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

39 Halcyon Days No More
1934, when she purchased a numbered copy of the Stradivarius ‘‘Messiah’’
in London.
In March 1918, when the first of the American Expeditionary Forces
arrived in France, the Allies had been pushed back toward the Marne, and
‘‘Big Bertha’’ began to shell Paris from the forest only seventy-five miles
away. On Good Friday, rockets were flying on all sides, and the Magasins
Réunis store was reduced to rubble, along with a six-story apartment
building on the boulevard Saint Michel. Gotha bombers continued nightly
raids, and streetlights were extinguished. The boulevards were empty at
night save for the hirondelles, caped policemen on bicycles patrolling the
neighborhoods. During the day, a blizzard of papers rained down from the
skies on which the Germans had printed ‘‘à demain soir,’’ or ‘‘à bientôt.’’
Paris all but emptied out by June.
Olga and her mother remained in England. As the war accelerated,
food was rationed and Zeppelins were raiding naval installations, in spite
of which Olga’s concerts continued on schedule. Under a banner headline,
‘‘London Applauds Americans’ Works,’’ Musical America praised Olga’s
Aeolian Hall recital and the gifted young violinist, whose ‘‘charm and
musical personality permeates all she does, added to which she has a talent
for selecting new and interesting programs.’’ Emile Bernard’s Suite, Nardini’s
Concerto in E Minor, and Saint-Saëns’s Habanaise were followed
by ‘‘Deep River,’’ a Negro spiritual arranged from Samuel Coleridge-
Taylor’s transcription by Maud Powell. The final piece was the London
premiere of a sonata by John Alden Carpenter, a young Chicago composer,
at that time a captain in the U.S. Army. Olga also played a benefit
concert at Hamilton Hall for the blinded soldiers and sailors of St. Dunstan’s
Hospital with thoughts of her absent brothers.
Teddy was then at Romford awaiting discharge. After nine months in
the German hospital, he had been sent back to England in an exchange of
prisoners as a grand blessé, having lost one eye. It first appeared that he
might lose an arm, but the wound healed after a long period of recuperation.
His wartime experience and su√ering reinforced his determination to
become a doctor.
Serious aerial combat had begun for Arthur: ‘‘This morning on patrol