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

264 Olga Triumphant
candles on Mary’s wreath from the Tyrol to red, added carnations and the
gilt bunch. The young Mangiarottis and Ivanciches were summoned to
light candles and told to make a sign of the cross and to say a prayer
for Ezra.
Early in the new year Olga su√ered another loss. Her Venice tenant,
Lester Littlefield, collapsed of heart failure in the Milan station on his way
back to Paris and was rushed to Fatebene Fratelli hospital. Olga did not
want Lester to su√er alone, so she took the train to Milan, arriving around
midnight, too late to go to the hospital. The next morning she was told
that Littlefield had been moved to the city morgue. She ‘‘found dear Lester
looking calm and dignified, all the noble qualities in his face dominant, he
[being] one among ten or more sheeted figures,’’ then went to the funeral
home to make the arrangements and to notify Lester’s cousin in Ogunquit,
Maine.
A posthumous espresso from Lester dated January 27 was waiting when
she arrived home in Venice. She had been planning to fly to London in
February for the memorial for Pound at the Mermaid Theater with Stephen
Spender, W. H. Auden, and Cyril Connolly. Littlefield had written
that he would like to go with her, but he had already booked a reservation
on the train to Paris for the next day, January 28: ‘‘I am 60 today, feel 120
physically, and a foolish and trusting 18 in spirit.’’
Olga sent news of Littlefield’s death to Connolly. ‘‘Lester was a
thoughtful and generous friend,’’ she wrote. He had spent the last two
years near her and Ezra, had o√ered financial help: his gift of a thousand
dollars would enable her to make trips to America and London. ‘‘Ezra
wrote that I was ‘the loneliest of them all,’ and I am.’’
A vexing controversy erupted between Olga and the Gardner family of
Boston, whose antique bed Olga had purchased in good faith as Ezra’s last
birthday gift. ‘‘Joan [Fitzgerald] lent it to you in an emergency last October,’’
Elizabeth Gardner wrote. ‘‘This bed, one of a pair made with matching
upholstered headboards, was my mother’s, never for sale. I cannot
believe you intend to keep someone else’s property.’’ Gardner was still
claiming the bed—and Olga stubbornly refusing to return it—in October
1975, three years after their first correspondence. In the end, Gardner
agreed to buy another bed if Olga would return the purchase price, ‘‘so