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

217 A Piece of Ginger
spying on her and will kill her!’’ In more rational moments, the ninetythree-year-old
had expressed a desire to go to Italy to live with her niece.
Olga was still pondering how to shoulder this additional burden when the
sisters wrote that Louise had been moved to Friends’ Hospital in Philadelphia.
The last close member of Olga’s mother’s family, Louise Birt
Baynes, succumbed on February 25, 1958. At her request, her body was
cremated, and the ashes were scattered over Mount Chocorua with her
husband’s.
A specific bequest of two hundred dollars was left to her niece, Olga, in
Aunt Lou’s will; an equal amount to Edgar M. Rudge and sons, Peter and
John, to the Heacock sisters, and several close friends; the residue of her
estate of some fifteen thousand dollars was to be divided equally among
the above, after donations deducted for several bird clubs.
When she received the news in Sant’Ambrogio, Olga wrote to Esther
Heacock, as executor: ‘‘Auntie Lou’s legacy . . . comes at a moment
when . . . my Youngstown tenant is falling back on his payments, [it] all
goes to the bank to pay o√ the mortgage.’’ The sisters had sent several
books written by Uncle Harold, the naturalist. ‘‘Mary’s twelve-year-old
will enjoy having these,’’ Olga wrote; ‘‘many I had seen years ago [and]
now can appreciate much more. It is such fine writing, and the point-ofview
is so sound, so unsentimental. So much trash . . . is being given to the
young.’’
Just before Christmas, Ezra told James Laughlin (who distributed his
book royalties), that he had been persuaded to make recordings at St.
Elizabeth’s only on the condition that the first hundred dollars per month
would go to Spann. ‘‘If I konk out, I don’t want Marcella stranded in
Europe.’’
Olga heard from an unidentified gossip that Marcella had replaced her
as Ezra’s lover. When she expressed this latest fear to Laughlin, he replied:
‘‘The Rapallo rumour about the Texan is sans basis. Neither I nor Bob
[Robert MacGregor], who saw her there, discerned anything of the kind.’’
As further reassurance, he added, ‘‘$1,000 for the Venice house loan awaits
when you need it.’’
In the beginning, life at Brunnenburg was idyllic. In Mary’s words,
‘‘The family had been trained for a demigod, and as such he came . . . with