To Scofield Thayer
C/o Brown Shipley & Co 123
Pall Mall, London
Paris. July 2, 1920
In Italy, two or three months ago, I received a copy of The Dial together with a letter, which in the confusion of travel I am afraid I did not answer. Now I receive two separate copies of the June number, with your new letter of June 17. It is now nearly ten years since I have been in America, and I can’t think even of one name with which to begin the list which you ask me to make out, of persons who might be interested in The Dial, and whom you do not know much better than I do. Your idea of bringing the old and the new together is interesting: but if you find that the public prefer their meat apart from their vegetables, why should you earnestly desire to serve them both up on the same plate? I think the vicissitudes of art at present, and of the faint though eager echoes that spread over America, like wireless vibrations, are not of much importance. It is all too voulu: something will gather head of itself some day when people least expect it.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Two, 1910-1920. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven CT