LOVE IS A LOSING GAME : AMY WINEHOUSE

EZRA POUND and AND OLGA RUDGE : THE LAST YEARS

The last years of Ezra, fragile and in failing mental and physical health, were difficult ones for Olga, but ones in which she showered him with her love by care-giving as well as being concerned for his legacy as a poet and writer, and so much else.

Excerpt page 210:  

For many months, she (Olga) visited Ezra (at St. Elizabeth Hospital) almost daily, observing the scene with an artistic eye: Dorothy's "luminous beauty, with almost celestial Botticelli perfection, a winter rosebud with tiny touches of pink --- soft hair falling with a  golden aura about her face.: Silence surrounded Dorothy, she remembered but the refined English lady would surprise everybody by saying things quite of character...

And then there was 'the other lady." (Seri was witness to Olga's 1955 visit.) She was sitting at the right hand of Pound one afternoon when Dorothy failed to appear.  The Olga came, "a royal presence, with marble-like, sculptured features, her back stiff and erect, professional looking, a trained person. Her hair carefully 'marcelled; in waves, and she was wearing a lovely lavender and white summer dress, with matching lavender parasol to protect fragile skin against the summer sun.....

***

Ezra and Olga had an argument that suspended their relationship again  But when he recovered from the long illness that plagued him, they reunited and went back to Italy. And there, she became Ezra's caregiver. They had been a couple for over thirty years at this point and this time it was Olga who prevailed over Dorothy, who was invited to visit, and was living without Ezra. 

***

Excerpt page 239: 

After years of waiting, Olga at last had her prize.  One observer noted that "Miss Rudge was clearly the sea in which he (Pound) floated.  She cleaned, she shopped, she stoked the old stove.. And she appeared to enjoy every day with Ezra. "Why is it, in old age, dancing seems better? We had a gramophone, dancing with Him to Vivaldi was His idea!  After many lonely Christmases past, she now could enjoy the holidays with her lover  They saw the New Year in with "His new couch, Vivialdi, again on the roof, dinner on a tray, later chocolates and grog -hot" (Olga said.)

Their daily lives followed a familiar pattern: Ezra did yoga exercises before breakfast, "spontaneously."  Lunch at the Pensioni Montin or Cici, visits with friends, walks ... a light supper at home....  In the evening, Ezra often read selections from The Cantos."

Excerpt page 240:

During this era, Olga began to record Ezra's dreams in her notebook....

***

Their days were also full of visits and letters from many noteworthy persons in Literature, Poetry, Music, and the Arts.

In 1971 Olga and Ezra's daughter, Mary, published Discretions. In so many words, Olga was not described as a loving mother, but a disciplinarian who was strict and had high standards.  Olga was wounded.

Finally, Ezra's was dieing.  At first visitors came and then he was moved to a hosptial.  Olga was there. The morning of the day he died, she had thrown the I Ching and had gotten the prophetic message when the hexagram meaning Deliverance came up. More than 120 friends came to the funeral.

Excerpt page 260:

"Ezra Pound wished to be buried in Idaho," Olga noted, In view of the Sawtooth Range. He had made known in his writing to his Committee in 1967 but legally He was not free to manage his affairs.

And so Olga arranged it. And so his body was carried through Venice on a gondola and then she (Olga) sent a telegram to England that Ezra had died in his sleep to break the news to Dorothy  She had not delayed the funeral in time for Dorothy to attend.

When she herself could no longer live alone, her daughter Mary came and took her back to Germany and her home.  At near a hundred she was beginning to loose her memory. She lived to be 101.

MARY De RACHEWILTZ

Mary was the daughter of Ezra and Olga.  She married a noble and had children. Olga lived to have grandchildren and great-grandchildren through this only child.  In this video posted on YouTube, Mary talks a bit about her parents. 

Thank You for reading Mistress Manifesto!  Every book that is featured here on this blog is one I've read from cover to cover.  Anne Conover Carson's book is packed with details about Olga and Ezra's careers and the people who were influential in their lives.

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THE ARRANGEMENT : EZRA POUND and OLGA RUDGE : WORLD WAR II FORCED EZRA, DOROTHY, and OLGA to LIVE TOGETHER FOR A YEAR

Excerpt page 98:  (1931) It was Ezra's custom to spend late summer and early fall with Olga and Mary in Venice, while Dorothy was in England with her mother and Omar.* Mary recorded her first impressions of those visits in her autobiography, Discretions.....

***

Mary had memories of afternoon walks with her father or going for swimming with him and her mother practicing her violin in Rapallo, setting the table for lunches and collecting flowers, as a child. But when these weeks were over, she was sent back to her foster home.  Mary was raised in that German home.

As the Great Depression deepened Olga sought some other ways to earn income, taking a steno class and seeking work as a translator of written work in French.  Though many of their contemporaries thought this work was beneath her, they were pragmatic too.

George Antheil had work for her in New York - a tour that included travel expenses.  Ezra continued to work on his Canto's.  Eventually the economic conditions improved. In 1939 Ezra went back to the United States for the first time in twenty-eight years. Olga would also have cause to go back to the United States eventually, but they ended their lives in Italy, and together.

***

Page 137 Excerpt:  

While in the United States, he (Ezra) had consulted an attorney to explore the possibility of legally adopting Mary to legitimize her status and secure a U.S. Passport for her, in case they had to leave Italy suddenly. (because World War II was brewing.)  When Olga heard the news, for the first time in their fifteen year relationship she 'put her cards on the table' and stated her position in strong language that could not be misunderstood. "He has put her off every time she tries to get H to consider the subject of the present triangle, she wrote (The couple wrote to each other in third person as if this might keep their communications private.) There was no reason to maintain a "marital front" out of respect for Dorothy's parents, since both were gone. "He has told her He did not believe in marriage ... certainly no church would consider a marriage entered into as He did her. His was, as sacred or binding."  On the brink if war with its possible dislocations, it might be a good time to reconsider legitimize her own - as well as her child's status...

***

Olga was worried that if Ezra adopted Mary she might loose her  A the war began Mary was already in her mid-teens. When in 1944 Rapallo was bombed, deprivation and hunger set in.  Mary, at eighteen took a secretarial job and was on her own. When in May of that year, Dorothy and Ezra Pound were forced to move, along with all their furnishings and possessions, Olga invited them to live with her. The three of them lived together for a year. They attempted to be mature about the situation and Dorothy gave the impression she was not hurt by her husband's relationship with Olga.

***

During the war, Ezra went on Italian radio and made some pro-fascist remarks, which got him charged with treason by the United States.

***

Excerpt page 155: 

Later, after the triangular living arrangement had abruptly ended, Olga recorded her true feelings" "One solid year, Dorothy made use of me to the fullest, shared my house (while) I worked like a slave - cooking, cleaning, finding food - which I only undertook owing to her incapacity, so that E. should not suffer.  I cannot understand the incredible meanness of the way she was behaving... in terror lest I have some advantage over her, considering our respective positions: she, with the war year's income saved up, a family legal advisor to fall back on and right to appeal to any of E's friends for help, a child provided for with no trouble on her part.  I with no rights of any kind - income completely knocked out by war  - high and dry in a country I never would have lived in by choice except to be near E, having to improvise a living with Mary...:

***

Dorothy Pound would prevail as the wife of Ezra Pound for the rest of her life.  Ezra may have also withdrawn from Olga as he aged and their daughter, Mary, married and had children, making Olga a grandmother with a family of her own.  At one point the poet and the violinist did not see each other for seven years nor had Mary seen her father in as long.  As Ezra aged and his physical and mental health declined,  Olga wanted to be there for him.  In particular she wanted to get him out of St. Elizabeth's Hospital, in the United States near Washington, D.C., a mental hospital which she was shut out from, when he was there in the early 1950's.  Olga battled with depression again but managed to make it back to the United States where she got to visit with Ezra, where he was housed in the part of the hospital that housed those with senile dementia. She asked certain literary friends of his to lobby for his release from the hospital.  His legal problems did not make it any easier but his friend Ernest Hemingway suggested it was mental illness that had influenced his behavior and that was the legal path his lawyers took.

In these passages of Anne Conover Carson's book, we learn that Olga paid the price of not being married to the father of her child, a man she long loved, because he would not divorce.

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*Omar was the son of Dorothy and Ezra Pound, who Dorothy had as a first and only child not long after Olga had her daughter with Ezra, Mary.

THESE ARE FOR YOU!

 

OLGA RUDGE FINDS A HOME and A DIFFICULT RELATIONSHIP EMERGES as DOES SERIOUS DEPRESSION

Excerpt: page 83    ... Watts was eager to sell one of three adjoining small houses on a cul-de-sac near the old church of Santa Maria della Salte in Dorsodura, the quiet "back" of the city. ...  Olga began to consider ways to get together enough money.  "It was the house that changed my life, ad I got it just for the asking." she remembered "First I asked Ramooh is she would give me what she had promised in her will now -- to buy a house --- and she said, "Yes."  That was half. Then I wrote my father and asked him if he could give me the rest, and if so, to cable, "yes" and he did. I still feel guilty at not having told my father that I had not seen the house (he was in the real estate business).  If I had, he might not have acted at once.  As it was , he lost his money in the 1929 stock market crash, and I would have been left with nothing but my three year old."

Excerpt page 84: Olga arrived in late November 1928. "To call it the smallest house in Venice (is) pretty near the truth...

***

It was the only house she would ever own though she had the rental apartment in Paris for some time. The idea was that Ezra live next door and that she would have Mary live with her, that they would be a family unit while Ezra would have his own space, but he reacted as if he would be in a cage.The house needed replastering and white-washing.  Olga sent Christmas alone when she wanted Ezra with her, in a hotel while the house was being refurbished. She let him know that she was angry.  They had differences in what we call "world view."

***

Excerpt page 85 (Ezra wrote) ... You have a set of values I don't care a damn for.  I do not care a damn about private affairs, private life, personal interests. You do. It is perfectly right that you should, but you can't drag me into it.  Yeats wrote a long time ago that an artist could not really have friends save among artists.... You want to be the center of the circle.  I can not be in perpetual orbit.

*** 

Ezra was laying down the rules for a relationship.  He basically threatened that he might not continue in it.  

Excerpt page 86 : Early in the new year of 1929, the hard work, the uncertainty, the coldest winter in many years - in Venice, the canals froze over - had broken Olga's spirit.  In deep depression, she wrote to Ezra, crossing our some of the most painful passages; "I have tried very hard to go on some of the more painful passages, "I have tried very hard to go on working, but I can't... nearly two months since I tried to finish things.  You didn't want to keep me -- or to give me any reason, except unjust ones....."

***

Ezra was not sympathetic.  He urged her to have the company of men younger than him. Slowly she emerged from her depression.  She realized that Ezra thought of their relationship as the "impresario and the impressed."  

Ezra might have had Narcissistic Personality Disorder.  While accusing Olga of wanting to only have her way, he was not accomodating.

During the 1930's Great Depression era, Olga went into a serious depression again and since everyone was effected she limited what she would accept from Ezra as support of their daughter Mary.  There were times when he backed out of the relationship, and she knew it, but their daughter Mary had to be considered.  Over the years the two would work out their relationship, and if secrets were kept from family or society, certainly discretion and Ezra's wife Dorothy, had to be part of the arrangements.

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THE CANTOS OF EZRA POUND : THE POET READS CANTO XIV

EZRA, OLGA, and DOROTHY : EZRA BECOMES A FATHER AGAIN, THIS TIME WITH HIS WIFE and EGERTON DID NOT GIVE UP

Reading Anne Conover Carson's book, I sought information on what Dorothy Pound knew and what her relationship with her husband, Ezra, was really like.

***

Olga Rudge, who hid her pregnancy, gave birth to her daughter and left her in the care of a villager, so that she could continue her music career and earn a living. She also experienced depression after the birth for some time. She kept that she had a daughter a secret from her father for the rest of her life. 

