To Rosamond Thomas Bennett Sturgis
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. June 21, 1945
Another parcel from you has arrived safely, containing tea, marmalade, and fruit biscuits. It is just what I most care to have, as my afternoon tea is my daily feast, which I can more or less control, while in a big religious establishment regular meals have to be taken as they come. On the whole this system has proved excellent for my health, in spite of the limitations imposed by scarcity of almost everything in the markets; still, things are not always as appetising or as varied as I could wish. But afternoon tea comes from the housekeeper’s private kitchen in this same passage, and she, Sister Angela, usually brings it to me herself, instead of the housemaid Maria who serves my other meals: and we have a friendly talk about things in general, and of course about food in particular. She is Irish and motherly: sometimes she wants to give me brandy or whiskey (as the Mother General, also Irish, does too) but I draw the line at that, being a Dago. At meals I drink the local white wine, or Marsala, a kind of port. As I have asked everybody for tea, Sister Angela says that I have enough for a long time to come: so that if you send me anything more, I suggest that it be coffee for the present instead of tea, and more fruit biscuits or perhaps another big festive fruit cake such as you sent me before, which keeps beautifully and makes one feel that one is always at a wedding.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Seven, 1941-1947. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA