Author: David Spiech Page 246 of 283

To George Sturgis
Hotel Bristol
Rome. November 27, 1927

Apparently, to judge by what you say in your letter of Nov. 15, it is a long time since I have written: I am sorry, and I can’t say it has been because I was too busy or because I had nothing to say, which are the grown-up and the childish excuses for such delinquences. In Paris I spent rather an exciting summer, being a party to a sort of run-away match. Don’t be alarmed; it isn’t I that was married, but Margaret Strong; only in the absence of her father I had to officiate as sponsor, or witness, or giver-away, or whatever you call it. There were two weddings,–a week apart–which was an absurdity in itself: after the first, one, at the mairie, I gave the party a breakfast: we were only six persons, and it went off very well. At the second wedding, which was in the American Episcopal Church, I had to lead the (married) bride up the aisle, in the conventional fashion. People said: Voilà le papa! but I felt like a fool and rather like a fraud. The Chilean chargé d’affaires gave a reception for us afterwards, and the bride was much admired with her “golden” eyes and her nun-like tulle veil. I ought to have said that the bridegroom is an impecunious but rather fashionable Chilean named Jorge Cuevas, who has knocked about Paris for ten years (he is about 35) and has a rather doubtful reputation. Margaret had seen a great deal of him for a year or more; but she is undecided and not quite normal; and she hid him as if their engagement or courtship had been something out of the way, until suddenly she announced that she was going to marry him in four days. The Rockefellers (John D. Jr. was then in France) were up in arms and did all they could to prevent the marriage, while poor Strong in Switzerland was left out in the cold, except for my letters. He finally telegraphed his consent and blessing at the very last moment: and now, having seen his son-in-law, he is quite reconciled or rather positively pleased. In fact, the young man is not a bad sort, it is she that is the problem. They are at Luxor in Egypt for the winter, so that all here is peace for the present.

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 Rosamond Thomas [Sturgis] Little
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. November 25, 1951

Christmas is approaching and I am writing to Mr. Wheelock of Scribner’s asking him to send you my prosaic present, as on recent years he has been kind enough to do. Don’t send me flowers, as they are rather wasted in my little room, which is crowded with books and tables, and not meant as a stage setting for poetry and philosophical vistas, as ideally it should be. But many years ago I gave up all dreams of finding beautiful quarters and surroundings. They would prove more a burden and a tether than a stimulus to pleasant thoughts. Possessions, when I was younger were a nuisance for one who wanted to travel, and in time to return regularly to a fixed circle of chosen places, easily reached, as were Rome, Venice and Cortina; and now that I am in the last stage of my journey what I enjoy without qualification is to read, especially history. I have just finished (in three days, as if it were an exciting novel, a long book by a man named Brandon on the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, and its effect upon Christianity, which he thinks was decisive. And the excursuses in Toynbee, which I had skipped on first reading his six volumes, are better than his text, and almost inexhaustible. You travel all over the world and through all ages without leaving your den. This is what most of the critics of my “Dominations & Powers” evidently never do, for I notice that they are blind to everything except current events and current questions, as if they could have any true vision of such things if they were ignorant altogether of the world in which these things arise and pass away.
Another, but perfectly normal difficulty that my critics have is that they don’t know my philosophy, which is not an arbitrary “creation” of my fancy but simply the result or sediment left in my mind by living. For that reason I am compelled to imply and to illustrate it in all I say about anything; so that if they have a different philosophy or no philosophy laid up in their minds, of course they cannot see how what I say hangs together.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Eight, 1948-1952.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA

To Dorothy Shakespear Pound
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. November 24, 1946

Dear Mrs. Pound,
I have much appreciated your husband’s letter telling me that p. 6 of my book had reconciled him to the frivolity of the rest. I know he is very selective and “subjective”; and a ray of mutual understanding is of value with such a person. I have also received his new Canto, and should have written to him about it if a ray of light from it had been able to pierce my thick skull. But really I can’t catch the drift of his allusions.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Seven, 1941-1947.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript: The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington

To Rosamond Thomas Bennett Sturgis
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. November 23, 1946

A magnificent bouquet arrived from you this morning, intended for Christmas. It serves just as well now, and I am sure that your good wishes are not confined to feast days any more than my leisure. Every day is a holiday and a birthday and a possible last day for a philosopher.

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