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

106 Rare and Unforgettable Concerts
Genoa, Venice, or Paris) by doing ‘‘voluntary work’’ with Sir Thomas
Barclay, who would be useful for a recommendation. She was ‘‘trying to
get some sort of solid ground under her feet,’’ and hoping to save enough
(580 francs) for a twelve-day return train ticket to Rapallo, but ‘‘where
does the money come from after that? She does not propose to live by
borrowing money from Him. God bless my rich friends.’’
She was writing to Pound with a new ‘‘perpetual’’ pencil, a gift of the
Marquise de Belboeuf (known as ‘‘Missy’’), a daughter of the Duc de
Morny (the illegitimate half-brother of Napoleon III), whom Olga had
met through Henri Etlin, ‘‘our original pianiste pederaste.’’ The old lady
was one of the few women at that time who dared to wear men’s clothes in
the streets of Paris and was invariably dressed in shirts, pants, and waistcoats.
She was ‘‘l’amie de Colette in the Year One,’’ Olga recalled. They
did a sketch at the Moulin Rouge, Rêve d’Egypt, by Colette’s husband,
Willy (Henri Gaulthier-Villars), and the women’s embrace on stage was
so ardent that ‘‘all the nobles in Paris were so outraged they rioted . . . the
show couldn’t go on.’’
The artist Tami Koumé had accompanied Olga to a Japanese garden
party dressed in swallowtail coat and white spats and a ‘‘peculiar’’ top hat,
and at the Salle du Conservatoire in the company of Don Arturo—‘‘a tout-
Paris house—Sauget’s songs were pas méchant, and Poulenc’s amusing.
. . . They cut out the Bach and replaced [it] with Darius Milhaud’s ‘Sonata
for Clarinet’ . . . then all got together and did a comedic ballet of Erik
Satie.’’ Olga’s comment on the performance of the famed chanteuse Mistinguett:
‘‘She is 102 and does acrobatic dancing that doesn’t belong to her
day at all—and gets away with it.’’
‘‘Parisian life sounds more divertin’ than the squabbles of the Pellegrini
family’’ in Sant’Ambrogio, Ezra commented in his Valentine’s Day letter.
On April 27, Mary made her First Communion in Gais, wearing the
beautiful lace dress that Julia had designed for Olga, but Olga was not
there to see it. Her best-laid plans went ‘‘Lord knows where,’’ she wrote
Pound. Mary appears in a photo with a large ribbon sash around her waist,
beautiful blond hair haloing a wistful face—with white cotton stockings
and sensible black oxfords spoiling the e√ect. Frau Marcher had written
that the child asked daily for her parents: ‘‘The child cries so much she