To Charles Augustus Strong
Colonial Club
Cambridge, Massachusetts. February 12, 1911
Thank you very much for repeating your generous offers; my plans about retirement continue unchanged; that is, I expect to leave (either resigning formally or getting an indefinite leave of absence) a year from next June, i.e. in June 1912. This summer I am sorry to say I shan’t see you, because I am going to California to give some lectures at Berkeley; the proposal came just in time, for if they had waited another year, it would have been too late. As it is, it seemed too pat to be refused; it gives me a chance of seeing the West for nothing and making a sort of farewell tour of the country.
By the time I retire I hope to have $2500 a year of my own; my unmarried sister (who is far better off) has offered to share her superfluities with me; so you see I shall be opulent according to my standards. Nevertheless I gladly accept your offers of a helping hand in spirit, and in fact also, if circumstances should require or justify it. You have eighteen months in which to make up your mind and experiment in places and houses; if you have settled down when I am free, I will come to make you a long visit, and we might (if your house was large enough) share it in a sense, if you would set aside a room for me where I might leave my books and other small belongings, and where I might come every year for a season. During my first winter—and you would probably be in Switzerland—I want to spend several months in Madrid, where I know I can be comfortable and amused at an old spinter friend’s. Then I am longing to revisit Italy; and my plan of writing a critical history of philosophy may take me to Oxford, London, & Paris, in order to have a large library to work in. But this consultation of books would (as you may well imagine) not be systematic, so that the greater part of my composition could be done in the wilderness, and would probably be all the better, as to tone and perspective, for being done there.
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.