[Illustration: Thia and Thol--B.C. 39,000.] THE DREADFUL DRAGON OF HAY HILL MAX BEERBOHM [Illustration] LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD. _First published in “A Variety of Things”_ (_Volume ten of the Limited Edition of Max Beerbohm’s Works_). _First published separately in book form, November, 1928._ _New impression, January, 1929._ _Printed in Great Britain_ THE DREADFUL DRAGON OF HAY HILL In the faint early dawn of a day in the midst of a golden summer, a column of smoke was seen rising from Hay Hill, rising thickly, not without sparks in it. Danger to the lives of the dressmakers in Dover Street was not apprehended. The fire-brigade was not called out. The fire-brigade had not been called into existence. Dover Street had not yet been built. I tell of a time that was thirty-nine thousand years before the birth of Christ. To imagine Hay Hill as it then was, you must forget much of what, as you approach it from Berkeley Square or from Piccadilly, it is now. You knew it in better days, as I did?--days when its seemly old Georgian charm had not vanished under the superimposition of two vast high barracks for the wealthier sort of bachelors to live in? You remember how, in frosty weather, the horse of your hansom used to skate hopelessly down the slope of it and collapse, pitching you out, at the foot of it? Such memories will not serve. They are far too recent. You must imagine just a green hill with some trees and bushes on it. You must imagine it far higher than it is nowadays, tapering to a summit not yet planed off for the purpose of Dover Street; and steeper; and with two caves aloft in it; and bright, bright green.