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

107 Rare and Unforgettable Concerts
might even die if they don’t come.’’ (‘‘It was enough to break any mother’s
’eart,’’ Olga duly reported to the child’s father.)
Ezra forwarded a cable from Antheil in New York: ‘‘O√er Olga tour
next season, $500 guaranteed, boat and rail expenses paid, cable acceptance.’’
George would be back at Le Planestel in Cagnes-sur-Mer in July,
and asked her to stop over to discuss the American tour with him. Pound
was against Olga’s going to America, ‘‘but if she could do it in six or seven
weeks?’’ Olga cabled, ‘‘With pleasure under guaranty,’’ but admitted
doubts about Antheil. ‘‘I have noticed his good intentions re. me usually
coincide with some service he wants you to render him.’’ Yet the o√er
seemed the only solution to her financial dilemma.
Wanda Landowska was planning a June 4 concert, the first in a series
featuring Olga and a Spanish pianist, with an eye to winning Don Arturo
Brown’s backing. ‘‘But whether that wily bird will be enticed, chi lo sa?’’ A
week later, she reported to Ezra that the musicale had gone very well, with
‘‘all the best people’’ attending. Don Arturo was impressed: ‘‘Last night
was a wonderful fête, you know how enormously I enjoyed it . . . [but] I
fear you think I only enjoyed the music because the public was so gorgeous.
Life is not always as easy as it seems.’’ He was awaiting news from
his banker in Buenos Aires, but ‘‘I fear there is little hope of my staying.’’
During this era, the poet wrote almost daily to his lady love about his
work, his tennis games and scores, his dental problems, his broken reading
glasses, his health (recurring head colds), and a newly purchased blue suit.
He was in Florence in late May to lecture at the Settimana Internazionale
di Cultura in the Palazzo Vecchio, but Katherine Dalliba-John could not
put him up; she, like everyone else, was terribly worried about money.
‘‘We go nowhere, eat only vegetables at home, I wear my old rags and buy
nothing,’’ she wrote, adding a poignant finale: ‘‘This world is an inferno,
and will soon be finished. We go to another star, where we are happy and
well—there is no death!’’
Olga was visiting Lindy Shaw-Paige in St. Julien–Biot in June when
Pound wired: ‘‘Meet composers [Tibor] Serly and [Geza] Frid at the
Cannes station—important—treat ’em well!’’ Frid had been Olga’s pageturner
in Budapest and, in Pound’s view, was a ‘‘damn fine composer’’; he
had written a divertimento for orchestra and a violin sonata performed by