Category: LETTERS Page 1 of 274

To Mary Potter Bush
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. June 29, 1946

Dear Mrs. Bush,

Another box of yours, despatched on May 4^th, has now arrived, with two tins of tea, two pairs of stockings, very welcome now that summer makes the thick kind uncomfortable, and four cakes of Castile soap. Thanks to you and to a few other friends I am now well provided with everything for a long while; and perhaps before long the market here will be better provided, and our begging season may come to an end. Thank you very much, especially for the feminine tact that makes you choose soap and stockings, besides the tea that I have pleaded for from the beginning. I am now assured of these things, as well as of coffee－which I got on without very easily, yet which when it presents itself certainly makes the morning more cheerful and the brain more active.

Have you heard of an unattached German writer, Rudolf Steiner, who has written a lot of theosophical books? A friend has sent me his Das Christenthum als Mystische Thatsache which I find strangely like my last book. He is almost clear.

Yours sincerely, G Santayana

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

To Guy Murchie
Chateau Frontenac.
Quebec, Canada. June 27, 1896

I can’t resist the impulse to write you a line from here, because I am thinking of you, wishing you were here, and wondering where in the world you are. If your father sold the mine in Newfoundland and you bought a farm in New Brunswick, why are you in Newfoundland and not chez toi, if, as they tell me now, you are in Newfoundland? I give it up: but of course it doesn’t matter if in some way you are finding what will ultimately satisfy you. Let me know soon what is up, for now when I pass the sad shores of Newfoundland I shall never know whether to gaze upon them with moist eyes and wave a metaphorical handkerchief in that direction, or whether the Mecca lies rather behind my back. You see, in spite of this then pursuit of vain knowledge, even the faithful need a little geography. We sail from here tomorrow, Sunday, morning. I like the place. The people are people. These are the long-sought peasants of America. I think it might be pleasant to live here: it would be like Europe, in the country.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book One, [1868]-1909.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Collection of Guy Murchie, Jr.

To Otto Kyllmann
Hotel Savoy
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. June 26, 1935

Dear Mr. Kyllmann,

I am not surprised at all that the people at the Thakeray Hotel might conceivably take umbrage at the passage you refer to: and I am not sure that the two King’s Arms inns, at Oxford and Sandford might not raise some objection—although if anything we are advertising them and rendering them more interesting.

It would be easy to drop the name Thackeray, and say something even more appropriate to Miss Letitia Lamb, such as Ruskin Hotel, or Pickwick Hotel, or (if these are perhaps real places in London) the Hotel Cimabue. But as I say in the Epilogue, I have a weakness for real names of places, and should like to keep the reference to the Thakeray Hotel if possible; but we might turn the passage into a compliment, that couldn’t but be taken in good part, if we said, “that inexpensive hotel for geniuses near Phidias and the British Museum? It might be crowded.”

What do you think?

Yours sincerely, G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Five, 1933-1936.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia PA.

To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Le Balze
Fiesole, Italy. June 25, 1934

So far existence here has been quite tolerable, the heat is not (as yet) oppressive, and I have managed, with some slight difficulty, to establish a sufficient independence of movement. But I am devoured by mosquitoes, and it seems hardly practicable to go down to Florence on foot or in the tram, except on favourable occasions. I shall have to go down with S. at 6 p.m.: but I have already knocked off tea, so as not to be interrupted in the afternoon, and have established the habit of being dropped in passing through the town, so that I have an hour to myself for walking about a bit, shopping, and having an apéritif before, at 7.20, we meet for dinner. The food is simple but suits me admirably, and S. encourages me to drink!

It is natural and, I think, right-minded of you to like the Catholic philosophy-books. They have improved immensely of late in their knowledge and understanding of modern views: not so much in their historical criticism, e.g. of Aristotle, Plato, & the Neo-Platonists. They are therefore able to present and defend common-sense—which is what Scholasticism is, apart from the theology—in an enlightened way. Formerly the same soundness was buried in an arid repetition of formulas, without much understanding either of the facts or of the theories of other people. Today, it seems that the Catholics are really the best critics everywhere, and the best informed. My Spanish review, Cruz y Raya, is admirable: and I am reading masterly Catholic critiques of Bergson’s latest book. But, as you say, the trouble is that all this is a human dream: it is a beautiful product, like music or architecture, of a long human tradition and art: but it isn’t true. It is a product of the fonction fabulatrice.

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.