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

205 A Visitor to St. Elizabeth’s
accomplished the viaggio di ritorno in a most serene state of mind, resigned
to going on in this vale of tears. . . . As far as she [is] concerned,
sitting on His lawn is paradise . . . watching His trees and His birds with
Him has been the only time she felt really relaxed and contented all these
years.’’
While Olga was away, Mary had ‘‘muddled up matters in re. her passport,’’
having gotten a sworn statement from England that Lieutenant
Arthur Rudge had been killed in 1918 and therefore could not have produced
her in 1925, ‘‘without consulting me, or worrying what consequences
it might have . . . result, [she] got a passport [in] San Marino, [as
the] daughter of EP and OR . . . will have to produce proof, which there
ain’t, and can’t be.’’
Back at the Accademia in June, Olga was ‘‘writing on an ornamental
concrete bench near an artificial lago covered with slime, and water spiders,
no swans, at Castel Berardenga [Count Chigi’s country estate],
where He once came for an Accademia picnic.’’ She wished for an Italian
Proust to describe the scene, the long table with the Count at the top, set in
front of the small chapel containing the family tombs.
In September, Olga’s stepmother, Katherine Rudge, was buried next to
her husband in the family plot at Calvary Cemetery. Olga always appreciated
the fact that Katherine worked in her old age (‘‘she did this voluntarily’’),
so that she and Teddy could keep their inheritance. ‘‘The only
reason to sell the Youngstown property is so the proceeds could be used to
get Him out,’’ she wrote Ezra. The guilt caused by not telling her father
about Mary’s birth still weighed heavily on Olga’s conscience; in her view,
the conflict with Mary was an ironic payback for her actions.
Saint Cecilia’s Day was observed with Mass in the Chigi chapel, the
courtyard spread with laurel leaves and hung with contrade banners. The
Count’s friends (the few who remembered) sent flowers to be placed on
the statue of the saint, and various nuns and beghinas assisted and kissed
the plaster foot of the saint, which pleased the Count: ‘‘He seems to think
he is building up a legend.’’
Mary, who had not seen her father for seven and a half years, planned to
go the United States in the spring, and Olga worried about the e√ect the
hospital—seeing Ezra in such a place—would have on their daughter.