Transcription
A.D. Dirkzwager
Keizersgracht 702,
1017 EV Amsterdam.
Mr J.W.S. Cook
"Lower Farm House"
Hambledon *GU 8 4HE
Engeland.
Amsterdam, 11 October 2019.
Dear Stuart,
Congratulations with completing your 80th lap around the sun. That is an achievement and worth our congratulations.
Psychological studies have been conducted to investigate the gap between the current sense of life and the current age. A result of this study was that this gap, with regard to reasonably fit people, is growing with age. And how is that with you? On the photo of yourself, you had emailed on September 29, I see a good looking man in his sixties, let me say, 65 years old. Am I right that you yourself feel to be not older than 65, thus 15 younger than your real age ?
In the afirmative case I congratulate Ursula as well for the fact that she is being the luckey one, married to a 15 years younger feeling person, than he really is !!
The Brexit
The culprit is the 2016 referendum. It created a nation divided by emotions. In my opinion, the very very complicated matter of Brexit weigheing the pro's and cons, should have been initiated by parliamentary procedures for an orderly course.
The EU and the Great Britain Federation have become strange bedmates. A breakup is therefore, in my view, highly desirable.
This year, I have read the 4 books listed below.
!) "ORANJE TEGEN DE ZONNEKONING
De strijd van Willem t1t en Lodewijk XIV om Europa."
geschreven doot Luc Panhuysen
2) "The Life and Times of Queen Ann." by Gila Curtis.
3) "The Silk Roads" by Peter Frankopean.
A new History of the World.
4) "The Kingin Love" byTheo Aronson
Edward V11's Mistresses
The contents of these books throw some light on the English character.
I need to write something confidential to you now. I cannot recall my father ever using perfume, or even aftershave. I have never once caught even a faint whiff of perfume on him.
When I told my father that we were going to London for a few days, he asked us to buy a bottle of "Eau de Portugal" for him. Apparently, Eau de Portugal was not available for purchase in the Netherlands.
I remember searching for three hours before I found the atomizer. He was probably the only person in the Netherlands who used this perfume (sporadically). On page 195, I discovered how he had come up with the idea for Eau de Portugal.
Love to you both, Adriaan
addendum
The Hon. Mrs George Keppel page 195
eighteenth-century portraits of people in red coats, huge porcelain pagodas [a gift from her royal lover], and thick, magnificent carpets, but the hostess conducted the running of her house as a work of art in itself.
The same 'atmosphere of luxury' pervaded her bedroom. Its mounds of pillows, its cut-glass vases filled with lilies and malmaisons and its rich velvet curtains drawn, in this instance, against the daylight, all helped to create a suitably seductive setting for her extramarital assignations. With George Keppel having obligingly gone off to his club - and later his job - for the afternoon, and with the staff remaining discreetly downstairs, the Prince and Mrs Keppel would be certain of a couple of hours to themselves.
Vita Sackville-West, who was friendly with the young Violet Keppel even as a child, used often to see a 'discreet little one-horse brougham' waiting outside when she arrived at the house. Gently but firmly Mr Rolfe, the butler, would push the visiting girl into a dark corner of the hallway with a murmured "One minute, miss, a gentleman is coming downstairs".
Trailing a whiff of freshly-applied еau de Portugal, the gentleman would descend the stairs and, having collected hat, gloves and cane from the obsequiously bowing Mr Rolfe, would cross the pavement to the waiting brougham and go spinning away in the direction of Marlborough House.
A legend persists, to this day, that the attitude of Alexandra, as Princess and Queen, towards her husband's affair with Alice Keppel was one of saintly forbearance. She is popularly believed to have displayed all those qualities of charity and forgiveness for which she was renowned. This is not quite accurate. In the first place, Alexandra was never the saint of popular imagination: she had many attractive qualities but she could be stubborn and selfish. Her supposed acceptance of her husband's mistress could simply have been a manifestation of her own self-absorbtion. And secondly, there were times when, far from of her approving of Mrs Keppel, Alexandra revealed an active dislike of her.
It is true that the Princess of Wales preferred Alice Keppel to Daisy Warwick. She would have agreed with the Duchess of Sutherland that her husband was 'a child, such a much pleasanter child since he changed mistresses'. (The fact that Millicent Sutherland was halfsister to Daisy Warwick gives her opinion added weight.)
