To George Sturgis
Hotel Victoria
Montreux, Switzerland. August 17, 1936
I write again to say I have received your letter enclosing one from Rita Ingersoll. She is right in thinking that my Christian name was given me in memory of your grandfather. It was (at least nominally) your Aunt Susie’s doing. You know she was my godmother, and always took that office quite seriously. And she had a great way of encouraging herself in sentiment about old things, working herself up, against the feeling prevalent round her, to enthusiasm for her old impressions. In this way she became intensely Catholic in Puritan Unitarian Boston, and finally married Celedonio, because he had been one of her early beaux. So, remembering her father a little (she must have been hardly seven when he died) she wanted to give me his name. George is not a name familiar in Spain. The national military saint is Santiago (supposed to be St. James, the Apostle) not St. George. But nobody objected, or thought it decent to object, and so George I became, for better or for worse; although they did add Agustín for my father and Nicolás for his brother the Major, who was my godfather.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Six, 1937-1940. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA