To Evelyn Tindall
Hotel Danieli
Venice, Italy. Dec. 18, 1939
Dear Miss Tindall,
The double copy of my two chapters arrived today in good order. Apparently the parcel hadn’t been opened.
As to the MS, if it isn’t in your way, the simplest thing would be for you to keep it until next September, when I hope to return to Rome. The earlier chapters are stored there, with my books, so that the MS of the whole could then be assembled. Not that I have any use for it, but there are collectors who might pay my heirs five pounds or even more for it, so that I hesitate to throw it away. If I should disappear before September, you may consider yourself my heir to the extent of these two chapters, and perhaps some collector would relieve you of the burden.
I send you what, as far I can gather, is the approximate equivalent of your dues in pounds. If there is a nest-egg all right: if there is only a vacuum, I think it will soon be filled, because I am booked to write a long paper this winter for another volume by various authors, and I will send you the MS perhaps in March or April. With best wishes for the New Year.
Sincerely yours,
G Santayana
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Six, 1937-1940. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin