Olga Rudge & Ezra Pound: "What Thou Lovest Well..."

97 The Breaking Point
cided about the flat. Having announced giving it up, I got Renata [Borgatti]
and Teddy [Rudge] falling over themselves trying to help me keep
it. . . . Teddy sent rent and proposed to repeat doing so. I couldn’t allow
[it], of course, but it’s nice he thought of it. . . . I wish I could get enough to
live somewhere near ‘the Center of the Universe’.’’
In November, she let the rue Chamfort flat for thirty-three hundred
francs per month to the Princesse de Polignac, the American heiress Winaretta
Singer, a music patron. In Olga’s words, ‘‘the whole idea, which came
from her, was to help me over the di≈culties.’’ Then Renata Borgatti
‘‘bought’’ Julia’s grand piano for five thousand francs and allowed Olga to
keep it on loan.
‘‘She plunk in on hi sassiety,’’ Ezra suggested. ‘‘She does much better on
her own than when encumbered with him.’’
In 1931, in Ezra’s words, ‘‘the state of murkn [American] industry’’ was
not getting better; 768 companies were missing their dividends. Olga’s
father had to give up his o≈ce in downtown Youngstown and take a larger
apartment to include a home o≈ce. He had driven to Toledo for the
consecration of the new bishop and to visit his brother, Father Eugene.
‘‘Mussolini is trying to make trouble for the Pope,’’ he commented. ‘‘He
had better lay o√ the Church, for She has drowned hundreds of better men
than he is.’’
Olga’s financial situation continued precarious until the Princesse engaged
her to play a Bach concerto and Schumann quintet in Venice’s Corte
del Duca Sforza with Giorgio Levi in January. She returned to the Richards
family at Gorse Cottage in February to play Mozart, Strauss, and
Schubert with their daughter Kathleen.
Her passport for the years 1930 and 1931 is stamped with eight entries
into and out of Italy. After a short visit with Dalliba-John in Florence, she
wrote Ezra: ‘‘I asked her [Ramooh] to tell my fortune with cards (as a way
of keeping her quiet), and she at once turned up the King of Diamonds.
‘Mr. Pound . . . What about his opera? I see it here. It’s going to be a
success—only given once.’ I have not mentioned the Villon for years . . .
the fact of her remembering you had written an opera was surprising.’’
Frau Marcher brought the Leoncina to Venice in August for the annual
visit. ‘‘She [Mary] enquires anxiously about the date of His arrival. I fear