Author: David Spiech Page 233 of 283

To Rosamond Thomas Bennett Sturgis
Hotel Bristol
Rome. Feb. 5, 1936

Dear Rosamond,
You are very good to want to come and nurse me, and I am sure you would do it better than the Blue Sisters to whom I expect to be consigned, if I have a long illness. If you came, I should feel as Oliver did when Edith (who had a trained nurse’s certificate) went to see him at the Stillman Infirmary–not that I am very like Oliver or you, thank God, very like Edith; but perhaps my last illness won’t be prolonged, and it won’t matter much who telephones for the undertaker. My ups and downs in health are very marked and very sudden. Now I feel all right again, only perhaps a little lazier physically, although mentally I was very fit even when confined to my room, and wrote a long article in my best style–unless I am in my dotage, and pleased with anything I may reel out.

The editor (of Scrutiny) to whom I sent it, however, and who doesn’t pay his contributors, said he was highly honoured. I fence in it a little with T. S. Eliot, who was once a pupil of mine, but never by any chance refers to me. Cory says he is afraid of me, as of a sort of devil. But you don’t know who Cory is. He will probably be the person to look after me when I get more dotty. He is an American but has now been ten years in Europe, and has helped me and my old friend Strong with some of our books. I call him my secretary, and he is to be my literary executor. At this moment, however, he is in London, giving some Sporting Cockneys lessons in baseball, for which he gets 30 shillings each time, and his fare from Bournemouth, where he likes to [illegible] waste the best years of his life playing golf. But he is half Irish and very human for a quasi-philosopher.

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 Martin Birnbaum
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome, Feb. 4, 1946

Dear Mr. Birnbaum,
I write to thank you very much for your reminiscences of Sargent,1 including those of Henry James and the plates of some of Sargent’s paintings and drawings. I wish that you had gone more systematically into the problem of naturalistic versus eccentric or symbolic painting. It is a subject about which my own mind is undecided. My sympathies are initially with classic tradition, and in that sense with Sargent’s school; yet for that very reason I fear to be unjust to the eccentric and abstract inspiration of persons perhaps better inspired. Two things you say surprise me a little: one that Sargent was enormous physically. I remember him as a little stout, but not tall: and I once made a voyage by chance in his company, and thereafter a trip to Tangier; so that I had for a fortnight at least constant occasions to go about with him; and being myself of very moderate stature I never felt that he was big. The other point is that he saw and painted “objectively”, realistically, and not psychologically. Now, certainly he renders his model faithfully; but in the process, which must be selective and proper to the artist, I had always thought that, perhaps unawares he betrayed analytical and satirical powers of a high order, so that his portraits were strongly comic, not to say moral caricatures. But in thinking of what you say, and quote from him, on this subject, I begin to believe that I was wrong, that he may have been universally sympathetic and cordial, in the characteristically American manner, and that the satire that there might seem to be in his work was that of literal truth only: because we are all, au fond, caricatures of ourselves, and a good eye will see through our conventional disguises and labels. And this would explain what to some persons seems the “materialism” of Sargent’s renderings; his interest in objets d’art for instance, rather than in the vegetable kingdom or in the life of non-sensuous reality at large. Crowding his house with pictures, and his memory with innumerable friends and innumerable anecdotes about them, shows a respect for the commonplace, a love of the world, that prevents the imagination from taking high flights or reflecting ultimate emotions.

Is there, I wonder, any truth in such a suspicion?

Yours sincerely,
G Santayana

1. John Singer Sargent, January 12, 1856-April 15, 1925: A Conversation Piece (New York: W. E. Rudge’s Sons, 1941).

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

To Christopher George Janus
Room No..77
[February? 1937] . [Rome, Italy]

Dear Mr. Janus,
If you can come here this afternoon, or any other day, between 6. and 7.30, you will find me in dressing-gown and slippers, doing nothing in particular and very glad to see you.

Yours sincerely,
GSantayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Six, 1937-1940.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: Santayana Edition, Indianapolis, IN

To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Hotel Bristol
Rome. Feb. 2, 1936

I have always taken for granted that you would be willing to come and look after me if I was seriously ill. You are the only person that I should like to have about at such a time. But so long as I can look after myself tolerably, and can lead my regular life, there is no occasion for calling you. I think I can work better when I am quite alone; and at present I am in hopes of getting the Realm of Truth into shape, and eventually also the Realm of Spirit. I work very slowly, but steadily, and an hour or two every morning counts at the year’s end. Then, on your side of the equation, I expect it is better and pleasanter for you to be in England and quite your own master. An old man, even if he behaves nicely, is always a rather heavy anchor to be moored to. …

The American edition of the novel has arrived: it looks very well. The page is a bit larger than in the English edition, there are 100 pages less, and fewer misprints. The back is square, the binding darkish green, with gold lettering, and the volume is as light as the English one in the hand. But the dust-jacket is hideous and full of false, low-class title-tattle about myself,–and with a horrible cross-eyed ferocious drawing, apparently after my last photo, but very ill-drawn. I have complained of this to Wheelock: but the book itself is very satisfactory. I shall soon be getting letters about it. Some have already arrived.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Five, 1933-1936.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY

To Charles William Eliot
75 Monmouth Street
Brookline, Massachusetts. Feb 1 1898

Dear Mr Eliot,
Thank you very much for your letter informing me of my appointment as assistant professor. It is very gratifying to me that the University should have confidence enough in me to take this step, and I shall endeavour to do my best to justify its expectations.

Yours very truly
G Santayana

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