The Letters of George Santayana Book One, [1868]—1909 To Susan and Josephine Sturgis [1868] • Ávila, Spain (MS: Sastre) Querida Susana1,2 he recibido tu carta que era escrita en Londres Lo que han dicho tus tíos que yo soy guapo eso no es verdad. Dice papá3 que te ponga que tu si que eres guapa y Josefina tambien; pero yo digo que esas son guasas, pero lo que si es verdad es que te quiere mucho tu hermano y ahijado Jorge Mi querida Josefina. No te es olvide escribirme cuando llegues á Boston y estes desocupada. Yo tambien te escribiré mientras pueda para que tengas siempre presenta á tu hermano que se acuerda mucho de ti y de tus cuentos Jorge 1Translation: Dear Susan I have received your letter written in London. What your aunt and uncle said, that I am good-look- ing, that isn’t true. Papa says that I should write to you that you are good-looking and Josephine too; but I say that that’s teasing, but what is true is that your brother and godson loves you very much My dear Josephine. Don’t forget to write to me when you get to Boston and have nothing to do. I will write you too when I am able so that you will always have in your thoughts your brother who remembers you and your stories a lot 2Santayana was five when he wrote this to his half sisters, Susan (1851–1928) and Josephine (1853–1930), who were en route with their mother, via London, to Boston. His half brother, Robert (1854–1921), had been sent to Boston earlier to attend school. George remained in Spain with his father. 3A retired colonial official, Agustín Ruiz de Santayana y Reboiro (1814–93), married Josefina Borrás y Carbonell (1826–1912) about 1863; their son, “George” Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, was born later that year. See Persons, 11–50. To John Galen Howard 21 August 1882 • Roxbury, Massachusetts (MS: Berkeley) Roxbury, Aug. 21–st 1882. My dear Howard.1 I address myself to you again, not because there is anything which I can impart in the way of interesting information, but partly in order to thank you for your very kind letter which I received some time ago, and partly 1:4 The Letters of George Santayana to ask you to let me know what are your plans, so that if you return to Boston I may have the pleasure of seeing you. It appears from repeated consultation of the calendar that the summer is coming to an end, to say nothing of the chilly weather which has come to enforce the fact through the evidence of the senses. Hence it occurs to me that you may soon be returning to town. I suppose you have been the happy recipient of a letter from Mr. Merrill similar to the one I have received from him. I doubt, however, that he has put into yours the amount of gush and eloquence and unction he has lavished on mine. At least 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 intimacy 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.” I have kept busy this summer principally by reading. I have nearly concluded Dante’s Inferno.2 I thought to have read the whole Comedia this summer, but I find it takes quite long to read a page with my imperfect knowledge of Italian. First I read four or five lines in the original, then the same in a translation, and then reread the Italian to see that I take in the force of each word. Thus I proceed slowly till I get to the end of the Canto when I once more reread the whole. I find it for more beautiful even than I imagined. I have translated some parts for myself in verse like the original in structure, but like all translations it is very unlike the original in effect. Hoping to hear from you, and also to see you before long, I remain Sincerely yours, George Santayana. 1John Galen Howard (1864–1931) and Santayana were classmates at the Boston Public Latin School during the headmastership of Moses Merrill, Ph.D. (1833–1902). They gradu- ated in the spring of 1882. Howard wrote poetry and became an architect. He later lived in the Berkeley area and worked on the University of California buildings. 2Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), born in Florence, was the first important author to write in Italian. His idealized love for the Florentine Beatrice Portinari (1266–90) was the inspiration for many of his works. His Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy) (1321) is an epic poem of the progress of the individual soul toward God and of the political and social progress of mankind toward peace on earth. Inferno (Hell) is part one, in which Vergil conducts Dante through the region of damnation, where souls suffer eternal punishments appropriate to their sins. Santayana’s analysis of this work constitutes section three of Poets. 1868–1909 1:5 To Charles Eliot Norton 9 June [1885] • Cambridge, Massachusetts (MS: Virginia) Dear Mr. Norton.1 Allow me to thank you for your kind note, in the name of the others who wish to study Dante, as well as in my own. We appreciate very much your kind- ness in being willing to undertake this additional work for us, and only hope it may not cause you serious inconvenience. Very respectfully yours, George Santayana. 19 Hollis. June 9–th. 1Santayana had been an undergraduate pupil of Charles Eliot Norton (1827–1908), a member of the Harvard class of 1846. Norton was professor of art history there and a Dante scholar. He was cousin to Charles William Eliot, Harvard’s president from 1869 to 1909. To Henry Ward Abbot 16 August 1886 • Göttingen, Germany (MS: Columbia) Göttingen, Aug 16–th 1886. P. Adr. Fräulein Schlote. 16 D Obere Karspüle. Dear Abbot.1 I had some hopes of getting a letter from you while I was yet in Spain, but I do not wonder at all at your not having written, for I know by experience what a bother letter writing often is. I am now comparatively comfortable and quiet, waiting for my landlady’s toothache to allow her to give me German lessons.2 My trunk and I arrived here without injury some five days ago. We had had rather a hard time on the way from Spain, getting shaken up a good deal and very dirty; but at Paris we managed to get put to rights again, and we started in very good trim for Cologne. I stopped there a day, admiring the cathedral and the yellow-haired barbarians. The women are ugly, but the men before they grow fat are lusty and fine looking after their species. I think, however, that you Americans are all the better for being a mixture of several nationalities, just as the English are in a great measure. These purer races seem to pay for the distinctness of the type which they preserve by missing some of the ordinary attributes of 1:6 The Letters of George Santayana humanity. For example, the Germans as far as I know have no capacity for being bored. Else I think the race would have become extinct long ago through self-torture. I hope to hear that you remain in Europe for the present. As I have told you I think more than once, it would be a pity, from my point of view, if you should go into business in Boston and make up your mind not to live for anything but what most men live for, namely, their business and their family. Now I have no quarrel with this state of things as far as the world at large is concerned; I don’t want the community to spend its time meditating on poetry and religion. But there are always a few men whose main interest is in to note the aspects of things in an artistic or philosophical way. They are rather useless individuals, but as I happen to belong to the class, I think them much superior to the rest of mankind. Now it seems to me that you ought to belong to the brotherhood theoretical also. Perhaps you would not be willing to go the length I am going, and start out avowd/edly with no other purpose but that of living in order to observe life. In that case it would not be well for you to study art and insist on Bohemianizing as I suggested to you that you might do. But still, without going to that extreme, why couldn’t you keep as near as possible to the theoretical field? Why couldn’t you study law? That is what your brother-in-law Stimson has done, and you see how it has not at all interfered with his artistic work.3 But what I should be sorry to hear is that you are going to let your interest in painting and philosophy drop out gradually, just as a man drops his school friends and his classics. One is glad to come across them afterwards, but it is always a sort of surprise when one does.