The History of Caliph Vathek

The History of the Caliph Vathek,
by William

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William Beckford
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Title: The History of the Caliph Vathek
Author: William Beckford
Release Date: April 20, 2005 [eBook #2060]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
HISTORY OF THE CALIPH VATHEK***

Transcribed from the 1887 Cassell & Company edition by David Price,
email [email protected]

THE HISTORY OF THE CALIPH VATHEK
INTRODUCTION
William Beckford, born in 1759, the year before the accession of King
George the Third, was the son of an Alderman who became twice Lord
Mayor of London. His family, originally of Gloucestershire, had
thriven by the plantations in Jamaica; and his father, sent to school in
England, and forming a school friendship at Westminster with Lord
Mansfield, began the world in this country as a merchant, with
inheritance of an enormous West India fortune. William Beckford the
elder became Magistrate, Member of Parliament, Alderman. Four years
before the birth of William Beckford the younger he became one of the
Sheriffs of London, and three years after his son's birth he was Lord
Mayor. As Mayor he gave very sumptuous dinners that made epochs in
the lives of feeding men. His son's famous "History of the Caliph
Vathek" looks as if it had been planned for an Alderman's dream after a
very heavy dinner at the Mansion House. There is devotion in it to the
senses, emphasis on heavy dining. Vathek piqued himself on being the
greatest eater alive; but when the Indian dined with him, though the
tables were thirty times covered, there was still want of more food for
the voracious guest. There is thirst: for at one part of the dream, when
Vathek's mother, his wives, and some eunuchs "assiduously employed
themselves in filling bowls of rock crystal, and emulously presented
them to him, it frequently happened that his avidity exceeded their zeal,
insomuch that he would prostrate himself upon the ground to lap up the
water, of which he could never have enough." And the nightmare
incidents of the Arabian tale all culminate in a most terrible heartburn.
Could the conception of Vathek have first come to the son after a City
dinner?
Though a magnificent host, the elder Beckford was no glutton. In the
year of his first Mayoralty, 1763, Beckford, stood by the side of
Alderman Wilkes, attacked for his No. 45 of The North Briton. As
champion of the popular cause, when he had been again elected to the
Mayoralty, Beckford, on the 23rd of May, 1770, went up to King
George the Third at the head of the Aldermen and Livery with an

address which the king snubbed with a short answer. Beckford asked
leave to reply, and before His Majesty recovered breath from his
astonishment, proceeded to reply in words that remain graven in gold
upon his monument in Guildhall. Young Beckford, the author of
"Vathek," was then a boy not quite eleven years old, an only son; and
he was left three years afterwards, by his father's death, heir to an
income of a hundred thousand a year, with a million of cash in hand.
During his minority young Beckford's mother, who was a
granddaughter of the sixth Earl of Abercorn, placed him under a private
tutor. He was taught music by Mozart; and the Earl of Chatham, who
had been his father's friend, thought him so fanciful a boy--"all air and
fire"--that he advised his mother to keep the Arabian Nights out of his
way. Happily she could not, for Vathek adds the thousand and second
to the thousand and one tales, with the difference that it joins to wild
inventions in the spirit of the East touches of playful extravagance that
could come only from an English humourist who sometimes laughed at
his own tale, and did not mind turning its comic side to the reader. The
younger William Beckford had been born at his father's seat in
Wiltshire, Fonthill Abbey; and at seventeen amused himself with a
caricature "History of Extraordinary Painters," encouraging the
house-keeper of Fonthill to show the pictures to visitors as works of Og
of Basan and other worthies in her usual edifying manner.
Young Beckford's education was continued for a year and a half at
Geneva. He then travelled in Italy and the Low Countries, and it was at
this time that he amused himself by writing, at the age of about
twenty-two, "Vathek" in French, at a single sitting; but