Category: LETTERS Page 163 of 274

To Mary Williams Winslow
1 February 1922 . Rome, Italy
C/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London. S.W.1.
Rome, February 1, 1922

In a previous letter you asked me what news of Boston or Harvard it would interest me to hear, and in my walks I have sometimes asked myself the question again, and haven’t found it easy to answer. It is not that my interest has waned—on the contrary, I feel I should like so much to see (through a peep-hole) all that may be going on and to understand it. But what is going on? My ideas are too vague for the inquiry to start at all. Of course, I can see the electric cars going over the Harvard Bridge and I can imagine others, much longer and swifter, going through the subway; and I can imagine you and Fred and (by a stretch) the  children as they must look in your library in Clarendon street; but what is going on under all those appearances? They tell me everything is quite different morally: Boylston Beal, the Potters, your dear friend Apthorp Fuller (who is here with his mother) inform me that when at home they feel like fish out of water, and that America is fast going to the dogs—or, more accurately, that it is sinking into a bog of commonplaceness and youthful folly which makes them feel like frustrate ghosts.1 Now, I don’t believe a word of it; and if you will sometimes give me a hint of what has changed, and in what direction, I think I could supply the rest out of my old knowledge. …. You, who know my friends (as Mrs  Toy doesn’t), could show me how the wind blows in this social quarter—more interesting romantically than the political world, and even more important, because at bottom it controls the turn of public affairs—I mean, that moral changes in society, if they don’t determine political events, certainly colour the result and give it all its importance. . . . Are the poorer classes in America still hopeful and loyal to the established order, or are there any signs of revolution? I ask all these semi-political questions because I have a feeling that we are approaching a great revolution and impoverishment of the world, such as has actually occurred in Russia, and I look for signs, not so much of its coming soon, but of the angle at which it will attack our old society, and the elements of it that may survive. Of course, I think the revolutionists, if they succeed, will suffer a horrid disappointment, because most of them will have to die off: the two great conditions for improving the lot of mankind are a much smaller population and a much larger proportion of people devoted to agriculture.

To Hannibal Ingalls Kimball
King’s College
Cambridge, England. January 31, 1897

My dear Mr Kimball,
May I ask you to send me two more copies of my Sonnets?
A poet, at least of my calibre, doesn’t expect to make money out of his verses. But I confess I am puzzled and annoyed at the vicissitudes of my account with you. First I had a balance of $82; that was a mistake, and the true balance was $16; now a third account shows that I owe $5. Will you kindly explain this, and let me know what system we are going on in future. I agree, as I wrote before, to whatever seems to you likely to be most satisfactory all round, but I should like to know what that is.
Yours very truly,
G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book One, [1868]-1909.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Alderman Library, University of Virginia at Charlottesville

To William James
75 Monmouth Street
Brookline, Massachusetts. Thursday [c. 1908]

I find your note here when it is too late to profit by it. I am very sorry, not so much for not gratifying Mr Gordon’s morbid desire to look upon the Devil, as for not giving him a chance to make the sign of the cross over me (or whatever is the Old South equivalent) and perhaps drive the Father of Lies out of me into some dumb and non-literary animal where he wouldn’t do so much harm.

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

To Charles Augustus Strong
Hotel Bristol
Rome. January 29, 1930

As to the grand Spanish title, I can’t say that I like it very much, as a matter of policy or management: it has an air of opéra-bouffe. But if they are pleased, what do a few smiles matter? I suppose the world is bound to laugh at all of us in any case. I assume that they will use only the de Piedrablanca and not the de Guana–the latter is unfortunate, especially for a Chilean: it is almost de Guano. But don’t say this to George, it might hurt his feelings; and I will explore the ground prudently when I see them.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Four, 1928–1932.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY

To George Sturgis
Hotel Bristol
Rome. January 28, 1932

I don’t see Boylston or Elsie very often; she has been ill, and we never particularly liked each other: but she seems to me mellowed and sweetened by age, although her voice and her nervousness still rub me the wrong way. Boylston is disconcerted by the way the world is going, not in business so much as in general manners, morals, and ideas. He is a conservative by temperament and would like to live under Queen Anne, as I under the Emperor Augustus: but my aspiration, being more speculative and distant, gives me less trouble. I am not a conservative at all. Things as they are now please me much better than things as they were fifty years ago: and the future, though we can’t tell what it will be, doesn’t scare me. In fact, if I couldn’t have been born 2000 years earlier, I shouldn’t mind having been born 100 years later. It’s running a risk, but worth it.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Four, 1928–1932.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA