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

134 The Red Priest of Venice
‘‘Long delayed explosion!’’ in red ink when she reviewed it in later years,
but she did not destroy it:
She gathers He getting tired of town life and not displeased at
getting back to His old slippers . . . She admits she would hardly do
Him onore anymore as a maîtresse to ‘take out’ . . . [but] He never
even sees that it is damn unfair . . . that He should always have her
front door key and come and go as He likes and she never has
His . . . they started even in Paris. Mah!—little by little all that has
been changed—and not from any fault of hers. She has never done
anything to hurt His family . . . or worry His parents, still He
doesn’t trust her, and now I have got to explain this to the
Leoncina—without making a tragedy of it!
Ezra reassured her that ‘‘he ain’t lookin’ fer novelties & bazars, and he
iz comin’ bak as soon as possible ’cause he purrfers St. Ambrogio with her
in it to London or elsewhere without her.’’ He had seen the world premiere
of W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood’s play, The Ascent of F-6, and
was meeting ‘‘the Possum’’ (Eliot) in the vestry of St. Stephen’s Church.
Olga was quick to apologize. ‘‘She take back anything narsty she might
have said. . . . Does the Possum really live in the vestry, or is it a joke?’’ She
was mourning the demise of Eliot’s Criterion magazine, and Ezra mocked
her: ‘‘the joy of my life, the Citharistria / the scraper of cat gut and reviver
of Vivaldi / the egregious Olga, scandalized at my levity thus reproves me:
‘I liked The Criterion, it was respectable / none of your other magazines are
respectable / You have no feeling for the sorrows of yr / friend Possum.’ ’’
She had been to Florence with Mary, who bought copies of Botticelli’s
Primavera at the U≈zi Gallery for her father and The Birth of Venus for
their neighbor in Venice, Dolly Watts. Moidile was invited by a friend for
an ice cream soda, ‘‘which she drinks patriotically as being American.’’
When they saw the Hollywood film A Yank at Oxford, Mary expressed a
desire to go to college. ‘‘Please do not disillusion her about it yet,’’ Olga
cautioned the child’s father. She took Mary to have her photo taken and to
apply for a passport, and they got back to Venice just as the sirens announced
an air raid drill.