Vathek, with The episodes of Vathek

À la demande de M. Beckford je me suis chargé de corriger son manuscrit et de le faire imprimer à Lausanne. Je me suis repenti d’avoir cédé à sa solicitation, l’ouvrage ne me paraissant ni moral ni intéressant. J’ai de plus des désagrémens. M. Beckford en quittant Lausanne se hâta de le faire imprimer à Paris au préjudice de l’imprimeur de Lausanne, et je dus menacer M. Beckford de mettre dans les papiers son infidélité, qui fit qu’on arrêta à la douane de France l’envoy de l’imprimeur Hignou, les trois exemplaires qu’il envoyait à Paris, et M. B. se hâta de dédommager l’imprimeur pour éviter la publicité1.

1 Notes and Queries, 20th April 1889. The actual book was sold in London on 2gth March of that year.

Introduction

It is doubtful whether the book was in its earlier adventures in England popular, but it gradually won its way among people of discernment and gained deserved celebrity for its real author.

After its first three éditions (i.e. London, Lausanne and Paris) the sale of the book lapsed considerably, but in 1809 Beckford put on the market an édition composed of the sheets of the Henley édition with a new title-page, etc.2 In 1815 he prepared a new

2 The édition was published by Clarke, Beckford’s bookseller. No information exists as to how these sheets got into Clarke’s hands. Is it possible that Beckford extracted the remainder of the Henley édition from Johnson and suppressed it? Vathek, although popular in Paris, appears to hâve been little known in England before the nineteenth century.

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Introduction

French édition1 (à Londres: chez Clarke, New Bond St.), in the préfacé to which he referred to the existence of the Episodes (cf. Vol. n, Appendix n). The Episodes indeed became one of the great literary mysteries. Rogers had them read to him by Beckford and thought them unpleasant2. Byron tried to procure a copy but failed, and ail the while the mystery-mongering author blew hot and cold as to publication. At length (1832-3), through the instrumentality of Clarke, he was induced to lend an ear to the advances of the great Bentley, but the Zeus of publishing was not sufïiciently generous in his offers, and the Danaë of the Lansdown Tower could not be seduced. The Episodes remained unpublished and, at Beckford’s death, were stored away in the Charter Room of Hamilton Palace where they remained until rescued and published in 1912 by Mr Lewis Melville, by whose permission they are here reprinted.

There are three French versions of Vathek. First, the Lausanne édition of 1787 which is the original copy and the one used by Henley for his translation. Second cornes the Paris édition of 1787, the text used for this reprint. The text of this édition varies considerably in detail, though not in essentials, from that of Lausanne. Beckford obviously carried out a very thorough révision with resulting improvements: e.g. p. 2, 1. 17, which runs “autre part, on trouvait tous les trésors de la nature” is an agreeable

1 A further édition in French was issued by Bentley in 1834. Barbier mentions an édition in French of 1817, but I hâve failed to trace it.

2 Table-Talk, p. 218.

Introduction

modification of the Lausanne, “tandis que le Naturaliste déployait d’un autre côté les divers dons que le ciel a fait à notre globe,” while (p. 26) he drops, after “où sont-ils?”, the further comment of the Giaour, “Ne vois-tu pas que l’eau m’en vient à la bouche?” The whole Paris version in short has been much tightened up and many superfluities eut away. The third version, that of London (1815), is based throughout on the 1787 Paris édition. Here again there are a number of small modifications of style, but they are largely unimportant. The only alteration of importance (and that has been incorporated in the présent version) is the number of steps leading to Vathek’s tower. In both the 1787 éditions the number given is 11,000 but Beckford doubtless reflecting that his self-indulgent Caliph would never scale so mighty a stairway, reduced the number in the 1815 version to the still considérable total of 1500.

The various éditions of the translation call for little comment. The first is Johnson’s of 1786; the second, composed of Johnson’s sheets with a frontispice and new title-page, is Clarke’s of 1809. The third and fourth éditions were reset and issued by Clarke in 1816 and 1823. Bentley published it among his Standard Novels (vol. 41) in 1834, and in the same year it was brought out, bound up with Italy &c., in Baudry’s European Library in Paris.

In this version I hâve omitted Henley’s notes following Mallarmé: “Suppression de volumineuses notes; érudites, surannés.”

It would be superfluous at this late date to add to the many appréciations which hâve been made of Vathek, from the eulogies of Byron and Southey to the reasoned criticism of Dr Garnett and Mr Saints-

Introduction

bury1. Alone of the novels of its period, it has been printed and reprinted ; where Rasselas and The Castle of Otranto hâve their dozens of admirers, Vathek has its hundreds. It is, as Dr Garnett pointed out, a book about which there is no argument. It must be either admired or detested. “A man may be reasoned into admiring Wordsworth but not into liking the Arabian Nights.” It possesses ail the virtues and faults ofits period. It is at once frivolous, learned, shallow and deep. It is couched in the manner of Voltaire, yet, as Mallarmé showed, it possesses that spirit of unrest which infuses Chateaubriand. One may with propriety quote the great French poet’s appréciation:

Tout coule de source, avec une limpidité vive, avec un ondoiement large de périodes, et l’éclat tend à se fondre dans la pureté totale du cours qui charrie maintes richesses de diction inaperçues d’abord: cas naturel avec un étranger inquiet que quelque expression trop audacieuse ne le trahisse en arrêtant le regard.

But in face of ail reasoned criticism, whether for or against, stands the principal truth, summed up in two words by Harriet Martineau: “ Vathek remains.”

1 One minor criticism I would like to make. Vathek is almost invariably placed among the effusions of the school of “ T error, ’ ’ a classification which appears to me superficial. Vathek is only accidentally by reason of its subject connected with these works. It is really sui generis, and, if a dérivation must be found for Beckford, it is from Rousseau more than from any other writer that he descends.