Author: David Spiech Page 102 of 283

To Charles Augustus Strong
Hotel Bristol
Rome. January 2, 1937

There is a German translation of my novel “aus dem Amerikanischen.” Also, a Swedish translation. I ask myself why. Don’t they all read “American”?

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Six, 1937-1940.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY.

To Susan Sturgis de Sastre
Florence. January 1, 1913.

It is a long time since I have written, or since I have had any news from you . . . I have been to lunch with several literary English people, all very constrained, and I have avoided a fancy-dress party at Lady Sybil Cutting’s, to which Strong was obliged to go dressed as an ancient Roman in pink stockings!

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Two, 1910-1920.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Alderman Library, University of Virginia at Charlottesville.

To Mary Williams Winslow
Florence, Italy.  December 31, 1912

Thank you very much for the pretty calendar with its kind message. It has found me still here—though rather restive—retained by my friends, Strong and his daughter, Loeser and his wife, the Berensons, etc, but driven on by the bad weather. London couldn’t be more wet and foggy—and by a certain dislike I have taken to the place and to the life of the aesthetical colony in it. Rome is far more to my taste—larger, nobler, more genuinely alive, and more appealing to wide reflection. In Florence it is rather the quaint, incidental, and hopelessly archaic that people feed their imagination upon. The landlord of my hotel complains that the stream of tourists has dwindled, and that people who came to spend the winter in Florence now go to Cairo instead. I can perfectly sympathize with this change of fashion, and though I am too lazy and fond of solitude to go to Egypt with the smart rabble, I am going for a while to the Riviera, to catch a glimpse of the sun and sea, on my way to Andalusia and thence to Madrid.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Two, 1910-1920.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.

To Otto Kyllmann
New York Hotel
Nice, France. December 30, 1922

Dear Mr Kyllmann,

It had not occurred to me that you would have any interest in not sending the preface to my “Poems” to Scribner, together with the rest of the sheets; nor do I now understand what that interest is. Messrs Scribner had written asking for a signed photograph to put in the volume; and in giving my reasons for not desiring that, I mentioned that at your request I had written a preface, which I thought might partially satisfy the same curiosity to which a portrait would have appealed; and that this preface would be a godsend to the critics who didn’t wish to read the poems themselves. I took for granted that you would send the preface with the book: so that, having raised that expectation, I should certainly prefer to have you send it, if you have no objection to doing so.

I see that misunderstandings can arise from having two publishers for the same book, and in future, as in respect to “Scepticism and Animal Faith,” I shall remember this fact, and endeavour to have all communications between me and Messrs Scribners pass through your hands, so that complications may be avoided.

Yours sincerely,

G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Three, 1921-1927.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia PA.

To Gertrude Stein
[Cambridge, Massachusetts?] [1895 or 1896]

My dear Miss Stein

Friday evening is perfectly convenient, and you may expect me at 7:45 at Miss Yerxa’s. If you don’t think the subject too vast I should like to talk about ‘Faith and Criticism’.

Yours very truly

G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book One, [1868]-1909.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven CT.