PERSONS AND PLACES George Santayana Based on the texts originally published in 1944, 1945, and 1953 The Santayana Edition www.iupui.edu/~santedit/sant/ I Fragments of Autobiography I My Place, Time, and Ancestry A document in my possession testifies that in the parish church of San Marcos in Madrid, on the first of January, 1864, a male child, born on the sixteenth of the previous December, at nine o’clock in the evening, at No. 69 Calle Ancha de San Bernardo, was solemnly christened; being the le- gitimate son of Don Agustín Ruiz de Santayana, native of Zamora, and of Doña Josefina Borrás, native of Glasgow; his paternal grandparents being Don Nicolás, native of Badumès, in the province of Santander, and Doña María Antonia Reboiro, native of Zamora; and his maternal grandparents being Don José, native of Reus, Catalonia, and Doña Teresa Carbonell, native of Barcelona. The names given him were Jorge Agustín Nicolás, his godparents being Don Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana, and Doña Susana Sturgis; “whom I admonished”, writes Don Joaquín Carrasco, who signs the certificate with his legalrúbrica or flourish, “of their spiritual relation- ship and duties.”* * Don Paulino Corrales Diaz, Presbítero, Licenciado en Sagrada Teología y Cura Proprio de la Parroquia de San Marcos de esta Corte, y en su nombre D. Prudencio M. Gil y Ar- guso, encargado accidentalmente del Despacho. Certifico: Que en el libro décimo de Bautismos que se guarda en este archivo al folio setenta y cinco se halla inscripta la siguiente partida, que copiada literalmente dice así: En San Marcos de Madrid a primero de Enero de mil ochocientos sesenta y cuatro, yo Don Joaquín Carrasco, Teniente Mayor de Cura de la misma bauticé solemnemente en ella a un niño que nació el diez y seis de Diciembre del año último, a las nueve de la noche, en la Calle Ancha de San Bernardo, No 69, cto 2o, hijo legítimo de Dn Agustín Ruiz de San- tayana, natural de Zamora, y de Da Josefina Borrás, natural de Glasgow (Escocia); abue- los Paternos, Dn Nicolás, natural de Badumes (Santander) y Da Maria Antonia Reboiro, natural de Zamora, Maternos, Dn José, natural de Reus (Tarragona) y Da Teresa Carbonell, natural de Barcelona: Se le puso por nombre Jorge, Agustín, Nicolás, y fueron Padrinos Dn Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Da Susana Sturgis, a quienes advertí el parentesco espiritual y obligaciones, y lo firmé Joaquin Carrasco = Rubricado. 3 4 Persons and Places My Place, Time, and Ancestry 5 A shrewd fortune-teller would have spotted at once, in this densely exception or alloy, the fact that these laws and not others (or none) were Spanish document, the two English names, Glasgow and Sturgis. Where found to be dominant would itself be groundless; so that nothing could did they come from, what did they forebode? Might not seeds of my whole be at bottom more arbitrary than what always happens, or more fatal than future lie buried there? And if the diviner had had preternatural powers, what happens but once or by absolute chance. Yet in the turbid stream of he might even have sniffed something important in those last, apparently nature there are clear stretches, and traceable currents; and it is interesting so effete and perfunctory words, that Doña Susana Sturgis, who was my to follow the beginnings and the developments of a run here and a whirl- mother’s daughter by a former marriage and then twelve years of age, pool there, and to watch the silent glassy volume of water slip faster and had been forewarned of her spiritual relationship and duties: not that she faster towards the edge of some precipice. Now my little cockle-shell and should forbear marrying my godfather, my uncle Nicolás, who was a ma- the cockle-shells of the rest of my family, and of the whole middle and up- jor in the Spanish army, with a wife and child, and forty-five years old; per class (except the unsinkable politicians) were being borne along more that was canonical red-tape nothing to the purpose; but that she was called or less merrily on the surface-currents of a treacherous social revolution; by Providence to be really my spiritual mother and to catechise my young and the things that happened to us, and the things we did, with their pleas- mind. It was she that initiated me into theology, architecture and polite ant and their hopeless sides, all belong to that general moral migration. society. My grandfather, José Borrás y Bufurull, belonged to a well-estab- With parents evidently Catalans of the Catalonians, how did my moth- lished family of Reus, of the sort that possess a house in the town and er come to be born in Glasgow, and how did she ever marry a Bostonian a farm in the country. In this as in other ways many old towns near the named Sturgis? These facts, taken separately, were accidents of travel, or Mediterranean preserve the character of ancient cities or civitates, and rather of exile and of colonial life; but accidents are accidents only to igno- Reus in particular is a place of great dignity in the eyes of its inhabitants, rance; in reality all physical events flow out of one another by a continuous who are reputed to speak habitually of “Reus, Paris, and London”. But intertwined derivation; and those odd foreign names, Sturgis and Glasgow. José was a younger son, and the law of entail or mayorazgo still prevailed They were in fact secretly allied and their presence here had a common at that time in Catalonia, so that the house and land and an almost Ro- source in my grandfather’s character and circumstances and in the general man authority as head of the family fell to his eldest brother. Yet dignity thaw, so to speak, of that age: incongruous wreckage of a great inundation. to the classic mind does not involve great wealth or much Lebensraum, Not that I would nail the flag of fatalism to the mast at the begin- and younger sons, even in Reus, had to seek their fortunes away from ning of this retrospective voyage. What we call the laws of nature are home. They might indeed expect hospitality or a little aid from their fami- hasty generalisations; and even if some of them actually prevailed without lies in time of stress, but were well aware that in the ancestral estate and community there was no place or occupation for more than one house- hold at a time. There was the Church always tempting them, if it tempted them; there were the other professions, and there was the New World, or at least Cuba and the Philippines. One of my grandfather’s brothers had actually combined these opportunities, become a monk, and later been established as a parish priest in Montevideo or in Buenos Aires.* The * A history of the Borrás family of Reus has been published, but it contains hardly any information about my grandfather and none about my mother. In some respects the tradi- tions recorded there diverge from those that my mother handed down; they may be more accurate, as my mother had no great interest or respect for the past. The exact facts in any case are not important, and I report the impressions that I have gathered. 6 Persons and Places My Place, Time, and Ancestry 7 ultimate resource, among all my Spanish acquaintance and relations, was mortgages, was beginning to lead a pure life of reason and virtue. With some post under the government; and my grandfather might very well slavery? Perhaps that was only a temporary necessity, a kindly apprentice- have sought his fortunes no further afield than Barcelona, or at most Ma- ship to instil into the simple negro a love of labour and of civilised arts; drid; but he went much further. Economic considerations were probably and as the protection of industries might be justified provisionally, until not uppermost in his mind; if they were, his career must have disheartened they could become well-rooted, so domestic servitude might be justified him. Those were unsettled and unsettling times, the repercussions of the provisionally, until the slaves were ripe for freedom. Be that as it may, José French Revolution had not spent themselves, and emancipation of mind Borrás either came well recommended or ingratiated himself easily into was sure to follow, if it had not preceded, being cast loose upon the world. the democracy of Winchester, Virginia, becoming (as a florid testimonial In any case we know that my grandfather, far from becoming a monk like averred) one of its most honoured and beloved citizens; so much so that his brother, became a Deist, an ardent disciple of Rousseau, and I suspect as the years revolved, and a change of government in the liberal direction a Free-mason; and when a French army entered Spain, in 1823, to restore had occurred in Spain, his Winchester friends induced Andrew Jackson, the shaken authority of Ferdinand VII and the absolute monarchy, José then President of the United States, to appoint him American consul at Borrás was compelled, or thought it advisable, to leave the country. The Barcelona. Thus his cordial attachments in exile enabled him eventually story goes that he fled first to Las Palmas, in the Balearic Islands, where to return home, not only safely but gloriously, and with some prospect of he saw and wooed Teresa Carbonell, a stout blonde with very blue eyes bread and butter.* (my mother’s eyes were also blue and large); and that after a romantic marriage he persuaded her to follow him in his wanderings.