Category: LETTERS Page 14 of 274

To Robert Traill Spence Lowell Jr.
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. January 26, 1949.

If when already a man of experience and an accomplished poet you come to Europe for the first time and land in England, your sense for that country will be that it is odd, small, somewhat annoying in being different from the United States; and it will take time, which perhaps you will not care to spend there, for you to feel its charm If on the contrary you sail into the Strait of Gibraltar (and your steamer will probably touch there, so that you could “take in” the Rock, the port, and the Spanish coast, as well as the spurs of the Atlas on the African shore) you would receive an impression of grandeur with details in the foreground of an original simple ancient truly human civilization. This would be increased, if you stopped at Gibraltar, in order to go from there to Tangiers and perhaps inland into Morocco. I don’t know how profoundly things may have changed since I was at Tangiers in 1893; but then Tangiers was barbaric beyond words, the Moors thoroughly Moorish, camels, donkeys, and sheep resting on the bare ground of the vast market amid pools of urine, and on a rock that emerged in one corner, a minstrel, looking like Homer, reciting at intervals to a sparse audience, all sitting on the ground. He was repeating, I was told, old tales of chivalry, like The Romance of the Cid. I won’t say more: but everything was as remote non-Christian, savage, and yet tightly established and dignified as the Old Testament. If instead of going to Morocco you made a short trip into Spain, the scene say in Ronda, Cadiz, and Seville, would be less antique but just as incomparable with anything in America as Africa itself. You might not like what you saw, but you would not think it, like England, an irrational variant of things at home, and annoying. Even if you came straight to Genoa or Naples your first impression would be of the Mediterranean, blue and tideless, with streets and houses down to the water’s edge, and the manners and colours of a beautiful world. As you went on to Rome, Florence, Milan and Venice your comfort would increase with your appreciation of the glories of art and nature, and nowa-days you would hardly feel that you were socially among barbarians. At certain moments, in certain places, you would feel the opposite. If then from Italy made your way to Switzerland, Paris, and perhaps Flanders, you might be fascinated by the order and justness of things, and their pleasing quality, like well-cooked food and refinements of art and manners. If from this then you finally reached England, you would cry at Dover: Almost like home! England then would have to make no apologies for not being American enough, and might seem, especially if you went into the country, the most perfectly home-like of places, more than anything since ancient Greece on the human scale clement, quiet, and friendly. By all means come if you can by the Pillars of Hercules, let Europe sink into you in chronological order, without comparisons with America, as it grew and as it was gradually overpowered by modernity.

I don’t understand what Eliot’s selection of your poems is for, if he doesn’t tell us why he has made it and is not thereby going to introduce you to the British as well as to the genteel American public: which I supposed involved a vast sale. I am sorry if I was wrong. I have perhaps not studied Eliot’s poetry or criticism as thoroughly as they deserve. I have not even seen his “Family Quarrel” which I only learned the other day, by chance, was a pendant to Oedipus. I agree with you in admiring his sensibility. He has caught that from the French critics who almost by heredity seem to voir juste. But I think he is timid, mincing, too content with non-radical views. All views should be radical, but not absolute; an opposite radical insight should redress the balance. But he is refined and safe in his indecision. Eliot was once in one of my classes, and perhaps it was I that gave him his first start in Dante; but he has gone far beyond me in studying him and using him. It is his approach to Catholicism, which I didn’t need. Perhaps because his Catholicism was so blameless and purified, he decided to sing on that perch. You and I know better, don’t we? the entrails of that angel.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Eight, 1948-1952.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: The Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino CA.

To Charles Scribner’s Sons
Messrs Charles Scribner’s Sons
New York
Kasr-el-Doubarah
Cairo. January 25, 1905

Gentlemen:

Your letter of the 6th has just reached me here. I am rather sorry that the publication of the “Life of Reason” has been put off so long, although I quite understand that the trouble came from my being so far away. As to the independent title of each volume, that is not of any consequence from my point of view. Apart from the common heading “The Life of Reason” which I understand you have retained, the volumes will be kept together well enough by their individual titles, which are obviously meant to go together—“Reason in Common Sense”, “in Society” etc. Merely leaving out the number of the volume or of the book will make no difference in the continuity of the work, especially as in the three later books I am still able to put in a phrase or two pointing to the next one in order. This reference forward happens to exist already in the first two books. That each book may be read apart from the others, as you say, was part of my original plan and I am glad you are taking steps to bring this result about.

Yours very truly

G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book One, [1868]-1909.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries, Princeton NJ.

To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Rome. January 24, 1935

Certainly you should see this new Hamlet. When I saw the portrait—there is no name to it—I said to myself: “This is Hamlet himself. Where did they get the picture?” Then after a moment I wondered if it could be you: the face is very like yours: only the hair looked too natural for a wig. Then I read reasonably and learned the facts. I am quite ready to believe that he is better than Forbes Robertson, who was simply inoffensive, not an actor of any native power. He is also likely to be better than Irving, who was fundamentally absurd, although with a certain suggestion of poetry à la Merideth: affected, pre-Raphaelite and Bohemian. John Gielgud seems to be natural, young, pensive, and deep: but there is one thing he probably is not, namely, princely. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is princely: in those days it was a quality people had before their eyes, and understood inwardly; but now we all live intellectually in Bloomsbury.

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 Daniel MacGhie Cory
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6,
Rome. January 23, 1947.

I am not in the least short of things to read . . . But send me anything you read that you think would enlighten or amuse me. I have just received a modern art book from Birnbaum in New York, édition de grand luxe. And Sitwell awaits me. Moreover I think I have not told you of the lovely present a young American (half Italian & half Spanish) in the army here made me some time ago: The Amberley Papers, “by Bertrand and Patricia Russell.” It is the history, letters, journals, etc. of Bertie’s father and mother; and I found interesting things about his brother also, in his first years. It is a curious document to the explanation of British liberalism with its shifts and its obstinacies. Now that you are going to see the Russell’s social circle in London, you must store your impressions. I never had the patience to study them in the life, e.g. at Lady Ottoline Morrell’s, near Oxford. It was too great a strain. But I like to know about it, if only I can avoid the personal shamming involved.

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

To George Sturgis
Rome. January 22, 1927

Dear George

I have received your two letters, the new letter of credit for $4000, and my yearly account, for all of which many thanks. Reduced to the terms which ultimately interest me, the account amounts to this: that my last year’s income was about $7000, of which I spent one half; and that the other half, together with the non-recurring extra “income” of another $7000, was added to my capital, which is now about $140,000. This, according to my standards, is a vast sum, and I am naturally highly pleased at being so comfortably off in my old age. I am following your advice in not being too economical, and have had guests here–a very easy way of amusing myself–in the persons of two of the Chetwynd children, nephew and niece of my late friend Moncure Robinson. Betty Chetwynd, aged 19, has now returned home to London, but Randolph, aged 23, is staying on, and is excellent company, without interfering at all with my habits or being, I hope, too much bored, as he does what sightseeing he likes in the morning and goes to teas, dinners, and dances when he is asked by his other friends in Rome, of which he has a good many.

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.