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...

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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.

*** 

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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VERONICA FRANCO'S CONFESSION TO THE COURT from the film DANEROUS BEAUTY

YOUTUBE VIDEO REPLACED OCTOBER 2017 

Michael Asinow 1998 UCLA Law School   discusses the film which he says was "loosely based on the book by Margaret Rosenthal.

EXCERPT:

The film correctly reflects the difference in lifestyles between successful courtesans and wives of rich men. Wives were cloistered creatures without education or financial independence, their life devoted entirely to home and family. Courtesans, on the other hand, could mingle freely with the rich and famous, acquire education and wealth of their own, participate in literary, political and intellectual circles, and even publish their work.

Franco was incredibly successful in this milieu; between 1570 and 1580, she edited works of various authors and published books of her poetry as well as epistolary works. She was greatly concerned with the plight of younger women who lacked dowries; her published letters often refer to their plight and her wills left money to help poor women.

Franco’s success inspired extreme jealousy from male courtiers and poets whose position and patronage she greatly threatened. As in the film, a particularly venomous rival was Maffio Venier, a nephew of Franco’s patron Domenico Venier. Maffio repeatedly attacked Franco by name in satirical and often obscene verse. Franco’s poems and letters effectively strike back at Maffio and defend the role of courtesans in Venetian society...

THE HONEST COURTESAN : VERONICA FRANCO : MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

The Honest Courtesan
Veronica Franco - Citizen and Writer in Sixteenth Century Venice
By Margaret E. Rosenthal
University of Chicago Press C 1992

Unlike some of the other books I've featured on this blog, written by the Courtesan or Mistress herself, The Honest Courtesan is a highly literary, almost academic book and it's not just about Veronica Franco, but takes a look at women in 16th century Venice, Italy, the world she lived in, when Cortesans were both accepted and denounced and subject to legislation. 

Veronica Franco is worthy of literary discussion because she herself wrote literary works and poetry, all published in the period of 1575-1580, when she would have been in her thirties.  Elevating herself by a reputation for intelligence, talent, and honesty, she competed with mostly male writers and poets, wanting work for her mind while surviving through work by her body.

This book is not for the light reader but someone who wants deep knowledge about the woman and what made her outstanding, so that 400 years later we are still interested.

LINK to the WRITING and POETRY of VERONICA FRANCO

THE POETS GARRET - VERONICA FRANCO link here!