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

14 Julia and Her Daughter
up and forget.’’ Olga was at a convent school in England when her grandfather
died at age eighty-three, but many in the Mahoning Valley mourned
his passing. His devoted wife Jane died of pneumonia three days later,
after saying: ‘‘Wouldn’t it be nice if I could go, too?’’
In the early years of their marriage, his son John remained in Youngstown
while Julia toured, returning to Ohio between singing engagements.
Their love match was held together by their strong Catholic faith; divorce
was never contemplated. ‘‘My parents did not quarrel in front of the
children. They married ‘till death us do part,’ ’’ Olga wrote. Edgar Marie
(‘‘Teddy’’) Rudge, the second child, was conceived in Ohio but born in
Paris, followed a year later by another son, Arthur Edgar (nicknamed
‘‘Babs’’ because of his beautiful long curls).
Arthur was a mischievous lad whose acts of derring-do often necessitated
an older sister’s rescue and excuses for him. As a very young child,
he fell down the stairs into the dark cellar of the Youngstown house. In this
and other emergencies, Olga exhibited the characteristic that shaped her
life (which Ezra immortalized in the ultimate Canto)—a blind courage.
Olga recalled very little of those early years in Ohio. To her eyes, Julia
appeared ‘‘like a cat dragging kittens by the scru√ of their necks from a
fire . . . we were saved from Youngstown. . . . Even a woman who married
for love and produced three children in three years could not stay put in
Ohio,’’ she wrote in the brief autobiography commenced in midlife but
never completed. Julia had taught a singing class, ‘‘a chorus organized
among the miners, the first orchestral concert Youngstown had ever
known,’’ Olga said. ‘‘[It was] considered a great ‘social progress.’ . . . The
local millionaire got into evening clothes as a great favor to my mother.
These seeming triumphs were not su≈cient to o√set the risks we ran (in
her view) in that atmosphere. I was first dragged away from my birthplace
to Europe at the age of two months. By my ninth year, I was to cross the
ocean seven times.’’
According to Olga, ‘‘Once married, [Julia] saw herself put into the
category of wives, and treated accordingly. . . . Money doled out in dribs
and drabs, secrecy and ignorance of facts . . . the whole situation galling to