Recollections of the late William Beckford / of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath

Transcribed from the 1893 edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
The Manuscript of the following Letters, written by my Father, has been in my possession fifty years. He intended to publish it at the time of Mr. Beckford’s death, in 1844, but delayed the execution of the work, and sixteen years afterwards was himself called to enter on the higher life of the spiritual world.
Mr. Beckford and my Father were kindred spirits, conversant with the same authors, had visited the same countries, and were both gifted with extraordinary memories. Mr. Beckford said that he had never met with a man possessed of such a memory as my Father; and many a time has my Father told me that he never met a man who possessed such a memory as Mr. Beckford.
If my Father had published the Reminiscences himself I think that much misconception in the public mind respecting the character of Mr. Beckford would have been prevented. For instance, I remember, when a child, being warned that this great man was an infidel. When he showed my Father the sarcophagus in which his body was to be placed, he remarked, “There shall I lie, Lansdown, until the trump of God shall rouse me on the Resurrection morn.”
CHARLOTTE LANSDOWN.
8 Lower East Hayes, Bath; July, 1893.
My Dear Charlotte,—I have this day seen such an astonishing assemblage of works of art, so numerous and of so surprisingly rare a description that I am literally what Lord Byron calls “Dazzled and drunk with beauty.” I feel so bewildered from beholding the rapid succession of some of the very finest productions of the great masters that the attempt to describe them seems an impossible task; however, I will make an effort.
The collection of which I speak is that of Mr. Beckford, at his house in Lansdown-crescent. Besides all this I have this day been introduced to that extraordinary man, the author of “Vathek” and “Italy,” the builder of Fonthill, the contemporary of the mighty and departed dead, the pupil of Mozart; in fact, to the formidable and inaccessible Vathek himself! I have many times passed the house, and longed to see its contents, and often have I wondered how a building with so plain and unostentatious an exterior could suit the reception of the works it contains, and the residence of so magnificent a personage.