To Cyril Coniston Clemens
Hotel Danieli
Venice, Italy. November 14, 1939
As to Florence and Papini, they are not in my line. You don’t know very much about me*. I avoid literary people and Anglo-American centres, like Florence; and I am not “America’s” this or that. I have never been an American citizen, but still travel with a Spanish passport, though I seldom go to Spain, my relations there being all dead as are my best friends in England. Yet I still love them all; and now that my Realms of Being are finished at last, I am turning to writing recollections about them.
Yours sincerely G Santayana
* But you are right in feeling that I sympathize with Peacock’s point of view. Yet I didn’t like the one book of his that I have read, except the Latin in it. Witty at times, but fault-finding & inconclusive.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Six, 1937-1940. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: William R. Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham NC.