The World's Greatest Books - Volume 1 Part 30

History of the Caliph Vathek

William Beckford, son of the famous Lord Mayor, was born at Fonthill, Wilts.h.i.+re, England, Sept. 29, 1759, and received his education at first from a private tutor, and then at Geneva.

On coming of age, he inherited a million sterling and an annual income of 100,000, and three years later he married the fourth Earl of Aboyne's daughter, Lady Margaret Gordon, who died in May, 1786. In 1787 Beckford's romance, the "History of the Caliph Vathek," appeared in its original French, an English translation of the work having been published "anonymously and surrept.i.tiously" in 1784. "Vathek"

was written by Beckford in 1781 or 1782 at a single sitting of three days and two nights. Beckford was a great traveller and a great connoisseur and collector both of pictures and of books; and, apart from "Vathek" and some volumes of travels, he is best known for having secluded himself for twenty years in the magnificent residence which he built in Fonthill. He died on May 2, 1844.

_I.--Vathek and the Magic Sabres_

Vathek, ninth caliph of the race of the Aba.s.sides, was the son of Mota.s.sem, and the grandson of Haroun al Raschid. From an early accession to the throne, and the talents he possessed to adorn it, his subjects were induced to expect that his reign would be long and happy. His figure was pleasing and majestic; but when he was angry one of his eyes became so terrible that no person could bear it, and the wretch upon whom it was fixed instantly fell backward, and sometimes expired. For fear, however, of depopulating his dominions and making his palace desolate, he but rarely gave way to his anger.

Being much addicted to the pleasures of the table, he sought by his affability to procure agreeable companions; and he succeeded the better as his generosity was unbounded, and his indulgences were unrestrained; for he was by no means scrupulous, nor did he think, with the caliph Omar Ben Abdalaziz, that it was necessary to make a h.e.l.l of this world to enjoy paradise in the next. He surpa.s.sed in magnificence all his predecessors. The palace of Alkoremmi, which his father, Mota.s.sem, had erected on the hill of Pied Horses, and which commanded the whole city of Samarah was, in his idea, far too scanty. He added, therefore, five wings, or rather other palaces, which he destined for the particular gratification of each of his senses.

But the unquiet and impetuous disposition of the caliph would not allow him to rest there; he had studied so much for amus.e.m.e.nt in the lifetime of his father as to acquire a great deal of knowledge, though not a sufficiency to satisfy himself--for he wished to know everything, even sciences that did not exist. He was fond of engaging in disputes with the learned and with the orthodox, but liked them not to push their opposition with warmth; he stopped with presents the mouths of those whose mouths could be stopped, while others, whom his liberality was unable to subdue, he sent to prison to cool their blood, a remedy that often succeeded.

The great prophet Mohammed, whose vicars the caliphs are, beheld with indignation from his abode in the seventh heaven the irreligious conduct of such a vice-regent.

"Let us leave him to himself," said he to the genii, who are always ready to receive his commands. "Let us see to what lengths his folly and impiety will carry him. If he run into excess we shall know how to chastise him. a.s.sist him, therefore, to complete the tower which, in imitation of Nimrod, he hath begun, not, like that great warrior, to escape being drowned, but from the insolent curiosity of penetrating the secrets of heaven; he will not divine the fate that awaits him."

The genii obeyed, and when the workmen had raised their structures a cubit in the daytime, two cubits more were added in the night. Vathek fancied that even invisible matter showed a forwardness to subserve his designs, and his pride arrived at its height when, having ascended for the first time the eleven thousand stairs of his tower, he cast his eyes below and beheld men not larger than pismires, mountains than sh.e.l.ls, and cities than beehives. He now pa.s.sed most of his nights on the summit of his tower, till he became an adept in the mysteries of astrology, and imagined that the planets had disclosed to him the most marvellous adventures which were to be accomplished by an extraordinary personage from a country altogether unknown.

Prompted by motives of curiosity, he had always been courteous to strangers, but from this instant he redoubled his attention, and ordered it to be announced by sound of trumpet through all the streets of Samarah that no one of his subjects, on pain of displeasure, should either lodge or detain a traveller, but forthwith bring him to the palace.

Not long after this there arrived in the city a hideous man who to Vathek's view displayed slippers which enabled the feet to walk, knives that cut without a motion of the hand, and sabres which dealt the blow at the person they were wished to strike, the whole enriched with gems that were hitherto unknown. The sabres, whose blades emitted a dazzling radiance, fixed more than all the caliph's attention, who promised himself to decipher at his leisure the uncouth characters engraven on their sides. Without, therefore, demanding their price, he ordered all the coined gold to be brought from his treasury, and commanded the merchant to take what he pleased. The stranger complied with modesty and silence; but, having maintained an obstinate silence on all the points on which the caliph questioned him, he was committed to prison, from which he was found the next day to have vanished, leaving his keepers dead.

