Author: David Spiech Page 234 of 283

To George Sturgis
Grand Hotel
Rome. Jan. 31, 1941

Dear George,
The Credito Italiano telephoned this morning to say the lire miste had arrived, and awaited my convenience. Unluckily I had a relapse, complicated by a colic (something antedeluvian in my history, but perhaps this is one form of a second childhood) and although better and quite comfortable I am still confined to my rooms. I get up and have my meals and receive my doctor in my salotto or sitting-room. For six nights I had a nurse who gave me my medicines and much conversation. She says there are too many children. Her two boys, being a widow, bring her no end of work in order to provide for their superior education. Evidently society is in a fluid state. I hope the end of this war will bring a new organization that may last, in fundamentals, for a thousand years. I mean in all countries. 

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To [Henry Ward Abbot]
[Summer 1932] • [Rome, Italy, or Paris, France]

. . . . pessimism, questionings about a future life, or the desirability of death. Somehow I seem not to feel the edge of those uncertainties, as I did fifty years ago: but, more objectively considered, the moral anarchy of the world is no less interesting. I am reading an excellent book by Papini, “Gog”:1 the Catholics seem now to be the best critics: Maritain, Papini, T. S. Eliot2 (an amateur Catholic): it is not their faith that makes them clear-sighted, but their remoteness from the delusions of the age. In America, Edmund Wilson seems rather good: but he is academic; has learned his authors.
I have been rereading John Locke, for a lecture I am to give in Bloomsbury in October: a bit prosy, and speculatively poor, but pungent and genuine in his common sense.
You keep asking about my novel: it is not finished, perhaps never will be, and is not likely to be published in my life-time. Don’t think of it. I will send you my lectures on Spinoza and Locke when they are printed— my last appearances in public!
Your old friend, G.S.

1. Giovanni Papini (1881–1956), an Italian writer and philosopher, was one of the founders of the philosophical journal Leonardo. A bitter opponent and critic of Christianity, he was converted after World War I to Catholicism and became an exponent of religious orthodoxy. His works include Gog (1931), a satire on modern society.
2. T[homas] S[tearns] Eliot (1888–1965), an American-born poet, dramatist, and critic, became a British subject in 1927. He was awarded the 1948 Nobel Prize in literature for his contribution to poetry.

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 Benjamin Apthorp Gould Fuller
Hôtel Foyot
Paris. Jan. 29. 1906

Your criticism, my dear Fuller, of my third volume1 has this defect, which I want to point out to you while the sense of it is still hot within me. You make an insincere objection. Of course there might be any number of finite gods making for righteousness, as there certainly are some natural and human forces making for it. But do you believe there are? In remote parts of nature we may well conjecture that some good is pursued and perhaps attained by beings inconceivable to us. But are these the gods of that living religion which you think I ignore? Of course the gods of actual religion are very confused and impossible monsters; but their essential functions, when discriminated and made articulate, seem to me to be reducible to the two I have insisted upon in my book. These are the rational values, the eternal sources and sanctions of what is sane in religious madness. The madness itself, in its psychological or dramatic texture, cannot be included in the life of reason, though of course it may be referred to in a description of that honourable fraction of our existence; nor do I think that I have left this madness altogether uncharacterised.—As to my injustice to the Neo-Platonists —of whom Plotinus is of course the best and the most Hellenic—I am more inclined to plead guilty, because I know little at first hand about them, and you, in the full blush of your recent erudition, might easily refute me with quotations selected ad hoc. I know that Plotinus, as against even Gnostic Christians, stood for what he called natural and political goods; but nature and society were by that time transfused with a mystical solvent which rendered his official allegiance to them, I imagine, largely deceptive. And his followers made this illusion more transparent and quite let the ascetic cat out of the bag.
You may have all of my furniture that pleases you. You will do me a favour by getting these impedimenta out of my way and out of my mind.
Here all goes well. Hyde has arrived and is very nice to me. The Frenchmen are dulcet and disappointing, but I am having altogether a delightful time.

Yours ever, G. S.

1. Religion.

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

To Wendell T. Bush
C/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London
Cambridge, England. Jan. 28, 1916

Dear Mr Bush,
As you may judge by the enclosed article,1 Holt’s book arrived in due time. I read it with greater pleasure than his older one2 (written ten years ago, I believe, although not published till lately) and his style, too, is less uncouth, although still crabbed and common; common beyond words are his illustrations, they make one writhe. But my feeling is that Holt is a man of force and ability: I wish he were geniessbar.3
A propos of Holt I have been reading Freud;4 also common, and I can’t help thinking fantastic, but certainly very penetrating and unforgettable.

1.Two Rational Moralists, Philosophy 13 (25 May 1916): 290-96. Review of John Erskine, The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent, and Other Essays (1915), and Edwin Bissell Holt, The Freudian Wish and Its Place in Ethics (1915).
2.The New Realism: Cooperative Studies in Philosophy (1912).
3.Palatable.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Two, 1910-1920.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY

To Lawrence Smith Butler
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. January 27, 1949

Dear Lawrence,
Your nephew William Huntington1 came to see me the other day and gave me good news of your convalescence, and today your box of presents has arrived, which is a sign that you are about and felt like stretching a hand in the direction of Rome. The black tie especially shows that you remembered an old fancy of mine. The first black tie is still in daily use and in spite of hard usage looks smooth and (to my eyes, at least) stainless. Now it can be replaced by the new one on the days when I wear a white shirt instead of pyjamas in order to look respectable on an excursion to the bank, the apothecary’s and the stationer’s–my constant round when I go in town (in a taxi, because it is beyond my range on foot at present).
The glorious large jars of mayonnaise sauce are going to transform my suppers, on the days of hard-boiled eggs and salad–even if potatoe salad–beginning with this evening, particularly apropos, because there is a strike of gas workers and a stoppage due to repairs at the electric works, so that hot dishes are temporarily abolished. However, in the big kitchen down stairs they have a coal or a wood fire; but for my minor meals Sister Angela provides in the ladies-kitchen in their corridor, and the Italian maid Maria brings them to me on a tray, because the dismal atmosphere of the table d’hôtes on my first arrival here–seven years ago—appalled me, and I have all my meals in my room. Your “Irish” tea will delight Sister Angela, a native of Eire, but I suppose it is not green tea, now that the Eirish colours have changed. All the other things are equally welcome and just what I need. “Need”, as I think I said in my last letter, is not an accurate expression, because we are now provided wth all the necessaries, but I like to get tea and coffee, so that my daily consumption of both may not cut into the Sisters’ share. Being most of them of Irish extraction they like tea, and like it strong.

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