Max Markham is the author of Indigo Bird – An Erotic Novel. For more information on the author and his work, please visit Max Markham’s Section on this website.
This article is part of a series of posts about my favorite top ten gay Englishmen.
William Beckford was a novelist, serious art connoisseur, travel writer and reputedly the richest commoner in England. He was MP (Member of Parliament) at different periods for Wells (1784 – 1790); and for Hindon (1790 – 1795 and 1806-1820). He was the author of the Gothic novel Vathek; the builder of now-demolished Fonthill Abbey; and of Lansdown Tower, Bath, which still exists. Part of his art collection formed the nucleus of the National Gallery’s collection in London.
Beckford by Romney - Copyright Unknown
William Beckford of Fonthill was in many respects the eighteenth century equivalent of Oscar Wilde. He too was witty and flamboyant; he too was a successful author; he too was the central figure of a lurid gay scandal that caused him to lose his political career and to be ostracised by all but his closest friends and relations. These loyal friends, however, included a national hero; Lord Nelson, and Sir William and Lady Hamilton. The main difference is that the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, which criminalised all forms of homosexual behaviour between men, still lay far in the future. The existing legislation, while draconian, including the death penalty, was restricted to sodomy. Many other forms of gay sex were not covered. The burden of proof was placed firmly on the prosecution – usually the police – who had to catch the sexual delinquents in flagrante delicto. Since this was difficult in practice, and securing a conviction was also difficult; especially if the accused turned out to be well-connected, the law was rarely applied. Moreover the police had more important things to do, including tracking Jacobite, and later Jacobin, agents. Unlike Wilde, Beckford was not destined to feel the lash of the law; his career was effectively destroyed by gossip and innuendo. Without the “Powderham Scandal”, he might have achieved high political office and a peerage: he was intelligent, well-educated and well-connected.
William Beckford’s father, William Beckford Senior (1709-1770), also known as Alderman Beckford, was a remarkable man. He was part of the white “plantocracy” of Jamaica. He owned considerable sugar estates, worked by slaves. He became a well-known political figure in eighteenth-century London, who twice held the office of Lord Mayor. He was never knighted because of his opposition to the policies of the Government of King George III and his criticism of the King personally. Alderman Beckford was born in Jamaica. He was sent to England in 1723 to be educated. He made his career in the City of London. In 1744 Beckford bought an estate at Fonthill Gifford, near Salisbury. He made substantial improvements to it, but the house was largely destroyed by fire in 1755. Beckford rebuilt it lavishly, as Fonthill Splendens. He married Maria Hamilton, daughter of the Hon. George Hamilton, bringing aristocratic blood into his family. His only legitimate son was William (Thomas) Beckford Junior, the subject of this blog post. He also had a daughter and at least eight illegitimate children, to whom he left legacies. As a millionaire, he could well afford to do so.
William Beckford Junior received a brilliant education. By the age of seventeen he spoke, read and wrote French, Latin, Greek, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. He also studied philosophy, law, literature and physics. His private music teacher was the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, at that time living in London with his parents. Beckford, who tried his hand as a composer, did not measure up to his master in this subject, however. His father died when Beckford was only ten, leaving him a vast fortune and a millionaire’s taste for pleasure.
When Beckford was nineteen he fell in love with his relation, the Hon William Courtenay, later Viscount Courtenay and Ninth Earl of Devon; then ten years old and extremely handsome, to judge from his surviving portraits. Beckford and Courtenay saw each other frequently, either at Fonthill or at Powderham Castle in Devon, for nearly six years. But in 1784 Lord Loughborough, a visitor to Powderham, claimed to have heard “strange goings on” in Courtenay’s bedroom, with Beckford apparently buggering, or preparing to bugger, the lad. The newspapers started circulating vicious rumours about Beckford and his “Kitty,” as the beautiful Courtenay was nicknamed. Beckford always maintained that, while he had indeed taken down Courtenay’s breeches, it was in order to horsewhip his buttocks for a piece of intolerable insolence; which, as his older relation, he felt fully entitled to do. No-one wanted to believe him; partly because Lord Loughborough had also stolen and published intimate letters between Beckford and Courtenay, couched in very affectionate terms.
For nearly a year Beckford braved out the storm of abuse and secreted himself at Fonthill. No criminal charges were ever filed but King George III, who privately wished that Beckford could have been hanged, dismissed Beckford’s application for a peerage. This was based on a rather fanciful “family tree” that purported to trace Beckford’s descent from all the Barons of Runnymede. Although still an MP, Beckford could no longer appear in the House of Commons. Beckford and Courtenay were forced to separate to avoid further scandal. Beckford finally went abroad; where he remained for the next ten years, living mainly in Portugal. His travel writings on that country are a masterpiece, still enjoyed today. Courtenay, now Lord Devon, withdrew to Powderham, which he had inherited after his father’s death, and where he too became a recluse.
The scandal of 1784 was fabricated, or at least exaggerated, by Courtenay’s vindictive uncle, Lord Loughborough. Nevertheless the general charge of homosexuality was almost certainly true. Beckford, though he would marry and have two daughters (his much-loved wife died in childbirth), was primarily homosexual: by 1807 he was caricaturing himself as Barzaba, from bar saba, Syriac for “voluptuary,” but used in the specific sense of “boy-fancier,” in his letters to his agent and general factotum Gregorio Franchi. Upon his eventual return to England, Beckford shielded himself behind the eight mile long, twelve foot high, wall topped by iron spikes, surrounding his gardens, and began to act out some of the dreams of his decadent novel, Vathek.
In exile Beckford had written a novel, Vathek, published in 1786. It was a best-seller. It concerns the adventures of an eponymous megalomaniac Caliph, who builds a high tower so that he can penetrate the forbidden secrets of heaven itself. Naturally, Vathek deals with the Powers of Darkness. His mother, the Princess Carathis, based upon Beckford’s mother, is a witch who is always mixing potions and casting evil spells. Vathek’s lover is the lady Nouronihar. Like Don Giovanni, Vathek finally ends in hell, “wandering in an eternity of anguish”. The ornately decadent style of the novel: a heady mix of refined sensibility, eroticism, irony, fantasy and horror, influenced the works of Byron, Oscar Wilde, Firbank, H P Lovecraft and other decadent writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Like Wilde’s play Salome, Vathek was originally written in French and later translated into English. Although its lush style is often criticised, Vathek is still in print. It is the literary equivalent of a dramatic painting by Delacroix, executed in rich, imperial colours. It is also more readable than other gothic novels like Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, with which it is often compared.
Very few people gained entrance to Fonthill Abbey: inevitably rumours arose of black masses and wild orgies by Beckford and his male household, who included footmen dressed as monks. These rumours are exaggerated; as is much else connected with Beckford. They cannot however be dismissed completely. Beckford was an art collector and builder on a heroic scale; he was probably more interested in acquiring objets d’art than catamites. But, ideally, he liked to enjoy both.
Beckford would never again mix with high society, but he was not permanently in internal exile at Fonthill. He sometimes ventured into the gay subculture of London. From 1811 to 1817 he rented No 6 Upper Harley Street (now 100 Harley Street). He also stayed at “Brunet’s’ bagnio,” And occasionally he stayed in Louis Jacquier’s Clarendon Hotel, New Bond Street: The Seven Dials rookery in St Giles’ Parish he called “the Holy Land”; his term for the gay cruising area, where he hoped to “kiss the relics”. And, further out, Hounslow Heath was apparently a “Paradise”, where a barracks was conveniently situated.
By the 1820s Beckford had spent so much money on Fonthill that he was forced to mortgage it. In 1823 he sold it to a gunpowder maker. He was just in time; the jerry-built Abbey collapsed soon afterwards. Beckford then bought an estate near Bath and built the Lansdown Tower, on Lansdown Hill, where he had a lofty study overlooking several counties. Now in his late sixties, he became respectably eccentric, rather than scandalously debauched, and remained so until his death. He continued to collect works of art.
After his death at Bath on 2 May 1844, aged 84, Beckford’s body was laid in a sarcophagus placed on an artificial mound. Beckford had wished to be buried in the grounds of Lansdown Tower, but was instead interred at Bath Abbey Cemetery in Lyncombe Vale on 11 May 1844. The Tower and its gardens were sold to a local publican, who turned it into a beer garden. Eventually however it was bought back by Beckford’s elder daughter, Susan, Duchess of Hamilton, who gave the land around it to Walcot parish for consecration as a cemetery in 1848. This permitted Beckford to be re-interred near the Tower that he loved. His self-designed tomb — a sarcophagus of pink polished granite with bronze armorial plaques — now stands on a hillock in the centre of an oval ditch. On one side of his tomb is a quotation from Vathek: “Enjoying humbly the most precious gift of heaven to man — Hope”; and on another these lines from his poem, A Prayer: “Eternal Power! Grant me, through obvious clouds one transient gleam/ of thy bright essence in my dying hour.”
Those items of Beckford’s collections of works of art that had not passed to the new National Gallery passed to his elder daughter and enriched the collections of Beckford’s descendants, the Dukes of Hamilton; first at Hamilton Palace and now at Lennoxlove Castle, East Lothian.
Beckford’s personality still remains elusive: “He was,” in the opinion of Alistair Sutherland, “as much a martyr as Wilde, and… a more interesting and civilised man.” He was intelligent as well as a hedonist; a serious artist as well as a social rebel, and more honest than eccentric.
Oscar Wilde and Beckford could never have met; Beckford died ten years before Wilde’s birth. But Wilde was aware of Beckford’s career and does homage to him, in the form of oblique references to Fonthill and Beckford, for example in his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Yet he took no warning from Beckford’s fate and went on to repeat all his mistakes, including having an indiscreet aristocratic boyfriend, in late Victorian England.
The Indigo Bird
An Erotic Novel by Max Markham
James Graveney, a young Major in a respectable regiment, is outwardly conventional. In private James is bisexual, with a strong urge for his own sex. Gay sex, however, is illegal in the Army, so he is discreet about this.
James’ world is turned upside-down when he meets Lieutenant Richard Finch. Richard is intelligent, charismatic and exceptionally handsome. He doesn’t mess around. He gets what he wants, and is completely unscrupulous about how he gets it. Richard will stop at nothing to achieve this, including Machiavellian deception and a cunning and brutal murder. James starts responding to Richard, cautiously at first, then gets swept along on the great love affair of his life.
The Indigo Bird is a rollercoaster of surprises set against backdrops varying from the jungles of Belize to London, the English countryside, and Ireland, and the scene is set for more shocks and adventures. [Read more...]
The Indigo Bird is available through Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords.com, Amazon Kindle US, Amazon Kindle UK, and any other good bookstore.
