Author: David Spiech Page 113 of 283

To Carlotta Russell Lowell
King’s College
Cambridge, England. November 11, 1896

Many thanks for both your notes. When I got the first I never expected a second, as it is the part of prudence to thank an author for his book before reading it, so as to avoid the necessity of lying about it afterwards. That you should have written both before and after is very gratifying, as it seems to mean that you liked the book better than you expected, and at any rate well enough to say something nice about it when this was no longer necessary. I am delighted that you found most of the book intelligible and interesting, and that you agreed with most of it. That is all I can now say for it myself, as there are already several things I should like to see put otherwise in it.

My life here is very pleasant and interesting, and perhaps a little luxurious. I try to chasten myself, however, with some tough Greek—the Parmenides and Philebus of Plato, which I am reading carefully—and with long walks among the clouds, which in this country come down to the surface of the land and especially of the water. The afternoons are very lovely, and the river with its many boats, blazers, bicycles, and coaches on horseback is a gay and pretty sight. My friends at King’s have the flavour of their Port, sweet, mellow, and with lots of body, and it will be hard not to get so fond of them as to miss them when I go. . . .

Haven’t the Russells turned up? I should have been glad to have you meet, they are such nice people. He is mathematical and she humanitarian, but both are human at the same time.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book One, [1868]-1909.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA

To John Hall Wheelock
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. November 10, 1944

Volume second of Persons and Places is ready to be sent to you, but I know of no means of conveyance. It would be easier for you, perhaps, to find one, either diplomatic, as before, or through the military. I don’t think MS is as yet accepted by the Post Office. My conscience is still uneasy about indiscretions in this volume. There are many about Earl Russell; but he was a public character, and I avoid the most scabreux episodes, and have changed the names of such ladies as were not publicly mentioned in the law courts. Still, I am a little afraid that his brother Bertrand may think I might have been more reticent. But these complications were the most exciting that ever came even vicariously into my life; and I can’t leave them out. The alternative could only be to postpone publication until all who can object have disappeared. This is what we must do about volume third, which intrudes even more into people’s private lives.

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

To George Sturgis
Hotel Bristol
Rome. November 9, 1930

I see by the papers that the result of the elections has had a depressing effect on shares, but an exhilarating effect on the hearts of the bibulous. If this is not a false dawn, I may yet return to America. A grandson of Mark Twain set me up the other day to a cocktail: it was excellent, and revived the sensations of my youth.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Four, 1928–1932.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA

To Horace Meyer Kallen
Hotel Bristol
Rome. November 8, 1932

I have spent a pleasant hour sitting in the Pincio and reading “College Prolongs Infancy”. Your facts are probably accurate and your descriptions certainly pungent: but, alas, I am a lover of youth, and would like to see it prolonged through life pour réparer des ans irréparable outrage. But apart from preferences, don’t you think it would be safer to adjust industrialism to human nature rather than human nature to industrialism? And isn’t industrialism petering out anyway? If your ideal is that all boys and girls should earn their living, and marry, at 15, I am glad I was born before the millennium.

Always your old friend G. S.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Four, 1928–1932.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: American Jewish Archives, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati OH

To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. November 7, 1946

I have . . . Bertie Russell’s “Amberley Papers”, the biography letters and journals of his parents, Lord and Lady Amberley.  Amberley was a soft sentimental ultra-consciencious youth, but egotistic and even cruel on occasion. The way he carried on and then abandoned a very nice middleclass girl, saying he “trusted that time would make her stronger” and that they “parted with the same trust, clinging to one another, the same pure loyalty to our sacred friendship”—she died a year or two later, while he married another girl—reminded me of my friend his son with his various lady-loves. But of course the book is rich in pungent foot-notes in the Voltarian or Gibbons-like tone that Bertie delights in: yet I feel how inhuman these high-principled self-righteous people are, and how troubled was their life in spite of their advantages—the greatest of which they didn’t appreciate. I have finished—that is, I have got to the end—of Sitwell’s book, after being cloyed with too much landscape and too much absurdity in the way of living described. This aristocracy deserved to disappear more than did the French, which didn’t go in so much for nominal virtue and superior judgement. Sitwell is an extreme example of the rich liberal who despises everything in his world except himself and the scent of flowers. But as you say they often write very well.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Seven, 1941-1947.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY