Author: David Spiech Page 255 of 283

To Susan Sturgis de Sastre
Oxford, England. September 15, 1901

I see you look on Mc Kinley’s end as a judgment of heaven. There were other people probably far more guilty in respect to the war, which I am afraid could not have been avoided in the end, given Spanish inefficiency and the sentimental and acquisitive instincts of the American public. The worst of this accident is that Rooseveldt is not a safe person; but responsibility may sober him and he may be able to resist the machine better than a mere bell-wether like Mc Kinley.

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

To Edward Joseph Harrington O’Brien
3 Prescott Hall
COLONIAL CLUB
Cambridge, Massachusetts. [September 1908-January 1912]

Dear Mr. O’Brien: We are besieged at this moment by soi-disant philosophers from all over the country, and I shall not be my own master until Saturday. If you could come to tea then or on Sunday, at about four o’clock, I should be delighted to see you.

Perhaps you would explain to me then some of the things you refer to in your letter, which I don’t quite understand. The tempests of the Olympians to not reach my catacomb.

Yours very truly,
G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book One, [1868]-1909.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Collection of Alan Denson, Aberdeenshire, Scotland

To Charles Augustus Strong
HÔTEL ROYAL DANIELI
Venice, Italy. September 13, 1931

Dear Strong,

(This change in my handwriting is caused by the hotel pen.)

I was surprised and pleased to find your letter. I am afraid we may find the Hôtel de Londres a bit shabby: they are charging me 55 lire a day for half-pension, with a “good” room and bathroom: but we shall see.

I came here yesterday by motorbus and motor launch: not a bad trip: and I found Venice en fête on account of the King’s visit, of which I was ignorant. I have a room in the entresol of the old building, almost on the quay, and it is amusing after the Alpine solitudes of Cortina. I had been left at the hotel with half a dozen ladies, some of which had an odd look and very blond hair. Perhaps they were friends of the proprietor and clerks, being entertained in the absence of the Herrschaften.

Yours ever,
G.S.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Four, 1928–1932.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY

To Charles Augustus Strong
BERTOLINI’S PALACE
Naples, Italy. September 12, 1912

Some other day I may answer the part of your letter about psychology: today I am hardly in the mood. You are quite right in saying that we disagree about the existence of unfelt feeling. I am not sure, however, that an unfelt feeling is a fact and not a word. I agree that there is something in an animal before he is aware of it—a very great deal, in fact. This is what I meant by the fact on which we agreed and the words about which we disagreed.

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 Charles Augustus Strong
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. September 11, 1924

How classical you have become! No wonder, with your residence in Italy and your Latin reading. But aren’t you going rather far in condemning flying buttresses? No doubt the motive was only economy—economy in carrying out an extravagant plan; and you may condemn this as not worthy of Aristotle’s magnanimous man. But I have always believed that the frankness of exhibiting such a device, and using it decoratively, had been rewarded by the effect. Sometimes the light and shade play wonderfully among those buttresses, and the labyrinthine effect is in itself poetical. As to thin columns, I agree: I have never liked them. When people speak of “lightness” and “clarity of design” in Gothic churches, I feel that they are picking out the faults: the true beauties are loftiness, intricacy, mystery, and tenderness of detail, so that one lovely nook after another is found nestling in the vast ill-defined whole. “Clarity” should go not with “lightness” but with elegance and modesty on the human scale.

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