Pearls Before Swine

By Annette Siketa

Why did the popular if gossipy Lady Wharton flee the country? Letters found after her death provide a tantilising clue.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Annette Siketa
• Release date: Nov 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005357184

Annette Siketa

For those of you who have not yet made my acquaintance, my name is Annette Siketa, and I am totally blind. Were you aware that most blind and visually impaired people are extraordinarily perceptive? To sighted people, this ability must seem like ESP, and I suppose to a certain extent, it is. (I'm referring to the literal meaning of Extra Sensory Perception, not the spooky interpretation.) To compensate for the lack of vision, the brain and the other four senses become sharper, so that we can discern a smell or the identity of an object. I promise you there's no trickery involved. It's simply a matter of adapting the body to ‘think’ in another way.Being blind is no barrier to creativity. Like most things in this world, life is what you make of it, and after losing my sight due to an eye operation that went terribly wrong, I became a writer, and have now produced a wide variety of books and short stories, primarily of the ghost/supernatural/things that go bump in the night genre.So, how does a blind person write a book? On the practical side, I use a text-to-speech program called ‘Jaws’, which enables me to use and navigate around a computer, including the Internet, with considerable ease. Information on Jaws can be found at www.freedomscientific.comOn the creative side...well, that’s a little more difficult to explain. Try this experiment. Put on your favourite movie and watch it blindfolded. As you already ‘know’ the movie – who does what where & when etc, your mind compensates for the lack of visualisation by filling in the ‘blanks’. Now try it with something you’ve never seen before, even the six o'clock news. Not so easy to fill in the blanks now is it?By this point you’re probably going bonkers with frustration – hee hee, welcome to my world! Do not remove the blindfold. Instead, allow your imagination to compensate for the lack of visualization, and this will give you an idea of how I create my stories. Oh, if only Steven Spielberg could read my mind.

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PEARLS BEFORE SWINE

By Annette Siketa

Copyright © 2021 Annette Siketa.

No part of this book may be manipulated, transmitted, or altered by any method or manner whatsoever. All rights reserved. Please respect the authors’ rights. Only through honesty can the insidious practice of illegal copying be curbed.

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Pearls Before Swine.

When Lady Mary Wharton died aged seventy-three, her Will included the following. To her son, Edward - Nothing. To her daughter, Prudence - all property not otherwise assigned. To Monsieur Dupont in Calais, two boxes of correspondence sealed with red wax and black ribbon, with a request that the more intimate letters be destroyed.

He did not comply with the request entirely, primarily because three of the letters, written to Lady Diana Newland in Paris, go some way to explaining why Lady Mary suddenly left England in 1739.

3rd April.

My dear Diana,

London proceeds at its usual pace, and vice is now so common that it’s not worth the trouble to conceal it. In the current climate, if it was easier to be righteous than rakish, the moral balance of the universe would shift and our present monarch and his latest plaything, Madame Walmoden, would be canonised as saints.

As I told you a few weeks ago, His Majesty's previous plaything, Lady Suffolk, suddenly withdrew from court. I was given more details about this by my good friend, Lord Hervey, who is as much as ever in the Queen's confidence.

Lady Suffolk made a pretty little speech to the queen, saying that, as she no longer enjoyed the favour of the king, it would be best for all if she quit the palace. I suppose she intended to make a dignified exit, but as a witness later stated, Never had a woman sounded more like an ass.

If Lady Suffolk expected her resignation to be refused, she was sadly mistaken, for the queen treats the king’s favourites with mocking geniality. In my opinion, it’s not tears, agony, and sympathy that move our sex, it's sugar-coated malice.

The queen cares not who rules the king, so long as she and Sir Robert Walpole can rule the kingdom. As one verse put it, ‘You may strut your crown, dapper George, but it will be in vain, for we know it is Queen Caroline who truly reigns’.

Never was a woman the possessor of so much tact, and had she the power to do so, she could easily form a government comprising primarily of women, which would be less silly and inattentive than the dotes who now govern the country.

As you know, my cousin Telford resided at our Twickenham estate, and just after his death, I was duty bound to visit the estate and endure a steady stream of callers. I have never seen so much black bombazine in my life. I will never understand the need to express condolences for a person one hardly knew.

Nevertheless, all was tranquil, but as fate would have it, I was walking by the river one afternoon, and when I pulled off a glove to dip my hand in the water, I lost a small diamond ring that had been on my mother’s finger the day she died.

I was very upset and scolded my maid, Leesha Pratt, who