Author: David Spiech Page 222 of 283

To William Soutar
C/o Brown Shipley & Co 123
Pall Mall. London. S.W.1.
Rome. March 31, 1931

Your title “Conflict”, and the sentence you quote from me as a motto, suggest love vs. dissatisfaction with love. Is that the end? Your powers of spiritual reaction and recuperation are evident: you have doubtless found, or will find, that which you seek in turning away from love with dissatisfaction: the light of “Dawn”. I myself have found it in a rather humdrum, intellectual, old man’s philosophy: your temperament will discover, I expect, something more vehement and sublime.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Four, 1928-1932.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh

To Charles Scribner’s Sons
C/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall
London
Athens, Greece. March 30, 1905

It is arranged that I shall be in Paris next winter, to give the Hyde lectures which Mr Wendell has inaugurated this season, and which you have doubtless heard of. Paris, however, is a good deal nearer than Egypt, and the circumstances may have this advantage for the sale of my book, that my name will probably be in the American papers more than it would have been for more glorious but less notorious achievements.

Your notice of “The Life of Reason” in the “Book Buyer” seems to me splendid—most flattering, naturally, but at the same time, even if it be not becoming in me to say so, essentially just. At least the critic has quite understood my intentions.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book One, [1868]-1909.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries, Princeton NJ

To George Sturgis
Hotel Bristol
Rome. March 29, 1936

I see the lien that the government has upon the royalties of a person in my position. I am—or my publishers are—protected by an American copyright: but for that, anybody might pirate my books and pocket the profits (when there are any). The privilege of cashing vast sums in the case of a best-seller must therefore be acknowledged with thanks and with an adequate contribution for poor dear Uncle Sam in his always temporary difficulties.

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

To Susan Sturgis de Sastre
Cambridge, England. March 28, 1915

Of course, reading the papers and thinking about the war takes up a large part of one’s time and energy. Until it is over I can’t expect to resume my ordinary manner of life.

…. Something Josephine said in her letter made me suspect that she is thinking of America again for the autumn. Unless the war is over (which is hardly likely) we might have some difficulty in coming through France, and might be torpedoed (although so far no good liner has suffered, partly because they are too fast to be caught and partly because the Germans don’t want to exasperate the U.S. by giving the tourists a salt bath)

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