Category: LETTERS Page 52 of 274

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.

To George Sturgis
9, Avenue de l’Observatoire
Paris. July 18, 1927

Dear George,

I have your letter of July 6, and a previous one also, and have seen with pleasure that all goes well with you. As for me, I am as usual. I arrived after the excitement about Lindberg; found Strong here, who left for Switzerland not long after; and later Margaret Strong has been here, but we lead a strange life together in this apartment, hardly ever seeing each other. I believe she is moving into her new house at Saint Germain in a day or two, but her ways, like the Lord’s, are past finding out. Don’t think I say this in any spirit of complaint: she gives me no trouble, and supplies me with food and service, which I don’t pay for when she is here; but she hides in an odd way; it is suspected that she is secretly engaged to be married, and altogether she is a puzzle to her friends.

. . .

A German friend dines with me (at restaurants) every evening: he is a friend of my friend Baron Westenholz of Hamburg, and my guest in Paris, although I had to get a room for him at a hotel near by, as I couldn’t put him up in the apartment, occupied by Margaret, her dog, her maid, and sundry bales and heaps of carpets, stuffs, blankets, antique furniture, and bandboxes in ever corner, on all the chairs, and behind every door. My own room, I need hardly say, is sacred, and I live happy in it, like a monk in his cell.

It is decided that I shall not go to Avila this summer. Your aunt Susie and Celedonio wrote giving me a formal invitation—too formal, perhaps—but it seemed to me safer not to accept it, as it was at least possible that I should have been in their way and given them too much trouble. This decision leaves me free to remain here quietly until the middle of October when I shall doubtless return to Italy, either directly to Rome, or stopping on the way to pay a visit to Strong at Fiesole. Love to all from

G Santayana

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 George Sturgis
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. July 17, 1939

I think I haven’t told you of the change that I am forced to make next winter. Pinchetti is going to pull down the Hotel Bristol and to rebuild it. He expects the work to last two years, after which he invites me (if I have not acquired a permanent mansion in the skies) to be the first guest in his new establishment. But meantime, at least, I shall have to look for other quarters. . . . As my serious work is now nearly completed, I could, in strictness, try some other place than Rome, Capri perhaps or Taormina; but I should miss my books and my familiar gardens, and probably shouldn’t be any happier for the change.

. . .

I am pleased to see that income is flowing in well in spite of Roosevelt and the war-scare. Here there is perfect tranquility, but some murmurs among hotel-keepers in view of the total absence of rich “democratic” travellers. There are plenty of Germans and Swiss here, but impecunious, and the Italians are beginning to troop in, but only for a month’s holiday.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Six, 1937-1940.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.

To John Hall Wheelock
C/o Brown Shipley & Co.
123, Pall Mall, London, Ss.W.1
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. July 16, 1939

The title Triton Edition has become historical in an unexpected way. I don’t mean that the whole edition has been sold, although I understand that such is practically the fact. I mean that Pinchetti, the proprietor of the Hotel Bristol, who is a personage of note and said to be rich, has decided to pull the house down and rebuild it in the latest style—no doubt seven or eight storeys instead of three, and severe concrete, brass, and glass architecture, to suit the spirit of the age. So that I shall no longer see the Triton of Bernini from my windows; at least, not for two years, because Pinchetti says that he hopes (unless heaven is then my permanent mansion) to welcome me back as the first guest in his new establishment.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Six, 1937-1940.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries, Princeton NJ.