To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Hotel Savoia
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. Friday, June 22, 1939
It is very nice of you to be concerned about my misadventures.1 The first day was really trying, as I will tell you more in detail later; but I rested one day in Milan rather confortably and one night–last night–in Venice. Here it is cool and most peaceful not to say death-like. I am the only person in the hotel! But my old room is engaged for later to another person, and they have given me a better one, a south-east corner with windows on both sides and a bathroom with a third window, so that I shall have the sun all day, from the moment when–not very early–it gets up over the mountains. Do come here, if you feel like it. For me it will be a return to youth and nature; but I am afraid you will find it dreary. Foreigners have abandoned Italy, except cheap Germans in troupes, and the Italian season is short, from the last week in July to the last in August. Except at that time Cortina is very quiet indeed.
1. Santayana never reached Lugano, and plans to move to Switzerland were abandoned.
Visas generally were not required for crossing the Swiss frontier; however, a
considerable number of destitute Spaniards had been entering the country after the
end of the Spanish civil war and new regulations had been passed. At Chiasso,
Santayana was refused permission to enter Switzerland. He traveled back to Milan and
went to the Swiss consulate, where he was told that he would be granted a temporary
(two-week) visa. Santayana was offended by the attitude of the Swiss consular officials
and refused to answer questions regarding his recent movements or his political affiliations.
“He told the consulate quite bluntly that if Spaniards were not welcome in
Switzerland, he had no desire to go there–and that was that” (Years, 216.17).
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Six, 1937-1940. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY