It was at Bath that Pitt and Sheridan lived, but its most eccentric
resident was William Beckford, the author of _Vathek_, who came to Bath
from Fonthill, not far from Salisbury. His father, a London alderman,
owned Fonthill, and died in 1770, leaving his son William, aged ten,
with $5,000,000 ready money and $500,000 annual income. He wrote
_Vathek_ in early life after extensive travels, but founded its scenes
and characters upon places and people at Fonthill. He then began
building Fonthill Abbey, shrouding his proceedings in the greatest
mystery and surrounding his estate with a wall twelve feet high and
seven miles long, guarded by _chevaux-de-frise_ to keep out intruders.
The building of the abbey was to him a romance pursued with wild
enthusiasm. So anxious was he to get it finished that he employed relays
of men, working day and night and throughout Sunday, keeping them
liberally supplied with liquor. The first tower was built of wood, four
hundred feet high, to see its effect, and it was then taken down and the
same form put up in wood covered with cement. This fell down, and the
third tower was built of masonry. When the idea of the abbey occurred to
Beckford he was extending a small summer-house, but he was in such a
hurry that he would not remove the summer-house to make a proper
foundation for the tower, but carried it up on the walls already
standing, the work being done in wretched style and chiefly by
semi-drunken men. He employed five hundred men day and night at the
work, and once the torches used set fire to the tower at the top, a
sight that he greatly enjoyed. Beckford lived at the abbey, practically
a hermit, for nearly twenty years, but his fortunes being impaired he
removed to Bath in 1822. Preparatory to selling Fonthill, he opened the
long-sealed place to public exhibition at a guinea a ticket, and sold
seventy-two hundred tickets. Then for thirty-seven days he conducted an
auction-sale of the treasures at Fonthill, charging a half-guinea
admission. He ultimately sold the estate for $1,750,000. In 1825 the
tower, which had been insecurely built, fell with a great crash, and so
frightened the new owner, who was an invalid, that, though unhurt by
the disaster, he died soon afterwards. The estate was again sold and the
abbey taken down, so that now only the foundations can be traced.