To George Sturgis
6, Via S. Stefano Rotondo,
Rome. October 17, 1941
I have now been three days in this “Nursing Home”, and feel as if I had miraculously been transported to Avila. This top of the Caelius is like the old rustic ruinous Rome of a hundred years ago, and the house and the Sisters all Irish have the quality of provincial good people in Spain—the Sastres, for instance. It is a complete change from the international first class hotels that I have been living in of late. Morally, I like it better; I am interfered with more, because I am attended to more. I am surrounded by women: one old Irish priest, a patient, and my doctor Sabbatucci are the only men I have seen in this establishment. It is a nice place, with grounds; you come in through an old gate and a well-planted avenue; there is a church and several large buildings, and the old Santo Stefano Rotondo is next door, overhanging the terrace. Food is also of a new type, not first class food, but in some ways better, and I have it in my room, as the table d’hôte, which I tried the first day, is dismal. What I most dread is the cold. Fuel is limited, and my present room has the sun only in the morning; but I can move to a sunnier room if I like, only I shouldn’t then have my own bath-room.—As you may gather from all this, I am not ill, but I am helpless; too old and threatened by too many difficulties to look after myself successfully. The attendance I have here, although I should prefer not to need it, really is a safeguard, and it may become indispensable at any moment, if my catarrh, etc., returns.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Seven, 1941-1947. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.