To George Sturgis
9 Avenue de l’Observatoire
Paris. August 2, 1921
Your telegram—which I am acknowledging by cable—reaches me this morning: the very last previous news had been encouraging, but of course under the circumstances the worst was to be feared. Your poor father at least had been expecting his end almost daily for years: and now he seemed to be having a spell of complete happiness, and to have felt quite satisfied with the posture in which he was leaving all his affairs, with the situation of Josephine and with your approaching marriage. Has this taken place, or has it been put off on account of your father’s illness? You will now begin your married life a little sobered by this bereavement; but it need not be less happy for that: perhaps more so on the whole, because your new life will be your whole life now, and you will enter upon it with a certain seriousness, which the knowledge of the inevitable end always gives, when we have time to remember it.
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.