Category: LETTERS Page 27 of 274

To Mary Potter Bush
Hotel Bristol, Rome
Rome. December 16, 1932

Dear Mrs. Bush

Thank you very much for your good Christmas wishes, which I reciprocate, and also for your address, which has enabled me to send off this morning three books of yours which I ought to have returned long ago. The Couchoud has made a great impression on me, and I have sent for others of the same series, to see what backing his views may really seem to have. I believe he is right in his religious psychology, that Christianity is an eschatological prophecy, not a personal morality corrupted into a theological system; but I am doubtful about the historical mixture of tradition, legend, & myth. Were it not that today being my 69th . . . birthday, I have made a good resolution to write no more articles and give no more lectures, at least until all my projected work is done, I might be tempted to write something on Couchoud & Co.: but I must abstain.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Four, 1928-1932.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY.

To Rafael Sastre González
Hotel Danieli
Venice. December 15, 1939

Querido Rafael:

El hotel Bristol en Roma ha desaparecido, o casi, pues lo están derribando, con intención de volverlo a construir. Dicen que la obra durará dos años, de modo que yo estoy sin “domicilio.” Había pensado tomar una habitación en otra fonda de Roma; pero al estallar la guerra, cuando se temia que se extendiera a Italia, avisaron oficialmente a los ancianos y personas inútiles de evitar las poblaciones grandes del mediodía y oeste de Italia. Como yo estaba en Cortina y tenia que pasar por Venecia, se mi ocurrió quedarme aquí, donde me conocen de muchos años en esta fonda, y donde siempre lo he pasado bien. Tengo una habitación con vista al puerto y al mar, y no encuentro ningun inconveniente en que el invierno aquí sea algo mas húmedo y frío que en Roma. No lo es tanto cómo en Boston, ó como en Inglaterra, y a pesar de mis 76 años, que cumplo mañana, espero poderlo resistir.

Translation:

Dear Rafael:

The hotel Bristol in Rome has disappeared, or almost, for they are tearing it down, with the intention of rebuilding it. They say that the project will take two years, so I am without “domicile.” I had intended to take a room in another hotel in Rome; but when the war broke out, when they feared that it would spread to Italy, they officially warned the elderly and people who were not needed to avoid the large towns of the south and west of Italy. Since I was in Cortina and had to pass through Venice, it occurred to me to stay here, where they have known me for many years in this hotel, and where I have always enjoyed it. I have a room with a view of the port and the sea, and it doesn’t bother me at all that the winter is a little more humid and cold here than in Rome. It isn’t so humid and cold as in Boston, or as in England, and in spite of my 76 years, which I celebrate tomorrow, I hope to be able to stand it.

From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Six, 1937-1940.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: Collection of Sra. Rafael (Adelaida Hernandez) Sastre, Ávila, Spain.

To Cyril Coniston Clemens
Hotel Danieli
Venice. December 14, 1939

Dear Clemens,
Thank you for your good wishes and for the news of the birth of your son Samuel, a name that I suppose is not given him in honour of Uncle Sam, or of the many Samuels of the Puritan tradition, but directly invoking the patronage of the ancient Priest and Prophet; something that points to an ecclesiastical career for the little one. Perhaps there may be some day a Cardinal Clemens, or a Papa Clemente.

. . . If you have actually read The Last Puritan you must have perceived that I had put everything I know into it, and shall certainly not write another “novel.” But as now I have finished The Realm of Spirit, I may revert to old memories and write some reminiscences of real people.

Venice in winter is like a ship at sea, only the decks don’t move and are a mile long. Probably I shall stick here until I return to Cortina in June.

Yours sincerely,

G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Six, 1937-1940.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: William R. Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham NC.

To Nancy Saunders Toy
Rome. December 13, 1931

You asked me in a previous letter whether I liked the idea of building a chapel at Harvard for a war-memorial.  Yes, I like it. A chapel isn’t a meeting-house; it is, or may be, just a shrine or a monument. Here in Rome there are often two or three churches in the same square; they are not needed for popular worship; they are acts of homage in themselves, as public statues would be. And at Harvard, where the existing Chapel is so hideous, the new one might serve its commemorative purpose and at the same time (in one transept, perhaps, or in one corner) supply a place in which morning prayers could be recited for those who wish to hear them. The main part could be left open, without pews, and could be a sort of Harvard Westminster Abbey for monuments to her distinguished sons. They might set up even a bust of ME there some day, in the philosophers’ corner. By all means, a Memorial Chapel!–but not in the style of Memorial Hall.

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.

To Henry Ward Abbot
C/o Brown Shipley & Co.
123 Pall Mall, London
Rome. December 12, 1923

As to me, you know all that can be told and probably can guess the rest. My health is good, and I manage to avoid most of the troubles that most people bring upon one another, by keeping to the life of a wandering student, which has been my ideal from my earliest days. I do nothing that seriously disturbs my digestion or my agreeable isolation; and I read and write when the impulse comes, and not under pressure. Sometimes my literary projects become something of an incubus, and I ask myself whether I shall live to carry them out: but what does it matter? I have already had my say: although I confess that I am still young and enthusiastic enough to feel that what I have in petto is far better than anything I have yet done, and that it must see the light. You may be surprised to hear that the most lively of these embryos is a novel. I began it long, long ago, in the early ’90’s, as a story of college life: that part has now receded into a mere incident; not that my heroes have become much older, since on the contrary I have gone back to their childhood and parentage, but that the scene has widened, and the fable. it is all a fable, has become more organic, knit more closely around the central motif, which is Puritanism repenting, but unable to reform.

Haven’t you written any novels? It is the only living art, and now it seems possible to print what in earlier days we hardly ventured to whisper.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Three, 1921-1927.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY.