These appearances in public were the only difference between the life Beckford led at Fonthill and at Bath. In fine weather it was his invariable custom to rise early, ride to the tower he had erected at Lansdown, look at the flowers, and walk back to his house for breakfast. He would then read until noon, transact business with his steward, and afterwards ride out for exercise, again visiting the tower, if there was any planting or building going on. After dinner, which in those days was served in the afternoon, unless he had a visitor, he would retire to his library, and occupy himself with his correspondence, his books and his prints, and the examination of catalogues of sales sent to him by the London dealers. This routine was seldom varied, except when he went to London, where by this time he had removed from No. 22 Grosvenor Square to a house, No. 127 Park Street, overlooking Hyde Park, which, owing to its somewhat unwholesome insanitary condition, he styled, and dated from, “Cesspool House.” In 1841, because of its many defects, he gave up this residence.

The Bath aristocracy and the fashionable folk who flocked to the watering-place could not understand how books and pictures, music and gardens, could occupy anyone to the exclusion of participation in the gaieties of the town; and the rumours that had been current in Wiltshire society were revived with interest in the little Somersetshire valley. The most awful crimes were placed to his account, and with them accusations of devil-worship and the study of astrology. Nothing was too terrible or too absurd with which to charge the man of mystery, and, we are told, “surmises were current about a brood of dwarfs that vegetated in an apartment built over the archway connecting his two houses; and the vulgar, rich and poor alike, gave a sort of half-credit to cabalistical monstrosities invoked in that apartment.”

Though in his later years Beckford rarely indulged in the pleasures of authorship, he did not underrate his literary gifts, and he saw with pleasure that “Vathek” was taking the place in English literature to which it was entitled. New editions were called for, and in 1834 it took its place among Bentley’s Standard Novels. The venture must have been profitable, for Bentley became Beckford’s publisher-in-chief. He at once took over the “Biographical Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters,” and in 1834 issued “Italy, with Sketches of Spain and Portugal”—a work that appeared in the same year also in Baudry’s European Library, published in Paris. In 1835 Bentley brought out “Alcobaça and Batalha,” and five years later republished this and the earlier book of travels in one volume—the last edition of any of Beckford’s books issued in the author’s lifetime. Beckford’s interest in the various publications was very considerable, and his annoyance with adverse critics is only to be compared with the anger he displayed when rival collectors at auction sales snatched treasures from his grasp. The adverse critics of “Italy, with Sketches of Spain and Portugal,” however, were few and far between. It was, indeed, received with a chorus of praise, and no one cried “Bravo!” louder than Lockhart, who reviewed the work in The Quarterly Review.

Though Beckford lived to the patriarchal age of eighty-four, almost to the last hour of his life he enjoyed good health. It has already been said that when nearly eighty he declared he had never known a moment’s ennui: few men have been able to say so much; yet there is no doubt this was true, for he had stumbled upon the secret that only the idle man is bored. Beckford was never idle; he had made so many interests for himself that every moment of his day was occupied. A man of his age who, in his last weeks, retains all his enthusiasms for his books, his prints and his gardens, may well claim that he has made a success of life. His intellectual power never waned, his sight was preserved to him unimpaired, and at seventy-eight he could read from manuscript for an hour and a half without resting. When his last illness overtook him, he was busily engaged in marking a catalogue of M. Nodier’s library, the sale of which at Paris his agent was to attend to make purchases: he was as enthusiastic about his collections at the age of eighty-four as he had been when he took up his residence at Fonthill fifty years before.

Physically, too, considering his great age, he was wonderfully active, and until within a few days of his death he took regular exercise on foot and on horseback. When he was seventy-seven he astonished a friend by mentioning that he had on the previous day at dusk ridden from Cheapside to his house in Park Street; and a year later he stated, “I never feel fatigue. I can walk twenty to thirty miles a day; and I only use my carriage (in London) on account of its being convenient to put a picture or book into it, which I happen to purchase in my rambles.” At seventy-five his activity was so great that he could mount rapidly to the top of the tower at Lansdown without halting—“no small exertion,” comments Cyrus Redding feelingly, “for many who were fifteen or twenty years younger”: and even eight years later, during his visits to London, he would ride to Hampstead Heath, or through Hyde Park, and along the Edgware Road to West End, and pull up his horse opposite the spot where once had been the entrance to his mother’s house.

Most men who live to an advanced age have some theory to account for it. Beckford had none, beyond believing that his days had probably been prolonged by the fact that his life had been temperate, and that, as he grew older, he took reasonable care of himself. “I enjoy too good health, feel too happy, and am too much pleased with life to have any inclination to throw it away for want of attention,” he said. “When I am summoned I must go, though I should not much mind living another hundred years, and, as far as my health goes at present, I see no reason why I should not.” Thus, when going out he would put on an overcoat, even if there were only the slightest wind stirring; and, however interested or amused he might be, he would always retire early; but while he took such precautions as these, he was in no sense a valetudinarian. His love of fresh air, and his activity, together with the regular life he led, undoubtedly had much to do with his attaining his great age.

Until the last week of April 1844, Beckford occupied himself in his usual way, walking and riding, and working in his library. Then influenza laid hold of him, and though he struggled manfully against it, at last there was no doubt that the end was near. He sent a last laconic note to his surviving daughter, the Duchess of Hamilton, “Come quick! quick!” and a day or two after her arrival, on 2nd May, he expired, with perfect resignation, and, we are told, so peacefully that those by his side could not tell the moment when he passed away.

His mortal remains were, on 11th May, interred in the Bath Abbey Cemetery; but soon after they were removed, and reburied, more appropriately, at Lansdown, under the shadow of his tower. 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