Author: David Spiech Page 2 of 283

Letters in Limbo ~ June 1, 1911

On June 1, 2025

To Conrad Hensler Slade
Colonial Club Cambridge
Cambridge, Massachusetts. June 1, 1911

Dear Conrad,

I can’t say I am very sorry, nor even very much surprised, that you are “still free”. There was something a bit exotic about your proposed marriage, and your attachment was hardly violent enough to justify the step. Nevertheless, I am sorry there is to be no house to visit you in at Arles, and no little “nephews”. This summer, for a change, I am going to California! The University of California at Berkeley, has invited me to teach there for six weeks, and offered me $500, which will almost cover my expenses. It seemed a good chance to see the Pacific, like Cortes, before I die, and probably the last chance I should have, so I have accepted. So I shall not be in Oxford, or anywhere else within reach this summer, for which I am sorry. On the other hand, I have made an arrangement with the College here, by which in future I shall be here only for the first half of each year, from October 1st to the end of January. This arrangement begins at once, so that next February I shall turn up in Paris (or in Italy), and perhaps see you at once; or, in any case, before long, as I shall remain in Europe the whole of the following year, which is my “sabbatical”, not needing to return to Harvard until September, 1913, and then only for four months. Whether I shall ever return after that is very doubtful; but I thought it wiser to make this arrangement than to insist at once on resigning altogether, especially during the life-time of my mother.

My friend Strong has taken an apartment in the Avenue de l’Observatoire, and has kindly invited me to stay there whenever I am in Paris. In fact, I am to have a room in his house with a place in which to keep my books and other belongings—almost a home! This will make it pleasant and economical for me to be often in Paris, and I count on seeing you constantly, for whatever your temporary impatience with the Parisian scene may be, you (like Strong) will never find another place in which you can really settle.

. . . Your idea of coming to Oxford when I am there must be carried out some day—possibly next Spring. May and the early part of June are the best months there, unless you like, as I do, the place without the inhabitants. In mid-summer, however, you have the tourists instead, which is worse.

Yours ever

G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Two, 1910–1920. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Unknown.

Letters in Limbo ~ May 31, 1933

By David Spiech

On May 31, 2025

In LETTERS

To George Washburne Howgate
C/o Brown Shipley & Co. 123, Pall Mall
London, S.W.1
Rome. May 31, 1933

[M]an is an animal before he is a spirit, and can be a spirit only because he is alive, i.e. an animal. The nature of the human animal, however, is to be intelligent, to be speculative; and hence the vocation to transcend the conditions of his existence in his thought and worship.

From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Five, 1933-1936. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Collection of Mrs. George W. Howgate.

Letters in Limbo ~ May 30, 1935

By David Spiech

On May 30, 2025

In LETTERS

Danieli-dandolo_2012-05-27_corr2 To Boylston Adams Beal
Hotel Royal Danieli
Venezia. May 30, 1935

What Gordon Bell says in the History about us, and in particular about me, is all true enough, and sympathetically meant; but it misses the atmosphere of the ’90’s, or early ’90’s, when the Philistine mind had freshly discovered sport, art, literature, and religion, and was respectfully, but humorously, in love with them. Bob & Warwick Potter, you and I, were just that: dilettanti really delighting in the nice side of things: and the distance—the American and Protestant perspective inevitable for most of us—made the experience romantic and a little tragic at bottom. Probably the young men of today are better adapted to the age. Those I come across seem to me all alike, and rather uninteresting, unless they are caught in the political revolution. That is the living question now, not our questions, when we thought the material arrangements of the world had all become final and satisfactory, and there was time for thinking of higher things. Now there isn’t time or inclination or much sense of higher things to think about. But there is the great social army to lead and to keep in order. It is what the old Romans had to do.

From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Five, 1933-1936. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Letters in Limbo ~ May 29, 1931

By David Spiech

On May 29, 2025

In LETTERS

Millay_magn To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Rome. May 29, 1931

After some vacillation I am sending you only your ordinary extraordinary budget for June. If the doctor’s bills, etc, make this insufficient, you will tell me frankly. I don’t want you to be skimped, but at the same time, if you have too much at once, you are tempted to make a splurge. On the other hand, this habit probably comes from the very fact that you have always been fed from hand to mouth, lived on the dole, as it were, which at your age is hardly normal. It would be better if you could have a fixed income and a bank account of your own, so that you could feel you were your own master.

Can you tell me whether “Edna St. Vincent Millay” is Miss or Mrs. and if the latter, what Mrs, or whose Missus? She has sent me a book of 52 sonnets, rather fluent, and only letting the cloven hoof peep out here and there from under the Elizabethan petticoat. But there are good-humoured inscriptions and comments of her own in pencil, which make me wish to write and thank her. Would you care to see the book?

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

Letters in Limbo ~ May 28, 1906

By David Spiech

On May 28, 2025

In LETTERS

Santayana_2 To Mr. Helder
Paris. May 28, 1906

Dear Mr Helder,
Your question about “Strong defenses” for individual immortality puzzles me a good deal—I can think of none. As to my personal opinion on the subject, you will find it expressed at length in the last two chapters of volume III of my book on “The Life of Reason”—the volume (which can be got separately) on “Reason in Religion”. But you will get little comfort out of it.
Yours truly,
G Santayana

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