To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Hotel Savoia
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. August 19, 1940
Dear Cory,
It was very pleasant and reassuring to know that you had got Scribner’s cheque and also the money from the Bankers’ Trust. This will keep you going, I hope, until the matter of the Fellowship is settled. As the fund is in America I see no reason why the war should prevent it from being arranged, unless the Trustees in England are too preoccupied to attend to matters not of immediate life or death. I am sorry that my bank account is blocked. I knew it before you informed me, because my poor old friend Mercedes, now 83 years old, had a trying experience. I had sent her a cheque to help fill the yawning void caused by a delay of two months in the receipt of her annuity, which we send her from America; and such is my financial standing—or was—that the Spanish bank gave her the cash at once. But alas, a week or two later they wrote to her that my cheque had been refused in London, and please to give them the money back! Of course, she being a lady accustomed in her youth to satisfy her caprices and to help her poor relations, the money no longer existed, and she wrote to me again in tears for explanation and for help. Well, I can’t send you more cheques on B. S. & Co.. but I will pass on any American cheques I may receive—they may amount to $1000 in a year—to help you replenish your new bank-account. When the war is over, if I am alive and the pound is still worth something, I shall be able to pay your extra expenses (assuming you have your Fellowship) in coming to Italy, and doing Strong’s commission, and if need be looking after me.
Yours affly,
G Santayana
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.