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

62 A Marriage That Didn’t Happen
Little by little, the child began to improve: ‘‘Night before last, [a]
thunderstorm cleared the air, so yesterday it was better. . . . I think it will
go, if it only gets a start . . . looks very grim and determined—e bionda
what there is of it, also eyelashes golden, so think it will probably remain
bionda.’’
‘‘There is a contadina here whose child has died, who can nurse it a few
weeks at least. . . . Does he expect her to travel with an infant? She
wouldn’t consider it. The child must remain here until I can find some other
place for it, and I can’t look after it, having no talent that way.’’
When the wet nurse, Frau Johanna Marcher, had to return to her farm
in the nearby village of Gais, she begged to take the baby home with her. In
Olga’s view, the frau was a sympathetic woman who, after five stillbirths,
would give love as well as abundant mother’s milk to Maria. Olga went
with her to Gais to see for herself that the Marchers o√ered a wholesome
environment for her child. She inspected the house, the clean kitchen, the
low wood-paneled room with vaulted ceiling, with a stable leading o√ the
front entrance. There was another foster child in the house, a beautiful
little girl of three, obviously well cared for and in good health.
Olga became convinced that the simple farm atmosphere, fresh air, and
country life were healthier for Maria than the itinerant gypsy life of a
violinist. Even if she had not felt it necessary to conceal the child’s birth
(‘‘it was not the permissive society’’), she was unwilling to endanger the
prematurely born infant’s life on the concert circuit. At that time, it was
common practice for children of well-to-do Italian families to be lodged
with a peasant nurse until they were old enough to be sent to a convent
school; Renata Borgatti had been raised by a wet nurse, she remembered.
‘‘I would have stayed on for a month or two at Brixen, but Frau Marcher
couldn’t be away from the farm, and obviously the place seemed ideal for
a small child. I still think it was,’’ she recorded many years later, ‘‘[except
for] the dialect, [which] became an impossible barrier.’’
In August, Olga returned to Katherine Dalliba-John’s villa in Florence,
arising early each morning to exercise with a young physical fitness instructor,
formerly of the U.S. Army, to regain her trim figure. She returned
to Gais in late October, but Ezra did not accompany her: ‘‘La mia leoncina