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

269 Olga Triumphant
War I flying ace. Fifi Drummond joined her on the train to Gardone, and
they continued on to Sirmione, the lakeside oasis of sumptuous gardens
and olive groves at the end of a peninsula on Lake Garda—the inspiration
of poets since the time of Catullus. Dante had stopped there, followed
centuries later by Goethe and Byron. Ezra had discovered it on a walking
tour with Dorothy and Olivia Shakespear in 1910, and returned in the
1920s with Olga.
When Fifi returned with her to Rapallo, they visited Father Chute’s
memorial chapel and lighted candles for Ezra and the Reverendo. Ezra’s
cat was waiting at the Casa, pleased to see the shutters open to his mewings—a
cat, Olga said, that ‘‘could look me in the eye, straight and hard.’’
She read accounts of an earthquake aftershock at Brunnenburg and noted
‘‘the remarkable coincidence of an earthquake in yesterday’s I Ching—
‘‘when I throw the coins for hexagrams, I feel my hands going through His
motions.’’
Mary visited, but—after broth with tortellini and one glass of red
wine—‘‘the argument (about what?) got out of hand, and at 9:30 she went
o√ with her valise in a fit of rage.’’ Olga gave her daughter the benefit of
the doubt, viewing Mary’s ill humor as the result of having ‘‘too much on
her shoulders.’’ But after returning to Brunnenburg, Mary wrote an angry
letter accusing Olga of ‘‘lying about Graziella.’’ For the first time, Olga
learned that Mary’s foster child, Graziella, was Boris’s daughter. ‘‘EP
never said, or wrote—to me at least—anything to show that he had been
informed. We both would have thought the truth . . . a good point in Boris’s
favor. As it was, it looked as if the ‘Knights of Canossa’ wanted ‘a good
work among the poor’ on their prospectus.’’
On January 14, 1974, the active octogenarian jetted o√ to London, and
after a nostalgic visit to 10 Church Walk, Ezra’s home in his youth, she had
another heartfelt reunion with Teddy. They went to Westminster Cathedral,
recalling Ted’s years as a choir boy (when Olga first noticed Irish
shamrocks on the stalls). Next, to the National Portrait Gallery for a
screening of D. G. Bridson’s documentary film about Pound, the last time
Olga and Bridson would meet.
In March, Omar came to Venice to collect the sculptures by Gaudier-
Brzeska lent by his mother for an Alliance Française exhibition. Olga gave