where he stayed for some months, visiting various cities and country
houses, and composing his first book, “Biographical Memoirs of
Extraordinary Painters.” It was well in keeping with the curious
contradictions of Beckford’s character, that, while his letters before
and after, and even while he was engaged upon the “Memoirs,” were so
full of dreams, this work should be an amusing burlesque. “I will
explain the origin of the ‘Memoirs,’” Beckford said to Cyrus Redding
in 1835, fifty-five years after its publication. “The housekeeper at
old Fonthill, as is customary, used to get her fee by exhibiting the
pictures to those who came to see the building. Once or twice I heard
her give the most extraordinary names to different artists. I wondered
how such nonsense could enter the brain of woman. More than this, in
her conceit she would at times expatiate upon excellencies of which the
picture before her had no trace. The temptation was irresistible in
my humour. I was but seventeen. My pen was quickly in hand composing
the ‘Memoirs.’ In future the housekeeper had a printed guide in aid
of her descriptions. She caught up my phrases; the fictitious names
of the wives, too, whom I had given to my imaginary painters, were
soon learned in addition; her descriptions became more picturesque,
her language more graphic than ever, to the sight-seeing people. Mine
was the text-book, whoever exhibited the paintings. The book was soon
on the tongues of all the domestics. Many were the quotations current
upon the merits of Og of Basan and Watersouchy of Amsterdam. Before a
picture of Rubens or Murillo there was often a charming dissertation
upon the pencil of Herr Sucrewasser of Vienna, or that great artist,
Blunderbussiana of Venice. I used to listen unobserved until I was
ready to kill myself with laughter, at the authorities quoted to the
squires and farmers of Wiltshire, who took all for gospel. It was the
most ridiculous thing in effect you can conceive. Between sixty and
seventy years ago people did not know as much of the fine arts as they
do now. Not but that they have still much to learn.” The biographies
of Aldrovandus Magnus of Bruges, of Andrew Guelph and Og of Basan,
disciples of the former, of Sucrewasser of Vienna, Blunderbussiana of
Dalmatia, and Watersouchy of Amsterdam, make up, as the author said in
his last years, “a laughable book”; but, indeed, it is more than that,
for it contains much brilliant satire on the Dutch and Flemish schools,
showing that the writer, although so young, had profited by his early
training in art. “[It is] a performance,” Lockhart wrote in 1834, “in
which the buoyancy of juvenile spirits sees of the results of already
extensive observation, and the judgments of a refined (though far too
fastidious and exclusive) taste.”
In June 1780 Beckford, with Lettice again as his companion, went abroad
for the second time, and visited Holland, Germany, Austria and Italy,
staying for a while at Naples with his relative, Sir William Hamilton,
whose first wife was then living. During this tour the young traveller
made notes that soon after he expanded and printed under the title of
“Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents.” This book is composed of
impressionist sketches made as his mind dictated, and nowhere did he
allow himself to be shackled by the rules laid down by the compilers
of works of travel. If anyone wants full particulars of a town, either
topographical or historical, it is not to “Dreams, Waking Thoughts,
and Incidents” he must turn; but if he desires exquisite word-pictures
inspired by a brilliant imagination and conveyed with great literary
skill, these he can find to his heart’s content. The story goes
that the book was suppressed by the author acting on the advice of
his friends, who represented that the brilliant imagination therein
displayed would create a prejudice against him when he should enter
the practical field of public life, but it can scarcely be contended
that this was the reason why at the eleventh hour it was withdrawn.
As a matter of fact there were rumours, started no one knows how,
of grave misconduct on Beckford’s part, and probably it was thought
that the tendency to romance laid bare in the work might give some
colour to them. These rumours endured through Beckford’s life, and the
scandal was certainly widely circulated, but there seems to have been
absolutely no grounds whatever for the charges. That Beckford should
deny the charges was a matter of course, and, indeed, he protested
passionately against them; but even John Mitford, an envenomed critic
of his brother-author, had to admit that Samuel Richard White,
Beckford’s solicitor, who knew more about the matter than anyone else,
after his client’s death as during his life, declared his firm belief
in Beckford’s innocence.
In due course there were the coming-of-age festivities at Fonthill,
and then another Continental tour, when Beckford was accompanied by
so large a suite that at Augsburg he was mistaken for the Emperor
of Austria, who at the time was known to be travelling incognito to
Italy. Early in 1783, when he was two and twenty years of age, he came
to England, saw, wooed, and married Lady Margaret Gordon, the sole
surviving daughter of the Fourth Earl of Aboyne.
