The Works of George Santayana

Volume V, Book Three

Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., General Editor

William G. Holzberger, Textual Editor
Marianne S. Wokeck, Editor
Kristine W. Frost, Associate Editor
Johanna E. Resler, Assistant Editor
 To the memory of
Daniel and Margot Cory
Charles Augustus Strong’s Apartment (third floor, with long balcony)
at 9 Avenue de l’Observatoire, Paris.
Original photograph, courtesy of Annegret Holzberger, has been altered with her permission.
 The Letters of George Santayana

Book Three, 1921–1927

Edited and with an Introduction by

William G. Holzberger

The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England

This publication has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, a
federal agency which supports the study of such fields as history, philosophy, literature,
and languages.

Additional funding was provided by Corliss Lamont, Emil Ogden, and the Comité
Conjunto Hispano-Norteamericano para la Cooperación Cultural y Educativa.

The endpapers are facsimiles of a letter from Santayana to George Sturgis dated 29 July
1924 in the Sturgis family papers (*89M-56). Publication is by permission of the Houghton
Library, Harvard University.

A selected edition of The Letters of George Santayana was published by Scribner’s in 1955.
Other letters written by Santayana have been published previously in books and period-
icals. All information concerning previous publications is included in the textual notes.

© 2002 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Introduction,” William G. Holzberger.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic
or mechanical means (including photocopy, recording, or information storage and
retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American
University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this pro-
hibition.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Santayana, George, 1863–1952.

[Correspondence]
The letters of George Santayana / G. Santayana; edited and with an introduction by
William G. Holzberger,—Santayana ed.
p. cm.—(The works of George Santayana; v.5)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-262-19474-0 (bk.3: hc: alk. paper)
1. Santayana, George, 1863–1952—Correspondence. 2. Philosophers—United States—
Correspondence. I. Holzberger, William G. II. Title.

B945.S2 1986 vol. 5

[B945.S24 A4]
191—dc21 00—048978

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National
Standards for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI
!
Z39.48 1984. ∞ ™
 The Santayana Edition

Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., General Editor

William G. Holzberger, Textual Editor
Marianne S. Wokeck, Editor
Kristine W. Frost, Associate Editor
Johanna E. Resler, Assistant Editor

Editorial Board

Willard Arnett Douglas M. MacDonald

Hugh J. Dawson John M. Michelsen
Morris Grossman Andrew J. Reck
Angus Kerr-Lawson Beth J. Singer
John Lachs T. L. S. Sprigge
Richard C. Lyon Henny Wenkart

Consultants

Jo Ann Boydston
Irving Singer
Robert S. Sturgis

The Works of George Santayana

I Persons and Places: Fragments of Autobiography, 1986

II The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outlines of Æsthetic Theory, 1988
III Interpretations of Poetry and Religion, 1989
IV The Last Puritan: A Memoir in the Form of a Novel, 1994
V The Letters of George Santayana, Book One, 2001
The Letters of George Santayana, Book Two, 2002
The Letters of George Santayana, Book Three, 2002
 Contents

Book Three, 1921–1927

Preface xi
Acknowledgments xix
Introduction by William G. Holzberger xxxiii
List of Letters lix

LETTERS 3

EDITORIAL APPENDIX
Textual Commentary 367
Short-Title List 381
Textual Notes 385
Report of Line-End Hyphenation 441
Chronology 443
Addresses 461
Manuscript Locations 475
List of Recipients 479
List of Unlocated Letters 481

INDEX 485
 Preface
Book Three, 1921—1927

The letters included in Book Three cover the period 1921–1927, doc-
umenting Santayana’s life from his fifty-seventh through his sixty-fourth
year, a period for him of intense literary activity. The death in 1921 of his
half brother, Robert Sturgis, who had for many years very ably managed
the family’s finances, resulted in the assumption of that responsibility by
Robert’s son, George, who would prove as capable a financial manager as
his father had been. Sturgis’s death would also initiate a frequent corre-
spondence between Santayana and his nephew that would prove a rich
source of information about Santayana’s relations with his family, includ-
ing both of his sisters; his sister Susana’s Spanish family, including her
husband Celedonio Sastre and his children and grandchildren from a pre-
vious marriage; and Santayana’s relationship with George Sturgis himself,
his wife Rosamond, and their three sons.
In his correspondence with George Sturgis, Santayana is often
required to mediate between his nephew and his half sisters, Susana and
Josephine, for whom Sturgis was also acting as financial advisor and man-
ager. For Josephine especially, who was always rather vague and for
whom money matters were confusing, Santayana interprets her some-
times contradictory requests for remittances by explaining that having a
few thousand dollars in the Bank in Ávila, instead of keeping all of her
capital more profitably invested in the United States, provides Josephine
with a sense of well being and a certain status among her Spanish family
and friends important to her happiness. During the boom years of the
twenties, Santayana’s wealth and that of his sisters, under George Sturgis’s
capable stewardship, multiplies manyfold, and they begin to accumulate
substantial fortunes.
In the early years of this period, Santayana moves about a good deal
looking for a place in which to settle down and live for the rest of his life.
During the winter months he lives in various hotels in Rome. The sum-
mers are spent with his friend Charles Augustus Strong in Strong’s
Avenue de l’Observatoire apartment in Paris, or in Strong’s Villa le Balze
xii Preface

at Fiesole in the hills above Florence. He also stays with his sisters in
Celedonio Sastre’s house in Ávila, or in Venice and Cortina d’Ampezzo.
In Paris and Rome he receives and entertains visitors from abroad,
including Warwick and Hamilton Potter, the young sons of his old friends
the Robert Burnside Potters. He finds these young Americans, and others
like them, the products of a general leveling: they are amiable but some-
what plebeian and lacking the grace and distinction of the gilded youth of
their fathers’ generation.
Other visitors of this period include Hans Reichhardt, the young sec-
retary of Santayana’s friend Baron Albert von Westenholz of Hamburg.
Reichhardt visits several times during these years, but his visits are ren-
dered less than completely satisfactory by his very limited ability to speak
English and Santayana’s difficulty either in speaking German (which he
could read with ease) or in understanding Reichhardt’s halting English. In
the spring of 1924 he is visited in Rome by the Philip Chetwynd family
(Mrs. Augusta Chetwynd was the sister of Santayana’s millionaire friend,
Moncure Robinson of New York City). Early in May of 1924 Santayana
takes Mrs. Chetwynd and two of her teenage children for a ten-day visit
to Venice. Andrew Onderdonk (an international lawyer) and his mother,
and the American philosophers Horace Kallen and Herbert Schneider
visit during these years, as well as a number of other American professors
who come bearing letters of introduction. In February 1925 Santayana is
visited in Rome by George and Rosamond Sturgis. He finds Rosamond
attractive and likeable; George, however, shares too many of the charac-
teristics of his late father to please Santayana. In May of that year his old
friend Mercedes Escalera and four of her friends come to Rome from
Spain on a pilgrimage. Santayana takes seriously his duties as host to all
these visitors, but he regrets the time they take from his various writing
projects.
An important occurrence in the lives of both Santayana and Daniel
Cory takes place when Cory, an impecunious twenty-two-year-old
American, lately a student at Columbia University and currently living in
London, sends Santayana an essay that he had written on Santayana’s
philosophy. Santayana, pleased with the essay, responds by offering to
pay Cory’s expenses for a visit to Rome, where their first meeting takes
place in April 1927. Santayana’s first impressions of Cory are rather
mixed: he is uncertain about the quality of Cory’s mind and even whether
or not he likes Cory. However, his appreciation of the young man grows
as he learns that Cory agrees with his own philosophical principles: he is
 Preface xiii

pleased to have a disciple. The relationship that develops between these

two men of different generations becomes one of mutual dependence,
with Santayana relying on Cory as a kind of confidant and literary assis-
tant for several of his writing projects, with Cory, for the rest of his life,
reling on Santayana for financial support. Cory becomes the most impor-
tant friend that Santayana has during the last quarter of his life.
During this period, Santayana is much preoccupied with his literary
and philosophical projects. Late in 1921 he completes Soliloquies in
England and Later Soliloquies, one of his favorites among his own works,
and the book is published the following year. In 1923 Constable and
Scribner’s release a new edition of his previously published poems.
Simply titled Poems, this is the last collection of Santayana’s verse pub-
lished during his lifetime. In 1924 his friend Pierre la Rose designs a
deluxe edition of Santayana’s tragedy, Lucifer, which originally had
appeared in 1899. Santayana spends the summer of 1926 in Cortina
d’Ampezzo writing Platonism and the Spiritual Life, which appears as a
short book in 1927.
Another of his favorites among his own works, Dialogues in Limbo,
comes out in 1926. A lengthy review-article of John Dewey’s book,
Experience and Nature (1925), published in the Journal of Philosophy in 1925,
costs Santayana six months’ labor and considerable pain. But his major
works of technical philosophy of these years are Scepticism and Animal
Faith (1923) and The Realm of Essence (1927). Scepticism was intended as an
introduction to, and The Realm of Essence the first volume of, Realms of
Being (1927–40), the complete expression of Santayana’s mature philo-
sophical system. Ultimately a four-volume treatise, Realms of Being was
originally conceived by its author in 1922 as a single-volume work that he
expected to complete “in a year or two.” The Realm of Essence required so
much effort and was so difficult to write that Santayana questioned the
capacity of his aging brain to continue to do technical philosophy. Indeed,
during this period, he regularly takes refuge from writing philosophy by
working on his novel, The Last Puritan, in which, as he says, he puts every-
thing that he knows, and the composition of which gives him so much
pleasure and relief that he dreads completing it. Perhaps it is fortunate
that at this time he did not realize that he would over the next thirteen
years produce three additional full volumes of Realms of Being (Matter,
1930; Truth, 1938; and Spirit, 1940).
Another significant event of this period occurs in May 1924 when
George Sturgis suggests that Santayana write an autobiography. At the
xiv Preface

time Santayana is working on a “chronology” of his life and also a book

to be called “Persons and Places” which will be about his travels, places
where he has lived, and persons whom he has known. He has not con-
sidered writing an autobiography per se, believing his life too uneventful
to be interesting. But he finds George Sturgis’s suggestion increasingly
attractive, and the Persons and Places that is eventually published in three
volumes during the mid-1940s and early 1950s is considerably more auto-
biographical than was originally conceived. In June 1925 Santayana trav-
els to Ávila where he hopes that his sister Josephine will have preserved
some family photographs that might be used to illustrate the autobiogra-
phy. However, the original American and British editions of Persons and
Places were, except for a frontispiece photo of Santayana in each volume,
not illustrated, and the inclusion of numerous photos had to await publi-
cation of the complete single-volume critical edition in 1986.
Whereas Persons and Places developed into something rather different
and more autobiographical than Santayana originally had conceived, in
1927 he was at work on another project: the revision of a collection of arti-
cles which he had written during 1917–27 that he hoped to publish under
the title “Symptoms.” The work, however, was never finished or pub-
lished, although some of the articles were eventually included in Some
Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy (1933).
Early in this period, Santayana had begun to think seriously of finding
a place in which to settle down. He flirted with the idea of permanent res-
idence in England, a country beloved to him in the early years of his first
European travels. But his visit to England in 1923, when he had been
invited to Oxford to deliver the Herbert Spencer Lecture on 24 October,
proved so disappointing that he afterward ruled England out as a place of
permanent residence. During the visit of 1923, he had enjoyed a stay at
Cambridge where, at the invitation of his Harvard friend (Class of 1893),
Gaillard Lapsley, a fellow of Trinity College, he had been invited to dine
regularly in hall at the high table and converse with the learned fellows of
that college. It was at Trinity, at a small dinner party in Lapsley’s magnif-
icent rooms in the cloister, that Santayana met and liked the classical
scholar and poet, A. E. Housman, whose poetry he much enjoyed and, as
he said, always read with tears. Also in 1923, however, Santayana’s visit
to an old friend, the Earl Russell (Bertrand Russell’s elder brother), at
Russell’s estate (Telegraph House, or “T.U.” as it was called familiarly) in
Hampshire, proved disappointing when Russell appeared remote and
accused Santayana of disloyalty in siding with Russell’s estranged third
 Preface xv

wife, the novelist “Elizabeth” (Mary Annette Beauchamp, Countess von

Arnim). Santayana enjoyed reading Russell’s recently-published autobi-
ography, My Life and Adventures (1923), but was grieved at the cold recep-
tion afforded him by this formerly intimate friend.
Other old friends of his younger days in England were, in 1923, dead
or living in depressingly reduced circumstances. The novelist Howard
Sturgis, a cousin of Santayana’s Sturgis siblings and his frequent host at
Queen’s Acre (Sturgis’s house near Windsor), had died in 1920, and
Willie Haines, for many years Howard Sturgis’s companion, whom
Santayana visits in 1923 in Bath, is reduced to living in bankruptcy with
his father. These melancholy experiences of England, together with the
disappearance of what Santayana regarded as the glorious England of the
Victorian and Edwardian eras, with its inimitable charm, civility, and def-
erence, discouraged him about retiring there. Furthermore, the wet and
frequently chilly English climate was unsuitable for an aging man suffer-
ing from chronic bronchitis. A particularly vehement attack of this ever-
threatening ailment, in February 1923, drove him for a week into a clinic
in Nice.
Santayana had often thought of retiring to Spain, the land of his birth
and of which he always remained a legal citizen. In the spring and sum-
mer of 1925, on a visit to Ávila, he found that his brother-in-law,
Celedonio Sastre, had recently suffered the latest in a series of strokes.
Celedonio, then in his mid-eighties and much diminished physically and
mentally by ill health, was chagrined at being rendered incapable of con-
trolling the affairs of his numerous family as he had always done.
Santayana was certain that Celedonio would not live another year.
Susana, then seventy-four, was quietly planning for the future following
her husband’s death. She intended to make a number of improvements to
the house in Ávila that would render it comfortable and convenient for
her, her sister Josephine, and her half brother George to live in together.
This, Santayana felt, was an attractive solution to his problem of finding
a permanent home and settling down. The question of whether this
arrangement would have proved satisfactory to all parties must remain
moot, for it was not to be. A few years later, on 10 February 1928, Susana
died, and her feeble husband lived on, dying at almost ninety in 1930 (the
year in which Josephine died also, at seventy-seven).
Susana’s death made impracticable and unattractive Santayana’s idea
of settling down for good in Ávila. But even if Susana had lived, the issue
of religion might well have caused problems between her and her broth-
xvi Preface

er. Santayana several times states his own position on religion in the let-
ters of this period. He describes himself as neither a believer nor a heretic.
He perceives religion, he says, from the “inside,” recognizing the poetic
nature of religious myth. His sympathy is with the orthodox views, but he
does not believe that they describe actual events, are not literally true.
Susana, on the other hand (as Santayana says in his letter of 7 June 1922
to George Sturgis), was determined to believe literally in the Christian
myth despite the objections of her own considerable intelligence. Indeed,
any self-generated incredulity had the effect of redoubling her determi-
nation to champion the orthodoxy, a behavior very near to the definition
of fanaticism that Santayana gives elsewhere. Therefore, it might have
been very difficult for Santayana, despite his deep love for Susana, to rec-
oncile himself to living at close quarters with someone so vehement in her
espousal of orthodox Christianity. In any case, Susana’s unexpected death
in 1928 prevented this experiment from ever being tried.
A significant factor in Santayana’s search for a place to settle down (in
addition to those of comfort, convenience, a temperate climate, and ide-
ally the availability of opera, ballet, and theatre) was his desire not to
abandon his old friend and fellow philosopher, Charles Augustus Strong.
Strong provided an additional reason for Santayana not to retire to
England but rather to remain on the Continent. Strong was by this time a
widower, paralyzed in the legs and forced to get about in a wheelchair. A
small elevator and some wheelchair ramps for his use were installed in
Villa le Balze (where they remain to this day, although the elevator is now
stationary and used as a storage closet). Strong probably would have been
glad to have Santayana live with him permanently, as they had in fact fre-
quently lived together for months at a time in Strong’s Paris apartment.
But living with Strong could be difficult. He could be imperious and was
forever trying to convert Santayana to his own particular philosophical
views, especially to his theory of perception. Santayana’s frustration and
irritation with Strong in this regard is particularly evident in their corre-
spondence of this period, which includes, in Santayana’s letters, a contin-
uous, detailed, and extensive discussion of their respective philosophical
positions.
Another problem for Santayana in living with C. A. Strong was
Strong’s daughter Margaret. A young woman who moved in the fashion-
able worlds of Paris and Florence, Margaret’s rather frenetic way of life
frequently disrupted the lives of the two elderly philosophers. It seems
that Santayana did not dislike Margaret, was sympathetic regarding her
 Preface xvii

personal problems, and wished her well, but he found her presence in the
Paris apartment inimical to the atmosphere of calm and quiet essential to
his life as a thinker and writer. When Margaret married and left her
father’s house, in July 1927, Santayana was called upon to play a signifi-
cant role in the whole affair.
At the time, Strong himself was taking an extensive cure at a Swiss spa,
and Margaret and Santayana were living, with a maid-servant who also
did the cooking, in the Paris apartment. One evening, utterly unexpect-
edly, a young man joined them for dinner whom Margaret introduced to
Santayana as George Cuevas, saying that he was the fiancé she intended
to marry in four days. Cuevas, an impecunious Chilean, had a reputation
for moving in fast company. However, after several interviews, Santayana
came to the conclusion that he was not a bad sort, understood Margaret,
and would probably make her a good husband. So he undertook, through
his letters, to reconcile Strong to the match. Next, he participated in the
nuptials directly by serving as a witness at the civil ceremony, and then
again, some days later, according to the French fashion, by standing in
loco parentis at the church wedding, leading the already married bride to
the altar and giving her away.
Even after Margaret’s marriage, Santayana did not wish to live perma-
nently with Strong, but wanted to be close enough to be able to spend
time with him periodically and to provide assistance in case it were need-
ed. His discovery of the Hotel Bristol in Rome was for various reasons
propitious. The Hotel Bristol is situated conveniently in the Piazza
Barberini, directly behind Bernini’s Triton Fountain, in an attractive and
interesting part of the city. It seemed to Santayana just what he needed
when he first engaged a room there in November 1923, and it proved so
convenient that in February 1925 he decided to make Rome and the
Bristol his regular residence, while continuing to head north in the sum-
mers to places like Florence (where he could visit Strong), Venice, and
Cortina. A regular headquarters in Rome would provide the stability that
Santayana needed as he grew older, with the opportunity to continue the
life of the wandering student, which was always his ideal. He expanded
his accommodations at the Bristol from a single room to a little suite, with
a sitting room complete with wood-burning fireplace. He could easily
engage other rooms in the hotel to accommodate guests, and could keep
a good many of his books about him (the others being stored in Strong’s
apartment), though they would have to be crated up during the summer
when he would be away from Rome and the suite rented to others. The
xviii Preface

Bristol would serve admirably as his headquarters until about 1940 when
it was closed for extensive remodeling and renovation. At that time
Santayana would move to Rome’s Grand Hotel, where he would live for
a time before entering the nursing home of the Blue Sisters where he
would spend the final almost eleven years of his life.
While living in Rome during the twenties, Santayana witnessed with
approval the ultimately disastrous rise of Italian fascism. He hoped and
believed that Liberalism all over the world might be fading away. He
admired Mussolini for his successful resolution of certain practical prob-
lems, as he also admired what he regarded as the new energy and healthy
self-confidence of the Italian people. Though he never liked democracy,
Santayana was nevertheless supportive of America at this time and actu-
ally defends American civilization in several letters. He admires practical
American expertise, describing the nation as a more fitting place for the
engineer than for the artist. The problem with America, he says, is not
that it is not like Europe, but rather that, not trusting sufficiently the value
of its native potential, it vainly tries to imitate Europe. He does not con-
demn the American way of life, though he does not wish it for himself.
Neither does he condemn the Russian Revolution nor regard it as having
begun the ultimate destruction of civilization. The results of the revolu-
tion, he says, will be different from and in essential ways contradictory to
the traditional structure and character of society, but not necessarily
worse. Despite these avowals, however, Santayana is obviously con-
cerned that the communist revolution might spread all over the world,
destroying the traditional and individual way of life that he valued so
highly.
William G. Holzberger
 Acknowledgments
This comprehensive edition of Santayana’s personal and professional
correspondence has been over thirty years in the making, and a great
number of persons in many different walks of life have contributed to it.
It was begun by Daniel Cory in the late 1960s as a two-volume sequel to
his 1955 Scribner’s edition of two hundred ninety-six letters by
Santayana. I began collaborating with Cory on the project in 1971. After
his sudden death by heart attack on 16 June 1972, I worked on the letters
with the assistance of his widow, Mrs. Margot Cory, who was his succes-
sor as the Santayana literary executor. I continued to work on the prepa-
ration of a comprehensive edition of Santayana’s letters until I joined the
project to produce a multi-volume critical edition of Santayana’s works
headed by Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., General Editor. As textual editor of
The Works of George Santayana it was necessary to deflect my attention sub-
stantially from the letters in order to help prepare the first four volumes
of the edition for publication.1 In 1988 Professor Saatkamp and I decided
to incorporate the letters into the comprehensive edition of Santayana’s
writings as the fifth volume, and work on the letters resumed. At that time,
however, the staff of the Santayana Edition was concentrating on prepa-
ration of the text of Volume IV, Santayana’s novel, The Last Puritan, and
the focus of attention and principal resources had to be directed toward
completion of work on that volume, which was published in 1994. Since
publication of the novel, however, the focus of the editorial staff has been
on completion of the letters volume.
Included in the host of persons who have, over an exceptionally long
period of time, contributed in many different ways to this large and com-
plicated project are both private individuals as well as representatives of
libraries and other institutions. Many of these persons no longer occupy
the positions they did when they contributed to this project, and others
are no longer alive. While it is impossible to acknowledge here everyone
who helped make this edition of Santayana’s letters a reality, we wish at
least to mention those persons and institutions whose contributions were
absolutely vital to the successful completion of the project.
Foremost, perhaps, among these individuals is the late Margot Cory.
Margaret Degen Batten Cory was born in England on 27 November 1900
xx Acknowledgments

and, after many years’ residence in Italy, died in England on 30 March

1995. As the Santayana literary executrix and heir to her late husband’s
ownership of Santayana’s literary properties, Margot Cory owned the
copyright in Santayana’s letters. Not only did Mrs. Cory agree to the con-
tinuation of work on this edition after her husband’s death, but she aided
and encouraged its realization in many significant ways. In the early
stages she made typewritten transcriptions of hundreds of letters, both to
her husband and to others. Indeed, many letters to various individuals
could not have been included had not Mrs. Cory, in an age before photo-
copying machines, first made handwritten copies of letters lent to her hus-
band which she later recopied on the typewriter. Mrs. Cory’s interest in
this project was extremely keen, and it is our deep regret that she did not
have the satisfaction of seeing the letters volume published during her
lifetime.
The names of private persons who possess letters by George Santayana
are given in the list of Manuscript Locations, and we are very grateful to
these individuals for providing, often as gifts, photocopies of their letters.
I wish to thank especially those who also contributed valuable informa-
tion and who aided this project in other ways as well. Foremost is Richard
Colton Lyon. Not only has Professor Lyon supplied copies of his own sub-
stantial and valuable correspondence, but he has been of great assistance
in locating other letters. It was through the kind cooperation of Professor
Lyon that I learned the whereabouts of the late Mrs. David M. Little, for-
merly Mrs. George Sturgis, the wife of Santayana’s nephew. With help
from Professor Lyon, Mrs. Little provided copies of letters that Santayana
had written to her former husband, who had for many years served as
Santayana’s financial manager. Mrs. Little, before her death on 17
February 1976, was of unique service to this project by supplying infor-
mation about the Sturgis family, and a great many footnotes to the letters
are the result of information that she provided. Rosamond Thomas
Bennett Sturgis Little was devoted to “Uncle George” both during and
after his lifetime in a way that might be expected of few nieces by mar-
riage. Mrs. Little’s son, Robert Sturgis, a Boston architect, is also warmly
thanked for permitting inclusion of his letters from his granduncle, for
arranging for the deposit of Santayana’s letters in the Sturgis Family
Papers in Harvard’s Houghton Library, and for his interest in the com-
prehensive edition of Santayana’s writings and his continued helpfulness
to the editors.
The late Dr. Corliss Lamont, a distinguished humanist and author and
a life-long admirer of Santayana, was, over the years, a constant friend to
 Acknowledgments xxi

this project. His direct financial aid to the Santayana Edition, together
with his concern and assistance with various problems, were always much
appreciated. The extensive collection of Santayana manuscripts and other
materials in Columbia University’s Butler Library constitute Dr. Lamont’s
gift to Santayana scholarship. Other private owners who have been par-
ticularly helpful include Mr. Guy Murchie Jr., whose glosses on the letters
to his father have provided information for footnotes to those letters.
Professors Justus Buchler and Peter Viereck also supplied helpful infor-
mation about their letters from Santayana.
Several individuals have personally supported this project with gener-
ous financial gifts, professional advice, and scholarly research. These
include Morris Grossman, Professor Emeritus, Fairfield University; John
Lachs, Centennial Professor of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University; Emil
Ogden, Ogden Resources Corporation, College Station, Texas; John
McCormick, Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University; Henny Wenkart,
Professor and Editor, New York City; and Excmo. Sr. D. Francisco Javier
Jiménez-Ugarte Hernandez, Spanish Ambassador to Greece, who helped
arrange the grant from the Comité Conjunto Hispano-Norteamericana.
Santayana Edition Board members who have continuously assisted the
project in many and various ways are Willard Arnett, Hugh Dawson,
Morris Grossman, Angus Kerr-Lawson, John Lachs, Richard C. Lyon,
Douglas MacDonald, John Michelsen, Andrew Reck, Beth J. Singer,
Timothy Sprigge, and Henny Wenkart.
Many learned and distinguished scholars have contributed directly to
the making of this edition. Among my Bucknell colleagues are several
who have provided help with editorial tasks. Perhaps our greatest debt is
due Professor Mills Fox Edgerton Jr., who has given most generously of
his time, energy, and thoroughgoing knowledge of Romance languages.
Not only has he translated the Spanish letters to José and Isabel Sastre,
and provided numerous translations of words and phrases, but he has
searched for Santayana letters during his travels through Spain. On one
occasion he acted as my emissary to Santayana’s grandnephew, the late
Don Eduardo Sastre Martín, of Madrid and Ávila, in an effort to learn the
whereabouts of any Santayana manuscripts or other materials extant in
Spain. We are grateful to Professor James M. Heath of the Bucknell
Classics Department, who has continually and unstintingly given of his
time and specialized knowledge in assisting the editors with the tran-
scribing and translating of Greek and Latin words and phrases and the
tracing to their origins of quotations in these ancient languages. Mark W.
Padilla, Associate Professor of Classics and Associate Dean of the College
xxii Acknowledgments

of Arts and Sciences, has also helped with translations of Latin words and
phrases. Professor John Gale of the Modern Languages and Linguistics
Department has rendered much the same sort of assistance with French
words and phrases, and Professor Marianna M. Archambault and her
husband, Professor Paul Archambault of Syracuse University, have also
been helpful with questions relating to the French and Italian languages.
A friend and colleague in the Bucknell English Department, Professor
James F. Carens, member of the Harvard class of 1949, has helped in a
variety of ways: by discussing the edition with me, making valuable sug-
gestions based upon his own experience as an editor of letters, by serving
as a guide to and about Harvard University, and by reading drafts of the
Introduction to this volume and making suggestions for revision that I not
only adopted but believe have significantly improved the quality of the
Introduction. Peter Hinks, Associate Editor with the Frederick Douglass
Papers, Yale University, collated letters at the Beinecke Library. English
Department chairmen who have aided in important ways are Harry R.
Garvin, the late John W. Tilton, Michael D. Payne, Dennis Baumwoll, and
John Rickard. Bucknell University officers who have supported this pro-
ject by supplying funds for materials and travel, allowing me released
time from teaching duties, and providing office space, equipment, and
supplies specifically for work on the letters are Wendell I. Smith, former
Provost; Larry Shinn and Daniel Little, former Vice Presidents for
Academic Affairs; Eugenia P. Gerdes, Dean of the College of Arts and
Sciences; and former Associate Deans Barbara A. Shailor and S. Jackson
Hill. To all of these colleagues I extend deep and sincere gratitude.
Texas A&M University officers and faculty who supported our work
over many years include John J. McDermott, Distinguished Professor of
Philosophy and Humanities, who directed the project during the transi-
tion from Texas to Indiana; Woodrow Jones, Dean of the College of
Liberal Arts; Ben M. Crouch, Executive Associate Dean; Charles Stoup,
Senior Academic Business Administrator; Robin Smith, Professor and
Head, Department of Philosophy and Humanities; Kenneth M. Price,
Professor of English; Robert A. Calvert, Professor of History; and Scott
Austin, Professor of Philosophy.
Special thanks to Sherman D. Frost for his ongoing support of the work
of the Edition. His help with computer-related questions, and mainte-
nance of the Santayana Edition web page is a significant contribution to
our progress toward publication of the letters.
 Acknowledgments xxiii

Since its move to Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis

(IUPUI), the Edition has had the unconditional support of the University
and the School of Liberal Arts. In particular, we must acknowledge the
diligent work of Marianne S. Wokeck, Editor; Johanna E. Resler, Assistant
Editor; Joshua B. Garrison; and Kimberly A. O’Brien, who have become
completely involved with the final preparation of the letters for publica-
tion. Special thanks to the entire staff of the Dean’s office, who have
assisted with our day-to-day work since the decision to relocate.
Noteworthy support has come from Gerald L. Bepko, Vice President for
Long-Range Planning and Chancellor of IUPUI; William M. Plater,
Executive Vice Chancellor and Dean of the Faculties; Mark Brenner,
Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education; Curtis R. Simic,
President, Indiana University Foundation; Nathan Houser, Director and
General Editor, Peirce Edition Project; Paul R. Bippen, Dean, Indiana
University-Purdue University Columbus; Janet Feldmann, Director,
Library and Media Services, IUPU Columbus; and Steven J. Schmidt,
University Library, IUPUI. We are grateful to Nadine C. Martin and
Martin Coleman for their assistance with translations and annotations.
An eminent textual scholar who has contributed to this edition in sig-
nificant ways is G. Thomas Tanselle, Textual Editor of The Writings of
Herman Melville (a critical edition in fifteen volumes) and a foremost
authority on editorial scholarship. Professor Tanselle has been very help-
ful in responding to queries about editorial matters, and his writings on
textual scholarship have served as a fundamental guide to the editors of
the Santayana Edition. Thanks to David J. Nordloh for conducting the
inspection of Book Three of the letters for the Committee on Scholarly
Editions of the Modern Language Association of America, and to Robert
H. Hirst, chair of this committee, for his guidance and support. Mr.
Harold Kulungian has given me several useful hints and suggestions. He
ascertained the correct date of Santayana’s letter to B. A. G. Fuller of 11
January 1905 (misdated in Cory’s 1955 edition as 1904). Hugh J. Dawson
of the English Department of the University of San Francisco and a mem-
ber of the Editorial Board of the Santayana Edition has been a valuable
source of information on the location of letters and has made many other
notable contributions to this project. His frequent travels and researches
in Europe have resulted in the acquisition of copies of three letters to the
late Professor Enrico Castelli, whom Professor Dawson interviewed at his
home in Rome in 1976. Our thanks also to Professor R. W. B. Lewis, the
distinguished biographer of Edith Wharton, and to Dr. Marion
xxiv Acknowledgments

Mainwaring, a professional researcher who attempted to locate additional

letters to Santayana’s Harvard classmate William Morton Fullerton that—
in addition to the four letters to Fullerton included in this edition—were
believed to exist. I am very grateful to the late Richard Ellmann, the
noted biographer and editor, Fellow of New College and Goldsmiths’
Professor of English Literature in Oxford University. During the sabbati-
cal year I spent at Oxford working on the letters edition (1975–76),
Professor Ellmann was particularly helpful in discussing the plan for the
edition and making suggestions regarding every aspect of the project.
Indeed, his edition of the letters of James Joyce, together with the edition
of Oscar Wilde’s letters by Rupert Hart-Davis, were the earliest models
for this edition of Santayana’s letters.
A special note of thanks is due to Professor J. Albert Robbins of
Indiana University, who served as Chairman of the Committee on
Manuscript Holdings of the American Literature Section of the Modern
Language Association of America, in charge of gathering information for
the updated edition of American Literary Manuscripts, an invaluable source
of information regarding library manuscript holdings. Professor Robbins
and his staff responded to my request, early in 1976, for additional infor-
mation regarding the location of Santayana holograph letters in library
collections, by undertaking a “hand search” of file data before their mate-
rial was computerized sufficiently to make such a search less laborious.
The result of their efforts was the locating and acquiring of a substantial
number of letters, the existence of which had not previously been sus-
pected. Yet another friend from the beginning is James Ballowe of
Bradley University. An accomplished poet, critic, author, and a distin-
guished Santayana scholar and editor, Professor Ballowe is warmly
acknowledged here for his continual interest in and encouragement of
this project and for his willingness to be helpful in every way. We are
grateful to the late Paul G. Kuntz, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at
Emory University, for the work he did in collating our transcriptions of
Santayana’s letters to Mrs. Bernard Berenson against the originals in the
Berensons’ Villa I Tatti (now owned by Harvard University) in
Settignano, Italy.
Special thanks are due individuals who sent copies or gave permission
for their Santayana letters to be photocopied by the libraries in which
they are held. These include Robert Lowell (Houghton Library, Harvard
University); Robert Fitzgerald; Mrs. Ann P. Howgate (letters to her late
husband, George Washburn Howgate, who, in 1938, became Santayana’s
 Acknowledgments xxv

first biographer); Mrs. Christina M. Welch, daughter of John P. Marquand,

and Mr. Carl D. Brandt (Houghton Library, Harvard University); Mrs.
Arthur Davison Ficke (Beinecke Library, Yale University); Dr. Cecil
Anrep, of Villa I Tatti, at Settignano, Italy, letters to Bernard and Mary
Berenson; and Lino S. Lipinsky de Orlov. Max Schwartz, brother of the
late Benjamin Schwartz, who, in 1936, with Justus Buchler, edited Obiter
Scripta: Lectures, Essays and Reviews, searched through his brother’s papers
in an effort to discover additional Santayana correspondence. Mrs. Max
Eastman (Lilly Library, Indiana University); Horace M. Kallen (YIVO
Institute for Jewish Research in New York City and the American Jewish
Archives, Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, Ohio); Lewis Mumford;
Milton K. Munitz; and Paul Arthur Schilpp (founder and editor of The
Library of Living Philosophers, the second volume of which was devoted to
the philosophy of Santayana). Sidney Hook gave permission for the inclu-
sion here of his Santayana letters published in The American Scholar (Winter
1976–77). George Knox helped locate the letters to Carl Sadakichi
Hartmann (University of California, Riverside). Father Ceferino Santos
Escudero, of the University of Madrid, who compiled a bibliography of
Santayana’s writings, supplied copies of the two letters in Spanish to
Miguel de Unamuno and J. L. Ochoa; the English translations of these let-
ters were done for this edition by Mr. Henry C. Reed.
I am particularly grateful to the late Spanish poet, Jorge Guillén, for
permission to receive a copy of his letter from Santayana in the Houghton
Library, and to Mary de Rachewilz, curator of the Ezra Pound Archive in
Yale’s Beinecke Library, who allowed librarians to check our transcrip-
tions of letters to her father against the original holograph letters before
the Archive was officially opened. I wish also to thank Mme. de
Rachewilz for her kindness and hospitality to my family and me during
visits to Brunnenburg, at Tirolo di Merano, where, in the early stages of
the letters edition, I conferred with Mrs. Cory on the project. I am grate-
ful to the late Don Eduardo Sastre Martín, Santayana’s grandnephew, for
the interviews in his home in Madrid that he gave to my colleague
Professor Mills F. Edgerton Jr. and for his help in obtaining copies of let-
ters in Spanish to his parents, José and Isabel Sastre. Thanks also to Pedro
García Martín, Emilio Santos Sastre, and Ana Sastre Moyano, who pro-
vided copies of letters and postcards written to Santayana’s sister and
brother-in-law and other members of the Sastre family. The late Mr. Hy
Oppenheim, a retired lawyer and an avid student of Santayana’s writings,
is remembered with thanks for his frequent informative communications
xxvi Acknowledgments

and for his gifts of copies of Santayana’s works. Thanks, too, to Mr. David
Wapinsky, a devoted student of Santayana’s writings, for sharing with us
the fruits of his researches into the existence of undiscovered Santayana
manuscript materials.
Realization of a project of this magnitude would be impossible without
the cooperation of a host of librarians, archivists, and technical members
of the staffs of a great number of libraries. Many of the personnel who
contributed remain anonymous to us. Still others were persons whose
names we learned through our correspondence with them and their insti-
tutions twenty or thirty years ago. Doubtless many of these persons are no
longer associated with the libraries with which they were once connected.
For this reason, and because space is necessarily limited in an edition of
this size, we are prevented from listing here the names of the scores of
dedicated staff on whose conscientious and generous assistance this edi-
tion has been so utterly dependent. But I wish to express the profound
thanks of the editors to each and every one of these colleagues.
We must, however, acknowledge here individually a few persons upon
whose cooperation and assistance this project has fundamentally
depended. These are the principal librarians at libraries containing major
collections of Santayana manuscript materials. Mr. Kenneth A. Lohf,
Librarian for Rare Books and Manuscripts of the Butler Library at
Columbia University, has had responsibility for the largest and most
important collection of Santayana materials. Mr. Lohf and staff, including
Bernard Crystal, Rudolph Ellenbogen, and Jean Ashton, have been a
never-failing source of cooperation and assistance to the editors, for which
we are very grateful. Harvard’s Houghton Library, as would be expected,
is another treasure trove for Santayana scholars. I know that Daniel Cory
counted the Librarian of the Houghton, Mr. William H. Bond, as a val-
ued personal friend, and we deeply appreciate his kind assistance. Other
persons at the Houghton who have been particularly helpful to us are
Leslie A. Morris, Elizabeth A. Falsey, Rodney Dennis, Jennie Rathbun,
Mrs. Richard B. Currier, and Ms. Deborah B. Kelley. The Charles
Scribner’s Sons Archive, in the Princeton University Library, is a huge
and invaluable collection of the correspondence of many prominent
authors whose works have been published by the house of Scribner. The
late Charles Scribner IV has the gratitude of scholars generally for con-
tinuing the policy of his company of preserving all correspondence with
authors. I am personally in Mr. Scribner’s debt for his unfailingly kind
attention to my questions and requests pertaining to publication by his
 Acknowledgments xxvii

company of Santayana’s writings, for permission to receive photocopies

of letters from the Scribner Archive and to reproduce and publish them
in this edition. Librarians at Princeton who so effectively assisted us in the
acquisition of photocopies are Alexander P. Clark, Jean F. Preston, and
Don C. Skemer, Curators of Manuscripts; Margaret M. Sherry, Archivist;
and Mrs. Mardel Pacheco and Mrs. Michael Sherman of the Manuscripts
Division. At the Alderman Library of the University of Virginia we wish
to thank Michael Plunkett and Anne Freudenberg, Curators of
Manuscripts; Adrienne Cannon, Special Collections; and assistants
Elizabeth Ryall and Gregory A. Johnson. At the Humanities Research
Center of the University of Texas at Austin, Cathy Henderson, Barbara
Smith-LaBorde, Mary M. Hirth, and June Moll, Librarians, have been
particularly cooperative in aiding our work; as have Thomas F. Staley and
Mr. F. W. Roberts, Directors of the Center; and staff including Sally
Leach, David Farmer, and John R. Payne. Mr. Thomas M. Whitehead,
Head of the Special Collections Department of the Samuel Paley Library
at Temple University, was most cooperative in enabling us to acquire
copies of the large collection of Santayana letters in the archive of the
London publishing firm of Constable and Company, Ltd. Special thanks
are also due to several librarians at the Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library at Yale University for their continuous cooperation
and valuable services over many years including Ms. Dorothy
Bridgewater, formerly Acting Head of the Reference Department; Ms.
Carol Park of the Reference Department; Mr. Kenneth Nesheim, for-
merly Acting Curator, Collection of American Literature; Mr. Donald
Gallup, Curator of American Literature; Mr. Peter Dzwonkowski,
Assistant to the Curator, who very helpfully collated our transcriptions of
Santayana’s letters to Ezra Pound against the originals in the then-
unopened Pound Archive; and Mr. Robert O. Anthony, adviser to the
Walter Lippmann Papers Collection.
The Rockefeller Archive Center houses the majority of Santayana’s let-
ters to Charles Augustus Strong (368). David Rockefeller, Alice Victor,
Darwin Stapleton, and Thomas Rosenbaum were extremely generous in
providing copies of these letters to the Edition on very short notice.
Librarians of specialized collections who have been particularly help-
ful to us are Ms. Fanny Zelcer of the American Jewish Archives; Mr.
James Lawton of the Boston Public Library; Mr. Monte Olenick of the
Brooklyn Public Library; Mr. John C. Broderick, Chief, The Library of
Congress; Mr. Andrew Berner and Ms. Susan Grant, the University Club
xxviii Acknowledgments

Library, New York City; Doña Dolores Gomez Molleda, Director, Casa-
Museo Unamuno, University of Salamanca, Spain; Mr. Ezekiel Lifschutz,
Archivist, and Mr. Marek Web, Archives Department, YIVO Institute for
Jewish Research, New York City.
Librarians of the Ellen Clarke Bertrand Library at Bucknell University
have provided aid in several important ways, and I wish to thank espe-
cially Mr. George Jenks and Mrs. Ann de Klerk, former Directors of the
Library who provided a room in the Library specifically for work on the
letters edition. Other librarians of the Bertrand Library that must be
acknowledged here for their special assistance are Mrs. Helena Rivoire,
Head of Technical Services; Ms. Patricia J. Rom, Head of the Reference
Department; and Mr. Ronald B. Daniels, Head of Public Services. I am
also much obliged to the librarians and staff of the Bodleian Library and
the English Faculty Library of Oxford University for allowing me the con-
tinued use of the resources of those fine institutions while working on the
edition during my residence at Oxford from September 1975 to July 1976.
We are very grateful to the institutions that have provided the financial
support on which the completion of this project depended. First and fore-
most is the National Endowment for the Humanities. The award of a
Research Fellowship for 1975–76 enabled me to devote a full year to get-
ting the project underway. Since 1976 the Endowment has underwritten
the comprehensive edition of Santayana’s Works, in which the letters edi-
tion is included. Officers and staff members to whom we are especially
indebted for their indispensable support are James Herbert, Director,
Division of Research Programs, Margot Backas, Michael Hall, George
Lucas, Douglas Arnold, Stephen Veneziani, and Alice Hudgins. Other
organizations that have contributed importantly to the completion of the
letters edition are The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
for granting a Fellowship for work on the letters edition to Daniel Cory in
1972; the American Council of Learned Societies for awarding me two
separate grants for work on the project; and to the Committee on
Scholarly Development of Bucknell University for the award of grants
that allowed me to devote several summers to work on the letters edition.
We wish also to acknowledge the student assistants who, over the many
years of work on this collection of Santayana’s letters, have labored along-
side the editors with much-appreciated dedication, performing tasks
essential to the completion of this project. The first student editorial assis-
tant to work on the letters project was Keith Washburn, a graduate student
in English at Bucknell who helped during the initial stages in 1972. Mrs.
 Acknowledgments xxix

Robin Hummel Kenner worked on the project from September 1972 until
January 1978, beginning during her undergraduate years and continuing
on after graduation. Mrs. Kenner, in a pre-computer era, made most of
the original typewriter transcriptions of the letters. Kristine Dane worked
on the project from July1991 through May 1997, beginning as an under-
graduate and continuing to work on the project while pursuing graduate
studies. Her contributions to the letters edition were many and various.
The other Bucknell students who worked on this edition of Santayana’s
letters are listed here in chronological order of their connection with the
project, from earliest to latest: Laurie Russell, Karen Hoffnagle, Elizabeth
Smith, Kathy Bittner, Afsaneh Bahar, Hugh Bailey, Roberta Visaggio,
Jeanne Wiggers, Caroline Keller, Cherri Lee Smith, Beth Lynn Davis,
Lori Fraind, Wendy Van Wyck, Michael Wardell, and Jennifer Beck. Let
us thank here also Mrs. Ruth Snyder, formerly secretary to the Classics
and History departments at Bucknell, who, in the mid-1980s, made our
original typewritten transcriptions of the letters from Santayana to
Scribner’s editor John Hall Wheelock of the period 1946–52 which had
just then been made available.
At Texas A&M University graduate assistants involved with the project
include Karen Antell, Ann T. Butler, John Cavin, Matthew Caleb Flamm,
Luis Guadaño, Kara Kellogg, Nakia S. Pope, Robert Renzetti, Wayne
Riggs, Clay Davis Splawn, and James Dan Unger. Special thanks to
Denise Johnston Barrychuck, Jodine Thomas, Lori Moore, Margaret B.
Yergler, Anne Divita, and Connie Chavez, students and staff who worked
with the Edition for extended periods of time.
At the University of Tampa, special thanks are given to editorial assis-
tants Shirley Cueto and John W. Jones, and to research assistants Austria
M. Lavigne, Jodi Lerner, and Nina Mollica.
Finally, I wish to acknowledge the persons with whom I have worked
very closely for a long time on this edition of Santayana’s letters and
whose collaboration has made possible its completion. First, I want to
thank especially my friend and colleague of many years, the General
Editor of The Works of George Santayana and Associate Editor of this edi-
tion of the letters, Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., with whom I have had the
pleasure of coediting the four earlier volumes of the Critical Edition. Not
only has Professor Saatkamp been responsible for overseeing and direct-
ing all phases of the Works edition, including this volume of letters, but in
his frequent travels through this country and indeed all over the world he
has sought everywhere and frequently found previously unknown or
xxx Acknowledgments

unlocated Santayana correspondence. During those travels he has also

spent countless hours in numerous libraries making sight collations of our
transcriptions (taken from Xerox copies of Santayana’s handwritten let-
ters) against the original holograph letters. This edition of Santayana’s
correspondence owes a very great deal to the boundless energy and
enthusiasm for Santayana’s writings that Professor Saatkamp has brought
to it, and I am sure that, like me, Santayanans everywhere are very grate-
ful to him.
Another person who made a very significant contribution to this letters
edition is Donna Hanna-Calvert, who was for several years the Associate
Editor of The Works of George Santayana at the Texas A&M University
headquarters of the project. Ms. Hanna-Calvert was always a most astute,
congenial, and helpful colleague, and I am indebted to her both for her
assistance with the letters project as well as for her collaboration on ear-
lier volumes of the edition. I owe her much for making my working vis-
its to the editorial offices at Texas A&M very pleasant, comfortable,
efficient, and productive.
To the current Associate Editor of The Works of George Santayana (and
also of this edition of the letters specifically), Kristine W. Frost, this letters
volume and I are very heavily indebted. Ms. Frost has had the responsi-
bility of coordinating and executing the multiple tasks of preparing the
text of the letters edition for publication. She has assisted the General
Editor and me in every conceivable aspect of the preparation of this let-
ters edition while simultaneously organizing and carrying out collation
schedules for future volumes of the Works edition that are currently in
preparation, and directly supervising the activities of our student helpers
and other editorial assistants. I wish also to express here to Kristine Frost
what I know all of us on the edition especially appreciate in working with
her: I mean her invariably equable temperament, her unshakable good
nature. Working with her is always a pleasure.
I want to thank especially my wife, Annegret, for her many years of
service to this letters edition (as well as to earlier volumes of The Works of
George Santayana) as editorial assistant. She has supported my work on this
project in every conceivable way. The help and companionship she pro-
vided on the numerous and extensive travels that this work has entailed
often transformed difficulty, inconvenience, and hard labor into achieve-
ment and adventure. I am grateful to her for all the effort, encourage-
ment, and patience that she has contributed to the completion of this
enterprise.
 Acknowledgments xxxi

Our other editorial assistant on the letters edition, Brenda Bridges, at

Texas A&M, also richly deserves recognition here and the gratitude of the
editors for effectively carrying out many important and demanding tasks,
including researching the information for much of the footnote annota-
tion to the letters. Thanks to Ms. Bridges’s astuteness and unflagging per-
severance, the extensive and exceptionally valuable collection of letters
by Santayana to Charles Augustus Strong—long believed lost or
destroyed—were located and copies acquired for this edition.
Therefore, to all these kind, cooperative, expert, and industrious per-
sons and magnanimous institutions that have contributed so materially
and indispensably to the production of this edition of Santayana’s letters,
I extend my deep gratitude.

William G. Holzberger
Professor of English Emeritus
Bucknell University
1
Volumes published to date: I Persons and Places: Fragments of Autobiography (1986); II
The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory (1988); III Interpretations of Poetry
and Religion (1989); IV The Last Puritan: A Memoir in the Form of a Novel (1994).
 Introduction
William G. Holzberger

George Santayana (1863–1952) was one of the most learned and culti-
vated men of his time. Born in Spain and educated in America, he taught
philosophy at Harvard University for twenty-two years before returning
permanently to Europe at age forty-eight to devote himself exclusively to
writing. He knew several languages, including Latin and Greek. Besides
his mastery of English, he was at home in Spanish and French (though he
modestly down-played his knowledge of those languages). As a young
man, Santayana studied Italian in order to read Dante, Cavalcanti,
Michelangelo, and other Italian Platonizing poets in their own language;
and, in later life, as a result of his long residence in Rome, he acquired
facility in speaking Italian.1 While a graduate student in Germany during
1886–88, Santayana lived with Harvard friends in an English-speaking
boardinghouse in Berlin, thereby missing an opportunity to learn to speak
German properly. However, he could read the original versions of
German literary and philosophical works. He also knew the world, hav-
ing lived for protracted periods in Spain, America, Germany, England,
France, and Italy. A true cosmopolitan, Santayana nevertheless always
regarded himself as a Spaniard and kept his Spanish passport current. He
possessed many talents and had a multifaceted personality, and each of
those facets is reflected vividly in his letters. World famous as a philoso-
pher, he was also a poet, essayist, dramatist, literary critic, autobiograph-
er, and author of a best-selling novel. The numerous letters referring to
The Last Puritan, his novel begun in 1889 and completed over a period of
forty-five years on 31 August 1934,2 describe the way in which a modest
story of college life evolved into a major study of American culture and
modern civilization. The letters incorporate a thoroughgoing statement of
Santayana’s own critical interpretation of The Last Puritan.
Santayana’s letters represent the full range of his interests, knowledge,
and achievements, and students of English prose style will encounter in
them superb examples of epistolary writing. They are of supreme value
to the biographer. Some letters are important for establishing dates of sig-
xxxiv The Letters of George Santayana

nificant events in Santayana’s life and career. For instance, the 13 October
1933 letter to Daniel Cory describes Santayana’s discovery of the philos-
ophy of Martin Heidegger and the similarity of his own theory of essences
to Heidegger’s ontology. Other letters illuminate Santayana’s philosophi-
cal system. The 1 March 1949 letter to Richard C. Lyon is an excellent
example of the “philosophical” letters. In it Santayana states his views on
matter, idea, the self, intuition, and other perennial philosophical issues,
relative to the views of philosophers such as Plato, Descartes, Kant,
Berkeley, Fichte, Kierkegaard, Bergson, and Russell. The second para-
graph of the 21 September 1917 letter to Charles Augustus Strong consti-
tutes a succinct and very clear expression of Santayana’s controversial
theory of essences; and the huge collection of Santayana’s letters to
Strong is in itself a treasure-trove of revelations of the development of
Santayana’s philosophical system.3 In fact, we find in Santayana’s letters
not only a distillation of his philosophy but also a multitude of new per-
spectives on the published work. The responses to his correspondents are
filled with spontaneous comments on and restatements of his fundamen-
tal philosophical ideas and principles. Because Santayana’s philosophy
was not for him a thing apart, but rather the foundation of his existence,
the letters indicate the ways in which his entire life was permeated and
directed by that philosophy. Essential to Santayana’s position is the Greek
ideal of the “life of reason,” a conception of the good life as requiring a
continual commitment to the pursuit of self-knowledge, discipline, and an
unromantic determination to harmonize rather than indulge the passions.
It is the ideal of sophrosune or moderation venerated by classical philoso-
phers like Aristotle and despised by modern ones like Bertrand Russell.
The fullest expression of Santayana’s philosophical system, which we
may observe developing in his letters, is in the four volumes of Realms of
Being, published over a period of fourteen years (1927 to 1940). Santayana
devotes a volume to each of the four realms: essence, matter, truth, and
spirit. These realms are not so much regions or elements of being as they
are kinds or representations thereof. Santayana’s formulation of the realm
of essence caused him, in the view of several of his critics, to be allied with
Platonic idealism; however, Santayana’s essences, unlike those of Plato,
are not the ultimate reality. For Santayana essences are merely an infinite
number of real though non-existent passive forms. The unconscious and
unformed realm of matter is the sole source of power and existence. In
Santayana’s view, the embodiment of essences by matter results in the
substantial physical world. Unlike Plato, for whom spirit or consciousness
exists eternally and independently of matter, Santayana conceived of spir-
 Introduction xxxv

it as conscious self-awareness generated by matter when the vital physical

organism (or psyche, in Santayana’s terms) achieves a certain level of
organization, as in a human being.
Spirit, for Santayana, reluctantly shares the career of the body that has
generated it. If it were free to do so, spirit would range impartially over
the spectacle of existence. But, because of its ineluctable identification
with the career of a specific individual organism, spirit is pulled away
from its natural tendency to disinterested observation by the necessity of
attending to the requirements of the organism to which it is bound. In
Santayana’s letters we see dramatic representations of the predicament of
the philosopher whose spirit, in its effort to seek and comprehend the
truth of things, necessarily strives to transcend the confinements and lim-
itations of particular perspectives, personal or national allegiances, or his-
torical contexts and observe things impartially under the aspect of
eternity. But, because the philosopher is nevertheless an individual and
mortal person, subject to the conditions of his environment and physical
organism, he must, however reluctantly, be called back to the never per-
manently escapable present personal, social, political, material reality.
That Santayana was keenly aware of this dichotomy is made perfectly
clear in his published writings, in his personal life, and in his letters. His
striving for a transcendental perspective devoid of personal, national, or
ideological bias is seen in his perennial effort to stand aloof from social,
political, or professional organizations that would demand of him an alle-
giance to their particular agendas and make impossible, even intermit-
tently, the perspective of eternity. At the same time, we can see his
recognition of the limitations and obligations placed upon every human
individual by one’s nationality, genetic inheritance, and psychological
conditioning. This recognition is reflected in the fact that Santayana
always identified himself as a Spanish citizen, and (despite the ultimately
atheistic character of his philosophical principles) a Roman Catholic. It is
reflected also in the record of loyalty and devotion to family and friends
that we observe in the letters. Perhaps the greatest problem for Santayana,
as manifested in the letters, was the life-long effort of the philosopher to
reconcile his inclination to live in the eternal with the necessity of the
individual human being to live in the here and now.
A succinct statement of his positions on religion, science, and poetry is
found in the 31 August 1951 letter to Ira D. Cardiff. In that letter
Santayana attempts to explain his unbifurcated view of religion and nat-
uralism, and he indicts positivism for unimaginativeness. Because
Santayana’s philosophy is one of materialism and naturalism, wherein
xxxvi The Letters of George Santayana

everything—including spirit or consciousness—has a material basis, there

can be no personal immortality of the kind traditionally conceived of by
religion. The individual spirit is contingent upon the continued existence
of the physical organism or psyche that generated it. At the dissolution of
that organism in death, the spirit, as a consequence of that disorganization
of matter, is annihilated. Except, therefore, where consciousness is tem-
porarily allied to some physical organism, nature is unconscious and
indifferent to human interests. There are, therefore, no supernatural
beings, no disembodied spirits, no gods. Thus religion does not describe
an actual otherworldly realm but rather only this world idealized and rep-
resented mythopoetically. For Santayana religion—and even science—is a
kind of poetry.
Other letters tell us much about Santayana’s literary method and the
achievement of his apparently effortless style. We learn from many letters
that the effect of spontaneous flow in his published writing is actually the
result of a method involving several drafts and much revision leading to
the finished work. In the letter of 13 December 1949 to Rosamond
Thomas (Sturgis) Little, he quotes the compositional principle of Boileau
as representing his own method: “Polish it continually, and repolish it;
add occasionally, and delete often.”4 He frequently had two or three com-
positions going forward simultaneously, moving from one to another as
inspiration and interest guided him. Sometimes he used material pruned
from one project for the substance of another (for example, the incorpo-
ration of the surplus of his Spinoza lecture, “Ultimate Religion,” in his
book, The Realm of Spirit, as described in the 14 May 1932 letter to Cory).
And, apropos of Cory, the detailed criticisms that Santayana makes of the
drafts of essays that Cory sent to him for comment constitute a sort of con-
cise manual for writers, and they reveal Santayana’s unremitting quest,
through continuous review and revision, for perfection of diction and
form in his own writing.
Some letters (for instance, that to the literary scholar and critic William
Bysshe Stein of 1 September 1949) reveal that Santayana conceived of the
practice of literary criticism as stating the critic’s personal taste rather than
making objective evaluations. The letters also document Santayana’s sub-
ordination of aesthetics to ethics and his view of the relativism of the lat-
ter. Still other letters, like the 15 March 1946 one to Rosamond Sturgis
(later Mrs. Little), express Santayana’s traditionalist views on education
and American education in particular. In addition to illuminating his
ideas, views, and accomplishments as thinker and writer, Santayana’s let-
 Introduction xxxvii

ters are especially important in revealing the personal side of the famous
author. Nowhere else—not even in his autobiography, Persons and Places—
does he express so directly and succinctly his fundamental attitudes and
convictions or reveal more intimately the characteristics of his complex
personality.
Each reader of the letters doubtless will relish in them what he or she
is most interested in knowing about Santayana’s life and thought; and
many persons will use this edition to consult specific letters as these per-
tain to certain ideas, persons, or historical events. But anyone who reads
extensively in this collection will see emerge the distinctive personality of
the writer, in a kind of verbal self-portrait. There are, to be sure, other
documents available in which a portrait of Santayana may appear, includ-
ing the many fine articles and books about him, especially John
McCormick’s recent critical biography and Santayana’s inimitable auto-
biography.5 These descriptions of Santayana’s personality and experience
are extremely valuable in fleshing out our image of him as a person and
writer. Private letters usually represent the most spontaneous and
unguarded form of written expression,6 and, by focussing on Santayana’s
letters as illustrative of their author’s personality and character, we dis-
cover in them a concentrated and revealing self-portrait. This verbal self-
portrait, produced partly by unconscious revelations, contributes
significantly to our conception of the sort of individual that Santayana was
and, therefore, to our understanding of his writings.
That Santayana was a precocious genius is evident from even a curso-
ry reading of his early letters. Among the most interesting are those writ-
ten in 1886 to his Harvard classmate, Henry Ward Abbot, while
Santayana was pursuing graduate studies in philosophy in Germany. The
maturity of view, intellectual acuteness, and power of expression in these
letters are remarkable. Santayana’s perennial emphasis on the crucial
importance of the Socratic principle of self-knowledge and the ethical
doctrine of moral relativism7 characteristic of his most mature writings are
nowhere more perfectly expressed than in the 6 October 1886 letter to
Abbot written from Berlin when Santayana was not quite twenty-three
years old. In response to Abbot’s indecision about going into business—as
his family evidently wanted—or pursuing instead some other career,
Santayana wrote:
To do right is to know what you want. Now when you are
dissatisfied with yourself, it’s because you are after some-
thing you don’t want. What objects are you proposing to
xxxviii The Letters of George Santayana

yourself? are they the objects you really value? If they are
not, you are cheating yourself. I don’t mean that if you
chose to pursue the objects you most value, you would
attain them; of course not. Your experience will tell you
that. … but success in getting after much labour what you
really don’t care for is the bitterest and most ridiculous
failure.
Santayana had several other close friends among his Harvard class-
mates, and the fact that he was socially active during his undergraduate
years (or at least as active as his very modest means would permit) is now
well known. He had drawn cartoons for and served on the editorial board
of the Harvard Lampoon; he was president of the Philosophical Club and
took part in Hasty Pudding Club theatricals. But Santayana seems always
to have been a rather formal person who resented what he considered
undue familiarity. In the 21 August 1882 letter to John Galen Howard,
written following their graduation from the Boston Public Latin School,
Santayana expressed his unwillingness to be patronized even by the ven-
erable headmaster, Dr. Moses Merrill:
… I hope he has not had the impudence of addressing all
the fellows by their first names, as he has done me. If he
supposed I would be flattered by being treated with inti-
macy by him, he was greatly mistaken. If I did not deem
it unwise to forfeit anyone’s good opinion merely for the
pleasure of speaking out one’s mind plainly, I should
have answered him and addressed him as “my dear
Moses.”
Forty-six years later, on 4 May 1928, Santayana wrote to his nephew
and business manager, George Sturgis, that he had received a letter from
a William C. Sturgis (a member of the prominent Boston family to which
Santayana’s mother’s first husband had belonged) of whom Santayana
had never heard:
He calls me “George”, but I don’t know who he can be.
Will you enlighten me? … When you reply please tell me
whether he is habitually called William, Will, Willy, Billy,
or Bill, so that I may live up to our relationship.
Santayana was, of course, on a first-name basis with members of his
immediate family, addressing his sister Susan as “Dear Susie,” and he was
not so stiff as not to be on a first-name basis with other persons as well. In
 Introduction xxxix

letters to the intimate friends of his youth—for instance, his Harvard class-
mates—he addressed Henry Ward Abbot, Boylston Adams Beal, and
Robert Burnside Potter as “Harry,” “Boylston,” or “Bob.” In later letters
written to close male friends usually the person is addressed by the last
name only, in the manner more common among men in an earlier time
than it is today. Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, Horace Meyer Kallen,
and Logan Pearsall Smith are addressed as “Dickinson,” “Kallen,” or
“Smith.” The Russell brothers ( John Francis Stanley, the second Earl
Russell, and his younger brother, Bertrand) are each addressed simply as
“Dear Russell.” Daniel Cory was undoubtedly Santayana’s closest friend
during the last twenty-five years of his life, yet he is never addressed in
any of the hundreds of pieces of correspondence that Santayana wrote to
him in any way but as “Dear Cory.”8 In writing or speaking about
Santayana, Cory referred to him simply as “Santayana” (though in con-
versation he sometimes referred to him as “the Master,” in the manner of
Henry James’s disciples and scholars). In Santayana: The Later Years, Cory
describes his arrival at Santayana’s bedside in Rome, shortly before the
latter’s death, saying, “I’m here, Santayana,” so we may assume that once
their friendship had been established Cory addressed his elderly friend
simply as “Santayana.”9 (We do know that in Santayana’s last years his
relationship with the young poet, Robert Lowell, became so friendly that
Lowell, thanking Santayana for helping him financially, humorously
addressed him in one letter as “My dear Uncle.”)10 Santayana’s editors at
Constable and Scribner’s—Otto Kyllmann and John Hall Wheelock,
respectively—are always addressed as Mr. Kyllmann and Mr. Wheelock,
as is Mr. Scribner when Santayana writes directly to the head of the New
York publishing house. Even close women friends of many years—like
Nancy Saunders Toy, Elizabeth Stephens Fish Potter, and Mary Williams
Winslow—are addressed in the letters as “Mrs. Toy,” “Mrs. Potter,” or
“Mrs. Winslow.”
The impression of Santayana as an essentially formal man is reinforced
by the language of his letters, in which there is a notable absence of slang
or obscenity. This is so much the case that one is a little startled to
encounter in a few letters even such mild imprecations as “damn” or
“damned.” As in his published writings, Santayana’s diction in the letters
might be described the way critics have characterized that of Hawthorne
and Henry James: “formal but alive.”
Santayana’s formal style, however, in no way inhibited the expression
of his formidable wit. There is little or no broad humor in Santayana’s let-
xl The Letters of George Santayana

ters, not much in the way of comedy or fun (except perhaps for the 31
August 1887 “Rabelaisian” letter to William Morton Fullerton and the 25
November and 10 December 1904 “Arabian Nights” letters to Mary
Whitall Smith Berenson), but there is plenty of wit: dry, ironical com-
mentary that is often paradoxical and ingenious and invariably in the ser-
vice of some point that he is making.
A typical example of Santayana’s irony and wit is found in the letter of
2 April 1923 to George Sturgis, in which Santayana comments on the
recent appearance of the Scribner’s edition of his Poems:
… a copy Scribner has sent me looks so mean and pover-
ty-stricken that I am afraid they are doing it on the cheap,
in order to make money. Money out of poems! I received
$1.87 for the first two editions, and was thankful, the pub-
lisher having failed in the interval, as was to be expect-
ed.11
In another letter to George Sturgis two years later, Santayana com-
ments on “the instability of the female will,” describing his own present
dependence upon the decisions of several women friends and relatives as
to where and when he may be traveling. He mentions that his friend
Charles Augustus Strong is enjoying the electric heating that Strong’s
daughter, Margaret, had installed in her father’s Paris apartment against
his will, and writes:
… probably I shall go to a hotel [instead of joining Strong
in the Avenue de l’Observatoire apartment], as Margaret
herself may turn up at any moment—another case of La
donna è mobile, especially with an auto-mobile, if you
will excuse an Italian pun. For Margaret has one of her
own much better than her father’s.12
In the summer of 1928 Santayana’s friend, the Yale English professor
and popular literary critic William Lyon Phelps, and his wife were plan-
ning a trip to Spain, about which Santayana wrote:
I admire your courage and that of Mrs. Phelps in going
to Madrid in August. We might apply to it a story Strong
likes to tell about a delegate’s description of the summer
breezes of Chicago: that not content with coming out of
the very mouth of hell, they had first blown over the State
of Texas. For Texas read the plains of La Mancha, and
you will know what awaits you.13
 Introduction xli

A final example of the mordant irony of which Santayana was capable

is in the 27 March 1939 letter to George Sturgis regarding Bertrand
Russell, who, Santayana believed, like Russell’s elder brother, had wast-
ed his genius through personal and political folly:
Not that his philosophy would have been sound: he is a
born heretic or genial madman, like John Knox or
Giordano Bruno: yet he is preternaturally intelligent,
penetrating, and radical; so that the more wrong he is the
clearer he makes the wrongness of his position; and what
more can you expect a philosopher to prove except that
the views he has adopted are radically and eternally
impossible? If every philosopher had done that in the
past, we should now be almost out of the wood.
As we encounter Santayana’s wit in the letters, we may occasionally
find ourselves laughing out loud, but more often our amused response is
of a quieter kind. Santayana’s sense of humor—or, more precisely, his
witty and ironic cast of mind—is much akin to that of Henry James (with
whom he shares not only a formal style but also other qualities and char-
acteristics)14 and not at all like that of Mark Twain.
Concomitant with Santayana’s ironical view of the world was his own
capacity for laughter. He likened himself to Democritus, “the laughing
philosopher,” and said that his friends told him that he laughed too much.
Yet most of the photographs of Santayana depict him as very grim. He did
not like being photographed and thought the typical grinning snapshot a
very inaccurate representation of someone. Thus, almost all of the extant
photos of Santayana—with the exception of a group taken in the Blue
Sisters’ nursing-home in Rome toward the end of his life—portray him as
an unsmiling and somber man. The same is true of the drawings made
from photographs to illustrate the dust jackets of several of his books, one
of which, he complained to Scribner’s, made him look “cross-eyed and
ferocious.”15 These somber or hostile-looking pictures, combined with his
political conservatism and reputation for avoiding society, have con-
tributed to a widespread notion that Santayana was remote and forbid-
ding; “cold-blooded” is a term sometimes applied to him. It is true that
the Santayana represented in the letters is unsentimental and tough-
minded, and his love of solitude and his philosophic resignation give the
impression that he was more indifferent and detached from human life
and feeling than are most people. But the letters provide considerable evi-
dence that Santayana was capable of profound emotional attachments.
xlii The Letters of George Santayana

So far as we know, Santayana never had a romantic relationship with

a woman, though there were several women with whom he enjoyed close
friendship and lifelong correspondence. Mrs. Toy, Mrs. Potter, and Mrs.
Winslow fit this description. And, until her death in 1928, Santayana’s
elder half sister Susan was, in complex ways, the beloved woman in his
life. However, Santayana—like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche—saw women
as fundamentally different from men, as is illustrated by a 17 February
1887 letter to Henry Ward Abbot:
A woman, for example, is despised in so far as she is a
human individual competing with others for life, espe-
cially because her methods of competing are small and
mean; but she is loved and even worshiped as the com-
plement of man, as something filling out his life without
sharing his qualities.
Feminists, with some justification, condemn Santayana as a sexist who
characterized women as inferior. Santayana believed that, compared to
men, women are generally not as intelligent, interesting, or physically
fine; men are the superior gender. This exaltation of the masculine may
be derived from Santayana’s own sexual nature. From his letters, from the
events of The Last Puritan and his remarks about the novel in the letters,
and from the conversation about A. E. Housman reported by Cory,16 it
seems clear that Santayana’s sexual orientation was not conventional. The
early letters to his Harvard classmate, Henry Ward Abbot, are particular-
ly significant in this regard. On 23 April 1887 Santayana wrote:
… I hate my own arrogance and would worship the man
who should knock it out of me. Says a Spanish song:
I am searching land & ocean
For the man that I might love,
And whenever my heart finds him
Then he will have found his slave.
Man or thing—it makes no difference—but heaven grant it
be no woman. … Of course all girls aren’t foolish—some
are charming and I am tender on two or three myself; but
if I ever humbug a woman into marrying me, it will be a
piece of selfishness on my part, depend upon it, and not
a conquest on hers.
The comments of the young Santayana in this letter about women and
marriage are common in the banter of young men, but the general tone
 Introduction xliii

here is not heterosexual, and, for this reason and in light of Santayana’s
other writings, we are disinclined to take seriously the statement about his
being “tender” on two or three girls.
A year earlier, in the spring of 1886 (his senior year at Harvard),
Santayana had met the tall, athletic, good-looking, cultivated, and
supremely self-confident Earl Russell, and he evidently fell in love with
the young aristocrat. His letters to Abbot of 1887 reveal his complete
infatuation:
… Russell is the ablest man, all round, that I have ever
met. You have no idea what a splendid creature he is, no
more had I till I had seen a great deal of him. He isn’t
good, that is he is completely selfish and rather cruel,
although I fancy I made too much of his heartlessness at
first. But then both practically and intellectually he is
really brilliant. … I know I am making a fool of myself in
writing about him. … but I send a note of his so that you
may judge for yourself and also have some idea of the
men I am seeing here. Pass the note on to Herbert Lyman
and let him keep it or send it back to me. I am going
tomorrow to stay with Russell again, for he is laid up and
wants company. … Don’t tell this round, I beg of you, but
I tell you because I am telling you everything to-day. I
make an exception of Herbert, because I should have to
tell him sooner or later, and he won’t chuckle over it as if
it were a joke merely, which it isn’t.17
In a letter to Abbot written a week later, Santayana reveals the abject
character of his relationship with Russell:
… what I call my “fall from grace and self-control” … is
simply this. Russell has a way of treating people which is
insufferably insolent and insulting. Never for a moment
did I imagine I could allow anyone to treat me in such a
way. But I find that instead of caring for my own dignity
and independence … I find that I don’t care a rap for my
interest in myself or my ways of doing things, but that I
am quite willing to stand anything, however outrageous,
that comes from a certain quarter. This is what has hap-
pened to me. I am a fool to say a word about it—espe-
cially when people think that I am talking about trifles. …
don’t imagine I am referring to “country matters”.18
xliv The Letters of George Santayana

The revelations of these letters to Abbot are franker expressions of

Santayana’s willingness to abase himself and accept abuse from Russell
than are found in Persons and Places, including the episode he relates there
about accidentally pulling the young earl into the Thames and being vio-
lently abused verbally by him for clumsiness.19 And Santayana’s willing-
ness to swallow his pride and suffer indignities from Russell seems to have
been unending. In the autumn of 1923, when he was almost sixty and
planning a trip to England to deliver the Herbert Spencer Lecture at
Oxford, he wrote to Russell saying that he hoped there would be a chance
to see him. Russell’s reply was: “Do as you like,” and Santayana respond-
ed as follows:
If you leave it to me, I will certainly come [to Russell’s
house in Hampshire]. I don’t believe that anything has
really happened to alter our relations to one another
which were always tacit and expressed in conduct rather
than words. You now say more than you ever said to me,
even in our young days, about being “attached to me”;
you must have been, in some way which in spite of my
cold-blooded psychology I don’t pretend to understand.
In that case, why drop me now, when certainly there has
been no change on my side except that involved in pass-
ing from twenty to sixty? Let me come, anyhow once,
and we can judge better whether everything is as usual or
whether the barrier you speak of—which certainly is not
“Elizabeth” or her affairs—really exists.
Shall it be next Tuesday, and if so, what train shall I
take?
Yours ever20
Santayana did visit Russell, who was indifferent, even frequently mistak-
ing his name and calling him “Sargeaunt,” the name of another of
Russell’s friends, a Latin master at Westminster.21
As in the cases of Henry James and A. E. Housman there is no evi-
dence that Santayana was an active or practicing homosexual or that his
youthful relationship with Russell (or anyone else, for that matter) was
homosexual in a physical sense. Indeed, the Hamlet echo of his warning
to Abbot not to construe his attachment to Russell as involving “country
matters” might indicate that Santayana regarded his devotion as tran-
scending the merely physical.22
 Introduction xlv

Only a deep emotional attachment could have enabled Santayana to

continue for so many years to tolerate Russell’s unpleasantness and indif-
ference; yet Santayana appears always to have been aware of Russell’s
faults. This insuperable critical faculty doubtless sobered Santayana’s
affections for other persons about whom he felt less strongly: he had no
illusions about people. For instance, he appreciated his nephew, George
Sturgis, for his able stewardship of his financial properties, as he had
George’s father—Santayana’s half brother Robert—for performing the
same service. He frequently closed letters to George Sturgis with “Yours
affectionately,” and even signed one to him of 1927: “With much love.”
But other letters reveal that he did not care for his nephew any more than
he had for George’s father; he found both men lacking in sensitivity and
sympathetic imagination.23 But the letters show that Santayana was gen-
uinely affectionate toward several persons. He was very well disposed
toward George Sturgis’s first wife, Rosamond, with whom he carried on a
long correspondence.
Santayana appreciated Rosamond’s thoughtfulness and kindness in
sending him packages of food and clothing, after the war in Italy had
ended and supplies in Rome remained short. He regularly signed his let-
ters to her “Your affectionate Uncle George.” He was also very fond of
George’s and Rosamond’s eldest son, Robert (“Bob”) Shaw Sturgis, who
had visited him several times in Rome in 1944 when Bob was there in the
U.S. Air Force. His letters to Bob after the war, when the latter was a
Harvard undergraduate studying architecture (the field that Santayana
had once thought seriously of making his profession), are full of unfeigned
interest in the young man’s activities and plans. The grandfatherly affec-
tion that the octogenarian felt for his good-looking, intelligent, and artis-
tic young grandnephew is unmistakable in both the letters Santayana
wrote to Rosamond and those to Bob himself.
If Santayana’s affection for young Bob Sturgis was grandfatherly, his
feeling for the young Daniel Cory was fatherly. Santayana first met Cory
in April 1927, when Cory was twenty-two and Santayana sixty-three, and
a long, intimate friendship began. Cory, who first encountered
Santayana’s writings at Columbia University, had left college before com-
pleting a degree and had gone to live and work in London. Impressed
with an essay that the young man had written on his philosophy and sent
to him, Santayana offered to pay Cory’s expenses for a visit to Rome. He
was pleased by Cory’s critical acumen, his interest in and grasp of
Santayana’s philosophy, and engaged the young man to assist him in
xlvi The Letters of George Santayana

arranging the manuscript of The Realm of Matter for publication. This was
the beginning of a friendship and professional association that lasted for
twenty-five years, until Santayana’s death in 1952.
Initially, Santayana did not think of Cory’s position of literary assistant
or secretary as becoming permanent.24 But Cory, while working for
Santayana, made the acquaintance of Santayana’s friend, the American
epistemologist Charles Augustus Strong, who also wanted someone to
help him prepare his writings for publication, and Cory became Strong’s
assistant or secretary as well. Both Strong and Santayana paid Cory a
modest monthly allowance. This combined income enabled Cory to live
separately, usually in England; but he spent protracted periods living near
Strong, either in Paris or at Le Balze (“The Cliffs”), Strong’s villa at
Fiesole, near Florence. Cory also made infrequent visits to Santayana in
Rome, helping him with his writing projects. For the most part, during
their long association, Cory lived far from Santayana, usually in another
country, and sometimes several years passed without the two men seeing
one another. Despite the separation, however, Santayana continued to
send Cory his monthly allowance, with special supplements for medical
bills, clothing, and travel. Though he never expected Cory’s dependency
upon him to become permanent, Santayana eventually realized that it
had and accepted responsibility for supporting Cory as long as he could
do so. Before the mail between Italy and the United States was cut off by
World War II, he arranged with Scribner’s for Cory to receive the royal-
ties on his books, so that the latter might not be left without resources.
In the beginning, Santayana’s appreciation of Daniel Cory was based
largely upon Cory’s solid understanding and sincere advocacy of
Santayana’s philosophy, as shown in the 21 May 1928 letter to Cory:
… you understand the true inwardness of it, and your
ways of expressing it are enough your own for me to feel
sure that it is not a casual adoption of a technical theory,
but a true participation in the Idea.
Later, Santayana’s admiration and affection for Cory was increased by
Cory’s considerable charm, his talent for reading aloud (a valuable skill in
the revision of manuscripts and something that Santayana felt he himself
could not do well), his enterprise in addressing himself to the task of prop-
agating Santayana’s views by writing articles on his philosophy for publi-
cation in professional journals, and his representation of Santayana in
communication with the editors of leading periodicals—such as T. S. Eliot
 Introduction xlvii

of The Criterion and Henry Seidel Canby of The Saturday Review of

Literature—about publication of Santayana’s writings in their magazines.
He also believed that Cory was someone he could depend on in a per-
sonal emergency, someone who would assist him if he became seriously
ill. And it was, indeed, Cory who traveled from England to Rome to be
with Santayana during the final weeks of his life and who made the diffi-
cult arrangements for Santayana’s funeral and burial in the Campo
Verano Cemetery in Rome.25
Despite his affection for Cory and his appreciation of Cory’s personal
loyalty and devotion to his philosophy, Santayana did not hesitate to crit-
icize him—both in letters to Cory and to others—on several counts: for
being a spendthrift; lacking initiative; failing to complete independent lit-
erary projects that he had begun (such as Cory’s unfinished autobio-
graphical novel, Michael ); repeating to him unpleasant things that C. A.
Strong had said about him (Santayana), thereby exacerbating his always
difficult relations with Strong;26 and for wasting “the best years of his life
playing golf.”27
The affectionate side of Santayana revealed in the letters contrasts with
the cold-bloodedness of which he has been accused (and of which he even
accuses himself). This conception of Santayana—as lacking in human
warmth and sympathy—may well derive, in part, from his political views
and his tendency to perceive things sub specie aeternitatis. He was a true
modern in terms of the bleakness of his outlook and in his chronic detach-
ment. There is also something very Spanish in the essential starkness of
his view of life. In 1917, during World War I, Santayana wrote a letter to
Bertrand Russell that Russell quoted from in his autobiography to demon-
strate Santayana’s lack of feeling:
As for deaths and loss of capital, I don’t much care.
The young men killed would grow older if they lived,
and then they would be good for nothing; and after being
good for nothing for a number of years they would die of
catarrh or a bad kidney or the halter or old age—and
would that be less horrible?28
This letter suggests that Santayana did not consider the anguish suffered
by the families, sweethearts, and comrades of the soldiers killed in the
war, or indeed the loss of life to the soldiers themselves. However it is evi-
dent from numerous other letters that Santayana wrote during the period
1914–18 that he was profoundly distressed by the terrible events of this
war and especially by the appalling loss of life on all sides. The letters
xlviii The Letters of George Santayana

show, in fact, that he was so depressed by these events that he found it dif-
ficult to think or write. Twenty-seven years later, writing to Andrew J.
Onderdonk on 20 January 1945, he was less discomfited by the horrific
events of World War II:
Perhaps the years since we last saw each other, and the
many since we saw each other often—34!—have made me
more inhuman than ever; but public and private
tragedies move me now much less than they did. I think
of all the empires reduced to filthy little heaps of ruins; of
all the battles and sieges in the histories, and all the hor-
rible fates of potentates, tyrants, patriots, and saints; and
what now happens to us seems almost a matter of course.
Santayana believed that, in order to understand the world, the observ-
er must not be too closely attached to it or too actively engaged in it. The
social activism of a Bertrand Russell or a Jean-Paul Sartre was anathema
to him. His detachment could, on occasion—as in his comments on the
two world wars—appear as sheer lack of interest in human well-being. In
October 1928 Horace M. Kallen wrote asking Santayana to “sponsor”
Kallen’s new book on “the Sacco and Vanzetti letters” or to join a com-
mittee that Kallen was forming to protest the way in which the case of the
two Italian anarchists had been handled. In a 22 October 1928 letter
Santayana refused Kallen’s request, making the following comment:
I don’t know whether those men were condemned for
what, morally, wasn’t a crime, or whether they were
innocent altogether: in any case, it was a scandal to put
off their execution so long, and then to execute them. It
shows the weakness, confusion, and occasional cruelty of
a democratic government: it is more merciful to the con-
demned, and more deterrent to others, to execute them
at once, as do my friends the Bolsheviks and the Fascists.
But that, I imagine, is not what your book is intended to
prove.
Santayana, somewhat chillingly, places the emphasis not upon the possi-
bility that two innocent men were condemned and executed, but rather
that they were not executed more quickly once the American court had
pronounced them guilty. In several other letters he uniformly refuses
requests to participate in public demonstrations to endorse or denounce
either side of a particular moral or political issue.
 Introduction xlix

Santayana’s conservative politics—he described himself as a Tory29—

sometimes caused him to take positions that seem mean-spirited. In 1940
Rosamond Sturgis was assisting a young working-class college student
with his expenses. In a 10 October 1940 letter to her Santayana autho-
rized Rosamond to have George Sturgis withdraw a hundred dollars from
his account to be added to the fund for the student, but he included this
comment:
… to tell you the whole truth, I don’t like to give in char-
ity to the deserving; it only encourages them to make
greater demands on life, to strain, and to increase the
half-educated proletariate [sic]; whereas the undeserving
merely get a drink, are happy for half an hour, and no
worse afterwards than they were before. However, it may
be the American ideal to increase the half-educated pro-
letariat until it includes everybody; but would that be a
happy result?
Again, the apparent callousness and cynicism of Santayana’s remarks in
this letter are disconcerting: we wonder at the smug injustice of a social
philosophy that accepts the accident of birth as the sole determinant of
opportunity and privilege for some and denial and deprivation for others.
Santayana frequently has been accused of anti-Semitism, and in sever-
al letters we do find unpalatable statements about Jews and Jewishness.
On 12 August 1936 he wrote to George Sturgis that he was reconciled to
the necessary transitoriness of things, that all conservatisms were doomed
because nothing could be kept up permanently, and for example added:
The Jews, for instance, aren’t in the least like Abraham or
King Solomon: they are just sheenies.
And in a 1 May 1938 letter to Mrs. Toy about Walter Lippmann, Sidney
Hook, and Irwin Edman, he wrote:
Are the Jews going to repent of being anti’s, for fear that
soon there should be nothing left to be anti against? After
all they have made themselves very comfortable in
Christendom, and if nothing but an international prole-
tariat remained, it would not offer them such brilliant
careers as professors and prime minister and newspaper
proprietors.
Mrs. Toy’s response to this letter evidently recommended that Santayana
avoid anti-Semitism, for in his 12 August 1938 letter to her he observed:
l The Letters of George Santayana

I ought to love the Jews, as they seem to be my only

friends intellectually, beginning with Edman—not to go
back to Spinoza.
These remarks of Santayana’s, though critical and contemptuous of
what he perceived to be ancient and modern Jewish attitudes, did not pre-
vent his appreciation of virtuous individual Jews. Ironically, Baruch
Spinoza was Santayana’s acknowledged master, and there was no philoso-
pher for whom he had greater respect. He appreciated the keen interest
in his own philosophy taken by Morris Cohen and Irwin Edman, and he
appears to have been fond of his former graduate assistant at Harvard,
Horace M. Kallen, to whom, after his retirement from Harvard, he had
given his doctoral cap and gown and to whom he wrote numerous warm,
friendly letters,30 frequently complimenting Kallen on his publications. To
George Sturgis on 31 January 1941 Santayana wrote that his doctor in
Rome (Luigi Sabbatucci, who served as his physician from 1935 until
Santayana’s death in 1952) had, like himself, never heard of lire miste (evi-
dently a form of Italian wartime currency) “although he is a Jew, and a
very nice person.” But Santayana’s most redeeming statement on the mat-
ter of racial prejudice is probably that found in his 23 September 1926 let-
ter to John Jay Chapman, an American bigot who had offered Santayana
the presidency of “The Aryan Society”:
Against whom is the Aryan Society directed? Against the
Arabians, the Jews, the Chinese, and the blameless
Ethiopians? I confess that I don’t like the Jewish spirit,
because it is worldly, seeing God in thrift and success,
and I know nothing of the blacks; but the Arabs and the
Chinese seem to me in some ways, apart from the cos-
tume, nearer to the Greeks than we are in Europe and
America: they have taken the measure of life more sane-
ly. Might it not turn out, then, that the Aryan Society, if it
stood for the life of reason, was especially directed
against the Aryans? Races, like nations, seem an unfortu-
nate class of units to identify with moral ideas.
If, therefore, Santayana’s comments in his letters and other writings are
perceived by some readers as repugnantly anti-Semitic, others today—
including a number of Jewish scholars—argue that such a view is an exag-
geration and reject the charge that Santayana was truly anti-Semitic. At
the very least, the quotation from the letter to Chapman indicates that he
was not a racist.
 Introduction li

Charles Loeser, Santayana’s classmate at Harvard, was from a pros-

perous Jewish family. Santayana enjoyed Loeser’s company and admired
his mastery of foreign languages and expert knowledge of art, which
Santayana thought even greater than Bernard Berenson’s. The two young
men traveled together and afterward remained friends for many years.
The young Santayana also enjoyed the forays he made into Boston
society, but most especially he relished the company of other sophisticat-
ed or cultivated young men. In some letters we find the elderly philoso-
pher reminiscing about the bachelor dinner parties of the 1890s in
Cambridge that had given him some of the most pleasant moments of his
life. As he got older, however, Santayana more and more preferred to be
alone, and a correlate of this love of solitude was his dislike of controver-
sy, a rather surprising characteristic in a philosopher. On 6 June 1939 he
wrote to Mrs. Toy: “I don’t like mental fierceness, even on my own side
in philosophy”. Many years earlier, during the summer following his
retirement from Harvard, Santayana had written (on 2 August 1912) to his
former colleague and department chairman, George Herbert Palmer, that
he expected to benefit from conversations in Cambridge, England, with
his friends Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore:
… whose views are near enough to mine to be stimulat-
ing to me, while the fact that they live in an atmosphere
of controversy (which for myself I hate) renders them
keenly alive to all sorts of objections and pitfalls which I
need to be warned of, in my rather solitary and
unchecked reasonings.
If Santayana enjoyed occasionally discussing philosophical issues with
friends (and, in the last part of his life, with many of the persons who vis-
ited him at the nursing home in Rome), he decidedly did not enjoy pro-
fessional conferences. In the 23 September 1932 letter to Mrs. Toy in
which he reported on his recent participation in the Domus Spinozana con-
ference at The Hague (6–10 September 1932), Santayana described the
meetings as being “like all meetings and international conferences, rather
tiresome and futile”; “in the end”, he had written to his sister Susan on 1
October 1913, “every philosopher has to walk alone.” And in the 18 July
1913 letter to the poet Arthur Davison Ficke, Santayana echoed Socrates’
remark to Crito in Plato’s dialogue of the same name:
… what does it matter what other people think? If we
care too much about persuading them we may disturb
lii The Letters of George Santayana

their peaceful conventions to no good purpose, since

they will never get anything straight, while we blunt the
edge of truth in our own words.
Santayana believed that if his auditors or readers could comprehend intu-
itively the truth of his views, they would accept them; but if they could
not do so, there was no point in attempting to badger people into agree-
ment. One must catch the spark if concurrence is to be genuine and
meaningful. Agreement in intellectual matters, he felt, came about more
through sympathetic understanding than through debate.
Just as he did not like the gatherings of professors at professional meet-
ings, neither did Santayana—with few exceptions—like individual profes-
sors; and he didn’t like being one himself. On 6 June 1912, at the time of
his retirement from Harvard, he wrote to President Abbott Lawrence
Lowell that “although fond of books and of young men, I was never alto-
gether fit to be a professor”. Three years later, on 4 August 1915, he wrote
to his former graduate student, B. A. G. Fuller, who was then on the
Harvard philosophy faculty, about his disillusionment with teaching phi-
losophy:
… I can’t take the teaching of philosophy seriously in
itself, either as a means of being a philosopher or of
teaching the young anything solid: they merely flirt with
that for a year or two instead of flirting with something
else. Philosophy is not a science; it might be a life or a
means of artistic expression, but it is not likely to be
either at an American college.
Contrary to the present-day practice of calling every college or uni-
versity teacher of philosophy—from the greenest assistant professor to the
hoariest veteran—a “philosopher,” Santayana made a significant distinc-
tion between a “philosopher” and what he referred to as a “mere profes-
sor” of philosophy.31 For Santayana the teaching of philosophy was a
profession like any other; but, for the true philosopher, philosophy was
not only a profession but also a vocation or way of life. In a humorous
vein, he wrote to George Sturgis, his nephew and new financial manager,
on 14 August 1921:
In respect to money-matters, I am a true philosopher (not
a mere professor of Phil. 10, 12, etc) and my one wish is
not to hear about them, but to cash cheques and be
happy.
 Introduction liii

More seriously, he says in a 1926 letter to Lewis Mumford regarding

Mumford’s discussion of him in The Golden Day:
… I feel that you are thinking of me—quite naturally—as
just a Harvard professor, author of a book called “The
Life of Reason”. Your appreciation seems absolutely just,
as directed upon that semi-public personage: but I never
felt myself to be identical with that being, and now much
less than ever.32
In a 16 June 1934 letter to Harry Austryn Wolfson, Santayana uses his
favorite, Spinoza, to make clear his distinction between the philosopher
and the “mere professor” of philosophy:
I believe there is another reason also why Spinoza seems
to me so pre-eminent: that in spite of being traditional, or
because he was not distracted by side issues, he was an
entire and majestic mind, a singularly consecrated soul.
All these trite dogmas and problems lived in him and
were the natural channels for his intuitions and emotions.
That is what I feel to make a real philosopher and not,
what we are condemned to be, professors of the philoso-
phy of other people, or of our own opinions.
Spinoza had been excommunicated by the rabbis in 1656 and banished
from Amsterdam for his heretical ideas; living on the outskirts of the city,
he earned a meager subsistence as a lens-grinder. Several years later, in
order to maintain his intellectual independence, Spinoza turned down the
offer of a chair of philosophy at Heidelberg. Santayana believed that, by
retiring as soon as he could from Harvard, he had achieved a compara-
ble independence. He expressed this idea of the necessary freedom of the
philosopher in the 9 June 1937 letter to Cory saying: “you are now a
recognised free lance in philosophy, as all philosophers ought to be.”
While avowedly not fond of professors, Santayana nevertheless moved
among them all his life, as many of his correspondents and many of his
visitors during the years that he lived in hotels in Rome were professors.
In fact, almost all of Santayana’s friends and associates were individuals
of either social or intellectual stature, or both. In some of his letters he dis-
tinguishes between what he calls “nice” people (the well-bred, well-edu-
cated, and well-to-do) and common or ordinary people. His habit of
choosing his friends from among socially prominent Americans and aris-
tocratic Europeans led to accusations of sponging, social climbing, and
liv The Letters of George Santayana

snobbery. Santayana responds to the latter charge in the 8 September

1920 letter to William Lyon Phelps:
I protest against being called a snob; what I love is
what is simple, humble, easy, what ought to be common,
and it is only the bombast of false ambitions and false
superiority, that I abhor.
There is no indication that Santayana, whatever his preferences for the
well-born and well-bred, was ever anything but courteous to and consid-
erate of persons in humble positions. In his letters, Santayana refers to the
waiters in the restaurants he frequented as being his friends, and there are
references to the servants in the hotels or private houses that he stayed in
that express Santayana’s consideration of them and his desire to do the
right thing and be thought well of by them. Perhaps Santayana received
a certain satisfaction from the names distinguished by European aristo-
cratic titles in some of the lists of persons he sent to his publishers to
receive complimentary copies of his books, but there is no evidence of
Santayana ever fawning on any Boston Brahmin or European aristocrat—
not even Bertrand Russell’s elder brother, where the matter was compli-
cated far beyond mere snobbery.
One purpose of this introduction is to suggest the ways in which
Santayana’s letters reveal various characteristics of his personality, how a
self-portrait emerges from the letters. That portrait is both fascinating and
invaluable in giving us a better understanding of the complex personali-
ty of someone who was a profound thinker, gifted artist, and sophisticat-
ed man of the world. By thus illuminating more subtly and fully
Santayana’s personality and character, the letters can deepen our insight
into his philosophical and literary works. (And many of the letters address
directly the principal ideas and themes of those works.) But though
remarkably interesting and informative, the letters make no sensational
revelations about Santayana’s personal life. It is not at all the case with
him—as it often is with celebrities—that the private individual differs dra-
matically from the public persona. On the contrary, the evidence of the
letters is that Santayana was a person of exceptional integrity, a man with
a clear conception of who and what he was and what he ought to be, and
one who tried to live a life of reason in accord with this conception of
himself.
Nevertheless, the personality reflected in the letters is complicated and
paradoxical. Some letters reveal Santayana as a political reactionary,
 Introduction lv

complacent about arbitrary inequalities of opportunity in society, approv-

ing of ruthlessly repressive forces like Mussolini and the Italian and
Spanish fascists, and—in terms of his remarks about the Jews—insensitive
about racial slurs. Yet the letters also show him as someone who rejected
totalitarianism on principle, disapproved of capitalism on moral grounds,
advocated a kind of state socialism, and was sympathetic to Bolshevism.33
They depict a thinker who aided and abetted creative expression in oth-
ers even when that expression clashed with his own opinions. They show
a man tolerant of irritating traits in family and friends, who frequently suf-
fered annoyance and inconvenience in order to accommodate persons to
whom he felt a debt of loyalty. They show us an honest man, generous
with his money and time, often contributing to the financial support of
relatives, friends, and needy strangers, and taking the time and trouble to
write conscientious appraisals of works sent to him by other writers. All
in all, the portrait of Santayana that emerges from the letters is that of a
man devoted to his work, one who valued friendship and loyalty highly,
was considerate and polite, but who quickly comprehended a situation
and was never reluctant to speak his mind. We invariably find him giving
his correspondents his frank opinions, irrespective of their own views.
There is nothing of the boor or bully in this candor, but rather only a
desire to be truthful.
Santayana’s letters depict a person of rare gifts and remarkable accom-
plishments, a very private individual, neither curmudgeonly nor arrogant.
They reveal a man endowed with great intellectual powers, living
detached from and “above” the world, who was nonetheless thoroughly
human.

Endnotes
1
Most of Santayana’s correspondence is in English. However, he wrote in Spanish to
relatives and friends in Spain, and the 29 April 1945 letter (to Dino Rigacci) is in
Italian.
2
Per 6 September 1934 to Cory.
3
The collection of 373 pieces of correspondence from Santayana to his Harvard class-
mate, life-long friend, and fellow professional philosopher C. A. Strong (1862–1940),
over the half-century from 1889 to 1939, is second only in size to the collection of cor-
respondence from Santayana to Daniel Cory (over the quarter-century from 1927 to
1952) totaling 400 items. Until recently, only a few items of Santayana’s correspon-
dence to Strong had been located, and it was feared that the rest had been destroyed
when German soldiers occupied the latter’s Villa le Balze, at Fiesole, Italy, during the
Second World War. Fortunately, however, the rest was discovered early in 1999,
housed in the Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Strong’s wife,
lvi The Letters of George Santayana

Elizabeth, was the daughter of John D. Rockefeller, and the letters were deposited in
the Archive by Elizabeth Cuevas, Strong’s granddaughter, in 1994.
4
The letter reads: “Polissez-le toujours, et le repolissez, / Ajoutez quelquefois et sou-
vent effacez.”
5
See especially Margaret Münsterberg, “Santayana at Cambridge,” American Mercury
1 (1924): 69–74; George W. Howgate, George Santayana (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1938); Dialogue on George
Santayana, ed. Corliss Lamont (New York: Horizon Press, 1959); Bruno Lind, Vagabond
Scholar: A Venture into the Privacy of George Santayana (New York: Bridgehead Books,
1962); John McCormick, George Santayana: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1987); and George Santayana, Persons and Places: Fragments of Autobiography, Critical
Edition, ed. William G. Holzberger and Herman J. Saatkamp Jr. (Cambridge: The
MIT Press, 1986). (Further references to the autobiography are to the Critical Edition.)
For a concise biography of Santayana as poet see Holzberger, “Introduction” to The
Complete Poems of George Santayana (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press; London:
Associated University Presses, 1979), 23–82. Daniel Cory, in Santayana: The Later Years,
A Portrait with Letters (New York: George Braziller, 1963), makes specific use of his let-
ters from Santayana to illustrate aspects of Santayana’s character and personality.
6
Even in his personal correspondence, so careful and deliberate a writer as Santayana
was never wholly spontaneous and unguarded.
7
“Moral relativism,” as Santayana uses the term, must be understood to include more
than mere arbitrary choice of behavior. For Santayana, morals are relative to the indi-
vidual and the specific situation, and the natural sanctions which determine acceptable
behavior are immediate and absolute.
8
The letter of 18 December 1928 begins, without salutation: “Of course, dear Cory”;
and within the letters to Cory of 21 May 1928, 1 July 1937, and 23 January 1940 we
find the phrases “My dear Cory”, “For heaven’s sake, dear Cory”, and “Now, dear
Cory”, respectively. But in the 352 letters to Cory that begin with a salutation it is uni-
formly “Dear Cory.”
9
The Later Years, 321. Cory’s part of the correspondence is unlocated; Santayana usu-
ally discarded letters after reading them.
10
Letter from Lowell to Santayana of 8 January [1950]. Santayana kept Lowell’s let-
ters, which are in the Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin.
11
The first book of Santayana’s poems was Sonnets and Other Verses (Cambridge: Stone
and Kimball, 1894). A revised, expanded edition was published in 1896.
12
14 May 1925.
13
15 July 1928.
14
Grattan Freyer, the late Irish literary critic, said to me that The Last Puritan was “like
the best of Henry James.”
15
“And why has my photo been redrawn so as to make me cross-eyed and ferocious?
I know that self-knowledge is often self-deception, but I feel not at all as this person-
age looks.” (1 February 1936 to Wheelock)
16
“I suppose Housman was really what people nowadays call ‘homosexual,’ [said
Santayana].”
“Why do you say that?” I [Cory] protested at once.
“Oh, the sentiment of his poems is unmistakable, [Santayana replied].”
There was a pause, and then he added, as if he were primarily speaking to him-
self, “I think I must have been that way in my Harvard days—although I was uncon-
scious of it at the time.” (The Later Years, 40)
17
20 May 1887.
18
27 May 1887.
 Introduction lvii

19
Persons, 297–98.
20
5 September 1923 and undated letter written between 20 September and 24
October 1923. “Elizabeth” refers to the Countess Russell, the earl’s third wife, who had
left him in 1918.
21
Persons, 517.
22
There is no evidence that Santayana ever had a physical sexual relationship with
either a man or a woman. This suggests perhaps that whatever sexual promptings he
may have experienced were sublimated to his thought and art and found expression
in his writings. It is also possible that Santayana deliberately embraced the tradition of
celibacy advocated by the Roman Catholic Church for members of the clergy (and by
the religions of India and China for holy-men and wisemen). He had a great respect
for the traditions of the Church and frequently refers to himself in the letters as monk-
like, saying that he could live happily in a monastery.
23
In a 30 September 1938 letter to Cory, Santayana described George Sturgis as “a
nice person, but not very perceptive”; and in a 31 December 1944 letter to Rosamond
Sturgis, from whom George recently had been divorced before his sudden death on 20
December 1944, Santayana wrote: “George never gave me any explanation of the
estrangement that had arisen between you, and of course I respected his discretion and
asked no questions. But I could well imagine that, like his father, he might prove hard
to live with in the long run. In fact, when you came to Rome, I couldn’t help wonder-
ing how you ever decided to marry him. He was very good, very useful, and very able
in many ways, and for me he proved a treasure (literally) in the management of my
affairs, as his father had been too. But there was never a resposive [sic ] chord.”
24
For example, in the 2 August 1944 letter to George Sturgis, Santayana wrote: “Cory
has been a problem for Strong and me for many years. He too is not a business man,
and between us three we managed to land him, at the age of nearly forty, in no man’s
land. I feel a certain responsibility for him, as it was as my disciple and secretary that
he first turned to philosophy: but I never meant to make our connection permanent.”
25
The Later Years, 325–27.
26
“… perhaps you would do better not to report to either of us any nasty thing that
the other may say, or do, in regard to his good old friend. It makes it harder to keep
up the amicable tone of our relations. … Do help us to remain friends.” (11 November
1931 to Cory)
27
5 February 1936 to Rosamond Sturgis.
28
[December 1917].
29
In the 12 May 1946 letter to David Page, Santayana says, while he is well aware that
others regard his political views as “Fascism and Phalangism,” that he regards them as
“Toryism.”
30
See, for instance, 15 and 25 September 1926 to Kallen.
31
This attitude of Santayana’s was more common in an earlier time. I recall Paul
Arthur Schilpp espousing this view in class at Northwestern University during the
1950s. Schilpp made a point of reserving the term “philosopher” for the great figures
of the history of philosophy and for contemporary theorists of international reputation.
32
16 December 1926, Lewis Mumford, The Golden Day (New York: Boni and
Liveright, 1926).
33
“Something in me tells me that the Russian Bolsheviks are right—not in their con-
duct, which has been scandalous and silly—but in their sense for values, in their equal
hostility to every government founded on property and privilege.” (6 April 1918 to
Mrs. Winslow); “I think [Soviet Russian communism] is a splendid experiment. Lenin
is as good as Lycurgus or Pythagoras. Let him have his way!” (6 April 1930 to Kallen);
lviii The Letters of George Santayana

“I am not a modern or liberal socialist: but I feel in my bones that our form of indus-
trial society is very precarious, and that it will disappear, perhaps rather soon, as com-
pletely as the mediaeval or the Graeco-Roman civilizations have disappeared.” (4
October 1931 to George Sturgis); “I … agree with … [Karl Marx’s] low opinion of cap-
italism. … To my own mind, absurd as capitalism is—I live on invisible and unearned
money myself, I don’t know why or how—it seems to be only a technical device accom-
panying industrialism: and the latter is the radical evil.” (15 April 1933 to Hook); “I
prefer the Bolschies [to the current British government]; and perhaps everywhere,
through one approach or another, it is to State socialism that we are bound” (19
October 1935 to R. S. Barlow); “But my ideal would be a communistic public life, as
in the Spartan upper class or as in a monastery, if it went with perfect liberty in thought
and in the arts, like painting or writing. And I should limit all the luxuries to public
gardens, libraries, churches, theatres and clubs, where each member might satisfy his
own taste and develop his own vocation. I have lived myself as far as possible on that
plan, and found it satisfactory. But I dread uniformity imposed upon mankind; that is
a waste of opportunities and a dull slavery. That is what I dislike in democracy and
social pressure.” (9 May 1945 to Rosamond Sturgis)
 List of Letters
Book Three, 1921–1927

4 January 1921 John Erskine

4 January 1921 Elizabeth Stephens Fish Potter
10 January 1921 Henry James III
23 January 1921 Charles Scribner’s Sons
2 February 1921 Charles Augustus Strong
9 March 1921 Charles Augustus Strong
28 March 1921 Charles Augustus Strong
30 April 1921 Constable and Co. Ltd.
9 June 1921 Logan Pearsall Smith
10 June 1921 Constable and Co. Ltd.
1 July 1921 Wendell T. Bush
2 August 1921 George Sturgis
14 August 1921 George Sturgis
17 August 1921 Logan Pearsall Smith
20 August 1921 Wendell T. Bush
23 August 1921 Mary Williams Winslow
20 September 1921 John Middleton Murry
20 September 1921 Charles Scribner’s Sons
20 September 1921 Gilbert Seldes
21 September 1921 Alice Cecilia Cooper
30 September 1921 Constable and Co. Ltd.
1 October 1921 Charles Augustus Strong
18 October 1921 Benjamin Apthorp Gould Fuller
20 October 1921 Constable and Co. Ltd.
28 October 1921 Constable and Co. Ltd.
4 November 1921 George Sturgis
[Between 5 and 11 November 1921] Charles Augustus Strong
[12 November 1921] Charles Augustus Strong
16 November 1921 Susan Sturgis de Sastre
17 November 1921 Charles Augustus Strong
21 November 1921 Horace Meyer Kallen
lx List of Letters

21 November 1921 Charles Augustus Strong

22 November 1921 Wendell T. Bush
30 November 1921 George Sturgis
2 December 1921 Logan Pearsall Smith
7 December 1921 Warwick Potter
7 December 1921 Charles Augustus Strong
17 December 1921 George Sturgis
1 January 1922 George Sturgis
18 January 1922 Charles Augustus Strong
30 January 1922 George Sturgis
30 January 1922 George Sturgis
1 February 1922 Mary Williams Winslow
[Early 1922?] Charles Augustus Strong
4 February 1922 Constable and Co. Ltd.
6 February 1922 Constable and Co. Ltd.
20 February 1922 Charles Augustus Strong
14 March 1922 Charles Augustus Strong
21 March 1922 Constable and Co. Ltd.
29 March 1922 George Lawton
2 April 1922 Constable and Co. Ltd.
4 April 1922 Charles Augustus Strong
7 April 1922 Mary Williams Winslow
10 April 1922 Charles Augustus Strong
25 April 1922 Charles Augustus Strong
25 April 1922 George Sturgis
29 April 1922 Constable and Co. Ltd.
8 May 1922 Charles Augustus Strong
13 May 1922 Constable and Co. Ltd.
13 May 1922 Charles Scribner’s Sons
20 May 1922 Constable and Co. Ltd.
5 June 1922 Logan Pearsall Smith
7 June 1922 George Sturgis
8 June 1922 George Sturgis
20 June 1922 Boylston Adams Beal
[Summer 1922?] Wendell T. Bush
[Summer 1922?] Logan Pearsall Smith
4 July 1922 Constable and Co. Ltd.
17 July 1922 Logan Pearsall Smith
26 July 1922 Gilbert Seldes
 List of Letters lxi

17 September 1922 Constable and Co. Ltd

4 October [1922?] Wendell T. Bush
5 October 1922 Constable and Co. Ltd.
11 October 1922 John Brett Langstaff
20 October 1922 Mary Potter Bush
25 October 1922 Harry Austryn Wolfson
30 October 1922 Charles Augustus Strong
3 November 1922 Constable and Co. Ltd.
3 November 1922 George Sturgis
8 November 1922 Robert Burnside Potter
10 November 1922 Otto Kyllmann
14 November 1922 Charles Scribner’s Sons
14 November 1922 Charles Augustus Strong
15 November 1922 Otto Kyllmann
16 November 1922 Mary Williams Winslow
22 November 1922 Zenas Clark Dickinson
23 November 1922 Otto Kyllmann
23 November 1922 Charles Raymond Bell Mortimer
1 December 1922 Charles Augustus Strong
5 December 1922 George Sturgis
13 December 1922 Charles Scribner’s Sons
13 December 1922 Charles Augustus Strong
21 December 1922 Otto Kyllmann
21 December 1922 Robert Burnside Potter
25 December 1922 Constable and Co. Ltd.
27 December 1922 George Sturgis
30 December 1922 Otto Kyllmann
3 January 1923 Charles Augustus Strong
4 January 1923 Constable and Co. Ltd.
12 January 1923 Otto Kyllmann
13 January 1923 Charles Augustus Strong
14 January 1923 Otto Kyllmann
18 January 1923 George Sturgis
19 January 1923 Otto Kyllmann
19 January 1923 Charles Augustus Strong
20 January 1923 Otto Kyllmann
23 January 1923 Unidentified Recipient
24 January 1923 Otto Kyllmann
26 January 1923 Robert Burnside Potter
lxii List of Letters

10 February 1923 Charles Augustus Strong

12 February 1923 Joseph Malaby Dent
12 February 1923 George Sturgis
23 February 1923 Charles Augustus Strong
26 February 1923 George Sturgis
27 February 1923 Otto Kyllmann
28 February 1923 Otto Kyllmann
[28 February 1923] Charles Scribner’s Sons
28 February 1923 Charles Scribner’s Sons
6 March 1923 Otto Kyllmann
7 March 1923 Charles Scribner’s Sons
9 March 1923 Otto Kyllmann
12 March 1923 Constable and Co. Ltd.
19 March 1923 Mary Williams Winslow
[25 March 1923?] Charles Augustus Strong
2 April 1923 George Sturgis
3 April 1923 Robert Burnside Potter
20 April 1923 George Sturgis
28 April 1923 Charles Augustus Strong
6 May 1923 Charles Augustus Strong
8 May 1923 Otto Kyllmann
[8 May 1923] Charles Augustus Strong
27 May [1923] Otto Kyllmann
29 May 1923 George Sturgis
[10 July 1923] Lawrence Smith Butler
12 August 1923 George Jean Nathan
1 September 1923 Editor of The Dial
4 September 1923 Susan Sturgis de Sastre
5 September 1923 John Francis Stanley Russell
13 September 1923 George Sturgis
18 September 1923 Charles Augustus Strong
[Between 20 and 23 September 1923] John Francis Stanley Russell
29 September 1923 Charles Augustus Strong
2 October 1923 Kenneth Duva Burke
16 October 1923 George Sturgis
17 October 1923 Miss Hanlon
18 October 1923 Charles Augustus Strong
20 October 1923 Thomas Moult
23 October 1923 George Herbert Palmer
 List of Letters lxiii

24 October 1923 Constable and Co. Ltd.

27 October 1923 Charles Augustus Strong
30 October 1923 Gilbert Seldes
30 [October] 1923 Charles Augustus Strong
31 October 1923 Robert Seymour Bridges
6 November 1923 Constable and Co. Ltd.
6 November 1923 George Sturgis
9 November 1923 Robert Silliman Hillyer
13 November 1923 Wilber Lucius Cross
13 November 1923 George Sturgis
20 November 1923 Charles Augustus Strong
23 November 1923 Charles Augustus Strong
1 December 1923 Xavier Léon
1 December 1923 George Sturgis
12 December 1923 Henry Ward Abbot
21 December 1923 Pierre de Chaignon la Rose
25 December 1923 Sterling Power Lamprecht
[1923?] Sterling Power Lamprecht
26 December 1923 Wilbur Lucius Cross
26 December 1923 Gilbert Seldes
11 January 1924 Charles Augustus Strong
16 January 1924 Henry Ward Abbot
16 January 1924 Charles Scribner’s Sons
16 January 1924 George Sturgis
29 January 1924 Wilbur Lucius Cross
29 January 1924 Otto Kyllmann
7 February 1924 Hamilton Fish Potter
[After 7 February 1924] Hamilton Fish Potter
8 February 1924 Sylvanus Griswold Morley
14 February 1924 Alyse Gregory
23 February 1924 Alyse Gregory
28 February 1924 Charles Augustus Strong
8 March 1924 George Sturgis
14 March 1924 Benjamin Alexander Morton
16 March 1924 Carl Sadakichi Hartmann
26 March 1924 Charles Augustus Strong
3 April 1924 Frederick J. E. Woodbridge
or Wendell T. Bush
18 April 1924 Charles Augustus Strong
lxiv List of Letters

19 April 1924 Curt John Ducasse

22 April 1924 Elizabeth Stephens Fish Potter
26 April 1924 Ferris Greenslet
26 April 1924 George Sturgis
13 May 1924 George Sturgis
16 May 1924 Charles Augustus Strong
17 May 1924 Susan Sturgis de Sastre
22 May 1924 Charles Augustus Strong
4 June 1924 Charles Augustus Strong
28 June 1924 Curt John Ducasse
29 June 1924 George Sturgis
16 July 1924 Charles Augustus Strong
26 July 1924 Constable and Co. Ltd.
29 July 1924 George Sturgis
3 August 1924 Charles Augustus Strong
15 August 1924 Robert Seymour Bridges
15 August 1924 Charles Augustus Strong
27 August 1924 Maurice Firuski
31 August 1924 George Sturgis
11 September 1924 Charles Augustus Strong
15 September 1924 John Boynton Priestley
15 September 1924 Charles Augustus Strong
21 September 1924 Charles Augustus Strong
26 September 1924 Charles Augustus Strong
10 October 1924 Logan Pearsall Smith
3 November 1924 Pierre de Chaignon la Rose
4 November 1924 George Sturgis
12 November 1924 Charles Augustus Strong
28 November 1924 Alyse Gregory
29 November 1924 Maurice Firuski
5 December 1924 Maurice Firuski
6 December 1924 Charles Augustus Strong
8 December 1924 Otto Kyllmann
9 December 1924 Alyse Gregory
9 December 1924 George Sturgis
10 December 1924 William Alexander Hammond
21 December 1924 George Sturgis
25 December 1924 Charles Augustus Strong
3 January 1925 Charles Augustus Strong
 List of Letters lxv

6 January 1925 William Rothenstein

8 January 1925 Robert Seymour Bridges
26 January 1925 William Alexander Hammond
1 February 1925 George Sturgis
12 February 1925 Maurice Firuski
23 February 1925 Otto Kyllmann
11 March 1925 George Sturgis
12 March 1925 Frederick James Eugene Woodbridge
19 March 1925 Pierre de Chaignon la Rose
19 March 1925 Logan Pearsall Smith
22 March 1925 Charles Augustus Strong
2 April 1925 Constable and Co. Ltd.
2 May 1925 Curt John Ducasse
4 May 1925 Otto Kyllmann
11 May 1925 Charles Augustus Strong
14 May 1925 George Sturgis
15 May 1925 Constable and Co. Ltd.
19 May 1925 Constable and Co. Ltd.
2 June 1925 Charles Augustus Strong
17 June 1925 George Sturgis
28 June 1925 Charles Augustus Strong
30 June 1925 George Sturgis
16 July 1925 Charles Augustus Strong
16 July 1925 George Sturgis
8 August 1925 Robert Seymour Bridges
13 August 1925 John Francis Stanley Russell
1 September 1925 William Alexander Hammond
15 September 1925 Charles Augustus Strong
15 September 1925 George Sturgis
29 September 1925 Frederick James Eugene Woodbridge
10 October 1925 Charles Augustus Strong
23 October 1925 George Sturgis
11 November 1925 Frederick James Eugene Woodbridge
21 November 1925 George Sturgis
22 November 1925 Bernard Berenson
12 December 1925 Warner Fite
24 December 1925 George Sturgis
31 December 1925 Mary Whitall Smith Berenson
1 January 1926 Benjamin Apthorp Gould Fuller
lxvi List of Letters

6 January 1926 Charles Augustus Strong

2 February 1926 Charles Augustus Strong
23 February 1926 Curt John Ducasse
19 March 1926 Charles Augustus Strong
26 March 1926 Rosamond Thomas Bennett Sturgis
20 April 1926 Charles Augustus Strong
16 May 1926 Charles Augustus Strong
17 May 1926 Susan Sturgis de Sastre
22 May 1926 Otto Kyllmann
31 May 1926 Otto Kyllmann
3 June 1926 Paul Weiss
27 June 1926 Charles Augustus Strong
19 July 1926 George Sturgis
25 July 1926 Charles Augustus Strong
1 August 1926 Otto Kyllmann
1 August 1926 George Sturgis
11 August 1926 Charles Augustus Strong
23 August 1926 Marianne Moore
30 August 1926 Otto Kyllmann
7 September 1926 Carl Sadakichi Hartmann
7 September 1926 George Sturgis
8 September 1926 Maurice Firuski
15 September 1926 Horace Meyer Kallen
15 September 1926 Otto Kyllmann
17 September 1926 Otto Kyllmann
23 September 1926 John Jay Chapman
23 September 1926 Charles Augustus Strong
25 September 1926 Horace Meyer Kallen
8 October 1926 Charles Augustus Strong
9 October 1926 Lawrence Smith Butler
22 October 1926 Horace Meyer Kallen
8 November 1926 Marianne Moore
12 November 1926 Otto Kyllmann
20 November 1926 George Sturgis
[22 November 1926] Herbert Wallace Schneider
23 November 1926 Charles Augustus Strong
27 November 1926 Otto Kyllmann
28 November 1926 Otto Kyllmann
12 December 1926 Unidentified Recipient
 List of Letters lxvii

16 December 1926 Lewis Mumford

23 December 1926 Maurice Firuski
30 December 1926 Marianne Moore
15 January 1927 Otto Kyllmann
22 January 1927 George Sturgis
31 January 1927 Otto Kyllmann
4 February 1927 [Marianne Moore]
9 February 1927 Charles Augustus Strong
11 February 1927 Edward W. Titus
14 February 1927 Otto Kyllmann
18 February 1927 Marianne Moore
22 February 1927 Otto Kyllmann
28 February 1927 Manuel Komroff
15 March 1927 Marianne Moore
15 March 1927 Charles Augustus Strong
[16 March] 1927 Charles Augustus Strong
17 March 1927 Charles Augustus Strong
23 March 1927 Horace Meyer Kallen
1 April 1927 George Sturgis
7 April 1927 Charles Augustus Strong
12 April 1927 Charles Augustus Strong
1 May 1927 Otto Kyllmann
8 May 1927 Charles Augustus Strong
19 May 1927 George Perrigo Conger
21 May 1927 Otto Kyllmann
21 May 1927 Carl Sadakichi Hartmann
21 May 1927 George Sturgis
22 May 1927 Van Wyck Brooks
25 May 1927 Charles Augustus Strong
1 June 1927 Charles Augustus Strong
3 June 1927 Otto Kyllmann
9 June 1927 Otto Kyllmann
14 June 1927 George Perrigo Conger
10 July 1927 Charles Augustus Strong
18 July 1927 George Sturgis
21 July 1927 Horace Meyer Kallen
24 July 1927 Charles Augustus Strong
28 July 1927 Charles Augustus Strong
1 August 1927 Charles Augustus Strong
lxviii List of Letters

3 August 1927 Charles Augustus Strong

15 August 1927 Charles Scribner’s Sons
24 August 1927 George Perrigo Conger
24 August 1927 Constable and Co. Ltd.
26 August 1927 Otto Kyllmann
30 August 1927 Charles Augustus Strong
1 September 1927 Charles Augustus Strong
7 September 1927 Otto Kyllmann
3 October 1927 Otto Kyllmann
4 October 1927 Charles Augustus Strong
14 October 1927 Charles Augustus Strong
23 October 1927 Curt John Ducasse
1 November 1927 John Middleton Murry
7 November 1927 Otto Kyllmann
15 November 1927 John Middleton Murry
18 November 1927 Daniel MacGhie Cory
21 November 1927 Boylston Adams Beal
21 November 1927 Robert Seymour Bridges
27 November 1927 Constable and Co. Ltd.
27 November 1927 Lewis George Sterner
27 November 1927 George Sturgis
2 December 1927 Charles Augustus Strong
7 December 1927 Otto Kyllmann
8 December 1927 Daniel MacGhie Cory
8 December 1927 John Middleton Murry
21 December 1927 Logan Pearsall Smith
23 December 1927 Wesley Fuller
25 December 1927 Herbert Wallace Schneider
Letters: 1921—1927
To John Erskine
4 January 1921 • Madrid, Spain (MS: Columbia)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co1
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Madrid, Jan. 4, 1921.
My dear Mr Erskine2
It gives me much pleasure to write your niece’s name and mine on the
sheet you send me, and I shall be glad it it contributes to the interest of her
collection.
Yours very truly
GSantayana
1
Santayana’s London bank, which he used as a permanent address.
2
John Erskine (1879–1951) was a critic, novelist, musician, and English professor at
Columbia University. His niece is unidentified.

To Elizabeth Stephens Fish Potter

4 January 1921 • Madrid, Spain (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123 Pall Mall, London
Madrid, Jan. 4, 1921
rs 1
Dear M Potter
I have before me not only your good letter of Dec. 14, but a photograph
of the hall at Antietam Farm,2 and both make me wish that I could trans-
fer myself by some miraculous process into your midst, even if was to
remain incognito while there. This soothing idea has been suggested to me
before, by my friend Apthorp Fuller, who also possesses a “farm”,3 and I
think in an even more savage and remote region than yours: but it seems
to follow that I should have to be incognito at both places, and also pre-
sumably at my brother’s;4 my old friend Mrs Toy5 would have to be let into
the secret; and I might as well be interviewed in New York harbor on
board the tooting steamer, and have my portrait in the next Sunday’s
^ ^
papers, with appropriate headlines: Cynic Santayana Sings Home Sweet
Home; etc. Besides would my life be safe? My English friends seem to
think not, although what I hear from America is all most dulcet and affec-
tionate. Together with your letter I receive one from Cuningham Graham6
3:4 The Letters of George Santayana

who says: “If you return again to the United States, you will find the new
adaptation by Colt of the Browning pistol,7 with the hair-trigger stop, the
safest and quickest thing to have about you. Do not venture into the
Middle West: there may be a feeling that may translate itself awkwardly.”
On the other hand, by the same post, the wife of a professor of philosophy
at Columbia writes “We have read with deep pleasure your last book8 . . I
delight in its justness . . I am comforted by the ripeness and GOODNESS
of its spirit. It makes me hope for things that had seemed lost.” And at the
same time a professor of English literature begs me “to write my little
niece’s name and yours in her copy.” Life is very complicated, especially
if one tries to put two & two — and together: it is simpler if one keeps
^ ^
things apart. I have been trying in Toledo, under the shadow of the mag-
nificent Alcazar and of Cisneros,9 to understand conservative Spain: it is
not impossible: but only if you learn it all like a new language, and forget
all the facts and all the feelings that it ignores. Bring the irreconcilable
^ ^
things face to face, and one, if not both, become incredible.
All you and Bob tell me about the boys10 interests me very much; and
I don’t wonder that they are not “artistic” in their tastes. Young people
nowadays have taken a new turn. They did not see the light (intellectually,
I mean) in the eighteen nineties, as some of us did. That was an age that
cried: Give me art or give me pessimism, or give me both. I see vestiges
of it among my friends in Florence: they are still impressed with the
thought of how beautiful things must once have been; and they yearn to
live, at least privately, in that rarer and richer atmosphere. But they are a
failure. Things are differently beautiful now, if one has eyes to see them;
or rather, it is something different from “beauty” that makes up their inter-
est and charm: it is perhaps their actuality, or their movement, or their
humour. Perhaps the most loving and the most perceptive of men among
us is not the artist but the humorist. Perhaps your boys won’t miss much if
they don’t care for “art”.
This is only a bow: another day I will write a letter more like a long
visit. Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Robert “Bob” Burnside Potter (c. 1869–c. 1936), Harvard class of 1891, became an
architect. Santayana’s poem entitled “Dedication of the first sonnets to a friend on the
eve of his marriage” was written in his honor. See Complete Poems, 263. Elizabeth “Lily”
Stephens Clare Fish married Potter in 1894. The daughter of Nicholas Fish (for years
American minister at Brussels), she had been educated abroad, spoke French and
German, and learned Italian in preparation for a spring 1897 trip through Italy. See
Persons, 379–81.
 1921–1927 3:5

2
The Potters’ home at Smithtown, Long Island, New York.
3
Benjamin Apthorp Gould “Bags” Fuller (1879–1956) was a member of the Harvard
class of 1900. He pursued graduate study (Ph.D., 1906) with Santayana and later was
appointed to the Harvard faculty. “ ’Tween Waters” was Fuller’s country home at
Sherborn, outside Boston.
4
Robert Shaw Sturgis (c. 1854–1921) was the fourth of Santayana’s mother’s five chil-
dren by her first husband, George Sturgis. Robert managed Santayana’s financial
affairs.
5
Nancy Saunders Toy (d. 1941) was married to Crawford Howell Toy (1836–1919),
Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Languages at Harvard (1880–1909).
6
Possibly R. Cunningham Graham (1852–1936).
7
Samuel Colt (1814–62) invented a breech-loading pistol which became very popu-
lar. John Moses Browning (1812–1926) invented an automatic pistol, a machine gun,
and an automatic rifle.
8
Wendell T. Bush (1867–1941) received an M.A. from Harvard (1908) and a Ph.D. from
Columbia. He was professor of philosophy at Columbia University and editor of The
Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods. Santayana had a copy of Character
sent to Professor and Mrs. Mary Potter Bush.
9
Alcazar is a type of palace in Spain, generally royal, built in the centuries of Moorish
domination. Formed around large courts within strong walls, it stood in the streets of
a city and was defensible but not fortresslike. There are alcazars at Seville, Toledo,
Segovia, and Córdoba. Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros (1436–1517), states-
man and archbishop of Toledo, formally created the Complutense University in 1499.
10
The Potters’ sons, Warwick and Hamilton.

To Henry James III

10 January 1921 • Madrid, Spain (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London.
Madrid, Jan. 10, 1921
Dear Mr James
It was a cause of regret to me not to have other and longer letters of
your father’s, which I know I had received, to send to you when you were
preparing the collection which you have now published.1 Those I was able
to send were chiefly of documentary interest, and I think you had better
keep them with your other documents.
The reason that the most interesting letters I had were no longer in my
possession was, I think, that I had lent or given them to other persons who
wished to see them, and they may yet turn up. I suspect that my friend Mrs
Toy may have one or two of them, but she naturally forgot the fact when
looking for such as she or Mr Toy may have received from your father. She
3:6 The Letters of George Santayana

probably has them among my letters, and though it is too late for your pur-
poses, I am going to ask her if this is not the case.
Believe me, with best wishes,
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
William James (1842–1910) was a preeminent American philosopher and psycholo-
gist. He taught at Harvard (1872–1907), physiology and anatomy at first; later, psy-
chology and philosophy. James’s relationship with his pupil, Santayana, was one of
mutual respect for one another’s intellect, philosophical disagreement, and tempera-
mental antithesis. James’s son, Henry, edited The Letters of William James in two vol-
umes (Boston: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1920). One letter (2 May 1905) to
Santayana is included in volume II (228–29).

To Charles Scribner’s Sons

23 January 1921 • Madrid, Spain (MS: Princeton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London S.W.1
Madrid, Jan. 23, 1921
M Charles Scribner’s Sons1
essrs

New York
Gentlemen
In reply to your letter of Jan. 4, inclosing one from Mrs Turner, of Grand
Rapids, Michigan,2 I can only say that I am more interested in finishing
the books I have in hand than in correcting my old ones. There are cer-
tainly many things that I should put differently if I were now rewriting
“The Sense of Beauty”; but, as you observe, I have supplemented what I
said there with other considerations in “The Life of Reason”, and the
“Soliloquies in England” now appearing in “The Athenaeum” will proba-
bly make a small book in which the whole nature of fiction, expression,
and representation will be treated in a new fashion. Mrs Turner will find
there, I hope, a sufficient sense of what Freud, if not Croce,3 has taught us.
And I am at work—slowly—on a much more considerable book,4 in which
I endeavour to clear up, as far as I can, all the fundamental questions con-
cerned in these theories.
Meantime I am afraid “The Sense of Beauty” will have to serve as it
stands. If I live to revise all my works; as Mrs Turner suggests, I might per-
haps add a few notes here and there, where my opinion has changed; but
 1921–1927 3:7

I think even if I had nothing else to do, /I it would be better not to meddle
with the general tenor of an old book, or with its style. It would be patch-
work; and some might prefer the author’s early view to his later one.
I should be glad if you would communicate this letter to Mrs Turner, for
whose interest in my work, as well as for your own, I am very grateful.
Yours truly
GSantayana
1
Charles Scribner’s Sons published the marjority of Santayana’s works in America.
2
Unidentified.
3
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) was an Austrian psychologist and the originator of psy-
choanalysis. Santayana’s library included Freud’s Die Traumdeutung (The interpretation
of dreams, 4th ed., 1914). Benedetto Croce (1866–1952) was the best-known Italian
philosopher of the twentieth century. The first volume of his philosophy of the spirit
was Estetica come scienza dell’ espressione e linguistica generale (1902).
4
Scepticism.

To Charles Augustus Strong

2 February 1921 • Madrid, Spain (MS: Rockefeller)

Serrano 7, Madrid
Feb. 2, 1921
Dear Strong1
“Critical Realism”2 reached me some time ago and I have read it all
through. Apart from your paper and mine I like Rogers’ best:3 he may not
be so clever as Lovejoy4 in controversy, but he understands the question
better and expresses himself clearly. I should think Lovejoy’s criticism
would compel Dewey5 to explain himself. I feel that Dewey has a noble
sincerity behind his illiterate oracles, and that Lovejoy has not been will-
ing or not been able to interpret him sympathetically. It would have been
better to unearth his real intentions instead of merely carping at his ill-cho-
sen words. I have never studied Dewey myself at all attentively or com-
pletely, and I am not sure that I understand him, but I suspect that he is
merely attempting to analyse the vision of the human mind, the “experi-
ence” (in the proper sense of the word) that a typical American has nowa-
days of the world. It is all surface objectivism—impressionistic,
conscientious photography—without the least attempt at penetrating to
substance or to the natural distribution of the facts; so that he is idealistic
in that he has only a flat canvass, but realistic in that every thing painted
there is a solid object. It is philosophizing in innocent perspective—and that
3:8 The Letters of George Santayana

is why it is so very curious and so very American; and it may not be incor-
rect in its own way, and when taken for what it is meant to be. The only
error—a tremendous one, to be sure—is the apparent conviction that this
impressionism is something deeper or more ultimate than other methods
of interpretation, and that it is “philosophy” as opposed to science. True
philosophy, of course, is built on science and is only an extension of sci-
ence, and impressionism and its pictures of round things made flat, is
something science can very well dominate and explain.
Drake’s paper6 is honest and useful: I like it better on a second reading.
His honesty prompts him to point-out the diversity between the two
groups among us in respect to the “datum”; but he doesn’t see, or doesn’t
care to mention, the diversity in respect to the psychical fact. I think the
psychological fact is the intuition of essence, with the history of these intu-
itions, i.e. of personal experience. The psychical fact is the ground of this
mental flux, whether we regard the psyche as composed of “feeling” or (as
I think, with the pre-Socratics)7 of matter. In your paper I miss the recog-
nition of personal “experience”, the flux of intuitions that autobiography
might record. Isn’t this an undeniable additional existence, besides those
which you admit? The experience of a pain or a passion is, to my mind,
quite as obviously the mere intuition of an essence as the “experience” of
a circle The violence of the feeling is merely the character of the [across]
essence given. I feel as if you had not applied the distinction of essence to
memory or introspection. Yours ever
GSantayana
I am thinking of returning to Paris for Easter.
1
Charles Augustus Strong (1862–1940), an American philosopher and psychologist,
was Santayana’s longtime friend from Harvard. They lived together off and on for
many years. From 1887 to 1889 Strong taught philosophy part time at Cornell
University. Later he taught psychology at the University of Chicago and at Columbia.
See Persons, 239–42.
2
Essays in Critical Realism: A Cooperative Study of the Problem of Knowledge, ed. Durant
Drake (Macmillan, 1920). Santayana contributed an essay entitled “Three Proofs of
Realism,” 163–184; Strong wrote “On the Nature of the Datum.” Other contributing
authors were Arthur O. Lovejoy, James Bissett Pratt, Arthur K. Rodgers, and Roy
Wood Sellars.
3
Arthur Kenyon Rogers (1868–1936), professor of philosophy at Yale University,
contributed “The Problem of Error.”
4
Arthur Oncken Lovejoy (1873–1962), born in Germany, was an American philoso-
pher and historian of ideas who taught at Johns Hopkins University. A critical realist,
his works fall into two main groups: those on epistemology and those on intellectual
history. In his major work, The Revolt Against Dualism (1930), he defended epistemo-
logical dualism against the reigning modes of monism. “Santayana always thought
 1921–1927 3:9

very highly of Lovejoy’s critique of Pragmatism.” (Years, 130) His paper is entitled
“Pragmatism Versus the Pragmatist.”
5
John Dewey (1859–1952) was an American philosopher and educator long associ-
ated with Columbia University. His philosophy (instrumentalism) is related to prag-
matism. In education he argued for learning by experience, motivated by the student’s
need.
6
Durant Drake (1878–1933) was a professor of philosophy at Vassar College. His
essay is “The Approach to Critical Realism.”
7
Pre-Socratic is a term applied to those Greek thinkers from approximately 600 to
400 B.C. who attempted to discover universal principles which would explain the
whole of nature, from the origin and ultimate constituents of the universe man’s place
within it.

To Charles Augustus Strong

9 March 1921 • Ávila, Spain (MS: Rockefeller)

Avila, March 9, 1921

Dear Strong
rd
Your philosophical letter of the 3– was awaiting me when I arrived here
yesterday, and I will try to answer it point by point presently. But first let
me tell you that my sister,1 having seen your post-card about “The
Wisdom of the Beasts,”2 wrote to me asking quite seriously if that wasn’t
the book of which you and I (among others) were joint authors.
^ ^
Coming now to your protestations, I admit at once that you have made
the distinction of essence in the case of introspection and memory quite as
truly as in the case of perception; what I meant by saying that you seemed
to me not to have applied that distinction in the other field was that you
seemed not to have availed yourself of it to clear away old confusions, as
in perception, and to return to a more accurate expression of common-
sense in the matter, as I think the distinction of essence can help us to do.
And this leads directly to my answer to your other points.
You say in “a,” “The memory I talk about is not the given-essence of the
past plus an intuition that is not given, but the present image that makes
memory possible.” Here, if I don’t misunderstand you, “present image”,
being contrasted with “given-essence”, is something not given at all; it is
the trace of the past in the self, the modification produced by the past
experience, and surviving inexperienced, which enables the “given-
essence of the past” to appear. This is the fact that the self has experienced
or learned something and is ready to recall it: but isn’t it paradoxical to call
this fact “memory”? And when you call it “present image” aren’t you
3:10 The Letters of George Santayana

assimilating it, in a misleading way, to given essences? The beauty of the

distinction of essence seems to me to lie just in dispelling this sort of
amphibious “present image”, and forcing us to ask ourselves at every step:
Am I talking of a datum or of some latent condition for the appearance of
data—something that a consistent idealist would discard altogether and
that, not being given, can actually be doubted, and ought to be arrived at,
if at all, by cogent scientific reasoning?
You say further in “a,” “The introspection I refer to is not the given-
essence pain but the pain itself, the group of mind-stuff point-instants
which the given-essence pain brings before us”. Certainly introspection
can’t be intuition of the given-essence pain, for that would be the feeling
of the pain, what I should call the “pain itself”, the sort of thing — that that
^ ^ ———
unconsciousness produced by an anaesthetic would abolish. Introspection
must be something else, and more complicated, tha/tn the direct feeling of
pain. But now when you say that introspection is –has [ for its object?]–
^ ^
“The group of mind-stuff point-instants which the given essence pain
brings before us”, I am not at all satisfied with your language. Granting
that there may be such mind-stuff point-instants which are the basis or sub-
stance of the experience of pain, I can’t see that introspection brings them
before us. The direct experience of the pain, taken as a perception, might
“bring them before us”, as the tooth-ache does the tooth, or any experi-
ence does the self and the whole universe; they would be the ulterior
object /t which the pain, if we dwelt upon it and investigated its ground and
significance, would lead us to discover. But such completed scientific
understanding and elucidation of our experience would not be introspec-
tion; nor would it lead us to anything like the given-essence pain in qual-
ity. I agree with you that introspection (what I should call introspection)
does this: for by introspection I think we naturally designate any intent
watching of our experiences as they flow, and of their mutual dream-like
relations: for instance, it is in introspection that I become aware that I am
thinking of various disparate subjects at once: of you, of my handwriting,
of the pink blotting-paper, of the court yard of this house, of my sister in
her sitting-room, of the London conference, etc, etc. Such consciousness of
what is going on in one’s head is necessarily discursive; it notes things in
succession, and in some past phase of their presence, even if they still per-
sist almost unchanged: and this discursive introspection or self-conscious-
ness is very often, I should admit, extremely truthful. Our introspection of
a sensation just past renders and prolongs (in a different setting) that sen-
sation almost unchanged: so that introspection can be more accurate and
 1921–1927 3:11

adequate to its real object than any other kind of knowledge. But this is so
because it remains within the psychological field, repeating in discourse
fragments of what was discourse from the beginning. In the same way, I
think our notions of other men’s ideas and feelings may often be perfectly
adequate. But introspection in your sense, which has for its object “mind-
stuff point-instants” would not seem to repeat or contain the nature of
those elements, but to offer/s us something as different from them as water
is different from oxygen and hydrogen—
The only other point in which I feel there is some stubborn divergence
in our views is in regard to “awareness not being given”. I always have
agreed to this, because I see that if the datum is “green” it cannot be “I see
green”. But now I smell a rat; for it seems sometimes as if you argued that
“I see green” cannot also be a datum; of course it cannot be a datum of
mere sight; but just after the datum “green” has been given, and while it
continues to be given, the field of consciousness may be enlarged, and my
own body and currents from my whole past experience may come within
my range, so that I may have for my datum “I see green”. “I see green” is
an essence just as “green” is: it may be given just as immediately. Do you
agree or disagree with this?
I mean to be in Paris before Easter, and shall be delighted to see [across]
you and the wisdom of the beasts as soon as you can possibly materialize.
Yours ever GSantayana
1
Susan, the second child of Josefina Borrás and her first husband, George Sturgis, was
born in Manila, in the Philippine Islands, on 5 June 1851, and christened Susan
Parkman Sturgis. The family did not like the name Susan and usually called her
“Susana” or “Susie.” On 26 November 1892, at the age of forty-one, Susan married
Celedonio Sastre Serrano (c. 1840–1930), a lawyer and small landowner, then a wid-
ower with six children. Her relationship with Santayana remained very close; for years
he was a summer guest in her Ávila home. She lived to be seventy-seven years of age
and died on 10 February 1928. In a letter to Daniel Cory (24 February 1939) Santayana
said his sister was “certainly the most important influence in my life.”
2
Strong’s book was published by Constable in London in 1921, and by Houghton
Mifflin Co. in Boston and New York in 1922.
3:12 The Letters of George Santayana

To Charles Augustus Strong

28 March 1921 • Paris, France (MS: Rockefeller)

Paris, March 28, 1921

Dear Strong,
Here I am, having arrived last Thursday after a tedious journey from
Avila. The train I was to have taken at midnight arrived at noon the next
day: I had to go back to sleep at my sister’s and say good bye all over again
the next day. I then did “get out of Spain”; spent one night at Hendaye, at
the frontier, and another at Bordeaux. The apartment was ready, the
concierge and Marie1 had received my notices of my intended reappear-
ance, and everything at once began to run smoothly, even the water in the
W.C. which on the first day had refused to flow. The place is much trans-
formed and beautified by the purchases that Margaret2 has been making.
I see even a lot of nice new old books, and when a box that is to be sent
after me from Avila arrives, all the shelves will be practically full. We can
then begin to relegate the unbound or deteriorated volumes to some place
of darkness.
I have received your three philosophical letters, and will take the hint
you drop in the last (received this morning) and leave all detailed discus-
sion of your points until we meet: they will all recur in due course some
day or other, when we are sitting in a terrasse having our coffee. But we
shall not agree. In reading all three letters over again just now, I have been
struck by certain presuppositions or habits of your thought which come
from a tradition in which I have never felt at home. My sense of what sort
of a thing mental life is, and how it is related to the body and to the psy-
che, is Aristotelian: not only because that is the philosophy which I have
always most respected, but because it corresponds to my own self-knowl-
edge and observation of the world. Mind is an expression, an entelechy, of
something not mind. But you are rather an heir of Humian or Jamesian
principles: you want to weave existence out of psychic stuff. In your last
letter there is a passage that at first struck me as very strange: but perhaps
it is not strange, if we start with that general programme. You ask why the
given essence is not, without further ado, the essence of the object! Why
on earth, I said to myself, should it be? If a sensitive plant or an animal in
its shell is being rained upon, why on earth should the chill or the fear of
death which it may feel be the essence of the rain; whether we conceive
the rain as the eyes of men perceive it, as a down-pour of grey drops, or as
 1921–1927 3:13

some dynamics of point-instants might describe it? It is simply a prepos-

terous, unnatural suggestion that the essences given to a vegetative thing,
like the psyche, should be the essences of the surrounding forces, under
the influence of which that psyche is living, and which, when it becomes
materially cognitive, it will describe to itself in its own poetic, mytholigal,
sensuous language, as the cold devil, or the spirit of the rain, or the patter-
patter elf knocking at the door. You see, I spontaneously conceive the
mind as an expression of the life of the psyche, turned into a symbol, a ter-
ribly inadequate and yet overloaded symbol, of what assails that life from
outside. It therefore startles me to hear that you ask for a reason why the
given essence is not the essence of the object. Am I wrong in surmising
that such a presumption belongs to the psychological metaphysics which
conceives the object as, fundamentally, the given idea, the “phenomenon”;
and then indeed it would be a mystery how the given “idea” could differ
from the given “essence”. This is not a central matter in our controversy:
it is something in which, I believe, we are agreed: but it struck me as a sign
of that diversity of original outlook which I think makes us differ on other
points.
You say I am improving in the matter of the inefficacy of consciousness:
and certainly in the Soliloquies I have talked a great deal about Mother
Psyche, an old busy-body who certainly weilds the housewife’s broom,
and perhaps that of a witch also, very efficaciously. But I still believe that
“consciousness”, or the intuition of essences, is an event which, being
immaterial, is imponderable, not measurable in quantity or position or
velocity, nor even intrinsically in date or duration: so that to assign any
mechanical efficacy to it is impossible. But of course, it is as good a sign of
its circumstances as any other habitual item among them: and it may have
a certain prophetic or symptomatic value as to the probable future, which
the superstitious regard as a magic efficacy: and this is what people really
cling to, and try to disguise to themselves as an experience of power. The
question as to the Ego, which you raise, is merely one of names. Homer3
says that the wrath of Achilles sent many souls to Hades,4 but delivered the
men themselves to dogs and vultures; there the Ego is the body, and the
Soul is a ghost. You may say that what you feel to be your very self is the
life or motive principle within your body, your psyche: and then of course
you will be the doer of all your acts and the sayer of all your words. It will
remain a mystery to you, if your reflection goes so deep, why you are
prompted to do or to say such things: your freedom will remain the fulfil-
ment of your inscrutable destiny; but undoubtedly you will be, like any
3:14 The Letters of George Santayana

other natural agency, a channel of causality and change, a focus of power.

There is, however, a sentimental self-consciousness in which a man iden-
tifies himself, not with this animal psyche in his body, but with his experi-
ences and brooding thoughts, with his inner discourse: and if you call that
the Self, the self will be impotent, except vehemently to be what it happens
to be. Certainly when I was young, even when I wrote the Life of Reason,
I was given to this “introspective” or romantic way of thinking more than
I am now: I lived more transcendentally, more egotistically: and I put off
to a distance (without denying them) the hypothetical world and the hypo-
thetical psyche that by their interaction produced this life-long dream in
me. I am glad that you like my new manner better: I like it much better
myself, and think it more respectable. There is something disreputable in
sentimental self-consciousness. Nevertheless, the exercise is possible and
(for a critical philosophy) indispensable: and unless you are willing to
indulge in it methodologically on occasion, your dogmas will have no
logic, no system in them. You will never have studied the order of evi-
dence. And this brings me back to our dispute. Do you deny that con-
sciousness—the intuition of essences—exists? You may not care to follow my
argument here, but I am willing to carry scepticism so far as to entertain
the possibility that nothing exists at all (as the Indians have maintained);
but the moment that, abandoning that extreme negation, we admit that
something exists, because we find it, or at least the illusion of its existence,
then it follows a fortiori that the finding, the experience, exists, although
we do not perceive or recall its existence until after we have posited the
existence of something else. This, you see, is the logic of Fichte5 (which I
think is good transcendental logic) and shows us that, if we believe in the
existence of anything, our belief must exist too, and is first in the order of
evidence, though not first in the order of discovery. For what is first in the
order of discovery may be an illusion; but what is second, that ——— it is——an
—— illu
————
sion, a —
———— s————
ense sense of discovering something has existed, cannot be an
^ ^
illusion, if there is to be an order of evidence at all.
Have you seen, in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,6
Montague’s paper on Variation, Heredity, and Consciousness?7 I admire it
immensely, without of course swallowing all its tenets: but I think he has
expressed perfectly the way in which novelty and persistence are related.
He is (as I have written to him to say) just the sort of pre-Socratic philoso-
pher which the world needs. It is delightful to see scientific speculation so
hard at work. You didn’t like Whitehead,8 but I did (again without agree-
ing altogether) because he helped independently to put nature (the “ether
 1921–1927 3:15

of events”) and mind (“sensible and scientific objects”) in their right rela-
tions. Montague also has them, as it seems to me, in their place, where they
belong: although his desire to make mind a hypostasis of potential energy,
rather than of the actual movements or conation of the body, leads him to
extravagant conclusions: as that we are never so much alive as when we
are dead. His “vectors” are capital; like the “endeavour” of Hobbes;9
because it is events, movements, that subtend the mind, not instants.
Yours ever GSantayana
1
The woman who took care of C. A. Strong’s apartment in Paris where Santayana fre-
quently stayed.
2
Margaret (1897–1985) was the only child of Elizabeth Rockefeller and C. A. Strong.
3
Homer lived before 700 B.C. and wrote the first extant Greek poetry. His epic mas-
terpieces are the Iliad and the Odyssey.
4
Hades, the underworld, was the place to which the souls of the dead (good and evil)
went. In Homer, Hades is the name of the god, also called Plouton (Pluto), who reigns
over the dead in Hades. Achilles, the hero of Homer’s Iliad, became the prototype of
the Greeks’ conception of manly valor and beauty. He was the Greeks’ most illustrious
warrior in the Trojan War.
5
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), a German philosopher and political thinker, was
an important influence in the development of German Romanticism. His philosophy
focused on the ethical. He wrote Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre (Foundation
of the complete theory of knowledge, 1794). He held that the essence of the universe
is mind and that it posits the material world through a process called productive imag-
ination.
6
A philosophy periodical published by Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, The Proceedings
of the Aristotelian Society contains the papers read at the Society’s fortnightly meetings in
London throughout the academic year.
7
William Pepperell Montague (1873–1953) was a Harvard-educated philosophy pro-
fessor whose system was developed in relation to scientific discoveries. His works
include The Ways of Knowing; or, The Methods of Philosophy (1925), Belief Unbound (1930),
and The Ways of Things (1940). Montague’s paper “Variation, Heredity and
Consciousness, A Mechanist Answer to the Vitalist Challenge” was published in The
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. 21 (1920): 13–50.
8
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) was an English philosopher and mathemati-
cian. His Science and the Modern World (1925), a history of the development of science,
explains his idealistic, mystical philosophy. He wrote other books, as well as coau-
thored (with Bertrand Russell) Principia Mathematica (1910–13).
9
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1670) was an English philosopher who set forth a mechanis-
tic rationalistic materialism. His Leviathan (1651) made him the first of the great English
political theorists.
3:16 The Letters of George Santayana

To Constable and Co. Ltd.

30 April 1921 • Paris, France (MS: Temple)

9, Avenue de l’Observatoire
Paris, April 30, 1921
Messrs. Constable & Company1
London
Gentlemen:
At my suggestion, my friend Mr Charles Strong, with whom I live
here, intends to send you half a dozen short pieces, which he calls “The
Wisdom of the Beasts” in hopes that you will be willing to publish them
for him. In case you have not heard of him—because although he is a dis-
^ ^
tinguished and very solid psychologist, the public to which he has
appealed hitherto is very limited—I send you a line to say that the slight
appearance of these “Fables” covers a great deal of learning and hard
/
thinking on his part; and whilst I can form no judjmement as to there
———eir
mathematical or physical cogency, I am sure the initiated would be enter-
tained by them. Moreover, the matter of profits need not enter into your
decision, as I am sure he would be glad to run any risk of financial loss that
there may be in publishing such a short and—in one sense—playful pro-
duction.
I hope soon to submit to you another book of my own “Soliloquies in
England” which is almost ready.
Yours faithfully
GSantayana
1
Constable and Company Ltd. was Santayana’s London publisher.

To Logan Pearsall Smith

9 June 1921 • Paris, France (MS: Congress)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1.
Paris, June 9, 1921
Dear Smith1
Thank you very much for taking such a constant and fruitful interest in
my productions, now that your special godchild, Little Essays, has been
 1921–1927 3:17

definitely presented and made its bow in polite society.2 The article in the
London Mercury is very nice and friendly all round, and I am delighted
and surprised to see how thoroughly Arthur McDowall understands me.3 I
am used, from my American critics, to a sort of vague estrangement and
beating round the bush; here all is simple and direct, and I am quite aware
that it is my fault if the technical side of my philosophy is not treated very
seriously. I haven’t treated it very seriously myself, as yet, but I assure you
there is solidity in it, if its skeleton were properly [illegible]laid bare, as I
hope before long to do, as a counter-poise to my excursions into the realm
of fancy.
Taking your hint, I sent yesterday a Soliloquy—a very pagan and senti-
mental one on Hermes—to the editor of the London Mercury.4 Others are
appearing in New York in the Dial5—a sophomoric paper which I don’t
mind, because its foolishness is youthful foolishness. But I can’t stand the
perversity of the Nation-and-Athenaeum. What mad ghosts these liberals
are! I am not surprised—to make a transition which isn’t one—that both the
Russells6 are in love, but my wonder is that they can still pursue matri-
mony, and that they find anybody, I don’t say to love them, for I quite
understand their perennial charm, like that of Cleopatra,7 but to trust or to
wed them. When will the public, and the individual, realize, as you and I
seem to have done, that in this absurdly over-populated world, there ought
to be a large class of celibates to do the thinking /;? a/ And it is far better for
the intelligence of the future age that we should not leave children in the
flesh—they would all be stark mad and most unhappy—but should only
rationalize the atmosphere in which the sturdy average mortal, the child of
the merely child-bearing woman, should be brought up. Mankind is faced
with t o
/ wo awful dangers, between which we naturalistic monks may be
able to steer them—the danger of losing their traditions and the danger of
keeping them.
I am hiding in the heart of Paris, having left Strong’s apartment for a
while to make room for Margaret and her friends. She is going soon to
America, and I don’t yet know whether I shall spend the rest of the sum-
mer here with Strong, or go to England. If the latter, you shall hear from
me. Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) was educated at Haverford College and Harvard
University. After working in the family glass-manufacturing business, he entered
Balliol College, Oxford University (B.A., 1893; M.A., 1906). He remained in England,
3:18 The Letters of George Santayana

where he took up a literary career. Robert Gathorne-Hardy’s Recollections of Logan

Pearsall Smith describes the decline into insanity that occurred in his later years.
2
Essays was published by Scribner’s and Constable in 1920.
3
Arthur Sydney McDowall (1877–1933) wrote Nature and Men (London, 1923) and
Realism: A Study in Art and Thought (Constable, 1918). His article in the London Mercury
was “Three Philosopher-Prophets (Dr. Inge, Mr. Bertrand Russell, and Mr.
Santayana),” ( June 1921): 164–72.
4
“Hermes the Interpreter,” 28 (February 1922): 374–77.
5
The Dial published articles reprinted in Soliloquies as Soliloquies 13, 18, 33, 34, and
43.
6
John Francis Stanley, 2d Earl Russell (1865–1931) was a barrister and politician who
served on the London County Council, was secretary of the Ministry of Transport
(1929), and was undersecretary of state for India (1929–31). He was the grandson and
heir of Lord John Russell, the reforming prime minister, and son of Lord and Lady
Amberley. His brother Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872–1970) was educated at
Cambridge and held a variety of posts there. As a philosopher he reacted against ide-
alism with realism and adopted the alternative of logical constructions, substituting
wherever possible constructions out of known entities for inference to unknown ones.
He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. John Francis Stanley was married
three times, and Bertrand was married four times. Both had numerous affairs.
7
Cleopatra (69 B.C.–30 B.C.), queen of Egypt, is a great romantic figure of history.
Though apparently not beautiful in the classical sense, she was an alluring woman.

To Constable and Co. Ltd.

10 June 1921 • Paris, France (MS: Temple)

9, Av de l’Observatoire Paris
June 10, 1921
Messrs Constable & Company
London
Gentlemen
I beg to thank you for the account in regard to Little Essays and the
cheque for £53–19–3.
I notice you sent the letter to Avila; I am seldom there: my permanent
address is C/o Brown Shipley & Co, 123 Pall Mall, S.W.1 and my head-
quarters here in Paris. If, by the way, you intended to send me more than
one copy of Character & Opinion in the U.S. I should be very glad to have
the others here now, where I keep my books.
I am very glad you are to publish Mr Strong’s Fables and we are both
much pleased with the aspect of the sample page which you sent him.
Yours faithfully
G Santayana
 1921–1927 3:19

To Wendell T. Bush
1 July 1921 • Paris, France (MS: Columbia)

1
9 Avenue de l’Observatoire
Paris, July 1, 1921
Dear Mr Bush
Here is a long Soliloquy2—the longest in the book, if I don’t cut it down—
which I venture to send you for your Journal, because it clears up (I hope)
some points which people are troubled by in my books, and especially
because it contains an answer to a criticism of me by William James and
another (or an expansion of the same) by Miller. Miller’s article,3 on the
personal side is very flattering, subtle, and delicate; but on the theoretical
side it is not fair, and I should not be sorry to have him read this indirect
reply.
I suppose, with your literary plans for the Journal, you won’t object to
the form of personal confession (and boastfulness!) in which this Soliloquy
is written. I could have written it more modestly: but being dead, and not
caring very much what people say, I prefer to go in for it, and say shame-
lessly what I really think. Why not?
Your young friend turned up once,4 but has not come again, although I
thought we had a pleasant time together. I did the talking.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
In the upper left corner of this letter is a note in a hand other than that of Santayana
which reads, “The very interesting paper is in the box.”
2
“On My Friendly Critics,” Philosophy 18 (22 December 1921): 701–13. Reprinted in
Soliloquies, 245–59.
3
Dickinson Sargeant Miller (1868–1963) studied philosophy at Harvard (A.M., 1892)
and earned a Ph.D. (1893) from Germany’s Halle-Wittenberg University. He taught in
the Harvard philosophy department from 1899 to 1904. Miller wrote under the name
R. E. Hobart. “Mr. Santayana and William James” was published in the Harvard
Graduates Magazine (March 1921): 348–64.
4
Irwin Edman (1896–1954) received his academic degrees from Columbia
University, where he spent his career teaching philosophy. He published The Philosophy
of Santayan: edited, with an introductory essay, by Irwin Edman in 1936. His most popular
book is Philosopher’s Holiday (1938).
3:20 The Letters of George Santayana

To George Sturgis
2 August 1921 • Paris, France (MS: Houghton)

9 Avenue de l’Observatoire
Paris, August 2, 1921
Dear George1
Your telegram—which I am acknowledging by cable—reaches me this
morning: the very last previous news had been encouraging, but of course
under the circumstances the worst was to be feared. Your poor father at
least had been expecting his end almost daily for years: and now he
seemed to be having a spell of complete happiness, and to have felt quite
satisfied with the posture in which he was leaving all his affairs, with the
situation of Josephine2 and with your approaching marriage. Has this
taken place, or has it been put off on account of your father’s illness? You
will now begin your married life a little sobered by this bereavement; but
it need not be less happy for that: perhaps more so on the whole, because
your new life will be your whole life now, and you will enter upon it with
a certain seriousness, which the knowledge of the inevitable end always
gives, when we have time to remember it.
For your two aunts in Spain3 and for me your father, especially, of late
years, has been the mainstay of life in money-matters, and also the chief
bond we still had with our old family life in Boston. Your aunts will be very
much agitated and worried: I am myself so useless a being practically, and
so ignorant of affairs, and so selfishly absorbed in my own literary inter-
ests, that I shall not be of any help to them. I hope you will reassure them
about business matters, and will tell me, too, what I had better do to keep
things running as smoothly as possible. Your father has no doubt made
arrangements, and I have a paper he sent me to sign in case of his death:
I am signing and enclosing it; but I leave it to you to say whether it ought
to take effect, or whether your father later had formed a different plan. I
suppose your aunts’ property and mine had better be entrusted together to
the same trustees, as the investments are parallel.—
Give my love to Josephine. Both you and she may always count on the
sympathy and best wishes of your affectionate uncle
George Santayana
[across page one] P.S. I can’t find the paper I was to sign at this moment. I
will look more carefully another day, and meantime I hope [across page one
 1921–1927 3:21

text] to hear from you on the subject, and also what your aunts have in
mind to do.
1
George Sturgis (1891–1944) was the son of Santayana’s half brother, Robert Shaw
Sturgis, and his wife, Ellen Gardner Hodges. George Sturgis became an investments
counselor and followed in his father’s footsteps as business manager for the family. He
married Rosamond Thomas Bennett (d. 1976) in 1921, and they had three sons: Robert
“Bob” Shaw (b. 1922), Neville (b. 1923), and Nathaniel Russell (b. 1925) Sturgis.
George was divorced from Rosamond in 1944.
2
Santayana’s niece, Josephine Sturgis Eldredge (1896–1958), was the daughter of
Robert Shaw Sturgis and Ellen Gardner Hodges.
3
Santayana’s half sisters, Susan Sturgis de Sastre and Josephine Borrás Sturgis
(1853–1930). Following the death of Santayana’s mother, Josephine went to live with
her sister and brother-in-law in Ávila.

To George Sturgis
14 August 1921 • Paris, France (MS: Houghton)

C
Permanent /o Brown Shipley & Co
address } 123 Pall Mall,
London. S.W.1
Paris, August 14, 1921
Dear George
th
Your good letter of July 25– , coming after your telegram, told me just
what I most wished to know about your father’s last day; and I very much
appreciate the clear way in which you put everything. In respect to money-
matters, I am a true philosopher (not a mere professor of Phil. 10, 12, etc)
and my one wish is not to hear about them, but to cash cheques and be
happy. Your father was inestimable to me and to your aunts in this way,
because besides being so affectionate and loyal, and taking so much pains,
he was very clever at it, and made us far more prosperous than we ever
expected to be. I can’t speak for your aunts, although I think your aunt
Josephine at least will be of my way of thinking, but my own chief desire
is that things should go on as much as possible as they did before, and I
will gladly sign a power of attorney in your favour if you will send me one.
If you know your father’s books, you must have noticed that your Aunt
Josephine and I are not extravagant persons—I hope not miserly, but
accustomed to an inexpensive way of living. I am also, at last, beginning
to get something out of my books: so that a large income is a secondary
consideration for us. What we desire is security, and the absence of care.
So that if you will take charge, and incline to the side of prudence, we will
3:22 The Letters of George Santayana

bless you from the bottom of our hearts. It is also, I suppose, no secret to
you that virtue on your part, in this case, is likely to be its own reward, as
you and Josephine are our principal heirs—at least, as things now stand: but
I warn you that if when accounts begin to come in, I see ruin and starva-
tion before me, I will put the débris of my fortune into an annuity, and
when my end comes there will be nothing to dry your tears.
I expect to be in Paris, at 9 Av. de l’Observatoire, until the middle of
October: but you had better get into the habit of thinking that my address
is C/o Brown Shipley & Co because I move about a good deal, and shall
probably be much in England in the future; and in any case the delay is
not more than a day, if letters from America come by way of London.
When you have time and feel like it, I should be glad if you would write
about yourself and Rosamond and give me some idea of your life and sur-
roundings.
Yours affectionately
GSantayana

To Logan Pearsall Smith

17 August 1921 • Paris, France (MS: Congress)

Paris, August 17, 1921

Dear Smith
If the neo-pensives wish to pensivate on No 581 of the Little Essays, by
all means let them do so. Now and then I get requests of this kind, usually
to include my beautiful sonnets entitled (not by me) Faith2 and Sorrow.
Bijou Tompkins (Miss) or Selma Holdstern Rosenkranz (Mrs.) would not
like their anthology without these jems, and they inclose American
postage stamps for the answer, hoping it will be favourable. I thus appear
in Dewdrops All The Year Round or High Thoughts Handy and I confess
I like it. It can’t make what one has written any the worse, and it is a link
with the Zeitgeist.3
I am afraid I sha’n’t get to England for another year, but then it will be
for the rest of my days. I have been working very hard getting the
Soliloquies into shape. They are practically done now, and I expect before
long to start for Italy and spend the winter there.
 1921–1927 3:23

Thank you very much for your letter, and the pleasant image of Big
Chilling4 which it calls up.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall. S.W.1
1
“The Elements of Poetry.”
2
Sonnet III, of the First Sonnet Series, beginning “O world, thou choosest not the bet-
ter part!”
3
A German expression meaning “the spirit of the time.”
4
Smith’s Elizabethan manor house at Warsash on the Hampshire coast of England.

To Wendell T. Bush
20 August 1921 • Paris, France (MS: Columbia)

9 Av. de l’Observatoire
Paris, Aug 20, 1921
Dear Mr Bush
I write to ask you to do me a favour, which is to send me as soon as pos-
sible a copy of my article on My Frie n dly Critics; either the proof, if it is
^^
ready, or a type-written copy, or the printed article if it has already come
out. To my great joy the Soliloquies are now complete, but I have no clean
copy of this one, and can’t send the book to the publisher until I have one.
By the way, I wished to make a slight change in one place, where I am
afraid my language does not convey my intention. I can’t give the page,
but it is where, toward the beginning, I speak of my “detachment”, and say
that it does not exclude good-will. Then, instead of “Let them take their
own course”, I should like it to read, “I share their joy in their true loves”.
That is what I really meant: but it is a small matter, and I shall be almost
glad if it is too late to make the correction, as then I shall get the article
back soon; and get the whole book—which has been a terrible though
pleasant labour—off my mind
I am afraid I shall be in Italy in November, but send me a line when
you arrive.
Yours sincerely GSantayana
3:24 The Letters of George Santayana

To Mary Williams Winslow

23 August 1921 • Paris, France (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London
Paris, Aug. 23, 1921
Dear Mrs Winslow1
What a kind letter this is which I receive from you this morning! I
always felt that you and Fred were the best friends I had during these later
years in Boston, and there was no house where I was happier and felt more
at home, so that all the kind things you say do not surprise me, although
they bring a fresh pleasure, and I believe you mean them. It would be a
treat to find myself once more in Clarendon Street, and to see the children
in the present stage of their existence—because you and Fred, I know,
would be just the same; but it is impossible to combine everything as one
would wish, and with the years it becomes harder and harder for me to
interrupt the routine into which I have fallen.
Robert, like others of the Sturgis tribe, was a very loyal, affectionate,
candid soul; he loved whole-heartedly what he felt was good and what
appealed to his feelings. Once won over, he spared no pains or trouble,
and lived without stint in the life of others. But his misfortune throughout
his life was that his perceptions were not equal to his feelings; he irritated
people, and that was the reason why he had comparatively few friends,
especially among men. I very well remember him as a boy—how pertina-
cious he was. We had pillow-fights—very unequal contests, as he was
twelve and I was three: and as he had been forbidden by our mother—who
had a very severe sense of justice—to take away any part of my supper
without my consent, he used to put out his tongue and say that, if I liked,
I might give him a bite of my omelette; and he did this so persistently, that
I sometimes gave him a little—a very little—to get rid of him. He meant this
as a lesson in generosity, to teach me to be unselfish; but I am afraid that
I was a poor pupil, and that it was only he that learned to distribute his
omelette in generous portions to everybody about him. During the last few
years he and I have been on better terms than we had ever been on
^ ^
before. He said, after seeing me in 1913 in Paris, that my moral character
was much improved; and I too came to appreciate better the value of his
strong points, and to rely on his judgement in a way which, I dare say, con-
 1921–1927 3:25

ciliated him. He was a treasure in the way of taking all earthly cares off my
back and that of our sisters, and we have to thank him not only for being
relatively well off, but for the sense of being devotedly and untiringly
look ed after, where we were incompetent. I don’t know what will
^ ^
become of us now; but I rely on the momentum he has given to things, to
carry them on more or less smoothly until our own end comes—George
seems to be a nice clear-headed young man, and has written his aunts and
me very nice frank letters about his father’s illness, and death, his own
marriage, and our future arrangements.
I have been working very hard all summer on the Soliloquies—which
will be my next book—and which are now finished. This leaves the field
comparatively clear for the magnum opus;2 but as I can never reduce
myself to one project, I have taken up again an old one, which is to write
a novel. It is to be entitled The Last Puritan, and to contain all I know
about America, about woman, and about young men. As this last is rather
my strong point, I have two heroes, the Puritan —— one
—— and another not too
much the other way. To make up, I have no heroine, but a worldly grand-
mother, a mother—the quintessence of all New England virtues—and vari-
ous fashionable, High Church, emancipated, European, and sentimental
young ladies. I also have a German governness—in love with the hero—of
whom I am very proud. I did a good deal on this novel last winter in
Toledo, where I was absolutely alone for two months; but I reserve it for
slack seasons, and am not at all sure that it will ever be finished, much less
published.3 But if I ever have a respectable fragment in good shape, I will
have it type-written and submit it to your private perusal. One of my
friends—a widow4—tells me she is sure I shall fail in the love scenes. I
sha’n’t, because there won’t be any.
I am thinking of going to Italy for the winter, in the first instance to
Venice, which I don’t know well. My thoughts [across] if not my picture-
postcards, will often fly to you from there, as from here. Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Mary Williams Winslow was married to Frederick Winslow, who graduated from
the Harvard class of 1895 and became a prominent Boston physician. They had two
children, Polly and Frederick.
2
Realms.
3
Puritan was published by Constable in 1935 and Scribner’s in 1936.
4
Probably Nancy Saunders Toy.
3:26 The Letters of George Santayana

To John Middleton Murry

20 September 1921 • Paris, France (MS: Macksey)

9 Avenue de l’Observatoire
Paris, Sept. 20, 1921
Dear Mr Murry1
I am about to send the entire collection of my “Soliloquies in England”
to Constable who is, I hope, going to reissue them in the form of a book.
If you, or Mr Massingham,2 have a copyright to those which appeared in
The Athenaeum, and one which appeared in The Nation,3 may I have
your permission to republish them? I take for granted that I may, as you
knew they were destined to appear together, before I began sending them
to you, but the stimulus of publication has led me to compose a great many
more than I had in the original collection: and I fear the tome will now be
rather ponderous. You have been, in a sense, a godfather to this fat child,
and I will send him to you to express his thanks as soon as he makes his
formal appearance before the world
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
John Middleton Murry (1889–1957) was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford. He
was literary critic for The Times of London (1914–19), and editor of The Athenaeum
(1919–21) and The Adelphi (1923–30). He wrote numerous books on literature, politics,
and religion. His autobiographical Between Two Worlds appeared in 1935.
2
Henry William Massingham (1860–1924) was a journalist and editor of The Nation
from 1907 to 1923.
3
“Society and Solitude,” (26 February 1921): 734–35.
 1921–1927 3:27

To Charles Scribner’s Sons

20 September 1921 • Paris, France (MS: Princeton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Paris, Sept. 20, 1921
Messrs Charles Scribner’s Sons
New York
Gentlemen
th
I am much obliged to you for your letter of the 7– suggesting that I
1
should contribute something to Scribner’s Magazine. It would be a plea-
sure to do so, if I had anything on hand that was suitable, but my
“Soliloquies in England”, of which you may have seen some in various
reviews, are now exhausted, and I am at work on more long-winded
things. However, I shall keep your suggestion in mind, in case an occasion
should present itself for me to take advantage of it.
Yours truly
GSantayana
1
Scribner’s Magazine (1887–1939), founded by the younger Charles Scribner
(1854–1930), was a monthly literary journal for educated readers.

To Gilbert Seldes
20 September 1921 • Paris, France (MS: Columbia)

9 Avenue de l’Observatoire
Paris, Sept. 20, 1921
Dear Mr Seldes—1
Thank you very much for the proofs of my two articles. I return that of
the Dickens2 with a few verbal emendations besides the correcti a/ on of
misprints: I hope they are not troublesome.
I am taking for granted that, if you have a copyright to the various
Soliloquies that have appeared in the Dial, you will grant me permission
to reprint them in the book, for which, as you and Mr Thayer3 know, they
were originally written Yours very truly
GSantayana
(over)
3:28 The Letters of George Santayana

th
P.S. Since writing this I have received your letter of the 9– enclosing a draft
3921 francs 56/100 for which many thanks— I am far from wishing to find
fault with your scale of payments—all my books together don’t yield such
sums in a year—but it occurs to me that paying authors by the page is an
encouragement to prolixity. Why not have a graduated scale like the
income-tax, so much for the first page, less for the second, nothing for the
tenth, and a minus quantity after that? This system would be particular ly
^ ^
good for poets.
1
Gilbert Seldes (1893–1970), Harvard class of 1914, was an American journalist,
author, and music critic who wrote drama reviews for The Dial (1920–29). He pub-
lished under his name as well as pseudonyms, especially Foster Johns.
2
“Dickens,” 71 (November 1921): 357–49. Four other Soliloquies were published in
The Dial in 1921.
3
Scofield Thayer (1889–1982) was an American writer and editor educated at
Harvard and Magdalen College, Oxford University. In 1919 Thayer became editor of
The Dial. He also was co-owner of the magazine and director of the Dial Publishing
Company. Santayana had known Thayer in Oxford during World War I.

To Alice Cecilia Cooper

21 September 1921 • Paris, France (MS: UCLA)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London S.W.1
Paris, Sept. 21 1921
Miss Alice C. Cooper1
Oakland
Dear Madam
Of course it can be only a source of satisfaction to me that you should
wish to include one of my sonnets in your anthology, and I am glad the
publishers have granted you their permission to do so.
Yours very truly
GSantayana
1
Alice Cecilia Cooper (b. 1895) was teaching at University High School in Oakland,
California. She edited Poems of Today: A Collection of the Contemporary Verse of America and
Great Britain (Boston, New York, etc.: Ginn and Company, 1924). The poem selected
by her is Sonnet XXIX, beginning “What riches have you that you deem me poor.”
 1921–1927 3:29

To Constable and Co. Ltd.

30 September 1921 • Paris, France (MS: Temple)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Paris, September 30 1921
Messrs. Constable & Company
London
Gentlemen
I am sending you today the manuscript of “Soliloquies in England”, of
which I have already spoken to you. The collection has grown longer than
I anticipated, and has been delayed by that fact, and by the publication of
several of the pieces in reviews, some of which, indeed, have not yet
appeared. But I have secured copies of them in advance, so as to be able
to send you the whole before I leave Paris, as I shortly expect to do.
If you decide to publish this book, as I hope you may, it could be made
into a companion volume to “Little Essays”. It is, I think, of about the same
length, perhaps a little longer. I am sorry it has grown so bulky, but could
not bring myself to sacrifice any of the inge/ redients in the dish. Yours
faithfully
GSantayana

To Charles Augustus Strong

1 October 1921 • Paris, France (MS: Rockefeller)

9 Av. de l’Observatoire
October 1, 1921
Dear Strong
Your card from Pisa, and news which Marie has had from Enrichetta,1
lead me to assume that you are happily contemplating the perfections of
your country seat (this elegant diction is due to Tom Jones,2 which I have
just read entire) and giving the finishing touches to all the improvements
there. Here we have had no change, and pleasant weather. Two pamphlets
by Maurice Picard3 have arrived, addressed to me, which I suppose he has
sent you also, as they seem to be applications of your doctrine, although
the style is so bad that I am not sure of his meaning and have given up all
3:30 The Letters of George Santayana

attempts to understand it. A card from Mademoiselle de l’Enfernat4 has

arrived for Margaret: I suppose it isn’t worth while to send it on.
I finally sent off the Soliloquies to Constable yesterday, having at last
received proofs from the London Mercury and the Dial, and a typewritten
copy of my article from Bush. Various re-writings, corrections, omission of
repetitions, paging, etc, have kept that book more or less on my mind, and
consumed my time, so that the Realms have not received much attention:
but in the next fortnight I hope to do good work. I have not yet decided
when to leave Paris. The truth is, I hate to move at all, and wish it were not
necessary, but I suppose it would be cold and cheerless here if I stayed on
into the winter. Let me know what Margaret’s plans are, when you know
them; if I don’t hear anything to dissuade me, I may start in about a fort-
night for the south.
I went last Thursday to hear The Barber of Seville5 at the Opéra
Comique, and (as usual) liked the first act or two very much, and then felt
that the performance became inferior and tiresome There was also an
absurd and indecedently ugly ballet called Le Bois Sacré.6 I have dined
again with Windram,7 and tonight expect to do so with two young English
friends, Mortimer and Taylor.8 This is much more fun than the play. The
little room upstairs at Poccardi’s has been opened again, and although my
old waiter is gone, I dine there now almost every evening, and find it very
pleasant, except on Sundays when the crowd invades even that upper
chamber. I don’t mind its being a little dearer than Duval,9 having received
3900 and odd francs for my last two articles in the Dial, so that I am more
glutted than ever with riches. Next week I mean gradually to begin prepa-
rations, so as to be ready to depart when the spirit moves me, getting
clothes, passports, etc. in order for the journey. I shall have to go to the
American consulate as well, to sign a power of attorney which they have
sent me from Boston. Yours ever
GSantayana
1
A domestic at Strong’s villa.
2
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749) by Henry Fielding. The hero, Tom Jones,
is a model of generosity and manly spirit mixed with dissipation.
3
Alfred Maurice Picard’s (1844–1913) works include Values, Immediate and Contributory,
and Their Interrelation (1920), his Ph.D. dissertation from New York University.
4
Unidentified.
5
Giacchino Antonio Rossini’s Barber of Seville (1816) is a comic opera. Figaro, a rascal
of a barber, aids Count Almaviva in gaining entrance to the house of Bartholo so that
the count can woo Bartholo’s ward, Rosine, with whom Almaviva is in love. The count
succeeds with Figaro’s help in marrying Rosine despite Bartholo’s precautions.
 1921–1927 3:31

6
Possibly Le Bois sacré: comédie en trois actes by Gaston-Arman de Caillavet and Robert
de Flers (Paris, 1910).
7
Unidentified.
8
Charles Raymond Bell Mortimer (1895–1980) was an English journalist and author.
See Persons, 489–99. Taylor is unidentified.
9
A chain of inexpensive restaurants in Paris.

To Benjamin Apthorp Gould Fuller

18 October 1921 • Paris, France (MS: Houghton)

9 Av. de l’Observatoire Paris

Oct. 18. 1921
Dear Fuller
Just a line, in hopes of catching you before you sail, to thank you for
your letter and to say that I expect to be in Rome too during the winter
and am delighted to hear that you and your mother are — to
— coming. We
shall have many delightful occasions on which to talk over the past and
future, and survey existence, both at Harvard and in the vulgar world. I
am waiting for Margaret Strong, now at sea, and expect to accompany her
in about a fortnight to Fiesole, where her father is, and thence, very soon,
to Rome, where I shall be when you arrive, if all goes well
Don’t worry about the Realms of Being: they are in hand, but I need
solitude and a certain returning of the season, as for the migratory or the
breeding instinct, in order to make rapid progress. This summer I worked
hard, and finished the “Soliloquies in England” which will make a long
book and one rather different from my others, richer, I think, and warmer.
It is now in the publisher’s hands.
I expect to go to the Hôtel de Milan, in the piazza di Monte Citorio; but
if you don’t find me there, you will hear from me
Yours ever
GSantayana
3:32 The Letters of George Santayana

To Constable and Co. Ltd.

20 October 1921 • Paris, France (MS: Temple)

{
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
Address:
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
1
Paris, October 20, 1921

Messrs Constable & Company

London.
Gentlemen
I am sorry that the American tariff is likely to place further obstacles in
the way of the sale of English books in the United States; it is a clear case
of protecting a local trade at the expense of the education of the country
and the preservation of the English language. In respect to my book, how-
ever, I am not much concerned: the American sale of Soliloquies in
England would in any case not be so large as that of Character & Opinion
in the U.S. as the book is longer and does not entice the American reader
with the almost irresistible bait of hearing himself discussed. Any arrange-
ment you think fair in respect to royalties will be satisfactory to me, and I
gladly accept your suggestion of receiving 15% on the sales in the United
Kingdom, and half the profits on any sale you effect in the United States.
Your letter seems to presuppose that you had already written to me
accepting the Soliloquies for publication, but in that case your letter has
miscarried, as I have received only the acknowledgement of the receipt of
the manuscript, and your letter of today. If there was another communica-
tion, which has been lost, I should be much obliged if you would repeat
anything you may have said in it about the Soliloquies or about the form
in which you propose to issue them.
Would it involve too great a delay or too much trouble to the printers if
you asked them to send me proofs in galley form, before the pages are
divided? I am afraid that there may be repetitions or redundancies which
have escaped me in putting the pieces together, but which I should per-
ceive in reading the proofs, and wish to remove. These changes could be
made more freely and economically if they did not involve rearranging the
pages of the whole book. I tried to revise the manuscript carefully, but I
was (to say the truth) rather stale and weary with it, and much that should
have been corrected may have escaped my notice.
 1921–1927 3:33

I shall be in Italy during the winter, but chiefly in Rome, so that the
delay in returning proofs need not be very great.
Yours faithfully
GSantayana
1
Before the date line is a note in a hand other than that of Santayana which reads,
“Ref. 1 / R.”

To Constable and Co. Ltd.

28 October 1921 • Paris, France (MS: Temple)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall S.W.1
Paris, Oct. 28, 1921
Messrs Constable & Co
London
I enclose the agreement for the publication of Soliloquies in England,
duly signed1
Yours faithfully
GSantayana
1
Unlocated.

To George Sturgis
4 November 1921 • Fiesole, Italy (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co Nov. 4, 21
123 Pall Mall LE BALZE,
London, —W S.W.1. FIESOLE,
FIRENZE.
Dear George
As you probably know by this time, I have already sent on a ———— joint
^ ^
power of attorney, in favour of you and of Mr Gardiner,1 jointly or sepa-
rately, to carry on my affairs. I did so supposing that this was what you, as
well as he, had in mind, and we re proposing to me. If there is anything
^ ^
in this arrangement that is cumbrous, or that you find in any way undesir-
able, I shall be glad to reconsider the whole matter, but my impression is
that it would be as well to let M–r Gardiner, who in any case has to look
after the various trusts established in your father’s will, to keep the books
3:34 The Letters of George Santayana

for us; it will relieve you of that drudgery; and at the same time you can
keep an eye on investments, and see that no changes are made contrary to
your judgement. In case of a difference of opinion between you, you might
consult me: for although I know nothing of business in detail, I have my
instinctive preferences, as for instance, in not having all, nor too many,
eggs in one basket, nor too much splitting and varying of investments, in
which more risks are taken than are worth taking for the amount of profit
in view.
I left Paris a week ago and am staying here in Strong’s villa and seeing
other old friends I have in the Florentine colony of Anglo-Americans. In
a few days I expect to move on to Rome and stay there for the winter.
Do send me any snap-shot photographs you may have of yourself and
Rosamond, as you promised. It may be a long time before I return to Avila
and see the portraits of her that I understand you have sent there. With
best wishes, Your affte uncle
George Santayana
1
Robert Hallowell Gardiner Jr. worked for Fiduciary Trust Company of Boston until
1941.

To Charles Augustus Strong

[Between 5 and 11 November 1921] • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Royal
Via Venti Settembre
Dear Strong
My journey was like il camin di nostra vita,1 with alternations of good
and evil. First I had to ——
weight
———— ^wait^ more than an hour for the train to
arrive, on a very cold and windy platform; but when it did arrive, I found
a very comfortable compartment, with only one man, who was always in
the passage, smoking. I had tea and dinner in the train, which helped to
warm me up. On arrival there were at first no facchini2 and when one
arrived and took my valises to the hotel c/ Continental, they told me there
were no rooms, in spite of my telegram, because trains from Rome were
suspended and no guests had left that day. This explained to me a phe-
nomenon to which, in the excitement of the moment, I had given no atten-
tion. As we left the station and came into the street, the way out was
blocked by a crowd trying to get in; and one young man asked me, rather
 1921–1927 3:35

brusquely, where I had come from. Apparently there is a sort of strike.

Being told that there was not a room to be had in the modest hotels near
the station, I took a cab and tried the Quirinal and the Grand, and then
this one, the Royal, where with some hesitation and talk about having my
meals in the restaurant, they gave me a very well furnished clean room.
This morning I went all over the place, and not a room to be had any-
where, and all require meals to be taken in the house: finally I decided to
try the Marini, where the pension is 55 lire a day, when a room there is
disponibile.3 They took my name and address, but I shall go every day to
ask, if the disponibility has become actual. This is the place I had in mind,
at the beginning, in case a pension was inevitable, since it is in the very
centre of things, and not too dear to exclude an occasional truancy.
Please keep my letters for the moment: I will telegraph when I actually
get into permanent quarters.
I have had a very dismal lunch in this hotel, to try it, but tonight I shall
go to the Tre Rè, to make up, and defy the worst that can happen to the
tyrannized traveller.
The town is in a state of orderly revolution—no trains, no newspapers,
no trams, fascisti4 marching about, and a general feeling of helplessness.
Yours ever G.S.
1
The way of our life (Italian).
2
Porters (Italian).
3
Available (Italian).
4
Adherents of fascism, the political and economic system in Italy under Mussolini
that developed after 1922 and lasted until Italy’s defeat in World War II. Fascism in
general has been negative reaction against socialism and a reaction of ruling classes to
the outcome of the French Revolution. It plays upon national pride and prejudice and
often exploits anti-Semitism; it sets itself up as the champion of law and order against
the threat of mob rule. In Italy social unrest was mixed with nationalist dissatisfaction
over the poor fruits of victory after World War I. The masses were won by paternalis-
tic methods of works and relief, but the real power lay in the hands of the élite.

To Charles Augustus Strong

[12 November 1921] • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Royal, Rome

Saturday
Dear Strong
As you see I am still in the place where I stranded on my arrival, but
they promise me at the Marini that they will give me a room in a day or
3:36 The Letters of George Santayana

two, and it is arranged that my letters may be sent there forthwith. If any-
thing has arrived for me I should be much obliged if you would forward it
there.
Rome is in a queer state and would not be at all convenient for you at
this moment, as there are no trams and no cabs or taxis. I have grown per-
ceptibly thinner footing it everywhere This hotel, except for the situation
and the guests, is not half bad, and I have been taking my meals in the
awful dining room, consoled by the very decent food and a note-book and
pencil with which I am already provided, so as not to miss the inspiration
of the moment, wherever I may find myself. I went one evening to the Tre
Rè and was recognized and attended to by my old waiter; but the place
was uncomfortably crowded and the food coarse and half cold, so that I
am not very sorry not to be obliged to go there too often. The restaurant
at the Marini, too, may turn out to be a rum place, I have only peeped into
it when it was not in full swing; but for a philosopher I think it will do, and
may prove positively congenial.
As we are cut off from all communication with the world, I don’t know
what may have happened, or when you will get this: but the absence of
half the usual accompaniments of modern life is by no means unpleasant
in itself, and the streets with only foot-passengers and an occasional motor
are decidedly humane and like antiquity. The weather, too, has improved
at last, and is almost warm today.
I have already done some work, in spite of not being really settled.
Yours ever
GSantayana

To Susan Sturgis de Sastre

16 November 1921 • Rome, Italy (MS: Virginia)

Hotel Marini, Roma

Nov. 16, 1921
Dear Susie
Rome yesterday reverted to its usual aspect, with cabs, trams, and I
believe most of the scheduled trains; at any rate I was able to move from
my first hotel, which was in the modern and foreign part of Rome, to this
old one in the centre, which I think I shall like better, although it is not of
the first class. The patriotic fascisti who were marching with flags about the
town have also disappeared, and if the sun would only shine and it would
 1921–1927 3:37

stop threatened
——ing to rain (it has actually been raining a great deal for the
last fortnight) I should be quite happy.
I write to you at once, now that I am settled and that things have
returned to the normal, as I don’t know what you may have heard about
the disturbances here. All I saw of them was absolutely innocent, and the
streets without carriages and without newspapers were rather improved,
and looked more as they must have looked in the good old times.
Yesterday, when the first newspapers appeared, it was amusing to see
everyone lost in the absolute intensity of his reading, though there was lit-
tle in them after all; but masculine man has become a paper-reading ani-
mal, and hungers for that thin nutriment when he is deprived of it by any
chance. I haven’t been able to make out what the strikes were about, or
how they have been settled; I shall have to wait for the foreign papers to
throw some light on the essential facts. The Italian sheets are filled with the
exploits of the fascisti, which as far as I know had nothing to do with
strikes, but were a demonstration a propos of the patriotic ceremony of
burying the “Unknown Soldier”.
I was glad to get away from Fiesole which, as I believe I said in my for-
mer letter, is not to my taste, as Strong has been caught in the life of the
Anglo-American colony, and no longer lives with his old simplicity. He
will probably join me here later when he himself gets tired of [across] liv-
ing like a rich man. — I want to send a Xmas present to Pepe’s boys:1
should I send Pepe money, or [across page one] send it to you, and in what
form, and must I send something for Rafael’s little girls2 also? Love to all
from
Jorge
1
José “Pepe” Sastre González married Isabel Martín. They had at least two sons,
Eduardo (b. 1915) and Roberto (d. 1939) Sastre Martín, and three daughters.
2
Rafael Sastre González married Adelaida “Adela” Hernández. Their children
include María Josefa, Adelaida, and Rafael.
3:38 The Letters of George Santayana

To Charles Augustus Strong

17 November 1921 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Marini, Rome

Nov. 17, 1921
Dear Strong
I am now thoroughly settled here. I have a very decent room on the
third floor, looking out on the via del Tritone, high enough to get the sun
(when it shines) and which after the Hotel Brébant seems very quiet. Trams
and taxis have begun to run again, and newspapers have reappeared. It
was amusing to see every one devouring the first sheets that came out, but
there was very little in them. They speak of “disturbances”, but I saw noth-
ing except harmless bands of fascisti with flags and some strike
————icks, march-
ing about to no purpose. The only “trouble” was negative, in the absence
of means of locomotion.
The restaurant in this hotel is the exact opposite of what I had expected.
There is a lounge and a bar at the front where, in passing, I had observed
rather nondescript people, and I expected a crowded gay place, with lov-
ing couples, etc. Not a bit of it; silence and almost gloom, plain home-like
fare, and a few respectable provincial families and commercial travellers.
If the food is not too monotonous, it will do very well for me, and I can
always go to the Roma (which is just opposite) if I want a change. It is at
least no interruption to profound meditation on the Realms of Being to
dine in such a place, and so far I rather like it.
I have begun to work steadily, and am making progress.
The only thing that makes me a little restless is the continued rain and
heavy atmosphere—I suppose it is the scirocco. I went yesterday to San
Pietro in Montorio to see my favourite Aqua Paula but was caught in
heavy rain and found the walk rather exhausting. But I learned the inscrip-
tion by heart. It reads: PAVLVS • QVINTVS • PONTIFEX • MAXIMVS •
AQVAM • IN • AGRO • BROCCIANENSI • SALVBERRIMIS • E • FON-
TIBVS • COLLECTAM • VETERIBVS • AQVÆ • ALSIETINÆ • DVCTIBVS
• RESTITVTIS • NOVISQVE • ADDITIS • XXXII • AB • MILLIARIO •
DVXIT •1
I haven’t yet received any letters either forwarded by you or from
London, although I telegraphed my new address to B. S. & Co some time
ago. Yours ever
GSantayana
 1921–1927 3:39

1
By order of Pope Paul V, waters were collected from the most healthful, ancient
fountains in the land of the Braccians; they were then drawn from the thirty-second
milestone to the Aqua Alsientina through both new and restored aqueducts (Latin).

To Horace Meyer Kallen

21 November 1921 • Rome, Italy (MS: American)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall. London. S.W.1
Rome, Nov. 21, 1921
Dear Kallen
It is very kind and friendly of you to send me your new book,1 which I
have spent two days in reading attentively from cover to cover. It is full of
instruction for me, not only of new facts about the history of Zionism and
of the war in Poland, but of matter for political reflexion. You carry me
along with you more completely than you did in your former book about
public affairs,2 although of course I have not the special interests of
Zionism so much at heart as you have, nor your sympathy with labour pol-
itics. Not that I have any hostility, in principle, to socialism, communism,
or nationalism; but I see the values also which their operation is bound to
destroy, and I think that, like any other forms of society, they are to be
accepted only when inevitable, and confined to the community to which
they are fitted, and by no means to be set up by the philosopher as ideals
compulsory at all times and places over all men, as if they were better in
themselves than any others. The great obstacle to political wisdom and jus-
tice is the difficulty we all experience in thinking in dynamic units and dis-
cerning the units which, in any problem before us, are really dynamic. We
think instead in aesthetic or moral terms which correspond to no lines of
cleavage or motion in nature; and so our eloquence and our prophecies,
even our treaties and legislation, come strangely to naught; and we are
consumed with astonishment and indignation at what we think the folly
and wickedness of mankind, whose actions and sentiments are so strangely
oblivious of the units we wished to preserve. I think it is wiser to appreci-
ate what arises and what (of course imperfectly) can actually maintain
itself, than to antagonize those other forces (also fertile in moral values)
which may prevent those things from arising on which, for some private
reason, we have set our hearts. Your book has left some doubt in my mind
whether the Jewish Palestine which you desire is possible, and whether it
3:40 The Letters of George Santayana

would be very pleasing. I can’t imagine Israel industrialized or Palestine

(which seemed to me a miserable country when I was there) anything but
a place of pilgrimage or penance, like Sinai. And would an artificial indus-
try, if it could become self-supporting in that climate, prove compatible
with the spiritual function which the seat of Judaism should have? I could
more easily conceive a Zion like Lhassa3 or like the Vatican or like Mount
Athos4 simply a religious centre and nursery for the Diaspora.5 But we
shall see.
What is your address? And what is [across] the New School for Social
Research?6 And how are you in health, wealth and spirits? Yours sin-
cerely GSantayana
[across page one] P.S. Where did you pick up the phrase “by and large”? I
never saw it before.
1
Born in Germany, Horace Meyer Kallen (1882–1974) attended Harvard (A.B., 1903;
Ph.D., 1908) and taught English at Princeton (1903–5). From 1908 to 1911 he taught phi-
losophy at Harvard and worked closely with both William James and Santayana. Later
he taught at the University of Wisconsin and Columbia. Kallen was one of the founders
of the New School for Social Research in New York City. A leading Zionist, he wrote
books on philosophy, politics, and education including Zionism and World Politics: A
Study in History and Social Psychology (Garden City, NY, and Toronto: Doubleday, Page
and Co., 1921).
2
Possibly The League of Nations, Today and Tomorrow: A Discussion of International
Organization, Present and to Come (Boston: Marshall Jones Company, 1919).
3
The capital of Tibet, center of Lamaism, near the main palace of Dalai Lama.
Traditional hostility of Tibetan clergy to foreigners has led Lhasa to be called
Forbidden City.
4
Autonomous monastic district in northeast Greece.
5
The dispersion of the Jews throughout the world, beginning with the biblical
Babylonian exile; any scattering of people with a common origin, background, or
beliefs.
6
In Manhattan, this is a nonsectarian coed institution opened in 1919 for adult edu-
cation. Its divisions include graduate faculty of political and social science. Founders
included John Dewey and Thorstein Veblen; Kallen was one of the first professors
there.
 1921–1927 3:41

To Charles Augustus Strong

21 November 1921 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Marini, Rome

Nov. 21. 1921
Dear Strong
Thank you for your letter, and the others you forwarded. I think every-
thing has arrived safely, and B. S. & Co are also forwarding my letters
properly. No proof of Soliloquies has yet arrived. I have been reading a
book of my Jewish friend Kallen on Zionism—very instructive. This hotel
is turning out very satisfactory, and the food, so far, just what I need, and
the quiet of the restaurant can be relei ——ieved by adjourning immediately to
the Aragno for coffee
The weather continues rainy, with a little sun now and then; I go after
lunch to the Pincio1 as a rule. One day I went to the Palatine,2 walking up
by the long path to the right, under the walls, and found it most solitary,
romantic, and beautiful. Here is all the country one can desire, within the
walls of Rome
A man who told me his name was MacKensy3 and said he had been a
pupil of mine stopped me in the street, and informed me that he was
“exchange-professor” here, and was going to lecture to them in Italian.
What a wealth of exchange professors! Perry4 has written from Paris,
regretting not finding us at the apartment; and Bush has written—do not be
alarmed—from Valladolid!
I will not say anything about the Fables: it is hard for me to see them
either as yours or as not yours. They are full of good points, but I have no
power to take them in as a whole, or to place them. Some day, when the
interest in the details and in the arguments has receded, I will reread them
with a fresh mind, and tell you what I think—
I see that Painlevé5 is at it again, and says he has various theories of his
own, each as good as Einstein’s.6 Poor man, how his head must ache!
Yours ever
GSantayana
1
The Pincio is a public park in Rome, the site of the Villa Borghese (including flower
gardens) and a favorite retreat of Santayana.
2
The seven hills of Rome are the Palatine, Capitoline, Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline,
Caelian, and Aventine.
3
Unidentified.
3:42 The Letters of George Santayana

4
Ralph Barton Perry (1876–1957) was an American realist philosopher. He attended
Princeton University (B.A., 1896) and received his M.A. (1897) and Ph.D. (1899) from
Harvard. He briefly taught at Williams College and Smith College, and from 1902 to
1946 at Harvard, where after 1930 he was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy.
5
Paul Painlevé (1863–1933), a French statesman and mathematician, held several
cabinet posts in World War I and was briefly premier late in 1917. He was premier
again in 1925, and minister of war (1925–29) and minister of aviation (1930–31,
1932–33). His political career overshadowed his importance as a mathematician and
scientist. He made important contributions in the field of differential equations and
published writings on mathematics, astronomy, mechanics, philosophy, and politics.
6
Albert Einstein (1879–1955), born in Germany, was an American theoretical physi-
cist who won the 1921 Nobel Prize. He is known for his theory of relativity.

To Wendell T. Bush
22 November 1921 • Rome, Italy (MS: Columbia)

Hotel Marini, Rome

Nov. 22, 1921
Dear Mr Bush
Your letter from Valladolid has just arrived, reminding me of your
address, which I had forgotten. Otherwise I should not have neglected so
long to thank you for the type-written copy of my article for the Journal (of
which proof has also come later) nor to answer a letter which Mrs Bush was
kind enough to write, just before you left America. As you see, I am in
Rome, and I expect to remain here throughout the winter. I find that the
pleasures of travel and of new sights are not what they were, and my
instinct is always to remain where I am, until driven out. Probably I should
have remained in Paris if the apartment were not rather cold in winter and
little affected by the wood fires which are all that we are in the habit of hav-
ing there. Strong is in his villa at Fiesole, surrounded by the Anglo-
American colony into which, at last, he seems to have been absorbed.
Have you seen his philosophical fables, entitled The Wisdom of the
Beasts? My sister in Avila asked if this was not the title of the book which
Strong and I were writing together—meaning “Critical Realism”. The
fables show Strong in an entirely new light, and it is very fortunate that
now, with his physical impediment, he has this new resource of interest in
belles-lettres and in baroque fountains. I expect he will come to Rome,
probably to this hotel, later in the winter, for a short stay. Meantime I am
working on my big and final book, for which solitude is indispensable.
 1921–1927 3:43

The Soliloquies are in the publisher’s hands, and I am in daily expecta-

tion of proofs, and proof-reading—which will give me something to do
while sunning myself on the Pincio.
It is enterprising of you to plunge into Spain, and I hope your experi-
ences in my native land will be agreeable. It is very much a question of
chance, of the mood in which one approaches the country: the facts and
the monuments are hardly a reward in themselves, unless the romantic or
historical imagination colours them agreeably. Sometimes I love Spain,
but not always.
I suppose, as you are coming to Italy, you will not fail to turn up here,
& I look forward to the pleasure of seeing you [across] and Mrs Bush before
long. Yours sincerely
GSantayana

To George Sturgis
30 November 1921 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Hotel Marini, Rome.

Nov. 30 1921
Dear George,
th
I have your letter of the 8– with the amusing photographs which I will
send on at once to your aunts in Avila. If they are not shocked, the male
members of that family, beginning with your uncle Celedonio, certainly
would be, if they were allowed to see them all: but I rely on your aunt
Susan to make a judicious selection before submitting them to the mascu-
line eye. For my own part, I find them delightfully sporting, and can well
understand what a good time you were both having; and I congratulate
you on such a jolly open-air honeymoon. My only objection, or dissatis-
faction, is that I can hardly gather what Rosamond looks like in the clothes
in which I should be most likely to see her, not frequenting Wyoming
myself; and I suppose she is not always thus. But I can see enough to
appreciate what a fine figure she must make Very few women could look
so well disguised as cow-boys, hardly betraying any of the weak points
^ ^
of the softer sex.
I am glad that the matter of looking after our affairs and your father’s
books seems to have been settled satisfactorily. When I last wrote I had got
the impression that something might have been done contrary to your
wishes or expectations; but now I gather that you and Mr Gardiner have
3:44 The Letters of George Santayana

come to an agreement, by which you are to remain in active charge. This

is perfectly satisfactory to me, of course, and pleasanter in that there seems
to be less of a change than there would have been otherwise. I suppose you
will have money of mine to invest, as with my best efforts I can’t spend
more. I drew £30 yesterday, which will last me a month, and just before
New Year’s I will draw a larger sum £50 or even £ 100, as my letter of
^ ^
credit is not good after, and I have invited my friend Onderdonk1 to make
me a visit. You might ask Brown Brothers,2 at your convenience, to ask
Brown Shipley & Co in London to send me a fresh letter of credit for £500
for 1922.
I wish you and Rosamond a very happy Christmas and have no doubt
my wish will be fulfilled Yours affectionately GSantayana
1
Santayana’s friendship with Andrew Joseph Onderdonk began when the latter was
an undergraduate (Harvard, 1910). Onderdonk graduated from the Law School in 1913
and became a Wall Street lawyer and an expert in international law. Santayana had
named Onderdonk his literary executor until 1928, when Daniel Cory assumed that
role.
2
Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. is the oldest privately owned bank in America.

To Logan Pearsall Smith

2 December 1921 • Rome, Italy (MS: Congress)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Rome, Dec. 2. 1921
Dear Smith
In Florence they told me that you were in America having an opera-
tion, and I am glad to hear, in spite of the delicate or indelicate character
of it, you are on the way to a complete recovery. I hardly expect to be in
Florence again this winter, having settled down in the sort of vulgar town
hotel which I like—The Marini—to solitude in a crowd, and steady work.
This taste of mine for living in the midst of a noisy, vulgar rush of peo-
ple, most of them ugly, with whom I have nothing to do, will perhaps hint
to you why I am not altogether in sympathy with your judgement on
America. Not that I disagree with your characterization of it; they say it has
changed even in these last ten years, but not essentially. I could perfectly
recognize, though the genteel tradition may then have been stronger, that
America had “no interest for the life of the mind” was “without a head”,
 1921–1927 3:45

and “alien”. But why do you call this condition “lying fallow” and “deteri-
oration”? Isn’t the judgement of the American people rather the opposite,
namely that its condition is constantly improving, and its labours splen-
didly fruitful? Not for the “mind”, which in our lips means, I suppose, the
liberal or aristocratic life, the mind turned to pure reflection and pure
expression and pure pleasure. But why need all the tribes of men sacrifice
at our altar? I agree that it is barbarous and tragic to strain after merely
conventional ends, by attaining which nobody is the happier, but every-
one is sacrificed to some fetich. But isn’t America happy? The old genteel
America was not happy; it was eager to know the truth, and to be “cul-
tured”, and to love “art”, and to miss nothing that made other nations
interesting or distinguished; and it was terribly and constitutionally
unhappy, because with its handicap and its meagreness of soul and its thin-
ness of temper and its paucity of talent, it could not attain, nor even
approach, any of those ideals. But is the new America unhappy? Does it
feel that it is living in a desert, and thirsting for the gardens and the trea-
^ ^
sure-houses of the Arabian Nights? I think not: it wants simply the sort of
life it has, only more of it. It wants comfort and speed and good cheer; it
wants health and spirits, and a round of weddings, foot-ball games, cam-
paigns, outings, and cheerful funerals; and it is getting them. In the midst
of this, as a sort of joke (and you may make a business of joking) there is a
patter of sophomoric art and lady-like religion—never mind what, if only it
is new and funny. Why not? When I was at Harvard, from my Freshman
days on, I “belonged” to the Lampoon:1 and that seems to me a sort of
symbol or oracle: I belonged to the Lampoon just as much in the philo-
sophical faculty as I did in the Lampoon “sanctum”. It was all a pleasant
hard-working exuberance by the way; there was not, and could not be,
anything serious or substantial in it. But notice: all learning and all “mind”
in America is not of this ineffectual sophomoric sort. There is your doctor
at Baltimore who is a great expert, and really knows how to do things: and
you will find that, in the service of material life, all the arts and sciences
are prosperous in America. But it must be in the service of material life;
because it is material life (of course with the hygiene, morality, and inter-
national good order that can minister to material life) that America has and
wants to have and may perhaps bring to perfection. Think of that! If mate-
rial life could be made perfect, as (in a very small way) it was perhaps for
a moment among the Greeks, would not that of itself be a most admirable
achievement, like the creation of a new and superior mammal, who would
only suck ^only^ the bottle? Imagine a race perfectly adapted
instinctively ———
3:46 The Letters of George Santayana

to elevated railroads and aeroplanes and submarines, with a regular per-

centage of a neutral sex to serve as “schoolmarms”, and not the least dis-
^^
satisfaction with the extremes of the weather, the pains of childbirth or
toothache (all pains being eliminated) or English as she is spoke by three
hundred million Americans! I submit that such a race would be as well
worth having and as precious in its own eyes (and any other criterion is
irrelevant) as ever were the Chinese or the Egyptians or the Jews. And pos-
sibly on that basis of perfected material life, a new art and philosophy
would grow unawares, not similar to what we call by those names, but hav-
ing the same relation to the life beneath which art and philosophy amongst
us ought to have had, but never have had actually. You see, I am content
to let the past bury its dead. It does not seem to me that we can impose on
America the task of imitating Europe. The more different it can come to
be, the better: and we must let it take its own course, going a long way
round, perhaps, before it can shake off the last trammels of alien tradition,
and learn to express itself simply, not apologetically, after its own heart. Of
course, I don’t mean that I feel confident that America will ever produce
a true civilization of a new sort; it may all come to nothing, as almost all
experiments in nature do; but while the experiment is going on it seems
only fair to give it a chance, and to watch it sympathetically.
I have sent to London for Vera,2 but with the strike of railwaymen
which is threatened, I don’t know when I may get it. The proofs of the
Soliloquies have not yet begun to arrive—everything is slowly adapting
itself to the minimum of labour per man, which is the ideal of the labour
parties. Being lazy myself, I rather sympathize with our new masters, the
proletariat, but I am sometimes afraid that they will be beguiled, will not
really accept the simpler life which their ideal would impose on them, as
well as on the rest of us, and will simply succumb to their old masters, or
to new ones no less ungentle, after having made all this row for nothing.
The longest of my Soliloquies, one on Dickens,3 by the way, has some
phrases in it very like those of your letter. You will find it in the November
number of the Dial, if you ever see that production. It is frankly sopho-
moric, and that is why I have enjoyed contributing to it, as I did to the
Harvard Lampoon.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
As an undergraduate, Santayana contributed to The Harvard Monthly and the Harvard
Lampoon.
 1921–1927 3:47

2
Vera (1921), a novel written by “Elizabeth” (pen name of Countess Russell, John
Francis Stanley Russell’s third wife), characterizes Elizabeth’s life with Russell at
Telegraph House (“The Willows” in the novel). The character Wemyss represents
Russell as a vindictive egomaniac. See Persons (484) for Santayana’s opinion of Vera.
3
Charles Dickens (1812–70) is the famous English novelist whose writing is noted for
its direct style, remarkable descriptions of character, and sentimental crusades against
social evils. Among his works are Oliver Twist (1837–39), Bleak House (1852–53), and A
Tale of Two Cities (1859).

To Warwick Potter
7 December 1921 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall. London. S.W.1
Rome. Dec. 7, 1921
My dear Warwick1
It is not often that I get a letter in an unknown hand and have to begin
by looking at the signature and I don’t know when I have had such a pleas-
ant surprise as seeing your name has given me. It was not altogether a sur-
prise because your mother had just written telling me of your engagement,
and my momentary wonder at the sight of a name that takes me back so
many years very soon explained itself. But the real surprise came when I
discovered that by chance I knew your fiancée, I who nowadays hardly see
anybody, and much less young girls. Yet this little miracle too has its nat-
ural explanation, because women arrange everything, and very likely
Harriet,2 being already engaged to you or having a shrewd suspicion that
she might be before long, got the young Hoffmans3 to ask me to dinner,
just we four, knowing that I was an old friend of your family, and then
profited by the softness proper to sentimental old men to lead me on to
talk of my beaux jours,4 in which your family naturally played a large part,
and to say a great many nice things about you, thinking I was doing so
quite spontaneously; and then as often happens she was taken in by her
own strategem and thought me decidedly agreeable, forgetting that I was
agreeable only because she made me so. However, it all came off very
well, and was quite delightful, capped as it now is by this pleasant news
and this long if somewhat vague vista of pleasant things in the future. That
you are to be an engineer has its good side, because that is a living pro-
fession I don’t mean merely that you may make a living by it, but that it is
in moral and practical sympathy with the age, and with American life. This
3:48 The Letters of George Santayana

is very important for happiness and for doing something which in the end
is worth while, and not wasted effort. You are probably tired of hearing
that the friends of your father and mother, and those who like me knew
you only as a little boy, wonder that you wish to be an engineer rather than
an artist or something more superior and ornamental. I confess that I
myself (remembering your blonde curls and that you spoke French habit-
ually) should have expected you to lean to the side of the sensitive, rather
than of the practical; but I am glad for your sake that it isn’t so. People of
my generation, especially in America, are full of apprehension and dismay
at the passing away, as they think, of all fineness, and the flood of rude
activity and blunt feeling that seems to be running so high all over the
world. But old people have always thought that the world is going to the
dogs: and so it always is, their world, but a new world, just as good in some
other way, is taking its place. I myself feel some secret sympathy with the
brutality of the new ways, and the new arts; it has a firmer hold on the
nature of things than had our “culture”. I don’t mean to suggest that if you
are an engineer you must be a brute, although that is what we thought in
the 1890’s; but only that in this life, as in war, one’s sensitiveness and
insight are most fruitful when turned to understanding and oiling a
machine that is necessarily brutal, and turning it to the best uses. If you will
only arrange material things properly, spiritual things will come of them-
selves, just as love comes to young people when they are good-looking and
in good health and good spirits — This letter will reach you at the
Christmas season; I only wish material things had been so arranged that I
might bring you all my best wishes in person. Affectionately yours
GSantayana
1
Elder son of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Potter.
2
Harriet Amory of Boston.
3
Probably Charles Gouverneur Hoffman and his wife. He was a member of the
Harvard class of 1913.
4
Fine days (French).
 1921–1927 3:49

To Charles Augustus Strong

7 December 1921 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Marini, Rome

Dec. 7, 1921
Dear Strong
I am sorry to hear of your father’s death;1 it is not as if he had been in
the condition which most people are in at 85, but perhaps it is a privilege
to be cut off before old age has reached its last phases.
You mustn’t be concerned about interrupting my work; it wouldn’t mat-
ter if you did, for a fortnight, but as a matter of fact you hardly will,
because it is only the morning and the late evening, when I can lock myself
up in my room and undress, that are propitious times for me in any case/s
and you would not prevent me from working then, if I felt like it. Come
whenever you like; if you will write proposing a date, I will inquire about
a room, and telegraph the result.
The only circumstance that I ought to warn you of, perhaps, is this: that
I have invited Onderdonk to come and make me a visit here on his way
back from America to Vienna, and in his last letter he said he expected to
sail from New York early in December, so that he may arrive for Christmas
or soon after. I don’t know definitely whether he is coming at all, or how
long he would stay if he came. There is another possible interloper—a pro-
tégé of Westenholz2—who may turn up; but I shouldn’t be responsible for
him, and if you were here, it might amuse you to talk German with him
and see what the youth of the day are like in that country. I suppose I
myself should not be able to converse with him in any language with com-
fort.
I went one evening to a play at the Argentina, where there is a good
company led by Raniero Ranieri,3 but it was the dullest of romantic liter-
ary dramas, and I went home bored to death after the second act. The
opera begins on Dec. 26, but doesn’t promise much. Bring books, as
[across] you will find you have a lot of time to kill, especially as the days
are short at this season. Yours ever
G.S.
1
Baptist clergyman Augustus Hopkins Strong (1837–1921) of Rochester, New York.
2
Santayana said Albert W. von Westenholz was “one of my truest friends. Personal
affection and intellectual sympathies were better balanced and fused between him and
me than between me and any other person.” (Persons, 261–65) Santayana met the
3:50 The Letters of George Santayana

German aristocrat at Harvard, where Westenholz was a student, in the early 1900s.
Hans Reichhardt of Hamburg was Westenholz’s young friend and secretary.
3
Unidentified.

To George Sturgis
17 December 1921 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Hotel Marini, Rome

Dec. 17, 1921
Dear George
Thank you for the two enlargements of your snap-shots and for your let-
ter of the 1–st instant, just received. I wrote not long ago about our accounts:
everything seems to be settled satisfactorily as far as I am concerned,
except the detail about the codicil to my will, which Mr Gardiner sent me
to sign, appointing you and him my executors in the place of your father.
I will attend to this when I can find three suitable persons in one room to
act as witnesses—a thing which is not frequent in my present circumstances.
But the thing isn’t urgent, as I don’t intend to die for at least ten years—I
was only fifty-eight yesterday—and in case of unforeseen accident the court
in any case would doubtless appoint these very persons—and no great
harm would ensue.
What you tell me about your aunt Josephine wanting her whole income
surprises me not a little, as I know how disinclined she is to undertake the
burden of a more elaborate way of life—and the same thing happens to me.
In our old age, she can only live like a younger daughter in the family, and
I like a travelling student. Anything else is too much bother for us. I am
writing to ask her what is up, if it isn’t a secret. She may be thinking of buy-
ing or setting up a separate house in Madrid or in Avila, with the two lit-
tle old ladies,1 whom we call las maestras, the teachers, because they once
kept a school; this is the only new arrangement of which I have any
inkling. I hardly think she wants her money in order to invest it in Spain:
but that is natural in the case of your aunt Susan, or rather of her husband,
because they count on distributing it some day among the Sastre boys, and
it would be very cumbersome for them to have the capital in America.
They are very deserving young men, and it is pleasant to think that they
will be distinctly more comfortable for this inheritance when it comes to
them, although, of [across] course, they have no right to it, even morally, as
their relation to their step-mother has never been more than correct. [across
 1921–1927 3:51

page one] I am sorry to hear that Arthur2 is no better. Please send my best
wishes to them when you write. Yours affly
GSantayana
1
Unidentified.
2
Arthur S. Eldredge, husband of Josephine Sturgis, was ill and died of tuberculosis in
May 1923.

To George Sturgis
1 January 1922 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Hotel Marini, Rome

Jan. 1. 1922
Dear George
Your letter of the 16th of December (my birthday, though you fortu-
nately did not make a great point of it) has reached me just on New Year’s
Day. Yesterday I had an answer from your aunt Josephine to my inquiries
about her proposed disposal of her whole income. Doubtless she has
explained the matter to you directly: it is not, as I had supposed, any new
expense that she is looking forward to, but the investment of that money,
for a year or two, in Spanish Government Bonds. From a business point of
view it is no doubt foolish: why not U.S. government bonds? But we must
look at the thing psychologically. There she is, among people who know
little of business and less of the U.S., who read clerical papers that every
day prophesy war between England and the U.S. and the ruin of Anglo-
Saxondom, green Erin1 alone rising triumphant over the waves; and it is
impossible for her, who is not well informed or clever or used to taking her
own course, not to be a little disturbed by what she hears. If she knows
those Spanish bonds are in the house, and can go herself and cash the
coupons at the bank, she certainly will feel the snug condition of her purse
much more vividly than she does now, and it will seem to her that she has
a more direct command of that part of her money. Of course, it will be
rather the other way: I need not enter into the circumstances, which are
known to you. I have written to her that, on these psychological grounds,
I understand and approve of her decision; but that I strongly advise her
not to invest in Spain larger sums than she intends to use there for herself,
or to leave in her will to Spanish people. There, I need hardly tell you, is
the root of the whole matter: but it is a delicate point to discuss; one does-
n’t want to interfere, to impute interested motives, nor try to exert influ-
3:52 The Letters of George Santayana

ence by alleging that other people exert it. When I see your aunt Josephine
it will be easier for me to speak plainly, and to discover what her free
wishes really are. For the moment, I don’t see how this step can be pre-
vented, even if it were desirable to do so, which I am far from sure of.
[across] Best wishes for the New Year from
Your afft uncle GSantayana
1
Ancient, poetic name for Ireland.

To Charles Augustus Strong

18 January 1922 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Marini Rome,

Jan. 18, 1922
Dear Strong
I am very sorry you have had such a siege, but if you were to take to
your bed at all you couldn’t have chosen a better time; it has been—here at
least—persistently cold and dark. I did have a touch of my chronic catarrh,
but staved it off with the gargles before it quite reached the syrop stage. I
am now in normal health and seem to feel a breath of Spring in the air.
Work has progressed uninterruptedly, although without any great energy:
I am confident that I shall be able to complete what I had planned to do
this winter before leaving Rome. There will remain a final revision, not
possible until I have the whole before me, since one of my chief difficul-
ties lies in placing the different arguments and analyses which I have in
mind or on paper: it is like a maze where the path passes very often close
to where it passed before, only in a different direction, and it is hard to
decide which hedges to preserve and which to break down, so as to sim-
plify the plan. But this plan is now pretty clear, and I am relegating to their
places in the later books many a development which would encumber the
argument in this introductory part. So that I expect to have soon, not only
the first book finished, but large portions of the rest on hand, to join to the
manuscript already in Paris.
I am rele/ ieved—if your comments are not too much toned down by
politeness—that my egotistical article didn’t make a worse impression on
you. I have come rather to hate it myself; but the version in the Soliloquies
is somewhat shorter and less fatuous.
As to Dickens and philosophy itself, you don’t seem to me to say any-
thing that I have not had in mind and replied to already in what my arti-
 1921–1927 3:53

cles contain. “Exaggeration”, “farce”, of course; but I took great pains to

analyse what this meant, and to appeal to a deeper reality against the
purely conventional one which you again invoke. So with my rejection of
metaphysics. It is not deeper than physics, but more literary and more
mythical, with interpretations of science which are not mere anticipations
of it. It is therefore possibly true—I don’t deny that—but not worthy of much
credence or serious attention. And you change my thought slightly, yet
profoundly, when you represent me as expecting that “philosophy” will
soon become scientific. I said I hoped that a scientific philosophy might
soon appear: I didn’t conceive that it would unite everybody for ever. In
philosophy there is always a moral element, a view of life, which will make
the scientific element subordinate.—I have been to hear the Meistersinger,1
and liked it very much—shed romantic [across] German tears over it in my
poltrona,2 thinking of 1886 in Dresden when I heard it first. That sort of
thing gives me [across page one] inspiration for the Realms, because it shows
how breadth lifts up a work and make the details memorable. Yours ever
G.S.
1
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868) is a comic opera by Richard Wagner. The hand
of Eva Pogner is promised as the prize to the winner of a singing contest. The rivals
are Beckmesser and Walther von Stolzing. Von Stolzing, whom Eva loves, is hampered
by his ignorance of the petty rules of the songfest. Beckmesser is patterned on Edward
Hanslick, a music critic who had annoyed Wagner by refusing to be impressed with his
skill as a poet.
2
Theater stall (Italian).

To George Sturgis
30 January 1922 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Hotel Marini Rome

Jan. 30, 1922
Dear George
I have at least two letters of yours to answer, as well as to thank you for
the yearly account of my property. You are quite right in thinking that it
would be useless to send me all the details about investments and divi-
dends. I see the money is pretty evenly divided among more than a dozen
things, which is an element of safety, and I have no means of judging how
safe or how productive each of them may be individually. They all seem
to be industrial securities—I mean, no government or railway or great well-
known corporation bonds. This no doubt makes for a larger income, but
3:54 The Letters of George Santayana

it involves more watchfulness. I see you have sold $5600 worth during the
year—most of it, I suppose, in your father’s time—but that seems to me a lot,
and suggests that there is not always much steadiness in the value of these
stocks. The only other thing that it occurs to me to say is that I find noth-
ing deducted for taxes. Are these all taken out at the source, before the div-
idends reach you, or are these securities all exempt? The totals, both
income and value of property, are most satisfactory. As you know, I have
no desire to live more expensively than I do, on half my income: but as I
get older I may need more for doctors, nurses, and someone to pull me
about in a Bath chair: so don’t do anything rash.
Thank you for ordering the new letter of credit which is in my posses-
sion. Onderdonk didn’t turn up, but he may do so later. I expect to stay
here until the first of May at least, as I am extremely fond of the sights and
ways of Rome, even without the excitements of a papal conclave which
await us presently.
I inclose the letter you suggested I should sign. I inadvertently styled
myself your affte nephew, and have had to rectify that illusion of extreme
youth; but I suppose an erasure is of no consequence in an informal doc-
ument of this sort
Yours affty G Santayana

To George Sturgis
30 January 1922 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Rome, January 30, 19221

DEAR GEORGE:—
UNTIL REVOKED BY ME, I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE YOU ACT AS MY SOLE ATTORNEY
IN THE MANAGEMENT OF MY AFFAIRS.
I UNDERSTAND THAT SHOULD YOU BE INCAPACITATED FOR ANY REASON, MR. GAR-
DINER IS AUTHORIZED TO ACT FOR ME UNDER THE POWER OF ATTORNEY WHICH I
RECENTLY EXECUTED.

Your affte ———

nephew
————uncle
George Santayana
TO
MR. GEORGE STURGIS,
87 MILK ST.,
BOSTON, MASS.

1
Santayana dated, closed, and signed this typed letter.
 1921–1927 3:55

To Mary Williams Winslow

1 February 1922 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London. S.W.1.
Rome, February 1, 1922
Dear Mrs Winslow
In a previous letter you asked me what news of Boston or Harvard it
would interest me to hear, and in my walks I have sometimes asked myself
the question again, and haven’t found it easy to answer. It is not that my
interest has waned—on the contrary, I feel I should like so much to see
(through a peep-hole) all that may be going on and to understand it. But
what is going on? My ideas are too vague for the inquiry to start at all. Of
course, I can see the electric cars going over the Harvard Bridge and I can
imagine others, much longer and swifter, going through the subway; and I
can imagine you and Fred and (by a stretch) the children as they must look
in your library in Clarendon street; but what is going on under all those
appearances? They tell me everything is quite different morally: Boylston
Beal,1 the Potters, your dear friend Apthorp Fuller (who is here with his
mother) inform me that when at home they feel like fish out of water, and
that America is fast going to the dogs—or, more accurately, that it is sink-
ing into a bog of commonplaceness and youthful folly which makes them
feel like frustrate ghosts.2 Now, I don’t believe a word of it; and if you will
sometimes give me a hint of what has changed, and in what direction, I
think I could supply the rest out of my old knowledge. For instance, the
other day I got a very nice letter signed “Warwick Potter”, in which the
young man who now bears that name informed me that he was engaged
to Miss Harriet Amory—a young woman I actually knew, having dined
(and sat next to/) her) with her in Paris last summer! Now she had pleased
me very much: but not as an Amory might in the old days: for she didn’t
seem to come from Boston at all and had never heard of Iago!3 Now would
the present Warwick Potter, who is said to adore this mere Gretchen,4 bear
the same relation to my old young friend, his uncle,5 as this Gretchen bears
to—shall we say—Miss Sally Norton or Miss Fanny Mason6—as they were
thirty years ago? You see I remember these ladies: but I don’t ask you for
news of them, because they are safe investments, so to speak, and I can
fancy how they live and what they feel. I can also fancy Guy Murchie7 with
his rich wife in Commonwealth Avenue, and I can fancy my nephew
3:56 The Letters of George Santayana

George (I have his photo) and his sister at Weston with their respective
spouses—also known in photograph. But who are the Fanny Masons and
Sally Nortons of today? Are they public speakers, or poetesses like Amy
Lowell,8 or devout High-Churchwomen,9 or what? And what is Harvard
like? More (or less) athletic, more (or less) virtuously and irresistibly orga-
nized into societies for everything except, alas, for mixing the genial cock-
tail?10 Mrs Toy, who writes to me sometimes, gave me the only intelligible
account I have seen of what happened to President Wilson11—I don’t mean
medically, but politically, and why the country went back on him, on the
league of nations, and on its allies. You, who know my friends (as Mrs Toy
doesn’t), could show me how the wind blows in this social quarter—more
interesting romantically than the political world, and even more impor-
tant, because at bottom it controls the turn of public affairs—I mean, that
moral changes in society, if they don’t determine political events, certainly
colour the result and give it all its importance. Here are a few items that
might make me feel which way the wind blows: Do people think at all of
Cardinal O’Connell,12 and if so what? Is Mrs Jack Gardin ––ner13 living, and
is there anyone like her or like Mrs Whitman?14 What do they say in Boston
and Cambridge of Professor MacDougal?15 Are there any notable new
buildings, and of what sort? If a Sunday paper should appear with pho-
tographs of Sargent’s16 new decorations in the Public Library could you
send me that part of the paper? Also any views of Harvard buildings. What
has become of Mrs Arthur Richmond and of her son?17 Are they reconciled
with his papa, or has he a new one? Is there any great spiritual force in
Boston, like Phillips Brooks or Mrs Eddy?18 Is there any bitter socialism, or
is it all Jewish and academic? In saying Jewish I was thinking of some suc-
ones Jews, like my pupil Walter Lippman,19 who only want a chance
cessful ————
to thrive themselves; but I remember other Jews, like my friend (also my
pupil) Kallen, now a leading Zionist, who are bitter as bitter can be, and
quite innocent of the art of thriving. Are the poorer classes in America still
hopeful and loyal to the established order, or are their ––re any signs of rev-
olution? I ask all these semi-political questions because I have a feeling that
we are approaching a great revolution and impoverishment of the world,
such as has actually occurred in Russia, and I look for signs, not so much
of its coming soon, but of the angle at which it will attack our old society,
and the elements of it that may survive. Of course, I think the revolution-
ists, if they succeed, will suffer a horrid disappointment, because most of
them will have to die off: the two great conditions for improving the lot of
 1921–1927 3:57

mankind are a much smaller population and a much larger proportion of

people devoted to agriculture.
I can’t send you any part of my novel as yet, because I have sworn to
dismiss it from my thoughts—at least in waking and working hours—until
the Realms are done. I am toiling on these here in surroundings that suit
me very well, and I hope in a year or two the book may be finished. I have
just read the proofs of the Soliloquies in England, which I hope, in time,
will find a sympathetic public, even if a small one. They are much more
me than my other books. Publishers are very [across] slow nowadays, so
that I can’t say when you will receive your copy. Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Boylston Adams Beal (1865–1944), member of Harvard’s class of 1886, was a Boston
lawyer. He served as an officer in the American embassies at Berlin and London
(1922–29). Beal and Santayana maintained an intermittent correspondence throughout
most of their lives.
2
From Robert Browning’s 1855 poem, “The Statue and the Bust,” line 246–48: The
sin I impute to each frustrate ghost / Is–the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin, / Though
the end in sight was a vice, I say.
3
Villain in Shakespeare’s Othello.
4
In Goethe’s Faust, Gretchen is the young, simple, lower-class girl whom Faust
seduces with the aid of Mephistopheles’ magic.
5
Warwick Potter (1870–93), brother of Robert Burnside Potter, was a student
(Harvard class of 1893) and friend of Santayana. Warwick’s unexpected death had a
profound effect on Santayana (see Persons, 423). The four sonnets “To W. P.” are in
Complete Poems, 125–27.
6
Sally Norton and Fanny Mason are unidentified.
7
In 1895 Guy Murchie received his A.B. and his LL.B. from Harvard.
8
Amy Lowell (1874–1925) was an American imagist poet, critic, and biographer
posthumously awarded the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for “What’s O’Clock?”.
9
High Church, an unofficial division of the Church of England and the Episcopal
Church in America, places importance upon the priesthood, the sacraments, and the
outward forms and ceremonies of liturgical ritual.
10
Prohibition was in effect in the United States from the end of World War I until
1933.
11
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) was president of Princeton University
(1902–10), governor of New Jersey (1911–13), and the twenty-eighth president of the
United States (1913–21). He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919, following
World War I. That same year he suffered a stroke, from which he never fully recov-
ered, and detached himself from politics for the remainder of his second term in office.
12
William Henry O’Connell (1859–1944), born in Lowell, Massachusetts, was a car-
dinal of the Roman Catholic Church; he was ordained in 1884. As archbishop of
Boston, his administration was characterized by building for charity and education.
13
Isabella Stewart Gardner (Mrs. John “Jack” Gardner, 1840–1924) was a wealthy
woman of distinction and a leader in Boston society. She and her husband patronized
artists and musicians and collected old masterpieces in their home, which today is the
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
3:58 The Letters of George Santayana

14
Sarah Wyman Whitman (Mrs. Henry Whitman).
15
William McDougall (1871–1938) studied physiology, anatomy, and anthropology at
Cambridge University (B.A., 1894) and went on to earn medical degrees there. As a
Harvard psychology professor (1920–27), he incurred the hostility of both the press
and American psychologists with his lectures on national eugenics. He proclaimed the
superiority of the Nordic race and made class distinctions in mental endowment.
16
In 1891 Santayana was one of John Singer Sargent’s fellow passengers as they
crossed by sea from Gibraltar to Tangiers. Sargent (1856–1925), an American painter,
was preparing his decorations for the Boston Public Library and intent on finding fig-
ures and especially costumes suitable for his Hebrew Prophets (Persons, 450).
17
Possibly Arthur Lavalle Richmond, Harvard class of 1918.
18
Phillips Brooks (1835–93), an American Episcopalian clergyman, was influential as
preacher at Trinity Church of Boston (1869–91). He was made Bishop of Massachusetts
in 1891 and wrote “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910) was
an American religious leader, editor, and author whose third husband was Asa Gilbert
Eddy. The founder of the Christian Science Church, she was pastor of Mother Church
in Boston.
19
Walter Lippmann (1889–1974), a distinguished political journalist, was a member of
Harvard’s class of 1910 and served as Santayana’s assistant. Lippmann was a leader
among the young socialists. He reversed his political position in the early 1930s and in
his later career epitomized the American conservative intellectual.

To Charles Augustus Strong

[Early 1922?] • [Rome, Italy?] (MS: Rockefeller)

Thursday1
Dear Strong
Thank you for this. I am pleased —that
with the reviewer2 takes us seri-
ously; but he seems to be exclusively occupied with one point.
I see Fuller now and then—unsatisfactory mind: always seems to be
really thinking of something else, like a woman. Yesterday he had a young
French professor3 in tow who said Einstein was an absolutist, and that his
theory should have been called Théorie de l’Invariance!
Yours ever
G.S.
1
This letter was erroneously published in The Letters of George Santayana, Book One
(2001).
2
Unidentified.
3
Unidentified.
 1921–1927 3:59

To Constable and Co. Ltd.

4 February 1922 • Rome, Italy (MS: Temple)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1.
Hotel Marini, Rome,
Feb. 4. 1922
Messrs Constable & Company
London.
I am very sorry at the long delay in returning the proofs of “Soliloquies
in England” which I hope have reached you by this time. They arrived
only a fortnight ago: the delay was in the post office, here or at the fron-
tier, and although everything arrived safely, the parcel had been opened
and was loosely tied together again. I hope the second proof, being less
bulky, will fare better.
Yours faithfully
GSantayana
P.S. I despatched the proofs from here on Jan. 28. registered.

To Constable and Co. Ltd.

6 February 1922 • Rome, Italy (MS: Temple)

Hotel Marini Rome

Feb. 6, 1922
Messrs Constable & Company
London
I am very sorry to cause you further delay with the Soliloquies, after all
there has been already, but I shouldn’t feel comfortable if I didn’t see a
proof of the verses in slip 4, where I have made considerable changes: and
I suppose if you send me that, you might as well send the rest too.
However, that is the only part that I feel anxious about, as your printer’s
proof-reading—apart from a weakness for reverential capitals—is excellent.
In case it should expedite matters to send the prologue only, there are
the two slight corrections following that I should like to make elsewhere:
3:60 The Letters of George Santayana

Slip. 115, 6th line from the bottom

1–st word: for “nor” read “not”
th
Slip. 90 4– line: for “amongst” read “amidst”.
You might send me the proof, in any case, directly to the Hotel Marini,
Rome, as I shall remain here for two or three months longer, and that may
save a day or two in transmission.
Yours faithfully
GSantayana

To Charles Augustus Strong

20 February 1922 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Marini Rome

Feb 20, 1922
Dear Strong
th
Thank you for your letter of the 11– with your article on Schiller-on-
1
Strong on Strong-on-Schiller; also for the London Mercury. I am sorry
you have had such a bad cold, and so prolonged: the weather here has
continued very bad, and I wonder why I thought Rome a nice place for
the winter; but it has proved a nice place in one important respect, as far
as I am concerned, that I have managed to keep off the usual winter dis-
eases, and have been well and able to work, although not with any
energy— During the last fortnight I have been caught in a tangle, finding
that what I thought fresh matter for a chapter or two was nothing but the
same old subject, and yet not being clear that it had all been said before,
nor able to introduce the new paragraphs in to the previous chapters. I
^ ^
am now copying it all off as it stands, and leaving it for a later revision to
decide whether it is all a lot of redites2 or not.
Isn’t something of this sort the trouble in your article too? The effect on
me, I might as well confess frankly, is discouraging. It seems like trying to
draw on a pe/ iece of paper that is worn and dirty with much rubbing out of
old lines; the hand is not free, the eye is misled; it is hopeless. Why not
take a fresh sheet? Why discuss at all, and why with Schiller? As he shows
in your paragraph (4) he is nothing but a squeaking automaton: he will
always squeak the same thing, no matter how you tickle him. Let him
alone. And all this scholastic language does not serve the only purpose that
might justify scholastic language: it does not define nor settle anything; it
 1921–1927 3:61

is all radically infected. For instance, I was seriously puzzled in paragraph

(1) by the words “it –the
[ datum]– conveys the object only in the form of a
‘meaning’.” I thought for a while that you were calling the essence a
“meaning”—as some of our American friends wanted to do: I suppose now
that you were simply troubled for lack of proper words in which to express
the fact that the datum is not the object. But then how can it_ “convey” the
object? All this needs, I think, to be approached quite differently and to be
stated in fresh language. Three or four lines above this passage, I can’t
understand how the ego, in your system, is “all experience de-objectified.”
That would seem to describe intuitions or mental discourse, the fact that
various essences appear in varying combinations: but I understand that
your ego is sub-intuitional: how then is it experience at all? I also fail to fol-
low you about the non-existence of meaning psychologically. Is it all
behaviour merely? Is there no given essence to mark that behaviour
inwardly? Is there no premonition of the object, before the datum is used
to describe it, so that we know where that object [across] lies, and that the
datum is not all? Cf. the pillar-box.
Yours ever G Santayana
1
Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller (1864–1937) was a British pragmatist philosopher
who was influenced by James. But Schiller focused on the personal aspect of thinking
and regarded knowledge as relatively subjective. Schiller felt the British school had for-
gotten the truth of Protagoras that “man is the measure of all things.” As a member of
Corpus Christi College, Oxford, Schiller had invited Santayana to dinner several times
at the High Table in the College Hall. Santayana described him as having the “airs of
a professed and shameless sophist” and was mortified when Schiller requested that
Santayana write a letter recommending him for the chair of logic at Oxford. See
Persons, 506–7.
2
Repetitions (Latin).

To Charles Augustus Strong

14 March 1922 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Marini, Rome, March 14, 1922

Dear Strong
Excuse my delay in acknowledging and returning your paper. I read it
at once, and with a feeling of great satisfaction. It seemed to me that you
might really convert Russell by it. But I was aware of not having taken in
every part, (it is extraordinary difficult, at least for me, to fix clearly the
meaning that these hackneyed words are meant to convey in each new
3:62 The Letters of George Santayana

instance) and I wanted to reread it before replying. I have now done so

several times, and am even more uncertain. I really have no opinion to
give: I am terribly stale on this subject. But here are a few notes made in
passing.
p. 1. “Distorted”. I think both Russell and the NeoRealists1 hold that
the “perspective” –really
[ only a segment]– nearest the brain-centre is no
distortion; for what should it distort? It is one of the components of the
object. You are simply not lending your mind to their view, and they will
discard your objections as unintelligent. So below, at p. 8, R. & the NeoR’s
would see no difficulty whatever in tactile and visual and auditory ele-
ments lying combined in any of the segments.
p. 3. In the lens a segment is reproduced which lies farther off along the
series of segments forming the object. I think R and the NeoR’s ought to
hold the/ at the seeing spirit is in the lens, or rather is the lens-segment
^ ^
incandescent. Holt2 evidently holds this when he compares the “image
in consciousness” with a photographic image, and says they are just
alike.
p. 7. Instead of “appearances are only sensations” etc, would it do to say:
“Essences are not sensations, but only the descriptions of objects which
sensations serve to suggest”? I think (besides other advantages) this lan-
guage avoids the danger of suggesting that the sensations are perceived
first (which is what most people assume): for how could the mind “use”
what it didn’t have in its possession?
p. 8. Of course the so-called perspectives are only segments. A per-
spective implies both an object and a view, and collapses when the two
are identified; so that R has no right to that word, and is simply cheat-
ing in the game. A perspective is a description of the relations of many
segments when this description is modified by the position of the seg-
ment in which their effects are gathered together and in which the
description thereby arises.
p. 9 top. Why not be content with the discontinuous? You must ask
R, not why he is content, but how he is able to know, or plausibly
believe in, the discontinuous he loves?
p. 10. Is this a new use of “datum”?
p. 11 top. The belief in the object may simply be false. Datum is a word
to shun.
Yours ever G. S.
P.S. There is no change here.
 1921–1927 3:63

1
The New Realists, or Neo-Realists, were a group of American philosophers (includ-
ing Ralph Barton Perry, Edwin B. Holt, and William Montague) in the early twentieth
century who opposed idealism largely on epistemological grounds. The group’s British
counterparts were Bertrand Russell and George Edward Moore.
2
Edwin Bissell Holt (1873–1946) was an American psychologist and philosopher
noted for innovations in philosophical psychology. His essay “The Place of Illusory
Experience in a Realistic World” was published in The New Realism: Cooperative Studies
in Philosophy (1912).

To Constable and Co. Ltd.

21 March 1922 • Rome, Italy (MS: Temple)

C
Permanent /o Brown Shipley & Co
address { 123 Pall Mall. S.W.1

Hotel Marini, Rome

March 21, 1922
Messrs Constable & Company
London
Gentlemen,
I enclose a letter1 I received some time ago from Duffield & Co of New
York, the publishers of my little volume called “Sonnets”.2 I am diffident
about my early attempts at poetry, but in America people are very appre-
ciative of “high thoughts”, and as my other books attract more attention, it
is possible that such a collection of my verses as is here suggested might
find a public. I don’t want to press the matter, but submit it to you again,
so as to be able to say to Mr. Hoppin (of Duffield & Co) that I have done
so.
I also enclose a short list of persons to whom I wish you would send
copies of the Soliloquies.
Yours faithfully
GSantayana
Please send a copy of Soliloquies in England, with the author’s compli-
ments, to each of the following addresses, charging it to his account.
Earl Russell, 57 Gordon Square. W.C. London
The Countess Russell,3 2 Whitehall Court, S.W.1. ''
J. Middleton Murry, Esq. C/o The Nation & The Athenaeum
10, Adelphi Terrace. W.C.
3:64 The Letters of George Santayana

L. Pearsall Smith, Esq, 11 St. Leonard’s Terrace. Chelsea.4

B. A. Beal, Esq, American Embassy, London.
Dr Robert Bridges,5 Chilswell, Oxford
Peter Warren,6 Esq, Magdalen College, Oxford.
G. T. Lapsley,7 Esq, Trinity College, Cambridge.
The Hon. Mrs. Chetwynd,8 Pembroke Lodge, Sunninghill, Berks.
C. A. Strong, Esq, 9, Av. de l’Observatoire, Paris.
1
Unlocated.
2
This was the origin of Santayana’s verses published by Scribner’s and Constable in
1923 as Poems.
3
In 1891 Mary Annette Beauchamp (1866–1941) had married Count Henning August
von Arnim-Schlagenthin (d. 1910). She became the third wife of John Francis Stanley,
2d Earl Russell, in 1916. Her most successful book was Elizabeth and Her German Garden
(1898). Later she signed her writings “Elizabeth.” Elizabeth left Russell in 1918. See
Persons, 479–86.
4
‘11 St. Leonard’s Terrace’ has been marked through, and ‘26 Walpole St’ is written
under ‘Chelsea’ in a hand other than that of Santayana.
5
Santayana’s “most distinguished” Oxford friend (Persons, 489), Robert Seymour
Bridges (1844–1930) was made poet laureate in 1913. The quintessential English gen-
tleman, Bridges was educated at Eton and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He studied
medicine in London but gave up practice in 1882. The philosophical poem in four
books, The Testament of Beauty (1929), is his finest work.
6
Probably E. P. Warren, whom Santayana describes as “An old acquaintance, … (a
Bostonian Oxford man)” in a letter to Strong of 14 August 1915.
7
Gaillard Thomas Lapsley (1871–1949) received his undergraduate and graduate
degrees at Harvard (Ph.D., 1897). He taught at Trinity College, Cambridge (1904–29);
he was Cambridge University reader in constitutional history prior to his 1939 return
to the United States.
8
Augusta Robinson Chetwynd of New York was the wife of Philip Chetwynd and the
sister of Santayana’s friend Moncure Robinson.

To George Lawton
29 March 1922 • Rome, Italy (MS: Unknown)

Rome, March 29, 1922.

Dear Mr. Lawton,
It is always pleasant to be urged to do something on the ground that one
can do it well; and I have some sympathy with your cry: No more meta-
physics.1 I am nevertheless at work on a book of philosophy (which I do
not like to call metaphysics); it will take a year or two; after that I promise
you to renounce the subject—except as an ingredient in pleasanter things.
The “Three Proofs of Realism” is only a short paper, and has already
 1921–1927 3:65

appeared. But now I come to the part of your advice which I don’t mean
to follow at all. Criticism is something purely incidental—talk about talk—
and to my mind has no serious value except perhaps as an expression of
philosophy in the critic. When I have been led to write criticism it has
never been for any other reason; and you don’t know me at all if you sup-
pose me capable of reading up Meredith or Thomas Hardy2 or any one
else who hasn’t come in my way, in order to describe them to other peo-
ple. If you like that sort of vicarious literary nourishment, read Croce, or
any other competent person who sets out to express the impression which
literature has made upon him. But I should advise you to read the origi-
nals instead, and be satisfied with the impression they make upon you. You
know Plato’s contempt for the image of an image;3 but as a man’s view of
things is an image in the first place, and his work is an image of that, and
the critic’s feelings are an image of that work, and his writings an image of
his feelings, and your idea of what the critic means only an image of his
writings,—please consider that you are steeping your poor original tea-
leaves in their fifth wash of hot water, and are drinking slops. May not the
remarkable sloppiness and feebleness of the cultivated American mind be
due to this habit of drinking life in its fifth dilution only? What you need
is not more criticism of current authors, but more philosophy: more
courage and sincerity in facing nature directly, and in criticizing books or
institutions only with a view to choosing among them whatever is most
harmonious with the life you want to lead. For as Dryden (or is it Pope?)
says, “If you think the world worth winning, think, oh think it worth enjoy-
ing.”4 I accordingly intend to devote such years as may remain to me
exclusively to philosophy; although I hope the form in which it will be
expressed will not lead you to call it metaphysics.
Yours very truly
GSantayana
1
While a philosophy student at Columbia, George Lawton (1900–1957) had written
Santayana, urging him to give up metaphysics and devote his time to literary criticism.
[D. C.]
2
George Meredith (1828–1909) was an English novelist, poet, and critic who hated
egotism and sentimentality and supported the intellectual equality of women. He
believed in the medicinal quality of laughter, that comedy corrects the excesses of sen-
timentality, selfishness, and vanity. His works include The Egoist: a Comedy in Narrative
(1879) and Evan Harrington (1861). Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) was an English novel-
ist and poet who wrote Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895).
3
Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.) was a Greek philosopher who was the student of Socrates and
the teacher of Aristotle.
3:66 The Letters of George Santayana

4
John Dryden (1631–1700) was an English poet, dramatist, and critic who became
poet laureate of England in 1668. In All for Love (his version of the Antony and
Cleopatra story), Dryden’s lines read, “If the world be worth thy winning, / Think, oh
think, it worth enjoying.” Alexander Pope (1688–1744), known for his metrical skill
and humorous satire, wrote in the heroic couplet, like Dryden.

To Constable and Co. Ltd.

2 April 1922 • Rome, Italy (MS: Temple)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Paris, April 2, 1922
essrs o
M Constable & C
London.
Will you please add the following to the list of persons to whom
“Soliloquies in England” are to be sent, with the author’s compliments.
Yours faithfully
GSantayana
Baron Albert von Westenholz
Sophienterrasse 14
Hamburg, Germany.
Mrs Mitchel,1 Bennington House
Newstead Road
Nottingham
Hon. Bertrand Russell
70 Overstrand Mansions
Prince of Wales Road, Battersea. S.W.
1
Mrs. Mitchel is unidentified (see 9 July 1920).
 1921–1927 3:67

To Charles Augustus Strong

4 April 1922 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Marini Rome

April 4, 1922
Dear Strong
I am glad to know your plans and I don’t wonder that you have decided
not to make the trip to Rome at present. The season has been rather try-
ing, and although of course at any moment the weather may become
delightful and Rome may manifest all its glories, I feel myself a growing
desire to get away. I have done very little serious work lately, being dis-
tracted by some books on America which the editors of the Dial and the
Forum have sent me; and I have written short reviews about them.1
Previously, I had the first and second proofs of the Soliloquies, which nat-
urally filled my thoughts a good deal, and lately two visits from
Westenholz’s young friend Reichhardt, the latter lasting ten days, and he
being at this hotel. Next Monday I expect Onderdonk, who will stay a
week. Taking all these things together, and the probable coming on of
warm weather, I fear there is not much hope of accomplishing any thing
more here this season, on my old momentum. I should therefore like to
return to Paris at once, have a change of air and get a fresh start, with the
whole MS of the Realms before me—of which I have often felt the need.
th
May I go to the apartment about the 20– of April, and stay for four or five
weeks—until you come? My idea is to go to England for a few weeks dur-
ing the summer. If you think there is any possibility that you should wish
to go to England yourself, I should gladly put off my trip until you went;
but if not I might as well go for June, and return in July, when you might
be alone in the apartment, if Margaret is going again to America.
Please send me a card saying whether it is all right about the apartment,
so that I may write to Marie and to Germont.
Yours ever
GSantayana
1
“Marginal Notes on Civilization in the United States,” The Dial 72 ( June 1922):
553–68, is a review of Civilization in the United States: An Inquiry by 30 Americans, edited
by Harold Stearns. “Living Without Thinking,” Forum 68 (September 1922): 731–35, is
a review of John B. Watson’s Psychology From the Standpoint of a Behaviorist. The Forum
(1886–1950) was a monthly magazine concerned with the discussion of contemporary
problems.
3:68 The Letters of George Santayana

To Mary Williams Winslow

7 April 1922 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Rome, April 7, 1922
Dear Mrs Winslow
This is not going to be a regular letter, only a word to thank you for
yours and to enclose these extracts from “Soliloquies in England”,1 which
in part answer your question as to what I think of Buddhism. You may
notice that I make no distinction between it and Brahmanism, between
Vendanta and Samkya philosophies.2 This is not wholly an effect of igno-
rance, but because the differences touch mythology or metaphysics only,
and not the wisdom which is all I care for in these (or any other) philoso-
phers. I hope the book of Soliloquies will reach you soon, but I send these
cuttings because you might not happen to come across them in the book,
in which you may find more alluring passages.
The reason why I asked about Cardinal O’Connell was that I am curi-
ous to know whether American society has waked up to what the Catholic
church is. Some time ago, Jack Chapman3 wrote a little book which
showed that he, at least, was alive to the facts. I can well understand pre-
ferring the Catholic system to the American, as certain disaffected Jews
and young pagans now dare to say that they prefer Bolshevism or free
love: but the things are incompatible with America; and America ought to
know it. To judge by the plaints of the young rebels, America is quite
aware of it in their case. But is America aware of it in the case of the
Catholic church? Or is the Americanism of Catholics in the U.S. so thor-
ough, that they are not really Catholics at all?
Mrs. Gardner is right about my destiny, except that I am a monk
already—with an occasional moral holiday. No chance of my becoming the
other sort of monk. Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Unlocated.
2
One of the six systems of Indian philosophy, Vedanta is a term denoting a variety
of radically different schools. The teachings of the Upanisads provide a common
ground of scriptural authority. The most archaic of the systems of Indian philosophy,
Samkhya can be traced back to the middle of the first millenium B.C. The Samkhya
remained one of the leading schools of thought until about the sixth century A.D.
 1921–1927 3:69

3
John Chapman, O.S.B. (1865–1933), wrote several books about the Roman Catholic
church, including Notes on the Early History of the Vulgate Gospels (1908).

To Charles Augustus Strong

10 April 1922 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Marini, Rome

April 10, 1922
Dear Strong—
Thank you for your card, and the suggestion that I should stop at
Fiesole on my way north, but I am anxious to make the journey as uncon-
sciously as possible—to wake up in Paris after forty winks, as it were—and
to get a fresh start in work before the Summer sets in. I am going directly,
rd
leaving on Sunday the 23– , and have written to Marie and the concierge
th
to expect me on the 24–
I am expecting Onderdonk today, who remains for a week.
Fuller has been showing me the manuscript of his History of Greek
Philosophy1—a very American performance, very airy and easy, for which
I feel some indirect responsibility, as it seems to be in my manner some-
what diluted—a green mint grown into an ice-cream soda. But if we
abstract from the journalistic tone and the flippancy, it is really rather
graphic and not unsound—better than Well’s universal history.2
I was interested in your account of Princess Mary and her husband,3
and their visit to the villa. I wonder why the English royalties are so shy;
they must have been brought up in the midst of people. Perhaps they were
only led out of the nursery on state occasions, and spoken to shyly by oth-
ers: and nothing makes one so shy as shyness in other people, especially if
they are older. And the aridity of all that these royalties are allowed to
^ ^
see and hear must make them dreadfully dull, unless they have private
safety-valves, like King Edward.4
Of course you understand that I don’t mean to stay in the apartment
when you and Margaret come, because (as I have often said) there is not
room for us to be comfortable, and I need solitude for any real work. But
I will see if I find a place quieter than the hotel Brébant, to settle down in,
and we can dine together, as we did last year. On further consideration, I
doubt very much that I shall go to England at all. Yours ever
GSantayana
3:70 The Letters of George Santayana

1
Published in New York by Henry Holt and Co. in 1923.
2
H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells (1866–1946), a prolific English novelist and author of The
Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind (London: George Newnes
Limited, 1920, and New York: The Macmillan Company, 1921), was one of the most
influential voices of his age.
3
Mary (1897–1965), the princess royal of England, was the only daughter of George
V and the sister of George VI. In 1922 she married Viscount Lascelles, who became
earl of Harewood in 1929. Henry George Charles Lascelles, 6th earl of Harewood
(1882–1947), was a British soldier who held diplomatic posts in Rome and Canada and
served in World War I. He and Mary had two sons.
4
The eldest son of Queen Victoria, Edward VII (1841–1910) was king of England
from 1901 to 1910. He was known as Albert Edward, prince of Wales. In 1863 he mar-
ried Alexandra of Denmark, and they had six children. A liberal patron of the arts and
sciences, he led a notable social group and was a sportsman. His love affairs offended
his mother’s moral sense and distressed the proprieties of Victorian England.

