UNDER THE HILL - a romantic novel

Scanned, proofed and corrected from the original hardcover edition for enjoyable reading. (Worth every penny spent!)


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Under the Hill is an unfinished erotic tale based loosely on the legend of Tannhäuser, published in The Savoy.

Beardsley was a caricaturist and did some political cartoons, mirroring Wilde's irreverent wit in art. Beardsley's

work reflected the decadence of his era and his influence was enormous, clearly visible in the work of the French

Symbolists, the Poster art Movement of the 1890s and the work of many later-period Art Nouveau artists like Pape and

Clarke.

Beardsley was a public character as well as a private eccentric. He said, "I have one aim—the grotesque. If I am not

grotesque I am nothing." Wilde said he had "a face like a silver hatchet, and grass green hair." Beardsley was

meticulous about his attire: dove-grey suits, hats, ties; yellow gloves. He would appear at his publisher's in a

morning coat and patent leather pumps.

Although Beardsley was aligned with the homosexual clique that included Oscar Wilde and other English aesthetes, the

details of his sexuality remain in question. He was generally regarded as asexual—which is hardly surprising,

considering his chronic illness and his devotion to his work. Speculation about his sexuality include rumors of an

incestuous relationship with his elder sister, Mabel, who may have become pregnant by her brother and miscarried.


Through his entire career, Beardsley had recurrent attacks of the disease that would end it. He

suffered frequent lung hemorrhages and was often unable to work or leave his home.

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An excerpt from the beginning:

CHAPTER I

THE Abbé Fanfreluche, having lighted off his horse, stood doubtfully for a moment beneath the ombre gateway of the

mysterious Hill, troubled with an exquisite fear lest a day's travel should have too cruelly undone the laboured

niceness of his dress. His hand, slim and gracious as La Marquise du Deffand's in the drawing by Carmontelle, played

nervously about the gold hair that fell upon his shoulders like a finely-curled peruke, and from point to point of a

precise toilet the fingers wandered, quelling the little mutinies of cravat and ruffle.

It was taper-time; when the tired earth puts on its cloak of mists and shadows, when the enchanted woods are stirred

with light footfalls and slender voices of the fairies, when all the air is full of delicate influences, and even the

beaux, seated at their dressing-tables, dream a little.

A delicious moment, thought Fanfreluche, to slip into exile.