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...
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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."
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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.
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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....."
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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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