To George Sturgis
9, Avenue de l’Observatoire
Paris. July 18, 1927
Dear George,
I have your letter of July 6, and a previous one also, and have seen with pleasure that all goes well with you. As for me, I am as usual. I arrived after the excitement about Lindberg; found Strong here, who left for Switzerland not long after; and later Margaret Strong has been here, but we lead a strange life together in this apartment, hardly ever seeing each other. I believe she is moving into her new house at Saint Germain in a day or two, but her ways, like the Lord’s, are past finding out. Don’t think I say this in any spirit of complaint: she gives me no trouble, and supplies me with food and service, which I don’t pay for when she is here; but she hides in an odd way; it is suspected that she is secretly engaged to be married, and altogether she is a puzzle to her friends.
. . .
A German friend dines with me (at restaurants) every evening: he is a friend of my friend Baron Westenholz of Hamburg, and my guest in Paris, although I had to get a room for him at a hotel near by, as I couldn’t put him up in the apartment, occupied by Margaret, her dog, her maid, and sundry bales and heaps of carpets, stuffs, blankets, antique furniture, and bandboxes in ever corner, on all the chairs, and behind every door. My own room, I need hardly say, is sacred, and I live happy in it, like a monk in his cell.
It is decided that I shall not go to Avila this summer. Your aunt Susie and Celedonio wrote giving me a formal invitation—too formal, perhaps—but it seemed to me safer not to accept it, as it was at least possible that I should have been in their way and given them too much trouble. This decision leaves me free to remain here quietly until the middle of October when I shall doubtless return to Italy, either directly to Rome, or stopping on the way to pay a visit to Strong at Fiesole. Love to all from
G Santayana
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Three, 1921-1927. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.