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

37 Halcyon Days No More
May 15, he too traveled to London to join up. Julia had asked Arthur at the
age of ten what he wanted to do for his birthday, and he had replied,
‘‘Something romantic, Mother!’’ What could be more romantic for a
young lad than to follow the Insall brothers into the Royal Flying Corps?
He wrote to the family that it was di≈cult to find his way around
London—‘‘the streets are irregular and all alike’’—but he finally located
the police station on Tottenham Court Road to enlist. Later in July, he sent
a letter from the Church Army Recreation Hut (Romford, Sussex), with
photos enclosed of ‘‘me, bayonet-fighting . . . the large field is where the
recruits have squad and arm drill. I was section commander before the
Colonel this morning, and gave orders to my eight men in an imposing
basso profundo. . . . We are waiting for our uniforms . . . had a fitting at
Studd & Millington’s. . . . hope we go to Oxford, as we shall be billeted in
the di√erent colleges.’’
Commissioned a first lieutenant on August 14, the young o≈cer wrote
his mother and Olga about his last leave in London, where he was introduced
to Frank Mullings of the Beecham Operatic Company. ‘‘I went
round to see him at Drury Lane . . . [he o√ered me] a lovely stall to see
Aida. Mullings, who sang the role of Radames, ‘‘introduced me in his
room to Beecham, a funny chap with whiskers.’’ Sir Thomas, he remembered,
had been their neighbor in St. John’s Wood.
Arthur mentioned a friend who—after only three months’ training—
was killed at the front, and cautioned his mother: ‘‘Do not tire yourself
and worry about Ted and me.’’ Soon after, Julia was informed that Teddy
was among the first of the Artists’ Rifles posted as missing; they next heard
that he had been wounded on patrol and was being held as a prisoner of
war in a German hospital.
In the fall, Arthur was assigned to the O≈cers’ Mess, Royal Flying
Corps, Shawbury, Salop. Inspired by a quotation in his mother’s letter—
‘‘To master the air, one must first master oneself ’’—he wrote: ‘‘The machine
I shall fly in France is a lovely little single-seater scout called the
Sopwith Camel . . . awfully fast, carries two synchronized machine guns
which fire through the field of the propeller.’’ Arthur was among the first
to fly the pursuit plane made famous by Germany’s ‘‘Red Baron,’’ Manfred