To George Sturgis
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. July 17, 1939
I think I haven’t told you of the change that I am forced to make next winter. Pinchetti is going to pull down the Hotel Bristol and to rebuild it. He expects the work to last two years, after which he invites me (if I have not acquired a permanent mansion in the skies) to be the first guest in his new establishment. But meantime, at least, I shall have to look for other quarters. . . . As my serious work is now nearly completed, I could, in strictness, try some other place than Rome, Capri perhaps or Taormina; but I should miss my books and my familiar gardens, and probably shouldn’t be any happier for the change.
. . .
I am pleased to see that income is flowing in well in spite of Roosevelt and the war-scare. Here there is perfect tranquility, but some murmurs among hotel-keepers in view of the total absence of rich “democratic” travellers. There are plenty of Germans and Swiss here, but impecunious, and the Italians are beginning to troop in, but only for a month’s holiday.
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.