To John Hall Wheelock
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. 23rd February, 1952
Dear Mr. Wheelock,
Some time ago I heard of Mr. Scribner’s death, and what you tell me gives me more reasons for regretting this loss to us all. I seem to have laid my social as well as philosophical eggs twenty or thirty years, systematically, before they were hatched. Those, like you and Mr. Scribner, who ventured to read and publish my “Sense of Beauty” when I wrote it, have never seen me alive; I vanished into another sphere before I became distinguishable. And my books, when supposed to represent a new phase, regularly contain my discoveries of the previous decade or even century.
By the way, Cory and I have both been surprised to find “The Life of Reason” so much like my latest views. The difficulty will be to choose the out-of-date passages. He is very much interested in the work and has already revised it all in a cursory way. I have stopped before the last volume, having fallen a victim of influenza on top of my double catarrh. But he will be able and happy to do everything himself.
Thank you for the royalty reports and especially for letting me used your office as a sort of bank. I hope “Vendome” and my occasional calls for $500 do not give too much trouble
Yours sincerely,
G Santayana
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Eight, 1948-1952. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries, Princeton NJ