Author: David Spiech Page 235 of 283

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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To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Hotel Bristol
Rome. Jan. 26, 1938

Dear Cory,
Strong turned up again a week ago, and seems to be looking forward to an indefinite stay. I see him every day punctually from 1.30 to 2.30 p.m. at the Caffè Aragno, in the darkest corner, looking toward the light, and accompanied by hammering in one or more directions, as the repairs seem to become more and more extensive, like progress, as they proceed. I don’t mind, as that is anyhow the time for coffee, and S. is in an amiable mood. He says his life has been a success; that he has solved the problem of body-and-mind; that he has enjoyed reading the foreign and classical poets (not the English so much) and that the review of his last book in Mind1 is accurate, that it reports his views so that even those who neglect the book will be informed about them, and that by saying that he would have done better to leave out the “poems”–of his own composition–, the review only confirms his conviction that it was the right thing to put them in. They show that he has feeling in his philosophy, not only “unconscious feeling” but suppressed religious feeling of the best American brew. This last, as you surmise, is not expressed by me in his ipsissima verba,2 but I think I convey his sentiments. The real reason for this roseate prospect over the desert of his life and the stony dryness of that little review in Mind, is that he has a new covered motor, like a bathtub with a lid to it, in which he can keep warm. The seats also slope uncompromisingly backward, so that he can’t concentrate his entire weight vertically on the tender south pole of his person: and a great cosmic philosophical relief and universal good will rise from there and permeate his thoughts. Even I come in now and then for a good word. He referred the other day–apropos of expatriation–to Peter Alden’s telegram to his son on that subject, as to a well-known historical event! Most delicate flattery to an amateur novelist, to suggest that his slightest creations people the public mind.
He asked if you had gone to London. Have you? Are you going, or is it given up?
Yours affly,
G.S.
Symbolism here was not intended!

1. Mind: A Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy was founded in 1876. From 1921
to 1948 it was edited by G. E. Moore. Strong.s A Creed for Sceptics was reviewed by H. Acton in Mind 47 (1938): 113.
2. Actual words (Latin).

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Six, 1937-1940.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY

To Charles Scribner’s Sons
KASR-EL-DOUBARAH
Cairo, Egypt. Jan. 25, 1905
Messrs Charles Scribner’s Sons
New York

Gentlemen:
Your letter of the 6th has just reached me here. I am rather sorry that the publication of the “Life of Reason” has been put off so long, although I quite understand that the trouble came from my being so far away. As to the independent title of each volume, that is not of any consequence from my point of view. Apart from the common heading “The Life of Reason” which I understand you have retained, the volumes will be kept together well enough by their individual titles, which are obviously meant to go together—“Reason in Common Sense”, “in Society” etc. Merely leaving out the number of the volume or of the book will make no difference in the continuity of the work, especially as in the three later books I am still able to put in a phrase or two pointing to the next one in order. This reference forward happens to exist already in the first two books. That each book may be read apart from the others, as you say, was part of my original plan and I am glad you are taking steps to bring this result about.
Yours very truly,
G Santayana

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 Nancy Saunders Toy
Hotel Danieli
Venice, Italy. Jan. 24, 1940.

The four destroyers and the two full-rigged training-ships, that you speak of as if they would be hideous reminders of war, now seen through a veil of snow-flakes look decidedly like painted ships upon a painted ocean. No scene could be more silent and peaceful. The war itself, seen from here, only through the newspapers (which here are of moderate size, without sensational features) looks unreal: most interesting and novel; a war that nobody wanted, and in which for the most part, nobody fights. It may be an effect of old age and of being in Italy instead of in England, but the atmosphere of daily anxiety and daily bereavement that we breathed in 1914-18 no longer surrounds us. It is rather like the plot of some intricate novel, where the issues and even the characters are not yet made out, and keep surprises in store for us. The appearance of Russia was one coupde-théâtre,* the appearance of Findland as a David slaying Goliath is another. Meantime, All Quiet in the West.

*Sudden dramatic turn of events (French). The reference is presumably to the invasion of Poland by Red Army troops in September 1939.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Six, 1937-1940.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA

To John Hall Wheelock
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. January 23, 1951.

Dear Mr. Wheelock,
I believe Cory cabled to you last night answering “Yes” to your question whether we agreed to correct inaccuracies in my text about matters of fact, such as that “all” colonists in America were British and “all” Protestants. I wish you had noted other phrases which might irritate my readers uselessly; because, as you know, I am not writing with statistics and books of reference before my eyes, but only evoking the dramatic and moral aspects that things seem to have or to have had. Of course, I knew that even within the United States there had been French Catholics (Acadians & Evangeline, and also in Louisiana) and British Catholics in Maryland; but I was thinking of New England in my boyhood where, in spite of crowds of Irish, it seemed to the stranger that the whole life of the country was Protestant and Anglosaxon. In any case, it led the new comers to drop or hide their peculiarities and plunge into the inescapable current. The Jews do the same, and even sometimes take the reins into their own hands, as if they were purer or more absolute Americans than anybody else. I should have preferred the Puritan purity, if it made room, in other circles, for manners and feelings of other kinds

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Eight, 1948-1952.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries, Princeton NJ