Evviva Il Duce!
Sincerely,
Enrico Piaggio.
Isotta Fraschini Automobiles,
12845 Milano
7 November
MR LOWNDES
FIND ENCLOSED BANKER’S DRAFT FOR L2500 AND ONE DISC RECORDING OF PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL FOR THE ISOTTA FRASCHINI TIPO 8B. WE ARE DELIGHTED TO HEAR OF IL DUCE’S INTEREST IN YOUR UNDERTAKING AND PLEDGE OUR CONTINUED SUPPORT FOR RADIO FIRENZE. PLEASE GIVE OUR REGARDS TO LORD ROTHERMERE.
VIVA IL DUCE!
ORESTE FRASCHINI ON BEHALF OF ISOTTA FRASCHINI AUTOMOBILES.
Café Rapallo
Rapallo
27th November 1937
Mr Lowndes –
YES! in a word. In rather more, I might say to you how long I have been waiting for an opportunity of this sort. I first suggested that I broadcast my views regarding the SCOURGE of usury and the sole solution — that of C. H. Douglas’s SOCIAL CREDIT — some five years ago at a dinner I happened to attend with, amongst others, Signor Achille Starace. Unfortunately, the Italian administration has not seen fit to take me up on this offer. I am delighted, therefore, that you have made contact, and that I might continue my association with the laudable efforts of the British Union to repel the threat of Communism.
I will talk about the JEW. For centuries, since the brute Cromwell brought them back into England, the kikes have sucked the English marrow from its bones. And now even those last remnants of the WHITE RACE, the proper, intrepid Brits each of them the right blend of Saxon warrior and Norman noble, find themselves kowtowing to international financiers, the houses of Rothschild and Raphael and Samuel, usurers in London and New York. I will speak, and when I have finished speaking, it will be as when the storm passes, and the sky is crystalline.
I am afraid that I am not able to come to meet you in Florence as I am currently rather diminished of capital. If you should like to visit us in Rapallo (we could put you up at my good friend Olga Rudge’s place — we are far too cramped here) and bring your recording materials, I will be delighted, for a small fee, to deliver you several hours of DYNAMITE.
Give my best to Sir Oswald and your father.
Sincerely yours,
Ezra Pound.
Wooton Lodge, Staffs.
20/12/37
Dear Esmond –
All the best for a magnifico natale from Diana and me. I’m bloody proud of you, young man. I think you still smoke: here’s a couple of cartons from our doomed attempt to take on Philip Morris! Hope they aren’t too stale …
Warmest wishes,
Oswald.
[Card: Blake’s Newton]
Happy Christmas Darling E! Miss you masses. I’m in hospital again, worse luck. Any chance of you coming back for a visit? A xxx.
[Card: Winter scene, English landscape.]
Dec ’37
Dear Esmond –
Wishing you a very Happy Christmas. Sorry you’re not with us. Cheque inside as I’m sure you can buy much finer things out there than we’d be able to send you from Shropshire.
Your mother sends her love,
Your Father.
The mince pies have been crushed in transit from England. Alice Keppel looks down at them apologetically as she serves coffee at the end of Christmas lunch. Reggie Temple has drunk too much and is lolling back in his chair, snoring. Bailey and Goad are wearing paper crowns and discussing the Nanking Massacre. Colonel Keppel alone seems cheerful. — I’m dashed if I’m too old to fight, he says to anyone that will listen. — Just let me at the bounders. Russians, Germans, all the same to me.
Esmond had unwrapped his presents alone, in bed. Two Old Wykehamist ties from his father, the Dugdale abridgement of Mein Kampf from his mother. His sister has sent him a bundle of Everyman editions of the great Russian novels: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev. He lays them on his dresser alongside the box of gaudy handkerchiefs from Gerald via Goad. Missing you, the card read.
He decides to walk back from L’Ombrellino alone. It’s cold and he’s wrapped in an overcoat. The wind brings tears to his eyes as he makes his way down into the city, lustrous under her lamps. Bells chime here and there, children play with spinning tops, yoyos, push-bikes in the street, their scarves tied in stiff knots at their throats. The church is dark and echoing when he lets himself inside. He has a recording to prepare, needs to check supplies of reel-to-reel tape and record needles. He’s in the studio until late and then goes to bed, reading three pages of Mein Kampf before tossing it aside with a snort.
Telegram: 2/1/38
Left yr mad politicians in the lurch STOP Wld rather sleep on street STOP Dad says he’s better is this true STOP Gerald
Via dei Forbici, 35c
Firenze
1.2.38
Dear Esmond –
It strikes me that we started out on the wrong note. Ada has enjoyed working with you enormously — she seems to have found her calling. Her mother and I listen to the programme with great pride, knowing the extent to which our daughter is involved in its production.
Perhaps you’d like to come for dinner one evening. If there’s one thing that the tribulations of my co-religionists north of the Alps have taught me, it’s that leaping to assumptions based upon such broad measures as race or nationality is almost always to err. I loathed your Mr Eden, I resented the sense of entitlement I found in the English who have colonised Florence, much as you have colonised the rest of the world. But these past few months have changed my views on many things. Ada’s aunt, my sister, lives in Hamburg. Life for her has become extraordinarily difficult. Her husband has been beaten, many of their friends have fled, some have disappeared.
It is to the credit of the British that you, like the Italians, are not temperamentally suited to racialist behaviour. The strength of your cultural life gives you access to a finer degree of sympathy — or that, at least, is how I’ve come to see it. Let’s discuss over dinner. I’ll leave it to Ada to agree the date with you.
With very best wishes,
Guido Liuzzi.
[Enclosed with following letter: article from Daily Mail entitled ‘Son of Sir Lionel Lowndes in Italian Broadcast Venture’.]
Welsh Frankton,
Shropshire.
February 2nd, 1938
Dearest E –
Thanks for yours. Can’t tell you how chuffed they all are with you. I’m sure others have sent you the piece from the Mail, but here it is just in case. It makes you sound like quite the hero. Mosley wrote a smashing letter to dad about the difference this has made to the Party’s standing in Italy. Is it true that Musso himself is going to broadcast for you? Now that would be a coup. In any case, he’s told Grandi that he’s thinking of re-starting his contributions to the Party.
I’ve been in the Royal Salop again, can’t seem to shake the cough. It’s a beastly pain but I’ve got through the boredom by thinking about you out there, and how fabulously you’re doing, and what a splendid time you must be having.
Oodles of love,
Anna xxx.
— You know the Treaty of Rapallo? Pound says as they make their way down from the train station. — 1922, it was. Marked the renewal of diplomatic relations between Germany and Russia. Now it looks like they’ll carve the world up between them. And it all started here! He has a halo of fiery hair turning white at the ends, a faun’s beard. Esmond had expected an American accent. — I found Hitler magnificent, when I met him, Pound says. — He’s the real thing, has a vision, a sense of history and destiny. They come to a small café on the seafront overlooking the gently curving bay, bobbing boats, terns and gulls following fishing trawlers out to sea. — In here, Pound says. — I’m upstairs.