To Max Forrester Eastman
18 January 1952 . Rome, Italy
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6,
Rome. January 18, 1951.
Dear Mr. Eastman
Your letter and two articles have naturally interested me, especially where you catch the spirit on which I write, which is not always. . . . Today, I wish to confine myself to a list of the trifling but strange errors on matters of fact which I have marked with a red pencil. This establishment is legally called “Calvary Hospital, Nursing Sister of the Little Company of Mary.” One wing is the convent for the Sisters; the opposite arm of the “Cross” is the “Ospizio” which you know, and the long middle wing at right angles is the Hospital proper. But we are not more than half a dozen guests in normal times, so that the three storeys over my head are often used for patients as well. You speak as if I had come to this refuge in order to retire from the world: why not become a monk rather than a nun? But my retreat has always been “moral” only, not disciplinarian, and it took place in 1893, when (until Dec. 16th ) I was 29 years old . . . Page 38 touches higher matters, which I will discuss when your third article appears, and I will skip to the fictions about my quoting Aquinas in Latin to a blundering missionary, to squash him; and that I came to this house because I was ill. The reason was that my money from America was about to be cut short, and I succeeded in making an arrangement with the Head of this Order to pay an equivalent of my dues here, in Chicago . . . Your trouble with me on major matters is that you do not understand that I am a pagan. Perhaps you don’t care for Greek & Roman classics. That seems to blind you to normality. America is not normal, not natural, but forced, Protestant.
Yours sincerely G. S.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Eight, 1948-1952. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington.