Author: David Spiech Page 1 of 283

To Martin Birnbaum
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6,
Rome. February 4, 1946

Dear Mr. Birnbaum,

I write to thank you very much for your reminiscences of Sargent, including those of Henry James and the plates of some of Sargent’s paintings and drawings. I wish that you had gone more systematically into the problem of naturalistic versus eccentric or symbolic painting. It is a subject about which my own mind is undecided. My sympathies are initially with classic tradition, and in that sense with Sargent’s school; yet for that very reason I fear to be unjust to the eccentric and abstract inspiration of persons perhaps better inspired. Two things you say surprise me a little: one that Sargent was enormous physically. I remember him as a little stout, but not tall: and I once made a voyage by chance in his company, and thereafter a trip to Tangier; so that I had for a fortnight at least constant occasions to go about with him; and being myself of very moderate stature I never felt that he was big. The other point is that he saw and painted “objectively”, realistically, and not psychologically. Now, certainly he renders his model faithfully; but in the process, which must be selective and proper to the artist, I had always thought that, perhaps unawares he betrayed analytical and satirical powers of a high order, so that his portraits were strongly comic, not to say moral caricatures. But in thinking of what you say, and quote from him, on this subject, I begin to believe that I was wrong, that he may have been universally sympathetic and cordial, in the characteristically American manner, and that the satire that there might seem to be in his work was that of literal truth only: because we are all, au fond, caricatures of ourselves, and a good eye will see through our conventional disguises and labels. And this would explain what to some persons seems the “materialism” of Sargent’s renderings; his interest in objets d’art for instance, rather than in the vegetable kingdom or in the life of non-sensuous reality at large. Crowding his house with pictures, and his memory with innumerable friends and innumerable anecdotes about them, shows a respect for the commonplace, a love of the world, that prevents the imagination from taking high flights or reflecting ultimate emotions.

Is there, I wonder, any truth in such a suspicion?

Yours sincerely

G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Seven, 1941-1947.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript: Unknown.

To Susan and Josephine Sturgis
Ávila, Spain. [1868]

Dear Susan I have received your letter written in London. What your aunt and uncle said, that I am good-looking, that isn’t true. Papa says that I should write to you that you are good-looking and Josephine too; but I say that that’s teasing, but what is true is that your brother and godson loves you very much

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book One, [1868]-1909.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Collection of Sra. Rafael (Adelaida Hernandez) Sastre, Avila, Spain.

To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Hotel Bristol
Rome. February 2, 1934

It is a very good idea of yours to write occasionally to S. and to prove what is the fact that you are a devoted philosopher. And that leads me to explain, in a word or two, what I felt in your essay to be an inconsistency between the beginning and the end. You come to the conclusion that pictorial experience is pictorial, you will understand what I mean by that. But you propose a problem at first which does not arise, if that conclusion is true: namely, the problem of the comparative simplicity of experience in contrast with the physical structure either of nature at large or of the human body in particular. Why on earth should feeling or perception not be simple? Why should the toothache picture the tooth or the cavity in it, or the histology of the brain? It doesn’t, and it can’t: and the idea that we must somehow explain why it doesn’t is based on a gnostic illusion, to the effect that perception is not sensation in the organ of perception but miraculous divine intuition of things as they are in themselves. As you say, that is at best an ideal for the intellect: we should like to know things thoroughly, to imagine what they must be in themselves, as we like to enact dramatically what we suppose may be the feelings of other people. But when the object is not another human mind, that ideal is unattainable, and rather foolish: because the function of ordinary perception is not sympathetic but utilitarian. This is only a hint: the constitutional uselessness of the mental side of things is another point important in my view, but perhaps better left alone.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Five, 1933-1936.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY.

To Charles William Eliot
75 Monmouth Street
Brookline, Massachusetts. February 1, 1898

Dear Mr Eliot,

Thank you very much for your letter informing me of my appointment as assistant professor. It is very gratifying to me that the University should have confidence enough in me to take this step, and I shall endeavour to do my best to justify its expectations.

Yours very truly,

G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book One, [1868]-1909.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Harvard Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.

To George Sturgis
Grand Hotel Rome
Rome. January 31, 1941

Dear George,

The Credito Italiano telephoned this morning to say the lire miste had arrived, and awaited my convenience. Unluckily I had a relapse, complicated by a colic (something antedeluvian in my history, but perhaps this is one form of a second childhood) and although better and quite comfortable I am still confined to my rooms. I get up and have my meals and receive my doctor in my salotto or sitting-room. For six nights I had a nurse who gave me my medicines and much conversation. She says there are too many children. Her two boys, being a widow, bring her no end of work in order to provide for their superior education. Evidently society is in a fluid state. I hope the end of this war will bring a new organization that may last, in fundamentals, for a thousand years. I mean in all countries.

I had never heard of lire miste, nor had my doctor (although he is a Jew, and a very nice person). From what the man at the Credito Italiano said this morning, I gather that a non-Italian bank is involved in the issue. In any case, the better exchange will partly take the place of the 20% that I got these last two times from the government.

Thank you for sending Pepe my Xmas present for the children. Pepe’s daughter Josefina and his son Eduardo have written. She has two babies and he is expecting one. That is all they write about. Too many children!

Yours affly G Santayana

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.