THE EYRE FAMILY

THE HISTORY

OF A FAMILY

 

A book about the

Moulton Eyre

Heritage

 

By Herbert Eyre Moulton

(*1927 - ╬ 2005)

 

Edited and transcribed

Posthumously by

Charles E.J. Moulton

 

PREFACE

 

Vienna, Austria, September 8, 1995

 

My dearest son Charlie,

 

For some time now you have been asking me to write down what it is I know or remember about my ancestors: who they were, where they came from and something of what they accomplished during their stay on Earth.

So, now that I have a little time on my hands during these doldrums, or dog-days of summer, I am going to try to do exactly that. Because it suddenly has hit me: if I don’t get on with it, I, too, shall be nothing but a memory, leaving behind nothing but an unmanagable, indecipherable cache of papers, scribbled notes and fading photos, plus what few vague reminiscences might have clung to your memory from my babblings over the years. As one of our famous family slogans has it: Y.N.K. �"you never know.

Excelsior, then! Avanti! And as they cry in Mother Ireland goes God Show the Right!

By the way, I plan to do this in four parts, taking each of my grandparents in turn, along with their varied ancetries.

And please note: there will be no test at the end of this period. No one is expected to plow through all of this in one sitting. If you can read this in various sittings, you are pretty good.

But no matter what, dear special Club 31-friend of my heart of which we are so almighty proud: enjoy, as far as humanly possible, these words of wisdom from your past. God bless you. God help you. And God shaw the right!

 

The envelope, please:

The winning combination is ¼ Scots-English Philadelphia Colonial

        ¼ Maryland farmer

        ¼ Connemara. West-Irish Immigrant

        ¼ Anglo-Irish, alcoholic aristocrat

 

Mix that with Mama Gun’s lovely “Blandning”, Swedish for mixture, of South and East Swedish humour, Walloon blood, Spanish Baroque Armada and Danish farmer.

Shake it well, put in a cherry and a miniature umbrella, play an Irish jig and a Swedish classical medley, a jazz tune and some Maria Callas, and you have the unbeatable combination of CEJM, Birthday-Man, Now and forever more.

Enjoy! Enjoy! Enjoy! God bless you!

Yea, forever more!

 

And one more thing before we embark on this journey:

Charlie, don’t worry: the only thing you have to fear is fear itself.

Even if it’s wrong, do something!

With the angelic help you have, you are liable to do everything right. Your pops knows the way.

 

Papa Herbert Eyre Moulton

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Medieval times: a Colloquy between a high-born lady and her warrior Son, our ancestor.

 

THE BALLAD OF ROWLAND EYRE

 

Oh, where hast thou been all the day, my ruddy Rowland Eyre?

Where hast thou been all the day, till night from morning fair?

Oh, I have been this Summer’s day across the forest drear,

A-   courting of my lady gay, who has no living peer.

 

Oh, what bird sang so blythefully as thou didst leave the door?

And what bird sang so blythefully as thou didst cross the moor?

It was myself that carolled gay, as ousel in the spring:

Twas I that sang a roundelay, like a skylark on the wing.

 

Oh, what steed pawed so rampantly ere thou didst go thy way?

And what steed neigh’d so gallantly like a war-horse in the fray?

It was my own gray Caradoc that pranced forth in his pride,

And roused the echoes of the rock, this morn by Derwent side.

 

And didst thou see they lady gay, my fair brow’d Rowland Eyre?

And didst thou meet her on thy way across the moorland bare?

I met her in her father’s hall, my fair Madeleine:

Like unto angels, in a pall of silk and silver sheen.

 

And can she braid her own hair, this lovely bride of thine?

And can she braid her own hair, or crown a cup of wine?

Yes, she can braid her own raven hair, when ladies meet to shine:

And for her own chosen knight prepare the cupof rosy wine.

 

And can she nurse her own babe, this dainty bride of thine?

And can she nurse her own babe and pleased the dance resign?

Yes, Madeleine to every child will prove a mother blessed,

As does the broodie moorland hen to the flock beneath her breast.

 

And can she list the trumpet sound, my bold-brow’d Rowland Eyre?

And can she list the trumpet-sound, nor tremble at its’ blare?

Yes, sounds of war my love can hear, nor tremble with alarm,

And see the banners glancing near and aid her knight to arm.

 

Then, Rowland Eyre, a welcome free to this fair bride of thine!

And, Rowland Eyre, a welcome free to this dear child of mine!

The heroes of thy race have, aye, match’d with fair and good:

And may I yet sing lullabye to the offspring of the blood.

 

(There was a Rowland Eyre who was a famous cavalier, whether this ballad celebrates him or a prior Rowland Eyre is a speculation. It was family name peculiar to this branch of the Eyres for centuries, and from it the Earls of Newburgh descended.)

 

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

GRANDMOTHER AND GRANDFATHER EYRE

 

“Never forget, children,” my grandmother Eyre used to say long after her husband’s death, “your father was an aristocrat, an Eyre of Eyrecourt.”

But if deeds and character count for anything, it was this lively, energetic, warmhearted, caring little woman who was the real aristocrat of the family. My grandfather, though aristocratic in name and manner (when sober, that is), seems to have inherited the worst traits of his famous and ever more disimproving race.

