To George Sturgis
Hotel Danieli
Venice. March 12, 1940
I hope your trip to Mexico went well. Several people have recently sent me books about Spanish America. It seems to be a very second class place, except for a very few vestiges of old Spanish dignity or religion. But of course, in an Americanized hotel, you will enjoy the tropical warmth and vegetation and like the atmosphere of “moral holiday” that prevails there—like it, I mean, for a change.
Is it true, as an unknown correspondent has written to me, that the stage in America has become “immoral”? This person had sent me a dramatization of The Last Puritan, in which my “Nathaniel” (George Parkman) and his old father both try to rape the young Caroline, their step-sister and step-daughter, while Nathaniel beats his wife. I protested that these were not the manners of Beacon Street in my time, and that he mustn’t use my name or the title of my book for his production. He now says he is going to burn it! Meno male!
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Six, 1937-1940. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.