To Charles Augustus Strong

25 April 1922 • Paris, France (MS: Rockefeller)

9 Avenue de l’Observatoire
April 25, 1922
Dear Strong
I arrived here last night after a journey not worth describing, and found
everything all right. Marie gave me my tea as usual this morning, and I am
devoting the day to writing letters, so as to have a clean mind and con-
science tomorrow for beginning work. It is cold, and I have a fire in the
salon.
th
Onderdonk came as he had announced on the 10– and stayed a week.
The impression I always get when I see my former young friends after they
have been for some years in “the world” is a sad one: they seem to have
no intellectual interests or clearness left. I don’t mean that I didn’t enjoy
seeing Onderdonk, and that he was not the same good friend as formerly,
but that I found he couldn’t understand what I said. It was, for a different
reason, much as it had been with Hans Reichhardt the week before, and
we were reduced to baby-talk. Fuller says he has the same experience. Of
course, this refers to Americans only, not to Englishmen.
I am delighted with the freshly-painted bathroom, and notice curtains
in the passage, and other improvements. Marie is anxious to know whether
cette Anglaise1 is coming with Margaret, for she says she can’t endure her,
and talks to herself about her in her sleep.
 1921–1927 3:71

Have you read Vahinger on Als ob,2 and do you think one must? Hans
Reichhardt has promised to send me Das Kapital by Karl Marx;3 with that
I think I shall have incidental reading enough for some time. I picked up
in Rome a French book on Language, by Vendryes,4 which is instructive
and supplies some hints about Essence. Why did we never talk about de
Gourmont?5 He seems to be very much in evidence: I have read only one
book (On how insects make love) which had some good tendencies in it—
true naturalism—but also some blindnesses.
I said good-bye sentimentally to the Tritons of the Villa Borghese6—
arrividerci! Yours ever G. S.
1
This Englishwoman (French).
2
A German philosopher and professor, Hans Vaihinger (1852–1933) contributed to
the understanding of Kant’s philosophy and founded the “as if” philosophy. His sys-
tem (Die Philosophie des als ob. System der theoretischen, praktischen und religiösen Fiktionem
der Menschheit auf Grund eines idealistichen Positivismus. Mit einem Anhang über Kant und
Nietzsche, 1911) was translated into English as The Philosophy of “As If” (1924). He argued
that since reality cannot be known, humans construct systems of thought to satisfy their
needs and then assume that actuality agrees with their constructions. People act “as if”
the real were what they assume it to be. Santayana’s copy of Die Philosophie des als ob is
housed at the Villa le Balze.
3
Karl Marx (1818–83) was a German social philosopher and radical leader, the chief
theorist of modern socialism. Most modern forms of socialism and capitalism are
derived from his dynamic theory of social change. He adapted Hegel’s dialectical
method to his own materialistic position to produce the theory of dialectical material-
ism. His monumental work was Das Kapital.
4
Joseph Vendryes (1875–1960) published Le langage: introduction linguistique à l’histoire
in Paris in 1921.
5
Remy de Gourmont (1858–1915), a French critic and novelist, was the leading criti-
cal apologist for the Symbolists. He consistently opposed traditionalism and defended
new literary departures. His novels, stories, and plays are analytic in their character
study.
6
Villa Borghese, now a repository for paintings, was the Roman summer palace built
at the beginning of the seventeenth century by Scipione Cardinal Borghese, of the
noble Borghese family.
3:72 The Letters of George Santayana

To George Sturgis
25 April 1922 • Paris, France (MS: Houghton)

9 Avenue de l’Observatoire
Paris, April 25, 1922
Dear George
I have just returned to Paris from Italy, and am looking over my arrears
of letters in order to start the season with a clear conscience. I am afraid I
th
haven’t yet answered your interesting letter of February 20– in which you
gave me an account of the various investments of which I am the happy
but semi-conscious possessor. It all sounds very safe, prosperous, and up-
to-date, and if I ventured to make any comments, they would be hope-
lessly trivial and unbusiness-like, and hardly worthy of an old editor of the
Harvard Lampoon, since I can think of nothing but double meanings for
American vitrified products preferred, and the furnishing of light heat and
power to such important parts of the world as Saint Louis, Mo. not to
speak of medicine for England Scotland and Wales. I am only sorry that I
am not supplying a little medicine to Ireland also. I vaguely remember try-
ing to furnish a little light to little groups of obscure minds in some dark
corner of Sever Hall:1 but it never entered my thoughts to supply all
Boston with heat and power as well. This only shows how we do our best
actions without knowing it, and how we may be laying up pleasant sur-
prises for ourselves against the Day of Judgement.
I am glad to hear that you are to build yourselves a house and home.
You may not know that I only just missed being an architect2 and have
always taken a great interest in houses—in the planning no less than in the
architectural effect—and I should be glad if you would send me some
sketch—if you have one not too large—of what you are to build, or some
photo of it when done.
Would you mind sending a check for $25—in my name—to Thorwald S.
Ross3 (what a name!) in the enclosed envelope? I have now a bank account
in London, but I don’t like to send an English check to the Signet,4 as it
would make a queer sum in American money, say $23.01½ cents.
I expect to remain in Paris all summer—at least.
Yours affectionately
GSantayana
1
A classroom building at Harvard University.
 1921–1927 3:73

2
Had Santayana not been offered a position in the philosophy department at Harvard
upon completing his doctorate there in 1889, his plan was to study architecture at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (Persons, 260)
3
Thorvald Salicath Ross (A.B., 1912, Harvard) pursued a career in manufacturing and
business management.
4
Harvard student society of which Santayana was an honorary member.

To Constable and Co. Ltd.

29 April 1922 • Paris, France (MS: Temple)

9 Avenue de l’Observatoire
Paris, April 29, 1922
Messrs Constable & Company
London.
Dear Sirs:
Here is the selection1 from my two volumes of verses which I should
suggest might be published, if you think the public would be at all inter-
ested in poetry of this sort, which I am well aware is not true poetry,
although perhaps it is one sort of true literature.
I hope before long to send you a list of errata in the Life of Reason
together with one of such verbal emendations as I should like to make if it
is possible. I think that, apart from material difficulties, it will be better not
to make any changes in the thought or spirit of the original, but (as you
suggest) to write a “Preface to the Second Edition” in which I can indicate
in what direction my mind has changed in these twenty years, and perhaps
say something about the scope and intention of the book, as I originally
conceived it.
I suppose the strikes are delaying the appearance of “Soliloquies in
England”.
Yours faithfully
GSantayana
1
Unlocated.
3:74 The Letters of George Santayana

To Charles Augustus Strong

8 May 1922 • Paris, France (MS: Rockefeller)

9 Avenue de l’Observatoire
May 8 1922
Dear Strong
I am delighted to hear that you are so satisfactorily at work on the
nature of things. It is evident that in the last year or two you have had a
second birth—what with Fables, and Latin, and this vigorous campaign in
Mind1 and in your own bosom, you seem to be a new man—I don’t mean
a different one, but a rejuvenated, reburnished, pugnacious, and courtly
version of your old self. It is a providential compensation for your lame-
ness, and it would be a curious thing if, in spite of it, you were now enjoy-
ing the pleasantest and most active years of your life. As to your arguments
in particular, I must wait till I see them before saying anything: but I am
already asking myself whether in reverting to your term “mind-stuff,” you
will at all accentuate a tendency which I seemed to feel in you of late
(though perhaps it was only because a misunderstanding on my part was
being dissipated)—the tendency to regard “stuff” as the function of the psy-
chical and “mind” as its essence. This was your original view: in clarifying
the view you had come to adopt instead, I wonder if you are restoring the
old in any measure.
Everything will be ready for you on the evening on the 31–st but in spite
of my desire to spare Marie the presence of cette Anglaise, I shall certainly
have decamped. My idea is to try the Quai Voltaire, if I can get a room
there, and if not to return to the Brébant which was very satisfactory save
for the noise—and even that often seemed a stimulus. I absolutely need a
clear field and solitude if I am to do anything like steady work. The out-
look is not discouraging: I find that, in the midst of much dry stuff and
many repetitions, I have a good deal—all over the book—that will do as it
stands, and that the revision, as it proceeds, suggests enough new thoughts
and images to make the work interesting. Nevertheless, even the first book
is not finished, because a great part of what I have done this winter turns
out to belong elsewhere, especially in the realm of matter.
The day before yesterday ushered in Spring, not to say Summer. A
complete change—heat, sunshine, and greenness all of a sudden. Yours
ever G.S.
 1921–1927 3:75

1
Mind: A Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy, originally published in London,
later Edinburgh, and now Oxford, was established in 1876 and is issued quarterly. Its
editors include George C. Robertson, G. F. Stout, G. E. Moore, and Gilbert Ryle.

To Constable and Co. Ltd.

13 May 1922 • Paris, France (MS: Constable)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Paris, May 13, 1922
essrs o
M Constable & C
London
Gentlemen
I have your letter of the 10th about the proposed edition of my poems,
with the sample pages. I have entire confidence in your experience and
taste about the form of the book, and the print is very good, and the
appearance excellent in the page containing one sonnet. The other page,
in which there are seven stanzas of four lines each, looks to me a little long
and heavy. Wouldn’t a shorter page, with more margin at the top, be bet-
ter?
The arrangement you propose about half-profits is perfectly satisfactory.
I am writing to Mr Hoppin, of Duffield & Co, informing him of what is
going on, and quoting the paragraph in your letter about the sale of sheets
to them or to Scribner. The proposed book, as you may have observed,
contains nearly the whole of the little book called “Sonnets”, and about
one third of the book called “The Hermit of Carmel”; and as the “Sonnets”
alone continue to be sold, it seems that Duffield & Co have the larger inter-
est in the matter.
I hope to send you the list of errata and the new preface to The Life of
Reason in a few days.
Yours faithfully
GSantayana
3:76 The Letters of George Santayana

To Charles Scribner’s Sons

13 May 1922 • Paris, France (MS: Princeton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Paris, May 13, 1922.
Messrs Charles Scribner’s Sons
New York
Gentlemen:
May I ask you, when the American edition of my “Soliloquies in
England” is ready, to send copies in my name to the persons in the list
enclosed?
Today I have received a letter from Messrs Constable & Company saying
that they are ready to publish a collection of my verses, taken partly from
my “Sonnets and Other Verses” now published by Messrs Duffield &
Company, and partly from “The Hermit of Carmel” of which you hold the
copyright. The selection I have made includes almost all of the first vol-
ume and about one third—some 75 pages—of the second. Messrs Constable
are proposing to sell such sheets as you or Messrs Duffield & Co may agree
to take for the American edition, to either or both of your firms, as you
may decide. Mr Hoppin wrote me some months ago, making a suggestion
to this effect: but now that the affair seems to be actually going forward, I
thought it as well to mention it directly to you, so that there may be no mis-
understanding.
Yours very truly
GSantayana
Please send a copy of “Soliloquies in England”, with the author’s com-
pliments, to each of the following addresses, and charge them to my
account. G.S.
Prof. Wendell T. Bush, Columbia University, New York City
Miss Frances Gwinn,1 227 East 48–th
St. '' '' ''
Prof. Durant Drake, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
Mr & Mrs R. Burnside Potter, Smithtown, Long Island '' ''
Prof. Wm Lyon Phelps,2 Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
Dr & Mrs Frederick Winslow, 275 Clarendon St. Boston, Mass.
B. A. G. Fuller, Esq, Sherborn, Mass.
 1921–1927 3:77

Mrs C. H. Toy, 6 Craigie Circle, Cambridge, Mass.

The Harvard Union, '' ''
The Delphic Club,3 9 Linden St, '' ''
The Robbins Library, Emerson Hall, '' ''
1
Unidentified.
2
William “Billy” Lyon Phelps (1865–1943) graduated from Yale (B.A., 1887; Ph.D.,
1891) and Harvard (A.M., 1891). A popular teacher (Yale, 1892–1933), he was among
the first Americans to specialize in modern literature. Phelps established the first col-
lege courses in contemporary drama and the novel and introduced Russian novelists
to his students. He wrote books on modern literature, as well as “As I Like It,” a book
column for Scribner’s Magazine. His Autobiography With Letters was published in 1939.
3
The Delta Phi Club, which occupied a house in Mount Auburn Street, was called
the Gashouse “because all its windows would be lighted up at once by the electricity
that was then a novelty; so that it was called ‘The Gashouse’ because of the absence of
gas.” (Persons, 349–50) The club was originated by Thoron, Lyman, and Beal of
Santayana’s class of 1886. Santayana had no money for dues as an undergraduate and
did not become a member until he returned from Germany in the fall of 1888. About
1898 it became a final club, changing its name to the Delphic Club.

To Constable and Co. Ltd.

20 May 1922 • Paris, France (MS: Temple)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Paris, May 20, 1922
Messrs Constable & Company
London
Gentlemen:
I enclose the new preface to The Life of Reason and the list of errata.1
I have taken pains to make no corrections that would involve disturbing
the page beyond the words directly concerned. I hope there may be no dif-
ficulty in making these changes, and if necessary I should be glad to bear
the expense involved.
In regard to the Poems, the second specimen page (which I also
enclose)2 seems an improvement, and quite satisfactory.
Yours faithfully
GSantayana
1
Unlocated.
2
Unlocated.
3:78 The Letters of George Santayana

To Logan Pearsall Smith

5 June 1922 • Paris, France (MS: Congress)

9 Av. de l’Observatoire, Paris

June 5, 1922
Dear Smith
“More Trivia”1 break all the rules about the inferiority of sequels and
second parts, because they have all the freshness of the first collection, with
more wit and more depth. I like them very much, but they can’t be very
well appreciated as a whole: each should be taken singly, and the savour
of it allowed to fill the mind and die away naturally, without being con-
fused and jostled by the next impression. Nevertheless, the whole makes a
picture of the self-consciousness of the modern man, which is not only
delightfully vivid and humorous, but is a great document: because
although it represents only one side of yourself, or of any of us, yet it is just
the side which the age has made conspicuous. Men have always been the
victims of trifles; but when they were uncomfortable, and passionate, and
in constant danger, they hardly had time to notice what the daily texture
of their thoughts was, in the calm intervals; whereas with us, the intervals
are all; and that is what you have painted.
As to Guillaume Lerolle,2
20 Av. Duquesne, Paris,
after our talk of the other day it came back to me, as in a dream, that I had
seen him after that incident about the unanswered letters to me and your
correspondance with him; that we had discussed the matter of translating
Little Essays, that he had said he must give up the project, and that I had
given him “Character & Opinion in the U.S.” in proof at that time, to look
over; and I haven’t seen or heard from him since. If you care to write to
him (as the above facts may not be accurately reported; my memory of
them is curiously dream-like) of course do so; but I think you are quite at
liberty to make arrangements with M. du Bos,3 if you feel disposed. Of
course, it would be an honour to have such a translation made, and I
should appreciate the compliment very much, as well as your interest in
the matter. You are an angel to take charge of the matter yourself and leave
me for the moment to the Realms of Being.
 1921–1927 3:79

Thank you for your very kind words about the Soliloquies, and espe-
cially about the allegories, which I somehow feel are my maimed children
or ugly ducklings.
I am looking for the book I haven’t sent you.4 Do you like La
Rochefoucault, La Bruyère, or Stendhal?5 Yours sincerely G. S.
1
Smith’s first book, Trivia (1902), had been published at his own expense. More Trivia
was published in New York by Harcourt, Brace and Co. in 1921.
2
Guillaume Lerolle and Henri Quentin translated Egotism (L’Erreur de la philosophie
Allemande, with a preface by Émile Boutroux. Paris: Nouvelle Librairie Nationale,
1917).
3
Possibly Charles du Bos (1882–1939), a French critic who combined Catholicism
with the influence of Walter Pater to become a leading commentator on the literary
production of his time. This translation was not published.
4
See 20 June 1919.
5
François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–80) was a French author renowned for his
book, Maximes (1665). Jean de La Bruyère (1645–96) was a French satiric moralist who
wrote about human vanity and corruption. His famous work is Les Caracteres de
Theophraste, avec les caracteres ou les mœurs de ce siecle (translated from the Greek, 1688).
Stendhal, pseudonym of Marie Henri Beyle (1783–1842), was a French novelist known
for his vivid characterization and psychological analysis.

To George Sturgis
7 June 1922 • Paris, France (MS: Houghton)

Paris, June 7, 1922

Dear George
Thank you for your letters of April 30, May 15, and May 24, the first of
which crossed with my last to you. Please give Josephine my love and tell
her I am sorry Arthur’s health is so deeply affected; but he has youth and
no doubt courage, as well as good care, to help him through. As to your
aunt Susie’s outburst on this subject, it is nothing to what you would hear
everyday in that household. They live in an atmosphere of such intense
partisanship in politics and religion that all the patriotism, self-sacrifice, or
good policy and insight which they would praise on their own side seem
to them criminal on the part of the enemy. Your aunt Susie is intelligent,
and ought to be above this sort of thing; but more than intelligent she is,
and has always been, enthusiastic and passionate. It has been her charm;
but it has driven her to exaggerate her own allegiances and force herself to
defend them in exaggerated language. In her heart she doubts and sees
that it is, or may be, all make-believe; but this only intensifies her deter-
mination to blind herself and to bluff it out. It is very sad, because her con-
3:80 The Letters of George Santayana

victions have not really brought her any happiness. She was seventy years
old yesterday:1 you must overlook this aggressiveness in her language now
and then, which is prompted by old scores which she has against things in
general. She is hitting back with such weapons as remain to an old woman.
I wish human nature and old age were more beautiful.
Strong and his daughter Margaret are here now, and I have left the
apartment temporarily, as there is not space enough there for family life
and philosophy at once. I am in a nice hotel near the Palais Royal, with a
cool comfortable room and great quiet, and I am working very well. I dine
with the Strongs every day at a restaurant.
As to that Italian book, you might as well send it on (to 9 Av. de
l’Observatoire) but there is no need of registering it. The author probably
thought the Italian postman’s soul could not resist the chance of stealing
the book and saving itself; but I shouldn’t mind. Yours affty
GSantayana
1
Susan was born in 1851; in 1922 she was seventy-one.

To George Sturgis
8 June 1922 • Paris, France (MS: Houghton)

Paris, June 8 1922

Dear George
In writing to you yesterday, my thoughts were so turned in the direc-
tion of old age, illness, and death that I quite forgot what should have been
the chief subject of my letter, namely, the coming event. I hope it will be
prosperous, and that Rosamond will get over that severe but joyful trial as
well as Josephine did. It is like seasickness; horrible at the time, but leav-
ing you feeling better than you ever felt before, so that you are soon ready
to face the same trial again.
You needn’t pay any attention to what I am going to say, and you prob-
ably won’t, as it will seem to you a mere prejudice, probably; yet I will tell
you what I thought when you said that, if –it–the child was a boy, you had
decided to call him Robert Shaw Sturgis.1 Does this s, mean anything to
you? There is, of course, your father’s cousin Robert –Gould]
[ – Shaw, whose
monument decorates the top of Beacon Hill;2 but your father was not
called after him, but after his uncle;3 and I don’t know — for
——after what
ancient worthy he was named. The middle name, if it is to be reduced in
 1921–1927 3:81

practice to a mere letter, seems to me useless and ugly: it is worth having

only when it is to be given its full weight and used always as a part of the
name you are called by. Three names can seldom hang together as a unit;
which is the reason why some people reduce the Christian name to a mys-
terious initial, as if every body called your boy Shaw Sturgis, and he signed
himself R. Shaw Sturgis: but you probably would feel about this as a friend
of mine did who said that he would as soon call himself A. Damned Foole.
If your young one is to be known as Robert Sturgis, as your father was,
why not call him so to begin with, and avoid a needless and (to my mind)
ridiculous middle letter?
I believe several old friends of mine live in Weston: –[W.]– Cameron
Forbes, –[ J.]– Murray Forbes,4 Austin Potter.5 Are any of these neighbours
or friends of yours?
Yours affectionately
GSantayana
1
Robert “Bob” Shaw Sturgis (b. 1922), George and Rosamond’s son, was named after
his grandfather, Santayana’s half brother. After graduation from Saint Mark’s School
in 1939, Bob attended Harvard University, but his studies were interrupted by service
in the United States Army Air Force in Europe. During the Allied occupation of Italy
in 1944, he visited Santayana several times in Rome. After World War II he returned
to Harvard to study architecture.
2
As an army colonel, Robert Gould Shaw (1837–63) commanded the first black reg-
iment in the field in the Civil War, the 54th Massachusetts. He was slain at Morris
Island, South Carolina; a memorial statue by Saint-Gaudens is on Boston Common.
3
Robert Shaw Sturgis (1824–76).
4
William Cameron “Cam” Forbes (1870–1959) coached the Harvard football team
and was a member of the Harvard class of 1892. An administrator and diplomat, he
served as United States governor of the Philippine Islands (1909–13) and as United
States ambassador to Japan (1930–32). He was the grandson of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Santayana was a frequent guest at Naushon, an island in Buzzard’s Bay, Cape Cod, that
belonged to Cam’s grandfather J[ohn] Murray Forbes, and at the family estate in
Milton, Massachusetts, an impending visit to which is announced in this letter. See
Persons, 346–48.
5
Austin Potter (Harvard, 1895) was the brother of Warwick and Robert Burnside
Potter.
3:82 The Letters of George Santayana

To Boylston Adams Beal

20 June 1922 • Paris, France (MS: Houghton)

C
Permanent /o Brown Shipley & Co
address: { 123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Paris, June 20 1922
Dear Boylston
Let me answer your good letter at once, for fear of putting it off indefi-
nitely. There is nothing changed in my plans or situation. I vaguely look
forward to settling down some day in England: but the truth is, I am less
and less attracted by the idea when I get to close quarters with it. I know
Oxford so well, that I can walk about it at will without moving from my
chimney-corner; and they say it is becoming harder and harder to find
lodgings there. I might take a cottage in one of the neighbouring villages,
and get my old landlady, or some other suitable person, to keep house for
me. But I am hardly ready to give up my Continental migrations, and if
once I settled down in England, it would be for the rest of my days.
Meantime, there is the problem of Strong, whom I don’t like to abandon
altogether. You know he is lame, half paralysed in the legs, and has few
friends to relieve the monotony of his meditations. His daughter hasn’t
turned out very useful to him. She is pretty, but her intelligence as a
school-girl seems to have been a false alarm, and she is singularly vague,
helpless, and empty. The poor thing cries, sometimes, out of pure ennui:
and as to her father, he is not happy unless she is out of the way, because
she is not punctual, and constantly changes and rechanges all her plans, to
his dismay and exasperation. I too clear out when she is on the scene,
because she is incompatible with work and quietness, and besides in the
apartment here there is hardly room for three. I go to some hotel, and dine
with Strong daily at a Duval restaurant. It is a splendid arrangement for
work.
The younger generation does not seem so foreign to me as it does to
you: the young people I see, I still like, and quite forget my grey hairs in
their society. Our own beaux jours were not very beautiful: I am not sure
that the war wasn’t a sort of Deluge providentially destinied to drown our
generation. We were genteel, we were aesthetic, but we were impotent.
Perhaps the future may bring a new simplicity, even if of a brutal sort.
Yours ever GSantayana
 1921–1927 3:83

To Wendell T. Bush
[Summer 1922?] • Paris, France (MS: Columbia)

9 Av. de l’Observatoire
Monday
Dear Mr Bush
What a fatality seems to pursue us this year! Your note, which you say
you sent from Dijon, has never reached me.
Are you and Mrs Bush free for dinner this evening? I will call again at
seven o’clock—or a few minutes earlier—in case you are. If not, please let
me know what day it may be
Yours sincerely
GSantayana

To Logan Pearsall Smith

[Summer 1922?] • Paris, France (MS: Congress)

9 Av. de l’Observatoire
Tuesday1
Dear Smith
This is very good news. I am not at all busy, only oppressed by the heat,
and I will come for you this evening at 7.30, and we can go to dine in the
Champs Elysées.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
‘[1922?]’ is written in pencil in a hand other than that of Santayana.
3:84 The Letters of George Santayana

To Constable and Co. Ltd.

4 July 1922 • Paris, France (MS: Temple)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Paris, July 4, 1922
essrs
M Constable & Company
London
Please send a copy of my “Soliloquies in England” to
Dr Luciano Zampa1
Petroia, Gubbio, Italy,
and charge the same to my account.
G. Santayana
1
Luciano Zampa translated Egotism (L’io nella filosofia germanica. Lanciano: R.
Carabba, 1920).

To Logan Pearsall Smith

17 July 1922 • Paris, France (MS: Congress)

9 Avenue de l’Observatoire
July 17, 1922
Dear Smith
I don’t know what I may have done to frighten Mr Kyllmann1 so much,
but if you don’t mind being dragged in into these affairs, it certainly
relieves me of a good deal of trouble. I should like to do anything that Mr
Kyllmann thinks would be advantageous to the sale of my books; not that
I want any money, but that it flatters me that they should be read and that
it would be a satisfaction if so devoted a publisher made more respectable
profits. In itself however, I will say frankly that the idea of a collection of
critical essays, picked out from my present books, does not seem to me
necessary: it would seem to eviscerate “Poetry & Religion” and even
“Winds of Doctrine” and the “Soliloquies”, as if the rest of what they con-
tain were inferior. This is perhaps true of “Poetry & Religion”, but hardly
of the other two books. Of course, it makes no difference to me in what
form people read my writings, if they read them at all: and if such a selec-
tion would be more popular, it is only a gain from the point of view of pro-
 1921–1927 3:85

paganda and of “fame”, just as “Little Essays” have been. But these evi-
dently did not supersede anything else—they were too short for that—and
may even have rescued the whole from early oblivion. My answer there-
fore is that I leave the matter in your hands—“you” being yourself and Mr
Kyllmann—if you are willing to wretle with Dent2 and with Scribner.
As to fresh essays, there is one that ought certainly to be included, the
one on “The Character of Hamlet” which forms the introduction to the
Hamlet in Sidney Lee’s edition.3 It is a very Latin view of the subject, and
cost me infinite pains. But the publishers are the most intraitable4 I ever
heard of—will not even sell copies of the volume (which is very dear) unless
one buys the whole set. I have never approached them (The Riverside
Press, Cambridge, Mass) on the subject of reprinting this paper, and
should be curious to see what luck you had in it.
The only other thing I can think of is a paper (never printed) which I
read at Harvard during the Emerson celebration many years ago on
Emerson the Poet.5 It doesn’t add very much to what I have said else-
where, but it is rather amusing. It might perhaps overload the Emersonian
chapter in the new book; but you shall see it if you wish, and judge for
yourself.
Does Squire6 really want anything of mine, or is it your illusion? I have
nothing at present. The squibs in the Dial are only marginal notes on the
American books they send me. I like the sophomoric [across] atmosphere
of it, and feel I am still writing for the Lampoon. Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Otto Kyllmann was director of Constable Publishers in London.
2
Joseph Malaby Dent (1849–1926) founded Dent & Sons of London, which published
Doctrine in 1913.
3
Born Solomon Lazarus Levi, Sir Sidney Lee (1859–1926) was an English author who
was editor of the Dictionary of National Biography (1891). He wrote Life of William
Shakespeare (1898) and Shakespeare and the Modern Stage (1906). Santayana’s essay enti-
tled “Hamlet” appeared as the Introduction to Hamlet, vol. 15 of The Complete Works of
William Shakespeare, ed. Sidney Lee (New York: Harper and Bros., [c. 1906–8]),
ix–xxxiii. This essay was reprinted in Obiter and in the Triton Edition, vol. 2 (1936):
205–24.
4
Intractable (French).
5
“Emerson’s Poems Proclaim the Divinity of Nature, with Freedom as His
Profoundest Ideal,” delivered on 22 May 1903 during the Emerson Commemorative
Week at Harvard. The lecture was printed in the Boston Daily Advertiser, Emerson
Centenary Supplement (23 May 1903): 16.
6
John Collings “J. C.” Squire (1884–1958), a highly influential literary journalist and
essayist, established the London Mercury in 1919. He was knighted in 1933.
3:86 The Letters of George Santayana

To Gilbert Seldes
26 July 1922 • Paris, France (MS: Beinecke)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Paris, July 26, 1922
r
My dear M Seldes
So far I have received only one draft for my article on “Penitent Art”,
the previous one being for “Marginal Notes on Civilization in America”.1
If the second draft arrives I will send it back to you.
Thank you for forwarding the letter from the New York editor of La
Prensa,2 who is an old acquaintance.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
“Penitent Art” was published in The Dial in July 1922; “Marginal Notes on
Civilization in the United States” was published in June 1922.
2
Founded in October of 1869, La Prensa is still a major newspaper of Buenos Aires.

To Constable and Co. Ltd.

17 September 1922 • Paris, France (MS: Temple)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Paris, Sept. 17, 1922
essrs
M Constable & Company
London
Dear Sirs:
In regard to Mr Pric/ tchard’s request to print “Masks” in his Anthology,1
please follow your own judgement and inclination. You can see much bet-
ter than I what is reasonable in such a case. An author who is asked for
permission to reprint something of his is like an actor when an encore is
demanded: he is pleased to be forced to yield, even against all rules. It is
for the manager to keep order and prevent abuses.
You will think me too prolific, but I have another book ready, and hope
to send you the manuscript in a week or two. It is the first volume of my
system of philosophy, which I have had in hand for many years. I propose
 1921–1927 3:87

that it be published separately under the title Scepticism and Animal Faith.
A second volume, entitled Realms of Being will complete the work, and I
hope to have it ready in a year or two.2 This first volume is not a long
book, little longer, I think, than Character & Opinion in the U.S. Perhaps,
if you consent to publish it, you could issue it in the same form as that
book, which has an alluring aspect.
Yours faithfully
GSantayana
1
“Masks” was published in The Athenaeum in September 1920 and reprinted as num-
ber 31 in Soliloquies. Essays of To-day: An Anthology, edited by Frances Henry Pritchard
(1884–1942), was published in 1923 by G. G. Harrap in London. It includes “War,”
reprinted from Little Essays.
2
Realms was published in four volumes: Essence (1927), Matter (1930), Truth (1937), and
Spirit (1940). Scepticism, introducing the philosophical system, appeared in 1923.

To Wendell T. Bush
4 October [1922?] • Paris, France (MS: Columbia)

Hôtel du Palais Royal, Paris

October 4—
Dear Mr Bush
Your first note reached me safely, although with some delay, as I am not
at the apartment for the moment. (The mad old woman is still there, but
she is superseded in all practical matters by another, who is quite com-
^ ^
petent.) I answered, making an appointment; but as you and Mrs Bush did-
n’t turn up, I inferred that in the interval you might have left Paris.
However, I am glad you are returning, and hope you will let me know
as soon as you arrive, and dine with me any day you choose (I have no
engagements!) at the Café de la Régence, opposite the Théâtre Français,
which is convenient for everybody.
I shall probably return to 9 Av. de l’Observatoire on Wednesday Oct.
th
11– , after the Strongs leave for Italy. If not, I shall be in this hotel.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
3:88 The Letters of George Santayana

To Constable and Co. Ltd.

5 October 1922 • Paris, France (MS: Temple)

9, Av. de l’Observatoire
Paris, Oct. 5. 1922
Messrs Constable & Co
London
I am sending you today the manuscript of my new book. You will
observe that I have suggested three slightly different titles, and I should be
glad to know which you think the best.
I shall be glad to know as soon as possible that the parcel has arrived
safely—
Yours faithfully
GSantayana

To John Brett Langstaff

11 October 1922 • Paris, France (MS: Unknown)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Paris, Oct. 11, 1922
Dear Langstaff
Thank you very much for sending me an invitation to the Presentation
of David Copperfield’s Library to The Borough of St. Pancras.1 It proves
that you (or someone else) have appreciated my praises of Dickens. His
books were a great solace to me during the war, when I read them practi-
cally for the first time. I am also glad to know that you are active and
already in a Presidential chair.
In my own occupations there has been no great change; and I am try-
ing to improve the shining (though afternoon) hour in finishing off all the
philosophical and other works which I have had in petto for years. The
first volume of my system of philosophy, solving all the riddles of the uni-
verse by proving that there are no riddles, is already in the press.
I hope to return to England in the Spring of next year, after a too pro-
tacted absence, and to see and (perhaps) hear you.
 1921–1927 3:89

Gouvy Hoffman and his wife were in Paris a year ago, and very kindly
looked me up. I have had a letter from Peter Warren, and Raymond
Mortimer is at this moment in the same hotel in which I have been hiding,
and we have had lunch together at the café de la Régence today . You see
^ ^
that my pleasant associations with Oxford are still alive.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Langstaff’s book David Copperfield’s Library was published in London (1924). The
dedication reads “Under the special patronage of the boy martyr Saint Pancras, to Jack
and Harry and to the children of David Copperfield’s Library in memory of Charles,
son of John Dickens.”

To Mary Potter Bush

20 October 1922 [postmark] • Paris, France (MS: Columbia)

Dear Mrs Bush

Yes, with pleasure. I hope this reply will reach you and spare Mr Bush
an unnecessary journey, although if he wants to come and discuss philos-
ophy in my den I should be delighted to see him. I leave on Sunday morn-
ing.
Yours gratefully
GSantayana

To Harry Austryn Wolfson

25 October 1922 • Nice, France (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London
Nice, Oct. 25. 1922
Dear Mr Wolfson1
I have spent a very pleasant hour reading your first chapter on
Spinoza.2 Thank you very much for remembering me. You know, perhaps,
that Spinoza3 is a great force in my private economy, and I daresay I sin
in adapting and transforming him to my own uses. It is a legitimate absorp-
tion of what one finds nutritive, but it makes it all the more necessary for
historical criticism to restore the genuine character of great men’s
thoughts, as their own age conceived them. I admire your wide scholar-
3:90 The Letters of George Santayana

ship, and the way you employ it: in the first place, in order to make an
imaginative and even playful reconstruction—what Spinoza’s book might
have been; and then to return to the formal and quaint dialectic, to the
scholastic flavour, of Spinoza, in contrast to the sentimental turn given to
him by Goethe4 & Co I hope you will persevere and make a great success
of the work. If in my capacity of former instructor I may make a sugges-
tion, I should advise you to paraphrase here and there certain expressions
which may be blind to the reader. For instance, when you say that the uni-
versal or the genus was regarded as the cause of the particular, I don’t
think any clear idea is conveyed by the words. But cause is a)rxh/, princi-
ple; and we can easily understand how space or extension is the principle
of the pyramid or of this sheet of paper in its Auseinandersein;5 that is, the
genus or universal is implied in the particular and the latter involves the
pre-existence of the former, but not vice versa. If “cause” meant deter-
mining antecedent, evidently no universal could be the cause of the par-
ticulars or the modes which diversify it, since it gives no foothold to the
differences and to the occasions proper to these particulars: and Spinoza is
himself explicit on this point where he says that each mode depends on the
other modes in its own attribute, not on the nature of the attribute—much
less of the substance—in general. So in the matter of “being understood
through something else”, this understanding is dialectical only. The nature
of the thing understood presupposes the nature of the more general
essence it is understood through, or by the use of: we must not think of
“understanding” either as explanation of origins or as appreciation of
^ ^
individual character.—I am curious to know the secret of this sumptuous
printing and publication. But why long §§? If it is in order to [across] sug-
gest the XVII century, you mustn’t speak of having “to be scrapped any-
way before we are through”. Suum cuique.6
Yours sincerely GSantayana
1
Harry Austryn Wolfson (1887–1974), Harvard class of 1912, was Nathan Littauer
Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy at Harvard until his retirement in
1958. His works include Crescas’ Critique of Aristotle: Problems of Aristotle’s Physics in Jewish
and Arabic Philosophy (1929) and The Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent Processes
of his Reasoning, 2 vols. (1934).
2
“Spinoza’s Definition of Substance and Mode,” Chronicon Spinozanum 1 (1921):
101–12.
3
Baruch (or Benedict) Spinoza (1632–77) was a rationalist whose philosophy finds its
fullest expression in his Ethics (1677). Spinoza maintains that one cannot understand
the world without understanding it as a whole, a single system that has two names, God
and Nature. Together with Plato and Aristotle, Spinoza is one of the chief sources of
Santayana’s philosophic inspiration.
 1921–1927 3:91

4
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was a German poet, dramatist, novelist,
and scientist. Sources for his work included Greek mythology and German legends.
Goethe was, for Santayana, one of the great philosophical poets; that is, poets who
effectively express the dominant world view of their era. See Poets, 139–99, and
Egotism, 43–53. Goethe’s lifework was the drama Faust (1808, 1831).
5
Relatedness (German).
6
To each his own (Latin).

To Charles Augustus Strong

30 October 1922 [postmark] • Nice, France (MS postcard: Rockefeller)

New-York Hotel, Nice

I have moved today to this other hotel, which is meublé1 so that one may
go out for one’s meals, and where I have a little apartment with a bath
room worthy of the name of the hotel, and a corner room with sun all
day—four windows—on the main street—not the sea-front. I hope to be com-
fortable, but the weather so far has been execrable—wind and rain—and the
place is still in curl-papers. However, I heard a part of La Mascotte2 last
night at the Casino gratis. You had better come a little later. G. S.
[across] Restaurants here –is–are many and good.
1
Furnished (French).
2
A comic opera in three acts by Edmond Audran (1842–1901).

To Constable and Co. Ltd.

3 November 1922 • Nice, France (MS: Temple)

New York Hotel

Nice, France
Nov. 3, 1922
Messrs Constable & Company
London
Gentlemen
I inclose the agreement,1 duly signed, for the publication of Scepticism
and Animal Faith.
I have added the words “the first part of” to the sub-title, because as it
stands it would hardly be correct. This book is only the introduction to the
system. Perhaps the words “Introduction to a System of Philosophy”
3:92 The Letters of George Santayana

would sound better than “The first part of”. They might convey the
impression of a separate introductory work, complete in itself, which is just
what this book is. If you think so, we could use the title —in
—with this modi-
fication.
As to the proposed large paper edition of my Poems,2 I should be glad
to sign the 120 or 125 copies which you mention, if you can send me the
pages here, to the New York Hotel, Nice, where I expect to pass the win-
ter. I will put the date on, as well as my name, if you think it would be bet-
ter, as the whole would not be a matter of more than half an hour—at least,
I suppose so, not having written my name over so many times since I was
a school-boy.
Yours faithfully
GSantayana
1
Unlocated.
2
Poems (New York: Scribner’s, 1923 and London: Constable, 1922). A special edition
of 100 numbered copies signed by Santayana was issued by Constable in January
1923.

To George Sturgis
3 November 1922 • Nice, France (MS: Houghton)

New York Hotel, Nice, France

Nov. 3, 1922
Dear George
Many thanks for your letter of Oct. 23, and its enclosures. The enclosed
half-sheet1 is a reply to the unfortunate creature who sent the begging let-
ter: I think he is probably in real trouble, and as deserving as unbalanced
people usually are—deserving of pity if not of anything else. Will you please
sen/td this half-sheet to him with a cheque for $25; to Mr Sadakichi
Hartmann,2 P.O. Box 341, Gainesville, Florida.
I am glad to know that you and Rosamond and the young man are all
well and happy. I wrote to Josephine not long ago; you make the best of
her situation also, because you are an optimist (as you have a national and
hereditary right to be) but I feel that it is rather distressing. As to your Aunt
Josephine, I had had a hint from her long ago that she did not intend to
draw her whole income for more than a year. She likes to have a small
money-bag under her pillow (I speak figuratively) but the $10,000 that she
must now have in the bank amply satisfy that craving, and she is satisfied
 1921–1927 3:93

to leave the rest in that distant and miraculous fountain of dollars over
which you are the presiding genius at this moment. I have written to her
once or twice on this subject, but not recently, and always in the sense that
she must do what would be most conducive to her peace of mind, and to
her pleasant relations with those about her.
I came to Nice a week ago or more, fleeing from the chill and rain that
had crept over Paris. The rain continued here, but not the chill, and after
some hunting I have found a comfortable little apartment, a corner room
with sun all day (when the sun shines) and a modern bath-room adjoining.
I have my coffee here in the morning, and at noon go to lunch at a very
excellent Italian restaurant across the street. I am working pleasantly and
feeling very well, and expect to remain here all winter. It is a somewhat
expensive place, and I shall draw the rest of my letter of credit during the
next two months, and by the 1st of January you will not forget to send me
a fresh one. I have received sundry small sums for articles, etc. during this
year, so that I haven’t been so very economical as my modest drafts might
indicate. It will not be necessary, I think, to make the next letter of credit
any larger—£500 as heretofore. If it should be exhausted before 1923 is
over, you can always send me a supplementary one, or a draft.
Yours affectionately
GSantayana
1
Unlocated.
2
Carl Sadakichi Hartmann (1867–1944) was born in Japan to a Japanese mother. His
German father brought him to the United States in 1894; he became a naturalized
American citizen. Hartmann composed and published verse dramas, poetry,
Conversations with Walt Whitman (1895) and A History of American Art (1902). He moved
among bohemian circles in Greenwich Village and Hollywood.

To Robert Burnside Potter

8 November 1922 • Nice, France (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123 Pall Mall, London
Nice, November 8, 1922
Dear Bob
Warwick has probably told you, by this time, of the repeated confabu-
lations and convivialities which we had together, when he and his young
wife were in Paris. It seemed to me I had known him all my life, as indeed
I had, or rather all his life: but I mean that, besides the great resemblance
3:94 The Letters of George Santayana

in expression which there is still to his childish face, he had a simplicity

and openness about him that removed all constraint at once. Harriet too
is very unaffected and friendly; she will be a splendid wife and mother. In
fine, I loved them both at once, and shall regard them as a permanent pos-
session, even if I see but little of them in future. At the same time, they
made me think of you and Mrs Potter, and of the saying of Homer that
some sons are better than their fathers, but most sons are worse. I don’t
know that I should call them worse in this instance according to my philo-
sophical standards, because I think these young people are more normal
than our generation (at least, of our sort) and more appropriate to the cir-
cumstances in which their lives must be led: remarkably well-armoured
and, in one way, insensible, so that they can stand the pace and the empti-
ness of things without loss of simple faith and heartiness. It is not a matter
of youth: because we were more exquisite when we were young, n’est-ce
pas? You certainly were more exquisite—you are more exquisite—than
young Warwick, and I need not repeat the phrase about Mrs Potter. The
new generation is tougher: it is adjusted to more noise, more speed, more
good-nature, and more democracy than we could have put up with. In
Warwick this modernness surprised me a little, as I had been prepared for
another type of mind, because as a boy he seemed pensive. He is that still,
but in view of facts, not in view of ideas; and his experiences in the war
and in engineering have probably confirmed this characteristic.
Intellectually he seemed to me absolutely Grotonian1 (they didn’t have
time to make a Grotonian of you: Gordon Bell and Bayard Cutting2 also
cut the traces, because they had such irrepressible wits); by Grotonian I
mean intelligent but passive, cognizant but not concerned. The social tone
of Groton I didn’t notice at all: it is probably out of date by this time. But
it survives remarkably in men a little older. During the war, at Oxford,
Bronson Cutting and Edgar Wells3 came to see me, and I saw Bronson
Cutting again in Rome last year. I can’t express to you the distance, the for-
eignes–ness, that I felt in him: it was another “world of values”, an estima-
tion absolutely well-informed but absolutely dead. I suppose it is that
people’s hearts are set on “heaven and home”. Or is it that they are just liv-
ing on respectably, considering when they should next go to the dentist’s,
and who will win the elections? The devouring automatism of American
life is something stupendous. I feel the force of it more and more every day
the farther, personally, I get away from it, as large mountains rise as you
recede from them, and —— you
—— surprise you by looming up as they never did
when you lived at their base.
 1921–1927 3:95

And this leads me to say why I am writing to you instead of to Mrs

Potter. As you know I am writing—or rather brooding over—a novel of the
American inner life, lived largely in Europe. My technical resources give
out at every turn, and I may have to give the thing up. There is one point
where I have an important scene in a yacht—and I know nothing about
yachts. You know—or knew—everything about them. Can you tell me of a
scientific book about yachts (my novel is to be scientific) that shall tell me
how they are planned, how many men are needed for the crew, what ser-
vants are usually taken, etc. It is to be a schooner into which auxiliary
engines have been put in (is this done?) for cruising in Canadian waters
and the West Indies. Elderly eccentric sportsman who likes to go away
from home.
[across] I have come to Nice for the winter, and am comfortably settled
and hard at work on Opus Magnum. Yours ever G. Santayana
1
Referring to Groton School, an exclusive preparatory school, in Groton, Massachusetts.
2
Gordon Knox Bell was a member of the Harvard class of 1893. William Bayard
Cutting Jr. (1878–1910) received his B.A. from Harvard in 1900. He served as secretary
to the vice-consul in the American Consulate in Milan (1908–9) and secretary of the
American Legation, Tangier, Morocco (1909).
3
Bronson Murray Cutting (1888–1935) attended Harvard (1906–7, 1908–10) and
afterward had a career in journalism and publishing. He also served as United States
senator from New Mexico (1927–35). Edgar Huidekoper Wells received an A.B. (1897)
and a law degree (1903) from Harvard and went on to a career in finance.

To Otto Kyllmann
10 November 1922 • Nice, France (MS: Temple)

New York Hotel, Nice, France

Nov. 10, 1922
Dear Mr Kyllmann
It is all right about the title of Scepticism and Animal Faith, with the
sub-title An Introduction to a System of Philosophy.
My first impulse on receiving your suggestion of a preface to the Poems
was to say no; they are an autobiography sufficiently, perhaps excessively,
confidential—at least for a discerning reader: and who cares for the others?
But on second thoughts, I have come to the conclusion that a preface
would be a good thing, if you don’t mind its not being exactly autobio-
graphical but devoted to these two points: 1–st an apology for republishing
such old-fashioned and unpoetical verses, on the ground that no one is
3:96 The Letters of George Santayana

bound by rules or genres in expression, and that there is no line, either in

nd
matter or form, between poetry and prose; 2– (and here a touch of auto-
biography may come in) a word about the temper, the beliefs, and the
changes in feeling which these pieces represent.
I will set to work on this preface at once, and send it to you in a few
days. I think it will make the volume more interesting to the public, and
certainly the reviewers will pounce upon it eagerly, without needing to
read further.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana

To Charles Scribner’s Sons

14 November 1922 • Nice, France (MS: Princeton)

Brown Shipley & Co

123 Pall Mall, London. S.W.1
Nice, Nov. 14, 1922
Messrs Charles Scribner’s Sons
New York—
Gentlemen,
When the new edition of my “Poems” reaches you, you will find that I
have added a preface at the request of Messrs Constable & Co which I trust
will supply a part of the attraction which a photograph might have for the
public eye; and I have also consented to write my name in 125 large paper
copies which are to be issued also. But as to a photograph, I am sorry I
can’t agree. Not only do I detest that sort of irrelevant interest (although I
know it is human) but in this case I think the portrait, if any, should be that
of the author at the time he composed the book, or the major part of it.
This is a young man’s voice: it should not seem to issue from an old man’s
mouth. On the other hand, a portrait of myself when young, presented to
the public now, would be grotesque. You must wait till I die. If my poems
or any of my books continue to sell then, you will be at liberty to put in
any portraits you like; and I have two which I think would do very well
for the “Poems”: one at the age of 22, my Harvard Class-photograph, and
the other from a charcoal drawing done ten years later by Andreas
Andersen.1 They correspond exactly to the two series of sonnets in the vol-
ume. There is no photograph of myself in later years that is at all good, and
 1921–1927 3:97

very few bad ones; but I mean to have one done when I return to London
which will be in the Spring, if my plans are not changed. This will remain
to represent the philosopher, as those other two the poet.—I hope you will
excuse this very vain and egotistical letter—it is a sort of last will and testa-
ment in regard to portraits—although I am not thinking of dying for the
moment. Somehow effigies suggest monuments, although I know there are
illustrated supplements to the Sunday papers which would probably serve
instead, although not aere perennius.2
You have perhaps heard that the first volume of my system of philoso-
phy, a separate book by itself, called “Scepticism and Animal Faith”, is in
the press, and I suppose Messrs Constable will arrange with you (if you are
so disposed) for the American issue.
Yours very truly
GSantayana

[across] P.S. It is all right about the royalty.

1
These photographs are in Complete Poems (85 and 101).
2
Latin for “more lasting than bronze” (Horace, Odes, III.xxx.1).

To Charles Augustus Strong

14 November 1922 • Nice, France (MS: Rockefeller)

New York Hotel Nice

Nov. 14. 1922
Dear Strong
I am very glad you have been having this outing and fresh glimpse of
Rome. If I were not so well and so busy (after my fashion) I should envy
you, but one of the things I like here is the Italian atmosphere. I hear
almost as much Italian as French in the streets, and go every day to lunch
at Maffi’s, across the street, which is very nice; a good deal like
Poccardi’s.— I enclose a review by Berty1 which is its own excuse for being,
and a cutting from the Morning Post2 that may enlighten and amuse you.
Yours ever
G.S.
1
Unlocated.
2
The clipping is headed “Moscow’s Verdict on Relativity. / Counter-Revolutionary
and Reactionary.” The first paragraph reads, “The Moscow Committee of the Russian
Communist Party has declared war on Professor Einstein’s theory of relativity which
3:98 The Letters of George Santayana

has been proclaimed a ‘reactionary theory leading to the support of counterrevolu-

tionary ideas.’ ”

To Otto Kyllmann
15 November 1922 • Nice, France (MS: Temple)

Hotel New-York, Nice, France

Nov. 15. 1922
Dear Mr Kyllmann
Here is the preface to the Poems. I wonder if you could ask someone in
your office to verify the quotation in the last paragraph? I make it from
memory, which in my case is very treacherous: I can’t even remember
which play it comes from, but it is easily found, being at the very end, in
the song to Winter, in one of the comedies, perhaps A Winter’s Tale. I
have no books here. –If [ the two lines are not consecutive, dots … after
^
the first.]– 1
^
I enclose a letter2 which explains itself and which I should be much
obliged to you if you would answer—entirely as you think best.
If you are anxious not to delay the publication of the Poems, in view of
the Christmas season, perhaps it would not be necessary to send me the
proof of the preface; the printer’s proof-reading being so careful; and you
or someone else with independent judgement might read it over to make
sure that no word had been misread so as to spoil the sense.
Yours faithfully
GSantayana
1
From The Song to Winter in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost (V.ii.922 and 939):
“When icicles hang by the wall,” and “And coughing drowns the parson’s saw.”
2
Unlocated.
 1921–1927 3:99

To Mary Williams Winslow

16 November 1922 • Nice, France (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123 Pall Mall, S.W.1.
Nice, Nov. 16 1922
Dear Mrs Winslow
Two letters, two sets of Sargent decorations,1 and I don’t know how
many months are being put down by the Recording Angel to my debit;
but I console myself with the thought that you have had a thick volume of
Soliloquies to overhear whenever you chose, and that I have been writing
so much else—“Scepticism and Animal Faith: Introduction to a System of
Philosophy” is in the press—that I may fairly be excused for neglecting to
put pen to paper out of school hours. However, reform is better than
repentance, and I will give you some account of myself—although as you
know nothing ever happens in my little world.
I spent the ——
winter
———— ^summer^ very pleasantly in Paris, working on the
above-mentioned volume. I wasn’t at Strong’s; because his daughter
Margaret was about, and the apartment is too small for three, a maid, a
dog, and ten thousand hat-boxes. I found a quiet cool hotel near the Palais
Royal, and lived there in a top room like a true philosopher, dining every
evening with the Strongs. They are my most constant link with human
affairs. Strong himself, in spite of his lameness, has developed a new
geniality (in every sense of this word) composes fables, reads the Latin
classics, travels by motor, builds baroque staircases in his garden at
Fiesole, and altogether plays the part of an opulent man of letters of the
eighteenth century. It is a great satisfaction to me to see him so happy, in
spite of his physical infirmity, and to find him blooming intellectually in
his old age after having been all his life rather cramped in expression and
rigidly professional in his interests. I think the Anglo-American colony in
Florence has had a great effect on him, and thawed him thoroughly.
Perhaps he has also caught from me the idea that a serious philosopher
may be playful on occasion. He has just been to Rome in his motor with
his architect, who is an invaluable friend and fac-totum, and I expect he
will turn up here later in the winter. I have not wanted to go to Italy nor
to Spain this year, because I want to finish the big book—and turn to the
novel! When that comes on the tapis, if I am as well as I am now, I shall
go the rounds again to Avila, Seville, Rome, Fiesole, Venice, etc, because
those scenes will not distract me from the fun which I shall be having.
3:100 The Letters of George Santayana

Composing a system of philosophy is not such an easy matter, and when

once the thread of interest and the momentum of the argument are lost it
is sometimes weeks before the engine can be made to run again properly.
Therefore I need absolute solitude, such as I have here—that is, solitude in
casinos, cafés, restaurants, theatres, and rambles in the midst of swarms of
idlers, villas, motors, and palm-trees. But to return to the Strongs: there is
the question of Margaret. Everybody (including herself) wants her to get
married, and she has plenty of suitors and of money; but somehow she
doesn’t make up her mind. This prolonged coyness on her part has a curi-
ous effect on the lives of two elderly philosophers, her father and myself,
because it keeps us both waiting with one foot in the air, until (she having
established herself) we may know where to set it down. I for my part
should like to settle down somewhere for the rest of my days; but I don’t
like to go to England, for instance, and leave Strong altogether; and yet I
can’t live with him while she is about, because then I feel I am staying in
a rich man’s house, and not sharing rooms with a fellow-student—which is
the sort of existence that Strong and I affect when we are alone.
This summer I had several visits from strange quarters. The Rev. Dr
Zampa came to spend a few days with me on his way from Michigan,
where he had been lecturing on Biblical exegesis (in Latin, if you please)
at a Polish Catholic seminary back to his native Umbria, to the castle of La
Petroia in Gubbio, which is his ancestral seat, and which I am invited to
visit some day. He is furious with prohibition and doesn’t find the
American Catholic clergy very spiritual: he says they are like the
Apostles—before the coming of the Holy Ghost. I also had a visit from
young Warwick Potter and his bride, who was Harriet Amory; I enjoy ed
^ ^
their company very much, and thought them both delightfully simple and
unaffected. But it seemed to me that they were a little more plebeian than
the older generation. Is this generally the case?
Now as to the Sargent compositions, of course it is not fair to judge of
them without their colour and in imperfect reproductions; but they seem
to me very vulgar. What I wanted to discover was how he had finally
treated the long walls of the stair-case hall in the Public Library; because
he told me himself,2 many years ago, that one long wall was to exhibit the
Sermon on the Mount and the other the Reformation. I was really more
interested in the idea of the composition, than in the composition itself: the
two semi-circles being very imaginative and learned in a historical way. As
a painter Sargent belongs to the spiritual world of Zola3; he has the nine-
 1921–1927 3:101

teenth century curiosity for things historical, decorative, and exotic; but he
has no leaven of his own to make the dough rise.
My nephew George Sturgis—with whom I correspond affectionately on
business and other matters—tells me that Polly Winslow is “great,” and that
young Fred is a nice boy “but” quiet, because he wears glasses. You see
George knows I take an interest in them; but his descriptions are imper-
fect and do not set the reality before me in a satisfying way. But he seems
to be a wide-awake young man, and an optimist, like his father. I had an
amusing dream about him: he had written a letter, and it began by
announcing that one of my investments might not yield the usual interest
next year: then it went on, step by step, to make matters worse (and I was
astonished afterwards that in my dream I showed so much more business
knowledge than I have when awake) by the most ingenious gradual trans-
formations; until at the end he said he had 75 cents left in all; but that it
would be all right, because he has put them into the Louisiana lotery, and
was sure of the first prize. Then I awoke. I haven’t told him of this dream,
because it might suggest doubts of his [across] stewardship which I don’t
feel in reality, at least not consciously. Love, best thanks, and best
wishes from
GSantayana
1
See letter of 1 February 1922.
2
See Persons, 450.
3
Émile Zola (1840–1902), a French novelist, was founder of the school of literary nat-
uralism, a form of literary realism emphasizing the determinative force of heredity and
environment on human existence.

To Zenas Clark Dickinson

22 November 1922 • Nice, France (MS: Michigan)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123 Pall Mall, London
Nice, Nov. 22, 1922
r 1
Dear M Dickinson
Your book—which it was very good of you to send me—has made my
chief reading for a week; it has been a genuine pleasure to be transported
by it into the discussions which are going on so busily, and in such a splen-
did spirit, in academic America. You know, of course, that I agree with
you—I think at every point—else why should you have sent me the book?
And I am particularly grateful to you for treating the old fogeys, like
3:102 The Letters of George Santayana

Bentham, and Adam Smith, so respectfully.2 That makes up for what

seemed to me (having wickedly begun at the end) too much McDougall. I
know by sad experience how in-bred controversy is, and how much eas-
ier it is to read and discuss one’s colleagues or teachers than remoter
philosophers of greater importance: and that this practice makes for
progress and a living tradition in particular schools. Watson,3 in particular,
seems to me a real master to gather about, and if I were young and in
America I should cling to his skirts. And this leads me to a point where
you might, I think, be more radical, as I have little doubt you will be in
later books, when your position is assured in the learned world and you
have travelled further from the Ph.D. You are an automatist like Watson,
but (like me) you do not on that account renounce or deny images and
feelings. But if the bodily movements do all the work, by means of mech-
anisms which must be extraordinary/ ily subtle and mobile, isn’t it idle to
quarrel about the association of “ideas”, as if this was, or could be, a rival
system of causation? It seems to me that Watson (although if he denies the
existence of mental discourse he is simply negligible) does well, as a mat-
ter of method, to ignore and deprecate literary psychology altogether: in
that way, he avoids controversies about units which are not the units of
events, but only of expression. The associationists are right, in so far as, in
their language, we may really describe and recall much that happens; but
the irrationalists4 and believers in instinct are no less right (righter, I think)
because they have c— o———aught
uld perspectives which throw the facts into
groups more suggestive of the biological forces which actually determine
them. When you come to the political questions at the end, I think a
sharper distinction between the dynamics of action, habit, government,
work, etc, and the rhetoric of politics and morals, would have helped you
to clearness: because as it is, it looks a little as if you were undecided,
^ ^
whereas it is not you that are undecided, but the rhetorics of literary psy-
chology that are optional and alternative; whilst the material forces that
rule events—think of the war and the state of Europe after it!—are not on
the scale of ideas or motives or principles at all, but lend themselves more
or less, here and there, to expression in those purely literary categories.
However, my object is to thank you for what you have done and not to air
my own views, already flaunted enough elsewhere.
Yours very truly GSantayana
1
Zenas Clark Dickinson (b. 1889) was professor of economics at the University of
Michigan, he wrote Economic Motives: A Study in the Psychological Foundation of Economic
 1921–1927 3:103

Theory, With Some Reference to Other Social Sciences (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1922).
2
Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) was an English philosopher, jurist, political theroist,
and founder of utilitarianism. Adam Smith (1723–90) was a Scottish economist whose
works include Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes
of the Wealth of Nations (1776).
3
John Broadus Watson (1878–1958), an early exponent of psychological behaviorism,
taught psychology at the University of Chicago and at Johns Hopkins University. After
his academic retirement, he lectured in the New School for Social Research.
4
Associationism is the view that disparate sensations, feelings, or ideas are related by
connections established in prior experience. David Hartley (1705–57) and James Mill
(1773–1836) were among the leading philosophers who held this view. Irrationalism
seeks to explain psychological phenomena on the basis of nonrational forces such as
instinct and feeling.

To Otto Kyllmann
23 November 1922 • Nice, France (MS: Houghton)

New York Hotel, Nice, France

Nov. 23, 1922
Dear Mr Kyllmann
No, it merely occurred to me that you might be counting on issuing the
Poems before Christmas, as that is the sort of little book people buy to give
away rather than to read themselves; but for my own part I am in no
hurry, and hadn’t thought of making a Christmas present of the book to
anybody.
Perhaps now you can send me a proof of the preface, together with the
sheets for my signature.
I am glad “Scepticism and Animal Faith” is in the press. The page proof
will be quite enough; you need not even send me the MS, as it is merely
a burden. Possibly you might like to keep it yourself as a curiosity; if so,
pray do.1 Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
The manuscript is housed at the University of Virginia.
3:104 The Letters of George Santayana

To Charles Raymond Bell Mortimer

23 November 1922 • Nice, France (MS: Princeton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Nice, Nov. 23, 1922
Dear Mortimer
I have read The Oxford Circus1 religiously. No doubt there are points
in it which I have missed, not knowing the language of the day, but I have
laughed heartily at others, for instance at the nobility of your hero refusing
to take a taxi in Oxford. “Rather than that, he had gone afoot”. How very
like Lord Curzon!2 But I wish you would initiate me into the mysteries,
orthographic and auricular, of ffoulis. Is it pronounced Fools? I also liked
your ever-young don, holding his feet in his hands, and wished you had
made more of him; but then that is a side of life with which I am well
acquainted.
Nice has turned out a happy choice for my winter quarters. I am com-
fortably settled, and have established a daily routine which keeps me well
and enables me to do a reasonable amount of work. The place and the
weather are undeniably beautiful. I am expecting the proofs of my new
book before long. As to plans for the future, there are no great alternatives
in my case to choose from, but I think it very likely that I shall go to
England in May or June, and spend the long vacation in Oxford, perhaps
in my old rooms, remaining until Realms of Being is done. But this will not
be my final Hegira,3 as the charms of Paris and Italy will certainly call me
back, if my health and spirits continue good.
I am rather sorry not to see The Dial, now that you are a regular con-
tributor. I should subscribe, but that I always find that if I subscribe to any-
thing, it becomes a burden, and I wonder why I did so. In respect to
Reviews, it is as with country girls, stolen kisses are best.
Now that you have written one book you probably will write another4—
at least, that has been my experience. If you do, I shall rely on you to let
me see it, as I might not hear of it in my ivory tower.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
The Oxford Circus: A Novel of Oxford and Youth (London: J. Lane, 1922) by Hamish
Miles and Raymond Mortimer.
 1921–1927 3:105

2
George Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925), a British
statesman, was viceroy of India (1899–1905).
3
The forced journey of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina in A.D. 622; any journey
made for the sake of safety or as an escape.
4
Mortimer published many later books.

To Charles Augustus Strong

1 December 1922 • Nice, France (MS: Rockefeller)

New-York Hotel, Nice

Dec. 1, 1922
Dear Strong
I am sorry that the sixtieth anniversary of your birth1 finds you so dis-
couraged, but one day makes one no older than any other does—just one
day older—and there is no reason why you shouldn’t do your most popu-
lar work, as James did, after the age of sixty. It seems to me natural, if you
were not to recover entirely, that your legs should get weaker from mere
disease; especially if you are heavier. In this respect I notice a change in
myself recently, especially here in Nice, that it fatigues me to walk and that
I tend to sit down in benches at intervals—a habit of old men which I used
to find very ridiculous. I don’t understand why, even if you are less active,
you shouldn’t spend the Summer in Paris. If going to cafés becomes diffi-
cult and tiresome (as I should think it would be for the whole afternoon)
the obvious remedy is to have a carriage, either a small motor or a
brougham, always at your disposal; it could take you to the Champs
Elisées and the Bois,2 to shops, where it would often not be necessary to
get out at all, as the books, etc, could be brought out to you sitting in your
carriage. If it was a motor, it would enable you to go even further at will,
to Versailles, Meaux,3 etc. for a change of scene and of restaurants. It seems
to me that a carriage in your case is hardly a luxury but a necessity and
that it would make a great difference in your sense of freedom and dignity.
During the last fortnight I haven’t done anything on Realms directly. I
have been interrupted by the arrival of books, including Dewey’s
Reconstruction and Whitehead’s Relativity;4 the first led me to fill a note-
book with a first draught of my “American Philosopher”;5 but I am afraid
it was a waste of spirit, as on beginning to copy it, I have lost my interest
and may abandon the idea; at least, I am doing so for the moment.
Whitehead’s book has some points in it that interest me, but two thirds of
it is unintelligible, and the whole is marred by his fundamental confusion
3:106 The Letters of George Santayana

of essence with fact. What I like is that, in spite of his desire to confuse
them, he ends by dividing them very clearly. He also maintains that the
flux of events in space-time is single, and the various time-spaces of
^ ^
Einstein are only readings of it. That is not his word, but it is what I gather.
I like to read a little of this sort of stuff in view of the Realm of Matter,
although of course my treatment will not broach any such questions: but it
is well to have some notion of what one is leaving out, so as to give a cor-
rect and unmistakable status to what one does say.
The weather here is splendid, although sometimes very cold at night.
The place is filling up, though this hotel is still nearly empty. I am well and
comfortable, but not very keen mentally.
Yours ever GSantayana
1
Strong was born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, on 28 November 1862.
2
Famous for its beauty and elegance, the avenue of Champs Élysées in Paris extends
from the Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe. The Bois de Boulogne is a park
in Paris which borders the western suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. A favorite pleasure
ground, it contains the race courses of Auteuil and Longchamps, as well as prome-
nades and bridle paths.
3
Versailles is a city in northern France, southwest of Paris, which grew around the
palace built for Louis XIV. Meaux is the chief city of Brie in northern France on the
Marne River.
4
Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920) and The Principle of Relativity (1922).
5
No known book or article by Santayana was published under this title.

To George Sturgis
5 December 1922 • Nice, France (MS postcard: Houghton)

Nice, Dec. 5. 1922

Thank you for these additional old letters of my father’s as well as for your
own. I am asking Scribner to send you a copy of my Soliloquies in
England, which is more readable (in parts) than my other books. I recom-
mend the one on Dickens and the four on Liberty and Liberalism. Your
father had some if not all of my books, and I suppose you will find you (or
Josephine) are in possession of them when you settle down in your new
house. When is that to be, or has it taken place? Is Weston, Mass, a suffi-
cient address? Merry Xmas. G.S.
 1921–1927 3:107

To Charles Scribner’s Sons

13 December 1922 • Nice, France (MS: Princeton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London. S.W.1
Nice, Dec. 13, 1922
Messrs Charles Scribner’s Sons
New York
Gentlemen,
Your suggestion that my new book, Scepticism and Animal Faith,
should be set up in America I think comes rather too late, as Messrs
Constable & Co lead me to expect the proofs to reach me at any moment.
However, this is a matter that I should leave you in any case to arrange
with them in whatever manner may be most convenient for both houses.
It is not likely that the copyright not existing in America would lead any
one to reprint so technical a book—it is the most technical I have yet writ-
ten—and as to royalties, I do not count on them at all. It would be rather a
satisfaction to me to think that people were actually pirating my works.
Various indications have reached me of the increased interest in my
books which is shown by the rising generation. I don’t subscribe to any
press-cutting agency, but my friends occasionally send me reviews, when
they think I shall be pleased by them. I also find occasional references to
myself in books. It is of course very gratifying, especially as I have always
lived on the hypothesis that I could not expect to attract much attention,
and should be content to please a small circle of kindred spirits. But per-
haps advancing years have made me more human, and able to interest a
larger public. Perhaps too the temper of the age has changed in a way
which, without moving exactly in my direction, has removed some of the
barriers between my way of expressing myself and the prevalent mood. I
always felt that the young people would agree with me, if they understood
what I meant.
Thank you for offering to send me evidences of this change in my
favour, but it is hardly worth while that you should take the trouble, unless
there is some comment which I should not be likely to see and by which
you think I might profit.
Yours very truly
GSantayana
3:108 The Letters of George Santayana

To Charles Augustus Strong

13 December 1922 • Nice, France (MS: Rockefeller)

New-York Hotel, Nice

Dec. 13, ’22
Dear Strong
I send you an article1 which explains itself, in case you haven’t heard of
these Daniels come to Judgement.2
I am a little less satisfied with Nice than I was when I last wrote. My
cough has come on again, and although I hope to stave it off by taking
every precaution at once, I think the rapid changes here from the hot sun
to the cold and damp night air are rather bad for my sort of complaint: and
also for comfort, because I have seldom felt so wretchedly cold as I do
here in the evening, in spite of all winter clothes and a great-coat. There is
central heating, but not very efficacious at all hours, and I have to wrap up
even when the window is closed. However, I am going to stick it out, as I
am not sure that I could find anything better, and in a few weeks doubt-
less the more balmy weather, which I remember at Monte Carlo years
ago, will come upon us. Meantime, I am going to try not going out at all
at night, but having a light supper in my room, or in the café which there
is on the ground floor.
I am putting together a chapter on “Essence in the Play of Passion”3 in
which I think I make clear my position about that which feels and that
which is felt. It approaches your view, but by a Euclidean4 parallel path,
never quite coinciding.
Yours ever G.S.
1
Unlocated.
2
Chapter twelve of the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament predicts the Apocalypse
and ensuing Judgment Day. The expression “a Daniel come to Judgement” is from
Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice and has come to refer to someone who is esteemed for
his sound decision-making skills.
3
This chapter does not appear in The Realm of Essence.
4
Euclid, also Eukleides, (fl. c. 300 B.C.), a Greek mathematician, whose Elements in
thirteen books became the basis of geometry.
 1921–1927 3:109

To Otto Kyllmann
21 December 1922 • Nice, France (MS: Temple)

New-York Hotel, Nice, France

December 21, 1922
Dear Mr Kyllmann
I entirely agree with you about the intervention and proposals of Messrs
Scribner.
In answer to their letter I wrote to them in effect (I have no copy of my
letter) that the matter of royalties and copyrights was quite secondary from
my point of view; that I doubted that anyone in America would wish to
reprint so technical a book; and that in any case the matter was entirely in
your hands to arrange with them as you thought best.
For my own part I am glad that you have not arranged with them to
have the book printed in America, as I like the English form and paper
much better. Please consult your own interests entirely in the matter of
allowing them to reprint, or take the sheets printed in Great Britain, as we
had anticipated that they would do.
If I understand the American regulations, they can reprint eventually in
any case, if they choose, and anyone can pirate a book not printed in
America, if it is in the English language: so that a French publisher has pro-
tection by copyright, but a British publisher has not. It seems sharp prac-
tice, but I suppose is to be expected. If, in view of this, you think you might
as well let them reprint, of course you are entitled to half the royalty they
will give me (if they are so kind): or even more, if your costs are thereby
increased. Yours faithfully
GSantayana
3:110 The Letters of George Santayana

To Robert Burnside Potter

21 December 1922 • Nice, France (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Nice, Dec. 21, ’22
Dear Bob
It is very nice of you to take so much trouble about the yacht in my
Novel, and your explanations after Pomeroy1 (whom I must thank also)
come in places very near to the critical point, and will be useful. If the
novel is ever done, the chapter2 on the “Black Swan” shall be sent to you
for revision before I reveal my landsman’s ignorance to the ocean wide.
But really, I have misled you about the importance of the yacht in the
book: there is to be no cruise (except a trial trip for the engines in
Massachusetts Bay) and no description of any voyage. The one important
point is the “sailing master”3—a character for which I have many adequate
models in my English experience. The yacht and the owner (my hero’s
father) are American: but the sailing-master is a young Englishman with a
shady past, through whom my young hero, at the age of 16, when he first
goes to the yacht (his mother ordinarily keeping him in leash) discovers all
the family secrets and many unmentionable things about human nature
and the ways of the world. The yacht is merely a background for that
momentous episode, which itself has nothing to do with yachting: but I
need the setting. The Black Swan is not a big yacht: not meant for social
gatherings; rather a floating hermitage, in which to escape from society. I
do not need to go into the question of the crew: but I want to have a pic-
ture of the facts in my own mind, and what you tell me of the Apache is
far, far too elaborate. The story is conceived from the hero’s point of view,
everything merely as it enters into his experience, and transforms his
Puritanism into a Hamlet-like perplexity. He does not himself know any-
thing about yachts: and his experience on that single occasion need not
enlighten him more than I was enlightened by the day I spent on Mr
William Forbes’s yacht in Buzzard’s Bay—an occasion which is the more
pertinent as Cam Forbes and his father are among the models for my per-
sonages.4 I once spent several weeks in a yacht, but it was a smaller one, a
steam-yacht, and in inland waters.5
Of course I know that one cannot go to Canadian waters and to the
West Indies at the same time; nor at the same season. I meant that the
 1921–1927 3:111

yacht was not meant to go round the world in, but for escapades from
home-life, such as my early friends used to indulge in when they went
shooting to North Carolina or to the Straits of Belle Isle.6
As you may imagine, I have no English library here in which to look
up the files of yachting magazines, nor could I really do so even in Paris.
If your encyclopaedia is not in ten volumes and you don’t mind sending it
to me, I should be really much obliged, and will send it back. I expect to
spend the whole winter in Nice, at the “Hotel New York”, from which I am
writing, and you could send the book here direct.
My opus magnum will be entitled “Realms of Being”, but the first vol-
ume already in the press is a separate book called “Scepticism and Animal
Faith”.
Happy New Year
GSantayana
1
Unidentified.
2
The Black Swan episode occupies chapters X–XV of Part Two of Puritan.
3
Jim Darnley, captain of the Black Swan, was based mainly on John Francis Stanley
Russell. The novel’s hero, Oliver, is the son of Peter and Harriet Alden.
4
The rich sportsman William Forbes was a principal model for Peter Alden;
Cameron Forbes was one of the models for Oliver himself.
5
Santayana made a trip on the interior rivers of France in the Royal, owned by Earl
Russell. The journey began on 2 June 1888 at Valence and concluded on 18 June at
Paris, where Santayana disembarked. See Persons, 312–13.
6
The Strait of Belle Isle is the northern entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence in
Canada between Newfoundland and Labrador.

To Constable and Co. Ltd.

25 December 1922 • Nice, France (MS: Temple)

Hotel New-York, Nice, France

Dec. 25, 1922
Messrs Constable & Company
London.
My bankers, Brown Shipley & Co, (123 Pall Mall) send me notice that
they have received a parcel addressed to me from you, and ask for instruc-
tions, saying it is necessarily for them to know the contents of the parcel
before forwarding it.
I am replying that it probably contains either loose sheets of my Poems
(in which I am to inscribe my name) or else proofs of another book of mine
3:112 The Letters of George Santayana

(Scepticism and Animal Faith) and that in either case I wish them to send
it on —by
in the most expeditious means, even letter-post if necessary, as I
hear that parcels normally take three weeks to reach the Riviera.
Last year, I remember, many weeks elapsed before I received the
proofs of the Soliloquies, after they had been posted in England.
I also have asked Brown Shipley & Co (if the parcel in question is bulky
and too heavy to the ordinary post) to return it to you; because I suspect
that, if Mr Kyllmann is away or has not mentioned the matter, you may be
sending me the manuscript of “Scepticism and Animal Faith”, as well as
the proofs; I do not want the manuscript; and if you remove it, you may
be able to send the proofs alone, open, as printed matter. Newspapers
arrive here regularly from London in one-and-half or two days.
I am very sorry if I am causing great delay by being abroad, but I will
do my best to return the proofs quickly when I once receive them. It will
help if (as I think I have already suggested) you send things to me directly
to the Hotel New-York, Nice, France, where I expect to remain all winter.
Yours faithfully
GSantayana

To George Sturgis
27 December 1922 • Nice, France (MS: Houghton)

New York Hotel, Nice,

Dec. 27, 1922
Dear George
Being without note-paper for the moment, I will wish you and
Rosamond and Bobbie a happy new year on this business sheet, which is
the sort on which I indict my immortal works.
The new letter of credit arrived safely long ago. I shall not draw upon
it for some months, as I still have £100 on the old one, which I will draw
out before January 1–st; and with that and what I have in my pocket there
will be enough for the rest of my stay at Nice, or very nearly.
I have had a Christmas card from Josephine and Arthur, for which I will
thank them some other day.
We have been having nasty weather, and I find Nice not so pleasant a
winter climate as Rome; the sun is brighter for a few hours, and shines
more frequently, but the sea-air in the evening is very cold and penetrat-
ing, and I feel insecure, with my bronchitis always ready to break out, and
 1921–1927 3:113

have fallen into the habit of having a light supper in my room instead of
going out in the evening. In this way I have a freer field for work, and
avoid the chilling night air. Of course the weather will grow now balmier
and balmier as the days become longer, and precautions will be unneces-
sary: but my experience this year is enough to convince me that this is not
a good place in which to spend the earlier part of the winter.
The season, in fact, is only just beginning. We have opera (decidedly
good) and all sorts of concerts and smaller shows: but I am absorbed in my
own affairs: and when the Big Book1 tires me, I take to thinking out new
scenes in the novel, and have actually jotted down a good many fresh
pages—although I had sworn not to do so until Opus Magnum was done.
However, it is foolish to force human nature; and if my health doesn’t play
me false, I hope to have time for finishing all my half-written works, before
the end comes. I shall turn out to have been a prolific writer; and if there
should ever be a complete edition of my works it will look like one of those
regiments in uniform that stand on the shelves of libraries which are not
disturbed except to be dusted. However, I have no hopes of rivalling
Voltaire whose complete works in 69 volumes I possess in Paris, having got
them second hand in a very nice edition (1793, I think) for 400 francs.
My friend Strong is gone to Switzerland for a cure, and I expect him
here for a while in February.
I believe I forgot to thank you for the snap-shot of Bobbie in his Father’s
arms. What an upstanding little fellow he is: I think he will take to riding
like his parents. Yours affly
G.S.
[across] P.S. That Harvard should beat Yale at footf/ball is most gratifying.
I used to care immensely about this: and one of my projected books
(“Dominations and Powers”) is largely based on that experience: it seems
to me to explain all politics and wars.
1
Realms.
3:114 The Letters of George Santayana

To Otto Kyllmann
30 December 1922 • Nice, France (MS: Temple)

New-York Hotel, Nice, France

Dec. —30,
29 1922
Dear Mr Kyllmann
It had not occurred to me that you would have any interest in not send-
ing the preface to my “Poems” to Scribner, together with the rest of the
sheets; nor do I now understand what that interest is.
Messrs Scribner had written asking for a signed photograph to put in the
volume; and in giving my reasons for not desiring that, I mentioned that
at your request I had written a preface, which I thought might partially sat-
isfy the same curiosity to which a portrait would have appealed; and that
this preface would be a godsend to the critics who didn’t wish to read the
poems themselves. I took for granted that you would send the preface with
the book: so that, having raised that expectation, I should certainly prefer
to have you send it, if you have no objection to doing so.
I see that misunderstandings can arise from having two publishers for
the same book, and in future, as in respect to “Scepticism and Animal
Faith,” I shall remember this fact, and endeavour to have all communica-
tions between me and Messrs Scribners pass through your hands, so that
complications may be avoided.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana

To Charles Augustus Strong

3 January 1923 • Nice, France (MS: Rockefeller)

New-York Hotel, Nice

Jan. 3, 1923
Dear Strong
Good weather seems to be returning after the wintry storms of the last
fortnight, and I have now entirely recovered from my cough. The attack
was not in itself so bad—not involving so much actual catarrh—as on some
previous occasions, but it seemed to shake me more and to be so fatiguing
that I called the doctor. He proved to be a young and apparently scientific
one and examined me very carefully, simply ordering another syrop and
 1921–1927 3:115

aspirations with a pulverisateur to soften the cough. But two or three days
later, having had a bad night, I called him again; and this time he said that
I had a slight congestion of the lungs—légère pouscée pulmonaire—and that
my heart was larger than it ought to be. For the latter he ordered some
minute pills of a drug called “strophantus,”1 which is evidently the sort of
“dope” which attracts the opium-eaters. I continued to go to Biffi’s across
the street every day for lunch, but have been coming home before sunset
and having supper in my room—an arrangement which incidentally leaves
me a splendid open stretch of time for work, say from four to twelve
o’clock. As I have only soup, two boiled eggs, and weak tea, my digestion
does not interrupt my train of thought at all seriously. Anyhow, I seem to
have completely recovered: but it is a warning that I am not so sound as I
had supposed, and that the machine may behave any day, if I am not care-
ful, like Dr Holmes’s one horse shay.2
As you may imagine, I haven’t been making progress with the book;
but perhaps by virtue of the strophantus my fancy has been working mag-
nificently and I was never more entertained than during this enforced
leisure. The result is that—yielding to force majeure3—I have written (in
pencil) the four last chapters of the novel, solving the problem of the
dénoument4 in a way which I think satisfactory, and incidentally creating
two delightful children, a boy of four and a girl of ten. The novel is not
complete yet, and many episodes might be worked up to fill the gaps: but
the outline is there, and I think it may not prove a bad thing for the Realms
to have that more interesting matter practically disposed of. [across] I hope
you are progressing favourably; when you come here in February you will
find the place very bright and gay. Yours ever G.S.
1
A tropical shrub that can be used in medicine as a cardiac stimulant and sedative.
2
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841–1935), Harvard class of 1861, was appointed to the
United States Supreme Court by President Theodore Roosevelt. He served there from
1902 until his death. He was a true liberal and greatly influenced many of the foremost
lawyers and jurists. The Deacon’s Masterpiece: or The Wonderful “One-Hoss Shay” is a poem
by Holmes in The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (The Atlantic Monthly, 1858). A parable
on the breakdown of Calvinism, the poem tells of a deacon who wanted a carriage that
would never break down, so he built all of its parts with equal strength. A century after
its construction, the whole carriage fell apart at once.
3
Irresistible force (French).
4
The final outcome or the unraveling of the main dramatic complication (French).
3:116 The Letters of George Santayana

To Constable and Co. Ltd.

4 January 1923 • Nice, France (MS postcard: Temple)

New York Hotel

Nice, France
The proofs of “Scepticism & Animal Faith” have reached me safely, and
will be returned as soon as possible
GSantayana
Jan. 4, ’23

To Otto Kyllmann
12 January 1923 • Nice, France (MS: Temple)

New York Hotel, Nice

Jan. 12, ’23
Dear Mr Kyllmann
Today I am sending back the first proof of Scepticism & Animal Faith,
revised
I have begun making an index which I think will add appreciably to the
value of the book if ever used by students, as I think it quite possible that
it may be in America. Moreover, an index was mentioned, I believe, in the
legal agreement between us. I will send it on in a few days.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana

To Charles Augustus Strong

13 January 1923 • Nice, France (MS: Rockefeller)

New York Hotel, Nice

Jan. 13, ’23
Dear Strong
There is no doubt that Val-Mont1 is the place for maturing your philo-
sophic seeds, and I am delighted that you have got your new book2 into a
satisfactory shape. It makes me envious, for although I have not been idle,
I have nothing complete to show for these two or three months of freedom
 1921–1927 3:117

and seclusion. Since I wrote you last, the proof of Scepticism and Animal
Faith has arrived and has been revised: I sent it off this morning. There are
308 pages; and I am preparing an index. In print, and after an interval, the
style seems to me better. The purple patches3 come in only in the similes
and illustrations: otherwise the argument proceeds soberly and I think
clearly.
When I was ill I also wrote an essay on Towers4 which I had long had
in petto: but it is only in pencil and I need to look up one or two matters
of architectural fact before having it printed.
My cough is gone, but the vestiges of a cold and of a certain general
fatigue still remain: I continue to come home in the afternoon and to have
supper in my room. The weather is still wintry and cloudy; but I am hop-
ing daily for the improvement which cannot now be long delayed.
Although Nice has not proved satisfactory as a winter residence, I don’t
feel like going away now that the worst is over and the sun rises earlier and
sets later every day: in the Spring my room here will be truly delightful,
with sun (which the blinds will soften) pouring in all day from two quar-
ters. But I shall surely never come here again for the early winter; and it
occurs to me that if I should feel shaky again next year, and you were
going to Val-Mont, perhaps I might go there too. Does one have to be very
ill to be admitted? That sort of medical monastery might suit me very well.
It also lies conveniently half-way between Paris and Rome, which are evi-
dently the points between which I shall oscillate in the future. I still think
of going to England in the Summer, but somehow the thought is melan-
choly: I feel I shall find nothing equal to my memory of it, and few friends.
It is quite possible I may never go there again.5
Fuller writes me from Rome saying his Greek Philosophy, vol. I, has
found a publisher—Putnams. What inveterate scribblers we [across] all are!
Books and more books. Yours ever
G.S.
1
Clinique Valmont is a health clinic located in the small city of Glion sur Montreux
in Switzerland.
2
A Theory of Knowledge (London: Constable, 1923).
3
Brilliant or ornate passages. This reference is from Ars Poetica, or Epistle to the Pisos,
from c. 13 B.C., written by Horace (65–8 B.C.), a preeminent Latin lyric poet.
4
Unidentified.
5
Santayana visited England in the fall of 1923 and in 1932.
3:118 The Letters of George Santayana

To Otto Kyllmann
14 January 1923 • Nice, France (MS: Temple)

New York Hotel, Nice

France
Jan. 13
—14, ’23
Dear Mr Kyllmann
After sending off the proof of Scepticism and Animal Faith I find I
should like to make the further corrections mentioned in the inclosed half-
sheet of paper.1 I suppose you will send me a second proof, although there
are hardly any important changes to be made in the first; but in any case
it might be better to have these additional corrections sent to the printer at
once
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Unlocated.

To George Sturgis
18 January 1923 • Nice, France (MS: Houghton)

New York Hotel, Nice

Jan. 18. ’23
Dear George
As you may imagine, your cablegram of the other day was a most
unexpected shock, and I am distressed to think that Josephine should have
lost her little girl, who seemed such a picture of health and who must have
been the one ray of light in that family. I have written to her, but with a
feeling that there is very little use in condolences. I addressed the letter
simply to Weston, Mass, as I hadn’t the exact address at hand.
Yesterday your letter arrived with my yearly account, for which I am
much obliged. It is much more than satisfactory; it is invraisemb/ blable,1
and hard to believe quite real. I can only repeat what I understand made
you laugh in one of my previous letters about the miraculous fountain of
dollars. By the way, I am afraid that my way of expressing myself is too
poetical for business. My father used to say that every old man had his own
rhetoric: and that is probably my case; and you must study Santayanese as
 1921–1927 3:119

a special language, particularly if you want to read the Soliloquies. For

instance, when I said you were the presiding genius over that miraculous
fountain of dollars I didn’t mean by genius any extraordinary intelligence—
although I have no reason to deny that you may not be a genius even in
that sense. What I meant was that you were the presiding sprite, fay, gob-
blin, or demon over the said fountain: in other words, I was talking
mythology, which happens to me rather often. So on another occasion
when I said you were an optimist, I didn’t mean that you took too rosy a
view of matters of fact, but that you were full of the zest of life and confi-
dent about the value and the success of what you undertook—a sentiment
which is healthy and natural in any energetic person, and characteristic
(for obvious good reasons) of America. And certainly so far, in your capac-
ity of attorney, you seem to justify any amount of optimism. Your aunt
Josephine will be snowed under by her millions, and I expect will ask you
anxiously not to send her any more.
Thank you too for the new photo of Bobby. In amount of hair and in
the form of his equatorial regions he rather resembles me: extremes meet,
but there is a difference between the baldness and rotundity of youth and
those of age. To quote my father again, there is a Spanish proverb which
says: “Man has two childhoods, one means life and the other death, but in
both he has a jolly time.” At this moment, however, I am hardly having a
“jolly” time, because I am leading an extraordinarily quiet life, coming
home in the afternoon, after a little walk in the sun, and having supper
served on a tray in my own room, so as to avoid the evening air which
becomes suddenly very cold and penetrating and dangerous to my chronic
bronchitis. But I am well entertained nevertheless, at present reading the
proof and preparing the /Iindex to my new book, “Scepticism.” I have also
written, at odd moments, several chapters of the novel, which I think now
will really come off, although not yet for some years.
I suppose you have already written telling me how this happened—I
mean, little Josephine’s death—and how her mother and Arthur are bar —ear-
ing their sad loss.
Yours affectionately
GSantayana
1
Implausible (French).
3:120 The Letters of George Santayana

To Otto Kyllmann
19 January 1923 • Nice, France (MS: Temple)

New York Hotel, Nice

Jan. 19, 1923
Dear Mr Kyllmann
I think on the whole it would be as well if you could send me a second
proof of the whole of Scepticism. There are always small errors that escape
one’s attention, and then suddenly arrest the eye. I have found two (which
I note on the enclosed half-sheet)1 since I wrote you last. Moreover, the
index—and the title page—would have to be sent to me in any case, so that
no additional delay need be involved.
The index will be ready in a day or two and shall be sent on directly.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
P.S. When the first proof was sent, it came by parcel post and I was obliged
to go to the custom-house here to get it, which involved some delay. I think
it can be sent by ordinary post, as printed matter, open.
1
Unlocated.

To Charles Augustus Strong

19 January 1923 • Nice, France (MS: Rockefeller)

New York Hotel, Nice

Jan. 19, 1923
Dear Strong
I am curious to see your new book. From what you say I should judge
that it is much more than a collection of your recent papers on Russell, Mrs
Steven,1 etc. What is the title?
Nice is filling up, and as the 13th of February is Mardi-gras,2 there may
be some difficulty in getting a room. They will ask in the first place for how
long you want it. But if you will telegraph the day before you arrive, I shall
surely be able to get something for the moment, probably in this hotel, and
then you can look about for yourself when you are here. Hotels are sim-
ply legion, but most of them require one to come en pension. Freedom in
that respect is the great advantage of the one I am in.
 1921–1927 3:121

Your bacchic song expresses the feelings of my remote past. I shouldn’t

feel any privation in not having even coffee, if I could have hot water. In
Avila, for instance, I never smoked and hardly sipped a glass of sherry at
dinner. Next year we must go to Val-Mont together
Yours ever G.S.
1
Karin Stephen.
2
Mardi Gras is the French name for Shrove Tuesday. The last day before Lent, it was
the occasion for merrymaking in the Middle Ages. Many cities (e.g., New Orleans, Rio
de Janiero, Nice, and Cologne) preserve the custom and hold elaborate carnivals for
several days before Mardi Gras.

To Otto Kyllmann
20 January 1923 • Nice, France (MS postcard: Temple)

New York Hotel

Nice, France
Jan. 20, ’23
The sheets of my Poems have arrived safely and quickly—in fact an hour
before your note announcing them.
GSantayana

To Unidentified Recipient
23 January 1923 • Nice, France (MS postcard: Huntington)

Nice, Jan. 23, ’23

I shall be glad to write my name in the books you speak of, if you can send
them to me here before April 1–st
GSantayana
Hotel New York.
Nice, France
3:122 The Letters of George Santayana

To Otto Kyllmann
24 January 1923 • Nice, France (MS: Temple)

New York Hotel, Nice, France

Jan. 24, 1923
Dear Mr Kyllmann
Here is the Index to Scepticism and Animal Faith. At the risk of mak-
ing it rather long, I have tried to turn it into a table analytique,1 which I
think the book requires.
I hope the sheets of the Poems, duly signed, have arrived safely.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Analytical table of contents (French).

To Robert Burnside Potter

26 January 1923 • Nice, France (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Nice, Jan. 26, 1923
Dear Bob
Your Nautical Encyclopaede/ ia, which I sent back to you yesterday, has
been the source of much amusement, if not instruction. I hadn’t seen an
American book of that period for a long time, and it carried me back to
the terrible ’80’s, I suppose one of the decades in which taste philosophy
and politics were at their lowest ebb. What ugliness! What satisfaction in
vulgarity and mediocrity! No wonder the aesthetes had to react, and could
do so only absurdly; but the marvel is they reacted at all, and prepared a
little fresh air, even if not very fresh, for us to breathe when we came on
the scene. Perhaps you will wonder how I find this in an innocent ency-
clopaedia; but it is everywhere, in the print, the tone, the state of science
and invention, the advertisements, and the portrait of the author. It is the
essence of what we used to call “jay”—the jayest state of society that ever
was! Naturally, I would not gather very much that would serve for my
highly distinguished and even spiritual novel; but I gathered that the “rail”
is the coping of the bulwarks, not a railing; and this interested me, because
 1921–1927 3:123

one of the things in my imaginary yacht which I can’t visualize with cer-
tainty is the periphery of the deck. The schooners represented in your
antique book seem to have a seat running round the stern, like a launch,
as if they had a cock-pit; but I remember that Mr Forbes’s schooner (which
was rather smaller than what I have in mind) had a whale-back sort of
stern; and I was afraid of slipping off. I want to imagine a deck where one
can dine on a summer evening, and afterwards sleep in hammocks. I also
looked up gangway and gangplank, because I wished to conceive whether
there would be a rope-ladder with wooden cross-pieces, or a regular stair
running diagonally down the side, with a square tressle-work hatch or
landing-platform at the bottom, and another at the top, as in a man-of-war.
But I got no light on this subject: and as to the arrangements below, I
learned only that a cabin was a place where the officers slept. No, I shall
have to go to sea, to give up yachts in my novels, or to ask Joseph Conrad1
to write them for me
How much do yachts cost a year, and what is the boat worth if sold after
some years’ use? Of course, my owner can be endowed with all the mil-
lions necessary: but as his wife’s establishment ashore is only genteel and
respectable, I shall have to accentuate a certain secretiveness in him about
money (the trait is already indicated, and hereditary) so as to make the
yacht possible if it involves disproportionate expense. You can’t imagine
what fun it is to have a novel in petto: philosophy is not nearly so inter-
esting because it is about the actual world—at least mine is; but the novel
leads me into such delightful by-paths, and supplies me with such charm-
ing friends! I am almost afraid of finishing it, because then the interest will
die down, and I shall never write another. All I know—and as you see all I
don’t know—will go into this one. I have lately written four more chapters,
contrary to my good resolutions of doing nothing but my philosophy for
the present; but I caught cold, had my usual bronchitis, which seems to
have got down into the lungs, so that I was decidedly seedy for some
weeks, and I suspect the doctor gave me some “dope” in my medicine:
anyhow, my fancy was very active, and as I could do no steady work, I
amused myself by scribbling the novel in pencil. It will all have to be
rewritten, but I have done the end, which had been rather vague in my
thoughts, and which is now, I think, suitable. It is a real end, because the
hero dies; but it is not a sad end, because he didn’t know how to live (I
think this is general among virtuous Americans) and the final note is one
of gentle satire and general benevolence.
3:124 The Letters of George Santayana

Nice is not a very good place for winter, the sun being very hot and the
shade very damp and cold; Rome is far more clement, and I shall proba-
bly return there regularly in the years to come. I am trying to screw up my
courage to go to England (for the last time, I say to myself) this summer;
but it will be an effort. When Mrs Potter kindly reiterates the suggestion
that I should go to America, she little knows how entirely I have ceased to
be a traveller for travel’s sake; much as seeing you would reward me, it is
not a “case of push”; and it is only in cases of push that I move at all nowa-
days.
A Christmas card came “from Harriet and Warwick”. If I don’t write to
them—that is another point in which I have grown lazy—it is not because I
don’t remember them or appreciate their attention.
I am expecting Strong here for a fortnight of philosophical conversa-
tion.
The new collection of my verses will appear shortly. I am not sending
it to my friends, as it is only a reprint; but you shall have a copy, as being
a sort of godfather to the synthetic infant. But I am a little ashamed to send
you only the American copy, when a large paper edition is to appear in
England: but if I send you one of these—you will have to pay duty on it! If
you like, I will send you both, one as a present and the other as a sort of
inversion of the paying-guest—something given for nothing to subscribers.
You can then pass on the one you don’t want to keep to Warwick, with my
best wishes.
Yours ever GSantayana
1
Joseph Conrad (Teodor Jósef Konrad Korzeniowski, 1857–1924) was born in the
Ukraine of Polish parents. He became both a sea captain and a distinguished novelist,
writing in English. His Lord Jim (1900) provided the nickname by which Jim Darnley
is called in Puritan.

To Charles Augustus Strong

10 February 1923 • Nice, France (MS: Rockefeller)

Clinique Sainte-Marguerite
2 rue Mantéga, Nice
Feb. 10, ’23
Dear Strong
Whether it was the grippe or not, my cough last week was accompanied
by such a loss of appetite, that it upset me a good deal, leading to vomit-
 1921–1927 3:125

ing (with hardly anything to w / vomit) and to moments of considerable dis-

tress and exhaustion, so that my doctor suggested that I should come to
this clinique, where I could be better watched and have suitable food. I did
so last Monday. I haven’t had a bad time, and am feeling decidedly con-
vaslescent and comfortable. The cough is now only occasional and not
severe, and my appetite and general condition are good, although natu-
rally I am a little “run-down.” The weather has been wretched, so that my
confinement, if a little depressing morally, has not been inopportune.
Today the sun is struggling to shine, but not succeeding very well.
I mean to stay here another week and then either return to the New
York Hotel or go for a time to Cimiez. The Carnaval will then be over and
I shall probably find good rooms. Mine were snapped up the moment I
left.
As to going to Fiesole, although materially I might do so and it would
be very pleasant in many ways, it involves an effort and a risk of relapse
which I think I had better not take. You have Pinsent1 with you, and I have
plenty of reading and writing to keep me entertained. We can meet in Paris
when you go there, either in April or later, if you really go to America.
The last proofs of my “Scepticism and Animal Faith” are here now, and
in spite of this long interruption to my work I feel as if progress might be
rapid when I can once more forget the accidents of the flesh—
My doctor is a charming man, young and rather Italian, and looks after
me very devotedly.
I have been reading Laurence Housman.2 How good [across] his verses
are! Why had I never read them before? Also a little Freud. Yours ever
G. S.
1
Possibly related to the Pinsent family of Birmingham, England. Hume Chancellor
Pinsent’s great-grandfather was the nephew of David Hume. Hume Pinsent’s oldest
son, David, was at Trinity College in 1910 and attended the meetings that Bertrand
Russell hosted.
2
The brother of A. E. Housman, Laurence Housman (1865–1959) was an English
novelist, dramatist, and illustrator whose popular success came from his An
Englishwoman’s Love Letters (1900). Called “England’s most censored playwright,” he
was versatile: a draughtsman, poet, and writer of fantastic stories. His Victoria Regina
(1934) was a success in America.
3:126 The Letters of George Santayana

To Joseph Malaby Dent

12 February 1923 • Nice, France (MS: North Carolina)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1.
Nice, Feb. 12, 1923
My dear Mr Dent
It was not for any personal dissatisfaction with your management in the
publication of my two books, that I went over to Constable; it was because
Mr Pearsall Smith had arranged with Constable (Mr Kyllmann being a per-
sonal friend of his) for the “Little Essays”; and as this book was (for me) a
great success, and as it presented a good appearance, there were exactly
the same reasons for continuing with Constable as for continuing with you.
I decided for him because he publishes (and takes a great interest in) my
“Life of Reason” (which is my principal work), because he seemed to
advertise and sell my books with success, and because, in consequence, I
got much more money out of them than before.
As to a fresh edition of “Winds of Doctrine”, I think it is very desirable.
There are parts of that book that can stand, and have a permanent inter-
est: others, especially the essay on Russell are already out of date. I should
be glad to revise the whole, cutting out or condensing most of the Russell
article and parts of the Bergson, thus reducing them to what I conceive to
be their real importance: and to balance those omissions, I might add a
chapter on Freud, and a few pages to the first essay, to carry the survey
over the war. It would thus make a fair commentary on my own times,
which might have a permanent interest. As I am now in my sixtieth year,
and my health is not very robust, I am concerned to arrange my works in
the most presentable form, freed as much as possible from dead matter.
The only trouble is that for the moment—and certainly this moment will
last a year or two—I am at work on my system of philosophy, which I
should regret above all things to leave unfinished.
Could you then postpone the revision and reissue of “Winds of
Doctrine” for a year or two,1 when I might be free to attend to that matter
with an easy conscience?
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Reprinted with a new preface, but without revision, in 1926.
 1921–1927 3:127

To George Sturgis
12 February 1923 • Nice, France (MS: Houghton)

Nice, Feb. 12, 1923

Dear George
Thank you for all these details about the death of Josephine’s child. I
am glad to hear she is expecting another1—that is the best possible comfort
for her and will help to tide over these days of anxiety. It also suggests that
Arthur is not so ill as we had imagined. It used to be a “thesis” for discus-
sion in my time whether acquired characteristics can be inherited, my phi-
losophy inclining me to support the negative. As Arthur’s trouble does not
indicate any predisposition on his part to tuberculosis, I see no reason why
his children should inherit it. The doctors presumably know the facts of the
case, and if they are not apprehensive, there is no occasion for Mrs
Grundy2 to be so.
I have had a troublesome attack of my chronic bronchitis, which is the
reason why I have not answered you before. Please don’t mention this to
your aunts in Avila, as it would worry them to no purpose. I am thinking
of moving to another hotel, more in the country, on a promontory by the
sea, in a pine wood; the trouble with Nice is that the Sun is too hot, and
the shade and the evening seem treacherously cold in consequence.
Will you please send a cheque for $50 to C. F. Hood Watertown, Mass,
saying it is from me for the Nichols Memorial Fund?3
My memory of the geography of eastern Massachusetts is not very
clear, and I don’t know exactly where Weston is, nor Auburndale, but I
think of them as lying in a south-westerly direction, west of Milton. Is this
right? I suppose you have now moved into your house, and are occupied
with the thousand little additions and arrangements which have to be
made before the newness wears off and one feels really at home.
Yours affectionately
George Santayana
1
Arthur Eldredge Jr. (1923–95).
2
Mrs. Grundy is the symbol of rigid conventional propriety which originated in
Thomas Morton’s Speed the Plough (1798).
3
Possibly Frederic Clark Hood. Edward Hall Nichols, professor of clinical surgery at
Harvard and a Fellow of the American Academy, had died in 1922. Both were mem-
bers of Harvard’s class of 1886.
3:128 The Letters of George Santayana

To Charles Augustus Strong

23 February 1923 • Nice, France (MS: Rockefeller)

Hôtel New-York, Nice

Feb. 23, 1923.
Dear Strong
I can’t remember whether I wrote to you last Monday, on returning
here, or only meant to do so. In any case it will do no harm to repeat that,
during the last days I spent at the clinique, I made excursions to Cimiez
and to Mont Boron; but the aspect of those “respectable” resorts seemed
to me worse than the hospital: I hated the thought of being roped in
among all those chattering old ladies wreathed in perpetual smiles, and liv-
ing as if in a transatlantic liner at anchor in a green field. As my room here
was vacant again, I decided to return, and pick up my old routine, which
is not unpleasant.
My cough has ceased altogether, and I seem to be all right: but I don’t
feel very robust, and am easily fatigued. I am still reading Spengler1 and
the newspapers, and not doing much work.
Let me know when you decide whether you are going to America or
not.
Yours ever
GSantayana
1
Oswald Spengler (1880–1936) was a German philosopher of history. His work The
Decline of the West (Der Untergang des Abendlandes; 1918–22) reflects the pessimistic
atmosphere in Germany after World War I. He maintained that history has a natural
development in which every culture is a distinct organic form that grows, matures, and
decays. He believed Western culture was in the last stage of this cycle.

To George Sturgis
26 February 1923 • Nice, France (MS: Houghton)

Hotel New-York, Nice

Feb. 26. 1923
Dear George
Josephine’s letter, and your last, reached me together a few days ago,
and I was glad to receive both.
 1921–1927 3:129

The weather and my health have somewhat improved; I don’t cough

any more, but feel rather “run down”, which the doctor says is usual after
the grippe, and has ordered “Kola” to set me up. On the whole I have
decided to stay in this hotel, as those more in the country which I have
gone to look at have an atmosphere about them of the old ladies’ genteel
boarding-house which does not appeal to my instincts. Here, in the town,
I feel freer and can change from one restaurant to another at will.
I am going to ask my London publisher to send you four copies of a
new edition of my poems which he is bringing out, because if I sent the
books to my friends directly they would have to pay duty on them, and it
seems an odd sort of present for which a tax is imposed. My idea is that
you should pay the duty and then resend three of the volumes, keeping the
fourth for yourself (or you can give it to somebody for a present next
Christmas, I sha’n’t be offended) and charge me whatever you have to pay.
The large paper edition is to sell in London for 15 shillings, and I daresay
they will want a dollar or more for each copy at the custom-house. The
persons to whom I want them sent are the following.
Mrs C. H. Toy,
8 Craigie Circle, Cambridge Mass.
Mr & Mrs R. B. Potter
Antietam Farm
Smithtown, Long Island N.Y.
Dr & Mrs Winslow
275 Clarendon St. Boston.
There is to be an American edition, but I don’t think Scribners will have
any of these large-paper copies.
Excuse me for giving you this trouble, but I didn’t know how else to
manage. Yours affly
GSantayana

To Otto Kyllmann
27 February 1923 • Nice, France (MS: Temple)

New York Hotel

Nice, Feb. 27. ’23
Dear Mr Kyllmann
The copy of the Poems has arrived, a day after your letter. On the whole
I am rather glad that you haven’t put in the preface,1 which I wrote for it
3:130 The Letters of George Santayana

at your suggestion; it was not a particularly happy bit of writing, and

poems, if they are good for anything, can stand alone, and the more per-
sonal to the reader, and divorced from the author, the atmosphere that sur-
rounds them, the better they fulfil their function as poetry. I don’t say this
because I object to Edmund Gosse’s criticism of the Soliloquies which you
have put in at the end.2 I recognize that you wanted something to intro-
duce me to the English public, and this (though slightly absurd in places)
is fair enough and comes from an authoritative pen. But why were you
afraid to tell me that the preface didn’t serve your purpose and that you
wished to put this notice in instead? It would not have offended or dis-
pleased me in the least, and on the other hand I could have asked Mr
Gosse to correct a slight error of inattention into which he has fallen. I say
in the Prologue to the Soliloquies that my father “read the –English]
[ – lan-
guage with ease, although he did not speak it;” on which Mr Gosse
embroiders the theory that my father “emigrated to New York”. My father
never emigrated: my mother, whose first husband had been an American,
and whose children by that first marriage were Americans, was attracted
there to Boston , and I after her. It is a slight matter; but no one would
^ ^
suppose that such a point would be misrepresented in a book of my own,
published in my [across] life-time. I also don’t like the cover, nor the yel-
low back. Couldn’t it be all dark blue? [across page one] And I have already
discovered two misprints! It is annoying, but quite my own fault in not
having sharper eyes. Yours sincerely
[across text] GSantayana
1
Santayana’s preface inadvertently was omitted from an advance copy of the book
sent to Santayana, but it is included in published copies of the Constable edition of
Poems.
2
Sir Edmund Gosse (1849–1928) was an English biographer and man of letters. His
review entitled “A Spaniard in England” was included at the end of the Constable edi-
tion of Poems. The Scribner’s 1923 edition of Poems omitted the Gosse essay and
included Santayana’s preface.
 1921–1927 3:131

To Otto Kyllmann
28 February 1923 • Nice, France (MS: Temple)

New York Hotel, Nice

Feb. 28, 1923
Dear Mr Kyllmann
Here are the errata1 which I have (so far) discovered in the Poems. They
are very annoying, as they make nonsense of the passages involved. Is
there any way in which they could be corrected in the sheets already
printed? Could it be done by hand, at least in the large-paper edition, or
could corrected sheets be printed and substituted for those in which the
errors occur? I should gladly bear any expense which might be involved.
I am telegraphing to Scribner to suspend publication until he hears
from me, and am writing to him repeating what I have just said above, and
asking him not to include Edmund Gosse’s review, which is not necessary
in America. Of course I should not object to it, or a part of it, as an adver-
tisement, not a part of the book.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Unlocated.

To Charles Scribner’s Sons

[28 February 1923] • Nice, France (Cablegram: Princeton)

HC0406 NICE 9
SCRIBNERS NY
PLEASE SUSPEND PUBLICATION POEMS LETTER FOLLOWS
SANTAYANA
3:132 The Letters of George Santayana

To Charles Scribner’s Sons

28 February 1923 • Nice, France (MS: Princeton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London. S.W.1
Nice, Feb. 28, 1923
Messrs Scribner’s Sons
New York
Dear Sirs,
In explanation of my cablegram of today, let me say that yesterday I
received from Messrs Constable an advanced copy of the new edition of my
Poems, and in looking it over found the misprints noted in the enclosed
half-sheet. They are very annoying, as they make nonsense of the passages
concerned. I know you share my aversion to imperfections of this sort, and
I leave it to you to take what course seems to you best. Could the errors
be corrected by hand, or could you wait for corrected sheets to be substi-
tuted for those in which the errors occur? I should be glad to bear any
expense which might be involved. I am writing to Messrs Constable in this
same sense, so that I hope any printing done in future will be from cor-
rected plates.
On receiving the book I learned for the first time that the preface I had
written at Mr Kyllmann’s request, had not seemed to him a desirable one,
and that he was not putting it in. I do not regret this at all, and I should be
rather glad if you followed his example; but let that be as seems best in
your own judgement. On the other hand, Messrs Constable have appended
a review of my Soliloquies in England by Edmund Gosse, which I quite
understand may be useful to introduce me to the publick —c in England; but
it is rather absurd in parts and contains one error of fact (about my father,
or me, having “emigrated to New York”) and, if they have sent it to you
with the Poems, I wish you would leave it out. Of course I should not
object to it, or some part of it, as an advertisement, but it should not be
continuous with the text of the Poems.
The copy sent me is also in a fancy binding not to my taste. I suppose
I may rely on you to avoid that danger.
Yours very truly
GSantayana
 1921–1927 3:133

Poems by G. Santayana
Errata1
p. 64, last line, “those” should read: whose
103, line 11 (at the end) . '' '' ,
125 '' 9, “horde” '' '' hoard.
1
These corrections were made in the Constable and Scribner’s editions of Poems but
not before some copies were printed. In one of the Santayana Edition’s copies a slip of
errata is bound in before the table of contents. In another, the corrections were made
by hand (both Scribner’s, 1923).

To Otto Kyllmann
6 March 1923 • Nice, France (MS: Temple)

New York Hotel, Nice

March 6, 1923
Dear Mr Kyllmann
I have received —your
th three notes of March 1st, 2nd, & 3– rd
, and also
^ ^
the two more copies of my Poems. The principal cause of our little trou-
bles is that I am abroad: if I were in London and we could talk things over,
everything would be easier. It is possible that I may be there in the sum-
mer.
As to the binding of the limited edition, I have no objection to it; but
even here I should have liked better something that did not suggest a dec-
orative-art school. I think I see the difference of angle —at
in which you and
I would naturally — see view such a matter. You wish to attract the eye, to sug-
gest a book of beautiful poems: I think of the book as a sort of minor reli-
gious work, that should be in plain black, or plain leather, like a vade
mecum.1 The few people who like my verses like them for what they say,
as an echo of their own experience, not as polite current literature. I
shouldn’t dislike the binding of the ordinary edition at all in itself: it is
rather jolly. Only it doesn’t seem right for my book.
Now that the misunderstanding about the preface is cleared up, I have
re-read it. It is not very good: I ought to have done better; but the truth is
that I wrote it off hastily, (as I must have done the proof-reading, I am
afraid) without allowing myself time for cold criticism. But it may do some
good even as it is. For one thing, it helps to balance Mr Gosse: the reader
will see that I don’t regard myself as an airy sceptic, but rather as a doctri-
naire: and he can come to his own conclusions. By all means retain Gosse’s
3:134 The Letters of George Santayana

essay: it will give the critics a hint, even if it refers to the Soliloquies, not
to the Poems, which latter, being the work of a much younger man are
much more solemn.
I send you a sheet of corrections,2 divided into three [illegible]categories:
st
1– the three errata which I had sent you before, which affect the sense, and
nd
should be corrected if possible at once; 2– other typographical slips, which
though certainly errors, are not important, and need not be mended in the
rd
present edition, unless it can be done easily; 3– emendations which I
should like to make in the plates (if there are to be plates) in view of any
printing in future. In America the Sonnets always had a small regular sale,
and may continue to do so.
I am not sending any copies of the Poems to my friends, as they already
have them. But I should be glad if you could send me four more copies of
the limited edition. I shall be here about a month longer; afterwards at 9
Av. de l’Observatoire, Paris.
When is “Scepticism” to appear?
Yours sincerely GSantayana
1
A handy reference guide (literally, Latin for “go with me”).
2
Unlocated.

To Charles Scribner’s Sons

7 March 1923 • Nice, France (MS: Princeton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall London, S.W.1
Nice, March 7, 1923
essrs
M Charles Scribner’s Sons
New York
Dear Sirs,
Many thanks for the copy of my Poems which you have been good
enough to send me
A few days after my recent letter and telegram to you, I received other
copies of the Poems from London, with the explanation that the preface
was not to be left out, but had not been included by chance in the
advanced copy they had previously sent me.
 1921–1927 3:135

I see you have it too, and even make use of it for the advertisement on
the paper cover. I note with relief, on the other hand, that the essay by
Edmund Gosse is not appended, as in the English edition.
As to the corrections, I see I discovered the errors too late. I have not
been very well, and the reading of one’s own verses in proof is particularly
hard, because familiarity carries one over—one hears the thing—and it is
almost impossible to see, without intermission, the actual letters on the
page. I can explain in no other way my failure to observe the errata I sent
you, as well as several others, of a minor sort, which I have discovered
since. I am arranging with Messrs Constable to have them corrected in the
plates, so that if you ever require more copies they shall be letter-perfect.1
If anything can be done to make right the three errors in question, which
affect the sense of the passages involved, I should be glad if you would do
it in the copies now in your hands.
I am not sending copies of these Poems to my friends, as they have the
previous editions; but I enclose a short list of addresses to which I should
like copies of “Scepticism and Animal Faith” to be sent, when that is pub-
lished.
Yours very truly
GSantayana
Please send a copy of “Scepticism and Animal Faith,” to be charged to
^
the Author’s account, with the Author’s compliments, to the following:
^
Professor & Mrs W. T. Bush, 1, W. 64th St, New York City
Mr & Mrs R. B. Potter, Antietam Farm, Smithtown, Long Island, N.Y.
Dr & Mrs Winslow, 275 Clarendon St, Boston, Mass.
B. A. G. Fuller, Esq, Sherborn, Mass.
The Harvard Union, Cambridge, Mass.
Robbins Library, Emerson Hall, Cambridge, Mass
The Delphic Club, 9 Linden St. '' ''
Mrs C. H. Toy, 8 Craigie Circle '' ''
Prof. Wm Lyon Phelps, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
1
Scribner’s set up the book themselves and produced a separate edition.
3:136 The Letters of George Santayana

To Otto Kyllmann
9 March 1923 • Nice, France (MS: Temple)

New-York Hotel Nice

March 9, 1923
Dear Mr Kyllmann
I had the complete proof (the first proof in duplicate)1 here, and did not
notice that the one returned lacked those two pages.
There is nothing to correct in them.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Of Scepticism.

To Constable and Co. Ltd.

12 March 1923 • Nice, France (MS postcard: Temple)

New York Hotel, Nice

March 12, ’23

In regard to the query of the printers about p. ix of the Preface of

Scepticism & Animal Faith, the word “electric” is right as it stands.
GSantayana

To Mary Williams Winslow

19 March 1923 • Nice, France (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1.
Nice, March 19, 1923
rs
Dear M Winslow
You have been very good in satisfying my curiosity about Sargent’s
paintings, and also throwing in the incredible Island and campanile of
Venice in the River Charles.1 As to Sargent, I feel that he belongs to a past
generation, and (being the youngest of men myself) I think him an
anachronism. This material fulness and realism, and these descriptive
lita/erary intentions, are foreign to “modern art”. We are now spiritual, sim-
 1921–1927 3:137

ple, eccentric, combining Il Greco2 with the Russian ballet. I was especially
glad to see the design of Sargent’s “Our Lady of Sorrows” because this was
what he had talked about in that voyage in which we happened to be in
the same ship. But the twenty-five years or more that have intervened, in
which he has painted little but fashionable ladies, and perhaps has not
gone back to look at the old Spanish images, have had a strange effect on
his conception. The face is (at least in this photograph) quite empty and
doll-like, and the hand seems to be pressing a bouquet flirtatiously, and not
a broken heart. The faces of the good old Spanish images are very beauti-
ful and tragic, a combination of the grand lady and the saint. And how
characteristic of him to put in the tall candles into the picture! A mere
extraneous feature, but one that strikes the tourist in the Holy Week pro-
cessions at Seville.3
Well, the winter is past and I am still in Nice, without having accom-
plished very much. For one thing, the climate has been a disappointment,
and I have been under the weather. But perhaps the summer will prove
more favourable for work, as last summer did. After all, I may have writ-
ten enough already, and the books I am so worried about leaving unfin-
ished may be nothing but tiresome repetitions.
My nephew George Sturgis writes very intelligent and rather frequent
letters; I am acquiring a great liking and respect for him, and he seems to
carry on my business affairs for me successfully; at least the invisible foun-
tain of dollars continues to flow freely.
As to politics, I watch what happens mainly with an eye to discerning,
if possible, whether the great international socialistic revolution is coming
or not. Russia and Italy now make me incline to believe that the cataclysm
will not occur, and that things will go on very much as usual, with a change
of personnel and of catch-words. Fascism is the most significant thing now:
I wonder if in England the decent people will not eventually organize and
arm against the politicians and restore the nation. Of course nothing is
eternal, and the England of the past can never return: but there may be a
restoration reincorporating old institutions under new auspices, as has hap-
pened several times before. Much of what people complain of in the world
after the war does not worry me; on the contrary, if only the “industrial sit-
uation” could remain always bad, and the population could diminish,
especially in the manufacturing towns, I should think it a good thing.
There are now too many people, too many things, and too many confer-
ences and elections.
3:138 The Letters of George Santayana

I have been reading a new book of Freud’s4 and other things by his dis-
ciples. They are settling down to a steadier pace, and reducing their para-
doxes to very much what everybody has always known. Einstein I do not
attempt to read: I am willing to have a maximum of “relativity”; but I won-
der if they have ever considered that if “relative” systems have no con-
nexion and no common object, each is absolute; and if they have a
common object, or form a connected group of perspectives, then they are
only relative views, like optical illusions, and the universe is not ambigu-
ous in its true form.
When I was ill with the grippe (which is what I am supposed to have
had) the doctor, I think, gave me some “dope” or other: any how my imag-
ination was very active and I scribbled in pencil four chapters of my novel,
including the end: but I have not dared to reread them, for fear they may
be pure nonsense. There – is a love scene, but the hero is only 17 and the
heroine5 10. However, I thought it a lovely love-scene in spite of what my
friend the widow prognosticated6—that my novel would be interesting,
[across] but the love-scenes failures. People never believe in volcanoes until
the lava actually overtakes them. Yours sincerely GSantayana
1
The campanile is a 325-foot-high bell tower located on the Piazza San Marco in
Venice, Italy. A replica of the tower stands beside the Charles River in Boston.
2
El Greco (given name of Domenicos Theotocopoulos, c. 1541–1614) was a painter
who was born in Crete but studied and painted in Italy and Spain.
3
Holy week begins on Palm Sunday and concludes on Easter. In Seville the religious
procession celebrating it dates back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. During
the procession there are floats from all of the churches depicting Jesus’ life between the
Last Supper and the Resurrection. Any depictions of the Virgin Mary show her in
mourning.
4
Beyond the Pleasure Principle was published in London in 1922.
5
Rose Darnley.
6
See letter of 23 August 1921.

To Charles Augustus Strong

[25 March 1923?] • Nice, France (MS: Rockefeller)

New York Hotel, Nice

Sunday.
Dear Strong
I didn’t answer your former letter because I was expecting you, or your
telegram, from day to day. Don’t be afraid of interrupting my work. I have
little heartiness for anything, although physically I feel very well, espe-
 1921–1927 3:139

cially when the weather is not unfavourable for a good brisk walk. I have
been making no real progress with the book, but only reading and doing
odds and ends—rewriting the preface, for instance, which is now in a much
worse mess than it was in originally. If you are coming for the sake of the
motor-trip (although you will find the roads very dusty here) I should
come; but I have always felt that you would find a stay at Nice unsatisfac-
tory. Even now the evenings are too chilly for dining or sitting out, and
there is a general restlessness and crowdedness about the place not con-
ducive to moral comfort or quiet. It is like the Boulevard; only now the
weather is becoming really lovely, and the sea is at its sparkling best.
I am not thinking of going back to Paris for the present. I am comfort-
ably settled, and the good season here is just beginning. I am only sorry
that I came in the early winter. If you are not going to America, you might
find Nice even more agreeable later on.
Slade1 is here. He asked me yesterday whether you had arrived. We
agree in liking the Italian end of the town and the château better than the
fashionable part.
I believe you will now find no difficulty in getting a room wherever you
may want it.
Yours ever
G.S.
1
Conrad Hensler Slade (b. 1871), the most Nordic of Santayana’s American friends,
was a member of the class of 1893 and a sculptor. He “was content to live in Paris
among poor artists and working people, with none of the comforts or social pleasures
among which he had been bred.” At Harvard, Slade had rowed with the varsity crew.
Described by Santayana as “very good-looking in the expressionless, statuesque man-
ner” and of a solitary, independent nature, Slade was one of the models for Oliver
Alden in Puritan. Slade’s personality and adventures also contributed to Santayana’s
conception of the Puritan character Mario Van de Weyer. See Persons, 383–84.

To George Sturgis
2 April 1923 • Nice, France (MS: Houghton)

New York Hotel, Nice

April 2, 1923
Dear George
There has been some confusion in the matter of my new book of old
poems. The American edition came out first, without my knowledge, and
a copy Scribner has sent me looks so mean and poverty-stricken that I am
3:140 The Letters of George Santayana

afraid they are doing it on the cheap, in order to make money. Money out
of poems! I received $1.87 for the first two editions, and was thankful, the
publisher having failed in the interval, as was to be expected.1 The conse-
quence is that I want to send only the English edition which—in spite of
some bad misprints—is more presentable. But here, too, I find the unex-
pected, as there is no “large-paper” edition, but only a difference in the
binding. I am sending you two copies direct; please keep one and send the
other to Mr R. B. Potter, Smithtown, Long Island, N.Y. I will send you
three more gilded ones when I receive them; another for Potter, one for
the Winslows, and one for Mrs C. H. Toy, 8 Craigie Circle, Cambridge.
Mass.
I have often heard of Miss Sarah Dearborn,2 but doubt whether I have
seen her for more than an instant among a lot of other ladies. It is quite
true that my hair—what there is of it—is white, and very white in most
places, and that as my moustache is still darkish I look like the distin-
guished villain in the melodramas—in that respect. Otherwise, I look
exactly like the two sketches3 which I enclose, by my own hand. You must
have seen me since I shaved that beard off, an ornament which I only
indulged in for a short time.
My friend Strong has been here with his motor and I have been having
pleasant glimpses of the mountain country behind Nice.
I am feeling very well, but not active intellectually. I am only reading
and sunning myself Yours affly
GSantayana
1
Sonnets was published in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by Stone and Kimball in 1894,
with a revised edition in 1896. A further revised edition was issued in 1906 by Fox,
Duffield and Co., New York, by which time Stone and Kimball had gone out of busi-
ness.
2
Unidentified.
3
Unlocated.
 1921–1927 3:141

To Robert Burnside Potter

3 April 1923 • Nice, France (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London. S.W.1
Nice, April 3, 1923.
Dear Bob
Your verses are a great surprise to me. I had a vague suspicion that you
were a sentimentalist at heart (like Boylston Beal and me) but not that your
sentiments had found words. If you were less modest you might be a reg-
ular poet; you seem to me here and there to give up too easily and to say
to yourself that it doesn’t matter and that anything will do, since it is only
Digression. But you can write, because the emotion in these pieces is ren-
dered unmistakably: it is only the verbal form that needs polishing or
heightening. It would be only a matter of art and practice. I like the son-
net on Howard Cushing1 particularly. You have said all the chief
(favourable) things that were to be said, and you have kept up the key. Still,
even here a little pruning might be in order. I don’t quite like “dim” as a
verb. Have you read “Th —A Shropshire Lad” and “Last Poems” by
Housman?2 There is a perfectly simple, but perfectly sure, use of the
English language to express strong emotion about ordinary things.
Thank you for the two books, I have just finished reading them reli-
giously. I agree with both—except with their philosophy. Walker3 is a good
observer, but he is not a moralist. It doesn’t occur to him that the question
is whether prosperity—population, machinery, things—is the summum
bonum.4 Of course, when the communists pretend that on their system
everything would be produced more economically and distributed more
justly, they are deceiving themselves; but the error is not important if pro-
duction is not their true ideal, but they desire rather a reversion to a
^ ^
happy animal life. Walker would not understand St. Francis.5 The
Communists would. As to Poor-Einstein, I have no doubt that Relativity is
a false scent to follow in astronomy, or in any science: but it represents the
intrusion of a philosophic attitude which is right in its place. The argument
of Chamberlin6 (in the Introductory Essay) that experience shows that
Euclidean space and time are absolute is a bad argument. Experience,
^ ^
and success in construction or prediction, can only show that specious time
and specious space are fair symbols for whatever forces or processes may
really be going on in nature. There need be no graphic likeness, no resem-
3:142 The Letters of George Santayana

blance, between symbols and their objects. A change from Euclidean

geometry (a set of ideas or symbols only) might conceivably fit things bet-
ter. But even if it did, the new geometry would be itself only a new sym-
bol, a new idea, not the constitution of nature itself. If Einstein means that
Relativity is the absolute order of nature, he is not a man of science nor a
mathematician at all, but only a misguided psychologist, composing the
universe out of optical illusions.
There has been some confusion about the new edition of my poems.
The American issue has been out for some time, but I will abstain from
sending you a copy of that, because it is much meaner than either of the
English versions. These, however, have been delayed by a strike of book-
binders. I am going to send you two eventually, but you will receive one
first, and then the other. I am sending them through my nephew George
Sturgis in Boston, who is my minister of the treasury, so that those who
receive them may not have to pay a fine for the privilege.
There has been an American yacht here, the Sea Foam, N.Y.Y.C.7 and
I have more than once gone down to the little harbour of Nice to examine
her. He deck-house is something dreadful, like a barge at Oxford—almost
a house-boat. I think I shall have to rely on my imagination to kindle that
of my reader—if I ever have any.
I suppose I may keep your verses, but if you intended me to return
them, say so, and you shall have them back.
Yours ever
GSantayana
P.S. The bindings of the poems were not chosen by me, and some of my
corrections in the proofs were not heeded. There are other changes that I
meant to have made and didn’t—why, I can hardly say, unless I was weary
of the whole thing.
1
Howard Gardiner Cushing (1869–1916) graduated in the Harvard class of 1891. He
spent the next five years as a student of painting at the Académie Julien in Paris, return-
ing to Boston to become a professor and painter. In 1904 he moved to New York,
where he maintained a studio until his death.
2
A[lfred] E[dward] Housman (1859–1936) was a leading English classicist, textual
scholar, and poet. In 1911 he became Kennedy Professor of Latin at Cambridge
University and a Fellow of Trinity College. A Shropshire Lad (1896) was published at his
expense and became a best seller. Last Poems appeared in 1922, and More Poems (1936)
was published posthumously.
3
Unidentified.
4
The supreme good (Latin).
5
Saint Francis of Assisi, originally Giovanni Francesco Bernardone (c. 1181–1226),
was an Italian monk who founded the Order of Franciscans. His approach to religion
 1921–1927 3:143

was characterized by its joyousness and its love of nature; he called both animate and
inanimate creations his brothers and sisters.
6
Unidentified.
7
New York Yacht Club.

