My Sweet Folly Read Free Page A

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
     
    My sweet Folly,
    If you were mine…
    Searching for parlor chat—the weather has become hot again. The monsoon is still months away. My work is interesting; politics and religion. I have been learning to make scale drawings of the architecture, and collecting recipes and superstitions from the guuruus. Certainly I shall have a book out of this eventually. I ride out every day, but my homing elephant dependably returns me to our abode by sunset.
    If you were mine, sweet Folly, I should not leave you, not for a moment, not for any rose or any riches.
    Robert
     

     
    Bridgend House  
    Herefordshire  
    9 May, 1806
     
    Dear Cousin Robert,
    My husband, your cousin Charles Hamilton, died suddenly of a seizure on the 6th of May. He was visiting