Category: LETTERS Page 36 of 274

To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. July 23, 1946

Dear Cory: This morning at eight o’clock I have walked to the local postoffice beyond the Lateran Gate, and brought home your blue pyjamas, coloured as if on purpose to match the virginal blue of the Blue Sisters. I have put on a pair, turning up about eight inches at the wrists and ancles. This can be easily corrected. Other wise the suit is delightful, smooth, and light (I have perferred it on this warm day to the white pyjamas that I was wearing and that I think have a stouter texture for winter).

By the way, I discovered that the white pyjama jackets, which I had not worn because they have no collars, do have long sleeves, so that they will do well, for sleeping, in winter under a worsted jacket. All together, I can now manage very well, and am much obliged for your care in looking after the matter under vexatious circumstances.

I suppose you will have sailed for England when this letter reaches New York, but I wished to acknowledge the receipt of the pyjamas in case this reached you before I have news of your arrival and address in England when I will write you a serious letter.

Yours affly, G Santayana

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 Rosamond Thomas [Sturgis] Little
Rome. July 22, 1952.

Dear Rosamond,

Your 4 parcels of rice-cereals arrived today, just when my supply was about to fail. Thank you very much.

You will perceive by this short letter that something else is beginning to fail me, namely my eyes, and reading is even harder than writing, so that it will be hard for me to do anything but compose old-fashioned verses.

It had already been enthusiasm for a poem of Lorenzo de’ Medici that had overtaxed my eyesight in making alternative English version of it. At least I have something to balance my imprudence in 23 stanzas in octava rima, making a complete partly original work: my last! For everyone tells me, that I am almost dead. It is more than tolerable, in spite of the heat.

I must stop scrawling, although I have various other things that I should like to tell you.

Yours affectionately,
G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Eight, 1948-1952.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.

To Henry Ward Abbot
Hotel Miramonti
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. July 21, 1933

Dear Harry,

Your impatience is most flattering, and I am asking the English publisher of the Locke lecture to send you a copy. Scribner seems not to have brought out the American edition yet, I suppose waiting for good times to return. The English edition appeared in May.

As to the Spinoza paper, I am myself a trifle annoyed. Nijhoff, at The Hague, was to have issued the Septimana Spinozana (in which my paper appears) last November, then in January, then in the spring, and now in the autumn. I have not received any explanation, but probably the multitude of languages and of contributors have made a Babel of the editor’s mind, who was not well to begin with.

All this comes, not of my being mad à enfermer, but only weak enough to have accepted invitations to waste my sweetness in the lectureroom air, and surrender my MS to third parties. It won’t happen again.

It is most entertaining living in these times. This Roosevelt is more Caesarian than the spluttering Theodore; we are having Fascism under another name rising in France, in Germany, and in the U.S.! And the English Church—what a comedy that is too! I enjoy it immensely.

Yours sincerely, G.S.

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 Richard Edmund Butler
Rome. July 20, 1952

Dear Father Butler

I do not think you have learned any thing from reading my books; you have read the words and perhaps thought what Saint Thomas might have said about it. This would do nicely for passing an examination; but it would not enlarge your mind: This is confirmed by your saying that “Soliloquies” is (verbally) the best of my books all of them being mere attempts to defend “Interpretations”. It is true that, as to religion, this book had struck the keynote. But as to “reason” and “ideas” all is changed in “Soliloquies”.

G.S.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Eight, 1948-1952.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: Provincial Archives, Province of St. Albert the Great, Chicago IL.

To Ezra Loomis Pound
Via S. Stefano Rotondo 6
Rome. July 19, 1946

Dear E. P.

I am glad to hear directly from you. What people told me when I inquired was meagre and contradictory. Now that I have your address I can ask Scribner to send you my new book, or any other obtainable book that you may want. In an anthology sent me I find your ballad about Christ quà gangster: it is a nice contrast to my new book on the idea of Christ as pure spirit in the flesh. Mine would perhaps turn your stomach, yours only makes me laugh.

My copy of the Realm of Spirit has not been returned, or was lost on the way, but now it doesn’t at all matter because I have another version in the big single edition of Realms of Being that Scribner has issued and which is a success both as an imposing volume and as a means of diffusing my speculations, now precisely when so much romantic nonsense has lost the hypnotic power.

I hope your health and prospects of returning to Italy are improving.

Yours sincerely,
G Santayana

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