To Josiah Royce
1 Silver Street
Cambridge, England. October 17, 1896
Dear Professor Royce,
You may have wondered at not hearing from me before this, and I should indeed have written if I could have given any clear account of myself earlier. Professor Palmer has probably told you that he saw me at
Oxford. I spent most of the summer there with great joy, reading in the Bodleian, writing off a couple of articles I had on hand—on Cervantes and on the absence of religion in Shakespeare—and taking long walks. . . . I should very gladly have stayed on; but there seemed to be no possibility of joining any college with a proper status, and to live there without official relations is not a desirable thing. With great regret, therefore, I decided to come here, where an old acquaintance, Wedd, a classical man, has managed to get me into King’s with the MA standing, so that I dine at high table, and meet the Dons daily on a friendly footing. People are much more hospitable and openhearted here, and there is more bustle and intellectual eagerness, so that I have much to comfort and congratulate myself with, in spite of the absence of a certain Oxonian distinction. My work is now definitely arranged, under Dr Jackson’s advice. I am to hear his lectures on the Philebus, and those of Archer-Hind on the Phaedo, and to have an hour a week privately with Jackson on the Parmenides. I have been reading a little Plato in the summer, and want to concentrate my attention on him for a while. Other things can follow later, if there is time for them. My stay here is indefinite as yet, and will be longer or shorter according to developments. I rather think I may stay two terms, that is, until the middle of March, and then go off to Paris and Italy, in search of old friends and new impressions.
I should be very glad to hear from you and to know how Harvard prospers, and especially the Department. My young friends write to me occasionally about College matters of a terrestrial and foot-ball plane, but I don’t know what currents blow in the upper ether. Hoping they are all propitious to you, I am always sincerely yours
G Santayana
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book One, [1868]-1909. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Harvard Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge MA