Tabby.

[Tabby]

I think, by all means, come looking. I look sensational.

[Dominic]

I mean, this is a book about vanity. I suppose. So it's great that we've got you talking about it.

[Tabby]

I know, terrible.

[Dominic]

Let's get into the novel then.

[Tabby]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

So we'll come back to Wilde and his life and how the novel and his life intersect more in the 1890s. A bit later, Wilde said of Dorian Gray, didn't he, that there was much of me in it. And there are some critics who sort of say, well, the three main characters. So there's the painter Basil, the dispenser of amusing witticisms, Lord Henry and beautiful, slightly sort of dandyish Dorian. That they're all aspects of Wilde's own character, but there are aspects of other people's characters, sort of friends of his and stuff, aren't there?

[Tabby]

Yeah, I think there was some kind of loose real life influences for Dorian himself. So there's a man called John Gray and he was a young poet. He was in Wilde's friendship group. He was famously pretty. He was called Lovely, a lovely boyish youth. And he would. And he and Wilde were friends and apparently they had quite a flirty relationship. And he would actually sign some of his letters to Wylde as Dorian. Then there was. This is definitely, I think, probably a little bit left field, but people say that the book as a whole was inspired by Benjamin Disraeli. So he was an excellent British Prime Minister. His debut novel, Vivian Gray, and because it has the same kind of gothic themes, dandyism, it's very witty. And the tragic heroines of that book and Dorian Gray are very alike. And then there's a story that it was inspired by the fact that Wilde himself sat for a portrait by a Canadian artist called Francis Richards. And he wrote of this experience. In December 1887, I gave a sitting to a Canadian artist who was staying with some friends of hers and mine in South Kensington. When the sitting was over and I had looked at the portrait, I said in jest, what a tragic thing it is. This portrait will never grow older, and I shall. If it was only the other way. The moment I had said this, it occurred to me what a capital plot idea this would make for a story. The result is Dorian Gray. So he said that. Yeah, outright that. That inspired it. I feel like there's quite a lot more going on in terms of the influences than that. But I suppose the. The basic premise.

[Dominic]

That's a nice. That's a nice origin story, I think. And actually there's another nice origin story. It doesn't. Doesn't negate that one. They can both work that, basically. I mean, this is an amazing dinner party. Oh, yeah.

[Tabby]

I love this.

[Dominic]

The editor of Lippincott's Monthly magazine, where it was first published in 1889, J.M. stoddart. He is. He's got three of his favorite people around for dinner and one of them is a politician called T.B. gill, who's everyone's forgotten about, so we don't need to talk about him. One of them is Oscar Wilde and the other is Sir Arthur Conan Daw.

[Tabby]

Where would that. Where would that sit in, like, your dream literary dinner parties? Because I don't think you'd enjoy sitting next to Oscar Wilde because I think you'd be intimidated by his relentless witticisms, but I think you'd absolutely love Sinexus. Arthur Conan Doyle.

[Dominic]

I'd love Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but I don't think I'd be intimidated by Oscar Wilde.

[Tabby]

Have you ever known me tiresome?

[Dominic]

I probably might find him tiresome, but I think there's a seriousness to Wilde sometimes which is forgotten. Wild. Beneath all the sort of flowery epigrams and the sort of witty, you know, I have nothing to declare but my genius or whatever, all that kind of stuff, He's a very smart and can be quite a serious person.

[Tabby]

And he had views and opinions outside of kind of asceticism and art.

[Dominic]

Yes. For example, I think he was pro home rule for Ireland, for example. We could talk about politics, but I

[Tabby]

mean, Dorian Gray itself is a testament to the seriousness of Wilde. I mean, it has a real heart and soul to it.

[Dominic]

Yeah. Would you go to such dinner party, Tabby?

[Tabby]

Oh, I'd love to go to such a dinner party. I mean, I think we can probably throw what's his name, politician guy out there.

[Dominic]

Get rid.

[Tabby]

But the other ones, definitely, that'd be great.

[Dominic]

Okay, so here's the amazing thing about this dinner party. Stoddart, the editor of the magazine, says the reason I'm invited you is I'd like to commission stories from you all. I mean, I can't even. I don't even know what happened to TP Gill's story or whether he ever wrote it, but Conan Doyle and Wild said, great, we'll do you a story. Wild does the picture. Dorian Gray. Conan Doyle is the sign of the four. A great Sherlock Holmes.

[Tabby]

I know. Amazing.

[Dominic]

So the fact that they're both published by this magazine as a result of this dinner, I think is a lovely thing. Anyway.

[Tabby]

Yeah, I agreed.

[Dominic]

So Wilde is already moving towards the themes of this book because he's done another story called the portrait of Mr. W.H. which is. It's something. It's about Shakespeare. The search for a character in Shakespeare's sonnets, isn't it? It's. It's nothing to do with this.

[Tabby]

He loves Shakespeare wild, doesn't he?

[Dominic]

But it's the idea of kind of the, the. The. The particular theme that's I think is. Is the homoerotic theme, which is becoming increasingly explicit in Wilde's work, mirroring the. The increasing recklessness of his own life. Anyway, he does that in 1889. Then in 1890, he finally delivers the story that he'd promised this bloke Stoddart for his magazine. And this is the first version of the Picture of Dorian Gray. And Stoddart is. Gets the story, which is a lot shorter than the novel that we have now. And Stoddart thought, God, this is quite racy. And he took out, I think, about 500 words or so, or maybe more.

[Tabby]

Yeah. Without telling Wilde, actually, before publishing.

[Dominic]

Without telling Wild.

[Tabby]

Also all the homoerotic stuff, all Dorian's female lovers or references to that, because he thought it would shock female readers.

[Dominic]

And even so, the story comes out and there's a great outcry. Like a lot of the reviews say it's morbid, it's unhealthy, it's dangerous. So the Daily Chronicle. It's a poisonous tale spawned by the leprous literature of the French decadence, heavy with the odors of moral and spiritual putrefaction.

[Tabby]

Harsh. You don't want that to be a review of one of your books.

[Dominic]

I mean, I've never had a review like that.

[Tabby]

That's what they said about our first podcast.

[Dominic]

Yeah. Heavy with the odors of spiritual putrefaction. God, we'd have done anything for a review like that, wouldn't we? Tell me.

[Tabby]

Oh, I would have killed for it.

[Dominic]

The review that's very famous. So I mentioned the Cleveland street scandal involving these telegraph boys in the Scots Observer. The reviewer says, this is the kind of book that is written for outlawed noblemen and perverted telegraph boys. In other words, it doesn't say so explicitly, but it's obvious to everybody who reads it. The bloke is saying, it's a gay book written for gay people, and therefore it is bad. And this is the context for what you mentioned before, which is Constance saying, oh, no one talks to us now because of Dorian Gray. And it's, you know, Oscar has blotted his copybook and all this stuff.

[Tabby]

Yeah. So because of this outrage, because of these reactions, in April 1891, Oscar Wilde published a revised and expanded edition. So he toned down the existing chapters even more in the kind of homoeroticism. He divided the final chapter into two chapters and then he wrote six entirely new chapters. So, for instance, the character Sybil that we mentioned when we were going through the plot, he expanded that kind of mini storyline a bit more. He introduces the character of James Vane, Sibyl's brother, in order to kind of hold a mirror up to Dorian's immorality so that it's not so inside it. You're not Kind of reveling in his immorality with him.

[Dominic]

Yeah, you have a critic, as it were.

[Tabby]

You have a critic and to kind of introduce a class element to the book, I. E. It's not a book just about homoeroticism. It's also a book about far more things that are going on anyway. Despite all this, it was. Despite his toning this down, expanding, etc. It was still considered pretty controversial. It's interesting. So few of the great books that we do on this show now considered to be great books, are well received in their own time. I'm consistently kind of struck by that.

[Dominic]

Is it not that they're books that push the boundaries? They're books that run counter to respectability. Often that's what gives them the edge. It gives them the kind of grit and makes them interesting and they are challenging preconceptions. There are always a lot of people who are quite conservative and don't like them.

[Tabby]

And they're often, you know, part of some kind of what we would retrospectively call like some sort of a movement, whether that's modernism or realism, whatever it may be. This too fits into a sort of a certain category, a genre, isn't it? And. Or a literary movement. Anyway, and we mentioned this earlier, these are the decadent, aren't they?

[Dominic]

Yes, exactly. So the Daily Chronicle, when it said it was spawned by the leprous literature of French decadence, or as it puts it, decadon. So basically late 19th century France, it's. It's very introspective, it's very hedonistic, it's very self obsessed. There's a massive fixation on art for art's sake, which we'll come back to. And on a pleasure. There's a sort of atmosphere that's very heady and a little bit perhaps unhealthy and morbid and all of this kind of thing. And actually the. The book that is the. Becomes the sort of the totem of the decadent movement features in Dorian Gray and it's a book by a French writer called Jacques Carl Huismans. And the book is called Arabor, or it's translated in English as against nature. And it was published in 1884. And in Dorian Gray, this is the book that Lord Henry gives to Dorian to corrupt him.

[Tabby]

The yellow book.

[Dominic]

Yellow book, it's. And they refer to it as a poisonous French. No. And to quote, you know, when Dorian is reading it, Wilde says one hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies of some medieval saint or the Morbid Confessions of a Modern Sinner. It was a poisonous book. The heavy odor of incense seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the brain.

[Tabby]

Very Marquis de Sad, that. Somehow, you know, bit market.

[Dominic]

But here's the thing. If people listening to this think, oh, I must seek out this. This dangerous, poisonous. I have a word of warning. It's actually quite boring because it's basically nothing happens. And it's the story of this bloke who just sits in his apartment all day in Paris, smoking, reading lots of old books, thinking about beauty and art and. And it's the sort of. Again, it's the sort of the introspection of it, the obsession with beauty, the obsession with the past and the sort of, you know, the. The sort of shunning of reality and the humdrum world. This is the spirit of the decadent movement. It's a rejection of bourgeois respectability and conformity and realism and all of this stuff.

[Tabby]

I kind of like it. Like, I. I quite like that premise, though, the idea. I mean, that's kind of what. It's an extreme version of what books are there for. You know, saying goodbye to the world and diving into something totally different and grandiose. And.

[Dominic]

Yeah, it's escapism. It's artistic escapism. Yeah. Carried to the ultimate extreme, which is actually a nice link to this other idea, which is the idea of art for art's sake, which features a lot in Dorian Gray, doesn't it?

[Tabby]

It does. It's a massive, massive thing. I mean, I mentioned how Oscar Wilde had made all these changes to the final edition of Dorian Gray that was published in 1891. A big part of this is that he wrote a preface. And the preface is essentially a defense of the aesthetic movement and thereby the book. The idea that it should be art for art's sake, I. E. There is no such thing as morality when it comes to art books. You know, painting, whatever it may be, it ought to speak for itself. So artists and writers ought to create art not for fame or fortune or for good reviews or because they have a moral message, but for the sake of the beauty of their product alone. And the critics shouldn't read books or look at art, you know, and seek to interpret them or analyze them or ironically, given what we're doing on this show, or read meaning into them, you know, they should let the beauty of whatever they are witnessing speak for itself. And thereby Dorian Gray cannot be an immoral book. Because if there is no such thing as morality and immorality in the context of art. It's just a beautiful object, basically.

[Dominic]

Well, that's what the preface says, doesn't it? There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all. And that is. I mean, that might seem to a lot of listeners that, well, that's just common sense. That's what I think. But that was a very novel and shocking idea in the late 19th century. It's an idea that, again, has come largely from France, writers like Theophile Gautier, who are saying, you know, arguing that there's. There's no mean, you know, don't try to imbue art with a kind of moral purpose. And it's actually more moral than that because art is beauty and, you know, you should just appreciate it for what it is. And I think part of this is, you know, obviously that lots of the people that are doing this are quite wealthy and well connected, and they are separating themselves from what they see as the sort of commercial, humdrum, vulgar tastes of the middle classes who think that art should have meaning and purpose. They're saying, oh, it doesn't need to have a purpose. It can just be itself.

[Tabby]

And Oscar Wilde's work, like the plays as well, are full of characters that are kind of mockeries of very earnest people, but also very bourgeois people. Yeah, he's got. Characters have always got strong views on that. But it's not just a decadent book. It's also very obviously a Gothic book. And indeed, it's considered one of the last works of classic Gothic horror fiction. And we spoke about, in the miniseries that we did, the Rest Is History, we spoke about Dracula. This is around the same time and very similar in that they're both kind of dealing with the anxieties of the period. So rising social degeneracy, urban decay, you know, the heart of respectable Victorian society kind of being polluted and corrupted. This idea of some kind of dark external invasion coming in and poisoning everything.

[Dominic]

And worries about masculinity and stuff. Right.

[Tabby]

And massive worries about. You spoke about the New Woman, for instance. That's a big part of that, the kind of fears surrounding homosexuality. And the other interesting thing is, is that a lot of Gothic novels feature this concept of the portrait. So in sort of probably one of the most famous Gothic novels of all time, the Castle of Otranto, the kind of villain in that Alfonso steps down from a portrait. Ditto portraits feature in Edgar Allan Poe's novel the Oval Portrait. And also, likewise, this idea of obsession. And that also plays into this idea of doubling. Doubling's a big thing in Dorian Gray, by virtue of the fact that Dorian is reflected in his portrait. He's kind of his doppelganger, his dark doppelganger.

[Dominic]

Rather like Jonathan Harker and Dracula are doppelgangers of each other.

[Tabby]

Exactly like that. As we'll get onto Jekyll and Hyde a bit more later. Very like that, too. And I think, in a way, this reflects another thing that was kind of prominent in this period, which is the Victorian external sphere of kind of respectability versus the private sphere of wicked desires and forbidden pleasures.

[Dominic]

Yeah.

[Tabby]

So Dorian Gray is full of all this. And London is a massive feature of all of these Gothic novels as well. You know, you have the gas lamps. This is around the time of Jack the Ripper. That's kind of in the air. The prostitutes outside Dorian's house. The degeneracy of these kind of dens that he disappears to at night. The opium. You know, these opium dens. And I don't know, this could be sort of a commentary on the decline of Empire in the way that it actually was in Dracula as well.

[Dominic]

Well, the empire's at its height, but people are so anxious about what that means, what that means for the soul, whether our. You know, and whether our sort of outward respectability is hiding this sort of inward corruption. The idea of corruption. Such an 1890s idea, I always think.

[Tabby]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

Anyway, that's the setting. We're coming towards the break, so let's get stuck into the book itself. And actually just starting at the beginning. I mean, there are a few books where the tone is set more perfectly by the opening lines. So this is how the book begins. The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses.

[Tabby]

I love that.

[Dominic]

And when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden that came through the open door. The heavy scent of the lilac or the more delicate perfume of the pink flowering thorn. You know, that sort of heady, perfumed, scented atmosphere, which is very, very Oscar Wilde. Very 1890s literature.

[Tabby]

I love it. I love that esthetic. It's so heady.

[Dominic]

So in this atmosphere, in this camp atmosphere, we meet two characters. Lord Henry Wotton, who's lounging on this divan. He's so tabby. He's lounging on the sofa and smoking constantly and just delivering what he considers to be immensely intelligent.

[Tabby]

Sorry, because he's drunk.

[Dominic]

Observations on art and beauty and stuff.

[Tabby]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

And there's another bloke called Basil who's working on his painting. We'll Start with Basil. Unfortunately, Basil is. Everyone thinks Basil is terribly boring, don't they?

[Tabby]

Well, they do. I don't. I like Basil as a character. He's the only good man in the whole book.

[Dominic]

He's the only decent character in the book. Agree. Completely. Completely. So he's the guy who paints Dorian's portrait. And he basically. He loves Dorian, doesn't he is infatuated with him. He's completely obsessed.

[Tabby]

I think it's telling that in the 1891 edition, one of the things that they. They did to try and make it more socially acceptable is they. They hugely toned down the descriptions of Basil's love for Dorian and they made it less about, you know, romantic love, and they made it more about an artist infatuated with his subject to try and make it more acceptable. But you are right, he's totally in love with Doran, perhaps, you know, in. In the sort of adoring way that Oscar Wilde might have been in love with Bosie.

[Dominic]

Yeah. I think he idealizes Dorian and he sort of says to him, 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. You have a wonderful influence. Let it be for good, not evil. If someone said that to you, Tabby, what would you.

[Tabby]

That's what people said to me before I joined Gore Hanger.

[Dominic]

And then you ended up on this show with Lord Henry Wootton.

[Tabby]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

So, Basil, you sang about the cuts. So in the first draft of the novel, Basil says explicitly, I have never loved a woman. And then he says, I worship Dorian with far more romance of feeling than a man usually gives to a friend.

[Tabby]

It's quite moving, really.

[Dominic]

Well, it is moving, but you can see why those first reviewers thought, come on, we know what's going on here. You know, you're not really even bothering to disguise it, which is fair enough. I mean, no reason why, to us why he should disguise it.

[Tabby]

It's interesting because his is the purest form of love, really. Everyone else pulls enough Dorian for his looks, and they kind of, you know, look the other way when it comes to his wickedness. But Basil really believes that Dorian is a good man, too. Like, he's a pure angel. And there's something to do there with, I think, the interesting relationship between the artist and his art, what he makes. It's as though Basil can't believe that the subject of this beautiful portrait, his great masterpiece, could be anything other than good. And there's quite a gratifying moment, I think, in the book. Actually, I mean, it leads to the sort of the climax of the book when Basil has a Come to God moment with Dorian and tells him what everyone is saying of him and what he's become, and I find that quite satisfying.

[Dominic]

And they both believe, don't they? I mean, Basil certainly believes that good and evil are written physically on your face.

[Tabby]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

So he cannot believe that Dorian could be evil because he thinks that Dorian is so beautiful. You know, obviously Basil doesn't realize the terrible secret that lies at the heart of the book. And as for the other character, Lord Henry, I mean, he's very Bosie Douglas. He's very Jude Law.

[Tabby]

Totally.

[Dominic]

He's sitting around smoking and just coming out with stuff. But he's. He is a massive cynic, isn't he? He wants to corrupt Dorian. And Basil says at the beginning, please don't corrupt Dorian, Henry. And Henry says, oh, but, you know, he. He says some witticism and then promptly does corrupt him, doesn't he? And. And you were a big fan of Lord Henry, right?

[Tabby]

Look, I. I am. I am a big fan of his because I think he's genuinely witty and he'd be great company at a lunch party or something. And I like his kind of aesthetic, I like his bad boyness, but increasingly dawned on me that he's a massive hypocrite because he never actually does any of the things that he coaxes Dorian into doing. He. He'll kind of taunt him into doing terrible things by saying, well, of course, you know, you'll never be as bad as I am. But he never actually does anything bad. So it's not really that he's sort of the devil tempting Dorian down the path of depravity. He's more like the devil's accomplice because he's more of, like a cynical observer. But I think I would find him quite entertaining at first. But I think after a while, when I was sort of trying to get a straight answer out of him, it would get a bit annoying, particularly if I text or email, whatever. If you were kind of asking him, I don't know, what time. What time do you want to book your flight tomorrow? Aha. Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the 19th century that one can explain away. Yeah, all right, get to the point, man. Speak in direct sentences. But actually, that. That actually reminded me a little bit of. Because that's what people sort of started thought about Oscar Wilde during his trial. He had these extraordinarily witty answers to everything.

[Dominic]

Yeah, dead right. He was flippant to the end. And the flippancy cost him.

[Tabby]

Exactly. Didn't. It didn't help him at all.

[Dominic]

Exactly. Exactly. Right. All right, we've probably gone on too long, so we should take a break, Tabby. And when we come back, let's talk about Dorian Gray himself. So the man that Basil and Henry are discussing in this first scene in the book. So we'll talk about a secret. We'll talk about what it owes to the legend of Faust. So this lies behind the story. And we'll talk about how this book ended up contributing to Oscar Wilde's spectacular and disastrous fall. So all of that is coming after the break. Hi, this is Gary Lineker from Goal Hangers. The rest is football. This episode is brought to you by Wise. It's only when you start moving money between currencies that you really think about the exchange rate, the fee, and what might be hidden away in the small print. Whether you're living abroad, paying someone overseas, or just trying to manage your money across borders, you want a fair exchange rate, an easy transfer, and no surprises along the way. Wise keeps things simple. Wise is a smart way to move the currencies you need around the globe. It works in more than 160 countries and with over 40 currencies, most transfers arrive instantly. Wise uses the mid market exchange rate like the one you see on Google, with no markups or hidden fees. So when money needs to move, you can see the rate, know the fee, and get on with it. Join millions saving billions on hidden fees by downloading the Wise app today. Be smart, Get Wise T's and C's apply let's talk about Peyronie's disease or pd. It's not widely talked about and some men may feel reluctant to bring it up, but it's more common than you'd think. PD can happen when scar tissue builds up under the skin of the penis, causing a curve with a bump during an erection that for some men may lead to pain during intimacy and impact mental health. A trusted urology specialist can help diagnose PD and walk you through your options, including non surgical treatment. Visit talkaboutpd.com.

