Author: David Spiech Page 223 of 283

To Rosamond Thomas Bennett Sturgis
Hotel Bristol
Rome. March 26, 1926

If you have found the children well, and stocks not hopelessly demoralized by the panic—of which I have heard only a first alarm, perhaps exaggerated—you can both of you congratulate yourselves on the result, because you have not only had a holiday and a change, but you have given your old relations a great deal of pleasure. Let me whisper in your ear that you, personally, were a little disappointing at first, because we expected a roaring Amazon, carrying everything before her and sweeping us old people off our feet: but nothing of the sort. You turned out to be remarkably feminine for these times, what in Victorian…days would have been called very attractive, and so far from Herculean that sometimes you seemed a little frail, and I was afraid you did more than was good for you. However, now that you are safe at home you can have as lazy and sleepy a time as household cares allow and the long summer in which to get fat and sunburned.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Three, 1921-1927.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA

To John Hall Wheelock
Grand Hotel
Rome. March 25, 1941

I am now having no difficulty in receiving money from America from my nephew, but the future seems uncertain; perhaps, if these remittances are stopped by the war, I shall have to leave Italy, which would put me to great inconvenience, even if I could get out. But my nephew is active, and he would discover some way of getting funds to me. We could even appeal to President Roosevelt. He knows who I am; I have a letter of his (not addressed to me, but to Mr. Harrison Reeves) in which he calls me “dear old Santayana.”

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Seven, 1941-1947.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript: Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries, Princeton NJ

To Mrs. William Warren
6 Park Street
Torquay, England. March 24, 1917

I am myself a sceptic, and if one’s object were to discover and embrace the truth, no religion seems to me much to the purpose, all of them being products of the human imagination.

. . . . [I]n a moral and allegorical sense, one religion may still be said to be “truer” than another, if it brings us into greater harmony with the conditions of our life, and developes better our spiritual capacities.

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

To Henry Ward Abbot
London, England.  March 23, 1887

I have been two weeks in London now, and enjoyed myself very much. I like the place, and above all I like the people. They are handsome, gentle, manly, and courteous. There may be machinery all over this cathedral, but it is a cathedral still. This beautiful English temper is what has been gained by not breaking with the past, but by keeping up every institution until it absolutely refused to be kept up.

. . . . I have already seen the main sights, but as you know I care little for “places of interest” unless there is something beautiful or impressive about them. I like the Tower, and Westminster Abbey, but I don’t like the British Museum. Perhaps the best sight is London itself, which I always imagined I should like. It is more like an American than like a European city, and makes me feel safe and comfortable again. There was a certain isolation for me at Berlin, on account of the language and the barbarism of the inhabitants; here I stand on my own feet, and can go into things if I like.

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 Charles Augustus Strong
Rome. March 22, 1925

I am at this moment struggling with Dewey’s “Experience and Nature” which I am to review for the Whited Sepulchre—a formidable task; but I don’t regret having undertaken it, because it seems that, after intense application and infinite patience in suspending judgement on opinions evidently absurd in form—according to my understanding of words—a certain order and naturalness begin to appear in his theory, which has many elements in it which I like extremely.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Three, 1921-1927.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY