Author: David Spiech Page 92 of 283

To Victor Wolfgang von Hagen
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. December 4, 1941

Dear Mr. von Hagen:

Your letter of October 9, addressed to the Hotel Bristol, has just reached me here, after travelling a good deal, for that hotel was pulled down two or three years ago, and though the shell is now rebuilt in a sky-scraper style, the place is not yet reopened. If I live long enough I shall probably return there, because the proprietor has all my books in storage, and the situation is convenient for my purposes. Being driven from there, just when the war was preparing, has unsettled me unpleasantly. The first winter I staid in Venice, a terribly bleak place at that season; the second winter (i.e. last winter) I lived at the Grand Hotel here in Rome; but this year I have come from there to the top of the Caelius, to a nursing home kept by an English Order of Sisters called the “Little Company of Mary”, not that I am particularly ill, but that I am short of funds, not because the source is dried up but because the conduit is stopped up, not yet entirely, but very seriously. These Sisters have establishments all over the English-speaking world, besides three in Italy. This is their Mother House, and a complete hospital, convent, and guest-house; and the Mother Superior has made a special arrangement with me, in view of my strange situation, by which I live here gratis, while a donation will be made for me, more or less equivalent, to their place near Chicago. I shall therefore have food and lodging even if my funds are blocked altogether. I found insuperable difficulties in the attempt to move to Switzerland or to Spain; this arrangement suits me better, in spite of some discomforts involved.

. . .

This war affects me, morally, much less than the other, although I think (and hope) that the consequences may be far more important and lasting: a really new era in human history, but not at all what people, on either side, think they are fighting for. Words and things were never further apart than in our uneducated times.

Yours sincerely,
G Santayana

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

To Abbott Lawrence Lowell
Colonial Club
Cambridge, Massachusetts. December 3, 1910

Dear Mr Lowell,
Thank you very much for the information about comparative marking, which I am sending to my assistants in Phil. B. It seems to me quite natural, however, that the marks in this course should be much higher than in a group which contains several courses taken almost exclusively by Freshmen. It is also to be noted that Phil. B. contains a decidedly select body of students, comes at 1.30 (an hour avoided by the self-indulgent) and is one in which ability and intelligence, even without very much work, suffice to produce good results, so that B is more commonly attained than it might be by the same men in other courses, when these men are clever.
Yours sincerely, G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Two, 1910-1920.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Harvard Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge MA

To Arthur Davison Ficke
Hotel Danieli
Venice, Italy. December 2, 1939

In the flattering mention you make of me in your book, there is a slight and very natural error, which in spite of its littleness, is strangely significant and shows how little the public really knows about its members. You speak of my half-Spanish blood. If you had said I was half-Spanish or half-American, it would have been true enough, because my dominant language and associations are American and I have lived little in Spain; but I am wholly Spanish in blood, and have always remained legally Spanish in nationality. . . . [O]ur family life in Boston was wholly Spanish: I never spoke any other language at home; and you can’t imagine what a completely false picture comes to the mind if you suggest that my mother was an American. Then, too, she and my sisters would have been Protestants, and my whole imaginative and moral background would have been different.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Six, 1937-1940.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven CT

To Charles William Eliot
75 Monmouth St
Brookline, Massachusetts. December 1, 1897

Dear Mr Eliot,
I see by the notice and the cheque I received this morning from the Treasurer that my salary for this year has been reduced to $1500 from $1750, which it was in 1895–1896. I venture to call your attention to the fact, as possibly the change was not intended.

You may remember that two years ago I spoke to the members of my department of my unwillingness to continue at Harvard unless there was some prospect of my promotion. I afterwards suggested taking a year away and returning for this other year with my former standing, in order that the Corporation’s plans for the Philosophical Department, which I understood were not yet fully decided upon, might be arranged in the interval. I should naturally be glad to hear as soon as possible what the decision in regard to myself is likely to be, so that if I am not to remain here I may make other arrangements.

Yours very truly,
G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book One, [1868]-1909.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Harvard Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge MA

To Elizabeth Stephens Fish Potter
C/o Brown Shipley & Co.
123 Pall Mall
I Tatti
Florence, Italy. November 30, 1912

You have not heard, perhaps, that my mother died soon after I left America. It was not an unexpected loss, and in one sense, as you know, it had really occurred long before, as my mother had not been herself for some years. Nevertheless, her death makes a tremendous difference in all our lives, as she had always been the ruling influence over us. She had a very strong will and a most steadfast character, and her mere presence, even in the decline of her faculties, was the central fact and bond of union for us. Now, everything seems to be dissolved.

. . . .

I was forgetting to tell you what is perhaps the only important fact—that I have resigned my professorship altogether, and don’t expect to go back to America at any fixed time. As you know, my situation at Harvard has never been to my liking altogether, and latterly much less so, because I began to be tired of teaching and too old for the society of young people, which is the only sort I found tolerable there. The arrangement I had made with Mr. Lowell for teaching during half of each year, I should have carried out had my mother lived; but it was never meant, in my own mind, to last for ever. Now, it seemed that the moment to make the change had come. My brother assures me that I shall have a little income that more than supplies my wants; Boston, with no home there, with no place to dine in night after night but that odious Colonial Club, is too distressing a prospect. Here, on the other hand, everything is alluring. My books (the only earthly chattels I retain) are at the avenue de l’Observatoire; that is my headquarters for the present. Meantime I am looking about, and if some place or some circle makes itself indispensable to my happiness, there I will stay. Intellectually, I have quite enough on hand and in mind, to employ all my energies for years.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Two, 1910-1920.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA