Madcap May

by Richard Kurin

  Newspaper illustration showing May Yohe in Mam’zelle Nitouche, 1896 (photo credit 5.6)

  She has a pleasing vivacity, a pretty voice, and no little espiéglerie. At times her gestures are somewhat brusque; but, on the whole, her performance has the merit of refinement. Miss Yohe’s success on Saturday was unequivocal, repeated encores manifesting the appreciation of the audience.10

  Another critic wrote,

  This very vivacious actress [May Yohe] at once leapt into favour in the part. Her tireless spirits, her rich fresh voice, the feverish energy of her electrical style at once challenged attention, compelled amusement and extorted admiration. Unmitigated silliness is the characteristic of the piece—a jumble of exaggerated conventualism flanked by distorted Bohemianism—but the actress is equal to gracing the petty and obscuring the inane … Miss May Yohe is an important acquisition to the London stage, and for bringing her thus prominently forward the clumsy stupidities of ‘Nitouche’ must be excused.11

  By September 1893, May was again on stage at the Lyric Theatre playing the title role in Little Christopher Columbus, a burlesque opera with a poor, convoluted plot, where the action, song, and spectacle move from Cadiz, Spain to Chicago’s Columbian Exposition.

  May plays the young Christopher, a Spanish lad serving as a cabin boy on an American vessel who jumps ship to be with his sweetheart Guinevere during the celebration in Cadiz of Columbus’ 400th anniversary of the discovery of America. Guinevere is the daughter of Silas Black, the millionaire “Bacon King of Chicago,” who would rather have his daughter marry a duke than fall in love with this young Columbus. After being arrested and extradited, and swapping clothes and identities with Pepita, a dancing girl, Columbus and Guinevere end up on the Midway in Chicago, where it is revealed that Columbus is, after all, the long-lost son of the duke of Veragua. All ends well with a number of senseless diversions, choruses, costumes, and dances.

  May’s return to the Lyric was no doubt aided by Lord Francis, who had become a part-owner of the theater. Whether by virtue of Lord Francis’ fiscal clout or May’s track record as a rising star among London audiences, she strongly asserted her will on the production.

  Eva Moore, who played the dancing girl Pepita in the opera, recalled in her memoir that May continually denigrated the performance of other actresses in order to be the center of attention:

  May Yohe played “Christopher,” and played it very well too; I impersonated her, in the action of the play. We had to change clothes, for reasons which were part of the plot. She was not an easy person to work with, and she certainly—at that time, at all events—did not like me.12

  May Yohe in Little Christopher Columbus, 1893. (photo credit 5.7)

  The account rings true. May squabbled with the musical director, complaining about her songs, the staging, and the roles of other actresses. As reported at the time, “At the Lyric Theatre, it was soon apparent that Miss Yohe was absolute queen.”13 The music director was forced to resign. He sued, asserting in his court testimony that the conflict revolved around the refusal of May Yohe “to be bound by the ordinary rules of the establishment.”14

  It was a re-occurring theme; May wasn’t one for rules or boundaries. As one of her fellow actors said, she was “intensely jealous of anybody getting applause beside herself” and “repeatedly threatened to leave the company.”15 Sir Henry James Wood, an honored conductor of the period, called May the “most extraordinary prima donna I have ever met.”16 As reported in the newspapers, Ivan Caryll took the music director’s place and rewrote “all the songs to Miss Yohe’s peculiar compass and by degrees cut out everybody else’s songs until she was able to shine alone.”17

  Music sheet cover showing May Yohe in Little Christopher Columbus, c. 1893. (photo credit 5.8)

  May’s recounting of Columbus’ opening night made her out to be the toast of London. Among her musical numbers was “Oh Honey, My Honey,” known in the day as a “coon song.” Performances of “Negro Pickaninny” bands depicting somewhat exotic scenes of Southern life were becoming exceedingly popular on Broadway at the time and would later flourish on Tin Pan Alley and with singers like Lillian Russell. May took full advantage of her opportunity with this genre piece imported from her own country across the Atlantic. These songs, racist by today’s standards, used the purportedly natural sensuality of African Americans to express the romantic feelings of middle-class whites repressed by Victorian morality.

  Dressed in her faux plantation costume, May belted out what was to become her theme song in a deep-throated, sultry way.

  Oh, honey, my honey, ’tis a dark and stilly night

  And only the stars can see,

  Won’t you wander through the grove by the pale starlight

  And whisper a word to me?

  Where the shadows all lie deep

  Oh, so quietly we’ll creep

  Not a little bird shall hear us in its nest upon the tree

  Oh, honey, my honey, while the other darkies play,

  While the merry banjo’s ringing

  And the darkie girls are singing,

  Come and listen to the music far away!

  Oh, come, my love, come with me

  Oh, come, my love, come with me,

  You shall nestle to my breast

  And we’ll dream awhile and rest

  While we listen to the music far away

  Oh, honey, my honey, if the night would only last,

  And never the daylight come,

  In a love-dream we would live while our hearts beat fast

  And only our lips were dumb.

  All alone, my dusky queen

  We would live and love unseen,

  ‘Mid the singing of the woodbirds and the insects’

  drowsy hum,

  Oh, honey, my honey, while the other darkies play …18

  The effect on the audience was stunning. May wrote that when she sang the number,

  Pit and gallery joined the wildest demonstration ever given in a London theater, when men threw pocketbooks and women their jewels at my feet and down from the gallery came that rare tribute, the show of programs which is the final approval.19

  George Bernard Shaw, who criticized May’s overall acting performance as lacking in comic genius and a bit too vulgar, nonetheless was again fascinated by the extraordinary register of her voice as well as the spirit in which she rendered her song, “which took her completely out of her forced role of burlesque actress, and gave her an opportunity of appealing to the audience on the imaginative and sentimental side.”20

  Ironies abounded in May’s performance and perhaps captured some of the underlying tensions of the Victorian era. Here were audiences, proud of the British Empire, applauding an American. Here were patrons, aspiring to English middle-class respectability and propriety, hooting for May singing a song born of presumably backward, plantation slavery. Here was May lauded for her beauty, yet saluted and celebrated for playing a young boy.

  May’s physical features mirrored the intrigue about her voice. Her skin color was described as “striking,” being of a “rich and radiant darkness that has something weird about it.”21 It was often attributed to her supposed descent from an American Indian mother. Her raven hair, big black eyes “that flash at one a volley of rays,”22 and small form made her appear both powerful and delicate. Her “shapely limbs,” “go and glow,” “serene depth of confidence,” and “brilliant bravado” animated her graceful movement.23 She was called a “wild child of lavish nature,” a “pert Pocahontas of lyric art,” “contemporary society queen,” and “enslaver of men.”24 In some cases May felt she had to tone down her femininity in “goody goody London.”25

  Indeed, a thread of Victorian morality opposed to more risqué theatrical displays ran through the press—as one aristocratic Lady argued, “This letting women make public merchandise of the beauty of their bodies is the gravest insult and dishonor put upon women in our time.”26 Not that May really minded. Yet, May said “boy’s par
ts” such her role in Little Christopher Columbus were what she liked best and what really captivated Lord Francis—and no doubt others. Cute, vulnerable, and seducible as a boy, brashly feminine as a woman, May was incredibly appealing to her largely male audiences.

  Enameled cigarette case featuring May Yohe in Little Christopher Columbus. (photo credit 5.9)

  Not everyone was convinced. There were critical laments about the show marking “the lowest attainable level of theatrical enterprise,” and accusing it of “unrelieved vacuity.”27 Overall, though, Little Christopher Columbus turned out to be a huge hit with an eventual run of 421 performances. It generated a cottage industry of products—cigarette cases, souvenir plates, and other paraphernalia graced by May’s image.

  May Yohe depicted on a cigarette card. (photo credit 5.10)

  May became a kind of “pin-up” girl for men at Cambridge and Oxford; a verse published in Granta captured some of the adulation:

  There’s a Trinity man whom I know. He

  Had photographs all in a row. He

  Had one of Mama,

  And one of Papa,

  And about 25 of May Yohe.28

  While May delighted men, she also intrigued some women who were entranced by her slim-necked, deep-voiced sensuality, as this 1895 poem by one “Sister Olive” shows:

  You butterfly!

  You singing bird!

  You dainty sweet,

  Sweet woman with the dancing feet!

  At sight of you, I know not why,

  All tenderest little thoughts are stirred

  In my soul’s depths—when you flash by.

  I love you at each swift heart-beat,

  Yet sit and never say a word—

  So many “loves” thrill thus unheard.

  O! little throat,

  So slim and white!

  Dear voice as deep,

  Restful, and wonderful as sleep—

  Our whole souls ache at each full note,

  Fall faint with rapture, swoon to flight,

  And follow where your love-songs float!

  And learn to laugh and long and weep,

  In slumberous calm shut safe from blight,

  Strange, dreamful singing, brief delight;

  Good-night, good-night!29

  May was a public figure who dramatically exposed tensions in British society over matters of nationality, sexuality and respectability. She was a humble American, yet a refreshingly London presence, a woman who flaunted her sensuality, yet did so by playing males. May was viewed as a boisterous character in a profession that placed her at the edge of social respectability, and her romance with Lord Francis was aimed at the heart of a staid and insecure aristocracy. These tensions increasingly came to the fore, played out both publicly and privately in May’s battles with the Newcastle clan.

  What’s a poor girl to do?

  I’m sure I can’t help it—could you?

  To be young and pretty

  Seems almost a pity

  But it has its advantages too!

  —May Yohe1

  CHAPTER SIX

  Aristocratic Artist

  WITH MAY ON STAGE AND IN THE SPOTLIGHT, the London press was awash with notices about Lord Francis and May. If Lord Francis married May, one day she would likely be the duchess of Newcastle. The fact that she was a theatrical performer, an “ex-chorus girl,” who might enter the highest level of the British aristocracy was news—and scandalous to more conservative members of society. This contrasted with the American press, which gushed: “still another triumph is included in this capture of a British lord by an American girl … which must naturally thrill our American pride of nationality.”2

  In August 1893, rumors began to circulate that the couple had been married. The source of the rumor was May herself, “whose evidence might be thought conclusive were it not for the fact that it is not the first time she has claimed to have entered into the bonds of matrimony and found it difficult to support that claim,” wrote one astute reporter.3

  Thus began the battle between May and the Pelham-Clinton-Hope family of Newcastle in the newspapers. Francis’ family and friends strenuously denied the rumor of marriage, declaring it to be “nonsense.” They did not deny Lord Francis’ interest in May—a friend of the couple even reported to the press that May and Lord Francis were “intimate friends.”4 No one doubted it.

  The Newcastle clan acknowledged that Lord Francis was helping May with her stage career. In fact they chided him for having “squandered” large amounts of money to “advance her fortunes.” Lord Francis was going broke, and helping May was one reason for his “unfortunate pecuniary situation,” they said.”5 Lord Francis had not only invested in the Lyric Theatre, he had also bought a major share in the Morning, a London newspaper, to tout May and promote her career. He produced posters featuring her image that hung in many of the shops and advertised her performances.

  The issue of English aristocrats marrying wealthy Americans was amply discussed in the British press and in high society. A number of high-profile lords had taken American wives, presumably for good reason. These were high-society “Newport [Rhode Island] brides,” Americans with good family connections and with money who could help sustain impoverished noble family trees. Such was the case not only in England, but also on the Continent.