The years 1783 to 1786 make little call upon Beckford’s biographer.
The honeymoon had been spent in travelling, and when it was over the
bride and bridegroom, still ardent lovers, stayed for a while at
Cologny, near Geneva. Towards the end of the year, having made up
their minds to sojourn for an indefinite period under southern skies,
they decided to rent a more commodious residence, and took up their
quarters at the Château de la Tour, near Vevey. There, in June 1784,
was born a daughter, Susan Euphemia, and, on 14th May 1786, another,
Margaret Maria Elizabeth. A fortnight later the young mother died. The
marriage had been an ideal union, and Beckford’s grief was terrible.
His friends, fearful of his losing his reason or taking his life, moved
him from place to place, hoping that change of scene might distract his
thoughts, even momentarily, from the loss. To some extent this plan was
successful, for after some weeks Beckford became again a reasonable
being. He allowed arrangements to be made for his children to live
with his mother, then residing at West End, between the villages
of Hampstead and Kilburn; but himself continued to move restlessly
from town to town, seeking, not change of place so much as change of
thought. Though time mercifully mitigated the transports of his grief,
it never ousted from his mind the memory of his gracious, beautiful
wife. Rarely he spoke of her, but when he did mention her it was in a
way which made it clear that she was always in his mind; though his
wealth and genius made him the target of fortune-hunters, he never
even thought to marry again; and his tender memories of her, enduring
through the passage of years, acting upon an emotional nature, may
have had more to do with his subsequent retirement than is generally
supposed.
Before Beckford left England for his second Continental tour he had
begun the composition of a “Suite des Contes arabes.” Of this the
principal story was “Vathek,” which he completed while he was abroad.
He sent the manuscript in 1783 to his friend, the Rev. Samuel Henley,
who was delighted with it, and volunteered to translate it into
English. The offer was accepted, but Henley proceeded leisurely with
the work, which, with the notes added by him, was not finished until
early in 1786. Beckford, however, was desirous to insert in “Vathek”
the stories of the Princes whom his hero met in the Hall of Eblis,
and he told Henley that on no account must the publication of the
translation precede that of the original. Henley, however, ignored the
author’s injunction, and issued the translation later in the year, and
made matters worse by stating that the tale was of Eastern origin:
Beckford hereupon made the only rejoinder in his power, and issued the
French original at Lausanne.
After bringing his children to England Beckford returned to the
Continent, where he remained until 1794, visiting Spain and Portugal,
where he wrote another book of travels, and staying for some time in
Paris, where he witnessed the fall of the Bastille and the execution
of Louis XVI. At Paris he was at one time mistaken for an English spy,
and he was in danger of arrest, from which he was saved by the devotion
of the second-hand bookseller, Chardin, who contrived his escape in
disguise to England, for which he was rewarded by Beckford with a
pension. Subsequently Beckford endeavoured, through his agent at Paris,
to set on foot, in 1797, negotiations for a peace between France and
this country.
After 1794 Beckford seldom left England except to pay brief visits to
Paris. At Fonthill he employed James Wyatt, the architect, to make
improvements in the house his father had built; and subsequently he
erected a new house, the famous Fonthill Abbey, a magnificent but
unsubstantial Gothic structure. Once Beckford was asked if the Abbey
was built from his own plan. “No, I have sins enough to answer for,
without having that laid to my charge,” he answered. “Wyatt had an
opportunity of raising a splendid monument to his fame, but he missed
it.” But whatever was said against the Abbey, no one had anything
but praise for the gardens and park, which were, indeed, beautiful.
Beckford lived at Fonthill until 1822, when, owing to the depreciation
of his property in the West Indies, he sold the place and moved to
Bath, where he remained until his death twenty-two years later.
Though Beckford had many visitors at Fonthill, he was singularly
independent of company, having more resources in himself than usually
falls to the lot of a man. “I love building, planting, gardening,
whatever will keep me employed in the open air,” he said; and, while
the Abbey was being built and the grounds laid out, he might have been
seen at all hours of the day, and sometimes, too, at night, watching
the progress of the operations. He charged himself with the welfare
of his workmen, of whom there were never less than two hundred in his
employ; he visited the poor on his estates, and made provision for
those who could not help themselves.
Beckford’s indoor occupations were numerous. It has been said, and with
some show of reason, that he was the most accomplished man of his time.
He was a good musician, he could sketch, he spoke five modern European
tongues, and could write three of them with elegance, he was well
acquainted with Persian, Arabic, and, of course, the Latin and Greek
classics; while his reading was at least as extensive as that of any of
his contemporaries. Anyone who has these accomplishments can scarcely
be dull, and Beckford, in addition, was an enthusiastic collector of
books, pictures, and other treasures, in pursuit of which he frequently
went to London to inspect the dealers’ stocks of scarce volumes and
fine paintings. Though he yielded to none in his love of tall copies,
splendid bindings and rare editions, he was student as well as
collector: and it was characteristic of his tastes that while, in later
life, he sometimes disposed of a picture, he never sold a book. Even as
in his youth he secluded himself at Lausanne to read Gibbon’s library,
which he had purchased, so afterwards he rarely put on his shelves any
volume until he had made himself acquainted with its contents; and,
large as his library was, to the end of his days he could without a
moment’s hesitation put his hand on any book or print he possessed. It
was his habit to annotate his books, and to write some brief criticism
on the fly-leaf. Sometimes his comments covered three or four pages,
and one of the most valuable items offered at the sale of his library,
in 1882–1883, was this item, knocked down to Quaritch for forty-two
pounds: “Beckfordiana. Transcript from the autograph notes written by
Mr Beckford on the fly-leaves of various works in his library, 7 vols.,
Manuscript (folio).” His comments were unusually shrewd, and often so
caustic as to suggest that had he been obliged to earn his living he
might well have turned an honest penny by contributing to one or other
of the quarterlies in the days when severity was the motto of these
periodicals.
In Wiltshire Beckford rarely went beyond the limits of his estate,
except when driving to London; but at Bath he might occasionally be
seen at a concert or a flower show, and not infrequently riding on his
cream-coloured Arabian, either alone, attended by three grooms, two
behind and one in front as an outrider, or in company with the Duke of
Hamilton or a friend. He was always dressed in a great-coat with cloth
buttons, a buff-striped waistcoat, breeches of the same kind of cloth
as the coat, and brown top boots, the fine cotton stockings appearing
over them, in the fashion of thirty or forty years before. He wore his
hair powdered, and with his handsome face and fine eyes looked every
inch the fine old English gentleman.
These appearances in public were the only difference between the life
Beckford led at Fonthill and at Bath. In fine weather it was his
invariable custom to rise early, ride to the tower he had erected
at Lansdown, look at the flowers, and walk back to his house for
breakfast. He would then read until noon, transact business with his
steward, and afterwards ride out for exercise, again visiting the
tower, if there was any planting or building going on. After dinner,
which in those days was served in the afternoon, unless he had a
visitor, he would retire to his library, and occupy himself with his
correspondence, his books and his prints, and the examination of
catalogues of sales sent to him by the London dealers. This routine
was seldom varied, except when he went to London, where by this time
he had removed from No. 22 Grosvenor Square to a house, No. 127 Park
Street, overlooking Hyde Park, which, owing to its somewhat unwholesome
insanitary condition, he styled, and dated from, “Cesspool House.” In
1841, because of its many defects, he gave up this residence.
The Bath aristocracy and the fashionable folk who flocked to the
watering-place could not understand how books and pictures, music
and gardens, could occupy anyone to the exclusion of participation
in the gaieties of the town; and the rumours that had been current
in Wiltshire society were revived with interest in the little
Somersetshire valley. The most awful crimes were placed to his account,
and with them accusations of devil-worship and the study of astrology.
Nothing was too terrible or too absurd with which to charge the man
of mystery, and, we are told, “surmises were current about a brood of
dwarfs that vegetated in an apartment built over the archway connecting
his two houses; and the vulgar, rich and poor alike, gave a sort of
half-credit to cabalistical monstrosities invoked in that apartment.”
Though in his later years Beckford rarely indulged in the pleasures of
authorship, he did not underrate his literary gifts, and he saw with
pleasure that “Vathek” was taking the place in English literature to
which it was entitled. New editions were called for, and in 1834 it
took its place among Bentley’s Standard Novels. The venture must have
been profitable, for Bentley became Beckford’s publisher-in-chief. He
at once took over the “Biographical Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters,”
and in 1834 issued “Italy, with Sketches of Spain and Portugal”--a
work that appeared in the same year also in Baudry’s European Library,
published in Paris. In 1835 Bentley brought out “Alcobaça and Batalha,”
and five years later republished this and the earlier book of travels
in one volume--the last edition of any of Beckford’s books issued in
the author’s lifetime. Beckford’s interest in the various publications
was very considerable, and his annoyance with adverse critics is only
to be compared with the anger he displayed when rival collectors at
auction sales snatched treasures from his grasp. The adverse critics
of “Italy, with Sketches of Spain and Portugal,” however, were few and
far between. It was, indeed, received with a chorus of praise, and no
one cried “Bravo!” louder than Lockhart, who reviewed the work in _The
Quarterly Review_.
Though Beckford lived to the patriarchal age of eighty-four, almost to
the last hour of his life he enjoyed good health. It has already been
said that when nearly eighty he declared he had never known a moment’s
_ennui_: few men have been able to say so much; yet there is no doubt
this was true, for he had stumbled upon the secret that only the idle
man is bored. Beckford was never idle; he had made so many interests
for himself that every moment of his day was occupied. A man of his age
who, in his last weeks, retains all his enthusiasms for his books, his
prints and his gardens, may well claim that he has made a success of
life. His intellectual power never waned, his sight was preserved to
him unimpaired, and at seventy-eight he could read from manuscript for
an hour and a half without resting. When his last illness overtook him,
he was busily engaged in marking a catalogue of M. Nodier’s library,
the sale of which at Paris his agent was to attend to make purchases:
he was as enthusiastic about his collections at the age of eighty-four
as he had been when he took up his residence at Fonthill fifty years
before.
Physically, too, considering his great age, he was wonderfully active,
and until within a few days of his death he took regular exercise
on foot and on horseback. When he was seventy-seven he astonished a
friend by mentioning that he had on the previous day at dusk ridden
from Cheapside to his house in Park Street; and a year later he stated,
“I never feel fatigue. I can walk twenty to thirty miles a day; and I
only use my carriage (in London) on account of its being convenient
to put a picture or book into it, which I happen to purchase in my
rambles.” At seventy-five his activity was so great that he could mount
rapidly to the top of the tower at Lansdown without halting--“no small
exertion,” comments Cyrus Redding feelingly, “for many who were fifteen
or twenty years younger”: and even eight years later, during his visits
to London, he would ride to Hampstead Heath, or through Hyde Park, and
along the Edgware Road to West End, and pull up his horse opposite the
spot where once had been the entrance to his mother’s house.
Most men who live to an advanced age have some theory to account for
it. Beckford had none, beyond believing that his days had probably been
prolonged by the fact that his life had been temperate, and that, as
he grew older, he took reasonable care of himself. “I enjoy too good
health, feel too happy, and am too much pleased with life to have any
inclination to throw it away for want of attention,” he said. “When I
am summoned I must go, though I should not much mind living another
hundred years, and, as far as my health goes at present, I see no
reason why I should not.” Thus, when going out he would put on an
overcoat, even if there were only the slightest wind stirring; and,
however interested or amused he might be, he would always retire early;
but while he took such precautions as these, he was in no sense a
valetudinarian. His love of fresh air, and his activity, together with
the regular life he led, undoubtedly had much to do with his attaining
his great age.
Until the last week of April 1844, Beckford occupied himself in his
usual way, walking and riding, and working in his library. Then
influenza laid hold of him, and though he struggled manfully against
it, at last there was no doubt that the end was near. He sent a last
laconic note to his surviving daughter, the Duchess of Hamilton, “Come
quick! quick!” and a day or two after her arrival, on 2nd May, he
expired, with perfect resignation, and, we are told, so peacefully that
those by his side could not tell the moment when he passed away.
His mortal remains were, on 11th May, interred in the Bath Abbey
Cemetery; but soon after they were removed, and reburied, more
appropriately, at Lansdown, under the shadow of his tower. On one side
of his tomb is a quotation from “Vathek,” “Enjoying humbly the most
precious gift of heaven to man--Hope”; and on another these lines from
his poem, “A Prayer”:
“Eternal Power!
Grant me, through obvious clouds one transient gleam
Of thy bright essence in my dying hour.”