To George Sturgis
20 April 1923 • Nice, France (MS: Houghton)

New York Hotel, Nice

April 20, 1923
Dear George
Here are the documents1 you send me, duly signed.
Old age in my bones, or a very exceptional season, can alone account
for the fact that, in winter clothes and often in an overcoat, I am still cold
here very often. However, unmistakable signs of Spring, not to say sum-
mer, have appeared, the sun (when it shines) is dazzling and hot, and I
walk daily up the delightful paths of the park into which the old castle
grounds have been turned. There is abundance of water at the top (I don’t
know how it gets there) which runs down in rivulets along the roads; and
although these babbling brooks are only gutters, I find them very poetical,
and babble poetry to them in response. The trees and flowers are also at
their best, and I feel more secure in my health; and since my friend Strong
left me (I suppose I told you he had come here for a week with his motor)
I have begun to work again, and feel encouraged in that respect, as my vol.
II.2 is “getting together”.
I expect to return to Paris about the middle of May, and perhaps to go
later to England for the end of the summer, but not for the winter, as I am
afraid of relapsing into my dreadful bronchitis. Fortunately it doesn’t make
much difference to me where I am, if disease and society allow me to phi-
losophize in peace.
I hope soon to have good news of Josephine, and to hear of your final
settling down in your new house.
Yours afftly
GSantayana
1
Unlocated.
2
Matter.
3:144 The Letters of George Santayana

To Charles Augustus Strong

28 April 1923 • Nice, France (MS: Rockefeller)

New York Hotel, Nice

April 28, 1923
Dear Strong
It is too bad that the journey to Val Mont should have been in vain but
I think the moment for unravelling a tangle, when one has got caught in
it, has to be waited for patiently; you can’t make it come by puzzling, since
puzzling is just the cause of the difficulty. Couldn’t you lay the whole thing
aside for a time? I suppose that is just what your trip to Rome, in search of
the principle of Deceit, is meant to facilitate.
The weather here continues to be almost wintry, and I am in no haste
to leave, as I have reading enough, and manage to do a little on the
Realms, especially in the morning, when the sun shines and I rise at eight
o’clock. I had thought of leaving for Paris on the 14th of May, probably
stopping for two nights or more on the way: but I don’t want to interfere
with Margaret’s free field, and if she is passing through Paris at just that
time, I could without the least inconvenience put off my return for a few
days. Please let me know if you have notice of any further change in her
plans.
I certainly shall not be gone when you arrive. I may not go to England
at all, and if I do it will be in July, when I can go directly to Oxford and
settle down, perhaps in my old rooms. Before July Oxford would be
crowded
As to monism and time I shall not be able to offer you much help, as I
relegate all that to the men of science: and I am not clear about what “the
nature of relations” means. I have thought a little about implication
amongst essences; but that is probably not your problem.
I have begun an article on Freud, and have sent my translation of
Calderon1 to the London [across] Mercury. I mean to write about Spengler
also; “The Downfall of German Philosophy.”2 Yours ever
G. S.
1
Pedro Calderón de la Barca y Henao (1600–1681) was a Spanish soldier as well as a
playwright. In 1651 he became a priest. He wrote several dramas based on the point
of honor. Most of his works written at the end of his life proclaim the vanity of life and
the emptiness of human existence. The philosophical play La vida es sueño is consid-
ered his masterpiece. Santayana’s translation is “Imitation of Calderon: The Lament of
Segismundo in La vida es sueño,” London Mercury 9 (November 1923): 13–14.
 1921–1927 3:145

2
In 1928 Santayana completed an essay called “Spengler,” published in The New
Adelphi (March 1929) and in The Idler and His Works (edited by Daniel Cory, New York,
1957).

To Charles Augustus Strong

6 May 1923 • Nice, France (MS: Rockefeller)

New York Hotel, Nice

Sunday May 6 ’23
Dear Strong—
Don’t you think it might hurt Margaret’s feelings, having an apartment
in Paris, which she has taken pleasure in furnishing and adorning, to have
to be in a hotel for the days she is there? I quite see that it might be more
convenient in the rue de Rivoli, and perhaps more amusing; but it does
seem a little queer. I should much rather not seem to be the cause of keep-
ing Margaret and her friend out of the apartment. As for me, too, a hotel
is practically better, and last Summer I did good work at the Hotel du
Palais Royal, I propose that after a week or two with you at the apartment,
I should in any case move out: they can still go to the rue de Rivoli if you
prefer, but I shall not seem to be the impediment to their coming to the
apartment. This arrangement also has this advantage for me, that the ques-
tion of going to England or not can be solved on its own merits and with-
out reference to the need of being alone for working.
It is warm but pleasant here. I am absorbed reading “My Life and
Adventures”1 by Earl Russell. Elizabeth is simply not mentioned, nor his
second divorce. Mollie2 figures as the Lady Russell. It looks as if he had
gone back to his vomit.
[across] I will see on Monday about trains and let you know when I leave
Yours
GS.
1
London and New York: Cassell, 1923.
2
Countess “Mollie” (Marion Cooke Cumbermould) was Russell’s second wife (Mrs.
Sommerville when he married her). Santayana describes her in Persons, 476–81, as “a
fat, florid, coarse Irishwoman of forty [in 1895], with black curls, friendly manners and
emotional opinions.” Their 1900 Nevada marriage was legal according to American
but not English law, and Russell spent three months in jail as a bigamist. They legally
married in England in October 1901. After fifteen years of marriage, he and Mollie
divorced.
3:146 The Letters of George Santayana

To Otto Kyllmann
8 May 1923 • Nice, France (MS: Temple)

Nice, May 8, 1923

r
Dear M Kyllman
I am returning to Paris, where my address is
9, Ave. de l’Observatoire.
I have received the four copies of my poems, special edition, and also five
copies (which I didn’t expect) of the ordinary edition. Thank you very
much. When Scepticism appears, you might send my copies directly to
Paris, and also a copy to the persons in the enclosed list.1
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Unlocated.

To Charles Augustus Strong

[8 May 1923] • Nice, France (MS: Rockefeller)

New York Hotel, Nice

Tuesday———
Dear Strong
I can’t quite decide whether to make the journey to Paris by the night
train or to stop over to sleep at Marseille; but in either case I will arrange
th
to arrive on the 15– , either in the morning at the same time as you (very
nearly) or in the evening at 10.30. I will let you—or if it is too late I will let
the Concierge—know which.
Your article on Mrs Stephen, like almost all you do, has two parts, one
of which I like very much, while the other is obscure to me. All your crit-
icism of her is excellent; but when you come to the third part our old dis-
agreement makes itself felt: and apart from my own view, I am not sure
that you improve your case against Mrs Stephen by introducing an alter-
native metaphysic, which the reader will probably find hard to understand
Yours ever
GSantayana
 1921–1927 3:147

To Otto Kyllmann
27 May [1923] • Paris, France (MS: Temple)

9 Av. de l’Observatoire
Paris, May 27
Dear Mr Kyllmann
Thank you very much for the six copies of Scepticism, and for the
account and the cheque which arrived at the same time.
The book looks very well. Could you have a copy sent to Mr Bertrand
Russell, if you can discover his address, which I do not know at present?
Yours sincerely
GSantayana

To George Sturgis
29 May 1923 • Paris, France (MS: Houghton)

9 Av. de l’Observatoire
Paris, May 29. ’23
Dear George
th
I have your two ‘cables’ and your letter of the 9– , enclosing one to your
aunt Josephine.
I had never seen Arthur,1 except in photographs, nor had we
exchanged any letters, yet I had a clear impression of his character, and
liked him. My idea—which is perhaps only a fancy of my own—is that he
had a manly simple way of facing events, enjoying what was to be enjoyed,
and not setting up any demands for special good luck or special privileges.
He was a victim of the war, and the form in which the sacrifice came to
him left time for a happy young marriage, and a long illness in which there
were probably many compensations and pleasant interludes. I imagine
that if he could have seen his destiny, as we philosophers say, “under the
form of eternity”, as we can see it now that it is over, he would have
accepted it gladly, as much better than that which awaited many another
young man, and much better than that which many an old man makes for
himself by living too long in this world, and getting stale in it. As for
Josephine, she has had a lot of trouble and sorrow, and deserves, and
doubtless has, everybody’s sympathy. Let us hope that all will be as well
in future as it can be. I will write to her one of these days.
3:148 The Letters of George Santayana

Your aunt Josephine has not consulted me as yet about the matter
broached in your letter, and I don’t know in what form her Spanish bonds
are deposited—probably together with Celedonio’s at the branch office of
the Bank of Spain in Avila. Certainly, in the event of her death, you must
not pay taxes in Spain for all her property. Is there no way in which what
she has in Spain could be bequeathed separately, to cover the legacy she
is leaving (I suppose) to Mercedes,2 etc. without involving her American
money at all? Your proposal is excellent, but I am not sure that your aunt
will understand the advantage of it.
Yours affectionately
GSantayana
1
Arthur Eldredge died on 20 May.
2
Mercedes Ruiz de la Escalera was born c. 1855. See Persons, 36–39.

To Lawrence Smith Butler

[10 July 1923] • [Paris, France] (MS: University Club)

Dear Lawrence1
I recognized your hand-writing, and have seldom opened a letter with
greater pleasure. You will find me here. Let me know where you are and
on what day you will lunch or dine with me and I will come for you, as
your hotel will probably be more convenient than this place.
Yours affectionately
GSantayana
1
Santayana met Lawrence Smith Butler (1875–1954) during an 1895 Atlantic cross-
ing. After graduation from Harvard in 1898, Butler studied at the Beaux Arts and
became an architect. He cultivated his fine tenor voice, studying with Jean de Reszke
in Paris. But, like Oliver Alden (of Puritan), he could only sing what he felt and, hence,
failed to become an artist vocally. See Persons, 381–82.
 1921–1927 3:149

To George Jean Nathan

12 August 1923 [postmark] • Paris, France (MS postcard: Cornell)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123, Pall Mall, London

The title “The Smart Set”1 suggests a world where I don’t belong: but if
you will send me a number, and if I have any thing on hand that would
^ ^
seem suitable to such a superior environment, I should be glad to let you
have it.
GSantayana
1
The Smart Set (1890–1930) was a monthly magazine founded by William D’Alton
Mann as a journal for New York society. In 1914 George Jean Nathan and H. L.
Mencken assumed joint editorship. The magazine was purchased by Hearst in 1924.
Nathan (1882–1958) was a drama critic who, with Mencken, founded The American
Mercury in 1924, where Nathan served as editor until 1930. He also wrote many books
on contemporary theater.

To the editor of The Dial

1 September 1923 • Paris, France (MS: Beinecke)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Paris, Sept. 1, 1923.
To the Editor of The Dial
New York
Dear Sir,
I write to you impersonally, not knowing whether Mr Thayer has
returned,1 and supposing that in any case you might read the inclosed
paper2 on the last phase of Freud and communicate with him about it. I
have been reading other German philosophers of the day, and taking
notes, and if these matters are not too technical for you I may have occa-
sion later to send you short articles on other worthies of that tribe.
Yours truly
GSantayana.
P.S. I should like to subscribe to The Dial. You might send the bill for the
subscription (which I have no direct means of paying) to my nephew Mr
3:150 The Letters of George Santayana

George Sturgis, 87 Milk St. Boston, or deduct the amount from the cheque
you send me, if you are going to send me one. This, by the way, may be
in dollars, as my bankers accept such cheques.
1
Scofield Thayer was editor until 1926.
2
“A Long Way Round to Nirvana: or Much Ado About Dying,” The Dial 75
(November 1923): 435–42.

To Susan Sturgis de Sastre

4 September 1923 • Paris, France (MS: Sastre Martín)

9 Ave. de l’Observatoire, Paris

September 4, 1923
Dear Susie
I see you are puzzled by the title of my last book. It has nothing to do
with religion: by “animal faith” I mean the confidence one has, for
instance, that there will be a future, that you will find things where you
have hidden them, etc. It is a technical book and not intelligible unless you
have a very analytic mind, but I will send you a copy if you wish.
Meantime I enclose a review which appeared lately in the London Times,1
which will show you how respectfully it is now the fashion to treat me. I
don’t know who the reviewer is, but he is moderately competent.
Margaret has descended upon us but is threatening to depart to
Copenhagen to stay with Madame de Fontenay, wife of the French minis-
ter there.
th
I expect to stay until Strong leaves for Italy, about the 15– instant. Of
course you know that my address will be
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London.
Love to all from
Jorge
I suppose Manuela2 has left you. I will answer he letter another day.
1
Probably “Mr. Santayana’s Philosophy,” The Times Literary Supplement (23 August
1923): 549–50.
2
Manuela Ruiz de Santayana y Zabalgoitia, a cousin of Santayana.
 1921–1927 3:151

To John Francis Stanley Russell

5 September 1923 • Paris, France (MS: Unknown)

Paris, Sept. 5. 1923

Dear Russell,
After four years’ absence I am returning to England in a fortnight, to
remain at least until October 24, when I am to give the Spencerian lecture1
at Oxford. I hope there may be a chance of seeing you in the interval.
Yours ever
GSantayana
1
“The Unknowable,” the Herbert Spencer Lecture, was delivered on 24 October
1923 and published by The Clarendon Press that year. It was reprinted in Obiter,
162–88.

To George Sturgis
13 September 1923 • Paris, France (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123 Pall Mall
London, S.W.1
Paris, Sept. 13. 1923
Dear George
I tremble to think how many weeks may have passed since I last wrote,
in spite of various letters and photos from you, which I have been very
glad to get. I am particularly glad to have a glimpse of Rosamond, and to
see Bobbie growing up. You also seem a very stalwart person nowadays,
and still with all the fine air of youth. I too keep young, in spite of white
hairs, and have lately had a good spell of working-weather, when compo-
sition seemed to come easily.
I am leaving Paris for England on the day after tomorrow. This decision
has been brought about by an invitation to deliver a lecture at Oxford,
called the Herbert Spencer Lecture. It is to come off on October 24, after
which I don’t know whether I shall stay in England or not. It will depend
on circumstances, chiefly on my state of health. You know that England
has a great fascination for me, or at least had, although I don’t like their
official classes, either political or academic; but my friends there are some
dead and some estranged or in reduced circumstances so that visiting them
is not as it was; and a man of sixty is never in himself so welcome an arrival
3:152 The Letters of George Santayana

as a young friend. However, if I find an opportunity to settle down in com-

fortable lodgings, and feel that my bronchitis is not threatening to reap-
pear, I may stay in England all winter, and try to finish my Big Book.
Otherwise I expect to go to Italy.
This is not a letter, only a certificate of continued life and affection from
your Uncle George

To Charles Augustus Strong

18 September 1923 • London, England (MS: Rockefeller)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
s: .
123 Pall Mall S.W.1
gram ON
Tele , LOND Sept. 18, 1923
O
DI L
L
ne:
PIQU Telepho ENT. ———
PICC——
A———— ———
DILLY ————,
HOTEL
R EG
160 PICCADILLY & REGENT STREET,
LONDON, W. 1.

Dear Strong
I crossed over from Boulogne to Dover yesterday in fine weather but in
a very crowded boat. However, the formalities were not annoying and I
arrived here, not at all tired, at 4.30.
England seems very unexciting—no emotions in it or in me. Have a
splendid room in this hotel, which I had been to once before and liked.
Hope all is well with you. Yours
G.S.

To John Francis Stanley Russell

[Between 20 and 23 September 1923] • [London, England] (MS: Unknown)

Brown Shipley & Co.,

123, Pall Mall, S.W.1.
Dear Russell,
If you leave it to me, I will certainly come.1 I don’t believe that anything
has really happened to alter our relations to one another which were
always tacit and expressed in conduct rather than words. You now say
more than you ever said to me, even in our young days, about being
“attached to me”; you must have been, in some way which in spite of my
 1921–1927 3:153

cold-blooded psychology I don’t pretend to understand. In that case, why

drop me now, when certainly there has been no change on my side except
that involved in passing from twenty to sixty? Let me come, anyhow once,
and we can judge better whether everything is as usual or whether the bar-
rier you speak of—which certainly is not “Elizabeth” or her affairs2—really
exists.
Shall it be next Tuesday, and if so, what train shall I take?
Yours ever
GSantayana
1
Russell’s response to Santayana’s 5 September 1923 note offering to visit him was,
“Do as you like.” (Persons, 518)
2
Russell believed Santayana to be siding with his estranged wife (see Persons, 515–16).

To Charles Augustus Strong

29 September 1923 • Cambridge, England (MS: Rockefeller)

September 29, 1923

UNIVERSITY ARMS HOTEL,
CAMBRIDGE.
Dear Strong—
After a week in London I have been for four days to Telegraph House1—
actually driven there by his lordship in a new glass car. I asked no ques-
tions on the way, and received no information as to what awaited me,
thinking I should very likely be greeted by “Mollie” with all her old Irish
cordiality. Not at all. In the hall stood a man-servant and two maids at
attention—and not a soul besides! We had good weather and took some dri-
ves, and discussed only indifferent subjects, barely touching on politics (on
which we don’t agree). Russell was unchanged save for whiter hair and a
somewhat more subdued manner. There was a cat and four dogs (not
counting a big one in the stables) and we went one day to tea at a widow’s,2
who I suspect may be the star now in the ascendant. From Telegraph
House I came yesterday to Cambridge, but find no lodgings, and they are
driving me out of this hotel in three days, on account of the Newmarket
races,3 when everything is taken long beforehand by the sporting gentry. I
may go for a few days to stay with Lapsley at Trinity College and then to
Oxford where I hope I may have better luck. It is horrid to be on the move
and I long for quiet and solitude. Yours ever G.S.
3:154 The Letters of George Santayana

1
John Russell’s cottage near Hampshire Downs, within sight of the sea, was called
Telegraph House because it had once been a signal station by which messages went
from Portsmouth to London.
2
Unidentified.
3
Newmarket, an urban district in Suffolk West in England, has been a racing center
since the early seventeenth century.

To Kenneth Duva Burke

2 October 1923 • London, England (MS: Beinecke)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London
Oct. 2. 1923
Dear Mr Burke1
Many thanks for you letter and cheque for $75, for A Short (but not
inexpensive) Way Round to Nirvana
I am also much obliged to Mr Thayer for putting me on the free list of
subscribers to The Dial.
Yours very truly
GSantayana
1
Kenneth Duva Burke (1897–1993) was a literary and philosophic critic who was
awarded the National Medal for Literature in 1980. He served The Dial in various
capacities, including that of music critic. Burke is considered to be one of the most bril-
liant theorists of rhetoric. His publications include Language as Symbolic Action (1966).

To George Sturgis
16 October 1923 • Cambridge, England (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London
Cambridge, Oct. 16, 1923.
Dear George
I am not surprised at the difficulties you encounter in the matter of your
aunt Josephine’s Spanish bonds. In transferring that money to Spain she
virtually separated it from the rest of her property, and for some reason
must have wished to do so. She is not very clear in her ways of expressing
herself, and perhaps it would require an expert psycho-analyst to discover
(even to herself) what her real motives were. But I think in some way she
 1921–1927 3:155

must have intended that, after keeping that money by her during her life-
time, in order to feel that her pocket was not empty, it should pass, as her
clothes would, or her other personal possessions, to those her surrounded
her death-bed. I dare say this is not what could happen legally, and that
her American will covers all her property anywhere; but I wish some
means could be found of letting her bequeathe her Spanish money to her
Spanish friends, instead of the legacies which I understand she has pro-
vided for them out of her general estate. Couldn’t a codicil to her will
make such a division? Or couldn’t she make a separate Spanish will cov-
ering her Spanish property?
After all, the important point is to give personal satisfaction to all con-
cerned, beginning with your aunt Josephine herself. Are laws made to pre-
vent that, or can something be done to reconcile the means with the end?
I am going to Oxford this week, and then to Bath to see an old friend.1
It is not certain, but I shall probably leave [across] England, on my way to
Italy, about Nov. 1.
Best wishes for the new comer.2
Yours affly GSantayana
1
Willie “The Babe” Haines Smith (b. 1870), who had been Howard Sturgis’s com-
panion, was living with his father near Bath.
2
Rosamond Sturgis was expecting their second son, Neville.

To Miss Hanlon
17 October 1923 • [Cambridge, England] (MS: Princeton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London
Oct. 17, 1923
Dear Miss Hanlon1
Many thanks for the October Century with Mr Carl van Doren’s arti-
cle.2 It is very good: I could wish it simpler, but I appreciate the consider-
ation with which I am treated.
Yours very truly
GSantayana
1
Unidentified.
2
Carl Clinton Van Doren (1885–1950) was a professor at Columbia University
(1911–34) and literary editor of The Nation (1919–22) and The Century (1922–25). The
Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine (1881–1930) published a number of serialized nov-
3:156 The Letters of George Santayana

els and Civil War papers. The article is “Tower of Irony: George Santayana,
Ambassador to the Barbarians,” The Century 106 (1923): 950–56.

To Charles Augustus Strong

18 October 1923 • Cambridge, England (MS: Rockefeller)

Cambridge, Oct. 18, 1923

Dear Strong
Your book arrived yesterday, and I have just finished it. The general
impression I receive is that of a pleasant, mellow, personal conversation;
you say various things, some technical, others simple, because they are in
your mind (or on your mind) and they all have the agreeable quality of
wise observations, boiled down to their essence. The quotations complete
this impression: they are very good in themselves, apt enough, and give
evidence of wide sympathies and good taste. I think you will probably
leave in your readers’ minds a trace of your doctrine, not necessarily by
converting them, but by making them aware that here is one more sage
with a hypothesis about the universe which it is interesting to record, if not
as a scientific possibility at least as a proof of the ingenious diversity of
human opinions.
As to making your view plausible to me personally, your book doesn’t
advance matters at all. I find no arguments at all for it, the assertion that if
substance were not feeling knowledge would be unconscious being purely
gratuitous. Reaction and adaptation, without consciousness, could be
called knowledge only by a behaviourist: and if you say in one place that
behaviourism is absurd, in other places you seem to adopt it. But my chief
difficulty, as always, is with your fundamental conception of “immediate
experience”. As I told you not long ago in conversation, I think the phrase
unfortunate; it will perhaps win over some critics but it will be only in
order to attack the other elements of your system. They will understand,
in spite of your warnings, that you mean elementary consciousness. The
arguments you invoke to show that consciousness and knowledge must be
secondary, apply to experience too. Experience, even conceived in behav-
iourist terms, seems to demand the affection of one thing by another.
Would you perhaps say that it is the mutual tensions between the points of
substance that make the essence of that substance into experience—into
responsive modification? But then you would need a deeper substance to
have or to undergo the experience. I cannot conceive how atoms of feel-
 1921–1927 3:157

ing (changeless ones, I understand) can facilitate the genesis of experience

by changing their order, even if an order of atoms of feeling can be con-
ceived at all, which I doubt strongly. Moreover I am convinced, as you
know, on general grounds, that feeling is just as much a symptom of vicis-
situdes in a complex organism as are consciousness and knowledge. You
do not feel without organs or occasions; you do not experience without
being in some predicament and undergoing some organic change. The
notion that the substance composing your organism is feeling in its ele-
ments, is simply a bit of surviving idealism: the only plausible ground for
it is the theory that only consciousness can exist.
^ ^
I am leaving for Oxford tomorrow morning, and have secured rooms
for a week at the King’s Arms,1 where I hope to be more comfortable (hav-
ing a fire all day in my bedroom) than I have been here. The insidious chill
of bedrooms and bathrooms in these modest lodging-houses, combined
with very changeable and rainy weather, — are is very trying. I have had a
touch of my bronchitis, but by staying two days in the house (my sitting
room is excellent) I seem to have got rid of it. Dinner in hall is materially
excellent, but I haven’t made any very pleasant acquaintances—that is,
such as establish easy relations. Lapsley gave a little dinner-party in his
magnificent rooms, to which he asked Benson,2 the Master of Magdelene
(Cambridge) and Housman; and I am hoping this evening to see Broad.3
Housman is a nice quiet keen little man with grey hair and moustache—
very nice, but like most people here hard to get on with fast. MacTaggart4
has been truly amiable; even complimented my verses and said he liked
one line of mine as much as any line anywhere, and quoted it: “Truth is a
dream, unless my dream is true”.5 I told him I was an undergraduate—
Sophomore—when I thought that, but I was none the less flattered.
Lapsley, in his emotional way, very kind and very nice: I feel he is a true
friend—Altogether I am glad I came to Cambridge, in spite of the close
shave about my health, and some discomfort.
Yours ever GSantayana
1
The tavern in Puritan visited by Jim Darnley and Oliver Alden.
2
Arthur Christopher Benson (1862–1925), English writer, was the eldest son of
Archbishop Benson and a master at Eton (1885–1903) and at Magdalene College,
Cambridge (1915–25). He wrote several books.
3
Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971) was an English philosopher who was elected to
a fellowship at Trinity (1911). His works include Euclid, Newton, and Einstein (1920) and
Perception, Physics and Reality: An Enquiry into the Information that Physical Science can
Supply about the Real (1914).
3:158 The Letters of George Santayana

4
John MacTaggart Ellis (1866–1925), an English philosopher, was made a fellow of
Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1891 and later appointed lecturer in moral science
(1897–1923). Three of his five books are on Hegel.
5
Sonnet V from Sonnets and Other Verses was originally published in 1896 by Stone and
Kimball.

To Thomas Moult
20 October 1923 • Oxford, England (MS: Leeds)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1.
Oxford Oct. 20. ’23
1
Dear Sir
Your note has just reached me after going to Paris and being re-
addressed
I should be much pleased to have you include my verses in your col-
lection. Perhaps you had better ask Messrs Constable & Company for their
permission, as the copyright belongs to them. Yours faithfully
GSantayana
1
Thomas Moult (d. 1974) was an English literary journalist, author, and editor. One
of his projects was a series of annual anthologies, Best Poems of [year ]. In the 1923 edi-
tion (London: Jonathan Cape, Ltd.), Santayana’s “A Minuet on Reaching the Age of
Fifty” is included (pages 32–33). See Complete Poems, 184–85.

To George Herbert Palmer

23 October 1923 • Oxford, England (MS: Wellesley)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London.
Oxford Oct. 22 /3, ’23
Dear Professor Palmer
Your letter fills me with mixed feelings of pleasure and regret. Let me
thank you for your expressions of interest in my poems, which although
they belong almost exclusively to a distant past, still represent pretty well
the fond1 of my feelings.
It is pleasant to think of you in your old place maintaining unimpaired
the traditions and the influence of the days when we were all together.
 1921–1927 3:159

As to the request of the Phi Beta Kappa, I am sorry but it is out of the
question for me to undertake such a journey at present; nor could I
promise to produce a longish “Poem” for a given date, even counting as I
should on a kind and indulgent public. I have many literary projects press-
ing for execution, and I am not sure that life and strength will remain to
me long enough to carry them out, even avoiding all distraction and
almost all social engagements. The very kindness of America would bowl
me over, and I understand the pace there is quicker than ever.
^ ^
[across] Believe me, with grateful memories of your life-long kindness,
/vVery sincerely yours GSantayana
1
Depth.

To Constable and Co. Ltd.

24 October 1923 • Oxford, England (MS: Temple)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Oxford Oct. 24, 1923
Please send one of the signed copies of my “Poems” (those bound in
white) to Randolph Chetwynd Esq1 New College, Oxford, and charge it to
my account.
GSantayana
1
Randolph (b. 1904), elder son of Augusta and Philip Chetwynd, was studying at New
College.

To Charles Augustus Strong

27 October 1923 • Bradford-on-Avon, England (MS: Rockefeller)

Turleigh Mill, Bradford-on-Avon,

Oct. 27, 1923
Dear Strong
On the last evening I was at Cambridge I sat next to Broad at dinner.
Great disappointment. Small, bald, youngish man, with muddy complex-
ion, features like Goldsmith,1 and a few brown hairs trained to pass over
his not very clean cranium, like the fingers wide apart through which a flir-
3:160 The Letters of George Santayana

tatious lass peeps at the passer-by. Began by attacking Poincaré;2 and when
I tried to switch him off to philosophy, I could get nothing out of him.
In Oxford, I had a possible room at the King’s Arms, but the food there
was not very appetizing. Dined at Oriel with a civil person named Ross,3
the president of the Philosophical Society, and read the first Chapter of
Realms. I wasn’t in good form, there were annoying people (Schiller & Co)
coming in late, and although some of the comments afterwards were semi-
intelligent, I had to hope that those who said nothing were not so stupid as
those who talked. Joseph4 was particularly odious.
My Spencer lecture,5 being much too long, occupied me to the last
minute in cutting it down and rearranging it: even the final form (I hope
you have received a copy) proved too long and in reading it I left out three
or four pages in the middle about the “logic of idealism.” The audience
was largely composed of ladies and dusky youths, Indians & Japanese, but
Professor Stewart6 was in the front row, and also my host Mr Poulton,7 who
being a scientific person (much excited at having received 12,000 butter-
flies that afternoon) was also genial, free from prejudice, and laughed
heartily at all my jokes. The peroration went off splendidly—I was in form
that time—and I felt that the lecture had been a success in the inner circle,
although it will have no effect at all in the official philosophical world of
Oxford, which indeed took no notice of it. The nice side of my visit was
seeing at lot of Randolph Chetwynd and some of his friends: they were
really very nice company, and far more interesting than their elders. I am
going back to Oxford for another week, this time to the Clarendon, where
the food is better. Here I am in a pleasant country; Willie [across] Haines
Smith and his father are very friendly and live very comfortably (motor,
etc) in spite of bankruptcy. My [across page one] cold is still knocking at the
door, but in spite of the very bad and changeable weather, I have warded
off any further positive attack of bronchitis. Yours ever G.S.
1
Unidentified.
2
Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934) was a French statesman and writer who was
appointed premier in 1912. He served as president to the Republic from 1913 to 1920,
leading France through the war years. Reappointed premier during the reparations cri-
sis, he held office from 1922 to 1924 and from 1926 to 1929. He was elected to the
French academy in 1909, and his chief work is Au Service de la France: Neuf années de sou-
venirs (1926).
3
Sir William David Ross (b. 1877), a British Aristotelian scholar and moral philoso-
pher, was knighted in 1938. A fellow of Merton College (1900–1902), he was elected
a fellow of Oriel, where he was provost (1929–47). He also served as vice-chancellor
of Oxford University (1941–44), president of the Classical Association, chairman of the
Council of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, and president of the Union Académique
 1921–1927 3:161

Internationale. He edited the Oxford translations of Aristotle (1908–31). His Aristotle

(1923) is well known. His main contribution to philosophy, The Right and the Good
(1930), is in the field of ethics.
4
Unidentified.
5
Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) was an Englishman who applied study of natural sci-
ences and psychology to philosophy, finding in the doctrine of evolution the unifying
principle of knowledge and applying it to all phenomena. He did not deal with the
“unknowable” but instead dealt with those things which could be compared with and
related to other things.
6
John Alexander Stewart (1846–1933), White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at
Oxford (1897–1927), was a professorial fellow of Corpus Christi College. He is known
for his Notes on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle (1892) and The Myths of Plato (1905).
7
In Persons Santayana says of Sir Edward Bagnall Poulton (1856–1943), “… when I
called at his house by appointment an hour before the time for the lecture, his wife said
he was so sorry but he had been called away to receive 4,000 butterflies that had just
arived from South America. He turned up later, however, and took me to the Natural
History Museum, not to see the butterflies, but to read my lecture … . He wore no
gown and instead of introducing me said simply, ‘Oh, you might as well begin.’”

To Gilbert Seldes
30 October 1923 • Oxford, England (MS: Columbia)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London
Oxford, Oct. 30, 1923
Dear Mr Seldes
I have read Bertrand Russell’s book,1 but hardly care to revert to it or
to write a review. My ideas of politics are so contrary to his that it would
be hard for me say anything that didn’t seem ill-natured about his strange
madness whenever he touches any human subject. Besides, I think I have
already written too much about him.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Russell published three books in 1923: The ABC of Atoms, The Prospects of Industrial
Civilization, and A Free Man’s Worship.
3:162 The Letters of George Santayana

To Charles Augustus Strong

30 [October] 1923 • Oxford, England (MS: Rockefeller)

Clarendon Hotel Oxford

Nov. 30, 1923.
Dear Strong
I returned yesterday from Bath, my cold having got rather worse, and
I have decided to leave England as soon as I conveniently can, and to be
in Florence next week. I take for granted that you are at home and that I
may come to the villa. If not, will you please telegraph to the Hôtel du
Palais Royal, Paris, where I mean to stop for two or three days. I will
myself telegraph as soon as I know the exact date of my arrival. Should
any accident intervene, no great harm will result, because if I don’t find
Aldo1 at the station I will simply go to the Savoia in the Piazza Vittorio
Emmanuele and come up the next day to Fiesole to make inquiries.
Turleigh Mill, from which I wrote you the other day, was a charming
spot, [illegible]d in a stone hamlet with fields, hills, a river, and a canal all
huddled together most picturesquely; but all desire to prolong my stay
there was removed by my cough, which though not severe was ominous,
and by the general lack of freedom that one feels in other people’s houses,
however friendly the host may be. I could neither have worked freely, nor
made myself really comfortable in my dressing-gown and slippers.
I find there is a providentially convenient through train to Dover, pass-
ing south of London, with a restaurant car; so that tomorrow afternoon I
hope to be watching the waves from the Lord Warden Hotel, in readiness
to cross the next day or (if it is rough) to make a trip to Canterbury until
the weather improves. Yours ever
GSantayana
1
Strong’s chauffeur.
 1921–1927 3:163

To Robert Seymour Bridges

31 October 1923 • Dover, England (MS: Bodleian)

Dover, Oct. 31, 1923

Dear Bridges
Your delightful “experiment”1 reached me this morning, just when I was
lamenting leaving England without having been to see you. I left Oxford
immediately after my lecture, hoping to return for a longer stay; but mean-
time the bronchitis that is always knocking at the door forced its way in,
and I am fleeing to Italy, in hopes of not having such a winter as the last
was, when my health hardly allowed me to do anything worth mention-
ing.
“Polly” is so interesting in himself, that your metrical devices are lost, so
to speak, in the general pleasure and interest which one feels in reading. I
suppose this is the greatest triumph of composition; but it leaves one in
doubt whether it is the art of versification or the simple vision of Polly that
produces the effect. Many of your lines, however, convince me that the
alexandrine, without rhymes, might be a good substitute or variant for the
blank verse of English tradition.
My glimpse of England after four years has left me with mixed feelings.
I fear my English days are over. Nothing I could now see or feel would be
likely to equal the memories I have of other days, which, if not the beaux
jours of England, were at least my beaux jours, and which it is almost a pity
to overlay with sadder impressions. Oxford is very much itself in spite of
obvious crowding, and the flocks of women on bicycles which come round
the corners of New College Lane Sunt lacrymae rerum2 but so mixed with
pleasure that all regrets become impertinent.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
This was a poem by Bridges called “Polly,” of which a few copies were printed pri-
vately in 1923 and distributed to his friends. It was reprinted in New Verse (per Sir
Edward Bridges, son of the poet laureate). [D. C.]
2
Part of a line from Vergil’s Aeneid, 1.462: “Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia
tangunt” (There are tears for things, and things mortal touch the mind). This sentiment
is expressed in the final lines of the penultimate stanza of Santayana’s “The Poet’s
Testament”: “And heavenly laughter, shaking from its wings / Atoms of light and tears
for mortal things.”
3:164 The Letters of George Santayana

To Constable and Co. Ltd.

6 November 1923 • Fiesole, Italy (MS: Temple)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Fiesole, Nov. 6, ’23
Messrs Constable & Company
London.
The enclosed,1 which I return as you request, has naturally interested
me very much, as nothing of mine has as yet appeared in my mother
tongue. But I know nothing of the Editorial Voluntad2 (a barbarous title!)
and am writing to friends in Spain making inquiries. Until I hear, I should
like not to make any absolute contract; but if you think proper, you might
reply that I, for my part, look with favour on the project provided they can
satisfy me that the translator will be not only capable, but sympathetic to
the spirit of my writing, and provided he is willing to let me read the proof,
or better the M.S. and suggest any changes that occur to me.
I don’t want my English to be turned into newspaper Spanish, nor to
have as a publisher any house identified either with clerical or with anti-
clerical propaganda.
Yours faithfully
GSantayana.
P.S.
Business questions I leave to you. I require no royalties for myself.
1
Unlocated.
2
Editorial Voluntad was a publishing house in Madrid. There is no record of their
publishing translations of Santayana’s works.

To George Sturgis
6 November 1923 • Fiesole, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Villa Le Balze, Fiesole

Florence, Nov. 6, 1923
Dear George
Only a line to ask you to send to the inclosed address,1 in my name, $25
with a promise of four more such installments during the next four years.
Deo volente!2
 1921–1927 3:165

I arrived here yesterday after a good journey from England—Channel

like glass—but still suffering from my bronchitis. This villa is now a very
beautiful and luxurious place and I am splendidly looked after. When I
have had a week or two of complete repose I am going on to Rome to set-
tle down for the winter.
I am awaiting news of you and Rosamond and the rest of your family.
Yours G S.
1
Unlocated.
2
God willing (Latin).

To Robert Silliman Hillyer

9 November 1923 • Fiesole, Italy (MS: Syracuse)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Fiesole, Nov. 9, 1923
My dear Mr Hillyer1
That anyone should resent a change in one of my sonnets is in itself
such exquisite flattery that I can’t resist telling you why that change was
made. “Garden rear”2 has a ridiculous familiar sense—and only one—to an
English mind, and as my new collection was made for the English edition
(Scribner’s is only a reprint) it was imperative to avoid such a snag.
Certainly the original, if the double entendre is not suggested, was better.
Nor is this the only case where I have been forced to make unwelcome
changes in order to avoid comic effects.
Yours very truly
GSantayana
1
Robert Silliman Hillyer (1895–1961), an American poet, graduated from Harvard in
1917. After World War I he returned to Harvard, where he was a professor (1919–45).
He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1933 for his Collective Verse.
2
In the first edition of Sonnets number XV begins, “A wall, a wall around my garden
rear, / And hedge me in from the disconsolate hills.” Santayana changed the opening
line to “A wall, a wall to hem the azure sphere,” thus avoiding an expression that might
provoke the contraction of an eyebrow in England. [D. C.]
3:166 The Letters of George Santayana

To Wilbur Lucius Cross

13 November 1923 • Fiesole, Italy (MS: Beinecke)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1.
Fiesole, Nov. 13. 1923
Wilbur Cross Esq1
Editor of the Yale Review.
Dear Sir
It would be a great satisfaction to me if you wished to publish a chapter
of my “Realms of Being”; but I am afraid what I have at hand is rather too
technical and presupposes acquaintance with “Scepticism”. However, in a
few days, when I hope to have settled down for the winter, I will look over
the MS and it is possible that I may find something which I might venture
to send you.2
Yours very truly
GSantayana
1
Wilbur Lucius Cross (1862–1948), a scholar and educator, was governor of
Connecticut. He received his B.A. and Ph.D. from Yale and taught there from 1894 until
1930. He edited the Yale Review from 1911 until 1940.
2
“A Preface to a System of Philosophy” appeared in Yale Review 13 (1924): 417–30.
This was reprinted with changes as “Preface to Realms of Being” in Essence, v–xix.

To George Sturgis
13 November 1923 • Fiesole, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Villa Le Balze, Fiesole

Florence, Nov. 13, 1923
Dear George
My best congratulations on the safe landing of young Neville. I am glad
he is not to have a middle name and the one you are giving him (apart
from family associations) is a very pretty one. The two boys will make a
convenient pair, and if they have good tempers, as they probably will in
view of their healthy and decent parentage, they ought to pull together
nicely through life. Having a twin, or a quasi-twin,1 brings in anticipation
some of the advantages of marriage or of having two eyes instead of one.
The smaller boy, in this case, will also be able to wear out the elder’s
 1921–1927 3:167

clothes, when they are outgrown too fast. These details of domestic econ-
omy are pleasant in themselves, even if the saving is not urgent.
This brings me round to money-matters, which you discuss in your let-
ter of Nov. 2, reaching me this morning together with your “Cable”. I don’t
think there is any such thing as trusts, leaving money in trust to one per-
son for the benefit of another, in Spanish law. I believe it is a feudal and
northern tradition, unknown to Roman law and to the code Napoléon2 on
which modern Spanish law is modelled. You could ask any lawyer who has
a little marginal learning whether this is not the fact. My idea was that
instead of legacies for life—the lives in question will all be very short—your
aunt Josephine should leave lump sums to her Spanish friends: she might
do so possibly in the form of gifts in her life-time, or even of cheques, to
^ ^
be delivered to them upon her death. I think Mercedes, Eugenia,3 and the
two old ladies (“las maestras”)4 in Avila would much prefer lump sums.
The money your aunt Josephine has in Spain (or so much as she decided
to keep there) would thus have disappeared at her death, and you would
have no trouble at all about recovering it.
As to your aunt Susan’s will, I suspect she thinks, if she should survive
her husband, there would be occasion for a complete reconsideration of its
provisions; whereas, if she should die first, the only right and simple thing
to do would be to leave everything to him. This is not inconsistent with
asking him to provide annuities or gifts to such persons or charities as
interest her particularly. I don’t know what the provisions of her will are at
present, but from things she has dropped in conversation, I gather that the
above is what she now would do if she drew up a new will. As it is not
unlikely that she may survive Celedonio,5 and have a free hand, I can
understand the delay in her action at this moment.
[across] I have the same dislike to broach ing these questions with your
^ ^
aunts which you express. Perhaps in the Spring I may go to Avila: then I
could feel the ground better. I am now [across page one] moving to Rome,
but am not sure what my address will be there. Write C/o Brown Shipley
& Co Yours affly GSantayana
1
The boys were sixteen months apart, Robert having been born on 8 July 1922.
2
Code Napoléon or Code Civil, the first modern code of France, was promulgated by
Napoleon I in 1804. It reflects the modern civil law, which prevailed generally on the
European continent. The code follows the Institutes of the Roman Corpus Juris Civilis
in dividing civil law into personal status, property, and the acquisition of property. Not
only was it applied to the territories under Napoleon’s control, it also exerted a strong
influence on Spain and on all European countries except England.
3
See letter of 30 November 1912.
3:168 The Letters of George Santayana

4
See letter of 17 December 1921.
5
Susan died at age seventy-six on 10 February 1928; her husband was ninety years
old when he died on 12 May 1930.

To Charles Augustus Strong

20 November 1923 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Albergo Corso Umberto

Nov. 20. 1923
Dear Strong
Thank you for forwarding my letters. I telegraphed my new address to
London at the same time as to you, so that I hope you will now have no
more trouble on that score.
My cold is entirely well—that is, I don’t cough or spit—but I still feel the
constant danger of catching cold and having a relapse.
This place is not a hotel but a maison meublée,1 and very shabby and
third rate: the morning coffee is the worst and scantiest I remember to
have had anywhere. But I couldn’t resist the temptation of seeing the
Piazza Colonna and the front of Santa Maria in Via2 both from my win-
dow, and having the full sun all day, with perfect freedom for meals, and
the ristorante Roma only a few steps away. So here I am, and have been
so far able to work nicely. The noise, though bad at times, stops at night,
and does not interfere with work by day, if I shut the window. However, I
don’t expect to be here long. I am merely waiting for something to turn
up. The Hôtel de la Ville made me melancholy: no sun in the rooms avail-
able, middling food, and a sort of comfortless newness in the whole place.
I decidedly prefer being down here.
Young de Bosis3 came to lunch yesterday, and Vivante4 is coming
today. Fuller has not yet turned up. I have been to the opera (Rigoletto5 at
the Adriano) and to a Neapolitan play, and have seen the Queen of Spain6
returning from the Vatican in a white mantilla: I have also been to Saint
Peter’s and more than once to the Pincio and the Villa Borghese. Also
once to the Museo delle Terme to see the new Venus,7 which left me rather
cold. Even a Venus should have a head.
You will be sorry to hear that the inner room at the Aragno has been
done up in white and modern frescoes—cheap beyond words—but it seems
to be always nearly empty, so that it remains a convenience.
 1921–1927 3:169

Let me know if you decide to make the trip to Naples soon, because if
you do I should be tempted to go ahead now to Bertolini’s and wait for
you there. Otherwise I must look for something here a little more com-
fortable for the winter Yours ever
G.S.
1
Furnished house (French).
2
The Piazza Colonna is a square in Rome that has at its center the Column of
Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antonius. Near the square is the Church of Santa Maria in
Via.
3
Lauro de Bosis (1901–31) was a philosopher, poet, and political activist.
4
Leone Vivante (b. 1887) was a prolific writer on art, thought, and literature.
5
Rigoletto is an opera by Giuseppe Verdi (1851) based on Victor Hugo’s drama Le Roi
S’amuse (The King Amuses Himself). The opera is set in sixteenth-century Mantua instead
of the court of Francis I of France, and the main character is Rigoletto instead of
Triboulet.
6
In 1906 Alfonso XIII married Princess Victoria Eugenia of Battenberg.
7
Santayana probably is referring to the headless statue of Aphrodite at the Museo
Nazionale delle Terme.

To Charles Augustus Strong

23 November 1923 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Rome, Nov. 23, 1923

Dear Strong
I am moving again, this time to the Hotel Bristol (at the head of the Via
del Tritone) where I am to have a good sunny room facing the Palazzo
Barberini,1 and half-pension for 70 lire a day; and I am free to take either
lunch or dinner at the hotel, as I like. It is a compromise in every respect,
but I am in hopes that it may work well. It is not so shabby as this place,
and not so art nouveau as the Hôtel de la Ville. My cold seems to be def-
initely cured, for the time being, the very rainy weather we have been hav-
ing not having caused any relapse.
Vivante is a surprisingly young man, very, very mystical and tran-
^ ^
scendental, who is not easy to understand either in English or Italian. He
took me to lunch at the Castello dei Cesari, and then to see his wife, a very
Madonna-like young person with smooth hair, carrying a big child. They
live in a large separate house and seem to be rich. You will never get
Vivante to perceive any matter of fact steadily: but he is very sweet in his
imbecility. Yours ever
GSantayana
3:170 The Letters of George Santayana

1
The Barberinis were a powerful Italian family of Tuscan extraction who settled in
Florence early in the eleventh century. In 1623 Maffeo Barberini was raised to the
papal throne as Urban VIII. The fine Barberini palace and library in Rome give evi-
dence of the Barberinis’ wealth and magnificence. The ruthless way in which they
plundered ancient buildings to adorn their own palaces is the origin of the saying,
“Quod non fecerunt barbari, fecerunt Barberini” (What the barbarians did not do the
Barberinis did).

To Xavier Léon
1 December 1923 • Rome, Italy (MS: Sorbonne)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London
Rome, Dec. 1, 1923
1
Dear Sir,
I am asking the publishers to send you directly from London a copy of
my last book, “Scepticism and Animal Faith.” It is not a new edition, but
the beginning of a sort of system, my previous books having been rather
unsystematic in their subjects and occasions.
Should the reviewer whom you have been good enough to choose care
to see any of my earlier volumes, I should be happy to send them too.
Believe me Sincerely yours
GSantayana
1
Xavier Léon (1868–1935) founded the Sociéte Française de Philosophie (1901) and
organized international congresses of philosophy. He, in collaboration with Élie
Halévy, established the principal French philosophical journal, the Revue de méta-
physique et de morale (1893), and served as its editor until his death. His works include
Fichte et son temps (Paris: A. Colin, 1922) and other books on Fichte’s philosophy.

To George Sturgis
1 December 1923 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Dec. 1, 1923
Dear George
I am glad to have the happy advent of number two confirmed by letter,
and to know that you think my idea about your aunt Josephine’s Spanish
funds not impracticable. I believe I have written to you again on that sub-
ject, so that I need add nothing today.
 1921–1927 3:171

After trying two other hotels I am at last comfortably established, prob-

ably for the winter. This is an old established house in a central position,
and I have a decent room with a southern exposure and a grand façade—
the Palazzo Barberini—to admire opposite at a suitable distance. I am on
what they call half-pension, that is, I have everything at the hotel except
one meal a day, either lunch or dinner, which I am free to take at some
restaurant. As Rome is well supplied with these, and I like the change of
scene and of food which one can get by browsing about, this arrangement
of a half-pension suits me very well. I pay 70 lire a day, little over three
dollars, which is not unreasonable: but prices are raised in the Spring,
which is the tourist (and pilgrim) season.
Will you discover—if you don’t know it—the address of your cousin
Maud Sturgis—one of the John Sturgis “girls”,1 as we used to call them—and
send her the enclosed letter,2 which will explain itself if you take the trou-
ble to read it. It seems that she and her sisters took a house in England last
Summer in order to invite their English relations, one after another, to
come and stay with them, and hearing that I was in England, they and
some of these English cousins who already knew me, thought of me too.
“The Babe” (now agèd 53) is Willie Haines Smith, who used to live with
Howard Sturgis3 at Windsor, where I always stayed in my palmy days
when I passed on my way to Spain to visit my father.
My friend Strong is now here for a few days, and his motor lengthens
the radius of my afternoon-excursions very much. Yesterday we went out
to the Campagna4, which is a place full of emotions for learned people,
besides being a fine landscape. I have also two or three Italian friends (who
speak English) and am expecting B. A. G. Fuller, whom you may have
heard of at Harvard. Yours affly
GSantayana
[across] P.S. Before Jan. 1st I will draw the rest of my credit, and you might
ask Brown Bros. to have a fresh letter for £500 sent me. There is no hurry,
as I shall be largely supplied.
1
John Sturgis, a Boston architect, and Robert Shaw Sturgis, Santayana’s half brother,
were cousins. John’s father was Russell Sturgis, brother of Santayana’s mother’s first
husband, George Sturgis (1817–57). See letter of 18 October 1897.
2
Unlocated.
3
Howard Overing Sturgis (1855–1920), a novelist, was the son of Russell Sturgis
(1805–87), a wealthy Bostonian living in London, and his third wife, Julia Overing
Boit. Howard, a cousin to Santayana’s half brother and half sisters, was educated at
Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. Santayana first met Sturgis in 1889 at the Cotuit
3:172 The Letters of George Santayana

house of Lucy Sturgis Codman. Afterwards, Santayana made almost yearly visits to
Howard’s house, Queen’s Acre, near Windsor Park.
4
Campagna di Roma was a popular residential area surrounding Rome during the
Roman Empire. It was deserted for centuries due to the high incidence of malaria and
a poor water system. All that exist today are the remnants of tombs and aqueducts.

To Henry Ward Abbot

12 December 1923 • Rome, Italy (MS: Columbia)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London
Rome, Dec. 12. 1923
Dear Harry
Someone has sent me a clipping from the Boston Transcript1—what an
odour of old maid comes from those words!—in which you resuscitate
some old memories of ours and incidentally supply your address. There
has long been a suppressed impulse in my nervous system—not strong
enough to produce any Freudian phenomena—to write to you, and ask
what has become of you in these thirty years, and also what has become
of our friends Herbert Lyman Ward Thoron, etc.; for although Boylston
Beal has sometimes mentioned them, I see him rarely, and usually when
political matters are so absorbing that we have no time for private gossip.
As to me, you know all that can be told and probably can guess the rest.
My health is good, and I manage to avoid most of the troubles that most
people bring upon one another, by keeping to the life of a wandering stu-
dent, which has been my ideal from my earliest days. I do nothing that
seriously disturbs my digestion or my agreeable isolation; and I read and
write when the impulse comes, and not under pressure. Sometimes my lit-
erary projects become something of an incubus, and I ask myself whether
I shall live to carry them out: but what does it matter? I have already had
my say: although I confess that I am still young and enthusiastic enough
to feel that what I have in petto is far better than anything I have yet done,
and that it must see the light. You may be surprised to hear that the most
lively of these embryos is a novel. I began it long, long ago—in the early
’90’s—as a story of college life: that part has now receded into a mere inci-
dent; not that my heroes have become much older, since on the contrary
I have gone back to their childhood and parentage, but that the scene has
widened, and the fable—it is all a fable—has become more organic, knit
 1921–1927 3:173

more closely around the central motif, which is Puritanism repenting, but
unable to reform.
Haven’t you written any novels? It is the only living art, and now it
seems possible to print what in earlier days we hardly ventured to whisper.
Your old friend GSantayana
1
The Boston Daily Evening Transcript (1830–1941) was representative of the conserva-
tive New England tradition and considered to be a leader in reporting cultural activi-
ties in Boston and elsewhere. The clipping mentioned here is unidentified.

To Pierre de Chaignon la Rose

21 December 1923 • Rome, Italy (MS: New York)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Rome, Dec. 21, 1923
Dear la Rose1
It is a great pleasure to receive your letter. From time to time I have felt
an impulse to write, or to send you a book—particularly the Soliloquies—
but the small impediment of not knowing your precise address or some
other trivial obstacle has always intervened. Not long ago Lapsley and I
spoke of you at length, and with a unanimity of sentiment which he and I
are now developing on a good many subjects—Anglicanism not included,
although even there we seem to have an inexpressible depth of agreement
beneath the tacit disagreement of our opinions. I mean that I think I know
why he believes, and he thinks he knows why I disbelieve. It is a sympa-
thetic opposition.
As to the occasion of your letter, what could be more grateful to a par-
ent than the resurrection of a dead child? I have not yet received Fituski’s
books,2 but I am sure the outer form he would give to Lucifer would be
more than satisfactory. Not long ago some one sent me a copy with a
request that I should write something in it, and before doing so I reread
the whole—which I hadn’t done for many years. My impression was that I
had done what I meant to do, but that here and there feeble or unfortu-
nate phrases occurred. I should not venture to suggest revision of the
style—I should do it much less convincingly now; but perhaps in the proof
we might change a word here and there, to strengthen the rhythm or avoid
platitude. If you have marked any very bad places, I should be much
obliged if you would point them out. Duffield has the copyright, but as he
3:174 The Letters of George Santayana

has disposed of that of the Sonnets I expect he would make no bones of

getting rid of Lucifer as well.3 As to the $200 which you offer me, I should
much rather take nothing, and let the money remain to insure Mr Fituski
against loss in his venture. I have much more money than I need in my
manner of life, which is that of the perpetual travelling student: so that do
not let money be mentioned in this pleasant affair.4
Since you say you have 20 volumes of mine (which I think is more than
I have written) I infer that you have various editions of the poems: if you
have not the nice one (in white and gold) of the English edition published
last year, will you let me know and I will have one sent you? Or would you
prefer the English edition of the Soliloquies? I meant to send it you (it is
probably much nicer than the American) only there is the circumstance of
passing the custom-house—which, however, I can get round without trou-
ble.
I am at work on many things, including a novel [across] about which I
should be particular ly glad of a chance to talk with you. Don’t you ever
^ ^
come to Paris? It would be such a pleasure. Yours sincerely GSantayana.
1
Pierre de Chaignon la Rose (b. 1871) was one of Santayana’s Harvard friends (A.B.,
1895) and a lecturer in Harvard’s English Department (1897–1902). Santayana
described him as a man of excellent taste and talent as a designer (he designed the
1924 edition of Lucifer). (Persons, 407–8)
2
Maurice Firuski worked at Dunster House, the publishing firm in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, which issued the new edition of Lucifer in 1924.
3
In July 1922 Duffield sold to Scribner’s the rights to Sonnets for $200, including
Lucifer at no extra charge (per correspondence between F. S. Hoppin of Duffield and
Maxwell Perkins of Scribner’s, Scribner Archives, Princeton University Library).
4
Dunster published a revised version of Lucifer in 1924. The headpieces, initial let-
ters, and end papers were designed by and the typography arranged by La Rose.

To Sterling Power Lamprecht

25 December 1923 • Rome, Italy (MS: Dartmouth)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Christmas Day 1923
Dear Mr Lamprecht1—
Your letter reached me too late to make any arrangements during your
first stay in Rome, but I write now hoping you and Mrs Lamprecht have
survived your trip to Sicily (which must have been very wet) and that I
may have the pleasure of seeing you.
 1921–1927 3:175

If you don’t mind letting me come to lunch some day, instead of to din-
ner, it would be rather more convenient for me, and perhaps I might show
you something afterwards which the guide-books do not emphasize,
although I am aware that you are probably better investigators than I in
the matter of sights.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Sterling Power Lamprecht (b. 1890) attended Williams College, Union Theological
Seminary, and Columbia (Ph.D., 1918). He taught philosophy at the University of
Illinois and at Amherst.

To Sterling Power Lamprecht

[1923?] • [Rome, Italy] (MS: Dartmouth)

Dear Mr Lamprecht
I am very sorry I have an engagement for lunch, but I will come to dine
with you and Mrs Lamprecht with pleasure if you will tell me the place and
hour—and I suppose, unless you are in a very grand place, I needn’t dress.
It is too bad that you are so hurried here, or we might have arranged
other meetings
Yours sincerely
GSantayana

To Wilbur Lucius Cross

26 December 1923 • Rome, Italy (MS: Beinecke)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Rome, December 26, 1923
Dear Sir,
As I promised in my previous letter I have looked over the manuscript
of “Realms of Being”, but the chapters that are at all in shape are so tech-
nical that (after seeing the number of the Yale Review which you kindly
sent me) I am afraid they would scare away your readers. I am therefore
sending you the Preface, which is comparatively comprehensible and will
give those who care to read it a general idea of what I am after.
3:176 The Letters of George Santayana

If it would not involve too much delay to send me the proof, I should
be glad to see it,x as my manuscript is rather in a mess; but being my own
typewriter I am appalled at the labour of making a clean copy. I hope,
however, that it is legible: and if you prefer to entrust the proof-reading to
some person on the spot, I have no objection.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
[left margin] xYou need not return the MS, proof alone will do.

To Gilbert Seldes
26 December 1923 • Rome, Italy (MS: Beinecke)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Rome, Dec. 26, 1923
Dear Mr Seldes,
Here is a first “Dialogue in Limbo”, of which I can send you one or two
more1 if you want them, not all with the same Ghost.
I hope there are no improprieties (according to present standards in
America) in this dialogue: but if there are, you may expurgate it. I shall
always be able to restore the truth of nature when the things reappear in a
book, as I suppose they will ultimately.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
“The Sorrows of Avicenna,” The Dial 76 (March 1924): 250–56; “On Self-
Government,” The Dial 77 (March 1925): 181–92 and 78 (April 1925): 302–12; “The
Wisdom of Avicenna,” The Dial 79 (August 1925): 91–103, which appears as chapter
IX, “Homesickness for the World,” in Dialogues.

To Charles Augustus Strong

11 January 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Bristol Rome

Jan. 11, 1924
Dear Strong
Nothing has occurred since you left to ruffle the surface of my stream,
but Fuller has arrived, and then Zampa (who came to make himself and
 1921–1927 3:177

his unemployment present to the mind of Cardinal Galli)1 and MacArthur2

has also turned up, but only for one or two days. I now go to Ranieri’s
every day to lunch, on account of the informality and home-likeness of it,
and the nice way in which I am treated there. There are several English
habitués, but I don’t speak to them. This week a young Philadeplphian,
/ a
cousin of the Sturgis’s,3 has been here. I took him to lunch at the Ulpia for
a change, and found it emptier than ever. Its existence is a mystery.
I have finished various papers, including three Avicenna dialogues, one
of which I have already sent to the Dial, and I have done some work on
the big book, not unsatisfactory but somewhat inconclusive—I mean, that
I can hardly say, so far the thing is finished and complete. However, I have
sent the Preface to the Yale Review, as a beginning of actual publication.
Your philosophical partnership with Drake is a happy event and I am
glad you have converted him where he was still recalcitrant—for “agree-
ment” seems to mean agreement with you. Does “emergent” mean that
something comes to light which existed in the same form under the sur-
face (as the word really demands) or does it mean that something of a new
and unprecedented quality appears under certain conditions? If the latter,
“emergent” is not a correct term. I am glad you are to have something to
occupy your time and your mind next Summer, and when Drake is in
Paris it will be a change for you from too much of my exclusive society.
Whether I am at the apartment or not at that time, I will leave you to / wo
to enjoy the privacy of the Duval together every evening, which will also
be a change for me.
I have had no more cough, and feel quite encouraged about my health,
although fat and lazy. Yours ever
GSantayana
1
Possibly Gallo Galli (b. 1889), who wrote a great number of books on a wide range
of philosophical topics, including Spirito e realtà: Studio de filosofia come positivismo spir-
itualistico assoluto (1927).
2
Possibly John Roofe MacArthur, who graduated with Strong in the Harvard class of
1885.
3
The family of Santayana’s “Uncle Robert” resided in Philadelphia. See Persons,
74–75, 88–89.
3:178 The Letters of George Santayana

To Henry Ward Abbot

16 January 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS: Columbia)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Rome, Jan. 16, 1924.
Dear Harry
As another thirty years will put us beyond the possibility of writing let-
ters (in spite of monkey-glands) I am going to answer you at once, while
the iron is hot. It is very flattering to be so faithfully read by an old friend—
how did you discover the Spencer lecture? I find that old friends and old
pupils usually think they know me well enough as it is, and leave my writ-
ings alone. But you were always a literary gourmand (or gourmé) and I see
you haven’t changed at all in this respect nor in your erotic preoccupa-
tions. My hero (in the novel) whose name is Oliver (after Cromwell) Alden
(after John Alden of the Mayflower and Longfellow’s Poem, his supposed
ancestor)1 is a natural Puritan, and it is not his sexual suppressions that
make the thread of the story, at least not on the surface, but his general dis-
covery that it is wrong not to live naturally, not to tell the truth about
^ ^
important things, as well as about trifles, and not to make hay while the
sun shines. But he is very much too fine in texture and feeling to be happy
in his world, or to succeed in the things (including love-making) which it
expects him to attempt: and so he peters out—which is so terrible a quiet
tragedy that I have actually cried over the writing of it! But I mustn’t
describe my chicken while it is still in the realm of essence only, and I
don’t know when the book will be done. For the moment I am absorbed
in the System and, at odd times, in the Dialogues in Limbo, which will
begin to appear in the Dial at once, and will probably compose my next
book. They are a general criticism of things modern from an ancient (or
normal) point of view: and they are purple—more so than the Soliloquies,
I think, which I regard as my sincerest book so far: because colour with
me, as with Latins generally, is more spontaneous than form, although it
may not be thought so by northern critics. Besides, in my old age, I have
become far more sentimental and even benevolent. I couldn’t write now
those sublimated love sonnets, nor Lucifer (of which they talk of making a
new edition): they were a perfectly sincere conviction, but they were not
an actual experience; they were an evasion of experience, on the pre-
sumption (quite just when you are young and on a high horse) that expe-
 1921–1927 3:179

rience would be a ghastly failure. The lady of the sonnets, far from being
the one you absurdly mention, is a myth, a symbol: certainly she stands
for Somebody, not always for the same Somebody, and generally for a hint
or suggestion drawn from reality rather than for any specific passion; but
the enthusiasm is speculative, not erotic: I had been convinced by Plato
and the Italian Platonists: I had not been obliged to make the Pilgrim’s
Progress2 in person. Love has never made me long unhappy, nor sexual
impulse uncomfortable: on the contrary in the comparatively manageable
form in which they have visited me, they have been great fun, because
they have given me an interest in people and (by a natural extension of
emotion) in things, places, and stories, such as religion, which otherwise
would have failed me altogether; because in itself, apart from the golden
light of diffused erotic feeling falling upon it, the world I have been con-
demned to live in most of my life would have been simply deadly. I have
never been anything but utterly bored and digusted with the public world,
the world of business, politics, family, and society. It was only the glimmer
of sport, humour, friendship, or love falling over it that made it tolerable.
In the last ten years, in spite of the war, I have been able to keep out of
that insufferable medium, and have consequently been much happier.
Here in Rome, for instance, the world is pleasing: it seems always to have
cared for things worth having; it is congenitally beautiful, born to enjoy
itself humanly, and straightforward in its villainies and its sorrows. I walk
about, knowing no one and speaking to nobody, and I feel that everybody
understands me; and what is more and greater, that everybody is at work
for the sake of the very things I am inwardly at work about, human lib-
^ ^
erty and pleasantness breaking through the mesh of circumstances and
laughing at it. The political atmosphere here is good also: I am in great
hopes in respect to the Latin world: the German and Anglosaxon shams
have been discredited—representative government, for instance—and peo-
ple are daring to be themselves. The church too is a good thing—much bet-
ter than “science”,—and a part of the game.
You don’t tell me anything about your way of life, or about our old
friends. What you say—or hint—about the power of Gompers3 surprises me.
I thought the U.S. was in the hands of the big business men. Or is
Gompers on their side? I understand little of what I hear about America
nowadays; but the people I see are so full of health, good-will, pleasant-
ness, and money that I can’t believe things can be seriously wrong there—
I mean, granting the American postulates—work, progress, democracy,
and whoop-her-up. Those who rebel against America are doomed to fail
3:180 The Letters of George Santayana

even in what America is busy about, and of course in everything else.

Everything good in the ultimate sense will long come from Europe only,
and from Latin Europe, because the Graeco-Roman tradition is the only
life of reason afoot. Remember what Norton used to say so sadly: Primum
Graius homo!4 And last, too, in the spirit. Your old friend
GSantayana
1
Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) was lord protector who ruled England with an iron
hand. As a member of Parliament from 1628 he stood firmly with the Puritans and was
active in the Puritan cause. John Alden (c. 1599–1687) was a Puritan settler and judge
in Plymouth Colony who came to America on the Mayflower in 1620. He was a neigh-
bor and friend to Miles Standish. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) was an
American poet whose romantic legend, The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858), was
based upon Alden’s marriage to Priscilla Mullins.
2
John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1675) describes spiritual struggle.
3
Samuel Gompers (1850–1924) was the English-born American labor leader who
helped found the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (which became
the American Federation of Labor).
4
Primum Graius homo mortaleis tollere contra / Est oculos ausus primusque obsistere contra.
(The translation of this Latin verse reads, “A Greek was he who first raised mortal eyes
/ And lodged his daring challenge to the skies.”) Lucretius 1.67 [D. C.]

To Charles Scribner’s Sons

16 January 1924 • [Rome, Italy] (MS: Princeton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Jan. 16, 1924
Messrs Charles Scribner’s Sons
New York.
Gentlemen,
My nephew Mr George Sturgis, of Boston, sends me an account by
which I see, that you have paid me during the past year $759.45 in royal-
ties! Although in the immediate future there will probably not be anything
new to stimulate the sale of my books, I write to ask you to send me any
cheques hereafter due directly to C/o Brown Shipley & Co, as I now have
an account with them and can deposit American cheques there.
Yours very truly
GSantayana
 1921–1927 3:181

To George Sturgis
16 January 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Jan. 16, 1924
Dear George
Apropos of your aunt Josephine’s will, I am delighted to be congratu-
lated by you on my good business head: it is the first time in my life that
this has happened, and will probably be the last. If my perspicacity
remains unimpaired, however, I see by your account that both the income
of my investments and their value decreased somewhat, since the totals
which seem about equal to last year’s include in the income account $760
of royalties, and in the capital account, $4000 of savings. It is perfectly nat-
ural and inevitable that there should be oscillations in these totals, and as
I spend so much less than my income it makes absolutely no difference to
me, even if the reduction should be greater and should be permanent: but
here is an instance of the advantage there is in not walking near the edge.
Of course, the 6% commission is all right: I feel rather that it is too little
for such complete freedom from care and anxiety as I enjoy. My late friend
Moncure Robinson1 (who hob-nobbed only with Vanderbilts Morgans
and dukes)2 used to say I was the richest person he knew, because I didn’t
spend half my income: but it would be truer to say that I am “beyond
riches and poverty”, because I eat, drink, spend, and keep no accounts,
and yet nothing happens. Or rather, the unexpected happens in receiving
in one year (apart from Constable’s cheques) $760 from Scribner for my
literary productions! By the way, in view of this sum (which will be
reduced very much next year, I expect) I have written to Scribner to send
me my royalties direct in future; because my account at Brown Shipley’s
is getting near to the point (£1000) at which they begin to give interest,
and it seems foolish to leave all that money there without getting any
return. I might draw most of it out, but I prefer to add to it, and have that
little nest egg hatched, even if the brood is rather measly, because at any
moment I may want to set up a little establishment of my own, and a lump
sum at hand would be convenient. My way of living half with Strong and
half alone in hotels, has great advantages in that freedom from care and
from possessions which I value so highly: but there is instability in it, espe-
cially so long as Margaret Strong continues to hover over us, an unmarried
3:182 The Letters of George Santayana

angel; and as I have now passed my sixtieth birthday, I shouldn’t mind a

fixed abode. But the trouble is all in the inclination of the earth’s axis,
which makes it impossible to live anywhere all the year round. It might be
possible in England, if a catarrhal old man could live in England at all; but
almost anywhere else, either in summer or winter, one is practically
obliged to decamp: and then what is the use of settling at all? However, I
foresee that if a furnace is put into the apartment at 9 Avenue de
l’Observatoire, as there is talk of doing, I might stay there at any and every
season, when I chose.
I have received an invitation (declined with thanks) from Prof. Palmer
to read a poem at the Phi Beta Kappa at the next Harvard
Commencement, the said poem to be about Beauty, and to occupy not less
than ten and not more than fifteen minutes in the reading: for which I
should receive $50, travelling expenses, and the honour of appearing on
the same platform with the President of Yale,3 the Orator of the occasion.
This is what comes of being really a great man.
I am glad all goes so well at home and at Josephine’s. A cousin,
Warwick Scott4 (Maisie’s son) has come to see me here, and has given me
[across] news of that end of the family. Thank you, by the way, for forward-
ing my letter to Maud Sturgis.
Yours affly GSantayana
[across page one] P.S. Thanks also for the new letter of credit, which has
reached me safely.
1
Moncure Robinson (d. 1920), a member of the Harvard class of 1898, had been a
wealthy New Yorker.
2
Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794–1877), who gave one million dollars to found Vanderbilt
University in Nashville, was the American railroad magnate in control of the New York
Central Railroad. The Morgans were American financiers and philanthropists. John
Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913) built early family fortunes into a financial and industrial
empire.
3
James Rowland Angell (1869–1949), American educator and psychologist, was pres-
ident of Yale from 1921 to 1937.
4
Son of Maisie Sturgis and Edgar Scott. See Persons, 75–76.
 1921–1927 3:183

To Wilbur Lucius Cross

29 January 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS: Beinecke)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Jan 29, 1924.
Mr Wilbur L. Cross
Editor of the Yale Review
Dear Sir,
I am glad you find my “Preface” acceptable, and I enclose the corrected
copy.
There were some marginal headings in the M.S. which I quite under-
stand it may not be easy to print, although they could be let into a blank
square cut out of the text, as was done in my “Life of Reason”. I don’t wish
to put you to any inconvenience, as they are of little importance in such an
article: but as I am carrying out this system throughout the book, and have
no other copy of the Preface, I should be much obliged if you could have
the marginal summary copied and sent to me. No indication of the place
opposite which each appears is necessary: I simply should like a record of
the phrases, as they may be better than what might occur to me if I rewrote
them.
When the article appears will you please send a copy to each of the
address es on the adjoining half sheet, and charge them to me?
^ ^
Yours very truly
GSantayana
Mr C. A. Strong, Fiesole, Florence, Italy.
Baron Albert von Westenholz, Sophienterrasse, 14. Hamburg, Germany.
Mr R. B. Potter, Antietam Farm, Smithtown, Long Island, N.Y.
Mrs C. H. Toy, 8 Craigie Circle, Cambridge, Mass.
Robbins Library, Emerson Hall, '' ''
Mr B. A. G. Fuller, Sherborn, Mass.
3:184 The Letters of George Santayana

To Otto Kyllmann
29 January 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS: Temple)

Hotel Bristol Rome

Jan. 29, 19243
Dear Mr Kyllmann
In respect to the request from the publishing house “Voluntad” in
Madrid, about translating some one of my books, I have had several com-
munications direct from Spain, and lately one from the proposed transla-
tor himself, D. Antonio Marichalar.1 The house seems to be of a superior,
if somewhat dilettante, type, under the auspices of rich ladies, Catholic but
not bigoted, and hyperaesthetic. Their printing is excellent, and the
prospective translator seems to be a brilliant young man, quite competent
in style and in capacity. I am therefore disposed, for my part, to accede to
any arrangement which you may wish to make with them, if they
approach you again with any definite proposal.
Mr Marichalar tells me he has been in doubt as to which of my books
would be most acceptable to the Spanish public, and asks my advice in the
matter. I am suggesting to him Three Philosophical Poets. If he should
choose that, or Egotism in German Philosophy which he mentions partic-
ularly, you would not be concerned for the present: but I write in order to
keep you informed of what is afoot, and in case now or later you should
be asked again to consider this matter.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Antonio Marichalar, Marqués de Montesa (b. 1893), was a Spanish man of letters
who was particularly interested in Santayana’s writings. He wrote “El español-inglés:
George Santayana” (Revista de Occidente 3 [1924]: 340–59). Marichalar translated some
of Santayana’s essays, but no translation by him of a Santayana book could be located.
 1921–1927 3:185

To Hamilton Fish Potter

7 February 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Feb. 7, 1924
Dear Hamilton1
Your father tells me you are to be soon in these parts and I hope you
will not fail to look me up and discover the reality of the family myth
which I must be in your eyes. My movements are a little uncertain, but I
shall probably be in Rome until May, and there is no better place.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
The younger son of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Potter, Hamilton Fish Potter was a mem-
ber of Harvard’s class of 1924.

To Hamilton Fish Potter

[After 7 February 1924] • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Dear Hamilton
I have written to you to Paris, at your father’s suggestion, but now I hear
from your mother that you are coming directly to Rome. My hotel is in the
Piazza Barberini, at the foot of your street. Please come to dinner or lunch
as soon as you can—dinner (as you are) at 7.45, lunch (which I take out)
^ ^
at 12.45 or earlier, as at about that time I leave my hotel. Don’t come at
any other hour, as I am always either out or invisible.
I am looking forward with some excitement to seeing you and hope you
are staying in Rome long enough to see something of the place and to let
me see something of you and hear something of your family.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
3:186 The Letters of George Santayana

To Sylvanus Griswold Morley

8 February 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS: Berkeley)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Pall, London, S.W.1
Rome Feb. 8, 1924
Dear Mr Morley
It was very kind of you to send me your translations from Anthero de
Quental,1 of whom I had never heard! I have been reading them with
much interest, and might send you a complimentary word of thanks, and
stop there. But as your work reminds me of many an effort of my own to
render Romance verse into English, you will forgive me if I add something
of a confession which at least will show you how truly I appreciate the dif-
ficulties with which you have struggled so manfully. The term “poetry” is
a false universal: there are as many poetries as there are languages, or even
poems. Now English poetry is not conversation: it is a sort of bubbling
over of sentiment into words, essentially new and incoherent words, like
genuine prayer, or genuine swearing. It may be overheard: it is not
intended to be understood by any hearer. If he understands it, it will be by
a happy accident, in that his own incoherent emotions are aroused in the
inverse order to that in which similar emotions in the poet precipitated the
words he reads. If there is not this intimate, irrational, private quality and
spontaneity in expression, English verse is not poetry. In Latin languages,
on the contrary, “poetry” is essentially rhetoric: it is an effusion; it is a tor-
rent of eloquence in the vernacular; and even if it be a soliloquy it is (like
my “Soliloquies”) intended to be persuasive. The colour is the colour of
things; the music is a rapid accompaniment, mere calligraphy; the perfec-
tion of it lies in transparency, sincerity, adequacy. When it is over, you
expect applause: you wipe your forehead, smile through your tragic tears,
and say to yourself, There! I’ve done it! Now my feeling is that this sort of
thing can hardly be rendered into English except in prose. Your preface,
for instance, conveys the message of your author more naturally than do
your translations. Of course, the translation may be a poem in itself: but
only if it is more, or at least other, than the original. And in that case it
would probably be much briefer. Swinburne2 might have orchestrated the
“Hymn to Morning” in his own style; or it might have been expressed in
uninterrupted prose, carrying the reader forward compellingly but
arranged as you arrange it, one expects too much at each step, and expects
 1921–1927 3:187

something new at the next step, and one is disappointed. I mean that each
part is not poignant enough for English poetry of this calibre, and the
“poetry” is in the way if one is interested in the man’s real feelings.
I hope you will excuse the impertinence of these [across] reflexions,
which are only a proof of the interest which your book has awakened in
me. Yours truly
GSantayana
1
Antero Tarquínio de Quental (1842–91) was a Portuguese poet who tried to revivify
Portuguese literature. He is best known for his sonnets, which constitute a spiritual
autobiography. Sylvanus Griswold (Small) Morley (1878–1970) was professor of
Spanish literature at the University of California, Berkeley. Morley’s translation Sonnets
and Poems of Anthero de Quental was published in 1922.
2
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) was an English poet whose work repre-
sents a blending of classical themes with flamboyant romanticism. His literary criticism
helped popularize older English dramatists.

To Alyse Gregory
14 February 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS: Beinecke)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London
Rome, Feb. 14, 1924.
My dear Miss Gregory1
Today I am sending you a second Dialogue with Avicenna2—the last
with that worthy—in which there are no improprieties but perhaps a little
atheism. I forgot, in posting it, to include a note, suggesting two things.
First, if the dialogue is too long it can be easily cut in two and published in
two issues. The second half begins at the words: “The Stranger. And what—
if it is not too much to ask—was the gloss”, etc. Second, there are a few
Oriental words about the orthography of which I have no sure knowledge
as my Arabic is confined to a French translation of the Arabian Nights, and
English usage may demand a different spelling of Emir, Kadi, Suk of
Shirah, etc. If you are an Orientalist, or have one in the office, I hope you
will exercise your judgement in this matter—which is not of much impor-
tance.
I hope soon to send you a Socratic dialogue or two,3 and one or two
with Democritus4 which I think you will find amusing.
3:188 The Letters of George Santayana

I am here without books or dictionaries and far from learned friends,

hence my helplessness in matters of science and grammar.
Yours very truly
GSantayana
1
Alyse Gregory (1884–1967), managing editor of The Dial, was married to Llewelyn
Powys, an English essayist and journalist. She wrote several books.
2
Avicenna (980–1037) was a Persian philosopher and physician who sought to rec-
oncile Aristotelian thought with Islam. He wrote Canon of Medicine.
3
“On Self-Government.” In the Socratic dialogues The Stranger (Santayana) con-
verses with the shade of Socrates. Socrates (469–399 B.C.) was a Greek philosopher
who regarded the pursuit of philosophy as essential to an intellectual and moral life.
His method of inquiry was known as dialectic, the systematic examination of statements
and their implications.
4
The first five of the Dialogues are with Democritus and were unpublished until their
appearance in the book. A materialist, Democritus (c. 460–c. 370 B.C.) was a Greek
philosopher who held that the world was made up of tiny particles, imperceptible to
the senses but indivisible and indestructible. He maintained that the true nature of
things can be discovered only by thought, for sense perceptions are confusing.

To Alyse Gregory
23 February 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS: Beinecke)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Feb. 23, 1924
Dear Miss Gregory
You will think me irrepressible, but since the enclosed dialogue, in two
parts, is ready, I am sending it on for you to deal with at leisure.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana

To Charles Augustus Strong

28 February 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Feb. 28, 1924
Dear Strong
I am very glad to have news of you and to know you are making
progress in working out your theory. The point you mention about the
“apparent image” being an essence other than the fuller or more unseiz-
 1921–1927 3:189

able one attributed to the object, of course is in harmony with my analy-

sis: in fact this absolute sensuous image is the palmary instance of a given
essence. Before scepticism or introspection has focussed this unequivocal
datum, it is extremely uncertain what we have before us, and people think
they see what the only conceive; or think they have as a given essence
^ ^
what they have only as the unknown essence, what ever it may be, of an
object posited: for I think the given essence in belief (of course there is a
given essence there too) is nothing less than our whole momentary
We/tltanschauung,1 within which the very elusive sense of an object meant
and partly specified (by the “apparent essence”) is only a detail.
I have kept well in spite of the continued bad weather: no snow here,
but much rain and no balminess even when the sun shines. I have done
nothing on the big book, but have been assiduously at work getting the
Dialogues in Limbo ready for the press. Four have already gone to The
Dial, and I have three or four more practically done. I foresee that a vol-
ume of these dialogues will be my next book.
Thank you for the review of Fuller’s book. He had already shown it to
me, but in a rather worn and rumpled cutting, and I will give him yours,
so clean and fresh, which I am sure he will be glad to have and to keep. It
is certainly very friendly, and naturally pleases him very much: and there
has been another even more enthusiastic by Kallen, but in some obscure
Bolshevik sheet. All this pales, however, in view of a much bigger feather
in Fuller’s cap; he has been appointed professor of philosophy in the
University of Cincinnati, with $6000 a year, and work, both in amount and
subject, entirely at his discretion. He is of course in high spirits about it,
especially because it will cause the nose of the Harvard Department to be
considerably lengthened.
I am glad Margaret is so gay and has done so much for the apartment,
and I am much obliged to her for my prospective share in the benefit. As
to Naples, by all means let us put it off. I am in no mood for trips, and it
would be a pity to go without Pinsent.
[across] They have asked me to give a course of lectures in Madrid! Of
course I have declined, but am in hopes of getting some thing translated
into Spanish. Yours ever G. S.
1
World view (German).
3:190 The Letters of George Santayana

To George Sturgis
8 March 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

March 8 1924
Dear George
Here too there is nothing in particular to report. The winter has been
rather rainy and cold, but this old-fashioned hotel is well warmed, the sun
when it shines pours in at my window, and I have kept well and done a
reasonable amount of work. Probably I shall stay here until May, or as
long into May as is convenient and then return straight to Paris—although
another plan is running in my head which I won’t trouble you with unless
it matures.
You may receive some book-bills of mine from the Harvard University
Press or from Firuski of the Dunster House Bookshop in Cambridge, and
I should be much obliged if you would pay them and charge whatever it
is to my account. This Firuski and Pierre la Rose—whom you may have
heard of in your college days—are going to get out a fancy edition of an old
poetic effusion of mine called Lucifer, and on this acount I have got into
relations with them. La Rose is an old friend, but Firuski had not set up
business in my time.
I am sorry about the codicil to my will, but I think it is in Paris. In any
case I could hardly gather that concourse of witnesses—how many are they,
only two?—which iron law seems to require. I know no white man here but
Fuller. Fuller, by the way, is in high feather, because having been invited
not to continue at Harvard, he has now been invited to begin at Cincinnati
as full professor with $6000 a year, and only such and so much work as he
wishes to undertake. It is a fair revenge, and will cause the nose of the
Harvard Department of Philosophy (as they say in the Arabian Nights) to
be considerably lengthened. Fuller is also being much praised for a breezy
History of Greek Philosophy1 which he has published, and which is really
very good of its kind, although I tell him it ought to have been entitled
Cook’s Tours through Ancient Thought, personally conducted by
America’s Greatest Humorist, B. A. G. Fuller.
I too am growing famous and have been asked to give some lectures in
Madrid! It is out of the question for various reasons, but I am pleased to
be asked.
 1921–1927 3:191

I hope Rosamond and the young hopefuls are flourishing as usual.

Yours affly
GSantayana
1
Published in New York by Henry Holt and Co. in 1923.

To Benjamin Alexander Morton

14 March 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS: Virginia)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
1
123 Pall Mall, London
Rome, March 14, 1924
r 2
Dear M Morton
It was very kind of you to send me The Veiled Empress and I have read
not only the last three pages, but the whole book, and gazed long at the
illustrations, especially the Cross Street and l’Impératrice. My father and
mother—though before my birth—lived for many years in the Tropics, and
the quality of that life has a fascination for me almost as if I had tasted it in
person. The rest of your narrative is not too romantic to be credible, and
as to your theory of history—which is what you wish me to speak of—I think
it is certainly right on its negative side, but its positive side is hardly made
explicit enough to be accepted or rejected absolutely. By the negative side
I mean your disbelief in grand impersonal principles governing events:
that is a pure superstition proper to a certain moralistic philosophy of his-
tory, essentially Jewish and adopted by the Hegelians. It is not to be found
in the great ancient historians who, like Homer and Shakespeare, see in
public affairs only the play of private passions. Saint-Simon3 is another
^ ^
observer who testifies to the same fact—indeed, it is the natural and ortho-
dox view: so that I hardly think you should call it “new”, although no
doubt you may have rediscovered it. At the same time I should suggest this
doubt or rather this complication: the circumstances under which individ-
uals act, as well as all their religious or national prejudices, belong to their
background; so that both in its sources and in its effects their private pas-
sion may not be merely theirs, but that of their age or class; and in this way
something typical or generic may be found in the parts played by leading
men. Herodotus sees history as a duel between Europe and Asia, and we
may see the same continued in our day, as between personal and national
individuality on the one hand and the great average on the other. But I
3:192 The Letters of George Santayana

think these are only optical effects or total perspectives, not causes. Now
the ambiguity which I still find in your view relates to the causes of per-
sonal decisions, on which we agree that public events are dependent. Are
these decisions merely personal and metaphysically “free”, or could we,
^ ^
with sufficient information, trace them back to inevitable instincts, plus cir-
cumstances? Your Aimée, for instance, is represented, by you as caring for
Martinique, Josephine,4 France, and Christianity: so that her personal ini-
tiative has ultra-personal sources, and she is a sort of meeting-place of
influences rather than an absolute arbitrary creator of her own will. That
the human brain and heart are the central office, so to speak, where all
messages are received and resent, and that without such delicate personal,
often inexplicable redirection of forces there would be no human life,
morality, or history, I think is certain; but I am afraid we should get into
hopeless difficulties if we tried to stop at the conscious origins of our
actions and feelings. Consciousness is a very superficial thing.
I have wondered a little how seriously you take the suggestion that
Napoleon’s divorce5 sounded the knell of his fortunes. It also seemed to
me probable that Mahmoud,6 in making peace with the Russians so unac-
countably, was following the British policy of a balance of power: because
it would have been useless to get his provinces back if he had had a French
High Commissioner—or Napoleon himself—in his own capital. I can hardly
imagine a Sultan seriously shocked, like a good American husband, at the
wickedness of divorcing a childless wife.
Yours very truly
G Santayana
1
‘Santayana Very fine mss’ is written here in a hand other than that of Santayana.
2
Benjamin Alexander Morton (b. 1878) received a bachelor of laws degree (1896)
from Harvard and pursued a career in law and finance. The Veiled Empress, an
Unacademic Biography was published in New York in 1923.
3
Count Claude Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) was a political writer and founder
of French socialism.
4
Josephine (Marie Josèphe Rose Tascher de la Pagerie, 1763–1814), empress of the
French, was born in Martinique. She married Napoleon Bonaparte in 1796.
5
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) was emperor of France. He divorced Josephine,
who was childless, in 1809. The following year he married Maria Luise, the Austrian
emperor’s daughter, by whom he had one son, Napoleon II, in 1811. After his second
abdication of the throne he surrendered to the British, hoping to find asylum in
England, but was exiled to Saint Helena, where he died of cancer. His body was
returned to Paris in 1840 and is entombed under the dome of the Invalides.
6
Mahmud II (1784–1839) was the Sultan of Turkey (1808–39) who led his country
through the revolt of Greece and two wars with Russia.
 1921–1927 3:193

To Carl Sadakichi Hartmann

16 March 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS postcard: Dartmouth)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London.

Thank you very much for “Confucius”1 which I have read with interest.
The grim humour of some bits and the decorative colour of others convey
the intended effect, but I am puzzled by the whole, and the end seems
incongruous. I like the Emperor and Empress best: I thought of Aubrey
Beardsley,2 who was one of the ancestors of the novel manner—the aes-
thetic caricature—in all the arts. I recognize the justification of this method,
tho’ too old and mild to adopt it; but I don’t see why ungrammatical or
vulgar phrases should be lugged in. I don’t want to be reminded of the
Bowery3 when reading about Confucius.4
Rome, Mar. 16, ’24 GSantayana
1
A book by Hartmann published in 1923.
2
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (1872–98) was an English black-and-white illustrator and
writer who was art editor of the Yellow Book (1894–96). He is known for his erotic draw-
ings and his connection with the decadents of the 1890s.
3
The Bowery is a section and street of lower Manhattan in New York City. By the
1860s it had many fine theaters; later it became notorious for saloons and dance halls,
and eventually for derelicts.
4
Confucius (551–479 B.C.), a Chinese ethical teacher who urged social reform,
encouraged a system of morality and statecraft to bring about peace, justice, and uni-
versal order.

To Charles Augustus Strong

26 March 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Bristol Rome

March 26 1924
Dear Strong
I didn’t answer your long philosophical epistle because although there
were perhaps some new minor points in it, the position seemed unchanged
as a whole, and I could have said only old irritating things if I had
attempted to traverse your various statements. It is much better that we
should drop this subject. When your joint book is out I shall have time to
3:194 The Letters of George Santayana

study it and try to profit by it, before my own is published; so that it will
not be too late to convert me, if that is your intention.
It is still cool and cloudy here and I hate the thought of moving for the
present. I have got back to the big book, and also have been doing bits of
the novel at odd moments—at table, or in the Pincio. I don’t feel like inter-
rupting this favourable spell: although perhaps if the Chetwynds turn up,
and Hamilton Potter whom I am also expecting, the literary current may
be turned off, and I may feel more willing to interrupt everything. But in
any case I see no object in going for a week to Fiesole. You had better go
at your own convenience: Margaret I suppose will return to Paris before
the end of April, and I think I should in any case not stay in the apartment,
because you are full of this problem of re-stating your theory, and I am full
of quite different matters, and we should only tire one another to no pur-
pose: and even if we forced ourselves not to revert to the old, old discus-
sion, there would always be an unpleasant strain in not reverting to it. In
fact, considering that Drake is coming to Paris later, it has occurred to me
that I might stay in Italy all summer, going to Venice, and then to the
Dolomites and the Lakes (I have never been in either place) and I could
join you in Fiesole, for a long stay, when you returned. This is no fixed
plan, but only a notion, and I should like to hear what you think of it.
Perhaps, if I had another six months of straight quiet work, I might do
wonders both with the Realms and the novel. The Dialogues I regard as
finished, although there may be a second set eventually.
I am glad Margaret is going to Madrid and hope [across] her impressions
of Cosas de España1 will be agreeable. Yours ever G. S.
1
Spanish things. Several books have this title, including Cosas de España (1905) by
Prosper Mérimée.

To Frederick J. E. Woodbridge or Wendell T. Bush

3 April 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS: Columbia)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Rome, April 3, 1924
Dear Mr Woodbridge or Mr Bush
May I count on your indulgence in printing this long article, although
it repeats what was printed in the Journal years ago?1 It is, however, very
 1921–1927 3:195

much developed, and I suspect most of your present readers have never
read, and would never be likely to read, the old article.
The marginal summary, I think, is of some value; but it is not essential
in an article, and may be left out. Or you might introduce it in the form of
a first sentence, in italics, at the opening of the paragraph in which it fig-
ures.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
The article is “Some Meanings of the Word ‘Is’,” Philosophy 21 (3 July 1924): 365–77.
The earlier version appeared in the 4 February 1915 issue, 66–68.

To Charles Augustus Strong

18 April 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

April 18, 1924.
Dear Strong
Your plan is excellent and I am very glad you have made up your mind
to take Aldo and the car to Paris. It will make all the difference in your
comfort and freedom there. As for me, though I recognize that the trip to
Paris would have great advantages, I think I had better stick to my idea of
going to Venice for as long a stay—a mere continuation of my routine here—
as the weather and other circumstances will permit; whether I shall then
go to the Tyrol or the Lakes, or to Paris, can be decided when the moment
arrives. I have not been working so hard as to need a holiday, and the
excitements of a motor trip and of a series of different inns would be more
an interruption than a rest for me in my present mood. On the other hand,
for you all that will be a pleasant stimulus: and in Paris, with the car, you
will not be so confined and will not miss a companion. So that I think you
had better not count on me. If I should go to Paris in mid-summer, and
you were returning in the same way to Italy in October, it might be a bet-
ter moment for me to join you and enjoy the journey.
The Chetwynds have turned up, but all is not plain sailing with a fam-
ily of children. The mother is all anxiety and all interruptions; Randolph
has become a superior person and turns up his nose at every thing not
according to his set views; and now Joan, the youngest, is in bed with a
fever and rash, and they are somewhat alarmed.
3:196 The Letters of George Santayana

It is a relief to hear that the last page of my “Preface” pleases you,

because I had some qualms about it. It came to me all at once, like a poem,
and afterwards I was not sure that it was intelligible or that I quite under-
stood it myself. Your approval confirms me in the feeling that it had better
stand as it is, without being tampered with in cold blood and perhaps
spoilt.
I have sent Chapter I, on “Some Meanings of the Word Is” to the
Columbia Journal, in which the old article under that title appeared origi-
nally. Several chapters following are entirely finished, and I see the top of
the hill in front of me—I mean the completion of the part on “The Realm
of Essence”. The other three parts, I think, will take shape more readily.
I have received a book on Causation by Ducasse1 of Seattle in which he
shows convincingly that causation is not a matter of laws but of substantial
derivation of particular from particular. I have [across] always believed that,
without expressing it clearly. I put it, by the way, in my own words, not in
his!
Yours ever GSantayana
1
Curt John Ducasse (1881–1969) attended Washington University (B.A., 1908) and
Harvard (M.A., 1909; Ph.D., 1912). He wrote Causation and the Types of Necessity (Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 1924). Though Ducasse took no courses with him,
Santayana conducted his doctoral oral exam in metaphysics.

To Curt John Ducasse

19 April 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS: Brown)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Rome, April 19, 1924
r
Dear M Ducasse
It is no ordinary note of thanks that I owe you for your book on
“Causation”, because at an age when one has abandoned the hope of
learning anything new, you have really taught me something which I hope
to keep by me and to incorporate into my philosophy—namely, that cau-
sation is not a law but an observable derivation of fact from fact in partic-
ular instances. In one sense, like Columbus’ egg,1 this is not new to me;
and you say Mercier and Joseph2 have pointed it out; but though I have
seen both gentlemen (and they are very different) I have not studied their
writings, and it is not probable that I ever shall. In fact, something of the
 1921–1927 3:197

sort is said or hinted, by the way, in my “Scepticism and Animal Faith”;

but I can’t give you a reference, as I have no books here. If I remember, I
say there that when not an arbitrary assignment of magic influence, cause
is “the principle of generation in nature”; but this phrase (if it is this phrase)
is loose and ambiguous. I meant, however, that the birth of thing from
thing is causation—which is what you, in your clearer and more explicit
language, now confirm me in believing.
Heartily as I agree with your main thesis, I had a feeling that perhaps
you were not in dramatic sympathy with Hume3 and Mill4 in their analy-
sis, and avoided the issue that was uppermost in their minds. Even at the
end, when you enumerate the senses in which one may ask “why” effect
follows on cause, you do not mention what I suspect was their problem,
namely, what internal relevance there was between cause and effect, to be
the reason for their sequence. People expect to have an insight into this
connexion, such as they have in action, or in an answer to prayer, or obe-
dience to an order given, or the execution of a plan. In such cases an image
of the consequent is a part of the antecedent, and seems to announce and
usher it in; in deduction also the consequence follows because it is con-
tained in the premises. On this ground too identity of substance binds the
material and the product in nature more closely together than if they were
unsubstantial disjointed perceptions. The change of forms remains unex-
plained, which you rightly say is all that requires a cause; yet the continu-
ity of substance, which needs no explanations, partly reconciles the
observer to that change (which it also keeps within limits) and so gives him
a feeling that causation is intelligible, or ought to be so, beneath its actual
working. People, in a word, desiderate a dialectical or moral unity in nat-
ural sequences, and it was the absence of this —— dise
——desideratum the Hume
and Mill pointed out.
There is a point at the end, in respect to the nature of philosophy, which
I am not sure I understand. Is it a mere valuation on the part of the ideal-
ist that makes it “true” that the model of nature is within his mind, not his
mind an item in the world of nature? Can the opposite valuation on the
part of the materialist render the opposite equally “true”? And is the “lib-
eralistic” view that both are true, or that neither is? And if the latter, what
is the “true” liberalistic relation of mind to matter? I am puzzled by the
(very prevalent) habit of calling truth a value. There may be a value in dis-
covering the truth, or some part of it: but what I understand by the truth
(and I think I am following your maxim in this and sticking to current
3:198 The Letters of George Santayana

usage) is something waiting to be recognized and perhaps valued, but not

ambiguous or variable with human interest in it. Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Columbus’s egg refers to an easy task once one knows the trick. Christopher
Columbus (c. 1451–1506), in reply to a suggestion that others would have discovered
the New World had he not done so, is said to have challenged the guests at a banquet
in his honor to make an egg stand on end. All having failed, he flattened one end of
the egg by tapping it against the table so that it stood up, thus indicating that others
might follow, but that he had discovered the way.
2
Désiré Joseph Mercier (1851–1926) was a Thomist philosopher and Roman Catholic
cardinal. Joseph is unidentified.
3
David Hume (1711–76) was an influential Scottish philosopher whose works include
Treatise of Human Nature, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, and An Enquiry
Concerning Human Understanding. An empiricist influenced by Newton, Hume wanted
to apply the experiential method to the principles of human mind to develop a science
of human nature. He thought only naturalism could avoid the skeptic’s argument.
4
John Stuart Mill (1806–73), an English philosopher and economist who formed the
Unitarian Society, was a member of Parliament who advocated women’s suffrage.
System of Logic (1843) established his philosophical reputation. Utilitarianism (1863)
expounds his alterations to Benthamism and includes his distinctions among types of
pleasure. Mill followed in the empiricist tradition but avoided the skepticism of Hume
and the theology of Berkeley by positing a theory about how knowledge of the exter-
nal world is generated. This led him to conclude that matter is nothing more than a
permanent possibility of sensation.

To Elizabeth Stephens Fish Potter

22 April 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Rome, April 22, 1924
rs
Dear M Potter
It is some time now since Hamilton came and went and you have prob-
ably heard from him something about our interveiws. I felt, as in the case
of Warwick last year, that I had known him all my life, and he is, if any-
thing, even easier to accept familiarly, as someone who of course has
always been there. I had expected more of a gilded youth, the glass of fash-
ion and the mould of form; and when I told him so, and said I was going
to write to you in those terms, he naturally laughed, and said he really
had—in his youth—taken great pains about his clothes, and still wore some
of his father’s waistcoats. But of course I had other things than clothes in
 1921–1927 3:199

mind; but I often find that people don’t quite understand my rhetoric, and
I don’t find it easy to convey what I feel otherwise than through those fig-
ures of speech. It was the same again with Warwick: for children of yours
and of Bob’s both the boys are more unpretending, more like the standard
young man, than seems natural; but it is due, I suppose, to the pressure of
democracy and the vast unison of American life; nor is there anything to
regret in it, when the prevalent type takes on so much sweetness and
charm as it does in them. Toward the end, I did catch in Hamilton some
slight echoes of the paternal manner, and even the waistcoats, when
minutely scanned, did turn out to be of a superior and rare quality: but evi-
dently the soft pedal has to be put on when any passage, nowadays, is in
danger of seeming florid. Perhaps the next generation, after socialism and
industrialism have petered out, may see a new crop of exquisite aesthetes
and incroyables.1
Hamilton treated me very affectionately and made me forget my years,
or what is better still, made me glad to have them as an asset, which after
all they are if one is willing to play with them.
I am thinking of staying in Italy this summer, as Strong is to have his
motor car and another philosophical friend2 in Paris, and won’t miss me,
while I am in the midst of a long pull at my opus magnum which I hope
may bring it to completion, so that I should like to continue the routine of
my life here, which agrees with me very well. My idea is to go to Venice
first (where I have not been since we were there together at the Casa
Frollo) and then to Cortina d’Ampezzo, and possibly to the Lakes, return-
ing here for the winter.
[across] I wish there was some chance of seeing you, but I see you are obdu-
rate. Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
French dandies.
2
Durant Drake.
3:200 The Letters of George Santayana

To Ferris Greenslet
26 April 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London.
Rome, April 26, 1924
Dear Mr Greenslet1
Of course it will be a satisfaction to me that you should include the
verses you mention in your anthology,2 and I am glad that Mrs Richards
has found something to her purpose in my book. I don’t know whether it
would interest her to know that these lines were written at Gibraltar in
1887.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Ferris Greenslet (1875–1959) was an editor for the Houghton Mifflin Company.
2
The Magic Carpet: Poems for Travellers, selected by Mrs. Waldo Richards (Gertrude Moore
Richards, d. 1927) was published in Boston in 1924. Santayana’s Ode V is included,
subtitled here “The Mediterranean.” This was published in Sonnets, in Poems, and in
Complete Poems, 144–46.

To George Sturgis
26 April 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

April 26, 1924
Dear George
Would you mind paying the enclosed bill, as I can’t do so very well
directly!
The plan I had in mind when I last wrote has matured and I have prac-
tically decided to remain this summer in Italy, going in a few weeks to
Venice, then to Cortina d’Ampezzo in the Tyrol (now Italian territory) and
perhaps later to the Italian lakes, returning here again, if all goes well, for
the next winter. I have been well and comfortable in this hotel, and I think
in my present mood, and while work is uppermost in my mind, I can
hardly do better than to return here.
My friend Strong will not miss me in Paris, as he too is busy and is going
to have another philosophical friend, Professor Drake of Vassar, with him
 1921–1927 3:201

for a part of the summer. They are thinking of writing a book together
which will at last solve the riddle of the universe. He is also going to take
his Italian motor-car and chauffeur1 with him to Paris—a thing he has never
done before for some unaccountable reason—and that too will contribute
to give him a more varied round of occupations, as he can go on excur-
sions and take his friends out for an airing in the Bois de Boulogne or
beyond. You know he is partly paralysed, so that walking more than a few
yards is impossible for him.
Josephine sent me a book about Arthur2 which I liked very much. I am
glad she and her little boy are doing so well under the circumstances. Your
star seems to be luckier in every respect, and I have no doubt you are mak-
ing the most of the sunshine. America is now so obviously at the top of the
tree, so far at least as prosperity goes, that you must all feel more than ever
that it is the land of opportunity. Here too life seems pretty decent, and
there are immense compensations for the comparatively small scale of
business in the old world.
You had better address me C/o B. S. & Co as I don’t know what hotels
I shall be at, or for how long. Yours affty
GSantayana
1
Aldo.
2
No book about Eldredge could be located.

To George Sturgis
13 May 1924 • Venice, Italy (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Venice, May 13, 1924
Dear George
Thank you for your letter of April 28 with its enclosures.
I am answering Scofield Thayer’s inquiries. I hardly think my autobiog-
raphy would be interesting, as there have been no events in my life and I
have known few distinguished people. My novel will contain most of my
observations on human nature, freed from personalities; and besides I am
writing something which I call “Persons and Places”1 in which I mean to
give some account, historically accurate but selective, of some scenes and
characters that have remained in my memory.
3:202 The Letters of George Santayana

I tremble to think what nonsense Miss Munsterberg2 may be writing

about me and my father and mother: and Thayer will not be much nearer
the mark. Perhaps I will after all follow your suggestion in composing if not
an autobiography, at least a chronology of my life, with a few notes about
the leading facts, so as to correct the inventions that may see the light in
the impertinent press. I foresee that when I die there will be a crop of sto-
ries, most of them sentimentally benevolent and reminiscent, and some a
little spiteful, about my supposed life and character: and although all this
will blow over in a few weeks, it may be as well that there should be an
authora/itative document to which anyone may appeal who may be really
interested in the facts. If I write such a chronology I will send you a copy,
because (as this incident shows) you too are not very well informed about
this branch of our family history.
I came to Venice from Rome about a week ago, accompanied by two
of the Chetwynd children, a boy of eighteen and a girl of sixteen.3 Their
mother, formerly Augusta Robinson of New York, and sister of a great
friend of mine, was detained in Rome by the illness of another child, and
was glad to have me take charge of the two elder ones, so that they might
not miss seeing Venice. It is rather a curious experience to stand in this way
in loco parentis to two young persons, and I find it pleasant enough, espe-
cially as they look after me much more than I look after them: but I shall
not be sorry when, in two or three days, I regain my usual bachelor soli-
tude.
I had not been in Venice for twenty five years, and find it charming and
very cool. [across] I expect to remain for a month or two.
Yours affectionately GSantayana
[across page one] P.S. Will you please send $25 in my name to the Hasty
Pudding Club building fund.4 I see no further address given, but I suppose
there is a treasurer.
1
Published by Scribner’s and Constable in 1944.
2
Margarete Münsterberg published three articles on Santayana: “Santayana,” The
Nation 109 (5 July 1919): 12–13; “Santayana at Cambridge,” American Mercury 1 (1924):
69–74; and “Santayana and His Pilgrim’s Progress” (a review of Puritan), American
Mercury 38 (May 1936): 115–20. Her biography of her father, Hugo Münsterberg, His Life
and Work (New York and London: D. Appleton and Co., 1922), contains comments on
Santayana and descriptions of his Harvard career.
3
Philip Jr. and Betty.
4
Founded in 1795, the Hasty Pudding (a Harvard social club housed in Stoughton
Hall) held its first theatricals in 1844. Santayana portrayed a female ballet dancer in an
1886 production.
 1921–1927 3:203

To Charles Augustus Strong

16 May 1924 • Venice, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Venice, May 16, 1924

Hotel Bauer-Grünwald
Dear Strong
I came here ten days ago—sooner than I expected—and under strange
though (as it has turned out) very pleasant circumstances. Until this morn-
ing I have been accompanied by two of the Chetwynds, Philip and Betty,
aged respectively eighteen and sixteen. Randolph had gone back to
Oxford and Joan, the youngest, was in a private hospital with scarlet fever,
and as I saw that the others were much disappointed at having to stay in
Rome and miss their intended tour, I suggested that they might come with
me to Venice. They and their mother jumped at the idea, and there was
nothing left for me but to carry it out. I have had a nice time, keeping in
my room as usual in the morning, and sometimes leaving them to do their
sight-seeing alone in the afternoon as well: but we had our meals together,
and spent the evenings in the piazza or in a gondola or in talk. They are
very nice children—Betty quiet and Philip lively, and they have very nice
manners and have behaved very well. The only unpleasant part was hav-
ing to dine in this German hotel in a hot room on not very good fare: but
that is now over, and I have made an arrangement by which I can have
both my meals out, and have already begun to make trial of the Venetian
restaurants, which seem to promise well. I have a curious little room on the
ground floor, looking out on the terrace and the Grand Canal, where in
spite of some passing and voices in the morning, I enjoy great inner pri-
vacy, and find I am able to work well.
Venice is lovely, but warm and suggestive of swells: I don’t know how
long I shall like to stay, but there is no need of deciding until the time
comes. For the present I am quite happy.
I hope your trip was not fatiguing and that Aldo will make himself over
into an expert Parisian and enable you to spend your afternoons pleasantly
and with more freedom than in other years. Don’t hesitate to ask Drake to
the apartment if you would like to have him there. If I come to Paris later,
I should in [across] any case prefer to go to a hotel, as during the last two
summers. What of Margaret?
Yours ever G. Santayana
3:204 The Letters of George Santayana

To Susan Sturgis de Sastre

17 May 1924 • Venice, Italy (MS postcard: Sanchez Sastre)

VENEZIA—
CANAL GRANDE PRESO DAL PALAZZO DON CARLOS CON LA CHIESA DELLA
SALUTE
Hotel Bauer-Grünwald,
Venice, May 17, 1924.
I came here ten days ago with some friends (who have now left) and am
comfortably settled for as long a time as the weather may remain agree-
able and work may be possible. Venice is extremely attractive and I have
a hermit’s cell overlooking the Grand Canal, but quiet internally. Love
to all from Jorge

To Charles Augustus Strong

22 May 1924 • Venice, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Bauer-Grüenwald
Venice May 22, 1924
Dear Strong
Margaret’s letter (which I return)1 is just what I should have expected of
her visit to Madrid under such auspices: she has got an impression of the
outsides of the top.
You will soon reconcile yourself to the universal light gray of the apart-
ment, and it must be nice to see it all so clean. But have the telephone and
the chauffage central2 been smuggled in also?
The Germans are certainly numerous here, and as this hotel is their
own, one who comes to it can hardly complain of their presence. I looked
everywhere, when the Chetwynds left, for a better place, but could find
nothing: the rooms are well kept, the first breakfast is appetizing (with
Vienna rolls) and I take my other meals out, so that the Teutonic invasion
does not annoy me. In the late afternoon I explore “Venice on foot,”
guided by a book with that title3 which I got in Rome and which I have cut
up into sections (each with its own map) which go conveniently into the
pocket. I have also found a very pleasant modest restaurant, where I eat at
a little table with a shaded lamp close to the street-door (which is wide
open) and where there are only Italians and an occasional elderly British
 1921–1927 3:205

pair who have come on their travels after the marriage of their last daugh-
ter. It is warm, but as yet quite tolerable, and the evening in the Piazza is
a great sight.
I am making progress in the Book, though as yet there is no sensational
result to announce. I have nothing to read for the moment, but don’t mind
so much as there is so much to look at, and I go to bed (by the lights in the
terrace outside) as soon as I get back in the evening from a stroll by the
sea-front, the Piazza, and the cafés. When I am ready to go to Cortina I
will order some books to be sent there from Oxford as there I shall not be
able to lead the life of a flâneur and a boulevardier4
If Cortina turns out to be a failure, you will see me in Paris, but let me
repeat that you mustn’t abstain from giving my room to Drake or to any-
one else who may turn up, as I should go in any case to a hotel. Yours ever
GSantayana
1
Unlocated.
2
Central heating (French).
3
Venice on Foot, with the Itinerary of the Grand Canal and Several Direct Routes to Useful
Places was written by Hugh A. Douglas.
4
Saunterer and a frequenter of the boulevards (French).

To Charles Augustus Strong

4 June 1924 • Venice, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Bauer Grünwald

Venice, June 4, 1924
Dear Strong
I am sending you a play by Giordano Bruno,1 although it is indecent in
parts, so that you may read at least the last scene. Manfurio is better than
anything in the Mariage Forcé.2
I am having an enchanted floating existence here (not that I ever take a
gondola) and wish it could last for ever. Venice is more excite/ ingly beauti-
ful than anything I have ever seen—and I had been here twice before with-
out seeing it! The weather has threatened twice to become oppressive, and
then has relented. I have found a second nice restaurant—out in the mid-
dle of a little piazza in front of the Teatro Fenice,3 where I now go to dine,
surrounded by towering old walls and a deep saphire sky. Nevertheless, I
have written to have my letters sent to the Hotel Cristallo, Cortina
d’Ampezzo, as at any moment I may be driven away by heat.
3:206 The Letters of George Santayana

Work continues lazily.

Yours ever
G.S.
1
Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) was an Italian philosopher. After studying at the uni-
versity of Naples and entering the Dominican order, he renounced his vows and fled
from his native land in 1576 to begin his career as a teacher of controversial philo-
sophical subjects.
2
Le Mariage Forcé by Molière (1664). Molière, pen name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin
(1622–73), was a French comic dramatist.
3
Teatro la Fenice is an opera house.

To Curt John Ducasse

28 June 1924 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Brown)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Cortina, June 28, 1924
r
Dear M Ducasse
I have not yet thanked you for your article in defence of “Ontological
Liberalism”, with which I entirely agree (save perhaps at one point, about
which a word presently) and which interests me particularly now that I am
at work on “Realms of Being”. Your analysis of the problem, exhibition of
the verbal character of it, and of the eulogistic meaning of “reality”, seem
to me all admirably true and clear. But now as to the point of possible
divergence.
If “real” is a eulogistic term relative to private interests, it should be left
(shouldn’t it?) to the tender mercies of poets and newspapers, and when
we use it in our speculations it should be in our concomitant capacity of
human babblers, without giving it any importance, except rhetorically.
As you probably know, or will when you read my first chapter of
“Realms of Being” in the “Journal”, I am in the habit of using the word
“existence” instead of “reality” (because the “non-existence / t indif-
–––t” is non
ferent to me) for a presumptive sphere, defined by me as that in which
beings have external and variable relations, or in other words, as contin-
gent and in flux. Being defined in this way, the existent is or includes all
^ ^
that is dynamic, and therefore all that interests practical people in their
transitive thoughts; and it includes all action, movement, and conduct. It
might be called Americanly real. But (as you show) it need not be real for
the oyster, the poet, or the mystic. Now, is it or is it not incompatible with
 1921–1927 3:207

“Ontological Liberalism” to confine the word “existence” to this dynamic

realm, to nature? Is this contrary to good English usage? And if so, is not
some name of the kind to be given to a sphere which, in one sense, forces
the recognition of its emphatic reality and arbitrary limits upon everybody,
since it conditions the existence even of his most rapt contemplation or
most passive pleasures?
Yours sincerely
GSantayana

To George Sturgis
29 June 1924 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Hotel Cristallo
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.
June 29, 1924
Dear George
Will you kindly send a cheque for $100 in my name to the insatiable
people whose circular is enclosed?1
After two weeks I find Cortina very congenial. There is much cloud,
rain, and thunder, but beautiful clear intervals “coolth” (as a poetic friend2
of mine calls it) and material comfort. The village school-master, a Sicilian
about thirty years of age, bursting in his skin, is giving me Italian lessons,
and as he knows no other language, not even Latin, I am at least obliged
to practice conversation, and he is a jolly creature, and keeps me from
being entirely — a————
lone solitary, because I leave the old English ladies,
Argentine tourists madly motoring, and misguided American females
severely alone. I expect now to stay here all summer, and hope to accom-
plish great things in the way of literary labour, perhaps to finish the first
part3 of my “big book” and the novel!
Yours affectionately
GSantayana
1
Unlocated.
2
Probably Joseph Trumbull Stickney (1874–1904). After his graduation from Harvard
in 1895, he studied for seven years at the Sorbonne and was the first American to
receive its degree of Docteur ès lettres. He was appointed instructor in Greek at Harvard
(1903–1904). A poet, he is best known for his Dramatic Verses (1902).
3
Essence.
3:208 The Letters of George Santayana

To Charles Augustus Strong

16 July 1924 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Cristallo, Cortina

July 16, 1924
Dear Strong
I am glad to hear such good news from you in every way, and the fact
that Drake is writing the book1 on his own responsibility is fortunate for
you, as it saves you no end of anxiety, and leaves you free to sum up your
views and dot his i’s and cross his t’s (if you feel so disposed) in a subse-
quent book or paper of your own. I have no doubt that his book will play
a valuable part in the contemporary American movement, but it may not
absolutely settle everything for ever. Movements are all like that of the
Earth: e pur s/ei muove.2
My own work is going on slowly but steadily; I have a chapter on
“Essence & Feeling” which might, if you saw it, spoil the article you say
you have in mind about Essence and Intuition in my phi/slosophy. I will
therefore not send it to you, especially as you don’t like to read advanced
sheets.
The weather here has become delightful, and the place is filling up with
Italian and other trippers and tourists; but I am quite comfortable and sat-
isfied to stick it out until the middle of September, when I understand
things come to an end here—until the winter season. The valley is really
most wonderfully beautiful, varied, and sublime: there are moments, espe-
cially in the evening, when only poetry could do it justice. Materially, too,
it is a nice place: healthy, sturdy, prosperous peasants, pleasing houses,
good first-class family fare at the hotel, great cleanliness, and sufficient
quiet for work. I am not altogether alone, either, because I am taking a
daily lesson in Italian from the village schoolmaster, a fat youngish Sicilian
whose Christian name is Rosario (a woman’s name in Spanish) for whom
I write an exercise and with whom I have an hour’s conversation, neces-
sarily in Italian, since he doesn’t know a word of anything else, not even
Latin. I talk to him about the most advanced subjects, as best I can,
because his own lights and subjects are naturally rather limited; and
though I feel that I am too old to learn anything new, I daresay at the end
of the summer I shall have acquired a little more ease in the language.
I had asked Onderdonk to come from Vienna to make me a visit, but
he says he is tired of mountains, and wants to come to some big town when
 1921–1927 3:209

I leave this place: so that I expect he will join me in September or [across]

October. I am thinking of going through Trent and Verona to Bologna and
Florence and (if it is still hot there) to Siena, where I haven’t been for an
age.
Yours ever G.S.
[across page one ] P.S. I wonder if you could send me my old Baedeker
for “Italy from the Alps to Naples”.3 I believe I have one in our common
collection. Also [across page one text] please give Drake my regards, and a
copy of “Scepticism” (if he wants it).
1
The Mind and Its Place in Nature (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1925).
2
And yet it moves (Italian). A reference to Gallileo’s defence of the theory that the
earth revolves around the sun.
3
Karl Baedeker (1801–59), a German publisher and founder of Baedeker guidebooks,
published Italy from the Alps to Naples: Handbook for Travellers (New York: Leipsic, 1904).

To Constable and Co. Ltd.

26 July 1924 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Temple)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Cortina, July 26, 1924
Dear Sirs,
Whenever anyone asks for permission to quote from any of my books,
you may assume that you have my consent. It is for you to decide whether
the quotation amounts to an infringement of copyright: although I should
think, in most cases, citation of extracts would be a valuable advertise-
ment, and that it would be in your interest to agree to it; unless, indeed,
you find that the more an author is quoted, the less anyone will wish to buy
his books.
Yours faithfully
GSantayana
To Messr Constable & Co
3:210 The Letters of George Santayana

To George Sturgis
29 July 1924 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Cortina d’Ampezzo
July 29, 1924
Dear George
Following a suggestion of yours I have begun to write an
Autobiography, and almost at the beginning I feel the need of a document
which you may possibly have seen among your father’s papers. It is a tes-
timonial of friendship and admiration presented to your great grandfather
José Borrás by the citizens of Winchester, Virginia, in 1832 or there-
abouts.1 If I remember it was rather yellow and torn, and you had better
not send it to me; but its phraseology is quaint and old-fashioned, and if
you have it at hand and could have it copied, I should be much obliged.
This residence of José Borrás in Virginia was the source of my whole con-
nection with America, the English language, and the Sturgis family:
because the reason my mother married your grandfather George Sturgis
of Manila was that she spoke English and had sympathetic feelings
towards America, where she lived in her early childhood: and the rest all
follows from that marriage.
I am staying on here, surrounded by rugged Alps, because I find I am
comfortable and can work easily. The first part (there are to be four in all)
of my “big book” is finished, and I believe the rest will be easier to put in
shape. It rains a great deal and though the sun is hot at midday (when it
shines) cool if not cold weather soon comes on, and the nights are always
fresh. It is a most beautiful valley, and in my walks I sometimes feel a won-
derful elation, as if I were a real poet and lover of nature, which I have
always believed I was not. Yours affty
G. S.
1
An 1835 document signed by President Andrew Jackson appoints Borrás American
consul at Barcelona. See Persons, 7–8.
 1921–1927 3:211

To Charles Augustus Strong

3 August 1924 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Cristallo, Cortina

August 3, 1924
Dear Strong
Since I last wrote we have had some Summer days: now it is raining
again and chilly, but I think I can manage to stay on certainly until
September 1st and perhaps longer. Although not always comfortable, the
season has been good for me for work. I don’t think I shall go to meet you
in Genoa: I would rather go to Verona and Bologna, or even back to
Venice, if I can’t stay here. I shall be glad to join you at the villa a few days
after your own arrival. I shall be almost without clothes, and shall have to
have them made at once in Florence. Pinsent said there was a good tailor.
By the way, I suppose, as you travel by motor, you will send your trunk
separately by rail, and it occurs to me that perhaps it might not be too
much trouble for you to send on to Florence with yours, a bag of mine,
^ ^
a large kit-bag, the one I left at the apartment when I returned from
England last year. It is locked and full of clothes. If the key is necesary to
open it at the frontier, I think Marie would be able to find it among a
bunch of small keys which I believe are in the red pocket of another half-
empty Gladstone bag in the trunk room. It is a small long key with three
little prongs. If you don’t find it, I could send you the one I have. Or could
the examination be made in Florence?
It is a compliment that they should have discussed essences in England
at all, and of course they would ridicule the whole idea, because if enter-
tained it would destroy their whole philosophy, which consists in believ-
ing that appearances are substances. As to Broad in particular, since I saw
him I have lost all interest in anything he may think. I am a little puzzled,
however, when you say “you are not sure about essences in perception”. I
suppose essences must be there; what is perceived must have some char-
acter: but perhaps you mean that you are not sure that the datum is not
more than an essence, that it is not a thing having that essence. If you take
this line you merely return to the traditional English view which conceives
that experience, perception, or sensation is a fact conscious of its own
^ ^
nature and existence: and neo-Realism only changes that view by not call-
ing those facts perceptions. Of course I am in an entirely different camp:
and it is the idealists, rather, who will agree with me at this point: my quar-
3:212 The Letters of George Santayana

rel with them is in cosmology, not in the analysis of experience. I believe

in what they regard as fictions: but I agree that they are fictions in their
^ ^
own persons; fiction or myth being the only possible knowledge of fact.
Yours ever
G.S.

To Robert Seymour Bridges

15 August 1924 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Bodleian)

Cortina d’Ampezzo
August 15, 1924
My dear Bridges
Little do Brown Shipley & Co imagine that they are an impediment to
communication, but that is because they do not expect to have poets for
clients. They think on the contrary that it is a blessing for correspondents
not to have to think where their wandering friends may be at the moment,
but need only send a line to Pall Mall, and it will reach them at the farthest
limits of the earth or in the most remote and obscure hiding-place.
However, if the thought of this intermediary, like a central telephone
office, puts your friendly impulse in an unpleasant suspense, you may
always imagine that I am in Avila—that is an address easily remembered
and quite sufficient, as every foreign letter that comes to the place is taken
to my sister’s house. In fact, I am hardly ever there, as both the climate and
the family [‘X’ in margin] life which I am constrained to lead are rather
^ ^
trying. My other permanent address is 9, Avenue de l’Observatoire in
Paris: but this is harder to remember exactly, and as I am not there except
at rare intervals, a letter might be lost. I am glad that, in spite of the dis-
concerting medium, you wrote to Brown Shipley & Co, for here is your
very kind letter, safely in my hands without undue delay. This safe arrival
of letters committed to a letter-box has always been a source of a mystic
wonder to me: although I profess to be a materialist, it is hard for me to
preserve a “realizing sense” of the material world and all its mechanical
connexions: it seems a strange tale.
Your boldness in going to America at all rather astonished me, but once
having taken the plunge I can well imagine that you found it tolerable, and
even appealing to that vague tenderness for mankind which I suppose is
in all our hearts. Often, in these hotels in which I live, I am annoyed at the
American parties that loudly take possession of the next table, and deluge
 1921–1927 3:213

me with commonplaces and bad slow jokes, and then, if something obliges
me to “make their acquaintance” and, as it were, to become one of their
party, I immediately lose all consciousness of their trying tones and senti-
ments, and am entirely absorbed by a sort of contagious kindness and
hearty simplicity which reigns among them. I am glad to know that you
and Mrs Bridges have not only survived the ordeal, but profited by it in
health and energy. How nice and quiet Chiswell must seem!
You speak of my “desertion of England.” I don’t feel that I have
deserted: I have got my discharge. There is no place I should rather spend
the rest of my life in, if my free inclination were omnipotent: but I should
have to make myself younger, less sensitive to chill and damp, less disin-
clined to travel (because I shouldn’t like to give up my other haunts, Avila,
Rome, Paris) and able to find a place, simple but comfortable enough, in
which I could work without interruption. When I was in England last year
I was not well and not comfortable. Possibly it was for this [‘X’ in margin]
reason that I felt that everything was somewhat changed, materially and
^ ^
morally: less peace, less deference, less facility in obtaining services or
small comforts. It was very like America. If I lived in England now I fear
I should feel that sort of pressure which drove me away from America—
that same difficulty in escaping and being at peace. The resource of living
quite in the country is not open to me, unless I took a house and servants,
which of itself would be perdition. Of course, I hope soon to return to
Oxford, but in the summer, and when I have no definite work in hand. At
present I am deep in “Realms of Being”: but even under the most
favourable circumstances, it is hard to remain faithful to such a task, and
last winter in Rome, for instance, I turned to quite another project, and
wrote some “Dialogues in Limbo”, which will probably see the light before
the other book is finished.
I think I have heard of Mencken, but who is Owen Young?1 My
Americana are very ancient.
You don’t know how pleasant it is to hear a good word said of my chap-
ter on Royce.2 I did enjoy writing it, not only “maliciously” but also imag-
inatively, in trying to call up the complete figure and tragedy of such a
man, a patient voluminous straggling mind, with a sort of childish insis-
tence and stubbornness in fundamental matters—puzzled and muddled,
and yet good and wise. It is not a complete picture—I hadn’t the facts
before me and could not have made public use of them in any case: but I
think there is enough to sketch the personage in outline, and strike the
characteristic note. Of course, his friends and disciples were angry: it was
3:214 The Letters of George Santayana

so unlike an obituary notice. One (a pragmatist, I [‘X’ in margin] suppose)

said that my account would be true in twenty-five years, but was utterly
^ ^
false today.
Here there are so many English people that when I go to tea in “The
English Tearooms”, I might almost be at the “George”. I peeped in there
when I was last at Oxford, but found it so disgustingly changed that I
immediately went out again. Cortina is a good place for the pedestrian, I
don’t mean only for the Alpine adventurer, but for the peripatetic philoso-
pher; clouds and frequent rain keep the summer cool—almost too cool; and
the noisy Italians in the hotel do not seriously disturb me in my own cor-
ner. Besides, I like Italians.
Yours sincerely GSantayana
1
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956), was an American social, cultural, and political critic
and essayist (see letter of 12 August 1923). Owen Young (1874–1962) was an American
lawyer, industrialist, political advisor, and diplomat.
2
Character, chapter IV.

