To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Hotel Danieli
Venice. September 25, 1934
Strong has been here for ten days, feeling rather dull. He now doesn’t go down to Florence for his dinner, but has every thing done at home by Dino and Dino’s sister. I showed him your photo in the postcard and he was greatly impressed. “How strong he looks!” “What nice friends he has!” I’m not so sure myself about the superior quality of your friends; but it is nice to have friends, especially young friends, with whom one can be natural. Poor S. has never had any; but his thoughts are now dwelling upon his earliest lady-loves, all from Rochester, N.Y. He was more confidential on this subject than he had ever been before in all our years of friendship and of living together. I could see that he wasn’t telling me anything; he was merely unbosoming himself to a vague other, to listening space.
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