Charles James Fox
Charles James Fox, one of the most brilliant personalities, if not,
indeed, the most brilliant personality, that flourished in the last
decades of the eighteenth century, was the third son of Henry Fox,
afterwards Baron Holland of Foxley, and Lady Georgiana Lennox, daughter
of Charles, second Duke of Richmond, a grandson of Charles II. The
future statesman was born on 24th January 1749, and as he grew up it
was thought that a resemblance to his royal ancestor could be traced
in his dark, harsh and saturnine features, that “derived a sort of
majesty from the addition of two black and shaggy eyebrows, which
sometimes concealed, but more frequently developed, the workings of
his mind.” He was a bright, lively and original child, but subject to
violent excesses of temper. “Charles is dreadfully passionate,” said
his mother. “What shall we do with him?” “Oh, never mind. He is a very
sensible little fellow, and he will learn to cure himself,” replied
his father, who perceived and was proud of the lad’s unusual ability.
“Let nothing be done to break his spirit; the world will effect that
business soon enough.”
At a private school at Wandsworth, and subsequently at Eton, where Dr
Philip Francis was his private tutor, the lad showed himself both
intelligent and diligent. His education was interrupted in 1763,
when his father took him to Paris and Spa, and at that early age
initiated him into the mysteries of gaming, the passion for which
was subsequently to exercise a most adverse influence on him. On his
return to Eton his newly acquired knowledge of the world demoralised
his companions, and he gave himself airs and thought himself a man
until the headmaster birched him, and so brought him down to earth. In
1764 he went to Hertford College, Oxford, preceded by a reputation for
Latin verse, a considerable knowledge of French, and a power of oratory
unusual in one so young, but which he attributed to the fact that at
home he had always been encouraged to think freely, and as freely to
express his opinions. At the University he read deeply in classics and
history, and the taste then developed endured through life, for, while
he indulged in many frivolities, he would in the midst of them steal a
few hours to devote to the books of which he never wearied. Towards the
end of his days he put his learning into harness, and wrote a history
of the reign of James II. and an account of the Revolution of 1688 that
do not deserve to be relegated to obscurity.
Much has been written about the faults of Fox, but some of them, at
least, should not be held greatly to his discredit, since they were
the faults of the age. Wine, women and cards were the occupations of
his companions, and not of the unintelligent only. Everybody drank and
drank deeply, drank in pursuit of pleasure, drank to drown sorrow.
“I dined at Holland House” (wrote the Right Honourable Charles Rigby
upon one occasion to George Selwyn), “where, though I drank claret with
the master of it from dinner till two in the morning, I could not wash
away the sorrow he is in at the shocking condition his eldest boy is
in.”
Fox, Sheridan, Pitt and, notably, Professor Porson were three-bottle
men, and it was not unusual for politicians to go to Westminster Hall
in a state of insobriety.
“Fox drinks what I should call a great deal, though he is not reckoned
to do so by his companions; Sheridan, excessively, and Grey more
than any of them; while Pitt, I am told, drinks as much as anybody,
generally more than any of his company, and is a pleasant, convivial
man at table,”
Sir Gilbert Elliot has recorded; and Lord Bulkeley wrote to the Marquis
of Buckingham à propos of Pitt bringing in the Declaratory Bill of the
powers of the Board of Control:
“It was an awkward day for him (owing to the defection of some
friends), and he felt it the more because he himself was low-spirited,
and overcome by the heat of the House, in consequence of having got
drunk the night before at your house in Pall Mall, with Mr Dundas and
the _Duchess of Gordon_! They must have had a hard bout of it, for even
Dundas, who is well used to the bottle, was affected by it, and spoke
remarkably ill, dull and tedious.”
One reads with amazement of a Chancellor of the Exchequer, a
Lord Chancellor and a Treasurer of the Navy--Pitt, Thurlow and
Dundas--excited by wine galloping through a turnpike gate without
paying the toll, and the man, mistaking them for highwaymen,
discharging his blunderbuss. This exploit was duly noted in “The
Rolliad.”
“Ah! think what danger on debauch attends!
Let Pitt o’er wine preach temperance to his friends,
How, as he wandered darkling o’er the plain,
His reason drowned in Jenkinson’s champagne,
A rustic’s hand, but righteous fate withstood,
Had shed a Premier’s for a robber’s blood.”