To Carl Sadakichi Hartmann
C/o Brown Shipley & Co
123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Rome. October 24, 1931
Dear Mr. Hartmann,
Your Mohammed didn’t shock me, much less offend me. Certainly your taste, your diction, and your whole literary atmosphere are very remote from mine, but that is not in itself a reason for disregarding you in your ill-fortune, and I have not disregarded it. In spite of the fact that I have never seen you and that there isn’t much artistic or philosophic sympathy between us, your figure appealed to me by virtue of its composite character—somewhat like my own, but running deeper, since it concerned blood as well as circumstances. And I am really sorry for you, not only because you are not well or rich or famous, but because in one sense you couldn’t be well: because the divine curse of seeing more than one side of things had pursued you. But, having yielded more than once to that impulse of imaginative sympathy, I don’t like to be dunned. You must have friends and acquaintances who know your case and—in generous America—will come to your assistance. I must therefore ask you to excuse me from helping you further: because the distance between us, material and moral, makes me feel that it is not for me, in this instance, to be more than an occasional and fantastic helper, coming out of nowhere and disappearing into nothing.
Yours sincerely,
G Santayana
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Four, 1928–1932. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Baker Memorial Library, Dartmouth College, Hanover NH