ABSTRACT
Early in September 1943, as the Allied armies prepared to invade Italy, and Badoglio, who had replaced Mussolini, agreed to capitulate, Pound was on one of his visits to the capital. During the final days there was chaos and many of those who were connected with the government fled north by car, having made provision for such an emergency. Pound, who had not, suddenly found himself alone with nowhere to go. How many hours or days he lived in this uncertainty I do not know, but after refusing to take shelter with the Degli Uberti family he borrowed from them a knapsack, a road map, and a pair of heavy walking boots, with the intention of heading out of the city to the north. At midday on 8 September — the day on which capitulation was announced — he rang the doorbell at the flat of a friend, Naldo Naldi, whose wife was English; this seems to have been his last call before leaving Rome.
