To Susan Sturgis de Sastre
Queen’s Acre
Windsor, England. February 6, 1912
I have just got a telegram, like one you must have received also, saying that Mother died yesterday. . . .
What a tremendous change this is! Mother was the absolutely dominating force in all our lives. Even her mere existence, in these last years, was a sort of centre around which we revolved, in thought if not in our actual movements. We shall be living henceforth in an essentially different world. I hope you and I may be nearer rather than farther from one another in consequence.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Two, 1910-1920. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Alderman Library, University of Virginia at Charlottesville, VA.