Meanwhile Dorothy Pound, Ezra's wife, sometimes traveled with him or alone. The movement of these people for work and pleasure created obstacles but also opportunities for them to reunite. In Rapallo, a hill town in Southern Italy, known for it's Mediterranean produce and wine making. Ezra and Olga spent Christmas of 1925 there, one of the rare times they would be able to spend the holiday together, because Dorothy was traveling. In 1926, in Paris, Olga's financials were good enough to renew the lease on the apartment her mother had first rented for the family for another four years. Her father remarried, much to Olga's approval, and visited her in Paris with his new wife.

What was attractive to Olga about Ezra?  It would seem his literary accomplishments and acceptance of her as a woman of intelligence, of her having a 'fine mind,' as well as his allegiance with her to further her career as a concert violinist. Certainly she had to learn that he would not meet all her needs nor could be commanded to see her. Ezra came up with reasons or excuses to cancel plans with her but no doubt he was proud of her and attended her performances when possible. Olga performed in George Antheil's unconventional masterpiece Ballet Mecanique and Ezra created an avant-guard opera Le Testement de Villon in 1926.

But then Dorothy, nearing forty, as Ezra was also, became pregnant with her first child and gave birth in September of 1926. It was American ex pat writer Earnest Hemingway who took her to the hospital in Paris, a friend of the couple but where was Ezra?. One wonders if Dorothy had a child competitively with Olga. Omar, a son, would live with Dorothy's parents. Ezra Pound himself checked into the hospital, some thought due to the stress of "divided loyalties." He now had two children, a daughter and a son, with a mistress and a wife, and both children were being raised by others, and possibly his in-laws also provided the finances for their garndchild. For as esteemed as he was as a creative person of achievement, he was not financially independent enough to be capable of supporting children. Olga and Ezra saw their daughter between concerts. Mary reported mostly seeing her parents a day or two here and there as they made side trips to visit with her. 

Mary was about four years old when Ezra told his father that he was the father of a daughter. His parents were not rich but he was suggesting this be considered when they were writing their will. However, his father may have not told his mother.

But Egerton Grey, who had married and divorced again, also paid Olga a visit, as if he were in competition with Ezra for her.  He proposed marriage again.  Olga was unable to bring herself to tell him about Ezra or that she had a daughter. She was keeping important secrets from those closest to her. Perhaps she feared becoming infamous because she had become a public person as a performer but Egerton's love for her seemed to be unconditional.

Late in the summer of 1928 came the shock that Egerton Grey was dead.  He had been a student at the Biochemical Institute and working on his book. It was said that he was 'ill from overwork." Olga was thirty three. As her life went on, being with Ezra, she became sentimental about Egerton. While Ezra was away, she had the attention of many men, and he even encouraged her to entertain being with a younger man.  Did she ever? We don't know.  It's assumed that Ezra always managed to keep her for himself, even if she did mention the flirtations to make him jealous.

***

I have to admit to my readers that I have a suspicion that Egerton might have been struggling with his sexuality, that he might have been homosexual at a time when he would not have had an easy time of it in society if he were out.  His love for Olga outstanding, I wonder how he could have had two quick marriages.  What had gone wrong?  Perhaps Olga knew that she could always have his love if they did not marry.  The reason for his death also sounds suspicious to me.   --- Missy

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VENICE

 

OLGA RUDGE BECOMES A SINGLE MOTHER WITH EZRA POUND AS THE BIRTH FATHER

At twenty six years old, in 1921, Olga went to Capri, before it became a tourist spot, where there were many women living, artists and musicians, what could be called a lesbian colony.  She went there with the woman who she had partnered with for her performances, pianist Renata Borgatti, who was lesbian, and they shared housing.  The question lingers, the possibility that the two women did have a lesbian relationship.  Olga seemed to deny it, was even a bit defensive, and yet, it seems that Ezra considered that she might have had an experience.  What is known is that the two women were life-long collaborators, and that Ezra Pound got used to Renata's temperament. Olga wrote years later that the three men most important in her life, her father, Egerton, and Ezra all liked Renata but that might have been sentimentality.  Egerton continued to profess his love for Olga that summer and in some way Olga continued to love him, for she would someday be buried in a red kimona that he had brought back from Japan for her. Ezra had attended Olga's performance, and we know they had written to each other, but exactly when the couple became a couple remains a mystery.

Whatever the case there is evidence that Ezra was slow to acknowledge or accept the new circumstances of his life. He remained married to Dorothy, and was known for socializing without her, but when he had Olga come to Rapolla, Italy, in February 1924, he installed her in the same hotel where he and his wife were staying,  which angered her.  Meanwhile Egerton again proposed that he and Olga marry. These were years in which both Olga and Ezra traveled for performances and business and to connect with their peers, family and friends. She went back and forth to London. They came and went and so there many have been weeks or months in which their paths did not cross.  And, there is always a question of how much Dorothy knew or accepted. The Pounds were thinking that Rapolla would be their permanent home. It can also not be assumed that it was Ezra who seduced the much younger Olga. He may have kept a certain distance in their relationship or his wife might have tried to do that in the beginning. But they certainly managed to meet up because Olga became pregnant by Ezra.  Ezra and Dorothy remained childless and rumors were that Dorothy had never warmed to sexuality.

Excerpt page 56:

In Olga's view, Ezra should not be deprived of the privilege of having a child, a torchbearer. They had a daughter by "mutual consent." Olga wrote "but it was I who wanted the child, and saw no reason to make him responsible... EP could not have undertaken the child's upbringing, and OR was not counting on it." When she first mentioned the subject, Ezra had turned down the suggestion: the world was no place to bring a child into, he said, especially without economic security. ......  she did not mention the subject again until an unidentified patron if the arts, a friend of both, suggested to Ezra that she would supervise the upbringing of Olga's child and support it financially.  With this commitment, Ezra changed his mind and asked Olga if she might change hers.

***

It's possible that the unknown art patron was lesbian Natalie Barnes, who's friendship with Ezra was enduring.  In any case, Olga decided she would not accept financial help. She though stipends from her father and subletting her deceased mother's Paris apartment would suffice

Olga Rudge gave birth after a long and difficult labor that required a surgery, a daughter Mary, and she registered Arthur Rudge, the name of her brother who had died in World War I, as the father, to spare her daughter and Ezra future difficulties. She had given birth in a town north of Rome at a time when unaccompanied women were not welcome in hotels and she had kept her pregnancy quiet from some of her peers and was not honest with her own father.  Baby Mary was premature and not robust and Olga could not breast feed. She was left with a wet nurse in the village so that the baby would prosper and Olga could continue to perform concerts and earn money.

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Reviews, selection of excerpts, narrative.

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY TO ALL YOU MISTRESSES OUT THERE!

Many of the women who've been covered here at Mistress Manifesto have had children with their man without marriage and sometimes without his financial support. 

These include Olga Rudge, Isadora Duncan, Dorothy Kilgallen, Cynthia Beck, and Bruna Palombo.

You can bring up posts about these women by clicking on the label extra-matrimonial children. 
 

WRITE ME

 

TEENAGE OLGA RUDGE : HIGH SOCIETY IN PARIS : MOMAGER JULIA : AND COMING OF AGE

Excerpt page 27:

Olga and her mother were always welcome in Parisian society; they rated high on guest lists that included barons and baronnes, comtes and comtesse, and the occasional prince or princess.  "My mother would take me to the along for my education, on the condition that I put my hair up," Olga remembered; "I usually wore it tied back with a large bow." A petite five feet three inches tall, Olga appeared younger than her years...

Excerpt page 28:  

Another venue for Olga's talent was St. Genevieve's Club on the rue Vaugirad in Monteparnasse (known to the American colony as Sylvia Beach;es father's club).  The British group assembled at the Lyceum where Olga, still in her tees, "performed with finish" before the evening was brought to a close with impromptu dancing and enthusiastic renditions of "God Save The King."  Through Julia's contacts, Olga was also invited to perform at the matinees musicales at the avenue Niel home of Madam Giulia Valda with the American soprano Julia Porter, then the star pupil of Madame Valda. The Musical Courier applauded the obbligato in the Bach-Gounod arrangement of Ave Maria" of the very capable young violinist whose excellent musicianship has been mentioned before.

