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

242 The Last Ten Years
meet Pound in 1958, came to stay with them in Sant’Ambrogio. He read
from the works of Patrick Kavanagh one peaceful evening, and on others,
Ezra and O’Grady concentrated on the chessboard. But days later, while
reading The Cantos, Ezra erupted angrily, following a pattern of erratic
behavior that Olga was at a loss to explain.
Mary came to visit. She and Ezra took long walks to the Castellaro, and
there was the appearance of a close family. But on the third day, while
Mary was helping to prepare lunch, she shattered a perfume bottle Olga’s
brother Arthur had given her some sixty years before on Hill Road in St.
John’s Wood. It was an accident, but to Olga’s eyes it was symbolic of the
basic discord between the two women.
The season persisted windy and cold, colder, coldest. Casa 131 was a
contadino’s cottage, and the only warmth came from the open fireplace
with pine cones to burn. Ezra’s cough persisted, and Olga attempted to
cure it with the housewife’s old-fashioned remedy, chicken broth and rice.
Her thoughts often returned to Hook Heath and the supportive environment
of the Richards family many years before.
She wrote to Kathleen, hinting at the loss she secretly felt in giving up
music to be Ezra’s companion: ‘‘Remember the Hill violin? You? Your
father? You were always such a united family, it becomes di≈cult to remember
which—a kindness to me, among many . . . a Hill copy of a Strad,
‘The Messiah.’ . . . I did practice all during the war, and was playing better,
too. [But] I have not had time for fifteen years now to practice, and you
know what a violin needs. You ought to have it . . . where would you like it
to go? If I am able to get to England when it gets warmer, [I] will bring it.’’
In April, the couple returned to Venice. Ezra was su√ering from stomach
cramps and similar complaints of advanced age, but was able to enjoy a
performance of Verdi’s Don Carlo at La Fenice. On April 13, he jotted in
the notebook: ‘‘It’s her birthday. He brings nothing but good wishes and
bad deeds.’’ Count Vittorio Cini, head of the foundation that bears his
name, and his wife, Kiki, honored Olga on her natal day with a dinner
party for nineteen. When Valerie Eliot arrived in Venice for the celebration,
the Count ‘‘charmingly explained that he put Valerie on his right
instead of me, because she was a ‘straniera.’ I feel myself Italian.’’