THE HISTORY OF THE MOULTON FAMILYA Story by Charles E.J. Moulton William the Conquerer, Betsy Ross, Titanic contemporaries, Barons, Operasingers, Actors and Historians: that was and is the Moulton Family THE MOULTON FAMILY Charles Edmond James Moulton, born 1969 " Actor, Baritone, Author, Teacher, Speaker, Tourguide, Painter, Big Band Vocalist, Connoisseur of good wines, Filmfan, Family Man, Artlover, Eternal Soul, As Are We All! The Moulton Family: Father: Herbert Eyre Moulton (1927 " 2005) " Actor, Baritone, Author, Playwright, Teacher, Director, Renaissance Man, Highly Intelligent, Good Storyteller, Baker and Cook of Great 10 kilogramme turkeys, Well Read, Loving Father, in fact, the best dad there ever was Grandfather: Herbert Lewis Moulton (1886 " 1959) " Salesman, First World War Veteran, Gentle & Kind Father to Herb Scottish and British ancestors, our ancestors were among the 102 English immigrants that came to America with the Mayflower. Among our ancestors are Betsy Ross (1752 " 1836) " the woman who sewed the first American Flag for George Washington The Eyres of Eyre Court Castle: Grandmother: Nellie Brennan Eyre (1887 " 1959) " Irish Immigrant, Saleswoman, Celebrated Cook, Operalover, loved a good drink, strong and funny A family of Barons dating back to the 11th century, who founded the township of Eyreville, inspired Bronte to write “Jane Eyre”, owned two castles in the west of Ireland, that are now haunted ruins. Among them are Giles Eyre and Henry Lee Eyre. The name was given to our family after our ancestor saved William the Conquerer’s life, after which he supposedly said: “You have given me the air to breathe, henceforth you shall be called Heir.” That name, Heir, carried by Humphrey le Heir, over the centuries turned into Eyre. The Kronzell Family: Mother/ Herb Moulton’s wife: Professor Gun Margareta Kronzell (1930 " 2011) " Operatic mezzosoprano, alto and soprano, stage and film actress, vocal pedagogue, speech pedagogue, director, author, good cook, warmhearted, funloving, temperamentful, colorful, fantastic mother, wonderful teller of goodnight stories, gave great hugs, always supportive, My Gosh, mom, you were incredible Grandfather/ Anna Nilsson’s husband: Knut Allan Kronzell (1900 " 1973) " Baritone, Sea Captain, Accountant for the community church, CEO of local steel company Great grandfather " Adolf Kronzell Founder of Helsingborg’s Symphonic Community, that became the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra Lieutentant of the Swedish Army Uncle: Bengt-Åke “Båkke” Kronzell (1926 " 2008) " Big Band Leader, Trumpetor, Expert Historian on the Swedish song “How Great Thou Art”, Teacher, Great fan of Satchmo, loved to laugh The Nilsson Family: Grandmother: Anna Julia Sofia Nilsson (1900 " 1996) " First woman with a driver’s license in her home town of Kalmar, Contemporary of the Titanic, the radio, WW1, WW2, Charity Sponsor, Great cook, loved to bake, loved to read, love to play piano, loved a good laugh Great Uncle/Anna’s brother: Carl Albien (1889 " 1981) " Founder of Sweden’s first cinema SAGA, knew everyone in Kalmar and greeted everyone new that came there, knew Sweden’s cinematographical elite Olof Nilsson (1911 " 2003) " Forester, Farmer, Huge and Very Funny Man, Gourmand, Loved a good drink and a good laugh Lilly Nilsson " his wife, fantastic cook, wonderful hostess, friendly and organized Rut Nilsson " Anna’s sister, lover of poetry, polite, cordial, interested and kind person INTERNET LINKS TO MATERIAL ABOUT THE FAMILY: http://vocalimages.com/?page_id=774 http://vocalimages.com/?page_id=746 https://de-de.facebook.com/pages/Gun-Kronzell-Moulton/165526970147928?sk=taggednotes https://www.facebook.com/pages/Herbert-Eyre-Moulton/108856562616609 http://searchtopics.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/article/05vs5Gb0Rj4zd http://www.booksie.com/memoir/article/charles_ej_moulton/charles-edmond-james-moulton http://www.reverbnation.com/gunkronzellmoulton www.reverbnation.com/charlesejmoulton http://www.epubli.de/shop/autor/Charles-EJ-Moulton/1421 http://www.buzzle.com/authors.asp?author=69032 http://www.ideagems.com/html/authors-_page_2.html Herbert Eyre Moulton was born in Elmhurst, Illinois on July 15th 1927 as the grandson of Irish immigrants. His great love of theatre and opera lead to a lifetime of wide artistic endeavour. His passion for knowledge inspired him to studies for Roman Catholic Priesthood, Archeology and Literature at University College Dublin and Music at Besides film roles and commercial television, he wrote opera librettos, sang at Glyndebourne Festival and performed Shakespeare, Wilde