***

Olga had a first love, Egerton Grey, a friend of the family who returned her affections.  Egerton accepted an arranged marriage that soon turned out to be a mistake. But war (World War I) was brewing and many Americans feared they might be caught up in it. Many expats went back to America.  Others left continental Europe. As the Rudge's moved to London, war in progress, recitals and performances were rare.

In July of 1916 in London, Olga played at an "All British" concert in which King George, Queen Mary, and the Queen Mother Alexandra were patrons. Attending were the Princess of Monaco, the Grand Duke Michael of Russia, Lady Randolph Churchill, Lady Cunard, and the Princess de Polignac, a Singer sewing machine heiress, who would later be Olga's primary patron.

Her mother single-mindedly promoted Olga's career the young woman turned twenty-one.  In 1916, among her notable performances was at Aeolian Hall where the audience numbered 600.

Meanwhile Olga's brothers participated in the war as did Egerton Grey. One of her brothers was killed and the other lost his eye. Though Egerton and Olga continued to write to each other, bit by bit the beautiful and accomplished Olga Rudge was loosing interest.  Perhaps she knew her first priority had to be her career. Her reputation as a concert violinist was growing and she was praised for her virtuosity. While the war and all the horror it brought had effected her family, the biggest shock was yet to come.

Julia Rudge died in May of 1920.  The emotional stress of the war was blamed  - a "broken heart."  But as she was dying she made Olga promise that she would not continue on with Egerton Grey, who was awaiting the official annulment of his brief marriage.  Olga did so, though she broke the romantic Egerton's heart, who reminded her that he knew she loved him and that she had vowed to be his forever. They had been in love with each other for about eight years.

 Excerpt age 44:

In her journal many years later, Olga confessed: "If I had let my mother know how much (Egerton) meant to me, she would have acted and felt differently. She was right.  I did not care enough." Thumbing through the pages of The Cantos, she turned to the line, "Nothing matters save the qualify of the affection.

***

As a note The Cantos is a long poem written by Ezra Pound. Described as unfinished and written mostly between 1915 and 1962, comprised of 120 Cantos... A canto is a break in a long poem, each canto is like a chapter. Here is an explanation: POETS ORG - GLOSSARY : CANTO

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Notes and excerpts:

FLORANCE

 

VIOLINIST OLGA RUDGE : CONTEMPORARY VIOLINISTS and THE NEW MUSIC EXPERIMENTS OF PARIS IN THE 1920's : OLGA RUDGE, EZRA POUND.

Alas!  Research Ezra and much comes up.  Olga  - not so much.  But musical compositions that she did play as a violinist in Paris do come up, and this series from Arizona State University circa 2015 in which violinist Hannah Leland did her final performance as a Doctoral Candidate, is exciting. Aimee Fincher is the pianist.  According to the information about this video, George Antheil wrote three sonatas between 1923 and 1924 as commissioned by Ezra Pound for Olga Rudge to perform. Here is the musical innovations that happened a hundred years ago.  (On another such video it says that Ezra played drums on a composition that Olga also played on.)

From the book by Anne Conover Carson :  pages 6-7 (circa 1923)   Ezra soon introduced Olga to Margaret Anderson's protege, George Antheil, a young pianist and composer from New Jersey who had arrived in Paris to attend the premier of Igor Stravinsky's  Les Noces on June 13.  With his Romanian belle amie Boski Marcus, he took rooms above Sylvia Beach's landmark Left Bank bookshop, Shakespeare and Company. Short and slight, with clipped blond bangs that made him look even younger than his twenty-three years, Antheil met avant-garde composer Erik Satie and "that Mephistophelian red-bearded gent, Ezra Pound," at a tea honoring Anderson and the actress Georgette Leblanc.

Ezra began to take Antheil to Olga's flat to practice. ....  Antheil soon set to composing a violin sonata for Olga, determined to make the music, he wrote for Ezra, "as wildly strange as she looked, tailored to her special appearance and technique.  It is wild, the fiddle of the Tziganes ...totally new written music...barbaric, But I think Olga will like it... it gives her more to do ad show off with than other sonata.

... The Antheil-Rudge collaboration at Olga's flat continued on an almost daily schedule in the all.  Antheil praised Olga's mastery of the violin:"I noticed when we commenced playing a Mozart sonata ...  (she) was the consummate violinists.... I have heard none with the superb lower register of the D and G strings that was Olga's exclusively."  On October 4 at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, the three short Antheil sonatas that premiered as the curtain raiser fr opening night of the Ballet Suedois became the most controversial musical event of the season.  A corespondent of the New York Herald compared the evening the the premier of Stravinsky's Sacre du Printempts: "a riot of enormous dimensions occurred when George Antheil... played several piano compositions... Antheil is a new force in music ... of a sharper and more breath-taking order that Stravinsky."

TIED WITH RIBBON

 

OLGA RUDGE VIOLINIST MISTRESS OF POET EZRA POUND : WRITING LETTERS TO EACH OTHER BEGAN AND PRESERVED THEIR LONG RELATIONSHIP

WHAT THOU LOVEST WELL by Anne Conover Carson is a primary reference for this month's posts.

OLGA RUDGE

(Olga Ludovica (Louise) Rudge)

1895-1996  (one hundred and one years old!)

EZRA POUND  

(Ezra Weston Loomis Pound)

1885-1972

Olga outlived the love of her life by twenty-four years. She did not consider herself to be his mistress because, she said, he never supported her. That's attitude is of interest here at Mistress Manifesto as we attempt to define and understand unconventional and alternative relationships. Does being a Mistress require being Kept?  I don't think so! Both Olga and Ezra earned some money but also depended on money from family - in his case from his wife's - and patrons of the arts.

Ezra's grave is at San Michele cemetery in Venice, Italy. Olga was taken in my their daughter Mary when she could not longer live alone, but she was buried next to decades-long love.

***

Anne Conover Carson's book is about the love story of an accomplished poet and his accomplished violinist mistress, both American ex patriots, his fame enduring, her's not as well known. He was a married man who never divorced. She never married but when it came to their daughter, saw the positives in him divorcing and marrying her. Early in their relationship, but when she was closer to thirty than twenty, Olga made the exceptional choice to bear a child by Ezra and had a daughter they named Mary Rudge. Mary would have children and Olga, who lived to be 101, became a grandmother and great-grandmother.  

Olga Rudge experienced conflict with Ezra, who may have had narcissistic personality disorder and clearly had episodes of mental illness. He may have wavered in his intentions or may have keenly felt himself between his wife and mistress.  No doubt the women had to share him.

Ezra and Olga met in Paris at the famous salon held by Natalie Clifford Barney.   

Excerpt: page 3

Barney was some twenty years Olga's senior and was the leader of a freedom-loving and bohemian group of intellectual women in the early 1900's - Collete,  Anna de Noailles, and the spy Mata Hari. Another generation, Olga's contemporaries, succeeded them : English suffragettes, militant feminists and lesbians, tolerant heterosexuals and asexual androgyns. .......  Musical reputations were established at Barneys; salon, and Renata Borgatti, Olga's accompanist, incited her there after the two women returned from a sun-filled action on the Isle of Capri.  Olga recognized Ezra, the tall American wearing a signature brown velvet jacket, as someone she had seen at concerts in London the year before.  

***

In 1895 when Olga Ludovica (Louise) Rudge was born in Youngstown, Ohio, of Irish heritage, it was a polluted mill town but boasted an opera house. Her mother, Julia, studied voice in London and Paris and had aspirations to have an operatic career but married at twenty-nine, then considered to be spinsterhood, to one of the most eligible bachelors in town. Olga's father's family traced their origins to 17th century England and had been Anglicans but had converted to Catholicism in Youngstown. In Olga's early childhood her mother was on tour. 

