ADDITIONS AND RESTORATIONS 17 



striking, if inconvenient, plan. He succeeded to such an extent 

 that the result of his labours has been referred to as " Fonthill 

 splendens." His son, the author of " Vathek," is said to have 

 been born at Fonthill in 1759, possibly in the new house, but 

 there is no record of the actual date of its erection. The son 

 eventually sold it for ^"9,000, a mere bagatelle in comparison 

 with its cost, which was nearly a quarter of a million. He was 

 then, about 1795, building on a vast scale, with the help of Wyatt, 

 one of those freaks in which the late eighteenth century delighted, 

 a mansion in the guise of a sham abbey, costing another quarter 

 of a million. This wonderful edifice had but a short life, for 

 in 1825, two years after he had sold the estate, the great tower 

 fell and started the decay of the whole structure. So famous 

 were Fonthill Abbey and its contents that half England had 

 flocked to the sale, filling every inn for miles around, and 

 eating the countryside bare. Beckford the younger, like many 

 of his contemporaries, was a man of great wealth and of con- 

 siderable culture ; a great collector of art treasures, and one 

 who spent large sums in building in an ancient style of which 

 neither he nor anyone living knew the rudiments. Reynolds, 

 however, may be held to have countenanced the practice, for he 

 says that the imagination being affected by the association of 

 ideas, and we having naturally a veneration for antiquity, what- 

 ever building brings to our remembrance ancient customs and 

 manners, such as the castles of the barons of ancient chivalry, 

 is sure to give delight. 



It is often very difficult to determine the date of old country 

 houses ; no records of the building of them survive, or if they 

 do they are stowed away in unexplored muniment rooms. 

 Tradition is vague or unreliable. Additions may have been 

 made from time to time of which no precise account remains. 

 The lapse of years may have toned everything down to the same 

 antique appearance, rendering the disentanglement of the various 

 periods a laborious task, and the results uncertain. The work 

 of a later period may, perhaps, predominate to such an extent 

 as to overwhelm what remains from an earlier, and cause the 

 whole house to be dated half a century later than it ought to 

 be. This is the case at Normanton Park, in Rutland, where 

 such considerable alterations were made about 1780 that the 

 house is held to be of the Adam period, whereas its main 

 disposition was almost certainly settled fifty years before that 



