Beckford's _History of the Caliph Vathek_, which was written in
French, was translated by the Rev. Samuel Henley, who had the
temerity to publish the English version--described as a
translation from the Arabic--in 1786, before the original had
appeared. The French version was published in Lausanne and in
Paris in 1787. An interest in Oriental literature had been
awakened early in the eighteenth century by Galland's
epoch-making versions of _The Arabian Nights_ (1704-1717), _The
Turkish Tales_ (1708) and _The Persian Tales_ (1714), which were
all translated into English during the reign of Queen Anne. Many
of the pseudo-translations of French authors, such as Gueulette,
who compiled _The Chinese Tales_, _Mogul Tales_, _Tartarian
Tales_, and _Peruvian Tales_, and Jean-Paul Bignon, who presented
_The Adventures of Abdallah_, were quickly turned into English;
and the Oriental story became so fashionable a form that didactic
writers eagerly seized upon it as a disguise for moral or
philosophical reflection. The Eastern background soon lost its
glittering splendour and colour, and became a faded, tarnished
tapestry, across which shadowy figures with outlandish names and
English manners and morals flit to and fro. Addison's _Vision of
Mirza_ (1711), Johnson's _Rasselas_ (1759), and various essays in
_The Rambler_, Dr. Hawkesworth's _Almoran and Hamet_ (1761),
Langhorne's _Solyman and Almena_ (1762), Ridley's _Tales of the
Genii_ (1764), and Mrs. Sheridan's _History of Nourjahad_ (1767)
were among the best and most popular of the Anglo-Oriental
stories that strove to inculcate moral truths. In their
oppressive air of gravity, Beckford, with his implacable hatred
of bores, could hardly have breathed. One of the most amazing
facts about his wild fantasy is that it was the creation of an
English brain. The idea of _Vathek_ was probably suggested to
Beckford by the witty Oriental tales of Count Antony Hamilton and
of Voltaire. The character of the caliph, who desired to know
everything, even the sciences which did not exist, is sketched in
the spirit of the French satirists, who turned Oriental
extravagance into delightful mockery. Awed into reverence ere the
close by the sombre grandeur of his own conception of the halls
of Eblis, Beckford cast off the flippant mood in which he had set
out and rose to an exalted solemnity.
Beckford's mind was so richly stored with the jewels of Eastern
legend that it was inevitable he should shower from his treasury
things new and old, but everything which passes through the
alembic of his imagination is transmuted almost beyond
recognition. The episode of the sinners with the flaming hearts
has been traced[66] to a scene in the _Mogul Tales_, where Aboul
Assam saw three men standing mute in postures of sorrow before a
book on which were inscribed the words: "Let no man touch this
divine treatise who is not perfectly pure." When Aboul Assam
enquired of their fate they unbuttoned their waistcoats, and
through their skin, which appeared like crystal, he saw their
hearts encompassed with fire. In Beckford's story this grotesque
scene assumes an awful and moving dignity. From _The Adventure of
Abdallah, Son of Hanif_, Beckford derived the conception of a
visit to the regions of Eblis, whom, however, by a wave of his
wand, he transforms from a revolting ogre to a stately
prince.[67]
To read _Vathek_ is like falling asleep in a huge Oriental palace
after wandering alone through great, echoing halls resplendent
with a gorgeous arras, on which are displayed the adventures of
the caliph who built the palaces of the five senses. In our dream
the caliph and his courtiers come to life, and we awake dazzled
with the memory of a myriad wonders. There throng into our mind a
crowd of unearthly forms--aged astrologers, hideous Giaours,
gibbering negresses, graceful boys and maidens, restless, pacing
figures with their hands on their hearts, and a formidable
prince--whose adventures are woven into a fantastic but distinct
and definite pattern around the three central personages, the
caliph Vathek, his exquisitely wicked mother Carathis, and the
bewitching Nouronihar. The fatal palace of Eblis, with its lofty
columns and gloomy towers of an architecture unknown in the
annals of the earth, looms darkly in our imagination. Beckford
alludes, with satisfaction, to _Vathek_ as a "story so horrid
that I tremble while relating it, and have not a nerve in my
frame but vibrates like an aspen,"[68] and in the _Episodes_
leads us with an unhallowed pleasure into other abodes of
horror--a temple adorned with pyramids of skulls festooned with
human hair, a cave inhabited by reptiles with human faces, and an
apartment whose walls were hung with carpets of a thousand kinds
and a thousand hues, which moved slowly to and fro as if stirred
by human creatures stifling beneath their weight. But Beckford
passes swiftly from one mood to another, and was only momentarily
fascinated by terror. So infinite is the variety of _Vathek_ in
scenery and in temper that it seems like its wealthy, eccentric,
author secluded in Fonthill Abbey, to dwell apart in defiant,
splendid isolation.
