To Charles Augustus Strong
Paris. July 24, 1927
Dear Strong,
Today Margaret came here to lunch and introduced me to George Cuevas, who came to lunch too, and to whom she told me she was engaged to be married. He is rather different from what I had supposed—not good-looking, not very young, not very small, but modest in appearance and manner, rather like a youngish priest, and making the impression of a decidedly serious, sensible person, perhaps a trifle common, but not at all showy, flighty, or loud. He is a Chilean, not an Argentine, he said; we spoke chiefly in Spanish, which Margaret seems to understand very well, and on the whole I got a good impression of his sentiments and tone, although to my mind he seems commonplace and insignificant. Dangerous, is the last thing I should think him: and though he might have been holding himself in a little, for fear of what I might say to you about him, I can’t conceive of him as a lady-killer or as a fortune-hunter, unless it were in a very timid Tartuffian way. During a few moments when she left us alone, he spoke of her in a way which showed that he appreciated the emotional difficulties of her temperament, and that he was conscious of the difficulty, and of the need, of making her more happy and normal. On this side, I think he may prove a very good husband for her—perhaps the very one that she needs. A more brilliant man might not have the patience or the modesty to support and watch her in her changing moods. He says—and Marie seems to think—that he helped her last year out of a very unfortunate situation to which she had been reduced by Lady Mitchelham. Whatever may be the truth of that, his attitude seems to be, in this respect, affectionate and intelligent.
I haven’t said anything about this matter until today, because I hadn’t seen him or spoken to him until today, and I didn’t wish to base any remark on the reports of servants. I am sorry if this turn of affairs causes you disappointment or anxiety, but the situation was strained, and now at last may be cleared up, and solved after a fashion. Yours ever
G.S.
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