Author: David Spiech Page 252 of 283

To Charles Augustus Strong
Hotel Danieli
Venice, Italy. October 4, 1927

As you doubtless have heard, I fled from Paris a fortnight since on account of the bad weather and the symptoms of a permanent cold, making straight for Venice, but I was allowed to stay here only two or three days, as every room everywhere was engaged for those hydroplane races. I accordingly moved for four days to Padua, the nearest place I could think of that might be interesting and that I had not seen. It was pleasant there; but sights leave much less impression on me than they did forty years ago, and even the domes of Sant. Antonio caused no great thrill in my bosom, nor the chapel entirely covered by frescoes of Giotto. What really pleased me most was the Café Pedrocchi, neo-Greek & pseudo-marble, and beautifully Napoleonic, more like a Roman house to sit and live in (as the Paduans do) than anything I have ever seen.

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

To Charles Augustus Strong
22 Beaumont St.
Oxford, England. October 3, 1916

How distressing it is that you should be laid up in this way by a mysterious weakness, without any immediate prospect of relief! As I wrote to Margaret the other day, I have little faith in the diagnosis of doctors, or in their prescriptions. At Harrogate—a dreadfully dull place—I had a vivid sense of the fact that the practice of medicine is a ritual and not a science. My doctor, or rather Mrs Morrell’s, to whom she sent me, was a sort of fashionable clergyman who had missed his vocation—impudent, too. In the treatment he prescribed he was evidently guessing; and when I represented that sulphur-water was nasty, and seemed to swell me without doing any good, he replied that it was absolutely the right thing for my “membritis”, or disease of the white membrane; and five minutes later he ordered me to take Kissingen water instead! Your doctors are undoubtedly better, but your trouble is also worse than mine has yet become, so that I do not envy you their ministrations.

I hear that the difficulties about passports are worse than ever, and that there is no chance of getting through to Switzerland at present. I wish I could reach you by wireless, and explain to you my latest discovery, that the three vices of European philosophy are egotism, humanism, and worldliness.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Two, 1910-1920.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY

To Anne Ford
Via di Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. Oct. 2, 1950

Dear Miss Ford:

You overwhelm me with superior chocolates from Sherry’s in New York. The last night I spent in America was luxuriously spent in an apartment at Sherry’s; not of my own choosing, but suggested by a fashionable friend who also took me that evening to a small dinner party, a theatre party, a private concert, and a reception at her Ambassador’s to meet (the backs of) the Duke of Connaught, the Duchess, and Princess Patricia, after which spree ( Jan. 1912) I never went to any other party in my life. It may well be, after your chocolates, that I shall never wish to descend to any but Sherry’s in the short rest of my life. You are too kind and I rely on your not forgetting to come to see me (if still visible) when you return to Rome.
Yours sincerely,
G Santayana

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

To Susan Sturgis de Sastre
Oxford, England. October 1, 1913

I have been working very steadily; my book, however, hasn’t got all the benefit of it, as I have been writing other stuff—some half-poetical dialogues that I have long had in mind and one of which was actually written and published long ago in a review. When this spurt of inspiration is over, however, I shall go back to the solid work, and I count on being stimulated especially by talking with Bertie Russell in Cambridge. I saw him at his brother’s, but we didn’t have more than one or two opportunities for quiet discussion. He is a logician and mathematician, strong where I am weakest, so that it is not always easy for us to understand each other on these abstruse points. However, we feel sympathy even in our diversity, and that is why I am anxious to put my view on some subjects (not on all) before him and to learn his more accurately. However, in the end every philosopher has to walk alone.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Two, 1910-1920.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Alderman Library, University of Virginia at Charlottesville

To Clifton Paul Fadiman
Rome. [1941]

. . . It was a curious occasion, that lecture of mine in Oxford. I was entrusted to the care of a scientific Don, doubtless of the committee for the Spencer Lectureship; and when I called at his house by appointment an hour before the time for the lecture, his wife said he was so sorry but had been called away to receive 4000 butterflies that had just arrived for him from South America. He turned up later, however, and took me to the Natural History Museum, to a lecture-room with a deep pit, and large maps on the walls, and instead of introducing me he only said, “Oh, you might as well begin.” The audience was small, a few ladies, and a good many Indians and Japanese: However, I recognized old Professor Stewart of Christ Church and F. R. S. Schiller. This audience, however, was most sympathetic, didn’t mind the length of the lecture, and applauded heartily at the end. But there was nothing Oxonian about the occasion: might have been at Singapoor. . . . I think it is one of the most reasonable things I have written, reasonable yet not cold, and I am encouraged to find that it has not been altogether forgotten. . . .

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