My Sweet Folly (3 page)

Your princess,
 

Folie

Bridgend House

Herefordshire

2nd February, 1804

Oh, the postmaster is so vexing as to have actually sent my package away on the afternoon mail for once, so I cannot retrieve it. I must beg your pardon, I am ashamed of myself.

I was a little put out when I found the miniature, and wrote in such a style as I should not have. It was very childish of me to send it away in my annoyance. If you please, will you return it when next you write?

Folie, red-faced

Delhi Garrison
 

15 July, 1804

My dear Folly,

For that is how I think of you, you know. Not as the French spelling, Folie, although that is lovely, but for what it means in English. My Folly and my Fate. I am afraid that I cannot return your miniature. It does not seem that Cousin Charles’ tobacco jar will miss it, and I cherish it very much. You look just as I imagined, pretty and happy. Such smiling eyes—I could gaze into them forever. How strange, that from your first letter I have felt such a vivid connection to you. I think it is possible to say that there has not been one day since that I have not thought of you at least once, and some in which I could seem to think of nothing else. Your dream of India haunts me; you do not know how clearly I know the place you saw in it. Perhaps we
are
bespelled, my princess, how else could I wish so strongly that you had found me in your sleep?
 

Sweet Folly, I can’t express to you what a profound change I’ve been experiencing since our correspondence began. Life looks better somehow. When I think about you, which is unbelievably often, I feel—well, it’s rather hard to describe. It’s just—
good!
 

Sometimes I wish I could just reach through the ether, through space and time, and pull you to me, feel you against me, look into your smiling eyes. In one sudden and blinding moment, I would crush this cage, make you
feel
my flesh and blood hands on you, my mouth against yours. I would cradle your face in my hands, place my lips very close to your ear, and breathe my thoughts and my feelings into you. And if I had the power, I would burn my image so indelibly into your mind and heart that you could never,
ever
forget me. And love, I just might be able to do it sometime. I’ve been working on it.

Robert

Bridgend House

Herefordshire

2 February, 1805

I have thought a long time about your letter. I have hidden it; it frightened me, and yet I could not destroy it.

I well know what I ought to do. I should not answer it. We should not write again.

Red Fort

Shajahanabad, Delhi
 

22 June, 1805

My dear Folly,

Please. Please do not say I must not write to you. I promise to say no more to frighten you; you have my sworn word. I shall write nothing that you may not read aloud in your parlor.

The weather has begun to be hot again. I have left the army garrison and moved here to a palace known as the Red Fort, an imposing edifice on a high rock overlooking the sacred river Jumna. The fort is quite beautiful, being a palace really, the seat of the Mughal emperor Shah Alam. It is full of open air arcades, long galleries of scalloped arches made entirely of white marble. There is a fountain shaped like an open lotus, its border inlaid with gold and silver. Thousands and thousands of red and yellow flowers in pots. (What is your favorite flower?) Persian carpets piled thick on top of one another, but no furniture, only cushions, except in my chamber there is a broken English chair, impossible to sit upon, but presented to me with such pride that I could hardly refuse it.
 

I have my own elephant now. I like her; she has a tiny, merry eye; huge slow ears, a feminine taste for adornment, and an unpronounceable Hindustani name. If you would like to suggest one in English, I shall christen her immediately. In the meantime I just call her sweetheart. Although she can
salaam
and trumpet quite satisfactorily, her most pronounced talent is for finding her way home—it was her habit of meandering back there at any time she pleased that caused her to be such a bargain on the pachyderm market. But personally, I find it very reassuring to know I will always be home before dark.

What else can I write about? Doubtless the monsoon rains will be heavy again this season. I am so afraid that you will not reply. I never wished to frighten you, my dear.

Your Cousin,
 

Robert

Bridgend House

Herefordshire
 

17 November, 1805

Dear Robert,

Here I am, writing. Now we see what force circumspection plays in my character! None whatsoever. You are to name your homing elephant after me, of course. It would be much better if you had a ship to name after me, but we must make do as we can.
 

I have thought and thought—how painful and knotty the world becomes, at the same time it is turned topsy-turvy and beautiful because you are in it. I wake each morning and my first thought is of you. I walk along the river Wye and see our white-faced cattle standing knee-deep and a salmon flash beneath the pool, and wish to tell you of it. I wonder at dinner if you prefer almond cheesecakes or apple tarts. How shall I say you must not write; how shall I look every day at my ink and pen and paper, feel my heart fill, and do nothing?

I do not know how. I come to no conclusion. I am perhaps a little dishonest in my life; I pretend to love my stepdaughter, I pretend to love my husband—and it is not quite that I do
not
love them, but that they really do not love me, and so I cannot seem to hit upon what will please them. Actually I do not seem to see them very often; Melinda is at her academy for young ladies, being polished to a high sheen; and Mr. Hamilton is a crusading amateur florist and hybridizer. He is creating a new rose. He spends a great deal of time in travel on account of this endeavor, and the rest of it in his hothouse. We feel that a blue ribbon is infallibly in our future, as long as I do not make the mistake again of using the wrong buds for the dinner table as I did last year. I am very much ashamed of this; it was a cruel blow to Mr. Hamilton’s cutting schedule. I knew better, truly! Very stupid of me; I admit that I did not listen closely, or forgot; I hardly know. But it is a difficult thing for Mr. Hamilton to forgive, and I am still in disgrace. So I go about in the happy illusion that at least I must please
you,
sweet knight, you being at such a distance that I could hardly manage not to do so! It is a great comfort to me, you cannot know how deep and real my feelings for you run, my dear friend.

I had never imagined anything of this sort would happen to me. It is harder than I had ever fancied.

Your Folly

P.S. My favorite flower is the yellow rose. I am not fastidious as to the subspecies. Fortunately for the future safety of his buds, Charles now specializes in a pink variety of the Ayrshire rose, which is a seedling hybrid from our
Rosa arvensis
.

Red Fort

Shajahanabad, Delhi
 

12 April, 1806