To Henry Ward Abbot
Oxford, England. May 27, 1887.
Dear Harry,
A word today to tell you that you have put a very fanciful and astonishing meaning on my “fall from grace”. I didn’t discover it from your own enigmatical references to it, but this morning comes a letter from the good and outspoken Herbert which announces that I have been batting with Russell. If you choose to believe it, I am perfectly willing and shouldn’t mind your knowing it if it were true—for I shouldn’t be in the least ashamed of it. But it doesn’t happen to be true. If you reread my letter you will see that what I had in mind was what I had already written to Herbert Lyman about—namely my running after Russell in a senseless and absurd fashion. Now don’t put an ignoble and unworthy interpretation on this also, or I shall think that you are blind to everything that enters into my life. “My running after Russell” means “my thoughts running after him”; so, after believing that I have been bumming with him, don’t imagine that I have been sniping him. He has taken me up because he has chosen to do so, and after his fashion has been overwhelmingly kind. But the trouble, from my point of view, what I call my “fall from grace and self-control” (I think I said self-control also) is simply this. Russell has a way of treating people which is insufferably insolent and insulting. Never for a moment did I imagine I could allow anyone to treat me in such a way. But I find that instead of caring for my own dignity and independence—instead of subordinating to my interest in myself and to my ways of doing things, all other interests and ways of doing things—instead of this old habit of mine, I find that I don’t care a rap for my interest in myself or my ways of doing things, but that I am quite willing to stand anything, however outrageous, that comes from a certain quarter. This is what has happened to me. I am a fool to say a word about it—especially when people think that I am talking about trifles. Is it actually possible that you believe me capable of making a fuss and feeling unhappy because I had been off on a bat? You insist on not believing what I say when I tell you that such things are of absolutely no importance or interest for me, except as they may affect health and get a man into trouble. When I write about gay things I will write gaily—when I write in this serious fashion don’t imagine I am referring to “country matters”.
Sincerely G.S.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book One, [1868]–1909. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY.