To George Sturgis
Hotel Bristol,
Rome. May 21, 1939
Dear George
I have your letter of May 9– with the copy of Lady R’s about Bertie’s appointment. I told you from the first that he is an absolutely honest, fanatically honest, man, and has got into this mess partly by his brother’s polygamous habits and partly by his own, curiously acquired late in life. They both inherited nobility, genius, and madness, and a decent fortune, £4000 a year each, which they didn’t know how to preserve.
. . . Some Communists, when Mercedes last wrote, were still camping in her house. They had ruined everything, carefully breaking the pious pictures, but curiously sparing some Chinese lamps and other objects that Mercedes preserved from her parent’s heirlooms in Manila. They were far more delicate and valuable than her religious ornaments, but luckily were heathen!
. . . I shall probably go to Cortina in a month, unless the political situation should become more threatening. My landlord here assures me that there will be no war, and he is a leading Fascist & member of parlaiment and ought to have inside information; but my American friends, Strong and Cory, are in a panic and think I ought to go to Switzerland for refuge. I should rather remain in Italy, Cortina would be perfectly safe and quiet, also Venice; but would it be possible to get money through my letter of credit if communications were interrupted between England and Italy? Should war break out, you might, I suppose, send me my $500 a month directly from America, assuming that the U.S. will keep out of it.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Six, 1937–1940. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.