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

208 A Visitor to St. Elizabeth’s
good form, tho’ much concerned and agitated over your predyk-cement.
She had us to lunch at the Palazzo, with the Old Boy [Count Chigi], who
is . . . behaving like a very spoiled young lady from Philadelfia . . . he is a
gonna shut down the hackademya fer spite if the Gov’t. whacks o√ his
patrimonio, which is rough on The Lady. . . . we had better get mobilized
and find her a genteel and not overly-arduous position of a litcherary or
musical nature. . . . Lozza snow here, powerful cold, dunno how these
[Italians] stand life in their palazzi.’’ He had also visited ‘‘old [Bernard]
Berenson,’’ and commented: ‘‘he keeps his hot, with profits from swappin’
with the Lord Duveen . . . [a] spry old joker at age of 89 . . . [with a] sharp
tongue!’’
Olga continued to urge Eliot and Ezra’s other literary friends to lobby
for his release. When the question of a presidential pardon was raised, the
U.S. Department of Justice advised that Pound could not be pardoned until
he had been found guilty; he could not be found guilty until he had been
put on trial; and he could not be put on trial until he had been declared
sane.
Another important obstacle to Pound’s release was Dorothy, his legal
guardian. She could not a√ord the high fees of a private facility and felt
that Ezra was doing well where he was. She did not admit, perhaps even to
herself, that she wanted to keep Ezra where no other woman could reach
him. As Mary Barnard remembered Dorothy at St. Elizabeth’s: ‘‘She is
very tense over Olga. You would have thought that in the last twenty
years one of those women would have thrown him over for good, or that
one or both of them would have resigned to the situation, but no. After
Dorothy withdrew, I got a briefing [from EP] on what to say and what not
to say to Olga . . . being mainly ‘patience and fortitude’.’’
These roadblocks were increasingly frustrating to Olga, who was trying,
once again, to get to the United States. She invited Clare Boothe Luce,
the American ambassador in Rome, to visit the Accademia, hoping to win
her support, and peppered Pound’s friends and colleagues with a steady
barrage of correspondence.
Early in 1955, Olga was still waiting to see if a friend could wangle free
passage to the States. She was at Brunnenburg on Whitsunday, when
Patrizia Barbara Cinzia Flavia de Rachewiltz received her First Commu-