To Robert Seymour Bridges
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. August 15, 1924
Your boldness in going to America at all rather astonished me, but once having taken the plunge I can well imagine that you found it tolerable, and even appealing to that vague tenderness for mankind which I suppose is in all our hearts. Often, in these hotels in which I live, I am annoyed at the American parties that loudly take possession of the next table, and deluge me with commonplaces and bad slow jokes, and then, if something obliges me to “make their acquaintance” and, as it were, to become one of their party, I immediately lose all consciousness of their trying tones and sentiments, and am entirely absorbed by a sort of contagious kindness and hearty simplicity which reigns among them. . . .
You speak of my “desertion of England”. I don’t feel that I have deserted: I have got my discharge. There is no place I should rather spend the rest of my life in, if my free inclination were omnipotent: but I should have to make myself younger, less sensitive to chill and damp, less disinclined to travel (because I shouldn’t like to give up my other haunts, Avila, Rome, Paris) and able to find a place, simple but comfortable enough, in which I could work without interruption. When I was in England last year I was not well and not comfortable. Possibly it was for this reason that I felt that everything was somewhat changed, materially and morally: less peace, less deference, less facility in obtaining services or small comforts. It was very like America. If I lived in England now I fear I should feel that sort of pressure which drove me away from America—that same difficulty in escaping and being at peace. The resource of living quite in the country is not open to me, unless I took a house and servants, which of itself would be perdition. . . .
Here there are so many English people that when I go to tea in “The English Tearooms”, I might almost be at the “George”. I peeped in there when I was last at Oxford, but found it so disgustingly changed that I immediately went out again. Cortina is a good place for the pedestrian, I don’t mean only for the Alpine adventurer, but for the peripatetic philosopher; clouds and frequent rain keep the summer cool—almost too cool; and the noisy Italians in the hotel do not seriously disturb me in my own corner. Besides, I like Italians.
Yours sincerely,
G Santayana
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Three, 1921-1927. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: The Bodleian Library, Oxford University, England.