(1759-1844)
The translation from a defective Arabic manuscript of the 'Book of the
Thousand Nights and A Night,' first into the French by Galland, about
1705, and presently into various English versions, exerted an immediate
influence on French, German, and English romance. The pseudo-Oriental or
semi-Oriental tale of home-manufacture sprang into existence right and
left with the publishers of London and Paris, and in German centres of
letters. Hope's 'Anastasius, or Memoirs of a Modern Greek,' Lewis's 'The
Monk,' the German Hauff's admirable 'Stories of the Caravan, the Inn,
and the Palace,' Rückert's 'Tales of the Genii,' and William Beckford's
'History of the Caliph Vathek,' are among the finest performances of the
sort: productions more or less Eastern in sentiment and in their details
of local color, but independent of direct originals in the Persian or
Arabic, so far as is conclusively known.
[Illustration: WILLIAM BECKFORD]
William Beckford, born at London in 1759 (of a strong line which
included a governor of Jamaica), dying in 1844, is a figure of
distinction merely as an Englishman of his time, aside from his one
claim to literary remembrance. His father's death left him the richest
untitled citizen of England. He was not sent to a university, but
immense care was given to his education, in which Lord Chatham
personally interested himself; and he traveled widely. The result of
this, on a very receptive mind with varied natural gifts, was to make
Beckford an ideal dilettante. His tastes in literature, painting, music
(in which Mozart was his tutor), sculpture, architecture, and what not,
were refined to the highest nicety. He was able to gratify each of them
as such a man can rarely have the means to do. He built palaces and
towers of splendor instead of merely a beautiful country seat. He tried
to reproduce Vathek's halls in stone and stucco, employing relays of
workmen by day and night, on two several occasions and estates, for many
months. Where other men got together moderate collections of _bibelots_,
Beckford amassed whole museums. If a builder's neglect or a fire
destroyed his rarities and damaged his estates to the extent of forty or
fifty thousand pounds, Beckford merely rebuilt and re-collected. These
tastes and lavish expenditures gradually set themselves in a current
toward things Eastern. His magnificent retreat at Cintra in Portugal,
his vast Fonthill Abbey and Lansdowne Hill estates in England, were only
appanages of his sumptuous state. England and Europe talked of him and
of his properties. He was a typical egotist: but an agreeable and
gracious man, esteemed by a circle of friends not called upon to be his
sycophants; and he kept in close touch with the intellectual life of
all Europe.
He wrote much, for an amateur, and in view of the tale which does him
most honor, he wrote with success. At twenty he invited publicity with a
satiric _jeu d'esprit,_ 'Biographical Memoirs of Extraordinary
Painters'; and his 'Italy, with Sketches of Spain and Portugal,' and
'Recollections of an Excursion to the Monasteries of Alcobaba and
Baltalha,' were well received. But these books could not be expected to
survive even three generations; whereas 'Vathek,' the brilliant, the
unique, the inimitable 'Vathek,' took at once a place in literature
which we may now almost dare to call permanent. This story, not a long
one,--indeed, no more than a novelette in size,--was originally written
in French, and still lives in that language; in which an edition, hardly
the best, has lately been issued under the editorship of M. Mallarmé.
But its history is complicated by one of the most notable acts of
literary treachery and theft on record. During the author's slow and
finicky composition of it at Lausanne, he was sending it piecemeal to
his friend Robert Henley in England for Henley to make an English
version, of course to be revised by himself. As soon as Henley had all
the parts, he published a hasty and slipshod translation, before
Beckford had seen it or was even ready to publish the French original;
and not only did so, but published it as a tale translated by himself
from a genuine Arabic original. This double violation of good faith of
course enraged Beckford, and practically separated the two men for the
rest of their lives; indeed, the wonder is that Beckford would ever
recognize Henley's existence again. The piracy was exposed and set
aside, and Beckford in self-defense issued the story himself in French
as soon as he could; indeed, he issued it in two versions with curious
and interesting differences, one published at Lausanne and the other at
Paris. The Lausanne edition is preferable.
'Vathek' abides to-day accredited to Beckford in both French and
English; a thing to keep his memory green as nothing else of his work or
personality will. The familiar legend that in its present form it was
composed at a single sitting, with such ardor as to entail a severe
illness, and "without the author's taking off his clothes," cannot be
reconciled with the known facts. But the intensely vivid movement of it
certainly suggests swift production; and it could easily be thought that
any author had sketched such a story in the heat of some undisturbed
sitting, and filled, finished, and polished it at leisure. It is an
extraordinary performance; even in Henley's unsatisfactory version it is
irresistible. We know that Beckford expected to add liberally to it by
inserting sundry subordinate tales, put into the mouths of some of the
personages appearing in the last scene. It is quite as well that he did
not. Its distinctive Orientalism, perhaps less remarkable than the
unfettered imagination of its episodes, the vividness of its characters,
the easy brilliancy of its literary manner--these things, with French
diction and French wit, alternate with startling descriptive
impressiveness. It is a French combination of Cervantes and Dante, in an
Oriental and bizarre narrative. It is not always delicate, but it is
never vulgar, and the sprightly pages are as admirable as the weird
ones. Its pictures, taken out of their connection, seem irrelevant, and
are certainly unlike enough; but they are a succession of surprises and
fascinations. Such are the famous description of the chase of Vathek's
court after the Giaour; the moonlit departure of the Caliph for the
Terrace of Istakhar; the episodes of his stay under the roof of the Emir
Fakreddin; the pursuit by Carathis on "her great camel Alboufaki,"
attended by "the hideous Nerkes and the unrelenting Cafour"; Nouronihar
drawn to the magic flame in the dell at night; the warning of the good
Jinn; and the tremendous final tableau of the Hall of Eblis.
The man curious in letters regards with affection the evidences of
vitality in a brief production little more than a century old; unique in
English and French literature, and occupying to-day a high rank among
the small group of _quasi_-Oriental narratives that represent the direct
workings of Galland on the Occidental literary temperament. Today
'Vathek' surprises and delights persons whose mental constitution puts
them in touch with it, just as potently as ever it did. And simply as a
wild story, one fancies that it will appeal quite as effectually, no
matter how many editions may be its future, to a public perhaps
unsympathetic toward its elliptical satire, its caustic wit, its
fantastic course of narrative, and its incongruous wavering between the
flippant, the grotesque, and the terrific.