Category: LETTERS Page 3 of 274

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.

To Cyril Coniston Clemens
C/o Brown Shipley & Co.
123, Pall Mall, London.
Rome. January 21, 1930.

Rashly assuming that the books in your Society Library are going to be read, and not merely to be a beautiful monument to the truth that of making many books there is no end, I will send you two of my productions, “Soliloquies in England”, because I think it is the least unworthy to be offered in homage to the Shade of Mark Twain, and “Character & Opinion in the U.S.”. because the title is the most likely to tempt the casual hand to take it from the shelf.

You needn’t have sent a cheque with your request; an inscribed book ought not to be paid for: but I send you the extra one gratis to satisfy my conscience on this point.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Four, 1928-1932.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript:William R. Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham NC.

To Ezra Loomis Pound
Hotel Danieli, Venice
Venice. January 20, 1940

Dear E. P.

This mustn’t go on for ever, but I have a word to say, in the direction of fathoming your potential philosophy. When is a thing not static? When it jumps or when it makes you jump? Evidently the latter, in the case of Chinese ideograms, you being your thoughts. And these jumps are to particulars, not regressive, to general terms. Classifications are not poetry. I grant that, but think that classifications may be important practically; e.g. poisons; how much? What number? There is another kind of regression towards materials, causes, genealogies. Pudding may not suggest pie, but plums, cook, fire. These are generalities that classify not data but conditions for producing the data. When you ask for jumps to other particulars, you don’t mean (I suppose) any other particulars, although your tendency to jump is so irresistible that the bond between the particulars jumped to is not always apparent. It is a mental grab-bag. A latent classification or a latent genetic connection would seem to be required, if utter  miscellaneousness is to be avoided.

As to the Jews, I too like the Greek element in Christendom better than the Jewish; yet the Jews, egotistically and fantastically, were after a kind of good, milk and honey and money. That gives them a hold on reality that can’t be denied. Reality is not miscellaneous sensations, but matter generating everything else under specific conditions. The Jews made a mistake in putting Jehovah instead of matter at the top: but now they have corrected that.

Yours G.S.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Six, 1937-1940.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven CT.