To George Sturgis
Hotel Marini
Rome. December 17, 1921
What you tell me about your aunt Josephine wanting her whole income surprises me not a little, as I know how disinclined she is to undertake the burden of a more elaborate way of life–and the same thing happens to me. In our old age, she can only live like a younger daughter in the family, and I like a travelling student. Anything else is too much bother for us. I am writing to ask her what is up, if it isn’t a secret. She may be thinking of buying or setting up a separate house in Madrid or in Ávila, with the two little old ladies, whom we call las maestras, the teachers, because they once kept a school; this is the only new arrangement of which I have any inkling. I hardly think she wants her money in order to invest it in Spain: but that is natural in the case of your aunt Susan, or rather of her husband, because they count on distributing it some day among the Sastre boys, and it would be very cumbersome for them to have the capital in America. They are very deserving young men, and it is pleasant to think that they will be distinctly more comfortable for this inheritance when it comes to them, although, of course, they have no right to it, even morally, as their relation to their step-mother has never been more than correct.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Three, 1921-1927. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.