To Mary Potter Bush
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6,
Rome. June 29, 1946
Dear Mrs. Bush,
Another box of yours, despatched on May 4th, has now arrived, with two tins of tea, two pairs of stockings, very welcome now that summer makes the thick kind uncomfortable, and four cakes of Castile soap. Thanks to you and to a few other friends I am now well provided with everything for a long while; and perhaps before long the market here will be better provided, and our begging season may come to an end. Thank you very much, especially for the feminine tact that makes you choose soap and stockings, besides the tea that I have pleaded for from the beginning. I am now assured of these things, as well as of coffee–which I got on without very easily, yet which when it presents itself certainly makes the morning more cheerful and the brain more active.
Have you heard of an unattached German writer, Rudolf Steiner, who has written a lot of theosophical books? A friend has sent me his Das Christenthum als Mystische Thatsache which I find strangely like my last book. He is almost clear.
Yours sincerely
G Santayana
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Seven, 1941–1947. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY.