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

36 Halcyon Days No More
Hall before an audience of some six hundred. A critic noted, ‘‘Miss Rudge
. . . is emphatically a musician. . . . If she were not a violinist, she would . . .
make an excellent singer. . . . she sings on her violin.’’ Julia considered her
e√orts well rewarded. She described the event to Arthur: ‘‘The first recital
is over and a huge success. The Morning Post, Telegraph, and Times have
splendid notices . . . the best-noticed recital of the season. . . . Aunt Emma
[Rudge] was delighted with Olga’s success.’’ The Duncans and Egerton
sent a bouquet of pink roses that was ‘‘immense—she had to struggle to
get o√ the stage.’’
On November 28, Olga introduced a new sonata of great interest to the
wartime audience. The composer, Paul Paray, winner of the Prix de Rome
in 1911, was then a prisoner of war in Germany. ‘‘His [Paray’s] musical
gifts may or may not . . . soften the hearts of his Teutonic gaolers,’’ one
hard-hearted critic suggested, but there was ‘‘hardly a bar to stir anyone’s
pulse or fire anyone’s imagination.’’ Olga, however, ‘‘played with genuine
power. . . . She was accurate, crisp, and—above all—sensitive.’’
Egerton Grey, forced to remain idle in Paris with an eye injury, found
consolation in Olga’s letters ‘‘from dear London.’’ He had been contemplating
‘‘The Hypothesis of the Subconscious Mind’’: ‘‘This comes
from staying in one’s room for a week with one eye shut and the other on
the ceiling, thinking of a thousand things one cannot write. . . . Perhaps
when you return to Paris, if you do intend returning, we may go into
details of this and a thousand other things.’’ Olga, however, appeared to be
retreating from her ardent admirer. In old age, she wrote in her notebook:
‘‘Egerton’s attitude toward ‘love’ was chivalrous in the extreme. I was
wrong to mock him.’’
She and her mother returned to Paris for the holidays, bringing muchneeded
gifts for the boys, ‘‘lovely shirts, socks, ties, and a mountain of
books.’’ It was the last reunion of the family before Teddy was posted to
the Western Front with the Artists’ Rifles.
On April 6, 1917, the United States declared war on Germany. Young
Arthur passed his bachot at the Lycée with Special Mention (sixth out of
forty in natural history), and after celebrating his eighteenth birthday