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

172 What Thou Lovest Well Remains
better if we could have the castle . . . he would try to convince his father, a
businessman mixing in politics (a monarchist). . . . His mother [is] a
Russian princess who met B’s father in Capri (she 20, he 25). At that time,
B.’s father [was] very rich. They married, [had] three children—B.’s the
eldest. The parents [are] not on very good terms . . . [his mother] is a very
good painter, but a bit mad, keeping extravagant company, saying, ‘My
greatest mistake was to marry and to have children—I was born to be an
avventuriera.’ . . . His father [is] a more sentimental type. B. is on his
father’s side . . . has his own studio in Rome to avoid family scenes.’’
When Boris told his father he was going to see Ezra Pound’s daughter,
his father asked, ‘‘Why Mary Rudge?’’ Boris had heard about Mary’s
background from Princess Troubetzkoi, who told his father that Mary had
used that name for convenience during the war. When Mary met Boris’s
mother in Capri, the mother said, ‘‘Scommetto che mi ha fatto nonna [I bet
he has made me a grandmother]!’’ Mary confessed to Olga, ‘‘B. has not
exactly been a ‘good boy’ up to now, but that does not worry me, because
he has been frank about it.’’
In September, she visited Boris’s father in Rome, and Olga went with
her to look into the ‘‘state of a√airs.’’ She described Boris’s studio to Ezra
as ‘‘the room a young man in 1880 would have thought the latest thing—
incredibly bad oil paintings, a female nude, a few old swords and daggers,
worm-eaten panels of ‘primitives.’ ’’ Boris’s background, in her view, was
equally unimpressive: ‘‘Friends of the Count’s high up in monarchist and
Vatican circles looked up [the] family. They are not known . . . no money.
The father, and the son to a certain extent is beginning to take after him, is
a very voluble talker, full of the most extravagant ideas, impossible to
realize.’’
Ezra reminded her of his experiences as a young man about town in
London: ‘‘minor follies, provincial taste, poses, etc . . . cd/ be mere
juvenalia, but . . . if he is a liar, basta finito, & let M. find it out in time. . . . If
you want to distract the child, you might take her to England—classic
procedure—remove the young fem[ale] with an ‘unexpected’ invite to
Spondon.’’ On the other hand, ‘‘if the y[oung] m[an] is healthy & can
support her that’s a start—after two wars, males are scarce.’’
Olga confided in Count Chigi, who cautioned: ‘‘I will be so bold as to