[Tabby]

How sad it is I shall grow old and horrid and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day in June. If it was only the other way, if it was only I who were to be always young and the picture that were to grow old. For this, for this I would give everything, yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give.

[Dominic]

Welcome back, everybody. What a moving performance that was. So that was Tabby giving us her Dorian Gray. And the amazing thing there is that Tabby said beforehand that she was going to put on.

[Tabby]

Come on.

[Dominic]

A posh accent in a stark contrast to her usual salt of the earth voice that will never think of you in the same light again. Tabby, now I've heard you do that voice.

[Tabby]

Transformative.

[Dominic]

Totally transformative. Well, speaking of. So. Speaking of which. Very good. Very well done. So Dorian Gray, I have to say I find him an extremely unlikable character. Yeah, so he's rich, he's young, he's incredibly good looking. He was orphaned as a boy. He was raised by his grandfather, who was nasty to him. But we are told, very sweet, very lovely, very innocent, very pure. We never see any evidence of this, actually. We just sort of told it because Basil and Henry idealize him. The story of his trajectory in the book is he goes from being this supposedly innocent, lovely, beautiful boy to a still beautiful, but very vain and selfish and entitled and cruel man, doesn't he? And I mean, I suppose to say there's a hint of his sexuality interesting in his name because Dorian is a very unusual name in the 19th century. And there are some critics who think, you know, Weil chose it deliberately because that there are. There are Greeks called Dorians and it's a reference to the Greeks and therefore a coded reference to the love between, you know, man and man, to homosexuality, which people associated with the Greeks and so on. But you're probably a little bit more pro Dorian than I am, aren't you? Because I just find him loathsome.

[Tabby]

I'm pro him in the sense that I don't think I'd like him to be my close friend or kind of my boyfriend or anything, though I probably would have had a crush on him at university. But I think initially, before he really goes on this downward spiral of depravity, he would have been great fun in the beginning, I think. You know, he. He's very hedonistic. He kind of loves to go out, but as it gets darker and darker and he gets more and more unhappy and. And his, his. His self love and his hedonism is mixed up with self loathing. And this kind of makes him a dark character, not this sunny, flamboyant revelry worshipper. He becomes just mean and cruel. And there is a character to whom he is so cruel that I just can't forgive him for it. And this is his first love. This is an actress called Sybil Vane. And Dorian falls head over heels in love with her, but it is not her that he is actually in love with. He falls in love with the parts that she plays. So she plays Shakespeare's great heroines. So he says, tonight she is Imogen, and tomorrow night she will be Juliet. And then Lord Henry wittily says, when is she Sibyl Vane? And this is the point. Dorian doesn't want her to be a real flesh and blood woman. He wants her to be an artistic icon, essentially.

[Dominic]

But isn't that. That's what all the characters think about other characters? Isn't it? That they all. It's what Basil did with Dorian. At the beginning. Basil wanted Dorian to be perfect and pure and innocent. Henry wants him to be corrupted and hedonistic and whatnot.

[Tabby]

And I think part of the reason that Dorian is so corrupted and hedonistic and is so obsessed with beautiful things and fine art and wonderful books is because he's constantly seeking meaning, because he can't find it in people. So he's looking for kind of a higher purpose, a higher vision of life and existence. But then upon seeing Sylvain act so badly one night, she does it intentionally. He casts her aside brutally and says to her, you've killed my love. What are you now? A third rate actress with a pretty face? And it is this cruelty that results in her. Well, we. It's implied. Killing herself.

[Dominic]

If he'd have seen you as Mrs. Cheveley, do you think he would have said the same to you?

[Tabby]

No, no, no. Head over heels. He would have stuck. I just would have. I just would have kept up the Mrs. Cheveley accent in my private life.

[Dominic]

Have you not done that? People can't hear the difference, Tavi. Let's be honest.

[Tabby]

They can. They can.

[Dominic]

Anyway, she ends up taking her own life, doesn't she?

[Tabby]

Yeah. And this is what sparks Dorian's realization that he's made a deal with the devil, essentially, because he goes home that night after having been so cruel to Sibyl, and looks at his painting and finds that it is changed, that it is now wearing kind of a horrible sneer on its face. And this is when we realize that every time Dorian does something cruel or dreadful or depraved, it will show on his painting like a mirror of his soul. It'll show the wrongdoing, while he will remain forever young.

[Dominic]

Yes. So this is an interesting thing because I think in the popular imagination, people always think totally that the picture grows old, but Dorian stays young, and that's the bargain. But Actually, there is an extra dimension to it, which is that as Dorian behaves badly, so the picture looks more cruel and corrupted. So there is actually, funnily enough, for all the talk of art for art's sake, there is a deep moral sense in this book. There is that there is a sort of. You know, the book would be incomprehensible without the moral dimension. There's definitely a sense of right and wrong. Dorian behaves in a bad way, and the picture therefore, looks corrupted.

[Tabby]

But it's kind of ironic because, you know, we spoke about the aesthetic movement and art for art's sake and how art shouldn't have a moral message. Yeah, but this painting is literally moralizing, you know.

[Dominic]

Yes, exactly. It is the moral message in paint. Yeah.

[Tabby]

His sins are writ large on its face. But the other thing is, I think. I think everyone who hasn't read Dorian Gray comes to it expecting the idea of a deal with the devil to be a bigger part of it. I think. I think I remember that. I think I. I imagine sort of a shadowy room with a young boy, you know, selling his soul to some dark power. That's not really. It's never. It's never that explicit in the book. He says it almost incidentally.

[Dominic]

Yes, he does. A throwaway remark. So it's in chapter two. They're talking about his portrait. He's seen his portrait. He says, how sad it is I should grow old and horrible and dreadful, but this picture will remain always young. If only it were the other way. If it were I who was to be always young in the picture that was to grow old. And then he just says to his friends, for that. For that, I would give everything. Yes. There is nothing in the whole world that I would not give. I would give my soul for that. That's the deal with the devil, as it were. There is no devil there. And I mean Lord Henry, who sort of as you. I think you're dead right, Tabby. He's kind of pretending to be the devil and playing at it, but he's not Mephistopheles.

[Tabby]

He's holding up the sign, but he's not jumping in himself.

[Dominic]

Right, Exactly. He's encouraging others to behave badly, but he never really behaves that badly himself. But obviously, the idea that lies behind this is the idea that you get from the legend of Faust, the Faustian bargain. Somebody who sells his soul to the devil in return for knowledge or power or whatever it might be.