Vathek was at first enraged, but having been comforted by his mother, the Princess Carathis, who was a Greek and an adept in all the sciences and systems of her country, he issued, at her suggestion, a proclamation promising the liberality for which he was renowned to whoever should decipher the characters on the sabres, and eventually had the gratification of meeting with an old man, who read them as follows: "We were made where everything good is made; we are the least of the wonders of a place where all is wonderful, and deserving the sight of the first potentate on earth." Unfortunately, however, when the old man was ordered the next morning to re-read the inscription, he was then found to interpret it as denouncing: "Woe to the rash mortal who seeks to know that of which he should remain ignorant." "And woe to thee!" cried the caliph, in a burst of indignation, and telling him to take his reward and begone.

_II.--The Caliph's Strange Adventures_

It was not long before Vathek discovered abundant reason for regretting his precipitation. He plainly perceived that the characters on the sabres changed every day; and the anxiety caused by his failure to decipher them, or to read anything from the stars, brought on a fever, which deprived him of his appet.i.te, and tormented him with an absolutely insatiable thirst. From this distress he was at length delivered by a meeting with the stranger, who cured him by giving him to drink of a phial of red and yellow mixture. But when this insolent person, at a banquet given in his honour, burst into shouts of laughter on being asked to declare of what drugs the salutary liquor had been compounded, and from what place the sabres had come, Vathek kicked him from the steps, and, repeating the blow, persisted with such a.s.siduity as incited all present to follow his example. The stranger collected into a ball, rolled out of the palace, followed by Vathek, the court, and the whole city, and, after pa.s.sing through all the public places, rolled onwards to the Plain of Catoul, traversed the valley at the foot of the mountain of the Four Fountains, and bounded into the chasm formed there by the continual fall of the waters.

Vathek would have followed the perfidious giaour had not an invisible agency arrested his progress and that of the mult.i.tude; and he was so much struck by the whole circ.u.mstance that he ordered his tents to be pitched on the very edge of the precipice. After keeping several vigils there, he was accosted one night by the voice of the giaour, who amid the darkness caused by a total eclipse of the moon and the stars, offered to bring him to the palace of subterranean fire, where he should behold the treasures which the stars had promised him, and the talismans that control the world, if he would abjure Mohammed, adore the terrestrial influences, and satiate the stranger's thirst with the blood of fifty of the most beautiful Samarahite boys.

The unhappy caliph lavished his promises in the utmost profusion, and by arranging for the celebration near the chasm of some juvenile sports, which were not concluded till twilight, was able to make the direful libation. As the boys came up one by one to receive their prizes, he pushed them into the gulf, the dreadful device being executed with so much dexterity that the boy who was approaching him remained unconscious of the fate of his forerunner.

The popular tumult roused by this atrocity having been appeased by the princess, who possessed the most consummate skill in the art of persuasion, there was offered on the tower a burnt sacrifice to the infernal deities, the main ingredients of which were mummies, rhinoceros' horns, oil of the most venomous serpents, various aromatic woods, and one hundred and forty of the caliph's most faithful subjects.

These preliminaries having been settled, a parchment was discovered, in which Vathek was thanked for his burnt offering, and told to set forth with a magnificent retinue for Istakar, where he would receive the diadem of Gian Ben Gian, the talismans of Soliman, and the treasures of the pre-Adamite sultans. But he was warned not to enter any dwelling on his route.

Vathek and the cavalcade set out, and for three days all went well. But on the fourth a storm burst upon them, the frightful roar of wild beasts resounded at a distance, and they soon perceived in the forest glaring eyes that could only belong to devils or tigers. Fire destroyed their provisions, and they would have starved had not two dwarfs, who dwelt as hermits on the top of some rocks, received divine intimation of their plight and revealed it to their emir, Fakreddin. The dwarfs were entertained, caressed, and seated with great ceremony on little cus.h.i.+ons of state. But they clambered up the sides of the caliph's seat, and, placing themselves each on one of his shoulders, began to whisper prayers in his ears; and his patience was almost exhausted when the acclamations of the troops announced the approach of Fakreddin. He hastened to their a.s.sistance, but being punctiliously religious and likewise a great dealer in compliments, he made an harangue five times more prolix and insipid than his harbingers had already delivered.

At length, however, all got in motion, and they descended from the heights to the valley by the large steps which the emir had cut in the rocks, and reached a building of hewn stone overspread by palm-trees and crowned with nine domes. Beneath one of these domes the caliph was entertained with excellent sherbet, with sweetbreads stewed in milk of almonds, and other delicacies of which he was amazingly fond.

