To Robert Steed Dunn
Rome. May 1, 1936
“Bobby Dunn!” I said to myself on seeing your name printed at the upper left-hand corner of your envelope. “What a nice person that was!” But when I went on from that purely sentimental sensation in search of images or ideas, I had to open your letter for guidance, and afterward your book. I remember lunching with you in New York—wasn’t it in a basement?—and that you were already a mature person, not exactly Bobby Dunn any longer, but Robert Dunn; with something of that for- midable will, that capacity for mysterious strong feelings and velléités which the hero of your book has . . . .
I won’t pretend to fathom your intentions in your book. For one thing I don’t understand it very well. Perhaps if I heard it read aloud, with the right idiomatic emphasis, I should catch the meaning more often; but even then you have a lot of words unknown to me, as well as a mixture of slang and poetry which disconcerts my aged mind.
Yet I feel that you are a poet in eye and heart, and I thank you for remembering me.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Five, 1933-1936. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Unknown