Gothic folly
Simon Raven
Beckford of Fonthill Brian Fothergill (Faber £13.50) If ever the good fairies blessed a cradle, it was that of William Beckford. Born in 1759 the only son of a millionaire Alderman and an earl's grand-daughter, he inherited both brass and breeding. He had, what was more, intelligence, taste, imagination and, despite a sickly boyhood, a very strong constitution. He had looks. He had style. He had the lot. If only the bad fairy hadn't come along at the last minute with her contribution: flatulence. Beckford had, among so much else, a fluent tongue and a fluent pen: more blessings, had he only known how to govern them, had he only known when to shut up.
It is possible that a normal education at public school and University, with companions of his own age, might have taught him this. Or again, his father, a tough sceptic of the old school, was eminently fitted to instruct him in such worldly lessons as that 'there is a time' — more times than not — 'to be silent'. But his father died when he was 9, and his mother, whose wits were much addled by religion, considered William too special for Eton, and Oxford too wicked for William.
So along came the private tutors, one of whom, his drawing-master Alexander Cozens, instilled in Beckford a taste, which later became obsessive, for all things occult and oriental. It has even been hinted that Cozens may have seduced him; certainly he was prepared to hear, without correction or warning, sexual and other confidences of a pretty seamy sort. (So much for the moral virtues of home education). However, the boy was growing up to mind his book and his manners, to understand the nature, if not the full responsibilities, of his inheritance, to dabble not discreditably (as yet) in letters, to be, on the whole, a satisfaction to his class and kin . .. when suddenly two most unfortunate things occurred: Louisa Beckford, wife of William's cousin Peter, fell violently and most unwholesomely in love with him; while he himself fell sentimentally and even more unwholesomely in love with the 11-year-old William Courtenay, son of Viscount Courtenay of Powderham Castle and known to his 12 elder sisters as 'Kitty'. The situation was rendered the more perilous for all as Kitty's mother was too stupid and good-natured to know or care what he got up to, and his Aunt Charlotte, who might have sorted the whole thing out, had herself taken a fancy to Beckford (though not as fierce as Louisa's).
Whether Beckford ever had Kitty remains a matter for speculation. What he loved in him at first was his childishness and innocence; but there are hints that after the boy came to pubescence he was quite accustomed to 'frolic on request with Beckford (light to medium petting would be my guess). It must be extremely doubtful, however, whether any crime, as the law then stood, was committed, and if it was there was never any proof of it. The disaster that subsequently came on Beckford was caused, in its entirety, by the indiscreet and extravagantly worded letters of affection which he sent to his little infatuator. Wherever he was, Beckford 'would be talking', or rather writing: from Fonthill the letters came to Powderham, they came from every town at which Beckford halted on his Grand Tour, and they even came, though at longer intervals, during Beckford's honeymoon.
For Beckford's well-wishers, scenting , trouble to come over Louisa and even more to come over Kitty, had persuaded him to marry Lady Margaret Gordon, who was said to be an absolute stick but was the only person to come at all decently or kindly out of the events which now followed. On his return from his wedding tour, Beckford found that Kitty had turned into a flouncing and effeminate ephebe, smothered in 'millinery'. This, to be fair, was not at all what Beckford had wanted or expected. In his eagerness to rehabilitate Kitty, he accepted an invitation for his wife and himself to stay a month at Powderham Castle, all unaware that Aunt Charlotte, resentful of Beckford's preference for her nephew and now married to a brute called Lord Loughborough, was helping her husband to prepare a trap.
Although the visit ran its full time wholly without incident of any kind, Lord Loughborough, who loathed Beckford and was determined to prevent his almost certain elevation to the peerage as a wealthy Whig, afterwards put about a rumour that Beckford and Kitty had been copped In flagrante. Beckford's only recourse would have been to take out a libel action and this he could not do, as Loughborough would have produced in court the highly romantic and compromising letters to Kitty (quite enough to endorse the scandal if not to warrant actual charges) which for years now' had been piling up at Powderham. Loughborough had Beckford on what Chess players call the Fork, and the onlY way off it was into exile. Beckford retired with Lady Margaret, who behaved like a gold brick throughout, into continental obscurity, where he completed his oriental fantasy, Vathek, and she died in childbirth. Up to this stage in Beckford's life there had at least been drama: now there was to be just the long boredom of killing time till death at 85, a boredom relieved only by the planning and building of the Gothic font hill. Since a fraudulent builder scamped the foundAtions of the great tower, which lat.er collapsed over a new owner while its creator, now a sour old closet queen, skulked his life away in Bath, Fonthill Abbey cannot be said to have repaid the amplitude of talent, intelligence and V° which had been lavished on William Beckford. Nor can Vathek; one literary curiosity, does not redeem a life of triviality ail° waste.
This dismal tale of a windbag who wit; choked by his own verbiage is briskly an' stylishly told by Brian Fothergill. No nudging here, no giggling, no raising of eyebrows: just candid and well ordered narrative, with sound deduction of the deduc. ible, shrewd speculation as to the specula' tive, and an agreeable, mildly ironic tolerance of all save the intolerable: by which_ token Mr Fothergill's portrait of my Lorc! Loughborough is a minor masterpiece or malignity.
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