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140 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
millionaire in New York or the exuberance of a carpet-dealer from
Keokuk vacationing in Paris, he maintains the same polite smile.
Perhaps this is the most that culture can do for a man, that is, to
give him a layer of weatherfat, which can absorb the chilling improprieties
of others without visible discomfort.
Inevitably, the proximity of Ford and Pound in Paris had to
result in another magazine. It was entitled transatlantic review.
Ford recalls Pound's lack of cooperation in genial terms:
"Ezra at that moment had become both sculptor and musician.
Thus all his thoughts were needed for those arts. He had living
above his studio in the rue Notre Dame des Champs a gentleman
whom he suspected of being an ex-Enemy, a person obnoxious to
himself. He had therefore persuaded Mr. George Antheil, who,
besides being a great composer, must be the heaviest living pianoplayer—he
had persuaded Mr. Antheil to practise his latest symphony
for piano and orchestra in Mr. Pound's studio. This lasted
all day for several weeks. When Mr. Antheil was fatigued, his
orchestra played unceasingly—Mr. Antheil's own arrangement of
the Wacht am Rhein. In the meanwhile, turning sculptor, Mr.
Pound fiercely struck blocks of granite with sledge hammers.
"The rest of his day—his evenings that is to say—would thus
be given up to the court of the local justice of the peace, rebutting
the complaints of the gentleman who lived overhead. He had some
difficulty, but eventually succeeded in convincing the magistrate
that he and Mr. Antheil were two pure young Americans engaged
in earning their livings to the greater glory of France, whereas the
gentleman upstairs was no more, no less than the worst type
produced by a lately enemy nation. So that fellow had to leave
Paris.
"It was not to be imagined that with all this on his hands, Mr.
Pound could be expected to give time to the conducting of a
Review and there the matter rested."
Pound did have a studio, and he was quite busy with his music
and sculpture, but he managed to give Ford the amount of time
that he had been accustomed to spend in advising and editing little
magazines. Ford says that "As a sculptor Ezra was of the school
of Brancusi. He acquired pieces of stone as nearly egg-shaped as