nunu

1899 born out of wedlock in a union between her mother (Lila Barrington Ryder) and Macgregor Mathers, the chief of the hermetic order of the Golden Dawn (the year before Aleister Crowley declared independence and created the Golden Dawn).
when still pregnant with Irma, her mother moved back to her family in America where she died during childbirth.

Reports of her childhood vary greatly. Either she was living with her grandmother in abject poverty and started prostituting herself from an early age or she was born into wealth and privilege that she saw as bourgeoisie and suffocating, so rebelled and was subsequently disinherited.

With her fourth husband, Irma moved to Paris during Annes Folles (”the crazy years”). She had an affair with director Dudley Murphy, appearing in “Ballet Mecanique”.
The Hotel de Balzac named a gin, mint and ginger cocktail the “Ryder Bow”.
She left her fifth marriage and started playing concertina with Creole french trumpeter Thackery “Downtrodden” White on banjo and mandolin.

During this creative time, Irma created her own musical compositional style, carving her own niche amongst European musicians, earning respect and a reputation for her work.
Irma and Thackery, sometimes accompanied by a bottle player “Jo Jo” Tubbs (from Leysin) toured Europe and apan- where Irma had the Japanese Barberry (species of berbis) named after her.
But never again did she set foot in America.

Accounts are hazy, but it seems Irma sailed away with Thackery White to Positano or surrounding Italian islands whilst pregnant and rumours swirled of her giving birth to a “green eyed albino foal”.
Although no hospital records exist, and it seems neither Irma nor Thackery kept in contact with their former lives.
In 1964 a nomadic gypsy named Albere von Freytag surfaced in Parisian bistros and streets busking for wine and playing accomplished, if somewhat drunken swing jazz on the guitar. The guitar was a selmer-maccaferri he claimed was given to him by his mother, Irma Ryder Bow.
A reporter from The Tribune (Harold Griggs?) who was collector of early Ryder Bow recordings heard the buzz surrounding the gypsy’s claims and had organized to meet with him in the hopes of eventually tracking down Irma.
Unfortunately, in the early hours of the morning on the day of the meeting with Griggs, Albere von Freytag was accidently crushed by a tinkers horse and cart after he had passed out drunk in the gutter outside Cafe du Nord Seine.
Very few recordings of Irma Ryder Bow still exist.