Briefwisseling en aantekeningen. Deel 1

CIX.
Willem Bentinck aan de gravin van Portland.

[B.M., Eg. 1713]

Den Haag, 14 April 1745.

The newspapers here are full of the discontents in England. I wish there was not so much reason for all these reports. For it disables the well-meaning and gives strength and vigour to the French. You judge very right by my silence, of my not liking the turn of affairs, when I don't speak of 'em. And there is commonly too much to say to begin, what one cannot end without trusting to the paper what is not fit for it.

I am very glad Lord Chesterfield has been here. For he would never have believed what he sees, whoever had told it him. And he sees very clear what he sees, and not onely remembers well, but knows how to tell it again.

[p. 124]

I find him mightily changed as to his person. The care he has of health has made him very sober and regular in his hours.

Mr. Tork set out yesterday with his wife for Gelderland. I find him vastly changed as to his way of acting for these four or five last months. And I have had occasion of late to examine him narrowly, because he is this year in the Committee for foreign affairs - - which the Deputys of Gelderland have by turns - -. I don't decide his being suddenly metamorphosed: but am glad to be ridd of the displeasure of disputing with him in the assembly, and of looking afterwards sower at one another in the family¹⁾, which is a natural and constant consequence of t' other as well here as in England......

1) Vgl. hiervóór, blz. 62.