Ann Wroe
speaker
865 appearances
15 recordings
2 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 21 Aug
Ann Wroe’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 15 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 6.
Appearances
As soon as Mary de Ratchovilt was born, she was sent away.
Her parents, the American poet Ezra Pound and his mistress Olga Rudge, an American violinist.
simply felt they couldn't cope with a child on the premises.
He was too busy with his poetry and she with her violin playing.
So they sent her from Venice where they lived then, to the South Tyrol, where
to a very kindly family.
Who took in abandoned children, although Mary was not quite abandoned.
Ezra and Olga paid two hundred lira a month for her keep.
And she herself, when she was older than a baby, was very pleased with the arrangement, because her two foster parents, Mame and Tata, as she called them, were
Where?
Incredibly comforting and kind.
And she loved growing up as a little Tyrolean peasant child.
Every so often, however, there would be visits from her parents.
There was one occasion when, at night, Ezra Pound, her father, came into her bedroom just to say goodnight and
And had a look at her hands and saw her nails were filthy with doing farm work all day.
And took out scissors from his luggage and cut her nails, and then asked her if she brushed her teeth.
She was rather coy about that, so they went out the next day to buy a toothbrush.
And all these were signs to her that this was a man who cared about her, even more so when she, every so often, as she grew older, would go on trips to Venice, and he then took charge of entertaining her.
So that they would go to the Lido on the Vaporetto.
They would have wonderful feasts of ice cream and exquisite pastries.
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