An Irish Sense of the Dramatic(Charles E.J. Moulton) My father Herbert Eyre Moulton lived on 35, Upper Baggot Street in Dublin while writing the following article, possibly for Hearst Newspapers in New York City, sometime in the early 1960's. After having lost both his parents in 1958, he moved to Ireland, deciding to start a new life in order to seek his own past. There he worked at the Gate and the Gaiety Theatres, went on tour with operettas, travelled to England in order to sing in Glyndebourne, lived with his relatives in the west of Ireland, was witness to many sightings of ghosts (see my article THE EYRE FAMILY HAUNTINGS), made a movie named ATTACK SQUADRON (see his article THE MAKING OF ATTACK SQUADRON) and worked in commercials. During one of these commercials he accidentally caught a shark. In 1966 he moved to Hannover in Germany, where met my mother: the operatic mezzo-soprano Gun Kronzell. Together, they went on a concert tour that took them back to Ireland for events and TV-appearances. I am promoting the life and work of my parents just like he promoted his parents at virtually the same age I am now. We meet, our souls transcending the eons and the power we humans call fate.

Now, sit back in your chair, pour yourself a pint of Guiness, have some Irish stew, whistle "Danny Boy" and get ready to enjoy the article! Oh, don't forget also to get ready to laugh and cry and embrace life like Nell did: like a true Irishwoman. She was Irish through and through: she was intense, dramatic, witty and highly entertaining. My grandmother Nell, who knows me by looking down at me from heaven although I never met her myself in this life. Nell had:


AN IRISH SENSE OF THE DRAMATIC

An Article by Herbert Eyre Moulton


Every Irishman is an actor at heart, and my mother was no exception. Although she lived all her life in America, her own people in Galway couldn't have been more Irish. And she was a born actress - if Nell hadn't been so busy working at other things, she might have taken her talents to the stage. As it was, she had a sense of the dramatic that any professional might envy, plus the unique ability to fling herself wholeheartedly into the mood of the moment. Just give her the basic situation, and the performance, like the audience, could look after itself.

She was short and round and florid, with flashing dark eyes and a personality to match. Emotions didn't lurk beneath the surface: she bristled with them. She loved anything joyous and happy -parties and party dresses that rustled when she walked, crowds of young people and music and dancing her jig with one foot stepping high and fast (she could only get one of them to work right) and her tafetta petticoats and red shoes flying in time to the tune. Our life was lined with laughter and yet (and here is where the "delightful dualism" of the Irish character comes in) no thought ever lay to deep for tears. They came as easy to her as laughter - she was even known to cry at newsreels. Along with her little coven of parish cronies - the Wax Works, we used to call them - my mother could be counted on to supply the fireworks for any occasion from a graduation to a betrothal. And when it came to the major milestones like wakes and weddings, or a funeral, their merest mention was a call to arms (or tears). Nell's own speciality was wakes, and during her heyday nobody in our town, Catholic or not, was considered decently buried without her official send-off. Her appearance was an institution and everybody always seemed enormously uplifted by it. This wasn't just anybody who had been called to his reward - this was a friend of Nell's, and therefore worthy of the complete orchestration. Her entrance was spectacular, usually begun by sweeping down the centre aisle of the funeral parlor or home, halting halfway and suddenly and dramatically to her knees.

Mind you, she was sublimely serious about all this, was our Nell. With all eyes upon her, would come a Sign of the Cross worthy of an Italian prima donna playing Tosca. After a moment of fervid prayer, and sufficiently recovered from her initial seizure, she would allow herself to be assisted to her feet, smiling bravely and shaking her head from side to side. By now the inevitable hankie would have put in its appearance, and dampening this and making little clucking sounds, she would approach the bier, supported by my long suffering father, Big Herb, unless he'd been lucky enough to slip away for a cigarette. Not even Nell could duplicate the performance she gave when our old milkman Howie Corbally was being waked. (And by "waked", I mean of course, not the native Irish, but the currently controversial "American Way of Death"-type, complete with electric organ, electric candles, and electrifying bills.)