  The British were quite conscious of the American duchess of Manchester, the American countess of Essex, the American baronesses of Abinger, Vernon, and Playfair, and the American marchioness of Anglesea. To those British-American unions would soon be added the marriage of Consuelo Vanderbilt to the duke of Marlborough for a settlement to the groom of about $3 million (or about $75 million in today’s currency). While these matches occasioned press stories, gossip, and serious commentary, they were understandable.

  Less understandable in England were the dalliances of the nobility, particularly the fondness of profligate ne’er-do-well aristocrats for showgirls. There were a number of them. The “weak” Lord Dunlo met his bride Belle Bilton at a late-night dance club and married her the next day, whereupon she became the countess of Clancarty. The marquis of Allesbury, who had mortgaged his family estate and been involved in several swindling schemes, married Dolly Tester of the music hall stage, making her the marchioness. The disowned Viscount Hinton, who sold off most of his inherited possessions, married ballet dancer Lydia Ann Sheppey. And there were many more. These cases were regarded as examples of the emotional foolishness of degenerate dandies, a sign of amorality, instead of the pragmatism of a financially weakened nobility.

  May Yohe, 1893. (photo credit 6.1)

  May Yohe, 1893. (photo credit 6.2)

  One friendly newspaper account distanced May from the realm of these foolish affairs:

  Lord Francis Hope’s marriage to May Yohe cannot be considered to possess the same features as the mesalliances of the others mentioned. In the first place, May is an actress of the legitimate stage, a young woman of many accomplishments … She knows more in a minute than her husband, who is a particularly boyish young fellow of twenty-five, will in all his life.6

  Another story praised May’s competitive edge. “Miss Yohe, an American exponent of leg opera, has beaten her English stage sisters at their own game.”7

  The Newcastle family fired back. They hired an investigator to examine and discredit May’s past. A newspaper article revealed one of their findings, her rumored marriage to Jack Mason: “At one period in her checkered career she possessed a bona fide husband from whom she has never been legally separated.”8

  One of Lord Francis’ relatives publicly declared that he “was sure that foolish as the boy [Francis] had been, he had not committed that crowning act of folly!”9 Francis’ mother, Henrietta Adéle Hope, the dowager duchess of Newcastle, was dead set against the marriage. The attractive Henrietta had been born out of wedlock, had been purposefully wedded to gain a title, and had, of her own volition, married a singer, Theobold Hohler, soon after the death of her husband, the duke
nicknamed “Linky.” These were all characteristics that may have otherwise allowed her to identify with May’s struggle for legitimacy. However, Hohler died in 1892, and Henrietta, influenced by a charismatic priest, had an epiphany of sorts. She converted to Roman Catholicism and increasingly became devoted to the Church, to simple, almost monastic living, and to community service. She was put off by May’s madcap reputation for loose morals.

  To dissuade Francis from the folly of marriage, his family offered him between £200,000 and £300,000, more than $1 million dollars then, and now worth about $30 million, “on the sole condition that he breaks off absolutely forever this connection to May.”10

  The family was clearly worried about their reputation and the drain on Hope’s fortune. A commentator noted:

  Unlike most wealthy Englishmen of his age, Hope is a quiet young man, who goes in for business … Yet young Hope will find his income is none too large if he continues to support May Yohe, a theater and a newspaper.11

  Sketch of Dowager Duchess Henrietta Hope, c. 1894. (photo credit 6.3)

  May was up against the full force of the Hopes and the Pelhams of Newcastle. What the Hopes had fought for so hard for three generations—aristocratic status—May Yohe was now taking for a song; respectability, so long sought by Henry Thomas, Adéle, and Henrietta, would suffer from associations with the tawdry music hall. May’s standing did not fit at all with Henry Thomas’ “Young England” vision of the nation, which he had defined as a politician with a young Benjamin Disraeli. That movement, now somewhat anachronistic but coloring the family’s ideology, had called for conservative social values, a strong monarchy, high church religion, and a responsible and charitable aristocracy. May’s music hall cavorting was anathema to the conservative Hopes.