[Tabby]

This originates with the legend of Dr. Faustus. And he's a German scholar who Sells his soul to the devil for infinite knowledge and worldly pleasures. In that element is also in Dorian Gray, because over time he accumulates these beautiful treasures from around the world in his house. And the legend is obviously very, very loosely based on a real person. This is a guy called Johann Georg Faust, who lived between 1480 and 1540. And he was a German itinerant alchemist, astrologer, and sort of in inverted commas, I suppose, or they would have believed him to be a magician. And during his own life, he was often denounced as something of a con man and a blasphemer, or someone who was a practitioner of black magic. This is of, you know, remember a very superstitious time. And then his exploits were first fictionalized in the Faust book in 1587. And this was an enormous. An anonymous German book that depicted him as this tragic figure who signs a 24 year contract with the demon Mephistopheles. This is another word basically for the devil. And then Christopher Marlowe, kind of the famous Elizabethan playwright, picks up this idea and then he writes it into his legendary play, Dr. Faustus, where the protagonist, a bit more like Dorian Gray here, realizes the cost of his deal too late, and he is literally damned and dragged to hell. And then you get Goethe, and then

[Dominic]

Goethe, for the Romantics in Germany in the 18th century, does a sort of more philosophical version of the bargain again, which, you know, popularizes it for new audiences. So by the time you get to the late 19th century, the idea of Faust or Faustus would be familiar, really, to anybody, I would say, who's reading this book, you know, to a very educated public, they will be very aware of this. This idea of the. The bargain with the devil and so on. And Dorian does the bargain. It's interesting. The difference between him and Faustus or Faust is Faustus wants knowledge, and he's greedy for knowledge, for treasures, for power, for all of these kinds of things. Dorian is not greedy for those things. What he's doing the bargain out of is really conceit. It's vanity, isn't it? He's in love with himself, and he's in particular in love with his own beauty. And he wants to preserve that.

[Tabby]

So, as you say, beauty is a big theme, and so is kind of decadence. Beauty and decadence. These are kind of the motives of the novel. Because Dorian's realization in chapter two that he is incredibly beautiful. And thanks to Lord Henry's instruction, it will get him far in life. And it will, you know, Griff, almost power. But Also that it is fleeting. You know, he will age and grow old. This is what turns him into this monster. And there's this moment where Lord Henry says to him, people say sometimes that beauty is only superficial, but at least it is not so superficial as thought. To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. That's such a Henry thing, such a Henryism. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. So he's basically saying this kind of old wives tale about, you know, beauty only being skin deep. And it's about what's in the heart and stuff that really matters. Never mind all that. Beauty really is what matters in this world. It really is what gets you places.

[Dominic]

But Henry then goes on to say, yes, Mr. Gray, the gods have been good to you. But what the gods give, they quickly take away. You have only a few years in which really to live. So the idea of it being transitory and impermanent.

[Tabby]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

And you know, youth and beauty are fleeting and all of this. So seize them now. That's what Dorian wants to do.

[Tabby]

It is. But even once he has achieved this, he will stay forever young and beautiful. He still feels like there's an emptiness to his life. And I think that is why he searches for fulfillment through art, plays, books, music and beautiful things. And there's this moment when he talks about trying to find sort of in life the heroes that he reads about in books that I actually think is pretty insightful. I kind of get it. You know, as a child you read because it's so much more exciting than life. And then as a teenager, I don't know, I would obsessively listen to music because it was kind of closer maybe to what I felt than kind of the humdrum world beyond. Do you ever get that sometimes now where you go to the theater or you go to the cinema and you come out and it takes you like a while to readjust. So I kind of get what he means there. Even though it's such a fantastical way of saying it.

[Dominic]

Of course you. Yeah, completely. You do. I mean, that's the joy. I mean, reading a book surely is a good example of that. You know how. Remember when we did. What was it? Northern Lights, the Philip Pullman, and you said when you finished the trilogy you were in, you know, you cried because you wouldn't be able to read it again and you didn't want to come back out of that world.

[Tabby]

So lame.

[Dominic]

I don't think that's lame at all. Though I think you're being hard on yourself. I think that's what lots of people feel about great works of art.

[Tabby]

Victorian is monstrous, but this is relatable, right?

[Dominic]

Yeah. This side of him, the fact that he wants to escape into another world. There's a yearning for something in Dorian, I think, but there's also a sort of slightly cold blooded collect. Yeah. And the collecting mania, for example.

[Tabby]

Yeah. The writing is so luscious here. It's just so opulent. Not just the things it describes, the writing. And so that's why, like, he talks about collecting all these beautiful things and it's a little bit like a drug or something. Like, he talks about how for a couple of days or so, he's infatuated by it and obsessed by it, and then it fades away and he kind of has to find the next thing, which is why he eventually goes on to smoking opium. And that's another feature of the book, is hedonism. Hedonism is a big thing.

[Dominic]

Yeah. Well, again, Lord Henry, I mean, Nicole, our producer, absolutely worships this bloke and she's like, please mention more of his immensely penetrating witticisms. And Henry's always saying to Doriam, live, live the wonderful life that is in you. Let nothing be lost, but always be searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing and all this kind of thing. So Dorian's vices, they tend to be nocturnal. He goes out at night.

[Tabby]

He.

[Dominic]

He's obviously, you know, he's drinking, he's smoking, he's taking lots of drugs, he's, you know, corrupting loads of young people and all this kind of thing. Again, Tabby, I see in the notes you've got loads more of these, of this lovely writing that you like.

[Tabby]

Yeah, I do think this is lovely writing. He says, veil after veil of thin dusky gores is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colors of things are restored to them. And we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern.

[Dominic]

You like that?

[Tabby]

I do, yeah.

[Dominic]

Fair enough. Fair enough. And then Henry again. Ah, Dorian, how happy you are so hard on Henry. What an exquisite life you have had. You have drunk deeply of everything. You have crushed the grapes against your palate. If someone said to me, you've definitely

[Tabby]

crushed the grapes against your palate.

[Dominic]

How's the podcasting going? You've really crushed the grapes against your palate, haven't you?

[Tabby]

Well, that would be mad. Look at us.

[Dominic]

That's bonkers.

[Tabby]

But that's. But what, what Lord Henry is saying there, what that little passage is Saying is essentially that Lord Henry, looking from the outside, having never partaken himself, is like, look at you. You're beautiful. You've got beautiful things. You can have whatever you like. You've lived so well. But actually it turns out that all this vanity and all this having and all this greed is pretty meaningless. Which kind of makes me think that in some ways kind of the central sort of message of Dorian Gray, you know, be careful what you wish for. Mind your vanity. It's. It's almost slightly a book ahead of its time, kind of given the time that we. We live in now. The concept of self worth and putting yourself first has never been more revered. The idea that of a very. Of a clear distinction between your public profile and your private profile profile, you know, the idea of having a perfect exterior, beauty products, influences, things like that.

[Dominic]

The Instagram. Instagram world, right? Where you. You manicure, your image, you are forever young.

[Tabby]

Yeah, we all have our, our portrait of. Of life these days. And so it's kind of a book ahead of its time in that sense, I think.

[Dominic]

Yeah. You know who during reminds me of? Tabby.

[Tabby]

Who's that?

[Dominic]

Are we familiar with the work of clavicular?

[Tabby]

Are you?

[Dominic]

What? Braden. Braden Peters. You don't think I don't know about Braden?

[Tabby]

You've been doing your homework because Nicole said that you didn't know who he was. Unbelievable. All right, tell me about Braden Peters.

[Dominic]

Oh, Braden Peters. You know, his big looks, maxing, he injects himself with steroids. He's a very controversial figure actually at the moment because he's been in trouble with the law.

[Tabby]

He literally, his. His pursuit of beauty is such that he literally breaks the bones in his face in order to create a more beautiful, you know, perfect image. And he does stuff like takes method, allegedly, because it makes him thinner. Like it's beauty above anything beauty at the cost of morality and ethics and being good. And that is so central to Dorian Gray.

[Dominic]

He and I have a lot in common.

[Tabby]

Anyway, now. Now to deeper subjects. Let's talk about the soul.

[Dominic]

Let's talk about the soul. Come on. So Dorian has sold his soul. I mean, again, this is the side of the book. Do you know what? I probably am going to up my mark as a. As a result of this conversation. This is the power that you have. Amazing. I'm like Lord Henry to my Dorian to my image of beauty. Yeah, brilliant. That's the. That's the comparison everybody wanted.

[Tabby]

Keep up that skin care and you too could be on forever.

[Dominic]

So it is a moral book. In this sense, Wilde believes that you have a soul and you shouldn't sell it. Yeah. And Dorian has sold it. And actually, interestingly, the book reflects a very late Victorian idea, which is that, you know, there is such a thing as immorality, and if you commit it, it is, you know, it is written not merely on your soul, but on your exterior, and that the two things are kind of linked, that your soul and your body are part of one whole. And if you behave in a corrupt way, the corruption of your soul will be expressed physically in your face. That's right, isn't it?

[Tabby]

Yeah, it. Absolutely. It definitely is. I mean, and this is. This is literal. I mean, in Dorian's face. So obviously, at this time, there's kind of a rising trend in psychoanalysis, and I think we spoke about this in both Hannah the Baskervilles and the Women in White.

[Dominic]

Yeah, we did. Yeah, exactly.

[Tabby]

Yeah. The idea that you can betray things from the outside, it's kind of a strange new form of dualism. It's kind of Freud. There are things going on underneath the surface that, you know, betray themselves externally. And therefore, you know, you can have two identities and whatever it may be. But this is very literal in Dorian's case. I mean, his soul is literally a physical object. And then what this called to mind is so. In the. In the 1945 movie of Dorian Gray, it's so brilliant. This actually, they have the original portrait of Dorian Gray and then they have the picture that he becomes, and you can kind of see them side by side. And there's this artist called Ivan Albright, who did the second painting, who did the painting as it would look after Dorian has lived this life of hedonism and cruelty because it is so creepy and so grotesque. And this is the literal embodiment of Dorian's soul. You know, it brings to mind another theme, which is conscience, because Dorian is increasingly dog by his kind of the destruction of his soul and feels a strange sense of remorse, and he wants his soul to be squeaky clean once more, but it's actually not pure conscience. It's actually not pure remorse, because a lot of his remorse is bound up in the fact that he mourns the hideousness of his portrait. Again, it's kind of still linked to his vanity.

[Dominic]

It's all his narcissism. It's all about himself. Yeah. He doesn't feel bad for Sybil or for the various people that he's corrupted. He cannot contemplate his own ugliness.

[Tabby]

Yes.

[Dominic]

And actually, I'm So glad you mentioned that picture because I remember when we went to the Art Institute of Chicago, which is an absolutely brilliant, brilliant gallery, just how shocking it is. It's kind of really, really visceral, isn't it? It is the ugliness of the picture

[Tabby]

and it's, it's not, it's not at all realist, which the original painting is, you know, it's quite literal. And then the second one, it's. Oh, it's creepy. It's quite sort of Tim Burton.

[Dominic]

Yeah, I can see why you'd say that. But actually what the pictures do is they capture, well the two. The idea of the two pictures in the film, but also the idea of the picture. And then the reality of Dorian takes us back to what's probably Wilde's, you know, the idea that he is best known for, apart from the witticisms. Well, it's the idea of the double life, isn't it? The idea that the respectability in the day and the corruption at night, the idea, as he puts it, that the terrible pleasure of a double life. And actually even in his more innocuous works, the Importance of Being Earnest.

[Tabby]

Love the Importance of Being Earnest.

[Dominic]

It's two. You're leading two lives. And obviously this appeals to Oscar Wilde because he is leading two lives. He has his life with Constance and he has his family life, but also that he has his life where he's interfering with 17 year old waiters or whatever. And you know, this is an idea that absolutely fascinates the late Victorians because they are becoming aware, you know, we're only a few years away from Freud. We are becoming aware of this idea of the subconscious of the human psyche, of things that are buried deep down that are, you know, you try to repress but they are surfacing nonetheless. I mean that idea we've already mentioned Dracula, it's there in Dracula, but it's obviously there in another book that anticipates Dorian Gray ring four years beforehand. And that is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

[Tabby]

Yeah, and so that is by Robert Louis Stevenson. And it's kind of the gothic horror book of that period was written in 1886, so only four years before Dorian Gray. And it's the same concept, you know, the idea of, of duality and doubling the sinful part of your nature, going on these rampages and killing sprees and acting in a immoral fashion. And then the side that you present to society, the side that like walks around in the light of day. So that is literally. So that is Hyde And Jekyll. Ditto Dorian and his portrait.

[Dominic]

Yes, exactly.

[Tabby]

One is the monster, one is the man.

[Dominic]

Exactly. You have the same sort of duality in the portrait of London, don't you? So, you know, sort of people smoking on divans in kind of the West End or something, and then at the other end and the. In the East End, opium dens and prostitutes and smoke and alleys and all of that kind of thing. The idea of the duality is so important to the way the Victorians see themselves.

[Tabby]

I was also struck by how similar the endings are to Jekyll and Hyde and Dorian Gray. So big spoiler here. Dorian Gray. Eventually, he's so miserable, you know, living in this kind of state of sin as he does, he goes upstairs and he stabs the painting. But what his servants discover later when they find him is a shriveled old Dorian curled up on the ground with the knife in his chest, and the painting young and perfect. And similarly, in Jekyll and Hyde, Hyde commits suicide and is found dead on the floor wearing Jekyll's clothes. So there is like the duality all over again. And the other thing is that it introduces this slight element of kind of a class dichotomy. The idea that the side of Dorian that is going out and entering, you know, opium dens or whatever it may be, is kind of debased. It's vulgar. It's of a different class to the aristocratic version of himself that he presents to society. Something of Oscar Wilde in that, maybe?

[Dominic]

I think so. Well, the big difference, I suppose. Well, I mean, one big difference between Jekyll and Hyde and Dorian Gray. Jekyll and Hyde is not a camp book by any means, whereas Dorian Gray. I mean, just read by reading the first lines, the stuff about the scent of roses and the perfume and the headiness of it. There is a. I mean, to 21st century eyes, there's something very camp about it. And obviously running right through this book is the wild sexuality. And that was dialed down, that element between 1890 and 1891, that bit that we already mentioned where Basil makes it very obvious that he is in love with Dorian, that he's physically attracted to him. There's also a moment that was taken out where I think Basil lets his hand rest on Dorian's shoulder or he strokes his arm or something like that. Again, taken out. But it's still there, isn't it? It's still very, very obvious in the book.

[Tabby]

Oh, I think it's. It's. Yeah, I think it's so obvious. I think it's wonderfully camp, the whole book. You know, the way that Basil and Dorian speak to each other in this very affectionate, sort of very tender way. Even the way that Lord Henry and Dorian speak to each other. The references to Dorian's dealings with young men. And it's never. It's never exactly stated what he's doing to them, but we find out that all these young men that have encounters the Dorian end up being destroyed in some way and kind of leaving society. And, you know, even references like this. So it says at one point, Richard II had a coat valued at 30,000 marks which was covered with rubies. The favorites of James I wore earrings of emeralds set in filigreen. Edward II gave to Piers Gavinson a suit of red gold armor. Etc, Etc. Etc. I mean, that is. That's a reference in a very kind of beautiful, camp, exaggerated way to three English kings famed for kind of showering beautiful gifts on their.

[Dominic]

On their favourites and their lovers.

[Tabby]

And their lovers. And that's a similar relationship to Dorian and his relationships with Basil and Henry.

[Dominic]

Yeah. Or the Palmer Violets. Doesn't. One of them was wearing a big buttonhole of Palmer Violets. And Palmer Violets were associated with Sappho, the Greek poet, the kind of lesbian poet and whatnot.

[Tabby]

Yeah. So it became the carnate. What the carnation was. Was it the green carnation?

[Dominic]

Green carnation.

[Tabby]

It was a way that gay men in sort of society at this time could identify each other. So Palmer Violets were the same thing to lesbians. And I mean, Oscar Wilde would be familiar with this reference because he's so familiar with the classics. And someone like Sappho, I think, in particular.

[Dominic]

Yes. And I guess the idea. I mean, Wilde is obviously pouring himself into the book, isn't he? Because the idea of leading a double life, the idea of a moral struggle, you know, Wilde is somebody who, although he. Great. He makes this tremendous defense of his sexuality when he's on trial, effectively. I think it would. It's hard to imagine that somebody who'd grown up, when and where he had, that somebody who had lived, who'd been so prim and proper as a young man, would not have had, you know, a degree of psychological struggle about his own life, I think. And I think that's. That definitely is there in the book, because there is a morality there and a sort of moral core and an anxiety about sexuality and I think an anxiety about corruption and stuff that you can trace back not just to the context of the time, but to Wilde's. Own personal dramas.

[Tabby]

Yeah. I wonder if you could read Dorian Gray in a totally different light if you interpreted, you know, what he calls his living death, the way that he lives this kind of empty, guilt ridden life as kind of his struggle with homosexuality, that is the sins that he commits being his homosexuality.

[Dominic]

I mean it's become a great touchstone, hasn't it? Dorian Gray. I mean our producer Nicole loves it. There are lots of people who absolutely adore it.

[Tabby]

I have a friend who's always said that it's absolutely favourite book he's ever read and he kind of puts on a massive pedestal. It later turned out it was the only book he'd ever read but nevertheless. Nevertheless, people revere it.

[Dominic]

If you're going to read just one

[Tabby]

book, surely according to thorns and roses, make that your identity.

[Dominic]

Fury of the Vikings by Dominic Sambrook,

[Tabby]

surely only to be read in red trousers.

[Dominic]

Nope. Unbelievable. From you. I don't wear red trousers. None of my fans wear red trousers. This is the tweed calumny all over again.

[Tabby]

The great controversy of our times.

[Dominic]

Shocking from you. Okay, so the writing, you obviously love the writing, don't you? You find it very funny and witty and you think that's one reason it's endured.

[Tabby]

And it's lavish and beautiful.

[Dominic]

It's lush I think, isn't it?

[Tabby]

It's lush.

[Dominic]

It's. I mean you, I think you described it as luscious earlier on and there is a sort of, there is a headiness to the writing. You know, it feels like you're sort of in a bath of Palmer violets or whatever.

[Tabby]

And then it's also kind of the sexiness of this message, isn't it? It's the hedonism, it's the elegance, it's the parties, it's the meaningless flings, there's all of that. But I mean ironically I think it's kind of maybe slightly the deeper message too. I mean it's basically, it's the ultimate be careful what you wish for. Particularly a time when we've never had so much, we've possibly never been so vain. I think it's an interesting book. You know, you can see why it would do the rounds on something like

[Dominic]

Booktok because it's a book about the hollowness of the obsession with image. Yes, isn't it? I mean that's the moral core. That's that wild slightly has his cake and eat eats in the book because on the one hand you're invited to enjoy the hedonism and all of that kind of thing but at the same time, clearly the book is telling you, you know, there is more to life than public display than there is more to life than beauty. Actually, Lord Henry is wrong. He's plain wrong. Because Dorian pursues beauty and vanity above all and is destroyed by it.

[Tabby]

He's unhappy. Yeah. But then I think the other massive reason for the book's popularity is Oscar Wilde himself. You know, he's such a famous figure, he's considered something kind of a gay icon or martyr possibly.

[Dominic]

Yeah, completely.

[Tabby]

Flamboyance, his witticisms, his imprisonment.

[Dominic]

So there's only five years between the publication the first version of Dorian Gray and Wilde's downfall basically was because of his relationship with Bosie. They were being pursued by Bowes father, the Marquis of Queensbury, who he wanted to disrupt the opening night of the Importance of Being Earnest by throwing a bouquet of rotten vegetables at Wilde when Wilde took his bow. And Queensberry wasn't able to do this, he wasn't allowed into the theater. But he left a card at Wilde's club accusing him of being, and I quote, opposing somdomite. So misspelling.

[Tabby]

It's misspelled it. Brilliant.

[Dominic]

Yeah. And Wilde, incredibly, foolishly egged on by his former lover Ross and his current lover Bosie, decided to sue the Marquis of Queensberry for libel. And this was incredibly self destructive behavior given how he had behaved, you know, given that he had been so open and so flagrant with a succession of waiters, young boys, all of this kind of thing.

[Tabby]

He denied it all, didn't he?

[Dominic]

He denied it all. Yes, exactly.

[Tabby]

And they literally brought them all up. They had so many witnesses, Queensberry and

[Dominic]

his legal team, they did a mercilessly brilliant job spearheaded by the future unionist politician Sir Edward Carson, who had known Wilde at university. They'd been kind of acquaintances back in Dublin. Anyway, they basically produced all of these young men. Wilde's case collapsed, obviously, and the trouble was because it had come out in open court now and also because he was quite close to people in the government or in the sort of liberal in the Liberal Party, the government felt they had no alternative, given that it was so public, than to have him charged with, you know, indecent behavior under this recent legislation. So then there are two trials. The first one, they don't produce a verdict and Wilde was terrible in the witness box because he's doing his thing about, he's being flippant, he's performing, he's making jokes, he's all this kind of thing and. And basically he ends up being convicted. Bosie flees off to France. I mean, Bosie's a terrible, terrible human being.

[Tabby]

He is. He really, really is. And also, he egged on Wilde to enter into all of that and said he'd pay his legal fees.

[Dominic]

I know. And then. And then.

[Tabby]

And then left him in the lurch.

[Dominic]

Yeah. And this is the mad thing, isn't it, that shocking? There's so many echoes of Dorian Gray in what happened to Oscar Wilde. So both in Wilde himself and in Bosie, Wilde is sentenced to two years of hard labor, the maximum penalty.

[Tabby]

There's talk that he's an example. People are making an example of him.

[Dominic]

I think they are making an example to some. To some degree. Constance leaves him. She goes to Europe with her children.

[Tabby]

He's not allowed to see his boys anyway.

[Dominic]

Wilde had a terrible time in Reading jail. His health collapsed. He has this sort of long, dark night of the soul. He's eventually released. He's a broken man. He's bankrupt. He flees to France. He sees Bosie again. They have this incredibly toxic relationship.

[Tabby]

And Constance says that she will only give him kind of his stipend or whatever.

[Dominic]

Yeah.

[Tabby]

If he doesn't see Bosi, stays away from Bosie. And he just can't resist.

[Dominic]

Yeah. There's a line in. I think it's Matthew Sturges's book biography of Wilds and talk about the trials where he says at the end of his life, he was spending more money on rent boys than on rent. And that basically tells you what happened to him. And he ends up dying, probably meningitis, in 1900 in a cheap Paris hotel.

[Tabby]

It's tragic.

[Dominic]

And the thing with Wilder, that's complicated. I mean, we did go into this when we did it on. The rest is history is.

[Tabby]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

He is simultaneously a victim. He's a victim in a martyr on one hand, but on the other hand, you know, he's a morally ambiguous figure because he is associating with much poorer, much younger men. So he. There's always a power dynamic and it's.

[Tabby]

Yeah. Is it exploitative?

[Dominic]

Is it exploitative or not? I mean, I think listeners can dig into it and make up their own minds about it. I don't. I. To be totally honest, this isn't something I often say. I really don't know what I think. I find it hard to make up my mind about him.

[Tabby]

Yeah, I know what you mean. I can't help but really, really pity him for what happened to him later in his life. And he was well liked wherever he went. And I think he behaved pretty well, in terms of, you know, when he was in prison, he was. Well, I think he was very lovable. I think he was really foolish.

[Dominic]

The fact that I've spoken so much about Wilde and possibly not so much about the book, perhaps tells its own story. So I think we're going to rank this in. Shall we rank it? This gets. Giving away my views, Tabby, in exhaustingly persistent witticisms. Out of 10. Which you did suggest.

[Tabby]

To be fair, I did suggest that. Give your mark in witticism.

[Dominic]

I'm not gonna. I'm not capable. I'm too. I'm too prosaic. I'm too drab. Exactly. It is a. I can't remember. I was gonna attempt to witness.

[Tabby]

It is a truth universally acknowledged.

[Dominic]

I know. I know that.

[Tabby]

A witness Criticism out of 10. Oh, God, I'm boring myself.

[Dominic]

So, okay. I think the story is fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. The story behind the book and the story of wild. And actually, I love the idea of the book, but I'm gonna give it five. I've gone. I've gone really low. And the reason for that is actually when I was reading it, so I read it madly after I read the Hunger Games.

[Tabby]

Oh, my gosh. Well, anything. Anything would pale by comparison.

[Dominic]

Like, I put down the Hunger Games one minute and picked up Dorian Gray. And I found myself pining for the world of. What is it called? Panem, Whatever in the hunky. Just because I became very bored of Lord Henry going on about his witticisms, I sort of thought, come on, the point's been made. I didn't enjoy it. I. I'm. I. I'm a bit sick of that kind of very lush, heady prose. Dare I say. Can I say this? I felt like I've slightly grown out of it.

[Tabby]

Wow.

[Dominic]

And I don't have much patience with it. And I just thought, come on, it's no Sarah J. Maas.

[Tabby]

I was going to say, I think our time reading Romantasy has ruined you for everything else it has done.

[Dominic]

So I'm going to give it five. And I know Nicole will never speak to me again. What about you?

[Tabby]

I'm going to give it a 7.5.

[Dominic]

Always the 0.5 with you. Hey, Some people would say it's nuanced. Other people would say it's evasive.

[Tabby]

Some would say it's indecisive. An indecisive rating is never as indecisive as it may seem. Okay, so I'm doing it 7.5 because I like that opulence. I like that kind of flamboyant prose and yet it's also quite straightforward and yet it's rich and it conveys a great deal. I find it actually very funny, even though after a while Lord Henry did slightly get on my nerves. I found Dorian's oscillations between kind of devilry and sort of self obsessed remorse kind of fascinating and, and they clung in my head quite a lot. I think that the kind of central message is quite convincing, I suppose. Not that it has like an intentional message, but I like that kind of idea that everyone should try to fight their vanities and their egos a little bit. But I didn't like any of the characters very much, which you need in a book, I think. I think you need to root for somebody. So, yeah, 7.5 for me.

[Dominic]

Okay, so what have we got coming up? So we actually have a really funny book coming up next week. One of my absolute tip top favorites. A book that I've loved ever since I've read it, and that is PG Wodehouse's the Code of the Worcesters. And I'm looking forward, given that we've heard Tabby's superb Dorian Gray. Are you gonna miss Bertie or Jeeves or a little bit of both?

[Tabby]

Well, I mean, people can find out when we, when we release the episode, but we're gonna cast each other, aren't we? We're gonna spend the whole episode in character.

[Dominic]

So we've got Code of the Worcesters, then Louisa May Alcott's book Little Women, which I'm reading right now. We have George R.R. martin, game of Thrones, we have the Wind and the Willows by Kenneth Graham. We have the leopard by Tomasi Delanpedusa, the 39 Steps by John Buchan, My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante and Circe by Madeline Miller, all to come. And some of those are the result of suggestions by you, the listeners. So please keep the suggestions coming. Brilliant. And I see on the chat Nicole has written Dominic's Let Himself down, which is. Which is sad. So on that depressing note, I'm about to go and inspect my portrait upstairs

[Tabby]

and next week I'll be joined by a new presenter of the book club.

[Dominic]

Exactly. What a way to crash.

[Tabby]

What a way to go.

[Dominic]

Yeah, okay, bye bye, everybody.

[Tabby]

Bye.