To Charles Augustus Strong
New York Hotel
Nice. Jan. 13, .23
My cough is gone, but the vestiges of a cold and of a certain general fatigue still remain: I continue to come home in the afternoon and to have supper in my room. The weather is still wintry and cloudy; but I am hoping daily for the improvement which cannot now be long delayed. Although Nice has not proved satisfactory as a winter residence, I don’t feel like going away now that the worst is over and the sun rises earlier and sets later every day: in the Spring my room here will be truly delightful, with sun (which the blinds will soften) pouring in all day from two quarters. But I shall surely never come here again for the early winter; and it occurs to me that if I should feel shaky again next year, and you were going to Val-Mont, perhaps I might go there too. Does one have to be very ill to be admitted? That sort of medical monastery might suit me very well. It also lies conveniently half-way between Paris and Rome, which are evidently the points between which I shall oscillate in the future. I still think of going to England in the Summer, but somehow the thought is melancholy: I feel I shall find nothing equal to my memory of it, and few friends. It is quite possible I may never go there again.
Fuller writes me from Rome saying his Greek Philosophy, vol. I, has found a publisher–Putnams. What inveterate scribblers we all are! Books and more books.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Three, 1921-1927. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript:Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY