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

42 Lost Loves
to play Premier Prix de Rome winner Lili Boulanger’s Nocturne, accompanied
by Nadia, her more famous sister. Paris critics praised Olga’s
‘‘virtuosity and style.’’ Her mother’s friend Halcott Glover was in the
audience: ‘‘The performance [was] sheer good work, such as one does not
often see. . . . I feel sure that if merit has anything to do with it, you will
soon be famous. And what a beautiful dress!’’
Paris picked up its tempo after the war, followed by les années folles. The
cost of living almost quadrupled. A baguette that cost fifty centimes in
December 1919 cost ninety a month later. Olga’s father had signed a long
lease at the prewar rent on the rue Chamfort apartment, where she continued
to stay during the concert season. She was touted as ‘‘violoniste, de
l’Orchestre Symphonique de Londres’’ in a concert at the Théâtre Caton
in February 1920, performing the Debussy Sonata with Georges de Lausnay
of the Conservatoire.
Back at Belsize Park, Olga was preparing for the premiere performance
in London of the new Ildebrando Pizzetti sonata. The date—May 17,
1920—was one she would never forget. Julia had been transposing the
violin part from a piano score arranged for pianist Henri Etlin. She was not
well, resting in bed, copying the second movement, ‘‘Preghiera per gli
innocenti, chi so√rano e non sanno il perchè’’ [Prayer for the innocent,
who su√er and know not why]. Suddenly, the emotional stress of the war
years took its toll, and the tired heart stopped beating. (In the euphemism
of the time, her mother died of ‘‘a broken heart’’; Olga recorded crepe
cuore in her notebook). Some sixty years later, at La Fenice in Venice when
someone in the audience was stricken, she recalled ‘‘the terrible sight—
mother!—except that after, she looked peaceful and beautiful.’’
As she lay dying, Julia had made Olga promise that she would not go
away with her first love, Egerton Grey, who was—according to law and in
the eyes of God—a married man. (Egerton had not asked her to do this,
Olga later insisted; he was waiting for an annulment of his early marriage.)
But Olga promised, thinking her sacrifice would placate her dying
mother. ‘‘My duplicity was the last shock she had after Arthur’s death and
Teddy’s imprisonment. I still have all these things on my heart.’’
Black-bordered mourning cards were sent out to friends of the family
at home and abroad: ‘‘Julia O’Connell Rudge, décédée après une courte