Category: LETTERS Page 14 of 274

To Mary Williams Winslow
Florence, Italy. Dec. 31. 1912

My sister-in-law Ellen has written me a Christmas letter in which she speaks of you and says your children are splendidly healthy, which is all that can be required of them at their tender age; and I hope they will continue to look angelic and to behave accordingly. Nowadays, I daresay the angels play tennis and football, just as formerly they used to brandish flaming swords and to spear dragons. I have also heard from Mrs. Toy, your favourite Fuller, and the Schofields (this last on business, but with friendly and social frills) all of whom put together give me a vivid picture of Boston, with its old heart and its new subway vibrating merrily together. It doesn’t seem to me much more remote than when I was there; and I am surprised to see how much life everywhere is now like life in America. Except Boylston Beal, I hardly know anybody who seems to stop to consider what it all comes to–and he is a trifle captious in his judgments. It is a sort of tobbogan-slide; but I assure you it is far more comfortable and far more interesting to roll off as soon as possible into the soft snow by the way, shake oneself together, and look on. My friend Strong does the same thing and we sympathize entirely on every subject except mind-stuff (which I insist on calling by another name) but he doesn’t get as much fun out of it as I do. He is far more charitable and hasn’t an enormous sense of humour. And I am a little afraid, when his villa at Fiesole is built (a part of it was washed down by the rain the other day) he will find the moral atmosphere of the place less satisfactory than the Tuscan air. He will be roped into the Anglo-American aesthetic ring, and the sparring ladies will make him dizzy. On Christmas he actually had to go to Lady Sybil Cutting’s fancydress party, dressed like a decadent Roman, with a ridiculous false beard, a hired tunic with tinsel embroideries glued on, pink stockings, and a scroll in his hand (the plans for his villa, I suppose). Margaret went as an ancient Egyptian. He was ill the next day in consequence.

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.

To Otto Kyllmann
New York Hotel
Nice, France. December 30, 1922

Dear Mr Kyllmann,

It had not occurred to me that you would have any interest in not sending the preface to my “Poems” to Scribner, together with the rest of the sheets; nor do I now understand what that interest is. Messrs Scribner had written asking for a signed photograph to put in the volume; and in giving my reasons for not desiring that, I mentioned that at your request I had written a preface, which I thought might partially satisfy the same curiosity to which a portrait would have appealed; and that this preface would be a godsend to the critics who didn’t wish to read the poems themselves. I took for granted that you would send the preface with the book: so that, having raised that expectation, I should certainly prefer to have you send it, if you have no objection to doing so.

I see that misunderstandings can arise from having two publishers for the same book, and in future, as in respect to “Scepticism and Animal Faith,” I shall remember this fact, and endeavour to have all communications between me and Messrs Scribners pass through your hands, so that complications may be avoided.

Yours sincerely,

G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Three, 1921-1927.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia PA.

To Clifton Paul Fadiman
Rome. [1941]

. . . It was a curious occasion, that lecture of mine in Oxford. I was entrusted to the care of a scientific Don, doubtless of the committee for the Spencer Lectureship; and when I called at his house by appointment an hour before the time for the lecture, his wife said he was so sorry but had been called away to receive 4000 butterflies that had just arrived for him from South America. He turned up later, however, and took me to the Natural History Museum, to a lecture-room with a deep pit, and large maps on the walls, and instead of introducing me he only said, “Oh, you might as well begin.” The audience was small, a few ladies, and a good many Indians and Japanese: However, I recognized old Professor Stewart of Christ Church and F. R. S. Schiller. This audience, however, was most sympathetic, didn’t mind the length of the lecture, and applauded heartily at the end. But there was nothing Oxonian about the occasion: might have been at Singapoor . . . I think it is one of the most reasonable things I have written, reasonable yet not cold, and I am encouraged to find that it has not been altogether forgotten.

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

To Rosamond and George Sturgis
Hotel Bristol
Rome. December 28, 1936

I am being treated very kindly by the world in my old age. Even an unknown friend I have in the Michigan State prison, called Wayne Joseph Husted, No 35571, sent me a Christmas card. Years ago he honoured me with a psychological essay, really very good, on prison life, and since then we occasionally exchange civilities. I am now sending him The Last Puritan. I hope it won’t be stopped by the authorities as dangerous to convict morals.

The reception of this book has been curious. I don’t think many people really like it, yet it has had, as you know, a vast success. The other day I received a Swedish translation. The German version, with the nasty things I say about Germans and Goethe left out by agreement, announces that it is translated by two ladies, aus dem Amerikanischen. Fancy that, when I am so proud of my Received Standard English. But I gathered from what I could make out of the Swedish wrapper, and from other hints, that the interest taken in the “novel” by the Nordics is entirely scientific. Style, humour, etc, are beneath their notice: but they say the book is an important document on American life; and as America, I mean the U.S, is important for them commercially and racially, they wish it to be studied in their country. Perhaps it will be quoted, as a warning, by the Nazi professors of sociology. This, like my convict friend, falls to me by divine grace, with no effort or merit on my part. We have uses we never intended.

I have had a touch of catarrh, very slight, as the injections my Italian doctor gives me seem to keep off the worst; I am now quite well and working with gusto, as I almost see my plans as to books completely carried out. Here is an egotistical letter, all about trifles interesting only to [across] myself: but the great questions like the war in Spain, and the Simpson affair, are too sad to write about.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Five, 1933-1936.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.

To George Sturgis
New York Hotel
Nice, France. December 27, 1922

If my health doesn’t play me false, I hope to have time for finishing all my half-written works, before the end comes. I shall turn out to have been a prolific writer; and if there should ever be a complete edition of my works it will look like one of those regiments in uniform that stand on the shelves of libraries which are not disturbed except to be dusted. However, I have no hopes of rivalling Voltaire whose complete works in 69 volumes I possess in Paris, having got them second hand in a very nice edition (1793, I think) for 400 francs.

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.