Pearls and Swine

by Leonard Woolf

Pearls and Swine has a similar sort of set-up–a room full of men harping on about their favourite subject. In this story, the narrator is on a week’s holiday in a “large gaudy uncomfortably comfortable hotel” in Torquay. It’s evening, and the male guests have gathered in the “smoking rooms” and are drinking before going to bed. The subject at hand is colonialism, “Indian unrest” and how the colonies should be ‘managed.’ Each man has his own theory of what should be done, and pomposity, ignorance, and hypocrisy are thick in the air that night, until finally a man who’s lived in Ceylon for years weighs in.

8 pages, ebook

About the author

Leonard Sidney Woolf was a noted British political theorist, author, publisher (The Hogarth Press), and civil servant, but perhaps best-known as husband to author Virginia Woolf.