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

181 What Thou Lovest Well Remains
with pine branches laid over her. Mary, Peter [Rudge], and I lifted her into
the co≈n and screwed down the lid. Then all the boys and the old grave
digger carried it to the foot of the steps, and it was dragged down the hill
on a sled to the grave, just near the little chapel on same hill as [the]
schloss, only lower. I had your cane—the old grave digger took it from my
hand to measure against [the] co≈n, as he feared he had made [the] grave
too small—it was giusto. He started to shovel in earth. But Peter (a year
younger than the others, and not so ‘clever’) said, ‘if none of the rest of
you are going to say a prayer for her, I will, though I don’t know any but
Our Father.’ So the last tribute paid [the] Old Lady was not in Italian . . .
blood is thicker than water.’’
Back in Rapallo, Reverend Chute was holding a requiem mass for Isabel
in the chapel. ‘‘You’ve been a brick,’’ he congratulated Olga. ‘‘Without
you, [the burial] . . . might so easily have been sordid [but] was turned into
beauty . . . not only the sled, but everything she would have liked. E[zra]
will approve.’’
After examining his mother’s checkbook and papers at the castle, Olga
wrote Ezra: ‘‘There is no money left . . . Boris has spent thousands on
archivio expenses looking up the Baratti family. . . . Mary seems hypnotized
with B. He seems to hold the purse.’’
She wrote Father Chute about her suspicions, questioning the pretentious
‘‘crowns and coronets’’ on Boris’s stationery, and enclosing a genealogy
signed by ‘‘Principe L. Boris Baratti de Rachewiltz, Conte di Lucca,
Fossano, Bestagno, and St. Agnes, Signore di Carvere.’’ (Boris claimed he
was entitled to use Conte di Fossano until he was twenty-one; after, as
primogenito, he had the right to Principe de Rachewiltz.)
Father Chute replied that he had seen the couple, and in his view they
appeared happy and in love, devoted to their child. ‘‘I feel sure Mary has
been straight, only inexperienced,’’ he reassured Olga. ‘‘She’s taken my
preachments well.’’ He agreed that ‘‘heraldry is an expensive hobby,’’ and
suggested that Count Chigi might research the family in the Almanach de
Gotha. But ‘‘you, Olga, are the one [Boris] most wants to impress.’’
Mary was considering returning to England with her cousin Peter, who
had spent the past year in the Tyrol working at the schloss. ‘‘I told her not