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

104 Rare and Unforgettable Concerts
pleased with the Samuel Putnam version of Cocteau’s novel Les Enfants
Terribles, and suggested Olga might do the translation.
Through Caresse, Olga met the Hungarian illustrator of the Black Sun
edition of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Hans Hemming von Voigt (known as
Alastair). He had been a friend of the eccentric Harry Crosby, who had
died in a suicide pact with a young lover, leaving his widow to preside over
the Black Sun Press alone. A talented pianist, Alastair joined Olga and
Borgatti in a recital at Versailles, but ‘‘excess nervousness made him play,
not out of time, but in a curious oblique manner.’’
Ever mindful of Pound’s opera, Olga visited Yves Tinayre to arrange
for the Princesse de Polignac to hear excerpts from Le Testament. Tinayre
spoke fondly of ‘‘the little Yehudi Menuhin . . . now fourteen, gone into
long pants, as beautiful as people in the Psalms . . . must be dripping with
myrrh.’’ Olga herself heard ‘‘the miraculous child’’ perform: ‘‘He did the
Bach double concerto with [Georges] Enesco, the Mozart re major, and the
Beethoven—no-one else plays anyway near it.’’ She was invited to meet
the little Menuhin girls, who ‘‘already speak five languages, and play the
piano—nothing like it since the famille Mozart.’’
Olga was scheduled to play Pound’s sonata (‘‘Ghuidonis, pour violon
seul’’) at a teatime concert on December 5 at the avenue de La Motte-
Picquet apartment of the Duncan sisters, a program that included works
by Respighi, Fritz Kreisler, and Lili Boulanger. The Figaro critic praised
‘‘la matinée musicale chez Mlle. de Courcy Duncan . . . brillamment
interpreté par Mlles. Olga Rudge et Renata Borgatti.’’ According to Olga,
as she reported it to Ezra: ‘‘Some said they liked it . . . and considering the
atmosphere of old ladies, petits-fours, and decayed duchesses, she thinks it
went o√ very well.’’
In spite of a cup overflowing with social activities often reported in the
columns of the Paris Herald, Olga was alone on Christmas Eve when Ezra
sent this message: ‘‘She’s ’sposed to git a C.G. [Christmas gift], but that
won’t come fer at least a quinzaine an’ don’t seem enu√ / along wi√
the a√ections of the seazon.’’ She never complained, except to say ‘‘she
has a bad cold—yeow!—it’s freezingly cold.’’ The Duncans had invited
her to lunch with Egerton’s brother Templeton Grey, in Paris attending a
conference on international law, ‘‘with talk of the League of Nations.’’