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

18 Julia and Her Daughter
indicating the closeness of their relationship and the major role she played
in Olga’s life.
My darling girlie: Let me tell you out of my own experience that
when you feel inclined to find fault with circumstances, that the
best thing to do is work. I have been through so many years of
ennui and disappointment, and if I had only had someone to show
me how to make my conditions or surroundings, instead of letting them
make me, I should have been saved much su√ering. Make your
music your first duty. Concentrate on it and try to love even the
drudging of it. Then use it (when you can play even a few bars
properly) to drive away the little devils of unrest which are always
trying to upset us.
Olga’s reply indicated that she had recovered her high spirits and was
following her mother’s advice: ‘‘Could you send me some violin strings?
Mine have broken. Madame said I was glad they were broken, but . . . I’m
not spoilt, am I? All the girls say I am.’’
Olga made her First Communion at St. Anthony’s Convent School on
June 29, 1905, and it was of such importance to her that—sometime
after her eightieth birthday—she recreated the events of that day in her
notebook.
My mother had made me a dress and sent it from New York: short,
long-waisted, with a sash, and with insertions and edging of real
lace (she must have bought it in Belgium and treasured it), with
fine tucks. [I wore] a white tulle veil under a wreath of white roses
from the convent garden. . . .
Madame Anselm came into the room . . . to see me get into my
dress, that I was looking forward to with joy—not vanity. [She]
suggested it would be a fitting sacrifice if I did not look at myself in
the long mahogany-framed swinging mirror, and turned it back to
front! So I never enjoyed what my mother had done with such care
for me. I have no idea what I looked like, but I took pleasure . . . in
renouncing vanity.