WYATT:Well, the main feature I suggest could be the Great Tower, a narrow pile rearing itself upwards to some 300 feet upon a fairly narrow base.  On its first floor this would contain a room of unusual proportions, 130 feet high but with a width of only 30.
BECKFORD:Divine dimensions!  Speak on, Wyatt.
BECKFORD:And beyond that, do I see in the plan a hall of great extent?
WYATT:Yes.  Of very great extent.  Your dining room table here, you see, will be some fifty feet long.
WYATT:From the outside, it will seem like some abbey from the middle ages.
GREGORIO:Abbey - this is good.
BECKFORD:But an abbey undesecrated by Henry VIII, still carrying on its saintly offices in the wild countryside!  Where does this stand in relation to Fonthill Splendens?
WYATT:Well, Sir, if I may point out through the window, I had envisaged it up on that craggy area of considerable height, up beyond the woods.
GREGORIO:A long way to walk.
BECKFORD:No, Gregorio, excellent.  We'll have to build a special drive.
BECKFORD:Drive - Carreterra - Road.  Or maybe ascend by many hundreds of steps.  And from how far, O Wyatt, will this great tower of such exceptional height be able to be seen?
WYATT:I have given some thought to this.  My computations show, Sir, its sublime shape will dominate the landscape for many scores of miles around.
GREGORIO:Dominate.  Good.  A high tower.  An Abbey.  This is good!  This is very good!
BECKFORD:Oh, the din of it, Gregorio, the dust, the stir!  And the work continues at night by the light of fires and torches on our high tower.
GREGORIO:Very good, Senyor, it is excellent, Senyor.
BECKFORD:The country around too.  To protect it I shall build a high wall enclosing thousands of acres.  No longer the desecration of horses and hounds!  No fox hunting!  We shall tame and befriend the birds and the hares - and the foxes!  Not gun, nor arrow, nor net will be found here.  And as for people, nesting in the shrubberies there will be traps and spring guns that snap legs off as neatly as Pinchback's patent snuffers snuff candles.
WYATT:The only problem is, Sir, as fast as new sections are built, unfortunately you have acquired the habit of having them thrown down and new ones devised!
BECKFORD:What matter, Wyatt?  I am paying!
BECKFORD:What's more, I am providing employment for hundreds of people at a time of great distress.
WYATT:Yes, Sir.  Very good, Sir!
BECKFORD:Still believing that our household is too small, among the staff I have now raised the strength to three chefs.  That way one of them can sometimes have a day off.
BECKFORD:Then I've engaged a new confectioner and as for footmen I wish to raise the number to ten to wait at our table.  Guests: we may shortly be welcoming Dr Erhardt, the Strasbourg physician, and the Abbé Dennis Macquin, formerly Professor of Rhetorick and Belles Lettres of Meaux.
BECKFORD:(URGENTLY, IN A WHISPER)  And, my dear Gregorio.  On your next trip to London to buy precious things also, if at all possible, go to see an angel called Saunders, a tightrope walker at the Circus Royal, and the certain captivator of every bugger's soul!  Seek him out, Gregorio, and sound him out!
GREGORIO:Excellent!  I will be very active.
BECKFORD:Not too active!  Also, for God's sake, be careful - risk nothing.  Make yourself his friend but not a suggestion of anything else at this point - nothing suspicious.
GREGORIO:Of course I will not be suspicious.  I will be sincere and offer sincere friendship.
BECKFORD:Remember me.  Remember the costly prize he carries about his person that could be ours.  But also remember this cursed country in which, for our extreme misfortune, we live.  (WITH A CERTAIN RELISH)  Hanging is not a pleasant death.
GREGORIO:(INGENUOUSLY BUT WITH A TOUCH OF MISCHIEF)  But they won't hang me.  I shall explain I am only doing it for you.
BECKFORD:Hm.  Anyway, he is a jackass after our own heart!  If he will not come on his own, the way to do it may be to inspire his divine mother to bring this divine person with his divine treasure here.
BECKFORD:Then we will become all sugar, I the most paternal of all fathers!  You as brother.  Do see what you can achieve.
BECKFORD:Gregorio, your taste!  None of the estate boys are in the least promising, especially not Billy.  There is not one cherub here but would lead my friend to entire despair.
GREGORIO:Your friend?  Oh yes, your friend.
BECKFORD:My friend cannot exist on agates, china and crystal only.  Needs some nutriment more substantial to his needs.  Right now, be gone, and God speed.  And, till you return, my friend shall have no spirit for anything.  My friend will be but a wretched old thing, sighing, looking round, slobbering, etc., but sighing, looking round and slobbering in vain.  On your return he will perchance stand up and show more interest in things.
GREGORIO:Good!  Excellent.  This will be very very good!
PARSON STILL:It is not only the regiments of dwarfs of which we are told and the wild and savage animals he befriends for his own uses.  There is, also, a certain foreign person who goes by the title of Chevalier, a foreign title, I think.  This person above all is a most dangerous influence on this neighbourhood and it must surely be the hope of all God-fearing persons here that he should go back to the place from which he comes!  (SERMON ENDS)  In the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, Amen.  Hymn 247.
BECKFORD:My dear Gregorio is not a proper chevalier?  Of course he is.  Chevalier of the order of Christ, a very special title.  I arranged it myself, bestowed by the Portuguese King in person.  And, as for being a dangerous influence - how many dwarfs does he believe we have here?
GREGORIO:It may be because we call the one we've got so many names - Perro, Pierrot, Nanibus.
BECKFORD:I thought so.  The works have gone strangely silent.  (WITH MOUNTING ANNOYANCE)  Where is Wyatt?  What putrid inn, what stinking tavern or pox-ridden brothel hides his hoary and glutinous limbs?  Please go after him!  One can't trust him in the slightest thing.
BECKFORD:Every day brings proof of his negligent apathy.  Even those pinnacles up there have had to be propped up with wooden spars!
BECKFORD:They look ghastly.  This place is a tomb.  How pleasant it would be to go south again.  Gregorio!
BECKFORD:How pleasant it would be to go back to Portugal again.
BECKFORD:A withdrawal with a copious detachment of young circus artistes gathered together by you, the Boy of Boys, will be the best course to take.  Let us get a whole troupe to emigrate!  What a levee en masse!  My friend will like that.  If my friend were at his last gasp he would rise for that one!  Gazing around with an attentive stance so ready to do obeisance to such a large bevvy of followers.
WYATT:It is quite incorrect to blame me, Sir!
BECKFORD:Incorrect?  Who then, pray, should I blame for the collapse of the turret?
BECKFORD:Whose then?  I've been up there too.  It was clear to me it was run up with wattle and daub and rubble.  Just about anything that lay to hand.  Not proper stone construction at all.
WYATT:What you refer to is 'Compo Cement'.  It is newly invented and is everlasting.
BECKFORD:Everlasting!  Dung and excrement for cement I wouldn't wonder.  And why the flag at its top?  A flag was not part of my specifications.
WYATT:You pushed us beyond endurance!  Gangs of men working day and night!  You required speed - it was your orders, Sir!
BECKFORD:The tower never anchored to its base; it appeared all right.  No one troubled about it.  Except the dear Chevalier.
WYATT:I am not dismayed by this calamity.  We shall rise again, more gloriously than ever!
BECKFORD:Yes, provided you, the sublime Wyatt, will graciously deign to bestow a little more attention upon practical details!
WYATT:I tell you what.  I will, as a special mark of esteem, within a week divert five hundred men here from the works I have in train for His Majesty at Windsor Castle.
BECKFORD:(SIGHS)  The basilica is a mad and diabolical undertaking!  We have managed to use more masonry on shoring it up than they consumed for the Hanging Gardens of Babylon!
GREGORIO:It is not comfortable.  It is very fine as a church or abbey, my dear.  But as a place to live - the halls are dank and dark and the draughts are painful.  Could we not go on living in the old house?
BECKFORD:The old house must go.  Who wants Palladian splendours now we are in the Gothic age!
GREGORIO:I'd sooner live there than here, however beautiful and Gothic.
BECKFORD:(THE WINDS ARE BLOWING ROUND THE ABBEY)  Oh, the horrible din of winds.  I can't sleep!  The whole night - I've hardly slept a half hour in succession!  What are these sounds?  Of sobs and lamentations, cannon shots, bomb explosions, and all the delights of the battles of Borodino and Waterloo!  Howl, you winds - (A BROADER ROAR)  Like that auto-da-fé of that November a hundred years ago, mixture of fireworks and flames from burning folk, torments below, above ground dancing.  Blow on winds!  Fill the air full of leaves! branches! and peacocks!  Make it even more terrific and raging.  Tell them in the morning the walls in the Fountain Court to be rebuilt in stone, rather than compo-cement on wood, Wyatt's favourite materials.  What else to be done?  Night falls again.  Yesterday the great tower swayed so much that at three in the morning I thought that everything was coming down!  The dwarf awoke with a terrific "Goddam!", flew down the staircase and ran for safety.  Where?  In the closet?  Worse!  In the coalhole?  No, worse.  In the cesspool?  No, worse!  Then where?  In the dog's litter!  What a fresh and delightful appearance he had this morning!  (LOSE WINDS)  All around us the forests!  The dense dark woods weary me.  Why no fauns, or gay frolicsome clowns or satyres making sport?  Bearing about their persons ...  No matter.  Fate has brought us here.  Fate and a certain predilection of mine.  Others drink to forget their sorrows.  I do not drink.  I build.
