Adrian Singleton Quotes

But you, Dorian, with your pure, bright, innocent face, and your marvellous, untroubled youth – I can’t believe anything against you. And yet I see you very seldom, and you never come down to the studio now, and when I am away from you, and I hear all these hideous things that people are whispering about you, I don’t know what to say. Why is it, Dorian, that a man like the Duke of Berwick leaves the room of a club when you enter it? Why is it that so many gentlemen in London will neither go to your house or invite you to theirs?…Why is your friendship so fatal to young men? There was that wretched boy in the Guards who committed suicide. You were his great friend. There was Sir Henry Ashton, who had to leave England with a tarnished name. You and he were inseparable. What about Adrian Singleton and his dreadful end? What about Lord Kent’s only son and his career? I met his father yesterday in St. James’s Street. He seemed broken with shame and sorrow. What about the young Duke of Perth? What sort of life has he got now? What gentleman would associate with him?…You have filled them with a madness for pleasure. They have gone down into the depths. You led them there. Yes: you led them there, and yet you can smile, as you are smiling now.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 12. Basil finds it difficult to believe the rumors about Dorian’s disreputable behavior because he looks so pure and innocent and youthful. But he confronts his friend about the hidious things being whispered about him. He speaks of a boy Dorian was great friends with who committed suicide, another man he was close to who had to leave England with a tarnished name, a young Duke that no gentleman would now associate with. In his search for hedonistic pleasure, Dorian stands accused of ruining many reputations and destroying lives, including his young friend Adrian Singleton whom he introduced to opium addiction. Basil accuses Dorian of filling these men with "a madness for pleasure" and leading them "down into the depths." Although Wilde does not explicitedly describe any practice of homosexuality associated with Dorian, he strongly hints that Dorian had relationships with many young male aristocrats. Wilde, who went to jail for his homosexuality, said that his character Dorian was "what I would like to be – in other ages, perhaps."