David Brown
It was the anguished plea of a desperate wife and mother as Eliza Forbes wrote: “Our beloved Kitty and Alexander thank God they are in good health and often hope to see their beloved father.”
The letter was addressed to Theodore Forbes, a wealthy Scottish merchant who had made his fortune in India in the early 19th century.
Eliza’s appeal was the culmination of their romantic yet tumultuous love story, which was ultimately doomed by the social attitudes to race and marriage in colonial India. Their descendant is now second in line to the British throne.