It is impossible to understand or appreciate _Vathek_ apart from
Beckford's life and character, which contain elements almost as
grotesque and fantastic as those of his romance. He was no
visionary dreamer, content to build his pleasure-domes in air. He
revelled in the golden glories of good Haroun-Alraschid,[69] but
he craved too for solid treasures he could touch and handle, for
precious jewels, for rare, beautiful volumes, for curious, costly
furniture. The scenes of splendour portrayed in _Vathek_ were
based on tangible reality.[70] Beckford's schemes in later
life--his purchase of Gibbon's entire library, his twice-built
tower on Lansdown Hill, were as grandiose and ambitious as those
of an Eastern caliph. The whimsical, Puckish humour, which helped
to counteract the strain of gloomy bitterness in his nature, was
early revealed in his _Biographical Memoirs of Extraordinary
Painters_ and in his burlesques of the sentimental novels of the
day, which were accepted by the compiler of _Living Authors_
(1817) as a serious contribution to fiction by one Miss Jacquetta
Agneta Mariana Jenks. Moore,[71] in his _Journal_, October 1818,
remarks:
"The two mock novels, _Azemia_ and _The Elegant
Enthusiast_, were written to ridicule the novels
written by his sister, Mrs. Harvey (I think), who read
these parodies on herself quite innocently."
Even in the gloomy regions of Eblis, Beckford will not wholly
repress his sense of the ridiculous. Carathis, unawed by the
effulgence of his infernal majesty, behaves like a buffoon,
shouting at the Dives and actually attempting to thrust a Soliman
from his throne, before she is finally whirled away with her
heart aflame. The calm politeness with which the dastardly
Barkiaroukh consents to a blood-curdling murder, the sardonic
dialogue between Vathek on the edge of the precipice and the
Giaour concealed in the abyss, the buoyantly high-spirited
description of the plump Indian kicked and pursued like "an
invulnerable football," the oppressive horror of the subterranean
recesses, the mischievous pleasantry of the Gulchenrouz idyll
reveal different facets of Beckford's ever-varying temper. In
_Vathek_, Beckford found expression not only for his devotion to
the Eastern outlook on life, but also for his own strangely
coloured, vehement personality. The interpreter walks ever at our
elbow whispering into our ear his human commentary on Vathek's
astounding adventures.
Beckford's pictures are remarkable for definite precision of
outline. There are no vague hints and suggestions, no lurking
shadows concealing untold horrors. The quaint dwarfs perched on
Vathek's shoulders, the children chasing blue butterflies,
Nouronihar and her maidens on tiptoe, with their hair floating in
the breeze, stand out in clear relief, as if painted on a fresco.
The imagery is so lucid that we are able to follow with
effortless pleasure the intricate windings of a plot which at
Beckford's whim twists and turns through scenes of wonderful
variety. Amid his wild, erratic excursions he never loses sight
of the end in view; the story, with all its vagaries, is
perfectly coherent. This we should expect from one who "loved to
bark a tough understanding."[72] It is the intellectual strength
and exuberant vitality behind Beckford's Oriental scenes that
lend them distinction and power.
_The History of the Caliph Vathek_ did not set a fashion. It is
true that the Orient sometimes formed the setting of nineteenth
century novels, as in Disraeli's _Alvoy_ (1833), where for a
brief moment, when the hero's torch is extinguished by bats on
his entry into subterranean portals, we find ourselves in the
abode of wonder and terror; but not till Meredith's _Shaving of
Shagpal_ (1856) do we meet again Beckford's kinship with the
East, and his gift for fantastic burlesque.