Category: LETTERS Page 6 of 274

To Benjamin Apthorp Gould Fuller
22 Beaumont St. Oxford
Sunninghill, Berk, England. September 10, 1918

It is a real pleasure to hear from you. I knew that you were in France officiating in some useful capacity, but had no definite address. Some six months ago I sent a pamphlet to you at Sherborn but I daresay it never reached you. The Harvard world seems far away and not very enticing: Heraclitus was right, I think, in believing that Dike presides over the lapse of things, and that when they pass away, it is high time they should do so. If you go round the world after the war, I hope it will not be at a hurried or an even pace, and that you will spend three quarters of the time of your journey in the places which after all are most interesting and where there is most (for us, at least) to discover—in western Europe. Then I shall hope to come across your path and perhaps even to make some excursion in your good company: this long confinement in England; though pleasant in itself, is beginning to grow oppressive, and I often think with envy of those in Paris or beyond. At the same time, I hate to face suspicious officials, and any unusual difficulties and complications in the machinery of travel; so I have remained in my Oxford headquarters now for three years, and expect not to abandon them until the war ends.

. . .

My good friend Strong has had a bad time—laid up with a paralysis of the legs—and is still hardly able to walk. The attack fortunately came on when he was at Val Mont above the lake of Geneva, a place he likes and where the doctors inspire him with confidence. He hopes soon to return to Fiesole: meantime I have been separated from him and have missed him, for in his quiet dull way he is the best of friends and the soundest of philosophers—good ballast for my cockleshell. . . . I am . . . deep in a book to be called Dominations & Powers,–a sort of psychology of politics and attempt to explain how it happens that governments and religions, with so little to recommend them, secure such a measure of popular allegiance. Of course, behind all this, is the shadow of the Realms of Being, still (I am sorry to say) rather nebulous, although the cloud of manuscript is already ponderous and charged with some electricity in the potential state. I don’t know if any lightning or thunder will ever reach mortals from it.

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

To Charles Scribner’s Sons
Paris. September 9, 1904

Messrs Charles Scribners’ Sons
New York

The proof of the first volume of the Life of Reason (the first part having been delayed) reached me some days ago, and I am sorry not to have been able to despatch it before today. I have revised the whole and am sending it to you all together.

. . .

I have restored the u’s in “honour” etc, partly because I prefer them and partly because, if this book appears also in England, the other spelling would shock people too much. They will receive shocks enough from the substance without adding others in the manner.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book One, [1868]-1909.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001. Location of manuscript: Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries, Princeton NJ

To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. September 7, 1931

I am always glad to get your letters and post-cards and to see that you are well. The ups and downs of one’s relations with Strong are nowadays a little troublesome, but I think with prudence and forebearance we may weather all storms. I feel rather as if my friendship with him were a family corpse, to which nevertheless it is right to show respect and consideration. He never writes without saying something unpleasant; but I think he doesn’t perceive the effect which his attitude must have on others, and he expects everything to go on as usual. I am perfectly willing to let it do so: only one has no sense of security with a friend in so hostile a mood.

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 Charles P. Davis
C/o Brown, Shipley & Co
123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland. September 6, 1936

Dear Davis,

It is all right about your not liking my book. Of course, it isn’t a novel in the ordinary sense; it is a study of characters and moral contrasts. No obligation on anybody to like it. But I should be curious to know in what direction you and your friends find it wrong: plot, style, morality, tone, character-drawing, or what? The book is done: I shall never write another “novel”, you may at least take comfort in that; but your judgements would tell me what you and your friends are attached to, and that is always interesting. The last American novel I have read is Faulkner’s “Sanctuary”. Do you like that? And how about Aldous Huxley’s “Eyeless in Gaza”?

As to the success of my novel with the public and the reviewers, it has been immense. 148,000 copies were sold in the U.S. before Aug. 1st, in England less than 10,000. But of course I am making money—not yet paid, most of it. Altogether, when the harvest is all in, it will not be far from $50,000. I am being translated into French, Spanish, and German, and printed in raised letters (in England) to be read by the blind! Me and the Bible.

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