just this morning discovered it in an empty tobacco jar. If my face must repose in jars, I prefer it to be in some more intriguing vessel, so I send it to you to place in a convenient spice bottle.
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
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
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