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

216 A Piece of Ginger
Wyncote, the party traveled to Rutherford, New Jersey, for a brief reunion
with William Carlos Williams and his wife, Flossie.
Omar was in New York to see them o√ aboard the Italian luxury liner,
acting as bu√er against reporters. The three adults shared one small cabin,
No. 128, tucked away at the end of a corridor in first class. When Ezra
disembarked in Genoa, he was photographed wearing an open-necked
sport shirt, slacks, and his ‘‘first new hat in thirteen years,’’ a sombrero.
More photographers, more reporters. Pound ‘‘hailed his adopted nation
with a fascist salute,’’ the press reported, although many interpreted the
gesture more benignly as holding his hand over his eyes like a visor to
guard against the glare of the Italian sun. When asked the simple question
of when he had been released from St. Elizabeth’s, he replied with a grand
metaphor: ‘‘I never was. When I left the hospital I was still in America, and
all America is an insane asylum.’’
The party traveled on to Verona, where they stayed overnight, until
Mary came to take them to Brunnenburg. In Mary’s words, ‘‘For how
many years I had prayed for just this meeting . . . Babbo coming down the
path! We were all swept o√ our feet and too happy.’’ Her birthday on July
9 was the occasion for a village celebration with dancing and fireworks, a
great welcoming party to which the villagers brought flowers and music
and torches and drums. At night, when the others retired to their rooms,
‘‘Babbo would sit in the dining room and talk to me for hours,’’ she said,
‘‘as though it were now his turn ‘to fill in the gap,’ of the years at St. Liz.’’
Olga was not there to welcome the man she loved. One can imagine her
feeling of isolation and pain, as that other woman—Ezra’s legal wife—
usurped what she considered her rightful place at the castle with Ezra and
their daughter.
In January 1958, Olga heard from her brother Teddy, living out his life
not far from the Rudge family ancestors in Spondon. He was anticipating
retirement from practice as a country doctor with a pension of six hundred
pounds a year and would sell his place to be near his son John, then a
prosperous dairy farmer, soon to be joined by the other son, Peter.
Teddy’s letter was followed by distressing news from the Heacock
sisters in Wyncote: ‘‘Cousin Louise’s mental condition has become a
problem,’’ Esther wrote. ‘‘She thinks she is persecuted, [that] someone is