But, unfortunately, the sight of the emir's young daughter tempted the prophet's vice-regent to violate the rites of hospitality. Vathek fell violently in love with Nouronihar, who was sprightly as an antelope and full of wanton gaiety; and though she was contracted to her cousin and dearly beloved companion Gulchenrouz, he demanded her hand from Fakreddin, who, rather than force his daughter to break her affiances, presented his sabre to Vathek. "Strike your unhappy host," he said. "He has lived long enough if he sees the prophet's vice-regent violate the rites of hospitality." Nouronihar fell down in a swoon, and of this swoon the emir took advantage to carry out a scheme which should deliver him from his difficulties. He gave out that both the children had died from the effect of the caliph's glances, and, having administered to them a narcotic powder that would give them the appearance of death for three days, had them conveyed away to the sh.o.r.es of a desolate lake, where, attended by the dwarfs, they were put upon a meagre diet and told that they were in the other world, expiating the little faults of which their love was the cause.

But Nouronihar, remembering a dream in which she was told that she was destined to be the caliph's wife, and thereby to possess the carbuncle of Giamsched, and the treasures of the pre-Adamite sultans, indulged doubts on the mode of her being, and scarcely could believe that she was dead. She rose one morning while all were asleep, and having wandered some distance from the lake, discovered that she knew the district.

This fact, and a meeting with Vathek, convinced her that she was alive, and, submitting to the caliph's embraces, she consented to become his bride, and to go with him to the subterranean palace.

_III.--The Palace of Subterranean Fire_

When Princess Carathis heard of the dissolute conduct of her son she sent for Morakanabad.

"Let me expire in flames," she cried.

Having said this, she whirled herself round in a magical way, striking poor Morakanabad in such a way as caused him to recoil. Then she ordered her great camel, Aboufaki, to be brought, and, attended by her two hideous and one-eyed negresses, Nerkes and Cafour, set out to surprise the lovers. She burst in upon them, foaming with indignation, and said to Vathek: "Free thyself from the arms of this paltry doxy; drown her in the water before me, and instantly follow my guidance." But Vathek replied civilly, but decisively, that he was taking Nouronihar with him; and the princess, having heard her declare that she would follow him beyond the Kaf in the land of the Afrits, was appeased, and p.r.o.nounced Nouronihar a girl of both courage and science.

With a view, however, of preventing any further trouble arising from Gulchenrouz, of whose affection for his cousin Vathek had informed her, she sought to capture the boy, intending to sacrifice him to the giaour.

But as he was fleeing from her he fell into the arms of a genius, the same good old genius who, happening on the cruel giaour at the instant of his growling in the horrible chasm, had rescued the fifty little victims which the impiety of Vathek had devoted to his maw. The genius placed Gulchenrouz in a nest higher than the clouds, and there kept him ever young.

Nor was this the only hope of the princess's that was doomed to be frustrated. She learnt from her astrolabes and instruments of magic that Motavakel, availing himself of the disgust which was now inveterate against his brother, had incited commotions among the populace, made himself master of the palace, and actually invested the great tower. So she reluctantly abandoned the idea of accompanying Vathek to Istakar, and returned to Samarah; while he, attended by Nouronihar, resumed his march and quickly reached the valley of Rocnabad. Here the poor Santons, filled with holy energy, having bustled to light up wax torches in their oratories and to expand the Koran on their ebony desks, went forth to meet the caliph with baskets of honeycomb, dates, and melons. Vathek gave them but a surly reception. "Fancy not," said he, "that you can detain me; your presents I condescend to accept, but beg you will let me be quiet, for I am not overfond of resisting temptation. Yet, as it is not decent for personages so reverend to return on foot, and as you have not the appearance of expert riders, my eunuchs shall tie you on your a.s.ses, with the precaution that your backs be not turned towards me, for they understand etiquette."

Even this outrage could not persuade Vathek's good genius to desert him, and he made one final effort to save the caliph from the fate awaiting him. Disguised as a shepherd, and pouring forth from his flute such melodies as softened even the heart of Vathek, he confronted him in his path, and warned him so solemnly against pursuing his journey that when night fell almost every one of his attendants had deserted him. But Vathek, in his obduracy, went on, and at length arrived at the mountain which contains the vast ruins of Istakar and the entrance to the realm of Eblis.

Nouronihar and he, having ascended the steps of a vast staircase of black marble, reached the terrace, which was flagged with squares of marble and resembled a smooth expanse of water. There, by the moonlight, they read an inscription which proclaimed that, despite the fact that Vathek had violated the conditions of the parchment, he and Nouronihar would be allowed to enter the palace of subterranean fire.

Scarcely had these words been read when the mountain trembled, and the rock yawned and disclosed within it a staircase of polished marble, down which they descended. At the bottom they found their way impeded by a huge portal of ebony, which, opening at the giaour's command, revealed to them a place which, though roofed with a vaulted ceiling, was so s.p.a.cious and lofty that at first they took it for an immeasurable plain.

In the midst of this immense hall a vast mult.i.tude was incessantly pa.s.sing, who severally kept their right hands on their hearts, without once regarding anything about them. They had all the livid paleness of death; their eyes, deep-sunk in their sockets, resembled those phosphoric meteors that glimmer by night in places of interment. Some stalked slowly along, absorbed in profound reverie; some, shrieking with agony, ran furiously about like tigers wounded with poisonous arrows; whilst others, grinding their teeth in rage, foamed along, more frantic than the wildest maniacs. They all avoided each other, and, though surrounded by a mult.i.tude that no one could number, each wandered at random, unheedful of the rest, as if alone on a desert no foot had trodden.

Vathek and Nouronihar, frozen with terror at a sight so baleful, demanded of the giaour what these appearances might mean, and why these ambulating spectres never withdrew their hands from their hearts.

"Perplex not yourselves," replied he, bluntly, "with so much at once; you will soon be acquainted with all. Let us haste and present you to Eblis."

They continued their way through the mult.i.tude, and after some time entered a vast tabernacle carpeted with the skins of leopards and filled with an infinity of elders with streaming beards and Afrits in complete armour, all of whom had prostrated themselves before the ascent of a lofty eminence, on the top of which, upon a globe of fire, sat the formidable Eblis. He received Vathek's and Nouronihar's homage, and invited them to enjoy whatever the palace afforded--the treasures of the pre-Adamite sultans and their bickering sabres and those talismans which compel the Dives to open the subterranean expanses of the mountain of Kaf.

The giaour then conducted them to a hall of great extent, covered with a lofty dome, round which appeared fifty portals of bronze, secured with as many fastenings of iron. A funereal gloom prevailed over the whole scene. Here, upon two beds of incorruptible cedar, lay rec.u.mbent the fleshless forms of pre-Adamite kings, who had been monarchs of the whole earth; they still possessed enough of life to be conscious of their deplorable condition; their eyes retained a melancholy motion; they regarded each other with looks of the deepest dejection, each holding his right hand motionless on his heart. Soliman Ben Daoud, the most eminent of them, told Vathek the story of his great state, of his wors.h.i.+p of fire and the hosts of the sky, and of heaven's vengeance upon him. "I am in torments, ineffable torments!" said he. "An unrelenting fire preys upon my heart." Having uttered this exclamation, Soliman raised his hands towards heaven in token of supplication, and the caliph discerned through his bosom, which was as transparent as crystal, his heart enveloped in flames. At a sight so full of horror, Nouronihar fell back like one petrified into the arms of Vathek, who cried out with a convulsive sob: "O Mohammed! remains there no more mercy?"

"None, none!" replied the malicious Dive. "Know, miserable prince, thou art now in the abode of vengeance and despair! A few days are allotted thee as respite, and then thy heart also shall be kindled like those of the other wors.h.i.+ppers of Eblis."

This, indeed, was the dreadful fate of Vathek and Nouronihar, a fate indeed to which the Princess Carathis was also most righteously condemned; for Vathek, knowing that the principles by which his mother had perverted his youth had been the cause of his perdition, summoned her to the palace of subterranean fire and enrolled her among the votaries of Eblis. Carathis entered the dome of Soliman, and she too marched in triumph through the vapour of perfumes.

APHRA BEHN

Oroonoko: the Royal Slave

In her introduction to "Oroonoko," Mrs. Aphra Behn states that her strange and romantic tale is founded on facts, of many of which she was an eye-witness. This is true. She was born at Wye, England, July 10, 1640, the daughter, it is said, of a barber. As a child, she went out to Dutch Guiana, then an English colony named after the Surinam River, returning to England about 1658. After the death of her husband, in 1666, she was dispatched as a spy to Antwerp by Charles II., and it was she who first warned that monarch of the Dutch Government's intention to send a fleet up the Thames. She died on April 16, 1689, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. It was while in Dutch Guiana that she met Oroonoko, in the circ.u.mstances described in the story. No doubt she has idealised her hero somewhat, but she does not seem to have exaggerated the extraordinary adventures of the young African chief. In the licentious age of the Restoration, when she had become famous--or, rather, notorious--as a writer of unseemly plays, she astonished the town, and achieved real fame by relating the story of Oroonoko's life. There are few plots of either plays or novels so striking as that of "Oroonoko." It is the first of those romances of the outlands, which, from the days of Defoe to the days of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, have been one of the glories of English literature.

_I.--The Stolen Bride_