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

252 The Last Ten Years
she had given Mary a blanket that had been Arthur’s to take to La Quiete,
and Mary mysteriously lost it.
Olga wrote to Peter du Santoy of Faber & Faber, pointing out the
alleged ‘‘inaccuracies’’ in Mary’s book. One particularly objectionable
passage—‘‘I shared Tate’s [Herr Marcher’s] bed’’—Olga protested vehemently:
‘‘If OR and EP had known, I would have taken her away!’’ This
was, in her view, pure fiction.
At the time of publication Mary was in Ghana assisting Professor
Leonard Doob of Yale with anthropological research. For several years,
Doob had lived in Merano while studying the region, and developed a
close friendship with Mary and her family; Mary dedicated her book, ‘‘To
Leonard.’’ Discretions widened the breach between mother and daughter,
and for many years Olga could neither forgive nor forget.
Her early collaboration with Ezra on Le Testament de Villon was at last
being recognized. Robert Hughes, a young assistant conductor of the
Oakland Symphony in California, was staging a new version based on the
original orchestrated by George Antheil in the 1920s. With his companion,
Margaret Fisher, he came to Venice to consult Olga about the production.
He observed that when she arranged tea, ‘‘it was a proper tea, Victorian
proper.’’ And even at this advanced age, Olga displayed great energy,
staying up late to talk about Ezra and his work for seven hours. But she
drew a line in the conversation when talking about her private life, a line
that she would not cross.
A young couple from New York, Christopher and Mary Mendenhall
Cooley (whose father was on the board of the Metropolitan Museum of
Art), came to stay at 252 while looking for a house of their own. They
bought a place with a garden in Dorsoduro, remarking how lucky they
were to find it. Cooley remembered Olga saying: ‘‘The hardest thing is to
cope with good luck. We can all cope with bad luck—there’s no choice—
but few people are smart enough to cope with good luck.’’
In December 1971 Ezra was ill with a slight case of flu; she hoped to get
him out again soon, but it was too cold and windy and there were highwater
alarms. Yet they attended a solemn ceremony at San Giorgio to
mark the death of another giant from the Paris years, Igor Stravinsky.
Olga and Ezra listened from their places of honor near the altar rail while