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

228 The Last Ten Years
1:30 lunch: riso in bianco, cold chicken, gruyère cheese, banana
cream w[ith] apricot.
4:00 tea: pane integrale, peanut butter, biscuit, tea.
8:00 supper: pastina in brodo, soft-boiled egg, 3 cooked apricots.
(Medicines: 10g. miroton, 20g. sympatol, 1 ducolax, lucidril.)
Ezra disdained the regimen, and he jotted this random comment in Olga’s
notebook: ‘‘My bestial idiocy at Dadone’s [is] past any measure. . . . If he
had (three years ago) . . . given me a proper large glass of castor oil, and
lemon ‘on the rocks,’ i.e., plenty of ice, followed by real co√ee, all these
doc bills & catetere [catheters] could have been avoided. B[acigalupo]
approves the model to replace leaky inner tube . . . swears he can remake
normal men.’’
Olga sent a note to Dorothy Pound at the Albergo Italia, enclosing a
map with instructions to reach Casa 131 if she wanted to visit her husband:
‘‘Take a taxi to the ‘Eucalyptus’ . . . where the via Primavera joins the
salita . . . you then will have to walk about 7 to 10 minutes (cars cannot
station there). . . . [The salita] joins the Via Aurelia above the Casa di
Sole.’’ The junction of the road where the eucalyptus and cedar appear to
grow from one root—called ‘‘l’eucalipto’’ by the locals and taxi men—
Pound mentions in Canto 76:
from il triedro to the Castellaro
the olives grey over grey holding walls.
When Ezra’s bladder infection reappeared at the end of May, the blood
count was very high, and the doctors recommended an emergency procedure
to prevent uremic poisoning. Dorothy, as legal guardian, was
required to sign the forms. Olga noted that she ‘‘paid purely formal visits,
one-half hour June 15th, at my request, [to] give the surgeon permission to
operate.’’
The procedure took place June 19, under local anesthetic. ‘‘He has been
doing well, yesterday was up for [the] first time,’’ Olga wrote Duncan,