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

130 The Red Priest of Venice
knowing more, and that miserable Leoncina [is] growing up just as cocky
and ignorant!’’ Ezra agreed to pay his daughter’s fees, and Olga referred
him to the Reverend Mother. ‘‘She can tell his darter that the way to Git
Out is to learn English and frog [French],’’ was Pound’s advice. ‘‘Having
swatted to get her into the best scuola in Italia molto caro / she orter
appreciate it and get edderkated.’’
Ezra was still corresponding with Münch, who was exploring the Vivaldi
collection at the Sachsiche Landesbibliothek in Dresden. In Ezra’s
view, putting the Dresden Vivaldi catalog on microfilm, along with the
manuscripts held by Turin and the other libraries, was the least expensive
and most e≈cient way of providing students copies of the collections.
When the Turin Library refused to collaborate with the others, Ezra took
the matter directly to Italian Minister of Culture Bottai, who ‘‘phoned
Torino instanter, to dig out Vivaldi’’ (Canto 92).
Olga was in Venice on October 29 for an ‘‘Omaggio ad Antonio Vivaldi’’
with David Nixon and Giorgio Levi, a program from the Estroharmonica
performed for the first time since Vivaldi himself conducted.
‘‘Nixon [is] trying hard to play well—beautiful tone, no technique, no
solfège, and no blu√—the same state she [Olga] wuz in 15 years ago, but
don’t know if he has her toughness.’’ Nixon was ‘‘agitating to start a
Vivaldi Society,’’ with proposed headquarters in Paris, and asked Olga to
be honorary secretary.
Mary’s first trimester report, forwarded from La Quiete by the directrice,
Signora Montalve, revealed that she was getting ‘‘edderkated’’:
highest marks in English, religion, music, and condotta (conduct); above
average marks in French, history, geography, mathematics, physical education,
design, and German; below average in Italian and Latin.
She spent her first Christmas holiday with Olga at the Hotel Elefante.
‘‘It’s cold work, doing the heavy chaperone in the snow, Olga wrote, ‘‘but
very good air, getting on with the copying [of the Vivaldi scores] . . .
enjoying meals and breakfast in bed . . . wishes Him here and liking it
(which is unlikely).’’
She was composing an article about the Vivaldi research for Il Mare, the
Rapallo newspaper, and Ezra advised ‘‘not to waste yr. time on unessentials—you
ain’t cutting a cameo for the Naples museum.’’ Another article