To Rosamond Thomas [Sturgis] Little
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6,
Rome. January 29, 1952
Your letter of Jan. 12th, and your box which arrived the day before, would have been acknowledged sooner if I hadn’t been depressed by the persistence of my “gastric catarrh” and subject to a diet of milk and mashed potatoes, with one raw egg at mid-day, which reduces me to dozing most of the time. I am afraid at my age this is an incurable trouble, though not immediately fatal; but it is not painful (except at moments, when a fit of cough comes) and allows me to read and to write letters when the weather clears. After a hot and dull summer, we are having a cold and dark winter, which have alike contributed to my complaint, and I think, now that winter is (here) on the wane, that I shall feel better in the Summer. Lucky that this trouble didn’t come a year sooner, or I should never have managed to get my last book together. It is being well received in Europe: there is to be a German translation and two in Spanish, one at Buenos Aires and one at Madrid.
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.