To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Hotel Savoia
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. June 26, 1940
Your letter of the 15th arrived yesterday, having been “opened by the Censor”. I suppose it came by a steamer from Lisbon and was stopped at Gibraltar for inspection of the mails by the British authorities; however, ten days in all is not making bad time.
I am not, as the heading of this letter suggests, at the Savoia, which is not yet open, but at the Ampezzo, near the Station, which is very second class, and the weather rainy and cold. However, I shall move to the Savoia as soon as possible, and hope for sunshine. All Schilpp’s essays have reached me except two, including Russell’s; but it is comprehensible that he should be late. I work every morning on my reply, but often with little interest. Most of these essays are like this hotel, very second-rate. Still, there are moments when I wake up and like the job: only such inspiration doesn’t last long. I am also without books, and am reading Balzac in an Italian (very good) translation that I find here in the book-stalls under the arch. It is very much like my finding refuge in Dickens during the other war: but there is this difference. Then I was in Oxford, with all the books in the world at hand, but too distracted to read anything serious. Now I am not distracted at all; what is happening interests me like ancient history, and illustrates the same truths. But I am without books materially, and inclined to fiction or memoirs, as really more interesting than official philosophy. When I have finished with Schilpp, I shall draw a deep breath and turn to “Persons & Places” which I have the MS of here. With that, Balzac and the very interesting newspapers, I hope to be quite happy.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Six, 1937-1940. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY