Author: David Spiech Page 258 of 283

To George Sturgis
Hotel Bristol
Rome. May 19, 1938

Just a word about the [Bertrand] Russell business, as he may wonder at the delay in replying to his letter.  There is nothing for us to say except, Very well. It gives us a breathing spell in the hard times, but I suppose we can manage to resume the payments later if they are needed. Next September you will send him his $2,500, as expected; but in 1939 you will not send him anything, unless he again asks for it. You see he is very honest, and even ascetic. He likes to be poor and hard-worked, although his fundamental standards are aristocratic, and sometimes break through.

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 Daniel MacGhie Cory
Hotel Bristol
Rome. May 18th 1933

You seemed to be worried at the fact that professors have opposite views, and hate one another. When was it otherwise? And if you eschewed philosophy on that account, and took, let us say, to history, because there everything is big, clear and unmistakably on the most superficial human plane, you would find the same endless and bitter controversy.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Five, 1933-1936.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY

To Mary Potter Bush
Hotel Bristol
Rome. May 16, 1932

The New Testament is a miscellaneous collection of Church tales, the sediment of early Christian tradition. It is not the foundation of any living faith, and never could be. The figure of Christ is just like that of the Virgin Mary, a mythological figure. The dramatic, life-like, and personal notes are just as frequent in St. John as in St. Mark: they are the product of prolonged, intense, cumulative dramatization. The Magnificat is no less genuine than the Sermon on the Mount, which last is evidently not a verbatim report of a real “sermon” but a disjointed collection of maxims, very like those of Hillal and the revolutionary late Jews. All this, however, does not militate in my mind against the existence of a historical Jesus, about whom we know next to nothing. I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads: and nothing seems more normal than that a religious Risen Christ should have been identified with an earthly dead Jesus.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Four, 1928-1932.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY

To George Sturgis
C/o Brown Shipley & Co 123 Pall Mall
London, S.W.1
Venice, May 13, 1924

Thank you for your letter of April 28 with its enclosures. I am answering Scofield Thayer’s inquiries. I hardly think my autobiography would be interesting, as there have been no events in my life and I have known few distinguished people. My novel will contain most of my observations on human nature, freed from personalities; and besides I am writing something which I call “Persons and Places” in which I mean to give some account, historically accurate but selective, of some scenes and characters that have remained in my memory.  I tremble to think what nonsense Miss Munsterberg may be writing about me and my father and mother: and Thayer will not be much nearer the mark. Perhaps I will after all follow your suggestion in composing if not an autobiography, at least a chronology of my life, with a few notes about the leading facts, so as to correct the inventions that may see the light in the impertinent press. I foresee that when I die there will be a crop of stories, most of them sentimentally benevolent and reminiscent, and some a little spiteful, about my supposed life and character: and although all this will blow over in a few weeks, it may be as well that there should be an authoritative document to which anyone may appeal who may be really interested in the facts. If I write such a chronology I will send you a copy, because (as this incident shows) you too are not very well informed about this branch of our family history.

I came to Venice from Rome about a week ago, accompanied by two of the Chetwynd children, a boy of eighteen and a girl of sixteen. Their mother, formerly Augusta Robinson of New York, and sister of a great friend of mine, was detained in Rome by the illness of another child, and was glad to have me take charge of the two elder ones, so that they might not miss seeing Venice. It is rather a curious experience to stand in this way in loco parentis to two young persons, and I find it pleasant enough, especially as they look after me much more than I look after them: but I shall not be sorry when, in two or three days, I regain my usual bachelor solitude.

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 Cyril Coniston Clemens
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6,
Rome, May 11, 1951.

Dear Clemens,
Many thanks for your letter of May 4th with the good-humoured review in Time, which is the best I have seen so far, much better than those by the Professors Hook and Krutch in the New York Times and Herald Tribune. My new book is too complicated for a hasty reader to take in at once, and people are accustomed to be guided in public affairs by their feelings, without considering origins or tendencies in the actual events. I am content, for the moment, to be regarded as a mere curiosity.

Tom Sawyer arrived in due time and has been religiously read from cover to cover. It is hardly as suggestive of Don Quixote as the latter part of Huckleberry Finn, but I will consider both books together and in that respect only in my paper, which is partly written but not quite finished even in the written part. You are not in a hurry and I am very slow now at everything. I have not had the “flu”, but only a recrudescence of my catarrh, and general fatigue, so that I have given up receiving visitors, except old friends. Please don’t send me cheques for $1. We are not in business. I will send Tom Sawyer back at once.

Yours sincerely,
G.S.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Eight, 1948-1952.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: William R. Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham NC