To Charles Augustus Strong
22 Beaumont St.
Oxford. June 29, 1917
What has chiefly occupied me of late (besides the inevitable obsession of the war) has been the French translation of Egotism, which I have had to revise, and in some passages actually to retranslate for the good Lerolle, who got lost in the intricacies of my style and of German philosophy. It is all over now, and in the press: it may come out in July, or may be postponed for business reasons for two or three months. The great event, however, is that Boutroux is decorating it with a preface, in which he calls me sage antique and a great many other pretty names; and he swallows my view of German philosophy, hardly making a wry face at all. The preface has appeared as an article in the Journal des Débats, and I would send you a copy, except that the tiresome censor doesn’t allow clippings to be sent to neutral countries. You shall get the book from Paris when it appears.
I am feeling well, and although I walk much less than formerly (I don’t know why) I am thinner. Perhaps it is the diet of no bread and no sweets! However, I have the most delicious combinations of rice-with-everything, and I believe that is supposed to be just as fattening.
I was in London for a week in May, but did and saw nothing to speak of. Lovely weather, sunshine uninterruptedly for weeks—now rain at last again—
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Two, 1910-1920. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY