Everything Is Possible For An Eccentric, Especially When He Is English – Part Eighteen
William Beckford (1760 – 1844)
Whether William Beckford was truly an eccentric or just behaved in a way that was untypical of his time – but perhaps that is a definition of eccentricity – is a matter for debate. A modern biographer wrote of him; “he was as much a martyr as Wilde, and almost certainly a more interesting and civilised man” while Lord Byron called him “the Great Apostle of Pederasty.” Sex was at the heart of the scandal which engulfed Beckford, having been caught in 1784, at least according to the story promulgated by his paramour’s uncle, “whipping Courtenay in some posture or another.”
Married at the time and bisexual if not primarily homosexual, Beckford tried to see out the furore. Although he was never charged – Courtenay was a minor at the time and George III not only refused Beckford’s application for a peerage but wished that he could be hanged – he eventually went into exile, spending most of the next decade in Portugal before returning to Blighty. It was in Portugal that he wrote the extraordinary History of the Caliph Vathek, published in 1786, in which the Caliph is satiated with sensual pleasures and builds a tower so he can penetrate the forbidden secrets of heaven itself – a blueprint for the rest of his life.
The primary source, though, of Beckford’s troubles was his fabulous wealth, which he inherited at the age of ten upon the death of his father, whose sugar plantations and other interests provided his son with an annual income of around £100,000. Whilst this funded a splendid education – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was briefly his piano tutor – it meant he could spend with gay abandon. Like many of his class Beckford was a collector of art but eschewed the classical marbles that were the rage, concentrating on Italian quattrocento paintings and exotic objets d’art or, as William Hazlitt rather sniffily put it, “idle rarities and curiosities or mechanical skill.” Beckford was notorious for compulsive purchases and just as readily selling pieces only to often buy them again at vastly inflated prices.
The other money pit was the transformation of Fonthill Abbey into a gothic cathedral-like structure, the impetus for the building work being Beckford’s acquisition of the library of Edward Gibbons and the need for somewhere to put his ever-growing collection of art. With the assistance of architect James Wyatt he built an enormous tower which stood 300 feet tall and had four bedrooms some 120 feet off the ground. Although it was far from complete Beckford organised a grand opening party in 1800 and whilst most of respectable society shunned the event, Lord Nelson and Emma Hamilton attended.
Beckford’s lifestyle and his collection of fey attendants, including a dwarf who guarded the38 feet tall doors at the entrance, excited comment and rumours about homosexual orgies and practices. His neighbour, Sir Richard Hoare from Stourhead, asked for a tour in 1806, an act which so scandalised the neighbourhood that Hoare was forced to apologise for his actions and never saw Beckford again.
By 1822 Beckford was in debt and put the Abbey and his art collection up for sale, an event which excited much excitement. John Farquhar, who had made his fortune selling gunpowder in India, bought it for £330,000 and sold off much of the art collection, part of which the irrepressible Beckford, back in funds again, bought once more. By this time he had moved, complete with entourage to Bath, buying 20, Lansdowne Crescent and 1, Lansdowne Place West which he connected by building an archway and in 1836 acquired nos 18 and 19, the former he left empty to ensure peace and quiet. When he died in 1844, his assets amounted to just £80,000.
His tower at Fonthill Abbey also had an unhappy ending. It was so badly built and unstable, due to inadequate foundations, that it collapsed five times, Beckford rebuilding it each time, but then on 21st December 1825 it fell down for the final time, the new owners not bothering to reassemble it and so very little of his folly remains today.
