Author: David Spiech Page 1 of 283

To Charles Augustus Strong
Rome. December 21, 1933

Dear Strong

I am very glad to hear from you and to know that your family party is going on happily. You will doubtless have a lovely Christmas tree, and much jollification. I hope nothing will happen to make either of the children end by crying, as usually happens on great occasions. Please give Margaret and George, for themselves and the children, my best New Year’s wishes. And will you ask George if he received two numbers of a Spanish review called Cruz y Raya (Plus & Minus) and, if so, whether he would like me to send him more copies. It is written by intellectual Catholics and I find it most interesting and instructive. They are full of German philosophy. Not long ago there was an article on “Nothingness” by Martin Hedegger, beautifully translated. They also translated my “Long Way Round to Nirvana.”

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Five, 1933-1936.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY.

To Charles Augustus Strong
22 Beaumont St.
Oxford, England. December 20, 1918

What a year this has been for wonderful events! I have often wished we might have been able to talk them over as they occurred, although for my own part I am hardly able to take them in, and all my attention seems to be absorbed by the passing moment, or the immediate future. The past will loom up, I suppose, when it begins to recede into the distance. Just now I am wondering what Mr. Wilson is up to: I rather think he is more to be trusted than the tendency of his political catchwords would suggest. He once told the Philosophical Association at Princeton (were you at that meeting too?) that in that college they had a radical purpose but not a radical manner in philosophizing: but it seems—and is to be hoped—that in politics he has not a radical purpose but only a radical manner. And I wonder what he has by way of manners! From what I hear—the papers can’t tell us what is most interesting—Mrs Wilson, not being able to make a fool of herself, because she is one already, is making a fool of her husband. My own feeling is, however, that he will yield to the experience and also to the fascinations of the European statesmen he is encountering, and that he won’t do any mischief.

Oxford seems to me more beautiful every day. I walked three times round Christ Church meadows this afternoon, under the most romantic of wintry skies and the softest of breezes, in a sort of trance; and I should certainly come to live and die in Oxford, if it weren’t for the Oxonians.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Two, 1910-1920.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY.

To Christopher George Janus
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. December 19, 1946

Dear Janus,

Several inquisitorial reporters, disguised in the lamb’s clothing of soldiers, have inveigled me into “interviews” which I took at first for innocent conversation. No great harm came of it, as far as I know, except that my English was transformed into the dialect of day. You can’t catch me so easily in writing. If people really cared to know what I think about politics in America, they would read the last chapter of my old “Character & Opinion in the U.S.”. . . . But people only want “copy”, and I think I might make them wait until the book on “Dominations & Powers” which I am at work on sees the light. I may not live to finish it, but enough is already written to make my position clear. It is independent of all parties, nations, or epochs: and this is easier for me than for most philosophers because my native Spanish attachments are not close (although I have scrupulously retained my legal Spanish nationality) and speculatively I am a naturalist.

Yours sincerely

G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Seven, 1941-1947.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript: Santayana Edition, Indianapolis, IN.

To Cyril Coniston Clemens
Hotel Bristol
Rome. December 18, 1936

Dear Clemens,

Thank you and your committee for your congratulations for still being in this world. It is a dubious privilege in itself, especially at the age of 73, but I am in good health and spirits, and willing to exist a little longer, Deo volente.

As to my medal, and the inscription you propose, I suppose, being from the Mark Twain Society, it is meant to humorous. But most people would laugh at us, not with us; and please choose something else, or (better) nothing at all. I have an imitation-gold medal from the Royal Society of Literature which says simply Honoris Causa and leaves the rest to the imagination. That at least is safe.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Five, 1933-1936.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: William R. Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham NC.

To George Sturgis
Hotel Marini
Rome. December 17, 1921

What you tell me about your aunt Josephine wanting her whole income surprises me not a little, as I know how disinclined she is to undertake the burden of a more elaborate way of life–and the same thing happens to me. In our old age, she can only live like a younger daughter in the family, and I like a travelling student. Anything else is too much bother for us. I am writing to ask her what is up, if it isn’t a secret. She may be thinking of buying or setting up a separate house in Madrid or in Ávila, with the two little old ladies, whom we call las maestras, the teachers, because they once kept a school; this is the only new arrangement of which I have any inkling. I hardly think she wants her money in order to invest it in Spain: but that is natural in the case of your aunt Susan, or rather of her husband, because they count on distributing it some day among the Sastre boys, and it would be very cumbersome for them to have the capital in America. They are very deserving young men, and it is pleasant to think that they will be distinctly more comfortable for this inheritance when it comes to them, although, of course, they have no right to it, even morally, as their relation to their step-mother has never been more than correct.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Three, 1921-1927.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.