To Rosamond and George Sturgis
Hotel Bristol
Rome. December 28, 1936
I am being treated very kindly by the world in my old age. Even an unknown friend I have in the Michigan State prison, called Wayne Joseph Husted, No 35571, sent me a Christmas card. Years ago he honoured me with a psychological essay, really very good, on prison life, and since then we occasionally exchange civilities. I am now sending him The Last Puritan. I hope it won’t be stopped by the authorities as dangerous to convict morals.
The reception of this book has been curious. I don’t think many people really like it, yet it has had, as you know, a vast success. The other day I received a Swedish translation. The German version, with the nasty things I say about Germans and Goethe left out by agreement, announces that it is translated by two ladies, aus dem Amerikanischen. Fancy that, when I am so proud of my Received Standard English. But I gathered from what I could make out of the Swedish wrapper, and from other hints, that the interest taken in the “novel” by the Nordics is entirely scientific. Style, humour, etc, are beneath their notice: but they say the book is an important document on American life; and as America, I mean the U.S, is important for them commercially and racially, they wish it to be studied in their country. Perhaps it will be quoted, as a warning, by the Nazi professors of sociology. This, like my convict friend, falls to me by divine grace, with no effort or merit on my part. We have uses we never intended.
I have had a touch of catarrh, very slight, as the injections my Italian doctor gives me seem to keep off the worst; I am now quite well and working with gusto, as I almost see my plans as to books completely carried out. Here is an egotistical letter, all about trifles interesting only to [across] myself: but the great questions like the war in Spain, and the Simpson affair, are too sad to write about.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Five, 1933-1936. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.