To Otto Kyllmann
Hotel Savoy Cortina d’Ampezzo
Italy, June 26, 1935
Dear Mr. Kyllmann,
I am not surprised at all that the people at the Thakeray Hotel might conceivably take umbrage at the passage you refer to: and I am not sure that the two King’s Arms inns, at Oxford and Sandford might not raise some objection—although if anything we are advertising them and rendering them more interesting.
It would be easy to drop the name Thackeray, and say something even more appropriate to Miss Letitia Lamb, such as Ruskin Hotel, or Pickwick Hotel, or (if these are perhaps real places in London) the Hotel Cimabue. But as I say in the Epilogue, I have a weakness for real names of places, and should like to keep the reference to the Thakeray Hotel if possible; but we might turn the passage into a compliment, that couldn’t but be taken in good part, if we said, “that inexpensive hotel for geniuses near Phidias and the British Museum? It might be crowded.”
What do you think?
Yours sincerely,
G Santayana
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Five, 1933-1936. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia PA