William Beckford: Man of Taste
Boyd Alexander profiles a man whose whole life and fortune were spent in creating and living out a youthful dream. But William Beckford was not only a romantic visionary: he was also an inspired collector and an artistic pioneer.
The young Disraeli, already lionized in society as the author of several successful novels, meditated in the summer of 1834 on the past “season of unparalleled success and gaiety. What a vast number of extraordinary characters... with whom I have become acquainted. Interviews with O’Connell, Beckford, and Lord Durham, three men all making a great noise. Will they be remembered when this book turns up, if ever it do? The first... is the man of the greatest genius; the second of the greatest taste; and the last of the greatest ambition.”
The man of the greatest taste! So that was Beckford’s reputation—despite Hazlitt’s venomous attack a dozen years earlier, when, with all England, he viewed Fonthill Abbey before the auction of 1822. Beckford’s reputation for taste has been forgotten. But Hazlitt’s strictures are still remembered, thanks to his brilliant literary style; with the result that Beckford is often thought of chiefly as the builder of a Folly that collapsed on its next owner, soon after it had changed hands for £275,000.
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