and Musicals in at least on six He married his wife, experienced opera-mezzo Professor Gun Kronzell, in 1966 and they began touring In Herbert Moulton passed away 2005 at age 77. His remarkable wit and love of living was a great example to us all. Among his other works are the Off-Broadway plays “The Minstrel Boy” and his novel “The Twittering Machine”. He is also the author of many novels, such as “The Lunts on Broadway” and “The Wild Colonial Boy”. For a more personal description of my father, read on. My father Herbert Eyre Moulton went to school in Here are some miscellaneous, passionate, coincidental stories from his early days. On one occasion, after ruining another lunch break, he was banned from the cantina all together. The following day he brought a table, a plate, cutlery, napkins and food and ate his lunch gladly outside. The nuns passing by could barely conceal their mirth. When it came to bragging about his knowledge about theatre, he was equally cocky. My father saw his first opera at a very early age and it was then clear, just as in my mother’s case, that he wanted to become a stage performer. In music class the next day, the nun was talking about the opera he had seen the evening before and was at fault many a time in her description of the story. Herbert then corrected her, where upon the sister said: “Well, of course, you would know!” Herbert then, truthfully, said: “Yes, as a matter of fact, I would!” He stood up from his chair and told the class the story the way it actually should be told, pronouncing the names in the right way. When he was called a worm by a nun, he went down on the floor and crawled, explaining that since he was a worm he must crawl. He played the wolf in a musical rendition of The Little Red Riding Hood, but was so fat that his suit almost burst open. He had to sing: “For three days I have had no food, no meat, no cake, no pie!” He wondered why people laughed. At a birthday party, he emptied an entire bottle of whiskey in one gulp and ended up drunk for two weeks. It was even rumoured that Nell’s brother Marmaduke Eyre had contacts with the mafia. A colourful family. He would arrive at home with expensive gifts and rather dubious friends, clad in suits and spats, following him up close. After graduation, realizing what Herbert wanted to become, he started studying singing and acting in Soon enough, though, my father became a name in his own right. He became Herbert Moore and was hired by MCA records as a dinner singer, performing in The two school-pals lived together in one apartment in It was the time of the Korean War and as a result things changed. My father got sent to My favourite conversation between my dad and Hog Jaw was the following: “Moulton honey, what become of your a*s?” “Well, Seargent, you been chewing it off so much there ain’t much left of it!” “Moulton honey, how about a couple of weeks in the eatable garbage section?” With all of that humour going on, you would think my father took what went on lightly. Still, my father’s favourite cousin Frank had died in the second world war and so my father was never really a aficionado of war. He almost got sent to Maybe it was the war or life in general, but after this experience my father had second thoughts about joining the life on the stage. He spent four years studying to become a priest. One of his teacher’s was a man he described as “a floating boat with a cigar”. He gave the students a test assignment one day: “What is God?” and added: “Have fun!” After this excursion into priesthood, my father had a very bad year sometime in the late fifties. His mother, father and girlfriend died the same year. He fled What began as a two week vacation ended as a seven year stay and commenced what was probably his most productive professional period. Working with the likes of Milo O’Shea, Michael MacLiomore and Siobhan MacKenna, he performed in most of the theatres of My father’s work in He made films, among them in main roles. One of them was movie named “Attack Squadron” made with lower than low budget money. One of his colleagues uttered these immortal words during a lunch break: “They should call this movie The Nine Commandments. They left out one: thou shalt not steal.” My father’s remarkable self irony remained with him throughout the years. His accidental catching of a shark, during a commercial for fishing rods, was something he kept on bragging about until the day he died. His triumph was even mentioned in the local newspaper along with the advertisement. My father worked with an esteemed composer named James Wilson in It was in The sheepdog was roaming about