To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6,
Rome. January 23, 1947.
I am not in the least short of things to read . . . But send me anything you read that you think would enlighten or amuse me. I have just received a modern art book from Birnbaum in New York, édition de grand luxe. And Sitwell awaits me. Moreover I think I have not told you of the lovely present a young American (half Italian & half Spanish) in the army here made me some time ago: The Amberley Papers, “by Bertrand and Patricia Russell.” It is the history, letters, journals, etc. of Bertie’s father and mother; and I found interesting things about his brother also, in his first years. It is a curious document to the explanation of British liberalism with its shifts and its obstinacies. Now that you are going to see the Russell’s social circle in London, you must store your impressions. I never had the patience to study them in the life, e.g. at Lady Ottoline Morrell’s, near Oxford. It was too great a strain. But I like to know about it, if only I can avoid the personal shamming involved.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Seven, 1941-1947. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY.