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

xiv Acknowledgments
archives there. Peter Rudge, Olga’s only surviving nephew (her brother
Teddy’s son), in Norfolk, England, cooperated through correspondence.
Dr. William Cody, a psychiatrist who observed Pound during his confinement
at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, provided valuable
clues to Ezra’s relationships with women. Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, a research
psychiatrist who analyzed Pound’s personality in The Roots of Treason:
Ezra Pound and the Secrets of St. Elizabeth’s, was my guide at the hospital
where Pound was incarcerated for thirteen years after World War II; the
late Julien Cornell, lawyer for the defense and author of The Trial of Ezra
Pound, o√ered helpful suggestions. Transcripts of taped interviews provided
valuable clues to Olga’s character and personality: five full hours of
conversation between Olga and Peter Dale Scott at the University of
California, Berkeley (1985); a three-hour interview with Christopher
Winner in Venice (1977), intended for a Newsweek profile (excerpts of
which were published in Rome in 1992). Ezra Pound: An American Odyssey,
a documentary directed by Lawrence Pitkethly for the New York
Center for Visual History (1981), captured Olga and Ezra on film in later
years. I am deeply indebted to Robert Hughes, former conductor of the
Oakland Symphony, and to his companion Margaret Fisher for memories
of Olga in San Francisco overseeing the concert version of Pound’s opera,
Le Testament de Villon. Hughes o√ered professional advice on the presentation
of the original concert version of Le Testament at the Sixteenth
International Ezra Pound Conference in Brantôme, France (1995).
Among the valuable archival resources are the Ronald Duncan–Olga
Rudge correspondence, held by the Harry Ransom Humanities Research
Center at the University of Texas, Austin; the Noel Stock–James Laughlin
correspondence, held by the Ward M. Canaday Center at the University of
Toledo, Ohio; the Caresse Crosby correspondence, held by the Morris
Library, Southern Illinois University; and the materials relating to Olga’s
musical career and Antonio Vivaldi research held by the music division of
the Library of Congress.
During Pound’s lifetime, Olga preferred to keep a low profile; hence
little biographical material about her has been published. Mary de Rachewiltz’s
Discretions provided a portrait of her mother during the years from
Mary’s birth in 1925 until World War II. Of the many works about Pound,