Author: David Spiech Page 198 of 283

To Nancy Saunders Toy
Hotel Savoia
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. August 8th, 1940

Since I came to Cortina, without any books, I have found another distraction of an imaginative kind for the afternoon: it is the complete works of Balzac in an excellent Italian version which I get for 30 cents a volume in a book-stall under an arch in this mountain town. I feel as I did in Oxford, where with all the books of the world at hand, I found solace from war-news in Dickens. Balzac is deeper in worldly knowledge, but never humorous or moving, and he would not serve for much comfort if I were as distressed now as I was in 1917. This picture of the world keeps politics, finance, and human perversity in general well in the foreground, without any real allegiance to any ideal compensations other than the artificial happy dénouement of some of the stories. But he gives me just what I need now, clearness in judging men and events. He is not cynical, he can even convert his villains on occasion, but he has no illusions and no prejudices, and can see the nobility or at least the humanity of all classes and parties. It is a support to philosophy at this moment when the public mind is subject to hysteria. I hope that events will soon bring us not only material peace, but the peace that comes from understanding.

I hope I may be inspired to write the verses you ask for, but poetry is even more remote from my habits than is a dinner-jacket. You wouldn’t want your little friends to laugh at me as an old dotard, who thinks he can sing.

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

To Susan Sturgis de Sastre
M•R TELEGRAPH HOUSE
Chichester, England. August 7th 1909

Your letter of the 3rd has just reached me here, where I came on Wednesday, the 4th. The house has been rebuilt since I was last here and now has a tower with an extensive view, including the Ilse of Wight in the far distance. We are on the crest of high domelike hills, called Downs, and out of sight of all habitations. There isn’t much quiet, however; for there are seven dogs, one cat, and three automobiles, a pumping-engine for water, another for electric light, and a general restlessness in the household. Russell is absorbed in business (he is now president of the Humber Motor-Car Company) and in politics, while his wife is given over to woman-suffrage, dogs, and gardening. I send you her portrait (published for political purposes) which she has just presented me, and I write on her note-paper, so that you will get a good impression of her personality. You may remember she is Irish, and has two other husbands living.

Russell’s other wife, by the way, and her mother Lady Scott, have both died this year.

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

To Henry Ward Abbot
26 Millmont St.
Roxbury, Massachusetts. Aug 6, ’89

You are not a Philistine: why then do you have the hardness the narrowness and the dogmatism of Philistia in your feelings? It exasperates me because I have always believed you were not really so: that the best in you was the real, and the worst the affectation and accidental dye. You may not influence me in the way of changing my ideas: I am not your disciple or (as you once wrote) your protégé. But you do make me do things I should not do of my own free will, as e.g. show you my verses. When I am with you I almost adopt your notions about my supposed literary rôle: I almost catch your tone. But my real feeling and conviction are quite opposed to that: I know what I want to do, and what I amount to. You think you encourage me, and in one sense you do: but you encourage me to be something worse than what I really am: that is what you do not see, and it disgusts and repels me that you should not see it.

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

To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Hotel Miramonti, Cortina d’Ampezzo
August 5, 1931

There is nothing to worry about. Strong is not mad, and he isn’t trying any game on you. He is innocently and happily amusing himself, and we ought to be glad of it.1 Of course those “comments” on his “poem” are a jeu d.esprit:2 Strong at this moment feels very skittish and witty—and very superior. It is a blessed compensation for his physical inabilities and his intellectual cramp. We must encourage him by treating the things he says as matters of course, and making light of them without offending him. For instance, you might (if you are in the humour) send him other “comments”, by Oscar Wilde, Keats, Joyce, and Lawrence, all finding his verse too warm, too rich, and too free. I have thought of some “comments” myself—only they are unkind, and not for his ears. Thus:

Shakespeare—
“Journeys end in lover’s meeting”
(An old sheep I hear a-bleating)
“youth’s a stuff will not endure.”3
Hast a drop of physic, sweeting,
agèd folly for to cure?

Dr. Johnson—
The pox at seventy! Sir, I might have it too; we be all sinners: but, by God, I would not publish my shame.

1. Strong “suddenly took to composing rather amorous little verses, addressed to ‘three lady-loves’ of his youth. He would send these exercises to Santayana and me, but what worried me a bit were the inane ‘comments’ he appended to his verses. I have a horror of older people becoming flippant, and I asked Santayana if he thought everything was all right with Strong.” (Cory, Daniel. Santayana: The Later Years: A Portrait with Letters.  New York:  George Braziller, 1963, 79) “In his old age Strong sometimes amused himself by writing ‘poetry’.
2. Witticism (French).
3. “Journeys end in lovers’ meeting” and “Youth’s a stuff will not endure” are lines from Twelfth-Night.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Four, 1928-1932.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY

To Susan Sturgis de Sastre
Lion Hotel
Cambridge, England. Aug. 3rd 1914

From the papers this morning I see that a return to Paris is out of the question for the moment. Indeed, it was lucky that I came to England when I did; only I left in Paris some clothes and other things—including my new letter of credit—which I should have brought with me if I had anticipated staying here into the winter. In fact, I shall probably not do so, but when we see which way things are going, and whether England is to remain neutral or not, I may go by sea to Gibraltar or to Italy. For the moment I have written to my old landlady in Oxford asking if she has rooms. I could spend the rest of the summer there with comfort, and should be able to accomplish a good deal in the way of reading and writing.

The strain and excitement of these events is terrible. I don’t know what to expect nor even what to hope for. It is all a dark riddle, and the consequences will be hateful, whatever they are.

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