PHOTOGRAPH:
4-1/2″ X 6″ MEASUREMENTS, BLACK AND WHITE IN EXCELLENT CONDITION AND SIGNED IN BLUE INK PEN, “HOPE NAMGYAL”
LETTERHEAD:
8-1/4″ X 6″ THE PALACE, GANGTOK, SIKKIM, DATED 15TH SEPTEMBER 1969 AND SIGNED SINCERELY HOPE NAMGYAL, “GYALMO OF SIKKIM
ENVELOPE:
8-1/4″ X 6-3/8″ WITH 13 STAMPS FROM INDIA AND 1 BIG STAMP COLORED PURPLE FROM INDIA (INK STAMPED FROM POST OFFICE DATED 17, SEPT. 1969
RETURN ADDRESS IS FROM GYALMO OF SIKKIM, GANGTOK, SIKKIM. VIA – EASTERN HIMALAYAS
HISTORY:
In 1959, Cooke, then a freshman at Sarah Lawrence College, met Palden Thondup Namgyal, Crown Prince of Sikkim, in the bar of the Windamere Hotel in Darjeeling, India. He was then a widower nearly twice her age.
Four years later, Cooke, an Episcopalian, married the Crown Prince in a Buddhist monastery on 20 March 1963, an act which caused her to be dropped from the Social Register. He became monarch of Sikkim nine months later but was deposed in 1975 and confined to his palace under house arrest. The couple had two children, Palden and Hope Leezum; she also has two stepsons and a stepdaughter from her husband’s first marriage.
The Chogyal and his wife separated soon after he was overthrown, and she moved to Manhattan, where she raised her children. The royal couple divorced in 1980, and the Chogyal died of cancer in 1982 in New York City.
Today
Cooke is a tour guide and historian in New York City. She lives in Brooklyn Heights, New York. She wrote a memoir of her life in Sikkim, Time Change.
