Category: LETTERS Page 13 of 274

To George Sturgis
Grand Hotel Rome
Rome. January 31, 1941

Dear George,

The Credito Italiano telephoned this morning to say the lire miste had arrived, and awaited my convenience. Unluckily I had a relapse, complicated by a colic (something antedeluvian in my history, but perhaps this is one form of a second childhood) and although better and quite comfortable I am still confined to my rooms. I get up and have my meals and receive my doctor in my salotto or sitting-room. For six nights I had a nurse who gave me my medicines and much conversation. She says there are too many children. Her two boys, being a widow, bring her no end of work in order to provide for their superior education. Evidently society is in a fluid state. I hope the end of this war will bring a new organization that may last, in fundamentals, for a thousand years. I mean in all countries.

I had never heard of lire miste, nor had my doctor (although he is a Jew, and a very nice person). From what the man at the Credito Italiano said this morning, I gather that a non-Italian bank is involved in the issue. In any case, the better exchange will partly take the place of the 20% that I got these last two times from the government.

Thank you for sending Pepe my Xmas present for the children. Pepe’s daughter Josefina and his son Eduardo have written. She has two babies and he is expecting one. That is all they write about. Too many children!

Yours affly G Santayana

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

To Edward Joseph Harrington O’Brien
3 Prescott Hall Colonial Club
Cambridge, MA. [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 Rosamond Thomas [Sturgis] Little
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6,
Rome. January 29, 1952

Your letter of Jan. 12th, and your box which arrived the day before, would have been acknowledged sooner if I hadn’t been depressed by the persistence of my “gastric catarrh” and subject to a diet of milk and mashed potatoes, with one raw egg at mid-day, which reduces me to dozing most of the time. I am afraid at my age this is an incurable trouble, though not immediately fatal; but it is not painful (except at moments, when a fit of cough comes) and allows me to read and to write letters when the weather clears. After a hot and dull summer, we are having a cold and dark winter, which have alike contributed to my complaint, and I think, now that winter is (here) on the wane, that I shall feel better in the Summer. Lucky that this trouble didn’t come a year sooner, or I should never have managed to get my last book together. It is being well received in Europe: there is to be a German translation and two in Spanish, one at Buenos Aires and one at Madrid.

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

To Susan Sturgis de Sastre
La Peninsular.
Seville. January 28, 1914.

Dear Susie

By this time I feel quite settled and happy here. My cough has disappeared with the cold and rainy weather, and I have come to find the hotel quite tolerable. The food is good enough if one makes a judicious selection of dishes, and I rather like monotony in food, e.g. I have an omelette and fried fish and a bit of guisado or rice and two or three oranges for lunch every day, and no wine It seems to agree with me; and if I went to a better hotel I fear I should find many worse things, tourists, for instance. This is a small place, with some old German women and business men living permanently and a very moderate tide of Spanish people coming and going. Not a single English or American person yet! Then my room is quite delightful, with so much sun that I already have to close the blinds not to be dazzled. I am in the principal, looking out on the main square, and almost in it, as I hear and see everything that is going on. I get up and have my chocolate at 9, and dress at 12. After lunch I go to a café, always the same one, and the same table, if possible, where the waiters are now my friends and bring me the illustrated papers, and then, with a note-book in my pocket, in case of inspiration, I start on my walk, through the Delicias into the country. On the way I watch the steamers loading and unloading, and if it is warm I sit in the gardens for a while. Tea I take on my return to the city, this at quite a different and more fashionable coffeehouse, where there are ladies and foreigners. Then I usually come to my room again, and read or write until dinner, which I have about 7:30. There is a good electric light over my table, by which I am writing now. In the evening, I return to my first café, in the Sierpes, overhear and sometimes join in conversation with some of the habitués, and then go to the theatre. I have seen a lot of things, good, bad, and indifferent, with and without local colour; but half the amusement is in seeing the people. I affect the dias de moda, tonight it will be at the cine in the teatro de San Fernando, the largest and best in Seville. In this way I see the beauty and fashion of the place, better than in their carriages and autos in the Delicias. Seville is a true and homogeneous capital city, like ancient towns, with its aristocracy just as native as its lower classes. I find it very simpático. Tomorrow we shall have the novelty of the arrival of the court. I suppose they will drive by my window in the morning, there is hardly another possible route, and I shall have other opportunities of seeing them during their sojourn, which I understand is to be for less than a fortnight. As you see, I dawdle and amuse myself a good deal, but at the same time I manage to work every day for two or three hours; and this is enough to keep my mind engaged and give me the resource of a settled occupation in the background, to which I can always return.

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 Sidney Hook
C/o Brown Shipley & Co.
123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1.
Rome. January 27, 1930

Dear Mr Hook

It is very kind of you to send me these three articles of yours, and I have been reading them with much interest and (I hope) some profit. As I said in a post-card which I sent you some time since, I should feel a very general agreement with you, if you put things differently! For instance, on p. 124 of the Marx-Lenin article, you seem to contrast “human needs” with material forces. But what efficacy of any sort could a “need,” more than a thought or a prayer, have in the world, if it were not a material impulse in an animal body? So the “ideas” whose power you exalt on p. 142, might find some difficulty in making themselves felt if nobody had them.

Yours sincerely

G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Four, 1928-1932.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Morris Library, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.