Olga Rudge - Alone in Venice

Alone in Venice

Rudge was 78 when Pound died, the beginning of the final phase of her life. She became one of Venice's resident celebrities, quick witted, intelligent, and cultured. She sat on many committees organizing the city's many charities and galas. She was an essential guest at the city's profuse "dolce vita" gatherings, but continued to inhabit the same small house she had shared with Pound. Encouraging young aspiring poets and artists, she often offered them free use of the top floor of her home in return for a small painting or dedicated poem. Frequently asked to write an autobiography, she always replied "write about Pound". She saw it as her raison d'être to promote Pound's work and defend his reputation against charges of anti-Semitism and Fascism.

Rudge's relationship with her daughter Mary had always been complex: at the time of the birth, Rudge had in fact wanted a son. Having boarded the child with Tyrolean farmers at birth, Rudge was later surprised to find the child developed into "a dialect speaking farm girl". Rudge tried to rectify this situation upon being permanently reunited with Mary when the child was ten. Elocution, etiquette, and music lessons were met with fierce opposition; a violin that Rudge gave to her daughter was smashed against a chicken coop: in short, Mary found her mother distant, impenetrable, and authoritarian. Her relationship with her father was better. She learned of her illegitimacy only in her late teens. Pound asked Mary to translate his epic work The Cantos into Italian. This was to be the beginning of a lifelong passion and study of Pound's work, with Mary later referring to The Cantos as "my bible". Mary wrote her autobiography, Discretions, in 1971 (the title being a play on words on Pound's autobiography, Indiscretions). The revelations contained in the book "deeply hurt" Rudge, and she and her daughter did not communicate for several years, although she remained in regular contact with Mary's children, Walter de Rachewiltz and Patrizia de Rachewiltz de Vroom. Mother and daughter later overcame their estrangement.

Venice with its many steps and lack of motorised road vehicles is a difficult city for the old and infirm, and with her family several hours' drive away, Rudge had to become dependent on friends and acquaintances for the necessities of life. In later life her memory began to fail her.