Category: LETTERS Page 54 of 274

To Susan Sturgis de Sastre
Lion Hotel, Cambridge
England. August 3rd, 1914

Dear Susie,
From the papers this morning I see that a return to Paris is out of the question for the moment. Indeed, it was lucky that I came to England when I did; only I left in Paris some clothes and other things—including my new letter of credit—which I should have brought with me if I had anticipated staying here into the winter. In fact, I shall probably not do so, but when we see which way things are going, and whether England is to remain neutral or not, I may go by sea to Gibraltar or to Italy. For the moment I have written to my old landlady in Oxford asking if she has rooms. I could spend the rest of the summer there with comfort, and should be able to accomplish a good deal in the way of reading and writing.

The strain and excitement of these events is terrible. I don’t know what to expect nor even what to hope for. It is all a dark riddle, and the consequences will be hateful, whatever they are.

Yours affly,
Jorge

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Two, 1910-1920.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Library, University of Virginia at Charlottesville.

To George Sturgis
9 Avenue de l’Observatoire
Paris. August 2, 1921

Your telegram—which I am acknowledging by cable—reaches me this morning: the very last previous news had been encouraging, but of course under the circumstances the worst was to be feared. Your poor father at least had been expecting his end almost daily for years: and now he seemed to be having a spell of complete happiness, and to have felt quite satisfied with the posture in which he was leaving all his affairs, with the situation of Josephine and with your approaching marriage. Has this taken place, or has it been put off on account of your father’s illness? You will now begin your married life a little sobered by this bereavement; but it need not be less happy for that: perhaps more so on the whole, because your new life will be your whole life now, and you will enter upon it with a certain seriousness, which the knowledge of the inevitable end always gives, when we have time to remember it.

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 Richard Colton Lyon
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. August 1, 1949

As to Angst my quarrel with it is temperamental and you must not take it seriously. The reality is what Schopenhauer calls the Will, the Will to Live. It makes the child anxious to get the breast or the bottle, the lover his girl, the workman his Saturday-night wages, and the invalid to get well. You can’t help caring. But these natural cravings and fears are occasional, they can be modified or placated, you may “care” about something else, Latin poetry, for instance, which carries no Angst with it, though it is rich in interest and in reassuring knowledge of life. What I dislike about calling Will Angst is the suggestion that it is mysterious and non-natural. It is fundamental but can be appeased. It need not end in Collapse but may be transcended throughout by charity and reason. The existentialists’ reaction against inhuman philosophy and politics is healthy, but they do not seem healthy themselves. And egotism is not cured by becoming personal. It is simply made easier to practise. It is naturally prevalent and won’t cause any wars or totalitarian tyrannies. Meno male!

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 John Hall Wheelock
C/o Brown Shipley & Co.
123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Paris. July 31, 1936

As to the illustrations, I am sorry to be helpless. I had a very nice little photo of myself at 18, my graduating school portrait, but somehow I have lost it. Possibly George Sturgis or his wife asked me for it when they were in Rome years ago. In that case he may be able to let you have it. Or the Latin School people in Boston: although I doubt that they collect photographs of their old boys. It was the class of 1882.

There was also a family group taken a year or two later in which I had rather long hair and little whiskers—bad form, but characteristic of the time before I had become a commonplace Harvard man. Otherwise, I don’t remember any picture of me in “early youth”.

The Denman Ross portrait is not a good likeness, but I am pilloried in it for all future time in Emerson Hall, and as it has a beard it will seem more like me to my old pupils between 1906–1912. All the rest of my life I have worn only a mustache.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Five, 1933-1936.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries, Princeton NJ.

To [Henry Ward Abbot]
[Rome or Paris] [Summer 1932]

. . . pessimism, questionings about a future life, or the desirability of death. Somehow I seem not to feel the edge of those uncertainties, as I did fifty years ago: but, more objectively considered, the moral anarchy of the world is no less interesting. I am reading an excellent book by Papini, “Gog”: the Catholics seem now to be the best critics: Maritain, Papini, T. S. Eliot (an amateur Catholic): it is not their faith that makes them clear-sighted, but their remoteness from the delusions of the age. In America, Edmund Wilson seems rather good: but he is academic; has learned his authors.

I have been rereading John Locke, for a lecture I am to give in Bloomsbury in October: a bit prosy, and speculatively poor, but pungent and genuine in his common sense.

You keep asking about my novel: it is not finished, perhaps never will be, and is not likely to be published in my life-time. Don’t think of it. I will send you my lectures on Spinoza and Locke when they are printed— my last appearances in public!

Your old friend, G.S.

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.