To Charles Augustus Strong

15 August 1924 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Cristallo Cortina

Aug. 15, 1924
Dear Strong
I am sending you (in a separate parcel) the key to my kit-bag, and am
^ ^
sorry to have given and to be giving /syou so much trouble. I thought I had
an extra key; and there is this circumstance, that even when unlocked the
bag sticks, and some force and patience are required to pull it open. This
is because it has been knocked out of shape in a previous journey. It is
old, and I don’t care in what condition it arrives, if the contents are not
lost. It contains my only whole pair of trousers, urgently needed for den-
cency’s sake until I can have clothes made. Also beautiful quasi-silk sky-
blue pyjamas.
I shall be glad to read your five type-written pages, although I foresee
that I shall find the same old difficulty in understanding your categories.
Perhaps Drake’s exposition may enable me to catch your point of view
from a new angle, and turn it more successfully into my own language.
The whole question is, I think, rather one of logic than of facts Of course,
essences are not facts at all: and I shouldn’t ask any one to put essences in
 1921–1927 3:215

that plane—that would be metaphysics—but at most to understand why, in

the presence of posited facts, I find it enlightening to distinguish the given
appearance from the presumptive reality.
I am now in the midst of the “realm of matter,” which I am treating very
sceptically and romantically indeed; nothing that the Einstein people can
object to, except a little “malicious” sympathy with their hypothesis.
The Dial has been very slow with my Dialogues. The second Avicenna
appears this month and they have two Socrates dialogues still to print. I am
not going to send them the others, but to get the book out—it is practically
ready—as soon as those two are in print.
It is cold here, but very exhilarating, and I hope to stay several weeks
longer.
Yours ever GSantayana

To Maurice Firuski
27 August 1924 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Unknown)

Cortina, Aug. 27, 1924

My dear Mr. Firuski
Will you please send me a copy of “Culture and Democracy in the
U.S.”, by Horace M. Kallen, Boni & Liveright?1 Perhaps you had better
register it, and send it directly to
Villa Le Balze
Fiesole, Florence, Italy
where I expect to be next month. Italian post-offices are a little careless
sometimes.
I have not heard from Mr. la Rose since I returned the sheets of
“Lucifer” some months ago. I hope they arrived safely.
Yours very truly
GSantayana
If you know of any books, such as Mr. Kallen’s that you think would give
me light on what is going on, spiritually I mean, in America, I should be
very glad if you would send them, or at least a notice of them, so that I
might order them, as I read no American papers (except the Dial!) and
might easily miss something of moment. I have Mr. Babbit’s diatribe
against democracy,2 which I largely agree with, and for that very reason
hardly need to read.
3:216 The Letters of George Santayana

1
Culture and Democracy in the United States (New York, 1924).
2
Irving Babbitt (1865–1933) was an American teacher, critic of romanticism, and
advocate of new humanism based on classical traditions. He wrote Democracy and
Leadership (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1924).

To George Sturgis
31 August 1924 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Cortina d’Ampezzo
August 31, 1924
Dear George
The fine photograph of Rosamond and the boys arrived on the day
after I had written to you, and I put off thanking you for it until the next
occasion for a letter. I am very glad to see how Rosamond really looks in
daily life: you are to be congratulated on having found a half—I won’t say
so much better than the other—but so fit, to make good any deficiencies
which your own half might have had, if it had had any. As to the boys, the
phases of life pass by very rapidly at that age, but they both have an air of
meaning to fight their way through the world, regardless of all obstacles,
and of being able to do so. Health and energy! Yes, but people in the
evening of life feel that there is a sort of danger in these privileges: so few
people with strength know how to use it in securing something worth hav-
ing, or in aiming at something attainable.
The document which you send me is very useful for my purpose: it set-
tles dates, and it suggests that your great grandfather, though appointed
American consul, had not become an American citizen (as I had sup-
posed) as he is described as “of Spain”, and nothing is said of his natural-
ization. This is a point of interest, as it relieves him of any reproach in
having afterwards taken office under the Spanish government.1 This doc-
ument, however, is not the one I had in mind: possibly my memory has
played pranks and there was no other; but in my mind’s eye I see a testi-
monial of good character, democratic virtue, and noble sentiments, given
(as I said) by his “affectionate fellow citizens”. It doesn’t matter; the smile
I had hoped to excite in the reader will be reserved for another occasion.
My “big book”, in one sense, has been complete for a long time, in as
much as the last page is in existence: but it is a mass of incongruous and
sometimes inconsistent stuff, and has to be revised and rearranged. It is
this revision that I am now at work on, and hope to finish within a year.
 1921–1927 3:217

Meantime, another book, “Dialogues in Limbo”, may appear: some of

them are coming out in The Dial.
It is now wintry here, but I am staying on, having a room with a
German “oven” in it, and finding the air bracing. Yours affly
GSantayana
1
Borrás was a Spanish subject. After a change in government occurred both in France
and in Spain, his friends obtained for him what promised to be a lucrative post in the
Philippine Islands. Despatches from Spain, sent after his departure, had reached
Manila before him; he learned that in Madrid there had been a change of ministers
and that the post promised to him had been given to someone else. The Captain
General of the Philippines found another post for Borrás, an absurdly modest one. He
was sent as governor to a small island–Batang–inhabited only by natives, and he died
shortly thereafter. See Persons, 30–35.

To Charles Augustus Strong

11 September 1924 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Cortina Sept. 11, 1924

Dear Strong
Since the first of September we have had a complete change of weather,
summer again after what seemed like winter. I have often thought of your
journey and rejoiced that it was favoured by such an unexpected turn in
the weather. I hadn’t supposed that you would reach Fiesole so soon, and
as Onderdonk is not coming (he has gone to America on business) I have
been staying on. Most of the people have left, but Cortina is at its best, and
I am in the midst of a chapter, so that I feel inclined to remain a few days
longer. I am writing to London to have my letters sent to the villa, and will
send you word, by letter or telegram, when I fix the day for starting. I
^ ^
suppose you are not expecting anyone else, so that a day sooner or later
will make no difference
How classical you have become! No wonder, with your residence in
Italy and your Latin reading. But aren’t you going rather far in condemn-
ing flying buttresses? No doubt the motive was only economy—economy
in carrying out an extravagant plan; and you may condemn this as not
worthy of Aristotle’s magn/ianimous man. But I have always believed that
the frankness of exhibiting such a device, and using it decoratively, had
been rewarded by the effect. Sometimes the light and shade play wonder-
fully among those buttresses, and the labyrinthine effect is in itself poeti-
cal. As to thin columns, I agree: I have never liked them. When poeple
3:218 The Letters of George Santayana

speak of “lightness” and “clarity of design” in Gothic churches, I feel that

they are picking out the faults: the true beauties are loftiness, intricacy,
mystery, and tenderness of detail, so that one lovely nook after another is
found nestling in the vast ill-defined whole. “Clarity” should go not with
“lightness” but with elegance and modesty on the human scale.
Yours ever
GSantayana

To John Boynton Priestley

15 September 1924 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Texas)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Sept. 15, 1924
J. B. Priestly, Esq1
Dear Sir,
Your book,2 which I have read entire, has given me rare pleasure, and
I admire the courage with which, in criticizing those of us who are still liv-
ing, you have faced the hard choice between truth and courtesy. Courtesy
has carried the day: not that everything you say is not, in detail, admirably
true, but that it is impossible to tell, or perhaps to find, the central truth
about a man without holding him at arm’s length, treating him as an insen-
sible object, and assuming the attitude, socially offensive, of a superior who
sees all things under the form of eternity. Your sympathy and comradeship
of mind forbid you to do that: and if thereby we escape, perhaps, ultimate
humiliation at your hands, we also fail to receive the crown that the gods
may have in store for us. For instance, in the case of A. E. Housman, it
seems to me that with all your wonderful sympathy and insight, you don’t
say the final, the unifying, word. I was panting for it, expecting it to come,
on page 83; but it isn’t there. Of course the “contradiction” you are there
considering is not a real one: what then is the secret of that double senti-
ment? Isn’t it hopeless love? I don’t mean love not returned, or cut off by
ill luck: I mean the lacrimae rerum,3 the hopelessness of loving anything,
because beautiful as it is, it exists, it is in flux, and we who love it are mor-
tal also: and the very pang that rises in joy and wonder dies in despair. I
cannot read Housman without tears, tears at the simplest things, rather
than at the gruesome touches here and there: it is not death that is piteous,
it is life. For that reason to love life and to love death are not contradictory.
 1921–1927 3:219

In the midst of the one we are in the other, and to love anything really is
to transpose it into the eternal world, into which we would gladly follow it.
I allow myself this sfogo4 (as the Italians here call it) because I wish to
indicate in this other instance the sort of limitation which I feel there is in
your account of myself—extraordinary/ ily generous and intelligent as it is.
You do not reach the centre, you do not discover the heart pumping —— the
—
through
——— ———— the blood through those devious veins and arteries. There is no
^ ^
contradiction in what you quote and comment on in p. 175. In recognizing
the equal legitimacy of every creature, with his innate ethics, I do not
renounce my own: the contradiction would come if, professing to admire
integrity in lions or barbarians, I allowed my own integrity to be polluted
or dissolved.
The same principle, applied more generally, is at the root of my
“detachment” and “condescension”. Rogers5 (whom you quote just before)
is perfectly right in attributing my “lack of influence” to these qualities; he
is considering (as the critic in the Times is too) my uselessness to contem-
porary professors. But that is not because my philosophy is in the air. My
philosophy is normal human orthodox philosophy, such as has come
down from the Indians through the Greeks, to Spinoza. It is simply not
Protestant philosophy. The problems of Protestant philosophy do not exist
for me: I regard them as products of a confusion of thought, of a heresy.
Catholic philosophy differs from the normal only in that it accepts sacred
history as well as natural history as the true account of the facts: but when
the facts are agreed upon, one way or another, philosophy has no real dif-
ficulty in discovering what to say. It has said everything essential already.
To invent a philosophy would be not to have understood.
Yours faithfully
GSantayana
1
John Boynton Priestley (1894–1984) was a British novelist, playwright, reviewer,
critic, and essayist. After infantry service during World War I, he took honors in
English literature, modern history, and political science at Trinity Hall, Cambridge
University. In 1932 he began producing plays, often experimental in character. He also
was a successful radio broadcaster.
2
Figures in Modern Literature (London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, Ltd.; New York:
Dodd, Mead and Co., 1924) discusses Santayana as a man of letters, 165–87.
3
Part of a line from Vergil’s Aeneid, 1.462 (see letter of 31 October 1923).
4
Outburst.
5
Arthur Kenyon Rogers wrote English and American Philosophy Since 1800: A Critical
Survey (New York: Macmillan, 1922). Pages 351–57 refer to Santayana.
3:220 The Letters of George Santayana

To Charles Augustus Strong

15 September 1924 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Cristallo, Cortina,

Monday, Sept. 15, 1924
Dear Strong
The weather here continues so warm and beautiful that it seems a pity
to leave and to interrupt the work going on under such favourable condi-
tions. But I will fix a date—since this can’t last for ever—say Monday next,
the 22nd for my departure. I have to spend one night on the way, at
Bologna, and should then arrive in Florence on Tuesday, the 23rd at 13.12.
I shall have had lunch in the train, and that being your time for luncheon,
I hope you won’t come to the Station, but send Aldo, who knows me, and
can take me up with my luggage, which is only bags.
If I should, for any reason, decide to start earlier, I will let you know.
Otherwise you may expect me on that day.
The idea, which smiled on me from a distance, of stopping at Trent and
Verona, or at Padua, loses its charm when time-tables, hotels, and changes
of trains are narrowly considered: and when it is so Summer-like here, I
am afraid it may be sultry in the valley. I shall therefore make a bee-line
for your hospitable roof.
This hotel is now almost empty, and they moved me two weeks ago to
one of their best rooms, with a German stove in it; but just then the
weather turned, and there has been no occasion to light it.
I have been reading D’Annunzio’s latest book “Le Faville del Maglio”,
tomo primo:1 an extraordinary hodge-podge not always intelligible to me,
but with many beauties in it. Also Papini’s Dizionario dell’ Omo
Salvatico2—absurd and perverse, but also containing some good things. It
suggests, as the Bolshevists do in the opposite camp, that the Dark Ages
may be really coming back; our philosophies may then be lost like the
books of Livy,3 but we shall have enjoyed them none the less in our day.
[across] Yours ever GSantayana
1
Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863–1938) was an Italian poet, dramatist, and novelist. His
oratory had much to do with bringing Italy to join the Allies at the beginning of World
War I. In 1937 Mussolini appointed him president of the Royal Italian Academy, but
he did not live to preside over it. His Le faville del maglio was published in Milan in
1924 (tomo primo means “first volume”; only volume 1 was ever published).
2
Giovanni Papini (1881–1956), an Italian philosopher and critic, adopted idealistic
pragmatism as his philosophical standpoint. In 1903 he founded the philosophical
 1921–1927 3:221

journal Leonardo. His fiction has a philosophical basis. His Dizionario dell’omo salvatico
was published in Florence in 1923.
3
Livy (Titus Livius, 59 B.C.–A.D. 17) was the Roman historian whose life work became
the 142-volume History of Rome. Only thirty-five of the original works and a few frag-
ments survive.

To Charles Augustus Strong

21 September 1924 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Cristallo, Cortina

Sunday, Sept. 21, 1924
Dear Strong
The summer weather continues in such force that I hesitate to abandon
the mountains for the valleys, and think that both the journey and my visit
to you at Fiesole will be pleasanter if put off until a little later. Shall we say
th rd
until next week, so that I may arrive on the 30– instead of on the 23– ? Let
me know, if this is convenient, because I am a little in doubt, not hearing
from you for so long, how matters stand with you. Possibly you and
Margaret too may wish to make some trip. If so, or whatever else may be
in your mind, let me know frankly, as I could easily adjust my plans, which
are all in the air, to any arrangement you wished to make.
There is no change here, except that both the hotel and the country are
much more attractive than in August—warmer, less crowded, and more
beautiful.
I have finished my chapter, but of course I have begun another.
Never mind my letters, if any, as there is probably nothing in them at
all urgent.
Yours ever
GSantayana

To Charles Augustus Strong

26 September 1924 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Cristallo, Cortina

Sept. 26, 1924
Dear Strong
You may expect me on Tuesday, the 30th at 13.12: if there should be any
impediment, which I don’t expect, I will telegraph
3:222 The Letters of George Santayana

After the rain of the day before yesterday, the weather here has grown
much cooler, though still fine, and I hope to find the journey not too hot.
I have become very apprehensive of journeys, startings, and stopping at
hotels; my instinct is to remain where I am, if I can once manage to feel at
home, and settled into a pleasant routine.
I suppose Margaret has been at the Lido, not in Venice itself, and that
she will soon find the sea-side uninteresting, and will come home. Nothing
is more dismal than a circus breaking up. Here on the contrary, the depar-
ture of the gay contingent has seemed to restore things to their natural
calm, as when the party of noisy tourists goes out of the church. The month
of September here has been really wonderful. Perhaps some year you
would like to come here before returning to Fiesole. With a car you could
see everything and be perfectly comfortable.
A bientôt.
G.S.

To Logan Pearsall Smith

10 October 1924 • Fiesole, Italy (MS: Congress)

October 10, 1924

VILLA LE BALZE
FIESOLE
TEL. 14-35
Dear Smith
I have delayed answering your letter until my plans had taken shape. It
now seems likely that I shall stay here a week or two longer, and then go
to Rome with Strong, in his motor. In that case I hope to find you and the
Berensons still there. Strong will return in a few days to Fiesole, but I
expect to settle down in Rome, at the hotel Bristol, for the winter. I was
comfortable there last year.
It will be very nice to see you again.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
 1921–1927 3:223

To Pierre de Chaignon la Rose

3 November 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS: Morgan)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Nov. 3, 1924
Dear la Rose
Today at last, sitting enjoying the golden warmth and light of a glorious
afternoon in the gardens of the Villa Borghese, I have succeeded in mak-
ing a version of the lines of Catullus1 which you had copied. I have been
carrying them in my pocket for some time and had some scraps of trans-
lation ringing in my head, but the thing had never taken shape until this
moment. It is a very Italian piece, childish, full of repetitions and sobs; and
I have tried to catch something of its passion, while letting other things go.
My friend Strong brought me here a week ago in his motor, and on the
way we stopped to lunch with the daughter of Bayard Cutting, who is set-
tled in a farm near Monte Pulciano with her young and charming husband
Marchese Antonio Origo.2 Strong has returned to Fiesole, and I am look-
ing forward to six months of peaceful existence and work. Rome is a par-
ticularly pleasant place to me: I like the solidity of its stones, the nearness
of the green country, the troupes of theological students of all nations, the
soldiers and sailors and Facisti, and the combination of modern comfort
with a suggestion of grandeur and a great deal of Bohemian freedom and
simplicity. Vale.3
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Entitled “A Fragment from Catullus,” Santayana’s translation of the lines beginning
“O misero frater adempte mihi,” (You, brother, snatched, and I bereft,) was sent to the
editors of The Latin School Register, who had been seeking contributions from distin-
guished alumni. The translation was published in the Register in 1928. Gaius Valerius
Catullus (c. 84–c. 54 B.C.) was a preeminent Latin poet and lyricist.
2
In 1924 Iris Margaret Cutting (b. 1902) married Antonio Origo (b. c. 1891), a
Catholic Italian and son of Marchese Clemente Origo. The couple developed a farm
below Siena into a splendid estate called La Foce (The Mouth).
3
Farewell (Latin).
3:224 The Letters of George Santayana

To George Sturgis
4 November 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS postcard: Houghton)

FIESOLE • PANORAMA DI S. FRANCESCO

Hotel Bristol, Rome.
Nov. 4. 1924. Thanks for your letter of Oct. 22nd.—I came here with
Strong, by automobile, about a week ago and am established exactly as last
winter, I hope for six months. Strong has returned to Florence, and left me
to my own resources. It is still summer here and I am very well.
G.S

To Charles Augustus Strong

12 November 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS postcard: Rockefeller)

Hotel Bristol, Roma

Nov. 12, 1924. I am glad to know you arrived safely, and found the fruits
of your labours matured in your absence. It will be interesting to see how
far Montague has moved.—My alarm about a cold was needless, as it
turned out to be nothing; but I had a feeling for a moment that I had been
imprudent, and perhaps it will serve to prevent some future accident from
lapsing from the realm of essence.—Apropos of health, I went yesterday to
an Italian dentist “to the Royal Family” for an appointment, and as he
^ ^
was unoccupied at the time, he took me in hand at once and cleaned my
front teeth in five minutes, charging 30 lire. I suppose dentistry, like archi-
tecture,—is here a matter of façades.—Except for a day or two of rain, we
have been having summer weather, and I am in high spirits. Last night I
went to hear Lucia1 at the Quirino, given pleasantly enough without seri-
ous pretensions. It is the only day I have been out in the evening.—I have
read “Cranford”2 for the first time and sent it to my sisters in Avila to
remind them of Boston. G. S.
1
Lucia di Lammermoor (1835) is an opera composed by Gaetano Donizetti with
libretto by Salvatore Cammarano based on Sir Walter Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor
(1819).
2
Cranford (1853), a story by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, deals with the life of the
peaceful English village of Cranford, inhabited chiefly by old ladies who practice ele-
gant economy and a quaint social decorum.
 1921–1927 3:225

To Alyse Gregory
28 November 1924 [postmark] • Rome, Italy (MS postcard: Beinecke)

I wonder if you could send me (directly to the Hotel Bristol, Rome)

another proof of my 1–st article on “Self-Government”, and two or three
nd
proofs of the 2– article, as soon as these are ready? I don’t ask for them
because I wish to make any changes; but because I have no clean copy of
them, and wish to send them as soon as possible to the publisher so as to
get the volume of “Dialogues” under way.
G. Santayana
Hotel Bristol, Rome.
Nov. 29, ’24.

To Maurice Firuski
29 November 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS: Unknown)

Rome, Nov. 29, 1924

Dear Mr. Firuski
Thank you for the three volumes just arrived which look interesting,
although Small’s Economics1 is perhaps more ponderous than what my
stomach can digest by way of hors-d’oeuvres.
Will you kindly send me (here to the Hotel Bristol, Rome) a copy of
Professor Dixon’s “Racial History of Man”?2 I am reading Stoddard’s
“Racial Realities of Europe”3 which I find entertaining, although I am
ignorant of what he continually calls “modern science” (except that I know
that some people’s heads are longer than others) and should like to know
what this science “has proved”.
Another thing. I should like to send my old friend Mrs. C. H. Toy (at 8
Craigie Circle, Cambridge) a Christmas present, and hardly find anything
here that she would not have to pay duties on if I sent it. I wonder if you
could choose a book—something she would not be likely to buy or to read
in a book-club, and that yet might interest her? All the better if a little orna-
mental and not cheap. If you are in doubt or have no time to think of such
difficult problems, you might pass my request on to Pierre la Rose, and I
shall be much obliged to both of you for your assistance.
Finally, please send my bill for everything to my nephew George
Sturgis, 87 Milk Street, Boston, who will pay it for me.
3:226 The Letters of George Santayana

I left my friends at Fiesole a month ago, and am settled in Rome for the
winter.
If my peregrinations confuse you at any time about my address, it is
always safe to write C/o Brown Shipley & Co.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Probably Albion Woodbury Small (1854–1926), whose works include The Relation of
Sociology to Economics (1895).
2
Roland Burrage Dixon (1875–1934), American anthropologist, taught at Harvard
University (Ph.D., 1900). He was a member of the American delegation at the Paris
Peace Conference and served as president of the American Anthropological Society.
His book, The Racial History of Man, was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1923.
3
Theodore Lothrop Stoddard (1883–1950), a member of Harvard’s class of 1905,
wrote Racial Realities of Europe, which was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in
1924.

To Maurice Firuski
5 December 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS: Unknown)

Rome, December 5, 1924

Dear Mr. Firuski
Since my note of the other day I have come upon a book which is just
the thing I should like to give for Christmas presents: “The Pleasures of
Architecture” by C. & A. Williams-Ellis,1 London, Jonathan Cape, Ltd. 11
Gower Street.
If you have it on hand, and have not found anything better for Mrs.
Toy, you might send it to her in my name; and also please send a copy
(indicating that it comes from me) to R. B. Potter, Esq. Antietam Farm,
Smithtown, Long Island, N.Y.
If you have not this book in stock, you might send for two copies and
despatch them to Mrs. Toy and Mr. Potter when they arrive—it doesn’t mat-
ter that it should be long after the holiday season. But this does not cancel
my request that you should choose something for Mrs. Toy for Christmas.
All the better if she gets two books instead of one as they are not perish-
able goods.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Sir Clough (b. 1883) and Amabel (b. 1894) Williams-Ellis’s book was published in
1924.
 1921–1927 3:227

To Charles Augustus Strong

6 December 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS postcard: Rockefeller)

Hotel Bristol, Roma

Dec. 6, 1924.
Thank you for your letter, and also for the pamphlet on Neo-Critical
Realism. The latter has not illumined me. It seems as if the old method of
angry controversy were better for sharpening one’s ideas than is negocia-
tion with a view to peace. You seem to be looking for a “formula” which
both sides can accept, by each giving it his own meaning. The whole sub-
ject seems to me impossible, because there are radical vices and ambigui-
ties in the terms.—As to my cold, it has not reappeared. We have lately had
much rain, but very mild weather. I have lunched repeatedly with the
Berensons, who are now going home. I expect Hans Reichhardt
(Westenholz’s friend) on the 22nd to stay until Jan. 1–st If you came at the
same time you could talk German with him. Let me know if you do,
because I don’t go now to the Aragno, having returned to Raniere’s: but
of course, I would join you [across] at Aragno’s any day you came There
seems to be no difficulty yet about rooms. Yours G. S.

To Otto Kyllmann
8 December 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS: Temple)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Dec. 8, 1924.
Dear Mr Kyllmann
“Dialogues in Limbo” will, I hope, be ready in about a month. I am
now at work on the final revision. What has delayed me is not the need of
this so much as an accident, namely, that “The Dial” to which I sent four
of the Dialogues many months ago has only published two as yet, and I
have no clean copy of the other two. However, I have already written to
New York asking for proofs or copies of these two dialogues, and as soon
as they arrive I will send you the MS (half is in print) of the entire volume.
“Realms of Being”, the sequel to “Scepticism & Animal Faith” is also
well advanced and I expect to finish it within a year; or if not the whole,
3:228 The Letters of George Santayana

at least a substantial part which might perhaps appear by itself, leaving the
moral part for a second volume.
Yours sincerely GSantayana

To Alyse Gregory
9 December 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS postcard: Beinecke)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

In continuation of my postcard of the other day, may I ask you, if the
second dialogue on Self-Government is not to be had in proof as yet,
kindly to have the MS type-written and to send me the copy at once?
I am sorry to give you this trouble, but the publisher is clamoring for
the book, and it is being delayed only by the fact that I have no clean copy
of these two Dialogues. I should therefore be grateful for copies of both.
G. Santayana
Dec. 9, 1924.

To George Sturgis
9 December 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Dec. 9, 1924.
Dear George
Of course your aunt Josephine must have got mixed up in writing that
letter. My first impression is that she meant to ask for 5000 pesetas quar-
terly instead of 8000 pesetas semiannually, 8000 pesetas being, at the pre-
sent rate of exchange, about equivalent to the $1200 that you have been
actually sending her every six months.
She may want this slight increase for presents and charities, since she
has no occasion to spend on herself, and the sum she contributes to your
aunt Susie’s household expenses can’t have grown larger. It is your aunt
Susie rather than I who could explain to you the true inwardness of the
mystery, if there be any mystery other than some slip of the pen.
The course you have taken seems to me sensible, and in any case will
serve to cover the interval until you receive an explanation directly from
your aunt Josephine. Of course you know she has never been able to fol-
 1921–1927 3:229

low the intricacies of logic; yet in her old age she has developed a certain
sharpness of wit in special directions, and I suspect that she had some def-
inite notion of what she wished, only became confused in expressing her-
self.
Thank you for the snap-shots, which are excellent, and which I will
send at once to Avila.
My automobile trip with Strong was only from his house at Florence,
where I had been staying. We stopped two nights on the way, at Siena and
Viterbo. I had gone from Cortina to Florence previously alone by rail.
Motoring is splendid for seeing the country, but I find the material side of
it—sitting in the carriage and going to different inns—rather trying after a
day or two.
I shall be drawing the rest of my credit, £200, this month; it will last for
a long time, but you might send me a fresh letter of credit (for £500) at
^ ^
your convenience. Like your aunt Josephine I have hopelessly fixed habits
of not spending. However, they have put up the price a little in this hotel,
and I expect a German friend1 as a guest for Christmas, and of course I
deny myself nothing that would really give me pleasure—but most things
no longer would do so.
You will also probably get a book-bill of mine from the Dunster Book-
shop in Cambridge, which I should be much obliged if you would pay.
The Society (or League) of Nations is now sitting here, and it is sup-
posed to be an “Anno Santo”2 or sort of Jubilee Year in religious circles;
but I observe no great change in Rome in consequence. I usually go to
lunch at a small restaurant in a side street, where there are usually the same
people every day—English, for the most part—and everything is very cosy
and familiar, including Beppino, the proprietor’s son and chief waiter, who
turns down my coat-collar and chooses a good pear for me out of pure
affection; but yesterday we were startled by an invasion of American
reporters who talked so loud that they set all the other tables shouting too
in rivalry in French and German (the British remained inaudible) and the
general hubbub became frightful, so that Beppino, noticing my distress,
explained apologetically that this was all due to the League of Nations,
which he called La Conferenza della Discordia.
Bobbie looks like the most vigorous of the little angels which one sees
here painted on ceilings as if swimming in mid-air. He seems able to kick
pretty hard.
Yours affectionately
GSantayana
3:230 The Letters of George Santayana

1
Hans Reichhardt.
2
Holy Year (Italian).

To William Alexander Hammond

10 December 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS: Cornell)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Dec. 10, 1924
Dear Mr Hammond1
I should be very glad to see Mr Marshall’s book on The Beautiful,2 and
if you will entrust it to me I have no doubt that I shall be able to say some-
thing about it that will do as a notice. Should I be inspired to extend the
notice to a regular article,3 I suppose you would have no objection.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana.
P.S. You may address me for the present as above, as I expect to remain
here all winter.
1
William Alexander Hamilton (1861–1938) was an author and editor of the
Philosophical Review.
2
Henry Rutgers Marshall (1852–1927) was an architect and writer on aesthetics. His
works include The Beautiful (London: Macmillan and Co., 1924).
3
“The Mutability of Aesthetic Categories,” Philosophical Review 24 (May 1925):
281–91.

To George Sturgis
21 December 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Dec. 21. 1924.
Dear George
I have just received a letter from your aunt Josephine, and I will trans-
late a part of it for your edification—not quite literally because her syntax
is not always classical even in Spanish. It is apropos of my birthday,
December 16, and says
“This is to congratulate you, dear Jorge, also for the reputation you have
acquired as an author and philosopher. Now you might stop writing and
rest your brain. I thought what I wrote to George quite simple because I
 1921–1927 3:231

supposed it was time for him to send me a quarterly remittance at the end
of the year, and I asked him for less, because I have $1000 in the Bank of
Spain not drawing interest. Perhaps I was wrong on the first point, and no
remittance was due at New Year’s. I also have little less in the Central Bank
of Avila, where I mean to transfer something from the other bank, since
the Central Bank is the one I draw on for my expenses.”
The rest of the letter is about the grandchildren of Celedonio.
From this it would appear that the course you took will solve every dif-
ficulty, and that the figures in your aunt’s letter were a jeu d’esprit.1 Her
intention was to diminish the amount of your drafts, which she imagined
had been quarterly, not semi-annual.
Please don’t mention in writing to Avila that I have reported her words
to me on this subject. It would confuse her further to feel that she was
cross-examined, and since she became strong-minded in religious matters,
she is sensitive about her intelligence and independence in other direc-
tions as well.
Yours affly G.S.
1
An ironically inaccurate calculation (French).

To Charles Augustus Strong

25 December 1924 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Bristol
Rome, Christmas Day
1924.
Dear Strong
The anno santo has actually begun with a small barricade in front of
Saint Peter’s, which I saw by chance because I went to lunch there—sitting
in the sun in front of a trattoria, without a coat, and quite warm on Dec.
23rd. I don’t think that I shall want to move before the month of May or
June: but if you want a change the obvious thing is for you to come here.
I am glad Margaret is so lively, and a trip to Egypt is the sort of thing
she will enjoy, with interesting changes of scene and variety of people.
Romanones1 is an old aristocrat who has played all his life at politics out
of deviltry and ambition, a clever rogue, but not for a moment to be
trusted or to be taken seriously. Even the disjointed report in The Times
shows what a farce and scandal the sort of governments were in which he
3:232 The Letters of George Santayana

and his rivals spoiled one another’s game, and said it was the luck of the
cards or a stupid partner that did it. I doubt whether either in Spain or in
Italy much can be done to mend matters, because industrialism and frivo-
/ ve not yet spent their force. There may first have to be a great cat-
lity had
astrophe. I /ienclose an article of Dean Inge’s2 which seems to point out
very clearly that a catastrophe is inevitable. Of course every society is
always destroying itself—what some people call “progress”—so that by a
“catastrophe” I don’t necessarily mean rivers of blood, but only the disap-
pearance of present institutions and a change of problems.
Hans Reichhardt is now here but looks after himself and I see him only
at meals. Yours ever
G. S.
1
Álvaro de Figueroa y Torres, conde de Romanones (1863–1950) was a Spanish
politician from the Liberal Party in Madrid.
2
The clipping is headed “British Infertility: An Imperial Problem.” The first para-
graph begins, “The letter which the Bishop of Gloucester has this week addressed to
the Press calls attention forcibly to a fact which has long been familiar to students of
vital statistics. The Bishop has been visiting North America, and finds that, both in
Canada and the United States, the British race is failing to keep up its numbers.”
Subheadings are “Population and Wealth” and “Class Standards of Living.” William
Ralph Inge (1860–1954), an Anglican prelate and author, was dean of Saint Paul’s
Cathedral (1911–34). He lectured in universities and was known for originality of
thought and pessimism (which explains the appellation “the gloomy dean”).

To Charles Augustus Strong

3 January 1925 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Bristol Rome

Jan. 3. 1925
Dear Strong,
Will you kindly enclose this note1 to Margaret in your letter when you
next write to her? I had no idea she was passing last night through Rome,
until I received her message through the porter, saying she was leaving at
8.40—I suppose on her way to Egypt.
The Chetwynds have taken a house near St. John’s Wood in London, in
a garden of two acres, and have asked me to go and spend July and August
next with them. I should have lodgings in the neighbourhood and take my
meals at their house. I have accepted condi ti onally, because I feel that it
^^
is a question of now or never, and I don’t like to abandon all hope of going
to England under more favourable circumstances than last year, and of
 1921–1927 3:233

erasing the dismal impression which that journey left on my mind. If I put
it off, the Chetwynd children will be quite grown up and beyond the plas-
tic age which makes it possible for an old man to amuse them. However,
I will decide nothing until the time comes, only I wanted you to know of
the project in case there is anyone whom you would like to ask to the
apartment in Paris for the Summer or any part of it. You must not let the
idea that I might occupy my old room stand in the way of any other plan,
as I should probably go to a hotel even if I was in Paris.
There is no change here, and I am pegging away slowly.
Yours ever
G.S.
1
Unlocated.

To William Rothenstein
6 January 1925 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Rome, Jan. 6, 1925
r 1
Dear M Rothenstein
I hope to be in England during July and August of this year, and if you
are then in London, it would be a pleasure to see you again and to sit for
a drawing, if on seeing me as I am you still felt that amiable impulse
Yours very truly
GSantayana
1
Sir William Rothenstein (1872–1945) was an English lithographer recognized chiefly
for his studies of famous people.

To Robert Seymour Bridges

8 January 1925 • Rome, Italy (MS: Bodleian)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Jan. 8, 1925
Dear Bridges
Of course I had nothing to do with the choice of a collective present1
for your birthday, nor with the idea of such a present, but I was very glad
3:234 The Letters of George Santayana

to join the others when I heard of it, for the very reason that it seemed a
way of concentrating the “fuss” and sparing you separate and endless con-
gratulations; but I am afraid you had to endure them as well. However, it
is all over now and I hope that this somewhat impertinent celebration has
not left you too much fatigued or feeling at all older.
Your poem in the London Mercury2 has a magnificent breadth and a
saturation (especially in the unrhymed parts) which is always a marvel to
me in English poetry of the genuine sort. I have tried, in my literal ratio-
nalistic way, to unravel the exact meaning of your dream. Is it that the
church is the only refuge for spiritual minds? In a very different way—
through the more and more frankly confessed mythical character of exact
science—I too have been recognizing of late that the church is a normal
habitation for the mind, as impertinent free thought never is. But there
remains the old misunderstanding, the forcing of literature into dogma,
and the intolerable intolerance of other symbols, where symbols are all.
Here in Rome, in the Pincio and the Villa Borghese, I often watch with
amazement the troops of theological students of all nations, so vigorous
and modern in their persons, and I ask myself whether these young men
can truly understand and accept the antique religion which they profess—
especially the Americans (very numerous) with their defiant vulgar airs
and horrible aggressive twang. Could the monks of Iona and the
Venerable Bede have been like this?3 Was it perhaps after some ages of
chastening that the barbarians could really become Christian and could
produce a Saint Francis?
It is probable that I shall be in England during the coming summer, and
I shall not fail to spend at least a few days in Oxford, when I hope to see
you. In July and August it may be possible to erase the unpleasant impres-
sion which October and November left on me when I was last in England.4
Here I lead a very pleasant regular life, seeing only an occasional pil-
grim who comes to peep into my cell. I have finished a volume of
Dialogues in Limbo which are still simmering in my mind, so that I can’t
judge whether the dish will be at all appetizing when served up cold to the
public. Meantime, I have plenty of other projects to occupy me, and
Rome, for comfort and for stimulus, is everything that I could desire.
I will send you my new book, but publishers are very slow, and I may
appear in person before my missive. Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Bridges’s 80th birthday gift was a clavichord (per Sir Edward Bridges). [D. C.]
 1921–1927 3:235

2
Published in November 1924 as “Come si quando,” the poem’s title was not cor-
rected to “Come se quando” until much later. Monica Bridges had observed that it con-
tained numerous Dantean similes introduced by “as if … when,” “like as … when,”
and similar phrases. She complained of too many “come se quandos” (as ifs, whens).
(See Donald E. Stanford’s In the Classic Mode: The Achievement of Robert Bridges [Newark:
University of Delaware Press, 1978], 115–18.)
3
Famous as the early center of Celtic Christianity, Iona is an island (one of the Inner
Hebrides) off western Scotland. Saint Columba landed there in 563 and founded a
monastery. In 1203 a Benedictine monastery was established. Sovereigns from
Scotland, Norway, Ireland, and France are buried at Iona. The Venerable Bede (c.
673–735) was an English historian and scholar who was a monk at a Northumbrian
monastery. His best-known work is the Latin Ecclesiastical History of the English People
(731).
4
In 1923.

To William Alexander Hammond

26 January 1925 • Rome, Italy (MS: Cornell)

Hotel Bristol, Rome,

Jan. 26. 1925
Dear Mr Hammond
My review of Marshall has grown, as you see, into a formidable article,
which I hope is not longer than those you like to publish. If you find there
is time to send me a proof, I should be glad to revise it, as I am afraid my
MS is rather in a mess: but if there is not time, may I ask you to commend
the proof-reading to some sensible person who will know what I meant to
say?
Yours sincerely
GSantayana.

To George Sturgis
1 February 1925 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Feb. 1. 1925
Dear George
I have received in due course your letters of Jan. 5 and 9, and the letter
of credit, as well as the yearly account of my investments, income,
expenses, etc. All seems to be well; thank you very much for everything.
3:236 The Letters of George Santayana

My existence here runs on in its usual course and so agreeably that I am

seriously inclined to make some permanent arrangement by which I
should have a little establishment of my own in this hotel or in some
^ ^
other like it—a sittingroom where I can have my books and mementoes
about me, a bedroom and a bathroom. Of course in summer it would
hardly be possible to stay in Rome—although the Pope1 does—and in old
age one is much less oppressed by warm weather. But I discovered last
year what nice places Venice and Cortina are in summer, and there are of
course many resorts in the Apennines2 and by the sea, if ever I felt that the
journey to Paris was too much for me. In this way I should be settled com-
fortably for the rest of my days. A hotel is expensive, because they don’t
like to give more than one room to one person; but it has great advantages
in the matter of service and heating and food on the premises; and it is also
a very convenient way of having friends to stay with one, as there is noth-
ing to do but to engage another bedroom. I have actually had a guest,
Reichhardt from Hamburg, for ten days and expect Onderdonk later in
the season. It gave me no trouble and was hardly an interruption to my
work, while I had the pleasure of a little congenial society.
I may not carry out this plan at once because I have been invited to
spend two months with friends—the Chetwynds—in London next summer,
and your aunts expect me to visit them also in Avila: and if I go to Spain
in the autumn I shall be tempted to stay for the winter, going perhaps to
Algeciras in December and January, and then to Seville for the spring,
which there begins in February. In that case I shouldn’t return to Rome
until the following winter; but I shall make inquiries before leaving this
year so as to feel that I have an anchor to windward, and a definite plan in
case my journey should prove unsatisfactory.
I am very well, but lazy and fat. My literary work goes forward slowly;
I have been reading more than writing of late; I let my instinct and mood
govern me in these matters, as after all I have already written a lot, and
there is no occasion to force myself to be loquacious at the expense of the
public unless I have something important aching to be told.
Rome is half empty. There has been a scare about the Anno Santo or
about political troubles (which don’t exist) or about both, and the ordinary
tourists have largely stayed away. It is a pity, because we have been hav-
ing a mild and glorious winter.
The state of my affairs seems to be flourishing, and I suppose you have
not been a worse steward of your own house than of that of your old rela-
tions, so that I am glad to think that you must be prospering too. It is a
 1921–1927 3:237

great convenience to have money, if it isn’t so much (as in the case of my

friend Strong) as to let one in for all sorts of luxuries which are in one’s
way. But we are not, in our family, [across] in serious danger of being
buried under a mountain of money. Your affly G. S.
1
Pius XI (Achilles Ambrose Damian Ratti, 1857–1939) became pope in 1922, chosen
as a compromise between the candidates of conflicting groups of cardinals. He nego-
tiated the official independence of the Holy See by the Lateran Treaty (1929) and was
outspoken against Mussolini and fascism.
2
Mountain range along the length of central Italy.

To Maurice Firuski
12 February 1925 • Rome, Italy (MS: Unknown)

Rome, Feb. 12, 1925

Dear Mr. Firuski
The three copies of Lucifer have arrived safely and have filled me with
satisfaction. I don’t know when I have seen a more beautiful book and the
poem seems to justify its existence better when presented in such fine
attire.
I will write to Mr. la Rose about it more at length, and meantime I
should be glad if you would send a copy in my name to each of the
addresses enclosed and charge them to my account which my nephew will
pay.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
A copy of Lucifer, from the Author to
Mrs. C. H. Toy, 8 Craigie Circle, Cambridge, Mass.
Mr. & Mrs. R. Burnside Potter, Antietam Farm, Smithtown, Long Island,
N.Y.
Professor B. A. G. Fuller, 317 Pike Street, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Baron A. W. Westenholz, Sophienterrasse 14, Hamburg, Germany.
3:238 The Letters of George Santayana

To Otto Kyllmann
23 February 1925 • Rome, Italy (MS: Temple)

Hotel Bristol Rome

Feb. 23, 1925
Dear Mr Kyllmann
Today I am sending you the MS of “Dialogues in Limbo”, which I hope
may arrive safely. I am always a little nervous when I commit the labour
of so many days to the post, and I should be glad to have the receipt of it
acknowledged at once.
The letter which I enclose1 may interest your printers and be of some
use to them. I have noted the points on which I feel some personal pref-
erence.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Unlocated.

To George Sturgis
11 March 1925 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

March 11, 1925
Dear George
You will be amused (if not annoyed) at the difficulty in which I find
myself in trying to answer your question about the money I have received
from America, over your head, during 1924. Since I was a schoolboy, and
had an allowance of $100 a year for clothes and all other expenses, I have
kept no accounts, and now have only the stubs of my cheque-book to go
by, which are in £, s. & d. and moreover, owing to my cheque-book being
exhausted early last year, even that record does not go back to January 1,
1924. However, by the help of memory and presumption, I reach the fol-
lowing result which you may swear to as honest, according to my best
knowledge and belief, although not as absolutely accurate.
 1921–1927 3:239

From
The Dial (/f 4 articles) $300
Yale Review, 1 '' 100
Harvard U. P. (“Three Poets”) 80
Scribner (royalties) 250
Your father’s legacy 400
Total $1130.
You will know whether income tax has been paid by Mr Gardiner1 on the
last item, in which case, of course, it ought not to be included in this return.
In future I will take pains to note in dollars the sums I receive and not
to throw away old remnants of cheque-books, so that my yearly report on
this subject may be absolutely correct. In fact, it now occurs to me that by
writing to London for my pass-book, I can obtain an accurate record for
last year. I will do so, and send you word in a week or ten days It will be
interesting to see how near it comes to my calculation.
As you see, the royalties from Scribners are far from being the whole of
what I receive, apart from your remittances, from the U.S. so that in any
case you would have to rely on me for a complete report of my income. I
might as well continue to receive the money from Scribner direct, and I
like to do so, as it helps to swell my London account, on which I draw for
a certain class of expenses such as tailors and charities and books.
Strong has been in Rome [across] for a week, and now I have a new
friend, an Argentine,2 with whom I sometimes walk and talk Spanish!
Otherwise, no change. Yours affecty
G. S.
1
Robert Hallowell Gardiner Jr.
2
Unidentified.

To Frederick James Eugene Woodbridge

12 March 1925 • Rome, Italy (MS: Columbia)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Rome, March 12 1925
Dear Woodbridge
Yesterday I received Dewey’s book,1 several days later than your letter
announcing it, and I have read half the first chapter, which suffices to show
3:240 The Letters of George Santayana

me that this is a far more thorough and elaborate presentation of his phi-
losophy than any he has given us hitherto, and I shall be very glad to study
it and write an article for you about it.2 As this may take some time, the
subject being exceedingly difficulty/ and thorny, perhaps you might like to
publish some other notice of the book first. Please don’t hesitate to do so,
as mine is likely to be about the subject-matter quite as much as about
Dewey, and two different reviews of so important a book might not be out
of place in your Journal
Thank you for remembering me on this occasion. Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Experience and Nature (Chicago and London: Open Court Publishing Co., 1925).
2
“Dewey’s Naturalistic Metaphysics,” Philosophy 22 (3 December 1925): 673–88.

To Pierre de Chaignon la Rose

19 March 1925 • Rome, Italy (MS: New York)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

March 19, 1925
Dear la Rose
I have been waiting for a moment of inspiration in order to describe to
you my feelings about the new Lucifer, but weeks and weeks are passing,
and I must not put off thanking you, even if perfunctorily, for all your
devoted labour and art in executing this generous project. It makes a beau-
tiful book and seems to lift the poem itself into a new category. Nothing
remains except that someone should make an opera of it—it would be, duly
abridged, a splendid libretto—and that some other wizard should design
the stage-settings in the style of Bakst.1 I have often, in secret, thought of it
actually on the stage: there is an absence of female parts, but Turel2 could
be a soprano, and in the fifth act there are the goddesses, while of course
the angel choir could be feminine too. And this leads me to speak of
details. When you wrote that you had printed the chorus in blue, I had
some misgivings; but on seeing the pages, with the red caption in the cor-
ner, and the long rather narrow page (to which I am quite reconciled) I was
really delighted: those are the best pages in the book; and I instantly com-
posed a motto:
’Tis Taste that prints the
mystic verse in blue,
 1921–1927 3:241

And robes the Angels in

their azure hue.
As to the misprints you mentioned, “He Drinks,” is harmless—might even
be taken for a subtle Catholic protest against Prohibition—and “ursurps”
does not occur, as I had feared, in the Invocation (which many will peruse)
but later on, in a passage which few readers will ever reach or notice. But
there is another misprint in the Preface “independent on” for “of”—not
serious, but still a blemish in what we should have wished to see quite per-
fect. Westenholz, by the way, to whom I asked to have a copy sent, says
that this Preface is an ‘“Abschwächung”3 of the whole idea of Lucifer … not
to shock poor blessed souls of Northerners!’ And I thought I had made a
bold profession of atheism, and deprived the pious reader of the comfort
of saying: “But his Christ was right after all.” Do you understand what
Westenholz can have meant? I will ask him but his reply may not be very
clear-headed.
The black binding with its gold ornament pleased me very much, and
also the gorgeous Pompeian lining: it would do very well for the lining of
the black cloak which Lucifer should wear in the Opera. If this was a con-
cession to the fashion of the hour, I without being aware of the fashion
entirely approve of it. Also of the title-page: and the monogram repeated
here seems to me the best and boldest of your designs for letters. The oth-
ers are in no less perfect taste, as are also the head-pieces, but I think you
err if anything on the side of safety and delicacy: I seem to miss emphasis,
concentration, and variety in the pattern of the blacks and whites. The
^ ^
red tail-piece at the very end is an exception: here you have given
Mephistopheles the last word in a fashion which I can only call naughty.
Or perhaps you let yourself go because there you are in the atmosphere of
editions, copyrights, and publishers’ announcements, and the sacred
theme of the book has become irrelevant. As you know, my idea of Lucifer
is that (like my “Poems”) it is a book of devotion—thank you, therefore, for
the black and gold—and should properly be a small volume, in fine clear
print, with decorations (if any) themselves favourable to meditation and
concentration of spirit. But granting o / the folio, and the necessary absence
of pictorial decoration—nobody alive could illustrate Lucifer, even in
headpieces or small friezes such as I might fancy, like those in the small
Virgil that Joe Stickney once gave me4—I am wholly satisfied with your
sympathetic presentation; and in itself, as printing and typographical
design, it will no doubt receive on all hands the commendation it deserves.
3:242 The Letters of George Santayana

I am not myself a connoisseur in the matter, but all my instincts are flat-
tered, and the book is an unmistakably precious and beautiful object.
“Dialogues in Limbo” are in the press, but I have no notion when they
will appear.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
P.S. A fourth copy of Lucifer has reached me [across right margin] safely.
Many thanks.
1
Léon Nikolaevich Bakst (1866–1924) was chief painter of scenery for the Russian
ballets.
2
Turel is a devil, under Lucifer.
3
A boned-down version (German).
4
See Persons, 386–87.

To Logan Pearsall Smith

19 March 1925 • Rome, Italy (MS: Congress)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

March 19, 1925
Dear Smith
Of course “Little Essays” is no more my exclusive property than a title
like “Poésies Nouvelles” of “Recollections” or “Autobiography”. I shall be
much flattered if Algar Thorold,1 or you, or both, want to adopt it for
another book of selections. An unknown admirer—a lady—wrote to me at
the time, however, protesting against such a misleadingly modest and friv-
olous caption for so much wisdom, and attributing it to your evil influence!
Such is the insight of earnest critics. This morning I have received a letter
from an old friend, a sort of disciple, who says: “I do not fail to see, but
thoroughly enjoy, how very much you have done in the direction of adapt-
ing your philosophy to the needs of Teutons and cooperative man.” Is
there any ground for this ambiguous compliment? I am not aware of any
adaptation, except to the evidence of things as they continue to march
past, and I am not aware that the character of the procession has much
changed: but a man is not able to survey his own career fairly, because his
perspectives change as he changes. Let it be as God wills.
I was sorry to miss you here, but I saw much of the Berensons, and a
hint from B. B. set me reading Sorel,2 whom I find nutritious even if half-
baked. I am now reading, and expect to review, a ponderous tome by
 1921–1927 3:243

Dewey, the pragmatic philosopher of Columbia, who also wishes to rear

the truth on the sands of industrialism. I am going to call him the “Latest
Oracle of the Zeitgeist:” and I have a feeling that these are swan-songs,
because industrialism may be short-lived.
It is possible that I may be in England during the summer, in which case
I will look you up. G. S.
1
Algar Labouchere Thorold (1866–1936) was the son of Anthony Wilson Thorold
(1825–95), Bishop of Rochester (1874–90) and of Winchester (1890–95). The younger
Thorold was a journalist, editor, and philosophical writer who married Teresa Mary
Mansel in 1894.
2
Georges Sorel (1847–1922) was a French pragmatist philosopher and social theorist
who supported the Russian Revolution. His works include Les illusions du progrès and
La décomposition du Marxisme (Paris, 1908).

To Charles Augustus Strong

22 March 1925 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Rome, March 22, 1925

Dear Strong
Perhaps it would be as well not to send me Drake’s book, unless you
think there is some special point in which some comment of mine might
be useful—in matters of vocabulary, for instance: but in view of a general
unification of our theories I think it would be better to wait until his work
has been polished as much as possible. I am at this moment struggling with
Dewey’s “Experience and Nature” which I am to review for the Whited
Sepulchre—a formidable task; but I don’t regret having undertaken it,
because it seems that, after intense application and infinite patience in sus-
pending judgement on opinions evidently absurd in form—according to
my understanding of words—a certain order and naturalness begin to
appear in his theory, which has many elements in it which I like
extremely: and I am in hopes of being able to sum it up in words that with-
out irritating the author will show the affiliations of his position and render
it intelligible even if not final or complete. Until this is done, I could hardly
devote myself seriously to another enigmatic system—my own meantime
being furthered only indirectly, if at all, by the interruption.
Your epitome under six points has suggested to me a really new aspect
of your whole theory. I seem now to see the minute parts, not as active
feelings or monads, but as little sparks or particles in an objective field, the
whole specious in its plane of existence, although not perhaps actually
3:244 The Letters of George Santayana

imagined by anyone, except by the author of the theory. These minute

objects, like the threads which make up a cloth, might then be grouped
into coloured patches, perspectives, etc, by selective active attention dart-
ing through their midst. This interpretation, however seems to break down
at point No 6, because if the manifold summated is internal to the self, the
action relevant to the fictitious aspects created would be internal to the self
also, and vegetative: it would not suggest projection to surrounding groups
of substance, as is requisite for animal perception. The fiction, then, should
properly have no substance at all, but only [across] an organ: i.e. an act
^ ^
joining the animal body with the body which stimulates it. This of course
is my way of conceiving fiction. Yours ever G. S.

To Constable and Co. Ltd.

2 April 1925 • Rome, Italy (MS: Temple)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

April 2, 1925
Messrs Constable & Co
London
I am advised by my bankers, Brown Shipley & Co, 123 Pall Mall, that
they are holding a parcel sent by you, which they are not able to forward
without knowing its contents and value.
I am writing to them to consult you or return it to you, as I don’t know
what it can be unless it is a book or proofs. If it is the proof of Dialogues
in Limbo there is no need of sending the manuscript with it. The proofs
alone, in an open cover, will pass the Italian post office more easily, and
are quite sufficient for my purposes.
Yours faithfully
GSantayana
P.S. I expect to remain here for at least six more weeks.
 1921–1927 3:245

To Curt John Ducasse

2 May 1925 • Rome, Italy (MS postcard: Brown)

Rome, May 2, ’25

Thank you very much for your two articles. I agree with the thesis of the
one on Teleology; a movement culminating in some interesting phase
must be either a result of various automatisms or an instance of automa-
tism. Mechanism, if we value the issue, may always be called teleology.
The teleology that is impossible is only that which represents the result as
a cause. As to your Liberalism in Ethics, although I agree with every part
of the argument, I feel some dissatisfaction with the general conclusion
You seem to leave out the authority of a man’s own nature over his casual
preferences, in other words, self-knowledge. I entirely agree that different
natures have no moral authority over one another; but folly in judgement
and action is nevertheless possible if a creature ignores the interests or the
facts which he would wish to take into account if /Ihe remembered them.
G. Santayana

To Otto Kyllmann
4 May 1925 • Rome, Italy (MS: Temple)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

/
AMay 4, 1925
Dear Mr Kyllmann
Are you sending me a second proof of Dialogues in Limbo? I ask, partly
to make sure that you have received the corrected first proof, which I sent
back some three weeks ago, and partly to advise you that I shall probably
leave Rome about June 1–st after which I shall be at 9, Avenue de
l’Observatoire, Paris; but my permanent address remains as always C/o
Brown, Shipley & Co 123 Pall Mall, S.W.1.
As the corrections in the first proof of the Dialogues were all brief and
simple, perhaps you don’t think it necessary to submit the second proof to
my vigilant eye; in that case, I append a few more slight errors1 which that
vigilant eye has detected, so that the printers may correct them.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Unlocated.
3:246 The Letters of George Santayana

To Charles Augustus Strong

11 May 1925 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

May 11, 1925
Dear Strong
I am glad your trip has been so quick, as that suggests smooth running
and no accidents. Your long philosophical letter has also arrived but I
won’t attempt to discuss it, as my notion of your notions is still sadly con-
fused.
My Spanish friend Mercedes is coming on a pilgrimage with four of her
friends, whom I also know, during the last week in May. I shall probably
not leave Rome until after they are gone. You may expect to see me at the
Duval any day about June 4–6; I won’t go to the apartment as even if
Margaret is not there, I wish to leave the field clear for her, and for my
own sake to make no arrangement until I know better what awaits me dur-
ing the summer. I hate indecision, and yet circumstances prevent me from
forming any clear plan. I am not going to England—so much at least is set-
tled, as Mrs Chetwynd seems to have changed her projects—couldn’t really
think of staying in London all summer, going on July 1–st to Dartmoor,1 or
(on second thoughts, it’s so much nicer) to Ireland instead, while Philip
must go to Baden-Baden to learn German! Moreover the poet has asked
me to stay at Chilswell2, and that would be hard to avoid, and who knows
but they might ask me to Garsington also! But the bombshell is that Mrs
Toy is visiting in England and Switzerland during the whole summer. I am
waiting to hear whether she is stopping in Paris; if not, I might have to go
to Switzerland to see her, and once there I might be tempted to stay on
until it was time to return to Italy. In that case I don’t know whether my
proposed trip to Avila would be dropped or made at once, in June.
Anyhow the summer will be useless for work, and the winter has been
very nearly so. Lately I have had an attack of my cough, not a bad one,
but enough to make me feel that I have less power of resistance than for-
merly. It is over now, [across] but I shall have to be prudent in the autumn.
Yours ever G. S.
[across page one]. A large parcel containing new clothes may have come
from Whitaker’s. Please tell Marie not to let the moths get into it.
 1921–1927 3:247

1
Mountainous wasteland in Devonshire, southwest England.
2
Chilswell, located on Boar’s Hill, Oxford, was the home of Robert and Monica
Bridges.

To George Sturgis
14 May 1925 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Hotel Bristol Rome

May 14. 1925
Dear George
Will you please send $20.00 for the enclosed subscription.
The Spring here has been unusually cool and rainy. I am still wearing
winter clothes, and expect to stay at least until June 1–st when I shall go to
Paris; but all my plans are unsettled, owing to the instability of the female
will, on which for the moment I seem to be dependent. I was going to
England to stay with the Chetwynds—but Mrs Chetwynd is going to
Dartmoor—no, on the whole, to Ireland. I was going to Switzerland to see
Mrs Toy (who has suddenly invaded Europe) but Mrs Toy has grown home-
sick and doesn’t know what she will do or where she will be. I was going
to Spain, but heaven knows what may happen first. In any case, Mercedes,
with three lady-friends and the unhappy husband of one of them,
rd
announces that she will arrive in Rome on a pilgrimage on May 23– I am
clay in the potter’s hand; but I daresay in time I shall recover my inde-
pendence and return to my natural and reposeful level.
Strong is already in Paris, having gone in his motor-car from Florence
in 8½ days, and says he is expecting me at the apartment, where he is
much enjoying the electric heating which his daughter Margaret had
installed there against his will: but probably I shall go to a hotel, as
Margaret herself may turn up at any moment—another case of La donna è
mobile,1 especially with an auto-mobile, if you will excuse an Italian pun.
For Margaret has one of her own much better than her father’s.
Yours afftly
GSantayana
1
Literally, “the woman is fickle.” This is a song title in Rigoletto, an 1851 opera by
Santayana’s favorite composer, Giuseppe Verdi.
3:248 The Letters of George Santayana

To Constable and Co. Ltd.

15 May 1925 • Rome, Italy (MS: Temple)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

May 15, 1925
Messrs Constable & Company
London
Thank you for the second proof of Dialogues in Limbo in which I have
still found three or four errata. I am sending the proofs back with the nec-
essary corrections, which I repeat on the enclosed half-sheet for greater
safety.
Yours faithfully
G. Santayana
Errata in second proof of Dialogues in Limbo
page, line
88, 4, for “put,” read “puts” (without the comma) and
for , after “commanding” read ;
159, 23, for “Atheus” read “Athens”
162, 1 for “soliquizing” read “soliloquizing”.

To Constable and Co. Ltd.

19 May 1925 • Rome, Italy (MS: Temple)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Rome, May 19, 1925
essrs
M Constable & Company
London

When Dialogues in Limbo appear, will you please send copies in my

name to the persons in the enclosed list,1 charging them to my account.
Will you also send a copy of my “Little Essays” to the Polish personage
whose address is on the slip I enclose, and who says he wishes to translate
my “philosophical works” into Yiddish.2 The “Little Essays” will do for a
beginning.
I have already written to Mr Kyllmann about my probable movements,
but I may repeat that I expect to go to Paris about the 1–st of June. If the
 1921–1927 3:249

Dialogues appear during the Summer, you might send my own copies to
me at 9, Avenue de l’Observatoire, Paris.
Yours faithfully
GSantayana
1
Unlocated.
2
Slip unlocated. There are no known Yiddish translations.

To Charles Augustus Strong

2 June 1925 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Rome June 2, 1925

Dear Strong
Most of the clouds have passed: Mercedes and her fellow-pilgrims have
departed, after agonies of uncertainty about lost luggage, most of which
was recovered; and poor Mrs Toy, scarcely arrived in England, was so very
homesick, bored, and ill, that she went back directly to blessed Boston!
This is the second time this has happened, and I think I know the reason,
but it is too psychological and complicated for a letter. Finally,
Onderdonk, who again seemed on the point of appearing, has again given
it up: so that I am preparing for departure, and will add a postcript if I get
an answer today about a place in the train. My delay, apart from the pres-
ence of my Spanish friends, was due to a desire to see how long Rome
proves habitable in summer. It is now warm, but not intolerable, and there
are thundershowers when it has got a bit oppressive. I also wanted to fin-
ish my review of Dewey before leaving, but I am now resigned to any fate
as far as work is concerned: I seem to be becalmed.
Thank you for repeating the suggestion that I should come to the apart-
ment, but it is hardly worth while as I am not sure that I shall stay more
than a few days. My idea is to go to Spain at once, and return to Paris later
in the summer, when I shall have a clear field before me and may be more
in the mood for work. I have written to Avila, and shall decide when I
receive the answer.
I expect to go in Paris to the Hôtel du Palais Royal, which is quiet and
retired and fo / ar from the boulevard, yet within easy reach of Poccardi’s
and the Duval. I am having my letters sent to you, however, in case there
is no room at that inn. Yours ever
G. S.
3:250 The Letters of George Santayana

th
P.S. I leave on Tuesday the 9–
th
Margaret, I hope, will be on the same train, arriving on Wed. 10– at 2.30?

To George Sturgis
17 June 1925 • Paris, France (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London
Paris, June 17, 1925
Dear George
Here are the signatures you ask for.
The news of Josephine’s engagement1 is very welcome as it seems to
promise a happier and more normal future for her, and also for her little
boy.
I am actually starting for Avila at the end of this week and shall be able
to give you more intelligent hints about the affairs of your two aunts than
have been possible before.
Thank you for the snap shots of Bobby & Neville. I seem to see a resem-
blance in them to your father when he was a little boy. Have you those
early photos of our family, or are they in your aunt Josephine’s possession?
Now when I am in Avila I will try to get hold of such as are interesting
enough to be reproduced in my “Autobiography” on which I hope to do
a little scribbling while in Spain. Yours affly
GSantayana
1
Josephine Sturgis Eldredge married Raymond Brewer Bidwell (1890–1969); their
children are David Dudley and Jane Sturgis.

To Charles Augustus Strong

28 June 1925 • Ávila, Spain (MS: Rockefeller)

Novaliches 6, Avila
June 28 1925
Dear Strong
My journey here was like that from Rome, uneventful, but hot and
uncomfortable. I arrived punctually at 7.15 in the morning and saw one of
my adopted nephews and the two little boys, aged 10 and 9, waiting for
 1921–1927 3:251

me. My Sisters were much as usual, but my brother-in-law is failing fast,

mentally more than physically, so that he is no longer the dominating
force in the family which he used to be. That circumstance would give me
more freedom if other circumstances did not intervene, but the children—
of whom I am very fond—feel that my room is their rightful play-ground;
and there are arrangements and civilities which otherwise keep me from
having any long time safely to myself. This is the first time for a week that
I have put pen to paper, and I have not read even the newspapers. Besides
we have had a small domestic tragedy, the youngest grand-child, a girl of
three months, died the day before yesterday, and today we had the
funeral, at which I figured as one of the chief mourners, walking behind
the little white hearse, and receiving, together with the other men of the
family, the condolences of all their friends; the ladies meantime remaining
assembled in the parent’s house. It would take too long to describe all the
details, but it was a touching ceremony, and interesting as a relic of ancient
manners.
The weather here is ideal, cool and sunny, with occasionally a little
shower, and the country greener and less austere than I have ever seen it.
We went to the farm the other day in an auto, and had a most interesting
afternoon. In the town, too, there are many things which I enjoy revisiting.
I have been in the cathedral at the hour when it is most deserted, and
found it more impressive than ever, also at a grand Gothic chapel where I
saw the tomb of my young friend Fernando de la Cerda,1 whom you had
a glimpse of a long time ago, I believe, in Paris. Altogether, I am happy
and interested here, but utterly idle. Unless things change, and I am able
to do a little work, I shall have to leave for conscience’ sake, and igno-
miniously bring back the heavy tome of Dewey’s philosophy without hav-
ing written my review of it. In any case, I shall stay until July 15: I will let
you know when the moment arrives.
I have found a class photograph of you among old family papers, a very
flattering one. Yours ever
G.S.
1
Unidentified.
3:252 The Letters of George Santayana

To George Sturgis
30 June 1925 • Ávila, Spain (MS: Houghton)

Avila June 30, 1925

Dear George
I have now been a week in Avila and can give you some account of the
true state of the family. Your aunt Susie, although suffering from the same
lameness and incapacity to move about with comfort, is less stout than
when I last saw her and generally in better health and spirits. She is mak-
ing plans for the future, which is a sign of renewed youth. Her husband,
on the contrary, is visibly failing in mind and body, and feels rather help-
less and bored, accustomed as he is to direct everything, and feeling bit-
terly his present incapacity. But he has no particular pain or discomfort,
eats and sleeps well, and may live for some time, unless a new stroke of
paralysis should overtake him on the heels of the recent one, when he lost
the faculty of speech, which he has regain/sed only imperfectly. As to
^ ^
your aunt Josephine she is much the same and spry in her own fashion;
but she sometimes says childish things and has a very short memory. The
family make a good deal of her, out of kindness mingled with hope of
small benefits, and she seems to be content with her situation and her
small interests. She says that what she wanted in the way of remittances
was $600 a quarter: but her thoughts are rather hesitant and contradictory
when it comes to figures, and she may soon say something different. You
should not hesitate to use your own judgement in the matter, because she
agrees with the rest of us in being very much pleased with the way in
which you are managing our affairs, and ––with
in your affectionate interest
in us. She was 72 years of age yesterday, and received presents from the
various members of this family, and from some of her protégés.
Several of the children are ill with hooping-cough, and the youngest of
Pepe’s children, a little girl of 3 months, died the other day. I officiated at
the funeral as one of the principal mourners—the ladies not appearing—and
accompanied her uncles and a cousin or two to the cemetery. Eight grand-
children remain, and Teresa,1 the wife of Luis, is expecting another.
Mercedes, whom I had seen in Rome, was in this house when I arrived,
but left after a few days.
My total impression is that Celedonio will not live for another year, and
that there is every likelihood that your aunt Susie will survive him. In that
case, as she has told me now and as I surmised, she will immediately make
 1921–1927 3:253

another will, which will, I hope, simplify the business of liquidating her
estate, which you looked forward to with just apprehension. She means to
leave her property to her husband’s family, but she will be comparatively
free to [across] distribute it as she likes, without interference from the side
of Spanish law.
I expect to return to Paris in two weeks.
Yours affly
G. S.
1
Teresa Fernández de Soto.

To Charles Augustus Strong

16 July 1925 • Ávila, Spain (MS: Rockefeller)

Avila, July 16, 1925

Dear Strong
Your letter and the photographs of Le Balze have arrived. Thank you
very much. The two views of the terrace are admirable for giving a true
idea of the house, and that of the corridor is beautiful, although it suggests
a larger edifice than actually exists.
There is no further change in this family. My brother-in-law and
another grand-child who was seriously ill are holding there —ir own well, and
I am planning to leave for Paris in the middle of next week, but I can’t say
exactly when I shall arrive as I am going this time by stages, in the hope
of avoiding a crowded train and a chance companion for the night. I
expect to stop at San Sebastian and at Bordeaux, and to be in Paris about
th
the 26– . For a day or two I mean to stop at the Hôtel du Palais D’Orsay,
until I see you and decide upon more permanent quarters.
I have sat down to work almost every morning, but have practically
accomplished nothing, and the article on Dewey is still in an amorphous
state. It seems to me as if perhaps my faculties were waning, and that I
ought not to write any more philosophy.
The weather has been cool, with some rain, and as this is a house all in
pieces, with an open courtyard to cross and all degrees of exposure to sun,
damp, draughts, and close air, I have caught a cold which has had the
usual sequel of a bronchial cough. Being armed with Experience and all
the requisite medicines, I have kept it down within moderate limits, and it
is now almost in abeyance, but there is no security against a recrudescence
3:254 The Letters of George Santayana

so long as I am not absolutely free to avoid occasions that may aggravate

it. Nevertheless this time, I don’t sing “If ever, ever, ever” and fully expect
to return to Avila before long, perhaps for a long residence, if my sisters
[across] should be living by themselves in their own house. Yours ever G. S.

To George Sturgis
16 July 1925 • Ávila, Spain (MS: Houghton)

Avila, July 16, 1925

Dear George
Your various letters have arrived for your aunts and me, and I have
shown your aunt Susie the private one about her will. We have agreed that,
under the present circumstances, it is better for her to wait. If she should
die before her husband—which is most unlikely, as he had a bad stroke of
paralysis three years ago, and has had three partial ones since—it would not
make much difference whether there was an American will or not, as your
aunt Josephine and I, if any portions were assigned to us, would certainly
not accept them in contravention to the Spanish will. Your aunt Susie has
consulted a Señor Arnaz,1 who has been minister of Justice, and who told
her that, by diplomatic channels if not otherwise, the execution of the
Spanish will could be obtained in the U.S. This Spanish will has been
made under pressure from Celedonio and his ideas of family unity and
marital authority. I understand that it leaves everything to him; but there
are some legacies to other persons and to charities. Your aunt has not been
able to tell me whether these legacies are made directly, Celedonio being
only residuary legatee, or whether they are only recommendations made
to him, for gifts to be made by him in her name for the good of her soul:
^ ^
I think the latter is more probable, and the Spanish term mandas (sendings
or commissions) rather suggests it. In that case, if she made a will now in
English, it would have to be simply leaving everything to her husband.
This is not at all in conformity to her true wishes. If, as you think proba-
ble, her Spanish will were not accepted for probate in America, and she
was pronounced to have died intestate, I (and I suppose your aunt
Josephine) would immediate ly surrender our shares to Celedonio or his
^ ^
children: the only difference would be that you and Josephine might retain
your portions. This would be regarded by the Sastre family as unfair, but
you could snap your fingers at their claims, especially as your aunt Susie
herself would never, of her free will, have left everything to them. In the
 1921–1927 3:255

improbable case then of your aunt Susie dying before her husband, her
^ ^
wishes would be just as well carried out without an American will as with
one, made in the only form in which she could now make it.
But supposing that, as is to be expected, Celedonio dies first, the situa-
tion would entirely change, and it would be easy for your aunt Susie to go
to Madrid (by auto if not otherwise) and to arrange everything according
to her true wishes and to the best legal advice from you and from others.
I should myself be glad to come to Spain in that event and give such assis-
tance as I could in the matter.
I don’t know whether your father or your aunt Susie herself has
informed you of a step which she took when your aunt Josephine’s will was
made. She asked your father to arrange that instead of a third of your aunt
Josephine’s capital, she (your aunt Susie) should be left only a life-interest
in that share, so that on her death the whole of your aunt’s \ Josephine’s
money (except my share) would go to you and your sister. Your aunt Susie
thinks that in this way she has virtually left you something in spite of the
necessity of leaving everything to her husband, if a serious row was to be
avoided at home.
I am glad the family tree is still budding, and (by the way) I was pleased
to see in the Sturgis family book that you were in charge of collecting fresh
data: it suggests that you take an active interest in your father’s tribe, which
has certainly a pleasant history. I don’t know what the younger generations
are like (just nice Americans, machine-made, I suppose) but their elders
were good-looking, generous, sanguine, not intellectual, and occasionally
rich.
Yours afftly GSantayana
[across] P.S. Of course I am at the house in Avila, where I have two rooms
called de Jorge. Luis & his wife are at Zorita, and we are often only five at
table. I leave next week for Paris.
1
Unidentified.
3:256 The Letters of George Santayana

To Robert Seymour Bridges

8 August 1925 • Paris, France (MS: Bodleian)

9 Avenue de l’Observatoire
Paris, Aug. 8, 1925
My dear Bridges,
You are such a good friend that you understand one’s silence as well as
one’s words, and I needn’t apologize for not writing and thanking you for
your previous (engraved) letter and the photograph attached. I am glad my
Dialogues do not seem to irritate you or offend your feelings, as I fear they
may those of many a reader—if many people read them. They are not, of
course, being mine, a work of erudition or even of retrospective fancy, and
I am not at all sure that the extant sayings of Democritus and the rest will
justify everything that I put in their mouths. I use them only as Platonic
types for points of view which are natural to my own mind, braver and
more truly ultimate than my accidental personal opinions, such as I assign
to The Stranger. And there are two things which I should be much pleased
if people found in this book, although I am afraid they won’t: one is a con-
nected doctrine and theme, the other an assimilation in spirit, though not
in language, between Greek and Indian philosophy. I have long thought
that the earlier Greeks had virtually the same wisdom as the Indians, and
that it was only an accident of race and rhetoric that they seemed physi-
ologers rather than religious mystics. My Democritus is intended to estab-
lish between his “atoms & void” on the one hand and his “normal
madness” on the other precisely the same opposition and connection that
the Indians established between Brahma and Illusion. I think myself that
this is the only right physics or metaphysics: but it is only half of human
philosophy. Socrates (who is nothing in physics, or a mere child) is brought
in to supply the other half, the self-justification of Illusion, because it is the
moral essence and fruit of life; and the “Secret of Aristotle” (which I am
much pleased that you take to kindly) is the means of harmonizing the two
points of view, and proving them to be not only consistent but indispens-
able to one another if the nature of things is to be understood at all.
Socrates defends human morality against religion no less than against nat-
uralism (which are not fundamentally enemies) and he is right politically:
but both science and religion, in thee /ir profound unison, make this politi-
cal humanism and ant-morality seem rather small and accidental. Both sci-
ence and religion, not being on the human scale, do violence to the human
 1921–1927 3:257

point of view, which at the same time they show to be excusable and
inevitable in a spirit expressing an animal life and generated by it. Is this
a hard saying? If not, why are people so slow to understand it?
I have been in Spain and expect to return to Rome for the winter, but
my local habitation [across] makes little difference to my way of life. I still
hope to return to England, which means Oxford and Chilswell, before
very long. Yours ever
GSantayana

To John Francis Stanley Russell

13 August 1925 • Paris, France (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Paris, Aug. 13. 1925
Dear Russell
Your note seems to reproach me for not having written since my last
visit to T. H,1 two years ago. I left England immediately after my Oxford
lecture and have not returned, having fallen into the habit of spending my
winters in Rome and my summers here or in Spain, where I was last
month in the bosom of my family—or what remains of it. My two old sis-
ters are living in Avila, and it is not improbable that I may end by retiring
there myself for my last years. For the moment, however, I continue my
customary round, except that England attracts me less for various reasons.
However, it is probable that I shall turn up there before long in the sum-
mer, and I shall not fail in that case to let you know and to make an
attempt to see you. Meantime there is nothing of interest to report. I
devote myself chiefly to sleeping, eating, taking the sun and air, and occa-
sionally (as you see) writing a book. There are still two or three volumes
which I hope to publish, if my life and mental powers don’t give out in the
interval. One is a novel, to be called “The Last Puritan”, in which my
observations on American life, and on love and friendship in general, are
to be enshrined; but I doubt whether it will ever be finished. Although it
is largely drawn from real life, you will not appear in it, at least not in a
recognizable form. There is one personage in whom something of you—or
of what I have put together in my own mind under your name—may be
reproduced: but only abstracted characteristics which a foreigner might
attribute to any unconventional Englishman.
3:258 The Letters of George Santayana

I suppose you are too busy to think of coming abroad, but if you should
ever do so a word addressed to B. S. & Co will always reach me.
Yours ever
G Santayana
1
Telegraph House.

To William Alexander Hammond

1 September 1925 • Paris, France (MS: Cornell)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1.
Paris, Sept. 1, 1925
My dear Professor Hammond
You may be pleased to hear, if you don’t know it already, that Mr
Marshall wrote me a very kind letter about the review of his book in the
Philosophical Review, saying that he was grateful, if not satisfied; in any
case, it seems to have been of some use in consoling him. Of course we are
all old fogeys now in the eyes of the moderns. I wonder, by the way if you
could have one or two copies of the number of the Review in which my
article appeared, sent to me C/o Brown Shipley & Co 123 Pall Mall,
London. If one was sent me at the time, it must have gone astray, and I
should like to have it at hand in case of any future collection of such papers
being prepared for publication.
Strong, in whose library I am writing this note, wishes me to give you
his kind regards.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana

To Charles Augustus Strong

15 September 1925 • Paris, France (MS: Rockefeller)

Paris, Sept. 15, 1925

Dear Strong
I am very glad to know that your trip was so pleasant and that you are
comfortably settled. You escaped a continuous fortnight of rain, chill, and
 1921–1927 3:259

darkness. Yesterday was the first fine day we have had, and today is the
second.
Here everything is as usual; I find the electric screens very comforting
to the feet when it is damp and chilly. Marie gives me more than enough
good food and is otherwise very attentive. I have spoken to her about her
wages, and told y/ her you had mentioned the matter to me, and said you
intended to send her her winter pension of 5 francs a day, as from Sept. 1st
and that I would give her 10 francs a day in addition while I remained
here. She said she was much obliged, and that this arrangement would
make her comfortable for the time being, but that later, as her husband
only earns about 15 francs a day, owing to interruptions caused by his ill-
health, she might find it hard to make both ends meet: and she thought
that if Mademoiselle would follow your generous example and give her
another 5 francs daily during the winter, it would be a great help.
I have been rereading old stuff of my own (which I mean to take to
Rome with me or to destroy) and also Saint Simon, beginning at volume
1: but you will be surprised, perhaps, to hear that the review of Dewey is
still unfinished. However, I am less impatient with myself about it than I
was, because it is now in an advanced and promising stage, and although
the effort spent has been wholly disproportionate, there will be something
satisfactory to show for it—something like the chapters on James and Royce
in the American book. Montague has written asking me to review a book1
of his that is coming out soon, but I have refused to promise anything.
Yours ever GSantayana
1
The Ways of Knowing; or, The Methods of Philosophy (London and New York, 1925).
Santayana did not do this review.

To George Sturgis
15 September 1925 • Paris, France (MS: Houghton)

9 Ave de l’Observatoire, Paris

September 15, 1925
Dear George
It was a great pleasure to receive the cablegram with the double news
nd1
of September 2– and now your letter of the same day giving me more
particulars. I am glad everything came off so well, and I appreciate your
remembering me at such a busy moment. If you ever take, or if you have,
3:260 The Letters of George Santayana

any snap-shots of Josephine and her new husband I should be glad to see
them; I count on seeing one before long of Nathaniel Russell Sturgis,
although at his age—except for his parents—he will partake more of the
species than of the individual. And, by the way, I don’t object at all to this
mouth-filling name, because he will grow up to it and meantime you can
call him Nat; and a traditional name like that is like a title, not a personal
combination made to suit. But I hope you don’t look forward to his hav-
ing as numerous a progeny as his patriarchal namesake2 and ancestor,
because the world, at least in my opinion, is already overpeopled.
I am living for the nonce in Strong’s apartment, where I am alone with
the bonne, as he found the rain and darkness oppressive and started on
September 1–st for Fiesole, in his motor-car, where he has already arrived.
His legs are weaker and weaker, and he now has a wheeled-chair, in which
he pushes himself about the house. About October 15 I expect to go to
Rome, where I have already engaged rooms at the same hotel where I was
last year—the Bristol—but this time I am to have a whole suite, and am tak-
ing a box of books so as to feel more honourably lodged, and this involves
financial consequences, of which I will write you later. It is quite true that,
if I had gone to Spain in the autumn, I might have stayed for the winter in
Andalusia: but I thought it safer to go in early summer and return to
Rome, where I know what [across] awaits me. I have no recent news from
Avila. Yours affectionately GSantayana
1
On this date Josephine Sturgis Eldredge married Raymond Bidwell, and a third son,
Nathaniel Russell Sturgis, was born to George and Rosamond.
2
He was named after Nathaniel Russell Sturgis (1779–1856) of Mount Vernon Street,
Boston. The elder Nathaniel fathered twelve children, one of whom was George
Sturgis (1817–57), Santayana’s mother’s first husband.

To Frederick James Eugene Woodbridge

29 September 1925 • Paris, France (MS: Columbia)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Paris, Sept. 29, 1925
Dear Mr Woodbridge
Although I warned you that “it might take some time”, I little thought
that my article on Dewey’s book would have taken six months to write.
Never did I tackle anything so stiff; and there were also journeys and other
 1921–1927 3:261

outside matters that interrupted me, and made it harder for me to return
to the mill. I have written much more than I am sending you, but at cross-
purposes; and even this is so long that I have divided it into two parts, so
that you may distribute it over two numbers of the Journal. I hope it may
amuse Dewey and not offend him, because I have come away from read-
ing his book—twice, most attentively—liking him better than ever.—If you
can spare the time to send me the proof, of course I should be glad; but
perhaps it is not strictly necessary, if your secretary will do it for me.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana

To Charles Augustus Strong

10 October 1925 • Paris, France (MS: Rockefeller)

Paris, Oct. 10, 1925

Dear Strong
I have taken my compartment in the fast train to Rome for next
th
Saturday, the 17– and expect to arrive on Sunday evening. If you wish me
to look for approachable rooms elsewhere than at the Minerva, when you
come to Rome, of course I should be glad to do so.
The book you asked for has been posted, and I put in a portrait of
Frazer1 which came in this week’s Mercury, thinking you might be inter-
ested to see what he looks like.—I am not taking any books to speak of to
Rome, only a few extra copies of my own recent books, and some old
manuscripts. You and Margaret will not see any change in the shelves.
As to Margaret, if she arrives on or before the 16th she will find me here,
and I should be delighted, not only to see her, but to hear any secrets
which she may be inclined to divulge
My article—divided into two for convenience, as it is rather long—was
despatched some time ago, and I have been luxuriating in the sense of
freedom and a light conscience. Besides copying some passages from old
note books that may serve for the big book, I have done nothing but read
Saint Simon and Destouches:2 the latter is sometimes very good and amus-
ing. Onderdonk has been hear —re for a few days with his mother, a
Viennese Jewess of sixty, very flirtatious and friendly, but a good soul:
reminded me of “Mollie” (Lady Russell) and of my matchless landlady at
St Jermyn Street3 in the good old days. I took them to the Théâtre Français
3:262 The Letters of George Santayana

to see (by chance) Monsieur Brotonneux and L’Enigme.4 I liked the first in
its way. But, as the German lady sighed, When will art return to the
Beautiful?5 Yours
G.S.
1
Possibly Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941), one of the founders of modern
anthropology. He did much to make the agnostic tendencies of his field of study
acceptable. The Golden Bough (1890–1915) is his twelve-volume study of the beliefs and
institutions of mankind, offering the thesis that man progresses from magical through
religious to scientific thought.
2
Philippe Destouches was the pen name of Philippe Néricault (1680–1754), a French
dramatist. Famous for Le Philosophe marié (1727), Le Glorieux (1732), and other senti-
mental comedies, he sought to make comedy morally edifying.
3
The genial and motherly Miss Bennett. See Persons, 270–71.
4
Monsieur Brotonneau was co-authored by the team of Robert de Flers (1872–1927) and
Gaston Armand de Caillavet (1869–1915). Probably Paul Hervieu’s (1857-1915)
L’Énigme pièce en deux actes, en prose.
5
Neither the drama “L’Enigme” nor the farce “Monsieur Brotonneau” features a German
lady. This line may refer to Andrew Joseph Onderdonk’s Austrian mother, who might
have made this remark in her native German.

To George Sturgis
23 October 1925 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Hotel Bristol, Rome,

October 23, 1925
Dear George
It is a good idea of yours, if you can leave your children and your busi-
ness in safe hands, to come with Rosamond for a trip to the Old World,
but I wish it could have been in the Spring or summer, rather than in
February and March. When the time comes, I will see if it is feasible to
leave Rome in order to meet you: the Riviera is not very far away, but
once there I should hardly feel like returning to Rome, so that my work-
ing winter season would be sadly cut short. That is the chief obstacle which
I foresee to joining you. On the other hand, all would not be loss to you if
you decided to come to Rome, because there is no place better worth see-
ing, and you would find the climate far better than that of Avila or of the
Loire at that season. It is a pity that you shouldn’t both come and stay here
at least a week: but I understand that your time is short, and your trip to
Avila will take up a good deal of energy—not speaking Spanish—as well as
of time. In France, on the beaten track, you will have no difficulty in get-
 1921–1927 3:263

ting on without much command of the language, because at the hotels you
can speak English and on the road everybody will know what you want
without much explanation. But the family in Avila, except your two aunts,
will be reduced to pantomime—as you know from your previous visit,
which I suppose you remember distinctly.
I am established here in a little suite quite luxuriously, and am enjoying
a warm Indian summer after the chills of Paris. It is a mere continuation of
my way of life, such as it was during the last two winters, and I find the
routine of it very pleasant. As yet no friends have turned up: but I saw
Onderdonk (with his queer gay mother) in Paris, and American professors
turn up at intervals with letters of introduction, and [across] give me a
chance of playing the part of ancient sage visited by inquiring pilgrims.
Yours affectionately GSantayana.

To Frederick James Eugene Woodbridge

11 November 1925 • Rome, Italy (MS postcard: Santayana)

Rome, Nov. 11, 1925

In the proof of my article on Dewey, which I sent the day before yes-
terday, I am afraid I overlooked a bad printer’s error in Rack B 13-1 (slip.
24), second paragraph, 12 lines from the end, where the full stop after “sec-
ondary” should be a comma, and “That” (following) should be “that”. May
I trouble you to have this change made? With apologies,
GSantayana

To George Sturgis
21 November 1925 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Nov. 21, 1925
Dear George
I am very glad to hear that you are hoping to come by way of Naples
and Rome. It is the right way of approaching the Old World, by the Straits
of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean. England is only a half-way house to
America and blunts the impression of contrast. When you reach Rome,
unless Raymond and Whitcomb1 have decreed otherwise, I wish you and
3:264 The Letters of George Santayana

Rosamond would come and stay with me here at the Hotel Bristol. You
wouldn’t interfere with my sacred solitude in the least, and we could see
more of one another with less trouble than if you went somewhere else. I
don’t dress before twelve or one o’clock, so that you would have the whole
morning in which to explore Rome independently; we could meet by
appointment to lunch at some restaurant; after which I might show you
one or another of my favourite haunts; and afterwards in the evening we
could meet again for dinner at the hotel, with bed conveniently near at the
first symptom of drowsiness—I was going to say, at the first yawn, but I sup-
pose that it would never come to that in so select a circle. The only obsta-
cle might be, as in the case of cabins in the Duilio, that there should be no
room in the/is inn; but if you will let me know when you are coming, and
whether you prefer one or two rooms, I will do my best to get what you
need—and you shall have a bathroom if possible, but I can’t promise: at the
worst you could come and use mine, which has a separate door to the pas-
sage.
I see that Raymond Bidwell is a stalwart young man, and that Nathaniel
Russell Sturgis has a will of his own. Thank you for the photos.—Please
send $25 to the Latin School Association, with the enclosed paper.2
When you send me a new letter of credit, (about which there is no
hurry, as the present one will provide funds until February at least) I wish
you would have it made out for £800 instead of £500, as heretofore. I
suppose this will still be well within my income, and is required in conse-
quence of my new establishment here, which naturally costs more than the
single room with which I have been satisfied in the past, and with which I
could easily be content again, if it were necessary. But the present arrange-
ment is certainly more suitable to a person of my age and dignity, and
gives me more elbow-room, so that there is no reason why I shouldn’t
indulge in it if I am able to afford it. You will see my quarters—more
appropriate perhaps for a prima donna or grass widow than for a hoary
philosopher; but I have taken things as I found them: the idea of furnish-
ing rooms in my own way, though pleasing in prospect, never tempts me
when it comes actually to taking an apartment and encumbering myself
with goods and chattels: here nothing is mine, and I can leave at a
moment’s notice without dragging any chains or cares away with me.
From Avila I have no news other than that Luis has had a second little
girl. This restores the number of grandchildren to nine, six girls and three
 1921–1927 3:265

boys, and although they belong to three different households they make a
single ladder in their ages and heights.
Yours affectionately
GSantayana
P.S. I am drawing £100 in a few days, and shall draw the rest of my credit,
another £100, before the new year.
1
There was a steamship line owned by Harry Howard Raymond (1864–1935).
2
Unlocated.

To Bernard Berenson
22 November 1925 • Rome, Italy (MS: I Tatti)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Nov. 22. 1925
Dear Berenson
It is pleasant to hear that the Dialogues have entertained you. Why
don’t you cut yourself a fresh quill and give us again a little of your own
wisdom? There is a subject which I should be tempted to attack if people
would listen to me, as they would to you, I mean aesthetic arrogance. We
are living in an age of emancipated specialists, or of people who give out
^ ^
that they are specialists; and the public is not served, but bidden to believe
and obey. These specialists, in other matters, are often persons of no cul-
ture or judgement, but one in physics, another in logic, another in eco-
nomics, another in art, assure us that they are each of them infallible.
There is Roger Fry,1 for instance, and there is a book by an American busi-
ness man2—I can’t remember his name—who has been baptized in the
Jordan of Futurism and has founded a college. Some of his analyses of pic-
tures show attentiveness, but his head seems to have been completely
turned by a sect of Parisian painters, essentially amateurs and irresponsi-
ble, who will admit that nothing is “art” but what they practice. You know
the man I mean, probably: he casts some aspersions on you, by the way,
for treating painting as if it were literature! Couldn’t all this stir you up to
some philosophizing on the “art” of criticism? The liberty of craftsmen to
amuse themselves and invent what toys they will, is one thing; the func-
tion of adorning a civilized city with the monuments and elegances which
express its instinct, is quite another. But the result of anarchy in our soci-
ety seems to be a crop of small persons who, by sheer effrontery, make
themselves tyrants in their respective fields.
3:266 The Letters of George Santayana

Strong, who has been here, has probably told you that I have returned
to my winter quarters. Let me know if you and Mrs Berenson come to
Rome
[across] Yours ever GSantayana
1
Roger Eliot Fry (1866–1934), born into an English Quaker family, began his educa-
tion in science at the University of Cambridge. He then turned his interest toward art
and became a critic and painter.
2
Unidentified.

To Warner Fite
12 December 1925 • Rome, Italy (MS: Princeton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London
Rome, Dec. 12, 1925
Dear Professor Fite
It was very kind of you to send me your beautiful big book on Moral
Philosophy,1 in which I see that there is a treasure of pleasant discourse on
many subjects. I have only dipped into it as yet, but my eye has fallen on
your strictures on poor Dewey, with whom I have been lately wrestling on
my own account. I think you are hard on him; he is doing such a difficult
pioneer’s work in reducing the human intellect—sadly idle and good-for-
nothing so far—to a working instrument, all muscle and no fat. The poor
creature never did such a terrible penance in his life before, but I think it
will do him good.
I have also happened on the page where you quote my peroration on
Spinoza, and it seems to me that you misinterpret a little what I had in
mind. By the little gnostics and circumnavigators of being I didn’t mean
any one who claimed to have an experience of God: Spinoza claimed this
himself most emphatically, and on the same page I repeat the saying of
Renan that probably nobody ever had a better right than Spinoza had to
that distinction. Every essence, being a portion of eternal inalienable
Whatness, is in one sense a divine thing: and every existence, in another
way, is a proof of God’s presence through its power, its brute objective-
ness. By little gnostics I meant people like Hegel2 or like orthodox theolo-
gians who profess to know all about God and the universe, that is, all that
is fundamental: they do not experience God’s presence in the night, but
circumnavigate his nature and put him “in their pocket”.
 1921–1927 3:267

I also notice that you praise my countryman Unamuno:3 but /syou

should have done it in your chapter on the wisdom—or the folly—of the
Serpent. He is not sound.
Believe me, with many thanks for your gift,
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
A naturalist, Warner Fite (1867–1955) was an author and philosopher who taught at
Harvard (1911–12) and Princeton (1915–35). Moral Philosophy: The Critical View of Life
(New York: The Dial Press, 1925) was later published as The Examined Life: An
Adventure in Moral Philosophy (London: Methuen, 1926).
2
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) was a German philosopher and propo-
nent of idealism. His system is presented in Phenomenology of Mind (1807), Science of Logic
(1812–16), Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1817), and Philosophy of Right (1821).
Hegel rejected the existence of finite objects in space and time, establishing instead a
rational unity, the Absolute. The quest for understanding the Absolute proceeds
according to the Hegelian dialectic in which positing something (thesis), denying it
(antithesis), and combining the partial truths in each (synthesis) results in a new thesis.
3
The distinguished Spanish poet, novelist, playwright, and critic Miguel de Unamuno
y Jugo (1864–1936) was educated at the University of Madrid and became professor of
Greek at the University of Salamanca. Del sentimiento trágico de la vida en los hombres y
en los pueblos (Madrid, 1913) is his best-known work.

To George Sturgis
24 December 1925 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Xmas Eve, 1925
Dear George
The people in this hotel promise to have a double room and bath
reserved for you for Feb. 6 to 10 inclusive. The house is now full, but
apparently there is a clear sky ahead. I am very glad that the matter is so
easily arranged. You will not disturb my meditations in the least, quite the
contrary. A German friend1 of mine is spending his holidays with me—he
is a school-teacher—and although communication is not very easy, his
English being broken and my German — on
——not in commission, I find it very
pleasant to have a little society and the stimulus of another mind.
The new letter of credit has arrived. Thank you very much. It is nice to
know that I shall still be keeping well within my income in spite of my
spurt of extravagance.
3:268 The Letters of George Santayana

Best wishes for the new year and the Eastward voyage
Yours affty
GSantayana
P.S. I shall draw the remainder of my old letter of credit, £100, in a few
days. Then I may not draw again until you return to America.
1
Possibly Hans Reichhardt.

To Mary Whitall Smith Berenson

31 December 1925 • Rome, Italy (MS: I Tatti)

Hotel Bristol Rome

December 31, 1925
Dear Mrs Berenson
Why didn’t I answer your previous kind letter? Because for a month I
have had no note-paper and have forgotten every day to get it. But now a
fresh box has been actually acquired in your honour. I well remember the
luxury and freedom which I enjoyed at I Tatti when I was last there, and I
am particularly sorry not to renew those delights now that your brother1 is
there. Isn’t he coming to Rome later? But as my father—who had some
nautical experience—used to say, I am here anchored with four anchors,
Sloth, Prudence, Work, and Minor Engagements; and they are impossible
anchors to drag at this moment. As to work, about which the whole net is
supposed to be woven, it really amounts to very little. I sit down to it every
morning, but without tangible results; my brain seems to be drying up.
However, this is no reason for travel, at least to Florence, because if I went
there, how could I come to stay with you, who besides your domestic soci-
ety (such society!) have so many friends coming and going, and how could
I abandon Strong who I suppose is all alone? I have heard nothing of
Margaret’s movements or decisions but I understood that if nothing mate-
rialized in Paris she meant to go to America
Thank you very much for writing again, it is very kind of you, but iner-
tia is the primary force in nature, at least in mine.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Logan Pearsall Smith.
 1921–1927 3:269

To Benjamin Apthorp Gould Fuller

1 January 1926 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Hotel Bristol Rome

Jan. 1st 1926
Dear Fuller
Your greetings reach me precisely for the new year, and I see that my
own good wishes, although unuttered, have been fulfilled and that you are
getting on swimmingly. Have you seen Abel Hermant’s little book on
“Platon”?1 The first part is charming, but his rope soon gives out, and he
has no idea of the political and religious grandeur of his subject.
My negligence in writing has not been as bad as it seems. I ordered the
new edition of Lucifer to be sent to you, thinking it would do as a return
Xmas card, but Firuski informed me afterwards that he had not sent it
because you had already subscribed. Then I thought the Dialogues would
soon appear, and would do as a substitute, but they were long delayed—by
the Dial2 and then by the English strikes in the printing trade—so that it can
have arrived only after months and months. Either sloth or old age are
gaining rapidly upon me, and I sometimes doubt whether the Realms or
the novel3 will ever see the light—but I have brought forth so often when I
despaired of deliverance, that I may perhaps perform the miracle again.
Your guess that I was at the Bristol was correct, but this year I am
indulging in a complete apartment, and have a boudoir (its blue silk ele-
gance can’t bestow another name on it) with a bedroom and bath, and I
have a few more books and things about me than on other years. I might
settle down here altogether, except that I may at any moment decide to
make Avila my head-quarters, if my sisters should move to a house of their
own when my brother-in-law dies; he is 85 and very feeble, so that the end
may come any day. I was in Avila last summer for a month—July—and was
both happy and comfortable there—not to speak of the ambiente4 of
domestic affection to which I suppose an ancient philosopher ought to be
indifferent.
I have read Broad, Dewey, Montague, and now Drake (alias Strong)5
and feel rather fed up with scholastic “problems”; I think people nowadays
are more sane and reasonable than they used to be, but they have, like
Polonius,6 a most plentiful lack of wit. For the Cambridge7 people the intel-
lectual world begins and ends in Cambridge, and for the Americans it is a
Department meeting. Do get out your second volume and give us a little
3:270 The Letters of George Santayana

oxygen to breathe. One of my greatest pleasures has been the three vol-
umes of Plotinus, with the new French translation, which have so far
appeared in the Collection Budé.8 How splendid it all is, with only a touch
of ancient old-fogydom here and there, to give us the right perspective!
Another true satisfaction for me is the new regime in Italy and in Spain,
American in its futurism and confident hopes, but classical in its reliance
on discipline and its love of a beautiful finitude and decision. That dread-
ful loose dream of liberalism seems to be fading away at last! Poor France
and England are paying the penalty for having drugged themselves so
thoroughly with that verbal poison.
Have you read Charles Maurras, Enquête sur la Monarchie?9 I have no
faith in the possibility of restoring the France which he dreams of, but per-
haps something new and possible may arise when things have got so bad
that they can’t get worse.
With best wishes for this and many a new year,
^^
Yours ever
GSantayana
1
Abel Hermant (1862–1950) wrote Platon (Paris: B. Grasset, 1925).
2
Under Scofield Thayer as editor after 1920, The Dial became the most distinguished
literary monthly in the United States to champion modern artistic movements. Several
“Dialogues” appeared in The Dial in 1924 and 1925 before Dialogues in Limbo was pub-
lished by Scribner’s and Constable in 1925.
3
Essence was published in 1927, Matter in 1930, Truth in 1937, and Spirit in 1940; The
Last Puritan, Santayana’s novel, was published in 1935.
4
Atmosphere (Italian).
5
Strong collaborated with Drake on Mind and Its Place in Nature, but the book was
authored by Drake.
6
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Polonius, a pompous old courtier, is lord chamberlain to
the king and father of Ophelia and Laertes.
7
University of Cambridge in England.
8
Plotinus (c. 204–c. 270) was a Greek philosopher of Neoplatonism. His treatises were
arranged into Enneads (groups of nine), which were written during the last seventeen
years of his life. Guillaume Budé (1467–1540), a French Renaissance humanist and
meticulous scholar, had a role in founding the Bibliothèque Nationale and Collège de
France. Émile Bréhier translated Plotinus into French (accompanied by Greek texts,
with notes) in six volumes (Société d’édition “Les Belles lettres,” sous le patronage de
l’Association Guillaume Budé, Paris, 1924–38).
9
Charles Maurras (1868–1952), a French political writer and critic, propounded his
nationalistic and monarchial views in Enquête sur la monarchie, 1900–1909 (Inquiry into
monarchy, Paris: Nouvelle librarie nationale, 1909). In 1938 he was elected to the
French Academy. An active collaborator with the Germans, Maurras was sentenced in
1945 to life imprisonment.
 1921–1927 3:271

To Charles Augustus Strong

6 January 1926 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Bristol Rome

Jan. 6, 1926
Dear Strong
Last night I finished Drake’s book. You must have foreseen, when you
refused to send me the proofs, that I shouldn’t like it; it is dreadfully infe-
rior, in depth and closeness of thought, to your own expositions of your
theory, and at the same time it is less yours than I had expected. You may
agree with it all, as I agree with most of it (apart from the atrocious vocab-
ulary); but Drake evidently has no speculative insight or sweep; different
views which recommend themselves to him are reproduced literally, with-
out that fusion into an original tint and total of which he speaks. I recog-
nize even scraps of myself; and his behaviourism and physiology are just
drawn from textbooks or from current authors, without change. I should
think, by the way, that these last elements might be those which, on the
whole, would remain in the reader’s mind, and that Drake, if he is noticed
at all, will be set down as a crude behaviourist and nothing more. If I had
not searched for the “feeling” to be infused into matter, and dwelt on those
few passages especially, I might have passed your part of the theory over
entirely, attributing the “psychic” and “mental” states and the “conscious-
ness” merely to the habit of using psychological words figuratively to
describe material facts. There is indeed a good deal about the non-existent
data, or appearances, which occupy attention during mental discourse; but
as these are reduced to groups of blurred existent units, I can’t see that the
apparition of appearance (or of existents) is in the least accounted for or
even acknowledged; the chapter on the unity of consciousness treats, not
of intuition or actual thought, but only of the varying scope of attention:
on which subject it seems to me excellent. Attention itself, like cognizance,
remains apparently an observable relation between an animal body and its
environment. When, however, I fix upon the places where the psychic
essence of matter is described, I am left as hopelessly unsatisfied as in our
frequent discussions. The sense of being alive in the depths of our bodies
comes from being alive in fact: how should inorganic matter possess it?
And if the atoms do not possess it, but only the organisms which they
form, how are the atoms psychic? In the chapter on fusion (as often in your
talk) I seem to catch a glimpse quite another view (which I call
3:272 The Letters of George Santayana

Anaxagoras) drawn rather from the neo-realist quarter; for there “fusion or
summation is merely a name for the fact that the datum is relatively sim-
ple” –[p. 111]–; and later –[p. 120]– we read that we might have intuition of
existing units, (!) if our senses were fine enough. It would seem then, that
these units cannot be feelings but must be dots: minima sensibilia.1 You dif-
fer from Anaxagoras in suggesting that they are all similar; so that the
invention of colour, pain, etc is left by you exactly to the same moral or
fanciful exuberance in nature to which a mere materialist would leave it;
whereas the prudent Anaxagoras, having once been guilty of hypostatiz-
ing given essences, thought he might as well hypostatize them in their vari-
ety. But, if I understand your meaning, the sensible ————
pre———
sence or existence
————
of the elements paves the way to the sensible presence of their groups,
without requiring the sensitive organism to rise to intuition on its own
account. This neo-realist view of fusion is not, however, the one which
seems to prevail in your treatment or in Drake’s: am I entirely misled in
entertaining it at all? The prevalent idea seems to be the other, that actual
feeling lives, in a seminal state, in each of the atoms and constitutes its
whole substance. But on this view, you ought to be a monadist: the growth
of the organism and of its reactions might develop that sensibility in the
atom: but it would be the atom, not the organism, that would possess it.
On these alternatives and doubts, which are the interesting and dark points
of the theory, Drake throws no light whatever: perhaps he doesn’t suspect
that they arise at all. By leaving out such questions, and all criticism and
dialectic, he makes his book easy reading: and if what you desired was to
spread your views rather than to justify them, perhaps his cooperation may
be useful. But I am afraid his simple and chatty manner, and his unneces-
sary abuse of words, will hurt you with the great heretics whom you wish
to convert. I add a rhyme
To a Stammering Philosopher G. S.
You say “qualitification”,
Why don’t you say sensitivity?
That is mystifica-cation,
This would mean legibi-bility.
You add “complexification”
To my seni-silli-nility.
1
The smallest of sensory perceptions (Latin).
 1921–1927 3:273

To Charles Augustus Strong

2 February 1926 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Feb. 2, 1926
Dear Strong
Here is your article, which I was waiting for before answering your long
letter. Your patience in ruminating over these points is admirable, and I
think perhaps you may still see your way to further restatements, because
it seems to me that there remain traces, at least in your phraseology, of
points of view which you have given up in theory. Your article is clearer to
me than your letter. In the letter I found nothing new, except the insistence
on “actuality”, (which I should call existence, actuality being, in a techni-
cal sense, limited to intuition); and of course I should agree that no intu-
ition and no appearance could arise unless there were an existent and
living organism to produce it.
In the article what has most interested me is paragraph (1) on p. 44. In
using “awareness” –and
[ later “consciousness”]– for knowledge of external
fact, or alleged knowledge of it, aren’t you in danger of having to maintain
that pain is unconscious, and that we are “aware” of its small parts but not
of its specious essence? Certainly in pure feeling the sense of existence is
at its maximum and the description of this existence at its minimum—
which is the reason for calling it feeling rather than intuition; but the sharp-
ness, badness, and alarm of it must be given, if attention and not merely
reaction is to be turned upon the aching member; and of course it is this
aching member, or the outer agency affecting it (the “bad smell”, for
istance) that is the object of our reaction and belief, the thing existing
besides the intuition or feeling. This feeling, the intuition of sharpness etc,
must be unitary, if it is to be conscious; and I still fee
——ail to see any plausi-
bility in the existence of little parts requisite to compose it.
I like your remark on p. 53 that “the organism does not merely cause
the appearance to arise, but enjoys it.” This is an important point which I
have neglected to consider expressly: appearances or angelic intuitions
floating about on the loose would not be expressions of animal life in me
or you: it is the same difficulty that besets the Humian “ideas”. They must
be moored to the organism, not merely by a temporal concomitance, but
by inner relevance: they are taken from it as a centre, in its interests,
through its organs, and are woven into that personal life in which the per-
3:274 The Letters of George Santayana

ception of the organism, its environment, in perspectives centred upon it,

its memories, and its passion are all woven constantly together. But it is not
incumbent on the observer, looking at the organism and imagining the
appearances open it, to imagine them growing up in that organism mate-
rially, by a sort of substantial vegetation: they are, by hypothesis, spiritual
facts, unobservable, and not to be moored in nature at all save by inner
relevance to particular natural predicaments, a relevance to be discovered
only sympathetically, not empirically, by evoking a similar appearance in
our own fancy.
This leads me to say that in this article, especially in the later pages, I
have felt more than ever the strangeness of your approach and of your
problems. You seem to look on appearances (e.g. visual images) as if they
were parts of the same world with things; and you trouble yourself about
“inversion”! I don’t want to argue about this: it would be useless. I only
mention it as a reason for not arguing: there is too great a divergence in
our preconceptions: you are an empiricist and I am a scholastic.
Onderdonk has been here: my nephew George Sturgis and his wife
[across] are coming next week: work is not going well. But I am reading
Alexander with some profit, I hope: he too is an empiricist: but a/ I advise
you to be wary in adopting his “enjoyment”. It is not your “sentience”.
Yours ever G. S.

To Curt John Ducasse

23 February 1926 • Rome, Italy (MS postcard: Brown)

ROMA – CAMPIDOGLIO ED ARA COELI

Rome, Feb. 23, 1926.
Thank you for your exposure of the tinkling Bell.1 I think, however, that
the criticism of this school is better than its art; and that if insignificant
form could be made arresting permanently and profoundly, as it can be in
nature and in architecture, it would be beautiful or sublime or comic, and
therefore worth creating. We are governed by an Aesthetic Soviet of
Desperadoes:2 we shall escape [across] someday, but they never will. G.S.
1
Clive Arthur Howard Bell (1881–1964), an English critic of art and literature, was a
member of the Bloomsbury Group. He married Vanessa Stephen, Virginia Woolf’s sis-
ter. His major works include Art (1914), Since Cézanne (1922), Proust (1929), and Account
of French Painting for the Winter (1931).
2
Santayana wrote an article, “An Aesthetic Soviet,” which was published in The Dial
(82 [May 1927]: 361–70) and reprinted in Obiter.
 1921–1927 3:275

To Charles Augustus Strong

19 March 1926 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Bristol Rome

March 19 1926
Dear Strong
I am very glad to hear how things are getting on with you. Do you sup-
pose that there is any wonderful secret in Relativity, apart from mathe-
matical calculations, which is beyond the understanding of the most
willing mind? I doubt it: but of course we have to be silent until one of the
Fach1 lets the cat out of the bag; it is the new system under which we live,
the Soviet system, where a self-appointed committee of experts tell the
world what it is expected to believe under pain of excommunication.
My own dulness has lately yielded to a spell of interest and capacity to
work, partly a last spurt of despair, partly perhaps the Season, and partly
the stimulus of a new author whom I have come upon by chance hear ——re
in a shop-window: René Guénon. He has written an “Introduction
générale à l’étude des doctrines hindoues”, “Orient et Occident”, and
“L’Homme selon les doctrines du Vedanta”2. I have read the two last and
am beginning the first which has only just reached me. He is a complete
convert to a sort of esoteric orthodoxy which he maintains has always
existed in the oriental world, even among the Mohammodans, and which
he calls la métaphysique pure:3 it seems to be the realm of essence with a
sort of essential hierarchy introduced into it. His criticism of the West is
severe but deserved. Anyhow, I am more hopeful than I was a month ago
of finishing vol. I, of the Realms this season. Probably I shall find, when
the moment to leave Rome arrives, that it is not quite ready, as the Realm
of Essence has to be revised a little, as well as the Realm of Matter to be
completed. In that case I think I shall go to Cortina: but that would not
prevent me from going on to Paris as soon as the work was done. I can’t
go to Florence, and am not sorry if you don’t feel like taking the trip to
Naples: but do come here for a change. It will also [across] be a pleasant
change for me to have a chance to talk philosophy. My nephew George
Sturgis and his wife, and other friends, have been here but they are inno-
cents. Yours ever G.S.
1
The complete German phrase is “einer vom Fach” (a specialist in the field).
2
René Guénon (1886–1951), a French philosopher, took the name Abd al-Wahid
Yahya in 1912 when he converted to the mystic Islamic tradition of Sufism. His books
3:276 The Letters of George Santayana

were published in 1921, 1924, and 1925. Translated from French the titles are
Introduction to the study of Hindu doctrines, The East and the West, and Man and his
becoming according to the Vedanta (Santayana incorrectly notes this French title, it
should read L’Homme et son devenir selon le Vêdânta).
3
Pure metaphysics (French).

To Rosamond Thomas Bennett Sturgis

26 March 1926 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Hotel Bristol Rome

March 26, 1926
Dear Rosamond
Forgive me for leaving your nice letter so long unanswered—also
George’s card from Paris. I was hoping to hear something of your impres-
sions in Spain, and from what George says, as well as both his aunts, who
have now written, I gather that you got on tolerably well. I hope the trip
as a whole was pleasant enough to leave you with a profound and irre-
pressible desire to come again. If you have found the children well, and
stocks not hopelessly demoralized by the panic—of which I have heard
only a first alarm, perhaps exaggerated—you can both of you congratulate
yourselves on the result, because you have not only had a holiday and a
change, but you have given your old relations a great deal of pleasure. Let
me whisper in your ear that you, personally, were a little disappointing at
first, because we expected a roaring Amazon,1 carrying everything before
her and sweeping us old people off our feet: but nothing of the sort. You
turned out to be remarkably feminine for these times, what in Victorian
[illegible]days would have been called very attractive, and so far from
Herculean that sometimes you seemed a little frail, and I was afraid you
did more than was good for you. However, now that you are safe at home
you can have as lazy and sleepy a time as household cares allow and the
long summer in which to get fat and sunburned. It seems to me here as if
it were only yesterday that you left, and I am counting on another & longer
visit, to your affte Uncle George
1
In Greek mythology, the Amazons are a nation or race of female warriors. The term
“Amazon” also means a tall, strong woman.
 1921–1927 3:277

To Charles Augustus Strong

20 April 1926 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Bristol Rome

April 20 1926
Dear Strong
I have been dreadfully remiss in not thanking you for your two post
cards and your article. I am glad to know about Fiuggi, and I mean to write
and inquire about the time when the hotel is open, etc. and possibly I may
go for the day to /rlook about and see what the place promises. It will prob-
ably not be so cool or so beautiful as Cortina, but it is nearer, and might
be more diverting.
The texture of your second article seems to me very good, and you say
a great many things with which I agree heartily; but, as you know, your
statement of the problem rubs me the wrong way, because it seems to
assume (for instance, in the second short paragraph on the first page) that
there ought to be intuition of things, and that if appearances differ from
things, the difference must be explained by some supervening operation,
in the nerves if not in the mind, by which the natural intuition is trans-
formed into the actual one. Now I think that only the ——actual
na one is nat-
ural, that there never was any other, and that the complexities of — the
——
material objects have no business, and no tendency, to reveal themselves
to animals grazing among them. Your conclusions seem to me sensible and
true: but you raise a problem which, at least in form, is artificial, and the
extreme difficulty of following your reasoning and your analysis, in certain
places, comes from the fact that there is no such subject-matter as that
which you are studying so laboriously. E.g. on p. 151, near the middle, you
speak of “our inability to resolve” read
——d and blue; whereas I should say
that there is nothing to resolve them into: their causes meet for the first
time in that simple intuition: they never could have appeared in their com-
plexity; and they are discovered only ultimately, by intellectual construc-
tion and symbolic representation. Why then make a problem of their not
appearing at first as they are? Yours ever
G.S.
3:278 The Letters of George Santayana

To Charles Augustus Strong

16 May 1926 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Bristol Rome

May 16, 1926
Dear Strong
After much hesitation I have decided to go to Cortina at the end of
June, and I am afraid there is little chance that I shall get to Paris this sum-
mer. I hope you will find or invite some one to keep you company for a
part of the time. Perhaps Pinsent might make you a longer visit than usual,
if he is not too busy to go North. They tell me that there is now a lift at the
hotel Cristallo, and running water in the rooms. You might come there in
September, if you are tired of Paris. The crowd is then gone, the weather
(two years ago) was ideal, and the scenery all that one could desire. Or if
the villa is not ready in October and you wanted to spend a fortnight at the
Italian Riviera or at Naples, I could join you almost anywhere before set-
tling down again in Rome
What I have heard of Fiuggi suggests that it is a crowded noisy place,
not too cool, and I am afraid of trying it when I wish to be quiet and to feel
the stretch of time clear before me. “The book” in one sense is going
badly; I find that revision becomes rewriting, and that nothing is ever
really finished: on the other hand, I am encouraged about the quality of
the work, and feel that it will be satisfactory if it can only come to an end.
I am also carrying on the novel; and as this is much more interesting to
me, it will help to fill in the gaps when I get stuck in the big book.
There is to be a new edition—unchanged—of Winds of Doctrine for
which I have written a short preface. Old Dent is dead; this is his son’s
doing. I have received the first account of the Dialogues: about 500 copies
have been sold in England and 2000 in America Constable’s Cheque
^
£73 (including both) Such reviews as I have seen have not been very
^
intelligent.
Yours ever
G.S.
 1921–1927 3:279

To Susan Sturgis de Sastre

17 May 1926 • Rome, Italy (MS postcard: Sanchez Sastre)

ROMA – BASILICA DI S. PIETRO (INTERNO)

Hotel Bristol, Rome
May 17, ’26. Your card from Paris has just reached me. I am sorry you
have been worried, and hope my letter arrived soon after. It is very cool
here as yet, I shall probably stay until the end of June when I go to Cortina.
I now dine out and lunch in the hotel, as the evening abroad is pleasanter.
Love to all from Jorge

To Otto Kyllmann
22 May 1926 • Rome, Italy (MS: Temple)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Rome, May 22, 1926
Dear Mr Kyllmann
In regard to the enquiry about a book entitled “Materialism & Morals”,1
I can say nothing. Is the book supposed to be by me? Possibly, years ago,
I may have read some paper or given some semi-private address under
this title. There is no such book that I know of, or any publication that I
remember
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
p. t. o.
P.S. Do you think the death of Sir Sidney Lee might enable the publish-
ers of his Shakespeare’s Works to let us reproduce my introduction to
Hamlet? It is a paper which cost me great pains, and which continues the
same sort of Latin criticism of English literature that I ventured upon in
other places: Poetry of Barbarism, Religion in Shakespeare, Shelley,2 etc.
I should like to rescue that essay on Hamlet if it were possible and repub-
lish it in some future collection of critiques & reviews.
1
Part V of Essays is titled “Little Essays on Materialism and Morals.”
2
“The Poetry of Barbarism” and “The Absence of Religion in Shakespeare” consti-
tute chapters VI and VII, respectively, of Interpretations; the essay on Shelley (“Shelley:
or the Poetic Value of Revolutionary Principles”) first appeared as chapter V of
3:280 The Letters of George Santayana

Doctrine. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) was an English poet whose works include
Prometheus Unbound, Epipsychidion, and Adonais.

To Otto Kyllmann
31 May 1926 • Rome, Italy (MS: Temple)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Rome. May 31, 1926
Dear Mr Kyllmann
The publishers and printers of Sidney Lee’s Shakespeare were The
Riverside Press, of Cambridge, Mass. They let me have a single copy of
the Hamlet, but would not even sell me any more copies of that volume
without the rest of the complete works. Fancy how many persons can have
seen that poor Introduction!
I am not sure whether the Riverside Press is still in being or is now the
Harvard University Press. Yours sincerely
GSantayana

To Paul Weiss
3 June 1926 • Rome, Italy (MS postcard: Southern)

ROMA - FONTANA DI TREVI

Rome, June 3, 1926.
Thank you for your letter & your review.1 Have you read Paul Valéry?2 I
find this in him: C’est pour moi un principe d’éthique … de considérer les
opinions des autres, et particulièrement les miennes, comme aussi stables
que le temps qu’il fait aujourd’hui.3—I had rather leave you, ten years
hence, to criticize your own criticisms than —to
— attempt to criticize them
now. Let me only say that Plato thinks myth necessary in physics, not in
morals.
[across] Yours etc. G. Santayana
1
Paul Weiss (b. 1901) is a philosopher and founder of the Review of Metaphysics.
Whitehead was his dissertation advisor. Weiss served as editor of Peirce’s Collected
Papers and is noted for his book Being and Other Realities. Weiss’s review of Dialogues is
“The Man Who Was Seven” (The New Republic 46 [12 May 1926]).
 1921–1927 3:281

2
Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules Valéry (1871–1945) was a French poet, essayist, and
literary critic. His works include Propos sur l’intelligence and Variété, a collection of essays
in five volumes.
3
The translation of this French statement reads, “It is for me a principle of ethics to
consider the opinions of others, and particularly my own, as being as stable as today’s
weather.”

To Charles Augustus Strong

27 June 1926 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Rome, Sunday, June 27, ’26

Dear Strong
I am very glad to have a word from you, as it was a long time since I
had heard anything. And it is pleasant to know that you have had so many
chances to talk philosophy with great minds in the movement.
I leave for Cortina tomorrow evening , going directly in 24 hours, via
^ ^
Verona, Trent, “Bobsano”; I change just before the Austrian frontier—my
train going on to Munich and Berlin—and take the side line down to
Cortina. If the weather is good, I expect that the scenery all that day will
be magnificent.
The book is going on at the same snail’s pace—or crab’s pace—but I am
not discouraged, because I think I am improving it; and I am taking the
novel with me as well, in case the spirit is more willing or the flesh less
weak in that direction. I have begun a general revision of the novel, mak-
ing it, as I go, ready for the printer.
Will you do me a favour and ask Aldo or Marie to see if they can have
the small object (mentioned in this half-sheet)1 (a handle with two small
^ ^
rubber wheels inserted, for rubbing the gums) sent to me to Cortina? I
have not been able to find it here, and it is useful in keeping my gums from
getting sore and retreating dangerously. It used to cost, I think, 16 francs—
it may be a little more now. I still have one of these instruments, but it is
getting worn.
June in Rome, until the last day or two, has been very cool: I have been
going out to dinner instead of to lunch, and have found the evenings
delightful.
Yours ever
GSantayana
1
Unlocated.
3:282 The Letters of George Santayana

To George Sturgis
19 July 1926 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Hotel Cristallo
Cortina d’Ampezzo
July 19, 1926.
Dear George
Your letter of June 14th and the formal announceme/tnt of your new busi-
ness connection are before me, and from what you say I gather that the
new arrangement gives you satisfaction and promises well for the future.
You will live in a hotbed of information about investments and the march
of events, and you will doubtless make good use of your tips.
As to your aunt Susie’s deed of trust, it seems to me all a question of
legal expediency and practicableness: if such a thing can be arranged, it is
evidently simpler than the old arrangement. But Celedonio, I suppose,
would not be told—he would never have had any confidence in such an
outlandish thing as a trust, and nowadays he wouldn’t even understand the
theory of it; and if he should survive your aunt, he would have the surprise
of his life on finding that she left no property whatever. Still, if you sent
him the entire capital, perhaps he might be consoled, even if not placated.
In the other eventuality, perhaps there might be questions in Spain about
the joint property of the married pair, increased capital (bienes ganan-
ciales1) being according to Spanish law possessed half-and-half by husband
and wife, apart from any will of either. But your aunt Susie knows this bet-
ter than I do, and if she sees her way clear, of course it is not for you to
trouble about Spanish technicalities. If the thing is legal in America and
the substantial result is favourable to the Sastre family, they would not care
(the sons, I mean)2 about the machinery by which the result was secured.
As to my own will and testament, I am meditating a complete change
(as I think I told you when you were here) but have not quite made up my
mind about it. As things stand now, I don’t think I should care to divert a
considerable sum for the Harvard Fellowship3: that would become rea-
sonable if ever I inherited (from your aunt Josephine) or made (by the
novel) a further appreciable sum. Meantime, the changes I should make in
my will are not considerable, at least in substance: although it has occurred
to me that I might leave your aunts out of my will altogether, as not need-
 1921–1927 3:283

ing or wanting money, certainly not your aunt Josephine: and your aunt
Susie would perhaps prefer a life-interest to an inheritance; it would be a
way of making you and Josephine her heirs to that extent, without the
intervention of her Spanish family. Tell me what you think frankly. You
know my general wishes in the matter, and it is chiefly a question of the
appropriate means. When I get your suggestions, I will deliberate
overnight, and make up my mind to something definite.
I have now been here, at Cortina, for three weeks and expect to remain
for the rest of the summer. My book4 gets on very slowly, but I have plenty
of entertaining books, besides the pleasure of the walks in the country, to
keep up my spirits; it has been very warm for this place and the exercise I
think is good for my superfluous flesh as well as for my sluggish spirit. I
have a private bathroom, though no sitting-room; but I am comfortable
and like the semi-domestic half-English food which they give us here. Love
to Rosamond from your affectionate
Uncle George
1
Marital estate (Spanish).
2
Celedonio’s children by his first marriage were Antonia, Antonio (d. 1928), Rafael
(d. 1940), Luis (d. 1937, Rafael’s twin), José “Pepe,” and Eduardo Sastre González.
Eduardo died sometime before February 1928.
3
The fellowship was established at Harvard in 1952 after Santayana’s death.
4
Matter.

To Charles Augustus Strong

25 July 1926 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Cristallo
Cortina, July 25 1926
Dear Strong
I have just finished “Sous le Soleil de Satan”1. Is the author a young
man? If so, I think he may do very good things. I like his ideas (when they
are ideas) and his prejudices: the portrait of Anatole France2 at the end is
excellent. So the other minor characters: even the Devil is plausible, if you
fall back on mediaeval ways of conceiving him. But there is a lot of rant
and confusion: I had some difficulty in following the thread of events or
emotions in places, and felt like skipping, or dropping the book altogether.
Neither the hero nor the heroine is intelligible. It looks as if the author
himself didn’t know exactly what was up. That the world is given over to
3:284 The Letters of George Santayana

the devil and that there are shady sides and bitter dregs in every life is per-
fectly true: but we must distinguish the part which is inseparable from exis-
tence of any sort—from flux and finitude—in this evil, and the part that is
remediable. No doubt a very exacting spirit might rebel against existence
itself: but I don’t know what he could find to substitute for it. Certainly this
book suggests nothing: it does not represent religion as offering any real
refuge: even there all seems to be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Why so
tense, little Sir?
The Drakes are gone after staying five days—I am writing an article
about Platonism and “Spiritual religion” apropos of a book of Dean Inge’s
on that subject. It is an interruption, but I have definitely dropped the reins
on the neck of my weary old Pegasus, and am letting him amble as he will.
I shouldn’t accomplish any thing better by applying the bit and spurs.
And you?
Yours ever G.S.
1
Georges Bernanos (1888–1948) wrote Sous le solei de Satan (Under the sun of Satan)
(Paris: Plon-Nourrit et cie, 1926).
2
Anatole France is the pseudonym of the French writer Jacques Anatole Thibault
(1844–1924). His works include L’Ile des pingouins (Penguin Island), an allegorical novel
that satirizes French history. France was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Literature.

To Otto Kyllmann
1 August 1926 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Temple)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Cortina d’Ampezzo
Aug. 1, 1926
Dear Mr Kyllmann
Thank you very much for the trouble you have taken about my
Introduction to Hamlet, and I am much p/eleased to think that it can be
republished at will, on the very easy conditions which Mr Orcutt1 imposes,
of a mere acknowledgement. But your letter suggests that I have some
immediate intention of publishing a new collection of essays. That is not
the case. What I may have said to you was a mere rumination on what I
think would be ultimately desirable, if my writings were ever to be
arranged logically, in a final edition: but probably there is no likelihood of
that, and certainly no immediate occasion. Even if you (for it would have
 1921–1927 3:285

to be you) cared to arrange such a book of essays, you would run up

against the obduracy of J. M. Dent & Sons, who have the Shelley—an
essential link in the chain; and as Mr Hugh Dent2 has woken up and has
issued a new edition of Winds of Doctrine,3 for which I wrote a short pref-
ace, it is likely that he might not be so obliging as Mr Orcutt in America.
What I have vaguely in mind is a book under some fresh title suggesting
that it contains a Latin view of English literature (possibly that itself might
do) and composed of “The Absence of Religion in Shakespeare” (with an
addition which I should like to make about Henry VI.), “Hamlet”, “The
poetry of Barbarism”, “Shelley”, and “Dickens”.4
Meantime, in quite another direction, I may before long have a suffi-
cient accumulation of articles and reviews which, revised and collated,
might make a book, say “New Winds of Doctrine”. But don’t take me too
seriously: I am suffering from an incapacity (I hope temporary) of getting
anything finished: I rewrite, and rewrite, and repeat myself without end,
without coming to any conclusion. The first volume of “Realms of Being”
has been almost ready for a year, but not ready: and it is so with shorter
things. I am sorry, but I must wait for a change in the wind.
Yours sincerely GSantayana
1
Possibly the author William Dana Orcutt (1870–1953) (A.B., Harvard, 1892).
2
Hugh Dent (1873–1938), chairman of Dent and Sons, was interested in the
Everyman editions of the works his firm printed.
3
Reprinted with a new preface in 1926.
4
This project was not completed. The essay on Charles Dickens first appeared in The
Dial (71 [November 1921]: 537–49). It reappeared as Soliloquy 18 in Soliloquies and
again in vol. 2 of the Triton Edition.

To George Sturgis
1 August 1926 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Cortina d’Ampezzo
August 1st 1926
Dear George
I have your letter of July 20, with enclosures about those sketches
signed G. S. which are troubling the sleep of Mr C. C. Eaton.1 As he wants
to know whether they are really emanations of my genius, I see no way
open except to let me see them: otherwise I should ask you to keep them
or burn them, according to your taste. The name Felton,2 which he men-
tions, carries me back to Lampoon3 days. Conway Felton, now no more,
3:286 The Letters of George Santayana

was one of our inner circle; and if the books in which these drawings were
found came directly or indirectly from him, it is very likely that they are
mine. An expert in handwriting could also tell by the initials. I now write
G.S. conjoined, but I think in those days I left the letters separate: G. S.
The style of my drawing is also inimitable, for its badness, at least in the
touch: I overdo the first impression, in which there is sometimes some
character: and I also have an instinctive eye for composition, not common
among Lampoon artists. Conway Felton himself had a vigorous, coarse,
masculine way of drawing, which I understand was the origin of the chil-
dren’s page in the Sunday papers.
If I understand the question which that ill-judging Judge has settled, it
amounts to this: that $280 have been transferred from the capital of the
trust left by your father for my benefit during my lifetime, to the account
of my personal capital in your care. I am sorry; but as you say, it is not a
great matter.
My time here passes pleasantly enough, but I seem incapable of finish-
ing anything. I read all sorts of things,—I have just finished “Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes”4—and begin enthusiastically various articles and chapters,
but get embroiled in the abundance of my repetitions, and have to leave
the thing unfinished. I suppose it is an effect of old age, fatigue, and too
much chewing the cud in solitude.
Love to Rosamond from G.S.
1
Possibly Charles Curtis Eaton (A.B., 1902), who was librarian (1921–29) and then
assistant dean of the Graduate School of Business Administration at Harvard.
2
Cornelius Conway Felton (d. 1890), a member of Harvard’s class of 1886, received
an LL.B. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1888.
3
On the basis of a cartoon that he submitted in his freshman year (1882), Santayana
was elected to the editorial board of the Harvard Lampoon. He supplied cartoons for the
Lampoon throughout his undergraduate career.
4
Anita Loos (1894–1981) wrote Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Illuminating Diary of a
Professional Lady (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1925). This is a satire on the gold dig-
gers of Hollywood which inspired a play (1925), a sequel (1928), a musical comedy
(1953), and a movie (1953). She also wrote Gigi (1952), a play based on the novel by
Colette.
 1921–1927 3:287

To Charles Augustus Strong

11 August 1926 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Cristallo, Cortina,

August 11, 1926.
Dear Strong
My idea is to remain here until the end of September. If I feel like stop-
ping at way stations—as I may if I am doing the novel—it might take me a
week or a fortnight to get down to Rome. I could join you in Florence, but
under the circumstances it would be better for me to stay in the town,
where we could dine together as in Paris. I remember being very com-
fortable in summer at the Savoia.
You have my sincere sympathy in the prospective loss of Enrichetta and
Guiseppe. It will never be the same without them, but I daresay you will
manage and, as I read between the lines of your letter, you won’t mind a
change of cooking.
I am still at work on the intruding subject suggested by Dean Inge’s
book; but the thing has grown into an independent essay. It will do for the
last chapter of the New Winds of Doctrine which I expect to get together
before long—a collection of my articles with omissions, additions, and
^ ^
variations.
It has been very cold here, with snow down to the line of the woods on
all the surrounding mountains, but I have kept well and comfortable. I
have Whitehead’s book on Science and the Modern World,1 but have not
yet begun it. I will send it to you when I have read it, and if you don’t want
it you can simply put it aside for me to pick up later.
Would you consider finally going to Naples in October? I have a feel-
ing that I don’t want to stay all winter again at the Hotel Bristol. A change
of scene might stirr up my sluggish mind, and Naples, with perhaps Capri
or even Taormina might do it.
Would it be too much trouble to have another “masseur gingival
Shamb” sent to me here? The other, beautiful ly packed, turns out to
^ ^
have a serious defect: the screws holding the little rubber wheels protrude
and tear the inside of the cheek. I am still using the old one. I repeat the
directions on the enclosed half-sheet,2 so that you may hand them to who-
ever does the errand.
3:288 The Letters of George Santayana

Where is Margaret?
Yours ever
G.S.
1
Science and the Modern World: Lowell Lectures, 1925 was published by Macmillan.
2
Unlocated.

To Marianne Moore
23 August 1926 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Beinecke)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Cortina d’Ampezzo
Aug. 23, 1926
Dear Miss Moore1
It is not likely that I should have anything new to say about Shelley:
when I have a free season I hope to turn to Wordsworth,2 but at present I
am preoccupied with other things. Before long, however, I hope to have
something for you of a slightly different sort—“The
—An Aesthetic Soviet”—
and meantime I continue to feast on the various condiments of The Dial,
which is one of my few wires to the world of the living.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Marianne Moore (1887–1972), an American poet educated at Bryn Mawr College,
was acting editor of The Dial (1925–29). She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her
Collected Poems (1951).
2
William Wordsworth (1780–1850) was an English poet known for his worship of
nature, humanitarianism, democratic liberalism, and interest in the common people.
In 1843 he was appointed poet laureate. He is buried in the church field at Grasmere.
 1921–1927 3:289

To Otto Kyllmann
30 August 1926 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Temple)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Cortina d’Ampezzo,
August 30, 1926
Dear Mr Kyllmann
My laziness or incapacity of the last months has yielded lately to a spell
of clearer mental weather and I am sending you, under a separate cover,
a MS which has outgrown the limits of an article, for which it was first
intended, and has become a little book.1 It is about “Platonism and the
Spiritual Life”, and contains, I think, meat for reflection. Those who read
at all with pleasure, will perhaps wish to read it again: I mean, it is not to
be presented as a little book of controversy or “actuality”—although sug-
gested by Dean Inge’s Hulsean lectures2—but as spiritual reading for the
philosophically pious. Do you think it could be published in a small vol-
ume, somewhat after the manner of a prayer-book—the print not too large,
the page decidedly small (there could be margins at pleasure) perhaps a
rubric or red letters here and there? I have divided it, I hope not too arti-
ficially, into short sections, on purpose to invite the eye to pause, and to
make it easier to pick the book up and read a page or two anywhere at odd
moments. I may be deceived by the afterglow of composition, which is
quite recent, but I think the thought justifies and rather requires that sort
of treatment. The binding, too, ought to be smooth black cloth, to go into
the pocket easily. Please don’t let the matter of profits intervene, as I
should be glad to make any arrangement about publication which you
think fair. Let it be a nice little book.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Platonism.
2
A course of lectures on Christian evidences, etc., delivered annually at Cambridge
since 1777, the Hulsean Lectures were instituted and endowed by the Rev. John Hulse
of Cheshire. William Inge’s 1925 and 1926 lectures at Cambridge outlined what he
called “a third type of Christian thought,” Christian platonism. These were published
as The Platonic Tradition in English Religious Thought (1926).
3:290 The Letters of George Santayana

To Carl Sadakichi Hartmann

7 September 1926 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Dartmouth)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London
Cortina d’Ampezzo
September 7, 1926
Dear Mr Hartmann
Your “Japanese Rhythms”1 have reached me: I see they are a work of
love on your part, and that of itself helps to carry me pleasantly in imagi-
nation to the East, which I don’t know but (perhaps for that reason) think
I should love.
Yours truly
GSantayana
1
Japanese Rhythms: Tanka, Haikai and Dodoitsu Form was a 1926 mimeographed limited
edition.

To George Sturgis
7 September 1926 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1.
Cortina, Sept. 7, 1926
Dear George
The two sketches intended for the Lampoon but evidently rejected as
“unsuitable”, or not good, or not comic enough, are certainly by me: now
what am I to do with them? I hate old relics: but perhaps, as these don’t
take up room, I may put them in a portfolio I have in Paris with other doc-
uments which I have not quite liked to throw away. I can’t find the letter
written to you by the librarian of the Harvard Business School: could you
have a note—or telephone message—sent to him to say that I have received
the drawings, that they are by me, and that I am much obliged to him for
his attention. And now that I am troubling you with business, another
request: Will you please send a cheque for $3.00 to Mr. Sadakichi
Hartmann, Beaumont, California, with the note enclosed? He has
(unasked) sent me a book which has a nice cover, separable and useful for
 1921–1927 3:291

other purposes: but he is ———

not to be regarded as an object of charity, and
^ ^
the price asked is not too high.
The summer has passed pleasantly: little rain and weather very warm
for this place. I have not made much progress in my regular work: but
quite unexpectedly I have written a whole new book, actually finished and
sent off to the publisher’s last week! It was to have been an article on a new
book of Dean Inge’s, but grew into 120 pages, so that it can appear in the
form of a small volume. It is on a quasi-religious subject: “Platonism and
the Spiritual Life.” The Pragmatists won’t like it.
My plans are vague: probably I shall return to Rome in October.
Yours affectionately
GSantayana

To Maurice Firuski
8 September 1926 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS postcard: Unknown)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co.
123 Pall Mall, London
Sept. 8, 1926
Could you send a copy of Percy Lubbock’s “Earlham” ( Jonathan Cape,
London)1 to Mrs. C. H. Toy, at Ware Hall, Cambridge, Mass., and charge
it to my account? I haven’t heard from you or from Mr. P. la R. for a long
time.
Yours truly
GSantayana
1
Percy Lubbock (1879–1965) was an English essayist, literary critic, and biographer
best known for The Craft of Fiction (1921). Earlham (an account of his Norfolk childhood
holidays) was published in 1922.
3:292 The Letters of George Santayana

To Horace Meyer Kallen

15 September 1926 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: American)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1.
Cortina d’Ampezzo,
Sept. 15, 1926
Dear Kallen
I am delighted at this prospect of seeing you, and of hearing the many
things which you will be able to tell me about unknown America. Of
course, I live surrounded by Americans who have all more or less recent
tidings to give of the Happy Land; but your point of view is more specu-
lative and you will better understand my questions.
I have fallen out of the habit of going to England. The climate, mater-
ial and moral, no longer suits my aged temperament. I am not much even
in Paris, although I expect to be there late next summer, on returning from
Spain—possibly for a few days in June also, on my way to Avila, where I
have my only blood-relations and a true refuge from the world of snobs—
I mean, intellectual snobs, because naturally the others don’t fall in my
way. In Avila nobody has heard of anything, and it is a great relief. But
meantime I expect to be chiefly in Rome, at the Hotel Bristol, Piazza
Barberini. It is possible that during the winter I may make some trips, to
the South or to Florence: send me word in advance, /ai f you come so far,
and we can easily arrange a meeting.
In the years since I have heard from you directly, my impression has
been that you were not having a very easy time: that you found contrary
currents about you. I am glad that at last you are able to take a holiday
and, in spite of congresses, perhaps to take a little rest. But you will find lit-
tle rest here morally, although materially, perhaps, the pace may be
slower.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
[across] P.S. I remain at Cortina (Hotel Cristallo) until Oct. 1: then for 10
days or so, I expect to be in Venice (Hotel Danieli): then in Rome.
 1921–1927 3:293

To Otto Kyllmann
15 September 1926 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Temple)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Cortina, Sept. 17\5, 1926
Dear Mr Kyllmann
I telegraphed this afternoon as you suggested, “Sheet proposal satisfac-
tory”. I should very much prefer to have the American public receive the
book as printed in England; even so, I am afraid it will present a less attrac-
tive appearance on account of the America n way of cutting down the
^^
page and binding. My “Poems”, which were supposed to be reprinted in
fac simile,1 cut a very sorry figure in Scribner’s edition, compared with
yours; but it sold well, which is a sort of bitter-sweet compensation.
As you know, the matter of royalties, especially for a small and
quasi-religious book like this, is indifferent to me: it would in any case be
a small matter, one way or the other. You needn’t give me any royalty at
all, if you can thereby make the book more attractive to the eye and the
pocket of the public.
On the other hand, I confess I am not altogether satisfied with the spec-
imen pages which you send. They follow my suggestions, so that I ought
not to find fault: but I am not a connaisseur in the art of printing, and my
suggestions, when carried out, don’t please me. Could you, with your
experience, or who ever is the Expert to whom you entrust such things, try
something different? Disregard the suggestions I made in my previous let-
ter, and start afresh as you would have done if I had said nothing. If you
ask me what it is that I don’t like in these specimen pages, I can’t answer
clearly. Perhaps the page is too long and narrow, the print faint and weak
(it makes me squint) and the title page not bold enough, too feminine, as
it were. What I had in mind was wholly different—a strong black and white
effect, like black-letter.
When you return from your holiday, I hope to hear again from you
about [across] these matters. Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Make like (Latin).
3:294 The Letters of George Santayana

To Otto Kyllmann
17 September 1926 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Temple)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Cortina Sept. 17, 1926
Dear Mr Kyllmann
I should be very glad to have the Indian branch of the Oxford
University Press include my “Little Essay” on War1 in their book of mod-
ern English Essays.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Essay number 103 in Essays.

To John Jay Chapman

23 September 1926 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Cortina, Sept. 23, 1926
Dear Mr Chapman1
I will telegraph tomorrow morning, as you request, and hope the delay
in reaching me here has not put you to any inconvenience.
Your request that I should be President of the Aryan2 Society is most
flattering, but it is also a little amusing, because it suggests that you think
me a personage entirely different from what I am. Of course Sir Geoffrey
Butler3 does not know me, nor I him. I have not been in England, save for
one flying visit, for these eight years; even when I was kept there by the
war, I led the same utterly retired life that I lead everywhere. I am not a
person in public life or in the public eye; nobody knows me except possi-
bly by name or through my books, and I should be the most unsuitable
choice you could make for a President.
Even if this were not so, and I was moving (as you seem to suppose) in
the midst of the London Intelligentsia, it might have been difficult for me
to accept your invitation. Against whom is the Aryan Society directed?
Against the Arabians, the Jews, the Chinese, and the blameless
 1921–1927 3:295

Ethiopians? I confess that I don’t like the Jewish spirit, because it is

worldly, seeing God in thrift and success, and I know nothing of the
blacks; but the Arabs and the Chinese seem to me in some ways, apart
from the costume, nearer to the Greeks than we are in Europe and
America: they have taken the measure of life more sanely. Might it not
turn out, then, that the Aryan Society, if it stood for the life of reason, was
especially directed against the Aryans? Races, like nations, seem an unfor-
tunate class of units to identify with moral ideas. If you had called your
Society the Society for the Preservation of Traditions, or the Lawgivers
Club, or something indicating the love of order as against the thirst for
chaos, I might, as far as my sympathies are concerned, have been heartily
with you: but even then, not as President. Even in the same church some
are born to be monks and others to be bishops: I was born to be a monk.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
John Jay Chapman (1862–1933) graduated from Harvard in 1885 and became a
controversial dramatist, writer, and critic.
2
Aryan is a term used by the German Nazis to designate, with no scientific basis, the
Indo-European race from which the German people were descended. The Nazis
claimed that German superiority depended on the purity of the race.
3
Probably Geoffrey Gilbert Butler (1887–1929), who wrote books on international
law.

To Charles Augustus Strong

23 September 1926 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Cortina, Sept. 23, 1926

Dear Strong
The season is so persistently fine and warm that I am almost sorry to
have to leave this place: but the hotel is getting empty and on October 1st
(as I remember from my former visit) it goes into curl-papers altogether. It
seems early to return to Rome, and hardly the occasion to visit you in
Florence, which for its own sake does not attract me. I am therefore going
for a fortnight to Venice—hotel Danieli—and from there I can make straight
for Rome in a sleeping-car, which is apparently the only means of travel-
ling now in Italy with any comfort—motors being excluded. In Rome, I
hope soon to see you. Since you don’t feel like going on to Naples, I will
put it off too, hoping that perhaps in February you may be inclined to
make that trip. I could go down with you (or at the same time by train), we
3:296 The Letters of George Santayana

could see the sights together—better still if Pin/scent could join us—and I
could stay on in the South when you returned, if I felt inclined, as I now
think I should. It is hard for me to uproot myself from any place, but once
having broken away, I feel rather disinclined to return to the old routine,
and I am going to tell the people at the Bristol that this year I will keep my
rooms only until February. My work is going on better, and I think it
would not suffer from a change of environment. I mean to linger at Naples,
Capri, or Sorrento, possible even Taormina, until it is time to travel north.
I could then visit you at the villa if it was ready and there was room. [across]
I have promised my sisters to go to Avila for July: after that Paris. Such are
my present plans. Yours ever G. S.
[across page one ] P. S. Specimen pages of “Platonism & the Spiritual Life”
have already arrived, but they are dreadful, and I have asked for others.

To Horace Meyer Kallen

25 September 1926 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS: American)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London S.W.1
Cortina, Sept. 25 1926
Dear Kallen
In November I shall undoubtedly be in Rome, which is not out of your
way to Palestine, at least as the bird flies, and your kindness in wishing to
see me will be rewarded by seeing Rome also, while if the Pope,1 I, and
Mussolini2 get on your nerves, you can take ship at Naples or Brindisi for
Egypt, which I suppose is still a way-station to the Promised Land. When
I made my pilgrimage in 19053 it had to be by water, landing at Jaffa4 in a
small boat amid rocks and breaking waves; but now I believe you go by
train in a few hours from Zuez to Jerusalem. But you know all this better
than I: all I can do is to assure you that Rome in November is in itself very
pleasant and that I shall be very glad to welcome you there. I live by rule,
as in a monastery, never go out in the morning or evening, but have lunch
at 12.30 or l o’clock at some restaurant, then take a walk until tea-time, and
then return to my hotel, where I dine upstairs in my cell. If you will make
a similar arrangement for your meals, which they call half-pension, I hope
you will come and lunch with me every day, while you remain in Rome,
and then I can show you, not the sights, but the pleasant places where I
 1921–1927 3:297

take my constitutional, and we can discuss eternal and temporal matters in

the mild golden light of autumn—very like that of Limbo. It may be a relief
to you after the agitation and hopeless confusion which you will have
found in England.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Pius XI.
2
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) founded fascism in Italy. When King Victor
Emmanuel III asked him to form a cabinet, Mussolini transformed his government
into a ruthless dictatorship. In the Axis partnership, Mussolini became a puppet of
Hitler and in 1940 entered World War II. Overthrown and arrested in 1943, he was
freed by a rescue party. Italian partisans captured him and his mistress, shot them, and
then hanged their bodies.
3
See Persons, 451–67.
4
Tel-Aviv-Yafo, Israel.

To Charles Augustus Strong

8 October 1926 • Venice, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Danieli, Venice

October 8, 1926
Dear Strong
It is now a week since I arrived here and I find Venice very agreeable—
warm, but not too much infested by flies or mosquitoes, or even by
tourists. A friend of Westenholz’s, who speaks very good English is here
and we usually dine together, so that I have enough society. I expect to
stay for another week, as was my original plan—possibly until Sunday the
th
17– If you don’t see me earlier, or hear to the contrary, you may expect
me to turn up at the Aragno on Monday the 18th for lunch—for I suppose
you still lunch there. If not, I will look you up later at the Minerva
Yesterday I went sight seeing, on foot, to the Findecca and the Island of
San Giorgio Maggiore, crossing by the ferry, and I was surprised at the
small size of the Tintorettos which I remembered as vast epical designs.
The interior of Italian churches is cold, and leaves me cold: these festive
buildings are better as distant features or backgrounds in the landscape.
San Giorgio as I see it at this moment from my window through a slight
haze is certainly a poetical object: near to, and inside, it seems only an
architect’s model in an old curiosity shop.
3:298 The Letters of George Santayana

/ t me some newspaper cuttings about the philosophical

Mrs Toy has send
congress at Harvard: it seems even less interesting than I should have
expected—
I gave your copy of Sous le Soleil de Satan to the Schneiders at Cortina
(a Columbia professor & his wife): but I will get another in Rome—nothing
easier.
Yours ever G.S.

To Lawrence Smith Butler

9 October 1926 • Venice, Italy (MS: University Club)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.l
Venice, Oct. 9, 1926
Dear Lawrence
Your business address and the neat appearance of your type-written let-
ter, involving an animate as well as an inanimate typewriter, open vistas of
you in a new atmosphere. Are you working really hard and building
Babylonian skyscrapers? I hope this will not prevent you from coming to
see me—you will need a rest—and please don’t bring either the animate or
the inanimate typewriter with you.
No, I have not seen “The Story of Philosophy”1 and have forgotten if
they ever asked me for a photo. I now have been reproduced especially
for reproduction by Swain & Co, New Bond Street, London, W. to which
your friends the publishers can send for a portrait of me in my 60th year;
it is not good, too much touched up, but will serve for the public. My real
portrait is the drawing by Andreas Andersen of which I suppose you have
a copy; at any rate the Potters have, and would lend it to Simon & Schuster
if they preferred it to the new photo. I don’t send you one of these because
those I have are in Paris, quite out of reach.
I have been spending the summer at Cortina d’Ampezzo, very pleas-
antly, and have stopped here in Venice for a little change before settling
down again at the Hotel Bristol in Rome. You will probably find me there,
at least until February, when it is possible that I may go to Naples etc. for
the rest of the season. Next summer I have promised to go again to Avila,
but shall be in Paris on the way there and back.
Yours aff–ly GSantayana
 1921–1927 3:299

P.S. Like a lady, I forgot the object of this letter until it was finished. Of
course I shall be glad to read your journal of the trip round the world, but
why should I, who am not a circumnavigator, write a preface for it? What
should I say in it? However, if on seeing it I should be inspired, the thing
might be done. This summer I have written a whole book—a little one—on
the spur of the moment, thinking it would be merely a review of Dean Inge
on “ The Platonic tradition in English religious thought,” but it grew into
^ ^
an independent treatise of my own on how to become a saint without let-
tng anybody know it. It is to be called “Platonism and the Spiritual life”
and is very Indian. You may not like it all, because it is not specifically
Christian, but I will send you a marked copy, where the orthodox pages
shall have a little red cross at the top.
1
William James Durant (1885–1981) received his doctorate in 1917 from Columbia
University. His book, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Great
Philosophers of the Western World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1926), was an imme-
diate success when it was published.

To Horace Meyer Kallen

22 October 1926 • Rome, Italy (MS: American)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

October 22, 1926.
Dear Kallen
As you see, I am already in Rome, and I shall be delighted to see you
any day that you are able to turn up. Strong is here, at the hotel Minerva,
pending some repairs which are being made in his villa; we can go after
lunch and have coffee with him, as I know he will be glad to see you.
If you will call for me on the first day you are here at 12.15, we will drive
or walk, according to the weather and to our feelings, to some restaurant
and fortify the flesh a little to help it bear the disappointments of the spirit.
My thoughts, too, often go back to the Harvard of our day, but I can’t say
that they are accompanied by any desire of living then —at ^day^ over again.
The past is better as past than it was or would be as present. I don’t say this
because I think all presents bad: I am enjoying my old age very much; but
I like the safety of distance, the lack of urgency, in the view of the most
3:300 The Letters of George Santayana

pleasing object.—But we can moralize at leisure by word of mouth when

you are here.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana

To Marianne Moore
8 November 1926 • Rome, Italy (MS: Beinecke)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Hotel Bristol, Rome,
Nov. 8. 1926
Dear Miss Moore
I enclose an old skit1 which I have found among old papers and
touched up a little, thinking that perhaps it might amuse your readers. If
you don’t want it, could I ask you as a personal favour to send it back to
me, as I have no other clean copy?
“An Æsthetic Soviet” has met with an accident, but I think will recover,
and be ready for you before long.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
“Overheard in Seville: During the Procession on Maundy Thursday, 1913,” The Dial
(April 1927): 282–86.

To Otto Kyllmann
12 November 1926 • Rome, Italy (MS: Temple)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Rome, Nov. 12, 1926
Dear Mr Kyllmann
This specimen page will do very well: I like the print (which is like that
in “Scepticism & Animal Faith”) and the shape of the printed part; my only
doubt is about the added length of the paper, and about the need of a run-
ning title at the top. Since the book has no chapters with titles, the running
title seems unnecessary, and the numbering might be at the top instead. I
think the reader, if he forgets what he is reading about, might as well turn
 1921–1927 3:301

to the title-page or to the back of the cover. Isn’t a quadrangular page of

print of better effect with a clear margin all round?
According to a calculation which I have made there would be some-
thing over a hundred of these pages in the whole book.1 Something would
depend, of course, on the amount of space left clear between the num-
bered divisions.
When the title-page is in proof, I suppose you will let me see it.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Santayana’s recommendations were followed; the book is ninety-four pages long.

To George Sturgis
20 November 1926 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Nov. 20, 1926.
Dear George
Don’t notice this girlish notepaper. It goes with my grass-widow’s room,
and I have no other at hand.
I was glad to hear that Josephine had had another boy1 and that both
mother and child were doing well. You seem to run to boys in your gen-
^ ^
eration. And I am also glad to know that Rosamond’s operation has been
successful and that you are in a football humour. I have seen by chance in
a friend’s Paris “New York Herald” that Harvard beat Yale, so that your
feelings must have been altogether festive.
It is a long time since I ought to have replied to your letter, in which
you answered my questions about my proposed new will. The delay
comes of a real incapacity on my part to reach any decision. Soon after
writing to you it came over me in the still watches of the night—between
naps, for I wasn’t at all sleepless—that I had overlooked two important
points. One was that in my will as it stands I leave, or mean to leave, one
third of my property to your aunt Susie or her step-sons: whereas accord-
ing to my proposed new will, I should be leaving nothing to the Sastre
family after your aunt’s death. Now neither of these results seems to me
fair. One third of my present fortune is too much to leave to the Sastres:
but I want to leave them something, because I am fond of them, their
house is a sort of second home for me, and a legacy would make a real dif-
3:302 The Letters of George Santayana

ference in their comfort and in the education or settlement of the children,

who are my special friends. In fact, I should prefer if possible to leave pre-
sents to the grandsons2 directly (there are now three only) rather than to
their parents or to the girls.3 If there should be more grandsons of
Celedonio later I could provide in a codicil for the new-comers. If, then, I
make a trust, it must be after providing legacies—say $5000 apiece—for
those three boys. That is the first point.
The second point touches the proposed Harvard scholarship. I had
thought of waiting until I was richer, if I ever am: but it now occurs to me
that, as far as your Aunt Josephine’s money is concerned, it makes no dif-
ference whether I inherit it and then leave a part to Harvard, or whether
you inherit my part of your aunt’s fortune entire but receive less from
^ ^
me upon the previous sad occasion of my demise. I might then just as well
establish the fellowship at once. If I die before your aunt Josephine, you
and your sister Josephine get so much less as my residuary legatees: but
then, when your aunt Josephine dies, you get her money entire. If on the
contrary, she dies first, my own chest is repleted, and the fellowship or
scholarship comes out of the lump sum. The result is therefore identical in
either case. Isn’t this so?
But here a different circumstance intervenes, and upsets all my project.
I had suggested in a careless moment to my friend Strong this idea of a
scholarship for Harvard, in recognition of the one we had enjoyed in our
youth:4 now Strong has been here in Rome for some weeks, and I find that
he is leaving his entire fortune, perhaps $1,000,000 for that purpose! What
will be the use of my pittance—I had thought of $25,000. or $30,000—in
comparison? He says I must act independently, that possibly he won’t
leave all his fund to Harvard but distribute it among various universities:
but in any case the wind is taken out of my sails, as his foundation will pro-
vide for just those elderly philosophers or impecunious but virtuous poets
whom I wished to befriend.
I am therefore in some perplexity, and not unwilling to let the thing lie,
until I see new light.
We had already talked, when you were in Rome, about the question of
having my next year’s letter of credit in dollars instead of pounds, and I
had agreed that it was more sensible. It would not affect in any case my
right to use B. S. & Co as a post-office, because I have a bank account there
independently of the letter of credit, very useful in cashing and paying
cheques for books, clothes, charities, etc. I will draw the rest of my present
letter of credit at the end of the year and shall be well-provided for some
 1921–1927 3:303

time. There is therefore no hurry about the new letter. It might be for
$4000.
I am settled here as you found me last year and leading the same life,
except that more friends seem to be turning up than usual. With love to
Rosamond & the children from G.S.
[across] P.S. Please send $100 in my name for the Phi Beta Kappa memor-
ial, as inclosed.
1
David Dudley Bidwell (b. 1926).
2
Eduardo and Roberto Sastre Martín ( José’s sons) and Rafael Sastre Hernandez
(Rafael’s son).
3
Adelaida “Adelita” and Maria Josefa “Maripepa” Sastre Hernandez (Rafael’s daugh-
ters) and Josefina and Maria Teresa Sastre Martín ( José’s daughters).
4
Strong and Santayana shared the Walker Fellowship, which was awarded jointly for
postgraduate study of philosophy in Germany.

To Herbert Wallace Schneider

[22 November 1926] • Rome, Italy (MS: Southern)

Dear Schneider1
I was sorry not to get to the Pincio yesterday, but Sunday is not a good
day for me, as I take the opportunity of going to some theatre if there is
anything that attracts me, and yesterday I went to a cheap but not unpleas-
ant performance of La Traviata.2
Perhaps you and Mrs Schneider will come to the Casino on Thursday or
Saturday, if it is pleasant. I shall make a point of being there.
How dreadful of Strong to discover that there are two kinds of intuition,
one that is intuition and one that is not!
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Herbert Wallace Schneider (1892–1984) was educated at Columbia University,
where he taught philosophy from 1918 until 1957. He wrote numerous books on phi-
losophy and religion.
2
La Traviata (The lost one) (1853) is an opera by Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901), based
on the drama La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas fils (1802–70).
3:304 The Letters of George Santayana

To Charles Augustus Strong

23 November 1926 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Bristol Rome

Nov. 23, 1926
Dear Strong
I take this large and professional sheet1 in view of answering all the
points of your long letter, on which I have made marginal notes. I do it, so
that you may not think I neglect your admonitions; but I hardly expect
that it will be of any use in clearing up our differences.
1. Isn’t what you call my agnosticism simply what they called “critical
realism”?
2. You say that appearances are not created out of nothing. My view is
that of Christian theology: they are created out of nothing, but not by noth-
ing, not by chance or spontaneously: they are created by something else.
In other words, their substance is outside of them, not within them; they
are contingent, not necessary or congenital effects of what precedes: facta,
non genita. Your contrary view is monistic or pantheistic: it does not
admit, with me and the Indians, that appearance is illusion and that noth-
ing given exists. It is partly for this reason, no doubt, that you value your
theory. You wish to be, at least in some measure, an empiricist, a
positiv/eist, a philosopher of the Left.
3. By “a sensuous nature” I take it that you mean some concrete fact or
instance of sentience, not the abstract nature of sentience, which would be
a non-existent universal. Now I ask myself: Has this concrete instance of
sentience no character save “being”? In that case its concreteness and
existence
———— ———— ^individuation^ would depend on its position in space-time; and
space-time, not instances of sentience, would be the true principle of exis-
tence or “being”. If on the contrary each instance of sentience has a spe-
cial inner quality differentiating it from other instances, like a monad, then
its “being” is simply its essence, and again it depends for its existence on
its position and relations in rerum natura.2 In either case, a fact or instance
of sentience cannot fulfil the function of bestowing existence upon itself or
upon appearances. The principle of existence, I think, cannot be any
absolute or static being, whether pure Beings or sentience conceived as
self-centred and self-existing. It must be the very fact of passage or flux,
involving the establishment (by an unsynthesizable succession) of contin-
gent or irrelevant relations between its assignable terms. It will not suffice
 1921–1927 3:305

for your point-instants to “be”, each in itself: if they are to exist, they must
vindicate their existence by pushing and generating one another.
Existence must be enacted: it cannot be given or conceived. Perfection
cannot exist; only imperfection.
4. You introduce your theory of “intuition by means of projection”. I have
assented to it, thinking of “projection” behaviouristically: but it now occurs
to me that a distingno is needed. Projection cannot precede intuition if it
be the projection of the terms which presently appear in intuition. That
which precedes intuition is only reaction. When this reaction has put some
term before the mind, it may also cause –it– that term to be regarded as
^ ^
the object upon which reaction is taking place, thus (erroneously) project-
ing it and believing it to exist.
5. You suggest that I probably object to your transferring “being” from
the appearance to the subject. No: the appearance, in my opinion, has no
being but essence; existence is in the psyche to begin with. What I object
to, if anything, is the transference of –it– “being” to the appearance. This,
^ ^
however, is only technically an error, the appearance being honoured by
proxy as if it were the external object: and it is quite porper to recognize
existence there, since the external object is collateral with the self, and in
the same field of action.
6. You say that the sort of existence attributed to a sound as it is heard is
empirically given. No doubt there is a sense of existence when we hear a
keen sound: it comes from the reverberation in the body (of which more
presently) and, until contemplative freedom is attained, — it is this felt exis-
^
tence is probably transferred to the sound heard or (more correctly) to the
^
source of the sound, to the sounding object. But of course you do not
expect me to believe that the given essence therefore exists, or that exis-
tence is ever “given” to intuition at all. It is continually pres[illegible]sing
and being enacted; but in exact proportion as intuition shapes and con-
templates the ————
essen—ce of sound, —this
———— it becomes an essence in the realm of
sound, an eternal theme, and the sounding object first, and the process
^ ^
of hearing afterwards, drop out of consideration. I went to hear La Traviata
yesterday and observed this.
7. I agree that there is an exact parallel between external perception and
the sense of one’s own existence, which I think is simply internal percep-
tion. My insides are perceived, not visually, but in an unmistakably cogni-
tive way. My existence is not given, since it is a natural process, an event,
and not an essence: but it is continually experienced: we long ago called it
a disturbance, tension, or trouble: you now call it a “stirring,” which seems
3:306 The Letters of George Santayana

much the same thing. Felt intensity is an essence, or an element in an

essence; it may be erroneously projected into things, to make a metaphys-
ical hybrid called force or energy; in things there cannot be anything sim-
ilar to felt intensities, unless these things are beings dramatically
conditioned, as we are conditioned. But force or energy may be a good
name, and intensity may be a good dramatic symbol, for the precipitancy
or volume of material processes.
You see (as I have often told you) that your “being” or “stirring”, which
I recognize to be a real and constantly pressing fact, seems to me to be sim-
ply the seething of animal life in us, and no possible primary existence.
I agree that this sense of our bodily existence is habitually projected, in
part, into the images of sense or into the objects which they announce:
whence the normal madness of positing given essences as existing, and
substituting them merrily for the unknown material processes going on in
the self and in the rest of nature.
8. You set me on the horns of a monstrous trilemma: I must either say –1– [ ]
form mode of being to which essences are raised,
that intuition is a ————
^ ^
called incandescence, in which case apparently I should agree with the
^ ^
neo-realists, and also, somehow regard intuition as a datum of experi-
^ ^
ence; or –2]
[ – that intuition is a “bi-polar” act which “apprehends” essence
attributable to the brain, and that intuition is not a datum of experience;
or –3]
[ – ——I
as must oscillate between these views and remain “unclear” in my
own mind.
Neither –1]
[ – nor –2]
[ – as you state them, express es my view: –2] [ – on the
^ ^
whole would come nearer, but for the unintelligible word “bi-polar”, and
the suspicious word “apprehends”. Act is the right classical term for the
sort of being, actuality, proper to intuition: but it is not “bi-polar” if that
means a transition between two objects of the same sort; for the organ is a
psyche, and the result of its operation is the intuition of some essence, a
wholly non-existent term. This situation is exactly what I meant to indicate
by “incandescence”, which has nothing to do with any change in essences,
which are all eternal and unchangeable. It is the psyche that grows incan-
descent, as the arc-lamp does, not the essence or the light thereby man-
^ ^
ifested: the essence of light is not plunged in darkness until the psyche or
^
the wire (without light at home) throws some light upon it. It is the psy-
^
che that is plunged in darkness until, by its friction, it manages to call down
the essence of light into its orbit, and for a moment sees what light is. The
hypostatic essences of the neo-realists are meant to obviate the need of
intuition: if you forget yourself, or admit only a transcendental ego, you
 1921–1927 3:307

may suppose that essences can intuit themselves: but then they are
^ ^
hardly essences (except for being all surface) since they come and go and
exist in external relations. They are things as the gnostic conceives them,
things obvious through and through.
I can’t understand how you could attribute to me a view that essences
hypostatized in this way were equivalent to essences given in intuition,
when half of “Scepticism” is devoted to proving that the data of intuition
do not exist; nor have I given you any excuse, I am sure, for supposing
that intution can be a datum of intuition: such data are essences, and intu-
ition is an act, an event, the fact that to some animal some essence appears.
This fact is implicated, no doubt, in appearance: but a particular intuition,
if absorbed in its object, cannot know that –it– this object is an appearance
^ ^
or that an intuition is requisite to its specious presence. The deliverance of
intuition is the essence simply, without any historical, psychological, or
material setting. It is for this reason that intensely contemplative minds call
essences the only true beings, and regard all else as confusion and false-
hood.
Intuition might be said, quo ad nos3, to raise (or call down) essence to a
new status, that of specious being: but, as all good Platonists say, it is not
the essence that descends, for it remains eternally where it was, but a sen-
sitiveness to it that is awakened in the incarnate psyche for the time being.
And, as I like to add, it is entirely the natural life of this psyche that deter-
mines which essences it shall call down, and for how long, and on what
occasions: as a poet’s genius determines what words he shall spout.

As to your new apartment I can only say: il a tort d’être en retard; mais
il a raison d’être beau.4
Yours ever G.S.
1
This letter is written on lined paper larger than stationery sheets.
2
In the nature of things (Latin).
3
By which to us (Latin).
4
It is wrong to be late, but it is right to be beautiful (French).
3:308 The Letters of George Santayana

To Otto Kyllmann
27 November 1926 • Rome, Italy (MS: Temple)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Nov. 27, 1926
Dear Mr Kyllmann
A Spanish friend, Don Antonio Marichalar, is writing an article about
me in a new Madrid review called “Residencia”, and intends to translate
for it one of the “Little Essays” (or part of one) drawn from “Egotism”.
–They
[ like “Egotism” because it is the most Catholic of my books, and
they are quasi-believers.]– I have told him to go ahead and that I would
take the responsibility of getting permission or paying fees, if either be req-
uisite, both as regards you and as regards Dent. When I see the length and
nature of the translation made—it may be only such a quotation as any
review may contain—I will write to you again about it, if it seems worth
while.
As to the page for “Platonism and the Spiritual Life”, I am very sorry to
be giving you so much trouble. The second specimen page will do as it
stands: my suggestions about leaving out the headings, putting the
page-number in the upper corner, and not having so much empty space at
the bottom of the page, were only suggestions; it seems to me that the last
point is merely a question of usage; if so much margin does not seem an
affectation, it is a positive luxury: people can use it for annotations. As to
the running-title my feeling was that, besides being useless, it detracted
from the soberness and concentration that might be expressed in a solid
rectangular page of print, but I may be wrong; it is perhaps a mere fancy,
and I shouldn’t wish to insist upon it if it causes inconvenience.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
 1921–1927 3:309

To Otto Kyllmann
28 November 1926 • Rome, Italy (MS postcard: Temple)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Nov. 28, 1926

I had just posted my letter of yesterday when yours arrived with the new
specimen page for “Platonism and the Spiritual Life”. I like this form very
much better, and hope you will go on with it without further trouble. The
proofs, without the MS, can be sent to me directly to the above address up
to March 1st 1927.
G. Santayana

To Unidentified Recipient
12 December 1926 • Rome, Italy (MS: New York)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Rome, Dec. 12, 1926
Dear Sir,
I am naturally much pleased that you should wish to include anything
of mine in your Anthology, and if the passages from the Life of Reason (I
haven’t the volumes here) are as short as that from the Dialogues, I hardly
think the publishers—Constable for England, Scribner for the U.S.—would
expect more than a formal notice: but you had better ask them the ques-
tion which you put to me about the permission extending to America.
Mine of course is not geographically limited, but I am not sure what
Scribner would say. They hold the copyright for the Life of Reason.
I suppose you don’t intend to attribute the two points of faith which you
mention in your preface to all the persons quoted in the book. As the pas-
sage you have chosen from my Dialogues shows, if you consider it nar-
rowly, I am myself distinctly opposed to the second point, and think it
contrary to the first, at least in the sense in which I should accept the lat-
ter; because spirit and the supremacy of spirit transport us to the eternal
world, and away from evolution, history, or the region of purposes; which
I think presuppose particular animals already existing and having special
interests in an alien world. But I am only the more pleased that, in spite of
3:310 The Letters of George Santayana

this difference in doctrine, you have felt that I shared your interest in a
spiritual reawakening.
Yours faithfully
GSantayana

To Lewis Mumford
16 December 1926 • Rome, Italy (MS: Unknown)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co.
123 Pall Mall, London S.W.1
Rome, Dec. 16, 1926
Dear Mr. Mumford1
A copy of your “Golden Day”2 has reached me without any visible indi-
cation whether I owe it to your personal kindness or to that of your pub-
lishers: but in any case I prefer to address my thanks to you. To them I
could only have said that this is the best book about America, if not the
best American book, that I have ever read—an opinion which they could
quote, if they liked, for purposes of advertisement.3 But your very sound
judgements—as they seem to me—about various matters, make me wish to
add something on two points, more in friendly confidence than in a criti-
cal capacity. And, by the way, I wonder whether you are one of the
Mumfords that were well-known oarsmen at Harvard in my day,4 or a son
of one of them or some more distant member of that family; this is not
merely impertinent curiosity, but leads directly to the first matter which I
wish to touch upon. You do not know me personally: do you know any old
gentleman—there are still several about—who was my personal friend?
Perhaps not: at any rate, in the very complimentary notice, in quality and
quantity, which you take of me in your book, I feel that you are thinking
of me—quite naturally—as just a Harvard professor, author of a book called
“The Life of Reason”. Your appreciation seems absolutely just, as directed
upon that semi-public personage: but I never felt myself to be identical
with that being, and now much less than ever. What you say, about my
roots being at best in Mrs. Gardner’s5 Boston, is true of him, not of me: my
own roots are Catholic and Spanish, and though they remain under
ground, perhaps, they are the life of everything: for instance, of my pose
as a superior and lackadaisical person; because all the people and opinions
which I deal with, and try to understand, are foreign and heretical and
transitory from the point of view of the great tradition, to which I belong.
 1921–1927 3:311

The other matter which I have in mind regards your own philosophy,
and the high place which you assign to Emerson and Whitman.6 It sur-
prises me a little that you should feel that I have no intellectual sympathy
with Walt. When I was young I passed for one of his ardent admirers,
wrote a “Dialogue” in his praise in the Harvard Monthly,7 when in its first
year, or soon after, and have never changed in that respect. You don’t
seem to me to distinguish between types of imagination or sentiment, and
doctrine about the universe. In the former capacity, Whitman’s attitude
seems to me fresh, manly, large, and healthy: in the latter (if he figures
there at all) he would be a mere rhetorical prattler and sentimentalist. The
moral world, for me, is a part of the human world, which is itself a detail
in nature: variations in the moral world are as legitimate, and may be as
welcome, as changes in art or in language: but does the universe change,
or can a serious philosophy change, with the moral weather?
Yours very truly
GSantayana
1
Lewis Mumford (1895–1992) was educated at Columbia, New York University, and
The New School for Social Research. He became editor of The Dial in 1919 and in 1920
edited The Sociological Review in London. Author of numerous books and articles on
politics, religion, architecture, and literature, Mumford described himself as a social
philosopher.
2
The Golden Day (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1926).
3
Boni and Liveright released an abridged and edited version of the letter as an adver-
tisement for Mumford’s book.
4
Possibly James Gregory Mumford (class of 1885) and George Saltonstall Mumford
(class of 1887).
5
Santayana describes Isabella Stewart Gardner as one of the “two leading ladies in
Boston of my time” (the other being Mrs. Whitman). See Persons, 363–65.
6
Born in Boston and educated at Harvard, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) was a
poet, essayist, and philosopher. He wrote Nature (1936) and from 1842 to 1844 edited
The Dial. Walt[er] Whitman (1819–92) was an American poet whose themes include
love, death, nationalism, and democracy. His most famous work is Leaves of Grass
(1855). Santayana was influenced by Whitman, calling him and Browning barbarians
in his essay “The Poetry of Barbarism.” Yet Santayana composed two poems subtitled
“after Walt Whitman.” “Had I the Choice” and “You tides with ceaseless swell” were
published in Complete Poems, 404–5 and 410–11.
7
“Walt Whitman: A Dialogue,” The Harvard Monthly 10 (May 1890): 85–92. The
Harvard Monthly was founded in 1885 by A. B. Houghton and was dedicated to the
publication of the best work by the Harvard student body and faculty. Santayana was
a member of the original editorial board, and many of his early works first appeared
there.
3:312 The Letters of George Santayana

To Maurice Firuski
23 December 1926 • Rome, Italy (MS: Unknown)

Rome, Dec. 23, 1926

Dear Mr. Firuski
I am glad to hear that Charles Pierce1 left copious materials yet unpub-
lished, but I am not at all the person to undertake editing any portion of
them. Find some young philosopher or mathematician, in whose career
such deserving work might be of use and profit. I saw Pierce only once, at
a lecture after a dinner at Wm. James’s. He had a red nose, a straggling
grey beard, and an evening coat that seemed lopsided and thirty years old.
As to his life, save that it was retired and, they say, bibulous, I know noth-
ing: but if you can enlighten me, I shall not be incurious. As a philosopher
Pierce has come late to be recognized, but his quality is unmistakably
good, far better logically than Wm. James’s, and anything speculative from
his pen would be welcomed, I think, by the learned public.
Where did you get the impression, I wonder, that I am planning a trans-
lation of Don Quixote?2 Many years ago Updike3 proposed such a thing
to me: I tried the first page and found it impossible: moreover the extant
translations are excellent.
My novel has been lying fallow, but I hope to devote myself consecu-
tively to it as soon as I have dispatched volume one of my “Big Book”—
“The Realms of Being”; and this I hope will be before I leave Rome this
winter. Meantime I have composed a little book, now being printed, which
may interest you in your spiritual exaltation, since it is precisely about
“Platonism and the Spiritual Life”. It is very short, but very sublimated:
written all at one go last summer at Cortina.
Please give my best wishes to la Rose, and tell him that it would give
me real pleasure if he would write to me about anything, or send me any-
thing that he may have published.
Is it true that “Lucifer” is sold out? If so, congratulations.
Yours sincerely,
GSantayana
1
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) was an American logician, scientist, and
philosopher. He lectured on the philosophy of science at Harvard and published
papers on logic as well as the first full statement of pragmatism (which differs from
James’s).
2
Don Quixote is Miguel de Cervantes’s classic work (1605). Quixote’s chivalric roman-
ticism is contrasted by the practical realism of his traveling companion Sancho Panza.
 1921–1927 3:313

Though Don Quixote is a satire on the exaggerated chivalry of the seventeenth century,
some critics have perceived the main character as an idealist who is continually
mocked and defeated in a materialistic world. Others have interpreted the novel as an
attack on the Catholic church or on contemporary Spanish politics.
3
Possibly Daniel Berkeley Updike (1861–1941), who worked for Houghton Mifflin &
Co. until he founded Merrymount Press in Boston in 1896.

To Marianne Moore
30 December 1926 • Rome, Italy (MS: Beinecke)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Rome, Dec. 30, 1926.
Dear Miss Moore
Here is the “Æsthetic Soviet”, or what remains of it; for the operation
which it had to undergo was nothing less than a division into two; it had
turned out to be a pair of Siamese twins; one half is rescued, but I am not
sure whether the other half—which I have christened “The Revival of
Intolerance”1—will survive the divorce.
As the MS is rather in a mess, and I have hardly the freshness of per-
ception needed to straighten it out at present, I should be particularly
obliged if you could let me see the proofs: I might wish to make some
slight but important corrections.
Thank you for the proof of “Overheard in Seville”, and for your kind
appreciation of this skit. It is not a “fantasy”, however, in the sense of being
invented: most of it was really overheard.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana

When this article—“An Æsthetic Soviet”—comes out, please have a copy

of that number of The Dial sent to the following persons, and charge them
to the author.
G. S.
Don Antonio Marichalar, Independencia 2, bis, Madrid, Spain.
Mr. Julio Irazusta,2 C/o Banque Anglo-Sud-Américaine, rue Scribe,
Paris, France
Baron Albert von Westenholz, Sophienterrasse, 14, Hamburg, Germany.
R. B. Potter, Esq, Antietam Farm, Smithtown, Long Island, N.Y.
3:314 The Letters of George Santayana

Mrs C. H. Toy, Ware Hall, Cambridge, Mass.

D. M. G. Cory,3 Esq, 52 Cranley Gardens, S.W. London, England
1
“The Revival of Intolerance” was never published. The manuscript is in the Rare
Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
2
Julio Irazusta wrote numerous books on Argentine culture and politics and articles
on George Santayana.
3
Daniel MacGhie Cory (1904–72) served as an occasional secretary to Santayana and
Strong.

To Otto Kyllmann
15 January 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Temple)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Jan. 15, 1927
Dear Mr Kyllmann
Here is the corrected proof of “Platonism”: I have had to make a few
changes in the text (having discovered one or two errors of memory on my
part) and there are other trifling corrections; perhaps it would be better to
let me see a second proof before printing: but do as you think best.
As to the MS, I have no use for it: destroy it, unless there is somebody
who wants it as a relic. Yours truly
GSantayana
[across] P. S. In any case, I should like to see a proof of the title-page, and
to know what binding is proposed.

To George Sturgis
22 January 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Rome, Jan. 22, 1927

Dear George
I have received your two letters, the new letter of credit for $4000, and
my yearly account, for all of which many thanks. Reduced to the terms
which ultimately interest me, the account amounts to this: that my last
year’s income was about $7000, of which I spent one half; and that the
other half, together with the non-recurring extra “income” of another
$7000, was added to my capital, which is now about $140,000. This,
according to my standards, is a vast sum, and I am naturally highly pleased
 1921–1927 3:315

at being so comfortably off in my old age. I am following your advice in

not being too economical, and have had guests here—a very easy way of
amusing myself—in the persons of two of the Chetwynd children, nephew
and niece of my late friend Moncure Robinson. Betty Chetwynd, aged 19,
has now returned home to London, but Randolph, aged 23, is staying on,
and is excellent company, without interfering at all with my habits or
being, I hope, too much bored, as he does what sightseeing he likes in the
morning and goes to teas, dinners, and dances when he is asked by his
other friends in Rome, of which he has a good many.
Of course it is all right about your commission on the extra “income”.
As to my will, I will write another day: I am still a little vague about
what to do. In the near future I may have occasion to consult Strong, your
aunt Susie, and Onderdonk (who made my present will for me) and to
come to a final decision.
The proofs of my new short book (“Platonism”, etc.) have now been
despatched, but I don’t know when the meteor will appear to astonish
Cambridge, Mass.
With love to Rosamond and the children Yours affectionately
GSantayana

To Otto Kyllmann
31 January 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Temple)

Hotel Bristol Rome

Jan. 31, 1927
Dear Mr Kyllmann
I am sending the second proofs of “Platonism & the Spiritual Life” back
under a separate cover. There are only two small corrections to be made
and it will hardly be necessary to send me a third proof of the body of the
book. But I find that the title-page is still the same as in the original project
which I asked you to give up. I have suggested in the proof leaving out the
trivial ornaments and straightening the indications at the bottom of the
page: so simplified, I think the title-page would be at least dignified and
inoffensive. But I should have no objection to any other straight-forward
arrangement, such as there is in the title-pages of my other books. My
unfortunate desire that this book should be a particularly beautiful one has
given us a lot of trouble. I am sorry, and I promise not to do it again!
There is also the question of the binding? What is it to be?
3:316 The Letters of George Santayana

I inclose a list1 of persons to whom I should like copies to be sent in my

name.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Unlocated.

To [Marianne Moore]
4 February 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS postcard: Beinecke)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Please send a copy of the March number (if it contains my dialogue
“Overheard in Seville”) to
Mrs C. H. Toy,
Ware Hall
Cambridge, Mass.
and charge it to my account: or if that piece doesn’t appear in March, the
number in which it does appear.1
G. Santayana
Feb. 4 1927
1
It is in the April 1927 issue of The Dial.

To Charles Augustus Strong

9 February 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Rome, Feb. 9, 1927

Dear Strong
I was glad to hear from you at last: my letter had seemed to discourage
your hopes of useful correspondence. The only point that seems to call for
fresh comment is about “specious” essence. A triangle does not lose its tri-
angularity when not thought of: but it ceases to be speciously triangular.
“Specious” is only a term used to vary the monotony of “given”, “appar-
ent”, or “intuited”. It is not a category of some essences in their own realm
as distinguished from other essences there. I should therefore not say that
Platonic ideas retained their specious character when not contemplated.
 1921–1927 3:317

They retain their essential character—the only character they have—but lose
their specious presence or actuality.
Randolph Chetwynd remained here for four weeks, Betty only ten
days. Of course, this long visit has made him a more important person in
my private world than he was before—a real friend instead of a boy friend;
this makes a fresh bond with England to replace some of those which were
growing so slack. The Chetwynds say I must go and stay with them; but I
am sure it would be a mixed pleasure all round, and I hardly think I shall
ever do so.
My work hardly gets on at all, but I am reading Keyserling1 and about
him—not the Diary: I have also read Salomon Reinach’s Lettres à Zoé2: on
the whole less amusing than I expected. I suppose you have seen the book:
a history of philosophy for young ladies. The second proof of my new lit-
tle book—only 94 small pages—has been read, and I suppose it will appear
in the Spring. I have also two pieces coming out in the Dial.
I am putting off the trip to Naples—may give it up altogether unless you
come and fetch me. But I suppose you are interested in your fresh quar-
ters and arrangements at home. Let me know your plans when you have
any—
Yours ever
GSantayana
1
Probably Die Philosophie des Grafen Keyserling by Heinrich August Karl Adolph (1927).
2
Lettres à Zoé sur l’histoire des philosophies (1926).

To Edward W. Titus
11 February 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Columbia)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1, London.
Rome, Feb. 11, 1927
Mr E. W. Titus1
Paris.
Dear Sir
I like the appearance, as well as the substance, of Mr Dunning’s book,2
and if I had anything of the sort you require, I should be tempted to sub-
mit it for your consideration, especially as I expect to be in Paris during
the Summer, and we might consult together about the details. I have
3:318 The Letters of George Santayana

indeed the MS of several poetical plays3 which have lain idle for thirty
years: they belong to the time and somewhat to the style of my “Lucifer”,
although less pretentious. They would be too long for your purpose, and
would require revision, so that even if you were inclined to consider any
of them, I could not promise to let you have it at once. Some day, how-
ever, I mean to unearth these old papers and set them in order—against
ulterior accidents. Whether any of them is worth publishing is another
question which I am willing to leave to my executors.
Yours faithfully
GSantayana
1
Edward W. Titus (b. 1880) was a publisher in Paris.
2
Ralph Cheever Dunning wrote Rococo: A Poem (1926), which was published by Titus.
3
“Philosophers at Court” and “The Marriage of Venus” were revised by Santayana
and published posthumously in Testament. The manuscripts of two other early poetical
plays, “The Flight of Helen” and “The Triumph of Zeus,” housed in the collection of
the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University, have not been pub-
lished.

To Otto Kyllmann
14 February 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Temple)

Hotel Bristol Rome

Feb. 14, 1927
Dear Mr Kyllmann
By all means let us have the black smooth binding. I very much prefer
it to the others.
I am sending the dummies back, and on the title page in the one with
leaves I have again suggested bringing “London” & “1927” to the centre of
the page. Don’t you think it would look better? This, of course, in addition
to leaving out the ornaments, as indicated.
Yours sincerely
G Santayana
 1921–1927 3:319

To Marianne Moore
18 February 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Beinecke)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1, London
Rome, Feb. 18, 1927
Dear Miss Moore
Today, long after I had sent back the proof of my article “An Aestheti
Soviet”, I am surprised to receive the MS of the same, with a scribbled
request to send it back. What would be the use of that, and what was the
use of sending it to me at all?
I will not destroy it, in case there is some mysterious destiny in store for
it.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana

To Otto Kyllmann
22 February 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Temple)

Hotel Bristol Rome

Feb. 22, 1927
Dear Mr Kyllmann
Thank you for the two proofs of the title-page to my new book. It is very
good. I return one of them for reference
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
3:320 The Letters of George Santayana

To Manuel Komroff
28 February 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Columbia)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1; London
Rome, Feb. 28, 1927
Dear Mr Komroff1
I have put off thanking you for your book,2 until I had had time to read
it—a very profitable thing for an old man who wishes to understand the
temper of the younger age. I never liked my own ———— nineteen
————
eighteen-nineties, and I hope the nineteen-twenties or thirties will do bet-
ter things. The glimpses you give of China and Russia are pleasant: let us
hope those countries will not lose their spiritual virtues in their eagerness
to borrow our worldly virtues from us.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Manuel Komroff (1890–1974) was an American novelist and short-story writer who
studied engineering, art, and music at Yale. He later wrote musical scores for movies
and worked as an art and film critic. A socialist, Komroff edited English-language
newspapers in both Russia and China. In 1924 he joined the staff of publishers Boni
and Liveright and continued to publish fiction, mainly historical novels.
2
Probably The Grace of Lambs: Stories (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1925).

To Marianne Moore
15 March 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Beinecke)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1.
Rome March 15 1927
Dear Miss Moore
Here is the MS. of my article. I didn’t know you made a collection of
your contributors’ originals: but aren’t most of them type-written? Or is it
only those of old fogeys like me that are preserved as curiosities? In any
case, I should be sorry to interfere with the completeness of your museum.
Thank you for generously sending the copies of The Dial at my request
to those friends of mine, without charging them to me. I hope you may
 1921–1927 3:321

have your reward in the form of enhanced reputation among persons who
wouldn’t be apt to see The Dial otherwise. Yours sincerely
GSantayana

To Charles Augustus Strong

15 March 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

March 15 1927
Dear Strong
It will be very nice to see you whenever you feel like coming. I have no
thought of leaving, and probably shall give up the idea of Naples for this
season. Next winter perhaps, when the direct line is open!
As to the summer, if you are to be in Paris in June, I could very well
join you there, at least for two or three weeks. My visit to Avila will be in
July: that is, if I go at all: for I have observed in my sister’s letters that she
keeps silent on the subject, and it may be that it would be inconvenient for
her to receive me this year. She is 76 and her husband 87! I mean to write
later saying that there are reasons (really only the above reason) why it
might be better for me to postpone the trip until next year: but that I will
come if they think it best. In this way they can put me off under cover of
letting me have my own way. Spanish manners are very cautious.
In any case I should be in Paris again in August, and it is possible that
I may go on to England; that depends rather on the Chetwynds and their
arrangements. If Randolph should be left alone in London, and not able
to come to Paris, I might be persuaded to go and stay with him in their
empty house. He would be at his work all day, and we should dine at
restaurants together in the evening. It might be very pleasant, and I might
work on the novel.
I am very sorry you are still waiting for your room and the lift to be
ready. One expects delay, and extra cost, in all building, but this is exces-
sive—especially now without Scioperi.1
Yours ever
G.S.
1
Strikes (Italian).
3:322 The Letters of George Santayana

To Charles Augustus Strong

[16 March 1927] • [Rome, Italy] (MS: Rockefeller)

Dear Strong
I send you another article of Paul Souday’s,1 marking a passage about
the realm of essence which may amuse you. Paul Valéry is excellent on the
subject, although unsympathetic: he says himself, in his Ébauche d’un
Serpent, that
l’univers n’est qu’un dèfant dans la puretè du Non-être.2
But the other Paul (I mean Souday) is rather a philistine in philosophy and
doesn’t see the point. I have Valéry’s poems at last: they are wonderful; the
only original and interesting poetry being written in any language
How are you? Yours ever
G.S.
1
Paul Souday (1869–1929) was a French philosopher and critic whose works con-
centrate on Gide, Molière, Proust, and Valéry. The article was published in the 10
March 1927 edition of Temps and is headed “Les Livres.” The passage Santayana
marked reads, “… l’obscurité est profonde, profond est le silence, donc ‘ce qui n’est
pas est le profond de ce qui est’–et la profondeur, chère à tant d’esthètes, est ‘le lieu
d’objets inconnus d’une connaissance inconnue’.” Translation: “... darkness is deep,
deep is the silence, thus ‘what is not is the deep of what is’—and the deepness, dear to
so many aesthetes, is ‘the place of unknown objects from an unknown knowledge’.”
2
Valéry published Le Serpent in 1922. “Sketch of a Serpent and Other Poems” is based
on this work. The translation of this French statement reads, “The universe is just a
defect in the purity of non-existence.”

To Charles Augustus Strong

17 March 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Bristol Rome

March 17, 1927
Dear Strong
I very much prefer the plan suggested in your letter to that in the post-
cript. It is out of the question for me to leave Rome on April 1–st. Before I
leave (and this is my principal reason for not going to Naples) I want to
send off vol. I. of the Big Book, “The Realm of Essence,” which I have
almost completely rewritten but to which I wish to add an appendix —on ——
 1921–1927 3:323

t————
—hree concerning three contemporary equivalents for my theory which
have lately come to light: viz. Ge/ uénon’s version of the Hindu Brahman,
Whitehead’s chapter on “Abstraction” in his “Science in the Modern
World”, and Husserl’s “Phaenomenologie”.1 The latter (which I am just
beginning to study) is wonderfully coincident with my notions, although
approached from a/the psychological side. Possibly it might appeal to you.
I think a short notice of these three writers, with some quotations, will very
much conciliate the readers—at least the professorial readers—of my
“Realm of Essence” and make them see that it is no hobby or madness of
mine, but an obvious Columbus’ egg which their worships had never
thought of erecting on its own bottom.
Come to Rome now, or as soon as you feel inclined, and then in June I
will join you in Paris. When I said I would come to make you a visit at the
villa, it was under the impression that you might not go to Paris at all this
summer. Since you are going, I would much rather stay with you there,
where I feel more at home than at Fiesole.
I am reading Congreve2 for the first time: he is less licentious than I
expected, and infinitely more witty. I laugh aloud like a madman at many
of his sallies. And his English is admirable—a great treat and lesson for me
after most of what I am condemned [across] to read—beginning with the
new “Morning Post”. Yours ever G.S.
1
Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) was the German philosopher who founded the phe-
nomenological movement.
2
William Congreve (1670–1729), an English dramatist, was known for his comedic
plays.

To Horace Meyer Kallen

23 March 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: YIVO)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Rome, March 23, 1927
Dear Kallen
Strong, who is here again, tells me that you are to be married, and to a
most agreeable lady.1 I am very glad to hear it. I hope and believe that you
will come at last into a long delayed and long deserved happiness.
Your book on religion2—which I am much obliged for, and have been
sedulously reading—is not that of a happy man. I wish you had postponed
3:324 The Letters of George Santayana

writing it until after your marriage! You know I never could see in James’s
compilation anything but the abnormal varieties of religious experience.
Normal religious experience is the assurance that one is living in a world
the economy of which is authoritatively known, so that conduct, senti-
ment, and expectation have a settled basis. If we distinguish (which
requires a dogmatic assurance on our part) between the true and the illu-
sory parts of such a religion, the illusory part, when it is worth considering
at all, seems to me to be poetry: that is, it is an imaginative fiction, rich in
emotions, which serves nevertheless to adjust mankind to its fate, and to
lend form to it’s relations to things, such as worldly life and eternal truth,
which are not easily expressed in commonsense language. Both the moral
economy and the poetry enshrined in a normal religion seem to be
ignored in your book. You view everything from the outside, as if patho-
logical. Your own experiments in getting at It are as little religious as pos-
sible: so is your list of examples of “religious experience”. Of course all life
and thought involve/s somatic feelings and a nervous system somehow at
work; but what I should call religion begins only at the point when rudi-
mentary sensations or trances are interpreted rationally and made points
of attachment for the poetry and the moral economy proper to a religious
tradition.
There is a great obscurity, to my sense, in your philosophical first prin-
ciples. Are you a mere humanist, without any physics? Why then don’t
you consider the Catholic church, for instance, as just as respectable and
acceptable a view of the world and as good a method of human life, as
^ ^
that of the contemporary Intelligentsia? Certainly the church has the
advantage humanly: it is richer in fruits of every description, much riper
and of sweeter flavour. I can’t help feeling that your tartly external and
perpetually insulting attitude to this church is founded on your love of
truth: you hate her for her very excellences, because you are convinced
that they are deceptive. I agree with you there; but then the very natural-
ism on which that agreement is based, if you steadily accepted it (as
Spinoza did, for instance) might lead you to regard those deceptive charms
historically with more sympathy and understanding: because the natural
predicaments of man and his history made them inevitable and dramati-
cally right. Spinoza (also James) didn’t understand the Catholic church or
the paganism of the Greeks and Romans: but that was only an accident of
his training: he was not a man of culture, as you are or ought to be. Why,
in a word, are you so angry with human nature, if human nature, for you,
is the absolute substance and only principle of things?
 1921–1927 3:325

I hope you will send me anything you may write about your impres-
sions of Soviet Russia. There is another moral economy which I should
like to see succeeding and rounding itself out, like the Catholic church.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
P. S. I have noted a few slips of the pen (or printer’s errors) which you
might like to revise:
p. 29. at the bottom. Your words sound as if the laity communicated
under both elements. The priest only takes the wine.
p. 48. “laisser faire” = necessity?
p. 62. “booming, buzzing”, wasn’t it “blooming”?
p. 24. is contemplation “passive”?
p. 213. “corpus meus” should be “meum”.
p. 12 “Descent of Man”: don’t you mean “The Origin of Species”?3
1
Rachel Oatman Van Arsdale.
2
Why Religion (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1927).
3
The Descent of Man (1871) and The Origin of Species (1859) by Charles Darwin.

To George Sturgis
1 April 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Hotel Bristol Rome

April 1, 1927
Dear George
th
Thank you for your letter of March 16– from the Harvard Club. You
speak of reading stories to Bobbie, in which Neville takes a mystical inter-
est too. It happens that the Harvard Lampoon has been sending me spec-
imen numbers in the hope that I may subscribe. I want to do so for the
sake of Auld Lang Syne1 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, if I attempted to enjoy them mysti-
cally, like Neville, without understanding the joke. 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,2 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
3:326 The Letters of George Santayana

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 dis-
tractions, 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.
As to the Summer, I expect to be in Paris, and may go to Avila if I think
they would really [across] like me to come. With much love
Yours afftly GSantayana
1
“Auld Lang Syne” (days gone by). The song (published in 1796), usually attributed
to Robert Burns, is really a restyled version of a much older song.
2
Robert Shaw Sturgis was in the Harvard class of 1944. He received his A.B. in 1947
and his M.Arch. in 1951.

To Charles Augustus Strong

7 April 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

April 7, 1927
Dear Strong
I am deep in Husserl, whose German is of the worst and most rébar-
batif1, but I can understand it when technical: his thought is conscientious.
There are one or two figurative phrases that trouble me, and I have no
German dictionary. Can you tell me if Klammern2 and einsuklammern3
refer to parentheses, brackets, or quotation marks? It is his phrase for what
happens to a projected object when it is reduced to an essence. He is far
too nice to call it “abstraction”! And also, please, is auszuschalten4 to
exclude, omit, oust, or exactly what? I want to be exact and etymological,
as I am going to translate the passages which I quote: the original is too
dreadful.
I am afraid you had unsettled weather during your trip: however, you
will now have a chance to enjoy your room and garden at their best.
I enclose the notice5 of a book that may interest you if you have not
seen it already.
Yours ever
G.S.
 1921–1927 3:327

1
French for “unpleasant,” “off-putting.”
2
Parentheses (German).
3
From the German einzuklammern for “to place in parentheses.”
4
To turn off or to exclude (German).
5
Unlocated.

To Charles Augustus Strong

12 April 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Bristol Rome

April 12 1927
Dear Strong
Many thanks for your letter and for Dewey’s explosion, which I have
sent back. After all, I haven’t needed to say anything about Husserl’s
Klammern: what he means, however, is not a synthetic bond but an insu-
lating cordon. When an entity is put in parenthis, it is no longer viewed in
external relations, but as a framed picture: i.e. as an essence. I have found
my Postcript easy and entertaining to write: it is almost done.
I am sorry that Dewey should have been so much enraged by my arti-
cle: I meant to be friendly and sympathetic, but magis amica veritas.1 Yet
I am not sorry that he wrote his reply, because I have gathered something
from it, partly from his denial that he thinks the immediate alone real, and
partly from his assumption that by substance I understand something not
in space and time and not distributed as things are distributed, in other
words, that I dont think it is matter but is some metaphysical being. Would
you have got the same impression from my book (Scepticism) or is it
merely Dewey’s extraordinary intellectual deafness and blindness? He
can’t think: he can only see things move: and for that reason he wonders
how I, who sometimes see things moving too, can also think about them
and see the dialectical and eternal relations of their essences. As to his non-
immediatism and empiricism (which he calls naturalism) I now seem to
gather that each nucleus in the flux is an immediate reality to itself, and
that it runs over into foreground and background, until there it becomes
the next nucleus, also immediate to itself: the non-immediate being the
path of transition from one immediate to another. But of course, if any-
thing of this sort is in Dewey’s mind, it is a hopeless mess: the points and
passages are either immediate to themselves pervasively, and then their
relations are not: or else some or all represent these relations within their
^ ^
3:328 The Letters of George Santayana

field of immediacy: or else the whole thing is “objective idealism” or “sub-

jective realism” and we are shut in in transcendentalism.
Cory, my unknown disciple, has turned up. He is tall, nice, and only 22,
but not [across] very clever—a sort of agreeable “grind”. He will come to see
you in a month or so, when he goes north. Yours ever G.S.
1
More a friend of truth (Latin).

To Otto Kyllmann
1 May 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS postcard: Temple)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1

Thank you very much for the six copies of “Platonism” etc, which have
arrived safely. I think the appearance of the book is satisfactory, and am
glad to see it safely come into the world
GSantayana
Rome, May 1, 1927.

To Charles Augustus Strong

8 May 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Bristol Rome

May 8 1927
Dear Strong
This1 is to introduce Mr Daniel MacGhie Cory who, as you know, is not
only my only living disciple but can also discourse to you about
Summation.
Yours ever
GSantayana
1
This note was hand delivered.
 1921–1927 3:329

To George Perrigo Conger

19 May 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Minnesota)

Hotel Bristol Rome

May 19, 1927
Dear Mr Conger1
I expect to be here about a fortnight longer, after which I shall be in
Paris. In either place I shall be glad to see you. You might have introduced
yourself without the intervention of Prof. Whitehead, but I am glad to have
a word from him for other reasons. If you wish to see me in Paris, please
write to 9, Ave. de l’Observatoire, and I will make an appointment.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
A specialist in comparative religions, George Perrigo Conger (1884–1960) received
degrees from Union Theological Seminary, Cornell University, and Columbia
University. He chaired the Philosophy Department at the University of Minnesota for
many years. His books include The Ideologies of Religion (1940), Epitomization: A Study in
Philosophy of the Sciences (1950), and Synoptic Naturalism (1960).

To Otto Kyllmann
21 May 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Temple)

Hotel Bristol Rome

May 21, 1927
Dear Mr Kyllmann
Today, at last, I have sent off the MS. of “The Realm of Essence”, which
I hope you will receive safely. I should be much obliged if you would
acknowledge the receipt of it at once, as I am always a little nervous when
a MS is in the post. I expect to be here until June 2nd: thereafter at 9, Ave.
de l’Observatoire, Paris.
This book is the continuation of “Scepticism and Animal Faith”: it
ought evidently to appear in the same outer form. There is a detail which
I am afraid may give some trouble; I mean the marginal summary or com-
mentary, like that in “The Life of Reason”. I think it is a help to readers,
and enlivens the pages. It is for you to say whether there is room for it in
the margin or whether, as in the “L. of R”, it had better be placed in an
indentation in the text of the page.
3:330 The Letters of George Santayana

I had hope d to make a single volume of this and “The Realm of

^^
Matter” which is to follow, if my plan is carried out. But I don’t want to
wait any longer, and this will make a convenient volume by itself. Perhaps
in later years, if there should be new editions, the two could be joined in
one volume of thinner paper.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana

To Carl Sadakichi Hartmann

21 May 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Oregon)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Rome, May 21, 1927
To
Mr Sadakichi Hartmann
Beaumont, California
Dear Mr Hartmann
I have not received any of your passports,1 nor do I know anyone who
wants at present to cross that frontier—if you mean immortality in another
world/,—or who cares a fig for it in this world, if the papers will only talk
about him now.
It hadn’t occurred to me that an aesthetic Soviet should have a financial
side: I was thinking of unanimity, not of communism. But of course there
ought to be provision made for genius without a market. The trouble is
that if society supported the artist, it would expect to educate him in its
own beliefs and tastes, and to see these honoured in his works. The heretic
and the stranger would be starved out, if not stoned. There is perhaps
more mercy in our anarchy. At any rate, I am sending you a small token
of the aspiration to comradeship—since as you say comradeship does not
exist—and shall be glad if you will send me one of your passports in
exchange, as I am an inveterate traveller, even in spirit.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Passport to Immortality (Beaumont, California: Privately published, 1927).
 1921–1927 3:331

To George Sturgis
21 May 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Hotel Bristol Rome

May 21, 1927
Dear George
Will you please send a cheque for $25 to Mr Sadakichi Hartmann at
Beaumont, Cal.? with the enclosed note. He is a half-Japanese waif, and
^ ^
ill, and though I don’t much like his work, I think he is a good object of
charity—as who isn’t?
Today is rather a red-letter day in my calendar, as I have sent off Vol. I,
of the “Big Book” to the publishers in London. If it doesn’t sink in the
Channel you will see me taking more and more the form of a misty sage,
like the Afrite issueing from Sinbad’s bottle1—of ink.
nd
In about a fortnight—probably on June 2– —I expect to leave directly for
Paris, where I shall be all summer, unless something unexpected should
call me elsewhere. Your aunt Susie seems not to be sure that it would be
best for me to visit them this summer: so I sha’n’t go unless she should
especially urge me to come. Strong talks of a cure in Switzerland: in that
case I shall be alone at 9, Ave. de l’Observatoire, and mean to devote my
lazy hours to the Novel.
Love to Rosamond and the young hopefuls from your affectionate
Uncle George
1
An Afrite is a monstrous giant in Arabic mythology. In a well-known story in the
Arabian Nights, Sinbad is a Baghdad merchant who acquires great wealth by going on
seven voyages.

To Van Wyck Brooks

22 May 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Penn)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1. London
Rome, May 22 1927
Dear Mr Brooks1
Although I am not sure whether I owe the pleasure of reading your
book on “Emerson & Others” to your initiative or that of your publishers,2
I would rather thank you personally for it, because I have one or two
3:332 The Letters of George Santayana

things which I should like to say, as it were, in private. Your pictures of

Emerson are perfect in the way of impressions: not that I knew him (he
was dead, I think, when I first reached America, aged 8); but that, whether
true to the fact or not, they are convincing in their vividness. But just how
much is quoted, and how much is your own? Am I to believe—I who
haven’t read the Journal3 and know little of the facts—that Emerson was
such a colossal egotist and so pedantic and affected as he seems on your
pages 39 and 40? Or have you maliciously put things together so as to let
the cat out of the bag? Sham sympathy, sham classicism, sham universal-
ity, all got from books and pictures! Lov/eing the people for their robust
sinews and Michaelangelesque poses! And for the thrill of hearing them
swear! How different a true lover of the people, like Dickens!
You apologize because some of your descriptions applied to the remote
America of 1919: I who think of America as I knew it in the 1890’s
(although I vegetated there for another decade) can only accept what I
hear about all these recent developments. On the other hand, when you
speak of the older worthies, you seem to me to exaggerate, not so much
their importance, as their distinction: wasn’t this Melville4 (I have never
read him) the most terrible ranter? What you quote of him doesn’t tempt
me to repair the holes in my education. The paper I have most enjoyed—
enjoyed immensely—is the one on the old Yeats.5 His English is good: his
mind is quick.
One more little protestation. Why do the American poets and other
geniuses die young or peter out, unless they go and hibernate in Europe?
What you say about Bourne6 (whom again I haven’t read) and in your last
chapter suggests to me that it all comes of applied culture. Instead of being
interested in what they are and what they do and see, they are interested
in what they think they would like to be and see and do: it is a misguided
ambition, and moreover, if realized, fatal, because it wears out all their
energies in trying to bear fruits which are not of their species. A certain
degree of sympathy and assimilation with ultra-modern ways in Europe or
even Asia may be possible, because young America is simply mod-
^ ^
ernism undiluted: but what Lewis Mumford calls “the pillage of the past”
(of which he thinks I am guilty too) is worse than useless. I therefore think
that art, etc. has a better soil in the ferocious 100% America than in the
Intelligentsia of New York. It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums,
new theatres, etc that make America impotent. The good think/ gs are foot-
ball, kindness, and jazz bands.
Yours sincerely GSantayana
 1921–1927 3:333

1
A Harvard graduate, Van Wyck Brooks (1886–1963) became a leading American lit-
erary critic and historian of American culture. His major work is the five-volume
Makers and Finders: A History of the Writer in America, published during 1936–52. Brooks
perceived a division in the American character (idealistic and materialistic), deriving
from Puritanism, which is paralleled in Santayana’s analysis of American culture, par-
ticularly in Puritan.
2
E. P. Dutton & Company had sent Santayana an advance editorial copy of Emerson
and Others.
3
Emerson’s Journals, edited by E. W. Emerson and W. E. Forbes, originally were pub-
lished in ten volumes in Boston from 1909 to 1914.
4
Herman Melville (1819–91) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and poet.
5
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) was an Irish poet and dramatist who was awarded
the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923.
6
Randolph Silliman Bourne (1886–1918) was an American literary critic and essayist.
Van Wyck Brooks edited The History of a Literary Radical (1920) about Bourne.

To Charles Augustus Strong

25 May 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Bristol Rome

May 25 1927
Dear Strong
Thank you for your card. I am glad you liked Cory—not that I alto-
gether like him myself—but he is going to make himself useful in clearing
my Augean stables1, and it is as well that he shouldn’t be disagreeable to
my friends. I have told him to come to the apartment—he is in Paris, at the
Pension St. Philippe, 123 rue du Faubourg St Honoré—if he wants to bor-
row any of my books. I haven’t quite decided on the date of my departure,
th
probably towards the end of next week—about June 4– If Margaret is still
to be at the apartment at that time, I won’t come there for the moment: if
you could send me a line when you know her plans, I should be much
obliged, so as to be able to telegraph for a room at the Hôtel Le Pelletier,
where I was quite comfortable formerly.
“The Realm of Essence”, Book First of “Realms of Being”, has been sent
off and the excellent Constable has telegraphed the safe arrival of the man-
uscript: so there is a great load off my back.
I am amusing myself—it is very pleasant here—writing a philosophical
autobiography as requested by Montague, Lloyd, etc. Are you going to
contribute? The project is of the kind that often falls apart, and I should
have hesitated to accept the invitation if it hadn’t in any case been my
intention to write an Autobiography, of which this can form a part: more
3:334 The Letters of George Santayana

personal matters can be inserted afterwards, or simply treated in separate

divisions.
Will you please ask Marie if the new concierge is informed of my exis-
tence and of my name. There may be letters, etc. arriving for me, and he
(or she, or they) might refuse them as being addressed to a personne incon-
nue.2
You are probably having a very pleasant journey: at least I hope so.
Yours ever G.S.
1
In Greek mythology, Augeas kept his enormous herds of cattle in the Augean sta-
bles. As one of his Twelve Labors, Hercules was ordered to cleanse the stables, a seem-
ingly insurmountable task. He did so by diverting a river through them.
Metaphorically, to “cleanse the Augean stables” means to purge of intellectual, moral,
or religious corruption that is ostensibly impossible to eliminate.
2
Unknown person (French).

To Charles Augustus Strong

1 June 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Rome, June 1, 1927

Dear Strong
I am leaving on Sunday and hope to arrive in Paris on Monday after-
th
noon, June 6– If you are not in when I arrive, Marie will tell me what are
your present arrangements, and if they are as of old, I will come at 6.30 to
the Duval as usual. If you have a sort of supper at home, I will wait for you,
and we can agree upon some combination.
I take note of the fact that you don’t wish me to stay away in order to
leave the field free for Margaret, while you are at the apartment; and I act
accordingly, although I think it is a little strange that she should be
squeezed out, so to speak, if it is convenient for her to have a pied-à-terre1
in the apartment, –if–even if she spends most of her time at Saint Germain
or at Versailles.
Let us not discuss the question of essences or “the spiritual life.” I have
said all I feel—and perhaps more than I feel when I am not warmed up to
the subject—in the little book, and I quite understand that it can appeal
only to those who are predisposed to that sort of sentiment. You would
agree with Abbot (an old classmate of mine at Harvard) who writes me
 1921–1927 3:335

that he has often found heads without ideas, but never ideas without heads.
What more is needed to damn all Platonism?
A bientôt.
G.S.
1
Temporary or second lodging (French); the phrase literally means “foot to the
ground.”

To Otto Kyllmann
3 June 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Temple)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Rome, June 3, 1927
Dear Mr Kyllmann
Yes, all your proposals, and the specimen page of “The Realm of
Essence” are perfectly satisfactory. I am pleased to see that the matter is
going forward so fast.
I should like to receive the “galley” or “slip” proof open, without the
^
MS : as I shall probably be in Paris, at 9 Avenue de l’Observatoire, all
^
summer, the delay will not be great, and I shall have a young man near
me, a sort of secretary and disciple,1 who will help my jaded eye to detect
repetitions and contradictions: for in a book written at intervals during
many years, they are almost sure to exist. I suppose corrections at that
stage, if they involve omissions or additions, are more easily mare
—de than
after the pages have been divided.
The 15% royalty and half the American profit is a generous arrange-
ment for a technical book
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
[across] P. S. Do you know who wrote the review of “Platonism” in the
Times? It sounds clerical.—Thank you very much for the telegram, which
relieved my mind.
1
Daniel Cory.
3:336 The Letters of George Santayana

To Otto Kyllmann
9 June 1927 • Paris, France (MS: Temple)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Paris, June 9, 1927.
Dear Mr Kyllmann
Here is the announcement1 of the Realm of Essence which you, or
rather the American publishers, have asked for.
I hope it may not frighten away more readers than it may attract.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Unlocated.

To George Perrigo Conger

14 June 1927 [postmark] • Paris, France (MS: Minnesota)

9 Ave de l’Observatoire
3rd floor
Dear Mr Conger
I went some days ago to your first hotel, and unfortunately misunder-
stood your new address,1 and thought you had left for good. I am very
sorry for the delay. Could you come and see Mr Strong and me here
tomorrow Saturday after lunch, and perhaps we can arrange a further
^ ^
meeting—: We shall expect you; don’t take the trouble to reply. Yours sin-
cerely
GSantayana
P.S. I suppose you know that Mr Strong is paralysed in the legs.
1
Conger had moved to the Hôtel de l’Orient on rue de l’Abbé Grégoire.
 1921–1927 3:337

To Charles Augustus Strong

10 July 1927 • Paris, France (MS: Rockefeller)

Paris, July 10, 1927

Dear Strong
I enclose something1 that may amuse you if you haven’t seen it.
Here all goes on as before. Margaret dined with me, at Lapérouse, one
evening last week and was very amiable and seemed well and happy: but
ordinarily I see very little of her—she hardly ever is at lunch, and I dine
out—and she has given me no openings for any discussion of her plans or
affairs. The apartment is full of objects which she has been buying for Saint
Germain and u/ I understand that she expects to move there before her
uncle and aunt arrive, at the end of this week.
Hans Reichhardt is here, and dines with me; but his English is unintel-
ligible, and I can’t get him to say more than an occasional sentence in
German, because when I reply in English, he struggles back into that lan-
guage, and at once gets stuck.
Cory has brought (to one of our meetings in a café) a young friend of
^ ^
Miller’s, named Morgan who looks like a sort of idealized Red Indian, and
is a sort of Mill or Miller philosopher. He will make a good pro/sfessor: but
Cory seems to me to have real intuition—when he sees things as I do.
Yours ever G.S.
1
Unlocated.

To George Sturgis
18 July 1927 • Paris, France (MS: Houghton)

9, Avenue de l’Observatoire
Paris, July 18, 1927

Dear George
I have your letter of July 6, and a previous one also, and have seen with
pleasure that all goes well with you. As for me, I am as usual. I arrived after
the excitement about Lindberg;1 found Strong here, who left for
Switzerland not long after; and later Margaret Strong has been here, but
we lead a strange life together in this apartment, hardly ever seeing each
other. I believe she is moving into her new house at Saint Germain in a
3:338 The Letters of George Santayana

day or two, but her ways, like the Lord’s, are past finding out. Don’t think
I say this in any spirit of complaint: she gives me no trouble, and supplies
me with food and service, which I don’t pay for when she is here; but she
hides in an odd way; it is suspected that she is secretly engaged to be mar-
ried, and altogether she is a puzzle to her friends.
This week I am absorbed in the proofs of my new book: but I mean to
return presently to the novel.
A German friend dines with me (at restaurants) every evening: he is a
friend of my friend Baron Westenholz of Hamburg, and my guest in Paris,
although I had to get a room for him at a hotel near by, as I couldn’t put
him up in the apartment, occupied by Margaret, her dog, her maid, and
sundry bales and heaps of carpets, stuffs, blankets, antique furniture, and
bandboxes in ever corner, on all the chairs, and behind every door. My
own room, I need hardly say, is sacred, and I live happy in it, like a monk
in his cell.
It is decided that I shall not go to Avila this summer. Your aunt Susie
and Celedonio wrote giving me a formal invitation—too formal, perhaps—
but it seemed to me safer not to accept it, as it was at least possible that I
should have been in their way and given them too much trouble. This
decision leaves me free to remain here quietly until the middle of October
when I shall doubtless return to Italy, either directly to Rome, or stopping
on the way to pay a visit to Strong at Fiesole. Love to all from
GSantayana
1
Charles Augustus Lindbergh’s (1902–74) famous transatlantic flight occurred on 20
May 1927, when he flew from New York to Paris in thirty-three and one-half hours.

To Horace Meyer Kallen

21 July 1927 • Paris, France (MS: YIVO)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Paris, July 21, 1927
Dear Kallen
Scribners, and formerly Dent, have always been somewhat refractory in
the matter of reproductions, and I am not sure that representations on my
part would do much good. If they are not satisfied with a general indica-
tion, such as I suppose you could easily give, of the length of the passages
 1921–1927 3:339

you intended to select, and of their character—technical ones, I suppose—I

should be inclined in your place to let the matter drop. It would give you
a lot of trouble, and the result might not be satisfactory, either from your
point of view or from mine. But it is for you to judge: I don’t feel that I
have any moral right over littera scripta.1
I am sorry the/ at “Why Religion” is persecuted: as far as my memory
goes you said nothing outrageous about Christian Science:2 but every
craze at present exacts profound respect from the intellectual democracy:
even experts in folly must be called masters.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
The written word (Latin).
2
Christian Science is a religion based on principles and divine laws formulated from
acts and sayings of Jesus Christ. It was founded in 1879 by Mary Baker Eddy. The
Mother Church, the First Church of Christ Scientist, was established in Boston in 1892.

To Charles Augustus Strong

24 July 1927 • Paris, France (MS: Rockefeller)

Paris, Sunday, July 24, 1927

Dear Strong
Today Margaret came here to lunch and introduced me to George
Cuevas1, 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 appear-
ance 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 Tartuffian2 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.
3:340 The Letters of George Santayana

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 [across] strained, and
now at last may be cleared up, and solved after a fashion. Yours ever
G.S.
1
Jorge Cuevas (1886–1961) later became the Marquis de Piedrablanca de Guana and
was known for his work as a ballet impresario. He became an American citizen (1940)
and founded the American Ballet International (1944), and he bought the Nouveau
Ballet de Monte Carlo in Europe (1947).
2
Tartuffe, a comedy by Molière, was banned in 1664 after it was first performed. It
was later published in 1669. “Tartuffian” is derived from the noun tartuffe meaning
“hypocrite” and is used to refer especially to one who affects religious reverence.

To Charles Augustus Strong

28 July 1927 • Paris, France (MS: Rockefeller)

Paris, July 28 1927

Dear Strong
Since my former letter I have seen Margaret and her fiancé several
times, and had several long talks with him. In some respects my impres-
sions are less favourable, in that he has a (for us) disturbing variety of
acquaintances, experiences, and sentiments, and he seems too anxious to
defend and to ingratiate himself. But I am confirmed in the feeling that he
is as likely as anybody to make a good husband for Margaret, and that
whatever people may say against him—even if true—ought not to interfere
with her action, if she desires it and feels that it is the best solution, at least
for the present, under the circumstances. I understand that her uncle has
arranged the financial side of the affair so as to prevent any claims on his
part to her property: and if later she was not happy with him, and there
was a separation, she would at least have had this experience and might
be better able to arrange her life sensibly and according to her real tastes.
 1921–1927 3:341

As to your project of coming here, I suppose you know that the wed-
ding is expected to take place next week, and that they are thinking of a
wedding trip, not of settling down at once at Saint Germain. But I think
you would find it pleasant here and, if you were in the mood, not at all too
crowded for motoring about.
Yours ever
GSantayana

To Charles Augustus Strong

1 August 1927 • Paris, France (MS: Rockefeller)

Paris, August 1, 1927

Dear Strong
Mr Aldrich1 came to lunch with me here today, and told me what the
result, so far, of their investigation (carried on in part through the French
police) has been in regard to Cuevas. In respect to him directly it seems to
be nil, except that he is known to move in circles of doubtful morals and
manners: but the damning fact is that a certain Soto,2 in whose establish-
ment Cuevas works or figures, is a notorious emulator of Oscar Wilde3 and
“M. de Clarolus”.4 I think I made some impression on Mr Aldrich in the
direction of making him see that this inquisition, with its appeal to the sec-
ular arm, was not to the point. Margaret knows those reports, and has
known that circle for a long time, and they have no influence on her deci-
sion to marry her friend; and delay would only prolong a painful situation,
and lead her to marry him in spite of the opposition of her friends instead
of merely without their consent. That the money left to her in trust and all
future legacies will be intercepted if she takes this step, is also expected by
her: there seems to be a sufficient remainder absolutely her own. One
result of an immediate marriage may be that Cuevas (in his own interest)
may bring some order into her affairs, which seem to be so casually man-
age[illegible]d. It is a pity the/ at Margaret’s reticence and fear of disapproval
have kept her from announcing earlier this determination of hers, which
^ ^
I understand is of long standing. I hope therefore you will not be unduly
distressed by the reports of Larkin,5 and will see things from the [across]
point of view of the young people themselves. Yours ever G.S.
1
Unidentified.
2
Unidentified.
3:342 The Letters of George Santayana

3
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was an Irish writer whose most popular play is The
Importance of Being Earnest (1895).
4
Unidentified.
5
Unidentified.

To Charles Augustus Strong

3 August 1927 • Paris, France (MS: Rockefeller)

Paris, August 3, 1927

Dear Strong
The civil marriage took place this morning at the mairie of the district,
place Saint Sulpice, at 11.30. Besides the young people and me, there were
present Señor and Señora Edwards1 and a nephew of theirs. The six of us
had lunch afterwards in a private room at the Foyot, and everything went
off nicely. The ceremony in particular seemed very dignified in its sim-
plicity, and almost religious.
Besides your letter and telegram, there had been yesterday a long
telegram from old Mr Rockefeller2 protesting against haste and asking
Margaret to take the first boat and go consult with him. I also had a visit
this morning (when half my face was shaved) from Mr Larkin, who had
nothing new to say, but to whom I gave a lecture on their employment of
the French police (private detectives would have been enough) and in par-
ticular on the phrase: quels sout /sces sentiments euvers la France3 which
was included in the interrogatory addressed to Cuevas’ friends. This ques-
tion, which has nothing to do with the marriage, shows a desire to raise
prejudice against the accused in the minds of the French officials, or to
excuse their intervention in a private interest—servility towards John D.
Jr.—under colour of patriotic zeal. Larkin got very red when I mentioned
the police, and said that that had been no doing of theirs: but how else
^ ^
were they set in motion? By the de Fontenays?
^ ^
As to the alliance itself, and the character of Cuevas, my later impres-
sions have become more favourable. Señor Edwards says he will write to
you (and to old Mr Rockef/feller) to explain his appearance as parrain4 for
Cuevas without your formal consent to the match. I therefore need not
repeat the very favourable things he said about him. As he , Cuevas,
^ ^
becomes more frank with me, I begin to feel that he is “not a bad sort”; of
course he is not a gentleman in the English sense; franchement caunaille5
in some moments, but also full of nice impulses and a sort of merry good
 1921–1927 3:343

sense; and like accused people generally, he tends to defend himself too
much and to extoll his own virtues. He is certainly not the person that ten
years ago we should have thought the right husband for Margaret: but she
has gone through a great deal, and our ideal statesman or scholar would
not find life possible with her, nor she with him. With Cuevas she now
seems to get on as well as possible—not perfectly—and he seems to be
aware of the sort of indulgence and of control which she requires. Of
course this sort of equilibrium may not last long: I have no great hopes for
the remote future: but as I said in my other letters, it is the only solution
for the present. Any alternative would have been worse.
Would you like them to go to see you at Val-Mont for a day? They are
ready to do so, if you are ready to receive them.
They are also talking of going to New York to see Mr John. D. Senior,
and perhaps to go on from there to South America, where the Cuevas fam-
ily apparently are very well known and esteemed.
I made a mistake in my previous letter in saying that the notorious Soto
was the head of the establishment in which Cuevas has worked: the head
6
is Prince Isongzoff
/ (or something of that sort): but Soto is an old friend of
his.
Margaret is calm and looks very well. Yours G.S.
1
Agustín Edwards (b. 1878) wrote many books about Chile.
2
John Davison Rockefeller Sr. (1839–1937) was Margaret Strong’s grandfather. He
was an industrialist and philanthropist married to Laura Celestia Spelman. Their chil-
dren were “Bessie,” Alta, Edith, and John D. Jr. His Standard Oil Company dominated
the United States oil-refining industry, and he founded the University of Chicago
(1892). His philanthropies promote public health and scientific progress.
3
French for “What are his feelings toward France?”
4
Sponsor or godfather (French).
5
Openly vulgar (French).
6
Unidentified.

To Charles Scribner’s Sons

15 August 1927 • Paris, France (MS postcard: Princeton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Paris, Aug. 15, 1927.
A friend has just pointed out to me a bad error in “The Sense of Beauty”
which I am afraid has escaped us for all these years.
3:344 The Letters of George Santayana

On page 9, in the second line of the German quotation, “euch”1 should

read ihr. The mistake seems to have come from repeating mechanically
the word “euch” from the first line, where it is right.—Can you have this
corrected, if it has not been done already?2
GSantayana
1
The quotation reads, “Im ganzen haltet euch an Worte, / So geht ihr durch die
sichere Pforte / Zum Tempel der Gewissheit ein.” The translation reads, “If, overall,
you stick to words, you will pass through the safe door to the temple of certainty.” Euch
means “you”; ihr means “it.”
2
The correct form appears in the Triton Edition, vol. 1 (1936).

To George Perrigo Conger

24 August 1927 • Paris, France (MS postcard: Minnesota)

9, Ave de l’Observatoire
Aug. 24, 1927
It will be very nice to see you again on Monday. Mr Strong will proba-
bly have started on his journey to Florence, but if you will come at about
half past four o’clock, I shall be very glad to give you a cup of tea.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana

To Constable and Co. Ltd.

24 August 1927 • Paris, France (MS: Temple)

9, Avenue de l’Observatoire
Paris

Messrs Constable & Co

London.
My bankers, Messrs Brown Shipley & Co, of 123 Pall Mall, advise me that
they are retaining a parcel, probably proofs, addressed by you to me, and
that they must know its contents and value before forwarding it.
They sent the first proofs without demur: and I am sorry that now this
delay should —o————arise.
ccur I have asked them to communicate with you, and
if necessary to send the bundle back to you, with the request from me that
you should readdress it directly to me in Paris, at 9 Avenue de
 1921–1927 3:345

l’Observatoire. I had, I think, suggested that you should do so, as I shall

be in Paris until October at least; but prob/lably I did so in a private letter
to Mr Kyllmann which may not have reached the person in charge of for-
warding proofs to authors.
Yours faithfully
GSantayana
August 24, 1927. p. t. o
P.S. You doubtless remember my request, made on purpose to avoid these
complications, that you should send me proofs open and without the MS.

To Otto Kyllmann
26 August 1927 • Paris, France (MS: Temple)

9 Avenue de l’Observatoire
Paris, Aug. 26 1927
Dear Mr Kyllmann
I should be much obliged if you would send me the slip proof of The
Realm of Essence, in which I had made my corrections, as that will save
trouble in revising the new page proofs. If rolled and left with open ends I
think the sheets will pass easily and quickly through the post, like a news-
paper.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana

To Charles Augustus Strong

30 August 1927 • Paris, France (MS: Rockefeller)

Paris, August 30, 1927

Dear Strong
Here is the telegram1 received yesterday and opened as you suggested:
but I don’t gather what their precise address will be at San Raphael. Can
you tell me what it is, as I should like to answer their previous letters.
It looks as if you might be having too much of a good thing on your trip:
the sun is blazing here in earnest.
Yours ever
G.S.
3:346 The Letters of George Santayana

1
A French telegram (dated 29 August) from Nice, addressed to Strong in Paris, reads,
“NOUS SOMMES HOTEL NEGRESCO PREMIER SEPTEMBRE
ARRIVERONS SAINT RAPHAEL MILLE TENDRESSES DE MARGARET
AND GEORGE.” Translation: “We are at Hotel Negresco. Will arrive Saint Raphael
September 1. A thousand tender thoughts from Margaret and George.”

To Charles Augustus Strong

1 September 1927 • [Paris, France] (MS: Rockefeller)

Dear Strong
Here is a new telegram1 received this morning, which will tell you all I
know of the young people
After two days of summer, we have returned to cloudiness and uncer-
tainty in the weather. It is perhaps as well that you left.
G.S.
Sept. 1, 1927
1
A telegram (dated 31 August) from Margaret and George in Nice, addressed to
Strong in Paris, reads, “MARGARET PREFERE RESTER HOTEL DU CAP
ANTIBES SERONS LA DEMAIN ESPERANT VOUS VOIR ATTENDONS
NOUVELLES TENDRESSES.” Translation: “Margaret prefers to stay at Hotel du
Cap Antibes. Will be there tomorrow. Wishing to see you. Waiting for news. Tender
thoughts.”

To Otto Kyllmann
7 September 1927 • Paris, France (MS: Temple)

9 Avenue de l’Observatoire, Paris,

Sept. 7, 1927
Dear Mr Kyllmann
A day or two ago I sent you the second proofs of The Realm of Essence,
corrected, and today I enclose the MS of the Index.
There were a score of misprints or small corrections in the book, but
your printer’s proof-reading is so good that perhaps it is not necessary that
I should revise it again. But I suppose I had better see a proof of the Index,
to verify the references.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
 1921–1927 3:347

To Otto Kyllmann
3 October 1927 • Venice, Italy (MS: Temple)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Venice, Oct. 3. 1927
Dear Mr Kyllmann
I am sending back today the proof of the Index to “The Realm of
Essence”; it has been delayed a little because it had to follow me here from
Paris, from where I was driven out prematurely by the bad weather. I
expect to settle down in Rome, at the Hotel Bristol, in about a fortnight,
for the winter.
Thank you also for my account to June 30th and the accompanying
cheque.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
P.S. I have discovered a superfluous comma on p. 16, at the end of the 12th
line from the bottom, and have noted it in the proof to the Index. I men-
tion it again, in case that is not the proper way of reaching the printer con-
cerned.

To Charles Augustus Strong

4 October 1927 • Venice, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Danieli, Venice

October 4 1927
Dear Strong
As you doubtless have heard, I fled from Paris a fortnight since on
account of the bad weather and the symptoms of a permanent cold, mak-
ing straight for Venice, but I was allowed to stay here only two or three
days, as every room everywhere was engaged for those hydroplane races.
I accordingly moved for four days to Padua, the nearest place I could think
of that might be interesting and that I had not seen. It was pleasant there;
but sights leave much less impression on me than they did forty years ago,
and even the domes of Sant’ Antonio caused no great thrill in my bosom,
nor the chapel entirely covered by frescoes of Giotto.1 What really pleased
3:348 The Letters of George Santayana

me most was the Café Pedrocchi, new / o-Greek & pseudo-marble, and
beautifully Napoleonic, more like a Roman house to sit and live in (as the
Paduans do) than anything I have ever seen.
On returning here I established myself comfortably, and expect to
remain ten or fifteen days longer, and then move to Rome.
Jorge Cuevas tells me that you “are expecting me”, but as I told you in
Paris, it falls in better with my arrangements to go straight to Rome and
see you there, where I suppose you will turn up in November.
I have sent off my “Life”, and am working in a lazy way on “Symptoms”:
the bits on Spengler & Keyserling are finished, and other parts well
advanced. Somehow the novel, just now, is not on my mind

Yours ever
GSantayana
1
Giotto (full name Giotto di Bondone) was a Florentine painter, sculptor, and archi-
tect born c. 1266. The thirty-eight frescoes in the Arena Chapel at Padua, which depict
scenes in the lives of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, are considered to be the great-
est of Giotto’s works.

To Charles Augustus Strong

14 October 1927 • Venice, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Venice, Oct. 14, 1927

Dear Strong
I am very glad that you are confirmed in your satisfaction, so far, with
Margaret’s marriage: it seems to me to have been the only available way
of giving her a true companion and guardian who could influence her
actions from moment to moment without being out of sympathy, or
expecting her to lead a life which she fundamentally disliked. Above all,
as you said, he is affectionate, and she is happy at once if she feels that she
is loved
I am tempted to say something about the philosophical part of your let-
ter, although you know my disbelief in the value of controversy on these
points. What is required is clearness in the respective conceptions: as to
which is true, if any, we can leave it to God or to the horse sense of
mankind. Now, I have felt for some time that your views were changing,
and although of course my first choice would be that you should agree
with me heartily and completely, if this is impossible, my second choice
 1921–1927 3:349

would be that you should take up an entirely different position from mine:
there might then be either diversity without real conflict, or a fundamen-
tal difference of attitude or judgement, and not, what is most annoying,
mutual misunderstandings.
It wouldn’t surprise me if, on the point you mention, misunderstandings
stood between us rather than a real disagreement. I should agree that “the
datum of perception” is not an essence. The phrase “datum of perception”
can be understood only in the sense in which we speak of “data of ethics”—
the elementary facts which make up our knowledge in that field. The “data
of perception” would then be things, or the events in one’s life. But when
I maintain that “data” are essences and that nothing “given” exists, I am
using the term in a much stricter sense. By a “datum” I mean something
which exists only speciously, and is exhausted by being given; so that there
can be no such thing as a “datum of perception” at all. The deliverance of
perception is the existence of an object: but this, by my definition, cannot
be given: it can only be posited, as existing on its own account; and it is
on its own account, if at all, that it exists. There can be “data” of intuition
or feeling; there cannot be “data” of perception, but only objects. The data
in perception are the essences which feeling or intuition is then manifest-
ing in their entirety and raising to specious existence as terms in that per-
ception: but the object of the perception (isn’t this what you mean by its
“datum”?) is a fact outside the perception: whereas a “datum”, in my sense,
can never be a fact outside intuition or feeling (which is simply intuition of
a simple essence: for you understand that I am speaking of conscious feel-
ing).
I don’t know whether this explanation does more than re-iterate what
you know already to be my view: but I thought it worth while to repeat it,
since your use of the phrase “datum of perception”, as if it were unobjec-
tionable, suggests that my meaning of “datum” and “given” was not at the
moment before your mind.
Miller used to be a hopeless victim of psychologism, not seeing that if
the moments of life have no ulterior objects, consciousness of living must
itself have no ulterior object, and the psychological flux must be only the
“idea” or “datum” of a psychological flux, abusing the Cherub in his time-
less ecstasy. I hope you have succeeded in bring this Cherub to earth, and
making him recognize the omnipresence of animal faith, eventu — in his own
warblings.
3:350 The Letters of George Santayana

th
I expect to reach Rome on Monday morning, the 17– , and shall be glad
to see you there soon.
Yours ever
G.S.

To Curt John Ducasse

23 October 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS postcard: Brown)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London
Rome, Oct. 23, ’27
Thank you very much for your articles. The one on Probability confirms
the agreement which I felt, and the light I received, from your book on
causation.1 I can only say ditto. As to the article on Drake’s book I am also
in general agreement with you, but shall have to reread it to make sure of
all the points. Although Drake, Strong, and I have much the same view in
“epistemology”, I don’t always follow them in “metaphysics,” nor (thank
God!) in language. It is also a matter of language in which I should quar-
rel with the first part of your review. It may be true that (often) in English
being and existence are synonymous, but not in good philosophic tradi-
tion: consider the “ontological proof”, for instance. Existence is being in
external relations, and therefore precarious. That there are x’s, or any
characters, whether noted or not, is never contingent. A forth-coming
book of mine on “The Realm of Essence” will [across] make my own use,
I hope, at least clear, if not acceptable. GSantayana
1
Causation and the Types of Necessity.
 1921–1927 3:351

To John Middleton Murry

1 November 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Newberry)

C
/oBrown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Rome, Nov. 1, 1927
Dear Mr Murry
Your kind letter and review in the New Criterion, as well as the prospec-
tus of the New Adelphi1 are before me. I should like to see a number of
the latter before making a reply to your request for an article, and I e/ in-
close a cheque for 10 s. for a subscription for a year. The fact is that I am
preparing a volume to be entitled Symptoms,2 composed of various arti-
cles and reviews written during the last ten years: not all of these have
been published, and I might send you one if its length and character
seemed suitable to the temper of your Review. For that reason, I want to
see it first.
A heretic, I should say, had to be a believer; he had to maintain a prin-
ciple while denying some of its consequences. I am a free-thinker or scep-
tic: and my sympathies in religion are with the orthodoxies—not with one,
but with each in contrast to its heresies. I am therefore not a heretic; but
you are right that my share in the spiritual life is more vicarious than per-
sonal, if a complete ascetic renunciation is understood to be involved in it.
Such insight as I may have comes from poetic indolence, or speculative
ecstasy. I can feel the sweetness of saying No, and the greater joy of leav-
ing the daisies growing in the field rather than plucking them to wilt in my
buttonhole.—I thought my little book3 made my position quite clear: but I
have a more formal treatise, about to appear, called The Realm of Essence,
in which I speak more than once of my personal attitude towards the ambi-
tion of those who aspire to be pure spirits. I do not share it.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
The Criterion (1922–39), an influential literary periodical launched as a quarterly and
edited by T. S. Eliot, became the New Criterion during 1926 and the Monthly Criterion
in 1927. On the verge of folding in 1927, publication (of The Adelphi, a monthly journal
started in 1923) resumed as The New Adelphi, a quarterly. In 1930 Max Plowman and
Richard Rees took over publication under the name The Adelphi (incorporating The
New Adelphi), which ran until 1955.
3:352 The Letters of George Santayana

2
For some years Santayana abandoned this proposed collection of magazine articles
and reviews but in 1933 published some of them under the title Some Turns of Thought
in Modern Philosophy.
3
Platonism.

To Otto Kyllmann
7 November 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Temple)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Nov. 7. 1927
Dear Mr Kyllmann
Brown Shipley & C–o, 123 Pall Mall, tell me they have a parcel of books
from you which they are holding for instructions. I am asking them to send
them back to you, and if they are copies of The Realm of Essence, will you
please have one copy only sent to me in Rome directly, keeping the oth-
ers for the present? I enclose a list1 of persons to whom I should like to
have copies sent, and charged to my account.
I hardly expected publication so soon, and shall be glad to see the vol-
ume.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Unlocated.

To John Middleton Murry

15 November 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Macksey)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123 Pall Mall, S.W.1.
Rome, Nov. 15. 1927
Dear Mr Murry
I have received your letter and the first number of The New Adelphi,
which I find interesting, and I enclose a paper which is to be the leading
one in my new book, “Symptoms”.1 I hope you will find it not too long
and otherwise suitable; but if, as is likely, you can’t find room for it in one
of the immediate numbers of your Review, may I ask you to have it
copied, I mean type-written, and to send me either the copy or the origi-
nal, so that the MS of my proposed book may not be delayed, in case I
 1921–1927 3:353

have it otherwise ready for the publisher before this article comes out? Of
course, the book itself /cwill take much longer—perhaps a year—to issue. I
ask ——
you
—— this favour, because here I have no one to copy manuscripts in
English.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
P.S. My address in Rome, good for this whole winter, is Hotel Bristol.
1
“Revolution in Science,” originally published in The New Adelphi in March 1928 (pp.
206–11), was reprinted in 1933 as chapter III of Turns.

To Daniel MacGhie Cory

18 November 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Unknown)

Hotel Bristol, Rome November 18, 1927

Dear Cory
Thank you for your two letters: you needn’t worry about not working
hard enough over the Realm of Matter. You are justifying your existence;
and I am myself so absorbed in other things that I don’t feel like turning
to our rather messy wine-press and trying to tread it with you. Later we
will return to that, and I feel that your assistance has already had its effect
in clearing my own view of what the book should be. “Symptoms” is going
well, in the sense that I am advancing in rewriting the articles concerned,
and composing blood-red sunsets and purple passages for it: but it is not
nearly ready. I have sent the first chapter, on “Revolutions in Science” to
Middleton Murry, who had asked for something for his New Adelphi. The
Realm of Essence is just out, but I haven’t seen it. Nor Russell’s book,1
which I have sent for. Strong has been here for a few days, caught cold,
and gone home.
Yours sincerely
G.S.
1
Both Analysis of Matter and An Outline of Philosophy by Russell were published in 1927.
3:354 The Letters of George Santayana

To Boylston Adams Beal

21 November 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123, Pall Mall, S.W.1
Rome, Nov. 21, 1927
Dear Boylston
You may not find my last book worth reading—it goes off rather at a tan-
gent, but the matter had been on my mind for years, and had to be dis-
charged somehow. It was hard work, and I am relei —ieved to feel that it is
despatched. I sent it rather as a substitute for the visits which I should like
to be paying you. Curious how little freedom one has, when one is the
freest person in the world. All my love for England has somehow con-
gealed into a memory, with a great dread of destroying it by any new
impressions. My last trip, in 1923, when I went to give the Herbert Spencer
lecture at Oxford, was very unpleasant. Howard Sturgis, whom I always
used to visit, was dead: Russell, the wicked earl, I saw, but found curiously
estranged, saying I had been “disloyal” to him, and at the same time show-
ing that he had entirely forgotten the degree of confidence which he had
reposed in me in the early days, and even the events which might have
convinced him that I was entirely devoted to him. This is a pathological
forgetfulness in part; but it goes with other changes which make it more
painful than pleasant for me to see him. Then Oxford was dismal, and but
for Randolph Chetwynd, who was very attentive and (except for his opin-
ions) seemed like the young Oxonians of other days, I saw no one who
gave me the least pleasure. At Cambridge, Lapsley was my mentor, and
also very attentive; they made me a member of the High Table pro tem,1
and otherwise were civil: but I was driven out of my hotel (I like hotels)
into dreadful lodgings and caught a bad cold which completed my misery.
From Oxford, the day after my lecture, I took a through train which there
is direct to Dover, and thence here to Rome, where my cold was soon
cured, my griefs softened, and my eyes gladdened by all sorts of agreeable
sights. I live at the Hotel Bristol (which I think you used to frequent) and
have comfortable rooms looking towards the Palazzo Barberini; the noise
from the Square reaches me, but the bit of garden in front, and the air of
retirement, help one to imagine that all is peace. I go out for lunch, at some
restaurant, and then walk in the Pincio and the Villa Borghese; in the
evening I dine in my dressing gown in my own sitting-room. In Summer
 1921–1927 3:355

I go to Paris, sometimes also to Avila, or else to Cortina d’Ampezzo, in the

Dolomites, which I have found perfect for my purposes, and on the way
perhaps stop for two or three weeks at Venice, which I also find a conge-
nial background. Essentially, it makes no diffference in my life where I
happen to be, if only I am comfortable materially and undisturbed. My
writing and reading keep me well occupied—I still have enough in prospect
to occupy me for the rest of my days. In fact, I shall leave much undone,
but it doesn’t matter, as I have already had my say.
Last summer I played an odd part in a sort of half-clandestine marriage.
Margaret Strong, who hasn’t turned out at all like her father, has married
a Chilean named Jorge Cuevas. She was always with him, but refused to
introduce him to me, or to let her friends know that she was in Paris at all.
We were living alone at the apartment, she and I, her father being at his
favourite sanatorium in Switzerland,2 but I hardly ever saw her. Finally,
one day, at lunch, I saw the table set for three, and the servant told me that
at last the young man was going to be shown. So it happened: I said, “You
are engaged?” and she said yes; and it transpired that they were to be mar-
ried in four days and that I was to be the witness, sponsor, and substitute
papa! A Chilean politician and banker, Agustin Edwards, was the other
sponsor and the thing went off well enough, poor Strong telegraphing his
blessing at the last moment!—Now, when you return home to live, you will
be freer to travel, and I hope [across] to see you here next year. You will
find Rome delightful. Yours ever GSantayana
1
Refers to the elevated table in the dining hall of an English college where the mas-
ter and fellows sit. The tables at which the undergraduates sit are lower than the high
table as a reminder of the established echelon. “Pro tem” from “pro tempore” is Latin
meaning “for the time being.”
2
At Val-Mont.

To Robert Seymour Bridges

21 November 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Bodleian)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Nov. 21, 1927
Dear Bridges
How nice of you to write, and how splendid that you should be com-
posing a philosophical poem in numerous Books! But you are wrong in
attributing to me a similar fertility in prospect: there will be no more of
3:356 The Letters of George Santayana

Essence: there will probably be another volume on The Realm of Matter,

and possibly a third, of mere fragments, on the other two Realms, that is,
Truth and Spirit. In a sense, perhaps, they are all about Essence, and
essence is all about them: but a scholastic philosopher must make distinc-
tions.
I believe I never thanked you, except in my thoughts, for your beauti-
ful little book of “New Verse”.1 I liked and like it very much, but these mat-
ters are indescribable, and had better be left to the intuition which we may
have of tacit sympathy in others for that which goes on in ourselves.
If you see Lady Ottoline,2 please tell her that I am no letter-writer, oth-
erwise I should have thanked her for her kind missives of long ago about
Dante,3 etc.
England has become almost as difficult and remote for me as America,
otherwise you would see me at Chiswell, asking for a glimpse of your
Sibylline leaves
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
New Verse Written in 1921 (Oxford, 1925).
2
In 1902 Ottoline Violet Anne Cavendish-Bentinck (1873–1938) married Philip
Morrell, who became a Liberal member of Parliament. Lady Ottoline’s manor house
at Garsington, southeast of Oxford, was a gathering place for the intelligentsia.
Unconventional, she was mocked and caricatured by writers whom she had
befriended.
3
Dante (Alighieri, 1265–1321) was an Italian poet who wrote The Divine Comedy.

To Constable and Co. Ltd.

27 November 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS postcard: Temple)

Nov. 27, 1927

I have not yet received a copy of my new book “The Realm of Essence”.
You may remember that I asked you to keep five of the six copies you had
sent to my bankers, when returned by them, and to send me one only,
directly to Rome. If this has not been done, will you please have it done
now?
G. Santayana
Hotel Bristol
Rome, Italy.
 1921–1927 3:357

To Lewis George Sterner

27 November 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Penn)

C
/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, London
Rome, Nov. 27, ’27
Dear Sir,1
I should be much pleased to have you quote any sonnets of mine that
seem to you to deserve it. As to your other requests, I am sorry that I can’t
do anything. You probably know much better than I whether sonnets are
still written by anyone who has anything to impart. Yours truly
GSantayana
1
Lewis George Sterner (b. 1894) wrote The Sonnet in American Literature for his Ph.D.
dissertation (University of Pennsylvania, 1930).

To George Sturgis
27 November 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton)

Hotel Bristol Rome

Nov. 27, 1927
Dear George
Apparently, to judge by what you say in your letter of Nov. 15, it is a
long time since I have written: I am sorry, and I can’t say it has been
because I was too busy or because I had nothing to say, which are the
grown-up and the childish excuses for such delinquences. In Paris I spent
rather an exciting summer, being a party to a sort of run-away match.
Don’t be alarmed; it isn’t I that was married, but Margaret Strong; only in
the absence of her father I had to officiate as sponsor, or witness, or
giver-away, or whatever you call it. There were two weddings,—a week
apart—which was an absurdity in itself: after the first, one, at the mairie,1 I
gave the party a breakfast: we were only six persons, and it went off very
well. At the second wedding, which was in the American Episcopal
Church, I had to lead the (married) bride up the aisle, in the conventional
fashion. People said: Voilà le papa!2 but I felt like a fool and rather like a
fraud. The Chilean chargé d’affaires3 gave a reception for us afterwards,
and the bride was much admired with her “golden” eyes and her nun-like
3:358 The Letters of George Santayana

tulle veil. I ought to have said that the bridegroom is an impecunious but
rather fashionable Chilean named Jorge Cuevas, who has knocked about
Paris for ten years (he is about 35) and has a rather doubtful reputation.
Margaret had seen a great deal of him for a year or more; but she is unde-
cided and not quite normal; and she hid him as if their engagement or
courtship had been something out of the way, until suddenly she
announced that she was going to marry him in four days. The Rockefellers
( John D. Jr. was then in France)4 were up in arms and did all they could to
prevent the marriage, while poor Strong in Switzerland was left out in the
cold, except for my letters. He finally telegraphed his consent and blessing
at the very last moment: and now, having seen his son-in-law, he is quite
reconciled or rather positively pleased. In fact, the young man is not a bad
sort, it is she that is the problem. They are at Luxor in Egypt for the win-
ter, so that all here is peace for the present.
I am sorry we can’t have another bottle of Asti Spumante: I never
indulge in it myself when I am alone. I will draw the [across] rest of my let-
ter of credit ($1000) before New Years, and shall be in no hurry for the new
one; but send one, for $4000, when it is convenient. Yours afftly
G. S.
1
Town hall (French).
2
French meaning “There’s the father!”
3
Envoy (French).
4
John D. Rockefeller Jr. (1874–1960) was a philanthropist.

To Charles Augustus Strong

2 December 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Dec. 2, 1927
Dear Strong
Your letter sounds a little discouraged: the weather (here, at least) has
been horrid since you left, and it isn’t easy to lose oneself in any agreeable
task. I have sent an article to Middleton Murry (who asked for it) for his
review The New Adelphi: it is about “Revolutions in Science”, and is
meant to be the first chapter of “Symptoms”. But I have got stuck in
Chapters II & III, and don’t know whether to make them one or two or to
drop them altogether. Perhaps I may abandon “Symptoms” for a while and
turn to the “Realm of Matter”. Russell’s latest book ought to have helped
 1921–1927 3:359

to revive interest in this direction, but I have been disappointed. It is nice

to see him insisting on his newly acquired conviction that “percepts are in
our heads”: it ranges him among my examples of latent materialism in ide-
alists. But does he conceive his whole philosophy, in the moment when he
is most aware of it, to be a single constituent of the series of events which
make up one of the electrons in his brain? It seems monstrous (to use one
of his words) to give so rich a substance (to use one of my words) to so
minute a phenomenon. It would seem to me more plausible to say that his
awareness of his philosophy was an event engaging a great many gyrations
of a great many electrons: it would therefore have no punctiform locus in
space-time, and could not be identified with a single constituent of the
physical world. But I agree with him, and with you, that the mental world,
in so far as it has a locus in nature at all, has it in the head—or in objects
arranged, like books and pictures, to excite certain events in the head. As
to the mental or moral world in itself, Berty is a poor witness: here is a
book entitled “The Outlines of Philosophy” in which there is nothing but
spleen, behaviourism, relativity, and babies. He has come down terribly in
the world: I suppose this is a set of lectures cooked up for America: there
is nothing in it that he hasn’t said as well or better elsewhere, and there is
an unreadable amount of improvised commonplaces, and chance
polemics. I have had to skip a good deal: but I haven’t missed here and
there an extraordinarily witty passage, like that about the behaviourist see-
ing the rat not seen by his friend, and thinking that he must give up that
bootlegged whiskey.
I have read a very good account of Russia as seen recently by a
^ ^
Russian exile, who had slipped in among smugglers: also a long article by
Kallen on Bolshevist religion: also, at last, Claudel1 on “Violence”. This
last is pathological.
Cory is thinking of leaving Paris and talks of coming South. If you want
to see him, I have no doubt [across] that an invitation to Le Balze would
help to fetch him. I don’t particularly want him to come to Rome now.
Yours ever G.S.
[across page one] P.S. Cory’s address is 123 rue du Faubourg St, Honoré.
1
Possibly Paul Claudel (1868–1955), a French dramatist and poet whose writings are
thematically concerned with the human spirit.
3:360 The Letters of George Santayana

To Otto Kyllmann
7 December 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Temple)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Dec. 7. 1927
Dear Mr Kyllmann
“The Realm of Essence” has now reached me. Thank you for sending
this second copy: I don’t know what can have happened to the first, as my
other copies, sent to friends here, reached them safely. Two which I had
forgotten are on the enclosed half-sheet.1 Will you kindly have them sent?
The book makes an imposing appearance
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
Unlocated.

To Daniel MacGhie Cory

8 December 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS postcard: Columbia)

Hotel Bristol Rome

Dec. 8. 1927

I am glad you are going to London, and when I have your address there I
will hasten to send you Chap. I of Matter, revised but not copied, so that
you may have it type-written, two copies, of which you may keep one and
send me back the other: and we can keep this up until the book is all
straightened out. As I am interested in Symptoms, Matter will certainly not
be finished this winter: that was why I thought of next summer as a good
time for continuing our work. I foresee (it is not an intention) that I shall
go to Cortina again: Paris will be, morally, too hot for me. You understand:
Egypt will have moved to Saint Germain, and Saint Germain is not far
from the Observatoire.1—Here we are having sad wet weather but not cold,
and I am reading more than writing. A Merry Xmas but I shall write ere
that. G.S.
1
Cory lived in Paris. Margaret and Jorge Cuevas were in Egypt, but Saint Germain
was the quarter in Paris where they lived. Santayana had been staying in Strong’s
apartment at 9 Ave. de l’Observatoire in Paris.
 1921–1927 3:361

To John Middleton Murry

8 December 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Macksey)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

Dec. 8. 1927.
Dear Mr Murry
Thank you for the copy of my article on “Revolutions in Science”.
There are one or two phrases in it that I should like to correct: I suppose
you will send me the proof when the time comes. It might be better to
address it to me directly to Rome, Hotel Bristol, where I shall be all win-
ter.
You are easily victorious in your article “Concerning Intelligence” in
The New Criterion;1 at least a person who said long ago that religion is
poetry can’t help thinking so. But it seems to me that you aren’t just to St.
Thomas.2 Words had a precise meaning in his mind; “faith” excludes “rea-
son” because it is a name for the supplement, beyond proof, in which our
sensations are bathed:
Praestet fides supplementum
Sensuum defectui.3
Moreover, the whole world to him was like a children’s theatre, that could
be delightfully pulled to pieces and put together again, not with a loss of
illusion, but with a masterful knowledge of why and how the illusion came
about, and was intended. The earthly and the heavenly, the rational and
the miraculous made one tapestry: the distinctions were not arid, because
they were internal to the work of God, and friendly.
Yours sincerely
GSantayana
1
John Middleton Murry’s article, “Concerning Intelligence,” was published in The
Monthly Criterion in December 1927.
2
Canonized in 1323, Saint Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–74) was an Italian scholastic the-
ologian and philosopher whose Summa Theologica (1265–73) defends “the truth of the
Catholic faith against the pagans” by making clear the distinction between the realms
of reason and of faith. His synthesis of theology and philosophy forms a cornerstone
in the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church.
3
The Latin verse meaning “Faith for all defects supplying, / Where the feeble senses
fail,” is from the Tantum Ergo stanzas of St. Thomas Aquinas’s poem Pange Lingua.
3:362 The Letters of George Santayana

To Logan Pearsall Smith

21 December 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Congress)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

December 21, 1927
Dear Smith
My memory is not good for references, and I am without books here;
but all your quotations have a familiar sound, and I have no doubt they
come from something of mine—from what book or article I can’t tell you.
I am sorry to be so useless, especially when you are overwhelming me
with your constancy to my muse, and paying me the compliment of asso-
ciating my words with those of such great wits. I shall be curious to see
your anthology1 and it may induce me to read Hazlitt, Halifax, and
Selden,2 who are all un / nknown to me. But it is hopeless, so late in life, to
fill up the lacunae in one’s education. I tried the other day to read Moby
Dick,3 but in spite of much skipping, I have got stuck in the middle. Is it
such a masterpiece as they say? On the other hand, I am not too old to
enjoy some novel authors: and what do you suppose was my joy at find-
ing the theory of essence beautifully expounded in the last volume of
Proust, (the second of Le Temps Retrouvé)4 and made, in a manner, the
pivot of his immense work! Do read it, page 14 to 20, if you haven’t yet
done so. My excursions into the other world are not so remote from expe-
rience as you seem to think: we live in that world; we only move in this
one.—What you say of your neighbour who likes my philosophy makes me
think of another disciple of mine who is now in London. He is a young
American named Daniel Cory, who is a sort of unattached student, and
has understood my books—at least the later ones—better than anyone else
that I know of. As he has nothing urgent to do, I have got him to help me
in straightening out the MS of the Realm of Matter, which is to be my next,
and I hope, culminating, book. I am going to take the liberty of giving him
a card to you, and perhaps you can also introduce him to your neighbour:
anything he learns from you or from him in the way of judicious criticism
of my works or ideas, will be useful to him and indirectly to me; because
he isn’t shy, though devoted, and tells me where I go wrong. Cory is also
a disciple of Berty’s and is studying under him in London.
Rome is very like London in these dark, cold days: but a sort of Socratic
sign, saying No!5 intercepts all my projects of crossing the Channel. Yours
sincerely
GSantayana
 1921–1927 3:363

1
A Treasury of English Prose (London: Constable, 1928).
2
William Hazlitt (1778–1830) was a penetrating and erudite, early-romantic critic and
one of the great masters of English prose. George Savile, Marquess of Halifax
(1633–95), was an influential member of the court of Charles II. He was an opponent
of Roman Catholicism and wrote many political tracts. John Selden (1584–1654) was
an English jurist, scholar, and orientalist known for his treatises, many of which were
written in Latin and dealt with questions of law. His best-known work is a collection of
his sayings compiled by his secretary after his death.
3
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851), a novel by Herman Melville, is a story of whaling
as well as a symbolic study of good and evil.
4
Marcel Proust (1871–1922) was a French novelist whose life work was Remembrance
of Things Past, though he died before the last three books were published. The second
volume contains “Cities of the Plain,” “The Captive,” and “The Sweet Cheat Game.”
5
An allusion to Socrates’ daemon, who warned him when Socrates was about to do
something wrong.

To Wesley Fuller
23 December 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Unknown)

Rome, December 23, 1927

Dear Mr. Fuller1
It is hardly possible for me to write anything for the Latin School
Register: too much time and space separates me from that world. Yet I
don’t like to disregard your request, and I am sending you a few lines of
translation from Catullus,2 which I happen to have at hand, as a token of
remembrance and good wishes.
Yours truly
GSantayana
A FRAGMENT FROM CATULLUS
O misero frater adempte mihi, etc.
You, brother, snatched, and I bereft,
My whole life crushed, no drop of sweetness left,
My whole soul buried in your grave,
My soul that lived but by the love you gave!
All my life’s pleasures, with you dead,
My studies all, my joy in all is fled.
Why speak, why call? I am not heard.
Your sweet voice, brother, answers not a word.
Never till death, never that face again,
Never that smile: yet love shall still remain.
3:364 The Letters of George Santayana

1
Wesley Fuller (1912–1958), Harvard class of 1933, worked as a reporter for the
Boston Traveller, was a marine pilot in World War II, and became assistant director of
Bell Telephone Laboratories. Fuller wrote the following to Daniel Cory, “I was a
Second Classman at the Boston Latin School and a member of the staff of the Latin
School Register, our school publication. I … set about seeking contributions from our
most distinguished alumni. Naturally I wrote Mr. Santayana … It was in response to
this request that I received the reply I am sending on to you … Needless to say, it was
the highlight of the issue, indeed of the year [1928] and, I suspect, of many, many
alumni issues. I do not believe it has ever been published elsewhere.” Santayana
attended the school for eight years.
2
See 3 November 1924. The fragment of Catullus’s Poem 68, from which Santayana
produced this translation, reads as follows: O misero frater adempte mihi! / Omnia
tecum una perierunt gaudia nostra. / Quae tuus in vita dulcis alebat amor. / Tu mea,
tu moriens fregisti commoda frater. / Tecum una tota est nostra sepulta anima, / Cuius
ego interitu tota de mente fugavi / Haec studia, atque omnes delicias animi, /
Alloquar? audiero numquam tua verba loquentem? / Numquam ego te vita frater ama-
bilior, / Aspiciam posthac? at certe semper amabo. See Poems 215.

To Herbert Wallace Schneider

25 December 1927 • Rome, Italy (MS: Unknown)

Rome, Christmas Day, 1927

Dear Schneider,
No: I can’t write a review of Woodbridge’s Realm of Mind;1 it would
require re-reading and a terrible struggle to become clear as to what it
means. My experience with Dewey was enough: no more such reviews in
this short life.
I believe I have sent you my Realm of Essence, but the American edi-
tion seems to have been delayed a good deal. Only today, I get the first
acknowledgement—from the Harvard Union. The English edition has
been out for many weeks. I am now at work on the Realm of Matter and
also on a collection of essays and reviews to be called Symptoms.
Strong was here in November, but—incredibile dictu2—we deserted the
Café Aragno for a trattoria3 in the Piazza di San Pietro where we went to
enjoy the sunshine, and sat in the shade by preference. He had ill luck in
catching a cold, although the weather was then glorious, and I am afraid
went home discouraged—also because I refused to be converted to
point-instants of psychic energy constituting the material world.
I am reading a book called The Mind and Face of Bolshevism;4 it is my
own philosophy—but, oh, so changed!
Yours sincerely,
GSantayana
 1921–1927 3:365

1
Frederick James Eugene Woodbridge (1867–1940), a Canadian-born philosopher,
was a professor at Columbia (1902–37). His influence is responsible for the revival in
the United States of Aristotelian trends of thought. A self-described realist and natu-
ralist, he argued that life and mind are products that develop in the natural world. He
cofounded (with Wendell T. Bush) the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific
Methods (later The Journal of Philosophy) in 1904. His Realm of Mind (1926) was published
by Columbia University.
2
Incredible to say (Latin).
3
Restaurant (Italian).
4
The Mind and Face of Bolshevism: An Examination of Cultural Life in Soviet Russia by
René Fülöp-Miller (London, 1927).
EDITORIAL
APPENDIX
 Textual Commentary

I. Summary Statement of Textual Principles and Procedures for

The Works of George Santayana

A. The Works of George Santayana and Editorial Scholarship

The volumes of The Works of George Santayana are unmodernized, critical
editions of George Santayana’s writings. This scholarly edition is “unmodern-
ized” because it retains original and idiosyncratic punctuation, spelling, capi-
talization, and word division in order to reflect the full intent of the author as
well as the initial texture of the work; it is “critical” because it allows the exer-
cise of editorial judgment in making corrections, changes, and choices among
authoritative readings. The editors’ goals are to produce texts that accurately
represent Santayana’s final intentions regarding his works and to record all
evidence on which editorial decisions have been based.
Except for the Letters and Marginalia volumes, The Works of George Santayana
pertain typically to materials composed by Santayana that he intended for
publication and dissemination in a printed form. For these writings there may
exist a holograph manuscript, a typescript, printers’ proofs, two or more edi-
tions, and multiple impressions of editions. In such cases the term “critical edi-
tion” indicates the task of comparing these various forms of the text in order
to ascertain and perpetuate the author’s “final intentions” regarding his work.
When the genealogy of the text has been established and the relationships
of all pertinent documents determined, the editors choose the document that
will serve as copy-text for the critical edition. In the absence of the holograph
manuscript, this is normally the document which is closest to the author’s
hand. Two independent sight or machine collations are performed against the
copy-text for each form of the text produced by Santayana or published dur-
ing his life-time.

B. Transcribing, Editing, and Typesetting The Works of George Santayana

Transcribing, editing, and typesetting the copy-text(s) to reproduce a criti-
cal text as accurately as possible is the primary goal of the Santayana Edition.
This reproduction of The Works of George Santayana is, therefore, done elec-
tronically and, beginning with Volume Five, the books are produced with
QuarkXPress, a commercial electronic typesetting program. First the text is
368 Editorial Appendix

carefully transcribed (a literal transcription indicating internal variants will be

produced if the copy-text is the holograph manuscript or a typescript correct-
ed by Santayana). As part of the initial transcription the editors identify the
various text elements (chapter headings, subheadings, marginal headings, stan-
dard paragraphs, extracts, poetry lines, footnotes, and the like), each of which
is rendered visually distinctive with the help of QuarkXpress, making system-
atic use of the program’s template features. Each transcription then receives at
least two independent sight collations against the copy-text to ensure its accu-
racy. Various software programs aid the editors in locating, counting, and com-
piling material needed in making editorial decisions. Together with a “Word
Book” indicating Santayana’s usage and spelling of problematic words, they
are used to identify patterns of punctuation and spelling and all line-end
hyphens in the copy-text.
In addition to the copy-text, files consisting of the front matter, textual
notes, various appendixes, references, and index are compiled and organized
using a variety of software programs. These files are placed into the
QuarkXPress program and the pages produced are proofed twice for accura-
cy and checked against the text as necessary. Use of the QuarkXPress desktop
publishing program enables the editors to send proofed pages to MIT Press for
printing. Before the book is printed, a check of the blueprints (contact prints of
the negatives) is made. At this stage, alterations to the text can quickly be iden-
tified by focusing principally on a comparison of line and page breaks.
Differences in lineation or pagination signal changes within the lines that must
then be scrutinized carefully.
The desktop typesetting employed in The Works of George Santayana greatly
facilitates the editing and publication processes because it maintains the accu-
racy of the textual record, keeping it free from the errors or alterations almost
invariably arising from retyping a document. In having direct control over the
printing process, then, the editors also safeguard the integrity of the critical edi-
tion text. The final critical edition of a text is, except for emendations dictated
by editorial policy, identical to the thoroughly proofread transcription of the
copy-text.

II. Publication History of the Letters

Santayana probably never intended his correspondence to be published,
and did not write letters as he wrote works for publication. The intent of this
volume is to present the letters in a form that will give the reader an experi-
ence close to that of reading the original letter. Therefore, these published let-
ters are, as much as possible, exact copies of the holograph original. That is,
they are diplomatic (or “noncritical”) transcriptions, reproducing all of the
characteristics of the autograph letters, including misspellings, mispunctuation,
grammatical errors, slips of the pen, and such alterations as cancellations and
 Textual Commentary 369

insertions. The printed form of the letters adheres to the characteristics of the
originals in all of these particulars. The exceptions to this practice of exact
transcription and reproduction are lineation, pagination, and other physical
features of his letters which it is clear Santayana did not intend to carry any
meaning.
The editors subscribe to the view of modern epistolary scholarship that “a
scholarly edition should not contain a text which has editorially been correct-
ed, made consistent, or otherwise smoothed out. Errors and inconsistencies are
part of the total texture of the document and are part of the evidence which
the document preserves relating to the writer’s habits, temperament, and
mood.”1

A. Earliest Publications
A few hundred of Santayana’s letters have appeared unsystematically, in
whole or in part, in a number of periodicals and books. Recipients of the let-
ters, editors of periodicals, and authors of books on Santayana recognized the
quality and interest of the letters and were desirous of putting them before the
public, but it was not until 1955 that a book-length collection of Santayana’s
letters became available.
The first volume of Santayana’s letters was collected and edited by Daniel
Cory and published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1955. The idea for a col-
lection of Santayana’s letters began to take shape in the autumn of 1952 when,
in a 21 October letter to Daniel Cory, Scribner’s editor John Hall Wheelock
suggested the undertaking of such a project.2 Cory agreed to edit the collection
and write an introduction for it, and he and Wheelock worked together at the
task of gathering the letters. The Scribner’s edition of The Letters of George
Santayana is a handsome and well-made volume and an excellent selection of
Santayana’s letters. Cory and Wheelock made every effort to present the 296
letters to 86 recipients (constituting a wide variety of persons) as Santayana
wrote them. A deliberate effort was made to preserve Santayana’s spellings
(American in the earlier letters and British in the later ones) and punctuation.
Except for a few mistranscriptions from the holographs, the text of the 1955
edition is accurate (for a more detailed description of the Scribner’s edition of
The Letters of George Santayana, see Letters, Book One, [MIT], 424–25).

B. The Comprehensive Edition of Santayana’s Letters: Origins and

Development
The project for a comprehensive edition of Santayana’s letters was origi-
nated by Daniel Cory (for a more detailed version of this section, see Letters,
Book One, 426–28). His association with Santayana began in 1927, when the
philosopher engaged the young man to serve as a literary secretary or assis-
370 Editorial Appendix

tant, reading his manuscripts and advising him on technical and composition-
al elements. This relationship—with many separations and interruptions—last-
ed until Santayana’s death on 26 September 1952. Santayana bequeathed to
Cory his remaining unpublished manuscripts—and the rights to his literary
properties generally—and named him his literary executor. Cory placed
Santayana’s manuscripts in four university libraries that were to become prin-
cipal centers for Santayana manuscript materials: the Butler Library at
Columbia University, the Houghton Library at Harvard University, the
Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and the
Alderman Library at the University of Virginia. He also began editing and
publishing the essays, poems, and plays not published during Santayana’s life-
time. In July 1971 Cory began to make arrangements with an American uni-
versity press for a new and enlarged edition of Santayana’s correspondence.
He then had on hand about 700 letters not included in the Scribner’s volume,
and a new two-volume edition was envisaged. At the same time William
Holzberger was working on a critical edition of Santayana’s poetry (published
as The Complete Poems of George Santayana by the Bucknell University Press in
1979), and, while doing his research, he located and collected copies of
approximately four hundred unpublished Santayana letters in twenty-one
libraries. In 1972 Cory entered into a collaboration with Holzberger to pro-
duce the new edition.
After Cory’s sudden and unexpected death later that year Margot Cory suc-
ceeded her husband as literary executor and approved the idea of continuing
work on the letters edition. Early in 1977 Holzberger joined the project initiat-
ed by members of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy
to produce a critical edition of all of Santayana’s writings. Subsequently it was
decided to incorporate the letters edition into the Critical Edition of The Works
of George Santayana.

III. Textual Principles and Editorial Procedures for

The Letters of George Santayana

A. Collection of the Letters

The goal of the editors has been to identify and collect all of George
Santayana’s correspondence for publication in The Works of George Santayana.
Although substantial numbers of his letters have been found, many more are
missing, some known to be destroyed, and others unlocated (for a list of unlo-
cated letters, see pages 481–84).
 Textual Commentary 371

The search for Santayana’s letters, begun by Daniel Cory in the early 1950s
and ongoing by the present editors, has resulted in the location of more than
three thousand pieces of correspondence. These include letters, notes, post-
cards, and a few telegrams and cablegrams; the texts of all of these are con-
tained in this edition. Daniel Cory’s method of locating and collecting the
letters was to publish advertisements in leading journals and reviews, to visit
libraries known to contain principal collections of Santayana manuscript mate-
rials, and to write to individuals who he believed might have corresponded
with Santayana. Later, in the 1970s, William Holzberger consulted both the
first and second editions of American Literary Manuscripts: A Checklist of Holdings
in Academic, Historical, and Public Libraries, Museums, and Authors’ Homes in the
United States 3 to generate a list of institutions reported as holding Santayana
manuscripts. Letters of inquiry were sent to libraries at sixty-three institutions.
In addition, fresh advertisements for Santayana letters were run in a number
of leading literary publications, including The Times Literary Supplement
(London), The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, and
American Literature. Letters of inquiry were sent to more than fifty individuals
believed to have received correspondence from Santayana. Also, scholars
familiar with this project have kept an eye out for Santayana letters in the
course of their research efforts, and this has resulted in the acquisition of sev-
eral valuable pieces of correspondence that otherwise might not have been
acquired. This continuous effort to locate Santayana letters in the libraries or
files of institutions and in the possession of private individuals has resulted in
the identification and acquisition of over two thousand more letters than the
original thousand that Daniel Cory and John Hall Wheelock had accumulat-
ed at the time the selection was made for the 1955 Scribner’s edition.
The title of the present edition, The Letters of George Santayana, is the same
as that of Cory’s selected edition. It is the best title for such a collection because
it suggests comprehensiveness without implying absolute completeness.
Although every effort has been made to locate and acquire all of Santayana’s
letters, that remains a goal impossible to achieve. We know that Santayana
himself destroyed the letters he had written to his mother, and he made refer-
ences to other letters that remain unlocated. However, this comprehensive edi-
tion is as complete as many years of work can make it, and it certainly
represents the principal corpus of Santayana’s correspondence.

B. Arrangement of the Letters

The letters are arranged chronologically, from earliest (to Susan and
Josephine in 1868) to latest (to Daniel Cory, 3 August 1952), a period of about
eighty-three years. This chronological progression, together with division of
the letters into books of approximately equal length, constitutes the sole orga-
nizing principle for the edition.
372 Editorial Appendix

Except for the period covered in the first two books (1868–1920),
Santayana’s history is not clearly marked either by a sequence of periodic res-
idences or dominating events. Therefore, any division of Santayana’s life and
letters into episodes seemed artificial and undesirable. Because of the gap
between the earliest extant letter and the next earliest one (21 August 1882)
and the fact that, as would be expected, fewer of the early letters have sur-
vived, the first book covers a much longer period than subsequent books. The
organization of the letters in Volume V of The Works of George Santayana is as
follows: Book One, [1868]–1909; Book Two, 1910–1920; Book Three,
1921–1927; Book Four, 1928–1932; Book Five, 1933–1936; Book Six,
1937–1940; Book Seven, 1941–1947; and Book Eight, 1948–1952.

C. Transcription of the Letters

1. Transcribing the Texts from Originals or Photocopies of the Original
Holograph Letters
In the case of correspondence the original handwritten document (holo-
graph manuscript) is the only extant authorial form of the text (the boards of
this book provide a typical example of Santayana’s letters). This holograph
manuscript, therefore, constitutes the copy-text for the vast majority of the let-
ters included in this edition. In those instances where no holograph is extant,
the editors have had to choose a form of the letter which seems to be the clos-
est and most likely to reproduce the missing original. For some letters this is
a transcription typed by the recipient specifically for an earlier edition of the
letters or for deposit with a library or another individual. For others it is a
typed transcription prepared by Daniel or Margot Cory or William G.
Holzberger for the edition of letters which Cory, and later Holzberger, antici-
pated publishing; these transcriptions were done against originals borrowed
from the recipient or photocopies thereof. And for some letters the only extant
form is a previously published version. Fortunately, most of these “published
version” letters are included in the 1955 edition of Cory’s The Letters of George
Santayana, where, for the most part, it was Cory’s intent to publish them with-
out alteration. When using these alternative forms in lieu of originals, the edi-
tors still have been conservative in making emendations. Based on the editors
careful comparisons between transcriptions of letters where the original or
photocopy survived and those where the letter was lost, the attempts at mak-
ing the transcriptions more standardized for an earlier publisher (i.e., under-
lining titles rather than leaving the quotation marks used by Santayana,
deleting or standardizing the format of addresses, dates, or signatures) are con-
sidered to be earlier editorial alterations and thus not part of the original let-
ter. Also those errors in transcription or typesetting which seem to be merely
typographical in nature are not reproduced as part of the critical text.
 Textual Commentary 373

Since the editors’ aim is to provide the reader with a literal, or diplomatic,
text, their task lies in correctly reading and transcribing this copy-text first and
then in assembling and reproducing the letters critically in printed form.
Wherever possible, exact transcriptions were made from orignal holograph
manuscripts or photocopies of them. All transcriptions were made by mem-
bers of the editorial staff of the critical edition. The essential principle guiding
transcription was to record everything that Santayana wrote on the holograph.
This meant that any revisions that Santayana made—cancellations and inser-
tions—were noted.The 155 letters for which original holographs have not been
located are noted as ‘(MS: Unknown)’ in the headnote.4 The textual notes con-
tain more specific information about the actual source for the letter.
2. Plain-Text Transcription
This edition of Santayana’s correspondence is a “plain-text” edition. As the
editors of Mark Twain’s letters (1988–) explain, “plain text” differs in intent
and in form from the two other principal types of transcription of texts: “clear
text” and “genetic text.”5 Transcriptions in “clear text” are devoid of editorial
symbols; information regarding authorial revisions is provided in footnotes or
in appropriate sections of the editorial appendix. Transcriptions in “genetic
text,” however, through the use of arbitrary symbols (such as angle brackets
and arrows), attempt to report any and all revisions that the author made on
the holograph. “Plain-text” transcription is like “clear text” in avoiding arbi-
trary mechanical symbols, but like “genetic text” in presenting the creative
process at work within the original document. The concept of “plain text” is to
represent authorial revisions by signs more natural and less arbitrary, thus
making a clearer and more immediately intelligible text for the reader. The
editors, by means of plain-text transcriptions, have attempted to represent the
original holograph letters as nearly as an efficient printed format will allow.
The goal has been to enable the reader to approximate the experience of read-
ing the original holograph letters. To this end, the texts of the letters have not
been altered (except in rare instances, where meaning would otherwise be
obscured): misspelled words are left uncorrected; no changes are made in
grammar; and punctuation is neither altered, added, nor deleted. The letters
for which an alternative form of a letter is copy-text are carefully reproduced,
though without any plain-text transcription, with appropriate emendation and
regularization based on the editor’s familiarity with Santayana’s style of writ-
ing and composing letters. Whatever the copy-text for a specific letter, any
changes or emendations of it are reported in the textual notes, and errors are
listed and marked ‘[sic ] ’ to provide assurance that they represent accurate
readings of the copy-text, not editorial inattention.
374 Editorial Appendix

Cancellations: single-character words, or single characters within words,

cancelled on the holograph letter are indicated by slash marks. See 9 March
1921 to Charles Augustus Strong (‘that/n’), where Santayana wrote the ‘n’ over
the ‘t’, or 20 September 1921 to Gilbert Seldes (‘correctia / on’), where ‘o’ was
written over ‘a’. Cancellation of two or more characters as words, word frag-
ments, or within words is indicated by a horizontal rule through the cancelled
matter. See examples at 8 June 1922 to George Sturgis (‘— for after’), where ‘after’
was written over ‘for’; at 1 February 1922 to Mary Williams Winslow (‘Gardin —
ner’), where ‘ne’ was written over ‘in’; and at 6 March 1923 to Otto Kyllmann
th your’), where the ‘y’ was written over the ‘th’.
(‘—
Insertions: single characters, word fragments, words, or phrases inserted on
the letter are indicated by the use of inferior carets. See for example the letter
of 4 January 1921 to Elizabeth Stephens Fish Potter (‘tooting steamer, ’), 16
^ ^
November 1922 to Mary Williams Winslow (‘I enjoy ed their’), or 30 April
^ ^
1921 to Constable and Co. Ltd. (‘although he is a distinguished’). Both lin-
^ ^
ear and marginal insertions are indicated in this way, with marginal insertions
further described in a textual note.
Insertions above cancellations: words written above cancellations are indi-
cated by a combination of the horizontal rule and the inferior carets (‘—— winter
————
summer ’, 16 November 1922 to Mary Williams Winslow), and the revision
^ ^
is also further described in a textual note.
Cancellations within insertions: are indicated by the combined use of slash-
es or horizontal rules and inferior carets (‘—— the thro—
— ^— ugh the’, 15 September
^
1924 to John Boynton Priestley).
It should be remembered that although plain-text transcriptions, through
the employment of type-identical signs, bear a greater resemblance to the orig-
inal handwritten letters than do transcriptions using the traditional editorial
symbols, they are not in fact type facsimiles of the holograph letters. Plain-text
transcriptions do not reproduce the original lineation, pagination, or any non-
verbal characteristics of the manuscript unless the author intended these fea-
tures to bear meaning, as for instance in quoting poetry. (The purpose of plain
text is not to reproduce the holograph letters pictorially, in the way of facsim-
iles.) The plain-text transcriptions of Santayana’s letters in this edition are
intended to represent the original holograph letters in type in such a way that
any revisions are immediately identifiable and the texts completely legible.
Other signs used in this edition for transcribing Santayana’s correspon-
dence include:
—[ —] Broken brackets: indicate matter bracketed by Santayana on the holo-
graph.
[ ] Editorial brackets: supply text the editors think necessary for sense or
describe textual conditions (the latter signaled by italic type).
* or x Asterisks or superscript ‘x’: designate Santayana’s footnotes.
 Textual Commentary 375

1
Superscript numerals: indicate editorial footnotes.

D. Emending and Regularizing the Letters

Although the editors’ aim is to publish the original document unchanged,
some emendations are made in the copy-text. With certain exceptions correc-
tions and alterations of words or spelling or punctuation are recorded in the
textual notes. Santayana’s nonlinear placement of text along the margins of his
manuscript pages has been standardized, with appropriate editorial explana-
tion. See, for example, the letter of 16 November 1921 to Susan Sturgis de
Sastre, ‘tired of [across] living’, where the text beginning with ‘living’ is writ-
ten cross-wise in the blank margin; and that of 18 January 1922 to Charles
Augustus Strong, ‘gives me [across page one] inspiration’, where Santayana
returns to the first page of the letter and writes in the blank margin; and ‘I
hope [across page one text] to hear’, where Santayana has actually cross-writ-
ten over words already on the page. Accidentally repeated words are removed
from the text, and such emendation is further described in the textual note.
Santayana very often did not close a paragraph with final punctuation, partic-
ularly at the end of a letter. This has not been altered, and since it is so com-
mon the editors have chosen not to note every instance in the textual notes.
1. Santayana’s Spelling
Santayana generally preferred British spelling forms, although American
spellings are common in his early letters and manuscripts. No effort has been
made to standardize spelling; words are reproduced as Santayana wrote them.
He was a good speller and only rarely misspelled a word. (A curious excep-
tion is his repeated misspelling of the word ‘parliament’, in which he regular-
ly metathesizes the ‘ia’ to ‘parlaiment’.) Notwithstanding Santayana’s
competency in spelling, one of the idiosyncracies of his handwriting makes it
generally impossible to distinguish between ‘s’ and ‘z’ in words that contain the
letter sequence ‘is’ or ‘iz’. In those cases the editors provided the spelling that
reflects Santayana’s unambiguous use of the same word elsewhere and the
rules observed by British scholarly presses at the time (Rules for Compositors and
Readers at the University Press, Oxford, by Horace Hart, nineteenth edition, 1905,
and thirtieth edition, 1936) in accordance with his stated preference for British
spelling.
2. Santayana’s Punctuation
The letters are generally conscientiously punctuated. But certain marks of
punctuation used by Santayana have always troubled his editors, partly
because of the difficulty of determining the specific mark of punctuation rep-
resented in his handwriting, and also because of certain idiosyncratic usages.
376 Editorial Appendix

For instance, Santayana’s colon and semicolon are frequently indistinguish-

able. That, of course, is characteristic of many writers’ handwritten manu-
scripts; but sometimes Santayana also used the colon where the semicolon is
generally called for (as shown in his published writings for which he had read
and approved proofs). Daniel Cory said that Santayana once told him that this
unorthodox use of the colon was due to a habit of “thinking in opposition.”
The procedure of the present editors has been to read a colon where clearly
indicated on the holograph letter and commensurate with Santayana’s habitu-
al usage; but where the punctuation mark is unclear on the holograph and is
situated where a semicolon would be standard usage, we have read the mark
as a semicolon. (Thus, our practice sometimes differs from that of Cory in
Letters [1955] and The Later Years [1963], where he has in certain instances read
colon and we have read semicolon.)
One or two other punctuation problems have bedeviled Santayana’s edi-
tors. Santayana’s period frequently resembles a hyphen, and it has been read,
by Daniel Cory and Bruno Lind, as a dash. Santayana’s dashes, however, are
generally longer than this “sliding period,” which perhaps resulted from writ-
ing rapidly with an old-fashioned, holder-and-nib-type pen. Santayana also
appears to vacillate in the letters between the British custom of placing on-line
punctuation either inside or outside of quotation marks depending upon
whether or not the on-line punctuation is part of the meaning of the matter
quoted, and the American practice of uniformly placing it inside except for
semicolons and colons, which are always placed outside the quotation marks.
In every clear instance, we place the on-line punctuation either inside or out-
side the quotation marks, according to where it occurs on the holograph letter.
However, when—as often happens—the on-line punctuation falls directly
beneath the quotation marks, we place it inside the quotation marks. Except
for this practice, no effort has been made to standardize the form.
3. Letters in Languages Other than English
The comprehensive edition of Santayana’s letters contains forty-six items of
correspondence by Santayana written in a language other than English.
Santayana wrote in Spanish to members of the family of his half sister, Susan
(her husband, and her stepsons and their wives in Ávila). There is also a for-
mal letter in Spanish to Miguel de Unamuno. There is one letter in Italian to
Dino Rigacci of 29 April 1945. Letters written in a language other than English
appear in the original language of composition in the letters text, with a fairly
literal English translation given in a footnote.
4. Recipients, Provenances, Addresses, and Dates
A headnote is added to each letter, indicating the recipient, date and place
of composition, and manuscript location (typically giving the name of the insti-
 Textual Commentary 377

tution of higher learning if it houses one collection with correspondence by

Santayana, but giving the name of a particular library or collection if the insti-
tution serves as repository of Santayana materials in more than one place):

To Mary Williams Winslow

16 November 1922 • Nice, France (MS: Houghton)

A key to the manuscript location is found in the List of Manuscript Locations.

‘MS: Houghton’ means that the original holograph letter is in the Houghton
Library, Harvard University. The textual notes give more information about
particular collections. If the correspondence is a postcard or telegram, that will
be indicated following ‘MS’.

To George Sturgis
5 December 1922 • Nice, France (MS postcard: Houghton)

Also, an effort has been made to identify many, if not all, recipients with short
biographical footnotes.
Dates editorially supplied are placed in square brackets, uncertain dates
being followed by a question mark. When the letter is written on printed sta-
tionery, the printed address is included in small capitals. Printed postcard cap-
tions are handled the same as printed stationery (SMALL CAPITALS), with no
distinction being made. No account is taken of envelopes, except when used
to establish the date of a letter, the recipient thereof, or Santayana’s address. If
a letter is dated by a postmark, that date is given in the header followed by
‘[postmark]’.

5. Signatures
The usual signature on the letters is the writer’s standard ‘GSantayana’. The
early form of his signature was ‘G. Santayana’ (as found, for instance, on the
holograph of the letter to C. A. Strong of 26 February 1917). Later, he dropped
the period following the first initial, carrying the stroke from the G to join the
first letter of his last name.

E. Editorial Footnotes to the Letters

The policy of the comprehensive edition of Santayana’s letters regarding
annotation is essentially to limit explanatory footnotes to supplying factual
information likely to make the letter more intelligible or meaningful to the
378 Editorial Appendix

reader. However, some effort has been made in the case of letters dealing with
events of great historical importance (e.g., the First and Second World Wars,
or the Spanish civil war) to provide historical information that will help the
reader place the letter in the historical context and for that reason perhaps bet-
ter understand it. This principle of a fuller understanding has also informed
our practice in regard to providing translations of foreign words or expressions
in footnotes. Santayana read and spoke several languages, and he makes fre-
quent use of words, phrases, or quotations in the letters from these languages,
including Greek, Latin, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. In order to facil-
itate the fullest possible understanding of the letters, we have included trans-
lations of foreign terms and phrases in the footnotes except in those instances
where the foreign term or phrase is very commonplace or its meaning com-
pletely obvious. English translations of titles of books or articles in foreign lan-
guages are also provided in the footnotes if the work was translated.
We have made fairly extensive use of information about Santayana’s life
supplied by Daniel Cory in his book, Santayana: The Later Years: A Portrait With
Letters (New York: George Braziller, 1963), frequently quoting directly from
the book in footnotes. Any footnotes by Cory included in this edition are iden-
tified by the bracketed initials ‘[D. C.]’.
The procedures for identifying persons mentioned in Santayana’s letters
follow a standard routine. Full identification in the footnotes occurs at the first
mention of the name. Subsequent occurrences of the name are noted in the
index, which allows for cross-referencing. Names are first checked in authori-
tative dictionaries and encyclopedias (including the Dictionary of American
Biography, the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Oxford Companion to American
Literature, The Oxford Companion to English Literature, and the Quinquennial
Catalogue of the Officers and Graduates of Harvard University, 1636–1925) and also
in the “WorldCat” database of “FirstSearch” in the Online Computer Library
Center (OCLC). In those instances in which no reference could be found, the
notation “unidentified” appears in the footnotes and index.
Lists of errata in Santayana’s published works, sent by him in or with let-
ters to his publishers, are included with the letters with which they were trans-
mitted. Such information may be useful to the reader of these letters in
correcting his or her own copies of Santayana’s works.
W.G.H.
H.J.S.
M.S.W.
 Textual Commentary 379

Notes
1
G. Thomas Tanselle, “The Editing of Historical Documents,” Studies in Bibliography 31
(1978): 48.
2
Wheelock to Cory, 21 October 1952, Scribner Archives, Princeton University
Library.
3
Edited by Joseph Jones, Chairman of the Committee on Manuscript Holdings,
American Literature Group, Modern Language Association of America, et al. (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1958). Second edition edited by Professor J. Albert Robbins,
Chairman (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1977). The editors are grate-
ful for the kind assistance provided by Professor Robbins in 1977 before the second
edition of American Literary Manuscripts went to press.
4
Among the letters for which no holograph could be located and for which no pho-
tocopy is extant are twelve letters to Daniel Cory that Margot Cory copied by hand.
These are not among the rest of Santayana’s letters to Cory in Columbia University’s
Rare Book and Manuscript Library. They are dated 18 November 1927, 13 June 1933,
2 September 1933, 5 December 1934, 7 December 1934, 9 June 1935, 26 September
1935, 20 September 1936, 14 October 1937, 30 April 1938, 11 May 1938, and 18 May
1938. Similarly, we have not been able to locate the original holograph of the letter to
Cory of 13 September 1950 and have had to transcribe the extract from it printed in
Santayana: The Later Years (1963).
5
Mark Twain’s Letters, ed. Edgar Marquess Branch, Michael B. Frank, and Kenneth M.
Sanderson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), Vol. 1, xxvi-xxvii, and xlv,
footnote 1.
 Short-Title List
The following short-title list includes the works most frequently cited in the
footnotes.
Primary Sources
Beauty The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory. New
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; London: A. and C. Black, 1896. Critical edition
edited by William G. Holzberger and Herman J. Saatkamp Jr. Cambridge, MA:
The MIT Press, 1988. (Footnotes refer to critical edition page numbers.)
Character Character and Opinion in the United States: With Reminiscences of
William James and Josiah Royce and Academic Life in America. New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons; London: Constable and Co. Ltd.; Toronto: McLeod, 1920.
Complete Poems The Complete Poems of George Santayana: A Critical Edition.
Edited by William G. Holzberger. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press;
London: Associated University Presses, 1979.
Dialogues Dialogues in Limbo. London: Constable and Co. Ltd., 1925;
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926.
Doctrine Winds of Doctrine: Studies in Contemporary Opinion. New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons; London: J. M. Dent & Sons Limited, 1913.
Dominations Dominations and Powers: Reflections on Liberty, Society, and
Government. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; London: Constable and Co. Ltd,
1951.
Egotism Egotism in German Philosophy. New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons, 1915; London and Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons Limited, 1916.
Essays Little Essays: Drawn From the Writings of George Santayana by
Logan Pearsall Smith, With the Collaboration of the Author. New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons; London: Constable and Co. Ltd., 1920.
Genteel The Genteel Tradition at Bay. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons;
London: “The Adelphi,” 1931.
Gospels The Idea of Christ in the Gospels; or, God in Man: A Critical Essay.
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; Toronto: Saunders, 1946.
Hermit A Hermit of Carmel and Other Poems. New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1901; London: R. Brimley Johnson, 1902.
Interpretations Interpretations of Poetry and Religion. New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons; London: Black, 1900. Critical edition edited by William G.
Holzberger and Herman J. Saatkamp Jr. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1989.
(Footnotes refer to critical edition page numbers.)
382 Editorial Appendix

Letters The Letters of George Santayana. Edited by Daniel Cory. New

York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; London: Constable and Co. Ltd., 1955.
Lucifer “Lucifer, A Prelude.” In Sonnets and Other Verses. Cambridge
and Chicago: Stone and Kimball, 1894. With changes becomes Act I of Lucifer: A
Theological Tragedy. Chicago and New York: Herbert S. Stone, 1899.
Obiter Obiter Scripta: Lectures, Essays and Reviews. Edited by Justus
Buchler and Benjamin Schwartz. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; London:
Constable and Co. Ltd., 1936.
Persons Persons and Places: Fragments of Autobiography. Critical edition
edited by William G. Holzberger and Herman J. Saatkamp Jr. Cambridge, MA:
The MIT Press, 1986.
Background Persons and Places: The Background of My Life. New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons; London: Constable and Co. Ltd., 1944.
Span The Middle Span. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1945;
London: Constable and Co. Ltd., 1947.
Host My Host the World. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; London:
Cresset Press, 1953.
Platonism Platonism and the Spiritual Life. New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons; London: Constable and Co. Ltd., 1927.
Poems Poems: Selected by the Author and Revised. London: Constable and
Co. Ltd., 1922; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1923.
Poets Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: Oxford University Press,
1910.
Puritan The Last Puritan. London: Constable and Co. Ltd., 1935; New
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936; Critical edition edited by William G.
Holzberger and Herman J. Saatkamp Jr. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1994.
(Footnotes refer to critical edition page numbers.)
Realms Realms of Being. Four volumes. New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons; London: Constable and Co. Ltd., 1927-1940.
Essence The Realm of Essence: Book First of Realms of Being, 1927.
Matter The Realm of Matter: Book Second of Realms of Being, 1930.
Truth The Realm of Truth: Book Third of Realms of Being. Scribner’s,
1938; Constable and Toronto: Macmillan Company, 1937.
Spirit The Realm of Spirit: Book Fourth of Realms of Being, 1940.
Realms (1 vol.) Realms of Being. One-volume edition, with a new introduction
by the author. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942.
 Short-Title List 383

Reason The Life of Reason: or, the Phases of Human Progress. Five volumes.
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; London: Constable and Co. Ltd, 1905–1906.
Common Sense Introduction and Reason in Common Sense. Volume 1, 1905.
Society Reason in Society. Volume 2, 1905.
Religion Reason in Religion. Volume 3, 1905.
Art Reason in Art. Volume 4, 1905.
Science Reason in Science. Volume 5, 1906.
Scepticism Scepticism and Animal Faith: Introduction to a System of Philosophy.
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; London: Constable and Co. Ltd., 1923.
Soliloquies Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies. New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons; London: Constable and Co. Ltd., 1922.
Sonnets Sonnets and Other Verses. Cambridge and Chicago: Stone and
Kimball, 1894.
Testament The Poet’s Testament: Poems and Two Plays. New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1953.
Truce Revised limited second edition published as Lucifer, or the
Heavenly Truce: A Theological Tragedy. Cambridge, MA: Dunster House; London: W.
Jackson, 1924.
Turns Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy: Five Essays. New
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933.

Other Works
Harvard Morison, Samuel Eliot. Three Centuries of Harvard 1636–1936.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: Oxford University Press,
1936.
Philosophy Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods (later The
Journal of Philosophy). New York: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.
Santayana McCormick, John. George Santayana: A Biography. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1987.
Shakespeare The Works of William Shakespeare. Edited by William A. Wright,
9 vols. New York: AMS Press, 1968 rpt. of 1891–1893 edition.
Years Cory, Daniel. Santayana: The Later Years: A Portrait with Letters.
New York: George Braziller, 1963.
 Textual Notes

Numbers on the left (i.e. 3.6) refer to Critical Edition pages and lines (Volume
V, Book Three). Line numbers refer to the text of the letters themselves. No
heading or editorial footnotes are included in the count. The virgule ( / )
between words on the right of the bullet indicates a line break in the copy-
text.

! 4 January 1921 • John Erskine • Madrid, Spain

!Copy-text: MS, Erskine Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia

University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:

3.6 glad it it • [sic]

! 4 January 1921 • Elizabeth Stephens Fish Potter • Madrid, Spain

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (Autograph file), by permission of the

Houghton Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known.

!Emendations and textual notes:

3.14 wish that I • wish that that I

3.15 even if was • [sic]
3.26 Cuningham • [sic]
4.7 GOODNESS • [four underlines]

! 10 January 1921 • Henry James III • Madrid, Spain

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (bMS Am 1092.10), by permission of

the Houghton Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known.

!Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 23 January 1921 • Charles Scribner’s Sons • Madrid, Spain

!Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts

Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton

University Libraries. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
7.1 /Iit • [‘it’ over ‘I’]
7.2–3 patch-work • patch- / work
3:386 The Letters of George Santayana

! 2 February 1921 • Charles Augustus Strong • Madrid, Spain

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 97, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
8.21 circle The • circle / The [sic]

! 9 March 1921 • Charles Augustus Strong • Ávila, Spain

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 97, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
9.19 “given-essence”, • “given- / essence”,
10.8–9 given-essence • given- / essence
10.12 of thing — that • [‘thing’ above ‘of —’]
that
^ ^
10.14 that/n • [‘n’ over ‘t’]
11.5–6 “mind-stuff • “mind- / stuff

! 28 March 1921 • Charles Augustus Strong • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 97, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
13.5 mytholigal • [sic]
13.21 weilds • [sic]
14.12 something • some- / thing
14.29–30 it is—an
— —— illus—
ion, a — sens—
e sense • [‘a —
sens—
e sense’ above
^ ^
it is—an
— —— illus—
ion, ]

! 30 April 1921 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
16.13 / ement • [‘e’ over ‘m’] [sic]
judjm
16.13 there
—eir • [‘eir’ over ‘ere’]

! 9 June 1921 • Logan Pearsall Smith • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Logan Pearsall Smith Papers, Manuscript Division, The Library of
Congress. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
17.8 [illegible]laid • [‘l’ over unrecovered character]
17.22 thinking;/? • [‘?’ over ‘;’]
17.22 a/ And • [‘A’ over ‘a’]
17.27 to/wo • [‘w’ over ‘o’]
 Textual Notes 3:387

! 10 June 1921 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 1 July 1921 • Wendell T. Bush • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Journal of Philosophy Records, Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
Columbia University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes: none.

! 2 August 1921 • George Sturgis • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
20.18 money-matters • money- / matters

! 14 August 1921 • George Sturgis • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: Letters, 188–89. !Emendations and textual
notes: none.

! 17 August 1921 • Logan Pearsall Smith • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Logan Pearsall Smith Papers, Manuscript Division, The Library of
Congress. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
22.23 jems • [sic]

! 20 August 1921 • Wendell T. Bush • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Journal of Philosophy Records, Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
Columbia University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes: none.

! 23 August 1921 • Mary Williams Winslow • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (MS Am 1352), by permission of the
Houghton Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication: Letters, 189–91.
!Emendations and textual notes:

24.12 everything • every- / thing

25.7 clear-headed • clear- / headed
25.20 governness • govern- / ness [sic]

! 20 September 1921 • John Middleton Murry • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, collection of Dr. Richard A. Macksey, Baltimore, Maryland.
!Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
3:388 The Letters of George Santayana

26.8 republish • re- / publish

! 20 September 1921 • Charles Scribner’s Sons • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts
Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton
University Libraries. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
27.8 something • some- / thing
27.12 However • How- / ever

! 20 September 1921 • Gilbert Seldes • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
Columbia University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
27.20 correctia/on • [‘o’ over ‘a’]

! 21 September 1921 • Alice Cecilia Cooper • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, University of California, Los Angeles. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 30 September 1921 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
29.16 inge/redients • [‘r’ over ‘e’]

! 1 October 1921 • Charles Augustus Strong • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 97, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
30.16 tiresome There • tiresome / There [sic]
30.17 indecedently • [sic]

! 18 October 1921 • Benjamin Apthorp Gould Fuller • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (bMS Am 1542), by permission of the
Houghton Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 20 October 1921 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.
 Textual Notes 3:389

! 28 October 1921 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 4 November 1921 • George Sturgis • Fiesole, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
33.16 —
W S.W.1. • [‘S’ over ‘W’]
33.21 anything • any- / thing
34.12 snap-shot • snap- / shot

! [Between 5 and 11 November 1921] • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 97, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
34.20 camin • [sic]
34.21 weig
— —ht wait • [‘wait’ above ‘weig
——ht ’]
^ ^
34.26 c/Continental • [‘C’ over ‘c’]

! [12 November 1921] • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 97, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
36.6 everywhere This • everywhere / This [sic]

! 16 November 1921 • Susan Sturgis de Sastre • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Collection (#6947), Clifton Waller Barrett
Library, Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library. !Previous
publication: Letters, 191–92. !Emendations and textual notes:
37.1 —ing • [‘ing’ over ‘ed’]
threatened
37.16 a propos • [sic]

! 17 November 1921 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 97, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
38.10 strike
————icks • [‘icks’ over ‘rike’]
38.15 nondescript • non- / descript
38.16 home-like • home- / like
3:390 The Letters of George Santayana

! 21 November 1921 • Horace Meyer Kallen • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio. !Previous publication:
none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
40.6 Lhassa • [sic]

! 21 November 1921 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 97, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
41.9 —ieved • [‘ie’ over ‘ei’]
relei
41.16 MacKensy • [sic]
41.18 “exchange-professor” • “exchange- / professor”

! 22 November 1921 • Wendell T. Bush • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
Columbia University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
42.6 type-written • type- / written

! 30 November 1921 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
43.23 understand • under- / stand
43.24 open-air • open- / air
43.28 make Very • make / Very [sic]

! 2 December 1921 • Logan Pearsall Smith • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Logan Pearsall Smith Papers, Manuscript Division, The Library of
Congress. !Previous publication: Letters, 192–95; Smith, Unforgotten Years (Boston:
Little, Brown, and Company, 1939), 283–88, excerpt. !Emendations and textual
notes:
45.28 anything • any- / thing
45.39 only suck only • [transposition by Santayana]
—
^ ^
46.1 submarines • sub- / marines
46.2 “schoolmarms” • “school- / marms”

! 7 December 1921 • Warwick Potter • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (bMS Am 1542), by permission of the
Houghton Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes:
 Textual Notes 3:391

47.25–26 profession I • [sic]

! 7 December 1921 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 97, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 17 December 1921 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes: none.

! 1 January 1922 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
51.17–18 Anglo-Saxondom • Anglo- / Saxondom

! 18 January 1922 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 98, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
52.28 rele/ ieved • [‘i’ over ‘e’]
53.16 and make • [sic]

! 30 January 1922 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes: none.

! 30 January 1922 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: typed letter, dated and signed by Santayana, Sturgis Family Papers, by
permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication:
none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
54.28 nep—
— hew uncle • [‘uncle’ over erased ‘nephew’]

! 1 February 1922 • Mary Williams Winslow • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (MS Am 1352), by permission of the
Houghton Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes:

55.9 peep-hole • peep- / hole

3:392 The Letters of George Santayana

56.2 photograph • photo- / graph

56.3 today • to- / day
56.17 Gardin—ner • [‘ne’ over ‘in’]
56.19 MacDougal • [sic]
56.27 ones Jews • [‘Jews’ over ‘ones’]
—
56.27 Lippman • [sic]
56.31 their
—re • [‘re’ over ‘ir’]

! [Early 1922?] • Charles Augustus Strong • [Rome, Italy?]

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 87, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
58.3 with that the • [‘that the’ over ‘with’]
—

! 4 February 1922 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 6 February 1922 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 20 February 1922 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 98, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
60.27 pe/iece • [‘i’ over ‘e’]
60.30 automaton • auto- / maton

! 14 March 1922 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 98, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
61.24 extraordinary difficult • [sic]
62.9 and 13 NeoR’s • [sic]
61.14 the/at • [‘at’ over ‘e’]

! 21 March 1922 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.
 Textual Notes 3:393

! 29 March 1922 • George Lawton • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS unlocated, last known in collection of Dr. George Lawton.
Published version is copy-text. !Previous publication: Letters, 195–96. !Emendations
and textual notes:
65.4 and 20 philosophy • philosophy
65.6 reading up • reading up
65.28 truly • truly,
65.29 GSantayana • [not present]

! 2 April 1922 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 4 April 1922 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 98, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
67.16 any thing • any / thing
67.27 Germont • [sic]

! 7 April 1922 • Mary Williams Winslow • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (MS Am 1352), by permission of the

Houghton Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known.

!Emendations and textual notes:

68.9 Vendanta and Samkya • [sic]

! 10 April 1922 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 98, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
69.13 indirect • in- / direct

! 25 April 1922 • Charles Augustus Strong • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 98, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
71.1 Vahinger • [sic]
3:394 The Letters of George Santayana

! 25 April 1922 • George Sturgis • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: Letters, 196–97. !Emendations and textual
notes:
72.8 semi-conscious • semi- / conscious
72.12–13 light heat and power • [sic]
72.14 England Scotland and Wales • [sic]
72.27 Thorwald • [sic]

! 29 April 1922 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 8 May 1922 • Charles Augustus Strong • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 98, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
74.33 sunshine • sun- / shine

! 13 May 1922 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Constable and Co. Ltd., London. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 13 May 1922 • Charles Scribner’s Sons • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts
Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton
University Libraries. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes: none.

! 20 May 1922 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 5 June 1922 • Logan Pearsall Smith • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Logan Pearsall Smith Papers, Manuscript Division, The Library of
Congress. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
78.22 correspondance • [sic]
79.2 somehow • some- / how
79.5 Rochefoucault • [sic]
 Textual Notes 3:395

! 7 June 1922 • George Sturgis • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
79.12 outburst • out- / burst
79.13 household • house- / hold
79.14 self-sacrifice • self- / sacrifice
80.1–2 seventy years old • [sic]
80.13 postman’s • post- / man’s

! 8 June 1922 • George Sturgis • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,

Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual

notes:
80.22 seasickness • sea- / sickness
80.27 it
—the • [‘the’ over ‘it’]
80.31 for
—after • [‘after’ over ‘for’]

! 20 June 1922 • Boylston Adams Beal • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (MS Am 1371.8), by permission of the
Houghton Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes:

82.15 Meantime • Mean- / time

82.22 rechanges • re- / changes
82.31 destinied • [sic]

! [Summer 1922?] • Wendell T. Bush • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
Columbia University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes: none.

! [Summer 1922] • Logan Pearsall Smith • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Logan Pearsall Smith Papers, Manuscript Division, The Library of
Congress. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 4 July 1922 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 17 July 1922 • Logan Pearsall Smith • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Logan Pearsall Smith Papers, Manuscript Division, The Library of

Congress. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:

3:396 The Letters of George Santayana

85.5 wretle • [sic]

85.17 overload • over- / load

! 26 July 1922 • Gilbert Seldes • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and

Manuscript Library, Yale University. !Previous publication: none known.

!Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 17 September 1922 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
86.18 Pric/tchard’s • [‘tc’ over ‘c’]

! 4 October [1922?] • Wendell T. Bush • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library,

Columbia University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual

notes:
87.20 everybody • every- / body

! 5 October 1922 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 11 October 1922 • John Brett Langstaff • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS unlocated. Last known in the collection of John Brett Langstaff.

Published facsimile is copy-text. !Previous publication: Langstaff, Oxford—1914 (New

York: Vantage Press, 1965), 38–39, in facsimile. !Emendations and textual notes:
88.27–28 protacted • [sic]

! 20 October 1922 [postmark] • Mary Potter Bush • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
Columbia University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes: none.

! 25 October 1922 • Harry Austryn Wolfson • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (bMS Am 1542), by permission of the
Houghton Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes:

90.2 reconstruction • re- / construction

 Textual Notes 3:397

! 30 October 1922 [postmark] • Charles Augustus Strong • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS postcard, Box 6, Folder 98, The Papers of Charles Augustus
Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publica-
tion: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
91.7 However • How- / ever
91.9 is
—are • [‘are’ over ‘is’]

! 3 November 1922 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
91.18 sub-title • sub- / title
92.3 in
—with • [‘with’ over ‘in’]

! 3 November 1922 • George Sturgis • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
92.21 sent/d • [‘d’ over ‘t’]

! 8 November 1922 • Robert Burnside Potter • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (Autograph file), by permission of the
Houghton Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes:

94.8 should call them • should call / call them

94.30–31 foreignes
——ness • [‘ne’ over ‘es’]

! 10 November 1922 • Otto Kyllmann • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
95.24–25 autobiographical • auto- / biographical

! 14 November 1922 • Charles Scribner’s Sons • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts
Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton
University Libraries. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
96.30 Class-photograph • Class- / photograph
96.33 photograph • photo- / graph
3:398 The Letters of George Santayana

! 14 November 1922 • Charles Augustus Strong • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 98, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 15 November 1922 • Otto Kyllmann • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 16 November 1922 • Mary Williams Winslow • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (MS Am 1352), by permission of the
Houghton Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication: Letters, 197–200.
!Emendations and textual notes:

99.13 —————— ^summer^ • [‘summer’ above ‘——

winter winter
————’]
99.20 word) composes • [sic]
99.30 fac-totum • [sic]
101.15 lotery • [sic]

! 22 November 1922 • Zenas Clark Dickinson • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Z. C. Dickinson Papers, Bentley Historical Library, The
University of Michigan. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textu-
al notes:
102.14 extraordinary/ ily • [‘ily’ over ‘y’]
102.23 could
————aught • [‘aught’ over ‘ould’]

! 23 November 1922 • Otto Kyllmann • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (bMS Am 1542), by permission of the
Houghton Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 23 November 1922 • Charles Raymond Bell Mortimer • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Raymond Mortimer Correspondence, Princeton University
Libraries. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 1 December 1922 • Charles Augustus Strong • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 98, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
105.16–17 Champs Elisées • [sic]
106.3 in • [in margin]
^ ^
106.3 and the various • and the / the various
 Textual Notes 3:399

! 5 December 1922 • George Sturgis • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS postcard, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton
Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and
textual notes: none.

! 13 December 1922 • Charles Scribner’s Sons • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts
Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton
University Libraries. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes: none.

! 13 December 1922 • Charles Augustus Strong • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 98, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
108.11 great-coat • great- / coat

! 21 December 1922 • Otto Kyllmann • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
109.8 anyone • any- / one
109.14 reprint • re- / print

! 21 December 1922 • Robert Burnside Potter • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (Autograph file), by permission of the
Houghton Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes:

110.33 inland • in- / land

! 25 December 1922 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
111.21 necessarily • [sic]
112.2 in • [‘by’ over ‘in’]
—by
112.7 heavy to • [sic]

! 27 December 1922 • George Sturgis • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
113.26 footf/ball • [‘b’ over ‘f’]
3:400 The Letters of George Santayana

! 30 December 1922 • Otto Kyllmann • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
114.2 29 • [‘30’ over ‘29’]
—30

! 3 January 1923 • Charles Augustus Strong • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 98, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
114.30 syrop • [sic]
115.6 opium-eaters • opium- / eaters
115.6 Biffi’s • [sic]
115.7 sunset • sun- / set

! 4 January 1923 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS postcard, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries.
!Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 12 January 1923 • Otto Kyllmann • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 13 January 1923 • Charles Augustus Strong • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 98, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 14 January 1923 • Otto Kyllmann • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
118.3 —14 • [‘14’ over ‘13’]
13

! 18 January 1923 • George Sturgis • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: Letters, 200–201, excerpt. !Emendations
and textual notes:
118.23 invraisem/bblable • [‘bl’ over ‘b’]
119.5–6 gobblin • [sic]
119.22 extraordinarily • extra- / ordinarily
119.27 /Iindex • [‘i’ over ‘I’]
119.31–32 bar
—earing • [‘ear’ over ‘ar’]
 Textual Notes 3:401

! 19 January 1923 • Otto Kyllmann • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 19 January 1923 • Charles Augustus Strong • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 98, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
120.20–21 Mrs Steven • [sic]
120.22 Mardi-gras • Mardi- / gras
120.25 something • some- / thing

! 20 January 1923 • Otto Kyllmann • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS postcard, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries.
!Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 23 January 1923 • Unidentified Recipient • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS postcard, Department of Manuscripts, The Huntington Library,

San Marino, California. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textu-
al notes: none.

! 24 January 1923 • Otto Kyllmann • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 26 January 1923 • Robert Burnside Potter • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (Autograph file), by permission of the
Houghton Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes:

122.14 Encyclopaede/ia • [‘i’ over ‘e’]

122.17–18 taste philosophy and politics • [sic]
122.20 reacted • re- / acted
123.10 tressle-work • [sic]

! 10 February 1923 • Charles Augustus Strong • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 98, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
125.1 w/ vomit • [‘v’ over ‘w’]
3:402 The Letters of George Santayana

! 12 February 1923 • Joseph Malaby Dent • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, J. M. Dent and Sons Records, #11043, in the Southern Historical
Collection, Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. !Previous
publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 12 February 1923 • George Sturgis • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
127.9 predisposition • pre- / disposition

! 23 February 1923 • Charles Augustus Strong • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 98, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 26 February 1923 • George Sturgis • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,

Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual

notes: none.

! 27 February 1923 • Otto Kyllmann • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
130.2 anything • any- / thing
130.6 something • some- / thing

! 28 February 1923 • Otto Kyllmann • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
131.5 nonsense • non- / sense

! [28 February 1923] • Charles Scribner’s Sons • Nice, France

!Copy-text: Cablegram, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives,
Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections,
Princeton University Libraries. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations
and textual notes: none.

! 28 February 1923 • Charles Scribner’s Sons • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts
Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton
 Textual Notes 3:403

University Libraries. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual

notes:
132.24 —c • [‘c’ over ‘ck’]
publick
132.25 error of fact • error of / of fact

! 6 March 1923 • Otto Kyllmann • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
133.9 th
—your • [‘y’ over ‘th’]
133.12 everything • every- / thing
133.16 in • [‘at’ over ‘in’]
—at
133.17 see view • [‘view’ over ‘see’]
—
134.4 [illegible]categories • [‘categories’ over unrecovered characters]

! 7 March 1923 • Charles Scribner’s Sons • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts
Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton
University Libraries. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes: none.

! 9 March 1923 • Otto Kyllmann • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 12 March 1923 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS postcard, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries.
!Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 19 March 1923 • Mary Williams Winslow • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (MS Am 1352), by permission of the
Houghton Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication: Letters, 201–2.
!Emendations and textual notes:

136.23 lita/erary • [‘e’ over ‘a’]

137.1 Il Greco • [sic]
137.4 twenty-five • twenty- / five
137.26 incline • [sic]
137.32 reincorporating • re- / incorporating
138.18 overtakes • over- / takes
3:404 The Letters of George Santayana

! [25 March 1923?] • Charles Augustus Strong • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 98, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
138.24 anything • any- / thing

! 2 April 1923 • George Sturgis • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
139.26 without • with- / out

! 3 April 1923 • Robert Burnside Potter • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (Autograph file), by permission of the
Houghton Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes:

141.9 anything • any- / thing

141.16 Th • [‘A’ over ‘Th’]
—A
142.18 He deck-house • [sic]

! 20 April 1923 • George Sturgis • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes: none.

! 28 April 1923 • Charles Augustus Strong • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 98, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 6 May 1923 • Charles Augustus Strong • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 98, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
145.11 Royal, I propose • [sic]

! 8 May 1923 • Otto Kyllmann • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
146.2 Kyllman • [sic]
 Textual Notes 3:405

! [8 May 1923] • Charles Augustus Strong • Nice, France

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 98, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
146.15 Marseille • [sic]

! 27 May [1923] • Otto Kyllmann • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 29 May 1923 • George Sturgis • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
147.29 everybody’s • every- / body’s

! [10 July 1923] • Lawrence Smith Butler • [Paris, France]

!Copy-text: MS, The University Club Library, New York. !Previous publication:

none known. !Emendations and textual notes: The top of this letter is torn. The date
and place of composition were on a typed transcription and a list of letters pro-
vided by the University Club Library.

! 12 August 1923 [postmark] • George Jean Nathan • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS postcard, George Jean Nathan Collection (#4615), Division of
Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. !Previous publica-
tion: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 1 September 1923 • Editor of The Dial • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 4 September 1923 • Susan Sturgis de Sastre • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, collection of Señora Eduardo Sastre Martín, Madrid, Spain.
!Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:

150.24 he letter • [sic]

! 5 September 1923 • John Francis Stanley Russell • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS unlocated. Published version is copy-text. !Previous publication:
Letters, 203. !Emendations and textual notes:
151.7 GSantayana • [not present]
3:406 The Letters of George Santayana

! 13 September 1923 • George Sturgis • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
152.1 However • How- / ever

! 18 September 1923 • Charles Augustus Strong • London, England

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 98, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! [Between 20 and 23 September 1923] • John Francis Stanley Russell •

[London, England]
!Copy-text: MS unlocated. Published version is copy-text. !Previous publication:

Letters, 203. !Emendations and textual notes:

153.8 ever • ever,
153.9 GSantayana • [not present]

! 29 September 1923 • Charles Augustus Strong • Cambridge, England

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 98, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
153.22 somewhat • some- / what
153.26 Newmarket • New- / market

! 2 October 1923 • Kenneth Duva Burke • London, England

!Copy-text: MS, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes:

154.5 you letter • [sic]

! 16 October 1923 • George Sturgis • Cambridge, England

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
155.1–2 lifetime • life- / time
155.3 those her • [sic]
155.5 anywhere • any- / where
155.6 bequeathe • [sic]
 Textual Notes 3:407

! 17 October 1923 • Miss Hanlon • [Cambridge, England]

!Copy-text: MS, Carl Van Doren Papers, Princeton University Libraries. !Previous
publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 18 October 1923 • Charles Augustus Strong • Cambridge, England

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 98, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
157.20 Magdelene • [sic]

! 20 October 1923 • Thomas Moult • Oxford, England

!Copy-text: MS, The Brotherton Collection, Leeds University Library. !Previous
publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
158.5–6 re-addressed • re- / addressed

! 23 October 1923 • George Herbert Palmer • Oxford, England

Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Wellesley College Library, Wellesley,
!

Massachusetts. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:

158.13 Oct. 22/ 3, • [‘3’ over ‘2’]
159.10 v/ Very • [‘V’ over ‘v’]

! 24 October 1923 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Oxford, England

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 27 October 1923 • Charles Augustus Strong • Bradford-on-Avon, England

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 98, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
160.22 at lot of • [sic]

! 30 October 1923 • Gilbert Seldes • Oxford, England

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library,

Columbia University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual

notes:
161.7 me say • [sic]

! 30 [October] 1923 • Charles Augustus Strong • Oxford, England

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 98, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
3:408 The Letters of George Santayana

162.2 Nov. 30, • [sic]

! 31 October 1923 • Robert Seymour Bridges • Dover, England

Copy-text: MS, Dep. Bridges 115, fols. 62–63, Bodleian Library, University of
!

Oxford. !Previous publication: Letters, 204. !Emendations and textual notes:

163.4 without • with- / out
163.23 Lane Sunt lacrymae • Lane / Sunt lacrymae [sic]

! 6 November 1923 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Fiesole, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 6 November 1923 • George Sturgis • Fiesole, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes: none.

! 9 November 1923 • Robert Silliman Hillyer • Fiesole, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Robert Silliman Hillyer Papers, Syracuse University Library,
Department of Special Collections. !Previous publication: Letters, 205. !Emendations
and textual notes: none.

! 13 November 1923 • Wilbur Lucius Cross • Fiesole, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 13 November 1923 • George Sturgis • Fiesole, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes: none.

! 20 November 1923 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 98, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
168.11 anywhere • any- / where
168.17 something • some- / thing
 Textual Notes 3:409

! 23 November 1923 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 98, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 1 December 1923 • Xavier Léon • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Bibl. Victor-Cousin, MS.366, Universites de Paris, Bibliotheque
de la Sorbonne. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
none.

! 1 December 1923 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
171.23 afternoon-excursions • afternoon- / excursions

! 12 December 1923 • Henry Ward Abbot • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library,

Columbia University. !Previous publication: Letters, 206–7. !Emendations and textual

notes:
172.11 Lyman Ward • Lyman / Ward [sic]

! 21 December 1923 • Pierre de Chaignon la Rose • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Miscellaneous Papers (Santayana, George), Rare Books and
Manuscripts Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden
Foundations. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
173.21 Fituski’s • [sic]
174.3 Fituski • [sic]
174.10 one sent you? • [sic]
174.11 send it you • [sic]
174.13 however • how- / ever
174.13 without • with- / out

! 25 December 1923 • Sterling Power Lamprecht • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Dartmouth College Library. !Previous publica-
tion: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! [1923?] • Sterling Power Lamprecht • [Rome, Italy]

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Dartmouth College Library. !Previous publica-
tion: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.
3:410 The Letters of George Santayana

! 26 December 1923 • Wilbur Lucius Cross • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 26 December 1923 • Gilbert Seldes • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 11 January 1924 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
177.5 Philadep / lphian • [‘l’ over ‘p’]
177.6 Sturgis’s • [sic]
177.11 However • How- / ever
177.16 something • some- / thing
177.19 something • some- / thing
177.22 to/ wo to • [‘w’ over ‘o’]

! 16 January 1924 • Henry Ward Abbot • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
Columbia University. !Previous publication: Letters, 207–9. !Emendations and textual
notes:
178.11–12 preoccupations • pre- / occupations
178.16 not to • [in margin]
^ ^
179.15 digusted • [sic]
179.24 understands • under- / stands
179.25 inwardly • [in margin]
^ ^

! 16 January 1924 • Charles Scribner’s Sons • [Rome, Italy]

!Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts
Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton
University Libraries. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes: none.

! 16 January 1924 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: Letters, 210–11. !Emendations and textual
notes:
181.8 somewhat • some- / what
 Textual Notes 3:411

181.17–18 Vanderbilts Morgans and • [sic]

181.27 without • with- / out
182.3 anywhere • any- / where

! 29 January 1924 • Wilbur Lucius Cross • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 29 January 1924 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
184.9 hyperaesthetic • hyper- / aesthetic

! 7 February 1924 • Hamilton Fish Potter • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (bMS Am 1542), by permission of the
Houghton Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes: none.

! [After 7 February 1924] • Hamilton Fish Potter • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (bMS Am 1542), by permission of the
Houghton Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 8 February 1924 • Sylvanus Griswold Morley • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Banc Mss 77/85 c, reproduced courtesy of The Bancroft Library,
University of California, Berkeley. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations
and textual notes:
186.2 Pall Pall • [sic]
186.5 Anthero • [sic]
186.16 understands • under- / stands
187.1 something • some- / thing

! 14 February 1924 • Alyse Gregory • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 23 February 1924 • Alyse Gregory • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes: none.
3:412 The Letters of George Santayana

! 28 February 1924 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
189.5 what the only • [sic]
189.9 Wet/ltanschauung • [‘l’ over ‘t’]

! 8 March 1924 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
190.11 book-bills • book- / bills
190.25 undertake • under- / take

! 14 March 1924 • Benjamin Alexander Morton • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Collection (#6947), Clifton Waller Barrett
Library, Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library. !Previous
publication: Letters, 211–12. !Emendations and textual notes:
191.27 background • back- / ground
192.18 Mahmoud [sic]

! 16 March 1924 • Carl Sadakichi Hartmann • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS postcard, Special Collections, Dartmouth College Library.
!Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 26 March 1924 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

!3 April 1924 • Frederick J. E. Woodbridge or Wendell T. Bush • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Journal of Philosophy Records, Rare Book and Manuscript Library,

Columbia University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual

notes: none.

! 18 April 1924 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
195.24 mid-summer • mid- / summer
 Textual Notes 3:413

! 19 April 1924 • Curt John Ducasse • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Brown University Archives. !Previous publication: Letters, 213–14.
!Emendations and textual notes:

197.27 dise desideratum • [‘desi’ over ‘dise’]

—
197.27 the Hume • [sic]

! 22 April 1924 • Elizabeth Stephens Fish Potter • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (bMS Am 1542), by permission of the
Houghton Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes:

198.11 someone • some- / one

199.1 understand • under- / stand

! 26 April 1924 • Ferris Greenslet • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (bMS Am 1925), by permission of the
Houghton Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 26 April 1924 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes: none.

! 13 May 1924 • George Sturgis • Venice, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
202.1 Munsterberg • [sic]
202.10 authora/ itative • [‘i’ over ‘a’]
202.24 twenty five years • [sic]

! 16 May 1924 • Charles Augustus Strong • Venice, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 17 May 1924 • Susan Sturgis de Sastre • Venice, Italy

!Copy-text: MS postcard, collection of Paloma Sanchez Sastre, Madrid, Spain.
!Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.
3:414 The Letters of George Santayana

! 22 May 1924 • Charles Augustus Strong • Venice, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
204.11 Bauer-Grüenwald • [sic]
205.8 sea-front • sea- / front

! 4 June 1924 • Charles Augustus Strong • Venice, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
205.22 excite/ingly • [‘i’ over ‘e’]
205.23–24 without • with- / out
205.27 saphire • [sic]
205.27 Nevertheless • Never- / theless

! 28 June 1924 • Curt John Ducasse • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Brown University Archives. !Previous publication: Letters, 214–15.
!Emendations and textual notes:

206.21 existence—t • [‘t’ over ‘ce’]

206.21 non/ t • [‘t’ over ‘n’]

! 29 June 1924 • George Sturgis • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
207.21 alo—
— ne solitary • [‘solitary’ over ‘alone’]

! 16 July 1924 • Charles Augustus Strong • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
208.11 e pur se/i • [‘i’ over ‘e’] [sic]
208.14 phis/losophy • [‘l’ over ‘s’]

! 26 July 1924 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
209.23 Messr • [sic]
 Textual Notes 3:415

! 29 July 1924 • George Sturgis • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: Letters, 216. !Emendations and textual
notes: none.

! 3 August 1924 • Charles Augustus Strong • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 15 August 1924 • Robert Seymour Bridges • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

Copy-text: MS, Dep. Bridges 115, fols. 64–67, Bodleian Library, University of
!

Oxford. !Previous publication: Letters, 217–18. !Emendations and textual notes:

212.15 However • How- / ever
213.7 Chiswell • [sic]

! 15 August 1924 • Charles Augustus Strong • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
214.17 /syou so • [‘y’ over ‘s’]
214.22–23 dencency’s • [sic]
214.29 facts Of • [sic]

! 27 August 1924 • Maurice Firuski • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS unlocated. Typed transcription by Margot Cory is copy-text.
!Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:

215.26 GSantayana • G.Santayana

215.31 Babbit’s • [sic]

! 31 August 1924 • George Sturgis • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,

Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual

notes:
216.17 grandfather • grand- / father

! 11 September 1924 • Charles Augustus Strong • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
217.23 magni/animous • [‘a’ over ‘i’]
3:416 The Letters of George Santayana

217.25 Sometimes • Some- / times

! 15 September 1924 • John Boynton Priestley • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas,
Austin. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
218.11 Priestly • [sic]
218.18 without • with- / out
219.5 extraordinary/ ily • [‘ily’ over ‘y’]
219.6–7 the
—— through
—^——— ————^the • [‘through’ over ‘the’ then ‘the’ over ‘through’]

! 15 September 1924 • Charles Augustus Strong • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
220.16 Summer-like • Summer- / like

! 21 September 1924 • Charles Augustus Strong • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 26 September 1924 • Charles Augustus Strong • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 10 October 1924 • Logan Pearsall Smith • Fiesole, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Logan Pearsall Smith Papers, Manuscript Division, The Library of
Congress. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 3 November 1924 • Pierre de Chaignon la Rose • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. MA 2931. !Previous pub-
lication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
223.10 something • some- / thing
223.18 Facisti • [sic]

! 4 November 1924 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS postcard, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton
Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and
textual notes:
224.4 automobile • auto- / mobile
 Textual Notes 3:417

! 12 November 1924 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
224.14 Apropos • A- / propos

! 28 November 1924 [postmark] • Alyse Gregory • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS postcard, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare

Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes:

225.9 Nov. 29 • [sic]

! 29 November 1924 • Maurice Firuski • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS unlocated. Typed transcription by Margot Cory is copy-text.
!Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:

C
226.4 /o • c/o
226.6 GSantayana • G.Santayana

! 5 December 1924 • Maurice Firuski • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS unlocated. Typed transcription by Margot Cory is copy-text.
!Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:

226.24 GSantayana • G.Santayana

! 6 December 1924 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS postcard, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus
Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publica-
tion: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
227.3 Neo-Critical • Neo- / Critical
227.5–6 negociation • [sic]
227.12 Jan. 1–st If • [sic]
227.14 Raniere’s • [sic]
227.15 came There • [sic]

! 8 December 1924 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 9 December 1924 • Alyse Gregory • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS postcard, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare
Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes:
3:418 The Letters of George Santayana

228.6 Self-Government • Self- / Government

228.7 type-written • type- / written
228.10 therefore • there / fore

! 9 December 1924 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
228.23 household • house- / hold
229.5 snap-shots • snap- / shots
229.36 mid-air • mid- / air

! 10 December 1924 • William Alexander Hammond • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Department of Philosophy Records (#14/21/109), Division of
Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. !Previous publica-
tion: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 21 December 1924 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,

Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual

notes:
230.17 birthday • birth- / day
231.7 grandchildren • grand- / children

! 25 December 1924 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
231.26 for you to • for you / you to
232.4 had/ve • [‘v’ over ‘d’]
232.5 /i enclose • [‘e’ over ‘i’]

! 3 January 1925 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 6 January 1925 • William Rothenstein • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, The Papers of Sir William Rothenstein (bMS Eng 1148), by per-
mission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.
 Textual Notes 3:419

! 8 January 1925 • Robert Seymour Bridges • Rome, Italy

Copy-text: MS, Dep. Bridges 115, fols. 68–71, Bodleian Library, University of
!

Oxford. !Previous publication: Letters, 219–20. !Emendations and textual notes:

233.24 nothing • no- / thing
234.33 Meantime • Mean- / time

! 26 January 1925 • William Alexander Hammond • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Department of Philosophy Records (#14/21/109), Division of
Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. !Previous publica-
tion: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 1 February 1925 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,

Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual

notes:
237.4 Your aff ly • [sic]

! 12 February 1925 • Maurice Firuski • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS unlocated. Typed transcription by Margot Cory is copy-text.
!Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:

237.16 GSantayana • G.Santayana

! 23 February 1925 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 11 March 1925 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,

Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual

notes:
238.20 cheque-book • cheque- / book
239.2 /f 4 • [‘4’ over ‘f’]
239.14 days It • [sic]

! 12 March 1925 • Frederick James Eugene Woodbridge • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Journal of Philosophy Records, Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
Columbia University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
240.6 subject-matter • subject- / matter
3:420 The Letters of George Santayana

! 19 March 1925 • Pierre de Chaignon la Rose • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Miscellaneous Papers (Santayana, George), Rare Books and
Manuscripts Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden
Foundations. !Previous publication: Letters, 220–22. !Emendations and textual notes:
241.33 o/ the • [‘t’ over ‘o’]
241.36 Virgil • [sic]

! 19 March 1925 • Logan Pearsall Smith • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Logan Pearsall Smith Papers, Manuscript Division, The Library of
Congress. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 22 March 1925 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 2 April 1925 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 2 May 1925 • Curt John Ducasse • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS postcard, Brown University Archives. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
245.8–9 conclusion You • conclusion / You [sic]
245.13 /Ihe • [‘he’ over ‘I’]

! 4 May 1925 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
245.16 / May • [‘M’ over ‘A’]
A

! 11 May 1925 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
246.19 Baden-Baden • Baden- / Baden

! 14 May 1925 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
 Textual Notes 3:421

247.11–12 homesick • home- / sick

247.14 lady-friends • lady- / friends
rd
247.15 May 23– I • [sic]
247.23 auto-mobile • auto- / mobile

! 15 May 1925 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 19 May 1925 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 2 June 1925 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
249.14 postcript • [sic]
249.28 fo/ ar • [‘a’ over ‘o’]

! 17 June 1925 • George Sturgis • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes: none.

! 28 June 1925 • Charles Augustus Strong • Ávila, Spain

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
251.8 newspapers • news- / papers
251.14 parent’s • [sic]
251.26 conscience’ • [sic]

! 30 June 1925 • George Sturgis • Ávila, Spain

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
252.13 regains/ed • [‘ed’ over ‘s’]
252.23 in
—with • [‘with’ over ‘in’]
252.26 hooping-cough • [sic]
3:422 The Letters of George Santayana

! 16 July 1925 • Charles Augustus Strong • Ávila, Spain

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
253.15 brother-in-law • brother- / in-law
253.16 grand-child • grand- / child
253.16 there
—ir • [‘ir’ over ‘re’]
254.2 Nevertheless • Never- / theless

! 16 July 1925 • George Sturgis • Ávila, Spain

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
255.2 without • with- / out

! 8 August 1925 • Robert Seymour Bridges • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Dep. Bridges 115, fols. 72–73, Bodleian Library, University of

Oxford. !Previous publication: Letters, 222–23. !Emendations and textual notes:

256.33 thee/ ir • [‘i’ over ‘e’]
256.34 ant-morality • ant- / morality [sic]

! 13 August 1925 • John Francis Stanley Russell • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (bMS Am 1542), by permission of the
Houghton Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes:

257.33 reproduced • re- / produced

! 1 September 1925 • William Alexander Hammond • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Department of Philosophy Records (#14/21/109), Division of
Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. !Previous publica-
tion: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 15 September 1925 • Charles Augustus Strong • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
259.6 y/ her you • [‘h’ over ‘y’]
 Textual Notes 3:423

! 15 September 1925 • George Sturgis • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
259.30 everything • every- / thing
260.1 snap-shots • snap- / shots
260.5 mouth-filling • mouth- / filling
260.12 motor-car • motor- / car
260.13 wheeled-chair • wheeled- / chair

! 29 September 1925 • Frederick James Eugene Woodbridge • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Journal of Philosophy Records, Rare Book and Manuscript Library,

Columbia University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual

notes: none.

! 10 October 1925 • Charles Augustus Strong • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
261.30 — re • [‘re’ over ‘ar’]
hear
262.1 Monsieur Brotonneux • [sic]

! 23 October 1925 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
263.1 without • with- / out

! 11 November 1925 • Frederick James Eugene Woodbridge • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS postcard, collection of the Santayana Edition. !Previous publication:
none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
263.16 overlooked • over- / looked

! 21 November 1925 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
263.28 otherwise • other- / wise
264.12 the/ is • [‘is’ over ‘e’]
264.28 elbow-room • elbow- / room
3:424 The Letters of George Santayana

! 22 November 1925 • Bernard Berenson • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Bernard Berenson Archive, Villa I Tatti, Harvard University
Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Florence, Italy. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 12 December 1925 • Warner Fite • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, General Manuscripts, Princeton University Libraries. !Previous
publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
267.1 countryman • country- / man
267.1 /syou • [‘y’ over ‘s’]

! 24 December 1925 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,

Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual

notes:
267.16 on
—not • [‘not’ over ‘on’]

! 31 December 1925 • Mary Whitall Smith Berenson • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Bernard Berenson Archive, Villa I Tatti, Harvard University
Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Florence, Italy. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 1 January 1926 • Benjamin Apthorp Gould Fuller • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Paper (bMS Am 1542), by permission of the
Houghton Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes:

269.24 head-quarters • head- / quarters

269.25 brother-in-law • brother- / in-law

! 6 January 1926 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 2 February 1926 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
273.24 istance • [sic]
273.26 fee
——ail • [‘ai’ over ‘ee’]
274.19 but a/ I • [‘I’ over ‘a’]
 Textual Notes 3:425

! 23 February 1926 • Curt John Ducasse • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS postcard, Brown University Archives. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
274.24 however • how- / ever

! 19 March 1926 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
275.13 hear
—— re • [‘re’ over ‘ar’]
275.16 “L’Homme selon les doctrines du Vedanta” • [sic]

! 26 March 1926 • Rosamond Thomas Bennett Sturgis • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard Univeresity. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
276.18 [illegible]days • [‘days’ over erasure]

! 20 April 1926 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
277.7 /r look • [‘l’ over ‘r’]
277.17 na
—actual • [‘ac’ over ‘na’]
277.25 read——d • [‘d’ over ‘ad’]

! 16 May 1926 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
278.27 both) Such • both) / Such [sic]
^ ^

! 17 May 1926 • Susan Sturgis de Sastre • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS postcard, collection of Paloma Sanchez Sastre, Madrid, Spain.
!Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 22 May 1926 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.
3:426 The Letters of George Santayana

! 31 May 1926 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 3 June 1926 • Paul Weiss • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS postcard, Special Collections/Morris Library, Southern Illinois
University at Carbondale. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and tex-
tual notes: none.

! 27 June 1926 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 19 July 1926 • George Sturgis • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
282.7 announcemet/nt • [‘nt’ over ‘t’]
282.18 whatever • what- / ever
282.33 Meantime • Mean- / time
283.13 bathroom • bath- / room
283.13 sitting-room • sitting- / room

! 25 July 1926 • Charles Augustus Strong • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 1 August 1926 • Otto Kyllmann • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
284.22 pe/ leased • [‘l’ over ‘e’]
285.15 anything • any- / thing
285.16 without • with- / out

! 1 August 1926 • George Sturgis • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
286.3 handwriting • hand- / writing
286.11 ill-judging • ill- / judging
 Textual Notes 3:427

286.17 Gentlemen • Gentle- / men

! 11 August 1926 • Charles Augustus Strong • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
287.11 Guiseppe • [sic]

! 23 August 1926 • Marianne Moore • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and

Manuscript Library, Yale University. !Previous publication: none known.

!Emendations and textual notes:

288.12 The An • [‘An’ over ‘The’]

—

! 30 August 1926 • Otto Kyllmann • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
289.20 afterglow • after- / glow

! 7 September 1926 • Carl Sadakichi Hartmann • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Dartmouth College Library. !Previous publica-
tion: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 7 September 1926 • George Sturgis • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,

Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual

notes: none.

! 8 September 1926 • Maurice Firuski • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS postcard unlocated. Typed transcription by William G. Holzberger
is copy-text. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
C
291.13 /o • c/o
291.21 GSantayana • G.Santayana

! 15 September 1926 • Horace Meyer Kallen • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio. !Previous publication:
none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
292.20 a/if • [‘i’ over ‘a’]
3:428 The Letters of George Santayana

! 15 September 1926 • Otto Kyllmann • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
293.3 \5 • [‘5’ over ‘7’]
17
293.11 bitter-sweet • bitter- / sweet

! 17 September 1926 • Otto Kyllmann • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple Univerity Libraries. !Previous publica-

tion: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 23 September 1926 • John Jay Chapman • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (bMS Am 1542), by permission of the
Houghton Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 23 September 1926 • Charles Augustus Strong • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
295.22 therefore • there- / fore
295.23 fortnight • fort- / night
296.1 Pins/cent • [‘c’ over ‘s’] [sic]

! 25 September 1926 • Horace Meyer Kallen • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio. !Previous publication:
none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 8 October 1926 • Charles Augustus Strong • Venice, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
298.1 send/ t • [‘t’ over ‘d’]

! 9 October 1926 • Lawrence Smith Butler • Venice, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, The University Club Library, New York. !Previous publication:
none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
298.12 type-written • type- / written
299.9 anybody • any- / body
 Textual Notes 3:429

! 22 October 1926 • Horace Meyer Kallen • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio. !Previous publication:
none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
299.24 —at • [‘at’ over ‘en’]
then

! 8 November 1926 • Marianne Moore • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 12 November 1926 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
301.4 Something • Some- / thing

! 20 November 1926 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
301.31 something • some- / thing

! [22 November 1926] • Herbert Wallace Schneider • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections/Morris Library, Southern Illinois University

at Carbondale. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:

none.

! 23 November 1926 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 6, Folder 99, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
304.19 positive/ ist • [‘i’ over ‘e’]
304.24 exist————
———— ence individuation • [‘individuation’ above ‘exist ence ’]
————————
^ ^
305.10 it that term • [‘that term’ above ‘it
— —’]
^ ^
305.16 it “being” • [‘“being”’ above ‘it
— —’]
^ ^
305.24–25 it is this felt existence is • [‘this felt’ over ‘it
——— ———is ’;
^ ^
‘existence is’ in margin]
305.28 pres[illegible]sing • [‘sing’ over unrecovered characters]
305.30 it
—this • [‘this’ over ‘it’]
306.17 form mode • [‘mode’ above ‘form
———— ————’]
^ ^
306.22 as • [‘I’ over ‘as’]
—I
307.1 then • [in margin]
^ ^
307.12 it this object • [‘this object’ above ‘it
— —’]
^ ^
3:430 The Letters of George Santayana

! 27 November 1926 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
308.17 page-number • page- / number

! 28 November 1926 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS postcard, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries.
!Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 12 December 1926 • Unidentified Recipient • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New
York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. !Previous publication:
none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
309.13 anything • any- / thing

! 16 December 1926 • Lewis Mumford • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS unlocated. Last known in the collection of Professor Lewis
Mumford. Typed transcription by Mumford from original is copy-text. Another
partial typescript sent as a press release is housed in the Montrose J. Moses Papers,
Special Collections Library, Duke University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes:

C
310.5 /o • c/o
310.18 well-known • well- / known
311.16 GSantayana • G. Santayana

! 23 December 1926 • Maurice Firuski • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS unlocated. Published version is copy-text. !Previous publication:

Letters, 223–24. !Emendations and textual notes:

312.3, 6, and 11 Pierce • [sic]
312.26–27 anything • any- / thing
312.30 GSantayana • [not present]

! 30 December 1926 • Marianne Moore • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 15 January 1927 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.
 Textual Notes 3:431

! 22 January 1927 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
314.21 non-recurring • non- / recurring

! 31 January 1927 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 4 February 1927 • [Marianne Moore] • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS postcard, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare
Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 9 February 1927 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 100, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 11 February 1927 • Edward W. Titus • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, James Gilvarry Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
Columbia University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
317.29 anything • any- / thing

! 14 February 1927 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 18 February 1927 • Marianne Moore • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes:

319.5 Aestheti • [sic]

! 22 February 1927 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.
3:432 The Letters of George Santayana

! 28 February 1927 • Manuel Komroff • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Manuel Komroff Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
Columbia University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
320.7–8 nine—
— teen eighteen-nineties • [‘eight’ over ‘ninet’]
320.8 nineteen-twenties • nineteen- / twenties

! 15 March 1927 • Marianne Moore • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes:

321.2 otherwise • other- / wise

! 15 March 1927 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 100, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! [16 March 1927] • Charles Augustus Strong • [Rome, Italy]

!Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 100, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 17 March 1927 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 100, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
323.2 Ge/ uénon’s • [‘u’ over ‘e’]
323.6 from a/ the • [‘t’ over ‘a’]

! 23 March 1927 • Horace Meyer Kallen • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York City. !Previous pub-

lication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:

324.10 it’s relations • [sic]

! 1 April 1927 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,

Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual

notes: none.
 Textual Notes 3:433

! 7 April 1927 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 100, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 12 April 1927 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 100, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
327.5 anything • any- / thing
327.7 parenthis • [sic]
327.9 Postcript • [sic]

! 1 May 1927 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS postcard, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries.
!Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 8 May 1927 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 100, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 19 May 1927 • George Perrigo Conger • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, George Conger Papers, Manuscripts Division, University of
Minnesota Libraries. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes: none.

! 21 May 1927 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 21 May 1927 • Carl Sadakichi Hartmann • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, University of Oregon, Libraries, Department of Special
Collections. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
330.17 /,— • [‘—’ over ‘,’]

! 21 May 1927 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,

Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual

notes:
331.11 issueing • [sic]
3:434 The Letters of George Santayana

! 22 May 1927 • Van Wyck Brooks • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania.
!Previous publication: Letters, 224–26. !Emendations and textual notes:

332.10 Love/ing • [‘ing’ over ‘e’]

332.11 Michaelangelesque • [sic]
332.31 ultra-modern • ultra- / modern
332.32 young [in margin]
^ ^
332.37 think/ gs • [‘gs’ over ‘k’]

! 25 May 1927 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 100, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
333.10 June 4th— If • [sic]
333.22 Autobiography • Auto- / biography

! 1 June 1927 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 100, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
334.11–12 afternoon • after- / noon
334.12 June 6th— If • [sic]
334.20 if
—even • [‘ev’ over ‘if’]
334.26 classmate • class- / mate

! 3 June 1927 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
335.18 —de • [‘de’ over ‘re’]
mare

! 9 June 1927 • Otto Kyllmann • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 14 June 1927 [postmark] • George Perrigo Conger • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, George Conger Papers, Manuscripts Division, University of

Minnesota Libraries. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual

notes: none.
 Textual Notes 3:435

! 10 July 1927 • Charles Augustus Strong • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 100, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
337.9 u/ I • [‘I’ over ‘u’]
337.17 pro/s fessor • [‘f’ over ‘s’]

! 18 July 1927 • George Sturgis • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual
notes:
337.25 Lindberg • [sic]
338.13 in ever corner • [sic]

! 21 July 1927 • Horace Meyer Kallen • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York City. !Previous pub-
lication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
339.6 the/at • [‘at’ over ‘e’]

! 24 July 1927 • Charles Augustus Strong • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 100, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
339.26 fortune-hunter • fortune- / hunter

! 28 July 1927 • Charles Augustus Strong • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 100, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,

Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 1 August 1927 • Charles Augustus Strong • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 100, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,

Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
341.10 today • to- / day
341.26–27 manage[illegible]d. • [‘d’ over unrecovered character]
341.27 the/ at • [‘a’ over ‘e’]
3:436 The Letters of George Santayana

! 3 August 1927 • Charles Augustus Strong • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 100, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
342.15 /s ces • [‘c’ over ‘s’]
342.25 Rockef/feller • [‘e’ over ‘f’]
343.11 Val-Mont • Val- / Mont
343.18 Isongzoff
/ • [‘z’ over ‘g’]

! 15 August 1927 • Charles Scribner’s Sons • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS postcard, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives,
Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections,
Princeton University Libraries. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations
and textual notes: none.

! 24 August 1927 • George Perrigo Conger • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS postcard, George Conger Papers, Manuscripts Division,
University of Minnesota Libraries. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations
and textual notes: none.

! 24 August 1927 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
344.21 o—arise
—ccur • [‘arise’ over ‘occur’]
345.2 probl/aby • [‘a’ over ‘l’]

! 26 August 1927 • Otto Kyllmann • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 30 August 1927 • Charles Augustus Strong • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 100, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,

Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 1 September 1927 • Charles Augustus Strong • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 100, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,

Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.
 Textual Notes 3:437

! 7 September 1927 • Otto Kyllmann • Paris, France

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 3 October 1927 • Otto Kyllmann • Venice, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
347.8 fortnight • fort- / night

! 4 October 1927 • Charles Augustus Strong • Venice, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 100, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
348.1 newo-Greek
/ • [‘o’ over ‘w’]
348.3 anything • any- / thing

! 14 October 1927 • Charles Augustus Strong • Venice, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 100, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,

Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
349.24 understand • under- / stand
349.35 in bring this • [sic]

! 23 October 1927 • Curt John Ducasse • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS postcard, Brown University Archives. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 1 November 1927 • John Middleton Murry • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, The Newberry Library, Chicago. !Previous publication: Letters, 226.
!Emendations and textual notes:

351.7–8 e/ inclose • [‘i’ over ‘e’]

351.19 understood • under- / stood

! 7 November 1927 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 15 November 1927 • John Middleton Murry • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, collection of Dr. Richard A. Macksey, Baltimore, Maryland.
!Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:

352.22 type-written • type- / written

3:438 The Letters of George Santayana

353.2 c/will • [‘w’ over ‘c’]

! 18 November 1927 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS unlocated. Copy-text is William G. Holzberger’s typed transcrip-
tion of Mrs. Cory’s handwritten copy. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes:

353.17 blood-red • blood--red

! 21 November 1927 • Boylston Adams Beal • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (MS Am 1371.8), by permission of the
Houghton Library, Harvard University. !Previous publication: none known.
!Emendations and textual notes:

354.7 somehow • some- / how

354.7 —ieved • [‘ie’ over ‘ei’]
relei
355.1 else to Cortina • else to / to Cortina
355.4 background • back- / ground

! 21 November 1927 • Robert Seymour Bridges • Rome, Italy

Copy-text: MS, Dep. Bridges 115, fols. 74–75, Bodleian Library, University of
!

Oxford. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:

356.10 letter-writer • letter- / writer
356.14 Chiswell • [sic]

! 27 November 1927 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS postcard, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries.
!Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 27 November 1927 • Lewis George Sterner • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania.
!Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:

357.8 anyone • any- / one

! 27 November 1927 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University. !Previous publication: Letters, 227; Years, 25–26, excerpt.
!Emendations and textual notes:

357.16 grown-up • grown- / up

 Textual Notes 3:439

! 2 December 1927 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 100, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong,
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. !Previous publication: none
known. !Emendations and textual notes:
359.24 bootlegged • boot- / legged

! 7 December 1927 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. !Previous publi-
cation: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
360.7 half-sheet • half- / sheet

! 8 December 1927 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS postcard, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript
Library, Columbia University. !Previous publication: none known. !Emendations and
textual notes:
360.19 foresee • fore- / see

! 8 December 1927 • John Middleton Murry • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, collection of Dr. Richard A. Macksey, Baltimore, Maryland.
!Previous publication: Letters, 228. !Emendations and textual notes: none.

! 21 December 1927 • Logan Pearsall Smith • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS, Logan Pearsall Smith Papers, Manuscript Division, The Library of

Congress. !Previous publication: Letters, 229–30. !Emendations and textual notes:

362.6 something • some- / thing
362.7 overwhelming • over- / whelming
362.11 un/nknown • [‘nk’ over ‘n’]
362.14 masterpiece • master- / piece
362.29 anything • any- / thing

! 23 December 1927 • Wesley Fuller • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS unlocated. Published version is copy-text. !Previous publication:

Letters, 230–31. !Emendations and textual notes:

363.4 separates • [sic]
363.9 GSantayana • [not present]

! 25 December 1927 • Herbert Wallace Schneider • Rome, Italy

!Copy-text: MS unlocated. Typed transcription in the George Santayana Papers,
Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, is copy-text. !Previous
publication: none known. !Emendations and textual notes:
364.21 GSantayana • G. Santayana
 Report of Line-End Hyphenation
In quotations from the present Critical Edition, no line-end hyphens are
to be retained except the following.

7.2–3 patch-work 118.6–7 half-sheet

9.21–22 “given-essence 142.11–12 book-binders
10.8–9 given-essence 158.5–6 re-addressed
11.5–6 “mind-stuff 160.7–8 semi-intelligent
13.6–7 patter-patter 164.16–17 anti-clerical
18.9–10 head-quarters 211.18–19 half-empty
21.10–11 money-matters 214.23–24 sky-blue
25.29–30 picture-postcards 229.20–21 Book-shop
42.14–15 Anglo-American 242.28–29 half-baked
51.17–18 Anglo-Saxondom 259.11–12 ill-health
53.27–28 well-known 261.2–3 cross-purposes
60.12–13 Schiller-on-Strong 266.14–15 good-for-nothing
65.16–17 tea-leaves 327.21–22 non-immediatism
72.8–9 up-to-date
 Chronology
William G. Holzberger

This chronology is based upon various sources of information about

Santayana’s life and work, including his autobiography, entitled Persons and
Places: Fragments of Autobiography, originally published in three volumes as
Persons and Places, The Middle Span, and My Host the World (in 1944, 1945, and
1953 respectively); his letters; the biography by Daniel Cory, entitled
Santayana: The Later Years; and my conversations with Cory. It is also indebted,
however, for its dating of Santayana’s transatlantic journeys and other travels,
to a large printed map of Europe sent to me by Santayana’s grandnephew,
Don Eduardo Sastre Martín, on which, in the early years of the twentieth cen-
tury, Santayana carefully inscribed, in red ink, the dates of his voyages, the
names of the transatlantic steamships on which he traveled, and the routes that
he followed.

1847 or 1848
Agustín Ruiz de Santayana (c. 1814–93), George Santayana’s father, is
appointed Governor of Batang in the Philippines.

1849
On 22 August Josefina Borrás (c. 1826–1912), George Santayana’s mother,
marries George Sturgis (1817–57) of Boston, aboard a British warship at anchor
in Manila Bay. They have five children, but only three survive to adulthood
(Susan Parkman, 5 June 1851; Josephine Borrás, in 1853; and Robert Shaw, in
1854). The other two ( Joseph Borrás, who was called Pepín, born in 1850, and
James Victor, in 1856) die in infancy.

1856
Josefina and George Sturgis, with their surviving children, visit America.
They sail from Manila to Boston aboard the Fearless, a journey of ninety days.
Agustín Santayana is also aboard, on leave from his post at Batang and bound
for Spain via America and England.

1857
George Sturgis dies in Manila at the age of forty. His brother, Robert
Sturgis, gives Josefina ten thousand dollars.
444 Editorial Appendix

1858
Josefina Sturgis sails for Boston from Manila. Her youngest child, James
Victor, aged one year and seven months, dies on the journey, in London.
Josefina and her three surviving children remain in Boston for three years.

1861 or 1862
Josefina and her children return to Spain. They live in Madrid with the par-
ents and family of Mercedes de la Escalera y Iparraguirre.

1862
In Madrid Josefina Borrás Sturgis marries Agustín Santayana (whom she
had known during their years in the Philippines).

1863
On 16 December, at No. 69, Calle Ancha de San Bernardo, Madrid,
George Santayana is born. (He retains his Spanish citizenship throughout his
life.)

1864
Santayana is christened Jorge Agustín Nicolás, on 1 January, in the parish
church of San Marcos, Madrid. The first name is given by the godmother, his
twelve-year-old half sister, Susan (Susana), who chooses the first name of her
own father, George Sturgis.

1866
Santayana’s parents and the four children move from Madrid to Ávila.
Afterwards, Santayana’s half brother, Robert, is sent to live in Boston.
1868 or 1869
Santayana’s mother, with Susan and Josephine, leaves Ávila for Boston, in
obedience to her first husband’s wish that his children be brought up in
America. George Santayana, age five, is left with his father in Spain.

1872
In his ninth year, Santayana and his father leave Spain in June, bound for
America, where the boy is to be raised and educated. They sail from Liverpool
on 4 July on the Cunard steamer Samaria. Santayana’s first American resi-
dence is his mother’s house at No. 302 Beacon Street, where his father
remained for several months before returning permanently to Ávila.
Santayana attends his first American school, Miss Welchman’s Kindergarten
on Chestnut Street.

1873–74
During the winter of 1873–74, Santayana is at the Brimmer School, the pub-
lic grammar school of the district. In the autumn of 1874, he transfers to the
Boston Public Latin School, where he spends eight school years.
 Chronology 445

1876
Santayana travels to Philadelphia with his half brother, Robert, to see the
Centennial Exhibition.

1880
In June Santayana, age sixteen, is awarded the Poetry Prize at the Boston
Latin School for his poem “Day and Night.” He regards the event as his “emer-
gence into public notice.” During the ’80s Santayana regularly attends mass at
the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Boston.

1881–82
Santayana’s senior year at the Boston Latin School. He becomes founding
editor of the Latin School Register, the student paper, in which he anonymously
publishes poems. In the autumn of 1882, he matriculates at Harvard College.
Throughout his undergraduate years, he lives in room No. 19, Hollis Hall, the
Harvard Yard. On weekends he visits his mother, who now lives in Roxbury,
Massachusetts. During this freshman year, he discovers Lucretius’s De Rerum
Natura, which he studies in Latin, but he fails algebra and does poorly in his
course in Greek, taught by Louis Dyer, whose book, The Gods in Greece, is to
influence him considerably. In the Greek course, he reads the Bacchae of
Euripides, from which he takes his personal motto: To\ sofo\n ou) sofi/a
which, in translation, becomes the second line of his famous Sonnet III: “It is
not wisdom to be only wise.” He becomes cartoonist for the Harvard Lampoon.

1883–84
Santayana’s sophomore year at Harvard. In June 1883, at the age of nine-
teen, he makes his first return to Spain to visit his father, sailing alone from
New York to Antwerp and traveling from there to Ávila by train. He also vis-
its relatives in Catalonia, where, at Tarragona, he contracts a mild case of
smallpox. Nevertheless, he manages to see a number of major Spanish cities
and also visits Lyons and Paris. Returning to America in October, from
Antwerp, he resumes his studies at Harvard. At first he is advised by a skepti-
cal William James against going in for philosophy. At the Church of the
Immaculate Conception, he meets Ward Thoron, who becomes his closest
friend during their undergraduate years.

1884–85
Santayana’s junior year at Harvard. He is initiated into two undergraduate
societies, the O.K. (on 22 April 1885) and the Hasty Pudding.

1885
He becomes a founding member of the editorial board of The Harvard
Monthly, the avant-garde college literary magazine founded by classmate
Alanson Bigelow Houghton. The first issue of October 1885 carries a sonnet
by Santayana, and he continues to publish poems in the Monthly until 1903.
446 Editorial Appendix

1885–86
Santayana’s senior year at Harvard. He meets Charles Augustus Strong,
who had come from the University of Rochester to study philosophy for a year
at Harvard. Together they found the Harvard Philosophical Club. They are
awarded jointly, by the Harvard Philosophy Department, the Walker
Fellowship for graduate study in Germany. The stipend of five hundred dol-
lars is to be divided between them. The issue of The Harvard Monthly for April
1886 contains what is to be Santayana’s most anthologized poem, his Sonnet
III, beginning, “O World, thou choosest not the better part!” He is introduced
to John Francis Stanley, 2d Earl Russell (“Frank”), age twenty, who is visiting
America after being “sent down” from Balliol College, Oxford, in May 1885
for an alleged misdemeanor. Russell, elder brother of philosopher Bertrand
Russell, becomes Santayana’s most admired friend and the model for Jim
Darnley of Santayana’s novel, The Last Puritan (1935). Santayana’s Bachelor of
Arts degree is awarded summa cum laude and in absentia, Santayana having
sailed for Cherbourg after taking his last examination. In July 1886 he returns
for the second time to Ávila, where he spends the summer with his father. In
mid-August he is at Göttingen, Germany, and later that autumn (September)
spends four to six weeks at Dresden. He also journeys to London, visiting that
city for the first time, in company with Strong. They sail from the port of
Bremen in northern Germany. In October 1886 Santayana is in Berlin for the
start of the winter semester.

1887
In late March (at the close of the winter semester at Berlin) Santayana and
Strong travel to England for a holiday. Santayana spends two days with Earl
Russell aboard the latter’s steam yacht Royal, sailing down the Thames from
Reading to London. In April Santayana first visits Oxford, where, through
Earl Russell, he meets poet Lionel Johnson, then a student at New College. On
18 June Santayana is in London. He visits Winchester, Russell’s school, in
company with the young nobleman. On 20 June he views the procession for
Queen Victoria’s Jubilee (the fiftieth anniversary of her reign) from a room in
Buckingham Palace Road engaged for the occasion by John D. Rockefeller.
The company includes Rockefeller’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth (“Bessie”), and
Charles Augustus Strong, to whom she had become engaged that spring.
During the summer, Santayana makes his third return to Spain. He is in Ávila
in July and August. On 2 September he takes a ship from Malaga to meet his
sister, Susana, on Gibraltar for a few weeks to tour southern Spain before
returning to Germany. From that autumn until the following spring, Santayana
continues his graduate studies at Berlin. (His December address in Berlin is
Pottsdamerstrasse 123III.) The current German psycho-physiological approach
to the study of philosophy is uncongenial to Santayana; also he is apprehen-
 Chronology 447

sive about writing a doctoral dissertation in German. He decides to return to

Harvard to complete his doctoral program.

1888
He joins Earl Russell at Valence, France, on 2 June for a seventeen-day
canal journey through Burgundy aboard the Royal. On 18 June they reach
Paris, where Santayana leaves Russell. In August, following his summer stay in
Ávila, he visits Russell at his house, Broom Hall, situated at Teddington. After
over two years abroad, Santayana returns to America, sailing from Liverpool
to Boston on the Catalonia. Josiah Royce rejects the suggestion of
Schopenhauer as the subject of Santayana’s dissertation, recommending Lotze
instead. Until the following autumn (1889), Santayana lives with his mother in
her house in Roxbury, Massachusetts, working on his doctoral dissertation.

1889
Santayana completes his dissertation on Lotze’s System of Philosophy and is
awarded Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees by Harvard
University. During the summer he stays with Julian Codman and his family at
Cotuit, on Cape Cod, where he meets the novelist Howard Sturgis, cousin to
his relations. That autumn, at the rank of instructor in philosophy, he begins
his twenty-two-year teaching career at Harvard. During the academic year
1889–90, Santayana lives in rooms in Thayer Hall in the Harvard Yard. He
becomes an honorary member of several college clubs, including the Delta Phi
or “Gas House” (later the Delphic), the Zeta Psi (called “The Spee”), and the
Signet Society. He meets Henry Adams at the historian’s home in Washington,
D.C., where he is taken by Ward Thoron.
1890
In June Santayana sails from New York for Liverpool. During the summer
he first visits Queen’s Acre, novelist Howard Sturgis’s home near Windsor
Park, England, which he is to visit almost yearly until Sturgis’s death in 1920.
He spends part of July and August in Ávila. Sailing from Liverpool on 3
September on the Teutonic, Santayana returns to America and moves into
rooms at No. 7, Stoughton Hall, the Harvard Yard, where he will spend six
winters. About this time he begins his “Poetry Bees”: regular meetings held in
his rooms with a group of student friends for the purpose of reading aloud
from the celebrated poets. This practice is continued for several years before
being discontinued and is revived in 1910–11, with Conrad Aiken as the lead-
ing light among the student members. Also, at about this time, Santayana,
William Vaughn Moody, Norman Hapgood, Boylston Beal, and others, as a
lark, found the Laodicean Club at Harvard, and Santayana is elected “Pope”
by the membership.
448 Editorial Appendix

1891
Santayana sails from Boston to Liverpool in June aboard the Cephalonia. He
makes his first visit to Telegraph House (or “T.H.”), Earl Russell’s estate on the
South Downs in Hampshire, England, where Santayana is to be a regular vis-
itor until 1923. He visits Ávila in August and returns to Boston in September.

1892
Santayana spends the summer in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the autumn
he makes his first visit to Yale, where he is invited by William Lyon Phelps to
watch the Harvard-Yale football game. Santayana is writing “nothing but
poetry” at this time. On 26 November his half sister, Susana, then forty-one,
marries Celedonio Sastre of Ávila, a widower with six children. On 16
December, Santayana’s twenty-ninth birthday, he gives a dinner party for a
group of Harvard friends: “one of the pleasantest memories of my life.”1
1893
On 10 June Santayana sails from New York for Gibraltar on the Fulda.2
Crossing to Tangiers, he meets the American painter John Singer Sargent on
board ship. During the summer, he is in Ávila, where he witnesses his father’s
death at seventy-nine. He leaves Ávila on 22 August for London and returns
to New York, sailing from Southampton on 3 September. He spends two weeks
with Strong in New York on his arrival. Back in Cambridge in October, he
learns of the death of the closest of his younger friends, Warwick Potter (who
had graduated from Harvard that spring), from cholera in the harbor of Brest
during a voyage aboard a friend’s yacht. The body is returned to New York,
where Santayana attends the funeral. He writes the four “To W. P.” sonnets.
About this time he is approached by Herbert S. Stone and Hannibal Ingalls
Kimball, young Harvard men who offer to publish a collection of his poems.
He also attends the New York wedding of Robert Burnside Potter, Warwick’s
elder brother. At the end of this year Santayana undergoes his metanoia, or fun-
damental change of heart, resulting in a renunciation of the world. This is
brought about by a combination of disconcerting events, including Susana’s
marriage, his father’s pathetic death, Warwick Potter’s death, the end of youth
(signaled by his thirtieth birthday), and the prospect of an undistinguished
career and life in Protestant America.

1894
Santayana remains in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for the summer. Earl
Russell, en route to San Francisco, spends a week with him in Cambridge.
Santayana’s first book, Sonnets and Other Verses, is published by Stone and
Kimball in Cambridge and Chicago.
 Chronology 449

1895
In Cambridge, Massachusetts, until June, Santayana again sails from New
York to Gibraltar on the Werra. During the summer, he visits Earl Russell at
his “ugly villa” at Maidenhead, England, and meets Mrs. Marion Sommerville,
who is later to divorce her husband and become Russell’s second wife
(“Countess Mollie”). During this summer, Santayana also travels in Italy with
Charles Loeser and makes a one-hundred-fifty-mile walking tour through
France to Switzerland with Guy Murchie. He returns to Cambridge in late
September, sailing from London to New York on a cattle steamer.

1896
Santayana’s first book-length prose work is published by Scribner’s: The
Sense of Beauty: Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory. The second edition of
Sonnets, containing the thirty new sonnets of the Second Sonnet Series, also is
published by Stone and Kimball in this year. Andreas Martin Andersen makes
his charcoal drawing, which becomes Santayana’s favorite portrait of himself.
On 28 June Santayana sails from Quebec on the Parisian, bound for Liverpool
and a year’s leave of absence from Harvard. He plans to spend a year in
advanced study at Cambridge University. From late July through early
September, he is in Oxford. Early in October he visits Bertrand Russell at
Haslemere, England; in September he begins a four-week stay in Maidenhead,
England. He also appears in court in Winchester on 9 or 10 October to testify
on behalf of Frank Russell, against whom charges were brought by the Earl’s
estranged first wife, Mabel Edith, and her mother, Lady Lena Scott.
Afterwards, Santayana goes immediately from Winchester to Cambridge,
where he is admitted as an advanced student to King’s College, with the stand-
ing of Master of Arts. His Cambridge friends include Nathaniel Wedd, G.
Lowes Dickinson, Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore, and J. M. E. McTaggart. He
studies Plato under the direction of Henry Jackson of Trinity College. That
December Santayana testifies on behalf of the “wicked Earl,” as Russell’s noto-
rious courtroom adventures caused him to be designated by the journalists, at
the trial of Lady Scott and her codefendants for libel, held at the Old Bailey in
London. They are convicted and sentenced to eight months at hard labor, but
Russell intercedes to reduce the severity of Lady Scott’s punishment.
Santayana spends the Christmas holidays in Paris with club acquaintances at
Harvard, who are studying at the Beaux Arts.

1897
In January Santayana returns to King’s College, Cambridge, England. He
spends April and May traveling in Italy with Mr. and Mrs. Robert Burnside
Potter, visiting Florence, Venice, and Rome. On 22 June, in company with the
Rockefellers (as in 1887), Santayana views Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee
procession (the sixtieth anniversary of her reign) from a room in Picadilly
450 Editorial Appendix

taken by John D. Rockefeller for the occasion. During the summer Santayana
sees Lionel Johnson again, in Earl Russell’s London rooms in Temple Gardens.
His study at King’s College is finished during July and August, and, after fif-
teen months abroad, he returns on 2 September 1897 to Boston from
Liverpool in the Gallia. He resumes his teaching duties at Harvard and lives
with his mother in her house in Longwood, Brookline, Massachusetts, walking
to classes.

1898
Despite Harvard President Charles William Eliot’s disapproval, early in the
year Santayana is promoted from instructor to assistant professor for a
five-year period at an annual salary of two thousand dollars. The promotion is
endorsed by William James, Hugo Münsterberg, and Santayana’s other col-
leagues in the philosophy department. He takes up permanent residence on
Brattle Street in Cambridge to “do one’s share in maintaining or establishing
the academic traditions of the place.”3 In June he sails to England for his sum-
mer holiday abroad, but he is dismayed by the ignominious defeat of the
Spanish fleet at Manila Harbor and Santiago in the Spanish-American War. He
returns in September, sailing from Liverpool to New York.

1899
Santayana’s Lucifer, a mythological tragedy, is published in Chicago and
New York by H. S. Stone. Santayana sails from New York to Southampton in
June and spends the summer at Oxford completing work on the manuscript of
Interpretations of Poetry and Religion. He visits the Robert B. Potters at Sainte
Marguerite and then spends two weeks with Susana and her family in Ávila
before sailing to Quebec from Liverpool in September.

1900
Santayana spends the summer abroad, sailing in June from New York to
London. He visits a number of cities in France, including Chartres, Orleans,
and Toulouse, and then settles in Oxford for most of the time. Returning to
America from Southampton in September, he moves into rooms at No. 60,
Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he continues to live until mid-
1904. He meets Baron Albert von Westenholz (“one of my truest friends”
[Persons, 261]) when the young German aristocrat appears at Harvard.
Interpretations is published by Scribner’s in New York and A. & C. Black in
London.

1901
The last collection of new poems by Santayana, A Hermit of Carmel and
Other Poems, is published in New York by Scribner’s (and in London by R. B.
Johnson in 1902). Henceforth, Santayana writes little poetry, concentrating
 Chronology 451

instead on philosophy. He spends the summer abroad, sailing for England in

July and returning in September.

1902
Santayana again spends the summer abroad, sailing in June from New York
to Southampton and returning from London in September.
1903
Santayana is reappointed assistant professor for a second five-year period,
at the same annual salary of two thousand dollars. Again the summer is spent
abroad, with Santayana sailing from New York to Southampton in June. In
mid-August he leaves Oxford for Portsmouth, to visit Earl Russell. He returns
to Cambridge, Massachusetts, from Hamburg in September.

1904–6
Santayana spends twenty-seven months abroad, including his only sabbat-
ical leave (1904–5), traveling in Europe and the Middle East. In mid-July 1904
he sails from New York to Plymouth, England. That September, he sends the
last batch of manuscript for The Life of Reason to the publishers and then sets
out from Paris for his “first real travels.” He visits Rome and Venice with
Charles Loeser. After spending a few weeks at Naples in December, he visits
Pompeii; then he goes on to Sicily, where, at Syracuse, he reads the first proofs
of The Life of Reason. He returns from Sicily to Naples and sails for Greece. He
is in Egypt in January 1905 and travels by boat up and down the Nile. From
Egypt he travels to Palestine and Tel Aviv, spending three weeks at Jerusalem.
He visits Damascus and Baalbeck, then travels from Beirut to Athens and
through Greece, which, in its modern form, disappoints him. He sails from
Piraeus to Constantinople, concluding his odyssey with Budapest and Vienna.
Never again will he travel “for the sake of travelling.” (Persons, 467) While still
in the East in 1905, Santayana is invited by Harvard to become Hyde Lecturer
at the Sorbonne for 1905–6; he accepts, thus extending his holiday for a sec-
ond year. During this period he lectures on philosophical subjects at Paris and
the provincial universities. The five volumes of The Life of Reason; or, the Phases
of Human Progress are published during 1905–6 by Scribner’s in New York and
Constable in London. Santayana rejects an offer of a position on the philo-
sophical faculty of Columbia University. He returns to America in September
1906, sailing from Southampton to New York, and resumes his teaching duties
at Harvard.

1907
Santayana is promoted from assistant professor to full professor, and his
salary is doubled to four thousand dollars per year. In June he sails from New
York to Hamburg and returns to Boston from Liverpool in September.
452 Editorial Appendix

1908
Santayana sails from Boston to Plymouth in June and spends time in
England and France before returning to Boston from Cherbourg in
September.

1909
Santayana is elected to membership in the National Institute of Arts and
Letters (later the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters). He
spends the summer in Europe, sailing in July, from Boston to Liverpool, on the
Lusitania, and returning from Liverpool in September aboard the Mauretania.

1910
In February Santayana delivers a course of lectures, on “Three
Philosophical Poets,” at Columbia University. On 13 April he addresses the
Century Club in Chicago, and from 14 April to about 24 April he repeats his
course of six lectures on the “Three Philosophical Poets” at the University of
Wisconsin at Madison. These lectures constitute the book Three Philosophical
Poets: Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe published later in the year by Harvard
University Press, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and by the Oxford University
Press, in London. Santayana sails from Boston to Liverpool aboard the
Lusitania in June, and he makes his penultimate transatlantic crossing in
September, sailing from Hamburg on the Kaiserin Augusta Victoria.

1911
In April Santayana delivers his final lecture at Harvard. He receives an
honorary Doctor of Letters degree from the University of Wisconsin. From
Madison, he travels to the University of California at Berkeley, where, begin-
ning in June, he teaches in the six-week summer session and has his only expe-
rience of the American West.

1912
Santayana makes his final transatlantic crossing (thirty-eighth), sailing
aboard the Olympic from Boston on 24 January, bound for Plymouth and a hol-
iday in Europe. He plans to return to Harvard in September 1913, but in fact
he has left America for good. On 5 February Santayana’s mother dies. His
share of the inheritance, coupled with his savings, enables him to resign his
professorship, which he does with a letter to Harvard President Abbott
Lawrence Lowell of 6 June. In February he visits Cambridge University,
where, as Bertrand Russell’s guest, he sleeps in the clock tower of Trinity
College. During the spring he lives in Spain with Mercedes de la Escalera (an
old family friend) in her home in Madrid. At this time, Santayana’s bronchitis
becomes chronic, and he suffers from it periodically during the rest of his life.
In May he moves into C. A. Strong’s Paris apartment at No. 9, Avenue de
l’Observatoire, which, until his settlement in Rome in 1928, becomes his prin-
 Chronology 453

cipal residence. At this time, his sister Josephine Sturgis is taken by her brother
Robert to Spain, where she will remain permanently.

1913–14
Winds of Doctrine: Studies in Contemporary Opinion is published by Scribner’s
in New York and Dent in London. Santayana is in Ávila during December
1913 and spends the period January through May 1914 in Seville. He is back
at Strong’s Paris apartment in June. In July Santayana crosses the English
Channel “to do some shopping, and see a few friends,”4 travels to London, and
early in August, to Cambridge. World War I breaks out, and Santayana returns
to Oxford, where he remains essentially throughout the war, until the end of
April 1919. During this period he often visits Earl Russell at Telegraph House.
At Oxford Santayana also becomes friends with Robert Bridges, the poet lau-
reate, and, through Bertrand Russell, with Lady Ottoline Morrell, whose
Manor House at Garsington (near Oxford) is at this time a gathering place for
the British literati.

1915
The controversial Egotism in German Philosophy is published by Scribner’s in
New York (and, in 1916, by Dent in London). Santayana is accused by his crit-
ics of writing propaganda.

1918
During the winter Santayana gives the Third Annual Henriette Hertz
Lecture, before the British Academy in London. The lecture is published as
“Philosophical Opinion in America,” in the Proceedings of the British Academy for
1917–18, and later appears, in 1920, as chapter five of Character and Opinion in
the United States.

1919
Robert Bridges tries unsuccessfully to persuade Santayana to remain in
England. He wishes to arrange a lifetime membership for him in one of the
Oxford colleges with which Bridges is affiliated, Corpus Christi or New
College. Santayana is still considering a permanent residency in Oxford, but
wants to travel for at least a year. At the end of June, after considerable diffi-
culties obtaining a French visa, Santayana returns to Strong’s Paris apartment
to write. He declines an offer from Professor Wendell T. Bush to lecture at
Columbia. In late November he accompanies a crippled Strong to his Villa Le
Balze at Fiesole near Florence.

1920
During this year Santayana begins his practice of passing the winters in
Rome, but continues to spend the summers in Paris, Ávila, Glion, at Lake
Geneva, or Cortina d’Ampezzo. Little Essays: Drawn From the Writings of George
454 Editorial Appendix

Santayana by Logan Pearsall Smith, With the Collaboration of the Author is pub-
lished by Constable in London and Scribner’s in New York. Character and
Opinion in the United States: with Reminiscences of William James, and Josiah Royce,
and Academic Life in America is published by Constable in London, Scribner’s
in New York, and McLeod in Toronto. His work continues on Soliloquies and
Realms of Being.

1921
Santayana spends the winter months in Spain (Toledo and Madrid) con-
centrating on his writing. Several of the English soliloquies are published sep-
arately in the The Dial, the The Athenaeum, and the Journal of Philosophy. At the
end of March he returns to Paris, and in October he travels to Rome.

1922
After a winter in Rome organizing the Realms of Being, Santayana spends the
summer in Paris working on the manuscript of Scepticism and Animal Faith.
Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies and the revised second edition of the
five volumes of The Life of Reason are published by Constable and Scribner’s
(Life of Reason by Constable in 1923).

1923
The introduction to Santayana’s system of philosophy, Scepticism and Animal
Faith, and the last collection of Santayana’s poetry to appear during his life-
time, Poems: Selected by the Author and Revised, are published by Scribner’s and
Constable. Santayana has by now changed his mind about retiring perma-
nently in England, partly because of the winter climate and partly because of
his dissatisfaction with the current tone of life there. On his penultimate visit
to England, Santayana delivers the Herbert Spencer Lecture at Oxford (enti-
tled The Unknowable and published by the Clarendon Press). He makes final
visits to Cambridge and to “T.H.,” where Earl Russell is now alone, his third
wife, the novelist “Elizabeth” (Mary Annette Beauchamp, widow of the
German Count von Arnim) having left him in 1918.

1924
Santayana declines Professor George Herbert Palmer’s invitation to read
the Phi Beta Kappa poem at the Harvard Commencement exercises. A revised
version of his tragedy (originally published in 1900) is published as Lucifer; or
the Heavenly Truce: A Theological Tragedy, by Dunster House, at Cambridge,
Massachusetts.

1925
Dialogues in Limbo is published by Constable in London (and by Scribner’s
in New York in 1926).
 Chronology 455

1926
Santayana writes a short preface to the 1926 reprint of Winds of Doctrine
(New York: Scribner’s; London: Dent). During the summer, in a room in the
Hotel Cristallo, in Cortina d’Ampezzo, he composes, “at one stretch,” (Persons,
529) Platonism and the Spiritual Life. That autumn Santayana begins the annual
practice of spending all or part of the months of September and October in
Venice, staying at the Hotel Danieli, en route back to Rome from Cortina.

1927
Early in April Santayana meets Daniel Cory, age twenty-two, who has
come from England at Santayana’s invitation to meet the philosopher in
Rome. In August Santayana officiates as a “substitute papa”5 at the wedding of
Margaret Strong (daughter of C. A. Strong and Elizabeth Rockefeller) to
George Cuevas, in Paris, by giving the bride away. The first volume of
Santayana’s system of philosophy, The Realm of Essence: Book First of Realms of
Being, is published by Scribner’s in New York and Constable in London.

1928
Early in January Santayana declines the offer, from President Abbott
Lawrence Lowell of Harvard, of the Norton Chair of Poetry for 1928–29. His
half sister Susana dies in Ávila, on 10 February, in her seventy-seventh year.
At the end of August Strong gives up his Paris apartment, in which, for many
years, Santayana has lived as Strong’s guest. Early in September Santayana
makes a penultimate visit to Spain. Avoiding Ávila, he goes to Mercedes de la
Escalera in Galicia to ascertain the state of mental and physical health of his
sister Josephine, who is living with Mercedes, and to advise her regarding her
will. About this time, at a suggestion from his nephew, George Sturgis,
Santayana begins composing his autobiography.

1929
By the first of September Santayana has finished work on the manuscript of
The Realm of Matter. Again settled at the Hotel Bristol in Rome, in October he
begins work on The Realm of Truth.

1930
Celedonio Sastre Serrano, husband of the late Susana, dies in Ávila on 12
May. At the end of May Santayana makes his final visit to Spain in order to
settle the affairs of his surviving sister, Josephine, as well as his own. He gives
his father’s house in Ávila to the Sastre brothers, Celedonio’s sons. After his
return to Rome, Josephine dies in Ávila, on October 15, at the age of sev-
enty-seven. The Realm of Matter: Book Second of Realms of Being is published, by
Scribner’s in New York and Constable in London, and “A Brief History of My
Opinions” appears in volume two of Contemporary American Philosophy: Personal
456 Editorial Appendix

Statements, edited by George P. Adams and William P. Montague, and pub-

lished by Macmillan in New York.

1931
John Francis Stanley, 2d Earl Russell, dies at Marseilles on 3 March at the
age of sixty-five. Santayana reverses his intention to visit Ávila in the spring or
summer, both because of disinclination and the worsening political unrest in
Spain, presaging the impending civil war. The Genteel Tradition at Bay is pub-
lished by Scribner’s in New York and by the Adelphi in London. In December
Santayana receives and declines the offer to become William James Professor
of Philosophy at Harvard.

1932
Santayana attends the philosophical congress commemorating the ter-
centenary of Spinoza’s birth, held at The Hague on September 6–10, where he
delivers a lecture on Ultimate Religion (published in Septimana Spinozana, by
Martinus Nijhoff, at The Hague, in 1933). He also goes to London, where he
attends a meeting held there to commemorate the tercentenary of the birth of
John Locke. On 19 October he gives an address on “Locke and the Frontiers
of Common Sense,” which becomes the first of five essays constituting Some
Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy (published in England by the Cambridge
University Press and in New York by Scribner’s in 1933).

1933
Evelyn Tindall, an Englishwoman who is secretary for the British Legation
to the Holy See in Rome, is first mentioned as typing Santayana’s manuscripts.
Beginning with The Last Puritan, she continues her work with Santayana for
almost twenty years.

1934
On 31 August Santayana completes work on his novel, The Last Puritan: A
Memoir in the Form of a Novel. Begun in the early 1890s as a story of college life,
the work has been in progress for more than forty years.

1935
In the spring Santayana declines the invitation of President James Bryant
Conant and the Harvard Tercentenary Committee to attend the
Commencement exercises in June and receive an honorary Doctor of Letters
degree. He also declines the subsequent offer to receive, together with sixty
other scholars, an unspecified honorary degree to be presented at Harvard
during the summer. He regards these offers as merely grudging recognition of
his achievement by official Harvard. The Last Puritan is published by
Constable in London (on 17 October) and by Macmillan in Toronto. The
 Chronology 457

Scribner’s edition, published in New York in 1936, becomes a

Book-of-the-Month Club bestseller.

1936
The first six volumes of the Triton Edition of The Works of George Santayana,
Scribner’s deluxe limited edition of the collected writings in fifteen volumes,
are published in New York. Santayana writes a general preface and autographs
sheets which are placed at the front in volume one. (The remaining nine vol-
umes are published during the period 1937–40.) Obiter Scripta: Lectures, Essays
and Reviews, edited by Justus Buchler and Benjamin Schwartz, and Philosophy of
Santayana: Selections From the Works of George Santayana, edited by Irwin Edman,
are published by Scribner’s (Obiter is also published by Constable). During
June and July, Santayana makes a final visit to Paris.

1937
On 29 May Santayana’s favorite grandnephew, Roberto Sastre (son of José
[“Pepe”] and Isabel Sastre) is killed while fighting on the Falangist side in the
Spanish civil war. The Realm of Truth: Book Third of Realms of Being is published
in London by Constable (and in New York by Scribner’s in 1938).

1938
The first book-length biography, George Santayana, by George Washburne
Howgate is published in Philadelphia by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

1939
World War II breaks out in Europe. Santayana is refused a regular
long-term visa by the Swiss officials and decides to remain in Italy. Daniel
Cory stays with him at Cortina d’Ampezzo until the end of August. (Their next
meeting will be at the Blue Sisters’ nursing home in Rome, early in September
1947, eight years later.) In the autumn the Hotel Bristol in Rome, Santayana’s
home for many years, is closed for reconstruction. Santayana decides to spend
the winter of 1939–40 in Venice, a decision that, because of the severe cold
and dampness of Venice in winter, he afterward regrets. In September he
learns of the suicide of his friend Baron Albert von Westenholz.

1940
On 23 January, at Florence, Charles Augustus Strong dies at the age of sev-
enty-seven. The Realm of Spirit: Book Fourth of Realms of Being is published by
Scribner’s in New York and Constable in London. The Philosophy of George
Santayana, volume two of The Library of Living Philosophers, Paul Arthur
Schilpp, Editor, is published in Evanston by the Northwestern University
Press. The book, composed of critical essays by several hands, contains also
Santayana’s rejoinder entitled “Apologia pro Mente Sua.”
458 Editorial Appendix

1941
Santayana spends the summer at Fiuggi, returning to Rome in the Autumn.
The Hotel Bristol being closed, he lives for a time in the Grand Hotel. Now
seventy-seven years old, he finds looking after himself more difficult and, on
14 October, moves into a nursing home operated by the Blue Sisters of the
Little Company of Mary, an order of Roman Catholic Irish nuns. The large
establishment is situated in the Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, atop the Celius
(Monte Celio), one of Rome’s seven hills. This is to be Santayana’s last home,
where he will live for almost eleven years.

1942–43
The manuscript of Persons and Places, the first volume of Santayana’s auto-
biography, is refused by the Italian postal authorities. Scribner’s editor John
Hall Wheelock, and Irish poet Padraic Collum, with the cooperation of
American and Vatican diplomatic officials, succeed in spiriting the manuscript
across national lines and ultimately to New York. Cut off by the war from cor-
respondence with America and England, Santayana continues to write his
autobiography and works on the manuscript of Dominations and Powers, a book
composed of essays written over a great many years.

1944
Like The Last Puritan, in 1936, Persons and Places becomes a Book-of-
the-Month Club bestseller. On 20 December George Sturgis, Santayana’s
nephew and financial manager, dies of a heart attack.

1945
The second volume of Santayana’s autobiography is published as The
Middle Span, the title being supplied by editor Wheelock of Scribner’s.
Santayana is awarded the Nicholas Murray Butler Medal by Columbia
University.

1946
The Idea of Christ in the Gospels; or, God in Man: A Critical Essay is published
by Scribner’s in New York and Saunders in Toronto.

1947
Daniel Cory spends nearly two months with Santayana in Rome, living in
a room opposite Santayana’s in the Blue Sisters’ establishment. He finds
Santayana completely deaf in one ear. On 13 October Santayana gives Cory
the manuscript of his Posthumous Poems, inscribing a personal dedication. These
unpublished poems and translations, which Santayana had begun revising and
transcribing at the end of the war, are published in The Poet’s Testament, in 1953,
edited by Cory and John Hall Wheelock.
 Chronology 459

1948
Dialogues in Limbo, With Three New Dialogues is published in New York by
Scribner’s.

1949
Cory spends the months of April and May helping Santayana with his work
on the manuscript of Dominations and Powers. They agree that henceforth Cory
should spend the winters in Rome. Cory returns to Rome at the end of
October and remains there until the end of April 1950. In December 1949
Cory consults Santayana’s physician, Dr. Luigi Sabbatucci about Santayana’s
persistent cough and recent loss of appetite. He interprets the doctor’s cir-
cumspect answers as suspicion of serious illness.

1950
Artist Lino S. Lipinsky de Orlov does his series of pencil portraits of
Santayana in August 1950. Cory returns to Rome from England in early
October 1950 and remains there until early May the following year. He assists
Santayana with the final checking and correction of the proofs of Dominations
and Powers, and they complete this labor by the beginning of the New Year. In
mid-October 1950 Robert Lowell and his wife, novelist Elizabeth Hardwick,
visit Santayana in Rome.

1951
Dominations and Powers: Reflections on Liberty, Society, and Government,
Santayana’s last book published during his lifetime, is issued by Scribner’s in
New York and Constable in London. Santayana receives another visit from
Robert Lowell early in the year, and Cory spends about nine months [c.
September 1951–May 1952] with Santayana in Rome. They spend the autumn
collaborating on the revised one-volume edition of The Life of Reason (originally
published in five volumes in 1905–6, the new edition is published by
Constable in London and Scribner’s in New York in 1954). Cory observes that
Santayana’s deafness is increasing and that his vision, never good, is impaired
by cataracts.

1952
On 4 June Santayana falls on the steps of the Spanish Consulate in Rome,
where he had gone to renew his passport. He is taken to the nursing home in
a taxi by officials of the Consulate. The effects of the fall include three broken
ribs, a bleeding head wound, and patches of pneumonia on the lungs. Cory,
hastily summoned from England by the Sisters, remains with Santayana until
the end of June. Dr. Sabbatucci is amazed by Santayana’s recovery. While
recuperating, Santayana receives, as a present from George Salerno (a young
American journalist, who had met Santayana while a soldier in the occupation
forces), a copy of the poems of Lorenzo de’ Medici. Santayana decides to
460 Editorial Appendix

spend the summer translating Lorenzo’s lengthy pastoral Ombron and Ambra,
and he works at this task into the summer, until increasing blindness and ill-
ness make further labor impossible. By the third week of August, Santayana
becomes desperately ill. Cory arrives in Rome on 8 September and is told by
Dr. Sabbatucci that Santayana is dying of stomach cancer. On 26 September,
after much suffering, Santayana dies. His wish to be buried in unconsecrated
ground in a Catholic cemetery is frustrated by the lack of such a section in
Rome’s Campo Verano. The Spanish officials intercede and, on 30 September
Santayana’s body is interred in the Tomb of the Spaniards. At the graveside,
Daniel Cory reads aloud Santayana’s poem, “The Poet’s Testament.”

1953
The third volume of Santayana’s autobiography, entitled (by the publisher)
My Host the World, is published in London by the Cresset Press, and in New
York by Scribner’s. The Posthumous Poems, together with two early plays, are
published by Scribner’s as The Poet’s Testament: Poems and Two Plays.

1955
The Letters of George Santayana, a selection of two hundred and ninety-six let-
ters to eighty-six recipients, edited by Daniel Cory, is published by Scribner’s.

Notes
1
Letter to Daniel Cory of 11 November 1932.
2
On page 36 of volume 3 of Scribner’s edition of Persons and Places, entitled My Host the
World (1953) (and also on the holograph manuscript itself), Santayana’s second visit to
Gibraltar is described as follows “… I returned there in 1891, this time from America,
and crossed to Tangiers. …” On page 37, he observes that he was again at Gibraltar
“two years later.” Evidently, the date of 1891 is a slip, for on the map referred to above
in the headnote to this chronology Santayana has indicated that in June of 1893, and
again in June of 1895, he sailed from New York to Gibraltar, on the Fulda and the Werra,
respectively. The map also indicates that in June 1891 he sailed from Boston to
Liverpool aboard the Cephalonia. Santayana had left the map in Spain many years
before, and therefore did not have it by him while composing his autobiography in
Rome during the 1940s.
3
Letter to Guy Murchie of 17 July 1897.
4
Letter to Mary Williams Winslow of 16 August 1914.
5
Letter to Boylston Adams Beal of 21 November 1927.
 Addresses

The following list of addresses is drawn from the place and date-lines and
from the contents of Santayana’s letters, from information provided in his
autobiography, Persons and Places, and from other biographical sources. The list
includes addresses where Santayana stayed for long and short periods, and it
includes trips and visits to various places. Santayana’s habit of changing resi-
dence with the seasons, however, complicates the task of accounting for his
addresses, and this list, containing estimations as well as gaps and omissions,
does not pretend to be complete. It is, nevertheless, reasonably accurate, and
used in conjunction with the Chronology serves to inform the reader as to
where Santayana was and what he was doing at a given time. The names of
clubs at which Santayana dined and from which he wrote letters, but at which
he did not actually reside (e.g., the Colonial and Delta Phi Clubs in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, or the National Liberal Club in London, England)
are not included in this list. Indented dates indicate temporary absence from
a permanent address.

1863–66
69 Calle Ancha de San Bernardo, Madrid, Spain
1866–72 ( June)
Ávila, Spain (father’s house)

1872 (15 July)–1881–82 (Winter)

302 Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts (mother’s house)

1881–82 (Winter)–1882 (September)

26 Millmont Street, Roxbury, Massachusetts (mother’s house)

1882 (September)–1886 (May)

Room no. 19, Hollis Hall, Harvard Yard, Cambridge, Massachusetts
1883 ( June–September)
Visit to Spain; trips to Lyons and Paris, France

1886–1912
Spends each summer in Europe

1886 ( July–early August)

462 Editorial Appendix

Ávila (father’s house)

(early August)
Visits to Paris and Cologne en route to Göttingen, Germany
(12 August to end of August)
c/o Fräulein Schlote, 16 D Obere Karspüle, Göttingen
(September)
c/o Frau Sturm, Werder Strasse 6, Dresden, Germany
(Autumn 1886)
Visit to London

1886 (October)–1887 (February)

Schiffbauerdamm, 3II, Berlin, Germany
1887 (late March)
Two-day boat trip down Thames, from Reading to London, visits to
Windsor, Eton, and Winchester, England
(21 April–May)
Oxford, England
( June)
87 Jermyn Street, St. James, London, England
( July–August)
Ávila (father’s house)
(early September)
Trip to Gibraltar and tour of southern Spain

1887 (1 November)–1888 (mid-March)

Potsdamerstrasse 123III, Berlin
1888 ( June)
Canal journey through Burgundy, visit to Paris
( July–August)
Ávila (father’s house)
1888 (August)–1889 (August)
26 Millmont Street, Roxbury, Massachusetts (mother’s house)

1889 (September)–1890 (Spring)

Room no. 29, Thayer Hall, Harvard Yard

1890 (Summer)
Visit to Queen’s Acre, Windsor, England (Howard Sturgis’s house),
and Ávila

1890 (Autumn)–1896 (June)

 Addresses 463

Room no. 7, Stoughton Hall, Harvard Yard

1893 (Summer)
Visit to Gibraltar and Ávila, Spain
1895 (22 June–late September)
Summer abroad: Spain, Italy, France, Switzerland, England
1895 (December)
Naushon Island, Buzzard’s Bay, Cape Cod, Massachusetts ( John
Forbes’s house)
1896 (27 June)
Chateau Frontenac, Quebec, Canada
( July–September)
26 Banbury Road, Oxford, England
(September)
Visit to Amberley Cottage, Maidenhead, England (villa of John
Francis Stanley, 2d Earl Russell)
(October–December)
King’s College (1 Silver Street), Cambridge, England
(December)
Trip to Paris
1897 ( January–June)
King’s College (2 Free School Lane), Cambridge, England
( July–August)
Gibbs Hall (Fellows’ Building), King’s College, Cambridge,
England (Nathaniel Wedd’s rooms)

1897 (September)–1898 (Spring)

75 Monmouth Street, Longwood, Brookline, Massachusetts
(mother’s house)

1898 (Spring)–1899 (Spring)

52 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts
1899 ( June–August)
Summer at Oxford, visits to France and Spain
1899 (Autumn)–1904 ( June)
60 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts
1900 (Summer)
France, 108 Jermyn Street, London, England, and Oxford
1901 ( July–September)
Oxford, England (5 Grove Street, now Magpie Lane)
1902 and 1903
464 Editorial Appendix

Summers in Europe
1904 ( July)–1906 (September)
Twenty-seven months abroad: sabbatical leave and Hyde Lecture
program
1904 ( July–September)
Travels in England, Belgium, Holland, Germany, and France
(24 September–October)
Ávila (sister Susana’s house)
(November)
Villa I Tatti, Settignano, Florence, Italy (the Bernard Berensons’
villa)
(25 November–8 December)
Grand Hôtel de Russie et des Iles Britanniques, Rome, Italy
1905 ( January–August)
Traveling in the Middle East and Europe
( January) Egypt
(February) Israel and Lebanon
(March and April) Greece
(May) Turkey, Hungary, and Germany
( June and July) England
(August) Germany (visits Baron Albert von Westenholz)

1905 (September)–1906 ( June)

Hyde Lecturer at the Sorbonne and at French provincial
universities, Paris address: Hôtel Foyot, Rue de Tournon
(September) Compiègne
(October–mid-November) Ávila (Susana’s house)
(April) Lyons, Montpellier, Cannes, Nîmes, and Orange
(29 April–5 May) Toulouse
(May) Pau, Bordeaux, Arcachon, La Rochelle, and Caen
( June) Dijon, Morez, Lyons, and Grenoble

1906 (mid-September)–1908 (mid-June)

75 Monmouth Street, Longwood, Brookline (mother’s house)
1907 ( January)
Lectures in New York City
1907 (mid-June–mid-September)
Summer abroad: Germany, Switzerland, Spain
(18 September)
 Addresses 465

Arrival from Europe in New York City: Hotel Manhattan

1908 (mid-June–mid-September)
Summer abroad: England, France; visit to Queen’s Acre, Windsor,
in July (Howard Sturgis’s house)

1908 (mid-September)–1912 ( January)

Room no. 3, Prescott Hall, Harvard Yard
1909 (mid-July–mid-September)
Summer in England; visit in August to Telegraph House (“T.H.”),
Chichester, Hampshire, England ( John Francis Stanley, Second
Earl Russell’s house)
1910 (February)
New York City
(April)
Visits Chicago, Illinois, and lectures at the University of Wisconsin,
Madison
(8 June–17 September)
Summer abroad; visit to Ávila
1911 (mid-June–end of August)
University Club, San Francisco, California
1912 (29 January)
On board the R.M.S. Olympic
(February)
Visits to Queen’s Acre, Windsor, and to Trinity College, Cambridge
(20 February)
7 Bennet Street, St. James, London
(28 February)
Hotel du Quai Voltaire, Paris
(March and early April)
Serrano 7, Madrid, Spain (Mercedes de la Escalera’s house)
(May–August)
9, Avenue de l’Observatoire, Paris (Charles Augustus Strong’s
apartment becomes Santayana’s principal residence [except during
the period July 1914–August 1919] until the end of August 1928.)
(September–November)
Travels in Italy (Milan, Bologna, Naples, Palermo) with an
extended stay in Rome
1912 (30 November)–1913 (early January)
466 Editorial Appendix

Villa I Tatti, Settignano, Florence

1913 (February–mid-March)
French Riviera: Nice and Monte Carlo
(mid-March–April)
Serrano 7, Madrid
(May–mid-July)
9, Avenue de l’Observatoire, Paris
(3 July)
Hotel de Ville, Brussels, Belgium
(mid-August–October)
66 High Street, Oxford
(November)
45 Chesterton Road, Cambridge, England
(December)
Ávila (Susana’s house)

1914 (January–mid-May)
Hotel la Peninsular, Seville, Spain
(mid-May–June)
9, Avenue de l’Observatoire, Paris
(27 July)
Euston Hotel, London
(2–3 August)
Red Lion Hotel, Cambridge, England
(5 August)
Visit to Queen’s Acre, Windsor
(16 August)
Oxford, England
(late August–11 October)
3 Ryder Street, London
(12 October–14 December)
45 Chesterton Road, Cambridge

1914 (14 December)–1915 January)

Old Ship Hotel, Brighton, England

1915 (February–April)
45 Chesterton Road, Cambridge
(May)
 Addresses 467

66 High Street, Oxford

1915 ( June)–1919 (April)

22 Beaumont Street, Oxford (main residence during World War I)
1915 (September)
Visits London, Lewes, and North Luffenham, England
1915 (October)
Visit to Bournemouth, England
1917 (February–March)
6 Park Street, Torquay, Cornwall, England
1918 (Winter)
Trip to London

1919 (end of April)

Trip to London
(13–16 and 20–25 June)
Richmond Hill Hotel, Richmond, Surrey, England
(16–20 June)
Trip to London
( July–November)
9, Avenue de l’Observatoire, Paris

1919 (December)–1920 (20 January)

Villa Le Balze, Fiesole, Florence, Italy (Charles Augustus Strong’s
villa)
1920 (20 January–early May)
Hotel Minerva, Rome
(during 1920)
Final visit to Queen’s Acre, Windsor
(May 1920)
Florence
(early June–September)
9, Avenue de l’Observatoire, Paris
(October)
Ávila, Spain (Susana’s house)
1920 (late October)–1921 (3 January)
Hotel Castilla, Toledo, Spain
1921 (3 January–7 March)
468 Editorial Appendix

Serrano 7, Madrid, Spain

(end of March–end of October)
9, Avenue de l’Observatoire, Paris
(early November)
Villa Le Balze, Fiesole, and afterwards the Hotel Royal, Rome

1921 (15 November)–1922 (22 April)

Hotel Marini, Rome

1922 (24 April–11 October)

9, Avenue de l’Observatoire, Paris (part of June and early October
spent in the Hôtel du Palais Royal)

1922 (25 October)–1923 (8 May)

New York Hotel, Nice, France

1923 (mid-May–mid-September)
9, Avenue de l’Observatoire, Paris
(mid-September–31 October)
Penultimate visit to England: London, Cambridge, Chichester,
Oxford, Bath, and Dover
(6 November–mid-November)
Villa Le Balze, Fiesole, Florence

1923 (mid-November)–1924 (6 May)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

1924 (6 May–mid-June)
Hotel Bauer-Grünwald, Venice, Italy
(mid-June–29 September)
Hotel Cristallo, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(30 September–mid-October)
Villa Le Balze, Fiesole, Florence

1924 (late October)–1925 (1 June)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

1925 (1–22 June)

Paris
(23 June–mid-July)
Ávila (Susana’s house)
(mid-July–September)
 Addresses 469

9, Avenue de 1’Observatoire, Paris

1925 (October)–1926 ( June)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

1926 (end of June–1 October)

Hotel Cristallo, Cortina d’Ampezzo
(1–10 October)
Hôtel Royal Danieli, Venice

1926 (10 October)–1927 (5 June)

Hotel Bristol, Rome

1927 (6 June–mid-September)
9, Avenue de 1’Observatoire, Paris
(mid-September to mid-October)
Hôtel Royal Danieli, Venice (except for four days in Padua)

1927 (17 October)–1928 (10 June)

Hotel Bristol, Rome
1928 (11 June–end of August)
9, Avenue de l’Observatoire, Paris (Strong gives up the apartment at
the end of August 1928.)
(early September)
Trip to Oporto, Portugal, and Bayona, Spain
(6–21 September)
Hotel Continental, Vigo, Spain
(22 September)
Santiago de Compostela, Spain
(early October)
Grand Hotel Miramare & de la Ville, Genoa, Italy
(3–16 October)
Villa Le Balze, Fiesole, Florence

1928 (16 October)–1929 (May)

Hotel Bristol, Rome
1929 (early June–mid-September)
Hôtel Victoria, Glion-sur-Territet, Switzerland
(mid-September–20 October)
Villa Le Balze, Fiesole, Florence

1929 (November)–1930 (20 May)

470 Editorial Appendix

Hotel Bristol, Rome

1930 (22 May–15 June)
A brief stay at the Hôtel Royal Haussmann, Paris. After final visit to
Ávila, a return to the Royal Haussmann.
(16–22 June)
Pavillon Henri IV, Saint Germain-en-Laye, France
(early July)
Hôtel Foyot, Paris
(11 July–23 September)
Hôtel Vouillemont, 15, rue Boissy d’Anglas, Paris
(end of September–21 October)
Villa Le Balze, Fiesole, Florence
1930 (21 October)–1931 (10 June)
Hotel Bristol, Rome
1931 (11–22 June)
Hôtel Royal Danieli, Venice
(22 June–11 September)
Hotel Miramonti, Cortina d’Ampezzo
(12–17 September)
Hôtel Royal Danieli, Venice
(18 September–23 October)
Hôtel de Londres, Naples, Italy
(23 October–end of December)
Hotel Bristol, Rome (except during the first week of December in
the Anglo-American Nursing Home, 311 via Nomentana)
1931 (1 January)–1932 (22 June)
Hotel Bristol, Rome
1932 (23 June–early July)
Hôtel Royal Haussmann, Paris
( July–August)
Hôtel des Réservoirs, Versailles, France
(1–5 September)
Hôtel Royal Haussmann, Paris
(6–10 September)
 Addresses 471

Hôtel des Indes, The Hague, Netherlands

(11 September–20 October)
7 Park Place, St. James, London (final visit to England)
(21–24 October)
Dover, England
(25 October–early November)
Paris
1932 (8 November)–1933 (20 June)
Hotel Bristol, Rome
1933 (22 June–early September)
Hotel Miramonti, Cortina d’Ampezzo
(6 September–20 October)
Hôtel Royal Danieli, Venice
1933 (20 October)–1934 (19 June)
Hotel Bristol, Rome
1934 (20 June–16 July)
Villa Le Balze, Fiesole, Florence
(18 July–11 September)
Miramonti-Majestic Hotel, Cortina d’Ampezzo
(12 September–17 October)
Hôtel Royal Danieli, Venice
1934 (20 October)–1935 (28 May)
Hotel Bristol, Rome

1935 (29 May–17 June)

Hôtel Royal Danieli, Venice
(18 June–10 September)
Grand Hotel Savoia, Cortina d’Ampezzo
(10 September–15 October)
Hôtel Royal Danieli, Venice
1935 (16 October)–1936 (3 June)
Hotel Bristol, Rome
1936 (4 June–11 August)
Savoy-Hotel, rue de Rivoli, Paris
(12 August–21 September)
472 Editorial Appendix

Hôtel Victoria, Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland

1936 (22 September)–1937 (14 June)
Hotel Bristol, Rome
1937 (15–16 June)
Hôtel Royal Danieli, Venice
(17 June–13 September)
Grand Hotel Savoia, Cortina d’Ampezzo
1937 (14 September)–1938 (17 June)
Hotel Bristol, Rome
1938 (18–20 June)
Hôtel Royal Danieli, Venice
(20 June–13 September)
Grand Hotel Savoia, Cortina d’Ampezzo
1938 (14 September)–1939 (18 June)
Hotel Bristol, Rome (Autumn 1939: Hotel Bristol closed for
reconstruction)
1939 (19–21 June)
Milan and Venice
(22 June–3 September)
Grand Hotel Savoia, Cortina d’Ampezzo
1939 (4 September)–1940 (19 June)
Hôtel Royal Danieli, Venice
1940 (9 June–6 July)
Hotel Ampezzo, Cortina d’Ampezzo
(6 July–11 September)
Grand Hotel Savoia, Cortina d’Ampezzo
(11 September–end of September)
Hôtel Royal Danieli, Venice
1940 (end of September)–1941 (c. 20 June)
Grand Hôtel, Rome
1941 (c. 20 June–12 September)
Palazzo della Fonte, Fiuggi, Italy
(12 September–14 October)
 Addresses 473

Grand Hotel, Rome

1941 (14 October)–1952 (26 September)
Calvary Hospital, Clinic of the Little Company of Mary, 6, Via
Santo Stefano Rotondo, Rome
 Manuscript Locations

Academy American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York NY

American American Jewish Archives, Hebrew Union College-Jewish
Institute of Religion, Cincinnati OH
Amherst Amherst College Library, Amherst MA
Antiquarian American Antiquarian Society, Worcester MA
Barnes Catherine Barnes, Philadelphia PA
Beinecke The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale
University, New Haven CT
Berkeley The Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley
Bidwell David Bidwell, Geneva, Switzerland
Bodleian The Bodleian Library, Oxford University, England
Boston Department of Rare Books and Manuscripts, Boston Public
Library, Boston MA
Bowdoin Bowdoin College Library, Brunswick ME
Bowling Green Western Kentucky University, Department of Library
Special Collections, Bowling Green
British The British Library of the British Museum, London, England
Brooklyn Brooklyn College Library, Brooklyn NY
Brown The John Hay Library, Brown University, Providence RI
Cambridge University Library, Cambridge University, England
Castelli Enrico Castelli Gattinara di Zubiena
Chicago The Modern Poetry Library, University of Chicago Library,
Chicago IL
Columbia Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY
Congress The Library of Congress, Washington DC
Constable Constable and Co. Ltd., London, England
Consulate Spanish Consulate, Rome, Italy
Cornell Cornell University Library, Ithaca NY
Dartmouth Baker Memorial Library, Dartmouth College, Hanover NH
476 Editorial Appendix

DeKalb The University Libraries, Northern Illinois University,

DeKalb
Denson Alan Denson, Aberdeenshire, Scotland
Dickson Mr. Carl Byron Dickson, Doswell VA
Duke William R. Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham NC
Dykeman King Dykeman, Fairfield University, Fairfield CT
Fales Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, Fales Library, New York
University, New York City
Fitzgerald Robert Stuart Fitzgerald
Florida University of Florida Library, Gainesville
Gardner Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston MA
Georgetown Lauinger Library, Georgetown University, Washington DC
Gerber William Gerber, Washington DC
Gilmour Mervyn D. Gilmour, Portadown, Northern Ireland
Harvard Harvard Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge MA
Houghton The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA
Howgate Mrs. George W. Howgate
Huntington The Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino CA
Indiana The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington
I Tatti Villa I Tatti, Settignano, Italy
Kansas University of Kansas Libraries, Lawrence
Kentucky University of Kentucky, Lexington
King’s King’s College Library, Cambridge University, England
Lamont Collection of Lamont family papers
Lango John W. Lango, New York NY
Leeds Leeds University Library, The Brotherton Collection, Leeds,
England
Lipinsky Lino S. Lipinsky de Orlov
Lockwood Lockwood Memorial Library, State University of New York
at Buffalo
Loyola Loyola University Library, Chicago IL
Macksey Richard A. Macksey, Baltimore MD
McMaster Mills Memorial Library, Bertrand Russell Archives,
McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Merriam John McKinstry Merriam
 Manuscript Locations 477

Michigan Bentley Historical Library, The University of Michigan, Ann

Arbor
Minnesota University of Minnesota Libraries, St. Paul
Morgan The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York NY
Mumford Lewis Mumford
Munitz Milton Karl Munitz
Murchie Guy Murchie Jr.
Newberry The Newberry Library, Chicago IL
New York The New York Public Library, New York City
North Carolina University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Northwestern Northwestern University Library, Evanston IL
Ohio Ohio Historical Society, Columbus
Oregon University of Oregon Libraries, Eugene
Penn The Charles Patterson Van Pelt Library, University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Pennsylvania The Pennsylvania State University Libraries, University Park
Princeton Department of Rare Books and Special Collections,
Princeton University Libraries, Princeton NJ
Provincial Provincial Archives, Province of St. Albert the Great,
Chicago IL
Radcliffe The Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Cambridge MA
Reading The Library, University of Reading, England
Redwood The Redwood Library and Athenaeum, Newport RI
Rigacci Dino Rigacci
Riverside Rivera Library, University of California, Riverside
Rockefeller Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY
Rollins Rollins College, Winter Park FL
Salamanca University of Salamanca, Casa Museo Unamuno, Salamanca,
Spain
Sanchez Paloma Sanchez Sastre, Madrid, Spain
Santayana Santayana Edition, Indianapolis IN
Sastre Sra. Rafael (Adelaida Hernandez) Sastre, Ávila, Spain
Sastre Martín Sra. Eduardo Sastre Martín, Madrid, Spain
Scotland National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh
Smith Smith College Archives, Northampton MA
478 Editorial Appendix

Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution,

Washington DC
Sommer Melvin L. Sommer
Sorbonne Universites de Paris, Bibliotheque de la Sorbonne, France
Southern Morris Library, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
Spiegler Mrs. Charles (Evelyn) Spiegler, Forest Hill NY
Stanford Stanford University Libraries, Stanford CA
Stroup Timothy Stroup, Annandale NY
Sturgis Robert Shaw Sturgis, Weston MA
Syracuse Syracuse University Library, Syracuse NY
Temple Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia PA
Texas Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of
Texas at Austin
Thompson Samuel Martin Thompson
Tisch Arthur Tisch, Palm Beach Gardens FL
Trinity Trinity College Library, Cambridge University, England
UCLA University of California at Los Angeles
Union Union College Library, Schenectady NY
University Club The University Club, New York NY
USC University of Southern California Library, Los Angeles
Vermont University of Vermont Libraries, Burlington
Viereck Peter Robert Edwin Viereck, South Hadley MA
Virginia Alderman Library, University of Virginia at Charlottesville
Wellesley Wellesley College Library, Wellesley MA
Wheeler Samuel Wheeler, Storrs CT
Williams Williams College Archives and Special Collections,
Williamstown MA
Yale Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library,
New Haven CT
YIVO YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York NY
 List of Recipients

Book Three, 1921–1927

Abbot, Henry Ward

Beal, Boylston Adams
Berenson, Bernard
Berenson, Mary Whitall Smith (Mrs. Bernard Berenson)
Bridges, Robert Seymour
Brooks, Van Wyck
Burke, Kenneth Duva
Bush, Mary Potter (Mrs. Wendell T. Bush)
Bush, Wendell T.
Butler, Lawrence Smith
Chapman, John Jay
Charles Scribner’s Sons
Conger, George Perrigo
Constable and Co. Ltd.
Cooper, Alice Cecilia
Cory, Daniel MacGhie
Cross, Wilber Lucius
Dent, Joseph Malaby
The Dial
Dickinson, Zenas Clark
Ducasse, Curt John
Erskine, John
Firuski, Maurice
Fite, Warner
Fuller, Benjamin Apthorp Gould
Fuller, Wesley
Greenslet, Ferris
Gregory, Alyse (Mrs. Llewelyn Powys)
Hammond, William Alexander
Hanlon, Miss
Hartmann, Carl Sadakichi
480 Editorial Appendix

Hillyer, Robert Silliman

James, Henry III
Kallen, Horace Meyer
Komroff, Manuel
Kyllmann, Otto
Lamprecht, Sterling Power
Langstaff, John Brett
La Rose, Pierre de Chaignon
Lawton, George
Léon, Xavier
Moore, Marianne
Morley, Sylvanus Griswold
Mortimer, Charles Raymond Bell
Morton, Benjamin Alexander
Moult, Thomas
Mumford, Lewis
Murry, John Middleton
Nathan, George Jean
Palmer, George Herbert
Potter, Elizabeth Stephens Fish (Mrs. Robert Potter)
Potter, Hamilton Fish
Potter, Robert Burnside
Potter, Warwick
Priestley, John Boynton
Rothenstein, William
Russell, John Francis Stanley
Sastre, Susan Sturgis de (Mrs. Celedonio Sastre)
Schneider, Herbert Wallace
Seldes, Gilbert
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Sterner, Lewis George
Strong, Charles Augustus
Sturgis, George
Sturgis, Rosamond Thomas Bennett (Mrs. George Sturgis)
Titus, Edward W.
Unidentified Recipient
Weiss, Paul
Winslow, Mary Williams (Mrs. Frederick Winslow
Wolfson, Harry Austryn
Woodbridge, Frederick James Eugene
 List of Unlocated Letters

The following is a list of letters by George Santayana which were known to

exist, but have not been located by the editors.

To Mr. and Mrs. Jack Ames

Prior to 12 Jun 1936 In 21 Jun 1936 to George Sturgis
To Sarah Ripley (Mrs. Jack) Ames
c. 23 Jul 1936 In 23 Jul 1936 to George Sturgis
To Henri Bergson
Prior to 13 Sep 1911 In 13 Sep 1911 to Charles Augustus Strong
To John Berryman
c. 21 Jan 1951 In 21 Jan 1951 to Robert Lowell
To David and Carol Bidwell
10 Feb 1950 In 11 Feb 1950 to Raymond Bidwell
To Josephine Sturgis Bidwell
January 1945 In 13 Jan 1945 to Rosamond Sturgis
7 Jun 1945 In 7 Jun 1945 to Raymond Bidwell
c. 20 Mar 1946 In 22 Mar 1946 to Raymond Bidwell
To Emile Boutroux
Prior to 21 Dec 1916 In 21 Dec 1916 to John Jay Chapman
To Wendell T. Bush
8 Nov 1914 Mentioned in letter from Bush of 23 Nov 1914
4 Jul 1915 Mentioned in letter from Bush of 23 Aug 1915
To Lawrence Smith Butler
September 1941 Mentioned in Sturgis Family Papers, Houghton Library
To James McKeen Cattell
c. April 1906 In 11 Apr 1906 to Hugo Münsterberg
c. May 1906 In 10 May 1906 to Hugo Münsterberg
To James Bryant Conant
Prior to 14 Apr 1934 In 14 Apr 1934 to George Sturgis
To Daniel MacGhie Cory
9 Sep 1933 (In a letter to William G. Holzberger, Mrs. Cory asked that
this letter not be included, the editors never received copy, and it is not at
Columbia.)
482 Editorial Appendix

To George and Margaret de Cuevas

Dates unknown Two mentioned in 11 Mar 1940 to Cory
To Durant Drake
c. 21 Jul 1917 In 21 Jul 1917 to Charles Augustus Strong
c. 21 Sep 1917 In 21 Sep 1917 to Charles Augustus Strong
c. 3 Oct 1917 In 3 Oct 1917 to Charles Augustus Strong
c. 21 Oct 1917 In 21 Oct 1917 to Charles Augustus Strong
c. 10 Dec 1917 In 10 Dec 1917 to Charles Augustus Strong
To Mr. Hoppin Duffield & Co.
Date unknown In 21 Mar 1922 and 13 May 1922 to Constable &
Company
To Jacques Duron
20 Sep 1933 Cited in Duron’s La Pensée de George Santayana, 87
6 Feb 1939 Cited in Duron’s La Pensée de George Santayana, 518
To Josephine Sturgis Eldridge
Prior to 3 Nov 1922 In 3 Nov 1922 to George Sturgis
To Françoise
c. 5 Aug 1914 In 5 Aug 1914 to Charles Augustus Strong
c. 9 Aug 1914 In 9 Aug 1914 to Charles Augustus Strong
c. 20 Aug 1917 In 20 Aug 1917 to Charles Augustus Strong
c. 30 Apr 1919 In 30 Apr 1919 to Charles Augustus Strong
To George Grady
Date unknown (A letter to George Grady of 25 Jul 1949 is in Special
Collections/Morris Library, Southern Illinois University, and the librarian
knew of the existence of a second letter to Grady which was sold to a
private collector.)
To Carl Sadakichi Hartmann
c. 3 Nov 1922 In 3 Nov 1922 to George Sturgis
To Leslie W. Hopkinson
c. 2 Apr 1940 In 2 Apr 1940 to Nancy Saunders Toy
To Alanson Bigelow Houghton
Two mentioned in 31 Aug 1887 to William Morton Fullerton
To John Galen Howard
Prior to 21 Aug 1882 In 21 Aug 1882 to Howard
To the editor of the Hudson Review
Date unknown. In 17 Apr 1952 to John Hall Wheelock
To Otto Kyllmann
Telegraph of 26 Aug 1935 Mentioned in letter to Kyllmann of same date
To Pierre de Chaignon la Rose
c. 8 Mar 1929 In 8 Mar 1929 to Maurice Firuski
After 10 Mar 1930 In 10 Mar 1930 to Maurice Firuski
 Unlocated Letters 483

To Bruno Lind (Robert C. Hahnel)

c. 31 Jul 1951 In 3 Oct 1951 to Lind
To Herbert Lyman
16 Aug 1940 Mentioned in Sturgis Family Papers, Houghton Library
To Manageress of St. James’s
Prior to 25 Aug 1932 In 25 Aug 1932 to Daniel MacGhie Cory
To Marie
c. 10 Dec 1920 In 10 Dec 1920 to Charles Augustus Strong
c. 10 Apr 1922 In 10 Apr 1922 to Charles Augustus Strong
To Dickinson Miller
c. 1 Feb 1934 In 4 Feb 1934 to Charles Augustus Strong
To William Pepperell Montague
c. 28 Mar 1921 In 28 Mar 1921 to Charles Augustus Strong
To Samuel Eliot Morison
c. 10 Mar 1930 In 10 Mar 1930 to Maurice Firuski
To Andrew Joseph Onderdonk
10 Jan 1940 Mentioned in Sturgis Family Papers, Houghton Library
To James Bissett Pratt
c. 14 Sep 1917 In 14 Sep 1917 to Charles Augustus Strong
To Thornton Delano Roberts
Date unknown In 3 Oct 1951 to Bruno Lind (Robert C. Hahnel)
To José Rodriguez Feo
Date unknown Mentioned in biographies of Wallace Stevens
To Mr. Roelker
c. 10 Apr 1931 In 10 Apr 1931 to Curt John Ducasse
To Arthur Kenyon Rogers
c. 14 Sep 1917 In 14 Sep 1917 to Charles Augustus Strong
To Celedonio Sastre Serrano
3 Dec 1928 In 4 Dec 1928 to George Sturgis
To George Frederick Stout
13 Feb 1912 In 14 Feb 1912 to George Herbert Palmer
23 Feb 1912 In 23 Feb 1912 to George Herbert Palmer
To Charles Augustus Strong
c. 23 Apr 1920 [telegram] In 23 April 1920 to Strong
c. 8 Jan 1929 In 19 Jan 1929 to Daniel MacGhie Cory
To Margaret Strong
c. 3 Sep 1912 In 3 Sep 1912 to Charles Augustus Strong
c. 3 Oct 1916 In 3 Oct 1916 to Charles Augustus Strong
c. 13 Jan 1917 In 13 Jan 1917 to Charles Augustus Strong
To Carol Sturgis (2d wife of George Sturgis)
Date unknown In 10 Mar 1945 to Raymond Bidwell (Written shortly after
484 Editorial Appendix

the death of George Sturgis, probably early 1945.)

To George Sturgis
Postcard between 8 Jun and 17 Jul 1939 In 17 Jul 1939 to George Sturgis
To Josephine Sturgis (sister)
12 Dec 1914 In 14 Dec 1914 to Susan Sturgis de Sastre
Prior to 28 Mar 1915 In 28 Mar 1915 to Susan Sturgis de Sastre
Prior to 29 Jun 1915 In 29 Jun 1915 to Susan Sturgis de Sastre
To Maud Sturgis
Prior to 16 Jan 1924 In 16 Jan 1924 to George Sturgis
To Susan Sturgis de Sastre
13 Aug 1903 13 Aug 1903 to Susan mentions another postcard sent on
this date
24 Apr 1906 25 Apr 1906 to Susan mentions two postcards sent on
24 Apr 1906
24 Sep 1912 Companion to another postcard of 24 Sep 1912
30 Sep 1912 Companion to another postcard of 30 Sep 1912
28 Oct 1913 Companion to another postcard of 28 Oct 1913
To Norman Tweddle
c. 17 Jan 1936 In 17 Jan 1936 to Charles Augustus Strong
To Unidentified Recipients
Prior to 7 Feb 1934 In 7 Feb 1934 to Charles P. Davis
Prior to 1 Jan 1936 In 1 Jan 1936 to Otto Kyllmann
To James Ward
January or early February 1912 In 14 Feb 1912 to George Herbert Palmer
To Bentley Wirt Warren
Correspondence mentioned in 31 May 1933 to George Washburne
Howgate
To Luciano Zampa
c. 14 Sep 1919 In 14 Sep 1919 to Joseph Malaby Dent
INDEX
Abbot, Henry Ward Santayana on, xviii, 44–46, 123, 179–80,
letter(s) to, 172, 178 332, 356
mentioned, xxxvii, xxxix, xlii, xliii, xliv, tariff, 32
334 theological students in Rome, 234
Achilles universities, 269
identified, 15n yacht, Santayana on, 142
wrath of, 13 American Literary Manuscripts: A Checklist of
The Adelphi (journal), 351n Holdings in Academic, Historical, and
“An Aesthetic Soviet” (Santayana), 274, Public Libraries, Museums, and Authors’
274n, 288, 300, 313, 319, 320, 330 Homes in the United States, 371, 379n
Alcazar, 4, 5n American Literature, 371
Alden, John The American Mercury (magazine), 149n
identified, 180n Amory, Harriet. See Potter, Harriet Amory
Mayflower, 178 Anatole France. See Thibault, Jacques
Alderman Library (University of Virginia), Anatole
370 Andersen, Andreas, portrait artist for
Aldo (Strong’s chauffeur), 162, 162n, 195, Santayana, 298
201, 203, 220, 281 Angell, James Rowland
Aldrich, Mr. (unidentified), 341 identified, 182n
All for Love (Dryden), 66n mentioned, 182
America(n) Anno Santo, 229, 230n, 231, 236
books, Santayana requests, 215 Antietam Farm, 3, 129, 135, 183, 226, 237,
business in, 179 313
Catholicism in, 68 Apennines, 236, 237n
characteristics of, 119 Appearances
copyright regulations, 109 and being, 305
critics, Santayana on, 17 creation of, 304
law, Santayana on, 282 as moored to the organism, 273–74
life in, 55–57, 94, 201 Santayana on, 273–74, 304
the mind, 65 sentience and existence, 304
newspapers, Santayana does not read, Arabian Nights. See A Thousand and One
215 Nights
people in, 45, 48, 63, 179 Aristotle, 217
people, Santayana critical of, 212–13 Arnaz, Señor (unidentified), 254
philosophy in, 206, 208 Art, Santayana on, 4
politics, Santayana on, 270 Aryan Society
postulates, 179 presidency, Santayana declines, 294
professors in Rome, 263 Santayana on, 294–95
prohibition in, 57n mentioned, l
publishers, 293 Associationism, 102, 103n
reporters in Rome, 229 Athenaeum (journal), 6, 17, 26, 26n, 63, 87n
sale of Sonnets in, 134, 140n Attention, Santayana on Strong’s view of,
Santayana interested in, 292 271–72
486 The Letters of George Santayana

Augean stables, 333, 334n mentioned, 157

“Auld Lang Syne,” 325, 326n Bentham, Jeremy
Avicenna (philosopher), 187, 188n identified, 103n
Ávila (Spain) mentioned, 102
no freedom for Santayana in, 251 Beppino, 229
Santayana does not settle in, xv Berenson, Bernard
Santayana does not visit, 338 letter(s) to, 265
Santayana might retire in, 257, 269 mentioned, li, 222, 227, 242
Santayana visits, xii, xv, 250–51, 255, Berenson, Mary Whitall Smith (Mrs.
269 Bernard Berenson)
Santayana’s family in, 264–65 I Tatti, Santayana visits, 268
weather in, 251, 253 letter(s) to, 268
mentioned, 34, 43, 50, 121, 212, 213, mentioned, xl, 222, 227, 242, 266
236, 260 Bernanos, Georges
identified, 284n
Sous le soleil de Satan, 283–84
Babbitt, Irving Beyle, Marie Henri [pseud. Stendhal]
identified, 216n identified, 79n
mentioned, 215 mentioned, 79
Baedeker, Karl Bidwell, David Dudley, 250n, 301, 303n
identified, 209n Bidwell, Jane Sturgis, 250n
Italy from the Alps to Naples: Handbook for Bidwell, Josephine Sturgis (Mrs. Raymond
Travellers, 209, 209n Bidwell) (Santayana’s neice)
Bakst, Léon Nikolaevich birth of David Dudley, 301
identified, 242n death of daughter, 118, 119, 127
mentioned, 240 death of first husband, 147
Barber of Seville (Rossini), 30, 30n engaged to Bidwell, 250
Barberini family, 170n grieves, 147
Barlow, Robert Shaw, lviii identified, 21n
Beacon Hill (Boston), 80 inherits father’s books by Santayana,
Beal, Boylston Adams 106
on America, 55 marries Bidwell, 259, 260
identified, 57n mentioned, 20, 79, 80, 92, 112, 128,
letter(s) to, 82, 354 143, 182, 201, 250n
as a sentimentalist, 141 Bidwell, Raymond Brewer
mentioned, xxxix, 64, 77n, 172, 242 photograph of, 264
Beardsley, Aubrey Vincent mentioned, 250n, 260n
identified, 193n Big Chilling (L. P. Smith’s house), 23, 23n
mentioned, 193 Blue Sisters (Little Company of Mary),
The Beautiful (Marshall), Santayana to Santayana resides at, xviii, xli
review, 230, 258 Le Bois sacré, 30, 31n
Bede (the Venerable Bede), 234, 235n Bois de Boulogne (Paris), 105, 106n
Bell, Clive Arthur Howard Bolshevism, lv, 68
identified, 274n Bolshevists, xlviii, lvii, 220
Santayana on, 274 Boni & Liveright (publishers), 215
Bell, Gordon Knox Borrás, José (Santayana’s maternal
not a Grotonian, 94 grandfather)
identified, 95n not an American citizen, 216
Bennett, Miss, 261, 262n receives recognition, 210, 210n
Benson, Arthur Christopher a Spanish subject, 217n
identified, 157n
 Index 487

Boston Daily Evening Transcript, 172, 173n Buddhism, 68

Bourne, Randolph Silliman Budé, Guillaume
identified, 333n identified, 270n
mentioned, 332 l’Association Guillaume Budé, 270,
The Bowery (New York), 193, 193n 270n
Brahmanism, 68 Bunyan, John, 180n
The Bride of Lammermoor (Scott), 224n Burke, Kenneth Duva
Bridges, Monica Waterhouse (Mrs. Robert identified, 154n
Bridges) letter(s) to, 154
trip to America, 213 Bush, Mary Potter (Mrs. Wendell Bush)
mentioned, 235n enjoys Santayana’s writing, 4
Bridges, Robert Seymour letter(s) to, 89
his birthday, 233–34, 234n in Paris, 87
“Come se quando,” 234, 235n mentioned, 42, 43, 135
identified, 64n Bush, Wendell T.
letter(s) to, 163, 212, 233, 256, 355 enjoys Santayana’s writing, 4
New Verse Written in 1921, 356, 356n identified, 5n
“Polly,” 163, 163n letter(s) to, 19, 23, 42, 83, 87, 194
reads Dialogues in Limbo, 256 in Paris, 87
trip to America, 212 in Valladolid, 41, 42
his writing, 355 mentioned, 30, 76, 89, 135, 365n
mentioned, 64 Butler, Geoffrey Gilbert
“British Infertility: An Imperial Problem” identified, 295n
(Inge), Santayana on, 232 mentioned, 294
Broad, Charlie Dunbar Butler, Lawrence Smith
identified, 157n identified, 148n
Santayana disagrees with, 211 letter(s) to, 148, 298
Santayana disappointed in, 159–60 to visit Santayana, 298
mentioned, 157, 159 mentioned, 325
Brooks, Phillips Butler Library (Columbia University), 370
identified, 58n
mentioned, 56
Brooks, Van Wyck Calderón de la Barca, Pedro
Emerson and Others, 331 identified, 144n
identified, 333n Santayana translates, 144
letter(s) to, 331 Campagna di Roma, 171, 172n
mentioned, 333n Campo Verano Cemetery (Rome), xlvii
Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., 44, 44n Canby, Henry Seidel, xlvii
Brown Shipley & Company (Santayana’s Cardiff, Ira D., xxxv
London bank) Catholic philosophy, Santayana on, 219
Santayana’s account with, 180, 181, 182 Catholicism in America, 68
service, Santayana on, 212 Catullus, Gaius Valerius
trouble with mail, 244, 344 identified, 223n
Browning, John Moses Santayana translates, 223, 223n, 363,
identified, 5n 364n
pistol, 4 Causation and the Types of Necessity (Ducasse),
Bruno, Giordano Santayana on, 196n, 196–98
identified, 206n Cavendish-Bentinck, Ottoline Violet Anne
his play, Santayana reads, 205 identified, 356n
mentioned, xli letter to Santayana, 356
488 The Letters of George Santayana

The Century (magazine), 155, 155–56n Christian Science, 339, 339n

Cerda, Fernando de la (unidentified), 251 Cisneros, Francisco Jiménez de
Champs Élysées (Paris), 105, 106n identified, 5n
Chapman, John mentioned, 4
and the Catholic Church, 68 Claudel, Paul
identified, 69n identified, 359n
Notes on the Early History of the Vulgate mentioned, 359
Gospels, 69n Clemens, Samuel L. [pseud. Mark Twain],
Chapman, John Jay xli
and the Aryan Society, l Cleopatra, 17, 18n
identified, 295n Code Napoléon, 167, 167n
letter(s) to, 294 Cohen, Morris, l
Character and Opinion in the United States Colt, Samuel
(Santayana), 4, 5n, 18, 32, 78, 87, identified, 5n
213–14, 259 pistol, 4
“The Character of Hamlet” (Santayana), 85 Columbia University, xlv
Charles Scribner’s Sons (publishers) Columbus, Christopher
The Hermit of Carmel, holds copyright, 76 Columbus’s egg, 196, 198n, 323
identified, 7n identified, 198n
letter(s) to, 6, 27, 76, 96, 107, 131, 132, “Come se quando” (Bridges), Santayana on,
134, 180, 343 234, 235n
releases new edition of Poems, xiii The Complete Poems of George Santayana
Santayana disappointed in, xl, 139–40 (Holzberger), lvi, 370
Santayana suspends publication of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Poems, 131 (Lee), “Introduction to Hamlet ”
mentioned, xxxix, xli, 129, 181, 239, (Santayana), 85n
293, 309, 338 “Concerning Intelligence” (Murry),
Chetwynd, Augusta Robinson (Mrs. Philip Santayana on, 361
Chetwynd) Confucius
her children, Santayana on, 195, 203 identified, 193n
her children, Santayana chaperones, mentioned, 193
202 Confucius (Hartmann), Santayana on, 193
identified, 64n Conger, George Perrigo
Santayana invited to visit England, identified, 329n
232–33, 236, 317, 321 letter(s) to, 329, 336, 344
in Venice, 204 to meet with Santayana and Strong, 336
visits Santayana with children, xii to visit Santayana, 329, 344
mentioned, 64, 159n, 194, 246, 247 Congreve, William
Chetwynd, Betty, 315 identified, 323n
Chetwynd, Philip Santayana on, 323
his children, Santayana on, 195, 203 Conrad, Joseph
his children, Santayana chaperones, 202 identified, 124n
Santayana invited to visit England, mentioned, 123
232–33, 236, 317, 321 Constable and Co. Ltd. (publishers)
in Venice, 204 holds copyright to Poems, 158
mentioned, 64n, 159n, 194, 246 identified, 16n
Chetwynd, Randolph, 159, 160, 315, 317, letter(s) to, 16, 18, 29, 32, 33, 59, 63, 66,
321, 325, 354 73, 75, 77, 84, 86, 88, 91, 111, 116,
Chilswell (Bridges’s house), 213, 356 136, 159, 164, 209, 244, 248, 344, 356
and permission to quote Santayana, 209
as primary publisher, 126
 Index 489

proofs from, 344–45 Santayana on, 65

release new edition of Poems, xiii mentioned, 6
and royalities, 164, 278 Cromwell, Oliver
mentioned, xxxix, 107, 129, 132, 181, identified, 180n
309 mentioned, 178
Cooper, Alice Cecilia Cross, Wilbur Lucius
identified, 28n editor of the Yale Review, 166, 166n
letter(s) to, 28 identified, 166n
Cortina d’Ampezzo (Italy) letter(s) to, 166, 175, 183
Americans in, 207 Cuevas, Elizabeth (Strong’s granddaughter),
Argentineans in, 207 lv
British in, 207, 214 Cuevas, Jorge
Santayana in, xii, 207, 208, 298 identified, 340n
Santayana on, 208, 214, 221, 222, 236, investigated, 341
283 Santayana on, xvii, 339–40, 342–43
weather in, 210, 211, 217, 220, 222, 287 mentioned, 348, 358, 360n
Cory, Daniel MacGhie Culture and Democracy in the United States
assists Santayana, 353 (Kallen), Santayana requests copy,
death of, 370 215, 216n
essay on Santayana, xlv Cumbermould, Marion Cooke. See Russell,
friendship with Santayana, xii–xiii, Marion
xxxix Curzon, George Nathaniel
identified, 314n identified, 105n
letter(s) to, 353, 360 mentioned, 104
The Letters of George Santayana Cushing, Howard Gardiner
(Scribner’s), 369 identified, 142n
as literary executor, 44, 369–70 mentioned, 141
Michael, xlvii Cutting, Bronson Murray
and Realm of Matter, 360, 362 identified, 95n
as Santayana’s disciple, 326, 328, 335, in Oxford, 94
362 in Rome, 94
Santayana and Strong’s secretary, Cutting, William Bayard, Jr.
xlvi–xlvii, 314n, 335 not a Grotonian, 94
Santayana on, xii, 333, 337, 362 identified, 95n
Santayana’s description of, 328 mentioned, 223
travel plans, 360
his writing, xlvii
to visit Santayana, 326 D’Annunzio, Gabriele,
mentioned, xxxiv, xxxvi, xlii, xlvi, liii, identified, 220n
lv, lvi, lviii, 11n, 314, 328, 359, 360n, Le faville del maglio, 220, 220n
372 Dante (Alighieri)
Cory, Margot (Mrs. Daniel Cory) identified, 356n
becomes Santayana’s literary executor, mentioned, 356
370 Darnley, Rose (The Last Puritan), 138, 138n
mentioned, 372 Das Kapital (Marx), 71, 71n
Cranford (Gaskell), Santayana reads, 224, Datum, Santayana on, 349
224n David Copperfield’s Library (Langstaff), 88
The Criterion (journal), xlvii, 351n de Bosis, Lauro
Criticism, Santayana on state of, 265–66 identified, 169n
Croce, Benedetto mentioned, 168
identified, 7n
490 The Letters of George Santayana

de Clarolus (unidentified), 341 mentioned, 104, 215, 239

Dearborn, Sarah (unidentified), 140 Dialogue on George Santayana (ed. Lamont),
Delphic Club (Delta Phi Club), 77, 77n, 135 lvi
Democracy, Santayana does not like, xviii Dialogues in Limbo (Santayana), xiii, 176,
Democritus 176n, 178, 187, 188n, 189, 194, 213,
identified, 188n 225, 227, 234, 238, 242, 244
role in Dialogues in Limbo, Santayana on, dialogue with Avicenna, 187
256 dialogue with Democritus, 187, 188n
mentioned, xli dialogue with Socrates, 187, 188n
Dent & Sons (publishers) errata, 245, 248
identified, 85n proofs, 245, 246, 249
mentioned, 85, 285, 308, 338 sale of, 279
Dent, Hugh Santayana requests copies, 249–50
identified, 285n Santayana sends manuscript, 239, 243
mentioned, 285 Weiss reviews, 281
Dent, Joseph Malaby mentioned, xiii, 176, 177, 178, 187, 189,
death of, 278 194, 213, 215, 217, 225, 227, 228, 234,
identified, 85n 256, 265, 269, 309
letter(s) to, 126 “Dickens” (Santayana), 27, 46, 286
The Descent of Man (Darwin), 325, 325n Dickens, Charles
Destouches, Philippe. See Néricault, identified, 47n
Philippe and philosophy, 52
Dewey, John Santayana on, 88
dislikes Santayana’s review, 327 mentioned, 334
Experience and Nature , 239, 240n, Dickinson, Goldsworthy Lowes, xxxix
242–43, 251 Dickinson, Zenas Clark
Fite on, 266 identified, 102n
identified, 9n letter(s) to, 101
and naturalism, Santayana on, 327–28 Die Philosophie des als ob (Vaihinger), 71
Reconstruction in Philosophy, 105, 106n Die Philosophie des Grafen Keyserling (Adolph),
Santayana on, 7–8, 261 317, 317n
Santayana reads, 269 Dixon, Roland Burrage
Santayana’s review, 243, 249, 251, 253, identified, 226n
259, 260–61, 263, 327, 364, The Racial History of Man, 225
mentioned, 40n Domus Spinozana, (conference), li
“Dewey’s Naturalistic Metaphysics” Don Quixote (Cervantes), 312, 312–13
(Santayana), 240n Drake, Durant
The Dial (journal) article on, Santayana reads, 350
articles, Santayana requests copies of, Essays in Critical Realism, 8
313, 316, 320 identified, 9n
“Dialogues” published in, 176, 176n, 177, The Mind and Its Place in Nature, 193–94,
178, 187, 188, 189 215, 217, 227, 269 201, 208, 209, 214
letter(s) to the editor, 149 to be in Paris, 194, 199, 200, 203, 205
Santayana on, 288 philosophical partnership with Strong,
Santayana requests proofs, 176, 225 177, 201
Santayana’s articles in, 30, 86n, 274, Santayana criticizes, 271–72
274n, 317 Santayana does not want to review, 243
Santayana’s reviews in, 67, 67n, 85 Santayana reads, 269, 271
Santayana’s subscription to, 149, 154 mentioned, 76, 209, 272, 284
“Soliloquies” published in, 17, 18n, 27, Dryden, John
28n, 30, 46 All for Love, 66n
 Index 491

identified, 66n Egotism in German Philosophy (Santayana)

Santayana quotes, 65 to be translated, 308
mentioned, 65 mentioned, 184
Du Bos, Charles Einstein, Albert
identified, 79n identified, 42n
mentioned, 78 relativity, Santayana on, 141, 142
Ducasse, Curt John Santayana does not read, 138
Causation and the Types of Necessity, mentioned, 41, 106, 215
Santayana on, 196, 350 Eldredge, Arthur
identified, 196n death of, 147, 148n
letter(s) to, 196, 206, 245, 274, 350 death of daughter, 119
and liberalism in ethics, 245 identified, 51n
Ontological Liberalism, Santayana on, 206 his illness, 51, 79, 127, 147
Santayana reads, 245 Santayana never met, 147
theory on teleology, 245 Santayana on, 147
Duffield and Company (publishers), mentioned, 112, 201, 201n
holds copyright, 174 Eldredge, Arthur, Jr.
sells copyright, 174 identified, 127n
mentioned, 63 mentioned, 127
Dunster House Bookshop (Cambridge), Eldredge, Josephine Sturgis (Mrs. Arthur
190, 229 Eldredge) See Bidwell, Josephine
Durant,William James Sturgis
identified, 299n Eliot, T[homas] S[tearns], xlvi
The Story of Philosophy, 298, 299n Elizabeth. See Russell, Mary Annette
Duval, 30, 31n Beauchamp
Ellis, John MacTaggart
identified, 158n
Earlham (Lubbock), 291 on Santayana’s poetry, 157
Eaton, Charles Curtis Emerson and Others (Brooks)
identified, 286n Santayana on, 331–32
mentioned, 285 mentioned, 333n
Eddy, Mary Baker Emerson, Ralph Waldo
identified, 58n Commemorative Week, 85, 85n
mentioned, 56 identified, 311n
“The Editing of Historical Documents” mentioned, 311
(Tanselle), 379n Emerson Hall (Harvard), 77
Editorial Voluntad (publishers) “Emerson’s Poems” (Santayana), 85, 85n
translation project, Santayana on, 164, England
184 like America, 213
mentioned, 164n has changed, 213
Edman, Irwin description of, 162
identified, 19n no emotions in, 152
visits Santayana, 19 Santayana
mentioned, xlix, l disappointed in, xiv, xv
Edward VII (king of England) feelings on leaving, 163
identified, 70n impressions of, 232–33, 257, 356
mentioned, 69 his love for, 354
Edwards, Agustín politics in, 270
identified, 343n does not settle in, xiv
mentioned, 342, 355 to settle in, 22, 82, 213
492 The Letters of George Santayana

England (Continued) identified, 15n

thoughts on staying, 151–52 Ficke, Arthur Davison, li
does not visit, 246, 257, 292 Fiesole
visits, 151 Santayana on, 37, 125, 323
strikes in, 269 Santayana visits, 31, 162, 165, 194,
weather in, xv, 157, 162 211, 221, 338
English mentioned, 69, 99, 226
critics, Santayana on, 17 Figueroa y Torres, Álvaro de
language, preservation of the, 32 identified, 232n
Enquête sur la monarchie (Maurras), Santayana on, 231–32
Santayana on, 270 Figures in Modern Literature (Priestley),
Enrichetta (Strong’s servant), 29, 287 Santayana on, 218, 219, 219n
Erskine, John Firuski, Maurice
identified, 3n identified, 174n
letter(s) to, 3 letter(s) to, 215, 225, 226, 237, 291, 312
Escalera, Mercedes de la sends books to Santayana, 225, 226
identified, 148n mentioned, 174, 190, 269
visits Rome, xii, 246, 247, 249 Fite, Warner
mentioned, 148, 167, 246, 252 identified, 267n
Essays in Critical Realism (ed. Drake) letter(s) to, 266
contributors to, 8n Moral Philosophy, 266, 267n
Santayana reads, 7 “The Flight of Helen” (Santayana), never
“Three Proofs of Realism,” 8n, 64 published, 318, 318n
mentioned, 42 Fontenay, Madame de, 150
Essays of To-Day: An Anthology (Pritchard), Forbes, J[ohn] Murray, 81, 81n
86, 87n Forbes, William, 110, 111n, 123
Essence Forbes, William Cameron “Cam”
and existence, 305 identified, 81n
and incandescence, 306–7 mentioned, 81, 110, 111n
Santayana on, 349 Forum (journal)
mentioned, 188–89, 211, 214, 322 mentioned, 67n
Euclidean geometry, Santayana on, 141–42 Santayana’s review in, 67
Europe, Santayana on, 180 “A Fragment from Catullus” (Santayana),
Existence 223n, 363, 364n
and intuition, 273 Francis of Assisi, Saint
principle of, 304–5 identified, 142–43n
Santayana defines, 206–7 mentioned, 141, 234
and sense of one’s own, 305–6 Frazer, James George
Experience and Nature (Dewey), Santayana identified, 262n
reviews, 239, 260, 261 mentioned, 261
French politics, Santayana on, 270
Freud, Sigmund
Fascism, xviii, 35n, 36, 38, 137 Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 138n
Fascists, xlviii, lv identified, 7n
Feeling versus intuition, 273–74 Santayana reads, 138
Felton, Cornelius Conway Santayana writes article on, 144, 149,
his drawings, Santayana on, 286 150n
identified, 286n mentioned, 6
mentioned, 285–86 Freudian phenomena, 172
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb Freyer, Grattan, lvi
and existence, 14
 Index 493

Fry, Roger mentioned, 179

identified, 266n Gosse, Edmund
mentioned, 265 essay on Soliloquies, 130, 131, 132,
Fuller, Benjamin Apthorp Gould 133–34, 135
on America, 55 identified, 130n
appointed professor at University of Gourmont, Remy de
Cincinnati, 189, 190 identified, 71n
History of Greek Philosophy, 69, 117, 190 Santayana reads, 71
identified, 5n The Grace of Lambs: Stories (Komroff),
letter(s) to, 31, 269 Santayana on, 320
reviews of book, 189 Graham, R. Cunningham, 3, 5n
mentioned, lii, 70, 76, 135, 168, 171, 176, Greco, El
183, 237 identified, 138n
Fuller, Wesley mentioned, 137
identified, 364n Greek philosophy
letter(s) to, 363 and the ideal of the “life of reason,”
Fullerton, William Morton, xl xxxiv
relationship to Indian philosophy, 256
Santayana on, 256
Galli, Gallo Greenslet, Ferris
identified, 177n identified, 200n
mentioned, 176–77 letter(s) to, 200
Gardiner, Robert Hallowell, Jr. The Magic Carpet: Poems for Travellers,
identified, 34n selected by Mrs. Waldo Richards, 200,
power of attorney for Santayana, 33–34, 200n
54 Gregory, Alyse (Mrs. Llewelyn Powys)
Santayana’s executor, 50 identified, 188n
mentioned, 239 letter(s) to, 187, 188, 225, 228
Gardner, Isabella Stewart (Mrs. John “Jack” Gretchen (Faust), 55, 57n
Gardner) Groton School, 94, 95n
identified, 57n Grundy, Mrs., 127, 127n
mentioned, 56, 68, 310, 311n Guénon, René
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Loos), identified, 275–76n
Santayana reads, 286 Santayana reads, 275
George Santayana (Howgate), lvi mentioned, 323
George Santayana: A Biography (McCormick), Gwinn, Frances (unidentified), 76
xxxvii, lvi
Germans, in Venice, 204
Gibraltar, 200 Hades
Giotta (di Bondone) identified, 15n
identified, 348n mentioned, 13
mentioned, 347 Hammond, William Alexander
Giuseppe (Strong’s servant), 287 identified, 230n
God, experience versus knowledge of, 266 letter(s) to, 230, 235, 258
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Hanlon, Miss (unidentified)
identified, 91n letter(s) to, 155
mentioned, 90 Hardy, Thomas
Golden Day (Mumford), Santayana on, liii, identified, 65n
310–11 mentioned, 65
Gompers, Samuel
identified, 180n
494 The Letters of George Santayana

Hartley, David, 103n Hermant, Abel

Hartmann, Carl Sadakichi identified, 270n
comradeship, does not exist for, 330 Platon, 269
Confucius, 193, 193n The Hermit of Carmel (Santayana)
identified, 93n as part of Poems, 75, 76
Japanese Rhythms: Tanka, Haikai and Herodotus’s view of history, 191
Dodoitsu Form, 290, 290n Hervieu, Paul, 262n
letter(s) to, 193, 290, 330 High Table (Cambridge), xiv, 354, 355n
Passport to Immortality, 330, 330n Hillyer, Robert Silliman
Santayana on, 331 identified, 165n
Santayana’s support of, 92, 290, 331 letter(s) to, 165
Harvard Bridge, 55 History of Greek Philosophy (Fuller), 69, 117,
Harvard Club, 325 190
Harvard Lampoon History of Tom Jones (Fielding), 29, 30n
Santayana “belonged” to, xxxviii, 45, Hobbes, Thomas
46n identified, 15n
mentioned, 46, 72, 285–86, 290, 325 mentioned, 15
The Harvard Monthly, 46n, 311 Hoffman, Mr. and Mrs. Charles
Harvard Union, 77, 135, 364 Gouverneur, 47, 48n, 89
Harvard University Holmes, Oliver Wendell
business school at, 290 identified, 115n
department of philosophy, 190 mentioned, 115
Hasty Pudding Club, xxxviii, 202, 202n Holt, Edwin Bissell
philosophical congress at, 298 identified, 63n
Santayana and mentioned, 62, 63n
his classmates from, 334 Holzberger, William
his class photograph, 96 The Complete Poems of George Santayana,
declined to speak at, 182 370
his fellowship for, 282, 283n, 302 and The Letters of George Santayana
his friends from, xxxvii, xxxviii, 171 (MIT), 371
his retirement from Harvard, liii mentioned, 372
his status as a professor at, xxxiii, Homer
310 identified, 15n
thoughts on, 56, 85, 299 Santayana cites, 13, 94
his undergraduate years, 45, 310 mentioned, 191
the younger generation, 325 Hood, Frederic Clark
Strong’s fellowship for, 302 identified, 127n
Sturgis’s children to attend, 325 mentioned, 127
win over Yale, 113, 301 Hook, Sidney, xlix, lviii
mentioned, 31, 55, 189, 190 Hoppin, Mr., of Duffield & Company, 63,
Harvard University Press, 190, 239, 280 75, 76, 174n
Hasty Pudding Club (Harvard), xxxviii, Hotels
202, 202n in Cortina d’Ampezzo, 205, 208, 220,
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, xxxix 221, 278, 292, 295
Hazlitt, William in England, 152, 153, 157, 160, 162
identified, 363n in France, 127
mentioned, 362 Hotel Bristol, Santayana resides in, xvii
Heidegger, Martin, xxxiv in Italy, 162, 292
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich in Nice, 91, 92, 106, 111, 112, 120, 125,
and God, 266 129
identified, 267n in Paris, 69, 74, 80, 82, 87, 89, 99, 145,
 Index 495

148, 162, 247, 262, 338, 346n Interpretations of Poetry and Religion
in Rome, xi, 34, 35, 36, 38, 42, 44, 60, (Santayana), 279, 279n, 285
67, 168, 169, 171, 185, 190, 200, “Introduction to Hamlet” (Santayana), 85,
222, 225, 227, 229, 236, 260, 264, 85n, 279, 280, 284, 285
267, 279, 287, 292, 298, 299, 347, Intuition, Santayana on, 277, 305, 306, 307
353, 354, 361 Iona (Inner Hebrides), 234, 235n
Santayana on, 129, 157, 168, 171, 204, Irazusta, Julio
212, 214, 220, 221, 222, 236, 269, 277, identified, 314n
278 mentioned, 313
in Venice, 203, 204, 292, 295 Irrationalism, 102, 103n
mentioned, 233 Isonzoff, Prince (unidentified), 343
Houghton Library (Harvard University), Italian architecture, Santayana on, 217–18
370 Italian Platonists, 179
Housman, A[lfred] E[dward] Italians, Santayana likes, 214
identified, 142n Italy
his writing, Santayana on, xiv, lvi, 141, architecture of, Santayana on, 217–18,
218–19 297
mentioned, xlii, xliv Barberini family, 170n
Housman, Laurence Bernini’s Triton Fountain, xvii
identified, 125n the campanile of Venice, 136, 138n
Santayana on, 125 Church of Santa Maria in Via, 168,
Howard, John Galen, xxxviii 169n
Hulsean Lectures (Cambridge), 289, 289n life in, 201
Humanism, Santayana on political, 256–57 the Piazza Barberini, xvii, 185
Humanities Research Center (University of the Piazza Colonna, 168, 169n
Texas, Austin), 370 post offices in, 215, 244
Hume, David Santayana in, 23, 25, 33, 347–48
identified, 198n theological students in, 234
mentioned, 197 Italy from the Alps to Naples: Handbook for
Husserl, Edmund Travellers (Baedeker), 209, 209n
his grammar, Santayana on, 327
identified, 323n
his writing, Santayana on, 326 James, Henry, xxxix, xli, xliv, lvi
mentioned, 323 James, Henry, III
letter(s) to, 5
and the Letters of William James, 5, 6n
Iago, 55, 57n James, William
Idealists, Santayana on, 211–12 identified, 6n
Indian philosophy on religious experiences, 324
relationship to Greek philosophy, 256 mentioned, 312
Santayana on, 256 Japanese Rhythms: Tanka, Haikai and Dodoitsu
mentioned, 68, 68n Form (Hartmann), Santayana receives
Inge, William Ralph copy of, 290
British Infertility: An Imperial Problem, Joseph (unidentified), 160, 196
232, 232n Josephine, Empress of France
his Hulsean Lectures, 289, 289n identified, 192n
identified, 232n mentioned, 192
The Platonic Tradition in English Religious Journal of Philosophy (Columbia)
Thought, 289n “Some Meanings of the Word ‘Is,’”
mentioned, 284, 287, 291, 299 194–95, 195n, 196
496 The Letters of George Santayana
Journal of Philosophy (Continued)
Dewey’s Naturalistic Metaphysics,
Santayana’s review, 240n
“Soliloquy” in, 19
mentioned, 206, 240, 243, 261
Kallen, Horace Meyer
Culture and Democracy in the United States,
215
identified, 40n
letter(s) to, 39, 292, 296, 299, 323, 338
to be married, 323
his philosophy, Santayana on, 324
preface for, Santayana to write, 299
and reproductions, 338–39
reviews Fuller’s book, 189
to visit Santayana, xii, 296–97, 299
Why Religion, 323, 325n
his writing, Santayana on, 39–40, 41
mentioned, xxxix, xlviii, l, lvii, 215
Knox, John, xli
Komroff, Manuel
The Grace of Lambs: Stories, 320n
identified, 320n
letter(s) to, 320
Kyllmann, Otto
identified, 85n
letter(s) to, 95, 98, 103, 109, 114, 116,
118, 120, 121, 122, 129, 131, 133, 136,
146, 147, 184, 227, 238, 245, 279, 280,
284, 289, 293, 294, 300, 308, 309,
314, 315, 318, 319, 328, 329, 335, 336,
345, 346, 347, 352, 360
mentioned, xxxix, 84, 112, 248
La Bruyère, Jean de
identified, 79n
mentioned, 79
Lamprecht, Sterling Power
identified, 175n
letter(s) to, 174, 175
visits Santayana, 175
Langstaff, John Brett
David Copperfield’s Library, 89n
letter(s) to, 88
Lapsley, Gaillard Thomas
discussion with Santayana, 173
identified, 64n
Santayana on, 157
Santayana to visit, 153
Santayana’s mentor, 354
mentioned, xiv, 64, 157
Larkin, Mr. (unidentified), 342
La Rochefoucauld, François de
identified, 79n
mentioned, 79
La Rose, Pierre de Chaignon
designs Lucifer, xiii, 174n, 190, 240–42
identified, 174n
Lapsley and Santayana discuss, 173
letter(s) to, 173, 223, 240
Santayana invites him to visit, 174
Santayana to send copies of his books,
174
mentioned, 215, 225, 237, 291, 312
Lascelles, Henry George Charles, 70n
Last Poems (Housman) 141, 142n
The Last Puritan (Santayana)
the Black Swan (yacht), 110–11, 111n
love scene in, 138
Santayana discusses, 25, 115, 172, 178,
201, 257
Santayana’s feelings on, 123
Santayana’s research on yachts, 122–23
mentioned, xiii, xxxiii, xlii, lvi, 25n,
57, 113, 119, 174, 194, 207, 269,
278, 287, 312, 321, 331, 338, 348
The Latin School Register (Boston), 223, 363
La Traviata (Verdi), Santayana attends
performance of, 303
Lawton, George
identified, 65n
letter(s) to, 64
Santayana’s advice to, 65
League of Nations, in Rome, 229
League of Nations, Today and Tomorrow
(Kallen), 39, 40n
Lee, Sidney
The Complete Works of William
Shakespeare, 85, 280
death of, 279
identified, 85n
Le Langage (Vendryes), 71, 71n
L’Enfernat, Mademoiselle de (unidentified),
30
L’Énigme pièce en deux actes, en prose
(Hervieu), Santayana attends, 262,
262n
 Index 497

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, lvii Loos, Anita

Léon, Xavier Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, 286
identified, 170n identified, 286n
letter(s) to, 170 Lovejoy, Arthur Oncken
Lerolle, Guillaume, 78, 79n and Essays in Critical Realism, 7
The Letters of George Santayana (MIT) identified, 8n
annotation of, 377–78 Love’s Labour’s Lost (Shakespeare), 98, 98n
editorial policy, 367–69, 370–78 Lowell, Abbott Lawrence, lii
Holzberger and, 370 Lowell, Amy
Margot Cory and, 370 identified, 57n
origins and development, 369–70 mentioned, 56
mentioned, 372 Lowell, Robert, xxxix, lvi
Letters of William James (H. James), 6n Lubbock, Percy
Lettres à Zoé sur l’histoire des philosophies Earlham, 291
(Reinach), 317, 317n identified, 291n
Liberalism in ethics, Santayana on, 245 Lucia di Lammermoor (Donizetti), Santayana
Life of Reason (Santayana) attends, 224, 224n
errata in, 73, 75, 77 Lucifer (Santayana)
“Preface to the Second Edition,” 73, 75, design, Santayana on, 237, 240–42
77 misprints in, 241
Santayana on, 14 as an opera, 240, 241
mentioned, 126, 309, 310, 329 Santayana requests copies of, 237, 269
Lindbergh, Charles Augustus Santayana’s impression of, 173
identified, 338n mentioned, 174, 174n, 178, 190, 215,
mentioned, 337 242, 312, 318
L’io nella filosofia germanica (trans. Zampa), Lycurgus, lvii
84n Lyman, Herbert, xliii, 77n, 172
Lippmann, Walter Lyon, Richard C., xxxiv
identified, 58n
is Jewish, 56
mentioned, xlix MacArthur, John Roofe, 177, 177n
Little Essays (Santayana) MacKensy, Mr. (unidentified), 41
“Little Essays on Materialism and Madrid
Morals” (Part V), 279 Josephine considers setting up house, 50
Santayana requests copies, 248 Santayana invited to give lecture, 189,
and Smith, 16–17, 126 190
to be translated, 308 The Magic Carpet: Poems for Travellers, selected
and an unknown admirer, 242 by Mrs. Waldo Richards, Santayana’s
mentioned, 18, 22, 29, 242, 294 verses in, 200
Livy (Titus Livius), 220, 221n Mahmud II (sultan of Turkey)
Loeser, Charles, his friendship with identified, 192n
Santayana, li mentioned, 192
London Mercury (journal), 17, 30, 60, 144, “Marginal Notes on Civilization in the
234, 261 United States” (Santayana), 67n, 86
London Times, 150, 219 Marichalar, Antonio
“A Long Way Round to Nirvana” identified, 184n
(Santayana), 149, 150n, 154 review of Santayana, 308
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth seeks advice on books to translate, 184
The Courtship of Miles Standish, 178 Spanish translator, 184, 308
identified, 180n mentioned, 313
498 The Letters of George Santayana

Marie (Strong’s housekeeper in Paris) mentioned, 65

identified, 15n Merrill, Moses, xxxviii
her wages, 259 Mill, James, 103n
mentioned, 12, 29, 67, 69, 70, 74, 211, Mill, John Stuart
246, 281, 334, 340 identified, 198n
Marini (hotel), 35, 44 mentioned, 197
Mark Twain’s Letters (ed. Branch, Frank, Miller, Dickinson Sargeant
Sanderson), 373, 379n identified, 19n
“The Marriage of Venus” (Santayana), 318, “Mr. Santayana and William James,” 19,
318n 19n
Marshall, Henry Rutgers Mind (journal)
The Beautiful, 230 described, 75n
identified, 230n mentioned, 74
review, thanks Santayana for, 258 The Mind and Face of Bolshevism
Santayana reviews, 235 (Fülöp-Miller), 364, 365n
Marx, Karl Mind and Its Place in Nature (Drake), 208,
Das Kapital, 71, 71n 209
identified, 71n Mitchel, Mrs. (unidentified), 66
mentioned, lviii Moby-Dick (Melville), Santayana on, 362
Mary, Princess of England, 70n Molière. See Poquelin, Jean Baptiste
La Mascotte (Audran), 91, 91n Monsieur Brotonneau (de Caillavet and de
“Masks” (Santayana), 86, 87n Flers), Santayana attends, 262, 262n
Mason, Fanny (unidentified), 55, 56 Montague, William Pepperell
Massingham, Henry William identified, 15n
identified, 26n Santayana asked to review his book,
mentioned, 26 259
Maurras, Charles “Variation, Heredity, and
Enquête sur la monarchie, 270 Consciousness,” 14
identified, 270n The Ways of Knowing; or, The Methods of
McDougall, William Philosophy, 259
identified, 58n mentioned, 63, 224, 269, 333
mentioned, 56, 102 Monte Carlo, 108
McDowall, Arthur Sydney Monthly Criterion (journal), 351n
identified, 18n Moore, George Edward, li, 63n
“Three Philosopher-Prophets,” 17 Moore, Marianne
Meaux (France), 105, 106n identified, 288n
“The Mediterranean” (Santayana’s Ode V), letter(s) to, 288, 300, 313, 316, 319, 320
200n Moral Philosophy (Fite), Santayana on, 266
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Wagner), More Trivia (Smith), 78
53, 53n Morgan, John Pierpont
Melville, Herman identified, 182n
identified, 333n mentioned, 181
mentioned, 332 Morley, Sylvanus Griswold
Mencken, H. L. letter(s) to, 186
identified, 214n Sonnets and Poems of Anthero de Quental,
mentioned, 149n, 213 186, 187n
Mercier, Désiré Joseph his translations, Santayana on, 186–87
identified, 198n Morning Post, 97, 97–98n
mentioned, 196 Mortimer, Charles Raymond Bell
Meredith, George identified, 31n
identified, 65n letter(s) to, 104
 Index 499

mentioned, 30, 89 letter(s) to, 149

Morton, Benjamin Alexander Nation (journal), 17, 26, 26n, 63, 155n, 202n
identified, 192n Neo-critical realism, Santayana on, 228
letter(s) to, 191 Neo-realism, 62, 63n, 211
The Veiled Empress, an Unacademic Néricault, Philippe [pseud. Philippe
Biography, 192n Destouches]
his view of history, Santayana on, identified, 262n
191–92 mentioned, 261
Moult, Thomas New Adelphi (journal), 351, 351n, 352
identified, 158n New Criterion (journal), 351, 351n
includes Santayana’s verse in anthology, New School for Social Research
158 described, 40n
letter(s) to, 158 mentioned, 40
“Mr. Santayana and William James” New Verse Written in 1921 (Bridges),
(Miller), 19, 19n Santayana on, 356
Mumford, George Saltonstall The New York Review of Books, 371
identified, 311n The New York Times Book Review, 371
mentioned, 310 New York Yacht Club, 142, 143n
Mumford, James Gregory Nice (France)
identified, 311n nature in, Santayana on, 143
mentioned, 310 Santayana in, 92, 93, 95, 104, 117, 128,
Mumford, Lewis 137
Golden Day, lvii, 310–11, 311n Santayana on, 139
identified, 311n weather in, 91, 93, 104, 106, 108,
letter(s) to, 310 112–13, 114, 117, 124, 125, 127, 137,
mentioned, liii, 334 138–39, 143, 144
Münsterberg, Margarete Nichols, Edward Hall
articles on Santayana, 202 identified, 127n
identified, 202n Nichols Memorial Fund, 127
Murchie, Guy Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, xlii
identified, 57n Norton, Sally (unidentified), 55
mentioned, 55 Notes on the Early History of the Vulgate
Murry, John Middleton Gospels (Chapman), 68, 69n
“Concerning Intelligence,” 361, 361n
identified, 26n
letter(s) to, 26, 351, 352, 361 O’Connell, William Henry
and The New Adelphi, 353, 358 identified, 57n
mentioned, 63 mentioned, 56, 68
Museo Nazionale delle Terme, 168, 169n “On My Friendly Critics” (Santayana), 19n,
Mussolini, Benito 23
identified, 297n “On Self-Government” (Santayana), 188n
mentioned, xviii, lv, 296 Onderdonk, Andrew Joseph
“The Mutability of Aesthetic Categories” identified, 44n
(Santayana), 230, 230n his mother, Santayana on, 261, 262n
in Paris, 70
to visit Santayana, xii, 44, 49, 67, 69,
Napoleon I (emperor of France) 208–9, 236, 263
his divorce, 192 visits America, 217
identified, 192n mentioned, 249, 262n, 315
Nathan, George Jean
identified, 149n
500 The Letters of George Santayana

Ontological liberalism, 206 Phelps, William Lyon

Orcutt, William Dana identified, 77n
identified, 285n mentioned, xl, liv, 76, 135
mentioned, 284, 285 Phi Beta Kappa, Santayana does not lecture
The Origin of Species (Darwin), 325, 325n at, 159, 182
Origo, Antonio, 223, 223n “Philosophers at Court” (Santayana), 318,
Origo, Iris Margaret Cutting (Mrs. Antonio 318n
Origo), 223, 223n The Philosophical Club (Harvard), xxxviii
“Overheard in Seville” (Santayana), 300n, The Philosophical Society, 160
300n, 313, 316 Philosophical Review (journal), Santayana
The Oxford Circus (Miles and Mortimer), requests copies from, 258
104, 104n Philosophy, Santayana on, 219
Oxford (England) The Philosophy of Spinoza (Wolfson), 89
the George (tearoom), Santayana visits, Picard, Alfred Maurice
214 identified, 30n
Santayana on, 82, 163 pamphlets by, 29
mentioned, 142, 151 Pilgrim’s Progress (Bunyan), 179
Oxford University, invites Santayana to Pincio (Rome), 41, 41n, 194, 234, 303, 354
lecture, xiv Pinsent, 125, 125n, 189, 211, 278, 296
Oxford University Press, 294 Pius XI, 236, 237n, 296
Plato
his contempt for the image of an image,
Painlevé, Paul 65
identified, 42n Crito, li
mentioned, 41 and essences, xxxiv
Page, David, lvii identified, 65n
Palatine (Rome), 41, 41n mentioned, 179
Palmer, George Herbert Platon (Hermant), Santayana on, 269
interested in Santayana’s poetry, 158 Platonism and the Spiritual Life (Santayana),
letter(s) to, 158 design, Santayana on, 318
mentioned, li, 182 proofs, 314, 315, 317, 319
Papini, Giovanni review of, 335
Dizionario dell’omo salvatico, 220, 221n and royalities, 293
identified, 220–21n Santayana finishes, 289, 291
Paris Santayana on, 299, 301
Santayana not returning to, 139 Santayana receives copies, 328
Strong and Santayana’s apartment in, xi, Santayana requests copies, 316
xvi, 67, 70, 204, 212, 233, 246, 247, specimen pages, 293, 296, 300–301,
249, 260 308, 309
weather in, 74, 83, 93, 346 mentioned, xiii, 284, 312, 351
mentioned, 213, 236 The Pleasures of Architecture (Williams-Ellis),
Peirce, Charles Sanders 226
identified, 312n Plotinus
his unpublished materials, Santayana identified, 270n
on, 312 translated into French, 270
“Penitent Art” (Santayana), 86 Poems of Today (Cooper), 28, 28n
Perry, Ralph Barton Poems: Selected by the Author and Revised
identified, 42n (Santayana)
mentioned, 41, 63n complications with publisher, 114
Persons and Places (Santayana), xiv, xxxvii, copyright, 158
xliv, lvi, 201, 202n, 210, 250, 333 duty on, 129
 Index 501

errata, 130, 131, 132, 133, 133n, 134, Potter, Robert Burnside
135, 142 on America, 55
preface to, 95, 96, 114, 129–30, 130n, his children, 199
132, 133 not a Grotonian, 94
publication of, 64n, 76, 139–40 identified, 4n
Santayana dislikes cover, 130, 132, 133, letter(s) to, 93, 110, 122, 141
142 Santayana has present sent to, 226
Santayana receives copies of, 146 his writing, Santayana on, 141
Santayana refutes accuracy of review, mentioned, xii, xxxix, 76, 129, 135, 140,
130, 132 185, 237, 313
Santayana requests copies, 134, 140, 159 Potter, Warwick (brother of R. B. Potter)
signed by Santayana, 92, 96, 111, 122 identified, 57n
mentioned, 77, 111, 121, 133, 134, 135, mentioned, 55
142, 241, 293 Potter, Warwick (son of R. B. Potter),
Poetry, Santayana on, 186 letter(s) to, 47
The Poet’s Testament (Santayana), 163, 163n Santayana describes, 55, 93, 94
Poincaré, Raymond visits with Santayana, 93, 100
identified, 160n mentioned, xii, 124, 198, 199
mentioned, 160 Poulton, Edward Bagnall, 160, 161n
“Polly” (Bridges), Santayana on, 163 La Prensa (Buenos Aires), 86
Polonius, 269, 270n Priestley, John Boynton
Pope, Alexander Figures in Modern Literature, 218, 219n
identified, 66n identified, 219n
mentioned, 65 letter(s) to, 218
Poquelin, Jean Baptiste [pseud. Molière] Pritchard, Frances Henry
identified, 206n Essays of To-Day: An Anthology, 86, 87n
Le Mariage forcé, 205, 206n identified, 87n
Potter, Austin Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society
identified, 81n (periodical), 14, 15n
mentioned, 81 Protestant philosophy, Santayana on, 219
Potter, Elizabeth Stephens Fish (Mrs. Proust, Marcel
Robert Potter) identified, 363n
Antietam Farm, 3, 5n Santayana on, 362
her children, 199 Psychic essence of matter, Santayana on
identified, 4n Strong’s view of, 271–72
letter(s) to, 3, 198 Pythagoras, lvii
Santayana’s friendship with, xlii
mentioned, xxxix, 76, 94, 124, 129, 135,
237 Quental, Antero Tarquínio de
Potter, Hamilton Fish identified, 187n
identified, 185n mentioned, 186
letter(s) to, 185
Santayana on, 198–99
to visit Santayana, 185, 194 Ranieri, Raniero (unidentified), 49
mentioned, xii Raymond, Harry Howard, 263, 265n
Potter, Harriet Amory (Mrs. Warwick The Realm of Essence (Santayana)
Potter) American edition delayed, 364
engagement to Warwick Potter, 47, 55 announcement for, 336
Santayana describes, 55, 94 index for, 346, 347
visits with Santayana, 100 manuscript, Santayana sends, 329, 331,
mentioned, 48n, 124 333
502 The Letters of George Santayana

misprints in, 346, 347 mentioned, 247, 247n

“Preface to Realms of Being,” 166, 166n,
196
proofs, 335, 338, 345
published, 353
Santayana requests copies, 352, 356,
360
Santayana’s work on, 322–23
specimen page, 335
mentioned, xiii, 196, 275, 285, 350, 351,
354, 355–56
The Realm of Matter (Santayana), xiii, xlvi,
106, 143, 215, 275, 283, 330, 353, 356,
358, 360, 364
The Realm of Spirit (Santayana), xiii, xxxvi
The Realm of Truth (Santayana), xiii
The Realms of Being (Santayana)
articles, Santayana requests copies of,
228
as the magnum opus, 25, 111, 113, 199
preface, 175
Santayana requests proofs, 176
Santayana’s work on, 74, 227–28, 275,
278, 355–56
and the Yale Review, 166, 183
mentioned, xiii, xxxiv, 30, 31, 38, 53,
57, 67, 87, 87n, 95, 104, 105, 115, 126,
144, 160, 175, 178, 189, 194, 196, 205,
206, 207, 210, 213, 216, 261, 269, 312,
330
Reichhardt, Hans
identified, 50n
in Paris, 70
in Rome, 67
visits Santayana, xii, 49, 227, 229, 232,
236, 267, 337, 338
The Relation of Sociology to Economics (Small),
Santayana reads, 225, 226n
Relativity, Santayana on, 275
Religion, Santayana on science and, 256–57
“The Revival of Intolerance” (Santayana),
never published, 313, 314n
“Revolution in Science” (Santayana),
352–53, 353n, 358, 361
Richards, Gertrude Moore (Mrs. Waldo
Richards), 200
Richmond, Arthur Lavalle, 56, 58n
Richmond, Mrs. Arthur, 56
Rigacci, Dino, lv
Rigoletto (Verdi)
Santayana attends, 168, 169n
The Riverside Press, 85, 280
Robbins Library (Harvard), 77, 135, 183
Robinson, Moncure
identified, 182n
on Santayana’s finances, 181
mentioned, xii, 315
Rockefeller, John D., Jr.
identified, 358n
mentioned, 358
Rockefeller, John Davison
disapproves of Margaret’s marriage,
342, 358
identified, 343n
mentioned, lv
Rococo: A Poem (Dunning), Santayana on,
317, 318n
Rogers, Arthur Kenyon
and Essays in Critical Realism, 7, 219n
identified, 8n
on Santayana’s philosophy, 219
Rome
American professors in, 263
American reporters in, 229
Blue Sisters (Little Company of Mary),
Santayana resides at, xviii
British in, 229
the church, Santayana on, 179
dentist, Santayana visits, 224
the Grand Hotel, xviii
the Hotel Bristol, Santayana resides in,
xvii
hotels in, Santayana on, 34–35, 38, 41,
44, 171
life in, Santayana on, 179
people in, 44
politics in, Santayana on, 179, 236
restaurants in, Santayana on, 177, 229
Santayana considers settling in, 236
Santayana on, 35, 36, 37, 41, 223, 354
no tourists in, 236
weather in, 38, 67, 124, 169, 189, 190,
194, 224, 281
mentioned, 36, 42, 185, 213, 263
Rosario, Santayana’s Italian lessons with,
207, 208
Ross, William David
identified, 160–61n
mentioned, 160
Ross, Thorvald S.
identified, 73n
 Index 503

mentioned, 72 Santayana), did not emigrate to

Rothenstein, William
identified, 233n
letter(s) to, 233
Santayana to visit, 233
Russell, Bertrand Arthur William
Analysis of Matter, 353, 353n
identified, 18n
marriage, 17
and the neo-realists, 62
An Outline of Philosophy, 353, 353n, 359
Santayana on, 358–59
his writing, Santayana on, 161
mentioned, xiv, xxxiv, xxxix, xli, xlvii,
xlviii, li, liv, 63n, 66, 97, 161n, 362
Russell, John Francis Stanley, 2d earl
his friendship with Santayana, xv, 152–
53
identified, 18n
letter to Santayana, 153n
letter(s) to, 151, 152, 257
and marriage, 17
My Life and Adventures, xv, 145
Santayana on, 354
mentioned, xxxix, xli, xliii, xliv, xlv, 63,
153
Russell, Marion (“Mollie”) Cooke
Cumbermould ( J. F. Russell’s second
wife)
identified, 145n
Santayana on, 153
mentioned, 145, 153, 261
Russell, Mary Annette Beauchamp von
Arnim ( J. F. Russell’s third wife)
identified, 64n
mentioned, xv, xliv, lvii, 63, 145, 153,
153n
Russia, Santayana reads about, 359
Russian Revolution, Santayana on, xviii
Sabbatucci, Luigi (Santayana’s physician), l
Sacco-Vanzetti case, xlviii
Saint Peter’s Cathedral (Rome), 168, 231
Saint-Simon, Claude Henri
identified, 192n
view of history, 191
mentioned, 259
Samkhya, 68, 68n
San Pietro (Italy), 38
Santayana, Agustín Ruiz de (father of
America, 130
Santayana, George ( Jorge Agustín Nicolás)
acts as tour guide, 263–64
on aging, 107, 143, 178, 213, 216, 236,
286, 299–300
on his appearance, 140, 151
on art, 4, 274
articles, 86
on the artist, 330
on authors, 86
on the benefits of siblings, 166–67
book reviews, 67, 67n
on his books, 170
buried in the Campo Verano Cemetery
(Rome), xlvii
on the Catholic Church, 324
his character and personality, liv–lv
on charity, xlix
on China and Russia, 320
and Christianity, xvi
chronology of his life, xiv, 202
on communism, 141
his comparison of philosophers and
professors, lii–liii
his conservative politics, xlix
considers himself a Spaniard, xxxiii
copyrights, 109
his correspondence
destroyed or unlocated, 370
publication of, 368–69
mentioned, xxxiii–xxxiv,
xxxvi–xxxvii
his correspondence with G. Sturgis, xi
on criticism, xxxvi, 65, 265–66, 280
on different cultures, 294–95
disagrees with Strong, xvi, 193, 194,
217, 246, 364
discussion with Lapsley, 173
discussion with Strong, 74
dislikes moving, 30
does not subscribe to a press-cutting
agency, 107
donates money, 164
enjoys discussing philosophy, li–lii
and the English language, 210
on essence, xxxiv, 188–89, 211–12,
214–15, 334–35
on experience, 156–57
finances
his income, 239, 314–15
504 The Letters of George Santayana
Santayana, George (Continued)
letter of credit, 44, 54, 93, 112, 171,
182, 229, 235, 264, 267, 268,
302, 314, 358
mentioned, 21–22, 53–54, 93, 101,
118, 181, 236, 238, 265, 286,
302–3
fluent in many languages, xxxiii
friends
in Cambridge, xiv
from Harvard, xxxvii
in Italy, 171, 175
in London, 236
in Oxford, 89
in Rome, 239
on his writing, 242
his friendship with Cory, xii–xiii, xxxix
on his friendship with J. Russell, xv,
152–53
his friendship with Loeser, li
on his generation, 48, 82, 94, 100, 320
to give Spencer lecture at Oxford, xiv,
xliv, 151, 151n, 178
as a graduate student in Germany,
xxxiii, xxxvii
as a Harvard professor, xxxiii
his health, xv, 52, 82, 105, 108, 112,
113, 114–15, 117, 119, 123, 124–25,
126, 127, 128, 129, 135, 137, 138, 140,
143, 151, 152, 157, 160, 162, 163, 165,
168, 169, 172, 177, 182, 224, 227, 246,
253–54, 354
heretic, defines, 351
his humor, xxxix–xli,
interest in architecture, 72
interested in America, 292
on intuition, 277
on Jews, xlix–l, lv
on language, 350
learns Italian, 207, 208
on his lecture audience, 160
letters
from his father, 106
from J. Russell, 153n
translates for G. Sturgis, 230
written in English, 376
written in Italian, 376
written in Spanish, 376
on his life and work, 172
his literary method, xxxvi
living arrangments, xi–xii, 181–82, 213,
264, 354–55
on love, 179
his luggage, 211, 214
and materialism, xxxv–xxxvi
and metaphysics, 144, 350
money, on the convenience of, 236–37
as a monk, 68
and moral relativism, xxxvii
on motoring, 229
mourner at funeral, 251, 252
and naturalism, xxxv–xxxvi
on novels, 173
offered monetary compensation for
writing, 174
on old friends, 178
on old people, 48, 128, 258
on old pupils, 178
on the older generation, 255
to order books, 205
on overpopulation, 17
his personal ideals, xxxv
on perspectives, 62
as a philosopher, 21
his philosophical ideals, xxxv
his philosophical letters, xxxiv
on philosophy, 219
on his philosophy, 219
photographs of, xli, 96, 298
pilgrimage to, 296
too poetical, 118–19
on poetry, 186
his political philosophy, xlviii–xlix
his political views, xviii
on politics, 137, 232, 270
on pregnancy, 80
does not like professional conferences, li
on the public world, 179
publications
“Little Essays on Materialism and
Morals,” 279, 279n
Little Essays, 22, 29
“The Mediterranean” (Ode V), 200n
“On My Friendly Critics,” 19, 19n,
23
Poems: Selected by the Author and
Revised, 92, 92n
The Poet’s Testament, 163
Soliloquies in England and Later
Soliloquies, xiii, 16, 22, 23, 26, 27,
29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 41, 43, 52
“Some Meanings of the Word ‘Is,’”
 Index 505

194, 196 and religion, xxxv–xxxvi

sonnets, 22, 165 on religion, 324, 351
“Three Proofs of Realism,” 64 and religion, disagrees with Susana, xvi
“Walt Whitman: A Dialogue,” 311 on reproductions, 338–39
to be published in an anthology, 309 on resorts, 128
on publishers, 293 his retirement from Harvard, liii
quotes his father, 118, 119, 268 reviews on, 150
reads royalties, 84, 107, 109, 164, 180, 239,
Bell, 274 278, 293, 335
Bernanos, 283 is a sceptic, 351
Broad, 269 searches for a place to settle in, xvi
Brooks, 331 his sexual orientation, xlii–xliv, lvii
Cavalcanti, xxxiii his signature, 377
Claudel, 359 his sketches, 290
Congreve, 323 and social classes, liii–liv
D’Annunzio, 220 on society, 232
Dante, xxxiii and the Socratic principle of
Destouches, 261 self-knowledge, xxxvii
Dewey, 269 on Spain, 4, 51
Dickens, 88 on specialists, 265
Dixon, 225 and spirit, xxxv
Drake, 269, 271 on Strong, 74
Ducasse, 245 Strong visits, 49, 140, 143, 227
Fite, 266 and the Sturgis family, 210
Freud, 138 on teaching philosophy, lii
Fülöp-Miller, 364 on theological students, 234
Gaskell, 224 and totalitarianism, lv
German philosophers, 149 and translations
Guénon, 275 Arabic, 187
Hermant, 269 French, 187
Housman, 125 Spanish, 164
Husserl, 326 on travel, 42
Italian Platonizing poets, xxxiii travel plans
Kallen, 323, 359 Ávila, 167, 246, 249, 250, 292, 298,
Keyserling, 317, 348 321, 326
Komroff, 320 Bath, 155
Loos, 286 England, 22, 117, 144, 145, 151, 155,
Michelangelo, xxxiii 162, 233, 234, 243, 257
Montague, 269 Italy, 23, 25, 33, 34, 152, 155, 162,
Papini, 220 163, 189, 190, 194, 195, 199, 200,
Reinach, 317 205, 209, 211, 220, 268, 275, 277,
J. Russell, 145 278, 279, 281, 287, 295–96, 298,
Saint-Simon, 261 317, 347, 360
Sorel, 242 Oxford, 104, 144, 153, 155, 157,
Spengler, 128 160, 213, 257
Stoddard, 225 Paris, 99, 125, 139, 144, 146, 150,
Valéry, 322 162, 190, 195, 205, 245,
a real poet, 210 246, 248, 249, 253, 255, 292,
on receiving letters, 212 298, 321, 323, 326, 331, 333,
his relationships, xlv 334
on relativity, 275
506 The Letters of George Santayana
Santayana, George (Continued)
Rome, 165, 167, 169, 185, 224, 249,
257, 260, 261, 291, 348, 350
Spain, 236
Switzerland, 246
Toledo, 25
Venice, 204
travel plans, Santayana’s advice on, 195
on traveling, 195, 222
as a traveling student, 50, 174
travels with Strong, 222, 229
trouble with travel plans, 247
visits dentist, 224
visits his father, 171
visits Strong, 217, 220, 221
his will, 190, 282–83, 301–2, 315
on women, xlii
his work, Josephine praises, 230
and World War I, xlvii–xlviii, 179
on his writing, xiii, 178–79, 197, 208,
221, 234, 236, 257, 259, 268, 278, 281,
284, 285, 296, 317–18, 348, 351
and a writing project, 285
his writing style
and his punctuation, 375–76
and his spelling, 375
mentioned, xxxix–xli
on the younger generation, xii, 320
on youth, 4, 82, 94, 100, 107, 199, 216,
255
on his youth, 238
Santayana, Josefina Borrás y Carbonell
[Sturgis] de (mother of Santayana), 210
“Santayana at Cambridge” (Münsterberg),
lvi
Santayana: The Later Years, A Portrait with
Letters (Cory), xxxix, lvi, 378
Santayana y Zabalgoitia, Manuela Ruiz de,
150
Sargent, John Singer
and the Boston Public Library, 56
identified, 58n
Santayana on, 100–101, 136–37
Sartre, Jean-Paul, xlviii
Sastre, Susan “Susana” Parkman (Sturgis)
de (half sister and godmother of
Santayana)
and Celedonia’s estate, 254–55
concerned about Santayana, 279
death of, xv, xvi
deed of trust, Santayana on, 282
and finances, 50
her health, 252
identified, 11n
letter(s) to, 36, 150, 204, 279
plans future, xv
and religion, Santayana disagrees with,
xv–xvi
Santayana on, 79
Santayana’s feelings for, xlii
her will, 167, 252–53, 254–55
mentioned, xi, xxxviii, li, 80n, 127,
168n, 212, 224, 228, 236, 251, 254,
257, 263, 269, 276, 283, 301, 315, 321,
331, 338
Sastre, Teresa Fernández de (Mrs. Luis
Sastre), 252, 253n, 255
Sastre González, Luis, 252, 255, 264, 283n
Sastre González, José “Pepe”
children of, 37, 37n
death of daughter, 251, 252
identified, 37n
mentioned, 37, 283n
Sastre González, Rafael
children of, 37, 37n
identified, 37n
mentioned, 37, 283n
Sastre Hernández, Adelaida, 302, 303n
Sastre Hernández, Rafael, 302, 303n
Sastre Hernández, Maria Josefa 302, 303n
Sastre Martín, Eduardo, 302, 303n
Sastre Martín, Josefina, 302, 303n
Sastre Martín, María Teresa, 302, 303n
Sastre Martín, Roberto, 302, 303n
Sastre Serrano, Celedonio
his children, 282, 283n
death of, xv
his grandchildren, 231
his health, xv, 251, 252, 253, 254, 269
identified, 11n
Santayana on, 252
and Susan’s estate, 254–55
mentioned, xi, 43, 50, 148, 167, 168n,
282, 302, 321, 338
The Saturday Review of Literature, xlvii
Savile, George
identified, 363n
mentioned, 362
Scepticism and Animal Faith (Santayana)
no copyright in America, 107
explains to Susan, 150
index for, 116, 117, 119, 120, 122
 Index 507

preface of, 136 Slade, Conrad Hensler

proofs of, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 125, identified, 139n
136 mentioned, 139
publication of, 87, 88, 91, 97, 99, 103, Small, Albion Woodbury, 226n
107 The Smart Set (magazine)
Santayana discusses, 197 Santayana on, 149
Santayana receives copies, 147 mentioned, 149n
Santayana requests copies, 135, 146, Smith, Adam
147, 170 identified, 103n
as a system of philosophy, 6, 86, 91 mentioned, 102
mentioned, xiii, 87n, 88, 95, 112, 114, Smith, Logan Pearsall
134, 166, 209, 227, 300, 327, 329 identified, 17n
Schiller, Ferdinand Canning Scott letter(s) to, 16, 22, 44, 78, 83, 84, 222,
identified, 61n 242, 362
Strong’s article on, 60 More Trivia, 78, 79n
Schilpp, Paul Arthur, lvii requests to quote Santayana, 362
Schneider, Herbert Wallace A Treasury of English Prose, 362, 363n
identified, 303n mentioned, xxxix, 64, 222, 268
letter(s) to, 303, 364 Smith, Willie Haines
visits Santayana, xii bankrupt, xv
mentioned, 298 identified, 155n
Schneider, Mrs., 298, 303 Santayana visits, 155
Schopenhauer, Arthur, xlii mentioned, 160, 171
Science, Santayana on religion and, 256–57 Socialism, 137
Science and the Modern World, 287, 323 Society for the Advancement of American
Scott, Edgar, 182n Philosophy, 370
Scott, Mary “Maisie” Howard (Sturgis), 182, Socrates
182n daemon, 362, 363n
Scott, Warwick, 182, 182n identified, 188n
Scribner’s Magazine (journal), 27, 27n, 77n his principle of self-knowledge, xxxvii
Selden, John role in Dialogues in Limbo, Santayana on,
identified, 363n 256
mentioned, 362 Soliloquies in England (Santayana)
Seldes, Gilbert proofs of, 30, 41, 59–60, 112
identified, 28n publication of, 17, 26, 29, 32, 33, 43, 73
letter(s) to, 27, 86, 161, 176 review of, 132
The Sense of Beauty (Santayana) sale of, 32
errors in, 343–44 Santayana discusses, 6, 13, 57
mentioned, 6 Santayana requests copies, 63, 66, 76,
Sever Hall (Harvard), 72, 72n 84, 106
Shakespeare, William, 191 mentioned, 16, 22, 23, 25, 27, 31, 52,
Shaw, Robert Gould 173, 178, 186
identified, 81n “Some Meanings of the Word ‘Is,’”
mentioned, 80 (Santayana), 194, 195n, 196
Shelley, Percy Bysshe Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy
identified, 280n (Santayana), xiv, 348, 351, 352, 352n,
mentioned, 288 353, 358, 360, 364
A Shropshire Lad (Housman), 141, 142n Souday, Paul
Signet (Harvard), 72, 73n identified, 322n
Simon & Schuster, 298 Santayana on, 322
508 The Letters of George Santayana

Sonnets and Other Verses (Santayana) mentioned, 207, 241, 242n

as part of Poems, 63, 64n, 75, 76 Stoddard, Theodore Lothrop
“Sonnet V,” 157, 158n identified, 226n
mentioned, lvi, 165n, 174, 174n Racial Realities of Europe, 225
Sonnets and Poems of Anthero de Quental Strong, Augustus Hopkins
(Morley), Santayana on, 186 death of, 49
Sorel, Georges identified, 49n
identified, 243n Strong, Charles Augustus
mentioned, 242 class photograph of, 251
Soto (unidentified), 341 disagrees with Santayana, xvi, 193, 194,
Sous le soleil de Satan (Bernanos), Santayana 246, 364
reads, 283–84, 298 his epistemology, Santayana on, 156–57
Spain essence, Santayana responds to letter
is conservative, 4 on, 9–11
Santayana on, 43 on essence, 211
Spanish law, Santayana on, 167, 282 his fellowship for Harvard, 302
Toledo, 4, 25 in Fiesole, 31, 42, 162, 217, 222, 223,
Specialists, danger of, 265 260
Specious, Santayana defines, 316–17 his finances, 237
Speed the Plough (Morton), 127n his health, xvi, 52, 60, 74, 99, 105, 113,
Spencer, Herbert 201, 260, 331, 336, 353, 364
identified, 161n identified, 8n
Santayana’s lecture on, xiv, xliv, 160, letter(s) to, 7, 9, 12, 29, 34, 35, 38, 41,
163, 178, 354 49, 52, 58, 60, 61, 67, 69, 70, 74, 91,
Spengler, Oswald 97, 105, 108, 114, 116, 120, 124, 128,
identified, 128n 138, 144, 145, 146, 152, 153, 156, 159,
Santayana reads, 128 162, 168, 169, 176, 188, 193, 195, 203,
mentioned, 348 204, 205, 208, 211, 214, 217, 220, 221,
Spinoza, Baruch 224, 227, 231, 232, 243, 246, 249,
and God, 266 250, 253, 258, 261, 271, 273, 275, 277,
identified, 90n 278, 281, 283, 287, 295, 297, 304, 316,
Santayana on, liii, 89–90, 324 321, 322, 326, 327, 328, 333, 334,
Santayana’s lecture on, xxxvi 337, 339, 340, 341, 342, 345, 346, 347,
mentioned, l 348, 358
Squire, John Collings “J. C.” and Margaret’s marriage, 348
identified, 85n and Mind and Its Place in Nature (Drake),
mentioned, 85 193–94, 200–201, 208, 269, 270n
“The Statue and the Bust” (Browning), 55, and neo-critical realism, 227
57n On the Nature of the Datum, Santayana
Stein, William Bysshe, xxxvi on, 8
Stendhal. See Beyle, Marie Henri in Paris, 200, 201, 247
Sterner, Lewis George philosophical partnership with Drake,
identified, 357n 177
letter(s) to, 357 his philosophy of mind, Santayana on,
Santayana gives permission to quote, 74
357 receives telegram from Margaret, 345,
Stewart, John Alexander 346
identified, 161n in Rome, 299, 323, 326, 364
mentioned, 160 Santayana on, 74, 99
Stickney, Joseph Trumbull Santayana reads, 214
identified, 207n Santayana visits, 34, 165, 217, 220, 221

A Theory of Knowledge, 116, 117n, 120
his theory of perception, Santayana on,
243–44
his transportation, Santayana on, 105
travel plans, 150, 169, 195, 203, 211,
258, 295–96, 344
travel plans, Santayana’s advice on, 139,
278, 341
travels with Santayana, 223
in Valmont, xvii, 343, 355, 358
Villa le Balze (Fiesole), xi–xii, xlvi, lv,
71n, 253, 278, 299, 321, 323, 359
visits Santayana, 49, 139, 140, 143, 171,
227
Wisdom of the Beasts, 9, 11n, 16, 18,
41, 42, 74
mentioned, xxxiv, xl, xlvi, xlvii, lv, lvii,
64, 80, 99, 181, 183, 199, 224, 229,
239, 258, 266, 268, 303, 315, 337, 350
Strong, Elizabeth “Bessie” Rockefeller
(Mrs. Charles Strong), lv
Strong, Margaret (daughter of C. A. Strong)
engaged to Cuevas, 339–40
her engagement, Santayana on, 340,
341
identified, 15n
in Madrid, 194, 204
her marriage, Santayana on, 343, 348,
355, 357–58
marries Cuevas, xvii, 342
in Paris, 12, 70, 80, 99, 144, 145, 150,
189, 194, 261, 333, 338
Santayana on, 82, 100, 247, 337,
337–38, 343
travel plans, 222, 231, 232, 268, 343
mentioned, xvi, xl, 17, 30, 31, 181, 203,
221, 246, 247, 250, 259, 261, 288,
334, 360n
Sturgis, George (Santayana’s mother’s first
husband), 210
Sturgis, George (Santayana’s nephew)
and his aunt Josephine’s finances, 154,
228–29, 231, 252
and the birth of Nathaniel, 259, 260n
collects family data, 255
his correspondence with Santayana, xi
his honeymoon, 43
identified, 21n
inherits father’s books by Santayana,
106
Index 509
letter(s) to, 20, 21, 33, 43, 50, 51, 53, 54,
72, 79, 80, 92, 106, 112, 118, 127, 128,
139, 143, 147, 151, 154, 165, 166, 170,
181, 190, 200, 201, 207, 210, 216, 224,
228, 230, 235, 238, 247, 250, 252,
254, 259, 262, 263, 267, 282, 285,
290, 301, 314, 325, 331, 337, 357
manages family’s finances, xi, 236
new house, 72, 106, 127, 143
photograph of, 151
power of attorney for Santayana, 21, 30,
33, 54, 119
and Santayana’s finances, xlv, 43–44,
50, 53–54, 72, 118, 180, 190, 200, 202,
207, 225, 229, 235, 237, 247, 264,
290–91, 303, 314–15, 331, 358
Santayana gives advice to, 80
Santayana on, xii, xlv, lvii, 137
Santayana’s executor, 50, 190
his sons, 191
his sons, Santayana on, 216
travels to Europe, 262–63
visits Italy, 263–64
his wife, Santayana on, 216
his work, Santayana on, 282
mentioned, xiii, xxxviii, xl, xli, l, lii,
lviii, 101, 149–50, 230, 275, 276
Sturgis, Howard Overing
death of, xv
identified, 171–72n
mentioned, 171, 354
Sturgis, John, 171, 171n
Sturgis, Josephine Borrás (Santayana’s half
sister)
her birthday, 252
death of, xv
and finances, 50, 51–52, 92, 119, 148,
167, 170–71, 228–29, 230–31, 252
her finances, Santayana on, 228–29
identified, 21n
her letter, Santayana translates for G.
Sturgis, 230
her old age, Santayana on, 229
praises Santayana’s work, 230
Santayana’s concern for, 92, 154–55,
her will, 154–55, 167, 181, 255
mentioned, xi, 21, 127, 147, 224, 229,
231, 236, 250, 251, 252, 254, 257,
263, 269, 276, 283, 302
510 The Letters of George Santayana

Sturgis, Maud, 171, 182 Sturgis, William C., xxxviii

Sturgis, Nathaniel Russell (grandnephew of Swain & Co (London), 298
Santayana) Swinburne, Algernon Charles
identified, 260n identified, 187n
his name, Santayana on, 260 his poetry style, 186
photograph of, 264
Sturgis, Neville (grandnephew of
Santayana) Tartuffe (Molière), 340n
birth of, 166, 170 Taylor (unidentified), 30
his name, Santayana on, 166 Teatro Fenice (opera house), 205, 206n
photographs of, 216, 250 Telegraph House ( J. Russell’s house in
mentioned, 325 Hampshire)
Sturgis, Robert Shaw (brother-in-law of Santayana visits, 153, 257
Santayana’s mother) mentioned, 47n, 154n
identified, 81n Teleology, Santayana on, 245
mentioned, 80, 177n Thayer, Scofield
Sturgis, Robert Shaw (half brother of identified, 28n
Santayana) and “Soliloquies,” 27
death of, xi, 20 mentioned, 149, 150n, 154, 201, 202
identified, 5n Thibault, Jacques Anatole [pseud. Anatole
Santayana on, xlv, 24–25 France]
mentioned, 3, 21, 106, 171n, 239, identified, 284n
250, 255, 286 mentioned, 283
Sturgis, Robert Shaw (grandnephew of Thomas Aquinas, Saint
Santayana) identified, 361n
identified, 21n, 81n Santayana on, 361
photographs of, 113, 119, 151, 216, 229, Thorold, Algar Labouchere
250 identified, 243n
Santayana’s affection for, xlv mentioned, 242
visits Santayana, xlv Thoron, Ward, 77n, 172
mentioned, 92, 112, 325, 326n A Thousand and One Nights, 45, 187, 331,
Sturgis, Rosamond Thomas Bennett (Mrs. 331n
George Sturgis) “Three Philosopher-Prophets” (McDowall),
and the birth of Nathaniel, 259, 260n 18n
her honeymoon, 43 Three Philosophical Poets (Santayana), 184
identified, 21n The Times Literary Supplement (London), 371
letter(s) to, 276 Titus, Edward W.
her marriage to Sturgis, Santayana on, identified, 318n
lvii letter(s) to, 317
her operation, 301 Santayana considers submitting articles
photograph of, 151, 216 to, 317
and pregnancy, 80, 155, 155n Toy, Crawford Howell
Santayana describes, 276 identified, 5n
Santayana on, xii, xlv mentioned, 5
travels to Europe, 262–63 Toy, Nancy Saunders (Mrs. Crawford H.
visits Italy, 263–64 Toy)
visits Spain, 276 homesick, 249
mentioned, xxxvi, lviii, 22, 34, 92, 165, identified, 5n
191, 264, 275, 283, 286, 303, 315, 326, Santayana has present sent to, 225, 226
331 Santayana’s friendship with, xlii, 3
 Index 511

travel plans, 246, 247, 249 Vendryes, Joseph

mentioned, xxxix, xlix, li, 76, 129, 140, identified, 71n
183, 237, 298, 314, 316 Le Langage, 71
Tre Re (restaurant), 35, 36 Santayana reads, 71
Trinity College, 64, 64n, 142n, 153, 158n Venice
“The Triumph of Zeus” (Santayana), never British in, 204
published, 318, 318n Germans in, 204
Turner. Mrs. (unidentified), 6 Italians in, 204
Twain, Mark. See Clemens, Samuel L. restaurants in, 203, 204–5
Santayana explores, 204
Santayana in, xii, 204, 205, 297, 298
“Ultimate Religion” (Santayana), xxxvi Santayana on, 202, 203, 204, 205, 236
Unamuno, Miguel de weather in, 205
identified, 267n Venice on Foot, with the Itinerary of the Grand
mentioned, 267 Canal and Several Direct Routes to Useful
Unidentified Recipient Places (Douglas), 204, 205n
letter(s) to, 121, 309 Vera (“Elizabeth”)
University of Cambridge (England), 269, described, 47n
270n mentioned, 46
“The Unknowable” (Santayana), 151, 151n Verdi, Giuseppe
Updike, Daniel Berkeley identified, 303n
identified, 313n La Traviata, 303
mentioned, 312 Vergil, 163, 163n
Versailles, 105, 106n
Victoria Eugenia, Princess of Battenburg
Vagabond Scholar: A Venture into the Privacy of (married to Alfonso XIII, king of
George Santayana (Lind), lvi Spain), 168, 169n
Vaihinger, Hans Villa Borghese (Rome), 71, 71n, 168, 223,
Die Philosophie des als ob, 71, 71n 234, 354
identified, 71n Villa le Balze (Fiesole), xi–xii, xlvi, lv,
Valéry, Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules 71n, 253, 278, 299, 321, 323, 359
identified, 281n Vivante, Leone
Le Serpent, 322, 322n identified, 169n
poems, Santayana reads, 322 Santayana on, 169
mentioned, 280, 322 mentioned, 168
Valmont (clinic), 116, 117, 117n, 121, 128,
144, 355
Van Arsdale, Rachel Oatman (Mrs. Horace Walker Fellowship (Harvard), 302, 303n
Kallen), 323, 325n Walker, Mr. (unidentified), 141
Van Doren, Carl Clinton “Walt Whitman: A Dialogue” (Santayana),
his article, Santayana on, 155 311n
identified, 155–56n Warren, Peter, 64, 64n, 89
Vanderbilt, Cornelius Watson, John Broadus
identified, 182n identified, 103n
mentioned, 181 mentioned, 102
“Variation, Heredity and Consciousness” Weiss, Paul
(Montague), 15n identified, 280n
The Veiled Empress, an Unacademic Biography letter(s) to, 280
(Morton), Santayana evaluates, 191–92 Wells, Edgar Huidekoper
Vedanta, 68 identified, 95n
in Oxford, 94
512 The Letters of George Santayana

Wells, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wisdom of the Beasts (Strong), 9, 16, 18, 74

identified, 70n Wolfson, Harry Austryn
The Outline of History, 69 identified, 90n
Westenholz, Albert W. von letter(s) to, 89
identified, 49n The Philosophy of Spinoza, Santayana
on Lucifer (Santayana), 241 gives advice on, 90
mentioned, xii, 66, 183, 227, 237, 297, mentioned, liii
313, 338 Woodbridge, Frederick James Eugene
Wheelock, John Hall identified, 365n
The Letters of George Santayana letter(s) to, 194, 239, 260, 263
(Scribner’s), 369 Realm of Mind, Santayana declines to
mentioned, xxxix, 371 write review, 364
Whited Sepulchre (Journal of Philosophy), Wordsworth, William
Santayana writes reviews for, 243 identified, 288n
Whitehead, Alfred North mentioned, 288
identified, 15n The Works of George Santayana (MIT)
The Principle of Relativity, 105, 106n editorial policy, 367–69
Santayana reads, 14 mentioned, 372
Science and the Modern World, 287, 323 World War I
mentioned, 329 and Oxford, 94
Whitman, Sarah Wyman (Mrs. Henry and Santayana, 179
Whitman), 56, 58n
Whitman, Walt[er]
identified, 311n Yale Review (journal)
Santayana on, 311 “A Preface to a System of Philosophy”
Why Religion (Kallen) (Santayana), 166n, 175, 183
errors in, Santayana on, 325 Santayana requests copies, 183
Santayana on, 323, 339 Santayana requests proofs, 176
Wilde, Oscar and Santayana’s books, 166
identified, 342n Yeats, William Butler
mentioned, 341 identified, 333n
Williams-Ellis, Clough and Amabel mentioned, 332
identified, 226n Young, Owen
The Pleasures of Architecture, 226 identified, 214n
Wilson, Thomas Woodrow mentioned, 213
identified, 57n
Santayana discusses, 56
Windram (unidentified), 30 Zampa, Luciano
Winds of Doctrine (Santayana) L’io nella filosofia germanica, 84n
new edition, 126, 278, 285, 287 mentioned, 84, 100, 176
mentioned, 279, 279–80n, 285 Zionism, 39
Winslow, Frederick Zionism and World Politics (Kallen), 39, 40n
identified, 25n
Santayana’s friendship with, 24
mentioned, 76, 129, 135, 140
Winslow, Mary Williams (Mrs. Frederick
Winslow)
identified, 25n
letter(s) to, 24, 55, 68, 99, 136
Santayana’s friendship with, xlii, 24
mentioned, xxxix, lvii, 76, 129, 135, 140
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