Very Irish, that.

When I first moved to Dublin in 1959, I tried to trace the registry of his birth there. All I was told was that the old records at the Four Courts had been destroyed in “The Troubles” and the Civil War. Thanks to my Grandmother “Scrapbook” (actually an old Architect’s and Builder’s Directory for the USA, published in 1885, into which she wrote and pasted everything she wished to save: a family trait) we have what scant information remains, regarding names, dates and places. This is my only source. This and what I remember hearing about those old days. Things that used to inhabit our old 1930’s Glen Ellyn home are gone. The memories are still there.

Damn the depression, anyway.

We had a great time.

Doldrum days?

Not a chance.

Anyway, we are not talking depression days yet, although the people that knew the aristocratic life of Ireland told me about it during the depression.

Anyway, Henry Lee Eyre was born in Dublin on Febuary 4^th, 1853. His father Marmaduke had left Eyrecourt for Dublin and was employed there at the GPO, the General Post Office, scene of the Easter Rebellion of 1916. When he emigrated to America is unknown, but he married Nellie Finneran in Chicago on October 21^st, 1884. The only picture we have of him is a small tin type, typical of that period, posed stiffly on a chair and looking rather like an elegant bloodhound with his drooping moustache and pale eyes.

He was dressed exactly as if for Ascot Opening Day: cutaway gray “frock”-coat and waistcoat, striped trousers, gray top hat and gold-cane or brolly. Better than jeans and T-shirt, if you ask me.

I have no idea what his profession was, other than Downgraded Aristocrat. Nor have we any idea if and when he ever visited the crumbling old mansion in Galway, nor do we know anything about his mother except that she was born Eliza Johnston at Friarstown in Sligo, the rugged northern coastal county where the poet Yeats is buried. “Horseman, pass by ...”

The only mention of him in Burke’s Landed Gentry is the terse entry: Henry, d. young. That is a Victorian euphemism for “married a Catholic”. Only titled people get into Burke’s Peerage. There hadn’t been one of those since The Baron “Stale” Eyre died in 1781 and the title died with him.

When one of Nell’s famous cousins, Sir Hugh Beaver, then director of Guiness and progenitor of “The Guiness Book of Records”, expressed doubts as to my authentic Eyre ancetry, I told the old gent:

“My grandfather did not die young, Sir Hugh. He did worse. He married a Catholic, daughter of a Gaelic-speaking peasant woman from the wilds of Connemara. But in America,” I went on, “Nobility with a Capital N doesn’t always go by titles. With us, a bartender is as good as a Bart. That’s short for Baronet. That is, if he is a decent person.

Sir Hugh finally accepted that AND me. After all, how would Nell’s brother get a name like Marmaduke Johnstone Eyre if he hadn’t been named after his grandparents. The “e” was later added to Johnston, by the way. Many’s the bloody fistfight he’d had when his boyhood companions teased him about his “fawncy” name.

In those days, marrying a Catholic was tantamount to dying young: picture turned to the wall, totally disinherited. Not that, by that time, there was anything left to inherit except monumental debts. Our Irish relative Charity’s father, Willie Worthington-Eyre, literally worked himself to death paying off the debts his branch of the family had left behind at Eyreville Castle.

So, sometime between his birth in Dublin in 1853 and his marriage to my grandmother in Chicago 31 years later, my grandfather emigrated, met and married Nellie Finneran, then processed to sire six children. Three of these died in infancy, which was about average for the mortality rate of that period. My grandfather, himself, drank himself to death.

Whatever his profession might have beenm it must’ve brought in a decent income, providing the amenities for what came to be called “Cut-Glass-Irish”. The one photo we have of her and her two children show them well-dressed. She is in her dark sealskin coat, fashionable hat and black kid gloves. Duke is in a Turkish “fez”, a fad of that time. My mother Nellie Brennan Eyre with a fluffy collar and matching muff. It is the bearing of the mother, the position of her head, that marks her as one of nature true aristocrats. It was only after the father’s death in 1896 (pneumonia, aggrevated by alcoholism) that times got really hard: the “Cut-Glass” disappeared along with the Ascot togs and both Nellies had to go out and work. My mother was not yet ten years old at the time.

And as for my grandmother, her family never knew her real age. To the end of her days, whenever asked, she’d only reply, sweetly, but firmly:

“I am twenty-nine!”

Surely, she had a genuine love for music and beauty. One of her family sagas has her, still unmarried, travelling all the way down from Stevens Point to Chicago just to hear Mme. Patti sing. Adelina Patti was the most celebrated soprano of her age. She was the diva who inspired the barber-shop favorite “Sweet Adeline”, she with here countless “Farewell-Tours”. Her mention in Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” tells it all.

Sir Henry Wotton says: “But you must come to Covent Garden tonight, Dorian. Patti is singing.” A side note here is that Patti retired to the splendor of her castle in Wales. June Andersson, whom I met often in New York City during my time there, has a gold-framed letter which Patti wrote in English from there towards the end of her life. Baby June, as we like to call her, considers herself in a direct line of the great Prima Donna and I suppose she is right.