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

240 The Last Ten Years
tradition, brought a beautiful Andalusian goblet and pine cone. Ezra said it
reminded him of an Aztec idol he saw at St. Elizabeth’s, a symbol of malefemale
copulation. Böski Marcus Antheil turned up—after more than
thirty years! Julien Cornell, Pound’s lawyer, arrived from Washington
with his wife, and Dorothea Watts Landsburg returned to her former
home on the calle Querini.
Correspondence came from an unexpected source in Ohio. Richard
Hammond, who had last visited Olga in Paris in 1928, informed her that an
urban renewal program was in progress in Youngstown; the building of a
new post o≈ce had increased the value of her father’s Boardman property.
Rentals were building up in her account, and Olga realized it might be
wise to hold on to the lots. But she asked Hammond to explore the
possibility of a sale: ‘‘I do not foresee leaving anyone any property.’’
In July the couple traveled to Spoleto to see Menotti’s 1968 production
of The Saint of Bleecker Street, which Olga pronounced ‘‘Magnificent!’’
There were concerts every evening, Thomas Schippers conducting Mozart
and Vivaldi, another opportunity for Olga to have lunch with Simonetta
Lippi, Schippers’s assistant. Lippi’s father had been a musician,
and Simonetta shared with Olga a love of music. An enduring friendship
developed, and after Lippi followed Schippers to his post as conductor of
the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, she credited Olga with teaching her
all she knew about managing a conductor’s busy schedule.
Menotti sent them home to Sant’Ambrogio in his chau√eur-driven car,
and two days later Ezra was strong enough to walk to Monte Allegro,
where they discovered their names in the old hotel registry for the year
1924.
During this era, Olga began to record Ezra’s dreams in her notebook.
In an early one, he saw Olga dancing in a window: ‘‘Me?’’ ‘‘Yes.’’ ‘‘Was I
dancing nicely?’’ ‘‘Yes.’’ ‘‘What kind of dancing?’’ ‘‘Oh, that Ceylonese
bending.’’
In another, Eustace Mullins of Staunton, Virginia, one of Pound’s
acolytes at St. Elizabeth’s, starred in an unlikely Freudian drama. Ezra and
the poet Hilda Doolittle, his young sweetheart, were staying with the
Mullins family when Ezra learned that Mullins had raped H.D.
‘‘I said if there was any produce, he would have to support it. He might