Author: David Spiech Page 237 of 283

To John McKinstry Merriam
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. Jan. 17, 1948

Dear Merriam,
You ask me to write you, for your Class Luncheon, something about the political state of things in the world, and you tell me what the Marshall plan is. I know all about that and the views current here (I mean in Europe, not Rome or Italy) about it, whether it is prudent charity, to prevent Western Europe from being Russianised, or sheer enterprise, to secure larger markets and military outpost for American expansion abroad, now that the home lands have filled up. I don’t know whether this second motive exists, consciously or unconsciously in any American circle, but if it does, my philosophy would at once dismiss it as a mere makeshift. For in a century or two (nothing for a philosopher) when Asia and Africa were filled up with men and industries up to the brim, the question would recur as pressingly as at present, and the real problem, not one of how to enlarge business but how to lead a rational life, would impose itself on the cosmopolitan government that we may suppose would then exist. Why should not this real question be put and answered now in each country and community, without looking for outlets or resources beyond its accidental borders?

Read More

To Henry Ward Abbot
C/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Rome, Jan. 16, 1924.

I have never been anything but utterly bored and digusted with the public world, the world of business, politics, family, and society. It was only the glimmer of sport, humour, friendship, or love falling over it that made it tolerable. In the last ten years, in spite of the war, I have been able to keep out of that insufferable medium, and have consequently been much happier. Here in Rome, for instance, the world is pleasing: it seems always to have cared for things worth having; it is congenitally beautiful, born to enjoy itself humanly, and straightforward in its villainies and its sorrows. I walk about, knowing no one and speaking to nobody, and I feel that everybody understands me; and what is more and greater, that everybody is at work for the sake of the very things I am inwardly at work about, human liberty and pleasantness breaking through the mesh of circumstances and laughing at it. The political atmosphere here is good also: I am in great hopes in respect to the Latin world: the German and Anglosaxon shams have been discredited–representative government, for instance–and people are daring to be themselves. The church too is a good thing–much better than–“science”,–and a part of the game.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Three, 1921-1927.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY

To Charles Augustus Strong
Hotel Bristol
Rome. Jan. 15, 1931

Dear Strong,
Cory arrived three days ago, giving me rather a shock with his thinness and weakness. He seemed yesterday decidedly firmer on his legs, and he seems to eat well and with relish, so that we may hope that he may recover, with time, his normal energy, which is not very great; and the fact that he uses itup so intensively at certain moments, makes him all the more liable to run down afterwards. I think–and he says his doctor in Florence thought so too–thathe needs a long and complete change, and rest from all persistent work. I am proposing to him that he stay here for the rest of the winter; of course, if he preferred to go to Rapallo or elsewhere later, he would be free to do so; but I should like you to let me take over the responsibility for looking after him for six, or at least three, months, because with me he will know that he isn’t expected to do anything but vegetate. Also the climate is more favourable here for a convalescent, and while he remains at this hotel he will be well looked after in the matter of food, hot baths, etc. I am sorry if this plan interferes with the discussions which you have been carrying on; but in any case Cory isn’t fit for carrying them on at present. If you obliged him to do so, I am afraid it might have consequences for him, nervous and religious, which you would deeply regret. He is getting desperate about technical details, and inclines to becoming a Catholic. He needs to be left free to recover his balance. Irwin Edman¹ is here, very enthusiastic. I have caught a cold, and am staying in the house to try to avoid complications.
Yours ever,
G.S.

Read More

To George Sturgis
Hotel Bristol
Rome. Jan. 14, 1930

Dear George,
Just a word to say I have received your yearly account, and am much pleased at the favorable aspect of it. The decline in value seems to be, in my property, only about one percent, which is remarkably little under the circumstances. I gather from what you say, and from the enclosures, that this panic was not so much a crisis in industry–and these have to occur sometimes, as now in England–as a reaction from the speculative inflation of the previous year or two. It has been like what I used to see at Harvard dinners in those disgusting old times before prohibition, when people had had some sherry-cobblers in the afternoon, some cocktails before dinner, much champagne with their food, and several whiskeys-and-sodas afterwards, besides some green-mints or other liqueurs, whereupon they “put their lunch”; a loathsome phrase and a loathsome thing which I daresay you have never seen or heard. The market has put its lunch, and probably feels the better for it, even if still a little disturbed.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Four, 1928-1932.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA

To Charles Augustus Strong
New York Hotel
Nice.  Jan. 13, .23

My cough is gone, but the vestiges of a cold and of a certain general fatigue still remain: I continue to come home in the afternoon and to have supper in my room. The weather is still wintry and cloudy; but I am hoping daily for the improvement which cannot now be long delayed. Although Nice has not proved satisfactory as a winter residence, I don’t feel like going away now that the worst is over and the sun rises earlier and sets later every day: in the Spring my room here will be truly delightful, with sun (which the blinds will soften) pouring in all day from two quarters. But I shall surely never come here again for the early winter; and it occurs to me that if I should feel shaky again next year, and you were going to Val-Mont, perhaps I might go there too. Does one have to be very ill to be admitted? That sort of medical monastery might suit me very well. It also lies conveniently half-way between Paris and Rome, which are evidently the points between which I shall oscillate in the future. I still think of going to England in the Summer, but somehow the thought is melancholy: I feel I shall find nothing equal to my memory of it, and few friends. It is quite possible I may never go there again.
Fuller writes me from Rome saying his Greek Philosophy, vol. I, has found a publisher–Putnams. What inveterate scribblers we all are! Books and more books.

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