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

122 Rare and Unforgettable Concerts
Katherine Dalliba-John, who consoled her with a generous gift: ‘‘I am
sending you this little help, because I can leave you so little money after
my death.’’ When she returned to Florence for another concert in May,
Ezra joined her and wrote another pu√ piece for Il Mare: ‘‘On the 7th of
this month our musicians played in the salon of the well-known music
patroness, Mrs. Dalliba-John in Florence, a salon frequented by Pizzetti,
Mainardi, and others in the musical world. . . . [The poet] Eugenio Montale
and other Florentine celebrities were also present.’’ After he left, Olga
said that ‘‘the earth seems to have stopped moving, but she supposes it
really ain’t.’’
From Rapallo, Ezra wrote that Gerhart Münch ‘‘has been nearly o√ his
head with worry about his god damn country [Germany] . . . the problem
of being interned in event of war.’’ Pound was inviting other international
artists to Rapallo: pianists Luigi Franchetti and Renata Borgatti, the Hungarian
Quartet, and violinist and composer Tibor Serly.
In July, Olga joined Ezra and James Laughlin in a long-postponed
motor trip to the town of Wörgl in Austria, one of two places where Silvio
Gesell’s stamp scrip—Pound’s panacea for monetary reform—was accepted.
Ezra would recall (in Canto 74)
a nice little town in the Tyrol in a wide flat-lying valley
near Innsbruck . . .
[where the] mayor of Wörgl
who had a milk route
and whose wife sold shirts and short breeches
and on whose book-shelf was the Life of Henry Ford
and also a copy of the Divina Commedia.
They visited Mary at Gais and continued on to the Salzburg music festival
in Laughlin’s Ford, ‘‘one of the best trips I ever made,’’ said Laughlin.
When Ezra heard Toscanini conduct Beethoven’s Fidelio at the Festspielhaus,
Laughlin wrote in his memoir, ‘‘after about fifteen minutes, [he]
reared up in his seat and expostulated quite loudly: ‘What can you expect?
The man had syphilis.’ We trooped out and Toscanini didn’t miss a beat.’’
Back in Venice in August, Olga noted, ‘‘everyone seems very cross and