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196 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
not serve the purpose of a monarch. At any rate, there was no
war in 1936, and there was one in 1939, after he had "abdicated".
Ezra tells another story about "Eddie", illustrating a thesis that
certain members of the European aristocracy are apt to revert to
type. That is to say, they sometimes like to bound about on all
fours, especially late at night. He tells a tale to the effect that he
was roused from his rest in a Riviera hotel one night by a woman's
scream. He dashed out in the hall, just in time to see something or
someone rounding the corner on all fours. Another lady was reassuring
the frightened woman that "It's only our Eddie."
In January of 1939, Ezra's friend William Butler Yeats died,
ending one of his longest and most stimulating associations. His
mother-in-law had also passed away the previous year, and he
decided that this was an opportune moment to revisit his homeland.
As he tells it, in an interview after his release,
"In 1938 my wife's mother died and for the first time she had a
little income and I was free of the responsibility for caring for her.
I thought it was monstrous that Italy and the United States should
go to war so I came here to stop it. For the first time I had money
to pay for the trip. I took second class passage on the Rex . . .
the ship was empty so they got me the bridal suite for $160. All I
had was a suitcase and a rucksack so I spent nothing on porters.
It cost me only $5 over the $160. Arriving in New York I entered
as the poor boy making good." 50
When Pound landed in New York, he was quoted in the New
York Times of April 21 as saying that bankers and munitionsmakers
were to blame for the current unrest in Europe, rather than
the heads of totalitarian states. On June 13, 1939, the New York
Times printed an editorial congratulating him on his having been
awarded a doctorate of letters at his alma mater, Hamilton College.
The citation reads:
"Ezra Pound: native of Idaho, graduate of Hamilton College in
the class of 1905, poet, critic, and prose writer of great distinction.
Since completing your college career you have had a life full of
significance in the arts. You have found that you could work more
happily in Europe than in America and so have lived most of the
past 30 years an expatriate making your home in England, France