To George Sturgis
Hotel Bristol,
Rome. October 28, 1935
I note your change of address. A copy of the English edition of The Last Puritan (addressed, of course, to 1 Federal Street) will have reached you by this time. If you read it (skipping without any qualms when the soliloquies bore you) you will see that it doesn’t lend itself to the cinema. Nevertheless the matter has already been broached, and Scribner has the cinema rights in hand, as my agent. I believe he said I should get 85% of the profits, if any, and he 15%. But there is no chance, I think, in that quarter, unless someone should rewrite all the last part and make it dramatic. There are several occasions where I have deliberately avoided obvious complications in the action. Tom Piper might actually have prevented Oliver’s marriage to Edith; the dropped letter business would then have more point: and later Mario might really run away with Rose, and leave Oliver doubly insulted and forlorn. But I haven’t enough familiarity with melodrama to work such plots out properly, and besides, I wished to keep the tragedy muffled and going on only in the realm of possibilities and frustrations behind the scenes. The lost letter business doesn’t make any difference: that is the point I wish the reflective reader to see: and Mario wouldn’t have snatched Rose away from Oliver for worlds, caring much more for him than for her. So that her caprices in the matter are wasted also. That is a more cynical and pessimistic effect; also a nobler one, if you catch it at all. And I am much encouraged about “putting over” my intentions. People don’t miss them. This morning, together with your letter, I receive one from Lady Russell (Elizabeth of the German Garden) who has recognized her late husband in my Lord Jim! Nobody else will, I hope and expect: and the likeness is not intentional or external; but it is the same man really, and it is a triumph that his wife should see it at once. But these psychological mysteries won’t go on the screen.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Five, 1933-1936. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.