with no one to his name and soon Herb and Fred became as indivisible as Laurel and Hardy. Nobody would say: “Look, here is Herb!” Now people said: “Here’s the guy that always comes with Fred!” I was two years old when Fred died. I do have some stray memories of him. Charity Eyre and the relatives of west There were commercials, plays and pub crawls with friends in his flat in Herb heard all the strange ghost stories his ancestors had collected and how the two Eyre mansions now were ruins. He heard about how Bronte had taken been inspired to name the main character Jane Eyre after the famous Eyre Family of Eyre Court in west He also experienced some ghost stories of his own. Here, too, are many fascinating ghoul stories from my father’s years in An old man of the family died and his cocker spaniel howled outside his door at the time of his death. The dog knew only by instinct what on inside the room. In the kitchen of the Eyre dwelling, there were loud noises of a staff of cooks getting the family breakfast ready around three in the morning. During one morning, my father complained to the lady of the manor that he wasn’t able to sleep. She answered: “Oh, those are just the ghosts. They always make a clamour of reverberation at that time of the break of day!” My father took a walk around the Eyre house one day and saw an old woman covered in a scarf and begging for money. She disappeared behind a corner and was completely vanished. Those were the tinkers, it was said. They were Irish gypsies that used to stray about and beg around the countryside. No one had seen them for ages. Then there were the stories about a window banging open and shut in the ruin of the old Eyre mansion, regardless of wind or weather. To this day, it is told, that shutter keeps on banging open. A female friend of his saw an old horse driven carriage with aristocrats in 19th century clothing venture down the road toward her. There were two valleys in the road. In the second valley, the coach was gone and did not reappear. The most mysterious of all these stories was one that one my father experienced himself on New Year’s Eve 1963 after a party in the west of Alas, the brave hardy American took the chance. Somewhere on the field my father lost track of his path and got lost in the snow. He couldn’t find his way back out and started to grow dizzy. He saw lights and chandeliers and people in gala wear and elegant artists performing elegant songs. He passed out on the field sometime in the middle of the night. It was just pure luck that a relative of his wondered where Herb was and started searching. He was found in the field sometime in the morning the next day. The epilogue of this tale was that he met a good female friend a couple of months later. She told him that she had seen him in That was actually impossible, knowing that he had been on the west coast that evening. Apparently, his soul had travelled across the country that night by help of the fairies. A funny story concerns my dad arriving with his dog Fred at a friend’s house. He was a welcome guest and only the man of the house knew that he would be there late after his concert. Fred was hungry and Herb had bought a heart from a local butcher that he could boil for the dog. He had already put on his nightgown, when he walked down the stairs with the heart and a knife and a lit candle in order to fix some supper for his pet. The wife of the household walked out of her bedroom at that moment just to check the noise and saw Herb walking down the stairs, suspecting a ghostly apparition. My father said: “Calm down, I’m just going to the kitchen to cut up a heart!” The woman screamed. “It’s all right, dear,” he said, “it’s my dog’s.” The woman ran into her room and wasn’t seen for a week. His great sponsor during this time was his rich relative Lady Mayer Moulton, an eccentric millionaire. She advised him to do something about his great singing voice. There were marvellous singing teachers in This commenced the next section of his life: life on the continent. Meeting the famous Gun Kronzell was elation to Herb. He loved opera and soon became her biggest fan. They bought an old Renault that they named Monsieur Hulot, named after the Jacques Tati character. What really grew successful was their musical collaboration. Soon enough, they became Astaire & Rogers and Kelly & Crosby and were rarely seen apart. I grew up attending their concerts. They were marvellous together. That collaboration began in 1966. My father was invincibly proud when I was born. He always spoke of the fact that I had smiled when I was born and not cried. Once we moved