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

175 What Thou Lovest Well Remains
about belle gambe a lot, and goes to sleep in his chair after dinner, snoring
loudly—very disconcerting from someone . . . so very sti√ and proper.’’
She had accompanied the Count to a screening of Walt Disney’s Fantasia,
‘‘an amusing Mickey Mouse to music of Apprenti Sorcier, conducted
by Stokowski, incredibly cabotin’’ (Olga’s almost untranslatable French
word for deliberately a√ected, or ‘‘ham’’ acting). The Count was a great
aficionado of American films—in his youth, of Ziegfeld Follies girls—and
liked to consider himself au courant in all things American. He would
avidly thumb through copies of the Saturday Evening Post, then the most
popular American magazine, though Olga suspected he could not read a
word of English.
Olga took leave from the Accademia for a few days in the new year of
1947 to see to her calle Querini house and to call on old friends in Venice.
Blanche Somers-Cocks, recently returned to the Palazzo Bonlini, gave a
vivid account of the wartime vicissitudes of the British colony in Asolo.
Olga learned that her house had been rented to Dottore Francisco Giacomelli
for 250 lire a month; then Guido Talloni, an artist who once painted
Pound’s portrait, was put into the house by the Fascist authorities. She
wrote to the o≈cer in charge of war reparations, Major G. K. Cavanaugh:
‘‘I take it that Dr. Giacomelli’s agreement to sublet my house to Sig.
Talloni till December 15, 1945, cannot be considered binding?’’ She had
left valuable books, household linen, china, et cetera in a locked cupboard,
and asked if an inventory had been taken: ‘‘If my house has been dismantled
to allow someone to store their own furniture in it, I see no reason
why I should be expected to accept their valuation of the house
unfurnished.’’
Back in Siena, she passed along news of the political situation: ‘‘The
new regime is going to split into 12 dipartimenti. . . . Siena and Grosseto is
the Lega dell’Ombrone, and Siena [is] agitated lest it comes under Firenze.
Professor Vannini is a very ardent supporter of a Sienese republic, with the
Count as first President. A great deal of joking re. same: the Count being
monarchist, Vannini anarchist, and me, republican (1st, as American; 2nd,
as Irish; 3rd for Vivaldi and repubblica Veneziana).’’
Ezra suggested that the Accademia might consider producing his second