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

65 A Marriage That Didn’t Happen
In mid-March, she returned to Paris, anticipating that Ezra would join
her there, but she was disappointed. ‘‘D[orothy] has been half ill ever since
she got back [from Egypt], took to her bed this a.m.,’’ Pound wrote. A
telegram followed: ‘‘Troppo incomodo—sorry.’’ Olga resented this injustice
and told him so: ‘‘ ‘Troppo incomodo’ is probably the mot juste,
[but] she feels he might have found a more polite if less direct way of
putting it, this idea of a ‘maîtresse convenable,’ a ‘convenient mistress.’ ’’
She was not angry enough to risk an open break, and she apologized for
the outburst in her next letter, asking Ezra to recommend a reading list of
the classics. Because her formal education had ended after the convent
school at Sherborne, Olga had a strong desire to hone her fine mind, one
possible explanation for her powerful attraction to Ezra.
Determined to keep the upper hand, Ezra replied with the pedantic tone
of one surprised by a woman’s intelligence: ‘‘She’s such a high blue
[stocking] anyhow, that she has already read everything except H[enry]
James, and Tho[mas] Hardy’s Mayor of Casterbridge. . . . When he feels
like readin’, he does Greek with a Latin crib. Fat lot o’ good that’ll do
her.’’ Instead, he suggested Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey and
Tristram Shandy, Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, novels he considered not
too challenging.
Antheil was then in Paris, corresponding with Ezra about future bookings.
‘‘I’ve got a new violin sonata I want to give a private but important
performance of with Olga here in early July. Where is she? Give me her
address. . . . You always forget that when I ask.’’ Ezra had kept Olga’s
confinement a carefully guarded secret.
She was on the Lungarno Guicciardini with Ramooh in April. Ezra’s
next letter hints at Olga’s depression after the birth of their daughter and
his own confusion about the future: ‘‘Ch’è il fine del mundo [sic] [It is the
end of the world]. He plunges into her grief . . . her a√airs don’t bear
looking at. his a√airs don’t bear looking at. The past is forgotten, the
future is ominous, the present is beyond words.’’ There followed several
paragraphs of tennis scores, local news, and weather reports, then, ‘‘He is
too g—d— stupid to live. He hasn’t brains enough to git on wif his
canters . . . or earning a honest living. . . . Gorblezz my zoul . . . two years
from last concert . . . hell an’ blazes.’’