Category: LETTERS Page 6 of 274

To Charles Augustus Strong
Seville, Spain. April 5, 1914

You are very generous to wish to return to the absolute financial monarchy which you have practically always exercised at the apartment, and I am glad of it, as a sign that the villa hasn’t yet ruined you, and that the fall in American stocks has left you calm like a Stoic. It hasn’t affected me either in practice, and I am still saving money; but on paper it has swallowed up 12% of my capital, so that I feel poor, although I have just as much to spend as before.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Two, 1910-1920.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY.

To Charles Augustus Strong
C/o Brown Shipley & Co. London
Cambridge, England. April 4, 1915

It is ages since I got your last letter, but as we both seem to be caught by the war, like flies in fly-paper, there seemed to be no probable change to report in the situation. I hope you and Margaret are enjoying the Spring in your new garden, and that the Germans won’t come to bombard Florence from your terrace. As for me, I have been doing nothing in particular except read, write, and walk, without much idea of getting any- where by any of the three operations. The war is a daily, and now monotonous, obsession. Sometimes I feel angry with all concerned and think—“It serves you right; do go on shelling and torpedoing one another, until there is nobody left! Good riddance!” The military I see here— Cambridge is full of troops—rather stir my feelings of martial sympathy, and I wish them immense victories, without in the least believing that they will achieve them. But then I read some interview by that ponderous ass Lord Haldane, and I think a country that can have such a humbug for Lord Chancellor ought to be torpedoed as a whole, and sunk like Atlantis in the Channel. As you may imagine, my sentiments about the Germans are even more ferocious; but as I naturally hate the Germans and love the English, the case for Germany is what I try to represent to myself by day and by night.—I suppose you have seen my pro-German (if subtly insidious) article in the Whited Sepulchre.

I have given up all thoughts of leaving England for the present, and rather expect to take some small flat in London for the summer, so as to satisfy my taste for crowds, for sitting in the park, and for eating in Italian restaurants. Let me know if you are really venturing to cross France—and the Channel!—in spite of the War-Lord-War-Zone. Must you go to America this Summer? After your prolonged stay there last year I should think you might skip it; why not go to Switzerland, to some German-speaking place, in lieu of the visit to Germany which you had planned before the Catastrophe?

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Two, 1910-1920.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY.

To Charles P. Davis
Hotel Bristol
Rome. April 3, 1936

I didn’t send you my novel because I felt that you wouldn’t like it. It’s not Catholic enough—really quite pagan and desolating in its background—and then the moral problem for poor Oliver is quite different from what I expect troubled you when you were young. Your difficulties were plain human difficulties and choices between clear-cut contrasted whereas Oliver is a born (and bred) transcendentalist, thinks always from the pure ego outwards, and never can get outwards very far. Then his feelings and passions are mixed up horribly, and helpless: I was going to say “impotent”, but that would be misleading, because he was far from impotent physically, only emotionally and morally inhibited, and without the courage of his inclinations. He was too tied up ever to find out clearly what these inclinations were. That was why he petered out. Meantime he behaved very well, was loyal and generous (as all my American friends have been) and had a great many noble thoughts: but even his thoughts didn’t cohere into anything specific. . . . Perhaps there are other incidental things in the book that rub you the wrong way, or leave you cold. But I assure you that the texture of the book is good, and that you would like it if you weren’t expecting something else. It certainly is remarkable how people have taken to it in America. I suppose in part it is curiousity to see how “high-brow” experience expresses itself: but in part it must be that they, or some of them, see the fun in the book, and are really entertained.

It isn’t a professional novel, with the events arranged to make a story. It is just a rambling biography, tossed along from one incomplete situation to another, as in real life. I meant it to be that. The world is not a tragedy or a comedy: it is a flux.

I am thinking of going to Paris in the summer . . . unless there is a war. But I think not. The talkers will continue to talk and the doers to do, and we outsiders will be allowed to look on and amuse ourselves.

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 Augustus Strong
22 Beaumont St.
Oxford, England.  April 2, 1919

Your philosophical letter shall be answered another day. I write now only to say that I am giving up my rooms here (where I have been for four years!) on April 24th and expect to go then for a few days to London. Please let me know when you are to be in Paris, and for how long. I hope very much to be able to join you—I don’t mean at the apartment; if you and Margaret are there there won’t be much space, and I could come for meals, etc, and sleep out—but I am not absolutely sure that it will be possible. Several things are in the air. The Y.M.C.A, although I am not young or a Christian, has asked me to go on a lecture tour at the front—either explaining America to the British troops or England to the Americans. I should give the same lecture everywhere, only one, so that I should learn it practically by heart and not have to read it. There are difficulties and anomalies involved, because the lecture ought to be illustrated with moving pictures or at least lantern-slides, and you can imagine my difficulties. On the other hand the idea of seeing the armies of occupation is rather tempting.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Two, 1910-1920.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY.

To George Sturgis
Hotel Bristol
Rome. April 1, 1927

It happens that the Harvard Lampoon has been sending me specimen numbers in the hope that I may subscribe. I want to do so for the sake of Auld Lang Syne and in order to show goodwill to the younger generation, but I find that I can’t understand a word of it, and the pictures are not modern enough for my taste. . . . It occurs to me that you might subscribe in my name (and at my expense) but have the copies sent to you for the boys. They will some day go to Harvard, I suppose, and they might as well begin early to understand the secrets of the place.

There is no change here. Randolph Chetwynd staid with me for the whole month of January, my friend Lawrence Butler was here for a few days, and lately Strong has made a long visit to Rome, and I have lunched and driven with him daily about Rome and the Campagna. In May I expect an unknown disciple named Cory, who is coming on a pilgrimage on purpose to make my acquaintance—fancy that! Apart from these distractions, I have been doing nothing but my usual reading and writing and strolling in the Pincio—and have been twice to the Zoo, remembering our visit there when you and Rosamond were here.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Three, 1921-1927.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.