William Beckford, son of the famous Lord Mayor, was born at
Fonthill, Wiltshire, England, Sept. 29, 1759, and received his
education at first from a private tutor, and then at Geneva.
On coming of age, he inherited a million sterling and an
annual income of £100,000, and three years later he married
the fourth Earl of Aboyne's daughter, Lady Margaret Gordon,
who died in May, 1786. In 1787 Beckford's romance, the
"History of the Caliph Vathek," appeared in its original
French, an English translation of the work having been
published "anonymously and surreptitiously" in 1784. "Vathek"
was written by Beckford in 1781 or 1782 at a single sitting of
three days and two nights. Beckford was a great traveller and
a great connoisseur and collector both of pictures and of
books; and, apart from "Vathek" and some volumes of travels,
he is best known for having secluded himself for twenty years
in the magnificent residence which he built in Fonthill. He
died on May 2, 1844.
_I.--Vathek and the Magic Sabres_
Vathek, ninth caliph of the race of the Abassides, was the son of
Motassem, and the grandson of Haroun al Raschid. From an early accession
to the throne, and the talents he possessed to adorn it, his subjects
were induced to expect that his reign would be long and happy. His
figure was pleasing and majestic; but when he was angry one of his eyes
became so terrible that no person could bear it, and the wretch upon
whom it was fixed instantly fell backward, and sometimes expired. For
fear, however, of depopulating his dominions and making his palace
desolate, he but rarely gave way to his anger.
Being much addicted to the pleasures of the table, he sought by his
affability to procure agreeable companions; and he succeeded the better
as his generosity was unbounded, and his indulgences were unrestrained;
for he was by no means scrupulous, nor did he think, with the caliph
Omar Ben Abdalaziz, that it was necessary to make a hell of this world
to enjoy paradise in the next. He surpassed in magnificence all his
predecessors. The palace of Alkoremmi, which his father, Motassem, had
erected on the hill of Pied Horses, and which commanded the whole city
of Samarah was, in his idea, far too scanty. He added, therefore, five
wings, or rather other palaces, which he destined for the particular
gratification of each of his senses.
But the unquiet and impetuous disposition of the caliph would not allow
him to rest there; he had studied so much for amusement in the lifetime
of his father as to acquire a great deal of knowledge, though not a
sufficiency to satisfy himself--for he wished to know everything, even
sciences that did not exist. He was fond of engaging in disputes with
the learned and with the orthodox, but liked them not to push their
opposition with warmth; he stopped with presents the mouths of those
whose mouths could be stopped, while others, whom his liberality was
unable to subdue, he sent to prison to cool their blood, a remedy that
often succeeded.
The great prophet Mohammed, whose vicars the caliphs are, beheld with
indignation from his abode in the seventh heaven the irreligious conduct
of such a vice-regent.
"Let us leave him to himself," said he to the genii, who are always
ready to receive his commands. "Let us see to what lengths his folly and
impiety will carry him. If he run into excess we shall know how to
chastise him. Assist him, therefore, to complete the tower which, in
imitation of Nimrod, he hath begun, not, like that great warrior, to
escape being drowned, but from the insolent curiosity of penetrating the
secrets of heaven; he will not divine the fate that awaits him."
The genii obeyed, and when the workmen had raised their structures a
cubit in the daytime, two cubits more were added in the night. Vathek
fancied that even invisible matter showed a forwardness to subserve his
designs, and his pride arrived at its height when, having ascended for
the first time the eleven thousand stairs of his tower, he cast his eyes
below and beheld men not larger than pismires, mountains than shells,
and cities than beehives. He now passed most of his nights on the summit
of his tower, till he became an adept in the mysteries of astrology, and
imagined that the planets had disclosed to him the most marvellous
adventures which were to be accomplished by an extraordinary personage
from a country altogether unknown.
Prompted by motives of curiosity, he had always been courteous to
strangers, but from this instant he redoubled his attention, and ordered
it to be announced by sound of trumpet through all the streets of
Samarah that no one of his subjects, on pain of displeasure, should
either lodge or detain a traveller, but forthwith bring him to the
palace.
Not long after this there arrived in the city a hideous man who to
Vathek's view displayed slippers which enabled the feet to walk, knives
that cut without a motion of the hand, and sabres which dealt the blow
at the person they were wished to strike, the whole enriched with gems
that were hitherto unknown. The sabres, whose blades emitted a dazzling
radiance, fixed more than all the caliph's attention, who promised
himself to decipher at his leisure the uncouth characters engraven on
their sides. Without, therefore, demanding their price, he ordered all
the coined gold to be brought from his treasury, and commanded the
merchant to take what he pleased. The stranger complied with modesty and
silence; but, having maintained an obstinate silence on all the points
on which the caliph questioned him, he was committed to prison, from
which he was found the next day to have vanished, leaving his keepers
dead.
Vathek was at first enraged, but having been comforted by his mother,
the Princess Carathis, who was a Greek and an adept in all the sciences
and systems of her country, he issued, at her suggestion, a proclamation
promising the liberality for which he was renowned to whoever should
decipher the characters on the sabres, and eventually had the
gratification of meeting with an old man, who read them as follows: "We
were made where everything good is made; we are the least of the wonders
of a place where all is wonderful, and deserving the sight of the first
potentate on earth." Unfortunately, however, when the old man was
ordered the next morning to re-read the inscription, he was then found
to interpret it as denouncing: "Woe to the rash mortal who seeks to know
that of which he should remain ignorant." "And woe to thee!" cried the
caliph, in a burst of indignation, and telling him to take his reward
and begone.
_II.--The Caliph's Strange Adventures_
It was not long before Vathek discovered abundant reason for regretting
his precipitation. He plainly perceived that the characters on the
sabres changed every day; and the anxiety caused by his failure to
decipher them, or to read anything from the stars, brought on a fever,
which deprived him of his appetite, and tormented him with an absolutely
insatiable thirst. From this distress he was at length delivered by a
meeting with the stranger, who cured him by giving him to drink of a
phial of red and yellow mixture. But when this insolent person, at a
banquet given in his honour, burst into shouts of laughter on being
asked to declare of what drugs the salutary liquor had been compounded,
and from what place the sabres had come, Vathek kicked him from the
steps, and, repeating the blow, persisted with such assiduity as incited
all present to follow his example. The stranger collected into a ball,
rolled out of the palace, followed by Vathek, the court, and the whole
city, and, after passing through all the public places, rolled onwards
to the Plain of Catoul, traversed the valley at the foot of the mountain
of the Four Fountains, and bounded into the chasm formed there by the
continual fall of the waters.
Vathek would have followed the perfidious giaour had not an invisible
agency arrested his progress and that of the multitude; and he was so
much struck by the whole circumstance that he ordered his tents to be
pitched on the very edge of the precipice. After keeping several vigils
there, he was accosted one night by the voice of the giaour, who amid
the darkness caused by a total eclipse of the moon and the stars,
offered to bring him to the palace of subterranean fire, where he should
behold the treasures which the stars had promised him, and the talismans
that control the world, if he would abjure Mohammed, adore the
terrestrial influences, and satiate the stranger's thirst with the blood
of fifty of the most beautiful Samarahite boys.
The unhappy caliph lavished his promises in the utmost profusion, and by
arranging for the celebration near the chasm of some juvenile sports,
which were not concluded till twilight, was able to make the direful
libation. As the boys came up one by one to receive their prizes, he
pushed them into the gulf, the dreadful device being executed with so
much dexterity that the boy who was approaching him remained unconscious
of the fate of his forerunner.
The popular tumult roused by this atrocity having been appeased by the
princess, who possessed the most consummate skill in the art of
persuasion, there was offered on the tower a burnt sacrifice to the
infernal deities, the main ingredients of which were mummies,
rhinoceros' horns, oil of the most venomous serpents, various aromatic
woods, and one hundred and forty of the caliph's most faithful subjects.
These preliminaries having been settled, a parchment was discovered, in
which Vathek was thanked for his burnt offering, and told to set forth
with a magnificent retinue for Istakar, where he would receive the
diadem of Gian Ben Gian, the talismans of Soliman, and the treasures of
the pre-Adamite sultans. But he was warned not to enter any dwelling on
his route.
Vathek and the cavalcade set out, and for three days all went well. But
on the fourth a storm burst upon them, the frightful roar of wild beasts
resounded at a distance, and they soon perceived in the forest glaring
eyes that could only belong to devils or tigers. Fire destroyed their
provisions, and they would have starved had not two dwarfs, who dwelt as
hermits on the top of some rocks, received divine intimation of their
plight and revealed it to their emir, Fakreddin. The dwarfs were
entertained, caressed, and seated with great ceremony on little cushions
of state. But they clambered up the sides of the caliph's seat, and,
placing themselves each on one of his shoulders, began to whisper
prayers in his ears; and his patience was almost exhausted when the
acclamations of the troops announced the approach of Fakreddin. He
hastened to their assistance, but being punctiliously religious and
likewise a great dealer in compliments, he made an harangue five times
more prolix and insipid than his harbingers had already delivered.
At length, however, all got in motion, and they descended from the
heights to the valley by the large steps which the emir had cut in the
rocks, and reached a building of hewn stone overspread by palm-trees and
crowned with nine domes. Beneath one of these domes the caliph was
entertained with excellent sherbet, with sweetbreads stewed in milk of
almonds, and other delicacies of which he was amazingly fond.
But, unfortunately, the sight of the emir's young daughter tempted the
prophet's vice-regent to violate the rites of hospitality. Vathek fell
violently in love with Nouronihar, who was sprightly as an antelope and
full of wanton gaiety; and though she was contracted to her cousin and
dearly beloved companion Gulchenrouz, he demanded her hand from
Fakreddin, who, rather than force his daughter to break her affiances,
presented his sabre to Vathek. "Strike your unhappy host," he said. "He
has lived long enough if he sees the prophet's vice-regent violate the
rites of hospitality." Nouronihar fell down in a swoon, and of this
swoon the emir took advantage to carry out a scheme which should deliver
him from his difficulties. He gave out that both the children had died
from the effect of the caliph's glances, and, having administered to
them a narcotic powder that would give them the appearance of death for
three days, had them conveyed away to the shores of a desolate lake,
where, attended by the dwarfs, they were put upon a meagre diet and told
that they were in the other world, expiating the little faults of which
their love was the cause.
But Nouronihar, remembering a dream in which she was told that she was
destined to be the caliph's wife, and thereby to possess the carbuncle
of Giamsched, and the treasures of the pre-Adamite sultans, indulged
doubts on the mode of her being, and scarcely could believe that she was
dead. She rose one morning while all were asleep, and having wandered
some distance from the lake, discovered that she knew the district.
This fact, and a meeting with Vathek, convinced her that she was alive,
and, submitting to the caliph's embraces, she consented to become his
bride, and to go with him to the subterranean palace.
_III.--The Palace of Subterranean Fire_
When Princess Carathis heard of the dissolute conduct of her son she
sent for Morakanabad.
"Let me expire in flames," she cried.
Having said this, she whirled herself round in a magical way, striking
poor Morakanabad in such a way as caused him to recoil. Then she ordered
her great camel, Aboufaki, to be brought, and, attended by her two
hideous and one-eyed negresses, Nerkes and Cafour, set out to surprise
the lovers. She burst in upon them, foaming with indignation, and said
to Vathek: "Free thyself from the arms of this paltry doxy; drown her in
the water before me, and instantly follow my guidance." But Vathek
replied civilly, but decisively, that he was taking Nouronihar with him;
and the princess, having heard her declare that she would follow him
beyond the Kaf in the land of the Afrits, was appeased, and pronounced
Nouronihar a girl of both courage and science.
With a view, however, of preventing any further trouble arising from
Gulchenrouz, of whose affection for his cousin Vathek had informed her,
she sought to capture the boy, intending to sacrifice him to the giaour.
But as he was fleeing from her he fell into the arms of a genius, the
same good old genius who, happening on the cruel giaour at the instant
of his growling in the horrible chasm, had rescued the fifty little
victims which the impiety of Vathek had devoted to his maw. The genius
placed Gulchenrouz in a nest higher than the clouds, and there kept him
ever young.
Nor was this the only hope of the princess's that was doomed to be
frustrated. She learnt from her astrolabes and instruments of magic that
Motavakel, availing himself of the disgust which was now inveterate
against his brother, had incited commotions among the populace, made
himself master of the palace, and actually invested the great tower. So
she reluctantly abandoned the idea of accompanying Vathek to Istakar,
and returned to Samarah; while he, attended by Nouronihar, resumed his
march and quickly reached the valley of Rocnabad. Here the poor Santons,
filled with holy energy, having bustled to light up wax torches in their
oratories and to expand the Koran on their ebony desks, went forth to
meet the caliph with baskets of honeycomb, dates, and melons. Vathek
gave them but a surly reception. "Fancy not," said he, "that you can
detain me; your presents I condescend to accept, but beg you will let me
be quiet, for I am not overfond of resisting temptation. Yet, as it is
not decent for personages so reverend to return on foot, and as you have
not the appearance of expert riders, my eunuchs shall tie you on your
asses, with the precaution that your backs be not turned towards me, for
they understand etiquette."
Even this outrage could not persuade Vathek's good genius to desert him,
and he made one final effort to save the caliph from the fate awaiting
him. Disguised as a shepherd, and pouring forth from his flute such
melodies as softened even the heart of Vathek, he confronted him in his
path, and warned him so solemnly against pursuing his journey that when
night fell almost every one of his attendants had deserted him. But
Vathek, in his obduracy, went on, and at length arrived at the mountain
which contains the vast ruins of Istakar and the entrance to the realm
of Eblis.
Nouronihar and he, having ascended the steps of a vast staircase of
black marble, reached the terrace, which was flagged with squares of
marble and resembled a smooth expanse of water. There, by the moonlight,
they read an inscription which proclaimed that, despite the fact that
Vathek had violated the conditions of the parchment, he and Nouronihar
would be allowed to enter the palace of subterranean fire.
Scarcely had these words been read when the mountain trembled, and the
rock yawned and disclosed within it a staircase of polished marble, down
which they descended. At the bottom they found their way impeded by a
huge portal of ebony, which, opening at the giaour's command, revealed
to them a place which, though roofed with a vaulted ceiling, was so
spacious and lofty that at first they took it for an immeasurable plain.
In the midst of this immense hall a vast multitude was incessantly
passing, who severally kept their right hands on their hearts, without
once regarding anything about them. They had all the livid paleness of
death; their eyes, deep-sunk in their sockets, resembled those
phosphoric meteors that glimmer by night in places of interment. Some
stalked slowly along, absorbed in profound reverie; some, shrieking with
agony, ran furiously about like tigers wounded with poisonous arrows;
whilst others, grinding their teeth in rage, foamed along, more frantic
than the wildest maniacs. They all avoided each other, and, though
surrounded by a multitude that no one could number, each wandered at
random, unheedful of the rest, as if alone on a desert no foot had
trodden.
Vathek and Nouronihar, frozen with terror at a sight so baleful,
demanded of the giaour what these appearances might mean, and why these
ambulating spectres never withdrew their hands from their hearts.
"Perplex not yourselves," replied he, bluntly, "with so much at once;
you will soon be acquainted with all. Let us haste and present you to
Eblis."
They continued their way through the multitude, and after some time
entered a vast tabernacle carpeted with the skins of leopards and filled
with an infinity of elders with streaming beards and Afrits in complete
armour, all of whom had prostrated themselves before the ascent of a
lofty eminence, on the top of which, upon a globe of fire, sat the
formidable Eblis. He received Vathek's and Nouronihar's homage, and
invited them to enjoy whatever the palace afforded--the treasures of the
pre-Adamite sultans and their bickering sabres and those talismans which
compel the Dives to open the subterranean expanses of the mountain of
Kaf.
The giaour then conducted them to a hall of great extent, covered with a
lofty dome, round which appeared fifty portals of bronze, secured with
as many fastenings of iron. A funereal gloom prevailed over the whole
scene. Here, upon two beds of incorruptible cedar, lay recumbent the
fleshless forms of pre-Adamite kings, who had been monarchs of the whole
earth; they still possessed enough of life to be conscious of their
deplorable condition; their eyes retained a melancholy motion; they
regarded each other with looks of the deepest dejection, each holding
his right hand motionless on his heart. Soliman Ben Daoud, the most
eminent of them, told Vathek the story of his great state, of his
worship of fire and the hosts of the sky, and of heaven's vengeance upon
him. "I am in torments, ineffable torments!" said he. "An unrelenting
fire preys upon my heart." Having uttered this exclamation, Soliman
raised his hands towards heaven in token of supplication, and the caliph
discerned through his bosom, which was as transparent as crystal, his
heart enveloped in flames. At a sight so full of horror, Nouronihar fell
back like one petrified into the arms of Vathek, who cried out with a
convulsive sob: "O Mohammed! remains there no more mercy?"
"None, none!" replied the malicious Dive. "Know, miserable prince, thou
art now in the abode of vengeance and despair! A few days are allotted
thee as respite, and then thy heart also shall be kindled like those of
the other worshippers of Eblis."
This, indeed, was the dreadful fate of Vathek and Nouronihar, a fate
indeed to which the Princess Carathis was also most righteously
condemned; for Vathek, knowing that the principles by which his mother
had perverted his youth had been the cause of his perdition, summoned
her to the palace of subterranean fire and enrolled her among the
votaries of Eblis. Carathis entered the dome of Soliman, and she too
marched in triumph through the vapour of perfumes.
* * * * *