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

274 Olga Triumphant
branch ’bin cut . . . your cats, Mr. Pound, long-lived cats. ‘Persistence,’ he
would say . . . am I turning into one of those horrible old women who
devote themselves to cats?’’
Early in January 1979, Olga was o√ to Milan for a lecture at the Teatro
Eliseo by Dr. Thomas S. Szasz, professor of Psychiatry at the New York
State University Hospital in Syracuse, with whom she had corresponded
about Ezra’s condition. ‘‘It was a great event in my life to have heard and
seen you in action,’’ she wrote Szasz. She suggested that 1985, the centenary
of Ezra’s birth, would be a fitting date for a ‘‘public retraction of any
accusation of un-American activities,’’ and contrasted public opinion in
the United States to ‘‘the more civilized attitude of EP’s friends in Europe,
and of the press in Italy.’’ The ‘‘explainers and exploiters’’ who followed
Pound reminded her of ‘‘small children walking ’round in grandpa’s shoes
cut down to fit his size.’’
A poignant family reunion on August 1. Olga was summoned to England
for the funeral of her last surviving brother, Edgar Marie (Teddy)
Rudge—at eighty-three, a year younger than Olga. Ted’s children, Peter
and Elizabeth, picked her up at the station and drove to the family home,
Four Winds, through ‘‘lovely country Mother would have loved.’’
‘‘Peter [was] doing splendidly in a di≈cult situation,’’ she wrote. ‘‘A
Protestant Church and a Catholic priest, Father Sleight, who did Teddy
justice. Peter read the Lesson very well.’’ They walked to the grave, then
back to Four Winds for lunch with at least forty of Teddy’s friends, to
show his paintings and old photos that her mother had, first at 12 Hill
Road, then on the rue Chamfort. ‘‘Everyone was very kind to me, seemed
struck with my resemblance to him [Teddy]. . . . Now that Teddy is gone,
His Cantos are the only place I find a record of our childhood—Chocorua,
the land of the Maple!’’
Another memorial took place on August 27 at the English church, for
Lord Louis Mountbatten, victim of an Irish terrorist bomb planted in his
boat while sailing with grandchildren and young members of the royal
family. William McNaughton was with Olga as she signed the guest register
in her distinctive hand, olga o’connell rudge. It was important to
her to make a statement that she was of Irish descent: ‘‘There should be one
Ireland—if the English show sense, they will get out in style.’’