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EZRA POUND 111
ones are like pools full of frogs eggs, and hordes of these globules
perish annually. I mean they merge into suburbias." 19
It seems that suburbias were already a problem, or at least a
matter for discussion, in Europe four decades ago. This illustrates
the time-lag of which Ezra speaks in comparing Europe and
America.
"There is a certain propriety," Pound continues, "a certain
fastidiousness of the mind. The old Slautzer used to mutter in
the face of the British scrubbed-clean nutocracy. We accepted
her because she had once lived with a certain Viennese artist.
She even passed for, and may have been actually, one of his
various wives. That was her passport. She must have had some
intelligence or he would not have stood her a week. She mumbled,
she was hard to understand. I, on the whole, have very little
to tell of her, but I can still hear her saying, as she waved a
guardsman away from her table: 'No, no, vot I say to dese people.
Vot, I will sleep vit you. Yes, I will sleep vit you. It iss nossing.
But talk to you half an hour? Neffair! Vun musst traw de line
SOMMEFVERE! !'
"This fastidiousness of the mind, my dear Lydia, is something
which I will recommend to you. The old Slautzer did not attain
it on all planes . . . notably on the plane of her fingernails. And
she never opened a window, or permitted one to be opened, and
she wore a greasy (but rich, very rich) fur-coat, indoors, out-ofdoors,
all the time.
"There were certain things in her favour. But for constant
immersion in second-rate conversation there is no extenuation
whatever." 20
"No. VI. No, my dear Caroline
Russians! Am I never to hear the last of these Russians! I
have shut up the esteemed and estimable William, and now you
take up the pillows.
"The Russian (large R. definite article, Artzibasheff, Bustikosseff,
Slobingobski, Spititoutski and Co. Amalgamated, communutated,
etc.). 'The Russian,' my dear Caroline, is nothing