BECKFORD:Fiddlesticks!  It was to have been finished by now!
BECKFORD:Yes.  It was so agreed.  It was to have been finished while I was away.  And I see little progress.
WYATT:Progress has been made!  Not only above the ground.  Also below the earth and now hence unseen, a building of this magnitude needs uniquely large foundations.  Down to bedrock itself.  Once or twice I thought we were digging right through to Hades!
WYATT:Yes, that is an addition of mine.  Merely to protect yourself and others from falling into the abyss!  There is a drop of thirty feet!
BECKFORD:(GRUNT)  I never authorised it!
WYATT:(BECKFORD GRUNTS IN BACKGROUND)  What are you doing, Sir?  No!  Don't pull at it!  Some final touches have not been ... There's furniture underneath!
WYATT:Sir, can I ask you something?
BECKFORD:Now seems as good a time as any.
WYATT:When Fonthill Abbey is finished, don't destroy Fonthill Splendens.
BECKFORD:Tut, who wants Palladian horrors when all the world is dreaming Gothic!
PINDAR:It was in December that myself, Lord Nelson, and Lord and Lady Hamilton, were invited by Mr William Beckford to enjoy a few days of repose at Fonthill Abbey, his country seat in Wiltshire, uncontaminated, he said, by the sight and prattle of drawing room parasites.  It was his intention to throw open the Abbey to our public gaze, for the first time.  We were met at the entrance to the park.
PINDAR:The cortege, which apart from those mentioned included Benjamin West, the painter, Wyatt, the architect, and Mme Banti, the soprano, was met by the Fonthill Volunteers and their band, and we were accompanied up to the old house.
PINDAR:A feu de joie was let off.  And the volunteers were inspected.  A not uncommonly smart body of men!
BANDMASTER:Band of the Fonthill Volunteers!  Quick march!
PINDAR:We then continued up to the Abbey, driven through the demesne between two lines of the volunteers, armed with flambeaux!
EMMA:What is that thunderous sound?
BECKFORD:Well, it is effective is it not?  It is the continued roll of drums placed at different distances in the hills!
EMMA:Oh, what pleasure to hear the sounds of distant, near, and varied instruments.
NELSON:Yes, with their reverberations among the woods and dells!
PINDAR:The huge doors swung open.  Opened, with great ease, by a dwarf in costly clothing.  We entered and (THEY SIT DOWN), sat down at a long table occupying nearly the whole length of the room to a superb dinner served in one line of enormous dishes in the substantial costume of the ancient abbeys.
NELSON:Such treasure of wrought plate, cups, vases, and ewers of - solid gold!
BECKFORD:Now, an especial pleasure ... Lady Hamilton will dance.
A LADY:What is she carrying?
NELSON:Well, of course, the ashes of Germanicus are in that urn.
PINDAR:She seems uncommonly pleased with herself!
BENJAMIN:In some ways not so much an Agripina as - a Cleopatra!
BECKFORD:Gentlemen, would you not agree that it is high time I were permitted to acquire a title?  You will surely acknowledge that a man who, by infinitely rare genealogical coincidences, is without exception descended from all the Barons - yes, all - who signed Magna Carta and whose issue still exists will not be out of place in our House of Lords!
NEWSHEET 1:Incomplete as yet, nonetheless Fonthill's vast halls have overwhelmed the minds of those few who have been lucky enough to gain admittance.  That object which to many is valued above all others is a stupendous tower, higher indeed than any for several counties.
NEWSHEET 2:It is, it must be confessed, extraordinary.  The place is filled with an illuminated atmosphere of its own.  The towering windows and the walls whereon the sunbeams fall gorgeously, glow with a mosaic of the most brilliantly tinted light; crimsoned light which struggles through the richly latticed doors, and the glimmering perspective of the golden arches.
NEWSHEET 3:It is a desert of magnificence, a glittering waste of laborious idleness, a cathedral turned into a toyshop, an  immense museum of everything that is most curious and most costly, and at the same time most worthless.  The stranger is even permitted to touch baubles of dazzling and exquisite nicety of execution, but there is a label on every article that says "This is mine".
BECKFORD:(CROSSLY)  Since the esteemed Chevalier has only now seen fit to join us, I shall have to ask you to repeat, Mr White.
GREGORIO:Sorry, Senyor.  (THEN MORE INTIMATELY)  Sorry.
BECKFORD:(TOUCHED, IN AN EMOTIONAL OUTBURST)  You will be looked after, Gregorio!  Never fear I will ever desert you!
BECKFORD:Now, Mr White, can you repeat again, more slowly?
BECKFORD:Oh yes, I think you remember Mr White?
WHITE:How do you do, Chevalier.
GREGORIO:Of course I remember Mr White.  You replaced Mr Wilding.
BECKFORD:Mr White has come to share with me certain perceptions about - continue please, Mr White.
WHITE:Well, as I was explaining, in this case it is not one but many factors.
BECKFORD:Yes, that's what you'd got to.
WHITE:Your income does not really exist any more at all.
GREGORIO:This is bad news indeed.
GREGORIO:But we have lived most frugally!  We scarcely eat or drink these days!  And we shiver by grates with little coal.
WHITE:Although I know how difficult it may be for your goodself to contemplate this, there is only really one way out - to secure an income - Fonthill and its estate must be sold.  Even that assumes that we can find a buyer.
GREGORIO:I'm sorry.  (BRIGHTENS)  But then we can go and live somewhere warm and comfortable!
BECKFORD:Silence, Gregorio.  Silence, Gregorio.  Silence, Gregorio!
WHITE:I am delighted to say we have now had an offer for the whole estate.  A very reasonable offer, in fact.  From a Mr Farquhar.  He is a merchant who has made a fortune from selling, er, gunpowder, to the East India Company.
BECKFORD:(WITH APPALLING MEMORIES OF HIS NOUVEAU RICHE FATHER WELLING UP)  Gunpowder!
GREGORIO:Senor William!  Senor!  Senor!  Wake up!  Wake up!  My dear!
BECKFORD:(NOW ABOUT 65.  WAKENING)  What is it?
GREGORIO:It is an urgent message - from Mr Hayter, the master builder!
BECKFORD:Master builder, what master builder?
BECKFORD:What does he want with me?  Let him seek its rightful owner, I have long since sold it to Mr Farquhar - are you dreaming?
GREGORIO:But the man is dying!
BECKFORD:What does he want me to do, administer the last rites?
BECKFORD:All right.  Is it about the Abbey?  Get a horse ready.  I will go to his deathbed.  But I will not canter.
MASTER BUILDER:I was the master of works under Mr Wyatt.
MASTER BUILDER:I was in charge of more than five hundred men.
BECKFORD:I know that!  Tell me something that I don't know now.
MASTER BUILDER:The foundations - you were away for nine months, sir.
BECKFORD:(BEGINNING TO DAWN ON HIM)  Yes ...?
MASTER BUILDER:They were never laid.  The great tower rests on bare earth.  It has no foundations.  Sir, it was a fraud.  The tower could fall at any time.  None of those who helped with the construction will now go to within half a mile of it.  It's surprising it's stood - so - long ... it is dangerous.
BECKFORD:Dangerous!  Mr Farquhar must be told at once!
BECKFORD:And so, Mr Farquhar - it could fall at any time.
BECKFORD:(SHOUTING)  It could fall at any time!
FARQUHAR:Oh!  I'm grateful for the information, Mr Beckford.  Most grateful.  But it seems firm enough, firm enough.  Tall and firm.  I reckon it'll last out my time.
SERVANT:I hear sounds from the tower, Sir.  I fear all is not well!
SERVANT:(SHOUTING)  Cracking sounds from the tower, Sir!
SERVANT:Permit me to wheel you outside!
SERVANT:I fear for your safety!
FARQUHAR:Oh, all right, all right!
FARQUHAR:Well, it looks just the same as ever, firm enough.  Is that a crack across its face?  Up high?  No, that's illusion.  Firm as a rock!  It always did look rather insubstantial.  That is part of its beauty, I'm told.  Wheel me in, you forgot to bring my rug.  I'm cold!
SERVANT:Then at least to the West wing, Sir, away from the Great Tower!
SERVANT:(APPROACHING)  You all right, Sir?
FARQUHAR:What?  What did you say?
SERVANT:(SHOUTING)  Are you all right, Sir!
SERVANT:I was blown the length of St Michael's Gallery.
SERVANT II:(IN THE DISTANCE)  Fonthill Abbey has fallen.
SERVANT III:(DISTANT)  The Great Tower at Fonthill has fallen.
FARQUHAR:St Michael's Gallery?  You blown down St Michael's Gallery?  How can that be true?
SERVANT III:What help can help us now?
SERVANT IV:Sir, the Great Western Hall and the whole of the Octagon Chamber is gone!  It's just a heap of stones.
FARQUHAR:Hmm.  The place always was too large.
SERVANT V:(A STRONG WILTSHIRE ACCENT)  That tower could never have stood.  It was built too tall.  And that William Beckford, what was he up to?  Whyever did he have to build that tower so high in the first place?