Until his retirement a year or two previous, Howie had been on our milk route for over twenty years. In fact his old horse Marcus was one of my first friends. Thus something pretty special in the way of histrionics was in order for his laying-out, and good trouper that she was, Nellie didn't disappoint. On her journey to the casket - this after the usual bravura opening, she paused at the front row of gilt folding-chairs to address the bereaved. "My dear," said Nell, pressing the hands of each in turn, "We'll be praying for the repose of his great soul." The mourners gulped with a wild surmise as Nell with a wild surmise as Nell emitted the two short puffs of breath that indicated intense distress, and moved towards the catafalque. "Poor boy," she snuffled. "Poor, poor boy." "Hush now, Nell," whispered Big Herb, looking uneasier every minute. "How does he look?" she begged, clutching and unclutching her hands. She knew perfectly well how he looked - he looked terrible. "He looks terrible," my father assured her. "Of course he does. He's dead." "I mean, it doesn't look in the least like Howie Corbally." "Poor darling," she said, putting the deceased's tie in place with a pink-gloved hand. "He's been so ill." As a matter of fact Howie hadn't known a moment's sickness until he dropped dead unexpectedly at his new motel in Florida. "He must have been," Big Herb put in drily. "He's lost all his hair." "Don't be an ass," said Nell. He hasn't lost an ounce of it. "He has, and he's joined the Masons, too." " Howard Corbally is a Devout Catholic," Nell insisted. By now my parents were beginning to raise their voices as usual. "He wouldn't have so much as a mason jar in the house." "Well, he's a Mason now. Or was. Look at the pin he's wearing." "Give me your glasses, please," was Nell's request. We never left the house without a frantic last-minute search for her glasses, her car keys or her teeth. This time she had come away without her glasses. "Why, he is wearing a Mason button. And he's as bald as an eagle." "That's what I said, Nell." "Poor thing." She was again the Figure of Grief, drooping over the roses. "He's lost all his hair, but he's grown a moustache instead. Poor, poor boy." "Stop saying that. People are looking." "He is a poor boy." My mother poked the chest of deceased. "Just feel the stuffing they've got in him." By now a third party had seeped up to where this little tableau was taking place. It was the Proprietress (we always had a lady enbalmer or two in our town) and she was wearing the traditional mask of professional compassion. "You will be good enough to sign the Guest Register, won't you?" she murmured as if it were some posh hotel. "You did a beautiful job, dear," Nell assured her. "He looks lovely." "Thank you." "Tell me, when did he get so thin?" "He was always rather frail, I unterstand." "Not when he was delivering our milk, he wasn't." "I beg your pardon," said one of the Members of the Immediate Family who had come foreward. There was a pause as Nell confronted them all. "This is Howard Corbally we're looking at, isn't it?" "Why, no," said the Lady Mortician. "He's over at Burke's. This is Chauncey Pratt, from Naperville."

After that, Nell could never drag Big Herb to another wake, not until she had assured him in advance who it was he was mourning. When the business of burials threatened to pall, there were always weddings to keep perking. These glamourous affairs figure in my earliest memories. I don't think we ever passed a church where it looked like one was in progress that we didn't stop the car at once and swarm inside, no matter how we were dressed or where headed.
And if you doubt that two or three people can swarm, you never saw our family on the trail of rice and "O Promise Me." The ushers may have been embarrassed, but we weren't. Asked whether we were friends of the bride or groom, Nell would beam, "I think they're both perfectly lovely," and they always were, too. Once seated, and with the old Celtic Twilight beginning to descend, Nell would soon be dabbing at her eyes and sighing blissfully over her beads. Sometimes, when the reception was in the parish hall, we would let ourselves be caught up in the crowd of congratulators, carried through the reception line (where I always had to kiss the bride) and deposited handily by the refreshment table. And it was Nell's authoritativemanner that got us service, too. It wasn't a hoax, we weren't gatecrashing - we loved weddings and this was a weddings and we belonged there, wedding garments or no. The caterers must've thought so, too, because they clustered like bees in attendance on the round little woman and the even rounder little boy. In later years when Nell began to slip ever so slightly, there was generally some confusion even at those weddings to which we were actually invited.

A Protestant church meant one or two things to her, anyway - a wedding or a funeral. Both were cardinal events of a lifetime and, as at a wake like Howie Corbally's, both called for some superhuman rising above the platitudes. It was nothing to have Nell bear down on the mother of the bride with a heartfelt hosanna like, "Thanks be to God you were spared!" And when my friend Buddy Calloway was being wed, Nell rose to heights unknown even to herself.

She and Buddy's mother - everybody called her Cal - had been pals for years, and as that lady, corsaged and anxious, was about to be escorted to her place of honor, Nell appeared from nowhere and engulfed her. Whether she momentarily forgot the purpose of the gathering or whether the splendor and excitement were just too much, Nell gripped Buddy's mother tearfully and cried, "Oh my dear, you have my deepest sympathy!" Cal hardly made it down the aisle. But it was at those weddings where I was soloist that Nell truly came into her kingdom. For such state occasions - and she always looked very spruce and sprightly for herself, too - Nell usually got up a party of wax-works friends and made a day of it, arriving well in advance to insure good seats down front. The members of my claque were old hands at the wailing wall, but their High Holidays fell whenever I put in an appearance.

It didn't matter where I was singing - nightclub or party, concert hall or public park, but especially church - I had only to clear my throat for something like "Panis Angelicus" or "On This Day, O Beautiful Mother", and there would appear enough hankies to fit out a three-mastered schooner. Many's the bride has had to present her bouquet to our Lady, accompanied by a fanfare of hornblowing to a rush-hour. At a notable nuptial, Nell and her Town Criers were asked to move over to share their vantage point with a distinguished-looking couple.

Then throughout the processional and service, the newcomers were regaled with a streaming of verbal programme notes. And when I began to sing, Nell gave signs that she was entering the Promised Land. Elbowing the gentleman next to her, she announced, "There he is now! That's my boy up there singing!" "Yes, Madam," came the response as patient as possible. "And that's my boy up there, getting married." Nell would have loved Ireland, and Ireland, if I'm not mistaken, would have returned the compliment. Pity they didn't have a chance to meet, not in this lifetime, anyway. But nowadays in Dublin or the Provinces when people come up to me after a performance (Oh, yes, the bit of ham has been passed on) and the inevitable question is asked: "Where did you get your flair for the dramatic?", I reply: "Ah, but you didn't know my mother Nell."


Herbert Eyre Moulton, 1963

35, Upper Baggot Street Dublin 4 IRELAND

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