To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. January 21, 1945
Dear Cory:
I am distressed to find, by your letter of Dec. 28, that you have received none of my letters. I have not written you many, but they covered all the essential points about the book and the royalties and also congratulated you on your marriage. I said, I remember, that long ago when I heard that your books were at Mrs. Batten’s, I foresaw that your future was there also. But will it eventually be in England or in New York? I see you are faithful to the shadow of Columbia. Is there any substance in that shadow?
As to George Sturgis, it is one of those numerous blows not to my heart but to my peace and sense of security which events have inflicted on me in these last years. I tell the Sisters that I was never happier than in their house, and this is true in the sense that I was never more at peace with myself and with the world, speculatively considered. But in action, dynamically, the world has inflicted some rebuffs on me that I hardly expected, making me trouble about money, trouble about politics, forbidding me my little comforts and indulgences: sitting in the sun, asking people to luncheon, getting interesting books, and living in a well-ordered country. Having George Sturgis to look after my money was a feature in this little garden of Epicurus; a hedge that cut off the vista over the dung-hills and the cabbages. All that is sadly fallen, and I hardly expect to live to see it restored: perhaps that sort of thing is not destined to return to earth for a thousand years. That is a bit sad, but good for me. It forces me to lift my eyes a little higher, to a more distant horizon. Incidently, it has made me thin, and very much older. You may have seen some of the photographs that these Army men have been taking. They have come to see me in great numbers, most of them very simple and kind, some real treasures, like Freidenberg, who got vol. II of Persons & Places to Scribner; and that is not the only favour he has done. He has made me presents of good things to eat, and of tea! And the religious book (very insidious!) that I have been writing also has raised my spirits. We must see heaven in the midst of earth, just above it, accompanying earth as beauty accompanies it. We must not try to get heaven pure, afterwards, or instead. Christ is essentially a spirit of the earth. He is a tragic hero. Basta.
Yours affly,
G Santayana
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Seven, 1941-1947. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY.