Word: santayana
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...cannot write too enthusiastically about these meetings with Mr. Santayana. I came to discuss a thesis on his philosophy but I've stayed to be charmed by his cordiality, his wit and his kindness. He lives alone here in Rome in modest rooms on the top floor of the Hotel Bristol. When I first saw him he was with Mr. Daniel Cory, his assistant, and was dressed in a dressing gown and slippers, as he wrote me I would find him. One day perhaps I shall send you an account of the more serious aspect of our conversations but suffice...
...lives a hermit sort of life. Getting up about 8, he has breakfast in his rooms, works until 12, then shaves, gets dressed, and goes out to some restaurant for lunch. When Mr. Cory is not here, and he is with him only three months or so every year, Santayana prefers to have lunch alone in his rooms. Thence for a stroll, after which he gets back to the Hotel about tea time, gets into his grey dressing gown and now and then receives a few visitors; though Cory tells me he's rather reluctant to see people. Dinner...
Particularly interesting among the speeches will be a selection from the "Iliad", given by Laird McK. Ogle '37. This is the first time since 1886 that a competitor has offered a selection in Greek. In that year George Santayana '86 won second prize with a selection from the same work...
After all the outery that followed Mr. Santayana's novel, to the effect that he was making fun of the Boston character, it is nice to see the truth at last revealed, all stark and naked: that the Boston character makes fun of itself--really...
Unfortunately all the George Apleys and their wives seem to think they are being made game of. Certainly neither the nice Mr. Santayana nor even Mr. Marquand meant to do that. They were merely showing them off, as one shows a most prized heirloom. George Apley, with his five-button coat, is to America as the Breton peasant woman with her super-headdress is to France; perhaps some day he too will adorn the pages of the National Geographic on the dentist's waiting-room table...