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

26 Halcyon Days No More
Among Olga’s early memories of this cosmopolitan neighborhood was
a small bookshop on the rue Jasmin where the young girl behind the
counter spoke Russian—one of a dozen languages. A colorful character
who lived nearby was her mother’s friend Martinus Sieveking, a pianist
who transcribed Chopin for Olga’s violin concerts. His hobby was collecting
timepieces, and Olga remembered listening to the tick-tock-tick-tock of
the several dozen clocks at his flat, chiming to di√erent rhythms.
Julia contributed a colorful narrative to the Youngstown newspaper
about Paris between the turn-of-the-century Exposition and the beginning
of the Great War: ‘‘For the first time in six years, the big lake in the
Bois de Boulogne has been open to skaters . . . up in the thousands daily,’’
she wrote. The Horseshoe, always the first to freeze, was reserved exclusively
for members of the Paris skating club, and Julia and Olga went there
‘‘to study the exquisite ‘creations’ of the dressmaker, furrier, and milliner.
. . . no-one can show a beautiful gown to greater perfection than a graceful
skater.’’ Though Mardi Gras was bitterly cold, ‘‘it did not dampen the
ardor of confetti-throwing crowds. . . . Shakespeare’s ‘seven ages’ were all
represented.’’ Later, at the mid-Lent carnival, there would be processions
and the crowning of the Queen of Queens.
Julia and Olga also saw lively times in the Latin Quarter. At a fair on the
Left Bank, acrobats performed in the open air, ‘‘many living in gypsy
vans . . . spread the table for their noon meal on the street.’’ The buildings
from the Paris Exposition of 1900 were fast disappearing: Belgium’s
model of the Hotel de Ville at Oudenaarde, the most beautiful, was gone,
but the United States’ pavilion was still standing. One of their favorite
walks was to the Place de la Concorde, where the two large fountains were
‘‘in their wintry garb, the water thrown high in the air by the dolphin
has . . . frozen into exquisite draperies.’’
When Olga was not following in her perceptive mother’s wake on the
boulevards or practicing the violin, she was performing at afternoon teas
and soirées, gaining experience before sympathetic audiences. She began
to draw more attention than Julia (who accompanied ‘‘the clever violinist’’
on the piano). Madame de Saussine, an aristocratic patron of the arts
whose daughter also studied violin at the Conservatoire, provided entrée
to the finest drawing rooms of Faubourg Saint-Germain, the realm of