William Beckford Biography

Dromo's Den

BECKFORD, William (1760-1844). An English author, born Oct. 1, 1760, he was the son of William Beckford, alderman and twice Lord Mayor of London. When he was about 11 years old, his father died, and he inherited the greater part of a very large fortune, consisting of estates in Jamaica and of Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire. His annual revenue is said to have exceeded £100,000. Young Beckford evinced unusual intellectual precocity; for before he was 17 years old he composed a satirical essay, entitled Biographical Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters, a sort of parody on the usual biographies of eminent artists. In 1777 he went with a tutor to Geneva, where he remained about 18 months; and in the years succeeding he made tours through Flanders, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. In 1783 he married Lady Margaret Gordon, daughter of the fourth Earl of Aboyne, arid left at once for Switzerland, where they remained until the death of Lady Margaret in 1786. He had already written Vathek: An Arabian Tale. Of its composition, which may be assigned to 1781 or 1782, be says: "lt took me three days and two nights of hard labor. I never took off my clothes the whole time." This famous romance, written in French and published at Lausanne and Paris in 1787, was translated from the French MS. by Samuel Henley and published, without Beckford's consent, in London in 1786: In 1790 Beckford sat in Parliament for Hendon; in 1794 he accepted the Chiltern Hundreds and again left England. He went to Portugal, purchased an estate near Cintra, and occupied for a time that "paradise" which Byron commemorated in Childe Harold. Tormented by unrest, he returned to England and settled in 1796 at Fonthill, where he sought to realize the. magnificence of his Oriental dreams. He erected a new building at Fonthill, the most prominent feature of which was a tower about 300 feet high. Beckford resided there till 1822, when he was compelled to dispose of the estate and house, with all its curiosities. It was bought by Colonel Farquhar for £330,000. Soon after, the great tower, which had been raised upon an insecure foundation, fell to the ground. On the sale of Fonthill, Beckford removed to Bath and immediately proceeded to erect another lofty building, the plan of which also included a tower, 100 feet high. While residing there, he did not mingle in Bath society; and the most improbable stories concerning the rich and morose genius in their neighborhood were circulated among the citizens and were believed by them. During all his life Beckford was a hard-working student with a passion for books. Some of his purchases were Imperial in their way. He bought Gibbon's library at Lausanne, to amuse himself when he happened to be in that neighborhood. He went there; read in the fierce way that he wrote, three days and two nights at a sitting; grew weary of his purchase, and handed it over to his physician, Dr. Schöll. Besides Vathek and his youthful essay, Beckford published two sentimental novels and sketches of his travels. Consult Garnett, Vathek, with a critical essay (London, 1893); and Melville, The Life and Letters of William Beckford of Fonthill (London, 1910).

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. III (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 33-34.