to We moved to Gothenburg on 1974 and my father kept on being active as an English speaking actor. Commercials, movies and plays kept on being his forte. Kemp in Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr. Sloane, the major part in Sweeney Todd, plays by Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill as well as melodramas became part of his resumé. He played a small part in the movie Firefox, opposite Clint Eastwood. He introduced Tomra’s new can recycler to a Swedish 1984 audience. These were all things that characterized his Swedish years. This and countless concerts with my mother were his professional reality. That year, in 1984, my mother again returned to My father became famous as the Milka-Tender-Man, making commercials for a delicious brand of chocolate that still exists twenty years later. He was even recognized in the sauna. Imagine the fun the old senior citizens in the local pool had when they told my dad that they saw had seen him on TV yesterday. Of course, these bookies and bakers thought he was just doing it for fun. Little did they know that this was the end of a glorious career of five decades as an actor. He had made movies with the likes of Zsa-Zsa Gabor, Alan Rickman, Jeroen Krabbé, Mickey Rourke, Audrey Landers, David Warner and Roger Spottiswoode. Through his work in the English theatre, as an actor as well as a programme author and dramaturgic collaborator, we were invited to all the premiere receptions and got to commune with famous people. Here, as well as at our regular visits at the Swedish Embassy Recidence, we met Rue MacLanahan, Larry Hagman, Linda Gray, David Carradine, Anthony Quinn, Helmut Zilk, Dagmar Koller, Claudio Abbado, Alois Mock, Erik Eriksson, Esa-Pekka Salonnen, Nicolai Gedda, Kjell Lönnå, Elisbaeth Söderström, Princess Alexandra of Kent, Ricardo Muti, Otto Schenk and Marcel Prawy. My father was always very valiant. He would wander up to the most famous person and chat them up. It has taken me twenty years to achieve that. Not even now do I possess that courage. My father worked as an actor at the Vienna International and English Theatres, playing major parts in all the classics: A Long Day’s Jouney Into Night, A Moon for the Misbegotten, Animal Farm, Charlie’s Aunt, Harvey, A Christmas Carol, I Can’t Remember Anything and many more. In the last mentioned play, he wore a full plaster cast after a knee operation and trudged back and forth to the theatre every day. Playing an arthritis patient made it easy to hide his full plaster cast. The reviews were excellent: “Herbert Moulton plays the arthritis patient remarkably well.” Of course, his rendition of Pollonius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet remains the most memorable, full of wit and brilliance. His poetic collaboration of readings, not only with Melinda May and David Cameron " but also with myself, was fertile toward the end of his life. They read poetry and prose by many a famous author and their evenings became popular cultural events. Ezra Pound and Edgar Allan Poe were only two of the many writers we covered. His film work includes “Mesmer”, “Dead Flowers”, “Wohin & Zurück”, “Business for Pleasure”, “Desert Lunch” and “Liszt’s Rhapsody”, but his favourite film was probably the all-star extravaganza “Johann Strauss”, directed by Franz Antel. He starred in the film as the Gypsy Baron " author Yokai, but his work as speech and dialogue coach was probably the most extensive of his career. There were so many dialects present in this haphazard and chaotic big budget film that my father had a hard time teaching everyone to speak high British English. Audrey Landers and Mary Crosby were Americans, Oliver Tobias was British, Heinz Holecek was Austrian and Zsa-Zsa Gabor was Hungarian. Just imagine the mish-mash, trying to accomplish your job as a dialogue-coach. Zsa-Zsa arrived in 1986 My father did his best to tutor her to speak eloquent English. She finally gave up, saying: “Get this awful American man away from me!” Dining with Oliver and Mary (the leading couple of the movie) in a restaurant where Herbert was entertaining them with wild stories about his youth in To sum up my views of my father, I can say only that my father was a good buddy I loved. Spending time with was fantastic. We went on bike rides together. We went to Among the celebrities that he worked with are David Warner, Clint Eastwood, Roger Spottiswoode, Mickey Rourke, Zsa-Zsa Gabor and Jeroen Krabbe Professor Gun Kronzell-Moulton was born in Kalmar, Sweden on July 6th 1930. The family vacations to Stockholm, though, were the start of her love affair with opera. This lead to singing studies for Ernst Reichert in The media discovered her talents and she began attaining truly first-class critiques. 1966 was a pivotal year. She studied for a teacher named Köhler and here met a young baritone named Herbert Eyre Moulton, who recently had moved to They married in Bad Godersberg in 1966. Exceedingly fast, they began singing together and forming a successful team. My father taught my mother everything he knew about musical comedy. Together, they performed in the Hannover Opera House in operas such as Der Rosenkavalier and Zar und Zimmermann. Their long collaboration as The Singing Couple brought them not only European tours, but also concerts in the In I have always been prone to eccentricity. I was born close to brewery in I do recall the next stop, Mödling, and my babysitter Tante Wolff with her apple strudel. I recall her German Shepherd at whom she would always shout “Schnaps!” My mother sang at the Volksoper in In Their performance in Osage, From 1979 on, she freelanced. In retrospect, it was admirable how my parents would keep us financially above water. My mother’s inventiveness was astounding. She wrote, directed and starred in a play called “Long Live the Trolls”. This was my first acting experience. She even toured with famous comedians in Swedish schools. I was her colleague at that time during my second production. She taught organists how to sing in Oskarshamn and held church music seminars. She taught private and official speech and vocal classes in a variety of schools and even taught Chinese immigrants Swedish and Stena Line Disc Jockeys how to articulate well into a microphone. She played the Goddess Justitia in a communist play about the fall of capitalism. My father and I, being true monarchists like my mother was, were a bit bothered. Prime Minister Olof Palme, who was murdered a few years later, came to watch and we were the only one not standing up when the audience sang the socialist songs. We knew the truth, though: my mother, like all actors, did it for the experience Her extensive concert experience brought her good reviews and her work for the Gothenburg Ballet Academy gave her wide-ranging attention from the press. She started to come into her own as a singing teacher. Her broad knowledge from various teachers now gave her expertise how to teach every imaginable style. Sebastian Peschko had taught her how to enunciate the alphabet. Paul Lohmann gave her a smooth legato. Köhler widened her range. Now she could use speech exercises such as Myavabranya, Pradgaflaspya and Yakaganga to perfect her student’s consonants. It was exactly this experience that brought her the offering of three professorships at once. Her student Judith was Luciano Pavarotti’s personal assistant for eight years. This gave us all intimate contact with the master and free tickets for many of his galas. Many opera stars like June Andersson, Nicolai Gedda, Claudio Abbado, Ricardo Muti, Per Grundén and Ingvar Wixell became acquaintances of ours through Luciano, if they hadn’t been so before. Gedda was an old friend of my parents from when my dad had worked in My mother’s wide experience made her arrange numerous appearances for her students in such diverse places as In 1998, she retired from the academy, but kept on performing actively until and after she moved to She also planned on auditioning her Brünhilde for our theatre superintendent. My mother had a glorious career and her personality was wide open and full of love. She passed away on Her soul is free. Anna Julia Sofia Nilsson and her family The Nilsson-family has a very renowned member. Somewhere in the past a woman emigrated from Spain to Scandinavia. We know that she was a contemporary of the Spanish Armada during the Renaissance or Baroque eras. All this leads up to my grandmother, who was the daughter of farmers in a little house called Friskamålen (pronounced Friskamohlen). She was the fourth or fifth in line of nine children. Her father was Gustav Nilsson and her mother brought her into the world in a city called Åseda, the town of Sweden’s most delicious brand of cheese. Anna Julia Sofia Nilsson was born on October 18th in the year of 1900. Among her nine siblings were, among others, Oskar. He immigrated to America in the 19th century and found a family there that still survives. Then there was Carl who was born in 1889. He would later found the first movie house named Saga in Sweden, where my mother often went to see her favourite movies. Calle, as he was called, took the name Albien and remained the eccentric original throughout his life, but his contacts within the Swedish movie industry was extensive. He knew the big Swedish film entrepreneur Sandrews personally and the movie actor Edward Persson came to visit him now and then. Calle’s son was Jan, who also was an amateur jazz musician. Anna’s other favourite sibling was Olof, or Olle for short. Where Calle was eleven years her senior, Olle was eleven years her junior. Little brothers are fun, especially when you can teach them stuff. There was Ruth, who like Anna knew many songs and poems by heart and at times called my mother a gypsy. There was Hjalmar, who died in the Spanish Flu in the 1920’s and Agnes who died in childbirth. She left her son Lennart in the care of Anna, who grew up along side of my mother like a brother. Anyway, at Friskamålen many children shared a dwelling and during the first year of school Anna walked three kilometres every day. Then, when Anna was eight years old, her Aunt Emily in Kalmar asked her if she wanted to live in the city and go to a high-quality girl’s school. She said yes. Moving to Kalmar in 1908 was the beginning of 88 years in her chosen home town. She shared a house with her Uncle Thomas and Aunt Emily, who were rich relatives, and their stepson Herman. Herman enjoyed all the benefits and Anna was treated with a step-motherly haughtiness. Still, Aunt Emily asked her if she wanted to call them Mama and Papa. Anna said that she had parents already, promptly writing her folks that she would rather be at home with Mama’s home made garments than with newer silk and satin in town. In 1910, she went home to a friend in order to hear a record being played on a gramophone, a so called phonograph. I remember hearing her tell me that she wondered where the man was who spoke inside the machine. She learned German as a teenager in a Girl’s Pension in Wernigerode in 1912 and escaped out against regulations at night to meet boys. In 1912, on the covers of the magazines she also read the news of the Titanic having sunk. In 1914, reports reached neutral Sweden about the start of the First World War. A few years later, a local inventor presented his new crystal radio receiver in the local school. It was a fantastic event, but unfortunately the radio didn’t work at the time and everybody was sent home again. All of these stories circulated my granny’s Bremergatan 11 apartment and she loved to tell everyone who listened everything about her industrious past and how she was the first woman in town to take a driver’s license. I think every single cab driver in town got to hear that story at least once. My grandmother’s teachers in school are an interesting chapter. Syftan and Snyftan were a couple of ladies that taught close at hand. Syftan always used her thumb to assess right proportion measurements in drawing class. Att syfta, to assess, gave her this name. Snyftan would cry all the time. She would be moved by everything. Att snyfta, to whimper, gave her this name. My mother and my grandmother had the same teachers in school and were taught the same things in the same way 30 years apart. My grandmother would seem a rather decent woman and she was everything that and more. In school, however, she did, at times, behave like a rascal. In learning how to bake, the teacher told her to turn the cookies on the baking tray around and heat them from the other side. My grandmother actually turned the whole thing upside down. The renowned artist Victor Sjöström came to visit her chosen home of Framstad to confer with her illustrious stepfather. The actor peeked inside her room. Anna only pretended to sleep and heard Sjöström say: “Look at how sweetly she sleeps!” She told all her friends in school the next day that a famous actor was visiting her. The subsequent daybreak ensuing breakfast, ten friends of hers came to bring her to school. They all made sure to shake hands with the actor. Ah, sweet fame. Anna and her girlfriends in school kept close contact for seventy or so years, meeting annually to commemorate their graduation of 1918. Their devotion to their scholastic friendship was even mentioned in the local press. When the Great War ended she worked in a Fuel Commission to mend poverty. She was one the most sought after type writers, writing over a hundred signs per minute. One of her most favourite colleagues was “Besvärarn”, “the difficult one”, who was called so because he thought everything was so difficult. A street was even named after this man. In Älmhult one can find Besvärsgatan, a road that honours him. The so called “original eccentrics” roamed about the counties and townships. Either they were professionals, like the odd barber with a comical turn of phrase at the ready, or homeless, like the apparently rich bum that collected bottles. One of these “originals” was Kalle Lindahl. He used to walk about Kalmar with a wheelbarrow loaded with stuff and welcome everyone that was new to town. Once he asked my grandmother how much time it was. She answered that it was four o’clock and he answered: “Good, I’ll be home by three thirty!” Anna studied how to play piano with Nanny Trädgård during these young years, which eventually would lead her to a position playing piano at her brother Carl Albien’s two establishments: his cinema and his restaurant. Her brother owned the neighbourhood restaurant Byttan (named after its’ buttercup form, en smörbytta) in the city park. I gather that Anna got to play quite a bit of piano there, just like mother got to sing there later on. Byttan still exists. She remembered the Mary Pickford and Rudolf Valentino movies and how the old film cameras had to be monitored by hand. The camera operator spun the wheel of the camera slower when he was drunk and so Anna would have to play Strauss and Mozart slower in order to match the practical capabilities of the camera man. She had a violinist as a partner one day that apparently was nervous. His bow got caught in her hair. What she also learned by heart were poems and songs. The French National Anthem, Lorelei by Heinrich Heine, Two Little Kittens One Stormy Night and a thousand Swedish poems all were her favourites. She knew them all by heart until the day she died at age 95. Witty was her rendition of It’s a long way to Tipperary: “... it’s a long way to Tipperary to the Swedish girl I know ... Farewell, Mister Square!” Her Victorian values, brought to her by Aunt Emily simultaneously with all of this literature, stayed with her all her life. Her brother Carl owned the cinema next door, but the house named Framstad itself had been inherited from Thomas and Emily. As a young girl, Anna came in contact with quite a few famous personalities due to her Aunt’s prominent local status. They owned the Tourist Hotel in Kalmar and many a Swedish star stayed at the hotel while performing at the local theatre. My grandmother also worked in the hotel as a maid and this was a chance to meet the stars. Ernst Rolf was the most famous singer of his day, kind of like the Dick Powell of Sweden. He had a concert in the local theatre one day. Ernst Rolf pointed at her when he sang:”My object of flirtation is here, but I don’t know of she’s near. Maybe it’s her, she’s there. She is blushing, how sweet.” (“Mitt svärmeri är alltså här, men jag vet inte vem hon är. Kanske hon det det är, hon som sitter där. Hon rodnar ju, det klär.”) Her encounter with a phrenologist at her daytime job at the Tourist Hotel only supported her love of music. He analyzed her head and by that could calculate her talents. He told her that she had very good music veins. Throughout her life, my grandmother had a great love of operetta. Her favourite operetta was, undoubtedly, Emmerich Kalman’s Die Czardasfürstin. She knew all the songs by heart. She was also the first woman to take a driver’s license in her home town of Kalmar in 1923. It cost her 5 Swedish crowns and she needed a certificate from the police that prove that she was sober and appropriate. She had, however, forgotten to learn how to drive backwards, so that lesson was added afterwards. Her first car was a Fafner, a vehicle with the gears on the outside. One man told his friends to be cautious when Anna drove around town. She was known for driving as fast as 40 km/h. It might have been true. She did stop for the horses, though. One coachman even asked her if she was afraid of the horse. Her husband Knut Kronzell was the son of a trumpeter that founded the Helsingborg Symphony. Their love affair started in 1925 and although Anna was already engaged with someone else, Knut Allan Kronzell, was the one she would marry. I performed on the same stage as my great-grandfather. While Adolf Kronzell was a strict man, my grandfather Knut was very gentle and funny and a man with a great sense of humour. He had a thousand witty jokes at the ready and was famous for having funny quotations for every situation. He got my grandmother to go out with him by jumping up on the sideboard of her car while she was driving. Knut had a great voice, but joined the fleet and consequently became a marine commander. He eventually founded a steel corporation. When it went bankrupt in the fifties, because of his partner’s mismanagement, Knut became supervisor for the local church. My grandmother was an avid enemy of Hitler during the Second World War. It shocked her that she one night had a dream about him. It shocked even more, though, that Hitler was very nice in the dream. Her hatred of fascism made her take on a child from Finland named Terrtu, driven out by Nazism. Her enormous contribution to welfare organisations like the Sailor’s Help and The Welfare of the Blind also made her receive all the more help when her sight grew bad in her old age. She raised two children, flew for the first time at the ripe old age of 85 and saw a world change from royalist horse power to electronic. My grandmother was my best friend. She would pick me up after school and occasionally we would meet up at the local café. We had a nice sport we called Baloon-Tennis. A balloon was thrown back and forth in her living room between two badminton rackets. Our record was 869 throws. I was Björn Borg and she was Jimmy Connors. She lived to be 95 and my times with her were among the best in my life. I will always remember the maid she kept using for her birthday parties. She was still serving drinks at her parties at 85. That was Anna Julia Sofia Kronzell. She was an aristocrat and a comedian. My grandmother would also sneak into the kitchen during the night and have a cup of coffee in order to sleep. She would grab breakfast food directly from the package. She loved Pavarotti and we played cards games in her kitchen. When I studied in Sweden, the weekends were always paradise. I could visit her. When I worked as a tour guide, the lunch break was the best thing about my working day. I could ride home and have lunch with her. My grandmother was a lady. A real honest-to-God-lady. The Eyre and Moulton Families This brings us to my father’s family, which can be divided into two parts: the Eyres and the Moultons. The Moulton’s were Scotsmen and Englishmen that eventually came with the Mayflower to America. We have a famous Moulton in our ancestry: Betsy Ross. She sowed the first American Flag for George Washington. One of our Moulton ancestors also remembered the beginning of Civil War 1861 and lived to tell my dad about it. One funny story is worth telling. My great-grandfather was put in an old people’s home at age 96, but took the bus home. When he was asked why, he told his children that there were just old people there. He wanted to be amongst young people. Herbert Lewis Moulton, my grandfather, spent years in the trenches of France during the First World War. He wrote letters home to America carrying his golden watch from 1912, a birthday present from his parents the year of the sinking of the Titanic. Big Herb, ended up as a salesman and married the daughter of an Irish girl named Nellie Brennan Eyre. Together, they settled down in Glen Ellyn, Illinois and had a son named Herbert Eyre Moulton, my father. The Eyre Family are colourful people that still habitat the west coast of Ireland. They were an aristocrat family that founded the city of Eyreville near Galway, Ireland. The name had been given to them by William the Conqueror during an 11th Century war, because this ancestor of mine had saved his life. “Henceforth, thou shalt be called Eyre, for thou hath given me the air to breathe.” The Eyre Family of Eyre Court had two castles to its’ name. They were festive individuals, one of whose later Barons, Giles Eyre, would eat slabs of beef direct off the animal on the barbecue. Another family member was responsible for burning down his own hotel. My father had a concert in that town in the sixties. He started the concert with an apology for his ancestor’s deeds. That broke the ice. The two family palaces are now haunted ruins on the west coast. The last baron to call himself that was, in fact, Giles Eyre, who was called Stale Eyre. He boarded up the windows in his house. During the difficult potato plague in Ireland 1848, the family fled to America. Here in America, Grandmother Eyre wrote a scrapbook in which she inscribed that the laughter of little girls was the finest sound in the entire world. Mother Nell was a colourful woman with a great sense of humour, who invited bagpipers and singers to the family house and loved good cooking just as much as she did Irish music. Henry Lee Eyre was born in Dublin on Febuary 4th, 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 21st, 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. © 2013 Charles E.J. Moulton |
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1 Review Added on August 2, 2013 Last Updated on August 7, 2013 Tags: BIOGRAPHY, HISTORY, GENEOLOGY, THEATRE, ART, SINGING, FAMOUS FAMILIES, CELEBRITIES Author
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