Olga didn't think of marriage as a career and hated Ohio. From an early age, perhaps influenced by her mother's attitude, despite her parents obviously traditional marriage, she had other ideas. In 1904, when she was nine, her mother sent her to boarding school in England. Olga saw the voyage and all else as a great adventure and was not resentful of being sent away to the convent. She was already learning to play the violin. In 1910 her mother moved the family to Paris and they began to vacation in Italy. Olga's was an advantaged upbringing, though the assumptions about her family's wealth was exaggerated.  Olga did need to earn a living and was able to do so as a violinist playing recitals and converts primarily in Europe.

Olga's first love began in Florence, where she fell for a young man named Egerton Grey, a friend of the family, who also lived an international life.  He went to one of Olga's concerts and then began to pursue her with romantic ardor but after he married and then annulled his marriage, she was left conflicted. Egerton was slow to give up on marrying Olga.

In 1910 Olga's mother decided it was time to send her to the Paris Conservatoire to study under Maestro Leon Carambat who was the 1st violinist at the Opera Comique. She moved the family - sans her husband who remained doing business -  into an exclusive and beautiful six story apartment building.  It could be said that Olga's had the perfect mother for her own aspirations.  Julia Rudge was perceptive, she honored her daughter's talent and sought her development as a musician, and she was a companion to her daughter who furthered their acceptance by society where important patrons could afford to support the arts and the artist. Olga started performing at afternoon teas, gaining experience in front of small audiences, and the patronage of important hostesses.   

Ezra Pound was married to Dorothy Shakespear, and English woman who was reportedly austere.  In January 1921, Ezra and Dorothy were living in Paris, though they also traveled to and lived in London and would move to Italy. Though he was 36, he and his wife rented and lived humbly, almost impoverished, on stipends from his publications, his wife's money, and contributions from his parents. Ezra had respect as a poet, musician, and all around creative.  American ex-patriots writer Ernest Hemingway and his then wife were visitors, the influential Gertrude Stein (who also ran a salon) was negative, but Ezra Pound was welcomed and admired at Barney's.  He and Barney had been writing to each other about literature and poetry for over a decade. Ezra wrote the score for an opera, his contribution to the new music trends of Paris just as there were new poetic rhythms. He was a pianist and also played drums. Olga was a violinist of talent and skill and her work in the new music of Paris in the 1920's composed by another American ex-patriot, George Antheil, was remarkable.

Pound met many important and famous artists and writers at the Barney salon. He had long been seen socializing around town without his wife and what must be assumed is that she was dedicated to their marriage but left alone quite a bit. They were childless when Ezra met Olga and there was speculation that Dorothy had never warmed up to sex. 

Ezra and Olga began a correspondence in 1923, which is known, but exactly when and how their love first bloomed or they began to have a sexual relationship or if continued one, or for how long is not. The evidence of it is the birth of their only child, Mary. (Mary de Rachewiltz was her married name.)

Please check in again here at Mistress Manifesto as I continue the story of Ezra Pound and Olga Rudge!  Can you understand their unconventional love?  

Here is a question I have, which ties into our exploration of defining Mistress. I've heard of this relationship called a 'menage a trois' but I think that is incorrect, unless there is evidence that Dorothy and Ezra and Olga went around together, and perhaps included sexuality in the relationship.  Yes, at one point the three of them lived uncomfortably together, but only out of necessity.

C 2023 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

The introduction of this book mentioned the names of people who have already appeared here at Mistress Manifesto. I just knew this was my kind of book, and the kind of book that my loyal readers would want to read. If any of the books I've read and featured here at Mistress Manifesto appeal to you, please do the authors the honor and get a copy!

These archived subjects may be of interest to you. Living in Italy, Olga Rudge played her violin for Mussolini.  At Barney's salon, Mata Hari was one of the people she socialized with.  Isadora Duncan was a contemporary in Paris who mixed with some of the same artists.

November 2014
MATA HARI

Tantalizing Courtesan and Spy Who Got the Death Penalty

September 2015
NATALIE CLIFFORD BARNEY : Lesbian in Paris who Kept Other Women

You might also be interested in: 

February 2016

ISADORA DUNCAN

Mother of Modern Dance and Mistress of Paris Singer; She Did Positive Affirmations to Attract a Wealthy Patron

March  2011   

CLARETTA PETACCI

Mistress who Died By Hanging With Her Man, Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini