Real Lace by Birmingham Stephen;

Author:Birmingham, Stephen;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media

Chapter 15

THE TROUBLES OF ONE HOUSE

Few rich Irish-American families have endured more second-generation problems than the Ryans. One thinks of the Kennedys, but consider the House of Ryan. One is reminded of the doomed Greek House of Atreus. Drink, divorce, multiple marriage, and lapsing from the Catholic Church are only a few of the furies that have beset the heirs of Thomas Fortune. After Allan Ryan’s bankruptcy, Charles M. Schwab was asked whether he thought there was a chance that Allan might get back on his feet. Schwab replied, “I hope he does—I think he will.” But he never did, and after his father’s death his two brothers, John Barry and Clendenin, got together and agreed to share in an allowance for their brother of $50,000 a year. On this he was required to live.

Nor did bankruptcy end his woes. In 1922 Allan Ryan had a court battle with a man named George Maxwell, president of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, over the affections of the latter’s wife, the former Sally Tuck of Philadelphia. Allan Ryan and his wife were divorced in 1925, and that same year he married a girl from Montreal named Irene McKenna. In 1933 he was unsuccessfully sued for $100,000 by his housemaid, on whom, or so she claimed, he had forced his attentions. Allan Ryan died quietly in 1940.

His children, by contrast, did fairly well, even though they received a smaller share of Grandpa Ryan’s estate. Two of Allan’s sons, Allan, Jr. and Fortune Peter Ryan, joined Grandpa Ryan’s Royal Typewriter Company, and did well, and a third son, Theodore, made a name for himself as a breeder of prize Black Angus cattle on his Connecticut farm, where he also became active in local politics. A fourth son, Barry, not only owned race horses but became celebrated as a trainer of them. But multiple marriages marked this generation too—led by Allan, Jr., who married no less than four times, all to society ladies. His first wife was the beautiful Janet Newbold (who later became Mrs. William Rhinelander Stewart and, later than that, dated Randolph Churchill). His second was Eleanor Barry (no kin), his third was Priscilla St. George, and his fourth was Grace Amory, to whom he is currently married.

The second of Thomas Fortune Ryan’s sons, John Barry, was a dreamy young man whose chief talent seemed to be spending his inheritance, though he did write undistinguished poetry from time to time which he published under the name “Barrie Vail.” He and his wife, the former Nan Morgan, had a total of fifteen children, of whom ten lived. Their daughters made generally proper society marriages, but they were not immune from scandal—Adele Ryan, in 1930, becoming involved in a sensational breach-of-promise suit. As for the boys, all of whom had the Ryan good looks and charm to a pronounced degree, only one became famous, and then briefly, when, after a night of carousing, he drove his car up and down the streets of Stamford, Connecticut, tossing rocks in the windows of every store in sight.

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